Traces of the Past

by Steve Laracy

  > CHAPTER 6

  THE FLAGG SISTERS

  Having nothing better to do, I took a stroll around Cordoba and get the lay of the land. This didn’t take long. I discovered the town is laid out in a grid consisting of ten streets, five each traveling north to south and east to west. As I have already mentioned, the streets which cross Main Street are First Street through Fifth Avenue. Starting from the west, the streets parallel to Main Street are named Pine Street and Maple Street on one side and Elm Street and Sycamore Street on the other. This is unusual since none of the trees named (nor any other trees) grow in Cordoba. These streets might be more accurately named Yucca Street, Yucca Street, Yucca Street, and Tumbleweed Lane. The only truthfully named street is Main Street since it is indeed the most traveled street in Cordoba.

  After surveying the town, my first stop was the general store to see if Sam had anything to report. She was behind the counter munching another bag of Planters. In between bites, she reported that Costello had wandered around town for about half an hour before walking down Elm Street to talk to the Flagg sisters.

  “They own the house across the street from Hilda and Frank,” Sam informed me. “He talked to the sisters for about five minutes and then went in the diner, and he’s been there ever since. I’ve been keeping an eye on the diner from over here, and he hasn’t left yet.”

  I complimented Sam on her investigative skills and asked her if the Flagg sisters would still be home at this time of day. She assured me they seldom went out and spent each day sitting on their front porch chatting with passersby. I decided to pass by and have a talk with the sisters myself and maybe case out the Bluff-Blaine residence while I was at it.

  Several minutes later I was walking down Elm Street and came across three elderly women sitting on a swing on the front porch. The swing was wide enough for all three but a little high off the ground, so the ladies had to reach on tiptoes to swing back and forth, which they were doing without speaking. As I approached, the first thing I noticed was that the Flagg sisters, for that was them, were appropriately named. The three ladies, in their eighties at least, were seated side by side as I mentioned, and from left to right, the color of each sister’s hair was red, white, and blue. The first sister’s hair was dyed bright red, the second a natural white, and the third was a wispy light blue like you see on some elderly women.

  The ladies, seeing me coming, tilted their heads and leaned forward in unison like birds on a telephone wire. As I moved closer the heads turned, again in unison, to stay focused on my movements.

  “Hello, ladies, how are we doing today?” I shouted as I grew nearer.

  “We’re doing fine,” said the first, followed by “fine” from the second and another “fine” from the third. I soon learned that every sentence from one of the sisters, who were named Ruth (red), Mabel (white), and Jewell (blue), was either repeated or finished by one or both of the others.

  “This is quite a momentous day,” Mabel said—it was her turn to speak first—followed by Jewell saying, “because you’re the second stranger we’ve met today and,” back to Ruth, “we normally don’t have any strangers around here at all.”

  I introduced myself and explained why I was in town and inquired about the first stranger.

  “Just a little while ago, there was a large Italian man named Abbott.”

  “No, it was Bracomonte.”

  “I think it was Turley.”

  Back to Mabel. “He was very nice and seemed very interested in the people across the street.”

  “But we couldn’t tell him very much.” (Jewell)

  Back to Ruth, “Because we seldom see them. Occasionally, late at night or early in the morning, we hear them talking.”

  “Or arguing,” Mabel interjected.

  “Not that we’re snooping,” finished Jewell.

  I looked across the street. Frank and Hilda’s house was located across the street from the Flagg house. The landscape sloped up from Elm Street to the center of town, so Frank and Hilda’s house stood above the Flagg house and the diner was higher still. I noticed that the sisters had an unobstructed view of both.

  I was then offered a glass of lemonade, which they kept on a table on the porch for people who passed by, I think as an inducement for them to stay a while longer. Since I had nowhere else to be for a while and the temperature was at least ninety-five degrees in the shade (if there was any shade in this town), I accepted the offer.

  For the next half hour, I sat on the porch steps and drank lemonade while the Flagg sisters rocked and told tales of their lives. None of the three had ever married. Ruth was the adventurous one and had traveled around the country in her younger days. She spoke fondly of an affair with a riverboat captain on the Mississippi and of drinking absinthe in the French Quarter with shady characters, both black and white, who had duels in the bayou and sometimes fought each other with Bowie knives while she sipped her absinthe. The other two sisters dismissed these stories as pure balderdash.

  Mabel had found religion and had been attending the church down the street three times a week since childhood. The church, as best as I could make out, was a nondenominational church that had been around since the town was founded in the 1850s and was named the “Friendly Church for the Salvation of All Souls, Including Gunslingers and Indians.”

  Jewell had a full-time job keeping Ruth and Mabel on the right track and making sure the lemonade was made every noontime.

  As I wrapped up my visit, I inquired about the intruder they had seen behind the diner. All three sisters agreed they had only seen the prowler once but did not get a good look at the face. They also couldn’t be sure if it was a man or a woman.

  “We can’t see so good anymore at our age.”

  “Not that we would snoop.”

  “But we haven’t seen any strangers around except you and that nice Mr. Benedetto.”

  “O’Boyle!”

  “Turley!”

