Looking for the Buckhead Boys
Page Title
by James Dickey
Some of the time, going home, I go
Blind and can’t find it.
The house I lived in growing up and out
The doors of high school is torn
Down and cleared
Away for further development, but that does not stop me.
First in the heart
Of my blind spot are
The Buckhead Boys. If I can find them, even one,
I’m home. And if I can find him catch him in or around
Buckhead, I’ll never die: it’s likely my youth will walk
Inside me like a king.
First of all, going home, I must go
To Wender and Roberts’ Drug Store, for driving through I saw it
Shining renewed renewed
In chrome, but still there.
It’s one of the places the Buckhead Boys used to be, before
Beer turned teen-ager.
Tommy Nichols
Is not there. The Drug Store is full of women
Made of cosmetics. Tommy Nichols has never been
In such a place: he was the Number Two Man on the Mile
Relay Team in his day.
What day?
My day. Where was I?
Number Three, and there are some sunlit pictures
In the Book of the Dead to prove it: the 1939
North Fulton High School Annual. Go down,
Go down
To Tyree’s Pool Hall, for there was more
Concentration of the spirit
Of the Buckhead Boys
In there, than anywhere else in the world.
Do I want some shoes
To walk all over Buckhead like a king
Nobody knows? Well, I can get them at Tyree’s;
It’s a shoe store now. I could tell you where every spittoon
Ought to be standing. Charlie Gates used to say one of these days
I’m gonna get myself the reputation of being of being
The bravest man in Buckhead. I’m going in Tyree’s toilet
And pull down my pants and take a shit.
Maybe
Charlie’s the key: the man who would say that would never leave
Buckhead. Where is he? Maybe I ought to look up
Some Old Merchants. Why didn’t I think of that
Before?
Lord, Lord! Like a king!
Hardware. Hardware and Hardware Merchants
Never die, and they have everything on hand
There is to know. Somewhere in the wood screws Mr. Hamby may have
My Prodigal’s Crown on sale. He showed up
For every football game at home
Or away, in the hills of North Georgia. There he is, and as old
As ever.
Mr. Hamby, remember me?
God A’mighty! Ain’t you the one
Who fumbled the punt and lost the Russell game?
That’s right.
How’re them butter fingers?
Still butter, I say,
Still fumbling. But what about the rest of the team? What about Charlie Gates?
He the boy that got lime in his eye from the goal line
When y’all played Gainesville?
Right.
I don’t know. Seems to me I see …
See? See? What does Charlie Gates see in his eye burning
With the goal line? Does he see a middle-aged man from the Book
Of the Dead looking for him in magic shoes
From Tyree’s disappeared pool hall?
Mr. Hamby, Mr. Hamby,
Where? Where is Mont Black?
Paralyzed. Doctors can’t do nothing.
Where is Dick Shea?
Assistant sales manager
Of Kraft Cheese.
How about Punchy Henderson?
Died of a heart attack
Watching high school football
In South Carolina.
Old Punchy, the last
Of the wind sprinters, and now for no reason the first
Of the heart attacks.
Harmon Quigley?
He’s up at County Work Farm
Sixteen. Doing all right up there; be out next year.
Didn’t anybody get to be a doctor
Or lawyer?
Sure. Bobby Laster’s a chiropractor. He’s right out here
At Bolton; got a real good business.
Jack Siple?
Moved away. Gordon Hamm?
Dead
In the war.
O the Book
Of the Dead, and the dead, bright sun on the page
Where the team stands ready to go explode
In all directions with Time. Did you say you see Charlie
Gates every now and then?
Seems to me.
Where?
He may be out yonder at the Gulf Station between here and Sandy
Springs.
Let me go pull my car out
Of the parking lot in back
Of Wender and Roberts’ Do I need gas? No; let me drive around the block
Let me drive around Buckhead
A few dozen times turning turning in my foreign
Car till the town spins whirls till the chrome vanishes
From Wender and Roberts’ the spittoons are remade
From the sun itself the dead pages flutter, the hearts rise up, that lie
In the ground, and Bobby Laster’s backbreaking fingers
Pick up a cue stick Tommy Nichols and I rack the balls
And Charlie gates walks into tyree’s un-
Imaginable toilet.
I go north
Now, and I can use fifty
Cents worth of gas.
It is Gulf. I pull in, and praise the Lord, Charlie
Gates comes out. His blue shirt dazzles
Like a baton pass. He squints, he looks at me
Through the goal line. Charlie, Charlie, we have won away from
We have won at home
In the last minute. Can you see me? You say
What I say: Where in God
Almighty have you been all this time? I don’t know,
Charlie, I don’t know. But I’ve come to tell you a secret
That has to be put into code. Understand what I mean when I say
To the one man who came back alive
From the Book of the Dead to the bravest man
In Buckhead to the lime-eyed ghost
Blue-wavering in the fumes
Of good Gulf gas, “Fill ‘er up.”
With wine? Light? Heart-attack blood? The contents of Tyree’s toilets?
The beer
Of teen-age sons? No; just
“Fill ‘er up. Fill ‘er up, Charlie.”
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