A/N: A short look at the main character from the 1969 movie "The Reivers" based on the novel by William Faulkner.

Sweet Mystery of Life

Put a different name on something, and it changes the whole perception of that thing.

Take a weed - call it a rose, and the world clamors to find new variations of it. Take that same rose, call it something else, and some writer said that people would complain about the smell. Take a man - an American - and, if he's from the state of Texas, call him a Texan and that very same man will nearly bust his buttons by swelling with pride.

I reckon anything can be improved with a little change of name. Take a thief for instance - lowly, scorned, and always a ne'er do well. Call him a reiver, though, and while people will still watch their pockets they will at least tip their hat or engage in polite conversation while overlooking what they would surely call your 'eccentricity', thinking that someday you just might outgrow the habit. After all, a reiver really wasn't a thief so much as a "borrower-without-permission" in those cases.

My friend Boon Hoggenbeck was just such a man. No, not the one that tipped his hat or watched his pockets; Boon was the one that watched YOUR pockets and wasn't above sticking out his hat for a bit of change - always with a smile. Smiles, like trains, go a long way in this world for both the rich man and the hobo. One rides in splendor while the other rides in freight, but it makes traveling companions more agreeable in either case.

That's the way it was in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, 1905 in the town of Jefferson; I have every confidence that this benefit of changed nomenclature was the same in the rest of the country as well at that time, and it is a time honored tradition that I believe is still deeply ingrained in today's world.

People had different words for lots things. Take Boss McCaslin's car; some people called it the future, some called it an irritable and noisy contraption beyond a nuisance, and Boon called it his for the short time he borrowed it. And then Ned McCaslin - a distant cousin of mine - called it his when he in turn borrowed it from Boon. You couldn't really call it stealing if you had every intention of giving it back, and if events and the world conspired against that plan then it certainly could be explained away with just the right words, promises, and occasional payment of restitution. The instance of the time Boon and Ned lost the car and then won it back on a horse race perfectly encapsulated for this eleven-year-old the ebb and flow of fortune in the world.

This I found out for myself thanks to our previously mentioned adventure to Memphis and the horse race. After that odyssey - odyssey, adventure, quest, or pilgrimage as whatever name you see fit to call it - the yellow Winton Flyer was stored safely up on blocks with the wheels removed; we were still allowed to drive it, with the provision that it never moved from the blocks. All adventures at that point were limited to either our imaginations or confined to our town, courtesy of our two feet as they had been before. The world was changing, the tensions that led up to the Great War were still many years away, and the days were a balance between making a living and having a life; too much of either one meant you weren't concentrating enough on the other.

But some had a talent for minimizing the former while maximizing the latter, and there were no greater adherents to this philosophy than Boon and Ned. So much so that any given week could find them exerting more effort to avoid what adults called honest work than most put into said endeavor, all in an effort to find that one Eureka moment that would set them up for life. For my friend Boon, life was about working - which definition changed depending on how successful he was at dodging it - just enough to pay for the finer things in life; and for him that included spending time with one of our town's newest additions, his girlfriend Everbe Corinthia.

It was my pleasure to make acquaintance with Corrie, as she was wont to be called, on our adventure to Memphis; for reasons I only vaguely understood at the time, she and Boon had an acquaintance for some time before that. She had been a resident of the boarding house that I stayed at while there; indeed, that year that I count as the one where I parted from my youth, there were many things on that trip that opened my eyes to the ways of the world.

My first trip outside my small town to the relative metropolis that was Memphis had provided me with wonders no book - or at least any book I had access to - could adequately describe. My first lies to my family to sneak out for the trip. My first cigar. My first experience driving an automobile. My first sight of an even more infernal contraption than an automobile - namely, a motorcycle. The inside of a boarding house that was no boarding house; it was years later before I learned the word bordello. But call it whorehouse, and even if I didn't know the specifics of what went on in one, I still knew it was a house of ill repute. I even viewed my first wagering sports event from the most surprising vantage point of all, as I found myself as jockey on top of Lightning, one of the two horses in that contest.

Also, I partook in my first ever fight which involved real danger, defending the reputation of a lady. When Otis, Corrie's nephew, insinuated that she sold her virtue out for money, such a flame of indignity roared inside of me that I felt there was no other no course of action but to engage in mortal combat against her accuser. In hindsight, what Otis had said was probably true AND as a blood relative with the advantage of prior knowledge and age, he would have been far less naïve than myself in such matters; but I was as much smitten with her beauty as Boon was (but in obviously different ways) and I achieved another first with the distinction of getting a wound from a weapon, courtesy of the larger boy's knife. Having seen much worse later in my life in World War I and heard of worse in World War II, the tiny scar that it left on my hand is still carried as a badge of honor to this day.

