Southern Discomfort Page 7

  Lights were still burning down in Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash's sitting room, but I went on up to my bedroom, brushed my teeth, popped a cassette of Donovan's Reef in my VCR and was sound asleep before the drunken Aussies had sung a single chorus of "Waltzing Matilda."

  * * *

  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.

  * * *

  As we drove through town, Annie Sue chattered enthusiastically about how she got roped into WomenAid. "I thought it was just a shelter for battered women. Then around Easter, Lu Bingham came by the office to see if we could give her a rough idea of what an electrician would charge to wire a small house because this is the first one they've ever tried. Cindy and I were there with Mom, and she really got us charged up about making a difference. Doing something tangible and permanent for a homeless woman and her children. It sounded like a lot of fun."

  That was Lu, all right. She could make having a root canal sound like fun if it would benefit one of her needy women.

  Sometimes it's quid pro quo—as when she helped one of the new Cambodian refugee families set up a lawn service and then convinced me it'd make a great present for Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash's fortieth anniversary this spring. Actually, it did. I no longer have to dragoon a nephew or niece to cut the grass when Uncle Ash is gone; and Aunt Zell thinks they really do a super job with her yard and gardens, so I get Brownie points every time they come. But I didn't think this project was going to get me anything but blisters and heat stroke.

  "So who's this house for?" I asked.

  "Her name's BeeBee Powell. She's a black single mom. I think the little boy's nine, and just the darlingest little six-year-old girl. She works full-time out at the hospital in the billing department and takes part-time courses at Colleton Tech to be a nurse."

  "Sounds like an overachiever."

  "Well, this isn't just charity, you know. Lu won't help anybody unless she's willing to help herself. We may be giving our time and labor and maybe even some stuff like that leftover wire Dad said I could use, but most of the building supplies have to be bought for cash money and—oops!" Tools shifted loudly in the back of the truck and my body strained against the seat belt as she braked abruptly for a stop sign she almost didn't see till the last minute. "Sorry about that!"

  "That's okay," I grinned. "But for future reference, you do not want to run a stop sign with a judge sitting beside
you."

  "Oh gosh, that's right. I keep forgetting. You still just seem like you. Not serious and—" She searched for the word as the intersection cleared and she could drive on. "Not big-headed."

  "It's only been a week," I said dryly. "Come back in a year."

  "Not you," she said firmly. "Dad said—"

  She broke off, embarrassed, and I pretended not to notice. I didn't have to push her to get the drift of what Herman probably said. I'd already heard my brothers speculating about how long it'd be before I forgot about where I was and mouthed off at the wrong time.

  "Anyhow," she continued as we crossed under a railroad bridge, "BeeBee got picked by WomenAid's board of directors. Everybody that wanted to could put their name in, but they had to fill out a long questionnaire—education, job history, finances, number of dependents—everything. I guess half the questions were about how bad they needed a house—like, can anybody really believe she and her two sisters and their five kids are all living in a four-room house 'cause they love each other so much? Let's get real here."

  Her young voice was hot with newborn awareness of social inequities.

  "What was the other half?" I asked.

  "Whether or not they could carry the mortgage."

  "If it's just for the building materials, that can't be much."

  "It's going to take BeeBee about twelve years to pay it off," my niece said indignantly. "Can you believe it? They must be paying her nothing at the hospital!"

  Reality time.

  She turned down a narrow street of shabby houses badly in need of fresh paint and fresh screens on doors and windows, took the right fork at the next intersection and wound up on Redbud Lane, a tree-lined street at the edge of Darkside where the neighborhood was racially and economically blended. Some of the houses on this street could use paint as well, but they seemed in good repair. Too, the yards were neatly tended and most were bright with red and white petunias and those stiff little blue flowers that I can never remember the name of.

  The site was easily identified by a temporary dumpster, two blue portable toilets and stacks of fresh lumber. Directly across the street was an undeveloped wooded lot, which neighborhood children seemed to use as a play place.

  Thanks to Annie Sue's enthusiasm, we were twenty-five minutes early, but Lu Bingham was already there, along with several other women. While we waited for the rest to assemble, Lu gave me the fifty-cent tour. When finished, the house would be a no-frills frame: hardboard siding on solid slab, three bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths. This morning it was merely an eleven-hundred-square-foot rectangle of concrete with plastic pipes sticking up here and there where water and sewage lines had been roughed in.

  "Took us four weekends to get it to this point," Lu said. "First we had to clear out all the underbrush and rubble. Filled three dumpsters."

  Situated two doors up from a neighborhood quick-stop and half again as deep as it was wide, the lot looked to be a little over a quarter acre. There was a tall pine beside the front sidewalk and two sturdy oaks at the rear. Someone had hung two old tractor tires from ropes, and a knot of youngsters, black and white, were already swooping back and forth.

  "Saturday before last, we dug the footing by hand and it was poured on Monday. And we finally got the utility companies to come out and give us electricity and water."

  Last Saturday, the wife of a brick mason had demonstrated how her portable mixer worked, and what proportions of mortar mix, water and sand to use. Then, while the neophytes kept them supplied with a steady stream of wet concrete blocks and fresh mortar, she and two others had laid a low block wall atop the perimeter footing that would enclose the concrete slab. They were finished by noon. After lunch, the women spread sheets of plastic over the entire dirt floor to act as a vapor barrier, lapped them up a few inches on the side, then laid down steep reinforcing mesh on top of the plastic.

