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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “the Statue” cc&d, v270 (the April 2017 issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:  |
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Double O and Vestal
From 3 Tweeners – Men Between Wives
Roy Haymond
Purvis Melton pulled into the middle-school parking lot at 7:30 and backed his station wagon up to the front of the ancient but functional auditorium. The early hour permitted him to set up his display in the choicest spot in the lobby for the county teacher’s meeting in the afternoon. The janitor, no doubt remembering the generous tip from the last visit, was quickly on hand to assist.
The first order of business was his taking a coffee urn to the teacher’s lounge, plugging it in and placing sugar, sweeteners and creamers on the table with it. From another trip to the wagon he placed several dozen multi-flavored doughnuts on another table.
By then the janitor had brought in all the lightweight tables and the boxes of books and the flip-flops. In a very few minutes he had assembled an attractive display in the center of the lobby of the auditorium.
With this completed, he returned to the teacher’s lounge to glad-hand various teachers as they came in, especially Nita Schwartz, whom he had met at last year’s state convention, a newly married but obviously on-the-make neat redhead in her late twenties.
The teachers drifted into the lounge and Purvis imparted his usual good cheer. But this only lasted until the bell sounded for morning classes, which left Purvis with some dead time. He read the morning paper, did the crossword, and then fidgeted until the teachers had their 10:45 break. Nita sat with him and had a chocolate curl with her coffee. The heat of this lady’s sumptuous hips disturbed him somewhat.
With the teacher’s break over, the possibility of lunch in a school cafeteria led him to a plan that had been in the back of his mind all along: some thirty miles away was the famous Missolou Manor, a stately ante-bellum mansion renowned as a Northern Virginia tourist attraction, and even more so for its lunch-time buffet. Since the teachers meeting wouldn’t commence until 3:30, he decided to take lunch there and see if the place lived up to its reputation.
It was just a little after eleven when he drove up to the palatial mansion. A placard out front said “Luncheon from 11:45 until 2:00”. He went through the mahogany double doors and was greeted by a hostess in a hoop skirt.
“Luncheon is not ready yet. Would you like to sit in one of our cozy rooms and wait? We have all the up-to-date news magazines and several daily papers. Would you like a drink while you are waiting?”
Purvis ordered a beer and then took a seat in a large over-stuffed chair in a little nook. A svelte girl of twenty in a granny gown brought him his beer and he began looking over Sports Illustrated.
He became vaguely aware of some soft organ music in the background. The tune was Just One of Those Things. And as he flipped through a few pages of the magazine, with the organ shifting to The Lady is a Tramp, Purvis noted that the player had good rhythm and an unusual style.
It was when the player got to Body and Soul that Purvis said out aloud, “Double O!”
Taking the beer he’d hardly touched, he wandered through several of the many rooms before he found the organ.
The slightly pudgy but quite distinguished-looking fellow at the organ still had the appearance of an English gentleman, complete with sparse, pomaded hair, pale complexion, a waxed moustache, and, of course, a tweed jacket.
Purvis, looking over the man’s shoulder, said, “Double O, I thought you was dead!”
The fellow didn’t look around – looking around wouldn’t have affected his playing, but he simply had to maintain an aloof manner. “Not hardly, John Wayne. To whom am I speaking – and my name is not Double O!”
Oscar Owens, the organist, the man who hated the Double O label, made short work of Body and Soul, then turned to face Purvis.
“Well, bless my soul, it’s P.M.! I never did decide what that stood for. You could be Prime Minister, or Pall Mall, or could it be Post Mortem? Good to see you, kid. What are you doing these days?”
“I’m a representative for a textbook firm. There’s a county teacher’s meeting down the road; I got there early to set up an exhibit and I’d always heard about this place...and, of course, I had no idea I’d run into...”
“Don’t say it, kid, don’t say it! Nobody around here knows me as...ugh...Oscar...”
“What’s your current alias?”
“Here I’m known as Owen Owensby...hell, I have monogrammed linen, so my scope is rather limited. Look, when do you have to get back to whatever?”
“Oh, about three...”
“Then why don’t you take a seat and have a couple of beers...I quit at two...we can eat together and have a chat...”
Without waiting for any answer from Purvis, Oscar Owens, or Olin Onslow, or Owen Owensby, or whatever designation suited him, was deep into That Old Black Magic.
