The Promise of Rest

by Reynolds Price

  Hutch fished in his pocket, found a dollar in change and held it toward Foster.

  Foster said “What you buying?”

  Hutch said “Not buying. I’m thanking you, Son.”

  “For what?”

  “Don’t question your luck; just take it.”

  The older boy said “Take it, fool.”

  But Foster was already on his bike and bound away.

  The older boy said “I’ll give it to him for you.”

  Hutch gave him the change; and as he left too, Hutch called to his back “Go straight home and stay.” In the backwash of both boys’ vanishing scorn, he felt like the primal sire of the race. It helped him smile.

  25

  AT that same moment Wade’s eyes came open in his darkened room in Hutch’s house—not that he knew any name for the place. By now he could see no more than a kind of pearly light in which occasional tall or round shapes stirred faintly at a distance like hands in milk. He said “Well, I’m here”; and his left hand scratched toward the edge of the mattress, feeling for his exact whereabouts. He found another hand, warmer than his and softer, though large. The arm above it was bare to the shoulder, where he felt a soft shirt. Wade started to say “Fe-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood—” Then he lost the rest of the saying. So he laughed. “Who’s in my bed?”

  Mait said “Your Mait.” He was lying full-clothed on the top of Wade’s cover, a handspan apart.

  Wade said “Hey, Mait.” Then “Who the hell are you?”

  “A young short guy—twenty-one years old though: no minor, don’t worry, no charges are pending.”

  Wade’s whole head seemed to retreat a long way. He finally said “I beg to differ.”

  “How?”

  “I’m convicted. And sentenced.”

  At once Wade had pushed Mait past his calm moorings. Mait laughed anyhow. “Convicted of what? Nothing worse than roadhogging.”

  Again Wade paused. Mait’s hand was still in reach, so Wade took it again and thought he pressed it—the pressure was barely detectable. “I think I’m guilty of just one thing.”

  “Want to tell Father Mait?”

  “If I do, will he trust me and not make the same mistake again in his entire life?”

  “A promise—Mait’ll give it a serious shot.”

  Wade’s lips were so dry they stuck together and only opened when he shook his head. “I was stingy as some old village miser.”

  Mait said “I heard otherwise—rumor says you were truly a gent and a spender.”

  “Too much of a gent—way too much. But barely a spender. Oh Jesus, no.”

  “You failed to buy what?”

  Wade knew right off. “Oh love. Fine bodies. Warm cries in the night.”

  Mait laughed again.

  “I mean every word. Don’t hoard your body.”

  “But Wade, your body’s what’s punishing you—using your body anyhow.” Mait bit his lip to have said the word punishing; too late now.

  The huge skull agreed. “For a few good years with one splendid man. One woman, for a few months before I actually figured who I needed, before I knew Wyatt. One tacky boy before I left home, a senior at State. God, I could have known every man in the nation, from stem to stern, and not be dying faster than this.”

  Mait said “You’ve got a point. It’s scary as hell.”

  “It’s waste and you know it. No, child, listen and recall this forever—remember Wade Mayfield tried to save you from stinginess, as mean a failing as anything else but strangling children.” Any person with eyes, seated by Wade, could have seen he was sane and urgent in his warning. What a watcher might have failed to see was how unstoppably the whole past life of his family surged in Wade and pressed out the news he’d passed to one boy, one who might or might not have the wits and courage to use it well.

  Young as he was, Mait knew to thank him, though he thought at the time Wade’s waving me on toward a death like his own.

  26

  IT was well past six in the evening before Hutch took the last turn in the drive and saw home, broad on its green hill, no sign of trouble, a rest for the mind. In the final twenty minutes of the trip, he’d all but panicked in the simple need to see Wade again and know that the boy had waited to see him and would recognize his face and accept his gift. Hutch had brought Wade a gift from Richmond, a small piece of staurolite, a dark brown stone that occurs in the natural shape of a cross and is mined in the mountains of Virginia.

  Hutch checked his pocket for the stone cross, found it, then searched the house windows for life. The sun stalled, ruthless, above the tree line; but in every window some lamp burned. Hutch thought They’re gone and they left in a hurry. Mait’s bike still waited in the back turn circle and a strange old Buick. They called the ambulance or Ann came and got them.

