WANDER DOWN RIVER; A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES by LAURA PAYNE, B.A.

A THESIS

IN

ENGLISH

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Approved

Accepted

December, 1995 /Wo ih^O^ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe a debt of gratitude to Professors Doug Crowell and Jill Patterson. Dr. Crowell first challenged me to work hard and aspire toward an artistic voice. He made me realize my own writing through self-critique. Dr. Patterson gave me unerring support and advice. She listened patiently to my insecurities and gave me honesty in return. William Faulkner once said in a 1956 interview with Jean Stein that the formula for a good writer is dictated by the demons that choose him and that formula goes as follows: "99% talent...99% discipline...99% work... He must never be satisfied with what he does. It is never as good as it can be. Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do." Without the caring and expertise of my committee, I do not believe that I could have understood or agreed with Mr. Faulkner. I also thank my friends, family, and classmates. 1 especially thank Mase Lewter for being my friend and for somehow findingsomethin g valuable in my stories. Her outlook on life and talent as a writer constantly inspired me to work on, to dream, and to shoot higher. Thank you to my parents for raising me up rightan d for not suffering a collective coronary when I chose not to be a lawyer but to write stories instead. TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1 n. WANDER DOWNRIVER 8 m. POWWOW 24 TV. OLD HANDS 38 V. FLIMFLAMMAN 50 VI. BROTHER DAMON TAKES A RIDE 63 Vn. BILLY BOYS PAWNSHOP AND MUSIC EMPORIUM 76 Vin. THE VERANDA 89 DC. SHIMMERDANCE 107

ni CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

-Langston Hughes from "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"

I was introduced to Langston Hughes' poem of rivers as an imdergraduate at this university. At the time, I was struck with the beauty of the language and the beat of the rhythm that seemed to hide within the letters, the words, the lines. Through the years, the poem has stayed with me as a companion, an inspiration, for my travels down rivers. The theme of riversha s continued, with the actual poem, to &scinate me. The river is a symbol, a metaphor, for the continuation of life and for the struggles of a culture or an individual. I feel that Langston Hughes, with his words, attempts to indicate the history we all hold within our souls. We don't necessarily need to have physically witnessed the birth of our roots in order to feel those roots beating inside and informing our lives. With that message in mind, I wrote this collection. The idea of it began a few years ago when I returned to north Florida-a childhood home-to live with my maternal family and try my hand at writing for a newspaper. The idealist inside me longed to write at a small town paper and act, for a little while, like all those great writers I learned about in 1 college. "Newspapering" seemed to be the first step to greatness for so many American writers. But while I learned a great deal about answering phones, mailing subscription notices, gofering-a little about writing-and much about life on my own, very little greatness developed. What did develop was the story of Booker T Goldwire and his friend Junior. 1 worked at the Gadsden County Times in Quincy, Florida, and lived in Tallahassee. Quincy is about twenty miles west of Tallahassee right on the east edge of the Florida Panhandle, and I drove my old, umeliable car back and forth every day. I didn't mind too much, because the drive gave me time to look aroimd the jungle that is north Florida. One afternoon, on my way home, I stopped at the Suwaimee Swifty convenience store to gas up my car. The Suwaimee Swifty is a small-town number much like an AUsups in Texas. I stood at the pump, pouring gas into my car, when this decrepit old Impala lumbered loud and slow up next to me. The man inside the car looked older somehow than the rusty metal contraption he traveled in, but he jumped out of that car as spry as a twenty-year-old. He swaggered over to me and, cool as could be, said, "I be getting your gas, baby." I named him Booker T Goldwire in my imagination, and a relationship was bom on a hot, afternoon in north Florida, on a day when 1 was doing nothing extra special. While I never saw the model for my character again, the relationship has continued in my work for years.

North Florida is a very special area of the country. So much of the landscape remains wild and undeveloped, and the people who live there seem to develop and civilize themselves as slowly as the jungle. Both people and the land they inhabit down there seem a bit wild and unrestrained. They are wrapped up in a package of Southern maimers as pretty as wild roses, but if you look into the eyes of a Southerner, a wildness of thorns and vines adorns the package. Southern short stories, according to the anthology entitled A Modern Southern Reader, develop fromth e "native Southern idiom and oral storytelling tradition" (15). I tend to 2 write tales of people and their tensions with themselves, with the people around them, and with the traditions behind them. The deep South, especially south Georgia and north Florida, is interesting, because it refuses to concede defeat to the encroaching Americanization that threatens to engulf it into normalcy all the time. The area retains a distinct, independent character. One of the most distinct characteristics is the continued separation of the races. They remain socially at odds somewhat, but while I lived among my family, I experienced the beauty of both cultures. 1 was struck with the family togetherness ever-existent in the black culture in Quincy. They gathered in great, extended family groups both in trouble and in happiness. Every occasion seemed like a celebration of life and of roots, and that seemed beautiful to me. They accepted people for who they were. They called me "Blue-eyes," and 1 was fascinated. Their lives revolved around music and the rhythm of the river. They strove to excel vMle planted firmly in their world, not desiring to leave it. The youngest child stUl remained at home to care for parents until their deaths, and grandfathers sat at parties in the best chair while children listened to stories of the past. The white culture is one reminiscent of old lace and velvet marmers. The outward actions of the white culture seemed somehow restrained and quiet, a way of life. But within that outward restraint lived an electricity that brought to mind the lightning bugs and their shining, disappearing dance. The white culture at times searched for life outside of the South, but the inherent spirit of tradition remained a constant: Once a Southerner, always a Southerner. 1 found my family-my Southern roots-which has resided in the area for generations. I lived with my Uncle Bob and Aunt Mary, and from them, I learned to think Southern, to enjoy the flow of the river in an aesthetic sense. The year I spent with my Southern family was quite a while ago, and at a time when I felt very hopeless about completing this collection, about remembering details and recreating electricity, I received a book written by my uncle. Jack Olive. He is a younger brother of my late maternal 3 grandfather. Daddy Bob, and he wrote his memoirs of growing up in Bainbridge, Georgia-just north of Quincy. His early memories are of the twenties in a rural country in which fiin was learning to drive a Ford Model T and traveling in it for miles to listen to an Edison phonograph. I read the book, entitled Jax Trax: An Autobiography, and I felt once again inspired to imagine the rivers I came from, generations of fishing and dancing with the lightning bugs always shimmering in the north Florida evenings. Uncle Jack ended his memoirs with the line, "Once upon a time there lived a man named Jack, not his real name, but that's what everybody called him...." My collection is not a true story of the south or of my roots or rivers,bu t one I created in my imagination, based on experiences of mystery and beauty, living with these southern folks in the jungle. I attempted in the coUection to intertwine short stories which would inform one another through thematic reverberations. The stories were written in couplets, somewhat, but they are arranged here in order for the ideas to transcend through themes rather than plot and chronology. My first story ("Wander Down River") examines regret and imderstanding, both dictated by the pride of the main character, Booker T Goldwire. The collection proceeds with an examination of actions and reactions, reality and subterfuge. 1 worked with the theme of the Southern experience as it affects the relationships among my characters, especially those between men and women. Everyone has his or her own river to travel down in order to findhim - or herself, and as is so common in Southern literature, those rivers and those who travel down them are often at odds. A Modem Southern Reader states that all Southern short stories resemble each other with these distinct qualities: [T]wo standard features [exist in] modem Southem writing: its preoccupation with the past, with Southem history, and its rediscovery of the hidden resources of Southem language. There is a third resemblance that comes to mind, the general tendency of the Southem writer to speculate on form and purpose of the short story. (17) The intermingling of emotional preoccupation, language, and speculation of form lends energy and distinction to the Southem genre. At times, raw and somewhat cutting, I hope 4 my stories indicate realistic dimensions in the personalities of my characters-dimensions representative of the human experience. My stories present three families in Quincy: the Woodards, the Goldwires, and the Rutledges. Each family comes from a distinctly different cultural background, and each owns a firm position in the class stmcture. The Woodards come fromth e privileged, moneyed, plantation-aristocracy class; the Goldwires are rural, uneducated, and black; the Rutledges represent the newer merchant class, relatively uneducated and more difficult to define culturally. The collection spans a time frame of forty years and examines the changes that occur as the rivero f time moves on. "Shimmer Dance" opens in the late 1920s, and "The Veranda" closes at the end of the 1960s. The themes throughout consider the cultural restraints on women in the south, the lack of understanding between the cultures who have cohabitated for generations, and the lack of self-imderstanding ever-existent in all humans. I like the Southem genre and am inspired by it because it indeed constantly reexamines itself and, at times, makes fun of itself in the process. One author who inspired this particular collection is William Faulkner. His collection of short stories. Go Down, Moses, intertwines characters in a fashion in which the narrative works as an examination of culture along with the individual character who engages in the same. The stories span, through changing perspectives, a great deal of time in the lives of the characters, but the questions put forth by Faulkner about society and our place in it remain the same. My story, "Wander Down River," was inspired directly by Faulkner's book. Faulkner's collection seems to indicate that we don't leave our roots: We retum to them in death. "Go Down, Moses," the title and final story in Faulkner's collection, shows, an ancient, rural, black grandmother attempting to make funeral arrangements for her grandson who has lost his way, lost his Southem roots by mnning to the north. After a grueling time getting his remains home with nothing more than her pride and heritage to barter, Faulkner writes in the final paragraph of the story: Yes...It doesn't matter to her now. Since it had to be and she couldn't stop it, and now that it's over and done and finished,sh e doesn't care how he died. Shejust wanted him home right. She wanted that casket and those flowers and the hearse and she wanted to ride through town behind it in a car. (365) I hope to indicate the riveralway s flowingpas t us. Whether we choose to travel down with the flow of the river, stmggle against the current, or even sit on the banks and watch the water, is the imwavering question in life-throughout the generations, regardless of class distinction. Another favorite storyteller is Sherwood Anderson. Winesburg, Ohio inspired me toward an appreciation for the weirdness in small town life and for the grotesque character. Like Langston Hughes, I go back to Anderson constantly for his use of language and the idea of character study as a primary focus in writing. The first story in Winesburg, Ohio is the "Book of the Grotesque." In this story, which functions more as an introduction, Anderson presents the author as an old man. He defines the intention of the short story collection through a group of people termed "grotesques" who live in this small town and who represent human tmths individually:

It was the tmths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it a tmth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the tmth he embraced became a falsehood. (5) In the same vein, my characters seek tmth in their worlds. Many of them find that the tmth they lived with all their lives was a falsehood, perhaps not for their ancestors, but for themselves in their present. They want to find their ways in the age in which they live and, in the South, that is often not easy. Anderson listed life's constant tmths as virginity, passion, wealth, poverty, thrift, profligacy, carelessness, and abandon (4). In the South, the main tmth is tradition. And regardless of your racial, economic, or social standing in 6 the deep jungle, tradition informs your life. In fact, the acknowledgment of the tmth is often denied in favor of the pride that lives inside the Southemer and dictates actions and feelings. Some of my characters are paralyzed by their pride, and this self-infliction restrains their growth. 1 meant in this collection to examine and reexamine-in the Southem tradition-the human experience just wandering down the river. CHAPTER n "WANDER DOWN RTVER" Wander Dovra River

Through a fog of dust mingling with heat and rising in a cloud from the gravel in puffs of footfalls, the road looms ahead, always ahead, and the man takes his first steps in a wandering. The man walks and the crunch of gravel softens as it settles into the sand under his shoes, under those shoes of cracked leather, hard and flapping at the toes. The road is yet another pathway etched out in the jungle landscape of the deep south. Endless red-brown ribbonso f dust float lazily up aroimd the man toward the sun that hangs directly above and is the same color as the ribbons of dust in the wavering heat. The road is bounded by pushed-up mounds: left-over jimgle ground, now a barrier between what was there before and what is there now beneath those feet. Step after step in a wandering as pointless as the ant hills painstakingly built out of the dirt of this same jimgle, only to be thoughtlessly, unknowingly kicked in, demolished by the man in wom, cracked leather boots.

Step after step, the road unrolls ahead with no particular destination, disappearing in a wavering horizon. Somehow, the man knows that the wandering is his legacy, his birthright, and that the road is his damnation. Or it is a salvation. But with each clomping step, the man fails to imderstand the difference, only aware that the dust and the soft crunch continue to beat with the rhythm of thoughtlessness and shoes moving forever forward. The lack of destination melds body with movement. Step after step. The dry oversized shoes are some handout. The man's foot moves forward a half-beat before the shoe. Will the shoe ever fail to follow and will that matter? Will failure of the exterior protection on the man's foot impede the constant traveling down the crunchy, cushy road? Or will only the knowledge of impediments intermpt the legacy of the wandering? ****

Cane poles hung out the backseat window, kind of drooping like willow branches as the car crept up to the Suwarmee Swifty gas station just west of the Ochlokonee River. Booker T Goldwire got out of his dilapidated Impala that was the color of the river and lookedjust about as old. Many things about the old man were the color of the river. His skin brought to mind river mud with its diversity of browns that lightened like sand on the banks as the darkness glistened and stretched lighter over the vastness of his cheekbones and nose. His darting eyes were a watery black with lightning snatches of trouble burning in the center. Booker T got himself only a gallon of gas after checking his pockets for change and noting that he barely had enough to buy a pack of Cools and a quart of malt liquor. Eleanor had packed him some dog bread and greens from last night's dirmer for sure, but he doubted that she gave him any ham-she sure liked her ham. Eleanor worked in Mrs. Woodard's house during the day as housekeeper and was considerably stingy with their leftovers in the morning dew when Booker T scratched like an old dog at the back screen door on his way to the river. Stingy though she was, Eleanor thought Booker T Goldwire was worth living with; he brought home mullet almost every night, and with his Saturday night jooking, he consistently worried her into a frenzy worthy of Sunday pray-ins with old Brother Damon down at the Mt. Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church. Junior normally sat on the bench outside the Suwannee Swifty in that same moming dew waiting for Booker T. He regularly piled into the back of the Impala and simply went along for the ride to the river. Short, pudgy, and taupe-colored, he possessed the iimocence of a man lacking the mental capacity to age with the natural progression of life's troubling events. Junior had lived on his own since his mama Alice ran off with the 10 last of a string of flimflamme n when Booker T supposed he was around ten. Everyone said at the time the man was just another flimflamma n and would, as a trick of the trade of flimflamming,certainl y leave her in the next town. She had wandered back, always, dirty and sweaty along the dusty roads to Georgia, but finally the one time she never retumed. For weeks, the boy waited on the stoop of his mama's shack, deep in the woods where, in the old days, jooks hid haunting blues and flowingmoonshin e from the civilization of the white folks and their laws. Time's passage seemed not to register in young Junior's mind, overfilled with stories of the glory days of his mother Alice's youthful wanderings. The boy simply sat on the stoop, hummed blue tunes, and looked up at the pine trees for days on end, but finally the landlord arrived and told him to get on down the road to make room for new tenants. Booker T was at the store as usual that day gassing up the old Impala—it had been old even then. He saw the boy later, tattered and starved after weeks in the elements, wandering down the highway toward the Georgia line and pulled up next to him. Booker T slowed near Junior and asked him if he wanted a ride. The boy just stared vacantly down at the gravel and dust of the road. He walked in a trance, slowly forward, and the scene startled Booker T with the pang of memories. He, too, as a kid in years past, had wished to follow the wanderings of Alice. In the dreamy past, Booker T had received only half-tmths and stories from the flirtatious floozygirl , childhood whisperings on the bar stools in the jooks of Gadsden County. Summer solstice of iced beer going down with the sun that shown through the loose planks and made a rickety,dust-shimme r dance in the moonshine hall. He moumed that moming of Junior's first wandering; he moumed for lost, unrequited love and for the fact that all Alice seemed capable of giving to this simple-minded young boy was the legacy of tortured wandering. Booker T allowed the boy to just walk on, paralyzed by his own cobwebs of sorrow and imcertainty.

11 Junior disappeared for a couple of weeks then, and ever since that first foray into the unknown, he took to wandering in any given direction after just about any slight disturbance in his routine. Booker T only actually saw him take to wandering that first time years ago. But if Junior failed to show up at the store in the momings, the old man knew the yoimg man was off wandering, and his mourning for the act disturbed the old fisherman until Junior retumed. When he did show back up after a wandering, Booker T simply opened the door to the Impala and silently let him in. Junior never talked about his wandering—never seemed to remember it particularly. He just crawled into the back seat, absently scratched his dirty skin and yawned. Booker T brooded often about this mystery of genetics that had quickly developed into a local myth—as myths do in small, close commimities with comer stores. His face a mixture of desperation and relief, Booker T kept to his business, started up the old car, and drove on to the river. He always pushed the wandering into the place with myths, unanswered. Still silently consumed after all these years by flimflamme n and their effects on those who should stay contented on the banks of the rivers that flow lazily through Gadsden County, neither fishermeneve r mentioned what should have remained in the past but instead hovered like the dust devils along the mtted, dirt road to Bainbridge. The old man hated to broach history: a subject that might tempt Junior into a wandering. He theorized that by maintaining a level of attention upon the art of fishing, the flow of the river would heal Junior. Jimior, for his part, never attempted to broach the subject of his past, because he heard snatches of gossip about his mama as he passed through doors in dmgstores and jooks. The stories held a smattering of tmth for the simple young man, half memories fromth e stoop of Alice's shack as she rambled on, slapping mosquitos from her thigh and sighing into herself She would stare at the full moon and tell Junior that he best not try to hit his fist against that moon, don't make her mistakes. Then she heaved her heavy bones up fromth e top step and walked slowly down the tree-covered 12 dirt roads, through the woods, and toward the jooks. Junior sat, stared at that moon, and strained to hear the tune that Alice hummed to herself Years later. Junior's mind never quite understood the coimection between his proclivity toward wandering and the night stories of his mama. Booker T loved Junior almost as desperately as he had loved Alice as a precocious boy. At the time of the woman's final disappearance, Booker T tried to take him in, but Eleanor said she deserved to be married if she was going to take in more stray dogs than what she already had. So Junior just met the old man at the gas station in the momings before the sun began beating down on the concrete parking lot, melting the asphalt into gum and paralyzing the dogs that followed Junior aroimd into a slumber of panting, dried-out tongues. Booker T wasn't sure where Junior slept most nights, but the simple man seemed content when Booker T slowed the Impala to a stop every moming. This moming, Booker T looked casually around for Junior but failed to see any indication of him, only the comings and goings of fravelers toward Tallahassee and the routine of regular customers who always sat outside the fronto f the store, intermittently buying food with their government stamps, then buying quarts of beer with their change. "Anyone seen Junior this moming?" inquired the old man, flashing a quick smile at three fat women leaning against the glass of the storefront. "Naw, I ain't seen him none today, Booker. Bet he's out in the woods snoozing," chuckled one woman, flashing a toothless grin back. "He's been regularly just a snoozing in the dirt behind Alice's old shack. You'll find him out there." Booker thanked the woman with all his outward flirtatious flourish, but he suspected Junior wasn't snoozing at all. The thought made him uneasy, and he swaggered toward his car with a bit less than his normal flair. He sat for a long moment with the front door open and considered whether he should search out back of Alice's shack anyway or simply travel on to the river as he always did in this situation. Indecision paralyzed Booker Ts hand around his keys; he stared at the glimmering silver and tumed the metal 13 slowly to catch the sun's reflection and create rainbow colors. In Booker T's mind's eye, he imagined Junior asleep on a pine needle bed in the woods with its forever nightshade from ancient trees and vines. But the sun shining colors off his keys tumed that sleepy image to the memory of a dirt road to Bainbridge and a young girl in a tight, floral dress and ill-fitting high heels, a girl who wobbled through the soft, sand road. The image in Booker T's mind always began and ended the same when Junior failed to show up at the Suwarmee Swifty. The daydream ended with Alice turning to Booker T and reaching to him as she never did when they were children. With her hand stretched out to Booker T, she slowly emerged into the body of her son Junior. Booker T abmptly shook his mind of the moment and thmst the keys into the ignition causing a jingle as the old car coughed and sputtered into drive.

