Collected Stories of Reynolds Price

by Reynolds Price

  But in the town we’re watching now—that whole long summer of wondrous nights—boys would sleep by droves in the warm grass of Whitlow Park under ancient elms and clean black skies with amazing stars. Their chosen spot was a gentle hill above the lake, topped by a road. And full-moon nights, townspeople would sometimes drive past slowly to see that broad encampment sleeping or talking in clumps, all silvered and still. It was years before civilians used flashbulbs; or I’d have pictures to back my claim—a broad hill planted in shining ghosts, waiting to rise at the angel trump to tell their secret sins and hopes.

  Sunday mornings my mother and I would drive to the park with friends from our church and furnish steamy urns of coffee, homemade biscuits, country butter and bacon—eggs were scarce. We’d go so early, the boys would wake up raw and stunned and wouldn’t say much but “Yes” and “Fine.” We were normal Methodists, not Holy Rollers; so we barely mentioned that our main service would be at eleven and they were invited. That hour was common for the entire Protestant country then; and numbers of the soldiers would turn up anyhow, wrinkled and grass-stained but shaved and, by then, wider awake than hunted creatures bayed in the woods.

  Two weeks running I’d watched one boy above the rest. I’d somehow forgot the fact till lately when I ran across two pictures of him beside some older pictures of my father (Father had died when I was four, and pictures are mainly how I recall him); but comparing them now, I see how much the two men shared—clipped sandy hair, eyes so light blue that the pupils fade almost to dots when you step back and powerful jaws with wide mouths about to grin. They were like a matched pair of young lords packed with life and hope, unquestioned by any god or man; and they still are that, so long as I have working eyes and a mind to watch their fading traces.

  Though I dream about my father still, I have to grant that the face on the boy Deke Patrick makes a stronger call on my grown mind, even now with what I finally watched Deke need and take. But after our first Sunday meeting in the park, I knew only one peculiar thing—Deke guessed my name on sight with no clue. He met my eyes dead-level, smiling, and said “Oh Marcus, wake a sad boy up.”

  I was too young to wonder why he was sad. I took his knowledge of me as a miracle—Marcus is not that common a name—and I blushed ferociously but managed the coffee and watched him butter two biscuits and leave.

  He went twenty yards and sat on a swing that he kept still while he ate his first round. I thought he’d surely come back for more; they mostly did. Deke finished the last morsel though, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and suddenly started to pump the swing till it flung him out parallel to the ground. From the highest peak he let it die, then rose and walked through a howling bunch of his fellow soldiers to the rim of the lake and stood a long time. Nothing strange happened—the ducks and lilies went about their business—but some stubborn mystery in the picture he cut, upright in weeds at the absolute verge of swimming or drowning, made me need to know him more than anything I remembered needing.

  The other soldiers seemed to agree in a loud way. For several minutes they yelled and whistled to call him back—it was in their calls I learned his name—but Deke stood his ground. And when they started a football cheer on “Deekey, Deke,” he turned his back, rounded the lake and vanished in woods on the far side.

  By then my brief acquaintance with his face may well have settled far enough down to find the buried face of my father. Whyever, I left the coffee urn and asked our pastor to estimate Deke’s age and height (I’d seen him talk to Deke after me).

  He said “Six foot, maybe twenty years old—a righteous face. Bet you a dime we’ll see that boy in church this morning.” He laughed but meant it.

  I was already edgy around the word righteous; so I said “No sir, I won’t bet against him.”

  I’d have won the dime. In church I sat near the door and watched. Ten identical soldiers walked in, thirty seconds before the sermon, but no sign of Deke. They sat on the front row, neat as if they’d slept at home—the park had a bathhouse with plentiful showers. Mother and I were twenty feet off, and I spent awhile not hearing the pastor but searching the necks for a usable substitute to Deke. Nothing—no instant burn of the kind I’d felt when he said my personal name and walked away like Adam naming the beasts in Eden but finding no mate.

