Excavation

Chapter 21

It was a quiet Sunday afternoon at Uncle Ben’s house. A veritable feast of a dinner at three, followed by a walk to burn off some of that delicious country-style food, and then lounging around on the old wooden lawn furniture Ben had set up under the oak. Lannie and Tim, Ben’s kids, circled the chairs like enormous flies, one of them occasionally plopping down into Reed’s lap with a giggle.

He hadn’t had a Sunday like this in years; he and Carol and the kids had gotten into the bad habit of watching TV on Sundays, and Alicia usually couldn’t make it until a mid-afternoon meal, so they had lunch at noon and dinner at six. It didn’t seem right. One meal on Sunday, a big meal like this one—that was the way to do it. Reed was so contented he didn’t bother to stifle the belch he felt climbing his belly. Lannie and Tim giggled insanely, Ben began to laugh, and suddenly Reed found himself joining them, so enthusiastically he didn’t think he could stop. It felt good; he couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed like that.

He looked over at Ben, who was gazing at him with a wide smile, his eyes twinkling.

“So whose canary did you eat, Uncle Ben?”

Ben chuckled. “It’s just good to see you laughing, Reed. I was afraid you’d lost the knack.” He sat up in the lounger. “And it’s good to have you spend a nice, normal day in the Creeks. You haven’t had one since you’ve been here. You know, we don’t spend all our time gettin’ eat by bears and chasing Hector Pierce in his birthday suit all over creation.”

Reed laughed. “I should hope not. I was beginning to wonder if things had changed that drastically over the years. There’s been a lot of excitement around here lately, more than I could have found back in Denver.”

Ben stretched his legs and sighed. “Yep. Sure has… since just before you got back.” There was an awkward pause. Reed looked past Ben at the garden, all harvested out. Lannie and Tim were playing among the brown and gray cornstalks. Lannie was going to be a beautiful woman: she had fine delicate features, high cheekbones, and long, lustrous brown hair. A bit on the thin side, but she held herself well. Besides, she was only nine years old. But damn if she wasn’t going to be a heartbreaker when she grew up. It made Reed wonder what he might expect to see in Alicia in a few years. Alicia had some of the same characteristics, although she was a bit chunkier. Baby fat. He actually didn’t look forward to her losing it—now he could cover her belly with one hand and it made a soft, rounded bulge like a ball. He loved that. And they had this game where if he pushed on it she would puff up her cheeks, hold it, then blow all the air out in an explosion of bubbly laughter.

For a moment he wondered if he’d be around to see her lose that baby fat. Stop it. Stop it.

Tim was quiet, dark, a lot like Michael, and, Reed suddenly realized, a lot like almost all the Taylor men at that age. He’d seen pictures of his father and grandfather when they were boys—pale faces below broad swatches of raven black hair, their dark eyes seeming to pierce the camera lens. An intense look about them, so that it made you wonder if they knew far beyond what they should know. Reed had that same look in his early photographs. Of course, a lot of young boys with those kinds of features gave him that impression, Reed reminded himself.

Ben was different; he hadn’t fit the Taylor mold in a lot of ways. He’d always been sandy-haired, jovial, open and friendly to almost everybody. Reed could remember when he was young wanting to look more like his Uncle Ben. He hadn’t consciously realized the drastic difference in character between his Uncle Ben and the other Taylor men until years later, when it made him uncomfortable that he resembled his father and grandfather so much.

“You there, Reed?”

Reed jerked in his chair. He could hear Ben chuckling a few feet away.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Just daydreaming.”

“I know what you mean. Sunday’s a good day for it, all right. Fact, any day is, if you ask me. Folks round here work so hard sometimes they start takin’ themselves just too serious. And that ain’t good for you. Gotta put aside some time for daydreaming. Fact is, sometimes daydreaming is one of the most important things a body can do, if you ask me.”

Reed looked at his uncle. He’d forgotten how well put-together the man was, how wise for this place and time. He’d met few men in his life he admired so much—odd that he was just now beginning to realize that.

Simpson Creeks was a normal place. His Uncle Ben was supremely normal, and healthy and generous. Reed had almost forgotten that over the last few days. Strange things were happening, but they were essentially isolated incidents. This was an essentially ordinary place. Just like home. Home in Denver.

On their honeymoon he and Carol had gone back to her hometown. Reed had loved the feeling of the small town, the friendliness of people and architecture, the quiet, restful atmosphere. That’s the way small towns should feel—he didn’t get enough of those qualities in Denver. Now Simpson Creeks had that small-town feel for the first time since he’d been back—here, in his uncle’s backyard.

