“I order you to stop this. This is none of your concern,” he said.
“It’s my sole concern. Please notice I’m the only person here.”
Drying him off with a fresh towel, I dusted his body with talcum powder, then helped him to brush his teeth and shave. Sitting him on the commode, I made sure he balanced himself against the sink and the claw-footed tub, then I went into the disaster area of his bedroom to find a fresh pair of pajamas and a set of fur-lined slippers. Though it took the moves of a contortionist, I finally got Mr. Canon into his fresh garments. Only then could I feel a slight diminishment of his abysmal fear.
“Now you’ve got to help me do something, Mr. Canon,” I said.
“I don’t follow the orders of wannabes,” he said, his fighting spirit returning.
“It’s going to take a couple of hours to get your room in shape. Let me put you in your guest room while I’m getting this done.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” he said. “I’m exhausted. Will you get me my pills?”
“Yes, and I’m going to make you some breakfast,” I said. “Then, I’m going to call Dr. Shermeta.”
Mr. Canon’s bedroom had the feel of a surgical tent after a ruinous battle, and it was good to pull back the clean sheets of the smaller bed in his guest room. I brought him his pills and supervised his drinking several glasses of water for his dehydrated body.
Back in his room, I gathered his pajamas, sheets, blankets, and pillowcases into a heap, then carried it downstairs and soaked it all in two great sinks that I overloaded with soapsuds and disinfectants. Then I returned to attack that room with mops, sponges, towels, and citrus-scented cleaners. For a solid hour, I removed deposits of shit, vomit, and blood from every corner.
When I needed a break, I went down to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. I also fried bacon, poached eggs, made biscuits, and brought a glass of orange juice to Mr. Canon. I placed a call to Dr. Shermeta. The blood had frightened me. The doctor’s wife said he had been summoned to the Medical University on an emergency, but she promised he would call as soon as she could reach him.
I felt overwhelmed. I called my house, delighted when my father answered. “Father, listen to me. I need you with me at Mr. Canon’s house. I’m in over my head. I need you. Do you hear me? He seems like he’s dying.”
“I’m there, son,” he said. “Right now. You and Mr. Canon hold on, and we’ll get this thing done right.”
“There was blood all over his bed,” I said. “That doesn’t sound good, does it?”
“I’m calling for an ambulance,” my father said.
“It might make Mr. Canon mad,” I said.
“He’s too weak to get too mad.”
I fed Mr. Canon his breakfast, spooning as much food into him as he could take. He was asleep in the guest bedroom before the ambulance arrived, and I was feeding a dozen more cats while the paramedics carried the stretcher upstairs. My father came through the front door as the men were carrying Mr. Canon out toward the ambulance, where a small crowd had gathered.
In the next two hours, my father and I cleaned Mr. Canon’s house from top to bottom. When we went to lock up, my father said, “Those cats are your responsibility until Mr. Canon’s well enough to take care of himself. Now, let us get ourselves home to relieve your mother of her clubhouse duties.”
My father and mother had taken charge of Starla’s recovery, bringing her and Niles to our house while she recuperated from the eye operation. When we got to our house, there were enough strange cars parked up and down our street to make it look like a main thoroughfare instead of the backwater side street it was; there was something about the term “sick orphan” that got to the hearts of the parent-teacher association.
Our house remained filled all day with visitors who brought slain gardens of flowers up to Starla’s room and enough candy for Starla to start her own chocolate shop. My mother’s eyes were frantic and undone when my father and I returned home. “You take over,” she said. “I can’t take another minute of this.”
“You go back to our room,” my father said. “Put in some earplugs. Take a nap. Leo and I will deal with the hordes.”
I skipped up the stairs to check on Starla’s condition but found that her sick room had been transformed into a makeshift beauty parlor by Trevor and Sheba Poe. All of the Peninsula High cheerleaders except Molly were reclining on the floor with cotton balls stuffed between their toes as Trevor went around giving pedicures and painting toenails in a color he called “gaudy fire-engine red.” He had already done their fingernails, and both the twins had already cut, washed, dried, and set the hair of every girl on the squad, black and white. Sheba was in the process of applying makeup to the girls, transforming them into stunning creatures who looked nothing like the girls I went to class with every day.
