Look Back All the Green Valley: A Novel: 4 (Kirkman Family Cycle) - Softcover

Chappell, Fred

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312243103 ISBN 13: 9780312243104

Publisher: Picador, 2000

Synopsis

The last in the Kirkman family trilogy by one of our most treasured writers

About this title

About the Author

Fred Chappell is the award-winning author of more than twenty books of poetry and fiction, including I Am One of You Forever, Brighten the Corner Where You Are, and Look Back All the Green Valley. He has received many major prizes, including the Bollingen Prize in Poetry from Yale University and the Award in Literature from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He lives with his wife, Susan in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Look Back All the Green Valley

By Fred Chappell

Picador USA

Copyright ©2000 Fred Chappell
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780312243104

Chapter One

TRAPPED!

Time has no secrets. You can match a clock all day and never learn a thing. ?Fugio

    My mother possessed a bristling armory of useful talents,but a gift for dying was not among them. I recalled the dutiesshe had undertaken over the years, the offices she had fulfilledin regard to the jester's motley of business enterprises my fatherinitiated. She had served as handmaid and general manager,as field laborer and nurse, as accountant and secretary,as critic and counselor, as gofer and governess, and their livesand happiness throve. Sometimes she had complained of herburdens, for they were weighty, but mostly she had performedthose multifarious tasks cheerfully. My parents adored eachother, even though the expression of that adoration was shadowedby a dark mordancy of temperament on her side and bya vigilant teasing playfulness on his.

    He was Joe Robert Kirkman and she was his beloved Cora,his mainstay and counterpart but not his mirror image. Wherehis nature gleamed with streaks of fantasy and sparkled withuninhibited impulse, hers was rooted in the clinging clay ofpragmatism and patched here and there with fatalistic gloomings.My mother was rather less gay than my father, maybe alittle less generous, but she was equally brimful of life; it wasonly a quieter kind of life than his. Yet her fullness of life ebbedquickly from the brim when my father died, hammered to thefloor of their living room by a massive heart attack. He hadbeen watching the great spectacle on the television set hecalled, in one of his futuristic waggeries, his "visiscreen." Itwas an almost brand-new twenty-one-inch-screen Zenith. Thedate was July 20, 1969, only hours before one man ventureda small step and mankind made a giant leap. All during the1950s, my father had predicted that Americans?men andwomen together?would rocket to the moon. His predictionwas dismissed by our neighbors and even by his admiring croniesas being only another example of his plentiful eccentricities.But I believed him. When I was a teenager, I sometimesimagined that he might be the first man to fly to the moon.

    Maybe he was.

    My mother never recovered from the loss of her husband.Oh, she made it through the necessary rituals well enough;her usual valiant courage was equal to those ordeals. She managedto complete some of the most urgent of the business demands:tax forms, will probate, debt arrangements, deedsearches, and so forth. But then her body began to weaken asher spirit crumbled and her strength of will deserted her littleby little, like a cone of sand leaking away to the bottom of anhourglass. She claimed in these days that she could wish fornothing more ardently than to lie in the earth alongside JoeRobert Kirkman, her Ariel, her Puck, and her Prospero all inone.

    This wish is a common, an honorable, and an ancient desire.I remembered how Roman Ovid had given it warm incarnationin his Metamorphoses with the story of Baucis and Philemon.They were an elderly couple who had loved each other always,who had lived in peace and amity since their first hours together.When benevolent deities in human disguise made itpossible for their secret hopes to be granted, the husbandbegged only that neither of them would have to experiencethe loss of the other. The wish was granted; Zeus changed Baucis,the woman, into a linden tree and her husband into anoak. Their branches intertwined and together they formed aneverduring arch. When my mother voiced her wish to join myfather, a few scraps of Ovid's verses murmured in my head.

    And yet when death did approach, when my mother's heartfluttered and threatened to cease its pumping, she drew backby force of an undesired strength. The spirit was willing, butthe flesh was yet too powerful. She suffered from congestiveheart failure, a disease that filled her lungs with fluid and hermind with terror. Extinction drew nigh upon her, but then aglimpse into the unresonant abyss would send her soul scurrying,like a terrified lapdog, back to the warmth of the world,back to the treachery of living. After a while, she made a kindof peace, accepting the necessity of having to die in the goodLord's own good time and not according to a schedule of herown devising. But she bowed to it with an air of deep regret,as if she was disappointed in herself.

