“Captain Cage, when you going to take me fishing?” Ben asks.
“One day soon, when I finish a boat, we’ll go shark fishing.” I wrap my arm around his little waist and hold him upside down. “We’ll go after the god of the great whites.”
“What does God look like?” Ben says when his feet hit the ground.
“Hmm.” I bend down and peer into his little face, big eyes and bangs. “That’s a tough one. Can’t say that I’ve ever seen him. Have you?”
Ben nods, his face serious.
“Really?” I glance up at Virginia, who looks puzzled.
“I think I saw him when he was putting me together,” Ben says.
“You’re going to be a poet, little man.” I laugh.
“What did God look like?” his mother asks.
“A big friendly polar bear,” Ben says with a solemn face.
“I don’t know where he gets these ideas.” Virginia sighs. “But he’s sure had a lot of funny ones since you started taking him fishing.”
“Children are closer to God because they have more recently sprung from the eternal source,” I say.
Virginia nods uncertainly. “Come on, Ben, we’re going to be late for school. I’ll see you later, Cage.”
“Absolutely.” I ruffle the boy’s sandy hair. “Bye bye, Ben.”
“Catch you later, Captain.”
Inside Coffin’s the plethora of hardware along the walls and shelves, all the colored boxes, is a testament to the ingenuity of man. Since flint was first flaked, man has devised thousands of tools for thousands of purposes. I mean to put many of them to good use on my trip through the vale of tears. I fill a shopping cart with wrenches, vise grips, crowbars and screwdrivers, a power saw, and a package of sanding belts and then order marine paint and lumber to be loaded in the truck.
Bill Tanner glances up from the invoice. “You sure you’re not getting carried away there, Cage?”
“Got a lot of work going on at Slade Cottages.” I feel bad about charging all this to the Slade account but I’ll cover it in time with the rent on the Blake and Treadwell houses because they aren’t due for another two weeks.
“What’s Slade making that wants thirty gallons of marine paint?” Tanner asks.
“That’s for my boats. He owes me for a job and we’re squaring it with paint. Sort of tax-free barter.”
Tanner looks at me for a long second, then punches a calculator and says, “Three thousand four hundred and sixty-three and change.”
“Got to run,” I say, signing the bill.
“So little time. So much to do?” Tanner smiles.
“Clocks.” I tap the face of my watch. “My grandfather called them the reductio ad absurdum of all human experience.”
“Way down South?” Tanner says.
“Away down South in Dixie.”
No one is at the Folgers’, which is perfect because I want to finish the job before they return and surprise them. It would take most carpenters eight hours to complete the deck but I’m moving in double time, sawing and nailing with no wasted motion, improvising lyrics to the tune of a John Prine song: “Jesus was a carpenter. The best trim m-a-n along the Jordan River. When Jesus hit the zone, an angelic look upon his face, the crew would begin to moan, ’cause they couldn’t keep the pace.” The last board’s in place by one. I realize I haven’t eaten anything all day but a bowl of Grape-Nuts, so I throw the tools in the truck and stop at Bartlett Farm to buy a carton of lemon pasta and fruit, which I eat in the sunshine sitting on a railroad tie by the front door. I nod and smile at the housewives going into the big greenhouse to shop. The sight of their legs in shorts fills me with longing, so I decide to head into town to Sylvia’s house.
At the junction of Bartlett and the road to town I pause and think of everything I have to do: finish the fence behind the Caldwells’, reshingle the hole in the roof of the Congdons’, hang a door in the Ellises’ cottage, and overhaul the sloop in two weeks so I can sell it and cover all the checks. There are so many checks. A mountain of debt. But surmountable. I haven’t climbed a mountain since the funeral.
Suddenly I remember my first big hike. I can see Dad’s canvas backpack bobbing in front of me as we climbed up the side of Roan Mountain. I can taste the horseradish and American cheese and white-bread sandwiches that Mom made for us. Twenty years ago. Before we knew what to eat. Where does the time go? Time is a river, flowing into nowhere. So little time, so much to do. I look out the windshield at the wide world. There’s not a cloud in the sky, an infinite expanse of blue nothingness, and the sky’s the limit. I’m about to turn toward town, go hang the Ellises’ door, when I see a black girl hitching the other way and I turn toward Cisco to pick her up.
