by Fannie Flagg
Also, we hear that the cafe may be closing. Idgie says that her business is way down.
By the way—
My other half claims he has had the eight-day pneumonia for ten days … Men!
… Dot Weems …
DECEMBER 23, 1958
Jasper Peavey sat up all through the quiet night while the train glided through the snow-laden landscape and the moon sparkled on the passing fields of white.
It was freezing outside the ice-cold window, but warm and cozy inside the car. This was when he felt safest, and at ease. No more smiling for the day … just quiet.
The red and green railroad crossing lights slid by at each stop, and early in the dawn, the lights began to come on, one by one, in the small towns.
He was a month away from retiring, with a nice pension, from the Southern Railroad. Jasper had come to Birmingham a year later than his brother Artis, and although they were twins and both classified as Negro under the law, they had lived two entirely different lives.
Jasper had loved his brother, but hardly ever saw him.
Artis had quickly found a place among the fast, racy set down on 4th Avenue North, where the jazz was hot and dice rolled night and day. Jasper had taken up residence at a Christian boardinghouse four blocks away and had attended church at the 16th Street Baptist Church the first Sunday he was in Birmingham. It was there that Miss Blanch Maybury had caught the eye of and took a shine to this creamy boy with his mother’s freckles. Blanch was the only daughter of Mr. Charles Maybury, a respected citizen, well-known educator, and principal of the Negro high school, so it was through her that Jasper was automatically admitted to the exclusive, upper-middle-class black society.
When they married, if Blanch’s father had been disappointed in Jasper’s lack of formal education and background, Jasper’s color and manners more than made up for it.
After he married, Jasper worked hard; and while Artis was spending his money on clothes and women, Jasper was staying in the cold, rat-infested dormitories that the company provided for porters when they were out of town. He saved until he and Blanch could go down to the piano company and buy one for cash. A piano in the home meant something. He gave ten percent to the church and started a savings account for the children’s college education at the all-black Penny Saving Bank. He’d never touched a drop of whiskey, never borrowed a dime, and never been in debt. He had been one of the first blacks in Birmingham to move into white Enon Ridge, later known as Dynamite Hill. After the Klan had blown up Jasper’s and several of his neighbors’ red brick homes, some had left, but he had stayed. He had endured years of “Hey, Sambo,” “Hey, boy,” “Hey, George,” emptied cuspidors, cleaned bathrooms, shined shoes, and lifted so much luggage that he couldn’t sleep from the pain in his back and shoulders. He had often cried in humiliation when something was stolen and the railroad officials searched the pullman porters’ lockers first.
He had “yes sirred” and “yes ma’amed” and smiled and brought loud-mouthed salesmen liquor in the middle of the night, had taken abuse from arrogant white women and been called nigger by children, had been treated like dirt by some of the white conductors, and had had his tips stolen by other porters. He had cleaned up after sick strangers and passed through Cullman County a hundred times, with the sign that warned, NIGGER … DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOUR HEAD.
He had endured all this. But …
The burial policy for his family was paid off, he had sent all four of his children through college, and not one of them would ever have to live off tips. That was the one thought that had kept him going all the long, hard, back-breaking years.
That, and trains. If his brother Artis had been in love with a town, Jasper was in love with trains. Trains, with dark, polished, mahogany wood-paneled club cars and plush, red velvet seats. Trains, with the poetry of their names … The Sunset Limited … The Royal Palm … The City of New Orleans … The Dixie Flyer … The Fire Fly … The Twilight Limited … The Palmetto … The Black Diamond … The Southern Belle … The Silver Star …
And tonight, he was riding on The Great Silver Comet, as slender and streamlined as a silver tube … from New Orleans to New York and back, one of the last of the great ones still running. He had mourned each of those great trains as, one by one, they were pulled off the lines and left to rust in some yard, like old aristocrats, fading away; antique relics of times gone by. And tonight he felt like one of the old trains … off the track … out of date … past the prime … useless.
