Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen

by Susan Gregg Gilmore

  Granddaddy watered, fertilized, pruned, and talked scripture to those vegetables every day. I imagine they heard every sermon he ever preached. Daddy said his daddy would come in from the garden with dirt on his hands and sweat dripping off his brow and say with a smile on his face, “Now son, those there are some true Baptist vegetables.”

  Daddy said he marched into his Sunday-school class one day with his chest all puffed up, holding a yellow squash so big that he had to carry it in both hands. He informed his teacher that his daddy was such a powerful man of God that even his vegetables had found the Lord. His Sunday-school teacher told him that may very well be, but she hoped his son and his vegetables remembered that the meek and the mild were the ones who were going to inherit the Kingdom of God. Then she took that squash home and fried it up for supper.

  Of course, I imagine those poor plants also heard a thing or two about the choir director driving down to Florida during the dead of night so he could bet on the greyhounds. Or about Brother Hawkin's baby daughter who was shipped off to Texas to live with an aunt because she had gone and gotten herself in the family way in the back of her boyfriend's pickup truck before taking the time to say, “I do.”

  Granddaddy must have grown tired of listening to people complain about the color of the cushions in the pews or the cost of the new hymnals or how much meat loaf the young deacon, Brother Fulmer, whose faith in the Lord was as big as his appetite, ate at Wednesday-night suppers. Every preacher must need a place where he can hide from his flock, and that garden must have been my granddaddy's secret hiding spot. He probably felt closer to God hidden among those stalks of corn than anywhere else on this earth, probably the way I felt sitting on that picnic table at the Dairy Queen.

  When my daddy was only eighteen years old, Floyd Marshall asked him to come and join him behind the pulpit. He said he was getting tired and needed his son's strong back and patient ear to help keep his flock from falling from grace.

  I think my daddy had been ready to step behind that pulpit since he was old enough to talk. He loved all people, and they loved him right back. He was named Marshall William, after both his daddy and granddaddy, and he had a good portion of each in his blood. He was tall like his daddy but solid and thick like his granddaddy, and he looked like he could save you from a burning building just as easily as from the fires of hell.

  He spoke with such confidence and persuasion that it wasn't long before everybody in town started comparing him to the great William Floyd, and people from as far away as Dalton started coming to Cedar Grove Baptist Church just to hear him preach. Daddy kept photographs of William Floyd and Floyd Marshall on his desk at the church. He said their faces reminded him every day of his reason for being.

  Not more than a year after assuming his new position, he married my mama, Lena Mae Pierce. My mama's family was from Willacoochee, a town even smaller than Ring-gold situated down in the southern part of the state. She had come north one summer with a girlfriend who was visiting relatives, and she and Daddy met at the Fourth of July fireworks celebration on the field behind the high school.

  Daddy said it was love at first sight. Mama was beautiful, and he said he took one look at her with those big brown eyes shining like moonbeams and knew there was no other woman for him. By Labor Day, they were engaged, and they married the following month on Mama's birthday, the twenty-fifth of October. She was only sixteen when they married, but Daddy said she was mature for her years. Sometimes I couldn't help but wonder if Mama had just been looking for a way out of Willacoochee, and sometimes I wondered if she wished she had stayed. I've never met any of my mama's family. Daddy said Mama leaving Willacoochee was the best thing that ever happened to Lena Mae.

  Granddaddy died shortly after their wedding, and Daddy said the day he left this world was one of the saddest days of his life. But he also said the day I was born, nine and a half months after they returned from their honeymoon in Gatlinburg, was one of the happiest. He said that for every angel that leaves this world there's another waiting to take his place. And I guess I was the one waiting in line to take my granddaddy's place.

  Mama stayed home and took care of me. She tended to the house, the one Daddy said he bought just for her. It was a white-framed house with a big porch that stretched clear across its front. All day long Mama cooked and washed and cleaned. She even tended to the tomatoes she planted right outside the kitchen door. But when the day was nearly done, Mama would rock on that porch and watch the sun fall behind Taylor's Ridge. Sometimes Daddy would sit along next to her with a big smile on his face. He had everything he ever wanted.

