Dairy Queen Days

by Robert Inman

  “It’s been a good while since I’ve seen Wardell. We really haven’t kept in touch. My fault, mostly”

  “He’s a troublemaker, Joe Pike.”

  Joe Pike nodded. “Wardell always did love a ruckus.”

  “Well, it’s more than a ruckus. He’s got people stirred up.”

  “How’s that?”

  “He’s appointed himself as the plant conscience. Always agitating. Safety this, safety that. The temperature’s too high, the pay’s too low.” She waved her hand and her voice rose an octave. “The light’s too dim, there aren’t enough exits. On and on and on! And I get no help!”

  “Then why don’t you sell it,” Joe Pike said.

  “What?!”

  “Find a buyer. People buy and sell businesses all the time.”

  Alma looked stricken. “I can’t believe you said that.” There was a long, painful silence and then she said quietly, “Yes, I suppose I can. You’ve never taken the slightest interest. Nobody but me.”

  Cicero chimed in again. “I heard Mister Leland say just before he died that not a damn one of his young’uns did what he wanted ’em to.”

  Alma’s jaw tightened. “I don’t believe my father ever used that word.”

  “What? Damn? Why, Mister Leland was known to offer up your mild expletive every once in a while. Now, I never heard him give anybody what you’d call your dog-cussing, but…”

  “HE NEVER USED THAT WORD!” Alma bellowed. The room rang with the echo of her outburst, like putting your head inside a bell while somebody struck it with a hammer. They all stared at her and she flushed with embarassment.

  The door from the kitchen swung open and Rosetta peeked into the dining room. “Y’all want something?”

  “You got any more of that squash casserole?” Cicero asked. Alma gave him a murderous look. “Never mind,” Cicero said. Rosetta disappeared.

  “Papa was not a saint, Alma,” Joe Pike said quietly.

  Alma turned her gaze on Joe Pike. “I don’t believe you have any right to judge,” she said. Again, that sadly desperate quality in her voice. And Joe Pike didn’t have any response to that.

  They all sat there in silence for awhile longer and then Alma composed herself and sat back in her chair. When she spoke again, her voice was quite calm. “I don’t expect you to have the same respect for the business I do, Joe Pike. But I don’t ever remember you sending back a check.” She waited for a response, got none. “And now with your extra financial burden, private care and all…”

  “Alma!” Now it was Joe Pike’s voice that shattered the air and stopped her dead cold. Trout looked up at his father, massive and bristling beside him, as angry as Trout had seen him in a long time Then Trout looked across at Alma and saw how she recoiled from his anger.

  “I didn’t mean…” she began, then broke off and they both stared at their plates for a long moment.

  And then Uncle Cicero said, “What’s for dessert?”

  Alma gave him a blank look. “Dessert?”

  “I’ve sort of had a yen for some peach cobbler lately.”

  “We haven’t had dessert in two years, Cicero. Not since your cholesterol flared up.”

  Cicero thought about that for a moment. “Well, it doesn’t keep a fellow from having a yen for peach cobbler.”

  Alma stared at Cicero and gave a slow shake of her head.

  Joe Pike stood up, pushing his chair back with a scrape. “Obliged for dinner,” he said. Trout stood up too.

  Alma looked up at him. “I don’t want to fuss,” she said quietly. “We never used to fuss at this table.”

  Joe Pike looked down at her. “Maybe we should have. All we did was agree with Papa.”

  “I just wanted a nice dinner. To celebrate your being home. You and Trout.”

  “Sure.”

  “Dinner was real good, Aunt Alma,” Trout said. And then something, he couldn’t have said what, made him add, “Why didn’t you invite Uncle Phinizy?”

  Aunt Alma turned beet-red. And Joe Pike hustled Trout of of there in a hurry.

  As they were going down the front steps, Uncle Cicero called from the front door, “Joe Pike, Rotary Club meets Tuesday at noon in the back room at the Koffee Kup.”

