Flavors (5 page)

“Gene's throwing his weight around,” she added in her knowing way, though I knew she adored Gene. “Telling Cletus
what to do.” She gave her head a rueful shake. “It won't do. Cletus don't take to that at all.”

Cletus was normally mild-mannered, with a big old grin on his face in the worst of times. He laughed a lot. Was playful, actually. Once, when I was only five, I spent a few days on the farm during cotton-picking time. Grandma helped labor in those days and took the little ones along to play on the white, fluffy piles while the older ones picked.

Nellie Jane and I would wander from picker to picker, helping them. Adolescent Cletus called to me, “Come help me, Sadie. I'll give you a nickel.” I would scuttle to help him. Then Tommy Lee would yell, “Come help me, Sadie. I'll give you six cents.” And off I'd go to aid him.

Of course, cents meant absolutely nothing to five- and sixyear-olds. But I wanted to please my uncles so I trotted hither and yon chasing adventure and approval.

Even then, at six, Nellie Jane seemed mildly distanced from childlike diversions and didn't join in the competition. By mid-afternoon, tired from the hot sun boiling down over the field, the two of us napped on shaded soft, cloudy beds of harvested cotton.

I can still smell cotton's clean fragrance as I drifted into slumber and feel its incomparable softness against my face and between my small fingers.

One night during that 1950 summer, when the Melton patch ran out of watermelons, the family dared Cletus to go get a couple from our neighbor's patch, across the dark woods. By now, I knew they picked Cletus because nobody else would do it.

“I'll go if Sadie'll go with me,” he announced with forced bravado. I knew he was afraid of the dark. So I agreed to go with him. All the way there, his flashlight beam weaving frantically over creek bed and tree tops, Cletus sang his lungs out and
whistled the spooks away. I was scared, too, but figured Cletus was more terrified than me so I ratcheted up my courage. We each quickly scooped up the spoils and returned, half-running, backtracking through the dark woods to the hungry front yard brigade in time to split open and divvy up two large melons and enjoy the still warm, red, juicy fruit.

One day, my play was interrupted by a commotion coming from the house. I ran lickety-split across the yard and burst through the front screen door. I skidded to a halt when I saw Cletus and Gene squared off, glaring at each other, hands rolled into fists. Grandma stood to one side, uneasily wary, silent.

Uh oh.
Things were coming to a head.

“You don't tell me what to do,” Cletus snarled, his dragonfire breathing revved like a locomotive. He was fierce to behold. I watched as he snatched Gene's gold wrist watch from the nearby dresser, a new treasure Gene had paid hard-earned mill wages to buy, and dash it to the floor. Then with one last blast of air, Cletus crushed it beneath one huge broganed heel.

Gene gazed at him for long moments as though seeing him for the first time. Then all the fight seemed to go out of him. He appeared to wither standing there as tears filled his deep-set hazel eyes, spilled over and ran down his handsome cheeks.

It was a pathetic sight, those two brothers clashing, Cletus still panting ragged breaths, vigilant, still on attack – Gene sad and resigned. Limp. Grandma swiped tears from her ruddy plump cheeks, a rare demonstration, but held her peace. Later, Grandma would say of the incident, “One was scared and the other was glad of it.” But that day, she grieved.

The flavor of that day eluded me, but I whiffed it. Felt the stink of it all about me. Yet I could not name it.

A week later, Nellie Jane, Cletus and I walked to the store to buy some candy. The trek was about three miles from the Melton place, but the day was a classically beautiful southern
summer day and Cletus romped and told silly jokes all the way there. We all laughed uproariously at them and I exulted in the sheer adventure of the journey. Even Nellie Jane was open and festive.

At Brown's Country Store, we plundered the candy case display and eagerly purchased an assortment of BB Bats, Mary Janes, suckers, Brown Cows, Hershey bars and bubble gum. While Mr. Brown – peering down his bulbous nose through the thickest wire-framed specs I'd ever seen – waited on us, two other familiar teens came in. Paul and Willie Brady, whose daddy farmed nearby acreage, made their Pepsi Cola and crackers selection and trailed us out into the late afternoon heat.

