by Jan Karon
‘How much?’ It was common courtesy to ask, though of course it would be free and he wouldn’t argue.
‘Five bucks. Chocolate-covered popcorn for th’ break room at MPD.’
‘Done!’ he said.
Aunt Louise delivered to the poetry section a pair of scissors, a roll of paper towels, a cookbook on North Carolina barbecue, and an entire volume on something called wasabi. She felt pleased to have collected everything the police captain could possibly want or need.
Grace stood by with a carpet sweeper as he popped onto a stool.
Adele draped him with paper towels, operated the scissors to see how they were working.
‘Not rusty, I hope,’ he said by way of conversation.
‘You have a comb?’
He handed it over. ‘Something spicy, huh?’
‘Tryin’ to perk up th’ marital relations,’ she said with a grim laugh. ‘Okay, here we go.’
When he sat in any chair or on any stool for the purpose of being barbered, he immediately recited his wife’s mantra:
‘Get rid of the chrysanthemums on either side and leave it a little long in back.’
‘How long is a little long?’
‘Maybe a half inch? So it just misses the collar?’
‘It’s goin’ to grow over your collar again in a heartbeat, you ought to let me cut it short.’
‘No, no, really. Cynthia doesn’t like me to look shorn.’
‘Doesn’t like you to look what?’
‘Shorn. Like a sheep.’
He didn’t know how to talk with somebody packing a Sig Sauer, standing so close he could hear her breathing. Was the trigger locked or did she leave it unlocked in case of emergency?
He felt what he believed to be her holster brush his right shoulder. He made the sign of the cross in a way that could be interpreted as searching for his ballpoint pen or even scratching his nose.
The captain didn’t know why she was so hardwired to stress over a little thing like runnin’ a traffic light at ten miles over th’ speed limit. Police were speeding 24/7, goin’ to lunch, goin’ home to watch football—siren, blue lights, pedal to the metal.
Maybe if she told somebody, it would help. Maybe the whole point was to confess, but since she was not Catholic she could not go into one of those little booth thingies and get it over with.
So right here was somebody ministerial, somebody who was not supposed to gab all over town what you told them. Grace had stepped away to find Margaret the cat, who had probably gone upstairs to sleep on Coot’s bed, which was a no-no.
‘I bet you hear a lot of stuff from people,’ she said.
‘I do.’
‘I guess people bare their souls to you, right?’
‘You could say that.’ It had, however, been some time since anyone bared their soul to him.
Snip, snip. Stuff falling onto the paper towel and drifting to the floor.
As Adele opened her mouth to speak, Chief Guthrie’s brood screeched into the poetry section. Sissy, Sassy, Timmy, and Tommy had each found a book and were ready to keep moving. But not before they thumped onto the floor and watched, wide-eyed, as their dad’s police captain buzzed their adopted granpa.
• • •
All these years, people had called his franchise Lew Boyd’s Exxon. Now it would be Jay Barringer’s Exxon.
Lew had never really thought much about retirement since he was cured of his prostate cancer eight or so years ago. Then boom, before he could get the retirement notion completely fixed in his head again, up popped a buyer for his business, which he was sellin’ as is.
He hadn’t been much of a prayin’ man since th’ cancer. But while he hadn’t necessarily talked to the Lord about this, he was sure thankin’ him. Th’ deal was, he would stay on for six months after th’ closing in mid-November. That would get him and Earlene on th’ road somewhere around th’ middle of May, or June at the latest. He hoped he wouldn’t miss th’ bloomin’ of his lilac bush over at th’ air pump. Every May, that bush was a town fixture.
He wouldn’t talk about the sale, because he didn’t like to upset people. He would also be mum about what he’d call his ‘spring vacation’ with Earlene in a ‘gently used’ RV. Not likin’ change, people would be ticked that he was sellin’ up an’ throwin’ them under th’ bus. They also wouldn’t care to see him and Earlene ride off into the sunset for a bit of fun.
