by Lee Smith
Johnny and me were going to get married, though. That was one thing. We were going to run off and find somebody that would marry us as soon as Johnny got his two-week paycheck from the mill. But instead of that, I told Freda. I still don’t know why I did it. I told her on a Wednesday afternoon, two days before we planned to run off. Then before I knew it, Daddy was driving me and Freda to Bristol in the dark of night, smoking cigarette after cigarette and throwing the butts out the window. He took us to the train station and threw my stuff out on the platform.
“Tell Johnny,” I said. “Tell Johnny—”
But Daddy slapped my face, hard. “Forget about Johnny. Johnny is as good as dead,” he said.
The train came and Daddy put us on it. I was so glad to see my little girl among the others. She wore a hat, which hid her long blond curls, but I knew who she was, and though she sat in another car so Freda wouldn’t see her, I knew she was with me, and she would stay close by me in the months to come, when she was the only one I could really talk to.
Freda made herself comfortable on the train. She put her hat on the rack and folded up her coat and my coat just so, and then got out a white box she’d brought along, and untied the string and started eating fried chicken and deviled eggs. “Would you like some?” she said to the man across from us, who said he wouldn’t mind, and then she gave it out to all and sundry like she was queen of the train. But I couldn’t eat a bite.
I guess, thinking back, this trip was a big event for Freda, who never got to travel with the others but had to stay home all the time. If it hadn’t been for my nervous breakdown, she never would have gone anywhere, so she ought to have been nicer to me, I think. But I know it’s mean to speak ill of the dead.
We went to a place in Chattanooga where Freda was not nice, and I was sick, I couldn’t eat, and Freda was not nice but I was too sick to stand up for myself and Freda was not nice at all and I don’t know, to this day, what I would have done if it had not been for my little girl, who wasn’t a bit scared of Freda and talked right back to her, saying the meanest things, things I’d never say, right to Freda’s face! But my little girl was right, Freda should not have kept the door locked, she should not! and then there was a tiny little baby, my own tiny baby girl, she came too soon, though, she was in a tent, I never got to hold her, she never had a name. “I want to name her Lucie,” I said to Freda when I could, but, “It is too late,” she said. “The baby is dead,” she said. “Thank God.” I was very sick then and I stayed in the hospital a long time having my nervous breakdown and my little girl stayed with me all the while, and she watched out for me then too, and spoke right up to the mean ones. I had a blue bedspread there and a white iron bed and my window looked out on a fountain. We did arts and crafts. When I left, it was Daddy and Pancake that came to get me, dressed up like lawyers.
“You’re a lot better now, Rose Annie,” Daddy said. “We’ve come to take you home.”
But my little girl stood right behind them, making terrible faces.
“We don’t want to go back to Grassy Branch,” I said. “Please no,” I said.
“Oh, Rose Annie,” Daddy said. He was crying. He hugged me and then I remembered how he smelled, cigarettes and something else, a traveling-man smell. “Freda will not be there,” he said, and said he was sorry about Freda, who had gone to live in Johnson City now. She died there, several years later. Of meanness, I imagine. I imagine Freda’s death like this—that she dried up from inside, more and more, until she was finally an empty, rattling husk.
When I got back to Grassy Branch, Johnny was not there and nobody mentioned him, and Virgie had gone off too, to make her fortune, though later she would come back for the girls. Virgie didn’t know or care where Johnny was, though—nobody did. Tampa was gone too, but Little Virginia had taken over housekeeping for Daddy, and she was real nice to me, and so was Katie’s mamma Alice, and so was Katie, and Georgia. Everybody was real nice to me. Little Virginia took me and Katie to Myrtle Beach, where I got real sunburned and the boys looked at us and we danced at the casino in the salty night air. We dated some boys from Ohio that talked real northern. We ate pizza, which I had never seen before. Then when we came back home, Daddy said that Louise Rickers had a little job for me over at her store The Family Shoppe in Holly Springs, and she did, and I got a discount, I got a lot of new clothes, and then some of the guys in Holly Springs started asking me for dates. At first I wouldn’t go. I set aside an hour or so each night just for thinking about Johnny, remembering him, but this got harder and harder to do. It was like it had all happened a million years before, in another country. Finally I had some dates. I have to say I enjoyed flirting, and looking pretty again. I liked to make them want me.
