by Amy Metz
“How in the world did you do that, Moody?”
Moody shrugged. “I was slicing beef roast, and I did like this.” He put his hand up to the meat slicer and cut another finger off.
“Don’t that beat all.” Slick cut off the meat slicer. “I tell you what. If I were you, I wouldn’t do that again.” He reached for the phone to call 911.
Moody stared at his hand. “Yeah. I’m about to run out of fingers.”
Slick hollered for Fern to bring a bucket of ice so they could preserve the fingers. Then he sat down next to Moody who looked to be in shock. He wanted to take the man’s mind off his pain, so he said the first thing that came to mind. “Is it hot enough for ya?”
She ain’t no slow leak.
~Southern speculation
Stooped over and peering into the oven, Maude looked up when her husband, Claude, propped himself in the doorway looking sheepish. They’d been married for fifty-six years and she knew that look.
“I’m going up to the corner for a spell. I’ll be back before long.” His eyes were on his watch instead of his wife.
She stood up straight (as straight as a 75-year-old woman with osteoarthritis can stand), closing the oven door and giving him a long look. “Up to the corner means the Magnolia Bar, and before long means hours.” She stood glaring at him, with her hands propped on her hips and her head shaking back and forth. She always shook and usually talked nonstop, whether anyone was around to hear or not. That’s just the way she was—she talked and shook, talked and shook.
He stared blankly back, saying nothing, and then he walked up to her, taking her face in his hands and caressing it with his thumbs, trying in vain to stop the shaking and the anger in her eyes.
“Aw now, Maude,” he crooned, “you’ll be busy all afternoon cooking and won’t even miss me. I’ll be back in time for dinner. You don’t think I’d miss Easter dinner, do you?”
His charm worked on her . . . like a charm. She softened and said, “The kids will be here at four.”
Kissing her on her cheek, he said, “See you then, pretty lady.”
“You’d better, Claude, you’d better!” she shouted after him. She went back to making potato salad, shaking and muttering about the uselessness of a man.
At four o’clock, the ham was out of the oven, the green beans were simmering on the stove, the potato salad was mounded high in her mother’s cobalt blue bowl, the deviled eggs were arranged on the deviled egg plate they’d gotten as a wedding present, and the coconut cake stood proudly on the cake stand. Maude slid the cornstick pans into the oven just as she heard the voices at the front door.
“Yoohoo! Anybody home?”
Wiping her hands on her apron, she hurried to the door for hugs and kisses from her two daughters and their husbands. “Don’t you look pretty.” She clasped her hands together in delight. “Y’all look like Easter eggs in your bright dresses.”
“Where’s Daddy?” Callie, the oldest one, asked.
“He’s up to the corner for a spell. Said he’d be back in time for dinner.”
Maude ignored the look exchanged by her daughter and son-in-law.
“What you got there?” Maude asked Callie.
“Jell-O Easter eggs. Aren’t they the cutest?”
Maude looked at the orange, red, and green jiggly egg-shaped Jell-O. “How’d you do that, Cal?” Her head shook in time with the quivering Jell-O eggs.
“With a mold. It’s real easy.”
“I brought tomato aspic, Mama,” Jenna said, holding out the dish of deep red gelatin with carrots, celery, and green pepper sprinkled throughout.
“My favorite, darlin’. C’mon, bring everything back to the kitchen. Or better yet, g’won and put it on the dining room table. Everything’s almost ready. Soon’s the cornsticks are ready and your daddy gets home, we’ll eat.”
Fifteen minutes later, the cornsticks were out of the oven, but Claude wasn’t home.
Twenty minutes after that, the cornsticks were lukewarm, and Claude still wasn’t home.
“Y’ont I should go and get him, Mama?” Callie’s husband, Campbell, asked.
Maude stood in the dining room doorway, shaking and surveying the table. It was set with her mama’s good china, silverware, etched crystal glasses, and cloth napkins. She’d done the hydrangeas and peony centerpiece herself. It was Easter. And Claude was at the Mag bar.
Nobody was really surprised. He’d done it for just about every holiday except Christmas, and he’d only been home then because the bar was closed on Christmas. He knew she spent days preparing for the meal. He knew the family would be there. He knew how important it was to her, yet more often than not, he was either late or missed the meal altogether because he was up at the bar boozing.
Campbell touched her tissue-paper-crinkled arm. “I can just run up and bring him on back, okay?”
She patted his hand, and her eyes lit up. A smile spread across her face, and she must’ve looked a bit wicked because Campbell stepped back, his mouth shaped in an O.
“No thank you, Campbell. If Claude can’t find his way back home in time for Easter dinner, we’ll just take it to him.”
The family gaped at her.
Thirty minutes later, Maude, decked out in her Easter bonnet, marched down the sidewalk, shaking and muttering, with her daughters and their husbands trailing behind. Everyone’s arms were laden with dishes. Maude opened the door to the Mag Bar and stepped inside, pausing to allow her eyes to adjust to the dim light inside. Once she had her bearings, she took her picnic basket full of china and silver and headed for the biggest table in the center of the room. She pulled a white linen tablecloth from the basket and covered the scratched, sticky table.
