BIG CAR 

Charles Armstrong 27 August, 2008

Alby was waving his arms around, like a turtle on it’s back.

“You have no idea of it’s size, man.” A faint sneer tugged at the corners of Alby’s mouth.

“But then who could?” I didn’t bother to answer, his attitude is like weather- it builds to a pointless peak.

“Only one, such as myself, who has the benefit of long years of DEEP experience, one who can say without shame, he has driven an automobile that measured a FULL TWENTY-SIX FEET LONG!” Full cry , ground zero. One of Alby’s  repulsive and twisted “hobbies” was nineteenth century oratory. William Jennings Bryan, and like that.

“The car in question, my good man, (jeez- do I hate that “my good man” crap!)- it was my mother’s car. Her first car- y’might say it was my NATAL CAR.” He leered at me, the light glancing off the smudgy lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses. He paused, as if listening to some far-off voice. I looked at my watch.

“Well?” he said. He turned his head in a small circular motion.

I said,”natal…”

“Doncha smell it?” When he stood up, I knew I was done for.

“What- Alby- what am I s’posed to smell?” Catholics got mass- I got Alby. I guess he satisfies my need for ritual.

“A STORY! A tale, a saga…a by-God canticle of my mama’s car!”

Here it comes. I heaved a great sigh.

“To me, Madeleine was like someone out of a black and white movie. Sometimes, she was a risk taker. Like her old man, the professional gambler. She was tiny, about five-one, and beautiful. I got the pictures to prove it!  When she was a kid, sixteen or so, she was the belle of  this sleepy little Mississippi town, Corinth. All the rich boys asked her to the Country Club dances, and to play tennis and all that. After the dance, or a date, Madeleine and her illiterate and bovine escorts would drive in their Model Ts and Stutz Bearcats down across the Color Line to the dark side of town. They’d pull up to “The Black Cat’ or “The Raven Club” for a little jazzy fun. The owners of these speakeasies were always welcoming, because Madeleine was so pretty- plus she could just wail on the piano! She could lay down that barrelhouse boogie until the piano was just hoppin’ up and down. A funky good time was had by all.”

“Her mother, Liline, thought Madeleine was too good for those small town clods. Liline was French. Liline felt it was too bad her children didn’t grow up in France, just as she did, but she did try to love them anyway. Poor dears. I will say this: Liline TRIED to hold up the torch of culture and illminate that dark corner of Mississippi. Just a spark in the wilderness of the New World.

“Liline had old fashioned ideas. Unfortunely, they were old fashioned European ideas. Liline’s  theories caused Madeleine a good deal of trouble over the years, since SHE was the object of  Liline’s hopes and desires.”

“Liline sent her only and beautiful daughter to France for what the Americans called “finishing.” Maedeline was packed off to Dijon, to her uncle and aunt, No-no and Tatat Jeanpierre. They lived in a tiny village up in the Haut Saone, very close to the French Alps. No-no was the mayor of the village, and the school master. Tatat owned the village store, and was the postmistress. No-no was so proud of his lovely American niece.

Madeleine would drive him down to the casino in Dijon, where No-no would gamble and Madeleine would dance and play that crazy hip American jazz. No-no could just burst from pride.”

“Madeleine met a handsome young man in Dijon, a tank corps officer- very dashing and oh-so French. Good family, too. Liline was happy about it, too, until the big invasion of nineteen thiry-nine, when  Madeleine was packed up on one of the last passenger ships to leave Le Havre. Heartbroken to leave France and the young man she loved she goes to the loving arms of Liline, then off to secretarial school, for training- so she could make it in the world, as in a Katherine Hepburn movie.”

“World War Two comes roaring along. Madeleine’s twenty-one, fresh outa school and cute as a button. Somehow she gets this job in Washington D.C., at the Federal Aeronautics Administration- very exciting! D.C. was filled to the rafters with handsome GIs. She shared an apartment with a crowd of girls, sleeping in shifts. She’d work all day at the FAA, and go out dancing at night. Being a hot piano player, she gravitated to the King Cole Room, where Nat King and his trio held forth. This mad and delicious frenzy went on for a while, then she met a man who was presentable, so she calls home. (What the hell could she know- she was only twenty-one, fer Chrissakes!)

“Liline comes at a gallop! She sniffed, liked what she smelled. He was handsome. He was Austrian: top quality- NOT an American. Dressed nicely, and, best of all : he had MONEY! Wow- not bad…”

“Then- BOOM! War’s over. The happy couple come out of the deal with a coupla kids and a decent bottom line. But- all is not well in Foggy Bottom. No tellin’ what SHE’S doin’, but he starts smackin’ her, just a little bit, y’know, after the European style- just t’show her who’s boss.”

