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Every Day by the Sun

Page 20

by Dean Faulkner Wells


  After Aunt Estelle left for Charlottesville, Wese and I moved into Rowan Oak to give Nannie some much-needed peace and quiet. For months Pappy, Wese, and I did little but prepare for the wedding. Pappy, my wedding planner extraordinaire, threw himself into the arrangements down to the last detail.

  It was a happy, peaceful time for everyone. Our schedule did not change from day to day. Pappy fixed his own breakfast and ate in the kitchen. After he read the Ann Landers column in the paper, we met in the library over coffee to plan the dinner menu and our dinner guests.

  Each morning he named the same guests: “That redheaded boy” (Tommy Barksdale) and “Miz Coers.” Often Miss Kate was included. Then we planned the menu and made grocery lists. I phoned to extend the invitations and we were off to the post office to collect my wedding presents, followed by a trip to the grocery store. Pappy never drank on Monday, in those days, so nobody drank on Mondays. In place of alcohol we enjoyed elaborate desserts. It was a beautifully settled routine.

  When Pappy was in an exceptionally good mood, usually any day but Monday, he would make up parlor games in the library after guests had arrived. “If you had to be any wife of Henry the Eighth, Miz Coers, which would you be and why?” Or, “Mr. Barksdale,” he’d say, watching Tommy squirm. “Which would you rather be, Attila the Hun or Nero? You may need to freshen your drink for that one.” From there, he might call on the group to name our favorite horses. Someone always chose Bucephalus or Dan Patch. Trigger and Traveler were banned due to overuse. The games would go on into dinner, and over coffee and nightcaps and more nightcaps, depending on who was playing and how well.

  Before bedtime when I came downstairs to say good night, he would be sitting in his favorite chair in his blue pajamas, smoking his pipe and reading Shakespeare or the Bible or Melville or a whodunit. He’d look up and say, “What are you reading?”

  Though Pappy and I never talked about his work, I’d begun reading him in high school. I don’t remember which year I read which book but over time I grew to love Pappy’s Yoknapatawpha and its people, in spite of or because of my closeness to them. I loved their names: Miss Rosa Coldfield, Joe Christmas, Boon Hogganbeck, all of the Snopeses—Montgomery Ward, I.O., Flem—Colonel Sartoris, Jackson and Longstreet Fentry, and, of course, Ikkemotubbe.

  He had always directed my coursework at Ole Miss, making sure that I studied “courses that matter,” such as the English novel, eighteenth-century lit, the Romantic poets, Old English (so I could translate “Beowulf”), and every semester one more Shakespeare course if I could find one I hadn’t already taken. He was disappointed that until I went abroad I could not speak French and had not read the Russians. He filled these educational gaps from his library at Rowan Oak.

  At his insistence I was reading the Russians that fall: Gogol’s Dead Souls, Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. Just then I happened to be reading Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. I had recently given him J. D. Salinger’s Nine Stories. His favorite was “For Esmé—With Love and Squalor.”

  “Where’s Salinger going to end up?” I asked, leaning against the door frame.

  “Wherever he wants to.”

  “I guess so. G’night, Pappy.”

  “Good night, Dean, sleep well.”

  Before I reached the landing he hurried after me and called, “I’ve worked out the parking arrangements! We’ll have numbered tickets. Hand them out one at a time. So each person will know where his car is—as soon as he matches up the ticket stub with the other half.”

  “Who’s going to hand out the tickets?”

  “We’ll work that out later. ’Night.”

  Soon the wedding parties began: showers, teas, dinner parties, cocktail parties, luncheons, and picnic suppers. When we stayed in, we had company. There were few quiet evenings at home, but on the night of October 23, 1958, I set the table for three: Wese, Pappy, and me. The phone rang during dinner. I knew Pappy would ignore it. He always did and expected us to follow his lead. “Please, Pappy, let me get that.” I was expecting a call from one of my bridesmaids. He nodded. I walked into the pantry, shutting the door behind me as I picked up the receiver so I wouldn’t have to look at Pappy as I chatted.

  “Hello,” said a famous voice. “This is Edward R. Murrow for William Faulkner. May I speak to him?”

  I was speechless. This was one of the most recognizable voices on radio and TV.

