The Giveaway Look

By Tom Neely

In the late 1950s, a horse-savvy southern high schooler gets the job of his dreams–teaching a society girl the latest technique in riding. He lives in her family’s Charleston mansion and enters into a glittery world that would define his future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Neely
• Release date: Apr 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781942150022

Tom Neely

Tom Neely is the author of nine books including five novels. He grew up on his family’s farm in Piedmont Carolinas. After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Tom served with the Army in Thailand and Vietnam. He was a diplomat in Latin America and Washington for the Department of State. Tom has worked in management consulting, publishing and business analysis in New York and New England. He owns and manages a small investment business as well as breeds and trains Trakehner eventing horses in the Berkshires.

Book preview

The Giveaway Look

Thomas Neely

Opening novel of the four part series Quadrille

Copyright 2011 Thomas W. Neely, Jr.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Summerlea Publishing

PO Box 1398

Northampton, MA 01061

http://www.summerlea-publishing.com

Manuscript Editor: Ted Gilley

Book Design: Zane Lumelsky

Cover Design: Margo Neely

Distributed by Smashwords

ISBN 978-1-942150-02-2

First Edition

For Elaine, Matt, and Bree.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

About the Author

Discover Other Books by Tom Neely

Sample Next Book Sequelae

Chapter One

"We were rice planters," Willie said.

Sitting on the dock I saw everything I wanted. The salt water glistening under the sun. A girl alongside, distracted, unfocused, tired. I heard a seabird. I could just hear surf, or I thought I could. I needed to for it to be perfect. Honeysuckle? Mimosa? Something that was easy to breathe in.

What time did you stop painting? I asked.

Last night? she asked.

When else?

I thought you meant maybe when I was young. You know, in Tunbridge Wells. Last night it was when your program went off. Two? Two-thirty? she said.

Anyway, you smell great, I said.

You smell wonderfully of cigarettes, she said.

Willie stood up, took off her shirt, and dived in. I waited a minute or two and jumped in beside her. As we floated my body relaxed. But my mind, my very self, whoever I was, did not relax. Instead I, as always with her, was on. The sun was still high when we climbed back onto the pier.

I’m packed. You want to rinse off? Remind me to lock the gate. The key, right?

Yeah. What did you mean? Rice planters, I asked.

Here. This island. That’s what we did, she said.

When?

The family would spend time in Charleston. More and more I guess. That’s when my great-grandfather got all involved with financing. Some indigo and cotton, mostly rice. About 1850. Our main house here burned. We had left. It had been a long, golden afternoon, everyone always said, she said.

What about this place? Where’d your people get it? I asked.

She put the gaslights out. Shade trees darkened the porches and the sitting room.

Daddy designed it when he married Mother. She was his second. He wanted something here. But different. We’ve still got a thousand or two acres just doing nothing. Ready now? she asked.

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Something in my thoughts was trying to seize attention. Most anything about Willie was, and had been, difficult to explain. Yet could anyone be more traditional? Nothing expected seemed to happen, it was true. What did happen had often shocked me; but the outcome opened me, knocked down defenses that appeared to be unfounded, even unfathomable after the fact.

Her superiority—might as well say it—owed something to her being twenty and her beau only seventeen. Yet I could manipulate her handily, at least when she wasn’t manipulating me. Looking back, I saw my anger at the distance between us brought out and I nourished an effort to lessen her. Bring her down to my level, as my father would have put it. It was shameful, true, but didn’t the ultimate risk lie in warping my recognition of who she really was?

Would you stop on 17 somewhere? she asked.

We’ll be about halfway to your house. Do you never drive? I asked.

What kind of place do you mean? A ladies’ loo? she asked.

A cinder block beer joint. Do you? I asked.

Do I have a license, no.

I saw you move a truck on Eula’s farm, I said.

She put her feet on the dashboard and closed her eyes. Sweetie? She rested her hand over mine. Did you take the twelve-gauge out to the car?

I reckon so. I took the case. It was still in the case, wasn’t it? I asked.

Sure should be, she said.

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I’m going to park under that tree by the fireworks shack. More shade, I said.

You actually know this whatever-it-is? she asked.

I’ve been here, I said.

Do I tell you enough? You thrill me. Really.

I made Willie aware, before we opened the screen door, of this juke joint’s appeal. It was the light, mainly. The old Wurlitzer, the new neon beer signs, the bug-repellent bulbs, a purplish looking fluorescent fixture above the bar. This time—daytime—sunlight like thin rods entered through slits in the blinds. Eight or ten people sat or stood around a few tables. It was dim, it was smoky, and just like I recalled it, the overall effect was green

Two Falstaffs, please, I said.

You old enough to drink, little girl? the man asked.

