The Wisdom of Hair (26 page)

Winston had never told me anything about himself. Although I’d wondered about things like where he grew up and what his job was like, I didn’t dare ask. So when he shared a little bit of his own history with me, I was taken aback. Then I thought about my own mother, who, no matter what she said, I knew had never forgiven me for leaving her. “My mother got mad when I left home. It’s not the kind of mad you were talking about. I mean really mad. I thought maybe you figured out that something had happened with me and her when you met her that day she came to the apartment.”

When we spoke it was always about general stuff like coffee and sex, so he never really knew how to talk about things like this with me. He nodded and pretended to be interested. When the waiter went by, he ordered another cognac and asked for the check. I helped him back to our room and undressed him because I knew he’d fall asleep the minute his head hit the pillow. I took my clothes off and nuzzled up beside him.

“I love you,” I whispered as I lay behind him. “I love you so much. I think—”

He rolled over and pulled me close to him and breathed a heavy sigh.

“Love you,” he said.

It’s easy to
look back now and see things the way they were, the fact that on any given day, Winston started drinking anywhere between noon and four. He’d eat a late supper and then drink steadily until he passed out. Somewhere in all that, he managed to make Sara Jane’s notion of “whiskey dick” an old wives’ tale before he reached for a bottle of Scotch or bourbon, or whatever was handy, and finished himself off for the night.

I’ve often wondered how he could go to bed drunk like he did, night after night, only to wake up the next morning, horny as a goat, never feeling a lick of pain. I remember seeing my daddy suffer most mornings so that the only cure for him was a little hair of the dog, but Winston wasn’t like that at all. He was up every morning and out the door to work like he’d had nothing but a little sweet tea with dinner the night before.

Maybe if his body had chastised him more, he might not have
taken to drinking. But he did, and drinking had become a part of who he was. Waking up with him pressed up against me, I never liked the sour smell of alcohol that came off his skin. The way he rested his chin on the crown of my head, he’d breathed on my hair all night so that it smelled like the bottom of a whiskey barrel. I didn’t mind it so much on that particular morning, because I was still high off of the words he mumbled in his sleep the night before. I lay there with his arm draped across my waist replaying them over and over again in my mind, putting an “I” in front of the garbled “love you.”

He woke up around seven, we showered together and went downstairs to a dining room that was full of people who must have come to “America’s premier mountain resort” to graze from buffet to buffet. I thought it was crazy for folks to eat like they were, it being Thanksgiving Day and all. I told Winston I thought I’d just have some juice and a piece of toast, but I don’t think he heard me, because he ordered an omelet for himself and a toasted pecan Belgian waffle one of the cooks recommended for me.

Those two fellows got to work on our order, dipping and flipping and sautéing all kinds of good things. The short, jet-black-skinned fellow handed me a pretty china plate with the biggest waffle I’d ever seen. He ladled some hot syrup over the top, plopped on a scoop of butter, and sent me on down the line where a tall, good-looking man with pretty skin the color of coffee with a good bit of cream was making three omelets at a time. He piled a big southwestern one onto Winston’s plate and moved on to the next person.

After breakfast, we walked down to the barn where the stableman had two horses ready to go. Winston’s horse was a fine black
Tennessee Walker, and the man said the bay mare he saddled for me was, too. I don’t think she was a Walker because she was a rough ride. Winston’s horse, Jim, had the smooth gait of a merry-go-round horse.

“Have you ridden much?” the man asked as he showed me where to sign the liability waiver. I shook my head, and he looked at Winston like he had been told different.

“Her name’s Ariel. She’s a good girl. She won’t get away from you if you pay attention. She does get a little excited when you start back to the barn, but they all do.”

“We’ll be fine,” Winston said as he mounted his ride.

The man helped me up on Ariel’s back and tightened my saddle a little more. “They’re all good trail horses. If you get lost, just give them their head. They know the way back. You’d better watch her on the steep trails,” he told Winston, and I knew he wasn’t talking about Ariel. He looked like he wanted to say something else but didn’t; he patted Jim’s neck and walked off toward his little hole-in-the-wall office, most likely to pray for me.

We started out past a bunch of folks dressed in fancy red coats on horseback. Between them they must have had twenty-five dogs that barked and yelped like they thought they were going to die.

“They’re fox hunters,” Winston said over the noise.

It seemed unfair, that little fox being outnumbered like he was and all those serious hunters looking like they were going to war.

I wondered if any of them had even seen a mountain fox close-up before. A little vixen came into the yard one summer day, just as tame as you please, like she was coming to supper with the rest of daddy’s hunting dogs. With her acting the way she was, I knew she was rabid and yelled for Daddy. He was sleeping his
toddy off in that old recliner on the front porch and fell all over himself, hollering at me to stay put while he got his gun.

She was so sweet that it seemed wrong to kill her, but it had to be done. The rabies had made her just crazy enough so that she wasn’t afraid of people anymore, and if Daddy hadn’t killed her right then, she would have been foaming at the mouth in a couple of days. She was a pretty thing, though, and smart, too. Even with the rabies, you could see that in her eyes.

A horn sounded, jerking me back from my daydream. The dogs barked even louder as they led the riders toward the woods. They all galloped at full tilt, which made Ariel wheel around and take off with them. I pulled back on the reins as hard as I could but she still cantered, which sure seemed more like an all-out run to me. Winston had to catch us and hold her bridle until the excitement passed. He leaned over in his saddle and talked to her in low, hushed tones that made her ears twitch back and forth with excitement.

