The Edge of the Gulf (16 page)

She paused and smiled. “But then there’s the music, you know? The great meeting ground for Memphians and our gift to the world. It’s almost always what people ask me about first when they learn it’s my hometown. The blues. W.C. Handy. Alberta Hunter. Elvis. B.B. King. Tina Turner. Jerry Lee Lewis. Stax Records. Gospel. Memphis really has been the melting pot for a lot of American music: hillbilly ballads from the Scottish and Irish settlers in the Appalachians melting into Creole songs from the islands, and African rhythms mixing with European sacred music to produce spirituals. Blues out of slaves’ work songs eventually fusing with Mississippi River jazz and then country with rock. It’s
fabulous
.”

Susie was wearing her horn-rimmed glasses this evening and looked quite studious. She pushed a stray lock behind her ear, and continued.

“And, of course, there’s the inexplicable fact of our literature. We always resort to the best guess—that we are ‘word people,’ anecdotalists, storytellers by nature. Whatever. But there’s just no getting around that in our general vicinity we grow great American writers at an amazing per capita rate. Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, Peter Taylor, Maya Angelou, Willie Morris, Elizabeth Spencer, Jesse Hill Ford, Shelby Foote, on and on and on.…”

She paused, and lifted her glass. “I suppose that’s what means the most to me.”

“And to me,” said Hudson, joining the toast.

“Let’s not forget the river!” said Libby. “Now admittedly it’s not a pretty little blue-green sort of thing. It’s huge, sprawling, muddy, a force of nature. But its beauty is in its power, its majesty. In the last ten or fifteen years, Memphis finally seems to have realized it’s its greatest natural resource. I’m delighted to see all those nice houses going up on the island and people converting old storefronts and cotton warehouses into restaurants and clubs and galleries and co-ops and all that. Downtown is at least sitting up and taking notice of itself again. High time.”

“It was wonderful when Brad and I were first dating in the early ’50s. We’d often go sit on the bluffs under the trees and feel the evening breeze come up off the river and watch the sun go down, and then we’d go for a drink and dinner at the Peabody and then on up to the roof garden to dance the night away. Oh, it was
so
romantic.”

Susie: “Heinous winter weather. Not enough snow and way too many ice storms.”

Hudson: “If you meet the right person—like Libby, for example—one of the most attractive of all Southern accents. If you meet the wrong person, one of the most gratingly god-awful of all Southern accents.”

Libby: “The worst drivers in the country.”

Hudson: “The best barbecue in the country. The only real barbecue, despite what a lot of deluded Texans may think.”

The three of them looked at each other, and then Libby looked at Sydney and Chaz. “Enough! Did that just wear you out?”

***

During the ceviche, it was the Cullens’ turn. They were asked about their childhoods, about their work, how they’d met, life in Atlanta. Sitting beside one another and occasionally holding hands, they more or less held forth together, trading off the various parts of their story to the appropriate partner, balancing the juicy bits of their repertoire with delighted aplomb. Sydney seemed to Hudson especially adroit at pacing their narrative, of throwing in a spontaneous, humorous aside just when it was needed, of deferring to Chaz at just the right moment, of graciously turning questions back to the others, eager to incorporate their opinions. Tremendous poise, he thought; she wasn’t an actress for nothing.

He noticed that she had two strikingly developed capacities. The first was for making her listener feel as if he had her absolutely unwavering attention, as if he or she were the only person in the world who mattered. The second was the imperceptible speed and finesse with which she could adapt herself to a completely different rapport with a completely different person. She seemed almost to become each person with whom she conversed, picking up on their personal style, the tone and rhythms of their speech, their concerns, their humor, temperament and emotions. Hudson realized that this was only natural, in a way, that different people and situations evoke different responses, and he had, of course, known people who seemed more inclined this way than others. Southerners could be famously gracious and sympathetic. It was one of their greatest claims to real charm and, even more important, to true civility; but the quality in Sydney seemed quite remarkable to him, almost extraordinary.

