Collected Stories of Reynolds Price

by Reynolds Price

  So with all that long day lying on me, I gave up and fell asleep and didn’t dream and wasn’t dreaming when I felt a hand on the center of my chest. I was too much asleep to jump or shout, but I opened my eyes enough to see it was Falc, come back for his own reasons and feeling for my heart to know if the moon had worked. It hadn’t and my heart was beating intolerably like a held bird but Falc didn’t know where. For all he could feel and for all I showed him, I was gone beyond recall. He knelt awhile longer. Then he walked around the Ring twice, saying words that sounded old to him and suitable as a service, and I thought he would leave again, but next he was above me with his hands held out—first as if I was fire and he was cold, then with the palms turned up, and whatever olden rite it was to him, it was like giving to me. He stood that way whole minutes, turning every sad color in the moonlight, holding out with both hands what he wasn’t ever going to give—his life that I had asked for. Yet thinking I would never know or thank him or ask for more, he found his way. He lay down near me, not too near and in the deadly moon but in half-shade a yard away, and tired as I was, I waited and kept my body quiet till he was asleep. Then I turned towards him and—not knowing what it was like to be Falc—I laid my arm on his chest which was the part of him in the light, and sometime—sleeping, I hink—he took my hand.

  When they missed us from our bed and my father came out at midnight to lead us home, walking straight as any judge to the bench, he found us in that secret place where he knew we were, and all he could see, he smiled at—me in troubled sleep in the full moon still and Falc dark and gone like he didn’t mean to return, but in each other’s arms at least and breathing slow.

  GOOD NIGHT

  IT WAS BRIGHT all day, so Gault worked the garden in late afternoon. And he almost thinned the strawberry patch before his knees and hips refused to bend. He was far past eighty—not sure how far—and he did as much as he did on the hope that Patsy Capps would visit tonight. She claimed twenty-four, looked sweet eighteen and came from a much bigger town than this—Goldsboro, some eighty miles on south. Saturday afternoon and evening were her time off; and deep in the country here, she had three choices—to stay in her own hot room, reading magazines, or hitch into Warrenton and sit with the colored in a stifling balcony to watch white cowhands kill each other or cross the tracks, walk a hundred yards to see Gaulton Walker.

  Soon as Gault washed and put on clean clothes, he slipped the bottle of Brame’s Oil of Cloves in his deep pants pocket. There by his leg it would warm in case this time Patsy mentioned it again. Gault hadn’t prayed in thirty-two years or been near a church, since Noma left him; but he fixed the sight in his mind of Pat. Then he pressed on it steady to make her want his soothing hands, and his mind went to work.

  So not long after full dark came, a hand was scratching soft at his door—“Mr. Gault, here Pat.”

  “Here Jesus” could not have pleased him more. But glad as he was when she stepped inside and sat by the lantern, he hoped for more. So he kept his mind on the sight of her ankles, though his eyes could hardly see them in darkness.

  In maybe an hour they’d pretty well covered everything fresh—their jobs, the people they worked for and lived with, scraps of war news (the new dead boy) and trifling memories. Gault almost slipped and told her he dreamed of his sister Anica—the day Mr. Lincoln broke their chains. But telling that now would tell his age. So when Patsy ran out of things to say and went off silent, gazing out the window at night, Gault was forced to raise the question he hoped all week she’d freely ask. He leaned slightly forward, not risking a smile—“Miss Pat, your ankles still swelling on you?”

  Pat kept watching the empty window, trying to keep her face blank of meaning; but then a grin took her. Not meeting his eyes, she said “Mr. Gault, they killed me last night. Feel some better now.”

  He thought Don’t rush her. But he said “They ain’t healed?” That would give her a chance to stop him.

  “I wish so but no sir, I doubt they healed.”

  Gault said “I may need to help you again.”

  Her smile was gone but her eyes moved toward him. And dim as it was by lantern light, with no word or nod, she might have meant yes.

  They were seated on straight chairs, two feet apart. Gault knew not to stand—Don’t break your spell—but he leaned to the bed, took the clean hand-towel, then found his bottle and pressed forward slightly. “Is it still this right one hurt you the most?”