Sheba said, “Get on out of here right now, Leo. This is the Palace of Perfect Beauty, where Trevor and I are turning these Renegade girls into goddesses.”
“I wanted to find out how Starla was doing,” I said.
“They’re going to do me last,” Starla said. “But I’d rather face a firing squad. I’ve never been to a beauty parlor.”
“You won’t believe how pretty we’re going to make you,” Trevor said.
“God’s going to think he put a new angel down on earth,” Sheba said. “Now, beat it, Leo. Skedaddle.”
“Take me with you, please,” begged Starla.
I found Ike and Niles out in the backyard. My father had assumed the role of disc jockey again, and I heard the sound of the Rolling Stones pouring out of the windows, startling the fiddler crabs.
“I need to ask you boys a question,” I said. I took a seat beside them and looked north toward The Citadel. The tide was spilling in fast, moon- swollen and moon-timed.
“Ask away,” Ike said.
“How in God’s name did Trevor learn to cut a girl’s hair, style it, give her both a manicure and a pedicure, then apply makeup like he was an expert in the field?”
“I bet he’s never thrown a football or caught a baseball,” Niles said. “And I bet he doesn’t give a rat’s ass, either.”
“I’ve never seen a cat like him,” Ike admitted. “He seems three-quarters girl to me.”
“What’s the other quarter?” Niles asked.
“That’s girl too,” Ike said.
“Yet he’s such a great guy,” Niles said. “He makes me laugh. He’s involved in everything in school. He and his sister have made quite a mark on the school—hell, on all of us.”
“My mother says their IQs are off the charts.” I turned back to the house and said, “My father needs to be sending some of these kids on their way.”
“I’ve noticed something,” Ike said. “Kids love to hang out at their principal’s house. It’s like getting to see a part of them that is secret or forbidden. I used to see that when my old man had his football team over for a cookout. Guys would be going crazy to see that he had an actual life off the field and away from his office.”
“My mother has never let a student into her house until Sheba and Trevor came on the scene,” I said. “They gave her no choice. They forced their way into her front door. But not into her heart.”
“Why do you say that?” Niles asked.
“My mother doesn’t like the twins, and I can’t figure out why,” I said. “She’s always loved artistic kids, and even she admits that they’re both the most talented artists she’s been around. I think she believes they draw trouble to themselves and to anyone who hangs around with them.”
“They got no daddy?” Ike asked.
“Not that I’ve met,” I lied.
“You got a daddy, Niles?” Ike asked, but with some unease.
“Virgin birth, pal,” Niles said. “You ever heard of ‘em?”
“Yeah, one,” Ike said.
“I’m your second.”
“It doesn’t seem like Niles wants to talk about his family, Ike,” I said.
“Very perceptive, Toad,” Niles said. “Good call.”
“I’d like to know how you and Starla got yourself into this position, is all,” said Ike testily.
“You asked Betty how she got to the orphanage?” Niles asked.
“She cries every time I ask her,” Ike said. “So I don’t bring it up anymore.”
“Take a hint,” Niles said. “You don’t want to hear my story. Neither one of you.”
“Why not?” I asked. “We’re your friends.”
“If you’re my friends, then listen to me: I don’t want to tell you. It’s a lousy story with some bad luck and mean people thrown in. I like you guys too much to tell my story.”
“How will we really get to know you,” I asked, “if we don’t know where you came from or who your people are?”
