“You know who hates him the most?” he said. “Fucking Varnadoe. He can’t stand it that my dad chairs the board at his precious Yeatman School. All the old guys are delusional about Yeatman, but Varny’s the worse, because of his fancy degrees and all of that Greek and Roman bullshit. He thinks he’s Marcus-fucking-Aurelius and my dad’s like some barbarian invader defiling the empire.”
I told Arch what Jamie had said about his father and Varnadoe.
“Jamie’s so full of shit,” Arch said.
In the library, I dug the old Vanderbilt yearbooks out of the stacks and found Jim Haltom’s pictures there. There were shots of him clutching a football, gazing off into the distance, his brow furrowed with determination. The years had made him a bit heavier and grayer, but he still had the same look in his eyes—the intense gaze, always probing, looking for the next guy to knock on his ass.
Later that fall, I was often the Haltoms’ guest at Vanderbilt games. I watched Jim Haltom huddled with business acquaintances, paying no attention to what was going on in the stadium; half of the time, he never left the tailgate. (Admittedly, the Commodores didn’t offer anyone much to get excited about.)
The more I learned about Jim Haltom, the more I watched him, the more I began to see him as a role model. He had taken his opportunity and made the most of it. This, I thought, was how one rose in the world. I wasn’t from the hills of East Tennessee, but my father was born and raised in Appalachia, just like Mr. Haltom. I began to draw conclusions. Without football, Mr. Haltom would never have left the woods of East Tennessee. Without Mr. Haltom, I’d never have left the streets of East Nashville. Having climbed out of his meager circumstances, he’d deigned to lift another like him, though perhaps less gifted, into the position of advantage he’d needed to achieve his remarkable rise. It was obvious, I thought. Jim Haltom was my fairy godfather. To deserve it, I merely had to follow the lead of his true son—Arch Creigh.
As often as I could, I went home with Jamie after school until my mother or Sunny could get there to pick me up. The Haltom house was big enough to get lost in; you could go a week without having to see anyone you wanted to avoid. I rarely saw Mr. and Mrs. Haltom in the same room together. They were both very busy, Mr. Haltom with his business ventures, Mrs. Haltom with her social calendar and her philanthropy and the various regimens she undertook in her war against the twin tolls of time and booze.
One afternoon, I left the game room and went into the kitchen for a Coke. Mrs. Haltom was at the club playing golf; Vanessa wasn’t home yet. Shirley was downstairs vacuuming. Jamie, I knew, was immersed in his video game. I left the Coke sweating on the glass-top table at the foot of the landing and tiptoed up the stairs and into Vanessa’s bedroom.
The room had matching bedding and wallpaper, all in the flowery prints popular among people who took their decorating cues from Southern Living. Above the desk was a corkboard festooned with photographs.
I couldn’t help myself; I slid the top drawer of the dresser open to gape at her underwear. I noticed something peeking out from beneath a sheet of floral contact paper—a wallet-sized school portrait of Vanessa, taken a few years earlier: braces and glasses, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. I should not have been surprised; I’d already learned from Jamie that Vanessa had only recently grown out of her awkward phase. Still, the picture transformed her in my imagination. Up to that point, she had hardly been real to me—more like an icon of idealized Southern womanhood in bloom. I tucked the picture into my front left pocket so I could take it home and look at it later, promising myself I’d return it the next time I visited and could slip upstairs unnoticed.
I left Vanessa’s room and walked down the hallway toward the master bedroom. The door was cracked. I pushed it open and stepped inside. Against the wall stood an enormous canopy bed. In the corner sat a chaise lounge, and a table holding a stack of magazines and a single empty wineglass. A red-and-blue Persian rug covered most of the floor. In the corner nearest one closet door, a men’s valet stand. In the opposite corner, Mrs. Haltom’s white bathrobe hanging from a hook on the back of the door.
“What are you doing in here?”
Mrs. Haltom stood in the doorway, dressed in a white golf skirt and a polo shirt the color of a fresh-cut lime. How had I not heard her coming up the stairs?
“Where’s Jamie?” she asked.
I stood frozen as Mrs. Haltom took her measure of me. I felt as if I might wet my pants.
“He could play those goddamned games for hours and not notice if the sun had gone down and risen again,” she said.
I nodded.
“Where are you from, Charlie?” she asked.
“Nashville,” I said.
“I mean what part,” she said. “I know you’re one of Jim’s projects, but I don’t know where you live.”
“East Nashville,” I said.
“I see,” she said. “And do you live with both of your parents?”
“With my mom,” I said. “And my aunt.”
“And what do they do?”
“My mom works at a restaurant,” I said. “My aunt’s a singer.”
“A singer?” Mrs. Haltom said. “Have I heard of her?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Her name’s Sunny Brown.”
“Sunny Brown?” She grimaced, as if the words tasted sour in her mouth.
I was silent. I’d never thought about the name; she was just Aunt Sunny.
“Has she recorded anything?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so. She sings at . . . a bar.”
“I’m sure she’s very good,” Mrs. Haltom said. “She was probably the best singer in her little town and came to Nashville thinking she was going to be a big star one day. This town is full of Sunny Browns, you know. None of them imagines that the peak of their career will be singing for tips in some shitty bar.”
Perhaps Mrs. Haltom had heard Sunny singing in the airport back before her husband bought them their own plane. I did not ask her.
“Is your mother a singer too?” she asked.
“No.”
“What about your father? What does he do?”
I recited the amended version of my father’s demise and my mother’s struggles as a young single mom getting by with the help of a kindhearted cousin.
“Sounds like a good story for a country song,” Mrs. Haltom said, her tone mercilessly dry. “Maybe Sunny Brown should write it. It might be her ticket to the top.”
Mrs. Haltom’s face darkened. She looked me over, glancing up and down, examining me the way you might a painting you suspected might be counterfeit.
“Empty your pockets,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
“It’s not every day that I catch someone snooping around in my bedroom.”
I glanced at the door.
“Pull them out,” she said. “I want to see the lining.”
Head bowed, I pulled out the cotton pocket liners, lamely trying to palm the picture of Vanessa.
“Give me that,” she said.
I picked up the picture and handed it to her.
“Where did you get this?” she asked.
“In Jamie’s room,” I said. “On the floor. I just picked it up to give it back to him.”