PLACES
Eight Place Stories
by Ralph Bowden
Copyright 2013 Ralph Bowden
I
Table of Contents
The Bohannon Cemetery
Pete’s Place
The Keller Range Plant
McCutcheon Meadows
Cinderella Tank
St. Cecelia’s Beach
Nelson Furniture Manufacturing Company
The Corinth
Author Notes
The Bohannon Cemetery
"Here comes somebody," old Emmett Bohannon ("bornd Dec. 29 1839, Gone frm this wrld July 8, 1902") muttered. As patriarch of the place, it was his duty to keep watch.
"I knew as soon as them cows was gone, somebody would happen along," Versey ("Versey Smith Bohannon, Lvng wife of Emmet, Frm the Ld. 1840, To the Ld. 1899.") said.
The hiker, equipped with staff and small backpack, ambled slowly up across the gently sloping pasture to the old Bohannon cemetery. He stopped and looked at the gate for a minute. The Grantham boy, nephew of Emmett's great grandson, when he mowed the field back in May, had wired the gate shut to keep new cattle out. Not that cows came in much anymore anyway. Inside the fence, the place had grown up thick with sumac saplings and periwinkle, which cows didn’t like. Years ago, they used to wander in and leave cowpies everywhere, even on the sunken places.
Wired shut or not, the ancient gate, weathered to a collection of rough sticks, was no real deterrent to a determined inscription-rubber like the visitor that had come along three or four years ago. But lush poison ivy cascading off the huge cedar tree that served as a gatepost made entrance treacherous.
"He's not comin’ in," Versey said. "I can tell. He's just up here for the view."
Aunt Gertie ("Miss Gertrudy Smith, July 4th, 1837, July 8th 1890") came out now too. She had lain quiet for weeks – actually since the mowing, the last excitement. Being still wasn't like her. When alive, she always had to be going on at somebody, too busy correcting, instructing, nagging, bossing, ever to listen to them, or to notice the effect of her words – or to catch a husband. The only time she spoke up these days was when somebody new, from outside, arrived. "A visitor, then?" she croaked – she had worn her voice out in middle age, and couldn't expect it to heal now, even with prolonged rest.
"Nobody we know," Emmett said.
It was as Versey said. The visitor looked in at the three stones for a few minutes. Then he started to turn toward the western view, but stopped halfway.
"Look there," Gertie said. "He doesn't care about us. He's come up for that Rogers man," she snorted.
"Hush, Gert," Versey whispered. "Just because he doesn't speak with us doesn't mean he's away."
The visitor walked a few paces to the side along the rusty barbed wire fence, mostly exposed now because the Grantham boy had used Roundup on the Virginia creeper and blackberries – for no good reason except that his mother insisted a burdened fence showed a lack of care and respect. Where the old fence turned down the side of the Bohannon plot, a new, galvanized, chain link fence joined it to enclose another plot, almost as big, though only one stone resided: "Hershel Rogers: Husband, Father, Businessman. An Honorable Life Without Enemies, June 12, 1933 – April 19, 2004." The weeds around it were thigh high, obscuring the heaps of faded plastic flowers covering the massive stone base. Hershel's stone stood high and proud – or arrogant, depending on your point of view – above the weeds.
"Well, if Hershel Rogers is too good to speak to us, I don't care what he hears," Gertie went on, "and I'll speak my mind."
"We know you always do, Gert," Emmett grumbled, "but there's no point rilin' up the neighbors, where-ere you're at."
The hiker peered in at the stone, new, sharp, and shiny, except for bird poop. A setting sun design on the west side faced the real thing. He turned and looked to the west to enjoy the view for a few minutes. It was magnificent, especially now with the sun sinking and redding through a few sky wisps, on for miles over rolling hills, still mostly green but with a first touch of autumn.
Then he shuffled along the chain link around to the back of the Rogers plot.
"All right, what do you think of that, now?" Gertie fussed. "Having your picture cut on your stone by some new-fangled contraption," she said. "If that's not sinful pride . . . ."
"Now Gert, we know how you feel about it," Versey chided. "Of course, I'm inclined to agree for the most part, 'specially since he had such an unpleasant look about him."
"Y'all hush, now," Emmett said. "A man can't help how he looks."
