A Short History of a Small Place Read online

  Pinky, however, got on with his life a little more successfully than Bubba did. He married one of the Jeeter girls whose family had inherited a chicken ranch in Draper and so had relocated there from Rock Hill, South Carolina. There were five Jeeters altogether, Momma and Daddy Jeeter, Grandma Jeeter, and the two Jeeter daughters, who had legitimate Christian names that got no sort of wide circulation and who were known instead as the fat Jeeter and the bald Jeeter. Daddy said the fat Jeeter was what Momma might call hefty, which according to Daddy was a lady’s way of saying she had the girth of a tractor tire, and Daddy himself said the fat Jeeter was a girl of tremendous quantity who cut an imposing if not disgusting figure. But Daddy said she was the one Pinky lost his head over at first and he wooed her and courted her and kept her in chocolates for the best part of three months before the wind changed, Daddy said, and blew what flame there was from the fat one over to the bald one and Pinky began to call on her and bring her candied fruit since chocolates made her scalp break out. Daddy said the bald Jeeter had not been born bald but lost her hair in childhood during a bout with scarlet fever and had been as slick as an egg ever since. And Daddy said once she got old enough to care that she was hairless her Grandma Jeeter made her a pair of wigs out of a combination of human and horse hair, one of which was satiny black while the other, taken mostly from a chestnut mare, was a lovely natural brown and heightened the otherwise drab features of the bald Miss Jeeter’s face. And Daddy said once Pinky married the bald one and left the fat one to go her own way, most everybody agreed he had done a wise thing since the bald one was not always bald or always brunette or always chestnut-headed, but the fat one was always fat. Daddy said Pinky had simply opted for variety, which nobody much was willing to blame him for.

  Pinky worked as a day laborer right after his marriage but soon enough took a job with the post office downtown where he sorted mail and sold stamps at the window. According to Daddy, Pinky was as tight as twelve cent shoes with his money and for the first two years of their married life him and the bald Jeeter lived in half a shack down by the cotton mill which they did not leave until Pinky had saved and scraped and otherwise strangled enough dollars to put a downpayment on his granddaddy’s house which his momma had sold on account of Poppa’s infirmity, Daddy called it.

  Daddy said Pinky and the bald Jeeter girl moved into the Throckmorton house in the winter of 1938 which gave rise to considerable optimism throughout Neely that come spring folks would have a Throckmorton to gape at on each end of town, and everybody concluded that would go a ways towards making the whole business more convenient and agreeable. But Daddy said spring arrived and Pinky proved out to be less accommodating than folks had hoped. He kept on at the post office like a regular Trojan, Daddy said, and nights and weekends him and the bald Mrs. Throckmorton worked over the old homeplace from top to bottom in an effort to make it respectable and maybe a little bit awesome once more. And Daddy said people were generally disappointed and fairly much appalled when summer came and went and Pinky never even strung up a hammock, but then Daddy said Pinky was not Bubba and Pinky was not Poppa either but was some of both of them and a little of something else. Of the two remaining Throckmorton heirs, Daddy said Pinky became known as “the other one” while Bubba was unanimously considered “the one who drinks,” as in “which one was it, the one who drinks or the other one?” Not that Pinky didn’t drink, Daddy said, and not that he drank less than Bubba who even in 1938 was saturated enough to steep in nothing but his own juices for a few days without risking full consciousness, but just that Pinky kept his liquor in the crook of the porch support and drank it in seclusion, which was pretty much discounted as any sort of Throckmorton-induced alcoholic dependence but was instead broadly and publicly taken as a form of polite imbibing, Daddy said.

