Littlejohn

by Howard Owen

  Mark tried to reason with me, but I am not reasoned with easily. Finally, he smiled a little smile and said he was going to wait by the dock, that he had seen enough of France for one trip. I don’t know if he thought I would follow him, but when I took his umbrella, which he always insisted on having in case of rain—he wouldn’t go to the Mojave Desert without it—and which I always seemed to wind up carrying, and pitched it like a javelin into the little harbor at Yvoire, he might have gotten the message.

  I turned to face a waiter with an only slightly arched eyebrow.

  “Does madame wish a table?” he asked.

  “Mais, certainement,” I said with all the aplomb I had left.

  I stayed in Yvoire that night, in a little hotel by the water, after spending the afternoon wandering through shops full of lavender and smiles. I had no clothes other than what I was wearing, but somehow I knew that Mark the fastidious would arrange things. So I spent another day in Yvoire, just sitting on the terrace by the lake drinking Kronenbourgs, because it’s the only beer the French can make, frankly, and it was beer-drinking weather. I took a nap/passed out in my room in the middle of the afternoon, to wake in the early evening to the smell and feel of a lake in the mountains at the peak of the summer. I felt like Daisy Buchanan.

  The third day, I went back to Geneva, all gray, with mist off the Jet d’Eau chilling those of us on deck. I checked at the hotel where we’d stayed and, sure enough, they were holding my luggage. Mark had stuck a letter to the largest piece. It told me where he was going to be, in case I wanted to join him.

  I am not made of money; few English professors are. For that, you have to do something really important, such as sell real estate. But I do carry plastic. I rented the smallest car they had for one week, and spent the next seven days wandering through towns between Geneva and the Côte d’Azur. I had dinner in a restaurant outside Grenoble that displayed Alps out every window and had no other Americans inside it. They put a U.S. flag and a French tricolor in a little vase and brought it to my table. I met a Frenchman from Annecy who took me to dinner by the lake there, and I met a wonderful couple at a farmhouse outside Digne when the VW Polo had a flat. By the time I got to Suzanne’s, three days before I was expected, I could barely remember Mark’s last name.

  I never left the boundaries of France for the rest of the trip, until I took the train to Barcelona and realized that Mark and I had assigned seating, right beside each other, for the flight home. We didn’t speak all the way back until we were circling Dulles. He asked me if I needed a ride to Montclair, which started me laughing at the vision of myself standing at the airport exit, luggage in hand, realizing I had no way to get home. I graciously accepted. On the way back, we talked, and we agreed to disagree about the way we live our lives. We’ll see each other, spend the night together when the miseries get to either of us too much, but we won’t be taking any vows, or long trips, together, and that should make Justin happy.

  All the trouble my son has gotten into caught up with me several days into the trip, when I called the Carlsons from London. My first feeling was irritation and a belief that he was doing this to make me feel guilty, even ruin my trip. He was so angry about my leaving, and maybe it was selfish, but this was the first time I’d had by myself, away from that town and all our old friends, since Jeff and I broke up.

  Then I worried. I wrote cards to him and Daddy every other day, not mentioning the breakdown of relations with Mark, and talked with Justin over the phone. I’m surprised that he ran away, because he’s always been pretty close to the vest, maybe too much so, and I’m surprised that he went south, to East Geddie. He and Daddy never seemed to have a lot to talk about, and he was downright rude to Daddy over Christmas.

  This probably won’t be my turn to be nominated for Mother of the Year, but things have been good between Justin and me since I got to the farm. He’s relieved that I don’t plan to send him to Fork Union; I’m glad that he took care of his own problem with the English situation. And it seems as if Daddy is a little less disoriented having someone else around to talk to. It appears that they’ve been looking after each other. Justin can cook a little more than he could when he left Montclair, and Daddy has someone to watch baseball games with on TV.

