The Darling Buds of May We enter darkness in Oxford, Mississippi, only three years after Faulkner’s death, arriving for the Southern Literary Festival. Doc, our favorite teacher who’s young and “with it,” comes to deliver the bad news. He smokes a long, slender Dunhill; the tobacco smells like rich chocolate. “We’ve decided that students are not to leave the motel,” he warns each face answering the six doors we have blocked. He eyes me slyly when I balk. Wynette, my roommate, and I head for the square almost immediately. She throws a sweater across her shoulders, covering her ample cleavage. “Some thangs you gotta keep under wraps,” she grins, mimicking a redneck voice. The gleaming white courthouse is stark against the quiet square, only a few dim lights visible from the shops and restaurants. A small group of men gathered on the steps talk softly. The rhythmic sound of their stories interspersed with muffled laughter is haunting, as if we’ve happened on Faulkner’s cronies. When we pick up the scent of Doc’s pipe, we follow it to a white lattice gazebo. I parody a Southern belle, batting my lashes, “Fancy meeting you here.” “I won’t tell if you won’t,” he says, his twinkling eyes the color of strong tea. “Wanna walk out toward Rowan Oak?” he asks. Of course, we do. The three of us walk along the edge of the road, facing the lights of occasional cars. An old Nash Rambler creaks toward us, swerves slightly in our direction. After passing us, the driver’s pencil-thin neck cranes our way as he looks back. We see the fierce red glow of a cigarette under a baseball cap from the back window like a surreal traffic light warning us to stop. I shiver, not sure whether it’s the night air or fear, “Wonder where Faulkner got his Snopes inspiration,” I say to the tail lights that slowly disappear ahead of us beyond the black web of privet hedge along the road. We have reached the edge of the drive where tall, shapely pines line the path to Faulkner’s higher ground. There are no lights, but we see the silhouette of the majestic house in the background. The four columns across the first floor are silvered by the full moon like the thick blanket of grass in front of them. “Even without that car creeping around here, I think we should head back, girls,” Doc says firmly, his voice rich like sorghum syrup. “I feel intrusive, as if Faulkner’s spirit lingers on the grounds,” I tell him, rubbing the stiff bumps along my naked arms. Doc takes my arm and hooks it under his. The warmth of his body stirs me. Wynette cracks only one joke, her voice just shrill enough to reveal her uneasiness. “Hell, I wish that Rambler would come back. I wanted to see what ol’ Flem looks like.” We titter nervously. She adds,” It’s hard to separate what you’ve imagined from what you’re seeing now. Know what I mean?” “Yeah,” I say softly into the honeysuckle fragrance that surrounds us. Silently, we walk back. “Good night ladies,” Doc says at our door. “See you in the morning, Doc,” Wynette answers. “Yeah,” I echo softly. His eyes linger for a moment. “Wanna come in?” I whisper. “I’d never want to leave,” he answers. “Besides, people talk. Maybe we can cook steak at my place when we get back Saturday night, just the two of us.” “Great,” I smile and close the door, relieved that Wynette’s face is covered with Noxema and she’s lost inside the sound of running water. I can’t really talk to anybody about what I feel for this man. Next morning, when we register on campus, we are greeted by warm, soft-spoken women who offer us coffee from silver urns and home-made biscuits on china plates thin enough to see through. Our host welcomes us with gentle grey eyes the color of his elegant silk tie. The glow of hospitality lifts my spirits, reminds me of the part of Southern heritage I’m proud of. Then we go with a horde of students to Rowan Oak. A small group of black students hang back as we saunter across the lawn, and I whisper to Wynette, “I didn’t know this conference was integrated, did you?” “Nah. Never thought about it,” she says, checking out the guys who line up at the entrance to the house. A couple of professors, jabbering in harsh tones that tell me they aren’t Southern, hold forth. The tall, thin man tells his students, “It’s clearrrrr that we’re fortunate to be seeing Faulkner’s home, ya know. It isn’t open to the public yet because the university has just begun the tedious process of restoring the place. It certainly needs it!” Nose tilted and mouth twisted, he looks at the faded walls, the peeling paint. A soft-spoken woman with clear, steady eyes welcomes us and asks that we please not touch things since they have not yet sealed the walls where Faulkner outlined A Fable. “You’re welcome to look all you like,” she smiles, “just don’t touch.” The professors continue to compete for attention. Now, it’s time for the short, squatty woman to show off her knowledge. “We must never forget this!” she exclaims. “Look where the author outlined the book that won the Pulitzer! A fine book, indeed!” She points toward the scribbled wall as if they are her while she shrieks toward her students. My eyes seek out Doc’s amber gaze, and we smile. He told our class just last week how little Faulkner liked that novel compared to the others he’d written. When we come downstairs, I am drawn to the old-fashioned telephone, then the numbers written on the wall. I fight my fingers, wanting to trace the numbers and somehow connect, in a personal way, to the writer who scribbled them. No sooner have I stifled the temptation than I see the short, squatty woman eye the wall. “Oh, look...” she screeches. I open the back door and make a beeline to the yard where it’s quiet, untouched. I inhale the sweetness of morning air, hear a sparrow in the oak tree, and relax. I walk to the edge of the thick, emerald grass, then hang over a fence. Thinking of Sam Fathers, I study the shack’s striations: silver with brown streaks flowing into shades of mud, nutmeg and rust. I am shocked out of my reverie when I see a little girl bang the front door as she comes out. People still live there! I fight my hand again to keep it from flying toward my mouth. Intrusive wasn’t strong enough to describe what I felt