Cletus and the other two teen Melton males had hired on the week before to hoe in-season beans for Mr. Brady. Cletus's earnings financed this day's country store excursion. Cletus enjoyed sharing his money with others. “Goes through his hands like branch water,” Grandma always commented dryly, shaking her head.

Unwrapping candy, I inhaled wonderful banana flavor as we strolled along, our bare feet avoiding the hottest asphalt patches, taking instead to dirt shoulders. I thought of how the lovely day fit in with the smell. I stashed one Hershey bar in my skirt pocket to ensure I'd have it for later.

Nellie Jane and I licked banana and strawberry flavored BB Bats as we wound our way back down the long road to the farm. I rolled my tongue over and around the flat yellow surface, relishing incomparable taste and smell as I swallowed. At first, the male talk was sparse but civil. Nellie Jane seemed a little taken with dark-haired Willie Brady and they exchanged small talk while I watched beautiful white-faced cow heads poked through fence wire along the roadside. Theirs were the most gorgeous animal eyes I'd ever seen, second only to deer.
I wondered what they were thinking as they gazed soulfully at me.

“What's them little tags on their ears?” I asked Nellie Jane.

“That means they're gonna be slaughtered.”

I thought how I ought to become a vegetarian.

“What size them brogans on your feet, Cletus? Sixteens?” Paul, the older of the Brady brothers, wisecracked then guffawed.

There was no warning.

Next thing I knew, Cletus had snatched up a stick from the road shoulder that looked, in that moment, four feet long and thick as a Texas Rattler. He drew back and swung that stick as hard as he could at Paul's skinny legs as Paul did swift, nimble leaps into the air each time it swung around.

“Aww, c'mon, Cletus,” Paul tried to placate as he dodged the wildly swinging weapon, “I was just kiddin', man.” To his credit, Paul's leaps and maneuvers would have rivaled any Watusi warrior on the silver screen.

Cletus, however, to my horror, got in several good whacks.

“Owww, Cletus. For God's sake,” Paul screamed at the impact of wood against bone. “Stop!”

“Cletus!” Nellie Jane cried. “Stop it!” But Cletus seemed not to hear.

I stood frozen, transfixed with the savagery of it all. I dropped my BB Bat, put my hands over my ears and began to cry. Nellie Jane, too, began silently weeping. “Please – Cletus! Stop!” she shouted out over and over.

Cletus, dragon-huffing in rage, kept a'swinging. Paul, a quick study, pivoted on a backswing and began to sprint like a greyhound, catching up with the already spooked Willie. Cletus pursued for a short time, but his hulk and clumsy gait aborted the chase.

That flavor came back again, this time stronger than ever. It was horrible. Vile. Like the roadkill the buzzards ate. Cairn, Grandma Melton called it.

I began to understand that folks just shouldn't mess unkindly with Cletus because his temper-fuse was short, as was his reasoning.

We finished the journey silently. I was numb with shock as another epiphany registered. I vowed then that I would never, ever let temper rule me. And I would never tease or disrespect anyone mentally challenged. Since that day, I never have.

My sexual education continued when Nellie Jane took me behind the barn and whisked out some playing cards with pictures of naked adults on the back. “This,” she authoritatively informed me, “is what mamas and daddies do in the bedroom with the door locked.”

“
Nuh uhhh
!” I gaped bug-eyed. But there it was. Official. The death of 14k innocence at Nellie Jane's dishpan hands.

I wish that were the end of the porn cards deal. Unfortunately, nothing at Grandma's house simply ended. Accountability topped Grandma Melton's must-have totem pole. Grandma – a duty-bound disciplinarian – found the dirty playing cards under Nellie Jane's pillow. My aunt had confiscated them from the oldest Melton son's hidden stash. Of course, by gender, Gene was exempt from Grandma's wrath. Boys will be boys, after all. Thus came my first major exposure to the gender double-standard.

