Candlemoth (20 page)

    'So
you're travelling back?' she said.

    I
nodded. 'Yes, I'm going back tonight with Nathan.'

    I
looked at her face, her eyes, her lips. She was more beautiful than ever.

    'Me
too,' she said. 'I haven't been home for about six months.'

    'Where've
you been?' I asked.

    'California,'
she said. 'San Francisco, Haight-Ashbury, L.A. for a couple of weeks,
travelling around you know?'

    I did
not know. I was not a traveller. I had been in Greenleaf all my life.

    'So
we should connect up when we get home,' she said.

    She
used the word, not me. We should
connect
up.

    I
nodded. 'I would really like that, Linny. I would really like to do that.'

    She
smiled. She hugged me again. She held me a little too long for this just to be
the excitement of a chance meeting.

    Then she
withdrew, and as she withdrew she held her cheek against mine for just a split
second, but in that second I felt all the warmth of the world encapsulated
within a touch.

    My
heart was racing.

    I
could feel my pulse in my temples.

    In
that second I believed every loss I'd ever felt was healed. My father, Eve
Chantry, even Caroline Lanafeuille - all seemed insignificant as I held Linny
Goldbourne against me. I could smell her skin, feel the power of her presence,
and around me the hubbub of the crowd within which we stood was silenced.

    And
then suddenly, all too suddenly, she was gone, breezing past me with her grace,
her beauty, the scent of something autumnal from her hair.

    I
watched her go.

    She
did not look back.

    I did
not want her to.

    My
cheeks burned with something close to a fever, closer perhaps to passion.

    I
would think back later, and despite the reason I was in Atlanta, despite this
being the first time I had left the State of North Carolina, I did not think of
Martin Luther King again that day.

    I
thought of Linny Goldbourne and how her body might feel against mine in the
coolness of the night.

    Had I
known that years later I would meet Father John Rousseau in Sumter, that he
would have asked so many questions of that time, I perhaps would have kept a
journal. My memory of those months after the shooting of Martin Luther King
were somewhat vague. So many things happened, so many incidents of moment, that
it became hard to maintain any frame of reference within which to hold them.

    Two
days after King's burial in Atlanta, New York Mayor Lindsay was stoned by a
black crowd in Harlem. In Detroit two police officers were shot, and down south
in Tallahassee a white youth was burned to death. The same day LBJ signed the
Civil Rights Bill making it illegal for landlords to refuse housing on grounds
of race. The second day of May one thousand people went on the Poor People's
March from Memphis to Washington. Five days later Robert Kennedy won the first
primary in Indiana, and a week later the second in Nebraska. Simultaneously,
talks began in Paris between the U.S. and the North Vietnamese, talks
instigated by Johnson with his promise to stop bombing North Vietnam above the
20th parallel.

    These
were historical things, events people would write about for years to come, but
these events melted into one another effortlessly when compared to Linda
Goldbourne.

    She
came and found me two days after my return from Atlanta.

    She
found me at Karl Winterson's Radio Store. I was alone. Karl was out in
Charleston and Nathan was fetching groceries for his ma.

    Linda
Goldbourne was a special girl, had always been. Her beauty and wit, her culture
and intelligence were not the only things that kept her far beyond reach.

    She
was ex-Congressman Richard L. Goldbourne's daughter. A staunch Southerner, a
towering monolith of a man, he really was a force to be reckoned with. Much of
the land east of Greenleaf's central suburbs belonged to the Goldbournes. They
had owned that land since before the War of Secession, and with that land had
come crops and slaves and leverage and money. Goldbourne, even now, seventy
years old or more, could swing an opinion with a nod of his head or a glance
one way or the other. He had been consulted by every Congressman, senator and
state representative ever to take office in North Carolina, his brother- in-law
owned two of the largest newspaper chains in the State, and Goldbourne
Automotive was the most profitable retail chain for agricultural and domestic
vehicles from Charleston, North Carolina to Montgomery, Alabama.

    This
was Linda Goldbourne's family, her history, her birthright, and on May 11th
1968 she walked into Karl Winterson's Radio Store and asked me if I wanted to
go out and party.

    Linda,
or Linny as she was known, had more life in her than a thousand of her
contemporaries. She was neither naive nor irresponsible, neither
over-enthusiastic nor brashly false; she possessed no airs or graces, affected
nothing but her own individuality, and unashamedly and without inhibition
opened her mouth and said what she thought. She did not offend or upset people,
for what she said contained an element of truth that was as reassuring as it
was direct. She did not make enemies. Who could make an enemy of life? Children
sought her as an oasis of sanity and like-mindedness. Those her own age found
her childlike spirit revitalizing and passionate. The older members of

    Greenleaf's
community, my mother included, described her as
a breath of fresh air
and
a ray of sunshine.

    This
was Linny Goldbourne, and for a little of the summer of '68 she decided I was hers
and hers alone. Perhaps she was short of company, but I did not complain; I did
not question her decision; I reserved the right to maintain equanimity in all
discussions as to her motives or agenda. She loved being alive, and for this
brief part of her life she had concluded that I should share it with her. Which
was fine, just fine by me.

