A Southern Place (24 page)

The preacher opened his eyes and smiled. He looked at us, then at the casket, then back at all of us again. He raised both his hands and looked upward, saying

“Praise the Lord—I saw the light.”

There was silence, then the harmonica played a long, sad chord.

“Amen,” the preacher said, and he stepped across to us, shaking our hands.

The crowd of mourners followed.

❦

Monday morning came. Mama was dressed for work, yelling at me to get up and get moving before I missed the bus for school. When I tried to argue, she shut me up quick.

“There’s a time for mourning and a time to get back to living. Your Uncle Cal woulda said the same. And if we aim to go on eatin’, after all this funeral food goes bad or runs out, whichever comes first, I gotta keep working.”

“But Mama,” I said. “Everybody at your work knows. And Uncle Cal just died Thursday.”

“I’m aware of when your uncle died, Mary Jane. I’m also aware the future’s lookin’ you dead in the eye, and you have gotta stay in school and keep your grades up, that is, if you wanna be able to leave the great city of Nolan one day.”

Well, that was that.

We went back to our regular routine, a little sadder but still keeping a stiff upper lip around each other. We gave the house on stilts a good cleaning, even washing the dogs and getting some cheap nylon collars with little tags that were supposed to kill fleas and ticks. Mama threw out the sheets and blankets that smelled like what I came to know as the last months of Uncle Cal, but she did it when I was at school so I didn’t notice ’til a week later. She bought a calendar printed with brightly colored English gardens and some little plastic air fresheners at the dollar store, but the look of the place remained the same.

Mama dusted the gun rack with a gentler touch, like it was something precious and valuable. Sometimes I would find myself staring at the picture over the couch, and I swear those dogs playing cards would look back at me.

We were doing the best we could, through the fall and winter, then spring came.

Then Mama got sick.

At first she called it a bad cold and went back to work anyway, hacking and coughing with every breath. When she passed out at her sewing machine, an ambulance took her to the twenty-bed hospital in Baxter. Imogene, her best friend at work, came by that day, after I was in from school. She told me what had happened, and what Mama wanted me to do.

“She says she won’t be there more than a day or two,” Imogene said, “and that you could take care of things on your own, but to make sure you knew she could come home anytime she wanted to, so not to put off doing the dishes or changing the sheets ”til you felt like it.”

Imogene was around Mama’s age, but she’d “lived hard and been put up wet,” as Uncle Cal woulda said. She had the body of a showgirl with the face of an aging alligator.

“I’m thinking she’ll at least be there another three or four days,” she said. “My ex-husband gets the kids on Wednesdays. I’ll go see her then. You wanna come with me?” she asked.

I said nothing, so I guess the eyes looking up at her said it all. She embraced me, hard, folding me into the forty-inch bosom that towered over her girlish waist. It gave and fell downward as I nestled in her arms. She smelled faintly of sweat and talcum powder, the way my mama smelled after work. Her hands hugged down my shoulders and waist, then she pulled away.

“Chile, you ain’t big as a washin’ a soap,” she declared, pretending to sound like the mammy we’d only seen in ancient movies, “with little ol’ legs like chicken wings.”

Uncle Cal had taught me well. “My legs reach the ground, and they’ll carry me wherever I go,” I said.

She hugged me again.

“Take me to the hospital with you, please,” I said. “I need to see her. Take me with you, if you can.”

“I’ll come by Wednesday, after work. If you ain’t here, I’ll wait. Sound okay?”

“Sounds great,” I said.

“Okay, then,” she said, standing up straight, looking towards the door. “You got everything you need? Food, lunch money—report cards, permission slips, $1 for a year of the Weekly Reader?” Imogene still had a kid in primary school.

“We shop for the whole week on Saturday,” I told her. “I’m fine, for everything except a way to see my mama. Thanks, Imogene.”

