Trueluck Summer

by Susan Gabriel

  “That’s the most intelligent thing I’ve heard him say,” Vel chimes in.

  Paris walks ahead, and I shoot Vel a look that could stop a charging armadillo in its tracks. She tightens her lips, and we catch up with Paris.

  “I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a colored person,” I say to Paris. “Especially in a place where every other pickup truck has a rebel flag hanging in its back window. It must be like living in The Twilight Zone—one of those episodes where the past plays out over and over again.”

  Paris agrees. “I like the thought of becoming your friend, Trudy. But, seriously, we could both get in a lot of trouble for this.”

  “Nothing bad is going to happen, Paris,” I say.

  He doesn’t look convinced, and I am not so sure I believe it myself.

  We meander toward home next to one of the many waterways along the Charleston coastline. But something has changed from when we first started our walk. For one thing, we take turns looking over our shoulders.

  To help us forget the two guys in the pickup I decide to tell a story. Nana Trueluck loves my stories, and I mostly collect them to tell her. But they are good for telling new friends, too.

  “An alligator ate a dog along this road last summer,” I tell Paris.

  He gasps like a girl, and his shock at my opening line pleases me. It has the opposite effect on Vel, who yawns. She has heard this story before.

  “It was Miss Myrtle Page’s white poodle,” I say, getting on with my tale. “Miss Myrtle Page always wears white dresses with a white belt cinched up on her waist just under her tiny bosoms that are the size of two concord grapes.”

  Paris laughs when I say the word bosoms, and I think that maybe he is a boy after all.

  “Miss Myrtle Page is an original member of the Daughters of the Confederacy,” I continue. “At least she looks that old, and her hair is the same shade of white as her unfortunate poodle’s. His name is Chester.”

  I lower my head and place a hand over my heart in honor of Chester’s memory. Paris does the same, and I take note of how white his nails are compared to his skin.

  “Chester, may he rest in peace, was the most obnoxious dog who ever lived,” I begin again. “He yapped nonstop at everyone who passed Miss Myrtle’s house.” I pause long enough to swallow and whet the appetite of my audience. “Most dogs like me fine, but Chester never warmed to me in all the years I knew him,” I continue. “Nonetheless, I was sorry that Chester met his end that way. The only thing left of him was a piece of fur the size of a cotton ball.”

  For a second it looks like Paris might faint, and I wonder how someone brave enough to pull me out of the path of a runaway bread truck could also be squeamish.

  “Are there really alligators here?” Paris looks around like one of those poodle-eating gators might jump right out of the marsh to grab one of his scrawny limbs.

  “Trudy’s pulling your leg, Paris,” Vel says, looking up from Nancy Drew. “Alligators are common in the marsh but they rarely show themselves,” she adds as if reading a book about reptiles now makes her an expert.

  I appreciate that she is trying to be nice to Paris, but she is also ruining my story.

  “This particular gator must have been desperately hungry,” I continue with added drama. “Either that or he was tired of Chester’s yapping.”

  Vel shakes her head like she is tired of my yapping. Meanwhile, Paris’ eyes are as wide as two white jawbreakers.

  “Relax,” I say to him. “You’re too skinny. Alligators like critters with meat on their bones.”

  I don’t know this for a fact, but it serves its purpose, and Paris’ eyes return to normal size. The truth is that stupid rednecks in pickup trucks are probably more dangerous than any alligator you will find in the swamp. But I don’t tell Paris that.

  Vel sighs. Alligators don’t faze her on account of her being too busy reading to notice. In the meantime, Paris has moved as far away from the marsh as possible while still being able to walk with us.

  Vel closes her book and turns her back to Paris as though he no longer exists.

  “What are we going to do this summer?” she asks me.

  “Beats me,” I say. “Any ideas, Paris?”

  “You mean you still want to be my friend?” he asks, like he hoped I forgot.

  “Of course,” I say, now wanting it more than ever.

  As Vel and Paris and I walk along the marsh road, I imagine we look like the inside of a carton of Neapolitan ice cream: the chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry side by side. Truth be told, just like Nana Trueluck I have always preferred Neapolitan ice cream to a carton of plain vanilla.

