Recessional: A Novel (42 page)

But just as she was about to dismiss her fears about a lurking danger, she saw in the gray twilight a sudden flash of iridescence and the appearance of a hideous, triangular head with gaping mouth attacking her nest and catching one of her babies—the chick’s head deep within the jaw, with the rest of the small body dangling out.

When the mother heron uttered a loud cry, her mate came rushing
through the savanna grass, aware that disaster of some kind had struck. Without hesitation the male heron leaped right at the rattler’s head, striking it with his long, incredibly sharp beak, while the mother heron took her stance near the nestlings and launched her attack on the extended body of the snake. Neither heron accomplished much, for the rattler was able to slither his body so adroitly that the long spikes of the birds’ beaks missed their marks. Freed for a moment, the snake started his reluctant retreat, with his mouth immobilized by the long legs of the half-eaten bird dangling from it, but the herons continued their attack until the battleground had moved a safe distance from the nest. The mother bird, satisfied that she had repulsed the invader with the loss of only one chick, returned to the nest to protect the other four from any other assailant who might attack in the confusion. She had finished with the rattler, gratified that she had at least once sunk her powerful beak into some portion of his cold body.

But the male heron, the inheritor since birth of a fear of the dreadful snake that could destroy an entire nestful of young birds, maintained his attack on the retreating foe, stabbing at wherever the grass was moving and trying to anticipate where the reptile would next be visible in the fading light.

Rattler now had a new set of problems. His raid had started as a success, but now, as he tried to retreat, other herons flew in to assist the original pair and he found himself assaulted from all sides. Some of the flashing beaks were beginning to do damage along the entire length of his body. Frightened, he managed to dispatch signals to all segments, and when they responded, he was able to slither in a dozen different directions at once, confusing the birds and allowing him to make his momentary escape into the deep grass near the Heronry.

He had, however, not counted on the fury of the male herons, who showed no signs of halting their attacks. Pursuing him as he tried to hide in the grass, they stabbed at him incessantly until he realized with horror that he ran a real risk of being killed. His problem was that a heron was built in such a way that there was no vulnerable spot for a snake to attack. The bird’s plump torso, normally an inviting target, was covered with slithery feathers which his fangs could not penetrate, so attack in that direction was futile. Even more discouraging were the thin legs of herons, not the fleshy targets customary on other animals but tall spindly sticks composed mostly of
gristle and bone, impervious to attack. In no sense was Rattler dominating this fight.

As the menacing beaks continued to torment him, he sensed a rabbit nearby and, searching instinctively for this tasty morsel, found its warren, a deep hole in the ground. Trusting that the cavern would be big enough to hide his full length, he darted into the hole and terrified two rabbits who were living there. Fortunately for them, the warren had another exit through which they fled, aware that they had looked directly into the eyes of death not six inches from them.

The herons, frustrated but aware of where the snake was hiding, maintained a watch over the warren, and in this manner the long night ended, with the birds having protected their nest with only a minor loss. Through the heat of the following day Rattler remained in the warren, slowly digesting the baby heron and dozing off at intervals. The warren was cramped and his huddled position uncomfortable, but he had no alternative except to stay until the fierce noonday sun began to leave the sky and the protection of a cooler evening approached.

Finally, when darkness provided at least a minimum of cover, the great snake edged his head out of the warren, found the air properly cool and the light minimal, and was encouraged to drag his entire nine and a half feet out into the late twilight. Remaining in the grassy area for as long as possible, he came at last to the spot from which he must make a dash across the barren ground, but at this moment a seagull, that rowdy scavenger of the sky, spotted him and raised a commotion, which brought back the herons. For fifteen desperate minutes a deadly fight exploded on the edge of the grass, with needlelike beaks slashing at the exposed snake and his poison fangs striving to find a target. But as darkness deepened, the herons were satisfied that they had repulsed their enemy and were content to let him escape.

