Bound South

by Susan Rebecca White

  I am suddenly aware of the stretch of highway before us and the fact that there are no other houses on either side of Mr. LeTrouve’s. Oh Lord, please don’t let him be like that man who made the skin suit in Silence of the Lambs.

  Tiny rings the bell while I stand back a bit. I really, really wish she had not sent Jose off to get a burger. I want us to be able to drive away in an instant if need be.

  “No one’s answering,” I say, praying that no one will. “He’s probably not home.”

  Just then the top half of the door swings open and a tremendously fat man with dyed black hair stands before us.

  I wait for him to say something, but he does not.

  “Mr. LeTrouve?” asks Tiny.

  “Yes,” says the man. He is wearing red suspenders over a plaid flannel shirt. His hairy stomach is so big that it pokes out between his shirt buttons.

  “I’m Tiny Persons and this is Louise Parker and we are both just the biggest fans of your work. Stephen Pollard, the owner of Frame!—you know, that adorable frame and print shop in Atlanta—well, he said that you sometimes open your studio to the public, and we were just wondering if we might peek in and take a look at some of your marvelous creations.”

  Tiny’s southern accent doubles in intensity when she is putting on the charm.

  “Y’all want to come in and check out the studio?” asks Mr. LeTrouve.

  “We would love to!” says Tiny. I try not to roll my eyes at her breathlessness. She is turning into a folk art whore, I swear to God.

  “Well, come on,” he says. “You don’t mind dogs, do you?”

  “I adore them,” says Tiny.

  I like a dog as long as it’s not trained to attack and as long as it’s not a pit bull.

  Mr. LeTrouve unlatches the bottom half of the door and steps back to let us into his house. It smells of dust and clutter, like someone needs to go through and open all the windows. The second we step inside, three Doberman pinschers come running out to the hall, their toenails clicking against the wood floor.

  “Halt!” says Mr. LeTrouve, and they all skid to a standstill and look up at Mr. LeTrouve for his next instructions.

  I have to admit, I’m impressed.

  “Go to bed,” he says, and the dogs turn and run back down the hall and into a room at the very end of it.

  “Pardon the mess,” he says, motioning to a room to his right that must be the living room but that is filled with so much junk it would be impossible to get through it, let alone to sit on one of its sofas. “I can’t seem to keep the front of this place clean the way Mama did.”

  “Is your mother, is she deceased?” asks Tiny.

  Mr. LeTrouve nods.

  “I’m so sorry,” says Tiny. “When did she pass away?”

  “Nineteen ninety-three,” says Mr. LeTrouve. “When she died she had eight cats. I promised her I’d take care of them, which is one of the reasons I stayed in this house. Six of them are still alive, and one of them had a litter a few years ago, so we’ve got fourteen around here somewhere.”

  Oh Lord. Tiny has trapped us in a house with a cat-loving Norman Bates.

  “Y’all come on back to the studio,” he says. “Can I get you something to drink? Some water or a Co-Cola?”

  A Coke sounds so good after all that champagne and driving that I agree to take one even though my better judgment tells me not to imbibe anything from this house.

  “I’ll have one too, please,” says Tiny.

  “Just keep walking straight back and you’ll hit the studio,” says Mr. LeTrouve. “I’ll meet you there.”

  There are all sorts of photos on the hall wall. From the giant physiques of most of the people in them, I’m assuming they are members of Mr. LeTrouve’s family, but intermingled with the family photos is a rather large portrait of Robert E. Lee.

  Why some people are still so attached to that man I will never know.

  There is a china cabinet at the end of the hall. I can tell, even from a distance, that it is not filled with Earl LeTrouve’s mama’s china, but it is not until I walk up close to it that I realize what it is filled with: death. The shelves are lined with death. On the lowest shelf are little stuffed mice, standing on their little hind legs. The second shelf up is lined with chipmunks, these turned in profile to show off the black stripe down their backs. The third row has birds, wrens mostly but two robins and one bluebird, and the fourth is filled with squirrels. The squirrels are at eye level with me, and I know, staring at their black beady eyes, that I will have nightmares about them tonight. On the final row is a framed photo of a large black cat, lying on its side—contented as can be—atop a pile of brown leaves.

