by Robert Inman
“Yeah.” And then he told Eugene about the Sunday that never seemed to end, Alma marching out of church and Joe Pike’s sermon and then Alma trying to burn down the mill. Recounting it, he was struck by how nightmarish it seemed now, by how profoundly the earth had shaken in Moseley, Georgia in the space of one day. He realized in the telling that it sounded like Eugene had brought down the temple on everyone’s head with one photograph on the front page of the paper. But it wasn’t so. The fault lines had been there all along. All it took was a nudge.
“I didn’t know about the thing at the mill,” Eugene said, staring into his coffee cup. “Dad didn’t tell me that.”
“Aunt Alma talks all the time, or used to, about you and me running it one of these days.”
Eugene didn’t say anything for a long time. His finger traced a circle around the rim of his cup. His brow furrowed. Finally, he looked up at Trout. “It’s all gone,” Eugene said quietly. “You realize that, don’t you?”
“Gone?”
“The mill hasn’t turned a profit in five years,” Eugene went on. “Maybe longer. But Mom just kept on running it full-tilt and selling stuff at a loss and using up the cash reserves. She plowed ahead like nothing was wrong, sending everybody in the family their checks, keeping up appearances, holding it all together somehow. Until now.”
“The union…”
“Wardell and the rest of them are just chasing their tails,” Eugene interrupted. “There’s nothing to unionize. The cash is gone and the only way to keep going is to borrow. And no Moseley ever borrowed a dime. It’s an article of faith. Mama’s darn sure not going to borrow money to pay for a union.” He paused, then shook his head. “Funny. Wardell wants a union because he thinks things are so bad. Well, they’d be a darn sight worse if Mama hadn’t kept the mill running like she has. Wardell’s about to find out what bad is.”
At first, Trout was stunned. And then lights went on, bells rang, pieces fit. Watch and listen, Phinizy had said. Trout had, and he realized that he had known more than he thought. The pained, frightened looks in people’e eyes, the fierce clutching at myth and symbol. What it amounted to, he could see now, was desperation -- the acts of people trying to save themselves. Save your own ass, Uncle Phinizy had said. Well, that’s what all the rest of them were doing, whether they knew it or not. Phinizy, Joe Pike, Alma, even Cicero, with their hauntings and agonies and dreams. Maybe Wardell Dubarry and his daughter too. Everybody scrambling for the lifeboats.
“Who else knows about all this?”
“Dad. Judge Tandy, probably. He does all the legal work.”
“My dad?”
“I don’t know. Uncle Joe Pike’s got his own problems I suppose.”
“Yeah. Uncle Phinizy?”
“Not all of it, I don’t think. But he suspects a lot.”
“Yeah.”
“And now, Keats.”
“You told her?”
“Yes.”
“What’s going to happen?” Trout asked.
“I suppose they’ll lock the door and turn out the lights. Mom and Dad will be okay. Dad’s done really well. Real estate, stocks and bonds. People have no idea.”
No they didn’t, Trout thought. He wondered what might happen now to Cicero’s Do-It-All, to the notion of economic transformation in weary, down-at-the-heels Moseley, especially with the mill and its wages gone. It seemed the height of futility.
Cicero had obviously known all along what was going on with the mill and the Moseley family money. Had he bought into the charade simply to keep peace? Or had he loved Alma enough that he was unwilling, even unable, to hasten the inevitable. Surely, what Alma had done had been foolish -- clutching at blind hope and some terribly warped notion of what it meant to be a Moseley, letting the ghosts of Moseleys past run her life. Surely, Cicero could see it. But he had either ignored or helped stave off the inevitable. To confront it would have meant admitting that the temple was rotten and crumbling. And that would have broken her heart, as Trout had seen it broken last night in the mill. Cicero might be something of a fool for doing what he did. But a man would be a fool for a woman, Trout Moseley knew that. And it stood to reason that a woman might also be a fool for a man. He just hadn’t seen that side of it yet.