“No thanks needed,” she said. “Your mama’s done a world of favors for me and a lotta other folks, and as long as I’ve known her she’s never asked for a thing for herself. Helpin’ you kinda makes me feel better, like I’m not takin’ advantage.” Her voice faltered. “And besides, now I can take advantage of her again, if I need to, and I got me like a free pass, you know?”

A week later Mama came home, still coughing up blood, but with enough drugs to knock her out between times. Imogene stayed for the first few days, then school was out. She went home to her kids, and I was there to stay beside Mama both day and night.

At first I slept in a chair, never leaving her side, but as time went on, I worked up the nerve to sleep in on my own bed across the hall. We settled into a kind of routine, not an easy one, but we were adjusting and beginning to feel more comfortable. Then one morning, just before sunrise, she called my name. I woke up excitedly, thinking she was finally getting better.

When I walked in, the room was pale yellow in the first morning light and Mama was sitting up in bed, her faded cotton nightdress open at her neck, which was pale and corded with thick, blue veins.

“You want your breakfast, Mama?” I asked.

“No, Mojo, I don’t want anything to eat, and no more damn medicine, not right now, anyway,” she said. Her voice was barely audible but stern just the same. “I want you to sit up,” she patted the bed. “And listen to me, now, while you can.”

I went over to the bed and sat next to her. I knew what she meant: This was important. I sat up. I listened.

“I won’t be here when you graduate, I’m afraid, but I’ll see you, just the same.” Her voice was thin and raspy and the words came out with great spaces in between. “Considering you’re almost eighteen, DFACS will probably look the other way. You ain’t never been in no trouble, so folks’ll probably just let you be, rather than have to take you on like a charity case. This house we’re living in, it’s already paid for, and it already belongs to you.”

“Whattaya mean?” I asked. It was all I could say.

She paused, the broken shade flapped in the morning breeze and mama’s face lit up briefly before the shade flapped back down again.

“Your Uncle Cal left you this house, that and the land around it, and everything else he owned. We talked about it, and decided it was the best thing to do.” She stopped and swallowed, and her lips quivered. I could hear the rasp of her breath. After several seconds she kept on. “He knew he was dying, and I knew I was sick, but we figured by the grace of God we could make this thing work out. God willin’, it did.” She tilted her head at me and I saw her eyelids twitch like they did sometimes before she cried.

I said nothing.

“Damn, Mojo,” Mama said in a surprising burst of energy. “Think about it.” Her words came out in a rush. “You own the place already, though you didn’t know it ’til this minute, with me as a trustee or some legal name like that, and if you can lay low and keep your nose clean ’til you’re eighteen, no one on God’s earth can change that.”

“But, Mama,” I said, sucking back the overflow and trying not to cry. I followed her story, but didn’t want to live in the moment. Not then, not ever.

Mama sagged down again like a wilted flower, but she kept on. “I’ve got lung cancer, baby. It ain’t gettin’ no better for me. You keep your grades up. Get you a little job after school. Folks’ll think they’re doing you a favor, but they’ll be getting’ a good worker for less’n they’d pay a grown person, so don’t think you owe ’em nothing.”

She took a deep breath in and closed her eyes as though for strength. Her lids looked delicate as the shells of tiny bird’s eggs. “There’s some life insurance money Cal took out on me—don’t you spend it on nothing but school, ya hear?” She opened her eyes and looked at me fiercely. “You gotta place to live, free. Your job’ll pay the ’lectric bill, other little bills. You eat for free at school, and if there’s ever a one-time month you can’t cover it all, you’re a smart girl, you’ll know who to go to for help.” Her voice weakened with each phrase. She sank back down on her pillow.

“Mary Jane—I want you to know I love you,” she said. In the silence that followed, I heard a bobwhite call outside, but mostly all I heard was the in and out of Mama’s thin breath. “I always did,” she said. “You’ve been the one thing in my crazy life that’s been worth it all. And some of the ugliest, and silliest fights I ever had with your Uncle Cal was ’cause a you. For some reason, it always seemed like he could show you how he felt, and you’d believe him, and I was always just the hard-ass bitch that was your mama.”

