During the fish fry, I eyed Pat nervously to see if he was picking up on any of the anti-Catholic sentiments expressed by some of the Bible-thumpers, but he assured me later that it was nothing new to him. Growing up Catholic in the Deep South, he’d been exposed to it before, especially on his mother’s side of the family. “Relax, kiddo,” he said, patting me on the back. “I’ve made my living writing about crazy families. Yours is no crazier than anyone else’s.”
Although I smiled in relief, I have no doubt that his assessment would’ve been different if Uncle Charles had been there.
* * *
I’d given Daddy two of Pat’s books, The Water Is Wide and The Great Santini, as a way of introducing him to the man I’d hooked up with. It’s the complexities of families that always fascinated Pat, and my father was a study. As the oldest of five and a young man during the Depression, he didn’t have the same opportunities his brothers and sisters had, and he hadn’t been to college. You’d never know it, however. Although a rough-hewn farmer, gruff and grizzled, my father read voraciously and could talk about science, world history, and politics with anyone. A human calculator, he added long columns of numbers in his head. He kept wooden pencils that he whittled to a point with his pocketknife, and little lined notebooks that he wrote in, daily journals about crops and livestock. As a boy he’d wanted to be a writer too, he told me once. Pat’s favorite thing about Daddy was that he listened to opera music while driving his tractor. I’ve never even tried to figure that one out.
After reading The Water Is Wide, Daddy started referring to Pat as Conrack. When he first met Pat, they sat in the den and talked about the book, and the early days of school integration in the South. My sisters and I eavesdropped from the kitchen, exchanging worried glances. Although I’d never known my father to be prejudiced, he was hardly a study in political correctness. He said what he pleased and if anyone didn’t like it, too damn bad. I need not have worried, though; Daddy was on his best behavior and surprisingly honest with Pat. “Look here, Conrack,” we heard him say, “I was raised to think that colored folks weren’t as good as us. They were treated terrible, you know? I’m downright ashamed of it, but that’s the way it was. I’m proud that most folks aren’t like that anymore. It ought not make any difference what color anybody is.”
The conversation moved on to The Great Santini and military life. A WWII veteran, Daddy had been a master sergeant in the army. Beckie, Nancy Jane, and I eyed one another in astonishment when we heard Daddy tell Pat that his father was a lot like the Great Santini, something he’d never told us. His generation was not the kind to reveal personal information about their families. “My daddy used to hit me upside the head so hard I swear that’s the reason I never could half hear,” my father told Pat in a low voice. “He worked me like a mule and beat me when I didn’t do things to suit him.”
Neither Beckie nor I was as surprised to hear this as Nancy Jane was. She was devastated. The youngest grandchild, Nancy Jane had been her grandfather’s pet and had adored him. Much like Santini, our grandfather had mellowed in his old age to become more lovable. But Daddy had never said one word to any of us about his father’s mistreatment. After hearing that conversation, I realized Pat had a rare gift; he could draw a story out of anybody, and they’d tell him things they’d never told anyone else. I saw this happen countless times over the years. Later my sisters and I tried to get Daddy to tell us more about our grandfather, but Daddy waved us off, closemouthed.
What Pat liked best about going to the farm was watching my father cook, which he did with great zeal. After Mother died, Daddy stepped up to the plate, so to speak, and cooked mostly from his abundant garden, which he took great pride in. My sons and nephews (my sisters and I only had boys) relished their granddaddy’s cooking for the same reason that Pat did—bacon drippings, grease, and lard. When Daddy had a heart attack in his early eighties, however, his doctors laid down the law. The next time we came for a visit, the breakfast table was different. Daddy had made his iron-skillet biscuits, but gone were the platters of bacon and freshly ground sausage patties. In their place were little links of turkey sausage, unsalted grits, and eggs lightened with extra whites. Next to the black pepper, which normally would’ve speckled Daddy’s pan gravy, was salt substitute.
