Pieces Of Infinity

Cajun spices filled the air; the humidity made your clothes stick to your skin like overcooked red beans and rice.  Spanish moss hung from the branches of the live oaks twisted and gnarled from storms long since past.  The Mississippi River flowed lazily into the Gulf of Mexico that summer, like so many summers before, bringing new verses and new rhymes to those along her banks.  Baton Rouge, Louisiana seemed to be the perfect, if not the most practical setting for an aspiring young writer such as I envisioned myself to be in the latter days of June 1979.

So far 1979 had been a lousy year, at least as far as I was concerned.  In fact it had been a piss poor excuse for a lousy year.  It had been less than an hour past midnight on New Year’s Day when my downward spiral had begun.  The police listed the accident at 12:38 AM.  A change of scenery was definitely in order.  I called upon my mother’s younger brother for help in finding employment and a place to stay until I could complete my first literary masterpiece: a novel which I had begun two months prior entitled, “Fifteen Thousand Magpies”.

Waiting for my Uncle Joe to meet me that Sunday morning at the Baton Rouge Greyhound station, I dropped three quarters in the cigarette machine and purchased a pack of Winstons, full flavored shorts.  I couldn’t believe they were charging seventy-five cents for cigarettes; it was outrageous. Fair market value equals whatever price the consumer is willing to pay, but I vowed to kick the habit as soon as my novel was complete.  It would be next to impossible to concentrate while undergoing nicotine withdrawal.

Uncle Joe was moving kinda slow at the junction.  I had just lit my third coffin nail and turned to the sports page of the Baton Rouge Sunday newspaper when he finally appeared.

“Sorry it took me so long to get here Scott.  I had a lot of running around to do this morning.

Christine wanted me to stop at the store and buy everything that wasn’t nailed down, and I had to take something else over to her sister’s house and do this and do that.”

“That’s all right Joe,” I said grinning.  “Don’t worry about it.”

We shook hands and embraced.  Over the years he and I had spent many hours together philosophizing over matters both trivial and profound, relating stories and reminiscing about friends and relations long since parted.  Much of what I knew about my family’s history, I owed to my uncle’s sentimentality.

“When we get back to the house, do me a favor Scott and try not to say anything to set Christine off.  She’s been in a pretty bad mood lately and I was looking forward to a little peace and quiet for a change, at least on my day off.”

“You don’t have to worry about me Joe.”

Joe’s wife Christine was a hot blooded, ill tempered, olive skinned woman of mixed Cajun and Italian descent.  Actually, I don’t think I could remember a time when she had ever been in a good mood.  She had an ongoing feud with Joe’s son Ralph, who was fifteen years old at the time and the product of Joe’s previous marriage.

“Where’s Ralph?” I asked.

“I ain’t seen him since early this morning,” Joe said, shaking his head.  “He took off before you called and don’t even know you’re here. I’ve been kinda worried about him lately. Maybe you can help me get him straightened out?”  That didn’t seem like too much to ask and I’d certainly give it a try, as soon as I got myself straightened out first.

Even though it had only been a few months since I’d seen him last: Joe looked frazzled and several years older.  He was a skinny man with dark brown hair and an oversized nose.  A professional beer drinker and house painter in his spare time, he was beginning to show the signs of too much time spent in the no man’s land in which he lived.

“Come out here Scott, I want to show you something,” he said, as his eyes began to brighten. I grabbed my only suitcase and followed him to the parking lot.

“A hearse, Joe you bought a hearse,” I said, as he looked at me smiling.

“Yeah, I got it for five-hundred dollars.  It needed some work, but she’s running like a top now.”  Joe Thorton, in many ways a thirty-eight year-old teenager, began to rationalize the attributes of his paint-splattered, macabre looking rustbucket.  “It makes sense, it’s got all the room I need for my tools and everything, and you wouldn’t think so, but it’s really not all that bad on gas either.”

“You don’t have to convince me Joe, but what does Christine think about it?”

“She’s not too crazy about it, but when she starts making the money, she can buy all the cars she wants.”

On the subject of money: I was down to my last few dollars, without any real prospects, at least in the short term.  “So you think you can get me a job, Joe?”

“Yeah, that won’t be any problem Scott.  I’ll talk to my boss man tonight.  You remember my brother in law, Alan Brumley.  We got a lot of work going on right now.”  He paused a moment and added with a smile: “You didn’t think I was going to let you stay for free did you?”

As a matter of fact, considering my perceived talent, it would have been the least he could have done.  “Fifteen Thousand Magpies” would take flight soon enough.  I