Into That Good Night

By Ron Rozelle

When his father began to show signs of Alzheimer's disease, Rozelle watched the man's painful transformation into a dependent and ultimately foreign person. In this haunting memoir, Into That Good Night, Rozelle recreates and reclaims the past for his father, offering a son's gift that will echo for a long time to come.

"The author's skillful and compassionate writing brings both the father of his childhood and the man who could not remember the names of his own children to life. Lester died of a stroke in 1992, but this serves, as his son intended, as a moving tribute." - Publishers Weekly

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Dec 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781466895225

Ron Rozelle

Ron Rozelle lives with his wife and three daughters in Lake Jackson, Texas, where he teaches high-school English. He is the author of Into That Good Night.

Book preview

Begin Reading

Table of Contents

Copyright Page

Thank you for buying this

Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

For Lester and Quinda

and Diane and Janie

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And then, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

—Dylan Thomas

one

It is snowing. Huge, light flakes are drifting and swirling, collecting on the ground and the rooftop and filling up the depression between our yard and Highway 79. This is a rare thing in Oakwood, where it snows once every several years, and then it is, more often than not, a wet, slushy business that melts as it hits, accumulating only in the hollows of trees and in icy bar ditches, leaving finally a dirty mixture best left alone.

It is Christmas Eve eve, as my mother calls the day before Christmas Eve, and it has never, in her memory or mine, snowed this early. Usually, the hard freezes and blue northers come in January or February, dull and useless times spent near heaters or fireplaces, wishing for spring. Mother reports that Warren Culberson, the weatherman on Channel 4 out of Dallas, is sure the snow will stay through Christmas Day. She can quote Mr. Culberson word for word, as she can Paul Crume and Frank X. Tolbert, columnists for the Dallas Morning News. The television news and the newspaper are two of my mother’s passions (though not on the level of her novels, of which she reads several a week), and she has heroes among their practitioners.

I am nine or ten. Bundled in heavy clothes, I wonder how all this snow, such big flakes of it, can be falling so silently. I am used to winds pounding through the pecan trees and honeysuckle bushes in our yard, or heavy rains trumpeting on our roof and rushing noisily down past my window to splash into puddles. Weather, to my mind, is a loud thing. And now this snow floats so gracefully down to my tongue and my jacket and all the places that I can see and it is quiet. The only sound is from cars and trucks on the highway.

The hedge between our house and Miss Mae’s is covered over now, a solid white wall broken only by the gap in its middle that Miss Mae has had Brown cut so that we all can go back and forth more easily. Her house, made of rough, cut stones, sits higher up than ours, on a hill, and the garage end faces us. I walk over to the hedge, listening to the slight crunching beneath my shoes, and see Brown puttering around in the garage. He has been the yardman there for as long as I can remember, and he is my friend. Flossie, the cook, serves him his dinner every day at twelve sharp in a tin plate, and he eats it sitting on an upturned bucket. In the summer, when I’m not in school, I sit on the ground beside him and he gives me his fried hot water corn bread (Flossie cooks it every day). I wonder what Brown will find to keep him busy today, with snow covering everything. We don’t have a cook or yardman. Annie Bell comes to help Mother clean our house twice a week, but she never cooks, and her interest in the yard seems limited to the grassless area beneath the fig tree, which she keeps swept clean as a floor.

It is morning, around eight. School is out for the Christmas holidays, and won’t start again until after New Year’s Day. This gives me ample opportunity to visit with Brown since, on school days, he has already left to sweep at the car dealership in town by the time I get home.

I plod through the gap in the hedge, up the hill, and into the large garage before Brown hears me. He is hard of hearing, and has to lean forward and strain to listen when someone addresses him. Anyone, that is, besides Miss Mae and me; we both talk loud.

Brown is sharpening a knife on a whetstone with his back to me; I kick a clay flowerpot just a little to let him know I’m here. He is a nervous man, and it occurs to me that he might stab himself with the knife if I startle him.

Moanin, he says, as he slides the kitchen knife along the worn stone.

Mornin’, I say, plopping myself, in my various coats and sweaters, down on his upturned bucket.

That snow sho is purty, ain’t it? says Brown. I ain’t never see it snow like dis. He pays close attention to his knife sharpening. Sho purty. I was jist thinkin’ about that comin’ from home.

Did you have to walk in the snow? I ask him.

No, suh. Not today. Mr. Robert, he come and get me today in the car. I think Miss Mae, she tell him I can’t walk in the snow. He smiles. I can’t, neither. I be slippin’ down ever step.

We laugh at this. Mr. Robert, he say it snow like dis all the time in the North. Brown speaks of the North as if it is a foreign country, with a border and a gate. I don’t reckon I’d like it all the time. He looks into Miss Mae’s backyard, at the shrubs and bushes covered with white. It sho is purty. He drops a golden bubble of oil on the whetstone and begins sliding another knife along it.

"It don’t snow all the time in the North, I tell him. In the summer, it gets hot like here."

Brown looks at me and nods his head, his one good eye wide; his other eye is gone. He sometimes wears a glass eye in the socket, not today. He seems to enjoy everything I tell him.

What’ll you do today? I ask him.

Gots to finish these here knifes for Flossie fust thing, he says. She like a sharp edge on her kitchen knives. He inspects a knife with his one eye, as if he just reminded himself of this. Then I’ll probly bresh the snow offen the bushes. He gives this some thought. I think he figures that snow can’t be doing them any good.

