The Fortunate Ones

by Ed Tarkington

Genres: Coming of Age; Family Life

Synopsis

“Tarkington’s writing . . . calls to mind a young Pat Conroy.” —Garden & Gun

When Charlie Boykin was young, he’d thought his life with his single mother was really just fine. But when his mother’s connections get Charlie into boarding school and give them access to the upper echelons of Nashville society, Charlie falls under the spell of all that a life among the wealthy can mean. Increasingly attached to another boy, Arch Creigh, Charlie learns how morality has little to do with life in Belle Meade. On into college and after, Charlie aids Arch in his pursuit of a Senate seat, only to be pulled into a growing web of deceit. The novel examines the questions: Why do the poor love the rich? Why do we envy and worship a class of people that so often exhibits the worst excesses and the lowest morals?

For fans of Ann Patchett's Commonwealth and Kevin Wilson's Nothing to See Here, The Fortunate Ones is an engrossing story of class, love, and loyalty.

Release date: January 5, 2021

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

The mother was standing behind the screen door when we stepped out of the car. She knew what we were there to do. This was my third such trip in a month. Fort Campbell had averaged about one a week since the surge. Casualty notification assignments were supposed to rotate, but Command kept giving them to me. Mike told me I was too well suited to the task.

“You’ve got a sweet face, Charlie,” he told me. “A sad face. They feel better when they think you’re sad.”

“I am sad,” I said.

“We’re all sad,” Mike said. “Some people just don’t know how to show it, that’s all.”

He was talking about himself.

Mike and I got on well, perhaps because he was always game for a few drinks afterward. The Protestant chaplains were all teetotalers. I hadn’t been out with the rabbi. Mike Bailey, however, liked his Irish whiskey. And he had no interest in counseling me. “Find us a nice, quiet spot, Charlie,” he would say when it was over, and before long, we were someplace dark where you could still smoke inside. Catholics understand the healing power of a stiff drink.

The dead boy’s parents lived in Bellevue, at the end of a quiet, shady street lined with red brick ’50s ranch houses and split-levels with well-kept yards. There were kids throwing balls and riding bicycles, elderly women sitting on front porch chairs and lawn furniture, a few men riding mowers. Manicured flower beds resting at the bases of mailboxes decorated with eagles and flags. Pickup trucks and minivans and motor homes and pontoon and bass boats on trailers parked at the ends of the driveways. America the beautiful, forever and ever, amen.

“Didn’t you grow up around here?” Mike asked. “You and this kid’s family might know some of the same people.”

“I doubt it.”

“Come on. You Southerners are all cousins, right?”

“And I assume you’re related to the Kennedys.”

A trio of old men congregating around an ancient Ford pickup turned from their conversation to watch our car roll past. They exchanged a few words and dispersed, heading toward their respective homes, no doubt to inform their wives of our arrival.

“There they go,” Mike said. “Tuna casserole, on the way. I’ll bet you a hundred bucks the first one shows up before we leave.”

I couldn’t say whether or not Mike Bailey was a good priest. He was a product of one of those big Irish Catholic families, the kind with a dozen kids, most of which give at least one son to the Army and one to the church. Mike had somehow managed to satisfy both requirements. I got the sense that he’d opted into the chaplain thing when he was still young and romantic, maybe under the influence of a charismatic Jesuit who’d filled him with dreams of emulating the heroic missions of Saint Ignatius and his followers. His idealism did not seem to have survived Fallujah.

I slowed to a stop in front of the appointed address, and the dread came on.

I reached back for the folder I’d set on the rear seat before we left. I looked up at the house, and there she was, standing behind the screen door, as if she’d sensed we were coming, as if she’d felt the life she’d brought into the world go out of it from thousands of miles away, and we were just there to confirm what she already knew.

“Let’s not keep her waiting,” I said.

She opened the door before we even reached the front porch steps. Her eyes were damp.

“Hello, ma’am,” I said. “Are you the mother of Private First Class Cody James Carter?”

“His daddy’s in the back,” she said.

We followed her through a small entry hall into a dim wood-paneled living room. On the wall over a gas-log fireplace hung a large flat-screen TV tuned to Fox News.

Mr. Carter stood when he saw us. He picked up the remote control and pressed mute. Maybe he was afraid he’d miss something.

Mrs. Carter came to her husband’s side. They stared at us, their faces anguished, waiting. In the language of the Casualty Notification Officer Module, I informed them that their son was dead.

Mrs. Carter’s face slackened. She drooped to the couch. Her husband sat down and wrapped his arm around her but remained rigid, his eyes fixed on some point between the television and the fireplace as I finished reciting the script.

