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Authors: Ruth White

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BOOK: Belle Prater's Boy
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I
n midsummer the apples were getting some size to them. They were bending the tree branches down, and you could smell them when the breeze was just right. But you couldn't eat them yet, because they were too bitter. Woodrow tried it and got a fearful bellyache.
There were blackberries and raspberries growing wild along the creek bank. And from Grandpa's patch of garden in that sunny place behind the shed, butter beans and green beans, summer squash, tender cucumbers, and melons of all shapes and sizes were coming on.
It was the best time of year for good stuff to eat. There were always fresh berry pies cooling on the
kitchen windowsills, and there was corn bread to crumble up in your vegetables, and fried green tomatoes and okra. You could drink cold buttermilk with your roastin' ears, and dribble hot pork drippings over your garden salad. There was nothing like it.
It was also the time of year for Mama's annual garden party, the social event of the season. It was always written up as such in the
Mountain Echo
's social section. In the past I had dreaded it worse than a typhoid shot, but that summer of 1954 was different, because Woodrow was there. He was interested in everything and almost everybody, and the way he looked at things with fresh eyes made me see them fresh, too.
It was an especially hot, humid summer afternoon the second week of July. Grandpa and Porter moved tables and chairs down by Slag Creek at the edge of the orchard near the tree house. The gardenias there were in full bloom and aroma. It was my favorite flower. Sometimes I could smell it in my dreams.
It was mine and Woodrow's job to get all the names of the women there and make sure they were spelled right for the newspaper. We were also in charge of serving refreshments, which consisted of dainty sandwiches of exotic substances, mints, nuts, and Mama's special drink, which she named Peach Ice. It was made with vanilla ice cream, fresh peaches, and ginger ale.
Mama had me wear a plain white, sleeveless cotton
dress with a real fancy ruffled red apron, red sandals, and red ribbons in my hair. Everybody oooed and ahhed over me. Woodrow was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt, black pants, and a red bow tie, and he took his job very seriously. He wouldn't let anybody run out of anything.
There were about fifty women there, counting Mama and Granny and the five eighteen-year-old debutantes who were coming out that year. That meant they were now considered young women of marriageable age and could be included in all the right gatherings with the other women who had a certain social standing in town. It was a tradition that went way back, all the way across the water to the old countries. Since Coal Station was a mining town, I asked Mama one time how come none of the miners' daughters were ever invited to be a debutante. Mama just looked at me and said, “When you're a debutante yourself, you'll understand.”
I figured I wouldn't be a debutante if I could help it, but to say that to Mama would be like saying I didn't want to live past the age of eighteen.
Woodrow was immediately smitten with the debutantes, so I let him serve them. They really were pretty and smelled almost as good as the gardenias. They were all wearing sweet sundresses in pastel colors, with crinolines underneath, high heels, summer hats, and white gloves, which they very carefully removed before
eating the delectables Woodrow spread before them. They fussed over Woodrow and called him “darling” and “dearest” and “precious,” which were not your routine Coal Station words. Woodrow soaked them up like sunshine.
Mrs. Osborne, Buzz's mama, was a jolly, wee woman, who favored Mammy Yokum in
Li'l Abner
the way she jerked herself around like a puppet and tended to wrap her arms and legs around her own self, and the way she smoked cigarettes one after the other. Buzz, her oldest boy, was her favorite topic of conversation; whether anybody was listening or not made no difference to her.
“He had such a case of the scratchies a while back,” she said at one point. “I don't know if it was poison ivy or chiggers—or maybe even the itch. He never would let me see it.”
Woodrow and I looked at each other with perfectly straight faces.
Mrs. Cooper, the principal's wife, who had grabbed Woodrow under the chin that first day at church, said, “It's no tellin' what a child might pick up going to school with those hillbillies.”
She complimented me nearly to death, patting me on the head like I was a poodle, and called Woodrow Angel Face till I thought he would puke on her if she said it again. But when Mama was far enough away, and seeing to the needs of her guests, Mrs. Cooper
leaned over casually and said to Woodrow, “What do you hear from your mama, boy?”
