Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction (68 page)

“‘ If there was a law he’s workin’ with maybe I could take it, but it ain’t the law. He’s workin’ away my spirit, tryin’ to make me cringe and crawl, takin’ away our decency’.” William had quoted this scene from
Grapes of Wrath
with such passion, he could’ve replaced Henry Fonda himself.

“At least you have a daddy,” I said. I thought any dad was better than no dad at all.

“I’d be your daddy if you’d let me,” he said with a mischievous wink. I couldn’t get him to talk any deeper than that.

Subsequent to the night he’d made the backseat of my car into a Struggle Buggy, and up until that last night that I left him stranded at the dance hall, he’d minded his manners. I’m talking a few weeks
of good behavior here. His only method of coming on stronger was through another one of our movies,
Casablanca
. Outside the theatre that night, he took me in his arms in a slow dance, and with people gathering around with an ain’t-that-sweet-smile and him loving the attention, he sang, “‘You must remember this / A kiss is still a kiss / A sigh is just a sigh / The fundamental things apply / As time goes by. / And when two lovers woo, / They still say I love you / On that you can rely / No matter what the future brings-’”

Two could play that game. I stopped him with an animated shake of my head and open palms on his chest, and said (in my most sultry Ingrid Bergman voice), “‘ You know, Rick, I have many a friend in Casablanca, but somehow, just because you despise me, you are the only one I trust.’” I loved that line.

“Ugarte said that, not Ilsa.”

“I knew that,” I said, trying to cover up.

“Sure you did, kid,” he said in his Humphrey Bogart voice.

So I cry and I miss the banter, the back-and-forth, the addictive challenge. He kept me on my toes and now I find myself flat-footed. I figure not even Papa’s journal can let me down this low. I pull it from its hiding spot and clutching it to my chest, crawl into my feather bed sniffing and feeling lonely.

August 1, 1921: I was reading over my last entry and boy did I get on a tangent about the Prohibition and the women’s vote, completely forgetting about my problem with my brother Joe. If Bess knew, she’d tell me to ‘refocus’, her favorite word these days, like I’m just staring off into nothing. It’s not nothing; I just can’t tell her what I’m looking at. It’s a mess. Like I said in my last entry – and before I got sidetracked on the eighteenth and nineteenth Amendments – my cousin, Jimmy, telephoned the other day. Jimmy’s got a whole set of problems of his own and he’s trying to dole them out like I need some. “Keep it in the family,” he said. Hell, yes, keep it in the family. Or see a good number of family change residence to the local jailhouse. Puts a whole new meaning on ‘family reunion’ and frankly I think it’s all wet baloney. God bless Pickerville Georgia.

Jimmy and his daddy – my uncle Willy – are involved in two things, and I’m split in two about it. One I’m one hundred percent against, one I’m
one hundred percent for. The complication here is that one caper pays for the other and that doesn’t sit well with me and my conscious. Yes, that’s right, Dear Diary, I said ‘caper’. Yours Truly has become a criminal of sorts. I even hesitated in writing that here but as I told Bess, if you can’t say it, then write it down. Writing takes a load off the mind. It’s the universe’s way of giving you absolution.

Which is why newspaper editorials are so popular and why I was Edrite Formen.

Jimmy telephoned to say he needed my help. Seems that Joe has borrowed a chunk of change and has no way to pay it back. When the cotton crop went down with the boll weevils, Joe decided to invest in automobiles and use his barren cotton field as a sales lot. He claims this new venture made him busier than “a farmer with one hoe and two rattlesnakes”. Turns out, he’s not so busy. Brother or not, I have to say this: If Joe’s brains were gunpowder, he wouldn’t have enough to blow his hat off. His plan didn’t pan out and he went all around Robin Hood’s barn as to why, from blaming it on the locals who move too slowly to change, to blaming the stink coming from Harriet’s chicken coops. I reminded him that it’s Harriett’s feather ticks and pillows business that’s bringing their money in, so stop looking the gift horse in the mouth.

The scariest part of all I’ve just written is that I’m starting to talk like him. To quote my hero, Mark Twain, ‘Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them, the rest of us could not succeed.’

