C Hribal - The Company Car

“Mel’s gone drinking,” came a voice from the back. “No-account bastard.”

“I’m here,” the young woman said. She leaned forward and whispered, “I’m Celia.”

At that the bead curtain behind the register parted to give way to a curlered behemoth in a housedress. This was a woman who looked like she wrestled pigs for a living. “Celia, get in the back,” the woman ordered. She was holding a broom and smoking a cigarette.

“I was just talking to these gentlemen.”

“These gentlemen ain’t gentlemen. They’re salesmen. And I’ll handle ’em. Now get.” She spat out “salesmen” as though we were vermin. Then I realized what was up. We were the punch line to too many jokes that had driven through town. This woman could just see it, a seventeen-year-old mother to be who couldn’t remember the name of the “nice man” who’d knocked her up, then disappeared on down the highway. She was protecting her daughter from a horrible future. Better she got knocked up by some local boy she could keep her eye on and make do the right thing. Even if he turned out to be a bastard like Mel.

Our father cleared his throat. “Would you be able, in Mel’s absence,” he said, “to make decisions regarding the stocking of this store?” Our father’s voice sounded unnaturally formal, and I wondered what had gotten into him.

“I make all the decisions about stocking this store, mister. Mel left that to me years ago when he decided the bottle he crawled inside was a better home than this one. And that was the last decision he ever made. And let me tell you something else, you slick city piece of shit, whatever you’re selling, I ain’t buying. Now get.”

The first drops of rain, which had been threatening to come down all day, splattered on our windshield and on the trees outside. You could hear it sputter-tapping the tin roof awning over Mel’s window. If we left right now, we could make the car before the deluge hit. But my father composed himself. He was not going to be driven out of a two-bit family grocery in a north woods town by a harridan with a chip on her shoulder. He refused. Instead he took out his order book and said, “I’ll just make sure you’ve got enough stock for the shelves.”

“I got all the stock I need. All the goddamn stock I’ll ever need. Some of that stuff has been sitting on the shelf since last summer.”

“Then I’ll remove the postdated stock and get you new merchandise,” said our father.

“I want the goddamn shelf empty!” the woman screamed. I had a hard time reconciling in my mind that this was Celia’s mother until it occurred to me that once upon a time Celia’s mom had probably been a lot like Celia, had married badly, and had paid for it ever since. Now she was just looking for excuses upon which she could unload all her grief and rage and unhappiness. It just so happened that today we were it. On another day it would be the water softener man, or the Coca-Cola salesman, or a representative from the Tri-County Bank, come to inform her that she had exhausted all her options vis-à-vis keeping this two-bit grocery afloat.

None of which comforted me when I saw the woman raise her broom and bring it down on my father’s head.

“Mama, don’t!” yelled Celia, who burst out of the back at the first crack of the broom.

“Ma’am, please!” My father threw up his arms to defend himself. “I’m trying to write an order here.”

“I don’t want a goddamn order here. I want you out of my fucking store.” She was beating time on his shoulders and head with her broom; my father turned his back and hunched his shoulders. He had his order pad out, with the three carbons tucked between the sheets—one for him, one for the office, one for the driver, one for the customer. She was raining blows on his back, and her words and the rain outside, which was coming in gusts, seemed to beat time with her. “Do… I… make… myself… clear?… I… want… you… out… of… my… fucking… store!” The last three blows were delivered to the back of my father’s skull. You could hear the broom’s plastic frame cracking as it whacked bone.

“Dad! You’re bleeding!” I cried as bright red blood burst into rivulets down the back of his head, spotting his yellow sport shirt crimson.

“Mama! Stop!” yelled Celia, but it was obvious the sight of my father’s blood only infuriated the woman, spurred her on to greater fury. A lifetime of frustrations had broken through the dam of her bile-swallowing anger, and here! here! she had found an object upon which she could whale. She just kept hitting him and hitting him and hitting him. My father had sunk to his knees—no easy task for a big man—and he was covering his skull with his order book. Whack! Whack! went the broom on his order book. Whack! Whack! Whack!

“Dad!” I yelled. “Sound the retreat! Retreat!” But he couldn’t seem to get to his feet, and when I tried reaching in to grab him, Celia’s mother started swinging the broom at me. Bottles of salad oil and Karo syrup and Mrs. Butterworth’s were knocked to the floor, crashing in time, it seemed, to the lightning flashes. I backed off. Celia’s mother returned her attention to my father, who hadn’t risen during his brief reprieve.

Celia had come up alongside me as this was going on, and her fingers reached for mine. We were holding hands, feeling the electricity of our entwined fingers, although we may have been feeling only the buzz from the electrical storm outside.

Meanwhile my father was getting the shit beat out of him.

“Make her stop,” I said, and Celia squeezed my hand tighter and said, “I can’t. She just gets like this sometimes, although usually she doesn’t take it out on people.”

Celia’s mother was winding down. Perhaps her arms were getting tired. She paused for breath, perhaps to regroup before redoubling her assault on my father’s cranium, and though it felt queerly strange and wonderful to have Celia holding my hand while my father was being beaten, I shook myself free and reached for my father, catching him under his arm. I half-pulled, half-dragged him to his feet. He slid in the Mrs. Butterworth’s–Karo syrup goo for a couple feet before I could get him upright. “Dad!” I kept yelling. “Retreat! Retreat!” And once I got him on his feet, I pushed him toward the door. Then I lunged back under the deadly broom of Celia’s mother to grab his sample case. She caught me a few times on my head and shoulders, slicing me open behind my ear before I was able to get out of there.

“Sorry!” Celia called as I sprang out the door, the bells above it tinkling in my wake.

Outside the wind beat furiously. The temperature had dropped, and cold rain and hail lashed down on us. It was like being attacked by ice cubes. “Shit and double shit!” yelled our father as he dropped his keys. We stood there while he fished for them in a large puddled pothole, then worked his way through the ring looking for the key. We were soaked and shivering by the time we got inside, and shivered more in the car’s air-conditioned air. The AC, which had labored and failed us all day, was finally successful in chilling us to the bone. He shut it off and the windows fogged. With a handkerchief I started wiping blood off his head, trying to stanch the flow. The rain had helped clean the wounds, and although he had several lacerations on the back of his head and neck, he wasn’t wounded too badly. He checked me for damage as well. The cut over my ear bled onto my shoulders. Our shirts were soaked with rain and blood, and our shoulders stung from the twin assaults of hail and Celia’s mother. Our father was breathing heavily. “What say we knock off early today. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” I said.