A full twenty-four hours after leaving his den on his perilous expedition. Rattler waited till the herons flew off, then ventured gingerly out onto the barren land. Drawing upon all parts of his enormous body, he slithered as fast as he had ever done across the sandy soil, still heated from the daytime exposure to the sun, and with a final burst of speed left the dangerous open ground, sought the grassy area around the Emerald Pool and almost dived with relief into his rocky den.

The food he had obtained at the Heronry would last him for about two weeks, in which time he might catch a rabbit or some small ground animal whose body would provide nourishment for some additional days, but inexorably the time would come when he would once more have to go foraging. And as the bulldozers continued to lay waste the savanna, the area in which he was free to operate grew smaller and smaller. Every day the space required for the new condominiums attached to the Palms constricted the domain he had terrorized for so many decades, but, like any astute elder statesman, he would face that problem when he had to. In the meantime he needed sleep.

Because John Taggart had decided, early in his business career, never to tolerate social discrimination in any form, the Palms had an interesting mix of the American population, encompassing all the groups sometimes excluded by similar retirement centers: Jews, blacks and, especially in his western establishments, Orientals. Thus the Palms housed three black couples, one mixed marriage and everyone’s friend and confidant, Judge Lincoln Noble, a widower. The selection of staff was also color-blind: the cooks were evenly divided between black and white, male and female; the nurses in Health tended to be female and black but there were also many whites; and the dining room waiters were again about evenly mixed between the races and the sexes.

There had never been, in the history of the Palms, any discord between the groups, partly because top management would not allow it to develop, not even in whispers, and partly because any black worker or resident could see that one of the powers in the organization was Nurse Nora Varney, who could spot and then neutralize any incipient trouble. If some black waitress felt that she was unjustly getting the more difficult tables to serve, she had to take her complaint to Nora Varney, who listened patiently and tried to clear the difficulty. If, however, the complaint was unwarranted and had nothing to do with race, the big black woman would amiably tell the girl: “I can point to three white girls who have table assignments just like yours. Next session you’ll get one of the better ones.”

In the kitchen there was a demon pastry chef, worth his weight in platinum, a black fellow twenty-six years old whose father and uncle had been pastry chefs in Tampa restaurants. Luther Black was a tall
young man, attractively slim and blessed with a disposition that kept him smiling most of the time. He had a fund of rural Southern sayings with which he salted his animated conversation: “as nervous as a long-tailed cat on a porch filled with rocking chairs” and “my doughnuts started out all right but I must have deep-fried them in rancid bear fat instead of Crisco.” He was such a treasure in the kitchen that Ken Krenek had quietly given him a series of raises in pay and increased authority.

Among the personnel who appreciated his unusual qualities was one of the high school waitresses, who saw in him a charming, stable young man who was bound to go far in whatever branch of the food business he elected to work in. She was especially impressed by his steadiness, because she was the daughter of a broken family commonly classified as “po’ white trash.” Her father was a feckless South Carolina cracker who had abandoned his wife and children and contributed nothing to their upbringing. As early as possible, she had fled what she called “our ratty dump,” had emigrated to Florida by herself and found both employment and a good high school. Lurline White was a survivor, a tough-skinned Southern girl, eighteen years old and determined never to slip backward into the kind of life represented by her pitiful father and her miserable mother.

As she moved among the tables, ingratiating herself with everyone and doing twice as much of the heavy labor of toting and distributing dishes loaded with food as the others, she became recognized as “the best of the lot,” and Krenek secretly slipped her bonuses. One afternoon he promised that if she continued to work at the Palms after graduation, he would see that she was promoted to one of the major jobs: “Lurline, you could be the mistress of the entire dining room. And if you handle that properly, as I know you would, one of the big hotels on the beach would want you. Think it over.”

