Handling Sin Read online

  malone

  handling sin

  “Phenomenal…a hilarious success.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  Hillston

  Thermopylae

  Praise for Handling Sin

  “Phenomenal…A hilarious success.” —The New York Times Book Review “Terribly funny, emotionally engaging, and almost impossible to set aside…a heartwarming tour de force.”

  —Newsweek

  “A picaresque comedy after the fashion of Tom Jones or Don Quixote, part generational saga, gangland adventure, mock epic and Southern gothic fable, all of which blended together prove singularly satisfying…lively entertainment…a wild and reckless adventure…exceptional good fun.”

  —Philadelphia Inquirer “Michael Malone exhibits the balance and showmanship of a champion acrobat, parodying every square inch of his native South even as he pays affectionate homage to the characters of the place and its people. HANDLING SIN is a comic odyssey…constantly sharp and funny…a KNICK-KNACK GEM-CRACK HIGH-TIME CIRCUS, with intriguing sideshows, and an abiding spirit of fun…This novel is some show.”

  —Newsday “This madcap book bubbles with frenzy from the first pages…with a wink to Cervantes and Dickens—as well as the Marx Brothers…a highly refreshing tale in which Malone has managed to make the bizarre hilariously credible.”

  —Publishers Weekly “Many of the characters are studiedly picturesque, as if Thermopylae were the Carolina franchise for Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “ HANDLING SIN is a raucous and jubilant as bright as a spring morning…Malone’s ear for voices and dialects, his comic timing, and his gaudy sense of the comic are marvelous. Like the comedy of Charlie Chaplain, HANDLING SIN is relentlessly perceptive about the funny ways we have of being human…We’re gratefully carried along by the madcap adventures of the hero…funny and touching, immensely satisfying…a very accomplished novel.”

  —Christian Science Monitor “Reminiscent of A Confederacy of Dunces in its brilliance and wry humor.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Michael Malone has done it again…Non-stop laughs…wonderfully absurd adventures.”

  —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Michael Malone has a true narrative gift, the true eye for the character in action, and a fluent prose wrought carefully and well…A real accomplishment.”

  —Robert Penn Warren

  “A very funny book…hilarious dialogue and prose…deeply satisfying.” —San Francisco Chronicle “With this immense, joyous novel…Malone has written the best, most vibrantly comic book of his career…A delightful book that readers will want to savor—at least once.”

  —Kirkus Reviews “Patches of fine prose spout when Malone writes about jazz and Southern cities like ‘sea-spoiled Charleston’…fascinating personalities …fast, entertaining reading.”

  —Providence Sunday Journal “ HANDLING SIN is a great big endearing picaresque novel…a larky tale. It’s somewhat later, after the breakneck chases and the giggles have subsided, that we realize it’s something wiser and deeper. It’s a parable of love and reconciliation; it’s also a celebration of plain old fun…a delightful book.”

  —Washington Post “ HANDLING SIN is terrific…large spiriteds, beautifully crafted and extremely funny…dozens of vivid, eccentric creatures…a dazzling display of caricature and high energy farce…grand and lovely.”

  —The Nation

  “A real find…A joy from start to finish!” —Boston Herald “While comparisons will be made to A Confederacy of Dunces…the humor of HANDLING SIN is superior…Mr. Malone’s twists and turns and surprises are downright phenomenal, verging on genius…weighed in the scales of laughter, HANDLING SIN is a hilarious success. It is worth reading just to collect the full kernels of fine humor which are much thicker in this book than pecans in a Georgia fruitcake.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  A Novel by Michael Malone

  Copyright © 1983, 2001 by Michael Malone

  Cover and internal design © 2004 Sourcebooks, Inc. Cover images © Martin Parr/Magnum Photos, Veer, Ron Kimball and Rand McNally

  First published in Boston in 1984 by Little, Brown and Company This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Excerpt from “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” used with permission of Belwin-Mills Publishing Corporation, Aldi Music Company, and Ireneadle Music Publishing Company. Copyright © 1928 by Mills Music, Inc. Copyright renewed. All rights reserved.

