Tru and Nelle

by G. Neri

  As the last car drove off, the sound of cicadas slowly came back. Truman turned to Sonny. “You can still come to my party if you want,” he said. “I think your costume is swell. In fact, as judge of the costume contest, I think I’ll name yours best costume. Congratulations!”

  Sonny sniffed and tried to rub his tears away on one of his cardboard arms but only left black streaks on his face.

  “Here, let me,” said Nelle. She took a rag from her costume and dried his eyes. “I’ll bet you can still bob for apples in that getup. You’ll have to keep your robot head off, though . . .”

  As Nelle led Sonny inside, something sparkly on the chest of his robot costume caught Truman’s eye. At first, Truman thought it was just a costume button, but when he inspected it in the light, he noticed two red stones staring back at him. They were the eyes of a green snake.

  Truman nudged Nelle and pointed to the cameo brooch glued to his costume. Nelle smiled and shook her head.

  “Say, Sonny,” Truman said. “That’s some button you got there.”

  “A snake.” He grinned.

  “Why do you like snakes so much?” asked Truman.

  Sonny stared off into the distance. “When . . . I was eight . . . I had a pet snake. I loved him so much. Then he passed.”

  Nelle took his hand. “I had a pet rabbit once. A hawk killed him. I was sad for a whole month.”

  Sonny nodded. “I had to put my snake back in the ground, ’cause that’s where snakes live, even when they’re dead. But I promised I would never forget him. He was a good snake.”

  Sonny’s whole face seemed to change. He almost looked like a normal young man . . . except for his beaten-up robot costume. His sister came up and helped him into the party. Jenny offered them cookies and punch and complained about the sheriff to the other adults. Many of the partygoers had had enough excitement for one night and slowly said their goodbyes and made their way home.

  Someone started playing the piano in the parlor, and Nelle knew right away that her mom had joined the party. Truman had never really seen her before. She was a big woman, but nimble. And could she play! A.C. followed the sound of music and smiled when he saw his wife playing. He sat down next to her and listened to her play for the rest of the night. Despite the early scare, she was in fine spirits; she even played a song for Nelle, “Tea for Two.”

  Nelle knew all the words.

  39

  Goodbyes

  As the evening wound down, Nelle and Truman watched Big Boy challenge Sonny to a bobbing-for-apples contest. “Well, looks like you got your wish, Tru,” said Nelle.

  “How’s that?” he said, stroking Queenie on his lap.

  “You pulled off a party that nobody will ever forget.”

  He smiled, nudged her in the shoulder. “We pulled it off,” he said.

  Nelle smiled. “Yes, we did.”

  They stared up at the stars overhead. The music was playing, Little Bit and Sook were dancing a jig on the porch, and Black John White and Bud were resting against a tree, eating cake. Queenie slept like a baby.

  “Your daddy’s quite something,” said Truman. “Did you see him stare down the Grand Dragon? I think there might be a story there.”

  “Well, what’re we gonna do about our typewriter?” she asked. “Now that you’re leaving and all.”

  Truman thought about it. “You keep it. I expect to see that story when I come back for a visit. Besides, my new dad promised to get me one.”

  Nelle nodded. “Fine, I’ll write one story. But then you gotta write two.”

  “Fine.”

  He glanced over at the Tri-Motor airplane standing next to them and grew quiet. “Someday . . . I’ll take you away from here, Nelle. Just the two of us,” he said solemnly.

  “Sure,” she said. “We’ll go far away, maybe up in the clouds, and just sail around and watch everybody below.”

  He laughed, running his hands along the green wings. “Maybe we should go on one last trip together before I leave?”

  Nelle stepped up next to the plane. “Okay. But where’s your plane gonna take us?”

  He lowered himself into the cockpit and tested the pedals. “I dunno. If you push me hard enough and jump on in time, I’ll bet we can make enough speed to get us to . . . Morocco!”

  “You think?”

  He shrugged. “We’ll never know until we try.” He dug out his goggles and cap from his jacket pocket and pulled them onto his head.

  Truman held up his finger to test the wind as Nelle steadied herself behind him. “I’m gonna miss you, Streckfus,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I’m gonna miss you more, Na-il Har-puh!”

