Beach Music

by Pat Conroy

  That night in Reese County ten men in masks came for Tony Calabrese, and though he struggled, they beat him half to death with fists and ax handles. They burnt his car and his house and they drove him to the state line of New Jersey, where they dumped him bound up in an oyster sack and blind in one eye. The ten men who assaulted Calabrese were never caught but were well known among their fellow citizens, who believed in their hearts that Calabrese had received a well-deserved civics lesson in the Southern way of doing things.

  The evening after the trial my father presided over a formal dinner of local officials and their wives who were meeting at our house to plan a political fund-raiser for a young politician by the name of Ernest F. Hollings, who was planning to run for governor. News of Calabrese’s disappearance had reached Waterford and the sheriff had sent word that it might be wise to post a deputy at our house for the next week or so. Since my father felt no sense of danger in his hometown, he was not disturbed at all. But my mother was alarmed a great deal and as she prepared the meal that night, she checked all the approaches that led to the house and secretly put in a call to the sheriff to see if there was any late-arriving news about the abducted teacher. She was six months pregnant with my youngest brother, John Hardin, and she thought she knew much more intuitively than her husband how rural white people felt about the topic of integration. Dallas, Dupree, Tee, and I were put to bed early and all the locks were checked on the windows. The four of us had watched her break jelly glasses in the sink that afternoon and place the jagged fragments on the railing going around the veranda. As my mother took inventory of the situation, my father drank. The bourbon made him both self-righteous and less worried about the disappearance of Calabrese.

  Because of Jack Daniel’s, my father faced the evening unafraid; because of Jim Crow, Lucy put my brothers and me all in my room for safekeeping with the dog, Chippie, guarding the door.

  Lucy had set her dining room table with great care, and she watched the languorous, confident guests as they slowly drifted into the dining room toward the aromas of baked Cornish hens and wild rice and turnip greens. She watched Becky Trask and Julia Randel take their seats as elegantly as monarch butterflies settling on peonies, while their husbands held their chairs and the candelabra glowed.

  I was sound asleep when I heard Chippie rouse herself from my bed and walk over to stare out of the window into darkness. The hair on her spine stood out, erect, and there was a steady growl in her throat. Getting up and going to her, I stared out of the window and saw nothing in the moonless night. But I could not calm Chippie.

  “It’s nothing, Chippie,” I said, but the hair on Chippie’s neck said otherwise and there was a fierce humming in her throat that my words could not stifle.

  Suddenly a brick crashed through the downstairs window and landed squarely on the dinner table. Other bricks followed and I heard Becky Trask scream when one of them struck her on the shoulder and every chair was overturned in the frantic scramble to avoid that shower of bricks. The half-burned candles were strewn around the room and my father found himself pressed face to face with the town’s mayor, as a voice screamed out in the darkness, “We’ll kill you, you nigger-lovin’ judge. We’ll kill you dead.”

  Then a fusillade of rifle fire burst through the window and I heard the women screaming and the men shouting for each other to do something. Then I heard a shotgun go off just beneath my window and it seemed as though someone was on the porch firing at short range below me.

  “They’re gonna shoot us down like dogs right here on the floor,” I heard the mayor shout at my father and the shotgun rang out again as the attackers seemed to be running away into the night. Far off I heard a siren sound, which was answered by the steady, hysterical barking of Chippie, locked upstairs with my brothers and me.

  In silence, the guests were lying on the floor when they saw a shadow cross the threshold of the front door, and in the dim, sputtering light of candles, they watched as Lucy returned her stillsmoking shotgun to its rightful place in the closet by the front door. My mother understood the nature of the white people of Reese County far better than my father did with all his degrees and all the finesse he brought to bear in arcane areas of legal dissent.

  She had prepared the meal and loaded her shotgun just in case there were unwanted visitors who had come to do her family harm. She was firing from the hip when she first opened that front door and she would have killed any man she had encountered on that blacked-out veranda.

