The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat (28 page)

The AA thing just came to me all of a sudden and I had no idea where we’d find a meeting. But even though Plainview was a small town to those of us who’d grown up here, it was really a small city now, especially if you added in the university. And every city in the country had at least one AA meeting a day, didn’t it? I added, “If
you’re not ready and waiting when we drive up, I’m washing my hands of you.”

Clarice cried out, “Odette, you don’t mean that.” Then, to Barbara Jean, “She doesn’t mean that. She’s just worked up.”

She was right. I couldn’t really have washed my hands of Barbara Jean, but I was hoping that Barbara Jean was too messed up to know that. I drove the point home. I said, “Barbara Jean, I won’t spend what might be my last days dealing with a damn drunk. I’ve got too much on my plate.”

I couldn’t think of anything more to say to Barbara Jean, so I turned to Clarice. “And, speaking of plates, what’s with those noodles, Clarice? I didn’t get my supper today and I’d better put something in my stomach.”

We ate and didn’t talk about AA for the rest of the evening.

Aside from putting together a good meal from the odds and ends in Barbara Jean’s refrigerator, Clarice did a nice job of keeping our minds off what had happened. She made us laugh talking about Sharon’s wedding, which we decided to start calling “Veronica’s wedding” since that was more accurate.

Clarice said that, for Sharon’s sake, she was trying to inject some small touches of good taste into the spectacle Veronica was designing. The more she talked, the more excited she became. It reminded me of how she’d gotten such big kicks, and big disappointments, out of planning Barbara Jean’s wedding and mine.

She claimed to be a fan of understatement now, but decades earlier Clarice had tried to convince both Barbara Jean and me that we had to have at least a dozen bridesmaids because it was unlikely you could get your picture in
Jet
magazine with any fewer. She’d also insisted that we had to have our ceremonies at Calvary Baptist instead of our own churches because Calvary’s beautiful stained glass and the painting of sexy Jesus above the baptismal pool made for the best wedding photos.

Clarice’s wedding to Richmond did get covered in
Jet
—because of his football career and her historic birth and piano prizes. But things didn’t go as she’d planned for Barbara Jean and me. I married
James in my mother’s garden with just Clarice and Barbara Jean as bridesmaids.

The day after our high school graduation, Barbara Jean married Lester in the pastor’s office at First Baptist with just Big Earl, Miss Thelma, and Lester’s mother in attendance. The big wedding Clarice had dreamed of for her was out of the question since Barbara Jean was well into her fourth month with Adam by then and was starting to show.

AA meetings made Barbara Jean want to drink. She sat and listened to people whine about the hardships that had led them to gather in a basement room of the administration building at University Hospital, where they were served the harshest coffee Barbara Jean had ever tasted—but good pastries, thanks to Donut Heaven. They’d tell their tales of woe and Barbara Jean would think,
I can top that
. But she never said anything herself during those first meetings, nothing honest, at least. She went twice a week, and at the end of each meeting she left feeling that she was fully justified in having a little cocktail as a reward for having sat through it. Still, she declared her AA experience a success because she now drank about half as much as she had been drinking before. At least it seemed like half as much to her.

She patted herself on the back for throwing out most of the alcohol in her house. Though, naturally, she had to keep some beer and wine on hand for guests. And she saw no reason to toss out the whiskey, since she hardly ever drank that anyway. She stopped carrying around liquor in her thermos to her volunteer jobs, most days. She didn’t drink before 5:00 p.m., more often than not. And she let the calendar determine the extent of her late-night drinking. She only drank on dates that had some particular importance—holidays, birthdays, special anniversaries, things like that. So, if she was drinking every night, it was just because it was April. That month being a minefield of significant dates was hardly her fault.

On April 11, 1968, one week after Dr. King was shot dead, Miss Thelma tired of watching Barbara Jean mope around the house and
struggle to keep her food down. So she sent her to the clinic at University Hospital. The next day, which was the day Lester was due back to hear Barbara Jean’s answer to his proposal of marriage, she returned to the clinic and learned that she was pregnant.

