Drowning in Gruel

by George Singleton

  Godfrey thinks, Did you start having children at the age of twelve? He says, "You tell your friends that God's price can't be beat."

  After she drives off, Godfrey thinks, This might be too easy. He thinks, I might have some explaining to do later on in life.

  Then he looks to make sure that the cedar tree still covers part of his sign. Godfrey feels his jaw, tries to spit, and remembers that he can't. He walks back to his car and gets a jug of tap water out. He wishes that his salivary glands weren't burned up from radiation.

  ***

  There was a time when Godfrey Hammett's father stood in front of Gruel Five-and-Dime with a hanging pot, dressed as Santa Claus, in order to solicit and collect money for nearby William Byron Strom Bryan Dorn Thurmond Jennings Boys Home of the South. Godfrey's father ho-ho-hoed, and rang his bell, and looked in the kettle for silver dimes and quarters, for wheat pennies. As a child Godfrey stood beside his father and yelled things out like, "Won't you please hep boys who can't hep themselves, please? The children are our future. Won't you please hep boys who can't hep themselves, please?"

  Godfrey didn't know that his father took kettle money daily to the William Byron Strom Bryan Dorn Thurmond Jennings Boys Home of the South and said, "Man, these people of Gruel ain't exactly putting out money for orphans. I'm sorry. I ring and ring and ring my bell, but they walk on by like I'm not there."

  Godfrey couldn't have known back then, when he was five to twelve, that his father pretty much siphoned off more than half the money. How could he? Godfrey stuck his arms out toward townspeople, and pled in a way that could've gotten him any part in a Little Theatre production should said theater run a Charles Dickens extravaganza.

  When his father died, though, the only inheritance that Godfrey attained was a backyard map of buried coins with a hopeful note that the numismatic scene would rise incredibly. It would, certainly, Godfrey thought, if he lived another couple hundred years or thereabouts.

  Most of the good Mercury dimes weren't worth more than a couple dollars each, Godfrey knows. And seeing as he doesn't have health insurance, sooner or later he'll have to sell them off.

  Or find another way to pay for his oncologist bills.

  Godfrey perfects his odd monologue over the first ten days: "Ma'am, what you got there is a genuine southern blue-green short-needle spruce known only to a patch of ground between here and Asheville, between maybe Elberton, Georgia, and Gafihey, South Carolina. You seen that giant peach water tower over in Gaffney on 1–85? The last of these blue-green short-needle spruces stops about right there. Let me tell you—this tree won't shed like some them other ones you see being sold. I got bass fishermen coming by to buy these things—not for Christmas trees, but to sink down in their favorite fishing holes."

  "Well that's something to think about."

  She's driving a new dark blue VW Beetle, and already Godfrey can't figure out how to tie it on top. He says, "You ain't from around here, are you."

  "I'm going down to Camden to see my folks. And I'm betting that they don't have a Christmas tree yet. I thought it would be a nice surprise."

  Godfrey nods once. He says, "Camden. That's like down in that horse country, right? Am I right or am I right? Camden. I been down there once a long time ago. My daddy took me down there one time to see a five-legged foal got born."

  The woman walks through the medium-priced trees, the expensive ones, all the way to the ten-dollar Leyland cypresses. She says, "To tell you the truth, I kind of need three trees. I need one for my parents' den, and then two more for their help out back. Would it be all right if I placed a couple trees in my passenger seat, just to see if they fit? If they fit, then I'll buy them. And I need to get one of these twenty-dollar trees somehow tied to the roof of my car."

  Godfrey says, "I guess you noticed how my sign says GOD'S CHRISTMAS TREES. I'll do my best trying to fit those trees inside. Does your seat fold back? Say, does this car have an engine in the back or in the front?"

  The woman points at two of the cheaper trees for Godfrey to put in the car. "Listen, God. Or whatever your name is. I want you to try to put these two trees here in the car, but I don't want them hanging over in a way that they would touch my arm when I shift gears. Maybe you could put one in one way, and the other the opposite way. Kind of like two doorstops, you know."

  Godfrey says, "Yes ma'am." Another car drives up. He's down to twenty trees, most of them the higher-end fake spruces. He says, "I'll be right with you."

