Drowning in Gruel

by George Singleton

  "Tell me about it," I said.

  Then I walked her around the corner to the Gruel Ice House, the only thriving business in town. Their motto, nearly flaked off atop the entire cement block facade, read, THE WORLD'S HARDEST ICE.

  I wanted to hear Sharon say that, I'll admit.

  The Old Gruel Cemetery holds the remains of about a dozen families—mostly Cathcarts, Deeses, Purgasons, and Downers. Because I imagined how disappointed—and perhaps litigious—Sharon might become once the hawk migration ruse became obvious, I felt it necessary to divert her attention to an ancient tombstone I had discovered during my first expedition through Old Gruel. There in the back corner stood a ragged-edged piece of limestone with NOVEL AKERS—WASHED ASHORE printed on it.

  Sharon retracted two plastic bags of crushed ice from her sockets and squinted at the headstone. She said, "What does this mean, 'washed ashore'? No way. What, did the guy drown somewhere else and they moved his body here?"

  I said, "I have no idea. When I asked some people about it, they either said they didn't want to talk about it or that some things were better off unknown."

  "I doubt the Atlantic Ocean ever came this far north. I think it stopped somewhere around Columbia. Even if it did, that would be long before the English language arrived, you know. My ass is melting."

  The ground in front of NOVEL AKERS—WASHED ASHORE barely grew new grass. It must've been some kind of Gruel inside joke, I realized, or maybe it was a dog buried there. No other headstone advertised a member of the Akers family. I suddenly felt like an idiotic and love-ravaged schoolboy showing off a secret hiding place or buried trivial treasures to a sixth-grade girl. I said, "Well this is Gruel. There's this washed ashore thing, and then there's a couple boys at the bar who try to do trick shots all the time."

  "No hawks flying overhead on cue," Sharon said. "No birds of prey whatsoever. Not even geese."

  I said, "You'd have to talk to somebody else about all that. The Chamber of Commerce woman. I only moved here some few months ago."

  We walked back to the square. Sharon threw her ice bags in the garbage and said, "I'm still young enough to look punk. People will think I'm only wearing a lot of mascara and eye shadow. I used to dress up like that at my last job, but I think my boss didn't like it."

  "Where'd you work?" I figured she worked for a zoo or something, what with traveling all the way from the lowcountry to watch some birds fly by. I figured she ran a homeless shelter, or a clinic for people who suffered from insomnia.

  "I was a teacher for four years. Then I sold cell phones. Then I went back to being a teacher for four more years. It got to the point where I couldn't keep a job where everyone watched your every move. And no, I didn't teach biology or ornithology. And I don't think my mother and father were reincarnated into hawks, though I can tell you that more than a few people over there"—she pointed across the street—"are hopeful to remeet their relatives in the sky."

  We approached Victor Dees's concession stand. I said, "What grade did you teach?"

  Sharon looked up and northeast. She pushed the middle three fingers of each hand to her cheekbones. "Second. I need a headache powder. Say, what made you move here?"

  I said, "They sell Goody's powders over at Roughhouse Billiards. I need a drink anyway." Then, for no rational reason, and against my better judgment, I said, "You ever see those wooden triangles with golf tees in them, like you see on the tables at Cracker Barrel? You know, you jump tees and see how many you have left at the end? Well my father invented that thing. Ever since, my entire family's lived off the royalties. And then I became an inventor, too."

  She said, "Bullshit. That was invented by someone at Junior Achievement. Along with that weird board with two metal rods trying to get the big ball bearing to travel uphill to five hundred points."

  I couldn't picture the metal rod game. And deep down I kind of knew that my father didn't really invent the triangle game. Right as I opened the heavy glass door to Roughhouse Billiards I said, "My latest invention ain't really that much of an invention." We walked six steps and pulled out stools at the bar. "It's more of a concept. I want to package a DUI retardant."

  Jeff the owner said, "We got a special for middle-aged men going through a midlife crisis today, Fred. Bourbon and Pep to." To Sharon he said, "Lady, I can tell you right now that I'm in no need of free-range eggplant." He pointed to the purplish rings around her eyes. Let me say right here that I was kind of amazed at Jeff's acumen in regards to quick-witted observations vis-a-vis people with physical abnormalities. I knew right away that I'd try to patent his abilities.

