Introduction

Asked to write a series of articles on Southern Homes and Gardens for a New York Magazine, Strekfus Beltzenschmidt (the main character in The Bark of the Dogwood) chooses not only some of the plantations and historic residences the South is known for, but places of his youth, including the home he grew up in and those of his relatives that he visited as a child. The intended articles become in essence, short stories, which then grow into the main character's memoirs about his turbulent and sometimes humorous childhood. The result is not only an ongoing battle with his boss over the magazine's content and direction, but a painful journey into remembering the people and places of his past.

The opening statement of his first story, 'When I was six years old I became locked inside the home of Helen Keller,' is a clue into this insightful book's revelations about how we are all in some way, deaf, dumb, or blind, if not literally, then at least spiritually or emotionally. The stories serve as chapters themselves in the novel, expertly intertwined with the modern day world of publishing in New York--each chapter commenting on the other and linked in ways that only become obvious as the reader digs deeper into the novel.

The Bark of the Dogwood is a dazzling display of virtuosity, combining rollicking humor and insights into human nature with a tale of horror and family secrets surpassing even the most Gothic Southern novel. The end result is a massive undertaking that works on several levels—so many, that it is up to the reader to decide just how deep he wants to delve into the colorful cast of characters whose lives are inextricably intertwined.

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Excerpt

The blood was now flowing with regularity, streaming down her brown shins like swift-moving paths of lava. With each kick, the steel toe of his cowboy boot dug deeper into her flesh, tearing dark pieces free from the front of her calves. They stood out from her legs, flaps of skin momentarily colorless, until the blood began to fill up the vacated spaces, seep into the shreds of flesh, and ooze out onto her body. With each attack more blood splattered the stiff white maid’s uniform she was wearing and flew back onto the yoke of his cowboy shirt. She neither cried out nor made an attempt to stop him.

“Nigger! Nigger! Nigger!” he yelled over and over, punctuating each word with a kick which gathered strength and momentum each time he brought his foot back and flung it forward. He thought that she would eventually start to cry, and as he went about his task he occasionally looked at her to see if her defenses were beginning to crumble. He wasn’t even sure what the word meant --- he had heard it used against others and he knew the pain it could inflict, especially in Alabama in the early 1960s. He thought he saw a momentary flame in her pupils, but in an instant it was gone. She only stood there during the assault, her solid and massive two hundred and thirty pounds hovering like some gigantic rock precariously perched high atop a cliff, ready to roll down the hill at any moment and crush him.

After a while he tired of the attack, dripping with sweat and exhausted from his display of anger. And the sight of blood had now made him queasy. When he had caught his breath, he looked at her with mean eyes, squinted and tight. He realized she wasn’t going to fight back or say anything. At first this shocked him. He knew that in the South, in the 1960s, regardless of how African Americans were treated socially, they were given carte blanche to discipline the children of their employers. There was only one thing lower than African Americans at that time in the volatile structure of Southern society, and that was children. As he thought about this, it hit him: She had something else in mind. But what? “You’re going to tell my parents, aren’t you?” he said maliciously.

“No. I ain’t gonna tell your mamma an’ daddy,” she said without emotion or hate. She was eerily unmoved and even-tempered in her reply, as if she were on the outside looking in instead of being at the center of the drama.

“Then what are you going to do?” His fists were balled up, ready to fight with force or words --- whichever came first to him.

“I ain’t gonna do nuthin’,” she said, her hands resting on her hips, looking down at him as if he were nothing more than a curiosity.

“Why not?” he countered angrily, but it was almost as if he knew the answer before it came, as if he were on the same wavelength, as if he could read her mind and she his. If he had chosen, he could have mouthed the words along with her, for they came to him in a stinging revelation, a split second before she delivered them, and he knew that once they started there was no stopping them, and that they would forever linger in his mind and run after him like some animal he had tortured relentlessly --- one that had broken free and begun to chase him.

“I ain’t gonna do nuthin’ to you, Mr. Strekfus. You gonna think about this moment after you is done, and your guilt is gonna be your punishment.” She delivered the words without hate or malice. She delivered them simply and elegantly, as if she knew deep down the favor she was doing for him. Her voice had a prophetic air about it, but not because of any ego or hatred. And in a way she was right, she was doing him a favor, for as he felt the guilt, the pain, the very anger and hate come back on his being, he resolved never again to call any person of color that name, and he would cringe from then on when he heard others do it.

