Peachtree Road (86 page)

And what he found was Lucy Venable.

“Nobody knows about the work he’s doing, Gibby,” she caroled to me on the telephone the next day, after Beau had headed back to Mississippi. “He doesn’t go looking for publicity, and nobody down there cares about the poor coastal Negroes. They never have. Beau’s not a saint, thank God—he’s really very realistic about them, and very funny.

Cynical, you might say. He says that he never met a noble savage, but he has met an awful lot of sorry ones, and the same thing is true of the Negroes on the coast over there.

He says they won’t hit a lick at a snake to help themselves and probably wouldn’t if they had a million dollars apiece, and what they really need more than money or food or the vote or anything is just to
feel
good. He says that feeling bad is probably the root of all racial oppression; the man who’s starved and sick and hook-wormy and tired all the time just won’t stand up and insist on his rights. He says they need energy as well as legislation, and he probably can’t do anything about the latter, but he can the former. So he gives them drugs.”

“Holy shit, Lucy,” I exclaimed. “Just what the world needs now. A latter-day saint who goes around turning on the poor and the downtrodden. You know, of course, PEACHTREE ROAD / 675

that what he’s doing is illegal.”

“No it’s not,” she said hotly. “He’s a doctor as well as a minister—he prescribes the drugs he gives them, with a written prescription and everything. And he does an awful lot of other things. He preaches at their little church once a month, and goes around to others, and he marries and baptizes and buries them, and he organizes them for voter registration and takes them to get their teeth fixed, and begs clothes and food and money for them from whoever he can, and he even teaches classes for the smallest ones, and for the ones who can’t read. Most of them can’t. There’s no school for miles and miles. And of course, he runs a free clinic.

Nobody has any idea what he’s doing down there—I don’t even think that miserable little backwater has a name. The nearest big towns are New Orleans and Mobile, but they’re hundreds of miles away, and they never heard of him there.

His church and the doctors he knows won’t help him anymore because of the drugs. What he needs most of all is publicity, and I’m going to get him some. I talked to Chip Turner at
Newsweek
, and he said they’d love to see a piece on him. I’m going to see if
SOUTH
will let me go down and do it, and then Chip can pick it up, and that way it’ll get local and national exposure. I’ll give Beau whatever Chip pays me, of course. I want you to write him a nice, fat check in the meantime. He doesn’t even have enough money to get back. He hitchhiked up here.”

“You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to finance the habits of a bunch of black junkies in Nowheresville, Mississippi,” I said. “I’ll send a truckload of medical supplies and food and clothes or whatever else he needs down there, but I’m not going to give him money to buy drugs. Marijuana for the masses is not my idea of an answer to poverty and oppression.”

“He doesn’t give out downers, only uppers,” Lucy said reasonably. “Amphetamines. It’s just the stuff in diet 676 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

pills, it doesn’t hurt anybody. Maybe some tranquilizers for the ones who can’t sleep or have anxiety problems. And pain medication for the ones who need it. Never any hard stuff.

It’s not any different from what any doctor would do.”

“Most doctors don’t prescribe drugs as a philosophy of social change,” I said. “I guess he’s on something himself, isn’t he? He sure looks like a junkie.”

“He looks wonderful,” Lucy said hotly. “He is wonderful.

He’s a real hero in an anti-hero age, and I’m going to do a sensational piece on him. Lord, you sound more like Jack Venable every day. If you all have so many answers, why aren’t you out somewhere helping people in need, instead of hiding out in front of a television set or in an overblown dollhouse?”

I bit back an angry reply, largely because she had a point.

I was not exactly proud of my noninvolvement in the great social issues swirling around me, but I could not seem to fight the entropy that kept me fast in the summerhouse. I could convince myself for long periods of time that my work on
The Compleat Georgian
would, in the long run, have greater lasting import than any sporadic, knee-jerk attempt I might make at social activism, but I knew very well too, underneath it all, that the only real value my magnum opus might ever have was that of refuge and solace for an aging Peter Pan afraid to go out into the world. So I let her stinging remark about the summerhouse lie.

“I gather Jack is not totally enchanted with Dr. Longshore,”

I said.

