A Short History of a Small Place Page 5

  But Daddy said Mr. Pettigrew made up for his indiscretions once the war ended. Daddy said we needed him then, Neely needed him because folks were weary and fairly down-trodden and it would take a Mr. Pettigrew to pick them up again. So Daddy said the citizens of Neely did the only thing they could do: they made him mayor. There was no campaigning, there was not even an election. It was all very proper and fitting to the occasion and the candidate, Daddy said. The town council invited Mr. Pettigrew to become mayor and he accepted their invitation. Daddy said Buddy MacElrath was mayor of Neely at the end of the war and was very contented with his position, but he gave it up, Daddy said, gave it up without a whimper because he saw that it wasn’t a matter of politics but a matter of morale, of what Daddy called spiritual necessity. Neely didn’t need a mayor in 1945. It needed a beacon, Daddy said. And Mr. Pettigrew, with his fortune and his mansion and his heritage, was more than prominent enough for the citizens of Neely to take a heading from. Daddy said Wallace Amory jr. stunk of his daddy’s success and his daddy’s money and his daddy’s ambition, and he said it gave the people of Neely a healthy kick in the pants to point to Mayor Pettigrew and say, “That man represents us.”

  Consequently, it didn’t matter that Mayor Pettigrew was a piddler since there was really nothing a mayor did that couldn’t be piddled through, except maybe presiding over commencements and openings, and Daddy said folks figured that if Mayor Pettigrew could handle a golden shovel he could manage well enough with a pair of scissors and a ribbon. So people couldn’t have known what they started when they invited Wallace Amory Pettigrew to become mayor. They couldn’t even have suspected that the job would catch fire with him. Momma said they were all surprised. Daddy said they were astounded and that he’d never seen a man so ripe with zeal, he called it.

  There was a time in Neely when the mayor was treated to a swearing-in dance at legion hall #33, but Wallace Amory jr. changed all of that. He and Miss Pettigrew gave an inaugural ball at the Pettigrew mansion where they served exotic canapes and authentic French champagne in crystal glasses. Momma and Daddy went and Momma said it was exceedingly glorious. Daddy said yes, Mayor Pettigrew did indeed dance divinely and did indeed make delightful conversation. A photographer from the Chronicle was present, and a half dozen of his pictures appeared on the “Social Sidelights” page of the Sunday edition. There was one of all the councilmen and their wives. One of the Presbyterian minister Mr. Holroyd with his mouth full of pate. Two of the dance floor taken from up on the balcony. One of the mayor shaking hands with a man who was obliterated from the knees up by what Momma said was the knobby part of her shoulder. And one of Wallace Amory jr. and Miss Myra Angelique waltzing which carried the caption “Mayor and Sister cut the shine.”

  Daddy said this was the sort of thing we wanted from our new mayor—idle pleasure, extravagance, simply something to point towards. But he said the office had a horrible and unexpected effect upon Wallace Amory jr.: it made him a politician. According to Daddy, nobody had imagined there was a politician inside of Wallace Amory waiting to get out. But there was, Daddy said. And it got out, Daddy said. He said the mayor made two speeches right off that seemed to put his career on the wing, one to the Ladies Garden Society and the other to the Neely chapter of the D.A.R. Each address was received with a riotous ovation which the mayor attributed to his political bravado, but Momma said the ladies were most likely applauding his beauty, his grace, and his fine tailored suit. She imagined very few of them had even heard the mayor. It seems he had been talking water bonds.

  And that’s the way it went, Daddy said. Wallace Amory would give a politician’s speech and get a Pettigrew’s reception. He got up before the Methodist Men’s Association, and the Neely Cotillion, and the Rotary Club, and the Businessmen’s Council and was uniformly met with wild enthusiasm, which Daddy said was nothing more than overblown courtesy but which the mayor took to calling his “endorsement by the good people of this fine community.” And Daddy said Wallace Amory jr. became almost entirely unbearable. He said Neely wanted a mayor who made delightful conversation and danced divinely, not a political advocate. But Wallace Amory was burning to be an advocate, Daddy said, and he did not want to be delightful or divine, just earnest, deadly earnest. Daddy said it got to where the mayor would not talk anything but what he called Brass Tacks. Folks just have to tighten their belts, he would say. We have to take the good with the bad, he would say. The little man can’t hardly make it, he would say. Prosperity is just around the corner, he would say. Daddy said the mayor had grown particularly fond of this last one and could make it ring most impressively.

