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July 7, 1993
Dear Professor Mayfield,
I’m extremely sorry I crashed in on your privacy today. I was feeling two strong emotions at once—homesickness and pleasure in my findings over here in the British Library—and since my father had sent me a check for my birthday last week, on a whim I decided to place that call to you and send my greetings and thanks in person. Thanks for all your encouragement in everything, life and work. Then you told your news, and I’ve been regretting my impulse ever since.
Of course I’d known that Wade was bad off before I left. And my wife has kept me posted at intervals on his progress—you recall that she knows Wade’s mother who shops at the greenhouse where Stacy works. But hearing he’s gone, in your controlled voice this afternoon, has struck me harder than I’d have guessed, even with all the liking I felt and all my admiration for his courage and remarkable cheer in the times I was with him this spring—that long ago.
Because I’ve been the receiver so often of your own kindness and openness to—what?—human failings maybe, I want to risk a few words to you now that may prove a surprise and a gift, I hope. I mean them anyhow as my main gift in Wade’s honor here, all I can send you from as far off as London.
The gift is one fact. Almost the last day I sat with Wade while you were on campus, he told me his eyes were having a good day and would I please strip off my clothes so he could see me—altogether me. We were out there, alone as any two hawks on a thermal updraft; so I thought “What the hell?” and gave him his wish. He watched me closely; I felt like it helped him. I can honestly say I know it helped me and bucks me up still when I get low. You recall I was having problems just then with my scrappy marriage, so any word of a hint that I or any part of me was of serious use to another live creature—well, it came as a help.
You understand that I’m aimed at women like a heat-seeking missile of the most abject kind; but that day with Wade, I even stepped near enough to take his touch if he’d felt up to that, but he turned it down—all very polite on both our sides, and a memory that gives me the little comfort I feel, here at this distance with the weight of his death on my mind and your grief. He’d said I was something worth watching with the eyesight left him by then. I’ve never felt nearly watchable enough, despite my mother’s praise.
That’s meant of course for nobody but you. Even though I’ve invested in express postage here, please burn these pages, to spare any hurt it might cause another, if other eyes see it. And if learning that fact has anyway deepened your present pain, I send you my deepest apology ahead of time to say I’m thinking of you by the minute, with the best hopes for strength and that somehow your own work will see you through again, as I know it has before. I’ll phone again soon. Meanwhile,
Yours,
Hart (Salter)
July 9, 1993
Dear Hart,
That news means a very great deal to me. I thought Wade had died in an unbroken drought. Now I know I was wrong. I’ve burned your letter but the picture it gave me will last, I’m all but sure, the rest of my life.
I’ll look forward to your call.
Grateful affection,
Hutchins Mayfield
July 10, 1993
Dear Strawson,
A bright cool Sunday morning here—the first chance I’ve had to draw a long breath for what feels like weeks. And first on the list of people I need and want to thank is you of course. I only wish I’d had the foresight to ask you to stay another day or so and answer the phone, distribute the excess food and flowers, and in general stand between me and life till I got a little better balanced on my pins.
It turns out that even the simplest plan to cremate a body and scatter the ashes, as directed by the dead man, is mined with traps of various sizes—none of which is your concern, so I’ll spare you the moan of a father aged sixty-three who had to stand helpless and watch his one child vanish this awful way (I have to remind myself I can say that awful way now, that it’s finished at least—it died with the boy).
There is one sizable dilemma I failed to mention while you were here. You know how Wade insisted on visiting Grainger in May and that he asked Grainger to oversee the scattering of his ashes on the creek behind the house. He went on to stress that intention to me on several occasions afterwards. Just before he died, though, he told me twice to bury his remains with Wyatt Bondurant in Sea Cliff, Long Island.
Confused as he was those last few days, I couldn’t take an oath that he was demented when he changed his plan—my guess is, he understood what he was asking and had weighed it sanely. In fact the only credit I can take from these last weeks comes from promising Wade I’d follow his wishes. I even phoned Ivory the night he died and let her know that Wade would be on his way north as soon as I could bring him. She calmly agreed.
