Uncle Nate got quiet, almost whispering—“When I went to school you learned your lessons. You went home and learned your lessons. And when it was time to work you worked. And when it was time to go to church, you went to church. And when it was time to go to bed, you went to bed. And when it was ti—”
“Well, I’m just glad I didn’t have to learn the states and capitals,” said Charles.
“We had to spell them too.” Uncle Nate spit on “spell.” “Miss’ippi. Capol M-i-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i. Jackson. Capol J-a-c-k-s-o-n.”
“Well, I’m glad you learned all that,” said Charles, getting up from the couch. “I think it’s about time I turned in.”
“I don’t care if you’re too good to talk to me,” says Uncle Nate.
“I don’t think I’m too good to talk to you.”
“Oh yes you do.”
“I do not.”
“Oh yes, yes, yes you do. I know when somebody thinks they’re too good to talk to me. But don’t worry, you’re not the first one. You just go right ahead off to beddy bye, sonny.”
Charles looked at me and I remembered we were sleeping on the couch. Everybody but Daddy had been sitting around listening. They started getting up—except Mama, who was sitting on a stool by the sink—and heading off to bed. It was time anyway. Charles asked me if I wanted to go out and get a breath of fresh air and I said I did.
“I thought you wanted to go to bed?” said Uncle Nate.
“You’re sitting on my bed,” said Charles.
“I’m sitting on the goddamn couch.”
Mama stood up. “Uncle Nate,” I said. “Now, listen, Charles does not think he’s too good for you. You’ve just had too much to drink, and I think you ought to cut out that language. You’re here with the entire family and the least you can do is be polite. Charles does not think he’s too good for you. He’s just got his own opinions like anybody else, that’s all.”
Uncle Nate looked straight at me, with his mouth open and his eyes red and droopy, “You’re right, honey,” he says. “You’re exactly right.” And he starts crying. “I love you all more than anything,” he says, “and I pray for ever’one of you ever’night. I pray for you, Doris, and you, Raney, and for you, Naomi, and Thurman, and you, Flossie, and the kids and you too, Charles.”
“Nate, you’d better pray for yourself,” says Mama.
Uncle Nate looked at Mama. His head was bobbing around and tears were on his cheeks. His head got still and he smiled and said, “Oh, I do that first.”
“Let’s go outside,” Charles says to me. I walked over and patted Uncle Nate on the back and then me and Charles went outside while Mama fussed at Uncle Nate for taking the Lord’s name in vain.
We walked down to the beach and started toward the pier. Mary Faye was following us. We stopped and she stopped.
“You’ll have to go back, Mary Faye,” I said.
“Why?”
“You just will.”
“I don’t want to.”
“We’re going to walk down to the pier and it’s time for you to go to bed.”
“I’m not sleepy. Come on. Let me go. Daddy said I could.”
I told Charles to wait and I went back and talked to Mary Faye. I figured she might be upset too. I told her that Uncle Nate was a good man at heart and not to be afraid of him, that God moves in mysterious ways, and that Uncle Nate’s cussing was the work of the Devil.
She said she just wanted to go to the pier.
So I explained that Charles was upset about Uncle Nate and that I needed to talk to him and that we’d go to the pier tomorrow.
She kicked the sand, making it squeak, turned around and went on back.
At the pier, Charles said Uncle Nate was a “weird bird.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“When he’s sober he’s so neat, and so infernally obsessive. Drinking water at the same time every day?”
“When he’s sober he does. Three o’clock in the afternoon.”
“It’s just . . . the way he sits around and falls asleep; and then those incredible binges. He’s obviously depressed.”
“Charles, he had some terrible times in World War II and sometimes he can’t hardly breathe with that asthma and emphysema or whatever. He never recovered from the war and Mama’s had to take care of him, don’t you see? And he won’t talk to anybody about what happened to him, except Uncle Newton—all night one night, they say. And Uncle Newton’s getting too sick for anybody to talk to, much. And he has to take those drugs for his nerves and his asthma. And he got that terrible burn on over fifty percent of his body. He’s got one big awful scar all over his body that he’ll have to carry with him all his life, plus his lungs from inhaling all that smoke.”
