Ecstatic

by Victor La Valle

  Downtown was only four blocks long with one bookstore, a food market, a dry cleaner; their store fronts had all been built before the Civil War. I felt a mix of admiration and aching back. Sleeping in a car seat all morning still hurt me.

  A Quaker meeting hall was in a large field, left to itself. Fifty feet by fifty, one story with a gabled roof. I wouldn’t say it looked like a religious building except for the way it seemed to shine under direct focus from the moon. The wood became whiter. There was a porch on the right side of the meeting house with one small chair out there. It faced me; I drove by.

  I touched the passenger seat where my sister had been on Friday. When I thought of her on stage with Grandma I regretted the mistakes I’d made today. Missing her phone calls and now, driving forty miles just because she’d hurt my feelings. When we came back to Rosedale from Ithaca on September 3rd, Nabisase helped me clean out the crowded basement so I’d have a neat place to sleep. If I was going to turn around and keep her orphan’s secret there were still a few miles to decide.

  Uncle Arms had written the driving directions on the back of a car loan application.

  They were too damn specific for me.

  Get up. Wipe off the dirt. Walk back to your hotel. Eventually get in your car. East on Jubal Early Drive. Take the on ramp for I-81 South. Merge onto I-81 South. Drive forty-six miles on I-81 South. Reach exit 303—Miser’s Wend. Use exit 303—Miser’s Wend. Follow off ramp to traffic light. Make right at traffic light onto Strop Street. Drive straight.

  I entered the saccharine half of this community, where private homes were modest in size if not expense; their walls were limestone; their lights were out. Every house around. Beautiful, but forsaken. By eight o’clock the sun was well under the trees.

  Turn right on McCutcheon. The house on the corner has an orange mailbox. Do not knock on any other doors. Drive slowly on this smaller road.

  By now the directions were insulting. Maybe Uncle Arms acted the asshole with everyone. Was there a way I spoke or looked that made people think they needed to carry me with tongs? I’d thought I hid my confused state expertly.

  After driving McCutcheon for ten minutes there was a private way to my right; thin as typewriter ribbon and it had no sign. His last direction read:

  My road is nameless. Watch for lights in the woods. Come to them.

  18

  Uncle Arms stood on the front steps of his limestone home and waved. Even though it was two-and-a-half stories the house seemed small because it was narrow. There were three small chimney stacks on the long, pitched roof, one at either end of the house and the third in the middle. The place was fixed onto a plain but well-maintained field. In fact it was beautiful. The thin road became a driveway that continued around behind the house.

  I wanted to drive back to the rear just so I could see the whole property, but he gestured for me to pull onto the front grass.

  There really isn’t any comfort in a rural night for me. I’m happy to see a traffic copter overhead. I decided that the cloudless star-filled sky looked like a busy switchboard, and it relaxed me.

  Uncle Arms was still short, but wasn’t wearing the gold teeth. His brown suit was better than the one he’d worn in the tent that afternoon. I touched his shoulder and the fabric felt softer than cold cream.

  As we walked into his house through the front door I peeked at the backyard. There was a wooden cabin, much smaller than the main house.

  –You’re no newspaper man.

  Uncle Arms said this only after we’d climbed into the front hall of his home. It was narrow like the whole house and I thought Quakers must have been some pretty slim people.

  – How’d you find out?

  –I made one phone call.

  There was a seven-foot wooden clock against the hallway wall, but it didn’t seem to work anymore. A sturdy cooling bench, six feet long, sat across from the clock in the hall. Instead of four legs to support it there were ten. There wasn’t much room for me between these heirlooms and the ceiling wasn’t very high either. I touched the bench and the wood was so supple I thought it would bend. None of his furniture had much flash, but it was superb.

  –Your family’s been rich a long time, I said.

  He walked ahead of me, showing none of that stoop from this afternoon’s carnival. You know what he looked like now? A former dancer. With that mean hoofer’s stride. I didn’t know how old he was, exactly, but his body was used to being limber. He didn’t drag his feet.

  A flight of stairs led up to the second floor, but we stayed on the first, walking left at the steps into another narrow room with an upright piano and light blue walls.

  As we went through his house the floorboards made a noise, -snap-, -snapsnap-, under me. I was embarrassed. What made it worse was that Uncle Arms weighed about sixteen ounces; the proof was in his soundless footfalls.

  We passed through the narrow room, that had the upright piano on one end and a mahogany highboy at the other, into the east end of his home. The only room, thus far, large enough to let me breathe.

  There was a dinner table, a dormant fireplace and lots of floor space. I could have camped out right there and still had room to hang my purple suit up to dry. It was wet with sweat already and limp from general exhaustion; it clung to me.

  Six framed plaques were on the wall, but I didn’t stop to read them since he’d left a door open to the backyard.

  His property slanted downward so that from the back door I saw the small log cabin only fifteen yards away and behind it was the rest of his property, another plain field, one acre at most. I was surprised at how far I could see with only a three-quarter moon, but stars also brightened the room.

  At the back end of his land there was a patch of small trees and past them a smaller, detached field. Two dozen tents were pitched in that one. Little domes strewn around in the far grass.

