Ray

Abstract

FICTION Ray Jim R. Hinsdale That Ray Nolan. Helluva character. You wouldn't know him 'less you was from Sparkle City—he ran a trucking company there ever since he graduated Cullowhee State and married. Started out with one old beatup pickup that his granddad had used at a peach shed. Last I heard, he had over a thousand trucks. If you don't know the name, bet you've seen the trucks with the big cat's paw on the side. Cat's Paw Express, that's Ray Nolan. Forty-seven. One minute he's here, the next gone, like a puff of smoke. Keeled over in his living room. Right into Jeannie's lap. Heart attack, the papers said. He had put on a few pounds. Hell, when I first met him up there at C. State, he wasn't nothing but a pipe-smoking pair of ears on a lath tobacco stick. Bet he weighed 230 last time I saw him. That's where the Cat's Paw came from, the Cullowhee State Catamounts . Clemson fans 'round Sparkle City think it's just a bad paint job that paw's yellow 'stead of orange. Ray never told them no different. Lotta Tiger fans in that area, good for business. I met Ray my freshman year. He was the senior dorm monitor. Everybody knew Ray. He had a finger in every pie. I never saw him take even a sip of beer, let alone the hard stuff, but all the bootleggers around campus knew him. If you wanted a pint for the weekend or a case, all you had to say was "Ray Nolan" and produce the cash. He never ran for student office, but if you wanted something done in the senate, you talked to Ray. And women, I never saw the like. Until he took up with Jeannie, he had a different girl each day of the week. Said that pipe smoke acted like an aphrodisiac, especially if you mixed Amphora with a dash of Sir Walter Raleigh and a pinch of Carter Hall. AU it ever got me was bad breath, but he'd meet 'em in the library or the snack bar or the lobby of their dorms till he could get 'em to ride out in that old pick-up. Ray was pretty tight with a dollar. "Saving up for business," he said. James R. Hinsdale, Warsaw, Kentucky, retired from teaching school and nowfarms 110 acres, raising tobacco, hay, and beefcattle. His articles and fiction have been published in numerous regional and literaryjournals and anthologies. 47 He loved playing pranks. It was him put that alligator in the college pond. I hear that thing's still there, growed to be ten, twelve feet long. Year before I got there, him and a couple of other guys disassembled the president's car and put it back together on the gym's roof. He snuck a cow into the dean of women's office. I helped him steal all the toilet paper from the East Carolina basketball team's locker room and replace it with a bucket full of cobs. I never will forget homecomings with Lathan-Roberts. In the old Carolinas Conference, they were C. State's arch-rivals. The L-R and C. State football game was homecoming, at one or the other school each year. Three years before I got to C. State, L-R's track team come over to Cullowhee and made off with all our hurdles. Swiped 'em right out of the storage building, carried 'em down to Hickory and burnt 'em at the pep rally night before the game. The year after, a week before the game, some C. State boys hijacked a honey wagon, drove it down to the flatlands and emptied it at the midstripe of L-R's gridiron. Them Bears had to rent a high school field to practice on for the big game. Our cheerleaders had a new cheer that year: Oh, that stench! What is it? L-R's Bears They smell like shit! 'Course back then, the cheerleader couldn't say the last word. Just let the fans fill in the...