  By the time Hutch reached the door, he nearly believed it. But he turned the knob—open on cool air and the sound of laughter, a man’s voice deeper than Wade’s or Mait’s. Hutch waited in place. Who on Earth?

  Then Mait’s voice called out “Welcome back.” His undiscourageable face appeared at the end of the hall, in Wade’s doorway. He was wearing khaki shorts and a green tank top.

  Behind Mait, a taller darker man stood and faced Hutch squarely. He was in the act of donning a T-shirt.

  Hutch failed to recognize the man; and when a surge of resentment struck him, Hutch heard himself say to Mait “You called in strangers?”

  Mait’s face collapsed.

  The other man said “Mr. Mayfield, I’m Cam—Cameron Mapleson. We met at Maitland’s.” When Hutch stared on in obvious anger, Cam said “I was badly dressed at the time—it was dawn—and I’m still sorry.”

  Then Hutch remembered their awkward meeting and nodded curtly; but he went on feeling invaded, assaulted. Why did Mait feel the right to bring in company?

  Cam understood. He came halfway down the hall toward Hutch. “Sir, this visit was my idea. I had the evening off, I knew Mait was staying out here with Wade, I wanted to see them both and I stopped by. I thought I might help someway, with my background.” He extended his massive right hand to Hutch.

  Finally Hutch came to meet him and took the plainly guileless greeting with the trace of a smile. “I’m just an old bear, sorry—guarding my cave.”

  Mait’s guilty face was still at Wade’s door, well beyond them.

  So Hutch said “Who’s feeding this great multitude?”

  From his bed Wade tried to call out “Me,” a broken syllable.

  Hutch could hear it but, to Mait and Cam, it sounded like trouble. They both looked to Hutch for directions. You deal with the crazy.

  Hutch lowered his voice. “Let me see Wade alone. Then I’ll cook us supper.”

  Relieved, the two young men agreed and moved past Hutch toward the bright-lit front room.

  When Hutch got to Wade, the boy was lying flat with both eyes open toward the ceiling. For the first time in weeks, the eyes had the look of real connection; they were almost surely seeing something beyond them in the world.

  Hutch leaned to the forehead and kissed it—cool. “What’re you watching, dear friend?”

  Wade tried to find him but settled on the wrong place, the foot of the bed. “I’m running our old home movies by the mile.”

  “Which reel?” There were years of old eight-millimeter film in cans in the attic—Hutch and Ann’s honeymoon in Charleston, Wade’s whole childhood; Hutch’s grandmother Eva in the year of her death, daunting as any Cretan priestess brandishing gold snakes; Wade’s graduation from architecture school at N.C. State and departing from the airport for his job in New York.

  Wade said “I’m watching, over and over the ones of you as a boy up at Strawson’s.” There were no such films. Any movies Wade watched were confined to the screen of his uncertain mind.

  Hutch understood that, but still it set off a recollection. He’d bought the movie camera just before he and Ann were married in the fifties. To a mind as visually grounded as H
utch’s, in those years even his private events had hardly seemed real until they’d been witnessed by some kind of camera and stored as proof for future reference—We had this life, it’s not all gone, I can bring if back partway. So he said to Wade “I wish we did have some record of me. I’ve got no idea how I really looked or moved in the early years, just that I never smiled in snapshots. I was always posing ferociously as the Hope of Mankind or the Blazing Avenger of Sensitive Souls. There’s an all but daily record of you in your first year, your first six Christmases until you told me I was Santa Claus, and I beat a retreat.”

  Wade said “I’ll bum those.”

  You couldn’t strike a match if your life depended on it. But Hutch said “They’ll just mean more and more to me.”

  “You can’t ever watch them again though, can you?”

  “Why?”

  Wade’s voice slid into the high singsong he used more and more. “Go incinerate every one of them now. You’re in my command.”

  Hutch said “I don’t watch them more than once in ten years; but no, they’ll be precious further down the road.”

  Wade said “They’ll kill you—on sight—you well know that: watching me young and well, in my right mind.”

