KS Culbreth

A Buried Source

Kneeling, the followspot commands the stage. The curtain rises, a spotlight dims. The pit band is muted and a low chorus hums a slowly swinging melody. A wire brush sh-shikks on a snare drum. The chorus fades as the spotlight brightens upon a face rising from the recess of folded arms upon a table. His brows are knitted. He is then silhouetted by a light brightening in the kitchen beyond.

The rattling sound of dishes. The impatient scouring sound. The sound of a dishrag swishing in a sinkful of lukewarm soap water and the gurgled splash of the rag being wrung. A moving shadow. The tinny sound of silverware being grabbed by the fistful. All this in the background, through an archway to a dim kitchen.

In the foreground a man sits at a round dining room table with lion-claw legs. The table is piled with books and papers, an antique typewriter in the middle. There are windows to the left and near them an old Sonora phonograph and a long rack of 78s.

He rubbed his face slowly but harshly with the palms of both hands. Jitterbug’s Lullaby was playing on the Sonora as he moved several piles of books, creating room to work at the dining room table. He sorted through the books and papers then stared a moment at the moving shadow in the kitchen.

“No mail today, sweet?” he asked the shadow.

“Circulars only,” she said, “and the supplement to the paper.”

“Nothing from the Thomas Troupe or the Barnstormers Company?”

“No. Not that I saw.”

“Nothing from the Blackfriars?”

“Sorry, no.”

He read for a while, then rose and opened the baffles on the Sonora and returned to the table. He read for a few minutes with deep admiration then replaced the book on one of the piles. He began to write, clacking laboriously at the old typewriter. But after only a line or two, slowed, then paused, and finally stopped.

He sat tapping his pencil between two piles of the books and dropped his chin heavily in his hand. He stared at the Sonora as though he were watching the Duke’s Band live, watching in a wistful daydream.

From the kitchen came the sound of a dish shattering. He hurried to see whether she had cut herself.

“You all right, kiddo?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” she said.

“Geez, watch yourself, will yuh? These thin plates can cut.”

“I know. It just slipped is all,” she said.

He crouched down and scooped the shards together and picked them up and dropped them carefully into one hand and threw the pieces away. On the way back to the table, he flipped the 78 from Jitterbug’s Lullaby to Chasin’ Chippies. He sat at the table and rapped his pencil between the books and tapped his heel on the floor and played pretend drums that way keeping rhythm with the music.

He tried to write again, but after a short clacking, slowed, paused, and stopped. He was stumped and so began to organize and reorganize the several piles of books and papers on the table. He sat and looked at the Underwood #4 in front of him. He’d picked it up at the Golden Nugget flea market for twenty-five dollars. It still had the original inspection sticker and, up inside the casing, a sticker from the shop that sold it seventy years before. The gold pin-striping on it was nearly perfect. He turned it to the side and then back again.

His wife came out of the kitchen and wound up the Sonora and put on Star Dust. He placed his fingers on the home-row of keys for a moment. Then, propping his chin on the palm of his hand, stared upward tapping his pencil.

She untied her apron and lay it out to air on the back of one of the needlepoint chairs around the dining room table. A breeze blew in through the window beside the Sonora and billowed the curtains.

“Beauty of a night, isn’t it, sweet?”

“Sure is. What spring used to be.”

He paused for a moment, adjusted the paper in the carriage, and typed what she had said.

“Pa used to throw us all in the station wagon on evenings like these and take us to the dairy bar,” she said.

He adjusted the paper again adding a few returns where he’d left off and wrote as she spoke.

“What town?” he asked.

“Ewingville,” she said. “We were still living in Ewingville. That was before Pa had the tool-and-dye business really up and running, before we moved to the house by the river.”

He was still writing.

“I would always be the last to decide,” she said. “Wallace and Adrienne would have thought about what they wanted during the ride, the windows open, their faces pressed into the wind like puppies. They’d talk about it with Pa. Wallace would say, ‘Think tonight I’ll try the Rocket Pop. How’s that sound, Pa?’ And Pa’d say, ‘Sounds just fine but awfully cold, awfully cold.’ He’d shiver and we’d all giggle. We were only supposed to get something simple, but Adrienne would always test the waters. ‘Maybe I’ll try the medium-sized sundae tonight, not the large because that’s just too much ice cream and too expensive.’ She was only six or seven but she’d watch him slyly for a reaction. Then Pa would say, ‘Can’t do that tonight, Monkey.’ ‘Why not?’ Adrienne would ask. ‘Not on a Wednesday. That’s why they call them sundaes.’ Wallace and I would laugh and Adrienne would ask, ‘Really?’ Then Pa would say to me, ‘What about you, Bird, have you decided yet?’ And I would say, ‘Nope. I’m only enjoying the drive and the open window. I’ll decide when I get there. I’ll look at all the choices, take my time, and make the right decision.”

He was writing furiously now trying to keep up with her. She arranged some of the books on the table and turned to take the apron back to the kitchen. He could tell by her shadow that she hung it on the hook beside the stove.

“Come on, Hon, I told you that could cause a fire.”

She took it down and threaded it through the handle of the refrigerator and walked out of the kitchen as he stared off again tapping his pencil. She walked through the dining room toward the stairs.

