by Jeffrey Lent
He was quiet then. He drank a little from the fruit jar. He wished he hadn’t squandered that last cigarette. Then had one of those rare wondrous moments of illumination where the past was not passed but breathing, working alongside him. And he leaned over her and with his right arm bracing himself against the dash to not touch her said, “Excuse me,” and leaned over her lap with the scent of her like a dozen campfires each burning a different fuel rising into him. He used his free hand to fumble down in the side pocket of the driver door and came up with a box of cigarettes. Because too many times to forget he’d seen his father set some partial almost-gone pack down into there when he wanted a fresh unopened one to take with him out of the car. And this was perfect knowledge to Foster. He dug in the glovebox and found a box of matches and struck up the smoke and worked with the fruit jar a little more. The girl Daphne just driving, the speed the same. Although he’d felt the hover of her breasts and the catch of her breath when he leaned over her. In that moment he understood that her talk was not all talk—she was fragile as he was and something in her searching was honest.
He said, “My father died nearly two months ago. My mother and baby sister ten years ago with the influenza. I didn’t know a thing about North Carolina or what went on here until after Father died. He was his own man was all he was, I never knew a thing about his family. Then I went looking. It’s all strange to me. I’m just trying to sort it out. That business you talk about—who’s white and who’s colored and why—it doesn’t make any sense to me. Except it’s starting to. Because my father never talked about his family. But what I don’t know is what does it have to do with me? I guess something because I’m here. All I’m trying to do is figure out what happened to somebody a long time ago. It’s not something that has much to do with who I am. Except maybe to you people. What I think, you people pay too much attention to what doesn’t matter all that much. I’ve got a simple question and your uncle is determined to not give a simple answer. Maybe that’s because he doesn’t have one. Or maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to.”
He had been watching the road. It was like driving with his father, the road tearing out from under them. Daphne had not looked at him as he spoke. When he was done, sometime after that, she lifted and drained the beer and then backhanded the bottle out the window into the night. Still she did not look at him. She was flexed away from the back of the seat, driving fast and peering ahead at once. Then she braked hard and dropped the gears and the car fishtailed and she let it do that, her one hand sliding and then gripping the wheel. As she made the turn off the road onto a shallow dirt track between files of tall pines she said, still not looking at him, “Don’t confuse me with him.”
“You’re the one brought it up.”
“If I hadn’t,” she said, “you’d of had to.”
“You think?”
“I do.” She was quiet then, driving slow down through a stand of woods. She killed the headlights and they were just in moonlight and the columns and shadows of the woods. The pines thinning to hardwoods, big canopied trees still holding their leaves. Then those thinned and he could smell the river before he saw it. An opening that spread out under the reach of the trees and then there was the broad slow drift of the water and the Chrysler came to a stop in the dark. She turned the engine off and twisted sideways on the seat to look at him, one knee poking free of her dress. Pale round bone under the moon. She said, “It’s a strange thing all right. You’re a perfect stranger but you’re not. There’s all that mess back there and if you don’t know it or like it I can’t help that but it’s there.”
“Seems to me it doesn’t have to matter much. To you and me.”
“Is that what you think?” She did not wait for answer or argument from him but threw open the door and stepped out and walked around in front of the car and down toward the river, a floating solid form of white dress and blond hair in the sparse moonlight. He sat in the car and watched her hunker before the broad silent river, her arms around her drawn-up knees, the dress pulled tight over her curled body. He felt very still, warm and comfortable with the liquor and also as if he were in another world altogether from any he’d ever known. And thought that what he would do was tiptoe his way as quiet as he could through this whole place to learn what he might and then load his dogs and head right back to New Hampshire and live quiet. Be a dog-man. Maybe see those two old women time to time. Maybe not. Maybe go to school. Maybe not. All he wanted right now was some slice of old solid earth to put his feet down on. And recalled the afternoon just passed when the quail rose up in the evening out of the creek bottom in their breathless wonder. And felt that moment was the end of something. Just what it was he could not say and he wasn’t sure if the sadness was real or just the liquor. As if the fruit jar could hold sadness that the world did not contain.
