Dairy Queen Days

by Robert Inman

  “I’ve been after Ezell for five years. And just this morning, he walked in here and said, ‘All right, Cicero, you can have it.’”

  “The store?”

  “Yessirreebobtail.”

  “What are you gonna do with it?”

  “Same thing Ezell’s been doing. Him and me had sort of a gentlemen’s agreement over the years. I didn’t stock things like fertilizer and bedding plants and chicken feed and so forth. Somebody come into my store and want a twenty-five pound sack of 8-8-8, I sent ’em to Ezell. Likewise, somebody walk into Ezell’s place and want a hoe, he sent ’em to me. Only thing we never could agree on was tree spikes.”

  “Tree spikes?”

  “You know, those things you hammer in the ground around the base of a tree. Ezell contends that a tree spike is fertilizer. But I contend that anything you hammer is hardware.”

  Cicero walked back in the store. Trout followed. Cicero pointed to the side wall, the one he shared with Ezell. “I’m gonna knock out part of that wall right yonder, make about a ten-foot opening. And I’m gonna put my tree spikes and Ezell’s tree spikes together on a rack right there.”

  “Sort of like a marriage,” Trout said.

  “That’s it,” Cicero laughed, enjoying the image.

  “Well, that’s nice. I guess.”

  “That ain’t all,” Cicero said, and led Trout out to the sidewalk again. “Yonder,” he pointed to the vacant lot just past Ezell’s, the place where the furniture store had been. “Auto parts.”

  “You mean a store?”

  “Not a store, Trout, a complex. Cicero’s Do-It-All. I got a bulldozer coming in the morning to grade the lot. Then I’ll put up a nice little building with skylights and a linoleum floor. And I’ll knock a hole in the far wall of Ezell’s place.” Cicero gave a grand sweep of his arm, taking in the elements of his business empire-to-be. “Hardware. Feed, seed and fertilizer. Auto parts. All connected.”

  Trout didn’t quite know what to say. It was a little overwhelming. He could feel fatigue thick behind his eyes. He really would like to climb back on the motorcycle and go home and maybe revisit Uncle Cicero’s grand design another day. But Cicero waited, beaming. “How about that,” Trout said finally.

  “It’s the best thing that’s happened to Moseley in a long time,” Cicero said. “It’ll draw from all over. Maybe even from Augusta.”

  “What does Aunt Alma think about it?”

  “Well, I haven’t told her yet. But anybody can see, all this town needs is a little shot in the arm, Trout. Get folks excited about coming to Moseley again. One stop shopping.” Cicero checked off items on an imaginary list. “Can of spackling paste, box of sixteen-gauge shotgun shells, ten pounds of azalea fertilizer, package of nasturtium seeds, radiator cap for a ’71 Chevy Caprice, case of Havoline thirty-weight oil.”

  “And tree spikes,” Trout added.

  “You betcha,” Cicero laughed again. “Don’t forget your tree spikes. Then when you get through at Cicero’s Do-It-All, go down the street yonder and eat lunch at the Koffee Kup. Pick up a pair of brogans at the dry goods. And shop the produce specials at the Dixie Vittles Supermarket.”

  Trout looked up and down the empty street. “What supermarket?”

  “Oh, it’ll come. This here,” he waved, taking in the hardware and Ezell’s, “is the catalyst.” They both stood there for awhile, pondering it. And then Cicero said quietly, “I’d like to be known as a man of vision, Trout. The fellow who turned Moseley around.”

  Trout gave him a long look. And he saw that in his Uncle Cicero, there was not an ounce of guile or pretense or arrogant pride. Just a sawed-off little hardware man in a police chief’s uniform with an honest, open face and the simple desire to do something right, whether it was fixing you up with the right lawnmower or fixing up a town with the right future. Trout liked his Uncle Cicero a great deal at that moment. “I think it’s a great idea,” he said.

  “I hoped you would,” Cicero said. “Can you be here at seven?”

  “What?”

  “First week or so, I want you to just wander around the store and look at things. Read all the labels, see what’s where. You got to know your merchandise. I’ll make up lists of items, just like I was a customer, and you fill ‘em. By the end of the week, you’ll pretty much be able to take over.”

