1971
BLISS
The splendor of the wisteria has not abated one iota.
This summer’s gravecleaning group was small but proud. Aunt Scrap was there, bless her heart, with her powerful presence and her walker, which meant two walkers in all, since Meredith likes to have his along so he can stand for awhile and maybe move a few feet. He’s decided not to order an electric wheelchair because he believes he’ll be walking before too long. I’m not sure, but I’m hoping. His progress has been remarkable. He tried an artificial arm and leg and gave up on both. What he has been through would have killed a lesser human being for sure, but he’s charged back from the abyss and is now able to clearly say some single words, and move very slowly from one spot to another by leaning over in the walker, putting his weight on his right elbow, steadying the walker with his short left arm and skipping forward with his right leg, then lifting the walker with his stub and moving it forward.
Throughout his ordeal, from the day he got back, I have seen the old Meredith in his eyes, and now when he says one word I can usually read the rest of the sentence in his eyes, which move on beyond what he’s saying.
Taylor loves him because Meredith buys him something out of every government check he gets, the last thing being a baseball glove, and too, Meredith points his stump at Taylor and wiggles it and Taylor thinks it’s the most mysterious and unusual thing in the world. Where the skin is sewed over the end makes a little X.
Ross was along on the gravecleaning, rolling in the truck bed on several blankets. He crawls and rolls all over the place and can pull up, but he’s not big enough to fall out yet. Next year he will be. He’s a sweet pretty, as Aunt Scrap would say, and looks exactly like Meredith’s baby pictures. He and Meredith both are living with Thatcher, Taylor, and me. It works out because Taylor and Ross have one bedroom, Meredith the other, and Thatcher and me the other. Noralee had rather babysit than eat, so she keeps one or both of the boys over at Mr. Copeland’s—enough to give me genuine relief. She helps with Meredith, too, and enjoys it, except for an occasional frustration.
Nobody made it up from Florida for the gravecleaning this year because Uncle Hawk had complications with his cataract operation. And Thatcher couldn’t be there at first because he was busy at Strong Pull, where his job is taking on more and more of an administrative cast.
So the only ones there to start with were me, Meredith, Mildred, Mr. Copeland, Aunt Scrap, Taylor, Ross, and Noralee.
Mr. Copeland had come over late Friday afternoon, the day before, got Thatcher, and they went to the graveyard and did some work. Mr. Copeland knew there was going to be only a small crowd the next day, so he wanted to get some of the work done. Very early the next morning, Saturday, he went back by himself, and so it turned out that a good bit was already done when the rest of us got there.
What happened was that it turned into one of those days when the sun is bright and warm but the air is cool, and thin. It set Aunt Scrap off to talking about how there used to be more days like that around the turn of the century when she was a little girl and lived just down the road from the very spot upon which we sat.
“I guess I was about eight or ten when Tyree and Loretta started having all their children: Little Hawk, Albert, Esther, Henry, Content, Spruce, Lucy. That the right order, Albert?”
“That’s right.”
“I won’t but three or four houses down the road, and for some reason, Papa and Mama didn’t have but two of us, so I spent all the time I could at Tyree’s.
“And then of course the typhoid of 1911. You ought to know about some of this,” she said to Taylor, who is nine now. “You too,” she said to Noralee.
“I know a lot of it,” said Noralee. “I knew about the typhoid.”
Aunt Scrap spat. “I remember walking in and seeing Aunt Loretta, pregnant, boiling water for Tyree, and Grandma Caroline trying to help out, refusing to take to bed, getting sicker and sicker herself, and Helen standing around wringing her hands, and Ross sitting on the porch. You know, Loretta’s the one finally threw away those baby fingers that used to sit behind the clock, and it won’t long after that that the fever came through.
“Son, go shoo that dog off there.
“Lord, Tyree and Grandma Caroline both died. Typhoid. And then within six weeks, those two lovely children, Henry and Content. That was Loretta losing a husband and two children within six weeks. And Ross, his mama and a son. That was a busy spring and summer in this little graveyard. Don’t you know. There was Tyree dying, while all the time Grandma Caroline was giving him skunk cabbage and finally his tongue turned black and he broke out in purple spots and all the time stuck under four or five quilts sweating like nobody’s business. And then Grandma Caroline gone herself within a couple of weeks.
“It was happening all through here. People dying like flies.
“Will somebody do something about that dog?”
Noralee got Rex by the collar and pulled him away from a grave.
Aunt Scrap started in again. “Then within two years Loretta married that Rogers fellow and they were all off to town. I stayed with the children the day Loretta married old man Rogers and I remember little Lucy saying something about them getting married and I asked her if she knew what getting married was and she said, ‘Laying down together and getting dirt throwed over you.’
