The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus

by Allan Gurganus

  But here, at Monticello, my daughter grew so belligerent toward that girl docent, staring absolute daggers. I confess to stepping slightly away from my own flesh and blood. Our tour-guide had lovely skin and you could see she was of good family. Funny, her name was Martha, same as his dead wife, Jefferson’s. Confronted by Meade, she did not back off answering the question. “In common, miss? Sally Hemings was the beautiful younger half-sister of his recently dead wife. Jefferson had made said wife a deathbed promise never to remarry. So, what had they in common? Living in sight of each other here, way out here, on their ‘little mountain,’ day in, day out? Sex. No charts are necessary, right? We all know he was certainly high-energy and project-oriented. —Now, moving on to something more germane about the genius we’ve come to celebrate, ahead on your left, please note …”

  Well, my daughter’s breathing had grown so labored, she had to cross her arms to keep standing. Meade’s expectations of Jefferson are, I fear, just not realistic!

  She will tell you any day: her two muses are the scientific Jefferson and her dog, a pug she calls Wallis in honor of the Duchess of Windsor, one of the most selfish people ever to draw breath. All pugs, lacking actual noses, snuffle like a TB ward. To top that, her Wallis, he has asthma. And here my Meade is, right in Monticello, grabbing this attractive UVA girl by one arm to spin her around and tell her to please go wash her mouth out with lye soap, period-appropriate! She said “lye soap”! Implying a mistruth, I suppose.

  Then Meade announces that this short tour has, for her anyway, near about “contaminated a founder”! Well, right there I told Meade this girl’s welcome had not been free-form. She’d not written that foyer speech. (Not the way that I—being always over-prepared—sometimes allow mine to evolve, if I get, like youall, an especially receptive group.) No, Martha’s had been scripted by the very historians you see on PBS. And I explained to everyone: this young coed had not herself climbed up on any helpless slave girl. So why be mad at her, Meade? But truth-telling is essential and, though embarrassed for my daughter, I basically found it tonic.

  Say what, young lady? Local hangings? Oh, my dear. Yes, a few. But, child, it is scarcely past ten in the a.m. What put you in-mind of those? Psychic little girl you are, Voodoo. The bistro has probably not yet deboned sufficient white meat to become our chicken salad and here we’ve already hit the historic racial punishment question! I prefer tucking that closer to my tour’s end, once I get you all back nearer your cars. My $4.95ers don’t even get to hear the pivotal American word “slavery.”

  But, you did pay nearly twenty-dollars adults, children’s—five, I believe. So Mrs. Evelyn, as local hostess to history’s embarrassing present-tense, should not deny you. Of course, I’d be going up against the Chamber of Commerce boys again. There are three main censors, uniformly Young Republicans, all named “Skeeter,” each one’s mind a forty-watt bulb. They’ll once more likely threaten me with silence. But … only if one amongst you should return to the Visitors Center and gripe afterwards. Well, but you promise?

  If I do tell the “whole truth and nothing but,” you’ll defend your Mrs. Evelyn? Show of hands. Well, I declare. I am a wee bit flattered. My first day back and maybe our nation’s still a Democracy, after all!

  But, should anybody care to skip this part, go wait over in that shady old bandstand. I’ll send my teacher’s pet here to retrieve you the second my topic gets easier.

  Well, now that Miss Flip-Flop’s gone, the answer’s “yes.” Some. Some hangings did occur. This has never before been a tour-stop. I am possibly overstepping. But, see this giant sycamore right here, silent? It did not go uninvolved. —And, m’ young ones: the proper verb here is a person’s being “hanged.” Not “hung.” That is something else.

  “Vigilantism” I’d call mighty unfortunate. See, poor white workers resented freed slaves taking their jobs for even lower wages. Much of the South’s trouble came down to our poor whites and how very little my own people, the more fortunate badminton Summit Avenue crowd, did to control Caucasian riffraff hereabouts. Gentry looked the other way. Generations living in a … cloud and I don’t know what silly mists! Bourbon, certain ones. Sad comment—especially from a town once called “the Athens of This Far into Eastern North Carolina.”

