Holding Pattern (24 page)

Moments later, we exit the minivan in the hotel’s driveway. I search through my wallet, slide free a five, the biggest tip I can spare, a full two dollars more than what I would normally give.

The town is fighting to keep Applebee’s, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Wal-Mart, and Circuit City out of the courthouse square, where uniform two-story brick-and-wood buildings with verandas perched on ten-foot-high posts house expensive shops and services, bars and boutiques, restaurants and cafés. On Friday nights, book clubs cram into the confined spaces of these shops. The town prides itself on being a literary community and boasts more reading groups than any other municipality in Mississippi. Homes in the immediate radius of the square—rehabbed antebellum structures and their modern imitations—hold the market at a million dollars or more per property. A national magazine recently honored the town with a high distinction, calling it the third-best retirement community in America.

In a small garden left of the entryway to the redbrick cement-lined library, a bronze statue of F. dressed in hat, suit, and tie is seated at the far end of a glazed (green gray) park bench, both taller and larger than F. actually was in life. His legs are crossed at the knees, with his left hand resting on them, right arm across the top of the bench back, so that he is seated at an angle, turned slighty toward the viewer, smoking pipe in (right) hand—a man both relaxed and dignified, inviting the viewer to sit down and join him. Dull metal clothing and skin are set against a fresh bright bed of red tulips and varicolored perennials, directly behind him. A small slim-trunked tree is planted ninety degrees to his right, the leaves either the palest of green or dried to a brown autumn tint and crumpled. And bronze and bench are positioned in the left extremity of a mosaic arc, alternating bands of rectangular red stone and curved green slab.

I continue on to the square’s center, where a small group of white reporters have flocked around the black Confederate, cameras swooping about, pens pecking words onto their notepads, microphones perched in air. From the tone of his voice, I can tell that he is taking a firm stand on the issues, gesturing with emphasis and keeping tabs with his fingers. I take a moment to lock his physical details into memory. The small gray hat has a thin black belt across the front, a tiny gold buckle dead center above the short black visor. With its folded-over crown, the hat reminds me of an old ice bag. (My aunt would unscrew the lid, drop a few perfectly square cubes into the pouch, twist the lid tight, then place the pouch, cold and hard, on a lump.) The ice-bag reb is a man in his early to mid thirties with pronounced cheekbones that form a thick V under each deep-set eye, a nose so compact and modest you might overlook it, and lips no larger than a nickel. He gives me an offhand glance. The camera finds him. He actually stops talking and poses for me, left foot on the curb, left hand positioned on left knee, eyes looking slightly to his right—off camera—flag across his right shoulder. The flag hand also holds a small black disk, a portable CD player, the headphones draped about his red-shirted neck. The shutter moves and emblazons him in celluloid. His damn-fool twin distant and small on a light-catching strip.

Bent at the waist, a man my age and of my build prepares to enter his compact Japanese car. He looks up, sees me, and straightens himself, keys in hand. “How are you?”

“Fine. How about you?”

“Never been better.” He approaches me. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” I’m expecting some mundane question about weather or directions.

“Did you talk to that guy?”

“Not really.”

“Did you hear what he was saying?”

“I really wasn’t listening. I mean, I wasn’t even trying to hear what he had to say. I figured he was crazy, that’s all.”

“He ain’t crazy. No, sir. I knew that guy way back in high school. He may be tricky. Ain’t crazy, though. He been tellin all these reporters that he’s got a wife over in London and a brother in Germany and that he’s got a degree from this college and a plaque from this organization. All kinds of stuff. He’s got a whole lotta them supporting him.”

“Uh-huh. So you think he fakin it? Hustlin them?”

“I’ll put it to you like this. He don’t care nothin bout no white folks.”

Dr. Hallard and I are the first guests to arrive for the cocktail party at an antebellum mansion, a white two-story structure with six green slat-backed wooden rocking chairs positioned across a long wide porch.

“Isn’t this something?” he says.