Eugene stood. “Well, I’ve got to go to work.”
Trout realized he didn’t know what Eugene did for a living. “Where?” he asked.
“The studio.”
“Are you an artist?”
“Film and video production.”
Then he remembered -- he and Eugene, playing TV station years before. Eugene organized everything. He combed Trout’s hair and put some of Alma’s pancake makeup on him. He made a camera from a cardboard box with an old toilet paper tube as a lens. Then Eugene manned the camera while Trout read articles from the newspaper. When Eugene eventually grew up and went off to college, Aunt Alma insisted he major in pre-law. But in the end, Eugene had obviously done what he wanted.
Trout indicated the condo. “I guess you’re doing okay.”
“I’m having fun,” Eugene smiled down at him. “You ought to try it, Trout.”
He turned to go, but stopped in the doorway. “Keats is a neat kid. If she has half a chance, she’ll make something of herself. She’s got a lot of spirit.”
“Yeah. She does.”
Eugene studied him closely. “She likes you a lot. I guess you know that.”
He woke Keats an hour later with coffee. She was nestled like a burrowing rodent in the double bed in the spare bedroom. She sat up quickly, startled from sleep, and stared at him uncomprehendingly. She was wearing one of Eugene’s shirts.
“Hi,” he said.
She took the cup without speaking and drank several sips. Then she said, “Hand me my crutches.”
He watched at she tottered off unsteadily to the adjoining bathroom. Bare legs, a sliver of white panties showing beneath the hem of the shirt. She came back after a moment and sat on the side of the bed next to him, propping the crutches next to her, looking much improved. She drank more of the coffee.
“I’m a good sleeper and a bad waker,” she said.
“Have you called your folks?”
“No.”
“Are you going to?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She looked down at her hands. “Because I’m scared.” It was, he thought, an incredibly naked confession for someone like Keats Dubarry.
“Scared of what?” he asked.
She looked at him harshly. “Do you know what’s going to happen? Do you, have any idea of the kind of pain and agony that’s coming?” He didn’t answer. “No, I guess you don’t,” she said with a sneer. “You folks up there in the big house, you’ll do just fine. Us pore white trash down in the mill village are out on our butts. No jobs, no place to live, no nothing. Can you imagine what this is going to do to my daddy?”
“But you said he ought to get out of there and find another job,” Trout reminded her. “You said he’s good with his hands.”
“It’s losing,” Keats said. “That’s what he won’t be able to stand. Losing to the Moseleys. Every time he looks at me a little bit of what’s good and kind about him dies. And a little more hatred for the goddamn Moseleys takes its place.” She turned away from him with a jerk, quivering with rage. He thought for a moment she might cry, but then he knew she would not. She had learned from Wardell Dubarry that anger would keep you going when nothing else could.
“Keats,” he said after awhile, “I’m sorry. I really am. I don’t want anybody to be hurt. Not you, not your family, not my family. I just don’t know what to do.”
She turned back to him then and gave a weary sigh. “I know.”
Impulsively, he put his arm around her shoulders. He didn’t know how she might take it, but she looked at him strangely for a moment and then she rested her forehead against his and slipped into the crook of his arm and he put his other arm around her, encircling, protecting. He clos
ed his eyes and they sat that way for a long time and there was no sound but their breathing. Then he opened his eyes and saw her legs, bare below the shirt. They were firm and strong and smooth. Whatever damage the truck had done, it was not there. He felt a rush of blood to his face and his breath quickened and his head spun and his stomach did little dipsy-doodles. “I’m really glad you came,” he said hoarsely.
Her lips were incredibly soft. He disappeared into them, like falling from a great distance into a cottony cloud, and he only faintly heard the clatter of the crutches as they fell to the floor. He fell and fell and the cloud that was Keats caught him and held him and then they fell together, through rain and then sun, crying out to each other like winged things. And when they landed finally, entwined and enthralled, the earth swallowed them in all its soft, lush greenness.