That was the nicest time I ever spent with Winston, riding all day like we did, only stopping to eat a sack lunch from the saddlebags. Sometimes, if the trail was wide enough, we rode side by side and held hands. We rode as far as the trail went and got off to stretch a bit. Winston was different around horses. I guess he must have been around them a lot growing up, but he never said so.

I lay on the brown meadow grass that was soft and thick, and watched him tend to them before he lay down beside me.

“Last night,” I whispered, “what you said…”

He smiled and laid my head on his chest. “Champagne makes me crazy, throw in a little cognac and…I can’t imagine what I said.”

“Well, you said you loved me.”

He didn’t move, but I could feel his heart beating fast, and his breath was crazy like he was failing a lie detector test. I didn’t say anything. I let the silence make him talk.

“You know I care about you. That’s why I brought you here,” he said. “I like what we have, I like being with you and having you there when I wake up in the morning, but right now, that’s all I can give.”

I should have sifted through all those words and noticed that he never mentioned the word “love,” but I didn’t because we fooled around a little bit. We didn’t do it right there in the meadow. We just did enough to make everything, even with the absence of love, seem romantic. The ride back to the stable was easier than when we started out. It helped that Winston was in front of me so that Ariel stayed behind Jim. Both were anxious to get back to the paddock, so when we reached the clearing by the barn, the horses cantered a little bit and would have run if we hadn’t held them back. Ariel went right to her spot at the hitching post and waited while I slid off of her back. I thanked the stableman, who looked relieved I’d come back in one piece. Winston kissed me on the forehead and told me I rode well for not having ridden much. He put his arm around me as we headed back toward the hotel.

On the way up the mountain, between stops at the scenic overlooks, Winston had told me about the history of the resort that was built around a hot spring and the legend of the Indian brave who they say discovered it. He said there was an important gathering of tribes, and each tribe was supposed to send one representative. One young brave was eager to get to the gathering, so he ran and ran until he collapsed in exhaustion in the springs. The soothing waters revived him and gave him extraordinary powers, so that
when he reached the tribal conference, he spoke so eloquently that he was chosen to lead all the tribes. There were other legends, but that’s the one I remember the most.

I was sore from all that riding, so we went swimming in one of those hot springs The Homestead is famous for. I was amazed at how good I felt when I got out, so good that I think the legend of the Indian brave must have been a true story. I went back to the room, ran a hot bath, and soaked for a little while until Winston came and joined me. It was around six o’clock, I think. He’d been sober all day, but he must have gotten into the mini bar. I could smell Scotch on him, but he wasn’t drunk yet.

It was odd dressing for dinner at night, but I kind of liked it. Winston looked so good in his coat and tie, and I loved the way he made over me in my new dress as we walked down to the Grand Dining Room and waited to be seated. We walked to our table, and the maître d’ smiled at me and told me how lovely I looked, and he wasn’t just saying it. Everybody was looking at us because we were so beautiful.

Winston ordered a Scotch for himself, champagne for me.

“I really don’t like champagne much.”

He looked totally surprised and ordered a bottle of Cabernet instead.

“For my red girl,” he said, as he approved the wine before I tasted it.

A string quartet played songs I’d never heard before, classical, but beautiful. For the first time since I’d set foot though the door of The Homestead, I felt like I was part of the grandeur and not just a poor mountain girl pretending to be somebody. Winston reached across the table and held my hand. He looked at me, not
so much with wanting, but with a look in his eyes that said he was comfortable with me. I ate my dinner almost giddy about the changes I was seeing in him.

“Winston Sawyer?” I heard a man behind me say. “My God, man, it is you. Sloshed, of course, but then I’ve come to expect that of you.”

Winston’s smile disappeared; he nodded at the man.

“And who might you be?” the stranger said to me, like he was better than everybody there.

“Zora May Adams,” I said, extending my hand like a grande dame who’d had too much to drink.

I’d never listened to myself before that night, never thought that I sounded like some hick from the holler, until then. But as soon as I said my name, Winston winced. He knew what was coming.

“Zora May Adams? Oh, well, dear, let’s not leave out the May. It gives your name such a mountain-esque ring, don’t you think?” The man laughed at me and then turned his attention to Winston. “Tell me now, did you find this one wandering the woods, or is this an Eliza Doolittle experiment from one of your classes?” He put his hand under my chin and I pulled away. “Really, Winston, I know your drinking is a disgrace to yourself and the department, but I can tell you, no matter how much Scotch you drink, this one will never be a fair lady.”

He might as well have punched me in the stomach. I trembled with anger and hurt. My stomach pulsed hard, keeping time with my racing heart. I was going to throw up. Winston just sat there, with a smart-ass look, and snagged the waiter for another drink.

“Zora, this is John Ridgeway, God of the English Department.”
He reminded the waiter for a second time in less than a minute that he needed another drink. “Fuck you, John. Mind your own goddamn business.”

He nursed his new drink like nobody else was there, including me. John Ridgeway turned away, and walked out of the dining room toward the elevator.

“Asshole,” Winston said. Then he looked at me and tried to reach for my hand. “I’m sorry, did you want another drink?”

I know Winston saw me leave but didn’t come after me. He probably couldn’t have even if he had wanted to. I took the elevator to our floor, packed my things, splashed some cold water on my face, and carried my bag down to the lobby.

I scribbled a note on a piece of paper and then wadded it up. Winston deserved nothing, not even an explanation.

“Ma’am, it’s late. This is no time to be on mountain roads.”

“Just throw this away for me.”

“Ma’am, please don’t leave.” He took the note and tossed it into the trash can. “It’s really not a good idea for folks to go out in the mountains this late at night.”