“Town Gives Up Plans to Enlarge Limits.”
— The Clarion
I f you were a white man in the sixties, in Laureate, you chewed your fat at Monk Folsom’s Auto Repair. Pretending concern over a brake job or the adjustment of your carburetor, you’d sink into a bench-seat salvaged from some Plymouth or Studebaker, and in time you’d know everything going on in the county.
Who was favored. Who wasn’t. What it was going to cost.
The Lord only can divine how Monk’s became the ground for nutcutting in Lafayette County. His was certainly not a comfortable place. The shop itself was an open bay facing the world and Highway 27. No air-conditioning, just a couple of industrial fans droning inside an unshaded metal shed that rusted in a pasture bordering the white folks’ school.
Personality could not have been the draw; Monk Folsom had the charisma of celery. About the same build as celery, too, long and slender and translucent. There was room for at least three fingers between his jeans and his waist. Charles Putnal used to say Monk was so skinny you could shine a light on his back and watch his heart beat. That exaggeration was about the norm for the discussions that pattered back and forth in Folsom’s shop.
But Monk had two talents not common anywhere. First of all, even Charles declared that Monk was truly a genius with anything mechanical. Mr. Raymond said if you gave Monk a pair of pliers he’d fix Cape Canaveral. I did not at the time know what Cape Canaveral was, but I gathered it must be a challenge for pliers.
The second, rare quality that Monk possessed was that he never repeated anything that he heard. Never. You could tell the man you’d thrown a rod, lost a transmission and by the way you’d just killed your wife and fed her to the hogs and Monk would carry it all to the grave. He was like those eunuchs who watched over Persian satraps, their tongues cut out along with their balls.
However originated, a small court gathered virtually every morning in Folsom’s steamy shop. You’d see farmers and tradesmen. Ben Wilburn, the high-strung principal of Laureate’s thoroughly segregated school, was a regular at Monk’s. And so was State Representative Latrelle Putnal. Mr. Latrelle was Mr. Charles Putnal’s uncle, but you never saw Latrelle in his nephew’s place. Not even to buy gas. But Latrelle Putnal was an habitué at Monk’s, the archetype of a pussel-gutted and completely unreliable politician, that forehead bulging out from his face like an overhang on some fleshy cliff. Always had himself a Rotary pin stuck into a tie stained with gravy. Across from Representative Putnal you’d frequently see Sheriff Jackson, rawboned and hard and, unlike nearly anybody else in Monk’s shop, gainfully employed. That shock of white hair templing along his head. But even with his badge and revolver Collard was not the majordomo in attendance.
There is always a pecking order in any community and in Lafayette County even the sheriff could not top Garner Hewitt.
Garner was a wealthy man, properly diversified. He’d got a half-million dollars from the government not to milk his cows. He got fifty or sixty thousand dollars in federal subsidies every year for tobacco. And the county had just given him, cost-free, enough seedlings to plant three hundred acres of slash pine on pastureland that the government was already paying him not to use. ’Course, Garner would be the first to tell you he hated welfare.
He was a large man, but not hard, not like the sheriff. He dressed in seersucker slacks that flapped around wingtip shoes. A florid complexion. Receding hairline. A strawberry-sized birthmark below one eye gave the constant impression that Garner had just emerged from a fistfight, but anybody knowing the man understood that fists were not among Mr. Hewitt’s chosen weapons. Not his own, that is.
He had two sons. Cody, a junior at Laureate High School and Garner’s youngest boy, could have hailed from Southern California. Cody was a teenager blessed with unblemished skin and a wonderful, well-toned physique. Blue eyes. Mop of hair that was white without the tease of peroxide. J.T. Hewitt was Cody’s older brother, at twenty-six Garner’s eldest son. J.T. was six feet six inches tall and had himself a reputation separate from the basketball court. Folks said that Garner Hewitt’s oldest boy was beating on grown men before he’d even turned seventeen. For sure J.T. was a wifebeater. That is, before she left him. J.T. beat his help, too. Beat his damn dog. He wore cowboy shirts with the sleeves rolled up, an outsized Jimmy Dean. And J.T. had a trademark belt he was fond of wearing, ordered it from a catalog, a cowhide girdle adorned with the silver-embossed likeness of a rattlesnake. The buckle’s tongue was also the serpent’s.
