Dairy Queen Days

by Robert Inman

  “They didn’t get along. I learned that much.”

  “Leland Moseley went for an entire year without saying a single word to his son. The year Dad was a senior in high school. They sent him off to the military school, but he ran away and came home and insisted on going to high school in Moseley. And his father refused to speak to him or even acknowledge that he existed.”

  “Just because Dad wouldn’t mind him?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “But that was way back, Mom. What…”

  “So Dad went off to college in Texas, and that’s where he met me. His father showed up, quite unexpectedly, at graduation. And he told Joe Pike it was time to come home and take over the mill.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No. He went on to seminary and became a minister. I think he had God and Leland Moseley confused. He wanted to please Leland, but he couldn’t bring himself to go to the mill. So he turned to God, and Leland couldn’t argue much with that. Only later, he began to figure out that he turned to God for the wrong reasons.”

  “And you?”

  “I never wanted to be a preacher’s wife. It’s very hard. People are always watching you, pulling and tugging on you, asking for things and expecting things you can’t give. Your dad…” she paused, again trying to find the right words to describe something that may be indescribable, “…wants people to love him. Needs it.”

  Images flashed through Trout’s mind: Joe Pike on the parsonage lawn, surrounded by the remnants of his distant past, pulling them to him, enveloping them with his smile and his great arms, soaking them up hungrily; and Joe Pike at summer camp, lumbering to the swimming beach draped with laughing kids.

  “I love him,” Trout said tentatively. He waited.

  “So do I, honey. But that wasn’t enough. And there came a time when I began to ask myself, ‘Why am I putting myself through this? Why is he?’ And I suppose that’s when I started to run away.”

  Trout could see the pain of it in her face, and he realized that it was pain, as much as anything else, that had permeated their lives all these years. That was the worst thing about the silences. The pain. For all of them. Pain, disappointment, and finallly exhaustion. Bending under the great weight on your shoulders, the weight of being who you were, or at least who you were supposed to be. Eventually, you might have only two choices: run or die. Save your own ass. But in doing so, it was an admission of failure. It was a word Joe Pike had used, and now Irene. They had all lost a lot. Much of it was irretrievable.

  He crumbled then. “I miss you Mom.” She searched his face and then she put her arm around him while he cried unashamedly, burying his face in her lap, a lost and bewildered little boy, for one last moment the child he would never be again.

  * * * * *

  It was mid-afternoon when Trout called Joe Pike and told him they were leaving Atlanta. They got on the motorcycle and headed out, finding Highway 278 in Decatur and retracing the route they had traveled the night before. The towns and crossroads -- Conyers, Pacer, Covington -- and the ribbons of winding rural road that connected them seemed strange and unfamiliar in the daylight, like territory fought over and conquered in some long-ago night battle, filled with sound and fury.

  They said little to each other until they stopped for a foot-long hotdog and a shake at the Dairy Queen in Covington. It had a small covered patio that shaded several picnic tables and they sat alone and ate ravenously.

  “I’ll bet Herschel’s mad as hell,” Trout said.

  “Yeah. We should have told him, I guess.”

  “Do you think he’ll fire us?”

  “Probably. Then hire us back. At least me.”

  “Why you?”

  “Well, he can’t do without me.”

  The Dairy Queen seemed strange and distant, something he had known long ago. Everything was changed now. What to do? Who could tell him? It was still only mid-June and the summer stretched ahead like an unending highway, the horizon shimmering with heat phantoms. There was, at least, Keats.

  When they had finished, Trout took all their trash to a nearby can and then sat down again across from her and they looked at each other for a long moment.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said finally.

  “About your mother?”

  “About anything. Us.”

  She looked away from him.

  “I didn’t mean to…I mean, I wasn’t trying to…it just happened.”

  She looked back. “Look, Trout. Let’s don’t spoil it, okay? Let’s leave it where it is.”

  “Damn it!” he said. “Stop making me feel like a little kid!”

  “If you feel like a little kid, that’s your problem.”

  “I love you!”

