Lookaway, Lookaway (49 page)

His father stood up, shaking the table, sending his water glass on its side. His eyes already blazing. Duke would recall that look—that was the look that got Dad into the mental institution—deranged, pure uncontrolled hate and rage, flailing around for something to pummel. But that Christmas, Duke was determined:

“Soldiers in Two Corps were falling like flies but you managed to stay out of harm’s way, didn’t you, Dad? Tell us. Did you hang back a little? Let the enlisted shield you a bit…”

By that time, his father was on him but Duke got a blow in first. He remembered his mother’s cries, and Carry sitting there, still too cowed to move. There were a few back-and-forth blows before he pushed his father into the cabinet full of military awards and plaques. His mother ran between them to intervene, and Duke flew from the house.

He would call his mother when he was sure his father would be at a veteran’s parade or a VFW event. He begged her to get in the car and meet him a few miles away at a restaurant for lunch, but she wouldn’t. She couldn’t lie successfully to his father, and if he found out … His mother was ground down like dust. Died suddenly. Both he and Carry got a call from his father, spitting out the news, a hint of blame in his voice as if maybe they had participated in their mother’s demise in some conspiratorial way. Duke did not go to the funeral. His mother would not be there and would not know he wasn’t there, so what was the point? Carry reported that his father was a wreck, crying, sobbing, maybe embracing for the first time a vision of how helpless and alone the remainder of his life would become.

Duke and Carry made the arrangements to have the major buried at Arlington. Duke and Carry attended without their families. The army is good about this stuff—they ginned up some kind of crowd. There was a band, the caisson, an escort, and a few of his surviving buddies, who assured his sons, with still-strong handshakes, with tearful eyes, what a brave man their father was, such ingenuity at the Kasserine Pass, such fearlessness at Monte Cassino.

“Glad at least someone got something good out of him,” Carry mumbled, on the way back to his car. Duke thought of how his last encounter was him accusing his old man of cowardice. Felt good at the time—didn’t feel so good now, walking amid the crosses of Arlington.

“You take care, Joze,” Carry added, with a brief pat on the shoulder in what was almost a hug.

It had been fifteen years, and the brothers had not seen each other since. Granted Carry has his kids, Duke doesn’t travel much. Oh they talk on the phone, holidays. And birthdays; he’ll probably call this Friday. And Duke was sometimes sad about it but he knew they would likely not see each other anymore until there was a summons from a wife, a dire scene in a hospital room one day.

The phone rang again downstairs. Duke craned his head to see the alarm clock. Four-thirty
A.M.
, now.

*   *   *

Duke (and Gaston in the old days) could get almost as worked up over hush puppies and barbecue talk as they could about Civil War talk. The closer to the coast you get, the more cakey and desserty the hush puppies get. Good Lord, Duke could remember Gaston declaring, the hush puppy should be savory, gritty with large-grain corn meal, fried to a crispy brown, NOT of a consistency “like a piece of deep-fried pound cake,” and never
ever
sweet. Now the coast itself—where hush puppies accompany fried seafood—often has exemplary hush puppies, i.e, Tony’s Sanitary in Morehead City, probably the best hush puppies made. Duke had been fishing with his law partners twice in his life, playing at being Papa Ernest, a charter boat out of Morehead, big talk of marlin and tuna in the Gulf Stream, the entire operation soaked in beer and, later, whiskey to avert seasickness. All Duke came back with was three sacks of hush puppy mix from Tony’s—two for his family and one as a gift for Alma, whose job it would be to re-create the hush puppy excellence in the Johnston kitchen. Gaston once said, “It is a hush puppy wasteland from Lexington to the sea with a few notable exceptions.”

The twin ideals of North Carolina barbecue—the phrase “pork barbecue” would be a redundancy—divide down the line where the flat and sandy, piney coastal plain meets the rolling red-clay, deciduous-forested slopes of the Piedmont. Piedmont barbecue is pork shoulder, slow cooked, eight or nine hours over hickory coals in what’s known as “Lexington style.” Down east, they roast the
whole hog
on a spit in a smokehouse, letting the organs and marrow flavor the meat, which becomes more tender and delicious than any pork recipe known to man. The pork is light as ash on the tongue—a
mousse
of pork, aerosolized. Both methods are delicious—there is virtually no bad barbecue—but Duke and Gaston, after the requisite sticking up for their native Piedmont style, spent many a university Saturday in spring on forays into the flatlands of the east to go “whole hog.”

