A Short History of a Small Place (54 page)

After it was over Daddy and Mr. Newberry smoked some more in the company of Mr. Lester Mordecai while Momma and Mrs. Newberry went off to visit Mrs. Newberry’s mother where she was laying in with a smattering of Hootses on the far incline. Two men from the vault outfit who had kept themselves and their truck at a discreet distance off behind some sycamore trees during the course of the service started up the engine once most everybody had departed except for me and Momma and Daddy and the Newberrys and Mrs. Ouida Gattis and her son-in-law, who were very nearly to their car, and the truck lurched out into view with the concrete vault top swinging from a cable over the bed. The driver backed on in among the tombstones and hard up to the commander’s canvas awning and him and the other fellow together commenced to clear out the chairs and the flowers and the shiny chrome casket-lowering device and then they dragged the green indoor/outdoor carpet off the dirtpile and rolled it up. Me and Daddy and Mr. Newberry watched them work with Daddy and Mr. Newberry propped comfortably against Mr. Mordecai’s headstone and me alongside them trying not to step anywhere Mr. Mordecai could possibly be, and at length after the gravesite was near about vacant Mr. Newberry spat between his shoes and said, “I wonder what in the world is wrong with that old fart Holroyd. Seems to me he’s lost his mind.”

“You think so?” Daddy asked him.

“Yes sir,” Mr. Newberry said, “I truly do. Seems to me it’s a pure and simple case of decrepitude, don’t you think?”

And Daddy crossed his arms over his chest and looked at his shirtfront for a spell. “No,” he said, “no, I don’t believe it is.”

“Well, what is it then?” Mr. Newberry wanted to know.

And while Daddy was considering his reply, the driver of the vault truck started up a mechanical block and tackle and played out the steel support arm until the vault top was suspended directly over Miss Pettigrew’s grave, and as me and Mr. Newberry and Daddy all three watched the concrete slab sway there in midair Mr. Newberry said, “Well?” and Daddy told him, “Not decrepitude, Russell. Futility.” And I do not believe that word had left off rattling in my ears when the vault truck driver dropped the vault top into place at a reckless velocity. The concussion shook Mr. Lester Mordecai I am certain and turned Momma and Mrs. Newberry completely around on the far hillside. It was most dramatic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ON THE TUESDAY after Miss Pettigrew’s funeral Mr. Conrad Rackley returned to Neely in a rented truck the cab of which he shared with a pair of Masseys who we did not know for Masseys right off but who we recognized as relations on account of a common chinlessness, which is apparently the predominant Massey trait in the West Virginia end of Kentucky. Now the Neely Masseys, and there are eight altogether, are adequately chinful people, but each one of them can catch rainwater in his ears without ever tilting his head. Daddy says there is probably some jackrabbit in the family somewhere. So nobody was even guessing Massey when Mr. Conrad Rackley turned off Scales Street onto the boulevard and proceeded to Miss Pettigrew’s house. There was, however, some speculation that it was possibly Newsomes, who go almost direct from the bottom lip to the neck without any distraction, but most folks figured Newsomes to be strictly a local phenomenon and did not consider it prudent to make such a serious accusation against total strangers.

This time Mr. Conrad Rackley pulled up alongside Miss Pettigrew’s wrought iron fence without ever stopping off at the Gulf station to find out how, and he left both the Masseys in the truck while he went himself to the front door and beat on it and kicked it and beat on it again before backing off the porch and into the yard to holler at the cedar clapboard, and I do believe Aunt Willa stood in the doorway for a full two minutes and listened to him yell before she brought herself out into the sunlight where he could see her.

