Wanderer Springs: A Novel

The Corner

THE CORNER a criminal, a saint, a prisoner, a communist, a hero IT'Strue what they say about small towns, they never change. I hadn't been back to Wanderer Springs in ten years but it looked the same as ever. "The town is well arranged," Grandmother had written. The first photograph showed it to be a one-intersection, four-corner town with a few windwhipped cottonwood trees and barbed wire fences around the houses. It looked the same as it looked when I was a child, but it looked unchanged only from a distance . The four pillars ofcommerce still dominated the comers, Otis Hopkins's bank, Murdock's The Comer Drug, Shipman's Hardware and Farm Implement Store, and Whatley's live and Let Live Grocery which was a little removed from the comer but because of its two Stories- the bank was the only other two-story building in town-still imposed its presence. Shipman's Hardware hadn't sold rann implements for years and most of the customers were looking for curiosities to decorate a ranch-style house or funky bar. The bank, imposing at a distance, was as defunct as Otis Hopkins. Dr. Heslar had acquired. The Comer Drug, and now sold prescriptions at his nursing home, TheWanderer's Rest. He used the drug store for a mortuary. Biddy Whatley was able to keep the Uve and let Uve open by living upstairs and selling sweets to convalescents able to walk the four blocks from TheWanderer's Rest. She also sold gift boxes of soaps, bath oils, and artificial corsages-all 114 THE CORNER"*,, liS prettily packaged in plastic- to dutiful relatives who visited the penitents awaiting deliverance at The Wanderer's Rest. The Help-Ur-Self Llundry, where Dad left me to do the wash while he went to the gin, the bank, the Live and Let Live, was not only vacam but shattered, the doors and windows gone, the roof collapsed. A mesquite limb reached through the window where Eli puzzled over a government that had asked him to kill his cattle [0 save the country. Once Roma Dean Tooley had helped me rinse clothes, while I feared she would catch her long hair in the wringer. ''I'm never going to cut my hair," she used [0 say, giving her head a shake. The N-D-Pendem Service Station looked solid but the covered drive-through between the pumps and the office was not big enough for modern cars. The hand-operated gas pumps had been vandalized and then stolen, although everyone, including Sheriff Brassfield, knew they were decorating the entrance to a Wichita Falls bar called "The Last Chance Filling Station." A rotting shell marked the barber shop where Oscar Spruill had been shaved and shot, where Melvin Perkins had puzzled over the circumstances that permitted his ex-wife to strut in Center Point on sturdy limbs, while his palsied hands pulled hair and nicked necks of those who believed patronizing his shop was a test of loyalty to Wanderer Springs. The buildings had their stories, as did the families who built them- Roosevelt Hopkins would be pleased about thatbut the books were intended for school children. Roo would expect some moral on the frontier vinues of independence, thrift, perseverance, hard work. I knew the stories. I didn't know the lessons. Eli Spivey had left his ranch, out beyond Medicine Hill, to fight the Hun during World War I. Eli lost a leg at Belleau Wood but he came back a hero, wearing a pegleg that permitted him to walk, lurching from side to side. Eli went almost everywhere on horseback anyway, and he made himself a 116 "*'WANDERER SPRINGS long-handled hoe so mat he could weed his garden from his horse. Eli rode his horse in Armistice Day parades and addressed the school assembly on Memorial Day. "I give one leg for my country," said Eli, standing with his pegleg cocked and holding to the podium for balance. Eli was a small man with deepset eyes, wiry hair that looked as if it had been cut with shears and left uncombed, and a face marked more by pain than laughter. "And I'd gladly give me other leg to keep this land free. The only thing that stops a man in this country is hisself. It don't matter if he's blind or deaf or only...