He’d never had a vacation unless you considered courtin’ Earlene a vacation. He had run up to Tennessee every chance he got, usually on Saturday night after the station closed, and headed back Sunday evenin’. He was rode hard and put up wet courtin’ that woman, but it was worth it.
There was a rumor that a funeral parlor was comin’ to town. All they’d have to do if they’d bought his place was dig up the pumps—which was a very expensive undertaking, ha ha. But no, it had been Mr. Jay Barringer from Tennessee who jumped on th’ deal of a lifetime.
People in this town didn’t know Jay Barringer from Adam’s house cat, and wouldn’t get to, either. Mr. Jay Barringer would run his gas station from his gravel and cement monopoly across the state line. There would be no owner-hands-on, which was not a good idea, but who was Lew Boyd to say? His business was sold and hallelujah.
He checked his watch. Here in a minute, he’d run home and have a chili dog with Earlene and they’d go through th’ RV catalog again, cover to cover. He was startin’ to think new, not used.
See th’ USA in your Chevrolet . . .
He whistled as he filled the tank of a vintage Suburban with slick tires and three coon dogs in th’ hatch.
• • •
Omer Cunningham noticed that some kind of ruckus was going on at the front of the store. He saw Otis move faster than usual to get up there.
He glanced out the window of the Local and there was a patrol car gliding up to the curb. Unlike regular vehicles, patrol cars seemed to glide. He took a pound package of livermush from the cold case and walked up front. Avis was talkin’ to a ticked-off blond-headed woman with a dog leash in her hand.
‘If you don’t mind my askin’, what’s behind his right ear?’ Avis asked the woman.
‘I have no idea. What do you mean?’
‘Like, if you scratch ’im behind his right ear—he likes that—what’s behind ’is ear?’
Omer had scratched Chucky behind the ears and felt the mole that Dooley Kavanagh said was nothing to worry about.
‘I don’t scratch dogs behind their ears,’ said the woman. ‘And I don’t have to prove anything to you. He’s my dog, my brother gave him to me.’
MPD captain Adele Hogan, who had dropped in for her sugar fix, stepped closer. She got what was going on and was pretty sure Avis wouldn’t ask the right questions—he was accustomed to pleasing people. The woman looked pretty tough and was way dressed up for this town.
‘He didn’t come with a collar,’ said Adele, who found that standing with her hands on her hips was generally a good move. ‘That could have helped prove who owns him.’
‘He didn’t come with a collar because he chewed himself out of it!’
Chucky trembled, looked at Avis.
‘Did you by any chance keep him tied up?’ said Omer.
‘Of course not! He lives in my house in the guest bathroom while I work.’
Sue Loudermilk was waiting to check out a bag of cat food. ‘You work around here?’
‘I work at the golf club in Wesley, eight to five. In accounting. You can call and ask—I am a very responsible and trustworthy person.’
‘What’s your name?’ said Sue.
‘My name has nothing to do with anything. Come here, Bouncer.’
Avis tried to swallow the knot in his throat. Chucky was looking to him for something he couldn’t give or do. A terrible thing was happening and he could not open hi
s mouth to speak, though all he wanted to say was Stop.
‘Come, I said! And quit that shakin’!’
Chucky looked at Avis. They all looked at Avis.
‘Be stubborn, then. I’m takin’ you home.’
The woman slipped on a collar, attached the leash, and stared, furious, at the assembled group. ‘Why I can’t claim my own dog without the help of cops and a jury is beyond me.’
She pulled on the leash. Chucky sat. She yanked, headed for the door. ‘Come, I said!’
Otis thought Avis looked like he might fall out. He moved toward him in case anything weird happened, but Avis turned away and was out the back door.
Coming in the front door as the woman stomped out was Father Tim with the police chief’s kids.
‘Chucky-y-y!’ said Sassy, who stooped to pat his head.
The woman jerked the leash. ‘This is not Chucky!’ she shouted, pulling the dog behind her as she crossed the street.
‘What’s going on?’ said Father Tim.
