Chapter 7: Captain Jack

In contrast to the meandering Sawatassee River and the two-lane State Road Forty-one, the Interstate was a wide slash across the outskirts of Davis Corners that carried fast cars and big trucks. At the single exit that metered traffic into and out of Davis Corners was a tall sign that simply said “Eats,” and at its base was Cole’s Truck Stop.

Buddy Cole felt the sign’s message had to be simple enough for people to read and comprehend while going seventy miles per hour. He had wrestled between “Eats” and “Gas” since his truck stop offered both. Nate’s Uncle Henry had suggested that he go with the latter, since it described both.

It was early afternoon and Buddy was patrolling the truck stop, wearing his usual John Deere baseball cap and greasy work pants. A chrome chain securely anchored his wallet to his belt. He went into the diner, sat down at the end of the counter, and waved to Sylvester, the cook, indicating that he needed a cup of coffee. Edna McElroy saw the gesture and told Sylvester she had it.

The diner had a long counter and two rows of booths. One row of booths lined the windows and one hugged the adjacent wall. The counter was where the truckers sat, and the booths were where the locals sat. No one enforced the convention, but it worked out that way most of the time. The other waitresses were content to let Edna handle the counter, because it saved them from having to deal with the coarse truckers. Edna liked it that way. She could handle the truckers, and they tipped better than the booth folks did.

“Here you go, boss-man.” Edna passed the coffee to Buddy from the other side of the counter. She leaned over the counter to inspect the chain attached to Buddy’s wallet. She could see Buddy looking down the front of her uniform as she did.

“I’ve never figured out what you’re guarding so carefully down there, your wallet or your pants. Beats me what you’ve got in either that you’re so proud of.”

The truckers at the counter all laughed.

“Want to see?” Buddy said.

“Well, show me the wallet first. If there’s nothing in there, there’s no point in going much further.”

Once again the men at the counter laughed. Edna turned her sarcasm on them next, knowing not to make her boss the butt of too much kidding.

“I see you boys all have your stuff chained down too.” Edna strolled down the counter looking over at the wallet chains and letting the truckers catch a glimpse of the lace fringe on her bra. “Good thing, too. Don’t know if I could control myself otherwise.”

Edna clutched her breast with her hand as if fighting off a fainting spell. The gesture brought the sightseeing to an end. As a professional waitress, Edna knew that cheesecake was best served in small portions.

“Is Captain Jack in today” one of the truckers asked Buddy.

Captain Jack was the code name for the slot machine that Buddy kept in the trucker’s locker room. The locker room was reserved for long haulers and had a shower and two cots, along with a small bank of six lockers. Along one wall were a toiletries vending machine, a condom machine, and Captain Jack. Gambling was illegal, but the state troopers who came into Buddy’s place never went into the truckers’ locker room. On the off chance that they might, Buddy had put a sign over Captain Jack that said, “For Entertainment Only. Not For Gambling.” Buddy said this would protect him from any prosecution. Over the condom machine, someone had scrawled, “Don’t buy this gum, it tastes like rubber.”

Buddy saw the pass key for the locker room in its usual place: next to the cash register, hanging on the arm of a wooden statue of an old sea captain wearing yellow foul-weather gear. “Looks like the captain is available.”

The trucker left Edna a seventy-five cent tip and started to head back to the locker room.

“Hey, lucky,” Edna said. She tossed one of the quarters from her tip to the trucker. “Play this one for me. I hear you got the touch.” This usually worked for Edna. Most of the truckers would cough up another fifty cents of their own money rather than come back and tell her they’d lost.

Buddy continued to sit at the end of the counter and looked over some paperwork. “Sure seem to go through a lot of steaks.”

He looked at Sylvester, but Sylvester just kept working at the grill.

“Sylvester,” Buddy said, “Why do we go through so many steaks?”

“People like steak,” Sylvester said. “Town folks eat them for dinner, mostly, and truckers like to eat them with breakfast.”

Buddy looked around and grumbled. “Nobody eating steak now.”

“It’s lunch.”

“Well, I’m going to be keeping on eye on it from here on. Just looks like I go through a lot of steak.”

Sylvester turned around and said, “They’re not going through me, if that’s what you mean.”

Actually, every night right before Sylvester would get off his shift, he liked to treat himself to a steak dinner. If Edna was on duty, he usually made her one too. One of the other waitresses, a sour crone named Pearl, had gotten jealous and told Buddy, but he hadn’t been able to catch Sylvester at it yet. He hoped that this little warning would stop it.

