Love Gloves

It was the seediest scandal ever sprouted in our small neck of the neighborhood. Anytime, Texas, Pop. 917. Nine hundred-and-seventeen, except Saturday nights, when everybody and his dog and horse comes to town, to hang around the parking lot of the Marlboro Movie House and to buy something at the Dollar General. Then there’s maybe a thousand.

For three weeks, which was about the time Mister August Armstrong Pettigrew came and left, the gossip flamed so hot it melted the leaves on Miz Lacie Steadbetter’s pecan trees.

And I guess if it wasn’t for China Croaker and his girlfriend, Annie Handy, we never would have figured who laid the fire. Or how Miz Linda Sue Pennyworth struck a match under the mayor.  

Somebody said Mister August Pettigrew was from Georgia, and owned a big plantation somewhere outside of Savannah, with a big, ole white house on it and a stable full of racing ponies. Somebody else said he owned half of someplace called Harlan County, and was big, poker buddies with the governor. And when I asked him how he knew, he said his wife had heard it from Miz Mabelle.

Miz Mabelle likely knows more about Mister August Pettigrew than anybody. Miz Mabelle Merriwater.

You see, Miz Mabelle works the cash register at the Jiffy Mart, and that’s where it all started. The night Mister August Pettigrew got to town and stopped by to acquire a certain few items before closing time. When he came in, Miz Mabelle said, it was late for polite folks, already past eight o’clock. The bag boy had punched out, and Mister Hoskins was pulling the shades down.  

Course, we knew all along Mister August wasn’t from anywhere around here. ’Cause he talked like somewhere east of Texas the times he stopped for lunch at Mel’s Diner. By then, the ladies had already painted him a rakish notion of a man, kinda like Rhett Butler, since he owned a mansion in Georgia, and so obviously, somewhere mid the roosting order of the Anytime Ladies Sociable Auxiliary, was shamelessly sparking his Scarlett.

Maybe, as the hen folk over whelmingly agreed, he was a fine specimen of a man. By all indications, in fact, he was one-more, ring-tailed, billy-whanger of a man. But it was still hard to figure, cause it looked to us gents he was a shade gone to seed, and at least in his 80s. 

But never you mind about that. You could tell right off he was Somebody.

One thing for sure, about a week after Mister August Armstrong Pettigrew so famously arrived, he was, without anybody’s doubt, the handiest horse in the barn. Thing that was driving the womenfolk silly, was, who in Hannah’s stockings was the mare?  

But I guess I ought to drop back a bit and tell you how it all happened, like Miz Mabelle told it to my wife, Flossie, and Flossie told it to me.

Best I can tell, in Miz Mabelle’s words, here’s the way it was.

“I’s ringing up, you know, closing out the register . . . standin’ there filin’ my fingernails. They’s nobody left in the store. Jus’ me and Mister Hoskins and Mary Kate Landsberry. Mary Kate was putting’ up chewin’ gum, cause it’d been a busy day, and we was out o’ Juicy Fruit.

“Well, the register was agoin’ click-a-snic . . . ching, a-countin’ up the day’s tally, and I had this aggravatin’ hang-nail on my pinkie, and I look up, and here’s this ol’ codger foggin’ thru the door . . . with poor Mister Hoskins standin’ there, tryin’ his almighty best to lock it . . . an’ he just dodges right past and stumbles up to me.

“Well, he’s rickety as Clancey’s barn and near mite as gray, and Darlin’, I could tell in a rodeo instant he wadn’ from nowheres around here. He smelled like he’d just had a bath this week, and he was gussied up way too fancy for Wheeler County. He’s out o’ breath, and wheezing’, and was gonna have a conipshun maybe fore he got the first word out.

“‘Ma’am,’ he spouted, ‘I jus’ sprung into town and I got to have a couple of things.’

“‘Honey-cakes,’ I said, pinchin’ his wrinkly little cheek, ‘I’d just love to get you a couple o’ things, but we’uz plumbed punched out. Closed, I mean.’

“Well, he was desperate as a cat in a combine.

“‘But everybody says you’re the only place in town . . . that has ’em, I mean.’

“‘Sweetie, whatever it is,’ I said, ‘you just drop back in the mornin’ and I’ll see you git as many as you can carry.

“‘But I got to have ’em tonight,’ he said.

“‘Sugar-pie,’ I said, ‘Ben Hoskins’d mash my grits if I sold somethin’ after closin’ time.’

“‘But I got to have ’em,’ he said, like he’s gonna croak if he didn’.

“And then you know what the decrepit old fool did? Held up a hunderd dollar bill ’side his ear, and bet me my clock was ten minutes fast. Honey, I told him, I’s born ten minutes fast.

“Well, I could tell Mister Hoskins was about to come over, so I just reached up and grabbed that hunderd and stuck it down my dress ’tween the girls. By the time he got there, I’d dropped back the clock on the punch-out machine.

“‘What’s going on here,’ he said, and I said, well, there’s one minute to closin’ time, and I’m about to sell this nice man . . .

“Mister Hoskins looked at the clock, then looked at it again like he’d never seen it before. Then went off mumblin’.

“So I looked at this old man ag’in, and he looked some better than before, ’cause I could feel the hunderd all nestled up midst the land of plenty, and I leaned over and said, jus’ exactly what is it you need, Honey-Bun?

“An’ when he looked up again, he kinda winked and pointed to the rack behind the counter.

“Well, I couldn’t tell right off what he was a-motionin’ for—Honey, you got to tell me in English, I said—then it grabbed me like Harry on a hayride.

“‘Why Bless My Soul, Honey-Pie, is that all you need? Some little ol’ love gloves?’