Omer set his livermush on the counter. ‘Some dip-stick woman came in an’ claimed Chucky. Said she saw his picture in th’ Muse.
‘Nine hours a clip in a bathroom?’ Omer said to the assembled. ‘Plus a dog can’t chew himself out of his collar, right? Just sayin’.’
• • •
He rarely went home during the day. If he did, he signed out with Otis and Lisa, but today he’d said nothing, just left.
He entered by the back door and sat down in a kitchen chair, trying to hold on to sections of himself that were flying apart. He was havin’ trouble breathing. Heart racing. Light-headed. Hands trembling like an old man.
When he could stand again without his knees goin’ to water, he went to his bedroom and took up the blanket at the foot of his bed and folded it and stood in the middle of the room wondering where to put it.
He walked back to the kitchen and placed it in a chair and stepped out to the porch, where he felt a strange and sudden confinement—the privet hedge surrounding the yard on three sides, the high fence of his neighbors, the sky sitting low and dark over the trees.
It was cold; he should go inside and put on a warmer jacket.
But he started walking.
Down the alley and across Wisteria and left onto Old Church Lane, where he stopped and had a prolonged coughing fit, and continued past the hospital and up by the stone wall, blind to the empty October sky.
He hadn’t been along this route in years. Right in his own backyard, yet he might have landed on another planet. He slapped his shirt pocket—he’d forgotten his smokes—and kept walking. If he stopped—he was afraid to stop, he didn’t know what might happen if he took a minute to look over the wall and into the Valley with the river like a ribbon laid out on the green.
Down Lilac past the maples, leaves crunching underfoot, and on past First Baptist and the town hall, where he hung a right. He hadn’t walked this far at one time since coming to Mitford thirty-some years ago when his car broke down outside the town limit. He was a stranger to this neighborhood, the houses and lawns and trees and somebody’s car backing out of a driveway, the radio blaring . . .
Chucky.
He was numb, as if from the cold, yet he’d broken a sweat. He stopped again to cough—a racking persecution that unlike the lesser coughs, he did not enjoy.
He had no idea where he was headed, he was on autopilot. But he was walking, okay? Which is what people had told him a hundred times he should be doing. Walk! Quit smoking! Walk! Get married! Walk! Wear clogs! Put some flesh on your bones, sharpen your mower blades, endless.
After the terrible thing happened with his mother when he was twelve, he had walked all night through his run-down mining town and around the fields and woods where he slept on a bed of pine needles. His daddy was on the way home from Montgomery, Alabama, and he’d been the only kin to see them fish her out of the river where she had jumped from the bridge. Hardly a splash, somebody said who saw her jump. A few ripples. And gone.
They had laid her out on the kitchen table with the little silver chain around her neck that he’d bought with two dollars earned at the feed store. The women had come and dressed her out for the coffin that three men and his daddy were building in the shed. He never sat at that table again.
He had not cried. He had never cried over the selfish thing she had done. She had come in and sat on the side of his bed the night before. He had waked up and there she was, like a ghost. She had taken ahold of his hand and said, I love you, boy. Please remember that. He had pulled his hand away as she’d never said such a thing before and it scared him. And she hadn’t loved him at all, none, zero, else she wouldn’t have done that to him as if he was nobody to her.
At Lew Boyd’s Exxon, he slipped the key from the nail by the cash register and went around to the side of the building and unlocked the john door and sat on the lid of the toilet seat and put his head in his hands and felt it coming, coming like a train that he could not dodge, for he was tied to the tracks.
It was a kind of keening he heaved up, the howling of something wild and caged, and he couldn’t stop it and it went on.
He was sliding off a high place into floodwaters and didn’t know if he could sink that deep and come up alive.
• • •
His haircut had been reviewed, Captain Hogan had received due credit, and he was starving.
‘Th’ special today,’ said Wanda, ‘is tortellini primavera. Mr. Skinner?’
‘Torta what?’ said Mule.
‘Come on,’ said J.C. ‘Get a grilled cheese, you like grilled cheese.’
‘Fancy has me offa cheese. Too bindin’.’
