by William Poe
“They were probably the first words I ever heard. Lenny never understood why I didn’t have the same respect for him that he had for Bart. Lenny wanted adulation, and I refused to give it.”
“What did Vivian want from you?”
“I don’t know. She had a terrible fear of losing the things she loved.” I smiled to myself.
“What?” Harris asked.
“I wonder how much Lenny’s lack of affection contributed to my leaving home the way I did.”
“You might understand better when you write about it.”
“Vivian was as unhappy as I was, you know. I don’t think Lenny paid her any more attention than he did to me.”
Harris and I sat in silence for a while, listening to the squirrels rustling through the leaves as they sought out the spots where they had buried acorns the prior autumn. In the distance, a horn bellowed from a barge traveling down the Arkansas River. My thoughts drifted to Wesley. I hadn’t experienced physical abuse the way he had, but Vivian must have understood that Lenny’s neglect had damaged me, nonetheless.
Harris studied my expression for a few minutes. “When did you know you were gay?”
The question hit a nerve. As a boy, I had been terrified that Lenny would find out what I was doing with my best friend, and hate me because of it. Later, in high school, I dreaded Lenny finding out I was dating a guy.
“I’ve always known I was gay,” I admitted. “I was a young boy when I started messing around with my best friend. When we reached puberty, he only seemed interested in how I could get him off. I wanted more than that. I was in love with him. When he started dating girls, I could hardly bear it.”
“Have you ever thought you could be straight?”
“Have you ever thought you could be gay?” I asked in return.
“Touché,” Harris replied.
I gathered up the papers that Harris had been reading. “Telling my story is—what’s the word?—cathartic.”
Harris walked to the edge of the woods. He picked up a twig and began stripping off the bark. “It’s a Gestalt thing,” he said. “Cathartic’s the right word.”
I went back to my writing desk. Soon, a fellow named Joshua approached me. I had noticed him before, during group meetings.
“Ought to be reading the Big Book,” he said.
Joshua’s counselor strictly adhered to the Twelve Steps. I wanted to tell the young man to shove off, but he was cute and I was lonely. At least Joshua had spoken to me. Most of the other guys kept their distance.
When Joshua went on his way, I returned to my writing.
✽ ✽ ✽
The first summer at the mansion, Vivian planted a vegetable garden near the back of the house, but nothing would grow. Lenny referred to the soil there as sandy loam and told Vivian she ought to plant her garden closer to the pond. Vivian didn’t want to cross the chigger-invested field, so she persisted, using a wheelbarrow to haul loads of soil from around the barn. After the evening meal, Vivian tended the garden, spending hours on her hands and knees pulling weeds and kneading the soil with her gloved fingers. It was hard work, but she seemed to enjoy it, no doubt relishing the chance to escape Mandy’s needs and Lenny’s criticisms.
Lenny eventually added his own touch to the garden, constructing a long trellis of one-by-twos and planting grapevines. When most of the garden plants were mature, I watched Lenny and Vivian from a hiding place among the eggplants whose leaves were as large as my face. Vivian plucked tomato worms with a wad of Kleenex and dropped them into a pail of kerosene. Satisfied that she had found all the colorful pests, she started weeding. Fuzzy-leafed plants with lavender star-shaped flowers had overtaken the garden’s edges. They were particularly prevalent near a row of okra. I wanted to help and found a similar plant growing near the tomatoes. I tugged with all my weight, but the plant held tight. All I managed to do was shred its leaves as my hands slipped along the stem.
Vivian called out, “What are you doing, Bubby?” In her rush to get to me, she knocked over the pail of dead worms. “Damn,” she said, using a rare curse. “That kerosene might kill the tomato plants.”
I was confused. Why was Vivian upset?
“That’s a yellow bell pepper!” Vivian said, grabbing my arm. “What were you thinking?”
“I just wanted to help,” I said with trembling lips.
Lenny, who had been tying grapevine runners to the trellis, heard Vivian’s voice and came over to see what was going on. He pulled off his work gloves and yanked up the bell pepper by its roots, showering Vivian and me with dirt as he shook the soil over the garden and tossed the remains into the yard. Lenny towered over me with his hands on his hips. His words, “I’m ashamed of you, Bubby,” went straight to my heart.
