The Fortunate Ones

by Ed Tarkington

  My grandfather had not accounted for the fact that Bonnie had inherited both his temper and his stubbornness. One morning, she woke before dawn, packed a suitcase, stole all of the money her mother kept stashed in a coffee can, and hitched a ride to the Greyhound station. She had a cousin who had run off to Nashville to become a country singer—Beverly Poteat, who called herself Sunny Brown. A few months later, at Vanderbilt Hospital, I made my inglorious entry into the world.

  These were the days when they stamped bastard on the birth certificates of fatherless children. Still, my mother decided to name me Charles, after her father, in the hope that this sign of respect would soften his heart, and that, perhaps, he might beg her to come home. When she called to give him the news, he said only two words to her—“Good luck”—and hung up.

  Unwed mothers and absent fathers were not unusual in the Montague Village Apartments. In school, I suffered far less persecution for being a bastard than for being one of the few white boys in a black neighborhood and school. When I got old enough to start asking who and where my daddy was, my mother told me he was a soldier who never came home from the war. When I asked more questions—why we had no photographs of my father, where were my grandparents, where did we come from—my mother looked at Sunny.

  “Well, honey,” Sunny said, “your daddy knocked your momma up, and your granddaddy kicked her out.”

  By then, Sunny’s dreams of stardom had stalled in an airport bar, where she sang for tips. Her stage was a small riser equipped with a microphone and a PA system running a loop of country classics like “Crazy,” “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” and “I Will Always Love You.”

  When I was old enough to be left with one of the neighbors, my mother started waiting tables. She worked at a diner until she turned eighteen, whereupon she moved up to cocktailing in a honky-tonk on Lower Broadway, which back then was all strip clubs, junkies, and hustlers. Eventually, she migrated to Café Cabernet, a dim restaurant in Midtown, also known as Café Divorcée for its popularity as a pickup spot. Every time I visited the place, the stereo seemed to be playing something by Steely Dan or Supertramp. My mother was a beauty, both sensuous and demure, with a curvy figure just on the right edge of plumpness. She was a bit heedless, but smarter and tougher than she looked. Tips were good enough for the three of us to upgrade to a three-bedroom apartment at Montague Village.

  We children of Montague were passed around from mother to mother, depending on who wasn’t working at the time. None of them appeared to notice where we were or what we were doing. I spent most of my time with Terrence Robie, who lived across the hall with his grandmother Louella, a maid for a pair of families across the river in Belle Meade. We were raised from infancy in such close proximity that we might as well have been brothers. Though we were only a few months apart in age, by the time we reached middle school, Terrence had grown six inches taller and at least thirty pounds heavier than I. He began to protect me as if I actually were his brother. Terrence could not save me from all of the abuse I suffered for being the smallest and meekest of the few white students in the halls of W. E. B. DuBois Middle, but he made things less miserable than they might otherwise have been.

  My mother never showed much interest in my education until, when I was in eighth grade, she received a hospital bill for eight hundred dollars after one of my regular beatings outside school resulted in a broken collarbone.

  “We’ve got to get you out of that school,” she said.

  One morning not long after, she woke me up early and ordered me to dress in the clothes usually reserved for Christmas Eve and Easter morning church visits.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “There’s something I want you to see,” she said.

  The Yeatman School lay at the end of a narrow drive lined by hickory trees, such that it couldn’t be seen from the road; the only markers of its presence were two weathered stone columns, each with the letter Y engraved on flat concrete panels. The obscurity of this entrance suggested that one wasn’t meant to be able to find the school without being told where to look. The forest surrounding the campus—the Grove, they call it—was so dense that I felt, after passing through the shadowy woods and coming upon the white columns bathed in sunlight, that if I left and came back to the same spot, I might not find it there.

  Coach Baldwin, a blond, lantern-jawed statue of a man with the stiff, erect posture of an antique nutcracker, toured us around. My mother blushed when he held the door for her and called her “ma’am.” It took me a while to process the fact that Coach Baldwin was, for lack of a more accurate expression, courting us, trying to persuade us of the school’s worthiness.

  What I remember best about that day was not the school’s beauty or its expensive amenities, but how different my mother seemed while we were there. At home, she still wore jeans and T-shirts, short skirts and sleeveless tops, cowboy boots or spike-heeled shoes. In her work attire, she looked like what she was: a sexy cocktail waitress with a keen grasp of what an extra inch of exposed thigh or cleavage could be worth in tips. That day at Yeatman, however, she wore a prim short-sleeved, knee-length blue dress and a pair of tan patent leather flats I’d never seen before. Her hair, usually sprayed out, lay flat and neatly brushed. All of the men we encountered—Coach Baldwin, the teachers who stopped to greet us in the hallways, the coaches in the gym—treated her with polite deference. I’d never heard my mother referred to as “ma’am” before. The whole picture was jarring, and, I thought, more than a bit deceiving. But I had only ever seen one side of her—the waitress, the unwed single mother, the drinker and smoker. I had forgotten, or perhaps never really understood, that she had grown up around the kind of people who sent their boys to places like Yeatman. Indeed, in her life before my arrival, she’d been one of them.

