Between Times-
Chapter Eight- Part One...
As Chapter Eight begins, we find Drum on a southbound train - again. He’s going home one more time, where someone waits to complicate his life considerably. To begin at the Beginning, Click here.
BETWEEN TIMES
CHAPTER EIGHT - POLLY
PART ONE.
Willard Hoots laid his glasses on the table and rubbed his eyes. Noddie had been after him to “read some Dickens,” until Willard finally asked, “Where should I start, then?”
“Barnaby Rudge,” said Noddie, “The most neglected but the most rewarding novel he wrote.”
“Better than Two Cities?” Willard asked.
Noddie pulled the book from a shelf and stabbed Willard in the chest with it. “Better than that. I bet you can’t read it before I get back from Boston.”
Noddie was always baiting Willard into a bet, which invariably Willard lost, forfeiting anything from a meal at Millie Robbins’ Hillhaven Inn to a weekend in Highland, the overpriced, and in Willard’s opinion overrated, tourist resort about two hours south of Asheton. Noddie, having grown up in a swamp, loved the mountains. Never seemed to get enough. Willard, who had been born just across a ridge from Asheton, had all his life wanted to get away, yet with each escape, had always found a more pressing reason to come back. The first time Willard left the Cove, to go off to college in Wake Forest, he told his father he didn’t know if he’d come back home to stay, that he wanted to teach in a real university one day. He was afraid he’d hurt the old man’s pride, but Daniel just smiled at his son like they’d shared some secret joke, “Ye got this mountain in ye, boy. Wherever ye run to, ye’ll have to come back.”
Thinking about it now, Willard admitted to himself that he’d always returned, not because he had to, but because when the dust settled, he wanted to. Noddie loved the mountains because they were different from anything in an unhappy childhood. Willard loved them because they were home.
Willard taught physics at the Asheton campus of the state university. He’d come back here because he had aging parents who needed some looking after, and because he couldn’t find a job in a more prominent school, and because Noddie, who he met during graduate studies at Duke, had landed a place in the English department here.
What a strange pair they were, Willard thought. How unlikely they’d ever have been together at all. Noddie loved English literature, taught it, breathed it, was a voracious reader, even smelled like books. Willard, because of his minimal eyesight, could never regard reading as more than a chore, sometimes a pleasant one for short duration, but always leaving him tired, with sore burning eyes. Reading was not something he would choose purely for pleasure, particularly Dickens, who didn’t hesitate to use thirty words when three would do. The flow and rhythms of being that Noddie found revealed in words and stories disclosed themselves to Willard in equations and propositions that he could carry handily in his head with minimal assistance from his damaged vision. When he wrote formulas on a blackboard for his class, he followed the lines behind his eyes, not the ones he traced on the board.
His childhood nickname had stuck, and to this day he was still Owly to all his friends, and behind his back to his students, and even to Noddie, who would hug him close when he made one of his ill-considered pronouncements on the state of the world, and croon softly, “my wise old Owly, How could I ever do without you?”
Today, Willard was on his way to lunch with Paulette Coggins. Growing up together at Annie Starling’s school, both were shy and different, mutual comforters and encouragers. They remained pals and confidants as adults. Polly understood him. She knew things about Willard he had told none else but Noddie.
When they last shared lunch up at Hillhaven, Polly read to him from a novel manuscript she had just finished, an account of Annie Starling’s adventures in Sorrow Cove, thinly disguised as fiction, Willard took the manuscript home with him and laboriously read the whole thing. He showed it to Noddie then, who had been impressed enough to carry it along to Boston to pitch to a publisher Noddie was meeting with there. Willard planned to surprise Polly with the news when they had lunch today.
#
Paulette Coggins looked in the mirror, sighed, made a valiant attempt to corral her dark hair into a configuration that didn’t resemble a summer storm cloud. Her naturally unruly locks got away from her when she was working. She wanted to look decent while she had lunch with Willard, who would likely be himself slightly rumpled, looking like the absent minded professor he really was. He’d phoned a couple of weeks ago to ask if he could show her manuscript to Noddie, who knew people. She was anxious to hear what Noddie thought of it.
They seemed to Polly such an unlikely couple, Noddie and her friend Owly. Willard, short and shy, dark and quiet, very like his nickname. Noddie, tall and fair, never met a stranger, full of words that spilled out in gorgeous array wherever there were souls about to listen. It must be hard for them, she thought, to be so close when there was so much in the world to keep them apart.
