Last Bus to Coffeeville

by J. Paul Henderson

  A life in confectionary had sweetened not only Milton’s tooth, but also his general disposition. As an employer, he embraced benevolence and exhibited a keen social conscience. Determined that his workers would enjoy the lifestyle of the middle classes, he built a model town for them; a utopia of his own design with schools, sports and leisure facilities. In 1906, the new model town slipped a ring on Derry Church’s finger, and Derry Church changed its name to Hershey.

  Seventy years later, the Vice President of Milk Production at the Hershey Foods Corporation slipped a ring on the finger of Nancy Travis, and she changed her name to Mrs Arnold Skidmore. In doing so, Nancy exchanged the paternalism of the agrarian south for the paternalism of the industrial north, Oaklands for Hershey. It was progress of a kind, she supposed.

  Thirty-one years later still, Eugene Chaney III drove into the town that advertised itself as The Sweetest Place on Earth, and checked into a hotel for three nights. If life in cocoa producing countries was cheap, the room rates at Hotel Hershey were anything but.

  Doc slept badly that night, worse than usual: a strange bed and thoughts of strange days ahead. He hadn’t seen Nancy for well over forty years, and in that time both of them had grown old, married other people and been widowed. This, they had in common. But what of the feelings they’d once had for each other? Were they still existent? Would their history make for awkwardness or could they start out afresh: two friends renewing an old and easy relationship? He had no idea.

  Although Nancy’s letter had requested Doc not to contact her after her sudden departure from Duke, he had, nonetheless, tried on several occasions: he’d phoned her parents’ house, tried to speak with Ruby and written letters. But the Travis wagons had been circled: if it was one thing Mississippians understood, it was defence! The answer was always the same: Nancy had gone away and couldn’t be reached. His letters were returned unopened.

  Bob proved a good friend during this time. He sympathised, but told Doc he should never expect to make sense of the Delta or its people, and should therefore stop trying.

  ‘Let it drop, Gene. Fo’ whatever reason, Nancy’s gone an’ there ain’t no damn thing you can do ’bout it. Jus’ make sure you don’t lose yo’ dignity, man. That’s my advice. Control what you can an’ let go o’ what you cain’t. Black pearls o’ wisdom an’ no charge.’

  Doc remembered taking Bob’s hand and grasping it firmly, thanking him for both his friendship and his thoughts. Bob had responded by asking Gene if he could borrow ten dollars.

  As Doc dressed that morning, he thought about the conversation he and Nancy had had in the cotton field those many years ago. At the time, he’d been naively optimistic that a cure for Alzheimer’s would by now have been found, that medication would be available to either solve or manage the condition. Medications had improved, but it seemed that little progress had been made finding a cure. Nancy, however, had been proved right in thinking that the condition might be hereditary in her family.

  Although there was still no obvious inheritance pattern to Alzheimer’s, clusters of cases in an extremely small number of families had now been documented, and it was agreed that genetic factors could play a role. A gene called Apolipoprotein E found on chromosome 19 was considered a risk factor, and other genes and pathological mutations had also been identified on chromosomes 1, 9, 10, 11, 14 and 21. Even for Doc with his medical training, these numbered chromosomes seemed more like the names of planets in a science fiction movie than anything to do with real life. He knew he would be unable to bring any medical solace to his meeting with Nancy – and that meeting was only two hours away. He finished dressing and went downstairs to eat breakfast.

  Nancy had agreed to meet Doc in the formal lobby of the hotel at ten o’clock. She’d told him she was still fine to drive, and that the onset of her Alzheimer’s was at a stage that didn’t wholly interfere with her day-to-day life.

  The lobby was one floor up from the hotel’s entrance and designed, Doc supposed, to give the feel of a Spanish courtyard. A turreted balcony ran around its top, and the high ceiling was painted to give the impression of white clouds floating across blue sky. To pass the time, he picked up a brochure from the table nearest to him and read about the various treatments available in the hotel’s Spa. The therapies were all based on chocolate and roses, and ranged in price: he could have a Whipped Cocoa Bath for $45, a Chocolate Bean Polish for $65, a Mojito Body Wrap for $115 or a Chocolate Fondue Wrap for $120.