I don’t know anything about it. But I offer an opinion anyway; Brown will think I know. Snow won’t hurt those bushes. There’s water in snow. This is news to him; I can tell. He squints his eye and considers it before grinning. All new information is received by Brown with a grin. Besides, I say, it’s still snowing. Warren Culberson says it’ll snow all morning, and then it’ll stick till after Christmas.

Brown ponders this. I don’t know whether he is in awe of the fact that it will snow all morning, or if he’s wondering who Warren Culberson is, or if he is deciding what to do instead of removing the snow from the bushes.

He looks, again, at the blanket of white that is covering everything. It sho is purty, he says. His breath becomes a cloud of vapor in the cold air.

I hear our back door open down the hill, and my mother calls me.

I’ll be back later, Brown, I say. Don’t knock the snow off those bushes. I get up off the bucket and walk into the falling snow. Brown comes out into it also. His skin is even blacker and shinier than usual against all this white. Miss Mae probably wants ’em nice and pretty.

Yes, suh, he quickly agrees. I ’spect she does.

Walking back through the gap in the hedge, I am careful not to knock any snow off. Any advice I give to Brown should, I think, be followed by me. He is, after all, the only person I can give advice to.

Once inside the warmth of our utility room, I gradually emerge from the sweaters and coat, leaving them piled on the tile along with my shoes. By my mother’s decree, we always leave our shoes by the door. My sister, Janie, at a stage in life where not much that goes on around here sits too well with her, says we might as well be a bunch of Japanese.

My breakfast is almost ready. Mother is at the stove in one of her orange housedresses, cooking French toast. I spend a good bit of my time watching her cook. When I was little, before I went to school, I shadowed her all day long, not missing much that she did.

Mother subscribes to three book clubs, one of which is the Cookbook Guild. She receives a new cookbook every month and, whatever its subject or length, reads it from cover to cover. From the recipes in these books, she prepares rich, exotic dishes which are pretty much lost on the common tastes of the rest of us.

As the toast, soaked in its egg batter, sizzles in the skillet, I watch my mother take long pulls from her Pall Mall cigarette, one of about forty that she will smoke today. When the color of the bread is to her liking, she lifts it to a plate and sprinkles it with sugar. This she brings to the table with a mug of hot chocolate.

Why does Brown say ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ to me? I ask through a mouthful of French toast.

She is wiping her stove clean with a dishrag. It’s just his way, she says. Brown is very respectful and nice. She takes a sip from a mug of black coffee which is never more than an arm’s length away during the morning hours. He’s one of the most respectful people in creation. She picks a tiny speck of tobacco from her lip. Mostly it’s respect for your daddy. Brown has children in the Dunbar school, and your daddy’s their superintendent too.

Does Brown say ‘sir’ to Negro children?

No, Mother says, I don’t imagine he does. She is now washing her heavy iron skillet in the sink. And he shouldn’t say it to you either. You can’t go around expecting grown people to ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ you. She is looking out the window over the sink; maybe she’s looking at Brown up in Miss Mae’s garage. And, she says, turning to point her Pall Mall at me, I don’t want you eating his corn bread anymore. Janie says you eat it every day in the summer. Her kitchen is clean now, and she surveys it. "Brown works hard and needs his lunch. Don’t you eat it anymore."

But he gives it to me, I tell her.

I didn’t say anything about Brown offering, she says, grinding her cigarette into an orange ashtray; I’m talking about you taking it. Once again she peeks out the window at the snow. Put your plate in the sink when you’re finished, and come look at the tree with me.

Our Christmas tree is a cedar which Mr. Headley Eldridge cut for us on his land. We are town people, with no access to trees for cutting, and Mr. Headley, a housepainter and one of my father’s closest friends, brought us this one. It is taller than me and even taller than Mother.

In the living room, she plugs in the lights and we step back to look at it. We share a deep appreciation for the magic of Christmas and all things Christmasy; we spend much of our time looking at this tree, and hours huddled over the Sears, Roebuck catalog all through the fall before Mother finally scribbles, in her hen scratch, the big order. More hours are spent wrapping every present just so on top of the deep freezer in the utility room. And sometimes we drive to town, a little more than a mile up the highway, just to look at the plywood Nativity scene at the Methodist church.

She pulls open the venetian blinds behind the tree to give it a backdrop of snow. I’ve never in my life seen a Christmas tree in front of falling snow, she says, as she pulls me close to her.

Me neither, I say.

Well, of course you haven’t. She laughs, hugging me tighter. If I haven’t, you haven’t.

I hope it snows all through Christmas, I say, too loud.

Shh, Mother hisses, you’ll wake up Janie. She continues to look at the huge snowflakes drifting down slowly behind our tree. It won’t keep snowing that long. But the snow on the ground will stay there and be pretty for Christmas Day.

In two more days, I say, pressing the side of my face against her. I can smell her bath powder.

In two more days, she says.

*   *   *

It is late at night now. I am snuggled deep into my bed, watching the brightest of the winter stars through my window. I have raised the window just a bit to let in some of the cold air near my head. The house is too warm for me and, besides, I want the crisp air to remind me of how cold it is outside, and of the snow,

Reviews for Into That Good Night

[debnance_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wonderful tribute to a dad, a man who "lived the contradictions". The author is a high school teacher who lives in Lake Jackson, just south of me. I strongly recommend this book.