I felt a knife stick in me that coulda cut through the state of Georgia.

Mama swallowed. Reaching over she patted my hand with hers. It was dry and light as paper. “But you’re a good girl, Mary Jane, and you’re smart. I’ve always been so proud of you, you’re everything any mother, rich or poor or whatever, coulda wanted. And I’ve always felt that way, Mojo.” Her voiced cracked on the last word.

I couldn’t help it, I leaned over and tried to hug her, I wanted a chokehold of life that would connect us ’til Armageddon, but she pushed me away and shook her head: She hadn’t finished.

“This ain’t the best life you coulda got, girl, but they’re folks out there got it a lot worse than you, baby. You’re a Mullinax—if we ain’t nothin’ else, we’re strong. You be strong, too, baby,” she said. “Be strong for Uncle Cal.” She closed her eyes.

“And for you,” I added, smiling like the village idiot. The lump in my throat was like a grapefruit, but I stayed strong.

I was a Mullinax.

Mama died at home on the Fourth of July. While illegal fireworks resonated on the river, I washed her off, changed her gown, brushed out her hair ’til it fell like gold silk over her shoulders, and then I called the funeral home. Having just lost Uncle Cal, I was a seasoned pro: I did what I had to do, and I did it well. I should’ve thanked Uncle Cal for giving me a trial run.

I stayed on in the only completely un-mortgaged-and-paid-for home my family had ever known. The dogs playing cards smiled in approval, and I smiled back. This was our house, and they were my guardian angels.

Oh yeah, they moved the town. No joke. The county commissioners voted, and they figured out a way for some kind of government grant. The whole town: post office, courthouse, grocery store, drugstore, and health department all abandoned their buildings and built new ones on a hill overlooking the Flint River Bridge.

I had me a job at Treadway’s Grocery, deep frying chicken, catfish, and quartered potatoes in the all-new deli section. It paid the light bill. With a discount on groceries, they let me eat in the deli for free.

My senior year was the pits. The year I was supposed to graduate, the county voted to consolidate Nolan High with a neighboring county high school, making it Baxter-Nolan High School, a stupid name if I ever heard one. We had a new, two-story building I lost my way in nearly every day. The Baxter kids treated us, the “Dumb-Ass Doom-Us” county kids, like pure shit.

Now
that
was different. At Nolan High, I was white trash. And I’d been in the same class with the same kids for eleven years. And although I was never student council material, being there that long gave me what they call a street cred, at least. Like, the cool kids would be nice to me when it was time for an election or something. And I was used to that. But now the kids who used to be
cool
were the white trash, so that made the ones like me—less than shit? The Nolan kids, the previously popular ones, were so distraught at not being
anybody
that their entire focus was on making someone else feel worse than them—and that someone would be any kid like me.

In the summer, I had worked every day. It was understood that I’d go to work on afternoons and weekends when school started, but that was before Mr. Treadway realized the deli would be the biggest hit in Nolan history: Durham’s Café had closed and there was no fast food. Everyone has to eat.

By the end of September, he realized he’d have to hire a fulltime day worker for the deli.

“You know I’d love to keep you on, Mojo, but I’ll be paying that person already. I can’t afford to keep you on just for after school and weekends,” he explained.

It was enough for me. I quit school and went to work at the deli fulltime.

My house on stilts was just a quarter mile from the Flint River Bridge: At night I listened as eighteen-wheelers passed by, going north to Columbus, Macon, Atlanta. Going south to Florida.

Always going
somewhere.

It was a cold day in hell when anything stopped here.

