Lookaway, Lookaway (52 page)

Jerene listened impatiently.

“No, you are mistaken. We have nothing to lose. You will be in jail, or in any event disgraced and blackballed from your intended life as a political operative if not a politician yourself one day—you seem to have the mettle for it. Duke will not lose his marriage—I assure you I am going nowhere—and he will not be running for re-election, and so there is no political consequence to your threats.”

Whatever Miranda said, Jerene interrupted her:

“You find me in a civil mood, Ms. Mabry. Future encounters with the full force of the law on our side will strike you, I promise, as less pleasant. You will resign your position by mail and your severance, I’m sure Duke will oversee, will be in keeping with what is expected. Any more contact with me, my husband or this family, or any
hint
of any sordidness appearing in the local papers, and this tape will be in the SBI’s hands by nightfall. Have I made myself clear?”

Jerene’s level expression suggested that Miranda enjoyed a state of perfect clarity.

“Then this concludes our business. Good night, Ms. Mabry.”

Duke now felt he could breathe normally. Clutching the armrest, he tried to get up but found his leg strength had deserted him, as if his circulation had been on hold. But Jerene set the phone down and then pulled off her other earring, standing in the doorway to the living room. She had dealt with the impertinent Ms. Mabry and now she would deal with him.

“You will not run for re-election. Nor will you accept these newfound friends of ours’ invitation to higher office. No congressional race, no mayoral race, no governor’s race. You are out of politics. It is the price of keeping me as your wife.”

It was all over—like that.

The political future that had been assumed, worn grandly like a cape, throughout his young adulthood, brandished in his confident striding through his thirties, the club, the law practice, was torn from his shoulders by her words. No, his destiny was annihilated by
his
actions—her words merely followed his folly. But it was Jerene who made the decision. And he acquiesced. He had relived the moment almost every day of his life and he, in each iteration of the scenario, still sat there acquiescing but he said more eloquent things, asked to be heard, recited the reasons that once Miranda disappeared, they would be safe to pursue political office again, but even in his fantasy do-over, she nonetheless would say what she said that night:

“Politics brings out the worst in men, and I do not need to be standing beside you at some press conference, supporting my man while he confesses to some liaison with a call girl or some tabloid-fodder love child or a tango in the reflecting pools with exotic dancers. I am not that wife. You’ll go back to your law firm and our normal life, which, you must admit, had a superior tone to the circus we live in now.”

“Quite.”

“I thought you might protest my edict.”

“I will never protest anything you dictate ever again, Jerene. I am your unworthy but grateful, loving husband.”

“For this weekend, you can sleep in your study. We’ll be back to normal, eventually.” She paused. “When her perfume is one hundred percent gone. Gone from your clothes, your hair.”

“I’ll burn all my suits in the yard, and go buy new clothes.”

She would not be charmed, and reconciliation, words passing between them that were not freighted with extra meanings and latent accusations, were still months away. “Good night,” she said, as crisply as she’d said it to Miranda. Then she climbed the stairs. Then she closed the bedroom door—not a slam, but there was a discernible increase of force in it.

There was a brief appearance at the old law firm; it was not exactly welcome that he return and divide the profits of the firm by another partner, but having been a city councilman, he would be in a position to draw new business … but it never happened, his return. The matter was left to drift and a reprise was never formalized.

What occupied him, for the next moment, and then the rest of the 1980s and most of the 1990s, was the undeveloped land around the Catawba River trestle south of Charlotte. Duke lent his considerable popularity to the cause of raising money and buying up the marginal land not owned by industry or the railway. Then he met with those industries and those railways that used the trestle to see if they would support his plan for a memorial and a park and a regular re-creation of the skirmish there. The most hard to persuade of any group were the developers who had their eye on the surrounding land. No one then imagined luxury homes could be in view of the trestle—the noise of freight, the association of boxcars and hobos—but they did have leases and water rights and hopes that the train track might be relocated so there had been some just-in-case purchases and Duke had to use his smooth, easygoing charm to talk them into selling, as well as selling to his not-for-profit foundation for a reasonable price.

