by Pat Conroy
“O.K. I will tell them. At lunch time I am going to every house on this island and talking to every parent on this island.”
Then I paused and reflected on what Ted Stone and Mrs. Brown had told me about the people. Mrs. Brown had pictured the people as a savage, blood-thirsty leftover from African tribes. Ted put his distrust of the island blacks into an epigram: “Can’t trust a nigger when your back’s turned.” I did not put much stock in either source, but both of them had had far more extensive dealings with the people than I had. In fact, I had met very few of the parents, much to my discredit. I do not have genuine self-confidence in walking up to a stranger and carrying on a conversation. And every time I attempted to make a friend among the adult blacks, I was put off by an unassailable barrage of the unremitting yassuhs.
I asked, “Now, gang. If I go running up to your house real fast … No, let me say it differently. If I walk to your home unannounced and uninvited … No. There ain’t no chance that I am going to get shot, is there?”
“No, Conrack,” Frank said with mild disgust. “My grandma shoot Brown dead. But she no shoot you.”
“No,” the class agreed.
“O.K. I believe you. But if I end up picking buckshot out of my behind, I may have to whip some fanny.”
At twelve the kids rushed out to the playground. I informed Mrs. Brown as gently as possible that I needed to see a few of the parents during recess.
“Do you have written permission from the superintendent of schools?” she asked majestically.
“No, ma’am.”
“You are being paid by the state of South Carolina for recess time and class time. You are required to be present on the school grounds at all times.”
“Yes, ma’am. I would hate to jeopardize that big salary I’m getting, but I really have to see some of the parents.”
She shook her head negatively and kept repeating over and over that she could not grant authority for me to leave the school grounds without written permission from a loftier source.
“See you, Mrs. Brown. Let’s argue later.”
I went out to the car, started it up, then headed for the house where Frank, Big C, Samuel, and Sidney resided under the iron rule of their grandmother, Edna Graves. Edna’s reputation went before her. I heard her grandchildren talk about her with deference, almost adoration. She was reputed to have the best garden on the island, and other residents went to her for advice about the best time for planting and harvesting. A rumor, persistent and enlightening, said that she and her husband made some of the best moonshine in the lowcountry during the bootleggers’ heyday. I went to Edna first because I knew if I could sway her, I would have won half the island.
Her house was gray and neatly situated beneath a tall oak. Pigs rooted behind her house and chickens fluttered nervously as I entered the yard. I fluttered nervously as I saw a pack of foaming hounds emerge from under the house to challenge my entry into the yard. There were a lot of teeth showing in that yard. I was muttering, “Here, boy. Nice doggie. Good boy. Don’t you bite me, you goddam son of a bitch.” I then started yelling at the dogs to keep away from me. A clothesline pole stood in the middle of the yard, a couple of feet away from where I stood. With a frantic bound, I leaped up on that pole and sat perched precariously as the pack closed around me, jumping and snapping at my dangling heels.
Then I heard Edna coming down the steps, swinging a broom over her head, shouting at the dogs and scattering them in six directions. She looked at me on the pole and in a voluminous voice—powerful, masculine, and incredibly loud—she bellowed, “What’ch you doin’ up on that pole, man?” Then she bent double laughing. “Ha, ha, ha! Lord, you look funny up on that pole.”
My dignity was more than a little ruffled. I dropped from the pole and tried to assume a more professional air.
“Your dogs chased me up there,” I said with solemnity.
“Well, what you want from Edna?”
“I would like to talk to you about your grandchildren who are in my class at school.”
“Oh Gawd,” she said loudly.
“What’s the matter?”
“Oh Gawd. Oh Gawd Almighty. You is Mr. Conrack.”
“My name is Pat Conroy.”
“Oh Gawd, Mr. Conrack. My grands talk about you all de time. They come home and say to me, ‘Mama, you know what Mr. Conrack say today.’ Oh Gawd, my grands love Mr. Conrack. So that’s who you are. The white schoolteacher.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh Gawd. O-o-o-o-h-h Gawd. I been wantin’ to dress up and meet you at the schoolhouse. People say you is a wonnerful teacher. Lord, I hear some mighty nice words about you from a lot of people.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Graves. I appreciate that. I really do. But I have come to talk to you about …”
“Oh Gawd, what we doin’ talkin’ out here. Come into my house and I fix you some coffee whiles we talk.”
