Free Why Dogs Chase Cars by George Singleton Page B

always got plain vanilla. My father ordered weird things, like strawberry with a glob of peanut butter whiskedthrough it, but I think he just did this in order to shock people. “He doesn’t put his hand in any of those spinning frames,” I said. “Anybody that crazy doesn’t care about coaching baseball.”
    My father turned the radio dial to some man singing opera. “Anybody that crazy doesn’t want to hang out around kids who can’t hit a baseball. Ask him. Or ask those other two coaches helping out. You make a buck-sixty an hour after a number of years and feel your lungs turning inside out, you’ll about do anything to move away. If you’re smart. D. R. Pope’s a smart man, son. His daddy was a smart man. Why you think he’s named D. R.? It’s so when he got a checking account it looked like ‘Dr. Pope.’ People treat him with respect when he writes out a check. Dr. Pope. You can’t be a surgeon with all those missing fingers, of course. But you can be a dermatologist. Or an English professor.”
    My father went on to list a number of doctors, from allergists to zoologists. He didn’t say, “Gynecologist.” The carhop returned with our extra-large milkshakes and said, “I ain’t never heard no one order a strawberry peanut butter milkshake. What’s it taste like?”
    My father pulled out his straw, turned it toward the woman, and said, “Stick this in your mouth and give me your opinion.”
    I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on over on that side of the Buick. I sucked.
    â€œHey, did you ever work over at Forty-Five Cotton?” my father asked the carhop. She wore a paper hat.
    â€œBoth my parents do. I made a pact with myself, though. I said I wanted to get out of high school and do better for myself. My momma and daddy never got a tip on
their
jobs.”
    My father nodded. He said, “What’s your name?”
    â€œEmmie Gunnells.” She pointed at a name tag half-hidden beneath her collar.
    â€œEmmie Gunnells, I want you to help my boy and me with a little argument we’re having. Did your folks ever have any tough times financially? I’m talking, like, back when gasoline prices went up to thirty-five cents a gallon?”
    Emmie leaned down and looked at me closer. She said, “Y’all ain’t union organizers are you? We’ve already had the union organizers over to the house.”
    I shook my head. My face felt like an hourglass, that’s how thick the vanilla milkshake was. My father said, “Hell no, we ain’t no organizers. I’m only trying to prove a point with Mendal here.”
    â€œI don’t know,” Emmie Gunnells said.
    My father said, “How many fingers has your father lost at this point in time?”
    Emmie Gunnells slapped her hip with the tray she was holding. “Law!” she said. “How’d you know?” She stooped back down to look at me. “Y’all are from the fair, I bet. Y’all are those people who can guess ages and weights and family trees.”
    My father said, “How many?”
    Emmie Gunnells said, “He’s got six left. It’s enough for him to drive his Cadillac.”
    S EEING AS THERE was little else to do in Forty-Five, everyone came out to the games. If a mastermind thief ever traveled through, he could’ve broken in to about every house in the entire town on early-dusk nights. And he might’ve gotten gold watches and pearl earrings from those doffers and weavers who’d jammed their hands into machines. Here’s what I heard from behind the plate every game: “Y’all are an embarrassment to Forty-Five”; “Hey, Bennie Frewer, see if you can get knocked in the head with the ball so no one will touch it and you can run around the diamond”; “Nice reflexes, boy. Remind me not to let you in on my driver’s ed class in six