Lucky Strikes (19 page)

“Hiram,” I said, “we're a filling station, not a flower shop.”

“We're a business for gentlemen
and
ladies. Unless we start making this place more becoming, every woman with an ounce of delicacy is going to pass us right by. And that's another thing. We need a separate ladies' room.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Listen now, no lady worth her silk stockings will go anywhere near that little outhouse with the door half hanging off. We need a nice little
retreat
. Set back from the store.”

I pointed out that nine out of every ten drivers was a feller.

“And who do you think is sitting alongside that fella? Some woman, that's who, leading him by the nose and telling him where to get off. If
she
doesn't feel at home,
he
won't stop.”

Well, it took Hiram a weekend to lay the water and sewage lines, another three weekends to build. But he got his restroom. Painted all in white, with a trellis in front and half-moon carvings on every side. He put in a liquid-soap dispenser, and Janey made a sachet of dried flowers, and Earle kept it scrubbed, and it didn't take too long for the ladies to find it. They was posh, too, some of them, gloves and pince-nez and pearls down to the waist. They ducked in there with tiny smiles and come out with bigger ones.

Word must've got out 'cause before long there was two dozen ladies stopping in each weekday, more on weekends. I reckon, if you been driving over the Blue Ridge for that many hours, that white trellis of Hiram's must've looked like a pillar of cloud.

Well, he was mighty pleased with himself, but he wasn't the type to quit when he was ahead. Sometime in July, he got it in his mind in the worst way that we needed uniforms. Now, me, I'd never worn nothing but a denim shirt and black overalls and didn't see no point in changing. But night after night, Hiram kept at it.

“Amelia,” he said, “what's the first thing you see at one of Harley Blevins's stations?”

“Hell opening up.”

“Uniforms, that's what you see. The sign of trained, professional mechanics. And that's the moment you relax because you know, whatever happens, you're in good hands.”

“Well, you're wrong.”

“Doesn't matter. In that
moment
, you believe. That's all the uniform is for, creating the impression of trustworthiness.”

Night after night, he went at it, and hard as I dug in, he came back that much harder. Till, finally, all I wanted to do was shut him up.

“Jesus,” I said. “I will wear it for
one day
. And if you make me look like Dudley, I will kill you.”

Wouldn't you know those uniforms came the very next week by parcel post? Four jumpsuits, the color of goldenrod. I give the fabric a good hard pinch.

“Cotton?”

“Reeves Army Twill,” said Hiram. “Sturdy, but it breathes.”

“I don't know about this.…”

“And you
won't
know until you try it.”

Well, I'm a woman of my word, nobody can tell me otherwise, but I'm telling you I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror when I was putting that thing on. Even harder to look my truckers in the eye. But as the day wore on, I found I wasn't so hot as usual, and I didn't have to roll up my sleeves, 'cause the uniform stayed nicely bunched round my wrists and never snagged on nothing.

But here's the best part. I clear forgot I was wearing it. Till Hiram come wandering over at the end of the day with a sly old grin.

“Let me think on it,” I told him.

All through supper, he kept trying to catch my eye. It was only when we was getting ready for bed that I broke down and said, “Okay, this ain't the worst idea you ever had. But if you ever sew my name over the shirt pocket, I will set the whole thing on fire.”

Funny thing about Hiram. Any little failure he could sweep right out of his head, but success took root like a dandelion, wanted more of itself. He took to reading. Rooted through Earle's Great Heap o' Treasure for back copies of
Time
and
Fortune
,
Advertising Age
. Ordered books through the mail like
Automobile Service Shop Management
and
Grouches Lose Business!

One morning, he dragged us out of bed an hour early. “Today, we're going to work on our greetings.”

“For the love of—”

“Now, according to that sign up there, we all work in an oasis. So our job is to make it feel like one. Earle, when a car pulls in, what's the first thing you do?”

“Uh … I ask if they want me to fill 'em up.”

“No. First, you tip your hat. And then you say?”

“Uh …
hey
.”

“Hay is for horses. You say
morning
if it's morning.
Afternoon
if it's afternoon. Then you say,
How can we help you?
”

“
How can we … help you?
”

“The
we
part, that's important. They've got to know you're part of a whole family of folks wishing to serve.”

Earle's mouth folded down. “Melia, too?”

“We'll work on her later. Just remember
you
are the first face customers see when they pull in here. The success of our business rests in
your
hands, do you follow me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So I don't want you strolling out to customers like you just woke up from a nap. I want you
running
, you hear? Go on. Show me how you run.”

Well, Earle got tolerable good at running. So good, in fact, that more than one driver took fright at the sight of him. There was a trucker named Wendell who figured Earle for a robber and whipped out his shotgun. Mostly, though, folks was charmed. And with him doing such a good job at the pumps, I could spend most of my day in the service bay—refacing valves, aligning wheels, charging batteries. Truth be told, it was the way I liked to work—nobody I had to smile at or bend an ear to—and if I ever get a notion I was needed elsewhere, Hiram set me straight.

“The less I see of you,” he once said, “the happier I get.”

I told him he weren't the first to say that.

“Melia, pumping gas gets us barely three cents on the dollar. Accessory sales and repairs are where the profits are. Now, sales I can handle, but the repair is all on you. Think about it this way. Earle gives them the gas,
you
give them peace of mind.”

Nobody'd ever put it quite like that before. It was a queer sort of comfort. More than once during those dog days of thirty-four, with the hot wet air pushing down on me like a fist, oil and grease dripping down my neck, carbon crawling through every crevice of skin, I'd close my eyes and say just the three words.
Peace of mind.

