BY the time they’d got to the end of lunch, Ivory could see that Raven’s sleeplessness from last night was calling for rest. They were still at the table, she was sitting by Hutch, so she asked if they had time for Raven to lie down for maybe half an hour.
Everyone present had reared a child, and Hutch said “By all means.”
Raven objected seriously, though his eyes were closing.
But Ivory said “Everybody else go right on with your plans. I’ll stay here and let this rascal nap awhile. Otherwise he’ll be mean as a hornet all evening.”
Hutch turned to Ann. “We’re in no hurry, are we?”
Ann said “Not I.”
Hutch said “In that case, we could all stand a breather. Let’s wait in the cool here while Raven snoozes.”
Straw had known, since he first laid eyes on Raven, that Wade was somehow involved in his life. And here he could sense that Hutch shared the feeling. Hutch wants this child to scatter Wade with him. Straw said “Raven, you and your mother can rest in the upstairs room with that fat lady’s picture you loved so much.”
Much as he hated yielding to it, Raven was at the mercy of his age. Like most children, his strength had quit him in an instant with no warning; and he was almost asleep in his chair. But before Ivory led him off toward the stairs, he said “Don’t anybody do anything here till I get back.”
Emily said “We won’t, Son. Go have a nice dream.”
It was natural enough, even for a woman who’d borne one daughter and no male child, to call Raven son; but Straw heard the word in Emily’s mouth as a punishment on his own past and future, his silent refusal to give her children beyond their own daughter, so far off now. In the instant, his whole life stretched like a salt plain, behind and before him. All he said however was “A first-rate meal, Em. You’re better by the day.”
Not meeting Straw’s eyes, Emily thanked him. Then she and Ann stood to begin clearing up and washing dishes.
10
HUTCH and Straw went to the front room and took easy chairs for a snooze of their own. First, Hutch leafed through the day’s News and Observer. It had been twenty years since he’d read the news daily; so whenever he came across a copy of a small-city paper, he was always surprised how full it was of possible lumber for stories and poems—vanished children, an adult male dwarf beat to a pulp in domestic combat somewhere in east Durham (the article noted that “Officer Pulliam said ‘He was nothing but gristle when we got there’”) and the perennial fuming letter-writers, flashing their crank convictions like road flares with nuclear fuel.
Hutch looked up and read Straw an item on the claim of a twelve-year-old black girl that she’d walked to Raleigh from Cordele, Georgia with a month-old baby and an old bulldog to celebrate her great-grandmother’s birthday. The piece made the girl seem smart and credible, despite her grandmother’s stated doubt—“She may be telling the truth. I can’t say. I got so many descendants, you know, I wouldn’t recognize most of them stretched out on the bubbling road under my flat feet.”
Straw laughed, took a long breath and said straight out “You recognize Wade in Raven, don’t you?”
“Amen.”
“Was it news to you?”
Hutch said “It was news all right, big news; but we’ll never be sure the news is true—not short of far more tests and studies than Ivory Bondurant would ever agree to or I’d ask for.” Then he wondered Did Wade discuss this with Straw? So he said “How long have you known about Raven?”
Straw said “The minute I laid eyes on him. First time I saw him tilt his head—Wade Mayfield’s hid in his spine like a great spring.”
Hutch almost agreed. “I hope that’s the case. We’ll never know.”
Straw said “If there’s any question of leaving the child any land or money in your will, you could probably get a court order for tests.”
Hutch stopped him with a flat palm, firm in the air. “You, of all people, know I thrive on mystery. Anyhow what’s to say I can’t leave every scrap I own to the nearest bird dog, if that’s my whim—not to speak of a likable healthy child that may be my dead son’s only leavings?”
Though Hutch smiled to say it, Straw knew he was earnest and wouldn’t budge further. Through a drowsy half hour then, they sat at the ancient rolltop oak desk and looked through Emily’s meticulous records of every seed planted since January 1st, every nickel paid out for help or supplies, even the pints of bourbon Straw bought to tide his tenant through quarterly three-day drunks and recoveries (she kept no record of Straw’s own quarts).
