Dairy Queen Days

by Robert Inman

  Phinizy turned down a corner of the page in his book and placed it on the table. Then he reached down and yanked the lever on the side of the recliner and sort of catapulted out of it, surprising Trout with the quick movement, the way he bounced on the balls of his feet, catlike, and disappeared through the door to the kitchen, flipping on the light as he went. Then Trout remembered. Rumplestilskin. The folk tale. A funny little man, a beautiful girl, gold spun from flax. Trout was struck again by a powerful sense of his mother. He could smell her, feel her. They nestled together on a sofa, book open before them with the curious illustrations, the rise and fall of her voice reaching deep inside him. And the little man stamped his foot… It was so immediate, so real, it almost took his breath. Even more than the music from the oldies station.

  Then he heard Phinizy in the kitchen, the tinkle of ice cubes in a glass. He looked around at the room. It was sparsely furnished -- recliner, rickety breakfast table with two ladder-back chairs, an ancient sofa. The walls were bare except for one faded picture, an old lithograph -- a man and a woman in a rowboat on a lake. He sat down on the sofa and waited.

  Phinizy came back in a moment with Trout’s ginger ale and a fresh drink for himself. He sat again in the recliner, lit another cigarette, took a long sucking drag and let the smoke out lovingly, playing with it. Trout took a sip of his ginger ale. It was a little flat. Phinizy probably didn’t drink much ginger ale.

  “My father built this place,” Phinizy said, looking about the room. “He hired a woman from Baltimore to come down here and teach Leland and me the social graces. She was young and rather attractive, and it wouldn’t do to have her living in the big house. Father was very big on appearances. So he built this. Called it the guest house.” Phinizy took a long pull on his whiskey, held up the glass for a moment and swirled the whiskey and ice around, squinting at it. Then he looked over the top of the glass at Trout. “If you can’t hold up your end of the conversation, just say so. I’ll try to go it alone.”

  Trout gave him a blank look.

  “Either a question or a statement will be fine, as long as has some remote connection to what has previously been said. The object here is to generally advance the topic.”

  “Well, ahhhh…”

  “That’ll do for starters. So, you ask, what am I doing here? Well, why not? I may have spent most of my life in exile, but I remain an heir to Broadus Moseley’s vast fortune. I am content to let Alma run it. All I ask is this…” a grand sweep of his arm took in the apartment, “…modest abode. I am content to live in the shadow of the Big House and bask in its reflected glory.”

  Trout took another sip of the ginger ale. “Daddy said you’ve been away for a long time. Why did you come back now?” he ventured.

  Phinizy thought about that for a moment. Then he said, “Tell you a joke. Two guys going to truck driving school. Joe and Charlie. Instructor’s giving ’em a final oral examination. He says to Joe, ‘Hypothetical situation, Joe. You’re driving, Charlie’s behind you up in the bunk asleep. You’re going down a steep two-lane mountain road. Car just ahead in your lane. You suddenly discover your brakes are shot. You’re coming up fast behind this car, so you pull out into the other lane. You’re going faster and faster. All of a sudden, another truck rounds a curve coming up the mountain, right toward you. Whatcha gonna do, Joe?’ And Joe says, ‘I’m gonna wake up Charlie.’ Instructor says, ‘Why you gonna do that?’ Joe says, ‘Cause Charlie ain’t never seen a real bad wreck before.’”

  Trout laughed. But Phinizy didn’t crack a smile. Trout felt stupid. And he thought that Phinizy was one strange duck. Finally he said, “Is there gonna be a wreck?”

  “Ask you a question,” Phinizy said. “Are you an optimist or a pessimist?”

  Trout thought about that for a moment. “I’m just trying to get through adolescence,” he said.

  “Ask you another question. Are you a skeptic or a cynic?”

  “What the difference?”

  “A skeptic asks questions. A cynic doesn’t bother.”

  “I guess I’m a skeptic, then. What are you?”