“‘The wet ones,’ he said, ‘an’ they got to stand the heat.’

“Why, Lord Sakes, Sugar, ’course they do. Las’ thing we want’s you havin’ a little’ ol’ blow-out.

“‘How many, Sweetie? Four, six?’

“‘Three dozen,’ he said, like he’s at the Krispy Creme.

“Well, Honey, my little’ ol’ mouth done fell open, and Mary Kate’s dropped the box of Juicy Fruit on the floor and gone to snickerin’ in her stock apron.  

“I mean, here’s this dried-up little’ ol’ whizzle of a man, looks like he’s maybe good for one-a-month, done asked for enough to satisfy the French Legion.

“Sing Hallelujah, Sugar, I shouted out loud, and started piling ’em on the counter. An’ all he did was pay me for ’em, and pull out another hunderd and hold it up ’side his ear. An’, Sister, that one went into the valley of the shadow, right along with the other, and now they’s one for each of ’em.

“Don’t you go spending’ ’em all in one place, now Honey-britches, I told him, and he jus’ grinned like he might.

“Well, he bought us plumb out, and left just like he came, ’cept—bless my bananas—he’s back a week later for another three dozen, with another hunderd. An’, Darlin’, that’s when I went to a D cup, and opened a new checkin’ account at the Sun Trust.

“An’ all the while, me and Mary Kate, Sary Hoskins and Bea Higginbottom was bustin’ our bonnets tryin’ to conjure whose mare the old coot had managed to hobble.’

And there it is, just the way Miz Mabelle told it.

Well, the second week after Ol’ Man August Pettigrew came to town, damned if every woman in Anytime hadn’t quit cooking and laundering, and was frettin’ day-and-night over who his sugar pants was. And every last one of them suspicious of the other. Cause they’d done exhausted all the usual suspects and come up dry.

It got so bad we finally decided for the sake of order one of us menfolk had to just up and go ask Mister August, so it’d be out, and things could get back to normal. ’Cause the cooking wasn’t the only thing that had dried up.

Malon Ledbetter said he figured the man with the shortest straw ought to go, and there wasn’t no need to bother with the broom. And we would have, except that’s when China Croaker went to the Jiffy Mart asking for his Saturday night usual, and Miz Mabelle had to tell him Mister August Pettigrew done bought ’em all.

You got to understand, China Croaker is maybe one marble short of a pot, and his girlfriend, Annie Handy, is a little light of a load either. But they’s living together, you see, and know how to make ten kids. Annie had finally got tired of free flight, but promised China once a week, long as he’d go to the Jiffy Mart before he climbed into the cockpit.

So naturally, China was noticeably put out when he found his flight plan had been cancelled.

Well, he tried to buy one from Mister August, but by then, since it was coming Saturday, Mister August said, “Well, I got some, but they’ve all been used.”

China said, “How used?” and Mister August had to tell him, “Well, most of ’em have been worn hard and there’s holes in ’em.”

Right there, China Croaker decided all he’d heard ’bout Mister August Pettigrew wasn’t near enough.

He’d save his money. Maybe he wasn’t the brightest lamp on the street, but even he figured Annie Handy wouldn’t warm too kindly to a busted flight plan. 

By the time China had seen Mister August and started back, it was something after midnight. He knew Annie Handy would be worried since he was never late on Saturday night once he’d been to the Jiffy Mart, so he took a shortcut through Miz Linda Sue Pennyworth’s back yard.

Thing he hadn’t figured on was Rufus Pennyworth’s Australian shepherd. The shepherd took in after him, raisin’ a ruckus, and China was afraid ol’ man Rufus—whose wife had relegated him to the guest shack cause he snored too much—was gonna wake up and cut loose with his shotgun. 

China was trying to fight shy of the shepherd when he noticed a ladder by the side of the house. So he leaped up on it when the dog went by, and thought he was safe for a minute while he figured how he could make the backyard fence. All the same time a light came on in Miz Linda Sue’s bedroom, and the Mayor came clambering down the ladder, his pride half-mast, so they both had to run for it.

Fortunately, they beat the shepherd to the fence fore Rufus came foggin’ out. And everybody says that’s how China Croaker and Annie Handy got a brand new double-wide on Periwinkle Street, with day care and a chauffeur for the kids.

The Old Man August Pettigrew?  Well, he went back to Georgia, still the man everybody thought he was. And nobody never did figure—though every man-jack in town wanted fierce to know—just who his honeypot was.

That is, ’til six months later, I ran into Mal Jinks at Mel’s for a hamburger and some fries. Mal runs this little bird-huntin’ service just north of Town. Naturally, fore we were done, Mister August Pettigrew came up, and I told Mal there wasn’t a woman in town didn’’t wish a little it had been her. 

Well, Mal laughed and got that twinkle in his eye.

“That ol’ man’s been doing that fifteen years,” Mal said. “First thing he does when he gets to town is buy three dozen. Knows what’s gonna happen. Gits the biggest kick out of it you ever seen.

“Hell, he’s eighty-eight,” Mel declared, “couldn’t raise dust in a sandstorm.” 

“Then, what the blazes does he do with ’em all,’ I wanted to know. “China said they’s all plumb used.”

“His dogs,” Mal said. “Brings eight or nine. Uses ’em to protect their feet, under their boots. Have to boot ’em, you know. All them sand spurs.”

“Well, I’ll be gol-damned,” I said. And I was.

That was five year ago, yesterday, and you know me or Mal never told nobody ’til today. But I figure the world deserves to know.

Anybody who can pull the pants off the entire Anytime Ladies Sociable Auxiliary is one bell-whanging figure of a man.