The Whole Town's Talking

by Fannie Flagg

  Another man said, “It just goes to show you, the old saying is true.”

  “Which one?”

  “ ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ particularly a redhead. She laid that bastard out to filth, and I think she enjoyed doing it, too.”

  The headline read:

  * * *

  Dairy Owner Michael Vincent Convicted

  * * *

  2015

  Her father had started The Elmwood Springs News in 1949. This morning, Cathy Calvert sat down at her desk and looked around the office, the same one she had worked in all her adult life. It was a mess—papers everywhere, things stuck up on the wall. She had vowed for years to clean it up one of these days, but she never had. And now the newspaper was closing.

  The town had lost population, her subscriptions were down, and she couldn’t compete with the Internet. She’d come to hate the thing. With so many tweets and instant news, she couldn’t keep up. She was exhausted at the end of the day, just trying to answer all of her emails. Now every kid with a camera was a reporter and could get a story on Facebook within seconds.

  For the past thirty-five years, she had written a weekly editorial under the byline “Chatty Cathy,” and she found that lately, she really didn’t have much left to say that she hadn’t said already. It was time to go. She was retiring from the newspaper business and starting a new one. She had been saving her money for a long time and had bought a large piece of land and a farmhouse and planned to raise goats.

  It would be a big departure from what she had been doing, but she had always loved baby goats, ever since she was a child and had played with them out at Elner Shimfissle’s farm. So now she was typing out her very last “Chatty Cathy” column.

  Dear Reader,

  As you know, I will be leaving Elmwood Springs and closing down the paper. Sadly, this will be our last issue.

  I find that after all these years of being your “girl reporter,” it is very hard to say goodbye. I have learned so much from all of you: The true meaning of family and friendship and what it means to be a good neighbor. I have known most of you all my life, and I have been especially honored that you entrusted me with the job of writing your obituaries. It’s a sad thing to lose loved ones or contemplate our own mortality, not knowing what will happen after we leave this world for another.

  But what I can say for sure is having known all of you, I leave here with a very high opinion of human beings. I bid you a fond farewell until we meet again.

  Cathy Calvert

  P.S. You may write to me in care of the Off-the-Grid Goat Farm, P.O. Box 326, Two Sisters, Oregon, 94459.

  A couple of years later, when Ralph Childress arrived at Still Meadows, people were very eager to talk to him.

  Merle Wheeler said, “Hey, Ralph, we heard about you finding that copy of Hanna Marie’s will. How’d you do it?”

  “Yeah,” added Verbena. “How’d you figure it out?”

  Ralph chuckled. “Well, I’m kinda embarrassed to tell you, but it sure wasn’t no fancy police work on my part. Somebody told me to go look behind the portrait, so I did.”

  “Who?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. I don’t know. It was an anonymous tip. One day, I was flipping through my phone on my things-to-do list, and there it was, written right in my calendar.”

  “And you don’t know who put it there?”

  “No, and it wasn’t Edna. She said she’d never seen it before. All we can figure is whoever did it must have hacked into my phone.”

  Ruby said, “Well, personally, I think it was somebody who must have seen Little Miss Davenport hide it there that did it.”

  Tot agreed. “Yeah, or else was told about it by someone who had seen her.”

  Verbena said, “I sure would love to know who it was…and why they waited so long to speak up.”

  Merle said, “I think it was the redhead.”

  “Maybe so,” said Ralph. “But we’ll never know now.”

  Norma had been gone for more than three years, and Macky was just hanging around the house. Their daughter, Linda, had begged him to come and live with them in Seattle, but he wouldn’t go. He needed to be in Elmwood Springs, where Norma was.

  He took care of her grave, made sure it was kept up. Even though he missed her so much, he was glad she had gone first. She’d been so scared at the end, and if he hadn’t been there with her, it would have been terrible for her.

