Purchase

by Christopher K. Doyle

  I know, I muttered to him, I know, I know, and touched my head. For I could tell the purchase had been set forth in him for sure and that I’d probably been the one that set it, casting down the economy of his life into scribbles of ink and notes on some unlined page long ago, and it made me weep as we drove. It made me turn to the window and watch the next town drift in and out of focus, the next road fall away into nothingness, the next moonrise appear as if formed from the very cloud and mist of night, it was all so lonesome and useless, the road then. To see that light was such a substance of sorrow and unease to be formed and reformed like that, from the very thoughts and dreams of my resentment, as if none of it had any beginning nor end left a hollowness in me and a regret. So that if we hadn’t finally headed back to Bristol after all that to breathe for once, to tip our heads above the overwhelming surface of things, that might have been it for me. I’d have drowned in my own weeping to see him possessed in a way that I’d hoped he’d overcome, but which had only tightened its noose that much tighter around his neck.

  SHE’S WALKING, WAS WHAT BENJAMIN MARKS said when we slumped in all disheveled and half-lit with our guitar cases tattered and marked up from all the venues and places we’d been. It wasn’t even yet dawning out, it being so gray and formless the light, and with the town stretched out and quiet, and the ridge an indistinguishable blanket draped across the horizon, even I had to wonder at the occurrence of it. Of Ms. Clara May walking with Jolie at this late an hour, or early, however you’d like to call it. But A.D. didn’t seem to pay it no mind. He was dead set on seeing her. To see them. To talk about what he wanted from her and what he could give back. But with them not there at the moment, I believe he saw the opportunity to carve out a piece of Benjamin Marks on the side, for I seen him start to lean in and glare at the new gold necklace Benjamin wore. It was a thick link chain with a small crucifix and little gold revolver dangling from it, hanging down Benjamin’s hairy chest. So that as soon as Benjamin noticed A.D. glaring at it he touched his stubby fingers to the symbols I suppose he saw in himself. Something about might and righteousness maybe, or worth and reverence. But then he swayed real far back in his seat when he seen A.D. lean in close enough to sniff him as if inspecting a hog set out to wallow in its slop.

  Hell, A.D. said, and paused as if to lend some credence to his proclamation, some gravitas to the circumstance. But then pointing real slow like, he leaned down toward that necklace, squinted his eyes as if looking on some premonition, some decree or outlandish edifice he should not have been meant to meet, and whispered then all calm and cryptic. Is that what’s supposed to help you then? With all that you’ve done? Reaching out, he grabbed the gleaming strand of it, so that Benjamin had to lean forward as A.D. pulled on it and the skin on Benjamin’s fat neck turned purple beneath the strain.

  I suppose, Benjamin said and then he didn’t say nothing as he winced and struggled still in the pull of it, before just giving up and leaning in so close to

  A.D with his chin, I thought the two might kiss. But just as Benjamin ebbed up close to A.D.’s face, A.D. let go and the stumpy man fell back off his chair and rattled the cupboard behind him and a few plates on the table as he groped with his arms and then harrumphed a bit breathing heavy as he struggled to his feet. His gray bathrobe was untied and his silk pajammy bottoms shimmered in the light and he had a face on him meant to strike at A.D. with some blasphemy or insult he probably had stored up inside him for months about A.D.’s behavior. Running around reckless on the ridge. Him losing out on Ms. Clara May and little Jolie. But just then she comes in the doorway and sees them both like that—sort of standing there opposed—A.D. in his ridge-ragged denim shirt, and Benjamin in his silk pajammies—and she just laughed and laughed. I swear, she was a pistol of a woman.

  To see them like that must have amused her to no end but she just said, Of course, and then set her keys down on the kitchen table before rearranging the cloth wrap she had on over her dress and wool jacket. Jolie was bundled up in there somehow and as she lifted the little precious girl out, the little one’s beautiful pale cheeks were all rosy and chapped and windblown, for the two had been out in the cool brisk morning, and as we all watched entranced then, Ms. Clara May started humming and singing the prettiest little song. Then she set Jolie down on the couch in a fortress of pillows and blankets and kissed her baby girl on the forehead before turning around still smirking at the spectacle of her shabby husband and half-kept beau.

