Two people I would like to see

Caleb Wallwork
Robert Norfleet

Alex Wade

Stokes Days

All my memories of grade school are out on the playground. We spent a lot more time sitting in class, but I don't have a single memory of something happening in a classroom. We might have said our names, out loud, in turn, but we didn't meet anybody. On the playground, we met people.

The playground was a big, open field behind the school, and it was there that I watched Penny Bryan ride pretend horses, up to the far corner and back. I encountered Harold Leffler, upperclassman, on the playground. I don't remember when I met Alex, but I'm sure it was on the playground.

I started out knowing him as Carson Wade. Much later, I learned that his name was Alex Corson Wade IV, but he didn't make a whole lot out of it.

I remember spending an afternoon at his house, something I didn't do often, back then. I remember the French tapestry on the wall, and little rooms off little rooms. It was dark and raining, and I had to catch the bus at the corner to go home. This memory is so dark and vague, I may have dreamed it.

The Chess Set

Everything Alex did or said was heightened. He would get to the punchline, watching, eager-eyed, for my reaction and only when he saw it, would he laugh. Not at the joke, but at me, at the moment of my epiphany.

Once he showed me a bit of business that he had learned at a theater production he was in. I didn't get it, but he laughed anyway.

Alex had a little chess set that zipped into a brown leather case and fit in his coat pocket. The chessboard was a small square of tiny in-laid wooden tiles and the chessmen were simple wood-carved figures with little dowels that fit into holes in the tiles. He said he had gotten it in Europe, where everybody plays chess on trains.

I was fascinated. I thought it had to be the only thing of its kind, anywhere. His skill seemed immense - I got him to teach me the game. He beat me every day for six months, but I didn't care.

End Game

He went his way and I went mine. At the first Hillsboro reunion, we reuned. We went to Alex's house - Betty and I, Alex's wife, and Johnny Wilson and his wife. We sat out on a screened-in porch that was dark except for moonlight and we talked.

At one point, Alex said, "Do you ever think about where you might like to be buried?"

Years later, I heard that Johnny would go over to Alex's house and read to him.

Afterlife

Every now and then, I think about that chess set; and Alex's fingers, when he picked up the chessmen and moved them from one slot to another. I think about his fingers. A kind of Combray moment.