The visitor smirked briefly at Hershel's high-tech lithograph, with its string tie and pretentious oversized hat, and the permanent, beetle-browed scowl. Then he turned around and looked east, to see what Hershel saw. A mound or knob rose above the pasture, scrubby rock land, eroded, stripped of its timber decades back and now supporting only cedars, stunted oaks and boulder outcrops, certainly no view to spend eternity contemplating.
"That's right!" Gertie crowed. "See? That's what his seed thought of him. Turned him around, they did. Served him right that he should look at what he left her."
"Now that's gossip, Gert," her sister said. "You can't trust what boys like that say. Gravediggers is liable to talk outlandish stuff when they work. Remember what they said about you?"
"That Jakes fellow always was spiteful to me! Of course he'd say things like that after I tried to set him right with his maker that time when he . . . . But them boys that put Hershel down, why, they knew about him! I'm sure they did."
"I don't know that," Emmett answered. "Didn't make sense to me. Give that woman a worthless knob in the middle of his property? Naw. Ain't no use to her or nobody, surrounded like that."
The visitor turned again to glance over at the Bohannon plot, as if pondering the relation between the new stone – expensive, substantial, and well-protected but obviously neglected – and the three fallen-over stones in the adjoining plot, covered with moss, the edges softened and the inscriptions blurred by a century of seasons.
"I think he's a Rogers," Gertie pronounced. "Something about the eyes."
"No, surely not. He didn't bring no flowers," Versey observed.
"Who brings flowers anyway, I ask you?" Gertie said. "When does anybody bring us flowers?"
"Our people are gone. Like us, but somewhere else," Versey said. "But Hershel Rogers has only been down, what, year and a half now? You heard it: they said his children are still here and own all this land – except the knob, of course."
"But have they ever been here to care for his place? She brought all them fake flowers right after. Carried on, made quite a show. But she hasn't been back since, you know. Once they read the will, she probably got a sight less weepy."
"Now Gert, we got no business talkin' about the dead that way. Disrespectful, it is." Emmett said.
The hiker walked on a few steps to where the Rogers chainlink joined the Bohannon barbed, stopped a minute, looked around, leaned his staff against the fence, unzipped and watered the fencepost.
"Well!" Gertie huffed. "Talk about disrespectful! He must be a Rogers. None of our kin would act like that. At least I surely hope times ain't come to such a pass."
"Well, I don't know," Versey mused, "men being what they are. But what I wonder about is why she should have been so affected if what they said was true. You know, about her doing him in like that for what she'd get in the will."
"Those fellas was talkin' through their hats," Emmett grumbled. "No woman's going to get her man to act up over her in bed just so's he'll have a heart attack and die. Now that just don't make sense either."
"Em! What a thing to say!" Versey complained. "And in front of Gert, too!"
The hiker was now making his way back down across the pasture.
"Well look at that now," Emmett said. "Goin' back the way he came. I should have thought he meant to climb the knob and just stopped by here to relieve hisself. Maybe he did come up to see Hershel or us."
Gertie sniffed a few times and started to fade, now that the excitement was retreating.
Emmett continued: "What I really can't figure is why Hershel Rogers should want to rest up here, next to us. Just because he bought the place ten years back from Vergie doesn't make it his home. You'd think he'd want to be downtown somewhere – whatever's there now – near where his children live, in his own churchyard."
Gertie came back at that, in tighter focus again. "'Churchyard?' You think that man had a church? I doubt very much that Hershel Rogers ever set foot into the Lord's presence. Didn't they say he was living in sin with her?"
"They just said he and her weren't married, Gert," Versey answered, "which is probably why she took on so. Married folk don't make such a fuss. Emmett didn't come up here but once in the three years before he joined me."
"Now Verse, I was sick and could hardly get out. You know that." Emmett went on, "But it does seem strange that he should fence off his plot right here, next to us. We're not his kin. He's got no real ties to the land here. They said he was from Texas."
"Well, it's probably the life he led," Gert said. "I expect he hadn't no ties to anybody anywhere. What'd they say he was? 'Dealer?' 'Horse trader?' That kind of folk are lucky to find themselves a plot anywhere. Of course, we couldn't complain."
