Stars of Alabama

by Sean Dietrich

  Dedication

  I’d like to dedicate this book to the people of Alabama because it is about them. I hereby submit this work to the gnarled Alabama family tree, which I find myself a part of.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Book I One: Hollering

  Two: Good Girl

  Three: Marigold the Magnificent

  Four: Child of the Plains

  Five: Two Men and a Baby

  Six: The Runner

  Seven: Wonder Boy

  Eight: The Lovable Lunatic

  Nine: Brave Girls

  Ten: Wild Blake Hickok

  Eleven: Cotton Men

  Twelve: Dizzy Redhead

  Thirteen: Peanut Butter

  Fourteen: Barbecuing the Moon

  Fifteen: The Borrower

  Sixteen: The Fugitives

  Seventeen: Old Tires

  Eighteen: Cowboys and Banditos

  Nineteen: Cowikee’s Railcar

  Twenty: Run, Boy, Run

  Twenty-One: Sugar and Candy

  Twenty-Two: Railcars of Ill Repute

  Twenty-Three: Wichita Dust

  Twenty-Four: Summer Showers

  Twenty-Five: Judgment Days

  Twenty-Six: Lightning Strikes

  Twenty-Seven: Motor Inns

  Twenty-Eight: Stealing Home

  Twenty-Nine: The Long Green

  Thirty: Heartbreak

  Thirty-One: Best Friends

  Book II Thirty-Two: Babies into Girls

  Thirty-Three: Girls into Ladies

  Thirty-Four: Laborers

  Thirty-Five: Louisville

  Thirty-Six: The Lame

  Thirty-Seven: Highwayman

  Thirty-Eight: Middle of Nowhere

  Thirty-Nine: Bad Decision

  Forty: Cold, Cold Hearts

  Forty-One: Mothers and Daughters

  Forty-Two: The Root of All

  Forty-Three: Lost and Found

  Forty-Four: Spring Wildflowers

  Forty-Five: O Little Child

  Forty-Six: Judy Bronson

  Forty-Seven: Sad Faces

  Forty-Eight: Saint Helen

  Forty-Nine: Tracks to Nowhere

  Book III Fifty: Man in the Mirror

  Fifty-One: Men of Fortune

  Fifty-Two: Black and Tan

  Fifty-Three: Girls of the Day

  Fifty-Four: The Game

  Fifty-Five: Leaves of Grass

  Fifty-Six: Where Wildflowers Are

  Fifty-Seven: Go-Getters

  Fifty-Eight: Homecoming

  Fifty-Nine: Loud Noises

  Sixty: Family Reunions

  Sixty-One: Carry Me

  Sixty-Two: Little Miracles

  Sixty-Three: Takers

  Sixty-Four: The Mighty

  Sixty-Five: Bearing Witness

  Sixty-Six: Change of Heart

  Sixty-Seven: In Care of Paul Foldger

  Sixty-Eight: Going to Meeting

  Sixty-Nine: I Shall Not Want

  Seventy: Dreams

  Seventy-One: Puppies for Sale

  Seventy-Two: Swinging and Hollering

  Seventy-Three: On the Bus

  Seventy-Four: Mobile

  Seventy-Five: Angels

  Seventy-Six: Going Home

  Seventy-Seven: The Big House

  Seventy-Eight: Bearer of News

  Seventy-Nine: Songbird

  Eighty: Yawning Partners

  Eighty-One: Newspapermen

  Eighty-Two: Clippings

  Eighty-Three: Mug Shots

  Eighty-Four: Mobile Bay

  Eighty-Five: Madness

  Eighty-Six: How High the Moon

  Eighty-Seven: First Times

  Eighty-Eight: Sweet Pete

  Eighty-Nine: Miracles over Easy

  Ninety: The Persuader

  Ninety-One: J. Wilbur

  Ninety-Two: Joy to the World

  Ninety-Three: Ride with the Lord

  Ninety-Four: Through the Static

  Ninety-Five: Glory

  Ninety-Six: Ruth Shall Set You Free

  Ninety-Seven: Sewn Together

  Ninety-Eight: Cold Hands

  Ninety-Nine: Tearing Things Down

  One Hundred: Hollering

  Discussion Questions

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Book I

  One

  Hollering

  Paul Foldger listened to Louisville bark. The dog’s black-and-tan fur dripped with water that had turned her hair curly. The dog had been swimming in Rabbit Creek all morning. She loved to swim. Louisville was old, lean, all ears, long jowls, with some white around her snout.

