Here begins Part Two, where you will meet many other curious folks of Riles Crossing who weave their lives into that of Bartle Clunes.
All previous chapters are listed in order in the Bartle Clunes archive. Click here . If you are new, please start here: Introduction to Bartle Clunes .
El Dorado County - Spring 1951
The little boys followed Eizer up the dusty road, skipping along, teasing, chanting. They threw small stones at him and made faces, but they stayed out of reach of his walking stick. “Eizer Griggs was a mean ol’ man,” they mocked. “Washed his face in a fryin’ pan!” It didn't bother him. He was used to it, and frankly, their song was inaccurate on both counts. Eizer Griggs was never mean. He was a little odd, but always kind. Neither did he wash his face much - nor any other part of the body God gave him, for that matter.
“You boys get along home now,” he said. “Go about your business, just leave a man be.” He turned and continued up the dirt road toward home. The boys grew tired of their game and headed back toward town, snorting, rough-housing, jostling for dominance like the restless young males of any other predatory species.
It was early April and every growing thing in the foothills of the Sierra was bursting with life. The county was ablaze with the gold of the poppies, the blue of the lupine. The morning air, already starting to heat up for the season, was laden with the heady fragrance of bay laurel and pine. The sun radiated down lightly on Eizer's head. He pulled off his wool cap and stuffed it into his coat pocket. His hair shot out in several directions at once, like dogs who'd found the gate open. A gray squirrel darted across the road in front of him, flew bird-like up the trunk of an oak and disappeared. A faint hint of skunk was in the air.
Eizer was a walker. It was his habit these last thirty-five years to walk at least three miles a day, only to get out in nature. Riles Crossing knew who he was and where he lived — a fixture, so to speak, a part of the foothills landscape. Louvina often spotted him on the hillside following the cow path up and over the top of the rise, or picking his way along the rocky creek that ran down below their house. Sometimes Bartle happened upon him on the dirt road that meandered back behind the hill. He always paused to offer him a ride, but unless it was raining, Eizer declined. He liked to walk.
As Eizer shambled past the Daughter's of Zeus Dairy this morning, he saw Louvina Clunes out in her garden with a shovel, large canvas gloves on her hands, peering around at the dirt. She looked to him like she'd have her baby any minute now, she had grown so big. Louvina was Eizer's friend, and he had very few. She always had a kind word. She looked up from the soil, wiping her brow with the back of her wrist and waved at the man. “Morning, Eizer Griggs!” she called. “How you doing this fine spring day?” Pressing a fist into the small of her back, she arched backward with a light groan to ease the ache.
He walked up the drive toward her, leaned on the fence. Her hound, Maggie, trotted out from under the azalea and sniffed around Eizer's shanks. Giving a loud sneeze, he went back to lie in the shade. “Good day to you, Louvina,” he said. “What are you doing out here with that shovel, and you so near your time?”
“Oh, I thank you, Eizer. I have a few weeks to go yet, but this garden wants planting now. Wanted planting last week, in fact! Bartle will be out here all afternoon turning this soil for me so I can get my vegetables in. I am just looking around, planning out my husband's work for him,” she laughed. “You been over to The Crossing?”
“Yes ma'am, I have. Down to the General Store and Hardware to get me some onions and a ball of string. I like to walk, you know.”
“I know you do, Eizer. And I saw those little boys running after you again. They apparently have nothing to do of a Saturday morning but run in a pack and be bullies. They should all be ashamed of themselves. Their parents need to give them work to do, something productive.”
“Ah, I don't worry about them none, Louvina. They're just practicing up for manhood, I expect.”
Eizer had just turned sixty this spring, but he looked more like eighty today, thought Louvina, with his gray beard and his ragged clothes. He always needed a haircut. He'd told her once that he trimmed it himself with the kitchen shears. She actually did not know much about the man, but she was piecing his life together bit by bit every time they met.
He stood tall and straight, but he walked with a rolling limp. “Nearly lost my leg in 1917 at the second battle of the Somme, over there in the north of France, you know,” he'd told her one time. “Then the Army sent me home on my own, to mend the best I could after my less than glorious eight-months in their service. Took a while …took a good long while.”
