by Terry Bisson
And Nostalgia, too.
One of the odd items of junk in the lot was a beaded seat cushion, of the kind much favored by New York cab drivers (particularly those from East Pakistan) back in the late 1980s, and still seen occasionally. This one had known better days, and all that was left were fifty or so large wooden beads strung together by twisted neoprene line in a rough sketch, as it were, of a seat; but it was enough to make it recognizable and to give me a warm hit of the Big Apple when I saw it two or three times a day. It was like hearing a horn honk or smelling a bagel. It lay half-on and half-off the narrow red dirt path that was my route to Hoppy’s Good Gulf. I watched it gradually disintegrate, becoming every week a little less recognizable, but still familiar, like a neighborhood (or a friend) in decline. I looked forward to stepping over it several times a day, for much as I loved Candy (still do—we’re almost Mr. and Mrs. now!), and was getting to like (at least) Alabama, I missed New York. We Brooklynites are urban animals, and what could be less urban than these faded little red brick Southern “downtowns,” deserted by both people and cars? I suspect they were always somewhat sad and empty, but nowadays they are sadder and emptier than ever. Like most American towns, north and South, Huntsville has seen its life blood flow from the old downtown to the Bypass; from the still, dark heart to the tingling, neon-lit, encircling skin of strip malls and fast food restaurants and convenience stores and discount centers.
Not that I’m complaining. Dead as it was, downtown suited me better than the Bypass, which is no place for a man on foot, which is what I was then: which is a whole other story, but one that might as well be told here, since it, too, is about Whipper Will, about an Edge (of town, not the Universe)—
And about a U-turn.
When I moved down here from Brooklyn to be with Candy, I had sold her the Volvo P1800 I acquired from my best friend Wilson Wu in return for helping him bring the LRV (Lunar Roving Vehicle) back from the Moon (which is also a whole other story, and one that I’ve told in “The Hole in the Hole”). I helped Candy maintain the car not only because I was her boyfriend—her soon-to-be-fiancé, in fact—but because the P1800, Volvo’s first and only true sports car, is a rare classic with precious idiosyncrasies that not even a Southern shade tree mechanic (and the breed has no greater admirer than I) can be expected to understand. The carburetors, for example. The Volvo’s twin slide-type SUs begin to leak air after a few hundred thousand miles, and according to Wu (and he showed me the math on this—of course!), the only way to get them in synch, especially after a move to another climate, is to run the Volvo up to 4725 rpm in third gear on a four- to six-percent grade on a day approaching the local humidic mean (temperature not a factor), and lean them out in eighth-turn stages, alternating between one and the other, until the exhaust note makes a twelve-inch tinfoil pie plate wedged between the frame and the transmission case sing the note A. I don’t have perfect pitch but I was able to borrow one of those little C-cell powered guitar tuners, and there is a long six-percent grade on the old four-lane at the north edge of Huntsville, where it crosses the city limits and heads around the shoulder of Squirrel Ridge, the thirteen-hundred-foot Appalachian remnant that dominates the northern half of the county. Since Wu’s procedure requires several passes, I went early on a Sunday morning when I knew the city cops would all be in church, and (my first mistake) used the NO U-TURN; FOR POLICE ONLY cut-across just past the city limits to shorten my way back down. I was finished, and getting ready to take the car back into town and pick up Candy at church (Methodist) when the ash-gray “smokey” dove out of the sun, as it were, and pounced.
Police in general, and Alabama State Troopers in particular, are humorless, excessively conventional creatures, and my second mistake was trying to explain to him that I was not actually driving but tuning the car. He used my own words to charge me with six counts of the same moving violation (Illegal U-turn). My third mistake was explaining that I was Whipper Will Knoydart’s soon-to-be (for I had not yet officially proposed to Candy, for reasons which will become clear) affianced son-in-law. How was I to know that Whipper Will had once taken a shot at this particular trooper? The result of all these errors was that I was summarily hauled before a Justice of the Peace (church was just letting out), who let me know that Whipper Will had once called him a _______, and who then snatched away my New York driver’s license and imposed a punitive three-month wait before I was eligible to apply for an Alabama license.
