Swimming Between Worlds

by Elaine Neil Orr

  “I’ve got an old haversack,” the man said. “I’ll fix it up for you.”

  As they waited for their lunch, Tacker felt a wave of doubt pass through him. He ought to be back in Winston working on the rendering for the split-level.

  “Hey, mister,” Kate said. “You ready?”

  Tacker reeled himself in.

  They rode through town to admire the houses and streets and then headed out onto a road along the shore, moving west in the direction of Salter Path. They had no plan except to ride, keeping as close as possible to the shore. It was easy going.

  “A white ibis,” Kate said as they rounded a turn and came into full view of the sound on their left. The bird turned into the wind and coasted downward until it landed just out of their sight. They rode so for an hour, until they were met by a high crest of dunes on their right.

  “Here!” Kate said. “The beach is just on the other side.”

  They banked the bikes, and, Kate leading, they found a lesser dune to cross. The Atlantic stretched out forever and away, like a grand carpet leading to the heart of the world.

  “Over there is your Africa,” she said.

  Then she took off down the other side of the dune. Tacker followed but had to be careful of the haversack. She doesn’t understand anything about Africa, he thought. Yet her unawareness caused him to love her more. Kate spread a yellow cloth. They anchored it with their shoes. Tacker popped off the Coke caps. Salami and American cheese never tasted so good.

  “We should have gotten in the water first,” Kate said.

  “I was famished.”

  “Now we have to wait thirty minutes.”

  “I can think of worse things,” he said.

  A flock of plovers landed and walked sideways against the wind down to the water.

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEN TACKER STARTED digging, Kate joined in.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “I’ll show you.”

  They made the hole wide enough to lie in. When they were through, Tacker placed their towels next to each other in the interior.

  “A round house is a bowl, a nest,” Kate said, standing as if reciting a poem before tumbling in. They wound themselves together and he kissed her and pulled away and looked at her face and did it again many times. They swam and rested again.

  “I used to think of my backbone as a blade. I had to be so strong with my mother. It doesn’t seem so anymore,” she said, and he didn’t know if the “it” was her backbone or having to be strong. It was both, he assumed, and held her close.

  The tops of their feet were sunburned and they spent the evening in Mrs. Johnson’s living room, a secret between them like a child, but it was their own selves they tendered and loved. That night Tacker woke, thinking about the split-level. He should have brought some drafting paper. He could have worked on sketches sitting with Kate. Now he was going to have to rush home and probably stay up all night. Still, when he saw Kate in the kitchen early Sunday morning and she looked at him with her large lavender eyes, he followed her barefoot on the cool morning lanes down to the open pavilion by the ocean, where they danced on the broad wooden floor without music until the sun blazed in through the windows.

  “We have to go, honey,” Tacker said.

  “One more swim,” she said.

  “I have to do a rendering when I get back. I promised Tom I’d have it tomorrow.”

  Tacker had forgotten to fill the car on Saturday; it was a little under half-full and he was anxious about that too. They didn’t stop but drove all the way back to Winston with the windows down, pulling into town just as the arrow reached empty.

  He was up half the night working on the split-level. It wasn’t as inspiring as the Firestone: a low-pitched roofline, three windows across the third level, a central chimney. The bay window in the living room was the most interesting feature and there was nothing especially novel about it. He embellished the design with a blooming forsythia in the left corner of the lot and pine trees behind, gently greened, and a pale blue sky. And then he slept for three hours before his alarm went off.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  GAINES WAS SKY-HIGH at the store, a hat cocked back on his head. “The Nashville sit-ins are over, man.” He waved a newspaper. “Negroes sitting at the counter and ordering their lunch. Dinner, too. Getting their Pepsi refilled. One turkey dinner, coming right up. Sixty-five cents. Soup of the day. Yes, ma’am. Cherry pie. Fifteen cents. You got it on a plate. Say you want a hot dog with all the fixings. Be out directly.”

  Tacker still had sand in his loafers.

  “Look right here, brother. Read it.”

  Gaines handed him the paper. It wasn’t the Winston-Salem Journal or any newspaper Tacker had ever seen. He looked at the grainy black-and-white photograph and scanned the story.

  “What did I tell you?” Gaines said.

  Tacker leafed through the paper. The Carolina Times, probably the same paper Gaines had shown him when his picture was in it from that early sit-in at Kress. “Where’s this paper from?”

  “Durham,” Gaines said.

  “How’d you get it?”

  “Aunt Frances has subscribed to the paper for years. We got to sit tight, baby. Keep filling those beautiful seats. I can taste it,” Gaines said.

  “What’s that?” Tacker said.

  “The club sandwich I’m going to order at Woolworth’s. Crispy bacon. Yes, sir. Nice thin-sliced turkey. A sweet tomato. Leaf of lettuce. Duke’s May-o-nnaise. On toasted white bread. With potato chips on the side. And a foot-long dill pickle. My mouth is watering already. What are you having?”

  Without thinking, Tacker said, “The same,” though it had always been possible for him to order whatever he wanted at any Woolworth’s in the country as long as he wasn’t with a Negro.

