Southern Fried

by Cathy Pickens

  “She’d have been a bit older than you. Of course, she was always a good bit older than she should have been. I’ve never stayed this long on a visit” he went on. “It’s always been hard, coming back. Reckon now it’ll be easier?” He paused. “I doubt it.”

  He gazed toward the restaurant’s entrance, but he wasn’t looking at the age-stained light fixtures and the old advertising slogans plastered on the walls. “I used to look for her, seemed like all the time. Not just here. Wherever I was. A street comer in Atlanta, the T in Boston. I’d find myself looking at faces, thinking I’d run into her. Sometimes I’d have that knot in my stomach. You ever get that when you’re waitin’ on somebody, scannin’ a crowd, waiting for them to appear?”

  I nodded. I’d had that sensation, that expectancy. But never, of course, for someone who’d been missing for years. He didn’t expect a reply.

  “I once ran a block and a half after a woman in New York City. Dodging through the crowd because she had Lea’s hair. I grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. But it wasn’t Lea’s face. What a shock.” He allowed himself a small chuckle. “Lucky I didn’t get maced. That was one P.O.’ ed Yankee lady.”

  “I bet so.”

  “Another time, I saw a woman in a restaurant. Something about her smile and the way she held her head brought Lea to mind so vividly. But, you know, you forget what people look like. You don’t think you will. You think you’ll always know them. But no matter how often I stared at her pictures, I could feel her slipping from my memory. I couldn’t hold her memory anymore. I kept staring at that woman, wondering, is that her?”

  He paused. “It’s a wonder that woman’s boyfriend didn’t stomp the mud outta me. He considered it. He hesitated only because he thought I was crazy. Which I was, I guess.” His sigh seemed to rise from deep inside him. “Do you suppose I’ll stop looking for her now?”

  The painful melancholy of that statement hit me hard. “That’s what memorial services are for,” I said. “So you’ll realize a person’s gone.”

  He nodded, the top of his head toward me as he studied the salt shaker’s holes. “Sometimes I have trouble going to funerals. I never know whether it’s better to go shock myself with the sight of that waxy, pretend person in the box, or just not go at all, so I can sometimes trick myself into thinking he’s still alive. Of course, there won’t be any waxy, pretend person to haunt me this time, will there?”

  I swallowed. A vision of that waxy-faced skeleton lying in cream satin didn’t set well with the stale-beer and cigarette smells in Runion’s.

  The waitress picked that moment to plunk two steaming platters in front of us, loaded with chopped pork and assorted deep-fried things. Since I rarely let queasiness get in the way of eating, I picked up my fork. Melvin abandoned the filthy salt shaker to pick up a hush puppy, which he didn’t eat. He absentmindedly rolled it around on the edge of his plate until it landed in the strawberries and limp cantaloupe he’d ordered instead of barbecued beans.

  “Lea couldn’t eat fruit.” He poked the cantaloupe with his fingernail. “She’d swell up like a poisoned pup. Allergies. Doctor said it could kill her, she wasn’t careful. Funny how something so healthy for most people can be so deadly for somebody else.”

  Not that fruit had killed her. Maybe a change in topic would keep him from sinking further into his grim fugue.

  “Melvin, I’m curious. What drew you away from Dacus?”

  I hoped he’d start talking so I could just nod and eat. The barbecue smelled wonderful.

  He pursed his lips and fished his hush puppy out of the fruit. “Nothing drew me away. After I left Garnet Mills—”

  “Garnet Mills?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I started there before I even finished college. A sort of intern. Hired on as an accountant, then quickly became CFO—chief financial officer. Which isn’t as grand as it might sound. I was still just a glorified bookkeeper, but with a lot more responsibility if something went wrong.”

  “I didn’t know you’d worked there full-time.”

  “Sure did. My first introduction to the real world of business. Taught me that, in business, all’s not always what it seems. Some people succeed in spite of themselves. And others have an amazing capacity for self-delusion. All important life lessons.”