    Then there came periods when she was bedridden. Now shewould study her worldly affairs and think of duties undone,tasks that my sister, Mitzi, and I were to carry out. Some ofthese were merely trivial, but she would brook no argument,and we, ever mindful of her failing health, could offer none.When Mitzi and I conferred about some of these minor concerns,we would complain in good-humored mock-gloomyterms. "Trapped!" we would exclaim. "She's got us exactlywhere she wants us. We're caught like mice in a trap!"

    Some of the things she wanted were of middling importance.The first of these was the burial arrangement. If she could notjoin my father immediately, as she so expressly prayed to do,she wanted to make certain that when she did die, she wouldbe supine by his side. The second item of urgency was myfather's last remaining hideaway workshop; it had been leftuntouched since his demise, and she wanted it cleaned out,sorted out, and set in order. There were other chores, too, butthey were of less moment.

    How could we deny her? There she lay in the bed she detestedin the new-smelling infirmary she abhorred in the retirementcommunity she was not reconciled to, and she issuedMitzi and me our orders in no uncertain terms. When shespoke to me, she tried to straighten herself, scooting backagainst two propped pillows at the headboard. She may havethought this taller posture lent her commands more authority.

    It twisted my heart to look at her. Her face was gray andpeeled-looking, her eyes watery. Painful arthritis had wrenchedher hands into bony knots. Her hair had always been thin andwas now so sparse that she had gathered it into a wispy topknotand secured it with a pink ribbon tied in a bow; this styleresulted in a Kewpie-doll look that made her crushing sadnessappear a little ridiculous. I couldn't help remembering howbright she used to look, her pert intelligence animating her features.That was the way she was supposed to look, I thought,and the way she looked now was like an ill-chosen frock; itsimply was not her.

    This room was too small for me to sit beside her. I had toheave a ponderous armchair, upholstered in squeaky limegreen plastic, to the foot of the bed and lean forward towardthe footboard bars as she laid out her plans. I expected toagree to her every demand, even to the ones that made nosense to me.

    "You want to make sure Jeff Halsted finishes paying off hisloan," she said, "and you need to send a gift for his daughter'shigh school graduation."

    "All right," I said.

    "What will you send?"

    "I don't know. What do you suggest?"

    She flapped a hand in listless impatience. "I'm all finishedwith those kinds of concerns now. You'll have to decide thingslike this from now on for yourself."

    "I'll ask Mitzi. This is her specialty."

    "You can't rely on your sister for everything, Jess. You'vemade a bad habit of that."

    "That's true."

    "And there's an awkward patch of ground by the corner ofthe Lindsay pasture that we never got resurveyed. You'll haveto get that done if you want to sell or build there."

    "All right."

    "Have you heard any word about Aunt Bessie Scott? Theysay the doctors can't do a thing for her."

    "I haven't heard."

    She would think of more things to do or to inquire about,then stop. "Are you sure you'll remember all this?" she demanded."Maybe you'd better get a pencil and write it down."

    "We're all set," I told her. "Mitzi has a list all written out.Everything you've mentioned so far is on her list."

    "Yes." She nodded sagely. "Yes, of course. Jess, I don't seewhy you can't be more like your sister. She knows how to getthings organized so she doesn't waste time and energy. You?"Now she shook her head as if perplexed. "You're too muchlike your father, always trying to do a hundred things at onceand never getting a one of them done."

    "I wish I had Mitzi's skills," I said, but my contrite admissiondid not mollify her. She had already locked into her familiarroutine of describing to me my character flaws and wouldn'tbe satisfied until she had tallied all she could think of. Shebegan with the obvious?my excessive drinking and total lackof social grace?and went on to details of my slovenly appearance,then finished with a topic she knew would irk me sorely,the obscurity of my literary expression. I had the feeling thatshe was going to make me submit my shoe shine and thehinder surfaces of my ears for inspection.

    Now she shifted back to the topics at hand. "But you understandhow important it is to get the burial arrangementsstraight. And you know we've got to clean out Joe Robert'spersonal workshop."

    "Well, I think Mitzi and I have about got the burial arrangementscompleted?and I came all the way up from Greensborojust to look into that workshop."

    "That's the only reason you came?"

    "And to have a cheerful visit or two with you, of course. Wetake that for granted."

    Her expression was one of mildly sardonic amusement, butpart of my sentence was true. I had come up to take care ofthe workshop, but the burial arrangements were far from complete.That matter weighed darkly upon me.