  Then, “Yes, sir, well, just one minute, sir. I’ll see if I can get him to … I’ll see if I can find him.”

  “Pappy.” Back in the dining room next to his chair, I whispered, “It’s Edward R. Murrow. He wants to speak to you.”

  He sat like a West Point cadet, not an inch of his body touching the back of his chair, his fork firmly in place in his left hand, his knife at the ready in his right. He stared straight ahead. “What does he want?”

  Back to the pantry.

  “Sir, Mr. Faulkner”—it occurred to me that it would serve me well not to be too closely identified with Pappy—“would like to know what your call is about.”

  “Pasternak has just won the Nobel Prize. I’d like a statement from Faulkner.”

  Back to the table.

  Whispering, “Doctor Zhivago. Nobel. What do you think?”

  Instantly, “Tell him it is a political hoax.”

  Back to the pantry.

  “Sir, Mr. Faulkner says that I’m to tell you that he thinks it is a political hoax. Sir.”

  After a slight pause, “Thank you. Good night.”

  I returned to the table. There was no further mention of the phone call.

  The next Friday, our wedding caravan left for a round of parties in Jackson. Pappy, Colonel Baker, and Miss Kate in one car, Jayne Coers, Wese, and me in the other. Pappy was in high spirits from the time we left Oxford until we returned Sunday night. He was surrounded by attentive, near-worshipful young people who clung to him, hanging on every word. At a dinner party Saturday, where whiskey and wine flowed and the food was extraordinarily good, Pappy was caught up in a conversation with a retired general and his attractive wife and daughter about his experiences in WWI. Expecting a repeat of the “silver plate in the head” story, I had moved away from the group surrounding him when they exploded into laughter.

  “What a wonderful joke. Tell it again, please, so everyone can hear. Hurry up, y’all.” A young man shouted, “Pappy” (as he was to everyone that evening) “is going to tell it again.”

  A British ladies’ club, Pappy began, had invited a WWI flying ace to speak. The officer, who had recently returned from a tour of duty at the front, began talking cautiously, then encouraged by their nods and smiles, warmed to his tale. “I spotted the Fokkers before they saw me, and climbed above them. I dived with one of the Fokkers in my sights. I was just about to fire when bullets ripped through the cockpit, and I saw Fokkers to the left, Fokkers to the right, Fokkers on my tail.…” The club president held up her hand and explained that a Fokker was a fighter plane of German manufacture. “Oh, no, ma’am,” the pilot said quickly, “those fokkers were Messerschmitts.”

  I don’t think it bothered him at all that the state dignitaries in Jackson ignored his visit. Early Sunday morning Colonel Baker drove him around town. Pappy was all turned out in a double-breasted gray suit and black bowler hat later made famous by the Cartier-Bresson photographs at West Point. They toured the old and new capitol buildings then went to the governor’s mansion, but they did not venture inside. If Pappy had been expecting an invitation to meet with the governor or the pleasure of turning it down, none was forthcoming. Only Edward R. Murrow, it seemed, wanted to hear from him.

  Shortly before my wedding Pappy decided I ought to know more about my family history. One night when we were alone in the library he began to talk of our Scotch-Irish heritage: McAlpine and Murry. He described our tartan and reminded me that he had a skirt made for me from the plaid when I was a child. He repeated our family motto (adding the qualifier, I think): “Fast in battle—especially in retreat
.” As to our “Falconer” ancestors, he was not content with their having been ordinary falcon handlers. No, they were “keepers of the king’s falcons.”

  This may have been true for the Butler side of our family. As the Earls of Ormond, Butlers were Lords Lieutenant in Ireland down to the time of James II. After he was deposed in 1688, most of the Butlers remained loyal to the Stuarts and thus suffered the loss of their estates. Some became mercenaries and served with distinction in the armies of France, Spain, and Germany. In America, Major General Richard Butler fought in the Revolutionary War, and five of his sons served under Washington. Lafayette was reported to have said, “Whenever I want anything well done, I’ll get a Butler to do it.”

  Pappy was nursing an after-dinner bourbon as he spoke of our ancestry. My mind began to wander when he came to the potato famine that drove our ancestors across the Atlantic. I drifted away from the sound of his voice. I can’t say how much I regret this lack of concentration. Cho Cho once said it was a shame all of us did not walk around with a pad and pencil. A tape recorder would have been even better, if we’d known how to make one work.

