by Lynn Pruett
Richard Reynolds was standing outside the circle, a folded chair leaning against his legs. He looked pale and shaken, a man who needed something strong like an electric shock to revive him.
The other men sat like boulders that would just as soon roll over Richard Reynolds as acknowledge him.
Martin held his tongue to see if someone else would come forward and take charge: Baker Thomas, the banker; Toller Odom, who commanded hundreds of criminals. No one moved. The sounds of the women’s class, a muffle of changing cadences, could be heard. A car door slammed. Someone outside shouted, “Dixie Creme!” A trickle of sweat ran from John Walker’s hairline down to the tip of his bony nose, but he did not even blink.
Inside Martin felt a swelling discomfort, then almost tangible pain, as if God had grabbed his heart with a fist and was squeezing it, telling him to stand up and steer this group of sinners straight.
At first, he resisted. His solace came from Stelle, and since she’d withdrawn he was left with only God’s strict words. The pressure of the men’s heavy eyes bore down. Inside, habit of authority rose like a volcano. The words crowded his throat. He stood up and practically vomited them into the room.
“Richard, the Lord will make His forgiveness known.”
“I just hope my wife will,” Richard said, and beseeched the other men for a laugh. A few chuckled in relief but quickly turned the chortles into coughs. He took off his tie and was begining to lay his jacket on top of another’s when Baker Thomas said, “Keep that tie on. You already done hung yourself.”
Richard crumpled. “I had to say it. That girl came to my house, came into my house and talked to Ann. I had to say it.”
“It is a brave thing to admit adultery in church and we are to forgive him,” said Martin to the class. “Richard Reynolds has set a good example. Our community would be a much more Christian place if others bared their souls as Richard has.”
“See, Reverend, there’s something you do not quite understand—” began Baker Thomas.
John Walker broke in. “I think we should concentrate on Reverend Peterson’s sermon and consider what he has said about a business that thrives on transient men. I think we ought to hold that truck stop accountable for those crimes such as Richard has told us about. I eat up there, and I do not want my food tainted by whoring hands. I do not want my wife and children to go up there and get exposed to what some of us saw on Friday night.”
“He’s right,” said Toller Odom. “Prostitution at the truck stop is a community ill, and something should be done about it.”
“Yes,” said Baker Thomas. “Maybe Richard’s wife ought to talk to our wives and give them a lesson about forgiveness.”
“Ann would feel blessed and relieved”—Richard Reynolds choked—“so happy if that could happen.”
“And maybe you could pray on how to get back on the Wheel of Gratitude,” said Toller Odom. “Like, seeing about some mitered top-grade scrap lumber Baker’s been needing for his new sunroom.”
Richard Reynolds smiled as if his own request had been granted.
Ed Wohlgemuth, a stringy older man who’d lost most of his voice to cigarettes, erupted. “Let’s get up in their face at that truck stop—bringing prostitutes and sick trucker trash into Maridoches.”
“Eventually,” said Toller Odom, “that place will be closed down and Maridoches will be pure again.”
It had been years since one of Martin’s sermons sparked enthusiasm, let alone action. He felt rejuvenated and secretly relieved. For now when he thought of the truck stop, instead of Gert Geurin and her sumptuous potato cakes, he saw the young prostitute, her nubile breasts in the glare of the Dumpster fire.
Martin stood but remained silent and oddly calm. He was in balance, having given in and spoken. He was simply a vessel now, and if words were to come they would. He could wait forever on God.
“I shall miss the chicken-fried steaks,” he said out loud, remembering with a stab of pain in his gullet that Stelle had become a vegetarian. She’d been driving behind a steer bound for the stockyard and she swore she saw, in its bewildered brown eyes, a soul.
“A steak house,” said John Walker, “is a noble idea.”
“Yes,” said Baker Thomas. ”It would keep the truckers out but draw families in.”
“Hooters is a family restaurant,” said Toller Odom.
“We’re getting away from that,” said John Walker. “A steak house for families administered by Christians.”
