Collected Stories of Reynolds Price

by Reynolds Price

  She thought a long time and said “No” again but not as hard. And when I’d sat another half hour, trying to think of anything under the sun but me and the two I’d lost, I gradually saw that Mary Greet had also gone, from this nearby, with no further plea, command or moan. No one alive had made me the gift of so much trust, though I knew she’d left both me and the world as a girl again, in pain more hopeless than any of mine.

  A FINAL ACCOUNT

  DAVID,

  Once you left this evening, the sun broke out and lasted well past normal dusk. Even as I try to write this at seven, what looks like three new goldfinches are still in the airshaft, roadhogging each other’s final snack. I trust you also benefited from the extra light and got home safe by dinnertime. I likewise trust you’ve given my best to Jean and the boys; and I need to underline one thing—I truly mean you to tell your mother I’m leaving this life with unchanged thanks and hope for her, whatever that’s worth at this late date. You’ll know when she can bear to hear that. You’ll likewise know it’s a solemn duty I’ve laid on you that cannot be shunned. Though I walked off from her, half her life ago, she matters that much still in my mind—the soul of decent fairness. Tell her she’ll count that highly with me until this plague consumes whatever mind is left in my ruined body that you just now took in your arms and brought indoors from the first real feel of sky I’ve had in six weeks flat on a narrow bed.

  Son, you count the most to me of anybody left alive. I knew if I said that straight to your face, near blind as I am, I’d just seize up. I was also scared you’d somehow say you didn’t believe me. God knows, you’ve got every reason for doubt; and you asked enough questions that I couldn’t answer with you nearby. So while I’ve got this last strength left, I’ll try at least to tell the truth that got us to here and is killing me.

  I knew, far back as I remember—well before I started school—that what was deeply magic for me was the simple presence of certain men near me in a room or in my head. The first such presence was my young father. If you’d known him in his early prime, you’d have seen he earned all I tried to pay him. Though I loved my mother like food and air, it was always just my helpless dad that I felt I owed some kind of worship—praise for how he looked there, tall in clean white trousers beside my cot in the summer night, hearing my prayers or promising me he’d stay nearby the rest of my life if his luck held out, which of course it couldn’t, not with all his hungers.

  By the time he was gone, I was in high school; and the similar pull I felt from a few tall boys my age was homing me in on their new bodies that had just filled out with the normal powers of the human race, normal but worthy of more than respect. I already knew that the sudden power in those boys was nothing more or less uncanny than the strength to do a grown man’s part in making life go on, with a wife and children in a safe clean house. I’d kept pace with them where growth was concerned; my body was manly. But I didn’t want that main life they were leaning toward. I wanted to go on finding a way to honor and thank the strength that hid in the eyes and bodies of a few men, young as me and better to watch.

  The clearest thing I can say this late to help you understand my decision is maybe this—I had no choice, from the day I knew there were others on Earth and that my part of all those others was men. Try thinking your way to the time a girl first dawned on you, the time you couldn’t help needing to ease your skin and reward your mind with all of her, or all she’d give. You almost surely felt that much by twelve or thirteen, when a certain girl who’d been near you for most of your life just started reeling you slowly in like a willing catch on a taut line toward her fine eyes and secret body. Surely you wanted to know that secret and know it steadily, years to come. What way was there but reaching to touch her, then sinking yourself as far as love and kindness allowed in her sweet deeps?

  My whole adult life, as I said, I felt that way for a short line of men, most of them worthy, and their lean bodies. In college though, I also felt the same for your mother. I honestly did. Nobody I’d met or watched till then was better to see and know than her, in her slow laughter with those green eyes to spike her meaning. I saw no reason to think I wouldn’t need her all my life and hers—need and want her, to use and thank.

  You came out of that, the natural result and a great satisfaction for her and me. Right from the time I first saw you in her tired arms the night you were born, I thought I’d never share in making a finer thing. Here at the end, I know I was right. For the whole nine years I lived beside you, you never gave me serious cause to change my mind—you were that calm to be with, that smart and watchful of the world around you. Right from the start, your main trait was welcome—you welcomed more or less whatever came, though I felt you specially welcomed me till you were maybe eight when other children took the lion’s part of your time and all your thoughts.