Meanwhile, a black sedan pulled off the exit ramp and into Cole’s parking lot. In it was the Reverend Ralph Johnson, passing through Davis Corners to sign some contracts for his traveling ministry. Davis Corners was usually a good stop for his tent revival, and he was here to finalize arrangements for this year’s circuit. Cole’s was a good meeting place for traveling salesmen and itinerant businessmen.

He was getting out of his car when Maddie Flanagan came screeching into the spot next to his in her Bel-Air. He pulled himself back in and quickly shut his door to avoid its being ripped off. Maddie stared at him with her trademark open look that seemed to ask if he had something to say, while at the same time suggesting it would be best if he didn’t.

Johnson just smiled at Maddie and observed her plastic Jesus on the dashboard. He got back out of the car and watched as Maddie labored to get herself out. “Good-afternoon, ma’am.”

Maddie shuffled to the diner and grumbled as Johnson held the door for her. Maddie sat at the counter, fully accepted by the truckers because she could spit tobacco juice farther and more accurately than any man there.

Johnson looked around, found an empty booth, and sat down. Ricky Thornton came in a few minutes later and joined him.

“Who’s the old gal at the counter?” Johnson said.

“Maddie Flanagan. She’s a real hoot.”

The Irish name and the plastic Jesus, in all probability, meant Catholic, and Johnson doubted that he’d seen her at one of his tent revivals. “Interesting driving style.”

“Don’t get folks around here going on Maddie’s driving. They say the only thing’s kept her alive is that plastic Jesus of hers.”

“Well, the Lord protects those who place their faith in him,” Johnson said.

Ricky Thornton gave him a quizzical look, then nodded. He had a tendency to forget that Johnson was a preacher.

The two men discussed this year’s rental arrangements for Evans Field, a property that Thornton managed. It was where the local VFW softball league played on Friday nights. The base paths were maintained more by wear and tear of the runners than anything a grounds keeper did. A backstop made from old power poles and chicken wire protected what bit of a crowd would sit in its rickety bleachers. It had night-lights and a large parking lot, though, which made it suitable for Reverend Johnson’s tent revival. Most of the details had been already worked out in the mail or by phone. Today’s meeting was mostly just to get the paperwork signed.

“How’s your ministry doing this year?” Thornton paused at the word ‘ministry.’ He was going to say ‘business’ but thought that might sound inappropriate.

“We’re doing well.”

“It’s just that people seem to be turning away from religion.” Ricky blushed a little. “Not that I’m in a position to gauge. Can’t say I attend services regularly.”

Johnson smiled. “The more they turn away from religion, the more they want to come to these tent revivals. They feel a need to get back what they’ve lost. I guess that’s why we call them revivals.”

“Huh, never thought of it like that.” Thornton blushed a little deeper, feeling like he’d said something stupid.

Ricky Thornton and Ralph Johnson finished signing their papers and Johnson convinced Thornton to pick up lunch. He told him it could be a double deduction, a business expense and a religious donation. Thornton did it only because he was picking up an easy commission on this one.

Johnson made sure Maddie was still sitting at the counter and left. He wanted to be sure he wasn’t going to share highway time with her. He pulled back onto the Interstate and headed toward Henderson, where he had to make similar arrangements. He thought about what Ricky Thornton had said about people giving up on religion and about his own reply, how it helped the revival business. He’d never thought about it that way either. If that were true, he thought to himself, he ought to capitalize on it more. As he drove, he worked on a new sermon for this summer’s circuit, a theme of lost faith refound.

Back at the counter, Maddie ordered coffee and a piece of pie. When the pie came, she just stabbed at it for a while.

“Look like you got the whole world on your shoulders,” Edna said.

Maddie would’ve jumped on anyone else for intruding on her thoughts, somber though they were. She liked Edna, though, something about her brashness or maybe the way she manipulated the men around her without their even noticing.

“Young, innocent thing like you got no idea how heavy the world can be at times.”

Edna looked away. Buddy pushed behind the counter and rubbed up against her as he passed by.

“Innocent? Edna? You need to get out more,” Buddy said to Maddie.

Maddie stared at him as she shoved a little snuff into her mouth.

Edna pulled away from him, annoyed as much by his butting in as by his physical contact.

“If it’s getting too hard to squeeze by, maybe you need to lose some weight.”

“Maybe you need to be a little nicer to me.” Buddy’s tone had a dirty edge to it.

Maddie spit into a paper Dixie cup. “Maybe you need to get your head out of your pants,” she said to Buddy.