  Sharon said, "I just want a beer."

  "My DUI retardant is kind of a care package, you see. It'll have a tin of those Altoid things, of course. But I also want to put in there a choke collar and leash and some dog biscuits so that when the cop pulls you over, you only have to say, 'Hello, Officer. I'm out looking for this obviously beaten and pregnant stray dog I saw yesterday, and I want to get it to my vet.' Also, in my package, there'll be a fake poster of a missing child, so if you get pulled over by a cop you can say that you were looking for some little girl you thought you saw. See, most of the time you'll get caught for weaving, and there's a reason to be weaving if you're looking for a stray dog or missing kid. On top of all this, there's two or three empty Styrofoam take-out boxes with MEALS-ON-WHEELS printed on the lids, so if a cop pulls you over, you can say you were swerving while trying to read house numbers. You see? Isn't that a great idea? Can you see it? It's like a little box—maybe one-by-one foot—and you keep it right there in the passenger seat ready to open up if you've been out boozing it up and a policeman pulls you over."

  Jeff the owner handed over a bourbon to me and a bottle of Pabst to Sharon. She said to me, "Tell me the real reason you had to move here. I've known some inventors in the past, and they don't like to talk about what they're in the middle of inventing. I met an old man up in Greenville one time named Townes who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the laser. He still won't talk about it."

  I looked at my glass of bourbon, but didn't grasp it. "Well it's the truth," I said.

  "Tell her about that other thing you thought up," Jeff said. To Sharon he stuck out his hand and said, "I'm Jeff, the owner."

  Sharon said, "Sharon." She didn't say anything about how I almost knocked her eyeballs out.

  "No," I said.

  "Go ahead, man. Tell her why you're here, Fred."

  I drank from my bourbon. Outside the window it looked as though people searched the sky for skydivers or the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. "It's not like I'm part of the witness protection program," I said.

  "Tell me," Sharon said. I wanted to run over to Gruel Drugs and see if Bobba Lollis still sold sunglasses.

  I finished my drink and said, "We came over here for some Goody's powders. You still sell them back there, Jeff?"

  "We can't get them no more." He poured me another and said, "When you think those hawks will ever show up? They been like clockwork, how many years now?"

  Markham Zupp came into the bar and said, "There's a guy out there who doesn't look like he's part of the bird-watchers, Fred. I don't like to cast aspersions or make generalizations, but he kind of looks like one of those gun guys who's after you."

  I had invented a lock for pistols and rifles that fit onto the trigger. Not only did it take a secret code and a Social Security number to open, but it also recognized fingerprints and irises. Forty-nine state legislatures wanted to enact a law that would require any gun buyer to purchase my Secur-a-Shot upon purchase of his or her gun. Unfortunately, the thing added quite a hefty sum to even a cheap, cheap pistol.

  The South Carolina legislature, though, felt it an unnecessary intrusion. Thus my move to Gruel.

  I got death threats from the NRA, the United States Turkey Hunters Federation, some fellow who said he ran the mob in Boston, the owner of a dozen shooting ranges in De-mopolis, Alabama, and so on.

  I said, "Where?" and looked out
the window.

  Sharon turned her bruised face and said, "What's going on?"

  I told her my entire story. She said that she'd expect me later on that night, at campsite 22 in the KOA campground. "I love a man who makes decisions," she said.

  I decided not to tell her that the hawk migration wouldn't take place anytime during her vigil here.

  I'd never undergone sexual intercourse with a woman who looked like she held afterburners to her face. The man who Markham Zupp thought might be after me ended up only being an angry golfer lost, looking for a course somewhere over on Strom Thurmond Lake and Resort thirty miles to the west. Sharon pulled out afterward a fold-up nylon chair with drink holders in the armrests and said, "There is no migration, is there. You can tell me. I won't let on to anyone else staying over."

  I said, "There might be. I mean, there's a possibility. Hawks migrate, and sometimes, I'm sure, they veer from the normal course. The Capistrano birds have done it before, I read somewhere."

