Mission FireFly » Stories » Joy
The Life of Hovis Washam
A short story by Joy
Page 3
“And you weren’t afraid, sir?”
“Why should a boy be a feared if he’s got his whole life ahead of him? If he be the lady’s choice? If the Father up in Heaven be on his side? No, son, I was not afeared. I was out to kill that there bear and I was gonna do it. I never carve what did nae happen. I carve what is real, son. I do nae lie in the carvings. If I lied in the carvings, I would be lying with my speech for the carvings are my life, son.”
Jake understood perfectly now. All these carvings were the man’s life! He didn’t need to talk after all. He and Hovis could just walk around the room and let the carvings talk for them. Jake picked a place to start.
He picked a carving with a little boy on it (the carving with the youngest child) as a good place to start. And as he studied the carvings on all four of the walls, Jake found himself plunged into a world that he could never have imagined. Jake assumed that the boy in the first carving was Hovis because there was no mistaking—even though the boy was younger—that it was the same boy of the bear carving. The boy was walking in a gorgeous meadow filled with flowers gently towing a little girl who was trying to pick every flower in view along by the hand. The boy’s face was one of pride, certainty, while the little girl’s was one of amazement at all the beauty around her. The next was of the boy again, older now. He was seated in a school room. He alone, along with a fat, wilted teacher. Obviously the boy was in detention, for he was the only one in the room and he was staring out a window with the most melancholy, wistful look on his face. As he stared out the window, all the other children left for home, hand in hand and laughing. The next carving was the one with the bear and Jake passed this one by with a smile.
The carving in the next slab showed the backs of two youths, about Jake’s age of 17 sitting on a swing under a great weeping willow. The girl’s soft curly hair trailing out behind her as she rested her head on the boys shoulder, and he in turn rested his head on the girls shapely crown, their hands clasped in tenderness between them. A sunset glowed in the distance and one could almost taste the romance that must have hung in the air at that time so many years ago. As Jake finished looking at this romantic scene, he took a quick glance at Hovis with a roguish look in his eyes, but Hovis was back in his old rocking chair slowly puffing on a pipe, oblivious to all the fun Jake was having discovering the great moments in the elder’s early life.
Jake moved on. The carving in front of him now showed a couple dressed finely. The handsome man in a suite, and the attractive, witty girl in a flowing dress and veil. And behind them in the distance stood the faint outline of a tall steeple. The couple’s arms were linked together and they were looking deep into each other’s eyes with bliss so great written on their faces that one might find himself starting to congratulate the newly weds before he realized he was still staring at just a carving. Jake found himself lingering on this particular carving as he thought of Alice back in the village.
He presently moved on though, unable to dwell too long on any one carving in his excitement to learn what would happen next in the earlier life of this Hovis Washam. The next carving showed a man walking up a dirt road to a house, his hoe slung over his right shoulder. His face wore the tiredness and strain of a good days work in the fields, but also the joy of a job well done and the eagerness of wanting to see someone, as he lifted his bronzed, handsome face towards the porch of the house. On the porch, stood the someone the man longed to see. It was the same beautiful girl in the wedding carving. She had one arm wrapped around a pillar next to the stairs of the veranda and in the other hand she held a dish towel. Her hair blew in tiny wisps out of her high bun, and beneath the lace-lined apron tied around her neck and waist, was a small bulge that Jake quickly interpreted with a sort of tingling happiness for the old man as he hurried on to the next carving to see what he hoped it would show.
The next carving was not at all what Jake had expected to see. He took one look at it and stepped back with a little gasp. The carving depicted two mounds of earth. One regular sized with a neat bunch of wild flowers placed at the head of the mound. The other mound so small that it wasn’t even half the size of the bigger one. Upon this tiny grave a single rose was placed, all that was left in remembrance of the child Hovis never knew. As Jake’s eyes moved away from the two fresh mounds of dirt, his heart filling with sorrow, he saw that above the two graves, a swing hung from a great weeping willow tree above the graves. Jake turned to look at the old man, words of sympathy welling up in his thoughts, but as he met Hovis’ eyes, the aged man just waved Jake back to the carvings, taking slow big puffs on his pipe and turning once again to the window to gaze into the afternoon glow.
Jake turned back to the carvings, giving the previous one just one more quick look of dazed sorrow before he moved on. Next he came upon a blank piece of wood. I guess to say it was blank would not be quite accurate. There was a pattern of lines and dashes and symbols that when one first looked at it, he might think that it must be very complicated indeed, but the more one looked the more aimless, patternless, dull the carving seemed. And Jake understood. This carving explained everything that Hovis must have felt with out his beloveds. At first he felt complicated. But as time wore on, everything just became aimless, patternless and dull.