Polly stopped by the door, collected her keys and purse, took down a light jacket, just in case, and walked out into the day. She never locked her door. Nobody in Sorrow Cove locked their doors, except the city-bred summer people. Things were changing now, Polly knew, but among her mountains, so far, at least, change came slowly. She still had some time to write about the old ways and life she had been born into, before it was all carried away along paved roads and utility wires. Polly hoped that somebody would read what she was writing, and remember what was being lost while something of it might be saved and preserved.
Her Ford started on the second turn of the key. Polly steered cautiously down her narrow winding drive, eroded and rutted from the past winter’s freeze and rain. She meant to ask her brother to come down with his tractor and try to render it more passable. Once on the graveled county road, she rolled up her window against the pale dust boiling up around her car. Passing her brother’s place, Polly waved to Lizbet, who had walked down to the road to retrieve their mail.
Another unlikely couple, Polly thought, brother James and his Judy. Judy, a teacher, in love with high thoughts and deep words, James a carpenter, who thought with his hands, a maker of objects that embodied his love and care for the souls in his life, all the things he could seldom bring himself to speak of aloud.
Polly, on the other hand, somehow had never found her match, unlikely or not. She didn’t really wonder about it. It was natural enough, in her view. She wanted things in life, and she was ruthless about what she wanted. She knew women with husbands and children who were living the lives of spouses and offspring, without ever having experienced lives of their own. Polly didn’t mean to follow that road. She would make her own life before she opened it in any intimate way to another. Romantic relationships had a way of derailing the most carefully planned vocation. She couldn’t afford to share her heart until she had accomplished in the world. Then she would be somebody by anyone’s measure, and love would not leave her in another’s shadow.
Ambition left room for friends, though. Willard was her oldest, maybe her closest friend. There was no danger of emotional entanglement there. Willard also knew people who might help her. He was entertaining company and he was useful to her cause.
#
Willard was so taken with his friend’s novel that Noddie had been hard put not to laugh in his face. Noddie never failed to be surprised and amused at Willard’s sudden and transient enthusiasms. Normally quiet, bordering on invisibility, Willard would come across something that caught his fancy and be all achatter over it for days on end, until the enamorment faded or Willard’s mind was unsettled by some other unanticipated attraction. It was one of several idiosyncrasies Willard exhibited from time to time that Noddie found at once endearing and annoying.
As much to get Willard to shut up about it, as anything, Noddie agreed to read Polly’s manuscript. After a few pages it became evident Warwoman was a better novel than most, and it required no nagging from Willard to induce Noddie to finish it. When Jon Davis at Boston Harbor Publishers read the pages Noddie sent him from Warwoman, he phoned straightaway. “Bring it when you come up here,” Jon said.
So on a foggy gray New England afternoon, Noddie got off a train in Boston carrying a briefcase containing Polly Coggins’ manuscript as well as his own.
#
Noddie stepped from the taxi into a chilling rain, tipped the driver, too generously, Willard would have said, and sought shelter under a doorman’s umbrella. Once inside the building, relatively dry and unruffled, while waiting for the elevator, Noddie studied the reflection in the mirrored wall of the lobby. I’ll do, Noddie mused, I travel at least as well as fresh produce. Then the door slid back, releasing the elevator’s descended hostages. Noddie waited for clearance, stepped inside and pressed the button for Jon’s floor.
Cynthia Carson looked up as Noddie came in, nodded, smiled her well-practiced smile. Thinking Cynthia had aged since the last time, Noddie stood waiting, clutching the briefcase with both hands while Cynthia spoke into an intercom, “Doctor Nodine is here,” then she gestured, “Come right in; Jon is waiting for you,” stepped briskly ahead to open the door for Noddie and closed it behind.
Jon stood behind his desk as he put down his phone, came around to take Noddie’s hand, then administer an enthusiastic but polite hug. Noddie kissed him lightly on the cheek.
Jon pulled out a chair, “Sit and rest yourself, Noddie. Let me pour you a drink, then you can tell about all you’ve brought me.”
“The train didn’t do wonders for my stomach, Jon, Maybe just a little tomato juice, if you have it.”
Jon delved into his little fridge, fetched the juice, conjured something stronger for himself, and when both had been suitably fortified, propped against his desk, arms folded, and beamed down expectantly. Noddie set the glass on the corner of Jon’s polished desk, dropped the brief case on the carpet, then leaned back in the chair and stretched out long slender legs that some men and a few women had found enormously appealing.
