by Louis Bayard
“Holy God,” I said.
A creek of red was washing out his cheeks as another voice come bellowing after us.
“Don’t he look smart!”
I turned my head real slow. Harley Blevins lay due west of me. Leaning against his butternut Chevrolet Eagle. Tipping his straw boater.
“What you’re looking at, Miss Melia? Why, that there’s the future.”
“He looks like the top of a cake.”
“You ain’t seeing it. Dudley there, he’s an aeroplane pilot or Buck Rogers or something. It’s how I got all my attendants gussied up.”
“They pump gas in that?”
“Sure they do! You know, Melia, public servants like us, we can’t just expect to totter out no more in big ol’ greasy overalls. Nasty rag hangin’ out our pockets. Standard Oil wants its employees to take their work serious. Ain’t that right, Dudley?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Aw, but listen to me. I ain’t come to lecture you, girl. I only stopped ’cause my little chariot here is famished. Gimme a buck’s worth, will you?”
I swear I could hear Mama whispering in my ear. Smile, honey. Smile them all the way to hell.
So I did. And when I cleaned the windshield, I did it extra hard, and the only thing that ruined it was Dudley hanging back a few feet.
“You ain’t much of a spy,” I muttered.
“I ain’t spying.”
“Your uncle is.”
“Melia!” called Harley Blevins. “Get me a Coke, too, will you?”
I walked back into the store and pulled a bottle from the icebox, uncapped it, and brought it out. Harley Blevins made a big show of taking out his money, peeling each bill from its neighbor.
“Word to the wise, Melia. Next big wind, that sign of yours gonna come right down.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Funny old thing. Looks like a tombstone.”
In fact, it was. Mama got it cheap off a Harpers Ferry stonemason, painted it herself.
“I can order you a new one,” said Harley Blevins.
“We’ll get by.”
“Makes an old feller sad, thinking how many challenges you and your mama got on your horizon. Now, don’t mistake me, independent operators has got their place, but here’s what I’ve always said, Melia. When a person’s driving down the road for a spell, he wants to see a station looks just like what he left. Makes him feel like he ain’t gone so far after all. Like he’s still in the same by-God country. Yes, sir, you drive down State Fifty-Five, you see one brand, one sign, one uniform every step of the way. Till you get here.” His eyes give a little swell. “Say, you got a match, Melia?”
“Sure.”
“I been meaning to ask how your mama’s doing.”
“Still a little poorly.”
“That’s too bad.”
“She’ll come round.”
“’Course she will. Only I gotta tell you, Melia, seeing as nobody’s laid eyes on her since I don’t know when, everybody’s fearing the worst. Hoping the best, of course.”
Smile them all to hell.
“She’s okay, Mr. Blevins. I’ll tell her you asked, though.”
“But seeing you struggle like this. Goddamn if it don’t make an old feller’s heart crack a little.”
“We’re A-okay, Mr. Blevins.”
“Well, you tell your mama anytime she wants to come and talk business with ol’ Harley, she just has to say the word, you hear?”
“I’ll tell her.”
“Say now, Dudley, what do you say we—hang on a minute! I near forgot what I come here to tell you. We’re cutting prices again.”
This time, I couldn’t even smile.
“Times being how they are. So many of our fellow Americans out of work. Nine cents a gallon, that’s the least we can do, huh?”
He tipped his hat.
“Now listen, Melia, you gotta promise me you’ll take care of that sign. Being an old man, I worry.”
He give me one last wave as the Chevrolet Eagle pulled away, but I weren’t even seeing him no more. No, sir, I was running the figures. Brenda’s Oasis was already running five dollars behind every week, and that was with me pumping the gas and running the store and doing near everything there was to do. We wasn’t just in debt to Standard Oil, we was in debt to the egg man and the milkman and the iceman. Most Mondays, there weren’t nothing on the dinner table but what was left on the store shelves. If we was to drop our gas price another cent a gallon—and what the hell choice did we have—we’d lose forty more dollars every week.
Which would mean an end to living. And Harley Blevins knew that as well as he knew his own name.
Here’s something else you’ll learn about me. I don’t cry, mostly. Instead, I rolled myself a cigarette, and I went and stood on the edge of the road, watching the cars go by. I took a harder drag, then a harder.
From behind me I heard a moan. I looked back and saw that old bum, curled up against pump number two.
I went to the well. Filled a bucket and carried it over. I had an idea of drenching him in one fast pour, but there was a meanness in me just then, so I did it bit by bit. A squirt in the eye, a squirt in the nose. When I was done pouring, I dropped the pail in his middle. He jerked straight up.
“Sleep well?” I said.
He give his head a mongrel shake. Run his tongue round his lips. Then he dropped his head between his legs and threw up.
Chapter
FOUR
He got up real slow, the puke still hanging in strands from his chin.
“Your ride went thataway,” I said. “They got a few miles on you by now.”
He didn’t seem to hear me.
“Look, mister. Either buy something or move along.”
“Would you…” He paused to slap some life back in his legs. “Would you have a cigarette by any chance?”
It was deep and dark, his voice, like something calling from the bottom of a well.
