So, what would he tell her he had heard about her? He wasn’t a native, with lots of friends. What did anyone outside her family and Dr. Thompson (and Emmalene and Hattie’s family, she supposed) really know about her? Her guess was they had some general idea, something in the general vicinity of her condition, her history.
She let her eyes linger on Gordon Ray, standing there waiting on her, now checking his watch. It wasn’t yet five-thirty but it was close. He pushed his hands back into his pockets, rocked a bit on his heels. He looked pleased, possibly a little nervous. She felt sorry for him, just then. But she also allowed herself to be pleased that a man would want to ask her to dinner, knowing or having heard God knows what about her. And then she left from the same door she’d come in through, around the corner and out of sight of Schoenhof’s and Mr. Gordon Ray, and took the long way around to where she’d parked the little yellow Ford, got in it, and drove up the hill and out of town. Feeling light, in a way, as if she’d escaped a difficult situation. And as far as she knew, she probably had.
She supposed she would have to refrain from taking lunch in town for a while, in order to avoid running into Gordon Ray. She would rather seem to be mysterious than cruel. She felt sorry for him, but of course she was not exactly sentimental about loneliness.
SHE STOPPED AT Dr. Thompson’s house on the way home and told him about her encounter. He grew serious, leaning forward and listening as if she were giving a lecture on something. When she finished he sat back, his expression relaxing, as if he were thinking on it.
“I know who that young man is,” he said. “I believe he’s not from around here, originally. I believe he moved here from Tennessee.”
“That’s what he said.”
“You know people in Mississippi and Alabama can be a little snooty toward people from Tennessee.”
“How come is that?”
“I don’t know for sure. But my guess would be they think it’s not quite Deep South, not quite Appalachian, kind of a state without a clear pedigree.”
“What about Louisiana?”
“France, lower part. Northeast part pretty much east Texas.”
“Georgia.”
“Oh, kind of piedmont in the north, Florida cracker in the south. Middle part’s Southern, I guess.”
“Well, what about Florida, then?”
“Florida? Florida is nothing. Just what folks slipped and slid down into the swamps, couldn’t hold on up here.”
She laughed. They’d made a game.
“People sure can get picky about all kinds of silly things,” she said.
“You got that right. I expect it would have been all right to go to dinner with that boy. Then again, you’re probably right, he’s probably been a little lonely and probably would have pressed you to get serious. Probably sooner than one would like, given he must be closer to forty than not. Wants to start a family.”
“That’s what I figured.”
He said, “You know, the Greeks believed that physical love was the lowest form of love. That true love was akin to divine love. Or something like that. That pure love between two people existed on a higher plane.”
“What did they mean by that?”
He looked into his glass, shook the ice, and shrugged.
“Well, they were pantheistic, of course. I guess they meant that the highest form of love somehow transcended physical love. Was more powerful. I guess I mean to say that, if you get down to it, you have loved. You’ve had love. And as I understand it, or it seems to me, anyway, that once you have something like that, you have it forever. So it doesn’t matter that you were not allowed to stay with or even marry that Key boy. In fact what you had with him, and still do in your memory, in your mind, is something greater than many people have in the end, when they find themselves trapped in the business of love and marriage. Do you understand?”
“I’m sure I will,” she said. “Someday.”
“What will you do with the rest of your life, Janie? When you’re truly alone.”
“I have been studying that.”
“How do you mean?”
“I’ve been studying it all my life.”
They were quiet then, looking frankly at one another without discomfort. Interrupted by the call of one of his peacocks over near the edge of the woods.
By this time, as he’d predicted, the doctor had far more peacocks than he could count. The yard was populated with cocks and hens as if it were some kind of strolling park in a big fancy city like New York or Paris, France, birds the leisure class of a Sunday afternoon. No doubt the doctor’s reputation as an eccentric had been greatly enhanced by their presence.
“How come the foxes and coyotes don’t get them?” she said.
“ ’Cause they can fly, I guess. Run pretty well, too. Listen, now, are you hungry?”
“As a matter of fact, I am. Thinking about eating at Schoenhof’s gave me an appetite.”
She stayed for supper.
After eating, between late afternoon and evening, they sat in the back yard while he had another glass of bourbon. She agreed to join him if he made it mostly water and ice.
“Don’t tell Hattie I’ve allowed you to corrupt me,” she said.
“Aw,” he said. “I know she takes a nip from my supply now and then. At least she doesn’t try to hide it by watering it back up to where it was in the bottle.”
He went into the house and came out, hobbling just a little, handed her the drink. A cock flew by so close it almost startled her into spilling bourbon onto her blouse.
“Good lord!” she said.
The cock landed on a tree limb at the edge of the yard with a honking sound. Dr. Thompson laughed, sat down.
“You know,” he said then, “you being startled like that reminds me. When I was a boy, for a while when I was small, I was afraid of things. I don’t know why. But I was afraid of just about everything. I can’t even say exactly what, just generally afraid. My parents were worried. I was an only child. I may have been adopted, but if I was they never told me. I don’t much favor either one of them, never did. Anyway, we lived on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama, in a big house, with woods nearby, like these. My father was a surgeon and I think he wanted me to follow him in that. Anyway, at some point I grew curious about those woods and gathered up the courage to go into them by myself. At first I was afraid of every sound and every little motion from this critter or that. Scared of the swoop of a bird, which would come out of nowhere, it seemed, not like when it happened in our yard. But gradually, as I did overcome my fear, and was able to sit quietly in a little clearing, or in the crook of a small tree, or beside a creek or whatever, I started to study the animals — mostly squirrels and chipmunks and armadillos, every now and then a fox or raccoon — and the birds. Study their habits best I could, I mean. And then I became mostly fascinated with the birds. I became so fascinated with them that I completely forgot about my fears. I just about forgot everything else that summer. I must have been eight or nine, I don’t know. Maybe ten years. I’d had some kind of elementary science at school, I think. And my father gave me a copy of Audubon’s book, and a BB gun, one of the first Daisys, I think, and some old surgical tools, and helped me in my crude efforts at dissection. I was fascinated by how these birds’ bodies were put together. How complex it was. I would pluck their feathers before dissection and study how the parts of their bodies fit into one another, before I removed the skin and then after. I would carefully skin them. I never did skin them with feathers for stuffing. I wasn’t interested in that. I made drawings.” He laughed at himself. “I decided I wanted to become a zoologist, pure science, much to my father’s disappointment. He thought I would grow out of it, though, and I guess I did.