Dancing in the Lowcountry

by James Villas

  “He certainly is, and…” She laughed. “Yeah, Tyler’s in high cotton. Just published his memoirs, in fact—for better or worse. I’m pretty proud of him.”

  “And you should be. Does he have a family up North?”

  After a long hesitation, Ella finally decided to tell the truth. “No, no, Tyler’s different from my other son. He lives with another gentleman, if you know what I mean, and the two seem to be very happy.”

  “I see,” O’Conner said, obviously not fazed by the revelation. “Does his sexual orientation bother you?”

  “Not in the least.” She chuckled again. “Oh, I’m sure it bothers my other children and most of my friends in Charlotte—and my husband was never exactly thrilled by it. But, no, I accepted the way Tyler is a long time ago. Actually, we’re very close.”

  “As you should be. Fortunately, we’re living in different times today, when that sort of circumstance no longer seems that earthshaking.”

  Ella laughed again. “You don’t live in the South, Dr. O’Conner.”

  Now he let out a warm, confident chortle, and Ella wondered if his pearly teeth were false, unlike her own. Then she felt a tinge of self-consciousness, glancing furtively at her red nails, and wondering if her hair was still tidy and attractive, and hoping the liver spots on the back of her hands were not too obvious. Wanting to show him a photo of Tyler in plastic she always carried in one of her large, elegant pocketbooks, she began rummaging through a slew of items, one of which was her small pistol that she placed momentarily on the cocktail table. The doctor stared at the object in disbelief.

  “Is that thing loaded?” he almost stammered.

  “You bet your bottom dollar it is,” Ella answered, still looking for the picture. “And I know how to use it if I had to.” She picked up the pistol and waved it menacingly in the air.

  “Is that legal down here?” he asked next, utterly flabbergasted.

  “Sure it is, honey, so long as you run down and get a permit. Why, everybody’s got a gun, especially if you live alone the way I do. A man broke into one of my best friend’s house not too long ago, and she blew his brains clear out. You never know.” All at once, she came up with the photo. “Ah, here it is. Look how handsome my Tyler is.”

  After complimenting her on the photo, he once again gazed at her, smiled, and said, “You’re quite a lady, Miss Ella.”

  Little did he know, of course, that even as a youngster growing up down in Charleston during the Great Depression and World War II, Ella Pinckney Hodges had always had a determined, often rebellious spirit that caused her archly conservative parents considerable concern but, along with her natural radiance and charm, gave her unusual distinction among those her age. Like many other prominent Charlestonians of the era who had been richer in plutocratic heritage than financial means ever since the days of Reconstruction, the Hodges lived in a large, ornamental Federal house on the city’s lower peninsula that went back generations in the family and had not been renovated in years. Ella’s father, Archibald Tyler Hodges (or Archie, as he was known about town), had enjoyed notable success as a banker till fortunes were ravaged in 1929, but even in reduced financial circumstances, he and his wife, Tillie, who was, by birth, a Pinckney from Aiken, remained active members in Charleston’s exclusive St. Cecilia Society, contributed generously to St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, and still managed to provide their son and daughter the type of privileges that would enable them to associate with the right people and eventually enter into proper marriages worthy of the Hodges name and pedigree.

  Since Ella just became more alluring and popular the older she became, she was certainly never at a loss in high school for beaus competing to squire her around at cotillions, beach parties out on Sullivan’s Island, and plantation oyster roasts. At the top of her list of boyfriends was Earl Dubose, not so much because he was particularly attractive and the son of a relatively prosperous paper manufacturer who owned a pine pulpwood mill up near Georgetown, but because she thought he was the best dancer in all of Charleston County. Ella loved to dance as much as she loved to drink and have a good time, and she never had a better time than on those special occasions when she and Earl and maybe another couple would hop into his daddy’s Plymouth convertible, head over to Folly’s Pier Pavilion or Atlantic Boardwalk on Folly Beach, and dance the night away to the swing music of Artie Shaw, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, and other big-band leaders touring after the outbreak of war.

