This monologue took place at Didi’s visitation inside Glymph Funeral Home. I didn’t know what to say, shook the biology professor’s hand, and tried to remember his name. I thought, are you making fun of me? I thought, I’m about to be your silent killer. I thought, if only I’d made the decision to cut off that water on the first day.
I could’ve walked back home and said, “Hey, pour some food dye down the hole and let me run back over to the graveyard to see if it comes out.” I could’ve said, “Food dye would get diluted beyond recognition. Let’s put a marble down that hole and see if it comes out in the cemetery.” I could’ve said, “You remember that time we got in a fight, Didi, a day before we flew to New York for a vacation? I have a confession to make. When I went to the e-ticket kiosk, I requested that my seat be changed so we wouldn’t have to sit next to each other all that time.” I could’ve said, “I wonder if we can send a piece of kite string down the hole, then knot both ends to empty lima bean cans and talk to one another, you know, like people did back before everything got so goddamned complicated.”
Luckily there were available plots at the Calloustown Natural Baptist Church’s graveyard. Didi would’ve never agreed to such an eternal resting place. I bought the plot right next to hers, too, even though I had no love of Christians in general and Baptists in particular. Fuck it, I thought. Would I be able to see anything in the so-called afterlife? Does anything matter? If, by chance, things turned out differently than I believed, couldn’t Didi and I take the mysterious tunnel back home nightly?
Oh Didi, Didi, Didi—how I wish you never roamed the earth out back. How I wish I’d’ve either shot you more, or never.
Muddling
A guy on the local news said most gas stations lowered their prices at nine in the morning and raised them at four, something about fucking over people who’d already driven to work and then again for drivers who didn’t leave their cubicles until dusk. He didn’t exactly use those words, but any rational cynic knew what he meant. I don’t think the guy was an economist or soothsayer, but he evidently worked honestly at something in between or no one would’ve interviewed him on Channel 4. I didn’t catch his name or occupation, but he wore a blue shirt and striped tie. He combed his hair. The guy seemed to know more about oil corporations than the rest of my friends, relatives, or instrument-needy prospective customers.
So on Friday morning I drove from where I live on the outskirts of Calloustown and began circling a block that held a Citgo, a Sunoco, an Exxon, and a locally owned Rajer Dodger’s that had two self-serve pumps out front. I circled and circled, starting about 8:30. Each establishment sold regular unleaded for $3.65 a gallon, plus that 9/10ths—twenty cents less than the national average, but like my friends, relatives, and instrument-needy prospective customers always say, “So what? It’s still fucking Calloustown.” Though, again, not in those exact words.
Three-sixty-five, three-sixty-five, three-sixty-five, three-sixty-five. I rounded the block—this is the Columbia Road, over onto Old Calloustown Road, onto the Charleston Road, onto Old Old Calloustown Road. What I’m saying is, I circled the heart of town where supply and demand mattered. In between I noticed six or eight church signs, the funeral home, Southern Exotic Pets, Worm’s Bar, and so on. Worm had a new piece of plywood leaned next to his door that advertised TOPLESS, which meant he’d be in there behind the bar not wearing a shirt. He’d done it before, during lean times, like the last time gasoline prices reached $3.65 and people rarely left their houses. One of the churches had a magnetic letter sign out front that read SIN COOKS FRY LATER, which took me about sixteen right-hand turns to figure out, what with “cooks” being both a verb and noun, and wondering if someone forgot a comma. At least the preacher or signage person wasn’t asking me to go to the library forty miles away, find a Bible, and look up what’s spelled out in a particular chapter and verse.
At nine o’clock, just as I was about to run out of gas, sure enough, assistant managers started coming out of the four stations and/or convenience stores. They took their poles and exchanged a 5 for a 3, bringing the price per gallon down to $3.63 plus that 9/10ths. Maybe I said aloud, “They need to hire that dude on a permanent basis on the TV, the guy who figured out this raise-and-lower-prices ruse. Fuck the weatherman, who’s never close to being right.”
I circled around two more times, then pulled into Rajer Dodger’s only because I liked to hear the Indian guy in there yell things to his wife in whatever dialect they employed. It didn’t matter to me much that they offered gas that came from one of the major oil companies, or that they charged an extra dime per gallon if you used a credit card, just like every other station on the block.
