Raising the Baton

by Herschensohn, Bruce;

  “Yes, I know.” He never really gave it much thought.

  There was a long silence that was finally broken when Savannah said, “So ah wasn’t bawn theyuh.”

  “Okay. That’s okay. I get it. Good. Sure. I get it.” He didn’t get it at all. He just didn’t want to go on and on about something so petty. With tremendous relief the very small dinners arrived for them brought by a tall thin waiter with a black bow-tie who looked at the diners and their dinners with the displeasure born of certainty that there would not be a large tip to come. He quickly walked away after the placement of the two dinners.

  She ignored their arrival. “So they didn’t want my name to be Chahleston. After all, they thought that when I would get old-uh, people might call me Chahles fow sho-awt and they didn’t want that.”

  “That was good thinking. Sure.”

  “Shoe-uh,” she said. But she wouldn’t stop. “Ah was supposed to be bawn in Savannah which was home but they were in Chahleston when I arrived. It’s only 98 miles up U.S. Highway Numbuh 17 you know.” One hundred miles would probably have been close enough.

  “Huh! That’s a good sized ride.”

  “It’s a wonduhfuhl old road, y’know. Lined with big old oak trees with Spanish Moss hangin’ from every branch, even right ovah the road!”

  “Is that right? That’s great.” Well, maybe not great. But it was just fine.

  “Do yuh know how we got all that gawjus ol’ Spanish Moss throughout all of Dixieland?”

  “I suppose I learned, I guess. But I don’t remember that too well.” He never learned.

  “The Timacua Indians.”

  “The what?”

  “The Timacua. And they were real Indians. Not like Raj Bhavnani. The Timacua were the real ones. Ah means Raj Bhavnani wasn’t a real one.” She probably got her facts reversed but that didn’t make any difference. What a face. What an accent. What legs even though he couldn’t see them now because they were under the table. Just knowing they were there was good enough. Christopher didn’t care about the Timacua Indians under the conditions. But, somehow, she cared. “There was a Timacuan Indian girl who lived off the Okefenokee Swamp and she fell in love with a young white man who was not a Timacua. He was white. Real white. The two of them would meet every night under the branches of an old oak tree and they called it their own oak tree and the Timacua elders found out about it—every night those two lovers were there—and that’s what they were—two lovers who would go to that tree—and so the elders killed him. Knives. They killed him. They brought his body to the Okefenokee—they put it in the Okefenokee—somewhere deep in the swamp. Alligators there, you know. They told her what they did. She cried and screamed and cried and screamed, and then at that day’s sunset she went back to their tree and waited there until it got hours after dark. And because her lover always had told her how much he loved her long black hair—when it got so very late she cut off a lock of her hair and placed it on a lower branch of their old oak tree.

  “In the years ahead the lock of hair spread from the lower branch to the one above it and then spread throughout all the branches of that tree and then to the neighboring tree and the neighboring one to that one and on and on until her hair spread throughout the south—throughout Dixie.”

  “Really? That’s a beautiful story. Absolutely beautiful. I won’t forget it. Who could? Was her hair gray?”

  “Not when they used to meet there. But after she put her lock of hair on their tree and after it spread and then after many years passed, she got older and her hair became gray—and so did her hair that rested on the branches of trees in Dixie. All those strands on the branches turned gray.”

  “I’ll never look at Spanish Moss again without thinking of what you just told me.”

  “People who didn’t know what they were talking about named it Spanish Moss. It wasn’t Spanish. It was Timacua hair that spread all over from Georgia—Gee-aww-juh,”—she corrected herself back into a prominent accent that had dropped while she became so engrossed in telling her story of the Timacua hair—“it spread to Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama down to Flaw-ida up to South Carolina.”

  “That’s a sad story—really sad—but it’s beautiful even with its sadness, Savannah.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “Yes, it is. At least I was told the story by those who heard it from generations that are now gone.”

  “What was the Indian girl’s name?”

  “Savannah.”

