Watermelon Days and Firefly Nights: Heartwarming Scenes from Small Town Life (14 page)

“Shush now. My hip’s not broke. Come and help me get out of this tub.”

Polly tried. With all her eighty-two years of might, she tried. She pulled. She pushed. She braced her feet and let Molly pull on her. All to no avail. No matter what they tried, Molly still could not get out. She would be almost, almost out, but she repeatedly slid back down.

Polly sat down on the toilet, exhausted but set on reasoning through the problem. “Sister, we’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do.”

Molly leaned back in the tub and covered her face with a towel. “I guess I could just live in the tub.”

“I don’t know as we have a choice but to call someone to come get you out,” Polly finally replied.

“Don’t you even think about it!” said Molly. “I am not going to have anyone come and see me like this. Besides, who would we call?”

“911.”

“No! I won’t have it.”

“Mayor Tinker?”

“Sister, are you crazy? I’m naked!”

“What’s your solution then?”

Molly studied for a minute, then said, “Call Tim.”

“Tim? Tim who?”

“You know, that new fellow who’s staying with the little girl who runs the Wild Flour. Her cousin, I think. Nice boy.”

“The one from New Jersey? Sister, what are you thinking, having me call on a stranger for something like this?”

“Have you met him?”

“No. But I did see him come in and have lunch down at the Wild Flour. I didn’t have occasion to speak to him.”

“I saw him that day too, and while you were in the restroom, I met him. Rochelle made me acquainted with him. She said to me, ‘Molly, I’d like you to meet my cousin Tim. He’s from New Jersey. He’s blind.’”

“Blind! Bless his heart.” Polly was touched by the man’s plight. “He sure gets around good, doesn’t he?”

“Well, sure. They’ve got all kinds of schools and such for people like that up in New Jersey.”

“I suppose so. As I recall, he didn’t even have one of those white canes or a dog with him. Do you know how he lost his sight?”

“Got hit by a car or something. That doesn’t matter. I want you to go in there, dial up the Wild Flour, and get the number where he’s staying. Since he won’t be able to see whether I’ve got on any clothes or not, he’s who we’ll get to help me out of this tub.”

“You reckon he’ll just come over here like that?”

Well, he did.

A strong, handsome man of twenty-seven, Tim had Molly out of the tub on his first try. Didn’t even have to strain.

“You don’t know how much we appreciate this.”

“No problem,” Tim said. “I used to be a paramedic. Did this kind of thing all the time. Happens more than you think, you know. You ladies really ought to put a rubber mat down in your tub. Next time one of you could break a hip.”

“That’s what we’ve decided to do,” Polly gushed. “Get us a mat for our tub. Won’t you stay and have a piece of cake—German chocolate?”

“Sounds good.”

“Coffee? It’s decaf.”

“I’d love some.”

“So,” Polly said, taking Tim’s arm and guiding him to a kitchen chair. “I guess you can’t do that kind of work anymore since you . . . since you . . . well, you know.”

“I suppose I could, but I just got burned out on it. That happens to a lot of paramedics. The hours are long. The pay is good, but let me tell you, you earn every penny. After a few years, the stress got to be too much for me.
That’s when I went to drama school to be a mime. Not
much call for that here in Ella Louise, but if I decide to stay, I might start holding classes for it down at the Chamber of Commerce.”

Molly, dressed by then, was confused. “Classes? For the blind?”

“No, ma’am. For mime.” He spoke up so she could hear. “
Mime.
You know. Acting?”

“You mean you’re not . . . ” Molly turned pale.

“Not what?”

“Oh, sister. He’s not blind.”

“Blind? No, ma’am. I’ve got twenty-twenty vision. I don’t even have to wear contact lenses.” He took a big gulp of coffee.
“I don’t mean to be greedy, but can I have another piece of cake?”

O
N
M
ONDAY MORNING
,
Esther down at Dr. Strickland’s office got the call. “Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. I understand. Today? Well, I don’t know. You’ll need to call and see if they have any openings today. Emergency? Well, hold on a second, and I’ll get you the number. Here it is. Have you got a pen? All right. The place that you’re calling is the Clear Sound Hearing Aid Company. Dr. Strickland recommends them to all her patients. Says that they do good work and sell a fine product . . . Hello?”

The woman had already hung up.

“Guess the Pierce sisters finally decided to give it up and get hearing aids. About time.”

Past time, Polly and Molly would say. Past time indeed.

9

P
INKIE AND THE
C
HIEF

U
PON MEETING
C
HIEF
J
OHNSON
for the first time, most expect that he, the owner and curator of Ella Louise’s American Indian Arrowhead and Artifact Museum, will have a liberal lean. Nothing could be further from the truth, and such assumptions pain Chief.