  The incident marked the first of many times that the town of Waterford would have to revise their opinion about my mother.

  My brothers and I heard the story of those night riders over and over again during our childhood. The bullet holes were never repaired in the dining room plaster or in the mantel over the fireplace. Those bullet holes served as sacred reminders that our father had the courage of his convictions and it was important to stand for something of great value in a society that had debased itself with the fury of its own worst instincts. They also reminded us of a father we could take pride in, even though it was a father we hardly remembered. The shotgun pellets from Lucy’s surprising fusillade remain embedded in three columns of the veranda as both mementos and lessons for us, her children, and a warning to those who would approach our house with malice and treachery in their hearts. They did so only at their own peril. The Calabrese trial was my father’s finest hour.

  I thought of those valiant days as I watched Governor Dick Riley take Lucy by the hand and escort her down the back steps to the applause of the crowd. Not bad for a redneck girl, Mama, I thought, as I watched Strom Thurmond kiss her hand and Ernest Hollings try to outrun Bishop Unterkoefler to get into the photographs that were being taken by newspapers from as far away as Charlotte. The Red Clay Ramblers broke into the “Tennessee Waltz” and Joe Riley, mayor of Charleston, danced with Lucy as other couples joined them. Tee made Leah put down the camcorder and dance with her “favorite” uncle. Before the day was out, Leah had danced with half the men in Waterford, growing dizzy trying to place the array of faces with her parents’ history in this small, two-steepled town that she could see through the arms of her ever-changing partners. I watched with a secret smile as she was spun across the lawn by the sweet-natured men who had grown up beside this river walking in and out of my life and Shyla’s.

  When the Ramblers began a set of beach music songs from the glory days of those long-ago Myrtle Beach summers, I put my chef’s toque down amid the plates of steaming pasta and ran out, with my apron flapping madly around my legs, and asked my mother for a dance. The song was “Green Eyes” by Jimmy Ricks and the Ravens and it took me back to the pier at Folly Beach in the summer of 1969 when I had joined all my high school friends on a night ride up the cypress-columned Highway 17 in Capers’ new Impala convertible, eight of us drinking and singing along with a radio turned up full-blast as the air, scented with the black-water lilies of the Edisto River, rushed over us.

  I spun my mother into the applause and sunlight and watched Leah recording our dance with the camera as I sang the words of “Green Eyes” to my pretty mother. I closed my eyes and heard the rhythm of the song, and my mother’s hand transfigured itself into Shyla’s hand and my feet moved along the grass as they had along the wooden floor of the Middletons’ house with the Atlantic moving to the music beneath us so many years ago. That was a time when our love was an outline and a concordance yet to be agreed on and Shyla’s laughter as she danced while our classmates screamed their fear at us was an invoice of collusion and promise of things to come. Shyla wrote a love song that night with her eyes every time she looked at me. She made my bloodstream feel like the place that the gods had to find before they could discover fire. My love for Shyla was different from the love I felt as I danced with my mother, yet there was a relationship that burned with a clear, rough energy within me. The connection felt absolutely sacred to me between the woman who had given birth to me and the woman who had given birth to my sweet-faced Leah w
ho was now filming this dance. Is there anything on earth more lovely than a son dancing with his mother famous for her small-town beauty? I thought, and I tried to take the thought even further. I felt lucky that I could love Lucy with a pure, uncorrupted love because she was the sole possessor of the only mother’s face I would ever know. The word “mother” applied to a single woman on earth and it hurt me deeply that I had become a fugitive from this woman’s confusion about how to love a son. Because of Lucy’s extraordinarily tangled character, I knew that mothers could come in a dazzling assortment of disguises … I felt a tap on my shoulder and Dallas asked to cut in on this dance and then I saw Tee and Dupree getting in line to follow suit. After she danced with each of us she could dance with the rest of the menfolk in town, but then I looked around and noticed that my father seemed everywhere in his unsolicited but welcome role of gray eminence. He roamed through the crowd with the bearing and discipline of a ringmaster. Because of his sodden history, his sons kept a close watch on his every movement and traded hand signals with one another when he moved out of one brother’s quadrant of vision and into another’s purview. After a lifetime observing my father get drunk and the inestimable horror he could wreak on all the lives he staggered into, I had come to understand why the military shot their guards who fell asleep on duty during wartime. I had seen my father ruin a dozen parties as nice as this one.

