by Terry Kay
14
He began planning the trip before he opened the envelope containing the invitation. It was a subconscious act triggered by a quick vision coated on the translucent scrim of his imagination—being again among the people he had liked.
He knew what was in the envelope because of the name on the return address: Madison A&M Reunion Committee.
Sixty years, he thought, as he cut the seam of the envelope with his knife. Nineteen thirteen to nineteen seventy-three. Sixty years.
Dear Classmate:
Time marches on.
This is to remind you that the classes of Madison A&M from 1910 through 1915 are invited to gather at Morgan County High School (site of Madison A&M) on September 23, 1973, at 12 noon, to celebrate a reunion of special friends.
A luncheon is being planned, followed by an afternoon tour of our beloved and beautiful city. For those who want to visit and reminisce, we’re also planning a dinner and will help with making arrangements to stay overnight.
Please make your plans to join us on this occasion. The years have given us all something to remember and to share. Your reunion committee looks forward to seeing you.
Sincerely,
Martha Dunaway Kerr (’15)
Chairlady
There was a registration card to be filled out and returned with a check for twenty dollars to cover the cost of the luncheon and the tour bus.
Cora had wanted to go to the reunion. On the day she died, the day the first invitation arrived, she had said she wanted to go. He remembered the eagerness of her voice.
He took his pen and put his name on the card and wrote a check for twenty dollars and slipped it inside the return envelope.
What if I’m the only one to show up? he wondered. God knows, we’re all old as the hills. Most must be dead by now, scattered about in cemeteries like used-up utensils dumped in landfills. Maybe no one would return, except him, and it would be the last of the reunions. Maybe he would sit down with Martha Dunaway Kerr and the two of them would silently eat lunch in the empty lunchroom of Morgan County High School.
He chuckled suddenly at the image: two old people gnawing away on tasteless food, not knowing what to say, wishing before the Heavenly Father God Almighty that they were somewhere else. He could see curled crepe paper streamers thumbtacked to walls and balloons bobbing limply on tie-strings. And the banner—yes, there would be a banner—welcoming the alumni. He would sit in the center of that circus with Martha Dunaway Kerr and wonder what he should be saying to her.
He turned on his radio to listen to the noon news and the Obituary Column of the Air, but he did not hear the deep and solemn voice of the announcer. He thought of Martha Dunaway Kerr. She had been a feisty girl, he remembered, quick to laugh and quick for temper—a personality suited to her scrubbed Irish face and her reddish-blond hair. She did not live on the campus, but in one of the elegant homes of Madison, and she seemed to wear that elegance around her shoulders like an expensive shawl. The boys whispered about her—reverently, in awe. She was too fine for them, they believed. Too fine. None of them had the nerve to call for her at her home. None of them knew how to behave in such a refined environment.
He reread the invitation with Martha Dunaway Kerr’s signature. There was still surety in the light, cursive sweep of her hand. It did not crawl and tremble in the making of letters, as his did, and he knew her voice would be the same—light, lilting, rushing to the next word and the next, her voice as cursive as her signature. But he wondered also if she would find him appropriate company for a conversation. She had married well, had moved comfortably in a cultured society, had become a figure of respect. He would be as tongue-tied at eighty in the company of Martha Dunaway Kerr as he had been at twenty-three.
The sorrowful organ music of the Obituary Column of the Air played from his radio. There were no announcements. No one had died.
He put the invitation from the Madison A&M Reunion Committee in his journal, where it would be safe from the prying, curious eyes of his prying, curious children. He did not want his children to know he would attend the reunion. He wanted to go alone, with dignity. He did not want to be transported by his daughters or sons, like fragile baggage.
“Just me and you,” he said to White Dog, who lay beside his chair. “Just me and you.”
At night, he wrote in his journal:
Received a reminder to attend the Madison A&M reunion in today’s mail. It’s been many years since I was in Madison and I suppose it has changed, like everything else. I first went there as a 16-year-old boy on his own. I did not have a penny on me the day I arrived, but I went to the office and told them I was willing to work. They gave me a job on the farm. My years in Madison were the best of my life. It is where I met my wife and where we got married. The last time I went to Madison was with Cora, my wife. We visited with some old friends and had one of the best days of our later life together. Cora always loved the houses in Madison, some of the finest in the south. She always wanted to live in one, but we could never afford such luxury. We had to be content with our children being our luxury and they have been better than any house could be. I plan to go to the reunion. I will go alone, with my white dog to keep me company. I know my family would not let me do this if they knew about it, but I will not tell them. It has been a cool day for August and I have rested most of the time. Hoyt called and asked me if I wanted to go fishing with him tomorrow. He said Alma would spend the day with Kate and Carrie and then cook supper for us. I told him I would. Maybe we’ll catch some catfish. It’s been a long time since I had any and I like them.
Of course, Hoyt told him. He would bring his tow hitch down on Saturday and take away the truck and give it an engine overhaul.
“Brakes, too,” he said to Hoyt.
