The Bark of the Dogwood - Excerpt
Prologue
I think I knew when I was naughty, for I knew that it hurt Ella, my nurse, to kick her, and when my fit of temper was over I had a feeling akin to regret.
—Helen Keller, The Story of My Life
The blood was now flowing with regularity, streaming down her brown shins like swift-moving paths of lava. With each kick, the steel toe of his cowboy boot dug deeper into her flesh, tearing dark pieces free from the front of her calves. They stood out from her legs, flaps of skin momentarily colorless, until the blood began to fill up the vacated spaces, seep into the shreds of flesh, and ooze out onto her body. With each attack more blood splattered the stiff white maid’s uniform she was wearing and flew back onto the yoke of his cowboy shirt. She neither cried out nor made an attempt to stop him.
“Nigger! Nigger! Nigger!” he yelled over and over, punctuating each word with a kick which gathered strength and momentum each time he brought his foot back and flung it forward. He thought that she would eventually start to cry, and as he went about his task he occasionally looked at her to see if her defenses were beginning to crumble. He wasn’t even sure what the word meant—he had heard it used against others and he knew the pain it could inflict, especially in Alabama in the early 1960s. He thought he saw a momentary flame in her pupils, but in an instant it was gone. She only stood there during the assault, her solid and massive two hundred and thirty pounds hovering like some gigantic rock precariously perched high atop a cliff, ready to roll down the hill at any moment and crush him.
After a while he tired of the attack, dripping with sweat and exhausted from his display of anger. And the sight of blood had now made him queasy. When he had caught his breath, he looked at her with mean eyes, squinted and tight. He realized she wasn’t going to fight back or say anything. At first this shocked him. He knew that in the South, in the 1960s, regardless of how African Americans were treated socially, they were given carte blanche to discipline the children of their employers. There was only one thing lower than African Americans at that time in the volatile structure of Southern society, and that was children. As he thought about this, it hit him: She had something else in mind. But what? “You’re going to tell my parents, aren’t you?” he said maliciously.
“No. I ain’t gonna tell your mamma an’ daddy,” she said without emotion or hate. She was eerily unmoved and even-tempered in her reply, as if she were on the outside looking in instead of being at the center of the drama.
“Then what are you going to do?” His fists were balled up, ready to fight with force or words—whichever came first to him.
“I ain’t gonna do nuthin’,” she said, her hands resting on her hips, looking down at him as if he were nothing more than a curiosity.
“Why not?” he countered angrily, but it was almost as if he knew the answer before it came, as if he were on the same wavelength, as if he could read her mind and she his. If he had chosen, he could have mouthed the words along with her, for they came to him in a stinging revelation, a split second before she delivered them, and he knew that once they started there was no stopping them, and that they would forever linger in his mind and run after him like some animal he had tortured relentlessly—one that had broken free and begun to chase him.
“I ain’t gonna do nuthin’ to you, Mr. Strekfus. You gonna think about this moment after you is done, and your guilt is gonna be your punishment.” She delivered the words without hate or malice. She delivered them simply and elegantly, as if she knew deep down the favor she was doing for him. Her voice had a prophetic air about it, but not because of any ego or hatred. And in a way she was right, she was doing him a favor, for as he felt the guilt, the pain, the very anger and hate come back on his being, he resolved never again to call any person of color that name, and he would cringe from then on when he heard others do it.
He was at that moment a five-year-old boy, physically attacking the housekeeper for denying him the right to leave the house—a denial that was well within the bounds of her duties, for at this time Alabama was a hotbed of racial turmoil and anything could happen. The day before his assault on her had been May 14, 1961—a day many in the state would remember as the start of the civil rights movement.
The first of the Freedom Riders had made their way into northern Alabama to show their support for integration on that day. Not only had the tires of their bus been slashed and the riders met by an angry mob, but when the driver was able to escape from the scene and stop six miles down the road to change the tires, the vehicle was firebombed. A second bus had followed, not knowing the fate of the first. The passengers on that bus had been beaten by a mob wielding clubs and pipes. Because of the intensity of the situation, ambulance workers refused to treat the injured. Althea had known this. She had watched the news on television that morning and knew that the world she was now living in—for better or worse—was changing all around her.
