Circle City

Back when Dothan was still a downtown town, come noon the stools rounding Jimmy's Horseshoe lunch counter had men perched on them. Men who grew corn, and cotton, and hogs and cattle. Hardware men, men who knew the length of a day, men who drove trucks and had two of pairs of shoes, a six-day pair and a Sunday pair. And these men all perched the same way, almost fetal in the way they curled over the bar, men carved from wood. But Clarence Bell changed things for Dothan. It was on Mayor Clarence Bell's watch that Allied Products brought their plant to Dothan and plopped it at six o'clock on what was to become the town's new beltway bypass, a road that would draw the breath from downtown and give Dothan a new nickname: Circle City. There was no reason to go to Main Street anymore except to pay your taxes, your tickets, or to register to vote. Or to stop by Jimmy's.

Jimmy's still had the best pie in town, so people went mostly for the pie.

Opposite the counter was a pair of booths but the only folks to ever sit there were the cops when they had to talk amongst themselves. Two ceiling fans spun circles but did little to move the air. Turn them up any higher and they might kick off that stripe of greasy dust clinging to the forward edge of each blade.

Larry Whitman and Lewis Green sat at the turn of the "U" with a stool between them, each with two cups in front of them, one tin and frosted halfway up. Larry withdrew his teaspoon and dragged it across his tongue, leaving a trail of strawberry pink. Lewis vacuumed the bottom of his glass until it was nearly dry then poured the rest his shake from his tin mixing cup.

"Why you gotta do that?" Larry said.

"Do what?"

Lewis was looking up into the metal cup, watching the dregs slide out. He swirled his tongue inside the rim and when he put the cup down he had a wide, white smile branded on his cheeks.

"Lord almighty," Larry said.

Larry did not have many friends and fewer so since he dropped out of Dothan High two-thirds of the way through his junior year. He and Lewis became acquainted in the fourth grade but didn't forge a real friendship until after Lewis's two older brothers flipped their car into an irrigation ditch and drowned. Larry had been their knucklehead prodigy and that naturally left him to look after the physically diminutive Lewis, despite the fact that Lewis was 17 days older.

Larry held the screen door for Lewis as they stepped out of Jimmy's. When Lewis dropped his outstretched hand Larry let go of the door, freeing it to fly back and hit Lewis in the face. Larry walked down the steps chuckling and digging in his back teeth with a Cinnapix.

"Sonuvabitch."

"You said it." Larry said. He paused, stretched and pointed with his toothpick. "What say we head over to the Grand Prix. If Daryl's working he'll give us a lap or two for free."

"Better be for free. My last two bucks just went for your shake."

"Yeah, well," Larry said. It was his stab at gratitude.

Larry and Lewis walked side by side along old Highway 4, then dropped down an embankment onto Mill Run Road. Grass grew waist high along the road and shorter through the cracks where the slabs of pavement were coming apart. It led down to the old bridge and the their footsteps slapped loudly on the cooling concrete. Lewis was walking a few paces behind Larry.

"Y'ever notice how a fella don't hardly bend his knees when he's walking uphill, but uses em extra when he's going down?" Lewis was looking at his legs as he asked the question. He walked more rigidly than was natural just to see if he could void his own theory.

Larry thought about it for a second, then stopped himself. He said, "Now why would I ponder such a senseless thing as that."

"It's true."

"Might be true, but it's as insignificant as a horse fart, Lewis."

Lewis started moving his knees more and his footsteps became quiet again.

Larry continued, "It's just the way it is. Thinking it over is just...well it's just wasted thoughts."

"Well, what were you thinking about?"

Larry took a deep breath, puffed out his chest and inspected his toothpick. It was frayed and fanned out on one end. He flicked it into the thicket that grew up around the stream.

"I was thinkin' how I might like to have me a kid of my own someday."

"What?" Lewis's was sharp.

"That's what I was thinking."

"Aw man, you gone plum crazy." Lewis was smiling and shaking his head from side to side.

"Why's that so crazy?" Larry stopped at the edge of the bridge and faced Lewis.

"Why would you want a kid?"

"I don't want one now, shit-for-brains. I said someday. You've never thought about havin' kids?"

"Hell no, not like that. Why would I? And why would you? The only Dad you've ever known whupped up on you if he was payin' you any mind at all."

