Should have kept quiet in The First Place
Just down the road from Boulevard Buick is the little garage called The First Place, as in "You shoulda come here in." It's a small business that has weathered good times and bad. I say "weathered good times" because the owner, Vance Chesterfield, had the good sense not to get all full of himself and expand the shop beyond its means.
This cannot be said of other businesses, which is why they suffer economic breakdowns and places like Vance's shop, do not. The most Vance has done to his shop is to enlarge and fence in the car lot in the back of the shop and spread some gravel around out there. Otherwise, the three-bay garage is pretty much as it was in the old days when it was a gas station.
It so happened that Jim Diminy took his ratty old Dodge there to have his brakes replaced on the day that Mary Frances Margaret McGuire brought her late model Explorer in to check out her tick-ticks. That's the sort of symptoms Vance gets to base his diagnoses on. "I got me a funny little tick-tick sound and it's wartin' me to pieces," Mary Frances Margaret said as she swept into the customer service area. "I need to go to Birmingham later today and I need you to see to it right now." I don't know how many descriptions like this that Vance gets on the average. Every car has its own "tick-tick" or "funny sound" or "little knock" or "crinkly whirr of doom" - my personal favorite, courtesy of Sally Diminy.
"It might take a minute, Mary Frances," Vance said. "All my boys are workin' on orders already, and Jim's next in line."
Mary Frances Margaret fixed a hard look on Jim, and she pointed an imperial finger at him. "You go to Our Lady of Perpetual Motion Church," she said, as if to accuse him of something untoward. That is just Mary Frances Margaret's way. She is known as The Enforcer among the ladies of the Altar Society.
"I do," Jim agreed amiably.
"I need to go to Birmingham, so I need you to do the right thing and let me go ahead of you."
"Well, somebody's got a hell of a gall," Vance muttered.
"What was that?" she asked sharply.
"I said, I'll get as soon as can to y'all."
"That's not what you said!"
"Lady," he said lightly, "It's close enough." He retreated to the shop where the mechanics worked wonders with iron behemoths that people like me pay them to fix. And presumably, where he didn't have to listen to whiny people demand better service than the next guy.
"Well, of all the nerve." Mary Frances Margaret recognized a soul more stubborn than she, and she sat down to wait.
For a little bitty ratty looking shop, The First Place is very busy. The phone constantly rang and the appointment book's edges were marred black from hard-working hands doing double-duty from the shop floor to the desktop. Every now and then a mechanic emerged from the shop, pale and blinking like a denizen of the night astonished at the morning sun. Vance returned to grab the phone.
An elderly lady came in the shop with a bag of donuts from the motel down the street. She left the bag on the countertop and left without saying a word. Jim wondered about it.
"Who was that?" he asked Vance. "The lady with the donuts?"
"She's Billy's mama; says we don't eat right. She thinks she needs to feed us." He patted his stomach. "She's very persistent."
Billy came in from the shop and headed straight for the bag. "I hope she got some sprinkles." He fished around until he found a nice fat donut with the required sprinkles. He waved it at Jim. "Your brakes was fit for burial, Jim. We'll need to replace them all the way around. I'll show you if you want, but that's what the deal is."
"I believe you," Jim said. "Go ahead and do what you have to."
'How soon before you can get to me?" Mary Frances Margaret asked.
Billy gave her a sly grin. "Depends on when your husband gets home, I reckon." He sauntered back out to the shop, licking his fingers after inhaling his sprinkled donut.
"Ohh you trash!" Mary Frances Margaret squealed indignantly. They could hear Billy chuckle
"Billy," Vance said in a thunderous warning, and followed him out.
"He was just teasing you," Jim tried to console her.
"Why, you sound as if I'm unattractiveor something !" Mary Frances Margaret huffed.
Jim hastily dug out his cellphone and called me. "Tru?" His voice sounded strained.
"Yes, Jim?"
"Listen, I wonder if you -"
"WELL?" I could hear Mary Frances Margaret even over the noise in the feed store.
"What in the world are you doing within hearing of the Mouth of the South, Jim?" I asked.
"We're both waiting on our cars here at The First Place," Jim said to me. To Mary Frances Margaret he said, "No, of course you are attractive; I only meant that he likely didn't mean it."
"And why wouldn't he mean it!"
"Huh?"
"Don't argue with her!" I ordered. "Do. Not. Argue. Just smile and nod and play the amiable pinhead. Why do you think Wade McGuire never says anything when they're together?"
"Uh...I don't know. Why?"
