South of Broad (43 page)

The centerpiece of the garden was a live oak that must have been well over a hundred years old. I thought it hid them from the watchtower in the library, but the whistle blasted out in all its shrillness. Ike and Betty reluctantly parted, then resumed their promenade, not even holding hands, but smiling brightly for all the world to see. Starla was right: they looked happy.

Starla and I joined them, and the four of us exchanged conspiratorial smiles.

T
he bar at Big John’s was small enough to fit in a railroad car, and it was filled with Citadel cadets when we arrived. It looked like a whites-only crowd for sure, and Ike cast me a glance as though I had invited him to be an honored guest at his own lynching. Then two black cadets came in; coincidentally, Charles Foster and Joseph Shine, the first two blacks to integrate The Citadel. They were delighted to hear that Ike had just won a football scholarship to their college. Outside, we joined their table while inside Big John’s seethed with beer-guzzling pods of cadets with a high percentage of plebes. On the other side of the small courtyard I spotted Chad and Molly with Niles and Fraser. They were sitting at a table with two couples I didn’t recognize, but they had those telltale tans that signified yacht club and regattas and a working knowledge of coconut palms during Christmas breaks in Martinique. Big John’s was crowded enough to draw the attention of the fire chief, who stood at the front door, blocking the entrance to any latecomers. As Ike had predicted, the news of Sheba’s beauty had spread like a virus through the Corps of Cadets.

Trevor came through a back door by the kitchen, and made his way to an upright piano. He sat down and began playing The Citadel alma mater, which sent all the cadets scrambling to stand at attention and place their caps back on their heads. Sheba came through the door and sang the alma mater in a breathy, sexual manner that was unprecedented in the history of that song. The bar was suffused with a strange combination of shock fringed with lust. When Sheba came to the last line of the song and all the cadets lifted their caps and waved them in the air, Trevor changed the tenor of the whole evening by blasting away at the piano keys with the most rousing version of “Dixie” I’d ever heard. You could barely make out Sheba’s voice above the roar. But then she quieted things with her haunting interpretation of “We Shall Overcome.” A full-bloom knowledge of the music of our time was one of my generation’s identifying legacies, so we realized she had fooled us into an American trilogy that she would end with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” bringing the respectable number of Yankee cadets to their feet.

As Sheba held the crowd in thrall, Starla turned to me, put her arms around my neck, and began kissing me. Fabulous though it was, I was self-conscious about making out in public. My face was red when I pulled back from her and surveyed the crowd to see if anyone had witnessed the scene. As far as I could tell, the only one who saw it was Molly, and she clapped her hands in slow, mock applause when she caught my eye.

“It’s okay, Leo,” Starla told me. “Lots of people kiss in public. I’ve watched them.”

“People like us?”

“People just like us,” she said. “By the way, you going to the junior-senior prom?”

“I didn’t go last year,” I said.

“You’re going this year,” she told me. Sheba began her rendition of “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” which sent the cadets into a frenzy once more, and Big John raised his huge right hand to restore some modicum of order in his joint. It was a shameless playing to the crowd, but that came naturally to Sheba and Trevor.

“I hadn’t thought about it,” I said. “It doesn’t even happen till May.”

“Ike’s already asked Betty.”

“Oh. So, you wanna go with me?” I asked.

“No, I can’t,” she said.

“Why all this hinting around, then? Why won’t you go with me?” “I could never afford a prom dress,” she said.

An idea struck me with the force of a thunderbolt, and I blurted out, “I can make you a dress.”

“What?”

“Mother raised me to be a so-called feminist, whatever the hell that is,” I said. “I made her a dress a couple of years ago, for Mother’s Day. Sheba sews great too. She can help me.”

“What about shoes?” Starla asked. “Your mama teach you how to be a cobbler?”

“Sheba’s got a closet full of shoes,” I said. “Don’t worry, we can work out the details.”

Starla reached over and touched Betty on the shoulder. “Leo asked me to the junior-senior prom!”