When confronted, did Nellie Jane take it like a woman? Well, sort of. But she just
had
to inform Grandma that I, Sadie Ann, had gawked at the sinful pictures, too. I'm sure she felt that the disclosure somehow diluted her culpability. That
weekend, when my parents picked up Little Joe and me to go home, Grandma promptly informed Daddy, who promptly decided I needed the rod of correction.

That day's flavor was sour grapes. Nellie Jane took me down with her. And she didn't even get a whipping.

 

I don't know when I started missing my folks. Seemed one day I was happy-go-lucky, caught up in the next moment's adventure and the next, my heart dropped out the bottom of my feet.

Lordy, how I missed home. I missed the perpetual snacks of peanut butter and Ritz Crackers, colorful strawberry Kool-Aid and meals that offered alphabet soup with tiny letters swimming in it, mesmerizing me, before I added dainty oyster crackers.

At the Melton farm, crackers dissolved instantly in the hands of the kids. Peanut butter? In a blink. Snacks simply did not exist. Soup was not considered food, except in the more substantial combination of tomatoes, corn, okra, potatoes and onions, stewed together until thickened.

Most of all, I missed unconditional affection. Of feeling special. Loved. Valued.

I missed Maveen, too, my teenage neighbor who lived down the street from us in the Carolina mill village. Maveen, seventeen, was a pretty brunette in whose silvery eyes swam deep pools of emotion. They could mist over when sad and sparkle when joyful. She always had time to talk to me. She even baby-sat Little Joe and me when Mama and Daddy went out on movie dates. Those occasions of leaving my little brother and me with Maveen were rare, but I didn't mind because I
loved Maveen, with her willowy frame, soft voice and childlike, unconditional love.

Like Nellie Jane, on occasion, and Conrad, Maveen treated me as an equal.

Now, I thought of her. It had been weeks since I'd seen her on our short weekend home furloughs. I was thinking of her when the lights went out at Grandma's house, just before sleep overtook me.

Arrr-arr-arr – AARRR
croaked the old red rooster outside the window.

I cracked one eye. The sun wasn't all the way up, but at Grandma's house, when old Red crowed, it was wakeup time. My bed was a ragged quilt on the hard floor of the central and biggest room in the farmhouse. During the sultry hot southern season, decreed Grandma, it was cooler there. Which was true, considering the alternative was to sleep pretzeled three and four kids to a bed in the stuffy lean-to bedroom. The feather mattresses were extra hot because one sank down into them. So the pallets were a practical, cooling choice. And the change was, to me, a new adventure. Like camping out.

Grandma and Grandpa Melton camped out, after all, on occasion. About once a month or thereabouts, during clear, pleasant weather, they would sleep outside under the stars somewhere in a forest clearing. Grandpa, shoestring entrepreneur that he was, found some large abandoned wooden boxcar doors God-only-knew-where and transported them home in his old truck. He and the older boys meticulously stacked them in the secluded spot, raising it to the level just short – from my worm's eye view – of a hallowed Indian burial platform.

I never knew when Grandma and he would carry quilts and pillows to their tryst. All this was done discreetly. No one talked of it. The romantic rite was reverenced. It was only when one of the older siblings extinguished the night light that
I noted my grandparents' absence at all. The romantic ritual embedded itself in my on-the-cusp-of-adulthood psyche in the most pleasant of ways, spiraling to me strong blasts of cinnamon-strawberry flavor.

Anyway, this morning, all around me, pallets cluttered the worn linoleum floor of the main sitting room. Near my elbow lay my baby brother Little Joe, sleeping so deeply he rhythmically sipped air between his perfect little rosy lips. My sleepy gaze lolled up and over walls covered by gray wallpaper spattered with faded colorless roses.