When the gigantic Sears up in Memphis closed down thirty or so years ago, my father was devastated. Even I felt a twinge, remembering how I’d anticipated our annual Christmas visit to the twelve story department store on Cleveland with all the excitement and enthusiasm usually reserved for Santa’s slide down the chimney. Going to Sears was almost as good. Until that trip, the Christmas season hadn’t officially started for the Truevine family.
Back then, we took our 1951 dark blue Oldsmobile, three in the front, three in the back, up what’s now Old 78 Highway. That car was built like a tank. Either Emerald or I always had to sit between my brothers so they wouldn’t fight, but that only meant we risked getting punched or pinched instead. Getting chosen to sit up front was not only a privilege, but a relief. Mama took a supply of food along in case there was car trouble or traffic, and by the time we got to the parking lot we kids were so wound up that only the walk through the cold air to the store kept us from just spinning off like tops.
I remember the rush I always felt when the front door to Sears opened and that gush of warm air washed over me, smelling like popcorn, hot peanuts, leather gloves, and new denim Levi’s. None of the stores have that special fragrance anymore. If it could be bottled, any store using it would have to post traffic guards at all the entrances. It’s that potent.
Those are the kind of memories Bitty and I share, because she and her parents and brother always followed behind us in their car. Daddy’s brother, Bitty’s father, died a few years back, and Aunt Sarah not long after. Steven, Bitty’s brother, lives down in Jackson where he’s the CEO of a company that makes rubber grommets for machinery of some kind.
So there’s lots more to my connection with Bitty than just friendship or kinship. Coming back to Holly Springs is like reclaiming my childhood.
The phone rang just as I poured my second cup of coffee, and I knew it was Bitty.
“Are you ready for this?” she said before I got out all of my cheerful Good morning. “No body was found in the river. So instead of assuming he’s alive and off in Mexico, or somewhere in Europe with an eighteen year old girl whose bra size is bigger than her IQ, the reporters are suggesting that Philip has been murdered!”
Reasonable, I thought. “Bitty, have you forgotten seeing him laid out in Sherman Sanders’ foyer with a bloody head wound?”
“Honestly, Trinket, you don’t really think he’s dead, do you?”
I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t want to rule anything out, either.
“It’s possible,” I said cautiously.
“Yes, and it’s possible that Hugh Hefner can be monogamous, too, but I wouldn’t want to bet any money on it. I’m telling you, this is just one of Philip’s schemes. If he wants something, he’ll go to almost any lengths to get it, and I wouldn’t put it past him to have run off with all the money in the state treasury and leave me behind to go hungry.”
Since Bitty had gotten substantial amounts in three other divorce settlements, I didn’t think there was any danger of her starving to death in the next month, but it didn’t seem like the time to point that out.
“I’m not sure state senators have free access to treasury funds,” I said, “and even if they do, not even Philip is cunning enough to figure out how to pull that off without getting caught. Or dumb enough to try it. He’ll turn up soon.” One way or the other, I didn’t add.
“Well, they just need to focus on finding out where that weasel went instead of dragging the river and looking under rocks. I should call the police and tell them his favorite rendezvous spots where he hides out with his Slut of the Month.”
“No,” I said as firmly as I could. “Just stay home and off the phone. Read. Watch an old movie. Try not to think about it. You’re working yourself into a frenzy.”
“Maybe I’ll go visit Rayna. She’s always calming. Want to go with me?”
“Sure.” What else did I have to do anyway? No one had called me in for a job interview, and my parents were feeding the furry flocks with fishes and loaves while their neurotic dog ran madly around the yard barking at birds sitting in oak and cherry trees. It drives him crazy to have the yard invaded by birds or squirrels, but he ignores several dozen feral cats like they don’t even exist. Go figure.
When I got to Bitty’s house, she met me at the door before I could knock. Bitty always wears her hair in the latest styles, something suitable for a fifty-one year old woman going on thirty. It’s usually loose, soft, and frames her face very attractively. It startled me to see it pulled straight back into a knot on the nape of her neck. She wore a black jersey and matching pants, and no jewelry. Even her flat shoes and opaque socks were black.