“Raney, there are lots of men who were wounded and had terrible times in World War II, and Vietnam, and World War I. They don’t necessarily sit around falling asleep all the time.”
“Maybe they sleep at night, Charles. Maybe you don’t know all about what’s wrong with everybody, and maybe it’s something besides ‘psychology.’ I think part of the problem is you don’t think Uncle Nate likes you all that much.”
“That’s right. And where do you suppose I got that idea? He is obviously jealous. It’s not a great deal of fun being around that.”
“He’s not the only other one in my family who you get to be around, Charles.”
“No, he’s not the only other one; that’s for sure.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing.”
It’s too bad Charles was a only child brought up without any family around. When he went to see a aunt or uncle, his mama and daddy had to carry him to another state. He just don’t have a single sense about family, about having family.
When Uncle Nate is sober he’s as nice as he can be. And you’ll never find anybody neater. His clothes are always pressed and starched. Well, Mama keeps them that way, but he keeps everything hung up and straight and folded. Then he’ll get drunk and filthy and come home and cuss something awful. And nobody able to do a thing unless it’s the law. Dorcus Kerr, the deputy sheriff, can usually handle him pretty well. Mama hates it when it comes to that. Daddy usually calls Dorcus, and Dorcus comes in his uniform. He puts it on if he’s off duty. Uncle Nate respects a uniform.
By Friday night, Uncle Nate had gotten sober on his own, thank goodness. After supper he wanted to hear “Give Me the Roses,” so Charles and me got out our instruments and did it. It’s one of our favorites too. It goes like this:
Wonderful things of folks are said
When they are passed away.
Roses adorn their narrow bed
Over the sleeping clay.
Give me the roses while I live,
Trying to cheer me on.
Useless are flowers that you give
After the soul is gone.
And it has a couple more verses.
Then Daddy wanted to hear “Unclouded Day,” which Charles has been wanting to learn ever since I met him. We learned it about three weeks ago. So we did that, and then “Are You Tired of Me, My Darling?” and “Fifty Miles of Elbow Room,” two other Carter family tunes Daddy and Charles like. We tried to get everybody to sing on “Fifty Miles,” but Uncle Nate and Daddy would be so far off key everybody would start laughing and that would get me laughing and that would get Charles laughing.
When we finished singing, Uncle Nate told about the Christmas Uncle Pugg went to Raleigh to sell wreaths and holly and mistletoe and got lost and was too proud to ask anybody the way home. He slept that night in a church and the next morning the preacher saw him come out and asked him if he was the man who’d come to fix the steps. Uncle Pugg said he was. He had his tools in a box in the wagon. He fixed the steps and the preacher asked him to fix the roof and so he did that. Then the preacher asked him if he brought the window to put in. Uncle Pugg said he didn’t but that a man over in Bethel had the window and could the preacher tell him how to get there. The preache
r told him, and Uncle Pugg came on home.
At about ten o’clock when everybody else was going to bed, me and Charles walked out to the pier. Charles said he wasn’t even sure about the names of anybody in his family, besides his mama and daddy and aunts and uncles. I couldn’t imagine aunts and uncles not sitting around and telling all about their aunts and uncles.
Out on the pier the breeze was steady and cool and the air had that fresh salty smell without the dead fish smell. The moon was coming up over the water, and waves hit against the poles, moving the pier the least bit. The moon was a dark red—because of the atmosphere, Charles said. He said it looks big at the horizon because it’s magnified by the air, which I’d never thought about. I always thought the orbit was closer when it came up, and then moved away. It sure looks that way. Charles said the red was because of chemicals and such in the atmosphere. He knows about stuff I never think about. Anyway, the moon got whiter and higher and soon reflected white off the water.
