Calloustown

by George Singleton

  I should’ve written the stores first, as it ends up, before ordering the jumping beans.

  So. I had stacks and stacks of jumping beans in the house. Every time I turned on the heat, or opened up the blinds, or turned on the lights, those things went off clicking and clacking. Louise couldn’t take it, she left the marriage, and I moved my belongings.

  Worm said, “Maybe I do remember you, then. I can’t remember everyone who comes into the bar who thinks they should be remembered for being famous.”

  Adazee started laughing. “My brother Bernard could’ve dropped you down to second place.” She looked up at Worm. “You remember? Tell Buzz here about my brother.”

  Worm stared hard at Adazee. From the speakers, Reverend Mixon’s voice came out saying, “‘Oh, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me…’” which was straight out of Job. My old college depended on mediocre students brought up in the church, so I needed to be able to recognize and quote scriptural passages on a whim. Worm said, “I don’t know your brother. I have never heard you had a brother.”

  Adazee said, “Yes you have. Anyway, Bernard might have been the best trumpet player to have ever lived. He won first place in the state competition, and then got invited to play down in New Orleans for the national competition.”

  Worm walked away, and when Adazee didn’t comment on his rudeness I understood that he already knew the story and that Adazee knew she’d told him the trumpet story at some point. I said, “How old is Bernard? Back when I went to Calloustown High we didn’t even have a trumpet section in the marching band. Two of those Munson boys played bugle, which kind of limited the band’s repertoire.”

  “Larry and Terry Munson,” Adazee said. “They’re probably third and fourth on the list of famous-from-here, seeing they got that award at a big Civil War reenactment competition up in Franklin, Tennessee. Don’t quote me on that. There’s Barry Harrell, who published his own book called What I’ve Thought about Duct Tape. He might be third.”

  Reverend Mixon said, “‘Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay my hand upon my mouth,’” which, too, was straight out of Job.

  “Bernard’s between you and me, age-wise. He’s my big brother. Anyway, he got down to compete in New Orleans, and this band director from somewhere up north had the second-best trumpet player for a student. Bernard didn’t even have a formal teacher, unless you include Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass albums he used to listen to nonstop.” Ada-zee got up off her stool, walked around the bar, seemed to be aware that her boobs might brush up against things, and made another drink. To me she whispered, “You want anything while I’m back here?”

  I wanted everything, and maybe a little cocaine. I said, “I better be on my way soon,” though I knew I wouldn’t be able to go and hear that clack-clack-clacking. I pretty much believed that those jumping beans spelled out “This is why your wife left” in Morse code.

  Adazee came back and shifted her stool closer to mine. “My brother’s main competition, the number-two guy? He somehow got Bernard to play a drinking game. He told my brother it was a game called Instinct, and real musicians were best at it. In the game, a guy closes his eyes and puts his hands on a table palms down. I’m not sure what is supposed to happen next.”

  I said, “I know that game, except you keep your eyes open. We used to call it Slaps.” Adazee’s tits belonged in the Guinness World Records, I thought. I needed to find a way to bring that up, how I—as a regular contributor in the annual anthology—could be some kind of witness if she took off her Alcatraz shirt and brassiere, and let me band a measuring tape around her torso.

  “I’m not talking rock-paper-scissors, or rock-paper-scissors-dynamite,” Adazee said. She drank from her glass and grimaced. “I’m not talking rock-paper-scissors-dynamite-stapler-pee.”

  I think it was at this point where I said to myself, “You have made a mistake, Luther.”

  “Anyway, Bernard closed his eyes to play the game—he was the best brother in the world and didn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable—and the next thing he remembered was regaining consciousness with his right hand nailed to the table. And I mean it wasn’t attached to the rest of his arm. That fellow nailed his hand to the table, then took out an ax and chopped it right off. My brother couldn’t play the trumpet in the competition, or ever again, really. So that’s why you’re still number one in Calloustown.”

