Solemn (26 page)

“In the Delta,” ‘Walter' said when he called back. “Ain't nobody covered it yet.”

“Kinda far to drive,” Redvine said.

“Naw, just a little bit west and north,” ‘Walter' said. “You get there, it's yours.”

So the next little black thing come into the house was a cell phone. Bev thought it was a remote control, so fat it was. Boost Mobile—just a little contract for Redvine to sign at one of ‘Walter's' friend's shops in town. It was essential if he was going on the road; so ‘Walter' said. Went good with the phone at home now, if he was gonna be out on the road away from Bev and Solemn. It took just two days of Solemn staring at Singer's gate, no Landon to talk to and Bev prone to the television now, to ask, “Can I go this time?”

*   *   *

By end of June, a right foot dirty from the heel to the big toe hung out of the Malibu. The car sailed on the Trace and through Sunflower County into scorching Bolivar County. The foot twirled sometimes right on the edge of the passenger side window, at fall of the door and window ledge, in the sunlight or moonlight or wind. No matter the weather or the road, there was the dangly foot, even if a sprinkle. There was no way Solemn was going to know men were out and she was at home. No. Not anymore.

In event of a storm or tornado warning, the Malibu stayed in Singer's. If the prognosis was clear for more than a night, the Malibu parked outside a Motel 6 if there was disappointment and a Howard Johnson's if there was one of the three sales. Solemn let the blowback of Southern road caress her unpolished toenails. She could press buttons on its small keyboard to enlarge the screen as much as she needed to, like the big-print
Reader's Digest
books. She had no reason to squint. Redvine paid her ten dollars a day, come hell or high water, rain or shine, no matter what, to drive with him.

When a curious or baby face let in from time to time, he approached any living or great room he was invited into:
Could the DigiCate fit here? Or here?
He loved self-assemble desks, bare tops of fireplaces, cubicles in a china cabinet where broken photos or passed-along china used to be, old frame houses with shelving built into the banisters and stairs, breakfronts with wide expanses and bare roofs …
Gas cheap … Two dollars a gallon if I time the trip right …
The investment of traveling seemed the best path so long as he didn't hit the brakes much or speed out the gas, stayed in the passing lanes.

No more groveling for a quick break. Now Redvine had an opportunity: to ride ride ride against the sunset and the dawn with the radio blasting. His cigarette break was just the ashtray in his car. No more begging to go out for a smoke (“Boss”), unable to savor it for thinking about who taking his place on the pick line. On the road, Redvine snapped his fingers and forgot how small his bedroom was or how quiet the rare sex had to be.

That part of it all was joyful.

But he wasn't selling anything.

An optimist, he kept the remaining five DigiCates on hand at all times, bound in heavy cardboard boxes like slaves, packed and stacked tight with ornate box tops to keep them contained. The sales demonstrator had Solemn's fingerprints all over it, but Redvine let it go.

Even Solemn learned the type of customer who just might buy; ones who actually took the material into their hands were worth coming back for. If more than five and no more than ten minutes passed of Daddy talking without one touch from a startled housewife or cold husband, let alone perky children, Solemn whined she was hungry. So they left. No more wasted time. On to the next. From amoebas to Buddhism to the Chicago World's Fair to Freud to the Kentucky Derby races to xenophobia, Solemn tapped through the DigiCate screens in excitement and inertia during her car rides with her daddy. All too often, she interrupted playlists and disk jockey banter to ask questions:

“Hey Daddy, did you know ornithomimosaurs were a dinosaur look like ostriches look today?” “Daddy, you know Sacajawea led the men Thomas Jefferson sent when she was big and pregnant?” “Daddy, you know the Hellenistic period had a queen named Cleopatra Grandma talked 'bout all the time before she died, and she committed suicide?” “Daddy, you know Beethoven was deaf?” “Daddy, you know…?”

Redvine didn't know any of it. He didn't care. Which made him wonder why the hell he was asking others to. And to pay one thousand dollars for it on top. Something for everybody, he guessed. Was the house gonna be bigger than the promises, for all this? To all of Solemn's questions, and proposed answers, Redvine just gave a head nod. He kept his eyes on the long and promising road, sandy and saffron, searching for winners who'd make him feel like one in kind. But most who would actually let him through the door were like the following.

