The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus

by Allan Gurganus

  You two darlings, now that you’ve stopped messaging, you are so much more attractive. I think people squinting at little screens … makes ’em s’ugly. Why, there’s a whole immediate world waiting all-up-out here! Look, two cardinals and one blue jay. Bird-colors are so good they flirt with being “cheap.”

  Moving along nicely. No stragglers, please. Incorporated in 1824, almost immediately made the county seat, Falls still boasts five thousand local souls. We’re down from our peak seven-thousand during the commercial boom of ’98, 18-98. See that arched bridge? Some say that yonder River Lithium accounts for both our citizens’ soothed temperaments and for how hard we find leaving home. Few local students, matriculating up north, last long there.

  On the cheap tour, I lead Yankees straight to Town Hall right past secret sites of major vigilante mishaps. Mind you, I withhold nothing out of laziness. I simply foresee which group is historically minded—like youall are. Everybody cannot handle events that once complicated these torchlit streets. Especially certain midnights in the name of hurry-up justice.

  Plus, the $4.95-ers get not one dollop of the secretly spiced chicken salad. For them I might point out to Carnegie Library yonder. Might call it, “McKim, Mead & White–like.” Little joke. Most Garden Staters don’t “get” it, ne’ery a smile. Sad, public education. In New Jersey. Why, Princeton was Granddaddy’s school.

  I feel opened today, and isn’t June simply the best? Falls was founded then, right now, June eleventh, 1824. Can’t help feel that today’s our start-over chance, an anniversary and birth date both. Since the aforementioned surprise medical turn, certain of my personality filters have grown more, I’d say … porous. Nerves tuned ever-alert. Times, sunshine almost cuts. What made me three whole minutes late? As I was walking over to greet you, I saw a mangy yellow alleycat trying to carry one of her blind kittens across Main. Just some common collarless housecat without a house. No pedigreed Siamese, mind you. Still, I stopped suddenly. And, as never before, felt for that feral thing. In the mother’s mouth her young one hung by its neck’s loose skin. Both animals faced terrible recent traffic we’re getting off the interstate. Mrs. Mother Cat stood waiting for the green light at a human crosswalk. Hesitating, she looked hard left then right, her kitten swaying as, fearful, her head turning, she made sure, sure. Something … about … her … attempts…. the endurance required.

  —Incorporated in 1824, ever-eager to further erode the church-state divide, Falls has given U.S. history one lieutenant governor and three U.S. cabinet-level politicians no more corrupt than forty-nine other states’ greedy boys.

  I say, “Welcome to Falls,” but would it welcome all of us, of you? Small-town life is made possible by rarely stating one’s true opinions. It’s the bargain we strike to keep getting invited places. But my brief illness just showed me: Mrs. Evelyn here—a good sport far too long—has kept so many ghastly secrets rammed safe down her throat. For nigh on to a century. Secrets must, like bad molars, eventually come out, if you’re to survive. Oh, imagine finally feeling sunbaked clean. Still, with inherited gifts go responsibilities. And, socially, I do think you have to be at a certain level in order to see at a certain level.

  As for my naming names as we tour, if Falls’ historic figures died during the nineteenth century, I consider them fair game, clear up to 1960. Our Tourist Board threatened to stick me back in the booth with the brochures. But I can talk there, too. Before my near-death experience, I defined myself as “conservative,” believe it or not. Then I woke up being this whole other person, the person I’d been becoming behind my own back.

  And History is the only way they’ll let me talk about it!

  You, you no-longer-texting pretty youngster skipping on the end? That was a yellow park rose, not your yellow rose. Well, don’t throw it down now; you’re just doubling your crime. Stay closer by. I see that you brightest children need stimulation, stories. You know bears were once so plentiful ’round here people would eat them like you’d go out and kill a hog? I yet own a family recipe, 1689, for “Bear Pie.” Can you guess one thing that lets me so confidently lead you? Leadership genes.

  My many-greats-back first American granddad, our founder, is still called “Grand Number One.” Big handsome man. He became a Carolinian after getting voted out of the Jamestown settlement for his sanitation ideas.