Barbara Jean was seventeen, no husband, no family—more or less the same situation her mother had faced in 1950. But Barbara Jean was relieved when she found out. By the time she walked the distance from the clinic to the All-You-Can-Eat, she actually felt joyous. The decision she had made to choose Lester was suddenly unmade. She had leaped off a tall building and discovered that the pavement was made of rubber. Marrying Lester was out now. Chick and Barbara Jean would have to create a life together somehow. Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles. Any city, burning or not, would have to do.

When she got to the All-You-Can-Eat, the after-work rush was on. Barbara Jean saw Little Earl running from table to table taking drink orders and clearing plates, but she didn’t see Chick. She walked through the dining room and down the back hallway and looked into the kitchen. Still no Chick. Big Earl was alone there, so busy slinging pots and pans around that he didn’t notice her sticking her head in. She went to the storeroom then.

Barbara Jean knocked lightly on the storeroom door and whispered, “Ray?” No one answered. She pushed open the door and walked into the dark room. Groping along the wall, she found the light switch and turned it on. Everything of Chick’s was gone. The bed was there, but it was stripped of its sheets and blankets. His books and magazines were no longer stacked on the homemade shelves. His clothes were missing from the hooks Big Earl had screwed into the walls. She stepped further inside and turned in a circle as if she might find him secreted away in a corner of the tiny room. The one thing she did find was the Timex she had given him for his birthday, a day that now seemed as if it were a thousand years in the past. The watch rested atop a stack of cans at the side of the bed surrounded by tiny bits of glass from its smashed crystal. She picked up the watch and squeezed it tight, feeling the broken glass bite into her palm.

She heard Big Earl’s rumbling voice behind her. “Barbara Jean, you all right?”

“I was looking for Ray,” she said.

Big Earl walked into the storeroom, making the space seem even smaller with his massive presence. He stood there wiping his hands on his apron and said, “Ray quit last night, baby. Said he was movin’ on.”

Barbara Jean managed not to shout when she asked, “Did he say where he was going?”

“No, he just said he had to go.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Maybe this is the best thing for you two, for now, at least.”

Barbara Jean nodded, not knowing what to say. Then she took off. She hurried out of the All-You-Can-Eat and headed up the street. First walking, then running, she went in the direction of Main Street and then over to Wall Road. She had a hard time remembering the way, but eventually she found the winding gravel and dirt route that led to the house Chick had once shared with his brother.

She was covered in perspiration and gasping for breath when Desmond Carlson’s place came into view. She saw the big red truck Desmond used to chase people off Wall Road sitting on a bald patch in the center of the overgrown field of weeds that passed for a front lawn. The sun had set by then and the property was dark except for the pulsating blue light of a television shining through one of the windows. She hurried out back and found the run-down old shed that Chick had called home. For the second time that night, Barbara Jean searched an empty room. The moonlight beaming in from the open door provided just enough light for her to see that the few personal belongings she had taken note of on her previous visits when she and Chick had come there to lie together on his narrow cot had vanished. The two posters of eagles in flight, the photograph of his mother and father, the ratty blue sleeping bag covered with crudely cut rectangular patches—all of it gone.

But then, just when she thought she would lose her mind from despair, she turned and saw him standing in the doorway. She shouted, “Ray!” and ran the few steps to him.

Not Ray, she realized when she was close enough to smell the sour odor of his sweat and feel his breath on her face.

Desmond Carlson reached up and pulled a chain to light the bare bulb that hung from the ceiling so that they could both see each other. The thing that struck Barbara Jean about Desmond, whom she had never seen up close before this moment, was how much he resembled Ray. They had the same height and build, although Desmond was considerably heavier around the waist—a drinker’s body. Their features were similar, but the mouth Barbara Jean had known so well as a feature of Chick’s face was misshapen on his brother due to a white scar that ran from just below his nose to the cleft in his chin. And Desmond’s nose looked slightly off-kilter, the result, she imagined, of a long-ago fight. Still, the life he led had only damaged him slightly. This man, who had caused so much turmoil and become the symbol of everything scary and evil in the world to her, was pretty.

