The School of Beauty and Charm (11 page)

“That boy there,” said Lyle, with an approving nod at Roderick, “now he's got short hair.”

“He attends a private school—Bridgewater. They're very strict about hair. It has to be above the collar, or they send them home. They'll make the parents leave work to come out there and cut it. He'll go into ninth grade this fall.”

“My, my,” said Grandmother, staring at him with wonder. She added, “He's right puny for his age.”

Roderick quietly lifted a framed photograph from the wall and began to study the back of it. It was a sepia-colored photograph of the USS
Leviathan
—a fierce-looking boat painted with a jaw of sharp, jagged teeth. Daddy-Go, who was a bugler in the Calvary, had written on the back:

Sunday night 7:30, Feb. 10, 1919, 800 miles out of New York City. “I am now on board this ship with over 9000 soldiers, over 500 officers, crew of 2200. She is 954 ft. long. She is due in NY some time Tuesday. We left Brest, France, Feb. 3, got on board Ground Hog Day, Feb. 2. We are now traveling over 20 miles an hour. 800 more miles and we will see the Statue of Liberty. Will be some old rejoicing, ha.”

That was the only time Daddy-Go had left Kentucky. He said the French women were pretty.

“Son,” said Lyle, “there's two men in the Bible that had long hair, as I know of. You look in there and find them. See what happened to those two. I ain't telling you today. You go look it up.”

“He reads the Bible,” said Florida. “I think.”

“This all you got?” he asked her. “The boy and the girl?”

“I've got my hands full. I do other things. Things with the church. I teach an art class to retarded adults.”

“She's on the go twenty-four hours a day,” said Henry, with a smile. “It makes me tired just watching her.”

“My mother had nine, seven of ‘em boys. My daddy used to say, ‘One boy is a boy, two boys is a half a boy, and three boys
is no boy at all.' I don't know if my daddy is in heaven or not. Now my sweet mother, she is right up there with about 146 old preachers I've known, but Daddy was kind of different. He had something to say about most everything though.”

Brack raised his head off the pillows, coughed, and said in a hoarse voice, “He used to say a man was like a snake. You don't know how long he is until you stretch him out.” Then, without warning, Daddy-Go began to speak French. I couldn't understand the words because he was so hoarse, and my French was limited to the painful repetition of Mrs. Robichaux's crackling “Où est Jean? Jean est à la piscine” and a few songs on the radio. All the same, it was French. Florida said he had learned it in the war.

For a moment, even Lyle was silent. Then Grandmother began to cry. “He's foolish,” she said, wringing her hands. Her hands were red, with swollen knuckles, and covered with small cuts and scratches. She never used Band-Aids. I hid my own hands under the hem of my T-shirt. We all crowded around the big bed, but Daddy-Go said clearly, in English, “Go on now! Git,” as if we were a herd of cows, so we backed off.

“I hear you've got a new book out, Lyle,” said Florida sadly. With his hands in his pockets, Lyle stared at Brack. Then he jerked his head up and said, “You can't be a big-time evangelist until you write a few books, write a few tracks, and then go into the Holy Land. Now the radio is what I like. The thing I like about the radio is that I can send out a picture of myself taken ten, twenty years ago, when I was still pretty, and that's who people see when they hear me today. Also, you can't play a harmonica in a book.”

“Louise, you should talk to him,” said Florida. “Maybe he could help you with your essays.” She turned to Lyle. “Roderick and Louise both attend Bridgewater Academy. That's a prep school. Ninety-nine percent of Bridgewater graduates go to college, some of them to Ivy League.”

“Is that right?”

“They smart chirren,” said Grandmother. She shook her head at the wonder of it, but she was still crying.

“Bridgewater stresses writing skills. Louise has to write an essay every week. Her English teacher, Mr. Rutherford, reads hers aloud to the class.” She and Henry beamed at me while I worked a hole in the rug with my toe.

Try as I might, I could not conjure up the image of Mr. Rutherford. The same spirit that had erased Drew's memory of her mother was in me now, wiping out the world beyond Red Cavern, Kentucky.
Mr. Rutherford, Mr. Rutherford
, I called inside myself, but he was only a name. I began to wonder if there were really a ghost like the Frances Deleuth one I made up to scare Drew. Glancing over at the big lump of Daddy-Go on the bed, at his white face covered with stubble, the thick white hair sticking out, and his bleary white eyes, I felt the chill touch of smooth fingers on the back of my neck.