I pulled up to the pump. I got out and unscrewed the cap. I read PLEASE MUST PAY FIRST PLEASE on a handwritten sign taped to the pump’s torso, and although I wanted to say, “Oh fuck me give me a break, what kind of gas station doesn’t have one of those fancy credit/debit acceptors plus a place to slide in cash a la any of the video poker machines up at Harrah’s Casino up in Cherokee?” I locked the door to my pickup and started inside.
This is when I noticed a white man, of the normal indeterminate age of these parts—which means between fifty and eighty—sitting in front of a fifty-five-gallon plastic barrel, his legs splayed out with ten or twelve pints of blackberries in between. He said, “You need you some berries, Chief. Keep away the cancer. Eat them on ice cream or whole under milk. Or by they selves. Keep away the cancer. You don’t want the cancer for you and yours, right?”
Remember that I said “dusk” earlier—about people leaving work—which means I’m talking winter. Blackberries emerge in July. No one has local fresh blackberries in November. They have spinach—which fights cancer, too, according to spinach farmers—but not blackberries. Hell, I’ve been around long enough to hear how everything fights cancer—radishes, peaches, cord wood, getting your driveway sealed.
I said, “You up early selling,” because I couldn’t think of anything else.
“I ain’t no worse than you,” the blackberry man said. He scrambled up without corrupting one of the cardboard containers. “You ain’t better than me, Chief.”
I would like to say that the price of fuel caused people in my town to act all bowed-up and cocksure, but even if Rajer inside decided to sell his gasoline at pre-1979 prices and hand out wedges of free garlic naan, everyone around would still pick fights and scowl.
I said, “Just came in to fill up my tank, man. That’s it. If I come across anyone today looking for vine-ripened berries, I’ll send them your way.”
I walked into the store trying to figure out what $3.63 times twenty gallons would end up, because I didn’t want to tell Rajer I wanted seventy-five bucks’ worth and then have to go back in and get change if I filled the tank prematurely. Rajer yelled out, “Hello, Mr. Finley. How are you today, fine sir?”
I had told him not to call me Mr. Finley. Hell, he’d started off greeting me as Finley sahib, so I guess we’d made some progress over the last few years I’d known him. He’d gone from Finley sahib to Mr. Kay, to Mr. Finley Kay, to Mr. Finley. In a decade he might plain say, “Hey, Finley, what up, bro?” like any other American.
I said, “Hey, Raj, I need to fill up. Or at least I need to get about seventy dollars.”
“Do not blame me for the price of gas! I make two cents only for every gallon. Two cents! Everyone think that we are setting the high prices, but it is the oil companies. And the Arabs. Mr. Finley, please—as you go about your daily duties—tell people that I am not from Arabia.”
I can’t say for sure if Raj Patel suffered from one of the more common forms of short-term memory loss—Korsakoff syndrome, for example—but he found it necessary to explain the nuances of oil company/distributor/individual operator every time I walked in, fuel-needy or not. If I wasn’t busy and didn’t have an order to complete back home, I’d hang out with good Raj, look over his various Ganesh pictures and figurines, listen to his weird music, ask ab
out the incense he burned. In time he’d explain what pathetic profits he received for beer, Little Debbie oatmeal pies, charcoal lighter fluid, white bread, daily newspapers, cigarettes, pickle relish, and hot sauce. He must’ve been some kind of champion oratory/ forensics/debate contestant back in his Mumbai, Delhi, or Bangalore school days.
I said, “I’m not blaming you on the price of gas, buddy. I know.” I didn’t tell him how I’d become aware of every goddamn gas station in America dropping prices when fewer people pulled into stations, when the “average price per gallon” people went around and concluded that things weren’t as bad as they seemed.
“You are my favorite customer, Mr. Finley,” Raj said. I’d heard him say it to people named Mr. Bubba and Mr. Larry, to Ms. Darlene and Ms. Tiffany, when I stood nearly out of earshot at the twelve-packs.
I started to say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah but I never see you giving me some lamb saag or whatever it’s called.” I started to say, “I sure could use a little of that good goat vindaloo that we can’t get around Calloustown.”
