The Promise of Rest Read online

  Alisoun’s answer was long-since ready. “I’ve noticed how scarce blacks are in this department, yes; but the reason for that has got to be, they know you’ll tell them nothing but lies—our solemn white poems and stories about human one-ness, all our feeble alibis for common greed and meanness and worse: torture, murder. Every black student here, and I know quite a few—I’ve made it my little white-girl project for the past three years—has got those lies bred into their bones. They don’t need to read Old Master’s effusions. What have we got to tell them, we Western white folks, in poems and plays?”

  Her immaculate pale green cotton sweater and short string of pearls had misinformed Hutch; he was shocked by her force. I’ll think about that on the road today. For the present he could only say what he trusted. With all the self-trust of a lifelong teacher, his mind chose to seize the wheel of the talk and turn it his way. “What conceivable subject—any subject comprehensible to humans at least, of whatever color—hasn’t been done to death? The fact that Milton wrote ‘Lycidas’ has hardly prevented the writing of later great poems about dead youth.”

  Alisoun said “Name two.”

  Hutch said “Take three, off the top of my head—Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam,’ Arnold’s ‘Thyrsis,’ Robert Lowell’s ‘Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket.’”

  Erik said “But isn’t the theme of early death a whole lot more universal and available than the historical accident of Anglo and Afro-American miscegenation for three hundred years in a highly particular steamy place called the old Confederacy?”

  Hutch waited, then had to say “Thanks for the question; I need to think it over. I will admit I don’t think William Faulkner is a genius compared to, say, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. Faulkner knew a small hot patch of ground he invented; it lacked huge chunks of the actual world—real women, for example: just half the human race unaccounted for. And responsible fathers, which many men are. Mothers who can love and not smother their young. Faulkner was the best student of wild and tame animals I’ve yet found in fiction; but as for his using up any large subject you’d meet in the real world, except maybe whiskey—you recall Hemingway always called him ‘Old Bourbon Mellifluous,’ a well-aimed spear from one who’d consumed his own share of gin—well, all Faulkner exhausted was runaway English; country show-off prose.

  “And no other writer, since Faulkner drank himself out of sane action by the age of fifty, has really dived deep into that huge maelstrom called miscegenation on Southern ground—the feeding of white on black, black on white—though the problem has gone much further toward both solution and utter insolubility than Marse Will Faulkner ever dreamed possible.”

  Hutch looked up to Alisoun, who’d waited him out, and smiled broadly at her. “I’ll prophesy for you what I’m likely to feel, if I think your question through for years—I very much doubt that any reality that’s widely experienced by human beings is ever worn out, not so long as the right he or she takes it up in flaming-new language.”

  More than half the class now realized that the teacher had left himself open for a body blow. Are you the right man, and where’re your deathless flaming-new words? But every watch showed the hour was ending.

  So Hutch said “I promise you more of an answer; but for now, one final word from the foreman here—words as freshly minted and potently thrusting as the words of ‘Lycidas’ all but never come out of a human mind for any reason less than enormous feeling, a nearly stifling pressure to speak. My money anyhow is on John Milton’s being mightily moved by his young friend’s drowning—by the chance that such a random disaster could fall on himself—and by the near-sure existence of a just afterlife. But believe what you will, if the poem will support you. I’ll see you on Wednesday. Read Andrew Marvell.”

  Only Kim slid her chair back to rise.

  Late as it was, the others seemed held in place, unsatisfied.

  Hutch actually asked himself Are they facing their own eventual deaths?

  And they held still another long moment—even Kim balked, unsatisfied but gripped.

  To free them, Hutch said the only thing that came. It was anyhow truthful. “This poem—‘Lycidas’—means more to me than all but a few of the humans I’ve known, more than most anything I’ve ever owned or tried to keep. Except of course for my lost son—he’s lost to me; how I can’t bear to tell you. If the world hadn’t turned up creatures like Milton—or Keats or Handel—every century or so, I doubt I could live through the thought of my young son dying in pain, too far from me, refusing any help and even his mother’s.” He knew it sounded a little mad, maybe more than a little.

