Victor LaValle - Ecstatic

As we walked into his house through the front door I peeked at the backyard. There was a wooden cabin, much smaller than the main house.

— You’re no newspaper man.

Uncle Arms said this only after we’d climbed into the front hall of his home. It was narrow like the whole house and I thought Quakers must have been some pretty slim people.

— How’d you find out?

— I made one phone call.

There was a seven-foot wooden clock against the hallway wall, but it didn’t seem to work anymore. A sturdy cooling bench, six feet long, sat across from the clock in the hall. Instead of four legs to support it there were ten. There wasn’t much room for me between these heirlooms and the ceiling wasn’t very high either. I touched the bench and the wood was so supple I thought it would bend. None of his furniture had much flash, but it was superb.

— Your family’s been rich a long time, I said.

He walked ahead of me, showing none of that stoop from this afternoon’s carnival. You know what he looked like now? A former dancer. With that mean hoofer’s stride. I didn’t know how old he was, exactly, but his body was used to being limber. He didn’t drag his feet.

A flight of stairs led up to the second floor, but we stayed on the first, walking left at the steps into another narrow room with an upright piano and light blue walls.

As we went through his house the floorboards made a noise, — snap-, -snapsnap-, under me. I was embarrassed. What made it worse was that Uncle Arms weighed about sixteen ounces; the proof was in his soundless footfalls.

We passed through the narrow room, that had the upright piano on one end and a mahogany highboy at the other, into the east end of his home. The only room, thus far, large enough to let me breathe.

There was a dinner table, a dormant fireplace and lots of floor space. I could have camped out right there and still had room to hang my purple suit up to dry. It was wet with sweat already and limp from general exhaustion; it clung to me.

Six framed plaques were on the wall, but I didn’t stop to read them since he’d left a door open to the backyard.

His property slanted downward so that from the back door I saw the small log cabin only fifteen yards away and behind it was the rest of his property, another plain field, one acre at most. I was surprised at how far I could see with only a three-quarter moon, but stars also brightened the room.

At the back end of his land there was a patch of small trees and past them a smaller, detached field. Two dozen tents were pitched in that one. Little domes strewn around in the far grass.

I thought Cub Scouts first, but then those soldier-boys from my hotel came to mind. How seriously would they take their roles? Would their chaperon really have them sleep outside a night and appear at the pageant sore, hungry, deprived? A war-weary approximation.

Past the tents, right behind them, parked and empty, was a giant yellow beast. There were shadows across its back and the nose was brushed up against a tree. Its black tires were camouflaged by the grass so the yellow bus seemed to hover in the distant field. There was a white banner tied to its side. Too dark to read the slogan, but I remembered it from the rest stop ruckus; Pretty Damn Mad was here.

How did they get near Lumpkin?

Had they followed us?

— I invited them, Uncle Arms explained.

But can we forget them for a while because Uncle Arms shut the door. He’d put together a great dinner.

The long pine top table was, like everything else, quiet about its quality. Wearing a table cloth with no frills around the edges and a Mariner’s Compass pattern sewn checkerboard into the cloth. — How old are these? Are they worth a lot?

He asked, — Is that how you think of the past? A numbers game?

— It was just a question. You know what I mean.

— When all the others fail history is the religion of humanity. In which do you believe?

— Can we eat? I said.

— Of course. Sorry. I tried to have some foods you’d recognize, he said.

Uncle Arms spoke to me like I was a foreigner, but I didn’t want to take this North-and-South-two-nations-within-a-nation folderol that seriously. Though he had. By preparing (or probably buying) a variety of Spanish foods.

Rice and pigeon peas, roasted pork, chicken stew and fried meat. The smell of onion, peppers, coriander came up from the pots when he removed their lids. An odor so good I got that high, itchy feeling in my nose like I was about to sneeze.

— Where do you think I’m from? I asked him after looking at it all.

— New York.

— So why Spanish food?

— Because you’re Mexican! He was stymied by my questions.

— No one’s ever thought I was Mexican before, I said. Puerto Rican. Dominican.

— That’s what I meant. Puerto Rican.

— So why didn’t you say Puerto Rican?

— I did.

— You said Mexican.

He put his left and right hand up but far apart in two unaggressive fists. — It’s like saying United States and America. Mexican. Puerto Rican.

— They’re two separate places.

— Oh come on. He acted like making this distinction was the worst kind of oversensitivity.

When eating I’m a silent hillside. Sometimes my hands don’t even seem to move because I heap my fork with a crane’s worth of food, feed myself and chew it slowly.

Uncle Arms was peckish; I could see a lot of the white of his plate because his portions were so small. — You’re no newsman, he said again, but he wasn’t angry.

— I clean houses.

— But you’re really here for the pageant?

— Sure I am.

— I can’t believe anyone would have a girl admitted into that debacle.

Who was this guy?! He had been doing his best Vardaman and Bilbo routine not ten hours ago and now he was some old-money Quaker gentleman with his morals in a high chair.

— My sister’s in it.

— And your father entered her?

— If he had she would have been disqualified.

He let me enjoy my own joke until the room was quiet again. I felt silly; I said, — Our mother paid the entrance fee, but my sister wanted to compete.

— It’s vulgar that the girls qualify because of their chastity.

— Better than pain! I yelled.

Did I mention that I had two beers? Or that I was drunk? Maybe I’ve kept it to myself because I’m ashamed to admit I was a lightweight.

— Haven’t you begun to think that the whole beauty system is archaic? he asked.

— Aww what does it matter, I sighed. No one’s ugly anymore.

What a good feeling when dinner’s over and there’s only the gruel left on the plate. This time it was a mix of gravy, grains of rice, oil and bits of shredded pork. I tilted the dish to my lips. That slop was fine as port wine.

When there were only bones on our plates Uncle Arms served a light green liqueur in a dark green bottle. The taste was paprika and peppermint at once.

He said, — We were Quakers until my great grandfather was read out of meeting. He split with them over the question of servitude. He was for it and they were not.

Servitude was the politest euphemism for slavery I’d heard in a long while.

— He was the first black Quaker ever expelled.

— Were there any others?

— No.

— So he was the only black Quaker ever expelled.

— He’ll be remembered as something else.

— As a slave owner.

— My great-grandfather Otis started three technical colleges. One in Mississippi and two in Tennessee.

Uncle Arms told me the schools used to offer courses in horse grooming, ‘domestic science,’ and had developed into computer engineering, business administration, even paralegal work. Thousands of graduates lived better because of Otis, the black excommunicated Quaker slave owner. Uncle Arms insisted. I listened but with only one eye open at a time. Because of the liqueur my mind wasn’t worth one puka shell right then.