Southernmost Read online

  “I always said I’d never get married until I could in my own state. Where I was born and raised,” Jimmy said, evenly and calmly, as if he had been waiting to say these things. “Now that it’s finally legal here, I just thought you might be—”

  “I’m sorry,” Asher said. “I just can’t say for certain right now.”

  Jimmy shook Asher’s hand. “We appreciate how you’ve stood up for us.”

  “But we’re as good as any other couple,” Stephen said. “We ought to be treated just the same.”

  “I know you should,” Asher stammered. “I agree—”

  Stephen stood before him, waiting for him to find the rest of his words. But the man already knew Asher was a coward. Stephen turned and shuffled down the steps.

  “You take care,” Jimmy said, polite despite the disappointment in his voice. He stepped past Asher, out into the blinding white light.

  Asher stood on the stoop and watched their car pull away and go over the ridge until it was completely out of sight.

  “Come on, Asher!” Lydia hollered from the car, where she and Zelda sat fanning themselves, Lydia with the church program and Zelda with her purse. “We’re burning up.”

  10

  The last time Asher had heard from Luke was shortly before the flood. Like the times before that, it was only an unsigned postcard.

  On the front was a photograph of a bird on a beach with an impossibly blue ocean beyond. The bird’s wings were an orange-edged brown, each one perfect and lovely. Its beak was long and black, as were its knobby legs, jutting out of a soft white down. There was something sorrowful about the way the round brown eye was gazing off into the distance.

  On the back of the card there was Asher’s name and address, an American flag stamp, and a postmark from Key West, Florida, on the right, but this, best of all, on the left: the words the roaring alongside he takes for granted printed out in neat block letters. The handwriting was the same as on the previous two cards he had received over the last couple of years. Each had contained a fragment quote like this.

  The first card he had received almost two years ago. On its front, an aerial view of the island of Key West. On the back, this message: Everything That Is, Is Holy.

  Asher had only to type the quotes into a search engine on the internet to find out where they came from. The first card had led him to Thomas Merton. He had ordered a couple of his books and discovered ways of thinking about religion that he had never thought about: acceptance, identity, freedom. In Merton he found that the key to knowing God better was to know himself better. Reading Merton’s books made him feel there was the possibility of his feeling like a good person again.

  Luke used to read and talk about going to the island all the time. It had been his dream to live there. He could see Luke before him now, his eyes alight with the thought of escape: “Down there, people can be who they want to be,” he’d say. Luke had always recommended music and books to Asher as a child and teenager but had stopped once Asher started preaching and became closed off from anyone who didn’t go to his church. Now Luke was sending his quiet recommendations once again.

  On the second card there had been a view of the sea in all its glory, a water that begged to be jumped into, the vast green-blue-white ocean fading off toward a purpling sky. On the back: Sometimes the hurt is so deep deep deep, and that led him to Patty Griffin. For years now he had not listened to anything besides gospel music. The way she sang—so full of sadness and trouble, yet always hope—sounded like Luke.

  So now here, this third one. He read the quote again and then took note of the little explanatory paragraph at the top of the card:

  The sandpiper is a wading shorebird often seen on the beaches of the eastern seaboard. Unlike most birds, the sandpiper is more agile on the ground than in the air.

  The underlines stood in the same blue ink as the quote.

  At his laptop Asher typed in the quote and the word sandpiper and sure enough there was a poem with that title. He read it through several times, trying to understand what his brother might be saying to him. Asher printed out a copy, folded it into a neat square and slid it into his wallet so he could reread it some more.

  He went out onto the front porch. A thin rain was falling, causing breaths of mist to ease out of the ridge cleft across the river.

  He had not changed as much as he had convinced himself. When put to the test, he had failed. It was like he had failed his brother once again.

  Asher pulled his phone from his back pocket and called Caleb Carey.

  “I’ve made up my mind. If any of you try to keep those men from this church, I’ll leave with them.”

