them, hands in pockets, rocking in place slightly. Other men perched on the hoods of cars or the tailgates of horse carts and passed a jar and laughed and slapped at each other with dusty hats. The night was warm and no moon out but plenty of starlight to see.
Jack had an expansive sensation that comes with the onset of certain evenings; the feeling that, in the end, he would be as free and clear as the air over the mountains. He heard the song build to a crescendo and end abruptly, the harsh chord of the mandolin coming through the air in the field and somewhere in the dark a woman laughed.
Jack opened the jar and raising it to his lips he thought of that sound again, the picked strings, the quick movement of her hands. Standing there in the freshly mown grass, tasting the hot liquor on his lips he felt the sky open up and the world come pouring in on him.
J ACK COULD NAME the exact moment when Forrest began to distance himself from the rest of the family: as soon as he recovered from the Spanish Lady Flu, the morning when his long blue face rejoined them at the breakfast table. Like all of the Bondurant boys Forrest was a quiet child, prone to long bouts of silence brought on by the apparent opposite of shyness; rather he seized each situation as his own and felt that there was really nothing to add. What is there to say? But after the passing of his mother and sisters Forrest withdrew even further into his own sphere.
That night Jack was roused by the rocking of the bed as Forrest climbed in at some late hour. Jack curled himself away from the burning presence in the bed, a wad of blankets in his hand. Forrest lay on his back, rigid and staring into the dark.
Forrest became a figure who passed silently through doors at night, consuming food as if it was just something to get over with. As he aged Forrest retained the stringy, wan look of influenza, his skin even when burned by the sun seeming a slight shade of blue. His eyes remained sunken, his nose more knifelike, his thin, colorless hair already receding as a teenager. But his knotted muscles lengthened, his hands knobby steeples of bone and tendon with iron strength and unflagging endurance, his fists like post mallets. At work Forrest would hammer the tool into submission, bludgeon the task into defeat; he began at a young age to force the world to bend to his will.
As a teenager Forrest would rise before dawn and top tobacco and pull suckers till dinner, then walk four miles through Snow Creek Hollow to a lumber camp and work a crosscut saw until supper. The next day he would get up and do it again, seven days a week, substituting cattle work, apples, chestnuts, hog butchering, haying, busting clods, harrowing, plowing, carpentry, depending on the season, need, and paying customers. With Howard he took loads of walnuts and apples to Roanoke in oxcarts, and tobacco to Harrisonburg, Martinsville, and Richmond, where he slept on pallets stacked high with pressed tobacco hands in the darkness of the warehouse. He began to drink occasionally, accepting the grimy jar as it was passed hand over hand, though Forrest never took any pleasure in it other than that it helped him put his head down and get his eyes screwed tight long after everyone else had gone to sleep. People moved around him as if he were a wild dog in the street.
Granville was heard to remark more than once that he was glad at least one of his boys had a solid work ethic. Forrest will never be no ’count, he murmured to the men standing around the stove at the store.
H IS BROTHER’S dynamism was mesmerizing, and Jack had sought his whole life to find that source of drive in himself. He was eighteen and had nothing to show for it. Jack stood and contemplated the open barn door, a square of light against the dark hills, the drifting music. The cicadas swelled in the trees along the edge of the pasture. He felt like he could stand out there in that field, the liquor humming in his head, and
Jack had an expansive sensation that comes with the onset of certain evenings; the feeling that, in the end, he would be as free and clear as the air over the mountains. He heard the song build to a crescendo and end abruptly, the harsh chord of the mandolin coming through the air in the field and somewhere in the dark a woman laughed.
Jack opened the jar and raising it to his lips he thought of that sound again, the picked strings, the quick movement of her hands. Standing there in the freshly mown grass, tasting the hot liquor on his lips he felt the sky open up and the world come pouring in on him.
J ACK COULD NAME the exact moment when Forrest began to distance himself from the rest of the family: as soon as he recovered from the Spanish Lady Flu, the morning when his long blue face rejoined them at the breakfast table. Like all of the Bondurant boys Forrest was a quiet child, prone to long bouts of silence brought on by the apparent opposite of shyness; rather he seized each situation as his own and felt that there was really nothing to add. What is there to say? But after the passing of his mother and sisters Forrest withdrew even further into his own sphere.
That night Jack was roused by the rocking of the bed as Forrest climbed in at some late hour. Jack curled himself away from the burning presence in the bed, a wad of blankets in his hand. Forrest lay on his back, rigid and staring into the dark.
Forrest became a figure who passed silently through doors at night, consuming food as if it was just something to get over with. As he aged Forrest retained the stringy, wan look of influenza, his skin even when burned by the sun seeming a slight shade of blue. His eyes remained sunken, his nose more knifelike, his thin, colorless hair already receding as a teenager. But his knotted muscles lengthened, his hands knobby steeples of bone and tendon with iron strength and unflagging endurance, his fists like post mallets. At work Forrest would hammer the tool into submission, bludgeon the task into defeat; he began at a young age to force the world to bend to his will.
As a teenager Forrest would rise before dawn and top tobacco and pull suckers till dinner, then walk four miles through Snow Creek Hollow to a lumber camp and work a crosscut saw until supper. The next day he would get up and do it again, seven days a week, substituting cattle work, apples, chestnuts, hog butchering, haying, busting clods, harrowing, plowing, carpentry, depending on the season, need, and paying customers. With Howard he took loads of walnuts and apples to Roanoke in oxcarts, and tobacco to Harrisonburg, Martinsville, and Richmond, where he slept on pallets stacked high with pressed tobacco hands in the darkness of the warehouse. He began to drink occasionally, accepting the grimy jar as it was passed hand over hand, though Forrest never took any pleasure in it other than that it helped him put his head down and get his eyes screwed tight long after everyone else had gone to sleep. People moved around him as if he were a wild dog in the street.
Granville was heard to remark more than once that he was glad at least one of his boys had a solid work ethic. Forrest will never be no ’count, he murmured to the men standing around the stove at the store.
H IS BROTHER’S dynamism was mesmerizing, and Jack had sought his whole life to find that source of drive in himself. He was eighteen and had nothing to show for it. Jack stood and contemplated the open barn door, a square of light against the dark hills, the drifting music. The cicadas swelled in the trees along the edge of the pasture. He felt like he could stand out there in that field, the liquor humming in his head, and
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