In another comfortable chair not far from the organ, Purvis watched Double O. And he also noticed the way the star-struck young waitress, the same one who had brought Purvis his beer, looked at the organist as she brought him drinks.
He’s what now? At least forty-five? And still has to have a nymphet? A leopard never changes his spots, thought Purvis.
It was impossible not to drift back into those times years ago when he, Purvis, had been associated with Double O for a couple of summers.
Purvis was quite proficient on clarinet even in elementary school. In high school he got himself and alto and a tenor saxophones and made a little money with local dance bands. Graduating from high school at seventeen, he was registered for the fall term in a little college where he was to major in music. And he was slated to work in his uncle’s lumber business during the summer.
Then he got a surprising and flattering call from Kit Carson, who led a traveling dance/show band, one well known in that part of the country.
“Purvis? Heard all about you...they say you can read and that you double on alto and tenor sax...”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Clarinet, too?”
“Yes, Sir.”
So, over his parents’ objections, he joined Kit Carson and his ten-piece orchestra, featuring Owen at the Organ, a four-act floorshow, and vocals by Lovely Frances Middleton. And the tour was made on a not-too-new bus.
He found the music not really challenging. And he preferred alto sax, but his book called more for tenor. But he enjoyed riding on the bus with the others, listening to their stories, especially those who could cite anecdotes about musicians who were “big time”.
He was by far the youngest member of the group, and some of the members were even in their forties.
His roommate and the closest thing he had to a friend for the summer was a twenty-five-year-old trumpet player named Vinnie. In time, the two of them would take in movies, shoot pool and unsuccessfully chase girls.
On his second night of the tour, Vinnie said to him, “Kid, would you like to make an extra five bucks a week?”
“Sure.”
Thereafter the two of them got to the bandstand early to unload the organ from the trailer hitched to a Cadillac and then move it to the band setup. Then they would reload it onto the trailer the instant the night’s performance was over.
The man who played the organ seemed always to remain unseen until the playing began for the evening. And he never spoke to the sidemen on the bandstand, including the leader. Then he seemed to vanish as the night’s performance concluded, only to drive away in the Cadillac as soon as the organ was loaded onto the trailer.
“This fellow Owen? What’s the rest of his name?” asked Purvis.
“His name, really, is Oscar Owens, but to his back we call him Double O.”
“What do you call him to his face?”
“Sir!”
A week or so into the tour, the band members loaded themselves and their gear onto the bus after an engagement only to find Frances, the striking thirty-year-old female vocalist, on the bus with her luggage.
The leader asked, “You’re not with Double O?”
“The son of a bitch dumped me...some little jail-bait is riding with him. Anyway, I was tired of the prissy bastard...”
Purvis then began to study this phantom organist more closely.
The hair had the look of a Continental cut and his moustache was waxed. His shirts had ruffled fronts, and there were O’s on his tie pin and cuff links, Regular sidemen wore light blue jackets; but the organist’s was dark blue, and even this was changed to English tweed the second the organist played his last note.
Hardly a night after Frances was demoted to bus riding, a slender dark-haired girl of about eighteen could be seen sitting near the bandstand eyeing Double O for a few nights.
Two events a year apart got Purvis closer to this anomaly at the organ.
In the first, Purvis and Vinnie attended an informal jam session in an after-hours club in a Southern Virginia town. Purvis had brought along his alto sax and he sat in with the half-dozen fellows who were improvising on standard tunes.
Double O and a young woman, not the same one he’d ditched Frances for, were sitting at a table near the bandstand. Someone asked him to play, but he refused – playing free of charge was anathema to him. But he and the woman stayed at the session for a couple of hours.
To a surprised Purvis, the man actually spoke. “Those your initials on your horn case? P.M.? What does that stand for? Maybe you can be Prime Minister...Anyway, you seem to know a lot of tunes...got a tenor sax? Can you play tunes on it like you can on alto?”
“Yes, Sir. I like the alto better...but I can fake all the tunes on tenor...”
That ended the conversation and Purvis thought no more about it for a time.
Then after an engagement on the Third of July, the troop loaded up and rode to a little North Carolina town. They checked into a motel in the middle of the night.
It was around nine in the morning when Purvis was shaken awake. Double O was standing over him.
