Candlemoth

by R.J. Ellory

  * * *

  Chapter Eleven

  Had I known that years later I would meet Father John Rousseau in Sumter, that he would have asked so many questions of that time, I perhaps would have kept a journal. My memory of those months after the shooting of Martin Luther King were somewhat vague. So many things happened, so many incidents of moment, that it became hard to maintain any frame of reference within which to hold them.

  Two days after King's burial in Atlanta, New York Mayor Lindsay was stoned by a black crowd in Harlem. In Detroit two police officers were shot, and down south in Tallahassee a white youth was burned to death. The same day LBJ signed the Civil Rights Bill making it illegal for landlords to refuse housing on grounds of race. The second day of May one thousand people went on the Poor People's March from Memphis to Washington. Five days later Robert Kennedy won the first primary in Indiana, and a week later the second in Nebraska. Simultaneously, talks began in Paris between the U.S. and the North Vietnamese, talks instigated by Johnson with his promise to stop bombing North Vietnam above the 20th parallel.

  These were historical things, events people would write about for years to come, but these events melted into one another effortlessly when compared to Linda Goldbourne.

  She came and found me two days after my return from Atlanta.

  She found me at Karl Winterson's Radio Store. I was alone. Karl was out in Charleston and Nathan was fetching groceries for his ma.

  Linda Goldbourne was a special girl, had always been. Her beauty and wit, her culture and intelligence were not the only things that kept her far beyond reach.

  She was ex-Congressman Richard L. Goldbourne's daughter. A staunch Southerner, a towering monolith of a man, he really was a force to be reckoned with. Much of the land east of Greenleaf's central suburbs belonged to the Goldbournes. They had owned that land since before the War of Secession, and with that land had come crops and slaves and leverage and money. Goldbourne, even now, seventy years old or more, could swing an opinion with a nod of his head or a glance one way or the other. He had been consulted by every Congressman, senator and state representative ever to take office in North Carolina, his brother- in-law owned two of the largest newspaper chains in the State, and Goldbourne Automotive was the most profitable retail chain for agricultural and domestic vehicles from Charleston, North Carolina to Montgomery, Alabama.

  This was Linda Goldbourne's family, her history, her birthright, and on May 11th 1968 she walked into Karl Winterson's Radio Store and asked me if I wanted to go out and party.

  Linda, or Linny as she was known, had more life in her than a thousand of her contemporaries. She was neither naive nor irresponsible, neither over-enthusiastic nor brashly false; she possessed no airs or graces, affected nothing but her own individuality, and unashamedly and without inhibition opened her mouth and said what she thought. She did not offend or upset people, for what she said contained an element of truth that was as reassuring as it was direct. She did not make enemies. Who could make an enemy of life? Children sought her as an oasis of sanity and like-mindedness. Those her own age found her childlike spirit revitalizing and passionate. The older members of

  Greenleaf's community, my mother included, described her as a breath of fresh air and a ray of sunshine.

  This was Linny Goldbourne, and for a little of the summer of '68 she decided I was hers and hers alone. Perhaps she was short of company, but I did not complain; I did not question her decision; I reserved the right to maintain equanimity in all discussions as to her motives or agenda. She loved being alive, and for this brief part of her life she had concluded that I should share it with her. Which was fine, just fine by me.

  That night of May 11th 1968 was the first night we went out together. We went to a bar on Doyle Street. She ordered tequila with lemon and salt and taught me how to drink it, and while I retched and vomited in the gutter along the sidewalk she kneeled beside me and rubbed my back with a smooth, strong circular motion that seemed both a reprimand and a comfort at the same time. And then she walked me home. My ma was asleep. She helped me to my bed, undressed me, and rolled me beneath the covers. I remember she leaned across me, kissed my forehead, and then she left.

  I slept like a dead man.

  And it was she who woke me some seven or eight hours later, her eyes bright and luminous, her energy unfettered, and suggested I haul my useless carcass out of bed, get some breakfast, and she would drive us to the coast.

  She prepared eggs and ham and pancakes, and sat across from me as I struggled to eat.

  'What happened with you and Caroline?' was the first question she asked me.

  I almost choked, had to thump my chest to catch my breath.

  'Caroline?' I asked back.

  Linny nodded. 'Caroline,' she repeated. 'You and she went out for a while, didn't you?'

  I nodded in the affirmative. 'For a while, yes.'

  'And then she left,' Linny said matter-of-factly.

  'Yes, she left.'

  'Because you got her pregnant?'

  I stopped and looked across at Linny, my eyes wide, scarcely believing my ears.

  'I heard you got her pregnant and her father had to give her an abortion, and that's why she left so suddenly.'

  I shook my head. I didn't know what to say.

  'So you didn't get her pregnant?' Linny asked.

  'I didn't get her pregnant,' I said.