Woodrow's face flushed.
Mrs. Cooper would never have said a thing like that in front of my mama, Love Ball Dotson, sister to Belle Prater and leader of Coal Station's social set.
“Nothin',” Woodrow mumbled, and tried to move on.
“And I doubt you ever will!” she called after him. “She was an impulsive thing! Hard to tell what she's done this time!”
The debutantes who were standing nearby looked away and pretended they didn't hear or see, but they did. And Woodrow knew they did.
I watched him walk toward Mama's kitchen.
“She called me a cow, you know,” Mrs. Cooper said to me.
“Who did?” I said.
I was thinking to myself I would never insult a cow in that manner, but I didn't say such a thing.
“Belle Ball!” Mrs. Cooper went on. “She was in the ninth grade and I was her English teacher. She said it right in front of Mr. Cooper. That was before we were married. I'll never forget it. And I said to myself then and there, ‘This girl will never amount to a hill of beans!' And you see? I was right!”
So that was it! As a young girl Aunt Belle had embarrassed her in front of her boyfriend. And Mrs.
Cooper had carried that anger with her all these years, so that now it was a bitter acid she was spraying on Woodrow in retaliation.
Woodrow came back shortly with a trayful of tall, frosted glasses of Peach Ice and resumed his duties as if nothing had happened. I saw him lean over and whisper to one of the pretty debutantes where she sat on a pink blanket. She giggled and I was thinking, Well, what do you know about that. Woodrow is learning to flirt.
Then I got busy—real busy. In fact, I couldn't keep up. Every time I surfaced for air, somebody needed something else. I made about a hundred trips to Granny's kitchen, where Grandpa was doing all he could to help without actually going amongst the “hens,” as he called them. It didn't occur to me to be insulted. The women did put you in mind of a whole lot of hens.
I noticed Woodrow was trotting pretty regular to Mama's kitchen, where the ice was stored in the freezer and the Peach Ice filled up the Frigidaire. It was so hot everybody was drinking a lot of it. I saw him offer Mrs. Cooper some and then whisper something to her. Mrs. Cooper clapped one hand over her mouth to stifle a sputter and reached for the glass with the other.
One thing was sure: Woodrow would not be flirting with Mrs. Cooper! So what was going on? As I stood
there puzzling over it, Granny whispered to me, “Mrs. Osborne is trying to eat and smoke and talk about Buzz all at the same time, and she is dribbling. Can you fetch her a napkin?” So I got busy again.
As the sun moved across the sky, the women clucked louder and got happier, especially Mrs. Cooper. She slipped into a fine mood. She was laughing and complimenting people, talking about how much she liked first this one, then that one; which was not a bit like Mrs. Cooper to go on like that. Why, she was as pleasant as Mrs. Santa Claus. But the thing that beat all was the way she and Woodrow buddied up. Every time he would bring her a fresh glass of Peach Ice—and she really was putting it away—she would giggle like a girl. She even started reminiscing out loud.
“Me and my sister, Audrey—she's a nurse in Roanoke, you know—used to wade up the creek on a hot day like this and gather tiger lilies. We had the best times.”
“That sounds like fun, Mrs. Cooper,” Woodrow said.
“I wish I could wade in the creek again,” she went on wistfully.
“I wisht you could, too,” Woodrow said sweetly, and patted her on the shoulder.
In light of that conversation I shouldn't have been
surprised a little while later to hear Mrs. Cooper's voice down by the creek near the tree house, but I was.
“Come on in! It's wunnerful!”
I eased my way through the powdered and perfumed ladies on the creek bank, and there I saw Mrs. Cooper with her dress tail pulled up to her thighs. This was the same Mrs. Cooper who, in the past, lay awake nights thinking up ways to put a stop to folks' fun.
“Come on in, girls! Don't be proud!”
And she giggled.
The other women stood on the bank, uncertain, not knowing if they should be embarrassed for Mrs. Cooper or laugh, jump in with her, or what. You could almost hear the whirling in their very proper heads. There was nothing in the etiquette books about creek wading at an elegant garden party.
