She’s pink in the face, like she’s been rolling around in a haystack; those milkmaid braids flashing gold. Quick as a flame, Luce has the urge to pull those braids, twist her wrists behind her back, something. But, no, he’s not that kind of man anymore; not the man who used to slap Joya around because she wasn’t what he wanted, who took her from behind so she couldn’t see his shame. A gentleman, he reminds himself, wringing his hat in his hands.
‘I can’t go back to how things were. Not after Father — His love. You wouldn’t understand, I guess, but oh wow, there’s nothing like it! Painful, yeah, but the kinda pain that makes you stronger? Like … ohh. Just imagine you’re a woman giving birth, hours and hours, only at the end you’re the baby, this beautiful shiny new baby, all crying and naked and no sins, just beautiful, beautiful! I’ve never felt so beautiful. Oh, Gene, honey, if you knew—’
One of the babies is crying, as if to illustrate Terra’s point. Luce turns in case it’s Hattie, but it’s the pigtailed white girl. Phyllis picks the girl up, rocks her, and Luce envies her for not being part of the conversation. When Terra reaches to touch his arm, he recoils, like she’s the girl from lock-up again.
‘Jim’s a married man,’ he reminds her through gritted teeth.
But so was Luce the night she’d slid her hand up his leg, tried to repay his charity the only way she knew how. It occurs to him a longhair doesn’t change its spots, and this new generation doesn’t care one bit for marriage.
‘Father is the reincarnation of King Solomon, you know,’ Terra says, and then looks at him expectantly. ‘Don’t be mad at me, Gene. You’ll hurt me so bad if you’re mad. I swear.’
Luce hands her his unfinished coffee. ‘Here.’
‘Are you mad? Genie? Hey?’ She puts herself in his path with the insistence of a football player. ‘Y’know, I really am grateful Lenny’s with you. It makes me feel so much better. You were so good to me, I just know you’ll make him right at home. Hey, you’re not mad, are you?’
‘Alright,’ Luce murmurs evasively. ‘Whew. Time flies.’
That’s apparently good enough for Terra. She presses her body against his, softly mounded as sand through her summer dress; whispers close and quivery, ‘Catch some bad guys for me, officer,’ so there’s nothing to say except, only if you’re home by midnight, Cinderella. Then he’s flapping out his hat and she’s baby-talking, ‘Say “bye-bye” to Brother Gene! Bye-bye! ’
‘Bada-gin! Bai-bai!’ Hattie chirps.
The patrol car is where he left it. The sight of it reassures him; its smell of trapped sunlight, dashboard dust. Luce doesn’t have the heart to whirl the siren again, but he waves at Laura Kana on the lawn, thinking after all she isn’t so bad, just a small-town kid with a big mouth. Just kids, all of them. He’d been twenty-seven when he first knew Father’s love. It hadn’t seemed so young then; five years married already, two kids under five, another on the way. And of course, Jim hadn’t been ‘Father’ then, just Jim: a well-groomed, devil-handsome street preacher he’d met while patrolling the black side of town. They struck up an acquaintance, then a friendship; night drives through the Indianapolis suburbs sipping from flasks — wild nights, free-talking nights where nothing was off-limits. They talked of women’s bodies and their smells, how it was perfectly reasonable for a man to want no part of that. Of how Luce had never even seen a black person until he left his hometown but had accepted without question the notion of the ‘nigger’; the ape-man who, if seen after sundown, could sportingly be chased down and clubbed to death. Of how when he started seeing colored folks with regularity around Indianapolis, just going about their business, lining up for buses, what they reminded him of most were horses: their proud necks, their intelligent eyes. And he never would’ve hurt a horse. No Luce would’ve. Though chickens were decapitated like daisies and cats thrown off roofs for fun, to hurt a horse would’ve been like hurting a good pal.
One of those nights, summer of ’55 it must’ve been, parked out by some railway tracks, Jim had put his hand on Luce’s crotch and the universe made sense. Then a night they’d gone to an empty house, an old lady’s house by the looks, rose-patterned wallpaper in the style of thirty years earlier, and Jim had fucked him against that wallpaper. It only happened two more times. Stopped so sudden it was like the world stopped turning, and from then on, they only saw each other together with Isaiah Bellows, or all three of them and their wives at a restaurant, always a whites-only place so Jim could make a scene. When Jim and Rosaline went to work with the poor in South America, he and Isaiah kept things going in their ham-handed way, and all he felt for Jim by ’65, following him to California, was a thorny sense of entanglement, like plowing his way through dead rosebushes.
