Spencer's Mountain

ON THE DAY BEFORE Thanksgiving the Spencer clan
began to gather. It was a custom that at this time during
the year the nine sons would come together in New
Dominion. On Thanksgiving Eve they would celebrate
their reunion with food and drink and talk. On the day
itself the men would leave at dawn to hunt for deer.
All day cars had been arriving at Clay Spencer's
house. Each car was greeted by Clay-Boy, a thin boy
of fifteen with a serious freckled face topped by an
unruly shock of darkening corn-colored hair. Now the
day was drawing toward evening, but still the boy lingered
at the back gate waiting for the one uncle who
had not yet arrived, the one he wanted most to see.
In the west the taller ridges of the Blue Ridge Mountains
were rimmed with a fading autumn silver, but in
the foothills, in the Spencer's back yard, all was in
darkness when the ninth and last car stopped at the
back gate. Clay-Boy, waving his flashlight excitedly,
directed the car to a parking place.