Martha brought out cookies and tea. The family sat around, and indeed Reed was feeling like part of this family, eating and drinking, listening to the crickets starting up late in the afternoon, feeling the cool breeze slipping under the trees, smiling at each other.

“Why, Reed, you’ve grown up into a handsome young man!” Martha squinted over her tea glass. She needed glasses, but had always thought they made her look ugly so she didn’t wear them in front of other people, just in bed to read, Ben had told him. She wouldn’t even let the kids see her wearing them. This uncharacteristic touch of vanity in his aunt amused and touched Reed. “Not that I ever had any doubts, mind you!”

“Why, thank you, Aunt Martha.”

“No… you’re better lookin’ than any of the other Taylor men by far.” She winked. “‘Ceptin’ Ben here, of course.”

Ben laughed. “You’ll turn my head talking like that, Martha. I’m liable to sweep you off your feet and take you up to that waterbed I’ve been hidin’ in the attic as a Christmas surprise!”

“A waterbed! Ben Taylor, if you’ve gone wasted our money for some oversized balloon, I’m gonna…” She stopped, looked puzzled a minute, then smiled almost imperceptibly. “Old fool.”

Ben and Reed went for another walk after the cookies had digested, and Reed would wonder for a long time after that just why they did. Uncle Ben took him farther up the Big Andy this time, up two connecting hollows and halfway up a ridge. It took them an hour just to go one way. Reed was out of breath by the time they reached a resting place on the ridge, and dizzy from the thin air.

Actually Ben had been maintaining a steady monologue the whole time; Reed had caught a line here and there, but mostly his mind wandered during the exertion.

Ben had been talking about Reed’s father, and what it had been like growing up together in these woods.

“A man can get lost pretty quick out here, so, as you might imagine, an inexperienced boy can get lost a lot quicker. Your granddaddy used to let the two of us boys loose in these woods just to see who’d get back. I’d be stubborn, wouldn’t play along, and as a result I wouldn’t wander too far afield. Now your daddy, he took all that real serious, saw that as a test his daddy was givin’ him that he needed to pass, and so he’d break into a run trying to be the first one back, and most times he just got lost worst than ever.”

Off to their left was an overgrown area full of bright pink rhododendrons, the clumps spreading all over the edge of the woods, obscuring fully the first half of the shadowed trunks. A number of ridges fell back from the one they were on, like great green ocean swells. The boughs and leaves were so tightly packed here that Reed couldn’t see a spot of ground. He knew the undergrowth must be just as thick and impenetrable.

Stands of forest looking much as they did when the first pioneers came into this valley—it never ceased to amaze him.

The view here made Reed remember one of the few good times he ever had with his father and grandfather. It was shortly before his grandfather died. There were four of them: grandfather, Reed’s father, Uncle Ben, and Reed. They’d gone up on some old forgotten patch of land his grandfather owned on the Big Andy. It might be this very one, in fact. After all these years it was difficult to tell.

Reed had been suspicious of going; he didn’t trust his father and grandfather. But things had really worked out okay.

They’d been planting red cedar on a bare slope next to some older trees. They had worked since sunup, which had been too much for Reed, but his grandfather—who was always in charge of any such group activities—had allowed him to rest on some limestone outcroppings. Later he’d pointed out to Reed the nearby black locust and cedar, giant trees over fifty feet high. “Trees won’t ever be that tall again,” his grandfather had said, and Reed could still remember the bleak feeling that had left him with. Even back then you could see the devastating effects of stripping four ridges away—the mountain there was bald. Now that particular ridge didn’t even exist anymore.

In most parts of the woods here tulip poplar and red oak had driven out the cedar. Cedar requires a lot of sun, and once the poplars come, needing lots of shade, they soon take over. After a time the poplars themselves grow so large they darken and crowd out their own seedlings, leaving room for the beech and hemlock that eventually take over the forest.

His father and grandfather between them had taught Reed all those things on that one outing. He’d remember them a lifetime. How an old forest invites new plants and animals. How the waxwings destroyed good fence post wood. How woodpeckers nested in knotholes softened by fungus. How a catbird can eat its weight in bugs each day.

For dinner that night the four shared a rabbit Uncle Ben had caught, and slept underneath the oldest cedar in the forest, maybe the oldest in the state, grandfather had said. It had been a good day.

Reed and Uncle Ben started back down the ridge around sunset. A few times Ben stumbled, and with a pang Reed realized his uncle—who had always seemed impossibly youthful—was getting old. After a time Reed put an arm around his uncle’s waist to help him.

Ben smiled and patted his nephew’s hand, and didn’t take it away.