  Her eyes softened then and she reached for his hand and held it. “It was the sweetest thing that ever happened to me,” she said gently. “I want to keep it that way.”

  “But what about…”

  “I don’t know. That’s all I can say. I don’t know.” She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it lightly. “Right now I just want to go home.”

  It was late afternoon when they reached Moseley. And as they rolled in from the west, Highway 278 becoming Broadus Street, he was struck by how small and dowdy it looked. Even Aunt Alma’s house seemed to sag under its own weight and he noticed, for the first time, that paint was beginning to flake from the facia board above the front porch. The Packard was parked under the porte cochere, but the Buick wasn’t there. And across the street at the parsonage and church, there was no sign of life at all.

  The park looked almost normal, except there was no bandshell. You had to look closely to see where the gash the bulldozer had made was now sodded over.

  The rumble of the motorcycle engine echoed hollowly off the downtown buildings as they rode through. It was mostly deserted, everything except the Koffee Kup Kafe closed for the evening, long shadows swallowing the storefronts and making them even more somber and drab than ever. The vacant lot where the furniture store had been was an open red sore. The slab of concrete that had unearthed the skeleton was a dirt-covered scab at the middle of the lot. Across the street there was nobody in the police department, or at least not visible in the front room. Trout wondered if Joe Pike had gone back to his cell, back to contemplation of the rules of the road. Then he remembered that Joe Pike had answered the telephone in the parsonage when Trout called. But where was he now? Maybe at the Dairy Queen.

  They passed the city limits sign on the east side of town, and that’s when he got his first glimpse of the commotion in front of the mill. As the motorcycle drew closer, he could see that the gate was closed and a big crowd was milling about in front of it. A couple of hundred people, men and women, black and white, a sprinkling of kids. It looked like the entire population of the mill village. Joe Pike’s car and Cicero’s police cruiser sat at the curb, well back from the crowd. As he turned onto the mill street, he could see Alma’s car parked inside the fence next to the office door. The crowd at the gate seemed agitated, and as he got nearer, he could hear its angry buzz and he could see Wardell Dubarry towering over the rest of the mill workers, one hand on the gate, shaking it furiously. It was padlocked. Then he saw Joe Pike and Cicero and Calhoun standing next to the police cruiser. The driver side door was open and Cicero was standing next to it, talking on the radio, while he kept an eye on the crowd.

  “Damn!” Trout said. Why couldn’t they all just be quiet for a little while?

  He could feel Keats craning her neck to see around him, seeing what he saw, her body tensing. About the same time, Joe Pike spotted them. His eyes and Trout’s met and Joe Pike shook his head vigorously, warning him away. Trout turned to give the crowd a wide berth, and then Keats yelled, “Stop!” He kept going. “Stop, Trout! Dammit, stop!”

  “I’m taking you home,” he yelled back. “You might get hurt.”

  “Let me off!” she bellowed. “Let me off!” She started beating on his back with one of her fist
s and then digging her fingers painfully into his side. At the rear of the crowd, people turned to look at them. And then Keats stopped hammering on his back and began to slip backward off the motorcycle. Damn! She’d kill herself! He slammed on the brakes and she lurched hard against him, and then as he fought to keep the cycle from toppling over, she scrambled off, an incredible flurry of crutches, arms and legs. She left him there, struggling with the bike, and plunged into the crowd, disappearing in the general direction of Wardell.

  Trout got the motorcycle under control and turned around and headed for Cicero’s police cruiser. As he pulled in behind it, Joe Pike pointed a no-nonsense arm toward the parsonage. “Go home, Trout.”

  Trout glanced toward the crowd, pressing up hard against the locked gate. Wardell was rattling the gate furiously and the noise level was rising. This was not a placard-carrying crowd, not some well-organized protest. It was a nasty-looking spur-of-the-moment mob. And Keats was somewhere in the middle of it. Trout killed the engine, kicked down the kickstand, climbed off the motorcycle and headed toward Joe Pike and Cicero. “Did you hear me?” Joe Pike barked.

