Dairy Queen Days

by Robert Inman

  Trout didn’t want to watch, but he was powerless not to. And he found himself, as the story unfolded, thinking of it as an out-of-body experience. He had read about such things: a man involved in a terrible wreck, dying but not quite dead, seeming to float above the scene watching medics work feverishly over his own broken body down below. The victim survives and lives on to tell how it was a detached, almost peaceful feeling. And then a sudden urge to return. To see what would happen next. Trout wished for a moment that he was a hundred years older, looking back on all this with historical perspective. HEADLINE: TROUT MOSELEY DIES AT 116; SAYS IT WAS ALL A FART IN THE WIND.

  The reporter signed off with another shot of the bulldozer destroying the bandshell. It seemed to sum up everything. Then Gordon Goodnight launched into a story about a woman in Alpharetta who had set her husband on fire as he slept, and Herschel turned off the TV set and they went back to work.

  At nine-thirty, when they had served the last customer and cleaned up and Herschel had turned off the red-and-white Dairy Queen sign on its pole out by the highway, Keats asked, “Can you take me home?” Trout hesitated. “It’s okay if you don’t want to. I can call Daddy.”

  “No,” he said. “I’ll take you.”

  They all left by the back door and Herschel locked up and got in his car and headed for town. Then Keats said, “Want to talk?”

  He hesitated again, but then he realized that he really did, that talking to somebody approximately his own age might be the sanest thing he would do this day. Everybody older seemed to have lost their minds.

  They sat at one of the picnic tables beside the Dairy Queen and for a long time they didn’t talk at all. It was warm and muggy, especially after having spent several hours in the air conditioned Dairy Queen, serving up frozen treats. Out on the Interstate, traffic barreled through the night. A carload of teenagers came up the road from town and turned into the parking lot. The windows were rolled down, the stereo throbbing with some Janis Joplin…Oh Lord, woncha buy me a Mercedes Benz… Girls and boys inside, laughing. Then, disappointed to find the Dairy Queen closed, they made a quick U-turn in the lot and sped back toward town with a flurry of flying gravel. If they had seen Trout and Keats sitting at the picnic table, they paid no attention. The night settled back into stillness. Out on the Interstate, an air horn bleated. Maybe a regular customer, unable to stop tonight but sounding a howdy anyway as he passed the exit.

  “Do you love your daddy?” Keats asked.

  She was sitting about two feet away from him, but it was difficult to tell much about her face. The only light was a single bulb left burning inside the Dairy Queen.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “I love my daddy too, but sometimes I think he’s crazy as hell.”

  Trout didn’t know what to say. Probably, a lot of people thought Wardell Dubarry was crazy as hell. But he had never expected Keats to say it, much less think it. She seemed to be such a fierce defender of all that Wardell stood for. She seemed so sure of what she believed, while he, Trout Moseley, felt mostly baffled.

  She read his silence for what it was. “You didn’t expect me to say that.”

  “No.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “Why did you?”

  “Because I had to say it to somebody.”

  He nodded wearily. “And I was convenient.”

  “No, I figured you’d understand. About a parent being crazy and all.”

  True, he did. Well, not crazy. Did clinical depression and acute theological angst qualify as mental illness?

  “I wish he’d just walk away from it,” Keats went on. “There’s plenty of other jobs Daddy could do. We could move to Augusta and he could go to work at the Army post. He’s really good with his hands.”

  “A helluva painter,” Trout said, then regretted it. Now was not the time to be a smartass.

  Keats let it pass. “I want to go to college and study art.”

  “Well, no reason why you can’t do that. There’s all sorts of loans and scholarships if you need ‘em.”

  “It’s not the money,” she said bitterly, “it’s this place.” She stabbed angrily in the direction of town with one of her crutches. “It’s like a big black hole with the mill and that pitiful little house and Daddy’s anger. It’s like it swallows you up, you know?”

