I put Marco Polo in my shirt pocket. Brother Macon said, “To be honest, I want people showing up to buy my carved works of God. But these old boys talked me into it, too. I got to go with the flow, you know. It’s a democracy.”
“Here.” Gerald reached back into the cooler and pulled out a grocery bag. “You take this as a gift from us, and go off to somewhere else and forget that you ever come here.” Gerald’s hair stood up two perfect inches. One of his eyes seemed misplaced.
“Oh, you’ll forget,” someone said, and everyone started laughing.
I opened the top of the bag to find a good four or five pounds of thick buds I’d only seen on the national news. Brother Macon, already carving another piece of blue chalk, said, “They’s certain parks and public properties we don’t need people discovering, or trampling all over, you know what I mean. The way things are now, we ain’t got nobody bothering us. Everybody thinks we just simple fruitcake-baking peoples. And they can keep that thought.”
“It’s not easy paying bills on what the fruitcake company pays out. All of us had to find other measures,” Gerald said. “Now, if you’d prefer not to drive around with an illegal substance in your Jeep, Lulinda here has permission from her husband to buy it all back. We normally get thirty dollars an ounce for this stuff. Shit, it’s so good we got people down in Mexico and South America buying from us.”
I’d never heard of marijuana going for more than five dollars a nickel bag. This was a time before sinsemilla, or whatever cross-pollinations got developed out in northern California. I said, “Well. Hmm. Is there any way I could maybe keep a couple ounces, you know, and sell some of this back to y’all?”
The barmaid—wearing a bowling shirt this morning, but I doubted that her name was Cecil—said, “Let me tell him about the fingers, let me tell him about the fingers.”
Gerald said, “I’m figuring there’s two grand in that bag. You keep you a handful, and we’ll still give you two grand. And then you leave us alone. Leave us out of the book. We’ll run you down and find you, otherwise.” He got off his barstool, pulled out his thick wallet, and extracted twenty hundred-dollar bills.
“Hey,” Cecil yelled from her spot behind the bar. “Somewhere in America they’s fruitcakes on the shelf with human fingers stuck inside from when LeRoy McDowell had his accident.”
“There’s worse than fingers,” someone else said. “Don’t forget about when Lulinda’s brother’s sister-in-law took that knife to her sleeping husband. Oh, she went into work that next morning and they never did find that old boy’s manhood.”
The jukebox came on without anyone that I saw putting in a quarter. Merle Haggard sang. I yelled out the only thing that seemed proper at the time, namely, “Drinks on me!” like a pardoned fool.
TO BE HONEST, I don’t remember my return to the Fall Inn. I awoke in darkness, though, because Cammie banged on my door. I looked through the peephole to see her sporting a tiara and sash that read Little Miss Fruitcake 1972. She was holding a baton.
I opened the door and said, “Hey,” wondering if she could smell what pot still hung in my clothes.
“It’s your lucky day!” she singsonged out in a drawl. “You’re officially our only lodger left. Are you hungry?”
I stepped back to let her in. “It looks like I won’t be staying here much longer, either. I might be leaving in the morning.” Cammie didn’t enter. She looked to the side, waved her arm, and the same woman who had offered me a free haircut pushed a hand truck of boxed fruitcakes my way. “Mendal’s cool,” Cammie said.
The beautician said, “I still owe you the haircut if you want one and got the time. Or a full-body massage.”
I had put my hush money in every single page of Revelation in the Gideon Bible. I remembered that much. Cammie said, “Open up your fruitcakes, open up your fruitcakes. My talent’s baton twirling, but I can’t do much with a low ceiling.”
I said, “Oh, your talent might be something else,” all wink-wink, as if the beautician weren’t present.
“I’m Frankie,” said the other woman. “Like in the song.”
“Hey, Frankie,” I said. “I remember you.”
“Open the fruitcake like Cammie said.” Cammie walked toward the sink and shimmied up on it. “It’s from the Small Business Owners Association. I’m part of them.”
I had no option but to believe in a God who looked down upon and cared about me. I pulled open the first box to find a fifty-dollar bill sitting atop the fruitcake. Subsequent boxes held twenties, tens, more fifties, and a roll of silver dollars. “What’re you people doing?” I asked. This was a half-town of people willing to bribe me to leave them alone and another half-town bribing me to exaggerate their wonderful environs.
