eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
When his father began to show signs of Alzheimer's disease, Rozelle watched the man's painful transformation into a dependent and ultimately foreign person. In this haunting memoir, Into That Good Night, Rozelle recreates and reclaims the past for his father, offering a son's gift that will echo for a long time to come.
"The author's skillful and compassionate writing brings both the father of his childhood and the man who could not remember the names of his own children to life. Lester died of a stroke in 1992, but this serves, as his son intended, as a moving tribute." - Publishers Weekly
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466895225 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 12/08/2015 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 181 |
| File size: | 357 KB |
About the Author
Ron Rozelle lives with his wife and three daughters in Lake Jackson, Texas, where he teaches high-school English. He is the author of Into That Good Night.
Read an Excerpt
Into That Good Night
By Ron Rozelle
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 1998 Ron RozelleAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-9522-5
CHAPTER 1
It is snowing. Huge, light flakes are drifting and swirling, collecting on the ground and the rooftop and filling up the depression between our yard and Highway 79. This is a rare thing in Oakwood, where it snows once every several years, and then it is, more often than not, a wet, slushy business that melts as it hits, accumulating only in the hollows of trees and in icy bar ditches, leaving finally a dirty mixture best left alone.
It is Christmas Eve eve, as my mother calls the day before Christmas Eve, and it has never, in her memory or mine, snowed this early. Usually, the hard freezes and blue northers come in January or February, dull and useless times spent near heaters or fireplaces, wishing for spring. Mother reports that Warren Culberson, the weatherman on Channel 4 out of Dallas, is sure the snow will stay through Christmas Day. She can quote Mr. Culberson word for word, as she can Paul Crume and Frank X. Tolbert, columnists for the Dallas Morning News. The television news and the newspaper are two of my mother's passions (though not on the level of her novels, of which she reads several a week), and she has heroes among their practitioners.
I am nine or ten. Bundled in heavy clothes, I wonder how all this snow, such big flakes of it, can be falling so silently. I am used to winds pounding through the pecan trees and honeysuckle bushes in our yard, or heavy rains trumpeting on our roof and rushing noisily down past my window to splash into puddles. Weather, to my mind, is a loud thing. And now this snow floats so gracefully down to my tongue and my jacket and all the places that I can see and it is quiet. The only sound is from cars and trucks on the highway.
The hedge between our house and Miss Mae's is covered over now, a solid white wall broken only by the gap in its middle that Miss Mae has had Brown cut so that we all can go back and forth more easily. Her house, made of rough, cut stones, sits higher up than ours, on a hill, and the garage end faces us. I walk over to the hedge, listening to the slight crunching beneath my shoes, and see Brown puttering around in the garage. He has been the yardman there for as long as I can remember, and he is my friend. Flossie, the cook, serves him his dinner every day at twelve sharp in a tin plate, and he eats it sitting on an upturned bucket. In the summer, when I'm not in school, I sit on the ground beside him and he gives me his fried hot water corn bread (Flossie cooks it every day). I wonder what Brown will find to keep him busy today, with snow covering everything. We don't have a cook or yardman. Annie Bell comes to help Mother clean our house twice a week, but she never cooks, and her interest in the yard seems limited to the grassless area beneath the fig tree, which she keeps swept clean as a floor.
It is morning, around eight. School is out for the Christmas holidays, and won't start again until after New Year's Day. This gives me ample opportunity to visit with Brown since, on school days, he has already left to sweep at the car dealership in town by the time I get home.
I plod through the gap in the hedge, up the hill, and into the large garage before Brown hears me. He is hard of hearing, and has to lean forward and strain to listen when someone addresses him. Anyone, that is, besides Miss Mae and me; we both talk loud.
Brown is sharpening a knife on a whetstone with his back to me; I kick a clay flowerpot just a little to let him know I'm here. He is a nervous man, and it occurs to me that he might stab himself with the knife if I startle him.
"Moanin," he says, as he slides the kitchen knife along the worn stone.
"Mornin'," I say, plopping myself, in my various coats and sweaters, down on his upturned bucket.
"That snow sho is purty, ain't it?" says Brown. "I ain't never see it snow like dis." He pays close attention to his knife sharpening. "Sho purty. I was jist thinkin' about that comin' from home."
"Did you have to walk in the snow?" I ask him.
"No, suh. Not today. Mr. Robert, he come and get me today in the car. I think Miss Mae, she tell him I can't walk in the snow." He smiles. "I can't, neither. I be slippin' down ever step."
We laugh at this. "Mr. Robert, he say it snow like dis all the time in the North." Brown speaks of the North as if it is a foreign country, with a border and a gate. "I don't reckon I'd like it all the time." He looks into Miss Mae's backyard, at the shrubs and bushes covered with white. "It sho is purty." He drops a golden bubble of oil on the whetstone and begins sliding another knife along it.
"It don't snow all the time in the North," I tell him. "In the summer, it gets hot like here."