  "Actually, they haven't. But that's okay. It might be a good thing that all these birders came out and saw nothing. That'll make their next experience that much more exciting. Yin-yang."

  The smell of veggie burgers and tofu dogs wafted our way No one cooked chicken, that was for sure. I said, "Let me get: this straight. You taught school for a few years, then sold cell phones, then taught again. What are you doing these days?"

  "I've never taught a day in my life," Sharon said. "And I've never even used a cell phone. I kind of feel bad about lying to you, Fred. It's a defense mechanism. Most men get repelled by elementary school teachers, don't they? Don't they look into the future and only see a wife coming home with snot on her hands and a load of homework to grade? As for the cell phones, I figured some people still believe that brain tumor story—about how people develop brain tumors if they're around cell phones too much."

  I reached into her old-timey metal Coke cooler and pulled out two cans of beer I'd brought over. "I'm no saint, but when I think of elementary school teachers I think of rare angels. When I think of cell phone salespeople I think of desperation, mostly." I handed Sharon a PBR. "Gruel somehow missed all of the economic recovery that went on throughout the rest of the country during the Clinton years. Hell, Gruel missed out during the Reconstruction, too. Some of the people in the community are just trying to bolster business."

  Sharon drank from her beer. Her eyes had gotten worse in regards to color, but the ice seemed to halt swelling. "Maybe I'm with Mothers Against Gun Control. Maybe I'm with Women in Need of Guns."

  I sat up out of instinct. "Maybe I'm a maxillofacialist, or whatever they're called, and I push women down in hopes of drumming up some cheekbone cosmetic surgery."

  We both went "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha" like that, as if we'd practiced for years.

  Outside it was dark completely. The other disappointed and befuddled birders stood around their own fires, most of them still looking to the sky. I heard someone yell out, "You've heard of nighthawks, haven't you? You've heard of goddamn nighthawks?"

  Sharon said, "I used to be a history professor down at the College of Charleston. That lasted only seven years. Straight out of graduate school, then I got the job, got tenure, and quit last year. I don't know if it was some kind of midlife crisis—if it was I should only live to be sixty-six—but something told me that talking about the past all the time wasn't all that constructive. It certainly wasn't meaningful to me."

  I was just about to say something like, "Hey, back there in the tent, that was really fun, wasn't it?" but then I would have been talking about the past.

  "I'm not even here to see the birds. I just happened to be passing through Gruel, saw all the people, and thought there was some kind of fair or bazaar going on. I rented those binoculars from your friend at the ice station, and joined the crowd. I was really on my way up to Asheville for the Women in Numbers festival. Bo Derek was one of the speakers."

  "Because she was in the movie 10? Is that what it means?" For some reason it didn't seem politically correct to have Bo Derek speak at a women's conference.

  Sharon, for no reason that I could ascertain, took off her shirt and sat back down in the chair. "It's supposed to be a history conference. People go up on this stage and say, '1884,' and then talk about how that was the year of Eleanor Roosevelt's birth. Well, actually it would be the birth date of Anna Eleanor whatever-her-maiden-name-was. I've been going to the festival for about five or six years now. It's very empowering. Women in numbers."

  I looked around to see if anyone else sat around half nude. There weren't any. I said, "Not that it's bothering me any, but there are probably laws around here against being topless, Sharon."

  "There's one more day. The festival's still going on tomorrow. Why don't you and I pack up and go there? No, I tell you what—I'll leave my tent here, and pay the guy for an extra couple days. Then you and I can go up there, see how we get along, then come back." She said, "Take off your pants and underwear right now, and let's talk about the plan."

  I've never been the smartest man in the world, but I foresaw what would happen. She and I would leave. I would be the only man in a group of a thousand women lined up and down McDowell Street. All of the women would notice Sharon's black eyes, and conclude that I was some kind of wife beater. I would hold up my hands and say, "Stop making snap judgments," and then go into great detail about how I invented the Secur-a-Shot, but no one would believe me, just like they didn't truly believe my story in Gruel. Before long there would be a mob scene, and no one would hear what Bo Derek had to say about, oh, Marie Magdalene Dietrich being born in 1901 and her importance to women in the film industry.

