by Jeff Fields
He spoke through gritted teeth. "God is jealous of anyone who attempts to create. It's the ultimate sacrilege."
"It is?"
"That's why artists are so miserable. It's their punishment."
"But how can you say that—you believe in God."
"You gotta believe in Him," Jayell said, "even when He's wrong."
"It could be they suffer because they don't eat and sleep right too."
He whirled around on me. "Are you going home now?"
"Yes."
And I got down and did.
Despite all the starts and stops and changes, the house moved along, and from the smoothness of its shape, the natural way it came together, no one would ever guess the strain it was to get it that way. It just seemed the only way that house could have been built. And it was a beautiful house. The rooms were of moderate size, but spacious and comfortable, and the kitchen, ringed with cabinets and little alcoves, was airy and full of light. Nowhere did a board lie even slightly out of line; windows and heavy oak doors moved at the touch of a finger; and the overhead beams joined with a seeming interweaving of grains with not a razor's thickness of gap in the joints.
The furniture was less trouble than I expected. From under his bed at the shop Jayell pulled boxes of drawings, and within days the designs were emerging from his boys' lathes and planers. The real time-consumer was finding the right fabrics and having upholstery made; for some of the accessories and ornamental hardware Jayell had to make trips to Atlanta.
Helping Jayell with the house after school and doing my homework while eating leftovers from the oven before toppling into bed, and spending as much time as I had to with Gwen Burns, was getting to be almost more than I could bear. The teacher kept her end of the bargain and never asked a word about the house, but as it occupied more and more of Jayell's time, she devoted more of her attention to me.
One night as I was pulling down the covers, bone-tired and already half asleep, she came to my room, eyes afire with excitement, and swiftly closed the door behind her.
"Earl, may I share a secret with you?"
I said of course, expecting a sure catastrophe, and trying to clear my head enough to meet it. She came and sat on the side of the bed, looked into my eyes for a moment, and whipped out a spiral notebook.
"I want to be a writer."
She waited, and when she got no reaction from me, she said, "What's the matter, don't you believe me?"
"Well, sure, but I don't see why you keep it a secret. Mrs. Cline wants to be one too, and she talks about it all the time."
"Mrs. Cline? The one with the detective magazines?"
"Uh-huh, she wants to write up a real murder for the magazines, but they don't happen that often around here, and when one does happen she can't get out to see about it. It's real sad."
"That nice little old lady. I would never have thought it."
"But she writes all the time anyway, and it's a nuisance. Miss Esther says she's about fed up with it."
The girl was shocked. "Why would she care about a thing like that? That poor, lonely little old . . ."
"Well, she wouldn't if Mrs. Cline would write somewhere besides the bathroom. But she won't; she sits in there and writes until her legs fall asleep and then somebody's got to help her to her room."
The teacher sat and looked at me. "Earl, I can't shake the feeling that you're somehow making fun of me."
"Oh, no, it's the truth. You can ask anybody."
"All right, never mind that now, here"—she opened the notebook and handed it to me—"now just read it aloud and tell me what you think. I don't expect you to grasp it all immediately, just let it seep in and see what it does to you inside, see if it evokes a response."
I looked down at the paper and could hardly believe my eyes. There were no capitals, periods or any kind of punctuation, not even paragraphs. It was all written in one big block, without a clue as to where one thought ended and another began. I looked at her to see if she was now making fun of me.
"It's all right," she said, "it's supposed to be that way. It's called stream-of-consciousness. Go on, read."
So I started reading, punctuating when I gave out of breath. As best I could tell, it was a dream of some sort, with the girl describing all the things she saw. There were some nice things, fields of yellow flowers and throbbing-throated birds and melting sunsets; but then the picture got disturbed, with "raging thoughts, like swirling bits of tissue paper, tumbling in the whirlpool of the mind." And finally the scene opened out on a meadow, with boys and girls, and it took on a decidedly different tone. Here things got down to specifics, with "great bronzed arms" and "hot ivory bellies" and "nymphs worshiping at the steeple of life." I stopped reading.
