The thing about him though. He loved nothing better than giving you food and watching you eat it. He made a big deal of handing customers their fried pie or corn dog, and had a sign saying people were welcome to eat in the store. It was for the reason of his childhood. This might be one of the weirder things ever. He said his parents, sisters, and all their dump friends were so-called no-toucher people. Meaning if they touched food or anything at all, it was like, doomed. Regular people would have none of it. Same for bodies, no shaking hands. If he let his shadow touch a high-class person, they’d call the cops to come beat the hell out of him. He said a name for this kind of people that sounded like “dolly.”
I was sure there had to be a catch. What about helping somebody get up out of the road, if they fell? No, he said, they would get run over before they’d touch you. What if you wanted to give them a present? Nope. What about money, buying something at a store? He said you’d leave the money on the counter and they’d do a prayer thing over it to clean it up, after you’re gone. He and his little pals for their best prank would run up to some guy selling food on the street and put their hands all over it, so he’d have to throw it away. If they hid out long enough and didn’t get killed first, they’d go back and eat it.
This was a million years ago obviously. But even after all this time, you could see how he had the biggest time handing people food. If the most important person imaginable was to come in his store, like the governor of Virginia or Dale Earnhardt, Mr. Golly could hand them a corn dog, and they would eat it. He said it felt like a magic trick. He said he never would get used to how nice Americans are to each other.
I told him yeah, I guess. But I had my doubts. A lot of people don’t ever get touched. Not even high-fived after a rim shot. I should know. Little kids chase around yelling “Cooties,” which are a made-up thing. But if we had a word for that type of person in America, it would get used.
I didn’t die that night behind the dumpster. It took all the next day and three more rides to get to Unicoi County. First, another trucker on his radio the whole time. He left me off at the junction of 26 where I’d gone wrong the day before. Next, a peckerhead kid in a truck that was older than he was. Face like a country ham, chest like a cement block. He kept asking why didn’t me and him go try and locate some women. I said no thanks, but he was kind of one-track. Finally I told him I’d sworn off hookers because the last one I tangled with took all my money. He slapped the steering wheel, laughing and laughing.
Ride three, a Caddy Deville. It was that dark brown color they call doeskin, and so was the man driving it. Another preacher. Suit and skinny tie, neat-cut hair, not young and not old. His car, definitely old. He had this way about him like whatever you’ve seen, he’d probably seen it too. He asked what was my burden and I told him: eleven years old without a dime, running away from nobody that gave a damn, probably headed for more of the same. He kept his eyes on the road, nodding his head, sometimes running a hand over his hair, while everything came out of me. Fighting with Stoner, Mom dying on me, getting sent to Creaky Farm, right up to two nights ago where I’d cursed a junkie hooker to die for stealing my money. He listened, now and again rubbing that hand back over his head like sweeping off the tears of heaven falling on us.
He’d heard of Murder Valley. He said he traveled pretty wide over those parts looking after his folks, and I could believe it. If he was in charge of my church, I would go. He never put on the hard sell about Jesus or anything. His only advice was to be careful in Unicoi because there were folks down there mean enough to hang an elephant. I said okay, thinking it was an expression his people had. But no. They gave the death penalty to an elephant there one time. He said if I was ever in a library to look it up, but try not to look at the photos because the sight of an elephant hanging was not an easy thing to forget. It was a circus elephant that got fed up and finally ran off after its drunk trainer whipped and tormented it to the point of going on a rampage, which, I could relate. But in the process of running off, it accidentally trampled somebody in town, and those folks were not going to be still until justice was done. Christ. Imagine the size of the noose. Plus what all they’d have to build, to hold it up.
The moral of his story was how you never know the size of hurt that’s in people’s hearts, or what they’re liable to do about it, given the chance. I thought of Mariah Peggot carving her no-takebacks on Romeo Blevins. The preacher said this big type of hurting was the principal cause for prayer being needed in this world, as far as he’d seen, and he would sure pray for me. Then he gave me a dollar.