The Maitland children had never heard of Panola Cola. Their father, interviewed on October 12, 1989, while on a book tour, could not believe it. “About thirty miles away from Memphis we passed the sign along the side of the road. The kids go, ‘What’s PanCola?’ Can you believe that? So I pulled off the interstate and said I’d show them what’s PanCola. I mean, it was a staple of my childhood. Guess what? After that visit I actually gave some thought to writing a book on it. Is yours going to be fiction or nonfiction?”
At the museum, Peter Maitland asked Harold about ticket prices, and without a word, Harold pointed to the chalkboard sign behind him, on the cloudy black surface of which was written, “Five dollars for the nickel tour.”
“Is that per person,” Peter said, “or all-inclusive?”
“Five dollars for the nickel tour,” Harold said in a whisper, pondering the integrity of his brogans. “Five dollars for the nickel tour.”
Peter took account of his family before placing a twenty on the countertop. With an arch smile he said to keep the change. Harold rang up the cash register and placed the twenty in its slot. His father had always claimed he wasn’t much for sums.
Harold stepped from behind the desk, saying, “Follow me, step this way,” with a showman’s flourish, and situated the needle on a turntable. He led the family just two feet before stopping in front of the nearest wall. At the start of Harold’s speech, memorized through years of repetition, the record player issued the first of six commercials that had once borne proof of PanCola’s sponsorship of WMAQ’s Amos ’n’ Andy program from 1929 to 1934. Welcome to our program, folks. Know what Amos and Andy enjoy before going on air? In the first photograph, a group of field hands, sweaty from a long day, sat on the back of a wagon as it lumbered forward, each of them clutching a glass bottle, and in the next photograph, three more well-to-do men, hatted and suspendered and groomed, stood in agrarian gentility before the arcade of a Forster Rex-for-All, shaded from the late-afternoon light of a warm southern day. “This is where it all began for the company,” Harold said, “planters and clodhoppers alike cooling off with a cold soda pop.” The third photograph featured an extravagant ballroom. Foremost in the picture stood Montgomery Forster, dressed in a tuxedo identical to those of the state senators flanking him, while in the background, clutching the midriff of a cigarette girl, sat Lance Forster beneath a banner for New Year’s Eve of 1939. “Things were flying high for the PanCola dynasty. At least till America entered the war a couple of years later.” In the next five photographs, a veritable flip-book of hard-won capitalism, billowy pillars of gray soot reached for the heavens from smokestacks atop a newly built factory, caravans of shipping trucks held back traffic on a long stretch of highway, a deliveryman refilled a vending machine, a laundry woman chugged at a dripping bottle, and thousands of pennants at a football stadium bore the logo for one of the most internationally recognizable brands. “Everyone the world over wanted a can of Pan,” said Harold. A photograph of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, most likely taken in Paris well before the occupation, featured two famous celebrities, an actress black and expatriate and a socialite white and affluent, embracing in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe, a handful of pedestrians near them marveling at the spectacle of one, the other, or both. Harold said, “Miss Ramsey Forster was a special friend of the Creole Goddess.” In the last photograph, whose caption penciled at the bottom, “Panola County, Mississippi, September 1914,” has never been verified by historians, the Forster family posed before their home. They were a handsome bunch. Going gray at his temples, Houghton, thirty-eight, kept an arm on the shoulder of his blond wife, Annabelle, thirty-nine, while their children, Montgomery, twelve, Haddy, ten, Lance, three, and Ramsey, three, sat at their feet, each dressed in white linen. “The Panola Cola Company was still private at this time,” Harold told his guests, “but the family had just the wealth to build their new home.” At those words, the record on the turntable began its last commercial—That’s all from Amos and Andy this evening, folks, but sit tight for a word from our sponsor—as Harold Forster led the Maitland family to the Panola Cola Historical Museum’s second floor.
“What happened to those people in the pictures,” Rose, the youngest, asked, “the mommy and daddy and the brothers and sister?”
Harold said, “They’re long gone.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yessum.”
On their climb up the rickety stairs, Peter and Claire, ignoring their two boys roughhousing with each other, exchanged a look that conveyed the question What’s wrong with him? Peter drew circles with his finger around his ear, prompting Claire to give him a slap on the shoulder to stifle her laugh. Jones wet-willied Brooks.