He drove slowly as he always did-absent of thought-and headed for the river. The urge to travel to Alice's shack remained strong, but he lumbered past the tum-off. Booker T considered the temptation to reassure himself that Junior had indeed slept in the coolness of the woods, but the simplicity to remain ignorant and rely on hope and supposition overcame that desire. He adjusted his radio through the static whine of AM stations onto delta blues. John Lee Hooker sang gruffly to smooth guitar, "Boom, boom, boom, boom," Booker T sang along, soft and equally gruff. Maybe he'djust as soon go on to the jook today and skip fishingaltogether . He considered and tumed onto the dirt road that cut across the county and branched off into the woods. The road also led from the jungle growth of the town to the highway to Bainbridge. With his mind tuming toward moonshine and cold beer chasers that would work to numb painful memories that crowded the old man's mind vdth hazy cobwebs and, finally, would transform those cobwebs to shimmering strings of crystal, Booker T's sharp eyes trained slowly upon the image of a squat, chubby man walking in the wavering horizon of the road. He knew in his worried mind the image was his friend and that he witnessed what he feared most. The car lumbered on toward the walking figure while it slowly 14 came into focus. And Booker T slowed the Impala more. He instinctively guarded against the effect that emerging too suddenly upon Junior would have; he knew somehow that waking a sleepwalker could scare him to death, and he panicked at the thought of what waking a half-witted wanderer could possibly do. But he had just irmocently driven right up on Junior that first time so many years before. He had opened the door and asked what the hell was going on, and Junior just got on in and drove to the river. Booker T stopped the Impala, still unsure, and got out of the car leaving the door open so as not to disturb the peace. One set of steps clomping evenly on the dirt road was replaced by the uneven rhythm of four feet moving through the dust and rocks. Junior's rhythm maintained the steady movement like the slow blues from the radio, softly emanating from the Impala, some Delta guitar wail about the blueness of the moon in the deep and the sugar of brown eyes. Booker Ts steps intermpted the sameness of Junior's movement as he, with trepidation, sped the movement of his wiry legs to overtake the young man. He noticed as he approached Junior that the man's back was soaked with sweat and that his head seemed cocked upward toward the sun as it made its trip to the center of the emerald sky. Booker T felt the slight discomfort of the moming heat, and he moved more quickly to overtake Junior. He came into step beside him at last and simply setfled into the wandering. Junior didn't note the presence of the interloper and kept his stride, moving out of the range of the soft, static music fromth e Impala. "Well, Junior. What the hell you doing this moming?" Booker T looked up toward the hazy sun with Junior and relied on the only inquiry he had ever made before in this situation. "I was waiting on you at the store this moming. Scared me to be there with the old regular gals. Had to talk after you and everything." Booker T kept staring at the sun, afraid to look at his friend for what his reaction might be. He felt his heart beating irregularly with the adrenalin of alarm, and the quake traveled the speed of the sun's rays through his nerves, down to the legs moving in 15 sequence with the young man's. He remembered he felt this way years ago when Alice ran off with the first flimflamma n and he had-as children do-been overwhelmed with the sense that Alice's decision to wander down the road was somehow his fault. His first tme adult emotion of guilt stayed with him for years and only magnified in his heart when Alice had retumed a changed woman. "I say. Junior." He looked finally over at the man beside him. "1 say, what you doing?" Junior lowered his head and contemplated his feet but did not change the rhythm of the movement. Step after step, he continued to move down the road. Booker T watched the change of his head and risked maneuvering the stride. He gently placed his arm around Junior's shoulder and slowed the pace of their walking. "Hey, Booker," Junior uttered gmffly, still staring at his slowing feet. "Well-Junior, you want to go on to the river. I was thinking myself that I might just settle on down at the Stardust today. Going to be mighty hot, and old folk like me got to watch the ticker. This walking ain't too healthy, neither." Booker T chuckled hopefully, "Yeah, Booker, I want to go." "We'll go to the riverthen . Junior. Sit in the shade maybe." The two men tumed with the gentle prodding of Booker Ts arm and walked slowly to the Impala. The car's engine mmbled along to the music fromth e radio. "Why is the car running, Booker?" Junior inquired as he got into the back seat of the car. "We going to have to gas up if we is going to make it." "Naw, I don't suppose that will be necessary this moming. We better put a rush on and make our spot before them others get there, though," replied Booker T. The old man sighed for a moment and fiddled with the radio. He finally tumed it off so that he could calm his nerves with the swift, hard flow of the wind through the opened windows. He considered what he had just participated in and the lack of emotional reaction that Junior registered when he snapped out of his reverie of wandering. He looked at Junior through the rearview mirror, but the man simply leaned back low in the 16 seat and stared out the side window. Booker T knew he must address the mystery of what they had just shared, but he felt uncertain as to how to broach the subject. In fact, he felt unsure as to what exactly the subject should be. Junior took care of the uncertainty by intermpting Booker Ts thoughts. "Booker," he almost whispered and then leaned forward and rested his head against the top of the front seat. "Booker, I had a dream last night about my mama. She beat her fist against the big old moon and wailed because she done lost herself She sat there by that big old moon and cried for me to come up there and find her, Booker. Why she done that? Is she not happy with that flimflamma n the gals at the store is always talking about?" Booker T, in all these years of fishing by the river together, had no idea that Junior ever thought that much about his mother or her adventures with traveling men. Hell, Booker T didn't realize the boy thought that much about anything. He fumbled through his thoughts for something to give to the boy, but the relief of findinghi m and the fhistration he had felt through the long sunny years of watching Alice and Junior wander, not knowing what to look for or what to find along the road confused the old man, and he was angered by his confusion and panicked. "Lord, Junior, ff 1 has told you once, 1 has told you one thousand million times, dont know nothing about no flimflamma n and your mama's spiritual attachment to him. And you shouldn't be worrying your simple mind none no more about who and where your mama is. You is a grown up man who needs some thinking on grown up things." Junior sort of sank back low in the back seat, but his attention was for the moment trained on Booker T in the driver's seat rather than the road that reached the horizon before it reached Tallahassee. "But my mama has the spirit," Junior changed his tone to one of hurt and defiance. Booker T didn't quite know why he answered Junior like he did. He only replied that she sure enough had spirit but once again that Junior should think of fishing and not past spirits. 17 The car lumbered its way on toward the river where three more cars already lined the bridge's flank. Booker T pulled up behind a tmck but then decided against the position and craised a little farther for some shade. When he found a spot under the hanging branch of an oak, he parked the Impala and waited patiently while the engine coughed itself out to a state that not even the old man knew for sure could resurrect. The two men climbed out of the car and stretched as if they had fraveled for hours rather than the few minutes down the wandering road that stretched from the river. Cars sped past them, over the horizon that fransformed the road into a shimmer and melded concrete and sky. That horizon was only wondered at as the unknown and unexplored by those who stopped at the river. They watched for a moment. Booker T was not particularly curious where people went down that road or why they went; he just watched. Junior, however, was blankly mesmerized by the vast mystery that traveling fast over that horizon hinted at. "Junior, you get the poles and the stink bait. You stink yourself, boy. 1 might just throw you in later. I'll get our lunch. You can have some after you is clean," snapped Booker T as he rummaged cantankerously in the front seat for any stray cigarettes, acting oblivious to Junior's stare but keeping one eye trained on him. Packed down with fishing supplies. Junior took his direction and wobbled into the woods down to the river. Booker T followed close behind after he propped a couple of cigarettes behind his ears and picked up a pail of packed food and a brown paper sack with his hot quart of malt liquor inside. The sun quickly bumed the mist off the grass, and bugs awoke to the sun's heat, evaporating the moisture that folks claimed weighted them into slumber at night. Junior slapped himself on the cheek. Mosquitos always seemed attracted to him over Booker T. "Well, the skeeters sure don't think I smell so bad, Booker. I guess it's just your nose a getting old." And Booker appreciated Junior's attempt to ingratiate himself into the fishing expedition. 18 "Boy, you don't know nothing," replied Booker T, glad to be off the subject of Junior's mama and her spirit and onto the hot-tempered, feisty prospect that Junior would challenge his smeller. "My nose is like the rest of me—just prime age, just prime. Shit, you just smell like that old stink bait you toting. And you can't even smell yourself over it. I'm inclined to just chop you up when we get to the shore and catch fish with you." His eyes began to once again twinkle with the humor of playing with Junior who, now they had broached the subject of fishing, would crowd out old memories and the mysteries of Alice.

"Speaking of bait. Junior, where is my old knife? I can't catch no fish without no knife. I has got to go back and get that knife. Damn." "No sir, I remembered it," said Junior displaying the knife, and Booker T chuckled to himself a bit at the pride the younger man exhibited for having the forethought. Junior's wide, pudgy face spread into a self-satisfied grin. The subject of his mama as well as the argument over Booker T's smeller almost appeared to have disappeared from Junior's mind, both crowded away by the flurryo f pride. Satisfied now that Junior's attention was off any transitory thoughts, Booker T continued with the boy on down to the bank of the river. Junior's firstjo b at the riverwa s to discover a cool, shady spot. Booker T made him an expert at this particular chore due to Junior's susceptibility to mosquitos and chiggers; he generally managed to choose a place that offered both shade and a log or rock to sit on. The two fishermen were well- known for their luck, and their friends tended to follow them. This kept Junior and Booker T on the move, changing their spot from time to time. Booker T didn't like to bother with a bunch of drunk moochers. This old fisherman felt himself professional and protected his integrity and secrets by the river. The spot Junior chose this day was one of their regular ones, a log almost perfectly parallel to the ground, probably fallen countiess years ago in a lightning storm. A sharp drop of the bank led into unusually deep water. Just a few drops of sunshine fell through 19 the leaves of the oak and pine trees making pattems on the dirt similar to the leaves on the trees. The sweet, sometimes musty smells of the woods permeated, tempting the fishermen into a nap all day long. In the woods at the river, as at Alice's old shack, moming lasted until sunset—the sun never seemed to win the battle against shade to bum the day along. Junior methodically laid down his load of supplies in perfect order behind the log. Booker T nodded approval to Junior who slid carefully down the bank toward the cool water. Booker T followed him to the bank and placed the quart of malt liquor in the water, jamming it deeply into the bed against a large rock. Watching it a minute to make sure it was secure, he ran his fingers into the sand to enjoy the coolness of the water, wash away the grit from between his fingers. Booker T liked this spot. He enjoyed the cool mystery of the woods, and while he spent most of his fishing time mumbling nonsense to Junior, the refrospection the buzzing darkness of the woods and the fluid lapping of the riverprovoke d was both disturbing and healing. What Junior remained ignorant of and therefore insensitive to was that Booker T was every bit as bothered by the mystery of the flimflamma n as Junior was. He didn't care to discuss it with Junior because he couldnt bear to have the issue weight his mind as it would now, today. He knew Junior's mama constantiy yeamed for the happiness of time and space he had next to the river. Fishing. Alone with what was his. He also knew some people just never got happy with what they had and looked for new things all the time-only to findou t the new things they sought became what they already had real quick. He figured that had happened to Junior's mama. Booker T kept the knowledge to himself, never quite knowing how to tell him and hating to see Junior haunted by demons that pulled him fromth e river.

20 Junior wandered off down the bank to a place where he could wash off. When Booker T noticed the smell, it was a command for a dunking. And in the river,Booke r T always said, a fisherman could kill two birds with one stone by jumping in clothed. Booker T sat, left to his own brooding thoughts and the flowing river. He watched as Junior bathed himself and his clothes upstream. The old man's hands were still submerged, and he sat back on his haunches just kind of enjoying the feel of the water flowing through his calloused fingers. He stayed there for a long while. He contemplated the flow of the current as Junior climbed dripping onto the bank. He sat down behind Booker T and started baiting hooks. The silence between the two men was broken only by the buzzing and mstling of the breeze through the forest, the lapping of the river, and the faint sound of the voices twanging far down the bank. Junior sat staring at the hooks, his head turning continuously to the bridge and to Tallahassee every time a car sped by overhead; only each time his attention lingered a bit longer in the direction of the road. Absently, he dropped the final hook on the dirt and retumed to staring blankly at Booker T, not actually seeing him, rather staring blankly at the water flowinglazil y toward the road toward Tallahassee. Junior stood up like a sleepwalker, his movement devoid of any singular intent. He walked slowly with the grace of a dancer, striding carefully toward the bridge. Booker T emerged finally from his own reverie but was only able, by then, to watch in wonder and confusion as Junior wandered off. He hadn't witnessed the beginning of a wandering in all these years, and now today he had shared in both the end of one and now the begirming of another. Booker T just kind of fell back on his haunches, settling onto the mud of the bank. He thought to himself, dreamily, that life was curious. Somehow Junior had inherited the haunted tradition of following life off the course of the river like his mama, always trying to avoid being caught by the rhythm of the flow. Only he couldn't remember or 21 even seem to be aware of having taken the trip. Booker T wondered if Junior was happy with or without his mama. Was he trying to beat his fist against the moon that Alice sat next to? He began to feel the boy's hopelessness. He realized he felt the same way when Junior's mama first disappeared-years before she finally left for good with a flimflam man. Why did folks always have to go chasing the current instead of just sitting by it and enjoying the feel? Just as this thought flowedint o Booker Ts mind. Junior stopped. Striding by, two fishermen stood mbbemecking over the guard rail of the bridge looking for the optimum spot and yelling at Junior. "Hey there. Junior. They biting down there? Think we might just come and sit for awhile. You don't mind none do you?" Junior tumed slowly aroimd to Booker T. Confused and disoriented for a moment, he was unsure what to say to the men and the straggle clouded his face. The old man, suddenly aware he was sitting in mud now, got up yelling out, "Naw. Get on down here, you old polecats. Junior was just about to get my knife out of the car and let me cut the dirt off of his clothes. Whew. He sure be stinking this moming." Junior came slowly back to reality, wandering back to the log and sitting next to Booker T. "I ain't dirty no more. 1 dunked down river a ways," he said haltingly. "Didn't you see me, Booker?" "Oh yeah. I suppose I did," replied Booker T, forcing himself to snap back to his omery self "You all just come on over here and sit for awhile. 1 was just telling Junior how nice it is to just sit here and watch the day go by. Yeah, boys. Life's just made for watching the current and for catching some fish. Did I ever tell you about Alice-that's Junior's mama. She was always wanting to go fishing when we was kids. But then she wouldjustgoonandjumpin. Could swim like a fish. HeU, she wasjustafishoutof water around here, anyhow. She always used to tell me when we was kids she was going back to the big city when she got grown up with money. Of course, she got grown up with Junior here, instead." 22 Booker T looked over at Junior to estimate his reaction and smiled at the enraptured look of attention spreading oh so slowly across Junior's face. He took a cane pole from the ground and tossed the line gentiy over the bank into the flowing water. The cork landed softly. The others followed suit, and the cane poles angled out over the river, kind of drooping like willow branches. Booker T fell quickly and finallyint o his story about Junior's mama. The other men listened, watching the current meander on by.

23 CHAPTER m "POWWOW"

24 Powwow

Miss Lou Woodard of Quincy, Florida, married Billy Boy Rutiedge Junior in nineteen hundred and sixty-eight because he talked just like her friend Booker T Goldwire, all molasses, sweet and thick. And Booker T Goldwire was the only soul who resided in Gadsden County w4io ever made any sense to Lou, She loved to just go down the road to the river in old Booker Ts brown Impala. She sat low in the front seat and enjoyed every moment of the cool fall wind as it rushed into the open windows. It hit her face like a smooth blue slap, and that shock released something in the girl's soul, something that always seemed trapped there. This day, Lou leaned her head against the car door frame and looked out the window at the pine trees standing erect in the median of the interstate between Quincy and Tallahassee. Her long, straight hair flung out the window and flapped in the wind. She liked that and popped a boiled peanut in her mouth. When Lou was a little girl, she leamed quickly to get off that porch her mama and her mama's housekeeper Eleanor sat on each and every day. Come hot weather or cool, those two women rocked to and fro, ignoring each other and wasting the day along. Slow and steady, insistent. Lou instead spent her childhood following Booker T Goldwire w^o worked as a handyman around the yard, leaming to, as Booker T called it, just piddle around. She adored the ancient black man as only a little girl can adore a grandfather. Lou never knew her blood grandparents too well: They all died somewhere in her before- memory time. She was sure even if they aU still lived and spent their days trying to entertain her with all their bundles of money, not a single one of them could ever match the good time she had with Booker T just lazing on the side of a river. He taught her, almost before she could tie her shoes, how to bait a hook real tight with miimow, worm, or cricket. He said right then, somewhere on the mud banks of the river, there weren't no need to wear shoes when you was fishing for cat. That's what he caUed just about all the fish that came out of the Ocklocknee River: cat. It didn't matter if they pulled out shell 25 crackers, stump knockers, speckled perch, red bellies, painted bream; if it bit a hook on the end of a cane pole and popped the cork down under, it was cat. He taught her how to cuss under her breath all hidden in a giggle, and he showed her the endless possibilities that lay in cutting loose from the bondage of responsibility. So by the time Lou was seventeen and a senior in high school, she herself was quite expert at the art of just piddling around. Lou began fishing on the riverwit h Booker T regular-like y/hsn his strange colored friend. Junior, had passed on. Lou asked him one day w^t he died of, and the old man shmgged off the answer and replied that sometimes folks just blow on up to the moon or something such. Lou didn't understand. She asked her daddy. Dr. Woodard, later what the young retarded man had really died of~it couldnt have anything to do with the moon which just sat up there staring down and giving a little girl the willies~and he said retarded people just don't usually last that long, and she shouldn't worry her mind about any friends of Booker T's and worry a bit more about her algebra grade, which by the looks of things wasn't about to raise much higher than last quarter's D minus. So Lou took to the river in Junior's place and worried considerably less than her daddy about people's passing on or about algebra grades. Instead of thinking hard on equations she couldn't see helped a girl much out there in the jungle by the river, Lou learned how to pop a boiled peanut stiU in its shell right into her mouth, split it with tooth and tongue, suck out the salt water, and then spit out the shell, all the while savoring the soft, sweetness of the jewel fhiit. She and Booker T often whiled away the aftemoons under the protection of the lingering shadow of oak and pine, shadows stretched to the limit that only grew with a day's death. They threw their cane poles into the water and popped boiled peanuts. Life was good as well as Lou Woodard could see, nestled on a bed of pine needles, a marriage bed for the shadows.

26 **** On the fateful afternoon Lou met Billy Boy Rutiedge at the Seminole powwow in Tallahassee, the girl once again chewed her peanuts and watched the shadow of the pines. She watched them not from the river'sedg e but from the window of Booker T's Impala. The shadows stretched unnaturally now with the speed of the car. She had cut the second half of classes today because it was Friday. She heard Booker T telling Eleanor that moming through the back door of the kitchen that he was going toward Tallahassee to this big Seminole Indian powwow. Lou giggled when Eleanor threw up her arms and her voice raised a few octaves in consternation and disbelief about this no account dog of hers possibly going to some dope-smoking, devil-spirit-worshij^ing, moonshine-whiskey-loving, sit down, and he wont even go to Easter Sunday with her at the Mt. Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church when he knows what a martyr she has made of herself by taking care of him all these years. She was just going to have to take this up with old Brother Damon. She ended the tirade by waming Booker T if Brother Damon had a stroke because of worrying about him, she was sure that not even her praying could keep the dog Booker T above the fires of Hell. Lou knew that any event provoking such an extreme level of sermonizing out of Eleanor was an event not to be missed. And as the two friends drove down the road, Lou thought back to Eleanor's warnings and smiled to the pine shadows stretched out long in the evening speed of the car. "So, Booker, we really gonna smoke a peace pipe and get high?" asked the girl into the swish of the wind. Booker T chuckled gmff sandpaper and stared at the road ahead. Lou wiggled in the brown, cracked, age-hardened car seat and twisted toward him. "Now, Booker, dont you mess with me. Tell me. You know Eleanor aint right about the Seminoles. She dont know nothing on earth except what that preacher or my daddy tells her. And I don't suppose they has been discussing Indians too much lately. They is all too busy discussing 27 you and Jesus." Lou didnt like Booker Ts look of feigned pondering. He treated her like an innocent child and enjoyed it. She let him, though. Booker T was her friend. "Well, Miss Lou-" Booker T finallyscratche d his chin in deep concentration, speaking slow like a shadow. "I reckon I dont know too much about the old peace pipe. You got to know they dont let just anybody smoke that thing. They get theirselves on top of the burial mounds of their dead ones, and they just start a communicating with them in moans and groans and such. They wiggle and they giggle, and then the dead ones teUs them whether they should make peace or war with the likes of us. Now, they likes old Booker T just fme because I is just right with the old chief He's a cane pole fishingson - of-a-bitch. But I just dont know what they is goima think about a silly-headed half- pounder the likes of you. Probably tell me to just throw you back to the gators. Mig^t do it theirselves," Booker T started to giggle, and Lou's eyes widened a bit before she rolled them in exaggerated disbelief

"Noway, man. You know better than that They dont really do any such thing at these powwows. My daddy told me they only sit around and tell stories about how their people came from different tribes all over the place or something, and then they lost their land to guys like Custer and were dropped like trash in the middle of the 'glades to rot. He said they pat each other on the backs because they didnt rot but became Seminoles instead, and that's what a powwow is. I cant wait to see. 1 think we was all dropped in this swamp like trash, and the fact we werent eaten a long time ago by the mosquitos is something to have a big old powwow about. Dont you, Booker?" Booker T laughed outright at that, coughed a guttural rasp, years of cigarettes and whiskey. "Why, Miss Lou, I dont know why you was so all powerful ready to go on this little trip if you was so sure powwow wasnt nothing extra special like. Damn, missie. You just seem to know the whole lot of it, but I expect we'll just see w^t's about today. Of course, this aint the glades. You'd be a mite better off staying a bit more time in that

28 school of yours leaming geography things." Booker T smiled and switched on the radio, a sign that conversation should end. Lou sat back and popped another peanut into her mouth, content with the small hope of excitement that shimmered like a lightning bug in her ribs and bounced against her bones to get out. She trusted Booker T to instmct her in the mysteries of the edge of the swamp even while knowing good and well they were in the jungle growth of north Florida, not the swamp of the everglades. But the girl had always felt like the world that surrounded her with maimers and old lace, silk moss and pine tree shadows, somehow held constraints on the people, and this knowledge caused her to lose reason at times in favor of the rash of talk. She spit her peanut shell out the window and felt the wind grab it fromhe r breath. "I just think that we ought to throw my entire family into the swamp and see if they dont come out Seminoles. I wonder if you didnt come out a Seminole at the end of the big dump, if you'd automatically get eaten by gators. And then, would they still give you a big old burial mound? Hey, we could just throw Eleanor on in there, too. Bet she'd like that old peace pipe if she tried it once." Lou said this to the wind outside the Impala and the car rolled on down the road.

****

Booker T lifted himself slowly out of the car in the shade of the woods. The powwow took place in what appeared to be deep Florida jungle. When the finallonel y convenience store on the outskirts of Tallahassee made its stand with a sign: Last stop for gas, the vines choked the side of the road into the overhang of tree limbs weighted down with crying moss tears. One never felt secure that civilization held a strong hold on the jungle. It seemed to somehow patientiy wait for the human tenants with their concrete and metal civilization to get tired of the fight. 29 The ground depressed softly under Lou's feet as she jumped from the Impala and left the old man behind in her msh to get to the action. She felt the sand sift into her sandals, and the sun-stroked grit bumed slightly on the soft skin of her arch. "Come on, Booker. You aic getting to be one old man who is always going to be left behind," she yelled over her shoulder. "I suppose you dont mind that, do you?" Lou whirled around in a rise of dust and planted her hands on her hips. "It dont smell like nothing but a football game here. This aint no powwow." She wrinkled her nose and looked suspiciously around at tiie trees for some dead spirits or something, but she only saw cars lined up along the dirt road. "Don't wait for me, then. You go on and findou t for yourself just what this here get together is. You let me know tomorrow when my old bones manage a creaking up there. Now get." Booker nodded off down the road, and Lou took his direction at a run, her sandals flapping staccato with sand. When she arrived at the action, she stopped abmptiy. Cut logs lay one upon the other and made a sort of theatre. A woman sat on a log at the front under a tent. She spoke to the crowd. She told a story and used her body in a way Lou had never seen. The woman was middle-aged with her hair long, and multi-colored stone beads were braided into the straight, coarse blackness. The beads made a clicking riiythmic song as she moved her arms, sometimes pointing to the sky, sometimes grasping at the dress she wore, caressing her heart. Lou sat down. ShehadneverwitnessedthistypeofstoryteUing; every action of the woman-her arms, her posture, her voice, her hair-contradicted upon each other. The dance of the story enticed the girl who was used to the singularity of movement that her mother exhibited, rocking on a porch all day. People milled around. The football game smell Lou commented on floatedi n wafts of smoke from concessions of fried bread and barbecue. Beer flowed and the mysterious powwow of Eleanor's fears consisted only of a real good party at which a unique heritage of survival was indeed being congratulated. Lou didnt even notice as Booker T walked 30 up and heaved his bones down on a log next to her. "Damn. Where's that peace pipe?" he said and glanced sideways. He received a hush from the girl. "This is cool," Lou whispered. "I want beads just like hers." "Well, 1 want a beer," Booker T replied and moved on to the concession. "Hope I dont need you as barter. You know they dont take no money, just trade out here in the wilds." He chuckled over his shoulder. The storyteller continued with the saga of her people. Mothers with small children held them around on the sandy ground in flocks. They listened with the attention Lou gave. She had grown up in her small world ridicuUng those who no longer held the power of the land. Booker T had his river and the mystery that the shade's protection held for him. Her mama had her bought things: the fortune of porch swings and silk dresses. Her father had his farms with their fences and workers. This woman up there talking to a people who didnt even look alike, somehow owned a history not of places or things, but of stories and survival. She spoke of flightan d loneliness and togetherness and making it. She spoke of not forgetting, and she spoke of owning the world in a flying, winged soul. Lou wished she had something to remember. She reached down and picked up a handful of sand. She let it slowly sift through her fingersont o her sandaled foot The sand here was cooled by the shade of the frees. Tepid melancholy gripped the girl. She felt unsettled like the sand lingering on her skin. She looked up at the storyteller. She longed to sit up frontwit h the children who mimicked her movements, the sign language of the Seminole. A world of fighting,th e movement of the white people against a culture that could not at first understand the motive for change, unfolded before the girl in a language of pictures colored with the sun-worship of wildflowers and the irmocent com- friiit-search of the deer. The woman sang of the melding with the white people that included blood marriage for most of the half-breed people at the powwow. She wamed

31 of losing what made up the constitution of the tribe that indeed had come into existence through the displacement of various other tribes. Lou thought how sfrange that her father was correct in his historic account of the situation, and how strange that he had failed to note the beauty of the story. Surely he could only know these facts if he himself had been to one of the storytelling affairs. She never heard this story at school. This was so cool. She looked around for Booker T to talk about the tmth she heard and ask him if maybe she might be part Indian herself That would be far out. She could braid her hair and sway like the woman. The storyteller spoke of the sun shining its god power on the children of the Seminole. Lou rose from the log, and the woman's voice receded in her ears as she walked toward her friend. Booker T stood at the concession sipping a large cup of beer. Lou noticed that the men he huddled with passed around a flask and each took their tum leaning forward and using the group as camouflage to sip amidst The act appeared ritualistic in the shadow of this evening with its bowing and sipping. It brought to mind the peace pipe. What she had witnessed was only a small event to most of the people here enjoying cold beer and hot, fried Indian bread. But the wanting inside the girl as she approached the crossroads of womanhood and eventually faced choosing to emerge from the dirt as either the wildflower inside her soul now or the cultivated hothouse flowerhe r pedigree demanded gave her such a longing for meaning in things that she felt possessed almost by the words and the shadows. As she came upon the men, they opened their circle instinctively to let her in. She smiled at Booker T nervously because she didnt know the three white men he stood with. They were people from Quincy, but she was unsure of their names or their place in her world. "Uh, Booker," she began and the oldest of the three, a short grey man with a protmding belly, cut her off, sensing her uneasiness.

