One of the most surprising things of all was that the very thing you come to church to hear wasn’t there. A sermon. There was no sermon. The priest talked about three minutes on hope and people in the ghettos, which may have been a sermon to him, but not to me.
They had the Lord’s supper, but they didn’t pass it around. You had to go up front, kneel down (of course), and get it.
I was a little nervous about drinking real wine in church. But when I thought about it I ended up figuring maybe that was the best place to do it and God would forgive me. It was red wine and about knocked my socks off. It was stronger somehow than Madora’s white wine and that expensive stuff that I tried in the kitchen at Charles’s TEA party. (That bottle had the price tag on it. Six dollars and something. It seemed like to me it should have cost less because it kind of disappeared once you got it in your mouth.) I want you to know the priest gulped down every bit that was left over at the end. That was an education to me.
All in all, it just wasn’t set up like a church service. I must admit, several people were nice after the service, but most of them had Yankee accents. They were probably people who’ve come down to work at the new G.E. plant outside White Level.
Charles said he liked it—that it was “formal.” I didn’t see anything formal about it. It was confusing to me.
Aunt Naomi and Aunt Flossie were at Mama’s for Sunday dinner, along with the rest of us. Everybody seemed happy to see Millie and she seemed likewise. I was a little tense. For one thing I was worried that the Sneeds business would come up, but I figured it wouldn’t—not at Sunday dinner.
We got seated, Mama asked Charles to say the blessing; he did; and we started helping ourselves.
I passed the okra to Aunt Naomi. She helped her plate and says, “You want some okra, son?” and passed the bowl to Charles. “We won’t get much more this year.”
“No, thanks,” said Charles.
“No? You don’t like okra?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I declare. That’s surprising. Have you ever had it fried before?”
“I can’t remember. I don’t think so. I’ve had it boiled.”
“You hadn’t ever fried any okra for this boy?” Mama says to Millie.
“We’ve never been much on okra, somehow,” says Millie.
“Well, you ain’t had nothing until you’ve had some good fried okra,” says Aunt Naomi, and she drops a piece onto Charles’s plate.
“I really don’t care for any.”
“I remember when I was a little girl no older than Mary Faye there,” says Aunt Naomi. “I couldn’t stand boiled okra because it was so slimy. For some reason, that’s the only way my mama ever fixed it. So I know what you mean. Then when I was, oh, about a teenager, I got aholt of some good fried okra. Mercy me—better than pop corn, with just a tiny hint of fried oyster flavor. Do you like fried oysters?”
“Sure do,” said Charles. He was staring at the piece of fried okra on his plate.
“Pop corn?”
“Sure do.”
“Well, then, you’ll love fried okra. Go ahead, try it.”
“I really don’t care for any.”
“Aw, go ahead. You’ll love it; I guarantee. Then when you go home your mama can fix it for you, can’t you, Millie?”
“Sure.”
Charles ate the piece of okra. It was good okra.
“Now, ain’t that good?” says Aunt Naomi.
“It was pretty good,” says Charles.
Aunt Naomi gets the bowl and hands it to Charles. “Well, here, get you out some.”
“No thanks,” said Charles. “I’m just fine. I really don’t care for any.”
“Well, I declare,” says Aunt Naomi. “I’m surprised. I thought for sure you’d love it.”
Charles put the bowl back and Daddy asked him if he saw the Braves game Saturday and they started talking while Aunt Naomi says, “I don’t know what I’d do without my fried okra. That and turnip salet. Why I could make a meal off turnip salet and cornbread, two meals a day for a month. There just ain’t nothing any better. Nothing. Doris, your favorite was always cabbage, won’t it?”
“I always liked turnip salet too.”
“I hate it,” said Mary Faye.
“You hate everything,” said Norris.
“I do not.”
“Do too.”
“Do not.”
“Hush,” says Mama.
“Ya’ll went to the Episcopal church in White Level?” says Aunt Naomi. She was looking at Millie.
“Sure did. It was really nice.”
Nobody said anything.
