I wish I
could be in West Virginia now, with the redbud and dogwood blooming and the
leaves still pale green, where so many of the people I care for are mourning
Bill Howley. The last time I was with
Bill in this part of spring was at my sister Hannah’s wedding, at the Purdy
house, which is maybe a twelve-minute drive from the Howley house, ninety
minutes if you walk the ridges. Bill and
Lorie sat with my parents, Wally and Deirdre, because they were family, and had
been my whole life.
Calling him
an uncle was easiest, and that’s what we said sometimes. I also felt him a bit
of of an older brother – one that I wanted to impress, loved being around.
I remember
putting up loose hay with Bill, using his horses and a pair of pitchforks,
rolling the hay into the barn, a load at a time, by hooking the forks
underneath, tines up, and rolling the whole pile over like a breaking wave of
half-dried meadow grass. Sometimes Bill
swore when the wave crested, and I tried to swear, too.
I also remember a day when Hannah
and I were putting in a field of baled hay by ourselves, when our parents were away. We turned our tractor too sharply and broke
an axle on the wagon. We knew somehow
that we should borrow Bill’s blue farm truck so we could clear the field, and
that he would understand that. It didn’t
occur to us to call anyone else.
I also remember walking up the
Howleys’ road in reflected moonlight one wintry night around Christmas and
interrupting Bill on his way to bed. We
had been visiting, and now my car was in a ditch at the mouth of his icy
hollow. I knew he would drive down the
snow-covered road and haul me out. It
was strangely comforting to go back to the house and knock on the door in the
dark, not to have to say goodbye quite yet.
I mention
these moments because I didn’t have to reach for them. I realized after I heard
the terrible news that these memories are part of the never-ending present in
my mind. I think of them every week or
two, in the normal course of things.
They are some of my touchstones of how things should work: people
helping each other, teaching each other, being there when you need them. Bigger people helping smaller people to be.
Bill and I
spent an afternoon once – a different one – in his hayfield. While we put in the hay, he told me about
theories of history. He talked about
different ways of understanding how the world changes, what kind of power
ordinary women and men have, what direction things might be going. It was a revelation. I have spent a lot of my adult life trying to
think that way, teaching those things. On
April 16, I finished teaching a yearlong class called “Past and Future of
Capitalist Democracy.” Everything a
professor teaches is a memorial to the people who taught him. That class was partly a tribute to Bill.
That
afternoon in Bill’s hayfield is still a model for me of what happens on the
best days: being outside in the sunshine, doing some work with your body,
thinking and talking with real friends.
Those days are also a memorial to the people who teach you to live them.
I think
Bill read most of what I wrote – much of it, anyway. It meant a lot to me that he took me seriously. That was partly because he was a big brother,
and also because he was a ferociously smart person by any standard, in a Yale
classroom or outside with hand tools and a job to do. Those were two worlds that I shared with him
in a way I did with very few people.
That made our friendship a living bridge between my worlds, and it gave
extra weight to his opinion.
He told me once that in my writing I
was “just trying to be honest about the fucking human condition” and should
ignore any critic who didn’t recognize that.
It was, honestly, one of the best things anyone has ever said to
me. Someone should say that to every
young writer, not so much because it’s supportive (though they need support!)
as because it sets a standard. Of course
that’s what you should be doing.
Bill and I would
occasionally remind each other of an ideal that Karl Marx sketched when he was
still in his twenties: a person should be able to farm in the morning, hunt in
the afternoon, and read and write in the evening – to live a full life without
ever shrinking down to fit just one of those activities.
It was like
a secret sign that this was what we were both trying to do, in our different
versions. As far as I was concerned, we
had figured out this goal together. Bill
came closer to living it than anyone else I’ve known. I’m going to carry him with me, as a picture
of generosity and enthusiasm and a reminder of how the world should be, for
just as long as I am around.
