South of Broad

  At the Piggy Park on Rutledge Avenue, a stone’s throw from Hampton Park, I drove to the far corner of the drive-in, leaving room for Ike to pull up beside me. Molly proved that she was a regular at the place by immediately ordering a Coke with a barbecue sandwich platter. Suddenly, it hit me in a flash of blazing insight that Niles lived in an orphanage and did not have a nickel to his name. “Let’s get four of those,” I said. “My treat, Niles and Fraser.”

  “You’re a good man, Toad,” Niles said, and I could hear the relief in his voice.

  Wormy Ledbetter strode out to greet us, accompanied by some of his lowbrow entourage. I stiffened at his approach. There was always a trace of the lynch mob in Wormy’s eyes. But he entered our realm as a teammate tonight. As Niles and I got out of the car, he embraced us fiercely and said that our defeat of Hanahan made for the best day of his life. Then he looked over at Ike and said, “Get out of the fucking car, Jefferson.”

  Ike did, and Wormy rushed over to hug him in full view of white Charleston. In that single gesture, something broke forever in the mystery that was the South. “Goddamn, you were great tonight, Ike,” said Wormy. “So were Niles and the Toad. Goddamn, all great.”

  “But my father gave you the game ball,” Ike said. “He hasn’t done that all year.”

  “The biggest honor of my life,” Wormy said, as emotional and vulnerable as I had ever seen that flesh-eating redneck. “Tell your daddy I said so, you hear?”

  “I’ll tell him,” Ike said.

  Wormy walked back to the realm of his Wormydom, and our trays came out. The carhop fixed them expertly on our windows and the smell of hickory-smoked hog filled the car like an anthem to hunger itself. I wolfed down my sandwich in record-setting time and so did Niles in the backseat. We had just played a forty-eight-minute football game and danced the night away, and our primitive, almost desperate hunger caught us both by surprise.

  Niles said, “I could eat that whole hog, including his eyeballs and asshole.”

  Fraser looked shocked, then answered, “That’s the crudest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say. Don’t you think, Molly?”

  “It ranks high,” Molly said, but she was giggling.

  Just as suddenly she wasn’t giggling, and her expression turned fearful and cold. Following her eyes, I turned and saw Chad Rutledge’s old-model Chrysler LeBaron pulling into the Piggy Park, doing a slow circumnavigation of the drive-in and doing it twice, so he would be sure to be noticed by all present. Twice, he passed directly in front of us and tooted his horn, trying to get Molly’s attention. But he failed to get her to look up from her sandwich. Beside him, Bettina Trask rode in triumph, the smile of a low-rent, cut-rate Cleopatra lighting up her face.

  “That bastard,” I heard Fraser say in back.

  Niles groaned. “Jesus, he’s mocking Wormy to his face.”

  Chad had chosen the parking spot nearest to the picnic benches, where Wormy and his troop of no-goodniks hung out with their cigarette-smoking girlfriends and beer-drinking buddies. Though I felt like a voyeur to some kind of disaster, my eyes were riveted to the scene of the skirmish that was about to take place. I did not hear Ike get out of his car or make his way to my window.

  “Let this one go, teammates,” Ike said. “This is like taunting a king cobra. Whatever happens, Chad is asking for it.”

  “Why is he doing it?” I asked.

  “Because he knows his place in this city,” Molly answered. “He’s untouchable, and he wants to prove it to Wormy. And to you, Leo and Ike. And to you, Niles.”

  “I’m curious, Molly, Fraser. What does Chad think of us, really?” Niles asked.

  “Actually, he likes all of you very much,” Molly said. “He’s grateful how you’ve accepted him on the team.”

  “Deep down?” Niles pressed. “How does he feel deep down?”

  Fraser closed her eyes, then said calmly, “He thinks you are all beneath him. Way beneath him.”

  “It’s fun to know you’re appreciated,” Ike said. He kept his eyes sealed on the action near the front of the drive-in.

  When it happened, it happened with quickness and contained the devastating power of surprise. Wormy leaped off the picnic table and rushed to Chad’s car, opened the front door, and pulled Chad out by his hair. Chad’s scream found itself muffled by the jeering laughter and the applause of Wormy’s friends, who’d been alerted to the imminence of the attack. Backhanding Chad twice on the face, Wormy challenged him to a fair fight and put up his fists in a boxer’s experienced stance.