  Published by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410 (630) 961-3900

  FAX: (630) 961-2168

  www.sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Malone, Michael.

  Handling sin / by Michael Malone.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 1-57071-756-7 (alk. paper)

  1. Father and sons—Fiction. 2. Southern States—Fiction. 3. Missing persons— Fiction. 4. Travelers—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3563.A43244 H3 2001 813’.54—dc21

  2001031325

  Printed and bound in the United States of America

  LB 10 9 8 7 6 5

  For my father Thank you for the gift

  Acknowledgments I’m grateful to Roger Donald at Little, Brown for his faith, his insight, and the pleasure of his company. To Phil Pochoda for his trust in the beginning and his exuberance at the end of a long trip. To my agent Peter Matson for his decency and daring. To the late Malcolm Cowley for his encouragement. And to Marilyn French for her friendship.

  The character Victoria Anna Hayes first appeared in “Get Up and Go,” Southern Humanities Review, Vol. XVI, Spring 1982. The character Flonnie Rogers first appeared in Viva. I’m indebted to John G. Barrett’s Sherman’s March Through the Carolinas (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1956, 1983) for the Civil War song.

  Contents

  Prologue xv

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4 Chapter 5

  Chapter 6 Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14 Chapter 15

  Chapter 16 Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  THE CALL

  In Which the Hero Is Introduced and 3

  Receives a Blow

  Which Treats of the Strange Message the 15

  Hero’s Father Sent Him

  Of a Misunderstanding between Our Hero 32

  and His Neighbors

  How Raleigh Received His Name 43

  In Which Raleigh Blackmails an Enemy and 50

  Frightens the Kaiser

  Of the Advice Given Raleigh by His Only 69

  Sane Aunt

  In Which the Hero Commits a Crime 83

  And Is Nearly Arrested 93

  The First Sally Takes a Strange Turn 103

  How Raleigh Was Confirmed in His View of 118

  the World

  THE QUEST

  In Which Our Hero Attends a Surprise Party 135

  Raleigh Escapes 146

&nbs
p; Wherein Is Continued the Account of the 161

  Innumerable Troubles Endured by Our Hero Sudden Impulses Overwhelm Our Hero 181

  In Which Is Continued a Conversation 195

  Begun Thirty Years Ago

  In Which Raleigh and Mingo Fall into a 209

  Swamp

  Raleigh’s Confession 228

  How Mingo Fared Alone at Myrtle Beach 243

  In Which the Hero Finds Himself at Sea 265

  The Great Adventure of the Bass Fiddle Case 274

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22 Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25 Chapter 26

  Chapter 27 In Which Is Described the Famous Barbecue 293

  at “Wild Oaks”

  Our Hero Succumbs to a Faded Beauty 314

  The Very Extraordinary Adventures Which 321

  Ensued at the Inn

  In Which Are Continued the Misfortunes 348

  That Befell Our Hero at the Ambrose Inn Raleigh Leads His Followers South 372

  In Which Our Hero Enters Atlanta with 396

  More Passengers Than He Expected

  Why Raleigh Took His First Communion 418

  Chapter 28 Chapter 29

  Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  THE RETURN

  Of a Discovery Made by Raleigh 447

  How the Glorious Battle of Stone Mountain 474

  Was Won

  The Consequences of a Remarkable Scene 503

  What Passed between Our Hero and His 519

  Father

  How Raleigh Was Ordained in The Cave 541

  What Raleigh Decided about Death 555

  Showing Our Hero’s Return Home 567

  In Which Raleigh Inherits a Fortune 577

  Wherein the Story of Raleigh W. Hayes 592

  Draws to a Close

  Why Raleigh Married Aura 601

  This book is cald Handlyng Synne. It contains Tales and Marvels. Handyl hem at onys euerychone Noght one by hym self alone Handyl so to ryse from alle, That none make the eft falle With shryfte of mouthe, & wyl of herte, And a party, with penaunce smerte; Thys ys a skyl that hyt may be tolde Handlyng synne many a folde.

