A Short History of a Small Place

by T. R. Pearson

  Of course, since Mr. P. Merriman Bledsoe did not live in Neely he did not much care who bought the property or what he put on it be it an exotic memorial garden or a stagnant pond. If Mr. P. Merriman Bledsoe showed any preference whatsoever I guess it was towards franchises, especially franchised restaurants, and when word got out from Mr. Ellersby the city council immediately commenced to search all local ordinances and find out if the Pettigrew property wasn’t somehow or another zoned against hamburgers and batter-dipped chicken. We did not suspect it was however, but refused to panic nonetheless since we already had a Burger Chef three blocks south and a fairly new Hardee’s just below the Holiday Inn on the bypass. Now the Burger Chef had not ever done anything in the way of steady business because it had not ever served anything in the way of edible food, and as for the Hardee’s, it seemed to us in town that the bypass was a considerable distance to go for a hamburger, even a charco-broiled one. But that was before Mr. Ellersby let it be known what Mr. Bledsoe intended to do with Miss Pettigrew’s property. The news altered our outlook extravagantly. We had never before realized the true extent of our loyalty to the Burger Chef and whenever we had a prominent opportunity we took to praising their hamburgers and cheeseburgers and fish filet sandwiches and we were outright rapturous over the french fries. We could hardly ever contain ourselves when Mr. Ellersby was around and some people even went so far as to eat at the Burger Chef by way of active illustration. Of course the Hardee’s became exceedingly convenient for us, and of a sudden we discovered it was on the way to everywhere and we could not begin to prevent ourselves from stopping in for a biscuit or a milkshake or a turnover or especially one of those delicious broiled hamburgers. We had discovered nothing was so satisfying as grilled meat. And our patronage to the Hardee’s was as utterly unshakable as our patronage to the Burger Chef and we told Mr. Ellersby as much, told him he’d best leave off fishing for a franchise buyer, told him we could not even contemplate the purchase of a competing burger. So Mr. Ellersby suggested chicken and we found we had some very strong and near about violent opinions on assorted pieces in buckets and dinners in boxes also. The very idea seemed a profanation to us.

  The surveyor from McDonald’s came to town in the middle of November and sized up the Pettigrew property with his surveyor’s contraption, but somehow or another the lot did not suit him and did not suit his employers, so Mr. Ellersby turned to the Burger King instead but they did not seem much interested in the place either. He negotiated with two representatives from a chicken outfit for awhile but could not entice them into a deal and he had some contact with the manager of Captain Mulligan’s Fish House in Greensboro where the waitresses wore black patches over their eyes and red bandannas around their heads and looked for all the world to be a cross between Blackbeard and Aunt Jemima. But the manager complained that the Pettigrew lot was a little scant to the leeward and considerably shy to the windward also which made him reluctant to drop anchor on it, so he shoved off and took his excessively nautical self on back to Greensboro on the wings of a southeaster. Consequently, come Christmastime of 1980, which was this past Christmastime, Mr. P. Merriman Bledsoe had not succeeded in relieving himself of the Pettigrew property and Mr. Ellersby had not succeeded in disposing of it for him, so throughout the holiday season the mayor and Miss Pettigrew’s grassy lot sat unbought and unlocked at and entirely unoccupied except for the concrete front steps, which the city was apparently attempting to move through the sheer force of good intentions. The holidays themselves were unexceptional enough. I do not recollect that the fire department got Santa and his sleigh and his reindeer onto the courthouse roof with any sort of remarkable velocity, and I do believe the Methodist Christmas pageant was fairly much of an unblemished success except for a brief interruption when one of the shepherds tending his flock by night got tangled up in the hem of his raiments and fell onto the crooked end of his staff which took his breath temporarily but did not cause any lasting injury. On Christmas morning I gave Momma a new sugar bowl and gave Daddy a hat and Daddy gave Momma a green skirt and a new book to read in February and Momma and Daddy gave me a wristwatch and a pair of shoes and then Momma gave Daddy a little box wrapped in foil paper with a ribbon around it and Daddy untied the ribbon and tore off the paper and opened the box to find a clear plastic Zippo lighter with an orange baitfly in the tank of it. I expected him to be delighted and I suppose Momma expected him to be delighted also but Daddy was not delighted, could not even bring himself to pretend to be delighted, and I do believe at the very moment he flipped open the top and touched off the first flame Daddy’s enthusiasm for tobacco began to wear away.

