The Pecan Man (2 page)

On the third Monday that I
watched him strike out for parts unknown, I flagged him down with a whistle my
Mama taught me years ago. It's a pretty darn good whistle, too. It startled him
enough to make him bring his bike to a shaky halt at my driveway. I waved him
up to the porch. He left the mower and pushed the bike as far as the stoop.

“Mawnin’, Ma’am."

Eldred Mims had an unusual
voice, high-pitched and squeaky, and each word was punctuated by the smacking
noise made when his toothless gums made contact. It was like they were made of
suction cups. The sound was distracting at first, but you got used to it easy
enough.

I used to joke to Blanche that
I couldn't understand why the neighbors were so afraid of the man.

"One thing was
certain," I'd tell her, "He may gum you to death, but he sure ain't
gonna bite."

Where was I now? Oh, yes,
Eldred Mims stood in front of me; beat up old cap in hand.

"Mighty fine day, isn't
it?" I asked him with a wave of my fan.

"Yes'm," he smacked
out his reply. "Look like it go'n be fine, 'jes fine."

"Care for a glass of
tea?"

He looked taken aback by my
question, as if it were the last one on earth he expected me to ask. Then he
shuffled his feet, rubbed his neck with the hand that held his limp cap and
mumbled something I couldn't understand.

"Speak up, man!" I
complained. "I can't hear worth a hoot."

"I said, No'm, tha's okay,
but I thank you for axin'. I sho' nuff do."

"Hot as it is out here,
you don't want tea? What's the matter with you that you can't accept my
hospitality?"

Now, I knew doggone good and
well he was trying to be polite by not accepting, but I was pretty sure it had
been a while since he'd had a glass of cold sweet tea and, quite frankly, he
looked like he could use some. I pressed on.

"Blanche!" I hollered
over my shoulder, throwing my voice in the general direction of the door.

Blanche's wide body appeared in
the doorway a moment later. I always got a kick out of watching her materialize
at that screen door as if by magic. Of course, there wasn't any magic to it. It
was just that you couldn't see her until she got right up to the screen and the
outside light hit her white uniform.

"Blanche, we have a
visitor here. Could you bring this gentleman a glass of tea?"

She answered by stepping out of
the door and reaching for my glass.

"I'll get you some more
while I'm at it." And she disappeared the same way she came.

"I'm Ora Lee
Beckworth," I said with a far less intimidating tone.

"Pleased to meet you,
Ma'am," was his shaky reply.

"You got a name?"

"I reckon I do, but mos'
folks jus' call me the Pecan Man."

"I knew that much," I
said, "but, I'd rather call you your given name, if you have one."

“Eldred, Ma'am.”

I realize now that he must have
said “Eldred Mims” and not “Eldred, Ma'am” like I thought, but that's the way I
heard it at the time.

“What’d your mama call you?” I
asked.

He grinned then, displaying an
engaging smile despite the missing teeth. “She call’t me Eddie.”

“Eddie it is, then,” I said and
returned his smile.

Blanche reappeared with the tea
just as I persuaded him to park his bike and sit on the edge of the stoop. He
mumbled a
thanks
and took the glass from her, holding it tightly in his
lap like he was afraid he might break it.

"So, you mow lawns for a
living?" I asked.

"Yes'm, I do."

"Interested in doing
mine?"

"Yes'm, I reckon I
am."

"Okay, good. This is what
I need. Every Wednesday morning, I need my front and back lawn mowed. Every
Saturday, I need my flowerbeds weeded and hedges trimmed as necessary. Can you
handle that for me, and how much do you charge?"

"I can do that for ya, Miz
Beckworth. Won't cost ya' but five dollars a week, I figure."

"Five dollars a
week!" I let my indignation set in before I continued. "Why, that's
highway robbery! And I'll have you know, I am
not
a thief!"

He looked at me, confused and
slightly horrified, but his eyes lit up when he realized what I meant.