  The days before the wedding flew by. Then it was upon us. All the men in the bridal party were splendidly turned out in their morning coats. My bridesmaids, one from each period in my life—Sheila, Little Rock; Alice, Ole Miss; Cynthia, my new sister-in-law; Sandra, lifelong friend—actually liked the dreaded royal blue dresses because they complemented the rich colors at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. With her magic buttonhook Miss Kate somehow got me into Jill’s eighteen-inch wedding dress. Ten days before the wedding I’d gone on a crash diet so my hand-me-down wedding gown would fit.

  Pappy gave me away in marriage. As we stood at the back of St. Peter’s awaiting our cue from the organist I glanced at him. Eyes shining, the tiny wrinkles in his face smoothed out, he was a happy man. At that moment I realized that I could see over his head even though I had chosen the lowest heels I could find—one-fourth-inch French heels. When we went down the aisle together I slumped until I practically had curvature of the spine, though I needn’t have worried. Once again there was no competition for star of the show. Every eye in the church was on Pappy. He was radiant. Yet when I stood in front of the minister and said, “I will,” my life as I knew it was over.

  Afterward at the champagne reception at Rowan Oak, Pappy stood at the head of the receiving line. One of the few pictures in existence of him smiling shows him tirelessly greeting wedding guests. That photograph now hangs in the entrance hall at Rowan Oak. Once the reception was over, he and Wese and Tommy Barksdale collected flowers from the church, went to the cemetery, and laid them on Dean’s grave. Pappy had fulfilled his promise to my father. He looked at the marker he had chosen for Dean and said, “She is married, now. I have done what I thought would please you, my brother. Let us wish her every happiness. Forever.” Then he asked Tommy to drive him and Wese back to Rowan Oak.

  *This from the mother of a notoriously soft-spoken Nobel laureate.

  *The statute of limitations on Pappy’s newspaper ads refusing to assume her debts had long since expired.

  SHORTLY AFTER THE FESTIVITIES, THE WISH I HAD MADE BEFORE my marriage (“If only we could have the wedding and then go our separate ways!”) came true.

  My brand-new husband, a second lieutenant in the air force, was assigned to duty in Japan. One month after we were married he left the United States for a year’s tour of duty in Sapporo. I moved in with Nannie, assuming I’d be joining him shortly after the first of the year. On December 31, 1958, I received his letter informing me there would be no Japanese sojourn for me. His year’s tour was classified “Remote,” meaning no dependents allowed. He’d be returning to the States in twelve months.

  I was filled with disappointment, not at the thought of missing my husband, but at missing an opportunity to live somewhere I’d never been.

  Uncle Jack had come up from Mobile to check on Nannie and was staying with us for a few days. Since Pappy was in Virginia, there would be no traditional New Year’s Eve champagne toast at Rowan Oak. At five thirty, the three of us walked up to the square to Mrs. Winter’s diner, Nannie in hat and gloves, carrying her purse, Jack in his usual coat and tie and braces. Secure in his jacket pocket were his pouch of Bull Durham, cigarette papers, and box matches. You could smoke everywhere in those days.

  The square was deserted and quiet. A rare, lonely firecracker went off somewhere. The combination dry-goods store–diner was the only restaurant open. We had to be there before Mrs. Winter closed at six. Customers could sit at stools at the long counter and watch her cook hamburgers or at one of the few tables placed next to shelves of kitchen matches, mustard, Kleenex and Kotex, boxes of number two pencils and notebook paper, quarts of vinegar and Blue Plate mayonnaise. The tables were covered with cheap oilcloth in floral patterns, all different. We chose a table and sat down. There were paper napkins in a metal holder. We were the only diners in the dimly lighted store. The air smelled of grease. Mrs. Winter’s specialties were fried peach pies and cheeseburgers. Actually, that was the entire menu. “I’ll have a cheese-boiger!” Nannie declared as if she had a choice.

