White People

by Allan Gurganus

  The mailman arrived again this morning. I’ve started giving him five or ten dollars a day. This is a sleepy town and he’s never worked so hard. He came in with three new boxes and said, “Tippie Wilkins is my niece.” I told him, All right. I went in and found Tippie’s application right on top. Her idea concerns an endangered species: whales. Tippie’s just thirteen. She sent me her school photo. Tippie says there are fewer survivors each year. Extinction, I’ve found, is a favorite theme among our younger contestants. I’m keeping notes on trends in applicants’ ages and geography. Our country is so vast. Regionalism will never die, will it? My notes are around here somewhere. How much longer do I have to judge? I’ll level with you, Dorothy. My reputation as a painter is mostly based on one rave review, one show of seven paintings in 1969. I’ve been gliding on that ever since. I teach part-time but really live on Lucia’s money. I haven’t sold a large painting in four years. If this makes you feel I’m unfit to judge a national competition, I understand.

  But please keep me a secret, Dorothy. Why don’t you call me (let it ring twice then hang up and call again)? You haven’t written me since this judgment began. I’ve only seen your handwriting on the check you sent. Tell Lucia to call the same way, in our code.

  I didn’t know there were so many Americans over eighteen. Dorothy, send me an assistant. It’s getting lonely up here.

  K.

  Kermit dear,

  I’m sorry our splendid phone talk was cut off just now. I’ll repeat the details for good measure. I arrive by Greyhound at Northampton, Mass., on April 2, at 2:30 p.m., your time, Eastern time. I’m not sure how far from Northampton your farm is, but during the drive we can get even better acquainted. From the tone of your sad gentle voice, I feel I know you so well already. You’ve been too too kind. I wonder if you even understand what a terrible thing isolation is. Especially isolation in Montana.

  This town made me its laughingstock when I was just eleven. You know what they say when I go by? “Look who’s loose.” They all say that. I know it’s hard for an established artist such as yourself to believe. How does it happen that I, the one person for miles who loves Art, who aspires to create, should be their favorite victim? Now I’m over thirty and it still goes on. Every day another little slight or humiliation. You can hardly shop. Luckily, we’ll have time to talk things over, my new friend. Thanks to your encouragement I won’t ever have to come back here again. Someday, they’ll all regret these years they’ve taunted and hurt me. Oh well, see you very soon now,

  All the love on earth, from us,

  Mirabelle and Jenny the Wren

  Judge of It,

  Still we wait for Daddy Eagles. Every day at the mailbox I don’t find them yet. Miss Martin the teacher says you all have plenty of time by now to pick. If you mess up the only Eagles he sketch down on place mats I mighty upset. My boys are big as I was then. They say to say they will come looking for the one that failed to send their grandads only Eagle drawings back here. Like I said my dad he died. There will never be another Eagle drawing done at the counter while he waited for Momma to finish up her last customers. My boys get mean sometime. They all have pickups and will really come to find the missing Eagles no matter how far. I cannot control my boys when they get the idea I been treated wrong or that my dead dad gets treated bad either. I just ask you to respect a persons property and also our feelings. It is within my rights to ask back what is really mine. Somebody dead drew those ones. There can be no new ones from someone who dead. I should not of mailed the only ones of something. I just wanted somebody outside our family to say his Eagles had something extra. Everytime that mailtruck leaves us nothing I feel that much more low and the boys they get madder.

  Just please.

  Rollo Krause

  Phoenix Ariz.

  Dorothy, Fundament,

  Yesterday morning, I decided to answer the phone. I wanted Lucia to call so I put it back on the hook. I wanted you to call. Jenny the Wren reversed the charges, this time from Cleveland. I was smart and wouldn’t accept. I could hear the train or bus departures being announced and, over the operator’s voice, Jenny kept chirping at me. Then it was an atheist shouting something about graven images and firebombing the wall.

