Guests on Earth: A Novel

by Lee Smith

  PERHAPS YOU FEEL that I am straying from my announced subject, which is Mrs. Fitzgerald. Yet it is impossible, as you see, for me to single her out from among all those others who composed the larger picture of our life as we lived it there upon that mountain at that time. Sometimes I see it as a vast painting rather like a diorama, yet in the style of Brueghel, densely populated with colorful people spread out over the rolling slopes, doing odd things perhaps, yet each one integral to the whole, and safe within the frame. At any rate this was how I experienced my life then: caught up, contained, and comforted by the routine that it had been Dr. C’s particular genius to devise.

  Of course dire things were always happening—some of these I knew about at the time; others I learned about later. There were several locked wards, as well as individual isolation rooms and a hypothermia chamber in which sedated patients were placed in “mummy bags” so that their body temperature could be lowered with a refrigerant. The frequently used metrazol and insulin shock treatments were administered on the top floor of Highland Hall, though Dr. Carroll had now discontinued his controversial “horse serum treatment,” in which equine blood had been injected directly into a schizophrenic’s cerebrospinal fluid. Ambulances went screeching up and down the hill frequently in the middle of the night. People appeared suddenly with bandages, or bruises, while others simply disappeared from our midst with no warning and no discussion afterward—for life at Highland Hospital was lived strictly in the present tense. We were discouraged from asking about anyone else, we were never told what happened to anyone, and we were not encouraged to speak about ourselves, either, so that we knew only the most rudimentary facts about each other. Introspection was discouraged even in our consultations with the doctors, contrary to the in-depth analysis then taking place at other institutions, pioneered by Freud and Jung.

  So my initial encounters with Mrs. Fitzgerald occurred within this larger—this very large and ever-changing—context, being significant, yet no more significant really than my interactions with a score of others, and always superseded in importance by my relationship with the Carrolls. It was only later, in retrospect, and in light of what was to come, that these scenes stand out.

  And one of the most frightening of all, for me, stands out in silhouette against the vision of a leaping fire.

  CHAPTER 3

  THIS INCIDENT OCCURRED IN September when a good-sized group of us, children and adults alike, about thirty in all, including staff, took a picnic hike up to Point Lookout on Balsam Mountain. These outings were much sought after by us all, dangled like carrots before us, the “prize” for the effort we had exerted, the progress we were supposedly making. I was surprised to find Robert in the group, since he was so notoriously resistant to the program. Yet there he was, too, in striped shorts paired incongruously with a white dress shirt, knobby knees and fragile legs ending in those high black socks and big brown boots. He carried a rustic walking stick with the bark still on it and wore a silly straw hat too small for his head. His forehead gleamed hugely, whitely, in the sun. His blue eyes swam behind his glasses. He looked like a crazy professor out for an afternoon nature hike. Suddenly I realized that this was a picture of exactly who he would probably become. The wide smile broke across his face when he saw me. Lily Ponder was right, I realized: he did like me. And I did like him, though I also hated him a little bit, too, for his weakness, his oddness, his frailty.

  I liked others on the picnic trip, as well: Lily herself, for she had turned out to be wonderfully outspoken and acerbic, once she began to communicate; fat, flushed Virginia Day, who was calming down; and of course Miss Tippin, funny and odd as usual.

  Mrs. Fitzgerald, always an enthusiastic participant in any sort of athletic activity, was a part of this group, too. I had not seen her for a while. Someone said that she had been on a family vacation trip to Virginia Beach, which might be why she appeared somewhat moodier and more distant than usual that afternoon as we all waited for the van. Patients generally did not do well when they went to visit their families, returning to us disheveled and nervous. Perhaps I should be thankful to have no family at all, I thought—though I didn’t really believe this, of course. Mrs. Fitzgerald stood apart from the rest of us, smoking and frowning and moving her mouth occasionally, as if she carried on a dialogue with herself.