  And with that, she gave him the biggest push ever, jumped on the back of Truman’s plane, and held on for dear life.

  The End

  Other Stories

  Truman Capote was fond of the short-story format, and many of his books were made up of a longer novella complemented by several short tales. In that spirit, here are some short stories inspired by Truman’s and Nelle’s adventures back in the day. Unfortunately, none of their short stories survived that period. Rumor has it that Lillie Mae burned them all in a fit of rage.

  “I want to write about my own life, about what it meant to be a child in the South . . . about Jenny and Sook and Bud and the life we all lived together in that big house. About riding on those big steamboats where my father worked. About tap-dancing while Satchmo and his band played. About all that time.”—Truman Capote

  The Case of Truman’s Missing Plane

  Truman was so proud of his Ford Tri-Motor airplane. He’d sit in that dumb thing and putter around the yard for hours on end. Me and Big Boy was always pestering him for rides but he would shake his head no as he rode up and down the road. If I gave him a sweet, he’d let me ride it for about ten seconds and then it was “Time’s up, Nelle!”

  He was always going on about how that thing could actually fly. “It’s true. Bud drove me over to North Hills and he pushed me down the biggest hill and I went so fast, by the time I got to the bottom, the plane started to fly!”

  Big Boy fell for it. “How far did you fly, Truman?”

  “I went up high enough where I could see the whole town spread out under me. I circled the courthouse clock a few times, then flew low enough to scare Mr. Farnsworth’s cows before I landed right back here.”

  “Prove it,” I said. “Let’s go ask Bud an’ see what he says.”

  “Oh, Bud’s sleeping. You know when his asthma gets bad, he needs his rest.”

  “What was it like, Truman? Can I go flying too?” asked Big Boy.

  Truman put his arm around Big Boy. “Someday. It was pretty scary, I have to say. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt or anything.”

  “Well, what about me?” I said. “I ain’t scared of nothin’.”

  Truman winked. “Good things come to those who wait.”

  Well, me and Big Boy couldn’t wait no longer. One day, when Truman went to New Orleans to visit his parents for the last time, we decided to try it ourselves. He kept it in the room he shared with Sook. And we knew Sook always took a nap after lunch.

  We snuck in the back door after Little Bit left for the afternoon. I peeked through a crack in the bedroom door and saw Sook taking her medicine. I knew she’d be asleep in a few minutes.

  Me and Big Boy waited, then tiptoed in as quiet as mice. There it was, wedged between the two beds, shining like the Spirit of St. Louis herself. But Queenie was standing in front of it, staring at us.

  I looked at Big Boy. If the dog barked, the jig was up. I went into the kitchen, glanced around, and spotted a bowl of collard greens sitting on the counter. “It’s worth a shot,” I whispered.

  I put the bowl on the ground and motioned Queenie to come over. The dog tilted his head and padded over to the bowl. He took one sniff and started chowing down.

  “Well, I’ll be,” whispered Big Boy. “The dog eats his vegetables.”

  While Quee
nie was busy, we snuck into the bedroom. The floor creaked as we tried to pull the plane out, but Sook just turned over on her side.

  It must have took us a good ten minutes to get that plane out the room, down the hall, and outside. I was sure Queenie was going to bark, but he just sat there watching us with a strange look on his face. Maybe the collards didn’t agree with the dog.

  Once we made it outside, we were delirious with happiness. We rode up and down every sidewalk and hill we could find. After two hours of this, we were plumb tuckered out.

  “Now what should we do?” I asked.

  Big Boy’s eyes lit up. “Let’s take it flying!”

  I knew it would never get into the air. “We’re too far from North Hills to build up enough speed to get flying.”

  Big Boy was staring straight into the big blue Alabama sky when he got another idea. He pointed over to the roof of Miss Jenny’s barn. “If we can get the plane up on the roof, I’ll bet we can fly it from there, no problem.”

  Before I could say anything, he ran into the barn and found a ladder. We set it up against the side of the barn and somehow managed to drag that plane up there, him pulling and me pushing till we plunked it down on the roof. I gazed down at the neighbor’s pig yard beside the barn below us. We were pretty high up. “You sure you want to do this?”