32 "Well, if this aint Dr, Woodard's daughter. Lou, Vm Billy Boy Hitiiciiar. hmim. honey, I know your daddy, I le deliverc^l my son here, i

35 pretty much something from every tribe makes up the Seminole nation. Wouldnt you think?" Lou looked at him. The dirt lingered in his look, and her eyes fell shyly onto the display of native silver jewelry. She fingered a turquoise bracelet intricately engraved upon its slightly tarnished silver. She thought how lucky that BiUy Boy Junior owned these things. "Why do you have these other things, these vMte folks things?" she asked him. "DarUng, you dont know nothing about Indian trading, does you?" He laughed, and she regretted showing her irmocence. She wished she knew how these men knew so much about the world outside of hers. "These Indians are just itching to come here and have a good time. Some big old guy might even want to show off for his wife and buy her a new mixer for the teepee. All theys got to do is come righto n down the end here, and FU give them an old mixer for a little silver. Works out good. Free frade,bab y doll, freetrade. " Billy Boy Junior ended the baby doll with a sugar sfretch of his voice, drawled out and melodious to Lou. The girl began to bloom again in the majesty of the wildflower. She decided she kind of liked this feeling of not knowing. She enjoyed the dirty look that now seemed to combine with a look of protection toward her irmocence. Her chin raised a bit and the boy retumed with two l)eers and two pieces of hard greasy hollow bread pockets. The sun finally died in the evening and the shade dispersed at its full growth. Strings of lights came on along the row of booths, and in the distance, music and singing began around the stage area. Lou propped herself up on the table and crossed her bare legs. She shivered in the coolness of the evening and Billy Boy Rutiedge Junior found a denim jacket with a price tag hanging from a metal button on the sleeve. He placed it around her shoulders and pulled the tag off. "I suppose this here merchandise just sold, darling," he said and looked deeply into the giri's eyes.

36 ****

When Lou and Booker T drove into the back drive later that evening, all hell broke loose in Eleanor's kitchen. The school had called to report the gfrl missing, but all Eleanor's praying didnt keep the two fromreturnin g together smelling like beer. Eleanor tarmed Lou's rump a little with a wooden spoon and sent her up for a bath and a mouth washing before her parents finished dinner in the great dining room. Booker T just giggled a little under his breath with all the cussing that felt good for the moment. He patted Eleanor's rump and kissed her on the cheek giving her the same deep come hither look Billy Boy had displayed so successfully for Lou. "You is some kind of trouble, Booker. Now get on out of my kitchen, m be talking to you later, and I dont want to send none of my children out looking for you at the jooks. You be home." She gave him her hardest look, but he saw the glint of forgiveness and kissed her on the other cheek. "I be home, baby. Dont worry your pretty head." And he swept out the door as swiftly as he could on his ancient legs. He turned outside the screen and looked back at his woman. "Lou sure is a good littie girl. Thinks she's a Seminole now. You better go straighten that out or she'll be smoking up a peace pipe soon." Lou lounged in a steaming bath. Through the cloud of condensation that floated around her skin and made her feel a bit dizzy, she thought of Billy Boy Junior and the powwow. She understood what the storyteller had spoken. She felt her soul float out of her body and kiss her skin disguised in scented steam. She felt the petals of the wildflower stretch to their limits, a send-off for her soul as it flew toward the frosted window. She wondered where Billy Boy Junior was right then and she knew in her pride that he wondered the same about her. Her chipped painted toes peeked out of the water and she wiggled them and made the water ripple.

37 CHAPTER TV "OLD HANDS"

38 Old Hands

Two hands clasped tightlytogethe r in the lap of the old man. The hands were splotchy-colored with light blue and dusty pink-hardened skin, stretched taut over protmding veins. These veins mapped out the flowo f life in the old man's body as he sat stone-faced and upright. Silver hair, groomed perfectiy, lay slicked backward from his forehead, not moving in the slight breeze created by ceiling fans twenty feet above the courtroom floor. A pulsation of blood came to life as the hands clasped and brashed constantiy in the lap. Unconsciously, the hands continued their movement, rhythmically. Clasp and brush. Clasp and brush. They seemed to wipe away invisible dirt from the crevasses in the dry skin. Slow motion. Constant. Clasp and bmsh.

He sat alone, rigid, thinking of the past in the sweltering heat of the county courthouse. Lawyers stood at podiums in the front of the dingy marble and stone room, picking jurors not-so-carefuUy, just a couple of questions about capital punishment and hearsay knowledge of a little turkey shoot last Thanksgiving. The old man only listened half-heartedly to the selection process. He knew that, in Gadsden County, the jury would likely be mostly white regardless of questions from bored lawyers. The population almost entirely consisted of blacks, but through a miracle of politics, the jury would end white. The man continued to remain in his partial consciousness. One salty grey-haired lady woke him briefly from his reverie when she claimed in her best sister-of-the-vestry voice that she could not pronounce a murderer guilty as charged because that was a job for the Almighty on Judgment Day, not for the good sheep on this earth this day. The lawyers smiled knowingly at the judge and excused her. He was glad to see her retum to the Woodard's house. She was their maid and cook. She clicked and slid old leather heels across the hard floor, rightu p to the old man. He looked blankly up at her, and she placed her pudgy hand on his shoulder, lightly. "Your son's had his judgment day He's sitting with the Lord now. It's time we pray for 39 the poor soul who's waiting for his here. My sympathy to you." She patted him a couple of times and thudded down the center aisle of the courfroom and out the door. He sighed as he looked at the other potential jurors and leaned back against the vamished hardwood pew, sinking back into the rhythm of his hands. One strand of hair loosened from the slicked-back mass, but he ignored it. He worked the dirt from his hands and tried again to sort out his life up to this point. The hands continued, clasp and brush; palms pressed together for a second and then tumed as one hand nestled within the other. A constant movement, a circle. Clasp and bmsh.

* * * *

Those same hands held a tiny baby boy twenty years before. A time of middle age for the man. He stood erect with pride, nestling the bundled baby in his large and calloused hands, awkward hands. The baby was still slimy fromth e young mother's womb, and the man looked around the hallway outside the delivery room for a nurse to finish cleaning his son off. He saw no one in the understaffed, rural hospital, only his new family in the dim light. He couldnt understand why his young wife had wanted to birth in the hospital. He told her that hospitals were for the dying, but she said she was scared and he finally relented. He sighed at the desolation of the hall outside their tiny room. A baby perched in his hands. He had been bom in the back room of their shotgun house with a colored midwife and family all around. Nothing to be scared of Just home, the way it should be. He felt now, as he paced his new son, like a priest carrying a baby to its first Holy Water. The father, the baby, and God. He wondered absently of the bad luck that birthing in the hospital might bring. He blamed her. Hospitals were for the dying. As he walked around the room with his new son, he thought how his feet ached from hours of pacing in the dingy waiting room, in his Sunday best shoes. Hours spent pacing helplessly back and forth in the halls waiting for the doctor to bring the baby into this 40 world. Smoking cheap cigarettes. Then came the time for breaking into hastily bought cheap cigars, generic cigars, some wrapped tight with blue ribbons, some with pink. He directed his attention once again to the child in his hands. His hands still smelt of bumt nicotine, and the boy began to whimper. The middle-aged new father wondered at this bundle ofpurplish skin and diaper pins. Perhaps he wants his mama. He tumed to his wife. She lay sleeping in exhaustion and relief, her life's duty performed. Afraid to remove even one redneck-red hand from the bundle~the bundle that would easily fit into one hand alone—he woke her with a nudge of his elbow and asked her if she should maybe nurse the boy. She blinked with sleepiness and anesthesia, then simply tumed her head away toward the grey, grimy stucco wall and murmured, "I've given you what you want. Now leave me in peace." The new father tumed from her, still holding the baby, and sat in the wooden chair by a solitary window. The evening sun spread shadows across the lawn outside. The woman, his wife, she tried to love him in the shotgun house, or so the old man supposed. She bought catalogue lace curtains, telling him of beauty and softness. Then she had seemed to give up somewhere in the middle of her time. The old man tried to keep her interested in their home together, even fiied up some green tomatoes and okra for her, but she simply stopped replying to his attempts, took to sitting in the old chair by the window. She stared for months at the dusty road in the distance, and he gave up himself, gave up caring. The man finally moved the boy into one hand and placed a finger in his son's tiny hand. He felt the baby grip, with the surprising grip of a newbom's incomparable might. "You have strong hands, son. We'll be just fine,"h e whispered to the child. The man held his son, for hours perhaps, in complete ignorance of the woman at their side. The woman had become the old man's folly, the resented personification of his aging ego. He simply stared at the bundled baby in his hands, never so much as moving the child into his arms. At times, he placed his finger into the tiny mouth and let the baby suck the tip, 41 fooling him into thinking there might be food in the process. When the afterbirth finally began to dry on the baby's skin, the man took die child to the sink in the bathroom and tenderiy bathed him. He felt the warm water as it slid through his fingers onto the soft body. He wiped away the slime; he wiped away tiie bumt nicotine. He couldn't stop washing the baby under the refreshing, clear sti-eam. The baby cried in confusion at his first bath, but no one else came. The man dried him off in a hospital towel, then wrapped him tightly in a clean blanket found in the delivery room. With a dulled mind, he supposed his young wife to be asleep again, but in the now-dark room, he neglected to confirm his suspicion. The man walked directly out the frontdoo r and took the baby home. No one in the deserted rural hospital stopped him, and no one else ever went home from there, but father and son. Home to the shotgun house on the small farm between Quincy and Havana. Secluded and safe in the midst of tobacco and cotton.

^F ^ " ^

The lawyer for the state stood up in the courtroom. Reconvening after lunch, the other officers of the court sat relaxed and slumped in their chairs. The old man, his mind still immersed in that hospital room years before, found waking to the consciousness of the courfroom confiising. He had not left his position on the hardwood pew during the lunch hour, had not noticed that the courtroom most certainly had emptied and now had filled again. He tumed his head slowly toward the front and the slow-motion action of the people. The court was stifling hot and dingy dark like that hospital room so many years before. The walls in the court had faded from white into ancient grey, and the marble floors had lost their slick silver coat decades before. Dusty wood-and-iron ceiling fans moved above the old man's head, but they moved much too slowly to disperse the heat of a North Florida spring aftemoon. He sat erect in the white heat, in the stillness,

42 feeling the pain in his chest reverberating through the nervous hands that continued to wipe away invisible dirt with invisible water. Clasp and bmsh. Clasp and bmsh. The lawyers in polyester suits clustered in a united front to pronounce the final rites over a dead son's life. They took tums standing up, sitting down, smiling at each other and exchanging courtesies. These actions, performed every day in this sweltering room, meant something greatiy significant only to the old man. The defendant, who slumped in his chair beside the lawyers, certainly cared about the outcome, and the sole newspaper reporter yawned in the back pew of the courtroom occasionally scratching notes. But the old man knew for certain that he alone ached against the unforgiving surface of the building that confined these proceedings. He shifted uncomfortably against the dripping sweat that trickled slow, crawling lines down his back. He considered the monotone of the lawyers half-heartedly arguing points of insignificance to the trial. Last rites. His son was denied and cheated. No priest, no sympathy for his son, only the repetitious rhetoric of today and every day. Stone-faced, he stared again at the invisible dirt on his hands and tried to wipe away the visible pain that spread from his heart into those hands with more invisible water. Clasp and brush.

* * * *

The boy raced up into the yard of cushy, St. Augustine grass in his rusty red pickup. The old man had told his son over and over again not to park in the yard. "The street's there for a purpose. I wont have no son of mine acting like a good-for-nothing roughneck," he said to no one as he slapped a mosquito on his cheek. He washed the smear of blood with a drip of water fromth e garden hose he held limply over limp tomato plants. The brownish-green plants hung loose and heavy on stakes, exhausted and slowly dying in the late fall coolness. He stood alone again suddenly and stared into the open door where his son had just gone. "You hear me?" 43 But no one heard, and no one listened. The boy came out of the house in a flash holding the old man's rifle. He asked his father for some bullets and cuffed him playfully on the shoulder. "Daddy, you know you cant grow no tomato plants in November. I dont know why you even try." The boy laughed as he examined the water hose angled dovmward over the plants. "You should just give it up and go with me. I'm headed down to old man McFarlin's lease for a turkey shoot. Come on. There's room for you. Just Ross DuPont and me's going." His brief glimmer of excitement at being included tumed immediately to scom. The old man told his son he had no business going on a hunting trip with a nigger. It was simply the wrong thing to do. The boy might have great ideas of equality, but as far as his father was concemed, mixing socially with the colored in town was not right. The old man placed his damp hands on his son's stubbom shoulders, not forcefully, more a kind of pleading. "Look, son, you listen to me now. This will bring you nothing but frouble. Aint no good comes fromnigger-loving . Stay here, and T\\ go hunting with you. Father and son." But his son just laughed as he flicked his cigarette ashes on the grass. He retreated from his father and posed in a defiant stance. "You're living in the old days. Daddy," he proclaimed. "This aint plantation time no more. This is 1967. Get over it." The boy tumed and jumped into the tmck. The door groaned louder, shutting with a heaved thud. As the boy raced away down the dusty, dirt road, he shouted through the open window, "What do you know? You'll see. Ill bring us home a turkey tomorrow." He flashed a smile with his head thrown out the side window. His blond hair blew in the wind, and he waved good-naturedly. The old man was left alone, standing in his front yard. He wondered at the stubbomness of his son. Times changed so quickly. All these years together in their decrepit, shotgun house. Perhaps he had a son too late in life. No hope for communication. His wife had been too young to be strapped down to a husband the age 44 of her father. She walked out of that hospital room twenty years ago and climbed directly onto a Greyhound bus. She never even looked at her son or came home to collect her belongings. Her now-dusty clothes still hung in the wardrobe, waiting. The old man carefully placed mothballs in the drawers and closet every spring. Another car fiill of teenagers raced by, hard-edged rock blaring from open windows. A beer can came flyingou t and landed in the grass in front of die old man. He picked it up slowly, walked it to the trash inside the shadowy, faded house and tumed on his radio to a country & westem station. The nasal twang of George Jones emitted from the box, singing through static about Jim Beam and Elvis Presley. He smiled to himself as he remembered dancing in colored jooks against the wishes of his old man. He had been wild once, had drunk moonshine liquor. But those days were different. Those days, a boy and his fiiends could sneak into the colored jooks and maybe meet a little colored girl and buy her a drink and go to her shack for a little while. Not like going hunting at the McFarlin place in front of God and everylxxiy. His days had mles and everyone knew them. The man tumed up the volume on the old radio his papa had bought for his mama years ago, the money saved over a couple of seasons of scrimping and starving. He walked stiffly back outside, picked up the hose and tumed it onto the tomato plants. A turkey would be good on Thanksgiving. Years ago, he used to hunt wild turkey with his own papa, every Thanksgiving.

* * * *

The old man had slumped a little lower in his pew. Some movement at the fronto f the court caught his attention, and by the timeh e came back to the present, the defense attomey was on his feet talking oh-so-sweetly to the jury. Now chosen, the twelve men and women were mostly white. He knew the public defender, went to the little, mral Old Time Baptist Church with him. A good man, the father didnt blame him for defending 45 the black boy. He realized he had no choice. It was the law. The defendant sat, also slumped in his chair. The old man noticed the crisp whiteness of his shirt. It looked imnatural, too clean somehow. The boy's hands were clasped on the table in front of him, and his head practically rested on those hands as he stared intentiy down. The scratch of the reporter's pen on a small pad of paper still lent a macabre reminder of the public nature of the proceedings. The old man knew the entire town talked of nothing but his son's murder at the coffee shops and bars around town. He figuredal l of Gadsden County must be talking of it. At church, he had heard even the quilting group discuss the tragedy in hushed, embarrassed whispers. When he failed to ever retum to meeting, the preacher had finally come on out to the run-down farm. The old man sat in front of his dead tomato plants. Slowly moving in a weathered, plantation rocker. He stared in the sunset at the preacher who stood before him, a preternatural glow surrounding the edges of his blondish hair and white, linen suit. The two men stared at each other in silence until the old man finally said, "Tell me. Tell me what they say."

****

The fires around the campsite died down, to a lingering death, to only embers; red- orange jewel rocks glimmered in the refreshing coolness of the fall evening. Tired, inebriated young hunters relaxed with joints and beer around the fire under a night void of stars or moon. Just an encompassing dark and the occasional fall-hardy mosquito. Shiny, silver beer cans littered the brushed dirt, and alcohol-inspired stories were voiced, first loudly and then more softly, bouncing among the shadows like the flamesdyin g in the breeze. Two young men, one black, one white, hovered outside the periphery of the fire's circle. They swayed in the shadows, leaning precariously toward each other, then away, grasping for balance against the empty air. The hunt had been successful for both boys. 46 Neither saw a turkey, but they succeeded in crossing the line of sobriety smoothly and quickly. The high of eariy evening, die waver and buzz in the bodies and minds of the two boys, became heavier by the minute, tiiming to a painful weight lying in their skulls and muscles. The beer no longer had the taste of a tart fizz. It swilled down their throats more like stale water from the stagnant pond on the lease. The boys swigged more, though, and examined their shotguns, both borrowed from disapproving fathers, with great importance. They began to discuss the business of the dope they had smoked throughout the day. "We damn sure'U be invited back to this shindig every year. Just look at those idiots. So stoned. Look like stuffed birds theirselves." The boys laughed at the power they held in dope over their fellow hunters, the rush of popularity. They checked their shotguns one more time. "How much you collect today for that dope?" inquired one of the other. A shmg. "Oh, a couple of hundred over the day. The money's mine anyhow. Dont matter. Hadfim." Voices slurred into anger over lax business practices, and the rekindled campfire provided a simmering backdrop to the heated tempers. The other hunters relaxed, prosfrate around the campsite, inclined their attentions toward the boys momentarily and laughed to themselves about the stupidity of the two who'd been only invited in the first place to provide dope for the campfire cookout. Knowing, stoned nods to each other stated emphatically that the two boys were to be ignored and later ostracized by the group. But as that group decided silently and en masse that the boys were frash of two colors, and not to be included again, the voices off in the shadows grew to a frenzy. Shots broke both the verbal arguing fromth e shadows as well as the silent ponderings around the campfire. A crack broke through the air. It sounded eerily like the crack of wood in the fire, firstechoin g above the heads of the hunters, then flying away with the smoldering grey smoke. Even the most fuzzy-headed man recognized at last tiiedifferenc e between 47 the thunderous reverberation of a rifle killing and the mild crack and splinter that had popped in the campfire throughout the night. The hunters hit the dirt flat and waited for the uncertainty of the next moment. The pop and crackle took over the night sounds. Each man listened intentiy over the beating of his own pulse. A boy's hysterical crying mixed itself in the breeze, the fire, and tiie pounding pulses. Finally, a brave man crawled into the shadows to meet the wailing in the dark. He found one boy lying in tiie grass, blood trickling out of his mouth. The other boy stood above. Tears ran down his face and ran into the fingerso f hands that covered his eyes fromth e horror below him. He absently dropped his shotgun beside the dead boy. It clanked metal against the metal of the other gun. Smoke emitted gentiy out of the ends of the guns, trailing lightly into the night, high above the campfire.

* * * *

Six months passed before what became commonly referred to in the local newspaper as "the turkey shoot murder," went to trial. The coolness of November bumed rapidly into the heaviness of May. And an old man sat erect in a courtroom, straggling to pay attention to lawyers as they determined the fate of his dead son's friend. The witnesses to the evening only attested to two messed-up young hooligans who had crashed their armual hunt and who both shot at each other. The town discussed over coffee, each moming, in much greater detail than the testimony over swom-to Bibles ever revealed, whether the drag deal over in Thomasville a couple of nights before the killing was to blame, not the defendant. Seems that an argument arose about fifty or so dollars, give or take a joint. But no one really witnessed the killing. Got to pay for bad practices, the good Christians of both colors said knowingly to each other. What are these young folks coming to and where are their parents, they asked, silentiy glad that those boys didnt belong to them and wondering where their children were right about then. 48 And the old man still sat alone in the courtroom. The invisible water still flowed over the old man's hands as he clasped and brashed. Clasped and brashed. Slow motion. He constantly washed the invisible dirt away with invisible water. He tried to wash away the visible pain. He sat in a seersucker suit and white patent leather shoes. His Sunday best. Damp from sweat in the county courthouse, in a county where a murder barely made the newspaper anymore. Amidst the heat, the pain, the old man sat thinking, "Aint no good comes from nigger-loving, son. Aint no good." Clasp and brush. Clasp and brush.

49 CHAPTER V

"FLIMFLAMMAN"

50 Flimflam Man

Her name had been Alice before she became known only as Junior's mama, long after running off with the flimflamma n so many years before. Both she and Booker T were little more than kids when they first met one sticky aftemoon sitting in tiie Stardust Club. The club, nestied deep in the woods outside of Quincy, was run by the boy's uncle. Alice was dressed up that day in cheap high heels and a tight,cotton , floraldress . It looked like she had grown out of it a couple of years before and had only managed to sfretch it over her body thanks to the grace of the constant perspiration that afflicted everyone in this little north Florida town from April to November. She told Booker T, as she displayed her gold front tooth, she was here in this no-account jook joint from the bordellos in Atianta simply to get some rest, but Booker T thought she talked kind of countrified to be a city girl. He fell desperately in love with her anyhow and decided right then and there that he would believe anything she said. Alice became a floozie girl at the Stardust with the joy and intent of a keen mind that knew her capabilities as well as her limitations and intended on getting as much out of that combination as possible. Alice used to tell Booker T, in a tone that implied, although she was only a few years older than he, she had lived eons beyond him in experience: "I don't know why them ladies of the Auxiliary like your Aunt Pearl aspire to be so all-powerful good their lives long. They follow them preachermen like tomcats to heat, and them preachermen are actually a tomcatting around after tiie likes of me. Now, Booker, you cant tell me them ladies don't know. I just think they is fooling themselves, and that's just plain wasting the good Lord's time. I may not be the most proper thing in this gaudy town, but at least I'm not trying to confuse the Lord none."