Niles grabbed me hard by the back of the neck and pulled my face close to his. “Don’t you understand, Toad? We don’t know who our people are. Why do you think we’re in this mess? Because we don’t know anything, not a goddamn thing. I was five when I was put into a goddamn orphanage. Starla was four. Someday I’ll tell you two what those first years were like. I’ll tell you what happened to my mama and daddy. But I’ll start with this: my mama was thirteen when I was born. Can you imagine having a mama all of thirteen years older than you? Starla and I’ve been looking for her all our lives. That’s why Starla keeps running away. She thinks Mama must still be alive, but just doesn’t know how to find us.”
“She could check records and documents,” Ike said.
“Ike,” Niles said, shaking his head. “Poor Ike. You don’t understand: Mama can’t read or write. She couldn’t have filled out any documents.”
“That’s all terrible, Niles,” I said. “Sorry we got so personal.”
“I’ll tell you the whole thing someday,” he promised. “But I’ll want to have Starla with me.”
“Why’s that?” Ike wanted to know.
“Because this is the last year of it,” Niles said. “Next year I don’t even have an orphanage to run to because I’ll be too old. We’ve run every place we can think to run, and now we’re out of places. We spent so many years looking for our past, we didn’t once worry about our futures. Now that the future’s here in our face, that’s something really scary, man. Scarier than anything we’ve faced.”
“You need to get a plan,” I said.
“Plan?” Niles said. “Life goes around in circles, and Starla and I catch on when it slows down. That’s always been our plan.”
“Toad and I are going to apply to The Citadel next year,” Ike said. “You could come with us.”
“Takes money I ain’t got,” he said.
“Red Parker likes the way you play football,” Ike said. “I heard him tell my old man that.”
“There’ll be some scholarship money lying around,” I said. “I’ll bet the monsignor will know where to find some too.”
“So that’s what a plan sounds like,” Niles said, his eyes pensive as he stared out against the still-rising tide.
My father leaned his head out the back door and called us all back inside, excitement in his voice. The house had the isolated feel of an abandoned village, yet the sheer number of flowers stuffed in vases or crammed in empty jelly jars made it smell like a florist’s greenhouse. As ordered, we took our seats facing the stairway. Even my mother had left her roost in her bedroom, lured by my father’s uncontrollable jubilance.
At the top of the stairs, there was a stirring, some whispering, then a disturbance as Trevor glided down the stairs with his elfin gait and sat at the piano. He was followed by Betty, whom Ike escorted to a nearby chair. Next, Sheba floated down, swanlike. Her eyes turned toward the top of the stairs and she gave a hand sign to her brother. Trevor began to play the “Triumphal March” from Aida in lush, subdued notes.
We all stood there, faces lifted, as Starla Whitehead made her shy appearance into the downstairs world of light and anticipation. When she crossed the point of no return between the slant of shadow caused by the banked stairway and chandelier light in the dining room, she paused for an instant, allowing time for her newly healed eye to adjust.
The rest of us observed the commemorative transformation that the twins had performed on Starla, who made no attempt to hide her discomfort in the spotlight. Slowly, she came down the stairs with an awkward grace, Trevor adapting his march to her reluctance. The patch was gone and so were the ubiquitous dark glasses. Her glossy black hair was now in a short, swingy cut that was stunningly attractive. She looked like a French actress I had developed a crush on, whose face I always looked for in movie magazines when my father took me to get a haircut, but whose name played hide-and-seek with me as this girl of absolute invention made her way down the stairs. The name broke free and my tongue held it like a prize—Leslie Caron. How many secret lovers had Leslie Caron collected by the millions as projectors took her gamine face into dark theaters all over the world, I wondered?
But it was Starla Whitehead’s eyes that caught and held my attention. Her gaze was straight and direct and perfect. She would have to adjust to walking the world as a beauty, and I could not have been more proud. Sheba began the round of applause and the rest of us joined in, even my mother. Starla’s dark eyes dazzled, and her steady, brown gaze seemed able to register passion or rage with equal forcefulness. Between the twins’ constant obsession with high drama and my own need to make corrections in a flawed and dangerous world, we had turned a wallflower into a knockout.