  The old girl howled for all she was worth, staring straight into the woods that sat behind the creek, which forked into Mobile Bay. She was a tracking dog. The most obedient dog Paul had ever trained. If Paul would’ve told the dog to build a ten-foot-tall sandcastle, Louisville would’ve gone hunting for a shovel and bucket.

  The morning air had an oyster taste to it. Not like a fresh oyster—more like a horrible canned oyster, the kind Paul’s father ate. The air surrounding the bay always had that sort of taste. It was a smell that could gag a goat. A smell that only got worse when the weather got hot and the wind died. A day like today.

  Louisville heard something. So did Paul. A high-pitched shriek cut the air. They listened to the screams together. Man and dog. Paul knew what Louisville was thinking. She wanted Paul to send her into the woods. But Paul was in no mood for tracking.

  “Ain’t nothing serious, Louise,” said Paul. “Just simmer down.”

  They stood on a shore littered with brown seaweed where the creek began and the bay ended. The sand near the water’s edge was so soft a man’s boots could sink halfway into the earth. Paul was up to his ankles in it.

  He looked toward the bay, across the gray water, at the yellow grass that stretched sideways next to the great Mobile Bay. The morning sun was strong enough to fry your skin. Paul’s pale face was freckled and ruined from a lifetime in this sunlight. He’d been a redhead long ago, before his hair turned white and the sun made his skin look like it was covered in buckshot.

  Louisville barked. Though it was really more of a baying. Louisville was like most bloodhounds, she didn’t bark. It was beneath her. Instead, she used her low voice, and it carried across the water, only to be interrupted by cicadas and crickets. The morning insect sounds were coming from all directions in swells. Loud, then soft. Loud. Soft. A man could get hypnotized if he closed his eyes.

  “Quit it, Louise,” said Paul. “Ain’t got time for your yapping.”

  But Paul knew Louisville was never wrong. Paul was listening with his eyes closed and letting the sounds of the world swirl around him.

  Vern stood straight and called down from the roof of the millhouse in the distance. “What’s Lou barking about?”

  “How should I know?”

  Vern was the tallest black man Paul had ever known. And from high up on the roof where he stood, he looked like a portrait of John Henry, only skinnier.

  Below the millhouse, the truck door was open so Vern could listen to the radio. It was Wednesday. Vern always listened to radio preaching on Wednesdays. And he listened to it at a volume that was loud enough to affect the weather. The sounds of a hollering voice from the tinny speaker competed with the baying from Louisville’s throat. Her voice was as deep as that of a full-grown baritone man.

  “Would you turn that radio off? Between that stupid preacher and Lou’s barking, I can’t hear nothing but hot air.”

  “Oh, sorry, Paul. I’s sorry.”

  “Quit your sorryin’, Vern. It
’s a bad habit.”

  Vern’s bare feet gripped the roof while he walked. His lanky frame crawled the edge like an acrobat. Paul watched him climb down, three rungs at a time. His sharp features made him look almost like a bronze statue. He lowered himself on the ladder and turned off the radio in the truck.

  Vern stood beside Paul and cupped his ear. “What we listening for? Don’t hear nothing.”

  “You wouldn’t,” said Paul. “You can’t hear nothing.”

  “Huh?”

  “Exactly. That dadgum radio’s made you deaf.”

  There was the sound again. It cut through the humidity.

  Louisville howled.

  Paul tugged Louisville’s collar and said, “Okay, honey, I hear you.” She stopped howling.

  Then he looked across the creek one more time, making his ears as big as he could, like a dog would do. When he was a boy, his father used to say Paul was part dog. In some ways, this was true. Paul felt something kindred with the canine. And he had proven this by squandering his life breeding and training tracking dogs. It started as a boyhood hobby, but soon he was trailing escaped prisoners and missing children. And squirrels, foxes, and coons.

