| |
Dixie snorted, circled her tracks, found a perfect spot along the fence line behind a privet hedgerow, squatted while holding her head high, and defecated copiously.
“Good job, Dix ol’ girl,” Toad Tuttle said to her dog.
Toad patted Dixie’s rump. She put on her bifocal glasses and bent over to examine the stool; it was perfect, shaped like a miniature chocolate brain. Fashioned out of wholesome grain-free kibble, it exuded a pungent, eye-watering odor that reminded Toad of the first whiff after opening a fresh bag of cow manure.
Dixie yanked on her leash, eager to move on. Toad looked left and right, saw nobody, and took a couple of steps before sighing, “Oh, snot ‘n’ bother,” then returned to bag the still steaming pile.
Of all the places Toad took Dixie on her daily walks, the dog liked walking around the old Hercules Steel Mill site best. She enjoyed investigating its odors and checking out what she could find in its ruins. It was like an amusement park for a dog.
Still, memories of the mill and what it had once meant for the town of Coon Creek saddened Toad. Once the mill had operated with three shifts that worked day and night. Now, only vermin and vandals visited it. A crumbling sidewalk surrounded the fenced property, and tree roots offset whole blocks in places. Bullet holes pockmarked the Do Not Enter and Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted signs by the main gate. An abundance of litter and garbage blew across the empty parking lot and gathered in heaps against curbs, lampposts, and walls. Empty beer cans filled the security booth by the gate, nearly to the ceiling. The largest pieces of refuse—kegs, a sofa, old TVs, mattresses, a couple of lawn mowers, and one vandalized VW bus up on blocks—moldered by the train tracks leading to the loading dock.
Early in the morning, the abandoned mill cast an elongated shadow over most of the block, including Toad’s front yard. The old plant’s brick chimneys leaned ever so slightly, as if they might come crashing down in the next hard wind. The smelters that had once contained raging hellfire were now cold and blackened with petrified soot. Shortly after the plant shut down, somebody had run a pair of soiled boxer shorts up the flagpole, and ten years later they were still there, flapping in the wind. Just about the only things the goddamned mill was good for anymore was as a place where dogs could shit, folks could dump their junk, and local rednecks could take target practice. It got uglier every year.
Back in '08, when the Hercules Steel Mill abruptly shut down, most citizens of Coon Creek, Ohio, dreamed that some benevolent entrepreneur would purchase the property and reopen it with new high-tech equipment, bringing a bounty of well-paying jobs for the next generation of Coon Creekers. After years passed and the plant remained idle, few still clung to that futile hope. Some folks started complaining that the grounds were contaminated, and they blamed unseen toxins for every malady from Sadie Hooker’s migraine headaches to Ace Bragg’s cancer of the colon, although back in its heyday, when the plant employed half the town, those same folks scoffed at any allegations that the rancid air inside the plant, the particulate smog issuing from its chimneys, and the greenish effluent it diverted into the Little Miami River contained anything other than healthful dietary additives.
Toad’s husband, Zeke, still believed that, with the right lawyer, he could sue the hell out of those corporate bastards at Hercules, whom he was certain were responsible for his many ailments, including gout, dizzy spells, acid reflux, and erectile dysfunction. He said he wasn’t greedy; he’d settle for a couple of million bucks. Too bad he couldn’t also sue them for his being dumb and lazy.
Personally, Toad hoped to one day see the whole sprawling post-industrial monstrosity dynamited to bits and hauled away.
The Hercules Mill was the backdrop for Coon Creek’s collective memory across several generations. Toad recalled how her grandfather boasted that the steel from the Hercules Mill built the tanks, bombers, and battleships that won World War II. When she was a girl, Toad would wait under the canopy by the main gate for the five o’clock whistle to release her father from his day’s labor; he’d meet her with a grimy hug and say, “another day, another dollar, li’l darlin’.” In high school, Toad often skipped classes to meet Zeke on his lunch hour, and they’d tongue kiss behind the security booth until his foreman dragged him back to work. Nearly two decades later, she had shed a tear as she watched her son, Boog, after not quite graduating from high school, fall in line to punch the time clock, with expectations of doing the same for the next forty-odd years. Such was the cycle of life in Coon Creek for over half a century. The work was brutal, but it paid a living wage. As Zeke said, “Ain’t much more a workin’ grunt like me can ask for.” That was cold comfort to Boog, though. All that was left for him to do was enlist in the army, and Toad didn’t like the way that turned out for him.