  But Daddy said Pinky was as much his father’s son as Bubba was, only in the other direction. He said, like Poppa, Pinky had a little of the potentate in him while Bubba could only own up to a perforated stomach and the ruins of a liver, but unlike Poppa, Pinky was also blessed with a dash of Fuller which Daddy supposed might have supplied him with the determination and wherewithal, he called it, that Poppa could never quite muster in his day. So according to Daddy, Pinky wasn’t much like Bubba and wasn’t exactly like Poppa who had only talked about his regal attachments while Pinky tried to act like one, which meant he blustered, Daddy said, since that’s what Pinky assumed potentates did best. The bald Jeeter was not given to drawing attention to herself and so was not much help to Pinky where blustering was concerned, but Daddy said once Pinky had settled into the homeplace and had gotten himself promoted out of mailsorting and up to clerking only, he developed a full swagger for outdoor use, a kind of bloated lordliness, Daddy called, for the Throckmorton parlor, and his own particular way of blowing around in the post office like maybe he’d invented the envelope. Now Daddy said people generally don’t sit still for this sort of thing but they let Pinky play the big fish for awhile since most everybody figured he had a generation or two of Throckmortons to live down and so would have to truly apply himself to this potentate business if he wanted to buff up the family name even the least little bit, and anyway, Daddy said, nobody could get his fill of Pinky as long as there was a Bubba swinging between two trees in his Momma’s sideyard and clapping the empty galvanized coffee cup against the near trunk after Poppa’s example, so the sight of one Throckmorton and the recollection of another tended to dilute and generally offset any full-scale blustering undertaken by the third one. And Daddy said it got so that the worst thing anybody could say to Pinky was, “I remember your Daddy.” He said it got so that wherever Pinky was Poppa was too and whatever Pinky did Poppa had already done it, he said it got so that the faster Pinky ran and the harder he worked his arms the quicker Poppa pulled even with him. Daddy said Poppa was Pinky’s lead necktie.

  So all of the blustering and blowing around Pinky could manage simply would not get it, and Daddy imagined Pinky might have never found his niche in Throckmortondom if a peculiar set of circumstances hadn’t come along to open up whole new vistas for him. Daddy said along about six months after the bald Jeeter had delivered Pinky a daughter into the world, the Throckmortons began to have some trouble with their upstairs toilet. Nothing much would go down it, Daddy said, or anyway nothing much that went down it stayed down it and no amount of plunging on Pinky’s part could persuade the toilet to swallow any of the sorts of items it usually made off with very casually and without complaint. So Pinky called in for consultation and advice one of the few local plumbers, Mr. Casper Epps, who Daddy said did respectable work if you could find a sharp enough stick to poke him with. Now Daddy said Mr. Epps had a brother, Justin, who was a servant of Jehovah in Decatur, Georgia and recent to Pinky’s toilet problems Justin had written Casper to tell how he had constructed an entire sermon around samples of Casper’s sinfulness and personal vice, which had been received very enthusiastically by the congregation, and Daddy said since Casper had yet to amount to much otherwise he was proud to have been displayed so prominently and to have earned such a reception and consequently he took it upon himself to cultivate and catalog his shortcomings and dispatch a biweekly report to his brother so that between the two of them they might better show the congregation what transgression is all about. Casper’s plan was to work his way systematically through the seven deadly sins taking in a number of the less lethal ones along the way, and he had most recently begun to air out his slothfulness, which he was already partial to, when Pinky called him about the toilet. So they agreed to meet the following morning and Casper, of course, didn’t show up, so Pinky called him the next day and made another appointment and again Casper didn’t come, so he called him a third time, all fed up and indignant, and threatened and browbeat Casper until he had squeezed a commitment out of him for noon of the day after, and when Pinky left the post office to go home and keep the appointment he found Casper asleep in the square on one of the benches underneath the statue of Co
lonel Blalock. Pinky took hold of Casper’s collar and dragged him on home with him.

  The little Throckmorton girl was responsible for the trouble though nobody knew it yet nor would know it until Mr. Epps had unbolted the toilet and turned it upside down. The bald Jeeter had insisted they name the baby Ivy after the fat Jeeter in hopes of smoothing out relations between them which had become a little strained on account of Pinky, and Daddy said the bald Jeeter left little Ivy on the bathroom counter while she cleaned out the tub and somehow the baby got hold of a small tin of toothpowder which she accidentally dropped into the toilet bowl where it sank on out of sight and became wedged in the crook just this side of the drainoff. Daddy said Casper leaned over the bowl and peered into it and Pinky leaned over behind him and peered into it for himself, and then Casper poked the handle of the plunger as far down into the neck as it would go and Pinky took the plunger from him and poked around for himself, and then Casper lifted the lid off the tank and fiddled with some of the paraphernalia and Pinky stuck his hand in the tank too and fiddled a little for himself, and then Casper told Pinky he didn’t know just what was wrong with the toilet and Pinky told Casper he didn’t know himself. So Casper set out after his tools and Pinky made the mistake of letting him which left the Throckmortons without an upstairs toilet until the following Tuesday, when the time came for Casper to take up another vice.