  “Take over?”

  “Of course, I’ll be close by if you have a question or a problem. Supervising the construction.”

  Trout felt weak. He wanted to sit down on the curb and put his head between his legs. Cicero talked on, but his voice sounded hollow and far away. “I sure was glad to hear Joe Pike say you were looking for a summer job. But this could be a lot more than that, Trout. It’s a chance to grow with the business. Build a career. Who knows.”

  “Uncle Cicero,” Trout interrupted, “I’ve got to go home now. I’ve had a long day. I got sunburned and my back and neck are killing me. And I’m feeling a little light-headed. So I think I’d better just go.”

  Cicero looked at him, face scrunched up with concern. “You do look a little peaked, Trout. ’Scuse me for carrying on so and not noticing.” He put his hand up against Trout’s forehead. “You may even have a little fever there. Want me to drive you home?”

  “No sir. I can make it.”

  “Well, you get a good supper in you, get a good night’s sleep.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Cicero held out his hand. Trout stared at it for a moment, then realized Cicero wanted to shake. He did. Cicero had a nice firm honest grip. A man of vision. “See you in the morning,” he said.

  * * * * *

  “I can’t eat this stuff,” Trout said. He got up from the kitchen table, took the bowl to the sink, crammed all the leafy green and chopped-up red stuff and the crunchy little croutons and the imitation bacon bits into the disposal, and turned it on. It roared in protest, digesting. Then he turned back to Joe Pike, who was shoveling a forkful of salad into his mouth, chewing it like a cud.

  “What don’t you like about salad?” Joe Pike asked after a moment.

  “It grows in your mouth,” Trout answered.

  “Oh?”

  “You put it in there and try to chew and it just keeps growing and you feel like you’re gonna choke on it.”

  “You used to like salad. Mom fixed it all the time.”

  “That was different.”

  Joe Pike nodded. “Of course.”

  “I mean,” Trout said, “she used different stuff.”

  “Same stuff.”

  “Well, she fixed it different. It didn’t grow.”

  Joe Pike ate some more salad. Trout watched him for a moment, then he went back to the table and sat down. “There’s a chicken pot pie in the freezer,” Joe Pike said. “And some sweet potato pie that Hilda brought from the Koffee Kup. And some of Grace’s jello fruit business.”

  “I’ve got three jobs,” Trout said.

  “Does that mean you don’t have time to eat?”

  “Uncle Cicero wants me at the hardware store at seven o’clock in the morning.”

  “And…”

  “Aunt Alma wants me at the mill at eight.”

  “And…”

  “Herschel wants me at the Dairy Queen at ten.”

  Joe Pike put down his fork, wiped his mouth on his paper napkin and placed it back in his lap. “Sounds like a full morning.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are the positions incompatible?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you don’t want to get lint in the ice cream or tacks in the looms.”

  “Daddy,” Trout said, “don’t! Dammit, just don’t!”

  Joe Pike sat back in his chair and studied Trout for awhile. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I’m obviously not approaching your dilemma with the sense of gravity it deserves. Let’s start over. You have three jobs -- or, at least, job offers.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “An embarassment of riches. Could yo
u do more than one?”

  Trout shrugged. “I don’t think so. They’re all the same hours, pretty much.”

  “Hmmmm,” Joe Pike hummed gravely, furrowing his brow, twisting his mouth, and pondering -- or at least appearing to ponder -- the situation. Then he drummed a little cadence with his fingers on the edge of the table. Then he stared at a spot where the ceiling met the far wall, as if the answer to Trout’s problem might be written there: ATTENTION! GO FOR THE MONEY! “How much do they pay?” Joe Pike asked finally.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Nobody said. That’s not the point.”

  “What is?”

  Trout shrugged.

  “All right. Let me see if I can put this in perspective here. Preachers are supposed to be good at putting things in perspective. The hours are about the same. Money’s no object. Sounds like it gets down to intangibles.”

  “Like?”

  “Work environment, compatibility with colleagues, expectations for emotional and intellectual fulfillment. Coffee breaks.”