Plenty. This wasn’t the last time she’d be asked. Willie didn’t reach for her ID.

Just checking for my own self. Highway patrol know better than pull in here, he said.

Willie sat down, drank a little, then openly looked at the other tables one at a time.

Did you have to, uh, use the john? I asked.

You know, southern men are so beautiful. I was just talking about that with Mabel. Every time we come home our first thought is, why did we ever leave, she said.

I’m not the big expert, but those two guys over there? What we call cats. It’s a nickname, not an animal. Kind of better dressed, but still and dangerous even if they’re friendly. Place like this, they probably carry knives, even guns. But sharp, I said.

Willie took this in, while seeming to look away. It was only a moment before she spoke.

You know why they’re so still? They don’t move almost at all? So they won’t break a sweat. They may not be conscious they’re doing it. Motionless. Another thing. They don’t blink very often. That’s unnerving. You feel threatened even if you don’t know why, she said.

How do you know this? I’ve never heard this stuff. Is it an artist thing?

Yeah. No. Find out where’s the ladies’, she said.

Falstaff and a pack of Camels, I said. You have a restroom?

Outside and around that side. It ain’t locked.

Willie said she would wait until we were leaving. I was relieved not to have her that far out of sight. She was tough and brave. And confident. But I could see, even knowing her only a short while, that she wasn’t very explosive. Not the way you’d need to be to throw off a drunken goon.

Can I have a gasper, please? she asked.

You smoke?

Every month or two, maybe. That not-blinking act. Tough kids practice it in London. The artist thing is to see beauty. Or to see something and think it’s beautiful. Get me another beer. God, they’re icy. At least that’s how art used to be. Always will be to most. For the people who count—there’s just a few—everything has changed. I’ve had to change. It’s the reason I left New York, she said.

She went over to the jukebox. Against the light her dress was transparent. A man stood beside her and punched in Crazy Arms. One couple started dancing, barely touching, his hand holding hers well above the waist. Nothing moved above the waist. Walking toward me was the juke box guy’s woman.

Stand up and dance, handsome, she said.

Hey. Thanks. But they can’t teach me all this. People have tried. I’m real sorry. I laughed at myself.

Willie interrupted.

How about teaching me? Please. Please, she said.

Dropping her smoke on the cement floor, the woman looked at Willie while twisting her foot.

Hell… He’s nice but you’re prettier, she said.

They danced very close, even in the heat. By the time Crazy Arms wound down Willie was almost leading the woman. A song I didn’t know played and then Willie returned to the bar. The man leaned back and smiled at me. He wore dark jeans with no belt oops and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves. Willie looked at him but didn’t smile. I lowered my eyes. Paratrooper? He was wearing jump boots.

Let’s split this scene, daddy, but play that song again so I can remember it. She touched her cheek with the empty bottle.

I stood not far from the restroom door until Willie came out.

I don’t recognize many hillbilly songs but that one grabbed me. You too? I asked.

Yeah. Taunting schmaltz. It just dares you to resist. Like the woman. She hadn’t had a bath, she said.

Jesus, I said.

Look, it’s nothing bad, it’s just another way to do it, she said.

My stomach fell in. What if Willie was queer? Tears came to my eyes, but behind my sunglasses. That bad feeling always eventually went away. It became part of my education.

She curled up in her seat and put her head on my leg.

Wake me before we get there. Can you turn the radio down? Wait, who’s that? she asked.

Kay Starr, I said.

I thought you didn’t listen to white music, she said.

She’s a jazz singer. Part Indian, anyway. Besides, I like your sister’s voice, I said.

Keep yer mitts off me sis, buster… ‘Hymne a L’amour,’ she said

–––––––––––––––

I’m getting off 17, sweetheart, I said.

OK. This time pull up by the gate and we’ll fling everything inside. I’ve got the front door keys, she said.

Your dad doesn’t drive either, I said.

He walks to his office. They have a driver, you know, to fetch old customers for meetings and to take forms for signing. To pick up certificates, take Daddy around to meetings. He’s kind of busy, the driver.

But they don’t use him for weekends? I mean, who drives the Packard?

Is this a survey for the Automotive Ministry? May I just introduce you to the novel notion that not everyone even thinks about cars at all? Or television? Or going to college? We’re not like other people. And if you ever think about comparing me to someone, I’m not promising to rethink our relationship, but I will be furious! she said.

Sor-ree! I said.

You’re curious about my family. That’s good in a way. But I think I’m getting a migraine. Where’s the headache medicine? she asked.

Glove compartment. I said.

