“You’re just the person I don’t need to see,” he said. “Why did it take you so long to get up here?”
“I went back over to your house to feed your cats.”
“They’ll be fat as hogs if you stuff their guts twice a day.”
“I didn’t know. I’ve never owned a pet,” I said. “My mother’s allergic to animal fur.”
“Once a day is sufficient,” he said.
“I’ll take care of it,” I promised.
“A housekeeper will need to be hired,” Mr. Canon said. “I left that four-poster bed a mess, I’m afraid. I was filled with shame that those sweet boys in the ambulance had to encounter me in such a situation.”
“Those guys’ve seen everything,” I said. “That’s what my father told me as we were cleaning up your place.”
“You cleaned up?”
“It’s good as new. We couldn’t save the sheets, but we saved everything else. We dusted, we polished, we cleaned. We made a good team. We even brought flowers in from the gardens.”
“Thank you, rapscallion,” he said. “Please thank your daddy for me. Neither of you were required to do it.”
“My father said we were the only two people in a position to do anything. You were unconscious and fighting to live.”
“I don’t remember a thing about it,” he admitted.
Nurse Verga stuck her head into the room. “Is this boy bothering you, Mr. Canon? We can send him on his way.”
“You and your incompetent cheerleading squad of nurses are what’s really bothering me,” Mr. Canon grumbled. “This boy just fed my cats and cleaned my house. Why am I not asleep? Are you feeding me placebos instead of using effective drugs of sufficient potency?”
“It’s time for a shot that will put you out for the night,” she said. “I can get rid of the boy.”
“I need him for another couple of minutes,” Mr. Canon said. “Leo, I’ll need you to place a call to my lawyer, Cleveland Winters, tomorrow. I’ve got some important decisions to make, and I’ll need to make them in a hurry.”
“The doctor will see you in the morning,” I said. “He’ll fix you up fine. You’ll be back home in no time.”
“That’s how it works in books and movies,” Mr. Canon said. “But something broke in me this morning. Something broke deep inside me, and whatever it was is going to kill me. Get that pussyfooting look off your face. I’m going to make up a long list of things for you to do. Customers to call. Scoundrels with accounts receivable, and other dealers who have things I own on consignment. I’m going to donate all my books to the Charleston Library. I need to talk to a curator at the Gibbes Museum of Art. You’ll need to call the rector of St. Michael’s, so he can come give me the last rites. I’d like you to bring me the Book of Common Prayer that’s in the first drawer of my bedside table. My great-grandfather Canon was carrying it when he went down at the Battle of the Wilderness.”
“No,” I said, devastated. “I won’t do it. I refuse to accept this. Dr. Ray is going to take care of all this tomorrow. You’ll see. We’ll be laughing about this tomorrow night. I’ll tease you about this conversation for the next thirty years.”
“Leo, Leo, I’ve told no one this. I’m not close enough to anyone to tell them. I chose a reclusive life because it seemed to fit me best. I was a bitter disappointment to both my mother and father. An only child never outgrows that. That’s a wound that suppurates through the years; there’s no healing, and not even time can touch it. I’ve told no one in Charleston, not even my beloved rector or my lawyer: I was diagnosed with leukemia two years ago. I’ll never leave this hospital.”
“Don’t say that,” I said. “Giving up’s the worst thing you can do!”
“What in the hell am I listening to you for, Mr. Nobody? You’ve never even had a head cold.”
“But I know all about giving up.”
“Yes, I sometimes forget about your bouts with insanity,” he said. “It gave me great pause before I took a lunatic into my store. But my Charleston values overcame my fears of the asylum.”
“That there are saints like you who walk among us.”
“You should be getting on home now,” he said. I could see he was tiring.
“I’m staying here with you tonight,” I said. “I’m sleeping in this chair.”
“Preposterous! I’ll not have it.”
“My mother and father don’t think you should be alone. At least for the first night.”
