Raney (19 page)

"Go. Visit during the week."

"Charles, you know it wouldn't seem right
—
me traipsing in to see Aunt Naomi once a week with you sitting at home with your nose in a book and Aunt Naomi asks, 'Where's Charles?' and I say, 'Sitting at home with his nose in a book.'"

"That would be okay with me."

"I know it would, because it's not
your
reputation."

"Reputation?"

"Charles, the entire foundation of my entire family is built on visiting. The family that visits together stays together. And if
—
"

"What if they didn't stay together, Raney? What would happen then?"

"Wait a minute. I haven't finished. And how do you think I feel walking into a room full of my aunts, uncles, and cousins when the living husband that I'm married to is at home reading Robinson Crusoe or something. It's like walking in beside a blank spot, or one of them black holes, Charles. Now I could
—
"

"Raney, there are plenty of singles at your family gatherings."

"I haven't finished. Oh no, they aren't 'singles.' Uncle Frank is
dead,
Uncle Forrest is dead, and now Uncle Newton. My widow aunts don't count as singles. And their husbands didn't ever sit at home reading."

"Maybe that's why they're all dead."

"Charles. Charles, that's simply awful."

"Okay, I'm sorry."

"What I was going to say is: you wouldn't have to come every single, solitary time. The way it is now, if I visited regularly by myself they'd all forget who I was married
to.
"

"Wear a name tag saying, 'My husband is Charles
—
male, 5' 10", loves to read
—
especially today.' I'll get one made up
—
I swear."

"I don't think it's funny. I think it's important."

III

Sneeds
and
me
got along fine the first week at the store. Monday
—
the day I started
—
he let me do the candy order. I had to check the items on the order sheet. The salesman says, "Two boxes Baby Ruth, two Butterfingers,
one
Powerhouse." He was going so fast I had to keep stopping him. Sneeds said that was the thing to do. He said a delivery man gypped him out of some potato chips one time and some magazines another time.

The part I like best about working in the store is finding something for somebody when I know where it is and they don't. Somebody will come in, look around for a minute, then come over and say, "Do you have any Kleenex?" And I say
Sure
do, and come around from behind the counter and go straight to it. It's like being in a spelling bee and getting the easiest word.

Right off the bat
—
that first day
—
I told Sneeds that the minnow tank had to be moved.

He says, "Do you know how much that thing weighs?"

"No, but if you'd scoop out all the dead minnows and mud it'd probably be down to about twenty pounds and you could slide it wherever you wanted to."

He laughed. He's got rotten teeth and he's about thirty-five or forty I think, and he moves real
slow
. But he keeps the books and Daddy says he's accurate and he just hopes he can keep him.

"Well," says Sneeds, "besides the fact that that tank weighs about a thousand pounds, you've got the problem of that big wall socket for the filter and light and all that. There ain't another one anywhere except on that post right there beside the tank. You'd have to put in another wall socket."

"I'll talk to Daddy about that," I said.

Also on that first day I found a feather duster under the counter. But you will not believe what else I found under there. There were these boxes of preventatives. There were all kinds of makes and models. It embarrassed me to death.

Well, that's okay. People have to get them somewhere.

I tried to dust off the canned food with the feather duster but what I needed was a vacuum cleaner. All the feather duster did was move the dirt somewhere else. So Thursday morning I brought my Kirby and by lunch I had the canned and boxed food cleaned up and by Friday I had the windows squeaky clean and all the junk cleaned off those shelves. Even Sneeds was pleased. The whole place looked like you'd opened window shades on a sunny morning. I moved out those oil cans from around the stove and got three brass-colored spittoons from Pope's, cleaned the ceilings, the bathroom, the shelves, and throwed out nine big garbage bags of pure-t trash.

The only problem was that even before I finished, one of Sneeds's buddies, Lennie somebody, came in and said, "Hell, I might as well be in the g. d. Seven-Eleven, Sneeds!"

Monday, when I put the feather duster back under the counter I noticed these stacks of magazines under there. Girlie magazines.
Playboy, Penthouse,
and some other one. In my daddy's own store. I could not believe it. My mind shot ahead six or seven years and I saw a little boy or girl of mine rustling under that counter and seeing a picture of a unnatural act which would stick in their mind forever as the way it's supposed to be. In my daddy's own store.

"Sneeds, why do you have those magazines stuck under the counter?" I said. "Why don't you put them out on the rack with all the others?"

"They ain't your regular magazines," says Sneeds. "We might get a little trouble from some of the church people."

I've already heard two or three men around the store talking about "the people down at the church."

"Well," I said, "how does anybody know about those magazines if they're stuck behind the counter?"

"Oh, they know. They know.
There's
regular customers who come in here as soon as we get in a new shipment."

"Well, don't expect me to sell any."

"Okay, I won't. Just holler for me."

That beat all. Here this had been going on under the whole community's nose for no telling how long. In my daddy's own general store. I figured I'd just have to say something to Daddy about it.

I finally had a chance after Sunday dinner when he went back to the bedroom to take his usual Sunday nap; I followed him.

"Daddy, I know about them magazines under the counter at the store."

"Honey, now you leave those magazines alone."

"Daddy, that's not what I'm talking about. How can you go to church and still sell those magazines? I can't do it. Every time somebody wants one I call Sneeds. Why do you sell them?"

"Honey, Sneeds manages all of that. I give him free rein in ordering and the whole magazine idea is his. I asked him about those magazines myself and he said their profit margin is higher than anything in the store. If you want to talk to Sneeds about stopping the magazines
—
fine. I just hate to put a man in control of something and then pull the rug out from under him. Plus, they're out of sight. He keeps them out of sight."

"I just think
it's
wrong, Daddy."

"Well, let me think about it. That's all I know to say now. I hate to let Sneeds do something and then tell him not to do it."

So I decided I would try to talk to Sneeds again. Monday afternoon
—
of the second week
—
during a lull, I'm sweeping inside and Sneeds is sitting out front in the sunshine. I go out and stand in front of him, putting the shadow of my head across his eyes.

"Sneeds, don't you think those magazines under the counter are filthy?"

"They ain't filthy
—
necessarily," he says. "They don't hurt
nobody
as far as I can tell. These people'll buy
them
somewheres. We might as well make the money as somebody else."

"Well, I just don't think
it's
right. If it was, they wouldn't have to be under the counter. You know the expression 'under the counter'?"

"Well, yes, but if you put them out where everybody can see them, old Mr. Brooks is liable to have the sheriff on us."

"Well, I just think it's wrong to sell them at all and I wish you'd think about stopping."

"Do you know how much money they bring in?"

"No."

"A lot. One heck of a lot."

There didn't seem to be much I could do. I put out some tracts
—
"What the Bible Means to Me"
—
but they didn't go very fast. The magazines sold steady. (I must admit that I couldn't help laughing at some of the cartoons in
Playboy.
That's all I looked at though
—
for any length of time. The pictures of the naked women are hazy like they're in a dream. And I cannot believe they show
everything
like they do
—
so the men can go off somewhere and look at the pictures. I mean you don't ever see some man sitting on the front porch or out in the yard looking at
Playboy,
do you? No. They're too embarrassed.)

Madora told me about
Playgirl,
but I don't care to see one. I wonder if they have the men all hazy like in a dream like in
Playboy.
I think it would be better if they had them sweaty
—
kind of shiny, maybe like they just got off working in the fields on a hot day. But I haven't seen one and I don't plan to.

For two days I'd noticed this brand new broom
—
with a piece of thin cardboard around the thistles
—
sitting by the cash register, but I hadn't thought anything about it until Mrs. Johnson, who had just bought three bags of groceries, took a look at her receipt after Sneeds had torn it off the cash register.

"What's this here?" she said, pointing to the receipt.

"Oh. That's the broom," says Sneeds.

"I didn't get
no
broom," says Mrs. Johnson.

"That there ain't your broom?" says Sneeds.

"Oh, no. I didn't get
no
broom."

"I declare, I'm awful sorry, Mrs. Johnson. Let me put this back where it belongs. I imagine somebody must have left it standing here," Sneeds says, real puzzled like. He carries the broom to the back of the store and leans it up against the other new brooms. "I'm awful sorry, Mrs. Johnson. I just saw it standing there and I thought it was yours. Let me give you your money back." He dings open the cash register. "There you go."

Mrs. Johnson got her purse out of her pocketbook, snapped it open, folded the bills and stuck them in and dropped the change in and clamped her purse shut and smiled at Sneeds. "I don't even need a broom," she says. "I got three."

Sneeds followed her to the door, saying he was sorry. But do you know what he did then? He walked to the back of the store, got that same broom and leaned it up against the cash register.
Again.

"Sneeds Perry," I
says
, "you tried to cheat her."

"Oh, no. It was an honest mistake. I didn't mean to charge Mrs. Johnson for that broom."

"Well, Sneeds, you went and got it and set it right back up there! What for?"

"There's people, Raney, plenty of people
—
but not Mrs. Johnson
—
who come in here and charge stuff. Right?"

"Right."

"Well, some never pay it off. Paul Markham has a bill you wouldn't believe, and nobody knows about it but
me
and your daddy, and Paul'll pay
on
it, sure, but he won't pay it off. Well, it ain't right. It simply ain't right, and I tell your daddy and he won't do a thing about it. So, I collect interest
—
I'll have a broom this week and a jar of pickles next week
—
one of them giant jars. Now that there with Mrs. Johnson was
a
accident. I didn't mean to ring up that broom. But Paul was in here yesterday and Fred Powers today and I'd just rung it up for both of them and so
—
"

"Sneeds, two wrongs don't make a right."

"I might as well get them both while they're here."

"No, no. I mean
your
wrong don't make
their
wrong right."

"Oh. Well, maybe not, but charging them extra ain't wrong because it cancels out their wrong. In other words, one wrong can cancel out another wrong."

"Sneeds. Sneeds, what if I tell Daddy? I mean I can't just ignore this."

"If you have to tell him, tell him. But I think you ought to remember that I agreed to you working in here in the first place, so if it hadn't been for me you wouldn't have known about this anyway, so it's my own doing, in a way. And what I'm doing is helping out your daddy, so you telling him would actually hurt him moneywise. But do what you have to do."

"Well, if it's something definitely wrong, like cheating, I'd have to tell him." I don't know what to do. I doubt Daddy would do anything. He's always making excuses for Sneeds.