About the only man in the county J.T. Hewitt didn’t intimidate was Sheriff Jackson.
The alliance between the Hewitt family and the sheriff was well known and mutually beneficial. Garner Hewitt made it clear that Sheriff Jackson was his choice for Sheriff of Lafayette County. More than one man who had voiced interest in running against Collard found his tires sliced or his birddog poisoned. J.T. Hewitt was his daddy’s enforcer. The quid pro quo, naturally, was that Sheriff Jackson looked out for Garner and his boys. There were thirteen complaints of assault directed at Garner’s oldest son in one four-year period and not one of ’em got past Collard’s desk.
’Course when it comes to politics muscle isn’t much good without money. Fortunately for Garner Hewitt and for Sheriff Jackson, Lafayette County was a place where a modest investment could take you a long way. Mr. Hewitt used to brag that he’d got a man’s vote for as little as a fifth of whiskey. Other times you might have to pick up a house payment, or buy a farmer his fertilizer. Garner bankrolled Collard in each of his three successful campaigns, sometimes buying off whole families. We are speaking of white families, of course. Negroes could not vote.
Garner Hewitt gave freely to his freckled electorate, yes, he did, but what he gave with one hand he could take with the other. A man might get a badly needed loan from Miss Pearl at the bank only to have it canceled when he made the mistake of telling his neighbors he was considering a change in his vote.
Garner owned Sheriff Collard Jackson just as surely as he owned his truck, his farm, and, before the government paid him off, his dairy. Mr. Hewitt also owned the Clerk of Court, the Supervisor of Elections, half the School Board, and the Tax Assessor. Everybody knew this, of course. However, alliances based on avarice and intimidation are never stable. A strain inconsequential to an even-handed relationship can become intolerable when raised between a lord and his vassal and Garner Hewitt had of late been pretty heavy-handed in reminding whoever was listening that he was the kingmaker in Lafayette County.
“No man comes to lasting prosperity except by me.” Garner loved to bastardize Scripture. And then he added, “That includes Sheriff ‘Collard Greens’ Jackson.”
It didn’t matter that Garner was drunk in deer camp with his entourage when he made that statement, and it did not help that the sheriff found a fresh hind of venison waiting for him in the Safe-Way locker afterwards. The damage was done. Garner had slighted his servant publicly.
In 1963, Collard Jackson was only a year away from re-election. Those years there’d be a primary in the spring and, if need be, a runoff in November. Sheriff Jackson was already gearing up for the run in ’64 that would give him his fourth term in office. He had no illusions about how he’d won his first three elections. He knew that his tenure in office had not been gained because of the electorate’s affection. Collard Jackson was a practical man; he knew which side of his bread was buttered and he knew who buttered it. But Garner Hewitt had jammed a spear into the sheriff’s side. Garner had tossed his insult spitefully, unnecessarily, and before some of the very men loitering now in Monk Folsom’s shop, and Sheriff Jackson was not about to let it stand.
The sheriff bided his time, but when the opportunity came, he took advantage, and I was there to see it. I was with Mama in the back of Mr. Frank Thistle’s truck. Mr. Frank owned the nursery where Mama and I worked. He was stopping by Monk’s for the ostensible purpose of settling a debt over a brake job or change of oil or some other weighty matter. As we pulled up to the shop I saw, I don’t know, at least twenty men, all seated on the rigged lounges of car seats or stools of one kind or another. There were cars and trucks stacked at odd angles in various states of disrepair. Monk was working on an engine slung like a slaughtered hog in a system of hoists and pulleys.
Mama and I naturally remained on the hard bed of Mr. Frank’s pickup, as invisible as bartenders to the white men gathered in the open bay of Monk’s shop. We were huddled there, knees to our chests, when Sheriff Collard Jackson came rolling up in that Dodge cruiser, the big hoop antenna waving back and forth like a fishing pole. The cop-car shifted weight as Collard got out; Mama kind of stiffened up as he strolled past.
