Hometown Favorite: A Novel

by BILL BARTON

  Cherie would not sit down with the boys while they ate. Her place was to monitor the kitchen-to see that one of them had prayed a proper blessing before a single bite was consumed, that all plates were sufficiently supplied, and that the sweet tea in their glasses never went below the halfway point. She would not let them lift a finger to help her. A future liberated wife might resent her indulgence in the kitchen with this trio.

  For as long as the boys could remember, Cherie had always worn the same raggedy apron at every meal. Threadbare and stained, it was one of the few gifts Robert Jobe could afford. He had given it to her while she was pregnant with Dewayne. The boys had found a catalog from a kitchen design company out of New York, opted for the most expensive designer-autographed apron among the nine selections, and pooled their resources to have it shipped to Jesse's house in time for them to add their own special artwork.

  There was no big ceremony. Sly simply forced her to sit at the table in his chair, and Dewayne put his hands over his mother's eyes as Jesse presented her with a beautifully wrapped package.

  "It's too pretty to open;' Cherie said, and squealing like a child intimidated by the splendor of the presentation, she pulled the apron out of the box. Her eyes widened as if she beheld a sultan's treasure. "Ohhh ... it's beautiful!"

  She savored each second it took her to unfold the apron. There were the decorative floral patterns painted on by the professional in New York outlining the edges, but inside the floral frame were three drawings done in multicolor Magic Marker by each boy, with the number of his football jersey painted on his chest and each in a dramatic pose: Sly poised to throw a pass, Dewayne leaping to catch a pass, and Jesse crouched down ready to make a tackle. When the apron had arrived in the mail, the boys gathered at Jesse's house and went straight to work.

  Cherie did not attempt to restrain her tears as the boys put the apron on her and tied it in the back, like servants dressing the queen. Between rounds of kisses planted on the boys' cheeks, she extolled the apron's beauty and what it must have cost and how she would cherish it all her life. The boys congratulated themselves on the success of their surprise.

  As much as Cherie loved her boys and appreciated their thoughtfulness, she could not spoil the moment by exposing them to the deep truth. One month into their marriage, Robert Jobe had given her the apron she always wore. Robert's apron was the first thing she put on when she came home from work, and she kept it on until time for bed. Its closeness was like a soft impression of Robert always against her skin. And though she would wear the new one for the rest of the evening, careful to keep it spotless, it would go back into the box the moment the boys departed.

  After final hugs, the boys left to revisit a few old haunts, and once alone, Cherie could not resist examining her gift. She cleared the table and wiped it clean before laying the apron on the bare top. She fondled the luxurious fabric, bringing it to her cheek, and then ran her finger over the floral outline, her eyes squinting in admiration of its detail. With the apron stretched out before her, she laid a hand on each rough-drawn image of her boys and implored God to bless the men they were becoming.

  The boys' drive through town was brief before heading out to the Webb farm, its five hundred acres a natural destination. After one summer of working with men three times his age, Jesse had talked his father into hiring Sly and Dewayne, and throughout high school all three spent their summers mending fences, hauling hay, herding livestock, and clearing forests. For Sly and Dewayne, it was an opportunity to make some money; and even though Jesse did not have the same financial needs as his best friends, there was still within him the pride of earning his keep from the sweat of his brow.

  Before getting out of the car, Jesse pulled three Romeo and Juliets from the glove compartment. As a last hurrah the boys lit their cigars, each puffing the smoke into the tranquil air like small signal fires and gazing over the field at the Charolais cattle bedded down for the night, their white hides reflecting the moon's full light.

  "You remember that first summer when we shot the bull between his legs with your BB gun?" Dewayne said, hearing the bellows of the enraged victim in his mind.

  "Hard to miss a target that big," Sly said.

  Jesse chuckled. "I thought he would charge us for sure."

  "I found out that day just how fast I could run," Dewayne said.

  Each cigar dissolved into ash as the experiences of past summers flew out of the boys' communal memories and brought stabs of laughter or moans of vexation: Jesse driving a tractor into a tree, Dewayne trying to "break" a three-hundred-pound sow and being bucked off into the muck, and Sly shinnying up a post in the barn and screaming at the sight of a six-foot-long rat snake slithering in his direction-each boy trying to defend his actions to an unsympathetic jury of his peers. And when the memories turned to silence, the flashing rumps of the lightning bugs, the lingering hoots of a barn owl, and a sharp coyote's yap at the silvery moon provided the sights and sounds for the boys' private thoughts to drift unencumbered.

  The knock on the front door interrupted the raspy humming of a favorite hymn. Cherie shut off the water in the kitchen sink and picked up a dishtowel to dry her hands. Through the glass of the storm door, she could see Jake Hopper swaying unsteadily on his feet, holding a gift in both hands. His perspiring face gave off an incandescent glow beneath the porch light.

  "Coach Hopper," Cherie said as she opened the door. "You just missed the boys"

  "That's fine"

  Jake shuffled his feet backward as the door swung toward him. He kept his head bowed, only bobbing it up now and then as if gasping for breath above some invisible surface line. Cherie slung the dishtowel onto her shoulder and leaned against the doorframe. She would be polite because this man had been good to her boy, but she did not feel like a visit. She had spent her entertainment quotient on her boys.