Martin sat back and let them work their evil—using church fellowship to shut down a business. It was being done in God’s house, and if God objected He could send a tornado crashing through the roof. He could give Baker Thomas a heart attack or let the prisoners revolt at Toller Odom’s. I am a child of the bride of Christ, the Church, not a man, and so I shall not act as a man.
Richard Reynolds was still standing outside the circle.
“Have my chair,” said Martin.
Baker Thomas put his arm around Richard. “You put us in the pickle, but I think we’ve found our oar.”
“Praise God. Praise, praise God!” Richard Reynolds’s face was pink as if suddenly flooded with oxygen.
“Richard, doesn’t your daddy still raise beef?” said Toller Odom.
Martin closed the door. He went outside and followed the path of stones to the huge cross mounted against the church’s wall. It was electric, made up of rows of lightbulbs. Extending above the roof, nightly it burned, a white cross in the midst of a barren landscape. After the service this morning, Gert Geurin had informed him that several bulbs were burnt out. He went back inside and brought out the ladder, climbed it, and screwed in fresh ones. Let there be light, he thought ironically. The sun’s glare against the white concrete made him tipsy.
He was sweating again. Late April hugged with its lubricious humidity, which he did not need. To be aware of his body every second, to remind him of carnality, of his manhood. But an Alabama spring did that. Every move he made was uncomfortable. He felt wet heat on body parts he never thought about: the upper thigh below the buttocks, the backs of his knees, the skin beneath the hairs of his toes. Sweat collected in the hollow above his clavicle. His bones sweated, and probably his internal organs too. Moisture wrapped his waist like the sodden band of his underwear. Worse to come was summer, when vanity was a luxury. Big bellies, blisters, and behinds shook free of clothes. Acres of Alabama skin was exposed, the flesh sensual and slick. He could not fight it, this man of spirit; he was already deep in the body season.
A lightbulb slipped from his fingers and splatted below. The ground wavered. He held on to the ladder with one hand and wiped sweat from his left eye, but then his right filled. The men came out, their faces distorted and run together, and Martin tried to keep his balance, grabbing the rung with one hand, wiping his stinging eye with the other, alternating hands and eyes, until the ladder began to hop. His sweat fairly poured down his forehead. The men stood in a respectful silent circle and finally Toller Odom steadied the ladder, but Martin did not come down.
After a while they moved to their cars. “Good preaching,” called Baker Thomas. Another said, “We’ll let the ladies lead,” which Martin decided later, when facing his supper—cold cereal in a plastic bowl—was a bad idea in life and the topic of his next sermon.
II
HATTIE BOHANNON
She was sipping an early morning sweet tea at her desk when a stack of mail arrived. She sorted the junk from the business and paused when she read the return address of the Veterans Administration. She slit the envelope. The letter stated that Oakley’s records had been located. His “disposables” had been sent. She should expect them soon.
His disposable what? His clothes? His body? There was an 800 number to call, which she did while drinking the sweet tea. Soon she was crunching ice to the tune of “The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies.” Soon after that she was disconnected.
Was she waiting for old socks or ashes? A hospital gown, his last unifor
m? If it was him arriving, she should stop everything and prepare the girls. But really, she couldn’t prepare until she knew what was in the package. So this is how it ends, she thought. With a slip of paper.
With Oakley, life had promised to stretch green and everlasting as the hills outside their bedroom window. In the morning before the sun rose, she’d wakened just to hear him leave for the fields. She listened to him move through the dark house, heard the trickle of water in the sink, the soft scraping of the razor against his skin, then his voice low as he hummed a song that ended abruptly when the words became loud enough to hear. The scratch of his first match, the kettle’s rattle in the kitchen. Off he’d go across the squeaky porch and call, “Dog, dog!” If she listened real hard, or maybe she just imagined it, she’d hear them head down the trail, the dog rooting in the cane and Oakley singing loudly, “Apples on the table, peaches on the shelf, I’m too good a-lookin’ to be livin’ by myself.”
