So They Say
Collected Stories
Jack Andrew Urquhart
Collected Stories
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011 by Jack Andrew Urquhart
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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For Raymond. Because of Raymond.
An Unavoidable Waste of Time and Energy
The Story of My Life in One Word
“How I Come to Know” appeared online, in slightly different form, in Clapboard House Literary Journal.
An earlier version of “Irises, Purple Irises,” appeared online (as “Purple Irises”) in Standards: The International Journal of Multicultural Studies.
[1956, Florida]
Come the Sunday of Grandpapa Amos’s appointment with Jesus, the whole Fordham family would have to be up and moving like a team with a holy mission. At least, that’s what Preacher Higgenbotham advised.
According to the Preacher, there wasn’t no time to waste.
“Only exposure to the son is goin’ to keep Amos from burnin’,” is what the Preacher said. “An I ‘spect it’ll take all a’y’all to get him to the church.”
Rex, playing hide and seek under his grandparents’ porch, heard the Preacher say just that to Grandma Aida—heard it plain as day through the thin floorboards same’s if he’d been right up there on the porch sipping ice tea with the two of them.
Soon as prissy old Annie Maude, who always tagged along when her Daddy went witnessing for the Lord, started up hollerin’ “Olly Olly Oxen Free,” Rex was on his hiding mate, Walter McCaffrey, like a duck on a June bug.
“That don’t make no sense a’tall,” he whispered to his friend while they were crawling out from under the porch. “My Grandpa’s too sick to be settin’ in the sun. Why, he ain’t got outta his bed for a slap month now. How in the world is exposin’ himself to a blazin’ heat goin’ do anything but burn him to a crisp?”
Walter, skinny as a stick and squinting when they came back into the light of day, stood slapping at his filthy knees in the middle of Grandma Aida’s zinnia bed. As usual, he took his time about offering his two cents.
“Prob’ly somethin’ scrip-ter-al to do with your Grandpapa’s baptism next Sunday,” he said, his buckteeth the only flash of snow-white-clean in a heart-shaped face.
Rex couldn’t help laughing. “Lord, Walter! You look like you just stepped out one a’them minstrel shows they put on down at the high school.”
“Yeah, well if I’m Amos you must be Andy,” Walter, not one to take being the butt of a joke, jumped right back at him. “You just as black-dirty, son. B’sides, try hidin’ in a cinder box for a quarter hour an we’ll see how lily white you keep!”
Ever practical, Walter was already making for the spigot.
“Best we take the hose to ourselves b‘fore Miss Goody-Goody Annie Maude gets a gander an runs tattlin’,” he said, turning on the water and adjusting the flow to a fine stream. “We don’t wash up first, somebody’s like to set our butts to burnin’ out here in the sun.”
Rex liked the way his friend could hold on to several notions at the same time. There wasn’t nothing ‘one-track’ about Walter.
“I wonder what Higgenbotham was thinkin’ to advise such a thing about my Grandpapa, sick as he is,” Rex said, coming back to what he’d heard the Preacher say.
Walter shrugged and tugged a lock of dirty blond hair to a point in the middle of his forehead. “You big enough by now,” he said poking Rex where his stomach pooched out over his Roy Rogers belt, “to know that grownups don’t study on makin’ sense to us kids. They got their own private language.”
As usual, Walter turned out to be right on the money.
~
Whatever it was the Preacher had in mind for Grandpapa Amos come Sunday morning, it seemed to Rex, all the Fordham grownups knew how to go about getting it done.
By 7:00 a.m., his Daddy was already washed, dressed, breakfasted and gone up the block to help Grandma Aida, Aunt Janet, and Uncle Jonas get Grandpapa out of bed and ready for his big day. Rex, left behind on the other end of Lake Street with his Mama, picked his way through two stacks of pancakes hoping to delay Inez’s well-established Sunday morning rituals.
His Mama, he knew, would not be put off for long. As far as Inez was concerned, ‘Sunday best’ meant exactly that.
“You best to get busy, Mister!” she snapped when she caught him hunched over the funny papers. “You sure ain’t going to that church today looking anything less than a polished penny,” she said, popping him on the fanny for good measure. “Not when your Grandpapa’s ‘bout to be put on public display, and him practically on his last leg! I swear, I think you been keepin’ company with that Walter too much. Maybe his Mama don’t care if he looks like somethin’ the cats drug in. But I ain’t about to let you follow suit, young man! No sir! You goin’ to shine!”
Rex sighed and folded the comic section, abandoning kindly Mary Worth’s self-sacrifices for a more personal brand of Christian martyrdom. He wondered if poor Grandpapa, who according to Doctor Tommy has something growing up inside of him, would have to put up with the same kind of polishing Inez had in mind—a glow that wasn’t merely skin deep. Rex hoped the morning would go something easier on his Grandpapa.
“Get on in here front of this mirror, little boy,” his Mama hollered from his bedroom. “We got no time to waste.”
Inez’s usual Sunday morning routine rarely varied in its vigor and roughness. Indeed, his Mama’s notion of personal grooming was all about elbows, thumbs and prodding fingers.
“Lord have mercy,” she despaired, giving him the once over, her blue-gray eyes narrowed down to slits. “Just look at them rooster combs popped up on your head!”
Now that his hair had grown out, it seemed to Rex that his Mama wielded a hairbrush like a household appliance, applying the same kind of pressure to his head that she put to a pair of wrinkled pantaloons on her ironing board. Pressing the bristles into his Wild Root anointed scalp, Inez went to war with his cowlicks pursuing each wayward tuft with a Biblical zeal. The end result, carefully examined in the mirror for any minor flaws in need of correction, was hair tamed to an un-naturally smooth, high gloss, a razor-sharp part, and a little pompadour wave at the front of his head.
His clothes and shoes were undertaken with an equal attention to detail. Hand-selected and color-coordinated by Inez the night before, Rex’s “Sunday suit” reflected a highly developed aesthetic notion of masculine fashion—one in which he had no say whatever. The plaid and pleated slacks Inez selected, the pastel-colored shirt, even the solid-colored clip-on tie he would wear to the First Baptist Church, were not open to discussion, nor was the act of wearing them a matter to be taken lightly.
“Stand up straight and don’t be sittin’ down in them pants yet, Mister! They’ll be wrinkled soon enough without you helpin’ ‘em along!”