“I'll declare, Gypsy,” Granny whispered to me for the second time that day. “If I didn't know better, I'd say she's drunk!”
Drunk! Of course! The bottle of rum in our kitchen! That's why Woodrow kept running in there. He had gone and got Mrs. Cooper drunk!
“Oh no, Granny,” I said in the most scandalized voice I could find. “Mrs. Cooper doesn't drink!”
Suddenly one of the debutantes kicked off her white pumps.
“What the heck!” she said, as she gathered up her pretty dress tail and crinoline in a bunch and went splashing into the creek. “I'm hot!”
“Me too!”
It was Mrs. Osborne jumping in.
Did he put rum in all the Peach Ice?
Then another debutante.
“Geronimo!”
Mrs. Cooper was laughing so hard she suddenly lost her footing and went flying backwards into the water, wetting herself all over. The two debutantes, also laughing and splashing, went to her aid and, in the process, went down, too.
And there they were. Somehow it didn't quite fit then picture of the Event of the Season, as it was usually referred to in the social column of the
Mountain Echo.
I looked around for Mama. She was standing back a piece from the other spectators, her pink polished fingernails resting lightly at her pretty white throat—totally dumbfounded.
Woodrow was standing a few feet away from me, watching the four women in the water and enjoying himself immensely.
I eased over to him. “Woodrow, did you put rum in Mrs. Cooper's Peach Ice?”
“No, Gypsy,” he said calmly. “I did not.”
“Then what … how?”
“Just an experiment I wanted to try with the power of suggestion,” he said, and his eyes lit up again.
“What kind of experiment?” I said.
“You see, there was no rum involved—no alcohol at all. What I did, see, I told Mrs. Cooper that her drink had a bit of rum in it. Her mind did the rest. I didn't figure on her going splashing around in the creek like that.”
And Woodrow laughed out loud.
“What about the debutantes?” I said. “And Mrs. Osborne? What did you tell them?”
“Oh, them? Nothin'. They're just hot, so they're cooling off.”
“
N
ow, let me get this straight, Woodrow,” Doc Dot said. “You told Mrs. Cooper her drink was laced with rum, but it really wasn't.”
“That's right. I would never slip alcohol into a person's drink. I know it could hurt them,” Woodrow said with such sincerity you had to believe him.
Mama, Porter, Granny, Grandpa, Doc Dot, Woodrow, and I were all seated around our kitchen table late that evening. The rum bottle, still three-quarters full, had earlier been produced, viewed, and tasted to verify it was the real stuff, and returned to its respectable place on the medicine shelf. It was agreed Woodrow
had not been into the rum, but he was still getting the third degree.
“And you're saying it was an experiment?” Porter said.
“Yeah. Me and Mama read one time that the power of the mind is so strong that if you tell a person he is drinking liquor and he really believes it, he might feel the effects just like if he is drinking alcohol for sure. We tried it on Daddy by pouring out his rum and putting water in the bottle, but it didn't work with him ‘cause Daddy was so used to the taste and the smell and the feelin' of rum, he didn't believe it. You gotta believe it, see? So me and Mama reckoned it would work on somebody that wasn't used to drinking, somebody you could fool into believing, so—”
“Hold it! Hold it!” Granny interrupted loudly. “Back up! Speak up! Slow down!”
Woodrow was breathless.
“You actually said to Mrs. Cooper, ‘There is rum in your drink'?” Mama said.
“Yeah. That was the seed I planted, see? I said to her …”
Here Woodrow leaned over and spoke in my ear the way I had seen him do with Mrs. Cooper.
“I put some rum in this drink just for you, okay?”
“And she believed me. She asked for more and more.”
All eyes were on Woodrow, and once again he had astounded everybody.
“It worked real good on Mrs. Cooper,” Woodrow said, blushing a little. “I wisht Mama coulda been here to see. She'd be tickled.”
Woodrow let out a satisfied little sigh.
About that time Porter started making funny noises in his throat, and he cupped his hand over his mouth. Then Doc had to bend over and pick something up off the floor. Was he trying to hide his face? Was he laughing? When the men couldn't hold it in any longer, they like to fell out of their chairs. At first Woodrow was startled at the sudden explosion of laughter; then he broke into a sheepish grin. Even Mama and Granny couldn't hold their faces straight.
