Cousin Morris

“Albert!”

“hmm?”

“Albert!!”

“I’m in here, for Chris’sake”

“Don’t blaspheme, honey. Are you packed?”

“Uh huh.”

“Let me see, do you have everything you need? Where are your socks in all this mess?” (throwing things out of his suitcase as she talks)

“Mother, stop!”

“Well you can’t go two weeks without wearing any socks; even if we will be out in the boondocks.”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Because it isn’t civilized, and we are civilized people—even most of your father’s relatives are” (with a deviant smile; aware that her husband has just entered the room behind her)

(He smiles in response, wryly) “That’s true, Leila, even old Morris wears socks once in a while.”

“Is that so, Charles? I always figured he’d have hooves like a satyr from all that rambling through the woods you always brag about.”

“Alright” (a little short, now) “if you two’d quit fooling around and get in the car, you could find out for yourselves. Let’s go.” (exiting)

“Put some socks in your bag, Bert.” (exiting after her husband and beginning to snap at him for his terseness)

Oh God, here we go again!

           I really do wish we could have a family trip, or do anything as a family, without having to go through all that shit. This family can’t do anything without fighting about it first. That’s why Charlie left to live with Aunt Virgie. I wish I was old enough to leave, sometimes.

But Mother was right to pick on Daddy for glorifying Cousin Morris, I think. Daddy always talks about him like he’s Paul Bunyan or something. It really pisses me off. I figure he’s just some big, redneck guy who lives in the mountains and my dad talks about him like he’s bigger than life because, compared to my dad’s accounting job, any other lifestyle seems romantic. Daddy grew up with Cousin Morris in the mountains of Pennsylvania, but he left when he was a teenager because of the Depression. The first place he found a good job was in Alexandria, Virginia, so I guess that’s why he stayed here.

Mother was wrong to bring up the stuff about Daddy’s family, though, because she always kind of means it when she says that sort of thing. Her family is “Old Virginia Money” and too damned good for anybody. They had a fucking fit when they found out mother was marrying someone who had to work for a living, and a Yankee to boot. Her grandfather cut her out of his will when it happened. I’ve never even met him. I guess she sort of regrets her decision, sometimes. Anyway, Daddy always tries to build Cousin Morris up; mother always tries to cut him down, and now, finally, I’ll get to make my own decision--because we’re going to Pennsylvania!

(Scene switch to the interior of a 1940 Ford Coupe headed north on the highway from Virginia to Pennsylvania.)

 “What was Morris’s wife’s name, again?” (Mother).

“Sarah was the first one, Matty is the second.”

“Which one can spit tobacco juice as far as a man?” I ask.

“That’s Matty,” Daddy smiles “the one he ordered from a catalogue.”

“I still don’t quite believe that. (Mother) I’d think there were plenty of men in Texas without her having to come to Pennsylvania to find a husband.”

“It was a catalogue where people all over the country could advertise they were looking for a spouse, I think. She just happened to be from Texas.”

“Daddy, did he get a divorce from his first wife, then?”

“No, honey.” (Mother) “Charles, why don’t you just tell us the whole Cousin Morris story from start to finish?”

“Weelll, that’s a first! Your mother is asking me to tell a story, now. Mark that down in your calendar, Albert.”

“I take it back.”

“Go ahead, Daddy, it’ll help pass the time.”

“Well, Morris isn’t actually my cousin. He’s my father’s cousin, and he sort of took us in when your grandfather died. Not took us in, really, your uncles and I stayed on at daddy’s old place on our own. But some of us were too young to work—I wasn’t any older than you, Bert—and work was scarce in rural Pennsylvania in the 30’s anyway. Just paying taxes on the house every year and putting food on the table regularly was more than we could do the first couple of years.

Morris knew that, I guess, though we never asked for help. He’d just show up at the door at odd times with food—a haunch of venison in the fall, a side of salt-pork in the wintertime, a peck of fruit or vegetables in the summer. He helped us put our first garden in, too. Whenever he went on a hunting trip, he’d ask me and your Uncle Ted, the youngest, to come along. Then he’d send us home with the lion’s share of the game meat—even if we hadn’t killed anything. He just generally kept tabs on us and helped us out when we needed it. Without him, Ted and me never would have finished up school.”

“He sounds like a really nice guy.”

“Well, that’s the funny thing. I thought the world of Morris; still do, and he was never anything but kind to us boys. But a lot of the neighbors hated Morris—or else were afraid of him. Because of what happened with his first wife, I guess.”