  "Everything was picture perfect for concrete to be poured and then the inspector came out and made us pull up the plastic all around so he could inspect every inch of the footing."

  "Nitpicking little bastard," said the brick mason's wife, who had joined us. A chunky fortyish, she'd stopped at that nearby convenience store and was drinking a Pepsi from the can. "I help my husband all the time when he gets behind with his jobs and has to work a Saturday. They never make him pull back no plastic."

  "I'd act surprised," I said, "except that I met his boss last night."

  Lu made a face. "Rufus Dayley. Did he tell you how he was having to pay an inspector overtime? You'd think it was money out of his own pocket."

  Nitpicking or not though, the inspector had finally passed the footing and the plumbing rough-ins as well. They had poured the slab on schedule last Monday.

  "Feel how smooth," said Lu, running her gloved hand across the dark gray surface. In truth, the finish was like marble.

  The mason's wife tried to look modest and launched into a monologue about mechanical screeds, rough smoothings, and troweling machines. "Then, 'fore we left, we sprayed the surface with a curing compound so it wouldn't dry out too fast and check on us."

  I didn't understand half what she said except to realize this was an artisan who took pride in her abilities. And with good cause, according to Lu.

  "Once the carpet goes down, you'll think this is a hardwood floor," she told me. "Smooth, no bumps or dips, and a hundred percent termite proof."

  I should hope so. My mother used to drive tobacco sticks into the ground for flower stakes and a month later, the sticks would be riddled with tunnels. Termites do love Colleton County's sandy soil.

  "Bet they didn't find any faults with this slab," I said.

  The women exchanged glances and Lu Bingham shrugged her ample shoulders. "Some men would fault God if they thought she was a woman."

  "Who's this inspector, anyhow?" I asked. "Anybody I know?"

  "Bannister?" hazarded the mason's wife. "My husband keeps up with them, but I forgot to ask him."

  We walked over to the fluorescent orange building permit that was nailed to the utility post. Five categories were listed under the bold heading INSPECTIONS REQUIRED: Building, Energy, Electrical, Plumbing, and Mechanical. On the footings and foundation/slab lines, the same signature appeared: C. Bannerman.

  For some reason that name touched a chord with me, but I couldn't think in what context. "He from Cotton Grove?"

  Neither knew and we quit wondering about him the minute our crew leader arrived.

  Betty Ann Edgerton had been three years ahead of me at West Colleton High. She was the oldest daughter of a sharecropper on one of my daddy's farms; and after one frustrating semester spent struggling with office machines and typing, she had single-handedly changed Industrial Arts into a coed department.

  "I ain't going to college," she argued before the local school board (of which my mother was a member), "and I shore don't want to spend my life cooped up in no office typing all day, so how come I can't learn how to build a house? Women buy houses, too, don't they?"

  She eventually married a classmate who aced Business Skills and these days they own a flourishing little contracting business, work three or four crews, and are building houses all over the county.

  "This here's like a holiday," she told me, happily revving up her Skilsaw. "I stay so busy these days estimating bids and then checking in behind our crews, I don't hardly ever get to use a saw no more."

  Hers wasn't the only saw that got a workout that day. Annie Sue hooked up some outlets to the utility box so that bright orange extension cords could power the tools; and by eight o'clock, the quiet Saturday morning was shattered by the high-pitched whine of power saws and the pounding of hammers as we anchored a heavy wooden floor plate to the slab. Using a carpenter's rule and some arcane formulae, Betty Ann and another woman who spoke the language quickly marked off where all the outer doors and windows were to go.

  We divided into teams and were soon laying out two-by-sixes on each side of the house. Each exterior wall was
nailed together flat on the ground, then hoisted into place, up on the plate, with door and window openings already roughed in.

  Betty Anne was everywhere, explaining and directing. Annie Sue couldn't begin wiring until the walls and ceiling rafters were in place, so she fell in with a crew on the other side of the house where her friend Cindy McGee was hammering away.

  * * *

  The work was grueling, yet at the same time, enormously gratifying. By midmorning though, I was glad I'd been sensible the night before and started the day rested. It'd been years since I'd lifted and hauled under a broiling July sun, but at least I knew enough to wear a loose long-sleeved cotton shirt over my tank top and a baseball cap that shaded my face. Some of the town-bred women came in shorts, tube tops and sweatbands, and by ten o'clock they were turning pink on their shoulders and noses. One worker was the manager of a chain drugstore and she'd thought to bring along a case of sunscreen. Every time any of us took a breather, we'd go slather ourselves. The smell made me feel I should be pounding through surf at the beach instead of pounding a hammer. There were over thirty of us; yet even so, I was surprised at how fast the work was going. Despite our self-deprecating chatter, we gradually shaped ourselves into a raggedly efficient work force. In fact, we were setting the exterior wall framing in place when photographers from the Raleigh News and Observer and the Dobbs Ledger showed up. Without being obvious about it, I made sure I was in several of the pictures and that they got my name spelled right. (Modesty has its place, but nobody ever said you have to hide your altruism under a peach basket; and let's face it: name recognition's half the game in the voting booth.)

  By lunchtime, all the exterior and most of the interior walls were set in place.

  "At this rate, we'll have the rafters up by quitting time," Betty Ann encouraged us when we broke for lunch.

  For the last fifteen minutes, women from two of the local churches had been spreading food on a table constructed of saw benches and planks. Every whiff of fried chicken and hot cornbread made my mouth water.