Next, she set the table with the silverware, china, and crystal. She took the centerpiece from Campbell, as the girls placed the food around the table. When everything was pretty as a magazine spread, Marie stood up straight, smoothing her dress with her hands, and called across the room to her husband, who was sitting at the bar staring at her, along with everyone else.
In her sweetest voice possible, she said, “Claude, would you care to join us?”
Claude didn’t miss another holiday meal after that. Ever.
There’s no fool like an old fool.
~Southern conjecture
Back in the day, Clive Pierce was a farmer and a tradesman. He prided himself on being able to get the best of every deal he made. One afternoon, a gentleman had come to the farm looking to buy a pig. The men dickered for about ten minutes then shook hands. The man took his new pig with him and Clive pocketed some cash.
Later that afternoon, Clive’s wife, Martha, came out of the house looking for him. She realized it had been quite some time since she’d seen him.
She walked into the barn, where she found her son Billy. “You seen your pa?”
He cocked his head. “No, actually, now that you mention it, it’s been a few hours.” Billy followed her out of the barn and to the pigpen, where they found Edna Earl, feeding the pigs.
“You seen your pa?”
She put her hands on her hips. “It’s been a few hours.”
Martha nodded, turned on her heel, and headed down the hill, her son and daughter following.
They walked toward the fields and she saw her two sons, Freddie and Eddie, standing ramrod straight, leaning slightly into one another, in the field next to the barn. Claude Davis, a neighbor, stood nearby with his hands in his pockets, eating an apple and looking from one man to the other as they fought.
“You know what you are? You’re a gross ignoramus.” Freddie started to turn around but changed course and faced Eddie again. “And that’s 144 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus.”
“Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is?”
“Boys, what in tarnation is going on back here?” Martha stopped next to Eddie and clapped him on the shoulder. “What’s got you two so riled up?”
“Mama, how long I been growing mushmelons?
” Eddie jammed his hands on his hips. “And how long has he been growing them?” He hitched his thumb in his brother’s direction.
“Oh, prolly about the same amount of time, I reckon.”
“And which one of us grows the best crop every dern season?”
“Oh, whichever one has the biggest mushmelon, I reckon.”
“Well, I propose a contest. The Best Crop Contest. And we’ll let daddy be the judge on,” he thought for a moment and then finished his thought, “August first.”
“Speaking of your daddy, you boys seen him lately?”
The boys shook their heads and went back to arguing. Martha, Edna Earl, and Billy kept walking. Down the hill they went, toward the sorghum mill. And there he was. He had a mule hooked up going around and around grinding cane into sorghum, and he walking alongside the animal, talking to it. Martha picked up speed, determined to give him a piece of her mind.
When she got closer, she heard what he was saying to the mule: “I took fifty, shoulda got a hundred. I took fifty, shoulda got a hundred . . . ”
Clive Pierce sat in the rocking chair on the lawn of his home, slowly rocking back and forth, listening to the birds sing and the wind rustle the leaves on the trees. It was a quiet summer day in Goose Pimple Junction until he saw Jimmy, the grocery delivery boy, pedaling toward him from town.
“Afternoon, son. Hireyew?”
“Doing all right, sir. Doing all right.” Jimmy’s “all right” came out like “aw rot.”
Clive squinted up at the almost grown man. “What’s your name again?”
“Jimmy Pierce, sir.” He swallowed hard.
“Pierce.” Clive stroked his chin. “We related?”
“Don’t rightly know, sir.” His hands went in his pockets, and he kicked softly at the grass.
There was a gleam in Clive’s eye. “Do you like to drink whiskey?”
“Yeah.” Jimmy nodded sheepishly.
“Do you like the women?” Clive’s forehead wrinkled, his eyebrows rising slightly.
“Well, yeah.” Jimmy’s cheeks blossomed with two red patches.
Clive sat up and leaned toward Jimmy. “Do you like to bet on the ponies from time to time?”
“Yeah.” Jimmy hung his head.
Clive’s chin jutted out, and he whispered, “Do you like a nice cigar from time to time?”
“Uh huh.”
Clive kicked his heel up and slapped his knee in the air. “Come quick, Martha! We have a full-blooded Pierce here.“
They were still laughing about that when Edna Earl, Clive’s grown daughter came out into the yard.
“Edna Earl,” Jimmy said, “I was actually here to talk to you.”
“Oh?” She cocked her head.
“You know that land you have up on Buttermilk Pike?”
“Yeah, I know it. Daddy here gave it to me.”
“You wouldn’t be interested in selling it, would you?”
“Well, now, I might entertain an offer or two.”
Jimmy sidled closer to the woman. “How much you think it’s worth?”
“Oh, about as much as someone’s willing to pay.” Her smile was genuine, but she had learned the art of trading from her daddy, and she wasn’t about to tip her hand.
Jimmy chuckled. “True, that. Well – “ he reached into his pocket and pulled out a golf-sized pencil and a scrap of paper, “would you take this?” He scribbled something on the paper and handed it to Edna Earl.
