The Fortunate Ones

by Ed Tarkington

  “What about Arch?”

  “Forget about him for now.”

  She squeezed my hand. I looked over at her. Without thinking, I leaned across the console and kissed her. She pushed me away, fleetingly wincing.

  “Oh God,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  She calmed herself. The flash of horror that had come over her face melted into pity.

  I hid my face in my hands.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re upset. People do crazy things when they’re upset.”

  I couldn’t bear to look at her.

  “I wish I could just die right now,” I said.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  If we hadn’t been so far from home, I’d have jumped out of the car and run away.

  “Let me take you to the carriage house,” she said. “Mother’s sleeping. You won’t have to see her. I’ll help you pack your things. Jamie will help too. You can drive the Jeep out to the farm after that.”

  “I don’t think I can go back there.”

  “Most of life is doing things we don’t really want to do, Charlie,” she said. “Once you accept that, life gets a lot easier.”

  She put her sunglasses back on.

  “It’s only a couple of weeks.”

  I nodded. She started the car and drove back down the Parkway toward Highway 100. When we got to the house, Jamie was waiting for us in the driveway.

  “Welcome to the family, brother,” he said.

  twelve

  I spent a torturous two weeks living at the farm, rising early in the morning so I could begin the commute from Leiper’s Fork before Mr. Haltom and my mother woke, going straight to my room when I came home, emerging only for meals, during which I said as little as possible and left the table as soon as I was finished eating. At Yeatman, I overheard remarks muttered behind Jamie’s and my backs in hallways and classrooms. None of this seemed to bother Jamie. Still, I felt ashamed around him and tried to avoid him without seeming to be aloof. It wasn’t hard; the long drive back and forth made it easy for me to disappear.

  Arch showed up unannounced at the farm the day before graduation. His magnanimity in the face of my sulking made me feel like a huge brat. Maybe I was.

  “Think about the fall,” he said. “We’ll be back together again, at Vandy. You’ll be a shoo-in for SAE. First ballot, I guarantee it. You can be my little brother. Focus on that. The rest of this stuff will all settle out.”

  I thought of the lame pass I’d made at Vanessa. I pictured her telling Arch, the two of them having a laugh at my expense. I wondered if Arch would feel so superior if he knew what I’d promised Vanessa—that she had trusted me with her secret. I imagined the look on his face if I were to tell him. I thought about doing the same to Mr. Haltom, just to prove to him that he couldn’t control and manipulate everything—that there were choices and consequences beyond his power. Then again, he’d already learned this lesson from my mother.

  Mr. Haltom was to give the commencement address at Yeatman that year. It was unusual for a board chair to do this; usually, the school invited some local eminence or a distinguished alumnus. An exception had been made for him; his “invitation” to speak had been calculated as a platform from which he could announce his run for governor. He’d abandoned his presumed candidacy too late for a replacement speaker. So he went on with the address, most everyone in the crowd well aware of his looming divorce.

  That week, I was told that my painting of the children gathering cans at the tailgate—the one I’d thought might get me kicked out of school—had, to my astonishment, won the school’s Art Purchase Prize. It would sit on an easel behind the dais for the duration of the graduation ceremony and then be hung in a place of honor somewhere in the library. Before the ceremony, I went to the art room to collect the painting and deliver it to the podium. There, I found Dean Varnadoe, dressed in a seersucker suit, white panama in one hand, brass-handled cane in the other, appraising my work.

  “You have some talent, Mr. Boykin,” he said. “So your time here hasn’t been a complete waste.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Varnadoe’s eyes wandered over to Miss Whitten’s bare desk.

  “I don’t blame her for leaving,” I said.

  “No, I don’t either,” he said. “Still, it’s sad, isn’t it? To come in here and see the place stripped of every trace of her. Every trace, that is, but her influence on this fine painting you’ve produced.”

  “You like it?” I asked.

  “I do,” he said. “It’s a bit heavy-handed, mind you. But it’s quite powerful, and technically quite accomplished. And you may be aware of my low opinion of the Tennessee Breeders’ Cup.”

  “Why’d they fire her?” I asked.

  “I can’t say.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  Varnadoe ignored the question. He took off his glasses and set them on the table.

  “I’m very much looking forward to your benefactor’s speech this evening,” he said.

  “Are you being sarcastic?” I asked.

  “Not at all.”

  “I might also have heard something about your low opinion of Jim Haltom, you know.”

  Varnadoe smiled.

  “I’ve sat through more than twenty-five commencements,” he said. “They can be a bit tedious. Mr. Haltom’s decision to appear in spite of recent events should make this one a bit more—memorable.”

  “You hate him, don’t you?”

  Varnadoe took a moment to consider his words.

  “It seems these days more and more that people assume that because a man is wealthy, he should be trusted to lead, or to govern,” he said. “They overlook the fact that wealth is often acquired without discipline or principle. Plato believed that wisdom led to virtue. But one needn’t be wise to become wealthy. One certainly needn’t be virtuous. Of course, all men are flawed, aren’t they, Charlie?”

  He had never called me Charlie before.