    As soon as the spring semester had ended and I'd filled inthe necessary paperwork and lugged it to the proper administrativepigeonholes, I'd left the neo-Georgian buildings of thecampus and driven 250 miles west to the mountains of NorthCarolina to try to take care of family matters. Since I was likelyto be gone at least a week, Susan stayed behind. Our gardenwould claim most of her attention, she said, but I pictured hergrooming our cats, Chloe and Marty, reading the completeworks of Margaret Maron, and eating nothing?repeat: nothing?butpraline caramel ice cream. When I got back home,we would celebrate what I hoped would be my triumphantreturn. I would take her out to Valencia, a nifty Spanish restauranton grubby Tate Street, where she would fall upon amountainous green salad and a lamb chop like a ravenous animal,an unlikely hybrid of bison and tigress. But my returnwould hardly be triumphant unless Mitzi and I could get thebusiness of my mother's burial straightened out. Unforeseencomplications had arisen in that regard.

    "You shouldn't rely so much on Mitzi," my mother said."She has a busy schedule, an important career. You shouldn'tgo running to her about every little detail."

    "Come now. I'm not entirely helpless," I said, feeling, asalways, painfully vulnerable in the face of her criticism. "Imanage to move about the world without continually fallingon my face."

    "Yes?because your wife props you up. Without her, you'dbe facedown most hours of the day."

    "I'm not such a hopeless case, am I?"

    "You're a dreamer. Head in the clouds. Nose in a book.Pointless schemes. If Susan didn't look after you, I shudder topicture the condition your affairs would be in. Making footnotes.Writing poetry nobody can understand."

    "Well, maybe I am a hopeless case. But you've had timeenough to come to terms with it by now."

    "What was the name of that book you wrote?"

    "River was the first one." It was the hundredth weary timeI'd said so. She knew the title and knew I knew she knew.

    "And what was that strange name you signed to it?"

    "My pen name is Fred Chappell. If I signed those books 'JessKirkman,' you'd have a conniption fit. Some dark family secretsare aired in those poems."

    "I don't see how it could make any difference what nameyou put to it. I never heard of anybody who read your River."

    "What?nobody? Not a single living soul?"

    "Well ... I did talk a couple of my friends into trying it, butthey didn't understand it any better than I did."

    "Maybe they're not used to reading poetry. Or maybe theyjust don't care for it."

    "They're not dumbbells.... If you're going to write books,why don't you write what people want to read?"

    "All right, next time I'll write a novel. It'll be a detectivethriller. I'll put in a secret treasure and episodes of nail-chewingsuspense and a flock of mysterious ladies. Plenty ofwomen with possibly naughty ways about them. I'll sign it'Jess Kirkman' in bright neon letters. How do you think you'lllike that?"

    "No, you won't," she stated firmly. "You won't ever writeanything but more poetry. That's all you ever think about."

    But my dear and cranky mother was mistaken. Just a yearago, I had actually begun a novel, a tale of intrigue, betrayal,sabotage, and lugubrious peril. My story took place in a universitythat resembled to a suspicious degree the University ofNorth Carolina at Greensboro, where I taught gum-chewingsophomores and intensely political graduate students the arcanitiesof literature. My plotline involved a married chairmanof a Romance languages department who was carrying on aweird affair with a junior colleague, a brash young womanwho schemed to push him into divorce and snare him in remarriageby getting pregnant with his child. Her plans werecomplicated but not ruined by the fact that this à clef chairman(Professor L. J. Moreau in what we may guardedly term "reallife") was the cautious but proud possessor of a vasectomy. Yethis paramour was not foiled. She got herself artificially inseminatedat Duke University Medical Center, and then ...

    ... And then my novel collapsed like a punctured soufflé.The observations of character transformed to smart-ass remarks,the "incisive wit" devolved into slapstick, and the satirictone degenerated into spiteful gossip, and I found myselfnot describing telling incidents at all, but paying off ancientgrudges and unforgiven slights. I had decided, ruefully but notreluctantly, that Jess Kirkman was not born to write novels. Iwas condemned to poetry. I was a dreamer: nose in a book,head in the clouds. Whoever it was who had brought thesecharges against me had told nothing but the flat-footed truth.

    When I looked at her, my mother wore an expression thatconvinced me she knew exactly what I was thinking at thismoment. I hated that. "I have an idea how to make somemoney from my writing."

    "Really?"

    "Dante," I said, trying to sound confident and sensible.

    "What about him?"

    "I'm working on a translation of The Divine Comedy. It willsell pretty well, I think. People are always reading Dante."

    She gave me a narrow look. "How's your Italian?"

    "Not wonderful," I admitted. "But I've got learned friends Ican go to when I run into trouble."

