Southern Living

by Ad Hudler

  Donna’s TIP of the Day: Did you know there’s a tropical fruit that can make your steak taste better? It’s the papaya! Papayas, which are also called papaws, have an enzyme called papain, which is used as a meat tenderizer! Just rub some juice of the flesh onto that steak before cooking and then, mmmm-mmm, tasty, tender T-bone.

  “I drew it cut open like that ’cause I wanted my customers to know what it looks like inside,” she said. “Sometimes I think they’re afraid of what’s inside, especially if it’s not the prettiest thing in the world. That’s why I’m always cuttin’ open a kiwi and layin’ it out on a foam tray.”

  As Koquita left for the employee lounge, Donna bent down to pick up someone’s crinkled shopping list and put it in her pocket. She’d grown to love the deep front pockets of her uniform that could easily accommodate the fallout from her entire day—broken rubber bands from broccoli stalks; crispy leaves that had dropped from a bunch of red grapes; a penny found on the floor in front of the apple bin; a blue Chiquita sticker that no longer stuck; contorted twist ties; lost buttons; a two-for-one coupon for nacho-cheese Doritos; Christian poems that Adrian would write and give to her.

  Even more than the pockets, though, she had learned to appreciate how a uniform gave her so much more time in the morning. She no longer had to search for a combination of clothes that fit her budget, laundry schedule and mood of the day. Donna found she had nearly an extra hour each morning, and she could linger and drink her coffee and read Chatter and spend time with her new three-legged tabby, Miss Kitty, whom she’d found at the Perry County Humane Society.

  Suddenly, Donna spotted Boone Parley standing before the lettuces. She had never seen him at Kroger. Slowly, with great effort, as if he were a patient undergoing occupational therapy, he used the chrome tongs to fill his plastic bag with the organic baby-lettuce mix that Suzanne usually picked up herself.

  Something’s not right, Donna thought. Maybe he thinks he’s got the wrong greens. She started walking over to say hello and offer help, but the look of consternation on his face was so intense that she changed her mind in front of the plums, did an about-face, and retreated to the stockroom to fill out her orders for the next day.

  Anyone who knew Boone Parley would recognize that something was indeed wrong. For starters, he was wearing his surgical scrubs, and Boone thought it unprofessional to leave the hospital in anything other than his jacket and tie and Brooks Brothers button-down-collar shirts. Also, he had not showered after surgery, as he always did, and his straight, brown hair was dented along the sides of his head from the straps of the surgical mask.

  Seconds after emerging from surgery that morning, Boone’s secretary greeted him at the doors of the surgical suite with news that the sheriff was waiting for him in his office.

  “The sheriff?” Boone asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why?”

  “Wouldn’t say.”

  “Can I shower first?”

  “He says he’s kinda in a hurry.”

  “The Perry County sheriff?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tommy Barnes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When Boone got to his office, Tommy Barnes was standing before a wall, his beefy hands crammed into his back pockets as his attention bounced from framed diploma to framed diploma.

  “Mr. Tom?” Boone said, and he turned to greet him. “I haven’t had the pleasure of talkin’ with you for a long, long time. How’s Timmy?”

  Timmy Barnes, now a truck driver for Middle Georgia Budweiser Distributors, Inc., was Tommy Barnes’s son and Boone’s center when he quarterbacked for Canterbury Academy fifteen years ago, and Boone suddenly remembered many a post-football-practice steak dinner at the Barnes’s house. Normally a jocular man with dimples deep enough to hold a peanut (indeed, he would perform this trick for boys who came to the house), Tommy Barnes looked at Boone with the same sober expression a law officer uses to inform someone of a death in the family.

  “I think you better sit down for this one, Boone,” he said. “I’ve got some news gonna break your heart.”

  And by the time the sheriff finished divulging all that he knew about Suzanne and the dogs of Red Hill Plantation, Boone had leaned back in his chair, deflated, his chest sunken, his head woozy, feeling as if something had just sucked every ounce of oxygen from his body. So his mother was right after all—something was wrong with Suzanne. And before he could lift the lid off the pan of boiling anger within, Boone suddenly remembered how ugly he’d been with his wife, the mother of his son, about the pee stains in the yard, and how he hounded and hounded her to take care of the situation. Of course she’d poisoned the stupid dogs! What else could she have done?

