On a late-spring night half-a-century back, best as I recall, I drove a Plymouth through a restaurant napkin and entered another universe.

Of the first I’m reasonably sure; second, certain.

It was a time of infinite possibility, near-probability, life all full ahead, fears masked in male bravado, if there at all, and as the black rotary phone in my bedroom shot unanswered rings at Phil’s place, it was like I could hug the future. And expect it to hug me back.

1970, 18-edging-toward-19, was the last year I’d live with my folks in their West Oak Lane, Philadelphia home, which has housed most dreams since, regardless of my sleep-world’s time-period and denizens.

On the wall of that room—little larger than a closet—I’d scribbled a pathway to freedom by penciling a few memorable lines from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, celebrating the “mad ones” who want everything, simultaneously. A few feet from Jack’s quote rested, uneasily, that well-thumbed paperback and a few others in the first rung of a small metal book-case: Richard Farina’s Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me; J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye; William Goldman’s The Temple of Gold; Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus; Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha.

My collection of tomes weighed like stones in a David-model slingshot aimed at something—or, in my mind, someone—blocking me from independent adulthood.

As it was my nature to view most everything I did as part of an endless soul search, these were my “find-yourself-already” novels, destined to forge an interstate to urgent destinations—wisdom, career, loss of virginity. Not in that order.

My call to Phil’s pealed madly, and I lapsed into one of many imaginary arguments with this long-time friend—my designated Goliath—who I loved dearly for all the great moments we’d shared, the summer in Europe we were about to blaze, and resented, because most of those times were his, me tagging along, laughing at his jokes, playing his outrageous what-me-worry sidekick shadow.

Why can’t you ever listen, Phil? Must you always pole-vault over whatever I say and make it your story? If I manage a good grade, you get a better one, and if I gain ground with a girl, you make more with a prettier one…or so you claim. How come I can’t slash your Saran Wrap-like prison around me? Will eight weeks across the ocean yielding to your stifling, if fascinating, aura leave me unable to burst unshackled and genuine, into my 20s?

My door rocked open, pulverizing my navel-gazing, and Phil burst inside, Art Carney into Jackie Gleason’s apartment, all 5-feet, 8-inches (one up on me, of course), Wrangler jacket, jeans, sneakers, on which he whirled, then stretched his scrawny (less so than mine) arms (hairier), pressed his hands on my books, squeezed volumes together in accordion fashion and elevated them towards the ceiling like a cascading deck of cards until they fanned out and detonated. Farina careening into my (mono) record-player. Kerouac sliding along the third-baseline of my hard floor. Hesse crashing against the “mad ones” quote. Goldman, Salinger, slithering under the bed. Roth splat! against the window.

Phil forced his stubbly face almost into mine and invoked my childhood nickname, along with the mission squirming in my scattered paperbacks.

“Change your life, Stutz!”

I gathered the books—fat chance he’d pick them up—and restored them to their vaunted spots.

“Where the fuck you been? I call, no answer, then suddenly you emerge, some amok Wizard of Oz flying monkey. How?”

“My sister dropped me off, man.” He cast a judgmental eye at my Kerouac wall. “Can you get the Bozo-mobile? Chance-of-a-lifetime sizzling at Continental Pizza.”

As I drew nearer the house, my carriage rolling slowly under a clear sky, not a single sound to mar the late afternoon, a sense of dread pervaded my soul.

Still several miles away, I could see the ancient structure atop the hill, regal and prominent, like the residence of a Lord or a King residing in sunlight and majesty. The house had occupied that spot since ancient times, and from its birth it has been occupied by the family Van Cordt. Such a large and beautiful house it was: Of its size one could wander along its hallways and easily get lost in transit from one room to another; Of its beauty it was the envy of anyone who has ever known the family Van Cordt, or even seen the house from a distance. Generations beyond counting of the great family had resided within those walls, within the depths of that gargantuan but elegant castle. And the legend was that the family line would stretch out to eternity till the horns of judgement sounded.