Larry cleared a splinter of toothpick from the side of his mouth and spit it at Lewis. His eyes shrank to a squint as he looked back up the hill. The sun was turning red as it dropped toward the line of evergreens that edged the top of the hill they’d just descended. He thought a while before he answered.

"Maybe that's why," and he turned to navigate one of the bridge girders. "Don't rightly know. I was just thinking it. Wasn't even really tryin' to think it," he held his arms out wide. "Just was."

Lewis held his arms out, too, and he followed Larry across the bridge. He avoided the sprigs of lime green grass had sprouted from the rotten wood.

On the far side of the bridge the two turned upstream and followed the disappearing road to where it ended, at the gaping mouth of a hillside culvert. The mud was rust colored in the bed of the man-made stream and an oily film swirled across the surface, bunching up into iridescent bows.

"Don't make no sense to build a culvert that big," Lewis said. He threw a pebble into the stream and took quiet delight from pucker it made when it hit the mud. "Only thing ever comes out comes out in a trickle."

"You ain't never seen it when it rains."

"Have to. So have you. Remember that time when we came out of the movies and it was pourin' like hell. Seemed like the sky'd split open, remember? When we was running back I noticed there wasn't nothing but a trickle, just like it is now. I checked it."

"It takes a while for the water to come up. She don't just flood as soon it starts to rain."

Larry left the culvert and climbed the hill, away from Mill Run Road and away from the stream.

"Still seems like they built it too big."

As they climbed, they neared the swath of land where bulldozers had scraped down to virgin soil to build the bypass, the shopping malls, the car dealerships and filling stations. A forest of high pressure sodium lights was flickering where the trees used to be and cars circled in a sea of parking lots like the shadows of buzzards. People came and went, pack rats clutching bundles and pushing carts. The traffic of the four-lane bypass whizzed through the middle of it all.

A backhoe was working in the distance. It appeared tiny, its bucket rising and falling slowly like the arm of an upturned beetle taking a few final swipes at the air.

"You hungry?" Lewis called ahead to Larry.

"No, I ain't hungry," Larry said without turning back.

"I'm hungry."

The Grand Prix track was a big loop with two curves along the sides that eased toward the center track and then eased back out. From the sky it was a figure eight that never quite touched in the middle and was lined with used tires. A trailer sat back from the track and was flanked by a garage built from corrugated fiberglass. Streamers hung between the track lights and from these streamers hung little triangular advertisements for motor oil.

Larry and Lewis stood at the chain link fence and watched to see who was working the track. The attendant was bent over the engine of one of the go-karts, twiddling with its choke causing it to bog, run lean and then bog again. He had an oil rag hanging from one back pocket, a wrench poked out of the other.

"Z'at Daryl?" Lewis asked.

"Can't rightly tell," Larry said.

"Looks like Daryl."

"Now how in God's name can you tell that by looking at a fella's backside." Larry raised his hand, "Don't wanna know."

"All's I mean is it obviously ain't Doug, asswipe." Lewis was referring to Doug Baumgartel, the youngest of brother of the fattest family in Circle City. Lewis had a point.

"Well," Larry said, "that don't make it Daryl neither."

The two settled forward against the fence and waited. The attendant stood, pulled the wrench from his back pocket, plopped into the seat and drove the kart under the awning of the garage. When he got up and stepped back onto the track Larry stood up straight as a prairie dog.

"Good golly Miss Molly,"

"That's Ruben Bell," Lewis said with equal surprise.

"So it is."

"I ain't seen him since you knocked out his two front teeth."

"I ain't neither."

"Must be home from college."

"Must be."

Ruben was son of the former mayor and Dothan's All-American. He had the fastest fastball in the Southern Division, a boast that landed him a full ride at Alabama State. He was two years ahead of Lewis and Larry and was quick to posture himself as such, until Larry knocked his teeth down his throat. Tussle at the drive-in.

Ruben was cavorting on the front seat of his Dodge with Judy Glover, cheerleader, when one of them, with an errant and quivering toe, flicked the toggle switch for his truck's 11,000 candlepower off-road lights. Instantly, Larry, who was cavorting on his backseat with Carrie Phipps, fry cook, had enough light showering his Pinto to give Carrie a full dental exam. He popped his head up into an 11,000 candlepower blindness, a radioactive wave that entered through his eyes and shot clean through the back of his head, taking the Old Grandad fog with it.