  Around three, little Tippie got on the phone. She played me a whole phonograph record of whale voices. Tippie held the receiver near the speaker. Have you ever heard whales singing, Dorothy? Have you ever heard anything so sad? It was like an echo of an echo of a human cry. The Russians and Japanese slaughter them for face cream. They shouldn’t. Tippie told me step-by-step how they do it. She started to whimper. I hung up, then yanked the phone out of the wall. I hope everyone will understand.

  All afternoon I’ve worked on my own application. I’ve decided to apply. My entry would incorporate all the worthiest aspects of those who have no chance at all. What is our country if not pitching in to help the other person less fortunate?

  I went for a nice walk just now all over our land. My breath showed blue. It’s chilly here now and nice. There were berries on some trees yesterday but not now. I think the cedar waxwings ate them. The moon came out early, it was silver over our weather vane. I wandered home and crawled under a quilt my grandmother made me. It’s done in shades of pink and is comforting. My mother took elocution lessons as a girl. She also studied scarf dancing and poise. She learned this and every time she got the least bit drunk she’d say it with real expression as they’d taught her to:

  There’s so much good in the worst of us

  And so much bad in the best of us

  That it doesn’t behoove any of us

  To talk about the rest of us.

  Right?

  K.

  Miss McPhee,

  I’m sending this to your former place of employment, hoping they will forward it. I wanted you to know what I found in Massachusetts. The phone went out of order and I rushed right up there. Just two nights before, when my call finally got through, he sounded tired but otherwise quite lucid. I want you to know what you’re responsible for. I walked into an abandoned house. The place was absolutely filthy. I won’t bother with details but I saw that Kermit had lost control of his hygiene and faculties. All the applications were missing, every one. I’d had the good sense to bring along someone from the village, a handyman who’s done work for us. Mr. Bryce went into the bedroom first and came out with a strange expression. He said, “It should be covered up.” A cardboard suitcase blocked the doorway. I stepped over this, and there, curled up in our bed, was a tiny elderly woman asleep and naked. She wore only high heels and a feathered hat. When I woke her, she looked around so startled she began whistling for help. She kept doing it, so shrilly, these bird imitations that were absolutely credible and absolutely horrifying. Finally I convinced her I meant no harm. I asked where Kermit was. I begged her to use words. At last, hiding completely under sheets, she whispered in English, Today he’s gone off to decide.

  Mr. Bryce and I rushed out and wandered all over the farm calling Kermit’s name. Bryce went down by the pond since I was too frightened to look there. I tramped around for an hour or more, still in my city heels, still holding my purse, screaming his name hysterically. Then at the edge of the woods, I saw our red wheelbarrow. A few drawings were in it, and beyond that, uphill, in a little clearing under the evergreens, Kermit had hidden himself among the applications. He’d piled all those packets neatly into four-foot stacks. Stacks stood like columns and, as a roof over these, he had placed a large stretched canvas, as yet unpainted. Draped across this was a patchwork quilt he’d inherited from a relative. I struggled up the hill in my ridiculous shoes. He seemed pleased to see me, he beckoned me into his little shack. I squatted on the spruce needles and crawled in. He needed a shave but otherwise looked all right. He looked wonderful, in fact. Very animated.

  He’d torn one corner off each of the hundreds of drawings. These lay spread before him, like a puzzle. He kept trying to fit all these colored shards together. I sat t
here, crouched beside him, watching. I could hear Bryce’s voice echoing across the pond, calling Mr. Waley, Mr. Waley. Kermit told me quietly, “This is our winner, Lucia. What do you think?” He went on contentedly arranging the torn pieces. He was humming. I put my hand on his shoulder, so soothed to see him alive. The strangeness of this hut we were in, of his activity, didn’t strike me till much later.

  Bryce took the woman to a nearby bus station. I never found out who she was or how she came to be in our bed. I’m not at all sorry that you’ve lost your job, Miss McPhee. We sold the farm. We had to. For now, we’re living at my uncle’s retreat on Bimini. We sit in the sun a lot. Kermit is beginning to talk again. He hasn’t gone near a paintbrush in over ten weeks. I’ve had to hide all the art books in the house, even books on decorating. When we venture out to dinner, I do detours to avoid even the hotel’s postcard racks. Anything might remind him. Anything could set him off. He’s beginning to make jokes again, though he still looks so fatigued. Just after it happened, he kept repeating, “We are one big unhappy family, and poor, aren’t we, Lucia?” To appease him, I said, “I suppose we are, dear.” He has been stunted as an artist and a man by what this competition has shown him, Miss McPhee. I hope you are satisfied. Since all of this occurred, I have felt a great need to write down these details for you.

