Local Souls

by Allan Gurganus

  He stopped making certain pointed jokes. He then stopped “getting” them. When a beloved cutup shoe clerk saw Doc step into his store, the owner called, for all to hear, “Please waddle into our web-footed section, Donald Doc.” Roper gave him one scalding look, veered out. It’d been a stupid thing to say but was meant as tribute. To survive in Falls, you have to take a joke. Or pretend to.

  Neighbors judged our Roper had floated a bit above his raising. True, his bridge-obsessed dad had “class” if rarely a spare twenty. —And now Doc was letting any cut-rate airline’s magazine come photograph that precious studio, while never admitting his closest Falls admirers.

  Still, I owed him.

  It was at his third show I saw it. And chose to buy his all-time greatest work of art.

  18

  NOT TO BOAST but, from twelve feet’s distance, I spied Doc’s masterpiece. Roper’s portraits of wood ducks were, I’d admitted from the start, unbelievable.

  In the wild, wood ducks are, of course, the prettiest things you’ll see dressing up any American creek. White specks, red beak, eyes almost lime-green, really God’s own Woolworth paintbox. A chestnut-colored breast spread with white dots the size of daily aspirin. And this one had a jaunty crest that looked back-combed just so. A little Elvis, not yet drugged unhappy, but already a tad aware of his own damp swiveling beauty.

  I bent eye to eye with this plucky bird. I met myself, age fourteen. Even the bird’s swept-back “Mohawk” somehow spoke to me. Now, how to adopt—meaning buy—this punk of a duck. The thing, first glance, just had such heart.

  Prices were not posted. I saw none of the usual rash of red stickers meaning sold. I felt embarrassed offering a close friend many thousands for something of no use, except your looking at it. Which is a use, I guess I know.

  Even so, really really wanting it, asking for and getting Janet’s own nod, I finally cornered my pal. “You signed the bottom of this bird, Doc. Now let me show you I can carve my name at least across the bottom of this check. Jan and I will give our little guy a nice dry home. I’ll take him.”

  Such a smile Doc gave me. “Bill? Gosh, I’m honored. Truly. Fact is, seems the way this world of decoy collecting is set up, I’m expected to park this particular baby with a top Manhattan collector. That way, they tell me, Woody here will be seen by certain museum folks. Don’t ask me. Seems that’s how ye ole art world flowchart works. But there’ll be others ahead for you and Janet, promise. You’ve got quite an eye. Wood ducks give me the biggest headaches. So they’re always the most fun, like my best patients, you regulars, m’ best patients. I hate that a New Yorker’s already called dibs on this little dandy. But nowadays I’m putting all my new things in the agent’s lap first-thing. Easier, finally. —But I sure appreciate that interest, Bill.”

  “Aha,” I said. I stood here. The checkbook in my hand truly felt like my dick hanging out for all to see.

  I stood remembering his cruel joke about my son’s clumsiness, even as our boy lay there gray-green with a bone-jutting fracture. “Well, Doc, thanks for even considering our offer.” Politeness kills the fastest. “Real-ly. Just to even be considered in the running . . .”

  He sure heard my edge. He knew my heart. He’d once described it as likely someday “to flutter then, quite honestly, implode.” Doc now stepped a full foot closer. He even clamped a hand around my bicep. I tensed it quick into a bulk more manly. Roper hinted under his breath how not even HE could pay retail for his own darned carvings lately!

  That too hurt my feelings . . . I guess I can afford what I usually set my heart on, thank you very much.

  Fact is, not to talk ugly about him, but Roper was becoming kind of “artistic.” I don’t enjoy stating this. But it’s sure what others were saying. Suede elbow patches appeared overnight on the old blond tweed jacket locals had seen on him since Davidson. He and Marge had bought a young pair of Josiah Hemphill–like springer spaniels, though everybody knew he’d given away his dad’s one beautiful unhocked bird gun. Janet predicted worse, “When we see him smoking a Sherlock Holmes pipe, we won’t be too shocked, now, will we, Bill?” How could I even tell Jan about his turning down my offer like this? Still smarts.