“True that. Sure we should go in? We might not get out.”

He laughs.

We enter the house and go right to the bar, discreet, taking little notice of our grand surroundings. Dr. Hallard is taller than I am, and I have come to learn that he is a jocular man. He tells me how much he likes my work, that I’m the real deal, how he can’t wait to read more.

“Well,” I say, “I learned everything I know from you.” I give him a playful slap on his blazer-covered back. I’ve never read him.

“Oh no.” He laughs. “I’m just a historian trying my hand at new things in my old age.”

“That’s where we’re alike. I try my hand too.”

A sharply dressed middle-aged woman approaches us. She has a long face and a protruding mouth like a sea horse’s. “Hi, I’m Mrs. Jason. I’m with the university.”

“Glad to meet you.”

“You’re—”

“Yes. And this is Dr. William Hallard.”

“Of course, I recognized you both. So glad you could join us.”

“Glad to be here.”

“You folks enjoying yourselves?”

“Most definitely.”

“Good.”

“This is some house.”

“Have you had a look around?”

“No.”

“Please do.”

I set off in one direction, and Dr. Hallard sets off in another. I wander through odd-shaped rooms that open one out into another. Let my gaze wander over gaudy Victorian settees and sofas, four-footed mahogany bookcases with scrolled cupboard doors, cylinder-topped bureaus on bow-legs and bun feet, peg-calved corner tables, inlaid
bonheurs du jour
, etched display cabinets, heavy curtains like mounds of hardened lava, narrow-shouldered grandfather clocks like genetically altered men. Every inch of the papered walls blocked with paintings—equestrians, seascapes, landscapes, and portraits—tree, sail, saddle, and cheek textured in age-thickened curls of oil.

The house quickly fills. People casual in conversation. Tilted heads and raised glances. Tinkling ice. Quiet sips. I make many introductions, names and professional descriptions that I quickly forget. I make my way back to the bar, where the bartender is hard at work, his hands circling a small table with a neat arrangement of tonic and seltzer water, vodka and soda, wine and whiskey, lime and lemon. He wears a white shirt, black bowtie crossed at the throat, and black slacks, and speaks in a high light cadence, like a rock skipping over water. He hands me my gin and tonic in a plastic cup.

“Would you know the story behind this house?” I take a sip. Just right. Take another sip.

“Yes. It’s a miracle it’s still standing. They burned everything else.” His face reveals no emotion. Shark gaze, eyes black and blank. “It was owned by a doctor who treated both sides during the war.”

“I see.”

“The university purchased it a few years ago.”

“Well, thanks for enlightening me.”

“My pleasure. Like another?”

“Yes.” I watch him prepare the drink, words stirring inside. I take my drink and hurry off to the dining room. Guests gathered around a cloth-covered mahogany table crowded with plates, pots, and utensils. Some fishy substance—life feeds on life—in rectangular pans kept warm by flaming canned heat. Dinner rolls like bare baby butts cradled in a wicker basket. Salad growing in glass bowls. Dressed like checkerboard squares—white shirt, black pants, white apron, black shoes—bustling attendants enter and exit the room, trays at the ready.

“Is that crayfish?” I ask one of them.

“Crawfish,” she says.

“Okay. That’s how we say it where I’m from.”

“And where’s that?”

I tell her.

“I have family up north.”

“Do you.”

“Enjoy your food.”

“I will.”

I eat till I am stuffed. Clean my hands on a cloth napkin and toss it on a waiter’s shouldered platter. Then I travel down a long hall—with a polished floor like a wooden runway—that leads to the roped-off upper story, oak banister gleaming like a wet tongue. I take a seat on the carpeted stairway, red rope inches above my head. I down my drink, neck craned back and plastic cup covering my mouth, muzzlelike. Sight along liquored edge and see a woman smiling down at me. A saloned blond in her early to mid forties, pure East Coast elegance in a black party dress with perfectly matched jewelry. Her skin is puffy, rebellious, refuses to stay flat.

