Now while we were off chasing pigs and suffering the viciousness of chickens, Momma and Daddy and half of the rest of the town were enjoying the privilege of gaping at Miss Pettigrew for the first time in eight years. Daddy said folks began to congregate across the boulevard from Miss Pettigrew’s house along about 2:30 and commenced to gaping at the house itself as a preamble to gaping at the occupant. Daddy said even those people who had intended to arrive fashionably late ended up coming early enough to get in some prefatory gaping themselves. And Momma said somehow or another Mr. Louis Benfield sr. had managed to convince himself that there was in fact a grain of virtue in arriving somewhere early, so him and Momma got in on the tailend of the preamble too and were right in the thick of things when 3:00 hit and the whole crowd went tearing across the street, through the iron gateway, up along the sidewalk, and onto the front porch.
Daddy said Mrs. Estelle Singletary rang the bell which apparently was broken since it didn’t bring anybody to the door, and after everybody who could see it had studied the knob sufficiently to convince themselves that it had not wiggled and was not about to Mr. Estelle Singletary made an uncharacteristically gallant attempt at reaching for Miss Pettigrew’s brass doorknocker but his wife headed him off and took it upon herself to do the rapping which at length did in fact cause the doorknob to wiggle and the whole door itself to swing open. Momma said the foyer was so dimly lit it was somewhat difficult to focus in on Aunt Willa at first what with the acute shortage of suitable backlight, and even Mrs. Estelle Singletary, who very nearly had her feet on the doorsill, put her face partway into the house and called out “Hello Hello” loud enough to be heard in the basement and she was nearly set to wail away again when Aunt Willa reached out from the shadows and general murkiness and touched her on the shoulder. Daddy said from the way Mrs. Estelle Singletary sucked air it appeared to him there would be some need for an ambulance, but after several minutes of regular breathing she began to look rather lifelike once more and told everybody she was perfectly alright notwithstanding some exceedingly serious palpitations of the heart.
Apparently Aunt Willa had not been much inspired by the holiday or the get together either, because Momma said she did not look any different than she normally looked and had not dressed any different than she normally dressed. She seemed to Momma as sour as ever and she was wearing her usual floweredy smock with most all the color bled out of it and her black button-up sweater and her nylons rolled down around the knee and her blue Keds sneakers. However, she was not wearing Mr. Shep Bristow’s fedora, which her head most generally did not ever go around without, and Momma theorized that perhaps Aunt Willa had left the hat off as a means of marking the occasion, but Daddy did not ever think too highly of Momma’s opinion on the matter. He said it was not one of your sounder theories; he said it was not the sort of thing Mr. Einstein would be proud of. Momma did not seem to have much faith in it either but she simply did not want to believe that Aunt Willa was entirely indifferent to everything although there was not any substantial evidence to the contrary. So it was Momma who said Aunt Willa invited the whole crowd of get togetherees into Miss Pettigrew’s house, and it was Daddy who said she only opened the door and stayed clear of the doorway, which was not his idea of a gracious welcome and did not even begin to constitute an invitation.
Everybody did get into the house, however, which was exactly where everybody had been burning to get ever since the opportunity had presented itself. But Daddy said there was not much to see right off on account of the general gloom in the foyer and though the ladies made a great variety of astounding faces and Daddy himself undertook some experimental sniffing, he said nobody knew for certain that the local aroma was monkey until considerably later when Mr. Rackley cleared it up for them. At the time, and primarily out of respect for Miss Pettigrew, most people suspected it was Mr. Emmet Dabb who was not locally famous for his hygiene and had a well-documented history of unsavory fragrances. Daddy said Aunt Willa did not bother to lead the get togetherees into the ballroom but instead allowed Mrs. Estelle Singletary to take several people on into a coat closet by mistake and partway into a half bath before she finally hit on the short front hallway that led directly to the get together itself. And Daddy said he could tell right off it was one of your hybrid get togethers that wasn’t purely a sit-down dinner and wasn’t purely a plain buffet and wasn’t exactly a pig-in-a-blanket affair either. There were plates of course, Daddy said, but they were paper with a picture of the constitution in the middle where the food went, and there was a punch bowl full of some sort of champagne concoction, but there was Pepsi-Cola and cracked ice too. Miss Pettigrew, or somebody anyway, had prepared some chicken and had baked a ham and had cooked up a couple of good-sized pork tenderloins along with several other full-fledged repast entrees, Daddy called them, but they were accompanied by a gracious plenty of cucumber finger sandwiches and two cheese balls, one entirely nutted over and one not, and a considerable bulk of raddish rosettes and celery stalks and carrot slivers. And Daddy said there were potato chips also and American cheese slices and little hunks of liver pudding on Townhouse crackers and a platter heaped up with apple dumplings dipped in confectioner’s sugar. However, there was not any legitimate table to sit at as Daddy recollected and instead Miss Pettigrew, or Aunt Willa most probably, had backed up several dozen chairs to the front wall so as to keep the best part of the floor clear and unobstructed for dancing, which Daddy said seemed to be Miss Pettigrew’s intention judging from the presence of her portable record player with the lid up and the plug in the socket.