  He toasted me with his fresh beer bottle and took a gulp. “Left there, headed to Atlanta and from there to California. Did some work for a couple of startup Silicon Valleys—one was a particularly good investment. Now,” he shrugged, “I have a little freedom to decide what I want to do. Toyed with the idea of heading back to Atlanta. I’m not rich, but I could afford to live out my life holed up in a shack somewhere back in the mountains.”

  “Doesn’t sound bad, some days, does it?” I said.

  He looked as if he’d forgotten he was talking to me. I didn’t try to explain that I would welcome not having to practice law. “So what are you going to do?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Float around like a piece of lint for a while. You ever try things on? In your head, I mean. To see if they fit?”

  Little did he know.

  “That sound crazy? I keep tryin’ on all sorts of things. Like going to the Ringling Clown College. Or riding as a hobo. Or opening a bookstore. Or going to law school.”

  I shook my head. “I’d advise against that last one.”

  He gave me a crooked smile. “I know. Nothing quite seems to fit. I can’t seem to do anything but what I’ve been doing. Maybe I’m too old. Or not adventuresome enough.”

  At least his options evidenced more adventurousness than “Welcome to Wal-Mart.” Or high-dollar ambulance chasing with Jake Baker. I changed the subject. “What exactly is it that you do?”

  “I don’t even know. I mean, when you say you practice law, people have some idea what that means. Granted, probably a wrong idea. But a better idea than when I tell people I do analyses for venture capitalists.”

  I nodded. Politely, I hoped, since I had no idea what that meant.

  “Do you think about how you don’t really produce anything in your job? I don’t mean you don’t work hard. I mean, I think about that. I don’t do anything. With my hands. I don’t have anything to show for my work like I would if I assembled steam irons or grew vegetables or welded metal. Something tangible.”

  I’d thought about it. But I’d always thought it too weird to talk about out loud.

  Melvin didn’t dwell on its weirdness. He flagged down the waitress with his half-empty beer bottle, signaling for a replacement. How many had he had?

  “You know the one thing I think people want in their lives more than anything else? Something that lasts. Something they can hold on to, feel passion about. The truly deep heartbreaks are when you find out that thing you planned to cling to never really was yours to begin with. That it wasn’t at all what it seemed. That’s the saddest thing. To find out it was never truly yours. No matter what the pledge.”

  He swigged from the long-neck bottle of Heineken. “You’d think it’d’ve stopped hurting by now. But it hasn’t. Fact is, right now, it hurts as bad or worse than it ever did. Maybe it’s having her float to the surface again.”

  He giggled. Out of character, and getting more so as he drained his bottle.

  “Your wife?”

  “My wife.” The words came out thick and uncertain. “My wife. I haven’t said that in a long time. At first, I said it a lot. It sounded so—strange.’ My wife just called. My wife is picking me up after work. My wife is having her hair done. My wife is having an affair.’ At first, you say it a lot. Then—” He didn’t finish his sentence. He stared intently at a water ring on the red-checked plastic tablecloth.

  I was torn between curiosity and embarrassment. To avoid looking at him, I glanced around the restaurant. It seemed odd, after being in Charleston and Columbia, to see so few blacks. Until I’d lived downstate, I’d never realized how white the hill-country folks are. Odd how being away could teach you about home. I tip
ped my glass and watched the ice cubes melting inside.

  We sat in an uncompanionable silence for far too long. Then Melvin shook himself, reminding me of a dog after a dip in the pool.

  “A’vry, when I decide what it is I want to be when I grow up, I’ll let you know. You’ll be one of the first.”

  “You do that, Melvin. It might give me some guidance.”

  His giggle faded into a small burp.

  “Melvin, you ready to head home?” I waved away the waitress, who should have known better than to offer him anything else, and laid out money to cover the check.

  I think he nodded. At least he seemed willing enough, with some help, to sway out to the parking lot and into my grandfather’s prized Mustang. If he threw up in it, I’d have to shoot him.

  We made it to his brother’s house without incident. “Melvin, this is getting to be a habit, me bringing you home.”