Chapter 17: 1982

Mojo

I paid him no never mind, not at first, I didn’t, and I meant not to at
all,
but after I talked to him, well, things changed. People aren’t always as bad as you think they’re gonna be, you have to at least give them a chance, before you make a decision about them. My mama didn’t trust nobody, ’specially men, though she must’ve trusted one at least once or I wouldn’t be here. Anyways, I guess my ways came from her. When I was in school, I was never much interested with the boys, they seemed to like girls that acted all silly and wore nice clothes every day, so I ignored them, and they did the same with me. Didn’t bother me. I was fine, just me and Mama, long as she was alive. Course, then when she died, I was pretty much in a trance: I didn’t do a thing she wouldn’t have approved of, other than quitting school, for a least a good year or two.

No, I wasn’t what you’d call “celibate,” I think the word is, but I was still a virgin when I turned eighteen. Then there was Marty, he worked at the Sing Station by Treadway’s Market. We kinda had a little thing there for a while, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be. We’re still friends, though he avoids me more than I’d have him to. Love him like a brother, I do, but I could never fancy myself being “in love” with him, and it seemed wrong to keep on like we was if I knew I wouldn’t never feel the same as he did. But Marty’s a good guy, he is, and I wish him the best. Honestly.

I worked at Treadway’s more than five years, and I still fill in when they’re hard up and need a favor. But they paid me minimum wage and not a cent more ’til I left ’em. I guarantee you the gals that replaced me make more than that. When I fill in there now, it’s time and a half, sometimes more, but I don’t say nothing. Like my mama said, it’s all water under the bridge. But I learned early on that a waitress making minimum plus tips is a hell of a lot better job than a cook or a cashier that never gets more than a smile extra. And waitresses in the bars make a lot more than the ones at Shoney’s, so it was just common sense that I learned the ins and outs of the nightlife.

I’ve worked a lot of bars around Albany, starting at the Jolly Fox—it seated eight hundred, had road bands and cash-prize dance contests, and all the waitresses were eighteen to twenty-four, naturally or diet-pill thin. Worked my ass off there on weekends, but picked up more in the smaller places during the week. Got to see the clientele as the same types, only different faces, everywhere I went. Learned a few things, a waitress friend and me made up a list I kept on the fridge for a while:

Unwritten Rules of Night Club Life

1.  The younger the guy, the less likely he is to have any money.

2.  All truck drivers lie, though they’ll probably be up and gone before you have time to prove it. Salesmen sell shit you don’t need on a daily basis: Think about it.

3.  Men who want to be all romantic and touchy-feely in public are always married—to someone other than who they’re all touchy-feely with.

4.  Always bring change in quarters and small bills. Alcohol makes for sloppy arithmetic.

5.  Stay away from the guys in the band.

Yeah, I know, that’s the one that should’ve reminded me. But like I said, you can’t keep living thinking everybody’s gonna be just like you thought they would. And I did stay away, in the beginning. Didn’t listen to a word he said, just smiled and played dummy like I do with all those musician guys, he wasn’t the first. Yeah, his singing, when he was singing for the sound of the song and not for the response of the crowd, his singing could take you places. But when the song was over, he was just another guy in the band, he didn’t fool me. And I more or less told him so that first night at the Plantation.

The Plantation Club was no club at all, and the weekend partiers who walked through its doors showed little in common with Old South aristocracy. Open only on Friday and Saturday nights, it existed for those involved in the club scene of neighboring towns, real nightclubs that obeyed state laws and local ordinances. Dumas County seemed to operate by a government all its own.

The common “Blue Law” outlawing the sale of liquor on Sunday had been going on in Georgia since the repeal of prohibition. In college towns, kids paid ten bucks apiece before midnight, then stayed and drank until the kegs were dry. In Atlanta, Macon, and Columbus, last call at eleven-thirty allowed patrons to buy as many drinks as they wanted at once, and the bands played non-stop until one a.m.

But bar-hoppers in south Georgia partied longer and harder than elsewhere in the state, courtesy of the Plantation Club. Twenty miles outside of Albany on a flat stretch of open road, a cinderblock building with pool tables, a dance floor, two full bars and a live band left no holds barred from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. on Saturday nights. Since the bars closed down in every small town in a fifty-mile radius, the Plantation Club was the place to be for folks who wanted to rock the night away.