Of course nobody ate anything right off and nobody danced anywhere and nobody even attempted to sit down. Daddy said everybody just stood all bunched up together in anxious expectation of the hostess’s arrival and Daddy said it was an extended period of anxious expectation and left him near about dying for a piece of tenderloin by the time Miss Pettigrew finally entered through a swinging door at the remotest end of the ballroom. Naturally everybody gaped at her straightaway since everybody had warmed up their gaping muscles previously, and Daddy said the harnessed energy of all those jaws dropping open at once could have electrocuted an elephant. But Momma said she was well worth gaping at. Momma said she was radiant. She said even from all the way across the ballroom Miss Pettigrew was very obviously radiant and handsome still. Momma said she was wearing a light, stylish cotton knit the color of the driven snow though Daddy could not verify anything but the light and stylish part of it since the driven snow did not ring a bell with him. However they both clearly recollected that Miss Pettigrew carried in front of her a copper tea kettle full of tiny cloth flags on dowel sticks, and Momma said from where she was the flags looked to be a bouquet and Miss Pettigrew herself, in her white dress and with her squirrel-colored hair drawn back into a proper and distinguished bun, appeared somewhat bridely which Daddy could verify since the entire scene had also struck him as highly matrimonial notwithstanding his resistance to the driven snow.
Momma said Miss Pettigrew did not exactly scamper across the ballroom but did not dally on her end of it either and so made forthright progress directly into the midsts of the get togetherees, and Daddy said she caught up the copper teakettle in the crook of her left arm which kept her right one free to shake with and she went roundabout to each of her guests and took them by the fingers and called them by name and asked after their children and their old, ailing relations. She told Miss Frazier she was fretfully sorry her dog had got run over by a creamery truck, and she congratulated Mr. Venable on his promotion at the cigarette plant, and she politely took issue with Mr. Wyatt Benbow’s tomatoes, which she claimed were altogether too mealy for the price. Daddy said it was purely mystifying to him how a woman who had stayed shut up inside her house for the last eight years and for the last ten years before that and for the last three years before that could know anything at all about anybody aside from herself. But apparently news siphoned in from off the street and Daddy said Miss Pettigrew fairly
stunned most all her guests with every little ordinary observation she made, which was not what people expected from a Pettigrew, especially from an isolated and peculiar Pettigrew, so the gaping persisted long after it had become noticeable and impolite and just when it seemed folks might get ahold of themselves and make civil expressions, Miss Pettigrew would say something regular and run of the mill and the chins would drop all over again since nobody much had expected Miss Pettigrew to be ordinary and since nobody much had wanted her to be either. So Daddy said the gaping did not die off to any degree as Miss Pettigrew made her way throughout the ballroom shaking fingers and giving out tiny cloth flags as party favors, and when folks found themselves out of position to gape at Miss Pettigrew directly they would gape at each other so as not to squander their astonishment.