  I feel a wave of nausea. I motion to Tiny to take a look, glaring at her as soon as she does.

  “Listen,” I say. “This is beyond the pale. I think we should get out of here as soon as we can.”

  Tiny takes a good look at the display case. “They’re stuffed,” she says. “Really, it’s not much different than the deer head Anders has hanging in his study.”

  “Well I don’t like that either, but this is different. This is vermin in a china cabinet.”

  “Don’t be a snob, Louise. Have a sense of humor. What kind of southern upbringing did you have if you can’t find the humor in this situation?”

  Tiny is forever lecturing me about how I have abandoned my southern heritage. Mainly because I don’t vote Republican (which only became a southern thing to do a few years ago) and because I don’t believe in heaven and hell. (“You went to church every Sunday growing up!” she says. “How did the truth not sink in?”)

  “As a matter of fact,” I say, “my southern upbringing explicitly forbids displaying dead animals in the china cabinet.”

  “It’s art,” she says. “Look, it has a title.”

  Indeed, engraved into a little brass plaque just above the cabinet doors are the words “Sassy’s Treasure: Everything but the Rats.”

  I shudder.

  Thank God he did not include the rats.

  Thank God he did not include the rats.

  Why did Tiny tell Jose to take an hourlong break? If he were still parked in the driveway I could march back out there and wait in the car while Tiny subjects herself to the imagination of a lunatic.

  “Come on,” she says. “Let’s see more of his stuff.”

  We find the studio at the end of the hall. It appears to be a new addition to the house. Its floors, walls, and windows are free of the years of caked-on grime that the rest of the house has. Indeed the studio is light and airy, neat and organized. The shelves that line three of the walls are stacked with, among other items, paintbrushes and tubes of paint and boxes of pastels and little plastic tubs and scrapers and turpentine and rolls of chicken wire. Pushed against the one spare wall is an old farm table with four tiny paintings resting on it.

  I walk over to the table to examine the paintings more closely. Each depicts an apple tree, one for each season. They are so small and so vibrant; it looks as if layers of color and light have been applied to each one. There’s nothing impressionistic about the paintings. I can tell exactly what they are trying to portray: apple blossoms in the spring, bright green leaves in the summer, fruit in the fall, and bare branches in the winter. As I look closer I notice that each painting has the same blackbird in it, though he shows up on different branches in three of them, and on the ground, in the grass, in the summer scene.

  The more I look at the four paintings, the more I like them. I focus on the depth of color and the precision of each image. Even though their techniques are completely different, there’s a generosity of spirit in these pieces that reminds me in some ways of Hank Huffington’s work, the now-acclaimed portrait artist who started out as a mail boy at John Henry’s firm and whom I hired to paint Charles’s and Caroline’s portraits. (It took me weeks to persuade John Henry to spend the $6,000 Hank charged for painting the portraits. John Henry could not understand Hank’s exuberant, almost cartoonish style, using
every color in the rainbow to paint something as seemingly simple as brown hair. You see, John Henry has philistine tendencies and could not recognize how fabulous Hank’s paintings were until they started appreciating in monetary value. Which they did.)

  I am drawn to Mr. LeTrouve’s work just as I was drawn to Hank’s. I am drawn to Mr. LeTrouve’s paintings the way a child is drawn to candy, the way a woman is drawn to jewelry. Indeed, there is something jewel-like about each one, as if you might find it wrapped inside a Tiffany’s box.

  “I hate to admit it, but I love these.”

  “I told you he’s fabulous,” says Tiny.

  “It’s the colors even more than the subject matter that I’m drawn to. The four seasons are nice, of course, but it’s the luminosity that’s captivating. And I’ll tell you, Tiny, this does not look like folk art to me. It looks to me like egg tempera, like Earl LeTrouve was inspired by Botticelli.”

  I stare at the paintings for a minute more before turning my attention to the other pieces in the room. Leaning against the far wall are three large oil paintings, each depicting a terrifyingly dark and shadowy forest. There is a tiny girl in the corner of one of the forests wearing a red cape, like Little Red Riding Hood.

