A Short History of a Small Place (46 page)

“No sir,” I told him.

And Daddy took another exceedingly deep breath before he stopped dead on the sidewalk and looked at me in a most serious and earnest fashion. “Louis,” he said, and then he said it again, “Louis,” and then he blew out the best part of his exceedingly deep breath and asked me, “May I have a match please?”

“Yes sir,” I told him, and gave him one out of my pocket.

And we walked another block and a half until Daddy had smoked out all the usefulness in his cigarette and just as he was tossing the butt of it aside he said to me, “Louis, a man and a woman have a kind of draw for each other. Do you see what I mean?”

“No sir,” I told him, “not exactly.”

“Well a man can like a woman,” he said, “because she’s pretty to him, and a woman can like a man because he’s handsome to her. And sometimes a man can like a woman because she’s smart or funny or goodhearted and sometimes a woman can like a man because he’s all those things too. Do you see what I mean?”

“Yes sir,” I told him.

“Now sometimes,” he said, “a man starts out liking a woman because

.she’s pretty and she can start out liking him back because he’s handsome, and once they’ve kept company together for awhile they each might find out that the other one is smart or funny or goodhearted and so become more attached on account of it. That’s what we call a romance. You follow me?”

“Yes sir,” I said.

“But sometimes,” Daddy told me, “a man and a woman can start out liking each other on account of looks and then discover they aren’t suited otherwise.”

“What do you call that?” I asked him.

“We don’t call that anything,” Daddy said. “But anyway that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that no matter whether a man and a woman get so far along as a romance or not, the thing that draws them together in the first place is always the same.”

“Well then what do you call that,” I asked him.

But Daddy decided he’d best smoke a cigarette before he answered and then he decided he’d best smoke another one and when he finally did set in on a reply it did not much seem like one. “Louis,” he said, “you see a woman has what we call charms and charms are kind of like musk; I mean she airs them out every now and again to draw in a mate. You with me?”

“Yes sir,” I said, “I think so.”

“Good. Now when she gets ahold of a prospect him and her have to go through this little dance together sort of like quail. First she takes him to meet her people and then he carries her to meet his people and then he gives her a ring to show who she belongs to and eventually they get things finalized at a church by a legitimate preacher who marries the two of them together. And once they’re married they can become what we call intimate without people looking sideways at them.”

“Intimate?” I said.

But Daddy rolled on ahead of me and recommenced with, “But there are some men, and some women too I suppose, who want to go direct to intimate without ever dancing much. Do you see what I mean?”

And I looked up at Daddy who was looking down at me with his lips turned up in a sickly sort of way and his face partway blue from the mercury light overhead, and I was just about to tell him Lord no, I didn’t see what he meant when it him me like a sledgehammer blow to the forehead. Daddy was talking about plugging, or anyway that’s what Everet Little calls it even though his sister, Angela Kirstan, insists the scientific term for it is getting intercoursed which Bill Ed Myrick says his brother tells him is most probably undoubtedly correct since word around town is that Angela Kirstan is taking a degree in it. But we call it plugging even though none of us are real clear on what gets plugged and how. We do, however, figure it will come to us at length and on Friday afternoons, in the pursuit of knowledge, we all collect at the Gulf station and listen to Coley Britt talk about the weekly Poontang Festival in Eden which him and his girlfriend, the former Mrs. Bradford Webb, attend most every weekend. Coley says they generally place in nearly all of the events but tend to specialize in the flying fuck and have been known to take their share of regular unornamented fuck awards as well. But even with his considerable expertise, Coley has yet to clear up for us what gets plugged and how since he is ever contradicting himself and all we’ve learned from him is that men and women get tangled and locked up together in a vague and inexplicable way and if nobody throws a bucket of water on them they’re liable to put fruit on the vine. Of course we all have plans to see this sort of thing for ourselves, since it is fairly much impossible to comprehend otherwise, but when Bill Ed asked his brother to carry us over to Eden to the Poontang Festival his brother fell directly off the bed and could not catch his breath to answer. We have been a little bashful about bothering him with it ever since.