She dialed again and this time reached a live person who found that Oakley’s remains had been mailed to his widow and she should have them soon. She breathed easily and felt relief stretch to her fingertips. Still, she’d wait before telling the girls. She pushed the junk mail into the trash and plucked up the top letter, a note from her accountant to file her quarterly taxes. She expected sadness to come down on her like a heavy curtain, but instead what she felt was curious elation.
There was a loud knock at the open door. Gert loomed in the doorway. “Miz Bohannon, the Inedible Fat man is here.”
“Oh, dear,” said Hattie.
He bumped up next to Gert, a short man with round cheeks and a burnished but shiny complexion. Gert stood as if enduring the eager tail-wagging of a puppy.
Hattie rose and shook his hand and explained the fire in the vat. Gert led the procession down the hallway. At the kitchen door she announced over her shoulder, “I’ll shut the hatch.”
The man, whose name Hattie had forgotten, watched Gert through the window, a look of longing on his face. Men never ceased to amaze her. This little man always made an excuse to come to the kitchen and gaze at Gert. He often wanted to inspect the deep fryer and the hatch to make sure there were no leaking joints in the pipe that fed into the vat. Gert tolerated these interruptions grumpily, often tapping her large spatula on the edge of the grill, jarring everyone’s nerves.
Hattie walked him outside. Troy Clyde and his son Darryl had cleared the vat and Dumpster of goo: dirt and grease. The man climbed up the side of his tanker, which was labeled INEDIBLE FAT in case of accident, and peered into the vat. “Shell’s still solid,” he said. He climbed down and thumped the walls. “Fireproof coating worked fine.” He opened its door and slopped around inside, inspecting the pipe’s opening and declaring it tight. “I’ll just treat it as normal,” he said, and unhooked a black hose from the back of the truck, affixed a clear plastic mask to his face, and sprayed the vat with a mist of cleaning agents, which oxidized. “Squeaking clean,” he announced.
Hattie took his log and added her initials next to his entry: No fat on account of a lit butt.
“Why don’t you share the good news with Gert,” Hattie said, “and have a slice of pie.”
“Well, actually,” he said, “I thought I’d have some french fried potatoes, stick around awhile, and see that everything’s in working order.”
“Go on then,” she said. Git along little dogie. She touched the warm sheet metal of the Dumpster. Soon the smell of ash would thin to nothing. Above the mountain, the sky was pure blue. Sweet home Alabama, Lord, I’m coming home to you. She smiled and felt a sudden tear in her eye. Oakley was on his way.
“Mama,” called a sharp voice coming out of the vent in the men’s rest room.
“What is it?” Hattie frowned and crossed the blacktop until she was standing under the vent. A diesel pulled up to the pump, snorting and rumbling. They yelled over it.
“There’s writing all over the stalls again.” Darla hesitated. “It’s the Mad Queen.”
“Clean it off.”
“Why bother? Next week it’ll be back for all the world to see. That stupid Mad Queen.”
“What are you standing on?” Hattie said.
“The sink.”
“You’ll muddy it with those boots.”
“Oh, Mama, the sink’s the cleanest thing in here. Men don’t wash their hands.”
“Your weight will tear it out of the wall.” Hattie heard Darla thump to the floor and the swishing of the mop begin. Darla was too thin to damage the sink, but at eighteen she was taking absurd stances on things.
The Mad Queen made Hattie’s blood boil. Whoever the misguided soul was, she suddenly found his vandalism, this deliberate destruction of her property, a personal affront. At first she’d been appalled by the vulgar invitation he offered truckers, but the content bothered her less and less as she grew accustomed to the obscene scrawlings and phone numbers inside the johns. She believed it was people traveling through, adding to what was there, or maybe some of the high school kids that came up to eat every once in a while. In truth, she resented the problem of cleaning up after the Mad Queen more than what he wrote. It would be so nice to establish something, like pleasant color on a stall wall, and have it respected. But no. Someone was always putting another obstacle in her path. All she wanted was clean rest rooms and a safe place to raise her daughters. She tried to rid her mind of the Mad Queen but found it impossible.
