White People (25 page)

And he winked.

Mother was far too stunned to hush him as he wandered. It was too late. There could be no future. He free-associated aloud, pausing to half-stoop, admiring whatever showed of nyloned legs on certain younger bridge enthusiasts.

I cannot describe to you the silence in our house just then.

Mother, using eyebrows only, swinging her head, hinted: I should maybe take him to the backyard, maybe? Very quickly, maybe? But first she did something I will always love her for.

By now he was entertaining ladies in the living room, gabbing about his constant companion Arthur. Mother walked up behind Grand. When his face turned toward hers, Mother’s—oval, cordial—went instantly serene. The farmer grinned back, entranced with her beauty and business sense. These two people stood for one second, face to face. Watching, I forgot everything unpleasant. (There’s a moment when every itchy sixteen-year-old boy suddenly
sees
his mother, sees her whole, and when he knows for the first time, “Hey, my mother is ‘a brunette,’” when he understands that she’s a not-at-all-unattractive woman, ripened by years, and is desirable and good, and when he really really wants to run away with her forever. This, for me, was that moment.) What she did: she put one palm on Grand’s shoulder and—while he smiled back at her simply, so simply—her free hand touched his stubbled cheek. Then Mother said loud enough for everyone downstairs to hear, “Ladies, I want you to meet my father-in-law. A dear man.”

Then I led him out.

The party chugged on, but its tones now sounded clogged; it would end early. I’ve always hated her guests for leaving so soon. I mean, doesn’t everybody have a family? Shouldn’t they have understood? And my mother never got over it, either. This sounds trivial, I know, but the things that shave the years off everybody’s lives are often just this slight.—No fair.

I kept my hand on the small of Grand’s back and, exiting through the kitchen, grabbed a fistful of trimmed sandwiches for us. I squired him to a group of lawn chairs in the sun; I settled at the foot of his chaise. He had gobbled four sandwiches before really noticing me. Then half-standing, reaching into his pants’ pockets, he pulled out the little can of household oil, one uncut plug of Sweet Peach chewing tobacco, and a ruby-chip dinner ring now missing four stones.

“How do
you
like my bow tie?”

I smiled. “What, are you taking a poll?”

“It’s just … nobody seems to …” and Grand held on to both ends of it the way a clown would. I felt he was putting me on, he’d been tricking all of us, hoping to unload faulty goods at top dollar, at night. For a second, it seemed Bobby’d finally become the kind of flimflam artist he’d always admired. But the moment passed. I saw he hadn’t pulled a thing; there was no “good one.” Instead, here in direct sun—a forelock of white hair, ears seriously testing the rolled cap—sat one very old and cruelly healthy senile man. He’d once been so charming. He could no longer regulate it.

“Yes, sir. Quite a tie. ‘Seriously groovy,’ some people’d say.” (It was 1968, not that it matters.) He shifted toward our house, frowning, maybe guessing he’d just made a mistake. Toilets flushed upstairs and down—ladies discussing recent events clear of their hostess’s hearing. I thought: Poor Mother. Then decided: But poor Grand here, too. Poor all of us eventually and now.

Touching the items spread before him, he shifted these, a shell game. Grand stared at me, as if trying to recall something. Yesterday I’d avoided him at the post office; I blamed that for today’s embarrassments. He pointed my way, saying to nobody, “Look, a boy. What is he, about eighteen?”

“I’m almost seventeen.
I
am. I’m
here
. Say it to
me
. It’s Willy, Grand.”

“You seem older. Than that. And know what, buddy? You definitely look like somebody. Seems like I should know you.”

Breath failed me for a second. (A civic thought: And they’re letting him drive around in a car like this?)

Slowly I explained who I was, via my connection to him. I skipped being Bryan, I stuck with Willy.

“That a fact? Well, you know, one look at you and I someway said to myself, I said … I went … went …”

“‘Little Bobby’ …?’”

“Little Bobby! The very name. You’re smart, aren’t you? Not as smart as … Little Bobby, but smart.”

I noticed secret service men watching us from around the house. I felt furious. I considered flipping them the finger, then remembered dodging this very gentleman downtown.

So I decided to tell him a story. It was all I could think of. Keep him occupied. If he trotted back into the house, we’d have to move from Falls. I started with one of his that you know, one about a local livestock dealer.

