The barrowfields, p.16
The Barrowfields, page 16
Meanwhile, he continued to grow and grow until he was positively leonine. By the time he was a year old, he weighed in at an incredible 125 pounds and every bit of it was bone and muscle. He loved to chase tennis balls more than anything in the world, and whenever he was ready to play, which was often, he would bring me two or three and put them in my lap and bark at me to take him to the park. As long as I would throw the ball for him, he would continue to go get it and bring it back. By the end of our respective days, he and I were usually pretty well worn out. He came to bed with me every night and always slept with his head on my chest.
In the early spring of my last semester of law school, J. P., Tyler, one of Tyler’s friends from Raleigh named Will, and I went to Crook’s Corner for shrimp and grits one perfect Saturday evening. The day had been warm and everyone was out and about with the optimism that comes with the promise of returning good weather. The restaurant was packed with a line out the door. When we finally got inside, the hostess asked us if we had a smoking preference and J. P. replied, “Marlboro Lights.” I said, “First available is fine,” and we crowded into a small space at the corner of the bar and waited for our table. Men were in khaki pants and button-downs and women were in flowered sundresses of swirling colors. We were all enjoying the scenery and J. P. was pontificating about the evolutionary basis for the bull’s eye aspect of the nipple when Story and five of her friends from school walked in. Naturally, they had had the foresight to make a reservation and were escorted straight past us to a table on the patio outside that was already thronged with people. After regaining consciousness, I asked the hostess to change our seating preference from “first available” to “patio,” which she happily did.
“Huddle up.” The guys looked at me like I was nuts. “Guys—huddle up.”
Will said, “What’s up?”
“I know what’s up,” said Tyler.
“I do, too,” said J. P. “Story’s here.”
“She is indeed,” I said. “Two things: First, I call that. You guys know what I’ve been going through, so please at least let me have the first shot at embarrassing myself. If she totally blows me off, she’s fair game, but so help me god I will hate you motherfuckers forever if someone else winds up going home with her. I’m serious about that. Forever. You don’t know me, Will, but I will carry a grudge into the afterlife. Second, do not, under any circumstances, let me do anything stupid. If I drink too much, don’t let me talk to her. Go get a restraining order. J. P.?”
“Yeah, I know a judge,” said J. P. “I got that covered. I can have you temporarily confined.”
“The key,” said Tyler, “is not to say anything at all. Just be near her but don’t talk unless you have to. Just try to sit there and look confident. You can only fuck it up if you talk.”
“Thanks, bud.”
“I’m looking out for you. I want this as much as you do.”
“Really?”
“I’m tired of hearing you whine about it.”
“Thanks.”
Several lifetimes passed and the hostess finally came to take us to our table on the busy patio. “It’s time!” I called out. “ ‘He that hath the steerage of my course, direct my sail. On, lusty gentlemen.’ ”
To Will, J. P. said, “He says shit like that all the time. You’ll get used to it.” Then to me, “Was that Romeo and Juliet?”
“Indeed,” I said. “I don’t know how you do it.”
I tried to sit where I could see Story, but Tyler wouldn’t let me. “You’ll just stare at her the whole time like a stunned animal and she’ll think you’re a stalker.”
“He’s right,” said J. P. “We’ll tell you what you need to know.”
“Bastards,” I said.
Tyler related that Story’s table was completely full.
“You think I’m going to go sit with her?” I asked.
“How else are you going to talk to her? Want to wait until she leaves and try to catch her in the parking lot?”
My torment thus continued for some time. Then Tyler noticed that a girl sitting next to Story had paid her bill and left, leaving a vacancy at the table. Oh, fate!
Tyler said, “You’re up. Go get ’em, tiger.”
“I can’t just go sit down next to her.”
“Yes, you can. Pretend like you’re going to take a piss and act surprised to see her and sit down. You got this.”
With a pounding heart and every line of romantic verse I’d ever heard or read ricocheting nonsensically through my brain and whipsawing the air around me, I walked to Story’s table and sat down next to her in the empty chair. All conversation at the table came to a screeching halt. Story and her friends were looking at me as they might have looked at a naked man who had brought them dessert.
“Hey, guys. How is everyone?”
After a long second they all responded cheerily and went back to talking about the bar exam and jobs. Thankfully, the waiter came by and I ordered a beer. I sat there for a minute or two without saying anything, as if there were nothing out of the ordinary about me sitting at the table with a group of people with whom I’d not previously had any substantive communication. Tyler and J. P. were doing a hell of a good job not monitoring my progress. They were continuing as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, and I admired their professionalism. My beer arrived and I took a long, grateful drink. I examined the patterned metal table with my fingers like it was of some real consequence and then pretended to study a menu with near-scientific intensity even though I had already eaten. Story crossed her legs and turned toward me. She and I were the only two people at the table and perhaps in the entire pullulating establishment not engaged in some conversation. We must have looked rather silly.
“I’m Story.”
