Zion (11 page)

Dr. Claiborne was flushed, clearly furious. He made a fist at his side and then released it to an open hand.

His wife pointed to Wesley. “This fine young man came over to the house by himself on Wednesday of this week, and he says he’s going to do the job alone. It will be his own personal project,” Charity said.

“Not while he sleeps at my house,” Tom said, shaking his head.

“Oh, please, Tom,” Sara said. She knew the junior college pettiness, the personal politics, and she feared for both of their jobs. Despite Dr. Claiborne being retired, one phone call and both of them could be fired from their permanent positions.

“Dr. and Mrs. Claiborne, I guess I’ve done all of the picnicking I can handle for one afternoon,” Tom said. He stood and tossed his cup of iced tea, half-eaten plate of barbecue, coleslaw, and pork and beans into the garbage can just across from the table. “Yes, sir, I’ve had about all of the good company I can take for one day. Time to go back to the shop and get some work done,” he said as he walked away.

Sara stood and made frantic apologies for his behavior, saying he had not been himself lately, and that it was all a big misunderstanding. Then she followed her husband out of the park.

Wesley sat at the table and never looked up, and the Claibornes glowered at him with their jaws clenched tight.

Sara caught up with Tom about a hundred feet away at the edge of the Student Union.

“Please, please Tommy. Wait,” she called out to him. “This is serious.”

He turned and looked at her but never stopped walking. “It sure is. But I’m not discussing it now. We can talk about it tonight,” Tom said.

“We’d better,” she said.

They went in opposite directions to their campus jobs, both walking with their heads down, shoulders stiff, as if the dead had gotten up from their graves and were traipsing the earth. Sara felt like the wind had been knocked out of her, almost as bad as the attack in 1964.

Wesley was mad enough to bite the head off a tenpenny nail. He tore out of the gravel parking area at the Industrial Arts Shop and headed north on Oak Street, a narrow blacktop road that bordered the edge of campus. The little Maverick six-cylinder motor whirred. When he passed the Quonset hut where his father worked, he wished they would have bought a Dodge Charger or something with real power, and right then for the first time he hated the little car that he’d once loved so much since his parents bought it for him. Now he wanted a Barracuda or a Challenger or a Duster when he passed his father’s workshop heading toward downtown.

As he shifted into third gear on the column shifter, he had no idea where he was going, but was certain he was leaving the campus and his hardheaded old man behind. Wesley knew Tom was dead set against the Claiborne job and wouldn’t back down for anything. The young man drove, wandering aimlessly and thinking.

He was even more livid by the time he reached Dead Man’s Curve at the Pickleyville crossroads. The disagreement with his father was churning inside of him. To make matters worse, he had not gotten to eat his lunch at the picnic, and he was hungry. He stopped at the National Grocery to buy a Hubig’s Pie and a Nehi Orange Crush. Inside, he spent twenty-seven cents on the cherry pie and a quarter on the Nehi. He drank and ate while standing under the store overhang outside. It was hot even in the shade, Wesley’s back resting against the brick wall. He began to calm down a little and tried to compose himself. He hadn’t intended to loiter, but he was unsure where to go, wondering what to do next. The fried pie settled his stomach. When the pop bottle was empty, he went back inside and placed it in the return rack and got a nickel back from the cashier. He looked at it and realized it was a 1934 Buffalo nickel. He rubbed it between his fingers, stuck it in his blue jeans pocket, and hoped his luck was changing somehow. Then he threw the Hubig’s bag into a garbage can outside and left the grocery parking lot.

As he drove back downtown to see a buddy, Nate Forrest, Wesley planned on asking if he could stay a few nights. He didn’t want to go back home right away. He went to South Spruce Street near the old First Baptist Church, a decaying building with mammoth concrete steps that led to the second-floor sanctuary. Forrest lived in a ratty garage apartment across the street from the church. When Wesley pulled into the drive, he almost didn’t bother to knock on the door. Nate’s bicycle, his only means of transportation, was not on the second floor stoop where he usually kept it. But he climbed the steps and knocked on the door anyway. There was no answer. So Wesley figured he was at work.

