Chapter 25
CALVIN PICKED ME UP EARLY EVENING IN HIS BLUE VOLKSWAGEN Rabbit. He had three sons but no daughter and treated me as if I were his own.
I pulled up a chair next to him, and he clasped my hand.
“I want you to do something for me,” he said.
“Anything.”
“I’d like you to give me something of yours.”
“Okay. Like…?”
“Something that I can look at and think of you, Patsy. Something you wouldn’t give to anyone else.”
I pondered that for a moment, and told him I had just the thing, an antique revolver that had been a gift.
The ivory grips were scrimshawed with the Scarpetta crest that was on my stationery, jewelry, even the paint jobs of my various helicopters and motorcycles.
As soon as I got home, I had the revolver sent to him.
After I’d walked out on his sermon in the spring of 1976 and he called, it was to be the greatest turning point in my life.
I shoved my guitar into the backseat of his car and climbed in front.
When we walked into that room in Gaither Chapel, the chairs were in a circle, all but three of them were occupied by college students with Bibles in their laps.
Calvin sat on my left, the chair to my right empty as if saved for someone.
A few minutes later, I was surprised when Ruth Graham walked in.
She headed straight to that empty chair, giving me the warmest smile.
Calvin bringing me here was a setup. No doubt, his first call was to her after I walked out of church that morning.
I’d seen Ruth only in passing over the years, but she’d never stopped being important.
Calvin opened in prayer and announced that I was a special guest and was going to play something I’d composed.
I snapped open the clasps of my cheap guitar case.
Standing up in the middle of the circle, I slipped the strap over my shoulder.
I began singing and strumming a song that at best was mediocre. When I sat back down, Ruth whispered how talented I was, and I didn’t believe her. But it was a nice thing to say. At the end of vespers, she turned to me again with another smile.
“We should have lunch,” she said.
Sure, I thought sarcastically. That will happen when the moon is made of cheese.
“Thank you. Yes, that would be nice, Mrs. Graham.”
“Please call me Ruth.”
“Okay.”
Early the next morning, the telephone in the kitchen clangored, and I grabbed the handset.
“Hello?”
“Patsy, it’s Ruth Graham,” she said to my astonishment.
“Oh! Hi!”
She was on her way to Asheville and wondered if I’d like to come with her. She thought we’d stop at Pizza Hut if that suited. My excitement dimmed when I remembered I had a follow-up appointment at Appalachian Hall midafternoon.
“That’s fine,” she said after I told her. “We’ll have lunch and I’ll drop you off at the hospital.”
“I don’t think you want anyone to see you pulling up to that place.” I was mindful of gossip that might end up in the news. “Someone might think…,” I started to add.
“It’s not a problem,” she replied. “How long is your appointment?”
“An hour.”
“I’ll wait in the car,” she said to my disbelief.
When her silver Volvo appeared in my driveway, I flew out the door, my feet scarcely touching the ground, it seemed. I climbed in, fastening my seat belt, my heart pounding, and she placed a dark red leather journal in my lap. It had gold-edged creamy pages, and a brass clasp with a tiny key.
She’d bought it in Lausanne, Switzerland, and maybe it would inspire me.
I thought the journal was exquisite and didn’t feel anything I might write worthy of it.
As we drove to Asheville, she remembered my visiting her mother, Mrs. Bell, when she was confined to a wheelchair, barely able to form words after a stroke.
“She’d show me your stories and poems,” Ruth said. “I’ve always known you’re talented, and I want you to write.”
At Pizza Hut I pushed my food around, barely eating a morsel while hoping she didn’t notice.
She didn’t draw attention to it or make me feel self-conscious.
I asked questions about herself, her family, and she mentioned that Billy had received another death threat that the FBI was taking seriously.
Sometimes these communications included vile promises about what the person intended to do to his wife.
Five years later while working on her biography, I’d read the details in journals she kept, and was disturbed by references to her as the target of sexual violence.
She’d write that the threats about her were “unpleasant,” but she didn’t seem frightened.
She paid little attention to the FBI’s recommendations about her safety, not wanting to live like a prisoner.
She told me there were guns in her house and she knew how to use them.
I have no doubt that Ruth wouldn’t have been an easy victim.
One of her fireplace tools was a wicked-looking long-handled iron fork she used to roast marshmallows.
It was her weapon of choice for killing poisonous snakes when they coiled in her yard.
She’d hear the dogs barking and fly out the door with her fork, getting within arm’s reach of a rattler or copperhead.
She was fearless and methodical in her executions.
Not much riled her except journalists and their aggressions.
She often commented that she’d like to go after some of them “with a switch.”
They’d dig through the Grahams’ metal trash cans chained to a post at the bottom of their road where the garbage truck could reach. It was a routine for Ruth to soak the labels off prescription bottles, food containers, and anything else that was nobody’s business.
While we ate lunch at Pizza Hut in 1976, I could see a shadow of worry about Billy and the most recent death threat. Then she changed the subject, focusing her attention on me.
“I want you to write your story,” she told me as we sipped iced tea. “People need to hear what you’ve been through and yet here you are.”
“Yes, I’m here. But not very impressively.”
“You’re a talented writer. You need to tell your story, Patsy. Do you think you could do that for me?”
“I’ll do my best.”
She suggested I start with an article for Christianity Today, or maybe Decision magazine.
I was amazed while worrying that the evangelical publications weren’t my cup of tea.
I envisioned the pack of More menthol cigarettes I bought after the patient Victoria let me try one of hers.