  Then I left you with no goodbye, not that you heard; and you need to know why. I have to admit, when you asked me today, it gave me the first taste of hope I’ve had in these two years of flat despair—the news that you can still demand an explanation of that cold scar after long years.

  A sentence can say all I know about it. One gray noon a man walked into a room where I was and asked for my life, a careful man with a clear tenor voice and no big needs that I couldn’t meet, as time would tell. I’d worked beside him for several months and known I liked him but had never let myself suspect how he saw me. He looked like God on God’s best day, far back in His youth. Still I thought he was bound to be crazy—Ferrell Lee—or joking at least. I bolted halfway to the moon before I stopped and let my mind think through his offer and try to picture his face down the years, in reach of my hand. More and more in the next six months, I needed him so steadily that I shied off the rest of my duties. But I never touched him once, not once, till that last night I told your mother I had to leave.

  She heard me out and then she stood, no question or blame. We were in the kitchen; I thought she’d walk toward you at least—you were long asleep. But she met my eyes as strong as ever and said “You wake our son up then and let him know this is your idea; and if you go, then do us the kindness not to turn back, not to hurt us by looking in when you feel like it.” Small as she was, she was that near perfect—I mean it as praise—and I sat there wishing to God I could stay. But no, I stood and went toward you. She followed me to be sure I did it, but at your room I drew a last line. I stepped through the door and shut myself in with you asleep. She left us alone and I knelt by your hot damp head and felt your breath till I knew the size and risk of my choice—it might well break you, where you couldn’t mend. But I kissed your neck as light as I could to spare your dream—your eyelids jerked in some fast tale your mind was telling.

  Light as I was, you looked out at me, clear as dawn. Then you said “What you bring me?” and laughed a little. It was our old joke now you were nine—when you were a baby I’d bring you something every evening, if only a dry dandelion from the yard.

  For maybe ten seconds I thought “All right. I’m here for good.” But something stronger than you spoke out inside my brain. It said “These people are better without you.” People—I know I thought the word people instead of your names. So I told you “I’m taking myself away.”

  You watched me what seemed like a slow year, then said “So long” and slid back under the same deep dream.

  You were right; it was so long—twenty-four years till your Aunt Margaret saw my name on a hospital door and had the goodness to push it open and take my hand and, five days later, write to you with the news that I was fully alone on Earth and dying, with strangers, of this new curse that eats grown bodies faster than children and has no name but four initials, an idiot pun.

  You came straight to me—endless thanks—and now we’ve had these three meetings that, whatever they will mean to you in years to be, mean this much now to your blood father. I know I’ve met my young self again, the one that loved your mother and you; and I’ve gripped his hand. One circle anyho
w is closed.

  That’s not repentance or scared remorse or a plea for pardon from you, your mother or God on high. I understand that the major part of humankind sees my brand of choice as ludicrous, pitiful, evil or worse. They’re welcome to whatever pygmy judgment they make on millions of useful humankind that they’ve never troubled to comprehend. No, what I truly regret tonight is not the natural course I took and stayed for two decades, nor losing your mother’s goodness and you—you grew without me, finer than me—but two facts are pressing me down so hard I pray for my skull to crush. First, I may have killed the man I prized above all. He was true to me as any good dog—who passed him the virus if not starved me, more goat than dog? And second, I lost so much of my eyesight before you surfaced and came to me here.

  So I die not knowing your grown man’s face the way I’d hoped. I’m past the point of asking to feel the planes of your head; but in my mind you’re the boy I left, still wise and realistic as pain. That memory will hold me till you come back or I fade out. You understand that nothing stands in my fast track but your one face in my skewed mind. You offering me the right to know you again is better than any actual cure.