The hitch of course lies mainly with his mother. Ann didn’t hear Wade express a last wish, and now she’s all but dug her heels in and defied anythought of taking him farther than those backwoods and the creek Grainger dredged. You’ll understand what a concession she’s making, just in agreeing to that first plan—spreading him on my own family’s ground, not a neutral cemetery plot in Durham or in southside Virginia with her own gruesome clan.
I suspect you’re straining to suppress a grin. Sad as it all is, as quandaries go it does sound a lot like the unholy wrangle over D. H. Lawrence’s ashes in the thirties. In his case—Frieda Lawrence (the spouse) and Mabel Dodge Luhan (the patroness) had decidedly separate plans for the remains, and Frieda finally resorted to mixing every particle of the ashes into wet cement and letting it harden. In no time thereafter she had Lawrence safe in a ton of concrete that Mabel with all her millions couldn’t haul.
I’m nowhere near that desperate yet, and I won’t claim to like Wade’s last idea, but I feel a deep loyalty to a deathbed promise. So I may yet ask you and Emily to speak about the matter with Ann and help her see what’s understandably all but as painful as the loss itself—that her son, in his right mind, chose to leave her again in a choice she loathes, and this time for good.
Whatever, we’re planning a small service here for Saturday afternoon, July 31st. If the weather’s good we may try to have it right here at the house where Wade after all lived two-thirds of his life. I guess I could get Duke Chapel for a half hour—Ann seems to want that—but I’m not sure I can be responsible for bearing up the way I’d want to in those huge surroundings. When that great organ gets underway, in those levitating vaults, I forget that the whole place was built with the proceeds from a billion lung cancers; and I more or less instantly revert to the worldview of, say, an Anglo-Saxon mason—the ceiling peels back, clouds evaporate, I contemplate God’s face at point-blank range and find slim reflection of me or my life anywhere in his eyes: slim or none at all. (I’m prepared to learn in any case that Wells Cathedral was built with, say, the proceeds from the archbishop’s chain of licensed brothels and that God Itself cares nary a whit for anything but the sight of our awe, facedown on the pavings.)
In any case I’ll keep you posted as arrangements are made. Ann and I both want you to participate as you think best—remarks or the reading of something you think will suggest Wade best to his few survivors. When I spoke with Ivory the night Wade died, she said she might also come down to join us. Again you can guess Ann’s feelings on the prospect, but so far she’s issued no ultimatum, so I’m writing to Ivory later today with full details. Should I ask her to speak?
I may drive up toward you late next week, if you mean to be home—see Grainger and you, beg Emily to feed me old childhood favorites (are the butter beans in?), maybe spend a quiet night. I’ll give you fair warning. Till when, more thanks than even an aging Mayfield can send. You know we’ve always been big thankers, whatever our faults.
Love always,
Hutchins
July 10, 1993
Dear Ivory,
I’d never in my life seen an entire orchid plant, so the one you sent was no
t only beautiful the hour it arrived but is by me still as I write to thank you—even more blooms, each one more mysteriously made than the others.
I don’t need to tell you that it’s been a hard week, a hard three months; but just today I begin to feel that the tunnel of numbness may well end. Not that I’m eager to start responding with sober nerves to all that’s happened since I last saw you—and to all that happened to Wade and Wyatt and you for months before I blundered on the scene. I hope you’ll also understand how deeply I feel relieved—many hours of the day and night, to the roots of my bones—and how guilty I feel at even the chance to shut my eyes for more than ten seconds and not expect a voice to call me. I’ve never been much of a believer in “blessings in disguise,” not even when the blessing comes as death. I’ve never thought any one I love should need to die. I still don’t.