  Daddy worked at the church almost every day. When his granddaddy started preaching, Cedar Grove was nothing more than a lean-to in a little clearing of cedar trees not far from where our house stands now. But today there's a real brick building and a fellowship hall and eight classrooms for Sunday school. Daddy hoped that in the next few years he could build a swimming pool right behind the pulpit so he could baptize people inside the church building.

  One thing was for darn sure, my daddy never needed to grow a secret hiding place. He could listen to people chatter on and on about the silliest things in the world and always seem interested. He just saw the best in everything and everybody, and I think people really felt like they were in the presence of God when they were with my daddy. They must have been because he even found it in his heart to love Emma Sue Huckstep.

  Every Saturday before Easter, Emma Sue's grand-mamma planned a big egg hunt at Cedar Grove Baptist Church. Hidden in the bushes and the tall green grass were all sorts of candy eggs—brightly colored, speckled eggs with malted milk inside and creamy marshmallow eggs with dark chocolate shells. There were even plastic eggs filled with jellybeans and pieces of bubblegum. But the egg to be had was the golden egg. It was the biggest, most beautiful egg of all, made of solid milk chocolate and wrapped in shiny gold foil. The sunlight reflecting off that egg was almost blinding. When I was real small, I was convinced Jesus Himself had sent this egg to Cedar Grove. He had sent this egg hoping it would be found by little Catherine Grace Cline.

  But every year, Mrs. Roberta Huckstep took her granddaughter by the hand and led her right to the holy egg. Mrs. Huckstep owned a small gift shop in town and for some reason seemed to think that because she knew something about leaded crystal and fine bone china that she was better than the rest of us and that her precious Emma Sue was the only one among us who could appreciate such a heavenly piece of chocolate.

  With her blond, curly hair tied back in a big pink bow, that bratty Emma Sue would sit on the front steps of the church, and with a big stupid smirk stretched across her face, would hold that golden egg in her hands as if she'd won some first-place trophy. She was rubbing my face in it, and I just wanted to rub her face and that big pink bow in the mud.

  “Looks like Jesus was smiling down on you again this year, Emma Sue,” Mrs. Huckstep would say, like she actually believed her precious little granddaughter, in her precious little white smocked dress, had found that egg on her own, her uncanny sense of direction coming straight from the Lord above.

  I know I was taught that Jesus loves all the children in the world, but sometimes I wished He had made one exception with that Emma Sue. Martha Ann and I would stomp our feet and beg Daddy to make Emma Sue give back that egg. “It isn't fair,” we'd cry in unison, sounding almost as though we'd been practicing our refrain.

  And we weren't the only ones complaining. Three or four deacons were regularly standing right behind us, waiting their turn to talk to the preacher. But as usual, Daddy knew just what to say to calm the crowd, something about the real gift of Easter not being hidden in the bushes or something Christian like that. Then one year, when Brother Buford Bowden, the town's only doctor and the same Brother Bowden who had donated all the money for the Bowden Fellowship Hall, finally threatened to join the Presbyterian Church in Fort Oglethorpe, Daddy came up with the idea of hiding two golden eggs, the second secretly placed well ou
t of sight of Mrs. Huckstep's roving eyes.

  It seemed to make the hunt a little more equitable, at first. But funny thing, Brother Bowden's niece, Mary Cummings Bowden, was always the lucky girl who found the second egg.

  Walking home with Daddy after the hunt one year, Martha Ann and I were kicking up the dirt on the road, griping about Emma Sue and Mary Cummings. Daddy calmly looked at us and said, “Girls, life's not fair. You know that by now. But I promise you there is a golden egg waiting for you, somewhere, someday.”

