Beach Music

by Pat Conroy

  We waited—wordless—and the cameras rolled unnoted all around us.

  Something was keeping us from talking to one another. A presence had come onto that stage unbidden and invisible. As long as it lay there undetected there would be no armistice among us. I had not felt the presence of this ghost for so long it took me a while to recognize its demoralizing ascension. Then I saw it, and could recognize it as an old friend that had trailed us to this stage.

  “Hello, Vietnam,” I said to myself. “Long time no see.” Yet it inked its shape in the tissues of the silence that held us in its tense concentric folds. As a country, Vietnam was not important; but as a wound, it was unbearable. We could not run far enough away from it; it followed us on stumps and crutches, prided itself on being omnipresent and inescapable. Though I had hated that war with my body and soul, I realized sitting there that Vietnam was still my war. I had blamed it for the great unraveling it had brought to America, the self-doubt, the breakdown of courtesy, the death of form, and the falling apart of all the old truths and the integrity of both law and institutions. Everything came up for grabs. Nothing survived the cut. The facile and the cheap became celebrated and the speech of idiots took on a benighted, kingly quality. Solidity was a concept found only in physics textbooks. Indifference took center stage and it was hard to believe anything. God pulled back. I had searched the whole world for something to believe in and I had come up empty-handed every time. “Hello, Vietnam,” I said again to myself. “Time for us to make friends,” as I waited for one of us to find our voice.

  Finally, someone spoke and I was surprised to hear Capers Middleton’s voice. “What was all this really about? I’ve heard everything and I still don’t understand it. I need help with this. I truly do.”

  “That’s how life goes,” General Elliott said. “There are no guarantees.”

  “How convenient for you to say that,” his wife, Celestine, said. “Avoid responsibility. Spread the blame. Like you’ve always done.”

  “What I’d like you to know …” Capers began.

  “You’re too hard on yourself …” Betsy said, taking her husband’s arm.

  “No, let me say this,” Capers said and he looked as troubled as I have ever seen a man look. “I had no idea how this would turn out. I’d’ve done it all differently. I had no idea it could lead to all this. It hurt people I thought the world of. It won’t let go of me. It’s always there.”

  “I’m a lot easier on myself,” Radical Bob Merrill said with an easy grin. Unlike the rest of us, Jordan’s recitation had no emotional impact on him at all. “I did what I thought was right back then. Hindsight’s groovy, but a total waste of time.”

  Mike Hess, the producer again, snapped his finger and said, “Bye-bye, Radical Bob. Go back to the hotel. Enjoy dinner and fly back into your life. You’re dismissed.”

  Bob Merrill rose up and walked off, stage right, and out of our lives, forever. No one watched him go or even said good-bye.

  “Okay,” Mike said, facing the rest of us. “We need an ending to all this. Got to find an ending. Let’s help each other out now.”

  “It got away from me, Dad,” Jordan said to his father. “Nothing was clear to me.”

  “The times were folded wrong, odd. You couldn’t hold them up and look at them. Things happened too fast,” Ledare said.

  “You weren’t even alive then, Ledare,” Mike said. “That was one spaceship you didn’t ride.”

  “I was watching,” Ledare said. “I inherited Capers, pulled him out of the wreckage. I think he suffered from all we’ve just listened to. I didn’t think Capers could ever forgive me for loving him after what he did to his friends.”

  “I don’t think you know the real Capers,” Betsy said, rushing to her husband’s defense.

  “I’m guilty of a little insider trading there,” Ledare said. “I’ve got more than a passing acquaintance of your boy there.”

  “That wasn’t the real Capers,” Betsy insisted. “Not the one I know.”

  “No, honey,” Capers said. “They knew that was the real me. I’m asking them to accept that part of me. It was there all the time and all of them knew it. What I didn’t know is that it had the power to hurt my friends. I ruined Jordan Elliott’s life. Look what I did to his parents.”

  Betsy let the words settle, then said, “You’ve always been your own harshest critic.”

  “Shut up, Betsy,” Mike Hess said. “Pretty please, but shut up.”

  “Can there be forgiveness?” Capers asked. “That’s what I have to know.”

  “You? Asking forgiveness of them?” General Elliott said, in disbelief. “You’re the only one on this stage who conducted yourself with honor in this whole affair.”

  “What would you know about honor?” Celestine asked her husband. “Tell us all you know about the subject, darling. Tell it to the wife and son you betrayed.”

  “Dad was true to his code, Mom,” Jordan said. “He betrayed no one.”

  “Harsh code,” I said.

  “I didn’t understand it either,” Jordan admitted, “until I met a couple of Jesuits in Rome.”

  Father Jude and the abbott laughed, but the joke was too ecclesiastical for the rest of us.

  “Jordan,” Ledare said, “did you become a priest because it was the best place to hide from the past?”

  “No,” he said. “It was the best place to hide from the present. And from myself. But I grew into my vocation, Ledare. I was born to be a priest, but I had to kill two innocent people to find that out.”