***

With the pasta, and then following through the ice cream and blueberries with coffee, the table conversation carried on in two- and threesomes: Hudson talked mostly with Sydney, on his right; Libby, Chaz, and Camilla were engrossed; and Susie and Charlie got to know one another and occasionally served as free agents, with topics they felt deserving, of general table conversation. Hudson thought Charlie looked relaxed and happy, if somehow a bit wistful, and noticed how often his gaze rested on Chaz and Sydney.

“Charlie tells me you’ll be bringing out a collection of your film reviews,” said Sydney.

“Well, yes,” Hudson smiled, “but it’s just a small press sort of thing. I don’t think Pauline Kael’s place in history, or even Gene Shalit’s for that matter, is in jeopardy.”

“You must enjoy it, though, film, and writing about it.”

“Yes.”

“Is there any one aspect of film that’s the particular draw for you?”

“Oh, the writing and direction of course. But actually I think it’s probably the art of acting that most fascinates me. That’s why I was interested in hearing about your tenure with the Alliance. What was it exactly that made you decide to give up the boards?”

“I couldn’t see myself doing it for the rest of my life. I loved it. But it began to feel like a season in my life rather than a career. I wanted to do other things.”

“It sounds as though you’re a busy woman, working with Chaz in his business
and
making videos?”

“You ought to know. I can’t imagine how you do your film reviewing and teach a college class one night a week
and
do all that class preparation for your real job!”

“I’ve pieced together a life that I enjoy, and I suppose I’m afraid to let any of it go—just now.”

Sydney spoke in a lower, very gentle voice. “Let me just say that I’m very sorry for your loss. Charlie has told us about your wonderful wife.”

“Thank you. And, yes. She was. What sort of videos do you do?”

“Mostly corporate work. Training, human resources, et cetera. Some educational ones. I don’t really do the technical production. I produce and script and recruit talent.” She laughed. “And put on my thespian mask when needed. Actually, however, I see this as a phase, too.

“ I have liked learning more about art and antiques than I ever would have guessed, and Chaz and I really love working together. We’re a good team.” She paused. “And…we want children. Before too much longer.”

***

Before the evening was out, Libby had developed such a fondness for Susie that, on their way out the door, she paused and rifled through her purse for a photo of her grandson.

“He just graduated from Washington and Lee and he’s brilliant. He’s coming down to Tallahassee for graduate school—to be close to Laurel, which he has always loved—in theatre. Wants to direct and teach. And just
look
at him—and he’s good and he’s kind and he’s fun—and I just bet he’d
adore
you.” Susie had looked at the photo and smiled, not without interest. “Cute.”

“Very,” said Libby. “He may be a year or two younger than you. But that’s fashionable nowadays, isn’t it?”

Hudson followed everyone down the walk. Charlie, Sydney and Chaz made their way down the road, turning to wave under the streetlight, and Susie walked north. Libby was getting a lift from Camilla, and as she got into the passenger side amid the general goodbyes, Camilla stood near her door and thanked Hudson for the evening.

“It was fun, wasn’t it?” he answered. “But I’m afraid you and I hardly had a chance to talk,” he said. “Isn’t tomorrow your other day off?”

“Mondays and Tuesdays are my weekend.”

“I’m driving into Destin late tomorrow afternoon to see a re-release of a film I really liked.
Afterglow?
Julie Christie? I’d like to give my review one more check.”

“I never saw it.”

“We might stop somewhere for dinner afterward?”

“I’d like that.”

Chapter 23

On Tuesday evening at five minutes to eight, Terry Main reached into the pocket of his old khakis and began to draw out a pack of cigarettes. Four or five years ago he had begun paring down his pack-a-day habit, and for the past several months he had been down to three or four smokes a day. He’d only had two today, but he hesitated as he looked again at the man who sat beside him on the bench of the pier. He withdrew his hand, without the cigarettes.

