Georgia

Georgia appears here through Baker County in June: a place where oppressive heat and swarming insects shape the journey to Turpmtine as much as the cultivated beauty of its Big House. The state’s rural setting becomes an immediate physical test for Charlie Croker, whose injured leg and crutches leave him unable to brush the insects away.

Summer in Baker County

The approach to the Big House unfolds beneath a sky filled with black gnats and flies. They dive at Charlie’s eyes, and, because his crutches prevent him from lifting his hands, he can do little to stop them. The insects seem to fill his ears as well as his sight. When Serena cries out that a bee has stung her, Charlie corrects her: it was a fly. Even this small exchange registers the setting’s persistent assault on the people moving through it.

June brings a wider catalogue of discomfort. Tent caterpillars drop onto the ground beneath the trees, while mosquitoes multiply near Jookers Swamp. Mosquitoes, yellow flies, horseflies, black flies, and gnats attack from above; chiggers make resting on a stump or lying on pine needles hazardous. The cicadas add a loud, continuous rattle from the trees. At the height of the heat, Charlie is so overwhelmed that he begins to experience what the field hands called seeing the monkey. The landscape is not merely scenic background: its seasonal conditions press directly on his body and state of mind.

Turpmtine and the Big House

The Big House stands among live oaks, magnolias, and dogwoods. Magnolias bloom thickly, their glossy deep-green leaves catching the light; their low branches and pointed crowns frame the house. A porch nearly encircles it, raised about four feet above the ground, while Confederate roses grow in such profusion beneath the trellises that the house seems to rise from a mound of flowers. These details present Turpmtine as an estate of conspicuous natural abundance, set against the discomfort of the surrounding summer.

Inside, the house may be musty after several weeks without use, but its central air conditioning offers relief from Baker County’s heat and humidity. Charlie remembers installing the system ten or eleven years earlier, when its $110,000 cost seemed routine. Now he could not assemble that sum. The remembered expense turns a feature of the house into a measure of his changed financial circumstances: the estate still carries the signs of wealth, but Charlie’s ability to sustain that life has deteriorated.

A Return Made Difficult

Charlie reaches Turpmtine by car from Atlanta, rather than by airplane as he had customarily done. His bad leg makes the Beechjet’s stairs difficult, and the slower drive with a cautious driver frustrates him. As he hobbles from the Cadillac toward the house, the crutches make the familiar estate newly difficult to enter. At the porch stairs he pauses and sighs; the route into his own home has become an obstacle.

Georgia’s setting therefore joins grandeur to exposure. The magnolias, flowers, and carefully maintained house promise beauty and shelter, while the June heat, insects, and stairs make the journey inward exhausting. Turpmtine remains a symbol of Charlie’s former ease, but his impaired mobility and financial strain alter what returning to it means.