For a moment, as he generally did, Straw took the idea seriously. Then his mouth seemed to fill with bile; he turned aside to spit. When he spoke to Hutch’s eyes, it came straight as a tracer. “I can see what you’ve turned into, friend. You can thank your Jesus that Wade is blind; he won’t have to watch.”
Hutch actually thought Nothing anyone’s said till now in my life was harder than that. In another ten seconds it still felt true. Hutch still hadn’t smelt any liquor on Straw; he couldn’t recall an offensive word he’d said to Straw in two decades (it had been twenty years since he’d criticized Emily for her Puritan-mother primness and jealousy). Had some postponed toll for years of self-loathing come down on Straw and poisoned him bad enough to flush hate from him—not only hate but unearned nonsense, however well phrased? What does he see I’ve turned into?
Hutch thought through that before he registered Straw’s main news. Straw knows about Wade. So Grainger’s told him. Hutch had known since Christmas that Wade still phoned Grainger every few weeks, but he’d had no inkling that Grainger knew about the plague and its symptoms. And he’d never asked Grainger to keep anything he knew about Wade from Shaw and Emily. Hutch himself, though, had kept it from Straw and everyone else except his own ex-wife—Wade’s mother Ann. Ann had been on her own for more than a year since leaving Hutch when she passed sixty-one.
Straw said “You don’t deserve that from me.” He knocked a fist on Hutch’s shin.
Hutch waited, thanked him but then said “What have I turned into?”
Straw looked him over thoroughly again, shook his head in honest bafflement and said “Can we talk about Wade instead? We might help him.”
“What don’t you know?”
Straw said “How long have you known Wade’s sick?”
“Since late last summer, eight or nine months.”
“Did Wade tell you outright or call his mother first?”
Hutch thought Might have known Straw would go for the quick. He almost laughed. “Wade came for a visit two winters ago. I hadn’t quite guessed what Ann had in mind, and I doubt Wade knew before he arrived, but Ann had her own plans cooking by then. She was already hunting modest quarters to start her ‘lunge at self-reliance’—honest to God, she was calling it that. So sometime during that three-day visit, she brought young Wade in on her thrilling secret, and he helped her find the place she’s rented out toward Hillsborough on Pleasant Green Road.
“Sometime on that same visit, Wade told her his trouble—by then he’d only had minor infections—and asked if he could count on coming home when he got bad. According to Ann, Wade asked if she could stand to move back in with me long enough to see him through to his own end, if the end-time came and he needed help? You know how Wade had shied off visits this far south in recent years, how he’d barely see us when we went to New York and then nowhere but in public restaurants or dark theaters—he and his super-Afro friend.”
Straw said “Wyatt Bondurant?”
“None other, the scourge of pink Caucasians. Anyhow, back to my sad story—Ann’s squatty little self-reliant house can barely hold her and her big designs on self-improvement, much less a man at least as sick as anybody left on Earth. But Ann told Wade she’d give all she had; she couldn’t speak for me—he must ask me himself. For whatever reasons, though, Wade left without asking me; and Ann didn’t mention one word of his trouble till after she’d been on her own for long months.
“Then she called me one evening and asked to come by on the pretext of bringing me some jackass gadget she’d bought for my kitchen. In fifteen minutes she backed up that great truckload of sadness and poured it on me. Till then I’d got fairly used to the idea that Wade’s friend Wyatt had turned him against us. But hearing that my son couldn’t trust me with the news of his death—and hearing it from Ann in the midst of this skit she’s waltzing through—well, it put an even harder freeze on our dealings, Wade’s and mine.” If Hutch had more to tell, it failed him.
Straw said “So Wade is at the point of death in New York City, alone as any street-corner psycho, because you and Ann are peeved with each other?”
“That’s likely to be a small piece of it, yes. It may be part of why he won’t take my phone calls.”
“Forget the damned phone, Hutch. Walk to New York, if that’s what it takes.”
“I’ve thought this through a billion times—Wade’s still a grown man, Straw. I don’t have the right.”