“I wonder if Mrs. Cooper still believes it?” I said. “Does she still think rum was served at Mama's garden party?”
“Oh my goodness,” Mama said. “I wonder.”
“It doesn't matter,” Porter said, as he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “In the
Echo
we'll say, ‘A good time was had by all!' and leave it at that.”
Nobody forgot Love Dotson's garden party of '54. As for Woodrow, he shrugged and went on with his life.
It was maddening to me how he could stir up a whole town in a single afternoon and not even get scolded for it and I could never get away with anything
at all. I reckon it was about that time I came across a streak of jealousy I didn't know was hiding and festering in me.
In August the apples were changing color. Between the sunshine and the rain they were earning their title—Golden Delicious. You could smell them everywhere. It was a wet month, so wet in fact that we got tired of going to the movies and watching television. We even got tired of each other—Woodrow and me. Conditions were ripe for our first quarrel.
It was on an evening when Uncle Everett came to see Woodrow, but he stayed only about fifteen minutes and was gone. I could tell Woodrow was disappointed. We lay down on the floor and started watching television. A little girl was singing “Pretty Is as Pretty Does.”
“That ain't the truth,” Woodrow said.
“What ain't the truth?” I said.
“Pretty is as pretty does. That's saying that anybody who does pretty is pretty, and that ain't the truth.”
“No,” I disagreed. “I think it's saying you can't be pretty unless you do pretty.”
“Pretty people can do anything they want to and get away with it just because they are pretty,” he said.
“Well, I guess you're one of them pretty people, Woodrow Prater, 'cause you do anything you want to and get away with it.”
“What do you mean by that?” he said.
“The rum! You got away with that without even a scolding from anybody!”
“That's because I didn't do anything!” he said crossly. “If I had really given rum to Mrs. Cooper, that would be different, but I didn't.”
“You lied,” I said bluntly.
“Lied? How did I lie?”
“You told her she was drinking rum, and that was a lie!”
“Well, excuse me, but how can you carry out an experiment on the power of suggestion without making a suggestion? Huh? Tell me that!”
I had no answer.
The evening news came on, and John Cameron Swayze was showing some scenes of New York City while he did a story. One of the places was a hospital.
“I wonder if that's the one,” Woodrow said.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“There's a famous hospital in New York,” Woodrow said, “that operates on people's crossed eyes and makes them straight.”
“'Zat so?”
“Yeah. Mama read me all about it in the newspaper. Me and her were saving money to take me up there and get that operation.”
“How much does it cost?”
“Oh, lots. Couple hundred dollars, maybe.”
“How much did you save?”
“Not much. Thirty bucks.”
“What happened to it?” I said.
“What do you mean, what happened to it?” he suddenly yelled at me, as he raised himself up on his elbows.
I was startled.
“I mean … what … what happened to the thirty dollars you saved? That's all I meant. Did you have to spend it on something else?”
“That's none of your business!” he sputtered.
There was more anger in his eyes than I had ever seen there before.
“You don't have to know everything!” he went on.
“Well, shut my mouth!” I said.
And I did.
We didn't speak then, and the air seemed to grow thick with our silence.
Coke Time
with Eddie Fisher came on, and Eddie started singing “Oh, My Pa-Pa.”
“I don't like that song,” I said, just trying to make conversation.
“How come?” Woodrow snapped. “'Cause it reminds you of your daddy?”
“No,” I said, surprised that he would mention my daddy. He never had before. “Because it's Porter's favorite song.”
“Why are you so mad at Porter?” Woodrow came back. “It wasn't him that left you!”
“My daddy didn't leave me!” I screamed at him. “He died! A person can't help dying, you know!”
“He …” Woodrow started to say more, but thought better of it. “Never mind,” he mumbled.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
After the rain stopped, we went out on the porch and sat in the swing.
The air smelled clean and sweet. A few stars came out to wink.