  Gaines took his hat off and hung it on the coatrack. A spot on the back of his head was bandaged.

  “Hey. What’s that?” Tacker said.

  “Nothing much. Some fellow decided to see if he could break a stick over my head.”

  “Who was it? You see a doctor?”

  “Didn’t bother to introduce myself. Used iodine.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Sitting at a diner.”

  “Maybe you should pull back. You’ve got Valentine to think about.”

  “I am thinking about her. And my mom.”

  “I know. I know.” In Nigeria, Tacker had once witnessed a man being flogged over the head for theft. The cane created a gash on his head. That image haunted him the rest of the morning.

  During his lunch break he called Tom. “I have the split-level but I can’t get it to you until this evening.”

  “That’ll be fine,” Tom said.

  Tacker hung up the phone. “I’ve got to lie down for thirty minutes,” he said to Connie. “I’ll be in the lounge if you need me.”

  * * *

  • • •

  ON THURSDAY, TOM called in the early morning before Tacker left for work. “Come over tomorrow evening. I’ve got something I want to propose.”

  Tacker had promised Kate a night at the ballpark. “That should work,” he said, though as soon as he hung up it needled him.

  “I guess we could go to the movies Saturday night,” Kate said when he called.

  “I’ll make it up to you next weekend.”

  “It’s fine. Really. What if you drop by Friday night after you see Tom and let me know what he says?”

  * * *

  • • •

  THE DOOR TO Tom’s studio stood ajar and Tacker stood at the threshold until the man looked up.

  “We got lucky,” he said, his hair awry, the studio messier than it had been last time.

  “Great,” Tacker said.

  “Fred Hammond called t
his morning.”

  Tacker’s mind went blank.

  “Hammond and Smith, the firm I’m joining.”

  “Right.”

  “The architect who was hired to design the bathhouse at Hanes Park had to pull out and Hammond landed it. But he’s got bigger fish to fry. He wondered if I’d like it.”

  “You want me to do a rendering for a bathhouse?” An odd taste came to Tacker’s mouth.

  “Actually I want you to work for me. We’ll collaborate. There’s not even an initial sketch yet.” The man smiled as if they were planning a road trip to Mexico.

  “A bathhouse?” Tacker said again.

  “There are other things I can give you a crack at. But this would make a good platform. That park has been waiting for years for a pool. It’ll revive the neighborhood. It’s where your heart is, right?” He leaned toward Tacker. “I’d like another State alum in the office. My new colleagues both went to Virginia Tech.”

  “Wow. I’d have to think about it, talk with my father.” Tacker put a hand to his forehead.

  “What if you started half-time?” Roberts said.

  Tacker hadn’t even sat down. “I’d love to do it. All of it. I just don’t know how soon we can find someone to take over the store.”

  “Tell you the truth, the bathhouse is a plum for me. The mayor’s in on it. I’d like to showcase our talent.”

  “Like I said . . .”

  “Why don’t you sit down? We’re going to grill some burgers. Can you stay for supper?”

  Tacker looked at his watch.

  “Here’s the pool design. No doubt you’ve been watching it go in. Look it over. Let me run and tell Kathy you’re staying for supper.”

  Tacker knew the park like the back of his hand. But looking at the rendering of the pool with the designer’s embellishments was surreal, like looking at an old-timey tinted photograph of an uncle he resembled, the same but not the same. He thought of Bobby Ransom and his bullshit response about integration, of Gaines that day at Woolworth’s, the way he smiled when the arrests were made, of Samuel and Chukwu at the Lebanese restaurant. He couldn’t work on the bathhouse for a whites-only pool. It would be a complete sellout. He gazed out the window at the goldfish pond. What sorry good luck to have this gift dangled in front of him. He cracked his knuckles and looked at his hands. Then he picked up the design and took it over to Tom’s drafting table to get a better look. Further study did not relieve his sense of the quagmire he was in, a man in a bog with a beautiful bride onshore he would never reach.

  Tacker got to Kate’s at nine o’clock.

  “I was about to give up on you,” she said, opening the door.

  “Yeah, sorry. Tom invited me to supper and I couldn’t really say no. He likes to talk.”

  “So what was his big idea?” she said, taking his hand and leading him into the library.

  “He wants me to come work with him.”

  “That’s wonderful!” She bounced up and down on her toes.

  “I can’t just drop the store,” he said, plopping himself on the couch.

  “Of course not. Did he give you a deadline?”

  “Not really.”

  She leaned down to give him a kiss; her blouse dipped open and he could see where her suntan ended going into her bra. He didn’t tell her about the bathhouse. She would be entirely for it.

  * * *

  • • •

  MIDDAY MONDAY TOM called Tacker at the store. “Any breakthrough on your end? Fred and I took inventory of our current projects. We’re going to have to hire someone. I’d like for it to be you.”

  Tacker hadn’t said anything to his father yet. “Can I have until next week?”

  “That’ll do,” Tom said. “But I really need to know by then.”