“Be still!” said Florida, when I jumped. “Let me fix your hair. It's gone haywire back here. Did you brush it this morning?”

“You published a book in Jerusalem?” Roderick asked Lyle.

“I said in the Holy Land. Now the Holy Land is not where you think it is, over in Jerusalem and Jordan and that area. That's the Bible Land. The Holy Land is over here in Kentucky.”

Florida tugged some hair over my ears, sighed, and then looked up at Lyle with admiration.

“And you're ninety years old!” she exclaimed.

“You don't look a day over thirty,” said Henry. “I hope I look that good when I'm ninety.” He laughed.

“I'm ninety-one,” said Lyle proudly.

“I guess you've seen it all,” said Florida, stepping closer to Daddy-Go. She touched his hand.

“No ma'am, I haven't. I know one or two things, though. I know you can't make people do right. I know that if you've got a lot of money, you've got a lot of problems. Yessir. And if you've got a lot of education, you're going to smart off somewhere.”

Florida stiffened. “I don't know about that.”

“You wait,” said Lyle, and then from his pocket, he pulled out a tract, which he handed to me.

WARNING. JESUS IS COMING. HERE IS THE STORM. DOESN'T IT MAKE GOOD SENSE TO BRING THE CHILDREN INTO THE HOUSE? PEOPLE ARE SAYING, OH WE HAVE TIME. THAT'S WHAT THEY SAID BEFORE THE FLOOD. IN HELL YOU CRY AND CRY BUT NO ONE HEARS YOU. TOMORROW MAY BE TOO LATE
.

Luke 17:26, “As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man.”

Luke 17:29, “But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.”

Luke 16:23, “And in hell he lifted up his eyes . . .”

After reading it, I offered him a light, fake smile.

“I say to people sometimes, when the Holy Spirit gets to dealing with you, you don't care what people think about you. I get on my knees and just cry and pray. The Lord has blessed me.”

He was standing in the center of the crowded room now, and he raised up his arms. “Oh what a day to live in!” he cried. “But one great and wonderful thing about this day we're living in, we're closer to the Coming of Jesus! The Bible says, any day the Trump could sound and the dead in Christ shall rise first and we that remain alive shall rise to meet Him in the air. Oh, we get to go home and be with Jesus! Oh, I tell you no eye has seen nor ear has heard, neither has entered into the heart of man what God has in store for them that love Him. In this day, we ought to love Jesus. Lift up your head and look because He could come today! Wouldn't that be wonderful?”

In the bed, Daddy-Go turned his face to the wall.

“I think I'll have some of that pineapple upside-down cake,” said Florida. “Even though I don't need it. Not with this pot belly.” She patted her small midriff and stepped down into the dining room where the cake sat on the table. Roderick had already slipped out of the room.

To make up for their absences, Henry focused his gaze on Lyle, encouraging him to go on.

“It wouldn't be so wonderful if you didn't have the seal of the Lord on your forehead,” said Lyle. He pointed at me and shook his finger. “Then the locusts would get you. Yessirree. These locusts, the Bible tells us, are as big as horses, wearing
golden crowns, with the faces of men, the hair of women, and the teeth of lions. Them tails sting like scorpions.”

I gave up trying to picture Mr. Rutherford.

“Yes, if it was me, I'd want to have the seal of the Lord on my forehead when He lets them varmints loose.”

In the dining room, Florida said, “I'm just going to have a bite. I really shouldn't.”

The cuckoo in the clock crowed four times, and soon the room began to grow dark. Lyle pulled a harmonica out of his shirt pocket, blew a chord to get himself started, and then began to sing.

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins;

And sinners plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains:

Lose all their guilty stains. Lose all their guilty stains:

And sinners plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains . . .

After Evange Lyle left, Florida said, “Now I thought that was just a little bit rude. If I was sick, I wouldn't want somebody bringing a Bible into the house. We're not having a funeral.”

“Won't be as long as it has been,” said Grandmother.

“He's showy,” said Florida.