  Trout pushed his chair back with an angry scrape, got up and turned to go. “I can’t even talk to you any more.”

  “Sit down,” Joe Pike ordered in his best no-nonsense voice. Trout sat down. Joe Pike gave him a long look, then reared back in his chair a bit, arms folded across his chest. “You want me to make up your mind for you? You want me to tell you what to do?”

  Trout sat ramrod straight in the chair and stared at his hands.

  “What do you want to do, Trout? Which job do you want? Any, all or none?”

  “The Dairy Queen,” Trout mumbled.

  Joe Pike threw up his hands. “Touchdown!”

  Trout stared at his hands some more and then he finally looked up at Joe Pike. “Would you…”

  “Nope.”

  “You don’t even know what I was gonna say.”

  “Yes I do. You were about to ask me to square it with Alma and Cicero.”

  How does he do that? Does God whisper in his ear?

  “Right?”

  “I don’t want to hurt Uncle Cicero’s feelings and I don’t want to make Aunt Alma mad.”

  “Well, there’s a chance you will on both counts. But that’s part of making a choice, son. I can’t make your choice for you.”

  Joe Pike got up from the table, took his plate to the sink and rinsed off the few shreds of salad that were left. “I bought some wheat germ,” he said over his shoulder.

  “What?”

  “I thought we’d have oatmeal for breakfast. With wheat germ on it.”

  Good grief.

  Joe Pike put the stopper in the sink and started running dishwater.

  “Daddy…”

  “Huh?”

  “Talk to me.”

  Joe Pike stood there for a moment longer with his back to Trout, then turned off the water, dried his hands on a dishtowel, came back to the table and sat down.

  “Why are you mad at me?”

  Joe Pike gave him a long look, his brow furrowing. “Son,” he said finally, “I’m not mad at you. What makes you think that?”

  “I don’t know. You’re just…not paying any attention.”

  Joe Pike sighed, rubbed his face with his hands, then folded them in front of him and leaned across the table toward Trout. “Trout, I’m sorry, son. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. I’m worried about your mama, I’m worried about Alma and the mill…”

  “And you’re worried about why you became a preacher. You never did answer my question.”

  “Yes. That too.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do while you worry about all this stuff? I’ve got stuff to worry about too.”

  “Most kids your age don’t want their parents telling them what to do and how to think. I didn’t. I wanted my father to just leave me alone.”

  “Is that why you ran away from Georgia Military Academy and went to school at Moseley High?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that why you went all the way to Texas to play football?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Well, that’s fine for you,” Trout said. “I don’t want you telling me what to do either. But I want you there when I need you. And you’re not there.”

  “I’m sorry,” Joe Pike said quietly, looking at his hands. “I’ll try to do better.”

  There didn’t seem to be much else to say, so Trout got up to go. He was almost to the door when Joe Pike stopped him. “Practice one day when we were getting ready to play Baylor. We had wallered around and looked like a bunch of sandlot kids all afternoon, so Coach Bryant just all of a sudden stopped practice and sent everybody to the locker room. And we sat there and waited for him, scared out of our pants. Players, trainer, assistant coaches. Nobody moved. We waited, and the more we waited the more scared we were. Finally, about a half hour later, Coach walked in. Didn’t say a word, just stood there in the middle of the room. Then all of a sudden he hauled off and threw a block on an assistant coach that would kill a mule. Just slammed into this poor guy and knocked him into a row of lockers. Blam! Blam! Blam! Lockers come crashing down, the assistant coach is laid out on the floor half dead, eyes rolled back in his head, blood pouring out of a cut in his scalp. The rest of us just standing there with our mouths open. Horrified. I’m right at Coach’s elbow and I’m about to pee in my britches ’cause I’m afraid I’m next. But then he puts his arm around my shoulder real gentle-like and says, ‘You know, Joe Pike, sometimes it just helps to get things off your chest.’ And he turns around and walks out. And on Saturday, we whipped Baylor pretty good.”