Betty and Starla embraced, then Betty punched me hard on the shoulder with a fist that could boast of power. My shoulder hurt for a whole day and it affected my aim on my paper route the next morning. Ike turned around and congratulated me, then asked me if I wanted to double with Betty and him. I had stumbled into normal teenage life by accident, and everything about it felt right. The Toad years were leaving me behind. I was saying farewell to the boy who had been tortured for years by the accuracy of that name. It had never occurred to me that a girl as cute as Starla could like me as much as she seemed to. We kissed some more, and when I pulled back, I could feel the loosening and the possession take place. Staring into Starla Whitehead’s melancholy eyes, I fell in love that night, and inadvertently began the long, agonizing process of ruining my life.

•   •   •

I
n the winter, when Father built a fire, he began with wood shavings as transparent as shrimp shells and coaxed it toward its crackling glory, laying the firewood with its veins exposed to the rising flames. I would inhale the aroma, close my eyes, and think that smoking wood was the darkest perfume on earth. In his workshop Father had built us three perfectly proportioned desktops that we could lay across the arms of our leather chairs. I could do my homework on mine, and in front of the fireplace Mother could catch up on her correspondence and Father could read his scientific journals and take copious notes. The fire itself made an amazing noise and Father kept it well tended until it was time for bed.

One late winter night, the phone rang. Father answered it and talked quietly into the receiver. After hanging up, he said to me, “That was Sheba. Go across the street and check on Trevor. He’s really upset about something.”

I took my jacket out of the closet by the front door and went out into the cold Charleston air. The smell of smoke from the chimney of our house was stronger than either the rivers or the marshes and made the airwaves above the neighborhood as dark-scented and fragrant as a night garden. I could hear Trevor sobbing while he sat on the first step of the veranda as I approached. Sheba was holding him tightly. I climbed the stairs and sat on the other side of my sobbing friend. I grabbed his hand and he squeezed it as I asked Sheba, “Lovers’ quarrel?”

“Worse than that,” Sheba said. “Cry it out, darling. Cry as much as you need to.”

When she ran into the house to get her brother a glass of water, I put my arms around him until Sheba returned. The water helped, but it was several minutes before he could speak, and his whole body trembled. Finally he said, “A month ago, Niles and I were nominated for membership into a fraternity. Guys from high schools all around Charleston, public and private, try to get into it. It’s a big honor.”

“You never said a word to me,” Sheba said.

“They swore us to secrecy. The organization began in the 1820s.”

“The Middleton Assembly?” I guessed.

“How did you know that?” Trevor asked.

“Mother has long suspected it’s been a presence at the high schools in town, even Peninsula, but she’s never had any proof.”

“Chad Rutledge nominated us, and tonight the induction ceremony took place. I was excited. Niles couldn’t believe his good luck. He and I were both amazed that this honor had come to us after we’d had such shitty lives.”

“Why do I think things went badly?” Sheba said.

Trevor continued. “They took us to a place on Meeting Street, some Confederate hall or something. There were about a hundred guys our age there. They were dressed in tuxedos and wore black masks. They looked like fucking extras in a Lone Ranger movie. All were silent as the inductees were led in to a pimply-faced guy at the desk. There were eight inductees. The first six were approved with no problems. The assembled members voted aye, with their thumbs raised. Their qualifications were impeccable. The usual Charleston bullshit: the Prioleaus, the Ravenels, the Gaillards, the Warleys. The first six were related to everybody, and it was a fucking cakewalk. Then the gears shifted and the fun began.”

“Where was Chad?” I asked, my voice cold.

“I guess he was in the crowd,” Trevor said. “I never saw him. He may not have been there at all.”

“Oh, he was there,” I said. “Go on, Trevor.”

“Well, they get to me. I’m thinking I’m about to be inducted into an old part of Charleston history and I was caught up in this sense of brotherhood that was completely unfamiliar to me. Then the guy at the desk said, ‘Mr. Trevor Poe is the first openly homosexual to be nominated for membership. His mother is a common drunk, his sister is a common whore, and he has no family that we can find. How does the assembly vote on the known faggot, Trevor Poe?’ A thunderous nay went up from the membership, all thumbs pointing down. Then they went to work on poor Niles.”

“At least they got the part about your sister right.” Sheba trembled with a rage she could barely contain.

“That’s not true, Sheba,” I said. “Don’t say things like that.”