“Thanks,” she says, climbing in.
“Well, you’re mighty welcome, young wayfarer.”
She giggles.
“Where you going this fine day?”
“Madaket. I missed my ride.” She looks at me and smiles, then looks at the pile of papers on the floor of the truck. “Where are you going?”
“Ah, where are we going, where do we come from—these are the eternal questions that have haunted us from time immemorial. They’ll haunt us until the end of time.”
Her laugh is like a horse whinny. Her hair’s cut close to her head and she’s wearing blue jeans and a loose sweatshirt. A chambermaid, probably studying in Boston to be a biochemist. “That’s funny.”
“As it happens, I’m going near Madaket myself.”
“Great.” She smiles again. “My lucky day. If I don’t make it out there by two I’ll lose my job. My name’s Sarah.”
“Cage.” Driving, I quiz her about herself, twenty questions, and sure enough she’s studying to be a doctor, a serious and heroic young girl, worth an hour out of my way. I tell her that I wanted to be a big businessman, almost got a double L.L.B./M.B.A., but in the end I couldn’t focus on the books and got terrible headaches. Sarah frowns sympathetically. I picture her mother at home in the projects, happy for her daughter to take a working summer in Nantucket, home of the first free blacks in the country. Sarah knows all about Absalom Boston, the black whaling captain.
“Imagine when you walked down the streets of Nantucket a hundred and fifty years ago.” I become excited by the vision. “It wasn’t a homogeneous sea of white folks back then. It was truly cosmopolitan. Sailors from around the world. Polynesians with tattoos from head to foot. Chinese. Africans. Brits and frogs.”
“I’d have liked to see that,” she says. “There’s the house. Thanks for the ride, Cage. I really enjoyed meeting you.”
“You, too, Sarah. See ya.”
Turning the truck around, I watch her get a mop and a bucket from a van in front of the big beach house. At the junction that leads back to the main road I look at the waves shimmering in the sunshine and decide to take a quick swim before crossing the island to the Ellises’ house.
1965
F
ountain City, a suburb of Knoxville. A sunny Easter Sunday. A tract of identical ranch homes on barren lawns ringing naked Tennessee hills only fifty years before enshrouded by primeval oak forest. The rectory was distinguished from its duplicates by the front door, which Margaret had painted a deep maroon, and by the lush beds of hydrangeas, lilies, and roses that she had planted along the red-brick walls. In the days before child car seats Margaret, twenty-seven, pretty with waves of thick, dark hair, a wide smile, and a slight gap between her front teeth, pulled a ’60 Ford station wagon into the driveway. The heavy passenger door swung open, pushed by a pair of little legs, and out came Cage, five, followed by Nick, four, both wearing pale blue collarless blazers over white polo shirts and navy shorts, white knee socks, and black and white saddle oxfords. They ran screaming up the concrete sidewalk holding red wicker baskets full of plastic grass and painted eggs. Margaret, unlocking the door, said, “Change your clothes first thing, sweet boys.”
Back in their room the boys peeled off their church clothes, leaving them in a heap, and put on green dungarees, long-sleeved cotton T-shirts, and red sneakers, which Cage had to tie for Nick. In the living room Cage turned on a small black-and-white TV and began to flick the channels slowly, until their mother shouted, not unkindly, from the back of the house, “Turn that off right now and go outside. It’s a beautiful day.” Still in a dark linen skirt and matching top with three big buttons leading up to a flat collar, she came out and stood where the carpet of the living room met the parquet of the dining area to watch through the sliding glass doors her boys running to the swing set.
She turned to the front window. A white Corvair, the two-door coupe Ralph Nader would declare unsafe at any speed, pulled into the driveway behind the wagon. The handsome young rector, whom the women of the church all agreed could pass for that Virginian movie star Gregory Peck, had come from locking up the Church of the Good Shepherd, a new, small A-frame with forty-foot-high triangular windows on both ends, a mission parish in the young suburbs of Knoxville.
