by Charles Rose
“You don’t have to picket the city. You are the city, Chief Cosgrave.”
“No you’re wrong, I’m not the city. I don’t even speak for the city. I only attempt to enforce its laws. Now our mayor, he speaks for the city of Ott. Do you want to know what he’s been telling me? What the city of Ott has been telling me?”
The chief pushed his face out into the aisle. They might, by putting their heads together, through some telekinesis Flo could only hope for, lift Ray’s school bus right out of the backyard, get the job done themselves, solve the problem. She was wondering who would take over the steering wheel, the chief or herself, if the bus did fly away.
“All right, you don’t want to know. You don’t care to know, I can understand that, but I’m going to tell you anyway. I’ve been in to talk to the mayor and believe me he isn’t happy. He doesn’t like this picketing going on all day in front of the city building. He can see it from his office. He tells me we have this weirdo out on the streets of Ott. I tell him he issued the permit, he didn’t have to issue a permit. He tells me this has to stop. He tells me something has to be done.”
Flo put on a smile she knew wouldn’t work, “I wish I could help you, Chief Cosgrave, but Ray’s going to do what he’s going to do. Nothing I say will stop him.”
The chief got up from his seat. “If you don’t mind I’d like to ask you something. How can you live with a man like that?”
“Sometimes I don’t know how I do it. But I’m doing it. That’s all that matters.”
Both of them knew there was nothing more she could say to Chief Cosgrave.
One cloudy afternoon in late October while Ray was picketing in front of the city building a stoop-shouldered man with floury white hair stepped out from behind the water fountain, none other than Homer Brown, who did a column for The Columbus Sentinel, “Out and Around with Homer Brown.” Homer Brown asked Ray to have a cup of coffee with him, across the street at the E-lite cafe.
After parking his sandwich boards outside the E-lite, Ray ordered apple pie a la mode and coffee. Like Ray, Homer Brown ordered the E-lite way, even though he lived in Columbus, Georgia, not Ott, Alabama. At the E-lite, people ordered by numbers and letters. Flo Mayfield thought the E-lite way was hilarious, this just couldn’t happen anywhere else. Number one signified country fried steak, two, pork chops, and so on. The letters referred to side dishes. So country fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and slaw would go—I’ll have a one, an A, and a C. The pies were from G to L, apple pie a la mode was L v, meaning ice cream, vanilla naturally. Coffee was X, iced tea was Y, diet Pepsi came last, a Z. Ray ordered an L v with X and Homer ordered an H for cherry pie and an X i for decaffeinated coffee. Homer’s column had dealt with the E-lite’s outmoded way of ordering food and drink, its hidebound waitresses who wouldn’t put pencil to order pad unless you ordered your dinner the E-lite way. But with the waitress today, Homer Brown had on his best-behavior smile, his chin propped on one pudgy white hand, elbow on the checked oilcloth. He ordered an H, an X i. and got out his notebook and pencil.
Homer Brown asked Ray why he had to violate the law? Stirring sugar into his decaf, Ray said, “All you have to do is read my sandwich boards. A man’s home is his castle.”
“Most men don’t live in a school bus, Ray. A school bus happens to be a vehicle. You know the law here, living in vehicles is prohibited within the city limits.”
Ray’s eyes narrowed. “A castle could just as well be a vehicle as not. At one time certain movable siege towers very similar to castles were used to assault castles and walled cities.”
“I wouldn’t call siege towers castles.” Homer Brown scraped back unruly hair over his ears without stirring up a floury white dust. “If I were to write in my column ‘a man’s home is his siege tower’ how long do you think I’d keep my job?”
“That depends on your readers. They might realize a man could live in a siege tower.”
“Not my readers, not in a blue moon. I’ll tell you what would happen. I’d be out on my ass. I mean pronto. So I don’t write obvious falsehoods such as a man’s home is his siege tower.”