  'Okay,' Linny replied, and then the subject was dropped. It went as suddenly and unexpectedly as it had come. Rather like Caroline herself.

  'And you always had a thing for me, didn't you, Daniel Ford?'

  That was the next question she asked. It was something that I would learn all too quickly about Linny. She never hedged or hesitated; she never sounded uncertain or vague. She had a thought, always a big thought, and when she opened her mouth that thought fell from her mouth. She didn't say it, it just fell out. After a while, a very short while, it became one of her most valuable and endearing qualities. With Linny Goldbourne you always knew exactly where you were and why. If you had any degree of uncertainty she would sure as hell tell you in no uncertain terms.

  I smiled at her question. It didn't embarrass me, didn't make me feel awkward. Linny's honesty engendered honesty in others, and I myself was caught in that wave without thinking.

  'Yes,' I said. 'I always had a thing for you.'

  'That's good,' she said.

  'Good?'

  'Sure,' she went on. 'I wouldn't want to get involved with someone who didn't have a thing for me, right? I mean, would you like to be really in love with someone and have the feeling at the back of your mind that they didn't really love you the same way?'

  I thought of Caroline, that that was exactly how it had felt.

  'No, I wouldn't,' I said, and believed that that was the most honest answer I could ever have given.

  'Which is not to say we're in love,' Linny said, again matter-of-factly. 'But then I have time, and you do too, and hell, we're young and intelligent and stuffed with hormones, right?'

  I started to laugh, and when I looked up from the breakfast she had prepared for me I saw her beaming, contagious smile, her hair tumbling around her face, her bright eyes, her winning charm.

  I wanted to kiss her.

  'You can kiss me now,' she said.

  'I can?' I asked, unnecessarily.

  'Sure,' she said. 'Free of charge an' everything.'

  I leaned across the table and kissed her, a brief and insignificant connection, yet so meaningful. Imperfect, yet perfect. Like Linny herself.

  Ahead of our house, parked against the curb, was Linny Goldbourne's Buick Skylark, deep blue, cream leather interior, a hundred miles of bright chrome, wire wheels and style.

  Within an hour of my surfacing from some dark hell of tequila-fueled unconsciousness we were on our way, Linny talking endlessly of San Francisco, of The Scene, of someone called Roky Erickson, The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Doug Sahm, The Grateful Dead, John Cippolina an
d The Quicksilver Messenger Service. The roof of the car was down, the sun was high and warm, and the wind took her long hair and sent it dancing out behind her in a bold wave of color and life and beauty.

  I said little. I watched her. I absorbed her energy until I felt replete, and still it came - boundless, infinite, rich and heady.

  We drove east towards the mouth of the Santee River, and then south-west to Port Royal Sound, right there on the Georgia border where the Savannah River hurried out to meet the Atlantic as if late for their appointment.

  I felt no ill effects from the night before by the time we arrived, and had I done I believe Linny would not have allowed them a moment of consideration. She was out of the car and down the street towards the beach before I had a second to question her plans.

  I followed on that wave of enthusiasm and energy, and I saw her run ahead of me to the sand just as I had seen her in school.

  But this time was different.

  This time I was here because she wanted me to be here.

  Later, seated there in the sand beside her, she rolled some grass in a neat twist of paper and lit it. She inhaled and held her breath, and slowly her eyes widened, her cheeks colored, and then she released that breath in a sudden rush.

  She held that thing out towards me, and gingerly, cautiously, I took it.

  I felt afraid, but I could not say no.

  I felt that here was my first moment of trial, my first test of mettle against the attitude and viewpoint of another.

  I felt Eve Chantry watching me.

  She was saying: Don't do it, Danny, don't do it until you have decided first. It has to be your decision, and your decision alone. Nathan was right. Nathan's daddy is a minister and sometimes he does have God on his side. It is a moment such as this that counts the most. Right now, right here.

  But I did not decide.

  The moment decided for me.

  I pressed the thing to my lips and inhaled.

  At first it tasted bitter, and then beneath that something sweet, and though I had imagined myself choking and coughing and spluttering over Linny I did not. I did as she had done. I inhaled and held my breath. I waited a while and nothing happened. I inhaled again, and yet again a moment later. And then I felt something coming, not at first, but a few moments later, or minutes perhaps, I cannot remember. But it came, it most definitely came, and when it came it was like the small weathered blanket you carried as a child, your best toy, the feeling of warm security that closes around you when your ma holds you after a bad dream… the sound of your father's voice as he lifts you from the sidewalk, your knee grazed, your confidence bruised… the rush of excitement as daylight fades and the lights of the funfair can be seen all across town… the rushing whirl of music as the carousel starts up… and the smell of popcorn, fresh donuts, red and white spiral sugarcanes…

  'Here,' Linny said, and passed me another joint - fatter, coned like a trumpet, and when it burned it crackled and hissed, and the smoke filled my eyes, my mouth, my nostrils. I smoked it for a while, and when I passed it to her she shook her head.