“Did you try the crawfish?”

I lower my cup. “Yes. Delicious.”

“Do say. Dessert should be ready soon.”

“I can’t wait.”

“So, how do you like our town?”

“Fine, so far.”

“Your first time here?”

“Yes. Well, not exactly. My folks come from these parts. Houston.”

“Oh, that’s only about forty miles east of here.”

“So I’ve been told. I used to visit my great-aunt every summer when I was a kid.”

“Well, enjoy your stay.”

“I plan to.”

“I think you’ll find the people in town are more than friendly. They’ll go out of their way to help you. Anything you need, just ask.”

“I will.”

“And, you know, before you leave, you should go down to Benjy’s and try their shrimp-and-grits dinner. It’s an absolute delicacy.”

“I will.”

I make my way back to the bar and discover Dr. Hallard, drink in hand, keeping the interest of a circle of listeners. (Perhaps he will hold them seven nights with seven hundred tales.) I follow the path of duty to the sitting room, where a squadron of eaters and talkers are sprawled about in high-backed armchairs. I talk to this person and that but soon run out of things to say. Conversation congeals into polite patterns. Attentive gazes and curious glances recede into fatigue or boredom. Faces go lax from alcohol. I scan the room for fresh skin. Survey the mansion one last time. Have another drink or two. End up back where I started. Voices pelt me, bang and run rough. I could attack. I could trot like a bull through every room of this fucking mansion, charge my enemies head-on, bumping and butting those who refused to give way. Stomp down ugly. Instead, I escape to the porch and scoot into a rocking chair. I am tiny inside it, a baby in a high seat. Notice a huge oak just left of the house as wide as three men. Stare out at the road, a dark screen of trees behind it. And I listen. Insects humming like incoming missiles.

I rise from the chair and set out for the hotel. The night rises and falls before me, trees shimmering in the lamped dark. Hot blots of light where moths and gnats and winged anonymous others stick and burn, their wings like flaming shrouds. I can hear their panic. If I am attentive, if I incline my ear, these woods will tell me great secrets.

“In mythical geography, sacred space is essentially
real space
, for … in the archaic world the myth alone is real. It tells of manifestations of the only indubitable reality—the
sacred.”

My oldest cousin and I catch a flight to Memphis, rent a car at the airport, and find a cheap motel just outside of Fulton owned and operated by Indians from India. We sit in silence, he on his bed and I on mine, staring down at the dark lake of floor between us, hoping to draw up memories from forgotten deeps. The next day we help lower our aunt’s coffin into a freshly dug grave, fist by fist. I feel the rope tug and pull, the red dirt shift under my feet, feel myself being yanked forward, snatched down into the open box of earth.

“Wasn’t that in Jackson?” The receiver tight against my ear, wedged between my shoulder and cheek.

“No,” my mother says. “Tupelo.”

“Tupelo?”

“Yes.”

I am watching a watercolored landscape, broad pastures and fields rimmed by a cheap metal frame.

“The Klan headquarters was right there downtown. I think it still is. The only place in the world where I’ve ever seen one.”

“That’s what I was wondering.” I unfold a map of Mississippi and spread it across the bed. “Because somebody at the party said that Jackson is south of here. And all this time I thought we took the bus from Memphis through Jackson to Tupelo.”

“No way.”

“Now I know.”

All this time, these many years, I’ve had the geography wrong. I’ve told people that my family comes from the delta. But the delta is a five- or six-hour drive south of here. I’m starting to learn that Mississippi is larger than I had imagined. Its boundaries have slowly grown since I was a child. The state busting its seams, moving out into space, ragged at its edges like an ink blot on paper.

“What do they have scheduled for tomorrow?”

“Nothing important. In fact, I don’t plan to attend any of the morning events.”

“Won’t they be expecting you?”

“They might be. I plan on having a look at the F. estate. It’s supposed to be a short walk from here.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“I don’t believe they’ll—”

“I wouldn’t do too much walking around down there, if I were you.”