Nothing Gold Can Stay (14 page)

“I’ve seen many a man live who lost an arm,” Ethan said, shaking free Pastor Boone’s hand. “He in there survived it, didn’t he?”

“Ride back with me,” Pastor Boone said. “I promise we’ll find a way, a way that won’t risk your life.”

“Listen to him, Ethan,” Helen said. “Please.”

“We’ve waited long enough,” Ethan said, tears in his eyes as well now. “I’ve done all of everything else and it’s still not enough.”

“Just one more week,” Pastor Boone said. “Allow me one week.”

“Please, Ethan,” Helen said, sobbing.

Ethan dried his eyes with a swipe of his forearm. He nodded and addressed the house.

“One week,” the youth said loudly. “One week and I will do it, Colonel Davidson, I swear I will.”

“I have always taken you for a wise man, William, despite your primitive beliefs,” Doctor Andrews said the following morning. “But what you purpose is unworthy of a rational mind.”

The two men sat in the house’s back portion that served as office and examining room. Sickness, his or a congregant’s, had brought Pastor Boone to this room many times, but more often it served as a salon for the best-educated men in Marshall to discuss everything from literature and politics to science and religion. The room had changed little in three decades. The Franklin clock ticked on the top bookshelf, beside it jars holding powders and tinctures. On the middle shelf was a solemn row of leather-spined medical books, below that
Man’s Place in Nature
and
On the Origin of Species
set between volumes by Shakespeare, Scott, and Thackeray. The examining table pressed against the opposite wall; in the room’s center sat a mahogany desk, one side bedecked with pill cutter, ledger, and mortaring pestle, the other a silver scale and balance aged to a dulled luster. An oil lamp sat on the desk, its flame alive. Because of the closed curtains, a lacquered darkness gave the office the aura of a confessional booth, which, like the room’s seeming immutability, no doubt made it easier to speak of fears too often confirmed.

“There is no other way,” Pastor Boone said. “Elopement is not possible and the Colonel’s own wife and daughter cannot dissuade him. The youth has done all he can. For eight months, he’s performed all manner of chores. Even in this weather, he was out there cutting and stacking wood. He offered to burn his uniform, and him on the winning side.”

“The Colonel sounds rather like Prospero,” Doctor Andrews said.

“Prospero forgave his enemies,” Pastor Boone answered. “It was Ethan’s notion to do the labors, and he’s shown himself worthy of any man’s daughter.”

Doctor Andrews removed a briar pipe and tobacco box from a drawer, as was his habit when anticipating a vigorous exchange. He tamped the tobacco and lit the pipe, doused the match with a sweep of the hand.

“I see that your new pipe has arrived.”

“Yes,” Doctor Andrews said, holding the briar pipe before them. “I only wish ideas could cross the ocean as quickly.”

“So will you help us?”

“You have forgotten my oath, Pastor,
primum non nocere
.”

“You will be healing, Noah, and not just two families but a whole community.”

“But at such cost, William,” Doctor Andrews replied. “They are young folks, both likable and attractive. If this union is not made, they will find others to betroth. With time, even accept that it was wise to do so.”

“Ethan is resolute,” Pastor Boone said. “What you will not do, he will do with an axe.”

“You truly believe so?” Doctor Andrews asked. “My experience avers that, once the axe is in hand, such brash valor abates. At Bowman-Gray I saw my fellows swoon cutting cadavers. The same in this office. Men you would think fearless get the vapors seeing a few drops of blood.”

“He saw blood and wounds in the war, no doubt amputations,” Pastor Boone said. “If it’s not done by someone else, he’ll do it. He would have done so yesterday with the Colonel’s own axe if I had not intervened. As for Leland Davidson, you know the man. Do you believe he’d break a vow, any vow?”

“I do not,” Doctor Andrews replied. “It would be an admission that he could be wrong.”

The clock chimed on the half hour. Doctor Andrews set the pipe on the desk’s spark-pocked wood.

“I must look in on Leah Blackburn. She has run a fever three days.”

“You have proffered no answer,” Pastor Boone said, but did not pause for one. “We are old men, Noah. Unlike the Colonel and this youth, we were spared the war’s violence and suffering. Perhaps it’s time for us to render what is our duty, even if we would wish it otherwise.”

Doctor Andrews stood and Pastor Boone rose as well.

“Old men, William? Yes, I suppose we are,” Doctor Andrews mused, rubbing his back. “I’ve watched others become gray and decrepit yet somehow presumed it was not happening to me. Is it so with you?”

“Sometimes,” Pastor Boone answered.

