A Short History of a Small Place Read online

  Of course Pinky blew up, Daddy said, but he blew up in stages and the first one was the quietest of the bunch. Daddy said Pinky just leaned himself towards Casper and put his face up next to Casper’s face and sort of whispered in the general direction of Casper’s ear, “What toilet seat? What toilet seat?” Then he moved on to stage two, Daddy said, which was very much like stage one only louder and led directly into stage three, which was also like stages one and two except for the pounding on the countertop that Pinky used to punctuate himself everytime he said “toilet” and every time he said “seat.” Daddy said the explosion, such as it was, built towards and culminated in stage four, which saw Pinky rise up from his stool and stalk all the way out onto the sidewalk and then back inside again to the lunch counter, which he beat on four times hard with both fists and screamed at Casper, “WHAT TOILET SEAT!” and Daddy said everybody in Mr. Castleberry’s dinette who had not left off eating previously left off eating now and the cook himself looked out from the kitchen through the slot in the wall and overtop two orders of tuna salad.

  Daddy said Mr. Castleberry’s Dinette and Cafeteria was in what folks call the grip of dead silence, except, that is, for the sound of Pinky’s fingertips against the formica countertop, which he was playing like a snare drum and continued to play entirely throughout what Daddy said folks call the anxious moments, and Daddy said the quieter and stiller things got, the louder Pinky drummed his fingers so as to provide a way for any excess of passion and sheer hot-headedness to seep off from him and thereby prevent the risk of instantaneous human combustion which Daddy said Pinky had heard of and wished to avoid.

  Daddy said the whole scene could have been played out in a very grand and dramatic fashion if only Casper had taken notice of the grip of dead silence and the anxious moments and had consequently allowed himself to get caught up in the feeling of the thing, but Daddy said Casper was not one of your regular dramatis personae and so just slouched against the countertop on his elbows and gnashed at the parsley stem. And Daddy said even after Casper had gotten his fill of parsley and had flicked the mangled stem onto his plate he didn’t seize upon the opportunity before him to launch some sort of poetical barb in Pinky’s direction but simply settled for, “Funny thing about that toilet seat—slipped my mind completely.” And Daddy said all the patrons along with Mr. Castleberry and the dishwashers and the cook and Mr. Castleberry’s girl, June, all of them together took a breath and held it and watched Pinky to see how he would blow up this time, and as for himself Pinky leaned in towards Casper and put his face up next to Casper’s face and sort of whispered in the general direction of Casper’s ear, “Slipped your mind? Slipped your mind?” and then he repeated himself three or four times, pounding on the counter every time he said “slipped” and every time he said “mind,” and of course, Daddy said, folks were already watching the door before Pinky ever made a move to stalk out it onto the sidewalk, and they were already watching the counter before he ever arrived back at it and hammered away on the formica with his fists while screaming at Casper, “SLIPPED YOUR MIND!” So Daddy said Pinky was not much of an innovator in his own right and him and Casper together would probably have made a dreary mess out of the whole production if Casper had not taken a few moments to ponder his predicament and decided he’d be proud he’d been slothful and so kill two birds at once. Consequently, Daddy said, the harder Pinky pounded on the countertop and the louder he hollered at Casper, the taller Casper got on the barstool and the more he drew back at the shoulders until, Daddy said, he began to look more like a rooster than a plumber, and as the patrons reported it later, it seemed that Mr. Epps was on the verge of having the sugar dispenser forcibly introduced into one of his upraised noseholes when he made his exit, and Daddy said everybody who saw it or even heard about it agreed it was a very fine exit, the sort of exit that should not be tampered with and could not be improved upon in this life or any other, and Daddy said it very possibly saved Casper from all grades of violence and certainly pardoned him for having previously squandered the grip of dead silence and a full sixty seconds worth of anxious moments.

