Lookaway, Lookaway

by Barnhardt, Wilton

  The service began normally, with a prayer, with a hymn, and then he took the pulpit early in the order of service.

  The silence was heavy as a stone.

  “Heard any good stories lately? Anything in the news…”

  That got a few chuckles.

  “Well, here’s the inside story. We have a lot of guns in our family. Living in this part of the country, I don’t think growing up with rifles, shotguns, pistols, is all that unusual. Any gun owners out there?”

  Predictably, about a third of the men raised their hands. Bet it was more than that, but some gun owners were too paranoid to raise their hands; the minister might be working with leftist forces to confiscate their weapons, naturally.

  “When I was young my dad taught me how to shoot…”

  Okay, skeet shooting at the club, but if they got the impression that he, manfully, had a history of blowing away small animals in the woods, he would let them believe that.

  “… and as they say in those NRA gun-safety courses, as it has been drilled into me a thousand times: there’s no such thing as an unloaded gun. Right? So my father, you may, some of you, remember him, Duke Johnston, he was a Republican city councilman in Charlotte for many years. And he devotes himself now to the—well, you couldn’t call it a battle, it’s called ‘the Skirmish at the Trestle,’ where the locals faced down Stoneman’s Raiders out at the Catawba River. Every year around April, they open up those grounds and they have a small ceremony and my father…” Why was he sounding like some prep-school snot? My father. Oh Father, can’t I borrow the roadster for the regatta? “… Dad, he brings out all these antique guns and pistols and gets them ready for the big day, and they were lying out this Christmas, where our whole big family gathers every year for this incredible feed my mom puts on.

  “There are so many people named Johnston in the world, you might not connect that the defender of the Carolinas, the last general to face General Sherman, was my ancestor General Joseph E. Johnston. The Civil War didn’t end when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, it ended when my cousin, many times removed, surrendered to Sherman outside of Durham, sparing North Carolina the Sherman scorched-earth policy that South Carolina enjoyed. Charlotte, Raleigh, Salisbury, Gastonia, Lincolnton, all these old towns still standing and prosperous because General Johnston said, enough, it’s over.”

  He didn’t meet Kate’s eyes. He hoped she was smiling. Some actors say they can feel when they have the audience, that a kind of telepathy transpires where you’re linked—preachers have that, too. He felt the tide turning. He felt the old men who had written him off as some kind of liberal pantywaist taking another look, going, Well whadya know? He thought: this is Bo Johnston working the crowd here, running perpetually for class president of his high school, leader of the Student Association at Davidson, he can pander and manipulate with the best of them. He knows his audience and, when he wants to, he can push the right buttons. Republicans. Guns. Confederate sentiment.

  “And so, there we were, talking Civil War, and Jerilyn and her husband head off to my dad’s study where the guns are, and my little sister picks up a pistol—which should have been unloaded—and she’s waving it about joking about shooting Skip, my brother-in-law … and bang. The gun went off. And nobody was laughing after that. Skip will be all right. He’s in good condition at Presbyterian, and I think he has a sense of humor about it, bless him. I worry about Jerilyn. She can’t forgive herself quite yet. Truly it was a Christmas miracle that Skip is still with us. It’s also a miracle my little sister could get a shot off like that, one-handed.”

  Some real chuckles.

  “I hope these two newlyweds can survive this. You gotta admit, folks, that’s a strange start to a marriage: sorry about that time I shot you with that pistol from 1854…”

  Oh, you should have seen the congregation at the end of the service. An especially long line to shake hands, pat his shoulder, even the old goats who avoided him, who had pointedly refused to shake his hand, they were there. You hang in there, Reverend.

  He heard about how Leroy Hargett got shot by his little brother by accident when he was sixteen.

  He heard how Ray Crutchfield filled his father’s behind with buckshot the first time he went hunting. Hope this doesn’t turn into one more chance for the gun control people to talk about takin’ our guns, right?

  Elmer Gillette told him, Would’ve liked to have seen your father go on and run for mayor and then governor, son.