“Five cents a pack,” I said.
“Ah … I know I’ve … got a few coins here.…”
He shoved his hands into his dungarees, but there weren’t no pockets left, so his hands ended up at his knees.
“Jesus, don’t clean out your bank, mister. Here.”
I pried the cigarette off my lip and offered it to him.
“Very kind of you,” he said.
He took a puff. Watched me roll myself another.
“Delicate fingers,” he said.
Well, here we come to the greatest mystery of them all. Why didn’t I just send that feller on his way?
In the two years we’d been in Walnut Ridge, I’d seen dozens of hoboes stagger on by, looking for a bite or a nickel or a smoke. Fellas as bad off as this one or worse, and they was gone from my thoughts as soon as I saw the back of ’em. So you’ll ask me—one day you’ll ask me—what was it about this one?
And I’m not even sure I can tell you. Maybe it was his eyes. They was blue like the veins on the underside of your arm, but one was lazy and dawdled away while you was looking at it, so you didn’t know whether to follow that one or stick with the eye that weren’t going nowheres. It was almost like two different fellers watching you.
“You don’t sound like you’re from around these parts,” I said.
“My people were from Maryland. Cumberland.”
“That’s where my mama’s people were from.”
“That so?” he said, politely.
We smoked in quiet.
“So that where you’re coming from?” I asked. “Cumberland?”
He shook his head.
“That where you’re bound?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Where are you bound?”
“Oh.” He give the cig a twirl between his fingers. “I hear the Shenandoah Valley’s lovely this time of year. Had it in mind to do some apple picking in the fall. Come winter, I’ll make for Tennessee or Florida. World’s my oyster.”
“So you ai
n’t going nowhere.”
“I beg to differ.”
It so happened I was looking over his shoulder just then. Looking at our sign. Which, if you was to believe Harley Blevins, was ready to come down in the next gale.
“You got a trade, mister?”
He shrugged. “I suppose I can hammer things together well enough. Woodwork. Tinsmithing. Threshing. Tobacco planting. Cotton picking.”
“What else you got?”
“Uh, cow and goat milking. Whitewashing. Tutoring. Shoe repair. Trout fishing. Harmonica and recorder. Beginning Latin. Elocution. Deportment. Shakespearean soliloquies. Waltz instruction…”
“Wait. Shakespeare.”
“Never mind that.”
“Like, you read his plays? Out loud?”
“Sure I do.”
“From memory?”
“Naturally.”
“Why would you go and do that?”
“You raise a good point. I was an actor once.” He spread out his arms in their ragged cotton sleeves. “‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.’”
“That ain’t Shakespeare.”
“No, ma’am.” A crinkle of surprise around his eyes. “It is not.”
From down the road came a two-door Chevy roadster, black like a hearse, front fender dangling to one side. I watched it slow down when our station come into view, go through all those little stops and starts that cars do—the courtship, Mama used to call it. It kept going.
“An actor,” I said. “Like on the stage?”
“For a time.”
“Did folks, like, pay to see you?”
“Sometimes. I played Casca to Charles Coburn’s Brutus.”
“Who’s Charles Coburn?”
“It was in Chicago. At the Athenaeum. Would you mind not doing that?”
“What?”
“Staring. I’m not so accustomed to it as I was.”
“I was just thinking you’re not as old as I thought.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean, your beard’s all gray, but on top, you’re mostly black. No more ’n fifty, I’d guess. Fifty-two?”
He didn’t answer. I dropped my cig on the ground, mashed it under my boot.
“That acting stuff,” I said. “Is it something you can pick up again?”
“Pick up?”
“I mean, if you ain’t done it in a while, does it come right back?”
“The old lines, you mean?”
“No. The doing of it.”
He give me the saddest smile then. Flicked a hunk of ash on the ground. “Child,” he said, “I never stopped doing it. What’s your name?”
“Melia.”
“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Meel-ya. However, you don’t appear to be in the business of theatrical booking, so”—he stubbed his butt on the pier—“I’d best be on my way. I do thank you for your kindness.”
“You ain’t got nowhere to be.”
“I have many places to be. I only said no one was expecting me at any of them.”
“In my book, that’s the same thing. Now listen up, mister.”
I fastened my two eyes on his one good one.
“For now, you can stay in the room over the store. We can feed you three squares a day. You don’t need to pump gas or nothing, but I wouldn’t be put out if you helped around the place. We got a sight of fixing needs to be done.”
“I don’t understand. Are you—”
“And there’ll be no funny business, you hear? None of the handsy stuff you old fellers go for. I won’t stand it. And there’s one thing I’m real particular about. You can’t be drinking.”
“I don’t recall ever—”
“Don’t pull that act, I can smell it on your clothes. Now, I don’t know what troubles you got—I got ’em, too—but I can’t be dragging you out of ditches in the middle of the night. I can’t have Earle doing it, neither.”
“Earle? Who the hell is—”
“Now just stand there, will you, and let me get a look at you.”
He didn’t lift a finger when I started tugging on him.
“You can keep the shoes,” I said. “The rest of the clothes has got to go.”
“Go,” he said.
