Without intending to do so, I raised Birdie's tweed coat to my face, then immediately felt foolish. I must lay aside my weak sentiments, I told myself. Birdie and Mickey were waiting for their coats, and I had a meal to complete. I removed my face quickly from the folds of Birdie's coat, but not before I had caught its scent, a faintly spicy odor as of woodsmoke and crushed bayberry.
The thought crossed my mind that the garments of the Old Testament priests, as they prepared sweet incense for the holy place, must have smelled like this. As I turned to leave Thomas's bedroom, I heard Mickey say, “Maybe she decided to take a nap in there,” and I noted that the aroma of baking bread was beginning to fill the house.
It is no great wonder to me that Leo Tolstoy could write so long a book as
War and Peace
; rather, I marvel that it is so short. I had hoped by the end of this month, July, to have completed my story, but I feel that it has scarcely begun. In the writing of each chapter, I find myself engaged in a battle. Perhaps other writers struggle similarly. I do not know. It is as though my heart is swollen with my story. I feel that I must set it down upon paper, and quickly, or I will surely break open and fly apart. Curiously, I imagine my heart as a fordhook lima bean allowed to soak too long and thus bursting its jacket. The metaphor perplexes me, for I do not like fordhooks. They are too large and lack the flavor of the baby lima. Furthermore, I see no relationship between a bean and the composing of a manuscript.
My battle is this: As I tell my story, I am impeded, first, by the sheer magnitude of material I wish to record and, second, by a proclivity for detail. No sooner do I set about to describe a simple interaction between Birdie Freeman and me than I realize it is not at all simple. Each incident is rich and expansive, teeming with sensory impressions and intersecting my life at many points. It cannot be condensed; or perhaps I mean that to condense it would minimize its role in my life, would blur the story, would verge on desecration. Yet I fight within myself.
I must include this fact. No, it is of no ultimate consequence in the larger story. But it is, for it is as a subtle shading in a fine painting. No, you must omit it. I cannot, for it adorns the whole
.
Moreover, I have woven other stories into my story of Birdie, and those, too, must be told. My path has diverged into many. In rereading parts of my manuscript, for example, I see that I have abandoned Thomas's cousin Joan for many pages, leaving unresolved her dilemma concerning Virgil Dunlop, the teacher at Berea Middle School with whom she had developed a friendship; indeed, I see that I carelessly failed even to complete the account of our telephone conversation in which she asked my opinion of him.
I clearly recall Joan's final remarks in that conversation: “Of course, I could never
marry
someone with a name like Virgil Dunlop. Can't you just imagine it? Joan Spalding Dunlop. People would think I was a sporting goods heiress or something. Everybody would expect me to be an expert at all the racket sports.” She had attempted a laugh, but it had punctured and gone flat. “Besides,” she had said, trying for an offhanded manner, “he wouldn't have me. He already as much as told me that. âI'm looking for somebody who knows the Lord' is how he put it.” When I did not reply, she had concluded our conversation with a tone of false brightness. “And we all know I don't qualify in that category!”
Between the time of our dinner at the Field Pea Restaurant in November and Birdie's coming to my house with a new set of dishes in December, I had spoken to Joan by telephone one other time and had accompanied her only a week earlier, on December 10, to a concert in Greenville by a touring brass quintet from New England who called themselves the Gateway Five.
As after any other performance, we went to the Second Cup Coffee Shop, where she composed her newspaper critique. My contribution, as with all musical concerts, was largely confined to suggestions concerning diction, for she possessed a broad understanding of music.
Though disinclined to ready displays of affection, Mayfield Spalding had given his daughter something of value, something that she had never interpreted as an act of love, though I have attempted from time to time to instruct her in this matter. From the time Joan was six years old, her father had engaged teachers for her in piano and later violin. He had monitored her practice sessions in the evenings and had attended every recital in which Joan had played, though, according to her, he had always sat in the back row and then, after she played, had left and waited for her in the car. She continued her study of piano and violin through college. Even now she plays in the community orchestra in Greenville and has a standing invitation as guest soloist at the Fiddlin' Fair, which closes the annual Hayride Festival in Clinton.