  Robert of Brunne, 1303

  Prologue THERE LIVED IN THE PIEDMONT of North Carolina a decent citizen and responsible family man named Raleigh Whittier Hayes, who obeyed the law and tried to do the right thing. He had a wife and two daughters, and he owned his own house, his own business, two oceanfront rental properties, two automobiles, his own retirement plan, and a large number of Treasury bonds. Thus was he well established in the middle class. Also he took care to be a member of the Civitans, the Chamber of Commerce, the Baptist Church, the Neighborhood Association, and the United Fund. Everyone who knew him called him reliable Raleigh, hardworking Raleigh, fairand-square Raleigh, and, in general, respectable, smart, steady, honest, punctual, decent Raleigh Hayes.

  The day came when the members of the court of Heaven took their places in the presence of the Lord.

  The Call

  Chapter 1

  In Which the Hero Is Introduced and Receives a Blow ON THE IDES OF MARCH, in his forty-fifth year, the neutral if not cooperative world turned on Mr. Raleigh W. Hayes as sharply as if it had stabbed him with a knife. Like Caesar, Mr. Hayes was surprised by the blow, and responded sarcastically. Within a week his eyes were saying narrowly to everything they saw, Et tu, Brute? The world looked right back at the life insurance salesman; either blinked or winked, and spun backward on an antipodean whim, flinging him off with a shrug. This outrage happened first in his little hometown, which was Thermopylae, North Carolina, and, soon thereafter, all over the South, where Mr. Hayes was forced to wander to save his inheritance from a father who’d, again, run ostentatiously berserk.

  Of course, there were warnings. Like Caesar, Hayes ignored them. A lunatic had gotten into the fortune cookies at the Lotus House, the only Chinese restaurant in town. Suddenly, along with their checks, patrons began receiving, coiled like paper snakes, harsh predictions or dreadful instructions: “You will die of cancer.” “Someone close will betray you.” “Sell all your stocks at once!” Either the manufacturer had unwittingly hired a sadistic sloganeer, or here in the Lotus House kitchen the Shionos themselves (ingrates despite decades of Thermopylae’s hospitality) were tweezering out the old bland fortunes and slipping inside the cookies these warped prognostications. The restaurateurs (who were not Chinese anyhow, but Japanese) were already suspected of holding a grudge about the war, of catching stray cats and serving them to unknowledgeable palates as Cantonese chicken, of meaning by “C. Chow Mein” on their menus, “Cat.”

  The Thermopylae Civitans met at the Lotus House anyhow, because it served liquor without resembling a bar, and the Civitans didn’t think of themselves as the sort of people who would eat lunch in a bar. As Raleigh Hayes did not drink, and as he found disturbing the mingling of foods customary in Asian cuisine—so many vegetables, meats, and noodles heaped communally together violated his sense of privacy—he never would have eaten a meal in the Lotus House had he not been a member of the Civitans Fund Drive Committee. Had he not reached for a fortune cookie to give his hand something to do other than twitch to choke to death the committee chairman for wasting his time, Hayes never would have pulled from the shell of stale pastry the strip of fortune that read, “You will go completely to pieces by the end of the month.” Obviously, nothing could be more preposterous. Mr. Hayes knew himself to be an irrevocably sane man; nor was this conclusion reached in a vacuum: he had a great many blood relations who were not in one piece, and he could see the difference. Folding the nonsensical strip, he put it absentmindedly in his pocket.

  Next to Hayes, less imperturbable, fat Mingo Sheffield curled up his paper fortune and set it on fire with his cigarette without telling the other Civitans what it said. It said, “Your spouse is having an affair with your best friend. Solly.”

