by Han Nolan
Daddy stormed out of the room, and we followed him to the front door. Adrienne kept talking, saying how this was all ridiculous and how she was not there to cause trouble but to live quietly, undisturbed, for a month or so. Daddy wasn't listening. I could tell 'cause he was jingling the change in his pocket the same way he did anytime someone tried to say something he didn't want to hear. He opened the front door, and we heard the sound of gunshots blasting. Daddy stepped outside and stood there jingling his change as fast as he could, waiting for Adrienne to leave.
Adrienne stood in the doorway and looked out to the end of the driveway. "What is that man doing out there? What's going on?"
We were so used to old Mad Joe, we hadn't given him a thought. I watched as he took aim and fired another shot into the road. "Oh, don't worry," I said. "That's just Mad Joe. He likes to shoot worm bellies. 'Course, it being so dry this spring, it's probably just ants or something."
Adrienne nodded. "Ah yes, a quiet, God-fearing town."
2
I had to wait a whole week before I got to tell Sharalee about Adrienne, what with Sharalee's new job at the Food World and all. We had planned to meet in the barn back of the Marshalls' house, only Sharalee was still eating dinner when I got there, so I had to wait out in the barn by myself for her to finish up. I had taken the shortcut, stepping through the hole in the back some cow once made and then got her head stuck in.
I looked around and shivered. The barn was all shadows, and empty except for the coffins. Mr. Marshall makes coffins—just the shells, not the satin and brass accessories—and stores them in the barn. They were lined up so straight and still, every one of them oozing out death like a leak of black oil. I couldn't keep from looking at them, watching them, thinking any minute one of the lids might start to creak open. I tried not to think about it. I busied myself by setting out the food I had brought over, which I always had to do 'cause Sharalee's mama had Sharalee on a diet and wouldn't let her have anything with flavor. Then finally I heard Sharalee's kitchen door slam and her flip-flops slapping at the dirt, and I relaxed and watched for her to step through the hole.
"Hey, girl," she called out, walking toward me and yanking down on her T-shirt. "What kind of dessert you bring me?"
"Nothing much, just some hush puppies left over from dinner."
Sharalee looked them over and gave them a sniff like some old coon dog. "Well, who made them, you or your mama?"
"I did. Mama's gone off to that birdcage convention, remember?"
"She's still gone? I thought that only lasted a week." Sharalee popped a hush puppy in her mouth. "Don't it last just a week?"
"Yes, but she's gone visiting and such. She's gone to Tennessee," I said, repeating what I had said to just about every nosy-body in town.
Sharalee popped another hush puppy in her mouth, even though she wasn't through chewing down the first one. She shook her head. "Weird," she said.
"What's weird?"
She shrugged and licked the grease off her fingers. "Your mama. It's like she puts all her living into one week of convention and the rest of the year she's just—well, kind of—you know."
"No, I don't know, and anyway, what a thing to say!"
"Well, it's not me that's saying it. I heard Miss Tuney Mae Jenkins telling my mama that what your mama needs is more frequent hydration."
"So what is that supposed to mean?"
Sharalee shrugged like what she was about to say didn't mean anything, but I could tell by the gleam in her eyes that she was getting ready to say something cutting.
"It's like she's a prune all year, you know, all dried up, and then come springtime and the convention she turns into a plum. Least that's how Miss Tuney Mae put it." She popped the last hush puppy in her mouth.
"Well, what does she know?" I said, trying to push away the memory I had of Mama the day she left. I could still see her dressed in all that green. Green pants and a green-and-white fern-leaf shirt and a straw sun hat dyed a bright shiny green. Law, if she didn't look just like a parrot escaped from one of her cages. And Daddy was fit to be tied 'cause he said green was way too tacky for a preacher's wife to be running around in. But Mama wore it anyway, so Daddy refused to kiss her good-bye or wave or anything, forgetting, I guess, that Mama and Aunt Nooney were going on to Tennessee to stay with Maggie and them after the convention.