  She and Pappy, as far back as I can remember, always used the same idiosyncratic pronunciation for certain words. For example, in any word containing an r preceded by a vowel, such as “word,” the r vanished, replaced by a diphthong that made “word” sound like woid and “verb” become voib. “Worth” became woith. “Earth” was oith. “Purse” was poise, and so on. They also consistently, and for their own amusement, used the third person plural “don’t” in place of the singular, as in, “He don’t care; she don’t know.” It was their private code or patois, their conversations liberally sprinkled with irregular plural verbs, or voibs. I don’t know why.

  I hadn’t said anything about my letter, but as I moped my way through supper, it was obvious that something was wrong. Just as we cut into the peach pies, which Nannie adored, I blurted out my news. The two of them were sympathetic and determined to cheer me up. “What will I do for a whole year?” I complained, relishing my self-pity, imagining my pretty new wedding presents (china and silver and crystal, tablecloths, bed linens and monogrammed towels) packed away for months. Even the thought of practical items such as kitchen utensils lying unused made me sad.

  “You’ll find something to do,” they assured me.

  Within a week, Nannie went into high gear. She would see to it that I stayed busy. Under her direction I would hemstitch and monogram all of my linens: twelve sheets, twenty-four pillowcases, twelve guest towels, four sets of dinner napkins. We made a shopping trip to Morgan and Lindsey for embroidery hoops, needles, and skein upon skein of white embroidery thread—whose strands had to be carefully divided—plus many spools of plain white sewing thread. I was in the simple stitchery business for the next year, or maybe for life! I grew to loathe the monogram:

  DMF

  After this, it would be years before I wanted to needlepoint or crochet.

  When Pappy made a brief trip home (he was living in Charlottesville then) he joined Nannie’s crusade to keep me busy. He offered to celebrate my twenty-third birthday with a dinner party at Rowan Oak. Oxford was still “dry,” and Pappy’s liquor supply having run out, he dispatched me to Memphis as his rumrunner. I delivered his handwritten list to his favorite liquor store near the Peabody, paid cash, and had cases of wine and booze loaded in the trunk. I also made a fast stop at his tobacco store, where the owner had Pappy’s favorite blend of Dunhill tobacco; then at a specialty shop to buy imported orange marmalade and extra-bitter dark chocolate. I drove back to Mississippi like a bootlegger with the rear bumper almost dragging on the ground.

  For my birthday Wese had given me a stereo set and a recording of “The 1812 Overture.” After dinner, Pappy let me take the stereo out to the front gallery and plug it in with several extension cords. I played the “1812” and turned the volume up full bore. When the cannons began to boom, it sounded like Gener
al Whiskey Smith was back in town. The silence at Rowan Oak, rarely sullied by radio or record player, and never by television, resounded for the first and only time to loud music. Pappy smoked his pipe and listened, giving his tacit approval, then went back in the house. I stayed until the last cannon blast, and then my birthday rebellion was over.

  The next day was payback for Pappy. I was to work the horses for him.

  I like to smell horses. I like to hear them drink. I like the creak of leather saddles. I think riding clothes—jodhpurs and boots and black velvet hard hats and Pinque coats and rat catcher—are sexy. I like to read about horses and learn of their storied history. Pappy saw to it that as children we all knew the annual Derby winner’s name, and about the great Dan Patch and Man O’ War, and the legendary Traveler and Bucephalus. He told us about his having learned to jump in Canada, when as part of the RAF training all the cadets took the jumps bareback with their arms folded across their chests like Native Americans. Still, despite my family’s tradition of horsemanship, I did not share their passion. I was fascinated by horses. I just didn’t want to ride them.

  Pappy had made a study of the relative intelligence of animals and enjoyed pointing out the disparity between the various species. “Nobody would ever be able to sit a horse if it wasn’t broke and dumb,” he said. “A creature that big would have his way every time because it can smell fear, but it don’t because it don’t have any sense.” Chickens, he allowed, were one of the few species dumber than horses. “The smartest ones of all—some of them smarter than we are—are the coyotes and the pigs. Pigs, don’t leave them out! I know you won’t like this part, Dean, but I think dogs are overrated. Their desire to please makes them seem a lot brighter than they are. The best thing about dogs is that you can trust a man who loves one of them.”

  Pappy believed mules to be the most distinguished four-legged creatures on earth. He often said, “A mule will serve you patiently and without complaint and wait a lifetime for the opportunity to kick you once.”

 

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