Southern Discomfort Part 6

CHAPTER 5.

LOAD-BEARING MEMBERS.

"Load-bearing structural members support and transfer the loads on the structure while remaining in equilibrium with each other."

In my teens, Friday nights were TGIF necking at the only drive-in left in Colleton County, hotdogs with slaw and chili at the Tastee-Freez afterwards, and cruising Cotton Grove in an endless looping traffic jam of open convertibles and loaded pickup trucks, every radio blasting-R&R going head-to-head with the Okie from Muskogee.

All through my twenties, except for the times I lived off, winter Friday nights were dinner dates and dancing at one of the Raleigh clubs; in summer, they were often the beginning of lazy weekends spent s.h.a.gging at the beach, before everybody drifted off and got married or settled into "meaningful relations.h.i.+ps."

Now that I'm in my thirties, a lot of the people I used to party with are back single again, only this time we all have so many strings attached, partying is almost more effort than its worth.

Terry Wilson had called me earlier in the week. His fifteen-year-old son, Stanton, was in a summertime baseball league and they were scheduled to take on the Dobbs team Friday night. Did I want to watch?

"Sure," I said. Terry and I go back a ways and I've known Stanton since he was six and Terry used to get him for the weekends. Terry's been married and divorced again since then. As an SBI agent, he was working narcotics undercover at the time. h.e.l.l on marriages. On Friday I played phone tag and finally left a message at SBI headquarters that I'd meet them at the field because I had to drop by a funeral home first.

Just because I had that fall's election wired didn't mean I could let up. The mother of one of the county commissioners had died. I never met the woman, but her son is one who'd remember if I didn't go and offer my condolences. Besides, once you gain elective office, you find yourself treating almost every gathering as another golden opportunity to press the flesh.

I was in and out in under forty minutes, but then I had to go home and change from funeral home decorum to jeans and sneakers.

The game was tied 1-1 when I got there in the bottom of the second and it stayed that way through the next six innings. Two of my nephews were playing for Dobbs, so I sat on a bleacher between home and third with Terry and my brothers and their wives, and I hollered for both sides indiscriminately. In the top of the ninth, Stanton batted in the go-ahead run for his team; in the bottom, as shortstop, he caught a hard-hit line drive down the middle and stepped on second before my nephew could get back from third. Una.s.sisted doubleplay. A high pop-up to center ended the game.

Terry yelled himself hoa.r.s.e, hugged me hard, and wanted to take everybody out for pizza, including my two nephews and their parents.

"Can't do it," I said. "We carpenters have to get a full night's sleep."

All through the game, my brothers had teased me about being so out of shape I probably wasn't fit to swing anything heavier than a gavel-I swear, I can't spit in Dobbs without having a brother in California call up the next day and tell me spitting's not very ladylike. They'd heard I was borrowing tools from Herman and thought they'd get my goat singing choruses of "If I Were a Carpenter and You Were a Lady"-words changed to suit my situation, of course.

"Better do a good job," said Will as we climbed down from the bleachers, "or ol' Rufus here'll make you do it all over again."

My eyes met those of a trim, fiftyish man with thinning gray hair and an easy smile who had been seated a few rows down from us and whom we had overtaken on our way out. I'd seen that face around the courthouse occasionally, but couldn't remember that we'd ever been introduced. Will knows everybody by their first names, of course.

"Say what, young man?"

"You know my sister, don't you?" Will said. "Deborah, this is Rufus Dayley. He's the county's chief building inspector."

"Everybody knows who Judge Knott is," he said gallantly. "Pleased to meet you, ma'am. Did I hear Will say you're building something?"

"Only helping," I said.

Will couldn't let it go. "She's gonna be pounding nails tomorrow over at that house those women are building by themselves."

"Oh, yes." Dayley nodded. "I've had to pay one of my men overtime, so we can fit the inspections in around you weekend workers." He seemed to hear the less-than-gracious tone in his voice and backpedaled for my benefit. "Of course, if we're going to have a lady judge on the job, I'll have to tell him to go easy on y'all."

"Oh, please don't do that, Mr. Dayley." Girlish sweetness sugared my words till it's a miracle I didn't choke. "Why, I'd just hate for him to think you've got a different set of standards for people you know."

He had to use his fingers to work it out, and then he didn't know whether or not to take it as a joke. His laughter sounded forced as he wished us a good evening.

Amy shook her head. "I'm no feminist, but-" she began.

"I'm a feminist, and," I grinned.

"Can't take you anywhere," Terry grumbled.

Out in the clay-and-gravel parking lot, the night air was hot and still. White moths fluttered in the headlights as the cars pulled out in swirls of heavy red dust that fell straight back to the ground. No moon and too hazy to see many stars. Terry's hunted and fished with all my brothers, and we stood and talked lazily about dogs and ba.s.s till the boys were released by their coaches.

They were laughing as they came up, loping dark shapes silhouetted by the field lights behind them. It'd been a satisfying, hard-fought game, nothing sloppy on either side and none of the three had been charged with errors, so they felt good about their performances. I hugged all three of them, loving their gangly height, their awkward social graces, their clean sweaty smell like young horses that had galloped through long gra.s.sy pastures. Aunts and former-almost-stepmothers can get away with stuff like that.

"Aren't you coming with us?" they chorused as car keys jingled and our group scattered across the nearly empty parking lot. "Aw, come on, Aunt Deb'rah."

"Next time," I promised. I got a brotherly kiss and a "Seeya, gal" from Terry, then he was gone, too.

For a small town Friday night, the main streets back through Dobbs were busy with cars and trucks full of couples sitting close to each other, wrapped in their own bliss. As I drove through the white brick gate and pulled up to the side entrance of the house, WQDR was playing the Judds's "Grandpa, Tell Me 'Bout the Good Old Days."

"And the good old nights," sighed the pragmatist, even as the preacher was patting me on the head in approval. -Bout time you quit burning your candle at both ends."

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 ca.s.sette 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 Sat.u.r.days," she scolded as Annie Sue followed her back down the wide hall to the kitchen where I was finis.h.i.+ng 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 gla.s.s 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 c.o.c.ked 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 G.o.ds: 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 b.i.t.c.hes 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 splas.h.i.+ng 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), coa.r.s.e 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 coa.r.s.e 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 s.p.a.cious 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 ca.n.a.l 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 gra.s.s 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 s.h.i.+fted 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, embarra.s.sed, 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 a.s.semble, 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 st.u.r.dy 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.

"Sat.u.r.day 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d," 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 Sat.u.r.day. They never make him pull back no plastic."