51 Booker T realized she was the wisest woman in the worid, and when his Aunt Peari could catch him and take him to meeting at the Mt. Zion Afiican Methodist Episcopal Church on Sundays, he just slouched down in his pew and glared knowingly at Brother Damon for being the hypocritical polecat he knew him to be. Finally, Aunt Pearl quit attempting to save Booker T, because that nonsensical glowering he displayed toward the preacher actually seemed to unnerve the poor man. She would later lament over that fact to the other ladies of the Auxiliary when they inevitably brought up the accusation that Aunt Peari was shirking her duties as godparent to her husband's orphaned nephew. Booker T would just run off to findAlic e and entice her to go swimming or get some beer with the money he made sweeping up dirt and frash in the aftemoons off the wooden floor of the Stardust Club. One white hot, muggy day as he and Alice retumed from a day on the Ochlokonee River, they heard a noise that sounded something like outdoor meeting on Sundays. "This aint Sunday," mused Booker T with a hint of concem in his voice as he instinctively looked around for Aunt Pearl's hands to whop him on the head and grab his ears for the drag to the water pump that came inevitably on the momings of meeting days. "Naw, it aint Sunday," exclaimed Alice. She ran like a lightaing bolt around the comer onto Adams street yelling across her shoulder, "Come on, Booker! It's a flimflam man. You dont want to miss no show like this one." Booker T wasn't at all sure what she was hurrying toward, but in his absolute devotion to Alice, he ran as hard as he could to catch up with her and prove again that anything she found interesting, he found interesting, too. She panted like a wild thing shifting restiessly on dusty, bare feet and peered from the outskirts of the small crowd that quickly gathered around the long shiny car. A tall sfranger climbed onto the polished hood and beckoned passersby to listen to his 52 &3tae>emeats. The trank was open, and h wae displ^ed boxes of dark, mysterious medicMne tNMtdes filfcd widi some sort of liquid He spoke like Brother Damon using his vofciei's^iieai^ and inflieclion to malK points of gravity The voice was p^wef&l and deep; tibeman , tall and strong. Ife wasnt as handsome as his cheap clothes, M be dnspla^ed lumcdf wifli a confidmce Hm made faim appear attractive to the women wfeo made (^ a flK^ofity of die groiq) that surrounded him.

'Xadies and gentkmai, yoo all just gadio^ around here now. You got to listen to die great importance of what Fm a selling here todity. We has got lots of frouble, we has, in thisherelife. We got die croi^ and the ihenniatian, and the misery that gets us down. We vwda da^ and we woiks nig^ in dwse big old tobacco fields, and the big white boss manjnst fillsbad e and he gets a ploity. And «4iat are we left with, I ask you? That's ri^t Weislegwiffaapleaty,too, We is left widi a twenty of ailments."

The owid gi^ed and mummred novou^, kxdcu^ aroimd for any white people WIK) mi^ be wandeiii^ on die sondi side, poh^ looking for their gardener or somedufl^ One woman, Naming hosetf widi a cardboard {date mounted on a stick that dispia^ a pocttait of a Mad^-cddoned Jesus, sliouted, "Amen, Brother, Amen." The rest of d^ cT0wd gathered some excitonent and assurance from her and moved closer. "Sister," said die flimflam man, ''ifvbat ails you? Does you feel weary in the moming even afio^ l«w has rested your weaiy bones a M niglifs slimiber?"

"Yes, sir. Lord have mercy on my tired old soul- I is a weaiy in the moming, weary in the noontime, and weary in die nigbt I only wisli I could get some relief. Yes, sir.

Some relief* "Well, sister. Iisri^here,ri^nowtobrii^yottdiatrelief I has here the brand new remedy from the great n^o doctor, Isaiah Blacldwan, Yes, brothers and sisters, 1 has traveled from way over in Atlanta widi die remedy for what I know ails you. This magic medicine I now hold in my hand will cure whatever wearisome weigjit is e

53 bringing your poor soul down fromth e glory we spend our days and nights a tiying to rise to." Booker T was still trying to swallow the import of the speech and the conversation he was listening to, when the enchanted woman daintily took the spoon from the hand of the flimflam man and, with a nervous look to tiie right and a glance to the left, allowed the man to pour a sip into the spoon. She ingested it A hush fell over the people as they waited for a miracle. The woman stood for a moment with her eyes closed, not moving even a wrinkle. Slowly, a quiver began to crawl over the folds of her skin, and her face broke into a satisfied smile. She hummed and moaned a tune and then exclaimed, "Woowee. My soul-this remedy of yours is the nectar of the Lord. 1 feel better than I has felt in thirty years." The crowd was swept up into her excitement and pulled the change from their pockets, some running for home to grab up coffee can savings. The flimflamma n tried to stay the frenzied crowd that now mobbed around him and the fat woman. He preached, "Now calm yourselves, folks. We has got plenty of the remedy for each and every ones of you. Just let me down off my car and form an orderly line at the trank. It'll be a dollar a bottle, and I thinks that you all can see that it is worth every penny. Medical science is a costiy endeavor. And one worthy our support." A line immediately formed at the trunk of the shiny car; the people were mesmerized by the miraculous recovery of the fat woman. Although no one knew exactiy what illness she had been cured of, her recovery was miraculous, nonetheless. "Lookee, Alice. She don't even need to fan herself no more," said Booker T. "That remedy done gone and knocked the sweat bullets rightou t of her." But Alice wasnt looking at the fat woman. She wasnt hearing Booker T. Alice's sharp amber eyes were frainedo n the flimflamman . Booker T had never seen this look in her eyes before. He had seen her size-up Johns in the Stardust Club, and he had seen her flirt with the ministers on the walk outside church on Sunday aftemoons. But tiie 54 look on her face now told him she was not simply doing business that stifling, hot aftemoon. Alice was quivering like the fat woman, and Booker T couldnt figure out how on earth she had gotten ahold of the remedy without him seeing. "Hey, Alice. What's wrong with you? You feeling all right? Shit, did you taste some of that rotgut remedy? Because he's a fooling. There's no more than moonshine in that there bottle. I is taking you home." But Alice shmgged off Booker Ts grasp and approached the line like a sleepwalker, never taking her eyes off the flimflam man. Booker T was left watching. It was the first time he had ever experienced this kind of rejection from his best friend. This was much more than her business, which Booker T had gotten used to months ago. Alice was a popular flooziegir l because she had shiny light hair, soft brown skin, and golden eyes. Softness and beauty were aspects that few women possessed after half a life in the tobacco fields. No, Booker T was in for something new now in his unrequited love affair with Alice. This flimflam man was for real.

****

Booker T didn't talk to Alice for a while. The flimflam man quickly moved into the colored boarding house with her. She only came into the Stardust Club on his arm, and then wore a look that implied tiiumphantiy she was on a permanent vacation from being a floozie. She had elevated herselfto the pedestal ofa kept woman. Booker T was crashed. When he looked for her in the aftemoons, she was nowhere around. He walked past the boarding house every evening, stood in the dirt road, and stared at the window that the proprietor, Mrs. Jackson, said was Alice's. The curtains were always drawn. Booker T was so disti-aught he started going to meeting with his Aunt Peari. He sat on the pew right next to her and prayed ferventiy with his eyes tightly shut that the flimflam

55 man would disappear forever. "Please, Lord. Oh, merciful Fatiier. If you ever want anything whatsoever from me on this Earth, I'll do it for you. Just please make him go away." Booker T prayed hard and fast And then he ended with, "I promise to always believe in the Almighty if you just do this little favor. I'll come to meeting with Aunt Pearl; I'll even get saved." About four Sundays after the flimflamma n arrived, Booker T sat next to his Aunt Peari when Brother Damon began yet another of his hour-long sermons, all in a frenzy about the lagging attendance of these Sunday moming meetings. "I guess we has got a guest in this here town of ours," he proclaimed self-righteously. "I suspect half of our congregation must have figuredth e firewater some polecat peddler's been selling is going to save their souls froma n eternity of perdition." He took a look around the room for effect, a noisy breath of air causing his eyes to bulge with the fire of the spirit, exhaled, and then continued, "Well, folks. I has spent my entire life a making sure that no God-fearing colored folk from Quincy, Florida, is a going to get caught in no perdition. No, sir. "That flimflam man aint nothing but an emery board in the Devil's beauty parlor, a filing down the resistance of good Christian brothers and good Christian sisters. It is my job to see he aint gorma be a threat to our community no more." A small "Amen" was uttered by a thin, young girl named Eleanor sitting pristinely on the other side of Booker T's Aunt Pearl. That shy emission received a smattering of approval, especially from Aunt Pearl who wholly approved of this young girl. Echoes of "Amen, brother" began, building momentum row by row through the hall until a fever of intensity and self-congratulation clouded the room with static electricity hovering above the people's heads. "We Christian brothers and sisters has the responsibility to take this here scar on the smooth skin of our sobriety and mb the ointment of the Lord into his soul. And I is telling you that we must rid ourselves of this here scar and send it rightbac k to that 56 scar-maker-yes, Lucifer-(a pause and a look) with the message: Not here in the Land of the Lord," sermonized Brother Damon. The preacherman by now stood in a glistening sweat, his black shiny suit darkening under the arms and down his back. Booker T awakened from his silent reverie of bargaining with God and sat up straight with attention now that today's service had finally answered his four long, lonely weeks of prayer. He glanced shocked and uncertain around the room and then up at the ceiling, sure that he would see a sign, some wink from the Almighty that his bargaining was heard and considered. And the congregation answered him, on their feet now with indignity over the flimflam man. "Thank you. Lord," Booker T cried inside, and along with the rest of the congregation he followed Brother Damon outside the church, singing in a mob of religion. Brother Damon stopped the congregation, standing himself still elevated on the steps of the church. "Are you all with me in a wiping out this scourge?" "Amen," they cried in unison. Then, with Aunt Pearl in the lead, they followed him down Madison Street toward Mrs. Jackson's colored boarding house, where at this time ofa sultry Sunday moming the flimflam man was sure to be still behind the curtains with Alice. The parade moved down the street, clapping and singing "Amens," "Hallelujahs," and "Lord have mercy on our poor undeserving souls." The ranks built, gathering in the folks they passed along the way: old people sitting on their stoops and curious kids out rabber- necking for trouble and fun. Once outside the boardinghouse. Brother Damon again climbed a porch/pulpit to elevate himself from the masses. "Now you sisters keep up the singing. The Lord is with us, so we brothers is going into this here hovel of sin and degradation to get out Lucifer- yes sir, I says Lucifer-to get Lucifer himself out and let him know we ain't a receiving no more of his kind of firewater,"bellowe d Brother Damon as the sun mixed with the sweat 57 on his dark skin, glistening in an animalistic lather. The sheen ran droplets into his bulging, blinking eyes. Booker T, overcome by the fever of the crowd and the miracle he still thought he witnessed, found himself breaking fromth e mob and mounting himself too on the steps of the porch. "I is saved," he stated, matter-of-factly. He looked around the crowd and tiie old ladies of the auxiliary looked approvingly at Aunt Pearl who herself beamed back at them with the pride of having at last dislodged a thom that had been stuck in her big toe for many years. "I has seen Jesus, and he's on the ceiling of tiiemeetin g hall," said Booker T. He hoped to make sure everyone understood he was here to save Alice from the flimflam man who was now certainly going away and this miracle was a direct result of his utter devotion to Alice who was an innocent victim and a misunderstood floozie girl. But the crowd wasnt taking notice of Booker Ts chivalry. Aunt Pearl put her fat arms around Booker T, humming "Praise the Lord, my baby's done found Jesus," happy because she would no longer be accused of shirking her duties as godparent. But that was all the attention he received as the deacons of the church stormed the boardinghouse in search of the flimflam man. After a few moments, the boy heard a high-pitched, startled scream come out the upstairs window, open, with lace curtains blowing slightly in the breeze. The fate awaiting Alice, too, now dawned on Booker T, and in a panic he ran for the frontdoor. "Stop! Wait! You got it aU wrong." He started toward the front door, but Aunt Pearl smacked him a good one on his head with her Sunday meeting fan that displayed a likeness of Brother Damon, a white robe encompassing the masses of people flocking under his arms. "You stay here, darting. Ain't no business for a innocent little lamb child just saved by Jesus to witness devilry of this magnitude. You stay put right here and pray with your Auntie Pearl." She placed her hands firmlyo n his shoulders and planted a big wet kiss on his cheek. 58 Booker T wasnt held in place by Aunt Peari's capable grip; he was paralyzed by the buming shame that built by the moment as the heat of the crowd mingled with the heat of the sun. He had befrayed his friend by making a pact with Jesus. He had only wanted Alice back. Booker T stood waiting with Aunt Pearl, trying to piece together how these events had actually culminated in this fate worse than death. He considered the last several minutes real hard: making a deal with Jesus for the flimflamma n to leave town, leave Alice to him-then looking up to see Jesus on the ceiling of the Mt. Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church-now this mob. If this was what being saved meant, feeling how he did, he felt quite willing to try perdition. Booker T began backing slowly away fromth e crowd so as to avoid another smack from Aunt Pearl who had stationed herself in front of the Ladies of the Auxiliary. Once on the periphery of the crowd, he stared at the upstairs window of Alice's room. The curtains were still drawn, but he could make out a scuffling of shadows and could hear faintly Brother Damon's professional bellow, "Out, scourge! Out, scar! Out, emery board of the Devil!" After what seemed an eternity in which the pounding of his throbbing heart was all Booker T could feel, the flimflam man burst out of the boarding house, half carried by the Deacons. His belongings were thrown out behind him, piece after piece. They forced him into his long, shiny black car and sent him in the direction of Bainbridge, Georgia, with a righteous physical and verbal threat he wasnt likely to wish to retum to any time soon. Booker T once again shifted in his mood as he realized that maybe Jesus had answered his prayer after all. Maybe Alice wasnt even there. Maybe she was at the river waiting for him. It was Sunday. He tumed tail and ran straight for the swimming hole, sure that his one-time friend would be his friend again.

59 What Booker T remained unaware of was that Alice at that moment sat watching out her window. She watched him ran away fromth e mob that continued to sermonize and to sing the praises of the great Brother Damon, the flimflam slayer.

^r ^r ^r ^r

Booker T lay on the cushy St. Augustine grass. The hot sun warmed the chill that permeated from his consciousness outward onto his skin. He felt tingly and drunk from the rays, exhausted from rurming the gamut of emotions that the moming had provoked. He knew he had to reconsider the pact he'd made with Jesus, but first he wanted to see Alice. She would come to the river. He was sure. He waited all day. As the sun set and a sad little shade slid into the darkness of dusk, Booker T realized Alice wasnt coming. Reluctant to give up hope, though, he waited until the mosquitos gave way to lightning bugs. He then waited until the sun rose the next moming and the mosquitos once again took over the river. Finally, Booker T walked back and into the Stardust Club. His uncle would be wondering where he was and would probably tan his hide for leaving a dirty floor two days running. Besides, he might see Alice there. She, of course, wasnt there, but his uncle was. "Where you been, Booker?" he asked over the top of a beer. "Come here, son, and get yourself a cold one. Get me another while you at it." Booker T was surprised at this development and uneasily got himself a beer. He grabbed the broom for good measure. "Lord, son," said his uncle. "What's this I hear about you a getting saved down at meeting?"

60 Booker T shragged his shoulders, embarrassed, wanting to ask about Alice but not daring. "You has got to watch your Aunt Peari. She's a wonderful woman, but if you let her start saving your ass, you'll find yourself spending all your good times at the mercy of that polecat Brother Damon." Booker T wasn't worried about his wonderful Aunt Pearl, nor was he thinking about his good times to come with Brother Damon. He drank down a slug of cold beer, feeling the coolness run down his throat. "Where's Alice?" he blurted out before he could think of a more casual way of broaching the subject. "Huh? Oh-didnt you hear? Well, I guess not Pearl told me you bolted from the meeting just as soon as they ran the flimflam man out of there. I don't blame you. I was pretty damned particularly fond of the remedy he was a selling myself Havent felt this good in years." "Alice," started Booker T who was now sitting straight at attention. "Oh yeah-she sat up in the room for a couple a hours and then finally came down with her bag packed, all dressed up for business, just a looking for that flimflam. Well, Brother Damon was just a stratting his stuff down on the walk, bragging about his victory over Satan. When Alice heard that, shejust went a wandering down the road after him." Booker T barely registered a reaction. He was once again consumed by his throbbing heartbeat and the feeling of his betrayal by Jesus. He swept the floor mechanically, then mechanically went back to the swimming hole where he mechanically drank beer and cried in the river all day. After several days of this behavior, Booker T retumed to the Stardust Club. His uncle tanned his hide a little bit this time but was mostly relieved he had taken to the river instead of the Mt. Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church. Booker T didnt mind the beating too much, either. He felt he deserved punishment for the route he had chosen, for his betrayal of his friend. He knew only one thing for sure: He would never retum to 61 meeting nor would he worry his conscience a moment about honoring the pact with the Jesus he had seen on the ceiling of that old meeting hall. Alice retumed a few weeks later after finallybein g left behind in Thomasville by the flimflam man, but she was a changed person. She was no longer a girl who liked to go to the river. She was a trae professional floozie girl who didnt appreciate her own capabilities at communicating with fellow humans. Nor did she care to get much out of the life that she had been given. She forgave Booker T but only wanted him to sit occasionally next to her on a bar stool while she waited patientiy, staring out the front door of the Stardust, looking for the flimflamma n to come back and pick her up in his long, shiny black car. Alice took to wandering often down the dusty stretch of dirt that was the road to Bainbridge. A sfranger in a black shiny car passing through town was all it took to start her walking, and the guilt that image set off in him pained Booker T for years. Booker T began to go to the swimming hole with that thin girl from the meeting, Eleanor. She wasnt as much fiin as Alice had been, but he liked the way she gazed at him with the expression of desperation that unrequited love produces so effectively. They would sit next to the flowing river while Booker fabricated stories of his grand adventures. "Why, Alice just begged me to go to the big city with her. I told her I was needed at the Stardust. Well, I guess I just broke her poor little heart. That's why she done ran off with that old flimflam man," he often began. His stories flowed like the river, were colorful and swift, and seldom contained more tiian a smattering of tiiith. Shy Eleanor had, however, decided that fateful day at the Mt. Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church that she loved Booker T to disti-action and would spend her life believing anything he ever said as being God's honest tiiith.

62 CHAPTER VI "BROTHER DAMON TAKES A RIDE"

63 Brother Damon Takes a Ride

Brother Theophilus Damon Johnson-Brother Damon to his people-rode low and smooth in his shiny Cadillac, white as pure wafers. It was a gift from his parishioners at the Mt. Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church-bless their souls to heaven-and he traly thanked the Lord for the good Christians in his flock who had toiled over several months of Sundays to bakesale and carwash his way to this golden chariot on earth. The car smelled the way he supposed a fineTallahasse e mansion to smell. He wondered, as he peered out on the downtown square of Quincy, how many bake sales it would take for a one-way ticket to a Tallahassee church with a rectory mansion thrown in. He longed for the kind of church with a huge stage and a microphone, not some crummy little pulpit with a podium. Ah well, he sighed, this was the way his calling took him: just a craising around dinky old Quincy looking for sin in his shiny, white, 1966 Cadillac. The downtown square was busy this moming, the minister noted. He paused at the fraffic light that hung over the intersection between the newspaper office of the Gadsden County Chronicle and the immense courthouse square. He thought momentarily of asking the young reporter who darted across Madison Sfreet what was the all-terrible hurry about, but Brother Damon instead lovingly watched the electric window roll down. It made an erotic buzzing sound that lasted for such a pleasurable length of time, that he let the boy ran on past the car. Milling blacks and whites walked and talked restiessly, segregated in groups on the courthouse grounds. The Brother supposed, as he hung his arm cooly off the edge of the now unrolled window, he would just have to parallel park his shiny new Cadillac on Jefferson Sfreet, right there in front. He'd go have a sit downti and hear what was all the raucous, maybe sip a little lemonade with ice slivers, later, across the sfreet at the drag store. Brother Damon had been the savior of souls in Gadsden County for decades, ever since he himself was a young, inspired man. He felt out of the buzz of things somewhat now, though. He didnt mind so much. He thought 64 his Cadillac car was a sort of retirement, a reason to get out of bed and look for sin a little. He liked his slow life, but he w^nt too particulariy keen about his parishioners knowing that little secret. The car slid smoothly into the parking spot marked off by red paint. Brother Damon thought, for a car-length moment, that perhaps he shouldnt park right there in the Sheriffs reserved place. But God's work certainly preempted man's law, and surely he was a going to find a little of that upper calling in this crowd. He admired his reflection in the windows of his car as he slowly heaved himself up and out. He bent over while the long door of the car remained open, and he pushed the electric window button up with his index finger. As the glass again moved slow and smooth, the light glimmering fromBrothe r Damon's three gold-plated necklaces caught in the sun and shone boldly. Brother Damon was very old and grossly fat, but no one could tell the man he was anything other than a perfect vessel to house the spirit of the Lord. Brother Damon felt he should attempt to remain contemporary with the fashions-he hated those old farts who refused to change clothes with the times-and the man had abandoned suits sometime earlier in the decade in favor of black turtlenecks and gold necklaces. He knew he looked like a hipster, a dandy, or whatever these half-witted kids called themselves these days, and the message of Jesus Christ just jived onto those poor misguided youngsters, the grandchildren and maybe even great-grandchildren of his original flock. He smiled at his reflection in the window and shut the car door with a flourish of his arm. "Oh, Brother Damon, bless my heart, I is glad to see you. You heard my soul just a calling you, I know you did, uh huh. Lord, what a terrible day we is a coming to. Oh my soul, my soul." Eleanor, the preacher's most reliable and conscientious baker and parishioner, grabbed firmlyont o his shoulder while fanning the perspiration on her face fhiitlessly with a wet hanky. He put on his sympathetic smile, glancing one more time at 65 his reflection, then tumed sfraight to face Eleanor. He reached his huge arms out toward the woman and brought her to him in a hug no closer than arm's length so as to avoid taking on her perspiration. "Well, Eleanor, you just beside yourself, honey. What in Heaven's name is the matter this moming? Course, I is here to spread a little hope in this time of trouble for our people. But why is it a froubling you so, sister?" Brother Damon queried Eleanor. He hoped she could not sense his lack of knowledge. He knew nothing of what was happening in this nervous crowd. But he knew certainly he could circumvent whatever the problem was for his people. The fat man emitted a deep, guttural sigh for effect. "Oh, sister. We has so many difficulties, froubling times for our people. Now you just tell Brother Damon righther e what has wearied your mind. Is it that Booker T Goldwire?" Eleanor chuckled a bit, falling off the snicker with a look around at the people and a pathetic sigh of her own. "Brother, if it only was. Ifit only was. No, sir. 1 suppose you is here about that poor DuPont boy. And I tell you, I just came fromth e courtroom my very self They caUed me in to take a sit down on the God-forsaken jury. 1 told them, right there in front of God and the county lawyer, I wasnt about to punish some poor lamb whose judgment awaits him with the Lord. Yes, sir. Poor Ross DuPont." "Ross DuPont?" Brother Damon asked, now fully realizing he was surely needed by his flock as the DuPonts had been good standing members of his parish for thirty-odd years. And he was just now hearing about this frouble. He worried he might be slipping, and in a panic Brother Damon let down his guard, asked Eleanor what in this mad world had happened here at the courthouse grounds. "It's what's happening in that there courfroom. Brother. I done told you they was a asking me to passjudgment on poor little Ross DuPont You aint heard? My Lord, Brother. It's been in the Chronicle. Probably made the Tallahassee paper. Oh, my soul, my poor soul. I has got to findRoss' s grandma. She will be beside herself You know 66 she ain't been right in years. This will put her six feet under if anything on this hard earth will. Well, you just have to go with me. Brother. You is needed." Brother Damon felt such a relief fravelthroug h his black-clad body. He agreed with Eleanor and loudly proclaimed to anyone who might hover in the heat within earshot that he was needed at the DuPont farm and tiiathe . Brother Theophilus Damon, would travel down any ratted road to take comfort to his sheep. He ended his proclamation by adding he certainly did know what happened to Ross DuPont, only he kept so busy reading scripture, werent no time really for the newspaper particulars. And he could find out exactly what the great burden befalling his people was on the way to the DuPont farm with Eleanor, gliding off in his shiny white chariot. "You just get righto n in here, and I will get you some air conditioning. Sister Eleanor," he consoled her as he opened the passenger side of the Cadillac. She sat very sti-aight in the huge front seat. Brother Damon climbed in the other side and hoped, vaguely, Eleanor would not sweat onto his soft, white-cloud, leather upholstery. He flipped the air conditioning fan on high and adjusted the vents to all blow in Eleanor's direction. "You just let me know when you is comfortable." He smiled toward her and the car lumbered back onto Jefferson Sfreet. Brother Damon considered how he should approach the subject of getting the facts of the froubleo n the square without completely letting on he knew absolutely nothing about what had happened in his parishioners' world. He felt he had covered himself pretty successfully back there on the square. He needed to simply keep up the subterfuge until he figured this frouble out. He would hate for his sheep to get nervous, to fear their leader might be slipping. The flockmigh t go get theirselves another shepherd of the Lord, and he might lose his shiny white Cadillac. Brother Damon could not imagine now ever spreading the message of Christianity without fine fransport such as this. "Sister," he began slowly hoping for a sign from above telling him how best to circumvent his obvious failing. "We needs to talk this trouble on tiirough. We dont have 67 no business alarming poor old Grandma DuPont into a coma. What is your idea about this consoling we embark on this morning?" Brother Damon smiled into the rearview mirror. He felt a rush of glee at his talent for inquiry and thought how the Lord once again was smiling his way. He settled back into a relaxed position in his plush car interior. Eleanor sat against the passenger door, shivering slightly. "I was just a thinking on that myself If you could tum this refrigerator down a bit, I has got an idea. Poor baby Ross. His grandma told him it wouldnt do rurming with that Georgia cracker's son. You know them white folks. Live on down the road from Ross's grandma. Told him rightther e in front of that wild white boy. Grandma DuPont did. She said, 'Ross, you is looking for frouble going on some hunt with them blue eyes, you is.' Said it rightther e in fronto f me too. I agreed with her but kept my mouth shut. And the way the paper is a going on, about it being a black insurrection and aU. Wasnt one bit Ross's fault. 1 just know. Could tell by the look in that cracker's eyes, he werent no good. No good at aU. Oh, Lord, I isjust thankful you is here. Brother. And I dont know where in the world Booker is, probably gone off with that no count used-to-be white man lawyer, Tom Louder. The frouble I has." Eleanor began to fan herself again with the now cold, sweaty, limp hanky. Brother Damon reached into the back pocket of his pants and, heaving his great mass over a bit, pulled out a flattened but clean white linen hanky. He handed it to Eleanor. "You poor, poor lamb. Ijust bet you is right about that Booker T Goldwire. I dont know how you has stood it all these long toilsome years. Ever since he pretended to see Jesus that day at meeting, I has had my doubts about his character. You are a martyr, sister, a martyr." Brother Damon patted her knee, keeping one hand on the steering wheel. He liked the way Eleanor's cushy leg felt under her cotton dress, soft as the leather upholstery, and he felt proud his memory was still intact about Booker T, even if his attention to current community affairs lacked a bit. After all, Booker T's blasphemy at meeting happened thirty-odd years ago. Yes, Jesus, he stUl had his memory. 68 "Well, Brother, I isjust a martyr. And so is you, keeping up this face against such frouble with the DuPonts. I dont know what we going to say to that poor old lady. She is probably the only soul in Gadsden County don't know about the murder. And now the paper's calling it the Turkey Shoot Murder and all. What you tiiink?" Eleanor queried the reverend, and he popped his thought of self-congratulations back to the frouble of his ignorance. "Murder?" he inquired, soft but shocked at this development. He been figuring,o n this ride, that the froublea t the courthouse couldnt be much more than someone's ripping off a liquor store, or maybe the pawn shop. "Oh, Brother. You is so right. We cant say that word to her. It'll put her under for sure. See. Ifyou wasnt here, Ijust dont know what would have happened. I'd have surely let the cat out of the bag. Brilliant You is brilliant as Jesus Himself" Eleanor patted her forehead vigorously and set to planning. "Yes. We'll not say that word, not breathe it for a second. After all, I is sure as Jesus died on the cross for our sins, Ross did not murder that son of a white cracker. You know, I bet the other boy tried to kill Ross, and it was only a little self-preservation. We'll tell her it was self-defense, we will." "Yes, sister. We must do that," Brother Damon replied, unsure of his brilliance, but happy nonetheless to keep such a designation for a moment more. They drove up to the DuPont farm that was not really a farm, but rather a square, cinderblock house squatting in the middle ofa couple of tired,dilapidate d acres of land. Eleanor tumed toward the minister as he tumed off the ignition. "You know what I is thinking. Brother. Perhaps I should go in first and kind of break the fragedycarefu l and quiet-like to Grandma DuPont. Won't do at all for both of us to come a knocking at the same time. You drive a bit and come back in a few minutes. Make her feel more special-like. You tiiink?"Eleano r opened tiiepassenge r door and got out of the Cadillac. "Now drive around a bit, just a bit. You hear?"