“You the money man,” Frankie said. “The Christmas dessert and money man.” She walked past me and stretched out on the bed. “I wish they was a good movie on tonight. Anyway, the association only asks that you let the world know how great Claxton is. Then people will indeed come visit. And it’ll be nothing but an economic boom for the community as a whole.”
All told, I got forty-eight free fruitcakes and another thousand-plus dollars. “Well y’all might win Friendliest Town in the South,” I said. I foresaw a fine life of driving from one small forgotten place to the next garnering illicit payoffs, each town’s populace evenly divided between hopeful do-gooders and ne’er-do-well outlaws. I said, “Do y’all want any of this money from the shopkeepers? I mean, did y’all come here to trade off some work, or what?”
Cammie said, “I got to get back to the front desk.”
Frankie got up off the bed, looked at herself in the mirror, and fingered her hair upwards. She squeegeed her teeth and popped gum I’d not noticed before. “I hope you’re not talking about what I think you’re talking about, as cool as you are or not. Anyway. If the mayor or anybody comes by and asks tomorrow, don’t forget to tell them we brought over the gifts.”
That night I didn’t call Marcel Parsell to tell him I’d be mailing Claxton in presently before moving on to Egypt, or Canoochee, or Kibbee, or Emmalane. I didn’t call my father to say how I’d succeeded in finding a satisfying job, regardless of what I might go on to study. I thought about calling Shirley Ebo, my imaginary black girlfriend who worked the summer as a counselor at a camp for children with missing extremities. Shirley taught knitting, somehow.
I didn’t telephone my lost and wayward mother in St. Louis, Nashville, New Orleans, or Las Vegas. Compton Lane—my best friend since birth—didn’t get a call.
I had three thousand dollars in my room, in a town of a thousand people, during an economic recession.
I took my leftover marijuana and pressed it in the Bible, like an autumn leaf. Don’t think I left money in there stupidly so the chambermaid could change her station in life. Then I called Rack Me. When Cecil answered I announced myself and asked if anyone was playing pool, then told her I’d come bring tip money in the morning if she would direct the receiver toward the pool table. I said something about how I’d unexpectedly needed to hear the crack of one sphere hitting the other, that I needed to prove to myself that at least one law of physics was working somewhere. She covered the mouthpiece, but I heard her laugh right before she hung up altogether.
I packed and made a point to fold my sparse collection of clean clothes neatly. It seemed important to place my money everywhere possible—in my shoes, in the glove compartment, between two opened fruitcakes shoved together. It would take another twenty years for me to understand what little value all of these bribes had, and how fortunate I was to—even if it was only a joke at the time—stick a carved cue chalk of either Henry Ford or William Tecumseh Sherman on my dashboard as I left for another hopeless group of citizens two hours away. My remaining collection of Brother Macon miniatures vibrated atop the passenger seat in an awkward and mysterious historical orgy, the participants of which would one day attract both friends and strangers to my door. Everyone in my later life would remark how gr
eat it was that I could line up these chalk busts and offer little lectures at tiny libraries to kids wishing for a place worthy of their rearing.
RICHARD PETTY ACCEPTS NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
LET ME SAY RIGHT NOW THAT THIS COULDN’T’VE BEEN done without the support of all the good Hewlett-Packard people. The Intel Pentium III, 550 megahertz with 128 megabytes of RAM done us right. There for a while we thought a 20-gigabyte hard drive wouldn’t be enough for what we had to say, but hot almighty model 8575 chugged along and took the curves. I’m happy to say that we moved over from the 40x/CDRW CD-ROM to the CDRW/DVD CD-ROM—not that we couldn’t’ve wrote what we wrote without it, but hey, we never felt like we was either too tight or too loose in the curves, or like we didn’t flat-out have plenty of get-go when we felt pressure from all the other fine writers who published books this year. It’s no secret that modem speeds in actual use may vary, but I got to hand it to the HP people for the way they kept me constant. There weren’t no surprises, is what I’m saying.
