Night Swimming (6 page)

Maybe it was because in the minds of the good people of Gorham, New Hampshire, Charlotte Clapp was newly dead. And as she’d never been dead before, she was curious about those who were newly dead, too. The obit that caught her eye was that of an old woman whose wake was extended for two extra days at the Germaine Devoe Funeral Home so that the whole community could get a chance to say good-bye.

It read:

Blossom McBeal 1916–2004

Beloved wife of Henry McBeal, mother of Sara Hutchkins, grandmother of Sam, Tara, and Billy Hutchkins, sister of Danny Peck.

For those who knew her well, she was nothing short of extraordinary. By the time she was twenty-five, she’d been married three times. She was quoted as saying, “Better to be alone than with some jerk. He’s gonna take it out of you, and then there’s nothing left over for the world.”

Courageous to a fault, she did some volunteer work in Bechuanaland, where she walked from village to village. There were nights she slept in trees to stay clear of the lions. Unfortunately, she did not know that leopards slept in trees, too, and lost her middle finger one night trying to escape one of the beasts. Despite the jokes that were spun from that, Blossom showed great bravery.

As beautiful as she was bright, she returned to Louisiana and enrolled at the state college. It was there she was nominated and won the title of Miss Louisiana. Her striking good looks did not go unnoticed by Dr. McBeal, who became her fourth husband, a fine proctologist from Baton Rouge. She became his nurse practitioner, often trudging out in the middle of the night to bring medicine to the elderly. She raised fifty thousand dollars single-handedly for St. Paul Charity by selling potholders to hospital cafeterias all over the South, an endeavor that took her ten years to complete.

When Baton Rouge made a calendar of its more mature beauties, Blossom graced the cover. In 1984, she and her husband moved to New Orleans. It was there she helped open a school for the mentally challenged and spent every Saturday teaching the children palettes and macramé. At fifty she went back to Africa to teach again, but fell ill with malaria and had to return home. But even malaria couldn’t keep Blossom down. From her bed she wrote low-fat recipes so her husband could hand them out to high-cholesterol patients. This was such a success, a book followed and some even thought it could be a movie, if done right. At sixty, Blossom created Deaf-Awareness Day and raised money by booking the local band at the church. This created a political brouhaha because the point was raised that the deaf couldn’t actually hear the music. But Blossom prevailed and named her campaign “The Feel-the-Music Extravaganza.” She also named it something else to flag her annoyance at the people who had a problem with it, but we can’t print that here.
Modern Maturity
did a lead article on her, and enjoying immediate success from the fund-raiser, she got to do a milk ad shortly after that. While she was in her seventies, the hospital erected a plaque of one of her low-fat recipes.

Blossom was the pride and joy of our community, and she will always be remembered for the final words she uttered: “I’ll be back, you sons of bitches, and next time I’ll really knock your socks off.” Blossom will be waked at the Germaine Devoe Funeral Home through Monday. Services will be held at Our Lady of Precious Blood Church.

Wow,
Charlotte thought,
now, that’s a woman. Beautiful, smart, brave, of average weight, and married....Now, that’s someone I’d like to be.
Even if Charlotte were only married for a short time, that counted. Hell, Dennis Hopper and Michelle Phillips were only married for eight days. Charlotte’s thoughts rolled back to Blossom.

If she left the truck stop now, she could take her time and still get to Louisiana to pay her last respects. Life was too short not to make important stops along the way. This was an important stop. She knew this because she had been given the sign, and it spoke to her in a way that only she could hear. She pulled out her map. Everything was possible. A whole world lay before her, and getting to each far-flung place was as easy as following the long blue highways with her finger.

CHAPTER 8

C
HARLOTTE FLEW SOUTH
like a bird clapping each county behind her. She finally crossed the invisible boundary from Tennessee, and entered the damp, mossy back roads of Mississippi. The air was warmer here. Ash, oak, and gum trees stood like Southern soldiers along the Natchez Trace. Rivers and oxbows and bayous watered the land—so much so, it seemed as if the delta would never have to take another drink.

It was late when Charlotte pulled into an old motel, lost in time on Moon Lake Road. It took her less than ten minutes to check in and find her way to bed, fatigued as she was from hours of driving and dust.

