Collected Stories of Reynolds Price

by Reynolds Price

  So I leaped and made it, though with no ground to spare. And each hedged step of the backward way was hard and cowardly. I somehow still couldn’t pray for help, for me or my brother that had been so lively this afternoon when Mother told me to press her belly and feel his foot. Worse, I couldn’t even pray for her—that whether he came out well or dead, she be spared pain, not to mention bloody death. She was three-fourths of all I’d known or loved, and she’d earned every calorie of all my heat.

  But my arms and legs worked on as before; and by the time it was actual night, my hands alone could guess I was almost home by the touch of familiar trees, especially pines with the scaly bark I knew as well as my favorite skin. The last few yards took what seemed years, but the hands were right. At last home was there, bright before me in its own safe clearing.

  Inside in Mother and Father’s room, my mother’s face was hid in their pillows. She was fully dressed but the tan wool skirt she’d worn all day was dark with blood, and I could count the wrenching cries that tore her heart. Around us three, the air had the hot iron smell of blood. It was so much my strongest sight till then that I can call it up whole this minute and be there again. I wanted of course to flee to the woods and learn a way to reverse the spell my trip had cast. But bravery showed me my kind-eyed father standing beside her, hands at his sides, unable to help. When he saw my face, he said “She lost your brother, son.”

  I saw his words had calmed her cries for the moment at least, which was all it took to brace myself for the sight of the eyes she turned on me next—her mouth like a razor wound in her face. I told her the only thing I knew, “I will be him too. You can love us more than ever.”

  Father shook his head and touched his lips for silence.

  But slowly my mother rigged a smile and pressed it toward me before her head sank back to sleep.

  THE LAST OF A LONG CORRESPONDENCE

  WHEN THE NURSE had turned Timson Larkin side to side with gentle efficiency to make the bed under him, she lugged him upright onto four pillows and rolled the tray table across his lap. “There now—yOU set for the morning?” The coal-black skin of her face was seamless, though she’d said more than once in his weeks here that she was a few years older than he.

  He said “Wilhelmina, call me Timson. Nobody else knows me well enough now.”

  She checked the open door for faces—a momentarily empty hall. “Timson, Mr. Larkin.” She thought about laughing but touched the dry back of her hand to his, a sensible meeting; then she stepped to the window and tilted his blinds so he lay in the reach of strong fall sunlight. He had what she thought of as “hospital ghost” skin, papery white and drawn on his forehead; but he’d kept enough flesh to leave his smile bearable, no corpse’s grin.

  Larkin lowered his voice and spoke through the smile. “If I had any real money to leave, I’d give this place a marble statue of a black trained-nurse—I’m that grateful to you.”

  Wilhelmina laughed. “They make black marble?”

  “Streaky but black.”

  “No streaks on me. No, get you some tar, Timson—leave them a sawed-off black tar-baby with a broad bohunkus. It’ll cost you less and they’ll know it’s me.” By then her mind was in the next room with another lone man but one she dreaded, mean to the core and likely to live weeks longer than Timson, who was speeding now.

  He saw her all the way through the door; then rocked his gray head back on the pillows, shut his eyes and sorted the people he still owed money or explanations. The vivid likeness of one young woman stood out from the rest, a tall redhead with wide blue eyes. He watched her stand there clear in his mind, a quiet minute, till he finally answered the question he’d postponed since his last surgery.

  Of all the friends and kin he was leaving—and he had a fair number—it was she who counted most by a long reach, the one he bitterly hated to leave. Before he opened his eyes again, he knew that whatever fear he had of his coming death sprang fully from her—her perfect record in his life and his in hers; his hope to watch her and her two children through a little more time, which he’d never do now.

  When his eyes came open, he saw his right hand on the table before him. The fingers worked anyhow, most mornings. So he worried the drawer of his table open; found the tablet of lined paper, the old pen, and set his mind to tell one story that was still inside him.

  October 19, 1992

  Dear Kit,

  Your potted plant beat me here. It was by my bed when they wheeled me up from Offensive Care, minus what was left of that lung. It loves the shade and is already growing—the plant, not the lung (I very much hope). My best nurse says it’s a century plant. In which case I count on knowing it better as we crawl toward my centennial, after all a mere four decades off. The plant’s chances are better than mine but you know that. And I don’t object. I honest to God don’t mind the thought of easing on from here to Plan B or to Full-Tilt Hell in Barbecue Season, just so I either feel nothing whatever or recall your face.

  I even know when I want to see you, in memory. It will be any one of the numerous ways you turned to me that bright weekend we spent when you were seven but looked a strong thirty, around your eyes. You seemed and acted, all those hours, like a full-fledged female guide with dangerous eyes but a heart that wanted me when others had quit. You were also funny—past any child movie star—and genuinely sweet at heart, not sappy. Memories of children seldom age well though, so I won’t force you to cringe by harping on what made you adorable then. And I can’t remember us ever discussing the time itself; so with your leave, I’ll expatiate.

