Blue Calhoun

by Reynolds Price

Genres: General Fiction; Classics; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Bluford Calhoun is finally satisfied with both his job and family when a young girl walks into his life and changes it forever with a passionate promise of forbidden love. By the author of A Long and Happy Life. 50,000 first printing.

Release date: May 2, 1992

Publisher: Scribner

Print pages: 384

Sample

Chapter 1

This starts with the happiest I ever was, though it brought down suffering on everybody near me. Short as it lasted and long ago, I've never laid it all out yet, not start to finish. But if I try and half succeed, you may wind up understanding things, choosing a better road for yourself and maybe not blaming the dead past but living for the here and now, each day a clean page. At least you'll see how certain things in my long life have gone down fast as one of those Japanese domino shows where two million pieces trip each other in hot succession and set off the unexpected jackpot -- an exploding mountain or a rocket blast that hurls men farther than they've yet gone, to Neptune or worse.

The time I'll tell about ran its course when I was thirty five, then thirty six. Till then I'd lived a fairly normal life, if normal includes some badly drunk years -- and I think it does in America still. So honest to God, I doubt you need to know much about me before the latter half of that day when everything started streaking downhill. Of course I'll add the odd event that feels worth knowing or tells a good story. Stories are something I'm better at than life; and that one year was built like a story, whoever built it. It had a low start that stoked up fast to such a heat that hinges on doors were melting away; and pent up people were tearing loose and running for what looked like daylight till, at some weird invisible signal, everything started cooling again.

And everybody slowed to average speed and drew deep breaths to treat their burns and wonder if they could stand the sight of each other's faces from then till death or just for that day. Some said Yes; a few said No; and everybody thought I'd caused the wreck, which may have been true. Even my mother, a certified saint, called me out to the country house and said "Now, son, you've ruined two lives -- your own blood child and the girl you claimed to love so strongly. How do you plan on living the rest of the time you've got with that on your mind, that blood on your hands?"

Blood was a figure of speech at the time, and she well knew it. I'd almost certainly killed four Germans in the Second War but nothing since. So I said what I believed was true, "Look, Mother. Nobody's dead." I was technically right.

But her deep blue eyes never flinched, and she said "Far worse than dead -- far worse."

Then I saw that the thing I dreaded had happened. I'd badly harmed three worthwhile souls that trusted me; and I knew no way on Earth to mend them -- not till your and my past months together, thirty years on. Know this first though (it's some of the worst you'll know about me) -- I drove myself back home from Mother's that late spring night in a tardy frost with my face grinning each mile of the way. I could see it in the mirror, dark as it was. My body was still that pleased with the memory; it still is today. Maybe my mind and heart just figured I'd taken enough from God or fate, my family and the U.S. Infantry -- not to mention the Nazis -- to earn me some substantial relief and nourishment. Whatever, I flat-out gorged myself for twelve full months. So here much further on in time, I'm hoping to make my slim amends by telling this history that's all but true.

I'm Blue Calhoun as you well know; and wild as I've been, I still like the sound. The full name's Bluford and the middle name's August, but there can't be more than ten people left who know that much about me still -- to the world I'm Blue and have always been. Except for the war and the times I was wild -- and our hard time overseas just now -- I've mostly stayed near my birthplace: a capital city, Raleigh, N.C. When I was a child, Raleigh called itself "The City of Oaks." But don't try to find an oak these days in the criminal mess that money and the chloroformed City Council have made from innocent fertile dirt and what grew in it.

I'm drifting already but here's the start. As I said, I'd climbed the sizable hill of my thirty fifth birthday -- a rough time for men, the downhill side. I think I was sane; people from all walks of life assured me I was not bad to see. I'd been stone sober for nineteen months -- the longest ever up to that point -- and as it turned out, I've stayed sober the rest of my life to this night now. I worked the best job I'd had in years; and to my knowledge, no part of my life was starved or frozen. I didn't stare off at sunsets and grieve. I thought I cherished my only spouse, born Myra Burns, a friend since childhood and your grandmother that you'd have prized.