  I won’t attempt to read this over; I doubt I could. I only hope you can read this scrawl and find the start of answers at least to what you’ve asked me—they feel true to me, however hard. Your father lived the natural life that opened before him as he moved on. When he moved past you, at first he honored your mother’s wish that he vanish entirely—it wasn’t that hard; he was that relieved. And since neither she nor you ever let him know if the wish had changed, he went on living the way he had to. He knows that caused considerable pain to the only two people that had blocked his way, but he can’t regret the needs he fed by moving on. By his strong lights, he had a good life. It was all he needed and more than he looked for. He thanks you though here, thoroughly, for the unearned mercy you’ve found to give.

  Till our next meeting, if that’s my luck.

  Honestly now, son,

  Newton Brooks

  UNCLE GRANT

  SUPPOSING he could know I have thought of him all this week. Supposing I was not three thousand miles from northeast North Carolina and supposing he had not been dead six years and I could find him and say, “I have thought of you all this week”—then he would be happy. Supposing though he was alive and I was still here in England—in Oxford whose light and color and trees and even grass would be strange to him as the moon (as they are to me)—and supposing he heard I had thought of him. It would go more or less like this. He would be in my aunt’s kitchen in a straight black chair near the stove, having finished his breakfast. My aunt would have finished before he started and by then would be spreading beds or sweeping the porch, in her nightdress still. So he would be alone—his natural way, the way he had spent, say, sixty per cent of his life, counting sleep. His back would be straight as the chair, but his body would lean to the left, resting. The way he rested was to feel out the table beside him with his left elbow (an apple-green table with red oilcloth for a cover) and finding a spot, press down and then lay his head, his face, in his hand. His long right arm would lie on his hollow flank, the fingers hinged on the knee, and his legs would be clasped, uncrossed not to wrinkle the starched khaki trousers and ending in high-top shoes that, winter or summer, would be slashed into airy patterns, clean as the day they were bought, just ventilated with a razor blade. His white suspenders would rise from his waist to his shoulders, crossing the starched gray shirt (never with a tie but always buttoned at the neck and when he was dressed, pinned with a dull gold bar), but his face would be covered, his eyes. Only the shape of his skull would be clear—narrow and long, pointed at the chin, domed at the top—and the color of the skin that covered it, unbroken by a single hair except sparse brows, the color of a penny polished down by years of thumbs till Lincoln’s face is a featureless shadow but with red life running beneath. That way he would be resting—not waiting, just resting as if he had worked when all he had done was wake at six and reach to his radio and lie on till seven, hearing music and thinking, then shaving and dressing and spreading his bed and stepping through the yard to the kitchen to eat what my aunt cooked (after she fired the stove if it was winter)—and he would rest till half-past eight when the cook would come and say towards him “Mr. Grant” (they were not good friends) and towards my aunt down the hall, “Miss Ida, here’s you a letter,” having stopped at the post office on her way. My aunt would come and stand by the stove and read with lips moving silent and then say, “Look, Uncle Grant. Here’s a letter from Reynolds.” He would look up squinting while she read out something like, “‘Tell Uncle Grant I am thinking about him this week,’” but before she could read any more, he would slap his flank and spring to his feet, rocking in his lacework shoes, opening and shutting his five-foot-ten like a bellows, and flicking at his ears—“Great God A-mighty! Where is Reynolds?” When she said “England” he would say, “Over yonder with them Hitalians and he been thinking about Grant? Great God A-mighty!” and then trail off into laughing and then for a long time to come into smiling. He would be happy that whole day and it is a fact—there is no one alive or dead I could have made happier with eight or ten words.

  But he is dead and the reason I have thought of him these few days is strange—not because I remembered some joke on him and certainly not from seeing his likeness in the blue-black Negroes of the Oxford streets but because I went in a store to buy postcards and saw a card from the Berlin Museum—on a black background an Egyptian head, the tall narrow skull rocked back on the stalky neck, the chin offered out like a flickering tongue, the waving lips set in above (separate as if they were carved by a better man), the ears with their heavy lobes pinned close to the skull, and the black-rimmed sockets holding no eyes at all. I looked on, not knowing why, and turned the card over. The head was Amenhotep IV, pharaoh of Egypt in the eighteenth dynasty who canceled the worship of bestial gods and changed his name to Akhnaton, “it pleases Aton,” the one true god, the streaming disc, the sun. I bought the card and left the shop and walked ten yards and said to myself in the street what I suddenly knew, “It’s the one picture left of Uncle Grant.”

