Cherokee Purple

by Rob Hunter

part 2 of 9

As Ed aimed his ’46 Buick sedan south on US 41, in those days more wishful thinking than a proper capital works project, I read The Last Tycoon. I should have read Faulkner instead of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The South of 1948 was steeped in the tradition of not a smile at parting but rather a smirk through implacable circumstance, a resignation to the dark inner heart of humanity.

Sheila Graham, the Hollywood columnist, had tried to dry Fitzgerald out. He died. Ol’ Parrish died; Thelma died. Faulkner drank alone and died years after the time of this telling. Thelma ate, not drank, and died all the same and right on time.

I might have studied up on this in advance of Thelma’s death but I am a salesman, not a soothsayer. Salesmen are creatures of the moment, spontaneity our strong suit. The trick would be to keep me from dying. We’ll get to that part.

Norma the cheerleader must have indeed been a legendary cupcake for the surviving hardware store layabouts to treasure her memory for over twenty years. All of her charms — well, almost all — had been revealed by one chance visit.

There was water damage at her grandmother’s and Pa Cawthorne figured Norma’s eye was keener than his for decorating. The good ol’ boys at the hardware store led Norma upstairs to peruse the collection of embossed tin ceilings. Norma had a short skirt, upthrust breasts and a peach-colored team sweater with a velour V stitched to the front.

I heard this while buying three pounds of 8-pitch lag bolts for a retrofit at Dixie Duck. Sharp observers, the guys at the hardware store. And long memories — they mustn’t have had many nubile young ladies checking out the tin ceilings in upstairs storage. A quick glance back down the stairs into an ascending cleavage. Hmmm. They cherished Norma’s visit for decades.

“This way, Miss. We don’t get much call for tin ceilings, but you never know.” Ol’ Parrish kept the 8 by 16 foot rolls upstairs 25 years past their best-used-by date in hope of a buyer. Ol’ Parrish just couldn’t throw anything away. And the rolls of stamped tin ceilings had clogged his attic since his father — Ol’ Ol’ Parrish, I supposed — had bought a carload lot right after the Spanish-American War.

He was a late convert to advertising, but young Ol’ Parrish put in the tin ceiling at the White Street Billiards and Snooker hoping for an upwelling of the communal esthetic. The denizens of the White Street Billiards and Snooker looked up infrequently and did not read House and Garden. They cooked with wood, the chimney clogging pitchpine of the Catawaba River bottom land. Thelma made sure they got home to the missus in time to chop and split. And the good wives of Piedmont’s doctors and dentists who did read House and Garden were planting magnolias and adding colonnaded porches by 1948. Tin ceilings were off their style radar.

“You just follow Sam now, Miz Cawthorne. He knows all the rolls.” I’d just bet. Norma Cawthorne was hot stuff for 1928, or for any year for that matter. Ol’ Parrish brought up the rear and drank up the view. He cherchez’ed la femme — cheerleader’s thighs, tightened by the steep incline. Yum, yum. Parrish Wagstaff was a lost man; a sad case, opined Piedmont, and all over a high school girl. Norma Cawthorne and Ol’ Parrish were gone that night. Norma’s Pa never did come to pick up the tin ceilings.

North of town, the Catawaba River bottomland flooded regularly. Giant carp, escaped pet aquarium goldfish most likely, were left behind in ruined cornfields when the waters receded. But only the occasional human’s remains. And never the remains of Ol’ Parrish. And no Norma.

Time passes; it is now 1948 and the good life is defined by do-it-yourself gypsum board and linoleum on the floor. Times are better, but not all that much better. Those rolls of tin ceilings languished still, upstairs at Wagstaff & Son Hardware.

Wherever Parrish Wagstaff and Norma the varsity cheerleader got themselves to, they hadn’t sent any postcards back home; they were never heard from again.

Until now.

Proceed to part 3...