The Floatplane Notebooks (14 page)

We do. I stand on the pond bank in my shorts while Rhonda, naked, side-strokes through the water lit by the moon, silent ripples spreading out from her body. I glimpse a dark nipple and then Lord, oh Lord, she gets out and walks up close enough for me to see—in the moonlight—goose pimples on her breasts around those tight-standing nipples and I lose my breath thinking about Brigitte Bardot and birth and death. She leans against me cool and wet and my heart pounds and pounds as I feel nausea and dizziness and then I mumble and chicken my way out of everything but the drive home. Rhonda drives.

At breakfast next morning, I say only a few words.

“Do you feel all right?” Mother asks.

“Yes ma'am.”

I always drive to Sunday school, let Mother off in front of the church, and then park the car in the parking lot.

I stop the car in front of the church. Mrs. Bingham is standing there. Mother says hello to Mrs. Bingham through her open window, then opens the door, places her right foot on the ground, and sits there talking. I glance in the floorboard and see, looped around her black high heel: a white bra strap. The shoe on Mother's foot is slowly dragging the whole bra out from under the seat as she talks to Mrs. Bingham.

I dive for the shoe, lift it, unloop the bra strap from around
the heel, grab the bra, press it against the floor while wadding it into a tiny ball, pull it to my chest, pause, stick it beneath me on the seat. I'll put it in the trash can in the bathroom in the church.

“What are you doing, Mark?!”

“Just getting some of this junk out of the floorboard.”

“What junk? Mark, you've been acting mighty funny this morning.”

“Just some old rags.”

“Why are you sitting on them?”

“I just am. Get out. How are you today, Mrs. Bingham?”

“Fine,” says Mrs. Bingham. “You?”

“Fine.”

Mother looks at Mrs. Bingham, at me, then starts getting out, slowly.

As soon as she closes the door I speed off. I look in the rearview mirror. Mrs. Bingham is talking to Mother, who is staring at the back of the car.

Everybody carried on at the gravecleaning today as if nothing at all were irregular, even though Meredith and Mark are all but packed to leave. There weren't quite as many people as usual, but Uncle Hawk and Aunt Sybil and Dan Braddock did drive up from Florida, and Aunt Scrap was there, of course. And since it was my eleventh gravecleaning, it was also the eve of my tenth wedding anniversary. It's hard to believe.

I almost decided to bake a going-away cake for Meredith and Mark, but nothing I might write on the cake worked at all, so I brought my normal lemonade and brownies.

Mark's home dog, Trader, died in the winter, and he and Meredith took him down to the old Hope Road sawmill, that's abandoned, and buried him. It's where the family has buried all their dead dogs and I suppose if they erected tombstones down there, it would look like Arlington.

Meredith's home dog, Fox, is still alive, but Mr. Copeland has been saying he needs to be put to sleep.

Fox and Trader always got along fine with Aunt Sybil's little dog, Dixie B., but Mark's new dog, Rex, went crazy barking when Aunt Sybil got out of the Cadillac at the graveyard holding Dixie B. in her arms. So Fox started in barking too, and Aunt Sybil had to get back in the car and take Dixie B. back to the Copeland's and lock her on the back porch. It was embarrassing to me. Sometimes I don't know about all these dogs.

Rhonda was not there at first. She came at lunchtime. She and Meredith have decided not to get married right away and I think that's a good idea. They've had fusses and fights off and on lately—Meredith wants her to stop singing in the rock and roll band.

Then sometime after the Christmas trip to Florida, Mark confessed to Meredith about going skinny-dipping with Rhonda several years ago. Meredith told me.

It would be very, very unfair—and reckless—if Rhonda has played these boys off against each other in some secretive manner. I don't think Rhonda has realized that she's playing with dynamite.

Walker's brother Julius who lived across the road died after a fist fight with Walker before they had occasion to make up. The fight was about a debt and while Walker had Julius down in the road between their houses Julius bit Walker's finger and it was always crooked afterward.

Julius and Walker didn't speak to each other for two days. Then Julius became sick with influenza and was inside for a week. Walker was on the way over there with a chess pie made by Caroline when he met Julius's wife Rebecca in the road coming over to tell them that Julius had died. A doctor from Raleigh arrived too late.

Caroline came out at bedtime and sat beside Walker on the steps. It's time for bed Walker.

I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight.

You should get your rest.

He might as well been a Yankee as far as our feelings.

T'warn't nothing. You both would have been over it in no time.

I'd liked to have asked him what I might do for his place.

The ceremony at the graveyard was larger than any of the others. Rebecca had so much food she brought the overflow from their house.

On the next blue moon, Thomas, Bertha, and Julius appeared in their rockers.

“Do these children cry like that all the time?” asked Julius.

“Yes,” said Bertha. “Give them a little push in the cradle…. that helps. I'm afraid that last one down there was born dead like my grandson. We never hear it at all. Can you see in there?”

“Well.” Julius stretched his neck. “Well, I don't know if it's dead or not, but it's got a foot bigger'n mine.”

It's the last gravecleaning before I leave for El Paso, and Meredith for Parris Island.

I finish raking pine straw, get the ax from the truck bed, stop by where Aunt Scrap is sitting and talk to her for a few minutes, then call Rex and start over to the wisteria to cut it with an ax from around all the trees I can get to. All of them maybe. The wisteria is going to kill them. It wraps around and chokes them. The stuff has gone completely wild.

Uncle Hawk says it won't make any difference, that I can't kill it with an ax. Meredith calls me to walk down to the rock pile, so I put the ax back in the truck and go with him.