Straw said “Pardon me but I fail to comprehend how any quibble about your rights can be strong enough to keep a man, kind as you’ve been in your best days, from a son in a pit as low as this?”
Hutch was too full to speak.
Straw said “Set me straight on a few things here—Wade is not a junkie, right?”
“Don’t cheapen this.”
“Don’t worry; I’m not. I’m exercising my rights as I see fit. You may have forgot but I remember, clear as this minute, standing by Wade when he was an infant at the christening font and swearing to be his faithful godfather.”
Hutch shut his eyes and agreed. He could see it plain as Straw.
“Last time I looked, Wade wasn’t a needle-drug addict. He’s sure God not hemophiliac.”
Hutch said “No, Wade would barely take aspirin till this came on him.”
Straw’s voice was like a voice that has reached the last conclusion available to humans, that exhausted and mild—“What other brands of adult catch this plague?” When Hutch stood silent, Straw stated his finding. “So Wade is queer.” It was far from a question.
Hutch faced him; their eyes were no more than three feet apart.
Straw could watch you for hours on end and not blink once; he was steady-eyed here.
Hutch said “That’s an admirably educated guess.”
“It’s the truth, mean as barbed wire; it’s been the truth since before Wade finished grade school surely.”
Hutch said “I doubt it was early as that; recall he loved more than one fine girl.” He paused, then mutely agreed to Straw’s finding. All right, we’ve both known it always. But he and Straw had never so much as broached it between them, not till today.
“Is there some kind of freeze-dried Baptist hypocrite hid down in your soul and holding you back from Wade Mayfield at the edge of his grave?”
Hutch said “Not to my knowledge, no. I was never a Baptist, as you’d remember if you honored our past. If any one of your friends has loved pleasure, it’s surely been me—taking and giving.” Hutch paused and met Straw’s unbroken stare. “I’d have thought you remembered. God knows, I seldom forgot our times.”
Straw watched Hutch again for a long quiet minute. Except for handshakes, no parts of their bodies had touched in nearly four decades. And for Straw that had never seemed a real deprivation, despite their pleasure. Now though, this close to Hutch’s body, Straw saw again how well made his friend was, how nearly his face had refused to age and how his eyes had only strengthened in both directions—Hutch drank in the world and sent it back out; something in his eyes always said Come. There’s a better place here, an actual dream.
Straw asked himself now why he’d stopped answering. He broke his gaze and looked down to Grainger’s all-but-maniacal water park below them. Then a memory he’d lost came back. “You remember Wade nearly drowned, right there.” Straw pointed to the central pool of the cleaned stretch.
Hutch said “Lord, no.” They’d kept it from him. “When was it? Who saved him?”
Straw thought Grainger’s name and recalled the event. But all that past suddenly seemed meaningless against the pressing weight of now. He faced Hutch and said the unavoidable thing. “Let me drive you to New York tonight. We can bring Wade back. He’ll listen to me.” Straw suddenly drew back and flung a small white flint, an arrowhead he’d found underfoot. It missed every tree between them and the valley and thunked down in the midst of the creek.
Shocked as he was, Hutch at least turned the idea over. Wade tonight? Would he so much
as answer the door, much less join them? At first Hutch could only think to ask “Where would he stay? I’m teaching straight through till the end of the month.”
“There’s Duke Hospital, for an obvious start. There’s his mother in her house, ready to serve. Emily wouldn’t object to Wade being here; I’ll take him on gladly.”
Hutch said “He won’t move.”
Straw waited through half a long minute. Then he said “Christ, do you love your son or not?”
“Friend, I honest to God don’t know,” but by then Hutch’s own eyes had watered, and the sound of the words was criminal nonsense. The total weight of the postponed fact that Wade Mayfield was dying blind five hundred miles north, the only thing Hutch had expected to last of all he’d had a part in making except a few poems, the only human he’d loved with no real reservation since his own father died—that whole weight caved in on him here. All over his body under the clothes, his actual skin begged to be held and touched. Hutch had waited too long, much more than a year, since any welcome hand had touched him. Now though, he couldn’t ask or reach out for touch. So he stood, looked down to the creek a last time, then turned and headed back toward his car—the main house, the car, the road, wherever.