  FINALLY, THE VAN and several cars arrived, followed by a truck carrying our food and other supplies. It would travel by another road, up the back of the mountain, so that our picnic would be ready when we arrived. Mr. Axelrod, the head physical education teacher, was in charge of this outing, wearing his customary cowboy hat and sunglasses as he read our names off a clipboard and directed us into the cars. “Come on now, put that out! No smoking in the van.” He hustled the reluctant Mrs. Fitzgerald along. She got in last, up front with him. Robert went in one of the cars. I sat with Lily in the very back of the van, trying to ignore a new arrival, Melissa Handy, who sat weeping in the seat in front of us.

  The wind from the open windows blew our hair about; it felt wonderful. Miss Phoebe Dean, the music teacher, came down the aisle passing out tangerines, a rare treat. Melissa Handy turned around and gave hers to us without explanation, then said, “Do you ever feel that there is another person, a different person, inside your body clawing at the inside of your head? Clawing to get out?”

  “No,” said Lily.

  “Bitch,” said Melissa.

  We split her tangerine and ate it.

  Miss Phoebe made us sing “The Old Gray Mare” and “Red River Valley,” her own operatic voice jumping and vaulting over ours. She was also the Christian Youth Director at a large church in downtown Asheville.

  “Showoff.” Lily had an opinion about everything; I admired this.

  Our van parked in a big lot at the foot of the mountain, which rose majestically into the clouds, far bigger than I had imagined when I had lain watching it from the window of my hospital room. A sign said RAINBOW TRAIL, which apparently began right there, disappearing into the trees.

  “I think I’ll just wait right he-ah,” said a very Southern lady whose name I didn’t know.

  “Not on your life!” said Mr. Axelrod. “Up and at ’em, that’s a girl!” He practically pushed her out of the van.

  The lady turned to look at him, her eyes brimming over with tears. “I was the Maid of Cotton,” she said hopelessly.

  Robert was poking about in the dirt with his stick.

  “Who’s that?” Melissa Handy asked, pointing at him.

  I didn’t answer, embarrassed to be his friend.

  Mr. Axelrod put us into a line, then marched to the front of it. “We’re off!” he sang out, waving his red kerchief in the air.

  “Jesus,” Lily said.

  We watched as Mr. Axelrod’s hat and kerchief disappeared into the yawning green forest, followed by all the rest of us, Miss Tippin’s bouncing brown ponytail, Robert’s stupid hat, the bald pate of Mr. Pugh, the science and math teacher, the frizzy-headed Gould twins.

  “I don’t want to do this,” Melissa said, pulling back.

  “Nonsense!” Lily barked. She and I grabbed Melissa’s bony hands and off we went, all of us, on the Rainbow Trail. At first the path was broad and nearly level, emerging from the forest to cross a natural meadow filled with beautiful flowers. “Bee balm, goldenrod, daisies, milkweed,” intoned Mr. Pugh. All of these flowers were blooming as hard and as fast as they could, I realized, blooming their heads off because winter was on the way. They would die soon, all of them. It was autumn already, though they called it Indian Summer. I wondered why. I wondered if Indians had lived here, real Indians, on this mountain, walking up this trail where we were walking, putting their moccasins where my feet now trod. It made me feel important, even sort of holy, thinking this. The Rainbow Trail rose through giant pines, the mountain falling away on one side to a deep gorge where a loud creek came leaping down from ledge to ledge over enormous rocks.

  “Snakeroot, yarrow, St. John’s wort,”
said Mr. Pugh.

  “That’s a remedy for depression,” Robert announced.

  “Well pick us some then, honey,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said, and everybody laughed.

  The piney smell was overwhelming now, brisk and healthy in my nose, making my eyes smart. It reminded me suddenly of getting off the train with Mrs. Hodges ages and ages ago. It was jarring to realize how different I felt now from that pale, thin little girl standing on the platform in the cold January wind, clutching a leather suitcase that wasn’t even her own. I could see her as if in an old photograph, like the photographs on the walls of that house in Metairie—someone I didn’t know.

