by Louis Bayard
“This is ours?” I said.
“Free and clear,” said Hiram.
“But we can’t afford it.”
“We already have.”
I looked up at him. “Just how’d you manage that?”
“From my Great Heap o’ Treasure,” said Earle. “We found a junk dealer out by Flint Hill, and he paid out two dollars and sixty-seven cents. That old loom alone, the one you said was ugly as sin, that fetched us a buck ten. And it was the dealer told us where we could find a sign maker.”
“Who wouldn’t mind working on the Sabbath,” said Hiram. “An enterprising artist by the name of Roscoe Barnes. Knocked it out in record time.”
“For two dollars and sixty-seven cents?” I said.
“Well, very near. I’m making up the rest.”
“How?”
“A month’s worth of elocution lessons.”
“Elocution?” said Janey.
“It’s the art of speaking. Mr. Roscoe Barnes has ambitions for his firstborn son. Wants him to go into law.”
Next thing I knew, Hiram was kneeling next to me. His head even with mine. Both of us studying that sign in the headlights.
“It’s yours, Melia. If you want it.”
Don’t know why I held back. I suppose it was just that, if the sign stayed, I’d have to stay, and all of us. We’d have to stay and live up to that sign, and fight Harley Blevins with all we had in us, and who was to say that was enough?
It was a cool night, I recall—the rhododendron leaves seemed to be curling up at the edges—and I hadn’t thought to put on a coat. But when the shiver took me, I shook it out again.
“What you waiting for?” I said. “Let’s put her up.”
Chapter
TEN
The next day, Hiram showed up for breakfast. Ate a bowl of Wheaties with no milk and washed it down with two cups of black coffee, then went straight back to his room. I didn’t see him again till later that morning when I headed back to the store. There he was, setting on the stool behind the counter. Quiet and fixed, like he’d been there all his days.
“What the hell you doing here?” I said.
“What’s it look like?”
“Like you’re minding the store.”
“So it would seem.”
“Maybe you can explain why.”
“Somebody has to do it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Me.”
“Melia, you can’t do that and pump gas and work on the cars.”
“Watch me.”
He leaned back on his stool, propped a heel on the counter. “Melia, can I ask you something?”
“No.”
“When you’re out there tending to people’s cars, what’s to keep them from coming in here and robbing you blind?”
“Our system, that’s what.”
In the old days, Mama and me, we’d get so busy out front we didn’t always have time to police the store. So we left a Union Carbide mining can on the counter and a plate of small change and a sign that said DO WHAT’S RIGHT. Mama had another sign that read GOD IS WATCHING, but that didn’t sit right with Gas Station Paganism, so she switched it out for a pair of eyes, drawn in charcoal on a piece of cardboard. “Let ’em think it’s God,” she said. “Or their grandma, I don’t care.”
But Hiram Watts was not to be swayed. “How do you know this little system of yours works?”
“’Cause there’s always money end of the day.”
“How much?”
“I dunno. Six, seven bucks.”
“Maybe you’ve got more coming.”
“Or maybe not.”
“Do you track the money against your inventory?”
“Ain’t got time.”
“So you’re busting your ass day in and day out, and you don’t even know what’s coming in and going out? What’s your biggest-selling item?”
“Coffee.”
“After that.”
“I don’t know, cigs.”
“Which brand?”
“Luckys. Camels, maybe.”
“If you knew which brand sold the most, you could stock more.”
Oh, I knew he was talking sense, but it was the kind of sense a Harley Blevins would talk. Business sense.
“I don’t know as I can trust you,” I allowed.
“What do you think’s going to happen?”
“Maybe some of my profit’ll walk away.”
He come near to smiling.
“Melia, have I stolen a dime from you in all the time I’ve been here?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then why would I start now?”
“Why does any fool start?”
He give the counter a slow sweep with his hand. “You said it yourself, Melia. Sitting up in that room all day, I’m not doing anyone any good. Tell you what,” he said. “You let me mind the store today, then when you’re done, you come back and check the till. I guarantee you will find at least eight dollars, if not more. Deal?”