  (In North Carolina, we’ve always put a premium on modesty. Mom advised I was already a lifelong “hider.” Still, it’s wrong to let others guess you have real money. Best underdress. No cowboy shirts inside the city limits. Understate to the power of five. That’s code here. But even so, I would have paid him twenty-five thousand for the damn thing is all I’m saying. Thirty. No, I’d go clear to . . . sixty-five. —I mean what is friendship for, man?)

  OF COURSE, IN modern life, decoys no longer mean to draw southbound fowl down toward your waiting gun. I know that. But, robbed of that cocky junior wood duck meant as mine, I got grouchy about folk art generally. Started wondering:

  When does “Americana” become that?

  Carved ducks, once meant to help you feed your family, aren’t they now just national good-luck charms? Find them on U.S. stamps or speckling wallpaper at inns. Only when decoys were outlawed after tricking too many birds to death did we find them fully “lovable” at last. (Regarding our handsome nation’s future in the hungry world, is there not a hint here?)

  Yes, I was pissed at losing my drake. Loyalty goes unrewarded when you’re seen as one who’ll stay no matter what. My leverage, if any? Canceling the Ropers’ home owners’ policy?

  Miffed, silent, I decided it was really kind of odd anyway, trying to exactly imitate another living thing. Who’d do that? I mean, imagine if, say, all life-sized bronze figure sculpture got painted to look exactly like human beings. What if art museums left out beautiful half-naked lady-statues to try and lure living breathing young men indoors? And why? to trick, trap, kill and eat them? See my point?

  I hurried home from the show, champagne-high in a way that made me feel, even walking, not quite balanced. Jan was kind enough not to ask if I’d got the one I’d set my heart on. As she settled before our usual nightly news, I told her I sensed one of my sinking spells coming, just needed a quick nap. Twenty minutes, tops. I went right down into a kind of suicidal sleep. Had this windy, saturated dream in color:

  Imagine you are flying south, migrating, actually. You lead your air-group and—with raw sun sinking quick—you keep scouting, seeking any inlet where your kind might settle, feed, rest.

  Some memory of gunfire elsewhere keeps you circling the blue cove below. Others—behind and beside you—await your signal-dive. Only that will prove how all this under you is safe. You’re tired and so are other flyers. But the inlet down there looks too ideal. True, some of your own sort already float there. Still, this might be a trick. But then you notice another one such as you. A more splendid example of your species, your sex. This male’s already bobbing at his ease to one side, guarding his own thirty. Even from on high you note the drake’s bold coloring, his bearing unflappable. And so, descending, bringing in your group to aim for water’s surface nearest him, you imagine greeting such a one. A fellow leader, his size notable, his markings almost . . . gunshots. Sharp pops, feathery explosions left and right. Three fall, now four, as you ascend.

  Beating upward, panicked, you sense at once: your group’s undoing is your own too-trusting need for another worthy’s company. That’s what got four good ones killed back there. Your visible authority is really just your own male loneliness kept perfectly hidden. That other leader? likely wood. Unflappable, all right.

  You, shaken, betrayed by your own kind, wing on. No loyalty. Not like you, he cannot have been quite real. Resemblance itself can be stolen. Attraction? Lethal. Turns so quick against you. Can kill you and all of yours.

  19

  THE BIXBY TWINS, barely teenaged, had grown amazing-looking, already built like anything. Their child faces were now carried around atop these panther limbs. Boys knocked at our door, announcing they’d be showing off their matched diving at the club, July Fourth. Could we come? They were walking all
over Riverside inviting old friends. Sweet when kids that young still want to sit and talk to silver oldsters like Jan and me. They asked by name about Jill and Billy, though our kids had been years ahead of them in school.

  Of course, we felt closer to the twins for having seen them go underwater and drown powder-blue. I’d not forget pulling these newts from our Lithium so someone else could fill them with his air. You’d think the boys might ever-after find our river terrifying; but no—absolute water babies.

  At the club, twins greeted everyone. Barely fifteen, tanned completely dark, each wore a Band-Aid-sized black Speedo, a short haircut exactly matching his brother’s. Rumor had it they’d just “been with” a handsome married lady of forty. Both with her at once, fore and aft, it was said then immediately believed. Her husband spent months away at tobacco market in Georgia. Turns out, most married ladies her age can keep secrets far better than identical newbies, fifteen.