“The pimply-faced guy at the desk—God, he was an ugly fuck!—read from a piece of paper, in this awful, serious drone: ‘Niles Whitehead has spent his life going from orphanage to orphanage looking for his mother, Bright Whitehead, and his grandmother, Ola Whitehead. But in our research we found obituary notices for both of them in the
Chimney Rock
Times
. Mr. Whitehead evidently does not know the name of his actual father. He was born in a shack in the Blue Ridge Mountains. At Peninsula High School, he has earned the nickname of “the mountain nigger.” How does the assembly vote on the mountain nigger, Niles Whitehead?’ Again, the roar of nay and the thumbs pointing down. Niles and I were led out of the hall by four guys who took us out to Meeting Street like we were the morning trash and left us there, too stunned to speak.”

“Where’s Niles now?” I asked.

“I fell apart and started to walk home, but when I looked around for Niles, he was gone. My crying may have upset him as much as the ceremony itself.”

“No,” I said. “They told Niles something he didn’t know. Starla and Niles have always kept going because they believed their grandmother and mother were still alive. Do you know Niles was born when his mother was only thirteen years old? His grandmother was twenty-seven when Niles came into the world. Those bastards killed something in Niles when they announced those women were dead.”

“I’m going to ask Chad Rutledge to fuck me,” Sheba said. “Then I’m going to chop his dick off with garden shears.”

Father walked onto our front porch and yelled from beneath the towering columns of our two magnolia trees, “Everything okay, kids?”

“Things are awful,” I shouted back. “Could you come over here?”

Father sprinted across the street. With rare economy, I sketched out the events of the night. I could see his anger as the lines in his forehead deepened. “Come over to the house and sit by the fire. I need to make some phone calls,” he said.

I sat by the fire with the exhausted twins and it moved me that they held hands as they watched the flames. When Father came in to stoke the fire, he brought them each a snifter of Cognac to calm their nerves.

“It’s been a rough night, Trevor,” Father said. “But it’s going to be a rougher morning for Chad Rutledge. Here’s a promise to you: Chad’s going to have no trouble with constipation for the next couple of weeks. I’m going to chew His Highness a new asshole. I think his principal is going to chew him a matching one on his other cheek.”

Sheba took a sip of Cognac, then said to the fire, “I’ve never felt safe in my whole life, but I feel safe in this house.”

Hearing a noise, I went to the front door. Looking through the curtains, I saw the solemn face of Fraser Rutledge through the pane. When I opened the door, she rushed in and ran straight to Trevor, who stood to meet her. Trevor looked like a toy when Fraser lifted him off his feet to hug him. He looked like a fragile, harmless invertebrate.

Fraser cried, “I just slapped the living hell out of my brother. When I heard what those guys did to you and Niles, I went crazy. I said I was sorry that I had a drop of Rutledge blood, then I spit in Chad’s face.”

“So Chad was a part of this?” I asked.

“I heard Chad and my father laughing so hard it brought me downstairs. Chad was telling our father what happened tonight at the Middle-ton Assembly. Something in me died listening to it, Trevor. Sheba and Leo, you’ve got to believe me. Chad said he did it for the family name. No Rutledge was going to marry a mountain nigger.”

“Why’d they do it to Trevor?” I asked.

“Trevor was thrown in as a plum. He was dessert. Also, it set Niles up good. He wouldn’t suspect anything because he and Trevor were being inducted together.”

She threw a mask at me, and I caught it in surprise. “There’s a souvenir from Chad’s big night. He just humiliated the only boyfriend his ugly sister ever had.”

“You’re not ugly, doll baby,” Sheba said, taking Fraser into her own sweet embrace. “Knock that word out of your vocabulary. Hey, Leo, do you get a hard-on when you think about Fraser?”

“Every night.”

“Fraser brings out the half-tenth of the one percent of me that’s straight,” Trevor said.

As we heard the sound of Fraser’s laughter again, there was another knock at the front door. On my way to the door, I said over my shoulder, “Let me know if you’re ever going to join a club again, Trevor. This is beginning to feel like a house party.”

Under the outside lights, Starla cast a large shadow across the yard. I hugged her, led her to the fire, and she went over to kiss Trevor on the cheek. As Father came back into the room, Starla announced, “Niles called me from a truck stop on this side of Columbia. He told me to tell all of you thanks and good-bye.”