May 27
Mother's soul can rest: here is a woman in my life. Mrs. Brown in a pearl-gray snood, age forty-six, sensible as pancake flour. Like characters in a story, our lives were star-crossed but came together. She will rescue the hero, answer his telephone, file the mountains of mail, maybe shake a broom at the laundry thieves. And he can keep his monk's life, the holes in his underwear. Mrs. Brown doesn't care.
At the first interview she laid her failings at my feet, or would have except she hasn't any. Does not smoke cigarettes, take strong drink, go to church or gamble. Has worked for the city, the army, and most daunting of all, the Asheville Woman's Club. Thirty years a widow. She doubts being married would have been much different.
It was strange to speak forthrightly, after living at Mrs. Bittle's those years: exiting the bathroom with downcast eyes, sitting at supper while old Mr. Judd piped up with his yellowed news extras. Now it seems we shared a kindred silence, restraining our smiles on hearing that Limburger has flown across the Atlantic. But maybe I contrive this, as lovers reconfigure the days before, with every glance leading ultimately to union.
In any event here she is, installed in my dining room. I hated to show her the mail, stored in bushel baskets in the empty spare bedroom. She did not flinch. Grasped each bushel by the handles, marched it downstairs, and dumped onto the maple table one mountain for each month. Bravely she dives in, even before we've found her a filing cabinet or acceptable typewriter. (Royal or L. C. Smith.) We shall put the bathroom door back on its hinges, as soon as I've cleared its surface of all piles and chapters, and found a proper desk myself. For now, when one of us needs the WC, the other steps out the back door, pretending to call the cats. This and more, she suffers with perfect composure.
Mrs. Brown is a force: small, unadorned, unapologetic. Her eyebrows arch like a pair of bridges across her wide forehead. Her blouses button to the top, she wears white cotton gloves even on warm days, and she can still any troubled waters with her austere calm and peculiar antique grammar. Each morning on arrival she taps on the front door, puts in her head and calls out, "Mr. Shepherd, where be ye?"
Her words seem scripted by Chaucer. She says "striped" and "learned," making an extra syllable of the past tense. A sack is a "poke." Surveying the piles of letters she declared, "Mr. Shepherd, you get mail by the passel." She says "nought" and "nary a one," and the garden greens she brought me were "sallets," the word Shakespeare used. She says "queasy" to mean worried, as did King Lear. When I noted this, she replied, "Well I expect he had a lot to be queasy about. He was a king, wasn't he?"
When pressed about her origins she said her people were "Mountain Whites." She seems reluctant to say more, only that it means Highlanders, people who came through the gap from England ages ago, and reckoned they ought to stay. Remaining on the spot, with idiom intact. She means "reckon" in the British sense, akin to reconnoiter, until knowing a thing for certain, which is to "ken it."
Most shocking was this pronouncement: "My family be there still, living in a cabin home in the hells." This is a kind of bush, evidently, a rhododendron. "They grow thick as can be. If you came to be lost in there, you couldn't push out with a stick. So it's called hells. Pardon if you're offended. It isn't a foul word in that sense."
No offense taken. Her past can stay where it is, lost in the hells, not my business, as my childhood hells are none of hers. We concern ourselves with the future, which we agreed should begin at once, in my dining room, as soon as she could give proper notice. And today here she is, dispatching the mess with carbon paper and a buttoned-up smile.
May 28
Mrs. Brown's advice about the schoolgirls: they won't bite. I took her word on that, and left the house for the first time in a while to wander up to the cemetery. A belated outing for Mother's birthday; it always seems important to go somewhere for her sake. But she is nowhere any longer, least of all the Riverside Cemetery. Even the writer O. Henry might have "up and gone" from here, as Mrs. Brown would say. Tom Wolfe is still in situ, though the town is evidently still put out with him. Many graves bore jars of wilting peonies today, but nary a posy for poor Tom, a man so recently gone, dramatically and in his prime, reeling from the fracas of fame. Maybe Mrs. Brown could have saved him.