“Jack was rude as hell to him the whole time he was here, and absolutely refused to let me wake Malory up to meet him. And he made me take him down to the bus station first thing the next morning; wouldn’t even let him sleep late and have some breakfast, when it was clear the poor man was half-dead for lack of sleep and mal

PEACHTREE ROAD / 677

nourished to boot. He said he wasn’t going to have any stray lions of God under his roof; he’d had enough of my stray black panthers. I was so mad at him I could have really killed him, Gibby. And Beau was such a gentleman about it. So graceful and funny. He actually had Jack laughing in the end, even as he was pointing him toward the door.”

“What did he say that made Jack laugh?” I asked.

“He said he didn’t blame him. He said the only thing worse than a professional do-gooder was a professional do-gooder who was also a stoned-out-of-his-mind fund-raiser who said

‘aboot’ and ‘hoose.’ He said if he were Jack he’d throw him out, too.”

I laughed, reluctantly liking Beau Longshore even more than I had the day before. “He’s a charismatic sonofabitch, I’ll say that for him,” I said. “Don’t worry about him, Luce.

I have a very strong feeling he can take care of himself. Let Chip Turner go down there himself and do a story on him, or send some fresh, bushy-tailed kid. You promised you wouldn’t overdo it.”

“What’s to overdo about a spring weekend on a subtrop-ical beach?” Lucy said gaily. “With a medical missionary close at hand? It sounds like a church retreat instead of a news story. I’m thinking of taking Malory.”

“NO!” It was a cry straight out of my heart and viscera, without thought or volition. “I mean it, Lucy! You can go trailing off after that middle-aged Pied Piper if you want to—nobody can stop you. But you are not going to take Malory. I absolutely forbid it.”

There was a long pause, and then she laughed softly. “You forbid it, Gibby? “You forbid me to take my own child with me on a weekend trip to the beach? Who do you think you are?”

“You know who I am,” I said, rage running red and hot in my blood. “If Jack won’t stop you, I will. I promise you that.”

678 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

Another pause. “Oh, calm down,” she said, in a lighter, conciliatory voice. “I’m not going to take her, really. I just said I was thinking about it. Lord, you’d think I wanted to take her to a white slaver’s den, the way you and Jack Venable are carrying on.
He
threatened to take her to live with you and Mother if she went with me. It’s going to be you-all’s fault if she grows up scared to take risks or meet new people.”

Good, I thought. I hope she gets through her entire life without taking your kind of risks or meeting many of your kind of people. But I did not say it aloud. I heard in Lucy’s voice an edge of febrile gaiety that could easily spill over into recklessness and worse; I had heard it before, and it did not do to push or challenge it. Not where Malory was concerned.

“So when are you going down there?” I said.

“In the morning. As soon as I can cash a check and pack a bag and rent a car. Chip won’t advance me any money, but he’s paying for a car for the weekend. I’m going to get a convertible if they have one. The weather on the gulf coast should be beautiful.”

“Be careful, then,” I said neutrally. I did not want her to hear the unease in my voice. It was an effort to keep it out.

“I will. I’ll see you early next week, and tell you all about it. And I’m sorry I snapped at you. I didn’t mean that about the summerhouse, or Malory, either. I love you, Gibby, and all I ever do is apologize to you. Please don’t ever give up on me, even if I deserve it.”

“I won’t,” I said. “I’ve got too much invested in you.”

“I know it,” she said. “I count on that. Good-bye, Gibby.”

“Bye, Luce,” I said, and then, not really knowing why,

“Stick it in your ear.”

Her laughter came over the wire, low and full and PEACHTREE ROAD / 679

delighted. “Stick it in your own ear!” And she was gone.

At the end of the two-day weekend she did not come home, and when Jack called Chip Turner at
Newsweek
Chip said Lucy had called and asked to keep the car a few more days, and said that the story was taking longer than she had thought but promised to be wonderful. He was surprised that she hadn’t called home.

“But I’m not worried now that I know she’s called in,” Jack told me when I telephoned to see how the weekend had gone. “I didn’t really expect her back after two days. You know Lucy. She gets so caught up in whatever she’s interested in she forgets to eat, even. I only hope that asshole is worth it. Malory is really upset this time. She’s been fussing and crying off and on ever since Lucy left. She’s never done that before.”