  Lucia McCloud-Waley

  The National Fundament of the Arts regrets announcing cancellation of its mural design competition. Appropriations formerly earmarked for the Humanities have, in this time of international tensions, been deemed more urgently needed in areas crucial to our national defense.

  The newly appointed Fundament director is Randolph Gleason, till recently Senior Vice-President of Boeing Aircraft. Gleason stated that, should rerouted funds ever be returned to the Fundament, future contests will probably offer themes far more specific, far less open-ended and inflammatory than that of this year’s competition.

  When asked if art jurists revoked the mural competition due to a lack of national interest, the new director commented that, on the contrary, if anything there had been an excess of response. The entries, Gleason explained, tended to be “highly individualistic and single-issue oriented.” Questioned further, Gleason would not elaborate beyond his prepared text. He then stood and pronounced the mural competition dismantled and—in turn—official withdrawal of its all-too-provocative theme question, “America, Where Have You Come From, Where Are You Bound?”

  Applications cannot be returned.

  1976

  Adult Art

  For George Hackney Eatman and Hiram Johnson Cuthrell, Jr.

  I’ve got an extra tenderness. It’s not legal.

  I SEE a twelve-year-old boy steal a white Mercedes off the street. I’m sitting at my official desk—Superintendent of Schools—it’s noon on a weekday and I watch this kid wiggle a coat hanger through one front window. Then he slips into the sedan, straight-wires its ignition, squalls off. Afterward, I can’t help wondering why I didn’t phone the police. Or shout for our truant officer just down the hall.

  Next, a fifty-nine Dodge, black, mint condition, tries to parallel park in the Mercedes’ spot (I’m not getting too much paperwork done today). The driver is one of the worst drivers I’ve ever seen under the age of eighty. Three pedestrians take turns waving him in, guiding him back out. I step to my window and hear one person yell, “No, left, sharp left. Clown.” Disgusted, a last helper leaves.

  When the driver stands and stretches, he hasn’t really parked his car, just stopped it. I’ve noticed him around town. About twenty-five, he’s handsome, but in the most awkward possible way. His clothes match the old Dodge. His belt’s pulled up too high. White socks are a mistake. I watch him comb his hair, getting presentable for downtown. He whips out a handkerchief and stoops to buff his shoes. Many coins and pens spill from a shirt pocket.

  While he gathers these, a second boy (maybe a brother of the Mercedes thief?) rushes to the Dodge’s front, starts gouging something serious across its hood. I knock on my second-story window—nobody hears. The owner rises from shoe-polishing, sees what’s happening, shouts. The vandal bolts. But instead of chasing him, the driver touches bad scratches, he stands—patting them. I notice that the guy is talking to himself. He wets one index fingertip, tries rubbing away scrawled letters. Sunlight catches spit. From my second-floor view, I can read the word. It’s an obscenity.

  I turn away, lean back against a half-hot radiator. I admire the portrait of my wife, my twin sons in Little League uniforms. On a far wall, the art reproductions I change every month or so. (I was an art history major, believe it or not). I want to rush downstairs, comfort the owner of the car, say, maybe, “Darn kids, nowadays.” I don’t dare.

  They could arrest me for everything I like about myself.