  But just then there was a roar from the crowd and they all looked and saw Aunt Alma emerge from the mill office. “Open up!” Wardell bellowed. Alma paid them no attention. She got into her Buick and sat there for a moment.

  Cicero turned to Joe Pike. He looked grimly alarmed. “I told her we should have called the state folks an hour ago!”

  “What’s going on?” Trout demanded.

  “Go home!” Joe Pike ordered again.

  “No!” he shot back, standing his ground. “What happened?”

  “Alma closed the plant.”

  Another roar from the crowd. Alma was backing out of her parking space now, turning and easing toward the gate. The noise was deafening. Cicero turned and said something to Joe Pike, but Trout couldn’t hear what it was. He handed the radio microphone to Calhoun and yelled something to him. Then Cicero headed toward the crowd, hitching up his gun belt as he went, Joe Pike close on his heels. Trout followed, slipping in behind them as Cicero lowered his shoulders and waded into the crowd. They edged along the fence, Cicero and Joe Pike shoving people out of the way as they struggled toward the gate. Trout was bumped and jostled. He almost went down, but he grabbed onto the back of Joe Pike’s belt. Joe Pike whirled angrily, then saw who it was. “Get outta here!” But it was too late now. Bodies pressed in around them -- yelling, pushing, pressing toward the gate in a heaving mass. “Hang on!” Joe Pike yelled, and pushed on.

  Through the fence, Trout could see Alma’s car stopping, Alma getting out, walking up to the gate, unlocking it. “The plant’s closed!” she cried. “This is private property! Get off!”

  “Well, if we ain’t coming in, you ain’t coming out!” Wardell yelled back. The noise exploded, drowning out everything for a moment until the gun went off. POW! Then bedlam. A panic in the other direction. Joe Pike staggered, almost losing his feet, and Trout was bounced roughly against the wire fence. He held on and suddenly they burst free and he looked around Joe Pike’s great bulk and saw Cicero and Wardell, faced off like two bulls, Cicero’s arm holding his police revolver high in the air. Cicero kept his eye on Wardell, but he yelled through the fence to Alma, “Get in the car!”

  “Yeah!” Wardell screamed at her back as she retreated from the gate. “Get in the car, Alma! Turn tail and run! Go see that faggot young’un of yores in Atlanta!”

  Joe Pike lunged forward and Trout lost his hold on the belt and almost fell. He grabbed the fence to steady himself, just in time to see the powerful movement of Joe Pike’s right shoulder and hear the sickening crunch as his fist collided with Wardell Dubarry’s face. Suddenly, all sound ceased -- except for the sound of Wardell’s body slamming backward into the gate and dropping with a thud to the ground. Nobody moved. Cicero stared at Joe Pike, then Wardell, an astonished look on his face, his gun still high in the air.

  Joe Pike stood over Wardell, massive and unmoveable. “Get up, Wardell,” he said. “Get up and apologize to my sister.”

  But Trout could see that was quite impossible. Wardell was out cold.

  Then from somewhere off to Trout’s right there was a horrible scream and then an explosion of motion and Keats came slashing through the crowd, yelling incoherently, scattering people with her crutches. She lurched up to where Joe Pike stood over Wardell, her face contorted with rage. “Goddamn you!” she screamed. “Get away from him!” She smacked Joe Pike’s shin with a crutch. He didn’t say anything, but he backed away a couple of steps and Keats collapsed on the pavement next to Wardell, covering him with her body. She sobbed against his ashen face while they all stood, stunned and unmoving, watching her. It was pitiful. Trout took a step toward her, but she looked up and saw and stopped him with her savage voice. “Goddamn you! All you goddamn Moseleys!”

  And Trout knew that she was quite beyond comfort.

  * * * * *

  He tried, just once. It was just after six the next morning when he knocked on the door of the Dubarry house. After a moment, Keats opened it and stood there, staring at him as if he were an apparition. She was calm, but there was a fierce hardness to it. After a moment she said, “You’re crazy, coming over here.”