  'Have my own,' she said, and held it up to show me.

  How much I smoked I can't remember, two, perhaps three, maybe more. I wasn't counting, and neither was Linny, and after a while she got up and walked away. She returned a moment later, a bottle of tequila in her hand, and with it two small glasses she had brought from the car.

  'Prepared for every eventuality,' she whispered as she leaned close to me, and she filled both glasses, urged me to swallow in one, and then she poured yet another and another.

  She kissed me then, and then her tongue was behind my ear, inside it, beneath it, and all I could remember doing was laughing.

  I felt I would burst with laughter.

  I felt whatever seams had been sewn into my body would unravel in one great rush and whatever was inside me would scatter across the sand and be washed out into the Atlantic.

  And then I felt I was the Atlantic, and inside me was the Savannah River, and over in my right hand a thousand miles away was Greenleaf and my ma and Karl Winterson's Radio Store… and the war was someone else's problem, and they weren't looking for me… no, they weren't looking for me… perhaps for Nathan Verney, but not me.

  Later, much later, I opened my eyes. The sun was setting along the horizon.

  We were both naked.

  Beneath us was a blanket from Linny's car, and over us were draped her dress, my shirt, and to the left, just there in the corner of my vision, I could see my right shoe on its side.

  Linny stirred but did not open her eyes. I could feel the weight of her breast against my arm. Like Caroline Lanafeuille, but not. Different. Not better, just different.

  And different was good.

  I closed my eyes again. I did not want this time to end.

  I felt nothing. No guilt, no pain, no loss, no sense of heartache for anything at all. I had not felt nothing for a long time it seemed, and in its absence, in its deep and echoing hollowness, it felt good.

  Linny felt good. Too good perhaps.

  I slept then I think, for when I opened my eyes again it was dark and cool and the sound of the sea closing up against the shore for the night was all I could hear.

  Apart from Linny's breathing.

  And those sounds, those reverberations of the soul, would be something I would remember for the rest of my life.

  Seemed to me the most beautiful sounds in the world.

  And they were mine.

  That we had smoked grass and drunk tequila and slept on the beach seemed crazy. At least to me. I wanted to tell Linny Goldbourne that this had been something magical, that such a thing as this was so new to me it was scary, but there was something about her that warned me to say nothing. It was not that I felt unable to share my thoughts and feelings with her, it was that I imagined such a confidence would really have no great significance for her. She appeared so worldly, she drove her own car, she smoked grass. Christ, she brought grass with her. I would not even have known how to go about getting some had I wanted to.'

  So I said nothing, and that was okay.

  When I opened my eyes the second time I could hear the radio from the car.

  Linny was not beside me, she was out there in the sea and, acutely aware of my nakedness, I hurriedly donned my pants and walked down to meet her.

  Linny Goldbourne possessed no such inhibitions. She was naked, and the water barely reached the tops of her thighs. She came up out of the water, and for a moment - even as she walked towards me - I felt invisible. For one horrible moment I felt I could have been anyone to her. And then she called my name, and the feeling passed, and I shrugged away my misgivings and uncertainty.

  I was here because she wanted me. After all, had she not returned from Atlanta and found me out?

  'You wanna go home, or somewhere else?' she asked.

  I tried hard to keep my eyes on her face as she came closer.

  I shrugged my shoulders. 'Whatever,' I replied, intending to sound relaxed and nonchalant, but it came out weak and indecisive.

  She smiled. 'You hungry?'

  I nodded. I had not paid much mind to eating, but now she mentioned it I was aware of the ravenous craving in the pit of my stomach.

  'We'll go get lobster or something,' she said as we reached the car. She leaned over the door to gather her dress from the back seat. I saw the sheer elegance of her form, the way her breasts barely moved as she stretched, the way she raised her arms to lift the dress over her head, and in the moment her face was obscured I looked down to her stomach and, below that, the dark triangle of color at once so magical and perfect.

  I looked away, out towards the sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and when I turned back she was watching me.

  She stepped towards me, she raised her hands, and placing them on my shoulders she pulled me close.

  Then her arms were around my waist, I felt the side of her face against my neck, and then she was leaning up towards me, kissing me, her
tongue between my lips, in my mouth.

  I felt as if I was being swallowed. Emotionally swallowed. It was powerful and intoxicating. A drug. There was little I could do but be devoured. Quietly, gratefully, thankfully devoured.

  This was Linny Goldbourne. She did not touch, she grasped. She did not caress, she enclosed. She did not hesitate, she acted, and acted with certainty.

  And yet, for all these things, she was never anything but a woman. Nathan, who in time to come would also learn to love her, said being with Linda was like being mugged by a beauty queen.