  As everybody rose for the last hymn, Mother asked if I’d like to invite a soldier home for dinner, as the midday meal was called back then. Around town lately the idea of bringing soldiers home for Sunday dinner was a growing fad, though we had yet to do our part on our slim budget and everything rationed.

  So one more time I scanned the necks. To me, in the mercilessness of my age, they might have been dead meat. I faced Mother, shook my head and tore on into “Princely Blood, Our Sovereign Cure,” all four verses and a low “Amen.”

  I was left for at least a week—maybe forever—to wonder how he knew my name when all the locals called me Snake because I could swim that fast and clean. Mainly though I wondered why so much of my mind went out to a stranger that I owed nothing but needed to watch, at close quarters soon and the rest of my days. I’d got to fourteen with no romances, no wolfish fix on another face; so this fresh hunger was hard to bear. And by the time I finally managed to sleep that Sunday, my mind had locked its teeth on a plan. It was new for me then but has stayed in use for the rest of my life and caused me tall waves of joy and pain, my kindest gifts and my devastations.

  For me the plan amounted to one of those gleaming cries that humans die for—Liberty or death! or God and my right! My aim was too red-hot to think of failure—Take what you need and hold on hard. Young as I was and new to passion, I understood that if I saw Deke Patrick again—next Sunday or fifty years ahead—I’d find a way to learn him, know him, right to the quick of his adult soul. And if you don’t think a fourteen-year-old can reason like that, then you don’t know sufficient boys. Or you didn’t know me.

  And whatever else I did all week, I’d see that fervent demanding face that knew my name and a direct way to the place I kept my secret life. The face was what I focused on, the uncanny eyes; no other part of his ample body came back to call me, not that early. Despite the hot floods of puberty, I could sometimes float back and see the world with the cool unblinking eyes of pure childhood, that fair and true; and I knew my prey, this single boy that somehow shared my father’s face (at supper later on in the week, even Mother remarked the likeness).

  Next Sunday morning Deke’s face was not in the biscuit line, and there was no sign of him down by the lake. I almost asked a red-haired boy where Deke might be. But that would have meant exposing my quick, and I was still green for a show of courage. All the next week though, I kept my inner eye fixed on Deke, drawing him toward me; and that third Sunday, there he stood awake near dawn and saying again “Oh Marcus, save me.” I guessed he thought I could save him from hunger.

  At one that afternoon, when Mother had got us seated for dinner, she asked Deke please to say the blessing. She and I shut our eyes and bowed, but a silence followed and stretched so long I had to look.

  Deke was there, head up, watching the food. His eyes were dry and his lips were parted but still as wood. Finally his eyes came round to me.

  I nodded hard and mouthed “Say ‘Thank you.’”

  He waited another few seconds, then gave a deep chuckle. Mother still hadn’t looked, but I was watching and saw Deke spread both hands before him in the air palm-down above the food—he was still grinning wide. Then he just said “Blessing” and reached for his napkin.

  For years it didn’t occur to me that Deke may well not have come from a home where blessings were said and that he was merely balked in the gate. But then I knew he’d stumbled on the only appropriate way to bless, as those old Bible pictures with Abraham raising long arms up through the smoke of a burning lamb. I also took the moment as one more confirmation that Deke Patrick was what I hoped for, not for these past two bated weeks but all my life—a thorough man to learn a
nd copy in every trait and skill I lacked.

  By three that hot day, in our cool house at the round oak table, we’d eaten enough for a squad of boys—a brimming platter of Swiss steak, our own fresh vegetables and strawberry shortcake. Mother had quickly cleared the dishes and readied herself for the weekly drive to see her own mother, twenty miles off. Though she was my one live grandmother, she gave me the fairly serious creeps with her white mustache and spidery hands; so Mother mostly let me use whatever excuses came to mind to spare the strain. Deke Patrick seemed my best excuse yet.