“He ought to get him one of those pocket-sized Bibles,” said Henry. “A New Testament. He could carry that in his breast pocket and leave it there until he needs it. Nobody reads the Old Testament much anyway.”

“Henry, the Old Testament is important. Don't tell the children that.”

“I didn't say it wasn't.”

“Well, what did you say?”

“Never mind.”

“Y'all don't fuss,” said Grandmother.

“No one is fussing mother. We're having a discussion. Is that against the rules? Can't we talk about God and Jesus in our home?”

L
ATE THAT NIGHT
, we stood around the bed in the parlor, watching Brack die. “Say good-bye to your grand-father,” said Henry. “You may never see him again.”

I leaned against the bed, keeping my eyes on a carved bird holding a grape in its beak. When Henry pressed his hand on the back of my neck, pressing his Masonic ring between my shoulder blades, I looked obediently at Daddy-Go. His hair was greasy, and his face had turned gray, the color of dishwater. When he put his cold hand over mine, I felt how hard his body was shaking with the effort to talk. He moved his dry, cracked lips.

“He's trying to say something to her,” said Florida. “Daddy, what is it?” He opened his mouth, but no words came out. He let his head fall back on the pillow. Did he think he was in one of those dreams where you can't move, can't speak? Was he trapped under the hull of a boat?

When he finally spoke, his voice was strong and clear. He said, “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi?”

B
RACK DID NOT
die that night, but in the morning we found Roderick stiff and cold on his cot. The coroner said he had died of asphyxiation—caused by the small blue pine tree he'd set up in the corner of the porch after I went to bed and decorated for Christmas-in-July.

I
T TOOK ME
an hour to decide what a sane person would wear to see a psychiatrist. In the fourteen months since Roderick's death, I had gained forty-three pounds on a steady diet of Ho Ho's, King Dons, and Hershey's Kisses; nothing looked good on me. There was no uniform at Bridgewater, but I wore one anyway: a plaid tent dress, a ponytail, and a pea coat. I looked repressed. My weekend outfit—a pair of oversized army pants tied with rope and one of Henry's dress shirts—screamed Electra Complex. If I wore anything that had belonged to Roderick, Dr. Frommlecker would think I had killed my brother.

Roderick's room had become a museum exhibit, lacking only a velvet rope across the door. Henry was the official duster; he didn't trust anyone else to handle the Boy Scout merit badges, the copperhead snakeskin, the blue sock, and the shell containing a single marble, a pair of toenail clippers, three pennies, and a burnt match. Each day he smoothed the
Star Wars
bedspread over the pillow. Florida had his sweaters dry-cleaned.
When Roderick didn't come home from Red Cavern, Puff had looked for him all over the house, sniffing in corners, crawling under beds, peering over bathtubs. After several weeks, he gave up the search and became incontinent.

We all needed therapy, but there was only one shrink in town, and Henry couldn't go to Leo because they were in Rotary Club together. Florida wouldn't see anyone who wasn't a Christian. I was the obvious candidate, but Henry stalled with the insurance paperwork because he didn't want a psychiatric diagnosis to go on my permanent record. Henry discussed my permanent record in the same grave voice he used when discussing my permanent teeth. What was lost was lost forever. In the end, he decided to pay cash for the visit, and I wore Florida's ancient full-length mouton, buttoned up to my chin.

In late September in Counterpoint, Georgia, the temperature hits eighty-five in the afternoon, but the air conditioner was on full blast in Dr. Frommlecker's reception room, so I kept my coat on. The receptionist made no comment.

She was one of Alfred Hitchcock's cool blondes—slim and pure white except for an icy blue shadow in her eyes. “Dr. Frommlecker will be with you in a moment, Louise,” she said in a sculpted voice. She handed me a clipboard then went back into her glass cubicle.

I hunched down in my fur and set to work on the battery of tests Frommlecker gave all of his patients. Drew St. John, who had been sent here when she was flunking out of the fourth grade, had prepped me for the IQ test. “Most of the answers are C,” she said. According to Drew, the results of this test showed that she had one of the highest IQs in the country. Her mathematical skills were equivalent to those of a college sophomore,
and her reading comprehension was perfect. I chose C for most of my answers, but occasionally I encountered a question with such an obvious answer that I had to go with my gut. For instance, in the analogy,