Then I thought about what she had said. Even though I never saw Pappy drunk, I didn’t have to. Because of my stepfather, I knew what it was like. Genius cannot alter the stench of an emaciated body drenched in alcohol and sweat, lying in days-old soiled underwear, entangled in stained bed linen, a voice hoarse and rasping, babbling incoherently, cursing the gods one moment and begging for whiskey the next. His alcoholism did not, however, mean that Pappy did not care about anybody. I know how much he loved Jill, his mother, and my father. He loved mankind—even the Snopeses.
Yet there is no doubt that Pappy’s fame eased the burden of his drinking. He could always count on somebody to pick up the pieces.
IN 1947, PAPPY’S neighbor and friend Colonel Hugh Evans, a retired army officer, began building a houseboat next to his home, a block and a half from Rowan Oak. Evans was assisted in this project by his friends Dr. Ashford Little and Ross Brown, the latter serving as architect and draftsman. Brown’s fifteen-year-old son, Billy Ross (Pappy called him “Bill”), was a tireless and strong helper. Pappy worked right alongside him.
Building a boat of this size in one’s driveway was an unprecedented event in Oxford, and the project drew many onlookers, some of whom were pressed into service fetching and carrying. It was a forty-four-by-fourteen-foot barge with a seventy-five horsepower Gray marine engine, mahogany paneling, and boarding ladders attached to both sides. It had an ample cabin and the cockpit was aft under a wide canopy that shaded the stern. They planned to launch the boat in Sardis Lake, eleven miles northwest of Oxford. Once launched, the boat would be permanently anchored in the ten-mile-long lake.
Pappy took offense when some job he completed did not meet Colonel Evans’s strict standards. He stopped working and stood there glumly, pipe clamped between his teeth. When Evans wasn’t looking, however, he resumed working on the boat. Later, Evans took a photograph of him that Pappy liked so much that he declared it his favorite picture of himself (see second photo insert, this page).
The houseboat was christened Minmagary, named for the friends’ wives, Minnie Ruth Little, Maggie Brown, and Mary Evans. Aunt Estelle was not included because Pappy did not share in the costs. Besides contributing manual labor, Pappy drew up letters of marque, in which he described the building of the boat: “Out of Confusion by Boundless Hope: Conceived in a Canadian Club bottle She was born A.D. 15th August 1947 by uproarious Caesarian Section in prone position with her bottom upward in Evan’s back yard eleven miles from the nearest water deeper than a half inch kitchen tap and waxed and grew daily there beneath the whole town’s enrapt cynosure.”
When the houseboat was completed, a sizable crowd joined the builders in Colonel Evans’s yard to watch the send-off. To me, the Minmagary looked like a beached whale. In Pappy’s words, “In the gloom of afternoon was raised tenderly in the myriad hands of her conceivers owners & artificers & their friends & well-wishers & dogs & the neighbors & merely curious & their friends & well-wishers & dogs” a three-ton houseboat, towed by a rented truck from Memphis.
Many a bet was on the line as to whether the Minmagary could make the first sharp ninety-degree turn onto Old Taylor Road. Dollars changed hands and a case of whiskey was wagered. She made the turn and the crowd cheered and applauded as she wound her stately way through the narrow streets and triumphantly circled the Lafayette County Courthouse to the delight of onlookers. Soon the happy entourage turned north toward Sardis.
She was launched in front of a large gathering, a cocktail party for grown-ups only. Miss Mary Evans broke a bottle of champagne on the bow after several tries. The Minmagary was officially christened.
The papers that Pappy had drawn up cited “whatever authority I may have inherited from my Great Grandfather William C. Falkner Colonel (paroled) Second Mississippi Infantry Provisional Army Confederate States of America,” commissioning the Minmagary as a “Ship of the Line in the Confederate Navy given under my Great Grandfather’s sword this Twenty Fourth July 1948 at Oxford Mississippi. William C. Falkner II.”
When the Minmagary was launched, she rode so high that, according to Billy Ross Brown, she “floated like a matchbox” with the propeller well above the water. For the rest of the summer, Billy Ross was hired by his father at twenty-five dollars a week to build concrete blocks to be used for ballast. He can’t remember whether he made two thousand or twenty thousand pounds of blocks. At any rate, the boat was soon made seaworthy.