We stood against the rail, pushing our shoulders together, and Charles sung this little song:
I see the moon and the moon sees me.
And the moon sees the one that I want to see.
God bless the moon and God bless me.
And God bless the one that I want to see.
I love Charles more than anything. Sometimes he’s hard to get along with, and sometimes he has some problems with the family, but he makes up for it in all kinds of little ways, and he’s always praising my singing to other people. Daddy said he thought Charles had plenty of common sense beneath all that book learning, and then too at the wedding Daddy said he thought Charles was a good man.
We came back home on Saturday and on the way Mama read to us out of a pamphlet she got in a drug store. It was about having a Christian home and the husband’s role and the wife’s role. I thought it made good sense, but Charles goes into a sermon right there in the back seat about customs being different in Bible times—which is not the point.
After we got back from the beach, and Charles got his rods separated out, and we drove on home and unpacked, and finished eating supper—some chili I froze before we left—Charles says, “I think I’ll call Johnny.” I had totally forgot to say anything about the vent or ask Charles if Johnny was a minority, but before I could say anything, Charles was on the phone, talking about the beach trip. I was eating peaches for dessert and it didn’t seem like Charles minded me sitting there listening.
“She’s got blue hair,” he said, “and talks more than anybody I ever met.” He was talking about you know who: Aunt Naomi, and eyeing me while he sat there, twisting the curly black phone cord around his finger. Then Johnny must have asked Charles what I looked like. “What does she look like?” said Charles, and looked at me and winked. “The most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen, some kind of blue-green, and her front two teeth tuck back just enough to make her mouth cute, kind of pouty, and besides all that, she has the purest singing voice ever—can bend a note on a country song as good as any blues singer you ever heard. . . . What? No. No bad habits. Wait a minute. Raney, would you please leave the room?” Then he laughed and said I cussed too much which was a flip-flop because Charles is the one who cusses, and then he said the only fault he could think of was I didn’t give him any warning when I started a song and that I rubbed my nose straight up with the flat palm of my hand, but that was cute. Then he said none of my other faults were my fault.
I thought about going to the bedroom and listening through the vent, but that wouldn’t have been fair. Maybe it would have been fair if Charles was my child. Mama read my mail; but it was for my own interest. She said she wasn’t interested from curiosity, but for the sake of my well-being. So since Charles won’t my child and did have a peculiar reaction about privacy which I don’t understand, I decided I should tell him about the vent when he finished talking. But he talked so long. He told about the fish hook in Norris’s nose and then went through Uncle Nate’s spelling lesson almost word for word and then some more about Aunt Naomi. He had good things to say about Daddy and Aunt Flossie.
When they finished talking, Charles said Johnny said hello.
I asked Charles what I dreaded: “Charles, is Johnny a minority?”
“He’s black, if that’s what you mean.”
A picture flashed in my mind of Mama and Daddy and Mary Faye and Norris and Uncle Nate and Aunt Naomi and Aunt Flossie and maybe a child of ours in the living room with Charles and his best friend, a nigger.
“Did you say something to him about coming here?” I asked.
“No, not tonight. Why?”
“I just wondered.”
“Would that be a problem?”
“I don’t guess so.”
“You don’t guess so?”
“Well, Charles, I know you were in the war together and everything but this ain’t exactly the war.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means—”
“What does that have to do with our friendship?’
“Nothing, but—”
“Then why are we talking about this?”
“Charles. The army has been segregated since 1948, you said, but Listre still has the black laundromat and the white laundromat and nobody complaining—neither side. Johnny might get embarrassed downtown, that’s all I’m worried about.”
“You mean the army has been integrated since 1948.”
“That’s what I said.”
“You said segregated.”
“Whatever.”
“Raney, don’t worry about how Johnny might feel. He’s sensitive to racial issues. You don’t need to talk to a race horse about the race. He’s been there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What I’m saying is that Johnny knows about towns like Listre.”
“What does that have to do with a race horse?”
“Never mind. Don’t worry about it. He’s not coming anytime soon as far as I know. He’s busy with law school.”
