by Stan Hayes
“Huh?” grunted Buster, swiftly completing the process of swallowing a third of a bottle of Miller High Life. “Th’ race cor? Jus’ fine. Jus’ finished th’ paint job in time for th’ parade; th’ motor’s still tore down, waitin’ for Smokey ta finish th’ portin’ an’ valve work. We’ll get ’er buttoned up next week.”
“It looks right fast just sittin’ on th’ trailer,” said Fred Marsh. “What’ll she do?”
“Geared fer Dahlin’ton, I figger one-twenny an’ change,” Buster said as he took meat from the large plate of barbeque that sat in front of him to build a sandwich. “We’re lucky Hudson makes a set ’a rear-end gears that’ll let us run that fast. Ya cain’t run nothin’ but factory parts in this showroom-stock division, that they’re callin’ Grand National now. Only thing they let us do is put in a roll bar, take out th’ back seat an’ weld a plate onta the riit front wheel to keep th’ lug nuts from pullin’ slap through it. Otherwise, that’s th’ same Hudson Commodore you could be drivin’ down Lee Street tomorra, Fred. We got a tan an’ dark mahogany two-tone on th’ floor riit now that’d look real good in yo’ driveway.”
“Well, they’re right pretty, set down low like that, but I’m a Merc’ry man anyway, Buster. That forty-nine ’a mine out there-” Marsh swept an arm in the direction of the driveway- “-well, I reckon it might get close to one-twenty itself. I’ve got overdrive in it, see.”
Buster’s good-natured smile stayed in place. “Oh, ’at Mer’cry’s a fiine automobile, an’ I kin offer you a real good trade-in allowance on ’er, cause there’s quite few folks that appreciate them big ol’ heavy cars. But they’re mostly a lot older than you’n Jolene. I’d love ta see y’all drivin’ sump’m that says, ‘Hey! Sure she’s beautiful, but she’s engineered for tomorra!’ Thatair Step-Down Design that lets it hug th’ road th’ way it does? It also runs th’ frame rails outside’a th’ seats, so you an’ yer passengers’re protected from crashes in a way no other car kin touch.”
“I ’preeshate it, Buster, but I believe I’ll just keep on drivin’ that Merc’ry. I gotta think about what our customers expect from a man who they come to for counsel when they make some a’the most important purchases of their lives- wedding and engagement rings, sterling flatware- things that they’ll own all their life. I need to show ’em that I understand graceful, traditional livin’s important. On the other hand, I can’t have them thinkin’ that I’m gettin’ rich helpin’ ’em decide on these precious pieces ’a their future. I miit well be able to drive a Lincoln, but if I did it’d just be puttin’ th’ wrong idea in people’s heads.”
“Yep,” said Richard Terrell, “It’s amazing what people expect from the folks they trust. It’s the same way with life insurance. When people start thinkin’ about the things that’re really important in their lives, they want to be sure that they invest their money with people who respect it, and who know how hard they had to work to get it. They sure’s the world don’t wanta feel like their money’s buyin’ other folks’ fancy cars, or houses, or anything they can see them enjoyin’. Most peoples’ world’s just too serious for that.”
“That’s gotta makes Mose glad that he sells alcohol and entertainment,” said Serena. “Sooner or later, people gotta get some relief from all that earnest strivin’.” Her comment produced polite, but restrained, chuckles from the diners.
The mood thus lightened, Ruth Powell took the conversation in a new direction. “Have you started anything new, Ríni?”
“Not yet; I’ve done some test pieces and gotten them cast up over in Augusta at the foundry, but I haven’t come up with a subject that I feel like committing to for my first metal piece.”
“Well, I don’t suppose you can just order up some inspiration any time you feel like it,” said Ruth. “If people could do that, this world’d be a much different place from what it is.”
“Yes, it would. But its seems that the more I try to think of what I’d like to do, the less I come up with. Guess I’ll just have to wait for something to come to me.”
“When you do decide on something- how long do you think it’ll take to do it?” asked Richard Terrell.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” she said. Robert Fuller, the artist whose work got me interested in moving into metal, told me that it sometimes takes him as long as a thousand hours to do an original, and another three hundred to cast the image. “If it takes him that long, no telling what it’ll be for me.”
