Even the Mississippi River had looked shallow in places. That was deceptive. You have to know that there are undertows, swift currents in some places, like slithering snakes; in others, the water appears muddy and no-account. Carleton, Sr., cautioned his sons to preserve their strength as men for things that were of account. He had been a blacksmith and a farmer and had not gone to school beyond a few grades but he had eyes in the back of his head, nobody could put a thing over on him. Carleton laughed aloud—“That old man ain't dead.” Suddenly he knew. And knew, too, that the farm had not been sold: that was just to fool him, and to punish him. Because he'd gone so far from Breathitt County. And he'd never repaid that debt.
His pa had said much in life is no-account, and a whole lot of that is a crock of shit. It passes without leaving any impression like clouds in the sky. What is of account—getting born, dying, buying property, getting married and having children and honoring your father and mother and defending the honor of your family—are all that matters.
Everything else was no-account. Carleton's life was adding up to no-account.
Stopped at a filling station paying in dollar bills, nickels and dimes. A penny that slipped through his shaky fingers, he bent to pick it up but the gas station attendant, a lanky kid, was quicker.
Which was the route to Savannah?
Savannah what? Florida, or Georgia?
Carleton thought it was Florida, maybe. Or, if it was Georgia, maybe the other was on the way.
You trusted to the sun, as a picker. In the field you can gauge the time by the sun in the sky. Even if it's overcast, you feel it.
He was back in the car and driving. “Now what?”—God was laughing at him. He'd maybe taken a wrong turn. He had not known there was more than one Savannah. So a map could not help, one hundred percent. But if one was on the way to the other, then it might. Hours passed. It was night, and another day, and again morning and he had not slept; or, if he'd slept, it was in his car with his mouth agape like an old man, snoring so hard he woke himself in a panic. And then he was driving into the sun: saw a clock in a barber shop window: eight-twenty. But which eight-twenty, day or evening? And which day, and which month?
Wasn't sure if he was still in Florida. Maybe he'd crossed the state line without knowing. YOU ARE LEAVING FLORIDA THE SUNSHINE STATE COME BACK SOON!
This was confused with God commanding him as God had commanded him once. All the corners of the world shall ye seek and one day ye shall find.
Except his skin, he'd be judged. His skin was white. Yet the Klansmen had been scornful of him. A white man and an American like them except they'd kicked him in the groin as you'd kick a dog, and one of them had struck his face with a rifle butt when he'd lain writhing in pain. Now he favored his left leg. He was not an old man but sometimes walked like an old man. What they'd done to Bert, he had not seen. Like you'd castrate a hog it was said.
There was a sign—CUMBERLAND ISLAND 19 MILES. Cumberland!
But he guessed it wasn't what he wished. He kept driving.
Stopped in a place called Brunswick. At least he was headed north on route 17, and he was headed for Savannah, Georgia. His head was pounding so, almost he couldn't get out of the car. Outside, the air was steamy, worse than in the car. Hugging close to his body in a kind of halo. Inside the diner that was also a tavern, a few flies buzzed lazily. No one at the counter and no one behind it. Carleton sat on a stool and waited. Folded his battered scabby hands and waited. Seek. Ye shall find. There were festive sounds from the kitchen, laughter, a hammer pounding. After a while Carleton went to peer through the doorway and saw that the kitchen was cluttered and messy but there was a floor fan going and at a table sat a fat, shirtless man wielding a hammer. A nerve in Carleton's eye twitched when the fat man struck the table with the hammer— “Gotcha, fucker!” A girl in a soiled waitress's uniform was leaning against a stove, giggling. Her cheeks bounced with hilarity. The fat man struck again at the table and she giggled louder. Carleton saw that for all his fat, the man had a deft aim: he'd mashed maybe a dozen flies on the table.
Still, Carleton was served. Had a cold bottle of Coca-Cola to soothe his nerves, tried to eat a ham-and-cheese sandwich on rye, but the ball of tiny snakes in his guts was acting up. He decided to take the sandwich along to eat in his car. No knowing when he would eat again. He smiled to think—“A sandwich can outlive who tried to eat it.”