Another first that had escaped my attentions to this point was blatant racism. In my small insular Mississippi town, any racism was so tied to one's economic situation that the two were difficult to separate. Nearly all of the non-white population was poor; this included not only negroes, but two families who were second generation Chinese. There were poor white people too, but they were mocked behind their backs for being either slovenly or stupid - 'unaccomplished', to use another word that was bandied about. Boon played this up, often pretending to be more ignorant than he really was; as to being slovenly, I can see him giving a wink and simply explaining that he was conserving his energies for more prodigious output later. And there were those like Ned, who straddled the two worlds; thanks to a liaison of an antecedent, he was a blood relative to the rich white plantation owner while still retaining the outer raiment of that disadvantaged class. As a fellow reiver, it was inevitable that he and Boon should become fast friends and accomplices in my advanced education - one which piano lessons and Sunday School ill-prepared me.

This was in sharp contrast to Sheriff Butch Lovemaiden whom we met at Uncle Possum's farm, whose contempt for anybody who wasn't white stank more than a dead deer I found once that had been lying in the sun for nearly a week. But there are names given other things that, unlike a good coat of paint, can't hide the truth beneath and no matter if he tried to wrap himself in a shroud of decency of the law there was still an ugliness underneath that reeked more than that deer.

But Sheriff Lovemaiden didn't limit his contempt to just negroes; no, he spread that vile around to anyone that didn't do things exactly his way and gave him just what he wanted. He equated power with respect like a bee looks at a flower and thinks pollen. In his eyes we were all just so much chattel to be used or abused as he saw fit. I'd never known such a man before, and I thank the Maker I've never met another.

I dare say my world wasn't the only one changed by Memphis. Not too many months after we had returned home, Boon took me to a park, and we sat under a tree. That in itself wasn't unusual – the park offered opportunities for much of the town from its central location.

"Lucius Priest, you are probably the best friend I have in the world" he told me as we sat in the shade.

Naturally, this came as no surprise to me, but gave me imminent satisfaction to hear. As I look back as an adult now, I can see just how I idolized Boon in my youth. While some might deride his demeanor as that of a man-child, it was those exact traits that drew me to him. Part playmate, part father figure, and all mentor - he was what I wanted to be when we both grew up. "You're mine too Boon," I admitted in a fit of mutual admiration. Unlike most of the kids at school, he had never called me 'Luscious', even in jest.

"Good, 'cause there's something I want to discuss with you. I've had my share of lady friends over the years, but I've had none better..." he said before chuckling. He looked at me before sobering "...I mean, none of them have been as special as Corrie. You like her, right?"

"Sure, Boon." Miss Corrie was beautiful in an entirely different way than my mother; a beauty that made me feel different inside, somehow. She also seemed to be very kind, too.

"Good. Well, um, I mean..." he said as he ran his hand through his hair. "See, I never thought of myself as a family man. I work for your grandfather and his family, but I never thought...well, I mean I could if I wanted...oh well, I reckon I should just come out and say it. Lucius, I think I might marry Corrie. Wadda ya think?"

This was probably the most important question I had ever been asked; I could tell, because my mind went off in a million directions. Boon had told me that women were the great mystery. Thanks to the naked paintings on the walls of the boarding house and the way Phoebe was dressed when she came late to dinner the first day we were there, I had a very vague idea of what Corrie had done for money while staying at that house. At the same time, I had an odd notion for a moment that if Boon didn't marry her that I might be able to when I got old enough. I knew that any marriage was going to take Boon away from me more as he spent time with his wife, and that bothered me a great deal.

But Boon was my best friend. If this made him happy, then it was a good thing for him and that was important to me, too. I hoped they wouldn't move away, but that was something to worry about later. I'd been to a few weddings in town, and they seemed like terribly complicated events; most people seemed happy, but I never really saw anyone having fun. And I certainly hadn't been real friends with anyone when they had gotten married. I summed up my thoughts in the most articulate way I could; "Sure," I said.

"Great!" Boon said with a sigh of relief. "Now I want you to know that I'd have you as my Best Man, but the job calls for a grown-up and I don't want to wait 'till you get there. No offense."

I was as old as I could be at my age, but it seemed like a job best suited for a grownup. "I understand."

"I appreciate that. Now we don't have all the details worked out yet, but we was thinking..."

...

The news traveled quickly once Boon let it out; he didn't know everybody in town, but most of them knew him. Somehow, word got out that Corrie had a checkered past and that raised quite a fuss in the town. But when Boon announced that Ned was going to be his best man, the town shook more than during the big New Madrid quake of 1812.