6.
Since it doesn’t seem like Lenny Lynden’s going anywhere, they put him to work.
Nothing too strenuous. Cleaning the stables. Turning the hay. Some sweeping and scrubbing around the house for Joya, who’s got less time for such things, caring for Hattie and working full time at the hair salon, overtime at the Temple Publications Office. Lenny Lynden does what he’s told without complaint, often shirtless, which is, well, a nice thing. Sometimes Danny helps him out. Sometimes the girls follow him around without being especially helpful, then report back whatever facts they gleaned: Dot, wide-eyed and breathless; Bobbi, the ‘teenager’, feigning coolness.
‘Did you know that Lenny Lynden’s mom comes from Australia?’
‘Austria, not Australia, dumbass. She left because of the Nazis.’
‘Did you know Lenny Lynden never kills bugs?’
‘It’s because he’s a pacifist, and I think it’s admirable.’
‘Did you know Lenny Lynden thinks letters and numbers have colors?’
‘Well, so what?’ Luce greets their nonsense. Or, ‘Better call the Publications Office.’
But, fact is, he likes these tidbits. The colored numbers, he questions the kid about breathlessly at the dinner table, murmuring, ‘Well, I’ll be darned,’ when the kid tells him five is yellow like a banana, six is violet-blue. Danny leaves the table in boredom. Both the girls get the giggles. Luce sticks to the subject, until Joya finally snaps, ‘Gene! Give it a rest.’
When he learns of Lenny Lynden’s preference for chocolate desserts, Luce persuades Joya to bake a devil’s food cake. When Bobbi takes another tumble off Magic Dancer, her chestnut mare, Luce enlists Lenny Lynden to help pop her dislocated shoulder back in place. When Luce sees Lenny Lynden feeding the goats one morning, he wants nothing more than to creep up on him, touch his bare shoulder, speak words so earth-shakingly tender that all things will be permitted.
Joya sees Luce looking, gives him a disgusted face, and brings Lenny Lynden a robe.
Come Sunday, Lenny Lynden won’t go to Temple: doesn’t refuse, just keeps sleeping, no matter how Joya yells and the girls clip-clop down the halls and Hattie totters into the room, prods him with her breakfast-sticky fingers. ‘It’s his soul,’ Joya harrumphs, slamming the door, and they leave the house as a family, arrive at the Temple just as a busload from San Francisco gets in.
Jim’s going to have to start holding more services in the city, Luce figures; it’s getting so crowded they can barely breathe.
Terra is around, meeting and greeting newcomers, looking pretty as always with her hair down her back and a minidress Joya sewed her. She waves but nothing more. During the service, the only time he sees her is when she ducks onstage between songs to bring Jim a thermos of something. He hopes for Jim’s sake it isn’t coffee she made herself.
Jim doesn’t notice Lenny Lynden’s absence, or doesn’t mention it anyhow.
After the service, all the kids skitter in different directions, and Luce does his best to talk to as many newcomers as possible. For the poor folks, it’s the usual soft sell: good grub, good music, good clean recreation, free legal aid and medical care and tuition. For the white col
lege crowd, he makes it a little more sensational: ever heard of a town called Greensburg, Indiana; my uncles were Klansmen; see that adorable two-year-old with the plush truck, that’s my baby daughter. Getting a rise out of how those smug California boys can’t quite figure him out, their credulous eyes, their dreamy-slow gestures, their hair a little too long like something from a painting.
But his mind keeps drifting to Lenny Lynden, how sweet he looked sleeping, how sweet he is, with a frequency that makes him get up to refill his punch too often, telling himself: Give it a rest, Gene.
Then, by the punch bowl, there’s Evelyn Lynden, looking like she’s just read his mind.
‘Hello, Gene,’ she says softly, politely. ‘How are you?’
She’s wearing a short dress with a high neck. She’s well-put-together, he’ll give her that. But everything else about her irritates him: her scrawny body; her sharp witch nose; her watery little eyes; her hair bunched neatly on her head like something sentient and eager to please.
‘’Scuse me,’ he says, filling his cup and turning his back.
People start coming by the house for Lenny Lynden the next week.
Not Terra. Not Jim. But others.
Monday is Johnny Bronco, a white California boy about Lenny Lynden’s age; not as good-looking but tall, longhaired, with an easy grace and a firm handshake. Danny is friendly with Johnny, too, and after playing with the bongo drums in the garage for a while, the three go off in Lenny Lynden’s car and don’t return till well after dinner.