  Although Earl had been obsessed with Ella all during high school and would tell close buddies that he was going to marry that gal one day, she never considered herself exactly pinned to him and more than once had to make it clear that she wasn’t yet ready for a steady relationship. Ella’s much more conventional older brother, Sherman, with whom she’d never been particularly close, had already married a charming girl from a well-bred family in Mt. Pleasant, and, of course, nothing would have made Ella’s parents happier than to see their carefree, often unruly daughter also settle down soon with a fine, respectable young man like Earl Dubose. But Ella had her own ideas and ambitions and dreams, and nobody was going to force or coax her to do anything she might end up regretting.

  She, in fact, had never been truly serious about any boy, not, that is, till she met Jonathan Green at a fish fry on a lake during the summer of 1943 before both were to begin their senior year at Arcadia High. Jonathan, raised in Savannah, was a new transfer student whose father had recently opened a textile mill on an old rice plantation north of Charleston, and from the minute he and Ella were seated together and began chatting at the large communal wooden table, the two were smitten with one another.

  “Grits and grunts” were the first words Ella remembered Jonathan uttering in his soft drawl.

  “Beg your pardon,” she said, passing a basket of cornbread to the boy seated on her left, who was talking loudly about baseball with a friend across the table.

  “Grits and grunts,” Jonathan repeated, an almost smug expression on his face. “Down in Savannah, we never eat fried fish without a big pot of grits. Grits and grunts, we call ’em.”

  “Why, I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Ella exclaimed. “Fish with grits?”

  “My mama makes the best, and these fried spots just don’t taste right without some grits.” He laughed while cutting into a piece of fish, then eating a forkful of coleslaw.

  “Sounds kinda weird,” cracked another boy across the table wearing a billed cap with the image of a swordfish on the front. “We don’t eat grits like that here in Charleston.”

  “Nothing like it,” Jonathan said in a friendly manner. “In Savannah, we even fix grits and grunts sometimes for breakfast.”

  “Then maybe you should go back to Savannah,” the other boy muttered defiantly, picking up some fish with his fingers and popping it into his mouth.

  “Oh, why don’t you just shut up, Conrad?” Ella said, tossing a wadded paper napkin at him. “Don’t be such a slob. Who says grits wouldn’t be great with fish?”

  Jonathan simply sat quietly, as if slightly hurt. Exotically handsome, with soft dark eyes, coal black hair that curled almost in ringlets, and a slightly remote attitude, he was the first boy Ella had ever met who could talk about something besides sports, cars, and clothes. For his part, he simply found Ella to be the prettiest, most outspoken creature he’d ever met, an intelligent young lady eager to ask questions and listen as he divulged his interest in Southern literature, cooking, and jazz.

  “What books do you like to read the most?” she asked after the two had gotten up and moved to a bench near the water.

  “Oh, Faulkner, and Rawlings, and Wolfe—I really like the novels of Thomas Wolfe. And I’m now reading a wonderful new story by this Georgia writer, Carson McCullers, called The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter—about a deaf-mute.”

  “Look Homeward, Angel,” Ella said almost shyly, lighting a cigarette. “We studied that novel in my English class, but I really didn’t understand a lot of it—only the man’s pr
oblems with his family.”

  Snapping repeatedly a twig he was holding in one hand, Jonathan gazed over the lake. “I think Wolfe’s writing mainly about loneliness, and growing up, and…our need to escape to find ourselves.” He flipped the pieces of the twig into the air. “I love that novel.”

  Ella stared admiringly at him, noticing his long eyelashes and how he blinked rapidly while talking.

  “I guess you’ve read The Yearling,” she then said.

  “Oh, yeah, we read that for class down in Savannah. Did you like it?”

  “Oh, I cried my eyes out—just sobbed at the end.”

  Jonathan smiled. “Me, too, I must confess. I’d like to read more Rawlings.”

  Ella was on the verge of pursuing the subject when she heard the boy named Conrad yell from the table, “Hey, Ella, we’re gonna go do a little shootin’. Wanna come?”