Speaking of fools, there’s Jimmy’s little brother nicknamed Slingshot. He’s a five-year old live wire that earned his nickname by killing every bird or squirrel that comes within fifty yards of their house. I’d forgotten about the pipsqueak until I was almost killed by him. I’d gone over there to talk business with Uncle Willy and Jimmy and there’s Slingshot standing on their second floor balcony that extends across the front of the house above the veranda. “Take another step and you get it between the eyes,” he said steadily, sounding overly menacing and convincing for his age. His dress shirt and suspenders added to his midget appearance. His slingshot stuck out between two railings and aimed at me. On the ground beneath the oak tree beside me, lay two dead Bluejays. How he could kill them in all that tree’s droopy Spanish moss was an impressive mystery but it seemed rather sadistic. He always was an unpredictable brat and the rock remained in the sling and pulled back, aimed
at my head. Admittedly I broke out into a sweat. I raised my arms and said, “Okay, David, Goliath surrenders.” We stood there staring each other down until his mother came to the rescue.

Silver haired since her twenties, Marge stepped out onto the veranda with a tray of iced tea, still looking like a young Sheba even though she’d delivered Slingshot late in her mid-life. She said, “Thomas, why in the world are you standing there with your arms up like that.” I rolled my eyes and jerked my head up and she immediately knew the cause. “TJ, you come down here instantly!” she called out, coming down the veranda steps and onto the grass. She shielded her eyes to look up to the second floor balcony but of course it’s empty and now I’m looking foolish. She gently lowered my arms while saying, “I could shoot his daddy for teaching TJ to be so violent with that slingshot!”

I sit very still, reading no more. Just staring. At one word.
TJ.

There could only be one TJ with a slingshot – he’d taught me to use one, with rocks aimed at Pepsi bottles. And only one silver-haired Marge – who now I know is my papa’s aunt … which makes TJ my cousin. Holey-moley we’re related! I’d been making out with my cousin – and he’d asked me to marry him! I think I’m going to blow my top. But I have to think first. This must be why he didn’t want his mother to know where I was living. But how could his last name be “Jackson”? And why would he want to marry his cousin? And why is Uncle Joe pushing us together?

“Clary, I’ll take Uncle Joe’s breakfast tray in to his room,” I say the next morning.

“You’re volunteering for abuse? I only do it cause I get paid for it,” she says with a chuckle. Then she turns from the stove to take a hard look at me. “What’s wrong, child? You look as weak as pond water.” She pulls out a chair at her working table. “Take a sit and I’ll bring you a cup of coffee.” She sets this down in front of me, slumped and sleepy in my seat. I yawn loudly and don’t eat. Big mistake.

“Clary, I’m all discombobulated. Did you know that William Thomas Jackson the Third, or TJ, is in fact my cousin?”

She stops fussing around me and returns to the stove, her back to me. “Don’t ask me nothing.”

I stare at her backside wondering why and what to say but then I figure if I say anything, she’ll just high-tail it to her room behind the kitchen. I wait silently for the eggs from her skillet to be added to the tray and I take this out of the kitchen without another word.

I’m relieved to see that Uncle Joe has a little color to his cheeks this morning. I’d be more hesitant to pounce if he looked like he was dying.

I set the tray down on his bed table in front of him. His eyes roll over to me in surprise and he immediately attempts to sit up more, smoothing his scrimpy gray hairs. “Well, this is an honor, missy. You bringing me breakfast. That’s more than I been getting from you. More than a wave and a spit of gravel as you drive down my laneway.” His mouth slacks as he studies me. “What’s wrong now? You look like the backside of bad weather.”

“Yes, it seems I’ve been giving that impression all morning,” I say dryly. I sit down and face him. “I haven’t been around much because I was doing what you told me to do. And that was to spend time with William Thomas Jackson the third.”

“That’s a good girl,” he says with a nod. “Did he ask you to marry him yet? I know he thinks you’re cuter than a bug’s ear. What you need to do is—”

“Why the hell would you want me to marry my
cousin
?” I blurt out, shocking myself. This isn’t the way I planned it.

He plops his head on his pillow and closes his eyes, and I swear for the life of me, he’s faking it. I become madder yet.

“Answer me!”

He opens one eye, a mean eye, like looking into the eye of a rooster. “Don’t you talk to me in that tone, missy. I’m not so sick I can’t get a switch after you.”

“Now you’re
threatening
me? What the
hell
is going on here? I want to know! I want answers
now
!” I’m shouting and it actually feels good; I didn’t know I had so much pent up inside.