  But none of their eyes betrayed fear or laughter; and even when they’d filed silently past him toward their crowded unthinkable lives—Whit’s hand touched his shoulder as he went—the rising in Hutch’s chest boiled on. What in God’s name has got me happy?

  2

  THE rising continued as Hutch stopped by his office to check the mail. He’d no sooner sat, though, before someone knocked—a tall man behind the opaque glass. A little annoyed, Hutch called “Come in.” The darkhaired, dark-bearded man was familiar on sight anyhow—Hutch had noticed him on the stairs and in the hallways for maybe two years. He was almost certainly a graduate student; but he held in place on the threshold, not speaking.

  Hutch stood. “I’m Hutchins Mayfield. May I help you?”

  Entirely serious, the man said “I very much doubt you can.”

  Then check out immediately. But all Hutch said was “We may never know if you don’t fill me in.” He motioned to the single red-leather chair that stood by his desk, for student callers.

  Then the man launched a sudden spectacular smile, stepped in, shut the door and took the red chair. When Hutch was seated, the man held out a hand. “I’m Hart Salter, sir, a doctoral candidate. I’ve watched you for years.”

  “I’ve noticed you around, yes, but didn’t see you watching me. You’re bound to be bored.”

  Again Hart took it seriously. “Not bored exactly. Not fascinated either. I guess I’ve always tried to guess how poems get into your head from space.”

  Hutch had taught one genuine lunatic student a few years back. Is this a fresh psycho? He thought he’d try first to lighten the tone. With both hands far above his head, he indicated the shape of a drainpipe running from thin air through the top of his skull. “There’s a long invisible pipeline, see, from the spring of the muses directly into my cerebral cortex.”

  Hart said “I’ve got no doubt about that.”

  “Good. I only wish it were true.”

  Hart said “You fooled me. I’ve read all your poems; you’re a real self-starter.”

  “Warm thanks, Mr. Salter. I’m a cold engine now, a minor dud.” Then dreading what was almost surely the answer, Hutch asked the question that seemed required. “You write poems yourself?” The thought of a manuscript thrust at him here felt as real as a knife.

  “Not a line of poetry, not since high school. No, I guess you’re wondering why I’m here.”

  “I had begun to wonder. I’m due out of here in the next ten minutes—”

  Hart sprang up at once. “I don’t want to hold you.”

  “No, sit by all means and tell me your errand.”

  So Hart folded his endless legs again and sat. “I’m in deep water, sir. It’s in my marriage. I figured a poet might help me swim out.”

  For the past three decades, student strangers had occasionally dropped in with personal problems for the resident poet. One excruciating twenty minutes had followed when a young man with hideous face burns had walked in to show Hutch the poems he’d written about his fate—a gasoline bomb that had left him a monster. But has any lovelorn certified adult ever asked for love-help? Almost surely not. Hutch said “My record on love is dismal, Mr. Salter. I’m alone as a dead tree.”

  “Call me Hart, please—Hart.” He smiled his winning smile again. “This is idiotic of me, I know; but since I’ve committed this ludicrous folly, let me ask one question.
”

  Hutch held up a finger and laughed. “One question then, entirely free of charge.”

  “How do you ever convince a woman that you actually love her?”

  Hutch had noticed Hart’s wedding band. “You’re presently married?”

  “Yes sir, for three years, fully sworn at the altar with God and man watching—”

  “God and humankind, Hart. Maybe you need a crash course in—what?—‘gender-sensitive language’?”

  “Sir, if I get any more sensitive, my blood will ooze out of these fingernails.” Hart showed ten long thick fingernails, well tended. “The problem is, my wife can’t believe me. I’m loyal as any Seeing Eye dog, I do well over half the chores (she works full-time in the Botany greenhouse), my body has never once cheated on her, I say the word love to her on the quarter-hour whenever we’re together, but she says she literally cannot believe me. This morning she said she felt as abandoned as the world’s last swallow.”

  Hutch smiled. “Assuming she meant the last bird, I like her image.”