  But we will always have the poor, certain uneducated bog-Irish lurking about, inebriated, intermarrying and making Saturday mischief. The facts about lynching, all over the U.S. and not merely in the South, appall any thinking person.

  (But, wait. Owing to this child’s question, aren’t I suddenly telling you Falls completely out of order? Seems I was just getting our pretty town founded in that butter-colored 1824. To offer you a newer reference point, that yellow mother cat trying and get her poor blind baby across four lanes of traffic? they occurred right here today. Does that give you a sense of the epic pageantry involved? But this question, see, reorganizes me just when I can likely least afford it.)

  I am told that, between the 1880s and the early 1960s when it went completely out of fashion, thank God, at least five thousand persons were done away with in this savage manner. And zero prosecutions, since the men who do it too often wear pillowcase hoods or pull their hat brims down or are your actual sheriff. So this very sycamore, grown up to shade a courthouse so McKim, Mead & White–like. Thank you for that knowing smile. I just knew you were a schoolteacher. Yes, African American schoolteachers warm my heart. I am proud of those who look after their own community. You folks and your little girl who just asked this question, I assume she is yours, do seem so bright, which just makes my work that much easier. Why, if this tree could talk, we’d pay it not to.

  Two of our worst hangings depended on participation from this selfsame sycamore. But, no, Professional Educator, you hear that passive construction I just indulged? It was weak of me and is shaming. That was the old me talking, the pre-mini-stroke Evelyn, a lifelong default-setting Daughter of the American Revolution. Fact is, this tree had little to do with it. Plain human meanness inspires such acts.

  Most of the hanged men, all ours were men, proved innocent. But only afterwards, see. The white girl recanted but she’d always been homely and had lied from day-one about having random boyfriends. And that stolen silver punch bowl—very valuable, made by Gorham, an early prototype of the “Viking Bowl” shown at 1893’s Columbian Exposition—was later found under a dining-room table. It had been placed there the day before by one cautious housepainter, not wanting to drip enamel on that grade of sterling. The owner who reported it stolen? she did not know this costly wedding gift’s whereabouts. Oh, and that lady she was very hard on herself afterwards. Later railed against herself for having accused a boy named Sammy, someone she’d known, liked, and hired his entire short life. It was terrible for everybody, really. Shocking when country men dragged that hollering child my age from a jail cell where police had stuck him just as a one-night lesson.

  Poppa said I could absolutely not go downtown, what with this mess roaring everywhere. But you know me. In my nightclothes and slippers I simply monkey-climbed my bedroom’s wisteria arbor, just came running these two blocks here to Courthouse Square, hoping to save our funny quiet Sammy. Running, I planned a speech! I feared grown-ups might reprimand me for being on the public street in a nightgown; but what with torches and the screaming, everybody was looking up at what was, not supposed to be, but hung twenty feet right in this tree. Poor boy. Skin ashy-gray already. And hadn’t done not one thing wrong, Sammy. Oh my my. This is … extra. Must not tell, you must not tell, I ever told that.

  So … but. I know how long she suffered, the woman that accused our Sammy wrongly, because, well, she was no stranger to me, but closely related by blood. Let it not be said I do not implicate my own family, given its central role in our town’s and nation’s founding.

  After round-one of my TIA mini-strokes, they said I’d only keep “losing function.” But I have also gained things. Have taken onboard a whole new admiration for the visible world, plus cert
ain old secrets I am saddened to finally know. But human life and history, it’s not all subtraction, children, no. We’re added on to, too. Or so I …

  Is it not a bit humid out today? Surely we heirs of these very Carolinas’ founders should be used to heat by now. Northern European stock was just not meant for this Africanized tropical climate. Imagine what-all noon might bring. Should have worn a big garden hat. But it seemed, in my hall mirror, too “intentional,” overtly picturesque. Even for you, the more educated Deluxe crowd. I was not thinking practically, nor of myself. So many little concessions to others. Well, what say we tarry a moment in this tree’s generous shade. See how many uses a sycamore can serve? Note its handsome mottled bark, unique … botanically.