  He replaced the brochure and looked at his watch: three minutes to ten. He wiped the moisture from the palm of his hand onto his pant leg. He was dressed in his usual attire – plaid shirt and corduroy pants – and started to wonder if he might have underdressed for his meeting with Nancy, especially when surrounded by such opulence.

  Doc had always figured that Nancy’s beauty would grow with her years, and in thinking this he’d been right. No one would have thought that the elegantly dressed woman who entered the foyer was anything but in the rudest of health. Her face, like her mother’s had been at this age, was relatively unlined and there were only slight traces of grey in her hair. She wore a modicum of make-up, no more and no less than was called for, and was dressed in an expensive two-piece suit, emerald green in colour. Doc rose uncertainly as she walked towards him. ‘Nancy?’

  Nancy’s face broke into a smile and she put her arms around him. ‘Gene!’ They hugged, as he remembered her hugging Ruby.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ he told her. ‘I always said you’d look better the older you got.’

  ‘And look at you, Gene,’ she smiled. ‘You look like an old tramp – just as my father predicted… A joke!’ she added, when she saw the look of surprise on Doc’s face. ‘You did graduate though, didn’t you? You weren’t too broken-hearted when I left you that your whole life went down the pan?’

  ‘I got through it,’ Doc said. ‘And yes, I graduated. Look at the register if you don’t believe me: Dr Eugene Chaney III.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ she smiled, ‘though anyone can call themselves a doctor these days.’

  They ordered coffee from reception and arranged to take it on the terrace. It was too nice a day to sit indoors, and besides, the terrace would afford Doc a good view of the town – its houses, parks, silos and smokestacks. Doc found a couple of rocking chairs at the perimeter of the rooftop, away from the geranium and petunia baskets attracting the bees and, more importantly, well away from the other hotel guests sitting there.

  Nancy poured, and asked Gene to tell her about his life: what he’d done, had he married, did he have children, had he been happy?

  Doc gave her an outline of his life: his final years in the civil rights movement with Bob, his time as a doctor in Maryland, his marriage to Beth, the birth of Esther, the death of Beth and Esther, his taking over his father’s practice, the death of his parents and retirement.

  Tears came to Nancy’s eyes when he told her about Beth and Esther. She now regretted asking him if his life had been happy. How could it have been?

  And now it was her turn, her time to tell Doc of her life. She started in the present and gradually returned to the past, the reason she left Duke. ‘I was pregnant, Gene. Pregnant with your child.’

  She described the panic that had taken hold of her the month she’d missed her period, and later, when the doctor confirmed her pregnancy. ‘I couldn’t go through with it, Gene, I just couldn’t. I told you why I never wanted children, and I still don’t regret having the abortion – especially now. I always wanted the Alzheimer’s to end with me. Remember me telling you that?’

  Doc nodded.

  ‘But I also knew you wanted children. You were always talking about us having a family, and I knew that if I’d told you I was pregnant you’d have tried to talk me out of an abortion and persuaded me to keep the child. You’d have told me I wouldn’t get Alzheimer’s, and that if I did, by the time our children were grown up the disease would be a thing of the past. And you’d have bee
n wrong, wouldn’t you?’

  Doc nodded again. He sensed that Nancy had braced herself for this conversation, had carefully practised the words she now spoke. He was also conscious of the strength draining from her voice.

  ‘I knew when I decided to have the termination, that once I had it I’d never be able to look you in the eye again. If we’d stayed together, Gene, there’d have always been a dark secret I could never have shared with you. How could I? I’d have killed your child – and how would you have still been able to love me knowing that? You might say now that you would have done, but you wouldn’t. It would always have been something that hung over us, and eventually it would have broken us. I never wanted you to know. I never wanted you to think of me, or feel about me, any other way than you did the last time you saw me.

