Later, Niles would reveal something to me that he had left out of his story. After a fruitless search for her children when she was released from prison, his mama hanged herself from a tree not far from the house we had stayed in the night before. After her funeral, his grandmother visited her daughter's fresh grave and put a bullet through her own head. Niles thought Starla was too fragile to take in that horrifying tale. I agreed, and never revealed that part of her mama's story to her, even after we married and began our disastrous life together.

Because of what happened to Starla, it still fills me with dread and astonishment that I never told her the details of her mother's death.

CHAPTER 23.

Fog and Mist.

One night soon after we returned from the mountains, the doorbell rang. Father had been helping Ike Jefferson with his trigonometry and Betty Roberts with her physics homework, and got up to answer the door. At the piano, Trevor was playing Schubert because he said it was "a Schubert kind of night," one of those lines that we had come to expect from Trevor, and that we'd repeat to one another for the rest of our lives. Working side by side at two sewing machines, Sheba and I were concentrating on the prom dresses we were making for Betty and Starla, who interrupted their homework every once in a while to let Sheba measure them with a tape measure. The dresses would be lovely-"Showstoppers," Sheba declared with confidence. Niles was studying in silence at my desk in the bedroom. The music had an ache to it, bringing with it all the accounts of melancholy you would ever need.

Father opened the door. Chad Rutledge stood in the light, flanked by his sister and his girlfriend. Sheba and I were concentrating and didn't look up, but we got distracted when the music stopped with unnatural abruptness. Chad, Molly, and Fraser stepped into the room just as Mother emerged from her bedroom at the back of the house. An awkward silence settled on us all. Niles, sensing the mood of the house, came downstairs and froze at the sight of Chad.

Mother said, "I asked Chad and the girls to drop by. Everyone here has quit talking to Chad since you got back from the mountains. At school, Chad is isolated and shunned by his fellow students. He did something stupid, something almost unforgivable. But there isn't any crime that lies beyond forgiveness. That's what literature teaches us, as does art and religion. Chad?"

Chad stepped forward, visibly shaken by our enemy stares. He began to say something, then stopped, cleared his throat, and started to speak again, all the Rutledge arrogance purged from his quavering voice. "I owe everyone here an apology. I don't deserve forgiveness from any of you. I wanted to tell you face-to-face, and I wanted you to hear me say it. Niles and Trevor can spit in my face like Fraser did, and I'd deserve it. I can't explain what I did, even to myself. Niles, you haven't called my sister since you got back. We hear her crying in her room every night. It's driving my parents nuts. She didn't know anything about the Middleton Assembly. I'm sorry. I apologize. I don't know what else to say."

I turned my back on Chad and continued to work on the hemline of Starla's prom dress. Sheba did likewise, and Trevor resumed his Schubert. Niles walked back to my room, and Chad stood in the middle of the room looking thunderstruck.

"Just a minute," Mother said. "Niles, come back here! Trevor, knock it off. Leo, you and Sheba look at me. You can choose not to accept Chad's apology, but tell him so to his face. Your rudeness I will not tolerate. This is not about Chad, really. It's about the kind of people you are."

"Niles, why haven't you called me?" Her voice breaking, Fraser cried out to Niles when he reluctantly came and joined us. "I went up to the mountains to find you, so I thought everything was good between us."

Niles looked at the floor, his fists clenched. "How can I call your house again? What if your mother answers, or your dad? Or even your brother? What do I say to those people? 'Hi, this is Niles, the neighborhood orphan. May I please speak to your daughter, Fraser, who lives in a mansion and whose family hates everything I am or ever will be?'"

"It's not what I I think," Fraser said. "I don't care what they think." think," Fraser said. "I don't care what they think."

"You say that now," Niles said. "But let's look at the future. What if we got married? Can you see the looks of your parents and their snot-nosed friends when they see a Charleston Rutledge marrying the mountain nigger? Ike and Betty, I mean no offense to you, and wouldn't use that term to hurt you."

"We dig," Ike said, looking hard at Chad.

