by James Villas
Advance praise for James Villas and
Dancing in the Lowcountry
“Jimmy’s fiction is like his cooking, wry and ribald, languid and laugh-out-loud funny. When you are from the South, as I am, these are the characters you wish were in your family. A wonderful novel from a wonderful man. The only better thing than reading it would be to hear the author read it out loud. His delicious sass fills every page. A real feast. Serve with some sippin’ whiskey and enjoy!”
Marsha Norman, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright of ’night, Mother
“James Villas has crafted an epic story steeped in the traditions and culture of the South. It’s about family and secrets, memories and regrets, lifelong passions and the inevitable tragedies we all face. Ella Dubose is a complicated, courageous woman still living with gusto, still struggling over life’s hurdles, still dancing in the Lowcountry with grit and grace.”
Cathy Lamb, author of Julia’s Chocolates
“Dancing in the Lowcountry is a delightful and moving account of a certain kind of upper-middle-class life in the South of my own generation. I know of few, if any, novels that give such an accurate account of that life and of the rich and amusing language we’ve used for a long while now—whether we’re white, black, or red.”
Reynolds Price, author of A Long and Happy Life
Please turn the page for more advance praise!
“James Villas’ Dancing in the Lowcountry resonates with the elegance and master storytelling skills that have made his award-winning food writing timeless. Simply told and yet complexly layered, Miss Ella’s journey from spoiled girlhood to endearing eccentricity vividly reminds us that there is always more to the celebrated “steel magnolias” of the South than meets the eye. Not all Southerners are good storytellers, but Villas sure makes the maxim seem true.”
Damon Lee Fowler, author of Classical Southern Cooking and The Savannah Cookbook
“In the character of Ella Dubose, James Villas shows us how through sheer force of character a person can throw off the burden of the past and choose to accept the challenge of the future. Authentic detail of time and place helps bring Miss Ella’s beloved Lowcountry alive on the page.”
Holly Chamberlin, author of Tuscan Holiday
DANCING in the LOWCOUNTRY
JAMES VILLAS
KENSINGTON BOOKS
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
To the memory of Jamie
Contents
Chapter 1: A Fresh Peach
Chapter 2: Flesh and Blood
Chapter 3: Dull Gold
Chapter 4: The Squaw
Chapter 5: Keyboard Tinkerbell
Chapter 6: Grits and Grunts
Chapter 7: Nobody Argues with a Gun
Chapter 8: Waccamaw Neck
Chapter 9: The Whole Ocean of Truth
Chapter 10: Wisteria
Chapter 11: In the Gazebo
Chapter 12: The Queen City
Chapter 13: Feedin’ the Crabs
Chapter 14: A Distant Clap of Thunder
Chapter 15: Defeated Soul
Chapter 16: Imperfect Bond
Chapter 17: Awendaw
Chapter 18: The Yellow Pine
Chapter 19: Magic
Chapter 20: Sharks’ Teeth
Chapter 21: Prevarication
Chapter 22: Last Dance
A Reading Group Guide
Discussion Questions
Chapter 1
A FRESH PEACH
The week after Easter, Ella Dubose set about making preparations for her “incognito” jaunt in as normal a manner as possible for a Southern lady determined to fulfill a vital mission. She very attentively went through her wardrobe as she used to do so she’d have the right clothes for every occasion. She had Lucy give her a permanent at the beauty parlor on her regular day, then went to the bank to get plenty of cash. While Goldie filled the car with gas, went to the liquor store for booze, and refilled the prescription for Ella’s heart pills, Ella dried a few marijuana leaves from the side porch in the oven, ground them finely in the blender, packed them firmly in a cigarette emptied of regular tobacco, and smoked a joint as part of her self-prescribed program to ward off glaucoma. She thought of everything, including getting the two old fishing rods and reels stored in the basement, checking to make sure the small gun in her pocketbook was loaded, and canceling delivery of the Observer so there’d be no newspapers in the drive to attract neighbors’ attention. When, in fact, Goldie arrived the following Monday morning to pack the car, and the two finally got under way in the white Cadillac, it was as if Ella planned never to return to the house again.
