Oral History #7

OK, I turned the button till it clicked and the tape is reeling from one side to the other, just like I was supposed to do…do you think we’re recording?

I think we’re recording!

Now, these tapes only run for a half hour or so, that’s why Victor told me ‘keep it moving, missy ma’am!’

Noooo, he didn’t really call me missy ma’am, that’s just something my mother used to say when I was in trouble. ‘You get down these stairs this minute, missy ma’am, and make it snappy!’ I think everybody’s mother calls them something like that, like missy ma’am.

Anyhoo, I’m supposed to get this show on the road, and get you all talking!

Well, Victor wouldn’t want me to say it like that. If he was sitting here he would be doing this whole deal in a whole different way. He’d be asking you all kinds of easy questions, what your favorite color it, what you remember about your grandmother’s cooking that made it something special. That kind of thing, just to get you used to getting questions asked of you at all.

See, I’m a hairdresser, just like my mama, so if I was sitting where you’re sitting and Victor was sitting right here where I’m sitting now, he’d be asking me about the hairdressing business, do I like cutting men’s hair or doing up women’s hairdos better, and he’d bet I heard some stories in my time.

And I would tell him ‘that’s for sure, mister!’ He’d ask me how I knew what I was doing when I opened the business, I mean the business end, and I can tell you right now what I would say, ‘I didn’t! I was just going on luck and prayers.’

Well, it all worked out and I’m making enough to get us through the times when Pete gets his layoffs down at the plant, but I wouldn’t want to depend on it full time. That’s why, come to think of it, that’s why, when Ruthie Ann asked if I would do a few of these tape dealeos while I was up here in town visiting their Aunt Glo here at Slope House, I said ‘sure enough, missy ma’am, but I’m used to getting paid for my services!’

She said ‘of course, of course!’ but I could tell Ruth Ann would have been fine just keeping whatever Victor had set aside to pay me – and you! – for these tape dealeos. She’s the oldest, you know, Ruthie Ann is.

Mmm, I like what your hairdresser is doing with your flip. I’m just gonna take that and use it on some of my gals down at the beauty shop.

Ruthie.

It’s usually the little sister that runs wild, but here it is Becky having to keep a rein on Ruthie.

They’re a funny people, the Castors, just plain funny. Mama always said so, Lord, everybody always says so. Spooky my mama would say, and nervy.

That’s what we call it down there in the hills, spooky don’t mean they spook you, it means they’re easily spooked, just like nervy doesn’t mean they’re all uppity and prideful like these women you see marching everywhere, Lord knows for what, no it means they’re nerves aren’t what other people’s are like. They’re like an electric cord with the insulation all wore off.

Ruthie just so wild, that’s the only word that will do, wild, like that was going to get her somewhere! And Becky there behind her, always quiet, watch, watch, watching, thinking her thoughts, thinking her…   

Oh, you know what? I’m supposed to say the date and time at the beginning of these!

Here, let me do it now, this is July 8, four days after Independence Day, at 2:00 in the afternoon, in the year 1980, and can I just mention it’s hot as blazes here at Slope House? Always has been, hot in summer, cold in winter, like it’s got no protection somehow.

Slope House, isn’t that a funny name? First time I heard it I thought it was built on a slope, never knowing that it was named after Mister Slope. But my, soon enough the sloping does start, doesn’t it? Once those bluffs cut off, they cut off, and it’s a straight line down to The Bottoms. Daddy did some plumbing, he would say you could drop a plumb line from the edge of the bluff and never hit bottom till you landed on river dirt.

The whole situation is funny. Slope House, the way Glo came by it, the Castor girls, their mama running off like that, and now Victor and these other boys staying here putting some kind of school together. Just…funny.

Becky though, she’s one of those people who are good with the dead. Remembers what it was that killed your Uncle Joe, remembers the year your cousin died, remembers who was left behind, and what the dates on the tombstones are. One of those people who are good with the dead.

I’ll tell you what, though, anything that Victor asked me to do, I would do. I never met a man so good-looking. And have you seen how Ruthie looks at him? And then how Becky looks at Ruthie looking at him?

There’s a lot of looking going on in this house.

I don’t quite get what he’s after with these tape dealeos, though. He says I don’t need to know, just to get you all talking and see what comes out. You know how he is, whenever he’s talking to you. you just want to go along with what he’s saying, and I suppose it makes sense.

He says if you try to drag it out of people the story will change from all that hauling and dragging and heaving. Best to just let it seep out, just kind of pile up like shadows in a corner, or that’s what he says.

You know what he’s after? I’m not supposed to tell, but I think if you want to know something, then why in the world don’t you just step up and ask them? That’s what I say, goodness! All this laying back and sitting quiet and seeing what comes out, like waiting for a snake to pop his head out of a hole.

See, what he’s looking for, what I’m supposed to be watching for, is lost time.

Lost time, minutes or hours that have gone by that you didn’t know had gone by.

I’m not talking about getting so wrapped up in your work that the minutes fly by of an afternoon doing one shampoo and cut after the other. No, this is more like looking at the clock and it’s 1:20 and then looking at the clock and it’s five till…five.

That kind of lost time.

He says it’s something that goes on in these places right when something’s about to happen, kind of like the deer and the rabbits and the birds getting all squirrelly hours and hours before an earthquake.

Well, I told you how I am about talking to Victor, you couldn’t pry me away from my Frank, but having said that, having said that, missy ma’am, you’ve said just about all you could say, so I just sat there like a dummy nodding my head, nodding my head.

It’s only afterwards that you’re turning a corner in one of these strange old hallways around here, or looking out the windows onto the city below and you notice that it’s kind of coming at you like through a thick old wavy window, like at the history museum? You know what I mean? Anyway, those are the times that you think to yourself, ‘now what did he mean by that, Handsome Mr. Victor? What did you mean by lost time?’

He also says that it’s like a frog being boiled in water, you eve hear that one? You put a frog in a pan of cold water and then turn the heat on underneath. That old frog just adjusts and adjusts as that water gets hots and next thing he knows he’s so adjusted that now he’s boiled through and through.

Through and through!

Victor says you never can know just what kind of situation you’re in until someone gets you talking and you pull yourself out of it somehow, even if it’s only for as long as one of these tapes.

He calls it talking to the frogs.

I say, ‘well, if that’s your thing, mister sir, I’m fine doing it, just so long as you pay me…and just so long as it don’t stretch on forever. I don’t want to stay at Glo’s Slope House forever, and it comes to me now that I don’t know why anyone would.

Well, listen to me! Here I am doing all the talking and the whole point of these dealeos is to get you talking. Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself? Who does your hair up here? I like what she’s doing with the curl. Oh, my goodness, will you look at that tape? It’s just about to run….