    "Have you got a contract from a publisher?"

    "Not yet. I thought I'd better try it out before I got in overmy head."

    "How's it going?"

    "Not quickly."

    She nodded. "Poetry again. That's all you ever think about."

    "Unfair," I complained. "Not true at all. I think about lotsof things. I think about you. How are they treating you in thisplace?"

    This was my unsubtle ploy to steer the conversation awayfrom my shortcomings into the broad fields of her displeasurewith her situation. She was bedridden, emotionally fatigued,frightened, and heartsick, and her complaints reflected thesequalities of her illness. She took the bait and began to expostulate,faulting every doorknob, coffee cup, thumbtack, toiletseat, television set, and mattress in the building. As I listenedto this plenary bill of grievance, a freshet of relief welled up inme. Her querulous moods usually signaled that some measureof strength was returning. As her energy remounted, she becamerestless, and this exacerbated her bitterness.

    I had heard these same complaints a number of times. Myattention wandered and I looked out the window into treesglowing emerald in the steady June sunlight. Her room on thethird floor gave my mother a view of the tops of the treesbordering the grounds, which were set against the darkergreen background of Slater Mountain. The warren of streetsand houses that comprised the little village of Graceful DaysRetirement Community cozied up to the base of Slater, andfootpaths, neatly graded and pruned, led into the woods forthose seniors who enjoyed comfortable hikes.

    She saw where I was looking, and her gaze, too, was drawnto the window. The treetops swayed, flashing green and silver,and then we watched a flock of goldfinches flutter down likeOctober beech leaves from the limbs of a red oak to the ground.She fell silent, pursed her lips, and I could sense the sadnessof some fond recollection suffuse her mind. In a few minutes,she said, "Whenever I see that flock of birds, I think of JoeRobert, how much he liked to study nature and think aboutbirds and stars and things. If your father were here right now,he would recall something interesting to tell us. I'm sure heknew all about those birds, whatever they are."

    "Goldfinches."

    "Yes. He would know about them."

    "And what he didn't know, he would make up," I said. "Hisscience always contained a fair amount of fable." Allegory, too,I could have added. But that phrase might have brought herattention back around to literature and to what she regardedas the Cimmerian obscurity of my output. I planned to avoidthat thicket of accusation.

    "Yes," she said, "he might well improvise his facts." Shelaunched into a story about a European tour they had enjoyed.In the town of Roussillon in Provence, they were providedwith a bus driver, but the tour guide didn't show. My fatherdecided to serve as cicerone and devised colorful chronicles tomatch points of interest in the landscape that rolled past thebus windows. His conception of history rested on perfidiousprinces, bloody revenges, daggers and crossbows and mutualpoisonings, and he was warmly partial to accounts of nakedladies on horseback à la Godiva. The peaceful fields oflavender, he made out to be corpse-strewn battlefields; thegray castles surmounting the brushy hills still containeddungeons, and the dungeons still contained the children ofthe children of figures like Duc Philippe of the Ugly Anklesand the unlucky queen, Matilde Who Had No Butt. Thesetales, my mother averred, had kept the tour bus teary-eyedwith laughter.

    I didn't believe her. Time after time, I had heard my fatherattempt to tell stories; time after time, he failed miserably,starting off as suddenly and loudly as an Atlas rocket and almostimmediately plunging to piteous human ruin like Icarus,whose waxen wings were inadequate for the grand heights hestrove to conquer. My father could shoe horses, build bridges,plumb toilets, and design futuristic aircraft, but whenever hetried to construct a story, he unfailingly banged his thumb withthe punch line.

An attendant came in to ready her for lunch. I rememberedthat I was carefully enjoined not to call her "nurse." Mymother was strong on that point: "They're not nurses. Theyonly have one registered nurse on the whole staff, and shenever comes around unless she's specifically called for. Canyou believe that?" I made no reply, thinking that registerednurses probably were not needed here; an emergency ambulancewould be the more necessary service.

    "Good morning, Miz Kirkman. How are you this beautifulmorning?"

    "Unbeautiful ... Lorene, this is my son, Jess, who is notstanding up when a lady enters the room. Pay no attention tohis lack of manners. He's notoriously harmless."

    In fact, I had been trying to rise to meet the thin youngblonde with the startlingly white skin but had found my kneeswedged against the footboard of the bed. I wrestled free, stood,and bowed. "Pleased to meet you."

    "Well, it's good to see you," she declared brightly, "after allthe things your mama has told me about you."

    "Nothing good, I assume."