–––––––––––––––

Doesn’t that hurt? was to me a familiar question. Until first grade any friends I had were black tenants’ children on our farms. They set a pattern in taking it like a man, taking one for the team, never showing weakness. Fear was something else. Your face could betray you. You had to learn to ignore fear, unless fear was the rare better course. Another plank in my rough-hewn persona was fear of being a sissy, or being thought a sissy, as a result of my endless reading. Added to that was the discovery that you couldn’t really lose a fight you were willing to enter. Flat on your back, you saw yourself some kind of victor just for taking part. People usually would not challenge anyone they’d seen in a fight. The blows really didn’t hurt either, except for your own bruised hands afterward. Was mind over matter the key to any universe? An adolescent, I learned about aboriginal initiations one could never imagine. Plains Indians. Inuit, Africans, Arabs, and others. If they could turn off and withstand pain, couldn’t I make the effort?

Oddly, my best tutor was Rebecca Reddick, the wife of a sharecropper who used the off-season to work in town. Whether she was attractive didn’t register. Interracial romance to me at that time was on a par, morally, with incest. Unthinkable in adolescence. Rebecca taught me marksmanship, fire building, mule handling, dog training, and a number of painful juvenile arts. One word to describe her, though, was hyperesthetic. Algesic still another. Everything she did hurt her. Physically. Carrying a one- or two-gallon bucket from the well cut into her fingers enough to bring winces, whinges, and gasps. It was her telling of enduring childbirth at home, virtually alone, that sealed the deal. I would deny pain. It worked, eventually leading me via the whirligig of chance to Willie LeCompte.

–––––––––––––––

Late in the ninth grade my best friend, Frell Blackwelder, and I walked across the basketball court in loafers. Our odd phys ed teacher and coach shrieked, Get those shoes off the court! I remarked goddamned son of a bitch or something like that. Frell cursed in stronger terms. We had not meant to be heard, but a bystanding staffer turned us in. The choices were expulsion or paddling by the lamentably fit phys ed fellow. I had no choice. Frell’s brother, though, headed a school near the South Carolina coast, not far north of Georgia. It was Frell’s dream to escape his parents. Being a minister’s boy hadn’t slowed him down. But his going to high school near the beach meant good-bye Frell. My paddling took place with me over a table and the door locked. The big board hurt a lot, but I managed a detached view. Dry-eyed, I was acting in a movie. Probably Blackboard Jungle.

–––––––––––––––

The year that followed began a new phase. My father had bought me a very nice car for my sixteenth birthday. Older girls would at least give me a tryout. Besides tending our horses, I had worked serious hours as factotum for a traffic survey company. All-night supermarkets were always hiring and firing if you needed something short term. Work was more in the foreground than school. Not once in three years did I take a book home.

Two grades after saying See you soon, Frell and I set it up for me to drive down and meet his great love. Only as an afterthought did she also invite this superfine but kinda different girl to go on a double date.

We crossed the one-lane island bridge to reach my date’s place. It lay beyond a long weedy driveway with a gate that locked. I’d never seen anything, even in pictures, that caught the dream tree-house effect of the dwelling, though it was sitting solidly enough on the ground. The girl was graceful and seemed delicate, but also strong and lithe. After looking each other over, we smiled. I was impressed. She, at least, wasn’t depressed.

May I ask what’s that perfume?

Caprifoglio, she said.

Fascinating but familiar. I didn’t talk this way. Already I was on.

It means honeysuckle and I think that’s its whole scent. Not a blend, she said.

At the crowded waterside seafood shed where we ate, Willie asked for her fish to be broiled.

Ma’am, all we do’s fry, the waitress said.

May I see the chef, please? Willie asked.

Pat, Frell’s girl, looked at her with an expression that was hard to read.

Ma’am, he’s real busy. We have a manager, the waitress said.

Tell him what I want and to come over if they’re not going to do it. I was ravished by her smile. So was the waitress. Would it be all right if I sautéed a serving for you with lemon and butter? she asked.

Only if you will then come away with me and be my love, Willie said.

The waitress’s weary features turned pretty in a way I wouldn’t have thought could happen. My way of presenting myself made a hairpin turn that night. I took on Willie’s mien and assumption of prerogative. Not all the time, dear God, not even that often. It’s just that thereafter my broad smile and insistent delivery, though usually dozing, were poised to be unholstered at need.

Later at the beach Pat and Frell spread a blanket behind the dunes. Willie and I stayed in the car.

Pat mentioned you in the post office. Only reason I took the bait was your alleged equine expertise, she said.

I hate that word. Expertise. I pronounced it Yankee style. She giggled, drew her feet up and faced me.

So we have two things to share, she said.

Horses and being picky about words? Bet there’s a good bit more. My nerve again surprised me.

Who are you, anyway? I asked. In my mind I had taken control. In my mind.