"He doesn't get a chance!" Oh, it was all very funny to me, but then I was not sitting in the white-hot glare of a furious Southern woman who feels her allure is being impugned or worse, being ignored. "She'd pick a fight with the Pope, Jim."
"Tru, can you come get me? It's going to be a while before my car -"
"Is that Truman Fable?" I heard her demand. "I should have known it, you two are thicker than thieves! Well you can just tell Mr. Goathead that I said he's the rudest man of the whole lot of you!"
"Give her the phone a minute, Jim."
"What?!"
"Give her the phone," I said in a calm, reasonable voice.
After a brief clatter, I heard her growl. "What can you possibly have to say to me, you...you hound!"
"Hello, Mary Frances Margaret," I said cheerfully. "How is your lovely self today?"
"Don't you try to sweet-talk me, Truman Fable. I know your game."
"Why, Mary Frances Margaret, you're going to break my heart - just like you did last Sunday, when you wore that pretty little sweater to Mass! I was going to tell you how nice you looked in it but no, you had to go rush off with Wade. Heartbreaker. That's what you are."
"I - what pretty little sweater?" she asked suspiciously.
"That little thing you had draped around your shoulders. You know the one."
"Oh. Well... that is my favorite color, you know."
"I know; it looks good on you. Some women couldn't pull off that color but that's because they're all so washed out. Not you, though. You looked downright vibrant."
Now part of the charm of living in a small Southern town is that you get to know your neighbors. It wasn't that I notice what Mary Frances Margaret wears - hell, I don't even think I even made it to Mass last Sunday - but I do know that she always wears a little sweater around her shoulders. Father Paul cranks up the air conditioning this time of year to the point where you could get frostbite if you sit near an air vent. Mary Frances Margaret always wears a front-button cardigan no matter what the weather, no matter what the rest of the outfit "just in case", so I knew I could mention it. What color? I don't know; she's got a half-dozen of the little beggars and it's anyone's guess which one was the designated shoulder-warmer.
"Truman Fable, you will say anything to get on a woman's good side," she said, still combative but warming to a compliment.
"That's not so! I am honest to a fault; bluntly honest, in fact. That's the problem, I tend to say what I think and it doesn't always sit well with folks. But you know every word out of my mouth is the truth."
"Every word out of your mouth is the biggest lie since the devil learned to talk," she scolded mildly. I heard the smile in her voice, but it was still not time yet to return to the matter at hand. It is not enough to merely encase the live wire in tape; one should insulate it as well.
"But I try, darlin'; I try."
"Oh...! You big flirt. What do you want?"
"I want you to ignore those big ol' ignorant boys out there at The First Place; honey, you know none of them has a lick of sense!"
"They're making me wait and I have to get to Birmingham today!"
"What's Birmingham got, that I don't?" I asked in my most saucy manner.
"It's got my grandmother, for starters," she returned in like kind.
"Oh, well! - you know I can't match your grandmother! You're just shooting me down at every turn, Mary Frances Margaret! You're a heartbreaker, that's what. I'm gonna have to call Wade Francis out and have fisticuffs with him over you."
"Wade Frances would beat the living air out of you, you little noodle," she laughed.
"Abase me, you wicked temptress! Beat me, whip me; make me write bad checks! Go on then, go back to your husband and your vibrant sweaters and your heartbreaking ways!"
"You scoundrel - here, I'm going to give you back to Jim Diminy. He deserves a round of silliness from the likes of you!" I heard her giggle.
"Now you treat her right, Jim," I said loudly for her benefit as well as his. "She's a pistol."
"Uh, yeah. Here comes Vance, I gotta go."
Later that afternoon, Jim came into the feed store. His original intent to call me was to come get him and save him from Mary Frances Margaret, but Vance was able to get it done after all. Jim eyed me suspiciously. "Just how do you manage to tame wildcats?" he asked. "She was ready to chew nails and spit out staples."
"How was she after that?"
"Vance came in and said they could squeeze in her car, and they had to run over to the parts store and get something for mine. She was happy as a clam and I suppose she's already in Birmingham by now."
"It's all in the way you talk to a woman. A little flirtation goes a long way to soothe a hot-tempered lady."
He thought for a moment and then let out a laugh. "And just how do you handle a man? Especially once she gets around to telling Wade Frances you said she vibrated."
"That I said WHAT?"
"Yep. She smiled at me all smug and sassy, you know how women are when they're confident? She said you told her that her sweater was so pretty it made her vibrate."
"Vibrant, vibrant, not vibrate."
I heard the doorbell chime its cheerful jingle.
"Truman Fable!" Wade Francis Aloysius McGuire roared. "What the hell have you been saying to my wife!"
This one was not going to be so easy to talk down.