“Well, the cumulative effect of all this was Madeleine came boiling outa D.C. trailing kids and luggage like a dust devil over Oklahoma! A well-brought-up young lady just could NOT put up with THAT SORT OF TREATMENT.”

“Her reception in Corinth was loving and sympathetic. But crowded. It fell out that just as Madeleine was arriving, her brother, Charles, had also returned from the Navy and was sharing a two bedroom apartment with Liline and HER new husband, Henry, who had also returned from the war where he had worked for the OSS. (The Army had discovered Henry could speak French and type, so they made him a spy!)”

“So- you gotcher Liline who, by the way, is at this time just forty-five herself, and a picture of proper chicness. Y’gotcher brand new Henry, very refined and a published poet, to boot. Y’gotcher ex-Navy man Charles, who’s just as smart’n’brilliant’n’handsome a young man as you’ll ever come across. Then, y’gotcher Madaleine’n’tow little kids, my older brother and sister. All these human beings in a two bedroom apartment! They SAY they didn’t have a cross word for OVER TWO YEARS! This would be inconceivable nowadays. Mayhem in ten minutes. It’s a tribute to th’ Moral Fiber of our forebears.” Alby is overcome at this point and rushes to the bathroom to press a cool washcloth to his teary eyes…but the voice continues, muffled by the rag.

“Of course, they DID drink- a little. Very genteel. That musta helped some. The county was still groanin’ under th’ mighty hand of Prohibition, all those years after the Repeal. Mississippi was dominated by the immense coalition of the Baptists and the bootleggers who combined to keep the state dry right up into the sixties- some places there are STILL dry!”

“I can see it like it was twelve minutes ago: Henry all bundled up in his nice sharp overcoat, hiding a big bag of booze smuggled in from Tennesee under there, knocking on the door, calling out,”C’est moi, Henri!” Liline whispering,”Do you have the fish?” That’s what my family still calls any kinda alcohol-“fish”.

At some point, that kinda livin’ musta gotten pretty damn old. No matter how well mannered and empathetic everybody was, no one can put up with so many bodies for too long. Charles got himself a Fulbright Scholarship and took off for Oxford and Paris. Madeleine, just for a little fun, began seeing Cliff, my dad, but she didn’t let on to Liline. Madeleine knew Liline would certainly NOT approve of this hillbilly boy who had ridden a horse to high school and let it graze on the school grounds.”

“At some point, Madeleine MUST have told Liline- put down her foot, because quick as a wink, she married Cliff and escaped to Texas. He had a job down on the Mexican border, building houses for the returning GIs. They had a ball, down on the Rio Grande, in McAllen. Dinin’ and dancin’ over the border in Nuevo Laredo. The restaurant they loved best had a dirt floor with a pit dug in the middle. Down in the hole, while they ate their dinner, the owner would taunt a mountain lion with a cane bottom chair- til one night the lion ATE him. So much for the floor show.”

“Madeleine always told me,” Your father was the most fun of any man I know.” They must have stayed too long at the party, ‘cause something made her pack up the kids and roll back to Liline. Madeleine never said bad things about Cliff, so I’ve always wondered if she was lonesome for the nice comfy feeling of being controlled by her mother. The pulse of her life was just like that: back to Liline, then out into the world for a while.”

“Now, this was about the time I WOKE UP. You know- became conscious. I awoke to the world and my family in Sheffield, Alabama. Madeleine had a good job at Reynolds Aluminium, doing some kinda office work- she always had a decent gig. We lived in Village Two, housing left over after the War. We had two cats, Socrates and his wife, Xantippe. There was a big back yard and a run down tennis court next door. My brother, Roger, had a fancy English racing bike with no brakes. To stop, he’d jam his foot onto the rubber tire. And a BB gun, which I used to shoot him in the back one time. I don’t know why. I just raised the BB gun and pulled the trigger. I heard the BB smack against Roger’s shirtless skin. Time slowed WAY down for me as he truned and looked at me with fire written all over his face. Slowly he walked toward me and…well, my memory fails me at that point- maybe beat th’ crap outa me- I don’t know- I just can’t remember…”

“What I CAN recall is being what they call nowadays a latchkey kid. Waiting. Alone. I’d sit on the front steps as the sun went down. Lonely. After an eternity, I’d hear that old Chrysler rumbling down Watts Bar Street. How happy I felt. She’d come back! I spent a lot of time searching  for the enormous round shape of that car.”

