Chapter Text
January 2nd
Stan straightened his posture and smoothed out the fabric of his suit with his hands. He combed his fingers through his hair, checking his reflection in the glass of a stranger's living room window. He cleared his throat, before knocking on the door in front of him.
‘Good morning, I’d like to have a minute of your time…have you ever found yourself needing a place to store your— no. Sick of using old margarine containers for your leftovers? Are you sick or wrapping everything in tin foil?’
He practiced his speech as he heard footsteps approaching.
The door was swiftly opened a moment later by a plump older woman wearing a kitchen apron that had flour down her front.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
And like a robot Stan spat of his pre-rehearsed lines, “Good morning Ma’am, if I could have just a moment of your time—”
SLAM.
The door was shut swiftly in his face.
‘Great.’
No biggie. It wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to. His first house of the day was never a success.
He turned tail and trailed down the woman's walkway back to the street. He walked over to the next house where he repeated the process.
This time there was no answer when he knocked.
‘No sweat. Keep trying.’
Down one house again. A teenager answered the door, he asked to speak to the kid’s mom. They rolled their eyes at him and groaned, ‘Moooom!’
A young thirty something year old woman came to the door. Stan had her attention with the Putterware, then quickly lost it once he started flirting with her.
He had the same luck down the entire block. No answer. A slammed door in his face, an old man who couldn’t give two shits about what he was selling, a rude ass teenager etc.
He sat in his car alone. There was no heating inside. He pulled out a lighter and lit a cigarette.
‘Fucking hell…’
He had bit off more than he could chew. He was terrified to face his brother again. He didn’t know how he’d react once they were pitted face to face again. But as much as he tried to force himself to hate the man, he just couldn’t do it. Regardless of how complicated his feelings were, he knew one thing for certain. He need to prove to him that he wasn’t a fuck up. He needed to be able to stand on his own two legs. If that meant getting back into his old business so be it, but preferably under… new management.
He drove a few streets over to another neighborhood to try again. He had one successful sale. He sold a lettuce keeper to an elderly woman. He made a profit of $4.00. Which wouldn’t even buy him a tank of gas.
He had his work cut out for him…
Fiddleford stood in front of the mirror in his room. He fastened the buttons on Ford’s shirt that he’d lent him. Neither had done laundry in ages, it was his only choice. He rolled up the sleeves to meet his wrists, and Ford said that he had monkey arms... He stuffed the hem of the shirt into his pants and buttoned his Wranglers.
Why did job interviews always make him so nervous?
He looked like shit. He hadn’t slept for more than a couple of hours at a time in weeks and it showed. He had dark circles under his eyes that had sent their message loud and clear, we’re here to stay!
His pants were practically falling off of him, he’d been so stressed that it had affected his appetite. He grabbed his belt from his dresser and threaded it through his belt loops, he nearly buckled it then paused.
Jesus, he was skinny.
It was at that moment Ford walked past his door. He caught Fidds staring at himself in the mirror.
“Everything alright?” he asked.
“I need your opinion on something—” He grabbed a gold colored belt buckled from his dresser and held it over the zipper of his jeans, “Does this belt buckle make me look tough? Or does it make me look more like a hillbilly?”
Ford furrowed his brow, “Uhh…” he drew out before finally answering, “I don’t follow.”
“I’ve a job interview today. Down at the auto-repair shop. I’m trynna make myself look presentable,” he sat the belt buckled down on his dresser and picked up a comb and pomade.
“But Fiddleford, you are a hillbilly?”
“That doesn’t mean I want to look like one.”
“But you’ve always been so unashamed of yourself, I’ve watched you eat fried opossum before?”
“Ford, that was a rabbit, I was fucking with you,” he frustratedly. He stepped closer to the mirror and began fixing his hair.
“Still though, why are you suddenly afraid of looking like yourself?”
“Because, nobody takes you seriously when you talk like me. I don’t need to waltz in there lookin’ like Ernest T. Bass.”
“I take you seriously.”
Fiddleford stopped messing with his hair and turned to face Ford, “Because you know me, but Ford, if your doctor spoke like me would you trust him?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Really? So if you found out you had a brain tumor, and your surgeon said to you, ‘Well Mr. Pines, it looks like that tumor of yours is as big as all git out, but don’t you sit there and fret none ‘cause what we goin’ do is saw the top of yer head off root around in there with a pair of forceps and see if we cain't git that dad burn thing out?’” Somehow, his accent grew even more thick whilst mocking his own dialect.
Ford exhaled through his nose, he fumbled around for his words because he knew Fidds was right.
“I uh, think the phrase, ‘saw the top of your head off,’ would be quite alarming.”
“But regardless,” he said, before dropping his accent entirely and switching to the most plain American accent he could manage, “wouldn’t you feel much safer if you Doctor spoke like this,” quickly he switched back to his normal voice, “Instead of this?”
Ford sighed, “I suppose it is inevitable to be judged by some aspect of where you're from. I’ve had plenty of people make Jersey jokes about me—”
“It ain’t the same. People hear my voice and automatically deduct 100 IQ points. Everyone assumes that because of how I talk, I must be some ignorant, racist, backwooded, barefooted, cousin-lovin’, moonshine makin’, motherfucker, incapable of holding any kind of complex thought in his head. That I don’t bath or brush my teeth. That I’m a Bible thumper— and a million other things that just aren’t true. And you don’t understand it.”
“No, I suppose I wouldn’t,” he began, “But I don’t think you should change yourself to fit someone else's narrative, what better way to prove to others that southerners can be intelligent, and socially aware, that you aren’t all victims of incest or incessantly religious, is there than by being southern and intelligent and kind in front of them? It’s as if you’re saying, hey look at me, I don’t fit your mold of what a southern person has to be!”
“It ain’t that simple, even if these people do manage to look past my voice and see me for who I really am, they’ll view me as the exception, not the rule.”
“Better than nothing right?”
“Hardly.” He said without meeting his gaze and instead returned to fixing his hair.
Ford kissed his teeth, “... Go with the belt buckle. It makes you look… sensible.”
He shot him a quick glance, “Thanks.”
Ford sighed, “I came up here to ask you if you had seen my brother? I can’t find him.”
“He left. Said he was gonna try hittin’ up the neighbors, see if he couldn’t sell them any of his Tupperware.”
“Putterware,” he corrected.
Fiddleford shook his head, “Whatever.”
He was being awfully short, Ford thought. They hadn’t acknowledged their argument before. They still haven't decided who was right or wrong.
Fiddleford was making some kind of insinuation about his brother that he didn’t understand. He thought that Fiddleford had no right to tell him how to feel about his own brother. And to say he wished they’d never met… He didn’t really mean it, he told himself…at least, he thinks so.
Fiddleford thought Ford was being intentionally dense. It was so glaringly obvious Stan had been through something seriously traumatic, how Ford couldn’t see it was mind blowing. But it wouldn’t be the first time his head was shoved so far up his own ass that he couldn’t see what was right in front of his face…
They both thought the other should apologize first. But Fiddleford knew it’d likely end up being him.