  Lucille Gerster looked like she might faint, like she was clasping the hand of a movie star: Had no idea about you and General Johnston—you gotta be proud to come from fine people like Johnston.

  And the old women, little hugs, little squeezes of the upper arm. I’m sure those lovebirds will get over it. Don’t let it depress you, it will all work out for the best.

  And from Ellie Ward Maynor, the snob of the church: Why Reverend, we didn’t know you were from an Old Charlotte family—why didn’t you say so?

  Kate hung back and let the lovefest continue.

  She couldn’t stop smiling and then laughing as they drove out to the nursing homes for the afternoon visits. “Wow,” she said, at last.

  “Stop saying that.”

  “Wow. That’s all I’m capable of saying.”

  “If I’d known I could bond with my congregation so well, I’d have had a family member shoot someone much sooner.”

  “It’s that they saw you were human, Bo. From a human family with human problems.”

  “No, that’s not it. They saw that I was just like them.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, they think I’m just like them in the bad ol’ Southern ways. Reactionary politics. Guns. Confederate sentiment. I won them over but it’s with a false image of Reverend Johnston.” And then after a second. “But that’s not true either, Kate. I am just like them. Old Bobby Denning and Al Gerster, rednecks hanging on to what’s left of white privilege, and Bo Johnston, who is white privilege. It was a great luxury to look down at these country rubes and feel because I’m going to vote for Barack Obama in next year’s primary that I was more evolved, but the truth is that my life, rich, white, privileged, sheltered, segregated my whole goddam life from black people, Mexican migrants, poor white people, real people—”

  “Whoa, hold on there, cowboy. You’re channeling Annie here—”

  “I AM their poster boy! I am what their politics derives from and hopes for, folks like me, to make me and my plutocratic existence possible.”

  Kate stared out the window. “I have quite a bit,” she said softly, “quite a bit to say on this topic. But it will have to wait until later when you’re a little less … enflamed.”

  They arrived at Mint Meadows, a retirement and convalescent home. It was outside of Mint Hill, North Carolina, but the idea of a mint-flavored meadow should have overruled the name of the place. It was not the nicest of homes, though the staff tried hard. Bo and Kate visited here first every Sunday and then finished up at the Presbyterian Home, always ending on the more monied, cheerier elderly community. A small bit of spiritual self-preservation in that. Kate would take the list of the male church members housed here, visiting each for a little while; Bo would take the women. Next Sunday they’d switch genders. They always brought a notepad since there were always small favors and requests, Life Savers, a magazine, could you see if my Social Security check was deposited, could you call my daughter and ask why she never visits?

  Bo enjoyed the visits, grimly. He passed Kate in the hallway intersections, and she was still eyeing him like he might not have returned to his right mind. They strolled by way of the cafeteria, the plastic Christmas tree and empty gift boxes underneath, just props, ancient tinsel and paper chains draped from the fluorescent lights.

  “Everybody holding on?” she asked.

  “Miss Grace is probably going to lose her other leg, she told me.”

  Diabetes. Plus recurring cancer and heart disease. Grace Hough lost
one daughter to diabetes 1, one son to the First Gulf War, one son to a liquor store holdup, and when her husband died, big-talking loudmouth Hank, he left her without a will. I mean what kind of villain assures his wife for thirty years that she’s taken care of and then doesn’t do it—no life insurance, dying intestate. The state is figuring out what she’s entitled to—a case going on for years now—because Hank Hough’s equally braying hillbilly sister is trying to get her hands on what little money there is. Miss Grace’s life is one long string of tragedies and buffooneries, and yet she’s so happy, so “blessed,” according to her own account. God doesn’t send you anything you can’t handle, she says.

  Bo hated that bullshit. God permits any number of things no human can handle, every day, all the time. Try that in Africa where a woman can see her twelve children die of AIDS or famine. A tsunami or a pandemic or an earthquake takes out one hundred thousand in a flash—what kind of “plan” is that? To choose to see a tornado or a flood wiping out a town as a sign, a message, a sign of disfavor, a chance for God’s faithful to dust off that faith and show God how well they can stick their heads up to get whacked again—how can anyone who knows God’s love choose to see it that way? When hundreds of thousands of faithful die … that ought to make any sensible person question that there is any plan, purpose, meaning or God. A meteor will come out of the sky and take out human life as we know it and somewhere, clinging to a fragment of the extinguished earth hurtling into the sun someone will chirp, God doesn’t send you anything you can’t handle! What does Annie call Him? The Mean Old Man in the Sky.