  Even in that more tranquil time, few parents would drive off, leaving their only child in the hands of a stranger with training in the arts of death. So apparently Mother shared my sense of trust and expectation in this one soldier. She shook Deke’s hand, gave him a standing invitation to be with us whenever he could—maybe spend a night this next weekend. She smoothed my hair, told me to show Deke some of my hobbies, then said she’d be back well before dark and left us clean as a streaking bird.

  Since the clammy heat was stacking up in our dim rooms, I thought Deke might rather sit outside in the breezy shade or even borrow Mother’s bicycle, ride with me to the city pool and swim awhile. I couldn’t imagine he’d care to see a boy’s collections of stamps and rocks or the model submarine I was building. An even stronger fact now was, I’d started feeling strange in his company. Not from fear—I thought his steady eyes were sane—but more because his private presence, in my home with no other people, was so near to being the perfect answer to years of hope that it spooked me mightily, waiting an arm’s reach from him at the table.

  I could feel a ringing charge in the air, but I couldn’t tell if it drew me on or pushed me back. And since Deke kept on talking and laughing about the miseries of basic training, I couldn’t tell if he understood how much force his body threw off in the normal room. I thought I could ask what time he’d leave and maybe break the spell that way. But then I knew I liked the mystery. Something crucial to my whole future might happen here, in a minute or never. So I tried to turn loose and take what came, though I braced myself by thinking He’s a lonesome human that’ll leave here soon. Then I said “We could bike ourselves to the pool; it opens at three.”

  Deke thought and said “We could also wash that world of dishes we just messed up.”

  It almost shocked me to think Deke had noticed the plates at all. I said “Mother says dishwashing calms her nerves.”

  Deke said “Same here. Then you got a bathing suit my size?”

  The darkest shadow I’d ever known passed over my sight. I thought it came from a cloud outside. Now I can guess that it came from within me; whatever, it brought up a wave of gladness. Everything’s moving my way now. I said “Sit tight,” then trotted to find my father’s trunks in the cedar chest.

  The trunks were the old kind, burgundy wool with a white belt and a moth-hole or two. At first they seemed to cheer Deke up. He laughed and said all he needed now was to part his hair in the middle and grow a handlebar mustache. But once we’d parked our bikes at the pool and entered the bathhouse, he sat on a bench, unrolled his towel and shook the trunks in the air before us. Two boys a grade ahead of me nearly fell out laughing.

  I suddenly thought I’d shamed Deke. So without meeting his eyes, I said “We don’t really have to—”

  He groaned a low note, then leapt to his feet and vanished through the restroom door.

  I didn’t know whether to put on my own trunks or wait to see what he’d do next. But I could feel the lingering charge of where he’d sat. Nothing he’d done yet, nothing he’d said, had stemmed my appetite for help. I’d brought us this far, there were too few hours till he had to leave, I’d take the next step till he said Quit. And before I tied my drawstring, Deke was back in the antique suit. At once I was glad, but then I felt wing-shot and falling. So far I hadn’t realized how much I needed to see Deke’s body, the secret zones; and his shyness had foiled me. I even said “You sure are modest.”

  He smiled but moved toward the sunny door. “I just don’t like to terrify people.”

  I tried but couldn’t begin to guess if he was joking about his size or somehow telling me he had a scar too bad to show.

  We swam around in the deep end awhile. Deke swam a lot better than I expected from the coal-miner’s son he said he was. When I told him that, at first I thought he’d taken offense.

  He didn’t smile but wiped the chlorine out of his eyes and said “We learned in the old mineshafts that flooded—pretty good swimming but dark and cold, and then sometimes you’d bump a dead miner they never rescued.”

  I nodded as if I truly believed him.

  He shivered and said “Let’s rent us some sun.”

  I said it was free and led him out. We spread our towels on sloping ground above the bathhouse, and Deke may have napped. He lay a good while with both eyes shut, his chest barely breathing and all of him roamed across by sun that was surely bad for skin light as mine. I ignored the risk since there unquestionably he was, a strong man condoning my nearness, my dumb requests for facts about his life and the world. I won’t even try to repeat them here—they were so mundane: his favorite sport and movie actor, his shoe-size and weight. I only need to set down clearly the declaration that I’d have stayed beside Deke Patrick in broiling sun till nothing was left of Marcus Black but a handful of ashes.

