The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus Read online

  Winstead referred to the tornado as “my storm,” sometimes “ours,” sometimes “it.” He conceded how, on its date each year, he always takes off from work, a “Personal” day. I asked how he commemorated—possibly returning to the flight-death site a mile away?

  “Nope, never. Besides, the land’s got all built-up. Fancy houses, paved streets. No, Mom and me, that night we just have dinner alone, just sit remembering things about Barry.”

  Winstead said he still gets approached by folks who miss his brother. (Larry’s even set up a Facebook page joined by thirty-six Friends of the dead boy.) Larry claimed it’s an odd thing about being a twin. He said you can be so much a twin that, though the other half is technically dead, you still feel full of him. “Your twin becomes almost your … GPS. Especially, I guess, ‘identicals.’”

  Showing me around, Larry reported being quizzed by certain family members. They still wonder how he really got from skinny-dipping to that hilltop grove of pine trees on a farm adjoining. “How do you think?” he recalled answering. “You figure maybe I rented a construction crane to lift me? —I don’t really need to understand it. It’s already only happened to me. They still trying to make me feel guilty for being the one that lived?”

  I sensed what he meant, but hoped to explore this further. Larry now led me into his den, walls paved with autographed sports artifacts; I asked if he’d let me tape-record his answers. Larry never answered but, shrugging, did not audibly object.

  I started with technicalities: Larry’s young father died early, a bulldozer mishap while working in school-construction, right? I mentioned Larry’s mother, her seeming a very warm diligent single-parent. I’d heard how her farmer parents offered strong support to the fatherless Winstead twins.

  Larry explained that he and his brother had been only moderately good third-grade students at Delta Grammar School nearby. They spent most of their time in the woods leading down to Doane’s Creek. “We had camps and caves all back up in there. Found arrowheads and even white quartz spearheads. Knew every inch of it and slept out many a non-rainy Saturday and Sunday night. No adults around for a couple miles. Those times felt safer outdoors for children. Nowadays? I won’t let my boys sleep two feet from our back door in a tent without me being in it between them. Times change. Seems people tend to be way more harmful now. Maybe overpopulation brings out cruelty? Anyway, things’ll grab you more now, you know?”

  I nodded.

  Larry Winstead’s later life sounds ordinary enough. He married his high school sweetheart, one Darlene Braswell, now thirty-nine. A childhood neighbor, she had been friends with both well-liked twins, and that, Larry said, mattered to him. After high school, by working construction and rewiring older farm homes, Larry put himself through NC State. He stayed on to earn the Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering. His thesis is still on-file online, “Anomalies of Conductivity in Voltaic Piles Esp. When Deployed in Wetland Setting(s).” He went to work for Duke Power. Nine years back, Larry himself became the father of twin boys. He says he is glad that twins often run in certain families.

  “And I do mean run!” He signaled outdoors, laughing toward sons now passing a football. The carrot-topped twins wore matching black towels looped around their necks as today’s superhero capes. A spiraling lawn-sprinkler claimed half their playing field. Kids scarcely noticed—enjoying getting ever-wetter.

  Winstead attends Red Rock Methodist Church. He admits his more home-rolled kind of faith is locally judged unorthodox, spiritually wired “not-to-code.”

  As we drank ale, I searched his den’s sports souvenirs for one memento of the lethal storm. Noticing, Larry finally squired me down a hallway to the blue Master Bedroom.

  Framed here, all known snapshots of his often-smiling twin. Young Barry had two new prominent front teeth. The freckled face showed a sweet beaver-eagerness. It made Barry look appealingly humorous, in on whatever joke.

  As we reentered the cabin’s comfortable great room, Larry’s own twins were still heard at side-yard scrimmage. On this farm I felt a sense of grounded practical safety. Larry pointed where I should sit. My chair matched his own puffy red leather lounger. Mine likely seemed Darlene’s favorite spot.

  She kept well-clear of me but could be heard making her family’s lunch. I’d arrived before noon bearing bread. I admit hoping they’d ask me to stay.

