Winthrop Reedy eased the International tractor and the Simplicity mobile home he was hauling up to Sentryâto that construction worker with the Harley-Davidsonâoff the four-lane bypass onto Highway 60, then started working his way up through the gears. Ahead of him was a car, a Ford Pinto with a Wide Load sign on its roof. Another Pinto was behind him. The tractor and cars belonged to Forrest Brothers Garage, which did most of his hauling for him. Just sometimes he wanted to do the driving himself, like this morning, when he'd gone down to the yard, picked up a rig, then headed for his own place to get the trailer.
He and Cub Forrest had gone to high school together. Cub was Bedford's son, and they were all like family to Winthrop, who had gone to work for them while he was still in school. He had once thought about making trucking a career, except that Lizzie wouldn't have been much for that.
Forrest Brothers wasn't a big business. In addition to two tow trucks, one big enough to haul a semi, it had five tractor-trailer rigs and did some regular interstate hauling as well as local work. Cub was the company's mechanic, a skinny man with freckles, impossible hair and increasingly terrible teeth who also raced mini-stockers outside Hickory, his pride being a '64 VW Beetle with a '62 Porsche engine in it that no one had figured out.
Winthrop had parked his and Lizzie's Firebird under an oak tree for the shade and walked across the gravel yard red with clay and already smelling of warming oil, rusty steel and water. Cub was standing in the huge, open doors of the metal building that was the Forrest Brothers office, garage and warehouse all in one. He held a cigarette between his thumb and index finger to minimize its contact with grease. “Leave me the keys to that Firebird and I'll get her running right while you're up in Sentry,” Cub said, deadpan, squinting into the sunshine toward the car.
“I'll do her, Cub, just as soon as I can afford dispensing with my car
and
wife.”
“That was something about Doc Pemberton being bound over on account of that Carver vehicle I hauled off the mountain in April, now, wasn't it?”
“Yeah, that's a fact, you did tow it. Just goes to show you. I still find it hard to believe old Doc did something like that, or at least that bad.”
Still not looking at Winthrop, Cub dropped the cigarette onto the concrete floor and stepped on it. "Take number 3, Winn. I already entered the mileage. Four's gotta go to South Carolina. I didn't think Lizzie ever let go of that car.”
“She and her mama went on down to Charlotte, shopping,” Winthrop said, slipping a key off a board.
“I thought she was teaching.”
“She's only part-time at the church nursery school,” Winthrop replied, turning to a logbook on a workbench nearby. “I gotta go if I'm ever
going to get this trailer up to Sentry, Cub.” Flipping the pages of the book, Winthrop happened to look up. Right in front of him, almost as big as life, was a calendar with a photo of a good-looking gal in high heels, the skimpiest shorts and a blouse unbuttoned so far you could see almost an entire, wonderful breast. She was holding a huge socket wrench like she didn't know what the hell to do with
that
. Truck tools. It took a moment for Winthrop to refocus on the log. Crazy. He'd always wanted a calendar like that, but it would never do in his business, and besides, Lizzie would never understand. She was fine looking and not stingy with her favors. She would wonder why any man would want to look at anyone else. And, he asked himself, why would he?
“Nice tit, huh?” Cub said, suddenly beside him.
Startled, Winthrop felt ashamed his thoughts had been read. “You bet,” he said, recovering as Cub slid the log around and wrote in the time beside Winthrop's signature. Cub sure ought to know. His wife, Curly, wore blouses that hung way out in front of her jeans, her breasts were so damn big.
It was a beautiful morning, and he was planning to take a back way up to Sentry off Highway 60 about five miles west of Little Zion, instead of going straight north up the Bristol highway toward New Hope. The road was pretty good and carried a lot less traffic. It would also bring him right by the construction site for the new generating plant, which he hadn't seen in several months.