  You don’t usually find an Altar Guild churchwoman willing to meet with strangers on public streets, much less go near the subject of race. But me, I am stronger than that. Mother brought us up different. She made her own mistakes but the woman learned. We’ll soon stroll off onto Summit Avenue, runs parallel. I’ll point out Belmont, 1824, my own home but we can’t go in, as it is her day for downstairs vacuuming and she’d kill me. —But some iced tea would be excellent about now. Is it increasingly hot out here or is this some … residue from my recent unpleasantness?

  You were kind to earlier point out my springy step. That’s due to titanium. This hip is made from the material that forges jet rocket airplanes. I am secretly so modern, what holds me up is what keeps airplanes in the sky! Now, watch out ahead for these huge tree roots coming. See how they’ve buckled the sidewalk? I’ve been after our mayor for years to … Children, said, “care-ful.”

  My! No.

  Ohsh! EEEee.

  Dear me, Lord. But see how fast I caught myself? Family tradition. Basically fine. Only let me, gather myself … somewhere. Please let me sit. Sorry. Better. Give me one wee minute. Why, thank you, child. Your yellow rose all for me? Can’t people be wonderful? You are so sweet. Now that this flower is both of ours, I love it more for being stolen. Wish I’d broken more laws while I could still reach ’em.

  Feeling better’n better. Mustn’t worry. Most of my days are spent losing then finding things and almost falling but, knock wood, not. Just shook me’s all. Here I was, trying to clear your paths! Typical. My nearly falling hurts way less than having it so seen.

  Let’s all test these park benches, what say? Think it’s too early for our slipping into Sally’s place? Could one of you ladies steal over, just tap on her door, ask if I and my today’s stellar group might come in, just sit a spell under their electric fans while they ready our lunch? Thank you, ma’am, for going. I would near-about kill right now for a simple glass of tea.

  Upsetting … Jefferson. And a grown daughter who disbelieves in DNA while living jealous of one poor trapped slave girl. My late Edmund was a whiz at earning money but not enjoying it. I had to seem to enjoy for all of us and it …

  These spells come over me now. And, should this episode persist and expand, you will not be charged, even given how far I have already got … Here, more nice Victorian reproduction benches in the shade of a real sycamore. The sycamore. Sweet Sammy’s tree.

  Poor Meade. I did encourage her love of history. But historical monogamy is impossible. Lately she’s joined a charismatic sect (if still Episcopal). My daughter acts so hidebound, old-fashioned. I feel “newer” than she. No, what’s the concept? Yes, “younger” than she. Whenever I visit Meade she keeps trying to give me tours of her tiny town house. Lead me! Why, there’s not one good thing in there I didn’t give her! Seems history keeps crushing us with what we’re proudest of.

  Times, I just don’t know m’ precious Meade. Is she and that poor wheezing dog all I’ll really leave behind? Have I made even one small stride? Doesn’t our white-folks’ tribe just keep falling back, ever weaker, in the pursuit of … pursuit? And since I nearly tripped, here I am perspiring, too. “Glowing,” we were taught to say as girls. Field-hands “sweated.” Now so am I.

  Certainly wish that teacher would get back from Sally’s. Not wholly myself today. Might some man run check where that other one wandered off to, after I trusted her? See? The restaurant’s directly yonder. Their plaque is still turned with “Closed” facing outward. But there is another side. You can fall at any minute. No help then. But the main sign can so soon reverse … can suddenly say “Open.” To us all. As the sheep of his pasture, enter into his gates and under his palm fans. There will be a first seating but next there will be a raising up and then the last leveling. I only hope that those, however flawed, who battled for enlightened views, those whose families treated theirs as close-knit members of … I only hope, in this town, which is all I know of home but which can actually be a festering little bandstand pagoda made of solid shit, if you youngsters will excuse my sudden potty-mouth.

  Your children disappoint. The Bible tells us that. Do you mind? I feel I need this entire bench to stretch out on. Could that prettiest child come fan me, please? Others go stand nearer the tree, now. All of you. But someone spry do run for Cousin Sally, say, “Mrs. Evelyn is poorly and down in the Square.” Hardly anyone anywhere knows now. Who my people were. When to wear real, shined, self-respecting shoes. I feel … where was I? Let us take me from the top.