  Today was the Fourth of July, but he didn’t feel like going to the parade. The kid to whom he had sold the hardware store had asked him to ride with him, but he had no interest in seeing it. The way the world was going, Macky knew that the old guys marching in the parade today in their VFW hats would look foolish to the young people watching them go by. And maybe a lot of them were foolish old men trying to hang on to their glory days. But they had been young men once, ready to fight and die for their country. And where would America be today if it hadn’t been for a lot of foolish young men?

  He was worried about his country. Something was rotting from the inside—a slow decay of what was right and wrong. It was as if hundreds of cynical little rats were chewing at its very fiber, gnawing away year by year, until it was collapsing into a vat of gray slime and self-loathing. It had oozed under the doors of the classrooms, the newscasts, and in the movies and television shows and had slowly changed the national dialogue until it was now a travesty to be proud of your country, foolish to be patriotic, and insensitive to even suggest that people take care of themselves.

  History was being rewritten by the hour, heroes pulled down to please the political correctors. We were living in a country where there was freedom of speech for some, but not all. What was it going to take to get America back on track? Would everything they had fought for be forgotten? He was so glad he and Norma had grown up when they had. They had come of age in such an innocent time, when people wanted to work and better themselves. Now the land of the free meant an entirely different thing. Each generation had become a weaker version of the last, until we were fast becoming a nation of whiners and people looking for a free ride—even expecting it. Hell, kids wouldn’t even leave home anymore. He felt like everything was going downhill.

  Up at Still Meadows, not everyone felt that way. Mrs. Lindquist’s great-granddaughter had just arrived and was saying something else about her generation. “Oh,” she said. “So many wonderful things are happening now. They are finding new cures for things every day. And people are so much more tolerant and accepting of everything now: different races, different religions, different lifestyles. Life is so much easier than when you were growing up, and women are just doing everything, and now with the Internet, well…the whole world has changed. Honestly, I have to say I grew up in the very best time possible.”

  When Macky Warren finally went to his reward, as they say, and landed up on the hill, the first voice he heard was Norma’s shouting, “Surprise!”

  “Good God, woman, you nearly scared me half to death.”

  Norma laughed. “Think again, Macky. You are dead, silly. Oh, Macky, I’m so glad you’re here. I have so much to tell you. Aunt Elner was right. She told me I’d be glad you bought us these plots, and am I ever. You are going to just love it out here, honey.”

  —

  LATER, AFTER MACKY HAD recovered from the state of shock of Norma shouting at him, he began to realize that this new state of being was a relief. He had always been casting about in his mind: What was life all about? What the hell was his purpose? What was he supposed to be doing?

  But now, everything made sense. He had lived and died; it was as simple as that. He hadn’t needed a purpose. The fact that he was born was all the purpose he had ever needed. He was meant to be his parents’ child, his wife’s husband, his daughter’s father, and on and on. Despite all his grand schemes and ambitions to set the world on fire, to be someone special, he was just another little link in the chain of life, inching forward from generation to generation. The only th
ing he had to do was relax and enjoy where he was. This was exactly where he was meant to be right now. He had to agree with Norma. He didn’t think he had ever been happier in his entire life.

  —

  AS THE YEARS WENT BY, all the old gang—Tot, Ruby, Verbena, and Merle—had all disappeared. One by one. And it seemed they were all leaving much sooner than they used to. And people were talking.

  Dwayne Jr. said to Gene Nordstrom, “Hey, did you hear? We lost three more people last night.”

  “Damn, that’s not good,” replied Gene.

  “You don’t think those people are going to hell, do you?”

  “No, I don’t think so. If that were the case, I think they would have gone there right away.”

  “Yeah,” said Dwayne Jr. “You’re probably right, and for all we know, they could be headed off into another dimension or to some real cool parallel universe.”

  “To where?”

  “A parallel universe. Didn’t you ever see Star Trek on TV?”

  “No, I died in 1945. We didn’t have television.”

  “Oh, man. What a bummer. But hey, listen…the way people have been disappearing lately? If I’m not here tomorrow, it’s been real nice knowing you.”

