by Kia Corthron
Now Rett stares at him, flummoxed.
“I’n’t that what you were lookin for in my room that day? Is that why you came here?”
“No!”
“Maybe not the only reason, but part of it? Easy access?” Rett wildly shakes his head.
They are still a few moments, then Rett says, “She wants to talk to you again.”
“Your mother’s still on the phone?” Dwight rushes back to his room to pick up the receiver.
“Sorry, Andi! I didn’t know you were still there.”
“That’s alright. I’m going to pay you back for this call.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Well I am.” A silence. “I’m sorry, Dwight. Accusing you like that.”
“Well. Until recently you’da had a good reason to.” He takes a moment. “I shoulda called you when he got here. Never occurred to me he didn’t tell you. And then I checked my phone bill. Your number come up a couple times.”
“Yeah, he called and said he was still in St. Louis doing an internship. After he flunked out.” She breaks into sobs. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do with that boy! Man, he’s a man now! Doing well, three point six average, then the last semester he decides to lock himself into his damn room and not come out.” Dwight hears her wiping her face. “He doesn’t have any friends, wouldn’t make any friends. Guess I was in some kind of denial. When he said he’d gotten a graduation gift from you, I was so relieved, thinking—” Her breathing. “It wasn’t until I told him I’d made the flight reservations that he leveled with me, told me there would be no closing exercises for him, now how stupid was I to then believe that cockamamie story about the St. Louis internship?”
Dwight takes a moment. Then, “Usually. I never woulda guessed. But now.”
“Drugs?”
“I wonder.”
“What do you think?”
He laughs. “My expert opinion. Well I ain’t seen no physical signs. But his behavior. He been so solemn. Then lately, all the sudden excited. Well we was plannin a little road trip. Down the coast.”
“Yes, he can get like that. New project.” She is quiet. “Well. Unless he’s started using there, he wasn’t before. Trust me, I thoroughly investigated.” A silence.
“What he do seem addicted to,” Dwight finally says, “is sad.”
“I know. I know!” He has the sense she’s pacing. “Sent him to a counselor. He wouldn’t talk. The counselor suggested family counseling so we went to the counselor. He wouldn’t talk!” She sighs heavily. “He gets insomnia a lot. Uses this over-the-counter sleep medication. Last year in the dorm he took too many. The school called, I was in court that day, the school called I had to—” Suddenly crying again, then just as abruptly stops. “We’re hoping it was an accident.”
When Dwight comes out of his room, he is surprised to find Rett standing in the exact same spot, in the exact same position, his shoulders tense, his back to his uncle. Upon hearing Dwight he quickly wipes his face and turns around.
“You like garlic in your spaghetti?”
“I’m not really hungry.”
“Come on out to the kitchen anyway.” Rett follows his uncle. Dwight fills the pot with water, snaps the pasta in half, drops it in. This takes a few minutes and he doesn’t speak, not sure what to say. He puts the food on the burner, turns on the fire, and indicates for Rett to follow him to the dining table. They sit.
“You know you worry her.”
“Well I’m sure The Judge’ll get over it.”
“Don’t talk about your mother like that.”
Rett stares at the table. Dwight decides that Rett will be the next to speak if he has to wait all night. After an excruciating silence, Rett begins bawling. “If you’re wondering about the hundred dollars you sent for my graduation I used it for my plane ticket here, and. I’m sorry about your journal, Uncle Dwight!” He tries wiping his face but the tears are falling too quickly. “I didn’t mean to be spying! I only read the parts that said ‘Eliot.’”
Dwight catches his breath. He stares at his nephew, and it’s suddenly all so obvious. Why he came here, why he was in Dwight’s room last weekend, reading Dwight’s personal written history today, why he’d asked about photos of Dwight and Eliot as children. Rett was searching for something but it wasn’t drugs. Dwight knew this, had always known this in some sense but perhaps hadn’t allowed himself to see the desperate degree of Rett’s hunger. “Oh,” says the elder, the fog of the last month lifting so quickly. “Oh,” he says again, nodding. The purple tint of sunset bathes the room. Rett’s sobs gradually subside.