There was no telling how long they'd be away. That's what Mama told me. And the way she said it, tossing it out, carefree-like, and not looking at me when she said it, was strange, not like Mama atall. And I remember her squeezing me and Grace real tight when she hugged us good-bye. Squeezing like she wanted our imprints on her body 'cause the hugs were going to have to last such a long time. Then she got in the car and she and Aunt Nooney rolled out of the drive, their car loaded down with the birdcages they were hoping to trade at the convention. Me and Grace stood on the porch waving at the back of their car, and Mama was waving, too, only she wasn't looking back. I remember that; she never looked back.
I scowled at Sharalee with my hands on my hips. "I've been waiting all week to talk to you and there you are going on about Mama."
"So what? You haven't asked me about my bagging job at the Food World and it's my first week." Sharalee lifted the lid of a coffin and pulled out a bag of chocolate chip cookies. "I'm thinking that maybe the reason you haven't even bothered to call me this week is 'cause you're jealous of my real job in Dothan while you're stuck here in Casper with the farmers and young'uns teaching Vacation Bible School for your daddy."
"I am not jealous. It's just that what I got to tell you I couldn't say over the phone."
Sharalee moved in closer. "Oh? You keeping secrets from your daddy?"
"It's no secret. It's just—Oh, Sharalee! I met her! I saw her and spoke to her. I even went over to her house before she shut herself in for good. She's wonderful! Splendid! Full of creativity, and her artwork's just bursting with artistic merit! Law! Know what she said?"
"Who?" Sharalee asked with her mouth full of cookies and cornmeal. "Who are you even talking about?"
"Adrienne Dabney. Adrienne Dabney! Look." I pointed down at my feet.
"What you got there?" She drew in her breath and choked on the chips or something. "Girl, is that my friendship ring you got stuffed onto your fat old toe?" she asked, coughing and leaning over. "It ist I don't want my ring getting all smelly. Take it off."
"Sharalee, it's artistic. Anyone can wear a ring on her finger but only a creative spirit such as myself would wear it on her toe."
"Creative spirit? Since when?"
"You know I'm artistic. I've gotten an A in art every year of my life."
"Everyone gets A's in art. Charity."
"Yes, well, Adrienne said that I have the artist's eye, the way I stand back and observe the world. She said she noticed it right away the day she came over and she saw me go sit in the ladderback chair over in the corner. You know the one."
"Sure I do. The wobbly, breaking-apart ladderback. The one your daddy says you're supposed to take when there's company so they don't get it and discover it's just for show."
"So what? I would have taken it anyway, even if Daddy hadn't said. Adrienne says I'm an observer of life and someday I'm going to choose my art form and interpret my observations for all the world to see because I'll have this burning desire, this inner urging need to express myself, and most likely I'll have to go to Paris and New York City to do it. She says I got way too much spirit for a small town like Casper and someday, someday soon I'll have to spread my wings and fly." I spun around with my arms spread out and banged into one of the coffins.
Sharalee laughed. "No, you won't. Your daddy won't let you get any farther than Birmingham. You'll go to that Bible college they got there and become a preacher lady, just like you said. Remember?"
"Sharalee, hush."
"Remember you said you had the Holy Spirit come over you in that church in Atlanta where your father preached once? The big one with all the stained
-glass windows? Remember you said how the sun shot through one of those windows and burned down on your head as if God Almighty Himself were breathing down on you?"
"Seems to me you forgot about the flat tire we had on the way back home from there and how all that Holy Spirit just whooshed right out of me like the air in that tire."
"I remember, all right, but you were so full of being holy you went and told your daddy right off and now he's spread it all over how you're going to follow in his footsteps, and just see if you don't."
"You'll be the one who sees, Sharalee. Did you know Adrienne ran off to New York City when she was just sixteen? That's just two years older than us. She moved out from New Jersey and went to live with her aunt."
"Alabama isn't New Jersey."
"So?"
"So you think you can just move on to New York just easy as pie? Who would you live with? All your kin's right here."
