by Nick White
I stumble across the article while at work at the library and photocopy it and take it home for Zeus to read. At first, he can only laugh. “You do know,” he says, “that you could have probably found this online and saved yourself the trouble.” I maintain that it wasn’t any trouble—none at all. Ever since I started my job at the library, I have begun to treat old-fashioned ways of consuming text with more respect. Zeus thinks I’m slowly becoming more and more twee. “If you start smoking a pipe,” he told me once, “adios!” Over dinner, Zeus reads the article, and we spend the rest of the evening discussing the subject of endings. Now we both are writing—his process is slow, a paragraph or a sentence a day, while mine pours out pages at a time. It’s as if I were trying to finish it, my reckoning with that summer, before I lose the nerve. At night, before bed, we sometimes share what we’ve worked on. When the writing’s good, we make love to celebrate, and when the words force a painful memory to surface, we hold each other and whisper the hurt away. More often than not, our work is neither, and we bicker over how to go about fixing things, but even then, our disagreements lead us, more often than not, back to having sex.
Tonight he tells me how queer endings are remarkably easy to fuck up. “But neither of us died, so I guess we’ve already crossed the biggest hurdle.” We’re in bed, naked, our legs locked together under the sheets. I tell him I should end my story here, in this very moment, and he bristles. “That makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little,” he says. “Too much cheese.” This has become his favorite critique of my work. “You don’t want the ending to be too happy,” he says.
I don’t tell him my fear that our relationship is doomed. Six months after we returned from Mississippi, Zeus and I moved in together. “Not as fast as lesbians,” Bevy remarked to me in private. “But close.” In the months following my impromptu road trip, I ditched my dissertation and suspended graduate school and soon got a job as a clerk at one of the branch libraries in the city. Between our incomes, Zeus and I were able to afford a nicer living arrangement than both of us could have had on our own. I left my run-down garret and my noisy neighbors, Elementary Ed and her Great Dane, for two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, a full kitchen, and—perhaps most important—a boyfriend who knows how to tell a story and, as a plus, can coax me into telling my own. The apartment’s downtown, within walking distance to the hospital where Zeus works. It’s the first time either of us have lived with such nice amenities—a dishwasher we revere and a garbage disposal we’ve yet to fully figure out though we have our theories.
Lately, I’ve been worrying we would run out of stories to tell each other at night and that our love, if that’s what this is, would wither. So far, we’ve not been faced with this problem. Each time I suspect he’s told me every possible fragment from his life, he will surprise me with another family story of some distant aunt or cousin back in Puerto Rico. Similarly, I’ve found that with him I am able to retrieve new memories that have lain dormant inside me for years until he poses some innocuous question that breaks the memory loose from my mouth.
I confessed to Bevy my fear once. By then she had passed the bar exam and felt herself entitled to give all kinds of advice, legal or otherwise. She told me that she was shocked to hear me talk this way. “You mean you’re actually afraid that you and Zeus will run out of things to say to each other?” She snorted. “Oh, baby, welcome to relationships—you’re so normal now.”
After mulling over possible endings, Zeus tells me I should end with the new camp. “It’s the most obvious, but also—possibly—the most satisfying.” But the reasons for not ending there seem glaringly apparent to me. “For one,” I told him, “I didn’t go to the orientation.” None of the original campers from Camp Levi attended. Larry invited us, but we had, individually, declined. I think we liked the idea of the new camp, but we didn’t necessarily want to have to be there again, in the heat of the summer, at a place that we’d all, in some way or another, put behind us. I’d not spoken to Rumil or Christopher since Memphis, and I imagined it would always be awkward between us. “That doesn’t matter,” Zeus says. “You can focus on your father’s deal he made you agree to before he signed the deed over—or you could talk about Father Drake and what happened to him.”
The first thing Zeus was referring to was my father’s request that I call him at least once a month and visit a minimum of twice a year. My father wanted me to give him my word that I would let him be a part of my life, and I gave it, thinking our habit of silence would be harder to break than he realized. But so far, he has been consistent, almost annoyingly so. If we’re ever approaching a month when he’s not heard from me, he will call, and call, and call until I answer. He says, “I was just making sure you were still enjoying that fine piece of property I gave you,” and I apologize, and then we talk. Sometimes we talk about nothing in particular, the little happenings in our lives: my new job, Cecily’s first day of kindergarten. Sometimes we reminisce about our hardest moments together and acknowledge to each other all those old feelings that needed acknowledging. It is taxing, and afterward, I feel exhausted, as if I’d just completed a long session of cardio at the gym, my heart thundering in my chest.
Zeus also mentioned I should end with Father Drake. Because the police had been looking for me, they eventually checked the campsite at the Neck before word traveled that I had shown up at my father’s, and they found him and Cake there instead. The police were suspicious of Father Drake and took him and the boy into custody for questioning. Cake’s family was notified, and an aunt and uncle in Little Rock agreed to take him in, and he stayed with them for a month before having an argument with the uncle that sent him back on the road. Father Drake was held overnight in a jail cell and released the next day, with the sheriff of Attala County forbidding him to return to the camp. As far as anyone knows, he didn’t.
