WE STOPPED FOR THE NIGHT IN KNOXVILLE AND WOKE up to a world so fogged in with Appalachian fog that neither of us wanted to get out of bed and deal with it. The white mist was so dense that it looked like it had been painted on the windows of the motel.
“Shoot, I don’t see how people get around,” Josie said, rubbing on the window as if by doing so she could rub a little hole in the fog. It didn’t work so she came back to bed and snuggled against me.
“It’ll go away when the sun comes up,” I said.
“Yeah, but what happens on a cloudy day?” she wanted to know.
At certain levels of tension and uncertainty the least little things make a difference. Sunlight, for example. If I wake up in a borderline mood and see the sun shining it might lift my mood several notches. I might get up feeling optimistic and go out and buy something wonderful.
Total fog has just the opposite effect. I felt like never getting out of bed. In such a fog it would be difficult to find my car, much less a junk shop or an antique store. I had been to several flea markets that opened in the early morning, when the mist was still rising. The flea marketers moved through it like ghosts, setting up tables and putting out old bottles and other objects, oblivious to the fact that the customers couldn’t see the tables, much less the objects. Certain well-equipped scouts carried big miner’s lights for just such occasions. I had a miner’s light myself, and had used it to good effect at several dawn flea markets. Once I had bought a marvelous Pennsylvania butter spreader by the light of my miner’s light, in the days when I scouted obsessively.
Lying in bed in the fogged-in motel in Knoxville, with Josie’s arms locked tightly around me as she stared at the very un-Texas fog surrounding us, I began to feel nostalgic for the days when I had scouted obsessively. I had had a lot of discipline, once. In fact I had had a good bit of it right up until the moment I had met Cindy Sanders. Of course there had been lapses, when my passions for Coffee, Kate, and Tanya had been at their heights. But Coffee, Kate, and Tanya were fixed entities, each of them easily located and quite predictable once found. In my mind they had become so closely indentified with their respective Texas cities that they could have been called Austin, Houston, and Dallas. Their qualities and the qualities of their three cities were very similar, their rhythms the rhythms of those places. To the extent that I understood the places, I understood the women, and vice versa.
Nothing like that applied to my relationship in the District of Columbia and its environs, where I understood nothing, neither the women nor the place. So far my every move had been wrong, womanwise. I felt like I was on a down escalator where women were concerned, though fortunately the small warm one with her arms wrapped around me didn’t think poorly of me yet.
“What kinds of people live here?” Josie inquired.
“Just the usual kinds,” I said. “It’s not always this foggy.”
“It seems like a long way, back to Henrietta,” she said. “Do you think I could get a job, up in Washington?”
“I guess you could,” I said. “But I thought you were just going to send for your pilot. It’s not a long flight.”
“It is if you don’t really want to go back,” she said.
“Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna be a burden,” she added. “I know you got all them picky girl friends to think about.”
“I wasn’t thinking of you as a burden,” I said.
“You wasn’t thinking of me at all,” Josie said quietly. “That’s okay. I wasn’t thinking of you, either. It’s just an accident, ain’t it?”
“What?”
“That you come by and that I run off with you,” she said. “Just an accident. It ain’t like we met one another in high school and fell in love.”
“No,” I said. “You’re right. Did you meet Little Joe in high school?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Everybody was trying to get him because he was so rich. Lucky me, I got him.”
Relieved by the accidental nature of everything that was happening, we made love, had a big breakfast, and dashed out of Tennessee into Virginia. The fog burned off when we got to Bristol and we drove north through Virginia on a beautiful fall day. The leaves had turned in my absence—the slopes of the Blue Ridge were exhibiting their most brilliant fall foliage, a sight that Josie managed to take in stride.
“I was never much interested in leaves,” she said. “Momma likes ’em, though.”
Near Wytheville we stopped to see an elderly Virginia aristocrat I knew, named Mead Mead IV. Mead lived in what appeared to be perfect leisure in a beautiful old eighteenth-century manor house, attended by tactful servants, all black. The lifestyle of the Mead manor was so eighteenth century that there was no way of knowing whether Mead or any of the servants knew that the Civil War had occurred.
Both Mead and the servants were more than a little shocked by the sight of Josie, in her yellow shirt and tricolored hair, but fortunately their manners were adequate to the situation.