All of which is to explain why the P1800 was running so well; why I was on foot; and why Candy and I met for lunch in Huntsville’s old downtown every (or almost every) day instead of out on the Bypass, near the Parks Department office, where she worked. It suited me fine. A New Yorker, even a car-loving Brooklynite like me, is happy on foot, and I loathe and despise the Bypass. I went through the same routine every morning: Wake up, cross the corner lot to Hoppy’s Good Gulf men’s room (“It’s Whipper Will’s Yank.”), then head back to the office to wait for the mail.
I didn’t even have to open it; just log it in. Whipper Will Knoydart had been a trailer park landlord for six decades, running low-rent, high-crime operations in four counties and making more enemies and fewer friends than any other man in northern Alabama. It was characteristic of the old man that his office was downtown, since he had often boasted that he wouldn’t be caught dead in a mobile home, which was only suitable (according to him) for “rednecks, niggers, and _______s.” Because Whipper Will had retired under a financial and legal cloud—a bank of clouds, actually—his office had been sealed and secured pending a state investigation. Under the agreement worked out among the Realtor’s Board, the IRS, the BATF, the DEA, and several other even less savory agencies, the premises had to be overseen by an out-of-state lawyer with no pending cases, past encounters, or conflicting interests. The fact that I was crazy in love with Whipper Will’s only child wasn’t considered an interest: In fact, it was Candy who had recommended me for the position. Nobody else wanted it, even though the resentment of Whipper Will was softening as it sometimes softens for malefactors after they are gone. Whipper Will wasn’t dead, but between Alzheimer’s, prostate cancer, emphysema, and Parkinson’s he was definitely fading away. He had been in the nursing home for almost nine months.
In return for answering the phone (which only rang when Candy called) and logging in the mail, I got to use the office as a place to “live” (sleep) and study for the Alabama bar. Or at least, spread out my books; or rather, book. The problem with studying was, it was a golden Alabama October, and fall is (I have discovered) the season of love for forty-somethings. I was forty-one. I’m a little older than that now, and if you think that’s self-evident, it’s because you haven’t heard my story, which begins on the morning I noticed that the beaded seat cushion in the vacant lot was getting better instead of worse.
* * *
It was a Tuesday, a typical, that is to say beautiful, Alabama October morning. The leaves were just beginning to think about beginning to turn. Candy and I had been out late, parking at the Overlook on Squirrel Ridge, where I had unbuttoned all but the last little button on her uniform blouse before she stopped me with that firm but gentle touch on the back of my hand that I love so much. I had slept late, entangled in the most delicious dreams, and it was almost ten before I dragged myself off the leather couch I called a bed and stumbled, half-blind, across the corner lot to Hoppy’s Good Gulf.
“Whipper Will’s Yank,” said Hoppy, combining greeting, comment, and conversation into his usual laconic phrase. Hoppy wasn’t much of a talker.
“Right,” I said, which was the only answer I had been able to devise.
“ ’Nuff said,” he said, which was his way of signing off.
On my way back across the corner lot I stepped carefully over my old friend, the beaded seat cushion, which lay in its usual place, half-on and half-off the path. Loose beads were scattered in the dirt and grass around the neoprene strings that had once held them; it was like the reversed body of
a beast whose skeleton (string) was less substantial than its flesh (beads). Perhaps it was the morning light (I thought), perhaps the dew hadn’t yet dried off: But I noticed that the discarded seat cushion looked, or seemed to look, a little better rather than a little worse that morning.
It was weird. It was jarring because it was, after all, October, with the slow, quiet, golden process of ruin evident all around; and to me, that October, there was something personally gratifying about decline and decay, which was freeing up the woman I wanted to marry. Candy had agreed the night before up on Squirrel Ridge that, since her father was finally and securely ensconced in the nursing home, it was time to think about getting married. Or at least engaged. Sometime in the next week, I knew, she was going to allow me to propose. With all the privileges that entailed.