  “Latet enim veritas,” he said, “sed nihil pretiosius veritate. Do you remember it?”

  I’d memorized the aphorism my first year in Dean Varnadoe’s class. It was printed on yellowed paper and taped to the wall above his blackboard: a line from El Brocense—Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas, a sixteenth-century Spanish philologist who three times faced the Inquisition for daring to criticize the Gospels as literature.

  “Truth is hidden,” Varnadoe said, “but nothing is more beautiful than the truth.”

  I nodded.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Boykin,” he said. “You have all my best wishes.”

  He picked up his glasses, slipped them into his breast pocket, and disappeared through the open door.

  Since diplomas were distributed alphabetically, I was separated from Jamie during the ceremony and so was spared his sneering at his father’s remarks about the value of loyalty and integrity. It was a good speech and would have gone over well, I thought, if not for the embarrassing circumstances. I was too troubled by Dean Varnadoe’s words to care one way or the other. My distraction was so complete that I didn’t notice when Dr. Dodd announced me as the winner of the Art Purchase Prize. Hugh Bowling, who was sitting next to me, had to punch me in the shoulder.

  “Go get your money, dumbass,” he said.

  Vanessa sat off to the left, with Mrs. Haltom and her parents, who had flown in from their assisted living facility in Florida for the twins’ graduation ceremonies. My mother sat on the far right, near the faculty, with Arch and his mother. I had insisted that we invite Sunny, but she called to tell me she just couldn’t get out of work that evening. Instead, she sent me a card with a fifty-dollar bill inside.

  The headmaster shook each graduate’s hand as we crossed the stage, after which the board chair handed each of us a diploma and posed for a photograph. As my future stepfather and I stood holding the green leather-bound cover between us, I spotted smirks on the faces of my classmates.

  Afterward, as the graduating class gathered under
the red oak trees on the quad to smoke our celebratory cigars, Arch and Jamie and Vanessa found me.

  “We’re going to Chris Presnell’s party,” Arch said. “Why don’t you ride with me?”

  “I drove the Jeep,” I said.

  “I’ll bring you back to get it later.”

  “I think I’d rather drive.”

  A flicker of irritation flashed across his face.

  “All right,” he said. “Suit yourself.”

  “I’ll meet you over there,” I said.

  Instead, I drove out to Percy Priest Lake with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and got drunk on the dock by myself. I fell asleep in the back seat of the Jeep, repeating El Brocense’s proverb in my head, over and over. Latet enim veritas, sed nihil pretiosius veritate. Truth is hidden, but nothing is more beautiful than the truth.

  The next morning, I awoke with a dry mouth, a splitting headache, and an overwhelming sense of despair. I pictured my mother in bed with Jim Haltom at that very moment; Mrs. Haltom in her bedroom at the great house on the Boulevard, face stained with mascara, her indignation temporarily numbed by chardonnay and Seconal; Jamie flopped on the couch in the pool house, preparing to wake up from a hangover worse than my own; Arch and Vanessa, up early, plotting their illustrious future together over coffee and eggs Benedict on the patio at the country club. I couldn’t bear the thought of facing any of them anytime soon—perhaps ever again.

  Driving back from the lake, I looked up and saw the signs for I-40. Call it the curse of my blood, inherited from my mother, perhaps my father as well: when in doubt, run away and begin again. The highway stretching off toward the horizon is always an answer and a possibility. I had a few hundred dollars’ cash, thanks to graduation gifts and the prize money. I didn’t think about whether anyone would come looking for me. I just drove. The tank in the Jeep was near full, so I was able to make it all the way across the North Carolina border before stopping for gas. I bought a cup of coffee and kept going.

  Outside Spartanburg, South Carolina, I stopped again to fuel up and piss. I bought a road atlas containing a map of Greenville, which included the town of Greer. In a phone booth, I thumbed through the worn pages of a phone book to look up the address for Charles Boykin. There was only one. I found the street on the map. I had to stop three more times for directions before I found it—a large white house with a red front door and a wraparound porch lined with blooming azaleas.

  I’d imagined that my mother’s childhood home had been something more than our walk-up apartment in Montague Village, but I’d never gone so far as to picture exactly what it looked like. I sat in the car for a long time, trying to summon the courage to walk up to that porch and knock on the door.

  An old Cadillac pulled into the driveway. A man and a woman climbed out. The woman was petite, a bit stooped, in a flowery dress and carrying a large wicker bag on her shoulder. The man glanced down toward the Jeep but did not appear to notice me watching him. They walked up the steps and into the house. A light came on in the front window. The woman appeared there to part the curtains.

  All at once, a great weariness overcame me. I felt as if I lacked the strength even to drive around the corner, much less to go home or find a hotel or a rest stop. I eased the seat back and closed my eyes.

  I awoke with a start. The light of the day had faded to dusk. I glanced toward the window. There stood my grandfather with his arms crossed, peering down at me through the open window.

  “Can I help you?”

  “No, sir,” I murmured.

  “You’ve been napping here for a while,” he said.

  “I . . . I got tired,” I said.