  I looked across to the bottles of good bourbon—there’s only good bourbon, even the ones that end in “Gentleman.” I don’t know if I opened my mouth and stuck my tongue out, over and over. I thought of Louise, and wondered what she thought, dealing with sick, damaged, and forlorn animals that once lived on a different continent. Did she talk to them? Did she try to convince these brutes I was a fool for working a decade and a half trying to recruit bootless scholars to an “institution of higher learning,” then falling for entrepreneurial scams that I invented myself?

  Adazee said, “Maybe it’s for the best. You’re probably the kind of man who understands ‘maybe for the best,’ right? I mean, Jesus, you’d have to, Buzz. Bernard quit playing the trumpet, and he took up singing, and the next thing you know he’s appeared on Broadway in a couple musicals. He’s been a pirate, seeing as he can wear a hook easier than anyone else! Bernard says he’s planning to come back here someday to re-open the florist shop, seeing as it’s been closed for a while and people shouldn’t have to drive out of town to buy a bouquet. And he says that if someone beats him to it, he wants to come back and open an ice skating rink and teach the youth how to perform triple Axels.”

  I hate to admit, and I am not proud, that the first two things I thought were A) a florist shop might be the perfect place to sell Mexican jumping beans, and B) your ex-trumpet-playing, Broadway-singing, florist-aspiring, ice-skating brother who might’ve one day been in the Guinness World Record anthology as the trumpeter who can play “Flight of the Bumblebees” faster than anyone, is perhaps a gay man who would be ostracized more than I, and perhaps killed, in Calloustown.

  I said, “Huh.”

  Adazee kept talking and talking for maybe twenty minutes. She named off everyone she knew in Calloustown who could’ve been a world record holder of one type or another, had they owned either luck or tenacity. She continued her monologue until Worm came back through the back door. They looked at each other for a second too long, I noticed, and then she excused herself for the restroom which, I learned later, had a hand-painted sign that read UNSEX on it.

  I said to Worm, “Goddamn she’s got the biggest boobs I’ve ever seen.”

  “You remember that time when we were at that ‘spend the night’ party over at Ms. Whalen’s house the night before the Sherman Knew Nothing festival?”

  It’s not something anyone would forget. Every year Ms. Whalen—the sixth-grade teacher—had a sleepover party so that her husband could tell the boys about sex. The sixth-grade girls spent the night elsewhere and received sex ed from a woman. This was a Calloustown tradition, and the next day the boys and girls met up in order to watch men burn down a courthouse that never existed. According to legend, General Sherman thought our town worthless and swerved between Savannah and Columbia. Seven or eight generations later, descendants of the original Calloustowners still felt slighted, and it showed in their everyday goings-on, thus why Stuart “Worm” Harrell shunned me at first.

  I said, “Yeah. Somebody pulled out his pecker to show off pubic hair, and you and I went back home. As a matter of fact, I remember our promising one another we’d never tell anyone about that night.”

  Worm said, “Exactly. I’m glad you remember. I’m about to tell you something, and I want you to make that same promise with me, at least for a day. Promise?”

  I nodded. I said, “What’s up?”

  “Listen. You might be the man I been looking for. Listen. And don’t think I don’t know that a man like you gets good money for advice. Ever since you come back because your daddy’s in p
rison for mass murder, I’ve been thinking about how I could get in that book of famous records. We need us another celebrity in Calloustown so we don’t plain dry up. Economy’s bad enough. Bad economy without even a Virgin Mary sighting on a tree trunk or pothole spells out disaster, if you ask me.”

  I said, “I’ll trade free advice for one shot of Old Crow.” I said, “My father’s not in prison for mass murder, by the way. If he was, he’d be the most famous person from Calloustown ever.”

  Worm unscrewed the cap and handed over the entire quart bottle. He said, “You do what you need to do. I ain’t a part of this. I ain’t pushing you.”