  Then three voices in unison, “Come by tomorrow for some lemonade.”

  I told them I would try to return tomorrow if sufficiently recovered from today’s visit and went on my way.

  As I left, I thought the poor vision the three ladies possessed may have been enhanced by the telescope I had seen in the front attic window of their house. The telescope seemed to be pointing in the direction of the diner.

  > CHAPTER 7

  THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON

  After my head had cleared, I wandered over to the gas station to see Hector and determine if there was any progress on the car. Hector confirmed that my car had been towed to Bell City. Other than that, he had no updates. I asked where I might find Ben Nye, and Hector suggested I try the municipal building, which was just down the block.

  “That’s where the mayor’s office is,” Hector informed me, “but he might be there anyway.”

  The municipal building was a small square brick building with a sign out front informing me that in addition to the mayor’s office, the building also housed the sheriff’s office, jail, tax collector, and sanitary commission.

  I walked in and headed down the corridor to the mayor’s office, which a sign told me was in the back of the building on the left. On the way I passed the sheriff’s office and jail on the front left, both of which appeared to be empty, as did the tax collector and sanitary commission offices on the right.

  No one was in Ben’s office either. I waited a few minutes, but when Ben didn’t return, I decided to try to catch him at the diner. As I was passing the sheriff’s office, I heard faint sounds coming from inside. Entering the office, I found it empty and proceeded to the cell in the rear. The cell door was open and the cot in the cell was occupied by Ben Nye, snoring. I shook him to wake him up. After he got his bearings, he brought me back to his office, showed me to a seat opposite his desk, and offered me a cup of coffee from a pot on a table in a corner of the office. I turned down his offer and asked how he liked being mayor of a bustling town like Cordoba.

  He
laughed and said, “It’s not much of a town, but then I’m not much of a mayor either. The mayor of Cordoba has few duties other than riding in the first car of the St. Patrick’s Day parade. This is a small honor seeing as it’s the only car in the parade.

  “But I can’t complain,” he continued. “I get by okay. I don’t get paid much, but there’s nothing to spend money on around here anyway. And I get to take plenty of naps,” he said, motioning toward the sheriff’s office.

  “Life around here is slow,” Ben continued, “and we may be twenty or thirty years behind the times, but the people are friendly and the beer is even cold over at the tavern. You should consider settling out here and get away from the rat race. You might live a lot longer out here without the pollution and temptations of the city.”

  “No thanks,” I replied. “I wouldn’t live any longer—it would just seem longer. No offense, but I plan on escaping this time capsule as soon as my car is fixed.”

  “Suit yourself,” Ben said. “What’s the latest on the car?”

  I told him the car had been towed and that it would take a few days to fix.

  “Which reminds me,” I said, “I better pick up a few items since I planned this as a day trip. Is there a store in town where I can buy some things?”

  “Nothing in Cordoba, unless you want to pick up a pair of overalls and some socks down at the general store. There’s a department store in Bell City where you can get what you need. You can borrow my car. It’s parked right out front and the keys are in the ignition. You can check on the progress of your car while you’re there.”

  I took Ben up on his offer and headed out of town in the opposite direction from which I arrived. The trip took about twenty minutes, and I would describe the scenery on the way but there wasn’t any.

  Bell City was what San Diegan’s would consider a backwater town and what the citizens of Cordoba call the big city. It had a movie theater that surprisingly wasn’t showing a 1940s gangster movie, a few restaurants, and a small department store, where I purchased enough clothing and toiletries to hold me over for a few days. I had passed Harry’s Service Center on the way in, so I backtracked and checked in with Harry. He confirmed through closed lips that had a cigarette dangling from one side that my axle would need replacing and that it would take at least three days and maybe a week to get the parts and do the job.

  With that depressing news, I headed back to Cordoba. I returned Ben’s car and walked to the boardinghouse to freshen up. I found Felicity in the parlor reading. Something that smelled good cooked in the kitchen. There was no one else around, so I went up to my room, dropped off my purchases, and headed off to the shower. This turned out to be a bath since the bathroom did not include a shower. I soaked in the tub awhile, got dressed, and went downstairs for supper, which was just about ready. By this time Felicity was busy in the kitchen. There was no sign of Silas Collins or Dobbs, but Costello was in the parlor reading a magazine. I took one of the easy chairs and asked him how his day went.

  “Not bad,” he said. “I stopped by and talked to the old sisters who live behind the diner—they insisted I come back tomorrow for more lemonade—and then went to the diner for some dessert after Felicity’s excellent lunch. I talked awhile with the girl Samantha at the general store. I seem to see her all over town,” he said with a smile.

  Before he could continue, Felicity came in and informed us that supper was served.

  Tonight’s menu included pot roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, succotash, and homemade biscuits. A man Felicity introduced as Fred Dobbs came in and joined us a few minutes after we started and apologized for being late. He had been working at Indian Charlie’s ranch and lost track of time. He was a tall, well-built black man of about sixty or seventy with a full head of graying hair and a crooked nose and swollen ears that gave away his former profession.

  I inquired about the work he did at the ranch.