Dixie stiffened, focusing her undivided attention at a clump of dandelion weeds growing out of a pothole. Something moved in there. Toad grabbed the leash in both hands, in case Dixie made a sudden lunge. She urged, “C’mon, Dixie hon, let’s get us outta here,” but the dog was fixated.
Two beady eyes, a pinkish nose, and a set of humming whiskers peeked between dandelion stalks. Dixie started whirling her tail and pawing at the bars of the fence. She greeted the creature with a series of short staccato barks.
A large rat, the approximate size of one of Boog’s work boots, scampered onto the rim of the pothole, raised itself on its haunches, and rubbed its paws together mischievously. Toad thought she recognized it.
Dixie crouched on her front legs. She panted so hard that just listening to her made Toad breathe harder too. If Dixie could speak, Toad imagined she would have asked the rat if it wanted to play. The rat skittered closer, inches from the fence, nearly within lapping range of Dixie’s tongue.
“Heaven’s to rabies,” Toad exclaimed, “I think that there rat is Old Hillary.” She tugged on the leash to tear Dixie away from the rodent. The dog tugged back, in apparent sport.
Disinterested, the rat sniffed in every direction other than toward Dixie. Desperate to attract its attention, Dixie continued yapping enthusiastically. Finally, the rat meandered along the fence line until it found an open manhole cover and escaped beneath it.
“Go ahead, Hillary. Ignore us. We’re just a ‘basketful of deplorables,’ anyhow. So good riddance to stray vermin,” Toad declared. She reached down to pat Dixie’s head. “Let’s get us home, girl. We’ve done lollygagged hereabouts too long already.”
Dixie stuck her nose between Toad’s legs and nudged her inner thighs, which was her way of making up. She then bolted in the direction of home, pulling Toad along behind her.
Zeke Tuttle knew that Toad would expect him to have dressed and readied himself for church by the time she returned home from walking her precious little princess dog, Miss Dixie. After thirty-seven years of marriage, he was well practiced in falling short of her stated expectations, and he seldom aspired to more than fulfilling her minimal unstated ones. He had gotten out of bed, splashed his face, and even brushed his teeth; that, he figured, ought to demonstrate a good faith effort.
Of course, that didn’t mean that she wouldn’t grouse about how lazy he was and possibly threaten to cut off his liquor allowance. Her ultimatums had no more effect on his behavior than one of Reverend Belvedere’s fire ‘n’ brimstone sermons—which was to say, none. If she ever did cut off his booze, he had a hidden stash of rotgut bourbon in the cellar to tide him over until she either forgot or gave up trying.
Zeke didn’t mind that she nagged, because it went in one ear and out the other. In his heart, he acknowledged that she was generally correct when she called him lazy, for he’d learned long ago that ambition wasn’t worth the bother. Time, experience, and a bad back had disabused him of the myth that hard work and determination led to anything other than disappointment and an early death.
When Toad came through the door, Zeke was wearing boxer shorts, sitting at the kitchen table, eating microwaved biscuits and gravy, and pretending to read the newspaper, hoping to discourage conversation. Dixie, who didn’t seem to get that he didn’t like her all that much, scrambled across the kitchen and dove slobbering onto his lap.
“Whoa, yah ding dang dawg,” Zeke grumbled, pushing back. “My back hurts.”
“She likes you,” Toad said. “Cain’t account for poor taste.”
Zeke let the insult slide. It was less grief than he’d expected for not being ready for church. To show his appreciation, he consented to let her dog drool on his knee.
“How’d her shit look this mornin’?” he asked.
“It was brown and lumpy and smelt a whole lot better than yours.”
“With all that expensive chow she gets, her shit ought to smell like lilacs in the spring. Yah feed that mutt better than yah do me.”
“Firsts of all, Dixie ain’t no mutt. She’s a purely bred American boxer. And seconds of all, she’s worth a whole lot more money than you are.”
“I’m a thoroughbred West Virginian. Men like me is a dying breed.”
