Tip and Jakob, who was an immigrant from Eastern Europe, came into the liquor store two, three, sometimes four times a day. They always bought minis of vodka. The vodka was so it wouldn’t leave the scent of alcohol on their breath because they were mechanics at the nearby Buick dealership on Papermill Road. They’d get a car fixed and then tell their boss they had to take it for a test ride. They’d high-tail it up to the liquor store, just three-quarters of a mile away–close enough to be convenient but far enough away that the boss wouldn’t see them. They’d park around at the side of the store, which was visible from the main road, so I don’t know what good they thought that would do them. They’d get their minis and then slink back out to the customer’s car. Down the mini (sometimes maybe it’d be two), and then head back to the dealership, where they could report that the car had checked out just fine. Apparently, their boss was never the wiser. In my naivete, I once suggested to Jakob, who went by Jack, that they’d get more for their money if they’d buy a half pint. He looked at me sadly and said in his good but heavily accented English, “Whatever I get, I drink all at once. I stick to little bottles.” I guess a man’s got to know his limitations.
Tip was a nice (if somewhat inebriated) guy. Youngish–I’d have put him in his 30s at the time–and reasonably attractive. Jack was older, but they were good friends, in spite of the age, culture, and language barriers. From what I understood, they hung out during their free time as well as at work. They enjoyed one another’s company, I guess, or else it was just better than drinking alone. Jack also enjoyed the company of Tip’s wife, Leona. Leona was one of those bleached-blonde women who–though she was probably about the same age as her husband–looked old beyond her years. She already had wrinkles, her body was kind of shapeless, and she was missing a few teeth. She was not an attractive woman, but that evidently didn’t keep the men from coming around.
Leona would come to the store every afternoon and spend hours there, just confiding in me. I was 21, just out of college, still in the suburbs, and had no idea what to make of this junkyard-dog of a woman. Leona was mean, and I was afraid of her. So, I just agreed to whatever she said, though I was appalled by everything that came out of her mouth. Her speech was typical of the kind of uneducated East Tennesseans I’d grown up with. I’d known them at school, so it seemed like they’d had the same opportunity to learn at least decent grammar as the rest of us. The difference is that, by fourth grade they were out “sick” more often than not, and by fifth grade, they disappeared altogether. At the time, I wondered what was wrong with them that they were sick so often. I myself was a somewhat pale, sickly child, but even I didn’t miss as much school as they did. Now, as an adult, I realize that they were either being put to work on their family’s farms or else they were from such dysfunctional families that they couldn’t make it to school on a regular basis for a variety of reasons that would have traumatized me for life if I’d known about such things.
Anyway, Leona was probably one of those early dropout kids all grown up and now wreaking havoc on her own family. I mean, she and her husband spent as much as five or six hours in the local liquor store, for crying out loud; not even at a bar, idly passing the time with other drunks. I never could figure out why they hung out at the liquor store; maybe they’d been kicked out of all of the local bars. Leona was definitely the kind who would’ve started fights at bars, I figured.
It was Leona herself who told me about her many affairs, including with Jakob–her husband’s best friend. She said that Tip was a nice guy, employed, and was “stable.” He wasn’t going anywhere (in more ways than one), he was kind to her and her kids, he paid the bills (which had not been a given with her previous “husbands”) and–this appeared to be the vital point–he was clueless. Again, these were Leona’s descriptions of Tip, not mine. She was pleased that she could carry on with other men and that Tip was oblivious.
I know that in some such relationships the cheatee knows, but for reasons of his or her own, decides to remain silent–and married to the cheater. But I never could figure this one out. Tip was a good man, reasonably good-looking, and employed. In spite of his drinking problem, Tip could’ve done better than Leona, who was not his equal in looks, temperament, or earning ability. In fact, I could never see any redeeming qualities at all that would have kept Tip with Leona. Maybe it was the sex, though–looking at Leona–that seemed unlikely to me. In fact, I could only imagine what was in it for her illicit partners. I assume that it was a little spending money of her own that drove Leona, but, good grief, it really seems like the guys could’ve done better if they’d just gone out to Magnolia Avenue. I guess that Leona’s main advantages were proximity and price.
I felt sorry for Tip, though. I would look at him sympathetically when he came in. Who knows, if he’d left her for a better woman, maybe he wouldn’t even have had to drink anymore. Leona would’ve driven anyone to drink, after all. I really don’t think he knew about Leona and the other men. I wanted to take him aside and tell him, but even as young and innocent as I was, I knew better. Plus, I didn’t want to get my throat slit by Leona. So, I just watched this awful daytime drama unfold in my liquor store.
One day, Leona came in with a cervical collar around her neck. She explained that she’d been in a car accident that was the other person’s fault. She’d gotten whiplash, and who knows what all else, she said, and it hurt like a demon. Over the next few weeks, Leona came in, always faithfully wearing her collar. As time went on, she confided in me that she wasn’t really hurt. And finally it came out that she was not driving her own car–she didn’t have one–but she had borrowed a friend’s car with this very scheme in mind. She drove around the parking lot of West Town Mall because she wanted the accident to be at low speed. What’s the point of getting into an accident if your settlement money really does have to pay for medical bills? She figured that a crowded mall parking lot was the perfect place to stage her little money-making scheme. It wasn’t all that hard. She just cruised around the lot until she found a luxury car being driven by a nice-looking middle-aged gent. It was perfect: a nice car and a nice, upper-middle-class looking driver–he was bound to have good insurance. Leona herself didn’t have insurance at all; back in those days, it wasn’t required by the state of Tennessee. So, she got in front of this guy, poked along for a little ways and then slammed on her brakes. Perhaps I should say that she slammed on her friend’s brakes. Sure enough, the guy couldn’t stop in time, so the accident was his fault.
But now she had to wear this expletive-deleted uncomfortable collar everywhere she went, she complained. She had to make it look convincing, after all. She could only take the cursed thing off at night when she was home, with the shades drawn, lest the guy’s insurance company was using a private detective to check up on her story. Apparently that was a real possibility because Leona had been in more than her fair share of “accidents.”
Between this and the way she treated Tip, I wanted to find out the name of the other driver’s insurance company in the worst way so that I could call their claims department and report Leona’s scheme. I could just imagine the satisfaction of hearing that they’d come and arrested her, collarless at home one night, and dragged her off to jail. It would’ve been such a joy to see that wretched woman where she belonged. But then, I imagined the trial. (I’d seen way too much TV, which was my only experience with the legal system and courtroom procedure.) I, having the only actual evidence of Leona’s treachery, would be the prosecution’s star witness. I could imagine the satisfaction of getting up before the entire court and telling them of her intentionally planned misdeeds. I would look with steely determination right into Leona’s eyes, which were shooting darts of death at me the whole time. She, clearly, was not afraid of jail time. I, on the other hand, was quite afraid of her. And the whole daydream would disappear in a poof of sweat-soaked fear.
Actually, I never was able to get the name of the insurance company from her, so I’ll never know whether I would’ve had the nerve to face her after I’d turned her in. Somewhere in my TV-saturated mind, I knew that there probably wouldn’t be a trial at all. Her claim would be dropped, the insurance company would agree not to prosecute her in exchange for some kind of probationary time for her, and then...there’d she be, back in my liquor store, knowing that someone had spilled the beans, and I was the only one she had told about her scheme. She would’ve slit my throat. Leona was the kind of woman who, if you got on the wrong side of her, would just as soon kill you as to look at you, and I knew it.