But that prophesy came under serious judgement in a terrible instant when, with the passing of his sister and two brothers in the span of just two months, my good friend Patrick became the last descendent of the sovereign line of blood. And with no intent on marrying or raising any heirs, the demise of a great tradition seemed inevitable. As for the incidents of so many deaths in such a short period, it was not any maleficent cause that might raise the suspicion of conspiracy; instead it was ruled natural causes in each case by a renowned and respected physician, and therefore, any further investigation was averted. It was mere selection that had played a tragic hand. Had I learned of the tragedy sooner, I would have rushed to Patrick’s side immediately. As it was, the news reached me a mere twelve hours after the last of these tragic demises, yet not prior to my decision to travel across the state to pay homage to my estranged friend.  I had simply decided that the time had grown late, but not too late, and I immediately began preparations for a trip that would turn out to threaten my very soul.

~~~

My earliest recollections of childhood were dominated by my dear friend and my acquaintance with every member of his extensive family. Patrick and I had met in grade school, and after a very brief period, we became inseparable. By the perceptions of others, the two of us were tightly-knit friends who spent every moment together and shared every secret. By our own notion, we were sworn companions, friends for eternity, tied together by a bond weaved from the care and concern, but also connected by a thread of jealousy that cemented that bond. Patrick was envious of my academic success as well as my prowess in almost any sport at which I tried a hand; while I was covetous of his family’s wealth and influence. I reveled in the applause and admiration of my own achievements, but my collection of trophies and medals were dull and substandard next to the riches of Patrick’s very name. And I was not less jealous of the non-material possessions, the closeness of the family, the love so strong between each and every member that it seemed to generate a warmth when two or more were in the same vicinity. There seemed not a thread of discord, so obedient was son to father, and so humble and just was father to son that there almost seemed to be a spark of the divine. But the jealousy between Patrick and me was calm and quiet, and never effectuated any true insult or injury. Our friendship transcended any such vulgar feelings of guilt or anger.

But sometime in our early adult years, something suddenly intruded, some inexplicable force severed our bond as severely as a sword strike. I cannot fathom if it were a series of offenses, or a single incident that created this chasm. And now, after such a long absence, I was unsure of my place in my friend’s life, unknowing if Patrick’s bitterness toward me might be unquenchable. But I was determined to make the attempt, and in great haste I packed my suitcase enough for three days away from home. I put by business affairs into other hands, and I secured a watch for my own apartment—and all this prior to any notice of the aforementioned deaths. Just as I was exiting my building, my departure was interrupted by a stern-looking messenger who addressed me by name as if acquainted with me. He handed me an envelope with no addressee or any postal mark, and then made a swift exit as if unable to endure my reaction to the news. I tore into the note and immediately recognized the familiar scrawl, though it took me several minutes to comprehend the message. It was less an invitation from Patrick than it was a plea for a visitation. The note contained no preliminary greeting, barely any decorum at all, just his recommendation that I avail myself and head straightaway to be at his side. This entreaty was an odd coincidence, I thought, as its origin obviously predated my own sudden desire for a visit, but fully supported my intention; yet its very urgency suddenly gave me pause, rather than strengthening my resolve. Why had my friend suddenly administered this decree upon me? What trouble had visited itself upon him that he should have no recourse but to infringe on my good nature? I quickly overcame my hesitation with the force of my commitment, and within a minute I was on the road, my reluctance trailing behind me.

~~~

]]> https://www.wildviolet.net/2023/09/04/visitor/feed/ 0 https://www.wildviolet.net/2023/09/03/433/ https://www.wildviolet.net/2023/09/03/433/#comments Sun, 03 Sep 2023 21:46:00 +0000 http://www.wildviolet.net/?p=6340

Okay, okay, I know … I remember opening this bottle of Zocor that is right here in front of me. I mean, it was just a few minutes ago that I did, just before I let myself get distracted by the news on TV that wasn’t really news, nothing that Walter Cronkite would have put on the news anyway. The question remains, the question the bottle seems to be asking me is: did I already take my nightly tablet? Honestly, I haven’t a clue—and that, of course was something I did or didn’t do after I opened the bottle. I do remember taking a tablet—but was that last night, the night before, the week before??? And yet there are things I can remember from so long ago. Not everything, of course, but certain things. Why those? What I have long suspected is that what gets recalled is what is tagged by emotion. Like pride. Or fear. Perhaps pride, however undeserved, touched by fear, however unjustified, is the most potent mnemonic of all.

~~~

It was late afternoon at a high school in a suburb of New York, during the mid-nineteen-sixties, and time for band practice. The teenage version of me—yes, I was that young once—barreled into the commodious rehearsal room, only a little late, grabbed my baritone horn from the instrument closet, and hurriedly settled into my assigned seat. The music teacher, the conductor, was already on the podium from which, grimacing, he tracked my progress.

The usual cacophony at the start. Yet, a pattern: two acoustical diamond shapes laid end-to-end. A crescendo of random utterings of woodwinds, brass, percussion, and unruly adolescents. The gradual quieting precipitated by the conductor’s rapid beating of a metal music stand with his baton. The one moment of pristine silence preceding what was even more pristine than silence: the pure tone beckoned from the concertmistress’s clarinet. Triggering another crescendo as more and more musicians attempted to match the pitch. Followed by the inevitable decrescendo as each individual tune-up was completed.

Far to the conductor’s right, beyond the sea of clarinets, the smatterings of flutes, double reeds, and saxophones, in a crescent of gleaming blond metal, lay the domain of the lower brass: trombones, baritone horns, and tubas. Instruments whose players have a reputation for irreverence and outright mayhem. Often well-deserved. Why might this be the case?

A theory.

Every brass player knows, in his heart, that what produces even the sweetest of his music is, in essence, a controlled fart. Made with the entrance rather than the exit of the gastrointestinal tract. Which instructional manuals like to call “a buzzing of the lips.” But it’s a fart, nonetheless. Now the sound of the upper brass, the trumpet for instance, is so far removed from that aforementioned disagreeable bodily function as to allow those hoity-toity prima donnas to conveniently forget their humble roots. For the lower brass, however, such self-deceit is impossible. The very tones these musicians produce are, at times, flatulent in pitch, timbre, and volume. Yet from such tones, the tenderest of music perfumes the air. Perhaps it is the stunning paradox inherent in coaxing angels to fly out of their assholes that inevitably grants lower brassmen an absurdist take on life.

Merely a theory, of course.

I first laid eyes on her in a Massachusetts State House conference room. She was taking notes during a debate over a new voting rights bill. I was there as an ambitious investigative reporter in search of an interesting story.

I nudged Lucas, my friend and fellow reporter. “Know her?” I asked.

He leaned into me and whispered. “Jessica Boyd. Committee staffer.” He frowned, shaking his head. “She’s involved with some dude named Leo.” I accepted the information as gospel. Lucas—single and always on the hunt—knows the skinny on every Beacon Hill mark.

I recorded her name in my small spiral notebook, saving it for future reference. Jessica Boyd. In time I’d call her Jessie.

We met three weeks later when I spotted her hustling up the front steps of the capitol. The gleaming rays of a February sun reflected radiantly off the building’s dome as I stepped up beside her.

“I’m calling security if you keep following me,” I said.

Startled, she fumbled an armful of file folders onto the capitol steps. I offered a lame apology and helped retrieve the scattered papers.

“Jonah Burke,” I said. I was impressed by her surprisingly strong handshake. Her light brown hair hung in seductive curls around her high-cheekbone face—a genuine All-American girl with magnificent green eyes.

“I know you,” she said with a mischievous smile. “I read your articles all the time.” Her forehead wrinkled. “You’re not writing something awful about me, are you?”

I grinned. “Please tell me there’s something awful to write about.”

She flashed a wide, beautiful smile that I instantly fell in love with.