  I don’t even know if you recall the genuine trouble that hung right over us, fine as it was in the warm sun from Thursday evening on through that Sunday in late October 1962. The scare had started on the Monday night when young John Kennedy, hot as a fever, told the nation on grainy TV that Russia was mounting hydrogen bombs on long-range missiles in rural Cuba, ninety miles from downtown Key West. He announced that we were, at that moment, quarantining the island of Cuba from Russian ships with offensive weapons. Every missile in place must go, and any warhead launched from Cuba would be considered an assault by Russia and would call for the ultimate nuclear answer.

  I was thirty years old, my whole boyhood had been World War II. I remembered the day Hiroshima vanished—I’d built a doghouse in our backyard. But that October night, watching alone, I knew we’d got to the worst place yet. Hitler could never have killed everybody. We could do that tomorrow, and so could the Russians. Seeing the glare in Kennedy’s eye, and recalling Khrushchev’s pudgy bluster, I knew the raw truth. It was more than likely the world would end this week or next, the human part.

  It had been eight months since your dad’s plane crashed with him and your mother; and I hadn’t seen you since that night I left you by your grandmother’s drive, pale and stunned from a double funeral and a houseful of cousins packed in behind you, feeding their faces on free deviled eggs and complimentary Jell-O. But when I’d taught my morning class on the Thursday after Kennedy’s threat, I suddenly understood you were all I wanted to see, in the time that was left. That morning had seen the first face-off between our blockade and a Russian freighter bound for Havana. The news kept telling us every ten seconds how far apart the vessels were, what instant they’d meet; and everybody over six years old in the Western world knew that, if the Russians refused our search, we’d sink them—and then?

  I was fairly sane, even that far back; and I’d led a smart class through the Treaty of Utrecht with a splendid day in progress outside as the two ships met, but I was convinced they’d defy our orders. We’d scuttle them and, in less than an hour, I and my twenty-odd rich sophomores and every page of modern history, not to mention you, would be loose atoms in a swarm of dust that could never settle. Years later I found out Kennedy shared my bleak outlook; he sent his wife and children into the Maryland hills to wait out the fire while he crouched in the White House by the big red trigger.

  By noon I’d stopped at hom
e, packed a small bag, fed my two angel fish and headed for you—a two-hour drive. The warm sunlight held steady around me; and I reminded myself that wars start mostly in warm dry weather, spring or fall, almost never in snow. And as I climbed northwest in open country, it started seeming that everything knew an end was bearing down; so even the dead things—rocks and dirt—were showing their finer points to the light in a last display. At one spot ten miles east of you, at the foot of House Mountain, a sizable cat that was clearly wild—some brand of panther with tan hair and pale eyes—slid out of a thicket and faced my car, completely unspooked. Later I checked and found that panthers had vanished from there in the early twenties, but I never doubted mine was real and was giving the Earth a final chance to see her elegant eyes and body which killed just to eat. She made me pick up speed toward you.

  See, I thought you were mine. And most of what I want you to know, once you read this, is why I believed it. It’s easy to say with me near gone, but I understand it may be hard for you to hear. I truly hope not. I mean it to be true news you can bank on the rest of your life. It can all be said in visible words—I’d loved your mother for so many years, we’d shared so much of each other so long, that when Connie chose your dad over me and you were born, I felt from the instant I saw your blue eyes that I’d helped make you.

  Strictly speaking, and this is important for you to believe, I’d had no physical part in your birth. Connie and I had ceased to be lovers nearly six months before she met Walt; and in his bottomless confidence, he never asked if I’d done more than steer her elbow around most of Europe for nearly two years—she told me that much, the year she died. No, what I’m trying to set down here is the way a single human being who’s never had a legal mate or his own blood children can, one day, know he’s had a strong hand in somebody else’s newborn child. I loved your mother that much from our childhood; and crazy or soft-brained as it sounds, I put so much into filling her mind and body with me—well, take it from there.

  You loved me too, from the day we met when you were barely three weeks old. Walt had moved you and Connie to Charlotte. Though he and I had met and were civil, I’d never have made a special trip to barge back into Connie’s life except for being invited down to speak at a men’s historical banquet. Your mother read about it in the paper and wrote me to say, if I felt it was right, that she and Walt would thank me for standing as your godfather the Sunday morning after my speech. I doubt Connie understood how nearly I’d shucked off any belief I might have had that life was moving in a plan toward happy endings for all concerned (or even just the truly baptized). And I knew the priest would have me swearing to guard you from spiritual harm etc., but something more than memories of my years with Connie made me accept. So I saw you for the first time ever on steep church steps before we moved in to scrub your soul.

  You were dozing in Walt’s arms in blinding light; and you looked like a wretch in Satan’s stewpot—red as any new rabbit, with hairline purple veins on your bald scalp. Of course I bore up manfully and lied about your native charms and your natural cool to be sleeping through this. The cool kept on right through the service, with you being held by the wheezy priest and plentifully soused. Your eyes were half-open, but you still looked raw and ready to yell. It was only when I had to answer the priest’s first question that you looked up and met me finally.