  "Do you have some rope or twine or bungee cord for me to tie the other on the roof?" says the woman.

  She holds her palm above her face, as if looking for sailboats on open water. She rests her right foot on the VW's bumper and Godfrey notices her beauty. Hotdamn, this woman has the curves of a brand-new dirt bike track, Godfrey thinks. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. "I do, yes ma'am."

  "To tell you the truth I don't even know why I'm bothering with all this. My parents haven't bought each other Christmas gifts in about thirty years. They quit when I went off to college. I hate to say it, but I think they don't even believe in the birth of the baby Jesus."

  "Well it's up to you to rechange their minds," Godfrey says. "In the Bible it is stated, 'Whatever-whatever-whatever ... and she brought forth a son.' I think that's in Luke somewhere, like in the first chapter of Luke. Don't quote me on that, though."

  Godfrey puts one Leyland cypress in frontways and the other opposite. They fit. He ties a nice near spruce to the front and back bumpers of the VW lengthwise. The woman says, "A five-legged foal. That's a miracle in its own way."

  Godfrey says, "Hey, you seem like a woman of worth. You don't have a silver change collection by any chance, do you? Or be interested in buying one for somebody on your Christmas list."

  Then he leans to the left for a spit, but nothing comes out.

  By December 15 Godfrey Hammett is out of trees. He restud-ies his maps and realizes that there are no more saplings left, that if he wants to keep up his little scam then he would have to expand his region. I should take this money and pay my doctor, he thinks. I should take this money and buy myself a burial plot over in Gruel Cemetery.

  "What you been up to?" Jeff Downer says from behind the bar at Roughhouse Billiards. "Damn, Godfrey, I ain't seen you since then. How you feeling? I heard about your treatments over all this time, and all."

  "Not much. Fine," Godfrey says. "Say, you could use a Christmas tree in here. You want a Christmas tree?"

  Jeff wipes away an invisible beer spill. Behind him, two men practice trick shots on the pool table. One of them tries to balance two balls atop each other, in the middle of a wooden rack. He's got a twist-off beer top in one hand, and three swizzle sticks that are somehow going to be part of the four-rail spectacle.

  Jeff's hair's slicked back and wavy in a way that makes the interstate highway system look simple. He leans on his right arm and says, "Christmas tree? It ain't but December 16. I don't put up a tree until the twenty-fourth, if I even do it then. No one brings me presents to put down beneath it. No one comes by here and gives me an extra tip, like I give the mailman."

  "I've been selling trees, that's all," Godfrey says. "People kept calling me God. The sign I had up was kind of hidden in part, and people kept calling me God."

  Behind them, one of the trick shooters says, "You didn't call that it was going to double-kiss the ball. You didn't call none of that."

  Downer doesn't move or blink. He stares at Godfrey and says, "You remember how your daddy used to ring that bell over there by the Five-and-Dime? Man. He used to follow people down the street heckling them if they didn't put no money in the kettle. You remember that?"

  Godfrey says, "I guess I'll take a Bud. If you put a tree up before Christmas Eve I bet people would give you presents. That's your problem, Jeff—you put something up the day before Christmas, no one has any money left."

  "All right then." Downer touches his brow. "Go get me one of your trees." He looks up at the ceilin
g, twelve feet up. "I'll take a big one, I guess. My wife can give up half her ornaments. She's got enough—some guy just come by and sold her a bunch of baby Jesuses inside these glass globes. She's got enough for her tree and another, I'm thinking." He hands a twelve-ounce bottle of beer over to Godfrey. It's nine o'clock in the morning.

  "I ain't got no trees," Godfrey says. "I might have some more next week. To tell you the truth, all the ones I sold were stolen. You know." He takes a draw off his beer. "I guess. I mean, I took them off property that I didn't own."

  "You been over to the Self property out by Forty-Five? That old boy must have a hundred cedar Christmas trees he's using for a border of his yard. I'm thinking that he's got something to hide, but I don't know for sure."

  "My father," Godfrey says. "First there was my father, and then there was my wife. You'd think that a person would get a break every once in a while."