~~~

In the beginning, ours was just a friendship. I had a wife, while Jessie, who had been married once before, was currently single. As usual Lucas’s research was spot on—she was dating a guy named Leo. But their dysfunctional relationship soon ended, and I learned that she had muddled through a series of equally unfulfilling courtships over the past few years. Her record of failed relationships had earned her a reputation as a woman who always fell for the wrong guy. “She’s the best,” Lucas liked to say, “but she’s attracted to the worst.”

After she left her Senate staff position later that year and joined a powerful Boston lobby firm, we spent even more time together. I scratched her back, giving her inside dope on breaking news, and she scratched mine by passing on the latest Capitol gossip, some of which I used in my newspaper column and attributed to an anonymous source. We’d make the information-for-rumors trade over drinks at a few Beacon Hill bars. I’d listen to her stories about the legislative crowd, and she would hang on every new revelation I shared about my latest investigation. I became her personal confidant, offering romantic advice that she rarely heeded and always cautioning her against rushing into a new relationship.

As for me, the truth was that I was moving on autopilot in my job at the newspaper. I was facing an old-fashioned case of burnout. I confessed my frustrations to her at lunch one day.

“The job has grown stale” I told her. “I’m tired of chasing stories about sleazy politicians.”

“Then quit” was her unusually sharp reply. “Stop whining and start writing the way you’ve always wanted to. You’ve got a ton of stories in you—let them out.” But she could tell that my dissatisfaction with my job wasn’t the only thing that was eating on me. “Okay, buster,” she said, “What’s really going on?”

I shrugged, sucked in my breath, and told her that I was getting a divorce. She opened her mouth in feigned surprise, but it was just an act. She knew too much about my relationship with Joanne for the announcement to come as a shock.

“Don’t do it, Jonah,” she said in a stern voice. “You’re not meant to be single.” Then she cocked her head and smiled. “You need mothering.”

I was in no mood for her humor. “Look, I was a freshman at UMass when I got married. Just a kid, for chrissake. The marriage hasn’t worked for years.”

“Don’t underestimate what you have with Joanne. She loves you, and you love—”

“I care about Joanne,” I said, correcting her. “She’s the mother of my two girls, so sure, I have feelings; but the kids are the only thing holding us together. She’d stay in the marriage forever, I guess, but I can’t. There has to be something more than just growing old together and punching the clock, neither one of us satisfied.”

 “Look at me, Jonah. All I’m asking is that you don’t do something stupid. I know a thing or two about bad relationships, and breakups aren’t always the answer. At least promise me that we’ll talk again about all this before you do anything rash, okay?”

Woolworths at Cedarbrook Mall, just outside my home town of Philadelphia, didn’t look like much, but that was beside the point.

Back in the Sixties, it was a great place for teenagers like me to visit during trips to the mall, especially the variety store’s record cut-out bin. Filled with carelessly tossed-in crap, near-crap, and the occasional gem, at 33 cents for a 45-rpm single, a buck for an LP, it invited those long on musical thirst and short on cash to find keys to their universe.

One afternoon in 1968, I found one of mine, a rare version of Buffalo Springfield’s self-titled 1966 debut LP. Overflowing with clever, hook-filled songs, minus the one tune most people ever heard by the band, it starred three hyper-talented guys who went on to bigger things than cut-out bins: Richie Furay, who fronted the influential country-rockers, Poco (the cartoonist behind Pogo wouldn’t let them use the name), along with Steve Stills and Neil Young. They went on to be, well, Steve Stills and Neil Young.

And while it was Young who penned two of the LP’s most memorable numbers—an ode to alienation with the confusing title of “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing,” and a tune about a guy who loses his girl because he smokes pot, appropriately called “Flying on the Ground is Wrong“—Stills wrote and sang “For What It’s Worth.” That was an enduring protest song, capital P and S, which sold well as a single, and which the record company added to later pressings of the LP. My cut-rate beauty was a first edition that languished in the store after the change was made.