  Unconsciously, to help revive his senses and jerk him back into his body, Boone pulled open his top desk drawer, reached for a rectangular tin of peppery Starbucks mints, and popped four of them into his mouth. He breathed through his nose, and the vapors from the so-called turbo-charged candies cooled his nasal passages like ice.

  “Are you sure about this, Tommy?” he asked.

  “Yep. I got lab tests and my best detective’s word.”

  “I just don’t know what to say. I feel horrible about this.”

  Tommy Barnes nodded his head in silence.

  “Boone,” he finally said. “Your momma says Suzanne’s got a drinkin’ problem. Maybe some depression.”

  “My momma doesn’t like Suzanne, Mr. Tom. That’s pretty well common knowledge,” he answered. “Suzanne likes her chardonnay just like any other lady in Red Hill Plantation. But she’s not drinkin’ now, Tommy.”

  “No?”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  Tommy Barnes’s jaundiced eyes opened wider. He pursed his lips and nodded his head again in thought.

  “Well now, that might explain somethin’.”

  “What’s that?” Boone asked.

  “Women can do some crazy things when they’re expectin’ babies.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You almost expect ’em to do somethin’ a little crazy. It’s natural, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, sir, it sure is.”

  The sheriff, who was leaning back in the chair, sighed deeply, his great belly rising then falling again. His brown-leather belt creaked from the sudden expansion and contraction. “If these dogs was to stop dyin’, I think people just might forget about all this. Then I could forget about it, too.”

  “Yes, sir,” Boone answered.

  “I’m assumin’ those dogs are gonna stop dyin’ here real soon?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll see what I can do. You know I’ll do my best.”

  “Problem is, I’ve got someone with loose lips in my lab.”

  Tommy Barnes stood up, placed his hands on the edge of Boone’s desk and leaned forward. “If that newspaper finds out what’s goin’ on, I’m gonna have to do somethin’, Boone.”

  “Sir?”

  “I’m gonna have to do somethin’. I’m gonna have to make me an arrest.”

  On the advice of his doctor, twice each week Frankie Kabel got his blood pressure taken. And without telling his daughter, because he did not want to inflate her ego even further, the place he chose to do this was the machine at the pharmacy in the Kroger where she worked.

  As the machine hummed and the stiff material inside the tube began to squeeze his arm, Frankie would look up at the pictures of the store managers on the wall and let the eight-by-ten color portrait of his daughter—Donna Kabel, Produce Manager—sink into him like butter on a hot biscuit.

  Thirty-one

  Dear Chatter: I wanna know why they’re not givin’ out Bibles this year in the middle schools when they’ve done just that for a hundred years or more. To heck with the Constitution, right?—Editors.

  Dear Chatter: Is there any place in Selby other than The Gap where I can buy girl’s clothes that do not have frills or lace or bows or cutesy appliqués on them? And while I’m at it, what is it with all the hair
bows on grown women?

  Where are you taking me?” Margaret asked.

  “It’s a surprise,” Dewayne answered. “It’s not too much farther. Are you still feelin’ sick?”

  “A little.”

  “Is that Rolaids helpin’ any?”

  “A little.”

  “You’re sure not happy this mornin’.” Dewayne paused, then smiled. “But I’m fixin’ to change that.”

  They rode south on U.S. 41, the Dixie Highway—past the flea market, past the airport, past one dead armadillo on the road, past the shady pecan groves and the Badcock Peach Packing Plant and Visitors’ Center, which was marked by a water tower whose roundish top was painted to be a peach.

  Finally, Dewayne turned onto a red-clay dirt road, and a mile or so later they pulled up to a white trailer with hail-dented, blue-metal shutters, which seemed to be resting in the shade of a gigantic live oak.

  “Who lives here?” Margaret asked.

  “My friend Bobby.”

  “So what are we doing?”

  “Just settle those ants in your pants and relax.”