Daddy said it did not seem to him that the gaping and finger shaking and the flag giving would ever leave off so the eating could commence, but after Miss Pettigrew had taken up little Sally Anne Cromer in her arms and rubbed their noses together, she made a vague sort of gesture with the back of her hand and said, “Please do help yourselves,” which was not one of your point-blank invitations but was certainly enough to put the buffet table in some immediate jeopardy. Momma said the food was exquisite and the champagne punch superb, and even Daddy himself, who forages widely but generally does not pay much attention to what he eats, agreed with Momma that the food was indeed exquisite and the champagne punch in fact superb. And Momma said Mrs. Estelle Singletary took a taste of each dish, working her mouth like a rabbit, and then announced to Miss Pettigrew that all of the refreshments were most adequate, which was excessively high praise coming from Mrs. Singletary and set everybody to gushing over whatever happened to be on their forks at the moment. Of course Miss Pettigrew gee-hawed as modestly as she could, and Daddy said she tried to make out like the food had near about prepared itself, but folks insisted on embarrassing her anyway and Miss Frazier said a few words on behalf of the baked ham followed by Mrs. Petree’s tribute to the cheese balls after which Mrs. Philtip J. King delivered a brief but compassionate speech on the texture of the potato salad and everybody else just hummed with their mouths full in a show of culinary delight. But Daddy said even the likes of Mrs. Phillip J. King cannot talk about a buffet forever, so the topic wore itself out directly but did not get replaced straightaway except by the sound of Mr. Emmet Dabb’s bronchial asthma and a singularly rich and hearty burp from little Buford Needham who simply could not get his hand up fast enough. Otherwise there was not much noise to speak of and most everyone looked at the floor or studied their fingers and waited for somebody to venture a remark they could all throw in with. And Daddy said he was expecting any moment some sort of idiocy from Mrs. Phillip J. King when Miss Pettigrew herself made several extraordinarily bland observations about the weather, so extraordinarily bland in fact that Daddy, who is not much of a natural gaper, laid his chin flush against his shirtfront and showed Miss Pettigrew his adenoids.
And just along about then came Peahead Boyette’s big bang, though nobody knew it was Peahead Boyette right off and folks just generally hovered over their chairseats on account of the concussion, everybody that is except for Miss Pettigrew who grabbed at her throat with the fingers of her left hand and looked altogether pleased, Daddy said, that some sort of engaging calamity had come along to prevent her from pursuing the weather. And it did turn out to be an engaging calamity though Daddy said it did not sound particularly engaging at the time or calamitous either. He said it sounded to him like somebody had tossed an aluminum trash can out of a Leer jet and hit the boulevard dead on, which seemed somewhat peculiar and diverting but did not strike Daddy as in any way disastrous. However, it had not been a trashcan exactly; it had been instead Mr. Peahead Boyette’s sky-blue 1961 Ford Falcon in combination with a nickel parking meter and a mature poplar tree. And Daddy said Mr. Wyatt Benbow, who had his back to a window, was the first one to part the sheers and look out and directly he shrieked, “A wreck!” which sent half the get togetherees toward the ballroom windows and the other half toward the ballroom door, and by the time Mrs. Petree could pull her nose off from the glass and holler, “Lord, it’s Peahead!” Mrs. Phillip J. King was already halfway down the sidewalk with her ears laid back. Little Buford’s boy, Paul, caught up with her at the gate since he was not wearing heels and passed her up across the boulevard, but Mrs. Phillip J. King managed to arrive at the Falcon just a hair’s breadth behind him nonetheless and the two of them stuck their heads in through the driver’s window and expected to see a goodly amount of gore judging from the impact. But there was no gore to speak of and no Peahead either, not anything really except for a pair of drowned muskrats on the back floorboard.
Of course everybody came pouring out of the house shortly, and Momma said she believed even Miss Pettigrew got so far as the front door before she recollected herself and stayed behind, and soon enough Peahead Boyette’s sky-blue 1961 Ford Falcon had fairly much disappeared under a swarm of anxious get togetherees who looked in the trunk, under the tires, and all throughout the engine but could not discover Peahead Boyette anywhere. And it was Daddy himself who found Peahead, mostly on account of his aversion for swarming get togetherees which sent him strolling down the boulevard in the direction of the icehouse and along the way he came across Peahead stretched out flat on his back lengthwise in the gutter.