  A wooden bridge took us over the creek to a platform where we stood to observe the Rainbow Falls, a great sheet of water that plunged into a deep pool creating a spray of mist that turned all colors in the sun. We couldn’t talk or hear; the noise of the falls was deafening. We jumped back, too late to avoid the freezing spray that had already covered us, head to toe. This is me, I thought suddenly. I am alive, and I will remember this. I have, too. That moment, that diamond shaft of sunlight piercing the canopy of trees to shoot through the Rainbow Falls, our entire ragtag company jeweled and beautiful. Miss Phoebe made us sing “On Top of Old Smoky” as we continued up the mountain. “Now courting’s a pleasure, and parting is grief, but a false-hearted lover is worse than a thief!” Lily and Melissa and I sang at the top of our lungs, holding hands.

  Robert and Mr. Pugh discussed nature versus nurture, endlessly.

  At last we reached Point Lookout, our destination—not the top of the mountain, but a rocky bald overlook with a 180-degree view, the land below us a living quilt so pretty that it took our breath away. Sky was everywhere, boundless sky, with here and there a crow or eagle, weaving and dipping or soaring, borne up on the brilliant air. Blue upon blue, the mountains stretched into distance until finally they became a part of the sky. Here and there a steeple rose from the little quilted towns or communities below, or a thin line of smoke that soon disappeared. Fluffy white clouds sailed past, like a flock of sheep.

  My chums and I drank dippers full of ice-cold water from a spring over by the tree line, then flung ourselves down, panting, on the smooth rocks still warm from the sun. Their heat filled my body with an indescribable sense of well-being.

  “Look!” Lily cried, pointing up at the clouds. “That big one, right there—it’s an elephant!”

  “I see a dragon,” Melissa called out.

  I saw it, too, then; it reminded me of a float in the Mardi Gras parade, and I imagined my mother, riding atop and waving.

  “Look, there’s the Buddha.” Robert was the only person who would have thought of this, but sure enough, there was the Buddha up in the sky, with his huge round stomach.

  The staff built a fire and lit it, while Henry and Johnson, two black men who worked in the kitchen, unpacked the food. Suddenly I was starving, but we all had to wait while Miss Phoebe, who loved to pray, said a long blessing, and then Mr. Axelrod said he wanted to say a blessing, too, which was: “Good food, good meat, praise God, let’s eat!” Everybody laughed and finally we got to open our boxes of cold fried chicken, deviled eggs, and ham biscuits. For dessert, we were instructed upon the making of “some-mores,” which required us to toast marshmallows on long sticks prepared and handed out by Mr. Axelrod, then put the marshmallows all hot and gooey into a graham cracker sandwich containing a Hershey bar. These were indescribably delicious—even more so since Dr. Carroll was usually quite strict about our dietary restrictions, with very little sugar allowed.

  Miss Phoebe sang “Shenandoah” and then the lady from Memphis did “Hardhearted Hannah (the Vamp of Savannah),” belting it out like a nightclub singer. I liked that one better.

  Robert, who had wandered away from the fire, came back with his hat off, all squashed up in his hands. “For you,” he said, holding it out to me.

  “Whatcha got?” asked Mr. Axelrod, drawing near, but Robert looked only at me.

  “Open it,” he said, and I did, very slowly, after straightening the brim. A beautiful orange and black butterfly fluttered out into our midst.

  “Monarch,” announced Mr. Pugh definitively.

  “Danaus plexippus,” Robert said. “One of the few insects capable of making a transatlantic crossing.”

  “Good-bye, good-bye,” I screamed with my chums, watching my butterfly flicker out across the bald then shoot straight up into the air until it was lost in the sky.

  “Atypical behavior,” Mr. Pugh muttered.

  “Thank you,” I said directly to Robert, who ducked his head and stumbled away.

  “What next?” Miss Tippin smiled, watching him go.

  It grew chilly up there as the afternoon wore on, winding down. We drew close around the fire, lounging on the old blankets they had brought for us. People were dozing off. It was an unusual time, a precious time for us all. Then Johnson began to move about purposefully, putting things back in the truck. Henry stirred up the fire and put a big pot of coffee on a grate directly above it.

  “Better wake up!” Mr. Axelrod clapped his hands. “Time to get going! It’ll get dark before you know it.”

