GodPretty in the Tobacco Field (11 page)

Slowly I made my way down the other aisle, past a bin full of wool socks, shelves packed with canned meat, pickles, corn, and mouse traps piled next to candied fruitcakes. Over by the wall where they stacked the bread, I squeezed several loaves and grabbed the freshest. Then I walked up to the long, narrow cooler full of bologna and other cold cuts, cartons of Millers' brown eggs, and Styrofoam cups filled with night crawlers.
Nothing new
. The cooler's soft motor kicked on and I stood there soaking up the coldness, nipping the morning's memories.

Paula, one of the Shake King hippies, squeezed past me with a bag. She gave me a shy smile. I tossed one back, grateful she'd given me a ride home that day when a bad storm blew in as I was leaving the Feed.
Saved me,
I thought.
Damned you, and better to have been struck by lightning,
Gunnar'd preached.

From behind, Mr. Parker cleared his throat as I looked above to the long wooden shelf lined with the artificial flowered funeral pots, spices, and sardine tins. I studied a box of Corn Flakes that cost twenty-nine cents, and looked at quart Mason jars filled with carrot, mustard spinach, beet, and other precious seed. Picking up a jar of cress seed, I opened the lid and sniffed.

Mr. Parker said, “Can't live without cress on my eggs and meat. Also helps with the gout.”

I set down the jar. “I'm needing a nickel's worth of seeds, Mr. Parker.” I pulled out the nickel I'd brought along to buy the Stumps some seeds.

“Sure thing, RubyLyn. For fall planting?”

“Yessir. Some cabbage and lettuce and maybe some of those snap peas, please.” I knew Baby Jane loved them and ate them straight off the vine.

Mr. Parker opened lids and began sprinkling the seeds onto squares of the wax paper beside them. “You sure buy a bunch of seeds—enough for three families,” Mr. Parker commented.

“Yessir,” I said, picking up a spool of ribbon from the shelf.

“That just came in,” he said, noting my interest. “It's called Hens-and-Biddies.”

It would be perfect for Baby Jane. I studied the tight little green rosette leaves running on the creamy silk ribbon, thinking how beautiful it would look in Baby Jane's hair.

“I can let you have a snip for, lessee . . . I suppose two cents would be fair.”

“Pretty,” I said, admiring it.

“You can get that and the seeds for a nickel.”

“Thank you, Mr. Parker. I'll take it and put back the lettuce seeds,” I said, deciding, and not wanting to be greedy.

“Sure thing, RubyLyn,” he said, unrolling the ribbon. “It'll look nice in your hair.”

“It's for Baby Jane. She's gonna look real pretty with it in church.”

Mr. Parker wrinkled his brow. I was thrilled to have it for her. Out of the corner of my eye, I spied the skin balm. I stared hard at the tin of Handmaiden's Salve, longing to rub the ointment across my rough, cracked hands. If Mr. Parker wasn't here hanging over my shoulder, I might've. What I wouldn't give for a tin full of that instead of the lard I rubbed into my ugly hands. Gunnar sure liked things clean, but he let you know he wouldn't waste his money on female pretties.

I rolled the nickel between my fingers, looked over at the gumball machine. Mr. Parker always spiked the machine with his
pot o' gold balls:
a bright yellow wooden ball about the same size as the colorful gumballs only with a black stripe circling it. For a penny you could get a piece of gum. But if you got a pot o' gold ball, it could be redeemed for a nickel's worth of merchandise. I knew folks who'd gotten as many as three of the lucky balls with just a nickel's try. But I'd never had the nerve to gamble.

“Fourteen cents,” Mr. Parker tempted, lifting the small can of salve. “The missus swears it makes her skin feel like rose petals.” He raised the lid and put it under my nose.

I got a whiff of roses and honeysuckle and could almost feel the ointment seeping into my chafed hands, silky, soft. I eyed the gumballs and then the ribbon and seeds. Giving a wiggle to my head, I picked up the can of oil that Gunnar wanted.

Mr. Parker capped the tin, took a pen out of his shirt pocket, and marked the seed packets. Then he dug inside his apron pouch and pulled out tape to seal them.

“Gunnar's tractor again?” he asked, side-eyeing the oil I'd put in my basket. “Let me just take these up to the cash register for you, RubyLyn.”