He got out of the car and walked down and knelt beside Daphne, not too close. He wanted to say something to her but would not wait to rehearse it and so was still not sure of the words as he knelt but she turned to him quick and reached out and put her hand on his knee and asked him, “Tell me Foster. Do you think I’m crazy?”
And he rocked a little under her touch and said, “Well. It’s hard to say. I’ve only known you a couple hours. But you don’t seem dangerous.”
And she laughed then, the laugh a splendid thing as if she opened her mouth and moonlight billowed soft out of it into the air to drift over him and beyond, on over the water where it fell apart under the cicada drone. And he wondered then if she was a little bit crazy.
She said, “You know what I thought? When Uncle Lex told me about you and why I came to wake you up? You want to know what I was thinking?” Her hand still on his knee, as if she were balancing herself. Or just wanted to touch him.
“What’s that?”
“I thought, Here’s this person come who doesn’t know me at all. Who’s never laid eyes on me, never heard the first thing about me. But who’s some part of me. Not the distant cousin part so much as maybe the one who would recognize me, who would know me. I don’t know what made me think it would be you but I did. Maybe some way Uncle Lex talked about you. Maybe just something I thought I heard. You know what I mean, Foster? You know?”
He looked at her then, seeing not just her but himself as well, the two of them in the dark on the bank of the river. And knew just what she was saying and at that moment did recognize her, as if each part and line and tissue of her was known to him. And was frightened now truly for the first time. He thought if he didn’t get his hands into her hair, along her arms, hovering over her face, he would lose the ability to draw breath. So he looked from her to the river and was quiet.
She took her hand from his knee then. He did not know what this meant. She took the fruit jar from him and drank a little bit from it and rocked on her haunches and he wanted to reach and steady her, just his hand along her shoulder, her upper arm, but he did not. And she said, “You can’t ever tell, can you?”
Then she rose without warning and he rose up with her and both unsteady, turning and reaching out for each other, hands on forearms, elbows, holding each other upright, steadying, not touching otherwise. Her breath against his face, warm and sweet with corn and the faint edge of charcoal. Then she said, “Oh,” and let him go and turned to walk up to the car and he followed her, lifting up the fruit jar forgotten on the riverbank. She went around the side of the car and got in the passenger seat. He stopped in front. The moon breaking apart fleet clouds driven by some high wind, the air down below still. He looked at her through the windshield. He took the lid from the jar and drank a little bit. Then went around and got behind the wheel.
She was low in the seat with her knees up against the dash, her dress pushed between her legs. She was smoking one of his cigarettes, lazy smoke dribbling from her mouth as she turned to him and said, “Tell me something, Foster?”
“What’s that?” His voice rough, torn with itself.
“What’s the craziest thing you ever
did?”
He did not have to think about that. “This right now. I mean coming south chasing after something happened a long time ago to somebody I never knew. Some part of me feels like it’s all for someone else, I mean for my grandmother. I guess I’m trying to figure out what it all means to me.”
“Don’t you know already?”
“Thought I did.”
“What happened?”
He looked at her. “How much did that Alexander Mebane tell you?”
“That your grandmother was a colored woman his family owned and that she ran away right before the end of the war. And came back years later looking to find her own mother and then went away again.”
“That’s all?”
“And that she—your grandmother—was his half sister. That his father was father to both him and her. He told me that part.”
Foster drank from the fruit jar and looked straight ahead and said, “Whatever happened when she came back looking for her mother, I don’t think she found her. But when she went home, back to Vermont, she went crazy. Not crazy like you but crazy crazy. Talking to herself. Not talking to anybody else. Before she killed herself.”
The blond girl looked at him, her bottom lip out and down a little. “She killed herself?”
“That’s right.”
“How?”