“Jesus loves me, yes I know,” Nick was singing on the swing set while Cage was poking a stick through the chain-link fence, trying to draw the attention of an old Lab that was sleeping in the shade of its doghouse.
“Mama says don’t bother Scout,” Nick said. “The Campbells don’t like it.”
“I’m not bothering it,” Cage said.
“Yes, you are.” Nick leaned forward, swinging up, propelling himself higher.
Cage threw the stick over the fence and it landed a few feet from the old dog, which did not stir. Nick said, “Mama might see you.”
Cage shrugged his shoulders, held an invisible machine gun, and swept the dog’s yard with bullets. “
Ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch!
”
Margaret watched them through the plate glass.
“Hello, honey,” Frank said, coming in through the front door. He crossed the carpet and kissed her. “What mischief are they up to now?”
“Just being boys.” She slid an arm around his back. “When girls are born, they know immediately what the universe is all about. Dolls. Babies. But boys . . .”
Outside, Cage was shooting Nick, who lobbed a grenade down from the apogee of the swing.
“. . . just want to destroy everything,” she murmured.
Nick fell out of the swing and lay dead on the grass.
The young priest smiled, wrapping his arm around her. “Like
Lord of the Flies
?”
“Like the nuclear arms race,” she said.
“I was a child of the Depression. You were a child of world war. They’ll grow up under that shadow.” Frank slid his hand up her side and cupped her breast. “It will work out all right.”
Margaret kissed him deeply and pulled away. “I better start dinner.”
Franklin went to their bedroom and changed into a pair of khakis and a gray sweatshirt. Passing through the kitchen to the backyard, he pinched Margaret’s bottom. Outside, the boys were digging fortifications in the sandbox, manning trenches with green and gray plastic soldiers.
“Hey, Dad,” Cage said.
“
Kboo!
” Nick made an explosive sound and threw a handful of dirt on the German front line. “Papa!”
“Who’s winning?” Franklin hunkered on his heels at the edge of the sandbox.
“The Americans.” Cage pointed at a green soldier. “Are there any Germans in Knoxville?”
“Plenty. There are lots of German Americans. They’re our friends.” Franklin tousled Cage’s hair.
“Why didn’t you stay in the army, Daddy?” Cage asked.
“Because that’s no way to live.”
“Did you fight Germans?” Nick picked up a gray soldier.
“No. There was no war when I was in the army, thank God.”
“God doesn’t like war?” Cage asked.
“No, son.” Franklin pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
“Why doesn’t God stop war?” Cage asked.
“Because he lets men have free will, son. He lets men do what they want to do.”
“Even if they are bad men?”
“Especially bad men.” Franklin put a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it.
“Do you know some bad men?” Nick asked, cuddling up to his father.
“I met some in the army.” Franklin laughed and picked Nick up by the waist and raised him high in the air.
Margaret came out on the porch, an apron over her dress, and called out musically, “Cage and Ni-ick, come to diin-ner!”
Franklin brushed the sand off the boys and followed them into a bathroom off the carport, where they washed their hands and faces before going into the kitchen. He went off to work on his tax return while Margaret served the boys. At the end of the meal she said, “All right, little men, it’s time to take your baths.”
“No, Mama, we took baths before church.” Cage slipped from his chair to the floor. Nick was silent, watching Cage, then his mother, then Cage again.
“Cage, you’re filthy. Of course you have to take a bath.” She called to Frank from the swinging door.
“Not fair! Two baths is not fair.” Cage was stomping on the linoleum, lifting his knees high and dropping his feet down hard, circling the kitchen table. “Not fair!”
Margaret put a hand to her temple, crimped the flesh of her forehead against her nose. Nick frowned and held out his arms. Cage kept stomping around the table. Again Margaret called out, “Frank!” She looked over at Nick, who was still reaching for her with both arms, and smiled at him, lifting the boy from his chair and setting him against her hip.
“Cage Malone,” Frank’s voice boomed. “Control yourself right now.”
Cage stood still and cried out vehemently, “Not fair.”