For the next six years the Minmagary cruised the waters of Sardis Lake and hosted many festive gatherings. Soon after the launch, Pappy gave a water-skiing party for members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, his fraternity at Ole Miss. He moored the Minmagary next to Sardis Dam and welcomed students aboard. It was a warm day, the sky blue and the lake flat and calm. The Minmagary served as mother vessel for a ski boat pulling the water-skiers. The SAEs and their dates watched the skiers and sunbathed, beer and cigarettes in hand. Pappy presided in captain’s cap, bathing suit, deck shoes, and blue work shirt with sleeves rolled up. The party was in full swing when the University of Mississippi’s dean of women, Estella Hefley, appeared. Sardis Lake was off-limits to coeds while school was in session. Hefley had heard about the SAE skiing party and suspected that “her girls” were involved.
The vigilant Dean Hefley was known far and wide for her vigorous enforcement of university regulations and had added refinements of her own, Victorian by today’s standards:
• To leave the campus to attend a football weekend in Jackson, Memphis, or Baton Rouge, a coed had to present a letter from her hostess verifying the invitation and assuming responsibility while the student was staying at her home.
• Coeds could not wear shorts even if going to gym class without covering their exposed legs with a mid-calf-length raincoat. (This meant that even on sunny ninety-degree days, coeds sweltering under their raincoats could be seen crossing the campus.)
• Girls weren’t allowed to wear “suggestive clothing” such as angora sweaters. Boys might be tempted to touch them. Patent leather shoes were prohibited because they might reflect underwear.
• Freshmen girls had to be in their dormitory rooms by 8:30 p.m. Sunday–Thursday (11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday) and were required to sign out in the office of the dorm mother when they left and to sign in when they returned.
• Of course drinking was prohibited. As the dorm mother looked on, most second-semester freshmen could hold their breath for well over a minute while signing in. Violators were punished by being “campused,” which meant you couldn’t go anywhere except class for one to two weeks, depending on the severity of the offense.
The moment Dean Hefley was seen coming up the boarding ladder of the Minmagary, beers and cigarettes went over the side. Girls disappeared into the cabin and crouched out of sight. Pappy was amused by their alarm. Hefley and his mother had known each other for years. He went to greet her in his captain’s cap and received Dean Hefley with such naval pomp and ceremony he might as well have piped her aboard. “Estella, what a pleasant surprise, please join us.” When he chose, Pappy could charm a cobra out of a basket. He seated her in a deck chair and at that moment became a de facto ambassador for Sigma Alpha Epsilon.
Hefley had a built-in radar for coeds and knew they were hiding in the cabin but said only, “How is Maud?” After they chatted about Pappy’s mother and passed the time, Hefley began to voice concerns that student regulations were being flouted. The SAE ambassador was fully in sympathy. How hard it must be to keep up with this impetuous, willful, yet resourceful and inventive younger generation! He offered her a Coca-Cola and deplored the lack of manners and decorum in the young and wondered what would become of Mississippi and, indeed, the world. Loosening social standards, he agreed, was an unfortunate result of the war. However, he tactfully pointed out, some of the SAEs on board were veterans who, having served their country and put their lives at hazard, felt entitled to relax and enjoy themselves. Still, standards had to be maintained and he promised to take responsibility for
the SAEs while they were aboard his craft. He assured Dean Hefley that they would conduct themselves like the gentlemen they were.
The young men looked on, grinning at one another, and when Dean Hefley’s car was out of sight they let loose a shrill rebel yell. The coeds immediately came out of hiding, one or two sheepishly shedding raingear stowed below deck.