WELCOME TO SAVANNAH his eye discerned without comprehending at first. So tired … Saw a clock in a billboard sign: two-thirty. But maybe it was a painted clock and not real. He could not have said which of the blond-haired girls he was seeking: the one named Pearl, or the one named Clara.
Had to wonder: Does God keep a promise?
He parked his car, had to piss so bad. Behind a boarded-up warehouse. A long shaky steamy-hot stream of piss like poison. When he was finished he swayed on his feet. Flies moved in.
Bitch just like your mother.
Why he said those things he did not know. In fact it wasn't Carleton who said them but some drunk with his mouth. He would ask to be forgiven, he hadn't meant to hit her. (Maybe he hadn't hit her. His own girl. It wasn't like Carleton to hit a woman let alone a girl his own daughter who adored him.) He was walking somewhere looking for his car he'd parked by a— He would remember when he saw it.
“Clara.” That was her name.
He was walking, and he was favoring his left leg. That bad knee. His skull pounded. Hammer-hitting: whack-whack! A nerve twitched in his eye. He understood that God was mocking him more directly, openly. Yet he had his dignity, you didn't look up to acknowledge it. Always he would have his white skin, that was a fact.
Time was slowing down for him. Never before in his life had time slowed down so you could feel it, like melting tar. This meant that the rest of his life would stretch out before him like that long hot highway to this city whose name he'd already forgotten. He did not think that he could bear it, unless it had already happened and was finished.
Came to a church. A church! Remembering that the girl had been taken to a church. He'd begun to lose her, then. And he had not even known at the time.
This church was made of dark red stone, and it was a big old church nothing like the small tidy white shingle board with the cross at the top where he and the little blond girl who'd hardly come to his shoulder had been married. His eye took in Gethsemane vague as a word glimpsed through water. He was stumbling inside, into the relative cool of the stony interior.
A strange place. Like a mausoleum. A high ceiling like no church ceiling he had ever seen. He squinted up at it, and could not see where it ended. In the half-light, rising from the stony floor, figures stood motionless observing him. He believed he heard a soft murmur. There he is. Seeing then that the figures were statues. Tall, garishly costumed statues, more than life-sized. They were wearing long robes, but their heads were bare. Their hands held no visible weapons. One of them was Jesus Christ contorted on his cross like a worm on the hook, spikes through his bare white feet graceful as a woman's feet. Carleton stared, and shuddered. The sweat on his body was turning clammy. Like a man losing his vision he groped his way along the pews, intending to approach the altar. For you were drawn toward the altar in this church. But the altar was far away, floating in white. White drapery, tall white candles. White flowers in vases. Above the altar was a stained-glass window. He had to sit suddenly, his left knee pounded with pain. Turning then to look behind and seeing how the statues were spaced through the church so that each section of pews might be observed. So that the church was never empty. If you half-shut your eyes, the statues seemed to move. There were low excited murmurs There! there he is. In this shadowy place like a mausoleum something seemed to draw everything upward, toward the altar and the stained-glass window that was a perfect egg shape. In the sides of the stone walls were other stained-glass windows, smaller and narrower. They were like eyes. Unblinking eyes. Carleton was the only figure in the church not moving, because he was bei
ng observed. In the windows the eye-aching colors—vivid reds, blues, yellows, greens—glowed and faded, sinking back into themselves then pulsing up again as if behind them a heart was beating. Everywhere there were vertical lines and juttings, arches high up the walls, that vibrated as if about to come to life. The shadowy ceiling might not even be a ceiling but the entrance to some other world. Ghostly and quivering the close, stale air was filled with invisible shapes like birds' wings. Spirits. Carleton was shivering, he did not believe in the spirits of the dead returning. He did not! Shut his eyes to ignore them seeing a melting-tar highway stretching off to the horizon, sun-baked. Sunshine State and God laughing at him and crushing him under His foot that was a fuckin cloven hoof.
“Fucker.”