I’m getting a horse I haven’t seen. From Virginia. Passaggio looked good in his eight-millimeter. My father’s friend found him for us, Willie said.

That’s probably a bad start. But I should be more polite, I said.

She was quiet. I lit a cigarette for the mosquitoes.

Stop me if you know all this, Willie. When someone sells a horse, that’s all there is. Who your father is, no matter. The drugs. The bad treatment. Horses remember it all. He won’t load? There’s a reason. And there’s no history in the sale. It’s just what’s said at the time. Just some story, I said.

Sounds like leading astray. I’m not shocked. They all say that you have to see the horse. Or a vet does, she said.

Is it a gaited horse? Gelding? I’ll take a look at him when you want. I do have a way, I said.

No—I mean yes. No and yes. He’s not gaited, he’s a thoroughbred. That would be great. The idea is hunter. Or do you think I’m more the equitation type? she asked.

You act like a pureblood. Thoroughbreds are fragile as hell. Temperamental. Single purpose. That’s what we own. Even some of ours won’t ever be ridden again. I mean ridden, you know. They all come off of tracks. Or probably worse, camps, I said.

I have heard all this. I didn’t absorb it. What’s your raising?

There’s a lot of stories. From Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on my father’s side since the 1730s in the same spot. That’s mules. We had twenty-six hundred acres, a land grant, now down to a few hundred. The shell plant confiscated five hundred acres during World War II. We sow cash crops and do dairy now. All registered Guernseys. We couldn’t afford the auction price when Uncle Sam unloaded it, the five hundred. My mother’s the horses. Her grandfather was a Confederate scout in California. Jesse James and he were friends until Jesse died. My great-grandfather and his helper went to Mississippi, rode into town, stuck up a bank and went back to North Carolina on the train. First to use that technique. After that war. Anyway, he had his stake. By the time my mother was a young girl, the family ran five plantations—not Gone With the Wind type—and a livery stable. Biggest taxpayer in Union County. I talk too much, don’t I? Why would anyone except Millwee family historians give a flying— I stopped talking.

You can say ‘fuck’ around me. You can smoke reefer around me. Got any?

Sad to say, no. It’s not that readily available, I said.

Later this month my sister’s friend’s bringing us some ‘Chicago Green.’ I’ll cut you in if we’re still… My mind’s in premature overdrive. There are possibilities if you’re with me, she said.

Lead on, MacDuff!

Lay on, she said.

Picky. Like I said. Anyway, to finish this up, my grandfather, Mom’s father, not my great-grandfather, went to Nebraska every year and brought home a trainload of horses. His three big sons would break them. One of those guys is a doctor in Montana. Another ranches in Ocala. Breaking them is more brutal than you think. Listening to the stories, I knew inside it was wrong. You may not like this idea but it reminds me of the way we treat colored people. Everyone knows it’s wrong, I said.

Wonderful, she said.

–––––––––––––––

Is that your bell ringing, your church? I asked.

Finish your tea and take a shower. My migraine’s gone. Answered prayers, she said.

We’re how far? Walking, right? I asked.

St. Philip’s is always a nice walk. The bell is St. Michael’s. You said you did bring a suit? It’s going to warm up. Feel?

See you in the garden. Pink shirt OK? I asked.

White’s better. Got one? Do you always go to church? We never miss a Sunday.

We’re Presbyterian. Our church in Mecklenburg started two hundred years ago, I said.

General Willie, my namesake, was a Presbyterian. Land grant, also from Lancaster, she said.

What about your mother? I asked.

Very Episcopalian now. Very St. Philip’s. You know it has burned down a number of times. It’s old too. Daddy’s family was Huguenot back in Maryland but some of his family went south of here, fought in Indian wars, married Anglicans as a rule. Our house on this street was topped off in 1785, way later than the first St. Philip’s. Enough lessons. I mean I hate the sound of my tour-guide voice, she said.

I love walking by these old houses with the beautiful flowers. Hidden gardens. I love irises. Pansies are gone, I expect.

It’s good you value flowers. Men too often take them for granted. Redbud, dogwood, wisteria—when they peak, man! Listen. Something else. Let me steer the talk when people pry about you, she said.

Dishonesty alert. I rely on dishonesty. Did I tell you I’m a thief? You’ve caught me in lies already, I said.

You’re a fornicator for sure. Evidence turned up everywhere. But this is for the retention of what I nostalgically call my reputation, she said.

Aren’t Episcopalians the same as, what did you say, Anglicans? Please clear this up, but don’t Episcopalians sort of soar above the clouds as far as how they act and everything? Lots of homos, inbreeding and stuff, all the time looking down their nose at the squares? I asked.