I decided it was my imagination (or perhaps my mood) that saw the beads reassembling themselves into a seat cushion. As always, I was careful not to kick them as I went on my way. Who was I to interfere with the processes of Nature? Back at the office I found two messages on Whipper Will’s ancient reel-to-reel answering machine: one from my best friend Wilson Wu announcing that he had located the Edge of the Universe, and one from Candy informing me that she would be twenty-minutes late for lunch at the “Bonny Bag.” This second message worried me a little, since I could tell from the low moaning in the background that she was at Squirrel Ridge (the nursing home, not the mountain). I couldn’t return either call since I didn’t have outgoing, so I opened a Caffeine-Free Diet Cherry Coke from Whipper Will’s old-fashioned kerosene-powered office refrigerator, spread my Corcoran’s Alabama Case Law Review on the windowsill, and fell to my studies. When I woke up it was 12:20, and I panicked for a moment, thinking I was late for lunch. Then I remembered Candy was going to be late, too.
* * *
The Bonnie Baguette is a little sandwich shop much favored by lawyers and real estate people, most of whom tend to be old-line Huntsville folks who leave the Bypass to the NASA and university types. “I was worried,” I said as Candy and I both slid into the booth at the same time. “I could tell you were calling from Squirrel Ridge, and I was afraid that . . .”
Candy looked, as always, spectacular in her neatly pressed Parks Department khakis. Some girls are pretty without meaning to be. Candy has to work at it, and that makes her (for me) even more special, especially after having a wife who pretended, but only pretended, to despise her own beauty. But that’s a whole other story. “Don’t worry,” Candy answered, cutting me off with that smile that had enticed me to Alabama in the first place, and a touch on the back of my hand that reminded me of our almost-intimacies of the night before. “I just had to sign something, that’s all. A document. A formality. A DNR, in fact.”
I knew what a DNR was. A Do-Not-Resuscitate order.
“It’s part of the process and everything, but still, it’s weird, you know?” Candy said. “It hurts. You’re telling them—ordering them—not to keep your Daddy alive. To let him die.”
“Candy—” It was my turn to take her hand. “Your father is ninety years old. He’s got Alzheimer’s. He’s got cancer. His hair is white as snow. He’s got no teeth left. He’s had a nice life, but now . . .”
“Eighty-nine,” Candy said. “Daddy wasn’t quite sixty when I was born, and he hasn’t had a nice life. He’s had a terrible life. He’s been a terrible man. He’s made life miserable for people in four counties. But still, he’s . . .”
“He’s not terrible anymore,” I said. Which was true. I had never met the Whipper Will everybody hated. The man I knew was gentle and befuddled. He spent his days watching TNN and CMTV, perpetually smoothing a paper napkin across his knee as if he were petting a little white dog. “He’s a sweet old man now, and his worries are pretty much over. It’s your turn to have a nice life. Mine too. Which reminds me—I got a phone call from Wu! Something about that astronomy project he’s working on.”
“Wonderful,” Candy said. She loved Wu; everybody loves Wu. “Where is he? Still in Hawaii?”
“Guess so,” I said. “He didn’t leave a number. Not that it matters, since I don’t have outgoing.”
“I’m sure he’ll call back,” said Candy.
At the Bonny Baguette, you don’t order when you want to; you are called on, just like in grade school. Bonnie, the owner, comes over herself, with a little blackboard on which there are five kinds of sandwich, the same every day. Actually, grade school was never that bad; they called on you but they never brought the blackboard to your desk.
“How’s your Daddy?” Bonnie asked.
“The same,” said Candy. “I was out to Squirrel Ridge today—the nursing home—and they all agree he’s just become the sweetest thing.” She didn’t say anything about the DNR.
“Amazed, I’m sure,” said Bonnie. “Did I ever tell you about the time he took a shot at my Daddy? Out at Squirrel Ridge Trailer Park.”
“Yes, Bonnie, you’ve told me, several times, but he’s gotten sweeter with Alzheimer’s,” said Candy. “It makes some old people mean, but it made my Daddy sweet, so what can I say?”