Ella insisted on driving at least the first leg of the four-hour trip, and since Goldie was now wearing her hair in a long pigtail and sporting more exotic Indian ornaments, the sight of a slight, dignified, elderly lady in a pink silk blouse and pearl earrings behind the wheel and a stout, tan-skinned woman decked out in colored glass beads and flashy bracelets studying a road map was enough to catch anybody’s eye—especially in rural North and South Carolina. At first, the two women had little to talk about, but the farther they drove through the flat, sandy Pee Dee countryside dotted with drab little farming towns, fields of young tobacco and cotton, and one Baptist church and trailer camp after another, the more Ella was inspired to tell Goldie about the region’s history, and the giant watermelons and boiled goobers sold at roadside stands around Pageland during the summer months, and how she and Mr. Earl once stopped awhile in Bennettsville to witness a tobacco auction. Then, just outside Darlington, she suddenly slowed the car down and pulled off the road in front of a dilapidated wooden hut where an old black man was dozing in a lawn chair.
“What’s wrong, Miss Ella?” Goldie exclaimed with alarm.
“Nothing’s wrong, dear. I saw a sign back there that said PEACHES. It’s still way too early, and I’m sure they’re hard as rocks, but I’d give my eyetooth for a fresh peach.”
With which she got out of the car with her pocketbook on her arm, approached the rack displaying small bags of yellowish pink, slightly fuzzy peaches, and squeezed one.
“Clings?” she asked the man.
“Yessum. Early Belles. The first.”
“Any taste?”
“Yessum. Not bad. ’Course they ain’t freestones, but not bad for this time of year.”
Ella sniffed another peach, frowned when she squeezed it, but nevertheless dug into her pocketbook for money and paid for a bag.
Back in the car, she asked Goldie if she’d take over the driving, then, once they were on the road again, rummaged in the backseat for a small knife she’d put in her liquor bag to cut lemons for her drinks. She then spread several Kleenexes over her lap, peeled what looked and felt like the ripest peach, cut and tasted a wedge, and handed one to Goldie.
“Still a little mealy,” Ella said, “but that Negro man was right when he said they have some flavor.”
“Miss Ella, you better stop using that word,” Goldie informed her politely.
“What word?”
“Negro.”
“Why, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, popping another wedge in her mouth. “That’s a perfectly respectable term, and you know I don’t have a prejudiced bone in my body.”
“All I know is what I hear on TV, and I heard the other night that the blacks don’t like to ever be called Negroes and now want only to be called blacks or African-Americans.”
“Why, I’ve never heard of anything so absurd. First, they’re not Africans, they’re Americans, and if I’d called a Negro a black when I was growing up in Charleston, I’d have gotten the worst whipping of my life.” She removed some pulp from her mouth with her fingers and place
d it on the Kleenex. “Lord, these are mealy.”
“I’m just telling you what I heard on TV,” Goldie went on, taking another wedge that Ella held out. “And, you know, more and more of us Indians are now calling ourselves Native Americans.”
Ella glanced over at her with a puzzled expression on her face. “I know of no such thing, dear, and if you ask me, I think that really is crazy. I mean, you’re an American Indian and should be proud of it. Plain and simple.”
Goldie just laughed. “I really don’t give it that much thought, ma’am.”
“Honestly,” Ella muttered dismissively, reaching for the map, “sometimes I don’t know what this world’s coming to.” She studied the map, told Goldie to slow down so they wouldn’t miss an important turn, then removed some more pulp from her mouth. “Yep, mealy, but Lord, there’s still nothing like a fresh peach.”
“No, ma’am,” Goldie agreed, accepting still another wedge as she drove. “But I know how you love those Elbertas and Indian Reds.”
