WHERE TROUBLE SLEEPS

by Clyde Edgerton

  "We been up to see the electric chair."

  "Oh?"

  "I don't think you can start teaching them too young."

  "About... electricity?"

  "About right and wrong."

  "Oh, yes ... mmph." Hard vanilla ice cream curled into the dipper. "Well, one thing for sure—you just can't beat the electric chair for putting a mean man to death. That gas is too easy."

  June smoked and worked, and in a minute she placed three banana splits in the window opening.

  "Oh, my."

  At the table, Stephen asked, "What do prisoners get to eat?"

  "They eat bread and water. Maybe a few vegetables."

  "Can a prisoner be a Christian?"

  "Yes, but that would be hard. Anybody who accepts Jesus as their saviour is a Christian."

  "So there might could be a prisoner in heaven?" A speck of whipped cream stuck to Stephen's lower lip. Alease wiped it off with her napkin.

  "That's right. But there probably wouldn't be many."

  Two soldiers came in and ordered chocolate milk shakes.

  "Are they in the army?" asked Terry.

  "Yes," said Alease. "The army has the brown uniforms. The navy has the blue."

  "Has the war started?"

  "I'm afraid so. But this one won't be so big, I don't think."

  Stephen saw a Jap in his mind, the one in the movie. He came up from behind the silver napkin thing that you could pull a napkin right out of. He looked like a mad wasp, with slanted eyes, and he was yellow, and up behind him in the dark came a Korean. Stephen couldn't see what the Korean looked like. Maybe a little bit like a stalk of corn. Something with lightning in his eyes.

  One of the soldiers asked his mother, "Is there any stores on down the road?"

  "If you keep going on down that way you'll come to a blinker light and there are three or four stores around there."

  "We need some supplies."

  Alease and harvey sat at their kitchen table next morning. They had sausage, scrambled eggs, toast, orange juice, and coffee. Alease was feeling a slight regret at not mentioning the electric chair trip to Harvey.

  "I want you to build a flower bed there beside the garage," said Alease. "I think you can do it with posts for the two corners and then fill it in with some topsoil and mulch."

  "I'll look at it, see if I can't get some posts from behind the store or Papa's smokehouse."

  Alease wondered when that might happen. "And then will you build it?"

  "Yes. That's what I'm saying."

  "Maybe Stephen could help you do a few little things."

  "We'll see."

  "I took him to see the electric chair yesterday—and Terry Daniels, too."

  "Why'd you take Terry?"

  "For the same reason I took Stephen. To let him see what happens if you break the law, commit a sin. Here, take this toast. I like it a little browner."

  "I don't think I'd be taking other people up there—other children—I don't think."

  "Why?"

  "I just wouldn't. It seems like it's intruding."

  "If his daddy had been taken up there when he was a boy, he might not have turned out like he did."

  "Well, I just feel like it might be a little bit getting in their business."

  "I stopped by there and asked Inez." Alease cut a sausage link with her fork. "I wish you could have gone with us." She chewed. "That store is taking a lot of time lately it seems like." He was out there just about every morning before work, nights after work, sometimes at lunch or when he'd get a half-day off, most Saturdays—the last three or four—and then he'd be so tired he'd sleep most of Sunday afternoon.

  "Well... Steve ought to be back sometime today."

  "It looks like to me he could have waited till tomorrow to go fishing. Since he don't go to church anyway."

  "It takes more than one day."

  "At least I wish he'd get somebody else to help out some of the time. You've got a job."

  "He can't afford it yet. But I think he'll be able to before too long."

  Alease poured herself some more coffee.

  "I do things with y'all," said Harvey. "And I'm teaching him to play baseball." Harvey sipped his coffee. "I got to get on down there. I'll leave the car here."

  "I'd like for all three of us to do something some Saturday maybe. You hadn't had a whole Saturday clear in I don't know when."

  "Alease, I'm helping out Steve. I have to help out my brother. He needs a little help, that's all. You don't expect me to just sit by when I can be helping him out, do you?"

  "No. But you've got a family. Here, in this house."

  "I know that."