  Yes, throughout my family’s seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, we’ve timbered then farmed till, alas, subdividing (into tasteful five-acre lots) this rich red soil on which we landed, 1607. History for people like us always means our next “Right Now.” I won’t be kept in my four-poster bed another two months. Whatever the young doctor says, I shall not be held back from my twice-daily appointments with history and you, our honored guests. There is a need to fill in Falls. And my people have always filled those. Bargain for you, and lucky for all involved. Never felt better in my life and do hope you find me making sense? Fine then. So I thought.

  Well-preserved, you say? Well, aren’t you precious. Care to know my beauty secret? The Twenty-Third Psalm. Keeps coming to Mrs. Evelyn’s rescue. On a summer day this warm so early, I have but to quote, He maketh me lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. Best offer I’ve had in months. Say it and your temperature’ll plunge, I swear.

  On your left, my right actually, please note our handsome Gothic Revival courthouse. See its columns topped with carved cornstalks and tobacco leaves? Done by a local boy who headed north to study at the Pennsylvania Academy under respected sculptor Stirling Calder. (Man was father of the more famous Alexander, twentieth century inventor of “the mobile.” Stirling’s own daddy forged that huge William Penn atop one tall Philadelphia building.) Our lad from Falls flourished, shot to the head of his class but, first semester, had a breakdown involving the undraped models he was daily subjected to. Of course, to do nude park statues, you need a real stripped thing to look at.

  One of his teachers, in a class open to both male and female pupils, saw fit to undrape a man, whole-hog—all while making some point about the finer points of the male … anatomy. —Is this too much?

  Children? Raise your young hands if Mrs. Evelyn either upsets or confuses you. Blame history. See, it’s all dead-true. That’s what I’m talking about. American facts cannot be beat. I don’t make anything up. In a town this small, fiction’s unnecessary.

  Why, if I told a quarter of what I know, the mayor’d disavow me; probably nationalize my lovely home on Summit. One good thing to put in chicken salad? White pepper, not black, is all I’ll say. And if this detail gets mentioned at Sal’s bistro later, Mrs. Evelyn is going with deniability, hear? Yes, dear, you may keep carrying your yellow rose since you went ahead and picked it.

  But that art teacher proceeded to yank the cloth off the handiest example of it, I reckon, of the male anatomy. Our delicate Falls boy, whose mother had protected him, even from the minimal coarseness surging along tree-lined Summit Avenue, which you will shortly tread and, as its name implies, is the pinnacle of refined art-loving book-oriented civilized filtration, he saw, for the first time, another … portion of another full-grown male’s full-throttle … anatomy.

  From whatever he expected, it must’ve looked … different. The breakdown ensued almost at once. Our boy, later grown ancient, explained (to me as a wee girl) there’d been something about how that brusque teacher whipped off the posing cloth or pouch or whatever. In front of ladies! It was seeing the male model’s own shocked expression. As if a man posing nude for his living had no idea as how all that extruded gear had been waiting shaded under there.

  In short, in wintry Yankeeland, the most gifted of our village boys fell pure apart. The lad—found wearing four pairs of winter pants, unable to leave his Walnut Street apartment—was shipped straight home to Falls. He was just one of ours to personally Appomattox, to stage a strenuous public washout up North. Me (except my college years), I stayed, and therefore stayed untested. That was your Mrs. Evel
yn’s fate till—after bearing a child then burying a husband—I somehow ascended, half-despite my upbringing and grim good taste, into being Falls’ number one guide. —Well, it gets me out.

  Philadelphia’s loss proved our gain, as you see in the courthouse capitals up yonder. Truth is, I always think his depicted corncobs look a little like hand-grenades. See that, youngsters? But the peerless veining along his tobacco leaves makes for plants you can all but smell. O how fragrant it was on market days in our Falls before the U.S. surgeon general, issuing warnings funded by your tax dollars, jinxed Daddy’s business, one highly profitable crop. Yes, madam? Good, a question. Say what? The name? Of whom, dear? The sculptor … of those agricultural products … that … predominated … hereabouts for … he, oh, I won’t lie to you. I just forgot. But only his name. Not him. Is that awful? I know it is. Not to answer my dear tourists’ first historical question, all while having by heart our artist’s entire genealogy.

