South of Broad (57 page)

Authors: Pat Conroy

Tags: #Literary, #Brothers, #Bildungsromans, #High school students, #Bereavement, #Charleston (S.C.), #Fiction, #Coming of Age, #Suicide victims, #General

BOOK: South of Broad

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O
n Bloomsday, Chad and Molly Rutledge give Trevor Poe a going-away party at their mansion on East Bay Street. The night before, Ike, Niles, Chad, and I stay up all night roasting a pig on a spit and telling the stories of our lives. Memories overwhelm us and hold us prisoners of time. The tide is going out in the harbor and will be at its peak when we toast farewell to Trevor on his last evening here. There is good luck in the high tide, a rightness about it that every man and woman in the Low Country knows in their bones, a completion, a summing up, and a good place for an ending. Chad teases us about wearing our Citadel rings, and we make fun of him for not wearing his Princeton one. A wind rises up, and the ties among us are strong and now time-tested, river-tested, and storm-hardened. When I was in the hospital, Chad had surprised me by visiting every day.

After the party, we gather on the third-story piazza and watch the sun light up the harbor with a deep shade of gold that makes it look like a Communion cup. The waters are calm, almost motionless. A great blue heron flies the length of the Battery with classical majesty. Ike holds on to Betty, Molly moves close to Chad, and Niles draws Fraser to him.

Trevor is flying out in the morning for San Francisco, his future uncertain. But so is mine, and so are the fates of the children who play in the yard below. We have been touched by the fury of storms and the wrath of an angry, implacable God. But that is what it means to be human, born to nakedness and tenderness and nightmare in the eggshell fragility of mortality and flesh. The immensity of the Milky Way settles over the city, and the earthworms rule beneath the teeming gardens in their eyeless world. I am standing with my best friends in the world in complete awe at the loveliness of the South.

Late in the afternoon, just before sunset, Trevor lets out a cry and points toward the Cooper River. A school of porpoises is following in a container ship’s wake. The sun catches them and turns their bodies into studies in bronze. The porpoise has always been a sign of renewal and of the charged, magical life of the Low Country. As the porpoises pass in review, we let out a cheer. They navigate the deep channel before turning out toward the Atlantic and the Gulf Stream. One of them breaks free and swims toward us, so close to the seawall that we can hear her breathe.

Trevor thinks of it first. He says it aloud, and ends his visit in Charleston with the perfect valedictory word: “Sheba.”

But the longer the word hangs in the air, the faster it decomposes, and the great humor that has always provided the granite base of our friendship begins to assert itself. Trevor himself breaks through the bell jar of piety he has glass-blown in our midst. “Did anyone bring a puke bag?” he asks drily. “I can’t believe I said something so mawkish. I’ve been in the South too long.”

“I thought what you said was sweet,” Niles says. “I like to think that both Starla and Sheba have turned into something water-born and pretty.”

“My mountain man,” Fraser says with a smile.

Trevor clears his throat. “I was carried away by a rare moment of piffle and nostalgia and even, God forbid, religious sentimentality at its most grotesque. I promise I’ll never allow my shallowest, most bourgeois instinct to overcome me again.”

Walking up to Trevor, I put my arms around him, and Ike moves to the other side of him. We follow the porpoises as they swim away from us, moving out toward the Atlantic.

“It wasn’t sentiment, Trevor,” I tell him, my eyes on the departing porpoises. “It was the urge toward art.” After a pause, I say, “It’s June 16, 1990. What has this group learned more than any other group?”

“Tell it, Toad,” Trevor says with a smile.

It is simple, I tell my gathering of friends. We understand the power of accident and magic in human affairs. All of us who are here tonight at the farewell party for Trevor Poe had randomly come together on Bloomsday in the summer of 1969. We know better than anyone the immense, unanswerable powers of fate, and how one day can shift the course of ten thousand lives. Fate can catapult them into lives they were never meant to lead until they stumbled into that one immortal day. What Trevor has tried to do by invoking the memory of Sheba is a powerful attempt at prayer. But it is all right, because today is Bloomsday, and all of us can serve as witnesses that anything can happen during a Bloomsday Summer. Yes, that is it: anything can happen. Yes.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My gratitude to the wonderful Florida novelist Janis Owens, one of the first readers of this book, who was both a great critic and a cheerleader. I came to love her husband, Wendel; her three beautiful daughters, Emily, Abigail, Isabel; and her granddaughter, Lily Pickle.

Great love to Bernie Schein, friend for more than forty years, who has read every manuscript I have written since
The Boo
in 1970. I could wish for no better reader or friend.

A bow to Nan A. Talese, my editor and the first recipient of the Maxwell Perkins Award for Excellence in Editing. This is our fifth book together, Nan, and I owe you a debt I cannot repay.

Great devotion to my agent, Marly Rusoff, and her husband, Mihai Radulescu, who have enriched the writing process with their faith and loyalty.

In memory of my great irreplaceable friend Doug Marlette, whom I talked to every day of my life, who made me laugh and brought me great comfort in a troubled world.

In memory of Jane Lefco, whose loss was one of the most traumatic of my life. Jane, who handled every aspect of my business life, was a rare and fabulous woman. My heart goes out to Stan, Leah, and Michael Lefco.

To Anne Rivers Siddons and her husband, Heyward, lifelong friends, who have opened their homes to us in Charleston and Maine. Very conveniently, they live South of Broad.

To Tim Belk, my piano man in San Francisco, who has been a mentor and inspiration since the day we met in 1967. I owe much of this book to him.

To my cousin Ed Conroy, who thrilled me by becoming The Citadel’s head basketball coach, continuing the Conroy basketball tradition since 1963.

To my family, immediate and extended, beloved yet innumerable as a school of herring: I send you my undying love and gratitude for the stories you’ve provided over the years. Even more love and gratitude to my lovely daughters and adorable grandchildren.

A note of thanks to Cassandra’s family, especially her father, Elton King, still on the farm in Alabama; her sisters and nephews; and her rowdy sons.

And to the other special ones: Martha, Aaron and Nancy Schein; Dot, Walt, and Milbrey Gnann; Melinda and Jackson Marlette; Julia Randel; Michael O’Shea; Ann Torrago; Carolyn Krupp; Chris Pavone; Phyllis Grann; Steve Rubin; Leslie Wells; Jay and Anne Harbeck; Zoe and Alex Sanders; Cliff and Cynthia Graubart; Terry and Tommye Kay; Mike Jones; Beverly Howell; John Jeffers; Jim Landon; Scott and Susan Graber; John and Barbara Warley; Kathy Folds; Andrew and Shea St. John; Sean Scappaleto; the late Mike Sargent. In memory of Kate Bockman.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pat Conroy is the author of eight previous books:
The Boo, The Water Is Wide, The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides, Beach Music, My Losing Season
, and
The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes of My Life
. He lives on Fripp Island, South Carolina.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Nan A. Talese, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.nanatalese.com

DOUBLEDAY is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Nan A. Talese and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Title page illustration by John Burgoyne

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Conroy, Pat.
South of Broad: a novel / Pat Conroy. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
(alk. paper)
1. Charleston (S.C.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.O5198S68 2009
813′.54—dc22
2008045681

eISBN: 978-0-385-53214-3

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