“What exactly did happen with her, Charles? Your family never really seems to want to talk about it much.”

(After a long, considered pause) “I’m not a hundred percent sure myself, but I think she committed suicide.”

(At this declaration both the wife and the son sit bolt upright, startled from their previous slouched and relaxed positions in the car by this unexpected news.)

“Really?!!” (me)

“I wondered if that was it, but why?” (Mother)

“Well, I was very young when it all happened but, best as I can understand, Morris just decided he wanted to marry Sarah and she never really had much of a choice.”

(Mother, skeptical) “A girl always has some choice in that!”

“Let me tell it, now. See, Morris wasn’t Sarah’s only suitor; not by a long shot. She was the great local beauty so all the local boys wanted to marry her. Morris was the biggest and meanest of the lot, and he was used to always beating out the others and getting what he wanted. I reckon he figured it would work that way with Sarah, too. But Sarah had her own ideas about who she fancied; and she didn’t take old Morris seriously.

 The way I heard it, she was a real quiet, reflective sort, and guys that showed off and played tough didn’t impress her much. She liked another guy. I can’t remember his name; but he played the fiddle, and made up songs, and they say he was real gentle and soft-spoken. I think he traveled around between logging camps and places like that and played his fiddle at the local dances. Morris thought he was just a wimp, you know, because he was sort of soft and because he didn’t work with his hands.

Back then Morris was foreman of a gang of dynamiters. They traveled around the state blasting out roadbeds and railroad-beds through the mountains. It was dangerous work, and hard physically, and they were a rough group of boys. And see … well the “foreman,” in a group like that, is just the toughest son of a bitch in the group, if you’ll excuse my French. He’s gotta be, or the others won’t do what he says.

My point is—look at how Morris must have seen this guy. Here he is, the boss of a tough group of men, with a good income and owning the house and farm his dad left him to boot. And this girl he’s crazy about could care less about him, see, ‘cause she’s nuts about this little guy who’s got nothing but the shirt on his back and a fiddle. And then on top of that the guy’s sort of a pansy. I mean, the smallest, weakest guy on Morris’ crew could probably tie him in a knot in two seconds. And he doesn’t take any crap from them, so why should he take it from this guy?”

“So he beats him up then? Sounds like he’s just a big bully, to me. Are we driving all this way just to see some jerk?” (I’m getting a little nervous now about meeting Morris)

“Well I want you to be sure to remember one thing. (with heat) You’re a McNett and he’s a McNett. He’s family, and your elder, and you’d better be damn sure to treat him with respect when you meet him, young man. You understand?” (turned around to face the back seat; index finger extended and wagging with each clause)

“I was just saying!”

“Lay off it, Charles! The boy’s got a point, anyway. He does sound like a bully in this story you’re telling.”

“Well, he’s changed a lot since then.” (Staring straight ahead at the road. A long moment of silence follows)

“Sorry.” (me)

“Alright already, tell the rest of the story for Chris’sakes.” (Mother)

“Oh … uh, actually it turned out worse than you thought, Bert. (another pause) Morris confronted the man and told him he had to get out of town. But he stood up to Morris and refused. So Morris hit him.

It was down at the Roaring Branch Mill before a dance, and they say he knocked the guy clean across the little mill-run when he hit him. That might be an exaggeration, I guess, but I know that he knocked him over backwards, and his head hit a rock when he fell, and it killed him.

Morris always said he didn’t mean to do it—the guy was just so much smaller than him—but he ran away from the area for a couple of months at first and that made some people think he was lying about not meaning to. I don’t remember what happened in court when he did come back, but he didn’t get locked up so I guess he got involuntary manslaughter or something. All this was when I was still a baby, but people talked about it a lot later.”

“So he killed the boyfriend and the girl still went on and married him? (Mother) That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Well, this part I never really heard anybody in the family discuss—I picked it up gradually from comments I’d hear in the community—but I think what happened is that Sarah was pregnant by the fiddle player when he died. I guess her parents put her out for shame, and none of the other local boys wanted her anymore because she was pregnant, but Morris still fancied her, and maybe he felt guilty about his part in it, so he married her and gave the child his name.”

“Wow, Charles, as much as you like to spin yarns, I’m amazed you’ve never told me all this before. Is that your cousin, Sarah, that came to your mother’s funeral?—the baby, I mean.”

