A Long and Happy Life

by Reynolds Price

  And she couldn’t—couldn’t run. Mama struck the last match and held it out. The candle caught fire and Wesley Beavers had a sudden face that he was bringing on, a black bandanna hiding his hair, a black robe crossed at his neck—

  Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume

  Breathes a life of gathering gloom.

  The frown cut deeper into her eyes, and Frederick whimpered stronger than before. She thought, “Take a-hold, Rosacoke. You are free,” and she tried to turn to Frederick, but Wesley, coming slow, was six steps away, and what she saw held her locked—just his face borne forward on a candle through eighty people towards her, swarmed with warning of the ruins and lives he would make—

  Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,

  Sealed in the stone-cold tomb.

  Her head rolled back and her lips fell open as if she would greet some killing bird, but anybody watching—her Mama and Milo, even Marise Gupton, even Rato—saw her suck one breath in pain.

  Then Wesley was at the basket, looking down, his verse finished. He stooped to place his gift (a covered butter dish) and stood for the chorus, and as it began he looked over Frederick to Rosacoke—offering his face, his real gift, the only gift he always gave, without even knowing, but it pressed against her now through six feet of air like a knife held waiting on her skin—his eyes which had seen her that awful way in the broomstraw field (her secret and then her hate), which had seen other women (God knew how many) laid back like her but giving him things she could not even guess, and under the bandanna his ears that had heard those women say “Yes,” and then his mouth that had never moved once to make the word “love,” not to her anyhow. He was not frowning but he was not glad—she could see that plain—just waiting. He had trapped himself and then done what he saw as his duty—offered his duty—and now he waited for her. Before she could shake her head and set him free, a voice cut up through the chorus. It was Frederick at last and Macey who could only see Rosacoke’s shivering back, bent to whisper, “Hand him here. I’m his Daddy, Rosa.”

  She was at her worst. She knew it. And she found the strength to try that—to try handing Frederick on—not because it would save the show but to save herself from running or screaming. Somehow she got both hands in the basket and under Frederick, and she leaned to take his weight. The minute he was in the air, his crying stopped. Rosacoke knew she could not lay him back, not yet, and she knew how strange it would look if she gave him to Macey now so she brought him on to the groove of her lap. He was too long to lie there straight, but his legs jackknifed till he fit, and his head weighed back in her hands. He probed once easy with his feet at her belly, but he seemed content and Rosacoke said to herself, “Look at Frederick. Think about Frederick.” And she thought, slow, to fill time, “You are named Frederick Gupton. You are Marise Gupton’s fourth baby, and I think you are eight months old which means you were born last April. You are long for your age, seems like, but most of your length is in your neck. You sure got the Gupton neck—long as most folks’ leg—and your eyes are your Daddy’s and your flapping ears. But you got Marise’s black hair, poor thing—straight as walking canes. You look about as much like Baby Jesus as Rato does.”

  But he wasn’t studying her. He was using her hands as something to roll his head on, limber as an owl, and take his bearings, and Rosacoke let him look but she didn’t follow his eyes. It was hard enough, watching him switch that face onto various ones, quick as a whip and solemn, and waiting till it came her turn. For some time though he stayed on the Wise Men. They were singing their last to the star—

  Westward leading, still proceeding,

  Guide us to the perfect light—

  and when they were done, Baby Sister and her Angels stepped closer forward and began “Silent Night,” very loud. But they didn’t interest Frederick and after they sang two lines, he looked to Rosacoke and put up his arms to her and strained his head off her knees till he flushed bright red. At first she thought, “Frederick, I ain’t who you think I am” (meaning she was not Marise). But his hands stayed up, twitching, and his head still strained so Rosacoke bent down and touched her cheek to his—his was warmer—and when she rose she could smell something strange. Trying to name it she only saw Landon Allgood in her mind, laid out at Mount Moriah in late July or digging a grave five weeks ago or just now heading for Mary’s to eat, with half Mama’s holly as payment, and Christmas coming which would be the anniversary of his toes. She bent again, not as far. Then she knew what it was—Frederick was the source. He was fragrant with paregoric—his breath—and by all rights he never should have waked (even now his eyes were tired). But his hands were reaching. He meant her to take him up—there was no doubting that and Rosacoke recalled Mary saying how Sledge was a shoulder baby so she gave in to Frederick and lifted him to her shoulder, thinking, “He can face his Daddy now and feel at home and sleep, I hope.” But he didn’t stay there ten seconds. The Angels still didn’t hold him, not even their lights, and his head rolled down to her chest, heavy on his neck as five pounds of seed. She thought, “Thank the Lord. He is sleepy” and raised his head with her hand. He was not too sleepy to show he didn’t want that. His head came down again—wandered slower this time—so Rosacoke left him to take his will, and looking over people to the back where her Mama was dark, she canceled her sight and fixed her mind on Frederick’s weight (that grew every second) and his heat that crept through blanket and costume into her cold side, and soon she was far from him and then farther—from herself and Delight Baptist Church and everybody in it, her mind roaming empty and freer than it had been since the first time she saw the deer in broad daylight at the edge of the broomstraw ring, half hid in trees but watching, waiting (till Mildred said “Great God A-mighty”), then going, loud in the leaves.