  From the bed of his blue truck Dewayne pulled a large Igloo cooler and motioned for Margaret to follow him. They crossed a grassy field, sloping downward, and after a few minutes Margaret could hear water from a creek.

  “There she is,” Dewayne said. “She’s always early—and here she’s early again. This here’s the first dogwood to bloom every year in Selby. And I’m the only one who knows about it. You ever seen one before?”

  “No!”

  Margaret walked up to the tree. It was relatively short, gnarly and twisty but with a wide canopy. “These flowers, Dewayne. They look like orchids.”

  He reached and plucked one from the tree then walked over, took Margaret’s hand and set it in her palm.

  “There’s a story about this flower,” he said. “About this tree. They didn’t used to be short and squatty like this but big and mighty like that oak over there. And it was big enough that the Jews picked it to make the cross for Jesus, and the tree was so sad about bein’ used to kill him that Jesus promised right there that dogwoods from then on would be short and squatty and crooked so no one would wanna use ’em for a cross ever again.

  “Now, look at this.” He pointed to the blossom in her hand. “These petals here—there’s two long ones and two short ones, which makes it kinda look like a cross. And these little brown marks … Look at ’em real careful; they look brown but they’re not. There’s red for blood and rust for the iron, and these are supposed to be where the nails were in Jesus’ hands. And in the very middle … see there? The little pollen things? That’s supposed to be his crown of thorns. Course this probably isn’t true, but it sure is a pretty story.”

  Margaret looked up from the blossom and into Dewayne’s eyes.

  “Darlin’,” he asked. “Are you cryin’?”

  She fell into him and buried her face in the denim shirt that covered his chest.

  “Honey? Sweetie? What’s goin’ on? Are you okay?”

  After a few moments, Margaret gathered herself and leaned back from his body. “Dewayne, I’ve got something horrible to tell you.”

  “What? What is it? Oh, Lord—are you leavin’ me? Are you movin’ or somethin’?”

  “No,” she replied. “But maybe I should so I don’t hurt you. I’m pregnant, Dewayne.”

  His eyes grew large and round. “Oh, my gosh.” He raked a hand through his blond hair and looked at the flowering dogwood. “I thought we were bein’ careful,” he said.

  “We were,” Margaret answered. “Sex is a game of chance, and we didn’t beat the odds, Dewayne. We are now among the three percent who get pregnant on the pill.”

  Margaret reached for his chin and pulled it toward her so she could look him in the eye. “I wasn’t gonna tell you,” she said. “I was just gonna take care of it and say nothing … because I know how you are and what you would want to do about this. And you and I have very different opinions. Children should be planned, Dewayne. They deserve it.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  On the way home they stopped for a red light at the corner of Tyville Road and Vineville Drive, at an overgrown lot with a large, professionally painted plywood sign pounded into the red-clay ground: “Watch for us: Hersch Porsche-Audi. Atlanta’s finest car dealer is coming to Selby.” Beyond the sign sat what appeared to be an abandoned car of Cadillac length, consumed by a thick green blanket of kudzu. Margaret thought it looked like a piece of topiary that General Motors might commission for the front yard of its headquarters.

  Everywhere in Perry County, bulldozers were felling trees; back-hoes were digging trenches and laying pipe; two Atlanta concrete companies had moved in and set up temporary plants out by the new Holiday Inn Muscogee Convention Center because the local companies could not keep up with demand. It was hard to find a traffic light intersection in the outskirts of Selby that did not have some piece of earth-moving equipment snorting and clambering over the landscape like a tank sent in to occupy unfriendly territory.

  Throughout the city, yellow ribbons had been tied to seemingly every tree and shrub whose trunk was thicker than a broomstick, and the group responsible for this had stapled hundreds of its printed cardboard signs to the bark of trees, featuring a grainy photograph of a traffic light on red with the letters H.A.L.T. underneath. Unfortunately, many motorists didn’t know this was the acronym for the protest group who put them there—Help All Lovely Trees—and they immediately braked upon seeing these signs, mistaking them for official warnings of a new traffic light ahead. Such was the rate of change in this central Georgia city.

