Collected Stories of Reynolds Price

by Reynolds Price

  I said “You’ve cooked enough for a tribe.”

  “I know I have but the tribe won’t get it—I’m cleaning out the refrigerator.” As she looked down on me, her face was bleak with the kind of certainty you dread to see.

  Through the years I’d teased her about her prophecies. When Connie and I were hurting each other toward the end of our time, Livia would occasionally turn to us both and smile as if to warn she was joking but then say “I prophesy so and so”—we’d die before dawn if we didn’t stop quarreling or we’d lose each other and live to regret it. The worst was when she turned on me once, “You’re poisoning memories, Timson, fool. You’ll grieve for this the rest of your years.” That Friday morning in ’62, I managed a chuckle. “You prophesying?”

  She sat beside me. I noticed how young her long hands were—she’d thrust them out on the table top, and they barely showed a freckle of age. When she faced me again, she was smiling too. “You want to take Kit on out of here, don’t you?”

  “Sure, but where would we go?”

  “Not we,” she said. “Just the two of you—I packed her clothes.”

  “When?”

  “Deep in the night; I hardly slept.”

  I could see she thought she wouldn’t sleep again; she was that convinced. But her smile hung on as her fingers mocked at primping that lovely head of hair, still finer than any I’ve seen since. “I took a long bath and curled my wig. I’m ready as I’ll ever be.” She tugged at the roots to show it was hers, in case I doubted.

  That trace of vanity was welcome in a morning where everything else had simplified to lines and graphs; and I noticed then how well she was dressed—a dark blue shirtwaist buttoned at the neck, a slim gray skirt and the gold rope-chain that you still wear. I thought She knows. But what I said was “I’m not going one foot without you.”

  She looked right at me. “This child’s yours, Tim.”

  A direct hit from Cuba might have surprised me less. I think I just nodded, I may have thanked her, I know I said she had time to pack.

  She glanced to the clock. “Old Dot will be here any minute. I can’t scare her.”

  I thought by then that—old as Dot was, as many meals as she’d cooked in this room—she might be glad to find a locked door and one day’s rest, not to mention eternity. But I knew Livia wouldn’t see it that way. So I ate the whole breakfast while she woke you and got you dressed. We were in my car and rolling by eight.

  And roll we did, that whole long day up through the valley. It never looked better and neither did we. I’ve still got the picture here beside me, the one the guide at the caverns took and mailed to me later. When I saw he had a camera, I’d given him five of my scarce dollars to take one of us and send it to me “if time permits.” He’d laughed and said “You don’t believe that Kennedy stud? He’s not about to burn his money up.”

  But then the lights went out in the cavern, and who was the first voice to yell he was scared? Not you or me but the pimply guide. We could hear him scrambling back toward the sun, abandoning us, when you said calmly “I bet this is it.” I remember thinking you sounded comically wise but right; then you pulled me down to sit on a rock 0ench carved from the wall.

  Everything in me said you were wrong; a fuse had just blown. When we’d sat there quiet for two minutes though, I realized I’d forgot your face. I well remembered in principle that you’d been, for two years, the only beautiful child I’d seen—not charming or winsome but beautiful in the lasting way, still as a tall bird before she’s observed. Blind as I felt, I tasted cold panic. I’ll be frank—it was fear for me. I barely thought of you or your safety for quite a while there, at least a minute.

  Then you found my hand and began to tap on it. Those were the days when Morse code was something boys tried to learn, but I’d never known you to show an interest. Since I’d learned it back in the Scouts, I tried to read your taps as a message; and even when I came up with nonsense, I tried to think you were transmitting some new signal you’d learned. Honest to God, I was that impressed by what smelt like the crack of doom and the likelihood we were already posthumous.

  Finally you said “Understand?” By then you were laughing, the way you could then, which always brought down the whole room with y0U—it came from that deep and was that good to hear.

  I said “Sorry, I—m out of my depth.”

  You kept on laughing and tapped again.

  Then a high voice yelled out “Rescue!”