Sometimes, when I had a free moment, I'd stand in the garage doorway and see Earle jogging over to greet a car … Janey coming right after with Dixie cups and a pitcher of lemonade … Hiram calling from the doorway, “Morning, folks! Come on inside where it's cool.” And I'd think,
This is the place Mama would've made. Only she couldn't see it yet.

'Cause that's the whole trick. Imagine, say, you're flying in an airplane. (I have to imagine 'cause I ain't never done it.) You start out on the ground, where you always been, the world nagging at you like it always does. But then you lift off, and before you know it, that old world drops away like it was never there, and this new world comes rising up at you. All these shapes and patterns and colors that was there the whole time, only you never knew it.

Well, that's what happens when you get a fresh pair of eyes on your life. You see things. Possibilities. Even if the eyes in question belong to a crazy old coot and one of 'em is on the lazy side.

 

Chapter

EIGHTEEN

Well, all the while this was going on, Hiram was getting new takers for his elocution lessons. You wouldn't have thunk it, but Warren County was crawling with folks who wanted to talk better. Druggists. Funeral directors. Beer distributors. Schoolteachers. The daughter of a Nineveh horse farmer. The father of a Riverton Lime plant manager. Grown men and women shelling out a buck an hour in the middle of a depression to have Hiram chip away at their vowels.

The only trouble was, with all the work around the station, Hiram had to squeeze his lessons into Sunday afternoons. So right round the time that Walnut Ridge's Christians were dragging themselves back from church, Hiram was climbing into the truck and making his rounds. There was times he was lucky to get back before nightfall.

Well, it was on one of those Sundays in early August that Ida came.

The heat was so thick, even the locusts had taken a breather, and every horse was snoozing in the shade of an old elm tree. Even the flies had gone quiet, so the sound, coming in from the east, lodged straight in my ear. A soft sweep, like leaves blowing up from a well. It built and built, without getting much louder, so there weren't nothing for it but to turn my head.

And there was Ida Folsom, shuffling down the side of the road.

Almost not to be recognized from the lady who'd sat next to us at the Park Theatre.
This
Ida was wearing a dress that looked more like a feed sack. Her legs was bare, her head was bare. Not a speck of jewelry, and that river of hair hanging down every side of her, like a ratty old comforter.

She must've known where she was going 'cause once she got abreast of the gas tanks, she veered straight for the house. Step by step, dragging the gravel as she went.

“It's Amelia, isn't it?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“How do you do? I was…” Her head did a slow turn. “I was wondering if Mr. Watts is at home.”

“No, ma'am, he is not.”

The news didn't seem to hit her one way or another.

“I can tell him you stopped in,” I said.

“Would you?”

She smiled, very sweetly, but didn't move.

“Uh, maybe you'd care to wait inside,” I said.

“I'm fine. Thank you.”

I looked at her a little harder now. “Miss Ida?”

“Yes?”

“I believe you're bleeding.”

It was fresh blood, too. Dribbling out from under her soles, caking round her toes and heels. She'd gone and walked Lord knows how many miles without so much as a scrap of leather between her and the road.

“Oh,” she said.

It took me no more than a minute or two to find some strips of gauze and an old bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

“Thank you,” she said.

And then, before I knew it, she was setting. Right there in the gravel. Mopping the blood off her feet and humming something low and tuneless.

“Is there anything else I can get you, Miss Ida?”

“No, thank you.”

I got Janey to make her some lemonade, and Earle, he fetched an old umbrella of Mama's to keep the sun off. Ida thanked them both, but nothing on Earth could dispose her to come inside. It was like she had just enough in her to get this far and no farther.

A little past eight, our truck come rolling down the road. What must Hiram have thought, I sometimes wonder, when his headlights carved out that queer figure setting in the gravel in a sack dress? He shut off the engine and jumped out of the driver's seat.

“Ida?”

“Why, hello,” she said, rising to her feet.

As he wrapped his arms round her, she made a soft kittenish sound and rested her head on his shoulder. He whispered something in her ear and then led her to the truck, and he'd just about got her into the passenger seat when I heard her say, “How charming they are, Hiram.”

He peered at us through the beams of the headlights, then bundled himself behind the wheel and drove away.

He didn't get back till six o'clock the next morning, but come seven, he was washed and dressed and in his customary place. And that night, he made chop suey again—the “real kind,” he said. (One of his students had paid him in pork shoulder instead of cash.) To look at him, you'd never of figured anything was off. Yet, when I think back on that night, I wonder if that wasn't the point he began to draw away.

It ain't nothing I can prove. Just a feeling I had that some
space
had opened up behind his eyes. Where we couldn't go in.

“Everything okey?” I asked.

“Why wouldn't it be?” he said. “Now listen up, pagans, I'm taking a break from elocution next Sunday 'cause I've got a new project in mind. And I'll need all the help I can get.”

It rained most of that day, but come three o'clock, we brought out Mama's tool bucket and set down a tarp and got to work. We was still at it two hours later when Chester Gallagher came driving up.

“Melia,” he said. “A minute, if you'd be so kind.”

I poured a couple glasses of well water, and the two of us set just out of the sun in the Adirondack chairs in front of the store.

“You going to tell me what you're building out there?” Chester asked.

“Well, it's a—it's a porte cochere.”

“I'm not even sure what that is.”

“Geez, Chester, it's one of them—
porchy
things. I mean, you put it over a stretch of sidewalk or road, and it damn well covers it.”

“But why?”

“
Why?
Well, say it's raining, and some folks drive on up. They can pull up under that there porte cochere and stay dry all the way to the store and back. It takes a load off folks' minds is what it does.”

“Does it now?”

“Why, sure.”

Chester sipped his water slow, like it was new whiskey.

“Two days ago, I had a most pleasant conversation with Miss Wand of juvenile court.”

“Can't rightly see how that would've been pleasant.”