And Strekfus knew that she was keeping him inside for his own good, but despite the fact that he had been labeled a special child whose intelligence and logic were far different from others his age, he sometimes lacked common sense and maturity. When his anger subsided later and they reconciled somewhat, she cleaned the blood off herself and him, the whole time listening to his sobs as she sponged him in the large tub, his head bent in shame. As she did so, she sang softly and the song comforted Strekfus. It reminded him of some far-off land where he imagined they had known each other before.
De little baby gone home,
De little baby gone home,
De little baby gone along,
For to climb up Jacob's ladder.
And I wish I'd been dar,
I wish I'd been dar,
I wish I'd been dar, my Lord,
For to climb up Jacob's ladder.
“That’s a pretty song,” he said to her, hoping to begin the healing between them, hoping to begin a conversation that would lead to other things, which would in turn bury those wrongs he had done to her.
“Umhm. I’ve known that song for as long as I can remember, child,” she said, as her hand disappeared beneath the water in an attempt to reclaim the soap.
“I’m sorry, Althea. I’m sorry I called you those names.”
“Child, it was only the one name you called me and that was enough. But don’t you be worryin’ about that now. I expect you feel bad enough that you don’t need me remindin’ you what you done.” As she dipped the sponge down into the water and brought it up over his shoulders to rinse him off, it was as if she were trying to wash away his pain, for she acknowledged his anger and it was almost as if she knew that he would someday have to face its source the way she had faced hers. And each would choose to deal with this pain and anger in different ways, the results of their inner explorations leading them through different landscapes of the mind, each seeking that same open field where blue skies stretched out like the upturned palm of God and freedom took on its many-faceted meaning.
As she squeezed water from the sponge with one hand, she used the other to turn his head slightly to the side with the pretense of rinsing the soap from his ears. He allowed her this charade now, knowing full well that she had done so to keep him from seeing her tears.
It was this scene Strekfus was now remembering, and with good cause. He had received word earlier that morning that Althea, the woman whose shins he had so angrily assaulted in 1961, had died. But before he could go any further with his reverie, he was knocked back into reality by his boss’s voice. The sound of it jerked his head up and he found himself looking out the window at the Manhattan skyline, solid and vertical in the overcast morning sun.
“Beltzenschmidt!” the man bellowed, and suddenly he was no longer in rural Alabama, but back in the sleek, modern conference room used for Monday morning meetings he and the other writers had with the editors and staff of the magazine. Strekfus had left the ’60s far behind, and he was now in the very center of the 1990s.
“If you think you could stop daydreaming for a second I’d like to give everyone their assignments. We might as well start with you since you seem to have the attention span of a gnat today,” and with that the short, bald, portly man paused for a second or two. There was a moment of tension in the air and then Strekfus and his boss both burst out laughing at the same time. Everyone else in the room just looked confused as they usually did whenever a conversation between the two men took place. For as long as Strekfus had worked for the magazine no one could quite figure out what the exact relationship was between the two. They seemed genuinely to like one another, but there were moments when neither seemed sure what was a joke and what was real. And the two men couldn’t have been more mismatched both physically and intellectually. Whereas Strekfus was tall, athletic, and well-groomed, his boss reveled in the not-so-delicate art of unkemptness and seemed to relish the pizza stains which appeared on his tie each day after lunch. Still, there was some bond between them, and as with most people, when pressed for details about the connection, neither could come up with a reasonable explanation.
The tension having dissipated, the staff waited for their next assignments from Sagaser, the man in charge of their fate and the man who was chief editor of the magazine which covered such human necessities as A-frame housing, the latest sofa designs, and hybrid tea roses. It was a home-and-garden magazine that the group assembled worked for, and lately the ideas seemed to be running out. Nothing much caught Strekfus’s attention as he listened to Sagaser wade through the lists of subjects that the writers of the magazine would cover—reproduction eighteenth-century creamware, a house being remodeled in Vermont using only woods native to that state, the evolution of the dining table in the past two hundred years. But when his boss reached the young writer, he paused for dramatic effect, thinking that the assignment would please his most valued staff member.
