Children of Crisis

by Robert Coles

  She uses crayons to convey that rock and the surrounding land: a few trees, some sagebrush, a path. As she puts the colors brown, red, and orange on the paper, she makes clear her sense of inadequacy: no one, she is sure, can really draw or paint that towering, mysterious, somewhat frightening rock as it really is — because it changes its appearance so often. She apologizes for her attempt. She stops painting, drawing, talking. She looks at the Rock. It is late in the afternoon; the Rock glows from a distance as it catches the setting sun’s rays. Some Hopi children have gone rushing to their parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents to tell them that the Rock is on fire. All who hear go to a place that affords a view and watch silently — until, as Miriam’s mother puts it, “the night will put out the fire.” In a few days there will be the sight of the Rock lit up by the moon — an eerie luminous color that has prompted various legends. The one Miriam likes to tell has to do with the three men. They express the regret they feel for wandering so far and for abandoning in their minds the conviction that they were and wanted to be Hopis. The glow of the Rock is the result of the intensity of their sadness, their self-accusations, their fervently spoken remorse.

  In broad daylight and under the sun’s unremitting intensity, the Rock seems to glow with the heat. At times the Rock seems to have captured the sun itself; the Hopis shun looking at it lest their eyes be hurt. Stories have been made to go with that brightness: the three buried Hopis, still greedy for gold, have set a trap for the sun, convinced that it is the prize of prizes — full of gold, blazing yellow rays. But they succeed only in scorching themselves; the sun, of course, escapes. And finally, there are the shadows that clouds bring. Miriam is not sure that she likes the Rock at that time. She has been told that for the Rock, as for people, shade offers relief from the scorching sun. But she worries that the three Hopis who dwell there may well feel cold, shut out from the world, condemned to something akin to the white man’s hell.

  She is not too talkative about such matters, but enough so to reveal the awe she and other Hopi children accord that rock: “My mother says I worry too much about the Rock, and the three men; but she says she is glad that I do. Some Hopis have tried to forget about the Rock; they laugh and say we make too much of the place. But why is it there, and why does it change its look so often? I don’t know how to paint it. My father asked me why I bother. I said that we have a Hopi teacher, and he says that we should try to close our eyes and think of the Rock, then draw it or paint it — and that’s a way of going there on a visit. I’ve gone there in the morning, in the middle of the day, and at night. The Rock looks different at different times. The three Hopis are like everyone else; they have moods. My mother tells us to look very closely because each time the Rock looks different. I like to look from far away: the three fingers practically touch the sky. Once we were far, far away, and the sun was going down, and the sky was red, all over it was red, and the Rock was a shadow, and it looked as if, any minute, the shadow would go away — it would disappear into the sky, and there would be nothing for us to find if we went near except some tumbleweed. Tumble-weed will run away from you, or it will bother you, if you’ve been doing anything wrong. My mother says tumbleweed is the wind’s hand; if the tumbleweed comes after you and hits you, that means some spirit is telling you something and you’ve done wrong; but if you’re walking and the tumbleweed gets out of your way, then you’ve been doing good, and you deserve an easy walk.”

  V

  Privileged Ones

  Comfortable, Comfortable Places

  Dramatic and secluded; old, historic, and architecturally interesting; large and with good grounds; private and palatial; beautifully restored; big, interesting, high up and with an uninterrupted view: so the descriptions go, phrases meant to lift a person’s eyebrows, make a person get the point, the facts of money, prestige, position as they come to bear on something called “the real estate market.” In the South, the house may be an old plantation manor, made modern, with cool air pouring through tastefully decorated rooms; or an imitation of such a building, designed by an architect and furnished by an interior decorator; or a rambling, nondescript brick or wooden home, contemporary but not conspicuously or outlandishly so; or a self-consciously Tudor home, with wings and maybe a turret; or, far less common and an obvious object of admiration and envy, an antebellum home with an interesting history.

