Raney

by Clyde Edgerton

  RANEY

  A Novel by Clyde Edgerton

  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

  I am grateful to my mother and father,

  Truma and Ernest Edgerton, and to others

  in my family, especially Oma Crutchfield, Lila Spain,

  and W. C. Martin, for giving me those wonderful

  gifts, family stories, over and over, for as

  long as I can remember.

  To Susan

  PART ONE

  Blood Kin

  LISTRE, NORTH CAROLINA

  APRIL 18, 1975

  FROM THE Hansen County Pilot:

  BETHEL—Mr. and Mrs. Thurman A. Bell announce the engagement of their daughter, Raney, to Charles C. Shepherd of Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Bell owns the Hope Road General Store and the family attends Bethel Baptist Church. Raney graduated from Chester F. Knowles High School where she was in the school band and various other activities. She attended Listre Community College.

  Charles Shepherd, the son of Dr. and Mrs. William Shepherd of Atlanta, is the assistant librarian at Listre Community College. Dr. Shepherd is a college professor, while Mrs. Shepherd is a public school teacher.

  A June 7th wedding is planned at Bethel Baptist Church. A reception will follow in the education building.

  The couple plans to honeymoon at Myrtle Beach and live in Listre at 209 Catawba Drive.

  I

  We get married in two days: Charles and me.

  Charles’s parents are staying at the Ramada—wouldn’t stay with any of us—and today me, Mama, Aunt Naomi, and Aunt Flossie ate lunch with Charles’s mother, Mrs. Shepherd. And found out that she’s, of all things, a vegetarian.

  We ate at the K and W. Mrs. Shepherd wanted to eat at some place we could sit down and order—like a restaurant—but Aunt Naomi strongly suggested the K and W. She said the K and W would be more reasonable and the line wouldn’t be long on a Thursday. So we ate at the K and W.

  I got meatloaf, Mama got meatloaf (they have unusually good meatloaf—not bready at all), Aunt Naomi got turkey, Aunt Flossie got roast beef, and Mrs. Shepherd, Mrs. Shepherd didn’t get any meat at all. She got the vegetable plate.

  When we got seated Mama says, “I order the vegetable plate every once in a while myself.”

  “Oh, did you get the vegetable plate?” says Aunt Naomi to Mrs. Shepherd.

  “Sure did,” says Mrs. Shepherd. “I’ve stopped eating meat.”

  We all looked at her.

  “I got involved in a group in Atlanta which was putting together programs on simple living and after a few programs I became convinced that being a vegetarian—me, that is—made sense.”

  Somehow I thought people were born as vegetarians. I never thought about somebody just changing over.

  “What kind of group was that?” asks Mama.

  “Several Episcopal women. I’m originally Methodist, but—”

  “Naomi!” says this woman walking by holding her tray. “Good gracious, is this all your family?” Her husband went ahead and sat down about three tables over—picked a chair with arms.

  “It sure is,” says Aunt Naomi. “Let me introduce you. Opal Register, this is my sister-in-law, Doris Bell.” (That’s Mama.) “You know Doris, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes. I think we met in here one time. Right over there.”

  “And this is her daughter, Raney, who’s getting married Saturday.”

  “Mercy me,” says Mrs. Register. She had on big glasses with a chain, little brown curls on the top of her head, and too much lipstick. “You’re at the start of a wonderful journey, honey,” she says. “It was thirty-seven years for me and Carl the twenty-first of last month. I hope your journey is as happy and fulfilling as ours.”

  “And this is Mrs. Millie Shepherd, the groom’s—groom-to-be’s—mother. She’s up from Atlanta, Georgia.”

  “Atlanta!” says Mrs. Register.

  “And this is Flossie Purvis, Doris’s sister. And ya’ll, this is Opal and Carl Register,” said Aunt Naomi, pointing toward Mr. Register who had started eating over at his table. He smiled, with food in his mouth. You couldn’t see any though.

  “Atlanta!” said Mrs. Register again. “You don’t know C. C. Lawrence, do you?”

  “No, I don’t think I do,” said Mrs. Shepherd.

