by Douglas Gray
“Live and let live,” the friend choruses in. “What grown people do in their beds is nobody’s business. Like my wife keeps telling our neighbors, ‘Just pay that no mind. They’re just sweet Sapphic girls, and they make lovely cheese.’”
“Sure do,” Fred agrees. “Are you from the college?”
“I go to Ole Miss. I’m here on a visit.”
“Didn’t know you hippies had made it that far south. They can’t think much of your kind down there.”
“It’s a lesson in mutual forbearance,” I say.
“Christian attitude,” Fred says. “Good day to you.”
“Good day.”
~ ~ ~
Sunday, June 11
We’ve arrived at Topsail after sundown. We’ve check into the cabin, and are now sitting in the sand on a blanket outside. Joan and Clamor still haven’t officially seen the ocean yet – new moon tonight, so only a white sliver of surf is visible – but we all can hear it, shouting out there in the dark, in its thousand mad tongues.
Not needing to compete with the light of the moon, the stars are out more brilliantly than I’ve seen them since my last time at Topsail. That was also the last trip Melissa and I took together. So dazzled was I by her that weekend, I don’t recall paying much heed to the stars.
Joan, we learn, minored in astronomy, and is displaying her familiarity with the sky by pointing out the constellations: Ursa Minor, Libra, Cassiopeia, Leo and Bootes, a scattering of individual stars – Arcturus, Regulus — and the steady glow of two planets, Saturn and Venus.
I can’t make out any of the patterns she tries to help us see. It’s not just that I’m seriously stoned tonight. Even straight, all I can ever discern is a fathomless puzzle of lights up there. Clamor apparently shares my failure to comprehend Joan’s observations.
“You know what I think?” she asks. “I think those goddamn Greeks or whoever in the hell filled the sky with imaginary animals and fairy tales really fucked things up for the rest of us. Because of all their nonsense, we’re not free anymore just to be wonder-struck by the stars. No. Now we’ve got to intellectualize them with a stupid bunch of myths.”
“The myths helped our ancestors make sense of the balancing forces of nature, Claire,” Tatyana says. “They watched the skies, and when familiar patterns appeared, they knew it was time to plant certain crops or return the animals to pasture or begin the harvest.”
“Libra, the scales,” Joan adds, “to them signified the balance of daytime and nighttime. The sun entered the constellation at the fall equinox, and the moon entered it at the spring equinox. Each constellation had a symbolic significance.”
“That was fine for them,” Clamor concedes. “But we’ve got calendars and almanacs and weather reports and satellites to tell us when to do those things. Why not, just for tonight, forget about what they saw a thousand, two thousand years ago? Let’s use our own imaginations. What do we see, just the four of us – right here and now?”
We fall silent and ponder the skies. Tatyana is the first to speak. She’s found a six-banded rainbow stretching from the southern horizon to the northern. Joan spots a mandala framing a pentagram, and Clamor the outline of a medieval castle complete with turrets. More discoveries follow: charging horses, the Arc de Triomphe, a giant tortoise carrying a fox on its back.
I – who have never been able to see a bull in the sky, or a snake, or a lion – can suddenly see all manner of things. But they’re all mundane: a ping pong paddle, a Coke bottle, a turkey drumstick, a pencil, an ashtray, a bra, an oven mitt. Whatever happened to my imagination? This is the most depressing game ever.
I decide to turn in. The cabin contains beds enough for the ladies, so I crash on the couch. They wake me, momentarily, when they return to the cabin, flushed with wonder from tonight’s communion with the heavens. I fall back to sleep to the sound of their voices, still chatting after the lights have gone out . . . .
. . . And wake to the sensation of wet sand oozing between my toes, and waves beating against my legs.
I’ve been sleepwalking again. I’m thigh-deep into low tide, though somehow all of me is wet. I must have been swimming before I woke.
“Oh, shit,” I complain
But this moment of annoyance metamorphoses to one of joy as I lift my eyes to a vision I was, no doubt, lured out here to see. There, growing (impossible) from the ocean floor, far out from shore, is the grandest oak tree the world has ever seen.