A sample of one day's mail, posted forward from Stratford and Sons, received on June 6, 1946, six months after publication of Vassals of Majesty. (Spelling sic.)--VB
Dear Mr. Shepherd,
Your book Vassals of Majesty is tops. I sobbed my heart out hundreds of times, especially at the end when the soldiers burnt up all the King's parrots in the fire. My mother has a Parakeet named Mickey Rooney. My sister never stopped razzing me because I stayed up all night, scared out of my wig on the gory parts. Then she read it, and blew her top. I think Lt. Remedios is a dream boat, but she is all for Cuautla. Which one is supposed to be the best? I am a budding author too. Please send an autograph photo and keep it coming. (My sister says, 2 please!)
Thanks!
LINDSAY PARKS
Dear Mr. Shepherd,
I am writing about your book in regards to the War in Mexico. Usually I sit on the fence and don't argue with people or try to tell them how it is. The horror of war is part of life since recorded history. But your book showed how men really feel when they are soldiers. I served in the 12th Infantry Regiment, F Company. One of the few that made it out of Berdorf. I read your book in the Van Wyck Army Hospital. About ten other guys on my ward read your book, and most of the others couldn't hold a book or see to read one. Everything about war is bad like you said. Some of us have a bet that you were an Infantry Man yourself.
Yours truly,
GEORGE M. COOK
Dear Mr. Shepherd,
My name is Eleanor White and I reside in Springfield, Missouri. I am currently attending college at Webster Women's College. I myself am not a big reader but I must say, your book made me want to read more, more, more. Now I understand the Mexican Conquistadors through new eyes. I am recommending my History professor to read it. My hat is off to you! Yours truly,
ELEANOR WHITE
Dear Mr. Harrison,
My name is Gary Duncan and I live in California. My girlfriend was hanging icicles all over me until I read your book Vessels of Majesty. In a word: "Stimulating." I found your destriptions very thought provoking, even if I didn't think it is the best book ever wrote. But am I going to tell Shelley that?
I would be tops in her book if you sent a photo. Her birthday is coming up here quick, June 14. Her name is Shelley. And the last name, same as yours, Harrison. Can you top that?
YOUR FRIEND, GARY
Dear Mr. Shepherd,
I would like to say thank you. Your writing is an inspiration to us all, or anyway that is how I feel. Your book hit me when it made me think how the boys on both sides of the war were still human whether Spanish or the Mexicans. Every person is human, even Japs, their mothers must have all cried tears just the same. That gave me something to ponder. Please continue to write more books.
Yours sincerely,
ALICE KENDALL
All correspondence answered with a short note, no photographs or inclusions.--VB
July 6, 1946
Dear Diego,
I trust Frida is still recovering from the surgery in New York. I have no address for her there, but could not let her birthday pass. I expect she is angry with me for failing to visit. Please forward my saludos, and tell her I never fail to bake a rosca in her honor on this day, whether she is present to eat it or not.
On the eve of your elections I share your thrill and dread, waiting to see what Mexico will declare for herself and her Revolution. The news is sparse, so I welcome any from you. I did read of the National Prize of Arts and Sciences, and so I congratulate you both. Your wife is a National Prize herself, as you know better than anyone.
The news from here is about what you'd expect. You wouldn't care for the food: no empanadas dulces, I doubt there is a tablespoon of sugar righ
t now in all Asheville. (My cake today, with molasses and pureed apples, was a sad, dark-brown cousin of its predecessors.) But rations are lifted on nearly everything else. Prices rise like balloons, and we all jump like children under a pinata, reaching for our material passions. Americans believe in water-proof gabardine and Vimm's Vitamin Tablets. The housewives sent their butter to the Front for years, and now require their heavenly reward. To get it all manufactured on schedule, the sacrifice of laborers will have to be made permanent, it seems: they toiled like slaves for the war effort and still haven't had a single pay adjustment. You could have heard a wrench drop on Pack Square this spring, when the unions shut down everything. But Truman seized the railroad and drafted the strikers into military service, to command them back to work.