  “Foundered in 1824, it …” No. Bad. Am reversing again. They told me I might and to come quick, so if. “If so.” Not good, see? Quick, send your strongest child fleet-of-foot to young Doc Worth. He got us through the dreadful Spanish flu, my whooping cough. He’ll know. I said: Run fetch Doc. Yes, you. Said stop fanning me. Run, you pretty little nigra-girl I been spoiling. Do as I tell you, I say … Why stare? Have you never seen a lady? Have you never seen an actual lad-y, you?

  Deliver me … someone even phone m’ Meade. Text, girls, text now! Meade’s organized, knows everybody. Scolded me this morning I was not ready. This concludes any walking tour’s possible walking … Full refund. How much can one convey in an hour?

  And now that I look closer at you people, I find you’re all unknown to me! Not one family resemblance present. Why, you’ve swarmed into Courthouse Square uninvited, empty-handed, wearing shower shoes. Pretenders. All you’ve ever brought us off that godless highway is carpetbags, Dutch elm disease and fire ants. You’re squashing local cats and being absolutely no help to your elders.

  Eager to be told history by those who’re mainly made of its embarrassments. And you expect to hear that for under twenty-dollars per riffraff-head? Oh, Mrs. Evelyn thinks not. And I’ve already spared you half the worst! Lady school-principals caught working as actual Raleigh whores. Mayors stealing us blind for thirty years and then forgiven. Preachers corrupting little boys … I mean, of diaper age! I’ve never given one tour worth even $4.95. Why? ’Cause, if I took you up to the full-twenty-dollar truth-level? your ears’d bleed. Admit you’re here to suck culture from us, the way black snakes put fangs into Momma’s white hens’ eggs.

  God gives so little guidance to His faithful guides. He must’ve taken early retirement. Left no practical instructions. Where are still waters to lead you people off beside? Presence of mine enemies, oh, I know you now. Such cold stares from false familiars. Have I just lost all my last looks? You the country posse come for me?

  And, as for you, ma’am. Why should you of all people wear short-shorts? To show us those huge white tree legs? Sequoias of foam-rubber! Is such germ warfare your Jersey way? Nasty. Please cover those. History’s hard enough without your needing to display all that! No shame? No home-mirror? You think Jefferson would’ve been caught dead looking like you anyplace? even in his house? even while doing Sally anywhere? even after candles-out? Where’s the least bit of dignity?

  Here, you people, at least come help me to stand. That’s all I need. Will breathe easier. Well, do as I say. Here, you and you and that on the legs, come help me rise. Try leaning me up solid, back against Sammy’s tree.

  All right, you Federal spies. Hard bargain you drive. Those your final terms? You were always going to w
in. It is: use seedless green grapes, white pepper, lots of mace, toast those damn almonds. And now you’ve got our secret? go home up North. Back off away from me.

  Believe I hear help coming.

  Falls’ ambulances will know me.

  Mustn’t be found like this, fallen among barefoot strangers, down, and in a public park.

  But, wait, attention, group.

  Last thing. And I’m meaning this.

  Look! Why … there … so suddenly …

  Directly to your left.

  It’s … it’s … —Green pastures!

  FOURTEEN FEET OF WATER IN MY HOUSE

  COME MIDNIGHT I was the sixty-five-year-old owner of a river-view Colonial, asleep on his second story. By three a.m., the river was my first floor and wanted my second.

  I kept an aluminum flatboat in the backyard. Hadn’t thought of the thing since last bass season. And yet it waked me like some good pet. Its prow kept beating gentle against my upstairs bedroom wall. Spooked, I set my bare white feet … into six inches of cold gritty water. I soon went headfirst out my highest window into a waiting boat. It was all so weird it felt natural.

  An aged outboard motor, untouched for months, somehow sputtered to life. Starting off I felt fearless as a boy. No streetlamp worked. Just a crescent moon refolding over currents as I chugged between treetops.

  Prediction, as usual, failed us. “This is real,” I told my Evinrude’s racket. “Dad’s house is ruined. —Boat seems fine, though. People probably stranded….”

  Our neighborhood is called “Riverside.” No lie! Three-acre lots, four-car garages, one dock per home. This happened September 15, 1999, a North Carolina hurricane named Floyd. Winds, threatened all afternoon, proved nothing much—the unexpected sneaks in after dark.