“I’ve been alone my whole life,” he said. “I’ll make a deal with you: go sleep in your own bed tonight. But bring me my newspaper on your way to school in the morning.”
“You sure you don’t want me to stay?”
Mr. Canon exploded, “What must I do? Send up a smoke signal? You need to be home with your family, and I need to be alone with my thoughts.”
“Call me in the middle of the night if you need me,” I said. “I’m just ten minutes away.”
“I snore,” he said.
“So what?”
“It’s such a low-class thing to do, snoring. Pipe fitters snore, used-car salesmen snore, welders snore, union members snore. Charleston aristocrats shouldn’t snore. It seems unforgivable for a man of my stature to snore.”
“The nurses were talking about it when I asked to visit,” I said.
“What did those fishwives and scoundrels say?” he demanded.
“Said you were noisier than a volcano. Noisier than rain on a tin roof.”
“I’ll have their jobs,” he stated, offended that his private life had been the subject of vile gossip. “Those magpies’ll be sorry they ever heard the name of Harrington Canon.”
There was a rattling sound at the door, and Nurse Verga brought a tray in with a small paper bonnet filled with pills and a serious-looking syringe. I knew that Mr. Canon was not a big fan of shots, so I was not surprised when he wailed, “My God, that shot could put a blue whale to sleep!”
“Probably,” she said. “And it’ll certainly put you to sleep.”
“Do you know who to call, boy?” he asked.
“Your lawyer, your rector, someone at the Charleston Library, a representative at the Gibbes Museum of Art. Feed your cats.”
“Once a day. Not twice. Change their kitty litter.”
“Bring you your Book of Common Prayer that your great-grandfather carried with him into the Battle of the Wilderness.”
“That’s all I can think of now. I’m exhausted to the bones.”
The medicine acted fast, and Harrington Canon was asleep in a matter of seconds with his hand in mine. Despite his insistence, I slept in a chair beside his bed. Of course, he snored throughout the night, a soft funny growling noise. Once, he woke and asked for a glass of ice water, which I gave to him, holding his head in my hand. At four-thirty in the morning, Nurse Verga woke me for my paper route, as I’d asked. I kissed Mr. Canon on the forehead as I whispered to him good morning and good-bye. I was lucky to have met him, and I knew it. I had many duties to perform for him that morning.
The following Friday, at the end of my first-period French class, a language I spoke with no facility and wrote in just a notch above idiocy, a message came from the principal’s office. I went to my mother’s severe bailiwick in the front hall. I tried to think of what I might have done to raise her ire, but could come up with nothing.
My mother was writing, treating the document with the same significance as though she were penning the final words of the Magna Carta. It was a very nunlike gesture of intimidation. When she finally spoke, she still did not interrupt her writing.
“Harrington Canon died this morning, Leo, not long after you left him. They think he had a heart attack. So he went fast and died in peace. His lawyer, Cleveland Winters, called and said you’re the head pallbearer. Mr. Canon put it in his will that he wanted you to choose the other five pallbearers.”
I lay my head on my mother’s desk and began weeping softly.
My mother sniffed with displeasure. ?
??Don’t take it so hard, Leo. You knew he had to die. Everybody does someday.”
Ignoring her, I continued to cry.
Finally she said, “I found him to be a most pretentious, unpleasant man.”
“He was nice to me, Mother,” I said. “At a time when not many people were.”
“You made your own bed there, mister.”
“So you’ve reminded me a few million times.”
“Try not to be disrespectful in your grief,” she said. “Mr. Canon was famous for being penurious. You worked for years for him without wages. He enjoyed slave labor.”
“Why is it so disappointing to you when someone seems to like me? Why does it make you so angry?”
“You’re talking nonsense, son.”
“I don’t think so, Lindsay.” I heard my father’s voice as he entered the door behind me. “So there’s nothing our sweet boy can do to please you?”
“My standards might be higher than yours are, Jasper,” she said. “My expectations for Leo are exacting, and I’m not ashamed of that.”