All I had wanted to do was help. Suddenly, nothing made sense. Why save one weed over another? The plants looked the same—the only difference was the name that Vivian gave the plant I had struggled to uproot.
Sparky ran beside me as I rushed toward the house. He tried his best to slow me down, nudging my side with his long snout. Mandy waited at the back door. “What’s wrong, Bubby? What did that woman say to you?”
“I did something stupid,” I said, racing upstairs to lock myself in the bathroom. I heard the soft soles of Mandy’s house slippers shuffling on the hardwood floor and noticed the change in light under the threshold when she began pecking on the door. I turned on the water in the sink, not wanting her to hear me crying.
The words kept repeating in my head.
I’m ashamed of you, Bubby.
CHAPTER 3
One afternoon, a boy my own age appeared out of nowhere on the other side of the chain-link fence that Lenny had built around the backyard, hoping to prevent Sparky and me from roaming off without permission. Ernie had escaped from his mother’s watchful eye and wandered through the brambles that separated our houses. I’d never seen anyone with hair as white as his or with eyes so blue. We each had crew cuts, though my hair fell flat, while Ernie’s stood up straight with the help of Butch Wax. The August sun had browned us both “dark as Indians,” as people said of us boys who went all summer wearing nothing but cutoff blue jeans.
Mandy came to the kitchen window and called out, “Get away from here,” as if shooing away a stray dog.
“Who’s that?” Ernie asked. We had been sizing each other up through the fence, but hadn’t said anything until then. When I didn’t answer, Ernie said, “She looks like a ghost. Is your house haunted?”
“That’s my grandmother. She sees ghosts, but I don’t think they’re real.”
Just then, we heard someone calling, a faint voice rising above the din of blue jays conducting an aerial battle. Mrs. Corley called out as she crossed the creek, stepping gingerly on the flat stones that rose above the surface. She paused to put her shoes back on, and then continued up the hill toward the fence. Mrs. Corley still possessed the youthful smile of Miss Pulaski County 1941.
“Now, Ernie,” his mother began, “I told you, don’t leave the yard by yourself.” As she spoke, her expression changed from pleasant smile to mock consternation. “Are you going to do this again?”
“No, ma’am,” Ernie said, bowing his head, but flashing a mischievous grin in my direction.
Mrs. Corley reached over the fence to take my hand. “You must be Simon. Nice to meet you, Simon.”
Mandy appeared at the screen door. Mrs. Corley waved politely and, with an elegant drawl, inquired, “How are y’all today, Miz Powell?”
Mandy took a step backward and disappeared into the darkness of the house.
Mrs. Corley raised her eyebrows disapprovingly. “You ought to come and play at our house,” she said, turning her attention back to me. “We have a pool.”
Sparky, who had been standing guard beside me, decided that Ernie and his mother were no threat and jumped on the fence, hoping to get a pat on the head.
“He seems like a good dog,” Mrs. Corley said, scratching Sparky behind the ears.
“Come on now, Ernie. Maggie will have dinner on the table soon.”
Maggie was their live-in maid and cook, who served as Ernie’s part-time nanny.
The Corleys were among the wealthiest of Sibley’s newcomers. Dr. Corley had moved his family from Little Rock so he could have enough land for a swimming pool and a driving range. The man loved golf.
Before meeting Ernie, I didn’t realize how much I had missed out by not having a friend my own age. When we weren’t splashing in the shallow end of the Corleys’ swimming pool, we were inventing stories and acting them out. We morphed into sea captains ready to harpoon a whale by standing on the good ship picnic table, wielding broomsticks. A few smudges of red clay transformed us into Cherokee braves spying on settlers from the edge of the forest. Sometimes we put a piece of black cloth over one eye, held in place with a rubber band, and became pirates looking for a secluded spot to bury our treasure. A hill could be the site of an old fort, the swamp a place of sunken ships and mermaids.