“Sounds like you could spend a year on it,” said Jolene. “It beats me how you can stay with it the way you do.”
“It might be different, Jolene, if I had a choice. For better or worse, though, I have to do it.”
Jolene, somewhat over-Juleped at this point, crinkled her nose slowly, deliberately, bringing her eyebrows together above the corrugated bridge. “Sounds like you’re talkin’ about feelin’ th’ call- th’ way people do about preachin’.”
Ríni’s laugh was closer to a cough. “I guess, in a way, if you mean that it’s something I can’t live without. You know how you feel when you’re pregnant, and toward the end you just can’t wait for that baby to stop foolin’ around and get on out? Well, I’ve been carrying this sculpture baby since I was eight, when somebody gave me some modeling clay to play with when I had my tonsils out. You know that baby’s coming out, and there’s nothing that you can do to keep it in, and you don’t know what it’s gonna look like, but you are by God ready to be done with th’ havin’ of it.”
“Yea-yuh,” Buster said, his voice spiraling upscale with the effort of avoiding falling backward, having leaned too far backward in his chair. “I’m startin’ to feel that way about ’at ol’ race cor.”
Ríni ignored Buster’s interjection, and the guffaws of appreciation that it prompted from a couple of males in the group. “Anyway, I’ve messed around with my art for a long time now, and moving into metal and larger figures means I’ve decided that I’m through messin’ around. The next piece I do’ll be like nothing I’ve ever done before, I know that much. I just wish I knew what it’s gonna be.”
“Well, honey,” Cordelia said, “I love that piece you did of me back in ’46. “An’ I don’t think my taste’s all that different from lots of other folks.”
“Thanks, honey. As Mose says from time to time, ‘From your mouth to God’s ear.’ ”
Dinner over, a couple of the women helped Mandy clear the table as the rest of the adults reclaimed their places on the porch. The kids had long since finished eating and returned to firecracker-punctuated conversation around their table. “Well, the kids seem to’ve had a good time,” said Richard Terrell, rocking placidly next to Moses and nursing an after-dinner Julep.
“Yeah,” said Moses, “they look like they’re ready to start all over. I’d like to bottle that energy and sell it to old farts like us.”
“I’ve never thought to ask you, Mose; am I right in assuming you don’t have any kids of your own?”
“Yes, you are. Just wasn’t in the cards for me to meet the right girl, I guess.”
“Well, I don’t suppose it’s too late for you and Ríni to think about it; the way Ricky tells me you and Jack get on like Gangbusters. I’ll bet you’d be a pretty good dad.”
Moses rocked gently, his eyes drifting out over the treetops. “I guess the biology’s still in the ballpark, and thanks for your thoughts about my potential as a father. But one of your assumptions is way off the mark.”
“What’s that?”
“You mean you wouldn’t like to hazard a guess, after what she had to say about what her art means to her?”
Terrell turned to look at him. “Oh. You mean- “
“Yep. She’s had all the children she intends to have. The number one thing on her mind’s being an artiste. A serious artiste.”
“Damn. I just assumed-”
“Well, I’m sorry to have to correct your assumptions, which you probably share with most of the rest of Bisque; but since she straightened a few of m
ine out years ago, I’ll do the same for you. No more marrying and no more chillun for Serena Redding Mason.”
“Mm, mm, mm. I’m sorry to hear that. I won’t say it’s a total surprise, but I am sorry. You guys seem like you really get along; now that I think about it, I guess I thought she was probably waitin’ for somebody like you.”
“Whattaya mean, ‘somebody like me?’ “
“Somebody from outside. And the farther outside, the better. Excuse me for saying so, but you must know by now that everybody in this town- every man and boy with a pulse, that is- has wanted to make love to her since she was a little girl. You know she married a Yankee.”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s just that Ríni doesn’t seem like she has much patience with home-grown nothin’.”