I wanted to tell him it wasn't necessary—I'd like to wait around and cool off—but he took the basket from my grip, making me follow him.

At the register, Mr. Parker bagged my stuff, dropped in a sheet of S&H Green Stamps, then leaned over the counter. “Mighty fine casting you gave the Stumps, RubyLyn.” Grinning, he reached past the box of Pall Mall candy cigarettes and tossed in a Clark candy bar. He pushed the bag toward me. “Yes, ma'am, fine Granny Magic for that new Stump baby.”

Behind, murmurs of affirmations and a few snickers drifted my way.

I wondered how much they knew. My face felt hotter than the Red Hots he kept in the candy jar. I gave him change, and whispered, “I don't have the extra money to pay for the candy, Mr. Parker—”

He fanned away my words and took the money. “Just filled the cola tub.” Mr. Parker nodded, letting me know I could take one.

I bobbed my head, then spied the latest
Sears Fall and Winter
issue on the counter beside a stack of others. I studied the girl on the cover with her short knit dress, gold jewelry, and perfectly bobbed flipped-up hairdo. I inched my fingers toward it, dying to open the thick pages and see the new slips inside.

“Anything else for you today, RubyLyn?”

“No, sir.” I ran my hands through my unruly hair and murmured thanks.

He reached under the counter and pulled out a box of laundry detergent. “Mind dropping this off at the Laundromat for me?”

I took the box of soap and my bag and exited the back door to the store's porch and lot.

Rose's traveling trader was parked in the gravel, a few folks milling about. For a minute I watched the people rummaging through her stuffed boxes stacked neatly in the back of the covered truck bed and the cartons on the ground piled around it.

Crawling around inside the back of the Canopy, Rose looked up and blew me a kiss out the side opening.

I tossed one back, then headed over to Mr. Parker's Laundromat in the lot behind the Feed's. I stared past the stenciled letters on the glass door: W
HITES
O
NLY
—M
AIDS IN
U
NIFORM
Allowed. Mrs. Parker waved me in. “Hi there, RubyLyn,” she said, busy with a stack of laundry. “Set it there, hon. Thanks.” She pointed to the table.

I traipsed back out to the Feed's lot and plopped down on the shaded bench snugged against the concrete wall and waited for Rose to take a break.

Mr. Parker's black worker, David Young, came by, picking up litter and emptying the ashcan. “RubyLyn,” he said, smiling. “Goldie was jus' speaking of you and Mr. Royal the other day. How's you and Mr. Royal doing out there? He still using that salve Goldie made for his arthritis?”

I missed David's wife, Goldie. Long ago, when I first came to live with Gunnar, she'd kept his house four days a week, cooking and cleaning. Then he couldn't pay her anymore and had to let her go. Goldie taught me how to do chores and cook before she left. She still dropped by on occasion to bring a special menthol balm she'd concocted to help Gunnar's old bones.

“Hey, Mr. Young.” I smiled back. “Gunnar's almost out of it.”

“Goldie just made a fresh batch. Best ever.” He rubbed his bad shoulder and grinned. “Tell him to stop by for a refill.”

“I will. I'm sure he'll stop next time he's in town.” I would've loved to go get it myself and say hi to Goldie, but the Youngs lived on Color Row, an old busted sidewalk section with six shacks located in back of the courthouse commons that was for four black families—the only ones in Nameless besides Rainey and Abby. And no white female would be caught dead walking it unless she wanted a whipping for herself or the colored she was visiting.
Folks didn't dare
.

I was barely six years old when the preacher took his wife over his lap on the town bench after she'd gone looking for her maid, Hallie, on Color Row. Folks still whispered how the preacher'd pulled up his wife's skirts and smacked her on her baby-blue satin undies. The jeers and cheers from bystanders were worse than a Bible stoning. Hallie got the same, but weren't no fancy undies under her skirts to take the bite off the skin slapping, just a pair of raggedy white knickers. And the preacher's wife never went looking for maid Hallie again, unless her mister went with her.

My stomach growled and I poked inside the bag. Just as quick, I rolled it shut. I'd wait to share the candy fair and square with Rainey.