At the new camp this summer, however, the boys and girls described seeing strange things in the woods. Larry believed it was the influence of the movie playing with their perceptions. After camp had concluded, he called to give me a full report, telling me the sightings were nothing to worry about. Overall, the two weeks went very smoothly, he told me, and I agreed to renew his lease on the land for another year but not before having him delve into more detail about what the campers had seen. Some reported seeing a man, he said. He would come just to the edge of the trees, and like a spooked animal, he’d run off if one of the campers spotted him. But that wasn’t the only kind of sighting in the Neck. Other campers claimed to see various kinds of people in the woods, the most popular description being a pair of women. They didn’t run from the campers but waved at them as they passed through. “But that’s just stories, stuff they told at the campfire,” Larry told me. “You know as well as I do that nothing can live in the Neck.”
We’re still lying in bed, Zeus and I. He’s tweaking my nipple and tells me I should make sure to credit him now for the ending. “In the acknowledgments,” he says. He has been working on his own memoir for several years but hasn’t finished because, as he’s told me, he hasn’t completed becoming the person he wants to be. “I’m still moving,” he says. “But I haven’t settled.” I tell him that sounds like a cop-out. For this, he tweaks my nipple harder and I yelp. He says, “Okay then—how about this: I’m not ready to write my ending yet—once you write it, then you have to start thinking about putting it out in the world for other people to read.” I say that doesn’t make any sense, and he says that he wants me to be his only audience. “For now,” he says. He hasn’t been home in nearly five years, not since he began transitioning, and he tells me this has something to do with his hesitation. He surprises me by summoning my mother. She didn’t, he believes, tell me those stories for my benefit, at least not entirely. “She told them,” he says, “because she longed for it—your mother loved the Neck despite everything and knew she couldn’t go back.” Before I can argue, he says to me, “But you can’t go back, it’s y
ours, and you love it, too.” Then he corrects himself. “Well, maybe not love, but you understand it.”
“Do I, though?”
He doesn’t say anything. Partly because this is a question we will need to ponder for many more nights, maybe years, before an answer can be decided upon. There’s a comfort in this. He returns his head to my chest, and I ask if he wants to hear my idea for an ending. He says, “Shoot.” I begin to tell him about the afternoon at my father’s house, the day I returned. After our emotions calmed down, Lila had suggested we barbecue ribs. “I was there,” Zeus says, interrupting me. “I remember.” But he doesn’t really mind hearing this again. He has taken great pleasure in retelling this story himself to some of our friends: how he and Bevy decided to come save me from Mississippi and then ended up staying there for a reunion celebration. While my father grilled under the shade of the trailer’s awning, the rest of us sat outside on the deck. Cecily had taken a particular interest in me and had decided to ask me all the questions nobody had answered for her during all the excitement: “Where did you go? Why did you go there? Who did you see?” I tried to be as honest as I could with a four-year-old, and Zeus and Bevy often interjected to ask me to elaborate on, things they had never heard until now.
When I told them about seeing the two women in the woods, Lila shot up from her seat to say she had just remembered something. She went inside the trailer and came back out seconds later with a wooden box I hadn’t seen in years. “I wanted your daddy to mail this to you, but he was worried it’d get too banged up in transit.” Inside, there were all the old familiars—the tiara, the sash—but also wedged in there was my notebook, the one I’d written in shortly after my mother died. Cecily came over and peeked in. She took out the tiara and examined it. A few more rhinestones had fallen out, but it still sparkled. Cecily had very serious eyes, the same eyes as my father, and when she stared at me without blinking, I discovered that I would do whatever she asked of me. “Lean,” she said, and when I did, she placed the tiara on my head. She pushed the combs deep into my scalp. Cecily plucked the book from the wooden box and got into my lap. “Now,” she said, flipping through the pages. “What is this?”
“Words,” I told her.
She rolled her eyes. “Read,” she commanded.
And so I did. I read her all those pretty lies my mother had told me, and Zeus and Bevy scooted closer to hear them. When my father got the ribs started on the grill, he joined us on the deck. He told us dinner would be ready shortly. Then he asked if I wanted to take a shower. “No offense, son,” he said. “But you smell ripe.”
Cecily howled with laughter.
“Hmm,” Zeus said, examining the crown. “Your hair’s so tangled you’ll probably have to cut that thing out of your head to get it out.”
“Or,” my father said, as he went over to kiss his wife, “he can just leave it in. I’m sure his mama wouldn’t have minded.”
—
Do you remember him saying that?” I ask Zeus, but he’s snoring now. Gently I slide from our bed and tiptoe into the next room, our second bedroom that we use as an office. I sit down in front of our desktop and go online. This has become a ritual of mine. Come in here alone, in the dark, and look her up on the Internet. As with most everyone, she was easy to find. Tonight, like always, I compose her an e-mail. Many times I have intended on sending one to her, but I’ve never quite worked up the courage. All my talk of endings tonight with Zeus, however, has me convinced that I might follow through with it this time. In the e-mail, I write how I have been working through the details of that summer. I tell her how her brother was the main reason for my survival, and how, until very recently, I hadn’t lived the sort of life worth saving. Once I finish the e-mail, I’m confident I won’t hit delete, not this time—but then I read it over. On second thought, I doubt these are the right words to send, so I hit backspace and try again. I begin the new e-mail by telling her how I remember seeing her and her grandmother in the courtroom that day. I write how sorry I am for not contacting her sooner, but I was afraid, a coward, and I am trying to be braver now. I try and try and try every day, all day long.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
■
First, I want to thank my family in Mississippi. I never take their love and support for granted.