The other man sat motionless, looking toward the west. Although the sun must have slipped just moments ago into the Gulf, there was no evidence of it. A bank of darkening gray and purple clouds that had been building since late afternoon had overtaken the entire sky, now moving fast and low. The man nevertheless kept his eyes fixed intently on the horizon, as though he expected to see something or could somehow see through the approaching storm to the last molten light of the day. His head leaned slightly forward from his shoulders, and the rising breeze lifted his lank dark hair in ribbons and made his bushy beard vibrate. His hands lay on his blue-jeaned thighs, one turned slightly upward as if in supplication.

The two men sat about halfway down the hundred-yard-long Laguna Beach pier, between the beach and the big old wooden pavilion at the end. Twenty-five miles east of Seaside, Laguna Beach is one of the old beach towns that have been amalgamated over the past thirty years into the westward sprawl from Panama City. Overdeveloped, badly developed, loud and tacky, this stretch of Highway 98 along the beaches has earned the possibly ungenerous, but nonetheless accurate sobriquet of “The Redneck Riviera.” Young men with already soft bellies and young women with crudely bleached hair and crude mouths to match overpopulate the area on an endless daytrip basis, from south Alabama and the small interior towns of the Florida panhandle. They cruise the strip, eating fast food, swilling beer, and yelling to one another from their trucks and their SUVs with oversized wheels. They litter the beaches, fry their skins, trash the cheap motel rooms they inhabit now and again, get ritualistically drunk out of their minds, and generally make themselves obnoxious. With the abbreviated afternoon, however, and the promise of a downpour, they seemed temporarily to have disappeared into the low-rent sports bars with widescreen TVs, or the discount malls, or whatever other noisy cheap dives they hovered in until the weather cleared and they could begin, like a gaudy fever, to rage forth again.

Small in the distance, a few young teenagers gamboled at the shoreline, their intermittent shouts and laughter scrabbling indistinctly over the white-capping waves. Terry watched as from the other direction a few couples strolled past, heading in from the pavilion. A few lone figures sat here and there, looking as if they couldn’t decide whether to come or go, and most of the remaining diehard anglers pulled in their lines and began to pack up their gear. He then looked toward shore again, toward the main set of wooden steps that led up and over the dunes to a boardwalk on top and the car park out of sight on the other side.

As if to assure himself as much as his companion, Terry said, “They’ll be here soon. I think the rain’s still an hour or more away, but we can sit in the pavilion if we need to.”

The other man turned and looked at Terry. “It don’t matter.”

Terry pursed his lips and nodded his head slightly. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. A little rain’s not going to stop us now, is it?”

The comment seemed to jog the man from his silence, and he began talking rapidly, with a low, uninflected intensity. “When I met Miss Rachel she said that God had led me to her and that you were God’s agent. That you brought us together. Just like He brought me to Pensacola. To hear the Word and be sanctified.”

Terry eyed him carefully and, after a minute, said, “Ever miss your home in South Carolina? Your sister?”

The man looked up, a pained expression quickly replaced with something like scorn. “I didn’t really have no home. I tried to. People oughta have a home. We lived in one of those big complexes, you know? It wudn’t too bad. Two bedrooms and all. I planted some flowers and stuff in some pots on the porch like my mama’d done before she got sick and I kept things clean as I could, workin’ all hours and all. But my whorin’ sister kept bringin’ those lowlife men around all the time.”

He paused, looking again toward the hidden sunset. “One of ’em shoved four cigarette butts and a empty half-pint of whisky in one of those pots and killed that plant. It was just ready to come out. Called a moss rose? I loved my sister but she’s dead to me now. She’s a whore. She mocks the Lord.” He paused again, and looked down at his paint-spattered work boots, and said softly, “She mocked me for going to the Lord.” Turning suddenly to Terry, he said, “I looked in the mirror last night, at how God has made my outside new like he did my inside, you know, the beard and all, and I said to myself ‘If God had meant for me to have a home, he wouldn’t have set my feet on the path they’re on now, he wouldn’t have led me out of South Carolina, to here.' When God leads us into exile it’s not for us to question and it’s never just for…for nothing. After
this
I don’t know what he has in store for me, but that’s not for me to worry about. Just like if I saved only one sweet baby, then even if I smite the devil just once it’ll be for the greater glory of God’s war against evil. I’m only a poor example, but if God sees fit to use me as an example then why should I fear anything?”