That move made sense for the company, and certainly for Stills, but I didn’t know or care much about it at the time. For a buck, I got the LP, which I played to death for months, long before I learned that, as a collector’s item, it was worth more because it lacked “For What It’s Worth.”

And when I finally realized what I had and announced it to classmates at lunch at Temple University, my way-too-loud voice carried to an adjacent table and caught the ear of an attractive blonde named Gretchen, who ambled over, introduced herself, and confronted me with two offers she thought I couldn’t refuse.

“Buffalo Springfield without ‘For What It’s Worth‘? I gotta have it. Bring it in tomorrow, and if you’re telling the truth, fifty bucks.” (Righteous bread in ’68.)

Trouble was, she was standing, I was sitting, and try though my eyes did to reach her face, they lingered on the rest of her, too. (Shit, I was 17.) I think she noticed, because when I turned her down, she upped the ante.

“OK, OK. How about this… you bring in the record, and I’ll sleep with you.”

She didn’t actually say “sleep with”—something far coarser—but you get the idea. Except I was a bashful virgin at the time and really didn’t get the idea; I muttered “nah,” perplexing the guys at the table and sending Gretchen back to hers. She looked wonderful walking away.

“What is wrong with you, man?” lamented several of my fellow long-hairs. “Ah, come on,” I sputtered. “She would’ve taken the album and left me hanging. I don’t even know her.”

That changed, eventually, though it took seven years, by which time I was neither bashful nor a virgin, and, so I thought, no longer intimidated by forceful, free-thinking blondes.

One May Sunday night in 1975, I was leaving my parents’ West Oak Lane house, on the way to my Baby-Boomer-issued VW bug, which would lead me to my Germantown apartment, when Gretchen appeared in the gloaming, walking a large dog.

I feigned car-key fumbling until they reached my parking spot, then offered a hearty “Remember me?”

“You didn’t want my money and you didn’t want my body. You’re an idiot.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t quite ready for all that then.” Her dog—-she called him Dandy—put his front paws on my cut-off bare knees. “I wouldn’t have been much in the sack.”

She flashed a wicked smile. “Probably still aren’t.”

I wasn’t sure where to go with that, so I let Dandy step up to the plate. I took his front paws in my hands, looked deeply into his eyes in the fading light of dusk, and warbled the opening line of, you guessed it, “For What It’s Worth.”

There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear

“You still can’t look me in the eye, can you, Stuart? That’s the name, right?”

I admitted as much, spewing out, kind of all at once, that after graduation I became a newspaper reporter, had a live-in girlfriend for a few years, no more, and I still had the LP, in a frame on my wall, no less.

“Well, I don’t want the album anymore, and I don’t care about your love life, in case you’re brandishing your single-hood as some kind of treasure I’m supposed to mine. Not interested.”

Except she was: By the time Dandy made it clear he’d had enough of our chitter-chatter, she’d scribbled her phone number on my right wrist with a Bic.

(continued on page 2)

True definition is impossible – at least that’s what I’ve heard.  Each pair of eyes defines the world their own way.  To my eyes, it was about Jip and The MC (The Motley Crew).  To others, it was more about “the times.” Some people are tailor-made for the times. All I knew was Jip came to our school. and it seemed he was instantly an important piece of our puzzle; and we were a puzzle. Jip fit us perfectly: the funniest kid anyone had ever seen and a natural-born leader for natural-born followers.

Our times?  It was the end of June and the end of a road for us, as well as the end of innocence in a lot of ways. Graduation day, we found ourselves all lined up and ready to be drop-kicked into the world. We were fair game. The world could gnaw our toes off. Our diplomas made us prey. That summer would be the final act of our circus, and Jip was our ringmaster. 

A week after graduation, we began a ritual. Followers are fond of rituals. Every night, after sundown, Jip led us to the back of the school, where he would hold court on the back steps. What a word-carver! He could make a trip to the laundromat exciting. The boy and his way with words made us feel good, made us forget, gave us the freedom to laugh. That’s how you laugh — when you know nobody can touch you.  

The back of the school was where time stopped, where we could smoke our cigars in peace and where we could throw off our father’s time pieces and warnings. The back of the school was ours.   

Jip unraveled his portraits for us each night. He painstakingly weaved pictures of the many characters he’d met as his family moved from town to town. He made them all come to life for our eyes. Picture this; absolute black — and in all that blackness, 10 red-orange cigar tips, like stars but just one star moving, the one between the ringmaster’s lips.  Picture that.

We all knew the kid was different. That’s why he became the leader. When you’re young, you don’t need to vote, you just know. One big difference was the rest of us had regular fathers — not Jip. Jip’s father was Canary Carl, Tweety-bird to his criminal buddies. People far and wide feared The Canary.  No one would ever be afraid of our fathers. Canary was one of those guys who didn’t have a job yet always carried wads of money. He had perfect hair, and it wasn’t yellow. It was jet black, like the wet back of a black cat. It wasn’t strange to see Canary driving up the street in a flashy new car almost daily. We could never figure out how he did that. Well, we knew, but we also knew to say it could be deadly. The first time I learned the word “aura,” I thought about Canary. He had an aura to him, and a couple of guys who looked like they could chew railroad spikes.