  Riversiders’ disapproval was offset by some awe at imagining the sight. The Fallen imagined this woman corrupting our Tomothy-Timothy concurrently; folks felt a hushed respect for her gall, her sheer twofer enterprise. She had hired the boys for a fix-it job, “Come help me clean my gutters?” Afterward, passing this put-together lady at the mall, nobody quite issued her the “cut-direct.” Instead, freighted humid looks got offered. Especially by other women of a certain age. Looks said, How? The why was understood. People all do crazy things when it’s their last-chance-ever. I told you, Riverside is rarely unintentionally rude.

  Presiding at Broken Heart’s pool, Kate Bixby, the twins’ glad mother, played hostess and was gracious and dear despite all that weight she’s put on. (Why so unhappy, you think?) Luckily, the forty-year-old seductress in question had the Protestant good sense to stay away.

  Tomothy and Timothy’s mirror-image dives made us all feel proud then stronger. People said they had a clear shot at the upcoming Atlanta Olympic trials. You could tell already: fond as we were of them, Bixbys seemed destined to be among the Fallen who did not stay.

  Greetings at their diving demonstration made me feel a solid part of Riverside. It was in the clubhouse bathroom afterward I got another bulletin concerning me. It arrived in the usual way I seem to learn: myself viewed via outside diagnosis, more than any deep personal reflection, hard as I try.

  Shy, I’d chosen the farthest row of urinals. From there I overheard one of my favorite tennis partners at the sinks telling his chum, “Yeah, we caught Bill Mabry with Mom, at home. Having tea. And trying to sell her flood insurance! A hundred and fifty miles from the ocean. And her always claiming she can’t even afford new dentures. Hers do whistle. And here he is sitting looking out at the ducks with her, and pushing that. Brochures out, the works. Given Bill’s history, people feel for him. Don’t think he doesn’t use that pity in his business, too. But, trying and pile coverage onto someone Mother’s age? My sisters and I think he’s overstepping.”

  NOW I HAD been shunned as a Marion collector eager to pay retail, I can hardly overstate how shamed I felt. He had no idea what-all he meant to me, but then did I? Losing that mere object, it left me truly shaken, silently enraged, convinced I should possibly go rogue. Bill, the Indie! I mean, how hard could it be? To take a hunk of wood and make it be or go . . . duck-shaped? Just out of spite, I’d maybe start with a wood duck. Where is it written that an able man retires to no lifeline stronger than his cable news?

  I avoided Bobbitt’s Hobby Shop where the Roper fan club gathered. I made a trip to Raleigh I sort of hid even from Jan. There I bought superlative German gear. “State-of-the-art everything,” the guy promised. Tomorrow I’d try my first one as an experiment. I’d do it all in my tool shop where we keep grandkids’ life jackets and temperamental weed-eaters. Safe back there, even if I found myself a slow starter, all thumbs, not even the wife need know.

  As I might have said, the week our boy finished Haverford (with high honors), Janet went out and bought herself a pair of cockatiels, noisy seed-scatterers. She embarrassed me even more by naming them for our now-absent son and daughter. But, today, for raw inspiration, I did step into our kitchen, did stare into their cage. “Hi, Jill. Hi, Billy.” Real birds, after all, if unfit to ever model as matching American wood ducks.

  I retired to my shop-studio feeling pumped up, almost wicked, granted a second and more sexual life. I’d once overheard my son tell a pal how some choir girl lighting candles at All Saints made him “get wood during service.” That term, new to me, I found funny.

  But now to business. Using my twelve hundred dollars of Kraut engineering and tempered Sheffield steel, I would mold and make it, major wood. I set the virgin cedar block into my bench vise, secured it. That’s not going anywhere. “Step One, Phase II. Completed, Houston.”

  TURNS OUT EVERYTHING my father possessed in anti-golfing talent, I’d inherited at anything artistic. It’s not just about intelligence, is it? Within ten minutes I discovered an even deeper secret—lack of even any actual motor skill. (In your head, you can see a thing so clearly . . .) It remained my news alone; right till Jan had to drive me to the ER. Just eighteen stitches, really. Told Janet I’d been fixing the lawn mower. She grunted, “That’d be a first.”