  By the second week in January there was talk all roundabout town of a branch bank on the Pettigrew property. Some people said it would be First Citizen’s and some people said it would be Northwestern and most people said it would be Wachovia, but in February when the two men came in the green pickup truck they erected just inside the wrought iron fence a sizeable wooden sign which announced that the property that had gone from Pettigrew to Pettigrew to Bledsoe had subsequently come into the hands of the South Atlantic Finance Corporation, which Daddy said was not the same thing as a bank exactly, was not the same thing as a bank at all. So we waited for the South Atlantic Finance Corporation to stake out their office and pour their footings, but construction did not commence in February or March or April or May or June or all throughout the rest of the summer and on into September, and the city kept the property up from month to month, mowed the lawn, trimmed around the sign, sheered the shrubbery, and continued to intend to move the concrete front steps.

  Along about the middle of October, with the Pettigrew property still uncultivated and unerected and unbuilt upon our anticipation had died away to a considerable degree and so we were easily distracted by the news of a package that the depot was holding for a Mrs. Willa Ross Bristow. It had arrived in the underbelly of a Greyhound bus out of Charlotte, and according to Mr. Lancaster Petree of the Lawsonville Avenue Petrees who had gone to the terminal to fetch his wife’s sister’s husband off the same bus and who had seen the item for himself, it was not one of your regular negro to negro packages but was instead a stenciled crate that appeared to have originated with some official arm of the very governing body of these United States, Mr. Lancaster Petree put it. But before we could even commence any sort of earnest calculations as to just what official arm of the very governing body of these United States, we found out for certain from a fat hairy Simpson who went by A.E. or O.I. or U.A., two vowels anyway, and who had driven Aunt Willa to the Heavenly Rest in his Blue Bird cab. The double-voweled Simpson said it was a zoo box, said he had read the stencil and figured out it was a zoo box for himself even though it did not say zoo or box either anywhere on it but said instead zoological park from which the double-voweled Simpson had precipitated and distillated zoo box. Daddy said you could hardly hope to put anything past a Simpson.

  At first, the double-voweled Simpson had not especially objected to carrying a zoo box to wherever it was a negro might want to carry one, but he had planned upon carrying it in the trunk of his Blue Bird cab and not in the backseat, which is where he ended up carrying it, and he did not object straightaway because he did not smell anything straightaway but presently the aroma of the zoo box impressed itself upon the double-voweled Simpson and he attempted utterly unsuccessfully to get shed of Aunt Willa and get shed of her boxed up aroma, but at length wisdom came to him and he drove Aunt Willa to the Heavenly Rest with the most of his head laying out the side window which itself attracted some considerable attention even before anybody discovered it was Aunt Willa in the backseat with the late Mr. Britches in a crate beside her.

  The commander had agreed to a burial, had been paid for a burial, had actually been paid for a burial and a chapel service, but psychologically he was not prepared to receive a monkey corpse only a scant two years after he’d agreed to receive one. After all, the commander had figured the zoo would not send it to him anyway,
had figured they would throw it in a hole down around Ashboro and cover it up, but they did send it to him inside of a plastic bag inside of a wooden crate and even then the aroma drove the commander and Mr. Tally and Mr. Dunn and the double-voweled Simpson and Aunt Willa out of the parlor and onto the shaded front porch and Mrs. Ida Joyce Hinkle, who stayed behind for a viewing, would probably have been killed by the stench if she had not been dead already. Of course the commander was bound and obligated to see to the monkey’s disposal; he had made an agreement and Aunt Willa still owned the receipt. And though not eager, the commander was willing to hold up his end of the bargain and would have too if not for the local uproar which set in once folks found out what manner of creature the commander was intending to hold services for. People generally did not want a chimpanzee eulogized where their mommas and daddies had been eulogized and where they themselves expected to be eulogized in the distant future. Of course the commander held that his was a nondenominational air-cooled chapel, but most people felt strongly that a monkey did not even qualify for nondenominationality, especially this monkey since it had not been in any way a Christian creature but had instead been a vile and excessively urinary animal, had in fact been a Hat out pagan beast, Mrs. Phillip J. King called it, and there was serious talk that a chimpanzee service in the nondenominational air-cooled chapel would probably be the final service ever held there. So the commander found himself in a tight spot with some specifications of the deceased on the one hand and a gracious degree of public outrage on the other, and after only a brief period of consultation and review, since the aroma was not in any way diminishing, the commander went ahead and yielded to the public outrage. The deceased had been dead near about two years, so her specifications did not hold the sway they had previously.