Yikes. That’s more of a Brit overgeneralization, doncha think? I mean schools have mandatory chapels and everything, but UK people couldn’t care less about religion. You know why the Church of England frowns on group sex? Too many thank-you notes.

Har de har har, I said.

There’s more. When kids in school bring samples of religious symbols, Mary brings a crucifix, Abe brings a Star of David, John brings a casserole. Get it? John’s not the ‘protestant,’ John’s the Episcopalian."

But you’re fretting about your reputation? I asked.

Look, my faith is the central part of my life. I pray constantly. Recently for you. I’m fine. My mother, though, and who knows who else close to me, will feel shame if I flout their morals. No matter how freshly acquired, by the way. No matter how chockablock Charleston may be with pervs and percies. Inverts. In Ojai or New York I revel in acting louche. Anything and everything. It’s not even an act. And even if people here don’t care, they know. That’s not so everywhere. Oh. Up there. See the summer hats and dresses? We’re here, she said.

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Taking in my first church service for at least a couple of years was going to be hard. More immediately jarring was Willie’s sketch of herself as devoutly religious. She worshipped in a setting decorous to the utmost. It was not full of doubt. What it was seemed elegant and reassuring. Not the usual Come home but instead Welcome home. Following the service, knots of female parishioners formed around Willie. Stumbling, I blunted my language skills on more than one puncture-proof matron. It was of course only the first scene in the first act. Should this play be extended, I would get better. On the whole, however, I spilled no blood and no secrets. Recently the latter had become my métier: discretion held a whip hand over my skill in repartee.

You done good, chile. A block away from St. Philip’s Willie took my arm.

Know what Father Quigley’s wife whispered when you turned away? In the vestibule? she asked.

No. What?

She said, ‘Crack on.’

–––––––––––––––

The help take quiet Sundays off, I did tell you, didn’t I? Ella and Watson? Please say I did! No lunch, no dinner either. I could treat you to the Francis Marion or somewhere. We’re dressed up and all, she said.

Sounds somber, I said.

It’s not, silly. You can trust me. Any ideas yourself?

I try to be sharp and—what’s that French word? And then I don’t say anything about how beautiful you look. My eyes averted as if on their own.

Suave? Soigné? She was trying to help but also trying not to grin.

I guess. There’s a quart of Mom’s tomato juice in the guesthouse fridge, I said. How about we strip, make Bloody Marys, you fix a cheese omelet. Orangeburg bread. Peach jam. Coffee, not tea.

Will you promise to play horizontal if I play vertical? she asked.

Do you always remember to put Waif out even if she doesn’t bark? I asked.

Why?

She was watching me get dressed.

–––––––––––––––

Mother and Daddy won’t be home before dusk, Willie said.

How do you know? They didn’t say, I thought, I said.

It’s assumed. The Guignards’ new boat—new to them, at least—is big, over forty feet. Galley seats six. They mentioned two nice big berths. I of course have never seen it. They never invite me. Because of a crush their son humiliated himself with. On me, she said.

He loved you? I can sure see that, I said.

I was fifteen. He cut in at a Citadel dance. I was with a freshman. Gin on his breath. Tried to tongue me. Very bad form. Said he had to tell me something, the most important thing in his life, she said.

Is he, you know, kind of a rival of mine? I asked.

No no, he’s twenty-six, stationed in Formosa or someplace out there. Attaché. I don’t think he’s home. But I barely landed here myself, she said.

So go on. Two Bloody Marys and I could get in the act-like-an-ass competition too.

That’s it, except when he pledged he had loved me since he was ten, another cadet tried to cool him off. Fritz—Fritz Guignard—threw a punch. He had been stammering, tearing up. So frustrated, she said.

Argh, I said.

They were expelling him. To save Fritz, his friends lied—code of conduct, yes?—and said I was teasing, the other guy was jealous. It appears Fritz gave his parents that story. I’ve been P-N-G at the house ever since. He wouldn’t have graduated. But you always have an excuse for sorry behavior, right? she asked.

That’s what my dad says about Yankees. Draft dodging, cheating at business, even sports, won’t do what has to be done. He can go on. Do you think he’s got something? I don’t care. That’s where I’m going to live if I’m not overseas. In the North, I mean, I said.

Hmm. I’m not sure I see that. Two years in New York, I’ve witnessed some sleazy behavior. But it’s the one place. Now I’m going to tell you a small part of a big secret.

First come over here and be my love, I said.

–––––––––––––––

Why don’t we put something on and take this pitcher out to the garden? It’s cool there, it’s very private for talking. When are you going to come down again? she asked.

You mean here? I’d like to be here when Passaggio is unloaded. If we can work out the timing. It’s pretty important, I said.