"And can't, really," Versey said. "He's not bothered us. I think we should leave him rest and not gossip. He may have been an honorable and upstanding man for all we know."
"That's right," Emmett agreed. "I remember Brother Crawford, when he was puttin' me down, said something about the evil that men do in their lives shouldn't . . . something. I never did quite understand that. I wonder what he was going on about? Was he talking about the evil that I did?"
"Of course he was!" Gert said. "I heard it too. I think he meant that trade you did with his cousin. You know, the worthless bull that you said . . . ."
"All right, he was a little past his prime. But that's not 'evil' . . . . Ho, what's this now?"
The hiker was trudging back up through the pasture, this time without backpack or staff. He held, instead, a huge array of early fall pasture blooms, mostly frostweed, ironweed, and goldenrod, a blaze of white, purple and yellow, tastefully blended.
"Well I declare!" Gertie exclaimed. "Who do you suppose he's heading for?"
"Well Gert, maybe he's your man, finally, after all these . . . ." Emmett started to suggest.
"Hush, Em! That's mean," Versey said. "We'll just have to wait and see. But I, for one, expect and hope he's going for Hershel Rogers. Nobody knows or remembers us anymore, and there's no reason they should. It'd be nice to know that we have a neighbor somebody cared about."
"I told you I thought he was a Rogers," Gertie said. "I certainly hope he don't bring those things in here. I can feel the sneezes coming on already."
They waited as the hiker drew closer. At first, it looked as if he was heading for the Bohannon gate.
"He's coming here, isn't he?" Versey asked. "Wouldn't that be nice! To be remembered, after all these years."
"He's just taking the easy path, the old road that leads up here," Gertie said.
She was right. He changed course to the side and went around to Hershel's gate.
"I knew it," Gertie said. "Well, that's a relief. I wouldn't want those things in here anyway. If he had really cared, he would have brought decent flowers, not just those weeds."
The Hiker fiddled with the gate, and then pushed it open. He set down his bouquet, gathered up the plastic remnants, and made a pile of them in one corner of the plot. Then he carefully divided out a sheaf of his blossoms and laid them against the base of Hershel's stone. Gathering up the remaining stalks, he stepped to the barbed wire separating the two plots, pushed it down with his free hand, and swung over.
"Why, he's coming in here too!" Versey exclaimed. "Isn't that nice!"
The visitor divided the bouquet equally, laying them in the old hollows. Nobody said anything. When he was done, he stepped back to look, then bowed his head for a few minutes before leaving the way he had come.
When he was gone, Versey spoke first: "Well, now, what do you think of that?! I declare, maybe there are still decent folks left. It almost makes me want to come back."
"Well, . . . really . . . ." Gertie seemed to be at a loss, for once. Her scratchy old voice sounded a little moister than usual.
"What do you suppose that was all about?" Emmett asked. "Was he trying to say dead folks are all the same, finally, in the end? I guess that's so."
Pete’s Place
December 10, 1991, Saturday night, and Pete's Place was full, judging from the parking lot.
"There's a phone." Robbie pointed out the booth at the corner of the lot as he drove in. “Drunks keep pissing in it. Nobody uses it unless they're real desperate. Actually, I'm not even sure it works. Seems to me somebody came in last week and fussed at LaVerne about it being out. They got a phone inside behind the bar, but she doesn't let anybody use it. It's usually too loud in there to hear anything anyway."
"So you're saying I might not be able to call for help if you get so blotto as to be unable to operate your truck and deliver us back to Buford?” Farool said.
"Well, actually I was thinking you might want out in 10 or 15 minutes and need a ride back before I had finished my first beer. This place isn’t like San Francisco where poets sit around and do whatever poets do.”
"There you go, holding my background against me. Can I help my refined, sensitive, creative nature? Who's LaVerne? Lady of the bar, I presume?"
"Yeah. Sure is bitchy sometimes. But I suppose working at a place like this night after night would do that to you."
"Why that's very charitable of you."
Robbie parked his truck. He was having real misgivings about this. He was a regular at Pete’s. Had been for eight or ten years. Anand Farool, he called himself, a name his guru had given him, had moved next door last summer, direct from California, for a ‘poet in residence’ job with the Harkin County school system. Robbie’s kid, Seth, had initially befriended him. While Robbie himself had tried to remain aloof to protect his own good ole boy image, Farool had helped Robbie get a maintenance job with the school system. Robbie did owe him, so when Farool came over and reported boredom a little while ago, Robbie had suggested, as a joke, an evening at Pete’s. To his surprise, Farool accepted the invitation and had ridden along.