  I don’t recall what I was promising—no doubt some inhuman guarantee—but my one answer, which had to be yes, did wonders for you. Your wonky neck firmed up for an instant, your eyes found mine and locked right on them, and your left hand came toward me slowly till it stopped in a bar of light from a window and held still there. Your fingers were less than ten inches from me; in the sun, I told myself I could see your actual bones, brittle as sticks. I told myself you were way too trusty to be near me that day, maybe ever—I somehow felt more unreliable than ever around you, but I didn’t think why.

  Still I put my hand out and let you feel my heat. Till then you’d fairly steadily smiled; but when you’d tested me a long moment, watching my eyes, your whole face cleared of the infant blankness and the plainness lifted. While the priest gunned through his benediction, you let me see deep into your mind that lay as calm behind your eyes as if you were ninety-five years old and had borne all sorrows known to the race before winning this peace. I had no doubt, that minute or now, that you were something I’d love from then out.

  I pulled over after I saw the panther and phoned to let your grandmother know I was passing through and could I stop (I hadn’t wanted to phone much ahead for fear of alarming her and you). She’d known me very nearly from birth, and I’d always called her Livia. She’d generally thought I was vague but firm as a family friend, and she left it at that. Your mother and I had most of our love, long miles from home when we worked abroad; so sure, why didn’t I come for supper and visit with you? Even better than hearing her invitation was the fact she didn’t allude to Cuba or the two men tensed in Moscow and Washington, dazed on testosterone and ready to lunge. Like my own mother, who was long gone, Livia was concentrating on questions that after all may have been more urgent than imminent death. Would one baked hen feed the three of us?

  We were all three famished and it barely did. Afterward we sat on the old glassed-in back porch and watched full night sweep past the mountains beyond the valley and up the near side to take us too. It made me edgy, watching it creep; and you’d been unnaturally quiet all evening; so I was trying to ease my nerves by rattling on to you about school when Livia leaned and touched my hand.

  She said “Tim, listen. Smooth that brow. It truly won’t matter.”

  At first I thought she’d loosened a screw; and then I noticed you were facing her, nodding.

  I said “I don’t follow you.”

  Livia faced you as if for permission, then said to me “This dustup over a tropical island can’t count for much.”

  I thought I should let it go at that; no use depressing the two of you with my timetable for planetary melt-down.

  But then you laughed. “Want to show him the new paperdolls?” In another few seconds you were in a long giggle fit.

  And Livia joined you, helpless with her corseted sides. Eventually she dried her tears and managed to speak. “We beg your pardon; we’ve been laughing all day.”

  Recall? You’d both spent the afternoon drawing what Livia called “celestial fashions” for paperdolls—planning your wardrobes and hairdos for Heaven. Once I was laughing too, Livia brought out samples of both your designs; and we looked through them, making fancy additions. I especially enjoyed the fact that—not even knowing I was on the road—you’d made an angel getup for me, covered with stars and (over the breast of my floor-length robe) the planet Saturn with colored rings. You kept us at it through most of the evening, and then it was time for the late news. In the curt reports of a hunkered-down world, there was one glimpse of hope, the size of a pinhead. Kennedy and Khrushchev had told the U.N. that “each side strongly desired peaceful settlement,” but neither man flinched from where he stood. And by the time the weatherman promised another fine day, you’d dozed off on the sofa beside me.

  Livia asked me to take you upstairs, and only then did I gauge your growth—you were solid as glove leather right the way through, though your face rolled back on your graceful neck, as limber as that first day I met you. Still you had enough energy to give me the first hard order all week. I knew at once it showed you were both a very young child and one that had some sense of the stakes outside in the world. You said “Don’t let this happen to me.”

  I told you I’d do my very damndest, but even I won’t claim it eased you. Your face looked ten years older since supper. You were bonetired though and fell asleep fast, while I sat by.

  For the first night since the crisis began, I also managed a few hours’ rest. But just before daylight, I had a rough dream that saw me killing you and Livia in your beds. I slit your throats as easy as lemons, to spare you worse. It woke me up and, as da
y leaked in through the blinds, I lay in the grip of that and knew it wasn’t the worst idea I’d had. Even groggy, I was sure we had no more than a few hours left till the first fireball rolled in across us.

  Since I was near I could do no better than start right now to drive you farther into the mountains, hole up in some granite cave and watch each other starve or get shot by other fugitives, just for our canned goods or pocket money (I had less than fifty dollars on me and a handful of change). The more I thought, the more I felt that a quick end here on Livia’s porch made better sense.

  I heard a single tap at my door. When I went, it was Livia fully dressed and ready as ever to meet what came. She whispered for me to join her downstairs, so I pulled myself together fast and met her in the kitchen.

  She had coffee on and was well into making a fieldhand breakfast like none I’d had for thirty years—eggs baked sunnyside-up on ham, link sausage and hominy, hot applesauce, corn muffins and biscuits with homemade jams. I saw right off she was cooking a wake, an old-fashioned feast to remember the dead or the soon-to-be; and suddenly knowing she took the Cuban news in earnest like you and me (she who’d laughed the most last night) scared me worse than Kennedy’s eyes or the second splendid day unfolding along the ridge beyond the bay window. I drank half a cup of her strong coffee and tried to think clearly.

  Even then I doubt I’d have tipped my hand, but Livia set a full plate before me and said “Eat without me.”