Outside of Davis Corners, Gray’s Road crossed the Sawatassee River on a sturdy, two-lane, wooden bridge. This intersection marked the border where town turned to country, and just beyond it was Grace Tillman’s farm. Out of a combination of respect and affection, she was known throughout all of Davis Corners simply as Grandmother Tillman.
Grandmother Tillman’s was the place where her own family went when it needed to be family: deaths, holidays, and Sunday dinners. The two-story, wooden house was plain, but spacious, and neatly painted white with long, green shutters. Oak trees shaded the front yard and had their trunks whitewashed for three feet up from the roots. The whitewash was to prevent bugs from getting into the trees, but they reminded Nate of the fancy pork chops with paper covers that Grandmother Tillman made every Easter. She didn’t work the farm any more. She leased most of the acreage to neighboring farmers, but still maintained a large garden, several chickens, and Old Redemption.
Old Redemption was a large mongrel that was absolutely devoted to Grandmother Tillman, and he was her constant companion on the farm. He was the ugliest dog Nate had ever seen, but his Uncle Henry swore to him that the father had been twice as ugly. Old Redemption was older than Nate, which in dog years made him considerably old. Still, he got around and at least took on a protective posture and mustered a single bark when strangers approached. The first sign of a friendly response from Grandmother Tillman, though, and Old Redemption would gratefully sag back down to wherever he’d been lying and give a dismissive grunt.
The first ones to get to Grandmother Tillman’s this Sunday were her son Gabriel and his family. His wife, Mary, went into the kitchen to help while their two, small daughters, Katherine and Theresa, played on the porch. Grandmother Tillman’s other son, Seth, showed up soon after. Seth was a widower with two children, Elizabeth and Clayton.
Clayton was a year younger than Nate and had big, fleshy lips. Nate couldn’t stand him because his sole conversational skill was saying “oh yeah” to whatever Nate or his other cousins said. Then he’d claim to have done more, seen bigger, or gone farther. Elizabeth was eleven months younger than Clayton and hardly ever spoke.
“Cat got your tongue?” Gabriel chided his niece as she sat quietly in the living room. She saw Clayton in the hallway and just smiled politely and shrugged. She knew that any response would earn a taunt from her brother and any attempt at conversation would be immediately outdone.
Grandmother Tillman had a third son, Louis, who had died. Her only other children were her two daughters, Hattie and Nate’s mother, Sylvia.
Hattie and Henry showed up next, followed soon by Sylvia with Nate and his father. Everyone slipped into their Sunday routines, the women working in the kitchen, the men talking in the living room, and the cousins playing in the yard. Nate was old enough now that he hung around his uncles. They took their suit coats off, sat in the living room with its high ceiling and tall, open windows and told stories. As Nate listened, he watched the curtains float out and waft back with the pleasant, spring breeze. He could smell the grass outside and could just catch the more distant scents of the Sawatassee River and the chickens. All of these blended with the signature odor of Grandmother Tillman’s house, a smell of age, wood, and roominess. Nate’s father sat with them, but didn’t join in. He was a man with no past to speak of and little presence, which made Nate’s flamboyant uncles with their colorful stories seem all the more fascinating to him.
“Lord, I couldn’t believe Old Redemption was still alive when I drove up,” Seth said.
“The ugly ones live forever,” Henry said. “Out of spite, I reckon.”
“You said Old Redemption’s father was even uglier,” Nate said. “What was he like?”
Seth started a slow, deep, coughing laugh. His face gradually turned redder and redder. “You remember that old dog?” It was a subtle invitation to Henry to tell one of his stories.
“Buster,” Henry said. “Belonged to that retarded fellow that lived at Annie Becket’s boarding house.” The invitation had been accepted. Everybody settled a notch deeper into Grandmother Tillman’s living room couch and chairs, ready to listen to Henry’s story.
“Billy Taggert was a simple-minded man in his forties, and Annie Becket, mostly out of kindness, let him stay for free in the utility room at her boarding house. She gave him room and board, looked after him, and in return, he did chores and heavy lifting around the place.