We'd been married for fifteen years, and Myra had tried her absolute best. As you well know we had a daughter that I near worshiped named Madelyn (called Mattie or Matt from the day of her birth, according to how we felt at the moment). Matt was the finest influence on me of anybody yet. I owed her the world and was aiming to give it, minute by minute from here on out -- upright kindness and every decent thought and act I could see she needed. But then that one day fell down on me from a clear spring sky, no word of warning. It tore the ground from under my feet, and everything round me shook the way a mad dog shakes a howling child.

April 28th, 1956 was an early scorcher; and I met my fate when a girl turned up in the midst of my job. The place I worked was on Fayetteville Street near the Capitol building -- Atkinson Music Company, a long narrow store with high old ceilings, gentle light and air that smelled antique and soothing. Up front was the sheet music department, then the phonograph records and concert tickets. From there on back it was musical hardware of every description. First the small things -- fiddles, accordions, ukuleles, flutes. Then you worked your way through banjos and mandolins, the big band instruments, tall gold harps and sets of drums you prayed your neighbors would never buy. Then you finished up with Steinway grands, Hammond organs and one enormous church size console with pipes enough to sweep back the roof and blow you skyward if a person that knew how to play it lit in.

I truly liked the actual job. For a man with no enormous mind and what he thought were normal ambitions, it offered a peaceful eight hour day, a respectable paycheck every two weeks and music around him, dawn to dusk -- real music made by live human beings, not piped-in syrup. As for making music I myself never got that far past whistling, despite my mother's early dream that I wind up as what she called "a poet of the keyboard." I took piano from the fourth grade on into early high school when baseball got me, but I seldom practiced and learned next to nothing except what music really is -- far and away man's best creation -- and how it can help when nothing else will.

When I flunked out of college at nineteen, and hadn't begun to lean on liquor, I and my thumb made numerous tours of the U.S. east of the Mississippi. In those free years I'd often end up wet or cold in the night with nobody near but a small harmonica that my dad gave me when I first pushed off. However gruesome or lonesome I got, there were very few times when even a talentless boy like me couldn't improvise a song or hymn and wind up glad to be on Earth plus ready to sleep. But I quit that too when I came back and grounded myself.

To this day now I regret that laziness. Even more often after I got married, I'd sink very near the floor of this world -- the black sub basement -- and every one of those desperate times, I'd hear some mangled piece of my mind start begging for music -- any music on Earth from nursery rhymes to opera on the radio that all but etches the window glass. If only I'd learned some lapsize instrument like the guitar, I might well have spent less time in Hell than I've since done.

Speaking of Hell, on the day in question, the whole world still wasn't air conditioned. And dim as it was, the store was stifling. Business was slack, the staff was mostly dozing upright; and I was on the verge of sleep behind the pianos. Then the street door opened and played its chime. A woman walked in, broad in the beam. The sun on the glass was blinding bright and I'm nearsighted, so I couldn't see her face right off. I gave her no thought anyhow. Somebody up front would help her if needed, and I could still doze.

But in maybe a minute, a voice sang out -- a woman's unashamed high sound in one long line of a song new to me, then a laugh and silence.

I thought right off how strange it was that, after these months of work among children blasting away on saxophones and pounding drums, I'd yet to hear a human voice sing so much as part of a tune and it sounded grand. I stepped forward five yards and tried to see if that broad woman had done us the favor -- she plainly had the chest to do it. It took a few seconds to realize she was more than one person. There were two females and they must have walked in single file. The other one looked like a slender child and was close beside the broad one at the sheet music counter. One of them must have been demonstrating the tune of a song she didn't know the name of. The singing voice had sounded grown, and I edged onward another few steps before I saw that the child was still -- still as a post and watching me. And not a child.

I was pulled right on another few yards. The girl never blinked or turned aside. I was maybe twenty feet away; and her look was so strong, I had to glance down. On the showcase beside me was a pear-wood mandolin perfectly made. I strummed it once and tried to pretend I knew how to tune it. When I had it sounding halfway right, I looked again. Now the girl was smiling, and her mother was striding on towards me as if I'd made some last mistake.

