Читать книгу A Ford in the River - Charles Rose - Страница 7

Marian Carcache and John M. Williams

In late December 2008, after this book was initially scheduled for publication, author Charles Rose suffered a stroke and spent a long time recovering, first in Birmingham and later in Auburn. There were times after the stroke, he says, when his mind could not process what had happened to him. “I didn’t know if I was crazy or not. I couldn’t tell.”

A lifelong reader and writer and piano player, Charlie was unable to read or write or play in the early stages of his recovery. Gradually he became more and more aware of the void the absence of music and literature had left in his life. The music came back first. A baby grand piano was the focal point of the parlor in the facility where he was recovering. As the long winter became spring, Charlie began playing his old beloved jazz standards and hymns for the enjoyment of the other residents.

Then, in May 2009, he picked up two books, one by Raymond Chandler and the other by Raymond Carver. These works sparked something in the dark confusion the stroke had left in his mind, and his love for writing reawakened. He says he had been making his way through Chandler’s The High Window when he encountered this passage:

It was a slim tall self-satisfied looking number in a tropical worsted suit of slate blue, black and white shoes, a dull ivory-colored shirt and a tie and display handkerchief the color of jacaranda bloom. He was holding a long black cigarette-holder in a peeled back white pigskin glove and he was wrinkling his nose at the dead magazines on the library table and the chairs and the rusty floor covering and the general air of not much money being made.

To the average reader this passage may seem typical Chandler and unremarkable, but for Charlie that was precisely its beauty. Something about that passage made him feel the ache and love of writing again. That feeling was only reinforced when, a few days later, working through Carver’s “What’s in Alaska?” (from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?), he encountered this exchange:

Jack and Mary came back. Jack carried a large bag of M&Ms and a bottle of cream soda. Mary sucked on an orange Popsicle.

“Anybody want a sandwich?” Helen said. “We have sandwich stuff.”

“Isn’t it funny,” Mary said. “You start with the desserts first and then you move on to the main course.”

“It’s funny,” Carl said.

“Are you being sarcastic, honey?” Mary said.

“Who wants cream soda?” Jack said. “A round of cream soda coming up.”

Carl held his glass out and Jack poured it full. Carl set the glass on the coffee table, but the coffee table smacked it off and the soda poured onto his shoe.

“Goddam it,” Carl said. “How do you like that? I spilled it on my shoe.”

“Helen, do we have a towel? Get Carl a towel,” Jack said.

“Those were new shoes,” Mary said. “He just got them.”

“They look comfortable,” Helen said a long time later and handed Carl a towel.

“That’s what I told him,” Mary said.

Again, unremarkable. But our laughter as we sat in his room and read this passage again and again, brought delight to the soul in a way too simple and sublime to explain.

Marian: When I first saw Charlie, I was a high school senior who had come to Auburn for a College Day. He was sitting in his office in Haley Center, perhaps the least interesting building that has ever been. I was not very excited at the prospect of leaving my home in rural Russell County, surrounded by a pecan orchard and a ryegrass field, to take up residence in a girls’ dorm and attend classes in a brick and metal monstrosity. But there sat Charlie, working behind his desk cluttered with papers and books and coffee cups, wearing a seersucker suit and dark glasses. I knew at that point that Auburn did have something to offer me in spite of the otherwise sterile surroundings I had found there. My overly romantic eighteen-year-old mind named him “the gypsy scholar” when I told family and friends about him upon returning home. Later, when I became a student at Auburn, he was my fiction writing teacher. He also taught me The Short Story and The European Novel. Those who knew him superficially did not always recognize his brilliance as both a literary scholar and a writer. Nor did they always appreciate his unconventionality. He was, and still is, peerlessly brilliant on a plane that many never visit. Years ago, when I was assigned to write an essay loosely based on the Theophrastus Character for advanced composition, I wrote about Charlie—dark-complexioned, small build, soulful brown eyes, a brilliant mind, a quiet man—both larger and smaller than life. Twice in the past few years, I feared losing him, but like the Phoenix, Charlie, the small and quiet man, the larger-than-life man, is back.

Johnny: I never had Charlie as a teacher. But it doesn’t matter: my cousin had him and reported to me about this odd bird (in a flock of them, in those days)—how in discussing The Confessions of Felix Krull, for example, cigarette in hand, Jack’s coffee cup nearby (those days!), he would sporadically erupt in flashes of searing insight like galaxies from a mumbled continuum of dark matter. I had imagined Coleridge, in his “Sage of Highgate” days, doing exactly the same thing, and the analogy has persisted. I’ve known Charlie maybe thirty years, and our many, many conversations about literature and music and everything else during those years, in numerous locales, will stand out, I know, when I’m looking back over it all. I’ve been fortunate to know him. Since there is nothing remotely petty, mean, cruel, or nasty in the man, the stroke seemed a really cheap shot. But my God, is he resilient. I’ve seen him recover from a series of setbacks, and now here he is recovering from something that would have silenced most of us—not only recovering but falling in love again. These two passages brought him some great joy which struck me as profound. The mountains are mountains again. I’m telling you, you just don’t find them like him anymore.

This book, containing some of Charlie’s best stories, is a testament to his talent and strength of spirit.