She was tired, so tired that she could barely smell the perfume of the crepe myrtle and magnolias rising into the drowsy night air. Every breath drew Charlotte deeper and deeper into sleep, until she was tenderly released into her first dream that had something to do with milk and honey.

The sun came up over the delta as it had for the past thousand years, except this time Charlotte Clapp was there to greet it. She stood at her window, gazing past the cattails and willows to the tall, lazy cypresses. Their Spanish moss blew out over the brown riverbanks like young girls in hoopskirts. Charlotte looked beyond the banks and saw the dark indomitable Mississippi River exploding forward in the swarming heat. She knew right then and there she had arrived at a place that demanded its due. Clearly, the strict southern gods were out in force. She would never say or even allow herself to think of the word f-u-c-k. But if she were to think it, only for a moment, a moment so quick no one could possibly know that she’d ever conceived such an unspeakable word, then, without a doubt, these would be the “gods not to be fucked with.”

She looked away from the river and went outside, relieved to see the morning sky shining bright as an amethyst. Spreading her map out like a quilt on her lap, she noticed an old woman in a sleeveless shift sweeping the walk.

“Excuse me,” Charlotte interrupted. “Could you tell me the fastest way to get to New Orleans from here?”

The old woman paused, rested on her broom, and considered the question as if she’d been asked if God exists.

“The fastest way or the most colorful way?”

“Good question. I say the most colorful way.”

“Highway sixty-one.”

“A highway is the most colorful way?” Charlotte asked skeptically.

“Why, Highway sixty-one ain’t like no other highway. It’s Blues Alley. And Clarksdale is the place to start. Blues men, that’s who traveled it, back in the twenties and thirties. My husband was a blues man, played a mean guitar. It’s how I fell for him. He used that guitar to woo me like a box of chocolates. But he’s been gone now many years.” She became wistful. “Yeah, he played the delta up and down, up and down. If there was a juke joint within a stone’s throw, then you can bet that’s where my Johnny would be. Jumpin’ Johnny Jackson.”

Charlotte’s curiosity was pedaling at top speed. “What exactly are these juke joints?”

“Shacks. You’ll find them all along Route sixty-one. You know ’em when you see ’em. Tin roofs, broken porches. But that don’t matter—it’s what’s comin’ out of ’em that matter. And that’s all the music your ears can hold.”

This appealed to Charlotte’s romantic side, and it was just the sort of experience she was hoping for when she bade her boredom good-bye.

“I like the sound of this,” Charlotte said. “I don’t really know blues, but I do know a thing or two about feeling blue.”

“Then you know the blues if you know that, child. Now, don’t get the jukes mixed up with those low-class lounges you’ll see along the road. Best they can offer is clean toilets, and they’re not all that clean, if you ask me. The music is the thing. The music can set your soul free.”

Set my soul free?
There was no longer any question as to where Charlotte was going that day. She was going to find music that would set her soul free.

Now, a fat white lady in a Jaguar is bound to get some attention in the middle of poor, black rural Mississippi. Clarksdale, Mississippi, to be exact. It was there she pulled over to a farm stand glistening with fruit and vegetables. Several children rushed out to see what Charlotte was all about.

“Can I help ya, ma’am?” The question came from the old black man coming out of the house with a flock of little girls in tow. They looked like half a dozen brown-eyed Susans.

Placed perfectly in proper rows along worn wooden benches were boxes of berries and beatroot, okra, and onions. Turnips, tomatoes, and sugarcane stalks. There were sweet peas and sweet pies from just-picked potatoes. There was sun tea and cider and hot pepper jelly, corn bread, and honey still caught in its comb. There were pecans and fruit jams and blueberry butter, all set out like a long Southern Sunday picnic.

“Weez got possum an’ fish out back, ma’am. Fresh fish. Weez got some bream, crappie, and catfish out back if ya want fish, ma’am.”

“I think I’ll take two sweet potato pies, a piece of honey, and handful of pecans, please.”

A pickup truck was hiccupping its way down the long, dusty corridor toward the group. It stopped at the stand as Charlotte collected her pies.

“Nice car, lady,” the man said as he slipped like an adder out of his pickup. His face was thin, and his eyes were slit so that only the narrowest gleam could escape them. His friend stood behind him, not saying a word.