  Her face was still toward him, but her eyes had closed. She said “Yes sir.”

  The right one wore the gold ankle-chain he gave her last Christmas. It caught the light as he raised her right heel onto his knee. He’d planned to take it off this time for fear it would snap (the links were thin), but he feared again that the spell would break. So he took the risk and moved ahead. He opened the bottle, poured a pool in his hand and—gentle as if he planted the frailest flower known—Gault worked narrow circles with his bony fingers in flesh that began in the slow quiet time to pay him, rich, for all he’d lost.

  In maybe two minutes his own eyes closed; and there again was his sister’s face—Anica Jane with her gap-toothed laugh, rolling a rusty hoop toward the road, saying she meant to not come back: Don’t follow me, Gault. You a old-timey boy; I’m hunting a man! And didn’t she find one—what was his name? Hob Hampshire that slit her throat, ear to ear, for daring to laugh when some boy passed, and her with two babies dugging her still. Well, didn’t she live, live and last? Doctor sewed her up for a dollar and Gault himself nursed her, for nearly a month till she sat up one clear sunrise and said “I’ll preciate this, right into the grave” but was gone by noon, never seen again. Was she live now still, and where on Earth? A broke-down pitiful sight or strong? (her boys were killed in the First World War).

  Gault set the right leg back to the floor, raised the left and renewed his oil. By then the smell of cloves in the heat had soothed them both; and though Pat still never spoke or sighed, she thanked this old man time and again in her own calm head. And when he had soothed her for what felt like the best part of a lifetime, she finally knew this was all he asked. There was no more harm in his hands than hate. So in her mind she saw herself with him at the beach (her white folks went to Virginia Beach two weeks every summer and Patsy cooked).

  She pictured how she’d take Mr. Gault, maybe this next year. He’d help in the kitchen and yard by day, and then they’d wait till the dead of night when the place was swept of all but them. They’d sit in the dry sand, and she’d find a way—a whole new way that she’d make up—to help him on his natural path. Old as he was, she knew the path was bound to be death; so maybe she’d say “Mr. Gault, thank you” (he thanked her several times a night). “Now lay your head down here on Patsy, and do whatever you need to next.” He’d shut his wide old golden eyes and soon be asleep, till sleep crept on to natural death. And she’d wait there till, well before day, a cool wave took his long bird-bones on out for good.

  Part of her dreaming reached Gault’s hands—not words or sights but the speed and kindness, the end she wished him. So he thought I won’t do this again till she asks me plain; but far in the back of his easing mind, an old picture stood up to see. Some deed his mother told him about before Mr. Lincoln—how the Lord bent low to wash a man’s feet in pure well-water, dried him gentle with a spotless rag and then got up and walked ahead to face his cross. Gault watched that sight till a meaning dawned, You helping this child, you strengthening her. Now go your way and take your due.

  When Patsy left, a slow while later, they both part-knew they’d seen him through a last big door. Neither one gauged its height or width nor saw any name on its dark frame. But when Gault died past three o’clock in a clean nightshirt, his hands stayed warm for a good short time after both his mind and heart were cold.

  AN EVENING MEAL

  SAM TRAYNOR had got the reprieve two days ago—the fiveyear cure of his stomach cancer—and he’d spent both days in quiet pleasure, not unstrung but high on
a joy he’d hardly known since boyhood. Because his parents were long dead though, and he’d lived alone since chemotherapy made him reckless for weeks on end, he had no close friend to tell the news. A woman who worked at the next desk over and the doorman in his apartment building seemed at least to notice a change. The doorman remarked on the tie Sam spent thirty dollars for, in celebration; the woman said “Sam, are you wearing blush?” (it was healthy color). And that was all, for human response. Sam wouldn’t phone his aunt or her sons; they’d offered so little when it would have counted.