  This seemed odd, as the bald was still bathed in sunshine. Henry and Johnson poured hot black coffee into tin cups and handed them all around, to us as well as the adults. The strong, acrid coffee almost burned my tongue, but it was wonderful. I held my cup out for more, as did Mrs. Fitzgerald, now seated beside me in the great circle around the fire.

  “Evalina?” Suddenly Robert was standing behind me. He leaned over and thrust his hat, crushed again, into my lap.

  “Oh, brother,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald.

  Everyone looked on while I opened the hat slowly to reveal a wet green lizard, iridescent in the sunshine as it twisted and turned, breathtakingly beautiful. “Oooh!” we all gasped as one. It was the loveliest gift I have ever received, then or now, though Lily, on my left, was afraid of it, scrambling to get away.

  But Mrs. Fitzgerald muttered, “Stupid, stupid.” She grabbed the hat from my hands and flung it into the fire.

  It was gone in an instant as new yellow flames leaped up to engulf the straw. Pandemonium ensued—several people screaming, others running away from the fire into the woods with staff members in pursuit. Robert and I stayed right where we were, eyes fixed upon the fire. So did Mrs. Fitzgerald. When all traces of hat and lizard were gone, I turned to find Mrs. Fitzgerald staring intently, almost hungrily, into the flames.

  “I don’t understand why everybody is so upset,” she said petulantly. “It didn’t hurt it. Salamanders live in fire, don’t you know anything?”

  “That is not true,” Robert said. “That is only a legend, a myth. This was a real salamander, genus Plethodontidae, and you have killed it.”

  “It is true, you little idiot,” she snapped at him, darkening.

  “How do you know it, then?” Lily asked.

  Mrs. Fitzgerald turned to face us. “I am a salamander,” she said. “I have lived in the fire for years, yet here I am.” She held out her tanned arm, palm up. “Touch me,” she whispered. “I am still alive, as real as you are.”

  We drew back, horrified, yet again I felt that awful closeness, that familiarity I had felt when I saw her for the very first time, sitting on the rock. I started to cry.

  “Fools!” Mrs. Fitzgerald spat at us. “Silly little fools!” She started laughing. She flung back her head, laughing.

  “Come along now, we’ll give you a ride back, easy does it . . .” Suddenly Mr. Axelrod and Mr. Pugh were hustling Mrs. Fitzgerald along, one on either side of her, over to the food truck. Miss Tippin hugged me, wordlessly, stroking my hair. She held me like that while Henry and Johnson and some of the others doused the fire and scattered the ashes about. Mr. Axelrod returned to lead us off down the mountain immediately, single file, urging us to move along as rapidly as possible, to beat the lengthening shadows. Robert stumbled along somewhere ahead of me. The Maid of Cotton was crying. Nobod
y sang.

  I GOT MY first and only glimpse of Mrs. Fitzgerald’s famous husband later that November, when Mrs. Hodges took me on a long-promised visit to the Grove Park Inn, where two of her daughters worked, one as a chambermaid and one as a hostess in the lobby. Moira, this one, was a big, buxom girl with a ready smile and a headful of carrot curls. She waved at us from her desk in the middle of the cavernous lobby, which took my breath away, as had the grand entrance out front.

  “She’ll join us later for a bite, when things slow down,” Mrs. Hodges said. “Now what do you think, eh? Quite the spot, isn’t it?”

  I was too overwhelmed to answer immediately. The Grove Park Inn had been built on a grand scale, as if it were a hotel for giants. The lobby in which we stood was by far the largest room I had ever been inside, as big as an athletic field, all wood and stone, with immense stone fireplaces blazing at either end. The rocking chairs lined up before the fireplaces were filled with people talking and sipping from cups or glasses, while uniformed waiters and waitresses moved about. Groups of comfortable furniture filled the lobby itself, as if there were many little living rooms, each with its own leather sofas and upholstered armchairs and tables and lamps, then a bar area over near the windows that featured tiny round tables, all of them occupied by chatting, gesticulating people. Beautiful people. A man with slicked-back hair, in a tuxedo, played tinkly jazz on a grand piano.