  I recall an instant of real disappointment. I’d truly believed you, This was it; and now you had a useful message that I’d never get. The next thing I saw was your face, grinning. The guide’s flashlight was probing for us and had found you first. You beckoned him on and when he reached us, he said “I’m a walking zombie, I tell you. Haven’t slept a wink since this past Monday, and now that old transformer blows. You think you two can crawl out if I lead you?”

  We’d entered upright so why should we crawl? I was trying to think when you said “Sure.”

  So the guide asked you, “Your dad fit to move?”

  You ignored his error and said “He’s just a little nervous today.” No movie nurse could have brought it off better.

  Out we crawled—me still half-thinking we’d see a cloud on the near horizon, containing the world in separate pieces. For once I knew I wasn’t crazy or a major coward. I don’t know what you’ve read about the crisis, but everything I’ve come across says we got right up to the edge as I thought we did.

  One more time the whole valley was laid out beyond us in every unfazed autumn color. And when I saw you again in daylight, you looked like an adequate reason to hope for reprieve, however brief. I asked the guide if he’d heard any news—it was well past noon.

  He was eager to tell us. “My battery radio just now said we boarded a second Red ship bound for Cuba. No bombs on board so we let it go. We ought to just sink everything they got till they run out of boats or bombs, either one.” He said bomb the old country way as bum, and he ended laughing.

  You readily joined him. If you’d been even a little scared, you’d barely shown it and were easing up.

  By then the guide was out of control in wild high shrieks. Finally he said “Like I told you inside, I’m a walking zombie. I know I got to get hold of myself—my mother’s down in that pink house on the left by the creek, expecting me to save her. But guess her weight—two twentyfive, stripped.” He giggled again and triggered you.

  I thought What the hell? and joined you both. Then more than half teasing, I asked him his plans. “You staying close to the caves, just in case?”

  He looked to you, then whispered as if he could somehow spare you. “I’d rather get burned to a greasy spot out here in the light than smother inside.”

  You actually nodded to his pasty face. By now you knew everything we could see was past taking shelter.

  I reminded the guide to send me the photo if time permitted, then drove us on.

  Can you fill in the rest of that Friday? Didn’t we stop at a sad bear cage by a filling station and talk to a bear that looked absolutely like a man in a bear suit, old and trapped? And was that the time we found you the sapphire at Flip’s Rock Shop where we paid a dollar each to sift through a big hill of dirt? I know there was nobody sifting beside us; but you let me see it for maybe three seconds before you hid it in my pocket and held up a finger to your lips for silence. Who did you think would stick us up, or did I dream the whole episode? I can see the stone anyhow, big as a pea.

  I know for a fact we stopped that night up past Front Royal in a tourist court and phoned Livia with our whereabouts. I didn’t mention the world situation; and neither did she, just wished us well and said she was fine last time she looked, “which was New Year’s Day.” And I know we lay back, tired as dogs on separate beds no wider than planks, and watched the evening news straight through with no talk between us.

  The White House was claiming that work on the Cuban missile sites was rushing ahead with
no sign of let-up. Even after the news went off and some awful slow-dance show began, we kept our silence. I think I may have napped a few minutes. When I came to, I felt I had a chance at least of getting us through the time that was left, which I still guessed was hours.

  No thunder and lightning, no heat or cold, just a kind of ease I’d hardly known since my own preschool days at home, behind the house in that fern jungle down by the quarry, knowing I’d be a hero one day, a help to all. Without looking over I might feel you wide awake and waiting. I reminded myself of what might happen in the world outside. But even that couldn’t touch the curious peace that was rising inside me. It began to feel like these cardboard walls could withstand whatever melted the Earth; but I couldn’t think why, except to guess I was fooling myself the usual way, dreaming of hope. I was even hungry and realized we hadn’t eaten since roadside sandwiches hours ago. We’d brush ourselves up and find a cafe.

  But you were gone, in one of those childhood trances that start out seeming normal but go too deep.

  I tried to wake you more than once; each time you were further off than before. So I lay on in the growing dark with the TV light on but none of the sound, and about nine-thirty I made a last try. I pulled you to the edge of the bed, aimed your legs at the floor and said “Kit, are you with us?”