  “Likewise, pal,” said Gene.

  2016

  Macky Warren was the last person to be laid to rest at Still Meadows, and since there weren’t any more new people coming in, almost nobody came to visit anymore.

  As the years went by, it seemed that Still Meadows had just become a place for people to jog, ride their bike, walk the dog, teach their kids how to drive, drink beer, smoke pot, or make out with your girlfriend.

  One morning, Old Man Hendersen woke up furious. The day before, some kid had knocked over his headstone, along with four others, when he’d put his car in reverse instead of drive. “And they won’t fix it,” he said. “This place is going to hell in a handbasket—weeds everywhere—and has anybody noticed that we have an infestation of gophers out here? All night, I hear them digging. Scratch, scratch, scratch.”

  Ida Jenkins turned to her husband. “He’s right. The way they have let this place go is disgraceful. I don’t understand where the Garden Club is. This would not have happened on my watch, I can tell you.”

  Three days later, Eustus Percy Hendersen was gone. And as odd as it sounds, people missed him. As Gene said, “He was crabby as hell…but I liked the old goat.”

  —

  BY THE YEAR 2020, the town of Elmwood Springs was almost non-existent. The old mall had shut down, and a factory outlet mall with an IMAX theater had been built on the other side of the dairy, where a new community had formed. The WELCOME TO ELMWOOD SPRINGS sign put up by the Lions Club that once stood on the turnoff had fallen down. There was almost nothing left but a few of the old houses, a trailer park, and a row of storage units. Linda used to send flowers to her parents on Easter, but she eventually stopped. She didn’t really believe her parents were there, anyway. She was right, of course. By then, both were gone.

  As the years went by, there would be nobody left at Still Meadows. Nothing remained but a lonely hill full of overgrown weeds and grass covering broken headstones.

  In the grand scheme of things, their time at Still Meadows had been a short time, but it had been a good time.

  2021

  It was getting late, and the sound of the traffic was growing fainter by the moment.

  The old crow in the tree lifted herself up, shuffled her shiny black feathers in place with one long iridescent ripple, then hunched back down for the night. She watched the last of the couples scurrying home through the park. After a moment, the old crow blinked her eyes and sighed. “I just loved being a human being, didn’t you?”

  The gray mourning dove that sat beside her shook her head. “I couldn’t say, Elner. Never been one.”

  “Ahh…well, you have a lot to look forward to. It’s a lot of fun,” said the old crow. “But then, I enjoy being a crow, too. I know a lot of people don’t care for crows, but personally, I always got a big kick out of them. Every morning, my husband, Will, and I used to sit on our back porch and watch them flying around way up in the sky. And now, I’m one of them, doing the same thing, and it’s just glorious to be able to fly.”

  A gray squirrel who was curled up in his nest above chimed in. “I was a turtle for over sixty-four years.”

  “Oh my, what was that like?”

  “Very restful,” said the squirrel.

  “Isn’t it wonderful? We just keep going….Who would have believed it?”

  A small four-leaf clover under a bench laughed. “Not me. I always figured when your time was up, that was it, and it’s sure a lot of fun going from one thing to another.”

  The dove said, “I agree. Whoever or whatever set this life thing in motion certainly knew what they were doing.”

  “That’s for sure,” said the squirrel. “But I just wonder where we will go after we have been every living thing on earth.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” said the four-leaf clover (who used to be a science teacher in Akron, Ohio). “That process will take trillions of years, and…there are over eight million species of fish alone, not to mention all the insects.”

  “I was a flea once,” offered a small grub passing by.

  The gray squirrel bit into a walnut, spit out a piece of shell, and said, “But, still, it is something to think about. Who knows? Someday we could all end up on another planet, in an entirely new universe, and start all over again.”

  “Ah, sweet mystery of life,” sang the old crow. The moon smiled and went behind a cloud, and pretty soon they all settled down for the night, looking forward to another day.