Just as he’d expected, his Mama was more agitated today than usual, the evidence showing up in the tone of her voice, as well as the rougher than usual handling she employed in dressing him.
“Worries me to death, that old man dragged up there in church s’frail as he is,” she grumbled, tucking the tails of Rex’s freshly ironed and starched shirt down tight against his butt cheeks. “No tellin’ what could happen with him in such a state.”
His Mama’s hands, busily engaged in digging a trench methodically all the way ‘round his middle, were hard and spade-like, the sharp edges of her nails raking him right through the oxford cloth.
Grandpapa Amos’s ‘state,’ it seemed to Rex, had been pretty much the family’s only topic of conversation all spring and now well into summer—especially since his Grandpapa’s return from the hospital a month earlier.
Cancer. That was the name Doctor Tommy had attached to what ails Grandpapa—not that the word made any more sense to Rex now than it had months earlier when he’d overheard his Daddy use it for the first time.
“Cancer’s back for sure, Doctor says,” was what he’d overheard his Daddy tell Inez when they’d thought he was too caught up in reading his Robinson Crusoe book to be listening in. “Them tumors he couldn’t get at s’growin’ fast enough to beat the band.”
Rex hadn’t understood their kitchen table talk about tumors and cancer, nor has anyone really explained it even now to his complete satisfaction.
“Cancer’s when your body starts turnin’ against you,” was how his Aunt Janet had tried to explain it to him one day while she was sitting out on the front stoop down at his grandparents’ house brushing out her long blond hair in between shelling peas. “It’s when your insides go haywire and start growin’ in ways that ain’t normal.”
Even more confusing was the notion, put forward by his Mama, that Grandpapa had somehow made the cancer things inside him worse on account of being so hard-headed.
“This is what comes from pure stubbornness,” was what Inez said to his Daddy right after Grandpapa came home from the hospital. And the way she said it left no doubt that she was mightily peeved.
“If your Daddy had listened to Doctor Tommy way last fall, they could’a probably nipped the whole business in the bud before it had time to spread. Now, here them growths has got big as grapefruits!”
It is on account of the grapefruit-sized things growing up inside his Grandpapa that Rex has been prevented from visiting him.
“I don’t know as you’d recognize your Grandpapa, sick as he is right now,” was how Grandma Aida put it to Rex when he’d asked about paying his Grandpapa a visit. “Besides, he’s just too sick to have much commotion going on ‘round him. Doctor Tommy’s laid down strict orders ‘bout Grandpapa’s visitors—that’s so’s he can get his rest.”
Rex noticed right away that his Grandma hadn’t said “so’s he can get well” or even “get better.” He’d also noticed that Doctor Tommy’s orders didn’t seem to apply to the many grownups who’d begun to-and-fro’ing his Grandpapa’s sickroom as soon as he got home from the hospital.
“A crying shame how so many folks has been put out by that man’s contrary ways,” was what Rex’s Mama had to say on the matter. “S’like a circus up there at the house, what with Aida lettin’ everybody traipse through,” Inez complained. “Must be a dozen folks doin’ for that old man—fetchin’ for him, answerin’ to his beck n’call.”
Even when it came to being sick, it seemed to Rex that his Mama could be mighty unsympathetic.
“Gripes me good, the way your Grandpapa’s done put the whole family in the way of so much grief,” was how Inez saw it. “Ever’body worried sick over how he’s put things off health wise, physical and spiritual! Just imagine it! Waitin’ till practically the last minute to settle things with the Lord God!”
Once Inez got going on a particular shortcoming, she was not easily put off the trail.
“I’m rightly ‘shamed Preacher Higgenbotham has had to take so much time gettin’ that old man ready to meet his maker! Sixty-something years old, and still not baptized. I never seen nothin’ like it in all my life.”
Neither had Rex. He couldn’t help but agree with his Mama—at least when it came to the part about getting baptized. He didn’t understand why his Grandpapa had waited so long to get dunked in the holy waters—especially when just about everybody from Rex’s third grade class last year had already had their turn in the big baptistry, himself included. It still made Rex fidgety just thinking about his time up in the big pool at the top of the choir loft.
“Land’s sake, stand still,” Inez barked at him, jerking him to a sudden attention. “How you ‘spect me to get this blame necktie ‘tached right with you squirming worse than a night crawler.”
“Yes Mam, but the knot’s chokin’ my neck,” Rex answered.
“Sorry thing’s made so flimsy it tangles up if you look at it cross-eyed,” Inez mumbled, her eyes burning into the sweaty spot at the base of his throat.
There was, to Rex’s mind—though he had not arrived at the notion consciously—no distinction between his Mama’s worried and angered moods. Both states of mind presented the same clues—the same impatience and abruptness, the same sharpness of voice; the same habit of carrying on conversations with an unseen other while never seeming to hear the responses of persons right in front of her. At such times Inez’s eyes narrowed down to chinks, no more than a sliver of her irises showing, and her head moved in a way that set the mass of bobby-pinned henna-colored curls atop her head quivering like a flock of guinea hens.
“There’s no telling how that old man’s like to behave up there this morning, pumped full of all them pain killers,” Inez grumbled, her fingers wrestling a button through a hole in his shirt cuff.
Around his Mama a hothouse garden of fragrances wafted and mingled to make a private, heady atmosphere. Clouds of Jungle Gardenia mixed it up with lingering wisps of Avon’s Skin So Soft and the aerosol sharpness of Aqua Net All Day Hold. Swirled together, they made Rex’s head swim. When his Mama spoke, her breath bore the scents of spearmint and creamed coffee.
“Preacher Higgenbotham and your Grandma ought to have their heads examined, dragging him up there in front of the whole town this way. Would’a been better to have him baptized in private,” she fretted. “Could’a spared us all a world of worry and embarrassment!”
Rex thought about Grandpapa Amos, who according to Uncle Jonas—Aunt Janet’s husband—is no longer the big-shouldered, big-bellied man Rex remembers.
“Lord Leland, there’s nothin’ to him but skin and bones anymore,” was what he’d heard Jonas say to Daddy one time when they were smoking their cigarettes out on the front stoop. “An’ he’s got so quiet. Cain’t help wonderin’ what he’s thinking nowadays.”
Rex wondered too. He wondered what it might feel like for his Grandpapa to be facing God and the whole church at the same time and in such a sorry state.