  “Yes,” he said. And he did. She had put her finger precisely on the problem. Being swallowed up. Being sucked down by everybody else’s circumstance and feeling that you had no power whatsoever to climb out on your own because you were weak and ineffectual and just a kid and at the mercy of people who should know better, act better.

  “Your daddy’s angry about…” he indicated her crutches, “…what happened. I guess I would be, too.”

  “Maybe it started with that,” she said, “but now, I don’t know if he even knows any more. He’s all caught up in this union thing, like if he wins and the union comes in he’ll get his revenge.”

  “On the Moseleys?”

  “On the world. For shitting on him.”

  They sat for awhile letting all that float in the warm sticky air, listening to the sounds of crickets in the high weeds at the edge of the parking lot and the bass rumble of traffic on the highway.

  Then he said, “A couple of weeks ago you told me I ought to be pissed off. Are you pissed off?”

  “Yes,” she said. “No. I mean, you aren’t supposed to be pissed off at your daddy, are you?”

  “No, I don’t think so. You can get,” he paused, searching for the word, “upset. But really pissed off? I don’t think God would let you get away with that.”

  “God,” she snorted.

  “Don’t you believe in God?”

  “Sure. But I don’t think He lets you get away with anything. Or doesn’t let you. I don’t believe all this crap about God running every little thing.”

  “When even a sparrow falls…” Trout remembered a verse from Sunday School.

  “Yeah, I think He knows. But He doesn’t worry with all the details. That would run Him nuts.”

  Trout laughed, but there wasn’t any mirth in it. “You ought to talk to Joe Pike Moseley.”

  “Is he nuts?”

  Trout considered again the concept of craziness. “No,” he said thoughtfully, “just confused, I think. About himself. About Mama. But mainly about all the God business.”

  “But he’s a preacher,” Keats said.

  “Yeah. That’s the problem. He thought he knew, but now he’s not sure.”

  “And where does that leave you?” she asked.

  “About the same place it leaves you, I guess.”

  She reached out then and took his hand and the shock of her skin on his almost took his breath away. He realized that it had been a great long while since he had felt the soft, smooth touch of female flesh. It was part of that other life, eons ago, that had once been his. His fingers intertwined with hers and she gave his hand a little squeeze. She didn’t say anything for a long while and neither did he. There didn’t seem to be anything that particularly needed saying at the moment, and at the same time, everything to say and all of it with just the touch. He half expected to feel a rise of sexual excitement, but this was different. This was… He couldn’t find a name for it, but it was at the same time both comforting and painfully sad. Sad to feel such a great, aching need that you couldn’t even identify because you were too young and unformed and unwise.

  Finally, she took her hand away and rose with a clank of her crutches. “I guess I better go home.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Me too. I need some sleep. I haven’t had much lately.”

  She turned on him suddenly, a fierce edge in her voice. “Don’t you think for one minute I’d do anything to hurt my daddy.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Me too.”

  “It’s just…”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then said, “I guess things have been pretty rough for you.”

 
“A little.” Then, “Maybe more than a little. It’s not easy being a Moseley in Moseley. Especially now.”

  “Because of the mess at the mill?”

  Caution held his tongue. She was, after all, Wardell Dubarry’s daughter.

  “I’m not trying to pump you or anything,” she said, reading his mind. “I don’t care if they have a goddamn union or not. They either will or they won’t.”

  “Aunt Alma thinks that one of these days, I’m going to take over the mill. Run it. Me and Eugene.”

  She gave a snort. “You? Running that mill?”

  “Well,” he said defensively, “I guess I could if I had to.”

  “But you don’t want to.”

  “No.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  He sighed. What did he want? At sixteen, were you supposed to have the foggiest idea beyond food, drink, shelter, sex (in just about any form) and a new tennis racquet? “I kinda want to go hide.”

  “Well, you can’t do that here. Not you.”

  “Then maybe I’d just like to have somebody tell me what to do. You know? I mean, that’s really weird, isn’t it. I always thought I wanted people to stop telling me what to do. But then they did, and…” he shrugged. “I guess they’re all too busy trying to figure things out for themselves. Daddy’s wrestling with God, Uncle Phinizy’s sick, Uncle Cicero is busy and Aunt Alma’s pissed off.” And scared, he could have added, but didn’t.