    "Why, she does nothing but brag about you all the time.You ought to hear the fine things she says about you."

    "I'm pretty sure I never will," I replied. "Is she as mean toyou as she is to me?"

    "She's a perfect angel," Lorene avowed. "Couldn't besweeter."

    "It's only an act. When you get to know her better, you'llunderstand what I mean."

    "What are you bringing me for lunch?" my mother askedher. "Not that gummy macaroni and cheese, I hope."

    "Chicken croquettes today. And mashed potatoes. Apple piefor dessert. Do you want tea or coffee?"

    Before she could answer, I began to take my leave, squeezingbetween Lorene and the bedside to give my mother an off-balancekiss on the forehead. I had to lean over so far, I fearedI'd topple down on her. The kiss was dry and brief but still gaveher time to whisper to me distinctly, "I hate chicken croquettes."

    "I'll see you soon," I said. "Is there anything I can bring youfrom town?"

    Her reply was another wan flap of her hand, indicating thatthe town, along with the rest of the world, was at this momentof no interest to her whatsoever.

    "Well?good-bye, then," I said. "Have a nice lunch." Theremark was reflexive; I hadn't desired to rub it in about thecroquettes.

    Lorene pushed the tiered lunch cart to the door. I sidledaround it on my way out and walked down the bland corridor,glancing, despite my wiser intentions, into the open doors Ipassed. Television sets flittered and muttered in the ceiling corners,flashing messages about detergents to women who wouldnever again wash clothes. Alzheimer patients talked angrily tothe walls; in other rooms were supine forms motionless undercrisp bedclothes. Scoliotic women sat hunched in wheelchairs,poring over Bibles they could not read, could hardly see. Onbedside tables sat weary potted plants, half-full water glasseswith litters of pills beside them, sheaves of unopened mail.

    I recoiled from these images in dismay, in dark fear. Theywere too acutely prophetic. My mother hadn't yet advancedto the stages of disrepair I saw here, and I didn't want her toexperience them. Yet I was at a loss to think what better stateshe could come to. The only alternative was death, because herhealth was not going to improve, except during brief periodsthat would be followed by fearful relapses. Congestive heartfailure saps the system by little and little; so Dr. Amblin hadtold Mitzi and me. When the end came, it would be peaceful,he said, but the ordeal that faced Mrs. Kirkman was that ofnerves. If you thought of it as war, congestive heart failurewould be like a siege, he explained, readjusting his gold wirespectacles on his prominent nose. The body resisted until thevery end, while the mind grew restless and the patient becameirritable and moody. The end was assured, and it was a milderkind of death than many another.

    The good doctor had hoped this information would be ofsome comfort, as much as would be consistent with the truth.He spoke quietly and meticulously, the fluorescent light of thehospital corridor making a silky silver mist of his fine, dry whitehair. He was the image of a messenger angel at that moment,but his words brought no solace. Mitzi and I looked at eachother sorrowfully, then looked away. I didn't know where tolook, but I didn't want to see another human being.

    His prognosis was accurate. The disease was carrying ourmother away exactly in the way he had described.

    I took the stairs down to the first floor and went out intothe late-spring day. The smells of grass and trees and newlybulldozed clay and fresh asphalt in the parking lot assailed meand I realized that in the new infirmary building I had beensmelling glue, the mastic of the tile floors and the sizing ofcarpet backing. That structure had been built so recently, it hadno characteristic odor of its own. No one had died in it yet, andI wondered if Cora Kirkman would be its first victim.

    I knew "victim" was unfair but couldn't help the way I felt.

    I found the little dented yellow Toyota my wife had christened"Buttercup" and climbed in. But I didn't crank it. I onlysat there in the half-full parking lot, clutching the steeringwheel in damp hands. The day sang about me; two butterfliesperched on a stalk of mullein near the curb. But I staredthrough the windshield at nothingness, at figments of dread Icouldn't put a name to. This was my state of being after eachvisit with my mother, a familiar complex of emotion I couldn'tget used to. I tried to collect myself but found me uncollectable.

    Finally, I turned the ignition key and pulled away towardAsheville, toward the funky maze of hilly streets in the blue-greenlap of the Land of the Sky. I was to meet my sister forlunch. We had scheduled a session of dark conspiracy.

Mitzi was a wizard at conspiracy, though she only called it"sensible planning." It was conspiracy nonetheless, becauseneither of us would dare tell our mother what we said duringthese meetings. It wasn't that we were selfish in trying to keepher ignorant, only that if she knew all the facts, she wouldcomplicate matters so thoroughly that we would never get untangled.So we fed her only enough information to keep herquestions to a minimum.