  “Why didn’t you just say an extra rosary, son?” the general asked sarcastically. “It would’ve saved two lives and the Marine Corps a plane.”

  “I wish it happened that way, Dad,” said Jordan, his hands folded across his lap.

  “What a shame you lacked character,” General Elliott said to his son.

  “It wasn’t character I lacked,” Jordan said. “It was moderation.”

  “Leave my son alone,” Celestine said.

  “He’s my son too,” the general said.

  I said, “Then act like it. Look at him when he speaks, General.”

  “I can’t help who I am,” General Elliott said directly to me.

  “Nor can I, Dad,” Jordan said quietly.

  Celestine rose to her feet and approached her husband fiercely. “Don’t you see it, Rembert? It’s so obvious now. No one could’ve acted in a different manner than they did. Fate’s a maidservant of character. Hired help and nothing else. You haven’t changed one degree since I met you. Look at you. Pure of spirit. Holier than thou. Watch your rigidity. I know what you’re after today. I don’t have to ask you. You don’t have thoughts, only patterns. You’d charge an enemy’s foxhole to save the lives of all of us here. But you’d charge it harder if you knew our son was hiding there. You want our boy in prison. You want him to rot in jail.”

  Jordan said, “I’m a monk, Mom. Cells hold no fear for me. It’s another place to pray in.”

  “You were stolen out of my life, Jordan,” she said. “I can never forgive him for doing that. And I never can forgive myself for letting it happen. I’m divorcing your father out of pure shame and exhaustion.”

  “You’re wrong to do that, Celestine,” the general said. “It’s not that you loved Jordan more than I did. It’s that you appeared to. That’s all. The appearances of things formed you. I admit that …”

  “Go on, General,” said Mike Hess, and it came out as an order, not a request.

  The general appeared surprised, then he went on. “I submit that I loved Jordan as much as my wife did. But within the restraints and limits of a man of my time. I was good at leading men into battle. Few men possess that gift. I could always connect with fighting men. A better father couldn’t have been as good a soldier.”

  There was a rap on the gavel and I heard my father speak. “You’re no longer a Marine, Rembert. That’s all over. What are you going to do about Jordan now?”

  “I’m go
ing to hold him accountable,” the general answered.

  “I’ve seen something today that’s surprised me,” my father said, and suddenly I saw him look at me. “Jordan holds you in much higher regard than Jack holds me. Anyone can see that. Yet it seems to mean nothing to you.”

  “Jordan was raised to know right from wrong,” the general began, “but when his country called, he was absent.”

  “You mean the Vietnam thing?” Capers asked.

  “Yeh, the Vietnam thing,” the general answered. “You can’t help the generation you were born in. I’m grateful I wasn’t born in yours.”

  “Yeh, you came from great folks,” I said, nearly exploding. “Thanks for presenting my generation with that fabulous little war. We’ll die grateful that we tore into each other because you guys were stupid.”

  “It was too much war for you, Jack,” General Elliott said.

  I replied, “It was too little war for me, General. That’s what you don’t get.”

  “I was expecting more from you, Rembert,” my father said to the general.

  “You were expecting more of me?” the general asked, his voice stony.

  “Jordan came here because he wanted to tell you his story,” the judge said. “All the rest of us are superfluous.”

  “You fought the Germans in Europe, Judge. You were a decorated infantryman. What do you think about Jack and the others and how they responded when our nation needed them?”

  “I wouldn’t have done it their way,” my father admitted.

  “Indeed,” the general said.

  “But let’s be truthful. We’re holding them up to standards that no longer apply,” the judge said. “My son Jack stood up for what he believed in. That’s how he was raised.”

  I nodded my appreciation to my father and he returned it in kind. The general watched the acknowledgments pass between us.

  “Let’s be brutally honest,” the general said. “He was raised by the town drunk, Judge. Standards, you say? I doubt if you were sober long enough to know if Jack was in the house.”

  “Stand at attention when you talk to my old man,” I said to the general. “Ever talk to him like that again and I’ll mop the fucking floor with your cheekbones.”

  The gavel hammered again and my father said, “You’re out of order, Jack. The general made an excellent point.”

  “I’m very sorry for that, Johnson Hagood,” General Elliott said.

  “The heat of battle,” my father said generously. “No harm done. Apologize to the general, Jack.”

  “Sorry, Rembert,” I said, calling him by his first name for the first time in my life. “Got carried away.”

  “I like the thought of you wiping the floor with Rembert,” Celestine said, and Mike laughed out loud, cutting some of the tension that had built up.

  “I’ve missed you, Jordan,” Capers said, rising out of his seat and approaching the priest cautiously from the opposite side of the stage. “I can’t get over that y’all think I betrayed my best friends. I can’t think of myself like that. It goes against the grain. Shyla died without ever speaking to me again. I wrote her a letter once. Telling her I loved her, loved all of you. That none of us was responsible for what happened at Carolina. Shyla sent the letter back, unopened. Jack still can’t look at me without hating my guts.” Capers looked over at me and said, “Don’t deny it, Jack.”