At the ball games, Canary always sat by himself. The other fathers were scared to sit nearby. Jip, on the other hand, was one of us from the very beginning. Close your eyes and look at a portrait of the Motley Crew; Jip is smack in the middle. Picture-perfect. 

The stories that floated around the neighborhood about Canary could make a pirate blush, but we only believed the ones Jip told us, in the dark, on the steps of the Smoke Saloon, as Jip called the back porch.

It was in the Smoke Saloon that Jip first told us about what “The Ferret” had done to him. The Ferret was Hector Ferris, the gym teacher at our school; a guy who hated kids only a teaspoon more than he hated sports. The Ferret’s real love was confrontation, and he reserved a special hatred for Jip. Apparently, by the end of the year, he couldn’t hold it in any more, and on the last day, Jip told us, the Ferret yanked him aside and told him he was nothing but a spoiled mobster’s brat. He also told Jip that someday, someone would teach him a lesson, and he’d clap when that happened. Now Jip being a spoiled mobster’s brat was undoubtedly true, but at that point in our maturity, truth wasn’t a welcome commodity. 

We all agreed, the Ferret had some mayhem coming to him. We were always up for mayhem, always hungry for new ways to give the world the finger. It must be said, though, that we did not condone evil.

All proposed mayhem was filtered through our own, personal evil meters. My evil meter didn’t have too far to go to reach “too evil.”   Jip’s evil meter was more tolerant. French Stick Louie, he shouldn’t have even have had an evil-meter. No act of mayhem was too evil for Frenchie. Frenchie was a scary kid who promised to turn into a scarier adult. 

Jippity laid out his mayhem proposal for us. The Ferret, he said, would be going to the athletic booster dinner on Wednesday night. The booster dinner always ended at 9, so “Earl the Custodian” could catch the end of the Sox game. Now, the Ferret, being like every other ferret, lived in the woods; a “fork in the road” village called Restitution. As a side note, we didn’t believe any human being had ever been beyond Restitution. Restitution, to our minds, was the true end of the world. Beyond here, lies nothing. The only way into the village was over the bridge at Restitution; a rickety, near-ancient covered bridge probably used by Moses once or twice. The Ferret, Jip told his adoring audience, would be reaching the bridge between 9 and 9:30. It was guaranteed like the dawn. Now for the mayhem part.

Jip’s proposed justice would be delivered to the Ferret by a couple of planks laid on the bridge’s floor, with a few choice nails sticking up, resulting in two flat tires, courtesy of the Motley Crew.

My evil meter immediately went to “appropriate,” as did all the other Motley members. Turns out only three of us would be executing Jip’s plan, though, the others being just too lazy. It would be me, Jip, and Pugs McPherson, who would deliver the mayhem that would just keep on giving.

Pugs was a different kind of kid.  His only claim to fame was being the most boring person on Earth. Pugsley literally had no hobbies, no interests, no personality to speak of, and on top of that was going prematurely bald with a rather distinct fence-line appearing. Pugs was only participating, because it was the first thing he’d been invited to do in five years. Why I volunteered was a mystery to me. If I had been called a name, it wouldn’t have bothered me at all. Maybe, I figured there were only a certain number of mobsters left in the world. and we needed to preserve them. That’s the best I could come up with.

(continued on page 2)

Connie rocked back and forth on the faded velvet sofa in her sister Lois’s living room. It was summer, 1940.

“Maybe you’re wrong,” Lois said.

“I missed twice. I never missed before.”

“You might just be nervous, the wedding coming and all,” Lois said.

“I threw up yesterday.”

“See there? Could be nerves.”

Connie reached over and clutched Lois’s arm. “Tell me what to do.”

Lois was a married lady, her big sister. She’d know.

“Have you told George?”

Connie shook her head. 

Lois pulled her sister close and kissed her damp cheek. “Good. Wait ‘til after the wedding. Then tell him.”

“Why?”

“Just say the baby’s premature. He won’t know the difference.”

Connie’s head jerked up. “It’s his!”

Lois smiled. “Of course it’s his. But if he doesn’t know now, he’ll back up your story when the baby comes early.”

“It’s not George I’m worried about. It’s Papa.”

“How’s he going to know?”

“Same way everybody will. All those old ladies at the church, counting the months on their fingers. Big fat baby coming out premature? Uh-huh!”

Lois nodded.

Connie wiped her nose. “I’m scared of Papa.”

“Yeah, I know. But what’s the worst he can do?”

“Disown me.”

“He would never. You’re his favorite.”

“I wouldn’t be if he knew. He’d look at me so disappointed. And he wouldn’t love me anymore. That’s the part I couldn’t bear.” 

Lois thought a minute. “You could get married early,” she finally said. “Next week, say. Tell people you and George just don’t want a big wedding.”

“I can’t. My dress is paid for. The reception’s all planned. They’d start asking questions. Besides, the baby would be coming way too early, no matter when I get married.”

“I think you should see a doctor. Make sure you’re right about this.”