    I found the restaurant, the Whirligig Café, a cheery placewith white tablecloths, a lace-curtained storefront window,and Matisse posters. I knew Mitzi would be late, so I took myfaithful notebook with me. Her schedule was as busy as astock-market telephone exchange, and I had learned to carrysomething to occupy myself until she showed.

    I was ushered to a table by a young blond waitress whoseplentiful freckles suggested yeoman ancestry and candid disposition.I ordered a glass of chardonnay; she delivered it efficientlyand cheerfully, then left me to my doleful musings.In a few slow minutes, I could bear to think about my motherno longer and opened my notebook for respite.

    Fat and battered, worn gray at every corner, its black leatherscratched and scuffed, this notebook was my staunch comrade,my date book, workbook, and silent confidant. It held telephonenumbers, titles of books and journal articles, partialnotes for lectures, names of those whose faces I could not recall,overheard scraps of conversation, fragments of poems inprogress or already abandoned. Unwieldy as it was, it had becomea necessary appendage of my organism, and without it,I felt like a quick-draw cowboy with an empty holster.

    Some of the notes I could consider important. Here weresuggestions for my fourth book of poetry, to be called Earth-sleep.This volume would be centered around the last of thePythagorean elements I was employing in my scheme. Earthwas my theme, and my connective tropes were gardens andgraves, intimate engagements with dirt. Two poems were tobe about ideal gardens, one that Susan dreamed of, and one Iwould dream up myself as a utopian proposition for a poetfriend, George Garrett. For this latter effort, I had chosen asepigraph a passage from Dante, the Purgatorio, Canto XXX,where he describes the approach of Beatrice, likening it to thefirst intimations of dawn overtaking the sky.

    Then there were notes that concerned my projected translation:"mondiglia = alloy; mi discarno = I am withered; greffo= cliff or bluff." Just now, I was struggling with a passage froma canto of the Purgatorio. Here the poet looks at the steep climbahead and feels daunted. Conversing with an old friend, thecomposer Casella, he asks for music to refresh his spirit beforehe recommences his necessary journey. The composer obligesby singing a setting he had made of a poem by Dante himself,the canzone beginning, "Amor che la mente mi ragione." "Lovein my mind his sweet argument pursuing ..." I looked withdespair upon my attempts to render the line into English meterand rhyme.

    Then there were other jottings, whose purposes I could neitherrecall nor deduce. Why had I written down terms likecourtlax, merle, nympholept, thrasicus, patera, zygia? Why had Iwritten "She moves like the reflection of a cloud on a runningstream"? How's that again? Who moves in such an unvisualizablemanner?

    I snapped the notebook shut. No time to speculate now?Mitzihad arrived.

    She searched the room for me and I watched as she lookedabout, seeming to recognize everyone in the room, which bynow had become fairly crowded. Probably she did know everyone,including the chefs and the dishwashers. When she spottedme, she smiled and waved and made her way through thetables as graceful as a hoopskirted waltzer. As always, I admiredher social presence.

    She was attractively but sensibly dressed in a female businesssuit, a sharp-shouldered dark jacket and medium-narrow skirt,both pinstriped. She had allowed a dollop of lace at the jacketpocket and a modest gold chain at the collar of the pleatedwhite blouse. Small jet earrings peeked from under the curlsof her dishwater blond hair. As she came to the table, shesmiled and gave some sort of greeting to other tables. It wasobvious that she was known and respected and well liked. Ifelt a flush of pride, family pride, I suppose, on seeing her crossthe room.

    My mother would delight to see me rise and pull out Mitzi'schair to seat her at the table, but it was only one of those reflexactions that are supposed to distinguish southern gentlemenfrom the lower animals. But since I am Appalachian by heritage,I don't consider myself a southern gentleman and don'tparticularly desire to be set apart from animals wild or domestic,which are never so low as to clothe themselves in bedsheetsand burn crosses. Appalachia is a different world from the DeepSouth, though few will allow that it is a better one. We haveour own supply of brutes, jerks, louts, thugs, and maniacs.They are only less well organized in our upper latitudes thanin the more nearly tropical.

    When I sat, Mitzi began talking immediately, as if feeling hertime with me was already ticking away. "How is she?"

    "Why, I'm doing fairly well, thank you," I answered. "Susanis well, too, and told me to give you all her love. The drive upfrom Greensboro wasn't bad at all. Traffic was light, and I gotinto the motel about ten-thirty last night. Slept like a top,though I can't imagine why tops have such a sterling reputationin the matter of slumber."