  “Keep laying ’em shingles,” yelled Paul. “I’d better go see what she’s making a fuss about.”

  “You going into the woods alone?” Vern called back. “You’s too old.”

  “Old?”

  “Huh?” said Vern.

  “I was askin’ who you was callin’ old,” Paul hollered.

  Vern was already unfastening his toolbelt. “I told you I’ll do it. Let me go.”

  “Now hold on, Vern. I ain’t some old man. I was walking them woods before you were even a sniffle in your pa’s nose.”

  “Better let me go, Paul. I’s younger.”

  “You ain’t that much younger.”

  Vern was at least twenty-five years Paul’s junior.

  “Something bad could happen to you out there, Paul. You could break a leg or somethin’.”

  “Vern, you stay where you is. Now that’s an order.”

  “Huh?”

  “I said stay put,” Paul hollered loud enough to break his own neck.

  “Foot? Whose foot? Yours or mine?”

  “You’re either deaf or stubborn. I can’t figure out which.”

  Vern ignored him and marched toward the woods in a straight line. Vern was middle-aged and quiet. But if it weren’t for the gray on Vern’s woolly temples, he would’ve seemed like a teenager. A stubborn teenager.

  Louisville whimpered at Vern. She started trotting through the high grass toward the trees.

  “Lou!” Paul hollered. “You stay here with me. If I can’t go, then you can’t go. We’re a team.”

  Louisville paused to look at Paul. She was thinking about this. Then she glanced at Vern, who was moving farther away.

  “Back here, girl.” Paul clapped, then pointed at the ground by his feet. “Come here to me. Now.”

  Louisville was old. She had spent a lifetime doing whatever Paul told her. She blinked at him. Then she turned and followed Vern.

  Two

  Good Girl

  Louisville trotted ahead of Vern, pausing to sniff. She was a smart girl. Vern remembered when Paul had trained her as a puppy. The animal could track human scent and game—in the air or on the ground.

  Louisville was getting white around her nose, and Vern could tell she wasn’t as sharp as she used to be. She ran in hurried zigzags through the woods, looking, sniffing, sneezing, pawing, thinking, serious. Vern knew what she wanted. She wanted the praise that finding prizes would bring her. She wanted to come trotting out of the woods holding a dead squirrel in her mouth so Paul would pat her head and say, “Good girl, Lou.” Those three little words made Lou’s whole life worth the trouble.

  The high-pitched screaming cut the cricket noises. Vern didn’t know which direction to walk, so he followed Rabbit Creek. He pointed his good ear toward the sound. He stopped every few steps to focus. He closed his eyes. The screams stopped.

  The only sound he heard was a woodpecker smacking its nose against a tree. Maybe whatever was making the noise had gotten spooked and stopped hollering. Maybe it had worked itself free and escaped from whatever snare it was in. Or maybe it had died.

  Vern thought about turning around and going back. But not Louisville. The old girl stopped and sniffed the air. She tilted her nose toward the sun and held her tail straight up.

  The woodpecker made a sound again.

  Louisville followed the bird sound. Then she took in more wind through her nose. She darted into the woods, head up, nose to the breeze, moving fast.

  The morning sun was glaring at Vern. He could hardly see in the early light. He spotted the woodpecker making all the noise on a nearby limb. The bird was dotted with black spots and was blood red at the corners of its mouth with long, straight tail feathers. It opened its mouth and let out a loud sound, then flew away. He watched it soar above the trees, catching flashes of its red in the daylight.

  Louisville lurched forward in a clumsy run. She ran like a dog who was ten years younger than she was.

  Vern followed, moving as fast as his big legs would let him. He lost sight of Louisville in the green. He paused every few moments to listen for her baying, but none came.

  So Vern stood in one place, waiting for a sound, cursing beneath his breath at his bad sense of hearing. He waited for nearly nineteen whole choruses of “Keep on the Sunny Side,” watching the creek water before him move in strange patterns. He wanted to call for Lou, but that would’ve confused the dog. Besides, it didn’t work that way. During a hunt, the dog calls you.