Ray tilted his eyes toward what the waitress was setting down on the oilcloth in front of Homer Brown, Homer Brown’s cherry pie—that was an H. The cherries must have come out of a can. Ray’s mother had no use for canned cherries, and since cherries weren’t plentiful in Ott she drew the line at making cherry pies. Ray’s apple pie tasted good to him. So did the apple pie filling. The pie crust, however, was hard to chew. His mother could bake a fine apple pie. Her pie crust would melt in your mouth, may the good Lord keep her wherever she was.
Homer Brown laid his pencil aside. “Let me ask you one thing, Ray. Some people might think you’re crazy. I don’t, but some people might. So let’s not talk about castles. Let’s talk about why you’re doing this. Aren’t you doing this because Chief Cosgrave is getting on your case? A man living in the city has every right to live in a school bus as long as it’s on his property. It shouldn’t matter to the community. He could be living in a dump truck and the city of Ott shouldn’t interfere. But Chief Cosgrave, he’s interfering. Am I making sense to you, Ray?”
“A man should be able to live where he wants, in the structure he wants to live in. I tried to tell Chief Cosgrave that.”
Homer Brown looked down at the cherry pie he knew he was not going to eat.
After Homer Brown’s story came out in The Columbus Sentinel, people showed up in front of city hall to cheer Ray on. They wrote letters to the Ott Weekly Bulletin defending Ray and excoriating Chief Cosgrave. For the first time, Ray felt he wasn’t alone. His sandwich boards felt light on him; he carried them up and down the long hill with the certainty that his cause would prevail. He’d take his sandwich boards to the police station. He was “standing tall” Homer Brown wrote of him in “Out and Around with Homer Brown.” “Avoiding public scrutiny” was what Homer Brown said Chief Cosgrave was doing.
Early in November, waiting for Flo at the E-lite, Ray was reading what Homer Brown had written about him in his column. Ray had come in without his sandwich boards, parked outside like a miniature A-frame house. He had just ordered apple pie a la mode when Chief Cosgrave sat down across from him, belt and holster creaking. The chief pushed his craggy face at Ray.
“I’m only going to say this once, Rackstraw. You won’t be seeing me again for awhile. But I’ll be keeping an eye on you. From now on you’ll be under twenty-four hour surveillance. That woman who’s living with you, we will also be watching her closely.”
That afternoon Ray went to his bandsaw and did a cutout of Chief Cosgrave. He set his chief cutout in the E-lite Cafe, did cutouts of columnist Homer Brown, the mayor, and Judge Popwell at the same table the chief was sitting at. Ray kept an eye out for unmarked police cars. Getting up at night while Flo was asleep, he’d go to the trailer and turn on the light. He’d turn the bandsaw on without using it.
He couldn’t sleep much anymore. He had dreams about his mother and Flo. “I had a dream about you last night. You were wearing a beautiful wedding dress. This wedding was something special,” Ray said to Flo one day. “You were kissing me in your wedding dress and you were everything that a man can desire. But my mother had run off again. She never did that when she was alive, but now that she’s dead she does it. She runs off and comes back again and I never know where she’s been.”
In some of his dreams it was Flo who ran off. Flo ran off and had sex with other men. When Ray thought of his dreams about Flo, he couldn’t eat his pie a la mode. He let it sit in front of him, on the plate.
“If you don’t want to eat it, I’ll eat it,” Flo said.
In another dream, Ray was driving his first car, following his mother’s school bus. It kept speeding up, so he had to too. He stayed behind it all the way through town and back again, back to his father’s house. He saw the caution lights come on, then the red lights, the
stop arm shoot out.
It was a cold night, the electric heater was on but it wasn’t putting out much heat. Ray was sitting up on the mattress and box springs near the back end of the school bus, directly under the glass bubble overhead. Flo imagined Ray unbolting seats in the school bus. She saw a seat on his back as Ray staggered down the aisle toward the door, Ray having done that not for her but for his mother, so his mother could lie down in this bed. Flo pulled her side of the blanket up to her neck.
“I have a right to live,” Ray was declaring to Flo, “wherever I choose. With whoever I choose. Don’t you see, I can’t run away from this.”