“Don’t they have a priest like the Catholics?” said Mama.
“Yes, they do,” said Millie. “I think their duties might be a bit different, though.”
“Don’t they make them preach in a certain town where they assign them—like in the army?” says Aunt Naomi.
“I don’t think they do.”
“They don’t,” says Charles.
“I’ve made many a meal on turnip salet and cornbread,” says Uncle Nate. He had his hair slicked straight back, like always, and was wearing a white starched shirt with the collar open. “And Aunt Annie’s nigger, Monkey—remember how he used to all the time talk about drinking turnip green pot liquor?”
That got Charles’s and Millie’s attention. I was afraid Charles was going to go into his speech about saying “nigger” but he didn’t, thank goodness. And Millie didn’t, thank goodness. (Charles is sitting there with a big hunk of cream potatoes on his plate, no gravy, two pieces of chicken, a piece of roast beef, a pickle and a piece of cornbread and a roll. No vegetables. He will not get any healthy recipes from Aunt Flossie: only apple pie, fried chicken, and such. It’s a wonder he don’t get pimples—again. You can tell where he had them a little bit when he was a teenager. Pock marks. I can’t imagine how he gets his system cleaned out. It looks like somebody who works in a library would have more sense about what to eat. And Charles ain’t the type to shun new things. His mother, of course, had just the opposite: a plate full of vegetables.)
“What’s pot liquor?” says Charles to Uncle Nate.
Uncle Nate had his mouth full, which don’t usually stop him from talking—as Charles has pointed out to me on the way home so many times that now I notice. But this time he kept chewing and didn’t answer.
Aunt Flossie answered: “It’s what’s left in the pot after cooking cabbage—usually cabbage. Course I’ve seen collard and turnip green pot liquor.”
“That sounds interesting,” says Charles.
“Did he look like a monkey?” asks Norris.
“You know,” said Uncle Nate, swallowing his potatoes, “Uncle Springer took Monkey to Raleigh one Christmas to sell quail and they—”
“Did he look like a monkey?”
“No, that was just his name, I reckon. Anyway, they got snowed in and there was a light bulb in the room where they spent the night in somebody’s house. For some reason Monkey ended up staying with Uncle Springer in the same room. Anyway, Uncle Springer hadn’t ever seen a light bulb and of course Monkey hadn’t and they didn’t know it had a durn switch on it to cut it off and so before they went to bed—I imagine Monkey slept on the floor—before they went to bed they put a chest of drawers up on another table and some chairs and so on and put the durn light bulb—course they didn’t know it unscrewed either—they put the durn light bulb in the top drawer and closed it and then went to bed and got a good night’s sleep.”
I’d heard that story once or twice but I knew Charles and Millie hadn’t. It’s a funny story but of course Charles don’t like to hear nothing about niggers unless it’s how Martin Luther King laid down in some restaurant or something. As I said, he has this thing.
“Wadn’t that terrible about Sneeds Perry?” says Aunt Naomi.
Nobody said anything. Somebody passed something and a few forks hit plates.
“What happened to Mr. Perry?” asked Norris.
/> Nobody said anything and Norris looked around at everybody. “What happened to Mr. Perry?” he said again.
It flashed through my mind: Sneeds paying one of those women to do what Charles had said for us to do on our honeymoon. “He got in trouble,” I said. “For being where he ought not to be and doing what he ought not to do.”
“What did he do?” asked Norris.
“He solicited something from a policewoman which he thought he was soliciting from a woman of the night,” said Uncle Nate.
“A witch?” said Norris.
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“I think if a man wants to ruin his life in one night by breaking the law, then that’s the chance he takes,” said Mama.
“Do you think he wanted to ruin his life?” said Charles. “That’s not exactly what he had in mind, do you think?”
“That’s what happened,” said Aunt Naomi. “Now he won’t be able to get a job within fifty miles—at any place respectable that is. It’s a good thing he don’t have a family.” Aunt Naomi looked at Daddy. “You will have to let him go.”
“I ain’t decided,” said Daddy.
