WHAT’S a story of this type for? What’s any story for? To make us laugh I guess. Look at Mark, he tells a story, then he just busts out laughing, holding his hand on his knee the way he do. Mark’s my husband, he’s so sweet you wouldn’t hardly know he is a man. Pick up the front of a Buick with no help. And sweet, sweet as sugar cane.
Sometimes I start telling a story that’s sad and the first thing anybody says is how come? How come they went and did that way? Nobody says how come when you tell a funny story. They’re too busy laughing.
How come? How come they went and did that way? That don’t figure. That don’t make no sense. Like Mr. Alter that come and stay with Miss Crystal all spring, then go home and shoot himself. 1976, I guess we won’t forget that year. They wasn’t in love either, not Mr. Alter and Miss Crystal. He was her business partner in that magazine. Francis, she called him. Francis said this and Francis said that. Mr. Manny got sick of hearing it.
Mr. Alter wasn’t in love with Miss Denery either, that sleep with him when he was here. He wasn’t in love with none of them that kept calling him up. Oh, he was a pretty man. I can’t picture him with holes in his chest. It just don’t make a bit of sense. He seem like such a happy man. Everyone in town calling him up whenever he was here, men and women. He’d just be wore out. He’d say, Traceleen, tell them I’m not here. Tell Miss Allene I’m taking a nap. Tell Miss Louise I’m gone to the coast.
How could he go and shoot himself with all those people loving him to death and wanting to talk to him all day? I couldn’t blame them. He was the prettiest white man I ever did see in my life. And strong, strong as Mark. Didn’t look like a poet. He looked more like a dock worker. All that curly black hair. And those big black eyes. Look like he just fill up a room with himself when he come in. Even Mr. Manny couldn’t resist him even if he do get sick of Miss Crystal saying what he said all the time. “Stay another week,” he’d keep saying. “There’s nothing going on in the mountains. Stay with us. Crystal wants you here.” Then Mr. Alter he’d unpack his bag and stay another week. March, April, May.
Miss Crystal, she just adore him. She’d even take care of Crystal Anne just to show off to him what a good mother she was. Mr. Alter, he loved little children. You didn’t ever have to make them leave if he was around. He loved Crystal Anne and would let her rock on his foot while he talked, she’d hang on to his knee. But the one that loved him the most was King, Miss Crystal’s son by her other marriage. King loved him the hardest of anyone. He started coming straight home after school and doing his homework and reading any book Mr. Alter recommended to him. He’d read it that day. Then too, Mr. Alter’d take him on walks and adventures. King was fourteen then, just the age for adoring someone. They went to all the cemeteries around town and made notes on the names for Mr. Alter’s poems. They went together to a Martin Luther King march. And downtown to Ape Day when they had five Planet of the Apes movies in one day. They went to a jazz festival at the Catholic cathedral. All like that. They had become real close friends. How could you shoot yourself with a young man adoring you and copying every move you make? That’s doing wrong, that’s doing very bad even if he was a famous poet. Well, I shouldn’t talk so loose like that. I shouldn’t be the one to cast the stones.
How come him to do it to us I asked Miss Crystal a dozen times if I said it once. Every time she told me something different. Fame killed him, she told me once. He was famous but he didn’t get any money for it. How was he supposed to act famous when he barely had a roof over his head?
It was those monks that raised him at that boy’s school, she said another time. They took him down into the basement of that old place when he was a boy and told him darkness isn’t any different from light. Benedictines. These old Germans in black robes. Right here in the modern world telling boys things like that. I blame them. No, I don’t blame anyone. I don’t know what caused it, Traceleen. Any more than you do. I don’t know a thing. She ducked her head down like she was going to cry and I was ashamed to keep bringing it up but I went on.
It don’t figure to me, I said. Walk into a bedroom and shoot himself in the chest with somebody else’s pistol. How’s that man supposed to feel? The one that owned the gun? What’s he supposed to say when he comes home and his friend’s on the floor, shot with his gun? Who’s to blame? I tell you, I’m about to get mad at Mr. Alter. It’s hard to go on loving someone that leads a Martin Luther King parade one day and three days later shoots himself to pieces with his buddy’s gun.
Here’s how it started. First it was March and I answered the doorbell one morning. Miss Crystal, she was at her dance class. And there was Mr. Alter standing on the porch wearing a Hawaiian shirt and smiling at me like I’m the one he came to see. He had gained some weight over the winter. Except for that I thought he looked just like the last time I’d seen him.
I came to surprise her, he said. Where is she? Where is the Duchess of Story Street? That’s the kind of thing he’d say, laughing when he said it. Well, he came right in and got a glass of grapefruit juice and sat around the kitchen talking to me and then she came home and started screaming she was so happy to see him and they got out all their boxes of stuff about their magazine and started laying it out all over the dining room table. It’s this magazine they’re starting from scratch with some of Mr. Manny’s money. It’s a magazine for poetry and like that. No pictures.