I thought of the swear words I sometimes uttered.
“I’ll look forward to reading it,” she promised, giving me her phone number.
I didn’t own a typewriter yet, but our next-door neighbor had an electric one. She was kind enough to let me borrow it. Every morning I’d appear at her door and head upstairs to a private space where I’d type most of the day. This went on for the better part of a week, and I was beyond frustrated.
I knew the point was to show that God had healed me.
But it wasn’t true. I don’t know how Ruth or anyone else could look at me and think otherwise.
I still weighed around ninety pounds. Everything I wrote was factual until I got to the happily ever after.
That was pure fiction, and finally I called Ruth.
“I need to talk to you if it’s okay,” I said.
“Come on up,” she told me.
She said to honk when I reached the lower and upper gates, and she’d open them for me.
I headed out in the family Impala, navigating that steep road with its scary drop-offs.
It was the first time I’d been to her house since Mom tried to leave us there ten years earlier.
Ruth was in a lawn chair in the backyard with its view of the valley and mountains beyond.
I remember it was a sunny day, the spring air cool.
I showed her the manuscript I’d written, apologizing for the italic font and the pale blue ink that weren’t my choice. The typewriter was borrowed, I explained. Then I got around to what was on my mind.
“I did what you asked,” I told her. “But I can’t let you publish it.”
“Why not?” She had her sunglasses on, flipping through the onionskin pages.
“Because it’s not true. I’m not any better.”
The last thing I wanted was to admit failure to the very person I was most desperate to impress.
“That’s all right, honey. Now, what else is on your mind?” she said.
After that and perhaps not coincidentally, I got a call from Ruth’s childhood friend Gay Currie Fox, the two of them having grown up in families that were Christian missionaries in China.
Gay offered me a job making folk art flowers called Springles that were invented by her husband, Joe.
Every morning I’d drive to their big frame house on Lake Tomahawk in Black Mountain, the workshop in the attic.
Eight hours a day, I’d sit at a table bending copper wire around a jig in the shape of a flower blossom.
I’d solder long green wire to the frames, and these were dipped in clear plastic.
The stems were attached to magnets on racks, and after the plastic dried it was hand-painted.
Leaves and flowers were glued into wooden bases and sold at craft shows around the South.
Late afternoons and weekends I resumed doing as Ruth had asked.
I started writing my story. I would tell the truth disguised as a novel, beginning it in longhand, recalling scenes from my earliest years.
When the weather permitted, I taught lessons at the Montreat tennis courts, showing up with my racquet and a plastic bag of old balls.
I charged fifteen dollars an hour, and a few people signed up. One was Carolyn Fitzpatrick, who lived in Black Mountain. I was giving her a lesson one afternoon while a man sat on the courtside bench watching as I prompted my student.
“Racquet back sooner!”
“Hit the ball in front of you!”
“Step into it. Hit!”
I’d remind her how to do split steps, and to use her index finger like a gunsight to line up an overhead smash. While this was going on, she’d engage me in breathless snippets of conversation. I was aware of the man in white tennis clothes on the bench, figuring he was waiting for my court.
Then Carolyn posed a question that must have been divinely inspired.
“Are you going back to King College this fall?” she asked me.
“I’m thinking of transferring,” I replied, hitting another ball from the net. “Racquet back, step into it, HIT!”
“Transferring where?” she asked, the ball burrowing into the net.
“I don’t know yet. Racquet back. HIT!”
“What about Davidson?” the man on the bench asked loudly.
“And I’ve always wanted a Rolls-Royce,” I replied, knowing that Davidson College was called the Princeton of the South.
The man was Ed White, Davidson’s dean of admissions.
His family had a summer home in Montreat, but this was the first time we’d met.
He waited until after the lesson, and we talked for a while on the bench.
As fate would have it, Davidson had an opening for a female transfer student after one had just dropped out.
The former men’s college was trying to build their women’s tennis team, and how would I feel about playing on it?
He asked questions about my academic history and wasn’t thrilled when I told him about my Scholastic Aptitude Test. I’d taken my SATs twice, scoring 830 the first time, and 1030 the second.
Both were “clearly below the Davidson average,” Ed said diplomatically.
I knew my scores were pathetic. But I never took a book home during high school, I added.
All I did was play tennis, and Owen was easy enough that I made mostly A’s without studying.
As an example, I mentioned that my only exposure to Shakespeare was seeing the movie Romeo & Juliet with my English class.
My teacher didn’t expect us to read the play.
“Well, if we can get you in,” he said, “you’ll never make above a C. Davidson is extremely competitive.”
To this day, I don’t know why Ed White was willing to take a chance like that with me.
I was grossly underqualified to attend such a place and couldn’t possibly afford it.
He followed up with the usual package prospective students got.
I wrote my essays, filling out the application while he called people who knew me, asking questions.
Some of those queried recommended against me. Davidson wouldn’t be doing me a service if I were set up for yet another failure. I’m sure Ed was told many details about my mother’s history and the troubles in my family. He was warned it would be impossible for me to handle Davidson’s academic load.
Miraculously, I was accepted, and decided to start my sophomore year over.
In late August I would arrive on campus having never seen a catalog.
I moved into Belk dormitory, and English professor Tony Abbott was my advisor.
My first day on campus he and his wife, Susan, had me to their house for dinner.
They knew I’d been through rough times and struggled with an eating disorder that wasn’t improving. There was no judgment. They treated me like family. If I needed them for any reason their door was always open.