Rex still remembered the shivering cold sensation of being up there in front of the whole congregation in the glass-walled pool high above the choir loft. Worst of all had been the realization that came to him just before the preacher dunked him under, when looking down into the water he’d been horrified to see the white yards of his choir robe floating lily-like around his waist. The terrible knowledge that his bare white legs, rising like fat stalks into his Fruit of the Looms, could be seen by everyone in the church had unnerved him enough to prompt a poorly timed in-breath just as the Preacher pushed his head beneath the waves. The result was a windpipe full of water that, on surfacing, spewed font-like directly into Preacher Higgenbotham’s ear. The episode was accompanied by a humiliating spate of coughing that left Rex snot-nosed, his lips and cheeks slick with spittle.
Afterward, in the anteroom, Preacher Higgenbotham, busily engaged in hand pumping his ear, offered Rex a towel.
“Son, I reckon you’ll be sloshing ‘round inside my head for the next day or so,” the Preacher had murmured, his pulpit voice traded in for something much quieter and less dramatic once they were back on dry land.
Rex wondered what the waters held in store for Grandpapa Amos.
~
They arrived at the church earlier than usual, which meant that for a good quarter hour Rex was obliged to attend Inez—a task that usually involved polite interaction with several matrons of the congregation.
On the front steps of the main sanctuary they encountered two more early birds—both members of Inez’s missionary society.
Miss Edna Shopke and Mrs. Hattilu Moore had the distinction of being the only identical twins in all of Fern City. Rex, tagging behind Inez as she made her way toward the sisters, dreaded the inevitable interrogation. Separated in name only by the distinction of Miss Hattilu’s marriage to Chester Moore, a union that had left her widowed decades earlier, the siblings were as famous in their own way as Mrs. Mironda Match, who’d accidently shot her husband—owner of the local Western Auto store—to death one summer night a few years back when she’d caught him sneaking in the kitchen door at three o’clock in the morning. But unlike Mrs. Match, who’d kept to herself ever since the shooting, each Sunday found Fern City’s twin sisters standing sentinel at the church house door.
Ever ready to question and probe in the purring, polite manner of Southern women born into money, the twins had a knack for uncovering other folks’ best-kept secrets, and an even greater talent for broadcasting the news to the widest possible audience.
Well into middle age, the sisters had continued to dress exactly alike—a fact that no longer seemed to strike anyone as unusual. Today both were clad in jersey dresses cut from the same garden-run-a-riot fabric. Roses as big as pumpkins and a jungle of leaves and vines bloomed and tangled over their reed thin bodies. Identical lime green hats sat dog-dish-like atop their immaculate pillbox hairdos, the color of which (Inez had it on good authority) derived from weekly dousings of Marchand’s Golden Hair Wash. Both ladies sported heels and lunchbox purses in blazingly white patent leather. Artic-white gloves, seed-pearl trimmed, sheathed their twig-like arms to the elbows.
“How you, Inez?” Miss Edna chirped, her blackberry bright eyes darting birdlike toward her sister. “Your family ready for the big day, praise God?”
“How is Mister Amos? He must be overjoyed about now?” Miss Hattilu chimed in.
Rex had always been puzzled by the ways of the church ladies of his Mama’s acquaintance. Always it seemed that their words, though plain enough, carried something else he couldn’t quite figure—another meaning buried in the foreign language of pauses, dips, and arcs of tone, in the peculiarities of word groupings and emphasis, even in the subtleties of facial expressions and head bobbings. Just now the sisters’ fluttering hands and twisty-turney heads reminded him of twin parakeets.
“I think it’s plumb wonderful that a man can still come round to God, don’t you?” Miss Hattilu said, chirruping at Inez.
“Just goes to show what a merciful, loving Savior we’ve got in Jesus, don’t it. So long’s we’re living, it’s never too late for his poor creations to turn from a straying path,” Miss Edna added, fixing Inez with an eager eye before nodding perfunctorily in Rex’s direction.
“How you, Master Rex?” she asked, taking Rex off guard. “Must be mighty proud of your Grandpapa’s decision to come home to the Lord?”
“Yes Mam,” Rex answered in his quietest, most respectful Sunday school voice.
“He sure is getting hisself big,” Miss Edna said to Inez. “More of him near about every time we meet. Just look at them broad shoulders and that fine tummy.”
Rex felt himself coloring, certain that Miss Edna—in her best Christian-like manner—had remarked on how fat he was getting. Good Lord, how long would it go on? Already a self-conscious humidity was beginning to condense at his hairline. Another few minutes of the Misses Shopke and Moore, and the lanolin enriched sweat from his scalp would begin to melt and coat his forehead in a Crisco sheen.
But if his Mama noticed any of this, she certainly gave no sign.
“Yes Mam, looks like he’ll grow up big n’strong—like his grand-daddy,” Inez said, throwing in a merry smile for good measure. “And, yes, we’re all proud today—mighty proud of them both,” she said.
At such times, the Inez Rex knew seemed changed into a new person, someone far more patient and pleasant than his everyday Mama. It was impossible to imagine the Inez before him now ever raising her voice, ever whetting it strop-like on her dull anger till the words cut razor-sharp. Instead, this Mama wore an easy smile on her lipsticked mouth, and her voice tinkled as musical as a wind chime.
“I declare, but if it isn’t just the most heartening thing in the world to see you come out to support Mister Amos like this,” she said, showing her wonderfully white teeth to the Misses Shopke and Moore. “We just appreciate the Christian fellowship and good will so much.”
It was only when she took his hand to lead the way inside—squeezing it in a vice-like grip—that Rex had any hint of her true feelings.
“Don’t drag and dawdle,” she bent low, to hiss ever so discreetly in his ear. “It’s like the dead lice is falling off you sometimes, you so slow. Here. Take this Kleenex and wipe the perspiration off your brow.”
Thank goodness for small favors. Inside the church the ceiling fans whirred quietly, the propellers kicking up just enough breeze to make sitting bearable. Rex took a seat alongside Inez near the front of the church. At least there would be the small comfort of knowing that owing to Grandpapa’s baptism, the Preacher’s sermon would be shorter by half the usual length.