  “Poor Grace,” Katie said. “I’ll go see her during the week.”

  Bo didn’t say anything right away, and Kate recognized in his face the dark places he dwelled. “Joan Maurner,” Bo continued, “over at Presbyterian, is opting for more chemo. Don’t know if I told you. She’s down to a hundred pounds but she said she knows God wants her to fight this.”

  It was Kate’s turn not to say anything.

  “When it’s crunch time,” Bo said, meaning death, “so few Christians really believe there’s a world after this one. How they pray and plead not to have to go there and be with Jesus. We have to rally around the hospital bed and assure them more is coming. After eighty years, ninety years more, there’s more ahead, we promise! What could be more important than more of Hank Hough. Grace can ascend to heaven and shake her finger, oh Hank, you scamp, you left me with nothing! But we’re all together now with Jesus.”

  “I’m not sure Hank Hough is up there.”

  “Think how that would hurt Grace for him not to be there. He wasn’t worth a shit, but he means something to her. Maybe God will let him slide … or maybe Mr. Mims can be resurrected as a consolation prize.” Mr. Mims was Grace Hough’s cat who had to be put down—Bo took Mr. Mims to the vet for that purpose—just as she was losing her first leg; she was more upset about her seventeen-year-old cat than her leg, Bo recalled.

  “The trumpet will sound,” Bo went on, “and up from the grave in Grace’s backyard, Mr. Mims’s body will be made whole again.”

  “Stop.”

  Bo fell quiet.

  “Don’t mock a belief in an afterlife. If you’re going to be a Christian preacher, that is.”

  Bo found her hand and clutched it. He closed his eyes. “Kate. When you experience grace, you feel the presence of Jesus, don’t you? You sense a purpose and mission for your life.”

  “Yep. My grace is pretty much a steady state, but hey, kid, you had an actual voice-of-God moment. Praying in Duke Chapel,” she reminded him, as if he could forget the moment that committed him to this path. “You were lucky to have had a Saint Paul experience. Most of us…”

  “I was favored.”

  “Well, was it a con, or did you experience God or not? For your faith to sustain itself, does God have to keep performing special effects? Showbiz burning-bush moments—or can we tell the Lord that one revelation was blessing enough, and that your belief in God took.” She squeezed his hand. “You should not be freshly debating your faith every week, every hospital visit, every encounter with some dumb redneck in our church. Are you inside the House of God or are you outside? If you’re in, close the door behind you and roll up your sleeves.” She stood up. “There is so much work to be done.”

  Bo sighed. “Lots of servants of God doubted and debated and wrestled with the angel all their days.”

  “Yeah, that’s the Tortured Christian, and I was hoping not to be married to that guy.” She held out her hand again, and as he reached for it, she plunged her index finger between his neck and collarbone, under the minister’s collar, his most vulnerable spot. He sprung to life, tickled, laughing.

  “If anyone’s gonna torture you, Bo, it’s me.”

  Jeannette

  When her granddaughter shot her new husband, Jeannette Jarvis was down for her afternoon nap, which extended into evening because she had taken Christmas Dinner at Lattamore Acres—exiled from the family gathering—and the seared turkey and pecan and oyster stuffing and mincemeat pie with double Devonshire cream sent her into a blissful several-hour sleep. (Since the hiring of Olivier, their new chef, Lattamore Acres was every bit as good as some of these overpriced uptown restaurants that prey upon Charlotte these days, Jeannette was happy to tell anyone.) It was only when dear Mrs. Doaks knocked on her door to tell her that her family was on the local TV and that something bad had happened that she was roused to action. This turn of events made Jeannette Jarvis the subject of public interest again, her words and actions once again noted by the public. Well, didn’t such things come naturally to her?