The Attic of Advertisements contained all kinds of memorabilia for PanCola. Across the room, Frank Sinatra stood beside Elvis Presley, one-dimensional and corrugated-stock, both holding an open bottle of “The Sweetest Thing Around.” Five “Panola Heat Wave” clocks read the time as “A Hair Above Thirsty!” A calendar from 1972 showcased a bottle of CitraPan, and a calendar from 1948 pictured a bottle of Mr. Pan, and a calendar from 1966 depicted a bottle of DietPan. On one wall, an original oil painting, commissioned from Norman Rockwell during his prime, portrayed a 1950s housewife playfully withholding a tasty treat from her daughter and son, their one line of speech, written in an air bubble, the soon-to-be catchphrase, “Can of Pan, Please!” while on another wall, the headline only the best for our boys floated above a scene, its design reminiscent of the WPA ads prevalent in years past, of American soldiers finding a surprise beverage in their GI rations. The two brothers had themselves a fine time. In front of the shelving, Jones fiddled with the ceramic figurines of the “PanCola Tooth Fairy” until one of them shattered to pieces against the floor, and next to the window, Brooks left smudge marks on a rare cutout from Photoplay in which Jean Harlow “Dares You” to try a glass of Panola Cola. Harold Forster found himself at what his mother used to call the Horns of Dilemma. He liked to have had a fit. These were paying customers, but they were ruining his legacy. At the funeral for Imogene Forster, whose death, as with all the others that had preceded it, Harold considered his ultimate failure to keep his family safe, a team of lawyers had informed him that, despite the family’s once great fortune, all that was left of his birthright fit easily into the two-story house built by Harold’s grandfather. “Mostly trinkets of little worth,” one had said, “but maybe of sentimental value.” Since that day so many years ago, Harold had managed to renovate the house, arrange each of his family’s artifacts for effect, and found the Panola Cola Historical Museum. And just look at how these boys were treating it.
“Now, after years of tragedy, you, the only Forster never to sit on the board of your family’s company, you, the only Forster left alive after your niece passed of cancer, you are all that remains of a family that used to be spoken of in the same breath as the Hearsts and Rockefellers,” the New York Times reporter had said to Harold Forster. “For the past few years you have been the proprietor and sole employee of a museum dedicated to your family’s company. You work as a handyman for your apartment complex in exchange for discount rent. Not to mention, you have never been married and do not have any children. So I guess my real question is a very simple one. Was it worth it?”
Only the littlest of the Maitland children, Rose, showed any respect for the PanCola history. Harold appreciated Rose. She reminded him of his sister, but he didn’t enjoy thinking of her. It was too much for him. At the conclusion of the tour, Harold told the Maitland family, “We enjoyed having y’all as our guests on this fine day. Please tell your friends.” Peter and Claire took that as ample sign to lead their children down the stairs, through the main level, and toward the door.
“We appreciate it,” Peter said, thinking this guy really meant his bit about the nickel tour. It hardly seemed worth that much. “See you next time.”
Either Brooks or Jones asked to try a PanCola, to which Harold replied there
were no more left. One of the boys said, “What a gyp,” but Harold couldn’t tell which. On the way to their station wagon, Claire Maitland told her son to watch his mouth, secretly glad that somebody had the nerve. Harold flagged Rose.
“I think you got something stuck in your ear,” he said before performing the only magic trick he knew. “Would you look at that?” Harold handed Rose a magnetic bottle cap labeled pc soda. “For your refrigerator. Good to hold up drawings.”
“Thank you, mister.”
“You’re so welcome.”
“Bye-bye.”
“Have a safe trip now.”
Harold went inside and then came back out. On the front porch of the Panola Cola Historical Museum, he watched as the dust kicked up by the station wagon caught the glow of September twilight. The evening air had grown sepia as blood. He held on to a cold bottle of PanCola, one from the last shipment made before the company filed for bankruptcy, the rest of which he kept in a cooler out back. Harold took a seat on the porch steps, his view of the countryside a picture show of grackles perched in beeches, horses grazing, cows lowing, water turkeys swimming amid water oaks, and lightning bugs like holes punched in a stage backdrop. He pried off the bottle cap, making less the sound of a sneeze and more that of biting into an apple, and took the first sip. Sweetness. Frost. Vapor. Memories. He loved these moments more than anything else left in his life. At another dusk of another day, Harold sat on the porch of his museum, alone, drinking from a soda long gone flat.
