Collected Stories of Reynolds Price

by Reynolds Price

  I see the sight in my mind clear as then. No point in straining to show it here. Our language sadly lacks the meanings to summon a well-made human body, much less one as awesome as Deke’s. The truest poets fail in the try to convey any part of the simple flesh that makes our first and final claim on the world’s love and pity, its craving and rage, because no words can set such a gift before the reader, clean of shame or lure and threat. I’ll only say that, fully awake, I looked for minutes at skin and hair, limbs and nails as finely made as any since. And all the while I thought a single furious thing, Don’t let this end.Let it teach me everything I need.

  But Deke moved. Both hands went up and rubbed his eyes. And then I was almost sure I saw the signs of tears. Next his right hand prowled his chest and belly like a careful doctor—probing, searching. What had he lost? From that point on I changed from famished watching to guessing—what again could this sight mean and who was it for? I understood that nobody else was witnessing this but Deke and I (had Deke seen my eyes open behind him?) and likely God.

  What I decided at last was easy; and yet these many years on in life, I can say it was my first manly finding. Deke is memorizing his bones in case he’s wounded or loses a part or comes back home a frozen corpse or just a free invisible spirit, recalled by maybe his mother and me for our short lives. I felt I had him printed deep in memory; but I went on watching, long as he stood there, to guarantee that my mind anyhow would hold his likeness—him at his best—let come what might. I even realized I was standing guard on him, the first of many nights I’ve guarded other burdened men and the good woman who bore our child, though none has meant an atom more than Deke that night, near as he was in time and place to my father’s death and chiming with everything I’d lost, like a tuning fork that rings in perfect harmony with an unheard chord.

  Maybe I dozed. For how long though?—when I looked, the window was maybe a whole shade lighter. But suddenly I looked again; and Deke was taking a step toward the mirror, a handspan off. Slowly he leaned and pressed his forehead high on the surface, both eyes shut. I thought He’s telling somebody goodbye, whatever I meant. Then he came back upright and reached to the chair. From a neat pile he found his drawers and pulled them on. He took a long last stare at the glass and made what seemed a sign of the cross all down himself, from head to thigh. I’d seen movies with nuns and priests and was old enough to think how few Kentucky boys were Catholics; but maybe he just meant something else, some private bet on health and safety. Then he took two backward steps—I might have reached and touched his calves— and I took the chance to turn away silently, facing the wall.

  Next I heard him move again. I felt my sheet lift back, and cool air struck my arms. I had the time to run or say No to whatever he planned, unless he held a knife or worse. But nothing in me was scared or mad. I stayed there toward the wall, eyes shut. And then I felt him lay himself down flat beside me, maybe a palm’s breadth from my back. I guessed it was Deke—I still hadn’t looked—but we lay on awhile, and the clean salt odor of his hair confirmed it. I was much amazed but still not scared.

  I understood from other boys’ jokes, and from camporees with weird troopleaders, that men could get as strange as women and reach for more than you could give. I also had a new hot sense of what two bodies could give each other or take by force. But I never feared Deke Patrick’s hand, his mind or any other part. And now I can almost swear that, once he had the sheet back on us, he said one sentence in a calm voice—-something about excusing him, could I pardon him please?

  I’m sure I didn’t speak at the time, and I’m well aware that it’s late for regrets; but if pardon was something he truly needed, then I never gave it. I was lost in trying to understand, was he asking for help or trying to give it? At least I hope he knew I didn’t blame him—far, far from it. And after a while I tried to signal my grateful trust by rolling back a little, still not touching, though both our bodies were in the range of each other’s heat. Then I got my next manly thought. I stayed there, honored, and told myself This boy is lonesome. Stay still now and let him rest.

  It was all I could feel that early in life, but I may have been right. In a minute longer anyhow, I heard the sound of regular breathing— Deke was plowing sleep like a narrow dugout slow through black marsh water in the dark. I took a minute to say my thanks to the bountiful night; and though I meant to stay on guard till first light showed, the weight of what I’d seen and learned began to press me. Soon enough I was also plowing the blackest sleep I’d ever known.

  Morning, I woke alone again. Deke had slid out on me—when and how? I lay to listen for steps in the house; I almost prayed I’d hear him cooking, or I’d smell fresh coffee. But what I heard were empty rooms, the old walls shifting in early warmth; and all I smelled were our hedge roses in heavy bloom. Was I shocked or sad? I thought I’d soon be one or the other; but no, I waited and still felt calm. I finally said one fact aloud, That was no dream. Then I stood and rushed to dress in cooler air than I expected. It was Monday and Mother had made me promise to mow the lawn and paint the shed; then she’d be back (I knew if my grandmother had died, I’d have heard by now). I searched my table for some kind of note—nothing, no word.

