Dairy Queen Days

by Robert Inman

  “How long have you been open?” Trout asked.

  “Two years next month. Before me, I think the last new business was a laundromat. 1968. Stayed open a year, the way I heard it.” He finished scraping, put down the spatular, turned to Trout. “You know what’s wrong with this town?”

  “The Interstate.”

  “No. The Attitude. Folks just sitting around waiting for something to happen. Capiche?”

  “I guess so.”

  Herschel waved in the general direction of I-20. “Hell, the Interstate’s no problem. Wasn’t for folks coming in off the highway, I’d be a dead duck. You hungry?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You look it. Thirty years running a mess hall, I can tell a hungry man when I see one.”

  There were two weiners left on the little rotisserie cooker next to the griddle. Herschel took a foot-long bun out of the bun warmer, put it in a little paper boat, plopped the two weiners end-to-end in the bun and spread chili over the top. Trout’s stomach rumbled in anticipation. He felt hollow.

  “Tea?” Herschel asked.

  “Sure. Great.”

  Herschel fixed a cup of iced tea and set everything in front of Trout on the counter. “Preacher ain’t feedin’ you?”

  “We had salad.”

  Trout sat on a stool and ate while Herschel went back to cleaning up. He fought the urge to wolf it down, savoring every bite, filling up the hollowness. The crunch of the weiner nestled in the soft bread of the bun, overlaid with the tang of the chili. A religious experience, Joe Pike called it. Yea, verily.

  When he finished, Herschel fixed him a cup of ice cream. “Here’s how you do the curlycue,” Herschel said. “A little twist of the wrist on the hand that’s holding the cup, just as you’re cutting off the flow. That’s about the only trick I know to working Dairy Queen. Other than that, it’s dish it up and dish it out. Clean place, good food, fair price.”

  Trout thought about it while he slowly ate his ice cream. Maybe that was why he chose the Dairy Queen. The thought of the mill gave him a dull, leadened feeling -- all that clattering machinery, spinning bobbins of yarn, looms disgorging miles and miles of plain white cotton cloth, all of it going into the big ledger book on Aunt Alma’s desk. And the hardware store. He liked Uncle Cicero, but the idea of all that stuff. Nuts and bolts and loppers and tree spikes rattling around in his brain and banging into each other? There was too much rattling around in there already. He needed something cool and not too noisy and short on detail and long on routine. Dish it up and dish it out.

  He scraped the last morsel from the bottom of the ice cream cup and let it slide down his tongue. Then he set the cup down on the counter, stood up, fished in his jeans pocket.

  “On the house,” Herschel said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Ten to two tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  “Two-fifty an hour to start.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “I’ve got to go to Augusta, so Keats is opening up. She’ll show you the ropes.”

  “Okay.” Somehow, even that didn’t bother him.

  * * * * *

  Joe Pike and Phinizy were sitting on the front steps when he pulled in the driveway. The beam from the motorcycle’s headlamp swept across them, but neither looked up. They seemed to be deep in conversation. Trout put the motorcycle in the shed and walked around to the front of the house. Joe Pike was wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt and tie. Had somebody died? Then he remembered. Wednesday night. Prayer Meeting. He felt an old familiar lurch in his stomach. There was something vaguely unsettling about the notion of Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting, something ancient and buried like an old bone turning to dust. He could not remember ever going, and maybe that was it. Guilt? Or something else?

  Trout sat down beside Phinizy on the steps. “Hello,” Phinizy said. He took a last drag off the stub of a cigarette he held between his thumb and first finger, pulled another out of the pack in his shirt pocket and lit it off the end of the stub.

  “Hello yourself,” Trout said. “Aren’t you gonna offer me a cigarette?”

  Phinizy sucked noisily on the new cigarette, then blew a double stream of smoke out his nostrils as he said, “No sir, I am not. Cigarettes make your breath smell bad and then you can’t kiss girls.”

  “Don’t you kiss girls?” Trout asked.

  “Not any more. At my age and stage, I’d rather smoke cigarettes.” Then he was shaken by an attack of wheezing and coughing, nasty wracking stuff that sounded like it was coming from somewhere down around his feet. HEADLINE: MAN DIES, LUNGS FOUND IN AUGUSTA.

