Abbeville. Jack Fuller

      Unbridled Books

      Denver, Colorado

      Copyright © 2008 by Jack Fuller

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Fuller, Jack.

      Abbeville / Jack Fuller.

      p. cm.

      ISBN 978-1-932961-47-8

      1. Grandfathers—Fiction. 2. Grandparent and child—Fiction. I. Title.

      PS3556.U44A63 2008

      813′.54dc22

      2008000989

      1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

      Book design by SH • CV

      First Printing

      This is mortality: to move along a . . . line in a universe where everything, if it moves at all, moves in a cyclical order.

      —HANNAH ARENDT

      We’re a couple of financial wizards.

      —GEORGE BAILEY, from It’s a Wonderful Life

      FOR DEBBY

      and the memory of Will Tegge

       ABBEVILLE

       1

      EVEN WHEN I WAS A CHILD, ABBEVILLE seemed too small. It was the kind of place you might have flashed through on a streamliner going somewhere else: a blur of faded paint on plank, a crossing bell rising and falling then gone. Since the last time I’d visited the town, a fire had reduced to rubble the bank my grandfather built, leaving only its walk-in safe standing in the weeds like a crypt. The old grain elevator that had borne Grampa’s family name in faded four-foot letters was also gone, replaced by a nameless structure of corrugated steel. No boxcars stood next to it today, but to the north three silver tank cars flashed sun into my eyes. You don’t put grain in a tanker. They seemed as out of place in Abbeville as sailing ships.

      At least Grampa and Grandma’s house had survived, although it had taken on an ugly cladding of vinyl. My mother had sold the place to one of her kin after she’d moved Grandma up to Park Forest to live with us. I’d never thought I would spend another night in it, let alone want to. When I called my second cousin to ask if he had a spare bed, he said I could take my pick because he was going to be away for a month.

      “Just go right in,” he said. “The door will be open.”

      “Abbeville is still another world, isn’t it,” I said.

      “Not as much as it used to be,” he said.

      I didn’t stop at the house right away. Instead I took the south crossing over the Chicago and Eastern Illinois tracks. In the local accent, C&EI became See-Nee-Eye. For years I’d thought the name came from an Indian tribe.

      Main Street ran parallel to the tracks on the side opposite the house and the unmown prairie along the right-of-way where I used to shoot tin cans off rocks. I drove past the ruins of the bank, then the boarded-up general store. Grampa had owned that at one time, too, along with a number of farms and the implement lot that now held only one rusted old combine, whose delivery assembly poked up out of the weeds like the skull and bony neck of a Brontosaurus.

      I rolled on a little way to the north end of Main. The crossing there had a modern set of lights and gates. I wondered why the C&EI had gone to the expense. Everyone in Abbeville knew exactly when each train would pass, as sure as tides.

      Crossing the tracks again, I drove back out of town the way I had come. After a couple of miles I turned onto the dirt road that led to the shack Grampa used to own on Otter Creek. Remarkably, it was still standing on the high bank, where you could look out over the lazy current and the marsh beyond. Its plank walls had weathered black, and in a number of places the roof yawned open. The whole structure leaned in the direction of the creek, as if moving water exerted a pull on its timbers the way it always had on Grampa.

      He used to love to sit in the beat-up rocker on the porch of the shack, gazing down at the creek. There were no trout in it, and Grampa would not deign to fish with anything but a well-tied fly, so for blood sport he had to settle for smacking pesky sweat bees with a rolled-up section of the Trib. He could spend all day like this, contented, insect carcasses piling up, as if bees were money.

      When I got out of the car, I half-expected to smell the smoke from his Prince Albert pipe tobacco or to hear him whistling the nine-note, monotone cadence he repeated over and over again like a bird.

      Beyond the shack a red-tailed hawk soared over the wide, flat fields. The corn was high. I pulled open an ear to check the quality the way Grampa had taught me. It looked like Abbeville was in store for a pretty fair yield, but any farmer would tell you not to bank on a crop until it was brought in.

      I walked the edge of the field, taking in the smell of pollen and leaves and dirt, then returned to the car and drove back to town. On the way I noticed a little trailer sitting on a brick foundation. An American flag flew outside, and next to it somebody had planted a small hand-painted sign that said, “U.S. Post Office.” When Grampa delivered the mail, he used the old bank building. He opened it every day but Sunday, as he had when it had served the purpose for which he’d built it. After business hours he would sit in a big old swivel chair with a cracked leather back, tallying the coins he had taken in exchange for postage, accounting sales against revenue again and again down to the last penny.

      The garage on Main Street looked to be the only establishment still in business. I pulled in at the ancient pump. The door to the mechanic’s bay was open, so I went right in. It had been here that Grampa and the other men had set up a rickety table and played pinochle for matchsticks on Saturday nights. Now the garage smelled only of rubber and oil, but it carried the memory of cigar smoke on Bicycle cards.

      “Hello,” I called.

      A man emerged from the office, drying his hands on a paper towel. He wasn’t as weathered as a farmer, and though he was probably in his thirties, he had the face of a boy.

      “I wasn’t sure it was self-serve,” I said.

      A few old tires with new treads lay on the cracked cement floor. When the mechanic finished with the paper towel, he hung it from his hip pocket to dry. In Abbeville using anything only once had always been seen as an extravagance.