She took it, looked at the number he’d written, and then said, “That and ten thousand more.”
He shook his head and walked away but returned a few days later. Clive was in his usual spot in the front yard, and he called for his daughter to come outside when he saw Jimmy approaching the house.
“I’ve decided to meet your price.” He was sweating under the noon sun and wiped his brow.
Edna Earl shielded her eyes against the bright sun. “Well, that’s a shame, because my price has gone up another five thousand.”
Jimmy walked away shaking his head.
This went on four or five times, until he returned one day with fire in his eyes. He handed her a slip of paper and said, “This is my final offer.”
She scrunched up her mouth and handed the paper to her father. Clive looked at it. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a stubby pencil. He wrote something on the paper and handed it back to his daughter.
She looked down at the scrap and saw he’d scribbled: Take it take it take it!
You took as long as a month of Sundays.
~Southern hyperbole
Jack and Tess were having a picnic at their favorite spot on a hill overlooking Goose Creek. Tess loved the old trees and the wild flowers that dotted the area. She had just finished eating a chicken wrap, and she was taking a sip of sweet tea when Jack said, “Let’s get married.“
Too much tea went down her throat in one gulp, and she coughed for several seconds, her hand on her Adam’s apple. Finally, she choked out, “Excuse me?”
“I think we should get married.” He said it as if he were reporting the weather.
“Um . . . no.” She began cleaning up the wrappers and napkins.
“Come again?”
“No, thank you.” She smiled disingenuously.
“Well, well why not?” His back became ramrod straight.
“Jack, you know I love you – ”
“So let’s get married.”
She held out her index finger. “Number one, I don’t think a marriage proposal should be made so lightly. I’m not asking you to wear shining armor and gallop up on a horse, but I’m not about to take a marriage proposal seriously when the question could just as easily have been ‘Would you like pie?’”
He shook his head. “We don’t have any pie.”
She rolled her eyes. “It was just an example.”
“What’s number two?”
“We’ve only been seeing each other for a short time. It’s too fast.”
The subject was changed that day, but Jack persisted. A few days later, he took her fishing. It was summertime, and the trees were lush and full; the sun shone on the water like diamonds. Jack fished and Tess watched, enjoying the scenery, the nice day, and being with Jack. He pulled his line from the water and reeled it in. Walking together to another spot, he said over his shoulder to her, “Marry me.”
“No,” was her quick response.
He just shook his head.
She spread out her hands. “Jack, you have a fishing pole in your hand, for heaven’s sake.”
“So?”
Soon after that, they were playing Scrabble, and he spelled out MARRY ME on the game board.
She scowled at him. “You cheater. There’s no way you just happened to get those tiles.”
He simply shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well?”
She had to wait several turns, but she finally got the right tiles to make the word NO.
Tess was walking to work one day when she saw single letters written in chalk on each square of the sidewalk ahead spelling out, MARRY ME, PLEASE? The please was written in extra heavy chalk. One square of sidewalk had a whole message written on it: I LOVE YOU A TON except the last two words ran together and looked like ATON.
She laughed out loud and pulled out her cell phone, first taking a picture of the sidewalk message, and then texting Jack: No.
His immediate reply: Ah, come on, Boo. Why not? We’re perfect for each other.
You’re very cute, but it’s too soon.
The next day, she got a letter in the mail reminiscent of the threatening letter she’d gotten just a month before. Jack had imitated that letter by also writing the message in cutout magazine letters:
PLeAse
mARRy
ME
That night, she climbed in bed and turned out the lights. As she lay there, glow in the dark letters appeared on her ceiling over her bed with the now familiar message: MARRY ME.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she
said to the dark room.
Her text notification chimed. She picked up her phone and saw Well? on the screen.
She typed, How did you know I just saw your message?
I’ve been sitting outside your house for 30 minutes waiting for the light to go out.
Then another message rolled in: What say you?
Too soon.
There was no response.
She lay there in the dark thinking about Jack. She loved him more than was probably sane and couldn’t imagine life without him. He was everything she’d ever wanted in a man. So why wasn’t she saying yes? Tess loved his sense of humor, and she laughed more with him than she ever had with anyone else, but she had a nagging feeling that she was ahead of him in the falling in love department. And they’d only been together for a few months. She fell asleep thinking, It’s too soon, and he’s not taking this seriously. Marriage isn’t a game.
As if Jack read her mind, he upped his game. He came to her house one night and not so nonchalantly asked, “So what is your ring size?”
She mockingly swooned. “You’re so romantic.”
He put his hands in the air. “I can’t get you a ring if I don’t know what size to get.”
“And you can’t surprise me if you ask obvious questions like that.”
“Okay. How about this for a surprise?” He pulled a ring box from his jacket pocket and opened the lid. A two-carat sparking diamond ring sat in the cushion.
She gasped and her hand flew to her mouth. “Jack,” was all she could say.
He got down on one knee and said, “Tess Tremaine, will you please marry me?”