“Perhaps it’s because we are always looking for imperfections in others, and not ourselves,” Doctor Andrews suggested.

“I’ve had cause to find plenty within myself,” Pastor Boone said.

“If you mean your neutrality during the war, you protest too much, William. You did what you thought best, as did I.”

“Best for the church or for myself?”

“Prudence was necessary,” Doctor Andrews said. “I essayed no show of Unionist sympathies once the war began.”

“But you did before. I did not even do that,” Pastor Boone said. “Perhaps if I had, and done so forcefully, Leland Davidson would not have joined the Confederacy.”

Doctor Andrews smiled.

“This present business should allay you of that vanity. Davidson is a man who values only his own opinion.”

“But even now I don’t understand his motivation to do so,” Pastor Boone said. “He had no slaves to fight for.”

Doctor Andrews set his pipe down.

“Perhaps I should not say this, William, but since you’ve broached the complexities of human motivation, might your involvement in this affair be of benefit to yourself as much as these young lovers?”

“In some ways, yes. I will admit that,” Pastor Boone said, “but, as will be obvious, not in all.”

“And you are certain he will sever his hand if I don’t assent?” Doctor Andrews asked. “Absolutely certain?”

“Yes.”

Doctor Andrews pressed his forehead with an open hand, as if to deflect some thought from breaking through.

“When would you have me do this?”

“Today,” Pastor Boone replied. “Ethan said he’d wait a week, but I fear he won’t wait that long.”

“This afternoon at five o’clock then,” Doctor Andrews said. “I visit my last patient at four, and I’ll need to fetch Emma Triplett to assist me. But know I shall yet attempt to stop this folly. I will tell Ethan your motives are not solely in his interest, and point out that what seems brave and chivalrous today may not seem so when he has to support a family with one hand.”

“No, not his hand,” Pastor Boone said. “You have misconstrued my meaning.”

The following afternoon the air still whitened each breath, but Pastor Boone and Ethan set out beneath a clear sky. The buggy passed slowly through town. Icicles dripped on posts and awnings, the thoroughfare a lather of mud and snow. Despite the cold, customers and storekeepers lined the boardwalks. Evelyn Norris, whose nephew had died in a Georgia prison camp, shook her head in dismay, but others tipped hats and nodded at Pastor Boone and Ethan. Several held out hands in the manner of a blessing. The Bible and package lay on the buggy seat between them, the rings set deep in Ethan’s right pocket.

As they rode out of town, the slashes left by other wheels vanished. By the time they entered the woods, the only indentions were those of squirrels and rabbits. They passed over snapped limbs shackled with ice. A cardinal swung low and settled on a post oak branch.

“It always comes down to guilt, does it not, that and somebody’s blood,” Noah had said when he’d taken the ether from his cabinet. “Your religion, I mean.”

Pastor Boone had been sitting on the operating table, shirt off, his eyes on the pieces of steel Emma Triplett had boiled and then set on a white towel. The woman had left the room and they were alone.

“I suppose, though I would add that hope is also a factor.”

Doctor Andrews had grimaced.

“I can’t believe I’ve allowed you to talk me into this barbarism, and for no other reason than some bundles of papyrus written thousands of years ago. We may as well be living in mud huts, grinding rocks to make fire. Huxley and his X Club will soon end such nonsense in England, but in this country we still believe the recidivists not the innovators bring advancement in human endeavors.”

“I would say our country’s military believe so,” Pastor Boone answered as Emma Triplett came back in the room, “as evidenced by the number of deaths in this last conflict.”

Emma Triplett handed a kerchief to the doctor, who nodded for Pastor Boone to lie down.

“Since a man of your advanced years may not rouse from this, I’ll allow you the last word,” Doctor Andrews said as he poured ether on the cloth, “although if you do pass on, and your metaphysics are correct, you shall quickly settle our debate once and for all.”

Pastor Boone was about to speak of Mrs. Newell’s similar doctrinal view, but the kerchief settled over his nose and mouth and the world wobbled a moment and then went black.

The woods thinned and the valley sprawled out before them. The Davidson farmhouse appeared and Ethan shook the reins to quicken the horse’s pace. Pastor Boone’s wrist throbbed, a vaguer ache where the hand had once been. The bottle of laudanum and a spoon were in his coat pocket, but if he took a dose, it would be just before the return to town. As the buggy jostled over the creek, Pastor Boone gasped.

“Sorry, Pastor,” Ethan said. “I should have slowed the horse more.”

“As long as you’ve waited,” Pastor Boone replied, “a bit of haste is understandable.”

