Calloustown (6 page)

“Your name is Ray Charles and you want me to pose semi-nude for you?” she said on that first meeting. Didi quit framing a paint-by-numbers clown than someone from the Junior League wanted to hang in her foyer. “Get the fuck out of here.”

We married three months later before a justice of the peace. Didi agreed to move to a land where Witness Protection people might be moving soon. I made some promises. For one, should we have a child—and we wouldn't—I was never to make the kid eat newspaper after each meal. Didi's own father—I don't have a clue about psychology, but this seems relevant and causal—believed that the ingestion of paper products helped clean out one's GI tract, thus saving money and the environment, in regards to bathroom tissue.

“I'd like to take your father's photo,” was my only response when Didi divulged her childhood, there on date number one.

“If a skilled archaeologist dug up my childhood septic tank he could piece together American history from Watergate to the Iran-Contra affair,” Didi said.

“What about your mother?” I asked. What could I say? We ate Mexican food, and I wanted about quatro or ocho margaritas.

“A skilled archeologist might find her in the septic tank, too, for all I know,” Didi said.

At the end of the third day I had walked the perimeter of our house so far away, looking for odd springs, that I had to use a zoom lens to catch Didi stooped over, filling the hole in our yard. If this kept going on I'd have to set up a magnifying glass pointed toward my wife, and then zoom in on that. I walked in circles, unconcerned with work I needed to do. I thought, I can set up a magnifying glass, and then a surveyor's level, and finally my zoom lens.

And then I found water surging up in the middle of the Calloustown Natural Baptist Church's adjacent cemetery, among headstones that only read Munson or Harrell. If I had a cell phone I could've called Didi and said “Eureka!” like that, or, “Our hole is connected to the plot of little Ernestette Munson, born December 26/died December 31, 1870. So basically we've had a wormhole between her coffin and our backyard, so her soul can come visit on occasion, which might explain those cries we've thought to be feral cats coupled and stuck nighttime.”

Out loud, there on a slight bluff overlooking my own house, I probably said, “Uh-oh.” I looked around to make sure no one stood around in the church parking lot. I found a nice three-foot-long fallen limb and stuck it in the hole, then kicked some dirt, then scooted a small flat rock over that. Finally—and I would have nightmares about this for the rest of my life—I kicked over little baby Ernestette Munson's miniature headstone to cover what may or may not have been a portal of sorts to our backyard.

The coroner, later, would pinpoint Didi's death to right about the time I covered the unnatural spring. To this pronouncement I would say, “Okay,” and not explain where I stood, or what I did, at four o'clock that afternoon.

I have photographed every Munson and Harrell in Calloustown, whether they liked it or not. I've placed my camera on the counter of Worm's Bar and Grill and tapped the shutter release button with my elbow. I've done the same at the Tiers of Joy bakery and Southern Exotic Pet Store. After my “Interesting Woman in the Middle of a Failed Cotton Mill” project never developed, so to say, I thought it necessary to encapture the blank, dull visages of a relentless people committed to proving General Sherman pointless and myopic and downright cruel for choosing to leave Calloustown unsigned, unscathed, still bloomful.

There are the “natural” and “unsuspected” photographs, and there have also been the normal family Christmas portraits, the near-coming-out pictures of eighteen-year-old girls walking down a staircase, the “Fifty Year Anniversary” photographs intended for newspapers, engagement and wedding photos. I shot Biggest Watermelon! photos, and the odd favorite dog/cat/mynah bird portraits with said animal standing in front of a Rocky Mountain or Niagara Falls backdrop.

Good God I wish I had more photographs of my wife.

Why did I find it necessary to chide her when she bought expensive dresses from catalogs, had them delivered, put them on, then sent them back for a refund, only so she could say, “I've worn Marc Jacob, Valentino, and Sue Wong”?

Why didn't I say, “Fuck you,” and click my camera in her direction even though she made such demands against it? Why, over these years, did I not show up at Didi's job and snap some seemingly inconsequential and inconspicuous photographs of her, face close to a miter box, checking forty-five-degree angles?