“Daddy, he was arrested,” I said.
“You’re going to let him keep working out at the store?” said Mama.
“Well, I hadn’t thought about—”
“Thurman, you read what he did.”
“I know I read what he did. He ain’t been tried yet either.”
“He won’t buying peaches,” said Aunt Naomi.
“Peaches?” said Uncle Nate.
“Daddy,” I said, “it seems like he’d hurt business with a criminal record.”
“It’s a misdemeanor, I think,” said Charles.
“What’s a misdemeanor?” said Norris.
“Hush a minute, Norris,” said Mama. “It’s a minor crime.”
“What did he do?” said Norris.
“He didn’t do anything that would have been a great harm to anybody,” said Charles.
I thought, “Charles, you talk about harm, about not harming—after that on our honeymoon!”
“He broke God’s law, that’s what he did,” said Aunt Naomi.
“I thought for sure you’d fire him, Thurman,” said Mama.
“I’m not going to fire a man that ain’t been convicted.”
We were quiet for a minute.
“Didn’t your church group do a thing on victimless crimes?” Charles asked his mama. “It’s a pretty interesting perspective.”
“Well, yes. The idea was, really, that some acts—without victims—ought to have a low priority on the list of things demanding law enforcement. That is, those crimes would be attended only after the crimes with victims were tended to. That way people would actually be better protected in the long run, because the police would spend more time solving robbery and assault cases and the like, and institutions like churches and mental health clinics could concentrate on the victimless crimes—given the proper support, of course.”
It flashed in my mind again about what these prostitutes probably do, and I wondered if Mrs. Shepherd maybe had any idea, and I wondered what she thought about all that. She might think it’s okay! I wondered if some of Charles’s attitudes could have somehow come from her—if she had the same weakness Charles had. If Charles’s weakness came from her! I remembered her and Mr. Shepherd hugging and kissing in front of everybody at the wedding. Putting on like that. I wondered about all the connections. How can you tell? You can’t ask!
“I don’t know what victims has to do with all this,” said Aunt Naomi. “You don’t need to have a victim to break the word of God.”
“If a you-know-what is not a victim,” says Mama, “I don’t know who is—but I haven’t studied all that about different kinds of crimes.”
“Daddy,” I said, “what if he is convicted? You’ll fire him then, won’t you? I mean if he’s convicted.”
“I don’t see what difference it makes whether he’s convicted. He done it. Anybody knows that,” says Aunt Naomi.
“Well,” says Daddy. “I’d want to wait and see what happens.”
I had never thought about Daddy keeping somebody on the job who’d do something like that. But the problem is: it didn’t seem to make any difference to about half the table sitting in my own mama’s house for Sunday dinner, every one kin to me in some way. I don’t understand why people won’t take a stand where they ought to. Especially my own daddy.
“It’s your store,” says Mama.
Things got quiet again, except for forks hitting on dishes and Uncle Nate chewing with his mouth open.
“Millie, did you hear about Norris getting the fishing hook hung in his nose at the beach?” said Aunt Flossie.
“Yes, I did. Charles told me on the phone. That must have been something. Were you afraid, Norris?”
“I was afraid when it first happened. I thought a bird or something had flew up my nose.”
We all laughed and then Uncle Nate told about the time one of Uncle Springer’s boys told his little brother to stick his tongue to a froze ax. We’d all heard it but Millie and Charles hadn’t. That got Uncle Nate into telling about the first car Uncle Springer ever saw that had a rear view mirror on the inside and Uncle Springer says, “I comb my hair before I leave home.”
Uncle Springer was the one who was so bashful that on his wedding night he peed down his leg into the pot so he wouldn’t make any noise. So they say.
The stories eased the tension some. For me, anyway. We finished eating; Mama and Aunt Flossie cleaned up; then we sat and talked for awhile. At about two-thirty we left and drove home. I could tell Charles was getting tired of sitting and talking. Then at about five o’clock we took Millie and those big suitcases to the airport.