  “Not this time,” she called back, a look of embarrassment on her face.

  “For a gal, you must be pretty good with a gun,” Jonathan said somewhat in amazement.

  “Just tin cans or duck decoys once in awhile,” she admitted meekly, fearing his disapproval. “Hey, what’s your favorite jazz and blues?”

  “Oh, Bobby Johnson on alto sax,” he answered without a moment’s hesitation. “And Art Blakey’s drumming. And have you heard this Count Basie? Wish I could play piano like that.”

  “You play piano?”

  “If you want to call it that. Gershwin, Kern, things like that. I’ve played by ear since I was a kid. Do you play?”

  “Oh, Lord, no. But I do love to dance. I’m really crazy about dancing.”

  He watched as she swept her glistening blond hair over one ear. Then he chuckled. “You’ve got me there.”

  “You don’t dance?”

  “About the way I play piano.” He looked into her blue eyes, again smiling. “Maybe sometime you’ll teach me a few steps.”

  Ella could have sat and smoked and talked with Jonathan all afternoon, and since he had mentioned at one point the possibility of the two of them getting together for a movie or some barbecue, her heart skipped a beat every time the phone rang over the next couple of days. That her friends didn’t initially share her fascination with Jonathan might well have been due to their natural suspicions of any newcomer in their complacent, secure community. Another possible reason was the important fact that Jonathan happened to be Jewish.

  Jonathan did indeed call Ella for a movie, and even though she continued to let Earl and other dates escort her from time to time to formal dances, big church picnics, and the like, it soon began to worry her family that she was spending more and more time with the Green boy from Savannah, who was rarely seen at football games and preferred reading books and listening to Count Basie records to duck hunting down on Goat Island. Together, he and Ella took long walks in Battery Park and watched the black “basket ladies” demonstrate their skills with sweetgrass at City Market. She took him to see the rare artifacts and treasures of the Lowcountry at the Charleston Museum and the ornate plasterwork and domed ceiling in the spectacular Calhoun Mansion on Meeting Street, and he gave her her first glimpse of the interior of Beth Elohim Synagogue on Hasell Street, the birthplace of American Reform Judaism and one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in the country. They ate she-crab soup and shrimp and grits at Henry’s on Saturday afternoons, and when they wanted to splurge on Friday dinner, Ella would pick out one of her silk dresses and wear her lustrous hair down over her delicate shoulders and Jonathan would take her to Perdita’s for the city’s best flounder stuffed with crabmeat and roast squab with rice pilau.

  Eventually, as Jonathan became more involved in various school activities and his classmates came to accept him as one of them, he and Ella would go horseback riding with friends, or attend war-bond rallies at the Citadel, or join others on Saturday nights at a popular jazz club on King Street where everybody drank lots of beer and Jonathan played Gershwin and Porter tunes on the upright piano. He and Ella did lots together, but, above all, they talked, and the more Ella learned about Jonathan and got to know him, the more appealing he became. Since he respected her the way young men were taught to do in those virtuous days, their intimacy was pretty much limited to innocent petting at the drive-in movie or on the beach and good-night pecks, but once, when they went to a tea dance at the elegant Fort Sumpter Hotel and were dancing especially close, Ella, smelling the clean aroma of Jonathan’s neck and feeling his pronounced arousal, experienced frightening yearnings that made her shiver and perspire almost perceptably.

  For a good while longer, Ella and Dr. O’Conner chatted casually about her early days in Charleston, and his wife’s short career in the New York theater while he was in dental school at Seton Hall, and Sal’s success as a highly respected estates lawyer in Englewood. Then, obviously determined to satisfy his curiosity about Goldie, he began to ask more questions about the unusual companion.