The intersection of the Damascus bypass and Highway 60 he'd just passed through was a famous one, a favorite location for roadblocks when at one time bootleggers, but more likely these days just some old boy from the eastern part of the county with a wild hair up his ass, howled up Damascus way under a full moon, thinking he had to break the boredom for the city cops, the deputies and the highway patrol. Not to mention everyone in the county listening to their scanners. It was like a game, trying to get from one end of the county to the other without getting caught or wrecking your car or both. For the life of him, he couldn't figure out why bootleggers, who by definition were in trouble before they even started, didn't avoid the county seat and all its officialdom and sneak around on the back roads, if they were really serious about their business. Business was business, after all, and Winthrop understood business. It seemed they
always came in on the state highways, the two-lanesâthe Bristol highway running north-south or Highway 60, the two intersecting at the traffic light at the top of the courthouse square. You could hear them coming like the Huey helicopters in Vietnam he saw on the TV newsânot just an announcement, but by the sheer magnitude of their thunder a challenge. The twin pricks of light would suddenly burst white under the trees and over the waiting, expressionless, sun-crinkled faces of the country people drawn from their porches or TVs, pronouncing “Must be young Riddell” or “The Gershaw boy” like a benediction on that passage toward the orange mercury-vapor glow on the skyline that was Damascus, or Babylon, or simply hell, depending on your politics or religion. The outcome was foregone in the minds of everyone. Whether this time or the next, or the one after that, a gaunt figure in a T-shirt and blue jeans would sit with a court-appointed lawyer in front of the bar before Judge This-or-That of the district court, to be handed over to superior court if he were caught actually transporting. Deep down, Winthrop understood the moonshine was irrelevant except as a symbol. It didn't make him feel easy.
Winthrop, his eyes hidden behind large aviator sunglasses, had the window down, an arm out and the radio volume up. He was dressed in fresh-washed jeans, cowboy boots and a clean and pressed blue work shirt, the only token to his status as a businessman the gold Cross pen sticking out of his pocket. It was only 8:10, the traffic running thick toward town. All the cars looked small over his hood, which bounced slightly when the truck rode over the joints of the old concrete highway rising beneath the asphalt. A folded receipt for the block and piping needed to hook up the unit was attached with other papers to a clipboard lying on the seat.
The Southern Railroad track flowed out of the fields beside the highway, and the two ran west side by side and absolutely straight toward the mountains for four miles or so, the mountains looking light blue and pretty. Winthrop had gone over them only as far as Memphis to take Lizzie to Graceland. Sometimes, like this morning, looking west at those mountains caused him to ache with a fine longing that he didn't understand and that troubled him, too, if he let it.
When he passed Rural Paved 96 in Little Zion, he glanced up the road, where he could see the cross on top of the squat steeple of the Ebenezer church peeking over some trees. That sight made him momentarily unhappy,
thinking of the Raconda mobile home he'd set up nearby at Willow Run for that Living Dead Skinner fellow. That TV was still sitting in the closet of his office, its case stuck together with electrician's tape, looking like $14,987 worth of dead weight. For an instant, his face grew heated with anger and something like fear. Then he found himself thinking about that calendar girl at Forrest's again. Though he was not much given to reflection, it nevertheless struck him as odd that you could have as pretty a wife as he did and see it all, and wonderful as it was, it wasn't the same. It was too, well ⦠He struggled for the thought. It just wasn't the same as that look, that toughness or scariness, like you might get the ride of your life, or be eaten alive. Or both.
He made himself think of church instead, like the past Sunday, the sanctuary filled with people of all ages, every one of whom he knew, and who knew him as Mr. Reedy or just Winn, if they were older or friends. They knew he was doing well with a good business and a pretty wife, so they could trust him with the Christian education of their children and their church finances. Lizzie, her long blond hair in that ponytail, had worn a sharp new yellow suit with a white collar, all of which made her look fresh and upstanding and efficient. He'd always felt himself gain in stature around her. Her mama and daddy sat in the pew with them, and they all went out to Raford's Fish Camp on the river afterward for catfish and hush puppies. Then they drove by Willow Run to look at the improvements. Her parents were so proud of themâof Willow Run, their new car, the brick house.
He recalled a rumor he'd heard over breakfast at Dorothy's a couple of hours earlier, that Eddie Lambert had resigned and no one knew where Sheriff Dugan was. Just a rumor, sure, but it had been unsettling. He hoped the sheriff was okay. He was a hardworking man and deserved the best.