"What's the matter? Are you embarrassed?"
Embarrassed? At that age I still had trouble buying underwear from a lady clerk at Telk's!
"All right," she said, smiling, "but tell me, what do you think?"
"I—uh, I'm not sure, I'm afraid it's a little over my head."
She leaned close. "But tell me, did you feel anything?"
"Oh, yes, ma'am, especially there toward the end . . ."
"That's enough!" she said ecstatically. "It's enough that you felt something. I get so discouraged in that English class, nothing moves them! I plan the most exciting lessons, full of nuggets, I hit them with things that should make their hair stand on end! And they just sit there. Every day I come away drained, the blood sucked right out of me!"
"Well, maybe we just got a dumb class."
"No, it's the same with the other teachers, only they just seem to accept it, to go along every day drilling the facts into them, getting it back on tests, and moving them up a grade. Teaching has to be more than that, but where do you start?"
I opened my mouth, and then realized, hell, I didn't have an answer for her.
"Well"—she got to her feet—"thank you anyway, Earl, for listening—for trying." She rolled the notebook and looked at it. "It may never amount to anything, but I have to have this release. Sometimes I feel so bottled up inside. I can trust you with my little secret, can't I. You won't tell the others."
"Oh, no, ma'am, but they wouldn't care anyway—so long as you don't write in the bathroom."
It was the wrong thing to say. She stopped at the door. "Good night, Earl," she said coolly.
"Good night."
It was no use, I thought. With some people, no matter which way you step, it's wrong.
She let up on me with the poetry and literature after that, and I thought maybe she had gotten discouraged and given up on me, and I was going to have some peace. But as it turned out a few days later, she was only gearing up enthusiasm for the court system she was establishing in civics.
10
"Jayell, you're killing yourself." Gwen spread the sandwiches and potato salad on a sawhorse trestle. Since it was Saturday, Jayell, for once, had let the shop boys knock off at noon, but he had asked me to stay and help him salvage a small barn after we finished painting on the Ledbetter house. "Why don't you quit for the weekend? I never see you anymore."
"Promised to clear away a barn this afternoon." Jayell ate silently, his eyes scanning the nearly finished house.
"The Martins have offered us the use of their boat if we want to go down to the lake tomorrow. With cold weather coming, it'll probably be the last chance we'll get to go."
"Maybe, if I can get this one finished up this afternoon. Told Ledbetter I'd give him the keys Monday, else he's liable for another month's rent. That time in Atlanta threw everything off."
"Jay, what kind of life are we going to have, with you working eighteen hours a day . . ."
"Gwen, you know I barely scratch a living on these houses. Until I get the boys better trained and get some capital built up . . ."
"I know," she said, "and that's why I can't understand why you don't reconsider that Smithbilt offer. It sounds like a wonderful opportunity."
"How do you know about Smithbilt?"
"That man—Mr. Wyche?—was by the boardinghouse this morning. Jay, they've . . ." She stopped and turned to watch a blue station wagon pulling up to the jobsite. She looked at Jayell sheepishly. "I told him you'd be here this afternoon."
John Wyche, the Smithbilt vice-president, picked his way through the construction debris. "How's it coming, Jayell?"
"Hello, John," said Jayell, glancing at Gwen.
John Wyche was a large, energetic man who had a habit of hitching his pants as he talked. "Fine-looking house you've got there. Like I told this little lady, you get more done with a half-dozen nigger laborers than we can with a crew of skilled carpenters."
"You got too many," said Jayell. "We don't use two men to carry a two-by-four."
"Exactly," said Mr. Wyche, "absolutely right. That's what I want to talk to you about, Jayell. We're just getting too big—did I tell you we're starting a new development outside of Abbeville? New mill going up there and they want five hundred houses! Got the bulldozers in there now. We got to have help. Got to have help." He stopped and looked again at the house. "My God, do you ever build any two alike?"
"Ain't had to yet," said Jayell, munching a stalk of celery.