  "I got something for Dewayne ... a little going-away something ... I thought I'd .. "

  Jake could not finish anything he started. He never should have had that last drink before he left the house, or maybe he should have had another drink. It was a tough call. He could see that Cherie didn't know what to make of his rambling, the nervous gestures, and the subtle dancing feet.

  Jake almost dropped the gift, swinging it in her direction, then pulling it back into his stomach like a fake handoff.

  "Coach Hopper, are you all-"

  "Please, just Jake. Just call me Jake. I like Jake. I'd like for you to say my name. My parents didn't name me Coach. Just Jake"

  When he saw the surprise and wonder on Cherie's face, he laughed to try to deflect his nonsensical, verbal bumbling.

  "I'm sorry. I haven't seen you much ... or seen Dewayne much since graduation. I just wanted him to have a little something ... a memento of all the years..." His voice faded out, but he steadied his arm enough to hand the gift to Cherie before an involuntary muscle spasm jerked it back.

  "I know you have meant so much to him ... Jake," she said, taking the gift from his wobbly hand.

  "I want to stay in touch ... to stay connected to you or to him through you ... you know ... keep in touch"

  "That would be good." Cherie dropped her head in a failed attempt to conceal her embarrassment for Jake.

  "Good night, then."

  Jake turned around and hurried down the steps of the porch. If he could get to the car and back to the house and consume another drink or two or three, he would fall asleep and wake the next morning and never remember what a fool he had made of himself. The number of those mornings of not remembering had increased over the last several months. He managed to finish out the school year without raising suspicions, and since he lived alone and ignored all social contact, there was no one curious enough to check on his well-being. His secret life remained secret.

  Then some force greater than the craving for a drink stopped him on the return to his car and whirled him around, and the words exploded out of his mouth.

  "May I take you to dinner sometime?"r />
  But Cherie had closed the door; the click of the latch was the only response he heard.

  Mother and son stood in the outdoor terminal with passengers moving behind them and boarding the bus. A shy pride had taken both of them. Unable to look very long in the eyes of the other, neither were willing to finalize the end of this phase of their lives and take the step of faith into independence now required of them.

  "I packed all the leftover fried chicken from last night," Cherie said, handing him a paper sack full of chicken pieces wrapped in wax paper.

  Dewayne frowned, knowing there would be a long hiatus before he could enjoy this kind of cuisine again.

  "Two things to remember" Cherie reached into her skirt pocket. "Your judgment is good. I trust it and so should you. And I'm gonna pray for you every day." Then she pulled out five one-hundred-dollar bills and gave a quick account of the number before she placed them in her son's hand.

  "Mad money," she said.

  Dewayne started to resist, but Cherie raised one finger in the air, halting any budding quarrel.

  "Now hug your mama before she starts making a fool of herself and says no to this college nonsense."

  The embrace was eighteen years' worth of gratitude and thankfulness for a life that could not have been lived with any other parent-and-child combination. Cherie ended it by taking Dewayne's hulking shoulders in her petite hands and pushing him away. He accepted the gesture as the signal from the stronger of the two that there was no turning back now, and he took that first step onto the bus.

  "What was the present Coach Hopper brought you last night? I put it on your dresser"

  Dewayne paused at the top of the steps. "I forgot to open it. Next time I'm home I'll get it. Thank him for me."

  Those were his last words before the bus driver closed the door. Dewayne stepped into the center aisle and found an empty seat as the bus pulled out of the dock.

  With a final wave to each other, their independence was complete.

  As the new BMW 325 convertible raced along a winding road through the Hollywood Hills, Dewayne watched the expensive homes whizzing past. They were nothing like the houses in Springdale, Mississippi. Even the pricey homes where he had grown up did not compare to the size and opulence he now passed. He never could have imagined coming so far in just a few years, but he swore never to forget the humble life he had left behind in Springdale and those qualities of character that had shaped him.

  In this new world where cultures from all over the globe gathered for higher education, free expression of every kind was an accepted practice, and it was displayed in a variety of ways that never would have been dreamed of in Springdale. Even after two and a half years of living in the midst of the liberated society of the university campus and achieving success playing football for USC, Dewayne still felt like a stranger in a strange land. Were it not for the letters Cherie wrote twice a month keeping him informed of Springdale's comings and goings-from time to time including a fifty-dollar bill from Webb Furniture overtime-and reminding him there was no doubt of his worth in her mind, he might have faltered along the way and slipped from the foundation of his faith.

  A rust-colored haze had settled over the San Fernando Valley.

  "It's gonna be all right, baby;" the sweet voice said from the driver's seat.

  Rosella Caldwell shifted the BMW into a lower gear as she approached the sharp curve before starting another steep ascent. She lifted her hand from the gearshift and gave a reassuring squeeze on top of Dewayne's left leg that bounced from nervous energy. He scooped her hand into his and stroked each finger before he kissed the back of her hand.