  Stephen awoke to his mother's touch and voice: "It's time to get up, Stephen."

  Stephen remembered. "Can we do Feed the Pigs?" He hadn't played that game in a long time.

  "Are you sure? Aren't you a little too old for that?"

  "No ma'am." This was the best game in the world.

  "Here," she said. "Put these on—and this, then come on out on the porch."

  He'd gone to sleep holding her hand, as he always did. He'd reached over from his bed to hers, and he awoke to her voice. Just before and just after sleep were times when nothing bothered him, scared him, hurt him, got after him, worried him. Before sleep was when she read him a story or two from Aunt Margaret's Bible Stories, and then they said their prayers. Some of the stories were scary sometimes.

  He got out onto the porch as fast as he could, crawled up into the wooden swing, turned, and plopped down.

  His mother sat facing the swing—eggs, sausage, and toast in a plate in her lap. She pushed the swing to get it going, stuck a bit of egg with the fork, gave the swing another little push.

  "Come here, little pig," she said. She was looking out toward the road.

  He looked too. Drops of dew reflected morning sunlight.

  "Come here, little pig. I got you something to eat. You come on over here, now. Get you something to eat."

  On his next swing forward Stephen mouthed the food.

  His mother lowered the fork toward the edge of the porch floor. "Here you go, little pig." Gasp. "Why—what in the world happened to your food, little pig?"

  More egg, a bit of sausage. "Little pig, come here, little pig. I got you some good food this time. Here you go little pig ... Now, what... what in the world happened to your food, little pig?"

  Stephen saw his black kitty. "Inky just crossed the road," he said, chewing.

  "He did? Well, I need to go get him. He'll get run over. Where did he go in the woods?"

  "Right across from the mailbox."

  "You got to help me keep an eye on him. He must've got out when I emptied the trash. He's your cat now and you've got to watch out after him like David—and Jesus—did with the sheep. When one little sheep didn't come home at night, they'd go out and look and look until they found him. They never gave up until they found the one lost lamb."

  Jack umstead, driving north in his Buick Eight, said to himself, "Rusty Smith, Rusty Smith, Rusty Smith." It was a name he hadn't used in a while. He was listening to Roy Acuff on the radio sing "Great Speckled Bird." It was just a real pleasure to drive this fine automobile.

  He wondered how many people in the world said "automobile" and how many said "car." Probably divided about even. That was one of the things that could be known if there was just a way to know. There was a number of people who said "car"—a specific number—and a number who said "automobile," and a number who said both. Just like there was a number for the grains of sand on earth. Just no way to know all those numbers. And then there were things you couldn't know, like "why" things. Why was hot hot and cold cold—well, maybe that could be known, but it was more complicated. It wasn't just a number like the grains of sand. But even the number of grains of sand would probably be harder than that: figuring out what was a grain and what was a tiny rock. You'd have to do more than count.

  After driving past and coming back from the other dire
ction, he pulled into a place called Alligator Jimmy's Fried Catfish Eats. He always drove into and drove out of an establishment in the direction opposite to his real route of travel. Next door to Jimmy's was a little zoo there and a few other places of business across the road. He'd passed a motel within a mile. Two churches back there. He was just outside Atlanta, Georgia, and didn't see why he shouldn't stay here a few days if it felt right. Then if a particular store looked ripe, why, he'd relieve it before heading north.

  Umstead, since he'd never heard the call to be a Christian, and couldn't come to believe he was supposed to hear it, had decided some time back that he would more or less live off the land. The one thing he didn't want to do was pretend to himself that he was a Christian, which as far as he could tell was what all Christians did except maybe one or two preachers he'd met. He didn't want no part of halfway.

  "What can I get for you?" The man wiped the table with a wet-looking cloth. That had to be Alligator Jimmy.

  "I'd like some breakfast. Two over easy, bacon crisp, grits, and toast."

  The man turned and shouted to the kitchen, "Two over, bacon, toast." He turned back to Umstead. "It was all crisp this morning. Coffee?"

  "That's right. Black. Are you Alligator Jimmy?"