I didn't see anything wrong with it, and every time I asked someone why they disapproved, I never got a direct answer - they always seemed to hem and haw, become at a loss for words and said "Well, you know" a lot. But I didn't know, and it was at this point that I had no choice in the matter; to understand, I needed to talk to the smartest man in town no matter how scary it was. My grandfather, who I also called Boss, was just that man.

"Come in," he said as I knocked on the door of his study. I respectfully entered the room and closed the door behind me before approaching the man. He was family, but he might as well as have been made out of marble for all the deference paid to him by both family members and the town. I stood before him and waited to be recognized. "What is it, Lucius?" he asked.

"Well sir, have you heard that Boon is getting married?" I asked nervously. Even Cletus Nesmuth, who had died last year, had probably heard by now but I wanted to make sure.

"I've heard about it a mite. Interesting news." He was informed, then. But I wanted something else.

"What do you think about it?"

"I think that Boon and his lady are both adults and can decide on their own if they want to get married."

"But everyone says the wedding is a bad idea."

"Not everyone, young man. Why do they say it's a bad idea?" he asked.

This wasn't going anywhere. "They won't say. I thought you might tell me."

Boss leaned back in his chair. He turned and looked out the window for a minute before turning back to answer. "Lucius, I can't say what another person thinks, much less a whole group of them - but I can guess sometimes. They might be hesitant to say because of your age or because they know you and Boon are friends, but I'll tell you what I reckon. At first, I think they thought that Boon might be a little immature to be getting married. I would tend to agree, but marriage has a way making you grow up really quick - and if the act itself doesn't, your spouse will see to it the job is done. Most people get married when they're young anyway, so there is a lot about life left to learn."

He went on. "Secondly, I understand that the bride has worked in a questionable profession in her past. I also understand that she has vowed to leave that behind her, a vow I heartedly would endorse. Folks all have pasts, but just like old mistakes you have to learn from them and move on to a better life. You and I have talked a little about that before, and the same goes for everyone. If you haven't picked that up from your Sunday lessons yet, you haven't been paying attention."

"But that isn't all of it."

"No, it isn't, and those kinds of things have happened here before, to one extent or another, for the generations that the McCaslin family have lived here both before and after the war." Everyone somehow knew that Boss had fought in the War Between the States, but he never spoke of it openly. "But that brings us to Boon's pick for a Best Man; Ned McCaslin is certainly not who people expected or even thought it would be. What do you think of Ned?"

"He's funny and he's a grown-up, too. Boon said he would have picked me, but..."

"Don't worry son, your time will come soon enough. Do you see anything else wrong with it?"

"No. They seem to get along well."

"Oh, that's a refreshing viewpoint to hear. There are those who believe that a negro shouldn't be part of a white wedding party because it hasn't happened around here before. There are those that, for some reason known only to God, think that they aren't good enough to be there; and most of those people probably couldn't even name one person with dark skin that they've gotten to know well enough to call friend. Or cousin and friend, in your case. The war changed some things right away, but other things are going to take time, and this is one of them. If Boon and the lady are agreeable to have Ned as the Best Man, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be so. That being said, it was a little hard to find a place to hold the event - but I think we've got that all settled now. Remember what the poet said:

It matters not how straight the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll

We had just learned this poem in school, and I finished it for him:

I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul

"That's right. Strive to do right, be sorry when you're wrong, and make your own choices. That's part of being an adult, Lucius."

"Thank you, sir." I started to excuse myself from his presence but stopped to ask since I hadn't heard. "Where's the wedding going to be?"

"On my plantation, of course. Wedding and reception. Should be a real shindig," he said with a laugh. "That's my choice, and anyone who doesn't like it can stay home."

...

The year of 1905 was indeed the year I left childhood, thanks to my indoctrination into the outside world. But maturity, if and when it does come, isn't defined by a single moment but rather by a series of slow revealings. It would be several years before I had full understanding (and by that I mean had knowledge of, as no man can truly understand a woman) of the wonders of woman, thanks to a girl I courted for a full year before I even got my first real kiss; the revealing of the greatest mystery - as my friend Boon must have alluded to, being as worldly as he was - would still have to wait for some time beyond that.

The End

A/N: A period piece that was a coming-of-age story told as a remembrance; I came across this movie when I was looking at a Steve McQueen movie list. It had, in some respects, the same type of feeling as a Mark Twain story and took place in the South after the Civil War.

The snippet of the poem at the end is from "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley - I had to memorize this for a public speaking class in high school, although I was told (falsely) that it was written by a dying Civil War veteran. Nobody's perfect *shrug*