“Lord a mercy, and then in two years they were back from town with the cow. Had to leave old man Rogers to his preaching. Aunt Loretta got sucked in by him being a preacher—her so straight-laced and all.”
“I remember that cow,” said Mr. Copeland. “People came from all over the place to see it—in town, I mean.”
I had heard all of this many times but it never failed to interest me greatly, because my parents were born twenty years later than Thatcher’s parents and these stories of child labor laws and tent preaching and a cow in town were so enticing, so authentic, and it is a major part of Taylor’s heritage. He was listening attentively to the part about how they left town in a caravan with the cow, and moved back here to the old homeplace which was being rented by a family of Indians who were then allowed to live in the kitchen until they found somewhere else to live.
Then Aunt Scrap leaned over, and looked around at all of us. “I’ll tell you something about Hawk you all ain’t ever heard. Since he ain’t here, I’ll talk about him. You know he worked for a while down at Lowrey’s store—about a year, I suppose. Well the fact is, he was taking things, and you know, I don’t reckon I ever told this, you know, he stole me a dress out of that store. A pretty blue dress. Color of the sky. You remember that, Esther?”
“No, can’t say as I do.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“It was Albert working down there, won’t it?” said Aunt Esther. “Won’t it you, Albert?”
“No, it was Scrap.”
“No, it was Hawk,” said Aunt Scrap. “He gave me that dress and I didn’t pay him nothing, and he stole one for Cousin Teresa because she took a suitcase down there one day and he filled it up in a back room and made her walk out the door with it.”
“Cousin Teresa?” asked Mr. Copeland.
“Yeah, little Cousin Teresa.”
“She won’t old enough, was she?”
“Yes, she was.”
“Why don’t you tell some nice stories?” asked Miss Esther.
“I like ugly ones,” said Noralee. “Nobody ever tells any of those.”
“I’ll tell you a ugly one,” said Mr. Copeland. “Esther, you remember Hawk telling us about where babies come from?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“We all thought they came from a stump—stump in the swamp.”
Mildred was tending her fingernails and looking up every once in a while, listening. She looked over at me. We have wondered together about some of the beliefs and customs that formed this family.
“Then Hawk got us together,” said Mr. Copeland, “under the sycamore tree—sitting on the root over the
re—me and Esther, and told us that a baby started growing in a woman’s stomach after a man peed in her mouth, and nine months later the baby came out her asshole.”
“Albert!” said Mildred.
“Don’t be telling that,” said Esther.
“Well, it’s true,” said Albert.
“Gross,” said Noralee.
“That shouldn’t be repeated,” said Esther.
“Lord, have mercy,” said Scrap. ‘At least we thought they came out your navel.”
“That is stupid,” said Noralee.
“My mama would have slapped your face for saying that,” said Mr. Copeland.
“She slapped your face more than once,” said Aunt Scrap.
“She did, I guess.”
“It won’t stupid,” said Esther. “People didn’t talk about those kinds of things back then. Nobody told us about anything.”
“Some people talked about sex and stuff, I’ll bet,” said Noralee. “Just y’all didn’t.”
“Let’s eat,” said Esther.
THATCHER
I got to the graveyard while everybody was eating. Papa told me that after the picnic we’d load up the floatplane and take it to the lake for a water run. He’s had it ready for a month, but wanted to wait until Uncle Hawk was up, but Uncle Hawk couldn’t come because of complications from his cataract operation. Papa says we can put Meredith in the plane and zip him around. I said sure.
We got back and loaded it out of the shop where it’s been sitting in there on two tables like a red kite-bird-doghouse with two yellow wood propellers stuck on these two new aluminum engines which you still have to start in this modern day and age with, believe it or not, a lawnmower crank rope.
It ended up the ones going were me, Papa, Meredith, Bliss, Noralee, and Taylor. Taylor’s finally got to be a pretty able-bodied little man.
We lifted the floatplane up off the tables, its wings folded back, and toted it around chairs, little ladders, saw, drill, hammers, pliers, and all that crap—out of the shop and set it down on the boat trailer which Papa has re-modified so the floatplane fits better. (One time a folded-back wing come loose while he was pulling it behind the truck, swung forward, and locked in the forward position, and the whole thing almost took off—the best luck he’s had getting it in the air. I told him he ought to be flying it off the trailer instead of off the lake.) Then we snapped the trailer tow-wire on at the nose and strapped a long strap across it. Noralee and Taylor just painted her with a new coat of red paint and wrote on the side for her name: Natural Suspension. That was Meredith’s idea. He typed it out on his typewriter. He couldn’t say it. He still can’t say much.
The way the floatplane is set up now is it’s got a pontoon out from each side of the fuselage to keep it from sinking so deep, and the wingtips have little boats hung below them in case they dip in the water.