“Yes, she was the tall, pretty one with black hair and black eyes. Do you know who we’re talking about, Albert.”

“I think so.”

“I’d really rather neither of you bring that up around the family. Most everybody knows about it, but she’s part of the family now—blood or not—so it’s best not to talk about it.”

“Ok, but you haven’t finished yet. What about the suicide?”

“Well, maybe I spoke too soon on that. Nobody really knows that it was a suicide—but there was a lot of talk when it happened.

After Sarah had the first baby, three more followed one right after the other. Morris was always away for his work, so she was stuck at home with the kids by herself most of the time. And all of the neighbors knew her story, and that she was already pregnant when she got married, and not by her husband. So you can imagine that most of them either judged her harshly for that, or pitied her for what had happened before that. So they would have either been rude to her or nervous around her, I guess. She must have been lonely as hell.

Anyway, one day she came into town, at Troy I think, to meet the train Morris was coming home on. She just set down the baby she was carrying and stepped out in front of the oncoming train. It could have been an accident, I guess, except that she set down the baby right before taking that step.

After that, but before he married Matty, Morris had to quit working away from home for a year or two to just tend farm and take care of his kids. Everybody says he changed for the better after that—calmed down a lot--and got to be a lot easier to deal with.”  

“I guess it would have been nice for Sarah if he’d done that a little earlier, huh?” (Mother)

“Yeah, I guess so.”

(Scene shift to a lonesome country driveway that terminates on a steep creek bank; then continues level on the other side. A steep mountainside looms in the near distance. The car stops and the family exits to stand stretching and yawning on the bank of the stream.)

“This is Roaring Branch” Daddy says, pointing at the creek. “Morris lives up there, at the foot of the mountain.”

“How’re we gonna …” Mother begins.

Daddy interrupts by squeezing the horn twice “Baloogha! Baloogha!” and yells “Mooriis!!” with his hands cupped around his mouth and head back-tilted. We wait about five minutes until we see a large, stooped figure plodding towards us on the far side of the creek. He raises a hand in greeting as he draws near.

“Halow Chuck.”

“Halow Morris.”

Without further discussion, the enigmatic old man walks to a tree against which lean two long, flat boards—2 by 12’s, maybe 15 feet long--and I suddenly realize what’s going on.

“Wow!” I blurt. “Are we gonna cross on that?”

Morris carries the first board hugged tight to his chest and extending upwards as he walks up to the very edge of the far bank. Then, grunting and stooping and still clutching it in a hug, he lowers it to my father who catches and places his end on the hard-packed earth on our side. They do the same thing with the second board and then, glancing at the span of the Ford’s axles for reference, they quietly adjust the two boards until they span the creek—level and parallel and maybe three and a half feet apart.

“Probably better if those two walk across.” says Morris, talking to Daddy and nodding towards mother and me.

“Yeah” he replies distractedly; looking at the makeshift bridge with doubt.

“You want me to take it across?”

“Yeah” Daddy replies again; still sounding nervous.

So we walk across on one plank while Morris crosses on the other. Then we watch as he deftly drives our little coupe across the creek on the two-plank bridge—Mother and Daddy breathless in fear for their car; me breathless in thrilled anticipation of a pending catastrophe. But there is none.

           We ride up the bumpy dirt track for another mile through a tunnel of big hemlock trees. Then the woods open up around us to reveal small fields dotted with sheep and separated by thick hedgerows. At the far side of the cleared area is Morris’ weathered, two-story farmhouse.

           The two weeks we spend in that house and farm and the surrounding woods pass by like a blur. I learn that many of the stories Daddy always told weren’t the exaggerations I’d assumed they were. Morris’s wife, Molly, really does chew tobacco like a man, and can hit the spittoon at twenty paces! The woods and streams are as full of fish and game as Daddy always said they were. It is fall, so both the fishing and the hunting are good. We fly-fish for rainbow trout in the Roaring Branch, and for native brook trout in its mountain tributaries. We hunt rabbits behind Morris’s beagles in his fields, and grouse behind his setter in the woods. Each night we eat game for dinner, and Daddy’s other relatives trickle in by twos and threes to visit around the wood-stove, smoking cigarettes or chewing tobacco, sipping Morris’s homemade whisky, and telling tall tales about deeds of ancestors long dead. I think I’d be happy to stay here for the rest of my life!

