A Short History of a Small Place (57 page)

Of course dilapidation was not the sort of thing Momma needed to hear talk of in February, especially along about the first of the month which would leave her the whole rest of the month to ruminate upon it. So the February Miss Pettigrew’s house got sold was an especially bleak one for Momma there at the beginning. She was celebrating near about a decade of false starts and thwarted intentions with Mr. Vanderbank, but I do not believe she managed to get properly underway and instead just sat in Grandma Yount’s boudoir chair with the book in her lap and looked out the living room window. On February the eighth Daddy made her a gift of an intensified table lamp from Hudson-Belk, but the additional illumination did not seem to enliven her spirits any, and on the evenings of February ninth through the eleventh Daddy treated Momma and me to three consecutive suppers at the Holiday Inn with about the same effect. Naturally there was some fear we might lose Momma. The living room had reached its peak incandescence and the waitresses at the motel were getting fairly fed up with Daddy’s sense of humor which left us with no clear remedy for a regular February much less a February complicated by Pettigrew dilapidation. So we were beginning to expect Momma to succumb straightaway and we were confounded and exasperated and feeling a little undone ourselves when Mrs. Phillip J. King called up with the remedy and brought us around directly.

He was Mr. P. Merriman Bledsoe from Stokesdale, and in Mrs. Phillip J. King’s estimation that was a name that showed some promise. However we could not discover the first little thing about him for a week after him and Mr. Ellersby shook hands on Miss Pettigrew’s front porch. On account of a steady rain, nobody much had seen him except for Commander Tuttle who had happened by and who recollected Mr. P. Merriman Bledsoe to have been approximately sixty-nine inches tall and twenty-two inches across the shoulders which was about as vivid as a mortician ever had call to be. And we did not find out anything otherwise until Mrs. Phillip J. King cajoled one of the Dudley Circle Petrees to urge her second cousin in Walnut grove to call her brother-in-law in Stokesdale and get the full dope on Mr. P. Merriman Bledsoe and his attachments, but even then we did not find out much of anything otherwise except for an anecdote of Mr. P. Merriman Bledsoe’s past that circulated all roundabout Neely like a cyclone. It seems Mr. P. Merriman Bledsoe had started out in business as a screenwire salesman for his uncle. He had worked the eastern part of the state down around Oxford and little Washington and Greenville sometime after Coolidge but a few years prior to Truman which Daddy said would have been the Paleolithic era, things being as they are east of Raleigh. Of course nobody much down that way was excessively passionate about screenwire since you couldn’t eat it or drink it or wear it on your feet, so Mr. P. Merriman Bledsoe figured he’d best stir up a little passion of his own if he wanted to make any money. What he did was to carry a fifty pound sack of pure white flour in the back of his truck and whenever he visited a prospective client he’d step up onto the porch first and introduce himself and immediately thereafter would circle around to the outhouse and drop three or four healthy handfuls of flour down the hole. Then he would return to the front porch and sit and talk about most anything under the sun aside from screenwire, and directly a white fly would come zipping around the side of the house and beat himself against a front window or disappear through the doorway and then three or four more would show up to take his place and they’d be joined by another half dozen and presently the air would be fairly thick with albino flies. I do imagine it was a most graphic and effective display of the virtues of a screened-in porch.

Naturally we figured him for a tycoon by now, a screenwire tycoon, and word was he had scoured the state for a garden spot and had decided at last to retire in Neely, winner of the Governor’s Award for Excellence in 1966. Of course we all looked forward to making him comfortable and welcome, and the widowwomen roundabout the countryside geared up for the undertaking since there had not been any whisper of a Mrs. P. Merriman Bledsoe. Mrs. Phillip J. King said it would be undeniably refreshing to have a worldly and resourceful gentleman in our midsts, and she expected him to possess a scintillating wit, figured him for a pure stitch she said, and Daddy told her he was a little breathless about it himself since he had never before met a man sixty-nine inches tall and twenty-two inches across the shoulders. But we did not ever get to find out if Mr. P. Merriman Bledsoe was indeed scintillating, did not even get to find out if he was sixty-nine inches tall, because Mr. P. Merriman Bledsoe did not ever come to the garden spot to retire or visit or sell screenwire either. Instead he sent two carpenters in a blue Dodge pickup truck and for the last few days in February and on through the most of March they paraded back and forth across the front threshold hauling new wood in and hauling old wood out and otherwise making a monstrous amount of ruckus with hammers and saws and such. Most people figured it for a general renovation though we could not see what was going on, and Mr. Monk Fanning, a carpenter himself, listened at the fence for a day and a half and said it sounded to him like a general renovation or maybe a partial renovation with complications, he could not detect which. Mr. P. Merriman Bledsoe’s carpenters did not seem much inclined to discuss the matter with anybody, and only once, when Mr. Wyatt Benbow found them squatting on Miss Pettigrew’s front sidewalk drinking Pepsi-Colas and eating nabs, did we get any information from them at all. Mr. Wyatt Benbow asked them just what it was they were up to and they told him they were drinking Pepsi-Colas and eating nabs.