The clock in the hall chimed ten as Moses sat down next to Pap. They had the porch essentially to themselves; Buster, his regular snores counterpoint to the clock’s soft ticking, sprawled in a chair at the corner nearest the road. Cordelia had left to drive Pancho to the Bullets’ boarding house about an hour ago, and everyone else had left soon after. A chorus of crickets, frogs and mosquitoes celebrated the night’s dominance of the sparse yellow light from bug-repellant light bulbs. “Nice party,” said Moses.
“Yes indeed,” Pap observed. “Quite a group. Enjoy yourself?”
“Oh yeah. This’s my favorite holiday. I wanted to be out there with the kids shootin’ fireworks. If Gene Debs’d been here, we probably would’ve horned in on those little shitbirds.”
Pap chuckled. “I don’t doubt it. And a couple of rascally sailors’re the only grown folks they mighta tolerated.”
“Makes sense, if you consider us grown,” said Moses.
“Bullshit. Gene’s the only one of my offspring who has grown up. And if I didn’t think you were grown, you and I wouldn’t be in business together. Those kids just know you like ’em.”
“Hell. Who doesn’t like kids?”
“A lot of people, in my experience,” said Pap. “You can love people without likin’ ’em. I think that’s the way it is with most parents. Raisin’ kids keeps people so busy, sometimes lovin’s all there’s room for. Kids have a way of being unlikable a lot of the time. So do parents, as far as that’s concerned. Just because you’re livin’ in the same house doesn’t mean you have to like each other.”
“I’d never really thought much about it. Until I came to Bisque, I wasn’t around that many kids. Close up, I mean.”
“Well, you must have some talent in that department; otherwise my one grandchild wouldn’t have such a high opinion of you.”
“The feeling’s mutual. Jack’s a terrific kid.”
“Yes, he is. And I have you to thank for helpin’ him to be such a terrific kid. He’s the offspring of two people who have a very hard time thinkin’ of anybody but themselves. I don’t know if the time he’s spent with you has kept him from being that way, but it damn sure hasn’t hurt.”
“The pleasure’s been mine, Pap; make no mistake about that.”
“Well, it makes me surer than ever that askin’ you to throw in with me was the right thing to do. I want to see Jack do well in life more than anything else in the world; I was glad when Serena brought him back to Bisque. From what I’ve seen of New York, it’s ten times better to grow up here, to say nothin’ of that hellhole they were in out west.”
“New York didn’t suit you, huh?” Moses said, smiling.
“Not on short acquaintance. And the circumstances that got me there didn’t help any.”
“How’s that?”
“I went up there every now and then to see Jack and Serena. Mason, the pissant professor, wouldn’t set foot in Hamm County.”
“He wouldn’t? Why not?”
“Oh, he’s got some kind of hard-on for the South. God knows there’s plenty up there who do. The way she put it to me was, they agreed before they got married that she’d never ask him to come down here. The thought of that must not’ve bothered her too much at the time, because she agreed to it. Not that an agreement like that’s got any teeth in it, p’tickly when it wasn’t ever put on paper. She agreed, but she told ’im that she’d never go to his folks’ place, either. Good basis for a marriage, wudn’t it?”
“Where was it, anyway?”
“Masons’ place? Out on Long Island somewhere. Northport, sump’m like that. Way the hell out from Manhattan.”
“But not too far to commute from there,” said Moses as he got up to freshen their drinks. “I guess you’ve met his parents.”
“Oh yeah. A couple of times. “Decent enough people. He’s got sump’m to do with Wall Street. Tall, skinny guy, like his son, but wavy grey hair, like Tom Dewey’s. She smiled a lot, but looked like she was ready to cry half the time.”
“He their only child?”
“Yep. Guess they figured they got it right the first time.”
Moses laughed. “Guess it’s all in your point of view.”
Pap snapped his close-cropped gray head around to look Moses in the eye. “Then they pulled up way short, as far as I’m concerned. He and Serena were no good for each other, not as husband and wife. But they managed to give me one hell of a grandson, so I can’t say I’m sorry they got together. But Jack deserves more of a daddy than that guy’s willing to be. Three-four weeks a year; for your son,” he said with a short bitter shake of his head.
“And she’s going back, too,” Moses observed.
