Wrapped in Rain(23)
Rex measured himself, and everyone else, by the yardstick of control. And he only measured up when he had it. In a slight variation on Auntie Manic, Rex would stand at the dinner table, raise his glass, and tell his business partners-and newest best friends-"Life is a banquet, and most poor bitties are starving to death. Eat up!"
By the time I was six, Rex tired of Waverly Hall and his boys, so once a week became twice a month. Twice a month became month end. A year or two more and monthly became quarterly, and finally, once a quarter became hardly at all. During my eighth year of life, I saw my father one time. And in all my life, I have never celebrated a birthday or awakened on Christmas morning to anyone or anything but Miss Ella.
Having sold, built, conquered, torn down, and then torn apart, Rex turned fifty-eight and baptized himself in the three things he could not control: liquor, women, and horses. Mixed together, the resulting highball became his Waterloo. By the time I reached high school, Rex Mason woke each morning in his office in Atlanta to seven medications and downed them with eight ounces of twelveyear-old Jack Daniels. For the next ten years-having become too attracted to his own product-he existed on a liquid diet, until at seventy he met a lap dancer named Mary Victoria-the star attraction of the nightclub that leased the bottom floor of his building. She was a six-feettwo silicone beauty with an affection for shiny things. She filled his nights and his glass, and pretty soon Rex was using his cane to punch the elevator buttons at the racetrack, and Mary was covered in shine and picking all the numbers. Rex and Mary deserved each other-and both chose poorly.
By the time Rex hit seventyfive, Mary had spent most of what the IRS hadn't taken. And after more than thirty years of doctored returns, they got everything they could find. Mary moved out just after government agents hauled off Rex's files and posted an eviction notice. Rex rallied, sobered up for almost a day, dug up a few of his offshore Mason jars, which the IRS knew nothing about, and managed to keep two things: his Atlanta high-rise and Waverly Hall.
Waverly Hall may be the only wise choice he ever made. Rex had incrementally gifted his edifice to the two people who cared little for it-me and Mutt. I didn't know it until a few years ago, but by the age of ten, we owned outright everything we could see for more than two miles in any direction. It's a good thing he didn't tell us, because if he had, we'd have evicted him about two minutes later.
Since his days with the circus, Rex had controlled his consumption so that it continually produced the desired personality. When I got old enough to understand, Miss Ella told me that Rex's secret was simple-"his vigor's in his liquor." Like most demons, it caught up with him.
Now at eighty-one, Rex Mason is in the latter stages of Alzheimer's, can't count to ten, can't control the spittle that drools off his quivering bottom lip, and spends all day wrapped in an adult diaper and sitting in the crust of his own excrement in an old folks' home not far from Waverly.
Sometimes, when I think about it, it's a joyous picture.
Chapter 5
Two MILES FARTHER EAST INTO JULINGTON CREEK, Mutt stopped paddling and let the canoe silently slip across the water. The bank grew narrow, the trees tall, and precivilized canopy covered the water. The creek had snaked back and forth for the last mile, only occasionally falling in a straight line. Water dripped off the paddle blade while Mutt listened to the owls that had sung him to sleep for seven years. Overhead, an old bird with a deep guttural drone hooted from the top of a cypress tree. Another, farther south, quickly answered like a homing beacon. The two sent sounding pings up and down the creek for nearly a minute until a third chimed in from the west and both went silent.
Mutt glided along the water, stretching the paddle through his newfound freedom yet working feverishly to quiet the voices that were raging beneath the surface. He knew Gibby would send a boat up the creek, so he began looking for an outlet. Another stream of clear water poured over a downed tree in a small waterfall as a smaller finger flowed into the creek. In comparison to the black Julington Creek, the clear water caught his attention.
Mutt pulled the canoe up over the log and paddled up the clear stream. The waterway narrowed to less than six feet across then cut along the side of a huge cypress tree. Mutt pushed the branches out of his way, even lying down in the canoe to clear the limbs, and poled himself into a clearing. He looked for the continuation of the stream but saw none. He had paddled into a cul-de-sac, and the stream had disappeared. The headwaters, apparently. Either way, he had found the source and was now spinning in a slow circle above it. He pulled the canoe onto the bank, sat in the bottom, opened his chess set on the seat before him, and aligned the pieces. He carefully opened a Ziploc bag holding a single bar of soap and dipped his hands in the spring, turning the soap over and over and over as lather bubbled in the water. When clean, he rinsed and began playing his eight competitors. Sirens and boat motors sounded in the distance, but they'd never find him. Only one person would think to look out here.
Several hours later, a green-and-orange chameleon climbed up the side of the canoe and perched atop the bow, blowing its pink chin in and out like a miniature sail that flashed in the moonlight. Buried inside the base of a vertical bank of mud that rose four feet from the surface of the water, Mutt watched the sail inflate and deflate for an hour while the lizard bobbed its head and tried to impress a suitor. When no suitor appeared, the lizard sped off the railing, launched itself off the stern, splashed in the crystal water, and swam across the spring, using its tail as a propeller. Reaching the opposite bank, it climbed up an overhanging vine and disappeared into the tree above.