  Chapter Five

  Ida

  The Tuesday afternoon bridge game is one of the few places where I rub elbows with old Charleston society. The truth is, not even my elbows would be invited if Ted Junior wasn’t mayor. With the exception of Madison Chambers, who was an old friend of Ted Senior’s, I have nothing in common with this haughty gaggle of gossipers. I am only here because it gets me out of Abigail’s hair for a few hours—and her out of mine.

  We gather in the foyer of an elegant mansion along the South Battery. “You look lovely today,” Madison says to me.

  Madison is a retired attorney and known advocate for the marginalized. When I extend my hand, he kisses it, his mustache tickling my age-spotted skin. We do this with each other, making a play of old manners and bygone days. Like me, he has a head of solid white hair, but all resemblance ends there. Madison is much more formal in his attire—he is one of the few men alive who still wears spats on his polished shoes—and his tickling mustache rises up at the ends in a smile. To be honest, he looks a bit like the photographs of Mark Twain in his old age.

  Dapper would be the word to describe him, but it is his eyes that draw me in. Eyes that are quick to wink or twinkle and reveal that he is not who he seems.

  “Is your granddaughter all right?” he asks. “I saw the story in the newspaper.”

  “She’s fine,” I say. “None the worse for wear. Not a scratch on her.”

  “Thanks to her rescuer, no doubt.” He pets his mustache.

  “Yes, he was very brave,” I say.

  I like being reminded that I am not only a grandmother, but also someone who enjoys spending time with a person my own age. Though I adore Trudy and even look up to her in some ways, she is busy with her own life. As for her brother, Teddy, he is an altogether different breed of grandchild. Someone who is often called a handful. A handful of what, I am not sure, but a grandmother isn’t to judge.

  Card tables are set up in the sunroom, a room resplendent with marble floors and large plants that reach their arms toward the domed ceiling. We are invited to take our places by the mistress of the house, a Ravenel, one of the old Charleston families.

  “I wonder who we’ll skewer today,” I whisper to Madison, who sits to my left.

  He leans in to whisper back. “To hear them tell it, Charleston is worse than Peyton Place.”

  “Oh my,” I say, whispering again. “How scandalous.”

  “Indeed,” he says with another wink.

  Madison’s wife died two summers ago, and since then the Charleston widows have circled like scavengers, to use his word. According to him, he is invited to so many social events he has to turn down half of them. Since Ted Senior’s passing, there certainly haven’t been any old men in line to court me.

  As bridge begins, the gossip grows as thick as the Charleston humidity. Madison and I exchange periodic looks and the occasional grin, the closest I have come to flirting in the last forty years. Servants fill our iced tea glasses, and after the first game we are all given a small slice of peach pie. Pie I recognize as coming from Callie’s Diner and baked by none other than my daughter-in-law, Abigail, who I can’t seem to get away from. I thank the older black woman who slips in and out between tables, a substantial woman who goes unnoticed by most everyone here. And a woman who has probably waited on this same Ravenel famil
y her entire life, as did her mother, and perhaps her grandmother.

  Charleston is a grand stage on which history has played. The actors may change with every generation, but the same lines are read and the same stage directions followed. Our only hope is that behind the scenes, white and black children are rewriting the script and becoming friends this very minute.

  “What are you thinking about?” Madison discards a six of clubs.

  “I am thinking about change,” I say.

  He raises an eyebrow. “That’s an odd statement to make in the midst of one of Old Charleston’s finest homes,” he says. “I doubt this place has changed in a century.”

  “To change.” I raise my crystal iced tea glass.

  We clink glasses as the others at our table exchange glances. I take a sip of iced tea and silently toast my granddaughter. The thought of Trudy on the side of change gives me more optimism than I have felt in a long time. Nonetheless, the dangers that surround changing times are nothing to celebrate.

  Chapter Six

  Trudy

  Vel and Paris and I walk in silence, as if getting used to the idea of becoming friends.

  “Paris is a weird name,” Vel says.