"Adrienne. She said I could. She said when Casper just got too small I could stay with her in New York and really discover myself and my art. She calls me 'soul of my soul.' Did you ever? We're artistic soulmates. And soon as she's done with her sensory deprivation project she's going to give me an art lesson. She said for me to be drawing and practicing all this month so I'll be ready. Isn't it just so splendid? Really, Sharalee, isn't it marvelous?"
Sharalee stuffed another cookie into her mouth and rubbed her greasy hands on the sides of her shorts. "If you're such soulmates all of a sudden what are you doing out here with me? Anyway, I'm the artistic one. I make all my own clothes and you don't even know which end of the needle is—"
"Law, Charity, you better git on home, Daddy's pitching a fit!"
I turned around and saw my sister, Grace, and her best friend, Boo, standing in the hole in the wall, panting.
"What's going on?" I asked, already hurrying around the coffins to the hole.
"All's I know is Daddy saw Mad Joe tending that Miss Adrienne's yard, 'cause Miss Adrienne hired him to do it, and Daddy went and said something to him and then Mad Joe said something that got Daddy plenty mad and he came home and said for me and Boo to find you and he said, 'This instant!'"
Boo nodded his head in emphasis.
I didn't even say good-bye to Sharalee. I ran along to the house with Grace and Boo, and there was Daddy waiting for me out on the porch, pacing and jingling the change in his pockets.
He stopped when he saw us coming. "Boo, you run on home now," he said. "And, Grace, you git on in the house and have yourself a bath. You look as if you spent all day in the mud."
The two of them scattered, leaving me to face my daddy. He stood looking down on me from the top of the steps and his face wore such a dark fury I scrunched my toes down into the dirt to keep his look from knocking me over.
I cleared my throat and spoke up. "Grace said you were wanting to see me, so I hurried on home."
"You went to see Miss Dabney?"
"Yes, sir. You never said not to, did you?" I tried to remember. I tried to think back to what he said after Adrienne left that afternoon. I remembered him watching her step off the porch and walk out the drive. I saw him shake his head when she met up with Mad Joe and the two of them started talking in the middle of the road.
"Isn't it fitting," he had said. "The two of them meeting up." He shook his head again and said, "That woman's of the devil."
Then later at dinner he said something about not consorting with the devil and he pounded the table, but I was thinking he was meaning in a general sense. Lots of times he worked on his sermons in his head at the dinner table and he'd just blurt out a sentence he was wanting to use and wouldn't even realize he'd spoken out loud.
"And what's this I hear about a picnic?" Daddy interrupted my thinking.
"Picnic?"
"Mad Joe's set one of his signs out at the end of Miss Dabney's drive all about a—a coming-out picnic. He said you gave Miss Dabney the idea."
My toes were now scrunching so hard the pain of it was shooting clear up the front of my legs.
"She was wanting a way to please you. Daddy. She said the two of you got off on the wrong foot and she feels that when she offended you she offended the whole town."
Daddy spread his legs apart and folded his aims across his chest. "And she's right."
"She said folks were dropping by to take back their pies and such, and they were saying how they were sorry to have bothered her and to forgive them for displaying such unwanted hospitality, and if she didn't want to be taken into the fold, far be it from them to be shoving her into it.
"She was just wanting a way to make it up to them, and so—well, I thought, well, the church picnic is so much fun and everybody comes and it's the biggest event of the year, so I thought—"
"You just thought another one in the middle of the hottest summer on record would be a good idea?"
"I didn't think of it that way. I was just—"
"You weren't thinking at all! My picnic is in the fall because so many of the older folks can't handle the heat. Think of Miss Tuney Mae."
I pinched at my leg and thought about Miss Tuney Mae, ninety if she's a day, and nothing but a mouth and bones.
"My picnic has had years of fine-tuning: where to park the cars, who brings what, time of year, time of day. That's why it works, that's why it's the event of the year. What does Miss Dabney think, she's going to step out her door come the end of July and there we'll all be with food in our hands?"