  “C. C. works at one of the big banks in Atlanta. He got a law degree and a business degree—one right after the other. His mama and daddy didn’t think he’d ever finish—and them working at Liggett and Myers. He went—”

  “Opal,” Mr. Register calls out. “Sit down and eat.”

  “Well, nice to have met you,” said Mrs. Register. “Good luck on that wonderful journey, honey,” she says to me.

  When Mrs. Register was out of hearing distance, Mama says, “Mr. Register just had a prostrate operation and I don’t think he’s recovered.”

  “Prostate,” says Aunt Flossie.

  “Is it?” says Mama. “Prostate? Oh. You know, I’ve always liked him better than her. She always makes so much out of every little thing.”

  The conversation went from the Registers to prostrate operations back around to eating meat.

  “You know,” says Aunt Naomi, “once in a while I’ve gone without meat, but I got so weak I thought I’d pass out.”

  “Well, that happens a bit at first,” Mrs. Shepherd says. “But after a few days that usually goes away. It’s a matter of what you get used to, I think. The body adjusts.”

  “I’d be afraid I couldn’t get enough proteins,” says Mama.

  “Oh, no,” says Mrs. Shepherd. “There are many protein substitutes for meat. Beans—soybeans, for example—are excellent.”

  “My next door neighbor, Lillie Cox, brought me some hamburger with soybean in it,” said Aunt Naomi, “when I had the flu last winter, and it tasted like cardboard. She’s always trying out the latest thing.”

  “I couldn’t do without my meat,” says Mama. She was fishing through her tossed salad for cucumber—and putting it on her plate. “I’d be absolutely lost without sausage for breakfast. Cole’s sausage. The mild, not the hot. Do they have Cole’s in Atlanta?”

  “I don’t think so. I really don’t know.”

  “Do you get the patties or the links?” Aunt Naomi asks Mama.

  “The patties—Thurman don’t like the links; they roll off his plate.”

  We all laughed. Even Mrs. Shepherd, so Mama stretched it out. “Every time we go to Kiwanis for the pancake supper he’ll lose one or two links. Because of the way he eats his pancakes—pushes them all around in the syrup. Last time one rolled up under the edge of Sam Lockamy’s plate, and for a minute there we couldn’t find it. Then Sam swore it was his.”

  “I guess you have less cholesterol if you don’t eat meat,” says Aunt Naomi.

  “There are health advantages,” said Mrs. Shepherd. “And also our women’s group has been concentrating on how eating less meat can help curtail hunger in the third world.”

  “On another planet?” says Aunt Naomi.

  “Oh, no. Developing nations,” says Mrs. Shepherd. She finished chewing and swallowed. “Developing nations.”

  “What I don’t understand,” says Aunt Naomi, “is that if they don’t eat their own cows, like in India, then why should we send them ours? They wouldn’t eat ours, would they? Or maybe they would eat American meat.”

  “We wouldn’t send meat to India, of course; we’d send grain and other staple goods. The fewer cows we eat the less grain we’ll need to feed cows, so there will be a greater grain surplus.”

  Aunt Naomi blew her nose on this Kleenex she had been fumbling with. She had a cold. She can get more nose blows on one Kleenex than anybody I ever saw. She always ends up with this tiny corner which she slowly spreads out, then blows her nose int
o.

  We’d finished eating so I said, “Aunt Naomi, you get more nose blows out of one Kleenex than anybody I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  “I probably won’t be able to sing Sunday,” she said. She sings in the church choir. “This cold just drags on and on and on.”

  “Ain’t it nice the way Raney and Charles play music together,” says Mama to Mrs. Shepherd. I was relieved to get off the meat subject.

  “Yes, it is,” says Mrs. Shepherd.

  “I think it’s wonderful,” says Aunt Naomi.

  “They sound real good together,” says Aunt Flossie.

  Music is what brought me and Charles together. He plays banjo and collects old songs from the mountains. When I sang for the faculty at the college Christmas dinner he was there—he’s the assistant librarian—and he came up afterward and complimented my singing. He was real nice about it. And has been ever since. Charles is the kind of person who is real natural around people—and is smart as he can be.

  Then I met him again when I went to the library to check out a record. They have a good collection, thanks to Charles. One thing led to another and the first thing you know we’re playing music together. We’ve had three or four performances. Kiwanis and such. Charles calls them gigs.