Once in a while, while all this is going on, I think of the story of Morris and the fiddle player and Sarah. But I can’t reconcile that Morris with the one in front of me. He is big enough, and still strong, but his back is starting to stoop with age, and his movements are slow and gentle, and his manner is patient and friendly. Only once or twice late at night when I hear his voice—slurred by the whisky and excited with remembering-- boom out from downstairs long after mother has sent me to bed, can I imagine him as the terror of the McNett Township.

But on our last full day there—the day before we have to leave for Alexandria again—something happens that reminds me of the Morris in Daddy's story in a way that makes me very uncomfortable.

Mother , Daddy, and Matty leave in the morning to go to visit some of the older relatives that can’t make it out to Morris’s farm. At first they say I have to go, but I protest strongly (really old people scare hell out of me, to tell the truth) and Morris sticks up for me. He says that he wants to show me something special that day, anyway, and asks if they can let me stay as a special favor to him. They can’t refuse that!

After Mother and Daddy leave, Morris silently fetches an old gig (that’s a spear for fishing) from the barn, hands it to me, then starts walking up a steep trail that begins behind his house.

“Where are we going, Morris?” I ask to try to slow down his pace. I’m breathless from trying to keep up.

“We’re gonna top this ridgeline first” he replies, slowing “then we’ll follow the ridge south a couple miles, then we’ll drop down the far side to a little stream called 'Yellow Dog Run.'”

“Is that the special thing you want to show me?” (I’m trying to keep him to the slower pace, now).

“Well, sort of. The thing is there at the creek.”

“What is it?” I ask.

(Laughing and picking the pace back up) “Patience, boy. You’ll find out soon enough.”

After a couple of hours of hard walking we drop down from the ridgeline to follow a gradually growing mountain stream down the far side of the ridge. Morris’s pace slows as we approach a small pool in the stream.

“Shhh!” he cautions, and we begin to stalk the pool; first crouching, then crawling forward to peer down into the water from behind a boulder.

“Look!” Morris whispers excitedly.

The little pool is beautiful. It is on a short shelf of level ground formed by the damming of the stream by a big boulder on one side (where we are positioned) and a huge old hemlock on the other. But it isn’t the pool Morris is telling me to look at. It’s the trout! She looks like she must be all of two feet long--bigger than any trout I’ve ever seen in the wild--and, as Morris explains in a low whisper, she’s even more special than she appears.

“That’s a brook trout there, a native. If you fish long enough, you might catch a stocked rainbow trout that size from a lowland river somewhere in the east. And if you go out west you’ll see a lot of browns that go even bigger. But I’d say it’s a safe bet you’ll never in your life see a native brookie this big again. When I told the guy from fish and game about seeing one this size he thought I was lying. See, a twelve-inch brookie’s considered a real monster. But this one must be better than twenty inches. They aren’t even supposed to get that big.”

“Shouldn’t we get him out of there then” I ask, “So we can prove that we saw it?”

“Well,” he replies, “I guess that’s the question I brought you here to consider, Albert. Whether we should or shouldn’t do that.”

           Now I realize what he is trying to do, and it makes me mad as hell. Daddy pulls this sort of shit on me all the time. What I’m supposed to do, I think, is realize that there’s some sort of moral reason why I shouldn’t kill the fish. Then I’m supposed to choose to refrain from killing it, and come away a better, more edified boy. Fuck that.

“We should!” I yell, as I dart forward, stabbing the gig hard into the image of the big trout. But instead of striking the fish where I thought it would and stopping against the solid rocks underneath, the gig seeks deeper into the water than I thought the water was deep, and I lose my balance and tumble into the pool. Morris erupts in laughter.

"I thought maybe you'd do that" he says between gasps "actually, it's what I'd planned to do when I forged that gig."

Too embarrassed and frustrated to reply I crawl, spluttering, out of the cold water. The trout is gone--retreated under the roots of the hemlock tree--and I begin to notice that a breeze is blowing uphill through the trunks of the trees. It is a brisk, fall breeze, and I start to shiver. Morris shucks off my wet jacket and replaces it with his own.

"We'd better get moving, before you catch a chill."

We walk back up the hill, neither one of us venturing to speak, and the exercise gradually warms me.

"Wasn't she beautiful, though?" Morris finally asks--breaking the silence.

"Yes she was" I reply. I still want that big, beautiful fish so damn bad I can taste the disappointment like bile in my throat. "Beautiful."

"I guess I sort of owe you an apology, Albert. Truth is, I sort of set you up for that."

"How do you mean?" I ask.

