Edisto - Padgett Powell

by Padgett Powell

  I didn’t know what to think. I holed up in my room, bassinet bound by books provided by my sweet mother. The entire Modern Library among other things, original glossy jackets on them. Trilogies, juvenilia, oeuvres! The works. I opened the window and unhooked the screen and dropped it off into the sand. Leaned back in a straight chair with my feet in the window, looked at the coquina beach, surf chomping, and took a steady gale of sand in the teeth while I sorted it out.

  I had been consummately stupid! The whiskey was a lighthouse light over an entire reef of secrets. At night when I had thought myself asleep-now suddenly I could recall gentle sounds, innocent door knocks and paddings thereto and slipping bolts and whining hinges and paddings, softer and heavier, coming back. Whiskeys and ices tinkling and low, steady voices, twelve bells and all’s well, and I must have been rolling over and off into turns of deeper, dreamless watch. Because now I knew there had been the bower sounds then too, the deep moaning of oracle rocks in the Carrier vents, sounds like blankets settling on cold patients, fluffed up in the air with a snap of woolen breath by healthy nurses and floating down on ailing folk to make them better, much better by morning. And how comfortable I felt, thinking it just the fun I was having with him, when it was more. It was fun she was having, and that mattered, I had to admit, and it mattered also when the Progenitor had come home and I consciously heard the Carrier moan, because then I did not want to call them the Progenitor and the Doctor but my mother and father, the way Jake would call his mother Momma when he went back to see her every afternoon before opening up, after he had cleaned up the joint, and they just sat on her porch.

  So who was I going to blame? At first I thought him, for not telling me, but then he couldn’t very well have advertised it or I’d have had him on the coroner list before long probably, and then I realized he did tell me, the same way he told me everything else, with one ounce of suggestion and pounds of patience. He didn’t have to step out from behind a tree, he could have gone anywhere. He could have left that bottle at the Cabana, or thrown it away. And God knows he’s a sport—I’d seen him release to warm Atlantic bay water the boundless bosom of my very own first girlfriend, though I hadn’t managed more than three words to her and with any more would have come off like the fat dude, though on the flip side, seething with green innocence. He’s a sport, he’s game, and even I admit she’s a goodlooking broad even for your mother. And lonely, and all that. So I can’t blame her—Taurus is a sight (and a damn sight) better than ten coroners boiled into one human being if you could do that.

  So what was my complaint? My teeth were full of sand, mainly. I went down and got the screen and put it back in and tried to shake it off. Made a hamburger and a Coke, I was still full of salt from the sailing. The only thing was, I thought the Progenitor—Daddy—had been negotiating a return since that night he got me at the Grand. Was that true? When had I heard the "we’l1 be friends" conversation between Taurus and my mother? Was it over and done with before I caught on? Is that why he had to take my girlfriend from me? He was giving me my mother? And my father? Could he do that? I didn’t know. I half wished he had given me my girlfriend instead. But I couldn’t help any of it, that was sure, since I seemed to be snapping-to about one or two months late. I was a reader turning pages written some time ago, discovering what happened next.

  We Take Communion

  About 3 a.m., Habits and Methods time Sunday morning, I realized that actually I did not know if they—Taurus and my mother—had called it quits or not. Maybe the same naiveté which first had me ignore the alien whiskey and the comforting extra weight in the house at night would now have me believe that, because negotiations for nuptial resurrection seemed to be under way, they (she and Taurus) would cease paramarital twinings. Hell, there was still the old man drinking a Bloody Mary with Mike’s mother, one leg over the other, bouncing his Florsheim above the coffee table, and me and Mike outside checking out all right as prospective stepbrothers. And maybe they’d put on that conversation about remaining "friends"—even I knew that ruse. It’s a diplomatic stunt. Bound allies suffer a falling-out and become political friends. Then they won’t fight for each other anymore, but the treaties get a lot more delicate and worrisome, and somehow their close ties are more important than when there were good military commitments between them. But maybe they faked it—never had the falling-out.