IN 1948, THAT same year, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer arrived in Oxford to film Intruder in the Dust with a budget of $250,000. Pappy’s stock shot up. “Count No ’Count,” it seemed, was nowhere to be seen and in his place was a benefactor of unimpeachable generosity. I was living in Clarksdale and was eaten up with jealousy that Vicki was living at Rowan Oak, basking in the glitter of Pappy’s “sudden fame.” (If Hollywood knew who Pappy was, we reasoned, then shouldn’t we be famous, too?) We made plans that as soon as I got to Oxford, we would set up a card table in the driveway and charge people a quarter to see Rowan Oak. We were going to be rich. Meanwhile, for every minute that I remained in Clarksdale, I fretted that Vicki was cutting school and going to the movie set. I knew Jill would be a part of it. That was okay. But Vicki … without me! I could hardly stand it. I figured by the time I got to Oxford, she would have a BIG PART in the picture show. She’d probably get to kiss Claude Jarman, Jr. I was absolutely green with envy after I found out that Vicki had been cast as an extra in a mob scene. Her role was “Little Girl Eating an Ice Cream Cone.” It nearly killed me.
Finally, Pappy drove to Clarksdale to get me, promising to show me movie people in action. We returned to Lafayette County where a scene was being filmed at a pond with a wooden bridge. The scene was the one in which veteran character actor Porter Hall, playing the villain Nub Gowrie, was caught in quicksand. We watched for hours, fascinated, as the crew dumped boxes of oatmeal into the pond to simulate quicksand. After each take, Porter Hall would towel off and change into an identical dry outfit for the next take. My interest never flagged. If they had kept shooting I’d still be there.
During the filming Pappy and Aunt Estelle gave a party for Jill and invited members of the cast and crew. The older teens were dancing in the front parlor, but Vicki and I were too intimidated by the sight of Claude Jarman, Jr., to come all the way downstairs. We watched from the landing, goggle-eyed, as Jarman danced with Jill and Mil’Murray and most of the girls at the party. Vicki and I were giddy with excitement but grateful for the safety and anonymity of the staircase. We knew when we were out of our league.
Vicki and I weren’t the only family members who were star-struck. The Hollywood bug bit Nannie hard. She met actress Elizabeth Patterson (“Miss Habersham” in the movie) and they became lifelong friends. Since Pappy modeled the fictional Miss Habersham in part on Nannie, I assume that Miss Patterson’s interpretation of her role could have come from observing Nannie’s speech and carriage. Several days before Miss Patterson was scheduled to fly back to L.A., she came to visit Nannie and purchased one of her paintings: a twelve-by-fifteen-inch oil on canvas of a large, fully opened magnolia blossom with leaves and stem intact, on a brilliant red background, signed “MFalkner” (the M overlapping the F). Nannie was tickled pink at the sale—thirty-five dollars, Miss Patterson no doubt insisting on paying—and was thrilled when Miss Patterson later decided to use the picture as a holiday card illustration. At Christmas, Nannie received several of the printed cards featuring her brilliant magnolia on the cover. She sent one to me with the inscription:
TO MY GRANDDAUGHTER, DEAN
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM
ELIZABETH PATTERSON’S FRIEND, MAUD FALKNER.
LOVE, NANNIE
A year later, the premiere of Intruder in the Dust was held at the Lyric Theatre. Wese and I had moved back to Oxford, and I was happily in the thick of things. Vicki and I found out much later that the grown-up world had been in a stew when Pappy threatened not to attend the film debut. If we had known, we’d have died. If Pappy didn’t go, nobody, including us, could have gone! Unbeknownst to us, pressure was brought to bear by Nannie and Aunt Bama, who came all the way from Memphis for the occasion. These formidable ladies beat down Pappy’s resistance until he agreed to attend the premiere.
The night Intruder opened we rode to town in Pappy’s station wagon. As we left Rowan Oak, beams were arcing across the sky from klieg lights outside the Lyric Theatre. The Ole Miss band was playing and hundreds of fans had gathered. As we came closer to the square we could hear them cheering and screaming as each car pulled up and a star emerged. The entrance had been cordoned off. Vicki and I were in the backseat, silly with excitement, checking our (first-ever) nylon stockings and smoothing the skirts of our new dresses. Vicki’s was iridescent orange taffeta with a wide sash that had been made by Aunt Estelle, and mine was midnight blue velvet, sewn by Wese. We thought we were gorgeous. When a tuxedo-clad attendant opened the door for us, we were sure of it.