69 Brother Damon unrolled his window again, slow. He feh impatient this time. "I is going to find that old Booker T, Sister. Wont do for him to be off catting with a sinning white man lawyer on a day of frouble for our people." Brother Damon waved and drove on down the dirt road. He relaxed with waves of relief They sent shivers over the folds of his skin, and he considered where Booker T Goldwire might be. He knew to look at the jooks or the river,bu t he was unsure which one first. Being as it was the moming with mist still shining on the grass and vines of the country. Brother Damon opted for the river. He couldnt care less what or where Booker T Goldwire really was or if the man comforted Eleanor today: He needed to consuh with the scoundrel and get to the bottom of the frouble. He had known Booker T for years. When Damon first took to his calling of preaching at the Mt. Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church, Booker T was just an impetuous kid who hung out with floozie gfrls. How the no-count fishermanhooke d himself a good woman like Eleanor, Brother Damon had spent most of his middle-age years trying to figure out. He felt particularly fond of Eleanor and her relationship to the rich white folks like the Woodards. She got them to make some fat donations to the pathway of the Lord. But Booker T was worth one good thing to Brother Damon: He always knew exactly what was going on in town, always knew tiie real story. The Cadillac rolled back onto Jefferson Sfreet and tumed east toward the Ochlocknee River. Brother Damon recognized Booker T's old brown Impala wedged between two old pickups in a row along the bridge. He hated to park his shiny car here on the highway across from the Suwannee Swifty convenience store. Ah but, he thought, any folks who might notice will just presume he. Brother Theophilus Damon, was bringing his good word to the river. They might even think he was having a river baptismal. Oh, how the Lord looked down favorably today. Now, if the Lord would clear up this Ross DuPont mystery. Brother Damon could get onto saving poor souls with his own special Divinity.

70 The fat man began to miss the bygone days of black suits, with jackets he could take off, stripping down to shirt sleeves in the mid-morning heat and humidity of north Florida. He waddled carefiiUy through the tall grass down toward the river. He hated his black patent loafers might get wet from all tiie mist, and he pulled up his pant legs lest he procure any bright green grass stains on his new gabardine pants. The work of the Lord, he muttered to himself, and he reached into his back pocket for his hanky. "Damnation," he exclaimed when he remembered giving it over to Eleanor. The brother looked up at the sky to give God his most sincere apologetic look and was startled by a voice just a few feet beyond him coming from behind a free. "Brother Damon. What's got you all riled up to cuss this moming?" Booker T Goldwire chuckled and got up from where he leaned against a big oak. The good brother looked up at God hidden surely behind a cloud. He wondered how Booker T came to act as the ear of the Lord. He sighed and silentiy apologized to the sky for his indiscretion. "Booker, 1 is terrible sorry for this travesty I has committed," said the Brother with his arms spread out like wings and his head bowed, chin resting downward in folds. "I asks your forgiveness." Booker T chuckled gmff again and cussed a little under his breath. He scratched his forehead. "Felt pretty good, didnt it. Brother?" Booker T said slow and deep. He looked at the fat man who was only a few years older than he. "If you'd just leam to lower that sermon-voice a little, you could just get rid of all the cussing inside. Bet it's been building up for years, aint it?" "Booker. You know I dont approve of no kind of blasphemy. I is praying silent, right now inside my soul, that Jesus will take pity on my undeserving constitiition and forgive me. We should kneel down right here by the riveran d have us a little pray-in. Do us both some good." The brother reached for Booker T's hand, but the thin, wiry fisherman side-stepped him.

71 "Believe I'll pass. Brother," he replied over his shoulder. "But you go on right ahead. I has got to check my poles. Got them propped under some rocks. Come on down when you is saved." And with that, Booker T disappeared over the embankment separating the river fromth e road decline. Brother Damon looked up for a third time. He smiled and winked at the blue sky. He would have absolutely hated kneeling down in this weed and bug-infested grass, all wet and muddy. But for dramatic effect, the man emitted some salutations and pleadings, loud. He proclaimed in his deepest voice he needed forgiveness on hands and knees. He told Jesus he would wake up and kiss the ground every moming for a month, because he. Brother Damon, knew he would retum to the dust from whence he came. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. He pulled out aU the stops in his lamentation. When he feh enough had been said. Brother Damon again waddled carefully toward the river. Booker T sat on a rock, his cane pole hanging in the water. He sat next to the white man lawyer, Tom Louder. The brother hated this; he had wanted a private consultation with Booker T. More froubles fromth e Lord, he thought to himself in a sigh. I is being tested for sure this day. And it aint even noon hour. Booker T tumed slightly and bid the preacher, "Take a sit dovra. Brother. You know old Tom Louder, dont you? Been living here with us ever since he retired from the law over in Tallahassee a few years back. Louder, this here is the man responsible for keeping old Eleanor good all these years." Booker T smiled and Damon thought of the years he and that pious woman, Eleanor, had spent trying to keep the rascal from buming in Hell. It was a lost cause from the beginning and he had known that fact ever since Booker T, as a teenager, had lied about seeing Jesus on the ceiling of the meeting hall. Oh, those were the days of such simple, clear-cut froubles. "What brings you here. Brother?" Booker T inquired. "You need some legal advice? Or did you just come to tiie rivert o do a little cussing with us fish?"

72 "Well, Booker. I has come about the frouble over at the courthouse. You know, the DuPont frouble. I wanted to talk with you a bit about the pain and suffering all this worrying about the situation is a causing Eleanor. Now, it aint my place to butt into your business here, but you has got to know what that poor woman of yours is a going through. What you know of it, Booker? I needs to be able to counsel Eleanor, and 1 promised I'd fetch you from the river." Brother Damon lied with all the confidence ofa sermon. He thought to himself that this didnt even sound a little like a lie; in fact, it wasnt really a lie at all. He did need to fetch Booker T, and maybe he did promise Eleanor he would get her man off the rivert o comfort her. Yes, he thought, he had done just that. Oh Jesus, you aint failing me now. I am on top of my game now. "Yes, sir," Booker T replied. "It is some bit of frouble over there. You go on without me and comfort her. If she dont have a little cat tonight, she might be especially sorrowful." "Yes, yes, Booker. You stay on here, but I needs to know what she knows so as I can help her soul through this." Brother Damon continued prodding. He prayed and glanced again at the sky. Please Lord, let Booker T take the bait and unload what he knows. "Me and Louder here was just talking about that very thing. Guess everybody's going to talk about it for years. Louder here is good old friends with the Rutledges. You know them, own the pawn shop, other side of town. Well, Billy Boy Junior was at the very hunt with Ross and the white cracker kid, son of the old farmer lives out past the DuPonts couple of miles. Guess you just shouldnt have kids when you is too old to raise them up right. What you think. Brother? Louder here agrees. That old farmer's about your age or some." Booker T took a swig from a quart of beer, passed it to Tom Louder, and offered some to the preacher. "Lord, no, Booker. That's firewater. You know Eleanor aint going to approve of you

drinking."

73 Booker T snorted some beer and swallowed hard. "Dont suppose you'll be telling her nothing about this aftemoon. Brother. You is out here to get some free legal advice with gossip thrown in, because Ijust dont suppose you'd be spending prime sermonizing hours by the river with us two sinners. Ifyou knew what was a going on over at that courthouse, you'd be there preaching after Georgia crackers before they string poor Ross DuPont up lynch-style for killing one of their own. Ifyou was smart like us, you'd stay right here, quiet-like, and sip a little beer." Booker T looked straight on the preacher. His eyes held Brother Damon's in a challenge. The two men had been at odds with each other for years over women and Jesus, and if the tmth was ever told, Booker T was the only soul in Gadsden County who had the man's number. "All right, Booker. You has caught me again. Just go on and teU me. What is the story? You say the Rutiedge boy was there? What did he see?" Brother Damon sat furious at Booker T's grasp of his situation. He glared at the sky for a second and abandoned the subterfuge, adding impatience instead, conceding to defeat. "Well, Brother, Louder here was just a telling me that Billy Boy Junior hunted with those boys all Thanksgiving day. Said they was just as screwed up as two kids can get. Said the rest of the group done left the two alone to sober up. But they didn't do no such thing. Instead, got mad in the dark over something and tried to kill each other. Both had their daddy's rifles. Furmy thing about the whole story was the white kid must have been more screwed up because his gun went off and the bullet didnt come close to hitting Ross. Both a couple of dumbasses, ifyou ask me. Anyhow, Louder says if the other had been more in his wits and killed Ross, he'd only be tried for manslaughter or something such. Get a few years. Ross, being a nigger like us, is a being tried for-what'd you call it. Louder-first-degree murder. A lot worse. Louder says. But I says Ross'U be Strang up before the jury goes to deliberating. I suppose Eleanor hightailed it off that jury?" Brother Damon assured Booker T she was safe at the DuPonts' house and away from the travesty of injustice. The two fishermen continued their conversation about the trial 74 and what Billy Boy Junior did or didnt know. Booker T said he supposed he knew a lot more than he let on, but he heard fromEleano r that the Woodard giri had ran off and married the Rutiedge boy. Rich white folks in Quincy rarely got involved in great froubles, especially involving their own people. And now Billy Boy Junior was married tight to them, he'd be zipping his frap shut, too. That evening. Brother Damon held a midnight pray-in on the steps of the courthouse. Ross DuPont was being held in the county jail, up on the top flooro f the great, old courthouse. Brother Damon assured his flock amidst farming and wailing, candles and prayer books, he would pray with Jesus to stop the continued persecution of his people and protect poor young misguided Ross fromwhit e jailers and lynch mobs. The newspaper reporter from earher that moming witnessed the pray-in with his notebook in hand. A photographer even snapped pictures. Brother Damon feh once again in prime form, preaching. He posed and he articulated in grand style. Oh, how his flock gathered around the courthouse stairs to grab a little sfrength from his piety. Only Eleanor was missing. Brother Damon never quite made it back to the DuPonts' to pick the good woman up. The masses required his attention this day, for he was the shepherd leading his flock on the righteous road to salvation. At the ripe old age of seventy-three. Brother Theophilus Damon Johnson-Brother Damon to his flock-successfully entered into the civil-rights movement in Quincy, Florida. The old preacher could not have been more pleased with himself and the direction of his ministry, and his shiny, white Cadillac, his flashychario t of God, sat oh- so-comfortably in the Sheriffs red-painted parking spot, for sure safe now. The Sheriff would not dare an insurrection from the mass of angry black citizens in town from all over the county. The lawman probably figured that just this one, uncomfortable night, he could walk.

75 CHAPTER vn "BILLY BOYS PAWNSHOP AND MUSIC EMPORIUM"

76 Billy Boy's Pawn Shop and Music Emporium

Heat waves and water pools of humidity danced down the middle of Madison Street, spinning and floating cellophane around the square, white-brick building that housed Billy Boy's Pawn Shop and Music Emporium. As midmoming in Quincy leapt with the full force of the sun onto the plate glass front door of the shop, layers of mist were melted away by the sfronger heat. Clear sfreaks of glass lay amongst the iron security railings and remaining condensation from the evening. Billy Boy Junior changed his mind about a quick trip to the Catfish Roundup for his usual two-pitchers-of-beer lunch, growing fatigued from watching the battle-building tension of sun and water broken only by mosquitos and air conditioning. "Well shit. Daddy," he growled fhisti^tion to the sfreaks on the glass, "What did you say is for lunch over here?" Billy Boy's Pawn Shop and Music Emporium-in one form or another—had been a standard feature of economic security in Quincy for several generations. In fact, not even Billy Boy Junior was sure of his exact relationship to the founding merchant father, BiUy Boy Rutiedge the First. He only knew—because his daddy told him—that the original ancesfral founder was known as Bill around town and ran a trading post. He figuredh e must have been a formidable personage. His now deceased mama used to read to him regularly from this gigantic, gold-leafed history book about Gadsden County in which Quincy sat smack center, and it quite eloquentiy indicated that forging a path through the great wild jungle of north Florida before I-10 was built was not a particularly easy endeavor. Billy Boy Junior was sure that making a successful go at a pawn shop-that's all a trading post really was in the mind of the boy-during those questionable historic times must have amounted to pure genius on the part of his family's founder.

77 The young, wiry man yawned, wishing he could tolerate iced coffee and tumed to his father who sat diligentiy counting receipts behind a dusty mound of newspapers and unopened mail. Billy Boy Senior lived for the pawn shop. The old man loved nothing more than to wander slowly through the stacks of stereos and toaster ovens with his goose feather duster. He adored other people's merchandise. He often hid himself between the pianos and automotive fare just dreaming about the good old days when the economy of the south had changed often and drastically enough to keep him traly busy. Billy Boy Senior never cared much for the music emporium half of his empire, claiming that it only invited every deadbeat musician east of New Orleans to freeload for guitar strings. He tolerated it though, because the instruments hanging from hooks on every wall lent class to the establishment and freeloaders usually made great kiss-ups who gladly worked for strings and guitar picks. "I say. Daddy, what you making in the back for dinner? It's damned sure too putrid outside at ten a.m. to be leaving here at noontime-and I has got a craving for your boudin-stuffed peppers. How about it?" Billy Boy Senior sniffed the air, and, seeming to something with the end ofa nose that held on to half-glasses, grumbled an answer to the tune of being the only so-and-so that ever did anything around there. But Billy Boy Junior understood that to be an affirmative and gave up his watch over the heat waves. He settled down in the big, cracked-leather easy chair across fromth e dusty, always-growing mound of newspapers that stood stacked between the desks of the Billy Boys. His attention was quickly diverted fromfathe r and work as he perased the sports section of the Tallahassee Democrat. The bells of the front door dangled a forewaming to the enfrance of choking heat and a couple sfray mosquitos, and while neither Billy bothered to get up, they both glanced up over papers and nodded at the first ofa constant array of regular bums who frequented their shop in search of handouts, food, and air conditioning. This particular bum, Tom Louder, actually slept on the premises at night. 78 The two Billy Boys referred to him as their night watchman, but the constant reality of his inebriated condition made his potential effectiveness against criminal activity very doubtful. A burglar with good ears need only listen for Tom Louder's snoring to emanate from the recesses of the pawn shop delivery track to gauge the reception awaiting at the shop. The heavier the grunting and snorting, the easier the heist. Billy Boy Senior held onto the conviction that a security guard was good for appearances and business; nonetheless, when Billy Boy Junior's mamma died, leaving him a full fifty-percent partner with Billy Boy Senior, the younger insisted they install a new-fangled security system that woke up everyone in town except for snoring Tom Louder if even a cat frotted too close to the square white adobe. Tom Louder shook off the sweat that had settled heavy on him that moming and whined about why everyone had failed to wake him before it got so God damned sticky outside. Billy Boy Senior looked over his dusty mound, actually pushed the glasses securely toward his eyes and chuckled good-naturedly, "Well, you good-for-nothing, disgusting bastard ofa drunken bum. Ifyou cant even wake your own lazy ass up out of my car, sleeping like a homeless dog in a parking lot, then you can just get the hell out of here." Billy Boy Junior giggled behind his sports page, and Tom Louder stood shaking not from fright but from the effects of last nights whisky and his habit of sleeping in the floorboard in a crammed and cramped, fetal position. Hehimselfchuckledasnort. He glanced at the old man, then looked down at his dusty tennis shoes and clasped his frembling hands together. "You want me to stuff up billing envelopes this moming?" "Yeah, Louder. 1 suppose it's that time of the month again. You stuff them bills over there. And remember the stamps this time. Just because your mouth's dry with a week's worth of shit growing in it, don't mean you can mail bills blank of stamps in envelopes flapping in the wind. Somebody's got to pull some weight around here. We ain't no 79 charity ward," said Billy Boy Junior, pumped up and snide, attempting to imitate his father's chiding. He stared, as always during every moming's dressing-down of the underling, repulsed at Tom Louder's frembling hands that moved to comb loose sfrands of greasy, grey hair off his forehead and into the mop on top. Tom Louder didnt seem to take the abuse spit at him by the younger proprietor as easily as he did the elder's. The clip of the tone BiUy Boy Junior lent his abuse indicated a trae antagonism. "I aint charity. I used to be a respectable lawyer over in Tallahassee. You know. Had a nice big marble office in downtown. Dr. Robert Lawry was my best friend. Sure he was. We graduated from Tulane together. He used to always say, 'Tombo, you make the best damned lawyer in Florida, because you can always talk louder than anyone else in the courtroom.' Get it? Louder?" Both Billy's had gotten it about five years ago, at its premier telling, and each since had stopped reacting to Tom's stories; in this instance, Billy Boy Junior exchanged his sports section for the Gadsden County Times with a flourish of disgust and Billy Boy Senior just sat a little lower in his cracked-leather rolling chair and hid fromth e onslaught of pathetic stories. Tom Louder was a good old boy friend of the elder Billy Boy, and the younger resented the fact that he had to take a fifty-percentresponsibilit y for a man he considered a loser and held no pity for in his hard luck days. "No, I was respectable before I retired." Tom Louder's voice raised a decibel in frembling desperation. "Just the other day Robert called me just to say hi-dy." Billy Boy Senior looked up from his receipts at this proclamation, giving Tom Louder a humph and a nod of agreement while he wiped a layer of dust off the mound. He urged the man to move on fromsenseles s memories to the present: "Tom, get on to the bills if you think you is getting any dinner today. From the looks of you, I'd be a mite more concemed with fillingm y stomach with food than our heads with your nonsensical bragging." He sauntered toward the back room, mumbling about boudin and laziness.