  “They chose their way of life,” Caleb said. “So now they have to stick with their own kind.”

  “Caleb, you’re the one making a choice here. Not those men.”

  “What choice?”

  “The choice to be mean-hearted.” He said, and clicked off the call.

  He sat there for a long while as the rain changed over to a fine mist. All the little live things in the trees and grasses clicked and sang.

  When Lydia came out he figured she was calling him into supper—he had smelled the chicken frying in the kitchen. “Caleb has called in all of the deacons,” she said. “To ask them to have a church vote on keeping you or not.”

  “I hope they don’t,” he said. “I’m done.”

  “You can’t just give up,” she said. “We don’t get to just sit down when we’re weary.”

  He stood and went to the porch railing, looking out at the valley. She stayed behind him.

  “I know you want to do what you think is the right thing,” she said. “But you have to do what’s right for us. For Justin, especially.”

  A breeze rose up from the river.

  “Everybody in this world has to make compromises,” she continued. “Every day of our lives—”

  Asher watched the wind in the dark-green trees. Asher remembered Zelda telling him once that her Cherokee granny had always said God lived in the trees, way up in the top branches.

  Lydia swept the porch now, her eyes intent on her work. He watched her move along the floorboards with the straw broom. Her arms were a golden-brown, as they always were in summertime. He had always liked to watch her work, especially outside: in the garden, around the yard. She knew how to can, how to raise plants and flowers. She could do anything she took the notion to learn. Ever since she was a young woman she had known exactly what she believed and if she had ever doubted it she had never articulated that to him. She had always believed that if she worked and prayed everything else would fall into place. He wished he could be more like that and not always full of all these questions.

  And he wished he could tell her about the postcards, but she had been glad when Luke disappeared. She had never said as much, but he knew just the same.

  “You’re not talking to me,” she said, bringing the broom back in a wide arc so she could send all the debris scattering from the top step and out onto the yard. She turned to face him and tucked the broom handle against her shoulder. He could see the young woman he had married so clearly: that clean-scrubbed face of youth, mesmerized in the second pew while he preached a fiery sermon.

  “How could you give up everything for two strangers?” she said now. “You know what those men do is wrong.”

  “Those men are no different than my own brother.”

  “But they’re not Luke.”

  “It’s the same difference, Lydia. You turned them away because of who they are.”

  She sat in one of the rockers and looked out at the river, the muscle in her jaw tensing. “I don’t know how to get through to you.”

  He looked down at his hands.

  “I should’ve offered for them to stay,” she said, with hesitation. “But I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t know how to say to them, ‘Y’all can stay here as long as you don’t sleep together.’ I couldn’t have that, around Justin. So it was easier to just not in
vite them.”

  “The world’s not the same as it was when we were growing up, Lydia.”

  “So I should accept just any old way?” She scoffed, a sound in the back of her throat. “I should agree with the world because it’s changed?”

  “There’s no use denying to Justin that different kinds of people exist. He’ll live in this world with them. He’ll know them. And those kids at school might be backward now but that whole generation—they think about this differently than we were taught to.”

  “That don’t make it right.” Her lovely brown eyes could become hard so quickly. “And my job is to let him know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

  “It’s more important to show him how to be good to people than how to judge them.”

  She arose as if she was going to go inside, but she reconsidered and eased back down into the rocker again.

  After a time she spoke. “When I was a real little girl my daddy told me that the world would try to change me. And to not let that happen. I don’t want to judge them. I want to love the sinner and hate the sin. But that don’t mean I’m going to let it come into my own home.”

  Asher stepped off the porch—

  “Where are you going?” she called after him, agitated now. “You used to believe this way, too.”

  —and went to the grove of willow trees down by the Cumberland River, the trees where he and Luke had spent so many afternoons as boys. He lay down beneath the trees and watched the summer breeze shake their long branches. He thought about a God who had made the trees, and the river, and himself, and Lydia. Where was that God, these days? So far up in the trees Asher couldn’t feel Him anymore? Or just completely gone?

