Novel
Page 21
I should mention sic, sic, sic, sic, et cetera, to all of those gaffes in the journalist’s article.
The next article—above the crease—was about a local U.S. representative’s attempt to have a Livestock Day passed in Congress, some time between Mother’s and Father’s Day. I said out loud to myself, “Paint. This makes sense.”
Deep down I knew that it didn’t, really, and I hoped that none of the students outside my silo heard me talking to no one. That would blow my reputation. I was the historian in residence! I was the famous Novel Akers, a man whose autobiography—though buried way down in Gruel soil—would one day be published and subsequently lauded nationwide in the New York Times Book Review.
I neatly folded this one page and shoved it inside my back pocket. I would’ve photocopied the thing, but this was only 1999 and Gruel Normal still operated on mimeograph machines that purpled out sniff-inducing copies.
I thought about yelling “Gotcha!” but one of my how-to-write books told me to never use dialect interference seeing as it had been perfected by Mark Twain and William Faulkner. Alice Walker. Flannery O’Connor. The rest.
I yelled out to myself, in my step van with no one listening, “I have you, Barry and Larry. You have some kind of secret that I’m going to uncover. You will one day tell me everything that I want to know.”
I circled the square like an idiot, and dodged what few people crossed between Gruel Drugs, Victor Dees’s army-navy store, and Roughhouse Billiards.
I yelled out at them, “I know you’re all hiding something. I know there’s more to know here!” and honked my bleatful horn. I’m not sure what woman gave me the finger—Paula Purgason, the amateur real estate agent maybe?—but she did, professionally.
“You two aren’t really trick-shot specialists hoping to appear on ESPN, the Discovery Channel, the Learning Channel, any of Ted Turner’s broadcasts about legends and liars in the South, ESPN2, ETV, 60 Minutes, 20/20, Dateline, or the Food Network. Y’all are great artists gone wrong,” I said inside Roughhouse Billiards. I’d just come from my work as historian in residence at Gruel Normal where I’d figured everything out. “You fuckers. Y’all are geniuses.”
Barry and Larry stood at the pool table. On it stood a bag of marbles, two packs of safety matches, an assortment of colored putt-putt golf balls, a Kutmaster pruning knife, an unopened pack of Picayune cigarettes that probably came out of my walls, one of those tiny boxes of Kleenex tissues, a carved Coco Joe lava figurine, a bag of boiled peanuts, two Boston Clip #20s, a GE 900MHz cordless phone, and a Joe Camel calendar from 1991. Barry said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I thought you and me were brothers-in-law.”
“That was y’all I saw that night up above Maura-Lee’s bakery. I’m on to y’all. You’re doing something against the law.”
Jeff the owner said, “Hold on, Novel.” He grabbed my right forearm. “Don’t you go doing nothing you might be sorry about tomorrow when you can’t even see what you’re sorry about because Barry and Larry beat your eyes shut.”
I said, “Come on. I’m supposed to be writing the history of Gruel. Y’all got to let on what’s happened in the past. What’s happening now. What’s going to occur.”
Barry and Larry held their cue sticks like soldiers bearing crossways rifles. Larry said, “I was against you getting that job the whole time.”
“Me, too,” said Barry. “I take it you seen our artwork photo, back in high school.”
Jeff the owner continued to hold my arm. He clamped down better than a crab on steroids, is what I’m saying. He said, “We’re all in on this, Novel. What you’ll find out and discover won’t be something you can pin on one person. Outside of Bekah’s daddy and momma. And later on you’ll wonder how it could’ve gone on so long without you ever finding out the whole time you been in Gruel. Let me say that we’ve been in practice hiding things from people a lot longer than you been in practice of digging things up.”
I looked at the brothers. “Did y’all end up going to college?”
“We didn’t need to,” they said simultaneously, and it appeared as if they’d answered thusly more than a few times. “We didn’t find a need to.”
Jeff the owner walked around the bar. On his way past me he put his hand on my shoulder for what might’ve been considered a tolerable time if we drank in a gay bar. He locked the door and pulled down its vinyl shade, testing it three times on the bottom for hold. On the way back he tapped the top of my head six times. I took note. This meant something. I might have to put this occasion down in words, I thought.