Danny’s band, Devil’s Whiskey, had played there for two weekends a few months back, and they were back for a three-month stint this time. That Danny was a piece of work, the kind that thought he was put here as a gift from God just for women to look at. He sat on a rickety stool on the stage, tuning his guitars and messing with his amps. He had at least a half dozen pedals and boxes at his feet, more doodads than any of the rest of the band. Come to think of it, he had more stuff than any musician I’d seen in south Georgia. Like he should have been in Foreigner, or Queen, or the Rolling Stones; not some weekend musician playing in the middle of nowhere. As he looked down, his shiny, shoulder-length black hair fell forward into his face, like he was staring at the floor, but I knew his kind. Danny Hatcher might have acted bored, but guys like him were always scoping out the scene, looking to score free drugs or women or anything else that might amuse him for a night.

I fixed up my tables for the night, lighting the candles and setting out cocktail napkins. Listening to conversations close to the stage, an older guy was talking to Devil’s Whiskey about last week’s band.

“Thank God they’re gone,” he said. “Sure, the Saturday Night Fever crowd likes them, I mean, they play Bee Gees, but they’re too candy ass for us. Glad to have ya’ll,” he told the band.

“Yeah! Had a damned girl playing keyboards,” a bearded guy in a Miller Lite cap said. “Played okay, but singing that disco shit. If you’re gonna have a three-piece band, you need a guitar.” He pronounced it git-tar. “You can’t play no real music without a guitar.”

That Danny smiled and nodded, acting like he actually gave a damn about their musical opinions. Then again, he probably thought the damned Beatles couldn’t compete with
him.

“Well, I liked ’em,” said the over-tanned blonde with the stiff Farrah Fawcett cut. “Anyhow, they probably won’t be back. Their drummer got busted in the parking lot Friday night.” She turned toward the stage and smiled, unaware of the gooey gloss on her front teeth. Danny took a rag from his amp, wiped off the strings of his glittery Stratocaster and set it on the guitar stand. Walking to the bar, he pretended he nodded at the folks already at tables but didn’t really look anyone in the eye.

“Bud in a bottle,” he said to Gracie, the bartender who was close to my mama’s age, but my buddy just the same.

“You gotta tab?” she asked, knowing full well he’d run a tab the night before. I loved Gracie.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m with the band. Danny.”

Gracie nodded, handed him a long-necked bottle and marked it in spiral notebook, never looking up.

“Thanks,” he muttered, taking a seat at the bar. He gulped a long swig and surveyed the area, which was half-assed busy for an early Saturday. In just a couple of hours, the place would be uncomfortable, standing-room-only.

Two other waitresses stood at the end of the bar, waiting for their drinks. They smiled at Danny, those knowing smiles that give all waitresses a reputation for being easy. He acknowledged them with a brief nod, then reached in his pocket for a cigarette. Flicking his lighter and taking a long drag, he glanced to my side of the room at crazy Linda, another waitress who must’ve worked every bar in town at one time or another. We stood together, holding our trays. Linda looked back at him, pouted her lips in his direction, then looked back at me, calling him an asshole under her breath. She laughed, then took her drinks and moved on to her tables. Danny continued to stare, now at just me.

He shook his head back, letting his hair fall toward his face, again pretending he saw nothing, but I saw him checking me out through a section of his rock star hair. I’m not stupid: I know I’m not model material, but I have my mama’s eyes and a thin frame that looks decent in the right clothes. My hair is my best feature; golden brown, thick, and wavy. That night it was tied in a loose ponytail on one side of my face, draping over my shoulder to below the breast. I was dressed for comfort as well as for tips: I wore a sleeveless denim shirt, tied in a hard knot at the waist, and tight white jeans.

“Another Bud, please ma’am,” Danny said to the bartender. He twisted off the top and walked toward the stage, trying his damnedest to catch my eye as he walked by.