It must stand two miles tall, and it bears an infinite number of branches sprouting an even more infinite number of leaves, each one catching starlight and glinting, shimmering that reflected light into a nimbus that spreads outward from its central trunk.
Its limbs rise like a chandelier of angels, ramification upon ramification upon ramification of angels, archangels, dominions, thrones and seraphim.
The great tree of creation reveals itself to my mortal eyes.
And in a blink, is gone.
My legs collapse. I fall backward into the surf, salt water in my nose and eyes. I struggle back into the air, gasping. I gather my feet, rise and stare toward the horizon, wishing for a return of the vision many long minutes, before turning back to shore and to bed.
~ ~ ~
Monday June 12
“You might have at least brought a pair of shorts,” Tatyana complains. We’re walking the beach of Topsail together. Joan and Clamor run ahead of us like schoolgirls, experiencing ocean surf for the first time in their lives.
My three companions are dressed for swimming — Joan and Clamor in modest one-piece outfits they purchased Saturday in Durham. Tatyana wears a madras-print bikini. Her Bardot body turns the head of every male on the beach this morning, just as it did when she broke the hearts of so many adolescent boys back in Pass Christian High when they realized that she wasn’t the least bit interested in them, that no man would ever possess her.
I am in jeans and a t-shirt.
“Shorts?” I say. “You expect me to wear shorts? That would be a bit much for anyone to bear. I’m too bow-legged. Besides, my legs haven’t been exposed to sunlight since 1964.”
“You look like a panhandler out here. At least take off your shirt.”
“People will laugh at me.”
“Nobody will laugh. If they do, just let me know and I’ll beat them up.”
So I remove my t-shirt and sit, cross-legged and self-conscious, in the sand as Tatyana wades into the water to join Clamor and Joan. I see them share a few words, then glance back at me, and I can tell that they are laughing at me.
But the sun does feel marvelous on my shoulders and arms. Within seconds, I’ve closed my eyes, found my hara, and relaxed my breath. I enter the moment, become one with the cosmos, and experience a state that’s profoundly, sensually rich, like drowning in smells and sounds and sensations of flesh, like being taken by a lover.
I haven’t said a word about last night’s vision. Aside from the water-soaked and sand-sodden pile of clothes I discovered beside the couch this morning, I have no assurance that it really occurred. But I feel spiritually high-strung this morning, half expecting the universe to pounce upon me with some new vision I’m ill-prepared to absorb.
I woke seeing Tatyana’s aura when she poked my shoulder and asked if I’d been out swimming in my clothes. And now I see Clamor’s aura when she interrupts my trance here on the beach.
“You’re going to get burned if you don’t put some lotion on,” she warns me.
I open my eyes to find her surrounded in a blue flame that radiates outward into scarlet arrows flying toward the sky.
“You’re fair-skinned, like me,” she goes on. “We burn easy.”
I see water dripping from her hair, her shoulders, her arms. It eddies and flows into the flame. The arrows catch it there and carry it away into the air, like messages speeding to another dimension.
And it suddenly strikes me: Clamor is a woman. A woman every bit as beautiful, in her way, as Melissa or Joan or Tatyana,
as Ashley, Cindy, Jenny, Dr. Goodleigh, Valerie, Amy. Ah, women — bless them all for their charm.
Then another shock: Clamor will never be Clamor to me again. She’s Claire.
“What’s the matter?” Claire asks as I gape.
“Nothing,” I say. “I just never realized how pretty you are.”
She laughs, frowns. “Shut up, Medway. You’re still stoned from last night.”
~ ~ ~
Tuesday, June 13
It’s our last night in North Carolina, our last supper at the farm. The ladies have prepared fire grilled tempeh steaks, skewers of caramelized vegetables, an artichoke salad, sourdough bread with pumpkin and sunflower seeds, and a chocolate mousse for dessert, all washed down with a jug of good red wine.
The Phillies are defeating the Reds on the radio. Tatyana is catching up on news from the farm, following our short trip to Topsail. She was already tanned before we left and thus shows no change from her time in the sun. Joan and Claire exhibit a healthy golden glow. I, as was warned, simply burned.