  Jeannette strode through the main dining room of the retirement community the next day, marked, everyone staring, noticing her carriage and composure, wondering how she was bearing up. Jeannette wore her best violet pastel, somber but not lugubrious, light rather than dark, and an amethyst brooch passed down through her mother’s side of the family, the Jellicoes of Salisbury, to remind people of her station. All of Lattamore, even the old harpies she despised, knew to cease hostilities temporarily to express support, because a larger conflict loomed in these situations: good families made to look like bad families, the quality made sport of by the rabble.

  “In such a scandal,” said Mrs. Bryan, “I bet your daughter must be turning to you now, Jeannette.”

  Jeannette concurred with a hum that she was at the center of things. “There’s a phone call with new information every hour, but I advise as I can. There are lawyers, of course, who must be listened to.”

  But the truth was Jerene had barely said a word to her. Jerene called that Society-page nincompoop May Biddle Bridger at the Charlotte Observer hoping to ameliorate the coverage in the inevitable article. Jerene notified the Mint Museum and the ladies on the Jarvis Trust; she called the Charlottetowne Country Club and warned them that reporters might snoop around. She called the poor boy’s mother and family; she called the older Johnston relatives; why, she called everybody on the Planet Earth, it seemed, but her own mother to explain what happened.

  Jeannette insisted, “Jerene still needs her mother’s advice, even at her age. This is not just any crisis, after all.”

  “Thank God she has you,” said Mrs. Coggins.

  “I would just die,” said Mrs. Langford.

  “We’re made of stronger stuff than we realize,” Jeannette had said, her lip trembling a bit as she turned to the window, nobly.

  Some of the staff brought her extra sugarless cookies; even the doctors and Lattamore Acres counselors hovered around her, taking her hand, letting her know she would not be alone through this ordeal. But when the police announced that this was a misadventure, two young folk playing foolishly with a loaded antique gun and no more, that there wouldn’t be any criminal charges, the tide of attention and sympathy began to go out. Jeannette, it must be said, felt the loss of it keenly—which was only a sign of how little attention she got from anyone anymore, of how her own blood relations had flung her to the far
corners of their lives, like some old dray put out to the weeds, waiting for the death notice and the will to be read. (Yes, Jeannette had confided to a few of the ladies, there are going to be some surprises when that will is read, believe you me.)

  But then came news that there would be a civil suit!

  Liddibelle Baylor was suing the Johnstons for hospital bills, distress, trauma and embarrassment, loss of Skip’s employment, future long-term health costs, and a host of other things that made no sense to anyone. They’d gotten some fancy lawyers who specialized in this kind of thing and they were going to fleece Jerene and Duke but good. Ruin! After all her labors to affix her girls into Society, and Jerene succeeding best of all … now that vulture Liddibelle Baylor, that tedious small-minded woman, already sitting on a fortune, was going to annihilate them. That was what Jerene’s afternoon visit was surely going to be about.

  Poor Jerilyn. She will always be the girl who shot her husband with an antebellum pistol.

  Now. Some kinds of clever young things could make that an asset, carry it through Society with a sense of amused pride, almost, light self-mockery, threatening people who cross her in committee meetings that having slung her gun once, she might do it again … like Payton Disher’s daughter who ran over the mayor’s foot at his inaugural reception, as he was leaning in to whisper something to her husband—oh she rode that seesaw for years, laughingly retelling it at every occasion she could wedge it into. Oh, but dull little Jerilyn has none of that élan, nor for that matter did frosty Jerene or wounded, half-hysterical Dillard. Really, Jeannette herself could have carried it off, much in the way she had had to hold her head high after many of the celebrated verbal offenses and dipsomaniacal disgraces perpetrated by her husband. Of course, it would have been irretrievable if Skip had died—there would be little recovering from that. Like the Mainbows, and their daughter who drove her prom date, heir-to-the-furniture-empire Chip Gundy (in the passenger seat), into a light pole and killed him. Hard to escape that footnote following you throughout life, let alone forgive yourself.