Padgett Powell - Edisto Revisited - A Novel

“I see.” I thought maybe I did. “There’s sexists on the one hand, like me, and gays on the other—”

“And in the middle, dweebs. You’re not sexist.”

“I thought if you openly pursued women for sex you were sexist.”

“You are. But you’re not.”

“I don’t see how not.”

“Trust me.”

Trust her I did: I kissed her, and we were done with this little minuet. Why I relate it now I’m not sure. Patricia Hod is a very accomplished kisser.

I sweep the house. I turn up furniture on other furniture and throw out the throw rugs and locate a good, new-looking broom. There is something eminently pleasing about coaxing sand over hardwood floors, a fine whispering pumicing, while the women sleep. The place will look, and feel, new when they get up. I am son, cousin, lover, innkeeper. Is this life’s wasting or not wasting? The women will emerge in their safari khaki with their tired but expectant, hopeful safari faces on, tightening their belts. Camp coffee will be ready for them. Take pride in yourself, their bearings will instruct anyone who looks at them. We may not ever see a single lion, but we take pride in ourselves. Do not let your dogs get fat.

I oil the griddle — my mother had the wit to pick up a used commercial stove — and put bacon on it. Cholesterol to go with alcohol; all the bad things in English-speaking life end in — ol. Let’s take this pistol and have us a little folderol. And eat this Demerol.

“Son?” It’s an odd sound coming through the still house full of upended chairs. I go to her room.

“Ma’am?”

“Beer. Miller. Bottle.”

“Tall order, Mother.”

“It’s a deathbed request. It must be in the bottle.”

Were she less absurd, it would be an annoyance. Procuring a Miller in the bottle at eight in the morning is not an annoyance. It is a necessary detail in the correct safari that the women know more about than you do. I drive to Jake’s.

Jake now has a door on the Grand that would look like a bank-vault door were it not made of wood. I knock, hoping not to have to go back to his house. Things have changed since I hiked to his house to dig fishing worms — women and dogs and racial climate and I have changed. It would be better to be a front-door customer now. A door within the door opens, a small deep trapezoidal passage like something on an old ice-cream truck. Jake’s face is where you would see the Fudgsicles.

“Yeah?”

“Need beer.”

“Closed.”

“Jake. Miller in the bottle.”

“She back.”

“You know it.”

“She a pain in the ass.”

He’s infected with it, too. Were she less a pain, were I just a drunk wanting something to drink, were there not in this picture a reclined woman commanding the bottled version of a white man’s beer, one arm over her eyes and the other extended in space for the drink, Jake would say to hell with it. Were she not a pain in the ass, it would be no go. It is a go.

“Don’t even carry this shit no more,” he says, letting me in. The club is a ruin.

“What happened here?”

“Where?”

“This.”

“What?”

“These people kill each other in here?”

“Nobody kill nobody.”

My act needs a little pointing up, I detect. I know that, but the place did look … really gone.

While sacking the beer, Jake says, “Somebody fell down.”

“I thought so,” I say, with an intentionally self-righteous thrust which, I hope, will be comic.

Jake chuckles — he gets it. I am white boy playing white boy — not just white boy. It is a relief to be back in the groove. But I can see it will be a shallower groove than it was for me as a child. Get too cute now and I will be a clown like anyone else.

“She down for a while?”

“It looks like it. I don’t know.”

“You want three?” He means another six-pack, which he is ready to add to the two he’s sacked.

“No. I’ll come back. I don’t even have money for those two. Jake .”

“What?”

I can’t contain myself. “I have a new girlfriend.”

“Yeah?”

“ Brand-new. Last night. ”

It is absurd for me to say this to him or to anyone else, but it comes out, and the absurdity helps in here, as usual, rather than hinders.

Jake smiles. “Last night?”

“Yes.”

“Somebody you know?”

“Somebody I don’t know,”

“ Man ,” he says. “Accidental sugar.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Accident the best.”

“It must be.”

“It is, son. Accident save your life. Even a young life like you, accident help.”

“It does help, Jake.”

“Happy for you.”

I’m gone with the Miller in the bottle, feeling like some kind of traveling salesman with the punch line coming around the corner. The joke will be at my expense, but I do not care. I have suffered an accident of the gravest kind.

COMING AROUND THE CORNER of our road onto the hard road, in her infamous fashion, is my mother in her rock-blasting Cadillac, a thirty-year-old model that would be valuable were there any body whatsoever left on it.

We ease up window-to-window.

“I have the beer,” I say,

“You took too long.” She extends her arm. I hand her one bottle of beer. She laughs.

“That’s all I’m giving you.”

“Listen, I’ve got to go up. I was just bringing Patricia down here. She — we are sheltering her.”

“From what?”

“Sasa is drinking badly and Winn called and asked if we would.”

“Grown girl can’t bear a toot?”

“Bit more to it. She was going to be home for the summer, and now is not. That’s the short of it. Did your father buy you that car?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“He fixes it, though.”

“Good. Perfect. You helpless scion. Your cousin is also helpless. It’s a match made in helplessness.”

“Is this official?”

“No. She’s with me. If anyone calls, I’m with her. I’m just out.”

“How long you out for?”

“Forever.”

I swear to God my mother at this point attempts a high five between the windows of our cars. We don’t quite pull it off, and laugh. I give her the six-pack she’s broken. “Jake thinks fondly of you still.”

“Jake. That’s a good man, Jake.”

“He speaks of accidental sugar.”

“Damned poet in a jook.”

“Yes.”

“Well. Congratulations. On graduating. Now learn something.”

With that she floors it out of our lane onto the hard road and catches rubber on the asphalt. I’m helpless, got helpless woman at the house, aim to learn something, ease on down the palmetto gauntlet to get with it.

Patricia Hod is on the back steps with a cup of coffee. Her legs look better even than I imagined they’d look. She does not appear altogether happy.

I sat next to her and proffered the beer. She declined. “We’re supposed to learn something. Dr. Manigault’s instructions.”

“God help us.”

I touched her leg.

“Don’t ever touch me in the morning.”

“Couldn’t help it. How’d you get those?”

“What?”

“Legs.”

“These?” She looked at them, leaning over sideways, as if inspecting a pair of shoes she was considering. I decided to drop it. There were less dumb things to talk about, surely.

“Where’d you get that mouth?” she asked.

“All right.” I didn’t know if she meant how it looked, what I did with it, or what came out of it, but she’d made her point. We were coming together as Jesus flang us. We were as-is items on a yard-sale table. Affection was gratuitous. Captivity was assumed.