With spotlights shining in our faces we entered the Lyric behind Pappy and Aunt Estelle, Jill, Nannie, and Aunt Bama. After being escorted to our seats near the front we saw that some of the stars were already present and being introduced. They gave brief speeches, then Pappy was introduced. He stood up, bowed, and sat back down. The crowd continued applauding. He rose again. I held my breath, hoping that he would say something, anything, so that people would keep looking at us in our new dresses. I was far too young to know what a courageous and avant-garde statement on civil rights Pappy had made in Intruder. I had not even read it when we went to the premiere. Vicki and I had huge crushes on Chick (Claude Jarman, Jr.). We cheered for Miss Habersham, who reminded us of Nannie. We feared for Lucas Beauchamp (pronounced Beecham in Mississippi) and yet like most of the theater audience we were white southerners entrenched in racial division without a trace of irony in our souls. All I knew was that for the first time, Pappy’s light was shining on me and I was dazzled. To my dismay he only nodded and sat down again. After the showing of the movie, when the lights came on, the spectators began shouting, “Author, author!” Pappy ignored them and quickly ushered us out to the waiting car.
Back home at Rowan Oak, Vicki and I lay awake and whispered and giggled, too excited to sleep. Finally she asked the question we both knew she had to ask. “How did I look in the movie, you know, Little Girl Eating an Ice Cream Cone?” I pretended to be asleep, but she knew me too well. So I yawned and said, “What kind of ice cream was it?” She hit me with a pillow. Then we snuggled down, listened to the grown-ups talking downstairs, and dreamed our Technicolor dreams.
*When a grade school teacher began to call Mil’Murray “Mildred,” which no one had ever done, Jill solved the problem at recess by inserting an apostrophe. She was “Mil’Murray” from then on.
EVEN THOUGH VICKI (VICTORIA FRANKLIN FIELDEN) AND I were not related by blood, many people inside and outside the family thought of us as sisters. We were a year apart in age. Vicki had sandy reddish-brown hair and green eyes and freckles; I had dark hair and eyes. But we were both scrawny, wore our hair in French braids, frequently dressed alike, and were inseparable when we were in Oxford. All of our lives we were either best friends or best enemies. We seemed to have known each other forever.
Vicki’s mother was Victoria Franklin, my aunt Estelle’s daughter by her first husband, Cornell Franklin. Victoria had been born in Honolulu. Her amah called her “Cho Cho,” Chinese for butterfly. Cho Cho looked like Vivian Leigh, black hair pulled back into a chignon and green eyes, a stunningly beautiful woman with delicate features and an ample bosom. With her narrow shoulders, small hands and feet, she could have been Asian.
Vicki’s father was Claude Selby of Vicksburg. Nobody in the combined families—Franklins, Falkners, and Oldhams—ever mentioned Selby’s name out loud. But there were whispers. As much apocrypha surrounds Cho Cho’s marriage to Claude Selby and Vicki’s birth as surrounds any Faulkner, Pappy included.
My favorite version of the story, because it makes Pappy the hero, is that shortly after Vicki’s birth in 1937, Selby abandoned her and Cho Cho and ran off to a lo
gging camp in Canada. Cho Cho was distraught and within days she and baby Vicki were on a bus headed for Quebec. Weeks passed without any word. Pappy and Estelle were frantic. Finally Cho Cho telephoned. She was a desperate, broken woman. She had found Selby. He would have nothing to do with her or their child. Would Pappy come for her? Despite being hard-pressed for money, Pappy took the bus to Canada and brought his stepdaughter and stepgrand-daughter back to Oxford and Rowan Oak. He did everything he could for Cho Cho that awful Christmas. They worked puzzles together and he read to her constantly, offering diversions. “He kept me alive,” she once said. Years later she told me, “Never once in my life did Pappy make me feel like a stepchild.” He was as tender and solicitous of Cho Cho as he had been of Wese after Dean’s death.
Her divorce (or annulment) from Claude Selby was finalized in 1938. With Pappy’s urging and his help, Cho Cho took Vicki and went to Shanghai to live with her father, Judge Cornell Franklin. In a sense she was going home again. There she met Bill Fielden, a handsome executive who ran the Asian headquarters of the Reynolds Tobacco Company. Within a year they were married. Two years later they were at Rowan Oak. Pappy managed to care for all of us.
Every Day by the Sun Page 13