I reached over to the large metal washtub, brimming with tiny bricks of ice and cold drinks, and pulled out a Barq's cream soda. I popped off the top with the wall-mounted bottle opener and swigged down a big gulp, and another, letting the icy red liquid sugar numb my tongue, bite my throat. I closed my eyes, savoring. It had been at least a year since I tasted a cola. Maybe this was reward for a troublesome time working the charms. After all, baby Eve would probably grow up and have cream soda and Clark bars . . . maybe every day.

I sat my bottle down, smoothed my hair, trying to hand-curl myself a bottom flip like the girl on the catalog page.

Rose walked up to the bench. “I could cut it in a city style,” she offered.

“Gunnar'd have my head if I ever did.” I blushed and pulled out my fortune.

She chuckled and laid a pad of paper beside me. My eyes lit. “Another sketch book . . . Rose, this is great. I've nearly filled up the other.”

“Just got back in town from picking up Mr. Parker's order up in the city and getting my stuff. Figured ya might need some more of your own paper. Maybe make yourself some pretty pictures or something fancy like what's on them book covers even.”

“That'd be swell. Forty whole pages—clean, too,” I said appreciatively, fluttering the thick art pad.

“Well, it's got a couple of pages missing, so I couldn't sell it.”

“Are you sure, Rose . . . it looks brand new?”

“It's yours, honey.”

“Thank you, Rose,” I said again, stuffing it down into my bag and pecking her cheek.

“Welcome, kid. Three more weeks till the State Fair.”

I picked up my fortune. “I can't wait to be gone.”

“Just be ready to leave out about three a.m. on the eighteenth.”

“Sure will.”

“That's a pretty one, kid.” She tossed back her long, flowing neck scarf, bent over to get a closer look at my fortune-teller. “You sure can draw.” She pointed to the flap with the picture of the barn. “City folks pay a lot for this folk art. Once, I even saw a painting of an outhouse for sale in a city store window.”

“Outhouses.” I wrinkled my nose. “Folk art?”

“That's when artist folk like yourself and me make beautiful stuff out of simple things . . . like this pretty fortune ya made out of ordinary tobacco paper—like my daddy's barn you painted for me on the old plank of his barn wood.”

I remembered how much of a fuss she'd kicked up showing it off to everyone. How she shocked me by hanging it above her mantel.

“And like the musical spoons you carve from wood,” I said. Rose had been making music spoons since before I was born. Something she taught herself long ago. She'd make her instruments from blocks of Kentucky Coffeetree wood, carving out two long, joined handles for the bottom, fashioning smooth heads for the tiny split wooden cups at the top—pretty spoons for slapping against the hand or leg. Folks swore that Rose's Kentucky bones were the best for clapping and snapping out a fine tune.

“Uh-huh.”

“Folk artist.” I liked those words, and I liked that we shared them.

“And”—Rose raised a finger—“folk artists like yourself need good paper. Lots of new places to visit, too, so you can be inspired.” She lingered over the fortune-teller and licked at gossip. “Heard tell about the new Stump baby. You claiming it would be a girl and grow up rich, folks been a'saying.”

Shrugging, I flicked at lint growing on my dress. “Never claimed
nothing.
And I wish folks would forget about Lady Bird Johnson and all that. Need to claim my own destiny out of here.”

“Now, honey, ya know small towns don't ever forget. Folks like to think of you as the next Granny. You get your small-town tag when you're young.”

“One day I'll get a proper one in the city,” I grumbled, “and not from a town that can't even tag itself a name.”

“That you will, kid. Just don't stray too far.” She brushed a fallen bang off my forehead. “Speaking of stray . . . stop by the Canopy. I have a coloring book with chickens. You might want it for that little one that's always following you.”

Remembering, I dug inside my bag and pulled out the ribbon. “Done spent my money on this, Rose. It's going to be so
beautiful
in her hair!”

“Ah, a print of a Hens-and-Biddies plant. Perfect for lil' Baby Jane.” She admired it a minute.

Nameless's deputy sheriff came out of the back door of the Feed & Seed and scanned the lot. Frowning, he rubbed his thick mustache and took hold of Rose's sleeve, and said, “Have you seen the Crocketts?”

Rose handed me the ribbon, and I placed it carefully back into the bag. “No, Deputy,” she said, somewhat startled. “Is something wrong?”