He was at that moment a five-year-old boy, physically attacking the housekeeper for denying him the right to leave the house --- a denial that was well within the bounds of her duties, for at this time Alabama was a hotbed of racial turmoil and anything could happen. The day before his assault on her had been May 14, 1961 --- a day many in the state would remember as the start of the civil rights movement.

The first of the Freedom Riders had made their way into northern Alabama to show their support for integration on that day. Not only had the tires of their bus been slashed and the riders met by an angry mob, but when the driver was able to escape from the scene and stop six miles down the road to change the tires, the vehicle was firebombed. A second bus had followed, not knowing the fate of the first. The passengers on that bus had been beaten by a mob wielding clubs and pipes.

Because of the intensity of the situation, ambulance workers refused to treat the injured. Althea had known this. She had watched the news on television that morning and knew that the world she was now living in --- for better or worse --- was changing all around her.

And Strekfus knew that she was keeping him inside for his own good, but despite the fact that he had been labeled a special child whose intelligence and logic were far different from others his age, he sometimes lacked common sense and maturity.

When his anger subsided later and they reconciled somewhat, she cleaned the blood off herself and him, the whole time listening to his sobs as she sponged him in the large tub, his head bent in shame. As she did so, she sang softly and the song comforted Strekfus. It reminded him of some far-off land where he imagined they had known each other before.

De little baby gone home,

De little baby gone home,

De little baby gone along,

For to climb up Jacob's ladder.

And I wish I'd been dar,

I wish I'd been dar,

I wish I'd been dar, my Lord,

For to climb up Jacob's ladder.

“That’s a pretty song,” he said to her, hoping to begin the healing between them, hoping to begin a conversation that would lead to other things, which would in turn bury those wrongs he had done to her.

“Umhm. I’ve known that song for as long as I can remember, child,” she said, as her hand disappeared beneath the water in an attempt to reclaim the soap.

“I’m sorry, Althea. I’m sorry I called you those names.”

“Child, it was only the one name you called me and that was enough. But don’t you be worryin’ about that now. I expect you feel bad enough that you don’t need me remindin’ you what you done.” As she dipped the sponge down into the water and brought it up over his shoulders to rinse him off, it was as if she were trying to wash away his pain, for she acknowledged his anger and it was almost as if she knew that he would someday have to face its source the way she had faced hers. And each would choose to deal with this pain and anger in different ways, the results of their inner explorations leading them through different landscapes of the mind, each seeking that same open field where blue skies stretched out like the upturned palm of God and freedom took on its many-faceted meaning.

As she squeezed water from the sponge with one hand, she used the other to turn his head slightly to the side with the pretense of rinsing the soap from his ears. He allowed her this charade now, knowing full well that she had done so to keep him from seeing her tears.

It was this scene Strekfus was now remembering, and with good cause. He had received word earlier that morning that Althea, the woman whose shins he had so angrily assaulted in 1961, had died. But before he could go any further with his reverie, he was knocked back into reality by his boss’s voice. The sound of it jerked his head up and he found himself looking out the window at the Manhattan skyline, solid and vertical in the overcast morning sun.

“Beltzenschmidt!” the man bellowed, and suddenly he was no longer in rural Alabama, but back in the sleek, modern conference room used for Monday morning meetings he and the other writers had with the editors and staff of the magazine. Strekfus had left the ’60s far behind, and he was now in the very center of the 1990s.

“If you think you could stop daydreaming for a second I’d like to give everyone their assignments. We might as well start with you since you seem to have the attention span of a gnat today,” and with that the short, bald, portly man paused for a second or two. There was a moment of tension in the air and then Strekfus and his boss both burst out laughing at the same time. Everyone else in the room just looked confused as they usually did whenever a conversation between the two men took place. For as long as Strekfus had worked for the magazine no one could quite figure out what the exact relationship was between the two. They seemed genuinely to like one another, but there were moments when neither seemed sure what was a joke and what was real. And the two men couldn’t have been more mismatched both physically and intellectually. Whereas Strekfus was tall, athletic, and well-groomed, his boss reveled in the not-so-delicate art of unkemptness and seemed to relish the pizza stains which appeared on his tie each day after lunch. Still, there was some bond between them, and as with most people, when pressed for details about the connection, neither could come up with a reasonable explanation.

