376
PARTISAN
REVIEW
Father was not as tall as Uncle Jake when they were standing,
but that was only because Uncle Jake had such long legs. When we
were seated at the table they seemed to be of the same height. Each
had an extremely high forehead and a pointed chin that Uncle Jake
said they had got from their Mother's people. Nothing could hold
my interest more keenly in those days than watching them sit together
at table after dinner when Mother and Virginia Ann had gone into
the living room. Sometimes they would only sit and smoke in silence.
Sometimes they would talk about the old times.
One night when they had talked about the negroes who had
worked their father's farm, about Cousin Lucy Grimes who turned
Catholic and later went completely crazy, and about the meanness
of their Uncle Bennett who lost his leg at the Battle of Stone River,
they turned again to the subject of Uncle Louis' native sweetness.
While they talked, I looked across the table from one to the other
trying to discover why they did not really look alike since their indi–
vidual features were so similar. I felt that they actually did look alike
and that I was just blind to it in some way. The only differences that
I could see were not ones of my own observation but differences that
I had heard Mother point out now and again: Uncle Jake had lived
outdoors so much with
his
hunting and fishing and his other activities
with the Boy Scouts that his skin was considerably rougher than
Father's, who had no real life but in his office and in our house. Too,
Uncle Jake's hair was still a hard, young, brown color whereas
Father's was full of pleasant gray streaks. Yet withal there was a soft–
ness or gentleness about his eyes and about the features of Uncle
Jake's face that were not to be found in Father's kind but strong
countenance.
After dinner Mother would always switch off the principal light
as she left the dining room, and the men's talking was done in softer
illumination from the sidewall lamps.
Brother had gone one night and climbed into Father's lap. I
was sitting beside Uncle Jake, and I leaned my head over on his
knee. It seemed that the lights were lower than usual that night, and
the negro cook in her white serving apron seemed to take longer than
ever in removing the
di~hes.
She kept reaching over me to clear the
di<>hes from mine and Uncle Jake's place, and once she told me to sit
up and quit being a bother to my Uncle Jake. But he, without turn–
ing his eyes from Father, laid his hand lightly across my chest to hold
me there; and the cook went off to the sideboard shaking her head.
Uncle J ake had not spoken for a long while. He had sat smoking his
white-bowled pipe and listening to Father, but I could tell now by