  In Appalachia, the home is quite often a heavy brick presence, likely as not with white columns that prompt, or are supposed to, reveries of the Southern landed gentry. The house may be tucked away on the side of a hill, quite visible from the road; or one may have to drive and drive, in seemingly concentric circles, until all of a sudden it is there — two, maybe three, floors, several large cars, and not much in the way of lawns or gardens, because the woods are immediately nearby and not easily pushed aside. In West Virginia or eastern Kentucky, if the home is located in a town or a city it may be of wood, and less imposing. Out toward the western part of Kentucky, of course, one is no longer in Appalachia, though a number of families that own mines in the eastern counties have taken themselves to “bluegrass” country, to horse farms: gentle hills, rich growing land, an established tradition of leisure — and, through riding or racing, fierce competition. And in the northern part of West Virginia one also leaves Appalachia, approaches Pittsburgh — with it, the Northeast and its cities, near which lie the well-to-do or wealthy suburbs.

  In the suburbs and beyond — of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, of Boston and Hartford, of New York City and Washington, D.C., of Wilmington, Delaware, and Cleveland: towns, townships, villages, stations, even crossings, anything to make it clear that one does not live in the city, that one is outside or away, well outside or well away, as it is so often put — the houses vary: imitation English castles; French provincial; nineteenth-century American; contemporary one-levels in the tradition of Gropius or Neutra. Sometimes the setting is formal, sometimes one is in view of a farm — animals, rail fences, pasture land, a barn, maybe a shed or two, a flower garden, and, more recently, a few rows of vegetables. Sometimes there is a swimming pool. Sometimes there is a tennis court. Sometimes there is a greenhouse, attached to the house or on its own. Sometimes the house stands on a hill, affords a view for miles around. Sometimes particular trees stand close guard; and beyond them, thick brush and more trees, a jumble of them: no view but complete privacy. Sometimes there is a paved road leading from a street up to the house’s entrance. Sometimes the road is a dusty path, or a trail — the casual countrified scene, prized and jealously guarded. Sometimes the property, as it may be called, is clearly marked. Sometimes no one but the owner seems to know where the “land” ends and someone else’s begins, though upon occasion there may be a marker, a fence, a road, a natural boundary like a stream. Sometimes the house is within sight of another house or two or is on a street of large homes surrounded by ample land. Sometimes the house is acres away from the nearest “neighbor.” Sometimes life is immediately apparent as one comes near: a barking dog (or two, or three); a watchful cat; children’s toys, bicycles, their sandbox — or their pony chewing relentlessly on the grass — a station wagon, another car, still another car. Sometimes there is an eerie silence, and no evidence of anyone — just a long driveway that leads to a home, which seems formidably closed up, even the garage doors tightly closed, and everything neat and tidy, even the flower garden.

  The trees matter; so do the grass and the shrubbery. These are not houses in a row, with patches of new grass, fledgling trees, and a bush or two. These are homes that are surrounded by spacious lawns and announced by tall, sturdy trees. Hedges are common, are carefully arranged. The grass is fine yet thick — years of cultivation. And not rarely there is water — a sprinkler system, a nearby pond, a brook running through the land. There are also quite likely wild birds who are fed food, given drink. If the people in the house are their friends and observers, squirrels are their constant competitors. The bird feeders are ingeniously constructed and plac
ed, but squirrels are quick, clever, and, it seems, able to get anywhere. And there are chipmunks, and garden snakes, and colonies of ants, and, in many cases, pheasants — a semirural landscape that particular boys and girls talk about, draw or paint, discuss with a visitor.

  Out West, in Texas or in New Mexico, the homes are ranches, big sprawling ones, many rooms in many wings. In the Rio Grande Valley the material may be wood, painted white; in New Mexico it’s adobe. The land is wet and fertile throughout the southern part of Texas, so tropical and semitropical flowers and trees adorn estates or ranches — acres of land given over to horse trails, gardens, large swimming pools, even landing strips for private airplanes. In New Mexico the large adobe houses abut cacti, corrals, and often stunning views: across a valley, over toward mountains miles and miles away. And the horses: they are not part of a “hunt” club, not exquisitely combed; they are just there, grazing or waiting to be used — and by boys or men as well as girls or women: Western style riding, sometimes bareback. And the cattle. They have to wander far over the stingy land for food — and in the clutch, must be fed grain by quite well-to-do owners, who don’t worry too much about costs, about profits and losses. And the dogs. Often three or four of them run about — after horses, around the house, up the trails on a scent. Signs announce to anyone who chances to come near that at a certain point a ranch begins — belonging to so-and-so and stretching maybe as far as the eye can see and then some.