Just yesterday, he overheard his grandson Mohammed Abdul Peavey telling his mother that he didn’t want to go anywhere with his grandaddy because he was embarrassed by the way he bowed and scraped to white people and the way he acted in church, still singing that old coon-shine, ragtime gospel music of his.
It was clear to Jasper that his time was over now, just like his old friends rusting out in the yards. He wished it could have been different; he had gotten through the only way he had known how. But he had gotten through.
DECEMBER 23, 1965
Smokey was across the street from the boarded-up terminal L & N station downtown, in a hotel room that may have been up to the minute thirty-five years ago but now consisted only of a bed, a chair, and a forty-watt light bulb on a string. The room was pitch black, except for the pale yellow light that spilled through the glass transom at the top of the tall, thickly enameled, brown door.
Smokey Lonesome sat alone, smoking his cigarette and looking out the window onto the cold wet street below, thinking back to a time when there had been little stars in the ring around the moon and all the rivers and the whiskey had been sweet. When he had been able to take a breath of fresh air without coughing his guts up. When Idgie and Ruth and Stump still lived in the back of the cafe, and all the trains were still running. That time, special time, so long ago … just an instant away in his mind …
Those memories were still there, and tonight, he sat searching for them, just like always, grabbing at moonbeams. Every once in a while he would catch one and take a ride, and it was like magic. An old song played over and over in his head:
Smoke rings
Where do they go?
Those smoke rings I blow?
Those circles of blue, that
Keep reminding me of you …
SEPTEMBER 22, 1986
When Evelyn Couch came into the lounge, Mrs. Threadgoode was asleep, and suddenly looked her age. Evelyn realized how old her friend really was, and it scared her. She shook her.
“Mrs. Threadgoode!”
Mrs. Threadgoode opened her eyes and patted her hair, and began talking at once. “Oh Evelyn. Have you been here long?”
“No, I just got here.”
“Well, don’t you ever let me sleep through visitors’ day. You promise?”
Evelyn sat down and handed her friend a paper plate with a barbecue sandwich and a piece of lemon icebox pie, a fork and napkin.
“Oh Evelyn!” Mrs. Threadgoode sat up. “Where’d you get this? Over at the cafe?”
“No. I made it especially for you.”
“You did? Well, bless your heart.”
Evelyn had noticed that for the past couple of months, her friend seemed to be getting more and more mixed up about time, past and present, and sometimes called her Cleo. Sometimes she would catch herself and laugh; but more and more, lately, she didn’t.
“Sorry I drifted off like that. But it’s not only me; everybody out here is exhausted.”
“Why, can’t you sleep at night?”
“Honey, nobody’s been able to sleep out here for weeks. Vesta Adcock has taken to making phone calls all night long. She calls everybody, from the president to the mayor. She called the queen of England to complain about something the other night. She gets herself all fussed up like an old cat and carries on all night long.”
“Why in the world doesn’t she close her door?”
“She does.”
“Well, why don’t they take the phone out of her ro
om?”
“Honey, they did, only she don’t know it, she just keeps on making calls.”
“My God! Is she … crazy?”
“Well, let’s put it this way,” Mrs. Threadgoode said kindly. “She’s of this world, but not in it.”
“Yes. I think you’re right.”
“Honey, I sure would love a cold drink to go with my pie. You think you could get me one? I’d go, but I cain’t see well enough to find the slot.”
“Oh, of course. I’m sorry, I should have asked.”
“Here’s my nickel.”
“Oh Mrs. Threadgoode, now don’t be silly. Let me buy you a drink. My heavens.”
Mrs. Threadgoode said, “No. Now Evelyn, you take this money … you don’t need to be spending your cash on me,” she insisted. “I won’t drink it if you don’t let me pay for it.”
Finally, Evelyn took the nickel and bought the seventy-five-cent drink with it, as she always did.
“Thank you, honey … Evelyn, did I ever tell you I hated brussels sprouts?”
“No. Why don’t you like brussels sprouts?”
“I cain’t say. I just don’t. But I love anything else in the vegetable family. I don’t like them frozen, though, or in a can. I like fresh, sweet corn, lima beans, and good ol’ black-eyed peas, and fried green tomatoes …”
Evelyn said, “Did you know that a tomato is a fruit?”