Then Buddy Rush got out of the army and came around. “I always loved you,” he said. “Don’t you remember when we had homeroom together in eighth grade?” he said, and I said, “Yes,” a lie.
One thing about Buddy is, he does things up right. For instance, this house. He wanted to get this house completely finished before we moved in, down to the last detail, so I wouldn’t have to do a thing. Gladys got a decorator from Sherwin-Williams in Bristol to come over here and help her pick out the wallpaper and the carpet and even the light fixtures. The only thing I ever said about the house is, “I want a big picture window in the front so I can look up and down the whole valley,” but I never said why, of course. The reason is that I’ve always somehow had this idea that Johnny might come back here sometime looking for me, just to see how I’m getting along, you know. Daddy told me that Johnny was only too glad to take off and escape his responsibility, and then later several people said they heard he was in prison somewhere, but I can’t seem to get it out of my mind that he might want to look me up. It’s crazy, I know. If he was going to, he would’ve done so a long time ago. I like this window, though. I like to sit right here and see people coming up the road, and watch them pass by and disappear. I like to watch my children playing. I like to watch the weather. Up here, I can see a rainstorm coming from a long way off. This window is real nice. This house is real nice. Oh, I am spoiled! I feel bad about acting so awful to Gladys. I’m going to call her right now and tell her I’m sorry, before Buddy gets home, and then I’m going to go put on my new turquoise mohair sweater and some fresh makeup, and fix Buddy a bourbon and Coke.
2
Tammy Adele Burnette in Her Prime
I didn’t think a thing about it at the time.
Now, in light of what all has happened since, this sounds crazy, but it is true, so help me God! It was a day like any other day, a morning like any other, though prettier than most, a Thursday morning in the tail end of October, with the sky as blue as it ever gets, and red and gold leaves blowing ever whichaway across the road as I drove to work. I thought to myself, I will have to get a high school boy to come over this weekend and rake, because I knew for sure that Herbert—that’s my brother, Herbert—would not do it. He won’t lift a hand around the house. My daddy was like that too, bless his soul. A woman’s work is never done. But a man can’t even see what all needs doing, around a house. Herbert would be living in wrack and ruin if it wasn’t for me. But I am happy to say I keep our house in a way that would make Mamma proud, poor little thing. She weighed under a hundred pounds by the time she died, but you could eat off her kitchen floor. Any drawer you pulled out, anyplace in the house, was a work of art. Of course Herbert is not a bad hand to bring home the bacon, I will say this. He is a real genius of electrical engineering. He went to State and got a degree in it, in three years. But like a lot of geniuses, Herbert does not do great in the world. He is not loaded with the social graces. In fact, over the years Herbert has run off several very nice women, such as Helen Warren who still teaches home ec at the high school and pines for him. She ought to count her lucky stars she didn’t get him, is what I think. For Herbert, it is sad but true, has such a taste for lowlife that I’m not sure any wife could put an end to it. Herbert has been this way sinc
e he was a boy, when he broke our little mamma’s heart many times.
Some people never grow up, you know. They just get older. Rose Annie Rush is another one.
I had to unlock the ceramics shop that October morning when I got to work, of course. Every evening, Rose Annie always said she’d do it, that she’d be in early tomorrow, and she’d open up, but I can count on the fingers of one hand the times this actually happened. Even though their house was right up the road there, practically in shouting distance, while I on the other hand had a nine-mile drive. But I was used to it. I didn’t think a thing about it on that particular morning either, fumbling around in my purse for the keys, watching my breath turn white in the chilly air. While I was standing out there in the gravel lot in front of the shop, several people I knew went by and tooted their horns and waved at me. I waved back. I have lived in this area all my life and am real popular. But I was freezing to death standing out in the cold grabbling around for my keys. You know how hard it is to find anything down in your pocketbook. This is when it hit me—key rings! I thought to myself, Now I bet I could make a key ring with a doodad big enough to grab onto real easy, so a person would not have to stand around in a parking lot fishing down in their purse forever.