“I certainly do,” Ella declared, wrapping up the skins and pit in the messy Kleenex and cramming the bundle in the bag with the other peaches. “That wasn’t bad; just what we needed to put us in the right mood. You know, I once met these folks up North who kept going on about their New Jersey peaches, and when I couldn’t stand it one minute longer, I simply told them that there wasn’t a peach in this country that could hold a candle to South Carolina and Georgia peaches. I didn’t mean to be rude, but Yankees do have some strange ideas about what’s good and not good. Of course, I have to admit that Mr. Earl and I used to eat wonderful peaches over in France—white ones almost as juicy as our Dixie Belles.” She now appeared preoccupied with the memory, so much so, in fact, that she took her eyes off the map too long and failed to tell Goldie to make still another tricky turn on the confusing route leading into Florence.
“These roads are a disgrace,” she huffed as they turned around. “You’d think that after fifty years there’d be a direct major highway from Charlotte to Myrtle Beach, but there’s not been one iota of improvement since I began coming down here. It’s a crime and disgrace, an absolute disgrace.”
Her rant stopped when she noticed unexpectedly a magnificent antebellum home on a wooded rise in the far distance. “Lord have mercy, would you just look at that. Almost like some of our gracious old houses around Charleston—and stuck back here in this wasteland. I bet that place is two hundred years old. Sherman must have missed this area.” She again seemed lost in her reveries as Goldie slowed down and tried to look.
“Now that, my dear, is what life was like when cotton was king and we had mansions all over South Carolina. Just look at that.”
With no warning, a rusty tractor pulled out onto the two-lane road from a dusty drive that led to a crumbling shack with a glider on the porch, but before Ella could even gulp, Goldie had very expertly swung out around it.
“Crazy fool!” Ella yowled at the farmer. “You’re a good driver, dear.”
Since it was now coming on noon, and Ella feared the dining room at the Priscilla would be closed by the time they arrived and got settled, she told Goldie to begin looking for a respectable place where they could get a bite of lunch. Following a shiny black Buick on the approach to Marion, they both had just noticed the sign for a diner when, from nowhere, a large dog darted in front of the car ahead and was sent flying in the air to the side of the road.
“Oh my Lord, my Lord,” Ella cried as Goldie slammed on the brakes and they watched the Buick simply drive on without so much as slowing down. Almost by instinct, and in a fraction of a second, Ella’s eyes caught the number of the South Carolina license plate as Goldie uncontrollably bellowed “The bastard!” apologized for her language, and pulled over to the side.
“I got the license number,” Ella said with rage in her voice, reaching above the visor for a pencil and jotting it down on the road map. “Go check on the poor dog and see if it’s alive.”
Blood was already draining from the dog’s mouth when Goldie crept up on the motionless body, and it didn’t take long to realize the animal was indeed dead. Anybody else, of course, would most likely have had a cell phone in the car to call for help, but since Ella’s outmoded convictions precluded that possibility, all the two women could do was vent their anger. Almost sobbing with frustration, Ella sat still a few minutes longer, wondering what to do.
“This has to be reported, ma’am,” Goldie said with conviction, “and there’s gotta be a police station in that town.”
“You’re exactly right,” Ella agreed as if she’d thought of the idea herself. “Let’s go up there to that filling station and get directions to the Marion police.”
In almost no time, they found the small, cinder-block building off Main Street and were standing in front of a high counter telling the uniformed, heavy-set officer what had happened.
“We’ll take care of it, ma’am,” the man drawled indifferently, eyeing Goldie suspiciously. “Happens all the time out there on the highway.”
“Well, sir, I got the license-plate number of the car,” Ella told him, pointing to the map, “and I’d like to know what you’re going to do about finding the driver.”
The officer ignored the scribbling on the map. “As I said, ma’am, we’ll look into it and try to notify the dog’s owner.”
“Whoever did that oughta be arrested and put in jail,” Goldie protested mildly at first, anxiously fingering one of her silver bracelets.
The man glared at the Indian. “I just said we’d check it out and notify the owner.”
Ella’s hand was shaking. “I don’t think you understand, sir. Somebody in a big black Buick just killed somebody’s dog and didn’t even have the decency to stop to see if the poor animal was dead or alive. I call that hit-and-run, and we want that person prosecuted. We’ll be happy to sign anything as witnesses.”
The officer began shifting on his feet impatiently. “That won’t be necessary, ma’am. It’s only a dog, and we know how to handle these things.”