Vivian began dropping me off at the Corleys’ house on her way to work. She had decided that watching out for Mandy should not be my responsibility now that I had a friend to play with. Often, looking toward our house from the Corleys’ pool, I would spot Mandy on the back porch, hand cupped over her eyes, peering in our direction. Only once did she leave the mansion and start walking toward the Corley house. When Vivian arrived home from work at lunchtime, she found Mandy collapsed on the ground, barely ten feet from the creek. After that, I couldn’t visit Ernie’s until Vivian or Lenny came home. Ernie’s mother preferred that he stay on their property with Maggie.
Sparky, along with Dingo and Wacket, again became my best friends during the day. Mandy followed me everywhere I went. To get away from her, I sometimes locked myself in the bathroom. She would stand at the door and call my name, all the while knocking like a feeble woodpecker. When I couldn’t take it any longer, I would rush past her and escape into the backyard. Mandy was reluctant to go outside after her collapse near the creek, hardly daring to cross the threshold onto the porch. Instead, she stood sentinel behind the screen, watching as I crashed toy trucks into the walls of my sandbox or dragged a stick behind me while I ran in circles.
By three o’clock in the afternoon, the summer heat inevitably drove me indoors. One day, I found the key to the basement, where it was cool. I constructed a hideout by stacking boxes against a wall. Even when Mandy realized where I was, she was frightened of the wobbly steps and didn’t try to follow me. I remembered Lenny telling me that JT was behind one of the plywood panels. I considered JT my protector. Sometimes I imagined that I saw him moving through the room, but it would turn out to be a shadow.
Ernie, something of an expert at getting his way, began throwing tantrums. Soon, his mother worked out a schedule with Vivian. Every other day, Ernie’s older brother, Jay, brought him to our house. Jay was supposed to watch us, but after a couple of hours, he would disappear, warning Ernie that if he told their mother, he would be in trouble. “Don’t say anything…or else,” Jay threatened.
One afternoon, while Ernie and I were building a fortress in my sandbox, using a square flowerpot to make bricks, Jay scurried up a persimmon tree beyond the backyard fence and climbed along a low limb until he could jump into the yard. He trampled the fort and kicked sand in our eyes. I pounded Jay with my fists. He laughed. I hit harder. Then I picked up a piece of pipe from discarded plumbing supplies that Lenny kept piled near the porch and clobbered Jay on the head. Blood poured from a gash in Jay’s forehead and dripped onto his shirt. He jumped the chain-link fence and ran away, splashing through the creek as he made his way home.
“I’ll kill you if you come back!” I yelled.
It took several minutes for Ernie to regain his composure. Then all he could say was, “Jay will get you for this.” He climbed the fence and ran toward his house.
Sparky had been unsure whom he needed to protect. When Mandy came to the door, he crept under the porch.
“Come inside,” Mandy said. “Let’s play Old Maid.”
I stabbed the bloody pipe into the fallen fortress and went into the house. Mandy and I made iced tea. Late in the afternoon, I went upstairs to the armoire and put on one of Mandy’s dresses, admiring myself in the gilded mirror. Mandy sat on the bed and applauded.
Ernie stopped coming over. Vivian told me that he was getting ready to start school, but I overheard the telephone call when Mrs. Corley and Vivian discussed what had happened. Vivian tried to defend me. “I don’t think my boy meant any harm.” Then, “Ten stitches, you say? Possible concussion?” And after a long pause, “Well, let’s just give it time.”
No one cared that Jay had attacked the sandcastle fortress that Ernie and I worked so hard to build. As far as I was concerned, Jay got what he deserved.
Lenny, ashamed of my inability to distinguish between a weed and a bell pepper plant, wasn’t at all bothered that I had drawn blood from a bully.
“Bubby took care of himself,” he told Vivian when she explained what had happened. “That Jaybird’s always getting into trouble.”
Vivian knew better than to argue with Lenny, but the episode bothered her. She feared I would end up like her father, whose evil she blamed on his atheism—defined as someone who never went to church. The next Sunday, I found myself sitting beside Vivian in the pew at Immanuel Baptist Church. We had attended services there a few times when we lived in Little Rock, but the stained glass windows were all that I remembered about the place.