The electric heater had a burnt toast smell. She should ask Ray to do something about it, but why do that, why bother? “We’ve had this conversation before and it always ends up getting nowhere.”
“When this is over, I promise you, we’ll leave. We’ll shake the dust from Ott, Alabama. I’m only asking for my day in court.”
“What you’re asking for is a jail sentence. What you’re asking for is losing me.”
“Well you know I don’t want that to happen.” Ray pulled his side of the sheet up to his chest and turned his face up toward the bubble. Flo listened to him talk to the sky, not her. “You’re wrong, Flo, dead wrong. I know I don’t belong here in Ott. I belong in Portland, Oregon, with you. You know while I was with you out there I didn’t think I would ever come back here.”
The moon was moving overhead, Ray’s full moon, for him only.
“But I did come back. I had to.”
“She died on you, Ray. You can’t bring her back.”
“Not all of her died on me. Some of her is right here in this bus.”
“I know you believe that, Ray. I couldn’t feel that way about my mother.” The moon moved on to the next panel. “When a woman dies, she dies.”
“That’s what I thought myself. I thought nothing of her would move again. I never thought she’d be with me again.” Flo knew what was coming next, what had happened before the burial, on the way to the cemetery. The hearse had to stop for a school bus. It had held up a long line of cars. “It was what my mother would have wanted. She could have been driving that school bus herself.”
“Well she wasn’t. You told me a man was driving.”
“It was a man driving the school bus. But my mother might have arranged for a man to be driving it. She would have if she’d been able to.”
“Things like that can’t be arranged. They are accidents, Ray. Just accidents.”
“I know. But it made me feel better. I kept seeing her like I used to when she wasn’t just my mother. She was who she was when she drove a school bus. Who she really was, not what she was to me.”
Flo felt her stomach knot up. She didn’t know what to say to Ray anymore. Ray had crossed some wide river, too wide for her to see him clearly. She saw a figure on the other shore, but it wasn’t the Ray she had known. Yet she let Ray make love to her, tracing ovals on his chest afterwards until his eyes closed and he went to sleep.
She got up and smoothed out her skirt, draped a skimpy fringed scarf over her blouse. If Ray woke up he wouldn’t look for her. He’d wait for her to come back even if he had to wait all night.
Flo parked the panel truck across the street from the E-lite Cafe, in front of Rusty’s Oyster Bar. She went in and found a table. The men playing pool didn’t stop their game, but she knew they were staring at her.
She was sitting with her back to the door, so she didn’t see Chief Cosgrave come in. He was wearing his uniform. His holster creaked when he sat down. He offered to buy her a glass of white wine, and she accepted; she took what was offered her.
“We have things to talk about, Flo.”
Chief Cosgrave pulled a newspaper clipping out of his wallet, “Out and Around with Homer Brown.” Reading through it, she felt he must have been carrying it around for a week, for the print was creased where he’d folded it. She handed the clipping back without a word, and he put it back in his wallet. “This can’t go on. I’m not putting up with anymore of this shit.”
“I told you, Ray won’t change his mind.”
“Then we’ll have to change it for him.”
The chief’s big thumb went into his shirt pocket. A small bag swayed on a drawstring. “If I find this in Ray Rackstraw’s possession, he’ll have to start seeing things my way.”
The chief put the bag on the table, waiting for Flo to pick it up. She heard the crack of pool balls breaking. “I wouldn’t ever do that to Ray. Not for you, not for anybody.”
The chief’s hands were heading her way, don’t you force me, don’t think you’re scaring me because I’m not going to play your game. “You listen to me carefully. If Ray doesn’t see things my way, there’s a certain lady I know who might find herself in a lot of trouble. You’re one of the little fish in my net. I can throw you back. Or I can keep you.”
Chief Cosgrave took her by the wrists and laid her hands palms up on the table. She felt thumbs pinning her wrists flat. “I got news for you little missy. Where you’re going, you won’t wear your hair long. You’ll be strip-searched, they’ll give you a jumpsuit like all the others have, you won’t be wearing any scarves, and you won’t get no white wine to drink either.” She felt the chief’s thick thumbs boring into her wrists. “Where you’re going, you won’t be like you are now. So who’s it going to be? You or Rackstraw?”