  So after work that pleasant Friday, he walked ten blocks to eat at a diner he’d last visited the week before surgery, not even sensing a near ambush. It was not his favorite restaurant, then or now; but he’d planned this evening in further celebration—or the risk of one. That last visit he was also alone; but a new waiter was working the counter, a boy just off the plane from Amalfi and as good to see as any face that rushed toward Sam too fast to use, in his early days. The boy had accepted his invitation, turned up after the diner closed and—through a whole night—lent Sam his stunning body and smile, free as air.

  And never again. When he left at dawn, he thanked Sam, saying “I liked you, sir.” Sam stopped him there with a silent hand and fixed the moment in his mind where he knew it was safe as long as he lived. Five years later though, the boy wouldn’t be there—surely not. His name was Giulio, called Giuli; and still his memory seemed worth the risk.

  But there he was after all at the grill end when Sam took a stool up near the cash register. A few pounds thicker but lit with a heat that spread from inside him, the generous fearless eyes of a creature better than humankind anyhow. He was talking intently with an ancient woman in a genuine cloche hat, stained pink velvet. The one other worker in sight was a girl who served the counter and the booths by the street wall. Final daylight was strong at the windows, colored green by water-oak leaves.

  Right off, Sam knew he’d give no sign. If Giuli glanced his way or walked by, Sam would look right at him but not speak first. That would test many things—how much the wait had changed Sam’s looks, how deep his face had registered on Giuli that one dark night, what Sam’s whole life might hold from here out: a whole new life. He was calmer than he’d expected to be and was halfway through a bowl of good soup before Giuli passed to ring the woman’s check.

  No look Sam’s way; and once the woman passed back of Sam, blowing a dry old kiss at Giuli—and Giuli had actually turned to Sam and asked if the crackers were fresh enough—still no door swung open between them. Giuli grinned but in a general direction.

  Sam knew it was strange, but he wasn’t disappointed. The most he’d hoped for was some shared memory and the chance of Giuli’s pleasure in the news. It was plain anyhow that Giuli’s forgetfulness was real when their hands touched to exchange the crackers. The skin was warm as before and tougher. On the right ring finger, Italian-style, was a wedding band.

  By the time his turkey sandwich was ready, Sam had agreed they’d touched near enough. They’d silently proved they were still alive and had asked for no more; but then Sam’s mind set off on its own, watching a clear line of pictures that came from the night they’d shared nearly all they had. The same pictures had been a main help through the six hard months after surgery and X-ray—Sam’s old skill as a home projectionist of well-kept memories. In lucky hours he could shut his eyes and play through a useful number of scenes, from minutes to days, in keener detail than when they were new, tasting individual pleasures and thanks strong as ever. There were twenty-some scenes from his adult years, eight of which were masterworks of time and light; and the scene that centered on the early Giuli contended for best. In the next half-hour, through his sandwich and tapioca pudding, Sam had again everything Giuli gave him and needed no more.

  He believed that at least till he asked for his check and Giuli brought it, clearing the dishes in graceful ease—not a clink or scrape. But one more time their hands brushed; and Sam was startled by the wash of gratitude poured out in him—an unexpected need to say his own name, then allude to their meeting and tell Giuli what that memory had meant to a man condemned by a ring of doctors to die in a month. It hauled me back; Sam knew that much. At first a cold-scared hunkered patience of constant pain; then slowly an easier slog through time, dense at first as hip-deep seaweed.

  Terrified and then edgy as the wait was, it came to feel better than what went before; and the new years turned out, of all things, celibate. In eighteen hundred ominous nights, however often Sam ran the scenes, he’d never once felt compelled to reach for another man near him. A bigger surprise by far than his cure; and he sometimes wondered if the X-ray had done it, burning out some nerve for longing. Or was it simply fear of more sickness? Whatever, Sam took the world through his eyes now. With no real blame and no regret, though he’d sometimes wonder Am I dead and punished? Or maybe it’s Heaven. Alone on his stool he actually laughed.

  Giuli turned from cutting a blueberry pie and seemed to nod toward a table beyond them—a nod and a frown to hush the air, then a dark-eyed sadness.

  Sam hushed and tried to see a reflection in the glass pie-cabinet; it curved too sharply. So when he’d sat another two minutes, dawdling through the last of his coffee, he laid a small stack of bills on the check, caught Giuli’s eye and said “Keep the change,” then turned on his stool.