stumbling into the life of a child who lives inside a shack and gawking at her as if she were in a museum. I smile feebly at the girl, try to think of something to say. She looks at her feet for an instant before she makes her way toward a sleepy-eyed mule. She talks softly to the animal, then turns back toward me. Her eyes look beyond me toward the clear, blue sky overhead. Doc waits at the screen door. “I decided it’s more of an intrusion to gawk at living people than a ghost,” I tell him. I know by his eyes I don’t have to explain. Quite by chance, students from Tougaloo College park their van next to us and pile out. Their skin tones range from deep ebony to golden honey, their eyes conveying various stages of fear and courage. As we make our way down the tree-lined walkway to a reception, the two groups begin to loosely merge. We feel the tension in the air, the suffocating racist cloud like acrid smoke. My quivering voice betrays me the way it does when I sit beside a black stranger on the city bus, trying to appear nonchalant. “Enjoy seeing Yoknapatawpha?” I ask a heavy girl with high cheekbones who looks more like a woman, huge breasts already sagging. “Oh yeah,” she answers, her voice strong, confident. After that, we don’t talk, but continue walking along together. I don’t even know I’m “marching.” Neither does she I figure, but we know enough to be wary. We both tighten and exchange a worried glance when a frat man, hanging over a balcony, taunts us. “Where y’all goin, gals?” snarls a tall, thin boy with a close crew cut the color of carrots. His pals crowd around, apparently glad someone has initiated more than glaring. Most of them are bare-chested, sloshing cups of beer like sacred bounty. In a slow, cultivated voice--deep as a river--a freckled boy asks, “What you doin’ with that nigger, honey? You just need some excitement.” “I got what she needs! I got something real excitin’ for that white girl,” another boy slurs to a chorus of laughter. I feel my heart accelerate, my neck and face redden. I glance behind me to be sure Doc and Wynette are not far away. They walk together, both faces masking emotion. I’m in that dream where you’re trying to scream but no sound comes. My brain won’t work fast enough to match the arrogance of the boys. I clear my throat, hating the fear that makes it hard to prize my jaws open enough to say what comes to me, “Up yours!” The girl next to me says, “Don’t say another word. Just keep walkin.’” Her breathing is heavy now with the strain of carrying extra weight; otherwise she emanates serenity. I hold my breath, quicken my pace and look straight ahead. I always thought I’d have a chance to get psyched up to manage something like this. I hadn’t marched in Birmingham, hadn’t gone to Selma. I just carried out my private ritual of integrating the city buses, those smelly cramped arenas for blue-collar workers. Facing cocky college boys demands more courage. We are heavily outnumbered by these leering monsters. It astonishes me that some of them are so handsome, yet capable of such meanness. I realize that this raw, unfinished swagger of college boys is partly what attracts me to an older man. I escape the fear by fantasizing, remembering Doc’s smoldering side-long glances in the car all the way to Mississippi. I erase the hell around me by remembering his lips on mine, the sweet forbidden relationship. Our conversations were innocent enough initially. My hunger for that intense communication cannot be called innocent. The eyes. I center on his eyes, their mystery flooding my head with memories and fantasies of future encounters. By the time we reach the banquet hall, I have almost forgotten the presence of danger. Mouth twitching, I mutter to my ally, “See you later.” “Yeah,” is all she answers, the poker face replaced now by a face of fear as she heads toward friends who wait for her and I join my buddies who are buzzing about our abuse. Wynette rode all the way to Tupelo that night with a boy from Memphis to get some booze, which Doc seemed eager to share. We sit by the pool until everyone disappears but the two of us. He slaps at a mosquito on his arm, its blood running down the vein in his forearm. He makes a smoke ring that floats above the smoldering eyes and says, “I’ve never asked a student out...before.” I take his hand, place it close to my heart. We have known each other over a year, but we’ve only been out together a few times. He stunned me the first night, “I think I’m falling in love with you,” he whispered into the back of my neck--sharp, blinding lights exploding throughout my being. Speechless, I held on tight, but couldn’t bring myself to say the words. Tonight, fed by the town’s mystique and bonded by that “march” we made down fraternity row, I murmur, “I felt your strength behind me when those guys jeered.” He responds, through puffs of pipe smoke in the humid air, “I was proud of you, afraid, but proud. I wanted to knock hell of those arrogant bastards, but it would have diminished the dignity two women made out of trash. Besides, that gave me an excuse not to get beat up.” I am drawn to those merry eyes, so brooding a second ago. Surrendering to the pounding waterfall inside my throat, I utter the words at last, “I love you.” He squeezes my hand. We gaze into the pool of blue as if it were an ocean of future--both afraid to look at each other, afraid of the intensity of the moment. When I unlock the door, I hear Wynette snoring. She sprawls on the bed, taking up three quarters of it. Her golden hair has a sheen even in darkness. Her voluptuous breasts spill out of the thin cotton gown that fit her last semester. I shake her, ignoring her boozy breath. “Wake up. I have something to tell you,” I begin. We talk into the night, then fall into a deep, peaceful sleep. Next morning, we learn that somewhere across town the kids from Tougaloo slept fitfully. Someone set their van on fire. Probably not one of them had the energy left to fall in love. Then I remembered the look in the heavy girl’s eyes, the one who told me to keep quiet and keep walking. She would. Somehow she would have the energy. Like the little girl outside the shack, she would look beyond this into blue sky.