“It was tooridiculous to see Madeleine driving that tank (which was what Chrysler had been making just the year before). She’d come wheeling along, smiling and waving. Little tiny woman- couldn’t even see over the steering wheel. Socrates and Xantippe loved to ride sitting on the broad back of the driver’s seat, takin’ in th’ whirling world. When Madeleine needed to parallel park, she’d call us kids to help. All four of us would pile on and haul the wheel over to one side. It was hard work. Like crewing a ship. That car was BUILT! Solid. When you closed the door, the sound was like to knock you over. CLANG!”

“ Outside it was battleship grey, more than six feet high and a coupla dozen feet long. The inside was covered in soft fuzzy upholstery called moleskin. The interior was as big as a living room. The seats were like sofas, and on the back of the front seat, there was a rope, beautifully covered in braided cord- to put yer coat on. I thought it was for me to hang onto while I stood up. I slept extra well in that car. The sounds of rocks hitting the springs as we rolled through the night was a mechanical lullabye. I was the only kid in the family who could stretch out on the space under the back window, so that was MY place on road trips.”

“Madeleine’s dad, Doc Chollie, the gambler-turned-Chiropractor, (which was just as bad as dealin’ cards) was a stingy, self-centered old geezer. Mean as a snake- too piss-mean to die. When he retired from running a hospital in Denver, he somehow came to own the Old Home Place- on top of the hill, slave-built and white columned. Hundreds of acres of Lime Kiln Valley went with the house, and Madeleine wanted- no demanded- that Doc Chollie GIVE her sixteen acres. It took years and a considerable amount of arm twisting, the kind only a daughter can accomplish, but in the end, the sixteen acres became an icon of retreat and security for our family.”

“This land, this sixteen acres, was five miles off highway seventy-two, on Lime Kiln Road, a twisting blacktop that ran over the railroad tracks, and past Cletus Woods’ house (the neighborhood bootlegger and father of Carol, the most beautiful girl in the entire world). A curve or two, some dips, then you were in the heart of the African village.”

“So many times, driving in on a Saturday night, Madeleine would say,” Now I must be careful and slow down- I don’t want to run anyone over!” She’d let off the gas and the Chrysler would roll softly up a small hill, powered by the enertia of it’s massive weight.”

“At the top of the hill, peering through the windshield, it was as if the glass was a television and we were watching a scene from “The Twilight Zone”. To one side, the dark woods. On the other, Grace’s Place.”

“Grace’s looked like this: a large concrete pad surrounded by rough cut hickory poles holding up yellow bug lights. Some artistic soul had fancied up the lights with shades made from Clorox bleach jugs. The bottoms of the jugs had been removed and the sides had curlicue designs cut in. At one end of the pad sat an enormous Wurlitzer juke box, all lit up like a paper plate. The other end was for FOOD. Grace’s sons had built a gargantuan barbeque pit. It was so immense, it could hold TWO entire goats. The goats had been freed in the hills by my family, oh, maybe a century before. Since in the nineteenth century, there was no refrigeration, wild goats were a great way to have some fresh meat any time ya wanted to go shoot one. The local folks had been eating those goats for generations.”

“On a Saddy nite, great billows of hickory smoke clung low to the ground, fogging and distorting the scene into a picture of hellish celebration. Music was a-blastin’, th’ beer-n-goat were in everybody’s hands, and the dancin’ had been goin’ on for hours.”

“As we topped the hill, the headlights flooded over a crowd of people movin’, dancin’ drinkin’, fightin’, laughin’, flirtin’, cryin’ and dyin’. As the night wore on, the crowd sorta forgot about the road and cars- all the outside world, with it’s pain and labor and white folks- that unreal world faded back before the reality of RELEASE. Their eyes gleamed in the startling light. A wall of white eyes. Always, I wondered if they would let us pass. It would be so easy, just surround the car and tear us apart. Maybe they took pity onus. Four little pasty-white faces peering from the depths of the old Chrysler- it musta been obvious we were without power to harm them in their holy African Saddy nite trance.”

“Slowly, softly, the dark sea parted, and we went past like the Israelites at the Red Sea. The car, Moses-like, boring a hole in the smoke.”

Alby stood silent, wavering on the cusp of the world. He let out a gusty sigh and collapsed on his ratty sofa. The impact of his body hitting the back of the couch caused a periouly over loaded bookcase to totter, cascading books, papers and odd detritus down to cover Alby. There was a scrabbling sound and the mountain of crap shifted. His pie face popped up. Alby leered at me. 

“I had even BIGGER cars than that one!”