Daddy gave it a try, I’ll give him that. Taking his seat at the head of the table, he broke open a biscuit and motioned toward Pat. “Pass me that play-like-it’s-butter, Conrack.” Gamely, Daddy sopped at the strange-looking eggs and tasteless grits with his biscuit, speared a turkey link, then scowled when he took a bite. Still scowling as he chewed, he threw down his napkin as though throwing down the gauntlet. “This goddamn stuff tastes like puredee shit,” he growled.
“Daddy!” my sister Nancy Jane gasped, glancing Pat’s way. He was still new to the family and she didn’t want our father’s language shocking her brother-in-law, the esteemed wordsmith. She had yet to learn that Daddy’s colorful vocabulary was tame compared to Pat’s.
My father suddenly pushed back from the table, gathered up the platters, then dumped their contents into the trash can. Next went the play-like-it’s-butter and salt substitute. We watched speechless and wide-eyed, but he wasn’t finished. On a roll, Daddy took his newly prescribed bottles of heart meds from the cabinet, opened the back door, and tossed the contents of the bottles into the backyard. Why there instead of the trash can, I have no idea. Guess he was making a statement.
Squealing and jumping to their feet, Beckie and Nancy Jane ran outside to retrieve them. “You could’ve killed the dogs, Daddy!” Beckie screeched. Nancy Jane was more concerned with her father’s health than his coon dogs. Her eyes, as electric blue as Daddy’s, were flashing fire when she returned with a fistful of pills. “Don’t think you’re not taking these, dirt and all,” she told him furiously.
Daddy stood his ground. “I been feeling like hell ever since I got out of that hospital, and I know it’s those damn pills and that shitty food. I’m through with all of it.” And he was. Cooking happily with all the bacon fat and grease he wanted, he lived several more years. One cold morning in January, Beckie called me early. A teacher, she always checked on Daddy before going to school. As soon as I heard her teary voice, I knew. At age ninety-six, Elton King had died in his sleep.
Pat was one of the speakers at my father’s funeral, and he unintentionally gave us a gift that has carried me through many a dark moment. Even to this day, when I get down in the dumps, I remind myself of Pat’s slip of the tongue at Daddy’s funeral and giggle in remembrance. Although I missed it at the time, my sons didn’t. One or the other of them still call me about it sometimes, sputtering with laughter. “I got to thinking about Pat at Granddaddy King’s funeral,” my oldest son, Jim, said recently, “and laughed as hard as I did then.”
The folks at the funeral spoke of Daddy fondly, some referring to him as Uncle Elton, Mister Tony, or just Elton, depending on their relationship. He was well beloved, and everyone choked up talking about him. Even though he’d lived to a ripe old age and died the way I wish everyone could, peacefully in his sleep, he would still be greatly missed. A truly unique character—no one could take his place, or delight the kids with delicious stories of ghosties and goblins and growing up in the good old days. He was a gifted fisherman, hunter, and gardener who lived off the land, and no one else would be able to teach the boys how to do the same. My sons and nephews were devastated and wept openly at the sight of their grandfather in his casket, clad not in his Sunday best but in his favored work clothes, a denim shirt and dungarees.
The eulogy speakers brightened the mood of the funeral, as often happens, by telling funny stories about Daddy’s antics, including his throwing the heart pills into the backyard. Everyone was chuckling and smiling at one another until Pat got up to speak. True to form, Pat gave a stirring eulogy of such lyrical beauty that the audience fell silent, enraptured. No one in Pinckard, Alabama, had ever heard a eulogy like that, and folks would talk of
it for years to come.
The family still talks of the eulogy too, but for a different reason. Fortunately no one else caught Pat’s slip of the tongue except for the boys on the front pew. That row was reserved for the eight grandsons, who were serving as pallbearers.
“Elton King was a man who raised three beautiful and smart daughters, and his girls gave him a houseful of boys whom he adored,” Pat intoned solemnly, and I saw the grandsons beam proudly. “He worked hard all his life, a farmer who listened to opera music as he plowed the fields. Nothing ever came easy to Elton John, who survived both a great war and the Great Depression.”