  My grandfather leaned over. My voice felt trapped in my throat.

  “I’m sorry,” I croaked.

  I turned the ignition and put the Jeep into gear and lurched away from the curb. I caught a last glimpse of my grandfather in the rearview mirror, staring at the car. Was I imagining a hint of recognition on his face?

  I drove until I saw a sign for I-85 South. Why not? I thought.

  The first night, I pulled into a rest stop outside Columbus, Georgia, and slept in the Jeep. On the second, I stopped in New Orleans at a cheap motel on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, where I rented a room with pale-pink walls and a bathroom that smelled of mildew, brine, and cigarette smoke. The day afterward, I made it all the way to San Antonio and sold the Jeep at a used-car lot for a thousand dollars cash. There, I thought. I had stolen a car. No turning back now.

  I thumbed my way to the bus station. You didn’t need a passport to cross the border in those days, and I was eighteen, old enough to travel abroad alone.

  By midafternoon on the sixth day, I was standing in the courtyard of the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico, asking people if they knew Teddy Whitten.

  She seemed less surprised than amused to see me.

  “Charlie Boykin,” she said. “Did they really kick you out over a silly painting?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then what on God’s green earth are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You look hungry,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

  I nodded.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

  Teddy Whitten understood better than most people that sometimes, one has no choice but to follow reckless urges.

  Part two

  Vaulting Ambition

  one

  More than ten years passed before the morning when, while sitting on a bench in the Parque Juarez, drinking coffee, I heard a familiar voice and looked up from my newspaper to find Arch Creigh standing in front of me.

  “Hey, bud,” he said.

  For the first few years of our estrangement, whenever I thought of Arch, I felt dizzy with the wounded resentment of a jilted lover. Later, my feelings softened into longing. I wished something would occur to give me an excuse to contact him, something that would feel less humiliating or risky than the facts. Eventually, a gauzy film of nostalgia settled over that time in my life, such that I stopped hoping as I once had that I’d look up one day and he’d be there, as he now was.

  “Arch,” I said.

  “That’s some beard,” he said.

  Arch looked different too—hairline rising a bit on his forehead; crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes when he smiled—but still young, still beautiful.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said.

  “I’ve missed you too,” I said.

  When I’d first found Teddy Whitten in San Miguel de Allende, she took me home and fed me tamales. She had a small place, the corner of an old building a few blocks from the Instituto—a tiled kitchenette; a living room with a futon couch, a bookshelf, and a woven rug spread out on the floor; a single bedroom with a twin bed strewn with clothes. It seemed just the sort of place someone like Teddy would have.

  I told her what had happened, what had led me to follow her.

  “Does anyone know where you are?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “You should call your mother,” she said.

  I shook my head.

  “They’ll find you, you know,” she said.

  “They can’t make me go back.”

  “I’m not sure about that.”

  “Let them try.”

  Teddy lit a cigarette.

  “Can I have one of those?” I asked.

  She hesitated for a moment before offering me the pack. Thus began but one of the regrettable habits I’ve been incapable of breaking.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked. “Do you have a plan?”

  “No.”

  She glanced around. She seemed anxious, as if she were expecting someone and wanted to get me out before anyone saw me there.

  “You can stay here for a while,” she said. “As long as you need, I mean. I don’t have much room, but you’re welcome to the futon.”

  “I have money,” I said. �
��I can get a hotel room.”

  “Save your money,” she said. “Are you tired?”

  I nodded.

  “You should sleep,” she said. “I have to go out for a while. Just try to rest. We’ll figure something out in the morning.”

  The next day, Teddy walked me down to the historic city center, showed me the great Gothic Parroquia and the other old churches, pointed out the color and the light and the space. The wrought iron window frames dripping with blooming bougainvillea set into aqua and crimson and yellow stucco walls. The narrow cobblestone streets. The statue of Ignacio Allende on horseback, saber extended, covered by pigeons, under an endless blue sky.

  We stopped at a small tienda, with a window in a wall facing the street. Teddy ordered tortas and bottles of water. We walked a few blocks, and she took me to her classroom, where she collected an easel and a few small canvases and a satchel. She stuffed brushes and paints into the satchel, handed it to me, and led me outside to an ATV. She got on and patted the seat behind her.

  We sped out of the city, up to the rim of the valley, through narrow dirt paths until we reached the edge of a steep canyon surrounding a lake. Teddy led me toward the edge of the cliff.

  “They call this La Cañada del Charco,” she said.

  Teddy reached into her bag and handed me a torta and a water bottle.

  “Eat up,” she said. “Then get to work. And make it good.”

  “What for?”

  “Your audition.”

  She set down the bag with the art supplies.

  “See you in a few hours,” she said.

  When she returned at dusk, I had a decent study. Over the next few days, I worked on a full-scale version of a barrel cactus against a crumbling stone wall. The giant green bulb reached the edges of the canvas. The golden needles jutted out and slashed across the edges of the frame. I mixed paint again and again, layering it for a rough texture that I hoped would convey the urgency of the strokes and the feeling I had when I painted it, which was like I was trying to speak but had gone mute.