Then there was Mr. Clark. Yeah, Mister by-God Clark, no first name volunteered. He was foreman at the railroad repair shop – a stocky, red-faced, balding, heavy-built guy who was all muscle and gristle. He looked like one of those self-important blow-hards who enjoy screaming at people, which made his limp handshake a surprise. Maybe he just gives with the dead fish to avoid crushing the other guy’s hand. He’s strong enough to do it. Howsomever, it didn’t take me long to find out he’s a New Dealer all the way, because he approved of my CCC duds and the WPA project that brought me to town. “Hell of a man, that FDR,” he said, and offered me a two-bit cigar, which I gladly took, from one fellow traveler to another, if you get my drift.
That catches you up on my first night. I came right to this room, wrote you, and drifted off into the arms of Morpheus, getting up, as usual, in time to watch the sun rise. As soon as I was awake I hopped out of bed and got to the bathroom down the hall, shaved, and took a fast spit-bath in a couple of inches of hot water in that claw-foot tub. I didn’t yet know these folks well enough to understand their particular ideas about boarding-house etiquette, so I was fast in and fast out. As a result, I had plenty of time to set my room up, go over my six changes of clothes, mostly CCC, and still be first at the breakfast table when Ma Stean rang the bell at 6:30 a.m. The food was jake – sausage and hotcakes and syrup, fried eggs, milk and coffee – and there was plenty of it.
I didn’t learn anything new about the other boarders that morning. Dave was already gone for an early trick on the key, and the other two were trying to zip out to their own jobs and not much for conversation. I guess weekends don’t mean much to railroaders. So pretty soon I was left at the dinner table by myself, tacklin’ my second stack of wheatcakes, my new chum MacWhirtle looking up at me and maybe hoping I’d slip him part of a sausage. I’d just done that when Ma Stean came in and settled herself where Dave had been sitting, asking me if I was getting enough to eat and shooing the little hound away from the table. That’s when I started getting the lay of the land.
First off, I told her about the two big oafs who’d tried to snatch my typer, and the little geezer who’d knocked them around. She told me they were Seth and Sam Black, the twin sons of that whiskery guy. She called him Old Man Black and said I ought to stay away from all three, but especially the dad.
“He’s a snake,” she said seriously. “A real snake. I ain’t kidding. Them boys come from about his fourth or fifth wife. Their mama’s dead now, like all the rest of the women who married ‘im. You wouldn’t think it to look at the old fool, but Ol’ Man Black just wears the life right out of ‘em, one at a time.”
I said I wondered if he was on the list the WPA had sent me, because they’d been keen to find the oldest folks around Mackaville for me to interview, and Black sure looked like he belonged in that group. She said she didn’t know, but she’d like to see that list, so I excused myself and went up to my room and retrieved the file, all three sheets worth.
When I brought it back, she cleared off a place on the table and smoothed out the papers, putting on a pair of black-rimmed spectacles and squinting at the names.
“You can see they’re mostly on rural routes, and I haven’t got very many phone numbers.”
“Naw,” she said, still studying the list. “Not many phones, ‘specially outside of town.”
“They’re all supposed to have gotten letters from the government telling them I was coming and asking for their cooperation. And I’ve got a letter of introduction, all official, telling
them who I am.”
“Uh-huh. That’ll be good and well for the ones that can read.” She pulled a stubby pencil from the pocket of her apron and started scratching on the paper, pausing between each broad pencil stroke. “Hope you don’t mind if I save you a little time.”
I got up and peered over her broad shoulder. About every third or fourth name on the top sheet had a mark through it, and as I watched, she flipped the page and continued working.
“These folks I’m crossin’ out,” she said, without looking up, “ain’t going to talk to you. Ain’t nothin’ personal, but a lot of people around here don’t cotton to strangers, some less than others. You can try ‘em if you want to, but you’re a-gonna be wastin’ your energy.”
I watched without saying anything as she lined through several more of the names on my official government document. When she got to the end of the last page, she checked everything over, pushed it aside, and stood up, addressing me in a businesslike fashion.
