Roxanna Slade Part 1

ROXANNA SLADE.

by REYNOLDS PRICE.

ONE.

Every time somebody calls me a saint, I repeat my name and tell them no saint was ever named Roxy. They know of course I was seldom called Roxy, though back in my childhood I tried to persuade my family to call me Roxy instead of the Anna which everybody chose but my brother Ferny. He'd call me Rox at least half the time and was my big favorite. For practical purposes Anna Dane was my maiden name. I never enjoyed it. Even now after so long it has never seemed to be me. Roxanna means Dawn or Daybreak which is fine, but my family never called anybody by their whole name.

So through the years I've consulted several child-naming books in hopes of discovering some good luck in Anna. But they just say the name is an English version of the Hebrew Hannah and that Hannah was the name of the prophet Samuel's mother and also Christ's maternal grandmother. Both women were likely saints, and I never felt the least kinship to either one. There was a popular song years back called "Hard-Hearted Hannah, the Vamp of Savannah, G.a." I've wished more than once she could have been me. But not one person who's ever counted deeply called me any more than nicknames, no one that is except a tall boy named Larkin Slade. And he died young, leaving me off stride for the rest of my life.

In a way Lark's death was the start of my life which is strange to think of. I was grown when he went, just barely grown. But I've given that odd fact a good deal of thought through the intervening years. Whenever I've heard about people's childhoods--how urgent they are to future health and pleasure--I've always felt that my childhood scarcely amounted to more than a dream, a pleasant enough dream with no grave fault, no hard stepmothers or beasts in the night but a made-up childhood all the same, certainly nothing real enough to cause the bitter pain I've since known and am bound to have given.

I had kind parents with no bad traits except my mother's tendency to put on flesh and the plug tobacco that my father chewed as neatly as any horse chews hay. They never had a great deal more money than it took to get from one day to the next.

Father ran a store with groceries and dry goods that ranged from gingham to plow points but was always in dutch. Still none of us children ever went to bed hungry or lacked clean clothes sufficient to the season, and we were respected on every side.

In the kind of town where I grew up, few distinctions were made on account of money unless you were outright redheaded trash. Truth was, you were either white or black. In those days we said colored if we meant to be courteous and not hurt people, and the color of your skin pretty much said all there was to say. The Bible forbade calling anybody common (acts 1015, "What G.o.d hath cleansed, that call not thou common"). So even if they were the sorriest white skin ever conceived, the worst you could call them was ordinary.

There were four Dane children in my generation, counting me--two girls, two boys. It was not a big family for that day and age. I and my sister Leela were the second and third children. There was one brother two years older than I and one who was younger than both us girls. So Leela and I came very close to raising the boys once Muddie's kidneys began to fail. Muddie was our mother. That failure took long years but always kept her unreliable for bearing serious weight and pressure.

Still my brothers were good boys in those days, just normally wild before they grew up and left home naturally. How they fared after moving away is a long grim tale that may not belong here, depending on where my story leads me. Both of them perished in sad circ.u.mstances well before they deserved, one of them leaving a wife and children that I've scarcely known. But I can see each of them in my mind's eye, fine as they were in their fortunate days and p.r.o.ne to gentleness till they each found some drug to lose their minds for--money in one case and pills in the other.

For instance it was through the good will of my younger brother Ferny that I met Larkin Slade and loved him on sight. Ferny had met Lark the summer I was nineteen when Fern went to work for a bachelor cousin of ours named Roscoe Dane far up on the Roanoke River, a cranky old bird who smelled like bacon and tried to cultivate rented land with insufficient help or truly good sense and was always in straits, though all of us liked him.

His nearest neighbors were a family of Slades.

There was old Major Slade who'd lost half a leg and several fingers in the Civil War, his second wife Olivia who was far more beautiful than any woman since, and numerous children of all kinds and ages by each of the wives. Most of the young Slades had grown up and left with very little trace of themselves like children in old-time pioneer stories who bid you farewell and cross the far hills to vanish forever.

The Slade place had been up there way more than a century, just above the flood plain of the Roanoke when the river was wild. And though it was only eight miles from our home, Ferny stayed gone forever till Roscoe's cotton was sold in late September. When Fern got back to us in time to start his last year of school, he was browner than any walnut chair. And very nearly all he could offer by way of memory from a long summer's work was praise for somebody named Larkin Slade.