We walk through the pines. “Why you going down there?” I ask.

“The rocks around Tyree's grave. There's about four little ones where it needs two big ones.”

I need to say something about us leaving. “You think there's any chance of you staying in?”

“Naw. Two years will be plenty. See some action. You're the one'll stay in. Get to sleep in a bed, make big money.”

I don't know if he's jealous or what. It's not my fault he didn't go to college. “It won't be bad. I'll be glad to get the hell out of here.”

“Don't forget to go to church.”

“Yeah.”

Thirty yards ahead, down the hill, I see the rock pile—a mound under pine straw. When this was a field, big white rocks were piled up so that plowing would be easier. One of Uncle Hawk's earliest memories is seeing Old Ross counting silver money on a table, money he'd gotten from under the rock pile to take to town and put in a bank.

“Y'all decided when you're going to get married?” I say. “If you could get to Vietnam and get that over, then Rhonda could meet you—in Hawaii. Y'all could get married in Hawaii or somewhere.”

“Listen, Mark.” Meredith stopped walking. I stopped. The rock pile was about ten feet ahead. “Why the hell did you have to tell me that about you and Rhonda?”

“What?”

“Skinny-dipping. I mean, why did you have to tell me? You could have kept shut up about it.”

“I don't know. I just felt like I ought to tell you.”

“Well, shit, why should I want to hear that?”

“I don't know. I didn't think it would make any difference.”

“It makes one hell of a lot of difference. Wouldn't it to you?”

“I don't know.”

“She never took
me
skinny-dipping. What if I'd gone skinny-dipping with some girl you were dating?”

“Shit, Meredith, she's going to marry
you.”

“Yeah, but you did that right under my nose.”

“That was a long time ago, Meredith, and she suggested it, I mean, she, I mean, it wasn't just all me, you know. It was us. Hell, I was drunk. It was just some fun.”

“That's exactly what I know: it was just some fun; she suggested it. How the hell do I know what else she's done?”

“I don't guess you do, but she hasn't done anything with me, and she wants to marry you, Meredith. Why can't you just forget it?”

“You can't just decide to forget some things.”

“I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I hope something as little as that don't keep you-all from getting married.”

“You thought it was funny.”

“I didn't think it was funny—in any way that matters. Hell, Meredith, you used to think it was funny. You'd talk about getting Rhonda hot when we went frog gigging and stuff.”

“Shit, Mark you don't… You need a daddy, or somebody, to teach you about women.”

He turns and walks to the rock pile and starts pushing back pine straw and mulch. He rolls out a big white rock, then another. I'm trying to think of something to say. “If there's some way to forget it, that's what I'd like to do,” I say.

“Sure.”

He picks up one of the big, heavy rocks. “Get that other one. Let's go.”

I bend down, pick up the rock in both hands.

Quilts and lawn chairs were spread in their customary fashion around Mr. Copeland's truck so that we could eat our customary picnic. Rhonda, looking quite ravishingly striking, joined us before Meredith and Mark came back from the rock pile. She walked into the woods a little way to meet them as they trudged up carrying two large rocks to place in a ring of rocks around one of the graves.

Once we all got started on the sumptuous food, Meredith said, “I'm going to be buried right over there. I want to make it official.”

“This graveyard is full,” said Aunt Scrap. “That was decided a long time ago.”

“Why?”

“Well, I don't know exactly. It just feels right. For one thing, it's way down here in the woods, and one of these days it's going to be all growed over with that wisteria vine. I got me a plot at the church. You do too, don't you, Esther?”

“Oh, yes. A big one, for Mark and his family and all.”

“They never shipped home Thomas, did they?” asked Dan Braddock.

“No,” said Miss Esther, looking at Mr. Braddock, “they didn't.”

“Let's talk about something else,” I said.

“I know Hawk and Sybil got a plot in Florida,” said Mr. Copeland, “and we got that one out at Oak Hill.”

“It's pretty out there,” said Aunt Scrap.

“Well, I always wanted to be on that rise looking out across that pretty scenery to them far hills. This place just always seemed like a place to clean off. But I don't care; if you want to be buried here, it's fine with me,” he said, looking at Meredith.

“It ought to stay like it is,” said Aunt Scrap.

Meredith walked over to a clear spot, and marked an
X
with the heel of his shoe. “
X
marks the spot.”

Every time I thought about Meredith being away in the Marines, a piece of biscuit would get hung in my throat, seem very large, and make my throat ache and my eyes water. And I knew Miss Esther had to be beside herself—her only son leaving, her husband having left for World War II, never to return. I wondered if he had come to the gravecleanings.

“Hand me one of them ham-and-biscuits,” said Thatcher. “Whose are these?”

“Mine,” said Aunt Scrap.

“That's good ham.”

“I dipped it in red-eye gravy.”

“There's your damn red-eye,” said Uncle Hawk.

“What's that?” said Aunt Scrap.

“I said, ‘There's your damn red-eye!'”

“Oh yeah—Ross and the striking iron.”

I realized I was about to be subjected to yet another family story. Sometimes….

“We all heard that one.” said Aunt Scrap. “What do you young'uns know about Aunt Vera?” she said to Meredith and Rhonda.

“She used to drink bitters,” said Meredith, “and she got a Civil War pension and—”

“Confederate pension.”

“And her chickens roosted on her bed and she had a black dog named Sailor and she lived right down there.” Meredith pointed.

“You do know something. You know what she used to say to that dog?”

“I don't know that. I won't here then.”

“She'd tell him to get out the door, and he'd go under her table. So she'd say, ‘Well, git under the table then.'”