The door to the building opened, and a woman, regally dressed, her gray-blue hair swirled in a crown on her head, stepped outside. He knew her instantly: Martha Dunaway Kerr. She was holding a paper. She stood for a moment, looking at the gleaming, parked cars. She glanced once toward his truck, then looked away and turned and went back inside the building. He wondered if she had come outside, looking for him. Martha Dunaway Kerr. Once, after his engagement to Cora had been announced, Martha said to him, blithely, “Why, Sam, didn’t you know? I’ve had my sights on you all this time, and now you go off and get yourself caught by another woman.” She had laughed and hugged him quickly and then danced away, calling to someone else.
“Let’s go,” he said to the dog. “I’ll take you some place you can run.” He pushed the starter pedal and pulled the gearshift down and felt it click and he eased his left foot (his bad leg) up from the clutch and the truck pulled away smoothly. “Got the right gear,” he mumbled.
The road was still there, as it had been when he was first a student and then superintendent of the farm at Madison A&M. The road led to the creek where he had proposed to Cora. Now there were pastures and pine tree stands along the road, where fields had been, where he had planted and harvested corn and wheat and cotton, but he knew the road, and the truck turned obediently under his hand until he came to the creek.
A pasture pushed up to the edge of hardwood trees that lined the creekbank, and he sat in his truck with the motor idling and carefully studied the pasture and trees. “Used to be a wagon path somewhere,” he said absently. “Maybe we can drive down it if it’s still there.”
He did not see the wagon path, but he did see a drop-down gate in the barbed wire fence. A large culvert had been placed in the gully to bridge crossing vehicles. He eased the truck over the culvert and got out and hobbled on his walker to the fence and released the drop-down gate. Then he got back into his truck and drove into the pasture. He did not worry about resetting the gate. He had not seen any cattle, and the only reason to have a fence would be cattle. And he did not think that he was trespassing. No one knew the land he was on as intimately as he had known it.
The pasture land had been packed hard by the summer’s heat and it was easy to drive over. He followed the graceful, curving line of trees until he came to a place that veered close to the water and he could see through the trees the muscle of granite that bulged from the ground, and he knew he was where he wanted to be. He stopped the truck and got out. The sun’s warmth felt good on his back. “Come on, girl,” he said to White Dog. The dog slipped from the truck. “Go run, girl. Go run.”
It was past twelve o’clock. The reunion lunch was being served at Morgan County High School, and Martha Dunaway Kerr was presiding with dignity over the sparse gathering of old people, but he was glad he was not among them. If Cora had lived, if Cora had been with him, it would have mattered; without her, it did not.
He took his journal from the suitcase and tucked it inside his shirt and worked his way cautiously into the woods and to the shade of the pines. He found the place he had been with Cora, where he could see the water splitting over the shoals. The smell of the water and the moss pads near the water was as sweet as it had been sixty years earlier. He raked together a seat of the needles with his foot and lowered himself with his walker, stretching his bad leg straight. He opened his journal and removed the picture of Cora and Marshall Harris and looked at it for a long time. Then he replaced it and took his pen and began to write in his unsteady hand:
Today is the reunion and I did not go. I am at a place where I asked Cora to marry me 57 years ago. It is the place I wanted to be. I always liked it here. I wish Cora could be with me but the Almighty had different plans for her. We should have come back here earlier, when we could. I still remember the day when we walked across the fields and came down here. It was the best day of my life. I wish I could live it over again, but I can’t. Having it to remember is the best I can do. I am tired, not having slept well in my truck last night. A preacher, Howard Cook, and his family helped me out or I wouldn’t be here now. I guess I will drive back home today, but if it starts to get dark I will stop some where and find me a room to sleep in. I guess my children know by now that I did not go to see Neal Lewis and they are worried about me. I’m sure they’ll keep an eye on me from now on. My white dog is running in the woods. She likes this place as much as I do.