“Beltzenschmidt, you’re to do a series of twelve articles on the South and various homes and gardens in that area.” As Strekfus Beltzenschmidt heard the words, he had mixed emotions which ranged from elation to dread. Now that he would be traveling to the South he would no longer have to approach his boss and tell him that he was leaving later that morning for the very place he was to write about—he could feign the excuse that he wanted to get started as soon as possible on the articles. He had feared what his boss would say about his flying home on the spur of the moment to attend a funeral of someone who wasn’t even a relative, but now the problem was solved. And yet Strekfus feared the trip, almost as if he were a fugitive returning to the scene of a crime. There was a morbid curiosity about seeing the South again through a pair of eyes which had so become accustomed to New York. Yet the pull of Althea’s funeral, of seeing the place he had grown up in so long ago, operated like some psychic magnet on him. He had purposely stayed away from what he sometimes sarcastically called “home” for many reasons, the least of which wasn’t that area’s noted intolerance of certain races and cultures, and it had been nineteen years since he had made the journey to the very place of his birth and formative years.
He thought about this as everyone cleared the conference room, pillaging the last of the poppy seed muffins, stale pieces of fruit, and rancid orange juice brought in for the meeting by one of the many catering companies that buzzed and flitted around Manhattan.
“Why do you take that from him?” a young girl in a pink mohair sweater was asking as she pawed the top of a bran muffin that lay forlornly on its side, a casualty of the ’90s now that the bran craze had died. He looked up at her. He had known Sharon for most of his life, having met her in the first grade, sailing through elementary school and junior high with her, and then dating her in high school. They had also gone to college together. Finally, both had made the move to New York years ago, and while they weren’t as close as they once had been, he still relied heavily on her opinion and friendship. She had been nice enough to push Human Resources into hiring him four years ago when he needed a job. Personnel trusted her judgment, and based on the fact that she was one of the most valued employees at the magazine they had taken her word—along with some writing samples from Strekfus—and hired him on the spot. But mostly she was his one lifeline to his past—a past he could never completely escape and a lifeline he could never seem to sever. She was the one person who kept him grounded, and while he professed some disdain for his upbringing and the pitfalls of its culture, he nevertheless clung to Sharon for some sort of daily reminder.
“I don’t know,” Strekfus was saying in response to her inquiry about Sagaser, “ours is a strange relationship. I don’t think we know if we’re friends or enemies.” He picked up a dried-out strawberry and then set it back down. “Besides, I can never really decide if I like the man or hate him, and I’m sure he feels the same about me. I mean, we go out for drinks every now and then and play racquetball together and everything seems fine. Then the next minute we’re at each other’s throats.”
“Maybe it’s your aversion to body hair,” she said with a smirk. “After all, Winney has forearms like a gorilla and I know how you hate that. Some people seek out what they hate.” He winced at her use of Sagaser’s nickname, partly because he was the only one in the office allowed to call him that, but also because it gave the impression that she was on the same creative level. For all their links to the past and the friendship she provided, Strekfus still maintained a competitive streak that could manifest itself at the oddest times.
“I’m assuming you still shave your chest hair,” she continued, trying to loosen a wedge of cream cheese with a plastic fork, but her own mention of body hair seemed to cause her to abandon the idea. Strekfus pulled open two middle buttons of his shirt, exposing a muscular chest with three-day old stubble.
Sharon rolled her eyes. “Look, what you do with your body is up to you. All I’m saying is I think you should be writing more serious literary works than the things you crank out for this magazine. You’re better than this place. You should be working on that novel you’ve always wanted to write, not puttering about some broken-down old house researching insulation blow-in techniques and plaster molding reconstruction.”
“I happen to like plaster molding reconstruction and I have never done a piece on blow-in insulation, I’ll have you know.” Strekfus had now decided on the only remaining cheese Danish and pried it from the silver-colored plastic platter. An overly white doily stuck to it like an infant clinging to its mother. “Besides, this is a magazine on homes and gardens and blow-in insulation happens to be a part of that. And you got me this job. What are you doing criticizing it now?”
“Look, I’ve read some of your real stuff and I think it’s pretty good. All I’m saying is give it a shot. Besides, with some of the things that I know you’ve been through, well, you certainly shouldn’t be at a loss for material. That’s all I’m saying. And I got you this job so you wouldn’t starve to death, not because I wanted you to become complacent.” She had now gone back to the wedge of cream cheese and was making several attempts to lift it off the platter by stabbing it with a plastic knife.
“And what am I supposed to do, quit my job for a year or so to write? Where do you think I’m going to find time to work on this novel—when I’m in the john? Which is about the only time old Sagaser is not on my back about something.” He noticed her vain attempt to procure the cream cheese and with one quick motion stuck a fork into the helpless white wedge and held it up to her.