Desmond looked Barbara Jean up and down two times—slowly, making a show of it. Then he snorted and said, “Now I see what it was had Ray goin’ over to the coloreds. Didn’t know he had it in him. I always figured him for a sissy.”

Barbara Jean wanted out of there and away from this man, but she stayed calm long enough to ask, “Where’s Ray?”

“Your little boyfriend’s gone. Ungrateful bastard ran off and said he ain’t comin’ back.” He smiled at her then. But there was no friendliness or humor in his expression, and she moved away from him as far as the space allowed. He said, “But listen, sweet thing, if it’s white meat you’ve got a taste for, let me show you what a real man’s like.” Then he lunged at her and pressed her against the wall with his body. He ground his crotch against Barbara Jean’s hip, all the while snickering like a mean-spirited child playing a game. He stopped laughing when she brought her hand to his crotch, grabbed him and twisted as if she were wringing out a wet dish towel. He hit the floor with Barbara Jean’s fist still between his legs, gripping and turning.

She let go, leaped over him, and ran out of the shed. She flew across
the yard, hearing him cuss and threaten as she escaped. “I’m gonna kill you, bitch!” he shouted.

Barbara Jean was back on the gravel road when she heard the sound of an engine firing and knew that he was coming after her. She darted down narrow, muddy streets that she had never seen before, hoping to hide from Desmond. She ducked behind trees and crouched in gullies to stay out of sight. More than once her pursuer’s truck passed just a few feet away from her face as she knelt in tall weeds at the side of the road.

Finally, after thinking she would be lost forever in this unfamiliar and inhospitable part of town, Barbara Jean found her way back to Wall Road. From there, it was just a twenty-five-minute walk back to Big Earl’s house.

It was probably the thunderous pounding of her heart that kept Barbara Jean from hearing the sound of the engine as it approached from the rear. She didn’t realize that she was being followed until the headlights behind her caused her shadow to lengthen on the road ahead. She started to run again, but she only had two steps left in her. She was just too damn tired.

She glanced toward the side of the road where it sloped down into a deep gully and then dark woods. If she could get out of the light and into the trees, she might be all right. She could hide, maybe even all night if she had to.

No. No hiding, she decided. For just a little while she had to become somebody else. Until this was over, no matter how it ended, she had to be somebody fearless.

Barbara Jean turned toward the headlights that had now come to a stop just a few yards away from her. Then she brought up her fists, ready to fight. She whispered to herself, “My name is Odette Breeze Jackson and I was born in a sycamore tree. My name is Odette Breeze Jackson and I was born in a sycamore tree.”

But no one approached. She heard nothing for several drawn-out seconds. Then the quiet night air was filled with the sound of a car horn’s blast. The horn played out, “Ooo, Ooo-ooo.”

Lester.

Inside the blue Cadillac, Lester explained that he had gone to the McIntyres’ to see her as soon as he returned to town. He had arrived at the house just in time to cross paths with Big Earl as he came rushing out of the door on his way to look for Barbara Jean. They had talked, and Lester persuaded Big Earl to go back to the All-You-Can-Eat while he tracked her down. After being pointed in the direction of Wall Road, that’s just what Lester had done.

Barbara Jean didn’t say a word all the way back to the house and Lester asked her no questions. When they pulled up outside Big Earl and Miss Thelma’s, Lester performed like the gentleman he was. He opened the passenger-side door for her and accompanied her up the front walkway. As they reached the porch steps, Lester asked, “Have you given any thought to what we talked about?”

She started to laugh then. She laughed so hard at God’s good joke on her that she had to hold on to the wrought-iron step railing to keep from falling over. Tears rushed down Barbara Jean’s face and she struggled to breathe. When she could talk again, she said, “I’m sorry. But you’re going to think this is funny, too, when I tell you … Lester, I’m pregnant. I’m going to have Chick Carlson’s baby. And I just spent the evening running and hiding behind trees, trying to get away from his crazy-ass brother. So, you can take that proposal back and count yourself lucky.” Barbara Jean climbed the three steps to the porch and then turned around, expecting to see Lester scrambling back to his Cadillac.