  So he went off to Raleigh and represented us at conferences and political gatherings of every sort, and Daddy said the Chronicle would frequently run photographs of the mayor holding forth on taxes or leash laws or what Daddy called the general proximity of prosperity. And sometimes him and Momma would discover Wallace Amory jr. and Miss Pettigrew on the inside of the Greensboro Daily News where they had been caught posing at a fund-raising dinner or taking the dance floor at a political ball. Momma said Miss Pettigrew made a radiant picture, but the mayor always looked a little bothered. Daddy called that Wallace Amory’s camera face. He said it wasn’t exactly “bothered” the mayor was after but something more like “upstanding” or “concerned.” Daddy said it was just the mayor’s way of wearing his civic conscience between his ears so as to get it into the picture.

  Of course we elected him to a second term of office. Momma said it was the decent thing to do, and Daddy said it was merely a serving up of justice, the only proper answer to the mayor having campaigned so untiringly throughout the four years of his first term; according to Daddy the natives of Neely are blessed with a keen sense of this sort of even-handedness. So the mayor got his second endorsement by the good people of this fine community and Daddy said he did a remarkable thing, probably by way of celebration: he bought Miss Myra Angelique a monkey. Momma said she didn’t know Miss Pettigrew was lonesome for a pet and she didn’t imagine Miss Myra Angelique had ever expressed a desire for a monkey, but Daddy said it could have happened one evening when the mayor came home to the supper table after a long day of belt tightening and taking the good with the bad. He supposed Miss Pettigrew might have leaned over the sugar bowl and said, “Mayor,” which Daddy said was all she ever called him anymore, “I’d be pleased to have a chimpanzee.” And Daddy supposed the mayor frumped himself up a little and muddied his expression some and said, “Sister darling, your chimpanzee is just around the corner.”

  “Louis!” Momma said. Daddy was hardly ever a very big hit with Momma.

  We had never had a monkey in Neely before Miss Pettigrew got hers and the only one we had after was a fit-in-the-palm-of-your-hand monkey that Jimmy Roach and two of his brothers ordered out of the back of a comic book, and it wasn’t but two days and about four dozen palms later when that one gave up the ghost and had to be buried in a legal envelope in the Roaches’ backyard. Miss Pettigrew’s was a legitimate monkey-sized monkey right from the start and Daddy said it arrived in the front seat of a station wagon, uncaged and diapered. The mayor had a flagpole erected on his front lawn for it to climb on and hard by the sidewalk he staked a tether that would allow that creature to wander most anywhere inside the iron fence. Daddy said at first they called it Junious after a cousin of theirs, but later on, when they’d bought it a blazer and a plaid sportcoat and a porkpie hat and had discovered it had no love for trousers, they called it, Mr. Britches since they were the only things it was without.

  Daddy said most folks in Neely had never seen a monkey before, so anytime the mayor or Miss Pettigrew turned it out of the house, an audience would collect against the fence. Of course, Daddy said, you always got the mayor along with the monkey, and the one of them would squat on the knob atop the flagpole and pick at himself while the other paced the lawn and talked issues. That was just the price of curiosity, Daddy said.

  Politically, Miss Pettigrew’s monkey turned o
ut to be quite an asset for the mayor. He was no longer very engaging on his own, but Mr. Britches made him a human interest story and he got his picture in scores of newspapers and a couple of national magazines, which Daddy said was somewhat unfortunate for Neely since the mayor always looked a little foolish with his troubled expression and his arms full of chimpanzee. But Daddy said all it took was that monkey, and the mayor became what Daddy called a figure. He got his notoriety on the coattails of an ape, Daddy would say, and Momma said where we used to see pictures of the mayor with just Miss Pettigrew or just Mr. Britches, it got so that he’d show up in a crowd of senators, or with one arm around the lieutenant governor, or in the general company of the governor himself.