The writing had made his hand cramp, and the lulling rush of the water had made him sleepy, but he knew he could not sleep. He looked at his watch. He had been there for more than an hour. He called to his dog, “Come on, girl. Come on.” The dog raced to him quickly and lay beside him and pushed her head into his lap. “Can’t rest now,” he said, stroking the dog’s head. “We got to be going back. We got a long way to drive.”
He stood at the creekbank for a long time, watching the water spinning across the shoals. He would never again see this place, and he wanted the last vision of it locked securely in his memory. He then drove back through the pasture and reset the drop-gate at the fence and drove to the highway leading into Madison. He looked at his watch again. It was past two o’clock. He turned right and drove toward the school.
There were no cars at the school, and he turned his truck into the driveway and parked again on the roadside and got out. “Stay in the truck,” he said to his dog. “I won’t be long.” He took his walker and crossed the street and followed the walkway to the building where he had seen Martha Dunaway Kerr. To his surprise, the door was unlocked, and he went inside. It was not the building of his youth, and walking inside it was a curious, unsettling experience. He did not know why he was there or what he should be looking for—if anything—but being there seemed imperative, as though nothing else would end the odyssey of foolishness that had preoccupied him for weeks.
He followed the corridor to a door leading into the school’s cafeteria, and he pushed open the door and stepped inside. The decorations for the reunion lunch were still there—balloons, crepe paper streamers, the banner he had expected. The banner read: Madison A&M Reunion. The banner’s purple and gold colors were faded. It had been used many times. His eyes scanned the empty room. It didn’t last long, he thought. Sixty years to talk over, and done with in two hours. But maybe they hadn’t come to talk over sixty years. Maybe they had come, as he had, to look for something that no longer existed.
He pivoted on his walker back through the door and began to move back down the hallway. His head was down and he did not see her approaching him.
“Sam?” she said. “Sam Peek?”
He stopped and looked up.
“It’s me. Martha.”
23
“If I hadn’t forgotten my papers and had to come back for them, I’d have missed you,” Martha Dunaway Kerr was saying again to him. She had insisted on talking and had guided him back into the cafeteria and to a table, and now she was sitting close to him, her voice clear and lively and her face as animated as it had been when she was a girl.
“I can’t believe your granddaughter’s car broke down on the way here,” she said, touching his hands with hers, removing them, touching them again. “What a day for that to happen. I’m so sorry, Sam. Everybody was asking about you. I told them you were coming, that I’d gotten your registration card and money, but something must have happened.”
“It took a while to get the car started again,” he lied. “She dropped me off here and went on to town to see about it. Just thought I’d walk around the place and look it over.”
“But you’re staying for tonight, aren’t you?”
He shook his head. “My granddaughter has to be back at her home tomorrow. She lives in Atlanta.”
“But, Sam, this is a special time,” Martha Dunaway Kerr protested. Her voice softened. “It may be the last time. Nobody talked about having another one.”
“Wish I could stay, Martha, but I can’t,” he said. “I was headed outside to wait for my granddaughter. We have to get back.?
??
“All right, I won’t argue,” she said, “but tell me about you. Cora? Is she—?”
“Passed away earlier this year,” he replied simply. “She was looking forward to coming down for the reunion.”
“How—?”
“Heart attack. Took her quick. I’m grateful for that.”
Martha Dunaway Kerr’s face furrowed in sadness. “My husband—David—had cancer. Took months before he died. He suffered badly. I’d like to go like Cora. I’d like for it to be swift and merciful.”
He did not reply. He looked into Martha Dunaway Kerr’s face. Her eyes were still magnificently blue and clear.
“I remember Cora so well,” she said suddenly, her voice brightening. “She was so beautiful. The girls always talked about that—how pretty she was. And I can tell you, Sam, there were a good number of them who envied her when she started seeing you.” She laughed girlishly. “For a while, until I met David, I was among them.” She touched his hands again. “You were a handsome thing, Sam Peek. Shy as the day is long, but handsome. I used to watch you working out in the fields, and I knew you’d become somebody special, and you have, Sam. You have.”