  Your eyes were glazed and your lips barely moved; but plain as a lawyer, you said “Who is us?”

  I knew you were talking on automatic pilot. But it seemed such an adult question, I laughed and told my hunger to wait till breakfast. I got you out of your dress and shoes and put you under the blanket in your skivvies. Then when I lay back, fully dressed, to wait for more news, I likewise tumbled off into sleep that was deeper than I’d counted on. At one in the morning, “The Star-Spangled Banner” from the TV startled me—was it war or just the station sign-off? When I realized it had to be sign-off, I slipped out of my own pants and shirt and lay down under a cotton blanket, cool as it was in the mountain air.

  Some time between then and daylight, you joined me. When I shifted to make room beside me, you said something that sounded almost disappointed like “Are we still here?”

  Through the years, the times I stayed with you when Connie and Walt were on their trips, you’d often join me in the midst of the night—a welcome bundle, despite being always overheated as a hard-worked pony and about as demanding to lie beside—your prematurely long legs would stake out the space and leave me clinging to the mattress edge. So at first this visit seemed familiar; I thought you’d made a waking choice to find me. But when I laid my hand to your back, I could feel you were cold; and your skin was bare the whole way down. Maybe you’d slept too hard, wet your bed, then got up and stripped. But your butt felt nearly as dry and hard as if you’d frozen. I said “My darling, your can is cold. Are you all right?”

  You were gone again that suddenly, back into your trance.

  You’d waked me though for the rest of the night, maybe forty-five minutes. I have no idea what you recall of that dark stretch. I know I’ve never mentioned this part. Still I think you’re strong enough in your own life now to hear the next fact; and I think you can use it—I never spent a more complicated piece of time, before or since. No fault of yours. Just one more thoroughly normal gauntlet—scary as hell and risky as gunfire—that a grown man passed through, hauling a child as his main baggage, not knowing if he or she would make it.

  See, through each of those minutes I held you, you seemed so nearly the same thing as Connie—something that Connie and I had made out of our best hours and that no one was left to treasure but me, at the world’s end. Looking back now from another bed, I can also guess you felt to me like the world right then. I could hold you as one last sample of what I’d lose in the fire. And that said something new to my mind—I’d enjoyed my time on Earth more than anybody I’d run across, and now you’d confided all you owned into my scared hands to keep or ruin. In the next few minutes, every failure I’d known just liquefied and drifted off; and I was left with you in my hands, begging to live.

  In that short while, your skin had warmed; the small of your back was hot as a lamp on the palm of my hand. And of course my own skin soon got feverish and ready for easing. I say of course; men generally have the morals of dogs, so few men will fail to recognize the weight I was under from my own need, which felt at the time like a wave of kind warmth. And that early morning young as you were—and sad as I was, with what I thought were huge odds against us—I ached to give myself to you, anywhere my need would fit. At first I drew my hands away; but then my mind said over and over It’ll be love, Timson, for her and her mother and all that Connie and you ever meant in the way of goodness.

  Maybe twenty percent of the people you see every day on the news, who’ve forced their daughters’ or sons’ young bodies, have started out with thoughts like mine. In some few cases, it may well feel like actual care, by their dark lights. I know anyhow I told myself you’d freely joined me. I knew I prized you and wanted to prove it to you and your mother (you can love a person in somebody else—and love them better than face to face while they’re still with you). I also knew that if I tried to find Connie in you, it would kill your fearless trust in me and most of the world, assuming the world lasted awhile. And it almost surely would have burnt me down. But then a day has seldom passed in my grown life without me wanting to move some way that feels so right but might prove deadly to somebody near. All I did then on that hard bed, that Saturday morning, was lie beside you holding your shoulders and humming in every pore like voltage, till my eyes said I could call it day and wake you for breakfast.

  We ate like a gang of riverboat sailors at that weird pancake house on the cliff by the shut gold mine. You had pecan pancakes with bacon; I had half the eggs in Virginia. And when we were finished, the mean-eyed waitress leaned over and whispered “You two walk out of here gentle please. Much as you ate, you could tear this place right off the moorings if you step too hard.” She’d still never smiled.