Me, Papa, and Bliss rode together in the truck cab, pulling the floatplane, and Noralee, Taylor, and Meredith rode in the truck bed.
We pulled through the upper parking lot at the lake and drove on down to the lower parking lot, which is next to the boat ramp.
When we stopped next to the boat ramp, people started gathering around to stare. Papa tells me to spread the wings. The reason he does that is so people will know what it is. He starts getting in his waders, which he don’t need because of how warm it is. But he always wears them no matter what, so he can walk around in the water beside the floatplane and not get wet. While he’s sitting in the front seat of the truck getting his waders on, some guy walks up and asks him if he’s going to fly it, and Papa says, “She flies whenever she takes a notion.” Then he says to me, “Go pay the ramp fee. We’ll get Meredith out.”
When I come out of the dock house and start back toward the ramp, they’ve unhooked the boat trailer, rolled Meredith down out of the truck bed on his two special planks, and parked him beside the truck—driver’s side—on the ramp, facing uphill.
Papa is pulling the boat trailer and floatplane back up to the truck and Taylor is in the truck getting out the life preservers. Bliss and Noralee are walking toward the dock.
I’m walking along toward them, and all of a sudden Meredith starts quietly rolling backwards—his brakes popped loose, I guess—right down the ramp, and nobody sees him but me. Or hears him—we keep them wheels well oiled.
I start running and hollering. Meredith sort of looks over his shoulder in the direction he’s headed, as he rolls on past the floatplane, gaining speed right on down into the water, sending out little waves, and keeps right on rolling deeper and deeper—strapped into that wheelchair.
Everybody looks at me—I’m hollering and pointing and starting to run—and then at Meredith. Bliss and Noralee start running toward him. Meredith is rolling deeper and deeper into the water, with water up around his knees and then waist and then shoulders. Papa gets the boat trailer back on the hitch so the floatplane won’t roll in on top of Meredith, I guess. Meredith reaches sand or something at the end of the boat ramp, because he stops, with his chin in the water—a single, solitary head on the water.
We all splash in the water after him.
“Get behind him,” says Papa, as he turns and starts back toward the floatplane for some reason. We got to Meredith—he looked scared and was breathing fast. We started rolling him out. Here comes Papa with the tow-wire from the boat trailer. He was planning to hook it to the front of the wheelchair, I guess, but the wire was too short. He stood there holding the hook while we rolled Meredith past him and on up onto the ramp.
“Did you bring a bathing suit and towel, Thatcher?” Papa asks.
“Yessir.” I decided not to say nothing about him standing there holding that tow-wire.
“Roll him over to the bathhouse, put on your bathing suit, take them wet clothes off him, dry him up, and dress him in your clothes.”
“But, Papa, I—”
“Now! Me and Bliss’ll get this thing in the water. Go ahead.”
In a few minutes, I rolled Meredith back, all dressed in my dry clothes.
“Let’s get him in there,” said Papa to nobody in general, pointing to the floatplane, “for a little ride on the water. Go get them football helmets out of the truck, Thatcher.”
“… and I wish I could say or even think what it was like to fly in the floatplane for the first time,” said Meredith. “There wasn’t a thing over my head but the sky. I could look down over the edge, which was right there at my elbow. The wind was cool and the sun hot at the same time.
“Papa seemed like he knew what he was doing. He was so happy he was red—with a smile on his face that he didn’t have any control over. He was scared in his eyes, until he got the hang of it.
“We were just going for a little ride on the water and that thing started flying—lifted right up, clean and smooth away from the water. We flew out over town, over the house, and then looked down at the graveyard, here.
“Papa flew it back to the lake and made a big, wide turn, dropping down lower and lower, straightened her out and touched down into the wind. Bliss said just perfect, like a swan.”
Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
in association with
Taylor Publishing Company
1550 West Mockingbird Lane
Dallas, Texas 75235
© 1988 by Clyde Edgerton. All rights reserved.
“Breathe on Me,” words, Edwin Hatch, 1878;
adapted, B. B. McKinney, 1937.
Tune TRUETT, B. B. McKinney 1937.
Copyright 1937, 1965. Broadman Press.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
“I’ll Fly Away,” copyright 1932, 1960.
Albert E. Brumley and Sons.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Parts of this book appeared in slightly different form in Just Pulp, The Leader, and The Lyricist.
A floatplane’s appearance in this book is due in great part to the author’s sighting of a real floatplane in 1980. That aircraft was designed, built, and flown by Tom Purcell of Raleigh, North Carolina.
Design by Molly Renda
Title page illustration by Steven Cragg
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE FOR A PREVIOUS EDITION OF THIS WORK.
eISBN 9781616202149
The Floatplane Notebooks Page 17