  Next day, one hand mittened in gauze, I sneaked down to our river. I took that red-stained block and chucked it. Tossed my wood-handled Sheffield blades into our crooked little river. I recalled downloading Red’s handmade if subcontracted SHADOWLAWN sign. I enjoyed watching every darned item bobble off toward the Atlantic far far away.

  We all have our gifts. —Don’t we?

  At Doc’s exhibit I’d bent at the knees, I’d stared so hard into his glass case. I had felt pride that slid at once into longing. Shelves had mirrors behind them; cruel, that. You saw your own blocky stubbled face edging streamlined wildlife. “Sad” can sometime seem a default setting for our whole flock of the Fallen over sixty.

  I kept replaying how he’d turned down my blank-check. My good-faith-offer for that little “me” bird, half-angel, half-juvenile delinquent. Grabbed by some poacher, it’d likely been shipped off to the City. Ransomed north, needing only my wad of cash to keep it here in Falls, a fellow stay-at-home. Doc’s pip of a masterpiece, exiled to New York’s East Side, institutionalized far from here and me. Atop some white Formica pedestal.

  —Hoping for what? a museum or open water.

  20

  I’D FELT SO healthy being twenty-two, home with the framed Chapel Hill “bachelor of science.” Beside it, in my insurance office, I hung the laminated “antiqued” certificate proving me also a licensed CPA. Jan and I were just back from our honeymoon (Washington, D.C., for some reason). Partly educated, fully married and employed, I first claimed, then fought to hold, Doc’s first Monday slot. If some hospital emergency took him elsewhere, I’d sometimes bob in anyway, joke around with his nurses. Hefty efficient Blanche and both funny Sandys. Same names, unrelated, they’d started saying they were sisters as a joke. Now they admitted sharing the same Clairol “Ash Blond” and it made them, in crisp white with folded caps, seem even cuter, almost-twins. I felt they counted on my turning up to get their week launched with a joke, good one, an old favorite.

  Everyday sameness? At least it made life feel potentially longer. Right hand on the steering wheel, left on your emergency brake. By the standards of Eden, Falls’ routes and habits might’ve seemed poky. But things flowed along as shallow yet easeful as our busywork Lithium itself. Insurance soon became clockwork, regularized and well-paying if in steady dribs and drabs. (I’ve always been a faster study than anybody else around here mostly cared to know.) By trade I was a cheerful seller of insurance. And I ensured I’d daily sell myself as a cheerful version of that. Call me a decoy 9–5. From my Fidelity notepad I summoned our national adjusters to sites of grease fires, fender benders. But Riverside somehow seemed exempt from maiming tractor-accidents, barn burnings, country gore.

  EARLY SEPTEMBER IS my favorite time for outdoor exercise. Maples have start
ed rusting that first mellow tint. Air along our river holds a crisp sort of start-of-school Granny Smith promise. So find me pounding away at the backboard of the Broken Heart tennis courts.

  Even as a country boy of eight I preferred tennis to golf. The sight of my first court seemed like a perfect memory of order. Like those faint blue lines on school paper. Given my cardiac picture, I’d never be Wimbledon material. On my doctor’s advice I tend to favor doubles but still love the game. Odd, I associate its pleasures with enjoying flossing my teeth. Nets? Strings? Always the constant cleanly sounds of tennis leave me feeling purified. Bit clearer in the head.

  Dad admitted disappointment. My failing to take up golf hurt him, he admitted. Tennis seemed a gelded game to this ex-farmer, “You’re practically indoors. Might as well play bridge.” But, belief in Golf? it’s like God—either you’ve always accepted it or, on sight, you find the very idea ridiculous. Those pompomed caps? men’s pastel pants and shiny white shoes, the rickety length of the clubs and the sneaky size of that ball! From the start, all of it struck me as some visual joke designed by a real mean gay New Yorker cartoonist.

  Red begged me to at least caddy for him. “I mean, we’re lifetime legacy members and you are m’ only begotten son, son.” But Roper, noting our recent shortness of breath, had politicked us toward half-rounds. Doc knew how long it took poor Dad to chop across the course.