"I'll pay you ten dollars
and not a penny less."

He grinned again. "Yes'm,
that'll be fine. It sho' will be fine."

"A day," I added,
pleased with his reaction and even more pleased with myself for causing it.

His face fell.

"No'm," he said,
"that'd be too much. I can't take ten dollars a day jus' for mowin' this
here little bitty lawn and pullin' some puny weeds out da' garden."

I realized I'd pushed it too
far and, though I thought the job well worth my offer, I backed down without
taking offense at his unintentional disparagement of my garden.

"Fine," I said,
"but lunch and all the tea you can drink come with the job both days. And,
if I were you, I wouldn't turn down one of Blanche's sandwiches or she'll be
downright offended."

"I'll 'member that. I sho'
will.”

After he left that day, Blanche
appeared at the screen door with a pot of beans in one hand and two colanders
in the other. We sat in companionable silence listening to the low whirring of
the fan and the rhythmic creaking of our rockers keeping time for the soft
percussive pops of the beans we snapped. When we'd finished all she'd brought
out, she set her colander in the crook of her arm and sat gently rocking as if
she held a sleeping baby and not a pot of beans. Finally, she stood up and
gathered all she'd brought out. She didn't look at me when she spoke. She
looked out across the front lawn.

"That man is old and
homeless, but he ain't stupid, Miz Beckworth. Don't be hurtin' his pride more
than he can take, you hear me?"

I didn't answer, but she knew I
heard.

Eddie showed up on time every
single day he worked for me. I never saw him with a watch, but he always seemed
to know what time it was. He would start mowing promptly at 10:00 a.m. and
finish just before noon. He would never join me on the porch, but ate on the
same side of the stoop without fail.

We didn't talk much, although
Lord knows I tried to get information from that raggedy old man. I think it was
the not knowing that made people nervous. Several of my neighbors made their
disappointment in my choice of employees readily apparent, but I ignored most
of their complaints. That is, until Dovey Kincaid dropped by with a lemon chess
pie and a bucketful of advice.

I've known Dovey since she was
a newlywed and moved into the house across the street. I'm only fifteen years
her elder, but by then she was treating me like I was old and feebleminded.

"Hey, Miss
Beckworth!"

Southerners
always
call
their elders Mr. or Miss Whatever. Doesn't matter if you're married or not; the
only thing that changes with familiarity is whether they call you by your first
or your last name.

Anyway, Dovey never called me
Miss Ora Lee. I never liked her enough to let her get familiar. Truth be known,
callin' me Miss Beckworth was her way of saying she didn't want to be familiar
in the first place, but that was fine with me. Southerners are mostly happy to
give tit for tat.

Dovey didn't wait to be invited
to sit down. She put the pie down on the table beside me and settled her big
ol' square behind into one of my rockers.

"Beautiful day, ain't it,
Miss Beckworth?"

"It started out that
way." I could barely disguise my contempt. Dovey Kincaid hasn't visited me
one time in her life to be social. I could tell right off she was on a mission.

"It sure did, Miss
Beckworth. It really did." She sighed like she'd just had a bite of heaven
and settled herself into the rocker.

"What brings you all the
way across the street, Dovey?"

"Well, I was just bakin' a
few pies for the Woman's Club bake sale and I looked out and saw you sittin'
here and I thought to myself, 'Now, Dovey Kincaid! Here you are bakin' pies for
charity, and there sits your very own neighbor over there all by herself!' So,
I whipped off my apron, picked up a lemon chess pie and headed right on
over." She smoothed her skirt with both hands, then clasped them together
like she was saying a prayer and dropped them into her lap. Then, as if she had
forgotten her manners, leaned forward, cocked her head to the side and aimed
her best debutante smile right in my direction.

I grinned back, but not in the
name of being mannerly.

"Is that so, Dovey?"
I chuckled. "Well, that is just as charitable a thing as I can imagine.
I'll make sure Blanche takes it home with her tonight."