  Anyway, I figured who was I kidding about them—my ersatz Big Brother, whose one certifiable ID card was scaring Theenie eighty-five miles in two hours, and my pedagogic, sot mother, who was, I have to admit, sharp for all that. What business was it of mine anyway, and how was it better if they had quit? It was precisely the stuff Taurus had taught me to keep an eye out for, to know by indifferent acute attention. So I would.

  I had been all excited when I figured it out, throwing that screen in the dirt and breathing hard. But for what? What was the trouble, exactly? That she did it? That he did it? That it was done to me? No, I don’t think so.

  I think it was like at the Grand. There are some dudes there who come out of the woods and woodwork with razor scars down their faces, across foreheads, through ears cloven into baby fists, from the corners of eyes like scalding tear tracks. Even Jake has a little one—it dents his nostril. And my information, which I got from watching the bug-tussles they get in before Jake halts them with the shortest shotgun in the world, is that two out of a hundred of those scars had to do with gambling and the remaining ninety-eight faces cut deep to bone, blood flying like hogs stuck, are about pussy. And even the two gambling fights are about not the money lost but the pride lost in losing. And that’s close to the ninety-eight reasons for the other.

  So pussy is the big nightclub reaper. It beats liquor, dancing, music, hemp, pills, rapping, racing cars, money, friends, and good times. And that’s why, even at my youthful point of promise, my hair not even cropped in yet, I vibrate on the edge of the deep end over some bottle of liquor in a sack in a cabinet. What the hell can that stuff be, for God’s sake? More than your finger inside your cheek, you rest assured. But what? I even think now, given this new disturbance I have had, that I am not going to know what it is even if old Altalondine dropped trou and said, "Get some of this cooter, stud, and if you can’t kiss me you can pull my hair," and I, say, did—jumped on it like a woodpecker alighting on a sapling and did what you do—if this happened tomorrow, I would have no better idea why finding Taurus in Penelope’s bower was so big a deal, and why you will cut somebody’s nose off when under different circumstances it’s enough to punch it in.

  Well, I’m in these ugly meditations when the Doctor gets up and announces we’re going to church. We do that about twice a year; once if it rains on Easter. I’m 3 a.m. fugued out anyway, so I sport up and we head out.

  It’s the usual. We go to Savannah, the closest place you can find an Episcopal layout. Right down in the slums, people already holding tallboys and blinking at the rising glare, we hit this pocket of new cars and a cathedral. All the dirt and smoke butts and dead banana trees changes to the soft, stained panes of biblical wonderment, and fresh acolytes with red-and-white robes and white faces and red lips carry gold candles; and the priest puts on twenty sashes and linen underthings and gold-braid overthings until he sweeps when he walks; and gold emerald-studded pikes get carried around, with three prongs for the Trinity; and the people kneel and stand and sing and kneel and pray on red velvet cushions that swing down for your knees like footrests under Greyhound bus seats, but of the finest, heaviest, wood-pegged oak, not bent pot metal; and the sermon intones with catch phrases like "more and more"; and the creeds, Apostle’s and somebody’s, get done; and then we pray, and then we line up for Communion. The Father wipes the silver chalice with a beautiful linen rag large as a small tablecloth, turns the cup two inches each time to keep you from having to drink where the last worshipper lipped it, as if that takes care of the germs. But I don’t care, I always reach out very piously—that’s to say, in slow motion, the way you move
for some reason to take and Bat the body of Our Savior-reach out and lay my hand over the Father’s in somber reverence to the moment and then press down as the silver rim clears my upper lip and suck a slug of wine that should have fed six communers. I have to, because the bread of His body is stuck to the roof of my mouth like a rubber tire patch, and if I can’t wash it loose by swishing His blood around, I’m going to have to dig it off with a finger, in slow motion, and possibly gag.

  When the service is over we go to a Howard Johnson’s for the business at hand. She wants to talk. I should have known. She orders a grilled cheese and takes one bite, as usual. She never eats. It’s the liquor. I get this ice-cream thing that looks like Mt. Pisgah. She has cup after cup of coffee, lights a cigarette.

  "Well. I want to tell you something very important.”

  "Shoot." I don’t like to be flip, but something about parents draws that out.

