Ferris Beach

by Jill McCorkle

  Four

  Mrs. Poole was forever having a tea of some kind or another, and there were many women in town, my mother included, who thought her teas were the greatest thing since God said Let there be light. If there was a reason to have a tea—wedding, baby, debut, retirement, charity drive—Mrs. Poole was ready to have it. In the wintertime, when the trees in the side yard were bare and spindly, I could just sit on our porch and watch the women come and go, but in the spring, I had to creep closer, or climb one of our trees. The teas were always elaborate and the women were expected to dress for the occasion, mohair or Ultrasuede, whatever happened to be the thing.

  “What on earth do they do over there?” Mo Rhodes asked me one day. It was the fall of eighth grade and she was clearly pregnant, her woven poncho stretching over her stomach, as we sat in their Camaro and waited for Misty to come out the front door of Samuel T. Saxon Junior High. “Just this morning there has been a florist truck and the Coca-Cola man, and I swear I think I just saw the butcher from Winn-Dixie going in.” She glanced up in the rearview mirror, looking first at me as I sat there in the small low backseat, and then at herself, rubbing a light fingertip over the edges of her dark lashes.

  “I don’t know what they do,” I told her. “Talk, I guess.”

  “Don’t you just know they talk” Mo laughed and cranked the car so she could turn on the heat. It was one of those drizzly days, leaves sticking to the windshield, headlights on; it looked much later than three o’clock. She turned on the radio and pressed the buttons, up, down, static coming and going until she finally turned it off. “That woman was known for all of her talking when / was a child.” Somehow, it was not so difficult imagining Mo as a child; the picture that came to me was one of a child Liz Taylor, a young Velvet Brown racing Pie across an open field.

  The rain was coming down harder, and I watched Merle Hucks and his brother, Dexter, and R.W. Quincy huddled up near the breezeway that led to the cafeteria, just beyond the rush of water that poured from the old rotted-out gutter. They had their hands cupped to hide the cigarettes they held, Merle’s hair wet and stringy, pushed back from his eyes; I had once seen Merle hide a lit cigarette in his pocket when the principal walked by. Dexter Hucks, though two years older, was several inches shorter than Merle and the shape of his face and his features reminded me of a scrawny little bird. He rode a motorcycle and had all kinds of biker patches sewn to the back of his denim jacket. I couldn’t help but wonder who had sewn them on. Would his mother do that, or had he, this tough guy who threatened to spit on you if you looked at him wrong, sat down one night with needle and thread and done it himself? Misty’s brother, Dean, had told her that Dexter Hucks had “done the deed” too many times to count, that half of the condoms she had counted probably belonged to him. Dexter had once been suspended from school for asking a teacher to “step behind the bushes and see what a real man could do.”

  “Where is Misty?” Mo asked, revving the engine. “I have some people at our house. I told them I’d just be gone for a second.” In over four years I had never seen Mo Rhodes getting impatient but lately she had been. Misty said it was the baby’s fault, hormones out of control. Finally I saw Misty coming out the door, her arms wrapped around her notebook, bell-bottom jeans dragging the muddy schoolyard as she made a run for the car. Dexter Hucks had his hands up to his mouth and he yelled something, but I couldn’t hear what because of the radio. Merle, his hands in his back pockets, turned and watched as Misty got in the car. Several times I had seen him working at Mrs. Poole’s house during one of the teas; she had him carrying Coke crates or sweeping the porch, washing windows. I imagined that he was heading there now, head tucked down as he made a run across the yard, Converse hightops drenched as water sprayed with each step. Dexter and R.W. were still standing under the breezeway, smoking; Dexter flipped up the skirt of a black girl who walked by them just as we pulled away.

  “Should I give that child a ride?” Mo asked, and motioned to Merle who was already a block closer to home than we were.