This saddens Luce a little, but Joya is pleased. ‘His life could use some variety.’
Tuesday is Ike Dickerson, who Luce knows from the old Temple days. A cheerful bald-headed man with a roly-poly body more like a woman’s, divorced back in the fifties and never remarried; rumor has it, he’s sweet on Rosaline. Met Jim through the Communist Party and used to bore Luce to death talking about commie books he had no interest in reading. But Ike has more to him than book smarts. Standing out by the chicken coop with Luce and the kid, he gives some good advice about how to re-roof it for winter. After that, Luce leaves them alone, goes to see the horses; Candy Cane, Magic Dancer, Bingo. From a distance, he observes Ike scolding Lenny Lynden.
This saddens him, too, though most likely the kid deserves it.
No one comes Wednesday, but Thursday after dinner, a young black man in a night-watch uniform shows up, grinning from ear-to-ear. Turns out he’s a buddy from Lenny Lynden’s commune, has just become a dad for the first time, a fact that inspires Lenny Lynden to give him a hug and say, ‘Nice going, Eustace.’ Although Luce is jealous of the hug, he thinks it’s nice Lenny Lynden has a buddy; nice, too, that this buddy is so excited about his newborn daughter; enthusiastically seconds Joya’s invitation for the buddy to come in for a celebratory grape juice. It’s all nice and good around the table, hearing how Jenessa sailed through her labor, how the baby came out a small but perfect 5lbs 8oz, how they’re going to name her ‘Nzingha’, after an African queen. At some point, though, Eustace makes a stray reference to Terra, how she sang ‘Bye Bye Baby’ to Nzingha right before going to her meeting tonight, and Lenny Lynden looks like he’s going to cry, then does.
‘He gonna be alright?’ Eustace asks in wonderment, seeing Lenny Lynden flee the room.
Luce and his wife look at each other, shrug, start telling stories of the kids as newborns: Roger, who came out long and pale like an uncooked sausage; Danny, born in a blizzard; Bobbi, who gave Joya the most pain; Dot, who tried to hang herself on her umbilical cord.
Friday evening, Luce comes home to find Lenny Lynden slumped on the stairs barefoot, white uniform rumpled, staring into space. The girls are all there, too, Bobbi with her arm in a sling giving orders from above to Dot, who’s assiduously threading beads onto a bit of macramé around Lenny Lynden’s wrist. Meanwhile, Hattie is climbing everywhere, sticking beads in her mouth. Everything about the scene annoys Luce, and is compounded by the fact that Joya isn’t home.
‘What in the heck is going on?’
Lenny Lynden jumps. Beads go everywhere. The girls whine, ‘Dad! ’, then, seeing the mood he’s in, skedaddle. Luce scoops up Hattie and repeats his question louder, tapping the kid’s shin with his boot so he jerks up. His blue eyes are frightened, watery, red-rimmed.
Higher than a kite. High as a spaceship!
It isn’t tenderness he feels for Lenny Lynden in that moment, just a desire to get him out of his sights. When the kid stammers, ‘N-no sir,’ in response to Luce’s accusation, it takes all Luce’s patience not to shake him, sock him, march him somewhere private. Son, you’re on your last straw. Ever bring dope into this house, I’ll lock you up. Then the kid retreats to Danny’s room, and there’s only the weight of Hattie in his arms, her watchful brown eyes.
‘Roberta. Dorothy. Be ready in half an hour,’ Luce barks, setting Hattie down outside the girls’ room. He catches a glimpse of dreamcatchers, painted horses, some longhair musician of ambiguous gender — too much flowerchild crap for him to comprehend in his current state. ‘Make sure your baby sister’s dressed.’
Locked in the bathroom, Luce feels his collar, damp with sweat; his back. He unbuckles with a clank like handcuffs, is throbbing and big with blood, is bent over the sink, is done within a minute with a sweet, whinnying moan he hopes the girls don’t hear. He puts his brown uniform in the hamper. Runs the taps. Changes into clean plaid, blue jeans, the belt buckle Terra bought him in Reno. He looks, maybe, clean and casual and a little bit festive; maybe younger than he is.
He raps on the boys’ room.
At the Temple, they will eat food, hear music, pass a nice Friday night with nice friendly people. This, or some such thing, is what Luce plans to tell the kid. But when he looks in, Lenny Lynden is already facedown asleep on Roger’s old bed.