  “Indian Charlie has a ranch a mile out of town where he grows miniature cactus, you know, the kind that are several inches high, the kind they sell in flower stores,” Dobbs said. “He has a few acres of cactus growing that I help pick. It’s not hard work except on your feet unless you’re careful. Indian Charlie, he doesn’t mind. He walks around barefoot, and he’ll step on one of those little cactuses and just pull the spines out of his feet, but me, I wear work shoes and those little needles still get through to my feet so I can hardly walk.”

  The rest of the supper transpired with little conversation as everyone was busy eating. When dinner was finished, Dobbs excused himself to go upstairs and clean up and soak his feet, Costello returned to his magazine in the parlor, and Felicity and I headed to the kitchen to do the dishes. This time I washed, and she dried.

  “I’m thinking about heading over to the tavern in a little while to soak up some of the local color and a few beers, if you’d care to join me,” I offered.

  “Thanks for the invitation, but I promised Sam I would be over later to play games with the family. You’re welcome to join us if you like.”

  I begged off—as much as I enjoy a rousing game of Monopoly—since I wanted to check out the tavern and the local folks.

  > CHAPTER 8

  THE CORDOBA TAVERN

  The weather had cooled in the early evening as I strolled down Main Street toward the diner that was now a tavern. There were few people on the street, but I met Phil Childers, who had just locked up the store and was crossing the street to enter the tavern.

  “Good evening, Phil,” I said when we met on the sidewalk out front. “I was surprised to see you locking the door to the store. Nobody seems to lock anything around here.”

  “Not much crime to speak of,” Phil said. “I lock it more to keep it from blowing open if the wind picks up. The door jamb is a little warped.”

  As we entered the tavern, I noticed the diner sign had been removed from the door. Instead, there was a knotty pine signpost stuck in the dirt to the left of the entrance with the words “Cordoba Tavern” burned into the wood. Inside, everything looked the same but different. Same counter, same seats, same booths, but the atmosphere seemed to have changed. On the counter bowls of peanuts and pretzels had replaced bowls of fruit. A few bottles of low-end liquor had replaced the boxes of cereal on the shelves behind the counter. A couple of taps were installed in the middle of the counter. The tap handles did not have names, so I couldn’t tell what kind of beer it was, but judging from my overall impression of the town, I assumed the two taps represented leaded and unleaded.

  Ben was seated at the same spot as earlier in the day, close to the jukebox. To his left was an elderly gentleman, at least seventy. At the other end of the bar, Silas Collins was drinking a beer and talking to an old-timer dressed in dusty old clothes and wearing Jed Clampett’s hat. There were two somewhat younger couples occupying a booth in the front of the tavern. The only other person in the bar was the bartender, who I assumed was Frank Blaine. He was clean-shaven with a weathered face and was as thin as Hilda Bluff was stout. I still hadn’t discovered what their relationship was, but Frank was the Jack Spratt of the pair.

  Frank’s cadaverous facial features sort of resembled Hilda’s if you added a few pounds of flesh around them, so I thought it was more likely that they were brother and sister than husband and wife. Of course, I thought they could be unrelated. My wonderings were interrupted when Ben motioned for us to join him.

  Phil and I took the two seats to the right of Ben, with me in the middle. After we were seated Ben introduced me to the man on his left.

  “This is Doc Fletcher, the best doctor in town.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Doc said. “As you can guess, I’m the only doctor in town, and I don’t get a great deal of business. How do you like our town?”

  “Don’t ask him that, Doc,” Ben jumped in before I could answer. “He’ll be ready to leave as soon as his car is fixed.”

  I corrected him. “I was going to say, ‘A little slow for my taste, but I like the
people.’”

  “Met anybody interesting since you been in town?” asked Phil.

  “Well, I met the Flagg sisters this morning.”

  “How was the lemonade?” asked Phil. “You know, they make it fresh-squeezed every day. Throw away what isn’t drunk by the end of the day, so they don’t disappoint their next day’s guests.”

  “The lemonade was very good…”

  Doc interrupted. “They’ve lived here all their lives. I’ve been treating them since we were all young.”

  “I got the impression that Ruth had traveled a bit,” I said.

  “Oh, she has, she has,” Doc replied, “but only in her mind. She’s never been further than Bell City, but her imagination has taken her to many strange and exotic locations. Still, can you think of a better way to travel? It’s cheap, you don’t need a passport, and you don’t have to pack.”

  “I guess you have a point there,” I said. Perry Como sang “Catch a Falling Star” on the jukebox. “The only other people I’ve met are little Samantha and Felicity and the roomers at the boardinghouse.”

  Ben smiled and winked at me. “That Felicity would be a real catch for any man. She’s pretty and cooks great and has a nice little business in the boardinghouse. Plus, there’s not much competition in these parts.”

  “I guess you’re right, if a man wanted to settle down, but that’s not me,” I said, trying to convince myself as well as Ben since I had been having the same thoughts.

  “Me, I’m a confirmed bachelor,” said Ben, “but take Phil here; he’s been married to his Phyllis for years and never had a fight.”

  “Best ten years of my life,” said Phil.

  “Oh, you’ve been married ten years?” I asked.