  Who are the people who live in all those homes, who own all that land — or acreage, as it is sometimes put with just the slightest of commercial implications? How is one to characterize them, region by region? As rich? As wealthy? As well-to-do? As members of the upper middle class? As affluent or prosperous or well-off, well-off indeed? As advantaged or privileged? The words are plentiful, and there are plenty of numbers to go with them. Clearly the issue is money, and with it social position, and, rather commonly, political leverage. The homes belong to people who have a lot of money, are “successful.” They are plantation owners, bankers, stockbrokers, business or corporation executives, lawyers, doctors, architects, strip mine operators. They are politicians whose salaries for “public service” only begin to indicate the extent of their resources. They are ranchers and growers. They are entrepreneurs of one sort or another. They are those lucky enough to inherit substantial sums of money. They are sometimes men or women successful in the arts. They are people considered to be “on top,” or “the bosses,” or very, very “lucky.” They are people who, in the middle 1970s, make, say, forty or fifty thousand dollars a year, and up. Some growers in the Rio Grande Valley are many times millionaires, as are mine owners in Appalachia or plantation owners in Louisiana or Mississippi. In cities of the North or Midwest, certain business or professional men bring home seventy-five or a hundred thousand dollars a year — and look up to others who make twice that and therefore are judged and called “better off.”

  Inside the homes all those dollars have done their work — tastefully or insistently or at times quite gaudily. A formal, nineteenth-century spirit dominates the plantation South — by no means inhabited only by cotton growers, because professional and business men want homes that look like antebellum homes and in some instances have bought “the real thing” and restored it. Mahogany furniture, often heavy, is found in living rooms and dining rooms: solid breakfronts; grand pianos; long and wide eating tables with heavy silver candlesticks; captain’s tables; end tables or casual tables on which one finds books that belong to hunters or fishermen — pictures of birds, fish, wildlife; writing tables or desks that boast a gardening lady’s books — the flowers of a region beautifully illustrated. Air conditioning is everywhere — entire houses, rather than a room or two. There are exceptions, though — stubborn holdouts: a family in, say, Mountain Brook, Alabama, that won’t, under any conditions, let “good, warm Southern air” be turned into “Yankee weather.” Not silly, eccentric people but a distinguished lawyer and his wife who genuinely like summer weather, however hot and humid, and who don’t want to surrender themselves to “artificial air.”

  Cars are everywhere, too; a car for the husband and a car for the wife, a car for each child over sixteen, and often a car that belongs to a maid, to a cook, to a man who “helps” with the garden. The “help” is all black, of course, in the South, and sometimes in the North, too. In the South the swimming pool can be an almost all-year-round center of family life. The pools are lit, are heated. They are guarded by columns of mosquito repellent — steel poles on top of which burn mysterious chemicals that only some people worry about as pollutants. There are many chairs and a table or two — the former bright-colored, the latter usually with a glass top. There is a phone nearby — in a few instances a phone that is mysteriously, miraculously free of wires or cords. There are electrical outlets, television sets, phonographs, radios, rotis-series, toasters, small refrigerators — a kitchen outside the house’s kitchen, all arranged decorously and without clutter.