“Fug me, fug me!”
“Mama, hush.”
Sheriff didn’t act like he noticed. Just passed a hand along the rim of his Stetson and stepped into the open bay of Monk’s shop. This was in May, a good six months since Garner Hewitt had shot his mouth off to his hunting buddies regarding Collard’s subordinate status. What gave Collard his opportunity was that Cody Hewitt, Garner’s unblemished seventeen-year old son, had got himself pulled over by the sheriff in Taylor County. Seems the bright-yellow road signs posted along the S-curves leading to Perry were just too much temptation for the young marksman. Cody got through half a box of birdshot before the county sheriff pulled him over.
But, after all, Collard Jackson got along famously with Taylor County’s sheriff. Rumor was that the two men shared a run to Lake City twice a year for whores and whiskey. Hard to see how you could get much closer than that. So Garner Hewitt had every reason to expect that Sheriff Jackson would make sure the charges filed against his son Cody would be dropped.
Collard wouldn’t do it. And not only did the sheriff refuse to use any influence in Taylor County for Cody’s benefit, Collard also made damn sure that he informed the boy’s daddy of that fact right in front of God and everybody attending the morning roll call at Monk Folsom’s Auto Repair.
“What’s that you sayin’?” At first Mr. Hewitt could not comprehend, or did not want to comprehend, what everybody else who was present understood perfectly.
“Cain’t help with that business with Cody, Garner. Just out of my hands is all.”
“Out of your hands? The hell you mean?”
“About what I said, I reckon.”
All of a sudden there wasn’t a wrench being turned. Every man in the shop was looking at his feet. Mr. Hewitt kept a pleasant smile plastered across his dampened face. “Maybe we need to talk in private.”
“Private, public. Won’t change anything.”
I saw the sheriff rest a gnarly hand on the knob of his nightstick. Garner Hewitt saw it, too.
“You eat some beans or somethin’ this mawning, Collard?”
“Greens more likely,” somebody quipped, but there was nobody laughing.
“Best advice I can give you, Garner, is tell your boy he wants to shoot signs, go down to Hatch Bend or someplace I can keep an eye on him.”
“Big difference between ‘can’t’ and ‘won’t’, sheriff. We need to be clear.”
“Fair enough,” Collard allowed. “How ’bout this? I wouldn’t do it even if I could.”
J.T. Hewitt shuffled past his daddy like a mannequin jerked on a stiff string. Six and a half feet of mean.
“You don’t wanta come over here, son,” and there was not a tremor in Collard’s voice.
“Gentlemen, let’s settle down, now. ’Fore somebody gets their feelings hurt.” State Representative Putnal twisting his Rotary pin in his tie.
“Monk,” Mr. Hewitt’s voice was flat. “You ’bout finished with my truck?”
“She’s ready to roll.”
“I ’spect I better move along.” Garner Hewitt hauled his loose weight up from the rude couch. “Come on, J.T. Let’s see how them pines is going in.”
“Judge Blackmond’ll be hearing the case,” Collard remarked as Mr. Hewitt and his tree-sized son stalked off. “You get Cody a good lawyer, first offense, he oughta do all right.”
“I won’t forget your help, Sheriff,” Garner snarled, and shoved his firstborn aside as he waddled out the shop’s chain-raised door.
Collard would have been within his rights to ticket Garner the way he squalled his vehicle out onto the street. Brand new Goodyears burning rubber all the way through the town’s one red light.
Principal Wilburn cleared his throat. “Nice looking truck.”
“It is, it is.” Latrelle Putnal tried to encourage the educator’s attempt to diffuse the recent tension.
“What did Garner bring it in for, Monk?”
“Air condition. Bad compressor.”
“I swear,” Wilburn offered lamely. “Man’s better off raising down a window.”
“He is, he is.” Latrelle would second any motion. “Still. It’s a good-looking vehicle.”
I turned from my own vantage point to look down the street. It was an awful nice vehicle, a Ford F -100 waxed up and red. A rebel flag displayed prominently from the cab’s rear window, right in front of the gun rack.
