A man in full, p.87
A Man in Full, page 87
“Want me to give you a hand, Mr. Croker?” asked Connie.
“Nawwww.,” said Charlie, “I was jes … jes …” Great weariness. “I was jes … I don’t know what I was jes doin’,” said Charlie.
“You were jes feeling sorry for yourself, Charlie,” said Serena. “That’s what you were jes doing. If you’d put that much energy into doing your therapy, you could be over all this.”
By now she was right beside him. She wore a pair of white linen slacks that tapered down to a narrow cuff over the ankle and a white silk blouse with yellow candy stripes. She was trying to chase the gnats away from her big blue eyes. She didn’t have to say another word. It was plain that she resented this escape to Turpmtine. This was the last place in the world she would choose to be in the summer.
Charlie started up the stairs, unaided. Clackclack … clackclack …
“Why do they make that noise, Charlie?” she said with exasperation, brushing her hand in front of her eyes about ninety times a minute.
“Why does who make which noise?” asked Charlie.
Obviously peeved: “That clackclack … clackclack.”
“Well, that’s jes the—”
“It’s not jes anything, Charlie. It’s those crutches.”
“There’s nothing—”
“Are they loose? Were they clattering that way when you got them?”
“I don’t know, I s’pose—”
“Well, let’s just get inside before we all get bitten to death.” By now Serena was flailing her hand before her eyes and screwing her face up into a Serena epitome of frustrated anger.
So Charlie headed up the stairs. Clackclack … clackclack … clackclack … Every clackclack now sounded to Charlie like a pair of rifle shots. He was dead tired, his knee hurt like hell, his brain felt as if it were the black part of a tornado, he was seeing the monkey, and his wife didn’t like the way his crutches sounded. His crutches! If he had had the energy and the confidence he used to have, he would have cut off that line of remarks in an instant. As it was, her observations about aluminum crutches became yet more trash sucked up by the tornado in his skull.
The Big House had always had a decor that was more feminine than not. There were a lot of Chinese-yellow walls with delicate, spidery white plaster moldings, in the “Adam mode,” as Ronald Vine had called it, whatever that actually meant. These were apparently the original decorations of the house, so much a part of a bygone era that no one, not even Ronald, had ever dared alter them. After all, Bygone Era was very much on the mind of anyone who bought a South Georgia quail plantation. As a result the house also still had things such as sliding pocket doors with elaborately etched glass windows, with which you could close off the dining room from the back parlor, and bays in the front and back parlors with four windows each, two of which had curved frames with curved glass to match. The interior of the Big House was where the woman, presumably the wife, could express her taste and refinement. The rest of the place was given over to Man the Hunter.
Even though it was on no more than four hours’ notice, Durwood had managed to soldier up a house staff for Cap’m Charlie. Auntie Bella would be there, along with two assistant cooks, and Mason would be there with a couple of the boys to help out with errands, lifting, and suchlike, and of course Durwood himself would be around, and Connie would be there. So it wasn’t exactly that Cap’m Charlie had been left to his own devices.
With Connie’s help, he had had himself ensconced in an easy chair in the Big House’s “den,” as it was called, the room that had been the Big House’s male redoubt before Charlie had built the Gun House. Compared to the big room of the Gun House, the den looked positively effete. No boars’ heads, no stuffed snakes, no battalions of upright guns; instead, a rather subtle form of paneling: heart of virgin pine with some School of Audubon paintings of quail adorning it. Charlie found the den peaceful. The roof of the porch outside shielded you from the sun. It was soothing. Heart of virgin pine and quail paintings were fine. He didn’t particularly want to be reminded of tusks and fangs right now. He picked up the Book. Connie was off with Durwood, with Charlie’s blessing, taking a look at the plantation, or at least the outbuildings and the kennels and the horses.
He opened the Book at random to a passage that said: “Just as every skill is strengthened by practice, so is every bad habit made worse by repetition. If you lie in bed for ten days, and then get up and try to take a walk, you will see how quickly your legs have lost their strength.” Christalmighty, Epictetus had been reading his mail! He had come as close to lying in bed for ten days as they’d let him, and it was true: his legs had no strength left!
His eyes came to rest on a painting of a covey of quail hiding in a huddle in tall grass. The artist had managed to make it look as if the birds were all crouching, frightened, ready to explode upward at the first sign of danger. That was what he, Charlie, was like now, hiding, crouched, in the tall grass, panicked to the point of taking off in any direction.
All right, suppose he went to the press conference and told the truth about Fareek Fanon? Suppose he said that Fanon is the epitome of the arrogant, obnoxious, swaggering athlete who thinks he is elevated above ordinary standards of right and wrong? As soon as the words passed his lips his worldly possessions would be gone—and he’d be branded as a racist bigot.