No book is ever written alone, and this one exists because of a series of talented and bighearted teachers who helped me along the way. I am a product of several public universities, and I want to give my professors their due because, Lord knows, most of them were probably woefully underpaid for the amount of time this young and overeager and (possibly) high-strung writer spent in their company, mostly during office hours: Andrea Mooney (who introduced me to Eudora Welty’s work by telling me how I reminded her of Sister from “Why I Live at the P.O.”) and Billy Wilson at Holmes Community College in Goodman, Mississippi; Carolyn Elkins, Bill Spencer, Susan Allen Ford, John Ford, John Pursley III, Dorothy Shawhan (who was the first novelist I ever met in person), Bill Hays, Beverly Moon, Marilyn Shultz, and everybody else in the land of the Fighting Okra at Delta State University; Rich Lyons (mentor-at-large), Michael Kardos (who lured me from poetry to prose), Catherine Pierce (the person I pretend to be when I’m leading workshops and get nervous), Becky Hagenston (whose stories are better than anything I will ever write, period), and all the wonderful people at Mississippi State University in Starkvegas; Michelle Herman (Goddess Divine), Lee (and Cathy!) Martin, Kathy Fagan, Erin McGraw, Andrew Hudgins, and Lee K. Abbott at Ohio State University—many of them are now my colleagues at OSU and their influence has made me a better human; Jonis Agee (who said, “Yes, you will write a novel,” and put my book in the right hands), Tim Schaffert, Stacey Waite, Amelia Montes, Joy Castro, Jennine Crucet, Chigozie Obioma, Melissa Homestead, Marco Abel, Grace Bauer, Ted Kooser, Kwame Dawes, and the rest of the distinguished and generous faculty in the Department of English at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Higher education gave me courage and set me free. These people are my heroes, and I love them.
I also have several dear hearts to thank (in no particular order) who gave me encouragement and feedback and love when I needed it the most: Asha Falcon, Kathleen Blackburn, Shelley Wong, Christie Collins, David Johnson, Silas Hansen, Dillion and Jacquie Dunlop (thanks for listening to me that one night), Leslie Adams, Brad Vice, Dan White, Abigail Voller, Jessica Mann, Raul (and Mix!) Palma, Lauren Galietti, Doug Lane, Marianne Kunkel, Amina Gautier, Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Robert Lipscomb (who always sees the potential in my drafts, no matter how horrid they happen to be), Jamie Brunton, Katie McWain, Stevie Seibert Desjarlais, Jordan Farmer, James Crews, Sam and Nancy Zafris, Erin Busbea (the best damn librarian in the world, possibly the universe), Hattie-Frank Maloney (I remembered!), Garrard Conley (his book cleared the path for mine), John Rechy, Claire Vaye Watkins, Brett Beach, Molly Patterson, Preston Witt, Elise Randall, Annie McGreevy, Ashley Cavada, Rebe Huntman, Ann Glaviano, Gabe Urza, Ali Salerno, Derek Palacio, Jill Patterson, Christopher Coake, Linda Garcia Merchant, Dave Madden, Geeta Kothari, Ellen Graham Weeren, Jill McCorkle, Marcus Jackson, Lina Ferreira, Gale Massey, Rebecca Makkai, Steve Yarbrough, Randall Kenan, Garth Greenwell, Belinda Acosta, Maria Nazzos, the wonderful writers and readers at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the good people at the Kenyon Review for inviting me around and letting me sit at the cool table, Justin Taylor, Matthew Frank Dadonna (who took a chance on a book and an idea), and—last but certainly not least—Joshua D. Kertzer (who took a chance on me).
Noah Ballard is the best agent a boy like me could ever want or need in this life. He’s the Mickey to my Rocky, the Rhoda to my Mary, the Lady to my Tramp. Many thanks, too, to Curtis Brown, Ltd., for all their support.
Kathleen (or “Kate the Great” as she is known around my house) Napolitano is steadfast and true, a fearless and kind editor—this book is a testament to her patience and keen insight. I won the lottery when she became my editor.
I want to add my appreciation to everyone else at Blue Rider, especially David Rosenthal, for treating me so kindly during this wild rodeo. As Minnie Pearl once said, “I’m just so proud to be here.”
My acknowledgments could go on and on and take up more pages than the novel itself. If I have forgotten anyone (and it’s likely I have) then please use my carelessness to your advantage and guilt me into buying you a drink. Nowadays, we could all use one.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
■
Nick White is an Assistant Professor of English at Ohio State University. A native of Mississippi, he earned a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. His short stories have been published in a variety of places, including The Kenyon Review, Guernica, Indiana Review, Day One, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere.
thenickwhite.com
@nickwhite1985
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