Nancy A. Collins, page 7
As he strolled down First Street, it suddenly occurred to Railsback that perhaps his father had stopped by the office before heading over to the rail station and got sidetracked by some paperwork, as was so often the case. As he neared Railsback Seed & Feed, he peered in through the front window, hoping to catch sight of his father silhouetted behind the counter, but all there was for him to see were shadows and bags of hog feed. Hollis’s puzzlement gave way to genuine concern and he hurried towards his home, five blocks away. The house Hollis Railsback grew up in was a modest affair, with a wide front porch, wooden siding, green shingles, and a glider hung from rusty chains, where he had spent countless summer nights idly swinging back and forth, watching the fireflies come out with the twilight.
He tried the door, but it refused to turn. Hollis’s concern now became full-fledged fear. He could never, in his memory, recall his father ever locking the door. He leaned on the doorbell set and heard its strident buzz echoing throughout the house.
“Daddy! Open up!” Hollis shouted, banging the door so hard it rattled the front parlor windows. “It’s me! Open up!”
“Gracious! Who’s making such a racket this early in the day—?” An older woman dressed in a pink housecoat, curlers still in her hair, peered over the hedgerow from next door. “Here now!” she said sharply. “What’re you up to? I’ll have the law on you if you don’t settle down!”
Railsback stepped towards the hedge, a look of relief on his face. Up until that moment, part of him had been secretly afraid the town was deserted. “Miz Eunice! Where’s Daddy gone off to?”
Eunice McQuistion, the Railsbacks’ neighbor for the last thirty years, halted her harangue and squinted at him. “Hollis-? Hollis Railsback?” She fished in her cleavage and retrieved a pair of cat-eye glasses. “Lord A’ mighty-that is you! God in Heaven, boy! Every one hereabouts gave you up for dead six months ago!”
“I’ll admit I got close to dying’, but I ain’t dead, Miz Eunie.”
“So I can see, son.”
“Miz Eunie, I sent Daddy a telegram letting him know I was coming home today…”
Miss Eunice’s face grew sorrowful. “Oh, Hollis, I’m so sorry, darlin’.”
“What? You’re sorry for what? What’s happened to Daddy? He ain’t dead, is he?”
“No, Hollis. Horace ain’t dead …but I don’t doubt he’d rather be than where he is now. Your pappy’s over at Twin Oaks.”
The words struck Hollis like a closed fist; Twin Oaks was the sanitarium. Hollis fought to keep from staggering as the meaning of what Miz Eunie said sank in. “No,” he whispered. “That can’t be so …Not my daddy…”
“It came on him sudden,” Miz Eunice said gently. “About a month ago. He was down at the store, one minute he’s talking to Jake Carlton, and the next minute he’s laid out on the floor. Doc Bocage said it was a stroke, brought on from stress and over work.”
“Over work? How’s that? He’s got three employees under him.”
“Not anymore,” Miz Eunie said, shaking her head. “He had to let Tim and Jack go awhile back. The only person he still has working for him is Mamie.”
Hollis couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Tim Tullis and Jack Fortenberry had worked for his father as far back as he could remember. “Why would Daddy fire Tim and Jack?”
“On account of the competition he was getting from Bright Star Agricultural.”
“Bright Star Agricultural? Never heard of them.”
“They opened up a year ago, just after the state finished with the new highway. Virgil Bayliss owns it. You remember Virgil, don’t you, Hollis?”
“I remember him, awright,” Hollis replied, his voice as hard as bone.
Miz Eunie’s cheeks colored as she belatedly realized her faux pas. “Well, yes, ahem, I reckon you would, wouldn’t you? Well, I best get back to my breakfast before my toaster catches fire. It’s good to have you back home, Hollis.”
Hollis watched Miz Eunie disappear back into her home, then turned and walked around the back of his father’s house. The Railsback’s’ ‘37 Packard sat inside the unsecured garage, a patina of dust obscuring the back windshield. Hollis took the old Folgers can down from the shelf over his father’s workbench and upended it, dumping the spare set of house and car keys into his hand, then walked back and let himself in through the front door.