  Margaret finally broke the silence. “They’re ruining this town,” she said. “I can’t understand why the natives aren’t jumping up and down screaming.”

  “They are. Look at all those signs.”

  “No. I mean ranting and raving and picketing and getting loud and right in the face of the zoning board and the county commission.

  What is it with Southerners, Dewayne? Why don’t they fight? Why don’t you fight? Why are you so passive? Why don’t you try to change my mind about the baby?”

  He continued down the road, both hands on the steering wheel as always. “We fought once,” he said. “Didn’t do a darn bit of good.”

  Thirty-two

  Dear Chatter: I don’t like those ugly comments you’re puttin’ on the end of some of the callers’ words. They’re mean and unnecessary. And fun as heck to write! Comin’ at ya!—Editors

  Using a sterling-silver pestle she’d ordered from the Frontgate catalog, Suzanne muddled the sugar cube, bitters and water in the bottom of a cut-crystal tumbler. In went the splash of Crown Royal, the ice, the maraschino cherry, even the twist of lemon she normally did not include.

  The garage door had opened minutes earlier, and Boone’s BMW, now inside, was still running. Suzanne knew he was finishing business on the car phone, and she rushed to make his old-fashioned so it would be waiting for him. She’d also removed the burgundy, tassled throw pillow from his chair that he complained about every night. And an hour earlier, Donna had dropped by with a casserole dish of veal piccata, Boone’s newest favorite meal. One of the better things about being pregnant, Suzanne had realized, was that she no longer had to lie about preparing the meals; suddenly, it was okay to be a slacker.

  Suzanne wanted everything perfect, everything Boone-friendly this evening. She had been in Atlanta for the day and stumbled upon an immense, nineteen-thousand-dollar candelabra at Beverly Bremmer’s Silver Shop and needed his permission to exceed the never-stated-but-implied limit of two thousand dollars for a single purchase. When Suzanne walked into Beverly’s and saw it gleaming beneath the halogen lights on a pile of rumpled black velvet, she knew immediately that nothing else would do for the round table in the foyer for Dogwood.

  Suddenly, Suzanne heard the alarm chime that indicated the door had been opened. With cocktail in hand, she chec
ked her lipstick in the mirror behind the wet bar and turned to greet her husband.

  “Hey, hey,” she said.

  “Hey.”

  Boone, normally a slow sipper, took the drink from her and downed a third of it in two swallows. “New outfit?” he asked.

  “You always ask me that, silly,” she replied. “No. This outfit’s old as the hills. I’ve been tryin’ to save money because of all the things we’ve been needin’ to buy for Dogwood.”

  “Suzanne … we need to sit down. I need to talk to you about somethin’.”

  “Boone, you look so serious, honey. What’s goin’ on?”

  “Just sit down, Suzanne.”

  She chose the couch, he his chair. Boone took another sip of his old-fashioned and began to set it on the end table but stopped in midair. “Where’s the coaster, Suzanne?”

  “Oh, Josephine!” she cursed her housekeeper in absentia. “Just a minute, darlin’. Okay, here’s one.”

  He leaned back in his chair and grabbed the arms in a way Suzanne had never seen him do, as if he were trying to steady himself. “I was gonna surprise you today,” he said.

  Smiling, Suzanne leaned forward, sitting on the edge of the sofa. “You know I love surprises, sweetie.”

  “I’d left a message with Mylene to call Dr. Madison and hunt me down another ultrasound picture of Maston. Have him send it to me as an e-mail attachment.”

  Suzanne’s smile began to collapse until she caught it midway down, and it now trembled as it hung there by frayed threads. “Well, did you get one?” she asked.

  “What do you think?”

  “What are you sayin’, Boone?”

  “Someone’s been eatin’ fried chicken behind the curtains, Suzanne. You’re not even a patient of his. His office has no record of you.”

  “Well now that’s impossible,” she said. “It’s probably some stupid secretary’s fault.”

  “No, Suzanne. I talked to him directly. He’s never met you. Now, can you kindly tell me what the hell is goin’ on here?”