Free A Place on Earth (Port William) by Wendell Berry Page A

then maybe they will go on over to Wheeler's daddy's place, as they do
sometimes, and visit a while there. Or go somewhere to look at a farm
that Wheeler will be thinking of buying-and spend a while pointing
out and describing to each other what could be done by way of improvement. Or maybe-it could be any day-Wheeler will have a case to try
in one of the counties upriver, and will stop by and pick up Old Jack and
take him along. They usually ride all the way to the courthouse without
talking much, Wheeler's briefcase and maybe a law book or two on the seat between them. There's too much going on inside of Wheeler then.
It is as if, while they are on the way to the trial, Wheeler's mind and his
nerves are drawing down like the spring of a steel trap. And with
Wheeler-who, in Old Jack's opinion, has a mind like a steel trap-that
is a mighty formidable thing to see happening. Because once he stands
up in one of those courtrooms, with the judge and the jury and the
opposing lawyer and the plaintiff and the defendant and the crowd of
courthouse regulars and loafers and idle farmers and the framed portraits of four or five generations of judges all looking at him, Wheeler's
intelligence shines. Whether he wins or loses, Wheeler shines, Old Jack
can see that. Every point Wheeler makes has the clean sound to it of a
good axe chopping into a locust stump. And Old Jack, in his seat in the
back of the room, says `Ah!" On the way home, after Wheeler has got
limbered up and relaxed a little, Old Jack will slap him on the knee and
tell him: "You're all right, son. You've got a powerful head, and that's
fine. Mighty fine."

    He folds up the President's picture and puts it back. He thumbs
through the notebook until he finds a clean page; and then he takes a
short pencil out of his pocket, and begins to write down a column of
figures.
    That pocket in the bib of his overalls is Old Jack's place of business.
That is where he keeps his old silver pocket watch and his notebook and
pencil; he tells Wheeler he uses the pocket to hold what he has got left of
his mind. He and Wheeler both know that he's still got a shrewd head on
his shoulders, but they let on as if he would have no mind at all if he had
no pocket to put it in.
    It is true enough that the old man no longer has any memory for figures. And all his accounts and receipts are kept in a file in Wheeler Catlett's office in Hargrave. He does his figuring in the notebook by guess,
estimating and imagining what he cannot remember or never knew, and
coming up invariably with a monstrous error in the result. But he has the
habit of figuring, and so he figures, night after night, sitting by himself in
his room, chewing furiously at his cud of tobacco, his imagination freewheeling among wishes and guesses, going up one side and down the
other of what he presumes to be his farm accounts.
    This is his farming, the remnant of habit and fascination from his life's work, which he claims he has died out of now, all except his mind. He
relishes his ciphering. The figures come into his mind smelling of barns
and grain bins and tobacco and livestock. His figures grunt and bleat and
bray and bawl. This is the passion that has worn him out, and made him
old, and is still a passion. As he labors over it, the notebook becomes as
substantial in his hands as a loaded shovel.

    Scratching and stabbing with the pencil, he makes a column of figures representing his guesses as to what his earnings have been since the
first of the year, and his predictions of what he will have earned by the
year's end. Beside that column he makes another, guessing and predicting his expenses. He adds both columns, and subtracts expenses from
earnings. If the margin of profit strikes him as too small he begins again,
and repeats the operation, increasing the earnings and economizing on
the expenses, until he comes up with a figure that suits him. The next
night he does the same thing,