  If Chad had just fought Wormy, man to man, I think the outcome of the evening might have had a more honorable end. But instead of raising his fists, Chad answered in a loud voice, audible, I think, over most of the peninsula: “Wormy, my father taught me never to lower myself by fighting white trash.”

  “Oh, he did, did he?” Wormy said. “My, my. Well, I have a different theory. I think you’re chickenshit from the bottom of your feet to the top of your head. A South of Broad pussy too scared to defend himself.”

  Wormy stepped forward and, with his open palm, began to slap Chad’s face hard—slap, slap, slap—until Chad screamed, “I’d kick the shit out of you, Wormy, but my parents taught me to always take the high road and never let a common redneck drag me down to his level.”

  “Defend yourself, pussy. This ain’t no fun. This ain’t no fight. How do you fight a man without no pride?” Wormy said to the crowd, then surprised everyone by ripping off Chad’s expensive and well-tailored shirt, leaving Chad looking as naked as a slug in a summer garden. It is difficult for a shirtless man to be taken seriously in a parking lot where every other man is wearing a shirt. Until that moment, I had never considered that possibility.

  Viewing his domain and his options, Wormy looked around the Piggy Park, then down at the shirt he had torn from Chad’s body. In a moment of rare creativity for him, Wormy blew his nose into Chad’s swell shirt, then threw it on the ground and kicked dirt and debris all over it. Without a pause, Wormy walked around Chad’s car, opened the passenger door, and offered his hand to Bettina Trask. To my surprise, Bettina took Wormy’s hand and let herself be led by the arm in a garish triumphal march into the parlor beside the barbecue pit.

  In a humiliation as complete as I had ever witnessed, Chad watched this event unfold, trembling with helplessness and rage. He shook his fist heavenward and shouted toward the open door, “Hey, Wormy, you fucking shit-bird redneck! I’m going home to lift weights for a year. Then I’m coming back to whip your goddamn ass. One year from tonight. That’s a promise. And I’m a man of my word. I’m a descendant from one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, so you know I’m a man of honor. One year, and I come back to kick your ass up and down and all over the Piggy Park.”

  Wormy walked out for a final time, shaking his head sadly. Then he backhanded poor Chad to his knees. “Shut up, Chad,” Wormy said. “I’m eating a sandwich with my girlfriend now.”

  The laughter was unbearable. In my car, we watched as Chad got into his car, backed it up, then headed our way instead of exiting on Rutledge Avenue. When he got in front of my car, he shook his fist at me, then sat on his horn, maniacal and unhinged. I heard something to my right and turned to see Molly getting out of my car, shutting the door, and walking calmly to Chad’s car. He flung the door open, motioned for her to enter, and Molly sat down in the place she was born to sit.

  Though I struggled with a restless exhaustion for most of that night, I slept hard in the last hour before the alarm sounded at four-thirty, when I awoke to the starlit world of paperboys. I rode my Schwinn slowly down to Colonial Lake, every muscle in my body burning with fatigue and every cell of my body nearing collapse from the humiliation of Molly’s public desertion of me. As I pedaled slowly, the thought occurred to me that I had just suffered through the most unsuccessful first date in the history of the sexes. Caught up in a maelstrom of an obsession I could not shake, I tried to recall every salient detail of how I had beha
ved with Molly from the moment she kissed me on the cheek to her measured, purposeful departure from the front seat of my car to the more familiar one of Chad’s. What had hurt me most keenly was the unnatural coldness of Molly’s leave-taking. It was breathless in its wordlessness, the lack of farewell or a blown good-bye kiss or any attempt of an explanation. I wished that she had aborted our evening with a little more finesse and allowed me to take her home, endure my unbearable awkwardness at her front door, then called Chad for their tender reunion. That she left me publicly, with my whole team as eyewitnesses to my mortification, was nightmare enough, but to do it with Niles and Chad’s sister in my backseat lent a touch of malice or inattention I didn’t think I deserved.

  In the backseat, Niles and Fraser had sat paralyzed, bee-stung into silence.