  Hello, I said, for I weren’t sure she’d even seen me she was so focused on A.D. with all the miserableness and anger still framing his face.

  Isaiah, she said and didn’t turn as I sort of glided past her to the couch. Whatever else was going to happen in that room, I knew it was going to happen with or without me, and thought I might as well be comfortable. Hell, I didn’t even want to be part of it anyways, not since I felt responsible for most of it, but I knew enough to see this was A.D.’s moment. A last chance perhaps to bring himself back into the fold of his family, to be one of them again, supplanting the usurper and fool he’d let in so easy. But I wasn’t sure this was the way to go about doing it. I mean, he was mean, A.D. The rage kind of dripped off him in waves and sent up a sulfurous humidity that had Benjamin Marks edging back. So that after a moment, Ms. Clara May was the only one standing there to block A.D. from everyone else in the room, for nobody seemed quite sure how to proceed until Benjamin Marks broke the silence.

  Maybe I’ll just ease on down to the Mercantile, he finally said. See if they open or something. He was thumbing the torn neckline of his robe and I could see through the doorway behind him to his pleated pants and silk tie and black and white checkered houndstooth jacket, all hung up proper and ironed over the back of his bedside chair. He had been caught unawares as he was, naked and vulnerable without his splendid suit on, and was itching to get somewheres he didn’t feel so small or insignificant. They expecting me anyways, he said and turned to go, looking out of the corner of his eye, but he was brought up short before he could even take another step.

  You don’t have to go anywhere, Ms. Clara May said and raised her hand as if to stay something, to hold it right there suspended in the air. Some momentum or feeling, something I was having a real hard time seeing. As I looked at her, I waited to see if she would drop it. But then a moment went past, and another, and she just kept it there poised in the air as any beacon or symbol, as if to intone to Benjamin that all was well. All was as expected. Then as if directing a marionette upon its invisible strings, she twitched her fingers and he moved beside her, clutching the open ends of his bathrobe before drawing them tight.

  Yes he does, A.D. said and he didn’t look away. Not at him, nor at anything else in the room. For even as he gauged her, he didn’t once shake out any of the anger plumping up his face that looked as if it could a been punctured and released with the smallest pinprick to wobble and whimper like a balloon through the air. And of course she didn’t budge neither to see it, and I remembered then how strong she was and looked to see the glassy stretch along the back of her neck, to see if it could lend me any secrets. And friends, she didn’t have an ounce of worry in her. Not a one. Her hair was clipped up for all the world to see, and that glassy stretch was as smooth and tranquil as any lake or iced-over pond, and I knew that A.D. was cooked for sure. No matter what he had to say. But I sure give it to him. He still tried. He tried and tried.

  This ain’t none of his concern, now is it?

  Of course it’s his concern, if he’s around, she said.

  Around? Around? And A.D. breathed so deep the tension sort of eased off a bit and his face rounded out at the edges. Listen, he said, a bit more composed, but still boiling beneath the surface. I been around and been around and it’s always the same. The world’s the same everywhere. Everybody’s just looking for a home, for a place to call their own.

  And this is meant to help you, she said, what you’re saying? With her eyebrows raised, she had the look of someone am
used to no end hearing the words of a common charlatan brought before her. Someone bent on assuring her of one thing when the exact opposite was true. You don’t have a home right here? she said and shook her hands out at the walls and windows. A home with your own wife and daughter?

  I have a home, A.D. said, and I swear when he said it I seen him glance off for the slightest instant to trace in ghostly strides the ridge rising out beyond the window. And of course Ms. Clara May seen it too, for ain’t nothing could get by her.

  O I see, she said. I seen it from the first but didn’t want to believe it, and she smiled then sort of sad and lonely to herself, her lips quivering the slightest bit. Just as long as you keep moving, you think you’re free. Well, you ain’t. You ain’t as far as I’m concerned. Not until you move on from me.