“Or they might be too high for anyone to achieve,” he said.
“He hasn’t been a perfect son,” she said. “Even you can admit that.”
“I never wanted a perfect son,” he said. “A human one was good enough for me.”
“Harrington Canon was a crank and a leech on Leo,” my mother said. “I don’t see why his death merits such grief.”
I cried out, “Mr. Canon was a sweetheart to me, Mother. You had to be around him awhile to understand him.”
“I think there might have been something prurient in his interest in you.”
“You mean you thought Mr. Canon wanted to screw me?” I asked, as incredulous as I had ever been in my life.
“You’ll not use such language in the principal’s office,” she snapped.
“That’s what the principal implied.”
“She certainly did,” my father agreed.
“I’ve always loathed old degenerates,” Mother said.
“Mr. Canon was a gentleman,” my father said. “And we have no reason to believe he was a degenerate.”
“You just became one of his pallbearers,” I said.
“A high honor, son,” he said.
That same afternoon, after a grueling football practice, I rode my bicycle down Broad Street in a crisp darkness that carried the first signature of a cold winter to come. The wind was delicious on my face with the air as life-giving as a salt lick. I locked my bike around a parking meter and then entered the law offices of Ravenel, Jones, Winters, and Day. It was after hours, but Cleveland Winters had sent word that he would be working late that evening and needed to have a word with me.
His office was on the third floor of an antebellum mansion, and it had that harmonious, leathery smell that all the white-shoe law firms seemed to exude. Mr. Winters was a splendid example of a Charleston aristocrat, with a shock of thick, white hair and the serene, regal bearing of a prince of this watery Low Country realm.
“Hey, Leo,” he said, smiling, as I walked into his office. “Let me finish reading this document, and I’ll be right with you.”
When he finally looked up and closed his Waterman pen, I said, “I bet you bought this desk from Mr. Canon.”
“Harrington claimed I stole this desk from him over forty years ago,” Mr. Winters said. “But actually, my parents bought it for me when I graduated from law school. I think they paid Harrington a hundred dollars for it.”
“They did steal it,” I said. “I bet it would go for four or five thousand in today’s market.”
“So Harrington taught you some things about antiques?” Mr. Winters asked.
“He told me he taught me everything he knew,” I said. “But that’s not even close to being true. Mr. Canon was a walking encyclopedia on antiques. I got to really like him.”
“He felt the same,” he said. “Do you know why I called you down here tonight, Leo?”
“I figured you wanted to talk to me about pallbearers,” I said.
“No, I called you to my office for a very different reason. I am the sole executor of Harrington’s will. He wants an auction company in Columbia to auction off the merchandise in his store. He would like you to take inventory of everything in the store and compare it with the auction company’s inventory.”
“That won’t be a problem, sir,” I said.
“He has some distant cousins living in nursing homes. Mostly in the up-country. He has made generous provisions to take care of those women until they die.”
“I can’t wait to tell my mother,” I said. “She always said Mr. Canon was a cheapskate.”
“She won’t be saying that after tonight,” Mr. Winters said with a smile.
“No one’s ever succeeded in shutting my mother up,” I said.
“I promise you that I will,” the lawyer said with a chuckle.
I looked up at him in surprise, his physical attractiveness only heightened by his certainty.
“Harrington has left you his store on King Street, Leo. He has also left you his house on Tradd Street with all the furnishings in it.”
“Great God Almighty,” I said.
“He knows you do not have the means to take care of the store or the house, so he has left you $250,000 in bonds and another $250,000 in cash to give you some start-up money when you get out of college. What school do you plan to attend?”
“The Citadel,” I said.
“That’ll be taken care of,” Mr. Winters said. “It’s in the will.”
“Jesus Christ,” I gasped. “Why? I worked at his store under court order.”
“He thought of you as the son he never had,” Mr. Winters said.