“Steada the California trip. Why on’t we head on out to Humble.”
Rett’s face snaps up, staring at Dwight.
“You ain’t never been. Right?”
Rett shakes his head.
“I can call my friend. He be at the meetin tomarra, I can ask him to bring his flight vouchers. This late we probably have to go standby. We can’t make it this week, there’s always next. My vacation time’s flexible.” He smiles. “And so’s yours.”
Rett continues staring at his uncle, then his moist eyes lower, considering it all.
“Now the house got sold. After your granddad died. So we wouldn’t be able to go in. I ain’t been back since ’64, nineteen years, for all I know it coulda got tore down. Doubt it though. When I left things was already startin to go downhill, the economy, so can’t imagine no big developers come to buy up blocks and redo em. I could show ya whatever’s still there. The neighborhood, where your daddy and me run around. Banneker School where your daddy and me went.”
“Miss Onnie’s house?”
Dwight smiles. The confused terror in Rett’s eyes starts to soften.
“Okay. I’d like— I’d like to see where you and my father grew up for my vacation. If that’s okay with you.”
“It’s okay with me.”
That night they sit in the living room watching the Bootsy Collins performance for what seems like the fiftieth time, but instead of their usual joyful bouncing they both quietly gaze at the screen. When the tape gets stuck in the machine and then breaks as they try to pull it out, Rett moans and starts to cry, and Dwight cries a little too.
8
The next morning Dwight calls the travel agent, who suggests a red-eye departing 10 p.m. Monday and arriving at Dulles 7 a.m. Tuesday, then returning on a 6:30 a.m. out of Dulles Thursday, those particular flights showing a few open seats before the holiday rush. As Dwight predicted, they’ll be on standby.
“Allowin three hours for the drive outa D.C. up through Maryland, everything on time we oughta be in Humble 10:30, eleven Tuesday mornin.”
He wonders if he should be in touch with anyone, to let them know he’s coming. Nineteen years. He would be fine not to run into any familiar faces but chances are he would. Sunday morning he reaches for a box in the back of a closet, ancient stuff. He’s rather relieved, should the need arise, to honestly be able to say over the years he lost all his old contact information. What he does find, tattered and dusty, is his senior yearbook.
Half an hour later Rett comes busting through the door, back from the errand Dwight sent him on.
“Sorry, Uncle Dwight! There were these jugglers in the street, they were really good! I got distracted.”
“That’s alright.” He knows his nephew is worried that Dwight can no longer trust his word, but this time he does.
“And they didn’t have the seedless so I got the regular. Okay?”
“I grew up spittin watermelon seeds, spose I can handle it now. Put it in the kitchen and sit down a second.”
They are at the dining table. The uncle opens the yearbook to the seventeen seniors, including Dwight Campbell. Rett laughs out loud, delighted. Then the elder flips back to another section headlined “7th Grade.” Rett is mesmerized, his fingertips g
ingerly grazing the page.
“Your daddy and me was pretty handsome huh.” Rett can’t speak. “I’ll take it to the photo place, maybe they find a way a makin a nice copy for you.”
At dinner that evening Dwight serves himself a healthy portion of kale.
“I’m guessin Togo ain’t happenin neither.”
Rett shakes his head without looking up. “I do know somebody in the Peace Corps there. He was kinda my only friend, but maybe that’s just cuz he was the R.A. and had to be.”
Dwight seasons his greens with vinegar, watching his nephew.
“He invited me when I was a junior and he was about to graduate and head on over. He gave me his mailing address. I was excited. So this spring I wrote him, then I went out and got the French lessons. I never heard back. Guess he was just inviting me to be nice, he didn’t really mean for me to come. Or changed his mind.”
“Not nice at all to invite somebody you don’t mean it.”
Rett picks at his meatloaf.
“What about this lass semester a school you dropped out?”
Rett sighs silently.
“I ain’t naggin atcha. I jus like to know whatchu thinkin about. The future.”
He shrugs. “I could go back to Indianapolis.”
“Might be good. Clear your head, figure out whatchu wanna do.”
Rett looks up. “What about the resta the summer?” His voice is small.