“Better on the john than never at all,” she said, cutting her eyes toward the door where their boss, Edwin Sagaser, was standing. He was waiting for everyone to vacate the space so he could take the rest of the food. “Did you tell him about the funeral?” she asked, now holding the fork and suspiciously eyeing the skewered cream cheese, not sure that she wanted it after all.
“No. I thought I wouldn’t mention it. Just go on the trip with the pretense that I’m down there to write about the South.”
“What a lovely, lovely idea,” she said, and shot him a fake smile. She set the wedge of cheese down with the fork sticking upward out of it like some modern sculpture found in front of a Manhattan office building—a usual attempt to draw one’s attention away from the fact that the building’s design is totally lacking in imagination.
“Sharon, would you kindly go to hell?” Strekfus asked as he adoringly glanced at her and smiled.
“Listen,” she said, changing her tone from that of a friend to one of a co-worker, “I’ve got to get back to that upgrade. I’ve got some serious software to install. And why does your boss insist I attend these meetings anyway? Aren’t they supposed to be strictly for writers? I think it must be some sort of power play with him, making the computer people and the accounts payable person attend. I mean, what do we have to do with the assignments you guys are given?”
“I don’t know. I guess he figures you’re an integral part of the process. Besides, I’d take it as a compliment. It’s just one of his many quirks. Last week it was the credit department and two people in production. I think he just likes to see new faces.” “I’d just as soon not have the compliment and have the extra time to myself.” Then she cut a glance over at Sagaser who was standing there, impatiently canvassing the room and looking in the direction of the leftover food. “Looks like he’s spotted the pound cake,” she said and started toward the door, glancing back at Strekfus with elevated eyebrows.
As Strekfus sat at his desk picking at the Danish, he thought about what Sharon had said, and later as he made his way down to the lobby and into the cab he kept thinking about it. Why shouldn’t he start writing his novel? Wasn’t it about time he decided what he really wanted to do? He was now staring out the window of the cab, watching the grays and browns of the city’s huddled-together buildings fade into the grays and browns of the outer borough’s assortment of factories, stadiums, and row houses. It was drizzling and the cab driver turned on the windshield wipers. Strekfus looked up at the man, who flashed a metallic smile at him in the rearview mirror. As the wipers thumped sideways, they reminded him of something he couldn’t quite place. He listened intently, then decided that the sound was irritating and wished the driver would turn them off. Soon they were pulling into the low, flat terminal of LaGuardia and he felt relief spread over him as it always did whenever he left one place for another, even if he was leaving what he considered to be the emotionally safe confines of Manhattan.
He paid the fare, pulled his bag out of the car, and made his way into the terminal. Now he found himself looking up at the monitor—the one announcing flight takeoffs and arrivals. The flight from New York to Atlanta would be delayed two hours. They weren’t anything new for him—airline delays and having to travel for the magazine—but the fact that he would probably miss his connecting flight in Atlanta to the smaller airport just outside his hometown added to his already present anxiety, and on this bright June day in 1996 Strekfus had more on his mind than missing a connecting flight. He had Althea to think about, and more specifically, the fact that she was now dead, for it was her funeral he was really heading to in the small Alabama town of Infanta and not his writing assignment. With a hand which wasn’t preoccupied with luggage, he reached up and scratched his chest. This equivalent of five o’clock shadow was beginning to itch. He would have to shave again as soon as he got to Infanta.
“Well,” he thought, rhythmically letting his fingers dig into the ridge between his pectoral muscles, “the good news is that Sagaser thinks I’m eager to get started on the assignment.” As he let his mind drift toward the job he was to do, he thought how it would be to remember the South through eyes which had not seen it for so many years. He remembered how, whenever friends came to visit in New York, he would see the city through their eyes, as if he were experiencing it for the first time. Perhaps it would be like that for him on this trip back home. After all, it had been years since he had set foot on Alabama soil and years since he had seen Althea. But now she wouldn’t be there with her gold-toothed grin, her open arms, her warm embrace. Now she was dead and he knew that while he hadn’t yet fully come to terms with this, he would have to before long.
The news of her death had reached him early that morning accompanied by a flood of memories from his childhood—all the memories of his life up until this point, and all of the choices he had made, for Althea represented to him more than just a housekeeper who had been employed by his parents during his youth—she represented a veritable lifeline he had been able to hold onto. Her simple insight into life had afforded him comfort at times, especially in a city where so many everyday comforts were lacking.
