for making a living. If Ham had a scholarship—even a partial one—perhaps he (and his mother) could convince his father to shell out the difference.
Ham felt a tug on his sleeve.
He turned to Nora and said, “Let’s get out of here.” They walked over to the Studebaker. Ham had taken it Moore’s garage and had the starter replaced. Ham opened the door for Nora, then folded his large frame into the seat behind the wheel. He coaxed the car to start. He, Nora, and MackieP took off into the chilly evening of the North Carolina Brushy Mountains.
Chapter 4
Ham woke up on the morning after Opening Day to the smell and sound of bacon frying. His left arm was throbbing. It was Saturday. Some Saturdays Ham had to go to the sawmill with Thom Jeff, to “catch up” on sawing logs. Most Saturdays, though, his dad was out looking for the next tract of timber for his sawmill. Even after a night of heavy drinking—which was most Friday and Saturday nights—Thom Jeff was up and out of the house. Ham loved those Saturday mornings when Thom Jeff left early. He got to sleep in til 8:00 a.m. Some mornings he would go fishing or hunting with JC. Some mornings he would lie in bed and listen to Casey Kasem’s “America’s Top Forty” on his transistor radio. Some mornings he would just lie in the bed “simmering,” as Grandma Cornelia called it, thinking about the game the night before or plans for the weekend. This morning he simmered, thinking about the game the night before, but then, in a more reflective mood for some reason, he started thinking about his name.
Thomas Hamilton MacPherson. Ham had asked his mother when he was about eight years old where his name came from. She had a simple answer.
“Hammie, your daddy’s family is a proud family, so the MacPhersons have a tradition of namin’ the first born male after presidents of the United States. Your daddy’s name is Thomas Jefferson, and Grandpa Dubya’s name is George Washington. And you are Thomas Hamilton.”
“What was Grandpa Dubya’s daddy’s name?” the young Ham asked.
“Nobody knows.”
“Grandpa Dubya doesn’t know his own daddy’s name?”
“Well, I reckon he knows it, but he ain’t never told nobody. Dubya’s daddy died right after he was born, so I ‘spect nobody much remembers him anymore,” his mom replied. Then she added, “And if anybody else does know, he’s sworn them to secrecy too. There was, I believe, a Benjamin Franklin MacPherson sometime before that.”
Ham thought how that answer satisfied him for several years, though the mystery of his great-grandfather remained. Then Ham thought about the seventh grade, when he took U.S. history and was required to memorize the presidents’ names up to Teddy Roosevelt. He confronted his mother one morning at breakfast. “Mama, you said we first born MacPhersons was all named after presidents, right?”
“Yes, that’s right Hammie.”
“Well, I’ve been studyin’ up on the presidents.” He then reeled off the names he knew:
“George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, and William McKinley.”
“Why, Hammie, that’s wonderful!!” Nina exclaimed.
“Yeah,” Ham said proudly. “We learned them all up to Teddy Roosevelt. Next week we’re goin’ to learn the rest from Roosevelt to Gerald Ford. We get extra credit if we memorize their dates, too, but that’s way too much trouble!”
“Well, I just think that’s amazing!” She hesitated. “But Hammie, didn’t you say Grover Cleveland’s name twice? Will the teacher count off for that?”
“No, Mama, he was president twice at two different times, so we have to list him twice.” Then Ham remembered why he recited the list.
“Mama, there’s no Thomas Hamilton who was ever president.”
“Well, maybe he’s in the list you haven’t learned yet Hammie.”
Ham leaped to his feet and pounded the kitchen table. “No, Mama, I looked ahead. There’s no Thomas Hamilton. And Sarah Elizabeth Corn made fun of me. ‘Ham, we thought you were named after a president.’ ‘I was,’ I said. ‘Well, apparently you warn’t!’ Then everybody giggled. So I looked ahead and sure ‘nough. There’s no Thomas Hamilton anywhere. I was embarrassed Mama. Kinda like when I got in the fight on the school bus when I was seven with Dennis the Menace Pinnix because he said Santa warn’t real, and I said he was. I was wrong about that, too.” Ham took a breath and sighed.
“Hammie, sit down.” Ham sat back down in the chair at the kitchen table. His mother sat beside him, and took his hands into hers. “I should have told you this a long time ago, I guess, but it never seemed like the right time. You had an older brother, Hammie. He was born six years before you came along. He only lived a couple of days; he had a lot wrong with him—congenital defects the doctor called them. Anyhow, he lived long enough for us to name him, and we did. Alexander Hamilton.”
Ham sat in silent disbelief. He had a brother? He had a brother he never knew and never knew about? He felt numb. He knew his daddy was a little older when he was born. Thirty was ancient to father your first child by mountain standards. And twenty-six for his mother was not much better. He had always thought—in fact, he had always been told—that his parents wanted some time together alone before they had children, and that’s why they waited seven years to have children. But that was a lie! He had a brother! What else haven’t his parents told him, he wondered. Then it came to him.
“Mama, Alexander Hamilton warn’t no president either!”
“I know, Hammie. Your daddy was so upset about how sick the baby was, and I wasn’t well either. It was a hard delivery. So when they asked for the baby’s name, your daddy tried to honor the MacPherson tradition and said the first name that came into his head: ‘Alexander Hamilton.’ He told me later it was the only name he could remember from U.S. history, and he was sure he had been a president. When we tried to change the name later, it was too late. It was Alexander Hamilton on both the birth and the death certificates.”
“Daddy couldn’t even get the damned name right,” Ham half muttered to himself. “Probably drunk.”
“Thomas Hamilton MacPherson! Do not use language like that in my house. And your father was not drunk!” She paused. “And though he warn’t a president, Alexander Hamilton was a very important American. He was the first treasurer of the United States or somethin’ like that. In charge of the country’s money.”
Ham tried to let all this sink in. Finally, he spoke again. “So where did the name Thomas Hamilton come from?”
“Well,” his mother hesitated. “We wanted to honor the memory of your brother, so we kept the Hamilton part. Neither of us liked Alexander very much. And Thomas is your daddy’s name, of course. So we chose Thomas Hamilton. There were a bunch of Thomas Hamiltons in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. All of them some kind of Earl in Scotland. I looked it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica. And your daddy’s family is Scottish, so it seemed right. Plus, the name sounds like a president’s name. Fooled everybody in North Wilkesboro all these years.”
Dazed,