  He had considered Adultery, but Daddy said Casper was not one of your more alluring plumbers and so had settled instead on what he called Shortness, which according to Daddy was mostly sharp-tongued ill-mannered rudeness with wings and had its appeal for Casper since he could be short all day without ever having to hunt up a consenting adult to be short with him. And Daddy said by Tuesday morning Casper already had two full days of discourteous behaviour under his belt and had managed to work himself up for the third day by kicking Mrs. Greenly’s schnauzer on his way to the Throckmortons, so Daddy said Casper was truly ripe and surly when he arrived at Pinky’s front door and began to beat on it with the handle of his mallet. It being midmorning, Pinky of course had long since gone off to his seat at the stamp window and the bald Jeeter was well underway with her housework which she usually performed skin-headed leaving a wig on Pinky’s hatrack by the door so she might have it handy in case of a caller, but Daddy said Casper gave the front door such a thrashing with his mallet handle that Mrs. Throckmorton thought maybe the house was on fire, or all her relatives had fallen over dead, so she tore through the parlor and into the front hallway and Daddy said she had already swung the front door partway open when she recollected her hairlessness and plucked the chestnut wig off the hatrack and slapped it onto her head as best she could. And according to Daddy, Casper had crossed the threshold and gotten himself into the house before Mrs. Throckmorton had the chance to be thoroughly disappointed, and he had started on up the staircase, Daddy said, when he turned his head ever so slightly and told her, “I come to fix your toilet.” Then he stomped on up three more steps before he stopped cold, Daddy said, and brought himself full around to face Mrs. Throckmorton who he treated to nearly an entire minute of genuine chicken-necked gawking, Daddy called it, before he reeled in his jaw enough to say, “Your hair’s crooked.” And Daddy said Mrs. Throckmorton got this kind of sour stomach grin on her face and her right hand sort of drifted up into the vicinity of her hairpiece and felt all around it until she got hold of the bun over her left ear and gave the whole business a quarter turn towards the backside, which pretty much set things to rights, Daddy said, or at least satisfied Mr. Epps who stomped on up the rest of the staircase and into the bathroom.

  Pinky came on home once the bald Jeeter had wailed at him over the telephone and told him how the plumber had blown into the house like Attila himself, but before Pinky could get so far as the stairwell Casper had already drawn the water off the toilet, unbolted the thing from the floor, and extracted the toothpowder tin from the neck of it; however, along about when he was resetting it over the drainhole he saw the opportunity for some active sinning and began pouring all of his resources into coveting Pinky’s brass lavatory taps which proved to be such a taxing endeavor that he lost his hold on the commode and it fell over directly atop the wooden toilet seat snapping it cleanly in two. So by the time Pinky arrived in the upstairs Casper was already holding the piece of broken toilet seat under his nose and eyeing it like maybe it had come off some antique upright creature and he couldn’t figure from just exactly what part. And Daddy said even before Pinky could haul himself into the bathroom proper and park his bulk up against the vanity or the towel rack, which Daddy said Pinky was inclined to do since he did not possess the usual lean and wiry Throckmorton frame but had constructed for himself a modified and overblown variation of it that called for buttresses and cross braces whenever they were available, and Daddy said even before Pinky could take some relief against the edge of the door on his way to the vanity or the towel rack, Casper shook the detached piece of toilet seat at him and made a noise in his throat that started out very much like articulate English but went axle deep and became snared in something Casper had to dredge up and evacuate into the toilet bowl, which was very handy though still waterless, before he could tell Pinky just what it was he wanted to tell him, which he did not get around to until he’d wiped his mouth three or four times with the back of his hand and which, even then, didn’t turn out to be anything but, “You know what?” followed by a most impressive tattoo, Daddy called it, that Casper played on the commode porcelain with the broken piece of toilet seat.

  And Daddy said Pinky situated himself against the overhang of the vanity counter and crossed his arms in front of him. “What?” he said.

