Pickett's Gap

by Homer Greene

“All right, Gran’pap! Don’t forget about the new suspenders.”

“No, indeed I won’t!”

“Good-by!”

Abner Pickett drove away, and Dannie sat on the gate-post and watched him until a turn in the road, as it wound through the narrow cañon of Pickett’s Gap, shut him from sight.

He was still a picturesque figure, this old man, as he faced the climbing sun and started on the ten-mile journey to town. Approaching fourscore years, he had lost little of his physical energy, and none of his mental vigor. He was still brusque and biting, exact to a hair’s-breadth, honest to the heart. He never spoke to any one of Charlie. The whole countryside knew that he had driven his son from his home; but, save Charlie and himself, no one ever knew the reason why. Abner Pickett would not talk about it, and Charlie did not come back.

Not that the old man did not care. No one believed that. No one could believe it who saw him every day. Aunt Martha, than whom no one knew him better, detected the bitterness and the sorrow of the estrangement in his keen eyes, and heard it in the tone of his voice time and again, as he went about his accustomed tasks. But she knew that in the stubbornness of his nature he would suffer death before he would make the first sign, or accept the first proffer of reconciliation. His pride had been too deeply cut to be healed with the salve of apology.

But then, there was Dannie. What Charlie had lost of his father’s strange affection, Dannie had won. And the fondness which the old man had felt and shown for Dannie’s mother had been transferred to her boy. But he was worthy of it. He was bright and affectionate, a typical farmer’s boy, the chum and crony of his grandfather. Many a day they spent together in the woods and fields, many a toothsome lunch they ate in common. Many a trip they took to hunt small game, or whip the brooks for speckled trout. Indeed, if you saw Abner Pickett anywhere within the borders of his four hundred acre tract, you might be pretty well assured that Dannie was not far away.

When the boy was old enough to go to school, it came hard for both of them to be separated all day long; and no one but gran’pap knew what a welcome sight it was to see the sturdy little figure come tramping home along the dusty road from the red schoolhouse two miles away.

So it was with a distinct feeling of loneliness in the heart of each that the old man drove away to town that bright September morning, and Dannie, sitting on the gate-post, saw him go.

For a long time the boy sat there after the last faint echo from the wheels of the rattling buckboard died away, looking off toward the graveyard with its fluted column, and on to the dim recesses of the gap. He was wondering. He was wishing. It was all about his father, whom he never remembered to have seen, to whom he had never spoken in his life, and yet who, so far as he could learn, was living somewhere in estrangement from his home. Why was it? When was it? Whose fault was it? He had asked himself these questions a thousand times. He had tried to learn from others. It was in vain. He had mentioned his father’s name once to gran’pap. He never dared to do so the second time. He was fond of his grandfather, very fond of him indeed. The loveliness of his dead mother was a tradition, not only at the Pickett hearthstone, but in all the countryside. And yet, what this boy wanted, what he longed for with his whole boy’s heart, with all the ardor of his soul, was, not so much a loving grandfather, not so much a dear mother’s tenderness, as it was the living, breathing presence and daily companionship of a strong and stalwart father.