It was this lifeline—though not a tangible one, for she had been miles away during these past years—that he had clung to, and it had enabled him to make many decisions (usually the good ones) up to this point in his life.
Now he was forced to deal with her death. He was also forced to deal with guilty feelings about the fact that he had not spoken with her in so many years. Life in New York had not allowed for family visits, and he probably wouldn’t have made them anyway given the past recriminations and accusations which flew back and forth within that group of persons one attempts to call family. And Althea was in some respects, a part of his family.
They all kept at least slightly in touch with her—at least the aunts and uncles on his mother’s side—and so rather than be subjected to her constant questioning about why he had not spoken to this one or why he never called that one, he had chosen to slip quietly out of her life even though he thought of her, in some form or another, almost on a daily basis. In fact, he had slipped out of his entire family’s life, having had only minimal telephone contact with them these past years and no homecoming for almost two decades. While each side had made nominal attempts at maintaining communication, it was as though everyone realized the cultural differences that New York and the South represented, and besides, his family had their lives to live and so did he.
But because of Althea’s death he felt on his own now—alone in the world—more alone than he normally felt, the way one feels after the passing of a parent or beloved teacher. He feared that it was now his turn to be there for others, to have others lean on him, to be responsible, to give advice, and somehow to be a source of inspiration. In short, he felt that it was time to grow up, and it scared him more than anything he had ever experienced. He knew the truth that had been kept so well from others around him: that he was, at forty, still emotionally a child, never having dealt with the fears and trials that had haunted him in his youth, and that waited, not always patiently, in the dark corners of his mind.
His emotions were mixed, as they probably are for most people who experience the death of someone close to them. There was the feeling that the dearly departed had somehow won a prize, had been relieved of the stresses of this world, given a reprieve, and in doing so had planted a seed of jealousy in others. For doesn’t everyone long for peace and freedom from frustration at some point, even if it comes in the form of death? Then there was the empty, hollow sensation which often accompanies another’s demise, and in a case such as this, the feeling that one somehow has to make up that vacant feeling to the world—that it’s now one’s duty to replace or rebuild what was lost. There’s a feeling that someone needs to carry on the goodness that the deceased perpetuated during their lifetime.
As he ruminated about Althea, his past came back to him. He started to remember the South and what it had been like. It had taken the move to New York and then the news of her death to bring him full circle to the things he loved and longed for. “Why was it,” he thought, “that you could only truly appreciate a place when you no longer lived there?”
He remembered his disdain for the South, for its hatreds, its lack of understanding. He remembered his desire to get away from everything that it represented, its culture, its heritage. He remembered how he couldn’t wait to be free even of the food that he had grown up with—the plethora of fried items piled up on china plates, the collard greens, dark and brooding in bowls, the pies warming in the noonday sun at picnics. How interesting he had found the New York delis, the mounds of fresh bagels, the voluminous torrents of coffee which made its way into greedy, sleepy hands before a day’s work had started.
Now, after the intense years of work in the city, he found himself longing for the simpler things in life—things which didn’t require an argument, a curt order, a defensive face, a meat slicer, or a cardboard coffee cup with a Greek motif on it. He was remembering the things about the South which he had tried for so many years to erase from his mind—the food, the people, the customs, the use of language.
As part of his magazine assignment, he was going to be required to see the South again, this time through a writer’s eyes, and so inwardly, whether he knew it or not, he was preparing to relive his past in order to continue to live in the present, pushing toward that elusive and circumspect landscape that everyone fears, and at the same time seeks with eager anticipation—the future.
What he didn’t realize yet was that this was to be a much longer journey than he realized, for it was to bring him back to the very place he had come from, a place so far removed from New York that he couldn’t imagine it until his feet were firmly planted on the dusty red clay that is north Alabama soil.
Finally the plane was ready for takeoff and boarding was to begin. Strekfus stood on line, ticket in hand, and waited. The attendants called the last rows of the plane first, and as usual, passengers not sitting in those rows swamped the narrow roped-off area to the door of the loading ramp. As he stood there waiting for his ticket to be methodically taken by the proverbially despotic and annoyed airline personnel, he became aware of the dull throbbing in his head. Maybe it was just the stress of the funeral to come or anxiety over flying. “Probably because of all these people ignoring the flight attendant’s directions,” he thought. That always angered him. He tried to put the sound out of his mind, but by the time he entered the door of the airplane it had become a distant, dull roar, like the far-off sound of waves on some unattainable beach. Then it retreated as quickly as it had come.