Straw called out “Answer yourself soon, boy. You’ve got to know”—know whether Hutch truly loved Wade or not. It didn’t feel like a cruel question to Straw.
Hutch failed to answer though, failed to look back. And soon he was almost out of sight before Straw fell in behind him and followed. Straw made no effort to overtake Hutch; and when they were out of the woods into daylight, Straw paused at Grainger’s to check on his nap while Hutch walked straight to the main house, the upstairs room that was always his on overnight visits.
5
AN hour later Straw had already gone on to Grainger’s with most of the meal, so Hutch and Emily came down the high back steps with only a tray of the last hot dishes and a box with the gifts. In the short walk Emily said, out of the blue, “Hutch, we’re heartbroken for all your family.”
If she’d flung off her darkish old-maid clothes and thrown herself on him, Hutch could hardly have felt a stranger surprise. In thirty years Emily had said very little to him that an unbiased witness might have called warm or generous. And it took Hutch a few yards of silent walking before he could say “Em, it’s awful. Thank you.”
“Whatever we can do, whatever on Earth—”
Have she and Straw huddled on some plan to bring Wade here and see him through to whatever end? Have they told it to Wade and has he agreed? It was hardly the worst thing that might happen next, but the thought of shouldering what was his duty onto others here—even onto Strawson who truly was Wade’s godfather and had loved him—was painful for Hutch and scraped on his sense of failing to tend the single person alive who had full claim on his care. He shocked himself by saying “Strawson just mentioned us going to see Wade—him and me, soon.”
Emily’s small white face burned a kind of fervor that Hutch hadn’t seen since the early days when she’d tear into him and fight for her share of Straw’s time and notice. “Strawson very much wants to go with you, I know.”
“Since when, Emily?”
She paused to answer carefully. “I think it was two nights ago, maybe three—Strawson came back up to the house from Grainger’s and said the old fellow had made him call Wade.”
“Straw talked to Wade a few days ago?”
“I thought Strawson told you—”
They were in earshot of Grainger’s door; it was open again. Hutch quietly said “Straw’s barely told me he’s alive, not for some years.” He thought it would please her.
But again she surprised him. “You’re the only person, alive or dead, that I’ve never heard Strawson low-rate or laugh at or slash to ribbons.” “He’s known a lot of people.”
“In the Biblical sense.” Still Em’s face was showing a life it had seldom showed, a fined-down purpose that could drill through rock. “I well know people have lined Strawson’s road; but I’ve told you the truth, Hutch, the bare-knuckle truth. I thought you were in the business of truth—teaching school, writing poems.”
By then they’d arrived at Grainger’s front steps, and Emily had climbed the first one before Hutch touched her elbow to stop her. When she turned, he said “I needed reminding.” His eyes were not cutting.
And she understood that. She also knew it was as near to thanks as she’d get from Hutch Mayfield. She shut her eyes, ducked her chin, then raised her voice and called “Mr. Grainger, we’re all here with you.”
Hutch wondered since when she’d called Grainger Mister.
Inside Grainger said “Stop where you are.”
Straw’s voice laughed. “Easy, Mr. Walters. We know them both. They’re bringing provisions. Just let them unload.”
Inside, when the screen door shut behind them, Hutch saw that Grainger had changed his clothes—a starched white shirt and gray wash pants with sharp creases, the small gold eagle-pin he’d found and polished not long ago (some relic of his infantry service in France in 1918). Can he dress himself; does Strawson help him? Again Hutch felt accused of failure—this old man was literally his nearest live cousin, of whatever color. Grainger had been as strong a prop to Hutch’s childhood as anyone, alive or dead—as watchful, honest and guard-dog loyal. I should come on up here, soon as class ends, and stay till he dies.
