Out of Their Minds

3

George Duncan had grown older, but I recognized him the minute I stepped into the store. He was gray and shaky and he had an old man's gauntness, but he was the same man who had often given me a sack of peppermint candy, free, when my father bought a box of groceries and, perhaps, a sack of bran, which George Duncan lugged in from the back room where he kept his livestock feed.

The storekeeper was behind the counter and talking to a woman who had her back to me. His gravelly voice came clear across the room.

"These Williams kids," he said, "have always been a pack of troublemakers. Ever since the day he came sneaking in here, this community has never had a thing but grief from Tom Williams and his tribe. I tell you, Miss Adams, they're a hopeless lot and if I was you, I wouldn't worry none about them. I'd just go ahead and teach them the best way that I could and I'd crack down on them when they stepped out of line and that would be the end of it."

"But, Mr. Duncan," said the woman, "they aren't all that bad. They have no decent family background, naturally, and sometimes their manners are appalling, but they really aren't vicious. They're under all sorts of pressures—you can't imagine what social pressures they are under…"

He grinned at her, a snaggle-toothed grin that had grimness rather than good humor in it. "I know," he said. "I know. You've told me this before, when they were in other scrapes. They're rejected. I think that's what you said."

"That is right," she told him. "Rejected by the other children and rejected by the town. They are left no dignity. When they come in here, I bet you keep an eye on them."

"You are right; I do. They would steal me blind."

"How do you know they would?"

"I've caught them doing it."

"It's resentment," she said. "They are striking back."

"Not at me, they ain't. I never done a thing to them."

"Perhaps not you alone," she said. "Not you personally. But you and everyone. They feel that every hand is raised against them. They know they aren't wanted. They have no place in this community, not because of anything they've done, but because this community decided, long ago, that the family was no good. I think that's the way you say it—the family is no good."

The store, I saw, had changed but little. There were new items on the shelves and there were items that were missing, but the shelves remained the same. The old round glass container that at one time had held a wheel of cheese was gone, but the old tobacco cutter that had been used to slice off squares of chewing tobacco still was bolted to the ledge back of the counter. In one far corner of the store stood a refrigerator case used for dairy goods (which explained, perhaps, the absence of the cheese box on the counter), but that was the only thing that had been really changed in the entire store. The potbellied stove still stood in its pan of sand at the center of the store and the same scarred chairs were ranged about it, polished from long sitting. Up toward the front was the same old pigeonholed compartment of mailboxes with the stamp window in the center of it and from the open door that led into the back came the redolent odor of livestock feed, stacked up in piles of burlap and paper bags.

It was, I thought, as if I'd seen the place only yesterday and had come in this morning to be faintly surprised at the few changes which had been effected overnight.

I turned around and stared out the dirt-streaked, fly-specked window at the street outside and here there were some changes. On the corner opposite the bank a lot, that I remembered as a vacant lot, now was occupied by a car repair shop thrown up of cement blocks and in front of it a single gas pump with the paint peeled off it. Next door to it was the barber shop, a tiny building that was in no way changed at all except that it seemed somewhat more dingy and hi need of paint than I remembered it. And next to it the hardware store, so far as I could see, had not changed at all.

Behind me the conversation apparently had reached its end and I turned around. The woman who had been talking with Duncan was walking toward the door. She was younger than I'd thought when I had seen her talking at the counter. She wore a gray jacket and skirt and her coal-black hair was pulled back tight against her head and knotted in the back. She wore glasses rimmed by some pale plastic and her face had upon it a look of worry and of anger, mixed. She walked with a smart, almost military, gait, and she had the look of a private secretary to a big executive—businesslike and curt and not about to brook any foolishness on the part of anyone.

At the door she turned and asked Duncan, "You're coming to the program tonight, aren't you?"

Duncan grinned with his snaggled teeth. "Haven't missed one yet. Not for many years. Don't reckon I'll start now."

She opened the door then — and was swiftly gone. Out of the corner of my eye I watched her marching purposefully down the street.

Duncan came out from behind the counter and shambled toward me.

"Can I do anything for you?" he asked.

"My name is Horton Smith," I said. "I made arrangements..»

"Now, just a minute there," said Duncan quickly, peering closely at me. "When your mail started coming in, I recognized the name, but I told myself there must be some mistake. I thought maybe…"

"There is no mistake," I said, holding out my hand. "How are you, Mr. Duncan?"

He grasped my hand in a powerful grip and held onto it. "Little Horton Smith," he said. "You used to come in with your pa…"

"And you used to give me a sack of candy."

His eyes twinkled beneath the heavy brows and he gave my hand an extra hearty shake, then dropped it.

It was going to be all right, I told myself. The old Pilot

Knob still existed and I was no stranger. I was coming home.

"And you're the same one," he said, "as is on the radio and sometimes on television."

I admitted that I was.

"Pilot Knob," he told me, "is plumb proud of you. It took some getting used to at first to listen to a home-town boy on the radio or sit face to face with him on the television screen. But we got used to it at last and most of us listened to you and talked about it afterwards. We'd go around saying to one another that Horton has said this or that and we took what you had to say for gospel. But," he asked, "what are you doing back? Not that we aren't glad to have you."

"I think I'll stay for a while," I told him. "For a few months, maybe for a year."

"Vacation?"

"No. Not a vacation. There's some writing that I want to do. And to do that writing I had to get away somewhere. Where I would have time for writing and a bit of time for thinking what to write."

"A book?"

"Yes, I hope a book."

"Well, seems to me," he said, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand, "you might have a lot to put into a hook. Maybe a lot of things you couldn't say right out on the air. All them foreign places you was in. You were in a lot of them."

"A few of them," I said.

"And Russia? What did you think of Russia?"