"I said I'd take care of the details." I said this so low I knew Daddy didn't hear me.
"What?"
I looked up at him. "Daddy, you're right. I wasn't thinking. I don't know what I'm going to do."
"You're going to pull the sign up and be done with it, is what. Either that or you can go fetch yourself a switch sized to fit the deed and have yourself a whipping."
"But I've already made arrangements." My voice was whining. "I talked to the Cobb sisters and they're setting up the grills, and Old Higgs is fishing up the catfish, and freezing it, and I've got—"
"The Cobb sisters!" Daddy started pacing and jingling his change again. Then he turned on me, throwing up his arms and knocking his glasses off center. "They'll blow the place up! Neither one of them's got a lick of sense."
"Daddy, please. Don't let this picnic fall apart. It can't. It just can't. I promised. And, really, Adrienne isn't of the devil, you'll see. She's in there fasting and everything, just like Jesus. In the Bible it says—"
"Just like Jesus! Child, don't you open your mouth again. Don't you say another blasphemous word, or I'll fetch the switch myself. Now, are you going to march yourself over there this instant and pull up that sign?"
"Yes, sir."
Daddy pointed at the road. "Then git!"
And I got, but once I got past the house I slowed down to a dragging crawl and cried the rest of the way there, just knowing the hurt that would be pounding in Adrienne's heart when she came out and saw there wasn't a forgiving soul in all of Casper.
3
I did as Daddy told me and removed the picnic sign from Adrienne's yard, and right away folks started rolling into our driveway wanting to see Daddy. They were all saying the same thing: Someone had taken away Daddy's picnic sign!
Miss Tuney Mae said, "And after you was setting this town a good example and turning the other cheek and all."
Mattie-Lynn Pettit nodded. "Forgiving Miss Adrienne and her New York rudeness is just plain Christian, and I'd like to know who in this town took down your sign."
Then Hank Dooley called out from his truck, "I'm just wanting to see what a woman deprived of her senses looks like."
And Old Higgs, standing in our driveway with his fishing pole in one hand and a cooler in the other, said, "I already caught me a mess of catfish. What am I going to do with it all hold a raffle?"
Before the evening was over Daddy was saying how the picnic would certainly go on as planned and he would have Mad Joe make up a new sign. And by the time of Adrienne's coming-out and
the picnic, Daddy was running the whole show like it was his idea all along, and never a word was said between us that it wasn't. But, law, it was a long thirty days.
Planning the picnic and teaching Vacation Bible School and drawing pictures for Adrienne to see helped fill up the days, but that still left the mornings and the evenings; it still left too much time for thinking about Mama.
Every morning I'd sit up in bed and sniff the air, hoping that Mama had arrived home in the early dawn and was downstairs frying up bacon and eggs for the family the way she used to. At night I'd lie awake wondering where she was, what she was doing, if she was missing me. I'd try to remember her voice, frightened that I could forget how it sounded in such a short time. She called a couple of times and both times it was so noisy in the background with Cousin Maggie and Aunt Nooney and them laughing and carrying on that Mama didn't hear half of what I said, and most of what she said back was, "What? What did you say?" I asked her when she was coming home. I asked her both times, and both times she said how much she missed me and then asked to speak to Grace.
Grace once asked Daddy when Mama was coming home, and he was so mad at her for bothering him with such a question he sent her off to her room to memorize seven Bible verses. From then on, Grace always looked at Daddy like she suspected him of hiding Mama away in the broom closet or something.
Vacation Bible School was only two weeks long, meaning I still had two more weeks to wait for that picnic, and if they didn't drag on like a sweatin' dog on a dusty trail! I couldn't set still long enough to do any decent drawing anymore, and I couldn't help myself, every day I had to walk over to the Dabney place just to see it. Scary thing was, the house still looked the same as it always had, standing out in the field, boarded up and leaning and all. If it weren't for Mad Joe keeping up the yard, and the new sign for the picnic, I would swear I had imagined the whole splendid, marvelous thing.