  After a time he went into the house to pack his things.

  11

  He stayed a couple nights in the River Inn out near Ashland City. The room smelled of stagnant air conditioner water and the carpet was threadbare in places but the sheets and tub were clean enough. There was a massive old television perched on a banged-up dresser and he kept it on to fight the silence: game show hosts with bright white teeth, the local news anchors talking perkily about the flood recovery and county court clerks who wouldn’t give marriage licenses to gay couples, the depressing infomercials late at night. He spoke to Justin a couple times a day and only once did the boy ask what was going to happen.

  “Everything’ll be okay, buddy,” Asher said, and once again he found himself telling his son something that might or might not be true.

  He hadn’t packed much more than a shaving kit and a few books. He couldn’t concentrate enough to read. Sometimes he stood by the window and watched the parking lot where he saw cars come and go, people smoking as they gazed up at the moon, a couple who couldn’t help stopping to kiss passionately before they went on to the office to check in.

  He found a trailer for rent out on Cheatham Lake and called to ask if he could see it. An old woman who leaned on a cane unlocked the door for him. “You’ll need to call and get the juice and gas switched out of the last renter’s name,” the landlady said, and listed all the things she didn’t allow her tenants to do. She was the most humorless person he had ever met. There was no furniture and it had not been lived in for a while but it was in good enough shape and its large windows looked out on the water where a white boat was pulling a water-skier, its sound a comforting hum in the distance. Even though he was very far out in the country there was still a strong cell signal so he could talk to Justin anytime he wanted. He went back out to the house to get a few more of his things and Lydia met him at the door.

  “Justin’s still at school,” she said.

  “I know it. I just need to get some clothes,” he said. He moved to go into the house but she stood in the middle of the open door.

  “You really intend to do this? To leave?”

  “I don’t see any other way around it.”

  “But I don’t believe in divorce. I can’t do that.”

  “Let me get my clothes, Lydia.”

  “Asher,” she said. He could hear the hurt in her voice, could see it on her face.

  “I want out of this,” he said. “All of it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s over, Lydia. There’s no use pretending—”

  Lydia shook her head as if she couldn’t wrap her mind around what he was saying. But she refused to cry. She steeled herself, her face becoming squarer with determination, then stepped aside so he could pass.

  He threw some clothes into a duffel bag and filled a couple Walmart bags with shoes. He took a small framed photograph of Justin holding up the first fish he’d ever caught, the Robert Frost book where he kept the postcards hidden. He was surprised by the strange sense of freedom he felt as he gathered his things. She was still standing in the door when he came back with the bags, the book tucked under his arm.

  “I’m going to take this little picture with me,” he said, holding it out.

  “We can’t just throw our family away,” she said. He could see how afraid she was. He left her there on the porch, where she was still standing as he pulled away.

  He drove on over to Zelda’s to tell her the news.

  “I hate this. I do. But I can’t live with her, either,” Zelda said. “You know I love her better than anything. But she’s too hard on folks,” Zelda said. Asher suspected she had seen it coming even longer than he had. “I never was a good enough Christian for her liking.”

  “Nobody ever was except her daddy,” Asher said, and they laughed a bit at that.

  “That’s the truth,” Zelda said. “I’ll say this for her, she sticks to what she believes. But a person can believe something so hard they lose sight of everything else.”

  “You know it’ll be a big scandal. A Pentecostal preacher getting a divorce,” he said, feeling loopy with relief. Perhaps this is what people meant when they said sometimes you had to laugh to keep from crying. “But after what I said Sunday they’ll run me off anyway.”