“Peahead!” Daddy exclaimed and stooped down over what he figured for a corpse.
But Peahead opened his eyes and scratched the end of his nose with his index finger. “Hello Louis,” he said.
“Are you alright?” Daddy asked him, and Peahead grunted and sat up on both elbows. “Well what in the world happened?” Daddy wanted to know.
And Daddy said Peahead spat out of the side of his mouth and told him, “Goddam Muskrat.”
“Muskrat?” Daddy said.
“Yes sir,” Peahead told him.
“You mean a muskrat wrecked your car?” Daddy said.
“Yes sir,” Peahead told him.
“Well, you should’ve never let him drive, Peahead. You know their legs are too short to work the pedals.” And Daddy said though Peahead is usually of a highly jocular disposition he just spat sideways once more and laid back down in the gutter.
Daddy said Mrs. Phillip J. King and little Buford Needham saw what he was stooped over near about simultaneously and set out together in a dead heat but after the first ten yards Mrs. Phillip J. King commenced to pull away primarily on account of little Buford’s arthritic condition, which did not lend itself to extended sprints. And Daddy said it was quite a frightful thing to have Mrs. Phillip J. King run at you, even in the middle of the afternoon, and Daddy said he got kind of hypnotized looking at her with her shiny black clutch purse in one hand and her tiny cloth flag in the other and with her eyes wild and her hair blown back and her forehead mildly irridescent. In fact, Daddy said he was so overcome by the sight that he did not hear Mrs. Phillip J. King at first when she hollered at him, “Is he dead?” and so she hollered it a second time with a little more conviction and Daddy got ahold of himself sufficiently to tell her No.
“Well, is he injured then?” Mrs. Phillip J. King wailed at him.
“No,” Daddy told her, “I don’t believe so.”
And Daddy said that aside from looking frightful and wild and mildly irridescent, Mrs. Phillip J. King looked somewhat lost for words temporarily and allowed little Buford the opportunity to holler, “Is he alright?”
“Yes,” Daddy told him, “I think he is.”
And Daddy said Mrs. Phillip J. King arrived shortly thereafter and fairly much threw herself on top of Peahead Boyette and put her face directly in his face and said, “Mr. Boyette? Mr. Boyette?” which caused Peahead’s eyes to pop open and instigated some serious squirming and thrashing around on his part.
“Jesus woman,” Peahead said and worked himself loose from Mrs. Phillip J. King, “I’m alright, just a little shook up.”
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sp; And Mrs. Phillip J. King stood upright in the gutter and shouted off in the direction of the sky-blue 1961 Ford Falcon, “He’s shook up,” which sparked a general stampede, and Daddy said little Buford had not hardly gotten enough breath to say “Hey Peahead” when him and Mrs. Phillip J. King and Daddy and Peahead too found themselves all wrapped up in get togetherees who shot down the curbing and churned all roundabout the four of them like a spurt of frantic ditchwater. Of course everybody wanted to know just where Peahead Boyette was shook up, just exactly where specifically, and Daddy said Peahead picked himself up out of the gutter for fear of being stomped on, sat down on the curbing, and had the audacity to insist he was not shook up after all, not shook up in the least. But a great preponderance of people were nearly violently adamant that he be shook up, so Peahead set in to complaining about a shooting pain in his left wrist which was not one of your more severe and scintillating injuries but was far enough off from perfect health to satisfy most everybody. So once Peahead confessed to a degree of noticeable discomfort, people generally turned their attention to the cause of the accident which was a matter of some confusion to them since the driver was a ways down the street sitting insufficiently injured on the curbing and the vehicle was a ways up the street very thoroughly bent around a poplar tree. So naturally folks began to ask Peahead what in the world happened and Daddy said he looked around to see what the ladies would do when Peahead told them Goddam Muskrat but Peahead did not tell them Goddam Muskrat and instead told them, “Ill luck.”
“Ill luck?” Mrs. Estelle Singletary said.
“Yes ma’m,” Peahead replied, “a shitpot full of it.”
A Short History of a Small Place Page 40