“Now, since you can’t call most of these folks up on the telephone and let ‘em know you’re comin’, here’s what you do when you get jest outside their place. Stand there like this and holler.” She cupped her hands and shouted, “HALLOOO THE HOUSE!” MacWhirtle, who’d settled himself on a braided rug by the parlor sofa, jumped up like he’d been electrified.
She nodded. “You do that ‘case there’s any moonshinin’ goin’ on. A few on your list there been known to brew up a little mash now and again, and they’re jus’ naturally juberous about strangers sneakin’ up on ‘em. So you need to announce your arrival. Then when they come out, you tell ‘em quick you’re with the WPA. Most folks around here knows what that means. They also know it means you ain’t a revenoouer.”
“Make sense,” I said. “Thanks. What about running into dogs?”
“Ain’t many around,” she said. “Like I told you, this here’s a cat town, and same goes for the hill folks, mostly.”
“MacWhirtle seems to do all right.” I nodded at the little gray-and-white terrier, who was still on his feet, watching Ma suspiciously after her sudden outburst.
“I’ve kinda taught him how to get along,” she said. “Knew he’d better.”
I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but I was beginning to get little glimmers of that old seventh sense again. Then, it all came to me at once: I knew that there was something strange going on in this burg. And I knew it had something to do with the town’s feline population. I felt that whatever it was went deep, and I had one of those little shivery feelings skitter through my body. Like, as Grandma Shultz used to say, a crow had just walked over my grave.
I wanted to say something to Ma Stean about the cats, but I didn’t know what I could tell her without it sounding like a line from a Lights Out radio show. You’ve known about my seventh sense for so long – hell, you came up with the name for it – that it’s easy to forget most other people would think I was nuts if I mentioned it. I thought maybe I could tell her about the cats I’d seen at the grave yard and the big one I thought was following me to her house, but before I could figure out the right way to approach that with her she started talking about church, and how I was welcome to go with her that morning. I begged off and told her I thought I’d walk around the town a little and see the place in the daylight, kind of get oriented before I started going out and doing my interviews. I thanked her again and left, MacWhirtle following me out the door. Once I got to the gate, though, he stopped, settled onto his haunches, and watched me leave. Before I’d gotten 50 feet away I spied him trotting back to the front door of the boarding house.
I got the odd notion that he might have some...trepidation about the cats in town, and wasn’t that a turnaround from the normal way of things?
My fellow roomers may have had to get out early and toil at their rail jobs, but it didn’t take long for me to see that blue laws were the rule in Mackaville. The downtown square that had been so busy the night before was all but deserted, except for the people, cars, and a few horse-drawn wagons gathered around the Baptist church just off Main Street. Not even the drug store was open.
I stood in a corner of the square and watched the people arriving at the church for a while, visiting with one another in groups on the grounds, and then the big bell atop the steeple rang, and they all went in. I walked by, and the muffled hymn I heard from inside – I think it was “Are You Washed in the Blood” – made me feel kind of lonesome. I thought f
or a minute about going in and sitting down in the back, but instead I walked on, kind of aimlessly, until I realized I’d been unconsciously heading toward the railroad depot. I went by the landing where I’d encountered Moe, Larry, and Curly Black less than a day before, mostly deserted now, and then I kept on going. I didn’t know why, exactly, but that didn’t matter.
Guess where I ended up? The bone yard, that’s where. If I’d seen it in daylight for the first time, I wouldn’t have mistaken it for a Hooverville, even for a minute. But the funny thing was that it gave me the same feeling it had given me when I’d first glimpsed it, as I came in on the train.
This town is weird. And now I know, for sure and certain, it has something to do with cats – all the cats that still prowled around that cemetery in the morning light, and especially that big old calico who peered at me brazenly from behind a chipped and broken headstone.