  You thought she was serious and walked accordingly.

  I put one heavy foot down and said “We’d loosen it for you, but the Cuban missiles’ll finish the job a lot neater than us.”

  She finally laughed. “Fat chance.” When I looked puzzled, she said “Heard the news?”

  “Not since last night.” It was only then that I realized how drowned I’d been in your company and how it had eased me through till now.

  She said “The Russians backed down in the night.”

  It was you that put your hands to your hips, frowned like the British ambassador and said “You can’t be serious” (I’d seen Connie say it a billion times, with just that frown, and always at me).

  The waitress nodded. “Serious as a kidney stone.”

  You turned back to me——See, I promised”—and burst out laughing.

  You hadn’t promised me any such thing, not in actual words; but I didn’t correct you—it was somehow true.

  So we beamed at the waitress; she was only bearing the news we’d kept each other from hearing. The pancake house had a new long lease on the sheer cliff side. By the car radio it turned out Kennedy wouldn’t formally take Russia’s offer till Sunday, tomorrow; but the great black fog of doom that had spread all week was shrinking. And wasn’t the finest news a secret from all but us? The world from here on would have us in it awhile at least, Timson and Kit, after all we’d shared and failed to share since Thursday night.

  I anyhow would lean on that many times down the years as lesser offers came my way and begged me to settle for pocket change when I’d been flush one time at least. The last clear thing I remember, before we turned back to Livia’s in glorious light, was standing a final moment above your breakfast plate and telling myself You and Kit caused this. I still think we did, and I want you to know it while I’ve got enough sense left to sign my name to this news that you may wish I’d borne to the grave and that I may not get the nerve to mail. It seems important, here while I can, t
o let you know how your trusting visit to me on a night I thought was the last—and the strength I found, just holding you clean—got me on through the years till I wait here, this near a real finish. I turned out not to need more than that, the pain we spared one another and the thought of your mother’s presence in you.

  Which is not to say I’ve leaned my body on just that memory for thirty years—I availed itself of occasional company, some of it helpful, all of it fun and most of it decent with willing adults. But after our days, I had a high flood-mark in my mind that nobody else could ever quite reach. Maybe now you’ll have cause to think well of me on official occasions (my birthday, cemetery picnics, etc.)—maybe tell your children the story itself, of a strange full weekend, when their time comes for handling facts too hard to explain.

  Let’s lay it down there. If we meet next week, let’s don’t discuss it. I’m too much of a weeper to face it publicly with you in the room as you well know, I weep for gladness, never in pain; but it’s still an affliction I like to avoid. If I slip off before you get here, tell yourself we cleared the deck. The deck and the hold and the captain’s bridge. We left each other thoroughly clean and open-eyed. It’s been a rare privilege, old Kit. Thanks ever

  And love from Tim in his right mind.

  When the last word dried, he folded the pages. No way he could read back through them, he was not disappointed with their feel in his hands, he estimated they’d serve the purpose. His script, as he finished the envelope, had never looked stronger—bold and upright like some world leader’s on a global pact. His thin lips smiled to think he’d signed an almost surely more valuable document, useful for more than a season of peace or a fling at free trade. With the taste of the postage sweet on his tongue, he leaned back, ready again to leave.

  DEEDS OF LIGHT

  IN THE SUMMER of 1942, no town in that whole end of the state was far from one of the big new camps, training soldiers for Europe and Asia. Tens of thousands of strong men, most of them boys, answered rollcall Saturday and were then cut loose till Monday dawn. Long on strength and curiosity, short on cash, they hitched in pairs to the nearest towns. And since that time and place were guileless, there were no saloons, few theaters and a grave shortage of dim dancehalls with willing girls. So the soldiers tended to take slow walks down leafy streets or lie in the sun on downtown benches and laugh with ladies that stopped to talk or vets from the First War with boring tales of body lice and mustard gas. At dark the boys might band into fours and rent a room in a widow’s house and smuggle in some cards and beer, not to speak of occasional risky girls and the first stunned round of young war-widows.