  “Charles sent me a tape,” says Mrs. Shepherd. “You two sound really good together. You have a beautiful voice, Raney.”

  I thanked her.

  Charles is learning to sing too. We harmonize on two or three songs. He’s improving gradually. He plays good banjo. He don’t look like a banjo picker, but he sounds good.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do without Raney singing around the house, and helping out with Norris and Mary Faye,” says Mama, looking at me.

  “Mama, I’m twenty-four years old,” I said.

  There’s a big gap between me and my little brother, Norris, and sister, Mary Faye. Norris is eight and Mary Faye is eleven. Mary Faye picks on Norris all the time, but sometimes he deserves it.

  “How many children do you have, Mrs. Shepherd?” says Aunt Flossie.

  “One,” says Aunt Naomi.

  “Please call me Millie,” says Mrs. Shepherd. “All of you,” she says, and smiles. “You too, Raney, if you’re comfortable with that. I have only one,” she says. “Charles is the only one.”

  II

  You would think a man could get married without getting drunk, especially after I explained that nobody in my family drunk alcohol except Uncle Nate, who was in the Navy in World War II, but got burned in combat on over fifty percent of his body, and caught pneumonia and had to be discharged from the Pacific. He had to stay in the hospital for three and a half months. Now he has asthma spells.

  Uncle Nate comes to our house in a taxi at any hour of the day or night, drunk, cussing his former wife, who’s dead—Joanne. And when I say drunk, I mean so drunk he can’t get up the front steps without me and Mama and sometimes the taxi driver helping him. And smell?—Uncle Nate I’m talking about—whew. A sweat-whisky smell that lingers in the house as solid as flower smells at a funeral—lingers long after Mama’s undressed him, got him in the tub, and piled his clothes on the back porch. And the thing is, he don’t ever get asthma when he’s drunk.

  Mary Faye and Norris have to stand there in the middle of all that, being influenced in no telling what ways.

  When Uncle Nate’s sober he’s my favorite uncle. I love his stories about when he was growing up with Mama and Aunt Flossie and Uncle Norris (who lives in Charlotte) and their Uncle Pugg. And he always gives me presents and says I’m his favorite niece.

  He’s always lived with us and worked at Daddy’s store part time. His lung troubles make him disabled, so he gets a check every month from the government. They think he inhaled so much smoke he’ll never recover. The scars are mostly on his body under his clothes so you can’t ever see them except on his left wrist and under his left ear. He never talks about it except to Uncle Newton, who was in the war, too. Sometimes his asthma gets so bad he has to sit perfectly still for three or four hours. So he can’t get a job anywhere, of course—except helping Daddy out at the store. Daddy says he makes a big difference and is very dependable—unless he’s drunk.

  I don’t know what Mama will do about getting him out of the taxi and up the steps since I’ll be living here in Listre. Mary Faye and Norris will have to help. But Mama hates for them to be exposed to such.

  Charles knew all about Uncle Nate and how I—how my whole family—feels about drinking.

  So at the rehearsal Friday night everything was going fine except Mama caught Norris hiding in the baptism place and made him sit on the front row. She’d already caught him once. I told him the water would flow in there and drown him if he didn’t watch out. Mary Faye was one of my attendants and being as smart as she could be.

  I’m standing in the back of the church with Daddy and Flora, my cousin, who directed the wedding, and I notice that Charles’s friend, Buddy Shellar, from Maryland, who I had never met until that night, keeps going outside. And Charles keeps following him. Phil, Jim, Dale, and Crafton—my cousins—were of course staying in their places like they were supposed to. Flora gives me a little push and I start down the aisle with Daddy. Charles is standing with this red-faced grin. When Preacher Gordon says you may kiss the bride, I turned to Charles and there were these little red blood vessels in his left eye that looked like red thread and all of a sudden I caught a whiff of you-know-what. It hit me. It all suddenly fell together. I thought they had been going outside to talk.

  The thing you won’t believe is: Charles’s daddy looked lit too.