Just before she got on the plane, she gave me a big hug and a kiss. I hugged her back but didn’t have time to figure out where to kiss her before we’d turned each other loose. I’ve just never hugged and kissed people I don’t know real well. Or people I do know real well, for that matter.
VIII
It won’t Sneeds they arrested. It was Sam Perry, Sneeds’s first cousin. The newspaper got it mixed up because Sam signed Sneeds’s name and gave Sneeds’s address, and at the police station he actually had the driver’s license that Sneeds thought he’d lost. Daddy said Sam told Sneeds he didn’t want his wife and kids to find out and he figured Sneeds wouldn’t mind. Sneeds told Daddy that Sam had done the same thing before and so he wadn’t too surprised. I can’t believe somebody would do something like that to their own cousin.
I was in the store Saturday morning trying to figure out whether I should mention the whole thing to Sneeds when Charles called and said to call Mama. I did, and she wanted to know if I could come over and stay with Norris and Mary Faye that afternoon while she went to sit with Uncle Newton—while Aunt Minnie helped with the church barbecue. Aunt Minnie is Daddy’s sister and has had an awful time taking care of Uncle Newton. She has to stay with him all the time. Charles was supposed to play tennis that afternoon with somebody from the library, so I said I’d be glad to come over and help out.
The only reason Mama wanted me to stay is because Uncle Nate had disappeared for two days and she was afraid he might come riding up in a Yellow Cab, drunk, with nobody at home but Mary Faye and Norris.
So I went over Saturday at about two. Right before Mama drove off she blew the police whistle for Mary Faye and Norris, who were up the road at Teresa Campbell’s house, to come on home. When she saw them coming—on their bicycles—she got in the car and drove off.
She was just out of sight around the curve when Norris, going about fifty miles an hour, turned, or tried to turn, into the driveway—on his Piggly Wiggly Special (that bike he won at the Piggly Wiggly opening: with a row of little red glass rubies up and down the fenders, and a saddle bag, and black rubber mud flaps, and sticking right out front under where the handlebars come together, this solid cast, little brown and white pig head). He had just passed Ma
ry Faye, going as fast as he could, standing up. Then he sat back down and turned about one foot short of the edge of the driveway. The front wheel dipped into the ditch; the bike stopped; and he made a arc through the air—landing full on his thumb.
When I got to him he was sitting on the ground looking at his right hand like he’d never seen it before. His thumb was drooped down like a broke tree limb, and where it connected to his hand looked like a golf ball.
Mary Faye was standing there. “That thumb is broke, Norris. You can’t move it, can you?”
Norris looked up at her, then at me, then at his thumb, and started bawling. I gathered myself as best I could. “Come on,” I said. “We’ll take you to emergency, right now. Do you hurt anywhere else?” All I could do was take him to the emergency room. That was the only thing to do. His hand looked awful.
Norris said No he wadn’t hurting anywhere else, and stood up slow, crying, holding his hurt hand up and in front with his other hand like he was carrying a bunch of flowers.
We hadn’t walked no more than ten steps when a Yellow Cab pulls into the driveway. It was like the ocean had pulled in and was about to drown everything. I just stopped and stood there. “Oh no,” says Mary Faye.
“Ya’ll stay right here,” I said. It was clear I had to take over. I’d have to do what Mama would do, which was take over. I walked to the driver’s side of the taxi. The driver was a pale little man with short red and gray hair, a scrawny mustache, and no teeth. “Howdy,” I said.
“Howdy, ma’am.”
I looked through at Uncle Nate sitting on the passenger side. His head was down like he was asleep. “Uncle Nate, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.” He didn’t even look up. “Mary Faye, ya’ll go on up and sit down on the porch. No, wait a minute. Go in and call Aunt Minnie and tell her to tell Mama, when she gets there, to come back home and sit with Uncle Nate—that it looks like Norris broke his thumb and I got to take him to emergency. Tell her his thumb is all that’s hurt. Tell her it might just be out of place. Ask Aunt Minnie if she minds being a little late for the barbecue.”
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