J.C. mopped his face with a paper napkin. ‘I don’t know about you, buddy. God knows, I don’t know.’
‘Mr. Hogan?’
‘I’ll have th’ baked fish, coleslaw, cooked apples, an’ th’ banana puddin’—but only if y’all remembered to put th’ bananas in.’
The first zinger of the hour.
Wanda ignored this. Once, years ago, they had failed to put th’ bananas in, and this goofball would never let her forget it. She pointed her pencil at the cleric among them. ‘Roast turkey with lettuce and tomato on seven-grain with mustard an’ hold th’ mayo?’
‘That’s me,’ he said. ‘With iced tea, unsweetened.’ Slipping in a little caffeine . . .
He wouldn’t mention the Chucky incident. The story would get around soon enough. He felt for Avis; this was a tough one.
‘How can you eat a turkey sandwich without mayo?’ said Mule. ‘I don’t get it. Why don’t you have somethin’ you’d actually like? Wait a minute. What’s this?’ Mule pointed to an item on the menu.
‘Biscotti,’ said Wanda.
‘What’s a biscotti?’
‘I’ll bring you a sample.’
‘Will I like it?’
‘Probably not,’ she said. ‘It’s a new item. And speakin’ of new, startin’ next week, live music every Friday after eight o’clock. Tell your friends. When it comes to advertisin’ . . .’ Wanda eyed the Muse editor. ‘. . . word of mouth is th’ way to go.’
Zinger number two.
J.C. raised an eyebrow. ‘Umbrellas on the sidewalk. Biscotti. Live music. What next, Miz Basinger?’
‘I’m an innovator, Mr. Hogan. How about you?’
J.C. gave her a dark look. ‘I am a communicator.’ This was code for saying he’d spread the word that he wasn’t treated so good at Feel Good.
The cleric raised his hand, looking overly cheerful. ‘This fall I cleaned out the garage and painted the hall closet. So I guess I’m a renovator.’
‘Oh, boy,’ said Mule. ‘Let’s see what I am. How about, let’s see . . . ’
‘Order,’ said J.C. ‘Pick somethin’. Anything.’
Mule looked dazed.
Wanda shoved the
pencil behind her ear. ‘You, Mr. Skinner, are a hesitator.’
• • •
He had checked with Father Brad. There would be five, including Pooh and himself, in the meeting on Thursday. If his similar experience of nearly sixty years ago in Holly Springs was any example, Pooh would be pretty stressed.
‘Be yourself, son. Hang loose. And most especially, speak from the heart.’
A long exhale. ‘Yessir.’
‘Easier said than done—but don’t worry. I’m available 24/7, and all your group will be praying for you.’
It took a moment, but Pooh managed a response. ‘What . . . should I wear?’
‘Wear what a preacher named Pooh would be comfortable in,’ he said.
• • •
A small fire sparking on the hearth. An October wind licking their shutters on the Baxter Park side. And she liked his haircut.
What could be better?
He turned on the lamp by his chair and read aloud the letter he was happy to receive.
Dear Brother,
My nephew, Conrad, takes note of my pleasure in writing to you and in receiving your letters.
Why do you torment yourselves, he asks, with the time required to write so many words and wait so many days for your labor to strike its target? And then, he says, there’s the persecution of waiting for a reply!
But that is the very reason for our delight, I say, as he sits nearby checking his text messages.
I promised to tell you how I found Eva’s grave, a story that again proves how much stranger is truth than fiction.
I had gone up to Memphis to see my oncologist and stopped at a gas station south of town. (Perhaps you know that I’m still driving my old Buick!). I was running my credit card when I heard a lady on the other side of the pump, talking to an attendant.
My heart began to pound so alarmingly, it took my breath.
It was Eva’s voice I was hearing from the lady at the pump. Everything about it—the tenor, the little uptick at the end of her sentences, the laughter. Eva!
I was in a state, brother, that cannot be described. I felt as if I’d had a blow to the knees, and sat down for a moment in my car.