Redemption Mountain (6 page)

“So, Charlie, any chance of joining the club again?” Berman asked. “I'm sure Ellen could get you a better locker this time.”

Charlie laughed and shook his head. He gazed across the patio at his wife, at her friends, and then around at the other tables, at all the wealthy, successful, contented members. All the white faces enjoying each other's company. He couldn't help but flash back to the sour memory of two summers earlier, to the day he'd invited his lifelong best friend, Cecil Thomas, to play in a member–guest at Hickory Hills. The events of that day became a catalyst in his decision to leave the club and still festered in Charlie's mind.

Charlie couldn't remember a time before he and Cecil were best friends. Their mothers brought them home from the hospital only weeks apart to the old house on Western Boulevard in New Haven. The Thomases lived on the second floor, one of several black families in the handful of three-decker houses on a street that was gradually giving way to an expanding industrial zone.

That Cecil was black or in any way different from him was never a concern to Charlie. He knew Cecil long before he ever met any other white children. From elementary school through high school, the best friends were a curious pair: Charlie, strong, athletic, and only marginally interested in school; Cecil, overweight and uncoordinated but gifted academically. Cecil was often called on to help Charlie with his homework, and, more than a few times, Charlie had to put his fists to work to protect his buddy.

After turning Charlie down for several years, Cecil finally accepted the invitation to play. Charlie had no reason to suspect that Cecil wasn't ready to play in a real tournament, on a real golf course. He also had no reason to suspect that Hickory Hills wasn't ready for Cecil. But Cecil knew it—the moment he stepped into the dining room for the luncheon, looked around for Charlie, and saw a sea of white faces staring back at him, an overweight black man in basketball sneakers and an Izod sports shirt a size too small. Cecil had been there before.

It didn't help that they played with a member with a five handicap and his guest, who had a Westchester Country Club bag tag. They would have had little patience with a white man's whiffs, shanks, and wild slices, let alone this clearly out-of-place black man, who looked like he could very well be picking up their trash next week. After a few holes, the member and his guest played as a twosome, standing well off to the side of the green or heading on to the next tee while Charlie and Cecil finished the hole.

It took Charlie a while to fully grasp Cecil's discomfort at being the only black man on the course, the only black man on the grounds of the club not working in the kitchen. Then he began to notice the sideways glances and the cupped-hand-to-mouth comments, followed by the quick turn-away snickers of the other players, and it dawned on him what a horrible mistake he'd made in subjecting his friend to this kind of test.

If Cecil had been the white CFO of a Fortune 500 company, he could have shot 140 and everyone would have joked and had a good time with it. But the standard for a middle-class black man at Hickory Hills was much tougher and crueler, and it gnawed at Charlie's gut every time he played after that. He and Cecil had talked on the phone only a few times over the last two years, occasionally exchanging emails, as their friendship dissipated. His estrangement from Cecil saddened Charlie whenever he thought about his old friend.

“No, Mal, I don't think I'll be coming back to the club again.” Charlie took a sip of his beer. “In fact, I may be going away for a while, couple of years if things work out.” He told Berman of his plan to be transferred to China and of conversations he'd had with Lucien Mackey. Charlie knew that Malcolm was closely involved with the project and knew as much about it as anyone outside the San Francisco office and Lucien Mackey.

“That's a tough one, Charlie. It technically belongs to San Francisco, which has half its people in Beijing already. Plus, it's not the kind of post a partner is often considered for.” Charlie knew that Malcolm was referring to the fact that most of the partners, although highly educated and experienced engineers, generally arrived on the partners' floor through their business and political acumen, not their engineering talents. The real ability to manage the complex projects of a company like Dietrich Delahunt & Mackey lay with a small cadre of experienced engineers who'd spent their entire careers in the field, building mammoth structures around the globe, working for a fraction of a partner's income. They were the kind of engineers that Charlie Burden had once set out to become, before he became a rainmaker and had to come inside.

“I could build that dam, Malcolm.”

“Lucien will know what's best, Charlie. Trust his judgment.”

The sun was suddenly blocked out and Charlie looked up to see Ellen standing at the edge of their table, equipment bag on her shoulder, smiling down at them.