DARLA BOHANNON
Inside the bathroom, as Darla sent the last wave of mop water rolling toward the drain hole, she savored her assault on the Mad Queen’s black scribble. She’d found a super cleanser that claimed it would eat Magic Marker and pen ink but leave paint intact. Industrial-strength Blister came in a can that looked like a steel drum. She wrung the mop out in the bucket and donned her outfit to repel noxious fumes. She fitted a white cone over her nose and mouth. Then she put on plastic goggles—stolen, she suspected, by her sister Connie from biology class—and, last, pulled on the yellow rubber gloves to prevent dishpan hands. With her long-sleeved shirt, jeans, and green rubber boots, every inch of her skin was covered.
She treated each toilet to a dose of Lysol then went into the first stall with Blister. On the walls some idiots from Virginia had written they’d been there and the date. Whoopee, big deal. What did they expect? Someday they’d be famous and this wall would go in a museum because they had scrawled their names on it? She could imagine Mama’s billboard reading BOHANNON’S FAMILY RESTAURANT, JUNIOR JOBES PISSED AND WROTE HERE. Blister wiped that possibility out. Above the dispenser in very small letters someone had written a message that you had to be reaching for the paper to read. As Darla bent closer she hoped it was not one of those stupid poems some people thought were so funny—no, it was a high school cheer: People in the front, let me hear you grunt! Some idiot from school had done that. He’d probably come back. She Blistered it good. Foam moved like a small white avalanche onto the toilet paper roll, which soon sagged in two pieces, the edges of the cardboard core jagged and wet. Mama would get mad about this. Darla leaned out the stall door and made two good shots into the gaping mouth of the trash can, which was never used. It looked sad, standing there doing its duty for nothing.
It was crazy how things like toilet paper were so important. She and Mama kept a close guard on it, especially in the fall since so many people around here were Crimson Tide fans and loved to watch football games, raising toilet paper in one hand and a box of Tide detergent in the other. Roll Tide! The truck stop was on the road to Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, and sometimes people forgot to get their toilet paper before they went to the games. Why didn’t they just buy the old scratchy generic kind?
In the other stall, she rubbed out several insult wars and some silly rhymes, a couple of War Eagles and Big Orange Crushes. Then she shut the door and faced the black hand of the Mad Queen. A whole week had passed and not a word from him, but here it was again. It appeared in time for weekends. Why then? The Mad Queen must kno
w his message got erased every Saturday. Could she catch him somehow if she just left it up? She couldn’t patrol the stalls. There had to be some way to stop this. What if there were no Mad Queen and it was just a joke? Just somebody who was leaving her messages, or somebody who wanted to make her work hard? She thought of all the time she invested in keeping the walls clean and of the collection of rejected cleansers in her closet at home. She stepped out of the stall to get some fresh air before spraying his message.
A man stood at a urinal, his head resting on the white porcelain. He slumped. The creases in his ruddy neck were dark with dirt, his sleeves rolled up past hairy arms. Without turning, he nodded in her direction. She knew she should move back into the stall. He held his penis with both hands, aiming it carefully at the sink. The stream stopped and he slowly raised his head. “Let me alone, you queer mother.”
He shrieked and faced her, holding his penis straight out. It looked like a pink toadstool on a thick stem, sticking out of a thatch of dark hair.
“Mother of God! It’s the goonies!” He stumbled as he zipped his pants and crashed through the door. Darla heard the CAUTION: CLEANING sign hit the floor.
She ripped the nose cone off and gulped the lemon-flavored air. She had seen a penis. It was an odd-looking thing, so smooth and pink but sprouting from a nest of briary hair. Her breathing slowed. She mixed a heavy solution of water and Lysol and poured a bucketful down each urinal. Even though she wore gloves, she could never bring herself to swab them out by hand. Mama never seemed to notice. As she worked, she began to feel like she’d been given one of those boxes with a coiled snake inside. First she was shocked and then pissed off, like when you realize the snake is just wire. She took a squeegee mop and washed down the walls around the urinals because there were yellow streams where some men had missed, although she didn’t know how they could be such lousy shots. They held the things in their hands.