  At five sharp, gathering up valise and papers, I look like a regular citizen. Time to leave the office. Who should pass? The owner of the hurt Dodge. His being in the Municipal Building shocked me, as if I’d watched him on TV earlier. In my doorway, I hesitated. He didn’t notice me. He tripped over a new two-inch ledge in the middle of the hall. Recovering, he looked around, hoping nobody had seen. Then, content he was alone, clutching a loaded shirt pocket, the guy bent, touched the spot where the ledge had been. There was no ledge. Under long fingers, just smoothness, linoleum. He rose. I stood close enough to see, in his pocket, a plastic caddy you keep pens in. It was white, a gift from WOOTEN’S SMALL ENGINES, NEW AND LIKE-NEW. Four old fountain pens were lined there, name-brand articles. Puzzled at why he’d stumbled, the boy now scratched the back of his head, made a face. “Gee, that’s funny!” An antiquated cartoon drawing would have shown a decent cheerful hick doing and saying exactly that. I was charmed.

  I’VE GOT this added tenderness. I never talk about it. It only sneaks up on me every two or three years. It sounds strange but feels so natural. I know it’ll get me into big trouble. I feel it for a certain kind of other man, see. For any guy who’s even clumsier than me, than “I.”

  You have a different kind of tenderness for everybody you know. There’s one sort for grandparents, say. But if you waltz into a singles’ bar and use that type of affection, you’ll be considered pretty strange. When my sons hit pop flies, I get a strong wash of feeling—and yet, if I turned the same sweetness on my Board of Education, I’d soon find myself both fired and committed.

  THEN HE SAW ME.

  He smiled in a shy cramped way. Caught, he pointed to the spot that’d given him recent trouble, he said of himself, “Tripped.” You know what I said? When I noticed—right then, this late—how kind-looking he was, I said, “Happens all the time. Me too.” I pointed to my chest, another dated funnypaper gesture. “No reason.” I shrugged. “You just do, you know. Most people, I guess.”

  Well, he liked that. He smiled. It gave me time to check out his starched shirt (white, buttoned to the collar, no tie). I studied his old-timey overly wide belt, its thunderbird-design brass buckle. He wore black pants, plain as a waiter’s, brown wingtips with a serious shine. He took in my business suit, my early signs of graying temples. Then he decided, guileless, that he needed some quick maintenance. As I watched, he flashed out a green comb and restyled his hair, three backward swipes, one per side, one on top. Done. The dark waves seemed either damp or oiled, suspended from a part that looked incredibly white, as if my secretary had just painted it there with her typing correction fluid.

  This boy had shipshape features—a Navy recruiting poster, forty years past due. Some grandmother’s favorite. Comb replaced, grinning, he lingered, pleased I’d acted nice about his ungainly little hop. “What say to a drink?” I asked. He smiled, nodded, followed me out.—How simple, at times, life can be.

  I’M REMEMBERING: During football practice in junior high gym-class, I heard a kid’s arm break. He was this big blond guy, nice but out of it. He whimpered toward the bleachers and perched there, grinning, sweating. Our coach, twenty-one years old, heard the fracture too. He looked
around: somebody should walk the hurt boy to our principal’s office. Coach spied me, frowning, concerned. Coach decided that the game could do without me. I’d treat Angier right. (Angier was the kid—holding his arm, shivering.)

  “Help him.” Coach touched my shoulder. “Let him lean against you.”

  Angier nearly fainted halfway back to school. “Whoo …”He had to slump down onto someone’s lawn, still grinning apologies. “It’s okay,” I said. “Take your time.” I finally got him there. The principal’s secretary complained—Coach should’ve brought Angier in himself. “These young teachers.” She shook her head, phoning the rescue squad. It all seemed routine for her. I led Angier to a dark waiting room stacked with textbooks and charts about the human body. He sat. I stood before him holding his good hand. “You’ll be fine. You’ll see.” His hair was slicked back, as after a swim. He was always slow in class—his father sold fancy blenders in supermarkets. Angier dressed neatly. Today he looked so white his every eyelash stood out separate. We could hear the siren. Glad, he squeezed my hand. Then Angier swooned back against the bench, panting, he said something hoarse. “What?” I leaned closer. “Thank you,” he grinned, moaning. Next he craned up, kissed me square, wet, on the mouth. Then Angier fainted, fell sideways.

  Five days later, he was back at school sporting a cast that everybody popular got to sign. He nodded my way. He never asked me to scribble my name on his plaster. He seemed to have forgotten what happened. I remember.