  I thought Cub Scouts first, but then those soldier-boys from my hotel came to mind. How seriously would they take their roles? Would their chaperon really have them sleep outside a night and appear at the pageant sore, hungry, deprived? A war-weary approximation.

  Past the tents, right behind them, parked and empty, was a giant yellow beast. There were shadows across its back and the nose was brushed up against a tree. Its black tires were camouflaged by the grass so the yellow bus seemed to hover in the distant field. There was a white banner tied to its side. Too dark to read the slogan, but I remembered it from the rest stop ruckus; Pretty Damn Mad was here.

  How did they get near Lumpkin?

  Had they followed us?

  –I invited them, Uncle Arms explained.

  But can we forget them for a while because Uncle Arms shut the door. He’d put together a great dinner.

  The long pine top table was, like everything else, quiet about its quality. Wearing a table cloth with no frills around the edges and a Mariner’s Compass pattern sewn checkerboard into the cloth. – How old are these? Are they worth a lot?

  He asked, – Is that how you think of the past? A numbers game?

  – It was just a question. You know what I mean.

  –When all the others fail history is the religion of humanity. In which do you believe?

  –Can we eat? I said.

  – Of course. Sorry. I tried to have some foods you’d recognize, he said.

  Uncle Arms spoke to me like I was a foreigner, but I didn’t want to take this North-and-South-two-nations-within-a-nation folderol that seriously. Though he had. By preparing (or probably buying) a variety of Spanish foods.

  Rice and pigeon peas, roasted pork, chicken stew and fried meat. The smell of onion, peppers, coriander came up from the pots when he removed their lids. An odor so good I got that high, itchy feeling in my nose like I was about to sneeze.

  –Where do you think I’m from? I asked him after looking at it all.

  – New York.

  – So why Spanish food?

  –Because you’re Mexican! He was stymied by my questions
.

  –No one’s ever thought I was Mexican before, I said. Puerto Rican. Dominican.

  –That’s what I meant. Puerto Rican.

  – So why didn’t you say Puerto Rican?

  –I did.

  –You said Mexican.

  He put his left and right hand up but far apart in two unaggressive fists. –It’s like saying United States and America. Mexican. Puerto Rican.

  –They’re two separate places.

  –Oh come on. He acted like making this distinction was the worst kind of oversensitivity.

  When eating I’m a silent hillside. Sometimes my hands don’t even seem to move because I heap my fork with a crane’s worth of food, feed myself and chew it slowly.

  Uncle Arms was peckish; I could see a lot of the white of his plate because his portions were so small. –You’re no newsman, he said again, but he wasn’t angry.

  –I clean houses.

  –But you’re really here for the pageant?

  – Sure I am.

  –I can’t believe anyone would have a girl admitted into that debacle.

  Who was this guy?! He had been doing his best Vardaman and Bilbo routine not ten hours ago and now he was some old-money Quaker gentleman with his morals in a high chair.

  – My sister’s in it.

  –And your father entered her?

  – If he had she would have been disqualified.

  He let me enjoy my own joke until the room was quiet again. I felt silly; I said, –Our mother paid the entrance fee, but my sister wanted to compete.

  – It’s vulgar that the girls qualify because of their chastity.

  –Better than pain! I yelled.

  Did I mention that I had two beers? Or that I was drunk? Maybe I’ve kept it to myself because I’m ashamed to admit I was a lightweight.

  – Haven’t you begun to think that the whole beauty system is archaic? he asked.

  –Aww what does it matter, I sighed. No one’s ugly anymore.

  What a good feeling when dinner’s over and there’s only the gruel left on the plate. This time it was a mix of gravy, grains of rice, oil and bits of shredded pork. I tilted the dish to my lips. That slop was fine as port wine.

  When there were only bones on our plates Uncle Arms served a light green liqueur in a dark green bottle. The taste was paprika and peppermint at once.

  He said, –We were Quakers until my great grandfather was read out of meeting. He split with them over the question of servitude. He was for it and they were not.

  Servitude was the politest euphemism for slavery I’d heard in a long while.

  – He was the first black Quaker ever expelled.

  –Were there any others?

  –No.

  – So he was the only black Quaker ever expelled.

  – He’ll be remembered as something else.

  –As a slave owner.

  –My great-grandfather Otis started three technical colleges. One in Mississippi and two in Tennessee.

  Uncle Arms told me the schools used to offer courses in horse grooming, ‘domestic science,’ and had developed into computer engineering, business administration, even paralegal work. Thousands of graduates lived better because of Otis, the black excommunicated Quaker slave owner. Uncle Arms insisted. I listened but with only one eye open at a time. Because of the liqueur my mind wasn’t worth one puka shell right then.

  –How come you get up there like Old Remus then? If you’re so proud of your ancestors?

  –People can’t imagine a black aristocrat. They’ve invested too much into a past filled with only one narrative. Whites and blacks would believe I was a devil more easily. So I appear as the raggedy, noble cottonpluck. In Colorado I’ve been Uncle Iron, of the Southern Ute Indian tribe. I am the best businessman you ever saw. I promise you that.