“I don’t have time, Mrs. Graves.”
“Call me Edna, Mr. Conrack.”
“Call me Pat, Edna.”
“Pat is a boo-tiful name, Mr. Conrack.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Graves.”
“Now,” she said, appraising me closely, scrutinizing every feature on my face. Hers was a beautiful, strong, wrinkled face with warm, powerful eyes. “Now, what you want, Mr. Conrack?”
“Mrs. Graves, I want to take your grandchildren to Beaufort for Halloween. I have a boat to take them over in; I have places for them to stay. Everything is set up and taken care of. The children will be well chaperoned. They will have a great time. It will be an educational experience for them that will do them a lot of good. I have the whole trip set up and now the only thing I need from the parents and grandparents is permission. If y’all don’t give me permission to take the kids, it’s just going to ruin everything.”
Edna continued to study me intently as I talked. Her stare was penetrating and a slight smile played on her lips. She did not seem to be listening to a word I said.
Finally she spoke. “Gawd, you is a nice-lookin’ teacher.”
“What did you say?”
“You is a fine-lookin’ teacher, a fine-lookin’ man. Ain’t you just a fine-lookin’ man, now.”
“Edna, I swear this is one of the strangest moments in my life. I am askin’ you about the Halloween trip.”
“Gracious, those chillun didn’t tell me what a fine-lookin’ white teacher. You look like a man I see on television. He come on ‘Love of Life,’ and Lawd, do I love dat man. I watch ‘Love of Life’ ever single day, Mr. Conrack.”
“That’s nice, Mrs. Graves.”
“You watch it too?”
“No, ma’am. I’m teaching then.”
“Oh Gawd. Well now, Linda had gone way from Edward. Left him clean to go with that doctor fella, Steve. Steve is so nice. Gawd, he is a nice man. Edward been drinkin’ a little too much and runnin’ around with Betty. Betty’s man done die the year befo’ in a bad wreck. Steve tried to fick him up, but he too far dead to get fick. Oh Lawd, those people all in a mess. Linda got something bad wrong with her too.”
I looked at Edna as she related the soap-bubbly plot of her favorite program and it suddenly struck me that a hell of a lot more people derived dramatic pleasure from the plight of Linda and Doctor Steve than ever derived it from Hamlet and Ophelia. The idea intrigued me so much that “Love of Life” was the Shakespeare of the late twentieth-century masses that I lost the momentum and indignation which was with me when I charged into the yard. Finally, I got her back on the subject.
“Mrs. Graves, will you just tell me why you won’t let your grandchildren go to Beaufort with me?”
Her eyes hardened suddenly and she shifted her weight from one foot to the other and raised a long, callused index finger toward me.
“ ’Cause I know the river. I lose three fam’bly in the river. They drop in the water and sink like rock to the bottom. When they come up, they swell like toadfish. I been libbin’ on Yamacraw for seventy plus s
even more years and I ain’t gonna lose no grands to that river. You young and you don’t know the river. I is old and see what it can do. Dat river can eat a man. None of my chillun goin’ along wit’ you.”
“I finally understand what the problem is, Mrs. Graves. And I am glad you told me. What I have to convince you of is this. Nothing is going to happen to the children. I promise you that. I give you my word that nothing is gonna happen. They will be with me and they will be my responsibility. I am going to take care of them. We are going to have the best time these children have ever had.”
“What kind of boat you got? They ain’t going on your boat.”
“I’ve got a big boat and a shrimp-boat captain to drive it.”
“Oh Gawd, that’s good.”
“Can they go?” I asked hopefully.
“No,” she said, with a certain perceptible degree of finality in her tone.
Then she smiled again, a mysterious, enigmatic smile that was full of wisdom, “Love of Life,” and perhaps pain. “Gawd, you is a good-lookin’ teacher.”
“Don’t say that, Edna. It’s not true. You are just saying that.”
“You got such a nice face for a white teacher.”