Lark Slade deserved all the praise he got, as I soon learned thanks to Ferny's good-hearted descriptions. My birthday falls on October 8th, and on the year in question--1920 --I was blue for several causes as the date drew near. My sister Leela had fallen out with me for fairly normal sisterly reasons having to do with a blouse we shared. We'd spent too many years in each other's faces, and Muddie had taken my sister's side as she generally did. In those days in any case there were so many souls in every family that you never made much of any birthday even if you were well off, so I had no great hopes for my twentieth.

Then on October 7th when Ferny had been back at home for a few weeks, he walked in from the post office with a card addressed in a strong man's hand and called me aside to whisper a plan. "Let's give this whole bunch a big d.a.m.ned surprise." Fern always called our family this whole bunch. Then he said we could "borrow" Father's car before sunrise and motor up to Larkin's place for the day. Tomorrow would be Friday. Ferny had shaved Friday off more school weeks than not, and I didn't try to object on those grounds. Anyhow he flashed the postcard to show me Lark's signature. It looked like the map of splendid distant mountains.

I recalled Father never used the car on week days. Muddie couldn't have driven a goat cart in a crisis, much less a car. And since n.o.body then paid a sc.r.a.p of attention to a driver's license, Ferny stole the car several times a year. He could start the Model T under water if called upon; and he'd run off with it and two especially ordinary girls the previous spring, staying nearly a week and requiring a hunt by the sheriff to find.

"It'll drive them all crazy," Fern said to tempt me. He was smiling down strongly at Lark Slade's postcard. By them Fern meant our family of course, and of course he was right. He and I were mostly the troublemakers, though the troubles were slight by comparison with any family's now.

I doubted Fern knew my birthday was coming that very next day. I chose not to tell him. I just nodded and smiled and said I'd be ready.

I could still make choices at a moment's notice, and seeing two things had made me say Yes--the mischief in Ferny's bright copper-brown eyes and the sight of Larkin Slade's whole name in his own rushing hand. Old as I was, and more than half of all girls near twenty then were married, I ought to have smelled the danger before us. I was old enough not to join my brother's foolishness and trick our father, a peaceful soul. I very well knew Ferny always overreached. But even a girl about to turn twenty --me, an earnest creature who took duty seriously--couldn't sense death coming on a cool fall day.

At the last minute before Fern and I crept out in the dim dawn to start the car, I pictured three family faces at breakfast--Muddie and Father and Leela of course. (my older brother was long gone, living in Shelby with a dreadful wife and an unloved daughter with a neck as long as any wet week.) They wouldn't know where on Earth I'd gone or whether I'd departed with a mean grudge against them.

So I took a stub pencil and left a quick note on the kitchen table to say I'd asked Ferny to take me off for a birthday outing. I needed the air to improve my low disposition which I knew had been getting on everybody's nerves. We'd be back by supper (in those days dinner was

the midday meal). Again I knew they wouldn't be needing the car. I meant for the note to spare Ferny's hide. Our parents had never laid a hand on me or Leela; and if we were late, as I hoped we'd be, I could always say we'd had a puncture or another small mishap which Fern had handled miraculously.

When we got to the main road, Fern stopped the Model T and faced me broadside. Turned out he'd seen me leave the note, which I thought was secret. Of course he'd intended to make harmless mischief, and I'd ruined his plan. For the hundredth time Fern said to me "Rox, you going to be a d.a.m.ned saint all my life? You can do it on your own time, but don't go shouldering stuff for me. I've borrowed this car for my own reasons. You're along for the ride."

I asked him why, if he was so upset, he hadn't just reached back and torn up my note.

Fern looked at me long enough to draw a long breath. Then as he moved us back onto the road, he said "Please just try to live on the Earth. You'll get to Heaven in time." He really wasn't mad but his skin had blotched red. And though the morning light wasn't truly that cold, his breath smoked from him like blue incense.

I said I had no expectation of Heaven, which even then was partly true, and that I was sorry.

Fern said "Don't be. Never be sorry again in your life or my life anyhow--I'm living forever." By then he could grin.

But I knew he was serious. I told him I wouldn't; and when my brother moved us both on down the bright road, I believed myself. I was not the cause of anything harmful yet done in my life. And I never would be, or so I hoped in my belated innocence and virgin folly.

The trip took us longer than we'd expected, mainly because back then most roads were narrow and cut by deep ruts with treacherous sandbars. We had one puncture that took awhile to mend. You couldn't cross the yard in those days without having at least one flat tire. And Fern stopped three times to show off his skills to boys we pa.s.sed, his old school mates who'd abandoned school at the legal age which was then fourteen. I'd climb down and wait in the shade while Fern gave them short dusty spins. With the last boy, the oldest, Fern managed to tip the car

onto two wheels. I watched it happen, not at all sure we'd ever go home intact again, not as children worth claiming by honorable parents. And it was close to eleven in the morning when Ferny paused us in sight of the Slade house and pointed toward it.