Wesley’s class work was almost done for the summer even before the term started. He’d nearly completed the independent study project by working on it in between the spring and summer terms. The class consisted of a drafting project, a sample house plan, and blueprints for a brick ranch-style home. He decided to go back to the Industrial Arts Shop and work on the Claiborne job for a while, so he drove the Maverick in a big circle from one side of town to the other, still worrying about the mess he’d gotten himself into. He went to the building and let himself in and started working on the Claiborne drawings. No use in fretting when I can do something constructive, he thought. I’ll do some work, get something done at least.

By dark, Wesley had finished at the shop, accomplishing all he could do at the time without the prices on the lumber. With the list of materials and rough drawings for a quote on Monday, he’d be ready to submit the price to the Claibornes, though he was unsure if Dr. Claiborne still wanted his business.

Some students were beginning to gather at the Industrial Arts Shop for an evening welding class, a night track to help local men find work in the industrial trades.

Wesley packed up his portfolio and drove back to Nate’s garage apartment. The bicycle was now chained to a post at Nate’s second floor stoop. When he got out of the Maverick, he could hear guitar music playing inside. The windows were open. He climbed the steps and beat on the door.

Nate opened the door and welcomed Wesley inside, and then he sat back down on the couch. He picked up the old Harmony flattop guitar that was leaned against the cushion, and started strumming a few chords of Lead Belly’s “In the Pines.” Then he dropped his tortoiseshell pick on the coffee table. “What’s going on? You don’t look so good.”

“The proverbial shit has hit the propeller,” Wesley said.

“Why? You get the clap? Knock up the little girlfriend you don’t even have?” asked Nate.

“No, I got myself tossed out of the house.”

“Whoa, Nellie. That’s not good. And you’re one of the decent guys here in P-Ville. You must have screwed up.”

“Well.”

“Let me guess. You’re at my place to sleep on the couch?”

“Nate, you’re a prophet.”

“Yeah and what all happened?”

Wesley told him the whole story, including the visit earlier in the week to Charity’s bedroom.

“Now if you’re not stuck in the creek and can’t climb up the bank. Your old man’s still gonna pay for school, huh?”

“I don’t know. He’s mad as hell, really pissed.”

“Have you gone back home?”

“No, I’m putting it off as long as I can. Let Pops cool off and take some of the edge off everything, I hope.”

“I bet you’re scared to face him again.”

“A little.”

“Okay. Stay here tonight. But tomorrow you’ll figure out how to deal with it. I’d tell the Claibornes to find somebody else to build the shelves. Keep the peace at home. My daddy says all the time it’s a whole lot easier to keep the peace at home than to fight foreign wars abroad. Wesley, I’d rather be sewed inside a bagful of dog turds before I’d get into a fight with your old man. The man does not play and has no sense of humor.”

“Thanks for the advice. I’ll take the couch. You got an extra pillow?”

The next morning, Wesley woke up more tired than rested. He had barely slept, his mind too anxious with thoughts of the conflict and what had gone on, what was left to do to salvage things. He smelled bacon frying in Nate’s iron skillet. Nate worked as a cook at the P-Ville American Diner, and college kids liked to hang out with him because he was always cooking something good to eat, playing the guitar and singing some kind of song.

At the table, Wesley said, “Why don’t we work on the Claiborne job together? We can split the profit after materials.”

Nate swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “I’m no carpenter, but how much are we talking?”

“Maybe two or three hundred dollars each. I need help with installation more than anything else. I don’t know. I could just pay you for coming over and helping me move the cabinets and shelving and installing them. I could pay you by the hour, if you don’t want a big commitment. I know you’ve already been working a lot at the café.” Wesley not only needed physical labor, but he wanted a buffer to help deal with Charity.