So that is the report you asked for, not entirely good. Our newsmen mostly reviled the "workers' rebellion." Politics here now resemble a pillow fight. Lacking the unifying slogan (Win the War), our opposing parties sling absurd pronouncements back and forth, which everyone pretends carry real weight. How the feathers fly. The newsmen leap on anything, though it's all on the order of, "Four out of five shoppers know this is the better dill pickle," assertions that can't be proven but sway opinion. "Dance for the crowd" is the new order, with newsmen leading the politicians like bears on the leash. Real convictions would be a hindrance. The radio is at the root of the evil, their rule is: No silence, ever. When anything happens, the commentator has to speak without a moment's pause for gathering wisdom. Falsehood and inanity are preferable to silence. You can't imagine the effect of this. The talkers are rising above the thinkers.
On my own advice, then, I'll close this ramble. But first I have a confession. The day I left Mexico six years ago, Frida gave me your copy of the Codex Boturini. She said it was a gift from you, and gladly I accepted. But I wonder, did she actually ask, or just tell you it was stolen? The culprit herein revealed: the cook. In this parcel I enclose it, rightfully returned. You may remember I was enthralled by this codex, which you showed me in your office one day. I understood it to be a sort of Bible for the homeless. Yet, with its little drawings of people it also resembled the eight-pagers the boys used to have at school, and I'm abashed to admit, your codex had more effect on me than the naked Sally Rand ever did. When Frida put its accordion folds in my hand, I couldn't refuse. I should have asked her whether you'd been informed of your generosity. But I wanted it badly, and took it, for this reason: in my experience, penitence is more attainable than permission.
I hope you'll be pleased to know I made good use of it. My second novel, now complete, is the story of the Mexica people's journey to their new home in the promised valley "Where the Eagle Tears the Snake" (my tentative title). Plot and dramatic interest all came directly from the codex: all those severed heads on stakes, fur-covered enemies, and eagles flying down to carry weapons to the rescue. I hardly needed to invent a thing. It was much like working as your typist: I only had to stay awake to a luminous presence, and make a good transcription.
So I'm in debt to you, not to mention the original author of the codex, attributed to Huitzilopotchli himself. I will soon send the manuscript to my publisher and receive a check for royalties-on-advance. If the Feather-Headed God expects his share, he had better get in contact right away.
With regards to all in your household,
H. SHEPHERD
July 8, 1946
The manuscript sailed off today. Mrs. Brown took it to the post office. Before going out the door she turned back and held out the bulky brown-paper package of it, resting flat on her white-gloved hands. "Look here, Mr. Shepherd, a little raft with all your hopes upon it, sailing for New York. Ye know not how light it feels in my hands."
This afternoon she discovered my birth date had just passed. She is filing old documents, the birth certificate applications and so forth, now that the flurry of typing is done. She seemed hurt. "A man turns thirty years, that's important," she scolded, "and to think I sat here and knew nought of it, all the day long."
I didn't say what Frida would have. That you can't really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece: the birthday like an invisible pinata hanging great and silent over his head, as he stands in his slippers boiling the water for coffee. The scarred, shrunken leg hidden under a green silk dress. A wife and son back in France. Something you never knew. That is the heart of the story.
August 27
Murderous dreams come even in daytime, memories that occlude vision. How can a friend's blood be willed from the mind? Other men do it. They come home from a war, kiss the ground, and go forward, as easily as taking the Haywood bus to the library. Without meeting this rising panic and humiliation. Running out of the library bookless and hatless, rather than end up crumpled behind the newspaper stacks again, watching blood spread across the maple floor boards.
Last week, on the day itself, even the bedroom was too uncertain a place, its shifting walls and window's glare, letting in the clouded sky. Mrs. Brown thought it must be the grippe. She brought tea and toast upstairs on a tray.
Today, one hundred ten paces to the corner market, step by counted step. An automobile passed slowly on the street: a Buick. Two women at the newsstand professed themselves as admirers. One had just come from the market and carried a bouquet of gladiolus wrapped in a paper cone. She meant no harm at all, she was only a young wife going home to some celebration. Not Jacson Mornard stalking Frida in Paris, arms loaded with flowers, any fool could know the difference. But anyone who rises, any greatness, attracts those who would cut it down at the root. Any fool knows that also.