  Maybe, but one thing I had already figured out was that my golden egg was not hidden anywhere in Ringgold, Georgia.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dreaming of the Promised Land

  My mama died when I was six years old. I don't remember much of anything about her dying. I imagine I pushed those memories about as far out of my head as possible. All I really do remember was Ida Belle Fletcher and the blue-haired ladies from the Euzelian Sunday-school class who came and cared for Martha Ann and me in the days right after Mama's accident.

  I called them the Zillions, partly because I couldn't pronounce their name and partly, I think, because there seemed like a million of them huddled in my house. I know they meant well, but I just wanted them to go home and leave us alone. They didn't make peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches like my mama. They didn't brush my hair like my mama, and they certainly didn't smell like my mama. And they kept saying the same thing over and over again like a choir singing some plaintive hymn, “Oh, you poor little children, your mama has passed and left you and your daddy alone. Oh, sweet Jesus. Oh, sweet Jesus.”

  Funny thing is, “passing” didn't sound like dying to a little girl. At first I thought Mama must have passed on over to the next county like Buster Black or some bird flying across the sky. But surely if she had passed over, she would pass on back soon. Even Buster came home. She wouldn't leave me and Martha Ann like that. Years later, Daddy told me that after Mama died, I watered her tomatoes every single day, all summer long, just waiting for her to come home and tell me what a good job I'd done.

  I begged and begged Jesus to bring my mama back to me, but He didn't answer that prayer, either. Finally, I decided that heaven must be something really special, like the picture in my Bible where the streets are paved with gold and the blue sky goes on forever. It had to be more beautiful than even I could imagine if my mama couldn't bring herself to walk out those pearly gates and find her way back to Ringgold, Georgia. Then again, I figured Ringgold probably wasn't much of a temptation for an angel living in a golden paradise.

  After the funeral, nobody really talked about my mama much, not even my daddy. I guess everybody thought it would be too painful for me and Martha Ann. I think it was just too painful for them, because I could never hear enough about her. I was always thirsty for more.

  Mama drowned in Chickamauga Creek, which is known on occasion to run pretty fast, especially after a thunderstorm. Daddy said she had gone down to the creek to pick some blackberries late one afternoon in the middle of July. She loved the taste of those wild berries, and she always picked enough so she could make a batch of blackberry jam. That way, Mama said, she could eat her berries all year long.

  Daddy said she walked along the creek a mile or so south of town to a small clearing just beyond the old gristmill where the blackberries grew particularly thick. She must have gotten hot and waded out into the water to cool herself off and wash the chiggers off her legs. I can still picture my mama standing in the middle of the creek in her white cotton slip, with her long, brown hair hanging down her back, dripping with water.

  Mama was a good swimmer. She had already taught me to keep my head above water. But the sheriff told Daddy that she slipped, hit her head on a rock, and fell, unconscious, into the current. The water wouldn't let go and took her away from me and Martha Ann.

  The blue-haired ladies kept whispering in each other's ears. I knew they were talking about the poor preacher's wife, but all I really knew for sure was that when the sun set on that hot, sticky summer day, my mama was gone forever.

  I've kept the same picture of her on my dresser for as long as I can remember, and then I've kept another one locked in my head, which I can see better than any old piece of paper. And even now when I'm lying in bed at night with my eyes closed tight, I can see her pretty face with her deep brown eyes and full, pink lips. I can touch her soft skin and smell the Jergen's lotion that she rubbed on her arms and legs before going to bed. In this picture, she talks to me. She tells me that she loves me. She tells me that she's sorry she had to leave me. She even sings “Hush Little Baby,” her perfectly pitched voice lulling me back to sleep.

  Then I wake up, and she's gone.