“Hello, Malcolm,” Ellen said, before turning to her husband. “Shall we go, Charlie? Wouldn't want you to get too comfortable here. You may want to become a member again and spoil all my fun.”

 

CHAPTER 5

 

T
he steering of Natty's Honda felt a little wobbly as she turned onto Heaven's Gate, which, after a short, winding climb through Angel Hollow, would lead to Redemption Mountain Road. Another mile through alternating dark woods and sunlit green meadows would bring them up to the DeWitt farm. The 1980 Accord, at one time red, had faded to a dull maroon. She hoped the problem was just a tire that needed air. Even with Gus Lowe's garage giving her a break, she couldn't afford any repairs right now.

Natty loved to come back to the farm to see her mother, Grandpa Bud, Alice, and Uncle Pete. She loved the smells and the colors and sounds of the farm and the coolness of the air on Redemption Mountain. Even the pungent aromas of the pigpens and the chicken house brought back nostalgic flashes, and the greens of the trees and the cornstalks and the fallow pastures always appeared deeper and richer and greener than anywhere else. On the farm, food tasted better, the water colder and purer, and the air smelled fresher. Natty enjoyed walking barefoot in the fields, feeling the hot soft earth between her toes. She'd sit on the warm flat rocks in the stream with her legs numbed up to the knee by the ice-cold water that ran down from farther up the mountain.

But the farm was also the source of Natty's greatest sadness, and she couldn't walk through the house or the barn or the fields or sit on the porch for very long without thinking of Annie. Twenty-three years later she could still hear her voice, and feel her small hands and her downy cheeks, and see her running across the dirt yard with her arms upraised, the sign for Natty to hold her.

The melancholy of old memories was supplanted by the unbridled joy the children experienced at the farm, and Natty enjoyed sharing their excitement as they explored the world of her childhood. After the obligatory hugs and a suitable interval of fawning by their grandmother and great-grandparents, Pie would always beg for his release to run off with Uncle Pete to drive the old tractor around the farm. Cat, after a hand-in-hand walking tour with Great-grandmother Alice to see the newest piglets, would invariably sneak off to the warm floor of the sunroom, surrounded by the tattered yellowing picture books from Sarah's library. She could sit for hours, cross-legged, reading the stories out loud to herself, just as her mother had done with the same books many years earlier.

Natty was always struck by how run down the farm seemed. The gray clapboards of the house needed painting, the roof was worn and patched in a dozen places, and the long boards of the porch sagged noticeably. Sarah still kept her flower beds around the house, but they weren't as full or as neatly edged as they once were. The farm, like its occupants, was looking tired.

As Natty pulled into the yard in front of the house, Grandpa DeWitt and Alice were getting out of their chairs on the porch to greet them. While the children were hugging their great-grandparents and Uncle Pete, Natty's mother drifted quietly through the screen door and stood unnoticed on the porch, arms folded in front of her, a serene smile on her face as she awaited her turn. This was her manner—never impatient, never demonstrative or in any way calling attention to herself.

Sarah DeWitt was several inches taller than her daughter and had only recently started to put some middle-aged pounds on her thin frame. She was fifty-three but looked older, the weathered skin of her face and arms showing the effects of more than twenty years of farm life. Her hair was prematurely white, the color of thick smoke. It hung down her back, reaching almost to her waist. Today it hung loose, and with her faded cotton dress and well-worn sandals, she gave the appearance, as she often did, of a Native American.

After the children had run off, Sarah DeWitt turned her attention to her daughter. She pulled Natty close for a long hug, then carefully examined her face, looking for a telltale sign. Natty knew what she was doing. It had become their routine since the night Buck had beaten her.

“So, he's been leaving you alone, then.” Sarah had a soft, unhurried way of speaking, a mannerism inherited by her daughter.

“
Yes,
Mama.” Natty was irritated. “You don't always have to do this. Buck ain't like that anymore; he's fine.”

“Of course he is. And he's given up drinking, and he spends all of his free time now with his children.”

“He's getting better, Mama. He's trying, anyway. He'll be fine when the new power plant opens. He's made good friends with the head man from the construction company—a big company from New York—and he's promised Buck a job. And those are good jobs, too.”