  “Who’s suh…Solly?” asked Sheffield as nonchalantly as he could. Nemours Kettell, the chairman and a veteran, took it on himself to explain. “It’s Jap for sorry.” He picked at a sharp fragment of cookie stuck in his receding gums, a public display of his mouth that irritated Hayes, who also disliked Kettell for abbreviating words, although he’d never been able to decide why this verbal habit so incensed him. Kettell shook his own fortune. “Somebody’s pulling our you-knows here. You may think it’s funny, Wayne.” Wayne Sparks was Kettell’s son-in-law across the table, now giggling because he’d just read his slip, “See a doctor. You have the clap,” and he was thinking about making a joke in mimicry of his wife’s father, by saying “clap” was Oriental for “crap.” On the other hand, it was quite possible he did have a venereal disease, so he rolled the paper into a spitball and stuck it under his plate like gum. Kettell was still nodding. “But I don’t happen to think there’s a lot to ha-ha about when I see this kind of anti-American blasphemy.” He passed his fortune around the table. It said, “Jesus is a bag lady. He saves trash.” Nobody thought it was funny but Wayne.

  Nemours Kettell now banged his fork on the cymbal-shaped cover over the last of the pepper steak. “I want some info on this cookie business. This could be like pins in the Snickers bars, remember that? I hate to believe the way the world’s turning to dirt, poisoning aspirins and shooting at the President over some girl you never even met.”

  “What the hell did we drop the bomb for, really, you know, if we have to put up with this kind of Jap backtalk?” threw in Wayne facetiously. A neo-hippie who’d had the bad luck not to be born until the sixties were over, he was in line to inherit Kettell Concrete Company, and liked to take these risks with his future.

  Raleigh Hayes kept calm by polishing his unused knife with his napkin while Kettell rapped on the dish cover until finally the tiny Shiono grandmother looked up from her Japanese newspaper. Like a pigeo
n through snow, she shuffled across the empty room of white tablecloths toward them. When the Civitans waved their fortunes at her, she bowed with a smile; when they pointed at the messages, she smiled and pointed at her newspaper.

  “Doesn’t speak the lingo,” suggested Kettell’s son-in-law. Mrs. Shiono smiled. “Check? Quit it, Claude.”

  “Credit card,” Kettell translated. “Look here, Miz Showno, you

  want our business, you won’t ask us to come in here and read this kind of garbage.” He snapped a cookie in two; nothing was in it. “Oh, for God’s sake,” said Hayes who had two prospective clients to see on the way back to his office. But not until Nemours Kettell was satisfied personally by the Shiono grandson, Butch, that they would complain to their fortune-cookie supplier in Newport News, would he let the Civitans adjourn. They had already voted to host a fish fry in June and donate the proceeds to diabetes research. That’s what they’d voted to do for the last ten years. Kettell’s wife had diabetes. So did most of Raleigh Hayes’s relatives; if it weren’t for his sensible diet, no doubt he’d have it himself.

  Outside their restaurant, the Shionos had grown a dogwood tree in a box on the sidewalk. Raleigh Hayes, preoccupied, started to snap off a blossom. He was stopped by a sweat coming all the way back from Sunday school, where he’d been taught it was against the law to mutilate a dogwood because Christ had died on a dogwood cross and the rust on the petal tips was His blood. The flower dangled bent, and Hayes propped it up on a neighboring branch. “Back to work, Mingo,” he told his next-door neighbor.

  “What for?” Mingo Sheffield sighed at Thermopylae, the rolls of his neck billowing out above his yellow short-sleeved button-down shirt. “I tell you what. Downtown is starting to look like that old movie, On the Beach. Did you see it on TV last night? The whole world was dead from fallout, not a soul on the streets. They thought somebody survived, but it was just a Coca-Cola bottle.”

  “Gas has dropped,” said Hayes. “That’s why.”

  “Just a Coca-Cola bottle clinking on a telegraph key.” “Everybody’s back on the beltway headed for the mall again.” Sheffield looked forlornly across Bath Street at the stone facade