What happened with all this conversation about Johnny Dobbs was: I forgot to mention the vent.
VI
Charles’s mother called on the Monday after we got back from the beach and said she was going to Connecticut the first week in September to see her sister, Charles’s Aunt Sue, and would like to drop by to see us—on the way up (Monday, Monday night, and Tuesday), and on the way back down to Atlanta (Saturday night and Sunday). She asked if it would be all right, if three months had given us enough time to settle in. I told her it had. She said not to do any extra preparing.
Lord, Lord. Last week was the big week. And it was not smooth, like I’d hoped it would be. Charles had that meeting at our house—wouldn’t cancel it—on Monday night, then the Sneeds business was all over the newspaper on the following Saturday which we got in a argument about at Sunday dinner at Mama’s with Charles’s mother sitting right there in the middle of it, taking up for Sneeds. Sneeds runs Daddy’s store. Not to speak of the fact that Charles and Millie went to an Episcopal Church Sunday morning—and dragged me along.
I figured from the start we’d put Millie in the guest room. (She told me on the phone, again, to call her Millie.) Charles suggested we stay in the guest room and his mama stay in our room. I said a guest is a guest and that his mother was the guest and that’s what the room is: a guest room.
Charles said his mother was not used to sleeping on a narrow bed. So I asked him what did he think I was used to sleeping on, and why didn’t he just give his mother the whole house and we’d move on down to the Landmark Motel for the duration.
It was a matter of principle for me and I won out.
Friday, before she came on Monday, I vacuumed the whole place, cleaned the window panes in front, shined up the bathroom, and made the guest room a little nicer by putting in the radio alarm clock, our antique brass lamp, a wall mirror, a little table with some fruit in a bowl, and our biggest wedding picture. Then I realized the fruit bowl might draw gnats, so I took that o
ut.
Friday night Charles tells me about this meeting he’s planning to have at our house Monday night—whether his mama is there or not. He’s joined this thing called a TEA club; he’s been to several meetings and it was his turn to have the meeting at our house. The TEA stands for Thrifty Energy Alternatives. I suddenly realized that with people coming to the meeting, and with Charles’s mother being there, I’d have to paint, or Charles would have to paint, the living room.
“Charles, if you’ll paint that living room some color I can understand then I’ll be happy for you to have your meeting here.”
“What’s wrong with it as it is?”
“Why do you think I’ve carried back those six sets of drapes?” See, Charles is just like a man. Has no more sense for color schemes than Bill Grogan’s goat. “They didn’t go. Nothing goes with that scum green tint. And Mama said none of them went. And for sure your mother and somebody at the meeting will notice.”
“You’re telling me you don’t want the meeting over here unless I paint the living room?”
“Most certainly. And your mother can’t come unless you do.”
“Raney. Do you have some color in mind? My God.”
“Some off-white without that green in it. And I’ve told you about cussing in this house.”
“You get the paint and I’ll paint it.”
So I did. Saturday morning. And Charles painted the living room. Saturday afternoon, before he finished, I got these real nice gold and brown drapes that go. Then after that I got my hair done.
Sunday afternoon Charles goes to the Winn Dixie for groceries and comes back with a bottle of wine. He didn’t even ask me—just brought it in as bright as day with the groceries, and I found it while I was unpacking.
“Charles, what’s this for?”
“The TEA meeting.”
“I’d rather not have wine in this house.”
“Raney, some of the people coming to the meeting will be bringing wine. I’d like also to have some available—for my own mother, anyway.”
“Charles. Why do you need wine at a meeting?”
“To drink.”
I didn’t say anything else, partly because it involved Charles and his own mother and partly because it won’t champagne, which evidently does something to Charles’s brain, and partly, I suppose, because I thought of Madora. She drinks wine at meals, like the French, and she poured me some one afternoon a couple of weeks ago—by mistake: she knows I don’t drink. I took a sip, though, to see what all the fuss was about.
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