  He didn’t stand up exactly, Daddy said, he just sort of rose from the barstool like a wisp of smoke and then lingered very casually at the counter digging through his trouser pockets with Pinky in his face raining abuse all over him, Daddy said, and generally threatening to do all sorts of damage to Casper’s person if he didn’t soon enough find himself perched atop his upstairs toilet with a varnished wooden ring between his posterior and the porcelain. Daddy said Pinky beat his fist on the countertop and then shook it under Casper’s nose and then beat it on the countertop again while Casper, for his part, continued to poke around in his pockets from which he extracted an ink pen, two folded pieces of paper, one set of keys on a steel ring, a buckeye, a three-bladed knife, and several pennies before he finally dredged up the nickel he’d been after and slipped it under the edge of his plate for Mr. Castleberry’s girl, June. And even then he didn’t light out for the sidewalk like everybody thought he would but just emptied his hands back into his pockets and left them there and stood quietly by while Pinky delivered himself of his latest dose of outrage and indignation. And Daddy said once Pinky had run down and momentarily fallen silent, Casper freed one of his hands and scratched the top of his head with it before seizing upon the opportunity to speak himself. “Mr. Throckmorton,” he said, “don’t get the fish.” Then he was out the door and gone, and Daddy said it was the grip of dead silence all over again until Pinky had regrouped and recovered enough to clear out himself in what Daddy said folks call a huff.

  And still Pinky did not commence proceedings, probably still did not know he was going to commence proceedings since he still had not ever commenced proceedings before and so had yet to feel the tug of jurisprudence at his heartstrings. Instead Pinky did Casper the favor of writing a letter to the toilet seat outfit in Atlanta and also did him the favor of signing his name to it and mailing it off, and Daddy said hardly two weeks had gone by since the high drama at Mr. Castleberry’s Dinette and Cafeteria when the boxed-up toilet seat passed through the post office on its way on out towards Casper’s digs, Daddy called it, and Pinky took leave from the stamp window long enough to hunt up Casper himself who, all reports indicated, had been lurking around Colonel Blalock’s feet for the better part of the morning.

  When Pinky found him, Casper had just finished up a lively exchange with Commander Jack Tuttle in the shade of the colonel’s left flank. The commander had climbed in on Mrs. Tuttle’s side of the bed the night previous and so had inadvertently forgotten to get his watch off her nightstand when he left for work come morning, and what the commander wanted to know from Casper was the time of day. Now Casper had already been wrestling with his angel for near a month and a half and had probably taken it down for the three count on several occasions, so Daddy said he was steadily becoming the closest thing to a regular infidel any Neelyite had ever been exposed to. His mind was increasingly sharp and sinful, and whereas he’d once had to ponder and decide on each separate transgression, he’d since come to rely on his instincts to cart him off into the darkness on their own. Consequently, when Commander Jack Tuttle caught up with him at the colonel’s flank and said to him, “Casper, you know what time it is?” Casper saw right off that here was the opportunity for some Lying, some Taking of the Lord’s Name in Vain, and some serious Shortness all at once, and almost before he could look at his watch he said, “Well hell yes goddam it. It’s two forty-five,” and the commander, being an undertaker and therefore accustomed to all variety of ill treatment, thanked Casper most hardily and went off towards the post office, where, by the clock over the portico, it was very nearly three-thirty.

  Commander Jack met up with Pinky in the post office doorway and the commander pulled up short like maybe he was inclined to exchange a word or two or hold a brief rivet seminar on Pinky’s behalf, but Pinky just told him, “Make yourself small,” and squeezed on by to the outside and hu
stled himself on down the steps and across the street towards Colonel Blalock. Casper did not exactly see Pinky coming but heard the footsteps and turned around only after Pinky had snatched up a handful of his shirtcollar so he could draw Casper right on up into his face. “Your toilet seat,” he said, “my toilet seat,” he said, “just passed through the post office and I want you to bring it out to the house this afternoon. Do you understand? This afternoon.”

  And with his nose hard up against Pinky’s nose and his eyes just level with Pinky’s eyes, Casper opened his mouth and said, “Well hell yes goddam it. I will.”