  “I don’t know what I’d have done without Goldie after Earl’s death,” she explained soulfully. “You know, she’s pure Cherokee Indian with some strange ways, so we’re different as night and day. But I’ve come to understand Goldie and think of her almost as family—somebody who’s always there when I need her.” She stopped a long while, reflecting. “Her life was so tragic when she was younger, and maybe she would have been better off and happier if she’d gone back to her own people after losing her husband and son. We’ll never know. But I hope we’ve been the family she never really had.” She paused again, a solemn expression on her face. “She probably doesn’t realize it, but Goldie has taught me a lot over the years. Oh, sometimes her peculiar habits and customs make me want to wring her neck, but I’m used to it all, and don’t forget that she didn’t have much education, and…The point is, nobody’s ever been more loyal to me, and, as I said, I’ve learned a lot from Goldie over the years—things my children and friends could never understand.”

  “I’d say you’re very lucky to have her around,” he said with a hint of envy in his voice. “Don’t get me wrong. I couldn’t ask for a better daughter and son-in-law than Lizzy and Sal, but, as you must know, they have their own life to lead. I guess my real salvation after Grace died was staying busy with my practice for a number of years, but since I retired…Well, you know, old friends and colleagues have a way of disappearing or dying, and a big house can get pretty empty sometimes.” He smiled and raised his sparse eyebrows. “I’d like to believe I’ve helped a good many patients in my day, but, gloomy as it might sound, the one condition that not even the most brilliant medical doctor can cure is old age. And, frankly, that irritates me beyond words—irritates the hell out of me.”

  Ella reached again into her pocketbook for the cigarette case, but instead of opening it, she simply began rubbing it gently as she’d done so many times over the years.

  “With all due respect, Dr. O’Conner, I’ve always refused to let that get me down, since you know as well as I do that there’s not one thing on God’s green earth we can do to change nature. If I allowed my age to get me down, I’d lose my mind—go stark raving mad. What’s funny is that I never used to give age a second thought, or dwell so much on the past. But, you know, as we get older, age and time seem to become more important, and I do find myself thinking more and more about the old days. I don’t like this, but there doesn’t seem there’s much I can do to control it.” She paused. “In any case, contrary to what my younger children seem to think sometimes, I’m still in pretty good shape physically and mentally, so nobody’s going to turn me into a feeble old lady till I’m good and ready.”

  “Miss Ella, the last thing I’d say you are is a feeble old lady, and the first thing I’d say is that you give new meaning to the term Southern rebel,” he declared more cheerfully, obviously captivated by her spirited monologue. “And my instincts also tell me that you’re a Republican.”

  “Staunch. Dyed in the wool. Have been my whole life, even when most Southerners were Democrats.
”

  He simply laughed.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “I guess I’m content as long as I can maintain my independence. As far as I’m concerned, the one thing active oldies like you and me must hold on to as long as possible is our independence. I’m not sure about lots of things, but I’m absolutely sure that once we give up our independence, we’re good as dead—finished.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something even more important?” he asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “Control. The determination to maintain control over our lives.”

  “Same thing,” she uttered casually, without thinking.

  “Not really,” he said, waving his finger in the air. “We can be independent but, without realizing it, allow others to make decisions that only we ourselves were once expected to make. That’s losing control.”

  Ella’s eyes began blinking rapidly, as if something had suddenly dawned on her. “Like allowing my children to decide whether I’m still capable of driving my car.”

  “Exactly,” he confirmed. “Loss of control.”

  She stared admiringly at him. “Why, Dr. O’Conner, I do believe you have a little of the wise philosopher in you. You know, I never thought of it in those terms, but you’re exactly right.”

  He laughed again, and when he asked if she’d like another Grand Marnier, she looked at her small gold watch and exclaimed, “Lord have mercy! Do you have any idea how long we’ve been sitting here gabbing? We’re the only ones left.”

  “Who’s keeping time?” he said. “I thought Lizzy and the kids would be back by now, but let me say, Miss Ella, I don’t remember when I’ve enjoyed myself so much.”

  Ella was already gathering her pocketbook and reaching for her sweater when he stood up, took her garment, and gently placed it around her shoulders.

  “Why, thank you, Dr. O’Conner,” she acknowledged, now sounding almost like a schoolgirl. “And let me add what a delight this has been for me also.”