“For God’s sakes, Edna, please cut it out. I feel like a fool.”
“Lawd, Lawd. Well, mebbe I let the oldest go. Frank and Charles.”
“What about Sidney and Samuel?”
“No, great Lawd, no.” She stamped her foot on the floor. “Those is bad chillun. They too bad to go on trip.”
“Why?”
“Because they is bad.”
“But Frank and Charles can go.”
“If the weather be good.”
“It will be great. Could you write a permission slip?”
“What dat you say?”
“Could you sign a piece of paper for me that I can show to Mrs. Brown?”
“That debbil woman.”
“Pardon me.”
“That damn colored woman at the schoolhouse. She the debbil herself.”
“Mrs. Brown is a pretty nice woman, Edna. You just gotta get to know her.” I was not expecting this vehement denunciation of my colleague, nor did I know exactly how to change the subject tactfully.
“You don’t know that debbil woman. She know. She never set one foot in this yard ’cause she know that I’ll use Betsy if I have to.” Edna had suddenly turned into a madwoman.
“Ah, who is Betsy, if I may ask?”
“Betsy my good friend, Mr. Conrack. She do a lot of talkin’ when Edna get riled.”
“Well, I don’t think we need Betsy, Edna. Give her my love when you see her. And think about letting the twins go. They’d really enjoy it.”
“No, they too bad. Gawd, you is a good-lookin’ white man.”
This phrase was making me extremely uncomfortable, so I finally retorted with, “Gawd, you are a good-looking woman, Edna. A real nice-lookin’ woman.”
“Lawd, you is too much. You is too much, Mr. Conrack.”
The snarling pack closed in for the kill again, so Edna waded through them with broom aflying once more and cleared a path to the car.
I had taken the better part of an hour to convince Edna that she should let her grandsons, at least two of them, make the trip to Beaufort. By winning Edna, I had won the island. Every parent I talked to was hesitant, dubious, unconvinced by my protestations and plans, but all of them eventually decided that their chillun could go “if the weather be good.”
Naturally, the weather was horrendous. On Friday morning, the last-minute preparations with Bernie completed, Zeke put me into the water just before seven in the morning. It was already drizzling slightly, the sky was overcast and foreboding, and tiny whitecaps were forming on the river surface. “Suck,” I said to myself as the boat headed into Bull Creek. I looked toward the sky and demanded fairness from the Great Weatherman. The nearer I got to Yamacraw the worse the weather became. Barbara and I had spent the previous evening in a five-and-dime store picking out Halloween masks for my students. I had worked them into a frenzy in the days preceding our exodus from the island. Halloween was going to be the greatest event in the history of the world; we were going to have more twenty-four-carat fun than any group in the long history of mankind. The masks Barbara picked out ranged from the ludicrous to the macabre. Some were vampires, others were monstermen, and still others mad scientists and ghouls. Barbara also selected eighteen heavy-duty, witch-inspected, certified Halloween bags to put the candy in. Everything was planned to perfection. As much logistics went into this trip as went into the planning of D-Day, or so I thought. As I rode over that morning, I thought the goddam weather was sabotaging me.
As I pulled in sight of the public landing, I saw the whole class huddled under an oak tree near the row of sheds where the islanders stored their fishing and shrimping paraphernalia. Joe and Jim came down to help me tie up the boat. Mrs. Brown, who relented the day before the trip by canceling her classes and declaring it a state law that the principal of the school must accompany every school-sponsored trip, stood ponderously on the bank herding the children together as if she were shepherding a flock of recalcitrant sheep. Miss Glover, the crippled teacher of forty years, had asked me on Tuesday if she could come along as a chaperone. I told her I would be delighted if she would come. We were becoming very good friends despite the warnings that she would use her powers of darkness on me before the year was over. As I walked up the dock, I saw Miss Glover glowering at Mrs. Brown, her avowed and eternal enemy.
A few of the parents were milling around the ring of children, looking at the sky and shaking their heads negatively. The weather seemed to worsen as each moment passed. One of the parents said to his child, “Don’t think you should make this trip. Weather no good.”
