A Short History of a Small Place (39 page)

“Up that way,” Mr. Covington said and flung his arm in a direction the road didn’t go exactly.

“What sort of plates did they have, Bill?” Mr. Newberry wanted to know.

“Jump got his gas for him,” Mr. Covington said. “I didn’t ever see the plates.”

So while Mr. L.T. Chamblee set in to bellowing for Jump to come out from wherever it was he’d gotten off to, Coley Britt told Mr. Newberry, “West Virginia’s up that way.”

And Mr. Newberry told him back, “So’s Alaska.”

“Well they couldn’t have driven down from Alaska in a Pontiac,” Coley Britt said.

And Mr. Chamblee broke off his bellowing right in the middle of it and told Coley Britt, “Hadn’t no Pontiac been in here all day. It was a Chevrolet as big as life.”

“For God sakes, L.T.,” Coley shot back at him, “that thing was a Bonneville pure and plain.”

“Tell him Russell,” Mr. Chamblee said, “tell him what it was.”

But Mr. Newberry said he didn’t know one car from another and all he could recollect for certain, aside from the license plate, was the color, which he remembered as a dull green all over.

And Mr. Chamblee conceded that it did look a little green to him at first also. “But it turned out to be blue,” he said, “turned out to be a blue Caprice Classic.”

Then Daddy asked Coley Britt if, in his estimation, a man could drive a blue Chevrolet Caprice Classic down from Alaska, and Coley looked at Daddy out from the side of his face like maybe he was sizing him up for a tire-iron necktie. “How about from Michigan?” Daddy said, and Coley spat twice on the asphalt and appeared to be formulating some sort of genuine threat when Jump Garrison, who was actually Coolidge Garrison but got called Jump, came out from around the far side of the station where he’d been hosing down Mr. Covington’s rest rooms so as to keep them as clean as all the signboards said they were. Jump was what Daddy called a blue-gummed negro which meant he was about the color of the bottom of a full hole. He had been with Mr. Covington for going on seven years and so had become somewhat attached to the gas pumping business and especially to the gas pumper’s uniform which he kept all pleated and creased like a tuxedo and which was no end of pride to him except maybe for the shirt since it did not say “Jump” in the little white oval over the pocket and did not say “Coolidge” either but said “Bill” instead, even after seven years.

He came round the corner mopping himself with a brick-colored rag, which he carefully folded and slipped into his back pocket once he was done with it, and even before he could manage a full stop and clasp his hands behind his back so as to stand fairly much at ease Mr. Covington asked him, “Jump, you remember a blue Chevrolet coming through here today?”

“A Caprice Classic,” Mr. Chamblee added.

And Jump licked the inside of his bottom lip. “No sir,” he said.

“You remember a green Pontiac,” Mr. Covington asked him.

“No sir.”

“How about a blue Pontiac or a green Chevrolet?”

“No sir,” Jump said.

“They was a man and a woman,” Mr. Chamblee told him. “They won’t from around here.”

“Yes sir,” Jump said, “I remember. Them two come through in a green Buick with a black vinyl top.”

“For Chrissakes, a Buick?” Coley Britt said and laughed and then he said it again and laughed again and then he made a most mean and vicious remark against negrodom in general which Jump Garrison accepted with the blandest of expressions like maybe Coley had merely speculated on the weather.