“Good God,” I said, “who are you supposed to be? The grieving widow?”
She narrowed her eyes. “He’s not rrsid12992214 dead, just absconded with state funds and a bimbo.”
“Ah. I keep forgetting that. So what’s with the death clothes?”
“Black is slimming. I’ve put on a few pounds. Stress makes me eat. Last night I ate an entire box of chocolate cupcakes. Then I threw up, but since my stomach was empty, I had a bag of potato chips to settle it. Do I look fat in this?”
“No. You look like you belong in a heavy metal band. All you need is a ring in your nose and one in your eyebrow. Use gold. It’s shinier.”
“I suppose you think you’re funny.” Bitty went to the coat closet right off the wide front entrance hall and took out a black crocheted cape. “They’re in style,” she said when she saw me staring at her. “It’s a poncho. Don’t you like it?”
“It’s lovely, Elvira. But doesn’t it get too warm in your coffin?”
“One more death joke,” Bitty muttered, “and I swear I’ll make reservations in Vegas for Uncle Eddie and Aunt Anna. My treat.”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s when to shut up.
Rayna was in the middle of painting a landscape when we arrived at the hotel. I mean that literally. It was something new she was trying. A gigantic canvas propped up by an easel under the skylight had swathes of vivid red, blue, and yellow paint. Rayna squirted green paint out of a tube onto her palm and swept her hand across the canvas, then dragged her fingers up in a twist that produced definite blades of grass. She used her thumb or fingertip to dot seed pods here and there, and a couple of entwined fingers formed tree trunks. Daubs of paint covered her from her scarf-protected head to her toes, like she’d actually rolled around on the canvas at one point.
“What do you think?” she asked, standing back and looking at it critically. “A finance company in Memphis wants something bright, new, and huge. Innovative.”
“Use real seed pods in a few places,” Bitty said. “They dry nicely. That’ll give it a three-D effect.”
Rayna pointed in the direction of a bunch of twigs, bark, and grass lying on a small table. One of her cats happily chewed on a chickweed stem. “I thought of that, too. It’s not exactly an entirely new art form, but I think it will be striking enough to catch the eye when hung behind the receptionist desk, don’t you?”
We all agreed that it would be. Rayna has an excellent eye for color and form. She’s very artistic. In first grade she drew people with actual arms, legs, fingers and toes, dressed in pants with belts and hats with feathers, while the rest of us were still trying to master stick figures.
When Rayna divested herself of her paint-drenched mechanic’s overalls and scarf, we all went outside in her garden to sit in the sunshine and drink sweet tea. After paraphrasing Dolly Parton’s line from Steel Magnolias, “Have a glass of sweet tea, it’s the house wine of the South,” Rayna got right down to the subject on all our minds.
“Do you think Philip is dead?”
“I think he’s laughing his butt off in Acapulco while some sweet young thing is waxing his ding-a-ling is what I think,” Bitty said tartly, hardly a surprising comment to Rayna or myself. We both just nodded.
“If he is,” Rayna said after a moment, “the police will find him.
It’s amazing the things they can do now. And you have to admit, Bitty, Philip never was that good at hiding his covert activities. Remember the time he told you there was an emergency meeting of Congress and he had to go to Washington?”
Bitty rolled her eyes. “And he shacked up in the Holiday Inn right next to 78 Highway with Naomi Spencer and left his car out front for God and everybody to see. Dumb as a box of rocks, both of them.”
“If Robby did that, I’d use hot wax on his ding-a-ling,” Rayna observed, and we all got a good laugh out of that. Everyone in Marshall County knows Robert Rainey would rather cut off his afore-mentioned part than mess with anyone else than Rayna. I’ve never seen a man more in love with his wife, except maybe Daddy with Mama. Not to say Rayna and Rob are sickly sweet about it, though. They’re both independent people with independent interests, lives, and friends. They just know how to balance their relationship and keep the excitement alive.