I’ve never seen someone so angry before; how his eye could turn redder from the inside-out, his face blotch red in patches. “This plantation is not going to some smart-ass kid and her bitch of a mother, I don’t care if you are my next of kin. I’ll do the right thing by your daddy, I owe him that as my brother, but on my terms. Do you hear me? On my terms!” He coughs a wicked deep-throated croup and truly does look sick now. “My terms,” he says hoarsely and takes a jagged breath. “My terms are, you will marry TJ and keep the plantation on the south side of the family, the
right
side of the family, if I have to beat you every step to the church house! Do you hear me, girl? Are you listening to me?” The more he says, the more his mouth foams in the corners.

I sit immobilized, shocked, like watching a chicken turn into a vulture. He keeps saying
Are you listening me, do you hear me, girl?
as someone drags me out of the room. Suddenly Clary’s face is in mine. “What are you trying to do, Miss Katy, get yourself killed? Don’t you know what that man is capable of doing? He’d have you hanging from a tree, and there you are, taunting him, like holding meat up to a mad dog.” She shakes my arm. “What’s wrong with you, girl? Now you get on up to your room and read your papa’s journal, or a book, or take a long soak in the tub. You want me run you some bath water? Come on.”

She mutters under her breath the whole way up there, and then turns on the bath water faucets, and stretches a towel up to block her view of me. “Now get undressed,” she says. “I’m not leaving til you do.”

I do as she says and step into the tub. Papa’s journal still lays on the bed and this she gets and thrusts in my face. “Don’t say another word to anybody until you read some more and calm down.” I begin where I left off in his last entry.

I’ve strayed with my thoughts again; seems I do that a great deal here lately. I think of one thing, then grab another … like a monkey swinging through the branches of a tree ... should I have the operation … should I tell Bess … should I tell Joe to go to …

Oh yes, Joe. I was talking about Joe owing Uncle Willy money and plenty of it. And Joe using the green stuff for his investment in automobiles but not
having much luck in selling them. Since Joe’s hurting and can’t deliver, he came to me for help. I can’t help him until I sell the Lighthouse; what I mean to say is, my manor - damn women have taken over and I don’t even think of it as mine anymore.

Like I said, I went over to Uncle Willy’s to see if I could help in some other way. After the slingshot event, and after TJ ran off to kill a schoolteacher or something equally bad, Uncle Willy and I talked in his study and he convinced me that the best way for Joe to come even is to help Uncle Willy out with a few bootlegging deals. If we’d give him a hand with that, Joe is all square. We’d even come out ahead and I admit I could use some cash flow. The illegal part of it all bothers me but liquor shouldn’t be illegal and I’m not with the Bible tappers who believe it’s wrong. To quote Mark Twain, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.”

I told Uncle Willy we’d help him; for one thing you’re either with Uncle Willy or you’re against him, there’s no in-between. I also knew Joe would have no scruples in breaking the law. But now in my reflection of it all, I’m getting a tight feeling in my chest over it all. If I get caught, Bess would lose all respect. And to support an uncle who makes a great deal of white sheets and black skin disappear - in other words, is in charge of the local chapter of the KKK – that part I’m totally against. I’ve always been a supporter of the Negro community and hire one whenever I can. Those I got to know, like Lizzie and the hired hand I got out here working and sleeping in the barn, are hardworking and caring folks just looking to get by, no different than the rest of us. The problem with James is he’s not only working and sleeping, he’s hiding. Hiding from the likes of my own people, who lynched James’ brother, Chester, but James got away. Joe’s not happy about keeping him here, but I think we owe him. I’ve decided to better protect him by sending James and Chester’s wife and children up to the Lighthouse until James can find a job up there. James tells me Chester has five children and without their daddy, they’re all working as field hands, even their two-year old Isaac. James and his brother were “caught flirting” with two young white ladies, daughters of the local klansmen. “The KKK is not singling out niggers,” my uncle said, when I questioned him about it. “The KKK is spreading across the nation to protect Americans against immigrants coming in and taking our jobs, against Jews and Catholics trying to take over our religion, against Communists trying to
take over our government.” Sure enough, my research found that there’s about three million men openly registered as members, as far away as California and Oregon, and it’s growing because of the loose immigration laws. I quoted Thomas Jefferson to Joe, “Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” And further told Joe that these “knights” of the KKK were damn un-American but he didn’t say one way or another. Plenty of fidgeting though, which made me more suspicious of his own affiliations.