Afterward, he sat rearranging the can, tobacco, and ring—like hoping to sell them. Soon as I finished “Lancaster’s Mule,” Grand nodded. “You must’ve told me that one before. Why’s that so familiar?”

“Because it’s yours. I mean it
was
yours, first. And see, you told me so if you ever forgot it or didn’t care about it anymore or whatever—then
I’d
remember it and tell it back to you, see?”

“Oh,” he said. “That lady is smart. She’s put about thirty tables in her front rooms and the hall, even on her landing. She’s soaking them good, I bet. (Why didn’t I think of it at
our
house that’s so empty?) Say four women eat at every table, and if she charges them, oh, maybe five bucks a head …” Grand leaned nearer suddenly, voice gone stupid, manly, matter-of-fact. He said, “I bet I can beat
you
up.”

I scouted for the detectives, suddenly glad they were near. I bet he could. I’d have a rough time hitting him back.

But Grand had already coasted past his challenge. I sat looking at him. I could. He always let you. I hated how I’d denied him in a public place. He might’ve hinted what he was doing there, copying convicts’ photographs. Maybe he’d finally found some scam, a “good one.” Now I’ll never know what Grand had in mind. And I only needed to ask. He would’ve told me.

T
HE NEXT
T
HURSDAY
, just after dawn, seeing a Packard parked sideways at the far edge of our oldest mall’s huge lot, Sheriff Wilks found Bobby Grafton in the backseat, dead. My grandfather was wearing—my parents explained later by phone—his best gray suit, one they’d forced him into for Ruth’s funeral. He’d parted his hair in the very exact middle. He had on a white shirt and blue tie, and his shoes weren’t bedroom slippers and were shined, and they matched.

It was just what Ruth once loved her Bobby to wear, and now he’d picked the outfit by himself and—as planned—on a site adjoining hers—was buried in it.

The old mall is a fairly good mall as malls go. But I really wish he hadn’t died there. I wish Little Bobby had made it out to some countryside he’d owned before selling cheap on the brink of its prospering. But then Dad reminded us how Grand’s boyhood farm—the twenty acres that his folks could not afford for long, a truck farm with its early-blooming hollyhocks—how that rested right beneath where Big Elk Browse ’n’ Buy Mall got built in ’62. Grand’s Packard found the spot, but not the place.

T
HE DAY
I learned the meaning of Lancaster’s mule, I overheard a local woman use the term downtown. Odd how that happens. You wonder what else you’ve steadily missed. I had long since left home and settled elsewhere—first Cambridge, then here in New York. I now plan to hurry toward our story’s end. I rush, compensating for an inherited tendency toward storytelling longwindedness. This is the part where you find out what Time did to everybody left alive. This is the part where you see how Stories maybe offer us a little deal-making revenge on Time.

My parents and aunts unloaded Bobby’s house four weeks after his well-attended funeral. A major selling point was the fine porch
on three sides. Suddenly it’d become “the old Grafton place.” It sold for under fifteen thou. North Carolina real estate always seems a bargain compared to Manhattan’s, but twelve-five for such a roomy, boxy home is—even by local standards—a deal and a half.

Bobby’d let the place slide at the end, and it did look fairly bad and needed paint. But, as we grumpy grandkids pointed out, it had stayed structurally sound. Why sell, and so cheap? Ruth’s good furniture was divided up. Her Aubusson carpet caused the only ugly feud. (In-laws behaved much worse than did blood relations. “I want
none
of it,” my mother said.) Nobody claimed a hideous orange chair and footstool, but everybody said somebody really should. “Though, of course, where would you
put
it?”

A young couple expecting twins bought the place. He’s chief DJ at Falls’s Easy-Listening Rock station. This made us grandkids moan the louder: Little Bobby’s heirs feel that rock should be hard, money is to enjoy, children should be seen and heard. Even a hog is wise enough to love its local life. The new owners had every right to paint our holy shrine that overly tart Williamsburgy blue—a gift-shoppe color. Driving past, I feel literally nauseated. On the front porch, near where Ruth frisked an incoming Grand for rent checks or criticized his outgoing outfits, one tastefully white plaster burro now stands, mopey, almost life-sized. Why a burro in Falls? It supports saddlebags sprouting geraniums that might or might not be real geraniums. I’ve never walked far enough into these perfect strangers’ yard to check.