  “No!” Misty screamed and began wiping her composition notebooks on the car seat. “I’m sorry I’m late but old Mr. Billings made our science class go back to the cafeteria and one by one apologize to the woman who collects the dishes.” She looked at me, laughed. “Like our class was the first to ever splash her.” It was common practice in the junior high to slam silverware into the little bucket of water rather than place it there. If the woman was standing beside it collecting trays and wiping them off, she got sprayed with water. I knew Mo was preoccupied when she didn’t even ask Misty what that meant, splashing the woman. Usually she had to know everything; Mr. Rhodes, Dean, and Misty often called her Curious George and joked about her incessant why why why.

  “Well, I just wish I had known,” she said. “Our new carpet came today and Betty came to help me rearrange everything.”

  “Today? It’s already in?” It didn’t take much to make Misty happy; she had been talking for weeks about how her mother had always wanted and was finally getting purple shag, the long pile, for her bedroom. “Is Betty still there?” I had met Betty several times; she was a close friend of Mo’s who had waist-length frosted blond hair and had once lived in California.

  “Yes,” Mo said. “That’s why I’m in such a hurry. Betty came and brought Gene with her so we could move the furniture around. It’s the man’s day off and I’m sure he doesn’t want to spend it raking purple carpet.” I had met Gene before, too; he was the man who had once promised Misty that if he ever met Sgt. Barry Sadler he’d get his autograph. Of course he hadn’t met him, but what he had done was get Misty and Dean free tickets to go see the real shot-up car of Bonnie and Clyde, which was on display in a big trailer in front of J.C Penney. The ticket sales went to buy new automobiles for the highway patrol. Misty had so many free tickets that we went three different times, each time in awe that those were the real bloodstains and real bullet holes. Misty could quote every single word of “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde,” and it seemed the tune stayed in my head for weeks after.

  When Mo stopped in front of my house, Merle was just a tiny speck rounding the corner six blocks down Wilkins Road, and the local radio station van was in Mrs. Poole’s driveway. “Now what has that woman got going on?” Mo laughed, and then waved to Gene, who was standing alone in the Rhodeses’ living room and looking out the picture window. “Come over and see the carpet,” Misty said when I got out. “Or just call me.” Misty and I talked on the phone every single night for at least an hour. Sometimes we didn’t even talk, but just laid the receiver down and tuned to WFRO NightBeat, which was the local radio show, and went on with whatever we were doing, homework or looking at a magazine, and occasionally yelled for the other to pick up.

  Mama met me at the front door, her high heels clicking as she walked over to stand in front of the hall tree, where she started toying with her hair. I knew that she had just had it fixed that morning, a smooth perfect French twist, teased and sprayed, and now she had to get from our house to Mrs. Poole’s without it getting ruined. “We should build an underground tunnel,” my dad had said on another such occasion.

  “My goodness, I was getting worried.” Mama opened one of those little plastic hats that will fold to the size of a quarter and carefully placed it on her hair. “Your father will be home before too long. I should be back well before six, but just in case, the roast is in the refrigerator and all the instructions are on the table.”

  “Why is the radio station there?” I asked, and followed her onto the porch, waited while she opened her umbrella and surveyed the puddles along the sidewalk. She waved to a carload of women who passed slowly and then parked right near the edge of our yard.

  “Mrs. Poole is heading up UNICEF and she’s going to advertise for the Halloween carnival.” The rain was coming down harder now, and I could hear the streetlights prematurely buzzing on. Merle Hucks ran through Whispering Pines, hurdling the lower tombstones as if he were on a track. Mam
a didn’t notice him there or she would have said something. Instead she thrust the umbrella in front of her as if it were a shield and she were leading the battle. “Back soon,” 1 heard her call as she lumbered forward, bits of mud flipping up on her hose. I was convinced that part of Mama’s allegiance to Mrs. Poole was the fact that they were the two tallest women in town; they could be friends without making the other feel huge.

  The light came on in Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes’ bedroom and then I could see them all passing back and forth, and furniture being moved. I caught an occasional glimpse of Misty’s orange hair.