“I know. She’s bent on it. Just being an artist isn’t enough. She’s got to be a New York artist, if it harelips hell.”
“But not until Jack’s through high school.”
“Yeah,” Pap said, “she’s not that crazy. Guess the Watkins blood got thinned out enough so she doesn’t forget about what the boy needs altogether.”
“Well, granted they’re not living the typical Bisque life, but I’d bet my last buck that nothin’ comes before Jack for Ríni. Not even her art.”
“I’d like to think that’s true, but I remember somebody sayin’ sump’m like ‘the rich live as they choose; the poor live as they can; but rich or poor, artists live as they must.’ So I’m keepin’ an eye on the situation. I had the dubious advantage of livin’ with her mother, and I haven’t forgotten one damn day of that. You’ve probably heard the story, the nasty essentials anyway.”
“Well…”
“Rose was 41 when she died; May the sixteenth of ’27. She never gave up on gettin’ her old flame back, and nothin’ was gonna get in her way. She wanted Pete, and she was gonna have ’im, one way or another. Marryin’ his best friend was just a step in her strategy. So the poor boy from Chattanooga worked his ass off and made babies with a woman who loved somebody else, and I was just too damn busy, or dumb, to realize what I’d stepped into. I came from very little, and she never let me forget it. Till the day she and Pete went out and got themselves killed, all I knew was that if I made enough money, she’d have to respect me. Wish I’da known how little difference money really made in this little sprint for happiness that we call life.”
“Don’t tell your average linthead that,” said Moses. Caught flatfooted by Pap’s proffer of intimacy, Moses had no other immediate response. They sat in silence for a bit, these business partners from adjacent generations, each contemplating the onset of age and responsibility from his own perspective.
“I’ll be 73 this September,” he said after a while. “Reasonably well off and healthy as a horse; I reckon most people around here’d swap places with me. That only goes to show how far below the surface we go when we look at each other. Which is to say, not very.”
“Hell,” said Moses. “Not many get that far below the surface with themselves, let alone anybody else. Probably scare the shit out of most people if they did.”
“I’d love to see some more grandbabies,” Pap went on, ignoring Moses’ invitation to remain safely on the surface; “looks like it’s up to Buster if I’m goin’ to. And he hasn’t been in any big
hurry; one a’ these days somebody like that high-yaller baseball pitcher might do it for ’im.”
“You think they want children?”
“What the hell have they got otherwise? P’tickly in this town. Chillun’ an’ fuhbawl’s about it. Buster knew that when he came back here.”
“Came back?”
“From Mayretta. He got a job at th’ Bell bomber plant over there in ’42. They came back here when he got laid off in ’46; not that long before you showed up.”
“Marietta; that’s close to Atlanta, isn’t it?”
“Just north; twenty-five miles, sump’m like that. Anyway, I brought ’im back in with me. Put ’im over on the real estate side of th’ house this time; but when the Simmons boys put their Hudson dealership up for sale, he pestered me night and day ’til I agreed to back ’im so he could buy it. Good thing, too; he was drivin’ me crazy in the office, and he loves cars. Specially th’ racin’ side of it.”
“Yeah, you can tell that right off. And it oughta help his business, if he doesn’t go crazy with it. People- young people, specially- will probably wanta buy cars like the ones that win, assumin’ Hudsons win.”
“Well, you put yer finger on it when you said ‘if he doesn’t go crazy with it,’ “ Pap said. “Buster’s subject to go crazy with things that strike his fancy. Like C’odeelya.”
“Cordelia?”
“Th’ same. She who’s gettin’ ’er eyes screwed out by José High-yaller as we speak. Yet you see how much that worries Buster,” with a wave at the boulder of comatose protoplasm.
“Hell,” said Moses, “he’s in no shape to worry about a goddam thing right now. How is it that he don’t run ’er off, if she’s that prone to whorin’?”
“Hell,” said Pap. “That ain’t whorin’, not to her. I ’speck she’d just call it sportin’ around.”
“Sounds more like spurtin’ around,” ventured Moses. They awarded this witticism the appropriate burst of drunken laughter, loud enough to cause a momentary shift in Buster’s bulk.