    That
night of May 11th 1968 was the first night we went out together. We went to a
bar on Doyle Street. She ordered tequila with lemon and salt and taught me how to
drink it, and while I retched and vomited in the gutter along the sidewalk she
kneeled beside me and rubbed my back with a smooth, strong circular motion that
seemed both a reprimand and a comfort at the same time. And then she walked me
home. My ma was asleep. She helped me to my bed, undressed me, and rolled me
beneath the covers. I remember she leaned across me, kissed my forehead, and
then she left.

    I
slept like a dead man.

    And
it was she who woke me some seven or eight hours later, her eyes bright and
luminous, her energy unfettered, and suggested I haul my useless carcass out of
bed, get some breakfast, and she would drive us to the coast.

    She
prepared eggs and ham and pancakes, and sat across from me as I struggled to
eat.

    'What
happened with you and Caroline?' was the first question she asked me.

    I
almost choked, had to thump my chest to catch my breath.

    'Caroline?'
I asked back.

    Linny
nodded. 'Caroline,' she repeated. 'You and she went out for a while, didn't
you?'

    I
nodded in the affirmative. 'For a while, yes.'

    'And
then she left,' Linny said matter-of-factly.

    'Yes,
she left.'

    'Because
you got her pregnant?'

    I
stopped and looked across at Linny, my eyes wide, scarcely believing my ears.

    'I
heard you got her pregnant and her father had to give her an abortion, and
that's why she left so suddenly.'

    I
shook my head. I didn't know what to say.

    'So
you didn't get her pregnant?' Linny asked.

    'I
didn't get her pregnant,' I said.

    'Okay,'
Linny replied, and then the subject was dropped. It went as suddenly and
unexpectedly as it had come. Rather like Caroline herself.

    'And
you always had a thing for me, didn't you, Daniel Ford?'

    That
was the next question she asked. It was something that I would learn all too
quickly about Linny. She never hedged or hesitated; she never sounded uncertain
or vague. She had a thought, always a big thought, and when she opened her
mouth that thought fell from her mouth. She didn't say it, it just fell out.
After a while, a very short while, it became one of her most valuable and
endearing qualities. With Linny Goldbourne you always knew exactly where you
were and why. If you had any degree of uncertainty she would sure as hell tell
you in no uncertain terms.

    I
smiled at her question. It didn't embarrass me, didn't make me feel awkward.
Linny's honesty engendered honesty in others, and I myself was caught in that
wave without thinking.

    'Yes,'
I said. 'I always had a thing for you.'

    'That's
good,' she said.

    'Good?'

    'Sure,'
she went on. 'I wouldn't want to get involved with someone who didn't have a
thing for me, right? I mean, would you like to be really in love with someone
and have the feeling at the back of your mind that they didn't really love you
the same way?'

    I
thought of Caroline, that that was exactly how it had felt.

    'No,
I wouldn't,' I said, and believed that that was the most honest answer I could
ever have given.

    'Which
is not to say we're in love,' Linny said, again matter-of-factly. 'But then I
have time, and you do too, and hell, we're young and intelligent and stuffed
with hormones, right?'

    I
started to laugh, and when I looked up from the breakfast she had prepared for
me I saw her beaming, contagious smile, her hair tumbling around her face, her
bright eyes, her winning charm.

    I
wanted to kiss her.

    'You
can kiss me now,' she said.

    'I
can?' I asked, unnecessarily.

    'Sure,'
she said. 'Free of charge an' everything.'

    I leaned
across the table and kissed her, a brief and insignificant connection, yet so
meaningful. Imperfect, yet perfect. Like Linny herself.

    Ahead
of our house, parked against the curb, was Linny Goldbourne's Buick Skylark,
deep blue, cream leather interior, a hundred miles of bright chrome, wire
wheels and style.

    Within
an hour of my surfacing from some dark hell of tequila-fueled unconsciousness
we were on our way, Linny talking endlessly of San Francisco, of
The Scene,
of someone called Roky Erickson, The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Doug Sahm, The
Grateful Dead, John Cippolina and The Quicksilver Messenger Service. The roof
of the car was down, the sun was high and warm, and the wind took her long hair
and sent it dancing out behind her in a bold wave of color and life and beauty.

    I
said little. I watched her. I absorbed her energy until I felt replete, and
still it came - boundless, infinite, rich and heady.

    We
drove east towards the mouth of the Santee River, and then south-west to Port
Royal Sound, right there on the Georgia border where the Savannah River hurried
out to meet the Atlantic as if late for their appointment.

    I
felt no ill effects from the night before by the time we arrived, and had I
done I believe Linny would not have allowed them a moment of consideration. She
was out of the car and down the street towards the beach before I had a second
to question her plans.

    I
followed on that wave of enthusiasm and energy, and I saw her run ahead of me
to the sand just as I had seen her in school.

    But
this time was different.

    This
time I was here because
she
wanted me to be here.

    Later,
seated there in the sand beside her, she rolled some grass in a neat twist of
paper and lit it. She inhaled and held her breath, and slowly her eyes widened,
her cheeks colored, and then she released that breath in a sudden rush.