The mother was ten feet off, and mad, when I recognized her as somebody I'd known centuries past in grammar school -- the very same scared old-time girl was hid in this stout woman's body. I held up a hand to slow her and said "Rita, old flame, you've kept your figure."

No brick wall could have stopped her faster. Her three chins shivered and her eyes went flat but stayed right on me. Then her thin mouth said "I'm way too stout and I don't know you."

I said "I've known you, down to the ground, for thirty five years" (not strictly true, more like twenty nine). By then the girl had come up behind her but I still watched Rita.

And Rita kept hunting my face for a sign. Old as I was and badly behaved, I hated to think my face had aged past recognition.

That instant a stock boy passed, bumped me and said "Old Blue."

Rita said "Blue?"

I held in place.

"Not Blue Calhoun?"

I nodded and grinned. "-- His cold remains."

She stood a second, then made a little graceful skip and a glide, then took my hands. "If you're cold, child, then cool my skin."

She was hot as a stove and had always been, even in the old days back in school. I could still see her eyes the day she quit the seventh grade -- all of us knew she was far gone pregnant (she'd failed a grade and was one year older).

I let Rita hold me as long as she would, and I looked beyond her now towards the girl. She was tall for what I guessed was her age -- seventeen or a little more -- and she had great handfuls of dark brown hair that looked as pliant and strong as cable. In the midst her skin was a perfect white; and her eyes were bluer even than my mother's, so deep you thought they were purple or navy. Her lips were full and wide -- wider still since she went on smiling.

Then Rita faced her. "Luna, say hey to one fine gentleman."

I couldn't think why Rita said that much. But it touched my heart -- whether I was any sort of gentleman or not, she'd likely known few in her hard life. I'm always too susceptible to joy, and I was scared I'd pour out a tear there on the spot where the staff could see me. I was also scrambling back through memory, trying to know what kindness I'd done to Rita Bapp (I suddenly knew that was her maiden name).

Young Luna said "Hey --"

It hit me bullseye, square in my chest. I put out my hand and said "Luna what?"

The girl looked puzzled but Rita said "Tell him Absher -- Absher. I'm a widow, Blue." Then she sailed right on. "This boy -- Bluford Calhoun -- in this nice suit: he gave me an arrowhead the last day I saw him. Recall that, Blue?"

I suddenly did -- the best belonging of my whole childhood, a spear-point big as a pullet egg that one of my uncles brought me from Mexico after he'd fought some banditos down there with the National Guard. I'd had it with me the day our class got final word that Rita was out; and when she looked my way that noon as she emptied her school desk forever, I wrapped the point in a sheet of lined paper and held it towards her. I couldn't think what on Earth I meant, but Rita Bapp reached out and took it last thing and left. Today I nodded and said to her bright eyes "Sure, I recall. I hope it helped."

Rita said "Oh more than you'll ever know. My son's got it now, or he will once he's out; and Blue, he needs all the help he can get."

I thought I'd read a few years back that Rita's son had gone to prison for something earnest like killing a highway patrolman or worse. Luna though -- was she Rita's daughter or what? The girl's face and body were so much finer, I was trying hard not to meet her eyes. So I said to Rita "I know you're proud of this girl here."

Rita glanced at her, then back at me. "You truly think pride's called for here?" She seemed dead serious.

I said "Absolutely, you've outdone yourself."

Rita still didn't smile. She asked how many children I had.

"A daughter -- just one child, age thirteen."

"Ain't they a heartbreak?" Rita said.

Luna said "Mother --" and looked to me.

So I said "Maybe I've had better luck."

Rita smiled. "You always had scads of luck." She took Luna's elbow. "Here, look at this man. I knew him back when he was bad off as me; and he's bettered himself -- fine job, nice shoes." That was not strictly right, but I didn't stop her, and she looked my way. "You tell her, Blue. I've about give up."

I'd been a fair joker most of my life, and I tried to think of some funny advice. But while I waited my eyes caught Luna's again and held. From the day I was born, I'd also been a soul that loves women -- most everything about them, day and night -- but for all my past adventures among them, I'll have to say I never felt so caught before. Not trapped but held. My whole body felt like a child a-borning, pushed helpless down a dim long tunnel towards strong new light.