It was one of those spectacular late February days that Mississippi produces just to remind residents why we choose to live here, with warm sunshine, soft breezes, and a false sense of spring. Weather here has an often wickedly turn of humor. People start shaking mothballs and cedar out of their summer clothes, get out the lawnmower and make sure it’s ready for Bermuda grass, and begin sprucing up gardens. Then winter slams back with a vengeance, bringing ice and hail, weather reports of coming snow that usually don’t quite materialize, and bone-chilling wind that cuts to the bone. The day before could be a pleasant seventy-two degrees. The next, an icy twenty-two.
“March first is tomorrow,” Bitty reflected, “so we’ve only got six weeks to get the houses listed and ready for the pilgrimage. Cady Lee printed up the brochures this year. She found a place that’s doing it for twenty percent less than we paid last year. Of course, we can always add The Cedars at the last minute with a quick print of a flyer once I get Sanders to sign the papers.”
“Do you think there’ll be enough time for that?” Rayna asked. “I mean, with the details that have to be confirmed, inspection, insurance verified and all that.”
“I’ve got everything done but his signature on the bottom line,” Bitty said. “I just have to get that and we can expedite it. I mean, the house needs hardly anything done at all. We have the history of it all written out, highlighted historical data, and a few personal details I was able to find in the museum archives. Sanders can add whatever he likes, and we’ll print that out, too. I imagine he’ll want to focus on his ancestors’ involvement, but that’s okay.”
“There’s always been rumors about his great-great-grandfather being a carpetbagger,” Rayna said. “But of course, that’s our history, too. Good and bad, we can’t rewrite it and no one should even try.”
It was a matter of complete agreement that revisionist history is a disservice to current generations as well as past.
“Philip spearheaded a campaign to have state funding ended for historical research,” Bitty said darkly. “Not just to spite me, though I’m sure that was the biggest perk, but to get votes from people who don’t like certain parts of history. I think he even tried to rewrite a few pages of it.”
“You’re talking about General Forrest’s third cousins or whatever asking Philip to have portions of the Mississippi school history books rewritten, aren’t you,” I said.
“Actually, those people weren’t even related to him. They just had the same last name and thought they’d get some easy money if they filed a lawsuit for slander. Idiots.”
“Well, like it or not, Nathan Bedford Forrest not only owned slaves, but he traded in them at times, just like he did mules,” Rayna said. “It’s awful, I know, but back then, even General Grant owned slaves. Why, when Grant occupied Holly Springs, his New York wife brought her own personal slave with her, and made no bones about her not being freed. After the war ended, General Grant had to be forced by law to free his slaves. Forrest just gets a lot of bad publicity because of the Ku Klux Klan.”
Bitty shook her head. “That was an act of idiocy in retrospect, though I’m sure at the time Forrest had some kind of reasoning for it. I mean, something needed to be done about all the criminals running around the South after Union troops moved out and the carpetbaggers came in. It’s historical fact that Forrest removed himself from the Klan when they began committing random acts of murder and violence. Of course, most history books don’t mention that fact.”
“Why, Bitty,” I said in surprise, “I had no idea you even cared about actual history.”
“Well,” she said, “I’ve been doing a lot of research since working with the historical society. And of course, Forrest only lived fifteen miles away from here in Ashland, so there’s a lot about him in the museum.”
“New Salem,” Rayna said. “Forrest lived in New Salem. Ashland was built a couple of miles over after the Yankees came through and burned down New Salem. Governor Matthews named the new town after his Kentucky plantation. It was called New Salem when Forrest lived near there.”
“But his home place was where Ashland city limits are now, I think,” Bitty said.
I felt very uninformed. Maybe I’d heard all this growing up, but none of it had stuck. One thing about a certain element of small town citizens is their addiction to local history, their pride in their forbears’ part in it, and a determination to educate as many as possible. Every town, north and south, east and west, has these citizens, and if not for them, far too many personal histories and historical data would be lost. Thus the purpose of National Historical Societies.