“What can I getcha?” the old man asked, leaning over to bring up more bags from under the table.

“Nothing I want from you, but I’d like to see what’s in that poke of yours.” He was talking to Charlotte now and wielding a long, sharp hunting knife. It took her a moment to figure out what was going on. Suddenly, she got it. She was getting mugged in the middle of a beautiful road in the middle of a beautiful day. The old man told the little kids to get back into the house, and they ran like a rush of rabbits tumbling down their hole. Charlotte opened her purse.

“Five hundred dollars! Wow, Earle, we hit a goddamn jackpot. We got ourselves a rich lady from... from... where you say you from?”

“New Hampshire,” Charlotte said softly, barely above a whisper. All she could think of was that she was going to die buying sweet potato pies.

“What’s your name?”

“Charlotte.”

“Well, Charrrrrlotte, what else you got in that fancy car of yours? Why don’t you just open the trunk so we can take a look, like a big girl? Get it, Earle? Big girl?” he laughed. His broken front teeth showed like a junkyard dog’s growling at an intruder.

Charlotte stared at his mouth. She couldn’t even hear the snorting coming out of it. It filled her screen like a silent bark pushing ever closer toward her face. It was the ugliest face she’d ever seen.

“Well? I ain’t got all day, lady. Open the fuckin’ trunk!”

She had stolen two million dollars, and for what? To be robbed on some godforsaken road in Mississippi and to never get to Hollywood? How cruel was this? She contemplated jumping into the driver’s seat even at the risk of getting knifed. What difference would it make now? If they took the money, she’d have nothing to live for anyway. She’d never get to California. She’d never hear Tony Bennett sing. She’d never meet Tom Selleck.

She walked over to the car, fumbling for her trunk key. She slid it slowly into the lock and opened it. There they were: her four suitcases. Her future. The man with the knife leaned in to lift them out when he was interrupted by the old man behind the fruit stand.

“Excuse me, boys, but y’all is on my property, and I don’t like these kinda of goin’s-on here...if ya gets my gist.”

The old man pointed a fat-barreled shotgun at the gut of the man with the knife.

“It’s been at least a week since I kilt somebody, and I hate to have to end my streak. So why don’t y’all back off, get inta dat truck of yours, and drive on back ta whatever sewer you dun drove out of. I don’t want no problems here, and I don’t wanna ruin my afternoon buryin’ two big cracker boys like yourselves. That takes a heapa lot of energy, an’ I had plans to go fishin’ for some crappie later.” The old man pulled back the hammer.

The two white boys started to move away from the trunk. The old man’s calm was disconcerting. He was way too quiet—quiet enough to be scared of. Even these backwoods boys could tell that with the least amount of provocation,
bang!
and it would be over. Where they were all bravado, he was all business.

“Hey, we don’t want no trouble. We were just havin’ some fun, is all.”

“Well, get your butts back inta dat truck an’ go have your fun elsewhere. Fun’s over here.”

They moved cautiously, quickly, sliding into their old beat-up Ford.

“Hey, wait a second, son.”

The mean one stopped. The old man grabbed the five hundred dollars out of his hand and gave it back to Charlotte.

And with that, they were off, eating the same dust they’d kicked up when they arrived. Charlotte was still frozen and hadn’t found her voice yet even to thank the man. All she could think was this must be where all the extras in
Deliverance
ended up.

“You okay?” he asked. She jumped.

“I don’t know what to say. You saved my life.”

“They wasn’t gonna kill you. They was just after some extra beer money.”

She couldn’t tell the old man her life was in that car. That all the money she had to live on was stashed in small bills in the trunk.

“Take this,” she said, handing him the five hundred dollars. He looked at it and shook his head.

“Dat’s a right lot of money for two sweet potato pies, a bit o’ honey, and a coupla pecans.”

“It’s the pecans. When they’re out of season, it’s a seller’s market.”

CHAPTER 9

I
T WAS CLEAR
Mississippi was a force to be reckoned with. Charlotte was no longer in the mood to find music that would save her soul or set her soul free or whatever the hell it was, and she wasn’t of a mind to do any more driving. She just wanted to stop somewhere, so she decided to find another place to hang her hat for the night. She’d leave Mississippi with the morning light in time to make it to Blossom’s wake.