“Well, not right off. We’ll have to find you some new ones first. You’re an inch or two taller than Chester, but he might have something that’ll fit. Till then, we’ll just give your duds a good scrub. Janey’s a whiz with the washboard.”
“Janey…”
“You’ll need a bath before another day’s out. We got a tub out back with soap. And Jesus Christ, have we got to shave off that beard! Shouldn’t take me but a couple minutes. When I’m done, you won’t be an old man no more.”
He was standing just where I left him when I come back with the comb.
“Maybe you remember this,” I said.
He winced as the teeth dug into his roots. “Goddamn it, girl.…”
“Look, I know you just fell off a coal truck, but you don’t got to look that way. Lord only knows what critters and cooties you got living up here. Well, never mind, that’s a little better. Now let’s wash you up.”
The still eye was calm. “What in heaven’s name are you talking about?”
“Janey and Earle gonna be here any minute, that’s what I’m talking about.”
“What’s that got to do with—”
“Oh, hush up, will you? The well’s over there. Get going.”
I found a clean rag propping up a corner of the cash register. Every swipe I took at his face, he got a year younger. I’d about scrubbed the dirt from under his fingers when I saw Earle and Janey, tumbling down the hill like a pair of old barrels. Earle had a bruise on his brow, and Janey had some kind of dandelion chain around her neck—weeds was gems to her. Any other day, they’d have dropped their satchels at my feet and started right in with the whole newsreel ’bout Miss Hyde and her willow branch and Johnny Sack smoking ginseng over by the quarry and what a frog looks like after it’s been cut open and is it true warts come from the devil. But not today.
“Who’s that?” Janey asked.
“He stinks like a polecat,” Earle whispered.
I give the boy a smack. “Show some respect now.”
“How come?”
“How come?”
I reached my hand over and rested it on the man’s shoulder.
“This here’s our daddy,” I said.
Chapter
FIVE
You’ll know it soon enough. That feeling you get after you send some words into the world and there’s no taking ’em back, so they kinda spin there in front of you. That’s how it was now. Me and Janey and Earle—and that stranger, gray as fieldstone—all just watching the words spin.
Earle’s satchel dropped straight off his shoulder.
“That ain’t funny, Melia.”
“Do I look like I’m funning?”
“Then you gotta be crazy,” said Janey. “Our daddy’s in jail.”
“No, this here’s my daddy. Which means he belongs to all of us.”
Earle’s eyes got real small. “You never told us you had a daddy.”
“Never come up.”
“Sure it did.”
“Either one of you ask me straight out?”
Earle thought on that.
“Mama always said you was dropped on her front porch one morning. Along with a pint of buttermilk.”
“She told me you come right out of her forehead,” said Janey. “Like a wart.”
“Jesus, she was pulling your leg, that’s all. I got a daddy just like you, only he ain’t a felon.”
“Well, if he’s our daddy,” said Earle, “what in Sam Hill’s he doing here?”
“Why, soon as he heard the bad news, he come a-running, didn’t he?”
“And who told him ’bout it?”
“Me, that’s who. Wrote him a letter.”
Janey got quiet, thinking about that letter and all the distance it must have traveled. B
ut Earle come up to that stranger like he was ready to crawl right up his shirt.
“He don’t look like you,” said Earle.
“Shows what you know.”
“If he’s kin, he should look like kin.”
“That’s just ’cause you ain’t seen him smile yet.”
I hadn’t myself.
“Go on, mister,” I said. “Go on, Mister Daddy. Give your babies a smile.”
His lips shook a little, but they couldn’t get a mind to leave each other, so I had to pull them apart myself. And there they stuck.
It wasn’t what you’d rightly call a smile. When I tried to fix my own mouth the same way, it felt downright unnatural.
“See?” I said. “Don’t we look like blood?”
“I’m pondering,” said Earle.
“Neither one of you’s much for smiling,” allowed Janey.
“Well, there you go. Third degree’s over. Now I believe y’all got some chores and homework to do, less you talked Benito Mussolini into doing it for you.”
But now it was Janey’s turn to dig in.
“If he’s our daddy, where’s he been all this time?”
“Traveling, that’s where.”
“How come he never come round to see us?”
“Business, that’s how come. Keeps him on the road.”
“How come you do all his talking for him?” said Earle. “Someone run off with his tongue?”
I was all set to hush both of them children but good, only—I can’t explain it—the gumption went out of me. All I could do was stare at that poor varmint and wait for something to happen.
And now him and his good eye and his crazy eye and every other part of him had gone someplace where nobody could follow. Then, from the deep dark cave of his mouth, a little peep of tongue come crawling out.
“I’ll be,” whispered Janey.
“Happy?” I said.
“He still don’t look glad to see us,” said Earle.
“Sakes, he just got here! Traveling day and night, all weathers. Lord knows how many buses and whatnot.”
“He ever been on a train?” Earle asked.
“Prob’ly a good dozen in the last day, ain’t that right, Daddy? And now he’s all wrung out, poor thing, so if you don’t mind, Mister and Miss Nosybird, I’m gonna take him to his room and get him settled.”