“Well, somehow he got hold of this mangy dog, ugliest thing you’d ever want to see, and the two were just inseparable. Billy, who hardly said ‘Boo’ to anyone, would sit and talk to that dog for hours. And the dog seemed to listen. He’d watch Billy’s face, wag his tail, and every now and then give Billy this big lick. Annie let Billy keep him, ’cause she figured that Billy had little enough as it was. He named it Buster, and Billy and Buster went everywhere together.”
“How ugly would you say Buster was?” Seth said, more as a setup than anything else.
“Oh this dog was ugly,” Gabriel said. “He looked like a mud fence after a rain.”
Everyone laughed at Gabriel’s description.
“I remember him,” Seth said, as he squinted his eyes. “His legs were way too short for his body.”
“That’s the whole problem,” Henry said. “Nothing on that dog fit with anything else. Like every gene in its heritage had combined in the worst possible way. That dog was a gene cesspool.”
“Didn’t Billy and the dog hang out at Johnson’s barber shop all the time?” Gabriel said.
Henry smiled. “Old man Johnson, who ran the shop, had one of those pictures of dogs dressed up like people and playing cards. This one had a big Great Dane or something raring back in a chair and pulling in his winnings while all the other dogs were throwing in their cards. Billy would park Buster outside on the sidewalk and would sit next to that picture for hours, talking under his breath and squinting at it. I think he liked to pretend that it was Buster winning the big hand.”
“I remember that picture,” Seth said. “Had some kind of cute caption or something under it.”
“Every dog has its day,” Gabriel said.
Henry agreed and continued the story.
“Ricky Thornton came into the shop one day all full of himself. Kicked Buster out of the way and started giving Billy a hard time about his dog. Ricky owned the place, I don’t know if y’all knew that, kind of funny little deal. He’d originally rented space above the shop for his accounting business and handled Johnson’s books. He let Johnson get himself into a cash bind, then bought him out and made him fire the other barber, Jim Halloway.”
All of the men, who had individually done business with Ricky Thornton, nodded their heads. It certainly sounded like the way Ricky would have done it.
“Anyway, he’s giving Billy this hard time telling him that he ought to kill Buster and just put him out of his misery.”
“Was Buster sick,” Nate asked.
“No, just ugly as sin.” Henry shrugged. “I guess Ricky felt anything that looked that bad must feel that bad.
“Then he started to make this really big deal about his own dog, Princess Davidia, and how valuable she was and how he was going to breed her and make a lot of money off the pups. He was going to take her to a kennel in Birmingham and have her bred with some hoity-toity dog named Jefferson’s Delight. The whole idea of dogs getting married—that’s how we explained it to Billy—made Billy laugh, and he went back to squinting and jabbering at that picture.
“That night, there was a big poker game at Annie Becket’s. There were a bunch of us who used to get together about every two months and play cards, smoke cigarettes, and drink a few beers. Annie would make sandwiches and put out crackers, and we’d pull two bits for the house out of every pot. It gave us a place to go and gave Annie a couple of extra bucks.
“Annie got a little behind in getting ready that night, so she asked Billy to feed Buster. All he had to do was open the can of dog food and put it into Buster’s bowl. Well, to Billy’s simple mind, all the cans looked alike and he grabbed a can of chili and beans by mistake. Buster sure seemed to love it, so he gave him a second and third can. Meanwhile, Annie was making sandwiches and didn’t notice any of this was going on.”
Everyone shifted in pleasant anticipation. The story was now set like a loaded gun. All that remained was to see how a master marksman like Henry Givens would shoot it off.
“A bunch of us got there, and we’re playing and all, and Billy Thornton shows up and wants to play. We didn’t mind his money so we let him into the game. It was cold that night, and he was wearing a denim jacket, which he put on the coat rack in Annie’s big front hall with all of our stuff. Geez, all he could talk about again was Princess Davidia and how she was going to have this Jefferson Delight’s pups and how much they’d be worth. To you and me this would’ve just been a dog, you know, something to go hunting with, throw a stick to and all that, but to Ricky this animal was an investment. I asked him how he knew Princess Davidia had been saving herself for old Jefferson. He got all huffy and went into this long, detailed description of a ten-foot high fence he’d put around her kennel and how he kept it locked up with a chain and padlock.