The Powells weren’t particularly religious—Bart had become a deacon mainly to enhance his social standing. Lenny stopped attending church soon after returning from World War II and finding that the minister had reprimanded the congregation for holding prayer groups of men and women who came together to pray for the troops. The minister believed in keeping the sexes separate, except during the sermons, when families were to sit together. The dogmatic attitude outraged Lenny. He refused to attend Sunday service as long as the church kept the man as pastor.
“Once saved, always saved,” Lenny repeated whenever someone asked why he didn’t go to church. “Don’t matter what you do after you’re baptized.”
The consequence of Lenny’s attitude was that I began life knowing little about God the Father, the Holy Spirit, or the fact that Jesus “came to die.” My sense of the supernatural came through Mandy, who instilled in me the belief that walking through the house in only one shoe brought loss of income. Opening an umbrella indoors always summoned a thunderstorm. Anyone who put his hat on a bed was sure to be childless. Never let a pole come between you and a walking companion without saying “bread and butter.” Picking up a penny lying facedown transferred bad luck from the person who lost it; the opposite was true of a penny found faceup.
To my young mind, Immanuel Baptist was little more than a social club for the privileged elite—though I characterized my feelings to Vivian by saying, “Everyone there is so snooty.” That assessment gained reinforcement from the way the other boys treated me in Sunday school. They wore tailored suits with spit-polished shoes and carried leather-bound Revised Standard Versions of the Bible. I owned one suit, purchased at Sears, and my clothbound King James Version had a broken spine.
I looked forward to one thing on Sunday mornings. After doodling in the margins of the church bulletin during the sermon, I’d get sleepy and rest my head on Vivian’s lap. She’d stroke my hair and run her finger over the contours of my ear.
In those moments, I felt loved.
CHAPTER 4
As summer progressed and Vivian’s garden chores took precedent, the trips into Little Rock became less frequent. Connie, who had managed to remain below Vivian’s religious radar, suddenly began attending Sibley’s Nazarene church. She had met a Derek Brumbelow, who also worked at the agriculture extension office where Connie answered the phone. She knew he was “the one,” and sure enough, they married by the time I finished second grade. I wasn’t sad when Connie moved out of the m
ansion, because it meant gaining a room of my own. For the first time in my young life, I wouldn’t wake up in a fright to discover Mandy standing over me in her white nightgown, bobby-pinned hair, and thick application of pearly white cold cream that made her face a Kabuki mask. I never knew why Mandy watched me during the night, but it was like living with a ghost.
Derek’s parents were prominent members of the Nazarene congregation, which emphasized a Pentecostal approach to worship. Whenever Derek came to visit, Connie would sit me in a chair beside him and read Bible verses. One session ended with me placing my hands over my ears and screaming. Connie condemned me as a heathen, thus winning Derek’s admiration for “rebuking the devil.” Vivian, who disliked conflict more than anything, snatched the Bible from Connie’s hand and admonished her that Christ came to bring peace. Derek quoted Matthew 10:34, pointing out that, in fact, Christ came to bring a sword. Connie and Derek retreated to the front porch and sat together on the swing. I watched Vivian carry the Bible into the den and turn to the verse Derek had quoted. Her wrinkled brow told how deeply the words confounded her. Returning to the Harlequin romance novel she had been reading, her resolution was clear. Jesus came to bring peace, and that was that.
Vivian spent her evenings canning and pickling, skills learned during her childhood in Magnolia. The garden produced so many tomatoes that she was able to make quarts of chili sauce, simmering peeled tomatoes, cinnamon sticks, and a pouch of spices in a kettle so large it covered two burners on the stove. She shelled and bagged messes of purple hull peas and stacked the packages neatly on the shelves of our closet-sized freezer.
Lenny kept himself occupied with a honeybee colony he had established near the barn. He was excited when it came time to harvest the honey for the first time. Wearing industrial gloves that extended to his elbows, green netting that draped from a square helmet, and with the smoke issuing from his handheld bellows, Lenny reminded me of a space alien from one of the late-night science fiction movies I sometimes got to watch. Lenny lifted the wax lattices from the hive, each one oozing thick with raw honey. The task of filtering out the impurities fell to Vivian. For years afterward, she complained of finding honey deep in the crevices of the kitchen counter.