For some reason, all the discussion about Nathan Bedford Forrest tickled the back of my brain with a reminder that there was something I should remember. I hate it when that happens. It makes me feel as if senility has hit and soon I’ll be gibbering in upstairs windows and trying to fly. Anyway, my brain kept making some kind of connection between Forrest and the senator, but I didn’t know why. Of course, thinking about Philip Hollandale made me think about him lying in a pool of blood in Sherman Sanders’ foyer, and that was unpleasant.
“Hellooo? Trinket? Have you been beamed up?” Bitty was asking, and I gave the lame excuse:
“I was just thinking.”
“Hah, I thought I smelled something burning. What’s got you thinking so hard your eyes are all squinty?”
I didn’t want to go into the details about Philip laid out in Sanders’ foyer, so I said, “My lunch. I didn’t take time to eat breakfast.”
“Let’s walk over to Phillips’ store and get a burger,” Rayna said, and we all thought that was an excellent idea.
Phillips, the former saloon-slash-whorehouse-slash-grocery store now serves hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fried bologna sandwiches, homemade fried fruit pies, and a variety of sandwiches and fried vegetables. Of course, the prerequisite choice of sweet tea or unsweetened is offered, as well as bottled drinks in a big cooler against one wall.
The interior is a historical buff’s delight. Big metal signs from the thirties to the sixties hang on the walls, old farming implements decorate odd corners and wall spots, and old-fashion wood shelving holds racks of chips and an assortment of mass-produced desserts. Ceilings are at least fifteen feet high, and bead-board walls and a low ceiling enclose an added bathroom right off the rectangular dining area. A gigantic wasp nest hangs from the dining room ceiling by a cord, but without current residents. Tables are plain and round except for a trestle table set by the front window. Right over the trestle table hangs a corkboard with clippings from local papers and the Memphis Commercial Appeal attesting to the fine quality of the cheeseburgers offered at Phillips. Chairs are eclectic. A long bench that looks like it came from the railroad depot sits in front of the counter, providing comfortable seating for those waiting on take-out orders.
I ordered the cheeseburger and a fried pie, Bitty—no doubt watching her weight—had a fried bologna sandwich and fried vegetable sticks, and Rayna ordered a grilled cheese with bacon sandwich. Of course, we all had sweet tea, though I did eye a
n Orange Crush in the cooler.
While we were eating our lunch, two of the Divas came in to pick up their take-out order. I only recognized one of them, but as I’ve said, there are so many new or forgotten faces now in HollySprings that it’s not that unusual for me.
After a spate of greetings that involved a couple of hugs, Bitty looked at me and said, “I swear, I don’t know where my manners have gone. Trinket Truevine, this sweet young thing on the left is Melody Doyle. Melody grew up here, but went off to college in Georgia, found a job and a boyfriend over there, and just came back about—what, six months ago, wasn’t it?”
“Seven,” said the sweet young thing with a smile, “though I come and go since I work up in Memphis a lot. It’s very nice to meet you, Miz Truevine.”
She properly waited until I put out my hand, and then gave me a nice, firm shake that was still soft enough to be ladylike. Obviously, someone’s taught her well. It’s a bit complicated at times, but there are rules about this sort of thing that I try to remember and usually forget, so I’m always impressed when someone a couple of decades younger is paying attention.
Melody is quite pretty in an understated way, with flashing dark eyes, shiny hair, a slender figure shown to advantage in snug jeans and form-fitting sweater, and a face with a little bit too much make-up to hide a few spots on her skin. She also has a little bit of an overbite, in an attractive Gene Tierney resemblance. If you don’t know who Gene Tierney is, you’re under fifty and don’t watch very many old movies. Trust me; Tierney was a great beauty in her day. I put Melody’s age at mid-thirties, but only because of her eyes. There’s something quite mature about her eyes. Maybe it’s the few corner lines that suggest she’s a regular smoker.
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