  At the end of our tour, Coach Baldwin led us back to the admissions office. My mother sat at a desk, filling out a form, while I flipped through a copy of the alumni magazine. When my mother was through, Coach Baldwin handed me a cellophane bag full of Yeatman Y-embossed knickknacks: buttons, stickers, a T-shirt, pencils and a sharpener, and a foam finger.

  “How would you like to go to a school like that?” my mother asked as we began the drive home in her Chevy Cavalier.

  Truth be told, I didn’t give the first thought to how out of place I would be at Yeatman. Nor did I question the expense involved, or why the opportunity had been extended to me. I could only think how lovely it all was—the brightness of the white columns—how clean everything seemed, how peaceful, how stately and noble.

  “Sure,” I said.

  If not for that day, I would never have left East Nashville for Belle Meade, nor would I have understood how much the conditions of life in one world depend on the whims of those who live in another.

  two

  A note on stationery embossed with a gilded Gothic Y arrived in the mail at our apartment a few weeks later, inviting me to join the Yeatman class of 1988. Admission letter in hand, I went to tell Terrence.

  “My cousin went there for football,” Terrence said. “Those folks Grand-Lou used to work for sent their boys there. That’s a rich white boy school, Charlie.”

  “It’s not all white,” I said. “You could go there too.”

  “You think I want to go to school with a bunch of rich white boys?” he asked. “Besides, who’s gonna pay for that? You rich now, Charlie? Last time I checked, you still lived in the hood like the rest of us.”

  I felt my face flush hot with both shame and indignation.

  “I don’t know,” I stammered.

  “You tell me when you figure it out,” he said.

  When I asked my mother about it, she let out a long sigh.

  “Have you ever heard of need-based scholarships, Charlie?”

  I hadn’t.

  “Well, you qualify for one,” she said. “So would Terrence. He’d probably get a better deal than you. Maybe he’d like to apply.”

  I said nothing. Terrence had made his fe
elings about the Yeatman School very clear.

  “You let me worry about money,” my mother said. “You just work hard and do well, okay?”

  A week before the beginning of school, my mother and I returned to Yeatman to attend a reception for new high school students and their parents, which revolved around an audience with the headmaster and the introduction of each new freshman to a sophomore designated to be his “big brother.” We gathered in the lobby outside the headmaster’s office, around a pair of long tables loaded with cookies, and pitchers of orange juice and ice water. Most of the rising freshman class had come through the Yeatman junior school; hence, there were only twenty new students. The boys who were familiar with one another all had tousled hair, Sperry Top-Siders or Clarks Wallabees, web belts from Brooks Brothers and L. L. Bean, and the tanned, healthy look that comes from tennis and swimming lessons and summer camps. The other group was smaller and motley: boys with cheaper clothes and shoes and buzz cuts; a few Asian and black boys to satisfy the recently implemented diversity quota. My mother and I stood at the front of the room, afraid to part from each other. I wanted to join the larger group of tanned, tousled boys and be absorbed into their ranks. But I knew that I belonged with the other group.

  I was rescued by the headmaster’s assistant, Mrs. Barnett, who led me up the hallway. Through a door to my left, I heard the chatter of voices—the sophomore big brothers, lounging in the chairs around the boardroom table.

  “Go on in, honey,” Mrs. Barnett said. “They’re waiting for you.”

  Inside the frosted doors, Dr. Dodd, the headmaster, leaned against the front edge of his desk. To his left sat a large man in pressed chinos, an open-collared white shirt, and a navy blazer. Dr. Dodd stood and extended his hand. The other man remained seated.

  “Hello, Mr. Boykin,” Dr. Dodd said.

  I grasped his hand and shook it.

  “This is a friend of mine, Mr. Haltom,” Dr. Dodd said.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Mr. Haltom smiled. “Hello, Charlie.”

  “Have a seat.” Dr. Dodd gestured to one of the club chairs arranged in front of his desk. “Don’t be nervous. We’re just going to get to know each other a bit.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Dr. Dodd asked me a short series of questions that made clear he already knew the answers. He talked about the importance of applying oneself, staying on top of things, showing up for extra help in the mornings. I was distracted—by the pictures on the walls and the windowsills, and the various other objects decorating the office; by the peculiarity of Dodd’s appearance, with his longish silver hair and glinting gold rings and dress watch; perhaps most by Mr. Haltom, whose presence remained unexplained.

  I was jerked back to attention as Dr. Dodd shifted off his desk and extended his hand again.

  “We know you’re going to thrive here,” Dr. Dodd said.

  “I’ll do my best, sir,” I said.

  Dr. Dodd pressed a button on his office phone.

  “Carolyn?” he said. “We’re ready.”

  A moment later, the door opened and closed. I looked up from the floor. There he was: strong jaw and broad shoulders, studiously sloppy sandy-blond hair.

  “Hey, bud,” the boy said. “I’m Arch Creigh.”

  Arch held out his hand for me to shake.

  “I’m your big brother,” he said.

  “Archer’s one of our best,” Dr. Dodd said. “You’re very fortunate.”