Louvina also knew that he had been raised mostly by his father. His mother had abandoned the two of them when Eizer was only eight, leaving them both fairly stunned, a condition that was to last both of them for the next ten years or so. Eizer had never married, never had much to do with women at all. One time he'd told her, “I find women hard to talk to. They're not reasonable, they don't listen and they are most demanding,” adding the sincere amendment, “...excepting yourself, of course, Louvina.”
Because of Eizer's worn out clothing and his marginal attention to personal hygiene, strangers may have believed him to be indigent. Those who passed him in their cars when he was walking along the road, may have assumed he was a poor hobo looking for a barn in which to sleep. But Eizer Griggs was not a poor man. His grandfather and father had both owned successful placer mines in the California foothills, and to Eizer they'd left the fruits of their labor, mounting up for years, no doubt, under the careful auspices of the local Savings and Loan.
“Well, Eizer, what’s new and good in your life these days?” she prompted, leaning on her shovel. “Haven't seen you walk by for a week or more. Have you been well?”
“Oh, yah. I have been right well, though my house continues to be somewhat of an embarrassment to me. Never have been much for housekeeping, so I don't get many visitors.” He laughed at himself. “But it is still standing and the roof keeps the rain off, so I guess that’s all right.”
“And how about those animals you keep?” she asked.
“My animals are all good. The cow is giving so much milk, I swear I don't know what to do with it all. I am awash! The neighbor-woman does come to do the morning milking everyday and takes that for her children. So that is a help.”
“Sounds like a perfect arrangement, Eizer. So you still have that duck and that big crow living with you?”
“Well, no. Lost the duck to a coyote. But I do still have that old Finn! He is a clever bird, smart as a whip. He's lived with me now these three years or more. I let him stay in the house, and he's learned how to lift the latch and push open the window over the kitchen sink. He lets himself out and in big as you please. Hasn't learned how to close it yet, though.” He laughed again. “I do like that old boy. He's darned good company.”
“I imagine he is! Now, you have to tell me what else is new. You know I don't get around much these days and I always crave news.”
“Well, let's see. I got a letter from my third-cousin, Merlene two weeks ago, out of the blue. She's the only family I got left, that I know of - her and her little boy. I try to keep up with her now and again, but I confess I don't really understand her way of living. She seems a wild-headed young thing, and she’s taken to the drink, I believe.”
“I don't think I've met Merlene, have I? ”
“Nah. She doesn't live around here. She wanders up this way a couple times a year, mostly when she is in need of money. She always says she'll pay me back, but she always doesn't. I don't care about that though. Seems to have gotten herself into a bit of trouble down there in Bakersfield. I'm not sure what it is all about, but she said she’d be driving up this way to visit me real soon. Well, I best be on my way and let you get back to planning your garden. Always a pleasure to see you, Louvina. You take care of yourself now!” He turned, scratching his neck, hitching up his trousers, and set out again. He had a mile and a bit to go.
He arrived home about noon and was startled to find a small boy sitting alone on his porch, a cardboard suitcase at his feet. Eizer said, “Here now! What are you doing on my porch? You don't belong here.” The little boy looked up, and did not reply.
“What are you doing here on my property, young man?” The little boy put his head down on his knees. Eizer thought he saw one small tear fall onto the child's shoe.
“Can you not speak?” said Eizer, a little more softly.
“My mama told me to wait here,” the boy answered. “She said Mr. Griggs would be home soon. She said I ... I had to stay here for a while and be good and she would come back for me.” He rubbed his cheek with a knuckle.
“Is that a fact now? Well ... and who is your mother then, and why has she left you here at my place?”
“My mama is Merlene. She said I had to stay right here on this porch and she would come back.”
“Merlene? Merlene! Come back when? Where's she gone off to?”
“I don't know. She didn't tell me.”
“What is your name, son?”
“I am Eli. Eli Flounder.” He offered a grimy hand to Eizer. The man, no stranger to grime, shook the boy's hand, saying “Eizer Griggs.”
The child was small and thin, and looked as if he hadn't been fed much. Eizer thought he was maybe five or six. His long hair wasn't combed and one of his shoe strings was broken. He wore a blue flannel shirt a few sizes too big, the sleeves rolled up. His trousers were torn at the knee. He looked pretty clean, but was still a sorry sight to Eizer, and he didn't worry that much about hygiene. “Well, I guess you better come on in then,” he said. “You'll be hungry.”
Uh oh. Looks like Eizer is facing a major life change.
Good writing!