  “Believe me, once I get airborne, you’re gonna want to be next!” he said. He reached into a compartment in the plane and pulled out Truman’s goggles. He strapped them on. “Now, Nelle, I want you to give me a big push.”

  “What about them pigs?” I pointed down.

  “What, them? I’m gonna soar right over those hogs and sail down to the pasture over yonder.”

  “Whatever you say . . .” I shrugged and grabbed the tail of the plane. “You ready?”

  He tucked himself into the plane and adjusted his goggles. “As ready and steady as rain.”

  I gave him the biggest push I could. “Fly, fly, fly!” I yelled, hoping he would.

  Big Boy and the plane sailed off the edge of the barn, and for a second, he was flying. “Woo-hoo!” he yelled.

  Then the plane nose-dived into the earth, crashing smack into the muddy pigpen and sending Big Boy flying into the hogs in a wave of watery muck and manure.

  “Oh my gosh! Big Boy! Are you all right?”

  He was lying face-down in the mud. He barely lifted his head. “Ow.”

  The hogs were squealing in anger, upset by this invasion. I knew from experience that when they were mad, they bit. Hard. And I’d never seen them this upset before. They were kicking and thrashing at the plane. And one of them had just spotted Big Boy.

  “Big Boy, get outta there! Them hogs’ll eat you alive!”

  The next thing I knew, I had jumped from the roof into the mud myself! My screams sent the hogs squealing. I crawled through the muck to save Big Boy. “Are you still alive?”

  He lifted his mud-covered goggles. “I think I’m still in one piece. My arm stings a bit.”

  We heard some grunting and looked over at the hogs, who were getting ready for another charge. “Hurry! We gotta get out!”

  “What about the plane?” he asked.

  We both grabbed it on each end and managed to throw it over the fence and climb over before the hogs got us. We collapsed on the grass. Big Boy started laughing.

  “Your hair, Nelle! You look like a mud pie!”

  I felt my head and came back with a handful of glop. “Ugh. I wouldn’t talk, Big Boy,” I said, throwing the goop at him.

  We both had a good laugh until we inspected Truman’s plane. It was smashed, muddied, and broken. It would never fly again. “What’re we gonna tell Truman?”

  “Let’s wash it off as good as we can and put it back.”

  We pushed it to the barn and cleaned it off. The propeller was gone and the wings bent in all kinds of directions. “Oh, Big Boy . . . Truman’s gonna hate us for this,” I whimpered.

  Big Boy spotted an old rusty pickup truck swerving by the house. He watched it as it nicked a trash can sitting on the curb, sending it spinning into the road. “I think I know what we can do. We can tell a half-truth.”

  “What’s a half-truth?”

  He shrugged. “We’ll tell him we took the plane out without asking him. Then we got hungry and left it on the curb while we ate lunch. And that’s when my uncle Howard smashed into it with his truck.”

  I was skeptical. “I don’t know . . .” I said. “Why your uncle?”

  “’Cause he likes to drink. And when he drives after that, he swerves all over the place. We’ll just tell Truman that he ran into the curb and smashed up the plane. Uncle Howard won’t remember a thing.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t like it, but I guess we got no choice. If he ever knew the truth, he’d disown us.”

  Well, Big Boy got his comeuppance, even before Truman came back. His arm ached like the dickens that night, and by morning, it had swelled up like a balloon. He had broken it in the fall and now had to wear a cast.

  Me, Big Boy, and Big Boy’s cast stayed away from Truman for a few days after he returned. When we finally got up the nerve, we went over to his house. The first thing I saw was that plane lying in a heap of trash. He came out to the gate to see us.

  “I’m so sorry, Truman. We shouldn’ta taken it and let it get wrecked like that,” said Big Boy.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry too, Truman,” I said. “Really, I feel so bad.”

  Truman noticed Big Boy’s cast. “What happened to your arm?” he asked.

  “Um, I broke it when I fell off the barn.” Half-truth. Big Boy was always doing silly things, so Truman didn’t even question it. He was too upset over his plane.

