BATESVILLE CASKET COMPANY

 

Some small towns are funny. The rest are just plain scary. I remember being in Batesville Arkansas once. They manufacture caskets there. As you pass by the town square, there are a dozen grizzled old men, retired casket-makers, that give you the hairy eyeball. There is a stop sign there, but its best just to roll right through it. I stopped off at the diner, where the owner needed more information about me than what I would have expected before he could serve me.
'Its not me, " he explained, "its the darn Chamber of Commerce. They don't want no tourists or college kids classin' up the place."
He told me that it was for that reason he couldn't get anything but frozen peas to serve with his Chicken Fried Steak.
"No fresh vegetables" they had told him, "Too delicious, people might come back"
None of it made any sense, even when he asked if I would like to buy his restaurant so he could get out of Batesvlle Arkansas.

It reminded me of a movie I saw long ago, "Wake In Fright" with Donald Pleasance. He played a schoolteacher who was stranded in a funny scary small town in the Australian outback, where they drank every night and everybody played a game with dice and no one could leave until they won the stupid game. Of course Pleasance never won, the movie ends with him sitting in the scorching sun, sucking on the barrel of a rifle and a single bullet in the chamber.

I just got back from passing through another town like this on my way to a private lake to fish and camp overnight.
The cashiers at the grocery where I stopped for ice and some hot dogs looked at me funny and said "From out of town aren't you?" and its not a question at all. As I passed through the town square there were familiar looking grizzled old men on the courthouse porch that didn't bother to look up from playing dominos. They knew I was there, they knew I was there since before I left the grocery store. I waved at the one who did look up, but he just spat some tobacco juice and stared right through me as I passed.

Later at the lake there is an eerie quiet and there are no fish, or fisherman, its just you on the lake and you feel a million eyes watching you.
The lady at the grocery store said there had been gators in the lake, and they called in a gator hunter and he pulled 23 out of there and thinks he got them all, but none of the locals will go near it. She says it like there is a deeper meaning, one you cannot quite discern, and you feel a chill go up your spine. You start to imagine that somewhere someone is building an altar of straw in the shape of an alligator, like the one in the movie "Hook" and you fight back the feeling you and that altar will have a lot in common around midnight. That you will be swallowed whole by a straw alligator, and then a mob of angry townspeople will come with pitchforks and torches and set the straw alligator afire.
And all you really wanted to do was catch a couple bass and cook some hot dogs over an open fire.

Trying to get a weather report on the car radio, it doesn't surprise you one bit when you find your car battery has died, or when the local deputy shows up just past dusk with a bottle of whiskey and a set of dice.
The next time you pass by a big 18 wheeler full of coffins, take a look at the tags.
I bet its from Batesville.