It was a groan, coming from his gut. The ball of spite-snakes rousing themselves. He was looking for her—his daughter—that one daughter—the only person he had ever loved—he wanted to understand this, and he wanted these witnesses to understand. They were judging him, and he wanted them to know he was a Walpole, and the name Walpole signified a certain kind of man, a man who honored his family even to the grave.
But he felt these facts sliding away. Memories he should have sorted out years ago so that when the time came he could put them all together. Of account these were. He could not die because that would mean all these things would be lost—who else was there except Carleton Walpole to bring them together? Everything— everyone—was joined in him. Like Jesus on his cross, these things came together in you, piercing and spiking you in place. Only in Carleton Walpole. He was the center of it, without him everything would melt away into nothing. Already he was losing their names, that were familiar to him as his own. And he had a new baby now back at the camp, he had to live for her. And Clara who'd run away with a man he had never seen. Pa no. Pa don't hit me. Pa! He held back his hand, he had not struck her. It was the others he wanted to hit, the others he wanted to murder.
Struggling to pull off his shoe, goddamn he was angry: threw the shoe at the nearest of the stained-glass windows but it struck the wall, and fell harmlessly to the floor. Carleton heaved himself to his feet. Grabbed whatever it was—a heavy iron stand for a candle— reared it up and swung with it, striking one of the long-robed statues, a female it appeared to be in a long blue and white robe, and a halo around her waxy face, Carleton laughed at the expression in the face as he swung and struck and battered and crumbled the thing and it fell in pieces at his feet. Turning then, panting and partially blinded, bits of grit in his eyes, he swung the iron stand in wild arcs striking the pews, denting the hardwood pews but not otherwise injuring them, he stumbled in the aisle uncertain which direction to take as at a crook in the road where there's no fuckin sign you can't make a decision, yet finally you do, he was laughing stumbling toward the door, he had one shoe on and one shoe off and his knee was numb, the pain had abated, as in his gut the tiny snakes were taken unaware, and could not stop him now. At the front of the church he swung and toppled in single strokes two fountain-looking things, milk glass on pedestals that held water, and the shattered glass went flying, and the water went flying. And a voice called out—“Stop! Stop!” and Carleton turned to see someone hurrying toward him, and ducking, wordless, remembering to breathe through his nose, Carleton swung the thing in his hand and caught the man on the side of the head, the man went down like a shot duck, hit the stone floor with a soft moaning sound, and Carle- ton dropped the iron thing beside him, and stumbled away. Both his hands were throbbing with sensation but it was a good sensation. Outside then in the sunshine, stumbling along the pavement one shoe on, one shoe off. Witnesses would think he was a drunk well fuck them let them think what they fuckin want. He saw faces regarding him with astonishment. White faces like his own yet regarding him with astonishment. In a sudden rage he tore a whiplike thing from a car, a metal strip it was, he'd use it like a whip, he was striking at people's faces who came too close, warning Get away! Get away I'll kill you! and it seemed to him not even himself any longer who was doing this, it was the whip-thing in his hand that was alive, and there came a youngish thick-bodied man in a policeman's uniform, bulldog face yet astonished behind curved dark glasses— Mister lay down your weapon, I am warning you mister lay down your weapon—and in his hand was a pistol cocked and aimed at Carleton's heart and Carleton felt the trigger jerk as he rushed his enemy wielding the whip, swinging it until something exploded into his chest and his vision went out, and his brain went out. And that was all.
II.
LOWRY
1
“Kid, you don't cry much, do you.”
It wasn't a question. It called for no answer. Lowry had no questions to ask of Clara, or of anyone. He was a man who knew the answers to questions, not one who depended upon others to supply them.
He likes that Clara thought. A girl who doesn't cry.