  The commander had been instructed to lay Mr. Britches away in a finely appointed child’s coffin, but for what he said were health reasons he cremated the monkey instead and filled up a ceramic jug with his ashes. Then the commander made the appropriate arrangements with the only man he could have made arrangements with, and the morning after Mr. Britches had arrived at the Heavenly Rest inside a plastic bag inside a wooden crate he traveled to Casper Epps’s Holy Jesus Chapel inside a ceramic jug inside a black Cadillac limousine. The service was to be held at two o’clock on the afternoon of October 17, 1981, which was a Saturday, and since word of the proceedings did not get much broadcast roundabout from the commander and from the commander’s employees and from the great preponderance of decent and God-fearing local people me and Daddy and Mr. Russell Newberry and Mr. Phillip J. King near about missed the funeral. In fact, by the time we got to the Holy Jesus Chapel all the chairs were taken and there was not much leaning space left either. Daddy said everybody who is nobody was there, and I guess that’s pretty much the truth of it. There weren’t any Benbows or Singletarys or Fraziers or Tullocks, not any white Tullocks anyway, but there was a scandalous load of everything else, and even with Casper Epps’s chapel expansion and renovation due to the stove explosion of the spring of 1970 elbow room among the mourners was passably scant.

  I do not believe Casper Epps had ever played to a full house before. I do not believe he had ever presided over any sort of official function either. But once he came out from a room off the kitchen in what looked like a white linen bathrobe, Casper Epps did not appear the least bit worked up on account of the genuine throng or on account of the special duty. Previously he had taken out what part of the wall between the kitchen and the living room the stove had not taken out for him, and before he passed directly off the linoleum and onto the hardwood he raised his finger and blessed that assortment of mourners who were leaning against the kitchen counter. Then he proceeded straightaway to the altar, which was nothing but an oak tressel table with a Bible and the bottled up monkey on top of it, and he waved his finger at the rest of us and blessed us also. Casper Epps had set aside his Uncle Bill Collier’s upholstered chair for the family, but Aunt Willa, who apparently had not held the monkey very dear, was not present at the Holy Jesus Chapel, so Casper Epps waved Mrs. Pearl Betts towards the upholstered chair and welcomed her to set her phlebitis down in it. However, Mrs. Pearl Betts, who was one of your more lowly Bettses, did not much appreciate all the commotion stirred up by a monkey in a jug, and as she made her way across the living room she gave Casper Epps a piece of her mind, told him he should worry himself with healing the sick and leave dead monkeys out of it, told him there was plenty enough suffering among regular people to keep him occupied from now on, told him she was in some considerable misery herself, told him he’d best toss that jugged up monkey on out the window and see to it, told him she had a son, Claude Laurance Betts jr., who’d come straight over and kick Casper Epps holy butt if he didn’t get back to his regular line of work, and then she sat down in the late Uncle Bill Collier’s upholstered chair and Casper Epps raised his finger and blessed her.

