Things Will Never Be the Same Read online

  It was a great Thanksgiving.

  Then when I show up at the General Delivery window at the PO there’s a couple of contributor’s copies of Amazing waiting for me.

  Instead of December, 1993, the issue says Winter, 1994.

  Uh-oh.

  Yeah, I killed it,

  A few years later when I was in Oso, Amazing was revived, and Kim was moved from Wisconsin to WA state, about 60 miles from me, a jaunty day’s mail away.

  He bought a story of mine I’d written to replace a story of mine he’d wanted revisions on. Instead of monkeying with a perfectly fine story, I took it back and gave him a brand new one, warning him all the time what had happened the last time he bought something from me.

  He published the story and sent me contributor’s copies and slapped a big Post-It, note on it that said: “See! You didn’t kill Amazing a second time.”

  He was right. It wasn’t the one with my story in it but the one after that that Amazing died for the second time.

  Like the Blue Eagle of the New Deal National Recovery Administration had it:

  We Do Our Part.

  Sorry, Kim.

  Part of the tone of “Household Words, . . .” came from the fact that it was written the week after the death of the late, great sorely-missed Chad Oliver, who was like a second dad to me. I’m still driving his next-to-last car (187,000 miles now) and fishing with some of his tackle. (I know he’d like that.)

  THE SAWING BOYS

  There was a place in the woods where three paths came together and turned into one big path heading south.

  A bearded man in a large straw hat and patched bib overalls came down one. Over his shoulder was a tow sack, and out of it stuck the handle of a saw. The man had a long wide face and large thin ears.

  Down the path to his left came a short man in butternut pants and a red checkerboard shirt that said Ralston-Purina Net Wt. 20 lbs. on it. He had on a bright red cloth cap that stood up on the top of his head. Slung over his back was a leather strap; hanging from it was a big ripsaw.

  On the third path were two people, one of whom wore a yellow-and black-striped shirt, and had a mustache that stood straight out from the sides of his nose. The other man was dressed in a dark brown barn coat. He had a wrinkled face, and wore a brown Mackenzie cap down from which the earflaps hung, even though it was a warm morning. The man with the mustache carried a narrow folding ladder; the other carried a two-man bucksaw.

  The first man stopped.

  “Hi yew!” he said in the general direction of the other two paths.

  “Howdee!” said the short man in the red cap.

  “Well, well, well!” said the man with the floppy-eared hat, putting down his big saw.

  “Weow!” said the man with the wiry mustache.

  They looked each other over, keeping their distance, eyeing each others’ clothing and saws.

  “Well, I guess we know where we’re all headed,” said the man with the brown Mackenzie cap.

  “I reckon,” said the man in the straw hat. “I’m Luke Apuleus, from over Cornfield County way. I play the crosscut.”

  “I’m Rooster Joe Banty,” said the second. “I’m a ripsaw bender myself.”

  “I’m Felix Horbliss,” said the man in stripes with the ladder. “That thar’s Cave Canem. We play this here big bucksaw.”

  They looked at each other some more.

  “I’m to wonderin’,” said Luke, bringing his toe sack around in front of him. “I’m wonderin’ if’n we know the same tunes. Seems to me it’d be a shame to have to play agin’ each other if’n we could help it.”

  “You-all know ‘Trottin’ Gertie Home’?” asked Felix.

  Luke and Rooster Joe nodded.

  “How about ‘When the Shine comes Out’n the Dripper’?” asked Rooster Joe.

  The others nodded.

  “How are you on ‘Snake Handler’s Two-Step’?” asked Luke Apuleus.

  More nods.

  “Well, that’s a start on it,” said Cave Canem. “We can talk about it on the way there. I bet we’d sound right purty together.”

  So side by side by bucksaw and ladder, they set out down the big path south.

  What we are doing is, we are walking down this unpaved road. How we have come to be walking down this unpaved road is a very long and tiresome story that I should not bore you with.

