by Jan Karon
“I promise.”
“You what?” she shouted.
“I promise!”
“These are valuable historical documents, an’ human skin has oil in it. Old as you are, Father, you might forget to wash first. Do you cross your heart an’ hope to die?”
He crossed his heart.
She yanked a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose with force. “I kicked up enough dust to sink a ship lookin’ for these bloomin’ things.” She thrust the packet into his hands. “I hope you appreciate th’ trouble I went to.”
“I do. Thank you very much.”
She cupped her hand to her ear. “What’s that?”
“Thank you very much!”
“There are fourteen prints in there. Because of th’ dust, I didn’t look at every one, but there’s descriptions on th’ back. Lucy Gilchrest documented every picture I took—we were fixin’ to do a book to raise money for th’ garden club, but Lucy moved to Philadelphia to nurse her mother. Th’ Whitefield azalea groves are in there, an’ th’ hosta garden, an’ th’ fish pond, an’ I don’t know what all. Madelaine had the most beautiful gardens of th’ whole Pilgrimage whenever she showed. These are th’ first year, I don’t have time or patience to rummage around for th’ other years.”
He was walking backward. “Certainly not.”
“People were jealous, mind you, because your mother had fine gardens and was beautiful into th’ bargain. I hate speakin’ ill of th’ dead, but people like Louise Grant despised her for it and didn’t mind sayin’ so behind her back. I couldn’t stand th’ sight of Louise Grant, do you remember Louise?”
“No, ma’am.” Picking up speed.
“If my hair was combed out, I’d ask you in for cheese wafers, it’s a secret family recipe that came horseback from Virginia.”
“Bless you. No, thanks.”
“There’s gummy bears in th’ bread box if you’d care to have a handful.”
“I greatly appreciate it.” Off the porch and down the steps.
“In case I’m not up when you get here, stick ’em in th’ door an’ ring th’ bell.”
“I will. And thank you again.”
“If you’re not where you can wash your hands,” she shouted, “wipe ’em on your pants first, you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“If I’m up, I’ll show you th’ oil portrait of th’ General, he was a wonderful husband, never complained. His people settled Kentucky, they produced four senators, a congressman, seven preachers, five medical doctors…”
He vanished into the boxwood.
“…an’ a first cousin on his mother’s side invented th’ door-to-door diaper service.”
He dived into the Mustang, gunned the engine, and roared out of her driveway in reverse. A wrench in his gut reminded him he had to put something in his stomach pronto, he was ravenous.
He was driving by the courthouse when he saw Jim Houck standing at the gazebo as if waiting for someone. Before he could look away, they made eye contact. He instinctively threw up his hand in an awkward combination of a military salute and a wave from a parade car; Houck shot up his arm in response.
Though he was in a moving vehicle, the eye contact seemed to last a long time, long enough for him to see the expression on Houck’s face—longing, perhaps, or desperation. It was as if he’d been surprised in some raw feeling, and not quick enough to mask it.
He puzzled over the fleeting exchange as he circled the square for another look at the brick storage building next to his father’s office. The Shed, as they’d called it, was where he’d hid his “mischief,” as Louis liked to say.
He remembered what he’d charged for looking at the pinup calendar: four cents. ‘Wipe your hands,’ he told his customers. ‘Four cents an’ clean hands is th’ deal.’ He had won the calendar playing marbles with Otis Gibson, whose daddy owned a tire store and could get calendars even in wartime. That little foray into commerce had earned him close to three dollars over the course of two summers, and when business fell off, mainly because the boys he knew had all had their go at it, he’d torn out the pages and sold eleven of them for a nickel each. The page with the blond lady in the pink swimsuit standing on the wing of a B-24 Liberator he stashed beneath the newspaper that lined his sock drawer.
With the calendar venture under his belt, he hid a pack of Camels in the Shed, and after smoking one and throwing up his gizzard, he sold the remaining nineteen for a dime apiece. ‘A whole pack ain’t but twenty cent,’ said Rufe. ‘You cain’t git no dime a smoke.’ But in two months, he had a dollar and ninety cents, which was pure profit, since he’d found the unopened pack in the grass behind Booker’s. From this, he learned that people would do crazy things on a whim, like spend a dime for something worth a penny.