The next surprise was to see the whole far side of Pete’s Place solid black. Pete’s had always been white. Oh, an occasional black guy might come in after work with a construction or road crew, and that was all right. But a whole group like this was new. It had never happened in Robbie’s time.
The place was quieter than usual – the ominous quiet of tension, which you could feel.
George, on his accustomed stool at the bar, looked around when the door opened and greeted Robbie.
"Hey hoss, you're late." He lowered his voice. "Missed all the excitement. Ole Pete himself got up there a little while ago and made a speech 'bout how he wanted to make sure everybody felt welcome here, and how he had heard some mean things about his new policy of intergratiatin’ the establishment, but he expected us all to be nice to them other folks. Why it just about made me wanta cry it was so sweet and brotherly. Then he says he had tried to get this great rock group tonight – another buncha coons,” George whispered – “but they had cancelled out at the last minute, and he was real sorry, and he would try to get them back at a later date. Who's this?" George nodded to Farool.
"Oh, this is . . ."
Farool took over. "Tom Kennedy, Robbie's neighbor. Glad to know you." Farool shook George's hand, took the one empty stool at the bar beside him and started some easy c
hatter about how Robbie had said this was the best place to waste time on a Saturday night, and asking about what sort of fellow Pete was and if the house beer was worth drinking. Much to Robbie's relief, he seemed to fit right in. By the time Robbie had found a spot at the other end of the bar, Farool had ordered himself a beer and apparently engaged LaVerne with his fluid word gushing.
Robbie ordered a beer, and was then distracted by an acquaintance from his days as a house painter. After they had exchanged views on the decline of Pete's, and the probability of real trouble this evening with the disappointed black clientele, Robbie glanced back over toward Farool, and found LaVerne still standing in front of him, hands spread apart on the bar, listening intently, as was George. Farool was going on about something that Robbie couldn't make out. Whatever it was clearly held their attention, so much so that LaVerne was neglecting her customers at Robbie's end of the bar. Finally, their entreaties broke through, more or less. She went through the automatic responses, reaching for the glasses and drawing the draft, but her interest remained centered on Farool's continuing line, which seemed to fascinate her.
Finally, Farool must have realized that it was bad form to monopolize her this way, and got up and casually walked over to a booth where two women, in their fifties and rather hardened-looking, sat glumly smoking. Oh no, surely he wouldn't try to pick them up. Robbie didn't want to watch too overtly, but was certainly curious, and stole glances in that direction between plays of the basketball game on the tube. Within a very few minutes, Farool had slid into the booth with them, and they were all engaged in animated conversation. The women were actually smiling. It looked strange on them, as if their faces seldom had the opportunity to smile and they had almost forgotten how.
"That's your neighbor?" LaVerne asked Robbie on the way by with a tray of mugs. On the way back, she stopped an instant. "He says Pete is a 'pioneer in the realm of the human spirit,' and this place will go down in history as a new kind of 'temple to human oneness.' What do you think of that?" LaVerne looked a little smug.
"Well, that's only if there isn't a riot and we don't all kill each other first."
"Humf. Well, don't you start it." She glanced across the room. "Check out your neighbor now." LaVerne went on about her business.
Robbie looked around to see Farool over on the black side of the room standing at one of the booths with four large black men in it. They were beaming, showing off missing or gold teeth, as Farool said something funny and slapped his thigh. The men roared with laughter and approval. One of them shook Farool's hand and got up to offer him his seat, which Farool took.
Robbie rolled his eyes back to the tube. Farool just had no class or taste at all, it seemed. He would bullshit anybody just for the effect. Oh well, maybe that's what the world needed.
A few minutes later, Robbie noticed that somebody had fed the jukebox and called up some weird thing – was it Reggae? When he turned around to see what was going on, there was Farool with some black woman, twice his bulk, in front of the little stage in the corner, gyrating and wiggling to the music.