“Special?” he said in surprise. “Don’t know how you get that.”
“Good heavens, Sam, you’ve been written up lots of times. I subscribe to a number of horticultural journals, and I used to read about you all the time. Quotes from Sam Peek. Very profound. You’re one of the smartest men in the south when it comes to trees. Do you know that I have some of your trees in my yard?”
“How?” he asked.
“I sent for them. Told the man to tell you they were for me, but when I asked him about it later, he said he’d forgotten to say anything. I think he was afraid of getting the wrong thing and was worried what I’d say. I started to write, but I didn’t. I wasn’t sure you’d remember who Martha Dunaway was.”
“Didn’t know about that,” he told her. “Sorry he didn’t say anything. I would have remembered you. Would have made sure you had the best in the field. Hope the ones you got did all right.”
“They’re beautiful. They’re pecan trees, that special variety you propagated. I sit out under them all the time in the summer. It’s so cool out under those trees.”
“I’ve sort of retired from all of that,” he said quietly.
“Well, of course you have. You should have,” she said. “But you made a name for yourself before you did. And your boys, your preacher sons, they’ve become quite famous, I understand.”
He thought of Howard Cook. He wondered if Martha Dunaway Kerr knew Howard. “The boys have done all right,” he said. “The girls, too. We had some good children. Mostly Cora’s doing.”
“I—I never had children,” she said. “Sometimes I regret that. David wanted them badly, but we couldn’t have them. So you see, Sam, you’re fortunate you didn’t get caught by me. You wouldn’t have had your wonderful children.”
He did not know what to say. He looked away from her face.
“Oh, but don’t go feeling sorry for me, Sam,” she said quickly. “We had a good life together. Got to travel around and see things. And I’ve loved Madison. Don’t know of any other place on the earth I’d rather be, and I’ve seen them all, from Europe to Asia. There’s something timeless about this place, though. It’s still as beautiful as it used to be.”
“It’s changed a lot,” he said. “Like the school. When they tore down the buildings, it changed what I remember.”
Martha Dunaway Kerr nodded and closed her eyes, as though framing a portrait in her mind. “I fought against that, Sam,” she said. She opened her eyes. “I did everything I could to stop that from happening, but that was a long time ago and nobody listened to women in those days.” She smiled. “Not that they do much now.”
“How many people showed up for the lunch?” he asked.
She patted his hand again. “Not many. Eleven, counting me. You would have been twelve. But you did show up, didn’t you? Just a little late, but you’re here, and you count. So, twelve showed up. Twelve came back. For sixty years, that’s not bad, is it?”
He wanted to ask about the frail, bent man with the white hair, but knew that he couldn’t. “It’s more’n I thought would be here,” he said.
“So many are dead, Sam. So many. But that’s to be expected, isn’t it? We’re in our eighties now. I don’t expect to live much longer, Sam. Do you?”
“Always thought I’d make it to a hundred,” he replied lightly, “but that was when I was fifty. No, not much longer now.”
“Does it scare you, Sam?”
“Sometimes. Not much, though.”
“Me, either.” She took his hands and held them. Her hands were warm on his. “Oh, there are days when I want to blink my eyes and have it all turned back, back to when we were children. I want to run again and dance and do all those things that I loved doing, but I know it’s not to be. Know what I do, Sam? I get out my albums, with all the pictures, and I look at them and pretend that somebody just took that picture yesterday. It makes me feel all young again. And then I look in the mirror, or at my hands …” She lifted her hands from his hands and looked at them, at the rows of bone beneath the pale, thin skin. “I look at my hands and know how foolish I’ve been,” she whispered.
He reached for her hands and held them. She was still a child, he thought. This remarkable, dignified woman was still a child. A moist film filled in her clear, blue eyes.
“I’m glad I had a chance to see you, Martha,” he said.