  * * * * *

  They were sitting in the car in front of the Dairy Queen, Joe Pike working on an Oreo Blizzard with crushed pecans on top and Trout a cone of vanilla. Aunt Alma might not serve dessert with Sunday dinner, but there was always Dairy Queen. It was one of life’s certainties. As Joe Pike would say, yea verily. They had the windows rolled down, the Atlanta oldies station on the radio. The Coasters: He’s a clown, that Charlie Brown. He’s gonna get caught… Trout had been raised on oldies. Most towns where they lived, you could get the Atlanta station. In Bainbridge, Joe Pike had installed a special antenna on a tall utility pole next to the parsonage to bring it in. While Trout’s friends were listening to Elton John, he got a steady dose of Clyde McPhatter, Elvis Presley, the Shirelles. Joe Pike and Irene danced in the kitchen, something called the Panama City bop. They were good dancers. Joe Pike, for his size, was nimble and graceful. Tiny Irene whirled like a doll in his hands. Then one day Trout realized that Joe Pike and Irene didn’t dance any more. But Joe Pike kept the radio tuned to the oldies station. Just in case, Trout thought.

  Joe Pike finished his Blizzard, scraping out the last morsel from the bottom of the cup with his red plastic spoon, reluctantly placing the empty cup on the dashboard. He had a look in his eye that told Trout he might go for another one with the slightest encouragement. Instead, he turned to Trout and asked, “Why did you do that?”

  “What?”

  “That remark about Uncle Phinizy.”

  Trout shrugged. “I don’t know. It just popped out, I guess. Are you mad?”

  “No.”

  “Aunt Alma likes to have her way, doesn’t she.”

  “Yes. But it’s not that simple.”

  Trout waited for Joe Pike to explain, but he didn’t. Finally Trout asked. “What am I supposed to do about Aunt Alma?”

  “I guess you’ll have to decide that for yourself,” Joe Pike said.

  He sat there staring at the Blizzard cup while Trout finished his ice cream. Maybe he’ll go for a chocolate shake, Trout thought. Or a banana split. Instead, Joe Pike said, “I guess I ought to be shot for what I did.”

  “What?”

  “Running off like that.”

  Trout didn’t know what to say. At a time like this, you could say too much. Or not enough.

  “I just want you to know it didn’t have anything to do with you, son.”

  Trout thought about that. He sort of wished it had.

  “I’ll tell you a piece of truth, Trout. God’s got me by the short hairs.” A long silence. “Last person did that to me was Coach Bryant.”

  “What did you do?”

  Joe Pike’s brow wrinkled, thinking back. When he talked about Texas A&M, about the Bear, he got an odd look at the corners of his eyes. You could see it if you knew where to look. Something like panic there, a nightmare made of heat, dust, agony. And pride, too.

  “There were times I wanted to kill him,” Joe Pike said finally.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I was afraid to.”

  “You feel that way about God?”

  Joe Pike pursed his lips, considering. Then he nodded. “Yep.”

  FOUR

  Joe Pike dropped Trout off in front of the high school shortly after eight the next morning.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” Trout asked.

  “Just go to the office and ask for Mr. Blaylock. He’s expecting you.”

  Trout had never started school alone before. Irene had always gone with him on the first day in a new town, even after the age at which having your mother appear at school under any circumstance was something akin to contracting leprosy.

  “Do I look okay?” he asked Joe Pike. He was wearing faded jeans, an old pair of Nike running shoes, a plain light bl
ue tee-shirt. He carried a half dozen dog-eared spiral binders, crammed with notes from his Ohatchee classes, and a couple of number two pencils.

  Joe Pike put on his mock-Scripture voice. “Give ye heed to the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, for they ask not, what shall I wear or what shall I eat…”

  “But they weren’t sixteen years old.”

  “You’ll do fine, Trout. Play it by ear. It’s just a week.”

  He stood at the curb watching Joe Pike’s Dodge pull away. Easy for Joe Pike Moseley to say. In his day, Joe Pike had belonged here in this aging, nondescript red brick building with its tall, sun-tainted windows. Joe Pike had never had to walk in cold turkey a week before the end of school with the kind of baggage Trout was toting these days. Trout felt like a man being paraded through town with a dead chicken around his neck. Naked.