But I couldn’t, because the blackberry dude charged in and yelled out, “I can get y’all a deal on telephone poles! Who needs some beet sugar? I can get y’all sugar, beans, gourd birdhouses, snow peas, book matches, and rebuilt carburetors. Y’all need of those things? I got a line on Royal brand typewriters. I got fescue, putters, fog lights, boogie boards, aluminum siding, fire ant killer, and plas tic lifelike nativity scenes. Did I mention telephone poles? And blackberries.”
I stood there staring at him. He came across much taller inside the store. I’m talking this guy might’ve been six-four or six-six, tall enough to’ve played some basketball in his day. He should’ve been selling peaches, apples, or oranges, what with that height. I said, “I only need the gas.”
Raj Patel said, “Hello, Mr. Ruben Orr. How are you today, fine sir?”
“I got everything cheap and legal, as usual,” Ruben Orr said. “Chief.”
“You got any ukuleles?” I asked him. If he did, then I knew he’d stolen them from me. Me, I had gone from being a normal luthier to specializing in ukuleles—an instrument that had become more sought after that most people believed, probably because of ADD.
“Little guitars? Ukuleles, like tiny guitars?” Ruben said. “I had me some sitars while back but Rajer here bought all them things up.”
“My nephews back home are very good sitar players. They are professionals!” Raj said. He nodded and didn’t blink. “One of them is now the number-one steel sitar player in all of India.”
I said, “Huh,” handed Raj over three twenties and two fives, and walked out to pump my gas before it went back up in price.
I didn’t have my camper top attached. I’d only had to put the thing on one time in order to transport sixty custom-made Finley Kay ukuleles to a group of Hawaiian music enthusiasts who wanted to break some kind of world record in regards to number of people standing waist-deep over in Lake Calloustown while strumming and singing “Tiny Bubbles.” So it wasn’t difficult to see, in my rearview mirror, Mr. Ruben Orr tailing me on his moped. Six-four or six-six on a moped, is what I’m saying. I took some turns—there weren’t many options—onto Old Savannah Road, then Old Charlotte Road, then Old Myrtle Beach—and the guy stayed behind me. I thought, fuck, do I want to waste all this cheap two-pennies-off-normal-price gas trying to keep a blackberry-to-telephone-pole-selling, moped-riding lunatic from perhaps following me back home? Maybe he actually lives on the route I’m taking, I thought.
I looked down at my gas gauge and noticed how I’d already spent a good eighth of a tank trying to lose the guy. I turned left, then right, then right again until I got on the road where I lived—where my ex-wife and I lived until she said out loud how she didn’t believe in a ukulele-making husband and took off for Raleigh, North Carolina, where, evidently, men have jobs that’re more secure and less suspect.
I checked my rearview mightily, and sure enough Mr. Ruben Orr continued behind me, scrunched down as if to be more aerodynamic.
I don’t know that this has much to do with my story, but I don’t believe in the NRA. I mean, I believe the NRA exists, just like I believe that the Bible exists, for I’ve seen it, but I don’t believe in those virgin birth, parting of the Red Sea, burning bush, dead guy Lazarus returning, water to wine kinds of stories. Anyway, I don’t believe that the Second Amendment allows all of us to carry little pistols around whenever we want, for the only purpose to shoot people we fear. No, I believe in taking care of things otherwise.
I got out of my truck, reached beneath my seat, and pulled out half a Louisville Slugger. I pulled out nunchucks I didn’t know how to use. Farther back I found an old length of a telephone line, maybe eighteen inches in length, notch marks at one end for a better grip. In my pocket I knew there was a razor-sharp folding Buck knife, but that would be my last option.
Mr. Ruben Orr puttered up behind my truck. He smiled and said, “Hey, you remember me from Rajer Dodger’s?”
“What’re you doing following me, man?”
He set his kickstand and turned the ignition. “You never let me finish my sentence. I thought you’d be coming back in the station. Anyway, sure enough I do have a couple ukuleles back at the trailer. Well, back in one of the filled-up trailers I got to the side of my doublewide. I got kerosene lanterns, pup tents, crockery, model cars and airplanes in the box, alligator heads, a stuffed bobcat. All kinds of shit. And two ukuleles, but I imagine the catgut’s somewhere between compromised and useless.”