  “Oh she can crucify you, by the minute, with images.”

  Hutch said “Try writing her short letters maybe, that she can keep and reread at will. Try your first adult poem.”

  “I guessed you’d say that.”

  “What else could I say?—you called on a poet.”

  Hart flushed as fiercely as Karen, last hour. But he leaned back, thrust a broad hand into his jeans and brought out a single folded index card. “I wrote the poem, just now in the local men’s room. May I read it to you?—I think it’s a haiku.”

  “By all means then—no epic recitations though.”

  Hart opened the card, spread it on his right knee but never looked down as he said

  “In all this thicket of straight white trees,

  A single burning bush, concealing you.”

  Hutch said “Well, it may be a little too bold to be a haiku; but it’s striking all right. Will she mind the touch of eros?”

  “No, that’s one thing that’s never been a problem.”

  Hutch said “Oh bountifully lucky pair!” Then he pointed to his phone. “Call your wife right now; read the poem to her, more than once. I’d be glad to hear it from any mate of mine.” He was suddenly eager for Hart to succeed, so eager he threw off his usual caution about recognizing real poetry, however modest. “I’ve got to leave, Hart. I’m overdue for my own family business. But use my phone for as long as you like; just shut the door as you leave—it locks itself.”

  Hart half rose. “I couldn’t.”

  “You can. You already have, with your poem. Now read it to—who? You never said her name.” “Stacy. Stacy Burnham—she’s kept her old name.”

  Hutch was on his feet now. “If you think it’s appropriate, you can say I believe you.”

  Hart said “I may need to deep-six that.” But then he could smile. He rose too, shook Hutch’s hand again, then sat and carefully placed the phone call.

  Only when he’d heard Hart’s voice say “Stacy?” did Hutch shut the door behind him and go.

  3

  TWO hours later, for whatever reason, Hutch was still nearly happy. The feeling that had sprung up at noon, in class, had only strengthened with the start of his trip. And against strong odds, it had lasted till now when he was in sight of his destination. At first he’d thought the change was caused by the day itself—an early April afternoon, new leaves overhead, the deeps of the woods splodged with redbud and dogwood, the air desert-clear. The landscape twenty miles northeast of Durham had begun a slow change through another forty miles into what was still the land of Hutch’s childhood, the only nature he’d loved on Earth, though he’d stood in various stages of awe in the presence of sights from the Jericho wilderness north to Lapland, west to Beijing and south to Rio.

  In calm defiance of rusting billboards, trailer parks and all other man-made waste and ruin, the country Hutch drove through briskly was caught in its nearly invisible rolling—a broad-backed brown and green undulation beneath dense evergreens and a wide pitched sky as royal-blue as the eyes of a watchful year-old boy or the banner at a high chivalric tilt in dark-age France. To Hutch it seemed, as it always had since his own father told him, the actual skin of a slumberous creature the size of a quarter of east Carolina and southside Virginia—a creature that might yet prove benign if it ever roused and faced the living.

  And as always, again Hutch pushed on silently across the broad hide, hoping at least to pass unseen in his odd elation. Or was his pleasure a simple prediction of the evening ahead, a birthday supper for his ancient cousin? Hutch slowed a little for the final curve, glanced to the rear-view mirror above him and grinned at his face.

  After all these years it still surprised him to see how, this far along in life, he’d come to look like Rob his father who’d died a younger man than Hutch was today. Not that Rob was an unlikable model—the same braced brow and jaw, the brown unflinching eyes, the still dark hair with its broad swag of white. So Hutch actually spoke to himself, “You’re bearing up better than you ought to be.” It was true but the words hardly touched his pleasure as he entered the drive and stopped past the main house, by the vast oak—his father’s old homeplace, which Hutch had rented to friends years ago.