The Gateway Five performed a repertoire astounding, I thought, in its variety, especially considering the fact that the concert was in December, thereby leading one to believe that the program would consist of Christmas music. This was not the case; the pieces ranged from Baroque fugues to transcriptions of standard orchestral works to ethnic dances. In her description of a stunningly discordant passage in a twentieth-century piece, Joan used the word
rambunctious
, for which I recommended a more aurally precise substitution:
bellicose
. She nodded as she made the change. In another sentence I suggested that she utilize the adjective
confluent
to describe the merging of two melodies in counterpoint. Again, she did so.
Though Joan made mention of Virgil Dunlop only once during the evening, I knew that she still thought of him often. As we sat at the Second Cup after the concert, she asked if I thought the trombonist of the Gateway Five was as technically proficient as the other four players. In fact, I did not. Though my ear is not trained in the finer aspects of brass instrumental techniques, I believe that I possess a keen sense of hearing and a naturally discriminating ear for musical quality. I had detected a want of facility and crispness in certain exposed passages by the trombonist, who was a rather gaunt man with a beaklike nose and long wisps of wiry gray hair that fanned out stiffly behind his ears as if from an electrical charge. He looked to me like a character from Washington Irving's imagination, a kinsman of Rip Van Winkle, perhaps.
Joan scribbled a sentence or two, then paused to stare at the plastic cap of her Bic ball-point pen. “Virgil said he used to play the trombone in high school,” she said. She wrote two or three more words and then looked up again, pressing the knuckle of her forefinger into the center of her chin. I wondered if she was perhaps thinking of the cleft in Virgil Dunlop's chin. “He said every instrument had its own personality,” she continued, “or I mean the people who played them.” I must have looked puzzled, for she began to explain. “All the trumpet players in his band were these feisty, fast talking show-offs, he said, and the clarinets were these odd little fastidious kids, and theâ”
She broke off as if suddenly losing interest in the whole business. Running a finger across her brow to straighten her bangs, she returned her attention to the sheet of paper before her. As she bent her head to write, her black hair fell about her face like a dark silk veil.
I will continue the story of Joan and Virgil as my narrative moves forward, but as Christmas neared, this is how the relationship stood: Joan's interest in Virgil Dunlop had not waned but had apparently grown warmer. The fact still amazed me, knowing Joan as I did. That Virgil seemed unwilling to pursue a deeper friendship could be seen as one of his chief attractions, I suppose, although I am in no way suggesting that Joan was drawn to him only as a teenager, adoring one who appears inaccessible, who “plays hard to get,” as the saying goes. Since Joan is sensible, intelligent, and mature, I do not believe this was the case.
To return to December 17, Birdie and Mickey reappeared upon our doorstep within an hour of departing, Mickey now wearing a ball cap to the back of which was affixed an imitation ponytail. Thomas, whose display of mirth once again exceeded proper boundaries, reacted with great hilarity and asked Mickey where he had bought the cap, after which he declared his intention of buying one for himself. “That'll really go over big in the hardware store,” he said.
Birdie shook her head and said to me, “Margaret, I think we've got a couple of little boys on our hands.” She meant it in fun, of course, but I knew it to be true.
Between the time that Birdie and Mickey had left and returned, I had completed the making of a large pot of potato soup. I had already peeled and diced the potatoes earlier in the day as well as fried, drained, and crumbled six strips of lean bacon. The actual assembling of the soup was no difficult task. I always use one can of evaporated milk to one cup of two-percent milk and one-half cup of water for the soup base. On this day I quadrupled the amounts designated on my recipe, also adding increased portions of chopped onion, parsley, salt, and pepper for flavor. The roast beef had only to be sliced and arranged upon a plate. I had cooked it for our supper on the previous night and, as is my custom, had wrapped part of what was left to use for sandwiches. I had baked a chocolate cream pie that morning and set it in the refrigerator to chill.
We sat down to supper at half past six. At my direction Thomas had inserted several compact discs into the player so that the music of Strauss, and later of Mozart, could be heard from the living room. I had laid the table with a blue-checked cotton tablecloth and blue napkins, both of which complemented the blue violet of the morning glory design on the dishes. Both Birdie and Mickey ascended into ecstasies over the table setting. “It belongs in a magazine!” Birdie kept repeating.