  “So is Vel,” he answers. They exchange a quick look that reminds me of alligators.

  “Trudy Trueluck is pretty silly, too,” I offer. “Who has a name like that?”

  Paris shrugs, and I notice how skinny his shoulders are. “It sounds like a perfectly good name to me,” he says.

  “Well, my name is okay, but my birthday is unfortunate,” I say, perfectly serious.

  Paris’ confusion rises to meet Vel’s boredom.

  “You see I was born on the first day of April—April Fool’s Day,” I begin. “So every year on April Fool’s day, people make lame jokes and tell me Happy Birthday and then say ‘April Fools!’ right after. Or they ask me what it’s like to be an April Fool. As you can imagine, the jokes get old.” I appreciate how carefully Paris listens.

  “When my brother came along six years later, he was born on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday,” I begin again. “A much more respectable holiday. His real name is Theodore Trueluck the Third, but everybody calls him Teddy.”

  “What I want to know is why girls can’t have numbers after their names, too?” Vel says.

  Every now and again Vel says something that surprises me.

  I agree with her that it makes no sense and wonder what it would be like to be the fourth Trudy Trueluck in my family. Actually, I wouldn’t mind if Nana was a Trudy, too, but her real name is Ida.

  “My name is Paris because my mother wanted to go there.” His accent is as thick as one of Mama’s apple pies. He kicks a pebble that ricochets off a tree, and the sweat on his brown skin glistens. The day is warming up.

  A few steps later, Paris takes a big breath like he is about to recite Shakespeare in a southern drawl.

  “Didn’t you say you were looking for a summer adventure?” he asks.

  “I did. You got an idea?”

  “I do,” he says.

  “Well, out with it.” Vel sounds just like her mother.

  Paris hesitates. “Never mind,” he says.

  “No, Paris. You can’t do that,” I say. “You can’t bring something up and then drop it.”

  “Well, you probably won’t like it because it’s something really big,” he says. “Maybe too big.”

  Nothing gets my attention more than a big idea. Vel and I stop walking and turn to wait. Boredom is usually our big summer pastime. Boredom with an extra scoop of monotony on the side, though having a new friend has already changed that—even if we do have to keep it a secret.

  “Tell us, Paris,” I say.

  “Well, I had a dream last night that I went to Columbia and took down that rebel flag that flies over the State House,” he begins. “Dr. Martin Luther King Junior was in the dream, too. He even shook my hand afterward.”

  Paris puts a hand over his heart like this is the highest honor he can imagine.

  “I know the flag you’re talking about,” I say. “It flies over the State House in Columbia. Two months ago our class went there on a school field trip, and we saw it for ourselves.”

  Vel was on the same field trip, though she read her way through most of it and probably doesn’t remember a thing.

  “Our school doesn’t go on field trips,” Paris says, “but my Uncle Freddie told me about it.”

  “You really dreamed that?” Vel asks Paris, looking skeptical.

  Paris makes a cross over his heart with his finger like it is a solemn swear, and he hopes to die if it isn’t true. I wonder if Vel even knows who Martin Luther King Junior is. Just yesterday Nana Trueluck was talking about him in the kitchen because he won the Nobel Peace Prize and was Time magazine’s Man of the Year.

  I think about Paris’ idea. I have to admit it intrigues me. It also sounds impossible. The three of us can’t even take a walk together in downtown Charleston without getting in trouble. How in the world are we going to get to Columbia and take down a flag in broad daylight?

  “I think we should do it,” I say, taking a giant eraser to my doubts.

  “Do what?” Vel asks.

  “Take down that rebel flag,” I answer. “It’s been a hundred years since that war, and it is darn well time to move on.”

  I am struck by how much I sound like Nana Trueluck, but it doesn’t bother me one bit. Maybe I can even talk her into helping us take it down. She needs something to take her mind off of how much she misses Grandpa Trueluck.

  “Let’s do it,” I say. “Let’s take that flag down.”

  Vel looks over at me like I suggested we fly to Mars and hang out with Martians.

