Miss Julia Hits the Road (29 page)

When I went down to breakfast Saturday morning, I found Hazel Marie still in her robe, drinking coffee at the table and looking through the morning paper.

“Where is everybody?” I asked. I’d expected Lillian to be making a big breakfast for Little Lloyd, as she usually did when he didn’t have school.

“Lillian and Little Lloyd decided to walk over to Willow Lane,” Hazel Marie said as she smoothed out the paper.

“My word, it must be two miles over there.”

“Well, I think they both just wanted to get out. Lillian said something about visiting with one of her neighbors who’s staying with a family near Willow Lane.”

I made toast and poured coffee and, offering more to Hazel Marie, sat at the table with her.

“Oh, look,” Hazel Marie said as she turned a page of the newspaper. “Look at this. They’ve got our ad in here. A whole half page.”

I looked over her shoulder and read with increasing agitation the huge, attention-grabbing ad:

Then, right below that in smaller letters, but not that much smaller, was a list of names of the leaders of local society—that’s what it said, “leaders of local society,” of all things. And heading the list was my name, as clear as you please. And beside my name were the words
Sponsored by Thurlow Jones, Sam Murdoch, J. D. Pickens, Deputy Coleman Bates, Sheriff Earl Frady, and Lieutenant Wayne Peavey.

I found it hard to get my breath. “Hazel Marie! My name wasn’t supposed to be in there! Who’s responsible for this?”

“Well, I put it in, Miss Julia,” Hazel Marie said. “You asked me to, remember? I didn’t know I was supposed to leave your name out.”

I put my hand to my forehead and moaned. “But what about all those sponsors? Thurlow Jones’s name beside mine is bad enough, but the rest of them? That’s false advertising, Hazel Marie.”

“No, it’s not,” she said, beginning to smile at my distress. “They’ve all donated at least a thousand dollars in your name, and some of them even more. I’ll tell you, the money is rolling in for you. Although Emma Sue Ledbetter would be a close second if you hadn’t gotten Mr. Jones as a sponsor.”

Leaning over to read the ad more closely, I said, “Well, at least you didn’t put the amounts that the sponsors have given. I’d never live it down if this town saw how much Thurlow Jones gave. They’d be speculating on what else he was buying.”

“Oh, you worry too much about what people say,” she said with an airy wave of her hand, as if she had not been the major topic of whispered conversation for years. “Now, listen, there’re five or six more women who’ve volunteered to ride since I sent this to the paper. A couple of doctors’ wives, a lawyer’s daughter, the Lutheran minister’s wife, and a judge’s wife. And they’ve all got sponsors. This thing is really rolling, Miss Julia.”

“How old are they?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “They’re mostly in their thirties and forties, I would imagine. Why?”

“Oh, no reason,” I said. “I’d just prefer not to be the only elderly woman to make a fool of herself.” Then, turning to the phone, I said, “I better call Sam.”

“He’s not home. I talked to J. D. before you came down, and he’s going with Sam to have the sidecar put on. Then they’re going to ride for a while to see how the bike handles. And I think J. D. wants Sam to get in a little more practice before the big run.”

“From what I’ve seen, he needs it,” I said. “When did you talk to Mr. Pickens? I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

She ducked her head and said, “Well, I called him. Just to tell him the ad would be in the paper. He might’ve missed it, you know.”

“If he had, somebody would’ve told him. This is going to be the talk of the town, if it’s not already.”

“Oh, look, Miss Julia,” Hazel Marie said, holding the newspaper up. “They’ve got a separate article about the Poker Run in here. Red Ryder’s quoted, and so is Sam. Oh, my goodness, they’ve even interviewed Emma Sue. Listen to this: ‘I go wherever the Lord tells me to go, whether I like it or not. And since he wants me on the back of a motorcycle, that’s where I intend to be.’ ” Hazel Marie stopped and pondered Emma Sue’s words, then, looking up at me, she went on. “Do you think the Lord really told her to ride?”

“For goodness sakes, Hazel Marie,” I said. “If you listen to what Emma Sue says, you’d think she has a face-to-face conversation with the Lord every day. With coffee and doughnuts. The one thing I know for sure is that the only word I got about getting on a motorcycle came in the form of a check from Thurlow Jones, who is as far from being a conduit from heaven as anybody I know.” I reached for my coat and began putting it on. “Now, I’m going over to Willow Lane and try to catch Lillian and Little Lloyd before they have to walk all the way home.”

I closed the door behind me and got into my car, and didn’t get five blocks from the house before I met Little Lloyd and Lillian walking home.

I leaned over and opened the passenger door. “I came to give you a ride.”

They piled in, bringing cool air with them. “That take my breath away, Miss Julia,” Lillian said. “Seein’ how lonesome it look.”

“I know, Lillian. But just think how much easier they’ll be to repair with everybody moved out.”

“Yessum, all us Willow Lane folks been prayin’, hopin’ we get to go back.”

“You will, Miss Lillian,” Little Lloyd said, patting her shoulder. “Mama said that since Miss Julia and all the other ladies’re riding in the Poker Run, donations’re coming in faster than she can count.”

