Louis Cat-Doors

“You got air in that thing?” The half-wit was standing in the driveway, next to the white car she was always splashing with water. The rear tire was completely flat. Up on the new deck, I was installing posts with J.O., wanted to continue with that, but told the woman I’d be down in a minute to help her out. I took the reserve tank of air out of the back of the truck, hooked the hose to the tire, and watched as the shiny white car rose a few inches with the inflation. Her daughter and her daughter’s man-friend looked on, having poked at the tire a little just recently, saw that it was flat, and those gathered there told me that the man-friend had plugged up the hole. “This is getting good,” I thought. “Maybe I’ll tarry a bit here; the posts can wait.”

“It takes 44 pounds,” the man-friend, that plugger of tires, said.
“That seems like an awful lot,” I said, getting my voice together for these times. “You hafta go by what it says on the car, if’n y’all don’t want it so’s yore tire gets all exploded.” I looked at the car, directed the half-wit to open the door. “See? It says right there by the door jab: 34 PSI.” Then, to show that I was just like one of them, wasn’t so bad after all, I plopped myself down in the dust and gravel of the driveway, started rolling around. With the warm sunshine dappled on my body, I kicked my legs in the air, pushed around a little with my arms. “I shore am tired,” I said, kicking some. “But I got the most turble itch.” I shoved off with my legs, raking my back along the mix of sand and dust and gravel. “I’m gonna scratch some.” I slid along the ground as I’d seen the cats do, dragging my back across the rough and pebbly surface. “Shore feels good.”

“You want I should give you something?” The half-wit was standing with her mouth open, the thick spectacles making her eyes blurred with even more confusion. I stopped my scratching down there on the ground. She wanted to pay me for the air. “I reckon fifty cent oughtta be all right,” I said. “Leastaways, that’s what they make you pay at one of them air machines down to the fillin’ station.” I slid along the ground a little more, added: “If’n you ain’t got the money right now, I kin come ‘round after lunch. Me’n J.O.’s gonna buy a Frosty an’ a ice cream once’t we get the fifty cents.” I added that I reckoned fifty cents wasn’t asking too much, on account of what they charged at the garage, repeated that she didn’t even have to go to the machine, that I’d had the air right there at her house, had saved her a trip. I rolled over two or three times, covering my jeans and shirt in the warm dry dust, shook the dirt out of my hair. I added this:
“You might’n gotten it fer less, but Miz Pamela down t’the market give me a whole dollar to bust up a Louis Cat-Doors what she said her granddaddy kept fancy pillers in an' said it was french. But she didn’ want the Louis Cat-Doors no more an I said if’n you got them fancy pillers I’ll bust it up fer a dollar. But after she thought on that said she ain’t had them pillers no more an besides they wasn’t no good on account of her granddaddy was real old. I says to her I don’t know what a Louis Cat-Doors is but you show me where it is an’ I’ll bust it up fer a dollar an also you shore you aint got them pillers on account of mine is wore out from when I was jes’ a kid.”

I made the half-wit understand that Miss Pamela no longer had the pillows, and that somehow my activities there in the driveway with her flat tire were related to my busting up the Louis Cat-Doors. I was on my belly, pushing off with my feet, scooting into the short grass. “Now I’m itchin’ all over,” I said. If you ain’t got the fifty cents, I guess I kin come ‘round after lunch.”

Down at the end of the lane, just before the levee, the trees reached for each other, embracing up high where no one looked—their rich-breathing canopy exhaling the passion of summer, but aloof and cool against a hot august sky you couldn’t see. Down there it was dark, and the levee rose beyond the lane’s end like it was the edge of the world. I got up, brushed off my dirty pants.
“I have to go back to work now.”