Brad Watson - Miss Jane

She woke from another sort of dream and went into the kitchen, and at the table there she wrote a letter, sealed it in an unmarked envelope, and tucked it into her chest of keepsakes at the foot of her bed.

Dear Elijah,

In my dream I walked alone in my meadow in the woods. I laid myself down in the wild grass there and let you gaze on me to see what I am. I let the sun beat down on my pale skin so it became transparent as the skin of an oyster — what is the word — translucent. And you could see the strange miracle of my body. In the world of us that gathered in my mind there was no need for physical perfection in order to enjoy the act of love. This I knew upon what I will call awakening.

J

It was late autumn, cooling down. The world had gone again. She wandered around the house in her slippers and a heavy robe, the propane space heater she’d had installed hissing its blue flame in the quiet living room where it sat on the old fireplace hearth. She was forgetful, leaving her cup of coffee or jelly jar of brandy in one room and forgetting to bring it with her to the next. Or setting down her reading glasses and being unable to remember where she’d set them down when she needed to read a label or an interesting item in the Sunday newspaper she had delivered each week.

She had all but forgotten that her life was compromised, had been compromised, in any way.

From the corner of her eye she saw a blur of bright color like the moving progress of a rainbow through the air of her yard. The peacocks, flying from one roosting tree to another.

She heard their calls through the afternoon, and in the dusk after sunset. Soon it would be winter and they would go quiet for a while. In the late evening she woke to them again, pulled on her robe, and shuffled to a window to look down on the overgrown pasture between the garden and the pond. The moon was almost full after several nights’ waxing in the clear cold sky. Its light blue-silver on the grass. At the edge of the yard, a single peacock stood alone, calling to the moon, displaying his magnificent tail as if to woo it, the moon itself.

She settled back into her bed. A cock somewhere deep in the woods gave out the haunting, lulling call that she loved and pulled her down into sleep. She came through her little meadow where the wildflowers trembled, then up the silvery trail and into the yard, where she stopped as if moonstruck. She’d entered a secret avian cathedral, filled with some kind of winged and feathered things she’d never seen. They stood very still, hushed, their gleaming black eyes fixed on her, white beaks open in a strange, alert anticipation.

I’m deeply grateful to the following people and institutions for their kindness and generosity and smarts during the many years I spent trying to figure out how to write this novel (and writing whatever I could when I couldn’t actually write this one), and the three years I spent actually writing and rewriting it down: the University of West Florida Department of English; the University of Alabama, Birmingham; the National Endowment for the Arts; the University of Mississippi Department of English and MFA in Creative Writing, and John and Renee Grisham for their endowed chair at Ole Miss; the Lannan Foundation; the University of California, Irvine, Department of English and MFA in Creative Writing; the Taylor family, especially Dr. Marvin Taylor; the Guggenheim Foundation; the Fairhope Writers Colony; the Aspen Writers Foundation and the Aspen Institute; the University of Wyoming Department of English and MFA in Creative Writing. Thank you to all the wonderful colleagues and friends at these places.

Thanks to Dr. Gary Ludwin, for valued information and corroboration and insights concerning important medical facts (any remaining errors would be mine, not Dr. Ludwin’s); Angela Beese, for dog talk and encouragement; my Clay family cousins, for memories; Jimmy White, for long friendship and tall tales; my stepmother, Vivian Watson, just for being herself, for saving my father, and for reading a draft of the book and offering insight and advice.

I’d also like to thank the following people: Neltje, for the gift of friendship and a most beautiful place to get away and wrangle with the book at crucial times; also her staff, David and Cindy; Ric Dice, who read the manuscript more times than anyone but the writer should have to and offered great advice and much encouragement; Jason Thompson, for dropping by my office several times in the past couple of years to ask about the book and offer encouragement; Kelly Kornegay, for a last-minute tip that made a big difference; Duncan and Anne Chalk, for long friendship and unmatchable hospitality; Rattawut Lapcharoensap, for letting me sit in his study and whine and moan anytime I wanted; Jon Hershey, who, though I didn’t bug him about this book, pulled me out of the basement back when I’d quit writing and so has my eternal gratitude; my amazing agent, Peter Steinberg, for good humor, patience, encouragement, and a keen eye at the perfect time; Dave Cole, for his superb work on the manuscript; the good and (infinitely) patient and supportive people at W. W. Norton & Company, especially Nomi Victor, Dan Christiaens, Marie Pantojan, Erin Sinesky Lovett, Bill Rusin, and of course my incredible editor for all these years, Alane Salierno Mason, whose apparently near-infinite patience I stretched so thin, whose belief in this book often easily surpassed my own, who pressed me with wise advice and encouragement, whose apparently endless support I had no reason to expect to last this long — my gratitude, love, and apologies. My love and gratitude to my wife, Nell Hanley, who not only read many drafts but somehow found a way to live with me while I worked on this book.

Thank you to my beautiful, talented, irrepressible granddaughter Maggie, named after my grandmother, who was such a marvelous source of good stories for me. Maggie, who upon being read a chapter from an early draft of this novel, for some reason said, “Pappy should put a peacock in there.” And I did. And it changed everything. Clear-minded, innocent genius. Thanks, Mags.

And thanks to all my old friends on the road who have given me love and support, guest beds, food and drink, good company, and their own unmatchable hospitality, especially Horn, Cawthon, Pettit; McLemore; Denny; Dice; Noble-Horne; Bobo-Brock; Howorth, Franklin-Fennelly, Kornegay, Donelson, Hudson-Formichella; Pritchard; Winthrop; Gessner-de Gramont; Salter; Wier; Peterson-Shacochis; Vaswani-Holter; Esslinger-Sanders; Borofka; Hershey-Blalock; Hathaway-Wickelhaus; Bausch; Carlin; Williams; Huggins; Parrish; Canty; Brown; Harwood; Brewer; Geuder; Chiarella; Butler; Singleton; and Mr. Land; and others I hate to think I may be forgetting at the moment. I’m a little tired.

I’d like to acknowledge the following sources in what was a difficult search for information as I tried to engage in (roughly) educated speculation about rare, complicated, and serious urological issues: Genital Abnormalities, Hermaphroditism and Related Adrenal Diseases , Hugh H. Young; Hugh Young: A Surgeon’s Autobiography ; and the website emedicine.medscape.com. Also, for information on Southern daily rural life and country doctors: The Doctor Stories , by William Carlos Williams, particularly “Old Doc Rivers” and his cocaine habit; Up Before Daylight , ed. James Seay Brown, Jr., particularly the essay “A Plain Country Doctor,” Lawrence F. Evans (wife conks husband with shovel); The Country Doctor Handbook , by the editors of FC&A Medical Publishing; Never Done: A History of American Housework , Susan Strasser; Cotton Tenants , by James Agee; photographs by Walker Evans.