Getting back into my Crosley was as close to hell as a human is likely to get. My rear end wept with electric bursts. I drove home trying not to think about the pain or about Anita Maloney. There had been a thirtieth reunion of my high-school class not long ago. I hadn’t gone. I told myself I never had anything in common with my classmates and I hadn’t liked Glendale High. I knew now that I didn’t want to look at their faces, to see dopey Gregg Lean with no hair and a big belly, and Anita Maloney, without saying a word, telling me to go look in the mirror.
I was back at Mrs. Plaut’s boardinghouse and halfway up the stairs when I heard behind me, “Mr. Peelers.”
I turned with a smile, paper bag in hand.
“Mrs. Plaut.”
“My manuscript.”
“I’ll finish it this afternoon. Here are the potatoes you wanted.”
“Needed, not wanted,” she said, meeting me halfway and taking the bag in her thin arms. She smelled the potatoes and, satisfied, looked up at me.
“I will go to my chambers now,” she said, “and listen to Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou and Elmer Davis and ‘The Week’s War News.’ By then I would think you will have finished my chapter.”
“You are too generous, Mrs. P.,” I said.
“Sarcasticisms?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
My voice must have dropped from the usual scream with which I normally addressed Mrs. Plaut because she answered with, “I can rewind my own clocks, thank you. I have since the Mister died, and I’ll probably find a way to do it after I die.”
“I’d bet on it,” I said. “Mrs. Plaut. How old would you say I am?”
“How?. .”
“Old.”
“Young,” she said. “Everybody looks young. You look maybe a little older than most. Sixty.”
“I’m not even fifty,” I said.
“Fifty, sixty, what’s the difference,” she said with a shrug, turning her back on me and heading down the stairs, potato booty in hand, humming “Glow Worm.”
I headed to my room, pushed open the door, and went to my cupboard. Dash was sitting in the open window, ignoring me, fascinated by something in the yard.
“Hello to you too,” I said, fixing myself a very generous bowl of Kix and milk even though I wasn’t hungry. “Care to join me?”
Dash turned to look at me and the Kix and then turned back to the apparently fascinating show in the yard.
I ate cereal standing and read Mrs. Plaut’s manuscript, page by page. It began:
Aunt Bess had an uncommon fondness for Cousin Leo. Uncommon. They were not kin. Aunt Bess was married to Uncle Seymour who sold junk to Indians. He was very bad at selling junk to Indians. He got into the business too late. By the time he heard about it and moved West, the Indians had considerable experience in being sold junk. As it was, some of the Indians sold the junk they had bought from white men back to Uncle Seymour. Should you conclude by this that Uncle Seymour was not acute, you would be right. Uncle Seymour had a son by the name of Leo who had been born to Uncle Seymour’s first wife, Hannah, who, it is reported, had a left eye that looked no place that much made sense. So, my mother’s sister Bess who was no Disraeli but neither was she a fool washed her hands of Uncle Seymour and ran away to Mexico with Cousin Leo who was pleasant to look at but not much higher of sense than Calvin Burkett who everyone knows is and will ever be an idiot boy. Uncle Seymour did not follow them. Instead, he took his junk wagon and headed to Texas where he was certain to find someone less acute than the Indians.
In Mexico, Aunt Bess and Cousin Leo built a cabin near Juarez with an eye toward raising corn and chickens and children. This in spite of the fact that Aunt Bess was a full fifty-five years of age and Cousin Leo someone in the vicinity of twenty. No one, not even his own father, knew for sure and apparently the age of Cousin Leo was of no interest to any member of the family until I began these researches.
It was then that Pancho Villa the dreaded bandit entered their peaceful though profitless lives. The bandit saw Aunt Bess in the market bargaining for tripe and was immediately enamored of her. Aunt Bess had a pleasant face and large body parts.
The dreaded bandit kidnapped Aunt Bess from the market and he rode away with her dragging tripe and screaming, “I am being kidnapped by the dreaded bandit Pancho Villa.” Now since everyone could plainly see this including Cousin Leo who stood watching there was little to comment on at the moment, though Cousin Leo later reported that a woman said in English for his benefit that Pancho Villa was known to have the taste of a snout hog. Three days later Aunt Bess had not returned to the village so Cousin Leo, whose Spanish was on the minimum and lacking in refinement, donned a hat of
It was at this juncture that Cousin Leo’s story strains even family good will. In his travel which took him to a mountain village where Pancho Villa was reported to be staying Cousin Leo in search of someone who could speak English wandered into a drinking establishment which in Mexico is called a cantina or at least was when Cousin Leo chanced into one. There at a table dealing cards in a game of poker was a painted woman of uncertain age with a wild left eye.
Mother? Leo inquired and sure enough the woman dealing poker in that cantina was his mother Hannah. There is no report from Leo-his story having been told to me by his daughter, also Hannah-that mother and son embraced. After the hand of cards was dealt Hannah did inquire of Uncle Seymour and learned the story of her son and her husband’s second wife. Since Hannah’s Spanish and connections in the town were more than adequate and she was up for something like adventure after having dealt poker for more than ten years she and Leo set forth in search of Aunt Bess. In the mountains they came upon a quartet of banditos who claimed they were in the army of the dreaded Villa. They had a powwow on whether to ravish Hannah and dispatch Leo but Hannah’s Spanish and advanced age saved the day. She claimed to have some information of military import for Villa’s ears only.
To make a long story a short story they were led into the presence of Villa his own self. Villa, a portly man of no great beauty, was seated upon a rock sucking out the marrow of what appeared to be the bone of a goat. Though his view of the dreaded bandit had been but fleeting Cousin Leo was as certain as his poor mind would allow that this was not the man who had taken Aunt Bess. As it turned out he was correct. It had been an underling of Villa who had taken Bess. Oh the ignominy. Villa readily agreed to exchange Aunt Bess for Hannah which suited Hannah though she knew the adventure would be short lived. Bess was returned to Leo but the union did not last. She abandoned him in Puerto Del Sol claiming she had forgotten her comb and had to go back to the Villa camp to recover it.
Cousin Leo sat in the town square of Puerto Del Sol for seven days exhausting his money and the patience of the town folk and singing various hymns particularly “Rock of Ages” to pass the time. He was driven out by stick and stone, running down the road with one hand upon his wide brimmed hat to keep from losing it and screaming as he ran, “Life is too much work for a simple man.” Cousin Leo found himself in Stickney, California, married a woman named Leona who was if the story is to be believed for I have never met her of even less wit than Cousin Leo, who opened a hat shop and made a living.
Aunt Bess and Aunt Hannah emerged in Mexico City some months after Leo’s departure and running as the Gringa Sisters were elected to the newly formed Godless government of Mexico.
There is more. Oh time triumphant! Would that I endure to tell the whole of my tale.
• •
I laid the pages of Mrs. Plaut’s manuscript flat on my small table, looked to Dash for support and guidance, and went to the phone in the hall to call Carmen, the cashier at Levy’s. I invited her to a movie. I told her that I was in pain and needed a gentle hand to cover my sore spots with salve. She said her son had chicken pox. Mrs. Plaut wasn’t around so I left the manuscript in front of her door with a note saying, “Brilliant work. The plight of Cousin Leo particularly touched me. Villa was a cad.”
I walked downtown carrying a pillow under my arm and a look on my homely face that challenged anyone to