Your pal and faithful comrade,
Robert
May 8, 1939
Monday night
Dear John,
I don’t mean to flood you with letters, but once all this interviewing gets started I may not have a lot of time to write much of anything else. So here’s the story of my first work day, sort of, in Mackaville, Arkansas, U.S.A.
Being the new guy in town and not having to punch a clock, I got put on the last bathroom shift, anytime after 6:15 a.m. The good news is I’m not restricted to fifteen minutes like the other three boarders. Since they’ve all been run through by then, I can stay as long as I want. So I took a real good soak in that old tub and got out just as Ma rang the bell for breakfast.
There was a new addition to the group when I got to the table – and brother, what an improvement. Her name is Patricia Davis. She’s 18, in her final year of high school, and she helps Ma Stean during the week before and after her classes. Take the Hedy Lamarr character out of Algiers and transplant her to Arkansas, make her kind of a quiet and innocent but sultry teen-ager, and you’d be close to this Patricia. I am not kidding. Dark, big eyes, swell figure, and before you say anything about cradle-snatching remember I’m only about five years her senior.
Not that I’ve asked her on a date or anything. But she sure got my attention, and I was able to chat her up a little bit without sounding like I was on the make. At least I hope so. I was glad I’d taken an extra-long bath and gotten myself presentable.
Meeting her was a bright spot in the day, but that’s not saying much, because the rest of it turned out to be pretty crummy. I spent most of the morning and afternoon searching for a car to use in my work, and all I found was that I was a world-class sap to have thought I could find wheels in this burg. I walked every beat-up sidewalk in Mackaville chasing the idea, but chasing was all I did. The town has one dealership, Studebaker, with a total of four heaps sitting on the yard, all of them less than five years old and way out of my price range. What the hell, I gave it a try. The salesman was this thin nasty bastard in a cheap, light blue pin-stripe suit, a once-white shirt and a wide, flaming red tie that I figured he was wearing to keep people from running over him. He looked at me like I was really interrupting his day. He had one of those rodent faces, like a rat or a squirrel, and he stuck a finger about halfway up his nose when he thought I wasn’t looking. Geez. I washed my hands as soon as I could after I’d gotten away from there.
The filling station I stopped into had an old roadster sitting out in front with a “For Sale” sign under the windshield wiper. The guy there told me he wanted a hundred bucks for that flivver, and he didn’t seem to care whether I was interested or not. I figure my CCC garb – even though they might have recognized it as an officer’s uniform – told both him and rat-face that I wasn’t a Rockefeller and probably didn’t have enough nickels to throw around to make me worth their attention.
By four o’clock I’d crisscrossed the hot red brick streets of Mackaville at least three times and walked out into neighborhoods to check on two ads in the local weekly I’d picked up at the boarding house. I was finding no joy in Mackaville. No. 1, the cars were all too high, and No. 2, the people all acted like I was from the Bureau of Internal Revenue. At one point I started getting mad for no real good reason, telling myself that they would all be laughing or smirking at me if I hadn’t been tall, tough-looking, and in a strange uniform. Their accents started grating on my nerves. Even the hue of their skin seemed foreign to me – most of them were a lot darker than the Norwegians and Swedes we’re used to back home. Can’t quite put my finger on their heritage.
They’re coffee-and-cream-colored like some Indians and Mexicans I’ve seen, but they don’t quite fit either of those categories.
Anyway, I don’t know if I was angry because I had gotten what I thought was the bum’s rush from the salesman and the gas-station guy, or if I was just feeling alone and strange, surrounded by all these different-looking people yammering to each other in their weird accents. I didn’t know what was up with me, but I thought I’d better get off the streets before I smacked somebody just for staring at me.
I was hungry, and Ma doesn’t serve lunch at the boarding house except on weekends, so on the way back I stopped beside a railroad-car diner on the edge of town – the Busy Bee Cafe. I ordered three hamburgers and a malted, kidded with the little bottle-blonde jane behind the counter, got a forced smile for my trouble, and gave it up. Dropping sixty cents on the counter, I walked on back to the boarding house to eat at Ma’s table, her place being the closest thing I had to home.