She nodded and smiled, then she stood. “I think I have to go along, Sam,” she said bravely. “There’s things to be done before tonight. Everybody’s on the tour now. Some young people from the Chamber of Commerce are guiding them.”
He pulled himself up on his walker. “I’ll walk out with you,” he said.
“I’d like that.”
They walked together, without speaking, out of the cafeteria, down the hallway and out to the front of the building.
“Are you sure your granddaughter’s coming back soon?” Martha Dunaway Kerr asked. “There’s nobody else around, except maybe the janitor. That must be his truck over there.”
He looked at his truck. He could see White Dog staring at him from the window. “She’ll be by,” he said. “I’ll just wait here.”
“Goodbye, Sam,” Martha Dunaway Kerr said. “I don’t suppose we’ll see each other again.”
“We could,” he said. “Maybe we’ll both make it to a hundred. We do, we’ll have a reunion, just the two of us.”
She leaned across his walker and hugged him quickly, then walked away to her car.
He waited until Martha Dunaway Kerr’s car was out of sight and he was confident that she would not return. Then he got into his truck and drove away without looking back at the school he did not know. He said to White Dog, “We got a long way to go.”
He was on the road, driving back toward Greensboro, when he heard the horn of the car behind him. He slowed and looked into the rearview mirror. He could see arms waving from the car and then the car pulled beside him and he looked out of his window to see James pointing for him to pull over to the side of the road.
“Well, girl, they found us,” he said to White Dog. “I guess I’m glad.” He guided his truck to a jolting stop.
24
He did not tolerate questions about his unannounced trip to Madison. He said, indignantly, “I made up my mind to go at the last minute. I can go see Neal Lewis anytime I want to, but that was the last reunion for us. Your mama wanted to go; told me that before she died. I made up my mind that’s what I’d do, and I went.”
The explanation that Neal Lewis knew nothing about a planned visit with him was a weak argument. “Neal’s getting old,” he said flatly. “Maybe he forgot.” The way he said it—defensively, angrily—made his children wonder: Was it Neal who had forgotten or was it their father?
“Don’t know why you worried to begin with,” he said. “I had my dog
with me. My dog takes care of me.”
“Babies,” Neelie said privately to Kate and Carrie, “that dog wadn’t doing nothing. That dog was what took Mr. Sam off. That dog a ghost dog. You got to keep a watch on Mr. Sam when he with that dog. He be gone again.”
But he did not, again, go away alone. He permitted his daughters and sons and their husbands and wives and his grandchildren to drive him for his needs—his haircuts and groceries and banking business. And sometimes they drove him to funerals, to sit among the depleting gathering of men in the rocking chairs on the front porches of funeral parlors.
“Another one gone,” the men always said matter-of-factly, and then they would praise the departed by reciting (and embellishing) some small, special story out of memory. The dead had been good, or the dead had been mischievous or thrifty or strong or shy or outrageous or brave or jovial or any of countless other attributes that, given forgiveness for shortcomings, made for a likeable person. That was the common agreement among them: the dead had been likeable, and in their front-porch, rocking-chair eulogies, the men who remained—waiting their turn to be likeable—momentarily elevated the deceased to a rare, but impermanent history.
Ira Carter.
Tom Mabry.
One by one they died, and he attended their funerals.
Oscar Beatenbo.
Herman Dudley.
Their names were read on the Obituary Column of the Air by a solemn-voiced announcer as organ music sang softly in the background, and he recorded their names dutifully in his journal.
Pete Mullinax.
Neal Lewis.
“Won’t be needing these rockers much longer. Won’t be nobody here to sit in them.”
“Great God Almighty, they ain’t but a handful of us left.”
“Won’t be none of us before long.”
“That’s the truth.”
He went to the funerals and joined in the eulogies that found the deceased likeable, but only one death greatly affected him—Neelie’s. When Neelie died, three years after his trip to Madison, he wept painfully. He ordered a majestic headstone for Neelie in the names of his children.