He put out a hand, but still I couldn’t bring myself to take it.
“Melia,” he said, “when a man’s ready to step up, you ought to let him.”
So after that, I pretty much had to shake on it, but my mind weren’t no more at ease. I hung round the store long as I could, and even when the late-afternoon rush come, I kept swinging by to see what I could see. Every time I glanced in, though, Hiram was just where I’d look for him to be, doing what I’d look for him to be doing.
Come quitting time, I went strolling into the store. Wiping the grease off my brow.
“My,” I said. “Starting to get warm out there.”
“That so?” said Hiram.
“Reckon summer’s not too far off.”
“I expect you’re right,” said Hiram.
We watched each other a spell. Then he opened the register, pulled out the tray, and set it on the counter.
“Count it,” he said.
So I did. Counted it twice, just to be sure. It was the same both times.
Ten dollars and thirty-three cents.
Somehow or other, Hiram Watts had figured how to squeeze four more bucks out of a single afternoon. Dear Lord, I thought, what couldn’t we buy with that two bucks? A sack of sugar or a spring chicken or a can of paint. Five pounds of bacon, eight pounds of cheese. A new doorknob, a new grease trap. A month of eggs.
And what if tomorrow brought two more bucks? Another twelve by week’s end? Another six hundred by year’s end? It was more than my poor brain could even twine itself round.
“Well, now,” I said. “I guess this’ll do.”
I took the money and stuffed it in the pay pouch. Put the pouch in the safe just beneath the counter.
“We got lima beans for supper,” I said.
“You go on,” he said. “I’ll lock up.”
*
He was up early the next morning, and when the first truck blew in, Hiram was already at his post behind the counter. I don’t mind saying I was uneasy. Even as I was pumping the gas, my eyes kept ticking over to the store, watching as each of my truckers traipsed inside … and then stopped stone dead.
By now, I should say, we’d got Hiram looking very close to human. Earle had biked over to Old Man Purdy’s estate sale and brung back an old linen suit and a pair of denim trousers and a couple of gray denim shirts. And Hiram was doing his bit for the cause—shaving every morning, brushing his teeth every night, bathing at least twice a week. What I’m saying is, he didn’t look like the feller who’d just rolled off a load of coal.
So I reckon what pulled those truckers up short was they’d never seen a face quite like Hiram’s. So grave, I mean, and craggy and beaten on, with that one eye wandering wheresoever it listeth.
Now, truckers don’t scare easy, but they are fools for habit, so if you throw a wrench at ’em, they need time to make it right in their heads. I recall Joe Bob staggering out like the Last Days had come.
“Who’s that feller?” he gasped.
<
br /> “My daddy.”
“Huh.” Joe Bob swung his head back toward the store. “He don’t take after you.”
Merle, he was thrown all out of whack. “It don’t seem right, Melia. It’s very near to wrong, I’m telling you.”
As for Warner … well, he strode straight to the counter, grabbed himself some coffee, and stormed out again. It weren’t till he was driving off that he leaned out the window and said, “You sure about this one?”
“I reckon,” I said.
“See you next week.”
I guess that’s when I knew it’d be okay.
It helped that Hiram met them halfway. Took time to learn all their names, their ways. He knew Warner liked his coffee bitter and hot and Joe Bob liked it cool enough to do the backstroke in. Elmer loved a sprinkle of cinnamon, Billy Ray wanted shredded-wheat biscuits for dunking. Merle took tea—two bags of Lipton, steeped for three minutes. And Frank? He didn’t care what was in the cup so long as there was a couple inches left over for Johnnie Walker.
Hiram got it down so tight, he was filling their orders soon as they drove up. “Why, it’s waiting for me every dang time,” said Joe Bob. “Now that’s what I call service.”
So each day got a little easier, and before too long, I’d be hearing, “Oh, man, Hiram better have my coffee waiting” or “Where’s that Hiram with my joe?” or “Hey, Melia, tell Hiram I like his new blend. That ol’ chicory takes me back.”
