A Garden Inclosed

A GARDEN INCLOSED

C. Leon Harris

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

A Garden Inclosed

All Rights Reserved © 2003 by C. Leon Harris

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ISBN: 0-595-29799-4 (pbk)

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ISBN: 978-1-4697-2136-1 (eBook)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

P A R T

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

P A R T II

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

For Mary Jane

P A R T

CHAPTER 1

The silence squeezed between them like an overweight hitchhiker, a kind of sound itself keening octaves above the engine and the sticky air roaring past the open windows and the hissing radio left untuned to see how long she could stand it before saying something. It swelled, feeding itself, preferring itself to the awkwardness that would follow if either of them now spoke after so long, if he pointed in vain to yet another tobacco barn decaying picturesquely beneath a floral tribute of honeysuckle or remarked on the vista as they topped a rolling hill, she, not turning to look at the barns, looking straight ahead but apparently not seeing the vistas, saying nothing over and over again loudly enough to drown out his own words. So he joined in the chorus of silence, did not point to the sign marking their transit into Virginia, did not remark on the fading of the imperceptibly shortened day as he switched on the headlights, and did not ask aloud what it was, which of the dozen words, or what particular combination, sequence, context, or juxtaposition had made her pull her thoughts tightly around her shoulders and knot them in front of her. The small car forced them so close to each other that each curve threatened to bring their shoulders together and displace the unctuous silence with a mumbled excuse me, yet they could as well have been in different cars in opposite directions, drivers glimpsing one another for a moment, forming impressions, curiosities, longings that would fade like taillights in the mirror. He glanced to his left at the red sun hanging low in the milky sky, and forgetting himself, for he had never been one to long contemplate beauty in silence, he turned to unloose words that suddenly swelled within him. But then all his words in praise of the glorious sunset left his mind, for he was dumbed by an even more stunning apparition on his right—the sun’s glow on her tan cheeks, black hair, and the skin above her blouse. The vision of her gushed like carnal seed through convoluted ducts and hidden recesses to the place unknown where words long dormant and unpotentiated lay awaiting and fearing such moments of conception. And now they gestated into a question. What would be her response, they asked, if he were to say to her, I was going to remark upon the beauty of the sunset, but you are more beautiful, Rosa. Your cheeks and lips are brighter than the ruby sun and more round, your opal skin more fair than the twilight sky, your hair the glistening black of the infinite night, and your brown eyes like stars that shine even in daylight? What would she say? That I’m a fool? A liar? Or would she continue to say nothing, let the words plummet dead as woodcocks shot in soaring courtship? But what if she were instead to say…

I have to be back by Monday morning.

Huh?

You’re going thirty-five in a fifty-five zone.

Oh. I’ll go faster. Sorry. I’m a novelist.

That explains it. I hope you write faster than you drive.

I mean, I was thinking about writing. I often do that. I call it novelizing. I imagine how I would write about what’s happening in the present. For practice. And sometimes because an experience is so intense I can’t help myself. And it helps me figure things out. I often find the real world confusing. Don’t you?

No.

Oh. Well, I do. But everything makes sense in novels. Or should. So if I can’t understand something I novelize it. I get carried away, I guess. Transported to a different world and time. I was novelizing about…about the sunset. Did you notice it?

Of course.

Beautiful. Some people would just sit and stare at it, but I have to set it to words. Sometimes I think nothing exists until I describe it in words. As if the words are more real than the world. I guess I’m like those people who are bored on a vacation but get excited telling people about it. Or like Van Gogh in that movie, trying to paint everything he saw, except I do it in words.

You talk like a required liberal-arts course.

What?

You sure have the gift for bullshit. If you get paid by the word you’ll do all right.

Are you mad at me for something? All I said was that I didn’t think there were any white Hairstons left in Henry County. Is it because I thought you were white? I assure you I didn’t mean it as a compliment.

Just don’t talk about it anymore.

All right. Sorry. I’ll talk about something else. So, Rosa—it is Rosa, isn’t it? My name is Ellis, in case you forgot. You’re going to see your parents in Pitt?