“Have you ever seen such a precious girl in your life?” Sheba asked. “She’s a sight for horny eyes. Oh, excuse me, Dr. King, Mr. King! I got carried away.”
My mother turned an icy stare on her, leaving my father to try to make amends. “All you kids have to stay for dinner. Leo and I’ll rustle up some vittles.”
“Vittles?” my mother asked with disdain.
“Food,” my father said. “In cowboy movies, they call it vittles.”
“I abhor cowboy movies,” she said, and returned to her room.
There was moonlight on the water as we ate our meal by the small acreage of marsh that cleaved to our yard. The moon had a silken, electric effect on the Ashley River, prowling through the tides like something active and with a story to tell. It was a happy meal, one of the happiest I could ever remember. When my father said grace that night, he prayed for the boys in Vietnam and for Harrington Canon’s recovery. He thanked God for making Starla’s operation so successful, and he thanked Him for the success of the football team. It was a comprehensive prayer, and he even thanked God for making me his son and for finding Lindsay Weaver as his wife. “Ah, yes, Lord, and last, before I forget, thanks for the vittles we’re about to enjoy.”
As he finished, we heard the train coming up the Ashley River, going straight through the Citadel campus. Ike said, “I’ve grown up with the sound of that train.”
“Trains have always given me hope,” Sheba said. “That one especially.”
“Why that one?” Betty asked.
“Because that’s the train that’s going to take me into a new life,” Sheba said. “That’s the train that’s taking me west one of these days. To Hollywood.”
“But that train is heading due north, sugar,” my father said.
“No, no. You’re wrong, Mr. King,” Sheba said, closing her eyes. “It’s heading for the Pacific. It’s moving west.”
“I’ll never make you a scientist,” Father said, smiling.
“You don’t have to,” Sheba said. “I’m already an actress.”
CHAPTER 21 Prayer Book for the Wilderness
It was almost midnight when I walked down the institutional, crepuscular halls of the Medical University looking for room 1004, where the night attendant told me Harrington Canon had been assigned. My tennis shoes made rodentlike squeaks as I neared the nurses’ station, announcing my presence as effectively as though I had an agitated magpie squawking on my shoulder. Feeling self-conscious enough, I felt yet more m
ortification as I observed the curiosity of every night nurse on duty at my noisy approach.
“Yes, young man?” one nurse asked, wearing a name tag that identified her as Verga.
“I’d like to look in on Mr. Canon,” I said. “He doesn’t have much family, and I wanted him to know he has some people looking out for him.”
“Are you Leo King?” she said, going over a list.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’re the only one he has on his visitors’ list,” she said.
“His family’s all in nursing homes,” I said. “They are too infirm to visit.”
“I see. And your relationship to Mr. Canon?”
“I help out in his antique store on King Street,” I said. “Ever been to it?”
“I’m a nurse, not a millionaire,” she said. Some of the faceless nurses looming over their charts laughed in appreciation.
“Is Mr. Canon going to be all right?” I asked. “It’s nothing serious, is it?”
“Dr. Ray will examine him tomorrow,” the nurse replied. “We’ll know a lot more after that.”
“What is Dr. Ray’s specialty?” I asked.
“Oncology,” she answered.
I couldn’t believe a four-syllable word had escaped inclusion in my mother’s indefatigable five-word-a-day vocabulary list, and this one had a barbed, ominous sound. “I don’t know what that means, ma’am.”
“Cancer,” she said, and I was faced with the horrifying word at last. “He’s in that room over there. We’ve got him medicated, but he’s been restless all night.”
It took several moments for my eyes to adjust to the prisonlike darkness when I peeked into his room.
“Who’re you staring at like I was some kind of polecat, boy?”
“I thought you’d be asleep, Mr. Canon. I thought they’d give you something to help you sleep.”
“I’m too worried to sleep.”
“What’re you worried about?”
“Just the little things. Incontinence, dementia, paralysis, unbearable pain, and then death itself.”
“Don’t worry. They’ll all come in good time.”