  Propped against the edge of the farm table is a small wood sculpture of a naked woman, nothing too special, although when I touch it I am pleased to feel that the wood has been polished so smooth it feels like silk.

  Tiny notices me touching the sculpture and walks over and picks it up. She turns it over and stares at the crack of her rear. “If I bought this,” she says, “it would never have to be dusted because Anders would pet it day and night.”

  Mr. LeTrouve walks into the studio carrying a tray. “I thought y’all might like some banana pudding with your Cokes,” he says.

  “I adore banana pudding,” says Tiny.

  Good Lord, has this woman lost all sense? Much as I like his paintings of the apple tree, that doesn’t make me willing to eat food prepared with the same hands that stuffed those squirrels.

  Mr. LeTrouve hands me my glass of Coke, filled to the top with ice cubes. “Banana pudding?” he asks. “I got a little creative and used colored Nilla wafers.”

  I look at the pudding. There are bright pink and green wafers floating in it, along with browned slices of banana. The food coloring in the wafers is leaking into the gelatinous pudding. I don’t think it would be possible to make something less appetizing if you tried.

  “Thank you so much,” I say, “but I’m afraid I have a banana allergy.”

  “Well, I don’t,” says Tiny, glaring at me. She grabs one of the bowls and eats a bite with a bright pink Nilla wafer in it. “Delicious,” she says. “Just like Mama used to make.”

  Ha. As if Tiny’s mother, former president of the Junior League and cochair of the Piedmont Ball for years, would have ever made banana pudding with colored wafers.

  I clear my throat, hoping to change the subject from the pudding, which is nauseating me more than the stuffed animal display. “Mr. LeTrouve, would you mind telling me about this series of apple trees? I am just so drawn to each of those paintings.”

  He scratches the top of his head while he walks over to the paintings, giving them a look-over. “These here are my egg drawings,” he says. “I mix powder pigment with egg yolk and water. That gets me the paint, and then I apply it thin as I can, layer by layer, to these little gesso boards. You got to use true gesso boards—the ones made with rabbit skin glue—to get that nice, reflective quality.”

  “So it is tempera,” I say. “I absolutely adore them.”

  “You see I read this book that said the shock of the Gospels has worn off after all these years of us hearing it every Sunday. That’s why we get bored in church. That’s why we’re unmoved. So, I got to thinking I might make me some Jesuses that would startle me into believing. I started with my party dress series, and now I’ve moved on to this.”

  “Excuse me?” I ask, having no idea how we jumped from talking about tempera to talking about Jesus.

  He points to the painting of the tree in spring. “Can’t you tell that’s Jesus?” he asks.

  “The bird?” I ask.

  “No, the tree. Look at it along the trunk for His body and then follow those two branches that are reaching out like His arms stretched on the cross. Don’t you see it?”

  I pick up the picture and examine it closely. The trunk looks like a trunk, varied and patterned, yes, but not like a body. I can, however, make out Jesus’s arms, two long branches with tiny red puncture marks about where the wrists would be. I look at the tree in winter, and yes, Jesus’s arms are in it too.

  The discovery makes me gasp, which is a wonderful feeling, as I am not one to be taken over by religious sentiment. Try as I might I don’t feel much of anything in church and I feel even less during the Eucharist. I will look at others as the wafer is placed in their mouths and I can tell by their simple earnestness that they are believers. And believe me, I have yearned for their earnestness. But I’ve never been able to convince myself, to convince my gut, really, that there is any existence beyond this earth.

  “Are they for sale?” I ask.

  Mr. LeTrouve turns toward me and smiles. “It takes a mighty long time to put down the layers for tempera. And it takes months and months for the paint to dry completely. And seeing as how I’m a bit partial to those pieces, well, they ain’t going to be cheap.”

  “How much for all four?” I ask, feeling my heart start to race because I want them so much.

  “And this,” says Tiny, holding up the naked statue and smiling wickedly. “For my darling husband.”