"Well, anyone who isn't used to using a gig always misses on their first try. The water plays tricks with your vision, see, so the fish is never really exactly where you think you see it. That's the only reason I let you bring that gig--because I knew you'd miss her."

 A long pause follows and I make no effort to break it. I'm trying to figure out whether I should be mad at him, or just embarrassed.

"For what it's worth, I didn't do it to be mean. I did it because I wanted to share her with someone. Just telling you about her wouldn't do that. Neither would just showing her to you. I don't know--it's hard to explain."

I decide not to be mad. "Have you ever shown her to anyone else?" I ask.

"No, and I don't think I will. They'd be too tempted to kill her--just like you were. Frankly, Bert, if you lived here in the area, I wouldn't have shown her to you, either. You'd probably sneak back and try again, wouldn't you?"

"Probably." I admit. "What's wrong with that?"

"Well, you might be too young to understand this. I know for a fact I didn't understand it until I was a lot older than you are. But when you see something unique and beautiful, as a man, your first instinct is to want to possess it. To grab hold of it and make it your own--no matter how you have to go about it. That's how you reacted to the fish, isn't it?"

"Yes. But I still don't see what's wrong with that."

"Albert, would you normally think it sporting to stab a trout with a frog gig?"

"Hmmm."

"The sporting thing would be to catch it with a fly, right?"

"Yeah, but we didn't bring a rod."

"I did before. When I first came across this pool two years ago, and saw that beauty swimming around in it, I hiked my rod up here and spent the whole day trying out every pattern I had. When that didn't work, I came back another day with my vice and some feathers, and tied flies to match the bugs that were hatching that day. That didn't work either.

That was last fall. This spring I came back with some hellgrammites. I put them on the tiniest hook I had, but she knew better. On the hook, she wouldn't touch them. The second I pulled one off the hook and threw it on the water--wham!--she sucked it down.

So early this summer I decided I was going to get her come hell or high water. I forged that gig you're carrying and hiked up here to kill her, Bert."

'Did you miss and fall in, then, like I did?" I asked, wryly.

"No" with a smile "I've gigged enough bullfrogs over the years to know how to correct for the mirage. I knew she was mine if I wanted to kill her. No, what I did is, I just stood there looking at her swimming, free and pretty in that little pool--for I don't really know how long. Then I just turned around and walked back home."

"Why, Morris? I ask, starting to feel frustrated and irritated again "I still don't get why."

"Like I said before I'm not sure if you're old enough to understand this yet, but I think it's really important that you try. What exactly would you or I gain if we killed that fish, Albert?"

"We could eat it" I reply. "We could even get it mounted!"

"Ok, so food or bragging rights are what you gain. What would you lose?"

"Huh?"

"Wouldn't something be lost, Bert?"

Another long pause follows. I'm thinking now. "The fish loses its life, I guess, but it's just a fish. If you got it with a gig you'd lose some of the bragging rights, too, because it isn't as sporting. Is that it?"

"Sort of, but not exactly. I don't know, maybe I'm going too far with this thing. Like you said, it is just a fish. But I've come to think of that fish as a sort of parable, you know, like in the Bible."

"You mean like when the lamb lays down with the lion. It doesn't mean a lamb really lays down with a lion. It just means we all ought to get along better."

"Atta boy! That's just what I mean!"

"So what does ..."

"What does leaving that fish alone mean to your old Cousin Morris? Well, that fish, in that pool, is perfect. When we snuck up to the pool and looked in didn't it feel that way to you? Like something magic?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"It felt that way to both of us then. But what was our first reaction? To want to kill it! That's my point, Bert! Our nature is just bad that way. Not just mine and yours, but most men's. We see something unique, something beautiful, and we just want to own it. Even if owning it means destroying it. Can't you see that that's wrong? (heatedly) Don't you see the flaw in that way of thinking?”

I actually thought about that question for a moment before I answered. “I guess I do see what you mean, maybe. Is it that we should appreciate the beauty we see in the world without interfering with it?”

“Yes! Because if we don’t do that we mar it—for others and for ourselves. But if we leave it alone it’s still there; still beautiful. Like that trout is still swimming in that pool because we chose to leave it be. Do you see, Bert?”

A cold chill ran down my spine when I finally realized that he wasn’t talking about a fish, and he wasn’t talking about some abstract generality; he was talking about a fiddle- playing boy and a girl named Sarah.

“Yes sir” I replied. “I do understand.”

We walked the rest of the way back in silence.