“She hanged herself. My grandfather found her. Up in the woods.”
“He didn’t tell me that.”
“Well he knows all right. Because I told him. And he knows something of why. But he hasn’t told me. Not yet at least. I can’t figure him out. So far, in one afternoon and evening he’s baited me, teased me, threatened me and been nice to me. Sometimes it seems all at the same time.”
“That’s because he likes you. Or is intrigued by you. Or both. Most people can’t get past his door. And he hasn’t told you what you want to know I guess because once he does then you’ll be done with him.”
“A lonely old man, is that what you’re telling me?”
She ran a hand over her face and looked away from him a moment out into the dark and said, “I think it’s more than that. I think whatever it is you’re after, is something after him too.”
Both quiet then. Foster drank a little more of the fruit jar and silent handed it over and she took it and drank also and then set it up on the dash like she wanted it out of the way. Then she said, “You’re sixteen is what he told me.”
“That’s right.”
“I turned nineteen the end of May.”
“Well, I can’t help that.”
“Orphan boy. Are you ever going to say my name?”
“What?”
“You haven’t once called me by name. Since I introduced myself.”
“Well. I will I guess.”
She laughed again, a low thing out of her throat. Then said, “And you’re not going to touch me unless I touch you first. Are you?”
“I don’t know. I guess not.”
“Foster? Let’s get in the back. I want to get in the backseat now.”
There was a moment, not during the first fumbling awkward fast time but during the second when she was over him, there was a moment then that was not thought or feeling or even the illumination of earlier by the riverbank but an understanding that flowed throughout him, a moment when it seemed for the first time of his life everything he understood to be himself was all of one piece, as if his body and mind and that other, that unknowable soul, had fused to unity: her over him, her breath shredded, broken by small cries that no longer alarmed him but seemed instead to enter directly into his blood, those cries small paper boats that would float forever through his veins toward his heart; her ragged breath against his face, her hands on his shoulders as she leaned her tipped breasts toward him; the moment then when her wet wrapped around him and the drops of sweat that beaded and flung from both of them straining toward the other and the air through the open car window and the silent tug of the passing river and the smell of her and the smell of the wet riverbank and her cries and the cicada echo and his hands wondrous sliding over the globe of her sliding against him and the hot writhe of her mouth against his and the sudden swift wet probe of her tongue and the tobacco liquor smell of the car and the pale thread-smell of dying leaves—when all these things were one thing and all things made sense; when the world became known to him and it was not bad or good but bitter and unbearably sweet. And he would live forever. If he died tomorrow. And he wrapped his arms around her tight and drew her close and hard against him, arresting her so she could not move before he spoke her name against her ear. Over and over.
He woke sheathed in sweat, the sleeping bag thrown open beneath him also wet, the air in the cabin dense and sullen, unmoving, swelled-up to some liquid state around him. Hot. Bright angled heat breaking in bars through the window and open door. He did not know where he was. He sat up naked on the sleeping bag laid over the old feather tick. His dogs were missing. His penis was staring up at him from between his legs. She had brought him back in the long flown-together hours before dawn and jerked him to her and kissed his mouth as if she would take it with her and then let go of him and walked down the alley, looking back once to say, “Bye, Foster.” He’d stood there swaying until he heard the rupture of the old Ford firing before the house and traced its passage through the town and away until it was gone from sound. And there was nothing then. Some nightbirds pealing in the bushes. And he’d come in through the yard and piled himself into the bed with his sleeping dogs and had not thought he would sleep at all but replay her forever. But now was up sweating and blinded and without dogs. He stood off the bed, losing balance before stepping into his trousers, hopping one leg around after the other. Then out into the day. Through the open door. Which he was sure he had not left open. So he was elated and rebuked and terrified all at once. As if he had made a fatal error he could not yet name.
