One Mississippi (5 page)

Mr. Frillinger’s den was crammed with Ole Miss plaques, pennants, and trophies. He waved us to a sofa draped with a Rebel flag. He asked our full names, ages, what our fathers did, and whether we liked Ole Miss football.

Oh yes sir, we said. We sure did.

His unnerving green eyes settled on me. “Well let me ask you this then, son, have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”

For a moment I was speechless. Then I managed to say, “Yes sir, I sure have.”

“Good.” He turned on Tim. “And you?”

“Oh yes sir, praise the Lord.”

“Well since you boys are believers, you’ll know what I’m about to say is just between us men, and in keeping with the spirit of the Lord.”

“Yes sir.”

“My daughters,” he said, “are blessed vessels of the purest virginity. And I mean to see they make it straight through to marriage with their purity intact. Now don’t think I don’t know what can happen between young people — believe me, I know! Something touches something. Something
rubs up
against something. Next thing you know the Devil has you by the hand and he’s taking you straight to
HELL!
” The bang of his fist made a ceramic Rebel Colonel hop an inch off the coffee table. He steadied it with his other hand. “Now, I’m not threatening you boys, but I am
deadly
serious when I say that if either of my girls comes home tonight with one hair out of place — wellsir,” he said, laughing sadly, shaking his head, “I wouldn’t want to be you. Daniel Musgrove? What do you say?”

My voice came out a chirp. “You don’t have to worry, sir.”

“Good,” he said. “Tim Cousins?”

“Your daughters are safe with us,” Tim said, twitching under the force of a postponed explosion.

Thank God here came Debbie, Dianne, and their mother swirling up the hall all a-chatter, and Mr. Frillinger was forced to let us go. The girls squealed in pleasure at the sight of us, they said our tuxes were
cool,
we were
sooo incredibly handsome,
who on earth except Tim and me would be
avant-garde
and
hip
enough to wear Sky Blue tuxedos! That was our cue to praise their dresses. They had made every effort to look different from each other. Debbie’s dress was a prim ivory-lacy thing with a high lace collar. Dianne’s was a pink shimmery gown that made her look something like a candle. They weren’t wearing makeup, but their faces radiated excitement. They’d even taken the rubber bands off their braces.

I couldn’t tell if their mother had made these dresses for them. Probably best not to ask.

The mother was a plain-scrubbed, slightly hysterical woman with a ponytail. She fell all over Tim and me, hugging us, thanking us a touch too fervently for taking her girls to the prom. It almost seemed as if she wanted to go herself — as if she might fall to her knees and beg us to take her — and considering the way Mr. Frillinger lurked in the doorway scanning with his cold green eyes, I wouldn’t blame her.

“Did you see the banner we put up for you?” she cried, breathless from talking so fast. “The girls and I made it ourselves!”

“Mommy’s so excited,” Dianne said. “We hoped it wouldn’t embarrass you.”

No, we said, it was cool, we loved it. “I hope you didn’t have to mess up a good bedsheet,” said Tim.

Everyone tried to ignore the connotations of that remark.

Mrs. Frillinger bustled around in search of flashbulbs for the Polaroid. “Now where are they, where are they,” she muttered, “they were here just a minute ago, what am I thinking, everybody so dressed up and pretty, and silly me can’t even find a box of stupid flashbulbs! In a minute they’re gonna get sick of waiting and leave, and I won’t have a single picture!” I think she was even weeping a little. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.

At last she found the flashbulbs — “Right here in the drawer! The whole time! Oh how stupid, how stupid can one person be!” She lined us up in a row and blinded us with repeated flashing attacks, then led us blinking from the house to the garage. We reenacted the presentation of the corsages in front of the banner for her camera.

“Now look into each other’s eyes like little sweethearts,” she said. “A little closer.”

“Come on, Mommy,” Debbie pleaded, “take the picture.”

“Deborah Ann,” Mr. Frillinger said. “Cooperate.”

“Daddy — please? We don’t want to be late.”

“Oh honey, I just can’t let you go!” Mrs. Frillinger wailed, dragging Debbie in for yet another hug. “Don’t leave me like this — whatever you do just don’t
please
don’t leave me alone in this house! Please not! Please not!”

“Deirdre, for God’s sake let’s don’t have a scene now. The neighbors are watching.” Mr. Frillinger tugged her arm, pulling her back toward the house. “Boys, drive safe and get ’em home before twelve.”