Numbingly familiar as the process was, Hutch took some comfort in Straw’s hot nearness beside him at the desk and in the certainty that, at the least, they were once more performing a major rite of the human race, as old as man’s descent from the trees—far older than any glimpse of art more durable than the blankets of wildflowers laid on their dead kin by roving Neanderthal bands in Asia sixty thousand years back.
When Straw gave signs of dozing again, upright at the desk, Hutch said “Put your head down and dive for five minutes.”
Straw obeyed, laid his arms and head on the desk and was gone in three seconds.
Hutch took the time to rise and walk silently toward the far bookcase, lift its glass door, then choose the last volume of Lee’s Lieutenants from Straw’s miles of Civil War lore. With a glance to check on Straw’s snoozing breath, Hutch reached in his pocket and brought out the wrapped small stack of pictures he’d found in Wade’s papers—the nude young men: some nude, some naked as peeled raw eels. He’d thought of them at sunrise today. Get rid of them quick, or they’ll break Ann down. Again, though, Hutch hadn’t managed to burn them. Whether they were Wyatt’s or Wade’s brief companions or store-bought outright provocations, they still were live traces of a vanishing warmth.
With no clear plan, merely acting on the instant—half joking in fact—Hutch slid the pictures to the back of the shelf behind Lee’s Lieutenants. Given the depth of cobwebs and dust, it was guaranteed Emily never touched these books. Straw might find them, though, years down the road and think of—what? A life I denied him, for good or bad? Or simple human pleasure in itself, these vulnerable young men—many surely dead now.
As Hutch slid the one concealing volume back into place, Straw roused and said “Now—” He plainly meant Wade, Now we lose Wade at last.
11
AT the final moment Ann touched Hutch’s arm and said “Friend, I’m going to wait here with Emily.”
The pain in her eyes kept Hutch from urging a change of heart. So it was past two when he took up the urn and walked with Strawson, Ivory and Raven down the back stairs and out to Grainger’s. By then the heat had climbed past ninety, but the window air conditioner at Grainger’s was plainly not running, and every door and window was shut.
Straw said “Everybody brace yourself; here comes a brick kiln. This old gent’s been a little cold-natured for the past few decades. We won’t stay long.” Straw climbed to the door, knocked twice, then opened it and leaned inside. When he’d said “You ready?” and got Grainger’s nod, he waved in the others.
Few brick kilns could have been appreciably hotter; but Grainger was in his automatic chair, fully dressed in his usual khakis with his neck buttoned tight and a cardigan sweater. Straw had stood aside to let Ivory enter first; and when Grainger saw her, he stood on his own—not waiting for the chair lift and lurching only slightly. Straw had prepared him for a lady from New York, with her young son, and Hutch of course; but he’d mentioned nothing about the lady being colored or who the child might favor. If Grainger was surprised, he gave no sign. He did bow deeply, though, when Straw introduced her as Miss Bondurant; and he offered her his chair.
Ivory declined but introduced Raven. “Mr. Walters, this is my son, Raven Bondurant.” When Raven stepped forward to take Grainger’s hand, Ivory said “Son, Mr. Walters helped raise Wade.”
Oddly, Raven said “Thank you,” not quite sure for what; then he felt mildly shamed and
fell back silent.
Grainger faced the boy long enough to say “Pretty name”; then he had to sit—his knees were unreliable in such dry weather (his joints worked opposite to everyone else’s). As he sat, his eyes found Ivory a last time. “You’ll have to excuse my feebleness—no disrespect to you, ma’m.”
Ivory reassured him.
But by then he’d fixed on Hutch and the urn. “You finally going to keep my promise to Wade?”
Hutch said “Yes sir, it’s only right.”
Grainger said “You’ve done a fair number of wrong things, you understand—I been mighty worried.” His old dragon eyes could well have been smiling—even Straw wasn’t sure—or they might have been merely pleased at their victory.
Either way, Hutch was easy. He’d mainly been watching to see whether Grainger paid close attention to Raven here by him. Who can he see in this child’s eyes?
Grainger was done with Raven though. He’d quit liking children once Wade was grown, and was making no exception today.