“All right, brakes, too.”
“Better check it all out. Make sure the lights work and windshield wipers.”
“Why you want all this done?” Hoyt asked.
“One of these days the sheriff may stop me,” he said. “Want the truck working right, if he does.”
“Might cost a good bit of money,” advised Hoyt. “You’ll be needing some new parts.”
“Just keep up with it. I’ll give you a check.”
Hoyt took another catfish from the serving platter and studied his father-in-law suspiciously. In the years he had been married to Alma, he had never known his father-in-law to give permission to spend money without an accounting for every penny. There was a family story that he had once discovered an overcharge from the community store and had engaged the store owner in a stern argument. Since that experience, he had always checked charges against payment.
“Now, Daddy, Hoyt won’t charge for anything but the parts,” Alma said soothingly. She poured more tea into his glass. “But that might be more than you’d care to spend. Things like that cost a lot these days.”
He nodded an understanding. “Got to have my truck running right. Might break down in the field someday, and I’d have to hobble home.”
“Just so you know it might cost more than you think,” Alma said. She threw a puzzled question to Hoyt with her eyes.
“Maybe I can find some good used parts,” Hoyt suggested. “Won’t be as much.”
“Whatever you think,” he said. “I trust you.” He watched the reluctant agreement in Hoyt’s face, but he had been truthful: he did trust his son-in-law. Hoyt was an honest man, a hard worker, a good provider for his oldest daughter. And Hoyt had a way with engines. He could listen to a motor and point his finger toward a trouble spot, like a divining rod bending to water. He knew a sticking valve from a clogged carburetor, and he could take his tools and disappear beneath the raised, yawning hood of a car and bang about expertly.
“I’ll get it Saturday, then,” Hoyt said.
As they drove to their home, after Alma had washed and put away the supper dishes, Hoyt said, “Wonder what he’s doing, wanting that old truck fixed up?”
“You’ve got me,” Alma
admitted. “Maybe he just wants it running right.”
“Best thing he could do would be to take a forty-five and put a hole in its radiator. Just finish it off. God knows, it needs everything but a new front bumper, and that ain’t in great shape, itself.”
“He’s acting funny, all right.”
“Not like him to spend money without asking about every penny. That’s what’s got me.”
“Me, too,” Alma said. “But he wants it done, so we need to do it.”
“That’s done,” he said to White Dog as he watched Hoyt’s car crest Cemetery Hill in a swirl of sunset dust a half-mile away. He smiled proudly. “Poor old Hoyt. He thinks I’ve lost my mind.” He stood leaning on his walker, his arms holding his weight. The heavy evening air was thick with the odor of grass and dust and flowering bushes. He inhaled slowly, deliberately, letting the perfumes seep into his senses. Other people did not like August because it seemed always hot and still, but August was one of his favorite times. In August, the seams of the earth cracked with a ground cover of growing, like a full, ripe flower spreading itself to the sun’s heat, and the fragrance of the earth sweetened the air. He opened his mouth and let the air slide across his tongue, and he could taste its honey.
He did not watch television. He took a state map from his roll-top desk and spread it across the kitchen table and studied it carefully. The faint, squiggling lines of the map made his eyes burn and reminded him that he wanted a magnifying glass. It would be best to go the backroads, he reasoned. On the backroads, he could be any farmer going about business and no one would wonder about his old truck. Old farmers and old trucks were not uncommon. He took a yellow crayon left at his home by one of his grandchildren and marked the route.
The first time he went to Madison, a boyhood friend—Asa Cobb—had convinced him that it was the place for going to school. “You get out of there and they give you a hundred acres somewhere and it belongs to you,” Asa had said. “All you got to do is farm it.” The imagined land (it was only that; there were no gifts of property) had enticed him, and he had agreed to go on the train to Madison with Asa. On the day they were to leave, Asa had decided not to go. “Too far from home,” was his excuse. “Well, I’m going,” he had said to Asa. “Nothing around here for me.” And that had been true. His parents were dead. He lived with an older brother’s family. His older brother seemed always annoyed by him. He had taken the train to Madison and walked to the school and announced to the administrator, “I’m willing to work.” The administrator had studied him through small, severe eyes. “There’s work to be done,” the administrator had said.
Sixty-five years since that train ride, he thought. Sixty-five years. He could still remember being frightened. “We’ll take our time,” he said to White Dog. “Might take all day, but it won’t matter.” He thought about the announced hour of the reunion. “Guess we better go the day before,” he mumbled. “Start off early. Give us plenty of time. Used to be a hotel in town, if I remember it right. You can stay in the truck.” He patted the dog on her head and laughed playfully. “Keep people from stealing it,” he added.
15
On the Monday after Hoyt pulled his truck away to repair it, he asked Kate to drive him to the bank in town. She called Carrie.
“He asked you?” Carrie said. “He didn’t tell you?”