We have made a practical plan or two, though. On Saturday afternoon, July 31st, we’ll ask Wade’s closest friends to gather for a brief chance to honor his life and recall his best. I was grateful when you said you might come down for that occasion. I very much hope you can still be here. The guest room in this house is quiet and cool with a bath of its own; no one on Earth could be more welcome. I’ll hold it, waiting for word from you, and will also reserve you a room in town in case you prefer. If you can be here, may I ask you to speak your heart at the time? If for any reason you feel you can’t, no need to explain. Wade’s family—his mother, his godfather Strawson and I—know how much you’ve done.
After the service, you and I can talk a little about the only two remaining problems. I need to face up to shutting that haunted New York apartment, and I need your advice on the final disposition of Wade’s ashes. I told you that the last wish he expressed to me was to lie by Wyatt. Earlier he’d told an ancient cousin and his mother about a different plan, and I trust you’ll realize that she’s distressed at the contradiction.
Long Island’s a long way to go from Durham to visit a grave. By the time you’re here, we should have a solution—one way or another. Conceivably I could drive you back north, finish emptying out Wade’s apartment and then inter him by Wyatt in Sea Cliff, or you might stay a day and drive up with us to my old homeplace an hour from here and spread him there on a creek he loved back deep in the woods. That was Wade’s original plan, expressed in strong terms to several of us.
Please let me hear soon. I don’t want to burden you with one ounce more of my family’s business than you’ve already borne, but let me say one last word in closing—your presence here on the 31st of July would mean an enormous amount to me.
Ever in gratitude,
Hutchins Mayfield
14 July 1993
My dear Hutch,
I never dreamt I’d have to mark French Independence Day in my old age by learning of Wade’s death and your plans to remember him. I’ve been permitted, for whatever cruel purpose of fate, to outlast the ranks of all I’ve loved except your good self. What else can I tell you but King Lear’s monosyllabic response to his one good daughter’s murder—“Howl, howl, howl”?
As for your invitation to come and speak for Wade at the chapel service, can you understand how hard I want to refuse you flat, then to sit right here—bolt every door and window, chink every keyhole—and refuse to acknowledge one more departure?
I’m coming, though, if I live and can walk downstairs on the morning in question and get past the Petersburg city limits sign. Don’t think about sending somebody to get me, but thanks for the offer. I’ve got an elderly Negro gentleman who drives me places I can’t help going, and I’ve already phoned to book his assistance. I won’t spend the night, so forget about hotels. If I’m not there by the hour appointed, you’ll know I’m prostrate or have quit myself.
It’s all I can offer you, dear boy, now or ever after. You’ll never get over this; don’t even try. It will make you strong as a heartpine knot though. You’ll be minting out poems and sterling pupils when Western Civilization is back in the hands of the wolves—speed the day! Wolves constitute a far more admirably organized species in every way than we and our brethren. I even read recently that wolves seem to have a developed religious sense—their love of the moon and worship of it—but as yet they have no known TV evangelists raking in the shekels. No doubt their basic decency has spared them any such vulgarity. May your own wolf nature serve you at present.
I send you a lifetime’s love at the least,
not that my love ever cured any pain yet,
least of all my own, though I’m breathing
still and glad to be
Alice
July 15, 1993
Deep Sympathy in your Time of Grief, Mr. and Mrs. Mayfield,
I am Wyatt Bondurant’s only mother as you well know and I think I can guess in the pit of my chest how you are looking at life these days. I have seen both of you in pictures Wade showed me in happier times and I know you are younger than me by some years. So please don’t think I am forward in saying the Lord will answer your need if you ask him in coming weeks. I have seen a lot, from old Virginia where I grew up to Long Island presently, and one thing I know about the Lord is, he may take you by the scruff of the neck and shake every last tooth out of your head but he very seldom cuts you off at the knees, or much below. Once in a great while but very seldom. To be sure, you may have to hunch down deep to bear his will. I am bent nearly double with all I watched since I was a girl in a family of nine. I have buried twenty-three loved ones in my life, including two children from my own body. But God won’t press you lower than you let him, not till your time is up and he’s ready. I wish we could be with Ivory at the service but will think of each of you through that day. And every other day till I am called home.