Ruben was still fully attached to Judy, lips to hickey, when the rap of a long-neck Budweiser came at his window. Ruben started and flipped around, expecting the inquisitive beam of a deputy's flashlight, however, through his windshield he noticed daylight coming from the top of his truck.

"Sakes alive," he said and flicked off the toggle.

As nighttime settled once again on the drive-in, Ruben saw Larry standing outside his window. He was looking down with his arms at his extended in front of him like he was lining up a golf putt.

"What the hell are you doing?" Ruben said as he rolled down the window with one hand and hoisted his pants with the other. He looked down and saw Larry shaking the last drops of recycled Budweiser from the end of his member. Larry looked Ruben in the eye.

"Careful you don't step in that."

Ruben yanked his door open and Larry stepped back as it swung open. Ruben burst from the truck and looked up to see Larry's fist closing in fast, just below his nose. In a flash of pure white the altercation began, climaxed and ended. He fell back but felt nothing of the impact. There was no light, no darkness, only transcendent pain, blindness and a muddy shirt. Larry winked at Judy and slinked back to his Pinto.

Three days later Ruben had new teeth. Two days after that he shipped off to college and a week later Larry was cooling his heels in the Clarkesville Correctional Facility for Boys.

"Let's go say hi," Larry said.

"You nuts? Why you wanna go stir something up?"

"Ah hell, what's he gonna do? He ain't gonna say shit."

"What's he gonna do? Plenty."

"He ain't gonna say shit," Larry smiled but it was a smile on half his mouth that said he wasn't sure. "Ain't no pain like the pain of cracked teeth. Except maybe a shot toe."

"If you say so."

Larry walked the circumference of the track fence, running his hand along the chain link as he went. He didn't take his eyes off of Ruben.

Lewis was looking down while he walked, watching Larry's heels rise and fall. He was filled with the anticipation of knowing something was going to happen and the excitement of not knowing what it was.

"I ain't so sure he ain't gonna be sore with you. That boy got his teeth knocked out and fell into a puddle of your piss right in front of his girl. That tends to plant a seed in a fella. But hoowee! I can't wait to see the look on his face when he sees you. Whatchyou gonna say? I mean-"

"Shut up Lewis."

Lewis had babbled his way around the track, staring at his friend's Cherokees and didn't notice that Ruben already caught sight of Larry. He didn't see that Larry and Ruben held each other with equal stares as they circled around to the tarmac. Then Lewis looked up.

"Daggone! Whatdya reckon they been feeding him up there!"

"Shut up Lewis."

Larry stopped and leaned on the fence that still separated him and Lewis from the track property.

He called to Ruben, "Daryl round?"

"We let Daryl go. Turns out he was giving away free rides more than he was charging."

"Yeah," Larry drawled, "I reckon he did."

Ruben stood in the middle of an expanse of concrete. The sound of a rolling van door was followed by a slam and the cackle of children. Traffic hummed on the bypass. Two go-karts, one in pursuit of the other, screamed by on the Grand-Prix track. Lewis turned to see a family of four, vying for the Baumgartel fat crown, climb the steps of the Circle City Family Restaurant.

"How's the teeth," Larry smiled, raising his lip to show his upper teeth.

"What do you want, Larry?"

"Just lookin for a friend."

"You know I could call the cops."

"What for?" He spoke with wry innocence, "I'm just lookin for my friend. Ain't no law against that."

"I'm sure they got something on you."

"I did my six weeks up in Clarksville. I'm clean." Larry puffed his chest and smiled. "I been a model cit'zen."

"Well, do what you like. Your not welcome on this side of the fence and I'd advise you to stay out of the restaurant as well."

"Or what?"

"Look Larry, I'm not going to do this with you."

Lewis shrugged and looked at Larry.

Ruben spread his arms wide and continued, "Seeing you is all the revenge I need."

"What the fucks'at supposed to mean?" Larry bolted up and spat. He wasn't sure what Ruben meant but he felt it. "Looking at me is what?" Larry spat again. "Aw, fuck it," and Larry was over the fence.

Ruben took two quick steps back and Larry was all over him.

Lewis stepped away from the fence in time with Ruben's steps away from Larry. Something was off. He normally enjoyed watching Larry dole out a licking, but this time something was off.