Brown looks at me and nods his head, his one good eye wide; his other eye is gone. He sometimes wears a glass eye in the socket, not today. He seems to enjoy everything I tell him.
"What'll you do today?" I ask him.
"Gots to finish these here knifes for Flossie fust thing," he says. "She like a sharp edge on her kitchen knives." He inspects a knife with his one eye, as if he just reminded himself of this. "Then I'll probly bresh the snow offen the bushes." He gives this some thought. I think he figures that snow can't be doing them any good.
I don't know anything about it. But I offer an opinion anyway; Brown will think I know. "Snow won't hurt those bushes. There's water in snow." This is news to him; I can tell. He squints his eye and considers it before grinning. All new information is received by Brown with a grin. "Besides," I say, "it's still snowing. Warren Culberson says it'll snow all morning, and then it'll stick till after Christmas."
Brown ponders this. I don't know whether he is in awe of the fact that it will snow all morning, or if he's wondering who Warren Culberson is, or if he is deciding what to do instead of removing the snow from the bushes.
He looks, again, at the blanket of white that is covering everything. "It sho is purty," he says. His breath becomes a cloud of vapor in the cold air.
I hear our back door open down the hill, and my mother calls me.
"I'll be back later, Brown," I say. "Don't knock the snow off those bushes." I get up off the bucket and walk into the falling snow. Brown comes out into it also. His skin is even blacker and shinier than usual against all this white. "Miss Mae probably wants 'em nice and pretty."
"Yes, suh," he quickly agrees. "I 'spect she does."
Walking back through the gap in the hedge, I am careful not to knock any snow off. Any advice I give to Brown should, I think, be followed by me. He is, after all, the only person I can give advice to.
Once inside the warmth of our utility room, I gradually emerge from the sweaters and coat, leaving them piled on the tile along with my shoes. By my mother's decree, we always leave our shoes by the door. My sister, Janie, at a stage in life where not much that goes on around here sits too well with her, says we might as well be a bunch of Japanese.
My breakfast is almost ready. Mother is at the stove in one of her orange housedresses, cooking French toast. I spend a good bit of my time watching her cook. When I was little, before I went to school, I shadowed her all day long, not missing much that she did.
Mother subscribes to three book clubs, one of which is the Cookbook Guild. She receives a new cookbook every month and, whatever its subject or length, reads it from cover to cover. From the recipes in these books, she prepares rich, exotic dishes which are pretty much lost on the common tastes of the rest of us.
As the toast, soaked in its egg batter, sizzles in the skillet, I watch my mother take long pulls from her Pall Mall cigarette, one of about forty that she will smoke today. When the color of the bread is to her liking, she lifts it to a plate and sprinkles it with sugar. This she brings to the table with a mug of hot chocolate.
"Why does Brown say 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir' to me?" I ask through a mouthful of French toast.
She is wiping her stove clean with a dishrag. "It's just his way," she says. "Brown is very respectful and nice." She takes a sip from a mug of black coffee which is never more than an arm's length away during the morning hours. "He's one of the most respectful people in creation." She picks a tiny speck of tobacco from her lip. "Mostly it's respect for your daddy. Brown has children in the Dunbar school, and your daddy's their superintendent too."
"Does Brown say 'sir' to Negro children?"
"No," Mother says, "I don't imagine he does." She is now washing her heavy iron skillet in the sink. "And he shouldn't say it to you either. You can't go around expecting grown people to 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir' you." She is looking out the window over the sink; maybe she's looking at Brown up in Miss Mae's garage. "And," she says, turning to point her Pall Mall at me, "I don't want you eating his corn bread anymore. Janie says you eat it every day in the summer." Her kitchen is clean now, and she surveys it. "Brown works hard and needs his lunch. Don't you eat it anymore."
"But he gives it to me," I tell her.
"I didn't say anything about Brown offering," she says, grinding her cigarette into an orange ashtray; "I'm talking about you taking it." Once again she peeks out the window at the snow. "Put your plate in the sink when you're finished, and come look at the tree with me."
Our Christmas tree is a cedar which Mr. Headley Eldridge cut for us on his land. We are town people, with no access to trees for cutting, and Mr. Headley, a housepainter and one of my father's closest friends, brought us this one. It is taller than me and even taller than Mother.
In the living room, she plugs in the lights and we step back to look at it. We share a deep appreciation for the magic of Christmas and all things Christmasy; we spend much of our time looking at this tree, and hours huddled over the Sears, Roebuck catalog all through the fall before Mother finally scribbles, in her hen scratch, the big order. More hours are spent wrapping every present just so on top of the deep freezer in the utility room. And sometimes we drive to town, a little more than a mile up the highway, just to look at the plywood Nativity scene at the Methodist church.
She pulls open the venetian blinds behind the tree to give it a backdrop of snow. "I've never in my life seen a Christmas tree in front of falling snow," she says, as she pulls me close to her.
"Me neither," I say.
"Well, of course you haven't." She laughs, hugging me tighter. "If I haven't, you haven't."