  Joe Pike hadn’t said a thing since Trout rounded the corner of the house. He sat hunched forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped, a massive silence. It was hard to see either man’s face in the dim light filtering through the tree branches from the street lamp out by the curb, but Trout could smell the aroma of argument in the air mingling with the pungency of tobacco. Phinizy gave a last hack, took a shallow breath, let it out easily. “Ahhhhh,” he said. “A gentle habit, smoking.” Then he tossed the glowing cigarette onto the walkway at the bottom of the steps, crushed it with his toe. “Your father and I were just discussing dichotomy.”

  “What’s that?” Trout asked.

  “Schism.”

  Trout gave him a blank look.

  “Contradiction.”

  “Oh. That.”

  Phinizy looked over at Joe Pike. “A sixteen-year-old boy, and he understands the concept of dichotomy.”

  Joe Pike didn’t say anything.

  “Reverend Joe Pike Moseley here has been a rare study in dichotomy this evening,” Phinizy went on.

  “I just said…” Joe Pike started.

  But Phinizy cut him off. “They tell me,” he said to Trout, “that your father has always been a stickler for tradition when it comes to church business. The old tried and true hymns, real wine at communion, even if it is watered down a bit, no Boy Scout troops or other such fol-de-rol. And good old-fashioned prayer meeting on Wednesday night. Praying and singing. A mid-week infusion of the Holy Spirit to tide you over ‘til Sunday. None of this ‘Wonderful Wednesday’ business they have in lots of churches where they study pop psychology and paint china and do book reviews. None of that in Reverend Joe Pike Moseley’s church. Am I right?”

  Trout fidgeted. He had learned from experience that the best course when a couple of adults got off on a tangent like this was to excuse himself and go to the bathroom. Or if escape was impossible, hunker down and disappear into the furniture. Anything to stay out of the line of fire. He had done a lot of that when Irene was around, when the tension got to critical mass -- Joe Pike being excessively polite, Irene lapsing into what became longer and longer silences, but the air thick with conflict that politeness and silence only made worse. If they’d just yell. Explosions come and go. Silence creeps up your butt like a parasite and builds a nest.

  But he decided now to wait it out a bit and see what happened. There might even be an explosion. Joe Pike was the one hunkered down over there on the other side of the steps, keeper of the great silence. And there was a persistent, needling edge to Phinizy’s voice. If he kept it up long enough, he might bring a rare burst of thunder and lightning. At least, get a reaction, which was something Trout wasn’t having much success at. He remembered Phinizy’s joke about the two truck drivers. Another wreck about to happen?

  “You’re right,” he answered Phinizy.

  “So here you have a preacher conducting a good old-fashioned Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting. And he gets off on deodorant.”

  A long moment. They all waited. Then Joe Pike’s shoulders shook and he sort of heaved himself into an upright sitting position. Trout held his breath, but when Joe Pike spoke, his voice was even. “I said…” He chewed on it a moment, then went on. “I said that what if the scientists made a mistake. They tested anti-perspirant, and they say it’s safe. So the FDA approves it and we buy anti-perspirant and put it on our und
erarms every morning and go about our business. But what if there is some minuscule, hidden ingredient in anti-perspirant that turns out, after many, many years of use, to be very, very bad. What if we wake up one morning and our underarms are rotting out? That’s all I said.”

  “And that,” Phinizy added, “is when Tilda Huffstutler started crying.”

  Trout stared. “She did?”

  “She did,” Phinizy nodded. “Tilda said she’s been going to Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting for more than fifty years, and it’s the first time she ever heard anybody talk about deodorant.”

  “Tilda’s always been a little high-strung,” Joe Pike said. “Maybe it’s hormones.”

  “No,” Phinizy said, “I think it’s more like confusion. Or, to return to my original theme, dichotomy.”

  “Look,” Joe Pike said, his voice rising a little now, “is there anything wrong with me introducing an idea…”

  “Which is?”

  “Randomness. Uncertainty. The unknown.”

  Phinizy gave a wave of his hands. “If we can’t be sure of our deodorant, what can we be sure of?” Joe Pike didn’t say anything. “God?”

  Joe Pike nodded. “That’s the point.”

