Rock of Ages

by Howard Owen

  “I don’t know.” He was itching for me to say the magic “A” word, I could tell. But I wouldn’t.

  “I’m not going to do anything right now but be there for her,” he said after a short silence. And we left it at that.

  By August, they were back in Chez Calloway, in a 10-by-12 bedroom. We’d had an argument on Justin’s 27th birthday. My fault. Another crack by me about the sands of time and summa cum laudes doing grunt work, and then they double-teamed me, and I made some remark about matrimony. We all apologized, but the general consensus was that it was time for somebody to go.

  The first day of fall classes, late August, I was standing in this room with 12 graduate students, most of whom I knew. We were going to spend a semester studying the short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was not really pumped for doing this, but it was good, I told myself, to do something other than sit around on the screen porch and alternate between reading and staring unfocused into infinity.

  And it might have been good, for someone who wasn’t already going as crazy as a shithouse rat.

  The classroom we were in could hold 60 students. Combine that with its high ceilings, and our little group huddled near the front seemed lost, swallowed up.

  I had just gotten into my spiel about how much Fitzgerald’s short stories were bringing in the ’20s, in 1999 dollars, and how much he was driven by the economics of this, when I realized someone else was in the room.

  He was sitting in the back. I don’t know where he came from; I never heard the door open. But he was there. He didn’t look the way he did as an old man. As a matter of fact, he looked a little like Justin, and my first, split-second thought was that Justin had slipped into my classroom, maybe come over from the construction job he was on, still in his work clothes, although the bib overalls were a little over the top.

  I must have been just standing there with my mouth open, and the looks I was getting indicated at least some of my class knew this had gone somewhere beyond quirky old English professor. They looked uneasy.

  He didn’t move, until I did. I started to walk slowly, past the little clump of scholars and toward the back of the room, where he was sitting with a slight smile on his face, his hands folded in front of him. By the time I’d taken four steps, though, he got up and was gone, before I’d come within 30 feet of him. He glanced back once on the way out, and when I looked out into the hallway, of course nobody was there. But I swear, I could smell him, some mix of sweat and Old Spice and the scent beneath that, which I always identified with the farm itself.

  I did not go back into that classroom. Stella Greenleaf got my things later. I went directly to Hubert Lefall’s office. It was Hubert’s turn to play department head, and so he had to deal with my nervous breakdown on the first day of the fall semester. Poor Hubert: Nobody would have been less capable of dealing with my wild-eyed ravings and my tears. He’ll probably use me in one of his novels someday, to get even.

  We did finally get it straightened out. I cheated two classes of graduate students, although what I had to give them at that point was less, I am sure, than the gifts of the relatively enthusiastic doctoral candidates who took over for me. The good thing about academics: A certain amount of lunacy is expected, so it was fairly easy to set the wheels in motion and cover for one addled English professor.

  I am now on sabbatical, supposedly wrestling with a scholarly paper on a set of short stories that the author never wanted read again, let alone dissected by English scholars. When I told Hubert Lefall in October that I was going to North Carolina for a few months, he just patted me on the shoulder, as if I might break, and told me to take all the time I needed, it being understood that “all the time I need” must not go beyond the start of classes next fall.

  I didn’t tell Justin about what I saw. What’s the point? I just told him I needed a break. Hell, he ought to know about breaks. So I spent September alternating between my bed, the den and the screen porch, reading, drinking, staring into space, and, I suppose, waiting for something to speak to me.

  The only trouble with seeing your dead father in the back of your classroom: You kind of half expect to see him again, most anytime. You know anything that happens once can happen again.

  Part of the flight to East Geddie, I’m sure, was a realization that you can run, but you can’t hide, not even from people who have been dead 11 years and are buried 200 miles away. Might as well come on down, Georgia McCain. (I kept the name, by the way, for my third marriage, because I’d changed it twice already without a hell of a lot of luck. Maybe I ought to get a rabbit’s foot.)