By the time Rex saw Aunt Janet and Uncle Jonas making their way down the aisle, the church was nearly full and the processional music had begun. For a moment, he thought of Daddy and Grandma, who would be waiting with Grandpapa Amos high above the choir loft in the anteroom adjoining the baptistry. At least they would be spared the firsthand experience of Miss Glenda-Jean Morton “banging away at that poor old instrument,” as Daddy liked to say of her organ solos.
“Woman jerks and turns her head same’s a circus monkey,” was the way Rex had heard his Daddy describe Miss Glenda-Jean’s gyrations at the organ to Aunt Janet. “That’s one big-butted woman! I swear, she gets to scootching on that bench and it looks like she’s making mash potatoes to go with them hams!”—descriptions Rex knew his Daddy would never have dared to share with Inez.
Preacher Higgenbotham’s sermon followed Miss Glenda-Jean’s music in short order. The text, as it was for all baptisms, was from Matthew 3:13–17.
Then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan coming to John, to be baptized by him, the preacher intoned, using his very best revival voice, so deep and sonorous that it seemed designed to convey soul-saving information by means of pure vibration.
But John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I have need to be baptized by You ...”
It was difficult to concentrate on the Preacher’s Bible story—difficult as always to picture the details of a familiar tale grown stale from countless repetition.
After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water ...
All Rex could think of was how it had felt when the preacher had pushed him under the water and the resulting humiliation of having weathered the test so poorly. The coughing and spluttering sputum. And how unclean he’d felt afterward.
“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”
Hardly had the preacher’s words faded into the rafters before the choir launched into a warbling version of “Shall We Gather at the River”.
His heart pounding in his chest, Rex watched as Preacher Higgenbotham exited the pulpit and vanished into the hallway whose stairs, Rex knew, led up and up to the anteroom—and, from there, to the baptismal pool. The words of the hymn were being carried aloft as well, soaring crookedly on Miss Eloise Humphrey’s slightly off-key soprano, which rang high if not quite true.
Yes we'll gather at the river
The beautiful, the beautiful river …
As the church lights dimmed, Rex leaned forward in his seat, drawn to the single spotlight that shown on the blue velvet curtains that concealed the baptismal pool. He held his breath against the moment when the heavy drapes would part to reveal an aurora borealis of shimmering green light above the choir loft.
We’ll gather with the saints at the river …
What must Grandpapa Amos be feeling up in the little blue waiting room behind the choir loft? Perhaps he was feeling ill the way Rex had a year earlier.
How, Rex wondered, would his Daddy and Preacher Higgenbotham get Grandpapa down into the pool and back out again?
“The beauuu-ti-ful, the beauuu-ti-ful riiiii-ver,” Miss Eloise sang, her quavering bell-like voice darting a half-beat ahead of the others.
Then, right on cue, the drapes parted and the sound of rippling water came gurgling over the public address system—the swishing, rippling sounds amplified by the microphone suspended above the pool.
Mere seconds later came the other, more terrible sound of the congregation’s reaction, a collective gasp going up—like wind bursting into a closed and shuttered room. Sighs and twitters filled the sanctuary. Several people even dropped their hymnals with a bang; others leaned forward precariously in their pews. It looked to Rex like even Preacher Higgenbotham was thrown off his mark by the commotion. Twice he had to stop and clear his throat before speaking.
There in the pool, amidst yards of undulating cheesecloth—like a great floating jellyfish—was an imposter masquerading as Rex’s Grandpapa Amos, a sea creature possessing none of Grandpapa’s bulk and presence, none of his authority of size and dimension. Instead, dangling below a shroud-like umbrella of ballooning gauze was only the barest hint of a physical body: arms and legs slender as tentacles—boneless, practically transparent. A white bandana had been tied about this stranger’s bobbing head. Indeed, it seemed a miracle to Rex that the creature pretending to be his Grandpapa had not completely dissolved in the iridescent green water.
The horrible sight was compounded by the acoustics of the sanctuary. Almost immediately the amplified fluttering of Grandpapa’s breath, a sound like laundry flapping on the line, drifted down from the rafters.
When the Preacher raised his hand toward heaven, Rex beheld the white handkerchief that would cover Grandpapa’s mouth and felt an anticipatory thrill as Preacher Higgenbotham’s voice rose to movie-house proportions.
“I am the way and the light,” the preacher intoned. “No man cometh to the Father but through me …”
At the far end of their pew, Rex saw Aunt Janet lean forward—her hands white-knuckled, her fingers manicured to a high gloss, curled tightly over the seat back in front of her. She drew a breath and held it.
“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost …” the words came painfully slow. “I baptize you, Amos John Richard Fordham …”
And then the moment. Rex caught his breath as the preacher applied the handkerchief to Grandpapa Amos’s face.
There was only a moment’s hesitation before the slow tilt took Grandpapa. Like a tree in the felling, his Grandpapa seemed to float backwards, the sound of his labored lungs extinguished by the snow-white handkerchief and the green water. In an instant, Grandpapa’s bandana’d head touched the water and vanished in a swooshing churn of bubbles. One. Two. Three seconds, Rex counted. An impossibly long time. And then like a ship rising from the depths, and with a great shout, Grandpapa emerged in a surge of green froth. His spindling arms, somehow miraculously re-animated, came flailing and grasping to the surface.
“Saved! I’m saved from the fire! Saved by the holy Son. Saved by His grace!” Grandpapa exclaimed, which was just about the first thing anybody had said all day that made sudden sense to Rex. So that’s what the Preacher had meant! Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle, Rex thought. Lordy, if it didn’t look like his Grandpapa had got himself exposed to a goodly dose of the Son’s grace! But the momentary satisfaction of a mystery solved vanished when Grandpapa’s coughing spell started up, the ruckus so violent that in no time Grandpapa managed to shake himself right out of the preacher’s grasp.
There wasn’t any way around it—the second time Grandpapa went down bore no relation to anything graceful.
Suddenly Grandpapa’s body seemed to bend and break mid-trunk. Just as suddenly, he twisted, his body falling toward the thick glass, toward the congregation. Like a broken wing, his Grandpapa’s right arm unfurled a moment too late to catch himself. And then, just that quickly, Grandpapa was under for a second time, his body barely visible through the glass amidst the churning commotion. Almost instantly, Preacher Higgenbotham, struggling to right the unexpected double dip, was thrown off balance and himself pulled neck deep into the waves. Then spouting water, Grandpapa rose from the depths. This time, the hump of his back, like a white whale, emerged first, displacing a great surge. A collective anticipatory gasp went up from the congregation as a wave rolled toward the back side of the pool, where it paused for a beat before undulating forward.