Terry reached over and grasped the man’s shoulder, and the man turned to look at him.

“Michael, you are not a poor example. And, as Miss Rachel says, God most certainly has not led you here for nothing. Just as He most certainly also led you to that painting job at the Blue Bar back in the spring. He wanted me to find you, you know? To recognize you, my man, as the only person brave and worthy enough of confronting the devil here. Of helping Miss Rachel alleviate her pain and being the Lord’s own helping hand in carrying out his divine judgment.”

Suddenly, nearly over them, a woman’s voice, strong but gentle: “You are God’s precious angel, Michael. You are part of the great ongoing mission in Pensacola and you are part of God’s larger plan for this sick and troubled land from which we wait to be translated into glory. He has already set your feet on that path and chosen you for his work.”

***

Neither man had noticed the two figures, a man and a woman, slowly approaching in the gloom, and both looked up, startled. At which point the woman quickly knelt beside the bearded man and, looking up into his face, said, “He has chosen you for greatness.”

The man called Michael uttered a choked cry, rising, and awkwardly lifting the woman with him to her feet. “No, no, Miss Rachel…you mustn’t do…”

“What?” she said. “Look into your face and see God’s salvation there reflected in your eyes?” She reached out her hand and lightly touched the man near his right temple. Her eyes matched his in intensity, but she smiled warmly. “Come, Michael, and walk with me.”

The three men and the woman moved slowly toward the pavilion. Only a few older people passed them coming and going, getting in their power walk laps undeterred by the encroaching weather, and one small group of teens lingered nearby, calling to a couple of their friends still surfing off one side of the pier. The atmosphere was heavy with that dull, quickening current of latent force, of waiting, just before a storm. But there was still just enough human activity that the foursome was not particularly noticeable as they walked, the woman in front with her arm linked through the arm of the man called Michael, Terry and the other man behind. And their low, earnest voices would not carry far in the rising wind.

***

The woman walked slowly, very erect, like someone in a ceremonial procession, her head held high. Her gaze seemed fixed somewhere beyond the looming pavilion as though on a point far out to sea, but occasionally, as if awakening from a trance, she would turn to Michael with rapt attention, searching his face with wide eyes, her serious expression warmed slightly by a knowing smile. She leaned in toward him when she spoke in her cadenced but somehow softly thrilling voice. When she did, he would steal sidelong glances at her and answer, quietly, like a child, enthralled.

When they reached the pavilion, she led them toward the side farthest from the few remaining people and sat down, her legs straight to the wooden boards, her feet together. She indicated that Michael sit to one side and Terry the other. The other man sat, still silent, behind Terry. She folded her hands in her lap and looked intently at Michael until he overcame his apparent shyness and stared expectantly back at her. Her eyes were an almost surreal robin’s egg blue.

She was dressed very plainly, in a longish dark gray jumper with a simple white blouse underneath. What little could be seen of her lower legs and ankles revealed dull whitish-gray hose, and her feet were encased in flat, round-toed black shoes. Though far from unattractive, there was an ascetic air about her. She wore little if any makeup. Her hair, a dark honey blonde, was long, parted in the middle and pulled back just over the tops of her ears, hanging straight down from a large barrette at the nape of her neck. The severity of her appearance seemed to set off, by contrast, the controlled but unmistakable passion in her face. Her expression was one of gravity and peace, yet at the same time shadows of emotion coursed somewhere behind her patient, almost stoical gaze—flickers of beatific joy alternated with the pained look of inconsolable longing. For a long time she did not speak.