Debbie and Dianne ignored the spectacle of their father dragging their mother up the sidewalk. Their faces went carefully neutral, like the female crew of the space station in
2001
.

“Wow, is she gonna be okay?” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” Dianne said. “She’s just a little nervous around people. Can we go?”

For a moment I felt a twinge of pity,
God how embarrassing,
and then I remembered the monster in my own house. I guess lots of families have monsters. To me it was normal to have a crippled half-man rolling around our house on a padded scooter. If these girls saw Jacko, they’d be giving me the same look of pity I was giving them now.

Tim and Debbie took the front seat. I got in back with Dianne.

Now, the backseat of a Riviera is a very roomy place. I don’t know if it felt too roomy for me back there, if I thought we might flop around loosely and bump into each other or something — I don’t know what, exactly, led me to buckle my seat belt, but I did, and I told Dianne to buckle hers too. “Tim drives like a maniac,” I said. “We don’t want any casualties.”

“That’s so thoughtful of you, Daniel.” Dianne giggled and smoothed her dress. “Drive careful, Tim. I don’t feel like buckling in. I’m living dangerously tonight.”

Debbie turned in her seat. “Did you guys hear? I mean, did you hear?”

“What.”

“You’re going to die,” she said. “Guess who thinks she’s gonna be Queen of the Prom.”

“Molly Manning,” said Tim.

“Not Molly, of course Molly’s got a chance. An excellent chance.”

“Lisa Simmons?” I said.

“Oh be serious, Daniel! Lisa
ought
to be queen. Cute as she is, and hard as she’s worked this year? She organized that whole bake sale by herself. Nobody lifted a finger to help.”

Debbie said, “I’ll give you a hint. Who is the
last
girl in the eleventh grade you think would ever get elected Queen of the Prom?”

Tim pulled into a 7-Eleven just inside the Jackson city limits.

“Rachel Bostick,” I said. Poor Rachel weighed about two seventy-five and had fur on her arms.

The girls made sympathetic little cries at the sound of her name. “Be serious,” Debbie said. “This girl is going around telling everybody that when they see her prom dress, they’ll have to vote for her. They won’t be
able
to vote for anybody else.”

“Can you imagine?” said Dianne. “So conceited.”

Debbie got up on her knees on the seat. “Give up? Brace yourselves. Arnita Beecham.”

“Arnita?” Tim said. “Yeah, I can see that.” He got out of the car.

Debbie looked peeved by this mild response. She whirled on me. “Daniel?”

“Well, Arnita is really pretty, you have to admit.”

“Oh come on, Daniel.”

“What?”

“Well, she’s black.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” Nobody had ever seen a black girl like Arnita. Her father, Lincoln Beecham, had been the janitor at Minor High forever. Arnita was pretty but studious-looking, with wire-rimmed glasses and old-fashioned ironed hair. She played first-chair flute in the band. She belonged to all the clubs and organizations and was every teacher’s pet. She was not meek like the other black girls, who tended to clump together, speaking in private black-girl code. Arnita sat in front, raised her hand, argued fiercely with the teachers. Last fall she caused a commotion in Canzoneri’s government class with a speech entitled “Why Castro Is Right.” She had a 4.0 average and a full scholarship to Ole Miss a year before graduation. I’d never thought of her as the beauty-queen type, but I was sure she could do it if she made up her mind.

“There’s only like twenty percent black in our school,” Debbie said. “You don’t really think she has a chance to be Queen?”

“Why not? She’s a great girl.” I knew why not, but I wanted to make Debbie say it.

“Of course she’s great,” Debbie said, her voice rising. “Nobody’s saying she isn’t
great,
it’s just — oh, never mind.”

Dianne spoke up: “Come on, Daniel, it’s pretty unrealistic to think Arnita could win.”

“Why?”

“Well silly, to win she’d have to get not just all the black votes but a whole lot of white ones too.”

“I’d vote for her,” I said.

“Daniel’s a Yankee, he doesn’t understand,” Debbie said. “Listen, we’re perfectly fine with them going to our school, but they can’t just walk in and expect to win everything their first year. They have to earn it like everybody else.”

How had I wandered into this danger zone? Every so often I got a sharp jab of the elbow to remind me that I was not from around here.

“Well,” I said, “you can always pray for her to lose.”

Here came Tim not a moment too soon, carrying a brown paper sack.

“Timmy, what did you buy?” Dianne called.