“Only a dog?” Goldie then blared uncharacteristically, her dark eyes burning.
Ella now had real fury in her own eyes. “What do you mean, mister, only a dog? Just what on earth do you mean? A crime has been committed, an inexcusable crime, and if you can’t assure me that it’ll be fully investigated and this person found and made to pay…I want you to know I have every intention of following up on this, and if it means reporting the incident to the state highway patrol, or the ASPCA, or any other authority, rest assured that’s exactly what I’ll do.”
“Now, now, little lady, just calm yourself down. No need to get so keyed up,” he said, obviously aware that this cranky woman with the weird-looking Indian meant business and could cause a real commotion. “We’ll put out a search for the car, don’t you worry, and notify you if we need a statement.”
“No, no, I’ll contact you,” she said, fumbling in her pocketbook for her tiny leather notepad and gold ballpoint and asking him to jot down his phone number. “I won’t be easy to reach.”
All this time, Goldie stood fuming, and when the two walked out of the station, the officer simply turned to a young woman with big dangling earrings smoking a cigarette behind a desk and, shaking his head, commented, “Some rich old city gal with a damn redskin raising hell ’bout a dead dog. Can you beat it? Boy, what you see these days. Better call Henry ’bout gettin’ that animal off the road.”
In the diner farther down the highway, Goldie ordered macaroni and cheese and iced tea, but Ella was still so shaken by what had happened that she had an appetite for nothing more than one of her sneaky minibottles of whiskey in her pocketbook poured into the plastic glass of ice water, and one cat-head ham biscuit with gravy.
“Good thing I’m driving, ma’am,” Goldie said mildly as Ella emptied the small bottle.
“Oh, hush, woman,” Ella snorted, reaching back into her pocketbook, this time for the gold cigarette case.
Although the two w
omen were by now as accustomed to one another as two sisters might be, never would either one have assumed that the relationship was in the least way intimate. Not, however, that this prevented Goldie from bringing up questions occasionally about things that intrigued her.
“Miss Ella, I’ve always thought that was the most beautiful cigarette case I’ve ever seen and hope you won’t mind me asking where you found it.”
Ella sat perfectly still for a moment, then took a sip of her doctored drink. “Of course not, dear. Mr. Earl gave me this case many years ago,” she lied, a nervous expression coming over her delicate face.
“Oh, I’ve never seen one like it and always wondered where you got it. Mr. Earl did have such a wonderful eye for beautiful things, didn’t he?”
“Yes, Goldie, he did.”
Goldie fingered her cheap bead necklace. “Bud gave me this not long after we got married, and do you know Mr. Earl once complimented me on it?”
“Well, he should have. It’s lovely, dear.” She took another long sip. “I’m sure you still miss Bud a great deal.”
“Oh, yes, I do. Not a day passes that I don’t think of him and John. I sing to them every night—a sky song I learned when I was young.”
“He was a fine person, Goldie. And John was such a fine young man. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am, though the Sacred Spirits have reasons for everything,” she replied cryptically, her eyes still fixed on the gold case. “And I also remember Mr. Earl every single night. He was so good to everybody.”
Ella patted the back of her silver hair the way she often did when caught off guard by any unexpected statement or question pertaining to her personal life. “Yes, Mr. Earl was special, a very special and good man.” She turned her head and stared out the window between the moving traffic at a cotton field across the road that extended far in the distance. “And he always loved this drive down to the beach, and the area’s history and people. Why, he could go on for hours about every crop, and major battle of the war, and barbecue, and the pulp industry, and all the old plantations. Mercy, I don’t know where he learned it all, but for me and the children it was like one long history lesson every time we made the trip.” She hesitated when the waitress placed the food on the table. “You know, we could be sitting at a sidewalk café in Paris, or shopping for antiques in London, or riding on a train to Venice when we did all that traveling in Europe, and Mr. Earl would eventually say he was about ready to feel sand between his toes again and eat peach cobbler, and I’d know then that he was ready to come home. Funny how I happen to think about that now, but that’s exactly what he’d say: that he wanted to feel sand between his toes.”