They huddled together like puppies, sharing warmth and security, not speaking for a very long time. Trout was astonished. That was the only word for it.
So that’s what it was. That’s what everybody made such a big deal about. Well, he thought with a smile, it was indeed a very big deal. It was not just the joining. That happened so quickly, so awkwardly it was almost embarassing. No, it was what the joining meant. You truly stepped out of yourself for the very first time in your life and entered a communal space where you willingly gave up something of your innermost self and were given to in return. It was something you could never adequately explain to a friend, even one who had engaged in the same act. Because it wasn’t just an act. It was…astonishment.
She stirred in his arms, flesh on flesh. He felt immensely tender, almost to the point of tears. He kissed her hair and she raised her head from the crook of his arm where she nestled.
“Did you…” he started.
But she put her fingers quickly over his mouth. “No questions,” she said.
And they slept.
It was almost noon. She sat up in the bed and moved away from him a bit, and when he finally opened his eyes she was sitting cross-legged, studying him. Every inch, head to toe and back again, seeming to absorb the minutest detail. Her eyes stopped just below his waist and lingered there and it was almost like a touch. He stirred. She smiled.
“Well, now you know,” he said, returning the smile. He should feel incredibly self-conscious, he thought, should make some frantic move to cover himself. But he didn’t feel that way at all. He felt freer than he had in a very long time, perhaps ever. He felt that he was letting go of a lot, easing out from under the peddler’s sack of stuff he had been carrying around. He reached for her, but she gripped his wrist and stopped him.
“Let me draw you,” she said.
“Will it make me feel famous?” he asked.
She smiled again. “Of course.”
FIFTEEN
It was a light, cheerful room with the walls painted a pale yellow, bright flowered-print curtains at the window and a matching bedspread, pictures of birds and woodsy scenes on the walls. There was a nightstand by the bed, a chest of drawers, a small table that served as a desk. The stack of books on the desk included a couple of novels (she was partial to Anne Tyler and Walker Percy), a typing manual similar to the one Trout had used in class at Ohatchee High, and a volume on organic gardening.
The desk also held a portable typewriter and beside it, a thin stack of typed sheets. He thought of reading them while he waited, but decided against it. Whatever she had written, it was private. And in a place like this your private thoughts would surely be intensely personal and even painful, part of whatever it was they did here to help you save yourself. There was much he wanted to know, but he didn’t want to find it out that way. It would be dishonest. So he stood instead at the window looking out at the shaded grounds, the long oak-lined driveway that led to the main building across the way where the motorcycle was parked and where Keats waited inside.
Keats. He tried not to think about her, because this -- this room and what it meant -- was why he had come. But he couldn’t not think about her. Every nerve ending tingled with the feel and smell and taste of her and he felt light, floating, helium-filled, abstracted. He shook his head, trying to rid himself for a little while of the images. There would be plenty of time for that.
Back to the room. She might not come. They had told her that Trout was here, but she might decide not to see him. It wouldn’t be because she didn’t love him, but because she just wasn’t ready yet. And if she did come, what to say? What to tell? What to ask? He was afraid it would all rush out in a great blur of words, all the wrong ones as well as the right ones. He might frighten her. Or bring on one of the great black silences that had so frightened him in the days before they took her away.
It was so quiet he could hear his heart pounding. He turned on the clock radio on the bedside table. It was tuned to the Atlanta oldies station. Patti Page sang “Old Cape Cod” and he thought suddenly of the beach. He must have been two or three -- spooked by the waves that pounded the sand and swirled up around his legs. He cried and Joe Pike picked him up and held him and then walked into the water to show him it was all right. But every time a wave broke, Joe Pike, unthinking, turned his back and Trout got a face full of salt water that stung his eyes and made him bellow with terror. And Irene had come to rescue him.
He heard the door open behind him, but he was unable to move -- stricken suddenly by the fear of what he might see, what she might be. Oh God...
