The Carpet Store

The railroad tracks ran alongside my Dad's carpet store on the edge of our small town when I was a kid.  Heading north, they cut through neighborhoods and eventually skirted the downtown area with its one way street and assorted antique shops.  Heading south, they cut through forests and farmers' fields, balancing on the back of a rocky mound that snakes through the hills of Southern Indiana to eventually find the Ohio River.

When I found the odd bit of change in and around the carpet store, I would lay it on the tracks and watch the train's wheels smash it flat.  Pennies were best, followed by nickels.  The dimes and quarters were too valuable for buying candy and comic books, plus the pennies were easiest to find amongst the gray and white gravel after the train's wheels sent them flying off of the tracks.  I collected these thin oval-shaped objects of curiosity in a cigar box.

A coke machine sat at the store entrance waiting to relieve customers of their coins and dispense a cold Tab for the occasional portly person who didn't seem to mind its chemical sweetness.  I was in the back of the attached warehouse using a long stick to smash carpenter bees as they entered their burrows in the wooden beams above my head or jumping on large rolls of pad wrapped in plastic and stacked in rows.

The front of the warehouse had a very high ceiling with a loft that had no ladder or stairs for access.  It was my secret place to nap or read books, but only on cool summer days.  It was unbearable on the hot ones.  Adults needed to bring a ladder to get up there, but I could shimmy up a  long carpet roll propped against the wall, like a small tree-loving mammal, and scamper into my favorite hiding place several feet above the warehouse floor.

Behind the carpet store, near the tracks, was a sizable burn pit where my Dad would turn his  trash to ash.  One particular day he had been burning the plastic coverings from his rolls of pad and we were getting ready to go home for the day.  A few tendrils of smoke still rose from the black ashes and I decided to use a large utility bucket full of water to put it out.  I was unaware of the pools of melted plastic hidden below the ashes.

I poured the water and swung the bucket to make sure the fire was out.  The bucket hit the ash and I immediately felt an intense pain from my legs.  I looked down to find black splotches that I could not wipe off.  I snuck into the warehouse bathroom and tried to wash them off.  The plastic had stuck to my legs and burned where it clung.  My Dad was calling for me to get in the car but I hid from him, afraid to show my damaged self, like Adam in the garden.

There were second and third degree burns, some of which eventually required skin grafts to cover.  I wore shorts for a few months while the grafts healed.  My sixth grade teacher had me come up in front of class the first day of school to explain the situation, this boy in shorts.  Stranger still, I wore shorts to church which I had never done before nor have I done since.  My son is curious about the scars and will sometimes feel the smooth and hairless patches.

My first summer back from college I stayed in a room in the back of the carpet store, feeling independent but strangely isolated in those evening hours on the edge of town.  I got a cat to keep me company from a member of our church who owned a farm.  He was white with a gray tail.  I named him Sir Mouser Graytail and put his litter box in the furnace room.  What I remember most about Sir Graytail was the puddle of diarrhea he left on my bed.

And then there was the time a tornado touched down just north of our town, destroying some businesses and dumping cars from a used car lot into the White River.  I did not have a TV or radio at the store, but I knew something was brewing due to the strange weather conditions.  Outside it was prematurely dark with a soft drizzle coming down.  Someone must have called by telephone to warn me to stay inside.  I remember having on just a pair of shorts.

I felt compelled to walk outside and experience the strangeness of the situation.  It was eerily quiet.  The darkness was warm and wet, like being in a spacious womb.  I climbed an old TV antenna tower onto the roof to see what I could see.  The sky directly north was glowing with a strange shade of green that I'd never seen before.  Standing still and half-naked, eyes closed, I wondered what it would be like to fly away in a pillar of wind.