  * * * * *

  Herschel was cleaning up when Trout got to the Dairy Queen about nine o’clock that evening. There were a few late customers. A family in a pickup truck, mama and daddy in the cab, five kids in the back, all licking on ice cream cones. A station wagon with an “Illinois Land of Lincoln” tag towing a pop-top camper. The occupants, a man and woman and two teenaged girls were sitting at one of the concrete tables, munching on hot dogs. An elderly couple in a late-model Buick, the woman watching a small dog pee in the grass next to the parking lot while the man waited for his order at the window.

  “Two cupsa vanilla with crushed nuts,” Herschel said to Trout.

  “What?”

  “Don’t just stand there. Fix the man’s ice cream.”

  Herschel had stopped cleaning the griddle to take the man’s order as Trout came in the back door. He pointed. “Cups there. Ice cream machine there. Just pull the lever down. Crushed nuts in the container. Anybody’s eaten as much Dairy Queen stuff as you and the preacher oughta know what a cup of ice cream looks like. And wash your hands first.”

  Herschel went back to his work while Trout washed up gingerly at the sink in back. His hands were still a little raw from the acid he had used to on the tables outside earlier in the day. Then he filled two cups with ice cream. He tried to finish them off with a little curlycue at the top, but it didn’t work. The ice cream just flopped over. He found the mixed nuts, sprinkled a few on each. He eyed his work. Not bad for a start. Then he took the two cups to the front counter, slid the window open. Warm night air and the faint rumble of traffic on I-20 drifted in, mingling with the air conditioning.

  “Spoons,” Herschel said at his back. “Under the counter.”

  Trout took two red spoons out of a box and stuck them jauntily into the ice cream cups.

  “Napkins,” Herschel said.

  Trout plucked two napkins out of the napkin holder on the counter and laid them beside the ice cream cups.

  “Dollar fifteen,” Herschel said.

  “A dollar fifteen,” Trout said to the customer. Then he recognized the man. Fleet Mathis. The mayor.

  “Trout, that you?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Working at the Dairy Queen.”

  Trout looked over at Herschel. “I guess so, yes sir.” Herschel grunted.

  Fleet Mathis took a dollar bill out of h
is wallet and fished a nickel and dime out of his pants pocket, pushed them across the counter to Trout. “I’da thought you’d be working down at the mill with your Aunt Alma.”

  “Well…”

  “Family business and all.”

  Fleet Mathis waited for a moment, but Trout didn’t say anything, and finally he picked up his ice cream cups. “Too bad about the tennis tournament,” he said.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Your backhand, the way I heard it.”

  “That’s it.”

  He started to turn away, but then he stopped, looked back at Trout. “Dairy Queen’s our newest business.”

  “Huh?”

  Fleet Mathis leaned over and peered through the open window at Herschel inside. “Sign of progress, that’s what I tell folks, Herschel.”

  “Yes sir, Mayor,” Herschel said. “A town that’s got a Dairy Queen is an up-and-coming place.”

  Fleet Mathis looked at Trout. “Kind of ironic, Trout.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You working here at our newest business.” He thought about that for a moment. “Well, good night Trout. See you in church Sunday, if not before.”

  “‘Night, Mr. Mathis. Hope you enjoy your ice cream.”

  He stood there at the counter watching Fleet Mathis walking back toward his car with the two ice cream cups. He’ll probably go right home and call Aunt Alma and tell her I’m working at the Dairy Queen. And then she’ll have a fit and come storming over to the parsonage in the middle of the night. HEADLINE: BOY TRAITOR EXECUTED.

  “It ain’t an air conditioned parking lot,” Herschel said.

  “What?”

  “Close the window.”

  Trout slid the window shut. Then he leaned against the counter for awhile and watched Herschel as he finished up at the grill. The muscles in his upper arms bulged against the tight sleeves of his shirt as he worked at the griddle with a spatula, scraping away the greasy brown residue of a day’s worth of hamburgers and hash browns. He wore a stained apron and his Dairy Queen cap was pushed back on his head, revealing a thinning patch of steel gray crew-cut. Herschel gave out a little snort. “Sign of progress, the man says. Next thing you know, they’ll be announcing a Wal-Mart and a Winn-Dixie. Maybe even a Lord and Taylor’s.”