Suddenly Luna said "Come on."

I barely heard her and I understood less. Come where, for what?

Luna said "Please --" and Rita slapped her arm.

So I pulled my mind back into my body and said "Set eyes on your mark and run, girl -- run."

Rita nodded like I'd offered a blessing.

Luna tried not to smile; but those slant eyes -- that looked out at you from a cool dark recess far in the woods, that deep at least -- those eyes couldn't hide the powerful joy she took in watching me hang out there in the helpless air beyond her. She said "Yes sir, I'll run when I can." By now her eyes burned nearly too high.

I could see she was serious as any bonfire, but you can't say that to a near rank stranger as lovely as night. I was just guessing but I said "You were singing up front just now."

Luna didn't quite blush but something way inside her huddled, and her eyes nearly shut.

Rita said "Best voice you ever heard. Sing him a song."

Honest to God I thought to myself Don't, girl, please don't. I'm doing so good in this new life. If that was prayer it got a quick answer -- No no no. At the time I didn't think who from -- fate or worse -- and I'm still not sure.

Luna gazed at the ceiling, her mouth came open, her chin rose slightly; and out rolled the first slow line of "Abide With Me" --

Abide with me; fast falls the evening tide.

It was nearly everything Rita promised. But I still had memories in those days of how my mother's voice had sounded when I was a boy across her lap in the white porch swing on summer nights with always a moon part-hid in the elms --

Moonlight shines tonight along the Wabash;

Through the fields there comes a breath of new mown hay --

and other such magic. Luna Absher ran my mother's voice a beautiful race and barely lost.

When she finished she looked down at me and said "Thank you, sir."

I couldn't think how I'd earned her thanks. But like a green fool, I said "You bet."

Before I could beg the girl's pardon for that, Rita stepped on past me. She said "I'm hoping you sell used Autoharps."

Autoharps were rare back then, in the piedmont anyhow -- a strange combination of harp and guitar that lay on your lap or was propped upright against your chest. You mostly found them up in the mountains with blind old women that sang like fingernails scraping on slate. In younger hands they could sound like news from behind the moon, that keen and silvery. I looked to Luna and said "Oh yes -- auto, steam driven, neon lit: harps in every shape and size."

Truth to tell, there was just one Autoharp; and it was new -- inlaid with mother of pearl and jet -- but when I brought it out from the storeroom and held it towards Luna, she accepted it calmly as her rightful due and took the hymn up where she'd left it --

The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.

When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless, oh abide with me.

At the end to hide how deeply she'd touched me, I said "You get our best discount."

Rita said "We'd better or you lose a good sale. This girl is headed somewhere, let me tell you. She'll be so famous she'll send you business."

But when I quoted a price that truly was under cost, Rita said "Lord God --" and staggered a step.

Luna faced her mother, took a real pause and said "I earned every penny of this" -- she didn't say how. Then she met my eyes, held right on them and -- when I thought one of us would break -- she finally smiled, though she wouldn't play the popular song she'd sung up front. She said "That would be sacrilegious now."

But still her eyes were close on mine, and I had to wonder where sacred began and stopped in her life.

The rest of the day, I felt fairly normal. Business picked up. By closing time I'd sold not just the Autoharp but a metronome and a spinet piano with a nice commission. So I didn't have much time in those hours to think about Rita's growing child. Still I'd been a salesman of one sort or other for many years, and faces and names are our life blood (nobody but criminals want to be strangers). Naturally that whole afternoon then, Luna Absher's face would drift up into view and wait, smiling or saying again how she thanked me.

And though I hadn't been able to coax her to play a popular song on the harp, I kept on hearing the actual sound of the one she sang -- "Abide with me; fast falls the evening tide." I couldn't think of those last three words without the cold shakes in that hot day. For several years I'd understood what short lives most of my male kin got (most of them drank liquor hard as me). So sure, once I'd passed thirty five I felt every day the pull of an evening tide on my tired mind and my long legs that for nineteen months now had walked a neat circle.