Mike sat down next to Mr. Carter. I rounded the coffee table and sat close enough to touch the mother.

“Did he suffer?” she asked.

“We won’t have the full incident report for another day or two,” I said.

The father removed his glasses and set them on the table, his arm still wrapped around his wife. His face went pale, and the tears began to form, but they did not fall, as if he had somehow willed himself not to cry.

“Would you folks like to pray?” Mike asked.

They nodded.

Mike removed a rosary from his uniform pocket and began. Above them, the talking heads on Fox News, silenced by the mute button, felt both comical and profane. While they debated whether this or that multimillionaire Republican candidate was sufficiently conservative, kids like Cody Carter were still dying in a place most Americans couldn’t find on a map. The world had moved on to a new movie.

As Mike finished, I opened up my dossier and explained the protocol for their son’s homecoming.

I have delivered casualty notifications to parents to whom the Army meant nothing at all—people whose sons had joined up because of the GI Bill, or because they played too much Call of Duty on the Xbox, or because they thought it might be fun to get paid instead of arrested for shooting at brown people or just wanted out of their shitty circumstances and away from the very folks to whom I was delivering the news of their death. Some, like me, joined up in the vain belief that the service would afford them the chance to atone for past sins—or, at least, to flee the scenes of our crimes. This was not the case with the parents of PFC Cody Carter. For the Carters, the Army was a calling. I knew without asking that they would go to Fort Campbell, and then to Dover, or anywhere else, to greet the remains of their son. They would leave that very second if they could. The Carters were True Believers.

“As part of the Dignified Transfer,” I said, dutifully reciting the script of the CNO Module, “Cody will arrive in a coffin draped with the flag of the United States of America.”

Dignified Transfer. The sound of it made me feel like a vacuum cleaner salesman. But I knew when I recited those words the Carters could hear the twenty-one-gun salute and see the honor guard folding the flag into a tight triangle and presenting it to Mrs. Carter with the thanks of a grateful nation. Who was I to say or even to think otherwise? So I did my duty.

My eyes drifted over to a wall decorated with family photos. Beneath the pictures stood a bookshelf full of trophies and medals and photographs of Private Carter and his brothers and sisters—the boys in wrestling singlets and baseball uniforms; the girls in choir robes, Sunday dresses, one posing in a pink leotard, another holding a violin. I recognized Cody Carter from his class A uniform portrait. He was the youngest.

“If you’ll excuse me,” I said, “I’ll contact your Casualty Assistance Officer and make the arrangements for you.”

I left Mike with the Carters and walked out into the entry hall and toward the open front door to call the base on my mobile phone. Outside, the old men we had seen were standing in the front yard under a big hickory tree wrapped with a fading yellow ribbon, along with a small group of neighbors, some of them smoking, the lot of them looking back and forth between themselves and the door. I started to duck back into the house, but they’d already seen me. So I stepped out onto the sidewalk and removed my mobile phone from my uniform jacket pocket. One of the old men shuffled over.

“Afternoon, sir,” I said.

“You boys drive over from Fort Campbell?” the old man asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Served there myself, a long time ago. Airborne,” he said, pointing to the patch on the shoulder of my uniform. “Hundred and first. ’Nam. Three tours.”

“My father was in ’Nam.”

“He must be proud of you.”

“He didn’t make it back, I’m afraid,” I said. “I never knew him.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. All the same, I know he’s watching.”

The man tilted his head and pointed to the sky.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Is it Cody?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“What happened?”

“I can’t say, sir.”

“Understood,” the man said. “How they holdin’ up?”

“As well as anyone could,” I said. “Better than most.”

“They’re good people,” the old man said. “Some of the best I know. Cody was a good boy. He’s a big deal to the kids around here. Wrestled over at Sacred Heart. State champ his senior year at one thirty. Little fireplug. He wasn’t the strongest or the fastest, but, boy, he just kept coming. Made the other guy want to quit. I bet he was a good soldier.”

Was Cody Carter a good soldier? For all I knew, he’d been an absolute shithead; unlikely, given what I’d seen of his life thus far, but, God knows, the Army was full of them. It didn’t really matter anymore. He was a hero now.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “I need to take care of some arrangements for the Carters.”

“Beg your pardon.”

“No need to apologize,” I said. “Thank you for speaking with me, sir.”

“You tell Pete and Martha we’re here for them when they’re ready,” the old man said.

I nodded. The old man straightened his back as if standing at attention and held his hand out for me to shake. I knew what was coming.

“Thank you for your service,” he said.