  It wasn’t until yesterday that Daddy told me about the will. He said that I should tell Justin about it myself when we get back, that that was my place. Daddy has always been so careful about not trying to tell us how to raise Justin, always spoiling him rotten when he’s down here, but always telling him to “mind his parents,” even after his parents lived in different houses and started acting like kids themselves.

  Daddy didn’t tell me about the wreck until I got down here. Said he was afraid I’d panic and do something crazy. They’ve set Justin’s nose and taken the stitches out, and most of the swelling has gone down. It could have been a lot worse; about the only thing he’ll have permanently is a little crease over his right eyebrow that shows when he furrows his brow. A friend of mine in Montclair says that any boy worth keeping will have a minimum of one car wreck before he’s twenty-one. I told my friend that that was a sexist statement, that I’d had two wrecks before I was old enough to drink, but now there’s a certain feeling of relief that maybe Justin’s used up his quota. Daddy said the other boys were both hurt worse than Justin was, and I told him I hoped the driver was, at least. He just gave me a funny look.

  Justin went over to Old Geddie late yesterday afternoon, I think to visit with the other two kids who were in the wreck. He walked, and I told him to be sure to walk back, too. Daddy and I ate about 5:30, which is when everybody down here eats. It always takes two or three days for my stomach to get adjusted to East Geddie Time. About 6:15, he asked me if I’d like to go for a ride. I told him fine, but didn’t Jenny say that the cops didn’t allow him to drive any farther than the Bi-Rite? I told him that that didn’t sound like a very exciting ride to me.

  “We’re going the other way,” Daddy said, and after we finally found the truck keys, off we went, by Rennie’s old house and the thicket beyond and into the swamp.

  I hadn’t paid much attention to the Rock of Ages in some time, although the cemetery is right next to it. We used to play down there when I was a kid, although Mom didn’t want us to, because she thought it was disrespectful to play that close to a graveyard.

  My main memory of the rock, though, is Warren Eccles. He was a senior at Carolina when I was a junior at UNC—G, and I guess he was crazy about me. He came to see me the summer before his senior year, and we put him up in the extra bedroom. It was a horrible summer, with Uncle Lex fading fast, and Aunt Connie dying right after he did. I worked as an intern at the Port Campbell Post, and sometimes I’d make up assignments to avoid having to spend part of the night at the hospital with Uncle Lex, or just to get away from all the sorrow. My family is funny about hospitals. If somebody’s in one, they feel a moral obligation to have a family member in the room every single minute. When Uncle Lex died, Daddy was right there, at seven in the morning, holding his hand.

  Warren Eccles was a brief respite from all that. The only problem was, there was nowhere that we could be alone. He was a handsome boy, about six two, dark, straight hair that he would start growing long by the next fall, although it always looked better short on him; very self-assured, very bright. I wasn’t a virgin, and it suited me very well to make love to Warren, but where? Finally, on Saturday night before he was to fly back home, we went for a ride, up to East Geddie, then right on the Ammon Road, past the strawberry patches, and then right again on the old rut road that backs into our land. I had him turn right one last time at Lock’s Branch, with the lights off by now, because Rennie was still living then. We made love in moonlight so bright that the Rock of Ages shaded us from it as we looked across the branch at the distant, faint glow of the Blue Sandhills.

  Warren and I broke up before Christmas, and he went to Vietnam after he graduated, was wounded and faded from my life. I haven’t spoken t
o him in eighteen years, but he made the Rock of Ages special.

  Daddy stopped the truck between the cemetery and the rock. We walked over and looked at Mom’s grave, a place I never go unless he wants me to. It’s in my will that I am to be cremated and will haunt anyone who goes against my wishes. All this buying flowers to put on an expensive monument to the dead is very offensive to me and serves no one except smarmy undertakers and florists. They are to scatter my ashes off Afton Mountain.

  Then we walked over to the rock. Daddy looked out to where the berry fields are, and out across the sandhills, and he reminded me a little of the pictures in my child’s Bible of Moses viewing the Promised Land.