Every day it seems possible to walk to the door. This time, step out. But the sidewalk leads to a bridge across a precipice. There is Mother up ahead slipping off her sling-back shoes, stepping out onto the planks above the rushing ravine. Don't come. You wait here. The red-bellied spider pulls itself into a hole in the plank. Every hole could have something like that inside.
Mrs. Brown might know more than she says. Today she looked up from the table, peering over her glasses to size up her wretched, captive chief, who stands at the door looking out. "They won't bite," she said. But it isn't the girls in saddle oxfords. It is the things that have already begun, proceeding now toward their finish, the supplicant who should have been turned away, and was not. The man at the door with hat in hand and the pickax under his raincoat.
September 2
No word from Frida, still angry. Nor from Diego, not even a curse over his stolen codex, though that's also to be expected. He couldn't remember to write letters even as Chairman General of Lev's Correspondence Committee. The world is a train moving forward, with people like Diego and Frida at the fore and all the rest of us standing back, shuddering at the roar.
Of all those gone away, Frida is the most missed. Not that she ever offered real affection. Only her version of it: a game of cat-and-mouse.
September 3
Well, here is a reason for missing Frida: writing letters. Who else loved my news the way she did? A neighbor named Romulus. Now a sister named Parthenia.
"Don't trouble yourself over it, that's my sister Parthenia Goins," said Mrs. Brown today, hardly even looking up from the page she was typing. "Her husband Ottie is out there too, I see. And some of the nephews."
I'd just told her a band of gypsies had come to the end of their rope on Montford Avenue and were camped on the front yard. Very chagrined, therefore, to learn it was Mrs. Brown's family, come down into town from "the hells." A twice-yearly event, at "Eastertide and the Laboring Day," for the purchase of dry goods and a checkup on the moral progress of Sister Violet. The trip takes them the better part of a day, even though they live only a few miles up toward Mount Mitchell. But the road is "fearsome hateful."
They showed up out there at noon, in a Model T that looked older than God and more likely to drop an axle. The man in the driving seat opened the door to stretch his legs, revealing a beard that reached his belt buckle.
Clumped in the back, an old-looking woman and shifting herd of oxlike boys. They sat in the car for hours, until the heat drove them out into the shade of the maple in the front yard. They showed no sign of coming to the door. Mrs. Brown said they likely meant to fetch her back to Mrs. Bittle's, and were waiting for her day's work to end.
"Shouldn't we ask them in?"
"They won't come."
"Well then, you should go."
"I'm not done here. It won't vex them any to wait."
"For hours?" I peered out through the curtain. "Couldn't they do some errands and come back, to save their time?"
"Mr. Shepherd, if they had any money or one precious thing, they'd be sure to save it. But time they have aplenty. They like to spend it where they be."
Realizing they might have come to investigate Sister Violet's situation, I did insist on asking them in. Elder Sister accepted, eventually, while the males remained outdoors, all of them smoking pipes. Mrs. Brown introduced us but begged a few minutes more to finish the week's work. The sister, Parthenia! What a strange creature, peering about this living room like Columbus among the red men of Hispaniola. She sat in a parlor chair with feet together, hands folded, a black kerchief covering her hair, a lumpish dress covering everything else down to her boots. Not even Frida could have worked this particular peasant style to much advantage. She declined my offer of tea, fiercely, as if accustomed to being poisoned by strangers. We sat facing one another across the shocking silence.
Finally: "Who mought ye all be?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Who's yer folks?"
"My parents both passed away. I don't have any family."
She took this in slowly, like a snake digesting its catch. Then: "How old be ye?"
"Thirty."
Many other questions stood in line after these, each patiently waiting its turn, each one finally spitting, rubbing its hands, and stepping up to position.
"Violet says ye be from Mexee-co?"
"I lived there. But I was born outside Washington. My mother was Mexican, her father did business with the government here, so that's how she and my father came to meet. She was too young, the family disowned her over the marriage." Stop. Filling up a silence with blather, like a radio man. That cannot be what a Parthenia requires.