Larry and Barry didn’t turn and consider their supposed trick shot.
“Y’all aren’t only housepainters,” I said. I stood up from the stool. “I mean, don’t take it that way. Housepainting’s an honorable profession. What with vinyl siding these days, y’all are kind of like relics. Kind of like archaeologists. Kind of like old explorers. De Soto. Vasco da Gama. Y’all are kind of like what Ronsonol lighter fluid is to Bic lighters. Kind of like hand-roll cigars in the land of machine-manufactured stogies. Like Maura-Lee baking white bread with Jesus crust for two bucks a loaf when you can get Sunbeam or Bunny Bread at a dollar fifty in the store. Like monks to typewriters, or typewriters to computers. That’s what I’m talking.”
Jeff the owner pulled four beers from the cooler. He said, “You know I normally don’t drink during the day. On the job. You know. Here I am.” Barry and Larry walked over and accepted their bottles. “This is a different kind of day, one that I admit I figured might happen sooner or later.”
Larry said, “Yeah, we went to college. I stayed an entire year and Barry went for a year and a summer school. Both of us had professors who said we were unteachable. No, that ain’t right-both of us had professors who said they couldn’t teach us anything new.”
Barry said, “Something like that. Neither of us would cotton to the new school of thought. We wouldn’t experiment. We weren’t brought up to experiment, you know. Both of us were born realists.”
I didn’t say anything about all their goofball trick shots. Jeff the owner said, “In the old days we were all realists. All of us. Well Bekah wasn’t. Her brother Irby wasn’t. Mrs. Cathcart was, though.”
Barry said, “Irby sucked. He couldn’t draw a stick figure. He would’ve been better off getting a degree in business from Anders College and opening up an accounting firm here in Gruel.”
I drank my beer and wondered how long it would take before they offered up the whole story of whatever it was they talked about. I checked the door lock. There had to be a way to jump up, turn the latch, and run away like nervous water should they never get to a point. “I didn’t know Irby all that well,” I said.
“He was no Leonardo da Vinci,” Larry said. “Oh, he tried. He tried Michelangelo, like his sister did. He tried Rembrandt. Nothing.” Larry looked up at his brother. “I got one—four banks, one shot glass, and a bottle of gin.”
“Irby was no Monet. Remember?”
“Shit,” said Jeff the owner. “None of us could do Monet. It didn’t matter! Nobody would buy Monet at the time anyway.”
I said, “I have no clue what y’all are talking about. What are y’all talking about? Even knowing that this might be something that will end up getting me killed for knowing, I want to know.”
Barry and Larry said, “Forgery, you dumb peckerhead,” at the same time.
“What you may or may not uncover during your time in the Gruel Normal silo,” Jeff said, “is that our whole entire town is founded on what we trick people into believing’s real. We’re the best they is.”
I nodded. I raised my bottle. “You probably don’t want my writing all this down. For prosperity’s sake and whatnot.”
Barry said, “We’ve had some discussions.”
“We’ve had some discussions,” Larry said. “Even old Mr. Sherrill Cathcart told us long ago that we should have some discussions. Before his untimely demise.”
I said, “Y’all are orph
ans. No offense, but y’all are bastard children, right? I thought Sherrill Cathcart made you work a farm.”
“A farm. A farm,” Jeff the owner said. “Ha ha ha ha ha. Cotton. Beans. Tobacco. A farm.”
Barry and Larry took their free beers and went back to the table. One of them said, “We orphans made so much money. We made so much money.”
“You saw us,” Larry turned around to say. “That night—you looked up and saw us. We were in the middle of printing. Hey, Barry, what were we printing that night?”
“I don’t think it was hundred-dollar bills. Those ain’t worth it.”