  Alongside Larry’s easy chair Darlene now placed a Tupperware container of fresh-picked butter beans and one empty colander likely meant to hold the husks. She seemed to guess that, if he was going to tell this right, Larry’s engineering hands would need gainful employment. Winstead soon made shelling beans look like so much fun, I reached over, soon tossing in my share. Unlike me, he could crack open and empty several pods at once.

  Activating my excellent German-made recorder, I formally told him how his neighbors held him in real high esteem. “Well …” He averted eyes and leaned right. I explained: his would be my last story for the Falls Herald Traveler. I reiterated how the idea for this piece had come from citizens who respected him. They insisted he’d been changed by whatever his experience midair.

  I said I admired the original article reported by my deceased colleague. But Larry himself had then been just a kid probably left in shock. By now, further insights must have settled? I admitted to collecting certain after-death experiences, ones that always draw extra interest in my Features Section.

  By now Larry had three decades’ perspective on his own balloon-like ascent (if that was accurate). Now Larry’s sons were older than he and Barry had been that disorienting afternoon. No one had ever accused Larry of being a bully, before. But folks said he’d afterwards grown more thoughtful and gentle, not just a better student but a person far more serious and “real.” I asked if he agreed that one unusual occurrence, however brief, might alter someone, even a kid age eight?

  “Well,” he answered, studying his busied hands, “some.”

  I sensed hesitation. So I tricked him. Maybe I cheated. I asked him … if he would at long-last tell me it … what I called—melodramatically, perhaps—his “secret.” The big man soon grew very still. Gazing straight ahead, he even ceased shelling beans.

  I had simply played my hunch. Our sticking solely to tired facts would just not lift us to the altitude I hoped he’d somehow reach.

  TEXT: TRANSCRIPT

  HE TOOK ONE LONG swallow of ale. His eyes are startling in their blue honesty. Fact is, as I met his stare, I remembered being late with quarterly taxes.

  I reminded him he had forgiven certain loans to pals. Others swore Larry even overlooked a couple of un-neighborly acts—irksome, even actionable. A suspiciously burned garage after his Pee Wee Football team became state champs.

  Larry stayed silent. Some people find praise torture. He sat studying the red light blinking atop my recorder. He kept combing thick fingers through those beans we’d shelled. His wife, hidden from view two rooms away, soon quieted around his unease. Her overly noisy cutlery quit chopping. Darlene called, “Larry? Like I said, you don’t have to. They never understand anyways. Especially non–North Carolinians. —No offense.”

  “Naw,” Larry called back just loud enough. “This kid’s done his homework. He can’t help where he got born. I’ve kept him hunting me a whole year. Don’t know why he wants it but he does.” Larry pressed a fingertip across his lips then nodded in his wife’s direction. Had she forbidden him to talk?

  I truly fought to stay silent. (I am told, when on the trail of an assignment, I can become at times over-directive.) I did, however, risk pushing our microphone one inch nearer Larry. (Darlene wouldn’t see.) I might’ve whispered, “Stories will ‘out.’ Got all afternoon. —Whenever’d be fine. To start.”

  (The machine caught my own shallow breaths. One long exhalation uncoiled from Larry’s big red chair. At first his voice came halted, compressed.)

  “Sounds simple but it’s not really. For a while afterwards, you do have, like, double-vision, very …
there’s this thankfulness.

  “First you go back to trying and be like ‘before.’ But you are already ‘after.’ Months later, it’s like you need an alternator.

  “As to the storm, most of it is there in print. Nice lady, the lady reporter. Got right down on her knees to be at my eye-level. She cut her leg then, I remember. She was soon just walking around talking to people, bleeding, not knowing, more trusted for that.

  “You keep going back over some details. Probably natural. The mind trying to crack a code. But just one twin got favored. After that, there’s no putting it back however much you’d like. See, I am already making no sense. You will have to go in later with a hacksaw … straighten things out, cut you a route.

  “As for so many kinds of weather turning up at once? I can say, from a science background—it was likely just some fluke of fronts meeting, wind-speeds mismatched. Freak-type thing.

  “I keep trying to learn the order that everything went down in. For others along our road, see, September fifth might mean the day I flew. For me it’s how my twin got killed.