  The cars kept parking at Mrs. Poole’s, the rain coming down harder all the while. Everything I ever read or saw at the movies or on TV had a part for Mrs. Poole; I might have to take away her long Salem cigarettes, fuchsia lipstick, and color-coordinated pantsuits, but there was always a part for her. She was the busybody neighbor, the wicked witch, and the teacher with the ruler in her hand. She was that misplaced woman who attempted to maintain aristocracy in a primarily blue-collar town. Having teas was just one way to go about it. She could see no merit in any changes, whether it was the Coca-Cola bottle getting taller or Mo Rhodes turning the yard of her split-level into a Japanese garden, or black children walking the halls of Samuel T. Saxon Junior High. She was the pillar of the community because she could afford to be; Mr. Robert Manchester Poole, known to the town as Bo, had left her in fine shape financially.

  When the children’s home down around Ferris Beach was burned to the ground by one of the children, who on local TV said he was tired of living in the hellhole, Mrs. Poole rented out Brown’s Econo Lodge on Old 301, which had gone bust with the building of 1-95, and they all moved in until a new home was built. In 1968 when Santa Claus, also known as Mr. Beef Hucks, was stumbling drunk down in front of the Goodyear Tractor and Tire store where Misty’s daddy was manager, Mrs. Poole stepped from her white Lincoln and proceeded to make her way over to him, finger shaking all the way. Mr. Landell, the black man whose job was to drive her around all day while his wife cleaned her house, just stood by the car and shook his head from side to side.

  “This, children, is NOT, I repeat, NOT really Santa Claus, but a man who took on the role as a means to make money. Those who offer to help Santa, just as those who offer to help the Lord, must have their hearts in the right place. If they don’t, well then”—she gasped for breath—“well, not only have they not done GOOD work, but they have done BAD work. You are dismissed on behalf of the town of Fulton, Mr. Hucks.” Her hand was down and rummaging through her purse, looking for a cigarette I was sure, though I was also sure she would not smoke one right that minute. She always followed the rule about a Southern lady smoking only while seated, with a roof over her head; the Lincoln counted as a roof and she was just getting ready.

  “That ain’t what your old man said when I ran eighty yards against Clemmonsville.” Mr. Hucks pulled off his white beard and threw it onto a big tractor tire. He started unbuttoning the front of the red suit, revealing a dingy white undershirt. “Ain’t what he said when I pitched a no-hitter against Sandy Bluff.” A small boy stared in horror at the stripped-down Santa before releasing a shrill scream and burying his face in his mother’s coat. “No sir, me and Mr. Bo had a fine time that night. Yeah, Mr. Bo was quite the baseball fan.”

  “You are not in high school, Mr. Hucks,” she said. “You are not playing ball but serving the public and you are dismissed. If Mr. Poole were here he’d tell you the same.”

  “If Mr. Bo were here, he’d say, ‘Well, Beef’”—he paused and spat off to the side—“‘let’s us ride out into the county and see what we can find to drink.’” People laughed nervously and then things got even quieter than before.

  “You are a filthy, lying man who cannot even support his family.” Everyone waited, expecting him to hit her or to pull up all those poinsettias, tell all those sniffling children to shut up, something, but he just stood and watched her walk away. When she got to the car, she turned back to the crowd; by then Misty and I had crept up near the office of Goodyear so we’d be near Mr. Rhodes in case a fight broke out. I saw a flash of green and knew she had a pack of Salems in her hand.

  Old Merle was red in the face like at school when he got called on, and mothers were dragging their children away so they wouldn’t see Santa Claus weave off to his old beat-up Chevrolet without taking their Christmas orders. He beckoned for Merle to follow but it was like Merle hadn’t even noticed, just stood there kicking the side of that tire and making the poinsettias shake. His hair was just as slick and dirty-looking as it had been at school the day before, when he won the fifty-yard dash, and he was wearing those same black jeans, way too short, that he wore nearly every day of the fifth grade. It was like he didn’t even see his daddy there waving to him, and we knew Merle was just waiting and hoping that somebody would say something so he could beat that person up.