  "Your father and I"—she takes a long drag—"have decided to get back together? She taps out that new cigarette and lights another.

  "Okay," I say.

  "Contain yourself." I do, by destroying one of Pisgah’s promontories. "I thought you might be excited by the news."

  "The news is fine. But what’s going to happen'?"

  "Well, a lot." Tap-out. Waitress, more coffee. "We will move to Hilton Head."

  "Oh, God. Have the Arabs got him?"

  "Stop being a smart ass. He has a wonderful opportunity to join a good firm. And he is. We will move there. You will go to Cooper Boyd."

  "What about the house?"

  "We don’t know. We may sell it if it works out. Or keep it for vacations."

  “What about . . . Theenie?"

  "She’l1 come to Hilton Head."

  I’d heard enough. The good old days were on a respirator. A boarding school and landed gentry snot-nose college-prep buggers for Simons Manigault.

  "I don’t know how to put this," she said, "but in the past what became of you was more or less my bailiwick. That’s shifted in the deal."

  "Baseball."

  She laughed. "I don’t think that bad. But you will go to a good school, as your father wants. And what you read is up to you and them. You’re a bright boy, son. Maybe I overdid things. Forgive me if I did."

  "No, you did all right." You couldn’t blame her for hedging the progeny gamble. I only held the shrink trip at three against her.

  “No hard feelings?"

  "Naaah."

  "Give me a hug, then." She stood up right there and I had to follow suit and we hugged. I did like her. She was what they call a good soldier.

  We sat back down and I glared at all the people looking at us' and she smiled through more blue smoke.

  This was heavy news. Taurus was good as gone. That didn’t really bother me, especially because of the yet confusing whiskey revelation, but I knew I’d get over that and like him the same for showing me all he did, in the end. But I hadn’t figured leaving the neighborhood—accessible mullet and the Baby Grand, the sporting life, being the Duchess’s boy, and all that. That would be tough. I just figured I’d be tough, something was finally happening good or bad for damn sure, and if the good old days were on a respirator, I’d do them the service of going around and pulling the plug.

  "All set?" she said, collecting her purse and keys.

  We left Savannah and cruised north through the curiously hot, still quality of late Sunday mornings when your church clothes need to be taken off.

  Taking Leave

  Monday night I went up to Jake’s expecting to engineer a big he’s-a-good-fellow send-off, to collect a few condolences about leaving, etc. Yet I get there and stool up and order and swing around a couple of times making the joint blur, making the pool-table green send rocket trails of ball colors into the players. I don’t feel bad a bit. More like snappy, I somehow feel.

  They don’t want me in there claiming hardship, carrying my howitzer can around for them to drop a tearful memento in and us to embrace like Boy leaving the jungle for Civilization and stiff British lips. All that's about as uncouth if not unethical as I could get. I’m supposed to be one of them. They’ll know as soon as the first stick of furniture walks into that van what happened to me, it don’t need no news conference.

  Jinx comes up. His eyes are brilliant. We knuckle bump. He looks off for Jake and says to me, looking away for Jake, “Where you been?"

  “I been around.”

  "Man, ain’ seen you in a long time."

  I shrug. "Just happens.”

  "Look so."

  He got a beer and drank some of it. Nothing came to us to say. Then he says, "So take care yourself, man."

  “You too, Jinx." He walks off. I notice he’s dressed up. He dresses funny for a country Negro in the Grand. He wears cardigan sweaters and nice dark slacks—pushes up the sweater sleeves over his forearms—with matching socks or sometimes no socks. He looks like a college golfer. He goes over to the jukebox and studies it.

  Jake’s down at the other end, occupied with himself. He’s got one foot up on a beer box, leaning on his knee, smoking, looking off at the wall. It’s a slow night.

  "Jake, what’s the weather sposed to do?" I say.

  "Might be sposed to rain."

  We figure on that a bit. I had heard a rumble. Then he says, "You ready?”

  "Nah," I tell him, setting my can back down in circles of water. "Not yet." He keeps smoking, looking at the wall.

  I slip out.