“I done … escaped … Hell’s fire! Praise the son!” Grandpapa Amos shouted loud enough to carry clean up into the rafters. And then the rogue wave swept over him a third time, a wall of holy water in a hurry to make landfall.
In the twinkling of an eye, the tidal wave took the altos seated mid-row directly below the baptistry with just enough momentum left over to drench several of the tenors and sopranos a row below.
Mr. Jo-Ed Dunn’s comb-over, washed contrary to discretion, revealed a gleaming blue-white pate that seemed out of keeping with the dignity of his rich bass-baritone. Meanwhile, Mr. Horace Burns and Mr. Joey Bill Smithson, both altos, caught the crest on the back of their heads. Shaky sopranos Miss Celestia Gresham and Miss Eloise Humphrey, seated a row below, faired no better. In an instant, Miss Humphrey’s horsehair black bun, always so carefully pinned to disguise a growing bald spot, dangled like a soggy bird’s nest on one side of her face. Seated beside her, dark rivulets of Teak-Henna Rinse #34 flowed over Miss Celestia’s forehead and dripped onto her snowy choir robe.
As the curtains in front of the baptistry swished shut, the overhead lights came up on a loft sprung into dissonant commotion: choir robes were being hoisted over soggy heads, hankies and Kleenex dug from water-logged pockets were offered to those unexpectedly redeemed. Everywhere, whooping drenchees fled the swamped choir loft.
Sensing the need for distraction, Miss Glenda-Jean launched into a hammering version of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” which proved the cue everyone was waiting for. En masse, the congregation flooded the aisles butting and shoving against each other as they rushed the exits. Rex could read the eagerness in the faces hurrying by—the shared anticipation of grown men and women plain as day as they hurried toward multiple retellings and the various angles and perspectives they would impose on the story.
“You poor dear. Did you ever see the like!” Miss Hattilu tittered as she sprinted past Inez.
“Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy,” Inez moaned, digging in her purse, her face a study in incredulous horror. “If that don’t beat all!”
At the other end of the pew Aunt Janet stood with her hands clasped cup-like over her mouth, while Uncle Jonas, bent literally double beside her, shook head to toe in a manner that did not suggest sorrow.
“I reckon Mister Amos is good and baptized now,” Mr. Tommy Bigley said to Rex through a broad grin as he hurried by.
“Lord have mercy,” Inez keened again.
Taking hold of Rex’s hand, she made a dash toward the side entrance.
“How we ever going to live this down?” she asked of nobody in particular, as they made their escape to the parking lot.
But they would live it down. Good and down. And three weeks later, when Grandpapa Amos finally took his leave for heaven, it was Preacher Higgenbotham who, speaking from the pulpit, pointed out that never in the history of the First Baptist Church had one man been so surprisingly, so single-handedly responsible for re-consecrating as many souls to Jesus in a single service.
[1958, Florida]
It happened last Tuesday evening. But it was yesterday that it really happened. That’s when I mentioned to Aunt Janet what I seen out behind Grandpapa’s shed.
Mama and me had just stopped off at Grandma’s to pick her up for the grocery shopping. I was waiting for them on the porch ‘cause it looked like a rain was coming up. That’s when I heard Mama in the kitchen asking Aunt Janet if she’d mind me while her and Grandma was down to the Winn-Dixie. She was saying something ‘bout how she’d had enough aggravation for one afternoon and didn’t need me traipsing ‘long behind her at the grocery store begging for a box of Animal Crackers. We’d had us a time, Mama and me that morning, that’s for sure. And from the sound of her voice, I knew better’n to argue. Next thing I know, they’d taken off and it was just me and Aunt Janet there in Grandma’s kitchen.
So, there I was—sitting on the stool picking the raisins out of one of Grandma’s oatmeal cookies—just watching Aunt Janet at the stove stirring up some turnip greens she’d put on. In the next room, I could hear the TV set going and Uncle Jonas calling out his guesses for The Price is Right. I remember picturing just what he’d look like, all stretched out there in that green leatherette recliner in front of the set. I guess I’d seen him enough times to know.
Uncle Jonas, Aunt Janet’s Yankee husband, sure does like to pretend. He likes to play like he’s out there in Hollywood with Bill Cullen and the rest of them TV studio folks. Ever since the packing house in Zellwood laid off ‘most everybody, and he and Aunt Janet come to stay with Grandma and Aunt Maggie, Uncle Jonas spends near ‘bout every afternoon watching his game shows. Sits right there in Grandpapa’s ole recliner for the longest time—wearing one a’his T-shirts with them pee-colored stains at the armholes. Got his big hairy arms drawed up behind his head like a pretzel so’s you can see his scraggly arm pits and all them little polka-dotty vitiligo spots on his underarms.
“Sixteen-hundred ninety-nine dollars,” he’ll yell right out loud at that TV set. “Seven hundred and fifty-three bucks, an’ not a red cent more!” another time.
I was picturing him in my mind just like that while I was eating that cookie. Then, all of a sudden, I hear Aunt Janet say something kinda low to herself.
“Well,” she said, “at least it’s not the wrestling matches.”
That’s what she said.
And that’s what done it. That’s what made me remember what I seen behind the shed Tuesday evening. It was right after supper it happened.
See, Mama and Daddy and I had come up to Grandma’s special to barbeque some chicken. Aunt Maggie, Aunt Janet and Uncle Jonas was all there at the table, too. After we finished up eating, Aunt Maggie went on up stairs, or leastways, that’s what I thought. Little while later I went on outside by myself. Wandered on out by the shed, I did. That’s how I come to see what was going on out there in Aunt Maggie’s convertible car.
It’s a Ford Sunliner and it’s real fancy. Grandma Aida bought it for her right before she went to twelfth grade last year; went down to Heintzleman’s on Orange Avenue in Orlando and she bought it off the showroom floor. Aunt Maggie likes to leave the top down, so it was real easy to see what was going on in the back seat. It wasn’t like a person would have to sneak up or anything.