Tim reached one hand in the bag and whisked out a six-pack of Champale.

The girls gasped. “Oh my
gosh!
”
Debbie shrieked. “That’s — is that
alcohol?
”

“They didn’t have champagne,” Tim said. “The guy said this was the closest thing they had.”

Dianne was scandalized. “How on earth did you buy it?”

“Fake ID. Y’all ready to party?”

“Oh no, Daddy would kill us,” said Dianne.

“Daddy’s not here, Dianne,” her sister said. “Couldn’t we have one tiny taste?”

This was a new frontier for all of us. Our parents were teetotalers, and so were all the kids we ran with. Those Champale bottles glistened like two rows of bullets in the light from the 7-Eleven. Tim popped off the caps and passed us each a bottle. “A toast,” Tim said. “To our big night.” We clinked.

I braced myself and took a slug. I choked it down, grinned, and said it was tasty. That’s the word I used, “tasty.” In fact it was foul. Everybody took a sip and pretended to like it, but we were all thinking,
Why would anyone drink this?

“Now don’t get too drunk, Tim,” said Debbie.

Tim said, “I wonder if this is even close to champagne.”

“I tasted a beer once,” Dianne said.

“You did not!” her sister exclaimed.

“Yes I did, at Uncle Sibley’s funeral. That man from the power company had a beer and I had some when nobody was looking. It tasted different than this.”

“Oh my God, the demon rum has loosened her tongue!” Tim said. “It’s true confession time! Drink up, ladies!” The girls giggled and took timid sips. We felt naughty and grown-up — dressed up, drinking and driving a big car fast, as the night sky fell over Jackson.

The downtown huddle of buildings looked rather handsome from the interstate. One or two more tall buildings and it would be a skyline. The tallest old building had the words
STANDARD LIFE
lit up in red letters on top. (“Truer words were never spoken,” Tim liked to say.) There were four or five tallish office buildings and two capitol domes, Old and New. On the plain below the city was the brand-new Mississippi Coliseum, a yellow-sided futuristic building shaped like a merry-go-round, with a white pleated roof. The interstate swept a wide loop around it and shot us off to the north.

We took the exit for Fortification Avenue, which I pronounced “Fornication” to general merriment. The Champale got better as you drank it, and brought on a giddy sensation I found myself enjoying. Soon we were pulling off the frontage road into the parking lot of Howard Johnson’s.

I trotted around to open Dianne’s door. She said, “Thynk you, suh,” attempting an English accent. Tim shot me a look that I managed to ignore.

It was only when we were inside, waiting by the sign that said
PLEASE WAIT HERE,
that I realized what a sight we presented in our Sky Blue tuxes and their long fancy dresses. The HoJo was full of truckers, salesmen, families with squabbling children. The most dressed-up people were the waitresses in turquoise and orange. One of them approached us with sympathetic eyes.

“Good evening,” she said. “Don’t you ladies look lovely tonight, and the gentlemen too. Will we have the pleasure of serving you dinner this evening?”

We nodded.

“Right this way, if you please,” she said. I will always be grateful to Myrna (her name tag) for the effortless grace with which she swept us across that room and seated us in the corner booth. Everyone cast admiring glances as we passed. We sat in splendor at the best table in the house and ordered cheeseburgers, french fries, chocolate shakes.

Myrna treated us like celebrities, even brought us two slices of strawberry pie on the house. I thought Dianne might burst into tears. “Oh boys, this was the perfect place to bring us,” she said. “I’ll never forget this night as long as I live.”

“Dianne is tipsy,” said Tim.

“I am not!” she cried, welling up again.

Once more I buckled up in the backseat. Once more Dianne said she was living dangerously. We rolled off toward the Holiday Inn with the radio cranked so we could all sing along with Elton, “Rocket Man.”

Maybe it started with the singing.

More likely it was the girls’ perfumes mixed with the Glade Summer Meadow in the confines of the car that caused me to sneeze. And again. And again. Everyone laughed. I rooted around in the floorboard for a Kleenex box, grabbed a tissue. I blew my nose and sneezed again. Every time I sneezed, Tim made a funny noise, “Ow!” or “Oof!” Each one of these sent the girls off in a fresh gale of hilarity. I couldn’t stop sneezing. I rolled down my window and asked them to roll theirs down, but oh no God forbid they should mess up their hairdos. I sneezed all the way down Fornication Avenue while everyone had a good laugh about it.