  So Casper went home directly, Daddy said, threw the boxed-up toilet seat into the back of his truck, and then proceeded to ride it all around Neely and into the reaches of the county for the best part of a week without ever once getting near enough to Pinky’s driveway to spit at it. But still Pinky didn’t commence proceedings, though Daddy assumed he was probably getting the inkling that he might, and through the weekend and on into the next week the toilet seat continued its open-air tour of the county until the following Wednesday when it disappeared altogether along with the truck and along with the plumber Mr. Casper Epps. However, Daddy said, Pinky didn’t know right off that the toilet seat was gone or that the truck was gone or that the plumber Mr. Casper Epps was gone either but just supposed that the three of them together might have grown a little travel weary and so parked themselves for a spell. Consequently, Pinky took his lunch hour Friday to ride on out to Casper’s digs, Daddy said, and see if he couldn’t come away with his toilet seat, but the truck was not in the driveway and, as Pinky found out from Uncle Bill Collier, Casper was not in the state. He had received a letter from his brother Justin in Decatur who, along with his congregation, had become gravely concerned over the increasing volume of Casper’s bi-weekly reports and so had planned and organized a redemption festival in Casper’s honor which had set in on Thursday evening with a pot luck supper, would pick up again on Friday night with an hour of scripture study followed by coffee and sweetrolls, and was scheduled to climax and conclude on Saturday with a successful redemption sometime between eleven and twelve of the morning and the accompanying picnic and softball game at the Decatur Sertoma part in the afternoon. So Casper was not at home and would very possibly not be home until Monday morning, and Uncle Bill Collier told Pinky he was entirely convinced that the Casper Epps who rolled into Neely on Monday would not be the same Casper Epps who set out for Decatur on Thursday. And Uncle Bill went on to tell Pinky how he thought redemption was a fine thing, and he said he would have liked to have a share of it for himself and probably would have if not for the bladder ailment that prevented him from taking any long trips, and Uncle Bill asked Pinky if he wouldn’t like to be redeemed every now and again himself, but Pinky didn’t say anything back since he had stopped listening to Uncle Bill a long time before Uncle Bill had stopped talking. Pinky had all he could handle in trying to accept the fact that his toilet seat had actually gone back to Georgia and so could not have been expected to listen and be disgusted at the same time.

  And Daddy said now Pinky commenced proceedings, or anyway tried to commence proceedings on his way back to the post office, but since the Neely courthouse is and has always been what Daddy called half land-deep depository and half jail, there was no district judge for Pinky to see and no circuit judge and no clerk of court and no courtroom even but only Mr. Earl Jemison’s brother Maury, who held hours as the justice of the peace in the afternoons and who told Pinky he’d be more than happy to unite Casper and him in holy wedlock but couldn’t do much in the way of settling the toilet seat dilemma. So on Monday Pinky took the entire day off from the stamp window and traveled to the county seat of Eden where he officially filed against Mr. Casper Epps, plumber, for failure to deliver one unsanded, unstained, unlacquered wooden toilet ring and bowl cover unit after having agreed to provide aforementioned toilet implementa by way of a binding verbal contract entered into by Mr. Casper Epps, plumber, with Mr. Braxton Porter Throckmorton III, plaintiff, and duly witnessed by the spouse of the plaintiff, Mrs. Braxton Porter Throckmorton III (née Jeeter, Daddy said).