I didn’t catch it, mainly because my attention had been caught by the row of pallbearers across the aisle. Their mood had suddenly changed. All grown now, the boys were clean-shaven and suited up, and it broke my heart to see them bend over in the pew and hide their faces in their hands. Pat continued his eulogy. “No; no one could say that Elton John had an easy life. He told me stories about his boyhood that brought tears to my eyes, and I didn’t have an easy boyhood either.”
Stifled sobs from the pallbearers’ pew caught my attention yet again, and my sisters reached for another Kleenex. Our boys were so broken up that they couldn’t even raise their heads, and their shoulders shook pitifully. Pat’s voice boomed out over the packed room. “Today we are here to bury Elton John, a great man whose like will not be known in these parts again. Yes, he lived a long and fruitful life, for which we are grateful, but he will be greatly missed. Rest in peace, my good man.”
As Pat returned to his seat by me, the pallbearers were finally able to raise their heads and wipe their eyes, arranging their expressions into more composed demeanors. Pat leaned over to whisper in my ear. “Wish I’d told some funny stories instead, but I didn’t realize I’d upset the boys so much. Even Jim was boo-hooing.”
Jim, who is much more dignified than his rowdy younger brothers and cousins, told me afterward that it was the “fruitful” that did him in. And that Pat never caught himself when he kept calling his father-in-law Elton John instead of Elton King. When we told Pat what he’d said, he threw back his head and roared with laughter, even more so when he realized the boys had been stifling their laughter, not weeping. No two people in the world, Pat declared, could’ve been as different as his father-in-law and the colorful British musician. The boys told him it was a good thing Granddaddy King had no notion who Elton John was. Otherwise he would’ve risen from his coffin and clobbered Pat over the head with his cane, right in the midst of the most moving eulogy anyone in Pinckard had ever heard.
Chapter 10
Joining Together, Coming Apart
During our years together Pat would write six books. Previously, his books had been more like a bloodletting than ink on paper. The Water Is Wide, The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides, and Beach Music all dealt with disturbing subjects such as violence and cruelty; abuse, both institutional and individual; and mental illness. By the time he and I were together, he’d switched gears to write a memoir about his love of sports. Writing My Losing Season was a new experience for Pat—not the writing of a memoir, but actually enjoying the process. He loved every minute he spent reuniting with his college basketball team, reliving their glory days (or lack thereof), and capturing the experience on the page. I’d never seen my husband so engrossed and happy.
The sports memoir was also the kind of project that allowed him to work on another book at the same time, The Pat Conroy Cookbook, which was more food memoir than cookbook. He worked with a talented cook he’d met on Hilton Head Island, Suzanne Pollak, to develop the recipes. Suzanne, her husband, Peter, and their family of four lively teenagers moved into a magnificent old house in Beaufort, which gave me the opportunity to get to know them. The house has historic significance not just for its age and beauty; it’s also one of the few remaining tabby houses in the Lowcountry. Tabby is an old-world type of concrete made primarily of crushed oyster shells and sand, which is uniquely textured and looks somewhat like stucco. I’ve often wondered why tabby has become a lost art in a place where oyster shells are so abundant.
It was during our friendship with the Pollaks, most likely during one of our many meals together, that Suzanne generously offered to host Megan’s wedding in the expansive and elegant gardens of their house. Suzanne, who’d been raised abroad during her father’s diplomatic service, was taken with all things southern, and Megan’s wedding plans captured her fancy. Pat told her that Megan wanted a traditional southern wedding with all the fixings. He saw it as a return to her roots, since Megan was born in Beaufort and raised in Atlanta. But after attending college in Colorado, she’d settled in San Francisco and become a California girl through and through. Even so, her doting father set out to make her southern wedding happen, though he couldn’t resist joking about it.
“You should see her billion-dollar wedding dress,” he told the Pollaks with a laugh. “She showed me a picture and it looks like something Scarlett O’Hara—or more likely Melanie Wilkes—might’ve worn, with a full skirt and white bridal veil covering her from head to toe. Tickles me good.”