Rita and Garnet dropped by, and the four of us sat there in the misty mountain shadows and talked of important things—school starting in a few weeks, new classes and teachers, who liked who, stuff like that.
Dawg came and nestled her head against me. I scratched behind her ears.
“Do you have a story for us, Woodrow?” Rita asked sweetly.
Woodrow sighed.
“Yeah, I got one.”
Didn't he always?
“Way back in the hollers a long time ago,” he began, “there was a beautiful girl with long, golden hair.”
“Like Gypsy,” Garnet said.
“She was married to a farmer,” Woodrow continued, ignoring Gamet's comment, “and he wasn't good enough for her. In fact, she thought nobody was good enough for her—at least not in these hills. Then one day a city slicker named Leon came along and asked
the girl to go away with him. Her name was Olive Ann, by the way. So Olive Ann said yes, she would go away with him, but first he would have to kill the farmer, because he would come find her and drag her right back. So they plotted to kill the farmer in his sleep.
“But you see, what they didn't know was, the farmer overheard them plotting. And you can figger he was plenty sore. So when they came to kill him that night, he was ready for them, and he killed them instead with his hunting rifle.
“The farmer took Leon's body and dumped it down an old abandoned mining shaft, but he couldn't bear to do that with Olive Ann's body, because she was so beautiful and he still loved her, even though she treated him like a dog. So he buried her in his own back yard under the grass.
“When folks missed Olive Ann and asked the farmer where she had got to, the farmer told them she had gone down to Cincinnati to see some kinfolks, and that satisfied them for a while. But as time went by and she didn't come back, they got suspicious, especially since the city slicker had disappeared, too. Not only that, but the farmer's conscience started hurting him bad. He cried a lot, and talked about Olive Ann to anybody who would listen.
“Then one day the farmer looked out the window and saw something that nearabout scared him senseless.
Out there where he buried Olive Ann, there was golden hair growing out of the ground where the grass used to be!
“The farmer went out there and cut that hair right down close to the ground before somebody might see it, but next morning it had growed longer than before and covered more ground.
“You can bet he was frantic. So he cut the hair again, but before the day was over, it had growed back even longer and covered more ground still.
“A week later the sheriff came out there to ask the farmer about Olive Ann, and what he found made him shiver.
“The whole hillside there was covered with long, golden hair just a-blowin' in the wind. And in the middle of it was the farmer. The hair was all growed up around him in a tangled knot, and it had squeezed the life out of him.”
There was silence when Woodrow finished his story.
“Well, didn't you like it?” he said crossly.
“It sure was strange,” Rita said.
“Is it true?” said Garnet.
“'Course not!” Woodrow said irritably. “It's a story with a moral.”
“And what is the moral?” Rita said.
“The moral is, don't ever have anything to do with a girl with long, golden hair. She'll tie you up in knots every time.”
With those words I got up, stomped across the porch, and went home.
“Damn dern it!” I sputtered as I stepped up on my own porch. “Double damn dem it!”
“Damn dern it?” came an echo from the shadows of the porch.
It was Porter sitting there in a chair, smoking a cigarette. “Gypsy, if I couldn't cuss any better'n that, I'd quit trying.”
I glared at him.
“Whatsa matter?” he said.
“Why wasn't Woodrow punished for what he did at the garden party?” I said angrily.
“Do you think he should have been punished?”
“He thinks he's so clever!” I said. “With his stories and experiments and stuff!”
Porter said nothing.
“If I had done what he did, Mama would confine me to my room for a year!”
“But it's not a thing Love Ball Dotson's girl would do,” Porter said. “Is it?”
That burned me up.
“I can do things, too!” I cried. “Why, I can be just as naughty as a boy when I want to!”
“Would you like to do naughty things sometimes?” Porter asked.
“Yes!”
“Why?”
“Because … because … I don't want to be Love Ball Dotson's good little girl all the time!”
“Who do you want to be? Woodrow maybe?”
“No! Me! Just me! And nobody sees me!”
“Why do you think they don't see you?” he said, leaning forward into the dim light.
We were eyeball-to-eyeball.
BOOK: Belle Prater's Boy
9.38Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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