I had only stopped in order to sell Mead a nineteenth-century lightbulb. He was a passionate collector of nineteenth-century lightbulbs, his one concession to modern times. He had over four hundred and kept each one in an individual wooden case which one of his handymen made.
I had found a beautiful nineteenth-century lightbulb in South Dakota. It had been the living room lightbulb of a family who had only used the living room once or twice in the twentieth century. Consequently, the bulb still worked. I knew Mead would be delighted, since only about 10 of his 400 lightbulbs still worked. He had a nineteenth-century light fixture in his study, and when he screwed in the South Dakota lightbulb it shone with a pure if feeble light.
“Perfectly beautiful,” Mead said. He loved the pure feeble light of nineteenth-century lightbulbs. A look of pleasure lingered on his features as he wrote the check and handed it to me. His thin silver hair was neatly combed and the effect of perfect elegance was marred only by a few traces of egg on his necktie.
As we were driving out of the manor’s long driveway, Josie reached over and got the check out of my pocket.
“I just want to read it,” she said. “You mean he paid you five hundred dollars for a lightbulb?”
I nodded.
“I never seen such a creepy house,” she said, and the rest of the way to Washington she brooded about the elegant creepiness of manor houses in Virginia.
When we got to Washington I headed straight for Boog’s, the one place in Washington I was fairly sure Josie wouldn’t think was creepy.
I was right. Boog had just flown in from Kansas City, bringing some barbecued ribs. Micah had his little TV set on the table and was giggling helplessly at a Sanford and Son rerun.
“Hi, like your hairdo,” were the first words out of Boog’s mouth, when he spotted Josie. In two minutes she was eating ribs like one of the family and helping Micah watch Sanford and Son. Micah liked her almost as instantly as Boog had, since she was the first person to come along in months who knew reruns as well as he did.
Boss seemed to be in a somber mood. She was not unfriendly to Josie, or to anyone, but she didn’t say much.
I had meant to ask if Josie could stay at the Millers’ for a night or two, until we got our bearings, but before I could even mention it Boog invited her to stay as long as she wanted to.
“Oh great,” Micah said. “I hope you like Bob Newhart.”
Half an hour later they all went off to Georgetown to see a double-feature Bogart rerun. Josie went with them, looking younger and happier than I had ever seen her.
Boss didn’t go. She sat at the table, idly fingering her long black hair.
“I didn’t mean for her just to move in,” I said, thinking Boss might be annoyed that I had brought a young woman into their lives.
“I don’t care if she moves in,” Boss said. “She seems like a nice kid. Why didn’t you go see Coffee when you were in Texas?”
“I meant to,” I said. “I know I should have.”
“Coffee depends on you,” Boss said. “She’s also about the only woman who gives a flip about you. You ought to be a little more loyal.”
Boss’s hair was extremely beautiful. She stood up and began to clear the table. I helped her.
“I’m glad you showed up,” she said. “I’ve got some papers for you to sign. I sold the horse farm today. Spud bought it.”
“Spud?” I said, shocked. “I thought he was in Miami.”
“When’s the last time you heard from Cindy?” Boss asked.
“A couple of days ago,” I said.
“Spud just left his wife and moved in with her,” she said. “Naturally her engagement to Harris is off. They need the horse farm for a weekend place, since Betsy will get Spud’s weekend place, if they divorce.”
“My gosh,” I said. “Cindy and Spud are planning to marry?”
“Yep,” Boss said. “Spud’s like Boog. He’s been good at his job too long. He’s just at the right age to leave his wife for someone half as good.”
I was so stunned I couldn’t think of a thing to say.
Boss went about cleaning up, perfectly self-assured.
“I guess I ought to go,” I said.
“You’re welcome to stay,” Boss said. “Plenty of beds. But then a bed’s not what you want, is it?”
I shrugged. I had no idea what I wanted. The fact that my life lacked purpose had never been more obvious.
“I think I’ll just hit a motel,” I said. “I’m getting where I can’t sleep, in house.”
She seemed at least slightly sympathetic, but not sympathetic enough that I dared approach her. I stopped as I was going out the door, looking back to see if Boss had anything else to say.