The midday cascaded upon him. His eyes were broken to pieces. There was a pump between the cabin and the house and he went there stumbling with his head down and worked the handle until the water was surging and bent down to hold his head under the gush, tipping to one side to drink, the water over him cold and riveting, bringing him back. And he recalled the vast liquid of the night before and could not understand how both the pump and that night could fit into the same world. He raised his wet head and shook it. His dogs were lying up in the shade of the house at the edge of the ruined garden. Tilted back in a broken-legged kitchen chair out in the middle of the yard, in full sun, was Alexander Mebane. His cane hooked over the chairback. One leg crossed over the other.
“It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” Mebane observed. “Your dogs was fussing so I let them out. You were dead to it all.”
Foster raked his hair back with his fingers, wiping at his brow, trying to do it in such a way as to blinder the sunlight. “Good morning.” He needed half an hour, some time to gather himself.
Mebane said, “Afternoon. It was high noon the last I looked at a clock. That girl’ll lead you to damnation.”
“I was willing enough.”
Mebane nodded. “Of course you were. Wouldn’t be natural, you wasn’t. What you want is a cup of coffee.”
“That’d be all right.”
Mebane grinned at him, tight lips drawn back over yellow teeth. “There isn’t any. I don’t keep it in the house. Life itself works me up all I need to be worked up.”
“I imagine I’ll live.”
Mebane jerked his head toward the house. “You go dig around in the icebox you’ll find you a bottle of Coca-Cola in the back of it. That’ll do you better than the coffee anyhow. Settle your stomach.”
“My stomach’s all right.”
“Go on. Get something in you. I don’t want to sit here and watch you get sick. You look like fishguts right now.”
“It’s hot out here.”
“I sit out for an hour or so every day. The sun is healthful. And the inside of the house feels so cool afterward.”
“I’ll go get that soda pop maybe.”
“You do that.”
Foster turned to the house. Lovey and Glow in the shade, watching him, their tongues heavy. Behind him Mebane called out, “Get your drink, come back out here.”
Foster stumbled in the kitchen dim after the outside, found the icebox and squatted before it and reached around in the back of it and found the bottle and lifted it out. Shaped like a woman. Everything in the world was changed. He wondered where she was, doing what. When he’d see her again. He rolled the bottle in his hands. Everything could go away. He already knew that. He went to the screen door and called out, “Is there an opener?”
“Drawer under the toaster. In there somewheres.”
He popped the cap from the bottle and took a couple of swallows. It was good. She had such great power, he thought. And wondered if it was her age or if that only added to it. He would not hunt her down. He drank off half the bottle and went back outside, already feeling better, his feet more steady.
“I thought you two might get along,” Mebane said. “Of course there was no way to know if you could keep up with her or not. But that would not be any disaster—there’s not many that can, I understand. It’s possible she makes a career of that sort of thing is what some think. Myself, I just think she’s looking for someone what can hold pace with her. From the looks of you, I couldn’t say. What do you think?”
“I’m all right.”
“Is it your nature or the situation that keeps you so tight-lipped?” Foster grinned. “Both I guess.”
“Well you two managed to stir up the neighbors. Old Winifred Coxe was over here this morning bright as a birdbath telling me all sorts of things I had no interest in knowing or hearing and all the time her head swiveling around so she could listen to the upstairs trying to figure out where you were. I wasn’t about to tell her you were camped out in the nigger cabin. These old birds they don’t miss a thing. If I was to move a flowerpot from over here to over there, if I had flowerpots to move, they’d not only note it but attach a meaning to it that would be lost on me. But it would be some reading of my character, of who I am, of who they think I am. It’s their job, the only job they have I guess. Or at least the one they’re best disposed for. Just so you know all I told her was you were the grandson of a friend of mine from Chapel Hill who moved north after the war. It was close enough to the truth so I felt fine about it and just far enough from the truth so’s to shut them up. My business is not theirs and never has been, never will be. As far as Daphne is concerned, I can’t help her in the eyes of these old ladies. It’s not as if she wants my help anyhow.”