  So Daddy said by the time Casper Epps got back to Neely on Monday he was already party to a legal action and didn’t even know it, but then Uncle Bill had predicted things pretty much square on and the ill-mannered, irreverent, altogether human plumber who had set out for Decatur on Thursday never came back to Neely, and instead we got what Daddy called the thirteenth apostle, who looked like Casper Epps, drove Casper Epps’s truck, and lived in Casper Epps’s digs but was not hardly the same Casper Epps all of Neely had grown to abide and put up with. In other words, Daddy said, the redemption had taken, and what was once essentially Casper Epps must have drifted on up to a loftier plain since, as Daddy saw it, there was certainly not much of him left on the one where his feet were. So it really didn’t matter that Pinky had commenced proceedings against Casper since even when Uncle Bill heard about it downtown and, his bladder ailment notwithstanding, went at a jogtrot all the way home and burst into the kitchen, where he found Casper sitting at the table gazing off into the empty spaces with his mouth all fixed and stretched out of shape into the sort of grin that Daddy said was appreciably more idiotic than angelic, and yelled out to him on his way down the back the hallway to the bathroom, “Pinky Throckmorton’s done sued you,” Casper Epps, who did not respond until Uncle Bill Collier showed up in the kitchen again, said only, “Bless him,” and grinned a little more stupidly off towards the cupboards.

  So when the deputy delivered the court summons Casper had him on into the front room for coffee and talked to him at some length about the Saviour who Casper called just plain Jesus now without the H. Christ tacked onto the end of it, and when the deputy finally managed to get himself outside again, Casper thanked him for coming, blessed him too, and then deposited the court summons in an endtable drawer without ever so much as unfolding it to see what it looked like. Daddy said consequently when the suit came up in the honorable K. Benjamin Mortenson’s courtroom two weeks following, Pinky was at the plaintiff’s table with a notepad full of accusations, and Mrs. Bald Jeeter Throckmorton, in her brunette wig and a comely blue dress, had taken the bench behind him along with her sister the fat Jeeter with who Pinky and his wife had managed to patch up relations and who held little Ivy in her arms and cooed at her. The rest of the gallery was about half full of idle and otherwise unemployed Neelyites.

  The stenographer came in and sat down at her table just before ten o’clock and then the bailiff announced Judge Mortenson himself, who clamored up onto the bench blowing and spewing like a stuck whale, Daddy said, and who called for the principals in the Epps/Throckmorton suit to approach him there, which got him only the plaintiff since the defendant still had not arrived, and Daddy said the plaintiff and the judge conversed for a minute or two in very low voices until Pinky became of a sudden what Daddy called wildly bombastic and waved his arms in the air and stomped up and down in front of the bench saying, “It’s always like this. I tell you the man’s no-count, entirely no-count,” and Daddy said Judge Mortenson asked Pinky to be quiet but Pinky kept on, so the judge tried to hammer him back to order with his gavel but Pinky still wouldn’t shut up, so the judge commenced rapping his gavel once at the end of each outburst and fining Pinky a dollar for it, and Daddy said before the bald Jeeter could get to the bench and bring Pinky back under control he’d run up a tab of six dollars and fifty cents for six complete outbursts and one partial one.

  Judge Mortenson sent a pair of bailiffs after Casper and shuffled the agenda some so he could get the whole Epps/Throckmorton business out of the way by the end of the afternoon. So Pinky took up his notepad full of accusations and surrendered the table to the next plaintiff. All the Jeeters and Jeeter-Throckmortons went to get an early lunch in a diner across the street and everybody ate a sound meal but the bald Jeeter who had taken little Ivy into her lap so as to prevent her from getting caught between the fat Jeete
r and her plate, and then they all migrated on back to the courthouse where there was still no Casper Epps, even after the stenographer had sat down at her table once more and the bailiff had announced Judge Mortenson who hauled himself back up onto the bench and settled in there again, but before he could finish laying his papers and official documents out in front of him one of the back doors flew open and the two bailiffs that had been sent off earlier hustled Casper Epps up the aisle between them and deposited him at the defendants table, where he sat quietly with his hands clasped in front of him and treated Judge Mortenson to the same idiotic grin he had used on the cupboards. And Daddy said eventually the judge looked out from under his eyebrows at Casper and asked him, “Where’ve you been, Mr. Epps,” and without ever not grinning even for a portion of a second Casper said back to him, “Your honor, I’ve been mired in sin,” and Daddy said the judge looked at Pinky and Pinky looked at the judge and the two of them shrugged at each other.