By the time I finally got in the shop, I was all fired up about it. I sat right down and did several preliminary drawings. First I decided to make some big alphabet letters, such as T for “Tammy,” and then I realized that some of the Christmas ornament molds we already had would work too, such as the pussycat mold and the frog mold. A bright green frog keychain would be real cute. Then I remembered this book we’ve got with pictures of everything in the world in it, and I found some daisies which would be darling, and an antique car for the hubby. I was deep into my plans by the time Rose Annie finally showed up, looking dragged out as usual, and remarked that I had not made the coffee.
“Do it yourself!” I said. “I’ve got an idea that’s going to make us some money.” Of course I was the one that thought up the macramé wall hangings which have done so good, and the lamps which Herbert wires without charging Rose Annie a cent, so what could she say? She made the coffee that morning and then to my surprise seemed real interested in my key-ring idea. Rose Annie herself does not have a flair for ceramics. It was all Buddy’s idea. Of course she would have had to close up shop a long time ago if not for me, I know it, Buddy knows it too, although of course he can’t say it. But as long as he knows it, that’s all right with me.
I’ll tell you, there’s not much I wouldn’t do for Buddy Rush, who has always been one of the finest people on God’s green earth in my opinion. I have known him ever since ninth grade, when I started coming over to the consolidated high school at Holly Springs, after finishing junior high at Raven. All through high school, I loved Buddy Rush from afar. He played football and basketball and was president of the Tri-Hi-Y and the Key Club. I was the recording secretary of the Tri-Hi-Y while he was the president, which he does not remember, and I would not remind him of it for the world, he would be so embarrassed. In the Senior Superlatives, I was voted “Most Responsible,” which made me cry.
I was very self-conscious then. Mamma used to drive me all the way to Bristol to buy my bras at King’s Department Store, so nobody around here would know what size I took. Now I realize that you just cannot expect high school boys to appreciate a big girl like me. It takes a man. I will never forget how surprised I was when I was cleaning house right after Mamma passed, and found these dirty magazines under Herbert’s bed, one of them named British Plumpers Show All! Let me tell you, lots of those girls were bigger than I am. And I realized then and there that some men like a large woman, which has turned out to be true. Russell Longmyer, for instance, worshipped the ground I walked on. I broke his heart. This is why he moved to Charleston, West Virginia.
Now that I am in my prime, I arouse plenty of interest. In fact, if I gave in to their base desires, I’d have to beat the men away with a stick. I’m proud to say I’m smarter than that. I’m still sitting on my treasure, so to speak. “Don’t handle the merchandise unless you’re fixing to buy it,” I say, and I mean it. I’m in no hurry either. A woman with my assets can pick and choose. I am still saving myself for Mr. Right, in spite of Herbert who said, “I don’t know that I’d be quite so economical if I was you!” just to make me real mad. Herbert can be so mean. But I know that somebody man enough for me will come along by and by, or else somebody I already know will suddenly see me with new eyes, as in books. This happens too. In the meantime I am content to bide my time and let Buddy Rush overpay me to keep his wife’s business going.
Don’t get me wrong—I liked Rose Annie, everybody liked her. I just don’t understand what in the world is wrong with her. The Baileys are all a little off, in my opinion. This goes for old R.C., who has always been either real smart or real crazy—often, you know, you can’t tell the difference. It goes double for Tampa, who has been flat out of her head ever since they buried that old drunk husband of hers. And don’t even get me started on Virgie, always putting on the dog and acting so stuck up, but common as dirt all the same. However, Rose Annie’s mamma was a real nice woman, and the boys are all right by and large except for Robert Floyd, who got in a lot of trouble over a woman and had to leave here. Then there was Freda, off her rocker, and then Alice, who turned into a religious nut after Ray died. She’s just a nut, I’m not kidding. Of course religion has always run strong in that family, like red hair or cross-eyes in others.