Then they call up some people they know, poets, people that their poems are going to be in the magazine, and pretty soon it’s a crowd and they’ve moved into the living room and the music’s playing. Jazz, that’s all they like to listen to. They’re all sitting on the floor, happy and drinking wine and talking all about poems and King comes home from school, he’s fourteen, I already told you that, and he goes and sits on the floor by Mr. Alter and from then on he don’t leave his side. March, April, May.
Now King’s run off to a hippie commune because Mr. Alter shot himself and Miss Crystal’s going crazy looking for him. It’s the second time he’s run off since the funeral. First time Mr. Phelan, he’s Miss Crystal’s brother that’s a big-game hunter, he come up from his ranch in Texas to lead the search. And Mr. Manning, senior, that they call the old man, he’s in town and everyone is bowing and scraping to him and he’s some mad at Miss Crystal for taking his grandson off to live in New Orleans and letting him know people that commit suicide. And police cars are coming and going and detectives making reports. Miss Crystal, she can’t even grieve over Mr. Alter for trying to find King. No one knows what to do. It’s a mess. Where was I?
I’m telling too many stories at one time. What was it I set out to tell? I wanted to tell about Mr. Alter killing himself and how none of us could understand what caused it. I was trying to get to the part where Miss Crystal sent notices to all her friends and told them she wasn’t going to any more funerals so if any of them was getting the idea of shooting themselves to count her out. That was the best part of that story.
Then I got off on King running away to the hippie commune. We weren’t sure exactly where. It would be the week they came to paint the outside of the house creme-colored. On top of everything else. Mr. Larkin, this Englishman painter, he’s got a niece that’s a famous tennis player. Anyway, he kept coming in, wanting someone to see if the color was okay. Finally he just went on and painted it. I think one of the policemen made the final decision.
They were all in the living room. The old man and Mr. Phelan and Miss Crystal and Crystal Anne, the baby, and Mr. Manny, Miss Crystal’s husband. They had detectives out combing the United States. King had left behind this terrible note. Dear Mother, it said. All you ever did wrong was have me. Love King. Not even a comma.
Seems like they sat in that living room a year getting reports and making phone calls. I never thought I’d be glad to see Mr. Phelan but I was even glad he was there. He had on his black suit and a tie pin made out of a tiger claw he shot on a trip to Africa and he was in charge of things. The one they call the old man was just sitting on a straight chair asking questions. Day after day they sat there. The painters were all the way to the wall facing the Mertons’ house when the case broke.
It was the old man that did it. All alone. One morning he got fed up with Mr. Phelan and his detective friends and he went outside and got into his old car and drove off. No one knew where he’d gone. Still don’t know. He hasn’t ever told a soul how he did it. He was gone about four hours. Then he came back in with a telephone number and they call it and sure enough it’s a house down in Texas, not too far from Mr. Phelan’s ranch, and King is there. The boy that answered the phone said he was gone for the day, working in a taxidermy.
Then the men flew off in Mr. Phelan’s plane to bring him back and Miss Crystal, she stopped crying and took a bath and even had something to eat.
King had arrived when I got there in the morning. Eating breakfast in the dining room. Like he hadn’t ever run away. He smiled right at me through his scrambled eggs. It could have all stopped right there and that bad spring been behind us.
Only Mr. Phelan came in and took him in the den and held him down and cut off all his hair. There’s been this big fight going on all year about whether Mr. Manny could make Miss Crystal make King cut his hair. It had got to be all they talked about up to the time when Mr. Alter came to visit. Now Mr. Phelan had his orders from the old man and in the end King was half bald.
Then Miss Crystal she got the gun and wave it at Mr. Phelan and said she was going to shoot him and I believed it. I thought she was going to. Mr. Phelan, he walk across the room as cool as a cucumber and take it out of her hand. Then King throw himself on Mr. Phelan for disarming her and it got out of hand. I never have seen anything like it.
In the end there was broken furniture and lamps and I don’t know what all. And nobody is ever going to speak to anybody again and King’s hair laying all over the den sofa and who you think got to clean all that up?
I had just got the vacuum plugged in when it started up again. Miss Crystal, by then she was back in the bedroom taking tranquilizer pills and King had gone to his room to sit on his waterbed and play the radio and Mr. Phelan was sitting in that Queen Anne chair in the living room reading a book and guarding the door. The doorbell’s ringing off the wall and it’s Mr. Big King from Meridian, that’s King’s daddy. He’s just got wind of the runaway and he’s boiling mad that he hadn’t been called in. He came storming in mad as hell. Then he starts screaming for Miss Crystal to give him his boy she stole from him and he’s calling her every name he can think of and Mr. Phelan rise up out of the chair and the two of them start scuffling, holding on to each other’s arms and moving around the living room. I was scared to death but I couldn’t stop watching. King’s in the doorway and Miss Crystal fakes a faint in the front hall but nobody pays any attention to her. They’ve all seen that before. I would have gone to her but I couldn’t cross the living room without taking a chance on getting knocked down. So I’m in the den behind the French doors and they’re saying every kind of thing to each other. “What you done to his hair?” Mr. Big King’s yelling. “I’m going to pull every hair out of your head for doing that to my son.” I couldn’t help but remember he’d been one of the main ones wanting Miss Crystal to make King cut it.