After supper, Tatyana sets about on her evening chores, and joins me in the men’s yurt once she’s done. “White Room” is playing on this radio, the only one on the property not tuned into the game.
“I’ve always wondered why those starlings are so tired,” I say.
“That’s a mystery we’ll perhaps never solve. I wish you didn’t have to leave so soon.”
“I have responsibilities,” I say. “The Museum. Dr. Goodleigh’s cats. Promises to keep, you know.”
“Along with a trailer filled with demons, packs of wild dogs, dead cows in the road, and drug dealers lurking about all hours of the night. And a witch who might still be out for revenge.”
“Right. I’d be crazy not to go back and find out what happens next.”
“Listen, if what you saw at the bridge that night was real, and not just another of your hallucinations . . . .”
“About which, not even I am sure,” I interject.
“. . . then that woman has some truly frightening powers. Who’s to say she won’t come after you? At least find a place to stay back in town. Don’t spend another night in that cursed trailer.”
“It has its rustic charms,” I protest. “Bucolic, even. Why, some mornings when I cart the previous night’s whiskey bottles to pitch into the ravine, I almost feel like one of Thomas Hardy’s milk maids.”
“You make a very unconvincing milk maid. And what about Joan? You can’t guarantee her safety, either. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that she should stay right here, out of that woman’s reach.”
“I don’t think Joan can be persuaded, but you’re certainly welcome to try.”
“I will. I’ve got all of tonight to convince her.”
“Just don’t tell her what really happened at the bridge. She oughtn’t have to hear about that.”
“As you well know, I am the soul of discretion. But I didn’t come by to talk about Joan.”
“No?”
“I wanted to say how proud I was of you, going back to Topsail without moping about the entire time on account of Melissa. I know the trip wasn’t easy for you.”
“Nothing to it,” I say. “I had wine, grass, and wonderful companions to see me through.”
“Three of the goddess’ greatest gifts,” Tatyana agrees. “Still, revisiting a place where your heart got broken so thoroughly and so suddenly . . . .”
“I seem to have devoted a lot of effort all weekend not thinking about that episode,” I complain, “only to have you bring it up again.”
“It’s just that you’ve never talked about how it felt, when Melissa told you she was leaving you for Paul Walker, and that it was the last time you’d be with her.”
I don’t answer at first, considering my most appropriate response.
“You and I have known each other,” I point out, “since we were kids, longer than either of us has known anybody else. Why is it that you’ve never noticed that talking about the past has never made me feel better about it? Never. Not even once. Believe me, if talking about the past actually helped anything, I’d never shut the fuck up about it.”
“You don’t want to talk about the past,” Tatyana counters. “You just want to live in it. I understand Virginia was shit, Daniel. Really, I do. You died there, after all.”
“Which was actually one of my more pleasant experiences in Charlottesville,” I add.
“But what bizarre logic led to you return to Mississippi? Why go back? You’d escaped! After 20 miserable years of captivity, you’d gotten away. Then you went back, like a prisoner who decides to slink back to his cell after getting over the wall. Do you know why?”
Tatyana lets the question hang in the air, refuses to say another thing until I answer. “I don’t know,” I finally admit. “Maybe the same the reason that the starlings are tired.”
~ ~ ~
Wednesday, June 14
“Whatever else you do while you’re in Turkey,” I warn Dr. Goodleigh, “don’t try to smuggle hashish out of the country. There’s an American kid named Billy Hayes serving a life sentence over there for that.”
“Smuggling hashish actually isn’t part of my travel plans.”
“That’s a relief to hear, because I don’t think I could take care of the cats for more than a few months.”
It’s a little after 7:00 p.m. We drove into Oxford about half an hour ago, and dropped Claire at her dorm. Joan and I have traded Garrett’s bus for my car at the commune, and have headed over to Dr. Goodleigh’s for keys and parting instructions before she leaves for Hisarlik tomorrow morning.
“Have you eaten yet?” she asks.
“Joan and I thought we’d hit the Beacon before heading back to the trailer. She’s in the car.”