  I did not kiss Charles. I kept my lips clamped. I grabbed him by the arm and led him right up the aisle and out the front door. Madora Bryant, my maid of honor, and some of the other girls were clapping as hard as they could. They couldn’t tell what was really happening. When I got him out on the front porch—right beside the bell rope—I said: (now I was really tore up) “Charles, I have told you for months about the condition Uncle Nate has put our family in with alcohol, and you promised me you would not have a bachelor party and get drunk and here you are, drunk, under the nose of Preacher Gordon, Mama, Daddy, Flora and Aunt Naomi and Aunt Flossie and my bridesmaids and Mary Faye and Norris and I will never forget this as long as I live.”

  “Raney,” he says, “first of all, I am not having a bachelor party, and second of all, I am not drunk. I am not doing anybody any harm. I—”

  “Not doing any harm? Charles, I—”

  “Raney, Buddy drove all the way down here from Baltimore, Maryland, and he has one little pint of something in his car, and we were in the war together and if you will just relax. And he’s the only one of my close friends in the wedding. All these damn cousins of yours.”

  “Charles, please do not start cussing right here on church property. And if you are mad about my cousins being in the wedding I would have appreciated you saying something about that before now—like while I was spending all my time getting this whole thing planned.”

  Charles’s daddy, Dr. Shepherd, walks up. I could not believe what was happening, yet I dared not make a scene in front of him. I was thinking that if Mama and Aunt Naomi and Aunt Flossie found out about all this drinking I would die.

  “Raney, honey,” Dr. Shepherd says, “you look adorable.” He’s a big man and wears those glasses without any rims—shaped like stop signs. He’s a math professor, of all things. A doctor. And Mrs. Shepherd is a school teacher. They use these long words I know Mama and Daddy don’t know. And they should know Mama and Daddy don’t know them. But they’ll go on back down to Atlanta after the wedding and we won’t see them except maybe a few times a year. Charles says they belong to a country club and all that. What gets me is that Charles said he explained to them about us being Christians and not drinking which I didn’t even know we had to explain until Madora told me that Charles’s parents would probably be used to drinking spiked punch at weddings and what were we going to do?


  I hadn’t thought about it. I’ve never been to a wedding where they drink liquor in the punch. I mean there’s usually a preacher at a wedding and it’s usually at a church. But Madora explained how rich people—or at least Episcopalians and Catholics and sometimes Methodists—will get married in church and then ride over to a country club or someplace where they all drink up a storm.

  Dr. Shepherd stands there kind of flushed and glassy-eyed and tells me how proud he is—and he laughs at everything he says, funny or not—and I’ll be durn if he didn’t reach up right then and there and pull the church bell rope and ring the bell. I could just see old Mrs. Bledsoe, down the road, figure it was not Friday night at all, but Wednesday night—prayer meeting night—instead, and get all upset and maybe grab Mr. Bledsoe, who can’t hear, and cart him off to a prayer meeting which don’t exist. Not to mention all the other people in hearing distance.

  The rehearsal dinner was in the education building around behind the church. I walked down the church steps between Charles and his daddy—their arms locked through mine—not able to say a word, and hot behind my ears with embarrassment at the prospect of a scandal.

  When we got to the education building there was Mrs. Shepherd—Millie—standing at the door, smiling.

  “Smooth as could be,” she said, and kissed Dr. Shepherd on the lips—right there in the door to the education building.

  Inside, there were two long tables and a head table. Aunt Naomi was in charge. She had got Betty Winnberry to cater. Steaks. T-bone steaks. French fries. The works. I had hoped all along it wouldn’t be tacky—like paper tablecloths, which Aunt Naomi was talking about along at first. I’m certainly not going to be cow-tied to any fancy ways of the Shepherds, but I did want things to be proper for everybody concerned.

  On the tables were about twelve or thirteen red-checkered, overlapped tablecloths that Aunt Flossie had borrowed from Penny’s Grill (and had to wash and dry later that night in order to get them back to the grill in time for Penny to serve breakfast. They open at six A.M.). And over in the corner Mack Lumley was sitting on a bale of hay playing his guitar. He didn’t charge but ten dollars, and furnished the hay, too. Somebody suggested me and Charles sing, but I think singing at your own wedding wouldn’t be right.