“Where you goin?” he asked.

“Upstairs. I have some packing. Why?”

“Wait a minute. What’s the rest of the story?”

“What story?”

“Why, the one you were just telling about going out for ice cream.”

“That? That’s hardly a story,” she said. “Well, we’d get to the dairy bar and Wallace and Adrienne would make a quick scan of the posters on the walls and in the windows and of the menu board up on the wall, pretending as though they were still deciding, just tempting themselves with choices really. Wallace would sidle over to the window, looking through the screen and up through the glass louvers, which were always tilted on a steep angle so that the high school counter boy, I think his name was Billy and he went to high school with my older brothers, could see out. He was very tall and skinny and always wore one of those funny, paper pastry hats. ‘So what’s it tonight, Wally?’ Wallace would point to a poster and say, ‘Rocket Pop.’ ‘Red, white, and blue or rainbow swirl?’ the kid would ask. ‘Red, white and blue,’ Wallace would answer. ‘OK,’ the kid would say, then, ‘How about you Adrienne?’ ‘Small vanilla sugar cone with chocolate sprinkles,’ she’d say. ‘How about you, Seed?’ he’d ask me.

That was my nickname then. Only daddy called me Bird. And I would always say, ‘I haven’t decided. Go on and get theirs and by then I’ll know.’ You see, I just loved the experience of being there, the bright fluorescent light, the slate floor, the brightly colored posters, the stainless steel counters, the syrup tubs and the pumps all gunked with strawberry and chocolate and fudge and the old-fashioned heavy-looking milkshake blenders. I took it all in as long as I could. You know, the moment, like you’re always talking about. The brevity of the moment. I didn’t call it that back then, but that’s what I was doing, recognizing a moment and savoring it.”

She looked away, over the Sonora, to the dark window where the wind was breathing in the curtains. He was tacking hurriedly on the Underwood.

“How quickly it all passes. You’re right about that,” she said. “Wallace and Adrienne would get their ice cream and the kid would ask me, ‘OK, now how about you, Seed?’ I would make as though I were still deciding, pressing my fingers to my chin, but Wallace and Adrienne would be impatient and coax me, ‘Aw c’mon, Seed, just decide so we can go over to the oak tree in the graveyard.’ I would be anxious by then, too, and would hurry over to the window, leaning on the small Formica ledge. ‘Yes please, I would like a small cup of chocolate with rainbow jimmies and a… just a touch of the simple syrup with crushed walnuts.’ Adrienne would stop licking her cone and point to me. ‘Say, Pa that’s practically a sundae,’ she’d say. Pa would roll his eyes and ask her, ‘Do you want simple syrup, too?’ ‘Sure,’ she’d say. Pa would nod to the kid, ‘Go on, Billy. Let her have a spoon or two.’ Adrienne would hand her cone back through the window very carefully, cradling it as though it were a small precious vase. The kid would drop it upside down in a cup and then spoon some simple syrup over the ice cream. Wallace would be sucking his Rocket Pop, trying to extract as much flavor as he could, his lips and tongue dark blue. Then the kid would get my cup of ice cream. ‘What about you, Mr. Hart?’ he’d ask Pa. ‘Just a coffee’s all. Thanks.’ Then the kid would ask Pa if he were still coaching Little League. ‘When I can,’ Pa’d say. ‘Awfully busy down at the shop.’ ‘I always wanted to be on your team,’ the kid would say, ‘the teams you coached may not have always been champions, but you always had the best team.’ ‘Thanks, Billy,’ Pa would say taking his coffee.

Then we’d all head to the graveyard behind the dairy bar and walk around frightening ourselves as we read epitaphs and talked about dead people and horrible accidents we’d heard about. Pa would sit under the big shady oak tree on a telephone pole lying down as a curb at the edge of the parking lot, sitting there looking out at the graveyard and at us, stirring his coffee with the thin metal slide rule he always had on him. He’d stir watching us, his sleeves rolled up, then fling the coffee off the slide rule and slip it back in his breast pocket with his pens, his fingers tattooed black with carbon from machining steel all day. Tattooed black but his hands were always clean when he came home.”

She turned the stairs and climbed the first two as he finished typing. Then he stopped her again.

“Wait a sec, sweet. Did you do that often?”

“Every few weeks through the spring and summer,” she said.

“No, I mean, until you were how old?”

“Until I was 14 of course, when the diabetes finally killed him. My oldest brother Charles tried to take over. But it just wasn’t the same. The trip there and back was empty, and the dairy bar seemed to lose some of its sparkle and magic. And the kid called Charles Chas, not Mr. Hart and I didn’t like that either. Charles tried but it just wasn’t the same.”

He continued writing.

“We’ll do the same when we have kids,” he yelled up to her as she went upstairs.

“That’d be swell,” she said back to him.

He got up and wound the Sonora and changed the record and as he sat down and stared at the sheet of paper curling over the back of the Underwood, Lost in Meditation began playing. He wrote a line or two, then stopped. He tapped his pencil keeping rhythm with the song.

[This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance or similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental. The author bears no responsibility for any damages that may occur to actual persons based upon this writing.]