  “What about your mother?”

  What a stupid thing to say, he thought. Maybe even mean, considering the circumstances.

  But Keats wouldn’t drop it. “Why don’t you just pick up the phone and call her and ask her what to do?”

  “She’s sick,” he said, spitting out the words.

  “I know that. Everybody knows that. She’s in the Institute in Atlanta.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, people call sick people all the time. Or go visit.”

  “Not there. Daddy says the doctors don’t want her to talk to anybody for awhile.”

  “Daddy says,” she said with a touch of sarcasm.

  Trout could feel the heat rising in his face. This was getting out of hand and it made him angry. She was treating him like a little kid again. Damn her.

  She waited. “Well?”

  “It’s none of your goddamn business,” he said stiffly.

  “Probably not,” she said quietly, “but I hate to see you just sit there and take it. I keep thinking you’ll get pissed off enough to hitch up your britches and do something for yourself.”

  It dawned on him that she sounded a lot like Uncle Phinizy. Save your own ass. But what did she know? Or Phinizy, for that matter? It wasn’t their ass to save. “What about yourself?” he asked finally.

  “What about me?”

  “You don’t sound like you’re deliriously happy either. Are you pissed off enough to do anything about it?”

  “Not yet. But I’m working on it.”

  They sat for awhile longer on the picnic table, but there didn’t seem to be much else to talk about. So they got on the motorcycle and went home.

  * * * * *

  It was an hour or so later, as he teetered on the edge of sleep, that he thought of the cup of vanilla ice cream Joe Pike had asked for. He thought of his father, sitting in the dark, hot, cramped little cell, knowing at this late hour that Trout had forgotten his one request, that there would be no ice cream this night. It might not be the greatest disappointment in his life, just the latest.

  Trout began to cry, and at first he tried to stifle it, but he found that he could not. So he buried his face in the pillow and let the sobs come without struggle or protest. They were bitter tears and there was no comfort in them. Then he wondered, why this? After all that had happened in the long hours since the sun had risen this morning, why was he crying over some stupid ice cream?

  THIRTEEN

  The telephone woke him. He thought if he lay there long enough it would stop, but it didn’t. Someone pretty damned persistent was on the other end. So he gave up and padded back to the kitchen and answered it.

  “Trout, can you come down here?” Uncle Cicero asked.

  “Down where?”

  “The police station.”

  “What’s the matter?” Trout asked, suddenly alarmed.

  “He won’t leave.”

  Trout looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was nearly eight. “What do you mean, Uncle Cicero?”

  “Your Aunt Alma got a judge out of bed at six o’clock this morning and posted bail for Joe Pike.”

  “She did?”

  “Yes she did. And him a Republican, too. The judge, I mean. I reckon being a Moseley transcends party politics, huh?”

  “Well, that’s good,” Trout said. “He needs to come home.” Then what?

  “But he won’t leave,” Cicero repeated. “He refuses to come out of the cell.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “No, he just sits there staring at that damned traffic chart on the wall.” There was a long pause. “I thought maybe you’d know what to do,” Cicero said finally.

  “Yes sir,” Trout said. “I’m the practical one in the family.”

  Joe Pike was sitting on the cot, his gaze fixed straight ahead. The cell door was wide open. Trout entered and sat down on the cot next to him, then joined his father in studying the poster for awhile, wondering if Joe Pike had perhaps found some answers up there among all those do’s and don’ts. Stop, Yield, No Left Turn, Railroad Crossing. Low Shoulder, Steep Grade, Sharp Curve, Dead End Road. A vehicular minefield. Knowing all this, why would anyone ever drive?

  “I’m sorry I forgot your ice cream,” Trout said after a moment.

  “I really need to stop eating so much of that stuff,” Joe Pike said, startling Trout a bit with the sound of his voice. “I need to lose some weight. I have let myself get woefully out of shape and I imagine that I cut an abominable figure. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity, quoth the preacher.”