 

TWENTY-TWO

Those Watsons lived among about eight hundred other people at the edge of Merigold, Mississippi, along the eastern hem of Arkansas, in a shotgun house with a built-on porch, on a nook replete with working water pumps. Three bedrooms wound around a curved hallway with a bathroom tucked all the way in the back. A window inside this would not shut. A brown curtain hung over it instead. Bubble flies buzzed in. On top of the floor-model television, the entire of the family's hardback book collection rested: the
Origin of Species,
mostly Jackie Collins and Danielle Steel and V. C. Andrews books,
The Godfather,
a Bible. The window fans were decent and young enough to still talk over.

“A day laborer with a construction company,” he said.

“A laundress,” she said. Still, in 2004. Mrs. Watson had five lines strung out back between sweet gum trees. She had three steel and pewter washboards inside, two more tubs in the backyard. As soon as she finished pinning up the latest batch, she came inside to sit with her husband and the salesman who showed up wearing a sport coat in ninety-degree weather. Solemn frisked in the front yard, kicking rocks. The son watched her.

“The gentleman's selling encyclopedia computers,” Mr. Watson kept repeating to his wife. She heard him the first time. “Ain't that something?”

For a salesman to come calling meant there was something noticeable about him. Had to have been something attracted the guy to his house. And his daughter was smart, he told the talkative salesman. She placed in the regional finals of an NAACP spelling bee and won the county oration award run by a Baptist church league.

Mrs. Watson cocked her head and leaned against the wall, wanted to half-whisper and half-shout,
We don't need no encyclopedias … kids got them computers in school now.
But her husband looked to be enjoying himself. The stranger seemed nice.

“Supper?” she asked him.

“I'd love to,” he said.

The young girl with him—“Solemn …
S-o-l-e-m-n
”—asked for two plates. The men decided to shake on it, half now and the rest later.

“No cash in the house” resulted in Redvine's acceptance of a check. He had taken them before, albeit never from a day laborer and laundress with no vehicle. Redvine hung behind for Mr. Watson's ceremonial assemblage of the DigiCate, its many cumbersome cords on a shelf he had his wife remove her family picture from.

“Man, you could drill two more two-by-fours in the wall below this shelf, to almost make for a real desk to set it on,” Redvine theorized. “Make it easier to work on that way. Watch the cords though. Can run hot. I gotta come back to this area soon for another prospect. Or, you know what, send me a mail order before the end of the month. Lemme give you my business card. I got my own account and phone number. And definitely, if you so inclined, pass 'em out to your friends to call me. Earl. Earl Redvine.”

Redvine first left the Watsons' home with a stomach full of Coors, great northern beans, rice, and neck bones—plus a five-hundred-dollar check in his hands in exchange for the supper and conversation. He and Solemn checked into a Howard Johnson's just because.

Less than a month later, Redvine pulled the Malibu to edge of the dirt road where there would have been a curb elsewhere. Here were only thinned patches of yellow grass. A bunch of kids played on top a pile of deflated tires. A Saint Bernard chased after the ones rolled down the road. Across the street, a few women sat in lawn chairs in a front lawn missing the lawn part. A few men in sleeveless shirts and jeans crouched down on the corner. They shot dice. Not too far off the road, the son met him.

“My daddy ain't here,” the son said.

“Well, hello,” Redvine said. “I'm Earl Redvine, from DigiCate—”

“I know who you are,” the boy said.

“Well, yes, I remember you too. How DigiCate working out for you?”

“Fine … Mama!”

The son ran around to the back of the house. The women across the way peered at Redvine. Redvine caught the laughter at his back, in his honor. He turned around to see the group waving at him. He waved back and his wedding ring caught a sunray. One woman said, “Aw … shoot!” She got up from the lawn chair and twisted while she slapped hands with the women. “I'll take him anyway, darlings…” She laughed.

Solemn heated up in the car. She came out to meet her daddy at the porch. Mrs. Watson came from the back of the house, clutching her wet gray-and-pink-checkered dress. She did not have the same grin on her face they had met her with. Pinched face instead. Her boy stood in the doorway, thumbing the screen.