I said, of course, “Well I sure would like to take a look at the things.”
Ruben Orr said, “I tell you what, Finley. Do you mind if I call you Finley, or Fin? Raj told me your name. I tell you what. I’ll go home, get the ukuleles, and bring them back over to Rajer Dodger’s. I shouldn’t’ve left all my blackberries there in the first place. You drop on by later and I’ll have them there waiting for your inspection.”
I closed my truck door so that Ruben couldn’t see my nunchucks, sawed-off bat, or copper-wire-and-rubber billy club. I said, “I got some work to do around here, but I’ll come back on by about after lunch.”
“Sounds good,” Ruben said. He stretched his back. “You got a nice little setup here,” he said. “Damn, son, you look like you done good for yourself.”
“In a previous life,” I said, which was true, seeing as I’d married up. “Used to have a rich wife and a regular job.”
Ruben Orr straddled his moped and turned the ignition. “I hear that,” he said. He turned the ignition off and on again. “Same story as me, except for the rich wife and regular job.” He shook his moped, then opened the gas tank lid and peered down close.
I said, “Let me guess.”
“Goddamn it. This wouldn’t’ve happened if you’d’ve pulled over when I kept buzzing my horn and flashing my lights. Man, I took off following you before I could even fill up at Rajer’s. You know, they all drop their prices from about nine in the morning until when people get off work. I seen a thing on the news about it.”
I had zero cans of gas in my possession, seeing as I feared my ex-father-in-law showing up, spreading it around, and burning me clear out of the state. Or of dousing the place myself and sitting in the middle of it all, surrounded by custom-made ukuleles that weren’t selling like a year earlier. I said, “Let’s get that thing in the back of my truck and I’ll drive you over to Rajer’s. I don’t have gas here, and I fear siphoning out of my own tank.”
“Goddamn it,” Ruben Orr said. “I hate to put you out.”
He picked the moped up by himself and laid it down on its side. Ruben strode over to the passenger side of the truck while I closed the tailgate. I said, “I’m not in a giant hurry today.”
“Hey, what are all those weapons of questionable destruction doing on your bench seat?”
I couldn’t lie. It’s a fault. Not being able to lie ruined my marriage. Making and selling ukuleles doesn’t require lying, since they are what they are. I dr
opped out of college first semester junior year because I enrolled in an acting class, and as it ended up I couldn’t conjure up a dialect outside the one I owned, or memorize lines I’d’ve never said in a social situation.
I said, “Well. I don’t own a gun. I don’t own rifles or pistols.”
Ruben Orr laughed. He banged his giant hand on my dashboard. “I had an old boy hit me upside the head with a two-by-four one time and I didn’t even swerve off the road.”
I tried to visualize a man getting whacked thusly while straddling a moped. I said, “I don’t even know how to use nunchucks, to be honest,” and backed out onto the road.
“I got this idea,” Ruben said. “I don’t live far from Rajer Dodger’s, and I got gas at my own home.”
A fireplace poker would fit nicely beneath my truck seat, I thought, and made a mental note to ask if he’s got fireplace pokers for sale when we get there.
“Mahogany’s good for a ukulele, isn’t it?” Ruben said as we pulled up to his mobile home, which appeared to be surrounded by four single-wides, two Airstreams, and two yellow school buses plugged without wheels into the clay yard. When viewed from above, I imagined that his arrangement of aluminum abodes looked similar to ancient hieroglyphics, or one of Carl Gustav Jung’s mandala examples, or a carton character’s slit eyeball with crow’s feet. “Over the years I think I had a couple oak wood ukuleles. One time I had one built out of balsa wood but I had it outside on a windy day and never seen the thing again.”
I said, “If you have a mahogany uke—like a Gretsch, or a Harmony Company Vita-Uke signed Roy Smeck—I’d be interested. I’d be surprised, and I’d be interested.”
Ruben pulled his moped out of the truck bed, straddled it, turned the ignition, and rode it forward when it started. He steered it thirty feet to a four-foot-high, tin-topped, three-sided enclosure of sorts and pulled the kickstand back down. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “I guess I had enough gas in it after all. Must be a jiggle-needy starter that’s the problem.”
Calloustown Page 5