“What would you know about what’s in a man’s pants?” Buddy said and walked away grumbling.

Maddie smiled and Edna smiled back. Picking on Buddy had taken Maddie’s mind off of her own troubles for a moment. “Keep your eye on him,” she warned Edna.

Meanwhile, the trucker who’d gone back to the locker room came back out and gave Edna a dollar. “You’re right. I got the touch today.”

Edna thanked him and tucked the dollar bill away.

“You’re not still getting them with that, are you?”

“Hey, stick with what works.”

“What I want to know is when did Captain Jack start paying off in dollar bills.”

Edna laughed. “Trust me. Captain Jack pays off in all kind of ways. You seen buddy’s new bass boat out back?”

“Can’t say I’ve been that lucky.”

“Name written right on the back, Captain Jack’s Loot. Tell me where Buddy got the money to buy that,” Edna said.

Maddie and Edna laughed and shook their heads.

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While Maddie was finishing her pie at Cole’s, Julius Wanamaker was just sitting down to lunch at his kitchen table. A lot of people thought the undertaking business was a cold one, but it suited Julius just fine. His house was right behind the funeral parlor, so he was able to come home everyday to a lunch his wife made, and in general, the pace of the business was slow and easy to keep up with.

It had been getting harder lately, however, partly because Davis Corners was growing and more people were dying and partly because his only assistant was his wife’s brother, who was becoming less and less reliable.

“Where’s Jimmy,” he asked his wife. There was to be a wake for old Mrs. Hayden that night, and Julius had been counting on his brother-in-law to get the viewing parlor set up while he finished preparing the deceased.

“He called and said he’s feeling poorly today. He’s going to try to get in this afternoon.”

Julius knew there was no use in getting into it with his wife. Jimmy was a drunk, and everybody knew it. But Julius loved his wife and she loved her brother and that was that. Jimmy was his burden.

Julius was finishing off his iced tea when he heard someone knock on the kitchen’s screen door. His wife looked past him in the direction of the door and got a curious look on her face.

“There’s a colored man at our back door,” she said.

Julius got up and went to the door. He spoke to the man through the screen.

“Colored funeral home’s over on Baker Street, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Thank you, sir, but no.” A soft, refined voice answered Julius from the other side of the screen. I’m here on less urgent business. I rang at the parlor, but it seemed that nobody was there.”

“Nobody who could hear you, at any rate,” Julius said. He laughed at his own reference to Mrs. Hayden, whose body was in the basement laboratory.

Julius opened the door, feeling it was rude to stand there and talk through the screen. “How can I help you?”

“My name is Washington, and until recently, I was employed for a number of years by a gentleman in Charlotte as his butler, chauffeur, and personal assistant. I’m looking for employment with someone who could use those kinds of skills.”

“I’m afraid I don’t need a butler. That’d be a bit higher style than I’m accustomed to.”

“My former employer was fond of entertaining, and I could be helpful with preparing and managing the events of the funerals.” Washington noticed that Julius didn’t immediately object.

“Also, I see that you have a hearse and what seems to be a flower car parked out back here. You may even have a family car for the procession to the cemetery. I maintained all my employer’s vehicles, including keeping them washed and waxed.” Washington didn’t point out that the hearse currently could use sprucing up. None-the-less, the point wasn’t lost on Julius, who had asked his brother-in-law to take care of it yesterday.

Julius walked through the open door so he wouldn’t be standing in the house while Washington stood outside. This was getting down to talking business, and men should do that face-to-face.

“I can’t afford to take on a big expense, cash-flow couldn’t stand it.” Julius nodded toward the funeral parlor. It was a large, two-story, ante-bellum house, painted white with black shutters. “I could set you up over there with a room on the second floor, throw in lunches and a small salary.”

Julius not only liked the idea of having some dependable help, he thought having a colored attendant at the services, greeting people and escorting them to the viewing parlors, would add some class to the operation.

The two men agreed on a weekly wage, and Julius got Washington situated in the funeral parlor. Washington went right to work, first getting the parlor set up for Mrs. Hayden’s wake and then washing the hearse for the next day. It wasn’t nearly as elegant as attending to one of Charlotte’s leading racketeers, but in many respects it wasn’t all that different. He had fine cars to take care of and a beautiful house to live in. He even had it all to himself, with the exception of the deceased transients who occupied the basement laboratory and first floor parlors. Given the indictments that had been made against his former boss, he thought that aspect of his new environment might not be all that different from his former one.

Chapter 8

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Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes