1993 Volume 116 No 1–4 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

eceived requests from many people on
this past tour to write about his experiences
with cancer, an idea he is entertaining-
^
"I've had people who have come up to
me and said, 'I've just had surgery, just
had radiation or chemotherapy, and I'm
in a bad way, and for God's sake someday
write a book that at least describes
your own situation going through this.'
Which 1 certainly intend to do."
Throughout the tumultuous changes
in Price's life, he believes the writing
process has actually gotten easier for him.
Part of that ease has come with the
technology of the word processor, but
most of it comes from years of hard work
and understanding the writing process.
Price has compared his writing to rolling
a live grenade into a room.
"I get some kind of fragmentary idea
— which is what I think of as the live
grenade. 1 say, 'It's going to be this man
who meets a teen-age girl accidentally
one day on Fayetteville Street in Raleigh,
and it totally alters his life and the hves of
everyone else he knows for the rest of his
hfe.'
"OK, that's the grenade. Pull the pin
out. Roll it into a room. Here they are, in
the middle of Atkinson Music Company
on Fayetteville Street on such and such an
afternoon in 1956. She walks in the door.
What happens next And I watch the
explosion go off, and I follow the bits and
pieces where they fly.
"And if that sounds idiotically simple,
frankly, I think for a person who's a born
writer and who's writing virtually every
day of his working life for more than 40
years now, it is sort of idiotically simple
to do."
Price's work attempts to illuminate the
mysteries of human relationships. It
paints a picture of how people struggle
with the big questions and come to
understand, love, and hurt each other.
The emotions of his characters are drawn
from his own past, turning his own
history into touching fiction.
"All narrative artists are very much
involved in telling the only real story we
really want to hear, which is: 'History is
the will of a just God who knows me.'
Now that either is or isn't true. I hope it
is," he says.
The answer to that question humanity
may never know, but we may be certain
that Reynolds Price is working harder
day and night to find it for all of us. He
has as good a chance, if not better, than
anyone, g
An Excerpt From 'Blue Calhoun'
This starts with the happiest I ever was, though it brought down suffering on
everybody near me. Short as it lasted and long ago, I've never laid it all out yet, not
start to finish. But if I try and half succeed, you may wind up understanding things,
choosing a better road for yourself and maybe not blaming the dead past but living for
the here and now, each day a clean page. At least you'll see how certain things in my
long life have gone down fast as one of those Japanese domino shows where two
million pieces trip each other in hot succession and set off the unexpected jackpot —
an exploding mountain or a rocket blast that hurls men farther than they've yet gone,
to Neptune or worse.
The time I'll tell about ran its course when I was thirty five, then thirty six. Till then
I'd lived a fairly nonmal life, if nomial included some badly drunk years — and I think it
does in America still. So honest to God, I doubt you need to know much about me
before the latter half of that day when everything started streaking downhill. Of course
I'll add the odd event that feels worth knowing or tells a good story. Stories are
something I'm better at than life; and that one year was built like a story, whoever built
it. It had a low start that stoked up fast to such a heat that hinges on doors were
melting away; and pent up people were tearing loose and running for what looked like
daylight till, at some weird invisible signal, everything started cooling again.
And everybody slowed to average speed and drew deep breaths to treat their
burns and wonder if they could stand the sight of each other's faces from then till
death or just for that day. Some said Yes; a few said No; and everybody thought I'd
caused the wreck, which may have been true. Even my mother, a certified saint,
called me out to the country house and said "Now, son, you've ruined two lives — your
own blood child and the girl you claimed to love so strongly. How do you plan on living
the rest of the time you've got with that on your mind, that blood on your hands"
Blood was a figure of speech at the time, and she well knew it. I'd almost certainly
killed four Germans in the Second War but nothing since. So I said what I believed
was true, "Look, Mother. Nobody's dead." I was technically right.
But her deep blue eyes never flinched, and she said "Far worse than dead — far
worse."
Then I saw that the thing I dreaded had happened. I'd badly harmed three
worthwhile souls that trusted me; and I knew no way on Earth to mend them — not till
your and my past months together, thirty years on. Know this first though (it's some of
the worst you'll know about me) — I drove myself back home from Mother's that late
spring night in a tardy frost with my face grinning each mile of the way. I could see it in
the mirror, dark as it was. My body was still that pleased with the memory; it still is
today. Maybe my mind and heart just figured I'd taken enough from God or fate, my
family and the U.S. Infantry — not to mention the Nazis — to earn me some
substantial relief and nourishment. Whatever, I flat-out gorged myself for twelve full
months. So here much further on in time, I'm hoping to make my slim amends by
telling this history that's all but true.
I'm Blue Calhoun as you well know; and wild as I've been, I still like the sound. The
full name's Bluford and the middle name's August, but there can't be more than ten
people left who know that much about me still — to the world I'm Blue and have
always been. Except for the war and the times I was wild — and our hard time
overseas just now — I've mostly stayed near my birthplace: a capital city, Raleigh,
N.C. When I was a child, Raleigh called itself "The City of Oaks." But don't try to find
an oak these days in the criminal mess that money and the chlorofomed City Council
have made from innocent fertile dirt and what grew in it.
I'm drifting already but here's the start. As I said, I'd climbed the sizable hill of my
thirty fifth birthday — a rough time for men, the downhill side. I think I was sane;
people from all walks of life assured me I was not bad to see. I'd been stone sober for
nineteen months — the longest ever up to that point — and it turned out, I've stayed
sober the rest of my life to this night now. I worked the best job I'd had in years; and to
my knowledge, no part of my life was stan/ed or frozen. I didn't stare off at sunsets
and grieve. I thought I cherished my only spouse, born Myra Burns, a friend since
childhood and your grandmother that you'd have prized.
We'd been married for fifteen years, and Myra had tried her absolute best. As you
well know we had a daughter that I near worshiped named Madelyn (called Mattie or
Matt from the day of her birth, according to how we felt at the moment). Matt was the
finest influence on me of anybody yet. I owed her the worid and was aiming to give it,
minute by minute from here on out — upright kindness and every decent thought and
act I could see she needed. But then that one day fell down on me from a clear spring
sky, no word of waming. It tore the ground from under my feet, and everything round
me shook the way a mad dog shakes a howling child.
Winter 1993 * The Scroll