In Spain the young American John Graves traveled in hopes of finding his “voice” as a writer. Like many budding artists who were veterans in those post WW II years, he was searching, and western Europe seemed a good place for his quest.
During 1953-’54 he took a sailing trip with his friend Pepe Mut to explore the coastal waters of western Spain. Short of wine and bread one day, they put into a cove where an old lateen-rigged fishing boat had been pulled up on its beach. Next to it someone had spread a sein to dry.. At the top of a steep path, they came to a small valley of baked earth where they passed a small herd of goats being watched over by an uncommunicative Down syndrome boy.
Walking past the small herd they approached a house of yellow stone and its owner, a short “leathery” man came out to talk, accompanied by two Down syndrome daughters. Other family members peeked from windows and the owner told Pepe and Graves that he had hard, Ibiceenco bread. Placing chairs on the patio for the visitors and himself, he gave them wine from his own grapes along with salty goat cheese and olives. All served by his mother and wife. As the three talked– pigs, chickens, children, and a donkey came to study the strangers. The man spoke of his eight youngsters and explained the three children with Down syndrome as “a natural misfortune.” Graves explains, “No, he did not see their life as hard. He had the valley in which grain and fruit and olives could be grown when the rains fell right; his goats, sheep, hogs, and poultry furnished meat, and his oldest son caught plenty of fish from the boat we had seen in the cove. There was more than enough of everything.”
The man refused money for the bread and wine that he gave them, and stuffed fruit into the bag of wine. He even told Graves that on his walk back to the boat he could pick several ears of ripening corn growing in a cultivated field next to the path.
Walking back to the cove, Graves sensed how much Pepe Mut was moved by the chance encounter. Before they reached the boat Pepe Mut said, “Now you have seen my true people, Zhohn. That man …that man is more man than we are. He is…entire. [italics Graves’]”
Years later, home in Texas, Graves fictionalized the encounter with the father in his book Hard Scrabble because he had learned at least one lesson while traveling and searching.
When I first read Graves’ story of his encounter with the father, I saw it as a lesson about poor and wealthy people and how those classes face adversarial events in life. I saw the father as a member of the 3rd world, the improvised part of the world that has less than enough for survival and John Graves as a part of the world’s wealthy who have more than enough. It was, in my mistaken thinking, about the so-called 3rd world and the opposite 1st world.
But it is not. It is about courage. The father demonstrated by his words his philosophy of living, such as when he describes his Down children as a result of natural misfortune. Seventy years later a reader could argue that his description of three of his children as misfortunes is cruel or ignornant; however, that would, in my view, miss his understanding and acceptance of what he saw as a result of some natural occurrence of birth. He likely knew nothing of genetics, but what he knew was that some of his children were born different, and he accepted that fact. He did not moan and groan about it but accepted it as part of his and his family’s life, just as he did about rain and his grape vines, olive trees, grain, and corn. The fact that his son with Down syndrome watched over the family’s herd of goats shows that he taught his children to be contributors to the family well-being. The goats gave milk necessary for the cheese, a food staple, so the boy’s responsibility was important to the welfare of the family. Each member of the family was valued.
Not only was the father courageous, but he was also charitable. Think of it—eight children and three adults living in a western Spanish valley just after WW II and the Spanish Civil War. The family livelihood depended on what could be produced on the valley land and what animals could be raised. As the father told Graves and Pepe Mut, if the rain came, the grape vines and olive trees produced. If no rain, no grapes, olives, grain for the family; and no corn for the animals. But the father believed that he and his family had so much that they could share with two sojourners who asked. He accepted no money in sharing his bounty.
Pepe Mut’s description of the father as being entire is as honest as is the father’s acts. St. Paul writes of faith, hope, and charity, and the father reflects all three. What I think Graves learned, and I know I have, is that this father’s life is an example of how life should be lived.
Southern Intersections 