  I thought, fuck. I thought, if I drink, I’m not going to stop until I get brave enough to find Louise, drive to where she and I once lived, and get pulled over by police for driving under the influence. Then I’ll have the worst lawyer ever and get thrown in prison with my father. In between the court case and incarceration I’ll drive out to AfriCall of the Wild, ask for Louise’s forgiveness, and end up volunteering to muck the elephants’ stalls. An elephant will step on my foot, I’ll get gangrene, and then I’ll die. Somebody will have to not only clear out my mother’s belongings, but all of my Mexican jumping beans, and that person will do nothing but curse my existence, which will negate any notoriety I’d gained for the hornet stings.

  The preacher on the cassette tape got all animated and said, “Everybody’s talking about the importance of bonding. We ain’t here to bond! If God wanted us to bond, He’d’ve given us a special glue gun instead of an index finger,” which wasn’t from the Book of Job.

  “I got a few ideas. In that book of yours they got people down for eating hot dogs, Krystal hamburgers, pie, pancakes, deviled eggs, pickled eggs.” He went on and on.

  I screwed the cap back on the Old Crow without drinking from it and pushed the bottle toward Worm. Adazee came back smiling and said, “So I guess Buzz thought it was a great idea, huh? Y’all don’t appear mad about anything.”

  Worm took the Old Crow and drank straight out of the bottle just as Reverend Mixon got back on track and said, “‘Gird up your loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. Will thou also disannul my judgment?’”

  They looked at one another again, for too long, and I realized that something had been planned, something I wasn’t in on.

  Worm said, “I just broke into your momma’s house—actually the door wasn’t locked—and I ate exactly a hundred and thirteen of your Mexican jumping beans. I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find a Mexican jumping bean–eating world record, so I guess I’m it. Thirteen’s my lucky number.”

  I took the bottle back from him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “We got us another celebrity!” Adazee said. “Calloustown’s back on the map!”

  Worm said, “I feel real bad about what I said earlier. What I made up earlier. Truth be told, your ex-wife didn’t call up. Why would I say such a thing?” He hit himself in the leg. “I got to learn some things about business.”

  I said, “You can’t just say you ate a bunch of something, or performed some kind of act, or had something happen to you like with me. There has to be witnesses. You have to have certified verifiers in a controlled environment.” I’m not sure how that last sentence developed in my head, or why.

  “That story about Adazee’s brother’s not true either, by the way. In a way it’s all your fault, Buzz. He could play a trumpet real good, that much is right. But from what I understand, he nailed his own hand to the table and then cut it off with a ax. He wanted to get known as the best one-handed brass player in the world. At least that’s what people finally figured out, once Bernard made it all the way up to New York.”

  Adazee jumped up and down quickly. It was obvious she’d taken off her brassiere when she was in the unisex restroom, probably because of discomfort, nothing else. She said, “That’s not true about Bernard.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Do you know how much those jumping beans cost me? You owe me some money, my man.” I still didn’t drink from that bottle of Old Crow.

  Worm said, “I don’t feel so good.” He said, “I don’t know if I can eat those things again, with witnesses or not.”

  Adazee said, “That’s what you get.”

  Reverend Mixon said, “‘They were children of fools, yea, children of base men.’”

  I didn’t make eye contact with either of them. I thought of my childhood, and how I, too—before and after the hornets’ nest—wanted to be remembered. I wondered what my father did in his cell, at that very moment. I hoped that there was no afterlife, for I didn’t want my mother witnessing anything I would partake of, ever, in the future. I said, “Well, I guess there’s still hope.” I said, “Those beans you ate will have moths emerge. It’s got a big old Latin name that I have written down somewhere. I guess if you pull down your pants we can count the moths flying out of your ass and be official certified witnessing verifiers to that.”

  Adazee said to Worm, “I did my job. I got him here and I kept him occupied. Pay up.”

  They may have had an argument. I started daydreaming. Maybe I heard Adazee say something, again, about how I was old enough to be her father, and how she didn’t have time to be making up fake Welcome Wagons just so people could make my acquaintance. I wondered what my wife did at that moment. Was she helping an ex-circus zebra foal? Did she study a blister on her palm from raking and shoveling too often? And then, unfortunately, I thought of the moths—Cydia deshaisiana—that might indeed emerge from the end of Stuart Harrell’s alimentary canal. What kind of life-beginning is that for an insect that will live less than a week? It won’t even have time to make its way into a bakery, attracted by bags of flour, in order to foul grain meant to be used in congratulatory and festive dessert, for people who completed an education or bested someone else’s long-standing record or knew that their wedding vows were impenetrable and relentless. I thought, I am back in my hometown. I thought, it might be good to throw away my father’s rifle, plus every book with my name listed inside.

  Pitching Pennies

  I expected a different downfall for my wife’s brother, something akin to murder or forgery. Long ago—and you can ask my groomsmen, because I told them all about Lee Wayne at the bachelor party when he disappeared for a couple hours—I predicted kidnapping, grand larceny, felony DUI, drug and gun trafficking, bigamy, and any number of paternity suits. I thought Lee Wayne might finally get caught scamming people out of their retirement savings, or selling stolen goods, or hooking up with chop shop men working a tri-state area. That’s how it is for men who insist on being called two first names, one of which is “Wayne.” There’s scientific and sociological proof. I predicted that Lee Wayne would eventually make his way to Nigeria to teach those Internet people how to siphon money from one account to another without repercussions.

  The maximum penalty for the mutilation, diminution, or falsification of usable currency, according to United States Code title 18, part I, chapter 17, is about the same as the maximum penalty for littering. If I ever get married again—it’s logically possible that it could happen—I’m going to mention this to my new set of groomsmen, who’ll all be different than the first team I employed, seeing as those friends, for the most part, advised me against marrying Monica. In my defense, I found out only later that my wife went by Monica Marie up until the time she went to college. I don’t know if there’s ever been a scientific and sociological study about two-named women yet, but there should be. Kate “Ma” Barker. Mary Lou Retton.

  “Lee Wayne’s coming by to stay with us for a couple weeks, until he can straighten out his life,” Monica said to me one day, seven years into our marriage, nine months after the last time we’d heard from her brother. “I don’t want to hear any crap from you about this.”

  A minute earlier we had been getting along fine, talking about how it would never be socially acceptable for women to chew Red Man or Beechnut tobacco in public until they
learned how to spit cleanly. We’d gotten on the subject because neither of us was doing very well when it came to nicotine gum, prescription Zyban, nicotine patches, prescription Chantix, hypnosis, and cold turkey. Monica and I stood out in the middle of our backyard smoking one-hundred-percent additive-free natural tobacco, because at least we’d gotten away from the more popular name brands. We had agreed that A) we should not smoke in the house because maybe the cleaner smell would make us eventually stop; and B) once we ran out of money from buying the one-hundred-percent additive-free natural tobacco cigarettes that cost twice as much as, say, Camels, Marlboros, and Winstons, we would have no other choice but to quit, or start robbing banks in a way more suited to her brother Lee Wayne. I’m not all that proud to admit that when I smoked cigarettes outside I found myself looking at the tomato/Brussels sprouts/habanero/broccoli/ rosemary/basil garden and wondered how difficult it might be to grow actual tobacco plants there, and learn how to roll handmade cigars.

  The neighbors next door had a cookout. It was a little more than obvious that they pretended they didn’t see us standing there, a half acre away, puffing like special lizards. These were new people who’d only moved in a couple months earlier. The old neighbors evidently didn’t pay their mortgage. I think their last name began with either an L or a T, but I can’t remember. I said to Monica, “Two weeks?” I said, “There’s no way that he can straighten out his life in two weeks. Did you mean years? Did I mishear you? Did you say two decades?”