  In Appalachia the pools are more modest; often they are nonexistent. The furniture is likely to be new — North Carolina-made imitations of antiques. Not always, however; it depends on who has made what money, when, and how. Rather often, simple mountain furniture — part of the region’s arts and crafts tradition — gets shunted aside in favor of massive, imposing couches and stereo sets or televisions encased in giant mahogany or cherry cabinets. Cadillacs predominate; Rolls Royces are not unknown. The driveways are occasionally something to see: lights, spaced at intervals, that blaze at night and a certain sweep that goes beyond any requirements of convenience. The garages can be enormous; inside are large cars, motorized lawn mowers, snowplows, diggers or cultivators — a warehouse of mechanized equipment. And near the house, often, a flagpole, used daily. And large television antennae, able to pick up distant signals. And, maybe, a boy’s aerial for a high-powered shortwave radio or a police radio. And motorbikes; they are fun, and “children” of eleven, say, use them a lot, indifferent to any law that might urge otherwise.

  There is, of course, other wealth in Appalachia — older, selfconsciously understated, Southern in affiliation, or, if near Pittsburgh, quite Eastern in many respects. In those homes, as in Southern homes catalogues are often to be found on the desks of wives and husbands, mothers and fathers: for clothes, for jams, jellies, fruits, cakes; for hunting or fishing equipment; for toys; for books or records. And clippings, coupons, advertisements — cut out of magazines like The New Yorker: promises of goods and services, bearers of symbolic assurance, reinforcements of a family’s sense of itself, reminders for anyone around that there is a national culture (material, at least) for the upper middle class and wealthy people of this country. Guns are part of that culture; especially in the rural South and in Appalachia those guns assert themselves: on walls, in corners of rooms, in closets, or even outside, in barns or garages — sometimes almost as numerous as the tennis rackets and golf clubs.

  Golf: a game, but for many a way of life. Some homes are regarded as especially convenient, because near a golf course. The weekends become a marathon of golf, interrupted by a meal or two. The mood of particular parents varies with their “game,” with their scores. And endless discussions are devoted to experiences in one way or another connected to the sport. Families travel with a certain golf course in mind. Clothing is often geared to what is worn on the links. And to move toward a less sociological and more psychological, even existential, vein, some well-to-do men and women openly acknowledge that without golf life for them would be unbearable, even hard to imagine.

  For others, tennis has the same function — not only a game, a means of exercise, but virtually an organizing principle. Social lives depend on who is playing against whom, when and where. Couples meet other couples. Wives play in the morning, as soon as their husbands and children have left, or right after a housekeeper arrives to care for a preschool child or indeed an infant. On Monday, husbands talk about the sets they played during the weekend; and the memo
ries hold those busy, important men together, so some say, until the next weekend — that is, the ones who are too busy for weekday tennis, increasingly played on indoor courts. The fear of coronary heart disease adds a certain determination to the game, when the opponents are middle-aged professional and business men — who, however, also worry out loud about the competitive intensity they feel as they serve, lob, smash the balls. Will they, on that latter count, be right back where they started, candidates for a sudden and possibly fatal heart attack?

  People who make enough money to live a privileged life, socially and economically, spend a considerable amount of time and money making sure that they are near the water. Summer homes are for many of them an utter necessity: Cape Cod, certain stretches of Long Island, Maine, the New Jersey and Delaware coasts, the Carolina beaches, the whole state of Florida, the Gulf Coast, the beaches of the Caribbean islands, Mexico, or the Pacific states. Or lakes: Michigan and Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Vermont, the Northwest and into Canada. Or the Portuguese and Spanish and French resorts, or the islands of the South Seas, not to mention Hawaii. Many families try one place, then another, out of genuine curiosity, out of a desire to taste different pleasures, or out of a nervous sense of what is fashionable — or strictly out-of-bounds. Other families are quite content to stay with a permanent second home, and pour into it years of lavish devotion: a whole new set of furniture and electrical gadgets; boats of various kinds; snorkeling equipment; a tennis court sometimes; often a movie camera and screen — for rainy days; a special library (old favorites and recently published books); and almost always a sampling of records that usually get played more than those in the “other” house and that have a broad family appeal. Needless to say, a group of families may stay together, winter and summer — move from one upper-income community to another one near an ocean, lake, or mountain. In other cases, a whole new world of friends and acquaintances awaits a particular family.