I drove straight home at six o'clock. We'd lived for years in my parents' house where I grew up. When my father died, Mother pulled up stakes, went back out to the country place (her dead parents' home) and left the big brick house for us on Beechridge Road -- crape myrtle bushes the size of trees in every yard, a lot of healthy mischievous kids with their comfortable parents. And as I turned into the drive that evening, there was Madelyn on her parked bicycle, talking in earnest to a loud boy from the next street down. By my strict standards he was more than a year too old for Matt -- that saddle of bumps across his nose and the hair on his legs.

But he wasn't all dumb. However drawn he was to the scent, he gave me a quick wave and trotted off. (If this is getting too tame to read, bear with me a minute. I'm trying to lay out the day and night that changed my life and all lives near me from then till now -- three full decades, no gentle stretch -- and the clues to even a normal day are in the details, the nods and moans that most people miss, being blinder than any blind beggar with a dog.)

Anyhow I sat in the car a minute and watched my child. Since her mother's hair was a dark blond and mine nearly black, we'd never known how Matt came by her splendid chestnut ringlets. But her deep blue eyes were straight from my mother (it took me awhile to notice how their eyes all but equaled Luna's in darkness). And now she was thirteen, all the rest of Mattie was rushing to be a woman, too fast for me. She was poised so near the edge of that peak, it was scarey to see her -- the peak or the pit, Heaven or Hell. Her body was that near ready to break on the visible world and start its full grown fun and work. Natural and due as it all was, it hurt me more by the week to watch her. She meant that much to my head and heart. I used to have two pictures of Mother in high girlhood, a local beauty. I'd study them in my own early years and try to picture my mind inside her, waiting for whatever life her body would choose to give me.

And lately as Matt was rushing on, I'd catch these glimpses of her alone and realize what a sizable thing I'd partly made and how many times I must have crushed her, what permanent sights she'd stored of me in my worst drinking and doping days (barbiturates) and how I'd never catch up now and pay her back with appropriate care. Hardest of all to face someway -- she'd never blamed me and never given the trace of a hint of whatever mess she'd seen me do. I'd try to press my eyes through her mind and find the hurts I needed to ease; but once you have your own first child, you'll know how I failed.

Mattie was as loyal a Catholic as her mother. Of course I wasn't (native Catholics in the South back then were scarce as good sense and regarded as weird, if not suspicious) -- and the main thing on her mind this April were the coming events at parochial school. She'd all but finished the seventh grade, and in a few days she'd wear a long white dress and veil and march up the aisle with other girls to crown the Virgin Mary with flowers. She'd only just got to the point of guessing that, while I'd go to church with her and her mother, I couldn't share her feelings on the subject -- Christ and his mother and poor St. Joseph, the old spare wheel, were as urgent for Matt as nourishment. More so at times but it got her through.

In all my desperate former days, I'd prayed to what most people call God -- the standard moody Santa Claus that does, or doesn't, love the world. Every now and then I'd get some help that seemed like an answer but nothing steady enough to win my long term worship or endless thanks, not then at least, in that much trouble. But Madelyn got more answered prayers than the average pope (she got me sober for one main thing, or so she believed and I didn't doubt her). That achievement marked her as thoroughly strange in my glad eyes -- grand but strange and almost spooky except when she laughed, which was luckily often.

So as I sat behind the wheel that April evening, Matt stayed on her bike and watched me seriously.

Finally I smiled, beckoned her near and turned my cheek out the window towards her.

She rolled over slowly, gave me a rub with her own dry cheek, then sat back to watch me another long while. I met her eyes and waited her out till she finally said "May Day please -- you'll be there won't you?"

I nodded I would and thought I meant it.

She rolled in closer and leaned to my ear. In all her life I'd never seen her whisper to her mother, but she made me the gift of numerous secrets. Now she said "You think I'm truly worthy?"

I understood but I said "What of?"

She looked behind her -- we were still safe alone. So she whispered again "You know -- this crowning."