  “You would’ve enjoyed my brother. Not a clown, just one of those people’s naturally funny. A talker, like you. Little things happened, he would turn them into jokes. Almost like a junior ‘stand-up’ even about certain birds in the woods. One time he made our hard-shell Methodist preacher laugh! Barry was the best of us two. I’m a bad copy, not a patch on what he was already growing into. Wrong one died. Storm hit without warning. Those days before ‘Weather Channel’? we had about as much notice as the birds did. Less, maybe. And, living in a trailer, we were about that protected. (But, if brother and me’d been inside our trailer with Momma, things might have gone even way worse, all three of us crushed.) Brother loved making model planes, was always saving up to buy his next. Grown, I studied engineering, Electrical, but Barry would’ve gone with Aeronautic design, I’m sure. NASA, maybe even. Every plane of his, decals and all, got sucked up with me.

  “I’ll try and say how it felt or happened. Fewer people ask me lately. They see it makes me bashful. Feels like I’m to blame for getting to enjoy all I enjoy every day. Will you just look at this beautiful cabin? It was a kit and the model-name is ‘Ponderosa.’ Me, I am free to live here with these folks that put up with me. A few neighbors still want you to retell your whole tornado. But it’s like being asked to sing a song in a room of people that are only talking. Even so, ever since then, I’ve always felt saved back for something.

  “Maybe every healthy person has a hunch he’s put here for serving some one purpose, you know? True, your purpose often stays unknown your whole durn life. Still, you wait. You know you want to help others. You try and make the most of whatever your talents are. My gifts have turned out regular enough. I am a good engineer, I think. I still work at it. Somehow Duke Energy has kept me on payroll these two decades. Was also lucky enough, right out of the gate, to meet that wonderful woman in there. (Hey, listening, Darlene?) She is my definite current-capacitor. ‘We brought each other up,’ I like to say. Mom was something of a loss after we buried Brother. She blamed herself to where she said, ‘I should not have named Barry “Bury.”’ I told her those were whole different words, but she was onto that self-punishment the first year especially, taking the fall herself, you know. She’d been being the strong one, having to, with Dad out of the picture so soon. And now this. I tried and make it up to her but never really could. Not till my wife and me had our twins, those over-frisky ones you hear now refereeing each other. Mom still lives out off Cedarcliff and she is all over those boys, has never missed not one of their games.

  “If people claim anything about me, most of the time they seem to call me ‘Upbeat.’ I don’t know. Songs tell you, you never know you were happy till your well runs dry. Maybe that flying-day jammed my gears into a single ‘Stay Upbeat’ setting. I wouldn’t call it Happy, more just Clear. Still, I reckon you could do worse. —See? See what I just did? by saying it like that? I am someone is determined to be satisfied. (Turns out, that’s rare enough!) At work we joke about the positive statements we’re always e-mailing our higher-ups. Like: ‘TEST RESULTS ARE PROVING EXTREMELY GRATIFYING’ really means, ‘We’re just real surprised the stupid thing even works’!

  “My habit of hoping, it’s what’s left over. From how I felt once our storm took me up. (Felt happier, of course, when it set me down!) But that very second, the same F5 was crushing then drowning Barry. It being September, Momma had already packed away our little wading pool. Still, the day turning so warm and sunny, we begged her to fill it one more time.

  “She had to blow it up herself by mouth, though we all took turns. She is a lifelong smoker, Mom, so it did take a while. There was already, now I think back, this feeling so late in the season with school already open? of ‘one last time … ’ at having any summer.

  “Mom was sitting working in the trailer with the window open. Was sewing somebody’s wedding dress beside her radio. I could hear her Singer bumping along. She made clothes for high school girls out our way, prom things, Easter dresses. Hats, she did their hats, too. My brother was then considered the cheerful twin. I was kind of a grind, I guess. I could be mean. I had done little things, experiments, on lizards, birds, one lost baby raccoon. Barry just watched, kind of concerned, but never lifted a hand to stop me. ‘You know you are hurting it like Hell, right? You know they feel what-all we feel.’ I could see he worried why I’d go on and do such s—to harmless things. People claimed I was The Worrier, having come out nine minutes before Barry, probably fretting what was taking him so long!