At the sound of cash money, Nate’s eyebrows raised slightly. “I’m your man for a few hours of work. Just pay me the same as I make at the diner, which ain’t much. But I can’t mess around a lot or I’ll flunk my algebra class. I’ve got Dr. Rawlings for Math 161, and she’s hard as hell. I took her last spring and dropped the class. If I get behind this summer, I’m screwed. I’ve come to realize that she’s worse than a cobra.”

“How’s that?”

“At least a cobra has the mercy to spit in your eyes and blind you before he kills you. And Rawlings wants you to see everything she’s writing on that damned blackboard when she tries to maim you.”

Wesley laughed.

“I can help you a little when you need it. Maybe a couple of evenings as long as it doesn’t foul up my class, my work schedule at the café, or my back. I’m already working forty hours a week at the café this summer, and Dr. Rawling’s math class is going to start next week. But God knows I could use some extra bread.”

Nate handed Wesley a plate with three eggs sunny side up, toast, and two strips of crispy bacon. He ate ravenously. He remembered that he’d never eaten any supper the night before. The last meal was the Nehi and Hubig’s Pie at the National Grocery. He thought about his plans for the remainder of the summer, the move to Lafayette, and trying to get the work finished before the fall semester started. The rift with his father could derail all of his future plans—if Tom took away the car or failed to give him the college money. He didn’t want to back down on the Claiborne job. It was a matter of principle and pride.

 Nate placed the hot skillet into the kitchen sink and it sizzled. He sat down with his own eggs, and ran a slice of toast across the top of the yolk making the egg break into a watery spread. “Life is wonderful until the darkness surrounds you like an abyss,” he said, smiling wide. “I think Albert Camus said that.”

Wesley didn’t even care to ask what he meant by the comment.

During the evening after the picnic, Tom and Sara argued as never before during their marriage of twenty-three years. In the low light of the living room, they battled about Wesley and the Claiborne job and Tom’s harsh rudeness at the campus picnic.

Tom tried to leave it alone, but Sara followed him, hounding him from room to room offering her bill of indictment. It was as if she had been storing up past acts for this very moment. She reminded him of his failures in life and served as his personal prosecutor.

More than once, Tom wondered if she would strike him. She had taken up Wesley’s cause saying Tom was narcissistic, utterly self-centered. She said she’d known this character flaw over the decades, but she kept her mouth closed about it until now, but no more.

“You are hard-hearted, self-righteous, and unwilling to compromise. It’s your way or no way. The sun and moon must take their cues from you, Tom,” she said, her eyes blazing with contempt, her finger pointing at him, shoulders square. She stood in the living room and he sat in his chair. The television played in the background.

“I think the constellations do just fine without my help,” he countered.

“Not even Almighty God knows how to run the world without your guidance,” she said.

“The Lord isn’t asking me to do this job. I simply do not want to work for that woman, Charity Claiborne. I want nothing to do with her. She’s corrupt.”

“Why?”

“She’s a liar and a harlot, and I don’t trust her. She’s deceived Dr. Claiborne into marrying her. But she won’t deceive me. That’s for damn sure.”

“You’ve worked for plenty of sinners before. It’s never stopped you from cashing a check.”

“I still don’t have to work for her.”

“No, you’re expecting her to walk on water. You’ve been made perfect like some of the Methodist ministers believe of themselves.”

“Sara, I’m sure you’ve heard that she literally drove the first Mrs. Claiborne to the grave.”

“Eliza died of a stroke. She had terrible health problems for years. Heart attacks, surgeries. She was not well for the longest time.”

“Sure, she had some health troubles, but it was made worse because Howell was shagging Charity every chance he could get. That woman was even hired as a receptionist at the Marble Palace, for Christ’s sake. She worked in the President’s Office while they were involved.”

“I’ve heard about all I can stand. It’s all just nasty rumors. I don’t know what they did or did not do. But I do know that Eliza Claiborne died, and they were married shortly thereafter. Who cares? It’s your unbending rules of decorum that place burdens on people beyond what they can carry. Now, you’ve turned on Wesley. This is nothing but a little carpentry job to pay for his college tuition, and it won’t cause you to lose your good morals and sterling reputation, I promise.” She put her hands at her sides and walked out of the living room where Tom sat staring at her back as she left.