My parents are dead.

Oh. I’m sorry. You’re too young to be an orphan.

Been one most of my life.

My mother’s dead. I never knew her. She died giving birth to me. So I guess you grew up in Pitt with relatives?

No. Near Philadelphia.

Ah. That explains the accent. So what brings you to Pitt, Virginia? The exotic night life? The ballet? The breathtaking scenery?

My grandmother.

Ah. I’m going to see my Dad. What is your major at UNC?

Finishing my PhD in molecular genetics.

Wow. You’re so young. You must be a prodigy. Molecular genetics. Wow. Cloning, genetic engineering.

Something like that.

How old are you? I’m sorry. Where are my manners?

Twenty-two.

Only twenty-two. Wow. You must be a genius. If only I had it to do over. I lost a lot of time. I did my undergraduate work at Virginia Tech thinking I might pick up some marketable skills in engineering, but all I did there was read and write fiction. Didn’t know what else to do, so I joined the Army. After I got out I bummed around the South. Northern Mississippi, mainly. Faulkner Country. Measuring out my days in sweat, my nights in the juke joints where one minute a man would pour out his soul on the guitar and the next minute take someone else’s with a knife. The women worn out at thirty by caring for such men. Mine the only white face as often as not. Trying to soak up the cadence and rhythm of it all, dark and rumbling like distant thunder in the dank air, foreboding, pregnant with doom. The past, never dead, not even past, entwined with the present. Past and present fulfilling each other, each unfolding to reveal—no, create—the other. The past creating the present, and the present constantly reshaping the past. In short, Yoknapatawpha County.

Where?

Nowhere really. Or maybe everywhere. The South. At least what’s left of the old South. An imaginary place. Never mind. So the time came when I felt like I was overflowing with it all and needed emptying. So that’s how I ended up at UNC studying how to write it all down. I’m forty-one. Kind of old to still be in school, huh? A graying veteran among all the fair-haired boys. Like so many of them choosing Faulkner as both subject and muse, except that unlike them, I can count Compsons and Snopeses among my intimate friends. Have you read much Faulkner?

Who?

Faulkner. William Faulkner. You know. The Sound and the Fury. Absalom, Absalom! Nobel Prize in Literature. Surely…Never mind. He was a famous writer at one time. I guess a little out of fashion now. He died…Let’s see…the year you were born. That would explain why you never heard of him. Pretty hard reading sometimes. Anyway, now I’m working on my master’s in Creative Writing.

What for?

What? Oh. I’d like to be a writer. And teach. I’ve only had a short story and a couple of reviews published so far. I hope to do one good novel eventually if I can find something important enough to try to make sense of. I went to Vietnam thinking I was going to write the Great American Novel, but it didn’t take long to see that there was no sense to be made of it. Too absurd for fiction; let the historians…

You sure are quiet, Ellis.

Oh! You startled me, Rosa. I was just thinking about the first time we met. Remember? We were on this road then also.

I remember.

Nineteen years ago. I’m surprised you remember. I didn’t make much of an impression on you then. You didn’t have much to say to this old white guy.

I was just a confused kid. I didn’t understand half of what you were saying. But I do remember thinking you were very distinguished looking with your pipe and gray-flecked moustache.

I was trying to look like Faulkner then. I imagined that if I looked like him I could write like him.

I was disappointed that you shaved it off before the ride back.

You should have said. I shaved it off because I thought it made me look too old for you.

I always liked mature men.

One of many things I still didn’t know about you after all these years. But I guess I wasn’t too repulsive even without the moustache. Do you remember what happened up ahead at the state line?

How could I forget? You did make an impression that time.

That was a pretty smart place you picked. If the police had caught us they couldn’t really have charged us with crossing state lines for immoral purposes, since we hadn’t completely crossed yet. And then there would be the jurisdictional dispute. Would we be charged with intent to offend the morals of the Commonwealth of Virginia, where the intent took root, or would the aggrieved party be the people of the sovereign State of North Carolina, where the offending organs were situated, more or less, if not actually oscillating back and forth from one to the other statutory authority? Maybe it would have been a federal case.