I asked a mental prayer of
forgiveness for insulting Blanche that way, but I just couldn't help myself.

"Oh! Well, of course, Miss
Beckworth," she sputtered as tat collided solidly with tit (if you'll
pardon the expression). "But, I do hope you'll try a little bite yourself
before you do. I worked awful hard on that pie for you not to at least get a
taste of it."

"I appreciate the thought,
but I'm afraid it might be a little sour for me. Lemon gives me gas."

Judging by her expression of
horror, she no doubt wanted me to think I had offended her gentility, but she
forgets the fact that sound carries a long way when windows are open. She may
not have lost her virginity on her wedding night, but Lord knows she lost any
discretion she might have had.

"What do you really want,
Dovey?" I asked as she composed herself.

"Well, I did want to ask
you about that awful old man you've hired to mow your lawn. Now, I know it's
none of my business, but do you think it's a good idea to have him in this neighborhood
all the time? Honestly, Miss Beckworth, we don't know a thing about this man
and you've got him over here plunderin' through everything."

"Plundering? He's weeding
my garden! How do you get plundering out of a little yard work?"

"Well, you know what I
mean. He's just getting mighty familiar with your property. It isn't right,
Miss Beckworth! The other day, I saw him rummaging through your garage when
your back was turned."

"I sent him to look for
some slug pellets, Dovey. He's trying to get my flowerbeds back in order, for
crying out loud."

"Well, still - I don't
think it's good for him to be around all the time. It's bad enough that we're
three blocks from the loony bin. Now folks ridin' through will be thinking the
neighborhood's gone colored all the sudden. And besides, it just isn't safe."

"Oh, for heaven's sake!
That man couldn't hurt a fly if he wanted to. He's seventy years old if he's a
day." (I was ten years off on that, but I didn’t know it at the time.)

"Maybe so, but he's got a
dangerous look to him and I don't like it. And he's fit enough to haul that
mower around everywhere he goes. That says to me that he's fit enough to do
whatever harm he has a mind to."

"Well, it says to me he's
hungry, and if you had a charitable bone in your body, you'd be baking a pie
for
him.
Now, you can take that pie of yours and waddle your fat butt on
home. No one here needs your kind of charity."

Don't you know, she scooped
that pie up and was back inside her front door before the rocker she vacated
came to a rest.

Three

Summer came and went without much excitement. Eldred Mims
became a fixture in the neighborhood. Mothers stopped calling their children
inside the moment they saw him and life returned to normal, as we knew it anyway.

Just about the time we finally
smelled fall in the air the family grocery store downtown succumbed to the rise
of the supermarket. Neither Blanche nor I were able to walk the mile or so it
now took to get groceries, so I started taking a cab to the Winn Dixie store. The
wide variety of choices was overwhelming at first and it often took over two
hours to finish my marketing. Blanche pitched a fit the first time I did that.

"Law, Miss Ora, you 'bout
scared me to death!"

Blanche could be dramatic when she
had a mind to be.

"Quit fussing and help me
unpack this stuff."

I was too tired to account for
my whereabouts, dull as the story might be.

"You couldn'ta been at the
Winn Dixie all this time! Why didn't you tell me you was go'n go somewheres
else?"

"Well, I was and I didn't,
Blanche. It took me all this long to get through that blasted store. I've never
seen so much food in all my life. I don't know why Bobby Milstead had to go and
close the Thriftway downtown."

"They like to blame it on
those big ol' stores, Miss Ora, but I know for a fact it's 'cause Mr. Bobby's
son wadn't no account. Mr. Bobby been wantin' to retire for ten years now and
he was just waitin' for Bobby, Jr. to grow up and take an interest. My Marcus
stocked shelves down there for three years. He wanted to buy that ol' store,
but Mr. Bobby wouldn’t have none of that. He said he'd rather close it down
than to have somebody else run it into the ground. That‘s why Marcus up and
join‘t the Army."