I walked past him, on towards my tables. I could feel the heat of his stare, as warm as the embarrassing blush I felt rising in my cheeks. Guys like that made me feel dirty, like they could see me naked when I was totally covered up. I guess it made some girls wanna get naked as well, but not me. I had enough crosses to bear without taking up with the likes of that Danny. Or so I thought.

By eleven thirty most tables were full, and the dance floor was comfortably appreciative. The band was doing forty-minute sets, three fast songs to every slow one, with long instrumental rides whenever possible, saving themselves for the after-midnight crowd. I’d just as soon have ’em play more slow ones; it was a lot easier to service my tables when folks were moving slow and close together than when they were shaking it off the floor and in the aisles. It was right dangerous some nights. The band wrapped up the set with a sure thing, one that never failed to fill the dance floor.

Danny sang about being superstitious and believing things he couldn’t understand.
Fool,
I thought to myself. That boy didn’t believe in anything beyond his own conceit or his next conquest. The dancers broke out in wild applause on the last echoing chord.

“Thank you,” Danny said, adding a “hell, yeah! Thank you, folks. We’re Devil’s Whiskey,” he grabbed his beer for a quick swallow, “and we’re taking a short break. Be back in twenty minutes for an hour
-
long set of your dance favorites. If you have a request, write it down and give it to a waitress.” He paused. “And please, folks, don’t forget to tip your waitresses. They’re working their pretty little asses off for you.” He smiled and shared a quick glance at
me,
starting by looking dead in my eyes, then glancing down quickly to my behind, eyes lingering there, and then looking back at me, grinning. Then he leaned back to bring in the band on the downbeat for an ending tag.

“When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer—”
Five eighth notes kept the dancers suspended in midair, drunkenly waiting for the song to continue, standing clueless until all the band members had left the stage.

I took advantage of the break to take orders from my customers; the band was so much louder than the old jukebox, and it was nice to talk without screaming for a change. A couple of guys made smart remarks about my “pretty little ass,” thanks to Mr. Hatcher they now
all
seemed to think my behind was fair game to talk about. Who the hell was he to do that to me? I joked back with obnoxious customers, took their orders, and headed back to the bar. Didn’t he tell them to
tip
my little ass? Hope they listened that far.

That Danny worked the room the way he did most weekends: letting loud, drunken older guys buy him drinks, showing off their fat wallets to girls they hoped to impress. There were hugs and kisses from girls he acted like he barely knew, but may have slept with after one gig or another. He smiled and smooched and acted like they were all best buddies. A leggy redhead drug him to the dance floor for a dry hump to the jukebox, but only for half a song, and long enough to squeeze her ass cheeks in front of everybody, while she rubbed everything God gave her against his front side. Honestly, when did all the normal-looking girls become weekend street walkers? I tried not to watch, but it was hard not to. The bar scene had gotten a lot more brazen in the past few years.

I emptied my trash and took my orders to the bar. Danny grabbed two more beers and meandered back to the stage, accepting hugs and pats on the back. I stood waiting, wishing the room had better air conditioning or that there was a way to outlaw cologne and require anti-perspirant.

To start this set, Danny strapped on the flashy white and chrome guitar, the “Travis Bean” he’d be paying for another two years. He counted off the first song, and I watched the dance floor fill.

Danny sang, his voice as near a match to David Bowie’s as his grinding lead guitar to the original. The crowd went wild. Rednecks who’d never let a Bowie look-alike cross their own county line were dancing, clapping, and lifting their hands toward heaven. The song ended but the drummer’s bass pedal never stopped, continuing straight into the intro for Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City.” Not one couple left, and tables began to push against the walls, making for an outer edge of dancers around their assigned space.

It was kind of fun to watch the change in those girls’ dancing in the next set, and I was kind of sorry for the poor guys they were partnered with. The girls would dance at the guys in the band, mainly Danny, doing stripper-like moves with their clothes left on and looking directly into his eyes. If one girl noticed another trying the same antics, the floorshow became a slut-off right there for the world to see.