Tom did not think he was nearly as cocksure as Sara claimed. He was heartbroken over the rift with Wesley. He sat in his chair in the living room, one foot on the floor and the other on a padded Ottoman. A worn copy of William Faulkner’s
Absalom, Absalom
! sat on the end table. He picked it up and tried to comprehend an infinitely long sentence a dozen times, but his mind would revolt from his reading and go right back to the fight with Wesley and Sara. He tried to read a few pages during the course of an hour, comprehending little.

Sara never reentered the room, and she spent the rest of the night in the bedroom. Tom tried to sleep on the couch, but his restless mind left only the knowledge that his attempt to do the right thing had caused a rupture within his family.

Wesley was a good kid, Tom knew, and he hoped his son would follow the right path back home, make his way toward better judgment. But he was unsure this hope would come to pass. He knew he couldn’t force the boy to make the right decision.

He also hated what Charity Claiborne stood for, the sense of entitlement that she displayed because of her good looks and because of her new place in the upper class of Pickleyville, the town and gown clique that ran the city. Tom couldn’t see how the money made from working for her was worth the indignity. How could taking on this project accomplish anything good? There were other jobs and other people he could do work for on the side. He didn’t have to take every job offered. This was the right and privilege of any craftsman. Tom’s goal was to protect himself and his family from the corrosion of Charity Claiborne, and to get Wesley through architecture school over in Lafayette. He wanted to keep the family unity, too, and he’d never leave his son high and dry moneywise. If he had to work multiple jobs by himself to help Wesley become an architect, so be it. He’d always been a blue-collar worker, and he would do whatever was necessary to allow his son to become white-collar.

This was the most serious threat to his family since the long day in 1964 when his wife was raped and almost killed by a still unidentified assailant, a ghost perhaps, some entity that entered into their lives like a wisp of smoke and left as mysteriously as when it arrived. There was no light in this darkness. He now felt a certain kinship to former times with the accompanying sense of dread.

It was as if some bad epoch in history had repeated itself, the resounding echo of fate. Tom couldn’t understand the insanity, the chain of events leading so quickly to the estrangement with Wesley and Sara. Certainly, he didn’t care to return to the past—not ever.

So Tom got up from the couch an hour before dawn. He woke up early even though he didn’t have to go to work. Not a word was said between him and Sara after the fight and her departure to bed the evening before. He left the living room in darkness wearing only a T-shirt on his back and a pair of boxer shorts. He walked down the hallway and opened his son’s door and turned on the light. He knew Wesley hadn’t come back home before he opened the door. The bed was empty. He realized that he and Wesley were too much alike for the other’s good. He hoped the boy would come back home and they could reconcile. Tom turned the bedroom light off but left the door open when he exited the room. He went to the kitchen and lit the gas stove to heat the aluminum percolator coffee pot. The local station no longer played old-time music and jazz during the day or night. He turned on the radio. Now the station only played country records. He listened to Glen Campbell’s version of “Galveston,” and then “Begging to You,” by Marty Robbins. And when the Robbins song quit playing, he turned off the radio in despair.

No matter his desire to stay away from the past and never to return to it, there were times when he regretted the current age, despite the relative peace he’d lived in since his wife was physically healed from the assault and took the position as a clerk at the college library.

By this time of the morning, he used to hear roosters crowing in the coming dawn, and he took great comfort and reassurance in the daily sound, but now none of his neighbors kept chickens any longer. He liked the fresh eggs, but some time after Sara went to work at the library, she made him get rid of all of the chickens. After a stray dog killed several in the yard, she threw a fit. She said, “I’m working a job, a full-time job, and I’ll buy my own damned eggs before I deal with all of this stress.” So, Tom gave the remaining birds to a neighbor who cooked them with dumplings. Now his coffee, eggs, and milk and all the rest of his food came from a grocery store in Pickleyville.

Tom sat in the cool light and drank his solemn cup of coffee. Nothing seemed right in the world. Nothing appeared to follow logic and common sense, and nothing was more important to him than his wife and son, yet both were in exile away from him.