“What was that name? Post Mortem? Anyway, get dressed and get some breakfast. I’ll pick you up in an hour...and bring your tenor sax...don’t fool with the alto or the clarinet...”
What Purvis learned then was that Double O often went ahead of the band and booked himself as organist for luncheons and matinees.
On this Fourth of July, he had lined up an afternoon bash that lasted three hours. Purvis and Carson’s bass man were along.
“Let’s see: what was your name? How about Pall Mall? Look, kid, you can try some jazz when you play those free sessions. Here, it’s strictly business. Stick to the melody. On ballads, hold the notes out full value, and add a little vibrato...Understand?”
Several more such gigs turned up during that long ago summer.
The suave Double O, in conservative tailored suits, complete with pin and cuff links with O on each, was aloof to any crowd he played for, but this only seemed to add dignity to the affair. And he would almost always have an admiring female along, usually one quite young.
Purvis left the Carson group in August to enter college. In a matter of weeks the whole advent of the summer was just bittersweet memory – he had enjoyed some of the experiences, but he had vowed never to get involved in a travel venture again.
Reminiscing, with Double O’s organ in the background, Purvis finished his second beer. It was twelve-thirty and he decided he must not follow the schedule laid out by the man at the organ. He did want to talk to the man some more, but perhaps waiting until two to have his lunch and then rushing back to the school auditorium would be too much of a squeeze.
He nixed the third beer and helped himself to a buffet lunch.
The year at college after his stint on the road had been less than satisfying for a variety of reasons. Moreover, the idea of attending summer school was odious, and so was the prospect of the summer job that was staring him in the face.
Then in the spring he got a call from Double O.
“Prime Meridian? Got a gig starting in June...no travel. We play six nights a week, a matinee once in a while. Give you something to do over the summer, and the pay is good. You stay in a tourist cabin...free...it’s owned by some relatives of the Vestal Virgin.”
“Vestal Virgin?”
“Wife. Old line Tidewater. ‘Shabby Genteel’. Lots of property and deeds and family connections, but not too much ready cash...Anyway, we’re staying in this tourist court and she does what she does and I do what I do. And, look, I’ll want you on tenor sax exclusively, but a group of kids get together for a couple of late-night things most weeks...you can play your other horns there...if you’re still of a mind to play free of charge...”
Purvis arrived in the little village in the middle of the afternoon. Double O picked him up at the bus stop, drove him to the tourist court and let him out in front of a small cabin.
“That’s yours. Go settle in and I’ll pick you up about six-thirty. Be dressed and bring your tenor sax...”
The cabin was furnished with a single bed and a sitting chair with a lamp. There was a sink for washing his hands, but other functions would be handled in a bathhouse. He put down his gear, which included his clothes, his horns, a 45RPM record player, and a stack of books that were selected from the parallel list of sophomore literature classes. Then he went to the bathhouse to take a shower.
From the tourist court Double O drove him to a lake a half-mile away. The lake was crystal-clear and surrounded by sandy beaches. Around it were concession stands, an arcade, a small fair, a movie theater, a pool hall and a bistro. He and Double O had a leisurely supper in the bistro. They sat for a long time afterward while Double O had a long cigar. Very few words passed between them.
From there, with Purvis carrying his sax in its case, they walked beside the lake to a pavilion. After an hour, Purvis was playing with the trio, something he would do for six nights a week throughout the summer.
This summer was certainly superior to the last one. The work was perhaps a bit more monotonous, but hardly taxing. And there was not the drudgery of the bus rides.
Mornings were spent at the lake, swimming, playing volleyball or whatever. Three or four afternoons each week were spent at the movie theater and he often shot pool. Meals he took at the bistro by the lake.
On Friday and Saturday nights he’d take his alto sax to a little roadhouse and jam with younger musicians for hours. And there was a girl, Melissa, who took him to church.
When there was nothing to do on nights after work, he’d go to his cabin and read himself to sleep.
Purvis had only been there a few days before he was confronted by Virginia Randolph Owens. He had been on the beach all morning and had returned to his cabin to change before his walk to the bistro for lunch. He found her standing before his door.
She was not at all what he had imagined – from the curt references to her by his employer, he’d come to expect a stylishly slender, elegant, sophisticated chairwoman of a charity fund.
She was tall and going to plump – the jeans she wore over white sneakers gave a hint of being at least a size too small, and the threads of her cotton shirt fairly strained over her full bosom. Her face was oval, the eyes were blue, and she was free of cosmetics. The hair, no doubt blonde, was hidden under a red kerchief.