“No need for that. Invite the girl in. I’m cleaning out the refrigerator, and have some nice lettuce and bread and chicken salad that’s just going to go to waste.”
Dr. Goodleigh opens a bottle of wine, and sets Joan and me to fetch plates and silverware for the dining room table as she prepares a cold supper for us all. The cats, who’ve been milling about in the yard, notice us sitting down to the table and come in to investigate.
Melpomene, at the head of the pride, fixes me with her evil eye and let’s out a cry – Mmmmmmggggggggrrrrrrraaaapppphhhh – that must signal her order for the others to eviscerate me.
They surge together and coil around my chair, fangs bared and dripping, claws shimmering in the twilit room, tails lashing my legs as they circle. And here I am without my spray can of catnip – which, even if I had it, I wouldn’t be able to use, lest Dr. Goodleigh object to my depraved tactic for subduing her darlings.
Fortunately, I’ve unwittingly brought a different secret weapon with me: Joan.
“Are these all yours?” Joan asks Goodleigh. “What beautiful animals!”
The sound of her voice staves off Melpomenes’ assault on me. Every furry head whips around to focus on Joan. Within a few moments, the cats have surrounded her. They’re rubbing against Joan’s legs and ankles, purring for her, crowding around and begging to be stroked, to be paid attention to.
They love her. Dr. Goodleigh’s cats love Joan with the same instant, united sympathy that they discovered that night back in October when they decided to hate me. I’m astonished, and Dr. Goodleigh clearly impressed:
“They don’t usually take to strangers this way.”
“I’ve always been good with cats,” Joan admits.
Melpomene rolls over and over on the floor at Joan’s feet, mewling for a belly rub – a kitten again, a docile sweetheart who’s never entertained the slightest ill will toward any member of the human species. But this might be a trick.
“Watch your fingers!” I warn as Joan reaches down to pet her.
“Don’t be silly. Hey, pretty kitty.”
“That’s Melpomene,” Dr. Goodleigh says by way of introduction.
Melpomene leaps into Joan’s lap and rubs her
muzzle against Joan’s chin, purring like a diesel engine.
Dr. Goodleigh and I glance at each other, an idea occurring to both of us simultaneously.
“Joan,” Dr. Goodleigh asks, “how would you like to live here this summer?”
~ ~ ~
Thursday, June 15
As I step out of the elevator on the third floor of Bishop Hall, turn left and take the south hallway to Dr. Sutherland’s office, I’m caught short by an old familiar face in an old familiar place.
Dr. Evans is back in his office once more, riveted to a typescript that he’s editing, his pipe jutted jauntily like one of Franklin Roosevelt’s cigarettes. The pipe is even lit this morning. I glance in, tentative. Not a trace of Amy remains, no sign that she had occupied this space for the past five months. I’m relieved.
I’m about to slip away without disturbing his concentration when Dr. Evans senses my presence in the open door and glances up.
“Welcome home,” I say.
He swivels back in his chair, sets the pipe in his ashtray and gestures for me to take a seat. “It feels good to be back. It also felt good to be away, though.”
“Your manuscript?” I ask, indicating the pages set before him.
“Finished last week,” he confirms. “Just making a few edits before sending it along to my agent.”
“Might one inquire as to the book’s subject matter?”
“A dark comedy about an American platoon in occupied Sicily. Anti-military. Big market for that right now.”
“Can’t wait to read it. I’m sure it’s better than that god-awful movie Alcott wrote.”
“Actually,” Dr. Evans says, “Alcott’s my model for the major character – an imbecilic GI who fancies himself to be the Hemingway of World War II. By the way, I’m sorry for missing your boxing match at Dr. French’s reception.”
“I never had a chance to land a single blow.”
“Being assaulted by an older, established writer is a rite of passage, you know. We all go through it. Did I ever tell you about the time James Baldwin tried to spit on me?”
I rise to leave. “Dr. Sutherland’s expecting me. Sorry to have interrupted, just wanted to say how good it is to have you back.”
“Thank you. By the way,” Dr. Evans says on my way out, “have you heard that the Lyceum finally released Barefoot?”