So I looked up at Daddy, who was looking down at me with his mouth all twisted and curled up in the sort of outright pathetic smile you might show the dentist when he comes in to drill your teeth, and I asked him, “Do you mean sex?”

“Well Jesus Christ, Louis,” Daddy said, “why’d you let me suffer so?”

And I told him, “Daddy, I couldn’t make out what you were up to.”

And Daddy grinned at me in an utterly untormented way and asked for a match. “So you know about sex then,” he said. “I mean you’re pretty clear on it?”

“Yes sir,” I told him, “fairly much.”

“Good. Good,” Daddy said and we continued down the boulevard for a spell listening to the crickets and the jarflies instead of each other, but after Daddy had flung his cigarette away he pulled up short, stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, and said, “Louis, you see women are born with a pureness and they’re meant to keep it all t( hemselves until they get into a romance that turns into a wedding and then they can let loose of it with a free conscience. You see it’s the sort of thing you can give away only one time to one man and most women figure the one they get to the altar must be the right one.”

“Well Daddy,” I said, “aren’t men born with a pureness too?”

And Daddy told me, “Now Louis, men are born with a pureness, but they’re meant to get shed of it as soon as they can. You see women are intended to keep pure and men are intended to keep from it. You follow me?”

“I believe so,” I said.

“Good,” Daddy told me. “Good.” And we started in to walking again very slowly down the boulevard. “Naturally,” Daddy said, “when women are trying to hold onto their pureness and men are trying to get shed of theirs you’re going to have some conflict and you’re going to have some temptation, but fortunately for men there are some women who don’t figure their pureness is worth keeping ahold of and give it up early on so as to provide an assortment of gentlemen a place to deposit theirs. You with me?”

“Like Angela Kirstan Little,” I said. “Mrs. Phillip J. King told Momma she’s a regular harlot.”

“Yes,” Daddy replied, “there’s one of your depository types.” And I felt pleased and somewhat sexually advanced by having recognized Angela Kirstan Little for what she was. “However,” Daddy said, “there are some women who manage to retain their pureness even though they are sorely tempted to let loose of it. They get in and out of romances, become engaged and disengaged, and are ever burning for intimacy but somehow or another rein themselves in just before their pureness can get away from them.”

“Do most everything but get intercoursed,” I said. I was feeling awfully bold by this time.

And Daddy laughed and asked me was that what Mrs. Phillip J. King called it. But I told him I couldn’t answer for Mrs. Phillip J. King; I told him it was a scientific term. And Daddy said, “Well then, scientifically speaking they do most everything but get intercoursed,” and at the time it looked to me that I would not need the Poontang Festival after all.

“Now aside from the women that get intercoursed,” Daddy said, “and aside from the women that stop just shy of it, there is another sort of women that do not ever risk their pureness. They hold it far too close and dear to themselves to put it in the way of temptation and only bring it out once the vows are done with and the honeymoon has commenced. And it’s my theory,” Daddy said, “that Miss Pettigrew was one of these last ones.”

“Pure?” I asked him.

“Yes sir,” Daddy said. “Pure and goodly right up to Mr. Alton.”

“And she got intercoursed?” I said.

“No sir,” Daddy told me. “She got invited to.”

Me and Daddy stopped directly across from an oiled road that ran alongside the Pettigrew property and linked up Russel Avenue with the Boulevard. “When it was all over with,” Daddy said, “when it was all pretty much up with him, the mayor would walk at the end of the day and I’d run up on him fairly regular back in there,” and Daddy pointed towards the narrow cross street that was lighted at the boulevard end and lighted at the Russel Avenue end but was all darkness in between, “and sometimes I’d give him a cigarette or two,” Daddy said, “and we’d smoke and walk together but he hardly ever said anything much except for once and I don’t know what possessed him to talk then but we stopped of a sudden and he grabbed onto my arm and told me, ‘Louis, I’ve ruined her.’ ‘Who?’ I asked him. ‘Sister,’ he said. ‘Sister.’ ”

And Daddy said he asked him, “How, Wallace?”