“True,” Toad said. She sat down next to him and took a bite out of an apple. “But since you ain’t quite dead yet, you best get ready for church. You need it.”
“I s’pose you’re right,” Zeke agreed, retreating to their bedroom.
Toad had laid out his church clothes on the bed before leaving to walk Dixie. She’d folded and placed each garment on top of the bedspread, arranged according to the order that Zeke got dressed, starting with his drawers and finishing with a pair of ugly blue-green argyle socks, which still had a Walmart price tag stapled to them. Zeke wondered what had possessed Toad to buy him a pair of argyle socks. When did she ever know him to wear anything other than white cotton crew socks? Never. Except, that is, for his Brutus Buckeye scarlet-and-gray-striped socks, which he generally wore just once a year, for the football game against Michigan. On a whim, Zeke decided that he would switch out those argyles for his Brutus Buckeye socks and wear them to church that morning. He would loosen his belt so that the cuffs of his trousers dropped over his ankles. Then, when they sat down together in the pew at the Coon Creek Baptist Church God, he’d hoist them up to reveal that he’d defied her choice in hosiery. He was anxious to see how she’d react.
Any small victory, even if it was only over stockings, would absolutely make his day.
Strolling the packed-dirt paths and grassy lawns that crisscrossed the Amity Valley Memorial Gardens made Faye Pfeiffer feel at peace. She took the same circuitous route through those hallowed grounds every morning. Wearing her standard black suit and tie, she carried a folded flag tucked under her right arm. Her cap-toe oxford dress shoes repelled the morning dew, but the cuffs of her pressed pants and her cardigan socks were moist from ankles to shins. She was trying to break in some new foam orthopedic insoles that Reverend Belvedere said would help her plantar fasciitis, but with wet feet that squished with every step, her heels hurt as much as before, maybe more. The pain did not distract her from her duty.
In the graveyard, Faye knew everybody by their first name. Except for the oldest residents, who dated back to the nineteenth century, most of them had been her family’s clients. The Life Eternal Funeral Home had been the Pfeiffer family business for four generations, serving the citizens of Coon Creek with supportive, dignified, compassionate, and affordable mortuary services. The tradition began when Faye’s great-great-grandfather, a former moonshiner, patented his secret formula for embalming fluid, purchased a 1930 Cadillac hearse, and opened shop in the garage of the Pfeiffer household. The adjacent funeral home and the rolling cemetery grounds together occupied an entire block near downtown Coon Creek. When folks joked that death was the biggest business in Coon Creek, they weren’t just being sarcastic.
Amity Valley Memorial Gardens never looked grander than at the start of summer, just after Memorial Day, when the greening landscape rippled with the colors of the hundreds of plastic American flags she had placed at the graves of every veteran, their spouses (including exes), and their children. That just about covered the whole population, for Coon Creek was known throughout the state for volunteering whenever the nation issued a sacred call for soldiers. After 9/11, more of the community’s young men went to defend democracy in Afghanistan than stuck around in Ohio. After the Hercules Mill closed, Coon Creekers had few non-military career choices available to them. Most of the young men graduating from Coon Creek High School opted for military service. More and more young women did, too. They were lucky—Faye wished that she’d had the opportunity to enlist when she was younger.
Whatever path folks chose, they all led to the same spot. In the center of the cemetery, on a grassy mound next to a well hand pump, Faye began every new day by raising Old Glory up a tall flagpole. Rows of Pfeiffer family graves—the final resting places of dozens of Faye’s proud, hard-working, God-fearing progenitors—were arranged in a semicircle around the flagpole, as if to bear witness to Faye’s solemn daily ceremony. Among them was her parents’ shared monument; its hand-rendered inscription read:
Wilbur Pfeiffer, 5/9/42 to 12/31/11
Mildred Pfeiffer, 9/13/43 to 12/31/11
Bound forever in love
Faye never passed without looking at the vacant plot next to theirs where, one day, she would be laid to rest.
The folded flag that Faye carried under her arm was the first-Sunday-of-the-month flag. She had flags for each day of the month, each with its own story to tell. A lot of people gave their old flags to Faye. Louisa Carp had donated that day’s flag; her husband died heroically during combat in Quang Nam Province, Vietnam, when he fell on a live grenade to save the men in his unit. Faye kissed it before fastening it to the line, hoisted it, and saluted when it reached the top.