“Trout,” she said softly. He turned slowly and saw that she was small and beautiful and filled with light, even if there were tiny lines etched around her eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there before. She was as he remembered, as he had hoped, only different. But not so much that it mattered. And then she took him in her arms and rescued him again, if just for a little while.
“You know? All of it?”
“Yes,” she said.
“How?”
“Cicero. He calls just about every day.”
Trout was stunned. Cicero had never mentioned Irene except in the most oblique and offhand way. But all the while, he was giving her a link with the world she had escaped.
“And Phinizy calls sometimes,” she added. “Mostly just to see how I’m doing and to tell me about something he’s been reading.”
“They let you talk on the phone?”
“Of course, honey. It isn’t a prison.”
They sat together on a concrete bench in the shade of a tree just outside her cottage. The afternoon was warm, but her touch was cool as she smoothed his hair and caressed his cheek.
“Dad said the doctors didn’t want anybody to come see you.”
Her face clouded. “What they tell you here is that you have to take responsibility for yourself. You can’t depend on anybody else or blame anybody else. You have to wrestle with who you are and come to grips with that.” She hesitated, searching his face for some sign of comprehension. “Do you understand that?”
“I guess so.”
“I’m wrestling. And it just seemed better to do it by myself.” She smiled. “But now you came. I’m glad. It was time.”
“Are you well yet?”
She pondered that for a moment. And then, without exactly answering his question, she told him about her long pilgrimage -- medication, electroshock therapy, a lot of talk, the gradual return of awareness and interest. It was like being a baby chick inside a shell, she said. She hadn’t wanted to come out for a good while. The world was too fierce and demanding. But then one day, almost by accident, she had pecked at the shell and a splinter of light had broken through and the journey began. It was often painful, often terribly so. “Honesty,” she said with a rueful laugh, “really sucks.” There were setbacks, days when the old curse returned. But there were fewer and fewer of those now.
“When can you come home?” he asked tentatively.
“I don’t know, Trout.”
Don’t know when? Or don’t know if? “Can I come stay here with you?”
“No, honey,” she said gently. “They
wouldn’t let you do that.” She looked away, out where the sun, almost directly overhead, splattered stretches of grass between the trees with a bright, hot light. It was quiet here, sheltered, the noises of Atlanta beyond the grounds of the Institute only a faint murmur.
“Dad needs you,” Trout said tentatively.
She looked back at him. “Dad needs…” But then her voice trailed off and she was lost in thought. It dawned on Trout that whatever great chasm of need that existed between them might be unbridgeable, maybe even unknowable. I am, Joe Pike had said, part of the problem. Maybe most of it. Trout felt a hollow sickness at his core, a dawning awareness that things might never be a great deal better, that she might never come all the way back and Joe Pike might spin off like a runaway meteor into nothingness. And he, Trout Moseley, sixteen years old and ancient in his battered soul? What? What?
“Mom,” he said, his voice small and distant. “I’ve got to know. Was any of it my fault?”
She pulled him close, pressed his head against her chest and held him for a long time. He could hear the beating of her tiny heart, a bird’s heart. He felt hollow. And pointless. She might never tell him. She might not be able.
But after awhile she said, “I’ve had a lot of time to think about what happened, honey. You think about everything, all the possibilities. I wondered for awhile if it was just that I didn’t want to be a mother, didn’t want the responsibility. I wondered if I was a coward. But then I thought of how much I love you. How could I not want to be your mother? You are the most precious thing in the world to me, Trout. No, sweetheart, none of it is your fault. I may have failed as a mother, but you didn’t fail as my son.”
“You didn’t fail, Mom,” he protested.
“I left. It’s a kind of failure.”
He raised up and looked her in the eye. “But why?”
She thought about it for a moment, closed her eyes, sighed, opened them again. “I left because I just couldn’t handle things any more.” She paused again, searching for words, for a beginning, perhaps. “Has Dad ever told you anything about his father?”