Mrs. Threadgoode, surprised, said, “It is?”
“It sure is.”
Mrs. Threadgoode sat there, bewildered, “Oh no. Here all these years, throughout my whole life, I’ve been thinking they were a vegetable … served them as a vegetable. A tomato is a fruit?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh yes. I remember that from home economics.”
“Well, I just cain’t think about it, so I’m gonna pretend I never even got that piece of information. Now, a brussels sprout is a vegetable, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes.”
“Well, good. Now I feel better.… What about a snap bean? You’re not gonna tell me that’s a fruit, too?”
“No, that’s a vegetable.”
“Well, good.” She ate the last bit of pie and remembered something and smiled.
“You know, Evelyn, last night I had the loveliest dream. It seemed so real. I dreamed Momma and Poppa Threadgoode were standing on the front porch of the old house, waving for me to come over … and pretty soon, Cleo and Albert and all the Threadgoodes came out on the porch, and they all started calling to me. I wanted to go so bad, but I knew I couldn’t. I told them I couldn’t come now, not until Mrs. Otis got better, and Momma said, in that sweet little voice of hers, ‘Well, hurry up, Ninny, ’cause we’re all here waiting.’ ”
Mrs. Threadgoode turned to Evelyn, “Sometimes I just cain’t wait to get to heaven. I just cain’t wait. The first thing I’m gonna do is look up old Railroad Bill—they never did find out who he was. Of course, he was colored, but I’m sure he’ll be in heaven. Don’t you think he’ll be there, Evelyn?”
“I’m sure he will be.”
“Well, if anyone deserves to be there, it’s him—I just hope I know when I see him.”
FEBRUARY 3, 1939
The place was jam-packed full of railroad men at lunchtime, so Grady Kilgore went to the kitchen door and hollered in, “Fix me a mess of them fried green tomatoes and some ice tea, will ya, Sipsey? I’m in a hurry.” Sipsey handed Grady his plate and he walked back in the cafe with his lunch.
Nineteen thirty-nine marked the fifth winter in a row that Railroad Bill had been hitting the trains. As Kilgore passed, Charlie Fowler, an engineer for the Southern Railroad, said, “Hey, Grady, I hear old Railroad Bill hit himself another train last night. Ain’t you railroad dicks ever gonna catch that boy?”
All the men laughed as Grady sat down at the counter to eat. “You boys can laugh if you want to, but it ain’t funny. That makes five trains that son of a bitch has hit in the past two weeks.”
Jack Butts sniggered. “That nigger boy’s got ya’ll jumping every which way, ain’t he?”
Wilbur Weems, next to him, smiled and chewed on a toothpick. “I heard tell he threw a whole boxcar full of canned goods off between here and Anniston, and the niggers got ’em before sunup.”
“Yeah, and not only that,” Grady said. “That black bastard threw seventeen hams that belonged to the United States government right off the damn train, in broad daylight.”
Sipsey giggled as she put his iced tea down in front of him.
Grady reached for the sugar. “Now, that ain’t funny, Sipsey. We got a government inspector coming down from Chicago that’s on my tail. I’ve got to go over to Birmingham and meet him, right now. Hell, we’ve already put on six extra men, over at the yard. That son of a bitch is liable to get me fired.”
Jack said, “I hear nobody can figure out how he’s getting on the trains and how he knows which ones have food on ’em. Or how he gets off before you boys can catch him.”
“Grady,” Wilbur added, “they say you ain’t ever come close to catching him.”
“Yeah, well, Art Bevins almost had him the other night, outside Gate City. Just missed getting him by two minutes, so his days are numbered … you mark my words.”
Idgie was walking by. “Hey, Grady, why don’t I send Stump over to the yard to help you boys out? Maybe he can catch him.”
Grady said, “Idgie, just shut up and get me some more of these damn things,” and handed his plate to her.
Ruth was behind the counter making change for Wilbur. “Really, Grady, I cain’t see what harm it can be. These poor people are almost starving to death, and if it hadn’t been for him throwing coal off, a lot of them would have frozen to death.”