So when the old man seemed suddenly gone on one of his driftings, Hutch said “I wish you could walk down with us to scatter these ashes. We better head on.”
Straw said “Mr. Walters, you had your nap?”
Grainger said “Haven’t had a good nap since the war.” As always he meant his war—France in 1918, the trenches, cooties, mustard gas.
Raven laughed and looked to his mother.
Ivory put both hands on her boy’s strong shoulders and said “Mr. Walters, we’re honored to meet you. I’ve heard Wade speak of you many many times—Wade and my brother both appreciated you, and I only wish my mother could have been here. She hails from Virginia, a good while back, and misses the South.”
Grainger didn’t face her but said “She had her head tested lately?” Before anyone could decide to laugh, he said “I’m from Maine” (it was literally true; his father Rover had left Virginia in early despair and gone north to build boats in the late 1880s). If he’d meant anything by that sideswipe, Grainger gave no further sign.
So with no more to say, and no lead from Grainger, Ivory steered Raven toward the door. They’d wait outside; the sun was cooler than this stifling room.
Straw said “Mr. Walters, you better rest a little. I’ll be back down with your supper at four. Call if you need us—Emily’s up at the house.”
Grainger raised his right arm, as if in school, to speak; but when Hutch and Straw moved closer on him, he found no words.
Hutch thought he’d simply forgot his point; he said “Just wait. It’ll come back to you.”
But Straw understood. He grinned broadly and slapped his own thigh. “So you’re saying you want me to leave you and Hutchins?”
Grainger still didn’t speak. He was facing the blank television screen as if it would, at any moment, flash instructions for his imminent departure or as if he might learn from his gaze alone a whole intelligent new brand of speech and the hard-earned power of generous judgment.
Straw said to Hutch “He wants you by yourself. I’ll be outside with Ivory and the boy.” As he left, Straw said “Mr. Walters, when they made you, they threw away the door—much less the key.”
Straw’s hand had hardly touched the doorknob when Grainger said “You let Hutch walk down yonder by himself, hear?” When Straw was silent, Grainger raised his voice. The ghost of its old self, its old bull bellow, it was still astonishing. “You hear what I said?”
Straw didn’t look back but he said “Aye, aye, sir”—not harshly but whispered.
SO when Strawson had shut the door behind him, Hutch went to the edge of the bed and sat. The urn was in his hands, resting on his knees. He thought I ought to be pouring tears; this is straight out of Homer or late Shakespeare. But he’d wept all his tears, very likely the tears of the rest of his life. What he felt was ease in the silent presence of a permanent feature of his usable landscape, the shadow of a broad hill he’d grown up beside. Don’t even think of the day he’ll die. After a minute with nothing from Grainger, Hutch said “They’re waiting for me out there in the blistering sun. I better join them. I’ll be up here again next week to see you with less on my mind. Tell Straw to call me if you need the least thing.”
Grainger faced him then, the only judge Hutch had ever acknowledged.
It almost bowled Hutch over on his back—the total recognition in that broad skull, the record of all his life that survived in this lean face, the man that moved it, the ancient eyes that even here were still feeding constantly on what the day offered. The only live thing, myself included, that’s seen my whole life. Hutch couldn’t speak.
Grainger said “Son, let me see Wade please.” The please was the shock; please had disappeared from Grainger’s speech forty years ago.
The lid of the urn was taped neatly shut with silver duct tape. For an instant Hutch hesitated to obey; he sat upright on the edge of the bed still. But once the old man leaned far forward and waited for the sight, there was no more question of refusing consent. Hutch peeled back the tape, set the lid beside him on the taut bedspread and tilted the open urn toward Grainger.
Grainger leaned still farther till his eyes were less than a foot from the ashes. “You sure that’s him?”
“As sure as anybody could be that didn’t watch him burn. No sir, I trust the people that did it.”
Grainger said “People didn’t used to do this, you know—just cook people down like sand in the wind. You think Wade Mayfield can rise up at Judgment, all parched like this?” His right hand went to the lip of the urn.