  We are being Chris the Shoemaker, who is the brains of this operation, and a very known guy back where we come from, which is south of Long Island, and Large Jake and Little Willie, who are being the brawn, and Miss Millie Dee Chantpie, who is Chris the Shoemaker’s doll, and who is always dressed to the nines, and myself, Charlie Perro, whose job it is to remind everyone what their job is being.

  “I am astounded as all get-out,” says Little Willie, “that there are so many places with no persons in them nowise,” looking around at the trees and bushes and such. “We have seen two toolsheds which looked as if they once housed families of fourteen, but of real-for-true homes, I am not seeing any.”

  “Use your glims for something besides keeping your nose from sliding into your eyebrows,” says Chris the Shoemaker. “You will have seen the sign that said one of the toolcribs is the town of Podunk, and the other shed is the burg of Shtetl. I am believing the next one we will encounter is called Pratt Falls. I am assuming it contains some sort of trickle of fluid, a stunning and precipitous descent in elevation, established by someone with the aforementioned surname.”

  He is called Chris the Shoemaker because that is now his moniker, and he once hung around shoestores. At that time the cobbler shops was the place where the policy action was hot, and before you can be saying Hey Presto! there is Chris the Shoemaker in a new loud suit looking like a comet, and he is the middle guy between the shoemakers and the elves that rig the policy.

  “Who would have thought it?” asked Little Willie, “both balonies on the rear blowing at the same time, and bending up the frammus, and all the push and pull running out? I mean, what are the chances?”

  Little Willie is called that because he is the smaller of the two brothers. Large Jake is called that because, oh my goodness, is he large. He is so large that people have confused him for nightfall—they are standing on the corner shooting the breeze with some guys, and suddenly all the light goes away, and so do the other guys. There are all these cigarettes dropping to the pavement where guys used to be, and the person looks around and Whoa! it is not night at all, it is only Large Jake.

  For two brothers they do not look a thing alike. Little Willie looks, you should excuse the expression, like something from the family Rodentia, whereas Large Jake is a very pleasant-looking individual, only the pleasant is spread across about three feet of mook.

  Miss Millie Dee Chantpie is hubba-hubba stuff (only Chris the Shoemaker best not see you give her more than one Long Island peek) and the talk is she used to be a roving debutante. Chris has the goo-goo eyes for her, and she is just about a whiz at the new crossword puzzles, which always give Little Willie a headache when he tries to do one.

  Where we are is somewhere in the state of Kentucky, which I had not been able to imagine had I not seen it yesterday from the train. Why we were here was for a meet with this known guy who runs a used furniture business on South Wabash Street in Chi City. The meet was to involve lots of known guys, and to be at some hunting lodge in these hills outside Frankfort, where we should not be bothered by prying eyes. Only first the train is late, and the jalopy we bought stalled on us in the dark, and there must have been this wrong turn somewhere, and the next thing you are knowing the balonies blow and we are playing in the ditch and gunk and goo are all over the place.

  So here we are walking down this (pardon the expression) road, and we are looking for a phone and a mechanically inclined indiv
idual, and we are not having such a hot time of it.

  “You will notice the absence of wires,” said Chris the Shoemaker, “which leads me to believe we will not find no blower at this watery paradise of Pratt Falls.”

  “Christ Almighty, I’m gettin’ hungry!” says Miss Millie Dee Chantpie of a sudden. She is in this real flapper outfit, with a bandeau top and fringes, and is wearing pearls that must have come out of oysters the size of freight trucks.

  “If we do not soon find the object of our quest,” says Chris the Shoemaker, “I shall have Large Jake blow you the head off a moose, or whatever they have in place of cows out here.”

  It being a meet, we are pretty well rodded up, all except for Chris, who had to put on his Fall Togs last year on Bargain Day at the courthouse and do a minute standing on his head, so of course he can no longer have an oscar anywhere within a block of his person, so Miss Millie Dee Chantpie carries his cannon in one of her enchanting little reticules.