Part 3
3.1
Histor in the Greek—Breakfast of Champions
At seven in the morning on March 12, 1985, Robert Vaughn, while sitting on the toilet, thought, If everyone’s life has an arc, then all of history is a story, in hindsight or in foresight but never in both. It could be an okay line, he figured, with a little teasing out. A scholarship student, frequent dean’s list honoree, and philosophy major at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, Robert had a paper due tomorrow for his class “The Machine in the Ghost: Antiquity and Infinite Regression.” He had finished a draft, but it still needed work. Should he note how those two words, story and history, share the same etymological root? Robert couldn’t decide. He balled some toilet paper, reached between his legs, and wiped himself clean.
His breath grew visible in the cold air as he walked into the living area of his trailer. Every witch in the county had put on her brass brassiere. Robert folded his arms around his chest, upset he had forgotten to fix the heater.
He’d inherited the singlewide when his father died of a heart attack last year. Prior to his death, Jimmy Vaughn had been a racist, a womanizer, a drunk, and a card cheat, in other words, as his only child was sometimes known to say, a Mississippian. The Fleetwood sat on a half-acre pecan grove in Yazoo County. Although Robert did not know the specifics, his father told him the land had been left to their family by Henry Vaughan, a distant relative, wealthy plantation owner, and namesake of Vaughan, Mississippi, the nearby town where Casey Jones, “right high-wheeler of mighty fame,” had ridden his train to the end of the line.
More than just a vowel in his last name separated Robert from that withered branch of his family. He would be the first to admit as much. Just look around. A dented can of Charles Chips on top of the refrigerator, fly tape hung from a light fixture, windows lined with rusty trinkets found in an old feedlot out back, a La-Z-Boy with holes, a console Magnavox: these accommodations were not exactly what one would expect of a man whose ancestral name graced the town charter. Robert considered it fitting that the grove on which his trailer sat rarely yielded enough pecans to warrant a single bottle of Karo.
“How’s tricks, pussy hound?”
On the couch lay Hellion, an eleven-year-old golden retriever who, after an unfortunate encounter with a combine, had continually proved, every time he lapped at the face of a stranger or took a dirt bath on a sunny day, that there was no such thing as an unhappy three-legged dog. He gave up his belly for a scratch. “You be a good little gimp while I’m out,” Robert said while doing as requested, the furry stump of Hellion’s hind leg twitching, an invisible limb trotting along an invisible treadmill. “No wild parties. Leftovers are in the fridge.”
Robert grabbed his book bag and keys from the kitchen table and left without locking the door. Outside was overcast. To either side of him as he walked through his front yard lay the dioramic detritus of his own childhood: a rusted tricycle halfway sunk into the dried bed of a mud puddle, flat footballs, flat soccer balls, flat basketballs, a jungle gym turned birdhouse, a birdhouse turned squirrel feeder, GI Joes that had been unearthed like arrowheads by a recent hard rain. Nothing gave a shadow on that gray morning.
In his car, a navy Buick won by his father in a game of Texas hold ’em, Robert turned the ignition, hoping the old girl’s luck would last. The engine giddyapped to life after four increasingly nervous tries. Lukewarm air sputtered from the vents as he made his usual turn, Fugates Road onto Berryville, though he was too preoccupied to worry about the temperature. Robert was worried about Marunga. He was scheduled to meet with his thesis adviser later that day. Despite the epithet Leopold Marunga was called around school, Robert knew “Professor Cowabunga” to be far more temperamental than laid-back, the type who would have a student expelled, write him a glowing letter of rec, forget his name, or guarantee a graduation summa cum laude at the drop of a hat or the toss of a mortarboard. Who could tell how that man would react when, on asking his supposedly favorite student about a thesis topic, a thesis topic in a field that was essentially the study of thought, he received an answer of “I can’t think of one”?
Robert pulled into a gas station named Campbell’s. Inside the store, a clapboard affair arrayed in Golden Flake–branded racks of road food, he nodded at the attendant, half of whose face was obscured by the morning’s Clarion-Ledger.
