*
Wild Bill flung the door to Smith’s Farm Supply open with his free hand and pounded into the main meeting area. Willy had designed the front of the store to include two long benches and had the spot pretty well filled most every morning with idle chatters sucking on five cent coffee and telling big lies. Bill was what you might call an irregular. He only swung through once in a while when he was down in this part of the county. He was a walking man and a rambler.
“Put on a fresh pot of coffee, Willy,” Bill hollered as he set his sword beside the bench and took his seat next to Charlie Ford. “I’m here to do a little politicking.”
Mary-Alice slipped in behind Bill with Tommy holding her hand. He would run straight up to the front door of the store but would never go inside it without an escort. There was a fat man named Rodney who hung about often enough inside who had a tendency to knuckle-rub his head, which severely irritated Tommy, and he fully intended to box the fellow as quick as he could muster the height to perform the chore. In the meantime, Tommy had to content himself with hiding behind his mother’s skirt which was a shameful act of cowardice, he knew, but his only recourse for the moment.
“Bill, you do as you please, but no roughhousing inside and you keep that dern blade to yourself,” Willy said with Maggie looking on. Maggie liked Wild Bill just a hair less even than other folks because she firmly believed he’d drug Willy off to see a slant-eyed whore during the war. And even though she hadn’t even met her husband before then, she still considered it a vile act of infidelity on his part.
“Willy, I can’t help it if you’re now jealous of my butcher knife since you hocked yours up immediately. Besides, this here‘s what they call one of them aphro-disiacs,” Bill said winking at Mary-Alice and her trying her best not to laugh. She wondered if anyone else knew that word. “That’s one of them new ten dollar words. Means it makes you randy, though, what it has to do with colored people, I have no idea.”
Maggie hmphed to herself and turned back to do some chore back toward her filing cabinet near where she kept the cigarettes. She didn’t care for any word, regardless of price, that had anything at all to do with folks being randy. It was only a short road from such topics to discussions of whores and she intended to have no talk of whores in her presence.
“Bill,” Willy started, “a silly silver-studded dress up knife don’t do me a lick of good whereas eighty acres and a solvent seed business does me plenty.”
“Yeah, well, I get this supervisor office this time, we’ll all be doing good and plenty. Time’s a changing, Willy. Yankees tearing up the country. Charlie, you going out to the polls?”
“Well, Bill,” Charlie began.
“‘Well, Bill’ nothing. You want to keep this country for country folk, you’d best make your mark next to old Bill Scanlon. Yessir. Good Old Bill Scanlon for Good Old Country Folk!”
Mary-Alice had laid twenty five cents on the counter for her a 7up and the boy an ice cream sandwich. Tommy was good about not making a mess with it. He hated to lose even a drop. Waste not want not was one of his many mottoes. Turn the other fellow’s cheek was another.
Maggie shot glances two or three times at Mary-Alice when she wasn’t frowning at Bill’s gab. Mary-Alice knew some folks around judged her pretty black for having taken up with Hank. It was bad enough he never got called up to the fight, but that way he carried on and brought shame down on his good father’s name put a sour taste in many a mouth. And then them yet unmarried. A just as sour note for Mary-Alice herself.
Fact was, Mary-Alice’s own people had told her not to bother coming back home ‘til that man put a ring on her finger and the two took on an honest lifestyle. From her time so far with Hank, she knew full well that was not likely to happen any time soon. Tommy hadn’t even helped it along even a bit. That had been a shoddy gambit on her part, for sure, though she now doted on the boy, messed up as he was.
She had at least taken to wearing skirts and sun dresses most days she went out for her walks through the country. Unwed mothers were bad enough without sporting jeanpants on top of it. There, she and Hank at least agreed that certain ideas ought to be changed. She liked her jeans, when she got to pick them.
Sucking down the last of his ice cream, Tommy was recharged and bolted toward the back of the store where he knew there were hammers and other tools for him to mess about with. Tommy loved tools, hammers in particular. He liked the way it made his arms and back feel when he lifted them and swung them around his head. He had got in trouble one time when he had the big hammer Willy used to fix folks’ tires with and was slamming it down on the floor and making an awful racket.
As Wild Bill continued on his filibustering concerning the dangers of unchecked northern aggression, Mary-Alice heard again the unmistakable bawl of Hank’s Killafella teamed up with whatever Austin Grantham was racing these days. The two kept up a pretty mean rivalry and while Hank just wasted money on new and even more useless parts for his existing vehicle—because spending the money on milk and eggs would be just foolish—Austin had the even odder tendency to just trade for a whole different car every year or so. But, Austin didn’t yet have any kids to feed. At least none in this country.
“No, it’s because you’re a cheating ass,” Hank said cruising through the door and straight over to the RC cooler for a root beer and pack of nabs—his standard lunch. Willy and Maggie both harrumphed at the sight of Hank’s flared-out jeans and his old gaudy hat flopping atop his head. While it had been mildly cute in high school, Mary-Alice only found it laughable now. It seemed as though Hank had drawn up the cartoon version of himself long ago and was dead set for sticking to it.
“Losers always weep, Hank,” Austin said, grabbing his own victuals and signaling to Mrs. Maggie that Hank—apparently being the loser of whatever competition they’d just had—should cover his tab. “Howdy, Bill, what you know good?” Austin continued.
Hank shot a look over toward the benches and saw the unmistakable wild hair and trademark long blade leaning against the seat and was already quick losing his characteristic studied detachment.
“Bill?”
Wild Bill Scanlon looked up to acknowledge Austin and saw Hank from the corner of his eye.
“I say, but it’s old sally jeans. How do, boy? Had any homemade get-up-and-go juice of late? My sister’s grandbaby, she still asks after you quite a bit,” Bill said with a chuckle, though most others just passed it off.
Hank winced and flinched at the same time and then looked toward the door. “Sugar-babe, I’ll see you back at the house,” he said and laid a dollar on the counter and was out the door. Within seconds they all heard the sound of his engine barking and tearing down the road.
Mary-Alice wondered what must have passed between Hank and Bill for Hank to be so out of sorts with the man. Of course, she had heard the usual tales about Wild Bill Scanlon being the terror of Culloden County, but all that was before the war and now that she’d met him he just appeared to her another worn out old hick just all like all the others in this part of the country. In some ways she thought, as she looked on at the wild silver-haired man with the thick mustache drooping down beneath his chin, she saw the future of Hank himself—an old silly cartoon man hanging on desperately to some idea of what he thought he once was. Silly men.
Still, the fact that Bill, old and crotchety as he was, could rankle Hank so bad was an amusing thought. There was a great deal about Hank that the man intentionally kept secret from her. She’d heard snatches through the years about this and that, never sure what was remotely true and what a total fabrication. She’d been told of traveling bottle rocket salesmen to flying tigers to atomic mutant militia gangs. Somewhere, she guessed, Wild Bill and Hank must have had dealings. And none to Hank’s favor, it would appear. The man suddenly seemed all the more interesting.
It wasn’t long after Hank’s car had squealed off that Tommy reappeared from the back of the store toting a ten pound tire hammer on his sho
ulder and asking about his ‘papa.’ Mary-Alice was in a constant state of shock at the boy’s strength level. There he was, shaggy red hair in his face and carrying a piece of steel heavy enough she’d never want to mess with it for any reason and him barely three years old. One day she wanted to save the money to take him out to Mobile or New Orleans or somewhere and see some kind of special doctor just to make sure nothing wasn’t wrong with the child. He was healthy enough. Damn healthy, in fact. But she just knew that something was off about him. The way his muscles got so big so fast and the way he ate constantly. He was a chore, that boy. A full time job just from cooking alone.