The house was profoundly silent and smelled of stale, closed air. A small drift of unopened mail and unread magazines, including the telegram he had sent from Kansas City, lay piled just below the mail slot in the door. Hollis bent to pick up one of the letters and saw it was a past due notice from one of the feed store’s suppliers. He threw the bill back down onto the pile.
Talk about a hell of a homecoming. It was clear now that his father had been hiding his business troubles in his letters. No doubt the old man didn’t want to worry his son while he was recovering in the hospital. Hollis had wondered why he hadn’t received a letter from his father over the last month, but had simply charted it up to delays in the mail. After all, Honolulu was a far way aways from Seven Devils, Arkansas. And, to make matter worse, Virgil Bayliss wasn’t content with simply stealing his girl; he had to steal Daddy’s business, too.
Hollis and Virgil had grown up together, attended school together, sung in the church choir together, even played on the high school football team together. Despite this, Railsback could not recall a time when he did not detest the bastard.
He couldn’t really pinpoint the exact reason for his intense dislike of the man; Virgil Bayliss had never once shown the slightest animosity towards him. Perhaps his resentment arose from how easy everything seemed to be for Virgil, who had been born with matinee idol looks and a strapping physique. With his a crown of wavy golden hair, Virgil Bayliss looked like how Jack Armstrong, All American Boy sounded on the radio: clean-cut, wholesome and virile. Virgil was gifted with a sharp and inquisitive mind and was also an all-round athlete. Basketball, baseball, football, tennis, chess, debate squad …you name it, Virgil Bayliss was its captain.
However, while Hollis was a good student, he was nowhere near as smart as Virgil, nor as gifted. No matter what it was Hollis tried his hand at, he had to fight to attain what little success he could claim, while Virgil Bayliss seemed to glide along through life with as much effort as a swan.
The one area that Hollis had enjoyed unqualified success, though, was with Joslin Simms. Hollis had known Joslin all of his life, and he had loved her since the first time he realized she wasn’t a boy. Joslin was the fairest, most perfect example of womanhood Choctaw County had ever produced. With her long, blonde hair, smoky violet eyes, and pale, translucent skin, she looked more like a porcelain doll than a flesh-and-blood woman. While her beauty drew men to her, it was her fragility that kept them in her thrall. There was a precious delicacy to her that always seemed on the verge of being ruined, like hothouse orchids in danger of a blast of cold air from a carelessly opened door. To quote his father, Joslin was not just a girl or even a woman; she was a lady.
And throughout their high school years, the lady was incontestably his. Hollis’s plan for the future had been to go the University of Arkansas up in Fayetteville, get a degree in Agricultural Engineering, go to work in the family business, then marry Joslin. But then the war happened, and all his plans went out the window. He could still see her standing on the train platform, wrapped in his letter sweater, clutching a hanky to her tear-swollen eyes as the train pulled away from the station.
Joslin started out writing him every day for the first three months. Then she started writing every week. Then it was once every two weeks. By the time he was gone a year, her cards and letters arrived one a month.
Then, two years into his tour, he got a Dear John. In the letter, Joslin told him she had fallen in love with Virgil Bayliss, who was given a deferment because he had blown out his knee playing football his senior year of high school.
Hollis’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile as he recalled the intense satisfaction he had felt as he watched from the sidelines as Virgil writhed in pain on the playing field, clutching his ruined kneecap. At the time it had secretly pleased him to know, for once, something had not gone perfectly for Seven Devil’s golden boy.
Of course, Hollis had no way of knowing that Virgil’s injury would keep him out of the draft, while he would be sent halfway across the globe to fight for possession of a chain of god-forsaken islands scattered between Honolulu and Rangoon that were not only infested with Jap soldiers, but with every possible biting fly and poisonous snake as well.