  Outside, it’s thunder and purple dusk. I hustle. A black pickup about forty years old with hog-slop buckets in the back stops. An old guy squints at me. He’s sixty to a hundred. No teeth. Gumming something. I get in. He nods. I did the right thing. We drive, a little slower than I was running, to the Cabana road, where he lets me out. I wonder about the hog business—if he gets the slop free from restaurants, etc.—but don’t ask him anything. The palmettos sound like a stampede, crackling and brushing and popping. They’re bristling around like fur, in waves and counterwaves. Jake sent me out the back door once at the Grand. I was all set to go out the front when his girl said, "Jake! You gone let that chile go out there?"

  "Why not?” Jake said.

  "It ain’t nothing but a bunch of rowdy niggers out there. You, come on the back."

  I went with her. I saw Jake call his momma to chain the dog. I went by the worms and a trail that let out down the road. I remembered all this walking in the whipping dark. The Cabana was lit up like a chandelier, crystal prism wobbling in the wind. At the shack Taurus was snifting Old Setter with the window open on the beach side, watching the ghostly waves chomp. When it’s dark you hear everything but only see a white roughness at the water’s edge and sometimes a glassy curl out farther, enough to place the wave for you and let you count toward its break. Once like this I saw a shark tearing light out of the water, blasting loads of mullet in phosphorous fires in all directions, like the shark was a bomb and the mullet hot shrapnel.

  But that night it was simpler. We just whiled it away. I should have known from the tone it was the end of us, like they say on a soap opera. Taurus asked me out of the blue, across the white enamel table and over our two amber oyster-jar snifters, which we held like cups of mission soup, what were Georgia and Alabama and Louisiana like.

  I said Georgia was convicts and palmetto, but my uncle built a lot of roads in the obscure parts, which they said were good roads still, old-concrete-slab-type roads with weeds in the expansion joints and not all this asphalt-lobby shit on them. I said Alabama was a place the Doctor said the air was different, but it sounded like the famous Bear Bryant had one half and the famous George Wallace the other and you took your choice. I’d also heard there were large shellcracker in Birmingham, somehow, but who could say if they were the coach’s or the governor’s? But Louisiana I said was It. I heard an old Mississippi lady tell of it once as "rich, old Louisiana." She said, "There’s a lot of money in that state. She’s very rich." And she wasn’t talking about new money, or old
money, or even money itself, but some other richness about a place that is not necessarily all tied up in the bank. And then I told him how the books seemed to bear this out. You had the Kingfish book with that bodacious beginning, all dug up right there at Baton Rouge—it must be the place, if there’s one left.

  "Why do you ask?" I said after a while.

  "Why not?"

  We thought this one over.

  "Well . . .” I said, highly articulate.

  "Well, yes," he said. He looked around the room and back at his jar of liquor.

  He meant Theenie was coming back, which meant Order, Restoration, including in its ramifications the Progenltor’s reclamation of the Barony and Penelope, and my riding a school bus regularly, and he meant swept floors at the house again, an end to custody junkets, an end to surrogate daddies, a beginning of baseball. I guess he hadn’t heard we would go to Hilton Head.

  "I’m thirteen years old in eight months," I told him. He nodded.

  "Little League already has stars," I said.

  "Flashes in the pan," he said. I guess I had told him before about my baseball training, before Daddy left. The Doctor takes me to a child psychiatrist at three to see why I can’t read, and when we get home, Daddy puts me between third and second to see why I can’t stop grounders. I failed the first test because I saw a relationship between an envelope and a cantaloupe and I failed the second because I saw a relationship between a crisply peppered grounder and a smashed face.

  "Baseball," I said. "I see too much.”

  "It’ll come in handy."

  I think he meant the girl stuff. Even I knew that Diane Parker wasn’t going to have much truck with worms and weenie-arms.

  I wasn’t really all that reserved about it, about grounders and girls and the end of coroners. That would put an end to listening to snout-first intrusions by the Doctor’s suitors, to the suitors themselves, to the requisite Boy Act to get rid of them, and I could hear the sweet groaning rocks of the nuptial bower restored, and Theenie would be back and we could have talks, and she could do linen and run the vacuum and worry about the gubmen and make more pound cakes, and maybe get over her fear.