Respectfully yours,
Mrs. Lucy Patterson Bondurant and Raven
July 15, 1993
Dear Hutch,
I’ll be there to help you with the service. Won’t even attempt, however, to advise you or Ann on scattering the ashes—here or Long Island. To my mind, they’re ashes, no more precious than woodsmoke. Everything that mattered and will last of Wade Mayfield will hang all around us every day of our lives till we follow on. Flip a coin, I’d say—but I said I wouldn’t say, so just ignore that.
Meanwhile Mr. Grainger finally responded to the news I gave him eight days ago, soon as I got home from seeing Wade last. When I sat down and told him then, he didn’t move a muscle. After ten minutes when I stood up to leave and asked if he recalled what I’d told him, he looked at the TV and said “Strawson, you couldn’t tell me news if you tried. I foretell every breath you ever draw.” Still, this morning when I helped him dress and had made him his breakfast, I opened the door to start my day; and he said “Go post this message to Hutchins.” He held out this little wad of folded paper. I have not opened it but send it on for what it’s worth.
Love anyhow from
Strawson
The enclosed tight-folded plain sheet of paper with pale blue lines seemed to say in the faintest readable hand, which was all but surely the remnant of Grainger’s old strong script,
Raven Hutchins Mayfield
Raven Wade Mayfield
Grainger Walters: kin people.
In all the years any white Mayfield had known him, since he came south in 1904 from Maine where his father (who was old Rob’s mulatto son) had taken the family in flight from Virginia, none of his white kin had ever heard Grainger claim blood relation.
For most of his own life, Hutch had understood how immense the distance was between the lives the white Mayfields had led in their well-built homes and Grainger’s adjacent tacit pain and solitude. But still this glimpse of the old man’s spider-silk words on paper shook Hutch to the sockets like nothing he’d seen since the last glimpse of Wade. It partly braced Hutch for what came to him the following day by express mail.
July 16, 1993
Dear Mr. Mayfield,
With any luck I’ll be there on the evening of July 30th, but please
don’t count on me to say anything at the service. I couldn’t. I saw too much in this past year and felt too many feelings, being powerless to help; so anytime I let myself recall it, I seize up cold and simply can’t speak. Wade knew he mattered in my life, more or less from the day we met; that’s what counts with me.
Since you’ve been so decent to me and my mother through this, I hate to complicate matters this late. But better now than when I’m down there, in the midst of your guests. The fact is that, once Wyatt died, Wade sat down on the night of the funeral and wrote a letter to you and Mrs. Mayfield. He sealed it just as it is today and made me promise to mail it to you when he was gone.
I don’t know all of what it says; but I’ve held off this long, trying to find a way to burn it and maybe spare you a further hurt. I’m too much of my Baptist mother’s child, however, to fail a dead man if I can avoid it. If anything Wade has written makes you want to stop my visit, just leave a message on my phone machine. I will understand far more completely than you know.
Till whenever then, I send you and all Wade’s people my thoughts, my strongest good hope.
Truly,
Ivory Bondurant
The letter she enclosed was sealed in a business envelope, no sign of tampering with the flap. In Wade’s unquestionable script, already shaky, it said For Hutchins Mayfield and Ann Gatlin once I am gone.
February 20, 1993
Dear Hutch and Ann,
We buried Wyatt today on the Island, so I don’t have the will to copy this twice. I trust whichever one sees this first will share it with the other, however far apart you are at the time. It’s the only thing you need to know about me that you don’t already know or haven’t surmised.
Wyatt has a living sister named Ivory Bondurant, a good-looking, smart and admirable woman. Through my work I met her my first week up here, summer of ’84. At that time she worked in the same firm as I, a first-class draftsman. She was only just recently separated from her husband, I was lonesome as a cactus and still hadn’t set my big sex drive on a single last rail, so she and I got very close in a hurry and stayed that way all the slow steaming summer. So close that, when Ivory realized she was pregnant that fall, we frankly didn’t know if the child was mine or hers and her husband’s. They’d gone on meeting occasionally.
The Promise of Rest Page 33