"I liked the Russian people. They seemed, in many ways, like us."

"You mean like Americans?"

"Like Americans," I said.

"Well, come over to the stove," he said, "and let us sit and talk. I ain't got a fire in it today. I guess one isn't needed. I can remember, plain as day, your pa sitting in one of these chairs and talking with the others. He was a right good man, your pa, but I always said he wasn't cut out to be a farmer."

We sat down in two of the chairs.

"Is your pa still alive?" he asked.

"Yes, he and Mother both. Out in California. Retired now and very comfortable."

"You got a place to stay?"

I shook my head.

"New motel down by the river," Duncan said. "Built just a year or two ago. New people, by the name of Streeter. Give you good rates if you're staying more than a day or two. I'll make sure they do it. I'll speak to them about it."

"There's no need..»

"But you ain't no transient. You're home folk, come back again. They would want to know."

"Any fishing?"

"Best place on the river. Got some boats to rent and a canoe or two, although why anyone would risk their neck in a canoe on that river is more than I can figure."

"I was hoping for a place like that," I said. "I was afraid there would be none."

"Still crazy about fishing?"

"I enjoy it," I said.

"Remember when you were a boy you were rough on chubs."

"Chubs made good fun," I said.

"There're still a lot of people you will remember," said Duncan. "They'll all want to see you. Why don't you drop in on the school program tonight? A lot of people will be there. That was the teacher that was hi here, name of Kathy Adams."

"You still have the old one-room school?"

"You can bet we have," he said. "There was pressure put on us and some of the other districts to consolidate, but when it was put up to a vote we beat it. Kids get just as good an education in a one-room school as they would get in a new and fancy building and it costs a whole lot less. Kids that want to go to high school, we pay their tuition, but there aren't many of them that want to go. Still costs less than if we were consolidated. No use spending money for a high school when you got a bunch of kids like them Williams brats…"

"I am sorry," I said, "but when I stepped inside I couldn't help but hear…"

"Let me tell you, Horton, that Kathy Adams is a splendid teacher, but she is too soft-hearted. She is always standing up for them Williams kids and I tell you they are nothing but a gang of cutthroats. I guess you don't know Tom Williams; he came floating in here after you had left. He worked around on some of the farms, but he was mostly good-for-nothing, although he must have managed to save a little money. He was well past marrying age when he got hitched up with one of Little Poison Carter's daughters. Amelia was her name. You remember Little Poison, don't you?" I shook my head.

"Had a brother that was called Big Poison. No one now recollects their rightful names. The whole tribe lived down on Muskrat Island. Well, anyhow, when Tom married Amelia he bought, with the money he had saved, this little shirttail piece of land a couple of miles up Lonesome Hollow and tried to make a farm of it. He's got along somehow; I wouldn't know exactly how. And every year or so there was a kid and him and Mrs. Tom let those kids run wild. I tell you, Horton, these are the kind of folks we can get along without. They cause no end of trouble—Old Tom Williams and that family that he's raising. They keep more dogs than you can shake a stick at and those dogs are worthless, just like Old Tom himself. They lay around all day and they eat their heads off and they ain't worth a lick. Tom says he just likes dogs. Have you ever heard a thing like that? A trifling kind of fellow, with his dogs and kids and the kids are always in some kind of trouble."

"Miss Adams seemed to think," I reminded him, "that it's not their fault entirely."

"I know. She says they felt rejected and are underprivileged. That's another favorite word of hers. You know what underprivileged means? It means someone who has no get-up-and-go. There wouldn't need to be no underprivileged if everyone was willing to Work and had a lick of common sense. Oh, I know what the government says about them and how we got to help them. But if the government just would come out here and have a look at some of these underprivileged folks, they'd see in a minute what was wrong with them."

"I was wondering," I said, "as I drove along this morning, if there still are rattlesnakes."

"Rattlesnakes?" he asked.

"There used to be a lot of them when I was a kid. I was wondering if they might be getting thinned out some."

He wagged his head sagaciously. "Maybe some. Although there's still a bait of them. Get back in the hills and you'll find plenty of them. You interested in them?"

"Not especially," I said.

"You'll have to come to that school program tonight," he said. "There'll be a lot of people there. Some of them you'll know. Last day of school and the kids will all perform—get up and say some pieces or maybe sing a song or put on little plays. And afterwards there'll be a basket social to raise money for new library books. We still hang on to the old ways here; the years haven't changed us much. And we manage to have our own good times. A basket social at the school tonight and a couple of weeks from now there'll be a strawberry festival down at the Methodist church. Both of them good places to meet old friends of yours."

"I'll make it if I can," I promised. "Both the program and the festival."

"You've got some mail," he told me. "It has been piling up for a week or two. I still am postmaster here. The post office has been right here in this store for almost a hundred years. But there's talk of taking it away from us, consolidating it with the office over at Lancaster and sending it out from there by rural route. Government isn't satisfied leaving things alone. They got to always be trying to make things over. Improving service, they call it. I 'can't see, for the life of me, what's wrong with the kind of service we been giving the folks of Pilot Knob for the last hundred years or so."

"I had expected you might have a bundle of mail for me," I said. "I had it forwarded, but I didn't hurry to get here. I took my time and stopped at several places I wanted to look over."

"You'll be going out to have a look at the old farm, the place you used to live?"

"I don't think I will," I said. "I'd see too many changes."

"Family by the name of Ballard lives there now," he said. "They have a couple of boys, grown men almost. Do a lot of drinking, those two boys, and sometimes are a problem."

I nodded. "You say this motel is down by the river?" "That's right. You drive down past the schoolhouse and the church to where the road bends to the left. A little ways beyond you will see the sign. Says River Edge Motel.

I'll get your mail for you."