“God, but you’re looking good, Noddie.” Jon fairly glowed as he said it. “You don’t age like the rest of us. Someone has been taking very good care of you, obviously.”
Noddie smiled back at Jon, laced fingers together, tightened arms overhead until shoulders shed their tension with an audible crack and pop, then nodded in agreement, “Blame it all on my wise old Owly, he said; Willard keeps me alive. I’d be worthless without him.”
#
By the time the train shuddered to a stop at the platform in Washington, Drum knew what he had to do. He handed over his film to the driver who met him, and sent him off to Eric, then found a window and bought another ticket before taking a cab to his apartment. Drum set his bags down inside his door and phoned James. Judy was home from the hospital, James told him, with no plans to return. She meant to die at home and live with her family in the meantime. She was in some pain, but so far they had been able to keep her relatively comfortable.
Drum listened until James waited silent for his excuse, “I’m on the train out of here tonight, James. I’ll be in Asheton tomorrow.”
“Judy will be glad to see you Drum. She didn’t expect you to come.” Drum knew James didn’t mean it as an indictment, but the words carried a sting all the same. James went on, “How long will we have you with us down here?”
“I don’t know, James. Awhile. I’m coming home.”
Next Drum rang Eric at the magazine, told him simply, “I have to go south now.”
Eric sounded beyond annoyed, “You can’t go right now. We have you booked already for another assignment.”
“I have family sick in Carolina, Eric.”
“Photographers with this magazine shouldn’t have family.”
Drum held his breath for a half second, then snapped back, “Eric, you are absolutely right,” hung up the phone, then began packing as much stuff as he could carry with him on the train.
So one more time Drum found himself on a train watching the sun rise over Virginia hills as he was carried among mountains and rivers to the one place on earth where people would be glad to see him without any consideration of how much money he might make for them. He knew he would have to leave again. He had to make a living the only way he knew. But he would choose the times and the places. And whatever sorts of photographs he agreed to make, Drum was determined to make no more pictures of wars and desolations. He wouldn’t get rich freelancing, but he knew he could make a living at it, and he wouldn’t have to live the rest of his life among strangers.
He went to the dining car, sat in a booth by himself. A somber waiter came to take his order. Drum looked up at the man hopefully. “You got any grits on this train?”
The waiter’s instant smile revealed a startling display of white teeth, “Sure enough we do. Somebody must have known you were riding today.”
#
Caleb Two Trees waited at Asheton in the rain with Drum’s battered old pickup. They scrunched into the cab with all Drum’s baggage piled around his legs and on his lap. In spite of the gloomy weather and his friend’s illness, Drum felt an unaccustomed lightness as they puttered and rattled out of town. His life felt accessible to him in a way it hadn’t in a long time.
He watched the wipers herding rain on the windshield, listened to the clack and flap of their cycling, and noted the sound of the engine, “This thing seems to be running a lot better than I recall, Caleb.”
Caleb glanced at him, obviously pleased that Drum had noticed, “I done a little work on it, Drum.”
“You didn’t tell me you were spending money on my account down here. I must owe you some.”
“’Twarn’t much. If it keeps on running good, we can settle up, if you want. I’ve been driving it some, don’t you know.”
Drum asked the question, dreading the answer, “How is everybody?” Caleb kept his eyes on the road, “Miss Judy seems holding her own, I reckon. She’s mostly in bed now. Sits out on the porch sometimes. Ronan’s off in the army, says there’s talk they’ll get sent to Ireland for training. David’s took a year off from State to help James, he says, but I think it’s mostly to be home with his mother. Pa’s been down in his back, hasn’t been able to work much this year, but I took up some slack by working for James more.”
“You keeping up with school?”
“Ma would kill me if I didn’t. Judy helps me study when she feels up to it. You want me to drop you off at their place, or you going down to your house first?”
“Let me go down to Annie’s house first and get cleaned up. You can take the truck if you need it.”
“Why does everybody always call it Annie’s house?”
“Because it will always be Annie’s house. I don’t guess you knew Annie, did you?”
“Don’t reckon I did, but I’ve heard plenty about the Warwoman. Was she your kin?”
“She was my teacher, and the best friend I’ll ever know. She would have helped you study.”
“Like she did Ronan?”
“Like she did Ronan.”
“He told me about that. He talked about that woman like he was in love with her.”
“All of us wandering boys loved Annie, Caleb. All of us still do.”
To be continued…
Next week, in Chapter Eight, Part Two- collisions between past and future.
Walk in hope-
-henry