GodPretty in the Tobacco Field

“This glorious debut novel is one of an unexpectedly fine crop of recent and new Southern fiction.
Liar's Bench
succeeds on many levels. As a coming-of-age story, it is splendidly realized and uplifting. As a portrait of a Southern community painfully stumbling into the age of racial and gender equality, it is penetrating and convincing.”

—
Southern Literary Review

 

 

“A well-crafted, beautifully written novel.”

—
News-Gazette
(Champaign, Illinois)

 

 

“Satisfying . . . with thought-provoking historical elements.”

—
Historical Novel Reviews

Books by Kim Michele Richardson

 

 

 

 

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

G
OD
P
RETTY
in the T
OBACCO
F
IELD

Kim Michele Richardson

KENSINGTON BOOKS
www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

 

and

 

 

 

—Wendell Berry

A
s sure as ugly is found in the morning addict waiting to score in the parking lot of a Kentucky Shake King, there is GodPretty in the child who toils in the tobacco field, her fingers whispering of arthritic days to come.

My uncle, Gunnar Royal, says I'm that child and that I'll find Salvation if I work hard enough. But it's doubtful. I've been working these fields since knee-high, and ain't nothing but all kinds of GodUgly keeps happening around here.

Now, every time we pass the Shake King my uncle points to the whores and hooligans who hang out there. That's what he worries on—what I might become and what my insolence could bring. That's what makes him pour the bitter herbs into my mouth, and why he sends me out to work the tobacco rows at daybreak. Gunnar says at fifteen I should know better, should have learned better, being that my sassy mouth-of-the-South has earned me buckets of punishment from his tincture of biting herbs steeped in moonshine.

When my uncle took me in ten years ago, I learned the widower scriptured his Jesus with moonshine, and he made it his sole purpose to chase out my parents' devils. If anyone could, I reckoned it'd be Gunnar. A feared man in these hills, he'd served as executioner and strapped no-telling-how-many Kentucky prison inmates into the ol' Sparky electric chair during the forties and fifties. And although it's 1969 and Gunnar's nearing sixty, lordy-jones that man can still set a full field and cut a look that's meant to do a'hurtin'.

Outside, a July rain dropped softly onto mountain shadows as the fog rolled through. I waited to be done with his latest by turning to the little windup clock on my nightstand. Keeping time to the soft ticks with steady taps on my knee, I glimpsed into childhood memories, searching for distraction from the mounting pain Gunnar'd dished out.

I studied my parents' photograph on the nightstand, my daddy looking on as Mama playfully wrapped the frayed cloth cord around me while pretending to talk to him on the toy telephone. A cottony memory whisked through my thoughts, easing the pain a little: She'd lightly poked my ribs and laughed softly into the tin mouthpiece. “Yes . . . uh-huh, me and the kid's on the way . . . Right, snugbug?” Mama had tickled me and put the red receiver up to my ear. “Tell Daddy we'll see him at the tent revival, sugar. Talk to Daddy, RubyLyn,” she'd coaxed. I grabbed the old toy, raised the cord, and shook it at her, hissing like Daddy's church snakes.

“Little Miss Preach!” she'd teased, catching me by the ribbon of my dress. My toddler's giggles had lit across her singsong as she pulled me into the soft folds of her satin slip.

I'd found the family photograph tucked inside Mama's old pocketbook along with her tube of Rattle-My-Tattle red lipstick, a few coins, and a homemade paper fortune-teller that we had made together.

I slipped my thumb and forefingers into the worn paper pockets of the fortune-teller, opening and closing it several times. I ran a finger over the tiny penciled portraits she had sketched of us on two of its triangle flaps. The third folded apron showed her sketch of a tobacco leaf. She had saved the last blank spot for me. Resting a fingertip on the faded red heart with the strange streak through its center, I thought about my daddy's missing portrait, what could've been—and should've been.

It was a sad broken heart that I barely remembered coloring onto the empty space. But, yet, it was my crayoned drawing from a time before memories could snug root.

I clutched my chest and rolled slowly over to the side of my bed, dropping the fortune-teller onto the bedspread. A shadow spilled under the closed door and I cast a prayerful eye toward it and stood. He went on into his room.

I wiped a bead of sweat off my upper lip, the pain crawling into my head and sliding down my throat. If he didn't let me out soon, I feared I would never swallow again, talk again. I began to pace in front of my open window, forcing myself to breathe in the fresh air. Some days the bittersweet vine rooted with patches of morning glory that had been hugging this big old house since 1857 gripped more than the white-columned porch and paint-peeling boards. You couldn't escape it—him. Not even from outside. Especially like now when the heavy fog burdened, and the cradling mountains squeezed a little too tight.

Sinking back down onto the bed, I punched the mattress again and again, glancing back at the clock and fighting the nerves whittling me down. Reaching under the pillow, I pulled out my mama's snakeskin purse with its kissing-lock closure. I rubbed my fingers over the biscuit-colored skin, trailing the diamond paths darkened with age and oil from my smooth tips.
Such a fine thing
. I knew from town talk that my daddy had it made for her and the skin had come from one of his church snakes.

I flicked open the golden clasp and dug out her lipstick and streaked the red paint across my puffy left cheek and imagined a mother's velvet kiss left its sweet mark.

Once more, I eyed the clock, slapping my fist on a jiggling knee. I picked up the fortune-teller again, tracing the paper's speckled grain that had been produced from the pulp of the tobacco stalk, questioning . . . Refusing to believe like some of the townsfolk—that there was anything magical in my fortune-tellers. Believing would mean I'd somehow heralded tragedy with this broken heart long ago....

Gunnar rapped on my bedroom door. I slipped the fortune-teller into her purse and shoved it back under my pillow. Cupping a hand over my face, I opened the door.

He frowned as I pushed past him down the hall and into the bathroom, my cramped jaws near splitting. Quickly, I spit out the mouthful of elixir he'd made me hold for fifteen minutes, the tang of moonshine burning my gums and widowing my sass—until the next time.

I touched my cheeks where the fires had leeched to tender skin, rubbing my tongue over the blistered lining of my jaws.

I spit again, blood this time that had me screaming. “G-Gunnar!” I looked at the sink in horror.

Gunnar rushed in beside me. “Good Lord,” he said softly to himself, before going to get the goldenseal medicinal he'd concocted.

“Please,” I cried. “I need to see a real doc. It's bad—”

“Rinse.” He pushed the jar into my hand, watching me swish the antiseptic around in my mouth. “I've warned you not to use my paper for those sinful witch fortunes you call art,” he chided.

“See what you made me do, Gunnar?
See?
. . . You old . . . executioner . . .” I spit out more blood.

He backed out into the hall. “You're not going to waste my good paper making vulgar scrawls.”

“And you're”—I spit once more—“you're not gonna execute me that easy . . .
dammit
.” Tears splatted down.

“Quiet that serpent tongue.”

“Gunnar, help . . .
God, please help me
. . . .”

“Only the GodPretty in the tobacco field. Only the
GodPretty,
RubyLyn.”

Gunnar's bedroom door clicked shut on my pleas.