"Listen, Jay, I'll come right to it. We got to have somebody to coordinate construction in this area. The Miami office is on my neck constantly about this territory, and with the Abbeville thing coming up, I don't know what I'm going to do. I ought to be in the office right now. This whole area is booming, and indications are it's just getting started. New plants opening every day. That means people, Jayell, and people means houses. Now, the company sees yours scattered around the hills and they keep asking me, 'Who's this fellow with such originality—who builds houses like that with a handful of niggers and utility-grade lumber, and why can't we get him on our team?' And frankly, Jayell, I'm running out of answers."
Jayell smiled. "Like I've told you, John, I've got all I can handle."
"How much can you realize out of a little unit like this? In the time you put up one, we build a dozen. We're prefabbing whole sections now and hauling them to the job by truck. With override alone you could make three times what you're making now."
"We've talked about that, John. You know it's not the money."
"Jayell, don't kid me. I know you're hanging by your fingernails. Any day now you're gonna stretch a little too far and your creditors are gonna clean you out! Besides, how many of these things can you build on what you're clearing? Now, you come and get a-hold of this Abbeville thing and get it rolling, and in the meantime we'll feed some of your ideas to our boys in Miami. Let them look them over, test the marketability, and if they think you've got something, hell, we can turn 'em out by the hundreds. We're interested in the low-income housing market too. If it doesn't work out, you've made a little extra money, and you can go right on building your houses. No harm done."
Jayell looked at Gwen, whose eyes were dancing with excitement. "John, I'm just not ready yet, and I don't know how I want to handle it when I am ready. What you say is true, I am hanging by my fingernails, but if there's any way to do it on my own, that's the way I want to go."
Mr. Wyche was scribbling on the back of a business card. "Had to have my home number unlisted—wife's orders—but you can reach me here anytime." He handed the card to Jayell. "You think it over, Jayell, that's all I ask, talk it over with this lovely lady, and you change your mind, you give me a call." He turned to Gwen and took both her hands in his. "Miss Burns, it's been a genuine pleasure. Incidentally, my son, Carl, is eagerly looking forward to trying out for the senior class play this year. Now I can well understand his sudden interest." He turned and walked quickly back to his car, leaving Gwen with an expression of surprise and pleasure.
Jayell chuckled. "If a six-foot-two linebacker turns up at the tryouts, digging his toe and looking like the last man at the Little Big Horn, that'll be Carl."
"Jayell, I don't think you're being fair."
"Ah, John's all right. He just oversells sometimes."
"It sounds like a great opportunity to me. Why don't you take a breather, go to work for them awhile and put some money in the bank. Your boys can keep this going on the side, can't they? Then, when the financial pressure is off somewhat, you can attack it again. You just need a rest, Jay."
Jayell nodded. "But when you've accustomed yourself to sleeping on the floor, there's a danger in getting in a nice, warm bed. You don't want to get out again. If I had to go either way, though, I'd rather be out there with a construction gang than sitting in an architect's office, I know that."
"Jay, you have a blue-collar, with starch in it."
"Just a clodhopper, baby."
She put her arms around his neck. "And speaking of nice warm beds . . ."
Jayell kissed her. "Don't forget to leave your window unlocked tonight."
"Jayell, how much longer are we going to play that silly game? Why don't I just come down to the shop?"
"'Cause your bed's got springs! Besides, I kind of like being a porchclimber. Adds excitement."
"I'm convinced Mrs. Porter's putting a glass to the wall."
"Yeah? Well, tonight I'll throw her a few moans. Do her more good than her White River tonic."
"I wonder what we're doing for him?" Gwen nodded toward me. I got busy picking something from my sandwich.
Jayell laughed. "We probably just put him through puberty. Come on, big ears, let's go wreck a barn."
"Hey," said Gwen, "can I come too?"
"Ah-no," Jayell said quickly, "you might get hurt. Tearing down those old buildings can be tricky business."
"Well, you can't blame a girl for wanting to get out of doing lesson plans. Will you be late?"
"No, it's just behind the cemetery over the hill from the boardinghouse. I'll stop off and see you on my way back.