80 Tom Louder kept talking about Tallahassee and lawyering while he dragged a stool over to the pile of receipts and envelopes that Billy Boy Senior had abandoned. The frembling hands straggled with each mechanical movement to stuff, lick, and secure stamps. "Yeah, Robert wants to know when I'm coming back for a bit of a visit. You know, his son Bucky is a medical doctor now himself over there. Sure would like to see him. 1 remember when he was just a little boy scared to jump on a frampoline. His daddy claims if 1 hadnt got him up on that old frampoline they had in their back yard, he would have never become a Seminole football star-told me that just yesterday." Tom Louder's voice frembledmor e audibly in sync with his hands while he pleaded with the emptiness of the stifling room and Billy Boy Junior behind his newspaper for some kind of recognition. "Shit," replied a muffled voice, "If this damned rag doesnt just get more and more like a nigger newspaper every day-nigger weddings and nigger funerals. You know. Louder, they never care about what might be newsworthy in Gadsden County or Quincy, what really runs things. They sure want my and daddy's money, though, to print their crap no one in this town cares one twit about. I think Til just call that good for nothing publisher tomorrow. There's never no white news no more, like we dont exist none. Well, I feel used. And, Louder, you know what rhymes with user dont you. That's right Loser. I aint no loser, and I has got some story ideas of my own, and they is going to listen if they know whats best. I'm sure they do, ifyou know what 1 mean." Tom Louder gave no indication of hearing this tirade,an d he continued reminiscing about his own glory days. The crackle of paper and the raspy cough of his dehydrated licking were the only sounds accompanying the whirring of the air conditioning. The symphony of heat and boredom played out the day for the old bum-a normal day of bargaining and wishing desperately for that two-pitchers-of-beer lunch that Billy Boy Junior normally freated him to.

81 "Hey, Billy Boy, when was you thinking about taking off for a little dirmer this aftemoon? I could drive your car around town and get it nice and cooled off for you, then maybe join you for a little spell. I has been working hard here." "I aint going nowhere. Louder. Daddy's making up some boudin. I aint gonna sweat bullets just so you can quit them damned hands shaking. Cant you do something about the noise you making? A body would think you was creating an earthquake over there. Ifyou would quit trying to drink them niggers under at the jooks every night, you would be a better hand around here. Louder," snarled the son as he got up and sfrode over to the stool Tom Louder perched upon. Billy Boy Junior enjoyed taunting Tom Louder and relished the moments when he could draw Tom to the brink of desperation, begging for a trip to a bar. Ever since the younger proprietor had reached an age at which he realized the ease of bullying an irmocent soul as his father had bullied him as a small boy, he'd tortured Tom Louder with the relish of revenge. He stared intently at Tom, daring him to begin his stuff, lick, and stamp in frontof a sneering audience. The pressure confused Tom Louder. In a panic, he stared at his useless, fremblinghand s grasped together now in his lap; the only sound in the symphony now was the lull of the cool air pushed through the shop by the fan. "What's wrong now. Louder? Cat got your tongue? I thought you was a big lawyer. Hell, you cant even stuff bills in a pawn shop. 1 cant wait to take you over there to Tallahassee. See you talk big to a judge. Mayl)eifl take you out and get you drenched down with sweat and beer so your hands dont shake like an earthquake, we can get a little work done around here. Yeah, maybe then you can take that trip to visit your highfalutin friend, the doctor," Billy Boy Junior jutted his hip to one side and bent into Tom Louder's face, enunciating each word with piercing needles of inflection that seemed to shoot sfraight into the old bum's eyes. The stand-off broke with a giggle from Billy Boy Junior. He picked up an envelope and checked the work of Tom Louder who rettuned reluctantly to the stuff, lick, and 82 stamp. He frembled back into the routine of his work, mumbling under his breath to Billy Boy Junior, "1 work hard here. You know I work hard, and I did as a lawyer, too. I did," Tom Louder once again lost himself to his bragging and the stuff, lick and stamp built momentum with the raising of his voice joining in again with the shop's symphony. "I was good, and judges over there loved seeing me, especially in juvenile court. I took care of those kids." Tom Louder straggled with that emission of trath. And his protestations held the completeness of integrity he had once bestowed upon his profession. He had been an attomey who actually spent his youthful energy attempting to fix the problems of the individuals he represented instead of trying to just put them away like most of the money-grabbing lawyers in Tallahassee; they had better things to do with their time than show up for those appointed cases they were constantiy being required by the state to represent. In fact, somewhere in a garage sale hastily thrown by his ex-wife for a forced possession by the Intemal Revenue Service, Tom Louder had lost the awards he had been given for his service to the juveniles of Florida. But that was ten years ago, and as the toil of disappointing years can damage some weak men, he had fallen into the bottomless well of self-destraction and now stuffed, licked, and stamped at Billy Boy's Pawn Shop and Music Emporium. "I sure enough got an award in 1963 for my contributions to the State of Florida. I did," crackled Tom Louder. But only the air conditioning remained to hear Tom Louder tell his past. Billy Boy Junior sfrode into the back to check the progress of the boudin- stuffed peppers, hoping his father would remember the rice this time. The thought of Tom Louder left the young man's crael attention as soon as he spun his heels in a black screech of leather on linoleum. The old alcoholic, left to his own thoughts and the physical sti^ggle of mind over unconfroUable hands, lapsed into the routine of his job. He thought about the long day ahead and the pile of envelopes mounding before him and about cold beers sliding dowoi 83 his throat and the relaxation that breaking out in the aftemoon meant. The pawn shop for Tom Louder was a prison that only differed from the prison he had saved young delinquents from in his glory days, in its air conditioning symphonies and time off with the bottle for good behavior. He simply stayed in the routine now, never daring to reclaim the outside world. After this day at the pawn shop, as after every day, he would wander into tiiewood s of Quincy looking for his fiiend Booker T Goldwire at the black jooks. Booker T always tried to listen to the nonsensical braggings ofthe old bum. He even acted like he believed him, often rewarding Tom Louder with a dinner of fiied fish and greens cooked by Booker T's good woman, Eleanor, in a small garage apartment out back ofthe Woodard house and then dropping him back at the pawn shop late in the evening coolness. Billy Boy Junior in the back room spouted off to his father about the crazed ideas of bums. "What does he think I am, a blithering idiot? That Louder lives in the biggest fantasy world. I dont know why I put up with it I has a mind to fire his ass. Let him sweep up the mess at those damned jooks he hangs out at. See how he likes pretending to be the big-shot-Tallahassee-capital-of-Florida lawyer to a bunch a ignoramus niggers all day. Next thing we know, he's going to be writing some legal column in the Times, and we'll be freatedt o nigger divorces for our advertising money." Billy Boy Senior mixed boudin with eggs and rice. "Son, you put up with that drunk old bum so you dont have to stuff them damned bills yourself," he regarded his son piercingly over his half-glasses, once again perched on the far end of his nose. "Ifyou dont hand me some jack cheese, I is gonna fireLoude r myself and leave you to it," replied Billy Boy Senior in the clipped tone he reserved for father and son chats. Billy Boy Junior handed his father the jack cheese out ofthe refrigerator, somewhat deflated but unwilling to let go ofthe point. "Daddy, you know as good as me that Louder is a lying bum. He aint no attomey. I am tired to death of his bragging about having a hand in raising Bucky Lawry. I myself went to FSU for a semester with him, 84 and he never once mentioned no drunk fool teaching him nothing about jumping on no frampoline." "God damn it, boy, what did Ijust finish telling you? I dont give one God damn about none of it. You are seriously impinging on my cooking here. Now, get out front before Louder gives the whole damned store away to his nigger friends or get on to lunch somewheres else. I is the only sonofabitch around here that seems to be able to accomplish more than bitching and bragging." Billy Boy Senior shook a boudin-greasy hand at his son and stuffed the concoction wildly into peppers. Billy Boy Junior retumed to the front and to his newspaper. He sat hiding his buming cheeks and hands slightiy shaking with indignation. He stewed over his rejection over the topic of tiiebu m Tom Louder. The rhythm of stuff, lick, and stamp ticked away elongated moments of anger and ideas brewed with emotion. The pawn shop once again reflected only the symphony ofthe moming heat and activity. All three men were left to their solitudes of jealousy and regret Like Tom Louder's sense of his loss of prominence, the Billy Boys both felt that something was missing in their lives, had been taken from them. And that missing agent should exist in the walls ofthe shop with its heat and dust and stacked, used merchandise. They had slowly hated for years, hated each other for the loss ofthe woman in their lives and for the dradgery that working together as equal partoers meant for both of them. The wife and mother had died from heart disease. The son blamed his father for the violent freatment he had bestowed upon the two of them ever since he could remember, convinced that the father's sharp verbal attacks that too often tumed to physical violence in the depths of nightiy drunkermess had caused the disease. And the father blamed his dead wife for leaving him to work the rest of his life, side-by-side, with the son he had always despised as being a pansy and a whiner. And neither ofthe two knew any more than Tom Louder did what to do about the monotony of tiieirmisery .

85 But Billy Boy Junior's regrets carried the energy of youth. He slammed down his paper on top ofthe dusty mound and picked up the telephone. He dialed the newspaper office and asked for the publisher. "Well, hi-dy. Jack. This here's Billy Boy Rutiedge Junior over here at the pawn shop. How you doing today?" he asked tiie receiver. "Oh, I'm doing pretty middling, pretty middling. I'm calling you because, well. Daddy and 1 is a little concemed about the lack a real news in the paper these days. You know what I'm talking about. News we likes to read. Well, I thought you might like one a those crack shot reporters over there to come on to the shop and interview our night watchman, Tom Louder. You know, he's just recently retired from the law over in Tallahassee, and he's got some humdinger stories to tell. It'd be a real people interest kind of thing. Something to add to the weddings and funerals. I don't mean to tell you what to put in your paper, now, but I is just personally mesmerized by his stories and thought you might be, too. He had a hand in raising Bucky Lawry, uh huh. Thats Dr. Lawry's son. Used to be star quarterback for the Seminoles few years ago. Whats he doing being our night watchman? Well, he fell on hard times after an untimely retirement, just like the rest of us can, and Daddy just felt like taking him on, seeing as he's a close family friend just like the Lawrys and all. He's a real hand- -and smart, too. Maybe he'll write you a column on the law. Could help you catch some of those damned politicians around here spouting off about money. He's brilliant, he is. You will? Good. Dadd^U be just tickled pink to help his friend get some exposure in his retirement years. I'll drop by on you later and talk about a big ad next week. I'm feeling mighty good, got an idea about a new slogan, listen to this-Buy a Guitar and Be a Star. We might just feel like buying an insert or something." Billy Boy Junior set the receiver into its cradle gently, grinning to himself at the brilliance of his joke. "Well, Louder, looks like you has got yourself an interview today. You'd best finish that up quick," giggled Billy Boy Junior as he stratted around the comer and looked once again out the plate glass window, now dry fromth e heat. "You know. Louder, I think I 86 will go out to dinner after all. I'm feeling like a cold one. You better stay around and eat with Daddy. He's cooking up a mess of victuals back there. Besides, you got your big break with the press coming later." Billy Boy Junior grabbed his keys from behind the counter, winked at Tom Louder as if the joke was a conspiracy against the folly ofthe small town press, and sauntered out the front door. "Tell Daddy I has gone, you hear?" BUly Boy Junior didnt need to delegate anyone to tell his daddy he was gone. Billy Boy Senior heard every word of that telephone conversation. Every word ofa conversation that both these helpless old men knew was a warrant for Tom's arrest into the prison with no air conditioning symphonies and no time off with the bottle for good behavior. They stared at each other for long moments, listening to the hum ofthe air conditioning crescendo on now-raw, wounded nerves. Tom Louder broke the reverie of misery first as he once again ran his fremblinghand s through his hair and then clasped them in his lap. Billy Boy Senior kept watching the old bum, his old friend. He had actually known both Tom Louder, esquire, and Dr. Robert Lawry in college at Tulane, and he knew that now the old bum hid in his current prison because he had embezzled fimds from the juvenile court in Tallahassee ten years before. It pained Billy Boy Senior to support his fallen friend in the degradation that life had imprisoned Tom Louder in, but the proprietor also knew Tom Louder to be a kind man who had helped frightened little boys leam how to jump high into the air and find themselves as men somewhere on the trip down. "You know. Louder, I never much cared for Little Billy's mama. She didn't raise that boy right. Couldn't figureou t why she insisted on leaving him her half of the pawn when she died. I'm the only sonofabitch around here that can do anything right. Who ever heard ofa pawn shop putting an insert in the paper?"

87 He looked sadly at Tom Louder who sat solitary and unresponsive on his stool. The stuff, lick, and stamp now absolutely abandoned for a blank stare at clasped, frembling hands. "Hell, Louder. Maybe you shouldjust go on and find tiiat Goldwire fella. He's probably around town somewheres. I'll save you some dirmer for later. Go on, now. Get." Billy Boy Senior tried to mask his concern behind indignation. "None of you is worth a damn to me today. I think PU just close up shop and eat some boudin. Maybe find me a melon to cut open. 1 is the one who deserves the retirement." Tom Louder continued to stare at his hands as he slowly raised himself off his stool and wandered toward the front door that would open onto Madison Sfreet. The old bum was met at the glass door, now completely dry of moisture, by BUly Boy Junior who had retumed for forgotten cigarettes. Tom Louder only brushed past and walked into the heat. Father and son stood, alone, in the pawnshop, staring at each other. "How much you hear?" Billy Boy Senior asked. His son cocked his head a bit to one side, studied his father with narrowed eyes. "Heard enough to know aint none of us worth nothing around here. Daddy. Louder aint even worth selling down river. Dont nobody care about nothing." The boy grabbed his cigarettes, spun around, and sfrode coolly through the front door, just behind Tom Louder. Billy Boy Senior watched him through the waves of heat that continued to dance in the distance of the asphah. He shook his head of memories as he locked the door and tumed the hanging sign to closed. He thought absently he must call the paper and tell them Billy Boy Junior was just stupid drank and rambling. They shouldn't bother coming over. He figured a big ad would just take care of this situation afterall. He shragged off an air conditioning chill as he walked to the back to check his dinner, thinking that it really was too damned hot today to eat out.

88 CHAPTER vni "THE VERANDA"

89 The Veranda

Ice melted slowly into vodka, and the cubes rang a wood-earth sound as they delicately tapped against the cut crystal glass, yet another heirloom from an ancient southem clan. What would my mama think, mused Frances Woodard. She sipped her drink; the cool liquid ignited in her throat-a throat long since numbed to the feel ofthe fire. She wondered, as the liquid slid down, if the inside of her throat was just scar tissue that no longer held sensitivity to the touch of alcohol just like her husband. Dr. Woodard, had incessantly wamed. What did he say-that I was forcing my insides into a coma or something? She wiped perspiration from her forehead. What would she think? Her mama had sat on this same veranda Frances's entire childhood, and the now middle-aged Frances rocked back slightly and stared up at the faded wood plank ceiling. Her mama painted it sky blue when she was bom so that Frances could be rocked for hours on the wicker swing and her mama could feel that the sky invaded her own veranda. The floor planking was painted kelly green. Frances's father had bought her mama almost the entire town of Quincy. He made his first fortune in tobacco and compounded that fortune when he comered the market on tomatoes as shade freetobacc o lost its marketability in the deep south. Cuba put a lot of farmers out of business but not Frances's father. He bought Coca-Cola stock at the right time, and the rest just fell into place as the years dragged on. A way of life, they called it. Frances supposed her father just couldnt quite buy up the sky and eartii like he did stocks, bonds, crops, and people, so her mama remedied the situation her own way: with a can of paint and the gardener's sweat. Frances always felt frapped on this veranda, a self-inflicted jail cell. She had spent most of her life watching tiieres t ofthe townspeople in Quincy go about their business. She sipped slow, smooth vodka and omamented the front of her ante-bellum home.

90 About this time every day, black Eleanor came out to take a sit on the veranda next to her and shell peas, snap beans, or cut com off the cob for creaming. It didnt matter what Eleanor worked on, Frances never helped her; in fact, she didnt care for the intrusion. She thought ofthe woman as a black cloud floating into her veranda world like the aftemoon summer showers that broke the surmy stillness hanging always over the yard like the moss that dripped tears from ancient oak frees, precursors to even the old house. The rain showers, like black Eleanor, arrived every aftemoon. Eleanor, for what it was worth, held a quiet disdain for all women like Frances. The housekeeper had come into Frances's life when Dr. Woodard did; Eleanor's family had cohabitated in service with the Gadsden County Woodards for what Frances figured was etemity. And when Dr. Woodard himself moved to Quincy after the war, he had simply inherited the woman.

Eleanor waddled out in her scuffed, white nursing shoes and sat heavily in a plantation rocker. "You want to help me snap beans. Miss Frances," she asked as always, and, in like fashion, received not even a glance in reply. "The moss is a hanging heavy on the old oak this summer, aint it," she continued, not missing a beat in the wicker rocker she sat tightly in. "I think I'll get old Booker off the river tomorrow and into this front yard. We dont want to be no redneck frash like the Rutledges, here. If the Woodards dont keep up appearances, who in the world will. This yard is going back to the devil himself" Frances sighed. Her glass lingered on her lips and the sliding vodka moved her thoughts inward, only frapped more securely on the veranda. My mama called me Frances Louise. When did that stop? 'Why? She sat on this swing and told me about Quincy society. How she came out at sixteen in a grown-up, white silk dress at the Suwannee Club when the Suwannee Club was for fme parties and good people in Gadsden County. Boys came to dance from as far as Tallahassee-it was a distance over rutted sand roads-through the plantation countryside that weaved crooked fences and dark jungle landscape into tapestry. Thick and razor sharp. Angry, she called it. The 91 landscape hadn't yet conceded complete defeat to men like my father who fought to tame it with plows and cheap black labor. But it failed to intimidate the boys who drove their father's new Fords through this maze and arrived to glance at and perhaps even talk to the belle of Gadsden County. The daughter ofa wealthy farmer. But not called just a farmer to his face, called reverently by the plantation aristocracy, a gentleman farmer. And Louise was my mama's given name, her first name. 'Why did my own double name legacy given to me at birth disappear when I married Dr. Woodard? My father pronounced me a woman when he pronounced to the Episcopal congregation that he indeed gave his daughter away. The priest said it so loud and important: my given name and my legacy. He asked, "Do you Frances Louise Simmonds take Riley Alexander Woodard to be your lawfully wedded husband? " And then I lost my name. I was forever tagged: Frances Woodard. Dr. and Mrs. Woodard. "It makes me want to take a dip of snuff. Miss Woodard. It does," interjected Eleanor's matter-of-fact voice into Frances's wandering thoughts. Frances had no inkling what Eleanor rambled on about. She placed the sweating glass of vodka against her forehead. It felt cool, and the condensation from the glass ran down her cheek. Tear sfreaks through heavy powder and blush. She sipped the vodka—cool, then hot again sliding down her throat. She asked Eleanor what in the world she had said. What was she talking about now? "Why, Miss Woodard. I was just saying that 1 cant hardly stand the way that no- count Billy Boy Rutiedge is always a calling Miss Lou, 'darling' and "baby doll.' It makes me want to take a dip of snuff, it do." Frances cut her eyes at the housekeeper. Eleanor had taken over responsibility for the house and its inhabitants the day that Dr. Woodard and his young wife moved into the big house upon the death of Frances's mother. The black woman stood between the old house and its probable demise fromth e disuse that had characterized Frances's growing- up life but this feat did little to decrease the animosity Frances exhibited toward Eleanor. 92 "You really shouldnt keep saying these distasteful things, Eleanor. Makes me think that horrible Booker T Goldwire bum you insist on feeding out the back door of our kitchen is a bad influence on your vocabulary. And 1 dont know if I like him mowing Dr. Woodard's yard too much. He simply scorches the earth with that lawn mower. If I wanted circles and triangles plowed into the grass, I'd get one ofthe farm hands to do it up right." Eleanor emitted a guttural sound of disapproval that reminded Frances she only wasted her breath complaining to this woman, who in reality maintained strict confrol over the Woodard household. "Oh, I suppose we might as well get some work out of him, anyhow. Pay for the victuals he eats." Frances settled into the swing and pushed off again, losing a high- heeled shoe from one foot in the process. "You need to have a talking to with that Miss Lou, I tell you. She may think she is a grown-up married woman of two weeks, but I told her yesterday nothing but no count white redneck trash girls take sits out at that Bottom Bar and Grill just a prancing around in hip buggers and halter tops and showing off their own birthing buttons. Now she sure enough begged me not to say a word to you or Dr. Woodard, but I wamed her if she didnt slow down, I was gorma have a talking to with her mama. She just giggled that little girl way she has with her daddy and thinks she has with me, and I ran out here to sfraighten this situation with you. She aint no big grown-up thing at eighteen years of age, and this marriage with that frashy Rutiedge boy isjust proof positive she needs her hide tarmed a little." Eleanor warmed up to her ratting out of Lou with an increase in the snapping and a flourish ofthe wrist as she threw the beans into an enameled bowl. Frances was quite well aware that Eleanor's threat to Lou-her daughter, her sfranger- was a tactical maneuver to scare the giri. The talk and the snap of friisfration centered the black woman into her frenzyo f worry that actually excluded Frances.

93 When I gave birth to this stranger in that front upstairs bedroom, Eleanor so quietly stole beside the crib and took her. Said she was going to put a soft diaper and a cotton lace dress on her so she could be pretty for company to view. Said I shouldjust sleep- she would take care of me and the baby. My mama was already gone from a heart attack. She should have been there, not all these strangers. I lay back on those old goose down pillows, thick and musty smelling. I fell asleep within them; I didn 't know what else I should do. "And Miss Lou, she said she wasn't having none of that college business no more neither. Said her husband would just pay Dr. Woodard back for the tuition he done paid out. Yes, she did. Humph. That no-count frashcan t pay for no clothes to put on Miss Lou much less her college money. Says she be busy setting up house and dont need no leaming no—what did she call it-algebra business." Eleanor talked sfraight into the nothingness of Frances's veranda, talked to no one. "1 cant hardly sleep at night just a worrying. And what she gorma do when that Rutiedge boy run out on her. Oh my. Miss Woodard. You just got to talk with her. Says she might be considering beauty school. Lord have mercy. Beauty school. A Woodard. Dr. Woodard's only little girl." / wanted to go to college after I graduated from high school. I wanted to move to Atlanta and go to Emory University. But my mama started entertaining Dr. Woodard on the veranda in the evenings. He had just gotten out ofthe army then, stationed in England. He never really experienced war; thought he did, or acted the part, all puffed up with importance. He just mended cuts and bruises at the officers' hospital in London. My father said so one evening out on the veranda when he wandered in late from the fields. Mama was so mad at him, all smelling like the earth and liquor. She said he needed to worry less about the fields and more about his daughter's future. And he laughed outright at her like only he could ever do. But Dr. Woodard did seem so important in that uniform with his medical degree and good southern pedigree. Though he was from Georgia, mother forgave him, being as he 94 was a major on the winning side and all. And had good family in Gadsden County. All medical doctors, he came to take over his uncle's practice. The old man, his uncle, even delivered me upstairs in the front bedroom, where all of us were brought. Musty and antique.

I don't really remember when we started strolling down the sidewalk toward downtown. My hand placed so delicately on the starched sleeve of his jacket. Even in June, he wore a uniform jacket Said it wasn't good form to court a young lady in his shirt sleeves. Mama let us walk along in front ofthe other big houses as the sky turned pink Told me to tum back home when the evening got purple, taught me how to introduce him to the neighbors politely, with decorum. "How do you do there, Mrs. Brawley, Mr. Brawley. This here's Major Riley Alexander Woodard, a doctor in the U.S. Army, just back from London, England. Yes, old Dr. Woodard's nephew." I practiced and practiced in front ofthe mirror, and hoped we'd walk on down to the square and get a coke at the drug store. But then every evening, we tumed the block before we could get a coke at the drug store. Major Dr. Woodard said it wasn't proper for a young lady like me to be seen without adequate escort as such downtown in the evenings, because that was when the coloreds strolled around the square. I thought he was my escort, my protector.