He was still staring at the covey of quail when Serena materialized in the doorway. She came toward Charlie with a smile he couldn’t decipher. Pleasure? Sarcasm? He couldn’t tell.
She sat down in an easy chair near his and said, “So—how does it feel to be back at Turpmtine?”
Charlie couldn’t read her expression or weigh her words at all. “It’s relaxing,” he said finally.
“Relaxing from what?” said Serena. When he made no response, she said, “Do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“What is going on, this whole business with Mr. Roger White?”
“Well—”
“And don’t just tell me that he’s trying to get you involved in some case of his. That doesn’t make sense, because here is this … this man who dares—dares!—to come marching into our house uninvited and insisting you give him an answer about something or other. The Charlie Croker I married would have picked him up bodily and thrown him out. I couldn’t stand to see you … cringing like that!”
Charlie stared at her for a moment. “Well, you’re right, this is a lot more than … than … I’ve made it out to be. In fact, it’s a mess.”
He didn’t trust Serena, didn’t trust his own wife, who had married him for better, not for better or for worse, with the information he was about to impart to her. He sighed and then resolved to tell her anyway. After all, she was his wife and had a right to know.
He told her step by step. Lawyer Roger White’s initial offer to trade him freedom from PlannersBanc’s bankruptcy machinery in exchange for a flattering public statement about Fareek Fanon, Georgia Tech’s Charlie Croker of today … How White had demonstrated his side’s power to keep PlannersBanc on a leash … His appalling meeting with Fareek Fanon, who got in as many insults and contemptuous snorts as possible … How he wrestled with the angels over the whole dilemma … How could he betray Inman, especially after volunteering to help in any way he could in having Fanon punished for what he had done? … But how could he turn down such a fairly innocuous way of saving his entire empire from certain ruin? Besides, he would be doing something for the entire city by calming troubled waters. The Journal-Constitution would no doubt give him a pat on the back for that … But Inman would be furious, and everybody who knew and liked Inman, which was a lot of people, would smell something fishy … And did he, Charlie, think Fanon was capable of raping Elizabeth Armholster? He wouldn’t put it past him for a minute … He told her how he swayed this way and that, wrestled with the angels, and finally called Lawyer White, who had turned out to be pretty obnoxious himself, and said yes, he agreed to the bargain … and how ever since then Lawyer White had treated him in the most condescending manner you could imagine … how he, Charlie, who used to pride, himself on making decisions and then putting the dilemmas behind him, was getting nowhere with this one. On the one hand, if he came out in favor of Fanon, he would save all his possessions and be safe from the bank but lose all his friends, the Piedmont Driving Club set and every other set. But if he refused, he would lose all his possessions, right down to the house they lived in and the cars they drove—and they would still lose all their friends, because the sort of friends they had made were the sort who couldn’t stand people who couldn’t afford to go out and blow $300 on dinner for four at Mordecai’s. His dilemma was just as hopeless as it had ever been.
All the while, as he told the story, Serena stared at him, with her left elbow resting on an arm of the chair and one side of her face resting on the heel of her hand. She scarcely even blinked. But toward the end she began to smile ever so slightly. It was a benign smile, however.
When at last he finished, Serena surprised him. Instead of acting angry, sarcastic, or put out, she took the heel of her hand away from her face and rested her weight on her forearm and smiled—sweetly—and said in a sweet, low voice:
“Charlie, I only wish you’d told me all this before. This is a terrible thing to have bottled up inside yourself.”
“Well—”
“Really it is. And you probably thought there was no one who could possibly help you and therefore you didn’t want anyone to know.”
“That’s true,” said Charlie. “When I think how I told Inman I’d do anything I could to help him—shook his hand—practically swore a blood oath—on the other hand, I’m sixty years old and I’m about to be wiped out.” .
“Charlie—”
“—they’ve already taken the airplanes, three of the cars, and you know what would—”
“Charlie—”
“—would be next—”
“Charlie!”
“What?”
Once she had his attention, she returned to the small, soft, intimate voice. “I have something to tell you that may make it easier for you.”
Charlie looked at her, seriously doubting that what she said was true, but all he said was: “What is it?”
“Elizabeth made me swear I wouldn’t tell anyone, not even you.”
“Elizabeth?”
“Elizabeth Armholster. I told her—but I don’t care, Charlie, this is something you have to know.”
He just stared at her.
“You remember that night at the Driving Club, the night you and Inman went off into the ballroom and had a talk?”
“Yeah,” said Charlie with a resigned twist to his lips, “I remember. That was the night I swore to Inman I’d back him up in this thing.” He shook his head.
“Well, before you start thinking you’re bound by some sacred oath—did you know I had a talk with Elizabeth that same night, at the Driving Club?”
“I remember you going off into the Bamboo Room with her.”
“Exactly. And you want to know what she told me?”
“What?”
“About that night? That Friday night of Freaknik? She hooked up with Fanon.”