“I agree with you in a way, Ruth. Nobody cares about a few cans of beans, now and then, and a little coal. But this thing is getting out of hand. So far, between here and the state line, the company has already put on twelve new men, and I’m working a double shift at night.”
Smokey Lonesome was down at the end of the counter having his coffee, and piped up, “Twelve men for one little old nigger boy? That’s kinda like shooting a fly with a cannon, ain’t it?”
“Don’t feel bad.” Idgie patted Grady on the back. “Sipsey told me the reason you boys cain’t catch him is because he can turn himself into a fox or rabbit whenever he wants to. What do you think? Do you reckon that’s true, Grady?”
Wilbur wanted to know how much the reward was up to.
Grady answered, “As of this morning, it was two hundred fifty dollars. Probably go up to five hundred before this thing is over.”
Wilbur shook his head. “Damn, that’s a lot of money.… What’s he supposed to look like?”
“Well, according to our people that saw him, they say he was just a plain old nigger boy in a stocking cap.”
“One smart nigger boy, I’d say,” Smokey added.
“Yeah, maybe so. But I’ll tell you one thing, when I do catch that black son of a bitch, he’s gonna be one sorry nigger. Hell, I ain’t been home to sleep in my own bed in weeks.”
Wilbur said, “Well hell, Grady, from what I hear, that ain’t nothing new.”
Everybody laughed.
Then, when Jack Butts, who was also a member of the Dill Pickle Club, said, “Yeah, it must be pretty bad … I hear Eva Bates’s been complaining, too,” the whole place exploded with laughter.
“Why, Jack, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Charlie said. “You ought not to insult poor Eva that way.”
Grady got up and looked around the room. “You know, every one of you boys in this cafe is as ignorant as hell. Just plain ignorant!”
He went to the hat rack and got his hat, and then turned around. “They ought to call this place the Ignorant Cafe. I think I’ll just take my business elsewhere.”
Everybody, including Grady, laughed at that one, because there wasn’t anyplace else. He went out the door and headed for Birmingham.
NOVEMBER 27, 1986
Stump Threadgoode, still a good-looking man at fifty-seven, was at his daughter Norma’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. He had just finished watching the Alabama-Tennessee football game and was sitting at the table with Norma’s husband, Macky, their daughter, Linda, and her skinny boyfriend with the glasses, who was studying to be a chiropractor. They were having their coffee and pecan pie.
Stump turned to the boyfriend. “I had an uncle, Cleo, that was a chiropractor. Course, he never made a dime at it … treated everybody in town free. But that was during the Depression, and nobody had any money, anyhow.
“My momma and Aunt Idgie ran a cafe. It wasn’t nothing more than a little pine-knot affair, but I’ll tell you one thing: We always ate and so did everybody else who ever came around there asking for food … and that was black and white. I never saw Aunt Idgie turn down a soul, and she was known to give a man a little drink if he needed it …
“She kept a bottle in her apron, and Momma would say, ‘Idgie, you’re just encouraging people into bad habits.’ But Aunt Idgie, who liked a drink herself, would say, ‘Ruth, man does not live by bread alone.’
“There must have been ten or fifteen hoboes a day that showed up. But these boys weren’t afraid to do a little work for their grub. Not like the ones they’ve got today. They’d rake the yard or sweep the sidewalk. Aunt Idgie always let them do a little something, so as not to hurt their pride. Sometimes she’d let them come sit in the back room and baby-sit with me, just so they’d think they were working. They were mostly good guys, just fellows down on their luck. Aunt Idgie’s best friend was this old hobo named Smokey Lonesome. God, you could trust him with your life. Never took a thing that didn’t belong to him.
“Those hoboes had an honor system. Smokey told me he heard they caught one that had stolen some silverware out of a house, and they killed him on the spot and took the silverware back to the people he had stolen it from … back then, we didn’t even have to turn a key. These new ones on the road and riding what’s left of the rails are a different breed. Just bums and dope addicts that will steal you blind.