  I was that ready for big news to break. Meanwhile Deke lapsed out again; so I tried to match his power to rest in the yelling midst of children trying to drown each other. I’d nearly snoozed when a girl from the tough side of town walked up to Deke’s head and fell to her knees. They cracked like shots.

  Deke never looked.

  And I pretended my eyes were clamped; but I studied her slyly (old as I was, I was waiting for girls to matter). As long as I watched her two-piece suit and her prominent parts, she seemed like a serious threat to the day.

  But again Deke ignored her or was he asleep?

  Finally she leaned halfway to his ear, snorted like a skittish mare and said “Aren’t you in the 41st?”

  No word or look.

  She bent farther and breathed cigarette smoke over his eyes. “If you’re Deke Patrick, my sister knows you.”

  His eyes stayed shut but he said “You’ve got the wrong man, lady. I’m Marcus Black and I was in Heaven till just this minute.”

  She didn’t know me from Moses’ dog, but she said a quick “Foo” and walked on off

  I thought Deke would look up and wink.

  He didn’t, not even a nod my way.

  So grabbing the end of his lie to the girl—that he was Marc—I told myself Deke was maybe my father, back for this one afternoon to show me useful facts and secrets he’d failed to show when he left so young. I also told myself to wait and not so much as mention what I knew. I’d let his secret purpose pour toward me in its own time.

  For now I only knew how he’d answered Mother’s questions at the table—he was from Kentucky “more or less” and one of such a crowd of poor children that even his father “barely knew our names at noon, not to speak of midnight.” But when half a quiet hour passed, and shadows were starting to cool the ground, I thought I’d better say something at least—Deke hadn’t really moved again or talked. I stretched back flat, to look nonchalant, and faced the sky. Then I figured I knew the first question. “Will this war last till I can join?”

  Deke took so long I almost thought he was back asleep, but then he rose to an elbow and faced me. His eyes were slow but they looked down my whole lean frame, that had never felt more childish than now. And whatever he thought, he said “Old Marc, you a god-fearing man?”

  I said “Some nights.”

  “Then promise me, every night of your life, you’ll ask Friend God to stop this mess before it kills me.”

  I saw he still hadn’t mentioned my chances, but I somehow said “That’s already settled” and found myself smiling.

  That woke him fully. His eyes spread wide
; he started to laugh but pulled up short. “You got some inside dope on me?”

  What I wanted to say, I knew I shouldn’t—You mean you’re scared? I let the next sentence in line roll out. “You’re the strongest soul I know on Earth.” I even believed the outsized claim, and I shut my eyes to certify it—I was in calm charge here, I knew the future, my elders could rest.

  Deke let me stay like that a whole minute, but then I heard him standing up. When I looked, he was halfway down the green hill in an excellent rolling chain of cartwheels till he hit water and backstroked a length of that long pool in what felt like world-record time.

  He showered with his suit on and dressed in the men’s restroom again. So when he came out, combing his hair, I was mad enough to say “You don’t have to go with me home.”

  Deke said “You plan to ride two bikes at once?”

  “I can ride mine and hold onto Mother’s—done it plenty of times.”

  He thought about that. “It’s a first-rate trick; but if you say Yes, I got my eyes on one last dish of those ripe strawberries.”

  I seldom ate even homemade desserts (I craved them too much and had sworn off a year ago), but I said “You’re welcome to whatever’s left. I got to get back to the model I’m building.” The whole slow day, I’d kept myself from asking Deke a hard question, hard for me—when would he have to leave for camp? I guessed he’d start out trying to hitch sometime before dusk while cars were frequent. Now though with both of us dressed—and Deke not trusting me with even the sight of his body—I made myself say “You get yourself on back before night.”