Hutch knew that God or the likelihood of punishment had meant less to Grainger, in the past fifty years, than money or vengeance. Is he changing here on the verge of the grave? No clean way to ask—he’d never tell me. So Hutch said “I feel fairly sure Wade can rise, yes sir, if there’s any such day. A lot of saints burned—you recall Joan of Arc, old Nero’s martyrs, soldiers in firefights, your own friends in France, young children in buildings every night of the year.”
Grainger was not fully satisfied, but he said “All right.” He saw no reason to alarm Hutch further. Then again he moved to stand on his own.
Hutch reached for the lid.
“Leave it open, I told you.” Again Grainger got to his feet, unaided. He went to the nearest kitchen drawer, reached toward the back and brought out a box maybe three inches long—an old cream-colored box tied with a ribbon that had once been red.
Hutch had never seen it.
Grainger came back with enormous care, stood before Hutch, untied the ribbon, reached under a yellowed scrap of cotton and drew out a gold ring—a wide plain band.
At first Hutch failed to recognize it.
But Grainger held the ring between thumb and finger and met Hutch’s eyes again. “Make up your mind who this is for next.” He didn’t hand it over.
Hutch suddenly knew. It had to be his family’s wedding ring—the one old Rob Mayfield gave his bride well over a century ago in Virginia. Nearly four decades had passed since Hutch had seen it. After his and Ann’s sad interrupted Christmas in Italy, she’d abandoned the hope to use it as their wedding ring. Hutch had left it with Polly Drewry in Richmond; she’d warmed old Rob in his last sick years, then Rob’s son Forrest (Hutch’s own grandfather). Polly had conditionally accepted the ring but for safekeeping only. She’d written to say she’d hold it for Hutch, taped to the underside of her bed. Then while the years passed, Hutch forgot the ring. Polly had never mentioned it again; and when she died, in her peaceful confusion, Hutch sold her few sticks of furniture for minus nothing—no thought of a ring worth maybe no more than eighty dollars, with a burden of suffering locked in its round. Yet here, in its shining life, it was. Had Polly sent it to Grainger somehow before she died? She and Grainger had never been great friends; they loved the same men. Still seated on the bed, Hutch could only say “Is it what I think?”
Grainger said “Don’t matter what you think.”
“Polly sent it to you?”
Grainger only said “You do what you know is right with it next.”
In real uncertainty, Hutch said “I’d appreciate some advice.” With all its other history, he also knew that the ring had spent some years of its history on Grainger’s wife’s hand—hard beautiful burnt-out Gracie Walters, who’d abandoned Grainger and drunk herself deep into the ground, a young woman still.
So Grainger reached inside the urn and pressed the gold band into the absolute center of the ashes till it barely showed.
Hutch said “You want me to scatter it with him?”
Grainger said “I told you I got no plans. You the man here now.”
It was hardly the first time Hutch had felt grown, though like most humans he secretly felt the same age always—some tentative year in mid-adolescence. Yet with this sudden license from Grainger, he did feel stronger. He stood in the short space between himself and the harsh old man and looked all round him.
The crowded wall of pictures beyond—poor scorched-out Gracie, Rob in his prime, Wade in his childhood (vivid as paint) and the whole constellation of kinfolk, statesmen, and murderous generals from Grainger’s war—they all seemed spokes of a slow-turned wheel in which the old man was somehow, for lack of another, the hub and axle. As Hutch cradled the ashes and moved to leave, his left hand grazed the cloth of Grainger’s shoulder.
Grainger said “Go on.”
12
OUTSIDE, Straw stood with Ivory and Raven in the deep oak shade. The heat had stilled them, and they stood as separate as horses in a field; but when Hutch came down Grainger’s few steps, he saw how the three of them looked like the harbor he’d longed for all his life and never found. Ask for them, here and now—then they’ll know I’m crazy.
When Hutch reached them though, thinking of some right way to ask for such a gift, Straw spoke first. “Ivory and I want to give you privacy, if you want that, down there at the creek.” He pointed to the woods.
It seemed unthinkable—coming from Straw who’d cared for Wade as much as anyone left alive (except maybe Ann; who could speak for Ann Gatlin?)—that Straw would surrender his place in Wade’s last moments among them. Hutch was all but ready to say “God, no, I need you all.”
The Promise of Rest Page 38