  “I’ve made a few changes in my will, Georgia,” he said, leaning against the rock for balance. “I hope they won’t offend you, and I want your promise, on your momma’s grave, that you won’t fight it.”

  And then he spelled out the changes, and told me all, or most, of the reasons for making them.

  Justin and I are to get the house and a rectangle of land going north and west from it, about thirty acres altogether, plus money that Daddy has in CDs and IRAs, a surprising amount, really, enough to have qualified him as rich around here, if anybody had known about it. But denying that you have any money is as important around here as having it. I told him that I hoped he spent every last cent of it, because Justin and I are fine, and he probably won’t get to take it with him. I only hope it’s enough to handle whatever might happen from here on. He forgot to turn off one of the burners on the stove again today.

  The land south of the rut road, plus a strip running east from the house to Lock’s Branch, goes to John Kennedy Locklear, who Daddy had to explain was the Lumbee who is using a little plot of land back of the garage for a garden. I met him last week, without knowing that he was going to be inheriting about 160 acres of McCain land—and without knowing that he’s probably my—what?—stepnephew? half nephew? Anyway, Daddy told me about Rose. He said he wanted someone to know about her before he died. I thought it was a very romantic story, after I recovered from the shock. There always seems to be more to Daddy than meets the eye.

  He said he figured Kenny should have the land around the old Lockamy place, since his family did most of the work around here, and that he wanted him to be able to be a real farmer instead of just a practice one. He said that Kenny reminded him of a carpenter without any tools.

  The other part is the hardest to understand. Why is Daddy giving the rest of the land—ISO-some acres, including most of the swamp and the near fields, and the berry patches, which make more money than the rest put together—to a Mrs. Annabelle Geddie, to be turned over to her son, Blue, on his twenty-first birthday? All he’ll tell me is where they live and that these are people that we—not he, we—owe a great deal to. From where they live, I deduce that they’re black. Is Daddy making reparations? I saw a guy on Donahue recently, a really angry middle-aged black man, who demanded, the way that only those who have spent half their lives asking and being turned down can demand, that white people give the descendants of black slaves some unfathomable amount of money to pay for our past sins. It reminded me of when we were kids and we’d try to make up the biggest number in the world, something like ninety-hundred forty-leven triptrillion. Has Daddy decided to try and make his peace with everybody that’s been wronged with one symbolic gesture, and are Annabelle Geddie and her son the Chosen People for once in their lives? Or is there something deeper, something personal here? I can remember lots of black Geddies, descendants of slaves owned by my great-grandfather and sharecroppers who worked for my grandfather after the Civil War, but Annabelle and Blue—is that his real name?—are strangers to me. Why did Daddy say “we”?

  I have been selfish and self-destructive in my life, sometimes managing the amazing feat of achieving both at the same time, which is somewhat similar to whistling and humming simultaneously. It would be quite impossible, though, for me to do anything else right now other than promise my father that I will not contest his last will and testament. More than anyone else I know, he has earned what is his, and anyone who helped him earn it enough to merit a part of it is dead and gone, as they say around here. The part he’s giving Justin and me is a gift, nothing more.

  Besides, I sense that he is completely right about this, even if I don’t know all the details. He can’t remember where he puts the truck keys half the time, and he’s called Justin “Lafe” ten times since I’ve been here, and Jenny pulled me aside before church Sunday to tell me about an incident at the grocery store that is more disturbing than anything I’ve seen myself. In some deeper sense, though, he seems to be completely in control.

  It’s funny, considering his lack of education and his generally passive nature—he always let Mom make the day-to-day decisions—but I’ve never been led wrong by Daddy. Oh, there have been times when I haven’t followed his advice, such as when he told me that Jeff Bowman might still have some growing up to do, after we told him we were getting married. He told me I might have some to do, too. Right on both counts, but it took me five years to forgive him and eighteen years to concede that he was right.