  It didn’t last much longer than the deer—her blank roaming. The Angels paused at the end of their first verse, and as they took breath the new sound Frederick made brought her back. He had worked his head to her chest, and he was chewing the cloth just over her heart—not wild or fast or sharp (he had three teeth) but wet and steady as if he had all night, had years of time and the trust of food someday and could gnaw his way through granite rock, not to speak of cambric and her white skin, to get what he reckoned was his. Her chest shrank inwards from his mouth. She pushed his head away as if his spit could scald, and she thought, “I am not who he thinks I am.” But before she could shift him to a safe position, she had to look up and halfway play her part in the show. The Angels had come to—

  Darkness flies, all is light.

  Shepherds hear the Angels sing—

  and that was a sign for the Shepherds to move. They stepped from behind the Angels and Macey and down the two choir steps, and they knelt again at the basket, not touching it this time. They were the reason Rosacoke looked up. It was her part to nod at them and try to smile. She did nod, accepting their praise for the baby, and she tried to smile to show she knew each one—Moulton Ayscue, John Arthur Bobbitt, Bracey Overby—had known them all their lives, but they didn’t return her acquaintance, didn’t smile, only bobbed their chins and turned to Frederick, where he was.

  He was back at her chest, one hand pressing hard enough to flush out his blood and his open mouth laid on the peak of her breast. But his jaws were moving slower and his eyes were shut. Rosacoke saw him, where he wanted to be, and waited a little and then gave in—“If that’s all it takes to help you rest, go ahead.”

  He went ahead, lowering himself deeper into sleep with every pull of his jaws—every pull weaker than the last—his breaths coming farther and farther apart, strained like sighs through his nose, and his eyelids heavy enough to stay down for hours. Rosacoke wondered was he dreaming yet—at first his shut face offered no sign. She asked herself, “Reckon what does he dream when he dreams?” and while the Angels finished a verse, she studied him and tried to guess. “Maybe he dreams about getting born last April in Marise and Macey’s iron bed, coming out easy as an Indian baby but howli
ng till they got him washed and turned him loose on Marise’s breast. Or maybe he can see further back than April”—she counted back in her mind—“maybe he recalls being made one evening in late July when it had been hot all day and the night was no help, and Macey was twisting in the bed, wringing wet, and then there come up a cooling storm, and when it passed and the rain frogs commenced outside, he felt relief and touched Marise and came down on her in the dark, and she took what he gave for her fourth burden, without even seeing him.”

  When she finished that, Frederick’s jaws had stopped, and his fingers had eased against her. She lowered the hand that held his Gupton neck—to cradle him better. His head settled in her arms as if she was his natural rest, and his whole face rolled towards her. Rolling, he flared out his ears even further and pressed out his hair stiff on her sleeve, and she thought again, “If Baby Jesus looked like you—poor Mary,” but then she noticed his life, where it beat hid and awful in each bare temple and—visible, blue—in the hot veins of his eyelids and his standing ears, filling him sure as an unlabeled seed with all he would be, the ruins he would make and the lives. “Wonder could he dream about that?” she thought, “—about growing up and someday (standing in a field or up a pecan tree) seeing a girl that he felt for and testing till he knew it was love and speaking his offer and taking her home and then one evening, making on her some child that would have his name and signs of him and the girl all in its face—maybe even signs of Marise and Macey? Wonder could he be dreaming that right now?”

  But he offered no answer and the Angels came to—

  See the eastern Wise Men bring

  Gifts and homage to our King—

  and the Wise Men stepped back to kneel with the Shepherds. Rosacoke’s part was to look up and nod to them but she couldn’t. She looked on at Frederick and went on guessing, to calm herself—“Wonder is he dreaming about me, and does he know who I am?” But that was no calming thought, no help. “He don’t know me from Adam. Of course he don’t. He has not laid eyes on me since late July at Mason’s Lake when I was not myself, grieving for Mildred. If he has thought about me for three seconds even, he thinks I am just Marise that can drop my babies like a mangy hound and flip out my bosoms in public to stop them yelling.” She looked up to her right, needing somebody to know her and nod their acquaintance, but all she met was Mr. Isaac awake in his chair, still not understanding, and Sammy dark beside him and at the back her Mama dark as the night outside, and in the front pew Marise staring tired across her to Macey, and Rato and Milo her own blood brothers, five feet away, not facing her—not one soul to own they knew her.