“I don’t like the hubs,” Collard declared, and on that I had to agree.
Spinner hubcaps just do not look right on a pickup.
Mama and I worked at Mr. Thistle’s nursery that Saturday at the rooting beds. I spent the whole day sticking cuttings of elaeagnus into a damp bed of peat and loamy soil, thinking about nothing but Joe Billy.
“You definitely are handsome, Miss Priscilla.”
Nobody had ever called me handsome. Or nice , for that matter. I began to rehearse the details of his appearance. Processed hair, greased back. Narrow head, high forehead. Deep, piercing eyes. Could he play the guitar, I wondered? When would I see him? Or where?! Would it be at school? I didn’t know. He could have been twenty years old, for all I could tell, impressed as I was by Joe Billy’s sophistication. Even a sixteen year-old could drop out of school if he wanted.
Joe Billy said he was going to Lester’s. Did that mean Lester was expecting him? Or Mr. Raymond? Was Joe Billy just visiting, or would he be staying with the two old bachelors? I had to find out. Could not wait to find out.
It was the first time in a long time, I can tell you, that I looked forward to hauling water.
Had to get home, first. Might as well tell you about my house, I guess. And my dog. The house, first. Don’t know who built it, or when. We didn’t rent it. We didn’t exactly own it, either. Whatever claim we enjoyed was established I suppose in usufruct. It was identical to almost every other residence in Colored Town. A shack and porch were fashioned of rough cut cypress and pine, mounted a yard high on loblolly stumps above a grassless yard frequently runneled by rain. A tin roof. There were only two rooms inside and no ceiling, just a span of rough, pine eaves. A kerosene lantern hanged on the tenacula of a ten-penny nail driven through one of those timbers. I was so tall, even at seventeen, that my head would brush its metal base.
Almost no furniture. A cot for me and an unsheeted mattress where mother slept. Grandma had a real bed and a small chest of drawers in the other room, across from the kitchen. Planks stretched between cement blocks provided more than ample shelving. We had two deerhide chairs that doubled for use in the kitchen or on the porch. We had a sink and slop bucket and out back was the privy shared each morning with a rat snake big as your arm.
We didn’t have anything like a lawn, only white folks spend that kind of money. But we had dogwood trees, two beautiful dog-woods. And crowding all around were riots of plant life native to northern Florida. There was French Mulberry, and Lady Lupine with its white shaggy hairs. We had bread-straw and scorpion-tale and frog-fruit. Goldenrod and dog fennel. Honeysuckle, of course. A wild and completely untamed tangle of vines and stems and blossoms presented an ever changing landscape for our back porch view. There was always something to catch your eye and what you didn’t see you would surely smell.
The atmosphere between the Gulf of Mexico and the Suwannee River, always heavy with moisture, was a natural caravan for the transport of odor. Mornings in May could be particularly redolent, a honeysuckle’s sweet aroma competing with pennyroyal or wisteria. Can you identity the smell of carrots that is Queen Anne’s Lace? Add to that the smell of damp earth. Of decaying wood.
Coming home from work that evening I could smell a country ham, slaughtered locally, smoked and cured with plenty of fat hanging on the rind. Cooking somewhere.
Not at our house. Ours was a supper of grits and red-eye gravy. Milk was hard to keep without an icebox so we usually drank coffee or sometimes a homemade tea. The Pennyroyal makes a nicely minted tea and normally I would put off hauling water to sip from a Ball jar of grandma’s homemade. Not that evening. That evening I was eager to be off.
“They a house on fire?”
“We need water,” I sailed off the porch. “HARD ON!”
You could hear him coming, claws scratch-scratch-scratching on the pine planked floor. Seconds later a bull-chested mutt halfway between a bulldog and a Republican shot out my screenless window.
“Well, come on.”
He turned his head askew, as if I had slapped his nose and turned him sideways.
“We’re gone to GET WATER. WATER, Hard On.”
‘Hard On’ was not so much a sobriquet as a truncation of an earlier name. While still a puppy and nameless, Puddin’ Reed’s little sister poured some honey in my dog’s starboard ear. I wasn’t there to see it happen, but later that night I could see my animal worrying that ear, worrying and worrying it.