“He also took a shot at my half-brother, Earl, out at Willow Bend Trailer Park,” said Bonnie. “Called him a ______.”
“We should probably go ahead and order,” said Candy, “since I only get fifty-five minutes for lunch, and almost eleven are gone.”
“Well, of course.” Bonnie sucked her cheeks and tapped her little blackboard, ready to make chalk marks. “What’ll you two lovebirds have?”
I ordered the roast beef, as usual; Candy ordered the chicken salad, as usual. Each comes with a bag of chips and I got to eat both bags, as usual. “Did you hear how she called us lovebirds?” I whispered. “What say we make it official tonight? I propose I propose.”
“Bonnie calls everybody lovebirds.”
Candy’s a sweet, old-fashioned Southern girl, a type I find fascinating because they never (contrary to myth) blush. She had her own reasons for being reluctant to allow me to propose (with all the privileges that entails). The last time Candy had been engaged, almost ten years before, Whipper Will had shown up drunk at the wedding rehearsal and taken a shot at the groom and then at the preacher, calling them both _______s, and effectively canceling the wedding and ending the engagement as well. Candy didn’t want to even hear a proposal again until she was sure she could accept it without worrying about her old man and what he might do.
“Things are quiet, Candy. He’s settled into the nursing home,” I said. “We can get on with our life together. We can make plans. We can . . .”
“Soon,” she said, touching my wrist lightly, gently, perfectly! “But not tonight. It’s Wednesday, and on Wednesday nights we go ‘grazing,’ remember?”
* * *
I was in no hurry to get back to the office and study for the bar, so after Bonnie went back to work I stopped by the station and watched Hoppy replace the front brake pads on a Ford Taurus.
“Whipper Will’s Yank,” he said, as always.
And, as always, I replied, “Right.”
But today Hoppy was in a mood for conversation, and he asked, “How’s old Whipper Will?”
“Just fine,” I said. “Mellow. Good as gold. He just watches CMTV and TNN all day out at Squirrel Ridge. The nursing home.”
“Ever tell you about the time he took a shot at me? At Sycamore Springs Trailer Park. Called me a ______.”
“Seems he took a shot at everybody,” I said.
“Lucky he was such a bad shot,” Hoppy said. “For a trailer park landlord, anyway. Meanest son of a bitch in four counties.”
“Well, he’s not mean anymore,” I said. “He just watches CMTV and TNN all day out at Squirrel Ridge. The nursing home.”
“Thank God for Alzheimer’s,” Hoppy said. “ ’Nuff said.”
He went back to work on the brakes and I strolled out into the sun and across the corner lot toward the office. I was in no hurry to start studying, so I stopped for a look at the broken-
down beaded seat cushion, my little reminder of New York City. It definitely looked better. But how could that be? I knelt down and, without touching anything, counted the beads on the fourth string down from what had been in better days, the top. There were nine wooden beads; judging by the length of the naked neoprene string, it looked like another five or six had gotten away. I wrote 9 on the back of my hand with my ballpoint, feeling almost virtuous. Next time I would know. I would have evidence. I was beginning to feel like a lawyer again.
Back at the office, I took a Caffeine-Free Diet Cherry Coke out of the little refrigerator which was still crowded with Whipper Will’s moonshine in pint jars. I never could figure out why he kept moonshine refrigerated. I could only guess that he didn’t want to take a chance on it aging; that is, getting better.
I spread my Corcoran’s Alabama Case Law Review on the windowsill and fell to studying. When I woke up, the phone was ringing.
It was Wu. “Wu!”
“Didn’t you get my message?” he asked.
“I did, and it’s great to hear from you, finally, but I couldn’t call back,” I said. “I don’t have outgoing. How’s the family?” Wu and his wife have two boys.
“They’re back in Brooklyn. Couldn’t take the weather.”
“In Hawaii?!?”
“I’m at the Mauna Kea Observatory,” Wu said. “We’re at twelve-thousand feet. It’s like Tibet.”