  One of the trick pool players puts three balls in a triangle in the middle of the table, and the eight ball next to a side pocket. He says he will hit two balls in the far pockets, that the first ball will end up knocking the eight in. And he says he'll use a broomstick instead of a cue stick. The other man says, "You go ahead, Cuz."

  "We don't get no breaks in Gruel," Downer says. "Whatever happened to Dora? Is that true what people say about her taking off for Texas?"

  "Texas."

  "I wonder if they celebrate Christmas in Texas. It's got to be hot down there, you know. You couldn't sell no trees down in Texas, brother. Cactus, maybe. But not trees."

  One of the pool players says, "I told you. I told you it wouldn't work. It's a good idea, but it won't work ever."

  Godfrey says, "Where does that guy with all the Christmas trees around his house live?"

  Godfrey Hammett's wife, Dora, left a half year earlier while her husband sat inside the outpatient waiting room, ready for blood work. She took off. Dora got in her Dodge with two suitcases, a makeup bag, and a trunkful of shoes. Godfrey had to drive some forty miles north to a real hospital, and she figured that she had time. She left a note that read, in part, "All ready I know what the results will be—cancer of the jaw. Jaw, and blood. And you know why? It's because you always chewed with your mouth open. Air got inside there—bad air—and caused the problem. I'm sorry to do it this way, but I can't live with a man with no lower jaw. I guess I'm not the best wife ever, but I don't see myself trying to feed you while you stand on your head, or however people without a bottom jaw have to eat. I'm going to Texas, only because you would never take me to the Gulf of Mexico on our honeymoon."

  Dora wrote and wrote about how this decision wasn't spur of the moment—that she no longer cared to live in a loveless marriage, that she couldn't stand Gruel, that she dreaded the days when Godfrey came home early from work, that she was embarrassed when her family asked how things went. Dora blamed Godfrey for their not having children, and said that one of her major disappointments in life had to do with not waking up on Christmas morning and seeing a little boy and girl tear into gift-wrapped toys and games and bicycles and .22 rifles.

  When Godfrey got back from the hospital some three hours after he'd left, he wondered if maybe Dora started the letter a couple days earlier. He thought about how she couldn't be more than a few miles down the road.

  Then he drove out to Gruel Sand and Gravel, which offered no health benefits anyway, and quit his job driving a dump truck. "I ain't got cancer of the jaw because I eat with my mouth open," he told his boss Freddie Shirley. "If anything, I probably got grit lodged down here," he said, pointing to the side of his throat.

  "You can't just up and quit," Freddie Shirley said. "How far are you until Social Security kicks in?"

  "Twenty years," Godfrey said.

  "Damn. You ain't but forty-five? I thought you were sixty by now."

  "See what else that grit will do to a man? I got nothing against you and yours, Freddie. It's time for me to make a change, though. I need to wipe the slate clean and start over."

  "What're you going to do, buddy? Does Dora know about all this?"

  "I'm going to go home, and sit myself down, and make out a list. After I make out my list, I'm going to let it set for a day, then I'll check it again to make sure."

  "You sound like Santa Claus, friend. Hey, you ain't going to start ringing that bell like your daddy did, are you?"

  Freddie didn't hear Godfrey's answer. Freddie walked over to a mirror in the office, opened his mouth wide, and peered in. Then he checked his eyes, his pores, the wrinkles on his forehead. When he turned back around, Godfrey was gone.

  Godfrey scopes out the Self plantation at three o'clock in the morning. Like Jeff the owner said, there are a good hundred six-to-ten-foot cedars lining the property. Mr. Self and his family ran Forty-Five Cotton, and could afford to have a landscaper come back in and replant the boundaries. But that's not right, Godfrey thinks. You can't cut down a man's trees this close to Christmas.

  He pulls into the driveway to turn around, which sets off four motion-detecting spotlights. Old Man Self sits in a cheap, woven, aluminum-frame beach chair, hidden behind a brick springhouse. "Come on back here, boy," he yells. He stands up and raises his right arm. Is that a gun in his hand? Godfrey thinks. "I got you a little Christmas something for delivering my paper on time daily."

  Godfrey looks down at his handsaw and ax leaned against the bench seat. In his mind he hears Dora's voice say, "You need to pay your doctor some money. Don't look a horse's gift in the mouth."

