The Clearing

Finn and I were pruning the plum trees around our garden when a rock came cracking among the branches of the tree I was pruning,

“Where did that come from? ” I asked Finn, who was on the ground below piling the branches.

“I don’t know, ” he said.

Then we heard the Hinton boys laughing on the other side of the valley. I went back to pruning. In less than a minute, a rock hit the limb above my head, and another rock hit at Finn’s feet. Then I came down from the tree. Finn and I started throwing rocks. In a few minutes, rocks were falling like hailstones around them and around us. The land was rocky on both sides of the valley, and there were plenty of rocks to throw.

One of their rocks hit Finn on the foot, and one of our rocks hit the largest Hinton boy’s head.

“Think of it, ” Finn said. “We fight before we know each other’s names! What will it be as time goes on? ”

We fought all afternoon with rocks. At sunset the Hinton boys took off up the path and over the hill. We went home. When Pa asked why we hadn’t finished pruning the trees, we told him.

“I told you, ” he said to Mom. “You’ll see whether we can live apart! ”

“Wait until we get to know each other, ” Mom said.

“But how are we ever going to know peo­ple like them? ” Pa asked.

“Oh, something will happen, ” she replied calmly. “You’ll see.”

The next day, Mort Hinton was with his boys. They climbed higher on the hill, cutting the briers and brush and tree branches and stacking them neatly into piles. Finn and I pruned our trees.

“I’ll say one thing for the Hintons, ” Mom said. “They’re good workers.”

“When they don’t throw rocks, ” Finn said.

On the fourth day, my guineas flew across the valley where the Hintons were clearing land.

“Get these guineas back on your side of the valley, ” Mort Hinton yelled. “Get ’em back where they belong.”

I didn’t want to put my guineas in the hen house. But I had to. I knew Mort Hinton would kill them. I wanted to tell him that they would help his land. They’d get rid of insects that might destroy his crop. But I was afraid to tell him anything.

A week had passed before my guineas got out and flew across the valley.

“If you don’t keep your guineas on your side of the valley, ” Mort Hinton hollered to me, “I’ll wring their necks.”

That night I put my guineas in again. I fixed the hen house so they couldn’t get out and roam the hills as they had always done. While Finn, Pa, and I cleared land on one side of the valley, the Hintons cleared on the other side.

Though we’d never been close enough to the Hintons to talk with them, and we didn’t want to get that close, we found ourselves trying to do more work than the four of them. Each day, that early March, rain or sunshine, four Hintons worked on their side of the valley, and Pa, Finn, and I worked on our side. One day a Hinton boy hollered at us, “You can’t clear as much land as we can.”

“Don’t answer him, ” Pa said.

When April came and the Hintons had finished clearing the hill and had burned the brush, Mort Hinton brought a skinny mule hitched to a plow and started plowing the new ground. He plowed slowly the first day. The second day my guineas got out again and flew across the valley to the plowed ground. Mort Hinton caught two of them. The others flew back home when he tried to catch them. Then he yelled across to where we were plowing our new ground and told us what he had done.

“I feel like taking a shotgun and sprin­kling him, ” I said.

“Your guineas were on his land, ” Mom said. “He told you to keep them off his land.”

Mort Hinton plowed his new ground by working from daylight until dusk, while the boys carried armloads of roots from the field and stacked them in great heaps. By the first of May, they had made this ground soil like a garden. Then came a rainy season in early May, and they carried baskets of tobacco plants and set them in the newly plowed rows.

“They’re workers, all right, ” Pa said.

On a dark night about a week later, I watched a moving light from my upstairs window. It came from the direction of the Hintons’, over the hill and down into the valley below our house. In a few minutes, I heard foot-steps on the porch. Then there was a loud knock on our door. I heard Pa get out of bed and open the door.

“I’m Mort Hinton, ” a voice said. “My wife sent for your wife.”

I heard Mom getting out of bed.

“I’ll be ready in a minute, ” she called out.

Neither Pa nor Mort said another word.

“I’ll be back when everything is all right, ” Mom said as she hurried off.

The next morning, Pa cooked breakfast for us. He muttered about the Hintons as he stood near the hot stove frying eggs.

“They are friendly enough when need something over there, ” Pa said.

We were ready to sit down to breakfast when Mom came home.

“Dollie Hinton’s got a healthy girl baby, ” were Mom’s first words.

“What did they name the baby? ” Glenna asked.

“They’ve not named her yet, ” Mom said “I think they plan to call her Ethel. They’re tickled to death. Three boys and now a girl! ”

“What kind of people are they, anyway? ” Pa asked.

“Like other people, ” Mom said. “They don’t have much furniture in their house. They’re working hard to pay for their farm.”

“Will they be any better neighbors? ” Pa asked.

“I think so, ” Mom said. “That hill over there is not a fence between us any longer.”

“There’s more than a hill between us, ” I said. “What about my guineas Mort Hinton caught? Did he say anything about ’em last night? ”

“And what about the Hinton boy that hit me on the foot with a rock? ” Finn said. “I’d like to meet up with him sometime.”