  “That’s your point. I’m not sure it registered with Tilda Huffstutler.” Phinizy pointed up in the trees. “You’re up there in the theological stratosphere somewhere, trying to figure out the meaning of life, and Tilda’s worried about her underarms. Or perhaps more precisely, she’s worried about why you’re worried about her underarms.”

  “I’m the preacher,” Joe Pike said with a touch of bitterness. “I’m supposed to have it all down pat.”

  “To Tilda, you are. She wants to believe in God, her preacher and her deodorant. You threw her a curve ball, high and tight, and it near about took her head off.”

  Joe Pike snorted. “So what am I supposed to do, Phin? If I have doubts about something, am I just supposed to keep ’em to myself? Isn’t that dishonest?”

  “I don’t get it,” Phinizy said.

  “Get what?” Joe Pike asked.

  “First of all, why anybody -- make that, why would a preacher -- purposely introduce more chaos into an already chaotic existence?”

  “Chaos is the essence of existence.”

  “Maybe the battle against chaos is the essence of existence. Else, why do we impose laws, record history, invent myths?”

  “Habit,” Joe Pike said.

  “Self defense. We blunder about, being as ornery and unreasonable and illogical as possible. But deep down, we want some rules. Something we can put in the bank.”

  “Okay, Phin. So we’re just supposed to obey the rules. Ask no questions.”

  “I didn’t say that, Joe Pike. You asked me why Tilda Hufstetler cried at Prayer Meeting. I’m playing devil’s advocate here. Telling you what I think. You know, part of your trouble is that you’re a Methodist.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Catholics got the Pope, Jews got Israel, Presbyterians got reincarnation, Baptists got biblical inerrancy. You Methodists take it all in. Come on, everybody. Think what you want. Israelites, reincarnationists, inerrantists, probably even a few closet Papists on the back row. Inclusion becomes confusion. Then the other part of your trouble is that you think you deserve answers.”

  Joe Pike shrugged. “I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger.”

  “Always have been,” Phinizy said. “I think you became a preacher because you thought God would whisper in your ear and tell you what it’s all about. But He didn’t. So you got on a motorcycle and rode off to Texas looking for Bear Bryant. And he wasn’t there. If Bear knew you’d done that, he’d probably laugh his ass off.”

  “Maybe that’s what God’s doing,” Joe Pike said.

  “Maybe.”

  Joe Pike waved his hands, agitated. “But if I don’t know, I’ve got to ask, Phin. And if it upsets folks, maybe it’ll get ’em to thinking, get ’em out of their self-satisfied existence.”

  “Or, it may just bring the Bishop down on your fanny.”

  “Could be.”

  Phinizy stood, brushing ashes off his clothes. “Well, you do whatever you want, Joe Pike. It’s your business. I’m going home and have some bourbon and read Heidegger.”

  Joe Pike looked up at him. “Tell me something, Phin. Why did you come to Prayer Meeting tonight? You never have before. Why this time?”

  Phinizy gave Joe Pike a long look. “Same reason I read Heidegger. You know Heidegger: ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?’ You and Heidegger are both wallowing in cosmic angst, Joe Pike. Chasing your theological tails like Little Black Sambo’s tiger. It’s interesting to watch.” He shot a glance at Trout. “But I sure wouldn’t want to live around it.” He waited, but got no response. A trace of a smile played at his lips. “I am a cynical old sonofabitch. I don’t believe in much of anything. But at least I’m consistent.”

  He turned then and shuffled off across the yard, lighting a cigarette as he went, the flame from his Zippo flickering in the darkness under the trees. Then he crossed the street -- a thin, stooped figure in the dim light of the street lamp -- and disappeared into the long shadows cast by Aunt Alma’s house.

  After awhile, Joe Pike said -- to no one in particular -- “That’s what you get with a church that’s been spoon fed all its life. Put a little spice in the menu, everybody gets heartburn.”

  Since Joe Pike said it to no one in particular, Trout didn’t feel any need to respond and wouldn’t have known what to say anyway. So they just sat there for a long time. And finally Trout thought of the thing he did need to say. He was bone-tired and needed desperately to go to bed, but he had to say this one thing first: “Keats told me about getting run over by the mill truck,” he said. “And her brother.”