So many expectations and hopes for the life of Joseph Beauregard “Duke” Johnston, and he whittled himself down to one project, distilled his considerable advantages and gifts into a single trifling purpose, and now look.

*   *   *

Annie pulled into her parents’ driveway. She looked at her watch again. “I think I’ll come inside,” she said. “Dad, perhaps I should warn you that…”

“Perhaps you should warn me of what?”

“Nothing. Let’s go inside.”

Duke saw she wanted to tell him something more, but he had borne enough events and revelations for one afternoon. Even though Annie had a key to the front door, she hung behind, making him get his keys out of his pocket and open the door for her.

Surprise!

“Oh goodness!” Duke said, laughing, clutching at his heart like a pretend heart attack.

There was Joshua and his friend Dorrie, who had been so helpful with the Skirmish website. There was Bo and Kate. There was Dillard, looking like her old self. There was Jerilyn—all of them laughing, pleased with themselves. Alma was now lighting the candles on a cake on the dining room table; the dessert plates were set around the table for nine.

“I thought I expressly forbade any notice being taken of my birthday,” he said, shaking his finger at them all.

“It is,” Jerene explained, setting linen napkins by each plate, “the day
after
your birthday.”

“Ah, that is why Annie was checking her watch—she was the shill sent out to occupy dear doddering Papa and bring him back home at precisely five
P.M.
Very clever, very clever.” Annie almost told him about the party as they walked inside—wanted to give him time, perhaps, to pull himself together. Well, he was together. How could he not be with such adoration.

“Where are your cars?” he suddenly asked.

Parked around the block, they told him.

“Happy birthday, Dad,” said Bo, who with Kate gave him a five-volume set of
The Army of Virginia,
one more History Channel retelling of the winning-then-losing campaigns of Lee and company.

“Happy birthday, brother,” said Dillard, presenting a lovely cashmere cardigan. “Now don’t smoke your pipe around it and turn it into a walking ashtray.”

“Sister, I intend to do exactly that,” he said, kissing her cheek.

“Happy birthday, Dad,” said Jerilyn, who gave him, in a ring box, a bullet she had ordered from a Civil War collector’s emporium in New Orleans. “This can replace the one I shot,” she said, as everyone slowly laughed after they saw her laughing. “Is it the right caliber?”

“Good Lord, it is!” he marveled.

And after the applause, “Happy birthday, Mr. J.,” said Dorrie. She had brought him some kind of spyware-spamware-virus-stopping device for his Skirmish at the Trestle website. Ah, alas, the Skirmish would have to live on solely on that website, he thought, with a fresh new pang. That was now all that there would ever be.

“Happy birthday, Dad,” said Joshua, who had something wrapped in beige packing paper that was either a fishing pole … no, a walking stick … no—as Duke tore into the paper: a flagpole. One of those flagpoles you install on your front stoop. And wrapped around it was the state flag of North Carolina.

“Y’all can move down to South Carolina,” Josh explained, “but we want you to remind all those rich neighbors where your loyalties truly lie.” Widespread
yeahs
and booming agreement. A little more laughter, but it soon died down as Duke stood there, momentarily speechless, starting to say something, then not. Then crossing his arms.

“About that. I don’t think we will be moving to South Carolina, after all.”

Jerene popped her head up, all ears.

“General Joseph E. Johnston, our Civil War ancestor, never forgot the magnanimity of the surrender terms offered by Sherman. He came to respect, even love General Sherman in post-war years. When anyone dared say a word against Sherman—and you can still hear people condemn Sherman even now—Johnston refused to tolerate that sort of talk. They shared a wonderful, superb correspondence … as you know, one or two of the letters I own. And they remained close until the end of their days. Sherman died and Johnston was a pallbearer. He went to New York City where it was very cold, very rainy. You don’t cover your head when you’re a pallbearer, and people at the funeral came up to Johnston and said, sir, at your age, you
must
put your hat back on, you’ll catch your death of cold. And he said, ‘If I were in his place and he were standing here in mine,
he
would not put on his hat.’ And so he didn’t. And he did catch cold. And that cold became pneumonia, which, weeks later, killed him.