Well, let us hope and pray, I thought as I pulled into the driveway. I took a long, sorrowful look at my house, thinking what a shame it would be if it went the way of Lillian’s house, and Clarence Gibbs put up another monstrosity like the Family Life Center across the street.

The next morning, being Sunday, Little Lloyd, Hazel Marie, and I walked across to the church for morning services. I was pleased that Hazel Marie had joined us, since she’d been avoiding church during her time of cohabitation with Mr. Pickens. I’d not said anything to her about it. It’d been my experience that the more you told somebody that they ought to go to church, the less likely they were to show up. Better to wait and let their own conscience do its work.

I was proven right by the fact that, without a word from me, she’d arisen, readied herself, and followed us into my usual pew, four rows from the front on the aisle.

But after commending myself for handling Hazel Marie in such a way as to bring her back into the fold, I soon wondered why I was there myself. Pastor Larry Ledbetter, in his black robe, cut loose on us with a sermon the likes of which I’d not heard in a month of Sundays. He took as his text half of a verse from Proverbs:
A prudent wife is from the Lord.

“Prudence,” he declaimed, lifting up a finger at each point he made, “means having discretion in all things.” One finger went up and pointed at us. “It also entails exercising good judgment when it comes to making decisions.” Another finger sprang up. “And common sense when it comes to practical matters.” A third finger went up, and he leaned over the podium to make sure he had our attention, putting power behind his final point. “And
circumspection
when it comes to one’s public behavior!”

As I reared back in the pew from that last onslaught, it came through to me that he was highly exercised over the plans of certain wives in the congregation to cling to strange men and ride behind them on Harley-Davidson Road Kings and Softails.

“It is incumbent,” he said, using one of his favorite words, “upon Christian wives to conduct themselves in such a way as to give no offense, shame, or humiliation to their husbands or to those who look to them as examples and models of Christian behavior.” He took a deep breath, leaned on the podium, and lowered his voice. “I say to you wives, nay, even to all women, you are commanded to be under obedience, as the law saith.”

I looked around to see how Emma Sue was taking such a public dressing down, but she was nowhere to be seen. I poked Hazel Marie and nodded toward Emma Sue’s empty place. Even though Emma Sue was not one of my favorite people, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. If her husband could speak so forcefully about her behavior to the congregation, and I expect everyone there knew who he was talking about, then there was no telling what he’d said to her in private. I sat back, satisfied and content that I no longer had a husband to berate me when I didn’t follow his directions.

Then Pastor Ledbetter switched from wives to widows, and I took immediate offense. If he wanted to preach about his own wife’s shortcomings, that was one thing—unattractive though it was—but now he’d gone to meddling. I sat there, getting stiffer and stiffer, as he took off on something that wasn’t one bit of his business.

“Widows,” he exhorted with authoritative power, “are to occupy themselves with their own homes and the Lord’s work, taking care to refrain from idleness.”

Well, I couldn’t disagree with that, even though I could think of any number of worthwhile occupations for widows besides house and church work. But then he started going far afield. “There are those widows,” he thundered, “who have nothing to do but be busybodies. They wander from house to house, stirring up discontent and speaking things they ought not.

“Paul writes,” the pastor went on, quoting his favorite writer, “that they ought to be teachers of good things to the younger women—good things like being discreet, chaste, keepers of the home, and
obedient
to their husbands. This is what widows and aged women ought to be occupied with, instead of,” he paused, then lowered his voice again for effect, “instead of running around enticing others onto the highways and byways of evildoers.”

My word, I thought, hoping to goodness there were no visiting bikers who’d take offense at being publically named as evildoers on the highways. For all I knew, they’d be enraged enough to call out the pastor, after which we’d have to form a search committee to find another preacher.

But I was so mad by that time that I didn’t much care what happened to the pastor. I didn’t know where he’d gotten his information, but
I
certainly had not gone from house to house stirring up anything. They’d all come to my house, and it had been Mr. Pickens who’d done the enticing, not me. Furthermore, there was not one soul who could accuse me of being a busybody. Of all the people who minded their own business, it was me. I wanted to stand right up and tell him so, but then he’d have grounds for another sermon, about women keeping silence in the church.

It was all I could do not to get up and leave. Hazel Marie put her hand on my arm to calm me down, and Little Lloyd kept glancing up at me as I became more and more insulted at the pastor’s effrontery. How dare he blame me for his own wife’s conduct! Then, having a flash of insight, I realized I was not only personally insulted, I was insulted for Emma Sue’s sake.

That was a change in my viewpoint, but as we rose to follow the choir in its recessional, I determined to do everything in my power to make sure Emma Sue crawled on that motorcycle and had the time of her life doing it. And Pastor Ledbetter could either like it or lump it, I didn’t care which.

Well, of course we had the pastor for dinner, and I don’t mean we invited him to dine with us. Hazel Marie and I, with Little Lloyd and Lillian listening with wide eyes and open mouths, discussed him up one side and down the other. I was still so mad that it was hard to swallow either his sermon or my food.

“Lillian,” I said, “what did the Reverend Abernathy preach on this morning?” I had driven Lillian to the AME Zion church earlier, and had picked her up after we returned from our services. The reverend always went longer than Pastor Ledbetter, although the pastor went plenty long enough. And, for my money, he’d’ve done better that morning to’ve quit before he started.