Finally, turning her body slightly and peering even more deeply into Michael’s eyes, she said, “I have spoken with my brother, Reverend Oakley, Michael. He has prayed about this mission for many weeks, and now he has received God’s answer. The revival in Pensacola will continue in some form, but his role, after these three glorious years, is ending, and he must take his call to other people in need. He told me last night that God has revealed to him that you are his chosen servant for this task, and that this glorious sacrifice will bring a fitting end to this phase of the Lord’s ministry here.” She paused as tears sprang up in her eyes. “That you have been chosen to honor our brother Timothy’s death through this vengeance against the Devil.”

Michael’s body went rigid, but after a moment he breathed deeply and seemed to settle slightly, resigned, within his work clothes.

He said, “I’ve heard your brother every night that he has preached since I got down here. He’s been just like my pastor back in South Carolina and the ones I listen to on the radio while I paint every day. I’ve learned how we
are
in a war and that we cannot turn our back on what’s right.”

“Praise God. He has a plan for each of us if we are to have victory over Evil. That is why God directed you to Terry. And let Terry know that it was you who did His work in South Carolina. Someone else would have had you put into prison, Michael, but Terry knew that you had been sent to continue helping God make an example of the wicked. And now we are one in God’s purpose. My brother says that when the news of this sacrifice is made known, it will help others come to the truth and join in God’s war against the Devil. Fewer babies will be killed by the abortionists and fewer young men, like my brother Tim, will be converted to evil and even killed by the sodomites and the plague that God has visited on them. Because of your example, more money will be raised to support the effort. With this brave act you become a part of my brother’s great work, and that of God’s other specially chosen servants, part of the great Pensacola revival and—who knows?—perhaps part of the ongoing work when he moves on. He thinks God is calling him to Galveston next or, possibly, Merida, in Mexico. The Great Gulf Revival! Remember. Once we are done with this work here, Michael, we want you to join us in some role in God’s new mission.”

“I don’t know what I could…”

“We will see. Leave it to me, Michael. And remember what we discussed at our first meeting. Do not seek out Reverend Oakley. In these next few days, when you go to the meetings, as I know you will, to hear God’s word urging you on, don’t seek out my brother, don’t try to find him and say anything about our plan. I am his agent, as you are mine, and we are all one. Each has his own job to do, Michael, and we must leave my brother to his. Just as Terry must continue to pretend that he is a bar manager so that he can serve as the eyes and the ears of the Lord.” She smiled. “Within our family of Christ he is sometimes called ‘the undercover disciple.’ He has done so much good, gathering information about the enemy and helping us to know how we can best target our efforts. And, of course, God directed Terry to know that you were the one He had sent for this mission. You understand this, don’t you?”

Just then, the thin man who had not spoken, dressed in black pants and a white shirt and seated behind Terry, rose, shaking slightly, looking as if he might begin to cry. Instead, he hesitated, and then went down on one knee in front of Michael. He looked up at him through thick black-rimmed glasses, and took his hands in one of his own and patted them slowly with his other.

“This is the Reverend’s and my cousin, Michael. This is Joseph. Joseph cannot talk. Like all of us, in his own way, he is one of God’s ‘peculiar people.’ He is a soldier, too, in God’s war. He’s done some work like yours and he manages our website outreach program. Do you know, he had hoped very much to do this mission, but God has told us that it is only you, Michael, whom He wants.” She touched the kneeling man lightly on his shoulder. “You want to pray with Michael, don’t you, Joseph? May I speak for you?”

The man called Joseph nodded. “We are one in God’s work,” she continued, extending one hand to Terry and sustaining with the other her hold on the kneeling man’s shoulder.

The three or four other people remaining nearby had left the pavilion by now, heading down the long pier in the gathering darkness. As the heat lightning on the western horizon began to erupt into writhing horizontal bolts, the foursome held hands, and the woman prayed.

***