In the evening, she would return to lower the flag and bring it home to its place of honor in her flag closet. She would never, under any circumstances, leave any flag flying after dark. It irritated her that many of her well-intentioned neighbors neglected that aspect of flag etiquette. Even though she believed, in her heart, that there was no more patriotic community in this greatest nation than Coon Creek, Faye sometimes felt that her fellow citizens took their blessings for granted. They didn’t realize how lucky they were to live in America.
That was one reason why she placed flags at veterans’ graves on Memorial Day, and also why, for the last twenty years, the Life Eternal Funeral Home had foot the bill for Coon Creek’s annual Fourth of July “Boom-a-Thon” fireworks show. It was well known as the most spectacular in all of Greene County. Sponsoring it was expensive—getting more so every year—and a lot of hard work, but Faye shrugged it off as well worth the investment. It was important to her that the celebration was 100% homegrown. Besides, she had a passion and God-given talent for blowing things up.
The sound of church bells interrupted her ruminations. Was it 9:00 a.m. already? Time sometimes got away from her when she dreamed her American dreams. Faye tsked at herself, brushed off her jacket, straightened her tie, and then hastened across the lawn, hopping over grave sites and dodging markers, to get to the church before the service began.
Toad chewed the fat with Edith Doody, both literally and figuratively. Sitting on a curbside bench in the town square, beside the statue of Philander Fink and across the street from the Hungry Coon Diner, the two women sampled Edith’s spring batch of sweet-and-spicy venison jerky.
“Mmmmaaaahhh,” Toad mumbled while chewing.
“Do yah taste that extra little bit of zing I put in it? Can yah guess what that is?”
Toad could have chewed that wad of jerky all day and still not guessed the secret ingredient. Her taste buds weren’t what they used to be. She shifted the wad into her cheek so she could talk. “Well, I do alright taste something special in it. Tastes like....”
“So sauce!” Edith eagerly divulged. “I mary-nated it overnight in a bowl of that, what’cha call it, oriental so sauce.”
“Do you mean soy sauce?”
“Yeah. Ain’t that what I said? I got the idea from watching Rachel Ray’s program, she said it was good with just about anything. Henshaw’s IGA didn’t have none, so I had to go all the way to Walmart in Dayton to get a bottle of the stuff.”
“Maybe, since it’s some kind of Japanese jerky, we ought to eat it with chopsticks,” Toad deadpanned.
Edith laughed so hard that her Adam’s apple shook, as if that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard in all of her life. Toad laughed at Edith laughing. Folks passing on their way to church paused to look at them, which only made both laugh harder.
“Well,” Toad sighed, catching her breath. “That sure felt good. We all don’t laugh enough around here no more.”
An engine backfiring, as loud as a shotgun blast, interrupted their hilarity. Toad tensed her head and shoulders, and she swallowed involuntarily. A chunk got stuck sideways in her throat, making her cough and gasp for air, until the same engine backfired again, triggering a violent hiccup which dislodged the jerky. Toad spat it into the grass.
“Whoa, Mom. Are you okay?” Boog called from the window of his pickup truck.
Toad called out, “Bobby Gregory Tuttle! That bomb that you drive around in nearly turned my stomach inside out. When are you a-gonna get it fixed?”
Boog revved the engine. “Most of the time it works A-OK. It only backfires when I’m goin’ to church.”
“Hey, Meemaw,” Justin yelled at her from the bed of the pickup, where he was sitting on a wheel well.
“Justin Zachariah Tuttle! What in the name of bejeezus are you doing in the back of that truck? Ain’t no seat belts back there, that’s for sure.”
“Seat belts are for pussies, Meemaw.”
“Shut your mouth,” Toad commanded. “You’re sitting right here in front of God’s house, and He can hear you.”
Justin looked to his father for a ruling as to whether what he’d said would bother God.
“Give the boy a break, Mom,” Boog said. “He already gets enough Holy Roller crap from his mother.”