Still, Hollis wasn’t really surprised that Joslin had dumped him for another man. He had always known she was overly dependent on others for her strength, both physically and emotionally. After all, it was one of the things that had drawn him to her. No, what galled him was that she had dumped him for Virgil Bayliss, of all people. If she had chosen anyone else, at least Hollis could have comforted himself by knowing she had settled for someone inferior to him.
Was this what he had fought for in the Pacific? For Virgil Bayliss to steal his girl? Had he slugged through those damned swamps, up to his armpits in slime and leeches, to have Virgil Bayliss wreck his family business and put his father in the old folk’s home?
Welcome home, soldier boy.
000
Horace Railsback sat in a high back convalescent’s wheelchair parked in the middle of a pool of sunlight like a potted plant. The left side of his face hung from his skull like wet laundry, and his left arm was twisted inward on itself, tucked near his chin, in parody of deep thought. Although he appeared clean and well cared for, Hollis could not help feel like his father was in bad need of dusting.
It took Horace a disturbingly long moment to recognize Hollis. It wasn’t until the orderly prodded the old man by telling him his son had come to see him that a glimmer of recognition could be glimpsed in his right eye.
“Son..? My son..?” Horace said, his voice as dry as a paper rose. “Hi, Daddy,” Hollis said in a low shout, as if by raising the volume he could somehow reach the place his father’s mind had retreated to.
“I’m back. I missed you.”
“Back? From where? Where did you go, son?”
“To war, Daddy. I went off to war. But I’m back now. I’m back to help you run the store.”
Horace Railsback nodded his head as if it might topple from his shoulders. “My boy is in the service, you know. Fightin’ Japs.”
000
Mamie Joyner, his father’s long-time secretary, burst into tears when Hollis walked into the back office. Mamie was a short, squat little woman who bore a strong resemblance to a pot-bellied stove, if said stove wore cranberry-red lipstick, cardigan sweaters and kept its hair in a bun.
“Oh, Mr. Hollis!” she boo-hooed into his shoulder. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re back!”
“I know, Mamie. It’s good to see you, too,” he said, patting her on the back.
“I’ve been coming in every day since your father took ill, answering the phone and seeing to it that things were in kept in order. To tell the truth, I didn’t know what else to do with myself! If only Mr. Horace was here..!” A renewed series of sobs shook her compact frame.
“That can’t be helped, Mamie. You and I both know that. But now that I’m home, I’m going to see to it that things get back to the way they used to be.”
“Oh, Mr. Hollis!’
“Don’t cry, Mamie-please, stop crying! You’re no use to me when you cry.” Hollis gently pried the weeping woman from him and pointed her in the direction of the filing cabinets. “Now, I need you to fetch me the books for the last year or so, so I can get an idea of what’s happened to the business and what needs to be done. Can you do that for me, darlin’?”
“Of course, Mr. Hollis,” Mamie sniffled, daubing at the corners of her eves with a tissue.
“That’s my girl. Just put them on Daddy’s desk. I’ll go over them this evening.”
Come midnight, Hollis Railsback had finished going over the accounts, and he had to admit that things were not as bad as he had thought they were. They were a far sight worse. Railsback Feed & Seed was not just teetering on the verge of bankruptcy; it had already fallen headlong into the hopper while no one was looking.
When he’d gone off to war, the new highway was just talk, nothing more. But in 1944 there was a nice, new two-lane blacktop located a mile from the older, narrower road that cut through town. Now travelers headed to Little Rock in one direction, or Greenville in the other, no longer had to drive through the business district, with its two separate sets of railroad tracks and five traffic lights. Still, no one gave much thought about what the new highway might mean, since the war was still on and gas was rationed and most everyone traveled by train. So when Virgil Bayliss opened up his Bright Star Agricultural Supply out on the new highway, everyone in town figured him for a fool.