“Thought you were spendin it with me. Wa’n’t that the plan?”
Rett smiles, sadness and shame and gratitude.
At Narcotics Anonymous on Monday, Dwight makes a quiet joke about his “addiction” to these meetings which he is about to break cold turkey. “But I’ll be back, fallin off the wagon by Friday.” That evening he and his nephew take the bus to the airport. Fortunately the flight still has open seats and they are given boarding passes. They stop by a bookshop, and Dwight peruses the fiction a few minutes before deciding instead to purchase a book of puzzles, imagining such brain teasers would be good for keeping his mind sharp. Rett has brought his Walkman for the long flight, though his uncle cautions him to get some sleep overnight so as to be alert for the drive tomorrow.
They sit in the waiting area at the gate, Rett lost in his music, Dwight frowning in concentration at a logic problem. He has made strides toward the complicated solution when he becomes aware that Rett is staring at him, and looks up. Rett quickly looks away.
“What?”
Rett shakes his head. Dwight continues gazing at his nephew. Rett turns to him. “Keith died of AIDS?”
Dwight is quiet a moment. “We didn’t know what to call it back then. But, yes.”
Rett looks down, nodding.
“What else?”
“Were you ever scared?”
“For him?”
“For you.”
“That I was gonna die?”
Rett nods.
“Yes.” Dwight sits back. “No justice in it. I sure was not particular who I slept with them days. And then the needle. Keith and I came out West together and he stomached a lotta my shenanigans. But not the drugs.” He shakes his head. “Clean. Selective. Sixties and seventies nobody else worried about nothin. But Keith jus wa’n’t really interested in bein with anyone less he loved em.”
“How did you meet?”
Dwight closes his book. “I worked in Lewis, West Virginia, forty miles outside a Humble. February 1st, which was the night before my birthday, I gone to the colored pub for a drink. Sittin on the barstool feelin sorry for myself, lonely, bout to turn. What. Thirty-one, I guess. Quiet, not too many frequentin the place on a Monday. And damn if two a them middle-agers don’t get into an out n out brawl over whether nex day the groundhog see his shadow or not. I left, got in my truck. And it was a bit icy, and I was a bit tipsy, and nex thing I know my fender’s French-kissin the guardrail. Big drop down the mountain jus beyond it and in that terrible near-death moment I see my mama, and my daddy, and your daddy. And it come back to me, Christmas we jus had. Your granddaddy’s sister, Aunt Beck visitin over the holiday, railin bout me and Eliot not married yet.” He smiles. “She always had to have somethin to pick on. Now there was a woman, my route. Made it clear she was very interested. By then I’d had a few fleetin experiences with men, none of em meanin much, most the men married to women anyhow. So I thought. Maybe time to grow up. Start a family. I’d often entertained the idea a bein a father, how else? Big decision cuz I told myself I was not gonna be like them men, if I committed to a woman and children I’d stick with it, no strayin.
“So, nex mornin. My birthday. Cold day. I’m deliverin, ain’t yet got to the woman’s place, she was the afternoon. And I pull out the mail for 613 Oak Place, bills and circulars and a digest. The digest is covered in brown paper but somehow the brown paper got ripped, the title showin: Jonathan.
“I start to put the mail in the box and this young blond man come runnin out on the porch, throwin a coat on. Wantin to know about forwardin his mail, he’s movin to Humble. I tell him the procedure, then I mention I’m from Humble and we get to talkin. He say he bought a place out at the new trailer park jus put up along Ole Mill Road. He got a nice smile, a soft, friendly way. Then I hand him his mail. I look at Jonathan, and I look at him. And he start to stammerin, Yeah, he’s a artist, he like that comic for the art of it. Then I say, I’m a artist too. I’ve drawn for Jonathan.
“Now I knew what Keith was first time I seen him on my route. But he hadn’t been around the block s’much. He weren’t no baby, twenty-seven, but out there in the sticks he just ain’t had much learnin, ain’t yet found the inroads I did. So he didn’t know yet, about me. Not for sure. And not for sure them days, well. That kinda mistake easily getcha fired, cost ya your livelihood. Or your life. So when I said I drew for Jonathan, which was a biblical reference even though wa’n’t nunna the characters in the cartoon biblical nor named Jonathan, when I said I drew for that underground gay comic he turned to me, like searchin my face, see if I’m tellin the truth. And then he know I am.”