  But he was managing to gain perfect control over himself for Lucy’s party, even though his sons had suggested the wisdom of leaving off our father’s name from the guest list. But Lucy had stopped by the law office and issued the invitation in person. Privately she told me they had talked together for over an hour, and that meeting had thrilled the judge because of its intimacy and its validation of their years together.

  “Your mother’s quite a package, son,” my father said to me.

  Lovingly, I answered him by saying, “Get drunk and I’ll kill you.”

  “I wouldn’t think of getting drunk at my own wife’s party,” he said with maddening piety.

  But my father was making good on his word, and he moved from group to group with the dignity of a minister of protocol. He was dressed in an immaculate white summer suit. Carefully, he avoided the central action where Lucy and Dr. Pitts held court, but he conducted himself with impeccable charm and grace.

  “What a handsome man,” I heard someone say to Ledare, and I noticed that Leah kept the camera on her grandfather whenever he glided into view.

  When the Red Clay Ramblers broke into their rendition of Bert Kaempfert’s “Wonderland by Night,” my brothers looked quickly toward the band, each of them sharing the same thought I had, that money had exchanged hands. It was my parents’ favorite song to slow-dance to, and I held my breath as I watched the judge approach my mother from across the yard.

  He bowed deeply at my mother, who stood beside Dr. Pitts; she curtsied in return. My father asked the doctor if he could have permission to dance with his pretty wife, and the doctor made a sweet, accommodating gesture with his arm. They spun out toward the lawn, my father swinging my mother in the broad, show-offy rendition of what had once been a simple waltz. Every other dancer moved to the side, and I could not bring myself to look at my brothers while our parents danced. I could not have spoken to another human being during their two minutes spinning on that well-manicured grass. That they danced so beautifully together moved me greatly; that their lives together had been such a perfect disaster shook me more; that these were my parents almost brought me to my knees. I followed them with my eyes and knew that the dance meant as much to both of them as it did to their sons.

  At the end of the dance, my father led her back to Dr. Pitts and the two men embraced and Lucy led the crowd in its applause.

  Mike and Ledare came up beside me and we stood together, our arms draped over each other’s shoulders as the Red Clay Ramblers went classic with the beach music and moved right into “Sixty Minute Man” as the crowd roared its approval.

  “My song. My song,” Mike said, shimmying out and motioning for Ledare to join him. Ledare moved out to meet him with the confidence of a cat measuring the distance between the floor and a tabletop.

  “What a good-looking woman,” I shouted at her.

  “Damn right,” she said. “Glad you noticed.”

  “Who sang this song? This holy, holy song that should be written down and placed in the Talmud?” Mike asked.

  “I know. Give me a minute,” Ledare said.

  “It was Billy Ward and the Dominoes,” I said.

  “Jack’s my main man,” Mike said. “The past is as sacred to Jack as it is to me. Marry me, Ledare. You’re the only woman I know that I haven’t been married to.”

  “Could I make you happy, Mike?” Ledare asked.

  “Of course not. Because I’d still be me. Trapped with the mind and soul of Mike Hess, who is satisfied with nothing. Who looks all over the world trying to be as happy as he was growing up here as a kid.”

  “I want to make someone happy,” Ledare said. “I might even have a gift for it.”

  “Good line. Put it in the script. Nah. I like you far too much to marry you. My ex-wives hate me. They’re all millionaires living better lives than Louis Quatorze and they all hate my guts. Go figure. Then call my accountant. He’s the one it really bothers. Hey, Grandma, let’s trip the light fantastic, darling.”