  Godfrey opens his driver's door. What looked like a gun happens to be an envelope. He says, "I do what I do. I can only do what I do. It's my job."

  "Well I appreciate it. You know, I used to deliver newspapers when I was a boy. This was when it used to be an afternoon paper. I'd get home from school, and get out my old canvas bag, and walk down to the Index-Journal office, and start to a-folding. I think I had about a hundred people on my route, most of whom didn't pay me on time, and most of whom ended up working for my daddy's mill. And then for me. It's funny how things turn around, isn't it?"

  Godfrey says, "Uh-huh. Yessir." He doesn't think about not having any newspapers with him. He doesn't think about how Mr. Self might say, "Hey, so where's today's paper?"

  "I hope this helps out for you and yours," Mr. Self says. "Go buy one of your kids something nice."

  Godfrey nods and kowtows and takes the envelope. He says, "It's customers like you who make my job a lot easier."

  "All right," says Mr. Self. He walks back to his folding chair and carries it toward the house. He doesn't think about not receiving the day's news. A mile down the road Godfrey pulls his pickup over and opens the envelope to find a two-dollar bill, a voice balloon coming from Jefferson's mouth, "Merry Xmas!" written in tiny, tiny block letters.

  He forgets everything he considered earlier about it being the holiday season, about not hewing down what one man might consider needful in regards to solace, protection, anonymity, and privacy. Godfrey gathers his courage, turns around, knows that he'll hand over the two-dollar bill should the real carrier plop his rolled cylinder of bad economic news on the shiny, shiny brushed cement path leading toward a brick house built by cough-stricken men and women.

  By daybreak Godfrey has only made three trips back and forth between his squatted-upon sales lot and Mr. Self's estate. He carries eight cedars in the bed of his truck each trip, tied down with a series of interlocked bungee cords. On the last trip, he swings by his house, finds some cardboard and a marker, and writes, FREE CHRISTMAS TREES FROM GOD. Because he's hewn more trees than he can carry—or that he would chance poaching in daylight—Godfrey stands his sign up in the Self yard, and hopes it will make a poor local passerby, perhaps an ex-loom fixer or doffer, happy. He thinks, Twenty-four nice trees. Getting close to Christmas, supply and demand.

  He stops in at Roughhouse Billiards as the rest of Gruel's retired or unemployed citizens begin their usual day, driving in circles around the square, waiting for anything to hap
pen. "I got you that tree you said you wanted," Godfrey says to Jeff the owner.

  "You in here mighty early. If you got the trees, why you in here in the first place?" Jeff sticks his head in the cooler and inhales hard. "It smells like stale beer, but I don't see where any thing's leaked or broken."

  "I'm going to wait a day or two. I'm going to keep them watered down and all, but wait until tomorrow." He doesn't say anything about not wanting to be near evidence should Mr. Self call the police and so on.

  "You went and cut all them trees off Old Man Self's yard, didn't you, Godfrey. I didn't think you'd have it in you. But I know this: You're going to feel guilty as all get-out before it's over. And then when something goes wrong in your life, you're going to look back and think it happened because of what you stole from another man. Like I bet you did when poor Dora up and left. Hey, you want a beer?" The owner reaches in the cooler without looking and pulls out a can. "You better do something awful nice for someone else, so as to even things up. Why, plain giving me a free Christmas tree might be a good start."

  Godfrey doesn't hear him, though. He tries to think back as to what he could've done wrong in life that would offer such heartache as his wife leaving. He wonders what he did to come down with cancer. "I drove up to the guy's house and he thought I was the paperboy. Look at this." Godfrey extracts the two-dollar bill from his wallet. "It's the tip he was going to give the fellow for delivering his news every morning over a 365-day period. Two dollars! Poor deliverer would probably try to spend it around here and get caught for having phony money."

  Downer wipes the bar. He walks around it to turn on his neon OPEN sign. "There's something else you'll pay for—stealing a man's Christmas tip. I swear, Godfrey. I'm believing I better keep an eye on you. Maybe you should stay in bed all day before you accidentally do someone wrong without even knowing it."