  Shortly thereafter the funeral commenced, or anyway I guess that’s what it was since the ceramic jugful of monkey ashes seemed to figure into the proceedings every now and again, but it was not one of your more clearcut ceremonies. I mean it was not all shot through with sobriety and Godliness like the funerals the commander usually put on at his air-cooled chapel. Actually there was very little about the monkey to it, and mostly the eulogy hit upon the highlights of Casper Epps life in preaching and briefly examined several of the more notable and miraculous episodes. We sang once that I recollect, but I do not believe I ever knew what it was we were singing, and we prayed any number of times, mediated mostly with some ecstatic shrieks thrown in every now and again for effect. And then towards the end, when we were all a little worn out and near about done in, Casper Epps raised his finger and said, “Bless this beast among the creatures that crawl and those that fly,” and he scooped up the jug in his arms, crossed the living room, and went out the front door with it. We had not been invited to follow him, had not been in the leastways encouraged to, but curiosity got the better of us and everybody except for Mrs. Pearl Betts and her phlebitis and Mr. Raymond Duggins, who had the excema on his forearms, followed Casper Epps out the front door and around the house to the sideyard. Two little Broadnaxes had been paid fifty cents to dig a hole and by the time Casper Epps got to it along with the rest of us there was still about twenty-nine cents worth to go, so me and Daddy and Mr. Russell Newberry and Mr. Phillip J. King and Mr. Wiley Gant leaned up against the late Bill Collier’s clapboard and Mr. Russell Newberry and Mr. Phillip J. King smoked Mr. Wiley Gant’s cigarettes while Daddy and me chewed gum. And once the hole was sufficiently wide and sufficiently deep to accommodate the jugful of monkey ashes, we all gathered at the graveside and listened to Casper Epps’s benediction, which was a wild and wholly incomprehensible animal itself, and then we watched him set the jug into the hole and kick some dirt in on top of it.

  Momma did not want to hear anything of the monkey’s funeral. She would not let Daddy speak of it at supper, would not let him speak of it in the house at all, so after we ate me and Daddy took to the porch and he sat on the glider and I sat on the front steps and we talked about the monkey and talked about Casper Epps and talked about the mayor and, at last, talked about Miss Pettigrew.

  “She’s gone two years now,” Daddy said. “Doesn’t hardly seem like it.”

  “No sir,” I told him. “It surely doesn’t.”

  “She was an odd creature, that one,” Daddy said, “an odd creature.”

  “I suppose so, Daddy,” I told him and picked at the top step with a stick.

  “I don’t guess she was made for this world,” Daddy said.

  “I suppose not, Daddy,” I told him.

  “It just never seemed to suit her, never seemed to suit her at all,” Daddy said.

  And I scratched at the step and did not bother to suppose one way or the other.

  “I mean, Louis, you have to bend some,” Daddy said, “you have to sway a little every now and again, don’t you know.”

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nbsp; And still I did not bother to do any supposing.

  “I mean, Louis, the world isn’t ever the same place it used to be. It’s a disagreeable and unfortunate fact, but Louis,” Daddy told me, “it is a fact.”

  “Yes sir,” I said, “I suppose it is.”

  And I guess that’s the truth of it. I don’t know. Anymore we hardly ever talk about Miss Pettigrew or the mayor, don’t ever talk about the monkey, and rarely have a word to say on the property since the city is still only intending to move the concrete steps and the South Atlantic Finance Corporation has yet to erect anything more lasting and permanent than a wooden sign. We do not worry much about Pettigrews at all anymore. Momma says there is no cause to dally in the past. Momma says we should forge ahead, break new ground, look to the horizon. Lately she is ever making the bravest sort of noise. Daddy figures it’s the fire and the monkey and the prospect of winter working on Momma all at once and together. He says she’s just whistling as loud as she can. But Momma has never much excelled in brave noises, and Neely is cold now and lifeless and near about at the end of another year. We have emptied the gutters and cleaned out the crepe myrtles and stacked all the screens in the cellar, and anymore when me and Daddy walk off our supper to the boulevard and back we wear our lined coats and our gloves and our fuzzy wool hats because the evening air is sharp and painfully cold and sometimes when the moon is out and the clouds blow free of the stars it seems to me you could swing a hammer against the night sky and shatter the whole business.