“Could you put her on?” I said, uneasiness mounting in me like mercury in a thermometer.

“Hey, Shep,” Malory said into the wire. Her voice was listless.

“Your daddy tells me you’re fussing because your mama’s gone,” I said. “That doesn’t sound like my girl.”

“I can’t hear her,” Malory said softly, as if she was afraid to say the words aloud. “I call her and call her, but she doesn’t answer me. She always answers, Shep. You don’t think she ran off or died or something, do you?”

“Oh, punkin, of course not,” I said. “She’s just having such a good time she hasn’t got…her radio turned on. She’ll be home before you know it.”

“She always answers,” Malory said, and I heard the tears begin. “She always does. She said she always would, no matter where she went.”

“She’s just fine, you’ll see,” I said. “Damn you, Lucy,” I said under my breath. “Damn you for setting her up as some kind of little psychic receiving station, and damn you for tuning her out after you did, and damn

680 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

you for going off and leaving her in the first place.”

Jack took the telephone then and said, “If she calls you will you let me know? She told Chip she couldn’t be reached by phone, but that she’d be calling in. It may be you she calls. She was mad as hell at me when she left. Like I said, I’m not worried, but I’d like to wring her neck for upsetting Malory.”

But Lucy did not call me, and she did not come home, and when five days had passed Jack called Chip Turner again.

This time there was a long, hollow silence, and then Chip said, “Christ, I thought surely she’d have been in touch, or somebody would have. She…Jack, she was sounding so erratic when she called in and asked for more time and money, and then we got word from a stringer down there that she’d been seen in a couple of real badass little backwoods joints, in…not very good shape…. Well, we took her off the story two days ago. She promised she’d come on home, and said not to call you, that she would. But I should have…Jesus.

What can I do? What would be the most help to you?”

“Just tell me how to find her,” Jack said. “And keep all this as quiet as you can, will you?”

“Of course,” Chip said. “Listen, do you want me or somebody from the office to go down with you?”

“No,” Jack said in a tight voice. “I have somebody.”

He took Malory out of school at noon that day, and brought her, with her pajamas and toothbrush, to stay with Aunt Willa in the big house, and by one o’clock we were on the road southwest toward the Mississippi coast, the Rolls eating up the miles of narrow blacktop in a smooth rush of silence. We said almost nothing to each other beyond consulting the map and asking and receiving directions. I know that in both of us dread hummed like a motor, but we did not speak of it. I thought once, entering the Alabama coastal plain, where ribbons of black ditchwater stood mirrorlike along the margin of

PEACHTREE ROAD / 681

the road and the first Spanish moss bearded the trees, that all Jack Venable and I had or ever would have in common was Lucy, and that while it was a bond likely to last our lifetimes and hers, it was not a comfortable one. If it had not existed, we would not have chosen each other for even casual companions.

But I did not think that we would ever be free of each other, now. Going together in search and in aid of Lucy Bondurant seemed to have settled into the very genes of us, as irrevocably as the great marches toward death in the genes of lemmings, and, who knows, perhaps as destructively.

We reached Pass Christian by nightfall, but it was nearly midnight before we found, at the end of a sandy, grass-matted road so dim it seemed a part of the very tangled coastal forest it pierced, the mission and dispensary of Dr. Beau Longshore.

It had taken us all those intervening hours of searching and phoning and stopping to ask directions in peeling cinder-block groceries and bait stores, and getting lost at the end of black, moss-hung tunnels and trying to turn the Rolls around in sucking, burr-matted sand, and swatting at vicious coastal mosquitoes, and cursing and squinting in the interior lights at Chip Turner’s map, and breathing deeper and harder over the mounting dread, to reach the moment, near-perfect in its awfulness, that we pulled into that last clearing and saw the leaning, shored-up frame structure with the raw wooden sign that said: COASTAL MISSION AND CLINIC. ALL

WELCOME. KNOCK OR HONK HORN. BEAU LONGSHORE, M.D.

The white moon of that gentle, beautiful shore bathed the leaning building and the four or five disreputable cars and one filthy new Hertz Mustang convertible in a light so clear and lambent that it seemed palpable, like spring water. The moss in the live oaks and tall black pines was silver-gray, and shadows were inky and