  His full name as far as we knew was Grant Terry, and he said he was born near Chatham, Virginia which is some hundred miles to the left of Richmond. (There are still white Terrys near there from whom his family would have taken its name.) He never knew his age but in 1940 when he heard of Old Age Assistance and wanted it (you had to show proof you were sixty-five), my father took him to our doctor who said, “I’ll certify him—sure—but if those Welfare Workers took a look at his eyes, they wouldn’t need my guarantee. He’s well past seventy.” So assuming he was seventy-five in 1940, that would make him born around 1865—maybe born into freedom and named for a general his parents heard of who set them free—but we didn’t know about his youth, what he did to live when he was growing in the years after the war. There was nothing much he could have done but farm for somebody—chopping or picking cotton or ginning cotton or sawing pine timber or at best tending somebody’s yard. We did know he had a wife named Ruth who gave him a son named Felix. It is the one thing I recall him telling me from his past (and he told me more than once, never with tears and sometimes with laughing at the end as if it was just his best true story)—“When I left my home in Virginia to come down here, I said to Ruth and my boy, ‘I’ll see you in Heaven if I don’t come back.’” And he never went back.

  He came south eighty miles to North Carolina. He told my father he came in a road gang hired by a white contractor to pave the Raleigh streets, but he never said when he came—not to me anyhow, not to anybody still alive. He never said why he came to Macon either. (The streets of Macon are still not paved.) Maybe he had done his Raleigh work and meant to head back to Ruth and Felix but never got farther than sixty miles, stopping in Macon, population two hundred, in Warren County which touches the Virginia line. Or maybe he came to Macon with a railroad gang. (Tha
t seems a fair guess. He always called Macon a “seaport town.” It was more than a hundred miles from the sea. What he meant was Seaboard Railway—the Norfolk-to-Raleigh tracks split Macon.) Anyhow, he was there by the time I was born in 1933 though he wasn’t attached to us, and his work by then—whatever it had been before—was growing things. He planted people’s flowers and hoed them, raked dead leaves and burned them, and tended lawns—what lawns there were in Macon where oak-tree shade and white sand soil discouraged grass—and then he began tending me.

  Not that I needed much tending. My mother was always there and my aunt down the road, and a Negro girl named Millie Mae looked after me in the morning. But sometimes in the evening my parents went visiting or to a picture show (not often, it being the deep Depression), and then Uncle Grant would sit by me while I slept. I don’t know why they selected him, trusted him, when my aunt could have kept me or Millie Mae. Maybe they thought he could make me grow. (When he first came to Macon and asked for work and somebody said, “What can you do?” he said, “I can make things grow” so they gave him a chance, and he proved it the rest of his life—till my father could say, “Uncle Grant could stick a Coca-Cola bottle in the ground and raise you an ice-cold drink by sunup tomorrow.” And God knew I needed growing—I had mysterious convulsions till I was four, sudden blue twitching rigors that rushed me unconscious into sight of death every three or four months.) The best reason though would be that, having no friends of his own, he had taken to me, and there is a joke which seems to show that. One evening when I was nearly two, my parents left me with him, saying they would be back late and that he could sleep in an army cot in my room. But they came back sooner than they expected, and when they drove up under the trees, instead of the house being dark and quiet, there was light streaming from my bedroom and mouth-harp music and laughing enough for a party. In surprise they crept to the porch and peeped in. My high-railed iron bed was by the window, and I was in it in outing pajamas but not lying down—facing Uncle Grant who was standing on the floor playing harp music while I danced in time and laughed. Then he knocked out the spit and passed the harp to me, and I blew what I could while he clapped hands. And then they stopped it—not being angry but saying I had better calm down and maybe Uncle Grant shouldn’t pass the harp to me in case of germs (I had already caught gingivitis from chewing a brass doorknob)—and that was our first joke on him.