Heading Out to Wonderful (11 page)

As he worked, Will smiled and sang the verses of one of the mournful old songs over and over:

Oh, I wish I had someone to love me

Someone to call me their own

Oh, I wish I had someone to live with

’Cause I’m tired of living alone.

Finally Charlie told him to quit it, and Will did. But Alma still hummed it, forgetting, maybe, that however cheerful the melody, it was about going off to jail and dying, that song.

Now I have a grand ship on the ocean

All mounted in silver and gold

And before my poor darling would suffer,

Oh, that ship would be anchored and sold.

Mac Wiseman sang that song on the radio. It was a beautiful thing to hear.

Neighbors dropped by, bringing things, saying how glad they were that the house wasn’t empty any more. They brought lunch, egg salad sandwiches on rich, fluffy rolls, and potato chips, and Mason jars full of sweet tea with mint and lemon.

Betty Fowler from next door brought a potted chrysanthemum, russet gold, a massive plant that spoke of fall and last bright fadings. She even picked out where to put it on the porch so it would catch the most light, telling Charlie to be sure to pinch the dead flowers every day, so more flowers would come in abundance. In the late afternoon light, they hung the swing on the porch, while Alma cooked dinner in the pots and pans from the old hotel.

When they were done, they were worn out from lifting in the heat, but it felt good, as though a complicated thing had been done almost by accident. They sat down at the dark table in the dining room and ate Alma’s cooking, the first meal in Charlie’s new house.

After supper, Charlie sat on his own porch with his own best friends, the lights on all up and down the street, watching his neighbors as they watched him, his voice joining with theirs as the people of the town sat and discussed and scolded one another for minor infractions of this or that nature, and the children played catch in the empty street.

“I’ve got a question,” said Will.

“Shoot.” Charlie sipped his tea and rocked while the others swung gently to and fro in the porch swing.

“How’d you get to be a butcher?”

“Accident, I guess. I worked in a grocery store after school when I was . . .”

“Where was that?”

“Will,” Alma laid her hand on his. “Let the man talk.”

“Back home. I was sixteen. You know, bagging groceries and such. Then the manager moved me into the meat department, the last thing I wanted. I liked meat. I just didn’t want to put my hands on it. But I did, because that’s the kind of boy I was then. I pretty much did as I was told.

“And I got to like it. I figured, if you’re going to eat it, you might as well know where it comes from, so I studied up, learned where all the cuts were, learned how to cut clean and fair. I learned how to slaughter the animals, learned to walk up to them so they trusted me and they weren’t afraid, so they didn’t release any chemicals that make the meat tough.

“By the time I was twenty, I was the head butcher in another store. A big store. That’s when I got my knives. Cost a lot, came all the way from Germany.

“But, to tell you the truth, I haven’t done it in a while.”

“Since then?”

“Things happened. Other things I hadn’t counted on. But it’s like riding a bicycle. If you learn something early, and you learn it well, you don’t forget.”

“That’s enough, Will,” Alma shushed him. “Don’t push so hard.” Then they just sat for a while in silence, rocking, the white smoke from Charlie’s Lucky Strike floating like a ghost in the air, the boy quiet and tired on his mother’s lap. Such a simple country quiet in the air, in the softness of the dark street, the porch lights on, the last moths of summer flittering into and out of the bright ring that hung above them, where the people of the town rocked and smoked and slept and talked in quiet voices.

When it was dark, the fireflies rose off Charlie’s own front yard, and bats wheeled and circled the eaves of his house and in the dark, heavy branches of his trees. Charlie felt a mixture of freedom and imprisonment he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

Then they did the dishes, Alma washing, the men drying, while Sam sleepily wandered around the new house, touching every single thing, asking when Beebo was going to get a radio, where the Christmas tree was going to go, asking what had happened to the people who had lived there before. When the dishes were done, Alma showed Charlie where everything was stored, put away neat as a pin, scrubbed clean and ready to use.

Sam was tired, and Will picked him up, wheezing, “I’m getting too old for this,” and they said their good nights, nodding, not touching, and left Charlie alone for his first night in his new house. Charlie closed the door behind him when they left, and took satisfaction in the fact that, when he walked through his rooms, the house didn’t sound hollow, and it didn’t sound new. It sounded already lived in.

That first night in his new house, he sat on the porch after supper, his porch light off, smoking a Lucky Strike and watching as the lights of the other porches went off as well, until there was only one left, across the street and down one, Old Mrs. Entsminger, sitting on her porch in a rocker, a shawl around her shoulders, her grandson at her feet on a stool with a fiddle to his chin.

The boy played eight notes, and the old lady began to sing in the high mountain voice they all used. There was such sadness in her quavering voice, such hope in the words she sang. She had been singing the same song since she was a girl younger than her grandson.

The water is wide

I can’t cross o’er

And neither have

I wings to fly

Build me a boat

That can carry two

And both shall row

My love and I.

Such a sad sweetness, a sweet sadness that was born in the mountain and crept down into the valley like a gentle fog. She drifted off, it seemed, to sleep or memory, but the boy played on, and when he had played another verse through, she opened her eyes and patted his head. “Finish it, Henry,” she said, “Take us home.”

He was a boy; he was eleven, or twelve, his voice not yet changed. Still he had the music in him, and he sang the words that were far older than he would ever be, and what he sang filled and changed Charlie’s heart.

Oh love is handsome

And love is fine

The sweetest flower

When first it’s new

But love grows old

And waxes cold

And fades away

Like summer dew.