Noted. So did the Fritz story make you hot? You seemed to be, I don’t know, electrified. And on extended play, she said.

"I’ve had some experience…

I’ll just bet you have, she said, managing to convey the opposite.

But that was a first, I said.

I have another secret, which I will fully divulge. But I can’t say strongly enough that you should not repeat things that are between us. Not to anyone except a headshrinker or a religious counselor or someone like that. I’m falling for you, you know, she said.

Thank you, Lord Jesus! I said this, but I’m not a hundred percent sure that I said it aloud.

Have you read the French novelists? The writers on love, she said.

Let’s see. Romain Gary, Marquis de Sade, Francoise Sagan, Anaïs Nin. Flaubert, at least Madame Bovary. Camus.

No Colette? she asked.

I will, I said.

Well, this is the secret. I was weak-kneed after Fritz’s, what would you call it, performance? All the stuff that happened. My pulse felt like a hundred, two hundred maybe. I went to bed. I felt down there. I flew into pieces. Nothing like that ever before or since. I now think it wasn’t, you know, the usual climax. The other kind. Why do I confide in you? According to things I read in French, women respond deeply when men shame themselves. Now I’m an expert witness. Friends claim not to know about any of this, she said.

Boy, I never would have believed that. Until now, I said.

When I found out he lied about me, I dried up. Maybe it’s not just a metaphor in this case. He’s dead to me, as they say, she said.

See, my dad would assume a Yankee girl would warm up to Fritz for being clever. Maybe there’s a grain of truth, but how could Dad actually know that? Intuition? I asked.

It’s way too simple. I don’t buy that whole outlook.

Well, humor me, I said.

How old’s your dad, anyway? she asked.

Fifty? Late forties. Yours is fifty-two.

See the angle? That way of looking at the country is history. The North is full of Germans, Puerto Ricans, English… It’s getting not even to be the North anymore. My girlfriend was Hungarian, for Christ’s sake. And LA! I need another drink, she said.

Finish mine, I said.

Where was I? Oh yeah, LA. It feels jammed with Chinese, Mexicans, plus Japanese. If you’ve heard about it, it’s there, she said.

When were you there?

When I graduated. Two years ago. From Ojai Valley.

How did you end up out there?

How did I end up out there? Let’s see, she said. It’s too long a tale to start this afternoon.

You keep me dangling like a kid. ‘A little part of a big secret.’ ‘Too long a tale,’ I said.

Don’t you see what I’m doing? It really is a folk tale here. To learn more, you must return to me. I am your Scheherazade, she said.

Time for you and time for me? I said.

Her face seemed to freeze but, if I could believe this, not in a cold way.

–––––––––––––––

You driving straight through? asked Willie.

I looked forward to the fields—peanuts, watermelon, cotton, corn, wheat, soybeans, whatever was coming up. The distinctive smells of pesticides, especially DDT. Fertilizer.

Planning to stop in Cayce. The barbecue’s a little strange but tastes better. Why? I asked.

We were, well, up so late. I want to start preliminary things, get my work moving along more than what I showed you down at the island house. Today’s for work, she said.

It’s hard to leave the pergola. Just enough light, green stuff, white columns to suggest heaven. Can you smell salt water? I asked.

Sometimes. Not now. But how about that coffee? she asked.

I tried a cup.

Whew! What is it?

Chicory. Ella’s first family, she was sixteen or seventeen, were from Louisiana. She’d drink nothing but, she said.

Wish you trusted me moreI’m glad you can tell me things, I said.

You’re not convinced after last night? Ella, is there more coffee? The dark night of the soul, revelation-wise, I should say, she said.

Was it safe around the Battery that late? I had an iffy dream, I said.

Nobody’s trolling for pogy bait that late Sunday night. Anyway, don’t my feelings for you register at all? Myself, I’m smitten,You should be convined after last night." she said.

The things you say make me so happy. OK, let me motorbeat over the hill. Pray for me, I said.

Give me your hand. Dear God, thank you thank you thank you for Jasper Millwee. Please help me to be better, do better somehow, to deserve part of the wonderful life you have given me. Please protect the J-man on his trip home. Please help make sure he’s in your kingdom so we can spend eternity together.

I’m choked up, Willie.You restoreth my faith.

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I liked driving long distances. The crops and fields, pastures, were just a part of it. My friends and I had mastered several tricks and maneuvers such as heel-and-toe downshifting and double-clutching, or drifting, sliding, avoiding skids, that sort of thing. I had picked up most of them either from reading or hanging around quarter-mile tracks and garages. My pace was very quick but grounded in safe practices.

Inside my trunk were sixty cartons of stolen Pall Malls for resale. I didn’t believe in the kind of fate that early last evening had me asking my beloved about religion.