    Mitzi giggled and laid her hand on my forearm. "I'm sorry,Jess. Forgive me. I'm so anxious about Mother that I completelyforgot my manners."

    "I understand. I'm the same way," I said. "You're forgivenutterly and completely."

    "So how is she?"

    "She looks pretty good and she may be doing a little betterthan last week, because she's getting cranky again. I take thatas a good sign. When she's too peaceable, it means she's tired."

    "So she wasn't peaceable?"

    "Hardly."

    "She probably gave you a rough time."

    "I'm tougher than I look," I said. "I can take whatever shecan dish out?just as long as she doesn't make me go and cuta hickory switch and bring it back for my own punishment.Do you remember that childhood ordeal?"

    "That's one I was spared."

    "The switching wasn't the hard part. It was the dread. I alwaysbrought back flimsy little switches. Then she'd send meout again for more durable material. So I had to endure mycowardice twice."

    When our daisy-fresh waitress appeared, Mitzi ordered asensible seafood salad and iced tea; I countered with a steaksandwich, feeling in my sister's cool presence that I was everyinch the red-ranged predator. I added the auxiliary crimes ofranch fries and a glass of cabernet. The young lady replied witha gesture very close to a curtsy and departed smiling.

    "What did she talk about?" Mitzi asked.

    "Oh, you know. The burial arrangements, Daddy's workshop.About how we need to get things straightened out.About how no-account I am and how I should model myselfafter my smart sister. The usual."

    She grinned. "Sorry about that."

    "I'm used to it .... Well, almost. How are we coming alongwith the business of the burial, anyhow?"

    "It's tricky," she replied. "There is just no space left inMountain View Cemetery. When they made that mistaketwelve years ago and got our family plot mixed up with theAnsons', we were sunk."

    "I'm surprised Daddy and Mother didn't notice."

    Mitzi nodded solemnly. "I am, too?not at Daddy so much.He just didn't care to think about graveyards and dying and allthat. But Mother and Grandmother talked about it."

    "Grandmother did, as I remember. But Mother would usuallytry to turn the talk in a different direction. It's only recentlythat it's become such a hot topic with her."

    "Well, her space in the family plot got occupied. There lieGrandmother and Granddaddy and Daddy?and no room forour mother. The graveyard people have apologized, but it's nottheir fault. This happened under the old management, beforethe new people came. So there's just no room."

    "Could we bury her standing up? Maybe there's room forthat."

    "Jess?"

    "Just kidding," I said hastily. "But there is the possibility ofcremation."

    "All right. I'll let you be the one to tell Mother that she'sgoing to be burnt to ashes and poured into a mason jar."

    "Why do we have to tell her? She doesn't really need toknow."

    "You mean cremate her without telling her beforehand?"

    "Well?"

    "I can't believe you said that. You are surely not serious.That would be?be something. I don't know what."

    "A betrayal," I suggested.

    "Yes. It's like we'd be double-crossing her."

    "So there's no solution to our little problem. But we're goingto have to tell her something?and pretty soon."

    "I know. And I've been thinking. There is one idea I've had,but I don't know if it could work out."

    "What's that?"

    "We don't have any close relatives left alive. But we do havesome distant ones, and of course Mother and Daddy hadfriends, a lot of friends."

    "True." I took a meditative sip of cabernet.

    "And a number of them still live on their old homesteadfarms and keep up family graveyards on them."

    "You think they might be willing to board our parents?"

    "I don't know," Mitzi said. "It's just a thought I had."

    I sipped and sipped again. "Might be worth a try."

    "They've been well liked, you know that."

    "Yes, but folks hereabouts are kind of touchous when itcomes to their real estate. And now we're talking about themost personal sort."

    "I know."

    "These would be long-term leases, too. From here to eternity,as the fellow said."

    "Yes. So what do you think?"

    "I can't say. I've been absent from the mountains fortwenty-one years and have lost touch with just about everybody.You know better about the possibilities than I could."

    "It's worth a try," she said. "There just might be someonewilling and able to take Mother and Daddy in."

    "It would be a right neighborly thing to do."

    She gave me a sharpish look. "That sounds condescending."

    "No, no, excuse me. I wasn't making mock. It's only thatwhen I return to my old haunts, my old way of talking comesback to me in spurts. I begin to sound like I almost belonghere."

    "Don't you?" she asked.