A hound came off the porch, barked until it recognized Ethan. The buggy halted in front of the farmhouse and Ethan wrapped the check reins around the brake and jumped off. He helped Pastor Boone from the buggy’s seat, being careful not to bump the bandaged wrist. The front door opened and Helen came out on the porch. Pastor Boone took the Bible off the seat.

“Bring the package,” Pastor Boone said to Ethan, and stepped onto the porch.

“What happened, Pastor?” she asked, but then her face paled.

Ethan brought the package and Pastor Boone used his elbow and side to secure it.

“Stand behind me,” he told them. “I’ll call you when it’s time to come inside.”

Pastor Boone entered the parlor’s muted light, set the Bible and package on the lamp stand. Mrs. Davidson offered to take the overcoat and he told her she’d have to help him. She held the overcoat in her hand, did not move to hang it up. Pastor Boone opened the Bible with his hand and found what he searched for. He left the Bible open and slipped two fingers between the pasteboard and the knot of twine. He lifted the package with the fingers in the manner of measuring its weight. He crossed the room to where the Colonel sat.

“I take you as a man of your word, Leland,” Pastor Boone said, and set the package beside the Windsor chair. “Open it if you wish.”

Pastor Boone went to the door and motioned Ethan and Helen inside. He took up the Bible and balanced it in his hand, positioned himself between the two young people.

“Mark 10, verse nine” Pastor Boone said. “
What therefore God hath joined together
.”

The Woman at the Pond

W
ater has its own archaeology, not a layering but a leveling, and thus is truer to our sense of the past, because what is memory but near and far events spread and smoothed beneath the present’s surface. A green birthday candle that didn’t expire with a wish lies next to a green Coleman lantern lit twelve years later. Chalky sun motes in a sixth-grade classroom harbor close to a university library’s high window, a song on a staticky radio shoals against the same song at a hastily arranged wedding reception. This is what I think of when James Murray’s daughter decides to drain the pond. A fear of lawsuits, she claims, something her late father considered himself exonerated from by posting a sign:
FISH AND SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK
.

She hired Wallace Rudisell for the job, a task that requires opening the release valve on the standpipe, keeping it clear until what once was a creek will be a creek once more. I grew up with Wallace, and, unlike so many of our classmates, he and I still live in Lattimore. Wallace inherited our town’s hardware store, one of the few remaining businesses.

“Bet you’re wanting to get some of those lures back you lost in high school,” Wallace says when I ask when he’ll drain the pond. “There must be a lot of them. For a while you were out there most every evening.”

Which is true. I was seventeen and in a town of three hundred, my days spent bagging groceries. Back then there was no internet, no cable TV or VCR, at least in our house. Some evenings that summer I’d listen to the radio or watch television with my parents, or look over college brochures and financial-aid forms the guidance counselor had given me, but I’d usually go down to the pond. Come fall of my senior year, though, Angie and I began dating. We found other things to do in the dark.

A few times Wallace or another friend joined me, but I usually fished alone. After a day at the grocery store, I didn’t mind being away from people awhile, and the pond at twilight was a good place. The swimmers and other fishermen were gone, leaving behind beer and cola bottles, tangles of fishing line, gray cinder blocks used for seats. Later in the night, couples came to the pond, their leavings on the bank as well—rubbers and blankets, once a pair of panties hung on the white oak’s limb. But that hour when day and night made their slow exchange, I had the pond to myself.

Over the years James Murray’s jon-boat had become communal property. Having wearied of swimming out to retrieve the boat, I’d bought twenty feet of blue nylon rope to keep it moored. I’d unknot the rope from the white oak, set my fishing gear and Coleman lantern in the bow, and paddle out to the pond’s center. I’d fish until it was neither day nor night, but balanced between. There never seemed to be a breeze, pond and shore equally smoothed. Just stillness, as though the world had taken a soft breath, and was holding it in, and even time had leveled out, moving neither forward nor back. Then the frogs and crickets waiting for full dark announced themselves, or a breeze came up and I again heard the slosh of water against land. Or, one night near the end of that summer, a truck rumbling toward the pond.

On Saturday I leave at two o’clock when the other shift manager comes in. I no longer live near the pond, but my mother does, so I pull out of the grocery store’s parking lot and turn right, passing under Lattimore’s one stoplight. On the left are four boarded-up stores, behind them like an anchored cloud, the mill’s water tower, blue paint chipping off the tank. I drive by Glenn’s Café where Angie works, soon after that the small clapboard house where she and our daughter, Rose, live. Angie’s Ford Escort isn’t there, but the truck belonging to Rose’s boyfriend is. I don’t turn in. It’s not my weekend to be in charge, and at least I know Rose is on the pill, because I took her to the clinic myself.