“She what?”
“Hooked up with him.” She gave Charlie the sort of stare, accompanied by a slight parting of the lips, that you give people when you’re unveiling a major revelation.
“What’s hooked up?”
“You don’t know hooked up? That’s something boys and girls do now. You really never heard of it?”
“No.”
“Well, today they don’t talk about ‘dates’ anymore. They go out in groups, a group of girls over here and a group of boys over there, all looking for a party. To find a party you go to places where boys and girls hang out, such as the Wreck Room.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a restaurant near the Tech campus. The Wreck Room, as in ‘the Ramblin’ Wreck.’ So here are five girls, including Elizabeth, squeezed into a booth, and it’s after eleven and they’re still looking for a party. The next thing they know, four black students slide into the booth opposite them, and everybody in the restaurant knows who one of them is: Fareek Fanon. Pretty soon Fanon and his friends are hitting on the white girls, but it’s all very playful, not crude or suggestive.”
“Hitting on?”
“Flirting with, coming on to. That’s what they say now, ‘hitting on.’ Elizabeth said they—she and her friends—didn’t want to appear standoffish, since everybody in the restaurant is looking at them and Fanon is Tech’s poster boy, and so forth and so on. Anyway, Fanon says there’s a party going on at his apartment, which isn’t all that far away. Naturally, you can say in hindsight, that should have started the girls thinking. If there’s a party going on at his apartment, what’s he doing here? But the fact is, Elizabeth and two of the girls decided to go to the party.”
“What about the other two?” said Charlie.
“They said, ‘Unh-unh, not me,’ and went home. One thing you ought to realize, Charlie. Elizabeth’s not a bashful girl. She’ll take you up on a dare. In certain ways she’s like Inman or, for that matter, Ellen, who I think is a holy terror. So the three girls arrive at Fanon’s apartment, and of course there’s nobody there. Elizabeth says, ‘I thought you said there’s a party.’ To which Fanon says, ‘Well, now there is!’ So now the boys and the girls have found a party, and that’s when the hooking up can begin.”
“But what the hell does it mean?” said Charlie.
“That’s what I’m getting to. The party’s in progress, people are drinking, and a boy is attracted to a particular girl—or a girl is attracted to a particular boy—remember one thing, Charlie, it can happen that way, too—the girl can start it—and one of them nods toward the back or wherever there’s an empty room, and right there, on the spur of the moment, the two of them go to that room and hook up.”
“But what—”
“I’m telling you,” said Serena in the same soft, confidential voice. “It always refers to sex, but it can be anything from kissing, along with, you know, some ‘feeling up,’ to going all the way, in which case it’s called ‘majorly hooking up.’ Now, I’d heard of all that, but Elizabeth introduced me to a term I’d never heard of. She’s ten years younger than I am—so I’d never heard of it. And that’s score.”
“Score?”
“Not scored with but just score. It used to be that boys would brag about ‘scoring with’ some girl, meaning getting her to go all the way. But score is a word girls use. A girl will say, ‘I scored Jack last night, as if she’s ‘gotten’ the guy to go all the way and it’s a terrific accomplishment. So anyway, Elizabeth hooked up with Fanon. They went into his bedroom.”
“Jesus Christ!” said Charlie. “He asked her or she asked him?”
“She says he asked her, but, Charlie, I’m not so sure.”
“Godalmighty. What did she say went on?”
“She says she didn’t have anything but a little mild hooking up on her mind. But she’d been drinking, and things progressed a lot more majorly than she’d intended. Meanwhile, the other two girls, her friends, they’re not having a very terrific time. They want to go home, but they don’t want to leave Elizabeth behind. By now, according to Elizabeth, her underpants are off and Fanon is trying to get on top of her and she’s protesting, she’s saying no, she doesn’t want to go all the way. But Fanon—this is Elizabeth talking—Fanon used his superior strength and shoved her back flat on the bed and had his way with her. Just about that time the door opens, and it’s the other two girls looking for her, and she starts saying, ‘Make him stop! Get him off me!’”
“Jesus God,” said Charlie, “had the guy actually … penetrated?”
“I don’t know,” said Serena. “I couldn’t bring myself to ask her that. But I don’t believe her version of how it happened in the first place. I think she was just drunk enough to decide she wanted to score Fareek Fanon. I can’t think of any other reason why a girl would let a man remove her underpants.”
“You mean—”
“If you want to know what I think, I think she was the one who gave him the eye to hook up, and she ended up doing exactly what she had in mind.”
“Are you saying—”
“Exactly,” said Serena. “I think the only reason this whole ‘rape’ business got started was she was surprised by those two girls and had to come up with a quick explanation, and so she said, ‘Make him stop!’ and ‘Get him off me!’ or whatever it was she said. You’ll notice she didn’t say anything to Inman and Ellen, not at first she didn’t.”