  He stared at her with a quick glance from her eyes to her hair and back to her eyes. “But your hair is blonde.”

  “She wasn’t me. No relation. I’m not Timacua. And I’m not old yet.”

  “I know you aren’t old but—”

  “She was the best of the tribe.”

  “Are there still Timacuas?”

  “Of course.”

  With each quick back and forth statement between the two of them the distance between their faces diminished because it seemed the distance had to do that until there was no distance at all. None. It was not planned by either of them. But when there was no distance at all between their faces there was an invisible avalanche that both of them felt simultaneously without doing anything except to look into each other’s eyes.

  For some time neither of them could calibrate the passage of time; they didn’t speak nor could they hear anything; not Angelo; not silverware clicking; not conversation from neighboring tables; nothing. Silence. There was a magnificent silence.

  The avalanche seemed to have staying power.

  Then a memory somewhere in Christopher’s head came into the foreground of his thoughts; not Miss Osborn this time but the memory of sitting on the railing of the playground at school with Malahia Kahala, and the memory of her asking him how many girls he had kissed and he lied by greatly exaggerating the amount since at that time he knew well that the accurate count was zero.

  The memory brought him to ask Savannah, “Have you kissed many men before?”

  She shook her head. “Not many. I make sure I find out in advance how many cups of coffee, toast and aspirins I can get out of a date first.”

  He gave a wide smile. “You want some more?”

  “Not yet.” She put her hand over his hand. “Your friend, Raj Bhavnani told me about your interest in space—I mean the big space; way up through the stars. I don’t know if it’s true because I don’t trust that man. There is something about him that calls for distrust.” She knew that would please Christopher. But then she thought she might have given the impression she was ridiculing space flight. She quickly corrected that possibility. “Is the big space something you’re interested in? That’s wonderful if it is. Do you want to go to the moon? That’s what Raj Bhavnani told me about you.”

  “He did, indeed, tell you the truth if he said I care about—about—about the big space—about space exploration. I work on its exploration. And I do want to go to the moon. I realize it’s dreaming but I believe in dreaming. He was not lying. We are not friends—but he was not lying about those things.”

  “You aren’t friends?”

  “No. I mean yes, we aren’t friends.”

  “I can see why.”

  “The ‘why’ has everything to do with his interest in you.”

  “Maybe, but he seemed to be in love with himself. He’s a show-off. He acts like he is so, so important. Is Raj Bhavnani an important person?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Savannah, I have never known an unimportant person. And neither have you. There aren’t any.”

  She stared at him with affection. “You are something, Christopher Straw.”

  He shook his head. “No. I didn’t know everyone was important until my Dad told me that. Then I noticed every person I met, and he was right.”

  She stared at him again, and then softly said, “Is your father gone, Chris?”

  He took a while before answering. “Oh,
no. No one is gone.”

  She gave a slight smile and a slow nod. “He taught you quite a bit didn’t he?”

  “My Mother taught me that one.”

  “You had good parents?”

  “Yes, they are,” he corrected the grammar without fanfare. “Past-tense doesn’t exist. That’s one marvelous thing about the—the big space. Everything is present-tense. That will be proven when we go fast enough and long enough. Everyone is in the present.”

  Savannah would not tread on that. She felt as though she would be sacrilegious to ask him what he meant. At least, not now.

  He rescued her by changing the subject. “Savannah, I don’t want to delve into something that is none of my business but although I am so fond of what I see of you and hear from you, I know nothing about who you are. If you feel easy about it, please tell me about yourself. I don’t mean private things. Are you a student? N.Y.U.? What do you study? Or do you work? If you do, where? Do you still live in Georgia or do you live here in New York now? Tell me anything. I want to know about you. I don’t mean secrets. I just mean that I want to know anything you want to tell me about you.”

  “Not now. I’m a very private person. Let me leave it that way for now. You’re leaving out some things about you, I’m sure. So am I. Is that alright with you? I want to talk about you—not me. I already know all about me.” She gave a big smile.

