A Fine Dark Line

25

DADDY HAD THE BODY put in the colored funeral home, and he paid for it to be embalmed. We tried to find the relatives Buster told me about, but no luck.

They buried him in the colored graveyard near where Bubba Joe had tried to kill me. They put him down without a stone between two other heaps of dirt without stones—recent burials.

I took the books the way he wanted. While I was gathering them, Callie, who was helping me, came across a note.

It read:

“Stan, you are my true friend. I give you my books, and my records. You’re gonna like them. Enjoy your life. Buster.”

“He knew he was dying,” I said to Callie.

“I suppose he did,” she said.

———

I DIDN’T GO BACK to the grave until some years later, and by then I couldn’t find it. Grass had grown over most everything and there were no longer mounds and what stones that had been there were gone or broken.

After Buster’s death, lots of things changed. There was a rumble in the air about civil rights, and there was much confusion and gnashing of teeth, but as the years went on, there were changes.

Colored didn’t have to sit in the balcony at the downtown theater anymore. James Stilwind sold out and moved off.

Mrs. Stilwind was found one morning in the pool out back of the old Stilwind house. She had fallen in and had been there for a few days before she was missed, or rather cared about. What I remember most about the story was a boy at school saying “Crows picked her eyes.”

Mr. Stilwind sued the old folks home, won, put them out of business, owned the place. He tore it down and built a subdivision there. He made lots of money and no one ever accused him of anything, nor his son, James.

Not long after the subdivision went up, Old Man Stilwind was found shot in his hotel room. No one knew who did it. Rumors were a young lady went up to his room to see him. More rumor said lots of young ladies did that. This one had a gun and a grudge. She shot him through the heart, then through the head four times, just to make sure he didn’t rise from the dead.

She got out of there without so much as anyone realizing Stilwind was dead or even hearing the shots. All she left were some gloves, and all that could be determined from those was that the label inside said they were made in London, England.

I smiled over that one.

Until now, I’ve never told anyone but my wife who killed Bubba Joe. All these years after, now and then I have a bad dream about him. See him chasing me and Callie and Richard. Richard is lost behind me, and Callie’s ponytail is flying in my face, Bubba Joe is closing, and the train is charging up the tracks.

Sometimes, in my dreams, he catches me.

Daddy bought the theater James sold. I thought that was ironic. He liked to joke he was Dewmont’s picture show magnate, indoors and out.

Mama began selling World Book Encyclopedias door-to-door, and she liked it. Rosy ran the drive-in, and I ran the projection booth. Rosy got her room upstairs. Along with an air conditioner. Air conditioners were put in all over the house. One for each bedroom, one for the living room that cooled it and the kitchen.

Drew and Callie dated seriously all through high school, but when Callie went off to a teachers college, they couldn’t hold it together. Callie became an English teacher. Got married, got divorced, met up with Drew some years later. He was divorced too. They got married, moved back to Dewmont where she teaches school and Drew runs his father’s hardware store, as if he really needs to. Drew inherited money. Lots of it. Callie dresses nice and no longer wears a ponytail. Men still look and sigh when she walks by.

Mom and Daddy went on fine for several years, then Daddy decided to close the drive-in down. It was just a home then. He kept saying he was going to take up the speakers and plant grass, but he didn’t. The projection booth filled up with lawn mowers and garden tools that he used to keep the front yard nice.

The indoor theater did all right for a few more years, and Rosy Mae worked there behind the concession and Mama took tickets, then Daddy gave it up too, retired.

He couldn’t stay that way, though. He and Mom decided to get back in the movie business. They owned the first video store in Dewmont. She quit selling encyclopedias and they ran it together until Daddy got too old and weak to be there.

Daddy retired for real, and a year later he had the big one; his great heart played out. Mom and Rosy lived in the drive-in home for another three years, then Mama died, left me some money, left Callie some goods, and left the drive-in to Rosy.

Rosy rented it out to a fella that wanted to keep scrap metal and old cars there. He cut down all the speakers. Rosy paid on a little house with the money she got from the rental, and moved out. Now and then, coming back from Austin, where I live and teach criminal justice, I’d stop by her house for dinner.

Rosy learned to “read real good,” as she was fond of saying, but she never read as well as she cooked. Now and then, for some reason or another, I’ll get the taste of her fried chicken and light biscuits on the back of my tongue, and it’ll be as if I just had them.

Last year, sensing time was playing out its string, Rosy quit leasing the drive-in and sold it to me for a song. I buried her on the far side of town in the graveyard where my parents are buried, the graveyard that just thirty years before only whites could be buried in. I bought her a headstone big as the one my parents had.

Bless her.

My wife and I have plans to retire to Dewmont, maybe open the drive-in again, as a kind of retirement lark. That’s down the road a way. We’ll see.

Chester, he who was slapped by Daddy in an attempt to raise his IQ, never did get any smarter. He married Jane Jersey, the girl who had slipped the prophylactic into Callie’s room. They had a couple of kids. One night he came home drunk and set out to beat her, a regular occurrence, and she shot him. The law called it self-defense.

Nub is long gone, of course. But I think about him at least once a day. He was a good dog and lived a long life. I have another dog now, but I don’t like him much. He’s my wife’s dog, actually. A poodle with a pink bow in his hair. He bites me at least once a week.

My wife and I wanted children. But it didn’t work out. We put it off too long. I guess the poodle is her baby. Nonetheless, I love her. She loves me. It’s a good life. The poodle’s name is François. I want a German shepherd.

———

ONE CURIOUS NOTE, and I read this in the Austin paper, just a little piece in the back section. It was about my old hometown, so I was drawn to it. It was more of a curiosity item than anything else.

It said an old sawmill in Dewmont, or what was left of one, a wobbly piece of rotted wood and rusted tin, had fallen down and been removed. There was a blackened mound of sawdust there too, washed down to where it was nearly flat.

When the sawdust was scooped up, a skeleton was found. I thought of that black kid Richard told me about at first, but I thought different when I read on.

Along with the skeleton, all that remained that was identifiable were some boots with one pull-up strap that had Roy Rogers written on it in silver paint.

It’s all over now. Some things answered, some things not.

As I grow older, and frankly, I’m not that old, late fifties, but still, the past is more important than the present. That may not be good, but that’s the truth. Things were more intense then. The sun warmer. The wind cooler. Dogs better understood.

Buster wasn’t always right, and he gave mixed answers sometimes, but the thing that sticks with me, the thing that always seems right, was what he said about how life isn’t always satisfactory, and that in the end, dirt and flesh are pretty much the same.