“Yes, I'm sure Buck will be very much needed at the new power plant,” Sarah said.

They'd reached the point they always reached very quickly, when Sarah made her usual inferences about Buck, and Natty had to resist throwing her mother's lifestyle back at her. But Natty knew it would just make things worse. She didn't want to argue with her mother, and, she had to admit, it wasn't fair. Her mother never hurt anyone with her addictions.

They strolled slowly toward the barn, her mother bringing her daughter up to date on the insignificant details that make up the news on a small farm. They sat down on an old bench by the barn, where they could watch the pigs cool themselves in the wet mud.

“You look thin, Natty. Are you still doing all that running?”

“Every day, unless the weather won't let me. It's the best thing I do for myself, Mama. And I feel fine, I feel great.”

“And your nursing job, how are all your patients?”

“I ain't a nurse, Mama. I'm a home health aide.”

“
Aren't
a nurse, Natty. You don't always have to sound like a hillbilly.”

“I know, Mama. I
aren't
a nurse.” Her mother ignored the wisecrack. “Anyway, I haven't lost any this week, but I got a few headed for the wrong side of the grass pretty quick. They keep giving me more.”

“No, I don't think we'll be running out of old people in McDowell County anytime soon,” Sarah replied pensively. “And you'll be working at the school again this fall?”

“In the mornings, for a few hours. Still gives me time to make my rounds, and I'll be able to see Cat once in a while. Make sure she's doing okay.”

“That'll be good for her. And Pie, he's ready to go back to school?”

“He's going into seventh grade, about where he's supposed to be.” Natty reflected for a moment on her remarkable son. “He still has problems with arithmetic. Numbers confuse him some, but it sure as hell confused me, too. You know that. But damn if he ain't the most entertaining little boy. He makes me laugh like we got no troubles in the world.”

“You've done a good job with that boy, Natty. A great job, all by yourself.”

Natty ignored her mother's subtle jab. Sarah hadn't liked Buck as a child, liked him less as the husband of her daughter, and now despised him as the father of her grandchildren. It had been several years since Buck had been to the farm and years since Sarah had been to Oakes Hollow. “Not just me, Mama. Mostly Mabel Willard at the school. Thank God for that woman. She's been teaching Pie since kindergarten, putting in extra time all these years.”

“And with all your work, you'll still be having your football team again?”

“Hell, Mama, that's about the only fun I have in life, that and my running. And it's soccer, not football.” Natty had to admit that her enthusiasm for coaching was waning. She was tired of being undermanned and outgunned against the all-boy teams from Bluefield, Princeton, and Welch. Even with Emma Lowe, her team always lost more games than they won. She wasn't sure if they would even be competitive this season, having lost a couple of capable players, but she had to run the team one last year, for Emma's sake, anyway.

Sarah's attention had drifted away, as it often did after a few minutes of conversation. She would appear deep in thought as she gazed off at nothing. Natty was used to her departures. She sat by her mother's side, looking over the old farm, content to let Sarah have
her own time,
as Natty called it when she was young.

She shielded her eyes and looked up toward the cornfield, the green stalks only three feet high. By September they'd be seven feet tall, with fat, heavy ears. She scanned the field to see if she could detect where Pete had hidden this year's weed patch. The pot was for their own use, Sarah told her, Pete having learned his lesson some years earlier. But Natty knew that Pete grew a lot of marijuana, and she had a suspicion that, while he may not be selling it, he could probably be persuaded to barter a bag now and then.

It had been more than a dozen years since Natty last smoked, with Buck in the backseat of his father's Chevy Blazer, a week before she learned she was pregnant with Pie. But Natty didn't begrudge her mother or Uncle Pete the small pleasures they took from the drug. They led an isolated existence on a dirt farm in the mountains, and the need for some relief was understandable. Not long after Natty, Pie, and Cat said their goodbyes and drove off down Mountain Road, Sarah and Pete would sit in their rocking chairs on the porch, their pipes and a small bowl of weed on the plastic table between them, Sarah with a glass of wine and a book, and Pete watching her, and watching the sun set over the hazy gray mountains to the west as the heavy night air swept in over the farm.