  Then came howling.

  He followed the sound. He saw something in the distance. Something big. A white square under the limbs of fat trees. Louisville was facing the drop cloth slung over a low branch. It was a tent—the kind hobos used. Louisville howled louder when she saw Vern approaching.

  He was moving slow, carrying a heavy pine branch he’d found, balancing it on his shoulder like a slugger. He didn’t know what or who he was approaching. The last thing he wanted was to find unfriendly drifters who didn’t care for his color.

  He called out to them. “Hello!”

  There was no answer.

  “Anybody there?” said Vern. “We friendly.”

  No response.

  “I’m friendly,” Vern said again. “Ain’t gonna hurt nobody.”

  When he neared the tent, Louisville was walking so close beside him she almost knocked him over. And then he saw it. The noise was coming from a little mouth.

  Louisville wandered toward the child. She pressed her nose against the tiny white thing that was squirming in a bed of pine needles. The baby’s mop of orange hair was thick and messy. Its hands were outstretched. The child looked just like the sweet little Jesus Boy himself.

  “Good girl, Lou,” said Vern. “Good girl.”

  Three

  Marigold the Magnificent

  She wasn’t stealing. Or maybe she was. Marigold wasn’t sure if this was, in fact, thievery, since this was her first time stealing. She’d never realized stealing was an actual skill until now. She had no idea it would be so difficult to behave naturally.

  She grabbed two small sacks of pinto beans from the store shelf. She felt a charge travel through her body. A sickening jolt that made her hands tremble. This was definitely not stealing. She was hungry, and that made it different. This was borrowing.

  She glanced behind her, then stuffed the borrowed beans into her blouse.

  The beans weighed more than she had thought they would. After adjusting the packages in her brassiere, her chest gained five inches on the left side. The lump in her blouse drooped halfway to her waist. She adjusted her renegade bosom, but it kept heading toward the floor.

  She walked through the general store with careful steps and an unnatural smile on her face. She was larger than other fifteen-year-olds, and she was embarrassed by this. Her broth
ers had teased her about it. Her hips were too wide, her chest was too big, and her legs were thick around the ankles. God, in all his cruelty, had seen fit to top her off with a dollop of fire-red hair and freckles that looked like someone had rolled her in confetti.

  Her brothers called her “Marigold the Magnificent,” and she hated them for it. They might as well have called her the Great Wall of China. Her size, her skin, her hair were her curses.

  “Why don’t you go suck an egg!” she’d often advise her brothers just before she made a serious attempt to fracture important bones in their bodies. Mainly their ribs. Ribs were always a good choice. She almost broke her brother Tom’s foot once by stomping on it. She hadn’t meant to hurt him like that. But he never called her Marigold the Magnificent again.

  Marigold had gotten bigger after she gave birth to Maggie. Her hips had become too big for the cotton dresses she wore. Her whole body had changed. In fact, she felt like a stranger in her own skin ever since Father had done the terrible thing he had done to her.

  The baby had changed her. She had purple stretch marks on every part of her. When her milk came in, she got even bigger, and it made her feel like she was a household appliance from the Sears and Roebuck catalog.

  She patted her brassiere, adjusting the beans. This was definitely not stealing. Stealing was what bad people did. She wasn’t bad. When she wasn’t breaking ribs or ankles, she was a good person. Honest, polite, courteous.

  Without this food, Marigold would die in the woods, and what would happen to Maggie?

  She wandered down the general store aisle. She let her fingers run along the canned goods on the shelves. She stopped at the canned herring and sardines. The hunger inside her was crippling. And she had strange cravings ever since she’d had Maggie. Pickles were at the top of her list. She caught herself dreaming about pickles sometimes. If she could’ve taken a bath in pickle juice, she would have.

  And oysters, she craved those, even though she had only had them a few times in her life. She looked at the can of Acme Oysters. She wished she could smuggle them without being noticed, but her brassiere couldn’t handle any more weight.

  The man behind the counter was watching her. She could feel his eyes. A cigarette was between his lips and his arms were folded. “Do you need help?” he said.