The tension having dissipated, the staff waited for their next assignments from Sagaser, the man in charge of their fate and the man who was chief editor of the magazine which covered such human necessities as A-frame housing, the latest sofa designs, and hybrid tea roses. It was a home-and-garden magazine that the group assembled worked for, and lately the ideas seemed to be running out. Nothing much caught Strekfus’s attention as he listened to Sagaser wade through the lists of subjects that the writers of the magazine would cover --- reproduction eighteenth-century creamware, a house being remodeled in Vermont using only woods native to that state, the evolution of the dining table in the past two hundred years. But when his boss reached the young writer, he paused for dramatic effect, thinking that the assignment would please his most valued staff member.

“Beltzenschmidt, you’re to do a series of twelve articles on the South and various homes and gardens in that area.” As Strekfus Beltzenschmidt heard the words, he had mixed emotions which ranged from elation to dread. Now that he would be traveling to the South he would no longer have to approach his boss and tell him that he was leaving later that morning for the very place he was to write about --- he could feign the excuse that he wanted to get started as soon as possible on the articles. He had feared what his boss would say about his flying home on the spur of the moment to attend a funeral of someone who wasn’t even a relative, but now the problem was solved. And yet Strekfus feared the trip, almost as if he were a fugitive returning to the scene of a crime.

There was a morbid curiosity about seeing the South again through a pair of eyes which had so become accustomed to New York. Yet the pull of Althea’s funeral, of seeing the place he had grown up in so long ago, operated like some psychic magnet on him. He had purposely stayed away from what he sometimes sarcastically called “home” for many reasons, the least of which wasn’t that area’s noted intolerance of certain races and cultures, and it had been nineteen years since he had made the journey to the very place of his birth and formative years.

He thought about this as everyone cleared the conference room, pillaging the last of the poppy seed muffins, stale pieces of fruit, and rancid orange juice brought in for the meeting by one of the many catering companies that buzzed and flitted around Manhattan.

“Why do you take that from him?” a young girl in a pink mohair sweater was asking as she pawed the top of a bran muffin that lay forlornly on its side, a casualty of the ’90s now that the bran craze had died. He looked up at her. He had known Sharon for most of his life, having met her in the first grade, sailing through elementary school and junior high with her, and then dating her in high school. They had also gone to college together. Finally, both had made the move to New York years ago, and while they weren’t as close as they once had been, he still relied heavily on her opinion and friendship. She had been nice enough to push Human Resources into hiring him four years ago when he needed a job. Personnel trusted her judgment, and based on the fact that she was one of the most valued employees at the magazine they had taken her word --- along with some writing samples from Strekfus --- and hired him on the spot. But mostly she was his one lifeline to his past --- a past he could never completely escape and a lifeline he could never seem to sever. She was the one person who kept him grounded, and while he professed some disdain for his upbringing and the pitfalls of its culture, he nevertheless clung to Sharon for some sort of daily reminder.

Excerpted from The Bark of the Dogwood © Copyright 2007 by Jackson Tippett McCrae. Reprinted with permission by Enolam Group Inc. All rights reserved. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. Discuss the use of symbols in the book: Helen Keller; Dixie; the references to dogs in the book, including the opening quotation at the beginning of the novel; the feather pen; etc.

2. How do the epigrams function at the beginning of each chapter?

3. Who is actually writing the book? Whose voice are you hearing?

4. Why does the main character choose to write about the homes he knew and grew up in as a child rather than the more obvious plantations and mansions of the South? How does this work for him? Against him?

5. This book is actually a “novel within a novel.” How is this writing technique achieved?

6. Discuss the difference in writing styles between the New York portion of the book and the Southern portion.

7. How does the author foreshadow in the New York sections what will be happening in the Southern sections? Discuss the “art imitates life” and “life imitates art” usage in the book. When does this turn from one to the other in the book?

8. Discuss the main character’s views on race, Southern culture, New York, and food. Do you think the main character is racist, liberal, or that he is struggling with his feelings on these and other issues in the book?

9. How many tie-ins can you find to the title? Where does the title come from? Why did the author title the book what he did?

10. Discuss the main character’s inability to communicate with the outside world. How does this manifest itself? How does he overcome it? What final attempt does he make to admit who he is and call things by their rightful names?

11. In chapter one Strekfus relates a story about taking an aptitude test when he was young. How does his rationalization of the answers to this test mirror the form, journey of discovery, and plot of the book?

12. Discuss the use of stereotypes in the novel. How does the author use stereotypes and how do certain characters dispel the myths perpetuated by them?

13. What is the significance of the town name, Infanta, in the book?

14. Discuss the use of religious references throughout the book.

15. Why did Althea perform the heroic feat that she did at the climax of the book? How did she view Strekfus and how did he view her? Would they have had the same relationship in another time and place?

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