  When I started telling you about that model being stripped naked? I feared its drama would take up those very brain-cells soon needed for entry-level information. I knew the boy’s mother as clearly as I see you here—with your digital cameras and some sunscreen blobbed beside the nose of that pretty little girl with the Afro on the end, there, that is better—names are the first things you lose, children. He never got real famous, anyway!

  I admit I am up onto the very Everest of my time. Air thins. Even ladies’ hair thins. Tree-line soon teeters far below. My doctor told me to go back to whole milk after years of slenderizing skimmed. For bones. But you try this, twice daily. To go, Moses-like, leading tours each weekday at ten then four, without the three-ring-binders that certain First Baptist tour-ladies in their early-fifties must read aloud, read badly. The doctor at Duke told me I’d had “many strokes” till my daughter explained he meant “mini strokes.” As in “miniskirts.” Well, that certainly spelled relief!

  One thing, I can still walk. You need to, leading pedestrian tours. Even my $4.95ers respect that. Yes, quite the hiker, my vigorous Scot tradition, kilts, knotted calves. Can still do five miles before my first cup of coffee but his name … Clarence! Clarence Royce Whitted! Born summer 1888, died not twenty-nine years back just two blocks north, 211 Summit.

  I will point out his house, if one of you youngsters reminds me. Volunteers? Excellent. This pretty little colored girl right here in front. I choose you, darlin. Cute as a button and bright, I can always tell. Our most famous sculptor got collected: Why, his statue of Chief Geronimo (1829–1909) stands in our governor’s mansion. Dear Clarence, like a much much older brother, befriended me while I was just a questioning if not-unpretty child. So, yes, folks, these crop capitals would prove his masterpiece post-Philadelphia-breakdown. —How’m I doing? Be honest. Facts console people. Folks just gulp dates down. They think they can permanently know a thing.

  My only child blames me for “hooking” her on history, like some drug. This daughter, “Meade,” family name, she’s sixty already. (Time, I swear!) This morning Meade begged me to stay in bed or, if I was determined to risk this, at least to stick with just facts till I ease back in. “Beside the stilled waters, preparest a table for me in the presence of mine enemy, Forgetfulness!”

  Now, feeling better and certainly hope you all are. Good. Confidence is the thing.

  What say we just keep moving southward, whatever befalls our li’l scouting party? Pioneer spirit. Fact is, while still a girl, on Sunday afternoons, my parents and my friends and theirs, we promenaded right around the Square here, still wearing white church-clothes. Crinolines made their very private sound, whispery, crackling, even. A brass band’s always playing Victor Herbert or your top hymns. My, but full sun is warming. Mind these cobblestones, now. Tricky even for my two-inch heels.

  Do these stones feel historically accurate? Should. These are the originals, children. Certain ones are said to have come over as ballast on English ships. “Pavers” can snag even a low heel and break a hip. Certain local ladies my age or younger get so worried about falling, they want to spread tar clear over stones’ own history. Why, if every generation did that, what’d be left to walk my tours through?

  Good college friend of mine she just attended the burial at Arlington Cemetery, for the last sailor found in wreckage of a Civil War iron-side. Government had held his body since the seventies, the 19-70s. Finally DNA science grew sophisticated to where it could trace which crew member he was. Then they actually contacted that poor sailor-boy’s living kin. This would likely be the last-ever Civil War burial. Big ceremony: Secretary of the Navy spoke, Marine band played, horse-drawn cortege waited out front, news photographers, a nation-mourns-type-thing. They saved that chapel’s whole front pew for the dead seaman’s modern offspring. And his kin they turned up, all right. Wearing shorts. One, I am told, in a huge yellow Tweetie Bird T-shirt. Here came grieving men and women slouching to Arlington in flip-flops!

  —No, not criticizing you, dear. Why, that was a state funeral, and we’re in summer with an outdoor group seeking more Mrs. Evelyn information. Apples, oranges. —Even so, I say a nation with no rules, no formality—with only an obese off-duty sapping casualness—it just makes China’s takeover that much easier!

  Let’s keep ours at least a high-end $19.95 nation, right?! Humor again, see. But, in light of some of your footwear, we trailblazers had best stick to historical Falls’ sidewalks, agreed? Lunch ahead, remember. You’ve got a secret treat in store. And the hungrier you get, the more you’ll want to know her cold chicken’s spices. Don’t even think of begging me. Sally is a first cousin with a private formula and Mrs. Evelyn’s lips are sealed.