But the clear fact was. Straw and Emily had been far closer to the old man than Hutch for decades. They’d lived with him daily throughout their marriage; they’d worked beside him as long as he could work; and they’d brought him up to the main house and nursed him through double pneumonia just last winter, not to speak of a hundred daily attentions. Hutch moved toward Grainger, gathered the long bird-bones of his shoulders into an embrace and said “I owe most of my life to you.”
Grainger whispered slowly at Hutch’s ear. “Colored men bearing down on you tonight, big knives in their fist. Haul out of here now.” It was said in urgent indelible conviction.
Hutch stepped back but said “I think we’ve got a little time. Let’s eat Em’s supper.”
If that assurance meant anything to Grainger, he gave no sign. His eyes were still urging Hutch toward the door.
By then Straw and Emily had slid the table out from the wall, set the extra chairs that Straw had brought and spread the food. There was a good-sized roasted turkey breast with dressing, baked yams in their skins, macaroni and cheese, home-canned green beans, fresh biscuits, corn chowchow, a pitcher of milk and a bottle of good California red wine. Straw guided Grainger to his place at the head, assigned the right-hand chair to Hutch, the left chair to Emily and the foot to himself.
Then Hutch said “Old cousin, you bless it.”
Grainger looked as distant as the outskirts of Cairo, not confused but gone.
Straw said “Mr. Walters has pretty much quit on the Lord Above. You bless it, Hutch.”
Hutch had likewise been far less than observant since he gave up on all known Christian institutions during the boiling acid and blood of racial integration in the South, when the churches behaved at least as abominably as the Klan (a good deal more so; the churches knew better). But after a short pause now, he said “Thanks for the three of you and this much food. Thanks above everything for Grainger Walters’ life that has given us such long care and that goes on among us. Watch everyone we love who’s not here with us.” Only at the end did Hutch realize he’d addressed his blessing more to Strawson than God.
But eventually Emily said an “Amen,” then began to serve Grainger’s plate a heaping plenty. If she knew what she was doing, then his appetite was healthy.
And once he had the food before him, Grainger set in at once to salt it heavily and slice the turkey into minute cubes. Then he ate it, not stopping, the way they’d all seen him eat for years. He’d neatly consume a particular item till it was exhausted—the beans, the bread—then move to another, around his plate clockwise. With each new ite
m he’d fix his eyes on one of the three white table partners. He showed no detectable smile or frown to any of them. Maybe he couldn’t see them at all but watched some memory from his long supply; but he never spoke, even when he turned to his tall glass of wine and downed it slowly in an unbroken swallow.
The others ate Emily’s likable cooking in normal ways and traded the all but meaningless remarks of longstanding friends; but though the three of them kept mild faces, their separate minds were circling tightly.
Straw thought of nothing but Wade—alone, he guessed, in a city where no strong man should live, much less a godson with the worst disease since white men sold smallpox-ridden blankets to American Indians and wiped out whole tribes, no trace left, not even their language. Straw’s own child—a textbook editor now in Georgia, pleasant to see and as cold as a bottle—was as far from his mind as the strangers of Asia.
Emily thought Someway I’ll wind up with Wade on my hands. My hands are full. How in God’s name can I hold on to more? None of that was just mean-minded; with all her fears, she’d kept a decent heart alive in her.
Hutch thought almost entirely of Grainger. Whatever secret personal things this old man had been throughout his own life, he sat here tonight for Hutch as a relic of more than a century of his own family’s unfillable hunger—its adamant aim to survive and print its demands on a line of faces called Mayfield, Drewry, Kendal, Gatlin and whatever part-black Walters kin lived on from Hutch’s white great-grandfather who’d wasted no chance to pass his traits down whatever human route would give him hot entrance.
Only for a moment did Hutch let himself think that—with Grainger barren of any offspring and Hutch’s own son racing toward death now with no more leavings than the memory of pleasure in a few young men as barren as Wade—then one long line of bold contenders from one patch of ground was fading and sinking to Earth at last.
The Promise of Rest Page 4