Soon there are only farmhouses, most in disrepair—slumping barns and woodsheds, rusty tractors snared by kudzu and trumpet vines. I make a final right turn and park in front of my mother’s house. She comes onto the porch and I know from her disappointed expression that she’s gotten the week confused and expects to see Rose. We talk a minute and she goes back inside. I walk down the sloping land, straddle the sagging barbed wire, and make my way through brambles and broom sedge, what was once a pasture.

The night the truck came to the pond, an afternoon thunderstorm had rinsed the humidity from the air. The evening felt more like late September than mid-August. After rowing out, I had cast toward the willows on the far bank, where I’d caught bass in the past. The lure I used was a Rapala, my favorite because I could fish it on the surface or submerged. After a dozen tries nothing struck, so I paddled closer to the willows and cast into the cove where the creek ended. A small bass hit and I reeled it in, its red gills flaring as I freed the treble hook and lowered the fish back into the water.

A few minutes later the truck bumped down the dirt road to the water’s edge. The headlights slashed across the pond before the vehicle jerked right and halted beside the white oak as the headlights dimmed.

Music came from the truck’s open windows and carried over the water with such clarity I recognized the song. The cab light came on and the music stopped. Minutes passed, and stars began filling the sky. As a thick-shouldered moon rimmed up over a ridge, a man and woman got out of the truck. The jon-boat drifted toward the willows and I let it, afraid any movement would give away my presence. The man and woman’s voices rose, became angry, then a sound sharp as a rifle shot. The woman fell and the man got back in the cab. The headlights flared and the truck turned around, slinging mud before the tires gained traction. The truck swerved up the dirt road and out of sight.

The woman slowly lifted herself from the ground. She moved closer to the bank and sat on a cinder block. As more stars pierced the sky, and the moon lifted itself above the willow trees, I waited for the truck to return or the woman to leave, though I had no idea where she might go. The jon-boat drifted deeper into the willows, the drooping branches raking at my face. I didn’t want to move, but the willows had entangled the boat. The graying wood creaked as it bumped against the bank. I lifted the paddle and pushed away as quietly as possible. As I did, the boat rocked and the metal tackle box banged against its side.

“Who’s out there?” the woman asked. “I can see you, I can.”

I lit the lantern and paddled to the pond’s center.

“I’m fishing,” I said, and lifted the rod and reel to prove it. The woman didn’t respond. “Are you okay?”

“My face will be bruised,” she said after a few moments. “But no teeth knocked out. Bruises fade. I’ll be better off tomorrow than he will.”

I set the paddle on my knees. In the quiet, it seemed the pond too was listening.

“You mean the man that hit you?”

“Yeah, him.”

“Is he coming back?”

“Yeah, he’s coming back. The bastard needs me to drive to Charlotte. Another DUI and he’ll be pedaling to work on a bicycle. He won’t get too drunk to remember that. Anyway, he didn’t go far.”

The woman pointed up the dirt road where a faint square of light hovered like foxfire.

“He’s drinking the rest of his whiskey while some hillbilly whines on the radio about how hard life is. When the bottle’s empty, he’ll be back.”

As the jon-boat drifted closer to the bank, the woman stood and I dug the paddle’s wooden blade into the silt to keep some distance between us. The lantern’s glow fell on both of us now. She was younger than I’d thought, maybe no more than thirty. A large woman, wide hipped and tall, at least five eight. Her long blond hair was clearly dyed. A red welt covered the left side of her face. She wore a man’s leather jacket over her yellow blouse and black skirt. Mud grimed the yellow blouse. She raised her hand and fanned at the haze of insects.

“I hope there are fewer gnats and mosquitoes out there,” she said. “The damn things are eating me alive.”

“Only if I stay in the middle,” I answered.

I glanced up at the truck.

“I guess I’ll go back out.”

I lifted the paddle, thinking if the man didn’t come get her in a few minutes I’d beach the boat in the creek cove, work my way through the brush, and head home.

“Can I get in the boat with you?” the woman asked.

“I’m just going to make a couple of more casts,” I answered. “I need to get back home.”

“Just a few minutes,” she said, and gave me a small smile, the hardness in her face and voice lessening. “I’m not going to hurt you. Just a few minutes. To get away from the bugs.”

“Can you swim?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What about that man that hit you?”

“He’ll be there awhile yet. He drinks his whiskey slow.”

The woman brushed some of the drying mud from her skirt, as if to make herself more presentable.

“Just a few minutes.”

“Okay,” I said, and rowed to the bank.