But the farmers and ranchers who bought feed and seed weren’t town folk. They had to drive into Seven Devils to make their purchases, which meant they regularly dealt with the railroad crossings, which had freights on them at least three times a day, if not more, as well as the traffic lights and the limited free parking spaces on First Street. By being out on the highway, Bright Star Agricultural was able to offer convenience and ample parking to men who viewed coming into town as a tedious chore. The result was a slow but steady loss of customers for Railsback Feed & Seed.
Hollis’s father had managed to hang on to some of his old clients-mostly those farmers to whom he had extended credit during the boll weevil infestation-but, for the most part, the younger farmers who were taking over from the previous generation were taking their business to Bright Star.
To make matters worse, Horace Railsback had taken out a second mortgage on the house simply to see to it that the lights stayed on in the store and Mamie was kept on the payroll. But most of what Horace had gotten from the bank was being rapidly eaten away by his medical bills. Within a month’s time the bank would foreclose on both the business and the house, and after that it was only a matter of time before Twin Oaks either kicked his father out or sent him to the State Hospital over in Benton.
Try as he might, Hollis could not puzzle his way out of the trap his father’s sentiment and the state highway department had constructed for him. So he took the bottle of Old Granddad his father kept in the bottom filing cabinet and got drunk.
Hollis woke up with a start when Mamie unlocked the store. He had passed out at his father’s desk, his head resting on an open ledger.
“Mr. Hollis! Were you here all night?” Mamie asked, clucking her tongue.
Railsback blinked and looked around, rubbing the gum from his eyes. “I suppose I was.”
“That’s not good for your back, you know.”
“So you tell me,” he grunted as he got to his feet. His lower back ached and his neck was so stiff the muscles creaked. “Mamie, you tidy things up here. I’m going home to change my clothes, splash some cold water on my face. I’ll be back in a hour or two.”
“Very well, Mr. Hollis.”
Hollis flinched as the morning sun hit his unshielded eyes as he left the feed store. The bitter tackiness of his mouth was enough to make him decide to grab a quick cup of Joe before heading home.
The Sip-N-Sup was across the street from the First Federal. It had booths, tables and a lunch counter, as well as a room in the back where the local Kiwanis and Rotarians held their meetings. The breakfast rush had just ended and Jesse, the short order cook, was cleaning the grill in anticipation of the clerks and accountants from the bank across the street hurrying over for their lunch break. Hollis had spent much of his young life eating at the Sip-N-Sup. After his mother’s death, he and his father had taken nearly every meal there. If ever there was a home-away-from-home, it was the Sip-n-Sup.
As Hollis entered the restaurant, a tiny bell over the door rang, announcing his arrival. Mary-Margaret, the Sip-N-Sup’s all purpose waitress and cashier, jumped down from her perch behind the register. “Well, I’ll be! Mr. Hollis! How long you been back?”
“Couple of days.”
Mary-Margaret turned around on her stool and shouted at the top of her lungs in the direction of the short order station. “Jesse! Looky who’s come back from the war! It’s Mr. Hollis!”
“Hey, Mr. Hollis!” Jesse said, glancing up from the grill he was cleaning. “You kill some Japs while you was gone?”
“I reckon I did. Never got close enough to see how many, though.”
“Glad to hear it,” Jesse replied, and returned to his polishing.
“Don’t you mind Jesse none,” Mary-Margaret said with a laugh. “You know how he is when it comes to that grill! He ain’t satisfied until he can see his face in it! Now what can we do you for?”
“Coffee. Black. And some dry toast.”
“Looks to me like someone’s been out celebratin’,” Mary-Margaret said with a wink.
“I wouldn’t call it celebrating, exactly.”
Mary-Margaret gave one of her patented horselaughs as she poured fresh coffee into a white ceramic mug. “Still the same old Mr. Hollis!”
He sipped at the hot, bitter brew, trying his best to quiet the drums thumping behind his eyes. Despite his hangover, and the problems heaped upon his shoulders, it was still good to be back home, surrounded by people he had known since before he could talk. After so much change, all of it chaotic and more than a little dangerous, the presence of familiar faces and things was a comfort in itself.