He found his seat, but before sitting down marveled at how, even though there were barely any passengers in his area yet, the overhead luggage bin was completely full. He stowed his small carry-on bag under the seat and began perusing a well-worn airline magazine—one which offered mechanical shoeshiners and gold-plated toenail clippers to travelers who presumably would marvel at the thought of such gifts for Christmas, even though it was only June and no one they knew would want such items.
Most of the trip he slept, occasionally being awakened for the usual small bag of peanuts or Coke (“No, you can’t have the whole can—we only have so much to go around.”), but when he was awake he took stock of his life. He couldn’t help it really; there are only a limited number of things which can be performed on a fully booked airliner, and given the enclosed and confining space and where his travels were taking him, it seemed a natural progression. After all, he had moved to New York to try to get away from his roots, and here he was flying back to them with every emotion he could think of circling inside his brain. He thought about how different his life was now than when he was a child. Now he wore black most of the time, worked in a high-rise office building for a major publishing firm, had lunches at Twenty-one and Le Cirque, and drank martinis at the Plaza with friends who had summer homes in the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard.
When he was young he wore blue jeans, played in the dirt under bee-humming forsythia bushes, ate peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, and had friends who vacationed in their backyards and occasionally, if they were lucky, in Florida every three or four years. “How strange,” he thought, even though it had been systematically planned, step-by-step, “that I would end up so far from home.” He felt the need to clarify his mission in life, to rethink options and to further break out of this “self” he had imposed so carefully on his very being. All of this he thought about as he dozed and ate peanuts and looked at pictures of flashlights that fit on key rings and plaques that said un-urbane but spiritually nurturing things such as “Creativity, Teamwork, Solutions,” captioned underneath a picture of several in-shape young men sculling on some northern college campus river. And before he knew what had happened the plane had landed, the passengers had disembarked, and he was wending his way through the vast Atlanta airport in search of his next departure gate.
The connecting flight to the north Alabama airport came off without the problems he had foreseen; there was a plane leaving every hour and this assuaged his anxiety somewhat. When the one he was on finally touched down a mere thirty minutes later he was relieved to find the rental car pick-up located so close to the main section of the airport. “Something to be said for small towns,” he thought.
It always amazed him how, when landing in a new location, you immediately sensed the difference in light and air and altitude—in the very karma of the place. And it was the same here. With the oppressive humidity that washed over the landscape and the slightly mildewed smell of the carpeting in the main concourse, a thousand memories came back to him, many of them as oppressive and mildewed as the air and the carpet themselves. But the dull throbbing in his head also came back, and as he reached for the door handle of his rental car it escalated to the point where he thought he might have serious heart problems. “If I can only get into the car and shut the door, I’ll be fine,” he thought, as his hands fumbled with the keys.
Soon he was inside and adjusting the air-conditioning. Evidently someone had just returned the car because it only took a second for the climate inside to become glacial. The throbbing had subsided somewhat—either that he had simply been distracted with all of the new and strange mechanics he had to learn inside the car—but it was still there in the background. He maneuvered the air vents directly onto his face, hoping the change in temperature would quell the pounding in his head.
He tried to listen to his mind, to the sound. It wasn’t as rhythmic as he thought. It seemed to ebb and flow and there was some other noise accompanying it. Then it suddenly stopped. This was even more alarming. As he moved the car into reverse he made a mental note to see his doctor in New York just as soon as he returned. He hadn’t felt dizzy or sick. Was the sound coming from inside him or from the outside? Or both? Trying to put it out of his mind, he backed out of the parking space and was soon driving out of the terminal area and toward the place of his youth—Infanta, Alabama.
“Funny,” he thought, “how everything comes back to you.” After all these years he could still remember where things were in the area outside Infanta. He noticed the clean brown drive down miles of highway that stretched out along the fields of cotton and beans, their fertile green rows seeming to go on forever. How did they get them so straight? Then there were the few simplistic billboards—“Eat More Beef,” with its bad rendition of a cut of sirloin or prime rib, and “Moonshine Kills,” with a drawing of someone’s face, the eyes just two large X’s. As he approached the town, landmarks seemed to rise up from the ground or lower themselves onto the earth as if some great scenic designer were arranging them for his own amusement, like giant chess pieces on a red clay board. There on the right was the low, concrete-block pumping station, raw and completely unadorned, just as it had always been. Even the kudzu, that noxious Japanese vine imported in the 1930s to stop soil erosion, refused to grow over it so ugly was the structure.
