Between Wrecks by George Singleton Page A

the river and selling them to people who like to make puzzles out of their yard. I have no clue what this guy means for me to do.”
    Abby looked over the email. I was to write a ten page paper and send it back within two weeks. “First off, read that chapter. It should give you some clues. That’s what happened to me when I wasn’t sure about a paper I wrote once on How to Interview the Criminally Insane back in college. You remember that paper? You pussied out and wrote one on How to Interview the Deaf.”
    I’d gotten an A on that one: I merely wrote, “To interview a deaf person, find a sign language interpreter.” That was it.
    Abby said, “There’s this scrapbooking place next door to Feline Fitness. Come on in to work with me and I’ll take you over there. Those people will have some stories to tell, I bet. Every time I go past it, these women sit around talking.”
    We sat on our front porch, overlooking the last three tons of river rock I’d scooped out, piled neatly as washer-dryer combos, if it matters. Below the rocks, the river surged onward, rising from thunderstorms up near Asheville. I said, “What are you talking?” I’d not heard of the new sport of scrapbooking.
    â€œThese people get together just like a quilting club, I guess. They go in the store and buy new scrapbooks, then sit there and shove pictures and mementos between the plastic pages. And they brag, from what I understand. The reason I know so much about it is, I got a couple women in my noon aerobics class who showed up early one day and went over to check out the scrapbook place. They came back saying there was a Junior Leaguer ex-Miss South Carolina in there with flipbooks of her child growing up, you know. She took a picture of her kid two or three times a day, so you can flip the pictures and see the girl grow up in about five minutes.”
    I got up, walked off the porch, crawled beneath the house a few feet, and pulled out a bottle of bourbon I kept there hidden away for times when I needed to think—which wasn’t often in the river rock business. When I rejoined my wife she’d already gotten two jelly jars out of the cupboard. “There’s a whole damn business in scrapbooks? Who thought that up? America,” I said. “Forget the South being fucked up. America.”
    â€œYou can buy cloth-covered ones, and puffy-covered ones, and ones with your favorite team’s mascot on the cover. There are black ones for funeral pictures, and white ones for weddings. There are ones that are shaped like Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, dogs, cats, cars, and Jesus. They’ve even got scented scrapbooks.” Abby slugged down a good shot of Jim Beam and tilted her glass my way for more. “Not that I’ve been in Scraphappy! very often, but they’ve got one that looks like skin with tattoos and everything, shaped like an hourglass, little tiny blond hairs coming off of it. It’s for guys to put their bachelor party pictures inside.”
    I didn’t ask her if it smelled like anything. I said, “I wonder if they have any bullet-riddled gray flannel scrapbooks for pictures of dead Confederate relatives.” I tried to imagine other scrap-books, but couldn’t think of any. “When’s your next class?”
    We drove down the mountain on the next morning, a Wednesday, so Abby could lead a beginner aerobics class. Wednesdays might as well be called “little Sunday” on a Southern calendar, for smalltown banks and businesses close at noon in order for employees to ready themselves for Wednesday night church services. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, little Sunday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday—like that. My common-law wife took me into Scraphappy!, looked at a wall of stickers, then said, “I’ll be back a little after noon, unless someone needs personal training.” She didn’t kiss me on the cheek. She looked over