“Then write my speech! I need ten minutes, and it’s been driving me up a wall.”
Now it was another February, month of the odd day every fourth year to reset the calendar, month of the day given to St. Valentine... Which? There were two saints of the name, you know.
And the clouds outside the descending aircraft were as filthy as the darkness in which I’d awakened three nights ago. The colors in frozen frame... her face in death, partly obscured by a swirling of water... the sounds of bullfrogs harrumping, the smell of swampy Louisiana bayou earth... then only the smothering darkness.
Luminous dial of the bedside clock: 3:00 A.M. I’d got dressed, gone out, and walked the quiet streets of Georgetown until the eastern sky showed gray.
From a phone booth I had called my secretary. No apology for rousting her out of bed. “I won’t be in today, nor for the next several days.”
Her voice cleared the cobwebs of sleep. “I don’t understand, Mr. Barnard.”
“It isn’t necessary for you to do so.”
“But your appointments, correspondence, the report—”
“Make excuses, Miss Clowerson! You’re very good at that sort of thing. Parcel out my chores, take up the slack, use your Washington logic.”
“Well, I can always say that someone very close to you suddenly died.”
I slammed the phone in its hook. Damn bitch! Damn unwitting, cruel, cruddy bitch!
A shuttle flight. A taxicab. Val surprised, her face lighting happily, heartbreakingly, when she saw me standing with a packed overnight and garment bag.
A kiss. Hug. A herding into the apartment with its view of Central Park.
“You’re going to Wickens this year with me!”
“Isn’t it time I met your mother, and this George you’re always talking about, and Keith, Lissa, and Reba who runs the house like a Captain Bligh, and the others?”
“Oh, Cody... I’m so glad you could arrange it. God, this will be the best Wickens year ever!”
Now her elbow nudged me. “Hey, Cody... Memphis below. Then a short commuter flight and you’ll experience Wickens, no less.”
My sham yawn was convincing enough. She’d turned her attention from my closed eyes to look out the window as the jet broke cloud level, and Memphis and the Mississippi River spread like a far-flung relief map.
She laughed. “He was a great songwriter, but he was wrong on one point.”
“Who is that?”
“Ira Gershwin... the lyricist. Look down there at the city, the farms, fields, docks, river craft just rolling along. I ask you. Is that an Old Man River? Male chauvinism, that’s what. Old Man River indeed! Any dummy from this part of the world knows the Mississippi is female.”
Our shoulders pressed as we both looked down before the plane wheeled for approach and the wing cut the river out of sight.
“Pure female,” I agreed. “Giver of life. Mercurial in mood from her icy beginnings in the north to her turgid joining with the Gulf. Comforter. Angry mistress, when she spews over her banks, scorning the levees trying to hem her in.”
“Don’t forget her mysteries.” Val smiled. “Beneath the warm, peaceful invitation of her surface are snags to rip the stoutest boat to pieces.”
“Oh, her mysteries fascinate me most.”
“I’m glad you understand, Cody.” She tweaked my nose. “How could I respect a man who didn’t see a truth so clearly?”
“Hell, it’s obvious. If the Mississippi is an old man, then the Statue of Liberty is a transvestite.”
She laughed, but I had a shriveling coldness inside.
For the nth time I thought to myself: Keep her away from Wickens, Louisiana, this Valentine year. If you can’t think of a logical reason, let her think you’ve lost your mind. Coerce, plead. Do it physically. Lock her in a room someplace and stand guard at the door until the Valentine hour is past.
But somehow I knew that this was not the alternative future that would work. Neither Wickens nor the forces would vanish at my whim. Wickens would be there all the years of her life. The issue had to be settled. There was no escape or normal safety until the issue was put to rest.
2
Val and I were among a trickle of passengers exiting the commuter plane in Wickens. We were hardly down the ramp steps when a man and woman gathered us in, beaming joy, smothering Val, pumping my hand.
“Mom, George, this is the man!”
“Wow! Toss you for this one, Val. Hi, Cody. I’m Elva.”
“I know,” I said, smiling. “Would have known you anywhere.” And it was true. She was the gracefully aging pattern from which Val had been cut.
“And this is George,” Elva said.
“Glad to know you, George.”
“Likewise.” His handshake was good — firm, but not bone crushing. He was a man who didn’t have to display, to prove anything. Mentally I agreed with what Val had said about George Crandall. He was a presence. You either liked him immediately or shied away. I liked the little echo of gentleness in the boom of his voice. I liked the intelligence of the perceptive brown eyes in the face that might have been carved from oak with a trench knife.
This retired army officer, this Colonel George R. Crandall, was second father to Valentina. He was hardly the stereotype southern colonel. No fine-boned aristocrat, no white Vandyke, no broad-brimmed, floppy panama hat or string necktie. He was a tanned, fit light heavyweight in sandals, poplin slacks, and a knitted shirt on which the corners of the collar curled slightly. A man who sweated easily but wouldn’t particularly mind heat or cold.
“Would you like a drink?” he was asking.
“You kidding?” Val said. “We won’t have to wait for the luggage. I want a drink — at home.”
Elva drove. Her car was a modest Chevy. The day was lovely, February cool but touched with that southern Louisiana sense of semitropic in the breath from the Gulf, the river, the bayous and swamps. George pointed out landmarks of possible interest and asked about my work. It was the usual, expected small conversation, but his interest was real, quick, lively.
My impression of Wickens was of modern hustle and a scorn for the passage of time. Taking sustenance from its busy waterfront and natural gas industry, Wickens was state-of-the-moment shopping centers, half a dozen high-rise buildings over a downtown where revitalization had preserved the more historic sites. Wickens was also previous-century on streets where time had been barred, where there was still a corner grocery, a drugstore in an ancient building... it surely had a marble-counter soda fountain. A statue of a Confederate soldier stood guard over a park where old men played checkers beneath hoary live oaks and aged palm trees and pines bearded with Spanish moss. A few young mothers chatted on benches, rocking baby carriages and watching older children at play near an iron-railed fountain. Tract homes and condos hadn’t conquered Wickens. There were broad, tree-shaded streets of impeccable old gingerbread houses from which maidens in crinoline might burst forth at any moment to prepare for a lawn party.
George saw my interest in passing details. “Get to you, if you’re not careful,” he laughed. “Best damn spot on earth — except during hurricane season. Phobia of mine.”
He didn’t strike me as a man of any phobias, which just goes to show.
“Last year, by God, when Charlie was taking on such a load coming up through the Gulf, twisting a drilling platform like it was wet spaghetti, Elva loaded me onto a plane and we shopped and saw the sights in Montgomery, Charlie having aimed straight for Wickens. You were in ’Nam, I understand. Jesus... in those parts I was once in a typhoon... left me without a nail on a single finger. You strike me as a tolerable sportsman, Cody. Golf? Fish? Maybe one night you’d like to break out a watersled and try your hand at frog gigging? Nobody cooks fresh frog legs quite like Elva.”