  She looked to Wesley. There was nowhere else to look. He was kneeling tall back of John Arthur Bobbitt with his face and his eyes on her, having offered his duty and with nothing to do but wait for her answer so he could plan his life, still not frowning but not glad, smiling no more than her father when he was a boy before he changed, in a tan photograph on a pier by the ocean with another boy blurred beside him. She stayed facing him. He held her like a chain. Then she drew one breath, hard, and said what she suddenly knew—to herself—what he had showed her, “Wesley knows me. After all Wesley knows me.” And she knew that was her answer, for all it meant, the answer she would have to give when the pageant was over and Wesley drove her home and stopped in the yard and made his offer again—“Are we riding to Dillon tonight?”—because it was her duty, for all it would mean.

  But also it was her wish. She saw that too. She faced that now and she spoke it as a trial to her mind—her answer. But once she had said it, even silent, it boiled up in her like cold spring water through leaves, rising low from her belly till it filled her chest and throat and spilled up into her mouth and beat against her teeth. She had to speak it or drown, and who could she speak to but Frederick Gupton in her arms asleep? She bent again and touched his ear with her lips and said it to him, barely whispered it—“Yes”—and wished him, silent, a long happy life. When she rose his face was still towards her, breathing out Landon every breath. He seemed the safest thing still, seemed shut for the night, so while they sang the last verse around her (Baby Sister climbing through the rest pure as day), she looked on at him, and under her eyes his lips commenced to move, just the corners at first, slow as if they were pulled like tides by the moon, as if he might wake to end some dream, but his eyes didn’t open, didn’t flicker, and his lips pulled on till at last he had made what was almost a smile, for his own reasons and for no more than three seconds but as if, even in his sleep, he knew of love.

  THE MYSTERY OF ARRIVAL: BEST NOVEL WRITTEN BY THE YOUNGEST PERSON

  Afterword to Scribner’s Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition of A Long and Happy Life by Allan Gurganus

  I

  “I cannot even begrudge the author his youth,” Dorothy Parker surrendered her usual artful ill-will. She was reviewing a first novel in Esquire 1962. The book had softened Miss Parker.

  Meticulously observed, beautifully told, [this work] strikes too deep to fuss around with analysis. You can say only … it is indeed a lasting novel, a story of the South … done with no violence…. Only the firm brilliance of its writing [keeps] its loveliness from sticking to your fingers.

  Other New York sages praised the debut of a young North Carolinian. Harper’s magazine printed the whole work. It even turned up at the public library of Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Our town’s Athena of a librarian stepped to my favorite corner table. I was fifteen when she set before me a volume, whispering, “Try this. He was born right over in Warrenton.”

  Jacket copy claimed the author was fourteen years my senior but he photographed young. He was shown as still a boy, shy yet approachable. Standing in a field likely one county away, he wore an unpressed denim farmer’s shirt. But I sensed this laborer’s getup had already been rendered—by his prose itself—a costume.

  On page twelve, I hit a reference to my hometown. “[Landon Allgood] fell down in the public road, and whoever found him next morning had to carry him to Rocky Mount Hospital and have all his toes cut off that had frozen solid in his shoes.” Could something so local serve the universal?

  The fiftieth-anniversary republication of Reynolds Price’s first novel lets us reconsider his complete life’s work. Along with Dorothy Parker, we must note: his talent arrived intact.

  Over time, I grew up and tried to write myself. I would somehow become one of the many friends of my early ideal, Reynolds Price. With him so newly dead, I again revert to being his loyal reader. Reynolds’s circle talks about him even more since his departure in 2011 aged seventy-seven. At his memorial service, the president of Duke University was right to suggest that Price’s contributions should be seen not just as his writing and legendary teaching. His epic gift for conversation matters, too.

  Without Reynolds physically present, we’re freer to recall him at all ages. He is no longer just the weighty, silver-haired oracle who, for decades, made his wheelchair serve as desk chair. Reynolds can again become the boy he was while writing A Long and Happy Life. It was his own book of Genesis. Composing the novel, he’d been scarcely older than its heroine. Joyful now, imagining him as a slim, fast-walking boy, twenty-nine.

  Most novelists only emerge after turning forty, after surviving a few divorces, after eulogizing major mentor-friends. Price somehow skipped apprenticeship. The surface of A Long and Happy Life is already polished onyx. His lifetime’s subject would stay as fully frontal American as Walker Evans’s. Price chose to limn the worthiest people otherwise ignored. He often lionized those who—secure solely in their family ties and senses of humor—must still be tested. His central characters—thanks to their growing genius at forgiveness—prevail by simply enduring. Even in this, his earliest book, we feel Reynolds Price’s acceptance of how sin and mortality are the very forces that give us all our color.

  The works he loved most were the Bible and Paradise Lost. They’d helped to form his own Christian notion: All of us have fallen but some have visibly slipped, if
not lower than others, then a bit more volitionally, strategically. And these souls often become the storytellers, the feelers, the hyper-responsible eldest children, the first-rate rememberers. Reynolds was all of these combined. Juggling talents, he was like Isaac Newton tossing all the apples back up.