One morning—it was a Friday in mid-May, I think—I was pumping diesel into a Chevy Confederate when I heard a shout and a crash. Now, Elmer and Dutch was already hustling into the store, and me, I weren’t but three steps behind. The first thing I seen was Hiram flat against the icebox and a pair of hands pressed hard—hard—against his chest.
Didn’t take long to see the hands belonged to Glenmont, one of the biggest, baddest mothers on the road. The kind of feller showed up every Monday with a black eye and half a tooth missing and dried-up blood on his knuckles.
“Hey, now!” I said. “Quit that!”
Truth be told, I was less fearful for Hiram than the icebox, which had customized glass panels.
Well, it took two fellers to pry Glenmont off, and even so he kept coming at Hiram like a drunk reaching for his last whiskey.
“What the hell’s gotten into you two?” I said.
“This bastard just ’cused me of stealing,” said Glenmont.
“I didn’t accuse him,” said Hiram, panting. “I saw him.”
“Like hell you did.”
“He took three quarters right out of that drawer.”
The anaconda tattoo on Glenmont’s neck was pulsing like a fist. “You’re a goddamn liar, old man. You didn’t see nothing.”
“I can even tell you the years on those coins. They’re 1929, 1932, 1933. The thirty-three’s got some kind of green oxidation on it, and the twenty-nine’s black around the rim, like someone rolled it in coal dust.”
Even in the midst of the ruckus, I had to wonder how a body could make such a study of a quarter.
“That so?” shouted Glenmont. “You wanna look for them there quarters?” With a slow smile, he turned out all his overall pockets, front and back. “See?” he said. “Nothin’.” Then he rolled up both of his shirtsleeves far as they would go. “Ain’t nothin’ up there, neither.”
By now, the driver of the Confederate had followed us into the store, and a whole knot of truckers come hard after. Jake and Colton, Rance and Elwood. All tense in the jaw, squared off in the shoulders. The sight of ’em seemed to give Glenmont a head of steam. He started strutting round the store, yanking on his overalls.
“I tell you what, boys! I tell you what! That old coot is touched in the head!”
“Well, now,” I said, clearing my throat. “I can see how there might’ve been a mistake.”
“No mistake,” Hiram said, soft and low.
“What I mean is if there’s been, like—I mean, like, a misunderstanding—I’m sure we’re all real sorry about it.”
Glenmont’s lip curled up. “Sorry don’t cut it, Miss Melia. You want to keep my business, this old man here’s gotta go.”
“Come on, now. Ain’t no need for that.”
“Pointing a finger at honest folk. I ought to punch his lights out.”
And boy, did he try. Come back swinging free and hard. It was all Elmer and Dutch could do to pull him off again.
“Say, now,” I heard Elmer whisper. “You can’t ask her to can her own daddy, Glenmont.”
“Don’t care who it is! She don’t toss him out, I ain’t never coming back. And I’ll tell all my buddies to do the same.”
I could see Hiram leaning back against that wall, studying his fingernails. I could see Glenmont, clawing his tattoo like a bull pawing at a patch of grass. Each second was a drum pounding in my head. Then, from the back of the store, come a voice even deeper than Hiram’s.
“Hold on, now.”
The other truckers parted like hair before a comb, and out stepped Warner. Without a word, he grabbed Glenmont—all two hundred pounds of him—took him by the collar, lifted him straight up in the air, and then flipped him like he was an egg timer.
“What the hell?” gasped Glenmont.
There came a ping, bright as a song. It was a quarter, falling from some deep, secret well of Glenmont’s overalls and twanging on the oak flooring.
Warner give Glenmont a little shake, and out come another quarter. One more shake, one more quarter.
With a measure of gentleness, Warner set Glenmont back on the floor, then scooped up the coins. Lifted ’em, one by one, to the light.
“The year is 1932, check … oxidized green, check … coal dust round the rim. Check.” Nodding, he handed the quarters back to Hiram.