The smartest part was figuring out how to do it in a VW Beetle. That took some ingenuity. I was rather proud of myself for being able to figure it out.

You were always good at geometry and mechanics. And we were both pretty flexible in those days. Now the only part of me that’s flexible is the one I least want to be. But, heck, I’ll bet we could still manage it, especially in this car. Let’s find out.

Silly. This was just a country road then, and it was dark.

Yeah. A lot has changed. We didn’t worry about AIDS then, for one thing. A year or so later and I might have been prepared with a condom. And Joey wouldn’t have been conceived. Do you ever regret that he was, Rosa? I often wondered.

What would be the point?

I wish I had control of my mind the way you do. I spend most of my time thinking pointless thoughts about Joey. I don’t regret it either, in spite of everything, but I just can’t stop asking myself Why? Why? Why?

I’ve been explaining it to you ever since he died. You just refuse to believe it.

Funny. That’s what that last preacher said just before I threw him out.

I hope you’re not comparing me to that pecker head.

No. You never tried to convince me to worship a god who tortures babies. Or that I should be happy that the Lord has called Joey home. Or, if you took scripture literally the way he did, that little Joey was conceived in sin and must therefore suffer eternity in Hell just because his brain never had the capability to believe in Jesus. Your answers are more convincing, but I don’t find them any more comforting than his.

They’re not meant to be comforting. They’re just true. But you don’t listen.

Alexander disease. Caused by a mutated gene on the long arm of chromosome eleven or seventeen. One mutation from each parent—one from you, one from me. Only a few dozen cases diagnosed every year. Maybe one in several million children inheriting it, mostly boys. See? I do listen. I just don’t believe it can all be reduced to mathematics like that. It’s so precise and yet so arbitrary. Why Joey

out of all the millions?

It had to be somebody.

I guess. But I can’t get rid of the idea that something loaded the dice against him. That he paid for some transgression in the distant past. Or maybe not so distant. Maybe he was punished for something I did. Something awful that Dad also knew about. Something so awful that Dad couldn’t even tell me what it was.

You’ve read either too much Faulkner or too much Bible. Only there do innocent children have to pay for the sins of the fathers. For those who struggle for survival in the real world, a higher sense of justice has evolved.

I know. I’m sorry this came up. I was really enjoying the trip. Being with you, just talking the way we used to. There’s something about being in a car that makes it easier to talk. If I ever wrote a novel I think I could have it take place mostly in a car, with two people just talking to each other. We should have taken road trips all these years. Maybe we would have said some things that needed saying, and things would have been different between us. You haven’t had much to say to me since Joey died.

I guess I got tired of talking about the same thing over and over again for the past eight years.

I’m not that bad. Am I? I mean, I try to talk about other things.

But you always bring the subject around to Joey. The way you did just now.

Did I?

When you were talking about condoms.

Oh. Gosh. I’m sorry. I see what you mean. God. No wonder you don’t like to talk to me. I’ve made you a garden enclosed, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.

What’s that from?

Song of Solomon.

I should have known. You used to quote from it a lot.

Before Joey died we used to talk a lot.

Well, you did, anyway.

OK.

I used to love to listen to you talk. About the South, literature, all the great books you had read, and the even greater ones you were going to write.

Yeah. Rosa, do you remember that night on the beach at Ocracoke? Our second honeymoon. The last summer vacation before we realized something was wrong with Joey. The last time we were really happy together. We had left him with Granny for the week. She was the first to notice that he wasn’t growing the way he should. Except for his head, which was growing too fast. That he couldn’t

move right. I guess we were in denial.