Mr. Phelan and Mr. Big King are yelling for a long time. Meanwhile, Miss Crystal she gets up since it’s not doing any good to be laying on the floor and she yells at me to call the police.
“I’m leaving,” King says. “This time I’m never coming back.” Then he’s out the front door and on his bike and gone and everyone stops and runs out on the porch after him but it’s too late. He’s gone. And he’s got the old man’s billfold with him, that was taking a catnap on the back porch and missed the fights. Everybody said there was hundreds of dollars in it. He can stay for months with all that money, they’re saying. He can hide out anywhere. Except for his hair, Miss Crystal said. He can’t hide that hairdo, can he? I’ll find him, the old man said. He washed his face and hands and put on his shoes and took over. You moved him down here, Sister, and let him know all those poets and homosexuals and suicides and now you’re paying for it. Well, your old daddy’s still alive. Thank your stars for that. I’ve found him once this week. I’ll round him up again. Get me a glass of sweet milk, Traceleen. And I’ll be on my way.
What about me, Mr. Big King said. He’s my boy. I’m going on the hunt. How about me, Dad, Mr. Phelan said. Don’t you want me to go along and drive you? Then they’re gone and I’m spending the rest of the day on the bed holding Miss Crystal and listening to her cry and Crystal Anne hasn’t had any attention and the whole house a mess. 1976. I won’t forget that year.
I love Miss Crystal. You know I do. I’ve told you that before. They’re some people in the world, seem like they’re just meant to be more trouble than other people. Demand more, cause more trouble and cause more goodness too. Someone’s got to love and care for them. Got to study them, so we see how things are made to happen.
He’s going to kill himself like Francis, she’s saying over and over to me. Traceleen, you know he’s going to do it. Now he hasn’t even got his hair. He’ll be dead before they find him. Just like Francis. Just like Francis Alter.
He’s not going to kill himself, I tell her. I’m hoping it’s true. He’s got to live to get his revenge on Mr. Phelan. As I said it I started thinking it sounded right. I never knew King to take an insult lying down before, I said, stroking Miss Crystal’s hair with my hand. He’ll be all right. They’ll find him. We’ll be seeing him again. Crystal Anne came and stood at the side of the bed and put her hand on her momma. King’s gone, Momma, she said. King’s crying.
This time the hunt went on for weeks. They combed every bar in town and every hippie commune in the South and moved out to the West. They bribed his friends for clues and put ads in the paper and Mr. Phelan prayed every day on his knees in the den and anyone that felt like it could join him. I joined in when I could. Mr. Phelan would make a first-rate preacher. He’s got the voice for it. He can get into a prayer good as anyone I have ever seen. Mr. Manny, he’d come and kneel down but he wouldn’t open his mouth. I thought it was nice of him to be there, him being of the Jewish race and all. Miss Crystal, she wasn’t having anything to do with praying. All that bullshit’s what got us where we are, she said. She stayed back in the bedroom talking to her cousin Harry on the phone and her boyfriend, Alan, that she gave up to save her marriage. She got to talk to him a lot during the emergency. Ordinarily, he won’t even let her call him since she decided to stay with Mr. Manny. It’s been hard on her.
We moved on into July and still no trace of King. Other parents that their children had run away are coming over all the time to have meetings. Oh, it’s very sad, they’re clutching letters they got and farewell notes and bits of information. But nobody’s finding their children. It’s a big country and our boy had nine hundred dollars and maybe more than that and credit cards. Every day we’re praying he’ll use one.
So July 10 came and went that is Crystal Anne’s birthday. She got a green and yellow Sesame Street swing set and an ice cream cake made like a clown’s face but no one’s got the heart to celebrate. It’s coming up to July 17, which is King’ birthday. He’d be fifteen at seven-thirty in the morning, which is the exact time he was born by cesarean operation in Jackson, Mississippi. Fifteen years old. If he’s still alive, Miss Crystal said. You ought to see the way she was looking by then. Look like she’d aged fifty years. Thin as a rail. Eyes like a praying mantis. Even her boyfriend, Alan, calling will not cheer her up. She won’t even talk to him.
Then it’s July 16 and I’m in the kitchen making shrimp Creole from my auntee’s recipe from Lafayette and who you think come walking in the side door almost six feet tall, look like he’d grown a foot and wearing a shirt hadn’t been ironed and old torn-up shoes and smiling like he knows nobody’s going to do a thing but hug his neck. “Where’s my momma?” he says, when I got through hugging him to death. Then she was right there, her hair half full of curlers, Crystal Anne right behind her. And we all wrestle him around and sit him down and start putting food in his mouth. 1976. I don’t want to go back there again. Too much happening. Too much going on. It was like a drought we had. Or a flood.