  ‘Even though I can forgive myself for doing what I did, I know that what I did to you was unforgivable. It was selfish of me to leave you the way I did, but I was never uncaring: I knew you’d be hurt. I wasn’t lying to you when I wrote that I’d always love you. They weren’t empty words, and it almost killed me to write them. You’d been the best thing that had ever happened to me. I’d have left Oaklands behind for you, Gene, I honestly would. But everything I did, I thought I was doing for the best, and I hope you can come to accept this – even after the tragedy of losing Esther.

  ‘After you told me about Esther, I wasn’t sure if I should go ahead and tell you all this or not, but I think it’s important that I’m completely honest with you. You’d have made a great father, I know it, and I hate it that you’ve never had a full chance to be one – and part of that reason is me. I’m sorry Gene, so very, very sorry. I hope you can forgive me. It’s… it’s important to me that you do.’

  Nancy fell silent and stared down at the hands in her lap, which played together nervously. Doc took hold of them. He couldn’t speak. Not once had he ever suspected this to be the reason. He could now only imagine how hard it must have been for her at the time, the intrusive indignity of the procedure she’d undergone, and how scared and alone she must have felt; he should have been there with her. Finally, he whispered: ‘It’s okay, Nancy, it’s okay.’

  It was a relief for both of them when the topic had been raised and excised. They were now free to enjoy the days that followed unencumbered by its burden. They strolled down the avenues of Chocolate and Cocoa arm in arm, and explored the lesser streets named after varieties of cocoa beans. Nancy pointed out the brown and silver street lamps made in the shape of Hershey Kisses, and the sweet smelling mulch made from cocoa husks that protected the roots of the town’s plants and hedges. They drank coffee at Fenicci’s, visited the town’s Grand Theatre at the rear of the Community Centre and, at Nancy’s insistence, drove to Chocolate World to experience The Great American Chocolate Tour.

  They walked into the building’s foyer and down a dark ramp. Under the watchful eye of two young attendants, they climbed carefully into one of the small cars attached to a continuously moving belt, and moved slowly from one illustrated process to the next. They saw how cocoa beans were cleaned, screened, blended, roasted, shattered and milled before milk was added to the mix. Three mechanical cows called Gabby, Harmony and Olympia wagged their tails and sang a song about the importance of cows – and the commentator’s voice backed them up: the factories, it said, used a quarter of a million gallons of their milk every day! At the end of the tour, each of them was handed a miniature candy bar: Doc got a small piece of Hershey Milk Chocolate, and Nancy a miniature Heath Bar.

  Doc left Chocolate World with no real memory of how chocolate was made, but with the cows’ song stuck firmly in his head. What he’d really wanted was a tour of Nancy’s missing years.

  He didn’t have long to wait.

  The Missing Years

  The abortion had been performed by a doctor in New York City and arranged by her father. Hilton Travis had come into his own during this episode in his daughter’s life, and was the only member of the family to ever know of Nancy’s pregnancy – or her reasons for termination. Initially, the news had shocked him, but he didn’t shout and he didn’t scream. Instead, he regarded the problem as if it were a farming complication and proceeded to solve the matter in a practical manner.

  Nancy had been only a few courses short of graduating when she’d left Duke, and after the abortion chose to complete her studies at Vanderbilt, a reputable university in Nashville. She then travelled for a year in Europe, spending most of her time in Italy and learning to speak its language. She returned to Oaklands bronzed and refreshed, only to evidence a marked deterioration in her mother – a decline the rest of the family had observed only gradually.

  Nancy qualified as a grade school teacher, and after holding positions in the Memphis school system for three years applied for an opening at a private school in Pennsylvania. A friend from her Vanderbilt days, now living in Philadelphia, had forwarded her the advertisement, commenting in an attached note that the post would suit her down to the ground. The school was the Milton Hershey School, and the vacancy was for a teacher of English Literature. Nancy was successful in her application and moved to Hershey.

  The Milton Hershey School was funded by a trust established by Milton and his wife Catherine. An expression of their benevolence and childlessness, the school provided a home as well as an education for children of families in financial and social need. Its mission was to nurture these children, build their character and provide them with the necessary skills for future success. The school’s raison d’être appealed to Nancy, played to her social conscience and salved her self-imposed childlessness.