“Johnston is often said to have failed the Confederate cause by his timidity, his unwillingness to fight the big battles—certainly Jefferson Davis thought so, and General Hood, some others. But that last gesture, toward the general that defeated him, showed honor.”

All of them now were watching him. He searched their faces, settling on Kate who projected her considerable warmth; perhaps she was even moved by what he was saying.

“So,” he concluded, “I can find no honor in taking that home in South Carolina, since the developers have violated every agreement we had, made a mess of the historical site. I would not be happy living there, having gained such a home at the expense of a bit of earth I sought to preserve.”

Annie knew his situation better than the other children. With real concern she asked, “But Dad. Where are you going to go? You have to live—”

“If he doesn’t want to live in South Carolina,” Jerene interrupted, “I, for one, am happy not to go there. Never liked the idea anyway. Now cake is served.”

So much laughter and relief that night at the Johnston household. Everyone said they had to leave, but no one left. People stayed to tell more stories and remember the house, the house that would soon remove itself from all their lives. Annie’s five-year-old trip and fall down the foyer stairs and ride to the hospital in the ambulance where it was shown that nothing was broken or injured—but it was Duke who banged his head on the ambulance door frame and had to have stitches! Bo, at seven, breaking the front window grand-slamming a baseball that Duke had pitched to him. Not just that: the ball breaking the window, flying onto the dining room table, destroying the centerpiece, then bouncing into the china cabinet, taking out the protective glass and a porcelain statuette. Jerene was a firestorm of indignation, bursting from the house, confiscating the bat, sentencing son and husband to the hard labor of cleaning up their mess, while they giggled and she grew more enraged, which made them giggle even more. Joshua with a Super 8 movie camera playing director, getting out the ladder without permission and filming an overhead shot from the roof and then being too terrified to climb down, staying up there for hours until his parents came home.

“Dillard’s sweater must be woven of Persian cat hair,” Duke said, after a second slice of cake, after a burst of familial laughter. “Let me go get my allergy medicine before my eyes turn red as coals.”

He padded up the stairs to the bedroom. He locked the door to the bathroom.

He was not going to take allergy medicine. He was weeping, tears pouring out in profusion. Of joy or self-pity he wasn’t yet sure. What a worthless old father and husband he had been, what a fraud, an inconsequential dabbler, a muddle. And they loved him anyway! Hadn’t it nearly always been that way, once he escaped his father’s home? Hadn’t he been liked and admired and had people drawn to him all his life? At Hampden-Sydney, at university, how they streamed into Arcadia to be with him. People elected him to office, people made him partner in a law firm, people invited him to everything and brightened when he entered a room. Downstairs were eight people, eight wonderful dear people, who were anxious that he should return because they loved him. Love that was not the least bit called for or deserved. To be loved for no good reason—well, he supposed, that was what love really was, but still, how remarkable to be on the receiving end of such bounty, such largesse.

He pressed a towel to his face. He laughed a little. This is what that elusive quality must feel like, he convinced himself: accomplishment.

Kate

She knew things. That was her gift. Others had the gift of music or cooking to comfort people, some Christians had prophecy and healing, but her gift was small yet ever with her. A woman would say “Good morning” to Kate and she’d ask what was wrong and twenty minutes later, they were discussing the dissolution of the woman’s marriage. A boy would complain about being mediocre in his math class and a half hour later he was telling Kate that he suspected he was gay. People confessed to her, confided in her, sought her counsel. They knew she would not judge, or if she disapproved of something (stealing from the petty cash, sneaking pills out of mom’s purse, texting nude pictures to the boyfriend of the moment), she would at least be corrective in an unhysterical manner, always clear, always lucidly laying out the moral precept to be considered—you would never say she was ethically squishy or lax—but always patented, unjudgmental, loving Kate.