I thought maybe he was hungry so I soaked some cornbread in clabber and gave it to him. Put him in a box to sleep. Middle of the night that puppy starts to yell. Started raising hell. So I went over to see what was the fuss and that’s when I saw the ants. They were in his ear. In and out of his ear, actually. They had smelled the honey and burrowed clear down inside the poor thing’s inner ear.
I got grandma and we washed out the ear with hydrogen peroxide. Got the honey out with the ants but the ear got infected anyway. Pretty soon the poor mutt was falling down like a drunk. He could not stand erect. Couldn’t look straight at anything, either; he’d try and you could see his eyes jerk horizontally, fast forward, slow back, in the presentation distinctive of nystagmus. Within a day or two those symptoms passed. My dog survived, but lost his hearing on the side of the infected ear. Hence the constant inclination of his puzzled snout.
“Got a name for him, at least,” Grandma declared after that trial. “We’ll call him Hard of Hearing.”
But Hard of Hearing got to be a mouthful when you were in a hurry. It was only a matter of time before Puddin’ or Chickenswamp or somebody came up with “Hard On.”
“Where you at, Hard On? Whutchu doin’, Hard On?”
That’s how my dog got his name. But there was only one name interested me that evening; I just hoped he would be at his newly adopted home.
“Be back inna while,” I called out, and hauled the Red Flyer with its unfilled pails toward Mr. Raymond’s. I arrived with my dog earlier than usual. I didn’t see Joe Billy. Didn’t see Lester for that matter, which normally would have been a blessing. I could have asked Mr. Raymond where his new boarder was keeping himself, but there were people all around and if anybody heard me asking after a boy I’d never hear the end of it.
“Cilla, you sweet on somebody?”
“Who you sweet on, Cilla?”
“Hey, but is they sweet on you ?”
So I didn’t say anything. I waited for Sunday and looked in vain for Joe Billy to attend church. I was slow giving mother her prompts that morning, which earned me a stern admonition from Preacher, but I didn’t care. I went back to Mr. Raymond’s porch again that evening with my Radio Flyer wagon and pails, and this time found Lester ruling the porch from his rocking chair. Still no sign of Joe Billy. Where was he? Gone? Dead? There were perhaps half a dozen women still milling around but I had to know. Finally my turn came to handle the pump.
“Hello, Sugar Baby.”
“Mr. Lester.” I pulled my water. “How you doin’?”
That was a mistake because I never inquired after Lester’s health.
“I’m steady by jerks,” he replied after a moment. “How ’bout you?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Hope I gave good directions to your visitor.”
“Visitor?”
“I believe so. New fellah? Came in on the railroad? Said he was kin to you.”
“Awww…” Lester settled back in his hickory rocker. “He’s just dog kin.”
“Stayin’ with you and Mr. Raymond?”
Lester scowled. “I tole’ him he can sleep on the back porch ’till he get his own place.”
So he was staying. I kept my eyes on the pump.
“Well, that’s good of ya’ll, Mr. Lester. That’s a help, surely.”
“Help to him ,” Lester grunted, and I went home heartened by his unwilling intelligence but wondering whether it was much help. After all, there were only two places I could expect to regularly see Joe Billy—at work or at school. So unless Joe Billy developed a sudden urge to either raise shrubbery or join the junior class our paths would not cross on any kind of predictable basis.
I was telling myself all the way home that I should not be disappointed. I had got my hopes up on the basis of a fairytale and should have known better.
“Come on, Hard On.”
I got home wanting to cry, but I didn’t have time. Grandma was pacing on the porch.
“Your mama. Havin’ one o’ her fits.”
You could never tell when it would happen, or why. Some unseen agent or influence would set her off. The only exorcism we ever tried made things worse.
“Put up the water,” I said, and went inside.
She was in our bedroom, on the mattress on the floor. Grandma hung back, wringing her shift.
“I too old for this chore!”
“I’ve got her, grandma.”
“Raise a chile, you get ole, she suppose to take kere o’ you !”
