'I
know,' she said.
She
reached out her hand. I saw it coming in slow- motion. She reached out her fine
and delicate hand and she touched my ugly, stumpy, fat-fingered hand.
'I
heard,' she said softly. 'I'm sorry.'
'Thank
you,' I said, and I really meant it. Someone important to me, someone other
than my ma had expressed their sadness about something that in its own way had
tortured me silently.
'Your
ma's okay?' she asked.
I
nodded. 'She's coping.'
Caroline
smiled understandingly and withdrew her hand.
Benny
brought sodas. We drank silently, and for all the world to see we could have
known each other for a thousand years.
It
was an important moment, a profound moment, a moment I would remember for years
to come. Caroline Lanafeuille was the first, and in some way she would be the
last, though the significance of that I would not understand until I believed I
was going to die.
'I've
seen you here a lot,' she said. 'You always sit on your own.'
I
shrugged non-committally.
'Where's
Nathan?'
I
frowned. I was unaware of the fact that we were so well known together.
'With
his folks I s'pose.'
'So
when you come down here you should come talk to us,' she said.
I smiled
and shook my head. 'Don't see as how I'd fit in with half a dozen girls,' I
replied.
She
nodded. 'So perhaps you should just come talk to me.'
I
felt myself blush. It seemed to please her.
She
smiled. 'So that's settled then… when you're down here and I'm here too then
you come talk to me, okay?'
'Okay,'
I said, and in that second I wanted to tell her everything - of the picture,
the Journal of Endeavor, of how I had longed and hoped and prayed that she
would speak to me just once. And now she was telling me it was okay.
It
really was okay.
She
stayed a little while - ten, perhaps fifteen minutes - and then she rose
slowly, gracefully, from her seat and said she would have to go home.
'I'll
walk you,' I said.
'Thank
you, Daniel,' she replied, and I did. I walked her home, and though it took the
best part of twenty minutes, and though I don't believe more than a dozen words
passed between us, it was the most memorable walk of my life.
Arriving
at her house she thanked me for being a gentleman, and she reminded me that she
would be at Benny's the following Wednesday.
'So
you come talk to me, okay?'
'Agreed,'
I said.
She
held out her hand. We shook.
'Agreed,'
she said, and then she passed through the gate at the foot of the path leading
to her house.
At
the door she paused, and then she turned, and she tilted her head and sort of
half-smiled.
I
raised my hand. I smiled. She disappeared.
I
floated home that night, floated three feet from terra firma with my head in
the clouds.
I was
nineteen years old, and I did see her again the following week, and two days
after that in fact, and the subsequent day as well.
When
she stood near me I could smell Bazooka Joe bubble gum and toothpaste. When she
held my hand I felt something moving inside me. Something cool and quiet and
special.
She
spoke with a Southern accent - pronounced and lyrical - and when she talked it
sounded like the words of a song.
She
was so different from the other girls I knew. She read a lot, things by
Hemingway and Robert Frost, and she quoted lines from something called 'Song of
Myself' by Walt Whitman.
I had
watched her from afar for so long, but never
really
spoken to her. Two
weeks became three, and I felt she was the only girl I had ever really shared
my thoughts and dreams with, the only girl who ever gave me the feeling she
understood something of who I was.
And
then there was a day, a day in August, and she came to me that day, came
walking towards me as I crossed the Nine Mile Road, and there was something in
her expression that told me she'd been looking. The sun was high and hot, and I
could see the fine gloss of sweat across her top lip. I wanted to kiss it away.
I remember thinking that, and for some reason the thought did not embarrass me.
I felt settled somehow, and when she walked beside me it didn't matter that she
was there, that she was a girl, that she was pretty or funny or interesting.
She was just there.
I
remember feeling a sense of accomplishment, but there was no vanity or pride or
self-aggrandizement. I felt I could be myself.
And
though we had spent so much time together, though we'd shared things that would
never transpire between myself and any other, she could never have guessed the
depth to which I'd loved her… and for so long.
That
day in August Caroline Lanafeuille came to find me because
she
wanted
to.
That
was the most important thing.
'Daniel,'
she said, and she reached out and touched my hand.
I
smiled. 'Caroline… how goes it?'
'It
goes,' she said, and her voice was a whisper.
'What
you up to?'
'I
came to find you,' she said.
'So
you found me.'
'I
did,' she replied.
And
then she touched my hand again, and this time she held it, and we walked for a
while saying nothing much of anything at all.
And
yet despite this, despite this sense of having arrived, I did not think of
touching her. I did not think of her skin, the arch of her neck, the curve and
dip of her hip or thigh. I did not think of the smooth, tanned silk of her
back, the slender ankle, the short white sock or the cream-colored pump. I did
not think of a midnight rendezvous in the back of a Chevrolet Impala, I did not
think of breaking a sweat, of fumbling in the semi-darkness with buttons or
bows or bra-clips.