Duke wondered whether he could patch things up with Gaston by proposing a two-day barbecue run to eastern North Carolina, stay overnight in some swank golf hotel … or more fun, some country club of a Podunk town, letting the old ladies swarm Gaston with copies of his books to sign, amusing themselves with the redneck fineries and parochial
société
.

Slaw. Just as important for Duke and many North Carolinians is the slaw. In the Piedmont there is “barbecue slaw,” which uses the juices of the pig and vinegar and sometimes cracked dried chilies to make a red-tinted, spicy slaw of chopped cabbage. When combined with the chopped-up shoulder on a sandwich or just side by side on a tray, where one can intermingle the piles alchemically on one’s fork, well, you have as North Carolina patron saint Andy Griffith would’ve said, “Goooood eatin’.” Slaw down east is mayonnaisy cole slaw, which often, even in the greatest of barbecue shacks, can taste store-bought from the supermarket deli counter. Sadly the best slaw (the Piedmont) and the best pig (down east) are never found together in the same operation. And then you got South Carolina. They can cook pig south of the border, too (Kingstree, Manning, Hemingway), and they tend to cook whole hog over wood chips like the east. Some barbecue joints make a hash out of the coarse ends of the chopped barbecue pile which is then turned into a stew and served over South Carolina white rice … which is right up there for satisfaction with first love and winning the lottery. Anyway, they have a mustard-based sauce and that might not sound good but it is: creamy, tangy, sharp with a latent heat.

On Nations Ford Road, right over the South Carolina line, Duke and his daughter Annie, in a red vinyl booth Annie barely fit into, were gorging themselves at Daryl’s BBQ Palace. The owner loved to see Duke coming because during the Skirmish at the Trestle historical re-creation (two more miles down the road), Daryl’s did record business. In fact, Duke was trying to wave and capture Daryl himself’s attention, but to no avail.

Annie had a large chopped plate, red slaw, fried okra, a little bowl of Brunswick stew and some collard greens she loaded up with vinegar. “Dad, I feel guilty taking you out for barbecue. Cholesterol, salt, your blood pressure. I’m sure this is forbidden. Just as…” She reached for her Styrofoam cup of tea. “… my pre-diabetic state would forbid this glorious sweet iced tea.”

The waitress came by and asked about dessert. They had blackberry or peach cobbler with whipped cream, except she didn’t say “whipped,” she said
whup cream
. Annie’s eyes sparkled as she and her father exchanged smiling glances. Annie asked for the banana pudding.

Duke: “I’ll take an extra Lipitor and you shoot yourself full of insulin and just enjoy yourself, says Doctor Dad. Really, the whole glory of being alive right now is that they have pills for everything. You can be just like your grandmother. She eats a slice of chocolate pie at the Presbyterian Home and then stabs herself with an insulin pin. We’re paying doctors all the money in the world to fix what we broke, so we might as well make the pharmaceutical companies work for us.”

Annie had missed the Friday birthday foray to a steakhouse, but had shown up Saturday morning, unusually, idling around the house, reading old magazines. She brought him a present—a navy blue Duke University hoodie, “like the cool kids wear,” she said, but perfect for his mandatory walk-round-the-block regimen of exercise on cool days.

He began, “I keep seeing where Charlotte hasn’t had a downturn—”

“Oh believe me, we’re gonna get it too. The banks at the center of this cluster … um, big steaming pile of … um, mess are in Charlotte so we’ll feel it last, but it’s coming. I can’t sell any of the properties I own, and they are losing value by the hour.”

“I thought you just sold on commission. You actually own properties?”

Annie looked caught out. She’d not told her father anything about her business life except that she was wildly successful. “The housing bust finally is coming to Charlotte,” she admitted. “Starting and spreading out from Ground Zero, my pocketbook. Let’s not talk about my situation,” she said with a wince. Duke assumed he would hear if Annie was teetering toward bankruptcy like so many other people in real estate. Annie made no secret of her sufferings, as a rule. But maybe this, financial failure, after she had been riding so high, was too much to advertise.

“But speaking of real estate,” she began, “and I’d like an answer unvarnished, if you would.”

