Chapter Seven

SALT OF THE EARTH

Margo Hamilton's reaction was swift and derisive. Her face was pure, white anger behind the large, blue butterfly frame of her glasses.

"He did what? That idiot! He's as worthless as Penelope. How could he run the van into a column? And the husband is a lawyer? We're screwed! Do you hear me? We're screwed. Jesus Christ! There's roof damage to their house? Jesus Christ!"

Dave Hamilton was nonchalant compared to his wife's volcanic demeanor.

"Insurance. They've got insurance and, thank God, I paid our premium last month. We've got it too. I'll have to pay the deductible, but I'll just take it out of Wilbur's pay for the next, couple months. No problem, honey.

"Mr. Stuart was quite reasonable. He had a few expletives about Wilbur, but he cooled off when I told him he'll probably make some money off the accident. He seemed to like that. He mentioned something about putting it into his wife's remodeling account.

"The van will be in the shop for a few days. That's all. They can't be that pissed off about it because Mrs. Stuart called here and left a message for Wilbur to call her. I know Wilbur feels pretty bad about the incident. We can't get anybody dumb enough, uh, I mean, ‘flexible’ enough to work these hours."

"He's still an idiot," Margo maintained.

Wilbur was smart enough, however, to know he was persona non grata at the Dream Mechanic, at least for a few days. Dave Hamilton had a peculiar knack for smoothing over hard feelings though. It took him that length of time to soften Margo's wrath.

In the meantime, Wilbur kept himself out of circulation, certainly clear of Typhoon Margo. He purchased from Penelope's boyfriend, Miguel Aguilar, one of his specialties besides tacos: an ounce of home-grown marijuana. There wasn't much for Wilbur to do with the van in the shop, so he was self-exiled to his drab, dusty apartment for several days. A bag of marijuana was almost a necessity.

Wilbur's apartment had the look of an Alice-in-Wonderland hallucination before he even opened the bag of marijuana. His laundry was piled high in one corner like an Indian, ceremonial mound honoring the dead. It loomed even larger because the ceiling was so low. The unusually low ceiling distorted the relative sizes of everything in the apartment. When moving from room to room, Wilbur lowered his head to go through the door jambs. It reminded him of a picture of a room in an Introduction to Psychology book he used at his alma mater, which he had mockingly renamed, The University of Urban Failures.

The apartment was on the second floor of a house owned by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Simmons. It was one of many, rental properties. After living there for several months, Wilbur, because of his size, had developed an almost bat-like capacity to unconsciously duck through each door jamb. The impetus to learn this skill had come from several, memorable lumps he received on his head.

Mrs. Simmons, an organist for a Baptist church in Tampa, practiced daily on her organ. Her practice shook the house with reverential fervor. She was accompanied by rats that frolicked between the wall cavities and in the insulated attic above. Wilbur often heard them gnawing on plaster and insulation.

Miguel's marijuana was therefore a welcomed companion. Wilbur's only interruptions were from Mr. Simmons on the first floor who rang his doorbell as soon as his wife took off for the country in a big-finned, white, 1967 Cadillac. She went off, her hair buffooned, her face miraculously creamy and clear of wrinkles, and her presence as fragrant as honeysuckle and Confederate jasmine in bloom, to collect her weekly rent money.

Mr. Simmons, who was bedridden and whose guardian angel was a cylinder of oxygen which he was attached to, unhooked himself on these occasions and left his companion, Sam, a black mynah bird, that Mrs. Simmons had bought for him so he wouldn't be lonely. He walked shakily through the house to the back door to ring Wilbur's doorbell.

By then, Wilbur was already embalmed with Miguel's marijuana. He staggered to his door, in much the same condition as his visitor, to see the old man, dressed in pinstriped bedclothes and brown slippers, at the bottom of the stairs. His right hand was outstretched as if he were a supplicant at a religious shrine.

"Salt. You got any salt?" the feeble, old man managed to call out to Wilbur.

Mrs. Simmons prepared Wilbur for this behavior. She knew of her husband's practices with previous renters.

"He'll puff up like a full moon if you give him any salt. Lordy, lordy," she revealed to Wilbur when he first moved there.

Despite this warning Wilbur felt sorry for the old man. He immediately went and got his saltshaker, carefully descended the stairway and sprinkled the pale, blue veined hand with salt. Mr. Simmons smiled appreciatively.

"You ain't gonna tell my wife, are you?"

"Don't worry, Mr. Simmons. It's our secret," Wilbur confided.

Mr. Simmons, carefully grasping the salt in his hand, then shuffled back to his oxygen tank and his caretaker, Sam, the mynah bird.

"He's a good boy, that Wilbur," Mr. Simmons said to Sam as he shared a granule of salt with the bird.