  “I really liked that plane, more than any present I ever got,” he said, looking over at the trash. “I guess there’s no such thing as magic anymore.”

  “Whaddya mean, Tru?” I asked.

  “Well, back when Lucky Lindy flew across the Atlantic Ocean all by himself, no one believed he could do it except me and Daddy. The whole trip, we listened on the radio, praying for him to make it, and every time we heard an update, we’d dance in a circle clockwise, snapping our fingers. That was our magic ritual to help him. And he made it, all right. But now, I’m not so sure. Nothing seems to work anymore.”

  I held his hand. I hated to see him that way. “What if . . . what if we fixed up your plane?”

  Big Boy shook his head, but I ignored him. “Bud is good with tools. I bet between him and Black John, they could make it good as new!”

  Truman beamed. “You think?”

  Big Boy rolled his eyes. “Nelle, don’t say that!”

  Truman shot him a look. “Why not, Big Boy?”

  Big Boy hemmed and hawed, then gave up. “’Cause . . . durn it, I’m the one who’s gonna fix it, that’s why. And Nelle is gonna help me!”

  I nodded. “Sure thing, Big Boy. We’ll get that plane up and running again, you’ll see.”

  Truman put his arms around us. “That would make me so happy.”

  Well, later, Black John and Bud took a look and shook their heads. “It’ll be easier to buy a new one, bang it up a bit, and tell him you fixed it.”

  “But how we gonna pay for that?” I asked.

  Bud thought about it. “I’ll front you the money, but you two will have to pay it off.”

  “How?” asked Big Boy.

  Bud smiled. “Got twenty acres of cotton coming up for harvest. Was gonna git a bunch of folks from Mudtown to come pull it, chop it, and haul it to the cotton gin. But now I got a better idea . . .”

  A month later, Truman had a new old plane. Me and Big Boy had cut-up fingers and bruised backs. It was the last time we’d ever “borrow” from Truman again.

  Sook’s Secret Recipe

  When I first met my cousin Sook, she was already a recluse. “Tru, I’m never gonna leave this house again!” she would say. And mostly she didn’t; not for church, not for haircuts, not even to fetch herself some
tobacco chaw, which she loved more than anything. No, sir, Sook was a regular hermit.

  On Sundays, when everyone went to church, she prayed at home. When she needed something from the market, she sent Little Bit or me. When she needed a haircut, the barber came to the house!

  She was shy with everyone but me, Nelle, and Big Boy. She seemed ancient, with her thin gray hair and those big eyes that looked right into mine. Jenny, Callie, and Bud tended to treat her like one of the servants. She cleaned the house, collected eggs from the chickens, scoured the backyard for beans and roots, and worked in the kitchen with Little Bit. And all she got was grief whenever she let me do something the adults thought I shouldn’t do, like drink coffee or stay home from school to listen to soap operas on the radio or sit around listening to Sook read the comics out loud instead of letting her attend to her duties. Jenny especially could bring her to tears, saying I wouldn’t grow up proper if we kept doing all the things we did together. Sook was a regular Cinderella, except old and superstitious.

  Superstitious because of a childhood fever that almost killed her—she was afraid of the night because she thought deadly swamp fevers would float through our windows and take us while we slept. So, during the hottest, most miserable nights, Sook kept the windows and doors sealed shut, even if it felt like an oven in there.

  Sook never got paid for her work around the house. But she possessed one thing that no one else had, and it was her only real source of money: a secret recipe for dropsy medicine that cured rheumatism (an old folks’ ailment). The secret recipe was handed down to her by her mother, who got it from some traveling gypsies before the Civil War. It was hugely popular, and the making of it every spring was a big undertaking, for which I was her only helper.

  While Sook refused to go to town or anywhere else, she did, for this one purpose, wander into the forest behind our house in search of ingredients for her medicine. We’d collect the roots from sourwood trees, iron fillings from old bullets left over from the Civil War (there’d been a big battle there, so there were plenty), and various herbs. But she had two secret ingredients that she told no one about—not even me. She kept those ingredients in an old lock box and hid the key.