  Earl names the price and I reach into my bag for my checkbook, my hand shaking at how much I am willing to hand over.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Salt of the Earth

  (Missy, Summer 2004)

  I peer into the kitchen, checking to see if Mrs. Parker is in there, hoping she is not. Even though it’s been a long time since she called to say that she overreacted about the bird, I still feel embarrassed when I see her. Especially after that talk she had with me the first time Mama dragged me back to her house. It’s been years, but I still feel ashamed thinking about it. If Mama didn’t make me, I wouldn’t keep coming to Mrs. Parker’s house with her, but Mama says sorry, I’m too good a help to leave at home, at least during the summer when there’s nothing else for me to do.

  I open the fridge and take out the roast beef and the mayonnaise. Then I take one of the croissants from the bag Mrs. Parker left on the counter and make a roast beef and croissant sandwich. One thing I can say about Mrs. Parker, she always has good food in her house, and she doesn’t mind if me and Mama eat it. I put the sandwich on one of Mrs. Parker’s pretty green plates (she says she doesn’t like to use paper plates because of the landfills) and walk to the den so that I can watch TV while I eat, but I stop short at the door. Charles Parker is already in there, sitting on the sofa and watching a show.

  “Hi,” he says, glancing at me. He’s dyed his hair again. This time it’s white blond, so bright it’s hard to look at. He’s cut it supershort too, almost like he’s in the army (as if that boy would make it in the army). He’s wearing a necklace of all things, made of little silver balls linked together. He looks faggy, and then it occurs to me that maybe he is one, a fag.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

  “There’s room for more than one,” he says. “Come in. Sit down. Take a load off.”

  His words are friendly, but his tone is not. He doesn’t sound mean exactly, more like he’s making fun of everything he’s saying while he says it, like he’s making fun of himself.

  Even though there’s room on the couch to sit next to Charles, I sit in one of Mrs. Parker’s upholstered chairs, resting my plate in my lap. The fabric on the chair is printed with little orange monkeys.

  “What are you watching?” I ask, thinking I’ll just eat my sandwich real fast and go. I take a bit
e. It tastes really good, the roast beef all soft, the croissant so tender.

  “It’s this hilarious new show I found,” he says, stretching out to lie down on the couch. “It’s called Salt of the Earth. It’s a Christian soap.”

  I watch the GIG network all the time and I’ve never heard of Salt of the Earth.

  “I thought the Rapture Update was on at eleven,” I say.

  In fact, I know it is. It comes on twice a day, at eleven in the morning and nine at night.

  “Oh my God! You watch Lacy Lovehart? She’s hilarious. She’s totally my apocalyptic hero!”

  Lacy Lovehart is a lot of things—upbeat, smart, prophetic—but she’s not hilarious.

  “Salt isn’t aired on the GIG. It’s on this cable access show filmed somewhere near Chapel Hill. Most mortals outside of North Carolina don’t have the privilege of watching it, but my dad bought a satellite dish so he can pick up UNC lacrosse games. Hence, I picked up this little gem, and believe me, you are in for a treat. This is even better than Lovehart. Promise you’ll watch, okay?”

  “Okay,” I say, shrugging.

  “Okay, so we just found out that Dawn, the preacher’s daughter, is pregnant. Her brother, Matthew, discovered her home pregnancy test in her trash can. That’s them.”

  A boy and a girl, Dawn and Matthew I guess, sit on a big pink bed in the middle of a pink room. Over the bed is a white cross with pink flowers painted on it. Dawn and Matthew both have the same blond hair, a color that looks like it came out of a bottle. I figure they dyed their hair the same color so that they would look more like brother and sister, because otherwise they don’t really look alike. He’s big and muscular while she’s just a tiny thing.

  In Dawn’s hand is something that looks like a thermometer, and Dawn looks like she’s been crying.

  “How’d you find it?” she asks.

  “You left it on top of your wastebasket, you idiot,” says Charles, making me miss Matthew’s line.

  “Will you turn it up a little?” I ask.

  Charles grabs the remote off Mrs. Parker’s glass coffee table, which has magazines fanned out on it: Martha Stewart Living, Veranda, The New Yorker, Atlanta. Charles punches the volume up so it’s really loud. I take another bite of sandwich.