And I asked mama if I couldn't stroll around the square just once and show off Dr. Woodard, and she laughed real hard at that and told me to just sit with my knees together on the swing and let our people come by and meet him. Our way of life. She even asked my father to come home from the fields early in the evening, to quit playing tonk and smoking cigars, and to shower and shave and present hisself to Frances Louise's suitor. And who are our people now? Where are they? My own daughter, flesh and blood that I birthed and gave my lost name to, married a merchant. Worse than a merchant. Ran off with a pawn broker. He deals in the local trash's throw aways. Gives those 95 people money and smiles and receipts for their furniture and cheap jewelry. Saw it myself when Lou begged me to go and see this travesty. Seemed real proud ofthe place, what with the older Mr. Rutiedge saying he went to high school with me and hadn't I held up real nice and all. Try as I could, I couldn't remember the man, my future son-in-law's father. Just smiled and nodded at him. Then our two children ran off together and married. Or I guess they married. What did Eleanor say-two weeks ago in Atlanta. Seems longer somehow. Longer. "And Miss Woodard, when that little grown-up married woman, Louise Woodard Rutiedge, it just pains my old bones to say it now, marches her hide over here, you need to tell her she has got to stop a telling folks that she done met that Billy Boy Rutiedge at powwow. She telling foUcs at the Bottom. A sleazy white jook joint stuck in the middle ofa gully. Yes ma'am, across fromth e Suwarmee Swifty and aint nothing to be a going aroimd bragging about none. Now the good Lord knows I aint been in there. Miss Frances, but Booker tells me that everything under God's beautifiil sun is a going on in that place. Gambling. Drags. Drinking. It aint proper. And now Miss Lou has got it in her head she should be a throwing some big marriage party at that stink hole of sin. Says its seeing that she met Billy Boy there and all. I told her she best talk to her mama about that. That her mama wasnt going to stand for none of this nonsense. She got herself in a big old huff. Said that it aint like you is gorma throw her any antique-like party nohow. That you just hate her and hate her 'lovey dovey'-yes, ma'am, she called him her 'lovey dovey' right to my face-and that she could throw any old kind of party herself Well, Miss Woodard, I'm telling you there is only one way to settle this mess, and thats to just stop it flat dab. I told Dr. Woodard this moming when I made his grits with exfra sugar and butter-which I'm just not letting him eat no more usual-like because of what the Tallahassee doctor done told him about the clogging of his constitution and ail-that maybe you and Miss Frances shouldjust rent out that country club and throw a big shindig and act happy and all. The whole county's just a wagging their tongues about this 96 disgracefiil union, anyhow. Only one way to settle this mess. Thats right," Eleanor finished with a wave of her arm at invisible mosquitos. "And what did Dr. Woodard say about this situation?" inquired Frances in almost a whisper not looking at old black Eleanor, rather reaching to the rattan side table for a pack of cigarettes. She drew one out and slowly put it to her lips, savored the action of lighting it. She thought absently of the dark swirl of smoke, the memory of shade, the retum to conscious thought. Like concrete-hard sun on her face. "Well, Miss Frances, he said he'd think on it a spell at the office and for me to ran it by you real nice like." Eleanor snapped her beans with the fervor of knowing she was the only soul capable of planning assaults on this crazy family. She looked at Frances with fiery brown eyes that seemed to lay in wait, ready to jump out ofthe folds of her fat, wrinkled, fleshy face. She abraptly stopped snapping beans and grabbed a Kleenex out of her apron pocket to wipe the glistening sweat from her brow, then her cheeks, and finally her neck and breast bone. All the time, her eyes remained fixed on Frances Woodard who smoked her cigarette slowly, taking in deep breaths of smoke, smoke that she exhaled even more slowly. Her swing rocker visibly receded to a creak with the action. Frances grasped for the memory of shade. Mama never seemed to sweat on this porch in the aftemoons. Not even at the tea that the neighbor ladies gave right here under mama's sky all newly-painted. The smell of wet paint lingered around all the ladies in their heady linen dresses and netted hats. Gloved hands sipped lemonade so delicately. I was thirsty, but when I tried to sip lemoned sweet tea, my gloved hand shook and the ice cubes rattled the sweat off the side ofthe crystal. Mama looked at me so hard; her eyes narrowed into slits with disapproval. How she did drink her own tea so smoothly; I gave up the attempt Settled on smiling at the ladies as they exclaimed to mama what a good match Dr. Woodard had made in snatching me, Frances Louise, up from my father's home. Under their breaths to each other they exclaimed what a good match Frances Louise had made in snatching up 97 the next town doctor, considering the poor girl always seemed afraid of her shadow and frankly a bit slow to put a sentence together. The neighbor ladies smiled practiced toothy smiles alluding to innocent whispers about lace patterns and engraved silver service. How their eyes shifted and their crisp, stiff hands patted my shoulder so slowly. And I sat and pretended I was just slow enough to miss the duality that surrounded me and my mama on our veranda under the new sky and thick painted kelly-green grass.

That day was so damned hot, and as the aftemoon crawled by under the oaks and moss, the ladies, my mama's so-called friends, hashed out a decision about my engagement party. So young to be a married woman, I was. The only proper thing to do in these crazy post-war years of abrupt marriages that raised eyebrows and caused doubtful gossip was for Major Dr. Woodard and I to celebrate our lengthy engagement with a combination coming-out party for me and presentation of the young new doctor, nephew ofthe revered old Dr. Woodard of Cypress Drive in Quincy, Florida. The Suwannee Club would be the place, amidst the stars with a light breeze wafting in through the great front doors that had announced all of Gadsden society into the ranks of the good people and their way of life.

A party at the Suwannee Club to honor me. White dresses and magnolias and gardenias. Just like my mama's parties when she was the belle of Gadsden County back in the twenties. Parties at which girls from good families wore long white dresses and carried nosegays to hide their smiles behind. Once when I was a child. Mama told me about the scandalous Tallahassee city girls who braved the rutted, rough roads to Quincy. Leon County girls in short silk dresses and page-boy haircuts that swung and long beads that clicked in the night of dances. Girls who came to Gadsden County with the boys in their fathers'Fords. Mama said they were flappers who frequented dance halls and sipped moonshine whiskey as dainty as she sipped her communion on Sunday mornings. Silver shimmering folds of cloth like star winks blurred in humidity, and these girls danced all night long. The chaperones gasped in fright and indignation at what 98 these kinds of girls dared. My mama said her kind, her friends, giggled and blushed behind their bouquets, sniffed the heady cologne of gardenias and felt drimk themselves. Wanderlust.

Please mama, oh how I begged. I sat up on my knees before her in rapt attention. Such a little girl. Please tell me about the whirling silver dresses and the Charleston and moonshine. I wanted more about the girls from Leon County, the Tallahassee city girls who drove through the jungle with bold gentlemen in order to drunkenly show off their city ways to the innocents in Gadsden Coimty. Oh no, Frances Louise, we wore long white linen dresses, my mama answered my pleadings. Answered them her own way. I wore my hair long and curled and twisted with flowers and velvet ribbons, she said. Our ears were always covered and our virtue intact But then, finally, as my pleadings exhausted, she told me that just once she and her friends snuck up into the attic to practice the flapper girl dances they had seen at the Suwannee Club. The summer they all were presented to society and found their husbands, they stealthily climbed right up into the third floor of her very own home. My very own home. Claimed that at one time, generations in the past, the great attic had been a ballroom and that the wood floor still glimmered with years of lemon oil—a sheen so much like the silver silk dresses and blurry stars. Reflections of flowers and secrets in the slight heel scratches. Snuck up there and attempted the bounce and kick ofthe dance steps. Practiced the manner in which the flapper girls from Tallahassee tossed their heads behind their bodies and laughed and glanced at the boys: a rapturous mating dance.

I asked mama how, if she wore a shapeless, dropped-waist white linen dress and hid behind her virtue and the heady aroma ofa bouquet in which her smile lived, how did she end up courted by and wed to one ofthe beaus of the flapper girls and what had happened to these girls? 'Who did they wed? My mama laughed good at that one and rocked a bit harder on the veranda.

99 The engagement party indeed would take place at the Stiwannee Club, and I would wear white and carry a wrist corsage of magnolias, hiding as my mama hid behind the flower perfume. I asked for a string of pearls. I wanted a long string to finger and twist and feel hanging low from my neck down to my waist But Dr. Woodard presented me with a small double-strand choker of pearls that evening, on the veranda by ourselves as we waited for my mama and my father to escort us to the Suwannee Club for me to be brought out on the arm of my future husband. Tiny, perfect white pearls that nestled just above my neck bone. A choker with an emerald clasp. I wanted so a long, long string like the flapper girls had that my mama snuck up to the attic to emulate and imitate in the long afternoon. The swing ofthe strand pulling opposite with its own gravity, a swirl of the shimmering silver silk in the imagination of my mother and her friends. Myself. "And that Miss Lou said to me today that she would sure enough just strat herself over here and talk to her mama about her party. She said she would give you a talking to and that she was a grown-up woman," interjected Eleanor. "And then do you believe she reminded me that this here is 1968, Miss Frances. Like I am some blithering idiot and senile-like and dont carry a clue as to the year. I is old is right I done told her, but I feel my age just enough to fiiUy comprehend the passage of time. Shejust humphed off to that disgraceful pawn shop and showed her belly button and halter top to that Billy Boy Rutiedge husband of hers. You come back here and show your mama what you got up your sleeves ifyou is brave enough, I told her. And Miss Frances, you know what she said to me? She done looked me right in the eye and said, Eleanor, I aint got no sleeves on. This here's a halter top my husband bought me, and if my mama or my daddy or even you don't like it, then you all can take it up with Billy Boy." Frances smiled at this. The sensation of light and laughter lifted within her and felt strange, so unlike the pang ofthe memory of shade that had pushed her so radely into watching life. Years she sat in supposed content on a veranda built for a mother of parties and choker pearis and repression. Frances put her vodka down on the side table, 100 pushed off once again to the beat ofthe snapping beans. Eleanor mumbled away about the degradation ofthe freedom of today's youth. Frances looked out beyond the confines of her world. She had to actually stand up to see beyond the drooping oaks and Spanish moss that enclosed her yard. She jetted out of her swing as it moved forward, with a deep creak of metal chains against the blue wooden sky. Frances stood by the railing in her bare feet. She watched the heat waves fly and shimmer against the boulevard. And out of that blur of cellophane emerged her daughter, her sfranger, Lou. She sfrode quickly, jauntily toward the veranda, a look on her set face of definite purpose. Her sandals flopped and the sunglasses propped on the edge of her nose bounced in time with the swing of her long sfraight hair that hung down her bare back. The ends mingled with the sfraps of her new leather halter top that Eleanor had proclaimed obscene. As she rounded the walk into the frontyard , Eleanor exclaimed, "My, my, ifit aint our old grown-up married girl. Miss Lou. 1 done told you that your mama was just going to die. See here. You done got her up off of her swing with constemation. You ought to be yonder putting on something decent instead of worrying your poor mama who you know dont feel none too good today." Lou Woodard Rutiedge looked at Eleanor, pulled the round, rosy glasses from her nose, and discarded them on the cushy grass. "Mama," she said with a sneering look at Eleanor, "you just wouldnt believe how this here Eleanor's been talking to me. She says I cant have no marriage party at the Bottom and she's gonna tell daddy on me and that I married frashan d I'm frashno w myself She just aint acting very cool to me and Billy Boy who is nothing but cool to her and to Booker T all the time. He just gave Booker T a fransistor yesterday to give her so's she won't miss no programs and she's not at all grateful. Mama, tell her I can wear anything I want and I can have my party." Lou placed her hands on her waist just above the band of her loose Levis that hung down around her thin hip bones. She challenged her mother with the sharp eyes of an indulged child Frances stared back at her daughter. U seemed years since she had really 101 looked at her own flesh,he r blood daughter. Frances, the mother of this crazy vision of skin and hair, freshnessan d beauty hidden behind hip buggers and leather strips of indignation, smiled and gazed at her daughter. She felt a furmy new pride in the creation she beheld in fronto f her. Independent, all puffed up with the fiiry of not getting her own way. Fire and passion had somehow skipped a generation in Frances's family, and in this moment, looking over the border of her veranda world, she realized it. She could just swing on the thick paint of her mother's life and mull over lost daydreams in the shadow of memory and the darkness of shade, or she could simply walk off the kelly-green wooden grass and accept the progression of her own life. Walk in the real grass with her daughter. Frances caught Lou's look, held it a long moment in the shade, then walked slowly down those stairs. The heat ofthe bottom step that stood fading in the sun sent a chill up her skin. She wandered over to Lou and lightiy placed her hand on the arm of her daughter. Her toes curled around blades of thick grass. "Come on, Lou," Frances said, not taking her eyes off her daughter. She saw the girl's lightness and being for the first time. A young vision of herself She thought how odd she had never really noticed they looked so alike. Not her father's daughter at all. "Take your sandals off and lets squeeze toes in this cool grass. Booker T sure does a good job mowing, doesnt he?" Frances smiled and lifted her head toward the moss above. "I'm just sure Eleanor appreciates Billy Boy's gift, dont you, Eleanor." "But mama, what about my party and the way Eleanor's been talking about me and my husband? I ain't no baby." Lou looked alarmed at her, this mother who never stopped to cranch toes in the grass or feel the soft grey fiir of hanging moss tickle the top ofa head. Frances put her arm around her daughter's waist and began walking amidst the garden of magnolia trees and wild roses three generations old. The free shade of nature felt good with its allowing in ofthe sun in sfreaks through the leaves on the trees. So

102 different from the painted sky ofthe veranda that allowed no sun and no veriegated shade. The grass gently smashed under the women's feet. Frances stopped walking and felt the rabber crunch ofthe grass. A twang of sadness and guilt lingered inside her soul: She knew less about the lives in her home than her housekeeper did. The twang developed into remorse at knowing even less about what had kept she herself on that veranda not even regarding life as it walked past. She straggled for something to clarify her thoughts, perhaps to qualify her life to this young self beside her fidgeting with the grass and wanting an answer. Frances looked up at the veranda. Eleanor still sat and snapped beans. She did not physically register surprise or concem at the development on the front lawn of Dr. Woodard's house that aftemoon. Shejust snapped and wiped perspiration from her breast. "Eleanor just hates to let her little girl go, sweetheart," mused Frances finally. "She loves you and wants the best for you just like my mama wanted for me and I want for you. I've been thinking hard about this idea ofa party, and I think your daddy and I need to just throw a great big party at the Suwarmee Club for you and Mr. Rutiedge." "The Suwarmee Club." Lou laughed. "It aint been open in years. Mama, it dont even have air conditioning. I bet you havent been there since you married Daddy." "No, honey, I don't suppose I have. But your daddy is going to open it up again just for you, and Lord knows he can afford you a little air-conditioning. We'll cover it with lights and palm leaves on the walls and beautifiil flowers from our own yard. You've never smelled a Florida evening amidst stars and magnolia blooms, just like they were when I was your age." Lou stopped strolling with Frances and tumed to her. She looked with incredulity at this woman who actually tiiought here today on the cushy grass ofthe front yard to plan a party for her daughter, her sfranger. "Mama." The single word was the finality ofthe pact between these two women, that they might henceforth engage in a relationship. Frances slowly placed her fingersaroun d the back of her neck and unclasped the double 103 sfring pearl choker fromhe r neck. She looked at her daughter from head to toe and slowly took stock ofthe image. Lou wore sfrands of cheap crystal beads that hung around her neck and settled on her bare belly between the halter and the jeans. "I want to give you these pearls. I dont imagine you want to wear them aroimd your neck, but I want you to have them anyhow. Your father gave these to me the night of my engagement party at the Suwarmee Club. He promised to take care of me like my father had. Then he placed them around my neck as a symbol of protection. I want to give these to you, because I want you to know I am proud of you and your independence. Show me you have your own mind like my mama did before you and decide where you want to wear these. Remember, you have what is yours right here on this grass." Frances had never attempted any form of motherly advice before. She wasn't sure what she should do; she only desperately wanted her daughter not to end like herself, frapped in the memory of shade. Frances handed the pearls to Lou and allowed her hand to linger in her daughter's as they both watched the dull pearls pick up reflections of wavering light from the sun through the frees. Lou took her hand from her mother's and played with the sfrands. "Mama, I dont know what to say," said her daughter. "I dont guess these beautiful things go too well with these hippy clothes. 1 dont guess I should wear them until 1 got on some church-meeting clothes, some clothes like yours." Frances threw her head back and laughed like her mama had so many years ago. She sank slowly down onto the bed of St. Augustine grass, her legs jutted out from beneath her dress. "Oh Lou, you're not hearing what I'm saying to you. You look beautiful in your hippy clothes. I didn't even know that is what you call them. You just put those beads on any way you want." Lou sat next to her mother, shocked. She slapped a mosquito that landed on her ankle and, in a fit of inspiration, wrapped the beads around that ankle securing the emerald clasp She pulled up her pant leg and displayed her creation, flexingan d pointing her 104 toes toward the sun. "Mama," she began, uncomfortable, "do you really mean it about giving Billy Boy and me a big party at tiie Suwannee Club?" Frances fingeredth e pearls on the ankle of her daughter and smoothed the jeans around the pearls. "There hasn't been a daughter in our family not present herselfto Gadsden County anywhere but the Suwannee Club since the Civil War, I dont think. I am not going to be the firstt o break a fradition in favor ofthe Bottom jook, as Eleanor calls it. You can be an independent soul and make your mama happy all day long as long as I get to tell the rest of this highfallutin county that its just fine witii me." Lou jumped up fromth e grass and ran for the veranda. "Eleanor, you aint going to believe it but mama and daddy are going to throw me and Billy Boy a big coming out party with aU of our fiiends there. You and Booker T can even come. Aint this far out?" Frances lay back into the grass, oblivious to the bugs and the moist earth hidden in the thickness. Lou sat on the porch and began to help Eleanor snap the beans. Eleanor shook her head and rambled on about the frouble this party would bring to Lou's saintiy parents and that her good-for-nothing husband Billy Boy Junior wouldnt know how to say hello to Lou's parents people any more than Booker T would. They would probably slip out back and shoot craps with the likes of Tom Louder who, by the way, wasnt getting invited over her dead body. But in the excitement and confiision of complaining and planning what would certainly be the biggest party ofthe year in Gadsden County, Eleanor looked over at Frances still lying back on the grass under the veriegated shade of an old oak free. Eleanor smiled a smile of contentment that matched Frances's smile. She vacantly eyed the blooms like corsages on the magnolia freebesid e the old oak. "Miss Lou, now don't you listen to me. You get yourself over there and discuss your party with your mama. And dont get no grass stains on them pearis of your daddy's neither." Lou giggled and bounced up fromth e painted floorofth e veranda. "You're gonna have to buy a new dress, Eleanor. And you're gonna have to drink champagne and maybe 105 even get drunk and dance with Billy Boy's daddy," taunted Lou as she bounded off the veranda toward her mother. "Lord, child, what is your mama gonna do with you?" Black Eleanor fell back into her work and let the mother and daughter plan their party.

106 CHAPTER K "SHIMMERDANCE"

107 Shimmer Dance

The car rolled and jived, bounced over the ratted, sand roads that etched Leon and Gadsden Counties into one junglescape. And boys, suspended in the cool evening air, almost flew as they bounced high off the car seats, ramblingove r every bump in the wild road. They breathed deep the whiskey exhaust floatingove r the rag-top and held onto flashy girls who laughed, drunk and abandoned. The girls wore metallic-colored dresses. They were flapper girls who sang in squeaky, high-pitched voices the songs of ragtime bands, tight notes from a washboard base and a newly-emptied crock jug:

Pack up all my care and woe. Here I go, singing low. Bye, bye blackbird. Where somebody waits for me. Sugar sweet, so is he. Bye, bye blackbird.

Humming the rest, the group was too drunk to remember words, mouthed only melodies now. One boy sat in the back seat, tense; it was his father's open-top Cadillac, new and shiny, inviting dirt fromth e sand road to duU the black paint. His friends assured him they had only borrowed the car for the night to retum with him in grand majesty to Gadsden County, his home. And so they straggled on thin, three-inch-wide wooden tires through land not made for this car, but rather for a mule wagon. The boys and their girls laughed and sang louder, harder, as the road sifted deeper. And deeper within the countryside that ridiculed man's futility, these young people, who knew not of futility, traveled on. 108 The boy who rode along not daring to drive in this quest was indeed brave enough to borrow the car from his father's garage in Tallahassee. He had failed to actually ask for the car, but he wanted so to impress his city friends, his university classmates. Somehow, being from Gadsden County, fromplantatio n aristocracy, older than the imaginations of his friends, didnt seem to impress, so the boys rode over to the white dance hall on the south edge ofthe city in a shiny, borrowed car. The hall was hard-edged with dark comers and a scratchy floor. There, they picked up the girls whose dresses reflected candle flames off the comer tables and who danced gold and silver against scratches in the floor and the shadow-life on putty walls. The girls' eyes appeared to sparkle in the smoky haze more brightly than their dresses, all filledt o the watery edges with whiskey and rhythm. The boys drowned in those eyes and piled everyone into the father's car to bump and slide through the jungle called Gadsden County. The end ofthe driving adventure promised the belle of that county. They all talked about her pronounced beauty at the university and perpetuated the story through whispers over musty books, stacked and hidden, in the library. The one boy from Quincy had unraveled a tale of unexcelled loveliness. He assured his classmates that square in the middle ofthe county, the rural brother to Tallahassee, lived perfection as could only grow under country rain and sun. Yes, he, whose father was a country lawyer and sent his son to the university to become the same, knew that on Saturday night, the belle of Gadsden County would emerge in all her glory to take her place in society at a great plantation ball like all of her mothers had done before and all her daughters would certainly do on through perpetuity. Because in the deep south, the conventions of society-of man's expectations-died hard and slow like the wagon roads. But with bottles bouncing along in time with the boys and giris, jiving fiery liquid-like lava through the jungle night, orange laughter sloshed and overwhelmed the cry ofthe whippoorwill that fought to out-maneuver the metallic cry ofthe engine. The boy from Gadsden County sensed fraditions in his worid might change this night. No one in the 109 slow moving automobile was aware ofthe fradition they embarked upon and, therefore, could not understand tiie fleetingsens e of imminent change. But gold and silver cloth flew faster and steadier than the stars in the night under the vines of Gadsden County. The giris threw their hair into the wind and grasped tight to the evening's beaus who had won their fleeting affection with no more than an invitation to jump on in and go to a dance. Their watery eyes giggled and held tight against the bounce, and the exhaust now seemed to pull in sand puffs from the jungle road, to make a fierygrit .