  She asked him to stay for supper and he did. Lydia had always accused her mother of siding with him on everything. Zelda fried green tomatoes and corn bread while he sliced cucumbers and cleaned green onions she had bought at Kathi Hoskins’s grocery. The floodwaters had carried her garden away. They ate on the porch and drank a pitcher of sweet tea. They watched the hickory-nut green water of the river and sat chatting for a while, then they both fell silent. That was one thing he loved about Zelda: she let a person be. She knew how to be quiet. Most folks couldn’t do that.

  “I sure do love the cool of the day,” Zelda said, finally, and popped a slice of fried green tomato into her mouth, chewing it with vigor. She always referred to the evening time this way, and Asher sometimes found himself repeating it aloud.

  Asher helped her with the dishes and the thin kitchen curtains breathed in and out at the windows. A sprawling willow tree stood near the kitchen and every time a breeze stirred the willow leaves made a small quiet music against the screens.

  “The best part about open windows at night is when I wake up in the morning, I can hear the birds praying in the trees,” Zelda said, her hands in the soapy water. She had said this to him many times before, too, but Asher loved hearing her say it each time.

  When he told her goodbye she finally got choked up and put her hands over her face. “You’ll always be family,” she said. “Nothing’ll change that.”

  He stopped at the Dollar General on his way back out to the lake trailer and bought an air mattress to sleep on, a set of sheets, a couple of pillows, a little lamp. He’d worry about everything else later. He wished he had gotten a quilt for the weight on his body but he could make it for a couple nights. He switched off the chilling air conditioner and opened the windows, filling the house with insect song arising from the lake bank. The mattress squeaked beneath him as he tried to get situated. He read the Elizabeth Bishop poem again as his eyes grew heavy. He thought of the sandpipers on the Key West beaches, of his brother living there in th
at place so different from home.

  Justin was in awe of the panoramic view of the lake from the trailer windows and didn’t seem to notice that there was hardly any furniture. Anticipating Justin’s visit Asher had bought a sunken old couch from the Goodwill and cleaned it with a shampooer he rented from the hardware store. He had bought another air mattress for Justin to sleep on—“It’s just like we’re camping,” he told his son, although Justin seemed unconcerned—but other than that the trailer was bare.

  “Can we go swimming?” Justin asked, peering out the uncurtained window.

  “I don’t see why not,” Asher said. “That’s why I made you bring your trunks.”

  They changed and followed the winding path down to the water and spent a long while there splashing and swimming. How different things were going to be. Already he felt like one of those divorced fathers on television who always just buy their kids pizza and let them do whatever fun thing they want. He knew things couldn’t stay that way. And he also knew that missing him would only get worse.

  The day before, he had received the call from Caleb Carey he had been expecting: the deacons had met and had called a church-wide meeting to vote if he should be kept on as their pastor or not. Lydia had said she would pick up Justin after the meeting, no emotion whatsoever in her voice, as if she was already treating the shared parentage of their son like a business deal.

  That afternoon Zelda cooked early on account of the church meeting and after their swim Asher hurried Justin to get ready so they could be there on time. They loaded their plates with chicken, mashed potatoes, fresh green beans, a slice of tomato so red Asher’s mouth watered.

  Once they were settled at the table Asher said the blessing and while he still had ahold of Zelda and Justin’s hands he turned to his son. “Whatever happens between me and your mother, we’re a family. You remember that, alright?” Justin looked back at him blank-faced. “There’s all different kind of families. Alright, now?”

  Justin nodded and scooped potatoes into his mouth.

  After supper Asher strolled down to the river to study on what he would say to the church when they voted him out. He knew they would. Zelda’s and Kathi’s votes would likely be the only ones in his favor. And if they didn’t, he would resign. He watched the river and listened to the mockingbirds singing in the willows. Heat was rising from the lush hills around him, moving in over the valley and causing a thin white haze to swim over the ridges in the distance. After a time he stood and made his way back to Zelda’s. Through the kitchen window he heard Zelda: “Your parents wouldn’t want me to tell you this but I want you to be prepared, alright?”