  Finally, I had said, “You know, I thought we were double-dating. Now it seems like I’m your chauffeur.”

  But there was a knock on the window and Trevor jumped in to occupy the space just vacated by Molly. “I saw the whole thing. It was pure Elizabethan drama with a little barbecue sauce thrown in. We live in a town that is provincially bigoted against the culturally astute, effeminate young men such as myself. Allow me a minute to explain. Since I have arrived in the city limits of Charleston, I have been variously described as a faggot, a queer, a cocksucker, a fudge packer, a fairy queen, a sodomite, a pervert, and a wide assortment of other unpardonable slurs. Of course, in my case, such slurs are perfectly applicable. I can make all your mean thoughts about Molly go bye-bye, Leo.”

  Niles said from the backseat in a tone of innocent wonder: “How have you gotten this old, Trevor, without somebody killing you?”

  “I have my tricks of the trade.” Trevor said it so good-naturedly that I started to laugh.

  I said, “Trevor, I don’t even know what gay people do to each other.”

  “And I don’t want to know,” Niles said.

  “Ditto,” Fraser said, putting her hands over her ears.

  “It involves meat hooks and razor blades and flamethrowers and dildos made from buffalo penises.”

  “What’s a dildo?” Niles asked.

  “Poor mountain idiot.” Trevor sighed.

  “I don’t know, either,” I said.

  “Look, Leo. After what just happened to you, I’m going to give you a free introductory lesson, and I’ll waive the usual initiation fees as a personal favor.”

  “Thanks, Trevor,” I said. “Just by getting in the car, you saved me from an embarrassing situation. I’ll never forget it.”

  “You baked me cookies,” Trevor said. “First day in Charleston, and I’m eating benne wafers baked by the loneliest kid in the world. Molly shouldn’t’ve treated you that way. She should be ashamed.”

  “Leo doesn’t expect a girl like Molly to go with a boy like him,” Fraser said.

  “Why the hell not?” Niles asked.

  “Oh, don’t get defensive on me, Niles,” she flashed back. “The differences are too great, and as a Charleston boy, Leo knows that. Charleston society keeps in the shadows, but it’s still the most important force in this town.”

  “Got your word on that?” Niles said.

  “You’re walking into a trap, honey,” Trevor warned Fraser.

  “You can always trust the word of someone related to a signer of the Declaration of Independence,” Niles mocked with a reptilian cold-bloodedness. “I learned that from a great man tonight. A guy who could run his mouth, but couldn’t use his fists.”

  “Chad was trained to be a gentleman,” Fraser said defensively.

  “Cut, my dear, cut. This scene is getting out of hand,” Trevor advised Fraser.

  “I come from people who never heard of the Declaration of Independence, who couldn’t read a word of it if they had to,” Niles said. “My folks wouldn’t read a book if you put a gun to their dicks. But they can read people all day long and always get it right.”

  “You’re going to say something you don’t mean, Niles,” Trevor said. “Let’s change the subject to the price of mangoes in Argentina or the life expectancy of a no-see-um.”

  “You were bragging about your people’s ability to read other people,” Fraser reminded Niles.

  “Your brother, Chad, is not half the man the Toad is, or Trevor, or Ike,” said Niles. “And this will be the shock of the night for you, Fraser. Or me. He’s had every opportunity in the world, and he still ain’t worth a shit. Could you drive Fraser home, Toad? I’m going over to the next car to be with the niggers, where I belong.”

  Niles left my car even as a distraught Fraser tried to grab his arm. Then I heard him ask Ike, “Can I catch a ride back to the orphanage with you and Betty?”

  “That’s not what I meant to say,” Fraser murmured tearfully as she watched Niles climb into Ike’s backseat. “It came out all wrong.”

  “Why don’t you tell that to Niles?” Trevor said. “Honey, the tongue is the most powerful and destructive organ in the human body.”

  But Ike had already cranked his car and was heading toward Rutledge Avenue. I followed and drove Fraser home. Trevor escorted her to the door with his matchless sense of the dramatic, then performed an elegant soft-shoe back to the car.