  Hutch agreed in silence, then quickly moved the subject aside. “Enjoy your break, your two days with Maitland?”

  Wade waited a long time, then ducked his head hard. “They stripped buck naked for me, let me feel skin. Mait and Cam—they mainly let me listen while they did it.” Wade was plainly not joking, he seemed clearheaded, then he faced Hutch and smiled the first abandoned smile he’d managed in months. “I’d forgotten hair, Hutch—sweet private hair. Don’t it heal your heart?” It sounded like unimpeachable thanks.

  And it took Hutch awhile to process the news with no resentment. Finally he granted the truth of Wade’s question. “Hair’s one of the absolute good things, true—the right kind of hair.” He reached for the bones of Wade’s hand on the sheet, lifted them gently toward his own dry lips and barely brushed them—the withered whorls that had been fingerprints.

  Wade said “Don’t stop. I’m living for pleasure entirely these days.” Then he gave the strongest laugh he’d given since before Wyatt died; he heard it himself and wondered at his strength.

  Hutch laid the cross-shaped staurolite in the palm of Wade’s hand. “A little gift from Old Virginny.”

  Wade’s fingers felt it hungrily, then took it to his lips, forced the long teeth open and the lips sucked it in.

  Hutch thought Oh Son, don’t swallow a brown rock. But he only said “It’s not candy, boy. Don’t break a good molar.”

  Wade said “I know it’s the Holy Cross. I’m draining it dry. It knows my name.” In another five seconds he’d sunk into sleep.

  Taking a clean rubber glove from the drawer, Hutch carefully opened the clenched jaw and teeth, felt for the staurolite with his finger and fished it out. He set it on Wade’s bedside table, went to his own room and washed the trip from his face and hands, then went to see if Mait and Cam were gone.

  No, they were silent, back in the kitchen, well into cooking clam sauce for pasta—their own idea.

  Hutch was too tired to feel resentment.

  27

  BUT an hour later, with the food and wine and low-keyed laughter, Hutch was partly restored. The ache for Wade was a steady presence, sure to last as long as Hutch lasted and to blare out unpredictably in solitude. Yet the nearness here of Cam and Mait had worked to remind Hutch of time’s persistence and the hell-bent course of every life except the self-haters who circle, slow-motion. Finally, when the dishes were washed and the two guests stood to leave, Hutch confronted them, smiling. “You gave Wade a brief exhibición I hear?”

  Mait didn’t know the word.

  But Cam had heard it years back from his father, a U.S. Navy vet from the days when Havana offered sailors a wealth of booths and small theaters where women, men and assorted animals supplied their starved eyes with live exhibitions of mammal flesh at the outer limits of its will to join, delight or torment other flesh. So it was Cam’s turn to look trapped and sheepish. Still he tried to put his best foot forward. “Wade remembered and told you?”

  Hutch said “Long enough to tell me he’d felt skin again.”

  Mait understood at last and went through his full regulation response—flushing, stammering at various pitches. “Sir, Wade asked us.”

  But Cam faced Hutch. “Not truly, no, he didn’t. It was my idea and it went a little further than I intended. You feel insulted?”

  When Hutch kept silent, Mait said “We just sat lightly on the bed by Wade and talked—in our birthday suits for half an hour.”

  Not glancing to Mait, Cam said straight to Hutch “That’s a lie, sir. We made flat-out love in easy reach of Wade.”

  “On that narrow bed?” Hutch was asking Cam.

  But Cam looked to Mait and gave a slow gesture. Over to you.

  So Maitland said “Wade asked us to—”

  In a calm whisper Cam said “No Wade didn’t. We offered it to him—I made the offer. I’m his age, I can feel his loneliness, I had the right.”

  Hutch bridled. “The right? Where’s your half of the deed? This is my house, Cameron, while I draw breath.”

  Cam held in place at the table and took it, eye to eye with Hutch.

  Mait’s face had reddened to the point of real danger. He nodded to Hutch though. “Wade liked it, right off.”

  Cam leaned forward finally. “Sir, I don’t think we harmed your son in the slightest. He’s been so far gone from life and caring, I’d all but guarantee we did him a kindness—a service at least.”