“Hi, I’m Henry. I saw you sitting here and thought I’d say hello.”
“You saw me sitting here?”
“I saw you come in.”
“And you wanted to say hello to me?” she asked.
“I did.”
“Hmm.” She appeared skeptical. My face began to burn and I became deeply and profoundly self-conscious almost to the point of personal incontinence. I had no business being there and I didn’t have the first idea what to say to her. “Anyway,” I said, choking on my words. I started to get up to leave. BethAnn, one of Story’s law school friends, said to me, “Have you started studying at all?”
Thank you, Jesus. I sat back down. She was talking about the upcoming bar exam.
“I heard you got called on in criminal procedure the other day,” she said, without waiting for me to answer the first question.
“I did.”
“That’s so crazy. I can’t remember the last time a 3-L got called on. What were you doing?”
“I was reading a book,” I said. “But not the textbook. Probably shouldn’t have had my feet up, even in the back of the class.” Story laughed and I felt my respiration decrescendo to a more medically acceptable level.
“What were you reading?” Another one of Story’s friends—this time, Nichole, whose superfluous h, short skirts, and multiplicity of short-term boyfriends had done her no favors—chimed in. Turpitude aside, she was competing for top graduating honors.
“For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
Story laughed again. Hell, yes.
“That’s crazy,” said BethAnn. “You’re such a geek. What did he say to you?”
“After I said pass, he said—very ominously, I might add—he said, ‘You can pass this time, but will you pass the exam?’ ”
“That’s what I heard,” said Nichole. “That’s so funny. He obviously has no idea who you are.” By this she meant that I was among her close competition.
“He’s arguably unpleasant,” I said.
“He’s inarguably a vacuous simpleton,” said Nichole. Touché, Nichole.
The rest of the table went back to its discussion. Story’s sunshine hair was pulled back but curled around and obscured her exquisite throat. She had on a sleeveless black dress and I marveled at the contour of her arms and shoulders. There was something inherently resilient about her manner that projected itself through her posture and even the very way she put her arms upon the table. She talked to BethAnn with animation, apparently unaware that I was still sitting next to her. When she turned to me again, I said, “I should be going.”
“Can I ask you a question?” she said.
“Of course.”
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” It had gotten so loud on the patio that we almost had to shout to hear each other over the rising voices and sharp clanging of silverware on porcelain and enamel. She was leaning toward me and our faces were close.
“I have no idea. Probably not a lawyer. What about you?”
“I thought I wanted to be lawyer,” she said. “Now I’m not so sure.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I truly want to help people.”
I mulled this over and looked at her and read the seriousness in her face. Her eyes were arresting. She seemed to become momentarily embarrassed at my obvious wonderment.
“What are you drinking?” She pointed with her beer at my glass of beer and tucked her hair behind one ear. I watched the remarkable economy of movement of her arm as it rose and fell. Surely a hundred or more people sat out on the patio and talked, and just as surely waiters and waitresses walked about carrying buckets of beer and people passed back and forth, but I was just as surely not aware of any of them.
“I really don’t recall,” I said. At that moment I really couldn’t recall. “It’s good, though, if you want to try it. What are you having?”
“I’m not sure. Someone else ordered it for me. It just appeared.”
I took another drink. “Do you want me to get us two more?”
“Yes, please,” she said. “That way we can figure out what we’re drinking.”
I summoned the waiter and ordered two more beers. Coronas with a lime. Keeping it simple.
“Who are you here with?” she asked. I pointed to my rowdy table where J. P. and Tyler were causing some kind of ruckus. BethAnn asked Story another question and I lost her attention and wasn’t sure I would get it back. I told myself it would be reasonable for me to wait at the table until the beer arrived, which it did a moment later. Story and I inserted our limes and toasted.
“To our one moon and all our myriad stars,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, savoring it. “I like that. To our one moon and all our myriad stars. What’s that from?”
“I might’ve read it somewhere.” I asked her where she was from and she said, “A town in South Carolina you’ve never heard of, I’m sure.” Her amused expression disappeared and was replaced with a beautifully furrowed brow. Her friends had gotten their checks and stood to leave. They asked if she was ready to go. She looked at me for a long second and I thought she just might stay.
At last, she said, “I’m ready.” She stood carefully, and her black dress showed her body underneath it. “It was nice talking to you. I can’t drink all this. Do you want the rest?” She handed her beer to me and I wondered if taking it home to keep in a hermetically sealed container in my refrigerator would signal to others the need for long-term confinement.
“Have a good night,” I said.
“Thank you. I will. You, too. Enjoy the moon and all our myriad stars.” And then she was gone.
As a going-away party from law school, my friends and I rented a beach house on Sullivan’s Island for a long weekend following the last day of exams. Word quickly got out that we had made such an accommodation and soon several more people from our class had signed up to come and stay. We knew nothing about the house other than that it was spacious, very expensive, and had red-painted French doors that opened from three of the downstairs bedrooms onto the dunes preceding the beach. On Thursday afternoon as we were loading supplies into the car for the weekend, Story called me at the house in Chapel Hill. I hadn’t talked to her since the night at the restaurant.