This reminds me of something my sweet little mamma said about Rose Annie not long before she died. I mean Mamma died, not Rose Annie. But it was on Easter Sunday, back when Rose Annie and them had that little quartet, and they sang in church. Afterward, Rose Annie was sick or something, and her mother drove her home. For some reason this sticks in my mind, Rose Annie and her mamma getting in the car, and my little mamma saying, “They is something wrong with that child,” as we watched them drive off down Chicken Rise.
As usual, Mamma was right.
Plus, Rose Annie did not care a thing about ceramics, or have any true feel for it at all. One time Mrs. Leroy Maupin had worked for weeks on this little gnome family. It took her a real long time because she has such bad bursitis. Old Mr. Maupin used to drive her over here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, then pick her up an hour later. She made a mother gnome, a daddy gnome, and six little ones. It was her pride and joy. Then don’t you know, Rose Annie over-baked them. Just sat there staring out the window at the road, forgot to set the timer. It was a tragic thing. Every one of those gnomes was shot clear through with spider-web cracks. Mrs. Leroy Maupin never has come back to the shop, of course. And do you know, I don’t know if Rose Annie has even noticed—she’s like that. No business sense whatsoever.
Well, this particular morning in October, the day that I got the key-ring idea, here’s who all was in the shop: me; Rose Annie; Beatrice Crowder, working on a garden lamb; Florine Pogue, one of our best customers, who is really talented but nosy as can be, she’ll ask you anything; and the Sizemore sisters, Belle and Shirley. They live together and do everything together. Belle never says a word. She doesn’t have to. Shirley will say, “Belle wants a Coke,” or “Belle never misses Arthur Godfrey,” and Belle just smiles and nods. She used to be real pretty, you can tell. In Herbert’s words, Shirley is “built like a brick shithouse.” She runs their farm as good as a man. Everybody around here respects her. Belle is the one that likes ceramics, so Shirley brings her over. It gives Shirley a chance to put her feet up and smoke a cigarette.
I showed Shirley how I was going to make the keychains, and she ordered two on the spot, an S for herself and a B for Belle, although Belle doesn’t drive and I couldn’t imagine her carrying any keys around. It was my first order on keychains.
So we were all there in the shop drinking coffee and doing our various projects and listening to the radio—Patti Page was singing “The Tennessee Waltz”—when the bell on the door jingled and here came Li
ttle Virginia bringing Tampa for us to watch while she, Little Virginia, took Alice over to Cana to get a permanent. Alice doesn’t get out much since Tampa lives with her. She doesn’t mind, though—too busy praying, I reckon!
“Now she shouldn’t have to go to the bathroom for a while,” Little Virginia said, settling Tampa into a chair in the corner across from Shirley Sizemore. She gave Tampa a Glamour magazine to look at. Shirley Sizemore started laughing, she kind of snorts when she laughs. “Won’t do her much good!” Shirley snorted. Tampa smiled at us all. She’s got a face like a pudding now, real soft, with her features sort of sunk down in it. She has fuzzy white hair like a halo standing up all over her head.
“God bless you all,” Alice said from the door. Her voice has gotten real annoying since she got so religious. It is too sweet, if you know what I mean.
The bell on the door jingled again and Little Virginia and Alice were gone. Then the rhythms of the shop took over—somebody asking a question about paint color, somebody ready to bake, Patsy Cline on the radio, yellow maple leaves blowing against the window, Shirley smoking her Marlboro cigarettes, Tampa looking at Glamour magazine like she knew what she was doing, the good smell of coffee throughout.
“Why don’t they put her in a home?” Florine Pogue asked. “Or over at Marion?” which is where the insane asylum is.
“Are you kidding? Daddy would rather die,” Rose Annie said. “He wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Plus it gives Alice something to do,” I said.
“I bet they’re a sight up there,” Florine said, meaning Tampa and Alice at home, and Shirley Sizemore snorted. “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-tonk Angels” was still playing on the radio.
“Do you think I ought to make these lamb eyes brown or blue?” Beatrice Crowder asked. She can’t ever make up her mind about anything.
“What’s that?” Rose Annie said.