“I come for some things,” Mr. Rackley said, and Aunt Willa just stared at him. “I’s here before,” he told her, “and I come back for some things. Conrad Rackley, you remember me.” But still Aunt Willa just stared at him and did not nod or twitch or even blink either, and Mr. Conrad Rackley looked to his left and looked to his right and then glared at the sky straight up over his head. “Shit woman,” he said and made a vigorous exhalation, “I ain’t got time to mess with you. Get on out the way, I come for some things.” And he motioned to the Masseys who bailed out of the truck cab and followed him up the steps, across the porch past Aunt Willa, and on in through the doorway, and by all reliable reports the younger Massey had not hardly disappeared into the foyer when he came out again creeping backwards across the porch and searching for the top step with his right foot. It seems he got as far as the apron, which put him abreast of Aunt Willa, when the older Massey who turned out to be the younger Massey’s daddy came out through the doorway frontwards and suggested to the younger Massey that he drag his butt directly back on into the house. “I ain’t,” the younger Massey told him, “I ain’t about to as long as that gorilla’s running loose,” and he continued to probe for the top step with his foot.

“That monkey won’t hurt you,” the older Massey told him, “now get back in here.”

“I ain’t, Daddy, I ain’t about to,” the younger Massey said, and what chin he had was all aquiver.

So the older Massey turned his attention to Aunt Willa and asked her would she please bind up her monkey somehow or another and Aunt Willa stepped into the house long enough to fetch Mr. Britches back out with her and carried him down the steps to the flagpole while the younger Massey looked on with some considerable attention. And once he was satisfied that the monkey could not work free of his tether, he commenced to back across the porch towards the doorway and eventually vanished into the foyer.

Mr. Conrad Rackley and the two Masseys rumaged throughout the house for a spell independently of each other, and the assortment of people who had collected along the wrought iron fence on account of the truck and on account of the monkey and on account of the combination of the truck, the monkey, two Masseys, and a Rackley all watched the various window sashes on the front of the house fly open in an agitated and violent sort of way so as to allow the older Massey or the younger Massey or Mr. Conrad Rackley himself a breath of untainted air. And I do not believe the first piece of furniture saw daylight until the entire Pettigrew mansion had been all opened up and cross ventilated like a Swiss cheese and even then it was only an endtable that Mr. Conrad Rackley dragged outside, inspected on the lawn, and promptly carried on back into the house. He did not reappear for the best part of a half hour afterwards and neither did the younger Massey or the older Massey or Aunt Willa either, so the folks along the fence had to amuse themselves with the monkey, who was not hardly a danger to them any longer on account of his pressure problem and consequently was not hardly amusing to them either, even in his plaid sportcoat and his porkpie hat and with his lips turned inside out. Mr. Britches’s bladder trouble had gone a ways towards deflating the thrill of monkey watching in Neely. Naturally, then, people were growing noticeably edgy and annoyed in the absence of Mr. Conrad Rackley and the accompanying Masseys, and there was mounting the threat that some one or two of the spectators might go on about their business when at last the air was filled with a kind of syncopated thud-thumping like maybe somebody was dribbling a piano down the inside stairway, and the noise had just barely left off echoing across the front lawn when the Masseys came trotting through the doorway on either end of a bonnet-topped highboy with Mr. Conrad Rackley close behind them cheering them on but not really carrying anything. He directed the Masseys straight to the truckbed, selected a spot for the highboy, and encouraged them to put it there. Then he drove them on back up the front steps and into the house in the most amiable sort of way. They were gone maybe five mintues this time when from out of the foyer came a tremendous splintering crash which seemed to indicate that Mr. Rackley and the Masseys had gotten together and decided to dispense with the dribbling and had simply tossed whatever it was off the second-floor landing. At length the Masseys passed through the doorway carrying between them a kind of a dressing table that was lovely, delicate, and complete except for three legs and Mr. Rackley encouraged them to set it off to one side of the porch.