The attendant asked, “Borden and MoonPie?”
“Borden and MoonPie,” answered Robert.
From the candy aisle he picked up a vanilla MoonPie, and from a cooler in the back he grabbed a pint of Borden milk. They were his usual breakfast. On his way to the front counter, though, Robert passed an open bin of ice, its surface studded with glistening cans of soda, Pepsi-Cola and RC Cola and Coca-Cola. He suddenly had a craving for one. After returning the milk, Robert picked up a can of Coke, ice still clinging to its lid. He figured what the hell. Today was his birthday. He deserved it.
3.2
On This Day in History—The Butterfly Effect—“Who knows what evil lurks within the hearts of men?”—As Goes General Motors So Goes the Nation—From Newton’s Cradle to the Grave—Chaos Theory—Secret Ingredient?
On February 29, 1932, two years before Lance wandered through Greenwich Village, contrite and lonesome, and Ramsey rode uptown in a taxicab, trying to keep her hands from shaking; eight years after Monty sat at a café in Ecuador, sipping on a soda called Raiz Dulce; and fifty-two years before Harold gave the Maitland family a tour of the Panola Cola Museum, Fiona and Annabelle Forster were drinking hot toddies on the porch of The Sweetest Thing.
“Enjoy your leap day?” Fiona said, taking in the evening view.
“Feels strange, doesn’t it?” said Annabelle. “It’s like we’re living in a day that doesn’t really exist. A fictional day.”
“An extra one never hurts.”
“Or like we’re trapped inside a mathematical course correction.”
Steam rose from Fiona’s mug as she took a sip. “I’m afraid to ask, but still no grandchildren on the way?”
“No, ma’am.”
Fiona was afraid to ask not because the answer was probably no but that it might be yes. Ever since the birth of her son, she had been certain the Malediction would come for her family, if not Houghton then his children, if not his children then their children. So far it hadn’t. Houghton was doing well with his fizzy water, and all of his children seemed happy in their lives. The problem was Fiona would forever be trapped on the Old W
orld side of the nebulous juncture at which a family in America becomes an American family. She knew herself well enough to know that. Prosperity to her being just another word for liability, she had never managed to shake the belief that what rises may fall, what falls might rise, and fate could not care less about keeping a balance.
“More tea?” asked a house girl, holding a kettle of bourbon, honey, lemon, and not a drop of tea, to which Fiona answered, “Yes, dear.”
Annabelle took a refill as well. “Would you be a darling and bring us some of those baked goods that came in this morning?” she said to the girl. Once they were alone again on the porch, Annabelle turned to Fiona and said, “So hard to find good help these days,” then gave a nod toward the view, as though it were a testament to her standards. That evening the front lawn, overrun with hawk moths and dragonflies hovering above its flower beds and mimosa trees, was far quieter than it had been the night years earlier when, unbeknownst to Annabelle, her daughter had returned home from the Moonglade Serenade and briefly mistaken Harold’s wails for the sound of cicadas. “Took us forever to find that one.” Annabelle sipped at her toddy.
Despite the cheery pitch to her voice, a put-on for her mother-in-law’s sake, the lady of the house was in no mood. It was Houghton again. This week he was out in California, ostensibly to visit the producers of Amos ’n’ Andy—there had been reports Pepsodent wanted in as sponsors—but the real purpose of the trip was for Houghton to take a meeting with RKO Pictures. He hoped to convince the studio executives that the verisimilitude of their characters would be best served if those characters were portrayed enjoying the kind of beverage real people drank. What did real people drink? PanCola, of course.
Annabelle was upset because product placement had been her idea. God save the mark should Houghton give her an ounce of credit! She had even helped set up the meeting with the studio. Last month in New York, while getting a cocktail at a former speak, she and Houghton had bumped into Joe Kennedy. “Well, if it isn’t the belch manufacturer,” he had said, to which Annabelle, taking account of Joe’s date, pretty as a Poiret model and just as young, responded before Houghton had a chance: “Evening, Joseph. How’s your wife?” For the rest of the night, Joe was like a whipped puppy, docile and obedient, except instead of wagging his tail he agreed to liaise between Houghton and the contacts he’d made while brokering the formation of RKO.
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