For twelve-five, maybe I should’ve bought the place. But why? To do
what
with?

When Dad retired, my parents got rid of their own suburban house. They chose Bermuda, of all places, but soon admitted feeling half homesick among the hibiscus. They returned to Falls and bought a little cabin down by Indian Creek. Now they spend three months a year in our hometown, nine in Bermuda. This pleases me very much. I visit them, but only in Falls; I never set foot in dull gorgeous Bermuda. None of my New York friends can understand this.

My spoiled girl cousins have prospered and scattered; they enjoy serious careers and have kids who’re nearly done with college. Hard
to believe. My spirited girl cousins all turned out fairly great-looking. They’ve withstood the usual serial marriages. For some reason, as a group, they’re just unbelievably foul-mouthed. They remain the blond family members who look the way I think I should, but don’t … yet. They keep their hair long, professionally full around the ear area. (Our family joke and family shame.) These cousins phone me when they’re passing through New York. We meet for drinks at overpriced places, where we talk about our adored low-rent grandfather and prudish grandmother, and get positively shitfaced and cry sometimes. Round by round, our Southern accents grow humid as bad actors’, till we reel onto the sidewalk, are hit in the face by Yankee winter, then holler for taxis, our tones gone suddenly harsh as any Bronx truck drivers’. Gentility will not snag you that cab during a snowstorm at 3 a.m.

Sir, your brood is finally sophisticated enough just to enjoy you to pieces. Where are you, now we’re ready, “Ears”?

I suppose that every county in our nation once enjoyed its own terms based on famous-for-around-here characters. These phrases are like most of us in being well-known and useful but within fairly strict local limits. Language
is
like love. Whatever phrase shows the rawest life, that finds its way into our speech. Whatever terms grow ossified and fussy get chipped away. If something means enough to enough people, if it really clarifies, feels accurate, then it catches on, spreads. If our poisoned world still matters enough to enough people, then I guess they’ll keep it continuing. If not … well, not.

When I return to Falls for summer visits or Christmas, I begin to see exactly who Bobby Grafton was and wasn’t. A very homely hick kid, he longed to own nice town things; and he got some, too. He let his renters slide if they talked as well as he did. His funeral was attended by 110 black people. The guy was loved. But a crusader? Moral beacon? Ha! Quite early, I’d started seeing him whole. I drove up and down one weedy street where no soul cared to live but many did. Roofs leaked, missing windowpanes sealed shut with tinfoil and Scotch tape. The landlord of all? My ex-tenant-farmer Grand was at home on his porch rereading
True Detective
. At age fourteen or so, I and my girl cousins secretly mailed part of our allowance money
to Dr. King’s civil-rights campaign. In plain brown envelopes (at the donor’s request) we got back leaflets asking “Where Are the South’s White Leaders? To Whom Shall We Speak?” In Falls, I sometimes still hear the phrase Grand taught me at age ten. Experts claim the National Nightly News might homogenize regional quirks out of our national language. I’m glad that’s not true quite yet. I’ve heard Falls citizens apply “crazy as Lancaster’s mule” to myself as a part-time radical graduate student, to myself during a brief intense early partnership with a woman who wanted my heirloom ears “cosmetically pinned”; I’ve heard it describe my second marriage to a person “rich enough to start a foundation, old enough to be your mother.” I’m comforted, knowing that a term coined mid-hog auction in 1890 still pertains.

Lately, the phrase grows more and more appropriate. Maybe, like me, you read the papers. I sometimes look up from a particularly rancid front page; I scan the air packed before my face. Say I’ve read about some group blowing up a plane with passengers and the terrorists themselves inside it. I shake my head the way Little Bobby would. I go, “People now … the world now—I swear to God, crazy as Lancaster’s mule.”

I know my tone might seem that of someone fairly provincial, somebody well over thirty-nine. But here in the city, many nights I feel like a perpetual outlander. To Bobby, this city—its onyx towers, crystal towers—might look as alien as Mars. My apartment is on the fortieth floor. I sit watching skyscraper lights come on. I sometimes feel very old here. Especially at the end of an office day, with tonight’s news smudging my hands.

I’m not the first to notice: it’s dangerous, what’s happening. I mean, something’s wrong, so
off
. We must all be very very careful.