  “Your wife’s bald,” Casper told him, “and I broke your toilet seat.” And Daddy said Casper handed the piece of wooden ring to Pinky so maybe he could see for himself it was far enough away from the hinged section on the commode not to be a part of it any longer.

  And Pinky examined what piece of the seat Casper had handed to him before setting it on the counter beside him and crossing his arms again. “I know,” he said. “How’d it happen?”

  And Daddy said Casper didn’t answer directly but repositioned the toilet over the drainhole and tightened it down with a wrench. Then he hooked the waterline back into the underside of the tank and began to collect his tools together but still didn’t offer Pinky any sort of response until Pinky asked him again, “How’d it happen?” and Casper brought himself to his feet, snatched up his toolbox, and said, “I ain’t got no call to know how it happened. Maybe she was born that way.” And Daddy said Pinky sort of lifted his face and blew a breath towards the overhead light.

  They reached an agreement about the toilet seat, Daddy said, so Pinky didn’t commence proceedings against Casper right off, probably did not know he was going to commence proceedings against him since he had never commenced proceedings against anyone before and so as of yet had no way of knowing jurisprudence would lay claim to him and be his calling just as recklessness and bravado had laid claim to his daddy. Casper agreed to order the toilet seat from an outfit in Atlanta and replace it for nothing if Pinky would sand it and stain and varnish it on his own, but Daddy said Pinky found this sort of arrangement entirely unacceptable at first since he’d had no hand in the destruction of the toilet seat and saw no reason for him to have a hand in the replacement of it, so by way of compromise Casper told Pinky he could take his toilet seat and go straight to the devil with it, which set Pinky to reconsidering the initial offer since as of yet he did not possess the proper spine for hard bargaining but was only capable of all variety of indignant noises with which he entertained Casper for a day or two before deciding that the first arrangement was not so entirely unacceptable after all. So they reached an agreement about the toilet seat, Daddy said, and Casper told Pinky he’d go ahead and order it, but Daddy said riotous and sinful living was certainly no sidelight and consequently didn’t leave Casper much time to conduct himself like a regular busines
sman, so the outfit in Atlanta did not hear from Casper Epps right off and understandably, Daddy said, did not up and dispatch any sort of toilet covering towards Neely on its own, which meant that Pinky, even after he waited what he considered to be a reasonable amount of time, could never discover a commode ring addressed to Casper Epps from Atlanta in the back of any mailtruck or in the bottom of any mailsack or in any dark and neglected corner of the post office itself.

  So the toilet seat never got so far as Neely, never got so far as out of Atlanta, and probably would have never arrived at all if Pinky hadn’t happened to run up on Casper at Mr. Bill Castleberry’s Leaf Market Dinette and Cafeteria adjacent to the warehouse and just around the corner from the square. Casper was attempting to hone up his gluttony on the fillet of sole which was always the chef’s choice on Tuesdays unless the truck got waylaid in Greensboro which would leave the chef to choose between the chopped hamburger steak and grilled weiner with navy beans, but the fillet of sole had turned out to be a little fishier than Casper generally preferred and so caused him to attempt to gorge himself on a helping of boiled potatoes, a sprig of parsley, two lemon slices, and a dribble of cole slaw, which Daddy said was the sort of meal a good Roman might sneer at and inhale but which Casper was forced to consider a gluttonous repast, Daddy called it, since he couldn’t get the fillet of sole beyond his nose and Mr. Castleberry had run out of lemon pie. So Casper was gnawing on the parsley stem and trying to look bloated when Pinky sat down beside him at the counter and began to tell him how shameful it was that a big toilet seat conglomerate like that outfit in Atlanta couldn’t get their orders out in any reasonable amount of time. He said people like him and Casper shouldn’t have to hold up their dealings just because some fiddleheaded shipping clerk in Georgia was as slow as Christmas and he asked Casper if he knew what it was like to have to bolt into the downstairs everytime nature beckoned in the night, and when Casper didn’t even venture an honest guess, Pinky said to him, “It’s no treat, I’ll tell you, it’s no treat at all,” and then he went on as to how he might just write a letter to Atlanta, as to how he might just make enough trouble to get that toilet seat for nothing. And Daddy said Casper put both elbows on the lunch counter and extracted the remains of parsley stem from his mouth. Then he turned around just enough to see Pinky with his near eye and said, “What toilet seat?”