28
I QUIT UNCOVERING. I stacked and restacked photos and newspaper articles for no reason. I shifted my chair from one spot to another at least ten times an hour. An envelope filled with ten hundred-dollar bills appeared on my desk every Wednesday morning with a note pointing out, “This is only to tide you over until you get paid in full.” I didn’t even try to deposit them at the nearest bank, in fear that I would be charged with passing counterfeits, and so on. Jeff the owner never questioned the bills, though. Neither did Brother Scott at Gruel BBQ and Pig-Petting Zoo, Victor Dees, Dr. Bobba Lollis, or Maura-Lee. I requested all my change back in one-dollar bills and case quarters.
Finally, one Friday afternoon in mid-April, Mr. Ouzts knocked on the corrugated metal door. “I’m wondering what you’ve come up with so far.”
“Seven hundred twenty-three is not a prime number,” I said. “It can be divided by three.”
Mr. Ouzts didn’t step in my office more than one stride. He said, “What’s that?”
“Look,” I said. “I’m not as stupid as everyone thinks. I’ve got it all figured out. First off, Mr. Cathcart’s orphans weren’t forced to work in the fields. No. They took art classes here at Gruel Normal and they forged famous paintings. I don’t know where they got sold, but they got sold. Number two: Your wife’s the biological mother of my brother and sister, James and Joyce. I don’t know if you’re aware of it or not, but I don’t want to be in the same ‘secret keeper’ category as everyone else in this so-called town. Three: Barry and Larry only try trick shots in order to cover themselves from making fake money, when they’re not painting fake masterpieces. They run a printing press out of the old Gruel Times office, which was also the old Gruel Printing office. I’m still not sure what that stamping, marching sound is that shows up on the hill above my house, but it’s something. So. How about that?”
Mr. Ouzts said, “My wife had children?”
“Bring her on in here. You bring her in and let’s have a little sit-down. I’m still not sure how come I got sent to Gruel, what role I play in this charade.” I waved my arm to all the clippings and photos. “I’ll figure it out, though. I mean, how sad a town is it that chooses me as a messiah, you know?”
“Have any of the kids talked to you? I keep telling them to use your services. That’s why you’re here, partly, I tell them. My wife? Nora is your stepmother?”
I moved my chair to the middle of the ex-silo. “No. No, no children have visited. And Nora’s not my stepmother technically. I know you know. You can’t bullshit an old bullshitter. Me—I used to write speeches for the lieutenant governor! Who can pull one off on me?”
“Nora’s never had any children, Novel. She had another husband once, but he died in a tragic accident down in the Everglades.”
I didn’t say, “There you go,” or “That was my father,” or “He was one of the up-and-coming ballet stars at Black Mountain College,” or “You poor, dumb, stupid fucking man.” I said, “I appreciate the town giving me this job, Mr. Ouzts.”
Then I took the rest of the day off, even though I thought up an entire great speech for any sitting lieutenant governor who wished to tackle the stray dog issue.
“You’re not supposed to write about all that. We want you to portray Gruel as a perfect retirement community. Or the perfect place to raise children, far from danger. We aren’t looking for trouble, or for people to think this is a place loaded with crime, Novel. We only want to be recognized.” Bekah said all of this to me in the aisle of Victor Dees’s army-navy store, between racks of camouflaged jackets and insulated underwear. I showed up to buy a canteen and helmet should I ever feel endangered and decide to camp out in the hinterlands. I had waited until coming up with an excuse, in case Dees got nosy, that I had a nephew whose birthday approached.
I said, “Those kids at Gruel Normal are sharp. Hotdamn. I can see how come you did so well in college. Gruel Normal’s a case for not going to public schools. Why, just the other day I had a fascinating conversation with a young woman, a senior, who plans on either going to the University of Miami in order to study Cuban refugee infiltration and the subsequent rum and cigar shortages back in the homeland, or she wants to attend the University of North Dakota and conduct an in-depth study as to why anyone would live there, what without its sense of history”
I possessed an overflowing Rolodex of declarative statements, alibis, theories, and deflective questions for every Gruel occasion. I don’t want to say that I only conjured these up during my memoir phase, but it seemed true. Bekah said, “You’re lying. The students at Gruel Normal have been asked not to talk to you. Ever. If you came out of the silo bleeding from a neck wound they have instructions to run away.”