“I am sure.”

“You never know. One time when I thought I was pregnant, I made an appointment with a doctor in Stanton.”

“Really? What happened?”

“My period was late, that was all.”

“Were you married?”

Lois shook her head.

Connie stared at her big sister.

“What would you have done if you were . . . ?” she asked.

“I would probably have gotten a doctor to help me.”

“Help you do what?”

“I don’t know. It didn’t happen.”

“But it’s happening to me.” Connie was crying.

“Maybe. We need to find out for sure. But if so, I’d advise you to have the baby.”

“Papa would be so ashamed.”

“Oh sweetie,” Lois moaned, holding Connie tight, rocking her on the velvet sofa.

~~~

She’d met him in the spring, May 12, 1939, to be exact, when she was still sixteen. He’d come from Ringgold, Virginia, looking to set up a business. She didn’t know why he picked her, he was so much older and smarter. And he had that dimple in his chin and he was so tall. Her Papa was Tabernacle Baptist and too strict to let her go out with him, so he visited her at home, on the front porch.

“You still a baby,” her papa said. “You got no business with a man like that.”

They lived in Goldfield, North Carolina, on the small tobacco farm her papa, Walton Reynolds, Jr., had inherited from his papa. Times being hard, all the children from five on up worked on the land, summers and after school, picking tobacco, milking the three cows, feeding the chickens. Connie was the last child of six. The seventh had died, taking her mother with her.

Three months they sat out there, Connie pumping herself back and forth on the white wooden swing. George sitting opposite on a wicker chair, cooling himself with a fan from the funeral home, talking about his future.

Every twenty minutes or so, her papa would come out on the porch, make some comment about the weather, check his watch, and head back in. Then around nine o’clock, he’d announce, “Bedtime for this little girl.” And George would disappear into the twilight of a long summer day.

Meanwhile, he talked and he talked. About his plan to save up the money he was making at the hardware store so he could set himself up in business.

“This town is ready for a proper shoe store,” he’d tell her. “Everybody orders their shoes from Sears Roebuck, you know that. And they don’t fit good. Men out in the fields, they need good-fitting shoes. When I get my store, they can come in and try on as many pairs as they like ‘til they find one that fits perfect. Women, too. I can stock pretty shoes, prettier than anything you see in the catalogue. Not to mention that cheap trash they sell in the general store.”

She loved to hear him talk. About securing a loan from the bank and checking out storefronts for rent and negotiating deals with boot merchandizers. She couldn’t imagine how he knew so much. After a while, he started using we and our when he talked, as in “you’ll sell the ladies their spectator pumps and I’ll man the register.”

By the end of the year, Connie’s papa had agreed she could marry George so long as they waited until she finished high school. And that would be in June.

After the announcement in the local weekly at Christmas, her papa started letting her go out with George on Sundays after church. They’d take off in his black Ford coupe to visit friends or stop by an open field to spread a blanket and eat deviled eggs and ham biscuits. It was March when he kissed her for the first time. Sunny and warm, white apple blossoms blooming early, new grass smelling fresh.

“Come here,” George said. He was lying down on his side. Connie sat down on the blanket beside him and began opening the picnic basket.

“No. Here, with me,” he said and pulled her down beside him so they were lying face to face. Connie’s first thought was her papa, how he would say, Pick yourself up right now and go home. But she found she couldn’t move. She was staring into George’s eyes, which seemed darker than she remembered. She tried not to notice his arm heavy on her waist, his fingers somewhere, his breath on her cheek. And he was pulling her, closer and closer, so that her breasts were touching his chest. She reached out automatically to push him away. And that’s when he did it. He put his hand on the back of her head and kissed her. On the mouth. She felt herself moving closer, like something outside her was in charge. Then she was kissing him and her hand was feeling the soft skin under his shirt. He stopped it that time, pulled himself up, and said, “Get out the picnic, honey,” in a hoarse voice she hadn’t heard before.

After that, every time they took a drive, she would tell herself, I’m not gonna do it, not this time. She would not lie down beside him, she would not let him kiss her, it was a sin to even want to. And in the car, on the way, it seemed so easy, saying no. But then he would stop the car. And she would follow him and let him pull her down, down onto the blanket, down against his hard chest, and she would feel herself melting into him. Feel that place somewhere low in her body come alive. He stopped it the next time and the next. Until he couldn’t.

(continued on page 2)

We find the stranger in our ark near East Fence. Me and Ada. Not a real ark, just some old rotted logs and pine branches for a roof. We set up inside after morning prayers. Pretend to off the infected. Patrol doesn’t come by in winter – too much mud – no one crazy enough to go over the mountains, not with all that snow and ice.

No one except the stranger.   

Ada’s snuffling behind me, got the ear of her rag bunny stuffed inside her mouth. Sucking. Always sucking. I jam my long braid down the back of my jacket and squat near the front of the ark to get a better look. I’ve got a pointy stick in one hand, grab a thick ceiling branch with the other. Water’s still dripping through, but the ground’s a little drier. Smells like Christmas – or at least what I remember Christmas smelling like.

The stranger’s asleep in the back corner, hard to see. Dressed like us, heavy boots for mud, pants all colorless from use, waterproof jacket that soaks in more rain than it keeps out. Got a pack, though, some kind of patchy green and brown like what Patrol wears. Using it like a pillow.