  But the submarine was there in the place where Deke had left it, rescued and waiting for my new skill. With summer on me, I told myself I had the time to finish it right by Sunday morning, if Deke ever showed. Then I told myself another thing—Deke’s long gone. That seemed to mean that he and I had finished our business well before day, and neither one of us needed more or had more to give. But even before I went downstairs, I knew I’d have to ignore that chance, in the short run at least.

  None of our neighbors had seen Deke leave, so Mother was flabbergasted to hear I stayed alone an entire night, but that passed off and all she did was call her mother and tell the news of Marc’s big dare. The rest of the week, I worked in happiness, hours each day, patient as any carpenter bee but also hot to finish on time. Late Saturday night I set the final painted boat back where Deke had left it. I stood and watched it a long time till I knew I’d finished a thing I was almost proud of, my first fair job. I felt nearly sure that Deke would approve. And when I finally managed to sleep, I steadily watched Deke walking toward me from those same woods by the lake in the park, where he had vanished the day I met him.

  But Sunday came and soon I knew that part of me had guessed correctly. I gave out the coffee and biscuits again but Deke never showed. As the line of boys passed my table, I dreaded one of them joking about me and Deke last week. I thought our day, not to mention the night, had been a thoroughly private truce; but what after all did I know about Deke and who he was in other places? If he could leave my room and house without a word, then couldn’t he tell his friends any number of lies about us or even the truth?

  But none of the hungry soldiers said so much as a word or faced me; they loaded their plates and walked away. I’d known right along that, if Deke didn’t show, I’d never mention his name again. So when we got to the end of church, and still no sign, I told myself I had this much—Since nobody knows the deal but me, I’ve got nobody but me to explain to. With the calm I’d gained, I sat down late that Sunday night and made a list of the news I’d learned from knowing Deke.

  The list, to be sure, is long since gone. But I know it said a lot about friendship—what two people can give each other. Since I’ve done better as a friend than a mate, those cooler bonds have been a lifelong study of mine; but my first lesson came from Deke and amounted to this. Friends can give you a guarantee that your poor body is a fit companion; they can teach you the dangerous duties you owe to neighbors and strangers. Friends lead each other across rope bridges with jagged valleys far below; and then they go their separate ways, though not forgetting the pure air and noble view at such tall heights. Friends, I thought— and time has proved-can show you sights like nothing your kin, your lovers, God or Nature herself will ever show: no purple canyon nor the boundless pardon in a saint
’s bright eyes.

  For years I wondered, did Deke live or die? On in my forties, when Mother died three months ago and I went home to clear the house, I found his pictures—the only two—in The Boy’s King Arthur; and the past rolled back as real as my hand. I vowed I’d write to the Pentagon and see if they had records on a boy named Deacon Patrick from east Kentucky (he mentioned his full name late in the night and made me spell it). But then I didn’t. Some cowardice in me, or maybe good sense, made me think that any news I got would be grim—he’d been dead for years and buried in Europe or the South Pacific or he lived on now as a black-lunged miner on welfare and food stamps or many things worse.

  I told myself I’d known Deke Patrick the single day that fate intended. Though I’m no staunch believer now, in fate or God, I tend to believe at least this much—Things happen in their time. Whether Deke knew it or not, he gave me what I needed then, that urgent summer, which was human hope—a halfway decent way to start the endless trek out of childhood. He showed me I was made to last a normal while in a world as loaded as any shotgun. I could do what I had to, storm or shine, like most men, women and—Lord God—children (Deke’s war proved at least that much: children can last through hunger and torment worse than any man will take). Nothing ahead was truly fearsome but bodily harm; and even harm could pass you by and let you sleep beside rank strangers to end your life at age ninety-six with kind descendents round your bed.

  I’m several decades short of ninety; but still my skin, give or take a few pounds, is the direct heir of the younger skin that a grown man trusted for the first time when I was a child on the last doorsill of a guarded life. As I stepped forward to the baffling world, other humans came at me with other big gifts and some with weapons; but nobody stayed much longer than Deke, not till now at least. I don’t say that in hopes of pity or mountains of mail with outright offers of hearts and lives. I’m the only man I know today who claims and can prove—in the bitter face of heartbreak, pain and mortal wrong, all caused by me—that he meets most days with sensible hope; that he sleeps most nights, unpunished by blame, and is partly healed by silent dreams.