So, anyway, yesterday when Aunt Janet said what she said there in the kitchen—you know, ‘bout how she’s glad Uncle Jonas wasn’t watching the wrestling matches? Well, I just went ahead and mentioned real nonchalant what I seen out behind the shed. I thought Aunt Janet might like to know seeing how they’s sisters n’all and they real close, her an’ Aunt Maggie. They always doing things together. Riding off in Maggie’s Ford car somewhere near ‘bout every day. Just like two peas in a pod, my Mama says.
So, I just said to Aunt Janet—I just said I’d seen some wrestling going on out behind the shed the other evening.
That was all there was to it.
But I want you to know that soon’s the words was out’a my mouth, Aunt Janet turned right around from that stove and she gave me such a look with them gray eyes a’hers—a real hard look it was, too. All clouded up like two of my aggie marbles, them slanty eyes of Aunt Janet’s. It was enough, that look was, to make the hairs on the back of my neck prickle right up.
For a minute I thought maybe she’d misheard me and was thinking I’d said a cuss word or something? So I hurried up an’ throwed in how they was laughing and carrying on out there in the back seat of that new Ford car, just having themselves a good time was all. I told her that. I told her so’s she’d know it was nothing bad that I said—nothing bad that I seen.
“You ain’t seen nothing, Mister Man,” Aunt Janet says to me real mean. She’s standing there barefooted in her orange pedal pushers, her hair fluffed up like a big old thunder cloud. It’s a silvery beige color—sort of like ginger ale—her hair is now; been that color ever since she spent ‘most of the whole day last Saturday down at Miss Juanita’s House of Beauty. When my Mama asked her how much that hair was to cost, I heard Aunt Janet answer her back real snooty, saying that was between her an’ Miss Clairol, and that only her and her hairdresser knowed for sure.
That sure did get my Mama’s goat.
“Champagne blond my foot!” Mama said later on talking about Aunt Janet’s new hair to Daddy. “Pure ol’ bleach-blond,” she told him. “Janet keeps messing with it, ever last strand’s going t’fall right out!” Mama said. “Trying to look like Lana Turner!” she said to my Daddy.
My Mama said a lot more, too. She said Daddy’s sisters got a plenty high-and-mighty notions, the both of ‘em! Said that right to Daddy at supper the other night.
“You got one of ‘em running the roads in that flashy Ford car and her a married woman now,” Mama said. “Just you wait till that soldier boy a’hers gets wind up there in Pensacola about what’s been going on. Then we’ll see a fine mess,” Mama said.
Which didn’t make no sense to me a’tall, since it was Maggie’s husband Uncle Andy—who’s in the United States Army—he’s the one said he was glad about that car. We all heard him when he said it—said it meant Aunt Maggie could run up to Pensacola to see him more often, and that he didn’t want Maggie stuck at home all the time while he’s off being a soldier. She’s done been up there already two or three times. I guess my Mama forgot about that, though.
“’Course, it don’t help matters none having a married older sister setting such a fine example as Janet—parading about in them tight pants, peroxiding her hair like the biggest hussy you ever saw!” Mama said to Daddy. “Two peas in a pod, them sisters a’yours. Mark my words, they’ll come a’falling out,” she says. “Right on the floor in great big wads.”
But it didn’t look like Aunt Janet’s hair was falling out to me. Not when she’s standing there in front of that stove, staring me down. More like her hair was standing on end. Like she’d picked up some of that static ‘lectricity that comes right before a storm breaks.
“Maybe you think you saw something,” Aunt Janet says to me. “But you ain’t seen a thing, you hear?” she says, waggling Grandma’s wooden spoon in my direction. “You been snooping in your Aunt Maggie’s business again, haven’t you,” Aunt Janet says. “Exactly what you think you saw, Mister Too-Big-for-Your-Britches?”
I could tell from the way she was talking, from the way she was standing there with her hand balled up on her hip, with her elbow stuck out right sharp to one side, I could tell that I’d have to be careful. Half-way down the street to mighty mad, Aunt Janet was, and there I was stuck in the house with her on account of the rain had come up.
“Oh, nothin’, I guess,” I says to her.
I reckon I shoulda stopped right there, but recollecting what I seen made it just too hard to keep my mouth shut. It’s kinda like when you run up against something like that, something you can’t quite figure, it gets so’s you can’t keep from talking ‘bout it. ‘Cause you’re thinking maybe if you say something, well then there’s half a chance somebody else’ll make sense of it for you. So, that’s how the rest of it just come busting out.
“It just looked like they was tussling there in the back seat, Aunt Maggie and somebody,” I says, the words bubbling up ‘fore I could do one thing about it. “Kind of like they’s wrestling,” I says.
“You hush your mouth!” Aunt Janet says.
It wasn’t no more than a second later come that big clap a’thunder, the one that Mama said later on liked to scared her to death when she’s downtown at the Winn-Dixie. It sure enough was loud. Loud enough to shake the house.
But I can tell you, that racket didn’t scare Aunt Janet none. Not one bit was she scared. In fact, ‘fore I knowed to jump down off that stool, she’d done cracked me on top the head with that spoon of Grandma’s. Quick as a wink, she was. That freckly old arm a’hers—well, it just jumped right out at me and rapped my noggin a good one. She done it right about the same time’s that thunder busted loose. Wouldn’t a soul heard me for all that noise—even if I had hollered. It smarted, that crack did. Smarted to beat the band. I still got the knot on my head today.
“Just like I thought! You been snooping!” Aunt Janet hissed at me.
Reminded me of that old cat of Miss’s Gandy’s—that white and yellow-spotted one that bows up and spits at you through its fangs—the way Aunt Janet sounded. It’ll scratch soon as look at you, too, that cat; even when you’re just trying to make nice like I’d been doing.
“Next thing you’ll be telling tales all over town, I expect! Lord, I’ll be glad when summer’s over and you back in school out from under everybody’s feets,” Aunt Janet says, waggling that spoon at me again. “You better not let me hear you been carrying tales about family business,” she says. “You hear what I’m saying?”
Well I heard her all right, even though by then her voice had dropped down to a mean whisper.
“Yes, Mam,” I says, scared stiff that she might have another go at me with that spoon.
She was standing there in front of the stove a’staring me down, Aunt Janet was; standing there in them orange pedal pushers that Mama says is too tight for decency. Had both her freckly little fists balled up on her hips now, with that old wood spoon a’Grandma’s sticking out from her hand, and it dripping pot liquor all over the linoleum.
It was that spoon got me started thinking again. See, it was kinda pointing sideways over Aunt Janet’s behind; bowl side up and quivering in her fist, it was. Looked like it was stuck there.
