Talking with Dickie

I always think my own childhood very plain until I remember the crow in the shoe store that said "Hello Joe" over and over when we came in twice a year to get new shoes. We loved that bird. And then there was the very large man, Dickie, who ran a candy shop in a tiny brick building by the railroad tracks just about a block from my great aunt Beulah's house. My brother and I stayed with our great aunt and great uncle for a week every summer and when we arrived, she'd set to making pie to celebrate the occasion. It was just what she did. I didn't mind.

Now my great aunt Beulah could make pie like nobody's business. One morning, with Great Uncle Carl having his cigarette-induced cough, my great aunt elbow deep in flour, and my brother and I trying not to break any of her pink and white porcelain nick-knacks after she'd given us breakfast, she'd really needed us kids to clear out on some made-up errand or another so she could find some peace of mind.

"Why don't you two go on up and get Stacy and Mike? I swan, I bet they ain't even had breakfast yet," I can remember her saying. "Now, you bring them on back here and I'll set out a bowl of Fruit Loops for them." Now my great aunt Beulah was a fan of Fruit Loops and so was I since, at home, I was used to getting oatmeal or shredded wheat served hot (which was mushy) in the morning. And my mother never let me put more than a single teaspoon of sugar on a whole bowl of cereal. So going to get my cousins wasn't such a bad deal because knowing my great aunt, I'd get some more Fruit Loops when we got back if I asked her nicely.

So my brother and I headed out into the hot summer sun. It might have only been eight in the morning, but in the Midwest, the morning sun and the humidity could cut down a man not used to being out it in. Though I was usually outside as much as possible, I favored climbing trees which was naturally shady. When I walked by myself, I even crossed the road sometimes to walk on the shady side.

My brother, being two years and three months older than I, was the leader. "Let's just go straight on up the road. Ole Dickie won't probably be out since his store don't open until ten," he said. I skipped along, knowing the wide cracks and upheavals of the sidewalks like finding the bathroom in my sleep. We came to the square where I got stung when I stepped on a bee and I realized I'd forgotten my flip-flops. My brother didn't want to go back. We both liked the quiet of the mornings and by nine, it would all be gone.

We were almost to the tracks and looking out for the light bulb that hung in Dickie's candy shop, both of us hoping it was out. We'd stopped buying our candy at Dickie's and it was embarrassing to try to walk by when he was in there. "The coast is clear," my brother said. I wondered if everything ran like a battle in his head. We were on the far side of the shop and about to skip across the tracks.

"Heyya, you two," said Dickie coming quickly out from nowhere. I was never sure he knew our names. "How're you all doing?" he asked. "Looks like you'd growed since I saw you last." I didn't mention that he'd caught us up by the malt shop two days ago and I probably hadn't grown much since then. The way Dickie let his mouth hang open between sentences told me he couldn't remember seeing us two days ago even though the rest of him looked like an ordinary adult would look. Dickie was tall, probably over six feet two, and pear shaped in the bibbed overalls he wore every day as did so many of the working men from that area. He was sweet, though, and that look on his face meant we had to treat him really nice or somebody would call my Great Aunt Beulah and complain. I could never get over how everyone in the whole town knew my name, my genealogy, and the state of my grades that year. They also weren't afraid to call up on the phone if we weren't behaving just right.

The problem with being polite to Dickie was that he wanted to talk, but he mostly wanted us to talk.

"Well yeah, we might have grown a little," I said. My brother, not helping out with the conversation as usual, was silent.

"I knowed you when you was a tiny baby," he said, poking his finger at my chest. I just didn't know what to say about that. I could feel the seconds ticking by and the heat starting to build on the top of my brown hair. I was not afraid of Dickie, but I didn't like him poking me. First, there was the poke, then the pat on the head, and then you'd be trapped in a hug that never seemed to let go.

"You was the sweetest little baby," he said. There it was, the pat on the head.

"Thank you," I said.

"Oh," he said, and waited a breath. It seemed to get hotter during that half second. "I knowed yore momma when she was a little bitty thing." That would not have pleased my mother to hear. And here it came, the breath-taking hug. Since he was so tall, my whole face smashed up against his belly so that I could feel the stitches in the pockets of his overalls. If I could breathe, it was shallow because he always had a sour smell along with a day or two's sweat from the summer heat. His breath coming down from above wasn't easy to take in either. I let him hug me for a beat or two and struggled to pull away without losing my balance or his dignity.

"That's nice," I said.

"Yore momma is the sweetest little girl," he said. "I knowed her in high school."

I wondered if my great aunt Beulah still had breakfast cereal on the table and how Dickie had managed in high school. I couldn't picture either.

"I love your momma. She is a sweet, sweet girl," he said. "She married yore daddy right after high school."

You notice that my brother hadn't said a word. At nine, I'd learned that it was my job to do the talking and his to smile a little, nod if I was lucky, and look authoritative. At eleven, he was perfecting the silent authoritative look.

"Yup, she did," I said.

"Yore momma is always the sweetest little girl," he said. "You look just like yore momma."

I'd have been happier if he'd told me I looked like my dad.

"We gotta go, Dickie. Great Aunt Beulah sent us up to get Stacy and Mike for breakfast," I said quickly.

"Well, I knowed Stacy and Mike since they were tiny babies," he said. "and I knowed their momma."

Oh, I lost track of what Dickie was saying. I nodded my head, smiled, said 'yup' and 'nope' at the right times. I tried three or four times to say that we'd better go, but Dickie didn't seem to hear me. He was back to poking and patting and I knew I was in for another breath-taking hug. The worst thing was that I felt sorry for Dickie the way I did when one of my Teddy bears got shoved into the back of the closet and forgotten for a while. I could feel his desperation increasing with my every excuse. I wanted to love those old Teddy bears enough. I really did.

I could feel the sweat beading in my hair, the sun burning my forehead. It seemed like we'd been standing there for hours. Being polite was never so excruciating. I could feel the heat on the sidewalk as I shuffled my feet back and forth.

Dickie was still talking when I interrupted and said, "We're going to get into trouble if we don't get going." Then I saw the ocean of loneliness that he held out for us to take away. Oh, that was the worst, trying to pry ourselves away when he had that look on his face. And he probably knew as well as I did that my great aunt Beulah didn't get mad at anybody.

"I knew yore momma when we was in high school," he said.

"We really gotta go now," I said again and my brother grabbed my arm and we half-walked and half-ran away while Dickie was still talking behind us, his voice a little louder so we could hear. I turned around and waved.

"Bye bye, Dickie," I yelled across the tracks. I turned back and we ran up the rest of the block so as not to hear what else Dickie was saying. It was as if the last line finally pulled tight and broke loose and we were free. I'd almost forgotten what we'd been turned out of the house to do in all my concentration on how to get free of Dickie's web.

On the way back with our cousins, we ran a block west and turned south along the road with the German Shepherd that liked to lunge halfway over the shabby cyclone fence at us. Then on Great Aunt Beulah's road, we turned east again. By the time we walked into the house, she was turning pork tenderloins on the stove for lunch. So much for more Fruit Loops.

Poor Dickie was tolerated in town, but even the mailman told us how to avoid him. The Bandaid of impatient time we gave him, of pretending to listen to him, didn't seem to do anything to help. I was only nine, but I learned to run away from him after a myriad of excuses, feeling like I'd left him emptier than when he'd stepped out of his little brick candy shop by the railroad tracks and caught us trying to sneak past. He was always still talking as we ran away.

Dickie just became one more obstacle to overcome on our way anywhere in that town, I don't know what happened to him in his little brick shack by the train tracks. Even the train tracks are gone now.

Thank you for listening, jb