BIG SOUTHERN CHAPTER 68

MAY 2012

DAVID

Oleva hands me the mail. "Pretty fragrant," she remarks, her left eye cocked with the opposite of a wink—inquiring rather than knowing.

Her comment baffles me. The moment shifts, there is a blank spot—like when you wake up not knowing where you are, briefly not knowing who you are, either. Syncope. It's a word that should be used to describe any glitch, and even if adopted will be way underused, because empty spots in social discourse run more common than smooth exchange. This incident is just a minor example of the phenomena. I think A) I need to be less lost in thought when I enter the public realm or B) I need to learn how to better spackle over conversational cracks.

She waits for my reply but I have none. "What do you mean?" I might ask, but I'm leery of the direction that might lead. "Yeah," I might say in agreement, sealing off further conversation. I just laugh, my go-to method. It usually works.

Mr. Dutson has filled my pickup with gas, washed its windows, checked the oil, his service reminiscent of another time and well fitting the pumps outside the store, which date from the fifties if not before. He reaches the cash register just as I do and we complete the transaction. Without a computer—imagine!

Every day is a history lesson out here. It has occurred to me that city liberals—and I count myself as one of them—should be bussed to the country to witness a world that exists, unseen, aside theirs. It could be undertaken in the spirit of Mao's Hundred Flowers program, which banished intellectuals to the farms to diminish their political impact. Also, it put them in their place, eliminated the disparity in prestige between the doctor/lawyer class and the lowly farmer. The experiment didn't go well. Turns out neither does the other's job very well. Mrs. Driscoll's 'Country Mouse and Town Mouse' fable seems appropriate here—ah, the sagacity of my grade school teachers.

There are doers and there are wags—though the wags do and the doers wag, as they are doing now back at their roundtable by the P.O. boxes: the good old boys are self-touting, referencing how 'those who can, do, and those who can't, teach'. Throwing down the gauntlet, drawing a line between us and them, establishing territory.

The warning shot strikes home. I momentarily consider that the statement is specifically aimed at me, but give them the benefit of the doubt—even they aren't that rude. I agree with them about the doing and teaching, but it's a nuanced agreement. Their gist is wrong. Yes, some people congregate around "how" and others cluster near "why", but no, the how clan holds no supremacy over the whys. It takes both, and when a person can embody the two, well, that is a remarkable human being bound for better things.

I used to think otherwise, took the side opposite theirs, until I experienced similar conversations at university outposts, only reversed: professors who couldn't make coffee or fix a lawnmower denigrating the cook, the janitor and the blue collar worker's ignorance. Suddenly I respected the men at the welding shop, in the parts store, at the electrical warehouse.

Mr. Dutson flashes the same smile he did forty years ago—his yellowed and worn teeth, however, haven't evaded entropy as that smile has. He uses the same cash register not because he's a Luddite but out of frugality and, as he has termed it, an inability to "keep up with the changes". The rules of our engagement haven't changed either. He remains innocuous until he's required to be otherwise, acts the same to old David as he did to the child of six.

I speed out and down the cement stairs to avoid sharing a sudden coughing spell. I'm not contagious, but no one else would know that. The battle with my lungs has escalated over the last year—I look both ways and, seeing no one, spit out the hacked-up sputum, which tastes of grain dust imbedded in my airways thirty years ago. Funny, how shoveling for hours in an unventilated bin leaves its mark. Once I recover my breath, I get in the truck and set the mail on the passenger seat.

Idling out onto the street I glance at the envelope pile. The whiff of perfume, noticed by Oleva, is evident now, overcoming the figurative stink of the junk mail solicitations—hearing aids, gun rights, financial planning seminars with free meals. I get the sense I recognize the fragrance but really, given that I am no perfumist, how would I know if I'd encountered it before or where I did? I keep one eye on the road, even though the likelihood of traffic is small, while I thumb through the letters to find the aroma's source.

I locate the envelope, remove it, stop in the unused parking lot of Joe's once I realize I'm a highway hazard. It is addressed to the museum, each letter in every word of the address distinctly crafted. The return address, which is accompanied by a heart doodle, has been fashioned in a calligraphic style I recognize but the source of which I can't identify—until my mind attaches it to the scent and the connections become apparent.

Syncope. I set the envelope back in the pile, feeling no need to open it. I ponder whether to immediately throw it away or keep it. I'm not sure how she found me. Or why she found me. My thoughts bounce around like a newly forming mob.

© 2025 Ralph Thurston