Ellis…

Oh. Sorry. There I go again. Anyway, we got to Ocracoke after dark, but we couldn’t wait to see the ocean, so after checking in at the cottage…remember? under the live oaks on the sandy road in the village…we went to the beach. It was so dark we couldn’t really see the ocean except for the waves breaking. Couldn’t see each other, even, so we held hands to keep from getting separated as we walked down to put our feet into the water, then we went behind the dunes to get out of the wind. There was something intimate about the darkness and the sound of the surf in that narrow space among the clumps of sea oats. Like being with you in the car going to and from Pitt at night. We shared our deepest thoughts, our secrets, our dreams. We talked and talked till dawn’s painted fingers pulled back the sheet of night.

That’s poetic. Song of Solomon?

No. The notebook of Ellis Jefferson DeHart. Volume fifty-six of the unpublished works.

That was a beautiful evening, Ellis. If I remember correctly, we didn’t just talk.

That was your idea. Blind man’s bluff in the buff. You know, as big and dark as that beach was, you were surprisingly easy to catch.

Well, after the second time I couldn’t run very fast. Not that I wanted to.

That seems so long ago. Where did the time go?

We should go back, Ellis.

Back to Ocracoke, or back in time?

If only we could. But Ocracoke, at least.

Every time I ask you, you always say you’re too busy. You go and lecture all over the world, but there’s never time to drive a few hours to the coast. Things keep coming up, and pretty soon nineteen years have passed. Where have you been? It seems like you’re always working. First getting grants and tenure, then helping to take care of Joey, and now the project.

I know. And it’s getting nowhere.

Well, I told you you’re going about it all wrong.

Yes, I know.

I’m a complete doofus when it comes to DNA analysis, but I do know Southerners. I don’t see why you think any Hairston man you pick out of a phone book is going to jump at the chance to give a DNA sample to some strange woman with a Yankee accent just because she’s also a Hairston.

So you’ve told me.

Not even, or especially, after you explain that the purpose is to uncover the hypocrisy of racism by showing exactly how often whites and blacks interbred in the past. This is not the seventies. Most people have gotten past that.

I haven’t. And I don’t intend to let you white people just forget about it.

You white people. Rosa, that’s unfair. My ancestors never even had slaves, much less children by them.

Where do you think I got this white skin?

Not from DeHarts. Or at least not from my DeHarts.

From some other white slave owner then, and I’m going to prove it.

Does it really need proving? Everyone knows it already.

Not scientifically, they don’t. It doesn’t mean a thing without quantitative data. I’m going to show exactly how often masters raped their slaves.

All I’m saying is that you’re going about it the wrong way.

Your way is stupid.

The church is the only Black institution that hasn’t been compromised by the white establishment. You’ll never get anywhere with Southern Blacks without its support.

You, of all people, wanting me to suck up to some preacher. I will not insult the dignity of science by associating it with a bunch of superstitious, ignorant holy rollers.

No one’s asking you to believe it. Never mind. Do it your way. You always do. Christ! Have we forgotten how to have a conversation without arguing?

You started it. A writer who hasn’t written anything in the past five years shouldn’t be giving advice to others.

You always have to speak the truth, don’t you. No matter who or how much it hurts.

But that’s OK. You’re right.

Let’s talk about something else.

Yeah. I was in such a good mood because you came.

Me too, Ellis. I want to enjoy the trip. As much as I can, anyway.

I know what you mean. You don’t have to see him, you know. After the way he treated you…us.

I know.

All those years. All the unreturned phone calls and unanswered letters. Not a word even when little Joey was born. Or died. I thought he would at least want to see him once in his life. Maybe even act like a grandfather. What a stubborn man he was. Is. If you change your mind I’ll understand.

No, it’s something I need to do. A purging.

I thought about not coming to see him myself. But he is my dad. And I keep hoping I’ll find out why he turned against us. He probably won’t recognize either of us, anyway. Clyde said he’s pretty much out of it with the morphine. Are you sure you don’t want to stay at the house with us?

No. I won’t go into that house. Besides, Granny is expecting me.

I have to, you know. Clyde will be all alone there now, and I should at least offer to help him sort through papers and things. Make arrangements.

I don’t see why. It’s not like he ever did anything for us all these years. And it’s not likely you’re in the will.

I know. But Clyde is still my brother. He was more like another parent when I was growing up. And after these past few years with just