7

       The Great World

      It was enough to make your head swim. There I went, walking away from Dr. Ardmire’s office down the empty corridor late in the afternoon, and once again all my life so far was behind me. I had a feeling of strangeness and a feeling of being free; I had no more obligations, no more fear of failure, for failure had already come and, in a way, had gone. My questions were still with me, but for the time being anyhow they weren’t crying out to be answered. I wasn’t yet as free as I was going to become, but I knew that I was freer than I had ever been before. More than anything, I was glad to be free of being a preacher. It has always taken me a long time to think of something to say, and then more often than not I say it to myself. I would have had no business trying to preach a sermon three times a week.

      And then, even before I got out of the building, and without any intention on my part, the thought of Nan O’Callahan returned to me. But she didn’t come to mind this time as “Sister Crow,” the entirely supposed preacher’s wife of my hopeless daydreams. She came as herself, comely, weighty, fragrant, and warm.

      That was in the early spring of 1935, just as the jonquils were starting to bloom. I brought my involvements at Pigeonville to an end with a few short farewells. What had happened seemed not to have happened to me so much as to the world, which seemed all of a sudden to have got a lot bigger.

      Since I couldn’t stay where I was, I had to think of someplace else. I could have gone in one direction as easily as another, and so I went to Lexington, which was the nearest city. I had never lived in a city, and I thought I would like to try one. I had my several pieces of folding money in the lining of my jacket and in my shoe, but they weren’t enough to go far. Pretty soon I was going to need a job; I thought Lexington would be the place for that. I trusted my willingness; I didn’t aim to be any kind of crook, but short of that I would do whatever anybody would pay me for. I had in the back of my mind the idea that I would take courses at the university and sooner or later graduate. If I was freer than I had ever been in my life, I was not yet entirely free, for I still hung on to an idea that had been set deep in me by all my schooling so far: I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself—if not a minister of the Gospel, then something else that would be (I had by now actually thought this) a cut or two above my humble origins.

      I owned a few books and a few clothes, a razor, a toothbrush, and a comb. I packed it all into a smallish cardboard box bound with several wraps of cord to make it easy to carry, and just after daylight I set off for Lexington afoot. It made me happy to have all my belongings in a box that I could carry with one hand and walk wherever I wanted to go. I thought, “I could go anywhere. I could go to the North or the West. I could just put one foot in front of the other until I would see places and things I have never imagined.”

      But after I walked four or five miles, a man driving a truck loaded with fat hogs stopped and gave me a ride, much to the relief of my feet.

      I climbed into the cab, which was neat as a pin, set my box on the floorboard, and said thank you to the driver.

      “You entirely welcome,” he said. “Entahrly” was the way he said it.

      He seemed to wait for me to say something else. When I didn’t, he said, “Well, are you traveling or going somewheres?”

      He was studying me out of the corner of his eye as he watched the road, and I eased my hand down to where I could feel the little sheaf of bills inside my jacket lining and held them tight. I knew there were people in this world who would cut your throat for a quarter.

      But he didn’t look like that kind. He was a small, neat man with eyebrows that were too bushy and ears that were too big for the rest of him. His chin stuck out, when he wanted it to, as though he used it for pushing open doors. His clothes and shoes were nearly spotless, which you wouldn’t expect of a man hauling hogs. He was smoking a pipe. After my walk in the frosty morning air, that warm cab fragrant with pipe smoke was welcoming to me.

      I said, “I’m heading over about Lexington.”

      And then, when I offered no more, he said, “Well, have you got a name?”

      “J.,” I said.

      He stuck his hand out. “Sam Hanks.”

      I could have laughed, if I had let myself, or just as easily have cried. I knew who Sam Hanks was. He was the main livestock and tobacco hauler in Port William. He was the nephew of Miss Minnie Proudfoot who lived on Cotman Ridge above Goforth. All in a pang I remembered seeing his truck in front of my father’s shop with a set of new racks, which I suppose my father had made. He had stopped by the store at Squires Landing a many a time.

      It was a touchous moment. I felt like I was on top of a tall pole, ready to fall off. I could have told him who I was and he would have known. And yet it was too much. I had been ten years gone, and I had no thought of ever going back. To have identified myself to him would have been like raising the dead. I didn’t have the heart. Also (as I was proud to think) who I was was my own business.

      I shook his hand and said, “Where you from, Mr. Hanks?”

      “Port William. Ever heard of it?”

      “No,” I said. “Are you a right smart ways from home?”

      “Not too far,” he said. “But usually I run to Louisville more than Lexington. Lately, though, I been coming up here some. People down home get tired of giving their stock away at Louisville, so they try giving it away in Lexington.”

      “Do you raise stock yourself?” I asked, because in fact I couldn’t remember.

      He drew on his pipe a little. “No. There’s plenty of people to do that—and borrow money and pay interest, like as not, for the privilege.” He said “privi-lege,” in a way I remembered.

      “No,” he said, “I’m just the man that hauls it to where they can give it away. Me, I ain’t aiming to owe anybody anything. I am an independent man, and take my hat off to nobody.”

      That was Sam Hanks—an independent man indeed, as stubborn as independent, and almost absolutely principled. In the time to come I would know him well. He was a man quiet enough, inclined, like most Port Williamites, to keep his own vital concerns to himself, but he could be goaded into a kind of eloquence. What goaded him invariably was the suggestion that there was any human under Heaven to whom Sam Hanks ought to take off his hat.

      His great enemy—and frequent client—was John T. McCallum. John T. did not goad Sam Hanks in order to enjoy his eloquence; their differences were profound and sincere. John T. was full of the spirit of patriotism and progress and he venerated public figures; he was therefore deeply affronted by Sam Hanks and could not resist the thought that Sam might be brought to see things in the proper way. In later years, when the two of them would converge in my shop, they always worked their way sooner or later to some version of the same conversation.

      John T., for instance, would itch until he had to invite Sam Hanks to go with him to hear the governor speak from the courthouse porch in Hargrave.

      And Sam Hanks would reply, “Hell, no!”