  “I saw the TV stuff,” Trout said. “You didn’t look all that bad.”

  “I suppose you’ve come to get me out of jail.”

  Trout didn’t say anything.

  “Well, I’m not ready yet.”

  “Why not?”

  Joe Pike turned to Trout. “Because I am meditating. I have found a little peace and quiet back here and I am enjoying the contemplative life.”

  “Looking at traffic signs?”

  “You can find all sorts of riches in symbols if you take long enough to think on them.”

  Trout looked at the poster, picked out one from the top row. “No U-Turn.”

  “Excellent choice,” Joe Pike said. “Start with Thomas Wolfe: ‘You can’t go home again.’ Then consider the lost magic of childhood. And think about the nature of wishes. Children wish for a B-B gun from Santa Claus, a dollar from the tooth fairy. Pleasant things, mostly. When grownups wish, there’s mainly pain involved: take away my arthritis; make my husband stop beating me; deliver me from evil. Speaking of which, is there something in the nature of evil that is undeliverable? What of the sinner whose life is one dastardly deed after another, crying out with his last breath, ‘Lord, I have sinned. Forgive me.’ Does the Lord say, ‘Of course.’ Or does he say, ‘Whoa just a minute, bubba. We got to have a little prayer meeting over this business you call a life.’” He paused, thought for a moment. “I could go on. The possibilities are virtually endless, but sooner or later you arrive back at the sign. ‘No U-Turn.’ I thought about that one a good deal of the night. It’s second from the left on the top, right after ‘Stop,’ which I didn’t. I have worked my way to the end of the first row and am ready to start on the second with ‘Deer Crossing.’ I suspect there may be something there in the nature of nature.”

  Trout looked over the poster again. There were seven rows of traffic signs. About a week’s worth of work at this pace. “Then will you leave?” he asked.

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead,�
� Joe Pike said. There was something gently wistful in his voice. He seemed calmer than he had in days -- a man poking about leisurely inside his soul. There was something to envy about that, Trout thought. Even a practical person could see that.

  “Have you been to see Phinizy?”

  “I haven’t had time.”

  “Go,” Joe Pike said urgently. “I think he’s pretty sick.”

  “All right. Does he have any other relatives? A wife? Children?” Trout realized that for all of Phinizy’s relating of Moseley history, he had revealed little of his own.

  “No children,” Joe Pike answered. “He did have a wife once upon a time. Married her in Italy after the war. But it didn’t last. They fought like a couple of alley cats, to hear Phinizy tell it. So, there’s nobody but us.”

  Trout got up to go, and he started to say, Can I bring you anything? but he thought better of it. He might forget again, and that was so much unlike him, he didn’t want to risk it. So he gave Joe Pike a hug and left.

  “You’re right, he won’t leave,” Trout told Cicero out on the sidewalk. “He seems pretty set on staying. Has he had anything to eat?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Cicero said. “He’s got a great appetite. I been toting stuff back and forth from the Koffee Kup since yestiddy.”

  “Maybe you should stop feeding him,” Trout suggested. “Try to starve him out. Or yell, ‘Fire!’”

  Cicero looked down at the sidewalk. Trout could tell he was terribly tired. He sagged around the edges. “I don’t know, Trout,” he said, and Trout understood that he meant a great deal more than the Joe Pike problem. They were, all of them, much in need of mercy and grace.

  “Maybe everything’ll calm down for awhile and you can get back to your project.” Trout nodded to the vacant lot across the street.

  Cicero gave a tiny shrug that didn’t use much more than his eyebrows. “Grady come and got the bulldozer. Be a cold day in July before I get it back.”

  * * * * *

  Phinizy looked like cannibals had gotten him. A shrunken head, brown and leathery and deeply creased, displayed upon a backdrop of white, nestled on a pillow with the bedsheet pulled up tight under the chin. A museum piece, that’s what Great Uncle Phinizy was. Grotesque, aboriginal. Or maybe just original.