  I said, "Asheville's a couple hours away. Thomas Wolfe used to live there. I think he invented some things. Well he invented the really, really long novel, for one." I got up, and pulled off my pants and boxers, then walked to the car and opened the passenger door.

  On our way out of town—and this would be either a great or horrendous omen, with nothing in between—a flock of flamingos, confused and wayward, passed in front of us, their heads turned our way, those unblinking eyes red, red, the tufts of fine pink feathers as startling and defined as the woman seated next to me, her hands folded into her armpits like wings.

  Christmas in Gruel

  BECAUSE HE HAD SCOURED both public and private properties over the year, Godfrey Hammett knew where to cut down small perfect cedars, eight-foot spruce look-alikes, and Leyland cypresses that might pass for Christmas trees once heavily decorated. He took notes, drew out maps, kept a mental image of where to go and what tools he needed. On Thanksgiving Day he poached these lands alone, armed with an ax, a handsaw, and a tarp. Godfrey fell three or four trees at a time, loaded them up, and drug them out. It took almost thirty trips, back and forth. He placed his trees in the pickup truck he usually used spring and summer to transport cantaloupes, tomatoes, cucumbers, and watermelons to the Forty-Five Farmers Market a half hour away from his ten acres outside Gruel, the pickup he used in the fall to transport pumpkins, gourds, the occasional one- or three-gallon azalea. He worked alone. He told himself that no one should have to spend fifty dollars on a Christmas tree, the price he'd seen the previous year up in Greenville when he had to visit a certified oncologist.

  Seeing as there aren't but a dozen families still living in Gruel proper—people who could only visit Roughhouse Billiards, Victor Dees's Army-Navy Surplus, Gruel Drugs and its adjacent Gruel Home Medical Supply store—Godfrey plans to set his $10—$20 Christmas Trees for Sale stand out on Highway 25 near the Ware Shoals exit, on a piece of flat hard clay at the top of the ramp. From the beginning he foresaw men and women driving the back roads between Greenville and Augusta, between Atlanta and Charlotte—people scared of 1–85,1–26, and 1–20—stopping by to strap a nice Christmas tree atop their new SUVs, their old station wagons, on bent backs if mopeds were their modes of transportation.

  Godfrey erects a simple sign: GODFREY'S CHRISTMAS TREES. He stands his ware
s upright, so that—taking hints from an article he read about how funeral directors set out display coffins from medium prices, to most expensive, to cheapest—possible buyers will wade through the twelve-fifty pines, then the fifteen-dollar cedars, then the twenty-buck near spruces before seeing the ten-dollar scrub Leylands.

  On the Monday after Thanksgiving Godfrey's first customer drives up near noon, a woman in an El Camino. She says, "Man, you got some kind of nerve, boy. 'God's Christmas Trees.'" She points at his sign. "I saw that from a half mile away and had to stop."

  Godfrey turns around to see how one of his trees blocks part of his sign, blocks the frey of his own name. To the woman he says, "God made the trees as an act of celebration. It's in the Bible. I think God made the trees on day three. Am I right or am I right? Genesis, chapter one, verse eleven. Something about the earth bringing forth grass and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, and so on." He can't believe he remembers the first book of Moses. He feels glad to have been forced to undergo the strict Bible-knowing tenets of Gruel Normal back in the mid-1960s.

  The woman says, "I don't know about all that." She meanders through Godfrey's maze of poached trees until she reaches one of the twenty-dollar pines. Then she backpedals to a fifteen-dollar variety, pulls it toward her, and says, "I'll take this one."

  Godfrey wonders how she gets her hair to stand so high, and why she doesn't tend to her roots better. "Y'all look good standing aside one another," Godfrey says. "This'll look good in your house."

  "I live in a trailer."

  "This'll look good in your house trailer," Godfrey says. But he thinks, I am God. I am God Hammett. "Fifteen dollars. I forget what the tax is on fifteen dollars. Oh, heck, just give me fifteen dollars even."

  He carries the tree to the woman's El Camino and sets it into the bed like an offering. The woman says, "I'll tell my friends about y'alls'es place." She winks at him, jerks her head down once. "My three boys gone like this fine."