  “You hear anyone denying it?” I said.

  “Shyla thought you loved her, Capers,” Ledare said. “A couple of us made that mistake.”

  “I was bad news for you, Ledare,” Capers said. “Every time I looked at you, it reminded me of how much I’d lost.”

  “Small potatoes, dear. All I gave up was my twenties and my belief in matrimony,” Ledare said. “Otherwise I came out without a scratch.”

  “I’m sorry. Please forgive me,” Capers said.

  “That’s enough, Capers,” Betsy said. “Don’t crawl. It doesn’t become you, darling.”

  “Whoa!” Mike said. “Pure ice, Betsy. An Eskimo girl couldn’t have said it better or served it up chillier.”

  “I’m sorry, Ledare,” Capers said. “When I left you I had started to notice that my life had gone wrong.”

  “Please save it, Capers,” I said. “Hypocrisy makes me weepy.”

  The gavel again—Dad. “Jack, if you can’t bring yourself to make peace with one of your best friends, then what hope does Jordan have with his father? How do we resolve this?”

  “The film’s running down. We need a wrap, people,” Mike said.

  I looked at my father and understood what was required of me this night, so I got up and faced Capers, who was still standing.

  “I’m sorry, Jack. So sorry,” he said to me. “I wish I could do it all again. I’d make everything right.”

  “When you’re governor, I’m sending you all my parking tickets,” I said.

  We shook hands and when we both felt that we meant it, we embraced.

  The general stood up and both Capers and I took our seats. He approached Jordan, who watched him come close without emotion.

  “You said this was a mock trial,” the general said to Mike. “I would like to cast my vote on the guilt or innocence of my son.”

  “Good,” Mike said. “But I’m the producer and the director. I’m casting mine first, General. But hell, you understand the chain of command better than anyone. Not guilty.”

  “Not guilty,” Ledare said, followed by Celestine saying the same thing.

  “Not guilty,” the abbott and Father Jude said. “Not guilty,” said Betsy and Capers.

  “Not guilty,” said my father, the judge.

  “Now it’s my vote,” the general said, and I thought I heard his voice crack.

  Celestine said to her son, who was meeting his father’s stare, “It’s not in him, Jordan. Love lies too deep for him. He can’t get to it.”

  “I can get there for him, Mom,” Jordan said. “It’s easy for me.”

  “I’m sorry, son,” the general said, but it was a father who was speaking now, not the general.

  Jordan covered his father’s mouth with his hand, with great gentleness. “No need for a vote, Dad. I know what it is. What it has to be. I came here to make it right with you. I’ve got to walk off this stage with a father in my life. I’ve proven that I can’t live without one.”

  “I can’t help who I am, son,” the general said when Jordan’s hand dropped.

  “Nor I who I am,” Jordan said.

  “Tell me you were wrong.”

  “I was very wrong, Dad,” the priest said. “My hatred of you got in the way. I should’ve followed the path you set for me. America’s a good enough country to die for even when America’s wrong. At least, for a boy like me. Raised the way you and Mom raised me.”

  “That’s far enough, Jordan,” I said. “It was a lousy war. Don’t make him rub your nose in it anymore.”

  “What can I do, Dad?” Jordan said, waiting for his father’s judgment.

  “Turn yourself in,” the general said. “If you do this, I’ll back you all the way. I’ll fight for you.”

  Jordan bowed before his father, assenting to his will. The two Trappists rose and walked toward him, both gaunt, prayer-weathered men. Jordan knelt and received both their blessings. The abbott then said, “Jordan had me call General Peatross at Pollock Island early this morning. I told him, General, that you’d be delivering your son to the provost marshal tomorrow at noon. General Peatross would like you to come by his office first. He says he knew Jordan as a child.”

  There was a muffled sob as Celestine Elliott left her seat and ran toward the darkness at the rear of the stage. Jordan followed her and we could hear him comforting his mother while the camera crew began to break up the set as the rest of us stood up in the middle of our actual lives. I watched my father walk over in his robes to comfort the general, who looked defeated and bereft after doing the only thing he could do.

  That evening, we ate dinner at Bet
sy and Capers Middleton’s beach house on Sullivan’s Island. I set up shop on the deck looking out to the ocean and grilled onions and eggplant, hamburgers and steaks and shrimp until everyone was full and happy and Mike and Jordan had to run out for some more beer. The Trappists had made their way back to Mepkin Abbey and my father had driven the general back to Waterford. Celestine chose not to attend the party, but the rest of us felt great relief in the gathering at the Middleton household. Ledare’s children, Sarah and young Capers, were glad to see their parents under the same roof, talking casually, and Betsy proved a good hostess as we gathered around the dining room table regaling each other with stories from the past. It was still strange for me to see Jordan out in public without looking over his shoulder or checking to see if someone had followed me to a secret rendezvous. A strange sense of freedom had come over him. He could not get enough of us. He drank us in, he fed on our spirits to the point of satiety. We gave ourselves to him and let him have this night completely.