As an act of obedience, he had taken his grandmother’s advice about putting something aside, and had actually gotten to like the idea. There was also a bonus he hadn’t expected—the ladies at the bank treated him like Boss Tate every time he made a deposit.
He parked the Mustang at the curb and looked at the iconic building as if it were a kind of memorial.
Including the junk bicycle he’d sold for parts and the funny books he sometimes, though rarely, recycled for four cents apiece, his juvenile enterprises had added roughly eight dollars to his savings account. This encouraged him to project the amount he could expect to amass by his twelfth birthday, including what he was able to save back from Nanny Howard’s allotment—fifty-five bucks seemed likely, maybe sixty-five if he really hustled. Then he spent hours figuring out how he would spend it. A BB gun, definitely, though he’d have to keep it hidden, and a comb and brush set like Robert McGuirk had desperately wanted to give his mother. Or maybe he wouldn’t touch a penny of it ’til he was fifteen and old enough to get a driver’s license—then he would buy a flathead V-8.
He didn’t like to think about the cookie venture, which had been a total failure…
‘I’ll give you a whole nickel to make me two dozen cookies,’ he told Peggy.
‘What you want two dozen cookies fo’?’
‘To sell.’
‘I can’t be makin’ you cookies t’ sell ’less you aks yo’ mama.’
He asked his mother, who thought about it and finally said yes, enterprise was character-building and his idea to put the money in the bank was wise and farsighted, but only after he tithed his ten percent, of course, and he may have only one dozen, not two, given the sugar shortage.
He rode to town with his father, the paper sack between his legs. The scent of fresh-baked raisin-oatmeal cookies permeated the car, he was nearly drooling. He would not eat one if his life depended on it; he’d been invited to lick the bowl and spoon, which should be enough for anybody trying to make an honest dollar. Chances were, he could sell every single cookie at Booker’s, or if he couldn’t move the whole dozen there, he could count on the ladies at the bank to take what was left. They might even give him reorders. I’ll have two every Wednesday, Miz Cox might say. One for me and one for my husband, Bill. Miz Cox had winked at him two different times.
‘This is wartime,’ said his father, who never took his eyes off the road while driving.
‘Yessir.’
‘Wartime is not a time to pleasure ourselves.’
He didn’t understand.
‘The cookies,’ said his father. ‘People are starving by the tens of thousands.’
‘Yessir. But they’re not for me, they’re for sale.’
‘Who made them?’
‘Peggy.’
His father reached over and lifted the sack from between his knees and set it between them on the seat. Then he opened the sack, removed a cookie, and took a bite.
Two bites.
Gone.
When he reached for the bag, his father stayed his hand. ‘Leave it there.’
He watched his father’s hand enter the bag and exit with another cookie, which he ate as if he were as starved as all of Euro
pe.
Almost immediately he ate yet another cookie, and another—not saying a word, but making an occasional grunting sound.
It was the first time he’d ever seen his father really like what he was eating. Once, when they were having Sunday dinner at Nanny’s, his father had said with obvious pride, ‘I don’t live to eat, I eat to live.’
Since he’d learned what happened at the cattle auction, he had tried hard to love his father more. But pity didn’t have the power he hoped it might, and all he felt was another kind of guilt for being unable to love the man who had suffered and seemed to like holding on to his suffering. He had finally figured out that what his father was doing was making everybody in his whole life pay for what had happened to him. He and his mother, especially, were the lambs in the thicket.
Crumbs on the seat.
Six whole cookies gone.
Thirty-six cents down the drain.
His father’s eyes looked dreamy. He was scared by the person driving the car, who didn’t act like his father at all.
When they arrived at the bank and parked on the square, the person driving the car turned and looked at him. ‘Don’t tell.’
‘Nossir.’