  Above the fireplace there were those six framed documents. One was a list of furniture either bought or sold in 1884. I did what everyone does, marveling that I could have bought a four-poster bed with the money in my pocket.

  Among them was a framed newspaper clipping accounting a man’s purchase of one hundred acres of Frederick County land. I should restate that. One hundred acres more. (Otis Allen, free man, purchases plot, livestock.)

  Along with the text was a sketch of the man; he was slim and bald as a monk. The eyes were far apart and his nose drifted to the left; I hoped the illustrator was just untalented.

  Uncle Arms walked next to me with two glasses of that green elixir. The top of his head only came up to my sternum. He said, –The Quakers thought Otis would perish without their help, but he flourished.

  I’ve read that some of the first English settlers in Jamestown resorted to a sort of cannibalism; so frantic from starvation they dug out fresh graves and ate the dead to survive. I collect those kinds of true stories. They were all just horrible.

  –The Quakers said he’d perish, Uncle Arms repeated. But what’s become of them?

  – If I had been a reporter what were you going to do?

  – See if some of our girls were truly lying about their backgrounds.

  – And then?

  – If it could be proven I’d have to disqualify them. No luck.

  – I need some air, I said. The wine with dinner, the emerald potion now, if we didn’t get outside I’d vomit toward his fireplace. We stood on the back steps of his home with breezes arranged around us.

  I wanted to see the cabin, but Uncle Arms walked me past that.

  It was empty anyway, or at least the door was closed. We walked through his field; sometimes he was next to me and other times ahead. It wasn’t long. Only ten minutes before we reached the stiff, sparse woods at the rear.

  A faint dirt path waited. He was silent and so was I. It was darkest when we were in the middle of the trees. Still too far from the small field with pitched tents. There were leaves and brown thistles underfoot. Even Uncle Arms made noise walking across them. This brief forest trapped the coldest air along its floor. My legs and my head were in different temperate zones; my knees were chilly, but my face started sweating. I was having fun.

  When we stepped out into the smaller field I covered my eyes because the nylon tents reflected light back at me. Twenty-five small domes zipped shut. I had a vision of Ledric stumbling, sick, out of each one. Hands on his stomach, phlegm in his hair.

  The protestor’s yellow bus wasn’t totally empty. A thin woman was taking down their banner.

  – Did you pay them to come? I whispered.

  – You can’t pay these kinds of people to act outraged, but they’ll do it for free if the cause is just.

  – And what did you tell them?

  –That girls are being exploited.

  – Do you know a man named Ishkabibble?

  The tents weren’t in rows or anything so when we walked through them it was a winding trail. I’d thought they were sleeping, but as Uncle Arms and I walked along I heard people talking inside.

  As I moved through I brushed too hard against a tent I guess, it unzipped and a groggy twenty year old looked out to see. His beard was patchy, but already fuller than anything I could grow. Since I’d woken him, he climbed out to smoke.

  Portable radios sat outside two different tents, unguarded; their owners must have trusted the elements.

  Uncle Arms brought me to the woman folding the sign. She was older than I thought. Not nineteen, but thirty-nine. In jeans and a sweatshirt, but her feet were bare.

  – Don’t your toes get cold? I asked her.

  She laughed loudly. It surprised me because Uncle Arms and I had been speaking in the quietest tones. She shook hands with Uncle Arms then me.

  – Where are Jerry and his cameras?

  She pointed at the bus. –They said it was too chilly in the tents.

  –That bus can’t be warm, I said.

  – I don’t know why they said no. It’s toastier with two people in a tent than one on a vinyl seat.

  – Jerry’s inside? Uncle Arms aske
d and when she nodded he went in.

  That left us there. I kicked a tire just to do something.

  There were actually a lot of cigarette butts on the ground. Not thrown about, but in a neat pile.

  –Take off your shoes, she said.

  – What for?

  She put one foot in the air. It was long and slim, the toenails were a lively red.

  – I thought you people wouldn’t wear makeup.

  – Which people?

  – You’re with the protestors, right?

  –That doesn’t mean I’m dead! Take off your shoes and let me see your feet. Just put them in the dirt.

  Uncle Arms stepped off the bus with two videotapes in his hand. He shook them in front of me. There was a diesel smell coming from beneath the truck.

  – I’m going to take him back up to the house.

  –This is your last chance, she said to me. It’ll feel good.

  – I’d feel silly barefoot, I admitted. I’m wearing a suit, I said.

  She sighed. – Just once you ought to find out how it feels to be free from all those clothes.

  – I’ll consider that, I said.

  Uncle Arms led me away, back through the trees and into his yard. Before we had walked five feet of his property, I asked, – Why are you doing all this?

  Uncle Arms said, –Those students sleeping there are the descendants of conscientious objectors everywhere. Nowadays the enemy is this way of life that tells young girls they’re beautiful because of their bodies.

  – But you’re running a modeling contest!

  – My ladies win because of hardships. Fortitude is probably the only way teenagers can show character anymore.

  – You’ll never know how it feels to suffer generations of shame, he said. I mean to have your parent’s mistakes continue on and affect you. I don’t like what my great-grandfather did, but I’m not giving the money back.