In its deep grove of oaks and hickories, the house was two unusually tall stories high with full-length porches upstairs and down. And it rambled considerably like a lot of houses then as families grew to a dozen or more; and aged relations, plus bachelors and spinsters, came home to die. If the pine siding had ever known a trace of paint, it showed none now. It was weathered to a likable shade of bone gray, and the tin roof was numerous shades of rust. No trace of antebellum glory in other words but no ruin either.

This was plainly a sensible working home, the well-kept refuge of people with no big sense of self-importance. It was plainly fit to withstand all but fire and cyclone and a slave revolt. I recall that the first time I glimpsed the Slade house was the first time it ever crossed my mind how odd it was that no Southern home had ever been built with any notion that the slaves might rise up and attack with scythes and pitchforks. By the time I'd registered that much, Fern had killed our engine there a quarter mile off down a long alley of cedars and oaks that looked very much like the road to somewhere final.

I was fairly well dressed to meet decent people, so I asked if we couldn't move a little closer.

Ferny shook his head. "They've got awful dogs and Major Slade may well take some shots with his old bird gun if he's had a drink yet." He was half grinning but his voice sounded earnest.

I said "Then thank you, I'll wait for you here. Run say hey to Larkin; then carry me home please."

Ferny took in my whole face and upper body as if I were suddenly some territory he'd never guessed at. He finally said "You'll wait till dark" and moved to get down. I didn't know he had expectations of an escort coming to guide us in.

So I was worried but when I looked ahead, a wide pack of hounds was legging out toward us with a

tall boy behind them.

Ferny said "Luck's improving. Here's a birthday present." He nodded through the gla.s.s toward everything coming.

I was too busy looking to notice that Fern had recalled my birthday.

The hounds reached us first, small old-time beagles with the kind of country noses that could find a lost child through miles of thicket, not to mention a fox. At a distance I hadn't noticed one peculiar dog at the head of the pack, the first one to reach us. It was thoroughly different from the twenty-odd others. Before or since I've never seen its like--not ferocious or ugly but not a member of any dog clan from our end of the world at least. It was so short haired it looked truly skinned, the tannish yellow of antique piano keys with a thin wolf's muzzle and cat-green eyes.

When it got right to us, it came to my side of the car and met me head-on. I was still seated. It was still on the ground. But the way it fixed on me, I all but expected it would say "I bring you this urgent message, woman. Listen close. Your life hereafter hinges on it."

My guess proved very nearly right. My life hinged there as the day would reveal before midnight. The dog didn't speak of course, not then anyhow. In a few more seconds it was swamped by the other dogs, all glad to see Ferny who had stepped out among them. We were white at least. All white peoples' dogs back then were prejudiced against colored skin and many still are.

Ferny was squatting there, kissed by hounds, when the tall man caught up and scrubbed Fern's scalp with the knuckles of the biggest right hand I'd ever seen.

Fern stood up beaming a half mile wide. He was never given to worshiping people and generally offered them as little as he could. But this new boy plainly drew at him powerfully. I'd never yet seen Fern this glad to be breathing. The two of them stood there grinning in silence. Fern's shirt was precisely the color of the sky, a celestial blue.

So finally I had to lean out and say "I'm this young scoundrel's sister Roxanna."

The new boy blushed a furious red, the only

dark-haired human I ever saw blush that deeply. And not only blushed but met my eyes with eyes of his own that were Wedgwood blue, another trait I've never seen elsewhere yet would later notice in people of Irish and Welsh extraction. Big and shining under all that black hair, he barely looked older than Ferny's seventeen. But the first words he said to me were "Happy birthday. We're the same age now."

Had my birthday suddenly become world news? Where on Earth was I?

In the face of the shock and grief that were near at hand, it would take me days to recall the new boy's words and to realize that somehow he and Fern had planned this escapade--by mail it turned out--and that Fern had filled Larkin with the expectation of meeting a lovely possible bride. On the spot that instant, I just felt mildly stunned and dusty. But the air had warmed nicely and when Lark put out his huge hand to help me, I climbed down carefully into the bright day.

I said "I feel a lot older than you." I meant to say I knew I looked older. But it came out differently if not really wrong.