Maybe if you had paid some mind to Darlene’s Holy Roller crap, she wouldn’t have kicked you out of the house, Toad thought. Although she could hear those words rattling around in her head and she could almost taste them on her tongue, she resisted speaking them aloud. Even so, she could tell by how Boog rolled his eyes that he knew what she was thinking. Scolding people without saying a word was one of Toad’s special skills.
The engine burped and emitted a puff of black smoke that made people standing in front of the church scatter for fresh air. Justin whooped and raised his arms in front of himself, brandishing an invisible rifle and pulling off several shots. He shouted, “Bing, bang, boom.”
Zeke came out of the restroom at Joe’s Sunoco. He often went there to sneak a drink before church, on the obviously fabricated grounds that he suddenly needed to piss. Zeke knew that Toad knew what he was doing, and Toad knew that he knew that she knew, so she considered it unnecessary to confront him about it. She actually took it as a sign of respect that he felt like he had to sneak around.
Zeke went to inspect the vehicle. “Lift open the hood,” he said, rolling up his sleeves. “Let’s have us a look.”
Before Boog got out of the driver’s seat, the bells to the Coon Creek Baptist Church of God started ringing. Toad thanked Jesus for His timing, for she knew that once Zeke and Boog popped the hood on that beat-up old wreck, no matter what they found under there it would occupy their attention for the rest of the day. Their purpose was not so much to fix anything as it was to look like they’d tried their best before taking it to the shop. Neither Zeke nor Boog knew jack shit about mechanics, but that never stopped them from tinkering.
“The truck can wait,” Toad said. “But the Lord cain’t.”
None of them moved until Toad swept Zeke, Boog, and Justin in the direction of the church. Once they were safely inside, she jogged up the steps, passed them in the vestibule, and then led them down the aisle to a pew in the front row. She pointed where she wanted each of them to sit. Sometimes, Toad wondered if not for her prodding them to go to church they’d even remember that Sunday was the Lord’s day. If by some miracle they managed to get into heaven, they’d have her to thank.
Seeing her boys—that’s how she thought of them, as her “boys”—seated side by side by side in the pew on Sunday morning pleased Toad. Still, she yearned for the one who was missing, her only daughter, Mazie Sue. As much as she was proud of her for graduating from Ohio State and getting a fancy job in Columbus, Toad still worried about whether she lived the right way. The city was a sewer of vice and temptation, where many a young person strayed into wrongdoing. Edith’s eldest son, Buck, had gotten into some serious trouble there one weekend, for which he spent a month in jail and paid a fine of $5,000. Toad and Edith both agreed that in the modern world, with all its instant temptations and on-demand seductions, it was harder than ever to live a good Christian life.
As she settled into her seat, Toad cast a backwards glance, the same as she did every week, in the ardent but unlikely hope that she’d see Mazie come walking through the church doors. Just once more before she died, she longed to see her entire family gathered all together in church. It was as much a mother’s job to hope as it was to worry.
Burl Slocum never missed a Sunday at the Coon Creek Baptist Church of God. He always sat in the last row of pews, so folks would pass him as they entered the church. The whole point of going to church was to be seen. Burl figured that if he didn’t go to church, people might gossip, so why give them something else to talk about? In practice, he didn’t necessarily believe in God or worry very much about his immortal soul. He picked and chose among God’s Ten Commandments; seriously—who didn’t lie? Maybe when he got older and needed it, he’d start trying harder to believe.
Likewise, Burl considered Reverend Belvedere to be more of a pragmatist than a dogmatist. He liked that about him—they both saw advantages in encouraging other people’s faith. Religion benefited both of their businesses. It saddened and worried Burl that over the last few years the congregation had dwindled down to a core of true believers and those, like himself, who regarded church attendance as a social obligation.
During the service, Burl folded his hands and lowered his head as if praying, when in fact he was thinking about what he’d do afterwards. The only part of the service he ever paid attention to was the reverend’s sermon.
Reverend Belvedere placed his hands on either side of the lectern and cleared his throat to signal for silence. Clearing his throat was an instrumental part of the reverend’s homily, which not only directed the flock to pay attention, but also suggested the tone of the words that he would deliver. His throat clearing repertoire included a nasal snort for comic effect, a rolling ahem for a casual style, a hoarse grunt for a grave or scolding emphasis, and others for circumstances that ranged from felicitous to somber. Burl thought that he’d heard them all. That morning, though, the reverend cleared his throat in a new way, drawing air from deep within his lungs and expelling it in a slow, raspy roil, in a manner that seemed to signify that he was preparing to make some momentous announcement.