  I reached across him as he slumped in the front seat and unlatched the car door. He blinked in the glare from the dome light.

  When I nudged his shoulder, he started and swung his legs out onto the driveway.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything. I last glimpsed him disappearing into the opened garage door. Not until I had backed out and driven away did I think to worry that he might wander into the pond behind the house and drown. But I talked myself out of turning around to find out and drove on up the mountain.

  The cabin stood dark and quiet, with none of the raucous racket of tree frogs that echoed and swelled all summer. No water lapping quietly in a boat’s wake. Just silence. And stars and the stark outline of trees darker than the dark sky, more solid than the rippled black water reflecting the security lights scattered around the lake.

  I swung open the back door to the cabin—the one closest to the weedy drive—and slammed it shut behind me, the noise too loud. I threw the deadbolt home and scanned the cabin. Maybe Melvin’s melancholy was contagious. Maybe too many people had reminded me how alone I was up here.

  “Get a grip,” I said aloud. The sound of my voice dispelled some of the monsters.

  Filling a tumbler with water and ice, I tried to wash the smoky taste of cigarettes from my throat. I’d have to shower the smell of smoke and fried grease out of my hair before I could go to sleep.

  I pulled the curtains to block out the darkness, and filled the sitting room with lamplight. The sofa, musty from humidity and age, sat next to a battered empire library table. The cabin had collected, over the years, the worn, lumpy, faded castoffs from the many families that had used it. Nothing anybody had to fuss over or worry about. Balancing my water glass on my tummy, I reached over and pulled from the table drawer a cracked leather book.

  My grandfather’s journal. I’d found it tucked behind a shelf of dusty Reader’s Digest Condensed Books I’d thrown away in my cleaning frenzy. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to read it then. But tonight, after witnessing Melvin’s painful trip down memory lane, maybe I could purge some of Melvin’s past with some of my grandfather’s.

  I’d glanced through it when I first found it. But I’d found myself reluctant to read it, as if, through the arching, sharp scrawl, I would find an entrance into my grandfather’s most intimate space—a space he’d never invited me into.

  Or anyone else, as far as I knew. But I kept coming back to it, with a guilty curiosity. I’d known my granddad as an adoring granddaughter does. And I’d had the uncommon pleasure of knowing him as a mentor. He’d stood in my comer and cheered me on through college and into law school.

  I’d never gotten to sit in his courtroom when he served as judge—he’d hit the mandatory retirement age before I hit kindergarten. But I’d seen him in the courtroom, on into his seventies, stooped but tall, distinguished in a silver-haired, slow-talking way. And, to my eyes, infinitely wise. And funny.

  Granddad often displayed his bitingly sarcastic sense of humor, though never at my expense. He tended to target folks who took themselves too seriously. Or others too casually. In him, I saw a man who focused intently on others, who usually left people smiling, but who seemed to genuinely enjoy solitude, strolls down Dacus side streets or paths alongside a trout stream, the quiet of this cabin. And the thinking of his own thoughts.

  I fingered the dry leather of the book, aware that I intruded on what held those thoughts. Would that intrusion have been unwelcome?

  I thumbed open the journal to a place in the middle. He must have written with a nibbed pen, the letters varying in thickness, the pages slightly embossed with the pressure of his strokes. I just paged through, watching the precise lettering move like a stereopticon.

  Aunt Vinnia’s name caught my eye.

  May 27, 1958. Vinnia had her friend Olivia Sterling over for supper tonight and the girls played bridge on the porch. The weather already has too much of the hint of what’s to come to suit me. My dear sister Vinnia, as usual, has taken Olivia under her wing, trying to cheer her. Sometimes, watching another suffer the pangs of lost love, one is struck with the awkward melodrama of it. Until one remembers, with a painful catch somewhere deep in the chest, the intense pain of one’s own losses.

  What’s it been now? Too many years. No point in counting. Surely I’m old enough for the pain to be duller now. But I still walk into the kitchen and, somehow, I’m surprised that she’s not there. Or the morning sun will catch the dressing table mirror just right and I’ll swear she’s sitting there, brushing her hair.