Well, by now, every single eye in the store was boring down on Glenmont.
“Come on now, boys,” he said. “Don’t be that way. Old man, he probably planted ’em on me. He’s sly that way. Got that funny eye, don’t he?”
A few more seconds, he might’ve left on his own, but Warner decided to move things along. Grabbed Glenmont by the stitches on his overalls and flung him out the door.
The morning rush was done by eleven, but I took another hour or so to sweep away the elm pods and stack some tires. Finally, there weren’t nothing for it but to take myself into the store, where Hiram was back on his stool.
“At it again,” he said.
I swung my head toward the window. There was that crazy redbird, pounding his idiot self against the glass.
“I used to think he’d kill himself doing that,” said Hiram. “Now I think it’s the thing that keeps him going.”
For a good while, I studied that bird. Then I give the floor a good once-over.
“Listen,” I said. “I want you to know—well, I just wanted to say I believed you. Back there with Glenmont.”
“You did, huh?”
“It’s just—I don’t know how to—how to handle a scrap. I mean, I can change your oil, put in new brake pads, but a ruckus—I mean the kind menfolk get into—I don’t know my way around that.”
“Is this your way of saying sorry, Melia?”
“Close as I get.”
He set for a spell, watching the redbird.
“You don’t need to apologize,” he said. “Girl like you shouldn’t have to adjudicate squabbles amongst grown men.”
“Adjudicate?”
“Means judge.”
“Oh.” I stuffed my hands in my pocket. “Guess you’d know a word like that. Seeing you was once an actor.”
“Actors only know what you tell ’em.”
I stood there awhile, rocking on my heels.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
“Sure.”
“You’re bringing in two, three bucks more every day, and it makes me kinda sad.”
His head tilted. “Why is that?”
“’Cause it means Mama and me was wrong about trusting people. Folks like Gl
enmont, they must’ve been stealing from us all along.”
“Not necessarily. If you ask me, ninety-nine percent of your customers are honest folk.”
“Then how come we’re getting more money with you in the store?”
“Because I’m suggesting things they didn’t know they wanted.”
“How’s that work?” I said.
“Well, now,” he said, giving his knuckles a crack. “Imagine some lady comes in here of a Saturday afternoon. One of those tourist ladies with the beaver coat and the Leica camera.”
“Sure.”
“She walks through that door there, and all she wants is a pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint. So she can freshen up her breath for her fella, who’s back in the car. ’Course you get her the gum, but before you hand it over, you say, ‘Hey, now, are you sure you’ve got enough film for that camera?’ ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I think so.’ And you say, ‘Oh, my maiden aunt, I’d hate to have you run out of film when you’re standing on top of Signal Knob and nowhere to buy more.’ And she says, ‘Maybe you’re right.’ And you say, ‘Now, you sure you got an up-to-the-minute map?’ And she says, ‘I don’t know.’ And you say, ‘Well, they’re changing the roads every day in these parts, so you’d best take care. Now this map here is the most up-to-date map there is. Can’t go wrong with H.M. Gousha.’ And she says, ‘Okay, I’ll take it.’ And then I say, ‘Now, are you ready to get nibbled on? ’Cause the bugs are getting awful bitey right around now.’”
“Not so much in May…”
“‘Excuse me, miss, but in the Blue Ridge, bugs are a year-round menace. How about I fix you up with some Flit? You can take it back to DC, too, use it when the skeeters come calling. And I’ll tell you what, since you’re such a valued customer, I’m gonna throw in a couple postcards free of charge. For your sweet mama and papa back home.’” He shrugged. “That’s how ten cents becomes two dollars.”
“How’d you learn that?”
“Used to sell ladies’ hats.”
“Where?”
“I. Magnin and Company. San Francisco.”
If he’d told me he’d sold flying carpets to Aladdin, it couldn’t have sounded any stranger. What sort of lady would’ve bought a hat off of Hiram Watts?
“I wonder if I could take a nap now,” he said.