  "Yep."

  "My name's Rusty Smith and I'm just driving through from Columbia." They shook hands. "Some of my kinfolks used to live around here somewhere and I'm trying to track them down."

  "Pleased to meet you, Rusty." Jimmy raised the rag and pointed. "Is that a Buick Eight you're driving?"

  "Sure is. Mighty nice car. I like it a lot."

  "I been threatening to buy a Chrysler. My daddy always wanted one. Went to his grave wanting one."

  Umstead wondered whether or not he ought talk to this guy about something like cooking as a art or cooking as a science. He'd wait until after he got his food. "You only live once," he said.

  Now, he didn't mind pretending he was a Christian to somebody else. That could be fun—if the situation was right.

  BIG TOP GRAPE

  Early in the afternoon, Stephen's mother walked him to the store to stay with his daddy for a while.

  On the way, she said, "As soon as you see I'm walking next to the road, you trade places with me. A gentleman always walks next to the road in case a car splashes. Then it will get on the man and not the lady. Do you understand?"

  "Yes ma'am."

  "That's what a gentleman always does. Let's hurry. I want to get back before it storms."

  Opal Register was pulling into her mother's driveway with her mother sitting beside her. They'd been shopping. Opal looked into the backseat. "Mother, where's your umbrella?" "Lord, I don't know." "We left it in one of those stores. Do you remember leaving it somewhere?" "There ain't no telling. There ain't no telling." "Well, try to think. I declare." "Well, don't get mad at me. You been everywhere I been." / Sylvia Roberts called out to her two boys, out under the woodshed. "You boys get in here. It's fixing to rain." / Beneath the blinker light, raindrops bounced like hail. Steam drifted along the asphalt; a fine mist sat still above the road. / Over at the flintrock store—a general merchandise store—a man holding a newspaper above his head ran beneath the drive-under shelter. Raindrops spread on his thin summer shirt, the wet making the skin show through. Several men stood under the shelter. A rush of cool air blew in. Rivulets began to run through orange clay, carrying tiny rocks, a cigarette butt. Gusts of wind scurried water across the ground. "That's a hard one." "You can't hardly get too much rain this time of year." "Well, you can get too much. You can drown things." "Well, I'll tell you one thing. You can't get hardly too much." "We might have to go in if that wind keeps up." Somebody farted. Everybody laughed. It was a good one. Well, hell, they all were. Fred Jernigan chewed tobacco, stood, and spit out into the rain when the time came. One or two were stubble-faced from missed shaves. The Nehi man stood holding on to his delivery cart, eyeing his truck through the rain. Somebody told a nigger joke. No hard feelings, though—nothing said that could bring hard feelings to the surface. No talk about God or the universe. A word on politics, something about the communists in Chapel Hill. Some talk about MacArthur and the new war in Korea. A little talk about the atomic bomb, the Japs. Casey Odell pulled a long string to the bare lightbulb in the white-flaked tongue-and-groove ceiling of the drive-under. The wind picked up. Out over the intersection, the red and yellow blinker light reflected off the streaking rain, and a tiny chill ran through Casey, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  Stephen looked out into the rain from his seat on the bench at the grocery store. His legs swung back and forth. In his hand he held a Big Top grape drink, the bottle bottom on the bench beside him. It was raining too hard to sit out on the step.

  Through the rain he watched the men over at Train's Place stand around under the shelter and drink beer—the one store in the community that sold beer. The flintrock sold buckets and overalls and fishing poles; the grocery, groceries. The Blaine sisters' store sold ice and chickens mostly. The grill, hot dogs and hamburgers. And the auto shop fixed cars. Stephen had been inside all of them except for Train's.

  Terry had told him about the inside over there, that it was dark, that Mr. Train sat behind the cash register in the dark in his wheelchair and fixed radios, that a calendar on the wall had a naked woman picture on it.

  When just about anybody in Stephen's family went to the beach on vacation to stay in the Douglass cabin, they always stopped at Train's Place and filled up with gas. His daddy would go inside and come back with a twenty-dollar bill that Mr. Train had given him in case of trouble on the trip. He did that when people went on trips. Everybody always brought it back—-something Stephen couldn't quite figure out. Why did people talk about that?