  “I have to admit it’s the boldest idea for a summer adventure we’ve ever had,” I say, “but at least we won’t end up counting freckles like we did last summer.” I look at Vel, who has 344 freckles as of our last count.

  “What’s a freckle?” Paris asks.

  I laugh until I realize he is serious. It occurs to me that white people are foreigners to him in some ways, like he is a foreigner to us. I show him the crop of freckles on my arms that always get darker in the summer. It feels like show and tell.

  In the next second something rustles in the marsh and the three of us take off running like the ghost of Chester is chasing us. After the length of about two football fields we stop, gasping for breath.

  Between breaths, Paris and I laugh about how scared we were. Vel doesn’t see the humor and puts her hands on her hips like she was simply pretending to be scared. It dawns on me that even brave people are cowards sometimes, even the ones who save people’s lives. I imagine most people are a mixture of both.

  A few steps later, Paris and I collapse into the arms of one of the live oaks and sit on a low limb that creaks like a rickety porch swing. Vel leans against the wide trunk and begins to read again. Then Paris grabs a long strand of the gray Spanish moss hanging in the branches and puts it on his head like it is a wig. Before long he is singing and stroking an imaginary guitar, pretending he is Elvis Presley singing “All Shook Up.” I laugh so hard I hold my sides and beg him to stop. All Vel manages to do is tap her foot.

  “You are a piece of cake, Paris Moses,” I say between laughs.

  “What kind of cake?” Paris asks as though enjoying the idea of being a dessert.

  “Chocolate, of course,” I answer. “Maybe devil’s food if we pull off this dream of yours.”

  He strums his make-believe guitar one last time and bows. Vel refuses to clap, but I applaud enough for both of us. The live oak holds Paris and me, and its massive limbs sag down to touch its roots.

  In the heat of the day my imagination revs up. “I bet Rebel soldiers rested under this tree during the Civil War,” I say. “I bet their guns leaned against that branch.” I point to a branch about waist high that is as thick as Paris and me put together.

  Paris shudders. Vel turns another page but briefly looks at me as if it
is one of my more interesting made-up stories. Living in Charleston means there is a ghost story that goes along with nearly every mansion, church, and bridge. Nana Trueluck has told me a bunch of them.

  A hot breeze shakes the leaves. Sun and shade dance on the ground underneath us.

  “Y’all want to hear a secret?” Paris asks.

  I nod, glad I am not the only one with secrets. I didn’t tell either of them how scared I was when that guy spat at my feet.

  Vel looks up from her book and closes it. Secrets always get her attention.

  Paris lowers his voice like he is going to tell us the most delicious confidence ever. Even Vel licks her lips.

  “My great-great-grandmother was a slave,” he whispers.

  Vel and I look at each other and then back at Paris. “Your great-great-grandmother was a slave?” I whisper back, like maybe I didn’t hear it right the first time. “I’ve never known anybody who was related to a slave,” I add.

  “Miss Josie told me about it.”

  “Miss Josie?” I ask.

  “She’s my grandmother. Everybody calls her Miss Josie, colored and white folks alike. Even I call her that.”

  I wonder briefly if Nana Trueluck would prefer I call her Miss Ida. Then I shake the thought away.

  “My great-great-grandmother was a house slave at Magnolia Plantation.” Paris’ voice remains soft.

  “Don’t joke about things like that, Paris.”

  “I’m not joking,” he says.

  I pause to imagine it. “I went there with my family once,” I say. “Somehow it never occurred to me that slaves worked there.” I wonder what else has never occurred to me just because I am white. I try to connect the dots in my brain and get nowhere. Then I realize that maybe Martin Luther King Junior is carrying on the work of Abraham Lincoln. Maybe that’s why Paris admires him so much.

  Nana Trueluck is a big fan of Abraham Lincoln. An old photograph of him is in a trunk in the attic that belonged to my great-great-grandmother. It was given to her by President Lincoln himself for the work she did as an abolitionist. It occurs to me how different Paris’ ancestors had it than mine, and I wonder if maybe they ever ran into each other on the streets of Charleston, not knowing that someday their great-great-grandchildren—one black and one white—would become friends.