As Winthrop left the main highway and started the climb toward Sentry, suddenly he saw himself twenty-five years down the road, fifty-two years old, gray haired and maybe a paunch. Still putting on his suits in the morning? President of the chamber of commerce? Deacon in the church? Member of the city council? Two or three Willow Runs, maybe, a house somewhere in Florida? Debt? Would he
ever
be out of debt? For sure, he would still be grateful, saying “Yessir” or “Nossir” to the head of the bank
and God knew who else, although maybe in a more easy manner because he would be “Winn” to everybody by then, and respect was implied, or he wouldn't have gotten there. Or just as like, he'd still be peddling mobile homes down on the bypass and maybe poking something on the side in the slow afternoons.
Lord! Where are these thoughts coming from?
The lead Pinto missed the turnoff to the old CCC camp. Winthrop, however, spotted it at once and, slowing to a stop, flashed his lights at the little car disappearing around a bend ahead. On his right through a small gap in the trees, he could see the reservoir, said to be over a hundred feet deep in places and running some seventeen miles from east to west, not including all the bays and inlets. Winthrop had never spent much time fishing, but they said catfish as big as boxcars grew there.
When the car reappeared about five minutes later, Winthrop had already gotten the other Pinto to take the lead and maneuvered the tractor and mobile home onto a narrow, grassy track that led across a small clearing into the forest. “You gonna have twelve foot down in there, Mr. Reedy?” the driver asked, eyeing the opening.
“How are you with a chain saw, Willie?”
“Ha!” the driver, Willie Cantrell, who was sixty, rejoined, grinning. “Does look like they's been a car and maybe a dozer down there,” he added, scuffing the matted grass with the toe of his shoe. He climbed back into his car. The drivers all knew Winthrop and liked him. He also tipped them, which a lot of customers did not.
It took Winthrop thirty minutes to maneuver the trailer a quarter-mile down the road, which once grew so narrow that two young saplings rubbed the sides, but with only the faintest hiss of bark on metal.
“Whoo, boy! Vaseline wouldn't have done it with less friction,” Willie said as Winthrop climbed down to look for damage.
Finding only a few green marks, he pulled himself back up into the cab. “C'mon, boys!” he said.
Ahead he saw a clearing for a trailer, just like that Grady Snipes had promised. But it sure wasn't Snipes standing there.
“Good
God
Almighty!” Winthrop exclaimed as he swung the tractor into the clearing. The drivers of both Pintos had already emerged from their vehicles to gape at a woman in short khaki shorts and a man's blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the front mostly unbuttoned. Ignoring them, she made her way barefoot over the grass from a battered Ford Mustang convertible to the cab of the truck, and was waiting when Winthrop swung the door open and jumped down.
Winthrop noticed at once that she came just to his chin, that she smelled faintly of lemons and that, although he wasn't touching her, he was as good as holding her and more, the way she stood in front of him. “I'm looking for Mr. Snipes,” he said, admirably maintaining his composure, he thought, though he couldn't bring himself to move back even a smidgen for the sake of appearances. He did make himself look around the clearing, saw the swath cleared up through the woods for the electric line, and an area graded by a bulldozer a little bigger than the trailer, where a plastic pipe stood up out of the ground, and another freshly turned area he
assumed was the leach field. The clearing was sunny and nice, he thought. In the silence of his breathing, and hers, and maybe the drivers', too, he heard the splash of a nearby stream.
“Grady's at work,” the woman said in a deep voice that wasn't Southern but wasn't harsh or unfriendly either. “My name's Helen. They call me Peanut.”
“Peanut!” he heard himself exclaim. “You sure don't look like any peanut I've ever seen, ma'am.” He saw her wide brown eyes lift to meet his gaze, noticed the pretty silver barrettes holding her long hair over her ears. He felt she was asking him to take them out, but no, he had to be imagining that. There was nothing but silence.
“Willie! Dooley!
Hey
!” Winthrop shook his head savagely and, turning away, started for the Pintos, where the two men stood by their open doors, still staring. But maybe holding back a little grin, too? He fished a tooled leather wallet, one Lizzie had given him, out of a back pocket and, flopping it open, pulled out two ten-dollar bills. “I shouldn't need you anymore, boys. Thank you kindly,” he said, handing each one a bill. Then he blushed. By God, they
were
grinning!
I got to unload those blocks, get a signature and get out of here, same as always, and I
always
do it alone. So where do they get off grinning?