  Mike moved over with Ledare in tow and lifted Esther Rusoff out of her seat as she protested every step of the way. Ledare reached out and took Max Rusoff by the hand and all of them moved among the low country dancers.

  “Make sure you film this, Leah,” I said. “Ledare dancing with the Great Jew. Mike dancing with Esther, wife of the Great Jew.”

  I spotted Capers and his child-bride Betsy, making political hay as they worked the crowd together. Their smiles were congruent as though the same orthodontist had set their teeth using the same wiring. They moved like a pair of lions on the hunt, all concentration and feral grace. They sprang in tandem toward the flanks of voters. Periodically, I would see their eyes meet and a flash of recognition pass over them, acknowledging to each other that they made a good team.

  “Betsy,” I said, when they approached my table. “Does your insecurity come from long practice? Or was it just a natural gift?”

  Betsy’s eyes flashed with anger, but she was far too polished to rise to my bait.

  “Oh, Jack. I was just talking about you. I do hope you’ve already purchased your ticket back to Italy.”

  “You’re good, Betsy,” I said. “What a shame this beautiful friendship’ll wither from neglect.”

  “It will if I’ve got anything to do with it,” she said.

  “I like it when you’re mean, Betsy,” I said. “It excites me.”

  “Don’t let my old friend Jack get a rise out of you, darling,” Capers said. “It’s me he’s got a problem with.”

  “Glad that’s straight,” I said.

  “I hear that my ex has her eye on you, Jack,” Capers said.

  “I sure hope so.”

  “That would make us related, in a way,” he continued.

  “Yes of course it would,” I said. “We plan to name our first kid after you.”

  “How flattering,” he said.

  “I just don’t think Enema’s a very pretty name. Do you, Betsy?”

  “Jack, Jack,” Capers said. “Your manners.”

  “Excuse me, Betsy,” I said. “What got into me?”

  “I can’t believe you once actually liked this guy,” Betsy said to Capers.

  “You misjudge me,” I said in mock horror. “Once I reminded all the world of the Christ Child. Then I read Das Kapital.”

  “I’m trying to think of where I’ve met a bigger asshole,” Betsy said.

  “In church. Waiting at the altar. Your wedding day, sweetie,” I said.

  Betsy seemed ready to explode, but instead she spotted a friend across the crowded yard and moved toward her, a huge smile lighting her
way.

  “Betsy’s perfect for you, Capers,” I said. “I think that’s the worst thing I’ve ever said about anyone.”

  Both of us stopped when we saw Mike Hess beaming down on us.

  “Your mother’s having the time of her life,” Mike said.

  I looked out where my mother stood in a crowd of admirers and old friends. “She’s having a ball. Thanks for doing this, Mike.”

  “I used to get a hard-on thinking about Lucy,” Mike told Capers. “But hell, who didn’t?”

  “Mike says the sweetest things,” I said.

  “It’s easy to be pretty,” Capers said. “But being sexy’s an art.”

  “You should know, Capers. You’re both,” Mike said.

  “A gene pool’s the highest-priced waterfront property.” Capers laughed, then asked me, “You hear about Thursday?”

  I shook my head and Mike said, “I told Ledare to tell you to keep Thursday evening open.”

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “A sound-and-light show,” Capers explained, walking toward Strom Thurmond’s limousine as it pulled up to the senator.

  “I can’t tell you,” Mike said. “Capers doesn’t even know the specifics. But it’s going to be big. Maybe one of the biggest nights in all our lives.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Jordan called,” Mike said. “He wants us all together one more time.”

  “I thought he was in Europe,” I said, shaken by this information.

  Mike laughed and said, “I bet you’re lying, Jack. But don’t worry about it. Jordan got in touch with me. I didn’t have any luck at all trying to hunt him down.”

  “Where are we going to meet?”