Ruben swung Larry around, fending off his first lunge but Larry came right back. Ruben reached for his back pocket and Larry noticed.

"You tossed the wrench aside, Ruben," Larry said. “I watched ya.”

Larry hooked an arm around Ruben's neck and brought him down to the asphalt, surrendering a patch of elbow skin to the pavement. Then Larry's first blow glanced off Ruben cheek and hit the concrete and he lost the skin on those knuckles, too. They rolled another time and then righted like a sailboat, Larry atop Ruben. When Larry raised his fist again, Ruben got him by the throat. Larry cinched his neck into a collar of sinew and brought a flurry of blows against Ruben's face. His skin of his knuckles opened up and was white under the tightness of his fist. Ruben rolled side to side as best he could under Larry's weight. His eyes were clinched shut and he hooked a thumb in Larry's throat and dug it in.

Then suddenly, like someone pushed a button and put him to sleep, Larry fell off of Ruben and flopped to the tarmac. Ruben looked up and saw Lewis standing over him with the wrench. He threw his arm across his head to shield his face, thinking immediately of his bridgework.

"Come on, Ruben. Get up. When he wakes up I'll tell him somehow you got your hand on the wrench and licked him. It ain't the first time he's taken a hand tool upside the head." Lewis offered his hand but Ruben was dumbfounded. "Get up. He won't be out long. No tellin' what he'll do when he comes to."

Ruben rose and checked himself over. Nose, no blood. Mouth, teeth, OK. Lips, tender but unsplit. Forehead, lump. Aside from a couple shots to the mouth he'd weathered the blows from Larry's pulpy fists fairly well.

"Look. Just do me a favor, don't call the cops. I'm sure you would have licked him, but it didn't seem right you two rolling around like that. Larry ain't right in the head and another spell up the river ain't going to fix him. He won't mess around with you no more. I know him."

Lewis stepped up and timidly held out the wrench. "You wanna give him a couple licks before he comes to? If it'll make ya feel better." Larry rolled to one side and Lewis poked the wrench into Ruben's belly. "You better hurry and whop him if so. He's stirrin'."

"Just get him out of here." Ruben took the wrench and put it in his back pocket.

"Right, well" Lewis stooped over Larry. "You go on inside, I'll get him outta here."

The two racers whizzed past, giving the go-karts all they were worth. Lewis rolled Larry onto his back, kneeled over him and commenced to slapping him. Heavy pats on the left cheek followed by heavy pats on the right.

Ruben paused on his way into the garage. "Thanks, Lewis."

"What?" Lewis looked up. "Oh, hell. You was gonna whip him, I'm sure. Something just didn't seem right the way he come over that fence."

Ruben looked at the two misfits an instant more then disappeared into the garage.

Lewis had Larry by the collar and was shaking him. "Wake up you dang fool! Come on! Get up! Cops is coming. You hear me, Larry? THE! COPS! IS COM-ING!"

Larry flailed his arms trying ward off the slaps. Lewis dodged him and kept up the rousing.

"Get! Up! Larry! Goddamn it, boy!" Larry opened his eyes. Lewis beamed. "You was tearin' him up but somehow he got a hold a that wrench. Licked you good, too. But boy you tore im up. He ran off squealin' that he was calling the cops."

"Cops?"

"Yeah! That's what I'm trying to tell you."

Larry scrambled to his feet and felt the back off his head. His hand was streaked with blood. "The hell?"

"He licked you good. I think you poked out one of his eyes though. C'mon, let's get!"

They leapt over the fence and jogged around the circumference of the chain link fence and disappeared into the fringe of darkness just beyond the fluorescent glow.

Ruben walked to the edge of the track and waved the checkered flag, calling in his last two cars for the night. He escorted them into the garage and killed the engines. Two boys leapt from the go-karts and threw off their helmets and dove into the same adrenaline charged debate that Lewis and Larry had had a hundred times or more: Reckon you got the slow car this time...yeah, well you kept bumpin' me in the turns...that's what happens when you fixin' to pass me on the inside, I'll put you on the rail ever-time...yeah, well...

They handed Ruben their helmets and when they did they saw his face.

"You OK, mister? Yer forehead's swoled up like a boiled egg."

"I'm fine, thanks."

The boys circled back toward the trailer to pay. Ruben waved them away. "That's OK fellas. Last round's on me."