  By early September, Justin had made good on his offer to go down and help get Daddy’s old place in shape to sell, and I’m sure Leeza was glad to have someplace they could at least temporarily call their own.

  I am not sure my appearance, a month later, was the thrill of their young lives. But I’ve been trying to play nice. Really.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  November 5

  What is now Blackwell Road, repaved so recently that the tire tracks of individual cars are still visible, was an unnamed dirt path when Georgia was in high school. Beyond William’s house, it turns to dirt again before continuing on toward the swamp.

  The house, on a small rise, is not much different from the one Georgia is trying to sell—wooden, two storeys with a rusting tin roof, surrounded by the various outbuildings of a working farm.

  Near the main house are at least six other dwellings, all modular, every one occupied by William Blackwell’s relatives, including his three sons and daughter and various grandchildren. Around it, in all directions, is cultivated land resting for the winter.

  Georgia called yesterday, to see about picking up what few items Jenny left her. William himself had answered the phone and told her she could come by any time. They settled on 3 o’clock. As Georgia gets out of the van, her watch reads 2:58.

  A large tan-and-black dog, mostly German shepherd, comes charging toward her, barking and baring its teeth, as if she is either a dangerous intruder or a very large pork chop. She is pinned against the van, afraid to turn around long enough to open the door and get back in.

  This is how Pooh finds her. He walks up to the dog and kicks it in the ribs, sending it yelping away to safety behind the house.

  “He won’t hurt you,” Pooh says. “He’s just a big pussy.” And he grins, the gaps between his teeth, like the rest of him, larger than life.

  Georgia takes a deep breath.

  “Thank you. Is your father home?”

  “He’s around here somewhere,” Pooh says. “Go on inside.”

  Georgia walks onto the screen porch unescorted and knocks on the door that seems to lead to the kitchen. A minute later, a small woman who appears to be at least 60 opens the door cautiously and stares as Georgia explains what she’s doing there.

  Betty Blackwell, Georgia finds out later, is an Autry from the other side of Cool Spring, two years young than William. Farm life seems to have aged her. The two women sit in the living-dining room for several minutes, the silence broken occasionally by Georgia’s attempts at conversation and Betty Blackwell’s one-word answers, before William walks in.

  “Sorry,” he says, taking off his Dale Earnhardt hat. “I was looking after one of the horses. We keep ’em for the grandkids to ride, and sometimes they’re more trouble than they’re worth.”

  He looks sharply at his wife. “I hope ’ol Betty here has been keeping you entertained. She’s quite the talker.”

  His wife blushes and frowns, then gets up silently and goes back to the kitchen, where much banging of pots and pans can be heard.

  William rolls his eyes. Georgia tries to make her smile as noncommittal as possible. She looks out the double windows and sees two preschool-age children playing in the side yard. They seem to be chasing a three-legged cat, circling around and trying to trap it. William tells her that they’re his grandchildren. His sons, Pooh, Ike, and Angier, and the one daughter, Sally, are all between
24 and 29, and among them they have made William Blackwell a grandfather five times over.

  “The oldest one starts first grade next year. They might have to rebuild the school by the time they get all of ’em in there at the same time.” William laughs, then bangs on the window glass and yells at them to leave the cat alone. “You want him to bite you again? You want some more shots?” The children, a boy and a girl, stop momentarily to stare at their grandfather, then go back to their pursuit of the cat. The boy has a stick in his hand.

  William shakes his head.

  “So, I expect you’re here for Miss Jenny’s stuff.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “I reckon we can get it all in that van. Nothing much of any size except the dresser, of course. Come on.”

  Georgia follows him into the hallway and eventually into a back room that is dark even in the middle of the day. William flips a light switch hidden away behind one of the many piles of cardboard boxes carelessly stacked and climbing high along every wall.

  “Excuse the mess,” he says. “It seems like we pack everything in here that we don’t know what to do with. Jenny’s stuff, or at least what all she left you, is over here.”