So, then it hit me—what that spoon looked like. Put me in mind of my birthday present from way last summer, that spoon did—the bow ’n arrow set Uncle Jonas give me when I turned nine. All of a sudden that spoon started looking like an arrow to me, like somebody’d done shot a little pointy one right into Aunt Janet’s fanny.
Well, I couldn’t help it, the way that idea sure enough made me smirk-up—even though I was still rubbing at that knot on my head.
Aunt Janet didn’t like that one bit. No sir.
“You think it’s funny, do you?” she kinda whispers at me, standing up straight and cocking her head toward the next room to make sure Uncle Jonas wasn’t coming.
“I’ll show you what’s funny, young man!” Aunt Janet spits. “I hear you been blabbering other folks’ business, well I reckon I can tell a few things, too,” she says. “A few little secrets ‘bout you,” she says.
By this time, she’s smiling down on me still sitting there frozen on that stool. Drawing up right tall, she was, her head all crooked up to one side. “I guess I might like to tell about what you been up to out there in your Grandpapa’s shed,” she says, nodding her head at me real prissy like. “You think I don’t know ‘bout what you been doing out there, don’t you. Poring over them magazines you done found,” she says, her head a’bobbin’ just like Preacher Higgenbotham’s when he goes to reading from the book of Revelations.
She was looking at me, Aunt Janet was, like she knowed something so bad it could land a person in the lake of hellfire, lickety-split.
Pretty soon, it come out.
“I’m wise to what you been up to, Mister. Out there just a’turning them pages fast as you can with them sticky little fat fingers. Slobbering over them trashy pictures,” she says to me.
“I know what you been looking at, what you been reading,” she says, her smile spreading wiggly-wobbly over her face just like she done answered The $64,000 Question.
I don’t mind telling you, what she said took me right off guard. ‘Fore I knowed it, I could feel my face burning like pure fire. You see, I didn’t think anybody else knowed about them magazines, the ones with all them stories that comes with pictures—the one’s shows them womens caught up in the coils of big boa constrictors and great big apes, just a-squeezing them so tight their bosoms is busting out. Or the stories that has pictures of half-dead ladies a’hanging out the windows a’wrecked trains with most of their clothes tore off.
I thought I was the only one that knowed about them magazines—the one’s Grandpapa kept out yonder in the shed before he died. There’s a whole pile of ‘em stashed up ‘neath his toolbox.
“Yes sir, I reckon I done seen a thing or two I could tell about,” Aunt Janet says. “And that ain’t all,” she says, narrowing her eyes down to little beady slits. “I hear you been gossiping about your Aunt Maggie, I’ll snatch you clean ball-headed, fat as you’ve got! Snatch the rest that butch cut a’yours out by the roots. Just you see if I don’t,” she hollered. “Your Aunt’s got a right to privacy same as anybody else. She’s a grown woman eighteen years old, and it ain’t nobody’s business—not yours nor your Mama’s—who she keeps company with in her very own automobile. A person don’t have to live lonely just to satisfy a bunch of Bible-thumping hypocrites,” Aunt Janet says shaking that spoon at me so I was splattered all over with turnip juice. “And anybody says different can sure enough kiss my foot!”
By now she’s a’booming ‘bout as bad as that thunderstorm that’d blown up outside. She wasn’t even thinking about Uncle Jonas in the next room watching The Price Is Right—till presently he yells at us to “Hush up that racket” so’s he can hear what Bill Cullen’s saying about the next prize.
So Aunt Janet quieted down then, but I could tell she was still pretty fired-up by the way she was rocking back and forth from foot to foot there in front of that stove. And sure enough, it was right then I seen what Mama meant about them tight pants. I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if they wasn’t riding up higher and higher with all that rocking Aunt Janet was doing. Till pretty soon I could see what Mama seen when she said it was a pure sin the way them tight pedal pushers got caught in Aunt Janet’s every nook and cranny!
“Yes sir. I hear you been talking,” Aunt Janet whispers after a spell, “well, I’ll do some talking myself,” she says. An’ then she went to make another pass at me with that spoon. Only this time, I was too quick for her. ‘Fore she knowed what happened, I’d made for the screen door—just about tore it off the hinges, I expect. And then I was out there in the worst of that downpour, the lightning flashing all over the place.
“You mark my words, young man,” Aunt Janet screamed out at me, forgetting all about Uncle Jonas again. “You go to talking, I’ll do some talking myself,” she says. “I’ll tell ‘em all—your Mama and Grandma. Your Daddy, too! And just what you think they’ll have to say ‘bout your dirty doings!”
So that’s how it come to me, standing out there in that downpour yesterday. That’s how I come to know, how I come to know ‘bout what I saw last Tuesday evening: that it was something that’s got to keep hid. Just like them magazines.
[1963, Florida]
Since males occupied every seat, Rex wondered why there was any need for the elaborately detailed diagram at the front of the classroom. Yet, there it was—a giant, drooping penis in all its glory, painstakingly accurate too. Right down to its pubic mustache.
Clearly the drawing on white chart paper in multiple shades of Magic Marker betrayed the hand of a teacher big on accuracy. Here was no mere garden-variety redneck pornography of the kind his classmates Louie Markham or Van DeLoach might scribble. This artist had researched the subject matter with an eye for detail.
The diagram heightened Rex’s curiosity and his apprehension about the teacher who, according to school scuttlebutt, would be charting every tenth grade boy through sensitive territory.
Both teacher and course were new this term—the taciturn and physically imposing Mr. Reynolds Beggs—and sex education. And yet, how stupid the mimeographed course description, which hid behind big words. The introductory text provided an interesting contradiction.
“This course is one of several required electives for all tenth graders,” it stated before going on to say that …
“Course units will provide students in the midst, or poised on the threshold, of important physiological changes with an overview of human reproductive science so as to equip them for responsible living.”
Poised? Responsible? Rex was skeptical.
A footnote indicated classes would be sex-segregated.
Commentary and speculation on what students would actually “study” ran rampant.
“So, they want to better equip us, do they—make us more responsible,” Van DeLoach crowed after reading the description. “Well, I’m here to tell you my equipment don’t need to be made any more responsive.”
Van, who at 17 held the distinction of being the oldest student in Fern City Memorial’s sophomore class, offered to fetch female witnesses who could testify to his expertise.