  Dr. Dodd stood; this time, Mr. Haltom came to his feet as well.

  “Well then. You boys get acquainted,” Dr. Dodd said. “Archer, take good care of Charlie, won’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Arch said.

  I shook Dr. Dodd’s hand for the third time. Mr. Haltom offered his hand as well. I tried not to wince at the strength of his grip.

  “We’re glad you’re here, Charlie,” he said.

  “Thank you, sir,” I replied.

  I followed Arch out of the office, and we descended the stairs and walked out into the quad. The air was hot and scented with ginkgo blossoms.

  “So what do you think of Yeatman so far?” he asked.

  “It’s great,” I said.

  I didn’t want to tell the truth—that I felt frightened and woefully out of my depth.

  “Wait until school starts,” he said. “You ever take Latin before?”

  “No,” I said.

  “It’s an absolute bitch. I think Yeatman might be the last school on earth that still requires Latin. It’s supposed to boost your SAT score, but I think they mostly hold on to it for the sake of tradition.”

  I’d not yet heard of the SAT, but I nodded as if this benefit was something I’d already considered.

  “That’s a big thing around here, you know,” he said. “Tradition.”

  He spoke the word in a tone both mocking and sincere.

  Arch had been given my class schedule; the ritual, it seemed, was for each of the big brothers to tour his protégé from room to room. As we walked, he spoke to me with genial familiarity, pausing on occasion to point something out or wave to someone across the quadrangle. I was too captivated by his allure to remember anything but the sound of his voice, the way he walked, the casual confidence with which he carried himself, how he inhabited the navy blazer and regimental tie as if he had been the model for which all prep school uniforms had been designed.

  When we were finished, Arch led me back to the reception area outside the theater.

  “It’s great to meet you, bud,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Again, we shook hands. The touch of his hand felt like an electric charge.

  I found my mother sipping a cup of coffee and nodding along as one of the well-dressed mothers prattled about what made Yeatman superior to Montgomery Bell, Nashville’s other elite boys’ school. Even then, my mother may have been plotting her own escape from the low-down life of Montague Village. But I knew none of this, distracted as I was by my own ascension.

  Heading home, my mother waited until we’d reached the highway before lighting a cigarette.

  “I saw you through the window, talking with that boy,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Who was he?”

  “Arch,” I said. “My big brother.”

  Two narrow funnels of smoke unfurled from her nostrils and wafted out the crack in the window.

  “He’s cute,” she said.

  three

  The spell cast by that first hour with Arch took little time to break. The various cliques in my grade had all been established long before my arrival. The school’s idiosyncrasies and traditions only made me feel that much more the outsider—an impostor bound to be exposed at any moment. I was a year behind every other boy in my grade in math and Latin, and had to take both of those courses with junior schoolers. I went from being first in my class in almost everything to fighting to stay off the bottom among boys a year younger than me.

  My greatest humiliations took place under the tutelage of my Latin teacher and advisor, Dean Varnadoe. In his late sixties, Walker Varnadoe was an elegant man, slim and rangy, with a sonorous baritone and pale-blue eyes that seemed to glimmer both when he recited a favorite aphorism and when he leveled his disapproval upon us. He carried a black cane with a polished brass head, which he used not to help him walk but, rather, to point and gesticulate at the board or around the classroom and to rap on the desks of drowsy students, startling them back to rigid, chastened attention.

  Varnadoe referred to his classroom as “the harbor.” We never saw him outside his harbor during the school day, not even in his office or in the dining hall for meals; he brought his lunch from home and preferred to dine alone while grading or reading from one of his numerous books of poetry, all of them aged, many in the original Latin or Greek. He was the only teacher granted a regular audience with Dr. Dodd—not in Dodd’s office, but in Varnadoe’s classroom, as if the headmaster needed the teacher’s bl
essing over the most vital matters that came across his desk.

  The bookend of my day, my sole refuge, was an hour in the art room. The new art teacher, Miss Whitten, had been hired at the last minute after a severe stroke forced her predecessor into retirement. Young and plainly inexperienced, Miss Whitten appeared baffled by the school, with its hypermasculine traditions and persistent whiff of testosterone. She had difficulty managing the classroom; neighboring teachers popped in a few times a week to complain about the noise.

  Miss Whitten didn’t smile often; she bore herself with a persistent air of mild melancholy. But she was kind, and encouraging. Drawing and painting in her classroom served as a salve on the battering my ego took everywhere else. In a period of profound disorientation, I lacked the vocabulary to express what I was experiencing in words; I channeled it all into pictures. Miss Whitten received me each day with both eagerness and relief. I would like to think she recognized in me the beginnings of an artist. More likely, she just appreciated having at least one student who took the work seriously. Or maybe she sensed, without knowing why, that I, too, like she, was a stranger in a strange land.

  Near the end of the first week, as I came up the stairs, headed toward Dean Varnadoe’s room, I found Arch Creigh waiting outside the door, leaning against the wall, flipping through a copy of Richard Wright’s Black Boy.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hey, bud,” he said. “Thought you’d never get here.”

  “What are you reading?”