She was about thirty, maybe a year or so older than Double O, and she was smoking a long cigarette. She was neither smiling nor scowling.
“Junior, I need some help...put on some pants and come along with me.”
Purvis obeyed. He got into a pickup truck and rode with her to a run-down mansion some five miles away. There, the two of them loaded an antique china cabinet into the truck and transported it to a barn beside the tourist court.
When this task was completed, she said, “Go wash your hands, Junior. Then I’ll feed you.”
Her quarters were more expansive than his own narrow room. Hers had a kitchenette, a small den, a private bath, and two small bedrooms.
She seated Purvis in the kitchenette and handed him an opened can of Pabst as she busied herself at the kitchen range.
“I think he said you were in college. How did you get mixed up with Oscar?”
“On the road last summer. He gave me some work...”
“So you’re out of school for the summer and he called you?”
“Yes, Maam.”
“You’re foolish to get mixed up with such an ass...”
“I don’t understand...”
“Well, he is an ass, isn’t he? Look at him: he just doesn’t get it!”
“Get what?”
“The Tidewater business...we were brought up in it, of course. A ten-county enclave of families that can’t help clinging to the old Colonial idea of aristocracy...we hang on to moribund properties and have our dated socials...and we feed on one another. That’s a given with us. But Oscar? No, he just doesn’t get the hang of it...”
“...we will both eventually inherit some property. I already have. I have a farm and a mansion...and both came with huge mortgages, so I rent them out...just to meet the payments. In short, Junior, we’re broke. We’re running this place for Aunt Martha...she’s in a nursing home and we get the property outright when she dies. This place gives us a roof and a little bit of income. But to Oscar? He’s still the Colonial Squire...a balance sheet means nothing to him...”
“...notice his clothes! Everything has to be tailored just so...his shoes have to be recognized brands...his cigars have to be imported...has to drive a Cadillac. And he thinks that pittance he makes with that damned organ takes care of all of it...”
“...He’s even indignant about living here...not a proper place for one of his heritage. He forgets that the world outside our little enclave of inner-bred snobs – like me – doesn’t give a damned about his brand of aristocracy...”
“...like last year he packed up and left with his organ. He really thinks of himself as casting pearls before swine. And with skinny little boppers thinking he’s an English gentleman...and any money he made was surely spent before he came back here...”
She brought over plates of meat loaf and cabbage and sat at the table with Purvis.
“...He may even net a little from the pavilion thing this summer. But that will be over by fall...that’s the social season. We’ll be at every ball, every drop-in...and he just loves to put on that monkey suit of his and ride after foxes...”
She hushed for a while and began to eat in earnest.
That she was an “older woman”, that she was dressed in such a functional way, that she was really demeaning the man Purvis worked for – all this was trivial. For even in her now sweaty clothes, she smelled like a woman. And Purvis blushed – he was finding her voluptuous.
“That Oscar! I really went on, didn’t I? Well, anyway, thank you for helping me out. I’ll be calling on you again.”
“Sure. And I had almost forgotten that his name is Oscar.”
“Ha! Yes, it is, and he hates it! And he makes up all kinds of names...but he won’t buy new accessories, so he has to stick with O’s.”
Purvis left, embarrassed by the way the woman affected him.
That night at the pavilion Double O said, “See she got you into her great enterprise, P.M. You’re in for it now. She hates to hire anybody, so she’ll be coming after you...every time she gets a check from one of her estates, she buys more junk...says it will be valuable one day. I don’t know about that...but what the hell.”
And, indeed, “Junior” was drafted for duty at least a couple of times a week.
The tourist court was near enough to the pavilion for Purvis to walk to his cabin in a few minutes after work. If Double O happened to be staying in for the night he’d give Purvis a ride.
On a particular night some weeks into the summer, Double O insisted on giving Purvis a ride home. Purvis sat in the back seat – there was a girl on the front seat with Double O.
When the car arrived at the tourist court, Double O said, “Look, Post Mortem, I have to go off...you probably won’t see Vestal, but if you do, just tell her I’m at a poker game. Understand?”
Purvis went directly to his cabin. In a few moments there was a knock at his door.
“Junior, do you know where Oscar is?” she asked through the closed door.