What exactly about it. Is it for you, is that what you want to know? she asked.

I guess I want to understand. So I cannot just worship you.

That’s nice. Sacrilege. But loving, she said.

She seemed to be debating. She bit her lower lip.

You know your friends, the ones who don’t believe? They probably think you respect them, maybe wish you didn’t need a crutch. In their ignoramus way, and no matter that they’re Oxford professors, they are still ignoramuses. Perhaps the guiltless and most childlike are moral ignoramuses. But what do you really think? You feel sorry for them, that’s what. Because you know they have nothing, know nothing. Oxford’s a great illustration. Did you realize that the Oxford Union rejected opposing Hitler in the thirties? That ninety percent or more of the academic and political elite in England that just wanted to cut a deal before the war started. The clearest and most unmistakably morally hideous event in history, I think. Hitler I mean, not the English. And those creeps knew nothing. And know nothing today. They think the fucking USSR is just ducky, she said.

Can I ask something?

You want me to turn down my blowtorch, don’t you? Your eyebrows will grow back in time.

Oh, that’s good. Isn’t what you’re describing political, not precisely religious?

You are correct, there in the front row. I never draw enough lines. But the cosmic canopy is shared by the irreligious dopes and the political dopes.

Cosmic canopy? I didn’t want to contend with Willie. I just wanted to survive the early qualifying rounds and earn a seat in her presence. Thus, as always, I was acting. Aping philosophical seriousness to ingratiate myself. But she would have made a hell of a recruiting officer for the Crusades. She started up again. Break was over.

People who don’t believe in God or try to follow him live a certain way. Sad to say, most people I like live this way. They’re shallow. A priori. They’re rootless. QED. Secular. By definition. Their lives and the lives of their children under them lack all value. Despite this great world God gave us they choose to live in a void. May God have mercy on their souls, Willie prayed.

She wasn’t mad at me. At something, I thought. Maybe this was passion.

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So do we know these people? Charlotte and Jimmy went to the College of Charleston. Jim Knox enrolled in The Citadel. When they found out how smart he was they sent him to West Point. Cousin Malcolm told Dad that Jim teaches math up there, she said.

Shouldn’t we sit on the porch so I can pat Funny? He looks reproachful, I said.

I’m glad I brought you up to be so observant, Mom said.

Can it, would you? I don’t think any of them would know any of us, Mom. He, the father, down there at least, turns out be kind of a big deal in how he’s lived. Right now his company sign says LeCompte Trust, Investment Counsel. Willie—like the general, you know—says it’s a family shop. Doing money things more for a family than mere individuals. They planted rice and then took up commodities, futures. Like selling the risks from the planters to investors. That’s what she said. But he’s also written several books. They’ve lived abroad. Willie’s sister tries to keep up some kind of a singer or bandleader gig thing, Willie says. She, Mabel, is married. Kids. She does travel. Louisiana. Mississippi, especially Mississippi, learning what’s new, what new things are coming out. The blues. Also older stuff, colored music, hillbilly. Songwriting. You know Elvis Presley, don’t you? Elvis could have done that. Hey, Dad, I said.

Hey, boy. Good to see you.

What’s new? I asked.

What’s new? I mean, well, I could use it if you wanted to disc and drag harrow that big field adjacent to Capps. I mighty nigh fouled up the planting schedule. About the only thing left to sow is beans, he said.

He sat on a high step and drank ice water, protecting the furniture from his overalls.

Luke cut his right hand and he’s too stitched up to help out for a few days. Rain’s expected Friday and Saturday. Too soon to say, of course. Pam doesn’t know how to operate a big tractor. He’s got a bunch of new geese. Durnedest mess I ever saw. If you’re tuckered out, don’t rush this thing," he said.

It had come across as a polite invitation to have some fun in the fields.

No, now’s fine. I’ll keep at it. I like plowing after dark with the lights. Smells different after it cools down. But that’s not news to you.

Things like that make a difference, don’t they? I think one round with the disc, two with a drag. It’s about fifteen acres and I know you’ve raked it a lot. But raking’s fast and disking isn’t. You might presume that I can just know the figures after all these years doing it. But I’m same as anybody else, he said.

Well, Dad, say it’d take a long day to turn ten acres. Counting everything at fifteen acres three times, not turning, the Super M might need three long days. I’ll do seven or eight hours today and this evening. Earliest Willie’s horse should get there anyway is Thursday.

Now that was an unusually good exchange. Too often, as if on schedule, the old man could be judgmental and I contemptuous. Others saw him differently.