  He leads her to a far corner, through a narrow corridor bordered by more of the boxes. There sits the dresser, a homely pine construct to which age has not been kind. Someone, at some point, painted it a color of green not seen in nature. One of the four drawers has a knob missing. It might be considered, within the generous parameters of a modest farming community, an antique. Georgia knows she will have to take it or seem callous.

  “We just put the letters and all the pictures and stuff in here,” William says, opening a middle drawer. “And the jewelry box.”

  The portrait of Jenny and Harold leans against the dresser. It was done more than 40 years ago, when they were both in their 30s. Georgia hasn’t really looked at it for many years, although it must have been in Jenny’s house during her infrequent visits. She is surprised at how young they look. Harold is thin with dark, wavy hair; he reminds her of John Garfield. Jenny’s curly blonde hair frames a face that seems almost free of worry lines. She looks happy.

  Georgia has heard the story many times:

  A man had come walking up their driveway, working his way along Route 47 from Port Campbell east, offering to do “artistic paintings” of couples, families, anything you want, for whatever he could get. The man came late on the same Thursday afternoon on which Harold had been paid 50 dollars—nearly a week’s salary at the sawmill—by Parker Vinson for the use of his land. Parker Vinson made moonshine and preferred not to make it on land he actually owned, choosing instead to give people like Harold McLaurin 50 dollars here and there for certain concessions. Once, a still was found and destroyed on Harold’s land, but no one had ever seen Harold near it. Actually, there were certain parts of the 120 acres he owned on the edge of Kinlaw’s Hell that Harold made certain he never set foot on. So, the portrait man’s timing was perfect. Harold paid him 20 dollars and a bed for the night in exchange for what had to have been a frivolous expenditure in eastern Scots County at a time when most people were more than happy to immortalize themselves via photography. It was the year before their son was run over by the train, and Jenny wanted Wallace in the painting, too, but Harold said no, he wanted this one to be just the two of them. It was a small thing. How could Harold know? But Jenny blamed him for that more than she did some of his larger, more obvious failings in years to come.

  Georgia pulls the portrait out into the dim light of the naked overhead bulb.

  “I can’t believe Jenny and Harold were ever this young,” she says as much to herself as to William Blackwell, who only grunts.

  William gets his second son, Ike, to help him move enough boxes so that they can get the dresser out. Georgia brings the van around to the porch behind the storage room, and in half an hour, her meager, undeserved inheritance is, as William says, “good to go.”

  He seems sincere in inviting her to stay for supper—“Hell, I bet we could even scare up a beer or two if you want to sit and talk”—but Georgia says she’ll take a rain check.

  More like an ice check, she mutters to herself as she backs out of the driveway, trying to avoid children who don’t seem disposed to move at all as she eyes them in the rearview mirror. When hell freezes over.

  The boy she saw earlier, no more than 5 years old with white-blond hair, stands in the dirt, picking his nose. They make eye contact and he gives her the finger, then finally runs to the other side of the yard when she stops and opens the door.

  The big part-shepherd chases the van for half a mile. He seems to actually be trying to bite the tires. Georgia has the sense, as she turns on to the state road, that she is leaving a foreign country.

  “Blackwells Über Alles,” she mutters.

  Back at the house, Leeza is in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and holding a recipe book she must have brought down with her. She’s frowning.

  “Oh, hi,” she says when she sees Georgia come in. “I was just looking for something good to cook tonight.”

  Georgia believes she manages to catch the grimace before it reaches her face. The last time Leeza “cooked” for them, there was a scene involving bloody chicken, tears, and a quick call to Pizza Hut. Leeza has not had much experience cooking; she’s been taught most of what she knows from Justin, who learned how to render several classes of plants and animals appetizing during his Peace Corps days.

  “What’re you thinking about fixing?” Georgia asks.

  “Oh, I dunno. Here’s one I’ve always liked. We had it once in this cool restaurant when Dad took us to New York. Beef Wellington.”

