Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (32 page)

By the way, we were sorry to hear about Artis O. Peavey’s bad luck.

 … Dot Weems …

Artis O. Peavey had been staying with his second wife, the former Miss Madeline Poole, who was employed as a first-class domestic. She worked for a family on the exclusive Highland Avenue. They were living at her house at No. 6 Tin Top Alley, over on the south side of town. Tin Top Alley was nothing more than six rows of wooden shack houses with tin roofs and dirt yards, most of which had been decorated with washtubs planted with colorful flowers to offset the drab gray wood of the shacks.

It was a step up from their last address. That had been the old servants’ quarters in the back of a house, whose address was simply No. 2 Alley G.

Artis found the neighborhood extremely pleasant. One block away was Magnolia Point, where he could hang out in front of stores and visit with other husbands of domestics. In early evenings, after a supper, usually of white folks’ leftovers, they would all sit on the porches, and many a night one family would start to sing, and one by one the others would join in. Recreation was plentiful because the walls were so thin that you could enjoy your neighbor’s radio or phonograph along
with them; when Bessie Smith sang on somebody’s Victrola, “I ain’t got nobody,” everybody in Tin Top Alley felt sorry for her.

The area was certainly not lacking in other social activities, and Artis was invited to all of them; he was the most popular man in the alley, with men and women alike. Every night there would be at least one or two chitlin fryings or barbecuing … or if the weather was bad, you could just sit under the yellow light on your front porch and enjoy the sound of the rain hitting the tin roofs.

This fall afternoon, Artis had been sitting on the porch watching a thin trail of blue smoke rise up from his cigarette, happy because Joe Louis was the champion of the world and the Birmingham Black Barons baseball team had won all their games that year. Just then, a skinny, mangy yellow dog came loping around the alley, scrounging for something to eat; he belonged to After John, a friend of Artis’s, named such because he had been born after his brother John. The dog wigwagged his way up the porch steps to Artis and got his daily pat on the head.

“I ain’t got mithin’ for you today, boy.”

The yellow dog was mildly disappointed, and wandered off in search of leftover cornbread or even a few greens. The Depression had never ended here, and dogs were in it too, for better or for worse; and most times for the worse.

Artis saw the dogcatchers’ truck drive up and the man in the white uniform got out with his net. The back was already loaded with yelping dogs unfortunate enough to have been caught that afternoon.

The man who got out whistled for the yellow dog, who was up the street.

“Here, boy … here, boy … Come on, boy …”

The friendly, unsuspecting dog ran over to him and in a second was in the net, flipped over on his back, and was being carried to the truck.

Artis came off the porch. “Hey, whoa, mister. That dog belongs to somebody.”

The man stopped. “Is he yours?”

“Naw, he ain’t mine. He belong to After John, so you cain’t be carrying him off, no suh.”

“I don’t care who it belongs to, it don’t have a license and we’re taking him in.”

The other man in the truck got out and just stood there.

Artis began to plead, because he knew that once that dog got down to the city pound, there wasn’t a chance in hell of ever getting him back; particularly if you were black.

“Please, mister, let me go and call him. He works over at Five Points, fo’ Mr. Fred Jones, making ice cream. Jes’ let me call him.”

“Do you have a phone?”

“No suh, but I can run up to the grocery store. Won’t take but a minute.” Artis pleaded harder with the man. “Oh please, suh, After John is jes’ a simpleminded boy no woman would marry and that dog is all he’s got. I don’t know what he’d do if anything happened to that dog of his. He’s liable to kill hisself.”

The two men looked at each other, and the larger one said, “Okay, but if you ain’t back in five minutes, we’re leaving. You hear me?”

Artis starting moving. “Yes suh, I’ll be right back.”

As he ran, he realized that he didn’t have a nickel, and prayed that Mr. Leo, the Italian man that ran the grocery store, would loan him one. He ran in the store, out of breath, and saw Mr. Leo.

“MR. LEO, MR. LEO, I GOTS TO HAVE A NICKEL … THEY GONNA CARRY AFTER JOHN’S DOG OFF … AND THEY’S WAITING FOR ME. PLEASE, MR. LEO …”

Mr. Leo, who hadn’t understood a word that Artis had said, made him calm down and explain to him all over again, but by the time he got his nickel, there was a white boy on the phone.

Artis was sweating, moving from one foot to another, knowing he couldn’t make that fellow get off that phone. One minute … two …

Artis moaned.

“Oh Lord.”

Finally, Mr. Leo passed by and knocked on the glass booth. “Get off!”

The young man begrudgingly said goodbye to his party for the next sixty seconds and hung up.

After he left, Artis jumped in the booth and realized he did not know the number.

His hands were wet and shaking as he searched through the telephone directory, hanging from a small chain. “Jones … Jones … Oh Lord … Jones … Jones … four pages full … Fred B.… Oh man, that’s his residence …”

He had to start all over in the Yellow Pages. “What do I look under … Ice Cream? Drugstore?” And he couldn’t find it. He dialed information.

“Information,” a crisp white voice answered. “Yes, please, may I help you?”

“Uh, yes ma’am. Uh, I’s looking for the number of Fred B. Jones.”

“I’m sorry, could your repeat that name, please?”

“Yes ma’am, Mr. Fred Jones in Five Points.” His heart was pounding.

“I have about fifty Fred Joneses, sir. Do you have a street address?”

“No ma’am, but he’s over in Five Points.”