After that the Masseys did not dribble any furniture and did not launch any either but did carry a great variety of items across the front yard to the truckbed under the cheerful direction of Mr. Conrad Rackley who did not dribble any furniture himself and did not launch any and managed to avoid carrying any also. I suppose all in all Mr. Rackley, with the invaluable assistance of the two chinless Masseys, made off with an even dozen endtables, five or six highboys, a matching pair of cedar wardrobes, countless whatnot shelves and several boxes full of countless whatnots, two pine hutches, one overstuffed leather chair, a ponderous oak bedstead, three pair of andirons, one stackable walnut barrister’s bookcase, four Tommy Dorsey albums, two sets of silver service, and one very large gilt-framed portrait of an excessively grim individual who was not then and has never since been verifiably indentified though Mrs. Louise Tullock Pfaff, who got the best look at it, insisted it was Jefferson Davis. And all throughout the hauling and the loading and the stacking Mr. Conrad Rackley persisted in his undying encouragement except for the brief few minutes he spent against the wrought iron fence talking to Mr. Mickey Roach sr. and Mr. Covington from the Gulf station and Mr. Russell Newberry and one of the wispy white Tallys along with two of the standard-sized Frank Lewis negro Tallys. As Mr. Newberry told it, Mr. Rackley wiped some accumulated perspiration off the top of his bald head and said, “Gentlemen, this furniture here is awfully heavy.”

“Yes sir,” Mr. Mickey Roach sr. replied, “I bet it is.”

“Awfully heavy,” Mr. Rackley said, and dabbed at himself. “We sure could use some extra hands to help carry it.”

“Yes sir,” Mr. Mickey Roach told him, “I bet you could.” And that was about all of it except for the hard looks followed by some general chortling on the part of most everybody but Mr. Conrad Rackley. So the Masseys continued to carry out the furniture alone and continued to suffer the singlehanded encouragement of Mr. Conrad Rackley until at last the truck was packed full and the door was lowered and latched and the older Massey and the younger .Massey each were rewarded with a coffee cup full of tapwater. The departure was exceedingly uneventful to a point. There were no fond farewells, not even a solitary civil goodbye, just two Masseys and a Rackley in the cab of a rented truck which back-fired when the engine turned over and then went off from the curb in a cloud of grey smoke. And I suppose the departure would have been entirely uneventful if Mr. Britches had not been startled enough by the backfire to urinate on account of it, and though it was not a thick and masterful stream it was a sort of arc nonetheless and drew a riotous ovation from the onlookers.

Daddy said that was that monkey’s last hurrah though we didn’t know it at the time and surely that monkey didn’t know it either. I suppose only Aunt Willa knew it since she had gone ahead and called the zoo in keeping with the specifications of the deceased, and the people in charge there had immediately agreed to drive the width of the state from Ashboro to Neely if only to pick up a dilapidated, bladder-plagued chimpanzee with a court record. You see, the zoo was a fairly new undertaking at the time and was understandably scant of resources. There weren’t any elephants just then or giraffes or zebras or tigers or crocodiles but just a few deer, one reasonably tame black bear, and enough corn snakes to start a Bible society, so I do believe the zoo would have flown a man halfway across the country to fetch back a housecat not to mention hopping over to Neely for a legitimate monkey. Consequently, someone came for Mr. Britches right away, or anyway came for him two days after Aunt Willa had called, which was about as right away as you could hope for from a state-supported institution. Aunt Willa had him dressed to travel in his porkpie hat and his handsome blue blazer and his black Keds sneakers, and Mr. Britches was squatting comfortably atop his flagpole when the green station wagon from Ashboro pulled out off Scales Street onto the boulevard and made direct for the curbing in front of Miss Pettigrew’s house. The driver got out and stretched himself. He was dressed in khaki from the feet up, kind of like Jungle Jim, but I do not believe he possessed much of a natural instinct for chimpanzees since he passed through the gateway, along the sidewalk, and climbed the steps to the front porch without ever noticing just what it was that had been run up the flagpole, but when Aunt Willa came out of the house and commenced to reel in the tether that fellow did some extremely serious noticing and in fact could not seem to stop himself from gawking at the porkpie hat and the blazer and the sneakers and the entire monkey in general. He did not appear willing to catch up Mr. Britches in his arms when Aunt Willa offered him the chance to and he did not appear willing to take Mr. Britches by his hairy hand when that opportunity presented itself. Instead he seemed to prefer simple gawking and he persisted in it as Aunt Willa hauled Mr. Britches up the front steps and then turned around and hauled him back down again along with his suitcase, or anyway that’s what the man from the zoo called it though it was really not anything but a little canvas valise.