  * * *

  • • •

  TACKER JERKED THE Indian from its stand. He swerved out into the road. An oncoming car barely missed him, the horn echoing in his ears as he headed out Reynolda toward Wake Forest College and beyond. He laughed into the air, his head back. Of all the dumb luck. He charged the engine. Ten miles out, he pulled onto a meandering dirt road that bordered fields, skirted a pond and a forsaken barn, then zigzagged, bringing Tacker to a stand of pines and an old sharecropper’s house. He parked the bike and entered the old yard. An ancient pump. Chimney straight but the house tilted away from it. He looked in a window. An old table and a tin pail. Fragment of flour-sack curtains. The scent of moisture prevailed and it filled Tacker with immense sadness, as if his parents were already dead and he were forty years old. They would never understand that there was no way he could design the bathhouse. Tom wouldn’t understand either. Turning it down would appear ungrateful. Worse than that, stupid.

  Frogs chorused.

  Kate might understand and even be sympathetic to his dilemma. But she would still want him to do it. His hands itched as they used to before a game. He felt a cold pity for the world, for himself. With this project he could launch his career.

  The smell of water and rock and a whiff of ginger.

  What you go to Africa for and come back here same as always.

  * * *

  • • •

  “DAD?” TACKER SPOKE over the phone. “I need to talk.”

  Early the next morning they met at Krispy Kreme on Stratford.

  “You know I’ve been doing renderings for Tom Driskell. He’s hooked up with two other architects. The thing is, he’d like to hire me half-time.”

  His dad set his doughnut aside and took a sip of his coffee. “I said at the beginning I didn’t want to stand in your way. How soon does he need to know something?”

  “Next week.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “Well, let’s think about it,” his father said.

  They stared out the glass wall at the street.

  “Theoretically: what would we do if you were sick for a week?”

  “I guess Connie could manage until I got back—if you could check in now and then.”

  His dad finished his doughnut and wiped his mouth and sipped his black coffee.

  “You think she could manage mornings if you came in at one? You could put in orders on Saturdays.”

  “Connie could run that store by herself. I just never thought you would consider it.”

  “Well, why not? How does she get along with Gaines?”

  “Fine. They get along fine.”

  “Okay by you if I make her assistant manager?”

  “Fine by me.”

  Everything was fine except that he was going to work for Tom—who wanted him on a bathhouse, who believed he was doing Tacker a favor. He felt as alone as he had when he first got home from Nigeria and had not a soul to talk with. Was it too late to learn how to pray?

  Riding the Indian back to the store, heading up Stratford, he sensed a deep splitting, his heart in two places. He could almost hear the crack. He loved Kate. He wanted to be in Winston. But he also wanted to be somewhere else. Part of him might never get home.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  THURSDAY MORNING, JANET, Kate’s Agnes Scott roommate, called to say she was engaged. Would Kate be her maid of honor? The wedding was being rushed because she and her fiancé were moving to California. He had a job offer with what Janet called “the aerospace electronics industry.” They had met on a blind date and his name was Bo Foster—Bo went to Clemson. “We just hit it off. He’s perfect for me. You’ll see,” Janet said.

  Kate wasn’t so sure. “Aerospace electronics industry” sounded like war machinery. Janet had railed against Korea and the waste of it. And against McCarthy. Alone, she had stood on the front steps of the administration building at Agnes Scott and protested Senator McCarthy. Janet feared nothing. Apparently not even moving to California, where who knew what her new husband, a man she had known two mont
hs at the most, would be doing. Kate said yes; she would love to be Janet’s maid of honor.

  “Katie, I know this is last minute, but can you come to Greenville tomorrow? I’d like to pick out the dresses.”

  Kate dreaded the idea of driving to Greenville to pick out a dress. Well, she’d take her camera. That would give her something better to do than look at dresses. She called Tacker at the store. “I have to go to Greenville, South Carolina, tomorrow.”

  “You feel safe driving that far?” he said, not yet perceiving that he should drop by to see her tonight.

  “Of course. I just thought you might want to see me before I leave.” Where was his mind these days?

  “I do, baby. I’ll be over around seven.”

  In her backyard the azaleas were riotous in deep pink and purple. Objective truth: azalea is Latin, from Greek, feminine of azaleos, “dry,” because the shrub flourishes in dry soil. Kate spent some time cleaning out the summer beds, getting them ready for the few annuals she hoped to plant. Turning the soil up lifted her spirits. Subjective truth: “Everything will work out.” It was herself speaking in her mother’s voice. Late in the afternoon she remembered that she had not been to see Mr. Fitzgerald in almost a month. She selected a few long stems of azalea and walked across the park to his house, but he wasn’t home. She had wrapped the stems in newspaper, so she wetted the paper with the garden hose and left them tilted up against Mr. Fitzgerald’s door. It was almost dark as she headed home, entering the back door, pulling off her Keds. As soon as she had showered, the doorbell rang. It was Tacker. She could see him through the glass by the door and she skated down the hallway.

  * * *

  • • •

  HE LOOKED TALLER.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hello,” she said.

  She sensed he had something to say but she wouldn’t let him start. She leaned out the door and into his arms and kissed him. Something in him seemed to retreat, and her heart sank.