"Behind the cemetery!" I said.
Jayell shot me a glance. "Let's go." He kissed Gwen again and climbed into the truck. When we were out of earshot, I said, "The Boggs place? The barn's at Phaedra Boggs's place? No wonder you didn't want her to come along."
"Take your choice," Jayell said.
I kept my job.
Why Jayell broke up with blond, long-legged Phaedra was still a mystery to me and everybody else. She was far and away the most girl in Pollard County, in a rough-edged sort of way, and her reputation never seemed to bother Jayell; certainly it was no wilder than his, though it did run him a close second, and maybe surpassed him in certain particulars, but on balance they seemed made for each other.
As for me, I'd made every effort to avoid Phaedra ever since the time I jumped out of the hedge with a cap pistol and popped a couple of shots at her as she was passing the boardinghouse, and she took the pistol away from me and beat it to pieces against a rock.
There was another time, when I was seven and she was twelve, that we might have encountered each other, but after what happened before I was in no mood to help her. That was the night that the sheriff and a search party came by the house to look for Phaedra after she had been missing for a couple of days and her hysterical father, the cemetery caretaker, convinced the sheriff that one of the Ape Yard Negroes had dragged her off to the woods.
Em wanted us to go along with the men and help look for her. He said it would be good for me. But there was no way I would be caught near the woods at night, unless they dragged me. I had pretty well conquered my ghosts by that time by using the methods Em had taught me, but for some reason I could not go near the woods at night. There was no way to describe or explain to him the paralyzing dread that came over me at the sight of a clump of trees shadowed by dark. I would watch them from the window of the boardinghouse or the loft as the sun set, wondering about it, trying to recall some past incident that might have caused it, imagining the friendly trees as I knew them in the daytime, full of birds and squirrels, but nothing seemed to help. As the long shadows moved jaggedly into the fields, as the gloom slowly descended with malformed shapes of white limbs, and the stre
aks of dark hung like black tinsel among the trees, the cold, nameless dread came climbing as steadily as the blood coursing toward my heart. I tried not to make a big thing of it, but when we went on a hike through the woods, or inner-tubing down the river, I always carefully calculated the time and distance to be sure we would arrive at home before dark. Fighting Em down to the loft when he was drunk, I could sometimes forget, but usually I stayed the night in the loft after I got him there. And those nights I had to get him from Dirsey's and follow him on his rampages along the river, through the nightmarish world of licking tongues, of hostile creatures that touched and rubbed and skittered away and sat watching behind trees and under branches and climbed gleefully to warn others of my approach and wait ahead in other gangs for that one moment when they could get me alone—they all come as fervently to life in my mind as they were in those early dark days of childhood.
So when the opportunity came to venture into the woods behind the cemetery in search of the girl who had busted my cap pistol, I let it pass. After half a night of searching, it was Em who finally found her, hiding in a boiler in the remains of Tyndall's still. She had run away from her father, she said, who had come home shot down on moonshine and stay-awake pills and, as usual, itching to beat somebody. He used to beat both her and her mother, Phaedra said, but since her mama had gotten sick Phaedra had to bear it all, and she was fed up. She wasn't going back home come hell or high water. Sheriff Middleton had told her she was either going home or to the girl's reformatory. She finally went home, but only after scorching Em's ears for bird-dogging her, and sinking her teeth in the sheriff's hand.
As Phaedra moved along three years ahead of me in school, having failed a couple of grades along the way, I watched in fascination as this tough, croaky-voiced girl with the stringy blond hair metamorphosed into a sleek, full-sweatered young woman. That froggy voice mellowed into a husky burr that did things to the hair on the back of your neck, and by the time she was thirteen she sported a figure that had the teachers lifting eyebrows at each other. And as she grew older, she grew wilder. There was a different sports car or hotrod buzzing over the hill through the cemetery almost every Saturday night, many of them belonging to sons of some of Quarry town's best families, to take her to the drive-in, to restaurants out of town, to the dances at Taylorsville—to take her anywhere, of course, but home.