  Then Mr. Nance came into the picture, and I mean actually into the picture right between Miss Pettigrew and the mayor and usually with one hand on the back of Miss Pettigrew’s neck and the other latched onto the mayor’s shoulder. But it wasn’t that way right off, Momma said. She said her and Daddy first picked out Mr. Nance in the Daily News. He was off to one side of the governor along with Mayor Pettigrew and the caption made him out to be a “Notable Democrat.” Then he showed up in the Chronicle, just him and the mayor, and Momma said they were eating sociables and smirking at each other; the Chronicle called this “having a confab.” Momma said after that Miss Pettigrew got in on the act and her and Mr. Nance would get caught having confabs of their own or taking a turn on the dance floor or posing with congressmen’s wives or congressmen themselves, and then it was the mayor on one side, Miss Myra Angelique on the other, and Mr. Nance in between attached to Miss Pettigrew’s neck and to the mayor’s shoulder.

  He had been named Alton after his father and Daniel after his father’s brother, and Daddy said what people didn’t call him Mister knew him as A.D. or Addie Nance. He was what Daddy called a cookie magnate, or anyway his daddy had been a cookie magnate and he had inherited the rewards of his daddy’s ambition and perseverance, though he personally had no more of a hand in the manufacture of cookies than did the mayor in the construction of buildings. Daddy said he used his money to buy influence and used his influence to tinker with politicians, not dishonestly, Daddy said, since there was no official who could give him anything he couldn’t get for himself, but just as a means of whiling away the hours. So he helped get some folks into office and he helped get some folks out of office and he earned himself the title “Notable Democrat.” Daddy said he was a slimy individual. Momma didn’t know about that, but she was convinced he made the best shortbread cakes and cream-filled savannahs she’d ever tasted.

  Mr. Alton Nance and rumors of the mayor’s candidacy arrived in Neely about the same time. The rumors came on the wind, Daddy said, but Mr. Nance was a little more stylish about it and hit town in a 1928 Ford Deluxe Phaeton with fender skirts. Daddy said it was in the most remarkable condition for a car of that vintage. According to Momma we were supposing governor or at least senator and were a shade disappointed when it turned out that the mayor was after nothing more than a seat in Congress; we’d just assumed he was no longer capable of modesty and caution, Daddy said.

  As far as Momma was concerned, Mr. Nance was not a particularly handsome gentleman. She found him too squat and pasty-faced and said he did not look at all rich, just unhealthy. Daddy stuck with slimy, so he was a little more shocked than Momma when Mr. Nance and Miss Pettigrew began keeping company. Actually, it started out with the three of them climbing into Mr. Nance’s Phaeton and going to a show in Greensboro or to dinner in Winston-Salem or traveling all the way to Raleigh for some sort of political hubbub or another. Then the mayor merely withdrew his attendance, so it was really more that he left off with his company than they started keeping each other’s. But there was talk anyway, Momma said, talk that Miss Pettigrew was finally getting herself a husband who was as wealthy and as prominent as she was if only half as handsome, and talk of the mayor’s candidacy for one of the seventh-district seats, which he still had yet to officially announce but for which he had already begun to circulate lapel buttons and fliers.

  Daddy said it all looked fine. It all looked proper. However, it was not fine and proper, he said, but rotten underneath like an apple that seems ripe and shiny enough on the outside but turns out to be brown and mealy when you bite into it. Daddy said Mr. Nance did not want to get married; he already was, to a woman who was paid astounding sums of money to remain what Daddy called invisible. That was the first problem, he said. The second was that the mayor alone knew it. Daddy said it was probably the appeal of glory and fame and power, touched with a little of boredom, that did away with the mayor’s good judgement, which was no excuse but was certainly a reason. So when Mr. Nance agreed to give the mayor a seat in Congress (which was, after all, what he was doing) and when he made the mistake of supposing that the mayor could give him in return something finally he could not purchase, Daddy said it was somewhat understandable that the mayor made the mistake of supposing so too.