  The sun is below the horizon, the sky a reflected blue, by the time we finish talking. I help him to the truck. His leg is stiff now, and he asks me to drive back. It is the time of day that sums up all my best memories of East Geddie and the farm, a time when you can drive along with the windows down, your left arm hanging out, and feel a cool relief that seems to spring from the crops and pines and dark, narrow streams. It is a sweetness of high school dates, of hope and promise.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  August 8

  If I hadn’t of kept Lafe’s yearbook, I never would of learned more than I ever wanted to.

  Georgia was born on December 6, 1947, not much more than a year after we was married. We had planned on having two or three; would of wanted more than that, but I was forty-one already, and Sara reckoned that it would be nice if I didn’t have to be pushed in a wheelchair to any of our children’s high school graduations. She didn’t mind teasing me about being old, because she knew it didn’t bother me a bit. I never felt younger in my life.

  But Sara had to have a caesarean section, and the doctor told us we shouldn’t have any more children. It bothered Sara more than it did me; whenever I’d get a little blue thinking about no little boys to teach farming and baseball to, I’d think of how hard I prayed to God to make her, just her, not even the baby, all right when she was having that caesarean. I had no right to ask for more happiness than He’d give me in Sara.

  Georgia was a colicky baby, and with Sara still recovering, I did a lot of rocking and walking at all hours in early 1948. Some mornings, I’d just tell Lex to go on without me, which was about the only day’s work I’d missed since I quit school, I reckon. It was Georgia’s colic that led me to the one secret I’ll die with.

  I developed a plan where I would put her bassinet with the rockers on it in front of me while I sat in my own chair in the living room. Then I could just reach out with my foot and rock her to sleep and maybe catch a few winks myself. If she started to crying too loud, so that I was scared she’d wake up Sara, I’d pick her up and hold her in my arms. But I didn’t have to do that much.

  While I would be rocking Georgia with my foot, it would leave my hands free, and it was a good time to try and improve on my reading, which was near-bout to the first-grade level by now. Anything with words on it was good practice, so I’d pick up a atlas, or a Farmer’s Almanac or a Bible, anything.

  One night, must of been late March, because Georgia was over the colic by April, I picked up Lafe’s senior high school yearbook, which I had toted over from Momma’s when me and Sara moved, and started reading every single thing in it, reading stuff about people I had known when we was young-uns. It was still a great joy to me to be able to see anybody’s name in print and know it was a name I had heard all my life, to see what Robert Wayne Hairr or Jessie Maxwell looked like in letters.
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  There was plenty of pictures of Lafe, of course. He was senior class president, and he was in the honor society, and he was on the baseball team—didn’t have no football in Geddie back then. Near-bout all the boys and girls seemed like they signed his yearbook. Then I turned to the single pictures of all the seniors, and when I got to Lafe’s page, I seen this other picture that wasn’t part of the book wedged in there next to his, so that they was facing each other. I reckon Momma might of found it at some time over the years, except I had hid the yearbook right after the accident, because I didn’t want anything reminding her of him, and of what I did, like either one of us needed a reminder. And then I forgot it was hid, until we started moving stuff and I found it in back of the plunder room.

  The picture was of Angora. It was one of them cheap photographs like people would have taken of themselves away out in the country when a traveling photographer would come through. I reckon one of them fellas was brave enough to go to the Marsay Pond in Kinlaw’s Hell.

  At first, I was confused. The picture was familiar, right off, but I wasn’t sure why or how, and I was about half asleep. It had been more than twenty-five years since I’d last seen Angora, but after the war, it seemed more like a thousand. I had blocked it out of my mind, I reckon, and the face I was so smitten with that day in 1922 had ceased to be a part of my life. I thought all them years with Rose and all the bad years in the war had wiped that part of my life clean away. Sometimes, though, I think that nothing ever really goes away, that we don’t do nothing in our whole lives that we don’t answer for one way or another.