Towards the end of March the carpenters were joined by three painters who arrived in Neely from the west in a gold Ford Torino with two aluminum extension ladders and one eight-foot wooden step ladder strapped to the top of it. The tallest of them, who was tattooed and leathery and wore his hair hooked back behind his ears, climbed up to the eave of the house and nailed the piece of detached dental molding back into the place. The next tallest of them went all around the structure patching, glazing and replacing windowlights. And the shortest of them, who was apparently the boss, kept Miss Pettigrew’s treestump from running off by sitting on top of it. Together the three of them scraped some paint and pecked at some paint and flecked some paint off with their fingernails, and then the leathery tattooed one mixed together a pint of Clorox, a cupful of laundry detergent, and three or four gallons of water in a five gallon bucket and him and the next shortest fellow used the concoction in combination with a pair of bristle brushes on broomhandles to scrub down the house. For his part the boss squirted the hose, from the treestump when he could manage it and he could manage it a considerable portion of the time on account of Miss Pettigrew’s surprising and prodigious water pressure which touched off a lively discussion along the fence since Neely was generally the sort of place where a man had to be patient to get wet in the shower.

The Clorox and the detergent and the brushes on broomhandles took off the first several layers of accumulated grime and as the siding dripped dry the three painters and the two carpenters all gathered on Miss Pettigrew’s front sidewalk for a collective squat and they all drank Pepsi-Colas and ate orange nabs except for the tallest painter with the hair hooked behind his ears who washed down a sack of pork rinds with a Truade and thereby struck what Daddy called another blow for rugged individualism. Then they threw their bottles in the yard along with their wrappers and they all smoked and looked at the people against the fence in a most presumptuous sort of way, Mrs. Phillip J. King called it, and they talked among themselves and laughed and swore and spat and one of the carpenters fetched a finishing nail out of his apron and picked his teeth with it. Then him and his associate went directly back to beating on the interior of the house but the painters did not commence to painting straightaway. Instead they caulked for awhile, or anyway the tallest one and the next tallest one caulked while the short one did some impressive coordinating from the treestump. And apparently Miss Pettigrew’s house was simply riddled with cracks because the tallest painter and the next tallest painter used up close to a half case of acrylic caulk and the short treestumped boss painter near about coordinated himself to a frazzle. So the three of them together rested for an hour on the front steps before they endeavored to exert themselves further, and at length when they were resigned to yet another strenuous undertaking the short boss painter sounded the carpenters and then checked with his leathery tattooed employee before dispatching the middle-sized painter down the boulevard towards the Burger Chef.

I do not believe they even removed the gallon paint cans from the trunk of the Torino until well past two o‘clock, and then, under the supervision of the boss painter, the tallest painter and the next tallest painter stirred the paint and mixed the paint and stirred it some more and gawked at it and just generally mucked around with it until right at three o’clock when it was time for two more Pepsis and a Truade. Of course the ladders had to be situated before any serious work could get underway and since the ground was not precisely level everywhere the short boss painter and the tall leathery painter went into the house to hunt up some shems and left the middle-sized painter in charge of the treestump. I guess there was near about an hour of daylight left when the first brushstroke finally found its way onto the frame of one of the upper front windows, and on account of the weak light there was some anxiety among the spectators who had waited all afternoon to see the paint and now that they were seeing it couldn’t make out the color to any degree of certainty. Mrs. Estelle Singletary suggested it was a kind of autumn beige, but Mrs. Phillip J. King said she believed it more towards a sweet cream white, while Commander Tuttle insisted on wheatstraw brown, puny wheatstraw brown he called it. The late Mrs. Doris Lancaster’s half sister, Miss Louise Branch Montegue, was more inclined towards lily of the valley, which she had in her bathroom but her neighbor Mrs. Pfaff, who had visited Miss Louise Branch Montegue’s bathroom on several occasions, saw in the trim paint more of an antique almond than any sort of lily of any sort of valley. Mr. Ogburn of the FCX made a case for pale camel, but Mr. Johnny Newsome pulled at his bottom lip and wondered out loud if pale camel and antique almond weren’t near about the same thing, and Miss Louise Branch Montegue told him that was probably the truth of it but made no nevermind anyway since pale camel and antique almond neither one showed much of any relation to lily of the valley, which Commander Tuttle insisted did not hardly approach the subtleties of wheatstraw brown which Mrs. Phillip J. King said could not match sweet cream white for purity of tone and general lustrosity, which Mrs. Estelle Singletary tittered at and she could titter in a most meaningful sort of way. The precise color, then, was still a little up in the air when Mr. Wyatt Benbow, who previously had communicated so ably with the carpenters, laid his arms between two of the wrought iron palings and called out, “Hey buddy, buddy” until he turned the short boss painter around on the treestump.

