Watermelon Days and Firefly Nights: Heartwarming Scenes from Small Town Life (6 page)

So numb with disappointment were the brothers that they pretty much gave up. At least their sister was staying with them for now. She wouldn’t end up on the street. If they couldn’t keep her dry, at least they could keep her safe.

When word of Daphne’s backslide got around town, she was put on the prayer list of every Ella Louise congregation. No one was terribly shocked, though. It was God the poor thing needed. Power from above. No way was she going to lick this thing until she saw her need of him.

One by one, all the ministers in town came to talk to Daphne about her soul. Brother Fred came by. She told him where he could go. Pastor Graves stopped in. She suggested that he put his Bible in a very dark place.

When Joseph Tedford came, he brought cake.

Which Daphne ate. Twice a week.

“Daphne,” Joseph said at the end of each visit, “God loves you. This Sunday, why don’t you come pay a visit to his house?”

“Uh-uh. Reverend Joe, that’s not gonna happen,” she said, wiping crumbs from her chin. “Not this week or the next. You’re just wasting your time.”

“No, I’m not,” he answered each time. “God doesn’t give up, and neither will I.”

On a Tuesday morning, after three months of his discouraging biweekly visits to Daphne, Joseph was sitting in his office at the back of the church (not studying his Bible as was later reported in the paper, but working a crossword puzzle, if the truth be known) when he heard an awful crash. It shook the roof and walls. An earthquake? Never happened before in Ella Louise. A bomb then! Joseph jumped from his chair, unsure whether to run out of the building or to take cover inside.

Then he heard a roaring sound. Was it a tornado? How? The skies were clear. Then Joseph smelled smoke. When he saw that it was coming from the hallway to the sanctuary, he ran to see.

There was so much smoke surrounding the scene that for a moment Joseph couldn’t take it all in. Pews were pushed forward. The communion table was on its side. Broken glass and splintered wood were everywhere. Daylight streamed in from a gaping hole made in the back wall.

In the middle of his sanctuary sat a car—a yellow El Camino. Its engine was still running.

Joseph had to climb over pews and debris to get to the passenger door. When he did, he reached in the open window, over and across the driver, and turned off the car.

He placed his hand on the slumped-over-the-wheel driver. “Daphne. Are you hurt?”

“No.” There wasn’t a mark on her. “Where am I?”

Joseph could not suppress a grin. “Daphne, my friend, you are in the exact place the Lord and I have been trying to get you for three months. Too bad you didn’t see fit to use the door. Welcome to Chosen Vessel. Like what we’ve done to the place? Come on. Let me help you out. Let’s go into my office and have some cake.”

I
’D LIKE TO REPORT
that Daphne Minter has trod the straight and narrow ever since the day she drove into Joseph’s church.

She hasn’t.

Daphne’s path to sobriety has been one marked by twists and turns, complicated detours, and maddening switchbacks.
Just about the time it seems she has her problem licked, she slips up.

Likely she will for the rest of her life.

But since the day of the accident—divine appointment is what Joseph calls it—Daphne has been going to Chosen Vessel Church. Every Sunday. She’s learning to pray, and she’s started reading from Psalms. She believes that God is helping her, and so she’s decided to help him out too.

Five days a week and half a day on Saturday, Daphne works for Lindell and Windell down at the car wash and slide. She stays pretty busy, running the cash register, emptying the trash, filling the soap dispensers—and, piece by piece, handing out cake.

4

M
AGIC
M
ONEY

“F
AYE
B
ETH
,
you had extra cheese on your hamburger.”

“But I had water to drink.”

“Janet, didn’t you have dessert?”

“Uh-huh. The peach cobbler.”

“With ice cream,” said Faye Beth. “Don’t forget to figure in the ice cream.”

“Esther and I shared it,” reminded Janet.

“Janet, you had coffee
and
iced tea. We just had tea.”

Rochelle Shartle, who stood in her spot behind the cash register of the Wild Flour Café, was privy to the just-lunched ladies’ efforts at math. She’d heard such tabletop reckoning at least a couple hundred times before. Rochelle hated to say it (and wouldn’t to a man), but women are the worst when it comes to figuring out how to split a check. They’ll nitpick over who had what for fifteen minutes or more when, after all is said and done, their individual meals will come within fifty cents of each other.

“Everything all right? Did you enjoy your lunch? How were the rolls today?” Rochelle smiled as the women placed dollars, dimes, and pennies in the palm of her hand. No surprise—they’d come with exact change. “You gals come back. I’ll be frying up catfish on Friday. Don’t forget.”

After the women made their trips to the restroom, collected their jackets, and went out to their cars, Rochelle’s new employee, nineteen-year-old Melissa Bates—who only this month moved to Ella Louise—moved quickly to clear their table, ready it for the next diner, and collect her tips.

“They’re usually pretty generous,” said Rochelle. “How about today?”

“Pretty good. About a dollar apiece,” Melissa answered. “Except for the one with black hair. She left fifty cents.”

“Esther,” Rochelle said with feigned indignation. “And she had the pie! Speaking of which, let’s you and I sit down and have a piece. I’m pooped, and we won’t likely get another chance today.”

It was almost 3:00. The café was empty, but the early-supper crowd would begin to trickle in just after 4:00.

“Melissa, pour me a glass of milk, will you? You want a Coke? I’ll get the pie. What kind you want?”