  “Can I see your daddy?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, and started to close the door. But then Wardell was there, standing just behind her and peering out. When he saw who it was, his eyes bulged with rage and he made a ragged gargling sound through the wires that held his jaw together.

  “Mr. Dubarry,” Trout said, “I came to ask you to drop the charges against my daddy so he can get out of jail and preach Uncle Phinizy’s funeral.”

  Wardell just glared at him, stunned at the audacity of it, then turned away from the doorway in disgust.

  “You’d better leave,” Keats said.

  Trout heard a screen door slam somewhere behind him and turned to see a shirtless, barefoot man standing on the porch across the way, arms folded across his chest, eyes narrowed. Then he saw more people on other porches, some of them drifting down into their yards, moving slowly in the direction of the Dubarry house. The hostility hit him like a hot wave.

  “Don’t come back, Trout,” Keats said. Her voice was absolutely flat and emotionless. “Ever.”

  He was stunned. “Keats. Don’t. After what happened…”

  “Nothing happened,” she said.

  “Yes it did!” he cried.

  “You’re just like a little puppy. You want somebody to hold you so you’ll stop whining. Grow up, Trout.”

  “No,” he cried. “Don’t do this, Keats.” It was something he had to hold onto, something that was just his. She couldn’t take it away. She couldn’t.

  “Forget it,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I’ll never forget it,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

  “Okay, don’t. But leave me alone. Don’t ever come back here. If you do, I’ll hang pictures of you all over the high school. Use your imagination.”

  He knew, with a sickening sense of helplessness, what she could do if she wanted. She knew every line and angle of his body, had committed them to paper and memory, and she could bend them into any shape or act her imagination could conjure up.

  He felt helpless. Betrayed. But then he looked into her eyes and saw that it was the same with her, only worse. She was a small wounded animal, snarling at the thing that had hunted her down and cornered her. It was not really him. It was all the other. And she had only her crutches and her anger to hold her upright. That, and the gift of her talent. Maybe she would use it to find her way out. But if she did, it would be on her own. She was beyond his reach, perhaps always had been. There had been one brief, exquisite moment when he had thought there might be such a thing as grace and redemption and, yes, love. But it existed now only in his memory. Another loss, perhaps the most profound of all.

  * * * * *

  He sat on the back steps of the parsonage
in the twilight waiting for the sun to dip below the treeline so it wouldn’t blind him as he rode west. The motorcycle leaned on its kickstand at the edge of the house, the small duffel bag strapped to the passenger seat with a piece of rope he had found in the garage.

  As he waited, he looked about the yard. The grass needed mowing. The storage shed needed painting. Next to it, the small plot of plowed-up ground was becoming clotted with weeds. Joe Pike had never gotten around to planting a garden. It was too late now.

  Joe Pike still languished in the tiny cell at the rear of the police station, guarded by Calhoun, the new police chief. Joe Pike appeared somewhat at peace. But with him, it was hard to tell. It might be just exhaustion. They were all exhausted. He hadn’t had much to say to Trout. Things were a trifle uncertain, he said. The Bishop would be in Moseley tomorrow to see to things at the Methodist Church. And then there was the judge to consider. Joe Pike was reading Aeschylus now. And Heidegger. Trout had brought him the books from Phinizy’s apartment, along with an enormous tub of Dairy Queen ice cream.

  At graveside, there had been just the family -- Trout, Alma, Cicero -- and two fellows from the funeral home in Thomson. The four men carried the casket from the hearse. It didn’t weigh much.

  It was early, before nine, and the June sun angled through the tall pines that shaded the Moseley family plot. It had rained during the night and the grass underfoot was spongy and the freshly-dug earth was soft and ripe-smelling. There was the faintest of breezes, just enough to make the pines whisper.

  Aunt Alma looked rather pretty. She was dressed in a mint green summer suit, silk maybe, something that clung to her figure. She had a nice figure. She, too looked at peace. Or at least, relieved.

  The four men placed the casket on the metal stand over the open grave and then they all stepped back and stood there for a moment, no one quite knowing what to do next.