"Mr. and Mrs. Rutledge feel terrible too," Molly said. "They wish none of this ever happened."

"If Trevor forgives you, I'll forgive you, Chad," Sheba said. "I've thought about what you did to my brother and to Niles. What I hate about your sorry ass is that you picked on the two sweetest and most vulnerable boys in the world. What do you think it's been like for Trevor to grow up? Always the sissy boy, the sensitive one, the effeminate little pansy boy. He's been a magnet for bullies like you his entire life. And they're everywhere, in every town and every school, waiting for my brother. To beat him up. Or strip him bare and take his money."

"I liked it when they stripped me bare," Trevor said, winking at the room, causing a slight break in the tension.

"So along comes Chad Rutledge," Sheba continued. "Handsome, vain, aristocratic, born with a silver spoon so far up his behind it looks natural. Chad-who doesn't know a thing about suffering, about misery. The worst thing that's ever happened to Chad is when he finished third in a fucking regatta."

"Your language, Sheba!" Mother interrupted.

"Sorry, Dr. King," Sheba said. "So you take my sweet, tortured brother and you mock him as a faggot in front of a hundred young Charleston assholes in Lone Ranger masks. You let my poor brother believe that he was being inducted into an old Charleston society because his talent had amazed the city. Trevor and I got us a daddy too, Chad. Now, he's a piece of work: a lunatic, a rapist, and even a murderer, we think. Only the King family knows about our daddy. And you know what we learned? This goddamn family'll fight for you. That guy over there you call the Toad? Yeah, that one, Leo. My father came all the way to Charleston to hurt us right after we moved here. He tracked us down again. We've been running from him forever. But he found us, and we ran to the Kings for help. Know what? Mr. King loads his shotgun and throws another one to Leo, and they're out in the night hunting that son of a bitch down."

"Sheba," Chad said, "I can't help how you were born. I can't help what Niles and Starla have gone through. I can't even help that Fraser and I are Rutledges. All I can do is be sorry for something truly awful that I did. I can't take back what I did. But I can beg your forgiveness for it."

"If Dr. King and Mr. King ask me and Trevor to forgive you, we'll do it. We owe them that much, and so much more. But the guy you call the Toad has to go first," she said.

"That goes for me too," Ike said.

"Second that motion," Betty said reluctantly.

"I didn't do a damn thing to the Toad," Chad said, flaring and resorting to his old form.

Starla then broke her silence. "What you did, Chad, hurt your whole school. You hurt every one of us."

"I didn't mean to," Chad said. "I didn't think it through. It was a mistake made by someone who was never taught to think about anyone else. I was the center of my parents' universe. Even made my only sister feel ugly. That's one thing I'll never be able to forgive myself for."

"Does anyone have a vomit bag?" I asked. "I'm about to heave my dinner."

"Words are easy, Chad," Ike said. "It's action that's hard. How come Betty and I don't even know where you live?"

"Our parents won't let us invite you to our house," Fraser said, speaking for her brother. "They don't believe in integration, and they never will. But Chad and I don't think that way."

"Is it what you used to believe?" Betty asked.

"Yes," Chad said. "We were raised to believe that."

"That's how I was raised too," Father said. "People change. That's one of the nice parts about growing up."

"Father," I asked, "do I have to forgive Chad tonight? Or can I go on hating him for another month or two?"

"Here's what you don't know about time, son," Father said. "It moves funny and it's hard to pin down. Occasionally, time offers you a hundred opportunities to do the right thing. Sometimes it gives you only one chance. You've got one chance here. I wouldn't let it slip out of your hands."

Under my parents' withering glare, I went through the motions and Chad and I embraced. It was during that awkward, fumbling moment that I recognized the depth of Chad's suffering, and that the shunning he had endured by the cold silence of an entire school had devastated him. Until then, I had never seen Chad suffer through an authentic human moment.