  Nancy proved a born teacher. She developed an easy rapport with her students, inspired in them a love for the written word, and encouraged their creativity. She also took an interest in their welfare outside the classroom, sympathetically listening to their problems and proffering advice when able. She continued to teach at the school after she married, and retired at the age of sixty. Old students would drop by her house and some, after her husband’s death, became her friends.

  Nancy met her husband-to-be in a road accident. Arnold Skidmore had been driving home from a visit to one of the Mennonite dairy farms contracted to supply milk to the factory. He was smoking a cigarette and, at the time of impact, trying to insert a cartridge into an eight-track player the dealership had recently installed in his car. He didn’t notice the brake lights flash on the car in front until it was too late, and although he managed to swerve and avoid colliding with that car, he mounted the sidewalk and shunted Nancy a good two feet back towards the shop door she’d just exited. Nancy fell to the ground, and Arnold rushed to her assistance.

  Property was always uppermost in Arnold Skidmore’s mind, and before asking Nancy if she was hurt gathered together her belongings – shopping bags and purse – and brought them to her side. No bones appeared to have been broken, but Nancy was in shock and Arnold insisted on driving her to the hospital. She lay on the backseat of his car listening to the atonal drone of music she didn’t recognise. It wasn’t the kind of music to hasten anyone’s recuperation.

  ‘What is this?’ Nancy asked.

  ‘Captain Beefheart,’ Arnold replied.

  ‘Well it’s awful,’ Nancy said. ‘Can you turn it off please: it’s giving me a headache! I thought you’d have been more of a Lawrence Welk and his Orchestra man.’ Arnold had been offended by such a suggestion but, from a position of weakness, complied.

  Theirs hadn’t been the most propitious of first meetings but, surprisingly, they started to date. Nancy often wondered if Arnold had asked her out after the accident simply to avoid the possibility of having to pay damages; despite the expensive car he drove, there was a thrifty, almost penny-pinching side to his nature that she never fully understood.

  Arnold would disguise his frugality by attaching it to one or another lofty cause, in particular the conservation of natural resources. ‘One day the planet will thank me, Nancy,’ he told her. His conservation
measures included flushing toilets in the house only once a day, and at its end, providing the bowls held nothing more than urine. When she first visited Arnold’s house, Nancy had been shocked to find a pool of amber liquid in the downstairs bathroom, and even more shocked when Arnold became agitated after she flushed it away. ‘Water, Nancy! We have to conserve it!’ he shouted through the cloakroom door.

  Arnold’s concerns similarly ran to toilet paper. If guests visited the house for overnight stays, he would remove the roll from the bathroom and leave on their pillows only what he considered to be a sufficient amount of paper for their stay: neatly folded strips, each one no longer than two perforations. When she asked him why he did this, he replied: ‘Trees, Nancy! We have to conserve them!’

  After she married Arnold, Nancy saw to it that these strange practices came to an end. The marriage, however, came after the deaths of Arnold’s parents and too late for her to do anything about their funerals – or lack thereof. Arnold had persuaded both parents to leave their bodies to medical research, telling them that he planned to do the same when he died. It was, he explained, an opportunity for them all to help save the lives of future generations – generations that might well number their own grandchildren, even though his parents might well be dead by the time they were born and in all likelihood never get to meet them.

  When Nancy asked him nearer the time of his own death if he wanted his body donated to medical science, Arnold had responded: ‘No way, Nancy! I don’t want some kid rummaging around in my insides.’ It then dawned on Nancy that Arnold had donated his parents’ bodies to medical science purely to save him the expense of burying them.

  Nancy told Doc that although Arnold was the most complicated, inconsistent, irrational, and often infuriating person she’d ever met, there was also an ever-present kindness to him. For all his foibles, he was a good man and she’d genuinely loved him. He was fourteen years older than her, fifty when they married, and had no interest in becoming a father. This too suited Nancy, and although she might have secretly wondered if Arnold’s aversion to fatherhood had something to do with the cost of bringing children into the world, never once pursued the matter with him.