“I said I got her.”
“Me here an ole woman raisin’ two chirren, Lawd!”
“Go on, grandma. There’s water, make some tea. I’ll take care of Mama.”
Corrie Jean was on the mattress on all-fours, in estrus. Hunching like a dog. When Mama was like that you had to be careful. It was like she was in a waking nightmare, or something, and if you came in on her like that and you touched her in any way, she was likely to turn on you, striking out with hands that, unless at a piano, were curled like talons.
“FUG ME, FUG ME!”
“Mama, it’s Cilla.”
“FUG ME FUG ME!!”
“Mama, Cilla’s here. Cilla’s right here.”
I took up a pillow and slowly crouched so she could see me.
“Remember our song, Mama?”
She didn’t respond.
“Our song, Mama. Remember?”
“Song…”
She was panting like a bitch in heat.
“Song…”
“It’s me , Mama. Cilla. Remember our song?”
“Song, song,” she sing-songed in reply.
“Sing with me, Mama. Mama? Sing. Come on, now—‘Double your pleasure’…Come on, now…‘Double your pleasure…’”
“Doubleyourfun,” mother’s head bobbed recognition.
“That’s right,” I encouraged. “Let’s sing it together, Mama. Mama and Cilla singing.”
She raised her head.
“Sing Cilla?”
“Sure, Mama. ‘Double your pleasure/Double your fun/With DoubleMint, DoubleMint, DoubleMint Gum…’”
Her head bobbed in time.
“Double your pleasure, Double your fun…”
“That’s right, Mama. ‘With DoubleMint, DoubleMint, DoubleMint Gum…’”
Double your pleasure. Double your fun. Over and over. It didn’t always work. I still don’t know exactly why it ever worked. But something about that simple jingle for chewing gum was, on merciful occasion, a magical mantra for my mother.
We sang it over and over. Sang it till the words slurred in my mouth. But I could feel her begin to relax. See the taloned hands uncurl. Her eyes, wide with some terror, were low in their lids. Now I could coax her off her hands and knees.
“Here, Mama.”
I got her to sit. I decided it wasn’t worth the effort to get her into night-things. She’d just have to sleep in her clothes.
But now, I knew we would be fine. Once I got her this far, I could put down the pillow, hold her to me. Put her back to me. Her head next to my own. I could feel my mother’s warmth on my new and heavy breasts. She would relax, then. Yes, I could feel her muscles go loose and long. And then a long, melancholy sigh. We just sat there, rocking back and forth.
Once, long ago, after a fit much like this one, she became lucid. It wasn’t for long. Just moments, really.
“Cilla!”
I was so startled, I had almost dropped her.
“Mama? Is that you?”
“Isn’t it bedtime, baby?”
“Yes, Mama. Yes, it is!”
“Then you best get to sleep.”
There were only a handful of occasions in my life where mother ever directly addressed me, or even seemed to recognize me. Those moments always came when I was worst prepared to receive them. When I was tired. When I was bone-weary and unresponsive, they came. With no warning or preamble. Out of the blue.
I hadn’t known what to do. What to say. I didn’t know how long we had. I just held her close to me. Close!
“Why don’ you sleep with mama, baby?” she said. Perfectly lucid.
“Oh, Mama! Can I?”
“Jussss tonight,” she said, and then the awful affliction returned. A glaze passed over my mother’s eyes. She lay slack as burlap once more in my arms and had not spoken to me since.
She was calm, now. Whatever it was that triggered the awful, recurring terror had run its course. I kissed Corrie Jean on lips wet with drool.
“Night night, Mama.”
A small chore, then, to straighten her legs on the mattress, put the pillow, caseless, beneath her head. Smooth her hair. She had wonderful hair, have I mentioned? Soft, not like mine. I then pulled the one sheet over my mama before crawling into my own sheetless bed. I was hungry and had not cleaned myself and I was dead, weary, tired, but I could not expect a restful night’s sleep. Mama would wake once, at least, I knew, before the rooster crowed. Maybe twice. And I would comfort her.
There would be no railroad dreams this evening.