A Ford in the River. Charles Rose

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.

Spink Hotel

      The brakes went out at the traffic light. My right foot crashed on the brake pedal. We ran the light, doing sixty. The emergency jammed. Mona gasped. Birdbaths, horrendous porch swings, a feed and seed store, a barber pole streamed by like bits of wreckage. I geared down, regained control of the car, felt it glide to a stop like a taxi. Sweat trickled out of my armpits.

      I switched off the ignition.

      “We are not going to make D.C. tonight,” said Mona, lighting a cigarette. She handed over the cigarette.

      I took a drag and gave it back to her. Mona was right. We were not going to make D.C. tonight. Or tomorrow. The nation’s capital was nearly four hundred miles away. Mona had pushed us along all evening, setting sunup as our ETA. Out of Cincinnati along the Ohio River, doing seventy on the two-lane, eighty on I-64. We were deep into West Virginia when Mona ordered me off the freeway. She said we couldn’t go on because a black sedan was tailing us. She clenched her fists.

      Arc lights on the courthouse square, one sputtering, stone facades and cornices of drab buildings, a church on the opposite corner—hulking and short-steepled, flaunting its dank red brick. A carillon chimed a hymn. I walk through the garden alone.

      A neon sign flaked rouge off, sifting down to the sidewalk. The hotel was four stories high, the windows set close together. Beyond the neon, a lobby spilling sour light like bile. Mona looked up at the neon, spelling out Spink Hotel.

      “Should be pink, not Spink,” Mona said.

      I said carefully, “Here there are no pink hotels.”

      “Okay, it’s a Spink.” Mona grabbed her loaf-shaped makeup kit after slipping on her cheapo wedding band. Got out of the car. “Remember if anyone stops us, it was your idea to stop here. I wanted to make D.C. tonight.”

      We had to stay here until I could have the brakes fixed, in this hotel in West Virginia, in a town that looked clean, respectable. Only the church looked ugly, still chiming about the garden. And the joys I share are beyond compare. What joys, whose? The carillon stopped with a lurch, an off-pitch, cretinous sound. I hauled the suitcase out of the trunk.

      I followed Mona into the lobby. Metal ashtrays, sour green leather wing chairs, rust-flecked, junk cigarette machine. From his cubbyhole behind the registration desk the night clerk wobbled to greet us. He wore a Civitan pin in the left lapel of his iron gray gabardine suit coat. His head was bald as a billiard ball.

      Mona sat down in a wing chair, crossed her legs, wiggled her toes in espadrilles, pulled her miniskirt down. She opened a package of Chiclets and popped a wad into her rosy mouth. I asked the desk clerk for a room for two.

      He sized us up and shook his head like a deacon seeing his church profaned, then relaxed, realizing a buck was a buck, even at Spink Hotel. “A single is all we have available. I can arrange to put in a cot.”

      “As you see we’re married.”

      As he saw Mona was jailbait. But he opened up the register. “Sign it mister and missus.”

      My ball-point signature skittered into illegibility. The night clerk turned to the mail slots and extracted a key with a dull green tab. Room 411 it told me. Mona was out of her chair, hugging her makeup kit as she made for the stairs. The night clerk lit up a Camel. He took a drag and coughed phthistically, spraying ashes on gray gabardine.

      “We can’t afford to have your kind here. One night will be your limit. Or do you want me to call the law?”

      I said we would be leaving tomorrow. Maybe late. We had car trouble.

      “Two nights then.” He took another drag, closed up the register, turned toward the plate-glass window, the street outside. I turned too. A patrol car idled in front of the church. My car was parked by a meter but we had an out-of-state tag. At this hour worth checking out, along with certain guests at the hotel, who could be taken into custody if such was the night clerk’s whim. The night clerk nodded me toward the stairs. The patrol car glided out of view.

      I passed the junk cigarette machine. There was a gum machine by the stairs, dispensing Chiclets along with other brands. Mona’d parked her wad on the coin slot. Thumbed it like a kidney. She’d kept on climbing, to the fourth and top floor, I was sure.

      I climbed the first flight of stairs. Alone on the darkened landing I tried to clear my mind. For eighteen hours a day I had kept Mona off the streets of Cincinnati. Her sister was three hundred miles away, in Richmond, our real destination. Sally had promised me she would take charge of Mona’s care. There Mona might get straightened out, live without me. With me she would only get worse. Yet I knew, as I stood on the landing, mustering strength to keep climbing, that I wouldn’t be able to let her go. That was why I’d veered off the I-64 exit ramp, come to Spink Hotel.

      Mona was still asleep. I lit a cigarette and got out of bed. I straddled a rickety chair, rocking with a furry squeak. Our room had a ponderous chiffonier beside a door to a tiny bathroom. On the other side of the bed a window overlooked a funeral home. Dust hung in the sunlight streaming in, lacing the carpet with hieroglyphics. The bed had a low headboard depicting a pastoral scene in low relief—a nymph being enticed by a satyr, in a scratchy, ivory stain. The satyr was playing a flute of some sort and the nymph was shielding her seat of love with both hands, fingers entwined. Smoking, I rocked with the back of the chair.

      From a room below I heard hammering, intermittently, yet with what seemed a willed intent. I was now on my second cigarette. Smoke from the first blimped over the bed. In her sleep, Mona’s breath mushroomed, lofted smoke toward the scarred plaster ceiling. Rust streaks showed in Mona’s frowsy hair. The hammering had