I knew that the nuns had leaned hard on her for the past three years -- pure, worthy and even spotless were words with a white hot meaning for Madelyn. But proud as I was of her looks, her brain and her generous heart, I sometimes knew she was being tormented past her years with the hopeless dream of spotlessness. So I spoke out plainly. "They ought to be crowning you -- you've won it."

arShe thought about it anyhow and looked again for signs of her mother. Then she shook her head like she watched a spreading stain inside that even I could never be shown.

Wild as I'd been for much of my life, I wanted to rush Matt into the car and flee west with her that minute for good. I'd wanted it more than once here lately. And now she looked so ready to save herself and me that I might well have said "Let's go" and vanished with her.

But Myra suddenly stood on the side porch, fanning her neck in the heat and smiling.

And what I saw that instant -- plain as a flare at night -- was Luna Absher, back of my eyes in the evening tide.

In those years TV still hadn't totally captured Raleigh. So after supper on a warm spring night, you had a whole different set of choices to make -- old time choices and not so bad. You could visit the neighbors and talk on their porch, they could visit you (neither one of you phoned, just turned up raw). You could ride the family up to Five Points and eat hand dipped ice cream at the drugstore or sit in an air cooled movie theater, watching or dozing. If the heat was heavy, you could drive awhile longer out to the country and sit with your mother or just roll on through narrow roads and deep night shade with no sign of lights to warm you up, telling each other the news of the day, which was generally tame but occasionally funny.

On the night in question, the heat was letting up by eight; Mattie was upstairs doing her school work, and Myra's sewing machine was bearing down on the famous homemade May Day dress. I'd finished the newspaper, knew there was nothing worth hearing on the radio and really didn't feel like riding out as far as Mother's and answering every question she'd stored since my last visit. But I still felt normal -- remember that. I didn't feel miserable, tired or trapped.

I knew I wasn't deprived of love, I wasn't roadhogged by sex as badly as in younger days, and I had no sign of the craving for numbness that ran my young years down the rathole of liquor and pills. At eight o'clock though, for no known reason, I hollered upstairs to Myra and Mattie that I was going to drive downtown and buy us some magazines at the newsstand run by the blind. If either one had asked to join me, I'd have calmly said Yes. But this one night they each requested their favorite magazine and said hurry back, be sweet -- stale prayers.

Since you weren't here in the 1950s, I doubt you'll believe how good it felt to drive through the streets of a shut down city with your windows open and not once think of danger or death. To be sure in those days Raleigh was smallish -- fifty thousand, give or take -- but that was a lot of people then; and noon or midnight, the streets were safe. Worst thing you'd see was a harmless drunk, the black transvestites in long red wigs or an old white girl too eager to share the leavings of her native charms. Otherwise you moved through the darkest streets like somebody welcome on this Earth and urged to stay by people that had their own safe homes and clean warm beds. Even the free-roaming crazies, with dressed up cats in baby buggies, went home to their mothers at night or some other kin.

Nowdays for instance no blind person could hope to sit alone in a nighttime newsstand and not get held up, whipped or shot. But till far on down in the 1960s, every weekday night of the year, Miss Alma Nipper was there on duty in the midst of Raleigh by the old post office. Nothing less than a smile ever crossed her face as she heard you tell her what you'd selected, from The Wall Street Journal to the timid peep magazines of the time. She'd count your handful of change in an instant and say either "Thank you" or "Three cents more" -- with paper money she trusted the public and still seemed to prosper. Unless you were blind too or otherwise afflicted, she'd leave you feeling lucky to have two working eyes and also much less nimble than she at walking life's various windswept tightropes.

That night as I browsed through the loaded racks, for some odd reason I picked up that day's Raleigh Times, the evening paper that wasn't worth reading and we never got. On the back of the single flimsy section, my eye caught a small headline down low -- high school girl wins music scholarship. It said that Luna Absher, a junior at Broughton, had won a fifty dollar scholarship to music camp this coming June in the Blue Ridge mountains -- it gave Rita's name, no father was mentioned, and then an address behind Peace College in a section of town that was starting downhill.

That caused it, that instant -- plain as that, that sudden and reckless. Luna's face rose up again in my sight -- cl