  “Now, dear people of Fulton,” Mrs. Poole announced, her mouth like a tight fuchsia line. “I am going to get the REAL Santa Claus. Mr. Landell?” He opened her door and off they went. Within two hours, she was back with a big fat Santa Claus from the Clemmonsville mall, who spent the next week taking orders and giving away candy and reminding everyone that Christmas was to celebrate Jesus’ birth and not to get all carried away with a Big Wheel or Barbie or such. If he forgot to say all of that, Mrs. Poole was there often enough to remind him. Misty’s daddy said he couldn’t wait for Christmas to come and go, he was so tired of dealing with her.

  Nobody in fifth grade mentioned Merle’s daddy getting fired, but who would’ve? Merle said he kept a switchblade in his scratched-up mock-leather boot, and since he was a Hucks, nobody had a reason to doubt it. “My old man should’ve punched the shit out of that bitch,” he finally said, and all the boys in class nodded in agreement. They knew better than to disagree. Merle had been caught drinking a beer up in a tree on the school yard the year before, and we had heard many times how Dexter Hucks had put a firecracker up a cat’s butt and blown it to bits. I used to go to great pains to keep my own cat from roaming out of the yard, fearful of what would happen if he wound up on the wrong side of the kudzu.

  It was still pouring down rain when I went out on the upstairs sleeping porch and tuned my radio to the local station so that I could hear Mrs. Poole’s advertisement. The rain misted through the screen mesh as I sat on the glider, my knees pulled up to my chest. There was one streetlight at the back end of the cemetery, but other than that slight glow, our yard was dark. The windows of the pastel houses were black. People were not even home from work yet, but the sky was like night, and leaves were blowing everywhere, sticking to the screens. A shirt was hanging on the Huckses’ clothesline, and I watched it whip back and forth like a banner of surrender. The night they drove old Dixie down. The DJ. was singing along with Joan Baez, in an obnoxious off-key way. Up and down the back street, lights began to come on, and headlights were turning into driveways. “I am Mrs. Theresa Poole and I am speaking to you live from my living room, where I am hosting a number of our community’s finest citizens in a little tea, where we are planning our annual Halloween carnival, which will be held October 31st, which is Halloween, down at the Pinetop Elementary School cafeteria.” Mrs. Poole talked on and on, and I could tell that by the end she was being hurried to finish. Finally in the last second, she managed to say, “All the funds go to UNICEF.” Prior to that she went on and on about what would be served at the carnival, how apples donated by Mr. Thomas Clayton would be bobbed for, and finally how there was more to Halloween than dressing up like little goblins and begging door to door. The obnoxious D.J. was a welcome relief after Mrs. Poole finally finished.

  I went downstairs to put the roast in the oven—my father was still not home from work—and when I returned, a blanket around my shoulders, there was a light on at the Huckses’ and I could see the mother passing back and forth, maybe from stove to sink or sink to refrigerator. Again, I wondered about Dexter Hucks’s patches a
nd who had sewn them, especially that nasty skull and crossbones on the seat of his worn-out pants. Dexter Hucks was in a gang, or so Merle had told people, a biker gang where he was much younger than all the others. When Todd Bridger asked about the gang, what they called themselves, Merle said it was none of his business. Todd Bridger was one of the most popular guys in school and had been since kindergarten. He was squeaky clean, with short hair, and was always elected president of something, a club, the class. He was always the teacher’s right-hand man, and for years he had been the ultimate dream of a boyfriend. I was not alone in the fantasy of having Todd Bridger’s heavy silver ID bracelet around my wrist. He was the catch of our class, though it seemed during that year he was trying very hard to impress Merle Hucks, who was not easily impressed.

  I caught a glimpse of white at the top of Mrs. Poole’s fence, and then there was Merle, swinging his leg over and then dropping with a splash into my yard. Mrs. Poole would’ve fired him just like she fired his daddy if she had seen. It seemed he paused there a minute, and then he walked quickly through my yard to the edge, where he disappeared momentarily in the overgrowth. When he came up on the other side, he turned and stared over our yard. The rain was just a fine mist by then, but I still felt certain it was too dark for him to see me sitting there. Still, I held my breath, waiting for the search to end. I half expected to hear him scream like an alley cat, though it had been years since he’d done that to me, and then my father’s headlights turned into our drive and blinded him, one frozen moment like a frightened animal before he bolted.