  Dewayne had declared himself a business/finance major his first year and had met Rosella, also a business major, in an English class that first semester. Her sparkling obsidian eyes caught his attention when he looked up from scanning his textbook as she took her seat beside him on the first day of that class. They were now in their fifth class together, and it was early this semester when a partnership for a class project finally prompted them to yield to the natural chemistry between them as they began to date.

  It was not just the dazzling beauty of Rosella's eyes arresting his attention that first day of class but the formidable intention behind them, a confidence reminiscent of his mother. In Mississippi, a confident black woman was a rarity. The inequality among races and genders there made Cherie's inner confidence all the more impressive in Dewayne's realm of experience. These two women might have come from different worlds, but both had a depth of self-assurance Dewayne respected and valued. Rosella knew what she wanted. She valued the opinions of others and gave the proper respect to professor and student alike, but she never lost herself in the process of absorbing other people's ideas.

  With each business class the two of them had taken together, their attraction had grown. But each of them had priorities and commitments, and neither had been willing to allow a romance to derail those goals ... until this semester, in Entrepreneurial Finance, where their professor had drawn the names of each team from his country gentleman's walking hat. The project for team Caldwell and Jobe was to decide what to do with an ailing movie studio: spin it off by selling it as separate businesses, or produce a genre of film that has a track record for success and thus save the studio? The project required viewing a number of different types of films and conducting an unscientific poll of audience reactions to determine genre tastes, then settle on the type of film the troubled studio should produce to save it from Chapter 11. It was a winter semester class, so Dewayne's schedule was more flexible, although he still had to maintain a strict conditioning regimen.

  In the beginning, going to the movies was solely for educational purposes, but their drives to the theaters had given Dewayne and Rosella the intimate time necessary to build a relationship beyond what academic, athletic, and film class dialogues had accomplished so far. This was a significant raise in the bar of personal interest. An early sign that this classroom partnership had moved to the next level was the number of romantic films compared to the other genres they viewed. The ultimate shift from class project to full-blown romance came when they forgot to conduct the survey after the movie. The blame could lie on an extraordinarily sad film that flayed bare the human condition, involved the death of one of the lovers, and was a sure Oscar contender. Their efforts yielded only a B from the professor, but their own Hollywood romance made up for the average grade.

  Dewayne clicked off one three-story mansion after another as they traveled the meandering road. He was a kid, staring wide-eyed at palatial spectacles he had only seen in magazines or on television. Were there that many people in the world who can live like this? And how can people live in these places and not get lost?

  The car slowed as they turned into a well-manicured entry. Rosella keyed the numbers on the pad that unlocked the gate.

  "My heart is beating like a sledgehammer on a steel door" Dewayne massaged his chest, trying to relieve the pain.

  As they pulled up the drive, he stared at the extravagant three-story house with its Corinthian-style columns stretching the length of the front porch. Dewayne had been adjusting to three stories as the normal height for the houses in this neighborhood. However, Rosella's home not only rose up three stories, it also spread out from north to south, wings on a great domiciliary bird. "I think I might be sick"

  He felt Rosella's fingers digging into his side. She must have thought a brief tickle might relieve some of his angst, but it only made it worse. The big tough football man was having a mild panic attack.

  "You know my mama gave birth to me on the floor of a furniture factory;" Dewayne said, shaking his head at the sight of this mansion he could only imagine as a heavenly reward. "You are so out of my league. I grew up in an outhouse compared to this"

  Since the tactic of tickling had failed to dissipate Dewayne's anxiety, Rosella took a different approach.

  "It's not too late. I'll call them right now and tell them ... what do I tell th
em?" Rosella lifted her cell phone out of her purse, flipped it open, and set her index finger on the speeddial position.

  Dewayne had not expected such a quick resolve and felt ashamed by Rosella's stone-faced demeanor, but getting his legs to move out of the car seemed a near impossibility.

  He gritted his teeth. Even though he would rather face two charging three-hundred-pound linebackers, Dewayne knew showing weakness was not something he wanted Rosella to remember. So he opened the door and set one foot on the driveway, and said, like a fire chief leading his men into a burning building, "We're going in." His confidence waned, however, as they walked down the path.

  Rosella's parents watched their approach through the glass door from inside the house.

  "Look at that. She's dragging him along like a pet zombie"

  "Franklin Caldwell, not another word"

  High school sweethearts Franklin and Joella Caldwell had been married for thirty-five years, both of them LA born and bred. Both had taken personal vows never to return to their former neighborhoods once they discovered the way out. They were the first in their families to go to college, and both became instant high achievers: Joella ran her own successful high-end interior design company, and Franklin was the founder and CEO of Caldwell & Associates, an architecture firm with buildings and complexes across the country.

  "Another football player," Franklin mumbled.

  "How many times do you have to be warned?"

  "From Mississippi, no less"

  Joella stomped her foot on the floor, rattling the glass figurines on the antique table in the foyer.

  Rosella had kept the fact that she was dating a football player from them as long as she could. But when she realized there was no turning back from the swift pace of this relationship, she knew she'd best broach the subject sooner rather than later.