  Large Jake is under an even more stringent set of behavioral codes, but he just plain does not care, and I do not personally know any cops or even the Sammys who are so gauche as to try to frisk him without first calling out the militia. Large Jake usually carries a powder wagon—it is the kind of thing they use on mad elephants or to stop runaway locomotives only it is sawed off on both ends to be only about a foot long.

  Little Willie usually carries a sissy rod, only it is a dumb gat so there is not much commotion when he uses it—just the sound of air coming out of it, and then the sound of air coming out of whomsoever he uses it on. Little Willie has had a date to Ride Old Sparky before, only he was let out on a technical. The technical was that the judge had not noticed the big shoe box full of geetas on the corner of his desk before he brought the gavel down.

  I am packing my usual complement of calibers which (I am prouder than anything to say) I have never used. They are only there for the bulges for people to ogle at while Chris the Shoemaker is speaking.

  Pratt Falls is another couple of broken boards and a sign saying Feed and Seed. There was this dry ditch with a hole with a couple of rocks in it.

  “It was sure no Niagara,” says Little Willie, “that’s for certain.”

  At the end of the place was a sign, all weathered out except for the part that said 2 MILES.

  We are making this two miles in something less than three-quarters of an hour because it is mostly uphill and our dogs are barking, and Miss Millie Dee Chantpie, who has left her high heels in the flivver, is falling off the sides of her flats very often.

  We are looking down into what passes for a real live town in these parts.

  “This is the kind of place,” says Little Willie, “where when you are in the paper business, and you mess up your double sawbuck plates, and print a twenty-one-dollar bill, you bring it here and ask for change. And the guy at the store will look in the drawer and ask you if two nines and a three will do.”

  “Ah, but look, gentlemen and lady,” says Chris the Shoemaker, “there are at least two wires coming down over the mountain into this metropolis, and my guess is that they are attached to civilization at the other end.”

  “I do not spy no filling station,” I says. “But there does seem to be great activity for so early of a morning.” I am counting houses. “More people are already in town than live here.”

  “Perhaps the large gaudy sign up ahead will explain it,” says Little Willie. The sign is being at an angle where another larger dirt path comes into town. From all around on the mountains I can see people coming in in wagons and on horses and on foot.

  We get to the sign. This is what it says, I kid you not:

  BIG HARMONY CONTEST!

  BRIMMYTOWN SQUARE SAT MAY 16

  $50 FIRST PRIZE

  Brought to you by Watkins Products

  and CARDUI, Makers of BLACK DRAUGHT

  Extra! Sacred Harp Singing

  Rev. Shapenote and the Mt. Sinai Choir.

  “Well, well,” says Chris. “Looks like there’ll be plenty of e’trangers in this burg. We get in there, make the call on the meet, get someone to fix the jalopy, and be on our way. We should fit right in.”

  While Chris the Shoemaker is saying this, he is adjusting his orange-and-pink tie and shooting the cuffs on his purple-and-white pinstripe suit. Little Willie is straightening his pumpkin-colored, double-breasted suit and brushing the dust off his yellow spats. Large Jake is dressed in a pure white suit with a black shirt and white tie, and has on a white fedora with a thin black band. Miss Millie Dee Chantpie swirls her fringes and rearranges the ostrich feather in her cloche. I feel pretty much like a sparrow among peacocks.

  “Yeah,” I says, looking over the town, “they’ll probably never notice we been here.”

  * * *

  They made their way into town and went into a store. They bought themselves some items, and went out onto the long, columned verandah of the place, and sat down on some nail kegs, resting their saws and ladders against the porch railings.

  Cave Canem had a big five-cent RC Cola and a bag of Tom’s Nickel Peanuts. He took a long drink of the cola, tore the top off the celluloid bag, and poured the salted peanuts into the neck of the bottle. The liquid instantly turned to foam and overflowed the top, which Canem put into his mouth. When it settled down, he drank from the bottle and chewed on the peanuts that came up the neck.