“It was him,” the mayor said. “It was him and me together.”

“Mr. Alton Nance?” Daddy said.

“Yes sir,” the mayor told him, “Mr. Alton Nance.” And Daddy said the mayor spoke Mr. Alton’s name in a very slow and peculiar way like it was a thing of great wonder to him. “He told me he would put me in the congress,” the mayor said. “He told me he would make a senator of me. He told me I could be governor one day.”

“Did you want to be governor?” Daddy asked him.

“Not until he said I could be. And Louis,” the mayor said, “it seemed like such a reasonable bargain at the time. It seemed like such a small price.”

“What did?” Daddy asked him.

“Her,” the mayor said.

“Sister?” Daddy asked him.

“Yes sir,” the mayor said.

“Her hand?” Daddy asked him.

“No sir,” the mayor said.

And Daddy said him and the mayor stood together in the middle of the oiled road and did not say anything to each other for a time, and then the mayor scratched in the gravel with the toe of his shoe and said, “I didn’t know what I was doing, Louis. I was just shut off from sense for awhile. Don’t you see, I’d already gotten enough of everything I’d wanted to believe I couldn’t help but get this too. I didn’t know what I was doing. And Louis I was right there, I was standing right there beside her and all I had to say was NO or STOP or DON’T, anything at all, and if you could have seen how she looked at me, if you could have just seen it.” And the mayor crossed his arms over himself like he was near about freezing and made a face, Daddy said, made a face like people on the t.v. make when they are sad and when they are woeful which is just the face regular people make when they are done in. “Ruined,” he said and drew off a breath and said it again.

Daddy could not find anything to tell the mayor back, so the two of them stood there in the middle of the sidestreet without talking and somehow without looking at each other either, and Daddy said he could not think of anything worthwhile to say right off and could not think of anything worthwhile to say at length but was fixing to open his mouth anyway when the mayor wished him good evening and so saved himself.

“But she never got intercoursed,” I said.

“No sir,” Daddy told me, and we set in down the boulevard once more.

“Never even got tempted,” I said.

“No sir,” Daddy told me. “But they figured she could be.” And we crossed the street to the imported wrought iron fence and put our arms through the palings. A number of people were milling around the length of the block and me and Daddy joined them in watching the Pettigrew house, which was dark everywhere except for the solitary light up in Aunt Willa’s window and every now and again Aunt Willa herself would pass into view toting a box or an armload of clothes and the sight of her would stir up a noticeable huzzah in the street.

“But Daddy,” I said, “she never got intercoursed and she never even got tempted so why did it matter if the mayor and Mr. Alton thought she could be?”

“Her own brother, Louis,” Daddy told me, “her own brother guessed she was ripe for it. It makes a difference.”

“So it wore on her?” I asked him.

“That’s right,” Daddy told me.

“And since the mayor figured she wasn’t pure,” I said, “and since Mr. Alton figured she wasn’t pure, she went ahead and figured she wasn’t either.”

“That’s right,” Daddy told me.

“But that isn’t fair, Daddy.”

“No sir,” he said, “it isn’t.”

“So she didn’t jump because Mr. Alton was gone from her.”

“No sir,” Daddy told me.

“And she didn’t jump because the mayor was gone from her.”

“No sir,” Daddy told me.

“Then she jumped because her pureness was gone from her.”

“No sir,” Daddy told me.

“No sir?”

“No sir,” Daddy said.

“Well how come then?” I asked him.

“Because she was bats,” Daddy told me. And just as he had closed his mouth good an exceedingly noticeable huzzah kicked up all around us and we looked towards Aunt Willa’s window to find it partway blocked off by the backside of Mr. Britches, who was crouched on the windowsill beating his arms on his head.