Those long dreamy hours driving with Lowry, sitting beside him in the front seat of his shiny-dark new-looking sedan, drinking Colas they stopped to buy—Clara was the one to run into the store, clutching coins Lowry gave her—and sometimes he let her have a few swallows from a bottle of beer, driving those hours Clara had no thought of any destination. Just to be in motion: to escape. Watching the sun shift in the sky behind the scrub pines beside the highway Clara thought nervously, fiercely Nobody's going to get me now. He isn't going to, ever again. Observing the nameless road before them that the man named Lowry overtook always at the same speed, trying to imagine it running back beneath them and into the days preceding: the distance and time her father would have to conquer if he were to get her, claim her. Lay his hands on her. And she saw Carleton Walpole blundering, failing. For he could not overtake the younger man whose face in profile was the sharp-etched face of the jack of spades on a playing card. And so she smiled. She laughed.
See? I don't need you, goddamn you. No more.
Dozing off and waking to his upraised hand, his actual fist, seeing the scabby knuckles before his hand struck …
“He made my face bleed,” she'd told Lowry in a thin, outraged child's voice. Her anger was for that sensation of being helpless, a sight to be pitied by others. “He never hit me like that before. He hit my brothers but not me, I could taste the blood and some people were watching, and—” She would shudder, raising her knees to catch her heels on the car seat, hug her knees tight against her chest as a boy might do, staring through the bug-splattered windshield at the road that had no name for her, as the places through which Lowry drove had no names and were fleeting, inconsequential. Sometimes she would turn to peer over her shoulder, to see the highway moving back steadily behind them, misty in the morning light; and something about the way it disappeared so swiftly frightened her. Lowry said, “You're afraid your old man will find you. But you're afraid worse he won't.”
Lowry laughed, and Clara felt her face burn.
“Goddamn it ain't that way. No.”
But Lowry just laughed, and reached out to squeeze her knee.
Like you'd squeeze a dog, the nape of its neck. Out of fondness that was superior, condescending.
Sometimes, Clara told him Go to hell. Muttered so maybe he heard and maybe he did not hear and she climbed over the back of the seat clumsy and indignant and stretched out in back to sleep. That weird sensation of lying flat in the back of a car as the car is moving, you feel the vibrations, a shivery feeling between the legs sometimes, and thoughts coming like long slow flat shapes and in her sleep she heard a child sobbing and her heart was filled with contempt for such weakness. You don't cry much, do you. Waking then she was confused not knowing where she was, maybe on one of the buses, then she realized the moving vehicle was small, contained: only just Clara lying on the backseat amid Lowry's things, and shimmering green outside the window flowing past like water, and there, the back of Lowry's head, the blond hairs that were different shades in the sunshine, some so pale they appeared silvery, others darker, almost brown, and he wore his hair long, straggling to his colla
r, and almost Clara could not recall his face, staring fascinated at the back of his head feeling calm now thinking There he is. He hadn't ever gone away.
Stopped at places along the road. Small restaurants, taverns. Lowry, entering such places, seemed always to be recognized: if not his actual face and name, his Lowry-self. The way he smiled, knowing that people would smile back at him; knowing they were grateful to see his smile, and not something else. He said, in the way of a man speaking to himself, to reason out a thought to which Clara Walpole was a witness only by chance: “You're a certain size, people look at you a certain way. Say I'm on crutches. Say I'm in a wheel-chair. These same fuckers looking at me, think they would respect me like they do? Or if I was a woman.”
Clara said, sly and mean, “If you were a woman, there'd be some bastard drives a car just like yours and the same color hair as yours to knock you on your ass every time. Wipe that look off your face.”
Lowry laughed. He liked it when Clara spoke to him in a certain brash way long as she didn't cross over into something else. Like a dog that's been trained to rush barking to the very edge of his master's property, but not to take a step over. Or he'd regret it.
In the places they stopped, Clara ran to use the rest room and fixed herself up. So happy! Sometimes she thought Just to pee. Just to wash my face. Just to run water, it don't need to be hot. She slapped her cheeks that looked pallid, sallow, to get some color into them, like she'd seen Nancy do. Wetted her eyes to make them clear. Smiled at herself in the mirror in that way she had not needing to show too much of her teeth, and thinking that she looked all right, she had a hopeful-seeming face, nobody would wish to hurt that face.
Smiling because there was Lowry out there waiting for her.