“The weather is fine,” I broke in. “The weather is going to be perfect. Listened to the weather report this morning and it said that the sun was going to break out at about ten o’clock this morning. Relative humidity about fifty-eight per cent. Temperature a very nice and satisfying seventy degrees. Looks like it is going to be perfect weather for the trip. Things clearing up already.”
I then passed out masks and bags to all the kids. Before I finished meting out the bags, Richard was poking Lincoln in the belly because Lincoln had coveted Richard’s vampire mask and subsequently absconded with it. A few other minor skirmishes broke out over the masks but peace eventually reigned over all.
Only three of the kids were not present. Samuel, Sidney, and Prophet were not among the ones chosen by the elders of the island to cross the waters with me, but I could not mourn over the fate of those who remained. I was damned nervous about the boat that was to transport us to the mainland. The captain promised that his craft would be moored to the Yamacraw dock at eight o’clock.
At nine o’clock the boat puttered into sight at the edge of Ramshorn Creek. The entire congregation around me groaned when they saw the boat; it looked as if it had been designed and constructed during the Peloponnesian War. It creaked and lurched up to the dock like an arthritic old man, wheezing and coughing a diesel asthma that appeared incurable. The boat looked like part of a ghost fleet, a mothballed potpourri of poor design. The captain, whom I had not met, stared confidently down at all of us. Then he commanded that we lead the kids into the ship’s hold. He made no pretense of hiding the fact that he would rather be doing other things and that this trip was an infringement on his valuable time. I led the gang quickly into the greasy, noxious hold and prayed silently that none of them would die of carbon monoxide on the trip over. Mrs. Brown shouted at them, tugged at their ears, and crammed them into the narrow passageway leading to the bowels of the boat. The hold could comfortably seat four people. Mrs. Brown crammed fifteen students into it.
“Ain’t no air down here, Conrack,” Lincoln cried.
“Gonna puke, Conrack,” another shouted.
“Lord, we all gonna die,” Mary shouted.
Joe and Miss Glover went aboard. J
im and I jumped into my boat and headed for Bluffton, where Zeke Skimberry was waiting to pull the boat out of the water. I was driving a load of kids in my car and I wanted to be damn sure that the VISTA workers were at the appointed rendezvous point on Hilton Head.
So far, things were running fairly smoothly, I thought. I wanted perfection, for I knew if there was any accident or mishap connected with this voyage, then I never again would be able to convince the parents to let me take their children from the protected embrace of the island. I looked back, saw the boat leave the dock and the parents waving, and realized that I had succeeded in the first major step of the operation: my students were no longer bound to the island and had begun what was perhaps the greatest adventure of their lives.
Then my great drama, directed brilliantly for a time, lapsed into farce. The first thing Zeke said to me when I got to Bluffton made me realize that the supreme allied commanders in the county office knew all about the trip.
“Bennington has a bus ready to take the kids to Beaufort. He’s sending the bus down here to the landing.”
“Why is he doing that, Zeke?”
“I think Ted Stone called him up on the radio and said that you didn’t have any transportation for the kids.”
“Did he think we were going to walk the thirty miles to Beaufort?” I asked.
“Don’t know, Pat. Just know that old Foxy is sending a bus down here in about ten minutes.”
“We gotta stop that damn bus, Zeke.”
We loaded the boat on the trailer hurriedly. Zeke gunned the blue pickup down Alljoy Road.
“I’ve had ’er up to a hundred on this road before,” Zeke said matter of factly.
“That’s great, Zeke.”
We skidded in front of Bluffton High School. Sure enough, a bus and a rather puzzled, nervous driver waited for instructions near the front door of the school. He was about fifteen years old and looked faintly perturbed about being pulled out of class for a project so ephemeral and disorganized. One noteworthy thing about South Carolina is the quality of school-bus drivers in the state. To qualify for a bus license one must have reached puberty and be able to recite the alphabet without stuttering. Anyway, the kid told me that “Mr. Ezra” had called his school (the black high school) and ordered the principal to have a kid out of class for the purpose of delivering the Yamacraw children to their proper destination in Beaufort. In a towering rage I told the driver to tell Bennington to stick it up his behind, to attend to his business as supervisor of instruction, and to keep his nose out of my life.