“Whut is it?” the painter asked him.

“Tell me something, buddy,” Mr. Wyatt Benbow said, “just what do you call that color your boys are putting on the windows?”

And the short boss painter briefly looked over his shoulder to where the middle-sized painter was working on a window sash and then turned back around to Mr. Wyatt Benbow and told him, “I call it yalla.”

There was an ensuing discussion. For a day and a half there was an ensuing discussion, but after four or five windowsills, a doorframe, and the full eave across the front had been trimmed out most everybody agreed to Sunmist, which Mrs. Jackson P. Eaton jr. had plucked directly off a paint chart. Folks said it was a subtle color, a rich yet pale shade markedly pure of tone and possessed of a matchless general lustrosity, and Mrs. Estelle Singletary said she believed it would strike a handsome contrast with some manner of slate blue. Mrs. Phillip J. King told her possibly but felt it more suited to a full chocolate, while Commander Tuttle played up the virtues of a maroon, and the late Mrs. Doris Lancaster’s half sister, Miss Louise Branch Montegue, suggested a soft and wholly capable green. Mrs. Pfaff was convinced an antique mahogany would best set off the brilliance of the Sunmist, and though Mr. Ogburn of the FCX found himself attracted to the idea of a mahogany he could not work up any enthusiasm for the antique part of it and was more truly inclined towards some sort of deep walnut, but Mr. Johnny Newsome pulled at his bottom lip and wondered out loud if deep walnut and antique mahogany and maroon and full chocolate weren’t all near about the same thing, and Mrs. Louise Branch Montegue told him that was probably the truth of it.

The leathery tattooed painter and the middle-sized painter took their time finishing up the trim and apparently the short boss painter took his time doing whatever it was he was doing because the three of them were on the job a week and a half before they ever fetched the siding paint out from the Torino to stir up and gawk at and muck with. Naturally anxiety along the fence had reached an extraordinary pitch by the time the leathery tattooed painter with the hair hooked behind his ears carried the fresh gallon of paint up a ladder towards the front eave and commenced to smear it on the siding. A sizeable crowd had collected to watch him—even Aunt Willa had come out from colored town where she’d disappeared to once the monkey was disposed of—but the leathery tattooed painter did not seem much affected by the audience and he spat and cleared his nose and swore like usual. The middle-sized painter took his own full gallon up a ladder on the opposite end of the house and him and the leathery tattooed painter carried six boards apiece over to the center where the short boss painter coordinated a masterful and indecipherable seam. Then the leathery tattooed painter and the middle-sized painter lowered their ladders three or four rungs and set in to covering six more boards. No one along the fence seemed excessively eager to comment on the color straightaway. Folks generally seemed inclined to reserve judgement and wait for what they called the full effect, but as for myself I knew directly this was not one of your standard pigments, was probably not one of your more exotic pigments either, but was most likely one of your strictly criminal pigments. I do mean it was offensive in a capital sort of way. Mr. Wyatt Benbow asked the short boss painter what he called it and the short boss painter said he called it red, but I do believe there are those reds with a richness and a paleness and maybe even a matchless general lustrosity to them and this was not a red like that. More precisely it was the exact color of tomato soup when you add the can of milk instead of the can of water, which is nothing that should be exposed to the out-of-doors in bulk. By itself the siding color proved to be nauseating and it was purely debilitating in combination with the trim, so nobody much waited around for the full effect once the partial effect had taken ahold of them. Consequently the leathery tattooed painter and the middle-sized painter baptized the most of the house without hardly any audience except for the short boss painter and the two carpenters whenever they decided to come outside and squat. Nobody had much stomach for the place once it stopped being white and started being red and yellow, and what folks could manage it avoided going downtown altogether which Daddy said was understandable considering how Miss Pettigrew’s house had suddenly gone from a show-place to a visual diarrhetic, he called it.