Sick with something like shame, he went to the Shed and sat on an old file box and methodically withdrew the rest of the cookies, one by one, and ate them, then upended the paper sack and sprinkled the crumbs on the floor for the rats…
At Frank’s, he ordered breakfast to go from someone who wasn’t Frank—two scrambled eggs, dry whole-wheat toast, link sausage with extra napkins to absorb the grease, and grits—and took the carryout box to Booker’s, where he sat on a wooden crate at the rear of the storeroom and ate like a field hand.
Nine-thirty. Three and a half hours to go.
He washed up at the ancient sink in the corner and walked to the window and tried to open it, but the sash wouldn’t budge. Sweating, he returned to the crate and shook the folds from the bandanna he’d bought from Red. He refolded it and put the thing around his nose and mouth and drew the ends behind his head and tied them. Dust made his sinuses drain like taps, and this envelope hadn’t seen daylight since the pharaohs came to power.
Before he drew the prints from the envelope, he stopped and prayed and tried to collect what seemed shattered in himself. All morning, he’d had the sensation of being lost—floating, but not free; he couldn’t put his finger on it. He was feeling his age in spades, but it was more than that—he wanted to bolt and run. His personal wizard, however, had nailed it: Life is short, and the road to Holly Springs is long. He wasn’t going anywhere—not yet.
As for what this trip might really mean, maybe he’d be able to figure it out later—on the road to North Carolina, back home in Mitford, or even hiking in Sligo in August with his living wife and alive-and-breathing travel companions, Walter and Katherine. Dear God, it helped to remember that the grave had not triumphed, he had a family—he would call Cynthia as soon as he got to the car, where he’d left his cell phone, and Walter—he’d call Walter, too, who would like to know his cousin was back in their old stomping grounds, that he’d seen Peggy Cramer, that Whitefield was getting a face-lift. Though Matthew Kavanagh had had an uneasy alliance with his brother, Walter’s father, both men had tolerated their boys spending time together, though the occasions were rare. Walter had twice spent a week at Whitefield, and he, Timothy, had taken the bus to Oxford for a week one summer. That was the summer they determined to be friends forever, no matter what their fathers had going on about a soured cotton deal that implicated their Grandpa Kavanagh.
He drew the prints from the envelope backside up.
April 14, 1941 Photo #12
Mrs. Matthew (Madelaine) Kavanagh, née Howard, entering her woodland azalea and dogwood grove at Whitefield, 4 mi east of courthouse. Whitefield boasts one of the most extensive private azalea gardens in Marshall County. Her frock of Irish linen is from Kennington’s in Jackson. Ice tea and lemon cookies were served on the porch. The first bus ever used by the Pilgrimage hauled visitors from the square for ten cents a piece, which will go to cover expenses. 131 people signed the Whitefield guest-book today. Temp. 72°. (Note bed of Iris sibirica in background, a stunning tetraploid that arranges beautifully with herbaceous peonies.) Photo by Luola Dabney Randolph Lewis. All rights reserved.
He turned the photograph over.
The old photos in the drawer back home were memorized and familiar, but this—he felt he was seeing his young mother for the first time. She stood beneath a canopy of ivory blossoms, her head slightly tilted back, her eyes squinting into the sun, laughing. He had loved nothing better than his mother’s laughter.
April 14, 1941 Photo #3
The fish pond at Whitefield, home of Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Kavanagh and their son, Timothy. The pretty pond grasses were transplanted from the wild and have not been identified. The limestone statue of the boy with a billy goat was a gift to Mrs. Kavanagh from HS Garden Club member, Mrs. Robert (Mae) Wilkerson, purchased during one of her trips to Paris. Photo by Luola Dabney Randolph Lewis. All rights reserved.
The boy in the statue was ‘buck-naked,’ as Louis had said, a fact which distressed his mother. Mrs. Wilkerson, a particularly liberal artist and club member, had effusively bestowed the thing on his mother, who saw nothing to do but partially conceal it behind pond grasses.
He remembered tossing a rock into the pond, and the pitch hadn’t gone well; he’d broken a horn off the goat.
Louis laughed. ‘You could of busted off somethin’ ’stead of a horn, an’ yo’ mama would like it mo’ better.’
‘Can you fix it back?’
