Southern Discomfort

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Next morning, Annie Sue came for me well before seven in one of the company's four trucks. She pulled right up to the front veranda and leaned on the horn till Aunt Zell went out and flapped a dishtowel at her to make her hush.

'Some folks in this neighborhood like to sleep on Saturdays,' she scolded as Annie Sue followed her back down the wide hall to the kitchen where I was finishing off a plate of sausage and eggs.

'Sorry, Miss Zell,' said Annie Sue. She snagged a biscuit and didn't look one bit repentant to me. No, ma'am, she didn't want a glass of milk or a cup of coffee; and no, she didn't want to sit either. Eagerness to get going kept her lithe young body in perpetual motion until she suddenly spotted the cardboard box in the corner of the kitchen.

'Oh, is that the puppy you were telling us about?' She touched the fat little rump and the puppy immediately began to cry and snuffle about. 'Oh, he's darling! May I pick him up?'

'And feed him,' said Aunt Zell, handing her the pup's nursing bottle as Uncle Ash came into the big sunlit kitchen.

'Here, now, what's all this hoo-hawing this early in the morning?' He cocked his head at my niece and said, 'Well, it's plain as those blue eyes in your head that you're a Knott. Haywood's or Herman's?'

She smiled back at him as the wiggly little puppy in her lap suckled noisily. 'Herman's, Mr. Ash. I'm sorry if I woke you up.'

'Not you, child. It was the smell of Miss Zell's coffee.' His face was smooth and rosy from its morning shave. 'She's a sneaky lady. Leaves the door open on purpose just to roust me out.'

Aunt Zell rosied up herself. Married forty years this May and they were still like that. I could never decide if it was natural, if they worked at it, or if it was because Uncle Ash was on the road so much as a buyer for one of the big tobacco companies. He'd been saving his frequent flyer miles and in less than two weeks, they were flying off to Paris for a second honeymoon, something Uncle Ash had been wanting to do ever since RDU became an international airport with direct flights to Paris.

From the day he brought home the tickets, there'd been an air of 'Let the Games Begin!' Nice to be around.

He gave Aunt Zell a squeeze, then poured himself a cup of coffee and topped my cup, too. The puppy held our attention. It was about two and a half weeks old and required round-the-clock feeding every four hours, which was why there were dark circles under Aunt Zell’s eyes.

Still didn't have a name, though. Aunt Zell was of the school that believed an animal would reveal its real name if you waited long enough. Of course, Aunt Zell once owned a dog that was called Dog from the day Uncle Ash brought it home till the day it got hit by a truck three years later.

Today she was trying out the names of gods: Thor, Zeus, Apollo. 'What do y'all think of Jupiter?'

'How about Greedyguts?' Uncle Ash teased.

'Poor little orphan,' Annie Sue cooed. 'What do you reckon happened to its mother?'

Aunt Zell shrugged. 'Sallie had her a box fixed out in the garage where she could come and go. She thinks the mama dog must have been moving them somewhere else and either got hit by a car or just stolen because she took one of the puppies and never came back for the other four and that's certainly not natural.'

Annie Sue set the pup on the floor and it took a few wobbly steps toward Aunt Zell, who scooped it up and matter-of-factly began to sponge its bottom with a warm damp washcloth. The short lapping strokes she used were supposed to feel like its mama's tongue because that's the way nursing bitches stimulate their babies to urinate and defecate.

Puppies or nieces, Aunt Zell has always been a nurturer and, as I drained my cup and picked up my gloves and cap, she cautioned, 'Now don't you overdo out there today.'

'I bet you're gonna have bad sore muscles tonight,' said Uncle Ash. 'Maybe Miss Zell and me'll let you have the Jacuzzi first tonight.'

Annie Sue was thoughtful as we climbed into the truck. 'You mean they still get in a Jacuzzi together? At their age? They're older than Mom and Dad.'

Not really, I thought. Through closed doors I had heard them splashing and cavorting like teenagers more than once. No way could I imagine Herman and Nadine in a tub together. Both naked and with the lights on?

I didn't think Annie Sue could either.

CHAPTER 6

CONCRETE FOUNDATIONS

'Concrete is a synthetic construction material made by mixing cement, fine aggregate (usually sand), coarse aggregate (usually gravel or crushed stone) and water together in proper proportions. The product is not concrete unless all four of these ingredients are present. A mixture of cement, sand, and water, without coarse aggregate, is not concrete but mortar or grout. Never fall into the common error of calling a concrete wall or floor a cement wall or floor. There is no such thing as a cement wall or floor.'

As in a lot of small southern towns that accreted around a market center in more spacious times, blacks and whites don't live as rigidly segregated in Dobbs as they seem to do in more urban areas. We do have an all-white wealthy section near the river and there is an all-black section over to the east—shabby old Darkside, in our case —where a few black professionals have chosen out of sentiment or pride to build on ground that had been in their families for several generations.

For everything in between these two extremes, you might have patches of fine houses facing each other, with backyards that touch the backyards of quite modest dwellings on the next street over, then a string of trashy shanties the next street after that. One of the white bank presidents lives near the center of town in his grandmother's fifteen-room Victorian 'cottage,' flanked by two-bedroom bungalows on either side. A white mailman lives in one, a black florist in the other.