  Phinizy took a deep pull on the cigarette and held the smoke for a long time, then suddenly started coughing, blasting the smoke from his lungs. He bent double in the chair, shriveled body wracked with deep, wretched spasms. Trout started to get up, alarmed. Phinizy waved him away. The coughing went on for a long time, and then Phinizy finally began to get it under control. He sat there awhile longer, taking shallow, tentive breaths. He stared at the cigarette still clutched between two fingers, took a defiant drag from it, stubbed it into the pile in the ashtray.

  “You oughta quit that,” Trout said.

  “No,” Phinizy said, “I should have quit sixty years ago, right after I started. I was ten years old when I took my first drag off a coffin nail.” He took a big drink of whiskey. And then he took off his glasses, pulled a handkerchief out of a back pants pocket and wiped his watery eyes. Stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket. Looked up, finally, at Trout. “Mark Twain used to say the reason he smoked was to have at least one bad habit in reserve, so he’d have something to give up in case of doctor’s orders. It’s as good an excuse as any, I suppose.”

  They both sat there in silence for awhile, Trout staring at the floor, not knowing what to say.

  “Everybody who’s been here so far tonight is looking for answers,” Phinizy said quietly. “Does that apply to you?”

  Trout looked up and shrugged. He didn’t even know where to begin. “This place is weird,” he said, and gave a vague gesture that took in town, school, mill, church, and house. And all that had transpired and been said since he arrived. “In school yesterday – nobody spoke to me but this one kid. And the principal said something about not having any trouble. And everybody seems to be ticked off about the Moseleys. But if Aunt Alma knows they’re ticked off, she doesn’t let on. She just sounds like she’s preaching a sermon all the time. Moseley this and Moseley that. You’d think it was a religion or something.”

  “Did you ask Joe Pike?”

  “Yes sir. He said something’s going on, but he doesn’t know what.”

  “Well, I don’t either,” Phinizy said. “I don’t have any answers, but I know some history, and I’ve been around long enough to know that sometimes, that’s where you find some clues. You want to hear some history?”

  “Yes sir.”

  And that was when Phinizy told him about Moseley, Georgia. About how Broadus Moseley created the town, lifted it up out of red clay and desperation and put his indelible mark upon it. And how he and his heirs, down to the present, claimed it as inviolable territory -- a permanent and unchangeable shrine to its creator. It was, for Trout, an initiation into mystery -- like Joe Pike in the pulpit, letting the big leather Bible fall open where it wished, reading at random a few verses of profound truth. Clues, portents, an intimation of all the rest. In it, an echo of Aunt Alma’s voice: Don’t ever forget who you are. He knew there was a great deal more, unseen and unknown. But it was a start.

  There was the other, of course – the mystery of Joe Pike and Irene Moseley, of silences and escapes, the Institute and the motorcycle. The why. But Trout wasn’t ready to get into all that with Great Uncle Phinizy. It was a private, personal mystery, and for the time being he would try to puzzle out that one for himself. Later, maybe…

  And besides, when Phinizy had finished telling him about the town and his forebears, dawn was at the window.

  * * * * *

  Joe Pike was waiting behind the wheel of the car at the curb in front of the high school at mid-afternoon, arm slung out the open window. “You look like death warmed over,” he said when Trout climbed in.

  “I want to go home and go to bed,” Trout said. He felt terrible -- drained, stupid with fatigue. All the air seemed to have leaked out of his lungs and puddled somewhere in the pit of his stomach.

  Joe Pike started the car. “We’ve got a stop to make first. How’d it go today?”


  “About the same. Where are we going?”

  “I told you. To see Wardell Dubarry.”

  It was the first time Trout had ever been in the mill village. There had never been a reason. And there wasn’t much to see. Just past the mill, the road curved and the pavement ended and became dirt and gravel, lined on either side by houses, each exactly like its neighbor -- white clapboard box on low brick piers, small porch, steep tin roof, door and two windows across the front, red brick chimney on the right side, short gravel driveway along the left. Patches of grass were neatly trimmed at a uniform height, as if somebody had mowed it all at once. A few trees, an occasional shrub. Here and there, an attempt at individuality -- a fern hanging at the edge of a porch, a splash of bright curtain at a window. But it was no match for the overwhelming sameness of the place.

  “Why did they build ’em all the same?” he asked Joe Pike.

  “They didn’t build ‘em. Grandaddy Broadus did.”

  Trout stared, thinking of all Phinizy had told him in the early hours of morning. History. At dawn, when he had finally gotten up to go, Phinizy had said, “Before you can know who you are, you have to know where you came from. Especially you. It’s all there, Trout. Go take a good look at it. Then come back and tell me what you saw.” The man talked in riddles. Or maybe, Trout thought now as they eased along the mill village street, gravel crunching under the tires, Phinizy just pointed out the riddles.

  “They’re all white,” Trout said.

  Joe Pike looked at the houses for a moment. “They get painted every other year whether they need it or not.”

  “Why?”

  Joe Pike shrugged. “Because that’s just the way it’s always been done.”

  “Well, why don’t they paint ’em something different?”

  “Who?”

  “The people who live in ‘em.”

  “They don’t own ‘em.”

  “Who does?”

  Joe Pike squinted at him. “They’re mill houses, Trout. The mill built ‘em. The mill owns ‘em. The mill maintains ‘em. Paints, cuts the grass, repairs the roof. Toilet gets stopped up, you call the mill.”

  “The mill,” Trout repeated. “You and Aunt Alma.”

  Joe Pike shrugged. “I guess so. And you and Eugene and Phin and anybody else who has a stake in the business.”

  “Uncle Phin didn’t tell me that.”

  “Phin?”

  “He had a busy night last night.”

  Trout stared again at the houses, one after another. Beyond this street, on either side, he could see two more. There must be a hundred houses here. It reminded Trout of the long rows of looms inside the mill.

  Then Joe Pike turned in one of the gravel driveways, just behind a faded red Ford, about the same vintage as Joe Pike’s Dodge. The rear end was on jacks, hiked up in the air. A pair of legs stuck out from underneath. Faded jeans, almost white with age and washings. Dirty off-brand jogging shoes. No socks. Joe Pike and Trout got out of their car, walked over to the Ford.

  “Hello, Wardell,” Joe Pike said.

  “Hello yourself, Joe Pike,” the legs said back. Joe Pike and Trout stood there for a good while. From underneath the car, a clank of metal against metal. Then, “Shit.” More clanking.

  “Anything I can do to help?” Joe Pike volunteered.

  “It ain’t a motorcycle, Joe Pike.” There was something about the voice that reminded Trout of fruit fallen from a tree, left on the ground, beginning to spoil.

  More clanking. “Are you gonna come out and say hello?” Joe Pike finally asked.

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Whether Alma sent you or you come on your own.”

  “Well, a little of both.”

  A couple of more clanks, and then the legs began to wiggle out from under the car. And just kept coming. There was a great deal of Wardell Dubarry, at least length-wise. When he finally stood up, wiping his hands on a greasy cloth, there was about six-feet-eight of him, incredibly thin with scarecrow arms and a head that looked like it had been mashed sideways in a vise -- great expanse of forehead, long sweeping jaw, deepset eyes, unruly shock of gray-black hair.

  “There ain’t even a goddamn auto parts store in this town,” Wardell said. His voice was a deep, thick drawl, slow like a creek with little eddies in it where it eased around rocks and roots. Trout stared up at him, craning his neck. Wardell looked him over.

  “This is Trout,” Joe Pike said.

  Wardell grunted. Trout realized his mouth was open, closed it. Then Wardell turned to Joe Pike and gave him a long look. “Joe Pike, you are one big hunk of preacher.”

  Joe Pike stuck out his hand. “How are you, Wardell?”

  It was quick, barely a handshake. “I been better, I been worse.”

  “It’s been a long time,” Joe Pike said.

  “It’s been thirteen years since I laid eyes on you, Joe Pike. This young’un here,” he gave a nod at Trout, “was still peeing in his pants.”

  “Well, he’s dry as a bone. And I’m back.”

  “And cut a deep furrow gettin’ here, from what I hear.” Wardell gave a little twist to his mouth, not quite a smile. “How was Texas?”

  Joe Pike folded his big arms over his chest. “Which time?”

  “Either.”

  “About the same.”

  They just stood and looked at each other for a moment. Trout tried to imagine them playing football together, about the same age as he was now. Echoes. The driver’s license examiner in Ohatchee: They near about killed our quarterback… The trophy in Mister Blaylock’s office at Moseley High: Damndest football game in history. Now here they were, middle-aged men, one gone to fat and the other to towering emaciation. But yet, oddly enough, almost young in each other’s presence. A bit of teenage swagger, the way they held themselves -- Joe Pike sucking in his massive gut, Wardell standing good and straight. But there was something wary about both of them, too. They stood a little back from each other now. Had they been rivals in some way, back there at Moseley High School? Had they fought over a girl? Thrown down a great dare? Trout realized with a jolt that Wardell Dubarry was the first person he had ever met, outside the family, who shared some sort of history with Joe Pike Moseley. But what of it?

  “How’s your family?” Joe Pike asked finally.

  “Mostly growed,” Wardell said. “Darrell’s in the Army. Wardell Junior lives in New Orleans, works the oil rigs in the Gulf. Just me and Sue and the girl now.”

  “That’s what you get marrying young,” Joe Pike said.

  Wardell looked at him for a long moment. “Wadn’t nothing else to do. Get a job at the mill, get married. Go to work, raise kids.” Something very close to anger there, Trout thought. But it was hard to tell. The drawl covered up a lot, like a coating of thick oil.

  Joe Pike uncrossed his arms and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. I reckon.”

  They stood there a moment longer looking at each other and then Wardell turned to Trout. “My young’un’s in the house. Go on up and say hello. Let me and your daddy talk, since he come on bidness.” He indicated the house with a jerk of his head.

  Trout looked up at the house, and then he saw her standing at the window, looking out at them.

  “Her name’s Keats,” Wardell said.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?” he asked after she had let him in the door.

  “Say what?” She stood in the middle of the room, balanced on her crutches. She was wearing a Dairy Queen uniform -- red jacket, white cap.

  “Your daddy and my daddy…”

  “So?”

  “They went to high school together. They played football.”

  “So?”

  “They played THE GAME.”

  If it meant a thing to her, she didn’t let on. But then, Trout thought, she wasn’t the one looking for answers. She seemed to know everything she needed to know. “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Non
e of your business.”

  “So?”

  “Eighteen,” she said. “Are you just gonna stand there all day? Sit down.”

  He looked around, spotted an overstuffed chair next to the front window and sat. She eased herself down on a sofa and laid her crutches on the floor beside her with a clatter. “You asked me if I’m pissed off because I’m crippled,” she said. “I thought about that. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it. I haven’t waked up in the middle of the night thinking about anything for a long time. Do I act like I’m pissed off?”

  “You’re…abrupt.”

  They sat there in silence for a moment. Trout looked about the room. It was small and cramped, just enough room for the sofa and overstuffed chair, a television set, a knick-knack stand filled mostly with small framed photographs. A young man in uniform, another in cap and gown, a school photo of Keats in what he guessed was about the fifth grade, a snapshot of the whole family at a picnic table – Keats, about the same age as the school photo, crutches propped next to her on the bench. On the bottom shelf, a stack of library books. On the splne of one he could make out Quo Vadis. The fireplace had been bricked up and an oil heater stood on the hearth, vented with a flue that disappeared into the brickwork. There was an air conditioner mounted in a window next to the fireplace, but it wasn’t on. On the opposite side of the room, a closed door. A bedroom, maybe. And through an open doorway at the back, he could see a small kitchen -- sink, counter, refrigerator, cabinets, a chrome-and-formica breakfast table. It was neat, everything spotless. A woman lived here.

  “Is your mother home?”

  “She works first shift.” Trout gave her a blank look. “At the mill.” Another blank look. “You know about shifts?”

  “No.”

  “Good God. Your family owns the place.”

  “Look,” he said irritably, “I’ve been here four days. I’ve only been in the mill one time in my life and that was last Saturday.” He had forgotten his fatigue for awhile, but he could feel its ragged edge wearing at him again. He really ought to go home and go to bed. He looked out the window. Joe Pike and Wardell Dubarry were engaged in heated conversation next to the Ford. Wardell was waving his arms. Joe Pike stood there, red-faced, hands jammed in his pockets.