"I hope it snows all through Christmas," I say, too loud.
"Shh," Mother hisses, "you'll wake up Janie." She continues to look at the huge snowflakes drifting down slowly behind our tree. "It won't keep snowing that long. But the snow on the ground will stay there and be pretty for Christmas Day."
"In two more days," I say, pressing the side of my face against her. I can smell her bath powder.
"In two more days," she says.
* * *
It is late at night now. I am snuggled deep into my bed, watching the brightest of the winter stars through my window. I have raised the window just a bit to let in some of the cold air near my head. The house is too warm for me and, besides, I want the crisp air to remind me of how cold it is outside, and of the snow, and Christmas. Everyone else is asleep; I can hear my father's rhythmic snoring down the hall. I like the idea, as I burrow deeper into the sheets and pull the blanket and quilt over me, that the whole town must be sleeping now, everybody warm and safe and in their proper places.
My mother and father are in the twin double beds in their long bedroom at the rear of the house. They both snore like sawmills, but I can only hear my father at the moment. At the opposite end of the house, in the front bedroom, is Janie, in high school now and beyond us all. I am a particular problem for her; my very existence seems to be a constant blight on her world. She snaps at me a lot, and sometimes even at Mother, but never with the steam that she aims in my direction. The only person who is immune from her current disposition is my father; Janie and my father pretty much think the other one hung the moon. Diane, my oldest sister, so many years my senior that she was grown and married before I knew her at all, is, no doubt, entwined with her husband, Jimmy — it's been my observation that they sleep awfully close together — across town in their tiny rent house filled with clothes and furniture and pots and pans handed down from our home to theirs. In the room adjoining Jimmy and Diane's are Lisa and Greg, piled into a sofa bed, and, in her bassinet, Lynn. I was only five when Lisa was born, and Mother had considerable difficulty convincing me that I was her uncle and not her grandfather.
Sitting up to look out the window, I search for Bo, the latest in a long line of our dogs which fell victim to the highway, and the only survivor. A car or truck ran over Bo's forelegs, shattering both badly. My father, who either is ignorant of the existence of veterinary medicine or shuns it as extravagant, gently attached makeshift splints to Bo's legs in the garage. Bo let him do it, and his eyes told us that he knew that my father was trying to help him. Since the splints were removed, Bo has had to crawl along with his forelegs out in front and his behind in the air, propelled entirely by his rear legs. His most comfortable position is to sit squarely on his rear, with his forelegs hanging loosely and his head in the air, as if begging. The sight of a large black dog sitting upright in our yard has impressed more than one passerby, and Bo has become something of a conversation piece hereabouts. Looking for him now — and he should be easy enough to find, perched ramrod straight — I see only our snow-covered yard washed in moonlight. I imagine Bo is sound asleep in the well house behind the fig tree, burrowed into a warm corner, his sad face resting on his misshapen legs.
Miss Mae and Mr. Robert are up the hill, warm and snoozing within the rough-cut stones of the big house. Down the hall from them is Mr. Mack, Mr. Robert's brother and his partner in the Chevrolet dealership in town. The name of the dealership is Greer Brothers, and that is where Brown sweeps every afternoon, after working in Miss Mae's yard all day. Since Mr. Mack never married, the Greer Brothers work with each other every day, and go home to the same house every night. Mr. Mack, old and nearly toothless, is now, I imagine, snoring into the pillows of the big bed in his bedroom at the back of the house.
Elsewhere, Annie Bell and Brown are sleeping in other houses. Whenever Mother and I go to collect Annie Bell, or drop her off, I stare at the small, dilapidated structure that is her home. It seems to me that a good gust of north wind would bring it down completely. But Annie Bell couldn't be prouder of it if it were a palace. She keeps her yard swept clean, as she does the area beneath our fig tree; not one blade of grass is in evidence.
I've never seen Brown's house, but I think it must be much the same. Annie Bell and Brown and their families are sleeping now, and waiting for Christmas like the rest of us. When I think about the plywood Nativity scene in front of the Methodist church in town, I imagine the original manger, all of those hundreds of years ago, must have looked more like Annie Bell's and Brown's houses than like Miss Mae's, or even ours.
From far off, I hear the slow rumble of a train, coming from the north. This will be the Eagle, on its run from St. Louis to as far south as San Antonio. I listen as it approaches, and then I look out my window to watch it pass beyond the pasture across the highway. Most of the lights in the train are out, so even the people in there must be sleeping; only one car seems to house activity. Trains don't stop at our little depot anymore, but fly through town at full speed, whistle screaming and bells clanging. Once, when the train still made a stop here, we all rode it to Austin, then got on another train and came right back. I think that my father, who had ridden trains for years, didn't want his children to grow up without having ridden one. It was high adventure, and we all enjoyed it, even Janie, who wasn't in high school yet, and could still enjoy such things.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Into That Good Night by Ron Rozelle. Copyright © 1998 Ron Rozelle. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.