  And it was a mistake, Daddy said, a tremendous miscalculation on the mayor’s part, and it ruined him, ruined him altogether. The mayor’s end of the bargain came due on a very warm, still night in Neely, and Momma said half the town was out in shirtsleeves making aimless excursions along the boulevard or lounging on porches in the dark. She said the silence was amazing and had a kind of hum to it, and Momma imagined that if a town can seem secure and contented then that’s what Neely seemed. Daddy said both wings of the Pettigrew house were all lit up and Mr. Nance’s car was parked alongside the curbing out front, which Daddy said was natural and reassuring, him being considered a suitor and the object of Miss Pettigrew’s happiness. And he said folks were wandering back and forth in front of the Pettigrew house with some regularity, a few of them pausing to admire the inside of Mr. Nance’s car but the better part of them just lingering along the fence and seeing what they could of luxury and grandeur through the Pettigrews’ milky window sheers.

  Then Miss Myra Angelique screamed, Daddy said, and the people on the sidewalk out front of the Pettigrew house gaped at each other and the people on nearby avenues and porches caught up their breath and looked out into the darkness. And then Miss Pettigrew screamed again. Daddy said it was not the sort of wild and frantic screeching you’d expect from a woman but more along the lines of a high-pitched moan. It was wordless, he said, and brief and despairing. Momma said folks dashed for the boulevard from all over Neely since even those who hadn’t heard the outcry firsthand had already heard about it, and she imagined there were two or three dozen in attendance along the fence when Miss Pettigrew said, “I will not!” in a voice that was still high-pitched and somewhat mournful but a little more wild and a little more frantic. Daddy said the mayor tried to calm her down, or anyway that’s what people supposed since they could hear the drone of the mayor’s voice but could not exactly decipher any sense from it. Then Miss Pettigrew said, “NO!” and she was howling, Daddy said, and he said the mayor’s voice came in again right behind hers, not soothing now but what Daddy called plaintive and more than a little frantic itself. But the mayor left off, Daddy said, when Miss Pettigrew broke in and wailed at him, “NO NO NO NO NO!” in a most frightful and wholly uncontained way.

  That’s when Mr. Nance snuck away, Momma said, or at least that’s when folks first noticed him coming out from around the backside of the house and making for his car. Momma said he didn’t speak to anyone, didn’t even look anybody in the face, but just slipped into the frontseat and drove off. She said he was nearly four blocks from the house before he finally cut the headlights on. And then the Pettigrews’ front door flew open, Daddy said, and the mayor came backing out onto the porch with his forearms drawn up in front of his face and Miss Myra Angelique flailing and slapping at him with her open hands and driving him across the planking and onto the concrete steps. She was sobbing, Daddy said, and making noises like words but not words themselves, and he said that Mr. Britches came through the doorway behind them, turned his gums pinkside out, hoo
ted once, and then bolted across the porch on his knuckles, cleared the bannister, and slipped off into the night.

  Then Miss Myra Angelique went back inside, shut the door, and latched it behind her, and Daddy said the mayor stood on the walkway with his hands in his pockets and looked up at the stars and at a little piece of moon overhead. Daddy didn’t imagine the mayor knew he’d collected a regular gallery against the fence, but he said Wallace Amory didn’t even twitch when somebody called out from the crowd and said, “Mayor, your monkey’s done run off.”

  The mayor just looked at the moon and the stars and he rattled a set of keys in his pocket and said, “Oh?”

  Momma said that was the beginning of the end. Daddy said that was the end. And I suppose Daddy was onto it this time since nothing much else came along to advance the drama any. Miss Pettigrew, of course, did not marry Mr. Nance and, to the best of Momma’s knowledge, did not ever speak of him again—not even in derision. The mayor, of course, did not run for Congress and, to the best of Daddy’s knowledge, did not ever again speak of having intended to run—not even to folks wearing his likeness on lapel buttons. And Mr. Britches, of course, did not know enough about chickens to stay out of a henhouse and the chickens did not care to know enough about a sportcoated monkey to tolerate the visit agreeably, so he was thrilled to be rescued and returned home.