  Move on?

  Isn’t that what you’re best at?

  As he stepped closer to her, the heat rose up like a furnace between them. Even Benjamin Marks was sweating so that I had to agree with him when I seen him waft the air towards him and then turn his collar back. I was hot and wanted nothing more than to sink my head into the icebox, but I wouldn’t have moved an inch when they got going like this. I wouldn’t have made a peep neither. I been out there driving for you, he said. And Jolie. Always for you. Like what I thought we needed. And this world, this other world—and he waved his hand then to encompass the window, the street, the ridge, everything— this singing and songwriting and everything, this other world ain’t nothing no more, see? For we finally got it. We got what we needed and can spend the rest. Spend it all out for sure now, for we’re done with it. Done with it for good.

  For good?

  For good, A.D. repeated, but then the faintest footsteps you ever heard interrupted Ms. Clara May. She was poised to speak again and strike down this nonsense that even I wasn’t buying from A.D., when a slight tap at the door stayed her and was followed by a sliding envelope. It’d been slipped up under the door short and sweet, and as those footsteps pattered away, and all of us turned to see if it had really happened, there was an envelope in A.D.’s hands. He’d snatched it up without even opening the door and frowned as he turned it over to me.

  It’s an invitation, I said, sent by telegraph this very morning. Tearing it open, I read it just as I seen it. To play at the Hillsboro Theater in Nashville. In two nights. At the Anniversary Jubilee.

  Nashville? A.D. said and leaned over toward me and took with his long fingers the invitation to inspect it himself, mulling it over even as Ms. Clara May watched him with her jaw gaping open.

  For the Grand Ole Opry, I continued, as the heat flushed my cheeks to say it. In Nashville, I repeated, as the phrase seemed stuck in my mind.

  Nashville, Benjamin Marks echoed. Well, I’ll be.

  We’re invited, A.D. said running his finger down the invitation.

  Invited? Ms. Clara May had turned to me with a face as scrunched up as a noose before glaring back at A.D. Well, isn’t that just like you, she said. Isn’t that just like you all over.

  What? A.D. said and half-looked at her and half-read the invitation, looking at something he might have been waiting his whole life to hold.

  To find a thing that nobody knows about and to take it up like it’s God’s gospel. You don’t know that invitation from Adam and there you are raring to go again even when you just got through telling me you wouldn’t. That you’re through with all that. That you finally got it and that it don’t mean nothing to you no more even if you don’t know what day it is let alone the significance that brought you back here like a vagabond blown in with the wind.

  What? he muttered. What day is it? and he shook his head to see the opportunity laid bare before us, at the Opry. For I don’t think he could see nothing else then in the whole world because of it.

  Why it’s Jolie’s baptism is what it is, she said, or had you forgot? and she crossed her arms then to look on him. As A.D. slunk back from view, he tried to speak, to say something about the chance of it, the great and honored opportunity at the Opry raised before him, before us. But there weren’t nothing for him to do but shake his head, close his eyes, and drop that invitation to the floor.

  XXXII

  The pull of life ~ Of the finest quality ~ The gathering spectacle ~ The eerie contours ~ A humid skin ~ The close catacombs ~ Ebbed into a stillness ~ The great man ~ Those empty seats ~ I aim to sing ~ He’s done

  FRIENDS, HE HAD FORGOT ALL ABOUT IT, for there was nothing else on his mind other than being invited to play on the Grand Ole Opry’s radio program in Nashville. In fact, he got so excited the morning before the baptism that he called up the Opry’s radio station just to confirm it, the invitation, and also to reserve three seats for Ms. Clara May, Jolie, and Benjamin Marks. Sure, he even wanted Benjamin Marks there to see the grand event, the raising up in A.D.’s eyes of all our work and ambition and hope. I suppose he thought in that moment of our taking the stage and hearing our Misericordia Blues, Ms. Clara May would see the error in her ways and leave Benjamin Marks sitting right there at the Hillsboro Theater, distraught and alone, opening and closing his pocket watch for all the world to see.