“But I wasn’t anything to him,” I said. “Nothing real.”
“Real enough to make you a fairly rich young man,” he said, reaching into his humidor to hand me a cigar. “It’s Cuban.”
“Aren’t they illegal?” I asked.
“Yep.” He nodded, lighting one of his own. “That’s what makes them taste better.”
He leaned across his desk, retrieved my cigar, and cut the tip with an elegant guillotine instrument. Then he took out a pearl-handled cigarette lighter and lit the cigar, imploring me to puff hard. The penumbra of blue smoke made my head disappear from view. Several moments later, I was vomiting in Mr. Winters’s private bathroom. When I emerged, I felt like my lungs and eyes had just endured a house fire.
“They take some getting used to,” Mr. Winters said.
“No wonder they’re illegal.”
“An acquired taste,” he said. “Like Cognac or martinis. You’ll get some money from this rather quickly, Leo. I’ll pay the estate taxes. It might take three to six months for the property to revert to you. There’s always the possibility that some woebegone fifth cousin could challenge the estate.”
Leaning across the desk, I shook Cleveland Winters’s hand. “You’re hired, Mr. Winters. If Harrington Canon trusted you, then I trust you. Sorry about your cigar.”
“Cuba’s not going anywhere,” he said.
From that night forward, I never went to Canada or Europe without bringing back a box of Cuban cigars for the humidor of my Charleston lawyer. It gave me a smuggler’s thrill at all border crossings and entry points, and nothing pleased Mr. Winters more. When he died in 1982, I inherited his humidor and the desk where I signed the papers that would change the direction of my life. I moved that desk to my office at the News and Courier, and I have written my columns on it ever since, always thinking of Cleveland Winters, and always sending up a prayer of thanks to Harrington Canon.
I parked my bike in front of Mr. Canon’s house on Tradd Street and tried for a moment to imagine it as mine. Looking back, I think I can figure out what that boy was trying to decipher as he stared at the mansion he now owned. Though he could not articulate or arrange his thoughts in an order that would make sense out of this unexpected night, I believe he was trying to discover some obscure figure in th
e carpet from the randomness of his own fate. No matter what angle he chose, this majestic house would not be his had he not refused to tell the police officers who had planted cocaine on him during the first week of his freshman year. What was a boy supposed to do with that cache of forbidden knowledge? How is that supposed to help him fashion a philosophy so he could go out to live a worthy, self-actualized life? What do you do when you learn for certain that fate can lead directly to the ownership of one of the finest residences on Tradd Street? It did not look like the work of God, but it might have represented the handicraft of a God with a joyous sense of humor, a dancing God who loved mischief as much as prayer, and playfulness as much as mischief. That was why Leo King stood outside the home that struck into the middle of his life with all the suddenness of a meteor. He could think of no explanation for it, no reason for it—for an ugly boy who had spent much of his childhood in mental institutions and found his brother’s self-slaughtered body in a bathtub, it seemed too much to have his direction restored and his luck changed in such an amazing fashion.
CHAPTER 22 Number 55
After practice for our semifinal against Gaffney, we showered, dressed, and walked over to Coach Jefferson’s house for the oyster roast he had promised at the beginning of the year if we made the playoffs. The owners of Bowens Island were catering the affair, and my parents had raised me thinking that Bowens Island fixed the best steamed oysters in the land. The backyard filled up with my football team and their girlfriends and parents. I waved to Starla Whitehead, who was dating Dave Bridges, a starting defensive end.
Since her operation, Starla had attracted the attention of scores of young men, including me. I had called to see if she wanted to be my date for the party but discovered I was the fourth player on the team to ask her. She seemed perplexed and self-conscious at finding herself so sought after.
“What do you think they want with me?” she asked, perfectly honest.
I wasn’t about to give a straight answer to such a loaded question, nor would I lie. “Ask Sheba,” I told her, making her laugh unexpectedly, a lovely sound not so frequently heard before her operation.