Suzanne was quick to admonish him for his teasing. “That sounds lovely, Pat! You shouldn’t tease her like that. Most young girls dream of a traditional fairy-tale wedding.”
“Yeah, but there’s nothing remotely traditional about Megan,” Pat responded. “Take this fancy wedding she’s planning. What I want to know is this: Is she planning to walk down the aisle in a snow-white dress with her baby on her hip?”
* * *
With Megan in California and me in Beaufort, I took on the role of unofficial wedding planner, which turned out to be a lot more fun than I feared when I made the offer. Pat got used to me cornering him with notebook in hand, firing questions like an investigative reporter hot on the trail of a big case. He soon tired of it, though, and waved me off when I persisted in asking his opinion about various details of the wedding and events leading up to it. “What part of I don’t give a shit don’t you understand, Sandra?” he said in exasperation. “The whole thing’s going to be a clusterfuck, regardless.”
I was indignant. “It most certainly won’t be. How can you say such a thing?”
“Oh, come on, sweetheart,” Pat said wearily. “You know as well as I do. Get that much family together and you’re asking for trouble. Nothing sets off a family’s dysfunction like weddings and funerals.”
I had to admit that he had a point. Not only had I seen it in the hundreds of weddings and funerals I’d attended in my previous life as the preacher’s wife, I’d witnessed it in my own family as well. I was thirteen when my great-grandfather died but remember to this day the shocking scene that took place as the family lined up outside to follow the casket into the church. I never knew what it was about, nor did anyone in the family ever mention it. My grandfather and great-aunt got into a furious, whispered argument outside the church doors, and my very dignified and elegant great-aunt reared back and slapped my grandfather in the face. Eyes straight ahead, the family marched in behind the casket as though nothing had happened.
“There’s one good thing about family squabbles and dysfunction, and the nastier the better,” Pat told me. “You’re new to the game, but you’ll find out that it’s all material, fodder for our work. As a writer, you should start taking notes.”
“Spoken by the master,” I said. “Considering the families that God blessed us with, neither one of us will ever run out of material.”
Family! What can you say? My boys inadvertently supplied Pat with the answer to that age-old question when they told him about their father, the preacher man, and his tendency to repeat everything three times. Pat was perplexed until the boys explained that sermons always have three points, so it got drummed into preachers’ brains. The boys would demonstrate by doing imitations of their dad saying “Close the door, close the door, close the door” or “Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands.” The trilogy Pat loved
most was from a eulogy my ex gave for a sweet little old church lady. What everyone needed to remember about Mrs. Grundy, the preacher man intoned, is what she loved best in all the world: family, family, family. Thereafter anytime Pat got exasperated with the difficulties, heartaches, and worries that happened in the most intimate of relationships, he’d look at me, sigh, and say “Family . . . Family . . . Family.”
* * *
Megan’s wedding would be the first occasion in which our combined families (which Pat and I referred to as the Brady Bunch on steroids) would be together at the same time. I couldn’t help but wonder how that would jibe and how folks would get along. True, our families had some things in common, but were those enough to make them enjoy each other’s company? I had no idea and wasn’t especially eager to find out the hard way, when everyone was under one roof without an easy escape route.
I raised the question with Pat, curious to see what he thought. Not unexpectedly, he sighed mightily and said that I worried too much. Yet again I had to admit that he had a point. I’m the kind of person who worries that something must be wrong if I don’t have anything to worry about. I quickly remedy that problem by running through a list of all the things I should be fretting about, from the progress of the grandkids’ potty training to global warming. Perversely, it’s the way I put myself to sleep at night. Instead of sheep, I count potential disasters.
Softening his stance, Pat put his exasperation aside to ask me exactly what I was in a stew about. “Our families!” I cried. “What if they don’t like each other?”
He made it clear that he regretted his half-hearted attempt to be a caring husband for a change. “Aw crap, not that again,” he said with a groan. “We’ve been through this before. Relax, baby. It’ll be fine. They’ll be fine. So what if they don’t like each other? I for one don’t give a crap.”
Tell Me a Story Page 16