By the time we had, finished our breakfast, Mort Hinton was plowing the young tobacco. His three sons were hoeing the tender plants with long-handled hoes.

“You’d think Mr. Hilton would be sleepy, ” Mom said. “He didn’t go to bed last night. And the boys slept on the hay in the barn loft.”

Pa, Finn, and I didn’t have too much sympathy for the Hintons. Through the dining-room window, we could look across the valley and watch Mort keep the plow moving steadily. We watched his boys dig with their hoes, never looking up from the ground.

“This will be a dry, sunny day, ” Pa said. “We’ll burn the brush piles on the rest of our clearing.”

We gathered our pitchforks, hoes, and rakes and went to the hill where we had cleared ground all spring. There were hundreds of brush piles on our twenty acres of cleared ground. The wind was still. The sun had dried the dew from the leaves that carpeted the ground between the brush piles.

“It’s the right time to burn, ” Pa said. “I can’t feel any wind. The brush has aged in these piles until it is as dry as powder.”

Pa struck a match to the brush pile at the bottom of the clearing. The fire started with little leaps over the leaf-carpeted ground. Finn, Pa, and I set fire to the bottom of the clearing until we had a continuous line of fire going up the slope. Then a wind sprang up from nowhere. And when flames leaped from brush pile to brush pile, Pa looked at me.

“This is out of control, ” Pa said. “Grab a hoe and start raking a ring.”

“I’m afraid we can’t stop it, ” Finn said. “We’ll have to work fast to save the orchards.”

“Run to the house and get Sal and Glenna, ” Pa yelled.

“Look, Pa, ” Finn said, pointing down the hill.

Mort Hinton was in front. He was running up the hill. His three sons were, run­ning behind him, each with a hoe across his shoulder.

“It’s out of control, ” Pa shouted to Mort before he reached us.

“We’ve come to help, ” Mort said.

“Can we keep it from the orchards? ” Pa asked.

“Let’s run to the top of the hill and fire against it, ” Mort said. “I’ve burnt hundreds of acres of clearings on hillsides, and I al­ways fire the top first and let it burn down! I fire the bottom last. Maybe we’ll not be too late to save the orchards! ”

Mort ran up the hill and we followed. Finn and I didn’t speak to his boys, and they didn’t speak to us. But when we started raking a ring side by side, we started talking to the Hintons. We forgot about the rock fight. Now wasn’t the time to remember it, when flames down under the hill were shooting twenty to thirty feet high. In no time, we raked the ring across the top of the clearing. And the fire Mort Hinton set along the ring burned fiercely down the hill and made the ring wider and wider. Only once did fire blow across the ring, and Pa stopped it then.

As soon as we had this spot under control, we raked a ring down the west side near the peach orchard. Mort set a line of fire along this ring and let it burn toward the middle of the clearing. Then we raked a ring on the east side and fired against the fire that was approaching our plum trees and our house. Soon the leaping flames met in the clearing. We had the fire under control. Our clearing was burned clean as a whistle.

“How much do I owe you? ” Pa asked Mort Hinton.

“You don’t owe me anything, ” Mort said. “We’re just paying you back for the help your wife gave us.”

“Then let’s go to the house for dinner, ” Pa said.

“Some other time, ” Mort said. “We must go home and see about Dollie and the baby.”

As we went down the hill, Finn and I talked with the Hinton boys about fishing and wild-bee trees, while Pa and Mort laughed and talked about weather and crops.

Jesse Stuart

a) Analyze the development of the relations between the Hintons and their neighbours. The questions given below may help you to cope with the task:

1. How did the conflict start? Could they avoid the conflict already at that stage?
2. Why was Mort Hinton angry about the birds? Was his reaction justified?
3. What was the reaction of different members of the family to the conflict?
4. Why did the male members of the families begin to compete while working?
5. When did the hostility begin to melt away?
6. What finally brought the families together?

B) Working in pairs (groups) discuss the problem of neighbourliness. Sum up the results of your discussion and exchange opinions on the subject with other students. Use the following points as a guideline.

1. What are characteristics of neighbourliness? What makes a good neighbour?
2. How do you get to know people who are new to a neighbourhood? How do they get to know you?
3. What problems can arise between close neighbours? What factors cause these problems?
4. Have you ever had any personal experience of such problems? What actions did you take?
5. Why does a shared crises or dangerous situation draw people together? Have you ever had such an experience?
6. Why can the experience of dealing with your neighbours be useful in other situations?

c) Comment on the following quotations:

1. The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbour. (H. Humphrey)
2. Good fences make good neighbours. (R. Frost)

XXV. The problem of stereotypes and prejudice is one of the most acute problems of today. In order to discuss it you should conduct a miniresearch. Use different sources (books, the Internet, etc.) Sum up the results of your research in a report. Present the report to the class. Take into account the following points:

1) What is stereotype? What is prejudice?

2) What do they have in common? What way do they differ?

3) How do stereotypes and prejudices originate?

4) Why is if so difficult to get rid of them?

5) What is the harmful effect of a stereotype on an individual? On the society in general?