  He walked up the steps, past the squat columns guarding the entrance, into the front hallway. Straight ahead, through open double doors, the auditorium -- rows of empty wooden-backed seats, a heavy dark blue curtain across the stage with gold letters across the top: MHS. To his left and right, wide hallways -- scuffed wooden floors, dingy pale green walls, flaking ceilings, open doorways from which he could hear the faint drone of voices. The place seemed weary.

  So did Mr. Blaylock. Over-sixty, bald, heavyset, with pale, watery eyes. Trout sat across from Mr. Blaylock’s desk while he flipped through the manila folder full of records that Trout had brought from Ohatchee. The top of the desk was bare except for a small note pad and pencil. The pencil was freshly sharpened, the pad empty. Trout thought Mr. Blaylock looked like he wanted to be ready to go home as soon as the bell rang.

  The room was sparse -- the desk and two chairs, a Georgia state flag on a stand in one corner, a glass-front bookshelf full of old textbooks, Algebra Made Easy, The American Century, Studies in Good Health. And perched atop the window air conditioner behind Mr. Blaylock’s desk, a trophy: a football player in full stride atop four columns, ball tucked under his arm, running to glory; a tarnished brass plate at the base:

  MOSELEY HIGH SCHOOL

  2-A STATE CHAMPION RUNNER-UP

  1953

  “Well,” Mr. Blaylock said. He closed the folder, opened a desk drawer, dropped the folder in, closed the drawer. His wooden swivel chair creaked in protest as he leaned back in it, making a little tent with his fingers under his chin, looking at Trout expectantly.

  Trout fidgeted. Finally he said, “I have trouble with math.”

  Mr. Blaylock gave a small flip of a hand, dismissing math. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. Certainly not this close to the end of school. Einstein couldn’t balance his check book.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The window air conditioner droned into the silence. Trout glanced up again at the trophy. Mr. Blaylock followed his gaze, turned with a squeak of the chair and looked up at the trophy, then back to Trout. “I suppose you know all about that.”

  “No sir.”

  Mr. Blaylock gave him an odd look. “Joe Pike hasn’t told you?” He reached out his hand toward the trophy, an almost reverent gesture. And then Trout understood. It was a sort of shrine.

  “An extra point,” Mr. Blaylock said.

  “What?”

  “Twenty-one to twenty. We missed the extra point. Best football game I ever saw in my life -- high school, college or pro. Except for that extra point.”

  “Well, it’s a nice trophy.”

  Mr. Blaylock looked up at the trophy again, studied the brass plate for a moment and frowned. “It says ‘Runner-up.’”

  “Was that my daddy’s team?”

  “Yes. It was your daddy’s team. That’s exactly what it was. If it hadn’t been, we woulda won maybe two games that year.”

  Then it dawned on Trout. “You were the coach?”

  Mr. Blaylock stared up at the ceiling for a long time, and Trout wondered if he had heard the question. Then all of a sudden Mr. Blaylock stood up, banging the swivel chair against the wall. He leaned over the desk toward Trout, eyes lit up, nostrils flaring. “Sometimes you look back on something that happened years before, and you think, ‘That was as good as it ever got.’ But I knew it right then and there. Damnedest football game in history. Ass-busting, bone-crunching, gut-sucking football, the way it was invented. Kids being helped off the field, coming right back. Halfback from Bainbridge played most of the game with his nose mashed over to one side of his face, dripping blood down the front of his jersey. Coupla my boys didn’t know their own names when it was over. I remember standing on the sidelines during that last quarter thinking, ‘Orzell Blaylock, this is it.’”

  Then he stopped, blinked, sat back heavily in his chair, gave a huge sigh. “And we missed the extra point. If we’da made the extra point, we’da gone to overtime. Ain’t no tie games in a state championship. And we’da whipped the sonsabitches in overtime. We had the momentum.” He stopped, mouth open, breathing heavily. And then he repeated softly, “We had the momentum.”

  “I’m sorry,” Trout said. It sounded pretty lame, but it was all he could think of.

  “Yeah.” Mr. Blaylock said. “Well…” They both sat there for a moment longer and then Mr. Blaylock asked, “You and Joe Pike see many Falcon games?”

  “Who?”

  “The Falcons. Atlanta.”