I steadied the jon-boat while she got in the front, the lantern at her feet. The woman talked while I paddled, not turning her head, as if addressing the pond.

“I finally get away from this county and that son of a bitch drags me back to visit his sister. She’s not home so instead he buys a bottle of Wild Turkey and we end up here, with him wanting to lay down on the bank with just a horse blanket beneath us and the mud. When I tell him no way, he gets this jacket from the truck. For your head, he tells me, like that would change my mind. What a prince.”

She shifted her body to face me.

“Nothing like coming back home, right?”

“You’re from Lattimore?” I asked.

“No, but this county. Lawndale. You know where that is?”

“Yes.”

“But our buddy in the truck used to live in Lattimore, so we’re having a Cleveland County reunion tonight, assuming you aren’t just visiting.”

“I live here.”

“Still in high school?”

I nodded.

“I’ll be a senior.”

“We used to kick your asses in football,” she said. “That was supposed to be a big deal.”

I pulled in the paddle when we reached the pond’s center. The rod lay beside me, but I didn’t pick it up. The lantern was still on, but we didn’t really need it. The moon laid a silvery skim of light on the water.

“When you get back to Charlotte, will you call the police?”

“No, they wouldn’t do anything. The bastard will pay though. He left more than his damn jacket on that blanket.”

The woman took a wallet from the jacket, opened it to show no bills were inside.

“He got paid today so what he didn’t spend on that whiskey is in my pocket now. He’ll wake up tomorrow thinking a hangover is the worst thing he’ll have to deal with, but he will soon learn different.”

“What if he believes you took it?”

“I’ll make myself scarce awhile. That’s easy to do in a town big as Charlotte. Anyway, he’ll be back living here before long.”

“He tell you that?”

The woman smiled.

“He doesn’t need to. Haven’t you heard of women’s intuition? Plus, he’s always talking about this place. Badmouthing it a lot, but it’s got its hooks in him. No, he’ll move back, probably work at the mill, and he’ll still be here when they pack the dirt over his coffin.”

She’d paused and looked at me.

“What about you? Already got your job lined up after high school?”

“I’m going to college.”

“College,” she said, studying me closely. “I’d not have thought that. You’ve got the look of someone who’d stick around here.”

Wallace waves from the opposite bank and makes his way around the pond. His pants and tennis shoes are daubed with mud. Wallace works mostly indoors, so the July sun has reddened his face and unsleeved arms. He nods at the valve.

“Damn thing’s clogged up twice, but it’s getting there.”

The pond is a red-clay bowl, one-third full. In what was once the shallows, rusty beer cans and Styrofoam bait containers have emerged along with a ball cap and a flip-flop. Farther in, Christmas trees submerged for years are now visible, the black branches threaded with red-and-white bobbers and bream hooks, plastic worms and bass plugs, including a six-inch Rapala that I risk the slick mud to pull free. Its hooks are so rusty one breaks off.

“Let me see,” Wallace says, and examines the lure.

“I used to fish with one like this,” I tell him, “same size and model.”

“Probably one of yours then,” Wallace says, and offers the lure as if to confirm my ownership. “You want any of these others?”

“No, I don’t even want that one.”

“I’ll take them then,” Wallace says, lifting a yellow Jitterbug from a limb. “I hear people collect old plugs nowadays. They might be worth a few dollars, add to the hundred I’m getting to do this. These days I need every bit of money I can get.”

We move under the big white oak and sit in its shade, watch the pond’s slow contraction. More things emerge—a rod and reel, a metal bait bucket, more lures and hooks and bobbers. There are swirls in the water now, fish vainly searching for the upper levels of their world. A large bass leaps near the valve.

Wallace nods at a burlap sack.

“The bluegill will flush down that drain, but it looks like I’ll get some good-sized fish to fry up.”

We watch the water, soon a steady dimpling on the surface. Another bass flails upward, shimmers green and silver in the afternoon sun.

“Angie said Rose is trying to get loans so she can go to your alma mater next year,” Wallace says.

“It’s an alma mater only if you graduate,” I reply.

Wallace picks up a stick, scrapes some mud off his shoes. He starts to speak, then hesitates, finally does speak.

“I always admired your taking responsibility like that. Coming back here, I mean.” Wallace shakes his head. “We sure live in a different time. Hell, nowadays there’s women who don’t know or care who their baby’s father is, much less expect him to marry her. And the men, they’re worse. They act like it’s nothing to them, don’t even want to be a part of their own child’s life.”

When I don’t reply, Wallace checks his watch.

“This is taking longer than I figured. I’m going to the café. I haven’t had lunch. Want me to bring you back something?”