  Meanwhile, outside of Oxnard, California, Luther Griggs (now a small green weed that had popped up in a crack in the cement out on the 101 freeway) was so enjoying watching all the different makes of trucks and RVs passing by.

  Mr. Evander J. Chapman (presently a snail in Woodsboro, Maryland) was still at it, and as snails are among the slowest-moving creatures in the world, he pretty much had a captive audience. As the group leisurely slid along, headed for another leaf, he continued, “Yes, sir. There we wuz, just me and ol’ Andrew Jackson. Ol’ Hickory hisself. Why, we musta been surrounded by ten thousand Seminole Injuns, and they’s all mad….So there we wuz, back to back…and we fit them off right smartly, tilt we run clean out of ammunition. Next thing I knowed, I sawed a hole in the woods and hollered, ‘Run!’ Well, sir, I runned one way, and he runned the other….The next time I seed him, he says, ‘Evander, you done saved my life, boy!’ So I says…”

  Though snails are usually slow moving, a little-known fact is that, if provoked, they do have the ability to pick up their shells and gallop away. And after listening to Mr. Chapman for a while, some did.

  And somewhere in South America, two beautiful yellow-and-black butterflies were fluttering together in the bright sunshine—one named Gustav and the other Lucille.

  And even though she was now a crow, Elner still had her memories and a few secrets. And if crows could laugh (which they can’t), she would have. Nobody knew it, but she had been the one who had flown into the kitchen window and pecked out that message into Ralph’s phone. Eating Ralph’s pie had been an afterthought. It was downright thievery, she knew. But then, she never could resist Edna’s apple pie. That gal could bake!

  A short time after the arrests had been made, Hanna Marie’s original will was reinstated, and all the properties, including the dairy, went back to Albert Olsen and all of Hanna Marie’s nieces and nephews. And the Missouri School for the Deaf received an anonymous donation of $5 million for their scholarship fund. All compliments of Little Miss Davenport and one old crow.

  —

  SADLY, MICHAEL VINCENT WAS not serving time for the murder of Hanna Marie, like he should have been. However, while he was in prison, a fellow inmate had suddenly, and without any provocation, stabbed him straight through the heart with a knitting needle
. How that knitting needle made its way inside of an all-men’s penitentiary remains a mystery.

  Maybe it’s like Verbena Wheeler always said, “It may take a while, but everybody gets what they deserve, eventually.”

  Of course, both Hanna Marie’s grandmother, Birdie Swensen, and her great-aunt Katrina Nordstrom had been quite the knitters in their day.

  AND SO IT ENDS…

  Or maybe not…

  What do you think?

  For Cluny Brown,

  who can fix anything

  Acknowledgments

  * * *

  The author wishes to express her sincere gratitude to the wonderful people at Random House publishing for all their invaluable help and support throughout the years. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  By

  FANNIE FLAGG

  The Whole Town’s Talking

  The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion

  I Still Dream About You

  Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven

  A Redbird Christmas

  Standing in the Rainbow

  Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

  Fannie Flagg’s Original Whistle Stop Cafe Cookbook

  Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

  Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man (originally published as Coming Attractions)

  About the Author

  * * *

  FANNIE FLAGG’s career started in the fifth grade when she wrote, directed, and starred in her first play, titled The Whoopee Girls, and she has not stopped since. At age nineteen she began writing and producing television specials, and later wrote for and appeared on Candid Camera. She then went on to distinguish herself as an actress and a writer in television, films, and the theater. She is the bestselling author of Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man; Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe; Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!; Standing in the Rainbow; A Redbird Christmas; Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven; I Still Dream About You; The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion; and The Whole Town’s Talking. Flagg’s script for the movie Fried Green Tomatoes was nominated for an Academy Award and the Writers Guild of America Award, and won the highly regarded Scripter Award for best screenplay of the year. Fannie Flagg is also a winner of the Harper Lee Prize. She lives happily in California and Alabama.