Caroline
Lanafeuille just walked alongside me down Nine Mile Road, and everything was
alright.
Without
a thought in my head, I smiled.
We walked
for an hour, a little more perhaps, and then she slowed and stopped.
I
slowed with her. She faced me, held both my hands, and there was something in
her eyes that told me something was making its way towards me. Something that
possessed sharp corners and rough edges.
'I
have to go now,' she said.
'But…'
'I'll
come see you later. I'll come see you at your house, okay?'
The
way she looked told me not to ask anything. I nodded, smiled as best I could,
and watched as she walked away once more.
Seemed
like I'd spent almost every hour of every day with her for a month. She'd
laughed at my stories, we'd gone skinny-dipping in Lake Marion. She'd even met
Nathan and thought him handsome and bright and charming. She'd met my ma, my ma
had thought her delightful and witty and one-in-a-million, and when Ma had made
baked ham sandwiches she'd made them for two.
That,
and that alone, made Caroline Lanafeuille almost family.
And
yet despite all these things, these special moments and magic hours, I did not
believe she loved me as I loved, and
had
loved, her.
I
tried to believe, Lord knows I tried.
Perhaps
I did not know what I was trying for.
It
was like climbing a mountain, overwhelmingly high, and as I reached each
visible peak I found another taller peak beyond it.
It
was a good time, that month or so, and it concluded that night… suddenly,
unexpectedly… a sense of beautiful tragedy.
I
lost my virginity on August 17th 1965.
I stood
on the back porch of my house. The verandah ran along the side and turned the
corner, but the back door possessed its own steps down to the yard. From where
I stood I could see the road that ran all the way to the Lake. I was thinking
of Nathan. I had not seen him for two or three days, and then I remembered he
had gone with his father to Charleston. Reverend Verney was on the fall
testimonials, a series of gatherings he held for two or three weeks each year.
Folks would come from all over to hear Reverend Verney speak in Charleston. He
was a good speaker, he commanded an audience, and when you slipped a dollar or
two in that solid silver collection plate it sometimes felt like a fee for a
performance. Folks down here appreciated a preacher breaking a sweat in church,
and Reverend Verney broke a sweat that would have carried Noah home.
I saw
Caroline before she turned off the road and started down the path. I saw her
through the trees, her white summer cotton frock, her shoulder-length hair, the
breeze flicking it up around her face. She really was a beautiful girl.
When
she turned the corner and saw me she waved.
In
that moment I seemed to feel something I could never hope to describe.
It
was an awareness, a perception, that something would both begin and end today.
I
waved back.
She
smiled, and though she looked like the same Caroline Lanafeuille there was
something in her expression, something in her eyes, that told me something was
different.
She
reached out and took my hand as I came down the back porch steps. She sort of
pulled me towards her and kissed my cheek.
I
asked her how she was.
She
said she was fine, just fine.
She
asked if we could sit on the verandah swing.
I
nodded, said I'd fetch some lemonade and bring it out.
She
turned and walked towards the side of the house.
I
watched her go, why I don't know, but I did, and when she reached the corner of
the house she suddenly slowed and glanced back. She had expected to see me disappearing
into the house, perhaps just the screen door closing behind me. The fact that I
was still standing there surprised her. She smiled, and then she frowned, and
then she sort of shooed me into the house like one would shoo a cat or a dog.
The
lemonade was cool; chunks of ice floated on the top and clinked against the
glasses as I walked back the way I'd come. The sound was like one of those
delicate wind- chimes you would find in bedroom windows.
I
went up onto the verandah and sat beside Caroline. She took the glass and
sipped. She sipped like a bird. She pursed her lips and kissed the lip of the
glass and you would imagine she could drink nothing that way. She did these
things, these special little things, and it was for reasons such as these that
I loved her.
'I'm
leaving Greenleaf,' she said.
She
came out with it like that.
Like
a stone had dropped from the evening sky right into my lap.
The
only thing I could ever remember being so sudden was in Benny's. Nathan had
roundhoused Marty Hooper and he flat-fuck fell to the ground. Boom. Down.
And
it was like that.
Bang.
I'm leaving Greenleaf.
'Leaving?'
I remember asking.
She
nodded, turned away for just a moment, and when she turned back there were
tears in her eyes.
'There's
been a little trouble,' she said. 'My daddy's gotten himself in a little
trouble, Daniel.'
She
always called me Daniel. Never Danny or Dan or Danno like the others did.
Always Daniel.
She
paused as if to catch her breath, and then she reached out and held my hand.