Periodically I go back to a churchyard cemetery on the side of an Appalachian hill in northernVirginia to call on family elders. it slows the juices down something marvelous.
They are all situated right behind an imposing brick church with a tall square brick bell-towerbest described as honest but not flossy. some of the family elders did construction repair workon that church and some of them, the real old timer, may even have helped build it ,but icounldn't swear to that because it's been there a long, long time.
弗吉尼亚北部阿巴拉契亚山脉的一个小山坡上， 有一处教堂墓地。每隔一段日子，我都要回到那里探望先辈们。这种探访有一种奇妙的力量，能让人的心境归于平静。
先辈们的墓地全都在一座庄严醒目的砖石教堂后面。高高耸立的方形钟楼也是砖石结构的，说它“朴实而不粗糙”在再合适不过了。家族先辈中有些参与过教堂的修缮工作，另一些人，那些真正的老祖宗们，或许还为教堂的建造出过力，但对此我可没有绝对把握，因为教堂建在那里毕竟已经很久很久了。
The view, especially in early summer, is so pleasing that it’s a pity they can’t enjoy it. Wildroses blooming on fieldstone fences, fields white with daisies, that soft languorous air turningthe mountains pastel blue out toward the West.
The tombstones are not much to look at. Tombstones never are in my book, but they do helpin keeping track of the family and, unlike a family, they have the virtue of never chafing at you.
那儿的景色非常怡人，尤其是在初夏时节。石栅篱上的野蔷薇竞相开放，田野被雏菊染成一片白色，微醺的和风给群山抹上淡淡的蓝色，一直向西边延伸而去。先辈们无法欣赏这些美景，真是一桩憾事。
那些墓碑倒是没什么看的。在我看来，墓碑从来就没有什么好看的。但它们确实有助于寻根问祖，而绝不会像现在的家人，总跟你唠叨个没完。
This is not to say they don’t talk after a fashion. Every time I pass Uncle Lewis’s I can hear itsay, “Come around to the barber shop, boy, and I’ll cut that hair.” Uncle Lewis was a barber. Heleft up here for a while and went to the city. Baltimore. But he came back after the end. Almostall of them came back finally, those that left, but most stayed right here all along.
Well, not right here in the churchyard, but out there over the fields, two, three, four milesaway. Grandmother was born just over that rolling field out there near the woods the year theCivil War ended, lived most of her life about three miles out the other way there near themountain, and has been right here near this old shade tree for the past 50 years.
但这儿并不是说他们总是“一声不吭”。每次走过刘易斯大叔的墓前，我都能听见这样的话：“回头到理发店来，孩子，我给你剪剪头。”刘易斯大叔是个理发的，有一段时间他曾离开家乡，到大都市巴尔的摩谋生，但最后还是回来了。几乎所有的人，我是说那些离开过的人们，最终都回来了，但大多数人——一辈子都呆在这里。
对了，“这里”当然不是指这片墓地，而是乡间那边，离墓地二三英里或三四英里的地方。内战结束那年，祖母就出生在树林子附近那片起伏不平的地头。她大半辈子都在离林子大约三英里的大山边生活，如今安躺在这棵绿荫如盖的老树下也有50年了。
We weren’t people who went very far. Uncle Harry, her second child, is right beside her. Acarpenter. He lived 87 years in these parts without ever complaining about not seeing Paris. Toget Uncle Harry to say anything, you have to ask for directions.
“Which way is the schoolhouse?” I ask, though not aloud of course.
“Up the road that way a right good piece,” he replies, still the master of indefinite navigationwhom I remember from my boyhood.
先辈们都不大出远门儿。就拿哈里大伯来说吧，他是祖母的二儿子，就葬在她的墓旁。他是个木匠，一辈子87年都在这一带度过，从未抱怨过自己没去过巴黎，见识见识外面的世界。要想让哈里大伯开口说点什么，你得向他问路才行。
“去学堂走哪条路呀?”我问道，当然声音不大。
“沿那条道一直走就行，还得走好一阵子呢。”他回答道。在我儿时的记忆中，他一直就是这个样子，总是那副好给别人之路却又指不清的含糊口气。
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