  WALKING LESSONS

  MY WIFE killed herself two weeks ago, her twenty-sixth birthday; and I, not anticipating Christmas at home, wrote to Blix Cunningham (a college friend in VISTA—Volunteers-in-Service-to-America—a med-school dropout, four months short of his degree; he calls it a pause) and volunteered to visit him at his post on the Navajo reservation. His reply seemed less eager than his letters eight months before—when he’d landed cold among hostile Indians and urged my wife and me to join him any time—but by then I was grasping any hand extended; so I flew to Albuquerque and rented a car and drove on to him. Dunder, Arizona; half an hour past Gallup off route 66.

  Nothing, nothing—a truckstop, a trading post, shoebox post office, the abandoned 1930s tourist cabins in which Blix lives. VISTA volunteers try not to live better than their chosen unfortunates. Blix lives considerably worse than most Navajo (thereby approaching some ultimate in discomfort). Night before last in Albuquerque I stayed in the best motel I’ve ever seen—everything provided (for $16) but a happy life—and watched TV, the Ed Sullivan Christmas show; a mouse talked Italian and Leontyne Price sang Vissi d’arte. Then last night in Dunder in Blix’s two rooms that make Beethoven’s study look anal compulsive (old meals petrifying under symphonies, cold pots of piss on the pianolid). He sleeps in the inner room on an iron bed, no sheets but at least an electric blanket. I sleep in the outer room in Blix’s sour sleeping bag laid on the springs of an army cot. The only hope of heat against the snow (14° last night) is a potbellied stove in which Blix burns old furniture—and from Dora.

  Dora. Dora was there when I arrived. I walked through snow toward the only lighted windows in the ring of ruining cabins, knocked, a wait, then Blix opened on me, as unsurprised as ever—“You made it.”

  Inside was barely warmer than out and almost as dark. To show I was myself, I made an obscene remark or two on the temperature and decor, my eyes slowly opening to the debris of clothes, sausage cans, books, records (Leontyne Price again, Porgy and Bess), wood scraps for the stove, muddy boots, a cherry pie (uncut on the table)—and Dora unmentioned in a corner on a broken chair.

  I smiled but didn’t speak, suspecting maybe (from her obvious Indianhood) that she wouldn’t know English (many Navajo don’t). She was nineteen or twenty, lovely not beautiful, standard Indian equipment (enameled black hair and eyes, clearer skin than most, unpocked, a fierce beige).

  Then she giggled in response (toward Blix not me) and showed bad teeth, nursed on Coke from the cradle, rotted in a dark perfect crescent in front.

  I looked to Blix too and he said “That’s Dora” and pointed quickly as though I’d smiled at something else—the cherry pie.

  I was hungry, had driven for hours without stopping; so I said, “Dora, did you make the pie?”

  She giggled some more till I felt I had landed in a geisha house— where was her red offended dignity?

  Blix said, “No, my landlady did. It’s for you. I told her.”

  Told her what, I didn’t ask (nor who landladied this disaster-site), but to cut the ice, strode forward to the pie, cut a slice and ate it ravenously—for comic effect but also to cover my sudden suspicion (dread colder than the room) that Dora was here for the night, would stay, and that I must listen.

  Two slices of pie were no charm. She stayed. An hour of tired talk between Blix and me—about nothing: jobs, my trip—then he stood and said, “Bedtime. You’re sleeping on the cot. The bathroom’s there.”

  Dora headed for the inner room and shut the cracked door.

  Blix went on behind her but stopped once more and smiled for the first time, “Don’t mention this in Washington”; then lower, in pig-French—“Je t’expliquera matin. Elle est en trouble.”

  I worked at guessing what trouble she was in—through my trip to the bathroom (a cold-water tap and a John that didn’t flush; I leaked out a broken window into the snow) and back in the dark and seizing cold, into my sleeping bag. The obvious reading was, she’s pregnant. Who by? Our Volunteer-in-Service-to-America, who else? She’d worn no wedding ring but did any Navajo? What would Washington do?— send Blix home to Carolina, no doubt, with Sacajawea and her copper papoose.

  The only sound—above the stove’s dying—seemed confirmation. Not only was she pregnant, they were struggling to abort her. And they worked at it nearly an hour, no pause. I never moved an inch toward their closed cracked door; but I heard every flicker, could hear every impulse leap every synapse—from Blix’s slow start, her dark dumb acceptance (they were straining at first for silence—why? sparing me what?), onward till they gained a fierce plateau which they held. Held. Every nail and joint in the two collapsing rooms was involved, dragooned into their effort.