‘You got to quit runnin’ t’ Louis ever’ time somethin’ go wrong. Someday you ain’t gon’ have no Louis t’ run to, then what you gon’ do?’
Louis had made him fix the blasted thing himself. Miraculously, the horn held fast over the years. After his mother’s death, he had given the statue to the garden club, along with two stone benches, a wrought-iron gate, and a pair of urns.
April 14, 1941 Photo #7
Mrs. Matthew (Madelaine) Kavanagh and her son, Timothy, soon to turn six yrs old in June, relax on their porch after Pilgrimage visitors have gone. Marge Gholson (HSGC Pres. 1937–39) brought the boy a book which he asked his mother to read aloud. She seemed very pleased to do so, though it had been a long day with 131 guests signing the register! Young Timothy says he wants to be an Indian chief or a preacher like his grandfather, Holly Springs’ beloved Rev Yancey Howard. Photo by Luola Dabney Randolph Lewis. All rights reserved.
He turned the photograph over.
He sat on his mother’s lap, a rare treat, in a rocking chair on their porch. He was gazing at the open book in her hands, and clearly happy. He could see that his mother was tired, but she, too, was happy—he knew it from the way she was holding her mouth. His mother’s mouth had been more expressive even than her eyes. He struggled to make some connection with the boy in the playsuit and well-shined shoes, but he could not. It seemed someone else’s life entirely.
His gaze roved their faces, as if he could etch the image onto his memory and keep it forever. Then he saw Peggy at the far end of the porch—she was shaking a tablecloth over the railing. He was moved by the late afternoon light shining through the cloth, and oddly startled by her presence.
Though her strong features and expressive eyes were indistinct in the photograph, he knew she had been striking, even comely. He was certain he hadn’t known that then, of course—she had just been Peggy to him. He held the fading image closer and looked at it a long time.
He turned the photograph over and read the inscription again. Peggy wasn’t acknowledged.
He sat for a while with the prints in his lap, his mind as absent as his mortal flesh was present.
April 14, 1941 Photo #10
Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Kavanagh in the hosta grove at Whitefield. Mrs. Kavanagh has planted fourteen different varieties in recent years, including giant and miniature. Mrs. Kav
anagh claims to have no favorite, but admits to a special fondness for H. plantaginea owing to its sweet scent along a shady summer path in the woods. Photo by Luola Dabney Randolph Lewis. All rights reserved.
He was riveted by the power of the black-and-white image. His mother and father stood among the hostas, facing one another. Their presence was so palpable he felt they might at any moment live and move and have their being. A light breeze pressed his mother’s dress against her slender frame; she seemed weightless, ethereal. Each of his parents was clearly magnetized by the other; the intimacy was so real he felt intrusive.
He held the print closer and adjusted his glasses. On his father’s face was something he had never seen before—it was an expression of undeniable tenderness.
He stood suddenly and slid the prints back into the envelope.
“Whoa!” said Red. “This a stickup?”
“Give me your cash and make it snappy.”
“You barkin’ up th’ wrong tree. There ain’t any cash left by th’ time th’ government gets through with th’ small b’iness owner.”
He pulled the bandanna off his face and wiped his eyes and sneezed.
“Bless you,” said Red, taking a canned drink from a derelict refrigerator. “You want a drink while you’re here, help yourself. Honor system. Drop some change in th’ jar.”
“I appreciate it.” He blew his nose and stuffed the bandanna into his pocket. “What do you know about Jim Houck?”
Red popped the tab. “Loner. Won’t win any popularity contests.”
“Married? Family?”
“Twice. Three kids, a few grandkids. Left town a good many years ago, came back; can’t seem to find whatever he’s lookin’ for.”
He walked to the car and called home.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey, yourself.”
“On the way out to Whitefield last night, I stopped by Frank King’s. Someone had left me a note.”
“Another note? Who?”
“A man named Henry Winchester.”
“Who is Henry Winchester?”
“I have no idea, except he’s the one who wrote me in Mitford. I talked to him on the phone this morning, he wants to meet this afternoon at one o’clock.”