Although I ate only a small serving of soup and half a sandwich, the others took seconds. The kitchen seemed to me a contracted version of itself that night, as if the ceiling and four walls had shifted inward. The effect for me was as of finding myself suddenly hedged about in a thick fog, hearing sounds that were at the same time muffled yet amplified. And though on the one hand I felt adrift in my own home, ill suited for my role as hostess, I felt on the other a deep satisfaction, as of setting one's craft upon a straight course. In spite of limited visibility, my chart was reliable. Hospitality was good, and the laughter and talk around our table seemed a fitting thing.
The evening of December 17 is engraved upon my memory. I could write an epic titled “December 17: Six Hours of Time.” Someday perhaps I will do so, but at present I feel that I must pass over many of the particulars of the evening in order to reveal a discovery that came to my attention as Birdie and Mickey were taking their leave a few minutes past ten o'clock.
The evening had been a success. Though my nerves were somewhat frayed from the strain of navigating through unfamiliar waters, it had surprised me to find that Thomas was a comfortable and genial host. Had he been as awkward as I, our venture into entertaining would surely have capsized.
We had talked of many things both during and following our meal. Mickey had spoken at length of kite flying, a lifelong hobby, and of purple martins, which flocked to his gourd birdhouses in great numbers each spring. Birdie had told amusing stories about former neighbors of theirs in Tuscaloosa, one of whom discovered in an attic trunk a genuine Stradivarius violin. Another neighbor, by the name of Oliver Malone, had been extremely fond of turnips and had planted turnip seeds each spring. “Imagine everybody's surprise,” Birdie said, “when a new family moved in right next door to the Malones with the last name ofâyou won't believe this,” and together Birdie and Mickey had cried, “Turnipseed!”
Thomas had slapped his knee and interjected, “I once knew a Turnipseed! Dewey Turnipseed. I'd almost forgot about him. That was the name of a boy I knew in the war, from Mississippi I believe it was. Nicest fellow you'd ever want to meet, except he had an odd habit of suckin' on his teeth like he had food caught in 'em.”
This led to a discussion of other curious names we recalled: Walteretta Pimento, Chickie Roast, Quince Pickle, Daphne Smallmouth, Bingo Mush, and so forth. I told of a girl who had attended Latham County High School in Marshland, New York, at the same time as I: Zinnia Greyhound. This in turn opened the subject of nicknames, and Thomas reeled off the nicknames of some of his kinfolk in North Carolina: Grease, Longlegs, Trout, Gypsy, Spade, Link, Barley, Gnat, Largo, Moonbeam, and Sled. Oddly, Thomas is one of the few in his family who is called by his given name. Granted, he is also one of the few in possession of what could be considered a common name, other Tuttle men bearing inconvenient, unwieldy names such as Barksdale, Hathaway, Ephraim, Ballenger, and Chrysler, to name several.
Mickey volunteered that his own nickname had been “Mouse” as a boy and explained it thus: “My ears stuck straight out when I was a kid, even more than they do now, believe it or not. It was a big old fellow in seventh grade by the name of Scofield Purvy who first called me Mickey Mouse, and it caught on real fast and finally got shortened to Mouse. 'Course I got even by calling
him
Scurvy, for which I paid dearly.” Mickey groaned and held his jaw as if having received a blow. “Old Scurvy sure had a mean left jab!”
Thomas chuckled and remarked that his nickname in school had been “Tattle,” suggested both by his initials T. A. T. and by his last name. He had never before told me this, and I could not imagine that the nickname had in any way described his behavior, for Thomas would hardly have been the type, even as a child, to make public the indiscretions of others. “I used to just hate it like the John-Brown dickens,” he said, “but I knew better than to let on. It kinda died out after I got on up past fourteen, fifteen.”
Birdie had smiled and remarked, “Nicknames can be real cruel sometimes. I guess I could have ended up with something a lot worse than Birdie!” Indeed, it was easy to see how she could have suffered at the hands of other children, given her plainness and her large, protruding teeth.