My heart’s flapping like a bird now. Sede always said I had more curiosity than sense. She’d be jawing about infection. Tell me to find Patrol, report the stranger. But Sede’s twelve now, gone to the Wives’ Quarters. Funny how loud her voice still sounds. Ada’s crowding at the back of my legs. I can feel the slobber from her rag bunny soaking into my pants. Eyes can see better now.

I poke the stranger with my stick.

The stranger groans and opens an eye, bright green in a red-chapped face. Ada whimpers, and I hear pine cones crunching as she runs out of the ark. My hand’s popped a sap bubble on the ceiling branch. Sweet smell covers fear. I hold my ground.  

“You infected?” I demand, hoping the stranger doesn’t hear the crack in my voice. No answer, so I poke again.

The stranger grunts. Opens the other eye. Pushes up into a sitting position. Green eyes

and dark red hair curling out from under her green stocking cap.  

My heart stops. Takes a long time to start again. Ada’s back, her wet sucking loud. Too scared to walk back to the kitchen alone. She’s next to me, then a little in front. I have to grab her and pull her back. We haven’t seen eyes or hair like that since we lost Mother. 

The woman looks at us. “Not infected,” she says. “Just got separated from my people in the mountains. Saw your fence and decided it was worth the risk. Nice fort you’ve built here.”

I narrow my eyes.

“I’m Maria,” she says and holds out a gloved hand. Puts it down when I don’t go forward to take it. The name sounds familiar, like the names some of us used to have. “What’s yours?”

The question surprises me, have to think for a moment. “Emzara,” I finally tell her. The name still feels strange even though I’ve had years to get used to it.  

“Interesting,” Maria says. She pushes away a layer of worm-wet pine needles and leaves until she finds the ground. “Here,” she tries to hand me a short stick, “write it for me.”

Now I do step back.

Maria cocks her head. “Like this.” She uses the stick to scratch lines into the dirt.

MARIA

My heart stops again. Breathing too. I drop my pointy stick. Tumble to my knees and crawl forward into the ark. Forget that I’m supposed to be afraid. Forget that I should get Patrol. Trace the lines with my finger. Cold, wet dirt. Magical markings. Like the lines from Father Noah’s book. Like something from The Before, a snuggly bed and Mother’s voice as she shows me pictures. Not sure I’ve started breathing again.

“You don’t know how to read, do you?”

I jump at Maria’s question. Her voice like Mother’s. So warm. It opens a hole inside me, something beautiful, something terrible reaching out. I shove it back. Shake my head. Not sure what I feel. Maria’s eyes though, her hair, her voice. Ada feels it, too. She’s stopped sucking.

We make an agreement then. Me and the stranger. Maria will teach me to read if I bring her food and promise not to report her to Patrol. I can still hear Sede’s voice in my head. She’s yelling now. But I can’t report Maria. Not yet. Not when she knows how to make those magical markings. Not when she sounds like Mother.  

“Don’t worry about Ada,” I tell Maria. “She’s five, but she won’t give you away. Hasn’t spoken since Mother got infected.”

(continued on page 2)

Middle Georgia—Summer 1974

He had forgotten how long he had been traveling—or how far. It had all seemed a lot clearer back then when he first decided to come to see her, again. All that was involved was flying into Atlanta and then taking the bus down to Flat Rock—just a few hours at most. But somehow, somewhere along the line, everything changed. Maybe it changed after he heard her voice; as if everything up until that time had been little more than a lark, an escape—not from boredom, but from the burden of routine repetition—or maybe it was just because of simple curiosity. He wondered if hearing her, again, had changed his lark into an obsession, a compulsion, a now complex curiosity, a drive that quickly reminded him of his old drive for her—their drive for each other. It had been a drive that had constantly strained and labored at its moorings until they broke free of the inhibitions that precluded any manner or form of expression. The rekindling of a drive so powerful that he found all of his thoughts and energies concentrated only on her. It was a concentration so great and overwhelming that everything was excluded, especially his sense of time.

He had also lost track of both the calendar day and the day of the week, being only able to distinguish parts of the day—early morning, afternoon, early evening, late night—but not specific times during the day. His sense of direction, time and destination had become prioritized on one focal point—her. The flight to Atlanta was less than a vague memory; it had occurred somewhere in the past, and that past was quickly becoming immaterial, inconsequential. At no other time in his life had any moment or moments seemed so important, so crucial, so central a vehicle to his future. But it was not a future as most are used to understanding the word, future.

His future had almost nothing to do with that nebulous expanse of existence encompassing everything from the next moment to the end of life—and often beyond even that. No, his future was different, and maybe because it was so different so was the intensity of his present. For his future was limited, though not by the ultimate claim of death, but by a convention of their own, agreed to on the telephone, and in essence being that his or her—or their—time together should be limited to just a few hours. It was in this way they could consider themselves safe; both able to endure the onslaughts of memories and old passions, and yet, still, be able to be honest and realistic about themselves, each other, whether together or apart. He agreed, reluctantly, to all of this, sensing that he really had no choice; knowing that she had always dictated time in their lives and that this time was to be no different. Throughout their conversation he felt the conflict between his heart and his mind; his heart shouting, “…but I love you…” while his mind was saying, “…I know you’re right.” He knew that he wanted to tell her that a few hours just wouldn’t do, that you just can’t put a time limit on something like this after all these years. Yet now, he even found his heart divided; one part trying to convince him to say, “…no, it isn’t fair…” while the other part was entreating him to take what he could and be happy for it.