  “Hmm. Beef Wellington.” Hell, Georgia thinks, why not try something hard? “Well, that’s always kind of intimidated me. Tell you what: If you’ll wait until I get my shiftless son to help me move this stuff out of the van, I’ll show you a great recipe for roast beef. It’s a no-brainer.

  “I mean,” she says quickly, gun-shy about accidental insults, “even I can do it.”

  Georgia, who has made a passable beef Wellington on a handful of occasions, has faced the sulking (Leeza’s) and wrath (Justin’s) before when feelings were hurt over kitchen prowess. As she walks out the screen door in search of her son, who is supposed to be “doing something with Kenny,” she sees her possibly-future daughter-in-law still poring over the cookbook, perhaps ready to take on beef Wellington just to show Georgia she can, which she can’t.

  As the day fades, the wind has picked up and the weather has turned chilly, as if November is finally bringing fall to the Carolina coastal plain. Georgia’s sweater is overmatched, but she doesn’t want to go back inside just now.

  She spots two figures across the field and sees that Justin and Kenny are playing golf on the little two-hole course Justin has taken to calling Little Augusta. While she is still 100 yards away, Justin takes a swing and they both yell “Fore.” The ball is invisible to Georgia, who’s staring into the low-hanging sun. She can only put her hands over her head and turn away from them until she hears a “thunk” in the near-distance.

  “Sorry,” Kenny says as they walk toward her. “We weren’t expecting an audience today. The gallery’s usually not much of a problem out here.”

  He and her son seem to genuinely like each other. They do have some history, although it’s pretty much ancient history by now. Kenny did teach her son how to drive the unsettled summer he turned 16, the summer she abandoned him and he ran away to be with his grandfather. They haven’t really stayed in touch over the years, but something’s clicking. Maybe, she thinks, shared blood.

  Some of it, she supposes, is the farm.

  She teased Kenny gently about his love of farming the week she arrived, wondering if there possibly was a more unlikely way to get rich.

  “You know what they say,” she’d told him. “The way to make a small fortune is take a large fortune and go into farming.”

  “Or,” he sa
id, “you could teach English.”

  “I guess we’re just not genetically disposed to make money,” she said, then blushed as he offered an uncertain laugh.

  But what to make of Justin? He never showed any desire to get dirt under his fingernails until he was past 22, but he has come home from Guatemala with what Georgia not-so-secretly hopes are only temporarily different priorities.

  Of all things, they taught him just enough about agriculture to make him dangerous and sent him out to show native farmers how to build better storage bins for their grain so the rats wouldn’t eat it. This seemed wrong to Georgia, when she first heard of it, in so many ways. How arrogant for the Peace Corps or anyone to come into another country and presume to tell people who had been farming the land since well before Columbus that they had been doing it all wrong. How ridiculous to send a sociology major from the University of Virginia, born and bred in the suburbs, to break the news to them. How outrageous that they couldn’t have him teaching them English or something he actually knew.

  “But, Mom,” Justin had written, “some of it they are doing wrong. We can learn a lot from them, but they can learn something from us, too. And if they don’t have grain, they have to starve or give up their land and move to some shantytown on the edge of a big city, where they’ll be worse off than they are here. Besides, I’m teaching them English, too. Or at least their kids.”

  So, Justin came back with more of an affinity for the land than Georgia has ever been able to conjure. To her, the farm was something to escape. There was no poetry in the land where she worked as little as she could, dreaming of a day when her world would be all tidy lawns and suburban streets and rooms that smelled like books.

  Once, the last summer before college, her father asked her to take a ride with him in his old pickup. He was going out to look at the lush acres where he was making a good living growing strawberries, blueberries, cantaloupes, watermelons, and a wide variety of other food that enticed city people from Port Campbell and travelers off what was then the closest road leading to and from Florida. It is land from which Annabelle Geddie and her son, Blue, still prosper, according to Kenny, “in spite of what they tell you.”