“Nice to see you,” she told the salesman. “You too.” She smiled at his daughter.

“You as well, Missus Watson,” Redvine said. “Your husband 'round?”

“Oh no. He's on a job.”

“Is it somewhere near here?” Redvine asked. “I really need to talk to him.”

“Well, yes. I 'magine he's working the area. They don't send him too far. Sumthin' I kin help you with?”

Both Watson names had been on the bank check, or contract in this case. But Mr. Watson wrote the check and so it was with him whom Redvine should discuss it.

“Well, no, I really should talk to your husband 'bout our deal,” Redvine said.

“Oh,” Mrs. Watson said, with her hands on her hips. Solemn shuffled.

“I understand,” Mrs. Watson finally said. Then, “I kin give you a new check.”

“Well,” Redvine said, “it'd be better if I had the cash. So, you know, I could cover what I lost. 'Cause, you know, I get my commissions on the sales, but technically I bought your DigiCate myself. You understand what I'm saying.”

“Oh, I understand. Hold on.” Mrs. Watson began to walk back to the house. Then she motioned back. “Please, sit on the porch and get out that sun.”

They heard Mrs. Watson's voice between her son's, what sounded like shuffling inside drawers. Ten minutes later, the women across the way started to laugh good-byes and hug away. The kids and Saint Bernard moved down the block somewhat, aroused by a cart of ice cream and shaved ice. The crowd of men on the corner scattered. Ten more minutes later, Solemn had lain back in the hard secondhand kitchen chair recycled to patio furniture. She dozed off. Five minutes after this, Redvine rapped on the door.

“Well, you'll have to forgive my manners,” the wife said. “Sorry. I just been in here lookin' all round. You know … all them little places you forget about.”

“I understand.”

The teenage boy appeared behind his mother. In his arms, he held what was left of the DigiCate. The three cords to run it and charge it were a mess. Copper wires poked out. A few dents on the chrome top, which ‘Walter' had claimed was hard as granite.

“This all I could find,” she said. Mrs. Watson opened her right fist, full of bills and coins. “It's the middle of the week, so I ain't been paid for my washin' yet. That come on the weekend. You know, when everybody come to pick up what they left with me. I'm kinda behind this week. But by the end … Can you come back then?”

“It's such a drive,” Redvine explained. Solemn saw behind them that one of the women who had been in the yard across the street appeared.

“Seen you come out the back and just had to come over to see if the washing was done,” the lady said. Then she looked over at Redvine. “How you? I'm Valerie.”

“Earl. Earl Redvine.”

“Yeah, Valerie,” Mrs. Watson said. “I'm fixing to do yours next. Should be done by the time the sun rise tomorrow. I been back out there all day…”

“Take your time … I wanna look at some of them records Troy selling off. Shame he gotta give 'em up. I know how long he been collecting them. We all know how it is.”

“Oh, and yes…” Mrs. Watson fumbled the cash around. Finally, she grabbed at a twenty-dollar bill and crunched the rest in her right hand.

“I forgot I owe you this, for the groceries for Estrella's spelling bee picnic and all.” She held it out to the woman on her porch.

“Girl, you betta put that money up,” Valerie said.

“Valerie—”

“Now don't you go insult my intelligence. I ain't been thinking about them groceries. Shit, I probably ate and drunk up half of 'em myself. What you cook today?”

“Some squash, greens and fatback, red potatoes, a pecan crumble. I'm boilin' a chicken. Waitin' for it to float. But Valerie, lemme give you this money while I got it.”

“Gimme a plate instead. Money ain't never been my friend. Soon as you give it back to me somebody gonna take it back from both us. I been thinkin' more about getting some clean draws back in my house.” She glared at Redvine.

“Clean draws are important,” Redvine said.

“I bet they is, for a man like you, clean as a whistle and— Well, I'm gon' leave that alone. Talk to you later, girl. Just come by when you done. Wrap me up a plate.” Before Valerie got halfway out the yard, she was waving, “Hey there now!” to a passing sedan with the wheels falling off. She whisked into the street to catch the halted driver.