He made a dumb remark like, “This ought to give people around here something to talk about for a while.” Which was true. All through school Courtney had had a knack for getting herself talked about — something Truely personally had never aspired to.
Truely didn’t tell his sister he’d never admired anybody more. He wasn’t even sure he’d told her he loved her. Surely she must know that, right? Until that moment in time he had never realized it was possible to leave the place you were born and move someplace far away and unfamiliar — just because you wanted to. Nobody had bothered to tell him that where you lived your life could be a choice you made yourself. Who knew the accident of birth had an expiration date?
Two
TRUELY LISTENED to his sister fall in love with Hastings long distance over the telephone. She called home nearly every week and before long was describing at great length the many quirks and wonders of this guy, Hastings Cabot Littleton.
Courtney had been in California less than a year when she met Hastings at a Grateful Dead concert at Berkeley. Some friends from art school had offered her an extra ticket when somebody backed out at the last minute. She took the bus out to the stadium when she got off work, with plans to meet up with the others, but there was mass confusion and she couldn’t find them. She confessed later to Truely that she had been maybe slightly out of her element. The last concert she’d gone to was Charley Pride over in Jackson at the Civic Center. She’d gone with Truely and their daddy that time. When Charley crooned “Missin’ Mississippi” he had the whole audience choked up with geographically inspired emotion — including the three of them. But this was totally different.
Out of all the guys in the throbbing concert mob she had chosen to ask him — Hastings — directions to the gate where she was supposed to meet her friends. Hastings didn’t stand out really, she would insist later. He was a tallish, sort of handsome guy, with longish hair, a stubble of beard, wire-rimmed glasses, brown eyes and a quick but cautious smile. She told Truely that he had looked a little older and calmer than the others in the crowd. Maybe that was why. She explained to him — Hastings — that her ticket was confusing and it seemed that everywhere she went the gates were chained closed anyway. “I can’t figure this out,” she had said. “What’s going on here?”
He claimed he had been so startled by the rawness of her accent that he couldn’t understand a word she was saying. After he asked her to repeat the question three times — What? What did you say? One more time?—she became exasperated and walked away, calling him rude. Now, that might not have been such a big insult out in California — Truely wasn’t sure at the time — but it was the ultimate insult that could be hurled your way on Mississippi soil. Hastings must have sensed that. He spent the rest of the night trying to talk to her, explain himself, apologize again, provide detailed directions pretty much anywhere else she might ever need to go. She avoided and ignored him — forcing him, naturally, to try harder. Avoiding him was pure instinct on her part. It was pure genius too. She would learn much later that Hastings was not a man used to being dismissed and ignored.
Toward the end of the night, the story went, Hastings was slightly crazed by the lost girl searching in vain for a familiar face. He didn’t even know her name — this eccentric redhead, hot tempered, high strung and Mississippi exotic. When he finally heard her laugh it was all over. That’s the way he would tell the story later. “That laugh. My God. I knew I was a goner.” Somehow he managed to convince Courtney to leave the Grateful Dead and go have a late supper with him, which he still claimed to be his crowning achievement in the art of persuasion, a talent at which he considered himself — and in the future years would in fact prove himself — to always have excelled. “I know a place you’ll like,” he’d told her. “The people speak your language there — or close to it.”
Courtney said she only agreed for two reasons: one, she never did find her friends and consequently had no ride home and not enough bus fare, and two, inhaling all the secondhand marijuana smoke was wearing down her defenses, besides making her ravenously hungry. It was really the thought of a cheeseburger, she said, that was irresistible.
At the time she was going to art school nights and had a part-time job at an art gallery downtown on Geary Street. She took the bus into the city four days a week and one day out of every weekend. Her boss liked her and paid her well enough, even helped her sell three modestly notable pieces of her own work, but still her money was always running low and she struggled to keep herself afloat. So she was not too proud to let an apologetic man express his regrets by buying her dinner.
They drove to Fat Daddy’s, a hole-in-the-wall all-night diner in Oakland that Hastings knew about. It played nonstop blues on scratched 45 records on a temperamental old jukebox. It was in what Hastings called an iffy neighborhood, but it specialized in Southern food and that was the lure. They were the only white people in the restaurant, a commonplace occurrence back in Mississippi, and Courtney’s comfort zone for sure. She guessed, according to Hastings’ definition of iffy, that she must hail from an extremely iffy homeland. The sights, sounds and smells at Fat Daddy’s helped put her at ease, which was good, since she was uncharacteristically nervous. She ordered a cheeseburger with Vidalia onions, watermelon rind pickles and a side of greens with pepper sauce. Hastings ordered the same, hold the onions.
While they waited for their food he said, “Anybody ever tell you your freckles are great?”
“Everybody,” she said. “Of course, most people are lying.”
“I’m not,” he said.
“Back home people are all about tans, you know? Freckles are not the thing down there.”
“I think they’re spectacular.”
“That’s a good start then.” She smiled. “So, what else do you like about me? I mean, so far? Let’s make a list, okay? How about my eyes? Do you love the way they sparkle and dance with light? Do you see your very soul when you look into the depths of my eyes?”