These moments happened to all of us, everywhere. Walking through an airport concourse, we’d meet the wistful gazes of hundreds of well-meaning citizens, and we’d know they were wondering if we were headed home or instead back to one of those far-flung deadly lands, with parents and spouses and children—some still unborn—waiting for us on front porches and stoops in all the Bellevues of America. Men patted us on the shoulder or gave us a soulful nod or a solemn salute. Some wanted to tell us that they also served, that they, too, had done their part, that they were different from the hordes of civilians who did not understand the concept of valor.

I knew these people meant well—that their respect was genuine and their gratitude sincere. Nevertheless, every time this happened to me, I felt like I was going to fucking puke.

I took his hand and shook it.

“Thank you, sir,” I said, returning one of those sad smiles that Mike thought made me such a popular Casualty Notification Officer.

I held up my phone.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said.

“Remember,” the old man said. “You tell ’em we’re out here.”

He rejoined the others gathered under the hickory tree with the big yellow ribbon around it. After I called the CAO, I retreated into the house, where the Carters still sat on the couch beneath the silent television while Mike tried to act comforting.

“Mr. and Mrs. Carter,” I said, “Lieutenant Garrett will pick you up in the morning, at eight a.m. He will travel with you to Dover. We’ve reserved a room for you at the Courtyard Marriott near the airport. You’ll stay overnight and then accompany your son home to Fort Campbell the following morning. They’ve notified your eldest son as well. His CO will do what he can to get him home for a few days.”

“Will we be able to see Cody?” the mother asked.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “Not at Dover. But you’ll be with him, to bring him home.”

Mrs. Carter rose from the couch. Finally, she broke. Her husband lurched up and reached for her. I heard a muffled moan, high and keening. Her husband stroked her back.

“I’ll be damned,” Mike blurted.

He pointed at the television. The Carters turned toward the screen.

Because I had seen Arch Creigh’s face on the news so many times before, it took me a moment to grasp the reason why I was looking at it now.

“What happened?” the mother asked.

“The son of a bitch shot himself,” Mike said.

There they were—Arch and Vanessa, in old footage from the day Arch declared his Senate candidacy. The camera cut to a live image, in front of the house on the Boulevard, surrounded by men with cameras, Vanessa’s face pale and slack with shock and grief.

“Charlie,” Mike said.

Vanessa was giving a statement to the media, which we could not hear. Mr. Carter picked up the remote and turned on the sound. The police had found him out at the family hunting camp—I was sure I knew exactly where. There didn’t appear to be any doubt about how it had happened. He’d left a note.

“That’s a hell of a thing to do to your wife and kids,” Mr. Carter said.

“They don’t have any children,” I said.

The television vultures were feasting on what lay before them: Charismatic Southern Republican Senator commits suicide in the midst of a tight race. Potential for upset in the reddest of red states. Who would the party tap to replace him? What scandal would emerge? Could the Dems seize this moment of crisis to narrow the gap in the Senate? Who would fill Arch Creigh’s shoes in the eleventh hour? Would the grieving widow take up the mantle herself?

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Charlie?” Mike asked. “Are you all right?”

I was crying. The tears just came. I couldn’t stop.

“Charlie?” Mike repeated.

I looked away from the television and over at Mike and the Carters, who were staring at me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Forgive me.”

Mr. Carter looked back toward the television. His wife glanced down at the floor.

“What on earth is wrong with you?” Mike whispered.

I wiped my eyes.

“I knew him,” I said.

“You knew Arch Creigh?” Mr. Carter asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Like, you knew him,” Mike said, “or you knew him?”

How could I even begin to answer such a question?

When I learned what had happened to Arch, what he’d done—when I saw him there on the TV screen in the living room of a dead soldier’s family and wept—I thought not of what he’d become, but, rather, of a boy I once knew, with a mop of golden hair and a golden smile and a sense of certitude so strong it spilled onto everyone around him. And I thought of the boy I had once been, aimless and timid, and how when that magnificent boy turned his light toward me, I fed on that light, and in doing so, became transformed.

I was born in Nashville, but I got my start in the mountains of Western North Carolina, on the last day of the second session at Camp Hollyhock for Girls, August 1969, in the back seat of an old Buick parked on a deserted fire road above the camp lake. My mother, Bonnie, fifteen years old, between her sophomore and junior years of high school, had fallen for a handsome stable boy named Johnny Larue, recently drafted and bound for Basic Training. Her parents were strict Upstate South Carolina Presbyterians, who firmly believed that God hates liquor and sex and loves rich white people, so long as they at least pretend to hate liquor and sex. But my mother never listened in church.