They’re quiet a few moments, the silence filled with flight announcements and beeping airport carts. Dwight is not looking at Rett.
“Nineteen eighty-one. There I am in the hospital, beaten, robbed while I was loaded. Gettin my wounds patched up by some disgusted nurse won’t look me in the face and the thousandth time I’m makin the promises to myself, goin straight this time, goin clean. And I’m released and as I’m walkin out I happen to pass this room and there’s Keith.” He takes a quiet breath. “I can’t remember ever seein him look so alone before. Scared. His eyes confused. I got this urge, got this yearnin to go to him, put my arms around him, but I been so evil for so long what kinda comfort I be?” He falls silent several seconds. “‘Keith?’
“He look up. Starin wild like I’m some stranger, I shudder thinkin maybe after all the junk I done I become unrecognizable. Then he said, ‘He died.’ Now it was all new at that time, there weren’t even a name for it, I don’t even recall rumors about it then. Not yet, but soon. I said, ‘Who died?’ He said, ‘Nicholas.’ The boyfriend he got after finally givin up on me years after he shoulda. ‘What happened?’ I didn’t understand, probably a year since I glimpsed em but last I seen that Nicholas he was young, healthy. And Keith said, ‘Kaposi’s sarcoma,’ and I said, ‘What’s that?’ and Keith said ‘Cancer.’ Then he said, ‘I got it too,’ and I said, ‘Naw, Keith, ya can’t catch cancer,’ but my voice. Shakin. And he looked at me, like finally seein me. ‘I wasn’t done mournin. He jus died, I barely got started mournin and now I’m scared for myself,’ and I say, ‘Ya can’t catch cancer,’ my voice a little stronger and he lower the neck of his hospital gown and there they are. Lesions.
“So. I’m Keith’s nursemaid to the death, which turned out not much longer. Few months. Moved into his place. He’d had a good job for years, art director, ad agency. Money
. Saved, so I didn’t have to get no job, I was full-time there with him. In and out the hospital with him. He talked about Nicholas plenty. I never knew him really but hearin about him now, seem like he was a nice fella. When it got close, he said he wanted to be home. What he said. ‘I wanna be home with you.’ Like it was our home, like we was never apart.” Dwight stares at the floor a long time. “I didn’t want the apartment. How’d I earn that apartment? way I treated him all them years. But he insisted, kep talkin about how happy he was I’d gone clean, really gone clean. Which I had. Takin care a Keith.” He sighs. “When he was real young, there was a Jake. Both of em babies, twenty. Besides that, and me, and Nicholas, I swear to God Keith never had nobody else. And far as I knew never so much as smoked a joint. I on the other hand did everything to kill myself one way or the other and look who end up with all the goddamn luck. Took my bess friend dyin to save my own life.”
After a full minute of silence, Rett gathers Dwight is finished. “He died at home?”
Dwight nods. “Jus turned fifty. Till recently he still looked like a healthy thirty-somethin, but that year aged him.” A stir-crazy little white boy throws a tantrum. His mother seizes him, whispering something threatening. “His lass day. We got happy all the sudden, couldn’t stop laughin, which was a struggle for him by then. I started tellin jokes. And postman stories. Even junkie stories, some of em was funny. And Humble stories, cuz we always had that between us: history. There was a time back home, I was always the one with the anecdotes, everyone come to me for the amusement. And in the middle a one a the laughin bouts, Keith said, ‘Now I remember. These lass years I forgot, it jus went outa my head. Now I remember why I love you.’” Dwight swallows, waits until he can speak again. “We talked a little more that evenin, I don’t remember what about. And then he went to sleep. And the nex mornin I tried wakin him, but.” He falls quiet, and Rett asks no more questions.
The stewardess at the gate announces their flight will be ready for boarding momentarily. Dwight puts his book in his overnight bag. “Well. What about you? Anybody ever make your heart flutter?”