On the evening he told her this, she returned to the miserable room she shared with two other white girls, who were then at their jobs as waitresses in bars, and sat alone, contemplating the bright future Krenek had painted. When she saw that she truly had a chance to escape the wretched life she had known up to now, she started to cry. She thought: Thank God for Mr. Krenek. Thank God that he saw how hard I was working.

Then, as she sat on the edge of her bed, for the room had no table and the two chairs were piled with clothes because it had no closets either, she dried her eyes and coolly surveyed her life. She was confident
she would do well as a worker because she had always been industrious and competent. But what about her personal life? She thought: I want a family—a real family! With the help of God, I want a husband who’s loving and strong and who will help support the kids. Not like Daddy. Daddy…why did I have such a rotten father!

Eleven o’clock came and she still had not turned on the light to do tomorrow’s homework in math, for she was deep into more vital problems. As she reflected on her parents’ failed marriage, to be blamed mostly on her worthless father, it seemed natural that her thoughts turned to Luther Black, the pastry chef with the winning personality, who was the exact opposite of her father. He was strong where her father had been weak. He liked people while her father had been a surly brute. In thinking romantically about Luther, she did not once consider the staggering problem that he was black and she white; she had progressed in her evaluation of life far beyond the traditions of her parents, who referred to blacks most often as “those goddamned niggers.”

She kicked off her shoes and started to undress for bed. But then, because she knew that it was obligatory for her to maintain a high grade average so that her high school record would look good—and she might even want to go to college—she got out of bed, turned on the light, cleared one of the chairs of its pile of clothes and tackled the beautiful mystery of:

4x + 2y = 22

 x + 2y = 16

Subtracting the bottom equation from the top, she saw that the y’s canceled out, leaving her with the final equation 3x = 6, or 2 for the value of x, 7 for y. Triumphantly, she placed the clothes back on the chair, turned off the light and fell asleep.

In the morning she faced the ticklish problem of how to hint to her pastry chef that she would not be averse to any interest in her that he might want to express, and when she gave rather blatant signals to which he did not respond, she found the courage to tell him one afternoon: “They say that the old Marx Brothers film
A Night at the Opera
is very funny. Maybe we ought to give it a try?”

Luther Black had been aware for some time that the blond waitress from Central High was not only one of the best but was also interested
in him, but to what extent and within what limitations he could not guess. He knew her primarily as a girl who had moved down from South Carolina, a state with Old South traditions on which he did not wish to trespass. He knew further that he had bright prospects at the Palms, and he could not anticipate how the management would look upon one of their black employees daring to date a white girl. He had therefore carefully refrained from sending Miss White any reciprocating signals, but he did have to laugh at the position in which he found himself: “Mr. Black, very black, disturbed about Miss White, very white. Fate gotta have a hand in a mess like this.”

But now that she had broken the ice he felt differently: She’s the best of the lot, by far, and I’d be proud to escort her to the movies. Then a more serious thought struck him: I’m the best cook in these parts. I can get me a job whenever I want one. So if Krenek and Zorn don’t like me dating one of their white girls, let them fire me, and to hell with them. He told Lurline on her next visit to the kitchen: “Hey, let’s take a look at that movie,” and boldly they did.

The couple was astounded at the way the Palms reacted to their courtship. Krenek and Zorn barely noticed; they took it as a matter of course that their attractive waitresses would date boy waiters and kitchen staff. The dining room patrons, knowing what an exceptional young woman Lurline was, expressed their pleasure that she had found a young man. There must have been some among the many couples in Gateways whose inherited prejudices made a black-white romance a bit difficult to accept, but since they were aware that voicing any opposition would be contrary to the center’s policy, they said nothing.

When the courtship intensified and the day came when a wedding could be announced the Palms swung into maximum activity. The older women, especially the widows, greeted the news with delight; many remembered their wedding day fifty or sixty years ago as the most meaningful day in their lives. “So much depended on it,” one widow said. “It was the beginning of my real life, and a day as sacred as that ought to be celebrated with pomp and joy.”