He laughed. “Do I detect a tinge of sarcasm here?”
“When I’m nervous I can get a little sarcastic I guess.” She was sipping sweet tea through a paper straw.
“Good. I like that,” he said. “So does that happen a lot with you? Men gazing into those liquid pools of yours in search of their souls?”
“Pretty much always,” she said. “Are you surprised?”
“Ask me later,” he said, “after we see if my soul makes an appearance.”
“Fair enough.” She leaned toward him. “Are you going to eat that slice of white bread?”
“Help yourself.” He passed her the red plastic bread basket.
“People in California don’t eat much white bread, do they? That’s what my roommate says. It’s not healthy, right? But in Mississippi we love it. Sunbeam is our favorite. Sometimes we fry it in a skillet with lots of butter and mayonnaise. That’s how Elvis liked his white bread.”
He watched her spread butter on her bread, fold it in half, and eat it daintily.
“Down in Mississippi we’re actually quite famous for our bad habits. Maybe you’ve heard?”
He nodded almost absentmindedly, staring at her so intently that she was slightly uneasy. “You’re staring,” she said.
“Sorry.” He smiled.
“Don’t stare.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“It’s rude.”
“Of course. Rude. Twice in one night. Damn,” he teased.
“So let’s try this again,” she said. “We’re aiming for a little pleasant conversation here. Help me out, okay?” She smiled her hundred-watt smile. “I take it you’re a Grateful Dead fan?”
“You could say so, I guess. I mean, I haven’t sold everything I own to follow them around the country in a stolen van or anything.”
“But maybe you wish you could?”
“Never,” he said. “You know how you hear people say, Oh, music is my life. I’m ready to die for the band or the art — or whatever.
Well, I like music, but it’s not my life. What about you?”
“I mostly listen to country music.” She mimicked playing a fiddle for emphasis. “You know, I like a lot of different things, but when I’m alone in a car I nearly always go straight to the country music station.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I always wondered who was out there listening to that stuff.”
“Well, it was probably me. My mother and daddy too. My brother — his name is Truely — he thinks he’s black, so he mostly listens to R&B, blues, Motown — you know.”
“Country music, huh? That’s what you like?”
“That’s right. Why? Do I lose points for that?”
“I’d say you leave me no choice but to deduct a couple of points.”
She laughed and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “I’d say we might need to broaden your horizons a little, mister.”
“I like the sound of that,” he said.
“You’re flirting.”
“I am,” he agreed.
“Well, on behalf of country music just let me say this. It is some of the finest organic art produced in this country.”
“Organic?”
“Untaught. You know, spontaneous, spirit-inspired, naturally evolving.”
“And that makes it good? That it springs from musical ignorance?”
“I can see you don’t have proper respect for ignorance. Ignorance inspires great courage and free thinking — if you must know. The purest form of artistic expression is born of what you are calling ignorance. You can educate yourself right out of having even an ounce of artistic creativity left. I’ve seen that happen.”
“So you’re in favor of ignorance and against education?”
“No.” She smiled. “I’m in favor of both.”
A fat man carried two plates heaped with food and more or less slung them down on the table in front of them. “Hot,” he said. “Ya’ll need anything else?”
“More sweet tea?” Courtney rattled her empty glass.
The man nodded and walked away.
“Looks good,” she said. “I love a good hamburger.”
Hastings began to laugh.
“What?” she said. “What’s so funny?”
“I like you.”
“Already? Just wait until you get to know me.” She picked up her cheeseburger with both hands. “You’ll be out of your mind.”
“I believe you,” he said.
Courtney bit into her cheeseburger with what she later described to Truely as a swooning gesture, eyes closed. It was a messy venture too, onions and pickles sliding, sauce dripping. “You’re doing it again,” she told him.
“Staring?” He laughed. “Sorry.”
She returned the unwieldy cheeseburger to her plate and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “So let’s talk about you, okay? Tell me something interesting.”
So far Hastings had not touched his food. “How interesting exactly?”
“Not earthshaking. Just, you know, reasonably interesting.”
“Well, I don’t know how interesting you’ll find this, but I own a business. I’m one of those geeky guys who actually like to get up and go to work every day. I might be a little overeducated by your standards, but I’m hoping you can overlook that.”
“What kind of business?”
“I buy failing properties, reinvent them and sell them. Sort of like real estate rehabilitation. Littleton Properties. It’s my baby, you could say.”
“You’re Littleton Properties?”
“I am.”
“I’ve seen some of your signs down on Geary Street where I work. That’s you? Aren’t you a little young — you know, to be Littleton Properties?”
“Not really.”
“How old are you exactly? By the way, it is not rude to ask a perfect stranger how old he is when he has lured you off the beaten path like this.”
“Perfect? I guess we’re off to a good start here.”
“Just answer the question, please.”
“I’m old enough to know better,” he said. “Turned thirty in January. How about you?”
“Nowhere near old enough to know better. I’m twenty.”
“Twenty? My God. You’re a baby. You look older.”
“I’m an old soul — if that counts.”
“Wise beyond your years?”
“Definitely.”
“Me too,” he said.