  And I. I did move. When it seemed Blix’s gouging would never slacken, no end be reached—release or destruction—and that Dora’s acceptance swelled more monstrous each moment, I sat upright in my sleeping bag and thought of two things. I could shout to them “Stop!” or, under the cover of their thrusting, I could leave—do my little packing, walk back to my car and, in less than a day, be back in my own house (more ruined than this one would ever be).

  So I stayed—stayed in bed, upright, freezing in my underwear but listening. Feeding. Forcing my eyes through the dark, noise and cold; inserting my vision through their door and among them. Dipping and probing, diving and stroking and licking between them, around them, above them in their work—till I came to rest in Blix’s clenched head and rode out there (battered but helpless to leave, not to share) the rest of the time till they’d reached their yipping yelping end.

  —With nothing destroyed, aborted, stove-in. Not even me. I could in fact have killed them—rushed on them in extremis with my cherrypie knife and ended them there (that after all being what they had struggled to offer one another—total vulnerability). One another, though, not me. So I stayed in pla
ce, my place which they’d assigned me; and silence was all that rushed in on their stillness. No wind outside, the stove cold and mute. I alone awake, upright and listening, my face and the front of my T-shirt wet with tears. (I come from a long line of weepers—never mind. I am going to survive.) Mouth open, still hungry, I fell back and slept.

  And didn’t wake or turn till, in faint morning light, I heard steps pass me and looked to the outside door to see Dora leaving. No sign of Blix behind her, no noise of a car. So I slept another hour, then woke for good, rose to pee and check on Blix. He was dead-asleep still beneath his hot blanket, coiled against the indoor temperature which must have been well under 20°. I called his name.

  He moaned, coiled tighter.

  So I went to dress and start a fire, knowing that nothing but a steady din had ever waked Blix. An unexpected transistor radio helped. I flipped it on top-volume and out came a song called “Navajo Sugartime”—minutes and minutes of heavy tuneless droning by an ancient man in (I take it) Navajo, then a sudden switch to (still tuneless) English for his stunning refrain—

  Sugar in the morning,

  Sugar in the evening,

  Sugar at suppertime.

  That routed Blix. He leapt from bed in a single loud stride, flew by me buck-naked with a shameless erection and shouted from the toilet, “They can’t even sing.”

  Twenty minutes later we were warm in the truckstop a mile up the road, eating eggs and sausage beneath a machinemade tapestry of John F. Kennedy; and Blix was volunteering his news, half-whispering-—he waitress and cook were Indians. “You’re wondering about all that, I guess”—he waved with his hand as though the night were still near, parked just outside. “She’s Dora Badonie. Twenty-two. Two kids under five. Their father—her husband, I guess; God knows—is now living with her mother. Maybe married to her mother. Sophocles himself would die of surfeit out here—everybody’s everybody else’s grandmother and is humping her daily. Now she lives with her father in a shack up a wash. But they’re better off than most—father works at the trading post and they have a pickup truck. She does nothing, I guess, but hang around me. I don’t know that. I don’t see all that much of her—that many hours a day. All these people live mysteries, weirder than snakes—what they’re thinking or feeling, what they’re doing even when they’re out of your sight. But I’ve helped her a little. She was the first one that asked. You remember what I told you it was like at first? I got here ready to pay all debts—mine, the white man’s, America’s. They wouldn’t look at me! Much less speak. It was six or eight weeks of wandering round daily before even the children would wave at me. So there I was in my lush tourist court, alone as a dry bone—and speaking of which, that was fairly desperate too; no help at all, long hours of self-service, pounding time to my five favorite records and ‘Navajo Sugar-time.’ Then Dora arrived on the doorstep one morning. I’d seen her at the trading post. She’d even smiled once—on those gorgeous teeth—but her father had seen it and called her down, or said something in Navajo. She never looked again. But here she was, that morning, at my door. Was I going to Gallup in the next day or so? ‘Why?’ I said. She said, ‘There’s a baby that’s cut his foot.’ I knew her father owned a truck and she’d waked me up; but of course I was weakkneed with gratitude—I’d have driven her to Tulsa. So we hauled her youngest child to Indian hospital—nineteen stitches; he had dropped his Coke bottle—and after that she began turning up most every day. Just to sit, at first—she can barely do more in English than giggle— then to mend a sock or two. Then to start mending all my less tangible needs—at my invitation. I still don’t know if it’d crossed her mind before I asked her. I still don’t know if those first two babies weren’t virgin births.”