“I give him fourteen dollars and fifty cents worth a Good Gulf,” Jump said, mostly to Mr. Covington, “and then I checked his oil, which was awright, then he come out around the front a the car and asked me to put some water in his battery. He told me he paid nearly ninety-seven dollars for that battery and he wanted to keep it slam full up with water. He said a man had to be willing to pay for quality, he said he was lucky he could afford to. But the battery didn’t need any water so I put some in the radiator instead and checked the belts and wiped the duster off before I closed the hood up. Then his wife decided she had to go right away and couldn’t wait for me to get the key so she took it off the wall herself and he give me a twenty and followed me into the station, but before I could take out for the gas he got himself some nabs and got his wife some peanuts and come away from the drink box with two Brownies but he opened the first one up before he shook it so I let him put it back and get another one and I only took out for the two Brownies along with the nabs and the peanuts and the fourteen dollars and fifty cents worth a Good Gulf. Then me and him went on back outside and presently his wife come round the corner and give me the key. Then him and her both want to know where they can find Miss Pettigrew. And I say to him, ‘What Pettigrew?’ And he says back to me, ‘Miss Myra Angelique Pettigrew.’ A course I didn’t know what to tell him, so I figured I’d fetch Mr. Covington and let him do it for me, but I looked up here into the service bay and seen him in the grease pit under a Torino so I guessed I’d have to do it for myself and as I figured it there wasn’t any way to go about it but head on so I said to him, ‘I’m awful sorry, Mister, but Miss Pettigrew’s dead. Died yesterday.’ And along about midway through the sorrowful news him and his wife both turned up their Brownies, then she ate one a his nabs and he ate some a her peanuts. ‘I know that,’ he says to me. ‘Where is she?’ Well, then I tell him I suppose she’s at Mr. Commander Tuttle’s and he wants to know where that is so I get him out alongside the road and show him how to hit the boulevard and tell him where to cut back past the square and he thanked me and seemed considerably gracious so I went ahead and asked him flat out if he was some sort of Pettigrew relation. And he finished off his Brownie, handed me the bottle and said, ‘You’re looking at the heir, buddy.’ Then his wife handed me her bottle too and him and her got back in the Buick and damned if he didn’t light out in exactly the wrong direction.”

“Well Jump, where was it they were from?” Mr. Chamblee asked him.

“Didn’t neither one of them say,” Jump told him back.

“The tags, Jump,” Mr. Newberry said. “Where were the tags from?”

And Jump said he never noticed the tags, said the gas tank was on the right rear fender so he never had call to circle round behind the car.

Then Coley Britt said, “They sounded like they were from West Virginia, didn’t they, Jump?”

“I guess so,” Jump told him. “What’s that sound like?”

And Coley Britt made another observation about negroes that was a little meaner and a little more vicious than the first one.

Mr. Russell Newberry came away from Mr. Bill Covington’s Gulf Station when me and Daddy came away from it ourselves and Jump Garrison went back to hosing down the bathrooms while Mr. Covington excused himself into the service bay, which left Mr. L.T. Chamblee and Coley Britt on the bench out front against the stucco wall where Mr. Chamblee got back on his palmetto tree almost immediately and Coley Britt leaned forward with his forearms across his thighs and appeared set to strike in on the history of his reading habits whenever the moment presented itself. And though Mr. Chamblee and Coley Britt still could not agree as to whether or not it was South Carolina or West Virginia they both appeared considerably relieved at the withdrawal of Louisiana from the proceedings. As for Mr. Newberry, he told me and Daddy he was not so thoroughly convinced it was Louisiana after all but was dead certain it had not been South Carolina or West Virginia and so had automatically volunteered Louisiana which was ever prominent in his mind on account of his sister’s husband who hailed from Natchitoches which Mr. Newberry could never say the same way twice. Then Mr. Newberry stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, braced himself, and told me and Daddy Natchitoches two times fast which Daddy said sounded like both sides of a heated argument in Portuguese.

Between the two of them, Daddy and Mr. Newberry decided we had best head on over to Commander Tuttle’s Heavenly Rest and put an end to this license tag business forever which worked out exceptionally well since that seemed to be where we were going anyway. But we hadn’t hardly set foot on the far side of the boulevard when a green Buick with a black vinyl top turned out from a sidestreet and passed us almost before we knew it was coming. I don’t believe I ever saw the front end of it and I don’t imagine I’d have ever seen the back end of it either if not for Mrs. Pettigrew heir who turned out to be Mrs. T. Fay Rackley, the “T.” being the survivor of something her daddy had burdened her with that she could not in good conscience dispose of entirely but had very nearly cancelled out anyway. Mrs. T. Fay Rackley was riding with her window rolled all the way down into the door and her head partway out the opening when Mr. Pettigrew heir drove her up the boulevard past me and Daddy and Mr. Russell Newberry. And along about when the front view of the Buick was becoming the side view of the Buick, Mrs. T. Fay Rackley laid the back of her head down next to the vent window and said, “Well, Sugar!” in one of those high unbearable voices that usually bypasses the mouth and exits through the noseholes. Naturally the sheer unpleasantness of it caused me and Daddy and Mr. Newberry together to seek out the guilty party who Daddy and me saw was riding in a green Buick and who Mr. Newberry saw was riding in the green Buick, so Mr. Newberry was the only one of us to turn around quick enough to see the license plate but of course he was the only one of us who couldn’t hardly see anyhow which meant we could still be sure it wasn’t South Carolina or West Virginia and could remain reasonably certain it wasn’t Louisiana either but could not say precisely what it was.