“Hey—it’s Story—we talked the other night at Crook’s Corner?…You remember—? Okay, good. I heard you guys were going to the beach. Do you think you have room for one more?” My essential organs became paralyzed. When I had regained my bearings, I told her we would enjoy having her, and that there was plenty of room. BethAnn and Nichole had already been invited by someone else in our group, and Story said she was going to follow them down later in the afternoon. She was familiar with Sullivan’s Island and just needed the address. “It’s on Poe Avenue,” I told her. “All the way at the end. We’re in a large white house on the left on the water. You should see my Scout, if the old girl makes it down there. It’s the one with the license plate that says VP-KAN.”
Those of us who arrived early stood on the front porch of the house drinking beer and waiting for the others as the coral sky faded languorously toward nightfall. We had no fewer than three oversize coolers, and the sun-bleached boards of the house were the color of the ubiquitous white sand. Someone found an antique crystal bowl from inside and filled it with lunes of fresh lime. It sat conspicuously on the railing of the porch, aqueous emerald against all the sand-white planks. A reggae mix dropped from the windows on the third floor and gave rhythm to every step and movement.
J. P., lubricated by the alcohol, talked to me nonstop about writing fiction and his attendant quest to become the next Ursula K. Le Guin. J. P. was one of my closest friends and I enjoyed him tremendously, but the confidence with which he discussed his probable future success as a writer and his insinuations of superior knowledge caused me to bristle and burn a little on the inside. I hadn’t told him about Father, so he wasn’t to blame, and even if I had there would be nothing in the telling of Father’s story that would prevent J. P. from talking about writing. Nevertheless, something about how he made it all sound so easy and color-by-numbers drove nails into the palms of my consciousness. Thankfully on this occasion the effect was ameliorated by a degree because I was having trouble paying perfect attention to what he was saying. The fact was that I was preoccupied to the point of severe distraction. I could think of nothing else but Story and whether she would actually come to the beach.
“I think erotica is really the way to go. That is, if you want to sell something. I may try my hand at that one of these days.” Momentarily tiptoed, J. P. moved his testicles from one side to the other. Ignoring the double entendre and looking past J. P. for evidence of Story’s arrival, I said, “Like who? Like D. H. Lawrence? Or more something like Henry Miller?”
“See, that’s what you can’t do. You can’t set out to write like anybody. You just have to create. Let it happen. Let your brain follow its natural patterns, which you can be sure in most cases haven’t been replicated in nature before. And Henry Miller is hardly erotica. Just because the dreaded c word appears in a book doesn’t qualify it as such. Read Henry Miller looking for something scandalous and you’ll be disappointed—unless the word cunt just curls your toes.”
He went to the cooler, came back with four beers, and handed two of them to me so that I was then holding three. He opened the first of his by wedging the cap against the porch railing and violently whacking it with his other hand, sending the cap hurtling off into the driveway like a Roman candle. Looking surprised, he scrambled down the steps to pick it up.
“You’re so conscientious,” I said.
“Tell that to my mother.”
“But don’t you have to read everything that has happened before so you’ll know that you’re not duplicating something that’s already been done?” I asked, playing the game.
“First of all, that’s impossible.” J. P. was tall and thin—maybe taller than me—with long limbs that spread out in all directions. To me, he resembled a kite made of very white, freckled fabric. He was always cultivating about two days’ worth of splotchy beard growth à la Yasser Arafat. His features were handsome but his demeanor said “geek,” and he much preferred to land in the latter category as a point of intellectual honesty. As far as I knew, he’d never been laid or even been on a real date. When he talked he gesticulated widely and his arms would twirl about to great effect.
“There’s just too much shit out there,” he said, and here he became a pterodactyl hovering in the air before me, a beer in each hand at the opposite termini of the wingspan. “You’ll paralyze yourself trying to do that. How would you ever find time to write? And then—and then,” he said, taking a drink, “you’ll find someone you really do like and you’ll unconsciously try to write like that. Now that’s what you have to avoid.”
“So what do you do?” I said. “You don’t read. You just write?”
“Me personally? Oh, I read everything. I read every fucking thing I can get my hands on. I completely agree with you despite what I’m telling you. I’m crippled by fear that my shit is not going to be as good as what people are writing now, and nine times out of ten, that’s why I don’t wind up writing. I just recognize that it’s not a good strategy, what you’re talking about.”
“Did you read Gaddis?” I said, trying to find something J. P. might not know in the world of letters.
“I couldn’t read that fucking book.”
“Pynchon?”
“I have the same feeling about Pynchon. You just can’t help getting the impression that these guys write just to see how much they can put down on paper and to see if anyone will actually read it.”
“Poe?”