    "I've been away for two decades." I felt slow-witted, desperate."What would you say to Evercare?"

    "That big new cemetery down by the interstate?" she asked."Where they use those flat metal things for headstones, thosethings that look like manhole covers?"

    "Well..."

    But we looked at each other and shook our heads in profoundrejection and fell at last to our food. Mitzi nibbled inladylike fashion, but caveman Jess took up his sandwich andgnawed like it was the thigh of a particularly juicy mastodon.A session with my mother always left me ravenous, even witha talk with Mitzi as a buffer. I signaled for another cabernet.

    "Let me ask around," she said. "We might find some charitablesouls. The location isn't too important, right? It wouldn'thave to be in Harwood County, just as long as Mother andDaddy are together."

    "Just as long as they're side by side, mingling their mortalremains under the cool green coverlid of Mother Gaia, we'llall be happy, you and I and our devoted parents."

    "I can't promise anything," she said.

    "I know you'll try your best," I said. "Now about this othermatter?"

    "Daddy's workshop."

    "Yes," I said. "I don't see what makes it such a major concern.It's not the only private workshop he maintained. Healways used to set up some little hideaway where he could goto take naps or repair tools or work out plans for constructionprojects or whatever. There was never anything in them buttoolboxes and blueprints and busted furniture and old how-tomanuals and so forth. He had six or seven places like that overthe years, and they were always the same."

    "This one is supposed to be different. He installed it a longlong time ago, and nobody knew about it for years. Motherfound it by accident one day when she spotted his parkedtruck. But he wouldn't allow her in. He said it was Dr. Electro'ssecret laboratory, no visitors admitted. He teased us with it.One day, he told Mother, a project he was working on wouldmake a big hit."

    "He was kidding."

    "How do you know?"

    "He loved to tease."

    "Yes, but lots of times when you thought he was kidding,he was actually serious. Things I thought were teases turnedout to be true. Stories I took for gospel turned out to be fairytales he made up on the spot."

    "He was your classic folklore trickster. I don't know whypeople put up with it. If I tried to get away with some of thepranks he played, it would be Judge Lynch for me and a mooringcable for a noose."

    "They liked him. They trusted him to be mischievous butnot mean. They knew him for who he was."

    "Or thought they did," I replied, for I didn't believe thatanyone had really known my father. They had recognized thegoodness of his heart, the charm of his glance, his waggishtemperament. They must have understood something of thetrust he put in old-fashioned ideas of science, progress, theadvancement of knowledge, the betterment of humankindthrough education and biological and cultural evolution. Tomy generation, these concepts seemed so quaint and outdated,they didn't deserve the title of "concepts"; to many of his generationand the one preceding, they were still dangerous irreligiousmodes of thought, snares Satan set for the vanity offools .... I exaggerate now in order to show how he sometimesfelt put-upon by certain members of the community,whom he termed "the benighted" or, in jollier moods, "ourlocal medievals."

    Yet even those whose notions he held in sorrowful scornhad respected him. They had wanted him to change his wickedmodern ideas so that they could enjoy his company in theharp-plucking afterlife.

    "Or they only thought they knew him," Mitzi agreed.

    "Well," I asked, "what do you think Dr. Electro's great finalsecret revelation will be?"

    She smiled. "Nothing amazing. It is probably just one morebig tease. But, what with one problem and another, we haven'tgot out there in ten long years to inspect the workshop. Motherwanted to make sure the job fell to you. She thinks there mightbe something there that only you would understand ....Youknow where it is, don't you?"

    When I said I wasn't certain, she gave detailed directionsabout striking old Highway 23 and then described the buildingI was to look for. She pulled out a large ring of keys and handedit to me. It was this weight that had given her purse such anauthoritative thump when she dropped it into the chair.

    She rose and I rose with her. "Which one of these opens thedoor?" I asked.

    "That's one of Professor Electro's secrets," she said. "You'llhave to puzzle that one out."

    She leaned to give me a farewell air kiss and, on her wayout of the Whirligig, stopped to exchange brief wordage at nofewer than six tables.

    I sat down to ponder, hefting the keys thoughtfully beforelaying them on the table. There were an even dozen?no, wait;one more made thirteen?and merely to look at them mademe apprehensive. I signaled the waitress and ordered coffeeand cognac. If the coffee didn't aid my deliberations, maybethe cognac would solace my spirit.

Continues...

Excerpted from Look Back All the Green Valleyby Fred Chappell Copyright ©2000 by Fred Chappell. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312243103
• ISBN 13: 9780312243104
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288