  Joe Pike didn’t say anything for awhile. And then he took a deep breath and made the little hissing sound through his teeth. “Yeah,” he said. “Too bad about that.”

  And that was all. When Trout realized that was all, he got up and left Joe Pike sitting there on the front steps with his theological angst and went to bed.

  What woke him in the depths of the night was the sudden remembrance of what made him uneasy about Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting. It came back to him full-blown, as vivid as the replaying of a documentary.

  A parsonage kitchen, a bit down at the heels as they sometimes were in small Georgia towns: scuffed green linoleum on the floor, shiny pale green walls, fluorescent fixture overhead, white metal cabinets. A calendar from an insurance company hangs next to the refrigerator with a parade of red X’es halfway across the month of July. Each evening, Trout climbs up on a kitchen chair and while Irene steadies him, marks off another day with a crayon.

  Joe Pike stands now in the kitchen door. Shortsleeved white shirt and tie, Bible in hand. Irene at the sink, hands thrust into sudsy water.

  “Time to go,” Joe Pike says.

  A long silence. Irene’s hands thrash about under the water, scrubbing away at a skillet. She lifts it out, runs it under the rinse water, sets it aside on a drying rack. “I’m not going,” she says.

  “Aren’t you feeling well ‘hon?”

  “I feel just fine.”

  “Well…”

  “I’m not going.”

  “Well…”

  “I mean ever.”

  Trout doesn’t know exactly where he is while this is going on, but he must be somewhere in the room because he can see and hear and even smell everything. And the look on Joe Pike’s face -- as if he had been slapped with a dead mackerel. And Irene’s tiny back, absolutely rigid and unyielding.

  “Irene, ‘hon, you have to go.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “You’re the preacher’s wife.”

  Irene doesn’t say a thing, but she gives a tiny shudder, as if she’s suddenly struck with a chill. After a moment, Joe Pike gives a shrug of his shoulders. “We’ll talk about it later,” he says.

  He has turned and left the r
oom before Trout hears Irene say, in a small but very firm voice, “No we won’t.”

  Then there is a horrible sucking sound from the sink and Trout realizes Irene has pulled the plug. She stands there looking down as the dishwater runs out, and then she turns and walks away. She doesn’t look at him, doesn’t even seem to notice that he’s there. Droplets of water and bubbles of suds drip from her hands, leaving a trail across the kitchen linoleum. Then Trout hears the door to her bedroom close. He’s afraid to follow, so after awhile he goes out the back door and around the side of the parsonage and climbs up in the pecan tree in the side yard and looks in the window. Irene is just sitting there on the side of the bed, facing the open window. Nothing separates them but the window screen and several yards of July night. He starts to raise his hand to wave to her, but then he realizes that she can’t see him here in the tree, can’t in fact see anything. She is so absolutely immobile that he doubts that she could hear him if he called out, or feel him if he climbed in the window and touched her arm. It is like watching a statue of his mother. Then across the street at the church, he hears a piano start up and the thin, ragged chorus of the Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting singing “Blessed Redeemer.”

  That was all he could remember. Being in the tree, watching his mother, hearing the music. He didn’t know what he did next, what he felt, even exactly how old he had been at the time. Five, maybe. Six.

  What he did know with certainty is that on a July Wednesday, Irene Moseley had refused to go to Prayer Meeting and that she lapsed into what was the first of the great silences that grew and grew until finally she embraced them as she would a lover and disappeared into the void.

  Trout thought, She won. She never went back to Prayer Meeting.

  Then he remembered what Uncle Phinizy had said: “Save your own ass.” Well, that was one way to do it.

  NINE

  Trout was on the front walk getting the morning Atlanta Constitution when the truck growled past the parsonage, belching diesel smoke, towing a big flatbed trailer with a bulldozer on the back. Joe Pike stuck his head out the front door and watched as the truck rumbled on down Broadus Street toward the middle of town. Trout opened the paper and scanned the headlines: AIDE SAYS REAGAN WILL RUN; ATLANTA COUNCIL TACKLES TRANSIT DILEMMA. Forecast: hot, humid, afternoon thundershowers, high 93. The air conditioning in the Dairy Queen would be a refuge. But first, there were Cicero and Alma to deal with. An inert lump of dread weighted his stomach.