Louise Marguerite Sheffield sat in front of her mother's great vanity. The pine scrolling carved dark and deep into the piece had always fascinated her as a small child. Before she was tall enough to reach the mirror and realize its trae purpose, she had sat on the cold wood bedroom floor and run her pudgy little-girl hands over the carved flowers. She loved the dull feel brought by years of diligent waxing, and she loved the deep crevasses that seemed to hide breathy secrets within their variegated depths. She knew some day she would sit before its grandeur like her mother and brush her hair in the candle warmth of evening. All her life, the little girl was sent to bed in the evening dimness as her mother sat to brush her hair and as her father sat downstairs smoking cigars, waiting himself to be summoned to bed. This evening she sat alone for the first time in the great bedroom. The quietude ofthe ante-bellum room closed around her and made her feel sfrangely old. She brashed her hair. The movement ofthe silver omamented bmsh as it pulled the mass of straight hair out from her body into the silky dimness was the only movement other than the flameo f oil lamps in the dark. Louise thought of how the room seemed to grow and take on life in the dimness, how it never seemed quite so imposing in the light ofthe moming. She waited for her mother and her mother's maid. She waited to be helped into the silver-white silk evening gown, her 110 mother's dress, which she would wear to her presentation this night. She looked over at it lying on the great bed. It seemed so soft and dull in the dimness, so majestic and milky. Louise feh calm, unlike her friends had acted earlier, friends who would join her that evening, and she wondered at her serenity. The girls who had grown up together in this town of aristocracy and conventions had all giggled the aftemoon away on Louise's veranda as they waited impatiently for their mothers to call them into supper-a light meal of cold meat and biscuits, left-over turnip greens fromnoo n dirmer—to calm their nerves and give them sfrength to stay awake long into the night. They sat on plantation rockers and whispered melody-hopes in three-three time. It was waltzes they had practiced all winter long, in preparation, after lessons in decorum and china painting that poor little old Miss Greaves taught, so diligent and hushed within the lace-pattem shade of her drawing room that never seemed quite light enough, not even right after noon dirmer. Miss Greaves, after a tedious aftemoon of silver and marmers, slowly, painfully cranked up her Edison phonograph, and the girls traded-off partners to the fuzzy, scratched waltzes. They loved that part ofthe tedious day, and Miss Greaves sat on her Queen Anne chair with its faded velvet-yesterday's violet-and smiled whimsically at the girls' excitement. She never joined in their excitement, and the gfrls always rashedt o leave else she did. They somehow did not care to hear her stories of grey, rainy spinsterhood, did not want to riskth e infection of that bad luck. The girls tumed slowly amongst her wet china and lace curtains. They held each other's elbows limply at a distance, smiling whimsically to themselves. Louise pulled a sfrand of hair back, and the door slid open. Her mother walked smoothly in, and the girl once again wondered at the water-like quality, the pretematural aura ofthe woman. The mother did not ask the giri to move, but rather hovered over her and made a shadow in the reflection ofthe mirror. Louise looked up at eyes that slowly critiqued her features.

Ill "You look just like 1 did when I was your age, honey," her mother whispered in a voice of wine and ginger. "I am so happy for you. I feel young and giddy like a school giri." Louise smiled shyly at her mother, a woman she always feh a constant shimmer of uneasiness toward, who suffered some sort of flightynerve s she could never quite conquer. Her mother represented all the mystery of long silk material and ornate silver brashes, of womanhood, the grandeur of owning the moment in serenity and security. Her mother tumed and picked up the comer ofthe dress. "Jewel will be here to help this on," she said and once again smiled, now a bit removed, glassy-eyed and distant. She sat on the edge ofthe bed, and her hand brushed her own cheek lightly as if she considered the feel of her skin. "Your father would not approve of this, and so it will be our secret." She moved toward the great wooden vanity and opened a drawer. A light spice scent lingered around Louise as her mother pulled out ajar. Held within its tinted glass was an earthy powder. "Let me put some on you. Ladies as lovely as you dont need this, but I want you to feel special, like the woman you've become tonight. Just a little. There you go." She lightly brashed along Louise's cheekbone with a makeup brash, soft and harsh at the same time, almost like a hot bath that shocked while it soothed. The girl, at first surprised by her mother's applying powder to her face, admired the effect, but mostly she enjoyed the secrecy ofthe womanly ritual. The evening had heretofore been unreal enough, but the brash of powder added added something more to simply sitting at the great vanity in the mystery of evening, only touching an omate silver brush to her hair. Jewel, the colored maid, walked in. All business like, she told Louise to get herself out of that chair and into her dress. "We've got to do something with that hair. Won't do to have Miss Sheffield's only giri showing Quincy society her hair. Got to pull it up nice­ like and present a lady."

112 "I want to cut my hair, mama. Please. The catalogues aU have short hair." Louise glanced at her mother. "Let us please cut it short, just to my ears. It will curl, and it is 1927, after all. All the girls in Tallahassee have their hair short, I'm sure. Its the end, really mother, please. Then I'd surely make an appearance tonight." The girl looked long at her mother now and then at Jewel. She pleaded with eyes shimmer-fiiU of want. The ritual ended in that moment. The wanting in the girl's eyes met with the mother look, not the woman look. Louise once again was the child, and she instinctively bounced out ofthe cushion chair in front ofthe vanity toward the bed and the dress. "Gadsden County ladies dont wear their hair short." The mother brushed her hair against the newly-powdered skin and sighed in the dimness. "Tallahassee girls may be fast all they want, but you will come to understand their folly." She instracted Louise to sit again in the cushioned chafr. The girl felt merely silly against such serenity and conceded defeat to her mother's brush. Jewel laid the dress back on the bed and began to twine the girl's hair amongst verbena and babies-breath. "Yes, ma'am, we dont need no short hair in Miss Sheffield's coming-out dress. We best make this beautiful hair up before we get into our dress, honey," consoled Jewel. The scent ofthe verbena overwhelmed Louise's disappointment, and the dull sheen ofthe silver-white silk dress waited, pressed and patient in the flame ofthe oil lamps and candles.

****

As the great wooden doors ofthe Suwannee Club opened wide and challenged the darkness with yellow-gold electric light, Louise, on the arm of her father, felt that she had entered a camival. Lights this bright never bumed in the ante-bellum house of her parents, and of their parents before. The house in the evening held a shadowy darkness, a shroud of warm black cloth, floating sheer and translucent, always lingering somewhere 113 between dark and light worlds. This light in the Suwannee Club overwhelmed the darkness, was bold and inviting. Her father stopped at the door. The hall separated into two rooms. The first room was a small reception hall with settees and small tables. Older ladies in their subdued, antiquated dresses sat and talked low. The large ballroom opened fromth e front room. Louise's eyes moved through the arched enfrance to the swirl of long dresses that seemed to twirl past the opening like the lightning bugs playing outside in the darkness. Up and down, the lights floatedwit h the lightness of neither purpose nor direction. The dresses wafted lightly past the young girl. She wondered absently: They glided rather than bounced to the rhythm of music. They moved smooth and watery to the melody, a consideration that had not come up at poor Miss Greaves's house on those sweltering whisper-lace aftemoons. The prim ladies arose from their couches to join Louise and her father. How beautiful you look this evening, your evening. Miss Louise, they gushed in unison. Louise felt overcome by the dusty smell of rose water mixing now with the verbena in her hair. She felt weak in anticipation ofthe revelry just through the archway which she was now embarked upon. She longed to break fromth e prim ladies, fromhe r father's stem, stiff arm and run with her silk dress and slips held up to her knees just as she had when she was a little girl out in the fieldswit h this now-stem father. She wanted to unloose this bondage of society and ran with him again. But the days in the fields came before and were obliterated by the womanly ritual performed in front ofthe great carved vanity of her mother, before she entered the great wooden doors ofthe Suwannee Club with its secrets of Gadsden tradition. Louise wanted to ran hard and breathless to the music and the lights, but she held her breath and smiled at the prim ladies. She wondered if they had sat and waited for her mother when she had entered Quincy society at sixteen, in this same club full of music and dancing. Her father kissed her hand as a soldier might in the dreams of giris who whispered spring away on a veranda. He excused themselves smoothly as the ladies 114 gushed. "How grown up you look in your mother's coming-out dress; how beautiful your hair is. What I wouldnt do to have Jewel in my home." And her father marched her away, leading her hand as he held it so lightly and unfeeling in his own gloved hand placed carefully against his tuxedo jacket, a jacket wom only to this club and only once a year. At last, the walk ended as they paused under the archway. Greenery draped the opening and brushed against the top of her father's head. Louise giggled as he stooped to enter. The walls ofthe dance hall were completely covered with palm leaves. Not an inch of paint or wood could be seen through the thickness. Louise gasped at the beauty and her father confided that her mother had sent all the way to Miami for the palms. Potted frees stood in every comer, flanked by party-goers in black and in white, and Louise felt as if they stood in a manicured jimgle, not in the man-made hall. The visual surroundings overwhelmed the girl, and the orchesfra at the end ofthe rectangular room sifted into her consciousness. She listened to the subdued sound, so much clearer, even muted than the phonograph that had scratched out the same melodies in poor Miss Greaves's parlor.

Her father let go of her arm and reached into his breast pocket. He pulled out a stiff cream card and a thin gold pen. He told her it was her dance card and that she mustnt consent to dance with any boy or man unless his name was properly added to her list and that his would be the first name. The last note played in the ongoing waltz, and dancers moved to their tables and to the potted frees in the comers. Another song would not be played until Louise Marguerite Sheffield took her place on the dance floor with her father, because this evening was her presentation and the good people of Gadsden County were here especially to anticipate and to admire her emergence into their ranks. And the girl knew of course what was expected of her; she had gone over every detail, again and again, an entire evening plotted and discussed in the parlor of poor old Miss Greaves Louise caught the gaze ofthe old grey, rainy lady. She sat at a comer table 115 with the widowed grandmothers from the Episcopal Church. She dabbed her eye lightly with a lace handkerchief and whispered to the other ladies, and the girl hoped vaguely she met their approval. Her father introduced her formally, grandiosely to the crowd. They clapped dreamy muffled sounds through gloves. Ladies gushed toward Louise's mother who lingered in the archway behind her daughter, and Louise's father nodded toward the orchesfra. He then led Louise to the middle ofthe dance floor. A slow steady waltz began as if cued to the inexperience ofa girl whose first dance in public would be watched by an entire world, and her father placed his right hand against the small of her back, took her fremblinghan d into his own. She realized she still held tightiy to her dance card, and her father smiled at her embarrassment. He waited for it to be placed into the small beaded evening bag that hung delicately from her wrist as her mother had dictated. Once again, her father held her firm and led her into the first step. One, two, three. One, two, three, the girl instinctively thought, until the firmness and the easy flow of her father's steps overwhelmed her insecurities. She thought then how sfrange, how intoxicating this man felt, so unlike the limp, lemonadey dances in poor old Miss Greaves's parlor those aftemoons with her girlfriends. The entire room, to Louise, was held up by her father's sfrength, and the orchesfra's smooth floating melodies engulfed the room in the moment ofa girl's emerging womanhood. Around and around she danced, in circles of lightness devoid of purpose, the direction she moved in always returning to the beginning ofthe circle again. One, two, three. And at the end of the dance, all the sons and their fathers would politely inquire as to her dance card and the circle of purposelessness would continue. One, two, three.

****

The car, over-filled with boys and their flapper giris skidded to a stop outside the Suwannee Club. The building emitted a warm glow into the darkness ofthe parking lot. 116 Cars and buggies lined the grass, and the Cadillac sandwiched tightiy into the mass. Colored drivers whiled away the night drinking cane syrap whisky. The laughter ofthe drivers as they squatted protectively around a craps game, scratching dice in the dirt, ceased as the car crashed in. Somehow, a three-inch red-top tire caught a wagon nail, and the hiss of air started a commotion of screaming neighs from horses and squeals of laughter fromth e flapper girls. The group piled out ofthe car, doubled over with laughter. "Shit." said the driver. "We come all this way and get a flat in the parking lot. One of you boys get yourself over here and fix this son-of-a-bitch. We got a party to attend. Got an invitation righther e to see the belle of Gadsden County. Isnt that right, Mr. Jackson Simmonds?" But Mr. Jackson Simmonds sat still erect in the back of his father's Cadillac, the top of the whisky bottle tom off completely, jagged glass still gripped in his hand. "My daddy's car," he began, but the others laughed and pulled him fromth e car. "ItU be just fine, boy. You wouldnt want to miss this all important social engagement you has been telling us about for a full term now. I'm sure your father will understand the greatness of our unfortunate emergency, having no other way to arrive and all." The heady aroma of azaleas, japonicas, and roses lingered in the close night air under the big pines of north Florida. The blackness of evening nestled secrecy within the ever- existent humidity. The flapper girls pulled compacts from their bright, jeweled purses and checked their hair, reapplied waxy lipstick. They giggled yet again at the boys in their rumpled tuxedos. One girl with night-black hair expressed great doubt as to the appropriateness of their emergence into this society function. The boys sfraightened themselves into an air of importance and stated their complete appropriateness being with Tallahassee society and therefore much desired within the walls ofthe great club. They took swigs from a broken bottle passed all around the group. The giri shragged. She shimmied her golden dress around her ribs and hips. The boy fromGadsde n County had never seen such a bold move in his life, except once as a young boy when he snuck 117 deep into the woods and watched through slats at a plantation jook and had glimpsed bluesy, colored women who seemed to mate with guitars. Jackson Simmonds took the night-black-haired girl in gold cloth by the arm and sashayed her toward the wooden front doors, slowly weaving to the beat of yet another waltz. The doors opened and light beckoned these interlopers with the same warm invitation the belle of Gadsden County, Louise Marguerite Sheffield, the newest member of Gadsden County society had received. The old ladies on the settees still sat subdued, still discussed the arrivals in dresses and tuxedos. They raised pre-approving faces to the young people and were retumed with inebriated giggle faces from girls in silver and gold dresses with ankles and shins proudly displayed under rolled-down silk nylons and high- heeled shoes. One flappergir l shrieked that her laces were untied, and before a prim, proper lady could gasp, she threw her foot into the hands of her escort and asked him ever-so-sweetly to tie that little thing. The boys awakened to the import of their folly and stiffened into the utmost height nature afforded them. The disapproval they met here in the reception room ofthe Suwarmee Club could only be outdone by their owoi grandmothers, and no one seemed to know quite what to do. The light violin ofthe waltz melody seemed somehow a funeral dirge to the boys, especially to Jackson Simmonds, who stood there among his own kind. One boy, in a panic, refreated through the front doors to throw up in the company ofthe colored drivers. The flapper girls stared at their escorts expectantiy. One whispered coarsely to her partner that she had been dragged over the entire state of Florida to Gadsden County to dance and by God she was going to, even if she was now standing inanimate in Georgia. And she would dance if she had to findanothe r partner to accomplish this feat. Follow ifyou wish. And with that, the Tallahassee flapper giris made their emergence into Quincy society under the archway ofthe dance hall with a flourish of girl-gilded laughter and impetuous embarrassment.

118 Jackson Simmonds stood erect and decided in a moment of complete failing that he would have to face these disapproving grandmothers with all the manhood he had acquired at the university. He waUced stiffly away from his companions who looked wistfully toward flappergirl s quickly disappearing into the flush of dancers and spectators. He marched military style toward the ladies and bid them a good evening. He told them he had come home with his coUege friends to show them the finest the South had to offer and didnt they look lovely. He inquired as to his parents arrival at the dance, and his relief at the fact they had indeed not yet arrived flushedhi m with such a level of gratitude to the fates, that he feh the power to tempt all propriety as he impatiently told the grandmothers these young ladies in his accompaniment were co-eds and, yes, times were a changing. But he assured them, the ladies came from only the finest of families in Tallahassee, though we know how city ways are. Yes, it was disgraceful how city children grew up wild but he, Jackson Simmonds of Quincy, was still a country gentieman who wished only to indicate the softer qualities ofthe south to his college colleagues. With that, the boy fromGadsde n Coimty sfrode himself after the flappergirls , none of whom had even graduated from middle school much less attended the university. He winked at his friends, and they stepped lightly, having gained passage themselves into the mystery of Gadsden County society.

****

Louise danced around in the circle that only ended for a breath's moment in time as she traded off dance partners. Her card had filled immediately after her father's first dance, and since then, her parents stood and greeted friends proudly with occasional gazes at their daughter. She danced with her father's friends and their sons, and she didn't care how nice or how attractive the men were as long as tiieywhiske d her across the floor 119 so she felt air melodies rush past her ears. Her girl fiiends were all in attendance at her big moment, but only the dancing mattered, around and around, one, two, three. But as the orchesfra played the final notes ofthe waltz that she was dancing with John Bascom's Uncle Clifford, her next partner failed to magically take his place on the dance floor. Instead, the dancers aU wandered from the floor while they stared at the blinding splash of color that hovered in a vibrating huddle at the refreshment table. Oh my, one of Louise's mother's friends whispered into her nosegay. The woman brushed past the girl. Louise's father walked stiffly out to the dance floor and grabbed her elbow. He escorted her over to her mother who all the while stared, with the rest of Gadsden County society, at the flapper girls. With the exception of men who regularly did business in Tallahassee overnight and thus were acquainted with the seedier side of south TaUahassee, no one at this party knew quite what to make ofthe girls. And in the midst of thefr shock stood unsure boys in rumpled suits. Jackson Simmonds weaved along through the room, avoiding much eye contact. He joined them, and they all stepped toward the dance floor, through a haze of whispers thicker than his whiskey fuzz. His night-black-haired flapper girl steadied him with yet another giggle. The orchestra remained silent. They looked expectantiy at Louise's father for instractions. He gaped at the girls, for he was one man wiio had indeed spent evenings on business in TaUahassee. Louise's mother stared at him in complete horror that this fravesty could have happened at her little girl's extravaganza, and Louise herself hoped she would in the next few moments understand what stood in her midst out there on the dance floor. She wondered ifthiswasjust a part of grown-up festivities. The dresses were the most exquisite things she had ever beheld. The light ofthe Suwannee Club, the brightest light in the plantation country, shimmered playfully on tiie short gold-and-silver dresses. Her father looked very stemly at Jackson Simmonds who stood with the prettiest flapper giri on his arm. Louise bet the giri was colored, because her skin seemed as 120 golden as her dress. Her dark hair was cut short, just like what she had begged her mama to do to her own hair that evening. It flipped around her cheeks in a perfect curl, and Louise fell in love. Louise's mother finallywiiispere d to her father to tell the orchesfra to play on, to not allow some floozies fromth e city to rain the evening. He could talk to Jackson Simmonds' father when he arrived. The man nodded to the conductor, and once again the soft melody ofthe waltz filledth e great hall. The flapper girls were now befuddled. They had expected ragtime and rhythm, some more booze and a good time. And they let their escorts know, loudly. But the boys grabbed them tightly, and four couples began a shuffle around the room to the accompaniment of whispers and gasps. The dancers straggled against the smoothness of the melody; the music could not keep time with the expectancy ofthe bodies on the floor. Louise watched only the night-black-haired girl and the shimmer dance in the cloth of her dress as it twirled in the light. The flapper girl had long, metallic beads that swung around her back and whipped as Jackson Simmonds tumed her. They twirled around and around until finallyth e dark flapper girl broke fromhi m and began, against the smooth one, two, three ofthe waltz, to tap her feet and shake her hips slow and fluid. She now danced completely alone, oblivious to her surroundings. Her shoulders flirtedwit h the beads draped askew on her body and tinkled with lights. Tiny flashesseeme d to fly off her body. Louise looked at Jackson Simmonds and wondered why he appeared so embarrassed. She herself felt an electiicity shoot through her legs and arms. She longed to dance this movement of expectancy and impatience. Louise decided that if she were Jackson Simmonds, she would join the night-black-haired flapper giri in gold. She would make a fravesty of white and black tuxedos and create a worid of shimmery light, dancing in private circles, never stopping. Instead, Jackson left the giri and walked as stiffly as Louise's father had walked throughout the evening, military style, over to where the Sheffields stood. 121 "What is the meaning of this?" Louise's father shook his hand and smiled, an outward courtesy. "Why, sir, my father informed me that little Louise Marguerite was coming out tonight, and he insisted I make her acquaintance, seeing as my own little sister will make her own appearance in a couple of years. I see she has grown up to be her mother's rival, ifyou dont mind me saying. Miss Sheffield," Jackson replied as he wiped perspiration from his brow. "I brought some of my college friends, all from the best of Tallahassee families. Why, that one there is Senator Inman's son, Frank. Surely you have met his father, sir?" Jackson Simmonds looked hopefiilly from Louise's father toward her mother whose sour expression indeed lightened, just slightiy, at this development. But Louise's father cut short the moment. "Son, dont make me tell you what 1 think your college friends here are. Mrs. Sheffield would not take too kindly to the language or the subject matter. I would ask you to leave, but 1 believe seeing your father's reaction to the complete debauchery you have made of my only daughter's coming out will make up for this indiscretion." With that he dismissed the young man and moved off with his wife toward his guests. Louise realized she was left here with the cause of this "debauchery." She couldnt believe her good luck and shyly looked at the man. "Are you feeling alright, Jackson? You dont look so terribly good. All the color hasjust left you. You look just as white as my dress. Come sit down." He brushed her hand from his arm lightly and told her he would be fine. "It was awfully warm this evening wasnt it. Miss Louise? My, you have tumed out mighty pretty. Last time I saw you, you were just a skirmy twig of a girl, about the size of my sister. Course, that was before I went off to the university." And he walked with her. Both of them kept an eye on the shimmering whiri of light still moving in circles on the dance floor, alone but with the attention of all of Gadsden County society on her.

122 Louise didnt care about the university. She wanted to hear about the TaUahassee girls. If they were college girls, how come they were causing this "debauchery" her father talked about? And was Jackson afraid of his father's arrival? All these mysteries hung on her tongue as the boy took her arm now and led her out to the floor. He placed his arms about her in the same manner her father had, and she feh the same strange thrill at the sfrength of his hand on her back. She stood now so close to the gold, to the short night- black hair curled around the flapper gfrl's cheeks. Louise felt a fleeting jealousy for the twirling gfrl. She noted how the dancer moved her torso in opposite directions against itself and against the smoothness ofthe music. The night-black-haired flapper gfrl looked challengingly at Louise Marguerite Sheffield and at Jackson Simmonds. Louise caught her eye boldly and in the moment realized she did not envy this dancer, not at all. The gold shimmer dance was simply a movement ofthe body, not so magical. The twinkling and twirling ofthe light was frapped within the manipulation of tiie cloth, and the flappergirl' s eyes, although they challenged Louise with their entire power, held no mystery, no electricity. A dullness lived there for much more than the moment ofthe dance, the she supposed. And in a contest ofthe eye's power a girl grew to her place in her world, a place she realized she would dance around in a beautiful white dress passed down from her mother. Louise left the flappergir l to her own dance, one that no longer interested her in its jagged rhythm. She searched instead in Jackson Simmonds' eyes, and to her complete surprise, she found there the shimmer dance she envied, somewhat accentuated with fright and drunkenness. He smiled a whiskey glow. She asked about her dance card; he was not listed as a parmer for the evening. And he hushed her with the confidence of his sfrong arm against the small of her back. Around and around, he glided Louise. She once again felt intoxicated, but now with the energy of anticipation and pride. She danced with this bearer of debauchery. She threw her head back and watched the molded ceiling spin by. She laughed lightiy in her 123 milk-white dress as they whirled like distant heat lightning past the night-black-haired flapper girl. The golden cloth still moved, jagged and hard-edged, but now Louise's was the movement that caused the brightest light in Gadsden County to sparkle. She and Jackson Simmonds danced faster and faster, gliding. One, two, three. Uncle Clifford Bascom joined them on the floor and oh-so-politely-as only an old world gentleman could-bowed before Jackson Simmonds' night-black-haired flapper girl. The old man danced delicately with her for the remainder ofthe waltz. He was later to remark that it was not a southem gentieman's place to leave a young lady ofthe university alone on the dance floor. Not hospitable at all. The other party-goers slowly conceded to the majesty ofthe dance, and under the disapproving eye of Louise Marguerite Sheffield's father, the young girl danced the remainder of her dances with her future husband in the dawn ofthe summer, the summer in which all the young ladies in her set found their husbands somewhere in the great hall ofthe Suwannee Club.

124 Works Cited

Faulkner, William. Go Down, Moses. New York: Random House, 1990.

Forkner, Ben and Patrick Samway, ed. A Modern Southem Reader. Atlanta: Peachfree, 1986.

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