Davy

That road east of the mountains was presently leading us down along the west bank of the lovely blue Conicut, and we took our time in that pretty country, which is full of little villages and all of them good for a pitch. Pa never would explain what old trouble it was that obliged him to keep out of Nuin: it was a question you just didn’t ask. But he’d been born in Nuin and was bungfull of Nuin history, and disapproved of most of it. I remember a day on the river road when we were approaching the little city state of Holy Oak, north of Lomeda. Old Will Moon was somewhat too drunk to handle the mules — a fault he had — and Pa had taken over for him while he slept it off. Pa enjoyed driving anyway, and carried on a ru

The mere name of Holy Oak had got Pa started on Nuin history, a subject that always chafed him. “This little country was part of Nuin,” he told us, “in the old days of Morgan the First, Morgan the Great they call the old sumbitch. I believe it fit a war of independence after he corked off, and so did Lomeda and the other pisswilly countries this side the river — ecclesi-God-damn-astical states is what they call ’em. Morgan the Great! — gentlemen hark, it’s getting so you can’t believe nothing you hear no more, more b’ token you never could, anyway not with Morgan the Great around. They claim you don’t behold his like no more, and I say that’s a good thing. Account of he was a bird. This little country, this Holy Oak, is supposed to be named for a tree that was planted by Morgan the Great. Kay, I’ve seen it — a’n’t no great circumstance of a vegetable, it’s just an oak tree, and you can say it’s a purty little story, but wait a minute. Let’s reason it out. Let’s look at what history says. You got any idea how many frigging oak trees that old man is supposed to’ve planted for himself? Why, gentlemen hark, it’s pitiful — why, if I had as many hairs growing out of my hide as that old man is supposed to’ve planted oak trees, I’d be bowed down, gentlemen, I’d walk on all fours like a bear till they ski

“Still and all,” Sam said, “he called himself a president, not a king, can’t get around that.”

“Ayah,” Pa shouted, “and there’s the biggest pile of hoss-shit ever left unshoveled!” Well, Sam had said it merely to keep him perking. “President my glorious aching butt! He was a king, and that’s the only excuse for him. I mean you got to make allowances for a king, the way he’s got everybody after him, obliged to king it from dawn to dark — planting oak trees, laying cornerstones and maternal ancestors in sinister bars, why, balls of Abraham and Jesus H. K. Hornblower Christ, they never gave that man any rest — git up, Lightning, God blast the shiveled-up mouse-turd you got for a soul, I got to speak rough to you? — no rest at all. How’d he ever find time for kinging, ’s what I want to know? Look, here’s how it was, on just an average day, mind you, when this poor old sumbitch, this Morgan the Great, is trying to address the fucking Senate on a matter of life and death or anyhow a lot of money. You think he’s going to get a chance to fit two sentences together end to end? — gentlemen hark! No, God butter it and the Devil flitter it, no — and why? Because up pops the Minister for Social Contacts or whatever — ‘Sorry, your Majesty, we got here an urgent message concerning a bed over to Wuster that a’n’t been slept in yet by no royalty, only your Majesty will have to sleep into her kind of quick, so to make it up to Lowell in time for to throw a dollar acrost the Merrimac account it says here in the book you done that on the 19th of April — more b’ token, your Majesty, we just this minute got in a new shipment of oak trees—’ why, goodness, gentlemen, that a’n’t no way to live, not for a great man. Takes the heart out of things, don’t it? How can you expect a boy to want to be President if he knows it’s going to be nag, nag all day long? — you Lightning, God damn your evermore backscuttled immortal spirit, will you git up?…”

It wasn’t only Nuin history that bothered Pa Rumley. He didn’t actually like any part of history, nor anybody in it except Cleopatra. He used to say he knew he could have made out with her real smooth, if he could have met her in her native California when he was some younger and had more ginger in his pencil. Nothing Mam Laura said could ever convince him that Cleopatra hadn’t lived in California . Sometimes he got me to wondering about that myself.

From Holy Oak we went on through the other little Low Countries into Conicut, where they were still feeling the reactions from the Rambler “strike” I told you about. Business had been very brisk, but we got there late, after too many other gangs had had the same idea. We passed on into Rhode, a dreamy small land hardly bigger than Lomeda, where coastal fishing is the main occupation and trial marriage the main entertainment — only nation where the Holy Murcan Church allows divorce by consent. The Church calls Rhode a “social testing ground”; they’ve been testing trial marriage there for fifty-some years now without learning anything except that almost everybody likes it. As I understand it, the Church considers this irrelevant, so they go on testing in the hope of more light. While we were there — most of the summer — I naturally did as much testing as possible: Bo

Since it couldn’t be Nuin, we doubled back through Conicut, and over the border into the southern tip of Leva

The spring of 219 saw us traveling north again on the great Lowland Road of Leva