Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [69]
“We might get there today!” Bill said when they got up at four. No one else in the camp was up.
“You thought it was milking time,” Imogene said. “I couldn’t sleep either. I was too wound up.”
After a large breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, and cereal, they drove awhile, then stopped for a nap.
“We’ll never get there,” said Bill.
They drove south to Birmingham, then across several smaller routes toward Plains. There was a lot of traffic on the small roads. Georgia drivers were worse than Kentucky drivers, Bill thought, as he tailed a woman who was straddling the line in a battered old Buick with its rear end dragging.
“Look, there’s a old mansion!” Imogene cried. “One of those with the white columns!”
The mansion was so close to the road there was no yard, and they could look through the front door and out the back. Weeds had grown up around the place.
“See them old shacks out back,” said Bill. “That’s where the slaves used to live.”
“Looks like they’re still living there,” said Imogene, pointing to some ragged black children. “Law, I thought we had poor people at home.”
In Plains, Imogene bought postcards and sent them to the kids, who were scattered all over. Imogene wrote the same message on each card: “Your daddy and me’s headed out to see the world. Will let you know how it comes out. If I live that long. (Oh!)” Bill and Imogene walked down the tiny main street, which was crowded with buses and campers. People from everywhere were there. Imogene wanted to take the tourist bus, but Bill said they had a new twenty-thousand-dollar vehicle of their own and knew how to drive it, so they drove around awhile, doubling back on themselves. Then, at Imogene’s insistence, Bill stopped at Billy Carter’s filling station.
“I think that’s him,” Imogene said, peering toward the back of the station, where there was a crowd of people standing around. “No, that’s not him. Looked like him, though.”
A sweaty man in an undershirt with skinny straps filled up the tank.
“Reckon Billy ain’t around,” said Imogene, leaning over toward Bill’s window.
“No, he’s off. He’s off over to Americus.” The man pointed.
“We went through there,” said Imogene.
“No, we didn’t,” said Bill.
“All these tourists just driving you folks crazy, I expect,” said Imogene, ignoring Bill.
“Oh, you get used to it,” the man said, leaning against the gas pump. “You never know what you’re liable to see or who you’ll meet. We get some characters in here, I tell you.”
“I ’magine.”
“Are you ready?” Bill asked Imogene.
“I guess.”
“Y’all come back now, hear?” the man said.
“We will,” said Imogene, waving.
“Seen enough?” Bill asked.
“I can say I’ve been here anyway.”
Bill was getting tired, and he drove listlessly for a while. He could not make the connection between Plains and the White House. Plains looked like the old slave shacks outside the mansion they had passed. The mansion was the White House. Bill thought of Honest Abe splitting rails, but that was a long time ago. Things were more complicated now. Bill hated complications. If he were running the show, it would be pretty simple. He never had trusted those foot-washing, born-again Baptists anyway. And now the President had let a whole country in the Middle East be taken over by a religious maniac. It made him sick. What if Billy Graham decided to take over the United States? It would be the same thing.
Bill and Imogene, no longer talking, meandered throughout Georgia, through tiny towns that looked to Bill as though they hadn’t changed since 1940. The grocery stores had front porches. Georgia still had Burma-Shave signs. Bill almost ran onto the shoulder trying to read one.
YOUR HUSBAND
MISBEHAVE
GRUNT AND GRUMBLE
RANT AND RAVE
SHOOT THE BRUTE SOME
BURMA-SHAVE
There was a word missing. The signs were faded and rotting.
Between Plains and the Florida border, Bill counted five dead animals—a possum, a groundhog, a cat, a dog, and one unidentifiable mass of hide and gristle. He tried to slow down.