After the first cup of coffee, he got up from the kitchen table and took a cold biscuit from the refrigerator and put it in the toaster rack in the gas oven. Strawberry jelly waited in the refrigerator. He sat thinking about Wesley, Sara, and their conflict. He thought about the little .22 magnum pump in his bedroom closet, how it hadn’t been fired three times in almost a decade. He should have been taking Wesley squirrel hunting somewhere during all of these years, even if they needed to drive up to Mississippi to hunt like some of the local men had started doing. I should have carried that boy hunting, he thought. All we ever did was work in the shop at home. We were together, but it wasn’t leisure. It was always work, and I’m not sure it was right.

Sharp regret on his mind, Tom spent all day Saturday in his carpentry shop behind the house. It still looked like an old barn on the outside, despite his renovation on the inside. It had a wood floor made of salvaged pine boards and hardwood walls with shelves and stacks of lumber, as well as the tools of the carpenter’s trade hanging from nails. On one of the overhead beams sat an ancient McClellan saddle from the Civil War, a ragged wooden saddle tree with a few scraps of blackened leather and brass. The saddle was something his father had kept in the barn, and he never threw it out because it reminded him of the old man.

His current project, a cedar chest, was a birthday gift from a college professor to his daughter. Tom was facing a deadline, the professor having paid his deposit months ago and the birth date was coming within a week. The party was set for the following Saturday. Tom had fashioned strips of cedar and laminated them. Wesley had helped join the pieces together using dowel pegs, and the bottom of the chest was placed on thin wooden rails. The box was two feet wide and four feet long, and two feet deep. The laminated wood slats showed different grains—red, white, gray, hues of amber—and they would be pretty when the lacquer was applied.

Tom placed a dowel rod into a hole on the bottom. The hole was filled with carpenter’s glue, and he tamped the rod down with a wooden mallet. The mallet was made from a fallen hickory tree in the yard, the head fashioned from a limb that he’d shaved down to size. He wished Wesley was there to help him install the hinges on the box lid. He smelled the cedar. It was even more profound after drilling the hole to insert the dowel, and he felt sad that he could not share it with his son.

On Sunday morning, Tom attended the service alone at Little Zion Methodist. They sang hymns: “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing.” He listened to a sermon taken from the Book of Hebrews preached by Reverend Poole, a local pastor. He worked part-time at the church and taught Senior English at Milltown High School. He had one foot in the world of religion, and the other in the ongoing battle to defeat comma splices, sentence fragments, and incoherent paragraphs. Poole had earned two graduate degrees, one in theology from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and the other in English from LSU. As a bi-vocational pastor, he stood on the bottom rung of the Methodist clergy ladder, but this suited him well enough. He often said that the proper role of the clergy was that of a servant and not a master, and staying as a local pastor and never getting ordained as an elder prevented him from entering the Methodist rat race toward larger churches and the bishopric.

Tom thought that having a public job allowed the minister to empathize better with the parishioners, since he worked full-time outside of the congregation like everyone else. At least it shielded him from charges of only working on Sundays and not knowing what it was like to function in the real world.

After the sermon was finished, the piano played “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling,” an invitation hymn. When the second stanza was complete, no one came forward to become a member of the church, so Poole went ahead with the benediction. The parishioners began to file out of the sanctuary, speaking to the minister at the door as they left.

The minister offered Tom his hand and they shook. “Tom, I’ve got to go visit Donald Brownlow and Mrs. Inez Jones this evening at the hospital. Donald mentioned to Mary Anne that he wanted to see you when I went to checked in on him this evening. I guess he wants you for company. You mind coming along for the visit?”

“No, I’ll ride with you.”

“Six o’clock. I’ll come get you at your house.”

“Okay.”

Tom stepped through the church door and into the afternoon light. He wondered what the marshal might want but wasn’t too concerned about it. Sara was still not talking to him, and he figured the trip to the hospital might help get his mind off the problems at home.