I looked Bekah hard in the face. In the past her eyes shifted back and forth and she looked downward during big lies—her eight or twenty “pregnancies,” those job promotions, how she didn’t have a fling with Gene Weeks before we moved to Gruel, how she really felt sorry for the people she harassed for payments, my “lost” or “accidentally dropped” bottles of bourbon, how she thought snakes weren’t embodiments of evil.
But this time she didn’t blink or waver.
Victor Dees came out of the back room and said, “I didn’t hear y’all in here. Sorry about that. I was doing inventory of things I can’t put on display. Hey, Novel, guess how many working claymore land mines I got.”
I said, “Hey, Victor Dees.” To Bekah I said, “I don’t pretend to get any of this trick being played on me. And I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t care. I could just leave, you know. Nothing’s stopping me from going back to Charlotte. Or Black Mountain. Not that I’m a visionary or anything, but I’m betting the state of California’s governor’s office will need a speechwriter within the next few years. And you might remember that I chose all my retirement funds to go into that NASDAQ tech-heavy Putnam Voyager fund. Have you been keeping up with it? There’s no way I won’t be set for life.”
I kept up with my retirement fund by calling a 1-800 number once a week or thereabouts from a pay phone in front of Gruel Drugs, seeing as my home phone still worked rotary-fashion. The Forty-Five Platter ran stock quotes on Saturday afternoons, and then it only chose selected companies as opposed to the full array. I was never a financial wizard, but I had a feeling that the newspaper printed the same week’s results over and over. Here’s what I’m saying: Did Eastern Airlines even exist in 1999?
Victor Dees said, “I got a special on gas masks. I don’t want to say that I’m being psychic or anything, but people are gonna want extra gas masks before long. I’m keeping them on sale until Valentine’s Day, 2000, man.”
I pulled a camo jacket off the rack and tried it on. It fit heavy, but perfect. “How much is this?”
Bekah walked one step closer to me and said, “It’s you, and it’s everyone else. You should feel honored. It’s like being Jesus! Or Chairman Mao! It’s like being Lenin, Franco, Mussolini, Castro, and Nixon all rolled into one! Buy this coat. You know history!”
Well of course I didn’t like that comparison or company with Nixon whatsoever. I said to Victor Dees, “If a man wanted to hide in the woods here, he’d need more green than tan, if you ask me.”
“He would,” said Dees. “There’s no need for you to hide in the woods, though.”
“Of course that’s what you’d say. I was testing you. I know that
you’re on their side, buddy. And I accept, respect, and understand all of this.”
Victor Dees rolled his neck around six times. “I’m still not proud of the way you beat my ass in Roughhouse that time. I ain’t saying I could do anything about it now, but I vow that it’ll never happen again. Me—I might have to change my ways.”
“Don’t believe him,” Bekah said. I didn’t know if she meant Victor or me. “Hey, listen, what you should do is buy a bulletproof vest right now, here. That’s what I would do if I were as paranoid as you’ve become, Novel. Buy a bulletproof vest and not worry about what people might try from now on.”
“You damn right,” I said. “I want a canteen, a camouflage jacket, a helmet, and a bulletproof vest.”
Victor Dees shrugged okay.
Bekah said, “You want to see upstairs? I’ll show you upstairs if you promise not to write about it. Upstairs here, upstairs from the bakery, upstairs from Gruel Drugs. From what I understand you already have a feeling about it.”
Being the investigative reporter I had become I had no chance but to say, “You can count on me. Back when I worked for the lieutenant governor writing speeches, I had to make this promise daily.”
Victor Dees said, “Do you want me to gift wrap any of this?”
I looked at him. He had one eye squinted. I knew that he owned more power in Gruel than anyone else, that he probably played stupid more than once on fifty occasions since I’d made his acquaintance. I said, “Separately.” I said, “I want to buy some bullets in back, too. Some them bullets’ll go with my twenty-two, and forty-aught-six, and four-ten, and twenty-twenty. I need me them bullets go with a good thirty-eight caliber pistol, and my Colt.”
Victor Dees said, “You ain’t got none them firearms, according to our results.”