The middle of the room had only a few tables in it, which, if they were pushed to one side, would have made plenty of room for dancing if anyone was interested. Few people ever had been. Occasionally, a guy trying to pick up a girl might put something slow on the jukebox and shuffle around a little. Robbie himself had done that a few times. But now it looked as if Farool had started something. He wheeled by the table where he had been sitting with the black men and pulled up one of them and passed the woman to him while he grabbed another black woman from the next booth. She was really overweight and seemed reluctant to shake around publicly, but Farool gave her a hug and said something to her to make her laugh and soon the four of them were doing a kind of square-dance to the beat.
The two rednecks at the closest table looked disgusted with these goings on. There was no way they could stay cool and aloof with the bodies jumping around so close, so they finally got up to leave. Farool by that time had recruited the tough-looking white women he had sat with to what had become a kind of stomping snakeline. Robbie could hardly believe his eyes. Farool said something to the guys who were leaving. While you could tell they were trying hard to maintain their dignity, one of them lost it for an instant and cracked a smile, and then Farool passed one of the white women to the other and pretty soon they had joined in, and their table had been pushed out of the way to make room. What was he trying to do? This was clearly playing with fire. Somebody surely would refuse to be charmed by Farool and then all hell would break loose.
LaVerne came running by, looking concerned, and charged into the back room where Pete sometimes hung out with a couple of cronies. She emerged with him a few minutes later. Pete was probably sixty, with a huge belly that dwarfed his spindly legs and pin head. Robbie always thought he looked ridiculously beetle-like. His bushy gray eyebrows grew straight across and so low over his eyes that he had to tilt his head back to see out. He and LaVerne surveyed the growing crowd stomping on what had become a dance floor. Pete at first looked puzzled and confused. Robbie was sure he would put a stop to this. But then a broad grin broke out on Pete's face. He waddled out on the floor himself and joined in! Robbie shook his head in amazement. The jukebox tune finally ended a few seconds later, but immediately an integrated crowd gathered around to feed in more quarters, and the writhing and shaking and stomping was soon in full swing again. In a few minutes, Pete, red-faced and sweating, collapsed on a stool two away from Robbie, and bellowed at LaVerne to provide a free beer to every dancer. Had everybody gone completely nuts? Pete rarely showed up at all, and had a reputation for being a cheapskate who never gave anything away.
Robbie himself stayed at the bar. At least he wouldn't make a complete fool of himself jumping around like some maniac with all kinds of blacks and ugly women. He noted, with some satisfaction, that a few people had left, probably offended by the undignified scene and the new direction launched at Pete's. But in general, the crowd out on the floor stayed large and enthusiastic for over an hour, as they ran through the jukebox's limited repertoire. It all seemed rather high-schoolish to Robbie, and brought back uncomfortable memories of being left out in those years, particularly after he had dropped out of school.
Finally the dancing eased up, as people drank more and just plain tired out. Farool himself had left the floor and was making the rounds, chatting and drinking beer with people at various booths, black and white. Finally, he came back to the bar, introducing himself and spouting off his typical flood of words to everybody. Whether or not anybody had any idea what he was talking about probably made little difference. His upbeat and enthusiastic manner served well enough. And he was a good listener, too. If somebody else said something, he would take the thought up and carry it on and extend it in wild and entertaining ways. Clearly, this was a party animal, working in his native element.
"There you are neighbor. Hey, this is a great crowd." Farool slid onto the empty stool next to Robbie and stretched his arms in a grandiose gesture towards overworked LaVerne at the draft keg. "Oh most virtuous of women and light of my very soul, I beg of you, my thirst overcometh me. Prithee, LaVerne, sweet lass, mermaid of la mer beer, which gushes forth never-ending from yonder keg, pour out your salving balm on this parched tongue . . . "
LaVerne slid him a mug. "Pete says you're on the house for the rest of the night," she told him. She wrinkled her nose and winked as she rushed by with a tray.
Farool looked suddenly sobered by this news. "Really! Your man Pete is a spontaneously gen’rous gentleman," he remarked to Robbie.
"Never would of thought it before tonight. He's probably glad you loosened up the tension ‘til folks had enough beer inside to forget all about it."
"Was that what I was doing?" Farool appeared surprised.
"Looked like it to me."
Then somebody came over and invited Farool to their table, and he was gone again.