Then he turned toward Niles and Trevor and Starla and put his hands out, palm up. It was like a white flag, and his voice was a high-pitched whimper, and a cry of surrender. "I keep looking for a motive, Niles and Trevor, some reason that would explain to me why I did that to you guys. The only motive I can come up with is that it was the meanest thing I could think of. And that you two guys were so far removed from the society I grew up in that there couldn't be any payback. It was the meanest thing I've ever done. And here's what's horrifying: I loved every minute of it. Until I heard that Niles had run away, that is."

Ike and Betty walked over to embrace Chad and welcome him back into our hurt, fragmented band. Sheba skipped across the room and kissed Chad on both cheeks with the chasteness of a European nun. "Be nicer, Chad. If you were nice, you'd be almost perfect."

"I'll try, Sheba. You guys gotta teach me the steps."

Niles took his time as he moved nearer to Chad, his eyes hawklike and unforgiving. Leaning close, Niles stared into Chad's eyeballs as though he were decoding a cipher that would reveal what Chad's heart was thinking. Finally, Niles said, "I'll let this pass, Chad, but it has nothing to do with you. I love your sister. Have since the day I met her. There's another reason. Because I ran away, I found my mama at long last. Found my granny too. Me and Starla been looking for them since we were little kids. At the Middleton Assembly when that asshole mentioned the Chimney Rock Times Chimney Rock Times, it was the first clue I ever had about where to look. So now me and my sister can quit looking. When you spend your life as an orphan, you don't believe in happy endings."

"Niles," Fraser said, "I think you and I can have a happy ending."

"We'll see," Niles replied. "In our world it's bad luck to believe in them. And Chad, I can save you some trouble-Starla won't forgive you and will die hating you, so don't even ask it of her. It's just the way she's built."

"Fair enough," Chad said. Niles went over and embraced Fraser, who began sobbing on his shoulder.

"Well said, brother," Starla admitted.

The attention of the room shifted to Trevor, who had sat through Chad's entire performance with his back facing the room and his hands covering the keys, as though he were going to play something in B-flat minor. His eyes never wavered from the keys, but he had taken in every word that had ricocheted around that room. He rose in theatrical splendor, ready for his moment in the spotlight. He approached Chad light-footed and flamboyant; Trevor always gave the appearance that he was walking across a pillar of air. On his face, he wore a crafty look, like a jack of clubs in certain decks of cards.

"I'm sorry, Trevor," Chad said to him. "I don't know how else to say it."

"It's all right, darling," Trevor said. "Let's just kiss and make up."

Trevor launched a surprise attack on Chad by kissing him right on the mouth, driving his tongue far into his throat. Chad backpedaled until his rear end collided with the front door, then he grabbed an ashtray and began to spit in it as though he'd been snakebit on the tongue. The rest of us doubled up with laughter.

"I can always spot a closet queen," Trevor said. He returned to his piano and started playing "One Last Kiss" from the musical Bye Bye Birdie Bye Bye Birdie.

Then my parents opened the back door for a mystery guest. Monsignor Max swept into the room, his biretta rakishly angled on his head. He removed it and hurled it like a Frisbee at me as Father handed him a dry martini.

"The King family has asked me to perform an exorcism, and there's nothing I can refuse this family. Will the miscreant introduce himself? Who is the poor sinner who needs to have the devil driven out of him?"

Chad came forward. "Sir, I think you're looking for me."

"Let's make this quick, son. Boil it down for me: I want the essence of what you did. And, my title is monsignor," Max cried out with great style and bluster.

"Monsignor," Chad said, "I think I was something of an asshole."

"Language, Chad," Mother warned.

"Forgiven," the monsignor said. "Your soul is wiped clean. Being an asshole is only another phrase for the human condition. It means that you are mere flesh and blood like the rest of us. Go now and sin no more."

Monsignor Max blessed the room with a sign of the cross, and the night ended with a sense of recovery and fresh joy.