“For crying out loud,”
a visitor recently observed, “the guy was wearing a silver and turquoise watchband. He has a teepee in his front yard. Gotta be just a little bit weird, if you ask me.”
The visitor’s disrespectful comments were overheard by Ella Louise’s mayor, Alfred Tinker, and his secretary, Faye Beth Newman. Generally an even-tempered pair, the two of them did not take kindly to the insult directed toward one of the town’s good citizens. By the time they got through speaking their minds to the out-of-towner, he had been corrected on things he wasn’t even aware of being mistaken about. So repentant was he of his
careless words that on his way out of town, he stopped and made a donation to Chief’s fine museum.

But truthfully, Chief
is
an unusual fellow, and it’s no great stretch to understand why those who don’t know any better take a fellow like Chief to be the same kind of person who would worship the sun, dance naked for rain, or beat on a drum.

Even vote Democrat.

If given the chance, Chief can explain about the teepee and the watchband. He spent years researching, gathering materials, and preparing to construct his teepee. It was a twenty-year dream of his to create one that would be historically accurate. (You wouldn’t know it, but those things are bigger than what they look like on TV.) Chief was well into the building of the structure when he realized that the only place it would fit was right in front of his house. And as for his eye-catching watchband? It was a gift from his sweet little mother, God rest her soul. She bought the piece at an Indian gift shop while on a bus trip to Carlsbad, New Mexico, unaware that it was too gaudy for a man. Since the watchband was the last gift she gave Chief before passing away, he wears it every day.

So no, Chief Johnson is not a worshipper of the sun.
He’s an upright and moral man; he’s been a deacon in the Baptist church for the past decade and is a member in good standing of the Ella Louise Elect More Republicans Club.

Of course, some folks still have trouble understanding why a normal man would even want
a teepee in his front yard. Chief’s fascination with Indian stuff goes back to his Aunt Effie, who first got him interested in it. Starting the year he turned ten (at that time he was still called by his given name, Bill) and continuing through his lanky-legged teenage years, Chief would spend ten days every summer with his aunt. Aunt Effie didn’t have any kids of her own. She didn’t even have a husband—but she wore blue jeans, and she sure was fun.

During his summertime visits, Bill and his aunt never did just stay at home. Year after year, the two of them hit the road, camping out together.

Bill always arrived on the Friday 3:00
P.M.
bus, and Aunt Effie was always there at the station to pick him up. They talked all the way to her house and stayed up half the night studying the map, going over their route. Early the next morning, they headed out in her car packed with sleeping bags and a tent, a bunch of mustard and bologna sandwiches, iodine tablets, and half a dozen quart jars of home-
canned peaches. For one week every year, they traveled
all over Colorado and New Mexico. They hiked, panned for real gold, visited Indian tourist sites, ate fry bread, and explored the ruins of old villages.

It was on the first of their trips that Bill found his first arrowhead. Though less than an inch long and sporting a broken tip, it was a real arrowhead all the same. Bill was so proud of his find that he couldn’t stop pulling it out of his pocket to look at it. Wow! Made by an actual Indian. Someone who lived a really long time ago.

When they got back to her house, Aunt Effie fixed him up a cardboard cigar box lined with a red velvet cloth so he could display it in his room when he got home.

Every year after that one, Bill found more arrowheads. He also collected bits of pottery. So good was he at finding such things that in five years’ time, three bookshelves in his room had been given over to a growing collection of Indian artifacts.

As Bill got older, his interest in Indians didn’t wane. He read books about Indians, visited museums about Indians, and took the bus to Houston to see traveling exhibits about Indians. Bill even traced his family tree back three generations and discovered that two of his ancestors actually had some Indian blood in them, which meant that he had some too. Navajo, as best as he could determine.

So great was his passion for all things Indian that by the time he was sixteen, Bill’s friends and most of his family began calling him “Chief.” It started out as a joke, but
the name fit so well that it stuck, and now most folks
don’t even know that he used to be Bill.

Today, Chief’s collection of artifacts are housed in a climate-controlled portable building that sits to the east of his house. Inside, he has done a great job organizing and creating interesting displays. With his own hands he built lighted, floor-to-ceiling shelves that hold all kinds of cool Indian stuff. Along with arrowheads and pottery, Chief displays Indian jewelry and clothing, Indian blankets and carvings, and Indian tools. One corner of the museum houses a library of books, which Chief is glad to lend out
as long as people sign for them. He also has a little TV
and VCR set up and a collection of educational videos that do a good job explaining Indian culture and lore.

Folks from all over have visited Chief’s museum. He doesn’t charge any admission, but he does keep a guest
book. In the dozen years that he’s had the place open,
Chief has hosted visitors from eight different states, as well as families from Mexico and Canada.

People from Ella Louise love to visit the museum too. Along with boring stuff like multiplication tables and state capitals, a trip to the Indian museum is on the agenda of every fifth-grade class that passes through Ella Louise Elementary. The kids love to come; they look forward to it all year. After Chief’s given them the tour and showed them his best video, he builds a fire and cooks fry bread, which they eat together, sitting Indian style inside the teepee.