I’d also like to thank the people at LaserJet Laser Paper for the strong, smooth, twenty-four-pound white paper that won’t curl up and wilt, even at Darlington. We done some high-speed copying, and the ink and toner stayed consistent throughout. The extra weight and brightness always assured crisp text, which is important for resumes, brochures, report covers, newsletters, press releases, and the Great American Novel. Ninety-six brightness can’t be beat when it comes to LaserJet 4050 Series printers, which gave us the ability to go seventeen pages a minute. We liked the 1200 by 1200-DPI resolution, and the fifteen-second start-up time probably kept us in business the same way my pit crew did down in Daytona Beach all those years—fast, fast.
Oh, I know I’mo forget somebody.
I can’t say enough about the people at Martin Computer Office Grouping. Our credenza, hutch, two-drawer lateral file, deluxe executive computer desk with return, and print tower made it easy as coming down pit row at forty-five miles per hour every day when we set ourselves down to type and write each morning. We’d just pull our deluxe ergonomic manager’s chair with pneumatic and independently adjustable seat height right up to the desk without even having to think about lumbar support, knee tilt, or durable fabric upholstery. Weavetek 100-percent Olefin put us in a good Dusty Rose 541 pattern that suited what we needed to say about the human condition, plus left us comfortable and dry during those humid summer afternoons of conflict between protagonist and antagonist.
Listen, the Great American Novel don’t come all at once, and we’d like to thank the Greencycle Recycled Steno Book people for their high-quality six-by-nine-inch green-tinted Gregg ruled pads, where we took notes and drew charts up about conflict and plot. Let me say to all the aspiring writers out there that I wrecked a good twenty pads before finding the groove on the outside of the home office, I tell you what.
Now I know a lot of the rest of the field went with UniBall Roller Grip pens because the steel point added strength and resistance to smears, but I got to tell you—toward the end there we just decided to take a chance on Paper Mate stick pens in black medium. The durable ballpoint tip withstood everyday office use there down the stretch. I can’t say for sure I’d’ve made it another couple chapters, but the team made a decision and stuck to it. For those of y’all not acquainted with the nuances of composition, it’s a lot like taking on two tires at the end of the Coca-Cola 600 instead of opting for four new Goodyears.
I ain’t too proud to admit that I partook of the Webster’s New World Dictionary put out by Simon & Schuster. I ain’t too proud to admit that on those cold winter nights when we couldn’t even think of a good character’s name I got some support from Jim Beam and Jack Daniel’s and George Dickel, not necessarily in that order.
Listen, sometimes it takes a wreck to understand a work of art. That time I rolled the wall—and y’all seen the clips on ESPN—the whole time I only thought, Well, the main character has to grow some by the end of the story.
We can’t forget the Xerox remanufactured cartridge people. I don’t know how many nights I called them people up and said, “Hey, I need a remanufactured laser-printer cartridge pronto up here in North Carolina.” They’d work all night long so I wouldn’t have to start next day at the back of the pack, which ain’t easy. Ask any driver in Rockingham, Richmond, or Pocono.
I remember one time at Bristol when I couldn’t keep up with what went on. Back then I could’ve used a printing calculator with twelve-digit fluorescent display and markup/mark-down function. We couldn’t’ve kept up our pace without the AC-powered Canon MP25D, just to let us know where we were in the novel, what with chapters, and scenes, and pages, and sentences. And words. Finally on the hardware front I got to tip my hat to the people at Acco for their smooth, nonskid regular and jumbo paper clips.
And the people at Brown Kraft recycled clasp envelopes, whose envelopes I used to send my first chapters off to the agent.
Now I know y’all in attendance might think writing the Great American Novel don’t take much more than one idea and a support team like I done mentioned. Somebody famous said oncet, “Clothes make the man.” Well, it’s true. I don’t know if I coulda finished up my pivotal climactic scene without the support of the people at Wrangler jeans. Combed cotton is the way to go having to sit on your butt six hours a day. Same goes for our people at authentic Dickies work shirts—another 100-percent cotton product made o’vair in Bangladesh. We couldn’t finish a minor scene—much less a chapter—without the good work of the people down at Stetson. And Dingo boots. And Ray-Ban sunglasses, naturally.
And, more than anyone else, we want to thank Mrs. Louise Gowers, who taught us how to type back in high school. F-R-F-R-F-R. J-U-J-U-J-U. Don’t look down at the keys. Ruler on knuckles. A lot of people think it only takes “Once upon a time” or “It was a dark and stormy night” or “Call me” whatever that guy’s name was on the boat, but I’m here to tell you that it all starts with a ruler on knuckles.