April of that year is a blur, and May is fog-bound. But I have some photographs from that time to lend me guidance. At the junior-senior prom I am sitting at a round table holding hands with Starla, who is radiant in her new dress. Sheba and Trevor came with each other, and the camera seems to have settled on the lush beauty of the twins and refuses to move toward the other people at the table. Niles is unsmiling in his eternal gravitas as Fraser sits on his lap, elegant in a designer dress she and her mother purchased at a New York boutique; until I studied this photograph, it never occurred to me that Fraser had the prettiest shoulders and most flawless complexion I had ever seen. Ike and Betty are looking at each other instead of at the camera, and so are Molly and Chad. As I looked at the framed photo twenty years later, I was struck by the group's wholesomeness, by the remarkable youthfulness of our faces. We looked like we could never die. It struck me as amazing that all the couples present at that fateful table, except for the twins, of course, ended up marrying their dates.

Had Starla and I already exchanged the sweet words that would eventually lead us to the altar of the Summerall Chapel, where Monsignor Max would bind us in holy matrimony on the day I graduated from The Citadel? Ike and Betty got married in the same chapel later the same day, and we took turns being in each other's weddings. Sheba and Trevor flew in from California to be members of the wedding party, with Sheba serving as maid of honor for Starla. Niles and Fraser got married at St. Michael's the following Saturday, and Chad and Molly followed suit the next weekend. We partied long and hard that summer.

But I return to the forgetfulness of April 1970, and the oblivion of May. I picked up another photograph and smiled at the memory of my father taking it. Though we had nearly killed ourselves getting into position, Father had insisted we listen to his commands, and the photo turned out to be a treasure for all of us. We were in our caps and gowns after a rehearsal, and Father made us climb the magnolia trees that stood majestic guard of our porch. The trees were lush with their snowy, showoff blossoms that perfumed the Charleston air for a hundred yards. We clambered up the trees with some difficulty and much grumbling, the girls struggling up the tree to the left, the boys to the right. Father insisted we poke our heads out into the open only when we had picked a perfect magnolia blossom and placed it between our teeth. It took us more than fifteen minutes of cussing and positioning, but in the resulting picture we all look like new varieties of wood nymphs, our faces wild-eyed and starry, balanced precariously as we leaned out in what felt like mortal danger so Jasper King could take his ridiculous photograph. The photo turned out to be an artifact of that sublime and magical year. It made strangers laugh out loud when they saw it, and we came to an appreciation of its whimsical humor and, of course, the fact that Father had conceived the idea and had the patience to see it through to the end.

Joseph Riley Jr., a fiery up-and-coming politician, delivered that rarest of historical events, a memorable graduation speech, which electrified my class and made us want to race out and change the world. Molly invited her whole graduation class out to her grandmother's beach house on Sullivan's Island, black and white, rich and poor; Molly made it plain that she didn't give a damn and neither did her parents. She invited all the teachers, and again it was black and white together. I heard Mother say to the Hugers that Molly's gesture was the greatest act of leadership she had seen in her career as an educator. It thrilled the Hugers, and Molly did a polite curtsy in Mother's direction, but I thought I saw a dark cloud forming in Chad's green-flecked eyes. But I don't carry much of that evening with me. I remember swimming in the warm surf, and the swiftness of the high tide and the crash of the waves. The water was salty and fine. I loved Starla's mouth on mine, and the party lasted all night. I had to drive back as the sun rose and was late starting my paper route.

When I arrived, Eugene Haverford barked at me. But then he softened and presented me with a graduation present, wrapped in an old copy of the News and Courier News and Courier. I unwrapped a brand-new Olivetti electric typewriter that must have cost a fortune.

"I know you want to be a journalist one day, so I want to see you working for this newspaper," Eugene Haverford said. "And I want to be able to deliver your goddamn shit around the city."

I'm still using that same typewriter when I write my columns today.

At noon, a large gathering of the graduates assembled at the train station for the departure of Sheba and Trevor Poe to the dream-filled state of California. Sheba would take the southern part of California as her trophy; Trevor would satisfy himself with possession of the northern sector. Their mother, Evangeline, was there at the station, and I think my parents were as well. I remember the roar of the crowd as the twins blew us kisses and the train pulled off toward Atlanta, but it is moving away from me now, losing clarity, fading out of range.

