A Woman Named Drown - Padgett Powell by Padgett Powell Page B

phone this apocrypha in to the editor,
when we had not even made the down payment on the johnboat and
Bonaparte was flailing away harder than ever.
    We would clean the place--it never got messed up,
really, but we soaked it down in Pine-Sol in the mornings anyway,
because the cats carried crabs and fish under it and we were in
effect disinfecting the ground as well as the floors. We poured
gallons of pine-smelling ammonia out and swabbed ourselves into
sweats by ten in the morning and split a six-pack and looked out of
the easy gloom of the bar into the headachy light, and there,
committed as a saint, full of belief, bailing the entire Gulf of
Mexico, was Bonaparte. He took to blowing a whistle periodically,
perhaps designating invisible progress.
    " Vim," Wallace would say, both of us
squinting at Bonaparte, both of us nodding, happy to be inside, in
the cool gloom, dizzy on fumes and cold carbonation. A man came in
one afternoon, sized the place up, had a beer, listened to Bonaparte
bail and whistle, said, "Sounds like a disco out there,"
and left.
    A couple came in one morning and watched him bail for
a while before suddenly going into a disquisition on hippies. "We
saw a van," the man said. "Purple."
    " With butterflies on it," the woman added.
    " All over it," the man said.
    Wallace served them. We were just finishing the
Pine-Sol detail. The woman opened both their beers and poured them
into glasses which she inspected in the light before filling,
squinting her nose at the ammonia. We could hear Bonaparte working as
steadily in the glare coming from outside as a pump in an oilfield.
    The light came in whole and hot and salty, and
reflected off the damp board floor in broken, mirrory planes. The
customers were shading their eyes.
    " I wish all I had to do was drive around in a
dope van all day," the man said.
    " With butterflies on it," added the woman.
    " That would be the life." He motioned to
Wallace for beer number two. It was 10:30.
    " Hippies," the woman said.
    " What's he doing out there?" the man asked,
with an emphasis that somehow seemed to link Bonaparte with the
hippies.
    " He's bailing, you sonofabitch," Wallace
said, and she walked to the dart wall and planted a foot up on it and
yanked out a dart. She wound up and fired one, and the sonofabitch
and his wife left.
    " See what I mean about you not offending
customers?" she asked me. "I can do it, and I can do enough
of it."
    She fired three darts. "Sonofabitch thinks he
can drink beer at ten o'clock and some kid can't drive a purple
truck." A three-legged cat walked in with a large live crab in
its mouth. "Get outside, honey," she said to it, and the
cat backed easily out, the crab waving claws to us, as if for help.
    After the demonstration of Wallace's diplomacy with
customers, I assumed a new demeanor around the few that straggled in.
I was a kind of personal valet, the ambassador of good will at
Bonaparte's. My job, as I saw it, was to prevent customers from
talking, lest they draw Wallace's wrath. I usually took their beer
orders with the gravity of a funeral-home operator, giving a long,
soulful look directly at them, then the slightest, tenderest nod I
could manage toward Bonaparte out at the docks, then another kind of
nod toward Wallace. This Wallace nod was in the thumb-jerk category,
but was very subdued, and I followed it with a shrug, as if to say, Given the kid out there, the lady is
disturbed, and likely to go of, you understand .
Most did--in fact, some customers, provided this one-two of tactful
apprising, gave an exaggerated and solemn nod of their own, clammed
up altogether, and would point to their brand of beer rather than
call it. These folk I had where I wanted--I felt like a matador with
the bull quieted and sword ready. Wallace would interrupt the moment
of their reverential silence with a great, sudden thuuung of dart that would make them spill beer.
    Much of the beer consumed was consumed by Wallace and
me. We got into a game of