WHAT COULD’VE BEEN?
TAKE A LEFT OUT OF THE DRIVEWAY. TAKE A LEFT AT the stop sign. Drive to the first convenience store—which used to be a 7-Eleven, or Pantry, or Quick-Way, but now offers scratch cards and Fuel Perks—and take another left-hand turn. Get in the slow lane.
Drive past the elementary school that looks nothing like the one you attended. A row of brick ranch-style houses. Maybe a set of clapboard mill village houses. At the light—there will be a McDonald’s here—take a right. Pass the Dollar General, or the Dollar Tree, or the Dollar Store. Look to the left and see how the pawn shop sells guns and buys gold, as always. Pass the grocery store that used to house a different chain, that used to house a different chain, that used to house a different chain—Publix, Bi-Lo, Food Lion, Ingles, Winn-Dixie, Community Cash, IGA, Piggly Wiggly. You’ll try to remember the succession.
The same will occur at the Bank of America. NationsBank, First Union, C&S, that other longtime local savings-and-loan where you started a checking account in high school.
Drive past a barrage of fast food restaurants that includes a Burger King, Hardee’s, Dairy Queen, Sonic, Chick-fil-A, Zaxby’s, Pizza Inn, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, Little Caesar’s, KFC, Bojangles’, Captain D’s, et cetera. Outback, Chili’s, Ruby Tuesday, Applebee’s, Moe’s Southwestern, TGIF. Subway, another McDonald’s, Firehouse Subs, Taco Bell, another Bojangles’, Ryan’s, Red Lobster, IHOP, and so on. Huddle House, Waffle House, Cracker Barrel, Shoney’s. This will take about two miles. In between there will be a Walmart, a vacant Kmart, Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Big Lots. Exxon, Texaco, BP, Citgo, Shell, Kangaroo, Sunoco—none of which have full service, or mechanics available who can fix a flat or check transmission fluid.
Take another right onto the four-lane road that used to be a two-lane country road forty years earlier, where you and your friends drove around smoking cigarettes, drank Miller Ponies, pulled over with the overhead light on into rusty-gated pasture entrances so someone could fumble with Zig Zag rolling papers. Drive past the d
ilapidated wooden building that housed the little store where your father bought Nehi grape sodas, or NuGrape—it’s the place where the owner got murdered and the police never caught a killer. Or it’s the place that the owner’s children didn’t want to operate, seeing as their father sent them off to college. Or it’s the place where the owner had diabetes so advanced that the doctor said a leg needed amputation, and the owner felt as if he had no better choice—what with all the grocery stores nearby—than to put a shotgun in his mouth behind the ancient tree behind the property. One of your friends used to claim that a man got hanged from the lowest branch of that tree. One of your friends carved his initials, plus the initials of, say, Ann Guy, in that tree. Years later—twenty years later—you figured out that the “A. G.” really stood for a boy who didn’t smoke cigarettes, roll joints, or drink from tiny beer bottles: Alan Gray, or Alvin Gillespie, or Aaron Giles. He was the boy who got accepted to a college where no one from your hometown went, and he made a mark on the world before dying in a tragic manner, not much different from the owner of the store where your father bought bygone classic sodas, which made him smile.
Pass a junk shop that holds as much merchandise outside as inside the cement block building. There’s a sale on drive-in speakers.
You’re not that far away. Pass a subdivision of lookalike houses wherein all the roads are named for British monarchy. Pass a subdivision of lookalike houses wherein all the roads are named for famous golf courses of the world. Pass a subdivision of lookalike houses wherein all the roads are named for Ivy League colleges. Pass a subdivision of lookalike houses wherein all the roads are named for Native American accouterments.
You will reach the land where the drive-in movie theater once stood. The screen’s structure remains, though the front of it peels away. Metal posts stand without their speakers, like the headless parking meters at the beginning of Cool Hand Luke, which you probably saw here. You should park your vehicle and walk these grounds—already scoured by men and women with metal detectors, already used for a makeshift flea market that somehow failed, already surveyed for a three cul-de-sac subdivision called Hollywood Hills that will offer nothing but drainage problems for the houses built closest to the screen.
You Want More Page 41