  Hutch said “I’m sorry you can think that simply.” He didn’t feel puritan outrage or envy, just one more taste of bone-aching regret that once again Wade had been forced up against a human pleasure he’d never share again.

  Cam said “Don’t be sorry. And think how wrong you may well be. Whatever Mait says, I can tell you this—I never did anything any more intimate with anyone else, male or female, than what the two of us did for Wade. I’ll never forget it.”

  Hutch said “You both took precautions?—Wade’s a very sick boy.”

  Cam said “Rest your mind. I work with the sick.”

  Then oddly, for the first time in years, Hutch was ambushed by concern for Ann’s rights in this. Ann would hate this; she’d blister us all, the moment she knew. He even said to Mait “Did his mother drop by?”

  “This morning early. Then she called up again in midafternoon.”

  “How much did you tell her?”

  Mait said “Cam wasn’t even here that early. I told her the truth—Wade and I were fine; you’d been delayed but would be here by dark.”

  Hutch had to say “But what if she’d walked in on you?”

  Mait looked to Cam.

  Cam said “We’d have stood up and acted polite.”

  Hutch imagined the scene and couldn’t think whether to laugh or howl. “She’d have shot you both dead—she packs a pistol” (Ann did, quite legally in her purse, ever since she moved to the deep sticks alone). By then Hutch could risk a smile.

  Mait said “Mr. Mayfield, I’m apologizing.”

  “To me?” Hutch said.

  Cam said “I’m not.”

  Hutch said “I wouldn’t accept it if you did.” He turned to Mait, who was still humiliated. “Friend, thanks for the time, if not the sideshow. We may need more of your presence yet; I’ll make it worth your while, as I told you.”

  Mait said “Your money won’t work with me.”

  Hutch was stumped.

  Mait said “I owe you anything you can ask—you gave me my life. Don’t even say money, sir.”

  Cam was standing by, behind Mait’s chair. Now he leaned and folded Mait into his arms, rubbing his chin on the crown of Mait’s head.

  And to Hutch, Mait’s outburst felt like as good a reward as he’d ever get for his years of teaching; the sight of Cam’s eyes and face w
ere a gift too. So Hutch said “My friends mostly call me Hutch—please no more sirs, not from either one of you.” When he’d shaken their hands, he felt so empty that he nearly begged “Better let me go rest.”

  But Wade’s voice sang out through his open door yards away, a high soft line from “The Last Rose of Summer”—“Left blooming alone.”

  Frail as the sound was, Hutch knew the voice well enough to know that Wade’s lips were grinning.

  Everyone chuckled and Mait and Cam left, not turning back on their full day.

  28

  BY half past nine Wade was washed and diapered and back asleep. Hutch had locked the house and was in his own room, ready for bed, when the telephone rang. Two rooms away, the message machine broadcast Ann’s voice. “Hutch, can yon hear me?”

  He badly wanted to ignore her, but he knew she’d panic and drive straight over to check on Wade. So slowly he took up the nearest phone. “—Just barely. I’m exhausted.”

  “The trip was hard?”

  “I had some car trouble; but no, I’m just not the wandering bard I was.”

  “You’re no worse than tired though?” Her time among lawyers was telling on Ann; she sounded relentless as any prosecutor.

  “Christ, no, lady—I’m no worse than beat. Not to the best of my knowledge at least.”

  “You can’t fail, Hutch.”

  “I don’t plan to fail. But I need to rest.” He was rushing her. “What’s on your mind?”

  She balked. “You’re conceding then that I’ve got a mind?”

  “Games, Ann, games. I resign; play solitaire. Sincere good night.”

  “Wait—it’s been a rough two days.”

  “It’s been a rough life.” When she didn’t agree, Hutch briefly heard Alice back this morning—You’ve frozen her out—so he said “What’s the latest?”

  Her voice moved through it like a memorized speech, with pauses and feeling but clearly practiced (which made Hutch despise it, from the first word on). “I need one promise from you, just one. I’ll even pay for it—don’t hire young Maitland Moses again to sit with Wade. I’ll pay for a nurse if you have to leave. When’s Hart Salter coming back from England?”