“She had a massive heart attack,” a man told me at the hospital. I had requested an autopsy in order to make sure—call me selfish—she hadn't taken an overdose of pills, finally tired of our long silences.

“Women have heart disease and heart attacks more than people think,” someone else told me, a man who taught Biology 50 to students who needed to be able to identify arms from legs on their remedial tests at the community college. “Dead men on the golf course get all the headlines, but women have just as many heart attacks, if not more. They call it ‘the silent killer.' Wait. That might be wrong. The brown recluse might be the silent killer. Or coral snake. Now that I think about it, just about everything's a silent killer.”

This monologue took place at Didi's visitation inside Glymph Funeral Home. I didn't know what to say, shook the biology professor's hand, and tried to remember his name. I thought, are you making fun of me? I thought, I'm about to be your silent killer. I thought, if only I'd made the decision to cut off that water on the first day.

I could've walked back home and said, “Hey, pour some food dye down the hole and let me run back over to the graveyard to see if it comes out.” I could've said, “Food dye would get diluted beyond recognition. Let's put a marble down that hole and see if it comes out in the cemetery.” I could've said, “You remember that time we got in a fight, Didi, a day before we flew to New York for a vacation? I have a confession to make. When I went to the e-ticket kiosk, I requested that my seat be changed so we wouldn't have to sit next to each other all that time.” I could've said, “I wonder if we can send a piece of kite string down the hole, then knot both ends to empty lima bean cans and talk to one another, you know, like people did back before everything got so goddamned complicated.”

Luckily there were available plots at the Calloustown Natural Baptist Church's graveyard. Didi would've never agreed to such an eternal resting place. I bought the plot right next to hers, too, even though I had no love of Christians in general and Baptists in particular. Fuck it, I thought. Would I be able to see anything in the so-called afterlife? Does anything matter? If, by chance, things turned out differently than I believed, couldn't Didi and I take the mysterious tunnel back home nightly?

Oh Didi, Didi, Didi—how I wish you never roamed the earth out back. How I wish I'd've either shot you more, or never.

Muddling

A guy on the local news said most gas stations lowered their prices at nine in the morning and raised them at four, something about fucking over people who'd already driven to work and then again for drivers who didn't leave their cubicles until dusk. He didn't exactly use those words, but any rational cynic knew what he meant. I don't think the guy was an economist or soothsayer, but he evidently worked honestly at something in between or no one would've interviewed him on Channel 4. I didn't catch his name or occupation, but he wore a blue shirt and striped tie. He combed his hair. The guy seemed to know more about oil corporations than the rest of my friends, relatives, or instrument-needy prospective customers.

So on Friday morning I drove from where I live on the outskirts of Calloustown and began circling a block that held a Citgo, a Sunoco, an Exxon, and a locally owned Rajer Dodger's that had two self-serve pumps out front. I circled and circled, starting about 8:30. Each establishment sold regular unleaded for $3.65 a gallon, plus that 9/10ths—twenty cents less than the national average, but like my friends, relatives, and instrument-needy prospective customers always say, “So what? It's still fucking Calloustown.” Though, again, not in those exact words.

Three-sixty-five, three-sixty-five, three-sixty-five, three-sixty-five. I rounded the block—this is the Columbia Road, over onto Old Calloustown Road, onto the Charleston Road, onto Old Old Calloustown Road. What I'm saying is, I circled the heart of town where supply and demand mattered. In between I noticed six or eight church signs, the funeral home, Southern Exotic Pets, Worm's Bar, and so on. Worm had a new piece of plywood leaned next to his door that advertised
TOPLESS,
which meant he'd be in there behind the bar not wearing a shirt. He'd done it before, during lean times, like the last time gasoline prices reached $3.65 and people rarely left their houses. One of the churches had a magnetic letter sign out front that read
SIN
COOKS
FRY
LATER,
which took me about sixteen right-hand turns to figure out, what with “cooks” being both a verb and noun, and wondering if someone forgot a comma. At least the preacher or signage person wasn't asking me to go to the library forty miles away, find a Bible, and look up what's spelled out in a particular chapter and verse.