“No, Maam. He said something about a poker game.”
“The son of a bitch doesn’t play poker...”
She left and Purvis began to undress for bed.
But, again, there was a knock at the door. “Junior, I have a candlelight supper...come join me...”
“Junior” did as he was told. He found her dressed in an elegant gown and with a gardenia in her hair. Her perfume was intoxicating.
“Welcome to my anniversary, Junior! Nothing like a romantic supper at home with one’s husband. But it seems he has an important poker game...probably with a blonde under twenty...”
She poured them glasses of champagne and then she served leg-of-lamb, with asparagus and new potatoes, followed by strawberry shortcake. Purvis had no trouble eating the solids, but he found the champagne distasteful.
Purvis spent an hour in her company. As he was leaving, she offered her cheek, which he dutifully kissed.
He knew he’d be unable to sleep, so he put some Paul Desmond on his machine and opened a volume of Byron, Shelly and Keats.
Again there was a tapping at his door. She stood there holding a bottle of champagne and a can of beer. She was in a robe and the gardenia was still in her hair.
“I noticed that you didn’t drink your champagne, so I brought you a beer. What’s that you’re listening to?”
“Paul Desmond. He’s my favorite sax player...”
“May I come in? Do you have anything we could dance to? My anniversary, you know.”
Purvis slipped on an extended play of Jackie Gleason: slow ballads, strings with Bobby Hackett on trumpet.
The dancing led to some sloppy kissing and then the two of them flopped on the bed.
She whispered, “Have you ever had a girl before? Don’t fib; no; it’s nothing to be ashamed of...I’ll just take charge and everything will be all right...”
She left him at dawn.
A few nights later she was back. “Oscar is off getting a piece of ass. It never crosses his mind that I might want one, too...”
And on the Sunday of his last week before leaving for school, she took him to a little cottage in the country.
At exactly two o’clock, Double O switched off the organ. Purvis followed him into a little room where they sat at a small table. Momentarily, the same little waitress brought him scotch on the rocks.
“How about it, P.M.? Want some scotch? Another beer?”
“No, thank you. I will face an auditorium full of teachers in a while. I’ve already had my lunch, but I can stay a few more minutes...”
“Good. Good. Been wondering what had become of you. Finish college?”
“Yes, but I didn’t major in music.”
“Oh?”
“No. I still play the horn...gigs on the weekend...but more for fun...I just didn’t want to do that for a living...”
“So what do you do?”
“Taught history for a while. Assistant principal. Now I’m a sales rep...more money, less pressure...”
Double O finished his scotch and almost instantly the smiling waitress appeared with another.
“Give me time to finish this one, okay sweetheart?”
There was thinly veiled lust in her answering smile.
“Let’s see, now: last time I saw you, P.M., was that miserable summer at Varney Lake...”
“That’s right, Doub...er, Owen. A long lifetime ago.”
“You married?”
“Was. We split up. She kept our two kids...I’m better off single...”
“Aren’t we all? But you know we Tidewater types never go in for divorces. Take me: would have left the Vestal Virgin after a couple of years...too damned stingy...didn’t know how to live. You saw her...running her aunt’s damned tourist court, for crying out loud! Of course, it paid off. She sold the property, made a killing. And now we got her family place, and all she has to do is dabble in antiques...”
“...Now, what you wouldn’t believe is this: I am a doting father! That’s right. Me, a father!”
“Well, congratulations! How old is the child?”
“The child is Randolph Owens...now at William and Mary, like his dad...going into law...but, damn, I’m proud of him...”
“...Of course, he was an accident...sure as hell didn’t plan on it. Tell the truth, I don’t even remember it happening. You know these Tidewater women don’t believe in copulation...and my Vestal Virgin is the staunchest of the lot...even before she caught me with that little bimbo next door in Hampton. Hell, you saw it...back at that tourist court...I didn’t spend a dozen nights in that crummy little cabin...we even had separate bedrooms. But I guess the Vestal let her guard down sometime during that summer, though I don’t know why I would have...she let herself get old and fat...Aw, I don’t hold that against her...it’s just that Tidewater women are short on hormones...”
Purvis suddenly remembered something he had to attend to at the school auditorium thirty miles away.
And Double O made no real protest over Purvis’s departure, since the little waitress brought him a plate from the buffet table, and one for herself.