The rest of ’em’s over with Ned and his boy. Some fence came down near the pond with a tree on it. They’re trying to combine, dust cotton, want to cut milo, can’t. No baling except get oat straw off the field. Wheat looks good so far. Alfalfa, lespedeza, pretty fair. Corn is high, Dad said.

Good season shaping up, then?

If I live, could be.

The no thanks to you part went unsaid. Dad had granted that there was only one reason to farm. You had to prefer it to easier, more gainful returns on capital and what could be called uncompensated labor. The point was that not many professions offered the same intimacy with nature and livestock. Seeing results of your efforts, breathing the outdoors, stretching muscles, being sole manager of your living.

What I saw, on the other hand, was real risk of fatal accidents, being tied down every day of the week, paperwork piled on itself. Property couldn’t be moved. Much as you may have liked where you were, you were still stuck. Farmers feared that the taxes they paid weren’t being steered toward their own needs. Huge farm bills in Congress spotlighted family farms but benefitted big corporations. Dad knew that the many things that annoyed him were things he should have grown used to by now. If you had a good year, the prices you received had to go down because of that very abundance. Floods followed droughts. Some crops, such as cotton and tobacco, were in demand. That’s when the government would impose tight limits on how on how many acres you could cultivate.

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The soil felt heavy. I needed power on call, and speed. The wide seat seemed to float. Second gear was almost irresistible, but third found the evening’s perfect pitch. It was not unlike Willie’s church: melodic, encouraging. I was content. The sound, the vibration, the hands’ skillful performance of repetitive procedures let the mind free associate. Motorcycles, mowers, chain saws, even driving had this effect too. Even making music. They liberated my mind. I imagined liquid chocolate pouring out of the muffler and streaming past me. My ears, my brain, were amiably assaulted. Farm work, I kept needing to remind myself, mostly meant constant exertion for meager reward. Hearing the message, though, didn’t have to erase every single good thing about the job. Were I to inherit these entrancing acres I would transform the streams, woods, meadows, and fields into yet another Carolina golf course. The land itself and some part of the old place’s essence might survive. My reverie would then be having enough money to restore it all as a farm. Earning was not, in itself, my dream. That belonged to someone else.

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Simmering in my brain pan was the quake from Willie that I had been trying to push aside. Would thinking it through now ravage our infant affair? My first. If then our connection was really destroyed, would anything, any hope, continue? Pain shot through my midsection to my chest.

Don’t get down to their level, my father had always advised. At last I was beginning to see the larger truth. When you react to something downbeat, you let others direct you, determine your actions. My mind was aswirl with anomalous information and anomalous emotions.

The nucleus of Willie’s midnight narrative was her brother. Brother? Perhaps not a brother? I was thrown. Dumbstruck.

You asked about Ojai. He lives there most all the time. He’s quite a guy. Some sand in his foundations, we suss. Good reason, Willie said.

But nobody— I tried to say.

It’s just not a comfy theme around the old family table is all, she said.

We found a bench. Boat lights, warm breeze, empty feeling. I remembered that on a dresser in her bedroom was a photograph of a man in a dinner jacket. I had been far too self-conscious to display curiosity about any details of Willie’s private quarters. Instead I wanted it to seem as if lying on a pretty girl’s bed in a colonial mansion was simply one small piece of the reckless romantic saga we knew as Jasper Millwee’s love life. Another feature of the photo I now recalled was the arresting effect of the man’s appearance: different from handsome, he was the one you’d really want to look like.

That his picture in your bedroom? I asked.

Oui. Not the best likeness in his cups. But cameras love Blaise. He’s indifferent naturally, she said.

So, I mean, why so much mystery? I asked.

It’s all about Dad around here. When Ojai finished at UVA he spent a year at LeCompte. Investing was his gift. Starting young. He’d worked there during summer vacations. People at McCallie and Virginia nagged him about trying writing. He was a person in the center of things. Still is, so he stays kind of hidden now. Got a ciggie? she asked.

That’s two this month, I said.

Are you going to cane me? Just ’cause I’m from England.

Sounds like they were right about trying writing, you know, at college, I said.

They were right, those people. He started at a New York paper. Evening Post? I think. Good timing. It was 1929, she said.

Really? Did he stay?

Allow me to tell this, please. I get emotional, so don’t press me. She finished smoking in silence, smiling over at me and squeezing my hand. But it was as if she were a great distance away. Three thousand miles, to venture a guess. Her shoulders slumped. After a while she spoke again.

Let me see, she said.

Hey, somebody loves you, I said.

She looked at me with a what are you trying to say expression. Later would I know why?

After a while she spoke again.

This is the heart of the whole brother situation. It’s so… vexing.

I would have sworn she wanted to say heartbreaking.

"You see, Dad married a photographer he met at the paper. She was French or French Canadian and Norwegian, I