  “That day, he chose to sit nearer the spigot hooked under our trailer’s foundation. I could tell by his face he was considering lifting the hose and squirting me a good one in the snoot. Between two trailers I’d just stretched into what sun warmed our pool’s outside rim. Dark clouds boiled up overhead that fast. Blackness shut over our trailer like maybe a lens closing.

  “Momma’s radio still played Patsy’s, ‘Cor-azy for feel-ing so lonely.’ I could hear Mom’s sewing machine treadle-rocking as the reporter’s voice broke in to announce danger. I heard Ma call, ‘Boys. If weather gets any—’

  “It came down on us that quick. Temperature dropped forty-odd degrees. Sky went ink-black, not a bit of blue in it. But the trees, some autumn color by then, stayed bright with all the sunlight left inside them. Almost hurt your eyes. My skin … it squeezed, pressured. Then came six crackings, sounds I think were our oldest Whispering Pines breaking apart, sap scattering.

  “One wooden shed behind the Lassiters’ flew to splinters everywhichaway. The sound to all sides kept beating like some waterfall down at its bottom where the tons of most water hit. Barry’s freckles and front teeth were right before my face and I said, ‘Better run, Ba—’ But our legs, see, were tucked up under us and, at that minute, our trailer, just to my left and behind him on the right, heaved like something living, shifted more our way….

  “You don’t get a sec to think, ‘Now I’m rising.’ Some of our wading pool’s water came up with me, a plug around my ankles and me still in it, then scattered what looked like ball bearings.

  “There’s just no choice. No chance of your giving a signal. It has already happened by just happening. And you’re knowing this without a bit of control. Admiring, kind of.

  “But I had adrenaline. And that seemed control. Keeps your mind as clear as anything. I must’ve used about a year’s voltage concentrating those next ninety seconds.

  “Of course, I was a third-grader. Man, kids don’t know what’s likely! If I was to walk outdoors now and call my boys to come pack for a trip to Mars, they’d ask how heavy a windbreaker to bring! You know?

  “I guess if I’d feared the worst I would have gotten only that. Didn’t have time to worry over Barry. Didn’t doubt myself. Felt like the wind had tied its biggest rope around my waist then lifted me. I was like its … yo-yo. It shot me up, me straight overhead. Wind across earholes. The land below me looked half-blue.
I noticed our trailer where I’d just been. Back then I weighed, what, fifty-odd pounds? You’d never know it, seeing me today!

  “I felt excited but, the strange part, not afraid. Later, yes. Not during. You hear about it when people see ghosts or know a head-on collision is about to get them. Instead of feeling scared, they see right through it. Two chess-moves ahead. ‘Let’s just notice how this is going to have to turn out.’ Comes like that, a calming voice that is your voice but smarter, maybe older. I did move my arms. I hung forty to fifty feet in the air over our trailer camp, looking down. It seemed simple. You know the way a kid—when he’s up walking along the peak of some house-roof—will just naturally throw his either arm out for balance? mine reached out, too. Not flapping like wings but just getting that bit more leverage to aim myself midair. Like swimming, really. Treading. Only you happen to be in sky not ocean.

  “At least I could keep my head mostly at the top and my feet pigeon-toed off to either side so’s I could see down past them. And I flew. Thanks to no effort or planning, no particular brain-wattage on my side, believe me. Wind had me kite-high before I could even calculate how. Sky around me was a black-green I’ve gladly not seen since. The wind that held me let me study whatever it was picking to do next.

  “Sometimes I’d spin in space. That let me see the whole three-sixty. Soon I fell off one kind of wind and flopped ten feet. When a force of different temperature caught me in a scoop-like. Meanwhile, on land, trailer-tops were peeling open like an Advent Calendar my teacher had. Bird-high, I could peek through the roofs of trailers not yet flying off due-West.

  “I saw one of Barry’s plastic jets shoot past me but not, of course, flying as it should on the level, but moving straight up in my direction. Rocket. That, see, was part of the unfairness. No one in our county would have enjoyed this flying more than Brother.