“No. He asked. Polite-like,” replied Kate. “He sounded, well, talkative. I haven’t heard him sound like that in a long time, not since that time Neelie came over and he made out that we were still starving him.”
“Maybe he’s feeling better,” suggested Carrie.
“Maybe. You know about his truck?”
“Holman told me. Said he wanted Hoyt to overhaul it. Do anything that it needed.”
“Does that sound like him?” Kate said.
“Daddy? Our daddy? Lord, no. Holman said Hoyt was scared to death of spending too much.”
“Sometimes old people get that way,” Kate said. “I read about it in Reader’s Digest, I think it was. They go hog-wild with money, spending it fast as they can. Has something to do with losing all sense of value. That article said they always begin to act childlike when they start spending. Said they didn’t know the difference between a dime and a dollar.”
“He said he wants you to take him to the bank?” Carrie asked skeptically.
“Oh, Lord, that’s right.”
“See if you can find out why,” suggested Carrie.
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Go in with him. Stay right beside him.”
“Carrie, I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid. And I’m not crazy. He wouldn’t even let Mama know what he did in a bank. Made her wait in the car.”
“Well, talk to him.”
“I’ll try,” Kate said fretfully.
Kate knew he was in a spirited mood. He had bathed and shaved and had dressed in a colorful mismatching of brown suit and green shirt and blue tie. He smelled of talc and Mennen Skin Bracer. A white shred of toilet tissue covered a razor nick on his chin.
“You sure look, ah, all dressed up, Daddy,” Kate told him as she helped him into her car.
“Like to put on my suit when I’m going to the bank,” he said casually. “Want them to know I’m in for business.”
“You got any special business you’re doing, Daddy?”
“Nothing special,” he said. “Just like to go in once in a while to let them know I’m still out here.”
“Daddy, you ever wear those white shirts Noah and I gave you?”
“Don’t like white,” he said. “Shows dirt too easy. Gave them to James.”
“Oh,” Kate sighed. It was not the first time he had given away one of her gifts. He believed that a gift given was a gift gone and he could do with it as he pleased.
“Don’t want to be buried in a white shirt, Kate. You keep that in mind. Just bury me in what I’ve got on. I like this shirt.”
“It’s a little frayed at the collar, Daddy.”
“Won’t many people be seeing it when they close the lid,” he said. “Let’s go. Bank’s open already.”
She watched him in quick, eye-darting glances as she drove to town. A pleasant smile was carved into his face. His eyes seemed bright and expectant.
“Great God,” he exclaimed. “There goes my dog. She’s following us, out there in the field.” He pulled at Kate’s arm and pointed to the field beside the car. White Dog rose and soared and fell and rose and soared again in powerful, graceful leaps. “Looks like a deer, don’t she? Never saw a dog that fast. Guess maybe she’s got some greyhound in her.”
“Noah thinks so,” Kate said. “Greyhound and German shepherd.”
“She’ll go up to the cemetery and wait there. We can drive by when I finish at the bank, and you’ll see.”
“If you want to,” Kate said. Then: “Everything’s all right at the bank, I hope.”
“You already asked about that. Everything’s fine. Just want to check my balance.”
“You don’t need any money, do you, Daddy?”
“I always need money, Kate, if you got some you’re giving away.”
Kate forced a laugh. “That’s me, Daddy. Got money to burn.”
“About all it’s good for, anyhow,” he said innocently. “The more you make, the more you spend. Might as well not have any.”
Kate turned her face from the road to look at him. The magazine article had mentioned an attitude of disregard; money meant no more than paper. Old people afflicted with unreasonable spending habits had even tried to pay bills with wads of notebook paper.
“Daddy, I thought I might stop in at the store and buy some of those peppermint sticks you like,” Kate said carefully. “How much do you think I ought to pay for them?”
He looked at her curiously. “What they charge.”
“Wonder how much that is?” Kate said. “It’s been a long time since I bought any. But you’re always buying them. How much did you pay last time?”
&nb
sp; “Good God, Kate. I don’t remember. Might of been a penny a piece, or it might have been a nickel.”
The magazine also said that afflicted people could not remember prices. “You think they could be a dollar apiece?” Kate asked.
He furrowed his brow and stared at her. He thought: She gets crazier by the day. God knows, it’s sad, watching her get crazier. “A dollar?” he said. “Could be. Don’t think they cost that much, though. But you want some, we’ll stop by the store and get them.”
It’s true, Kate thought. He’s afflicted. She could feel the weight of sadness in her face. She wanted to cry.
He took six hundred dollars from the bank and insisted Kate drive him to the store, where he purchased a jar of soft peppermint sticks and gave them to Kate. “Go ahead and eat one if you want it,” he said gently. “Maybe I’ll eat one with you.”
“How much did they cost?” asked Kate.
“Not much,” he said.
“Well, Daddy, they could have cheated you.”
“Don’t think so. They gave me money back.”
“Did you count it?”
“Kate, what’s the matter with you? No, I didn’t count it. They counted it when they put it in my hand. Like they always do.”