Instead, in my memory I am back hurling papers beneath starlight again, the gardens blooming in secret. I am riding through darkness, the streets feel honeycombed and spiritual again, and the sun is rising over the rouged and columned city as I pedal down Church Street and over to East Bay and right on Meeting Street. I could finish this route with my eyes closed or sound asleep, and I hated to give it up.

After I threw my last paper, I rode down Broad Street to join my parents for the morning Mass. I was a couple of minutes late, but I saw that Monsignor Max had a full complement of altar boys at his service, so I slipped into the front row beside Mother. It was then that I noticed Father's absence.

"Where's Father?" I asked her in a whisper.

"Feeling poorly this morning," she replied.

It wasn't until after the Gospel was read that an unexplained but electrifying sense of dread came over me. I jumped up from my seat and sprinted down the central aisle of the cathedral. I leaped onto my bike and rode like a madman to my house. Only later did the neighbors tell me I was already screaming even as I unlocked the front door. I raced to my parents' bedroom and found my father lying facedown on the floor. When I turned him over, he was already stiff to the touch, but I tried to revive him by breathing into his mouth and punching his heart. When I breathed into him, pinching his nostrils closed, it was like blowing air into a torn paper bag. My air did not return from his lungs, but remained there in the darkness and quiet that was death itself. Then I found myself in our neighbor's arms. Evangeline Poe called the ambulance as I sat there on the floor wondering what I was going to do for the rest of my life.

When Monsignor Max finished the rosary at the viewing on Friday night, I went up to the opened casket. I kissed Father on both cheeks and silently thanked him for all he had done for me, for loving me at times when even I found myself unlovable. I removed his Citadel ring from his right hand, and I put it in my jacket pocket.

Mother observed this and asked, "Why don't you wear it?"

"Because I haven't earned it yet," I said. "After I earn it, I'll wear it the rest of my life." I am looking at my father's ring at this moment as I type these words on my Olivetti.

Much of the town turned out for Father's funeral. Half the doctors and nurses in the city had taken his science classes in high school. Monsignor Max came through with flying colors and started his eulogy by saying, "Jasper King was the finest man I've ever met on earth. I will wager that Jasper King will be finest man I will meet in heaven."

A huge crowd was present as he was interred in St. Mary's churchyard in a grave beside his son Steve. I thought my mother would collapse when she saw Steve's name on his tombstone, and I realized she had never been to visit her oldest son's grave. I had been there dozens of times, and it never failed to break my heart.

PART FIVE.

CHAPTER 24.

Home Again.

When the Learjet taxies down the runway in Charleston, Ike spots the ambulance awaiting our arrival. The pilot parks the jet twenty feet away, and two orderlies rush out. With the steps lowered, Niles carries down Trevor, who slept the entire cross-country journey, and lays him out on the stretcher. Dr. David Biederman walks out on the tarmac to greet our disheveled, exhausted group. We look like a lost squad of soldiers that has been in the field and under fire for too long.

I shake hands with him. "Hello, David. I haven't seen you since I handed over the receipt book to you when you took over my paper route. Now you're a hotshot."

"My God," David says, "this plane is filled with the gods and goddesses of my freshman year in high school. Sheba Poe, I had such a crush on you."

"Of course, you were David," Sheba says. "Can you help my brother?"

"AIDS is a puzzle," he says, "but yeah, I can help him. I'll do everything in my power to keep him alive."

"You keep Trevor alive, I'll give you a toss in the sack every year," Sheba says.

"I'm married now, Sheba," he tells her. "Two kids."

"Did marriage turn you into some kind of nutcase?" she says. "I'm not talking about spending the next fifty years together, just a friendly roll in the hay."

"Leave David alone," Betty tells her. "Hey, Doc, good to see you again. You remember my husband, Ike?"

"The new chief of police." David shakes Ike's hand.

"The pig of pigs," Ike says. "Thanks for meeting the plane."

Niles asks, "Want me to ride in the ambulance with Trevor, Doctor?"

"No, that's my job. I want to check him out before we even get to the hospital. It sounds like he has not been on any medication."