So between the two of them, Daddy and Mr. Newberry decided we had best not head over to Commander Tuttle’s after all since there was no longer much call to pay the commander a visit, and instead me and Daddy and Mr. Newberry swung around in the opposite direction and made for wherever it was the Buick had made for which we figured had to be the Pettigrew house since there wasn’t much else in Neely worth coming all the way from Louisiana or West Virginia or even South Carolina to see. And although we swung around in pursuit of that Buick a time before it got wherever it was it was going we weren’t hardly the first people to catch up with it once Mr. Pettigrew heir pulled up alongside the curb by the imported wrought iron fence and him and Mrs. T. Fay Rackley let themselves in through the gate and poked around in Miss Pettigrew’s flower beds for a spell before they climbed the front steps up onto the porch and beat on the door. By the time we arrived, Aunt Willa had already let them into the foyer, and out on the street that car was thick all around with admirers who circled it from frontside to backside and from backside to frontside and puzzled over every little attachment and embellishment like they had never seen such a contraption as a Buick before. Even Coley Britt and Mr. L.T. Chamblee beat us to the license tag and we came up on the two of them stooped over it in the midsts of a fiery exchange. “That’s what I thought it was all along,” Coley Britt said. “I told you that’s what I thought it was.”

“I’ll be goddammed if you did any such thing,” Mr. Chamblee told him.

“L.T. I said clear plain if it weren’t West Virginia that’s what it would be.”

“The hell you did,” Mr. Chamblee said.

“They’re near about the same place, L.T. You can stand in one and spit into the other.”

“But they ain’t the same place.”

“Well at least neither one of ’em has a thing in the world to do with a palmetto tree.”

“I tell you I seen a palmetto tree on this exact car,” Mr. Chamblee said.

And Coley Britt asked him, “Well where is it then, you jackass?”

And when it looked like Coley and Mr. Chamblee were just about set to flail each other to death, Daddy stuck his head square between the two of them so as to get to the license tag himself. “Yep,” he said. “Just like I told you, Russell. Kentucky.” And then he drew his head out again and grinned at Mr. Coley Britt and grinned at Mr. L.T. Chamblee, and I do believe if the both of them had not been all frozen up and transfixed with rage they would have made a very sincere attempt to take Daddy apart entirely.

But then Aunt Willa turned the monkey out so everybody forgot about the Buick and forgot about where the Buick was from and took to the fence. Me and Daddy and Mr. Newberry got us a place right up next to the gate, and I guess there was a dozen people flanking us on either side when Aunt Willa hooked Mr. Britches into his tether and turned him loose. Of course he shot directly up the flagpole and stood on the knob at the top looking thoroughly self-possessed and satisfied and wearing the exact same outfit as the day previous except for the - sneakers, one of which was under a chair in the front hallway and the other of which Sheriff Burton had confiscated in the name of conscientious law enforcement. And as we all stood there at the fence watching the monkey perched there on top of the flagpole watching us, Aunt Willa went back up onto the porch and into the house but left the front door standing open and consequently we all heard Mr. Pettigrew heir say, “What’s this here?” which drew us off from Mr. Britches who had himself commenced to surveying the horizon. You really couldn’t see on into the foyer, you really couldn’t see clear up to the back of the porch on account of Miss Pettigrew’s awning and the shade it threw everywhere, but it seemed you could hear well enough, so we all sucked in our breath and waited to find out what Mr. Pettigrew heir’s this here was exactly, but no matter how still we held ourselves and no matter how hard we listened all we could hear was a kind of flat, bothered silence that turned out to be Aunt Willa’s response. “But what’s it for?” Mr. Pettigrew heir said, and Aunt Willa droned at him for another spell until Mrs. T. Fay Rackley opened up both her noseholes and shrieked, “Why Bugs, look at that yonder.” “Where?” Mr. Pettigrew heir asked her. “Right yonder,” she wailed at him, and apparently right yonder was somewhere other than the foyer and took the three of them on into the back of the house because that was all the talking and all the droning and even all the screeching we heard for awhile.