He told then of his place-ness. "I had the furniture shipped by riverboat to Nashville and Mr. George got two of his hands to pick it up and drive it home in well padded wagons." He had succeeded in shifting his tale away from matters of the heart and loins and the details of his powers of visitation, taking up instead less provocative elements of his story.
I went with the surface account and asked, "You worked in your apprenticeship until 1830, correct?"
"That's very good," Jones responded. "You did find some information on my life. Yes, it seems you have some idea of the progress of my living. That is something." He went silent. Then, after he surveyed someplace in his memories, he said, "Yes, you have found what you could."
He paused, smiled, and telegraphed his next verbal punch with his eyes. "Sir, you have the skeleton of facts, shall we say. It is my intent that your biographical piece will offer something of my substance. Existence, anyone's existence, is more than happenings, events, and occasions. There are sentiments, ideas, and motivations, longings you know, sir, or should, if you be a man of the cloth and aspire to be a writer." I smiled, blushed, and accepted his teaching as worthwhile.
Before I could respond he said, "I appreciated Simms wonderful descriptive chronicling of things Southern. His The Wigwam and the Cabin was pretty relevant to what this area was like in my younger years. And Melville. I like Mr. Herman Melville's writing most, I think. The whale as symbol of Ahab's demons is powerful. I appreciate Hawthorne as well. He dealt with the Puritans' strength and the weakness inherent in their arrogance, assailing their hatefulness and presumptions. The elite Mr. Emerson and his circle did not move me. There is too much cheap Grace in the Sage of Concord's ideas. You must reckon with the darkness of the soul, sir, if you reckon with truth."
This from the man-spirit who had offered a powerful sweetness-and-light homily on the purity of love but a few minutes before. Now he was offering a harsh understanding of human nature. I was confused and disoriented. As I let his words settle in me, I realized again the place of contradiction, its quality in the human experience. I like to ignore contradiction. Life is easier that way-maybe not authentic life, but at least a more comfortable pretense.
"I was granted master status as a saddler in 1830." He had gone back to his story while I wandered around in my uncharted existentialist wilderness. "Yes, I was a journeyman until 1830 and, on becoming a master saddler, I arranged a partnership with Mr. John T. Morgan. He was a founder of Fayetteville, a local businessman who had varied interests in several concerns. Fayetteville and the county were then growing apace"