  Mr. Train's brother, Mr. Luke, lived in a little short trailer right behind the service station. He was Mr. Train's mechanic, Mr. Blake, another brother, worked there most of the time. And there were some other brothers who came and went. The sign out front said redding bro. gulf service station, train redding, proprietor. "Proprietor" was just some word. His mama showed him how to read it. But she wouldn't let him go over there, except when they stopped to get gas.

  Behind Mr. Luke's trailer were big piles of old tires. One time they caught on fire and the smoke was black and jumped up rolling from flashing orange flames. Somebody hooked Mr. Luke's trailer to a truck and pulled it out of the way. The fire truck came, but didn't do anything. People stood around and watched. You could feel the heat all the way from over on the grocery store porch—like a hot cloth on your face. Somebody said Mr. Train had wanted them to burn up, and that's why the fire truck didn't put them out.

  Stephen wondered why the church hadn't gotten mad at Train's Place and done something to it because of the beer-selling and -drinking.

  Preacher crenshaw, down the road, sitting in his study, looked at the rain gusting against his window through the screen. He was thinking that maybe instead of sending $2,700 to the Lottie Moon offering they should just give it to somebody like Cheryl Daniels and a few other needy people. Cheryl was a girl who could go to college and make something out of herself. Her family could use some money. And it really was a matter of money. It was a shame about the little bit of money they must have. With a thousand dollars they might buy a car and fix up that house. But somehow the idea of giving money to people in the community wouldn't work. It just wouldn't work. You had to give money to some organization far away. Think of all the money that had gone to somewhere in China.

  Crenshaw closed his Bible, stood, walked over and looked out the window. He could see down to the blinker light. The whole end of his driveway was under water. What about poor people in the community, poor people within driving distance? What about those Negroes over in T.R.? Andrew, the church janitor, was from over there and the church did pay him a fair salary. That was the right thing to do. He'd supported fifty cents an hour, against the will of Mr. Clark and Mr. Sanders. And when he'd taken An
drew home one Thanksgiving eve and stopped nearby with some food for the Negro family that had lost two cousins in a car accident, he'd noticed a windowpane missing from beside the bed in the bedroom—so somebody could spit tobacco juice out the window, or that's what it looked like. He didn't know any white people who'd do that. But then again, just because he didn't know about it didn't mean it wasn't out there somewhere. In fact, what was so bad about spitting out the window? He turned and went back to his sermon. He was preparing Sunday's sermon on the power of the Trinity.

  Stephen felt safe on the grocery store porch. Around him were slat-wood baskets stocked with tomatoes, potatoes, onions, corn, turnips, turnip greens, cucumbers, and squash. The rain smell was strong, mixed with some raw vegetable, dirt smell. He turned up his Big Top grape, the only bottled drink he knew about besides a beer that had a long swelled neck. He dared to pretend he was one of them. But there was an understanding between him and the whole world that he should never go over there alone, never set foot in that place.

  Terry said some men did their drinking over behind the candy counter inside Train's and that he'd seen Stephen's uncle Steve doing it, but Stephen knew Terry made that up. That could not be true. That was a lie. Sometimes Terry told lies. Leland did too. Leland Triplett. Leland's daddy, Mr. Triplett, was a beer drinker and a truck driver who stayed gone most of the time.

  Inside the grocery store were more bins of vegetables, a counter and cash register, shelves of boxed goods. On the wall behind the cash register were cigarettes, aspirin, BC powders, and big cardboard posters holding combs, handkerchiefs, and socks. At least one red comb was always clothes-pinned to the top of the comb cardboard, and when a little boy of the community got old enough to get a haircut by himself, Big Steve said, "Hey, boy, you see that red comb up there? When you let Mr. Taggart cut your hair by yourself, I'll give it to you. Free of charge. But you be sure you tell him to leave them sideburns. You hear?" And everybody always laughed. "Sideburns" was a mysterious word, too, and funny, because everybody laughed.