In the end, the decision to send Lenny Lynden packing is all about blood.
The chicken coop needs re-roofing. Lenny Lynden agrees to lend a hand after his shift at the timber mill Saturday. Wayfarer sunglasses and smelling of sawdust, slow-walking across the grass to where Luce is gathered with Isaiah and a reluctant Roger, up from the college dorms for the weekend.
Not a job that needs four men. This Luce suspected when Isaiah showed up uninvited — proud, laconic, with his own tools and Roger in tow. It becomes crystal clear as soon as they get started, Roger and Lenny both reaching for the same screwdriver, eyeing each other warily, repeating the act with the box of nails. ‘Watch it,’ Roger snarls at Lenny, and even though Roger’s been moody for months now, walking around like God has personally wronged him, the rudeness surprises Luce and Isaiah both. Wordlessly, they decide it’s best to separate the boys: Roger inside on the stepladder; Lenny, smaller and lighter, out on the roof. Meanwhile, they supervise.
Supervising Lenny Lynden. There could be worse things. The kid is in a better state than the day before, smiling in a dazed way when anything goes right; a plank of rotting wood lifted easily as a wet Band-Aid, a new plank set in its place. When anything goes wrong — a dropped nail, a suspicious fissure in the wood, a centipede twisting into view of his elbow — he’s equally dazed, but also pained, and maybe even sweeter. Sweet kid. Good-looking guy. Pretty boy. Luce feels the endearments rustle in him like autumn leaves; feels cataracts forming when he looks anywhere but Lenny Lynden. Isaiah mentions going to the house for refreshments, and maybe Luce hears the note of warning in his old friend’s voice; maybe even sees the tension in his eldest son’s jaw. But Luce just nods and keeps right on directing the kid. ‘Let me see … Hold it there … Hold it tight … Ah, hold it.’ The kid’s head of brown hair seems at times to bump against the sky. His back has a nice curve to it, like a swimmer. The dusty seat of his jeans. Sweet kid. Good-looking. Pretty, real pretty. Like a prayer, if this was a thing to pray about. Like closing his eyes and feeling the sun on his face — until Luce feels himself grabbed from behind and hurled tow
ard the earth.
For a moment, it seems as if his younger, handsomer self has come back to smite him.
But it’s Roger. Tall, towheaded, graceful as a dancer, eyes frosty as an Indiana winter. Fist landing with a soft biff! like in the comic books he and Danny used to read before Jim Jones said, We don’t need our kids wasting time on this white savior bullshit. It doesn’t land hard. Doesn’t hurt. Already, with a dull astonishment, Luce is calculating his odds, and that they’re good. Then, like work, nothing more, getting Roger in a headlock, ready to cut his breath short. Yet not ready for the flinch, the voice hoarse with hate: ‘Get your hands off me, faggot.’
‘Hey … what?’ Lenny Lynden cries incredulously from above.
Mercifully, Isaiah intervenes, grabbing Roger’s arm like he’s a ragdoll, jabbing him in the chest. ‘You do not say that! You do not.’ Isaiah is a good friend. Isaiah was there when Luce’s world stopped turning, reminding him what it meant to be a good man, a father. Luce is thankful for Isaiah as he brushes himself off, feeling heavy as a bag of amputated limbs. He touches his lip and, seeing his rust-tipped fingers, is more disturbed than he wants to admit. Isaiah keeps jabbing Roger. ‘Honor thy father! You don’t know that? Honor thy father! ’
Roger nods, cheeks red, shirt ripped, looking more like white trash than the son of one of the Temple’s oldest families. It occurs to Luce that Roger has done badly by Isaiah’s beautiful daughter, Minnie; badly enough to come to Jim’s attention. It occurs to Luce that maybe they are white trash, not the Bellows’ equals.
‘Hey, man. You okay?’ Lenny Lynden, down from the roof, asks tentatively.
Luce looks at the kid’s shirtless chest, no longer able to recall what all the fuss was about. Just a young and stupid interloper, an imposition. ‘Uh huh,’ Luce snorts. Over the kid’s head, Isaiah shoots Luce a stern look that says everything: This is your fault, get your act together, set an example for your piece-of-shit son. Luce nods in agreement, begins his wounded march up to the house, avoiding his girls and Ursa riding horses, his wife on the porch painting Petula Bellows’ hair mahogany. He uses the phone upstairs.
Beautiful Revolutionary Page 17