  Christopher nodded. “Of course.” He gave another nod and said, “Savannah, will you excuse me for a moment?”

  She nodded, assuming he was going to the Men’s Room because men never tell women they are going to the Men’s Room. It is quite acceptable for a woman to tell a man she is going to the Ladies Room. After all, a woman could be fixing her lipstick or putting on a touch of perfume or adjusting her earrings or straightening her dress or other things like that. There are no such things like that for a man. He goes to a Men’s Room to go to a Men’s Room without something to talk about.

  In this case he was not going to the Men’s Room. He went to borrow something from Angelo and he produced it at the table as he put it in Savannah’s hand. It was a small scissors. “Please, Savannah—Will you cut off a lock of your hair and give it to me?”

  She gave a wide smile and nodded. “Of course. What are you going to do with it, Chris?”

  “I am going to climb a tree in Central Park. A high one. And I’m going to put your hair on a branch so high that no one will knock it off or take it off, and other branches will cloak it from the wind.”

  “Are you really?”

  “Really.”

  “Do you think some day it will turn gray?”

  “Yes. Given enough time, yes.”

  “Will we see it when it’s gray?”

  “Yes.”

  “Christo-fuh?”

  “Yes?”

  “Let me tell you one thing about myself. Call me Anna.”

  “After all that explanation of Savannah? The Indians and all that?””

  “Shoe-uh. Yes. As soon as my parents named me Savannah they started calling me Anna for short. Since then only my parents and my closest friends—only the closest people to me called me Anna. Just the closest.”

  “And you want me to call you that, too? Anna?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anna Lane. I like that. And I will be one of the honored few.”

  “Even if you don’t call me Anna, at least—call me.”

  Christopher nodded very slowly and while nodding he said, “I will.”

  Then the magnificent long silence came again and there was no distance between their faces again. Neither one of them took the aspirin. Bayers. In total it was the kind of New York City night that would have a difficult time duplicating itself just about anywhere else. Of course other places have good nights but not exactly like that one at Angelo’s.

  harmony

  THEME ELEVEN

  COMMON AND UNIQUE DESTINATIONS

  DURING THE NEXT THREE MONTHS Christopher Straw and Anna Lane walked together down the crowded streets south of Midtown and walked together up the empty streets north of Midtown and they stood together in lines of people at night outside a Times Square theater and they sat together on a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park, and in all but one case they were either holding hands or with an arm around the waist of the other one or there was some different visual sign of affection. One night when Chris looked around to insure there was no policeman watching, he climbed a tree in Central Park and put her lock of hair on a high branch. The promise made at Angelo’s was kept.

  The morning of Midtown’s Friday, May the 5th, was cool and cloudy and crowded. At 9:00 A.M. Christopher and Anna joined the mass of people outside the tall, wide windows of a Seventh Avenue store that appeared to have no name because there was no room for a sign but, rather, dozens of watches and jewelry and gadgets and radios and even, of all things, two television sets. That is what the crowds were there to watch because this was the morning scheduled for the first U.S. Astronaut’s ride in the nose-cone on a rocket, depending on the progress made at Cape Canaveral in Florida and dependent on the weather over which the greatest scientists in the country had no control—and then dependent on television transmission from the Cape.

  In a public sense it was Alan Shepard in a capsule he had named Freedom Seven and in a private sense it was Anna sharing in Christopher’s passion for space exploration. If it should be a big moment for him to be a viewer, she wanted to be standing by him during that moment.

  She did not need to pretend the thrill of seeing the rocket’s lift-off. No pretense needed. At 9:34 A.M. with the Redstone launch vehicle’s lifting above the flames coming from its thrust section on Cape Canaveral’s Pad LC-5 and its simultaneous audible blast, and like everyone else watching on the New York sidewalk she showed shock and gave the sincerest of yells of joy and she even surrendered her hand-holding with Chris so as to join the piercing applause of the expanded crowd of strangers with her eyes and Chris’s eyes and all eyes outside the Seventh Avenue window glued to the black-and-white images on the two television sets with their rounded-edged glass screens encasing a visual miracle: man off toward space.