How could he know, the boy, and, knowing, how could he sing? But he knew. His child’s voice didn’t mean he did not know, and Charlie knew, too, knew a thing that he had not remembered for a long time.

The boy’s voice trailed off. He helped his grandmother to her feet and into the house, their porch light went off, the last one of the night. Then Charlie went indoors and closed the door behind him, locking it, he knew for no reason. He climbed the stairs, a glass of whiskey in his hand, and undressed and lay in his bed and sipped the whiskey. Alma had told him never to smoke in bed, but he did anyway. The linen sheets were old and heavy without being hot, and they felt good on his body. He was small in the big four-poster Alma had chosen for him.

Whiskey done, he said his prayers, remembering, as he always did, the name and face of every person he had ever loved. Before turning out the light, he picked up his diary, spit on the end of a pencil, and turned to September 30, 1948, and wrote: Home. 126 Main Street, Brownsburg, Virginia, USA.

He closed the book and arranged the pillows so that nothing touched his body while he slept. But smooth and arrange as he might, hearing the soft whir of his new fan from Sears, he couldn’t sleep. He tried for three hours, and then he gave up. So Charlie Beale got out of bed, remaking it as neatly as a nurse, and got dressed and went out and started his truck, the only sound on the street.

He drove out to his land by the river, and spread out his quilt on the ground. He was asleep in five minutes, while the silver river fish swam through his dreams.

He woke up with the first light of a new day in his eyes.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
HERE WERE TWO
things Charlie Beale wanted, and neither one was a woman.

The first thing he wanted was a dog. He said it wasn’t so much that he himself wanted a dog, although deep down in his heart he felt that if you had a house you ought to have a dog, but that Sam wanted a dog and couldn’t have one. That boy talked about it every single day, bringing it up time after time as though it had never been discussed before. He knew every dog on the street by name, and there was a kind of mournful, tender wonder in his eyes every time he put his hand on a dog’s head to pat it.

The second thing was land. Charlie wanted to amass acreage the way boys collect baseball cards or young men collect broken-down cars, hoping to take the parts and put them all together one day into a sleek, fast, girl-attracting ride.

Maybe it was because Charlie wasn’t a big man and wanted the armor that land would provide him. Or maybe because it was that, for so long, he had lacked a sense of place, of belonging. It was beautiful, this land in the Valley of Virginia, and Charlie hungered for beauty.

Obviously, one thing was a small thing and the other one was a big thing. But both dogs and land were everywhere around him, and at least he knew exactly which dog he wanted, the dog he thought Sam might like, because he’d seen Andy Myers’s place on one of his many drives around the county when he first got there.

Andy Myers had more dogs than children, and he had a gang of children. He bred both for use and pleasure, the dogs to hunt and sit by his feet in the evening, and the children for chores. The beagles were brindled and content, the children freckled and happy with their lot.

Charlie drove out there and looked over the new dogs, a twelve-week-old litter.

“You hunt?” Andy asked him.

“Don’t,” Charlie said. “Not against it. I just never got the idea of killing for pleasure.”

“I kill to eat.”

“Well, see, that’s sort of my business,” Charlie said, looking at the squirming mass of puppies around his feet. He loved their spots, and the colors splashed on their skins, honey and black and white, the way their tongues hung from their mouths. He felt like he was five years old again, just picking out his first dog. “I’m a butcher by trade, and I never go hungry.”

“I don’t sell house dogs, or yard dogs. I sell hunting dogs.”

“He can go hunting with Will Haislett.”

“Oh, you a friend of Will’s? His mother was my mother’s second cousin. I don’t know what that makes him and me, but his people and my people are buried in the same graveyard, so I guess that makes us family. Sure, you can have a dog. Male or female? There’s both.”

“I want that one, the strong one, the male.”

“He’ll make a good hunting dog. I was thinking of keeping that one for myself.” But Charlie figured that’s what Andy always said, just to get another dollar or two.

“How much?”

“For that one? Any other one, I’d take fifteen, but that one, I got to get more.”

“Eighteen.”

“Least twenty.”

“I’m not going to argue about two dollars. He’s the one, and twenty happens to be exactly what I’d planned on spending.” When Andy saw the roll of bills Charlie took out of his pocket, he looked at it like he wished he’d started at twenty and gone up from there. Now he couldn’t go back, so Charlie put the dog in the cab of his truck, squirming beside him in the quilt he’d brought, and drove on home.

Sam was beside himself that night. At first, he just stared at the dog, but then he laughed. “Can I pet him?” He looked at his mother.

“Of course, Sam.”

The puppy took to him right away. Soon, they were on the floor of the porch together, rolling and tumbling. “Be gentle, Sam,” Charlie said softly. “He’s just a baby.”

They all played with the puppy until it was time for Sam to go to bed. The next morning, the boy was back before breakfast, practically before it was light, and Charlie sat on the porch with his coffee, and he and Sam named the dog. Charlie’d been thinking about it all night.

“Sam, I’ve got two choices for you. We could name him Popeye. You know, from the funny papers. That’s kind of nice. Or we could name him Jackie Robinson.” Sam had been astonished when, a few weeks before, Jackie Robinson had hit a home run, a triple, a double, and a single, all in the same game.

Sam looked the dog in the eye. “Jackie Robinson!” he cried, and the dog cocked his head at the sound. “See? See, Beebo? He knows his name already!”

So Charlie laughed, and that was that. Charlie took the dog to work with him every day. It wasn’t quite legal, a dog in a butcher’s shop, if anybody looked into it, but nobody minded, and even Boaty Glass thought it was a fine-looking dog.