Then there was the burned-out shell of the cement factory, its huge towering elements looking like a Gothic chemistry set with beakers and tubes and distilling pots all made of rusted metal. It was a wonder to the town. How could so many tornadoes come through the area demolishing hundreds of homes and never touch this decaying monster which seemed to teeter on thin metal legs high above mounds of unclaimed cement?
Further down the road, nearer the town, the ugliness of the outlying industrial areas began to give way to the green oasis which was the town square. It wasn’t located in the direct center of town—not anymore—it was now on the very edge of town, and because of its longevity and history, many of the houses and gardens surrounding it had been preserved. Like so many town squares in the South, it contained neighborhoods of century-old boxwoods and azaleas, white-columned homes, and low cast-iron fences whose gates sometimes hadn’t been opened since the last wedding or death in the family. These were homes occupied by people one never saw—homes that had been in families for generations. Homes that probably had a mystery to solve or a story to tell. But this was not the neighborhood Strekfus sought on this day in June. He would return to these homes and what they had to offer at some later point, but for now he would turn to the left and head toward the other side of town—toward the railroad tracks and even across them—to the side of town where the non-white residents lived.
This was Althea’s neighborhood. It was not as pretty as the town square, but the houses were well kept (a government subsidy years before had greatly helped the area) and there were small gardens, well-watered lawns, and clean avenues. Maneuvering the rental car along the curving street, Strekfus found the house earlier than expected. It took him a moment to realize that he was in the right place. He had stopped the car directly in front of Althea’s home, yet he was still looking ahead as if he thought it was much further down the street. In reality all he had to do was look to the left.
After a few moments of daydreaming, the sound of an impatient driver’s horn jolted him into reality and he turned into the driveway. Pulling up to the house, it suddenly hit him: Althea was gone. All the years of having had her “there,” and she was no more. He choked back his emotions as he made his way up the walk and knocked on the screen door of the red brick ranch-style house. Peeling paint surrounded the doorframe. A half-dead cedar bush by the front steps and a weatherbeaten garden hose thrown loosely into the front flowerbed greeted him. He noticed that Althea’s extensive collection of roses, hostas, ferns, and snapdragons were in dire need of attention. She obviously hadn’t had time to take care of them since she had become ill.
Opening the rusted screen door, he extracted a note taped to the inner door.
Mr. Beltzenschmidt,
I’ve left the door open. Please feel free to go in and make yourself comfortable. I’m at the funeral home and should be back shortly.
Randolph
P.S. There’s another note for you on the bedroom door.
“This is strange,” thought Strekfus. “Who is Randolph?” With no one there to greet him he felt odd about entering Althea’s home, especially after all these years, and even more so since he had never met anyone named Randolph. He figured it was probably the landlord Althea rented the house from. She had often spoken of him as being benevolent about late rent payments.
He opened the door and entered the house. Immediately the soft carpeting cushioned his steps. The entire house had that hushed feeling that often accompanies the passing of a friend or relative. It was as if the person had not only vacated the space physically, but spiritually also. And yet the spirit of Althea was somehow still here. He could feel it and literally see it in her furnishings. That is, what furnishings he could make out in the dim light of the interior. And then the throbbing inside his head returned. Or maybe it had never really gone away, for it seemed to loom out of the depths of his mind with the strength of something that has been hovering in the background, lying in wait, picking up energy in order to ambush its victim.
It was almost as if this crescendo of sound and emotion came together the instant he saw the note—the one pinned to the bedroom door—the note someone named Randolph had warned him about. He could see it from where he was standing, glowing and white, written on ordinary spiral notebook paper and taped three-quarters of the way up on the door. The sound in his head seemed to increase with each step toward the door and he considered stopping mid-route to see if it would cease, but it was as if something wasn’t letting him cut short his predetermined goal, as if he were being pulled by some unseen force toward this ordinary piece of notebook paper, this ordinary piece of tape, this ordinary door to this ordinary bedroom.