  I have lots of little pieces of memories of my mama and then I have one very vivid one, and I've guarded every detail of it as if it's some secret golden treasure. I was playing in the backyard with my baby doll, pushing her around in a little carriage Mama got me at the S & H Green Stamp store down in Dalton. The carriage was white with a delicate navy pattern scrolled around the sides, and it had a matching navy hood I could pull up to protect my baby's eyes from the bright sunlight. Mama had collected those green stamps for months at the Shop Rite before she could get me that stroller. It took five whole books of stamps, most of which I licked myself. Mama placed them all real neatly on each page until the books were full.

  “Catherine Grace, I do think your tongue is going to turn green licking all those stamps,” I remember her saying. “Sweetie, that's why I put the kitchen sponge there, so you don't have to do so much licking and tire your tongue out so.”

  Daddy said I pushed that buggy around the backyard for hours while Mama did her chores. She'd prune and water her tomatoes and then let me pick the really red ones, the ones she was going to serve with dinner. She'd hang the day's laundry on the clothesline that stretched from the house to a pole stuck out in the middle of the yard, making our house look like a ship about to set sail. All the windows were wide open and Loretta Lynn, Mama's favorite singer, was playing on the radio in the living room. Loretta's voice just floated across the backyard serenading us both. Mama sang along, like she was standing there with her onstage at the Grand Ole Opry.

  It's funny how you can take just one memory of someone and create a lifetime of feelings and attachments. Sometimes I think I'm really lucky. Martha Ann was only four when Mama died. She doesn't have any memories of her at all, only the same black-and-white photograph I have sitting on my dresser. I think she carries another one around in her head, too, but I think to Martha Ann, Mama sounds more like Miss Nancy on Romper Room.

  The Lord would heal our hearts, Daddy kept telling us. But mine never did quit aching, and eventually I decided that the Lord had forgotten about Catherine Grace and Martha Ann Cline. He had forgotten about the preacher's daughters in Ringgold, Georgia, who needed their mama.

  But Daddy never lost his faith, not for one minute. He said God didn't take Mama away. It was an accident, and God doesn't cause accidents. He just helps us cope with them. Then he'd call to mind some part of a hymn, trying to comfort me with a bunch of rhyming words.

  “The Lord will strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand upheld by His righteous, omnipotent hand.” Daddy always spoke the words ’cause he knew, unlike Mama, he couldn't carry a tune.

  One day, I asked Daddy what omnipotent meant, and he said it was a big fancy way of saying “more powerful than anybody or anything in the whole wide world.” “In other words, hon, it means there's nothing the Lord can't do.”

  Yeah right, I thought to myself. If God was really, truly omnipotent, He could have kept one needed mama from slipping on a stupid rock. But I still went to Sunday school every week wearing my best dress and my patent-leather shoes, looking like I had absolutely no complaints with the all-powerful One. I had everybody at Cedar Grove Baptist Church, even my own daddy, thinking I was the most Jesus-loving girl in town. Sometimes I wondered if I even had the Omnipotent One fooled, too. />
  Truth be told, even though I had grown a bit tired of waiting on the Lord to get around to answering some of my most pressing questions, I found an unusual amount of pleasure in reading His good book. Well, at least the stories. I figured if Noah could survive a flood that covered the entire earth while rocking around in a homemade boat filled with a zooful of animals, and David could beat up a giant with nothing more than an old slingshot he fashioned together with a sturdy stick and a piece of leather, then maybe little old Catherine Grace was going to find her way out of Ringgold after all.

  But Moses was my favorite. His life was exciting from the minute his mama birthed him. This mean, old Egyptian king commanded that all the Hebrew baby boys be killed, including Moses. So his mama put him in a basket and floated him out into the river so the king's daughter would find him and protect him. Then his mama, who must have loved him something awful, pretended to be some kind of maid or something and offered to help the princess take care of her newly found baby boy.

  When he was all grown up, Moses got a message from God telling him he was going to lead all the Hebrew people out of Egypt. Moses was sure God had gone and gotten the wrong man for the job, apparently forgetting momentarily that He was the Omnipotent One. But God reminded him, even parting the Red Sea square down the middle so Moses could walk the Israelites right out of slavery once and for all.