Flo gripped the bag in her hand. She was free to go now, because it’s you chief, only you, and if you ask me nice I’ll do my ovals on you, on your belly, wherever you want me to, just “please I have to be going now. You hear me, I’ve got things to do tonight.”
Thumb and forefinger on his whistle, the chief raised it but didn’t blow it at her. “You go on now, little missy,” he said quietly. “I’ll be talkin’ to you. I’ll be in touch.”
A light was on in the bathroom window. Mason Rackstraw was brushing his teeth. What was on his mind Flo didn’t want to know. He must have seen her drive into the backyard. He might be thinking she’d drive off in Ray’s panel truck. Flo saw a cloudy water glass raised in the window to the toast of the town, Flo Mayfield. Flo wrapped her scarf around her shoulders tighter. Then getting out of the panel truck, she followed five extension cords to the trailer door.
The overhead light bulb had burned out so she had to find her way to the toilet in the dark. Once there she pulled the chain on another bulb that worked. The seat was loose but that wouldn’t matter anymore. Ray could wiggle the seat with his skinny butt, or put in a new seat, or would that take up too much of his valuable time?
She set her handbag down and tinkled. She stood up and pulled her panties up, smoothed her skirt out, readjusted her scarf, dug deep into her handbag for the drawstring, pulled the small bag out like a tampon you need in a hurry, held the small bag over the toilet bowl, dropped it in. She flushed the toilet. She left the light bulb on so she could find her way out. She followed a trail of extension cords to the school bus, climbed in across from the driver’s seat. Ray was sleeping like a baby in the back of the bus.
She packed her suitcase; some items she would have to leave behind. When she finished she bent down over Ray’s closed eyelids and gave him one final kiss on his left eyelid. She couldn’t risk kissing his right eyelid, or the lips she had kissed so many times. She left him a note. Please don’t wait for me to come back because I’m not coming back to this shit hole.
The lights were off in Mason Rackstraw’s windows as Flo drove away in Ray’s panel truck.
Some of the things Flo had left behind Ray took with him to the trailer. She had left a hairbrush beside the driver’s seat, miscellaneous items in a seat near the back of the bus—Bic razors she shaved her legs with, a brass bracelet a little too large for her wrist, two photographs of them in Portland, in the rose gardens of Washington Park, holding hands on Pioneer Square. She left her thrift s
tore shirt with its dirty beige diamond lettered woman at work. He would have kept these items in the school bus but he knew Flo wasn’t coming back. So he moved himself and the bed out of the school bus and made room for the bed in the trailer workshop. He put the hairbrush, the bracelet, and the photographs in an empty shoebox without a lid, and set it at the foot of the bed. He left the razors on the seat near the back of the bus. The thrift store shirt he draped over the steering wheel of a school bus that wasn’t going to run anymore.
Late one Sunday night Ray was cutting out school bus number twenty. His fingertips pushed the sheet of plywood into the blade of the saw. He had to concentrate, or lose a finger. When he finished, he turned off the bandsaw. Ray kept his eyes on the cutout. He would finish it, paint it, mount it. He would put it in with the other school buses, in the parking lot of his little school, at various points along the routes.
Mason Rackstraw had a bottle stashed somewhere in the house, but he hadn’t brought it out here with him. He stepped over the shoebox at the foot of the bed and ran his fingers along the bandsaw’s teeth. “I came out here to tell you I’m going to report a stolen vehicle.”
“I don’t want the police involved.” Ray moved a schoolboy getting off of a bus outside the cone of the light on his father’s bald head. “And I’d appreciate it if you stayed out of this.”
“You can’t collect on the policy on a vehicle that hasn’t been stolen.”
“That truck is just as much Flo’s as mine.”
“The title is in your name, Ray. That means you’re the owner.”
“Titles mean nothing to me. They’re legal documents, nothing more.”