  Ah, that incredible chestnut hair. I used to bury my face in it, to smell it, to be closer to her, lost in her. Ah, Emmalyn. How silly you would think me. And how desperately I wish I’d let you know then how silly you made me feel.

  That’s probably my deepest regret. I’m certain I was too busy being your masterful protector, I couldn’t let you know that the very thought of you could turn me to jelly. How silly. Who am I to begrudge Olivia Sterling her melodramatic broken heart?

  I pinched my fingers tight across my upper lip, to fend off tears. Crying gives me a headache. My grandmother Emmalyn had died when my mother was very young. Granddad had never remarried. And he’d never moved her dressing table from in front of the window.

  I turned to the end of the journal, so I wouldn’t think about it anymore.

  June 17, 1963. Today I put on my judge’s robes, climbed up behind the bench, and sentenced Lew Crowl to life in prison. “Lew Crowl, you will be surrendered to the South Carolina Department of Corrections to serve a life sentence.”

  No matter how many times I must repeat those words, I hope they’ll always have a profound effect on me. For always, something tragic beyond the normal ken has to have happened. And all manner of people, from policemen to the solicitor to twelve men good and true, have wrestled with the enormity of that tragedy. And then I do my part.

  Why I think it matters to Lew Crowl where he spends the next twenty-five years of his life, I couldn’t say. Lew hasn’t paid that much attention to where he spent the last twenty-five years. And he likely told the truth, by anybody’s measure, when he told us that he hadn’t meant to kill her.

  He and Lilann had been doing what they always did on weekends—drinking too much and fighting too furiously. When he held that World War II relic to her head and she spit at him and tried to slap it away, it’d gone off. Several of the jurors—the usual good number of Baptists—didn’t hold much truck with drinking. And him screaming, in earshot of two witnesses passing by on the road, “You spit on me, I’ll kill you, you bitch” like as not made the difference.

  Not everyone on the jury could know that she was a bitch. Not that Lew ever pressed charges the times she’d beaten him blue. But, in his own way, I think he misses her. And probably preferred the verdict and the sentence he got. And the finality of it likely affected no one but me.

  What dramatic turns lives can take on the heels of the simplest change of direction. And, given only a half turn in perspective or lot, what outcome might have altered?
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  Judges aren’t allowed the luxury of philosophizing—except in the bounds of their private thoughts. Sometimes I stare at myself in the mirror, wondering whom I see. And what other people see. And how much of other people we can know. Perhaps I need more the mettle of a Sylvie Garnet.

  Drove by Cabe’s place after court today to check on those pups. Hoped, I guess, the smell of manure would dampen the clamor in my head. And there stood Sylvie Garnet, hands on her hips, ordering some young vet to put down her horse. “He’s perfectly healthy, Mrs. Garnet.” “And he threw my son. You’11 put him down now. Or I’ll put a pistol between his eyes myself.”

  I tried to intervene but she looked angry enough to put the pistol between my eyes. Can’t say that exchange helped balance my day in court. I certainly couldn’t confess it to anyone, but I actually felt sorrier for that horse—a fine bay—than for Lew Crowl. The horse likely was smarter. That young vet was almost in tears.

  I had to leave. I didn’t know the whole story—perhaps the horse did present a danger. Perhaps her son—what is he now? Two? Perhaps he’d been badly injured. Shouldn’t make judgments without all the evidence. Hard enough to make judgments when you know more than you want to know.

  I wanted to cry about that damned horse. My grandfather must have used up all his sense of humor in his interactions with people. He sure didn’t save any of it for his journal.

  In the front of the journal, he’d penned 1958 to 1963. The last date had obviously been added later; the handwriting and ink differed from the first date.

  I hadn’t even been born yet.

  Had he kept other journals? Maybe being a judge had motivated him to record some events for posterity. Or maybe he just needed somewhere to vent his frustrations, his angst. Cheaper than therapy. Not that that would’ve been an option for a judge in the late 1950s.