  We’ll soon turn onto tree-lined Summit Avenue. It’s been the scene of major coming-out parties, seven murders, more suicides than have ever been called that. One good thing modern is medicine. Thank you, madame, for passing me your brochure to use as my personal hand fan. S’thoughtful. Are you a schoolteacher? I thought so. It’s getting toasty out, despite the spring left in my step. Guess how old? Still un-willing? Maybe that is personal. Oh, I hail from a long line of walkers, and I do not mean the rolling aluminum kind! Another modern advance is how the race-subject can be addressed front-and-center, at least among thinking persons like us. And especially, my lucky first time back, to draw, like ours today, a “mixed” tour.

  Meade, my one child, eats and breathes history but has a willful streak I find mysterious. My daughter just idolizes Jefferson. It’s beyond “having a crush.” At sixty, she still calls him “Master Tom” or, after ’bout three martinis, “Massah Tom.”

  Meade’s backyard has an eighteenth century “knot-garden” and nothing in hers was not first in his. The man ghostwrote our Declaration at age thirty-five and who can deny his unbelievable genius? Of course, I bought her all those worshipful children’s biographies, before we understood the full extent of his interest in animal husbandry, if you grown-ups see my meaning. —Never a beauty, Meade. Took after my husband’s mother, poor dear thing. (But is beauty that important now? I notice, out at the mall, how the utter lack of looks doesn’t stop those countless frog-like couples from rubbing all over against each other.)

  My daughter belongs to various local book groups. One still reads books. They bused to Monticello last month, with old me tagging along. Dear Meade keeps a copy of Houdon’s life-sized bust of him in her dining room. She has propped a man’s fedora on his head, cocked at an angle. I asked her, only once, why that hat was there. Meade, now sixty, answered, “Cute on him. —Other questions, Historical Interrupter?” She often mentions Jefferson’s weight and height, red hair. My daughter likes to concede how shy he was. Except, I guess, around his personal staff.

  We’d just arrived in Monticello’s great foyer. As you know it’s lined with Lewis and Clark’s stuffed animal specimens. Our tour guide that day proved a lovely undergraduate girl, studying history at the University of Virginia. And before we were properly in the house, she brightly mentioned our third President’s liv
e-in slave mistress. Well, Meade emitted one sound between a hiccup, a gasp and, I guess, growling. I sensed trouble ahead. We visit Monticello so often Meade has one of their out-of town family memberships. And, during earlier tours, back in the early times when “slaves” were still called “servants,” Jefferson’s form of sexual exactions went cleanly unmentioned. But today’s pretty tour-girl waded straight to Ms. Sally Hemings’s becoming mother to Jefferson’s, what? six-or-eight bright dusky sideline children.

  Well, my daughter’s face it duskied up. Even I know that things have changed and sex is more freely discussed now. Good thing, too. (Say what? You want more of the tour’s walking part? Soon as your Mrs. Evelyn gets herself cooled off a little. But what I am guiding here aloud is itself quite a procession. If you’ll bother to listen. History cannot be sidestepped, whatever your footwear.)

  Getting back to Monticello, for the few of you still interested? Well, thank you. Meade was about to embarrass all of us. Miss Docent, dignified, trained, she stopped, pointed: “Question? This lady—”

  “I mean,” Meade began. “What could a man of his refinement and some semi-literate girl-servant possibly find to discuss all those years?”

  Well, everybody looked at their feet. I just wish I’d taught my daughter more directly about birds and bees and men’s willingness to do or pay anything for it. Maybe my cowardice about sex-talk stunted our Meade, you think? I’ve finally become a liberal but could-be too late! Oh, my daughter is intelligent, forever forcing excellent books on me. Meade is the admired executive vice president of our local college. But I should not have withheld her childhood sex-information. She’s never had one boyfriend. I’d be glad with her finding a nice woman roommate, maybe a trust-funded potter out of Sarah Lawrence or somewhere. But it’s just always only Meade off alone being Meade. If sex is embarrassing, virginity’s worse.