“Billy just sat around and watched us with his eyes all squinty. I think he was pretending we were the dogs in the picture. All of a sudden, I heard this muffled sound and I looked down and saw Buster. I didn’t think much of it until Hank Thompson got this funny look on his face and asked what the god-awful smell was.”
The other men chuckled and quickly looked to make sure that the women were preoccupied in the kitchen, then Henry continued with the story.
“Well, old Buster let off another couple of rounds of ripe, chili-bean air-biscuits and everybody scrambled. Annie came in to see what all the commotion was about and the smell stopped her dead in her tracks. ‘Get that dog out of here,’ she yelled, and then started opening windows and lighting candles.
“Billy was panicked by this time, so he grabbed Buster and started pulling at him. Annie yelled at him to put on his coat, she had to take care of him like he was a child. So, he grabbed his old denim jacket off the rack and took Buster outside.”
Henry paused for a second.
“At least he thought it was his jacket. When he got Buster outside and calmed down, he must’ve realized that he’d grabbed Ricky Thornton’s by mistake. Guess he put his hands in the pockets and found Ricky’s key ring with the key to the padlock on it. Well, apparently Billy decided at that moment that poor Buster had been the town joke for too long and deserved better, at least once in his life. If Princess Davidia was good enough for Jefferson what’s-his-name, she was good enough for Buster. And that night, between chili-bean salvos, Buster was treated to prime, pure-bred setter.”
Henry had to wait while everyone laughed. Seth got into that deep cough-laugh of his again, so Hattie stuck her head in the door to ask if everything was all right. Everyone assured her it was and she went back into the kitchen.
“Ricky took Princess Davidia down to Birmingham the next day and fixed her up with Mr. Delight. Apparently the union took place, Princess Davidia became pregnant, and Ricky spent the next few months calculating his return on investment. Unfortunately, when the pups were born, Ricky realized that Princess Davidia had dallied, and it was obvious with who. I heard that he went by Annie’s place to kill either Billy or Buster, it wasn’t clear, but Annie stepped in and stopped it, in either case.”
Everyone kept laughing. They all knew how pompous Ricky Thornton was. It was easy to imagine his fury at having been done in, in his mind, by the town idiot.
Henry’s voice got very soft. “What he did do, though, was take those pups to that bridge right out there and start dropping them one-by-one into the river.”
Everyone sat absolutely still. As funny as the story had been, it now turned tragic and eerie as they thought of those puppies drowning so close to where they now sat.
Henry spoke to Nate. “Your grandmother saw what was going on from her garden and went down there to stop him. All but one had been drowned by the time she got to Ricky Thornton, but she was intent on saving that one. She was dead serious, too. Ricky Thornton told someone that Mother Tillman aimed her rifle square between his eyes.”
Nate’s eyes got wide and he sat straight up. He couldn’t imagine his grandmother even owning a gun, much less aiming it at someone.
“Oh yes,” Gabriel said, seeing Nate’s astonishment. “Your grandmother’s quite the shot. There was many a night there wouldn’t have been supper on the table if she hadn’t gone out into those fields out back and shot a rabbit or a couple of squirrels. And every drifter down the line knew not to try to intimidate that widow woman who lived out in the country or they’d see the business end of that rifle of hers.”
“Anyway,” Henry said, “Ricky Thornton surrendered the remaining pup, and it’s been the devoted companion of your grandmother ever since. She named him ‘Redemption’ since he’d been saved. As he got on in years, the ‘Old’ got tacked on.”
Everyone shifted from their frozen positions, let their breath out loudly, and nodded their heads. This was the equivalent to applause for a story well told. Hattie could be heard out back fussing at Clayton for picking on Theresa and Karen. Since none of the kids were hers, Hattie was always the designated arbiter of Sunday disputes between the cousins. She told everybody to come in and start cooling off and cleaning up. That summons generally meant that dinner was about fifteen minutes away from being served.
Chapter 3
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
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