“I’ll do my best, sweetheart.”

“Are you and Mom losing the house?”

Best not to temporize: “Yes, by the end of the year. The bank will own it—they already do, in a manner of speaking. You may have heard that Gaston was going to help us, but he’s feuding with us again.”

“I could go try to speak with him. Uncle Gaston likes me.”

For one thing, Duke had heard Gaston berate Annie recently in the unkindest of terms—loud, vulgar, materialist, a woman who had wasted her magnificent intelligence—and second, Duke hated for any hope to be revived, even to be attempted. He and Jerene had made up their minds to leave and they would leave. “We don’t really need the house anymore, darling,” he said. “It’s big and expensive. Property taxes, the yard, Alma’s getting older like we are and will retire upon our departure. Our children are all grown up and gone.”

“Your children are
not
gone. We’re all bankrupting ourselves in turn and will come home with great frequency.”

“I beg your pardon. Bo has a lovely manse courtesy of Stallings Presbyterian.”

“That Nazi church is always about to fire him. Josh says they’re shutting down stores at
Uomo Modallll
.” She over-performed the Italian name of the ridiculous place. “And Jerilyn needs a place to hide out until the court case has gone away.”

“And you’re planning on returning again, are you?”

“You never know.” She changed tone. “Dad, it’s a lovely old house that’s been in the Johnston family forever—”

“Just over a hundred years, let’s not exaggerate.”

“I’m surprised you want to sell it. I’m doubly surprised Jerene wants to lose her perch in Myers Park.”

“Very shortly, your mother and I hope to be in Lookaway, Dixieland. It will have a guest room for your cyclical bankruptcies.”

Annie was fooling neither of them; she hated fundamental change, only preferred it around the edges. She couldn’t stand to be without the house she grew up in. “But your Civil War Study with the fireplace,” she wheedled. “You’re not going to have such a nice period room in some pre-fab condo somewhere.”

“I’m surprised to hear such concern for my Civil War Study. You said once if you could bring General Sherman back from the grave you would do so in order for him to burn down my study.”

“Gimme a break, I was a teenager.”

“That was just a few years ago, sweetheart.”

“This development sounds dreadful. Gated community, snobby, exclusive…”

“Just the ticket, for your mother.”

“Filled with South Carolina Republicans.”

“We should hope so.”

“I’ve seen that billboard on Seventy-seven. The house on the sign is like a mini-Tara, white columns and foyers that’ll be impossible to heat or cool. Three-car garages, tacky chandeliers in high-ceilinged rooms that don’t have any more floor space than McMansions in Huntersville and Morristown that are half the price. God. What do you suppose the guy in the gatehouse will be forced to wear? White-powdered wigs and breeches with stockings?”

“I was hoping for a girl in a hoop skirt.” Duke saw Daryl, the proprietor, emerge from the kitchen—he waved. It seemed Daryl saw him, looked right at him, but turned around back inside. Must be busy. But it was two
P.M.
, a bit late for lunch, and the dining room was not that crowded.

Annie was still ranting: “… and I’m ashamed to have parents living in South Carolina. North Carolina has worked very hard
not
to be South Carolina and here y’all go and sink to their level, in a gated community—and these enclaves represent nothing less than Southern apartheid. Maybe that slogan can be a selling point for Mr. Boatwright and his crowd:
slavery still permitted here
.”

“I’ll suggest it to the residency association.”

“Are we really out of money? I mean, as a family. Have we gone bust? I think I have a right to know.”

“I think it is debatable whether our finances are much of your concern. We’ve clothed and fed you, we’ve educated you, inasmuch as that took, and we’ve been generous as we could be throughout. And we’re done, darling, we’re just simply done.” He didn’t mean to sound harsh. Duke smiled again, his trademark twinkle. “Yes, we’ve gone through it,” he went on, “in the tradition of great Southern families.”

“But Mom could sell some of the paintings,” she ventured.

Duke stared at her. That would be the very last thing that could transpire with her mother still breathing. “You know that’s not going to happen. Any more than I’m selling my pistols or muskets.”

“But they’re just things—”

“Yes, things that mean a great deal more than houses—which, by the way, are also things. Cars are things. Annie, why don’t you sell your BMW and chip in? That is two years of property taxes sitting in the parking lot.”