  “Oh. No sir. They play on Sundays.”

  Mr. Blaylock nodded. “I reckon Joe Pike being a preacher and all…”

  “It’s not that. It’s just that you can’t leave Ohatchee after church and get to Atlanta in time for the game.”

  “Well, you’re not in Ohatchee now.”

  “No sir.”

  “Moseley’s not that far from Atlanta. Maybe you and Joe Pike can see some games this season.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You do like sports, don’t you?”

  Trout glanced up at the trophy again. “I sure do like sports, yes sir.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Well, actually… tennis.”

  “Tennis?”

  “Yes sir.” There was a long silence while Mr. Blaylock stared at the blank pad on his desk. Trout wondered if he might pick up the pencil and write something on the pad. But he didn’t.

  After a moment, Mr. Blaylock looked up at him again. “We don’t want any trouble here, Trout.”

  “No sir,” Trout said, feeling his face flush. What in the hell is he talking about?

  “This ain’t a good idea. Especially right now. And I told Joe Pike that. But he insisted. So let’s just get through this the best we can, okay?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Any problems, you come see me.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “But I hope you won’t have to.”

  “No sir,” Trout said. His eyes went to the blank pad on the bare desk. “I can see that.”

  Trout vowed to keep his mouth shut and keep a low profile. Head up, fanny down. And by mid-morning, he had decided it might be easier than he thought. The teachers seemed nice enough, but wary -- as if they didn’t quite know what to do with him. And as far as the students were concerned, Trout Moseley might as well have been invisible. They didn’t so much ignore him as they looked right through him.

  Until mid-morning. They were changing classes, the hallway where Mr. Blaylock had assigned him a locker, crowded and noisy with students. Then suddenly, down the hall apiece, there was an explosion of sound and motion. “Outta the way! Comin’ through!” Trout saw the mass of students parting, then she burst through -- a flailing windmill of arms, legs, torso, crutches, flying hair, everything galloping off in a dozen directions at once. A big pad of some kind tucked under one arm, books under the other. Trout stared, transfixed. A wreck, happening before his eyes. Incredible.

  “Move it! Move it! Comin’ through!” And then she lurched to a halt in front of his locker, screwed up her face in a grimace and looked him straight in the eye. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Trout Moseley,” h
e said.

  “I knew that.”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “I just wanted to see if you’d admit it.”

  “Admit it?”

  A bell rang somewhere down the hall. Bodies swirled around them, giving both a wide berth. Invisible Trout Moseley and the human anti-gravity device.

  “Meet me in the football stadium after school,” she barked. And then she lurched away, leaving him open-mouthed.

  At first, he thought she wasn’t there. Some kind of trick. The student body, hidden in the bushes next to the stadium, laughing their asses off. It had already been one of the strangest days of his life, ranking not far behind the day they took his mother off to the Institute and the Easter Sunday Joe Pike rode off on the motorcycle.

  Then she waved and he saw her sitting in the shade by the concession stand behind one of the end zones. Back to the wooden side of the building, knees bent, the big pad open in her lap, crutches next to her on the grass. He walked the length of the field, feeling sweat trickling down his back and sopping his already-wet tee-shirt. The only air conditioner in Moseley High School, it had turned out, was in Mr. Blaylock’s office.

  As he approached, he could see that she was drawing on the pad, making broad strokes with some kind of pencil, looking up at him and then back down. He stopped in front of her. “Hi. I’m Trout Moseley. I’m new here. What’s your name?”

  She concentrated on the pad for a moment longer, then looked up at him. “I know all about you.”

  “Oh?”

  “I know your mama’s in the Institute in Atlanta, your daddy flipped out and rode his motorcycle to Texas, and you play tennis.”

  “Well,” Trout said, “I guess that about sums it up.” He craned his neck, trying to see over the top of the pad. “What’re you drawing?”

  She closed the pad with a slap, stuck the pencil behind her ear so that just the tip showed from her close-cropped brown hair. “None of your business. Sit down.”

  He sat a couple of yards from her, put his books down on the grass beside him, looked out across the hot green expanse of the football field. Twenty-one to twenty. It was just a ball game, wasn’t it?