  He sat still a moment and tested again this strange new feeling. Despite the bitter sadness and loss he knew was bound toward him—him and his family—Hutch felt like a lucky man on a hill. And he guessed it was not some temporary boost, ignited by the weather or a quick jet of natural endorphins in his blood. He’d had long stretches of joy all his life and he trusted pleasure. It had lasted for two hours alone on the road, and it somehow promised to last a good while. For an instant, it even crossed his mind that his sexual force might come back again. Except for occasional bouts with his own hand, sexual will had all but left him months ago when he learned for sure that his son was desperately ill at a distance. Yet he knew all feeling, all longing for love, must hide now—for weeks or months—till he buried his only child, his son who was dying in upper Manhattan, refusing phone calls or visits from home.

  Hutch reached for his cousin’s birthday gift and climbed out into pure good-smelling sun. He shut his eyes and let the light warm his face and neck. Then he looked around him. No other car or truck, no other human in sight or hearing—Strawson and Emily must be in town. But Hutch had known this house and its setting all his life. He’d spent the best part of his boyhood here; it knew him well enough to let him arrive with no boisterous welcome. Only the fat old Labrador bitch on the porch turned to check; and once she knew him, she spared herself barking. Hutch called to her “Maud, it’s the Friendly Slasher—go back to sleep.”

  Maud ignored the news and resumed her watch on the empty road.

  So Hutch walked on toward the squat white guest-house beyond the stable. The clapboard was freshly painted, the roof was sporting new bright green shingles, and every window was shut and shaded against the light. Once Hutch was there though, the door stood open. Even the rusty screen was propped wide.

  A single day-moth made a lunge to enter, then fell back as if a broad hand had struck it.

  Hutch paused at the foot of the three rock steps and spoke at a low pitch. “Anybody breathing?” A keen-eared child, or a bat, might have heard him. He was testing his cousin’s ears and brain.

  The voice that answered was lean and light, a note or two higher than in the old days but firm and unbroken with no growl or husk. “One mean old soul in here; that’s it—enter at your own risk.”

  Hutch said “I’m hunting a birthday boy named Grainger Walters. You seen him today?”

  The voice stayed put but spoke even stronger. “He’s not your boy but I’ve seen him every time I looked in the mirror for one-damn-hundred-and-one years today.”

  “You’re not in there with some young girl?”

  “Haven’t seen a girl in thirty, forty years. You coming in or not?—I can’t stand up.” But there were sounds of a creaking chair,
a tall body unfolding itself and then steps toward the door. A man was slowly there in the doorway behind the screen—long powerful hands, skin the color of the starched khaki pants and shirt, brown eyes that had turned almost a pale sky-blue.

  At first that seemed to Hutch the one sign of unusual age—the eyes and the skin that lightened with every year as if time were canceling the first fact about this palpable body: its mingled blood. Hutch hadn’t seen the old man in nearly four months. If there’d been a real change, it was maybe the eyebrows. The last of the snow-white eyebrows were gone, and the head was as hairless as any bronze bust. Then Hutch realized that the skull itself seemed larger and grander, grown to accommodate the huge filmy eyes. Otherwise the old man stood straight as ever since Hutch had known him—a little shrunk in the chest and thighs but bolt upright and balanced steadily. “Happy birthday, Cousin Grainger—and a hundred more.”

  Grainger Walters had given up smiling long since, except at unpredictable moments for unannounced reasons; but he showed the remains of his strong teeth now, and he tipped his bare head. “Fall down here in the dirt on your knees, and pray I die after supper tonight.”

  Hutch said “Whoa here.”

  “Whoa nothing—I’m tired. Haven’t slept since Christmas.”

  “Why?” Hutch had asked without thinking.

  “If you don’t know my reason, fool—if you been sleeping good yourself—then leave that package here on my stoop and head on out.” Grainger turned and vanished back to his chair.

  At first Hutch edged his way to the door and laid the gift where he’d been told to leave it. A powerful urge to run shot through him. If anyone living knew Hutch Mayfield from sole to crown, it was this old soul who’d say what he meant if he felt the need or the merest whim. Hutch waited the urge out; then climbed the steps and entered, shutting the screen door behind him. It took a whole minute before his eyes had opened to the indoor darkness, and while he waited he said “You’ll ruin your eyes in this dark.”