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he found himself saying to her, agreeing to what she said and in whatever way she said it. Her voice, her tone was neither melodic nor entrancing, but somehow, she had gotten him to agree with her—with her wants and needs. It was almost as if nothing had changed. He remembered time after countless time, over the years that they were together, that he found himself agreeing and giving in to her pleading, loving, teasing, angry and non-commonsensical wishes and desires.

At first, after he realized his inability to demand—or maybe just a greater ability in her to counter-demand—he questioned the relationship, particularly his role in it. He wondered why he was always so malleable, why did he always give in to her and for what reasons?  Was it because he was using her? Was he allowing her to control him for some self-effacing reason, or was he allowing her to control and dictate to him so that she might fulfill within herself some need for power and authority? Or, more simply, were his reasons self-serving, was he just trying to placate and appease her so that he might be able to keep her?

It bothered him for quite some time, her power over him, and not only did he not understand it, but the harder he tried, the more confusing it became. Once, back then, he had even come close to calling off the entire short-lived relationship when he realized that maybe there wasn’t anything to understand at all, that possibly neither one of them had anything wrong with them. That maybe he had spent too much time and effort trying to understand a process that could probably best and most easily be described as their particular give-and-take, their ease. And so, without any further time spent trying to understand what was going on between them, he had found himself a reason for forgetting it—he was comfortable—and that was that, at least for then.

(continued on page 2)

“Where do you go?”

The question echoes in my mind as if sounding through a cavern. It’s annoying as an alarm clock. If I could only swat a snooze button and silence the interruption.

“Dear,” my wife says with fading patience, “the Millers drove all this way to meet us, and you’re ignoring them.”

I snap out of it and recognize Bailey’s Tabard Inn, the restaurant that my wife, Barbara, and I frequent. At the table sits another couple, Alison and Geoffrey Miller. I work with Geoff at the university. In fact, we share an office because we’re literature professors. He specializes in Medieval writers such as Chaucer while I favor Romantic Age poets from Wordsworth to Keats.

Geoff Miller grins and says, “I’m used to James’s drifting off.”

Geoff brushes unpleasantness aside with grace because he is an amiable person, someone wo accepts the grand parade of life, and I appreciate how he tries to lighten a situation that currently and chronically upsets my wife.

“I’ve seen him with a stack of students’ papers,” Miller says with a smile, “and James will just sit with his chin in his hand, gazing out the window. I have to call him two or three times before he acknowledges me.” I wince while the three of them laugh.

Soon, a young, pretty waitress stops by to take our drink and food orders.

“James, let’s try the amber ale,” Geoff says. “I heard that it’s locally brewed.”

“Sounds good.”

“I’ll have a white zinfandel,” Barbara tells the waitress.

Alison says, “Make mine a merlot.”

Ah, for a beaker full of the warm south that I might drink and quite forget. The waitress flashes a dazzling smile before trotting off. Barbara and Alison eye each other after measuring the young girl. Discreetly, Alison adjusts the cleavage dip of her dress.

To be sure, Geoff and his wife Alison, even in middle age, are an attractive couple. My colleague’s salt and pepper hair creates an aura of imminence, and Geoff keeps physically fit with his daily walking excursions and his weekly pilgrimage to the university’s gym. He favors oxford shirts, wool vests, and tweed jackets. To his left is Alison, who has remarkably maintained her attractive charms. There’s always been something downright sensual about Alison, with her full red lips and hooded blue eyes. Yet, she carries herself like a simple farm girl. A blonde, buxom, mischievous beauty. Tonight she has packed herself nicely into a black, sleeveless, low-cut dress.

Barbara, my wife, was never a glamor girl; however, she was always appealing. How to describe her physically? Competent. Yes, I suppose that’s the bet word because it fits her looks and her nature. I, of course, was never and am not now a prize attraction. Short, balding, and waist-expanding—plain James. I’m lucky to have Barbara, even when she asks, Where do you go? A good question. I understand her concern. Dreamy behavior is either eccentric or rude. I’m no near wealthy enough to be eccentric. Barbara wants me to be “fully present” at all times, but I don’t see why. I manage things around the house. In the parental past I attended our children’s activities—well, most of them. I have always earned a steady salary. I admit, though, I am never fully present. Can you imagine how painful that would be—to be completely aware of every mundane moment? And what, for example, are the three of them talking about now? The weather!

“I like when the temperature drops,” Geoff says. “I’m so tired of hot summer days.”

Alison says, “It’s nice to have a nip in the air. And for whatever reason, I like the feel of fresh-milled flour and the smell of baking things when the temperature turns.”

“For me, I’ll take summer all year.” Barbara makes a prickly face. “I hate heavy snows and wild winds.”

(continued on page 2)