“Witnesses my ass!” Louie Markham cackled, clever on his own for once and strong enough to brave a reply. “You cain’t bring sows and heifers to school, Van! So where’s your evidence now?”
Naturally, the course syllabus had been thoughtfully revised by some of the brightest stars of the campus literati.
“Introduction to fuckin’,” Riley Buckly renamed the course at the bus stop on the first day of term, adding that he had heard the course was to be taught by a “Mr. Beggs-for-it.”
Judging from the blackboard diagram, “Mr. Beggs-for-it” was determined that there should be no question about course focus: “The Male Penis,” he had thoughtfully added in giant letters above the illustration (just in case anybody wasn’t sure).
“Say, who’s the Rembrandt, you reckon?” Louie Markham, his forehead starred with a constellation of pimples, hollered from the back of the classroom on the first day of class. Given the new instructor’s tardiness, Louie had no trouble summoning the nerve to venture a reply himself. “Think maybe Beggs-for-it used his own pecker as the model?”
At least twenty-odd hormonally charged voices, some breaking treble to bass clef in the space of few notes, had ideas of their own. As usual, Van DeLoach’s voice rang over the rest.
“Why’nt you ask Timmy Baker!” Van, two years older and with a voice to prove it, bellowed. “Maybe it was one of them queers he hangs out with behind the field house. I hear they study male members up real close and personal, ain’t that right, Timmy.”
Rex felt sorry for Timmy Baker, who—as the smallest (and some said dimmest) boy in the sophomore class—caught more than his share of abuse. Defenseless against the bigger, stronger boys, Timmy grinned hangdog and silent through the ensuing catcalls, his eyes darting rabbit scared from one hazard to the next.
Rex’s strategy was to ignore the fray, which wasn’t easy given the proximity of the major players, and sitting right across the aisle, Riley Buckly, pinch-faced and fox-clever, was one of them. A quick glance in Riley’s direction told Rex everything he needed to know. Riley’s pursed and twitching lips were a sure sign that he was hatching one of his famous embellishments. One never had to wait long for the results. Riley was a quick study. Leaning across the aisle, his squirming lips settled into a comfortable sneer.
“What’cha say Rexie? You and Timmy Baker know all them faggots,” Riley began. “When it comes to cock and balls, that bunch are all real artistes. Regular Dick Van Dicks!”
A straight “A” student who knew how to stay on the good side of burly dunderheads like Van and Louie, Riley always seemed to know which way the wind was blowing. Today it seemed to be blowing toward ridicule.
“By the way,” Riley added, waiting for a momentary lull before continuing, “what about you and Timmy? Your ‘goobers’ look anything like that one” he said nodding at the blackboard, “or do sissy dicks look different?”
Rex kept his attention fixed on the syllabus in front of him and pretended not to hear the appreciative uproar that came at his and Timmy’s expense. Mercifully, no more than a moment passed before a fresh explosion at the back of the classroom cut short Riley’s triumph.
“Hey, y’all look at Burris! He’s tenting in his britches,” someone yelled. A chorus of fresh hoots and hollers erupted in short order. Rex could make out several of the contributors—Richie Davis, Van DeLoach, and Mac Ashley. The usual suspects. No surprise that Louie Markham keened somewhere near the eye of the storm.
“Looks like Beggs-for-it’s drawin’s done give ole Burris a boner,” Louie hooted. “Will you lookit stickin’ up! S’like a totem pole!”
So it went, the crudities hurled back-and-forth as the class took advantage of Beggs-for-it’s absence.
The room buzzed and snapped with commentary from art lovers and artists alike. Already the charged atmosphere had inspired numerous not so accomplished copycats. Rex noticed several of his classmates engaged in penning their own genital masterpieces. From time to time one of them held up his work—scrawled on crinkled Blue Horse notepaper—to rave reviews.
“Hey Riley! Looky here,” Richie Davis hollered holding up a lurid creation featuring what looked to Rex like an eyeball at the spot where, according to the blackboard diagram, the urethral opening rightly belonged. “I want one like this,” Richie squawked, his voice cracking as he strained to out-shout everyone else. “Want to see where I’m goin’, when the time comes!” he screeched, pleased to manage a two-in-one vulgarity in front of an appreciative audience.
The class was still at it, still in uproar when Rex first saw the man standing in the doorway. A former Tennessee State fullback, according to rumors, Beggs-for-it managed a low profile when it suited him. For several long seconds he went unnoticed by the rest of the class—including Van DeLoach still waving his notepaper art work to wide acclaim.
“Shoot! I reckon I could teach this class a thing or two about the art of gettin’ some,” Van boomed.
Unfortunately, this claim to fame coincided with the exact moment when the rest of the class noticed Mr. Beggs.
In the sudden silence, Van’s boast echoed in the classroom.
“Let’s hope, Sir, that after this term, everybody in this room will know more about the mechanics, responsibilities, and consequences of getting some, as you put it,” was all Mr. Beggs had to say to put Van—who went scootching down in his seat—in his place.
Later, on reflection, Rex would be struck by the authority the man managed to exude. His voice was part of what commanded instantaneous response—the cold, deep resonance of it, enough to stop careening adolescence in its tracks.
Standing there in the doorway, arms akimbo, a yard-long rod of pure hickory hardwood gripped in his fist, Mr. Beggs put Rex in mind of a door swinging shut. Nobody and nothing would’ve been able to get by him.
“Be sure of this,” Mr. Beggs continued, rocking off his heels and striding to the front of the class, “before this term is up,” he said, pausing long enough to aim the hickory pointer at the giant penis, “anyone who stays in this class is going to know this organ, and all its functions and capabilities, backwards and forwards.”
Riley Buckly allowed a token snigger to escape, one that died almost in the birthing. Mr. Beggs was that quick. In a single fluid motion belying aim or forethought, the pointer cracked down on the corner of Riley’s desk, mere inches from the crooked arm that cradled Riley’s head. “And I am serious about that,” Mr. Beggs added unnecessarily. Nobody in the room, certainly no one who saw the man, would’ve doubted it.
At roughly six feet, he was not the tallest or the most physically imposing of the school’s male faculty members, but that hardly mattered. Mr. Beggs was all business and all muscle. Indeed, the underside of his arm, extended over Riley’s desk, reminded Rex of a club.