Whatever I felt or thought I knew, I was sure of one thing. I'd never seen a boy or man as fine as Larkin Slade.

Till then I'd spent very little time or energy noticing men or dwelling on them. Leela my sister thought of precious little else and was eager to wed the first boy that paused to smile, which was part of why she and I were moving back from the closeness we'd shared. I well understood I'd also likely marry some man and raise my own children. The human race appeared to do that. I also knew, and had heard others whisper, I was dying on the vine with no immediate prospects at twenty.

It hadn't bothered me more than three or four seconds. Not till here and now on a dry country road near the Roanoke River, surrounded by dogs and my pitiful brother (pitiful years down the line from that day) and his good friend who was grand to see as the darkest rose on a wine-red bush you find somewhere you were not expecting roses. Facing Lark Slade now I felt alone as a snow-covered alp.

But then Lark said "We've made a plan. Hope you like it." He'd looked from me to Ferny as he spoke.

Fern had never stopped smiling. He turned it

on me. That open honest face and neck, set in that blue shirt against that sky, looked very much like an angel messenger--telling me what?

I'd loved Ferny Dane all his life, so what could I do but hold out my arms--I was carrying nothing but a plain gray parasol--and try to speak enough to show I was living? Somehow I said in Lark's direction "I'm a captive guest."

It didn't hurt to say it, I'm glad to admit.

Lark laughed, came forward again, gave me his version of a courtly bow and said "We keep our prisoners happy--well fed at least."

Without a word or sign from Lark, the hounds moved back and went utterly quiet.

The peculiar short-haired yellow dog had gone apart to a thicket of blackberry briars and was stretched out panting, facing nothing any human could see.

Larkin was extending his left hand toward me, inviting a shake, though his right hand looked strong enough at his side.

That seemed as odd to me as the yellow dog, but I gave him my own left hand. When I felt the dry surprising heat of his rough-skinned palm, I said "Boy, you're about to burn down."

All Lark could do for a while was nod. Then he said a little fiercely "I have been waiting--"

I was honestly scared to ask him what for, though off to the right Ferny bent over double and gave in to a long seizure of laughing. Of all the children I've ever known, Fern laughed the earliest in life--at three months old--and right from the start he laughed in full silence. Just opened his wide mouth and held it there silent while his eyes shut for joy. He was silent now and he hung back to let Lark walk me toward the house. Wild as the woods looked on every side, there was a clean walk straight on to the porch through the great dark alleyway of old cedars.

Larkin, like Fern, barely said a word till we got to the foot of some sway-backed steps that might have been salvaged from Adam's first hut on the far side of Eden. And when Lark spoke it was not to me. He said "Father, why don't I marry this lady?"

The Slades were famous for harmless craziness across several counties, so I charged Lark's

remark up to that family trait. Then I noticed who Lark had spoken to.

At the farthest edge of the porch, looking half trapped in thick English ivy that was overtaking things, a short stout white man sat on a rocker. From his right knee downward, he wore a peg leg with bright bra.s.s hardware. And he looked a lot older than any ruined house, though his jet-bead eyes were live as hot beetles.

I'd glimpsed old Major Slade years before at somebody's funeral. So I knew this was he, too wild-eyed surely for early in the day. He was dressed head to toe in one color of brown--shirt, necktie, trousers--and he grabbed at his chair arms, trying to rise.

But I laughed to stop him. "Please keep your seat, Major. I'm n.o.body's bride."

I have to admit Major studied me slowly with those eyes that would scare most grown grave-hearted men. They were keen big eyes but pickled in brandy, long years of homemade brandy strong enough to embalm any pharaoh.

In any case I've never been p.r.o.ne to fear, so I met the swimming eyes head-on.

Then the major said "I'd marry any face fine as yours."

Another voice laughed, a woman's voice but low. Then the woman stepped out through the wide front door. She'd heard our joking and was smiling down on me.

I'd seen handsome women in our town and at the movies which were then called picture shows. But none had prepared me for the sudden appearance of this much beauty in one face and body. I felt I ought to curtsy or kneel to her eyes alone. They'd clearly been the cause of Larkin's eyes, that same color of a pure spring sky devoted to joy.

But she didn't pause for any such foolishness. She said "The major was married last time I heard, and more than once--I'm his second wife Olivia. I was born a Venable. I'd know you anywhere. With that clear brow you're bound to be a Dane." She stroked at her lovely eyes as if they required frequent clearing. "Never saw a Dane without a fine forehead. And you're Fern's favorite sister."