Three months later, back home in Greer, when she could no longer hide her condition and was forced to confess, my grandfather vowed to make this Johnny LaRue take responsibility. But by then, he was on the other side of the world fighting communists. My mother’s letters to him went unanswered. Years would pass before she found out he’d been killed in action. She did not know if he’d learned that he was going to be a father before he disappeared. She knew only that she was about to become an unwed mother in a town where such a designation was a disgrace. My grandfather resolved to send her off until I was born and could be given up for adoption. He knew of a home for unwed mothers in Virginia that placed infants born to wayward daughters in good Christian homes. Everyone in Greer would be told that Bonnie had gone off to boarding school, which would soon enough be true: my grandfather had arranged to send her to a girls’ school notorious for breaking the spirits of privileged girls who had turned out willful or wild or “fast.”

My grandfather had not accounted for the fact that Bonnie had inherited both his temper and his stubbornness. One morning, she woke before dawn, packed a suitcase, stole all of the money her mother kept stashed in a coffee can, and hitched a ride to the Greyhound station. She had a cousin who had run off to Nashville to become a country singer—Beverly Poteat, who called herself Sunny Brown. A few months later, at Vanderbilt Hospital, I made my inglorious entry into the world.

These were the days when they stamped bastard on the birth certificates of fatherless children. Still, my mother decided to name me Charles, after her father, in the hope that this sign of respect would soften his heart, and that, perhaps, he might beg her to come home. When she called to give him the news, he said only two words to her—“Good luck”—and hung up.

Unwed mothers and absent fathers were not unusual in the Montague Village Apartments. In school, I suffered far less persecution for being a bastard than for being one of the few white boys in a black neighborhood and school. When I got old enough to start asking who and where my daddy was, my mother told me he was a soldier who never came home from the war. When I asked more questions—why we had no photographs of my father, where were my grandparents, where did we come from—my mother looked at Sunny.

“Well, honey,” Sunny said, “your daddy knocked your momma up, and your granddaddy kicked her out.”

By then, Sunny’s dreams of stardom had stalled in an airport bar, where she sang for tips. Her stage was a small riser equipped with a microphone and a PA system running a loop of country classics like “Crazy,” “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” and “I Will Always Love You.”

When I was old enough to be left with one of the neighbors, my mother started waiting tables. She worked at a diner until she turned eighteen, whereupon she moved up to cocktailing in a honky-tonk on Lower Broadway, which back then was all strip clubs, junkies, and hustlers. Eventually, she migrated to Café Cabernet, a dim restaurant in Midtown, also known as Café Divorcée for its popularity as a pickup spot. Every time I visited the place, the stereo seemed to be playing something by Steely Dan or Supertramp. My mother was a beauty, both sensuous and demure, with a curvy figure just on the right edge of plumpness. She was a bit heedless, but smarter and tougher than she looked. Tips were good enough for the three of us to upgrade to a three-bedroom apartment at Montague Village.

We children of Montague were passed around from mother to mother, depending on who wasn’t working at the time. None of them appeared to notice where we were or what we were doing. I spent most of my time with Terrence Robie, who lived across the hall with his grandmother Louella, a maid for a pair of families across the river in Belle Meade. We were raised from infancy in such close proximity that we might as well have been brothers. Though we were only a few months apart in age, by the time we reached middle school, Terrence had grown six inches taller and at least thirty pounds heavier than I. He began to protect me as if I actually were his brother. Terrence could not save me from all of the abuse I suffered for being the smallest and meekest of the few white students in the halls of W. E. B. DuBois Middle, but he made things less miserable than they might otherwise have been.

My mother never showed much interest in my education until, when I was in eighth grade, she received a hospital bill for eight hundred dollars after one of my regular beatings outside school resulted in a broken collarbone.

“We’ve got to get you out of that school,” she said.

One morning not long after, she woke me up early and ordered me to dress in the clothes usually reserved for Christmas Eve and Easter morning church visits.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“There’s something I want you to see,” she said.

The Yeatman School lay at the end of a narrow drive lined by hickory trees, such that it couldn’t be seen from the road; the only markers of its presence were two weathered stone columns, each with the letter Y engraved on flat concrete panels. The obscurity of this entrance suggested that one wasn’t meant to be able to find the school without being told where to look. The forest surrounding the campus—the Grove, they call it—was so dense that I felt, after passing through the shadowy woods and coming upon the white columns bathed in sunlight, that if I left and came back to the same spot, I might not find it there.

Coach Baldwin, a blond, lantern-jawed statue of a man with the stiff, erect posture of an antique nutcracker, toured us around. My mother blushed when he held the door for her and called her “ma’am.” It took me a while to process the fact that Coach Baldwin was, for lack of a more accurate expression, courting us, trying to persuade us of the school’s worthiness.

What I remember best about that day was not the school’s beauty or its expensive amenities, but how different . . .