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Authors: Wendell Berry
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home from the graveyard on the hill outside Port William where they had laid Uncle Peach to rest, they were silent until Wheeler said, âWell!â
He let the silence come back, and then he said, âThe preacher takes a very happy view of Uncle Peachâs prospects hereafter.â
Wheeler was lining out a text that would be clearly printed in his sonâs memory, where it would wait a long time for interpretation.
When his father again let the silence come back, Andy understood that his mother wasnât saying anything because she felt that the fate of Uncle Peach hereafter was none of her business, and his grandfather wasnât saying anything because he didnât want it to be his business, and hisgrandmother wasnât saying anything because it was her business. It came to Andy then, for the first time, that his father was still relatively a young man.
The preacher had said Uncle Peach was going to Heaven, or was there already, because his soul had been saved when he gave his life to Jesus and was baptized at the age of twelve. His baptism, so many years ago, in another century, was still in force. Andy imagined that baptism had left on Uncle Peachâs soul a mark like a vaccination scar to show that he had been saved. When he got to Heaven he was to be let in.
Andy had stood in church beside his mother, had heard her singing with the others,
While I draw this fleeting breath,
When mine eyes shall close in death,
When I rise to worlds unknown,
And behold Thee on Thy throne,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee,
and he had thought, â She ? She will?â And so he knew that in the soulâs bewildering geography there was a Rock of Ages. In his mind it looked like the Rock of Gibralter cleft like a cowâs foot, and you could hide in the cleft and be all right.
But from other songs they sang he knew that this geography had a shore too from which the dead departed to cross a wide river, and another shore beyond the river, a beautiful shore, that was Heaven. He had seen in his mind a picture of people on the far shore waving to people coming across in a boat who were waving back. They were calling each otherâs names and they were happy.
But Wheeler wasnât finished. He was always concerned with fittingness, which was maybe a kind of honesty. Those were words he used: âfittingâ and âhonest.â He was always trying to get the scattering pieces of their history to fit together in a pattern that made sense. He wanted to find the right words and to say things right. âRightâ was another of his words, as was âsense.â His effort often made him impatient. This also Andy took in and remembered.
âIf Uncle Peach is in Heaven,â Wheeler said, âand Lord knows I hope thatâs where he is, then grace has lifted a mighty burden, and the preacher ought to have said so.â
And then he said, as if determined in his impatience to capture every straying piece, âAnd as an earthly burden it wasnât only grace that lifted itââmeaning it was a burden he too had borne. Even at the time, Andy caught that.
So did his grandmother. She said one syllable then that Andy later would know had meant at least four things: that his father would have done better to be quiet, that she too had borne that earthly burden and would forever bear it, that Uncle Peach had borne it himself and was loved and forgiven at least by her, and that it was past time for Wheeler to hush.
She said, â Hmh !â
A Desirable Woman (1938â1941)
For Tanya and David Charlton
She was not beautiful according to the standards of the magazines and moving pictures of the time, and she knew it. But by any standard she was a desirable woman, and she also knew that. She knew it from what she had seen in the eyes of certain men, to which from time to time she had felt something like an echo in herself.
That she was desirable was
He let the silence come back, and then he said, âThe preacher takes a very happy view of Uncle Peachâs prospects hereafter.â
Wheeler was lining out a text that would be clearly printed in his sonâs memory, where it would wait a long time for interpretation.
When his father again let the silence come back, Andy understood that his mother wasnât saying anything because she felt that the fate of Uncle Peach hereafter was none of her business, and his grandfather wasnât saying anything because he didnât want it to be his business, and hisgrandmother wasnât saying anything because it was her business. It came to Andy then, for the first time, that his father was still relatively a young man.
The preacher had said Uncle Peach was going to Heaven, or was there already, because his soul had been saved when he gave his life to Jesus and was baptized at the age of twelve. His baptism, so many years ago, in another century, was still in force. Andy imagined that baptism had left on Uncle Peachâs soul a mark like a vaccination scar to show that he had been saved. When he got to Heaven he was to be let in.
Andy had stood in church beside his mother, had heard her singing with the others,
While I draw this fleeting breath,
When mine eyes shall close in death,
When I rise to worlds unknown,
And behold Thee on Thy throne,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee,
and he had thought, â She ? She will?â And so he knew that in the soulâs bewildering geography there was a Rock of Ages. In his mind it looked like the Rock of Gibralter cleft like a cowâs foot, and you could hide in the cleft and be all right.
But from other songs they sang he knew that this geography had a shore too from which the dead departed to cross a wide river, and another shore beyond the river, a beautiful shore, that was Heaven. He had seen in his mind a picture of people on the far shore waving to people coming across in a boat who were waving back. They were calling each otherâs names and they were happy.
But Wheeler wasnât finished. He was always concerned with fittingness, which was maybe a kind of honesty. Those were words he used: âfittingâ and âhonest.â He was always trying to get the scattering pieces of their history to fit together in a pattern that made sense. He wanted to find the right words and to say things right. âRightâ was another of his words, as was âsense.â His effort often made him impatient. This also Andy took in and remembered.
âIf Uncle Peach is in Heaven,â Wheeler said, âand Lord knows I hope thatâs where he is, then grace has lifted a mighty burden, and the preacher ought to have said so.â
And then he said, as if determined in his impatience to capture every straying piece, âAnd as an earthly burden it wasnât only grace that lifted itââmeaning it was a burden he too had borne. Even at the time, Andy caught that.
So did his grandmother. She said one syllable then that Andy later would know had meant at least four things: that his father would have done better to be quiet, that she too had borne that earthly burden and would forever bear it, that Uncle Peach had borne it himself and was loved and forgiven at least by her, and that it was past time for Wheeler to hush.
She said, â Hmh !â
A Desirable Woman (1938â1941)
For Tanya and David Charlton
She was not beautiful according to the standards of the magazines and moving pictures of the time, and she knew it. But by any standard she was a desirable woman, and she also knew that. She knew it from what she had seen in the eyes of certain men, to which from time to time she had felt something like an echo in herself.
That she was desirable was
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