  Four yards ahead—close to the door in a four-seat booth with the low light on him—a single man was huddled inward on himself as tight as if a blunt pole had pierced him, threaded his chest and bolted him shut. He might just weigh a hundred pounds; his rusty hair was parched and limp. His eyes hit Sam’s a moment, then skittered.

  It’s Richard Boileau, already dead. Sam guessed it that fast; but since the man’s eyes wandered to the window and watched the street, Sam stayed in place and tested his hunch. He’d last seen Richard in ’78, the November morning after they’d proved through a long bleak night how well they’d learned each other’s least weakness and how they could each flay the other with words. Then as daylight had streaked the roof, Sam suddenly found the one path out. He stood from the bed they’d shared for three years, picked up a few good things from the bureau—his father’s gold watch, a comb of his mother’s, his wallet and knife—and said “All right, the rest is yours.”

  The rest had literally been the rest—Sam’s clothes, books, records, two years of a diary, a few nice pieces of furniture he’d more than half paid for. All well lost and Richard with it, the dazzling tramp hungry as any moray eel, cored-out by a set of monster parents. Through the years Sam heard second-hand of his whereabouts, always in town at a new address; but the two had never collided till now, if this was Richard.

  For whatever reason, of Sam’s old loves—vanished or lost—it was only Richard he’d thought of as dying, purple-splotched with Kaposi’s sarcoma or drowning in lung and nerve parasites. Each day he’d read the obituaries, crouched against the name on the page; and while he chalked off friend after friend, Richard stayed inexplicably free. Even in Sam’s own worst days though, when radiation seared his gut in thirddegree lesions, he somehow knew he’d outlast the havoc inside his skin while Richard Boileau would certainly die in this new plague. And not from an endless hunger for bodies-scrupulous Sam could have picked a killer any calm night—but from some cold rage in Richard’s mind to leave a string of his riders appalled.

  But is this helpless scarecrow Richard? In two more seconds Sam all but knew. The worn blue shirt that swallowed the long neck was one Sam had left—a red S.T. still edged the pocket, sewed by Sam’s mother. Had a stranger bought it at the Salvation Army? Sam turned away to steady himself.

  By now Giuli was back by the grill, laughing with a cook that had just turned up, a rangy boy with a knife-blade profile.

  Sam thought of quietly walking their way and asking if they knew the man in the booth—was he a regular; what was his problem?

  But the young cook met Sam’s eyes, gave a wave with his spat
ula, then kissed Giuli’s jaw—their eyes were identical; they had to be brothers. Giuli called out “Grazie,” smiled at the whole room, took a short bow and scrubbed at his neck.

  Sam stood up and faced the booth. The man was still pressed close to the window, though Sam could see there was nothing to notice, nothing Richard would have spent ten seconds on. The fact freed Sam; he stepped across, took the opposite bench two feet from the man’s head and said “See anything good out there?”

  The man turned gradually and, at close range, the skin of his upper face was transparent—that thin and taut on the beautiful skull.

  Sam thought he could see a whole brain through it, a raddled mind, whatever it knew or had lost for good. But Sam stayed still till he’d drawn a direct look from the eyes—they’d kept their color, an arctic blue. Then he said “Is it Richard?”

  No move or sign from the frozen face.

  Sam tried a new way. “Bertrand? Remember?” In the early days he’d sometimes called Richard “Bertrand Le Beau” when nothing yet had dulled the shine.

  At first the name seemed to penetrate. The eyes widened and the dry lips cracked.

  But then a quiet voice said “You know him?” The waitress was there with a dry slice of toast and a cup of milk that gave off smoke. She set it by the man’s right hand and spoke to him gently, “This’ll warm you fast.”

  Sam took the risk and looked to the girl. “You know his name?”

  The man might have been on the moon, engrossed.

  The waitress smiled. “I know he’s been bad off a long time. I know this is what he eats every night. But he’s gaining strength now—aren’t you, friend?” She touched the wrist that was nearly all bone.