Suddenly he became aware that the sound he was hearing was not that of his heart, his blood pressure, or anything at all related to his physical being. It was a real sound and it was of something being struck repeatedly with anger, with frustration, with a force which seemed to want to exorcise something. It was a sound he knew but couldn’t place. It came into focus with the intensity of a high-powered searchlight, its beam shining directly into the eye, blinding and white-hot. He felt like someone who has just been shot, but thinking the bullet has passed by, relaxes for a moment only to realize by reaching down, seeing the wound, drawing up his hand wet with blood, that the act has indeed happened and he must now wait for the aftermath—that the events which have been put into motion cannot be reversed and must be played out.
As he pulled the note from the door, tattered shards of paper fluttered to the floor. He unfolded the message. As he read the words written in a shaky hand, the sound in his head continued to grow. “Strekfus,” the note read, “I want you to have what is in here. I love you. Althea.”
As he reached for the knob, everything seemed to go into slow motion. He heard no sound except the beating in his head. It was unrelenting, unforgiving, otherworldly. Turning the knob, he realized there was another sound accompanying its wooden, hollow, percussive attack. He had not heard it before, but now as he listened it lent a human quality to the reverberations in his head. He became aware of a man’s agonizing groans, his muffled sobs underneath the beating. The moans were animalistic, almost sexual, angry, as if the person making them were putting all his strength into them. For a brief moment he thought that he recognized who was contributing these new sounds, but his mind leapt quickly away, not letting him get near the source, but not letting go either.
Turning the knob and opening the door, he saw the room fill with an immense white light from the back window. The sun had broken through the clouds at that instant and it seemed that every beam it possessed entered through the opened window, blessing the moment and the room with its enormous intensity.
He stood transfixed, unable to move from the spot as if held by some horrible, wonderful power which was his past, his present, and his future. The beating sound in his head had reached such a level now that its echoes melted into one continuous roar, like multiple tracks of a recording machine which looped over and over until the only sound was a wash of noise. He felt himself losing his grip on reality—the light coming in from the window, what he was seeing in the room. He only had one brief moment to take in the contents of the room before things started to spin and he lost complete control. He was seeing the window fly upward, hearing the roar in his head, the combination now like some awful multimedia event held in a horrible house of mirrors at some decadent carnival with distorted loudspeakers and the noises of a thousand eager and rowdy commoners chanting for blood. Then the loud, twisted music, the lights that swirled and streaked like some slow-motion photography, the thick groping of hands which rose around his legs, pulling him under.
The room was now an out-of-control merry-go-round and his knees were made of water, but he was to endure the vertigo for only a second more before he slumped to the ground, noticing for the instant before the end the cracked ceiling, the dusty light fixture, the thin white draperies now standing almost perfectly horizontal from the window, caught in a breeze which had suddenly blown through the room out of a seemingly unearthly locale. It was only a second and then something wiped him out as clean and sure as if an eraser had wiped yesterday’s homework assignment from the blackboard of life.
When Strekfus came to, he became aware that there was a man standing over him. As his eyes focused, he began to make out the concerned expression of an older gentleman. But there was something else—something he noticed in his deep subconscious before his mind cleared and he began to think again about the room and what it held. There was a strand of something familiar yet buried behind the glasses, the aging face, the human patina of this individual. He tried to hold onto it, to comprehend where it had come from, what it meant to him, but he was now beginning to reenter the world of the living and the thought retreated like a garter snake slithering back into an unused woodpile, soft and silent. He knew if he wanted to recapture it—this thread of consciousness—then dismantling the woodpile was his only option, and feeling drained by what had just happened, he let the thought slip from him undeterred. Before he would answer the question the man was asking—this man who knelt over him, concerned, afraid, unsure—he would turn his head first to look back into the bedroom.
“Are you all right?” the man was asking, his hand gently resting on Strekfus’s arm. Strekfus had yet to regain his speech, so he simply nodded. Then sitting up and managing to slowly stand with the help of the man, he once again confronted the room.
Again the man was speaking, saying something to him, but Strekfus’s mind was a blur and he was already back there, in a time long before New York and much further away—in a land of red dust and fetid swamps and burning suns. A land where gullied roads led past dead cottonwoods and solitary eagles swung high over patchwork fields. It was a land that now contained something he needed. The journey back to it would be a long and arduous one, but he knew was necessary, so without hesitation he turned again in the direction of the sunlight streaming in from the bedroom window, took a deep breath, and took his first step into the room.
Copyright ©2002 Jackson Tippett McCrae