  I parked my bicycle by the News and Courier truck, lifted the first bale of newspapers, and cut through the steel binders with my wire cutters. I began to fold the papers quickly, securing them with a new and stronger rubber band. Mr. Haverford’s immense hulk made a shadow behind me, and I wished him good morning without looking up.

  “You ever go out with women, Mr. Haverford?” I asked.

  “Broke that bad habit years ago.”

  “Why?”

  “Played the law of averages. Went out with a lot of women when I was young. One hundred percent of them were assholes or heartbreakers. I could take the assholes, but the heartbreakers could inflict some real damage.”

  “I can’t imagine you heartbroken.”

  “I was married once,” he said. “I ever tell you that?”

  “No, sir,” I said, surprised. “Who’d you marry?”

  “Mrs. Haverford, you little bastard,” he said, smirking. “We even had a kid, a boy. The kid would be in his late twenties by now. My wife fell in love with a welder in the navy. They moved to San Diego. Never heard from her or the boy again.”

  “You never heard from your son?”

  “I don’t even know if he’s alive,” Mr. Haverford said. “He’s ignored my every attempt to stay in touch with him. What kind of sorry kid wouldn’t want to get to know his own daddy?”

  “An asshole, Mr. Haverford,” I said. “Anyone who wouldn’t be proud to have you as an old man isn’t worth a shit.”

  “I thought you’d killed that Hanahan halfback last night,” he said. “That was your best tackle of the year.”

  “You were at the game?”

  “Got a season ticket.”

  “We got Wando High next week,” I said.

  “You’ll cut their asses,” he said. “I like this colored coach of yours. You guys have only jumped offsides twice this season. That’s good coaching. And his kid, Ike: he’s a bearcat.”

  “A great guy too,” I said.

  “Be careful of humanity,” he said. “It’s a bad breed overall.”

  “Eugene Haverford: the philosopher,” I said.

  “Eugene Haverford: the realist. Anytime you want to talk to me about the girl, I’ll be happy to.”

  “Girl? What girl?”

  “The heartbreaker,” he said softly. “It happened last night, didn’t it, kid? Take your time. I’m here every morning. Half-drunk but always ready to talk with an assful of life behind me and a nickel’s worth left to live. Now, go deliver the news of the world to Charleston.”

  CHAPTER 20 Pygmalion

  The following Sunday, while I nursed my wounded ego and obsessed over Molly’s abandonment, I went to check on Harrington Canon. His coloring had displeased me last time I visited him, and he had been in bed for th
e past week. I had noticed that his listlessness had come to rest in the corners of his dried-out eyes. The only thing he had said to me was, “I forgot to get my flu shot, Leo.”

  “Let me get you to a doctor,” I had pleaded, alarmed.

  “Get out of my house, interloper,” he had responded.

  When I approached his house on Tradd Street that morning, I could sense a dissolution of a place and a civilization. I opened the gate and was immediately surrounded by a dozen neighborhood cats that over a long period had become both a hobby and the objects of Mr. Canon’s most sustained devotion. They surrounded me howling and meowing and impatient. Mr. Canon’s life was systematic and almost metronomic in its sense of order; his clocks were set with grim precision. But I could tell that some sort of breakdown was in motion, and I had to feed a pride of aggravated cats before I could walk upstairs to check on Mr. Canon. The smell of excrement nearly overpowered me halfway up his circular staircase, but I stiffened my resolve and knocked at his bedroom door.

  “Leave me alone, Leo,” he said in a weak voice. “I don’t need your help.”

  “I don’t believe you, Mr. Canon. Just let me in to clean up a bit.”

  “This is very personal,” he said. “I’ve got too much pride to let you see me like this.”

  “Pride’s great. I can’t wait until I get me a little bit. But I’ve noticed it’s hard to have much pride when you’ve got shit running down your leg.”

  “I couldn’t get up,” he said. “I just couldn’t. I think I ruined my four-poster bed.”

  I opened the door and Mr. Canon began to cry. I worked with efficiency and speed, getting him out of his bed and into the bathroom, where I pulled off his pajamas. When he was naked, I turned on the water of his shower, and then walked in with him even though I was fully clothed. I soaped him down from head to foot, then washed him until his skin shone as red as a baby’s.