I drove over to Charlie’s Truck Stop this past week to fill up with gas and pick up some milk and few other things I needed around the house. I pulled up in front of the gas pumps and stopped behind an old Ford pickup truck. There were near to a dozen cars and trucks parked around Charlie’s, more than I can remember seeing at the store at one time in quite a while. Jack Witherspoon came out with his arms loaded down and I opened the door to his truck on the passenger side and stepped back so he could dump his stuff on the seat. He said, “Thanks.” and asked how I had been getting on. We talked for a few minutes and he piled into his truck and drove off. I don’t see Jack that often. He is a big red faced farmer who works his land full time and does not hang around too much. He comes to pick up whatever he needs and hauls off back to work.
I pushed the lever on the gas pump and began filling my tank. Jake usually comes out to fill your car when you drive up, but it looked as if he was busy inside this time and I know how to operate the gas pumps. Jake had these new pumps installed over a year ago, but they still don’t look right sitting out in front of the old store. Jake had a pair of old pumps for years, the kind that had a crank you turned to start up and had little colored balls inside a glass window you could watch swirl around as the gas ran by. They finally broke down for good and Jake could no longer find repair parts, so he replaced them with these modern things. I finished filling the tank and went inside. Jake was over by the cash register ringing up sales for Hurshel Ledbedder’s wife, Dolly. There were customers all over the store and Jake had a big grin on his face. I saw the Reverend Johnson sitting over by the pot belly stove drinking a coke. He waved to me and I walked over.
“Jake's doing pretty good today,” I observed. “What’s the occasion?”
“Nothing special I know of,” said the Reverend. “I expect folks about just decided they needs stuff and came over to make some purchases.” We talked about nothing for a while until the Reverend said he had seen me with a pretty young lady coming out of a downtown Corinth restaurant this past week. He asked if I had something going on I was not telling about. I replied it was looking less and less as though I had anything going on at all.
The Reverend has never met Charlotte Crum, to use her married name. Back when I knew her as I was growing up, her name was Williamson. My folks moved away to Knoxville and we lost touch and she married a guy named Crum. He up and died a few years back of lung cancer and she was in the area and saw one of my Charlie’s reports in the paper and came looking to find me. Seeing her again brought back so many memories. She had not changed so much as you could tell. There were a few gray streaks in her dark hair, but she was mostly just like the girl I had first kissed one night in the back of the First Baptist Church in Selmer. She was living in North Carolina and had come back to Selmer on family business. We arranged to see each other whenever she was in Selmer and I came to talk with her over the phone to the point I thought my phone bill was going to rival the national debt. It developed that I began to have the fantasy in my head that we would renew the romance we started when we were just children in Selmer, Tennessee.
Charlotte phoned me from Selmer to say she was in town to see a lawyer about family matters and it would be nice to talk with me again. I was up to my eyeballs in work with a deadline breathing down my neck, but I told Charlotte I had plenty of spare time on my hands. She had to deliver some papers to the Courthouse in Corinth, so I suggested I could see her there after her business was taken care of and I would buy her dinner. I parked in a downtown lot and was sitting on one of the Courthouse benches when she came out. She threw her arms around me and asked how I had been. We chatted for a while standing in the shade of a big tree, then I asked what she would like to eat. She was tired of fast food and thought a real restaurant would be nice. I knew just the place and steered her to a family restaurant just across the street from the old Coliseum Theatre.
The restaurant is one of those locally owned affairs where you go in and everyone mostly knows everyone else. The tables and chairs have that well worn look and are arranged neatly around the room. The ladies who wait the tables know their business and the food is excellent. I visit the place enough I am recognized when I walk in and one of the ladies came over with a menu soon as we found a table. Charlotte said the plate lunch looked good and I told the lady I would take the fish again. I’ve been on a fish kick for the past month or so and I mostly ask for fish whenever I go in. Though we have been some of the best customers the phone company has, I have not seen Charlotte in person for a while. She had some worry lines in her face that had not been there before and there was more gray in her hair. She began to tell about the problems she was having with the boutique she runs in North Carolina. I knew from phone conversations the store had not been doing well. She had not had the enthusiasm for running the business she enjoyed before her husband died. In the last week she had been forced to lay off two of her employees. I thought she might consider selling the shop and possibly moving back to this part of the country where her family still resides. She had thought of the same thing, but something of a miracle came about last month. One of the businessmen who is a regular customer in her store suggested a partnership. He is a really nice man with a teenage daughter he has raised since a messy divorce about ten years ago. His name is Edward Sharp and he has considerable experience in retail. Charlotte is thinking of accepting this man’s offer. She believes he could help her refocus on getting her shop back in its feet. This guy Sharp may be a good deal for Charlotte, but I don’t like him right off.
END