  The image stayed with the rocket until the glow from its thrust section became nothing more than a bright dot in the sky.

  “Where is he going?” she asked Christopher.

  He shook his head and wiped his eyes. “Up and down. Just up and down for this one, that is if everything goes well.”

  “How long until he comes back down?”

  “If all goes well, about fifteen minutes. It’s scheduled for that.”

  “Is that what the Soviet Union did?”

  “No. They did much more—so much more. Last month they sent an Astronaut—or a Cosmonaut as they call him—Yuri Gagarin—he went into orbit around the world! Yuri Gagarin. We are behind but we’re on the way now. But Gagarin went into orbit. Around the world! He went around the world in a little less than two hours. Can you imagine that? That’s what it probably takes you to—must have taken you to drive from Savannah to Charleston!”

  Like everyone else, they stayed in front of the store until the image was nothing more than sky and the television cut to a close-up of the NASA communicator, a jubilant Shorty Powers giving a narrative to the television audience which was his summation of what had just occurred.

  What, of course, Shorty Powers missed in his summary was that Anna Lane was interested enough in Christopher Straw that she had actually agreed to have met him in Times Square in the morning to watch a rocket go off on television through a store window. And in the doing of it, although she was thrilled and showed it, she was simultaneously trying not to exhibit evidence of her anger that was best kept inside her. She was, after all, a woman who was with a man who seemed to be more interested in something other than her. Shorty Powers at Cape Canaveral didn’t know it. Neither did Alan Shepard know it. And neither did Christopher Straw know that Anna Lane was jealous of her morning’s rival named Freedom Seven.
Men can only do one thing at a time. Women can do many things at one time. At this time, with that feminine ability, she couldn’t help but give a risk of honesty with a symphony of a southern accent by softly—very softly—saying, “You, Mistah Straw ahh not aboard Freedom Seven. You ahh aboard Enslaved Eight!”

  As the enslaver, she knew she had made a point he did not understand but enjoyed.

  striking the chord

  THEME TWELVE

  IN DOLLEY MADISON’S HOUSE 112 YEARS AFTER SHE LIVED THERE

  IT WAS THE MOST UNCONVENTIONAL airplane travel service in the history of commercial airlines. Eastern Airlines did it. It was called “The Shuttle” meaning that at LaGuardia Airport in New York, every two hours from 8:00am through 10:00pm an airliner would leave LaGuardia headed toward Washington National Airport without reservations needed. (The same was true in reverse from Washington National to LaGuardia.) No tickets sold in advance. If even one more passenger than capacity showed up at the gate to be on the airliner, another plane would be provided for that person. Once on the plane, and once in flight, all passengers would buy a ticket from the stewardess who walked through the aisle of the plane wheeling her metal cart while passengers paid her $12.75 in cash or paid that amount by a personal check or a traveler’s check or a Diners Club Card or a Carte Blanche Card.

  In the chronology of flight-technology, this bus-like service was started just five days before Alan Shepard went into space. Not coincidentally, 20 days after Alan Shepard’s flight Christopher Straw took the Shuttle for two reasons: to try it out, and to get to the newest bureaucracy operating in D.C.

  Government agencies are not regularly headquartered in old homes but no previous agency was like the current one and no preceding occupant of the home was like the wife of the fourth President of the United States.

  The address was 1520 “H” Street N.W. just two and one-half blocks from the White House, a house located on a block of somewhat similar looking row-houses across from Lafayette Square. It had been the home of Dolley Madison during the last uninterrupted six years of her life and thirteen years after the death of her husband, James Madison. Thirty Presidents later, after Dwight Eisenhower became President, Dolley Madison’s home became the headquarters of the new government agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that was fast becoming known by its acronym; NASA.