“Brothers and sisters in Christ....” Reverend Belvedere cast his gaze broadly over his flock, side to side and front to back. He projected his voice as if to address a much larger audience. “I don’t need to tell you that we live in challenging times. Coon Creek has endured more than its share of hardship and strife. There’s not a single person here today who has not felt loss, grief, frustration, fear, and even despair on behalf of themselves, their families, or their neighbors. It is painful, and, yes, I know that it can try a person’s faith. Even my faith.
“But faith is supposed to be hard. Nobody ever said that getting into heaven would be easy. Jesus taught us that ‘Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father.’ Still, it seems that every time things start to look a little better for us hereabouts, something happens to squash our hopes, like we are mere bugs under Satan’s hooves.
“To those of you who struggle to find meaning, though, remember that Jesus is your best friend, who will always listen to your prayers, day or night, whenever you drop onto your knees and call for Him.
“We are all sinners. I am, too, just like you. Maybe a sinner with better intentions, but a sinner, nonetheless. God tests my faith, same as he does yours. Fortunately, God’s test is open book, and the name of that book is the Bible. And what does the Bible tell us to do?”
Reverend Belvedere paused to give anybody who felt so inclined a chance to respond to that question. Nobody did. Burl had heard this spiel often enough to know that the correct answer was to pray, but he wasn’t about to upstage the reverend by saying it out loud.
The reverend fulminated, “He tells us to pray! Only through sincere prayer does God reveal His intentions. We must humbly seek His guidance, for as Mark assures us, ‘Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.’ Let me tell you about a conversation that I had with Jesus just the other day.
“So, recently, when I was aggrieved after losing my dearest Maude—God rest her soul—that’s exactly what I did. I prayed nonstop for an entire day. I prayed before I got out of bed in the morning. Instead of drinking my usual wake-up cup of coffee, I prayed. I set aside all my pressing affairs for that day, closed the door to my office, and just prayed, prayed, and prayed some more. I prayed so hard that it made me sweat. I clasped my hands together so tight that my finger joints ached. My back began to hurt, but I prayed through it. Nothing distracted me—not dogs barking, not horns honking, not cars backfiring, not ambulance sirens, not even when my daughter knocked at the door to my office and asked if I was still alive. I kept praying with all my might, determined that I would not stop until I got an answer. I prayed to God—What is Thy will for me?
“It was late at night. I was exhausted and sore all over my body, but I resisted the urge to sleep. Finally, I felt my soul rising right out of my body. I heard a voice. It said to me just two words: Do it!”
Reverend Belvedere opened his arms, palms up, in a come-to-Jesus gesture.
“And then I knew what He wanted from me. So, I hereby today announce in front of you all, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, that I can no longer stand by idly and watch our beloved town degenerate into ruin, vice, and perfidy. God calls on me to act. Therefore, I intend to run for the position of mayor of Coon Creek.”
Burl thought he must have heard wrong. Reverend Belvedere hadn’t said a word to him about it! Normally, the reverend would have run that idea by him first. It was all well and good that he thought he’d heard God tell him what to do, but still Burl deserved the courtesy of being consulted, as well.
The congregation was absolutely dumbfounded. They looked down or from side to side, anywhere other than at the reverend. In the ensuing silence, Burl felt like everybody was holding their breaths. Reverend Belvedere walked around the lectern, stood at the foot of the altar, and widened his eyes, as if to say—say something, for crying out loud.
Finally, recognizing an opportunity to burnish his born-again credentials, Burl Slocum pushed off the back of his seat to stand, all 350 pounds of him, tugged on his suspenders, and bellowed, “You have my vote, reverend.”
This opened the floodgates for further affirmation. “Mine, too,” Faye Pfeiffer concurred.
“And ours,” Gertrude Tuttle said, speaking for her entire clan.
Reverend Belvedere was so relieved that he started to weep. “Bless you,” he said. “Now let’s sing a hymn of joy. How about ‘Jesus, I Come’?”