The two of them sat down at a table away from the door. Rochelle quickly forked down a good portion of her pie and gulped half a glass of milk. She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and took several long breaths. “Feels good to relax for a minute, doesn’t it?” She opened her eyes and studied Melissa’s feet. “Those shoes you’re wearing don’t look very comfortable. Do your feet hurt?”

Rochelle wasn’t sure Melissa had heard her. The weary girl (she was working two jobs) sat with her knees together and shoulders hunched, only picking at her pie.

“Honey, is something bothering you?” Rochelle noticed that her only employee looked sort of red in the face. “You feeling okay?”

Melissa looked up and put her hand to her back. “I think I’ve got a bladder infection.”

“Oh, those things are wretched! Why didn’t you say something? I’ll call Rocky to come up and help out with the supper crowd. Have you called Dr. Strickland for an appointment?”

“No. I’ll be okay. I’ve been drinking lots of water and some cranberry juice too.”

“Girl, if you’ve got a bladder infection, it is not going to get better by itself. Let me feel your forehead. Lean over.”

Melissa did as she was told.

“You’ve got a fever. I’m calling the clinic and telling them that they’ll need to work you in right now. Won’t take you five minutes to get from here to there.”

“I appreciate it,” said Melissa, “but please don’t. I’m broke. Even if I could afford to pay for an office visit, I wouldn’t be able to get a prescription filled. I’ve had these things before. Lots of water, some aspirin—I’ll get over it.”

Rochelle studied Melissa for just a moment, then without a word got up and went to the cash register. From an envelope stuck behind the register, she retrieved a worn hundred dollar bill. Sitting back down, she slid the bill across the table, then took a big bite of her pie.

“Thank you, but I can’t.”

“Sure you can.” Rochelle’s legs were crossed. She swung her foot.

“There’s no way that I can pay you back.”

“It’s not a loan.” Rochelle took a swig of milk.

“I can’t take a gift. You’re my boss. It wouldn’t be right.”

“It’s not a gift.” After one last bite of pie, Rochelle wiped her mouth and laid her napkin down.

Melissa, who was weary and worried and trying her best not to fall apart in front of her employer, did not know what to do. She tore the paper wrapper from her straw into tiny bits and stacked them neatly beside her plate.

“See this envelope?” said Rochelle. The envelope was dingy and one corner was torn. On the outside were the words “Magic Money.”

Melissa had no idea what the words meant. She only knew she needed to go to the bathroom.

“Remember when I told you about me and Rocky moving here back when I was just nineteen?”

“That was when your great-aunt died and you used the money she left you to get your house and this restaurant.”

“That’s right, God bless her soul. Rocky had just finished up with college, and we were barely making ends meet. Then I got the money from my great-aunt. Even though it’s worked out, looking back, we were crazy to spend all her money at one time like that, but we thought we had it figured to the penny. Before we decided for sure, we sat down together on the floor of our little apartment, and we wrote it all down. After paying for both places, the little house and the business, we would have five hundred dollars left to live on until he got his first check from the school. It would be tough, but we thought that we could make it work.”

“Sounds like you had it all thought out.”

“We did, except for one thing. On the day that we were to finish with all the paperwork, Rocky and I showed up with a cashier’s check from the bank for exactly what we’d agreed to pay for the house and the business. We forgot one thing. Closing costs. Neither one of us had even heard of that. Four hundred and thirty-five more dollars was what we owed.”

“What did you do?”

“We should have backed out right then, but we were both too embarrassed. Before he caught himself, Rocky blurted out something like, ‘That leaves us sixty-five dollars to live on for a month!’”

“He said that?” Melissa giggled.

“Right there in front of all those lawyers and other important folks. I wanted to crawl under the table. Everybody just sort of coughed and looked around, but me and Rocky—well, I don’t know what we were thinking, but we went ahead and signed all the papers. Once we were done, we took the keys to our new house and went right on over so we could get it clean enough to move in to. No one had lived in it for several years, so there was a lot of dust and stuff. We got busy sweeping and wiping, but I think we were both in shock. How were we going to get the utilities turned on? How were we going to eat? Put gas in our car? When you move, there are a lot of expenses. We’d already given word that we’d be out of our apartment in three days.”

“You guys were in a real mess! You had no family to help?”

“Both of us come from families poorer than us. No way could we even let them know that we needed help.”

“I know exactly what that’s like. Can you hold on a second while I go to the bathroom?” Melissa sprinted to the ladies room and came back with sweat on her brow.

“Okay. I can tell, I’ve got to get to the point. That first night, Rocky and I were unloading our stuff and three cars pulled up into our driveway. We had met a few folks around town. One of them was Faye Beth Newman.”

“Doesn’t she work for the mayor?”

“That’s her. She was one of the ladies that had lunch today. Part of the threesome that just left.”

“Frosted hair? Pink blouse with the rhinestone trim?”

“That’s her. The three that were here were the same three that showed up at our house. Faye Beth Newman, Janet Evans, and Esther Vaughn. In our driveway. And we didn’t know what for.”

“They look like sweet women. I bet they brought you a casserole or something.”

“Yes, and a cake too. But that wasn’t the only reason they’d come. It was Faye Beth, I think, who handed Rocky the envelope. She told him to take it, to open it, and to see what was inside. He nearly died when he saw that it was five hundred dollars.”

“No!”

“Yes. It was. Word had gotten to them about the straits we were in. Rocky didn’t know what to say. First he tried to give the money back. They wouldn’t take it. Then he told them thank you. They said that we were welcome. Then I promised them that we would pay it back. They said no.”