  The Anniversary Jubilee had been trumpeted and advertised constantly on the radio, and was being billed as an all-out extravaganza for commemorating the importance of the program going on five years now. Runnymede himself and the Piedmont Pipers and a host of other acts would be there for three whole days to ring in this hillbilly sensation taking over the ridge and heartland beyond. So that at Jolie’s ceremony, no matter what I said to him nor how I tried to stay his feet, he wouldn’t stop moving to save himself even in that place of places. He wanted to get going even though the soul of his daughter was at stake here—and maybe even his family’s—but still he needed to move. To keep moving. To move eternal, so as not to feel the pull of life settling him down like what Ms. Clara May wanted and that maybe only Benjamin Marks could deliver. That stability, that sanity, for lack of a better word, even if to see Benjamin Marks at the baptismal font was to look on one of the lowest and most blatant hucksters you’d ever seen.

  O he was beaming as the priest dabbed little Jolie on the forehead, and then smiled the more as he held her like she was his own daughter and all the while A.D. was inching closer to the door for he wanted to get going and have an early start and nothing as significant as his own daughter’s eternal reward seemed to matter to him. He just looked at me after scouring the whole scene with the priest and choir and attendants and said real quiet like: Hokum, when the crying started and Ms. Clara May crossed herself and the choir joined up with their Praise Jesuses and Hallelujahs. A.D. didn’t want no part of that religiousness and was already outside gunning the motor and blasting the horn for he wanted to stop in Knoxville on the way at the John H. Daniel haberdashery. He’d been told to go there to get the finest silk duds and suits in the whole area and he meant to do it up right, even though I told him it was just the radio and nobody could see us anyways. But he just looked at me real serious, cocked his head sideways, and said Runnymede would. He’ll see us for sure and will know finally who we are and where we’re going.

  Where we’re going, I muttered, thinking on Runnymede’s wish for stopping everything we could become. For as I thought on it, and considered A.D.’s eagerness to get going and outfit us anew for our big moment, I took one last look at the whole place because I never did have that much luck in churches, nor with religion, and as I bowed my head and raised it again who should I see—but Ms. Clara May eying me. She just sort of smirked with her soft pretty face to know what me and A.D. were up to. What we could only be up to— and I suppose that was it for her, even if A.D. had already invited her to come with Jolie and Benjamin after the baptism. He’d even paid their bus fare and everything.

  But she just smirked once more and there might have been a telephone line laid direct from her mind to mine, for I could hear ever last thing she said: He’s yours now. All of him. So get. Get going. The two of you, before she
turned to the choir holding up that sweet little Jolie into the everlasting light and blessedness and munificence, and I wondered all the way on the drive to Knoxville if I’d ever hold Jolie again. If I’d ever see her turn her soft sweet face to mine or touch my knee and coo with that short coddling sound she made, if I’d ever be in her life again. I was pretty sure A.D. wouldn’t no matter what he tried or thought to persuade Ms. Clara May with, especially after busting out on this last grand event in the way that he had.

  O but to see him in Knoxville, staying there that night and halfway through the next morning, as he hemmed and hawed with the tailors and managers and the proprietor himself, Mr. John H. Daniel. Just to get the right cut and line of suit, and then to make sure all the material was of the finest quality and that even a few bowler hats were blocked out right and the argyle socks starched and ironed—with two new pair of leather wingtips thrown in for good measure— was to see the anxiousness in him for getting everything right. With Ms. Clara May (and maybe himself too), and of course with everything he’d let slide in his life before this. In his thirst for the songs and the names behind the songs that so weighed on him to drag them back out into the truth of day. And yet, when the first lights of Nashville lit up the road that evening, when we hummed out there in the darkness, as if riding down from another land entire, to see the way he slowed that car to a crawl through those streets where the music spilled out and echoed from almost every doorway and window on Broadway and Church Street and 2nd Avenue, was to see him move from his anxiety into an excitement hardly contained. For his eyes—my god his eyes—only seemed to stretch that much wider at it all, to see the gathering spectacle set right there before us as we pulled into the Hermitage Hotel.