At nine o'clock, just as I was about to run out of gas, sure enough, assistant managers started coming out of the four stations and/or convenience stores. They took their poles and exchanged a 5 for a 3, bringing the price per gallon down to $3.63 plus that 9/10ths. Maybe I said aloud, “They need to hire that dude on a permanent basis on the TV, the guy who figured out this raise-and-lower-prices ruse. Fuck the weatherman, who's never close to being right.”

I circled around two more times, then pulled into Rajer Dodger's only because I liked to hear the Indian guy in there yell things to his wife in whatever dialect they employed. It didn't matter to me much that they offered gas that came from one of the major oil companies, or that they charged an extra dime per gallon if you used a credit card, just like every other station on the block.

I pulled up to the pump. I got out and unscrewed the cap. I read
PLEASE
MUST
PAY
FIRST
PLEASE
on a handwritten sign taped to the pump's torso, and although I wanted to say, “Oh fuck me give me a break, what kind of gas station doesn't have one of those fancy credit/debit acceptors plus a place to slide in cash a la any of the video poker machines up at Harrah's Casino up in Cherokee?” I locked the door to my pickup and started inside.

This is when I noticed a white man, of the normal indeterminate age of these parts—which means between fifty and eighty—sitting in front of a fifty-five-gallon plastic barrel, his legs splayed out with ten or twelve pints of blackberries in between. He said, “You need you some berries, Chief. Keep away the cancer. Eat them on ice cream or whole under milk. Or by they selves. Keep away the cancer. You don't want the cancer for you and yours, right?”

Remember that I said “dusk” earlier—about people leaving work—which means I'm talking winter. Blackberries emerge in July. No one has local fresh blackberries in November. They have spinach—which fights cancer, too, according to spinach farmers—but not blackberries. Hell, I've been around long enough to hear how everything fights cancer—radishes, peaches, cord wood, getting your driveway sealed.

I said, “You up early selling,” because I couldn't think of anything else.

“I ain't no worse than you,” the blackberry man said. He scrambled up without corrupting one of the cardboard containers. “You ain't better than me, Chief.”

I would like to say that the price of fuel caused people in my town to act all bowed-up and cocksure, but even if Rajer inside decided to sell his gasoline at pre-1979 prices and hand out wedges of free garlic naan, everyone around would still pick fights and scowl.

I said, “Just came in to fill up my tank, man. That's it. If I come across anyone today looking for vine-ripened berries, I'll send them your way.”

I walked into the store trying to figure out what $3.63 times twenty gallons would end up, because I didn't want to tell Rajer I wanted seventy-five bucks' worth and then have to go back in and get change if I filled the tank prematurely. Rajer yelled out, “Hello, Mr. Finley. How are you today, fine sir?”

I had told him not to call me Mr. Finley. Hell, he'd started off greeting me as Finley sahib, so I guess we'd made some progress over the last few years I'd known him. He'd gone from Finley sahib to Mr. Kay, to Mr. Finley Kay, to Mr. Finley. In a decade he might plain say, “Hey, Finley, what up, bro?” like any other American.

I said, “Hey, Raj, I need to fill up. Or at least I need to get about seventy dollars.”

“Do not blame me for the price of gas! I make two cents only for every gallon. Two cents! Everyone think that we are setting the high prices, but it is the oil companies. And the Arabs. Mr. Finley, please—as you go about your daily duties—tell people that I am not from Arabia.”

I can't say for sure if Raj Patel suffered from one of the more common forms of short-term memory loss—Korsakoff syndrome, for example—but he found it necessary to explain the nuances of oil company/distributor/individual operator every time I walked in, fuel-needy or not. If I wasn't busy and didn't have an order to complete back home, I'd hang out with good Raj, look over his various Ganesh pictures and figurines, listen to his weird music, ask about the incense he burned. In time he'd explain what pathetic profits he received for beer, Little Debbie oatmeal pies, charcoal lighter fluid, white bread, daily newspapers, cigarettes, pickle relish, and hot sauce. He must've been some kind of champion oratory/ forensics/debate contestant back in his Mumbai, Delhi, or Bangalore school days.