Excerpt from an unpublished novel

When good turns to intolerable

My father hated his job. He had loved it one day. Then, the next, he was as miserable as he could be. It wasn’t a sad thing to see really, because no one saw it coming. The mood shift was like shutting the slats on a Venetian blind. Sunlight. Dimness. Bright? Good! Dark? Bad!

Momma explained away his unhappiness as the aftermath of his boss dying. But, as a grown-up senior in high school, I knew it was more than that. Pop loved his boss, even though they were opposites in practically every discernible way: Mister Gladdis was tall, thin, quiet, stolid; Pop was short, round as a basketball, loud, outrageous. Mister Gladdis didn’t bother to smile much; Pop’s hee-haw laugh – rising from deep inside and erupting with a gush – would put a donkey’s bray to shame.

The men made a good business couple in the small drug store in the small town in the small slice of East Texas called Avery. Pop entertained the customers in sundry ways; Mister Gladdis enjoyed being entertained, and worked hard to look as if he wasn’t involved in the audience participation part of the show.

One day in early winter, Mister Gladdis didn’t show up for work, which was as unusual as an eclipse. In the town of 332, everyone knew he has “passed” within thirty minutes of the event. Dialing three digits on a rotary phone was not a difficult undertaking. Pop heard the news from the wailing widow five minutes after she found her husband on the floor of the bedroom. He was dressed, the rumor mill assured all listeners, in his work clothes – dark pants, white shirt (light starch) and medium-width black tie. His shoes were shined to a nice gloss, his hair was in place, teeth brushed. It was a business day. No one expected anything less.

I got the news just as first period classes were winding down. James Lambert was late and had heard about the demisal at Buel’s Store where he went to buy an Annihilator (or Now and Later, as the candy was sometimes advertised).

James walked into the room just as Miz Grant said, “Today, we’re finishing up ‘Romeo and Juliet’ . . . ."

James interrupted: “But, hark, what light from yonder window shines? . . . Old Man Gladdis croaked this morning. Jerked to Jesus about ten minutes ago.”

Girls in the room sounded a chorus of “Awwwwwwww.” The boys mostly patted their patent leather hairdos and flattops with fenders and tried to look cool. I panicked. My whole life could be destroyed by this piece of flippantly delivered news!

It was like a soap opera, As The World Turns or Edge of Night. Would the Gladdis Drug Store stay open? Would Pop get to keep his job? Would the Smith family ever be happy again? Would I get to finish school at Avery? Would I have time to lose my virginity to Elsa Mahoney before leaving town?

Pop couldn’t lose his job and we couldn’t move. I had a basketball game Friday against Annona to decide the district championship!

Why’d did that old man have to go and die?

All day I waited for Mom and Pop to come driving up to the school in the family Chevy, pulling a trailer piled high with household goods looking for all the world like Henry Fonda’s Joad family hieing off to California to get away from having to live in Oklahoma. Thoughts fluttered through my head like broken-wing butterflies.


My God! Will they remember to bring my comic book collection?

What about the box of Post Cereal bicycle license plates buried under the southwest corner of the house?

Are we not even staying for the funeral?

That final thought was quickly batted away, like an attic bat with a Big Bill Tilden tennis racket. Funerals were a big deal in Avery. Next to Church of Christ singing schools, it was the premo social event. No way we weren’t staying for the funeral. Mister Gladdis was a Methodist and the Methodists knew how to send a member off right to Heaven – with a lot of singing, crying, and wailing, and a good graveside service. Chances are the widow would try and throw herself in the casket as they were trying to shut the lid. That was a growing trend at dead spouse funerals that was a hang-over from the war years. Black women performed the throw-themselves-in-a-coffin bit a lot at funerals in their churches. Whites did it less often as it was not considered “seemly.”

But when white women did do it, it was always a crowd-pleaser and talked about for weeks.


The Methodists also had their denomination’s reputation to uphold. Everybody knew Methodists always had the best indoor death picnic after a funeral. It was guaranteed they would set up a four- or five-table buffet that would have fed all the prisoners at Andersonville. Twice.
At lunch, instead of marching off to the cafeteria for Goulash Surprise and green bean casserole – it was Tuesday and that’s what the lunchroom ladies served on Tuesdays – I ran the half-mile to the drug store. Expecting to see a somber the-owner-is-real-dead atmosphere, I was not disappointed.

Mom was behind the soda fountain, leaning against the back marble counter, sipping a cup of black coffee. She saw me enter and head-nodded me to her, where she put her arm around me and . . . just hugged me tight. She meant that gesture to be comforting. It was anything but. It was worse than her screaming, bawling, and gnashing her teeth. The hug had a futility feel to it: Our lives have been tossed upside down and we’re leaving town by sundown.

Breaking the hug, I went to the pharmacy area, located behind a wall full of seldom-requested merchandise – enema bags (also called hot water bottles by the town’s widows), humidifiers, tubs of burn salve, household bluing, and the like. Pop was filling a prescription when I eased around the corner.

Intending to play the part of a stoic, worldly high school senior used to life’s tragedies, I blurted out, “Hey, Pop. What’s happenin’?”

He raised his head. I looked into his red-rimmed eyes. He had been crying. Pop didn’t cry.
I instantly turned into the Despair Triplets: Stutter, Blubber, and Cry. Pop was not a hugger, having been in World War II and all, but he held me and rubbed my back and I felt his body shake in sympathy for my pain.

After school, I went to the drug store before the bus left for Dimple for a conference basketball game. The game wasn’t cancelled despite the death of a leading citizen of the community. He was not a coach and his son wasn’t on the team.

No one mentioned Mister Gladdis. Pop told me to play hard. Mom told me to play hard. Both said they would see me at the game.

I think I remember playing hard, and I know we won the game. Dimple was a sucky town and had a sucky team and we could have beaten the Dumplings (they tried to call themselves the Tigers, but they were Dumplings) if all five Avery starters had croaked that day.

The funeral for Mister Gladdis was on Thursday and the Methodist Church was packed. In the middle of the talkathon about how great a man he was, I quit studying the weave of cotton in my dress pants and glanced up at Pop.

He had a spring thaw of water running down his cheeks.

In three days I had seen my father cry two times.

No child should have to experience that.