  Rooster Joe took off his red cap. He had a five-cent Moon Pie the size of a dinner plate and took bites off that.

  Horbliss had a ten-cent can of King Oscar Sardines. The key attached to the bottom broke off at the wrong place. Rather than tearing his thumb up, he took out his pocketknife and cut the top of the can off and peeled the ragged edge back. He drank off the oil, smacking his lips, then took out the sardines between his thumb and the knife blade and ate them.

  Luke had bought a two-foot length of sugarcane and was sucking on it, spitting out the fine slivers which came away in his mouth.

  They ate in silence and watched the crowds go by, clumps of people breaking away and eddying into the stores and shops. At one end of town, farmers stopped their wagons and began selling the produce. From the other end, at the big open place where the courthouse would be if Brimmytown were the county seat, music started up.

  They had rarely seen so many men in white shirts, even on Sunday, and women and kids in their finest clothes, even if they were only patched and faded coveralls, they were starched and clean.

  Then a bunch of city flatlanders came by—the men all had on hats and bright suits and ties, and the woman—a goddess—was the first flapper they had ever seen—the eyes of the flatlanders were moving everywhere. Heads turned to watch them all along their route. They were moving toward the general mercantile, and they looked tired and dusty for all their fancy duds.

  “Well, boys,” said Luke. “That were a right smart breakfast. I reckon us-all better be gettin’ on down towards the musical place and see what the otherns look like.”

  They gathered up their saws and ladders and walked toward the sweetest sounds this side of Big Bone Lick.

  * * *

  “So,” says Little Willie to a citizen, “tell us where we can score a couple of motorman’s gloves?”

  The man is looking at him like he has just stepped off one of the outermost colder planets. This is fitting, for the citizen looks to us vice versa.

  “What my friend of limited vocabulary means,” says Chris the Shoemaker to the astounding and astounded individual, “is where might we purchase a mess of fried pork chops?”

  The man keeps looking at us with his wide eyes the size of doorknobs.

  “Eats?” I volunteers.

  Nothing is happening.

  Large Jake makes eating motions with his mitt and goozle.

  Still nothing.

 
; “Say, fellers,” says this other resident, “you won’t be gettin’ nothing useful out’n him. He’s one of the simpler folks hereabouts, what them Victorian painter fellers used to call ‘naturals.’ What you want’s Ma Gooser’s place, straight down this yere street.”

  “Much obliged,” says Chris.

  “It’s about time, too,” says Miss Millie Dee Chantpie. “I’m so hungry I could eat the ass off a pigeon through a park bench!”

  I am still staring at the individual who has given us directions, who is knocking the ashes out of his corncob pipe against a rain barrel.

  “Such a collection of spungs and feebs I personally have never seen,” says Chris the Shoemaker, who is all the time looking at the wire that comes down the hill into town.

  “I must admit you are right,” says Little Willie. And indeed it seems every living thing for three counties is here—there are nags and wagons, preggo dolls with stair-step children born nine months and fifteen minutes apart, guys wearing only a hat and one blue garment, a couple of men with what’s left of Great War uniforms with the dago dazzlers still pinned to the chests—yes indeedy, a motley and hilarity-making group.

  The streets are being full of wagons with melons and the lesser legumes and things which for a fact I know grow in the ground. The indigenous peoples are selling everything what moves. And from far away you can hear the beginnings of music.

  “I spy,” says Chris the Shoemaker.

  “Whazzat?” asks Little Willie.

  “I spy the blacksmith shop, and I spy the general mercantile establishment to which the blower wire runs. Here is what we are doing. William and I will saunter over to the smithy and forge, where we will inquire of aid for the vehicle. Charlie Perro, you will go make the call which will tender our apologies as being late for the meet, and get some further instructions. Jacob, you will take the love of my life, Miss Millie, to this venerable Ma Gooser’s eatatorium where we will soon join you in a prodigious repast.”