Old Powder Man

by Joan Williams

  “I believe it’s going to kill me,” he said.

  Everything was still, they, the house, the outdoors. He moved a hand slowly to his chest and held it there flat. Following the movement, Laurel thought his hands seemed smaller too and they had always been so large and strong. Kate often had said, Like paws. With those big thumbs, he can’t do a thing in this world with them, and he would look apologetic. From all his years in the open, his hands were permanently tanned to the wrists where his shirt cuffs had ended, as if he wore mittens. His nails were shiny and well-shaped; a thin gold hair, fine as a duckling’s, lay along the back of his hands and they always seemed freshly scrubbed, to smell of soap, felt cool to the touch, like the hidden ends of grass. It was only a moment they were silent, but she thought too, I’ve got to remember everything about him, memorize it; thought, still, she did not believe he would die soon. She said, “That’s not what the doctor said. You’re just going to have to give up smoking, that’s all.”

  He did not answer and went down the long hall. Halfway, he had placed a slender chair to rest in and stopped now. Then they were at the doctor’s and Son said, “I want to do everything I can to hep myself.” Dr. Phillips suggested a therapeutic girdle. Laurel drove him to the shop, waited in the room of portentous things, oxygen tanks, iron lungs, braces, crutches, supports, while he was fitted. He wore the girdle home and after dinner went away from the table holding his stomach saying, “Wheww.” In his room, he took the girdle off, put it in his underwear drawer and never took it out again. “That thing like to cut me in two,” he said coming back.

  Laurel was irritated that he gave it up so quickly. She wanted to will into him her own feeling of hope, wanted him not to sit for hours his head hung, seeming to have given in. Sometimes, passing his door as he sat, she was unable to think of anything to say, went on by. It was the relationship he had established the years he was busy; she thought of it resentfully. But she softened, thinking he had been the way he had because he had not known better. He had mellowed with age, like most rough men, had begun to sense mistakes, too late. She was gone, Kate was beyond reach. It seemed he had put all his eggs in one basket; now it was empty. She wrote George saying so and he wrote back he had seen it happen to many self-made men when they reached the top. It was as if they had hammered at one door all their lives and when it finally opened, no one was there.

  To bring the house alive, she made as much noise as she could, talked along the center hall to Sarah or Kate, let doors slam, called loudly to Tippy. She thought Dr. Phillips, knowing more, could make him wear the girdle and went to see him. “Young lady, I found out in a short time I couldn’t tell your daddy what to do,” he said laughing, to her surprise, in admiration.

  She protested and he cut her off. “It’s only to make him more comfortable. He’s the judge of whether it does. It’s not going to cure him, Laurel.”

  She thought, driving home, that he was the braver after all. Simple and country maybe but without pretense. Her college-educated friends would have clapped the girdle on telling themselves it would do some good. She urged him to try the Mayo Clinic, a doctor in New York, another climate. He said he was better off at home, Dr. Phillips knew as much as those birds, she was like his mammy, always wanting to jump around.

  The things she had come home for had been sent to California and arrived. George wanted to know when she was coming. She had to go. Having told about the baby, she said she would come back after it was born and from the plane window stared out thinking how many times she had, with the same regret: it was too late to turn back. He leaned against a post, one hand to his chest. Kate stood off alone; her voice had broken saying goodbye and Laurel had gone to the plane unable to look back, until now.

  When the doctor in Grenada ordered another four hundred pounds Son told Holston to send it, sure he would pay off after that telephone call. Several times in the next month he went to the office and wrote the doctor each time. It was the only fellow who ever got the better of him that way. He hated to let the business go with even that one debt outstanding; but there was no reason to hang on anymore, the shape he was in, not even another year until he was sixty. In his best years he had averaged selling about a hundred and thirty-nine thousand pounds of powder a month. When he started in the business, if he sold a thousand he was doing good. That record was one thing he didn’t have to be sorry about.

  He wound up everything the first of the year, got on the plane and flew to Illinois. Leaning toward the man behind the desk he said, “Fifty thousand dollars. That’s my price,” living through now what had been so long a dream. If some things hadn’t worked out, this was. The man had said they wanted to buy use of his name, wouldn’t do as much business in that part of the country without it. Son said, Sho nuff?

  Selling of property and fixed assets had been agreed on without trouble; his name was the last point and the man had to argue. Son thought, Hell, he had waited all these years, he could wait some more, hoping they would give him a watch with an inscription, For Thirty-five Years Service.

  But they did not. They shook his hand all around, took him out to dinner and put him on the plane the next morning fifty thousand dollars richer. He hadn’t budged a inch, he told later. The plane rose over the unfamiliar cold country, went into clouds threatening snow, and he felt it right to be hidden, suspended, nowhere, because suddenly with his business lifted off him he didn’t feel anywhere. I’m retired, just a old broken down retired powder peddler, he thought. A crowd of men had gotten on the plane, feeling good, wearing ten-gallon hats. Oil men, he thought, because from Delton the plane went on to Houston. He felt like standing up and saying, O.K., big shot, how much’s anybody ever going to pay you for your name? Not that oil you bring up out of the ground. Your name.

  For most of the trip he slept dreaming about the watch, woke thinking maybe he’d buy himself one with an inscription that read, To A Tough Customer.

  As little, Kate said, as he had had to think about that business, what was he going to think about now? He ought to have had a hobby.

  He hadn’t had time to have a hobby, he said. He said stocks and bonds were his hobby. He had financial magazines coming in the mail and read those. He ordered stationery with his home address, set up a desk in his room, wrote checks, attended to what business he had to there. Clipping his first coupon, he wrote Laurel and Winston to tell them. Regularly now he wrote them, took rides about the city to find mail boxes he could reach from the car. One day, making a left turn, his fender was struck by an on-coming car. No one was hurt; he contended it was the other fellow’s fault and the case came to court. Once he would have had the juice to argue, now stood holding the rail, heard himself judged in the wrong. It was the first wreck he had ever had. He worried, knowing his reflexes and judgment had slowed down. Writing letters, he had to think a long time.

  Still, all that spring he ventured on his afternoon rides, up and down highways and seeking back roads. Buzz was in town and came to see him. Son told him, “Hell, I get so lonesome sitting here I get out and ride. Look for gravel roads. I bet I’ve found ever gravel road left in Delton County. I get on it and just ride up and down, to remind myself what it use to be like.”

  Buzz had come with news but for some moments could not say anything. Then he said that all these long months since Son had last been in East Tennessee he had been taking out that waitress. He was going to get a divorce and marry her.

  If there was anything that could make him forget how lonely he was, for the time being stop trying to figure out things, that was it: his best friend about to make the biggest fool in the world of himself; he told him so. Jesus Christ, that woman had been out with every contractor and peddler that had ever been up thataway: nobody had been going to marry her. Whew! You didn’t give up the kind of woman he had for that kind. He had been out with aplenty women; there wasn’t any two ways about that. But, hell, he never had been going to marry any of them. What does she want to marry a old man for anyway? he sai
d.

  I ain’t that old, Buzz said.

  You’re old enough to know better, Son said. If you’re going to marry her, get on out. I don’t even want to see you anymore.

  What should he do? Buzz said.

  Take your wife back up there with you and don’t let her come home again to you do, Son said.

  It was a mild winter and at the beginning of March forsythia buds opened in the warm afternoons. He started again rides he had stopped while Buzz and Will were in town. He had thought for the first time of investing money in real estate, drove about looking at lots advertised in the morning paper. He always took Tippy, sometimes drove to the edge of woods and let Tippy run there, after birds and things he never saw that disappeared down holes. He laughed telling Kate and Sarah, Tippy was going to catch himself something some day too. Driving along, he thought of all the dogs they had had, mostly plain dog, the kind he liked. His favorite had been a black and tan named Sam. He had seen it following a Negro boy down a country road, stopped and said, “Boy, how much you take for that dog?” The boy had said four bits. He gave him a dollar and brought the dog on home. After he was run over, Laurel had gone fancy and bought this pedigreed poodle that looked more like a monkey than a dog, stayed under a chair and peed if you spoke to it. He had not liked Tippy until they started taking rides. Now he guessed he was one of the smartest dogs he had ever seen. Almost every day after his late breakfast, he started out with Tippy, sometimes to look at property, sometimes without aim. Sometimes he stopped by the office for a few minutes, other times went on by into Mississippi, just to travel the flat open road.

  This morning the anticipation of spring drove him out earlier than usual. He could not find Tippy, went alone, the radio on for company. He always turned to the Negro station. Aside from music, they had a fellow talking in a conversational way, announcing dogs that were lost and jobs open. Today the State Employment Office was looking for fieldhands, seamstresses and dishwashers. A record was played that seemed like a lot of hollering to him before the announcer said, On the Main and Elm Street bus today—bus number five—Mrs. Lettie Sue Jackson of 4-0-3 First Street lef’ her wallet; telephone 227—0717. Anybody finding it please call Mrs. Jackson. Son said aloud, She won’t see that wallet again, losing it on the bus.

  After another record, the announcer said, Billy Roy Brown has lef’ home. Billy Roy, he said, call your Momma. Billy Roy, call your Momma, let her know where you’re at or come on home.

  Thinking of Billy Roy roaming the city, Son laughed, knowing no such plea would have brought him back when he was fourteen years old and ran away. Settling to the highway he knew suddenly where he was going, kept straight on until he pulled into the parking lot some time past the usual lunch hour. He went inside slowly. The restaurant was empty except for a waitress cleaning up behind a counter and a hostess who came forward carrying a menu and said, “How do. Can I give you a table or you want the counter?”

  He found breath to say, “How bout over yonder at the table by the window?”

  “That’ll be fine,” she said, going ahead and pulling out a chair. He sat down and the sun through the plate glass window made the white starched tablecloth bluish like water through heat. The hostess was large and soft, blonde except for an inch of hair close to the roots. “What can we do for you today?” she said.

  Holding the menu, not reading, he said, “Can you rustle me up a bowl of barley soup?”

  “Sure can,” she said.

  He sank over his arms folded on the table and said, “I drove near bout a hundred miles to get me a bowl of that soup.”

  She had been turning toward the kitchen, stopped and said, “You don’t mean it.”

  He tapped a foot, grinning. “I passed here, Lord, I don’t know how many years ago, and had me some barley soup. I been meaning to get back ever since.”

  “I declare,” she said and called to the waitress. “Alice Jean, this gentleman’s driven near bout a hundred miles to get some of our barley soup. Can you beat it?”

  Alice Jean stopped wiping to stare but said nothing. The hostess said, “Cook’s gone for a rest. I’ll get it. Anything else?”

  He looked at the table, trying to think; breakfast had been a short while ago. Looking up, he said, “I’ll have to let you know.”

  “Take your time,” she said, turning away. He watched her go, wide hips rocking like boats at sea, not even thinking about them. With a sound of expiring, the kitchen door fell to; the room was quiet. Alice Jean sat reading now, her head barely visible. One of his arms lay in a half-circle across the table; he moved the other to meet it; his fingertips, touching, raced one another. He looked forward to the soup. Time passed and he had to think about something else, watched a fly trapped inside a transparent cake box, hit again and again and finally settle, still. On the highway cars passed, chromium glinting like foil shining. He watched each car; one turned into the filling station next door; an overalled attendant ran out, bent to the window, put in gas. Hanging up the hose, the boy took money and leapt on long legs back to the station. Son thought, It must have been the right change. Heat made the day dance beyond the window; thin streams of rain seemed to fall in the shimmer.

  The hostess’s face filled the round porthole window in the swinging door before she pushed through carrying a tray steam rose above. He smelled the soup as she approached. It was as he remembered, thick with barley and diced carrots. He said, “Looks like I’ll have to have a glass of sweet milk after all.”

  She called, “Alice Jean, a cow juice,” and laughed, exposing gold fillings. “We seen it ordered that way in a picture show,” she said. Alice Jean brought the milk foamy from the spigot and went away without speaking.

  He blew on the soup and tasted it tentatively, after a spoonful said, “Not bad.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad it’s not no disappointment when you’ve come so far. Sometimes, things aren’t like what you remember.”

  “Last time I had two bowls and I remember driving away feeling full as a tick.’

  “I declare,” she said.

  “You got the same cook?”

  “To tell the truth, I’m not sure. I haven’t been here too long myself.”

  He was glad she was not busy. He said, “I didn’t think you was here before. Seems like there was a tall woman with a thin neck. Friendly and nice as she could be though.”

  “Always had a bow or a bunch of flowers under here?” Raising her chin, the hostess cupped her small puffy hands beneath it.

  “I don’t know now. I was only here the one time.”

  “Miss Selma, bound to be,” she said. “She up and left without a minute’s notice, to get married. Figured she better grab the chanct while she had it, I reckon. Lucky for me. I got the job. Before I was a waitress and didn’t care for waitress work.”

  “Hard on your feet,” he said.

  “Huh, hard on a lots of things you don’t know nothing about,” she said, looking down at his bowl. “Want another one this time?”

  His arms circled the bowl as if the warmth were precious. He took them away. “I don’t believe I could make it,” he said.

  “You could stand some weight,” she said.

  He looked down at himself. “I can’t get a ounce on me. I got my wife putting me half a pint of heavy cream on oatmeal and bananas every morning. It don’t do a bit of good.”

  “If that’s not always the way.” She lowered her chin and looked over her bosom. “If I drink a glass of water it puts a pound on me even standing and working like I do.”

  “If you’re fat you want to get thin, if you’re thin you want to get fat,” he said. “Do you smoke?”

  She pulled out a chair, sat down and said, “No, I’ve never cared for the taste of tobacco.”

  “That’s one thing the doc says keeps weight off me,” he said. “But I don’t know whether he knows what he’s talking about or not. I tried to give up smoking but I got so nervous I liked to jumped out of my skin.”

 
; “I guess I’m lucky about tobacco. I know everybody says I am.”

  “It don’t do you any good but if there’s one thing I enjoy, it’s cigarettes.”

  She nodded at his bowl. “How bout some pie or cake?”

  Thinking of the fly, he shook his head. “No mam. I might do with some plain vanilla ice cream, though.”

  She called, “Alice Jean, bring the gentleman a dish of cream. Vanilla.”

  “The thing the doc wants me to stop smoking for is my cough,” he said. He coughed lightly to show. “I got a cough that’s a booger.”

  “I said to myself when you come in, he looks kind of peaked. You better take care. A cold can fool you.”

  “No mam, it’s not a cold. It’s a cough. I keep it all year round. It’s something to do with down here.” He indicated the hand he held hard and flat against his chest.

  “Well, I’m sure sorry to hear it,” she said. Alice Jean brought the ice cream. Puckering her lips, blowing upward, the hostess said, “I got heated up when the soup did. Alice Jean, I could do with some cream, but not that much.” When Alice Jean brought it, the hostess ate several bites with quick tongue flicks, then sat back to say, “What business you in?”

  Very deliberately he put down his spoon, leaned back and said, “I’m a old wore out powder peddler.”

  She had her spoon halfway to her mouth, her mouth open, stopped the spoon and said, “A what?”

  “Powder peddler,” he said.