WHILE THEY ATE, with Smokey Robinson and Muddy Waters crooning in the background, Courtney learned some things about Hastings Littleton. He was originally from Connecticut — a man she might have fondly referred to as a Yankee back in Mississippi — but he had come west to college and claimed the West Coast had won him over entirely.
He was an only child born to older parents. His dad had died of a heart attack when Hastings was twenty-four. His mother had been diagnosed with dementia shortly afterward and had died two years ago from an overdose of medication. Hastings never knew whether she ingested a lethal dosage to stave off the inevitable or whether in a state of confusion she continued to retake her medicines because she was unable to remember having already done so. She’d lost her short-term memory almost entirely — remembered her father but not her husband, her childhood but not her child. It was heartbreaking the way Hastings explained it. “She wasn’t the sort of woman who would want to live wearing a diaper, not knowing who she was or where she was,” he said. “Sometimes death is merciful.”
“That’s sad,” Courtney said. “So there is just you now?”
“Some distant cousins somewhere,” he said.
“Are you lonely?”
“Wow. Now there’s a question.”
“You don’t have to answer,” she told him.
TRUELY KNEW all the details of this first meeting because Courtney called home and talked to him at length—reported and repeated the significant events of her new, foreign life. “True,” she’d said on this occasion, “I met this interesting guy.”
“Good.” He was only half interested.
“No, True. This guy is different. We had this really delicious conversation. The words just came,” she said. “They flowed, True. Before we knew it dinner evolved into breakfast.” That image stayed with Truely — his skinny sister with her big appetite, nourished by a mouthwatering conversation.
“Fried eggs and grits later the sun was coming up,” she’d said.
TRUELY MISSED Courtney more than he’d expected he would after she left for art school. The house was eerily quiet without her. He had come to look forward to her Sunday-night phone calls just to break the spell of serenity or — on a couple of rare occasions — the lack of serenity. Her calls came late, when the rates were low and his parents were asleep. “You’ll never believe this, True, but …” and she updated him on her new and improved life, relayed the conversations and struggles of her worldly new friends — or opened briefly the windows to her own surging soul. Nearly everything Truely thought he knew about women — however little — he felt he’d learned from his sister’s late-night revelatory and unrestrained phone conversations. She trusted him. And he appreciated being connected somehow to the world beyond Hinds County.
Whenever Courtney asked him about his own life, as she often did, he replied with nonanswers. “Nothing much going on,” he might say. “No news here.”
Sometimes it made her furious. “True, you really scare me. You need to get a real life.” It didn’t bother him to be perceived as boring. He took comfort in it.
“How’s Tay-Ann?” Courtney routinely asked.
“Fine,” he always said.
“You two still going out?”
“Yep.”
Courtney sighed loudly into the phone and said, “Okay then, Mr. Excitement, gotta go. You be good. Don’t you do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“I didn’t think there was anything you wouldn’t do, Court.”
“Ha, ha,” she said. “Love you, little brother.”
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“Me too,” he told her.
THERE WAS ONE SPELL when Truely was disturbed by Courtney’s calls home. It was a period of maybe three or four weeks when she seemed distant and emotional when they talked. He thought at first that something had gone wrong between Hastings and her — but she insisted nothing had. “Hastings is great,” she said.
“Then what is it, Court?” he’d asked her. “You don’t sound like yourself.”
“I am myself.” Her voice cracked. “That’s the trouble.”
“Tell me what’s wrong then.”
“I just wonder sometimes, True, if I’ve made too many mistakes.” She began to cry. “Sometimes I feel, you know, lost out here.”
He held the phone to his ear and listened to her cry. Her voice broke into small desperate sobs. It was all Truely could do not to panic a little. “Why don’t you come back home, Court?”
“I can’t,” she insisted.
“You can always come home, Court,” he argued.
“I wish it was that easy,” she said.
In time her sadness seemed to dissipate and she returned to her more exuberant self with a new stash of anecdotes to report. Whatever caused her dark second thoughts seemed to have worked itself out. She was happy again.
COURTNEY MOVED in with Hastings when she was barely twenty-one and Hastings was thirty-one. Like clockwork, just as Truely’s parents had predicted — Courtney’s moral collapse was fully under way.
His mother had her own ways of dealing with humiliation. One was to pray long and hard. Ordinarily she implored the Baptist Women to join her in prayer. “Where two or more are gathered,” she said to Truely. But in this situation, she was not about to explain to others why their prayers were needed. So she went it alone. She played a spiritual game that she had invented herself which brought her comfort and peace of mind. It consisted of closing her eyes and opening her Bible to a random page, then reading that particular page aloud in search of whatever perfect message awaited her there. So far it had never failed her.
Her other technique was to cook. On the occasion of discovering that Courtney was living in sin with a virtual stranger she began with a pot of vegetable soup and a skillet of cornbread. Next she made a big dish of macaroni and cheese — and nearly ruined it by adding a few pink hot dogs cut bite size and stirred in. Next a pan of brownies with pecans. And a pot of pinto beans with fatback. At this point Truely and his daddy became nervous and began exchanging knowing looks.
Eat, Drink, and Be From Mississippi Page 2