MacWhirtle seemed happy to see me, and that made me feel a little better. I plopped down at the table and Ma, who was bustling around in the kitchen, brought me out a plate and a clean napkin and told me that Mac had never taken to any of her other boarders like he’d taken to me.
“It wasn’t just that piece of my good sausage you fed him this mornin’, neither,” she said, smiling.
I shrugged and smiled back. “I throw myself on the mercy of the court,” I said. Suddenly, I felt pretty good. Funny how some little exchange like that can boost a guy’s mood.
You know I’ve always liked dogs, and most of them like me back. MacWhirtle sure seemed to.
“Okay if I feed him some of my lunch?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I guess,” she said, still smiling. “He’ll be beggin’ food from you ever’ time you sit down at the table.”
“Aw, that’s ok,” I told her, cutting up one of the burgers into little pie slices and feeding him the whole thing, pickles, onions, and all. He loved it. Ma just shook her head.
While I was feeding him, she asked me how my day had gone. I told her, leaving out the way I’d come to feel about her fellow townspeople.
“Hmmm,” she said. Then, “Maybe I know a fellah who can help.” She told me then that she had a friend who ran the town’s Skelly station. I remembered going by there, but I didn’t go in, because I didn’t see any cars for sale or rent. Plus, I wasn’t in the mood to be given the brush again.
But Ma made the call, and when she hung up, she turned to me and said, “Go on over. His name’s Pete, and he’ll treat you decent.”
Funny, isn’t it, about how the world can kick you in the nuts, knock you down on your back, but then you get a full stomach and even a hint of hope and you’re ready to go again. I almost ran the seven blocks to the guy’s place of business.
It sat at the southwest corner of the town square and was, by far, the neatest-looking of the town’s three stations – something I’d noticed earlier. The front drive was busy, with three cars at the pumps and a couple more waiting. The guy tending them all was in an officer’s peaked hat and one of those blue gabardine uniforms. When he turned toward me for a moment I could see the Skelly patch on his shoulder and the name “Pete” embroidered above the front left pocket of his shirt. He washed windows, pumped gas, and swept out floorboards, all in a kind of blur. I watched him for a minute from across the street, and by the time I arrived at the station he was putting air in the back tires of some old guy
’s Hudson coupe. He waved me toward the building from where he squatted.
“Go on inside,” he shouted over the noise of a couple of rumbling exhausts. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
I nodded and walked into the place. Like most filling stations, the inside was small.
Unlike a lot of them, it was immaculately clean, with a shiny yellow-and-black Congoleum floor you could’ve eaten off of. There was a Coke box by the door, a Captain Midnight bicycle tire and tube rack next to it, and a glass case full of smokes and candy with a brass cash register sitting on top. Not an inch of the place was wasted.
I looked through the window. His business wasn’t thinning out any; as quickly as one car left the pump, another took its place. Figuring I’d be there a while, I pulled a Coke out of the ice and water, dropped a nickel on the counter next to his register, and sat down on the Coke box, watching him work.
You look around just as much in a small place as you do in a big one, and I could see through the side door into the grease-pit bay and beyond that through another door into an area I figured for the repair bay. A couple of flats leaned against the jamb of that second doorway. I considered things for a minute and then I walked across that bright yellow floor, which crinkled like cellophane, and through the grease bay to the deflated tires. Just inside the door was the breaker for flats.
Looking out the door, I could see he was still busy as hell. So I took the initiative and grabbed the first tire, flipped it over, and broke it down, checking inside the case for a nail or piece of wire. There wasn’t anything, so I took the tube over to a tub of soapy water and shot a little air into it. It didn’t take me long to find the hole, and not all that much longer – maybe eight or ten minutes – to patch it and put it back together. I aired it up, bounced it a time or two, and rolled it off to the side, thinking about how many times I’d done something like that during those two summers I’d worked at Ole Andersson’s Ashland station.
Seventh Sense Page 2