“I have three Fred Joneses in the Five Points area … would you like all three numbers?”

“Yes ma’am.”

He searched his pockets for a pencil—and she started … “Mr. Fred Jones, 18th South, 68799; and Mr. Fred Jones, 141 Magnolia Point, 68745; and Fred C. Jones, 15th Street, that number is 68721 …”

He never found a pencil and the operator hung up. Back to the book.

He could hardly breathe. The sweat was running down his eyes, blurring his vision. Drugstore … Pharmacy … Ice Cream … Food … Catering … THAT’S IT! Here it was, Fred B. Jones Catering, 68715 …

He mashed the nickel in the slot and dialed the number. Busy. Tried again. Busy … busy …

“Oh Lord.”

After trying eight times, Artis didn’t know what to do, so he just ran back to the men. He turned the corner and, Thank God, they were still there, leaning up against the truck. They had the dog tied to the door handle with a rope.

“You get him?” the big one asked.

“No suh,” he said, gasping. “I wasn’t able to reach him, but if you could just ride me over to Five Points, I could get him …”

“Naw, we’re not gonna do that. We already wasted enough time with you, boy,” and he began to untie the dog and put him in the back.

Artis was desperate. “Naw suh, I jes’ cain’t let you do it.”

He reached in his pocket, and before either one of the men knew what had happened, he had sliced the rope holding the dog in half with the four-inch switchblade, and yelled, “Scat!”

Artis turned around and watched the grateful dog scamper around the corner, and was smiling when the blackjack hit him behind his left ear.

TEN YEARS FOR THE ATTEMPTED MURDER OF A CITY OFFICIAL WITH A DEADLY WEAPON
. It would have been thirty if those two men had been white.

Ed Couch came home Thursday night and said that he was having trouble with a woman down at the office who was “a real ball breaker,” and that none of the men wanted to work with her because of it.

The next day, Evelyn went out to the mall to shop for a bed jacket for Big Momma and while she was having lunch at the Pioneer Cafeteria, a thought popped into her head, unannounced:

What is a ball breaker?

She’d heard Ed use that term a lot, along with
She’s out to get my balls
and
I
had to hold on to my balls for dear life
.

Why was Ed so scared that someone was out to get his balls? What were they, anyway? Just little pouches that carried sperm; but the way men carried on about them, you’d think they were the most important thing in the world. My God, Ed had just about died when one of their son’s hadn’t dropped properly. The doctor said that it wouldn’t affect his ability to have children, but Ed had acted like it was a tragedy and wanted to send him to a psychiatrist, so he wouldn’t feel less of a man. She remembered thinking at the time, how silly
 … her breasts had never developed, and nobody ever sent her for help.

But Ed had won out, because he told her she didn’t understand about being a man and what it meant. Ed had even pitched a fit when she wanted to have their cat, Valentine, who had impregnated the thoroughbred Siamese cat across the street, fixed.

He said, “If you’re gonna cut his balls off, you might as well just go on and put him to sleep!”

No doubt about it, he was peculiar where balls were concerned.

She remembered how Ed had once complimented that same woman at the office when she had stood up to the boss. He had bragged on her, saying what a ballsy dame she was.

But now that she thought about it, she wondered: What did that woman’s strength have to do with Ed’s anatomy? He hadn’t said, “Boy, she’s got some ovaries”; he had definitely said what
balls
she had. Ovaries have eggs in them, she thought: Shouldn’t they be as important as sperm?

And when had that woman stepped over the line of having just enough balls to having too much?

That poor woman. She would have to spend her whole life balancing imaginary balls if she wanted to get along. Balance was everything. But what about size? she wondered. She never heard Ed mention size before. It was the other thing’s size they were so concerned about, so she guessed it didn’t matter all that much. All that mattered in this world was the fact that you
had
balls. Then all at once, the simple and pure truth of that conclusion hit her. She felt as if someone had run a pencil up her spine and dotted an
i
on her head. She sat up straight in her chair, shocked that she, Evelyn Couch, of Birmingham, Alabama, had stumbled on the answer. She suddenly knew what Edison must have felt like when he discovered electricity. Of course! That was it … having balls was the most important thing in this world. No wonder she had always felt like a car in traffic without a horn.

It was true. Those two little balls opened the door to everything. They were the credit cards she needed to get ahead, to
be listened to, to be taken seriously. No wonder Ed had wanted a boy.

Then another truth occurred to her. Another sad, irrevocable truth: She had no balls and never would or could have balls. She was doomed. Ball-less forever. Unless, she thought, if maybe the balls in your immediate family counted. There were four in hers … Ed’s and Tommy’s … No, wait … six, if she counted the cat. No, wait just another minute, if Ed loved her so much, why couldn’t he give her one of his? A ball transplant.… That’s right. Or, maybe she could get two from an anonymous donor. That’s it, she’d buy some off a dead man and she could put them in a box and take them to important meetings and bang them on the table to get her way. Maybe she’d buy four …

No wonder Christianity had been such a big hit. Think of Jesus and the Apostles … And if you counted John the Baptist, why that was 14 pairs and 28 singles, right there!

Oh, it was all so simple to her now. How had she been so blind and not seen it before?

Yes, by heavens, she’d done it. She’d hit upon the secret that women have been searching for through the centuries …

THIS WAS THE ANSWER …

Hadn’t Lucille Ball been the biggest star on television?

She banged her iced tea on the table in triumph and shouted, “YES! THAT’S IT!”