The Dry Grass of August (14 page)
Read The Dry Grass of August Online
Authors: Anna Jean Mayhew
C
HAPTER 17
HAPTER 17
I
n Albany, Georgia, well after sunset, Mama pulled into a motel, one long building with rooms opening onto the parking lot. She went into the office to register us. When she got back to the car, she drove to the end of the building.
n Albany, Georgia, well after sunset, Mama pulled into a motel, one long building with rooms opening onto the parking lot. She went into the office to register us. When she got back to the car, she drove to the end of the building.
“What about Mary?” I asked.
“I ordered a rollaway, and I didn't mention her.” Mama set the brake and said to Mary, “Go on in. As long as no one sees you, it'll be fine.”
We left before dawn and I fell asleep in the car, slumped against Mary. When I woke I saw that spit had dribbled from my mouth, leaving a streak on the sleeve of her dress.
She smoothed my hair. “You sleep good?”
Puddin was asleep, too, with Davie wedged between us, looking out the window, his hand in my lap, fingers curled. “Doobie.”
“Hey, Davie-do.”
“Doobie sleep.” He closed his eyes.
A thin forest of scraggly pine trees passed by, behind a wide black-water ditch, its surface still and shiny as wet tar.
Puddin opened her eyes. “I need to use the bathroom.”
“Tee-tee,” said Davie.
Mama said, “We'll stop when we find a decent place.”
That meant Esso, because they cleaned their restrooms every day. Texaco was next best because it put opera on the radio every Saturday.
“Mama, I really have to.”
“Ye gods! If I pulled over now, you'd have to pee in the swamp.”
“Pee,” said Davie.
Puddin bounced in her seat, then scrunched her fists in her lap, rocking.
Davie laughed. “Tinkle.”
A sign appeared in the distance on the right.
“Red star at one o'clock!” I called out.
Mama pulled into the Texaco. “One o'clock, my fanny.”
Puddin jumped out and ran. “I see the restroom,” she called over her shoulder.
The heat wrapped itself around me when we left the car. Mary smoothed my shorts in back, pulling the legs down. “Your whole self is wrinkled. I reckon I'm not much better.” But she was. Except for wet circles under her arms, she looked like she'd just gotten dressed and fixed her hair, not like she'd been stuck for hours in the backseat of a car with three kids.
Mama gave me a five-dollar bill and told me to go to the grill next to the gas station. “Lunch. French fries. Hot dogs, no onions for Puddin and Davie.”
I walked up to the order window and hollered through the screen, “Hello?” The whole world smelled like onion rings.
A teenaged girl came from a back room, wiping her hands on a towel. “Yeah?”
She got to work before I finished the order, putting buns in a steamer, lowering a basket of slivered potatoes into boiling oil, dropping wieners onto a sizzling griddle.
Her pink peasant blouse was cut so low the tops of her bosoms showed, and her white shorts had ketchup on the pocket. She looked past me. “Where y'all from?”
“Charlotte, North Carolina.”
“Where you going to?” Her yellow hair was tied back with an orange ribbon. Stell would have said the ribbon was a mistake because you shouldn't mix clashing colors, and orange is tacky like purple.
“Pawleys Island, South Carolina.”
“Someday I'm going to see the ocean.” She put a grilled wiener in the middle of each bun.
“You work here all the time?”
“Except for school. I'll go full-time soon's I'm married.” She ladled chili.
“You're getting married?”
“Next summer. My boyfriend drives army tanks in Berlin, Germany.”
“Golly. How old are you?”
“Turned fifteen last week.” She sprinkled chopped onions.
To show I wasn't shocked, I said, “Your hair's great.”
“It's the same color as Jane Powell's.” There was lipstick on her teeth. “Y'all gonna eat here?” She pointed to a picnic table, under trees behind the Texaco.
“To go, please.”
She wrapped everything in newspaper and put it in a grocery bag. “The two without onions is on top. That's three dollars.”
Mama walked up behind me. “C'mon, Jubie, we're losing time. What'd you get?”
“Six orders of French fries and eight hot dogs.”
“Eight?”
“Anybody who's still hungry canâ”
“Anybody like you?”
“Yes.”
“Better watch for when you stop growing up and start growing out.” As we walked back to the car, Mama said, “That girl ought to cover herself and wash her face.”
“Her hair is the same color as Jane Powell's.”
“Jane Powell would shave her head if she had such hair.”
“She's getting married next summer.”
“She'll have three kids before she's twenty.”
“But she's engaged to a soldier whoâ”
“June, don't admire such a life!”
We got back in the car. Even with lunch to look forward to, I dreaded more time scrunched in the backseat. Mama had put the key in the ignition when I shouted, “Puddin!”
Mama turned. “Ye gods, where's she gone now?”
I ran to the filling station. Puddin wasn't in the restroom, not in the tiny office, not in the empty service bays. Mama stood by the gas pump hollering, “Carolina Wendy Watts! Come here right now!”
I ran around back. She was sitting in the weeds, leaning against the block wall of the station, crying.
“Puddin-tane! What's wrong?”
“Mama wouldn't stop. I wet myself.” She howled.
Mama came around the other side of the building. “What's going on?”
I helped Puddin up. “Puddin damped her panties.”
Mama's face was a mix of
I'm really mad
and
oh, well.
“C'mon, Puddin, let's get fresh undies from the trunk.” The
oh, well
won.
I'm really mad
and
oh, well.
“C'mon, Puddin, let's get fresh undies from the trunk.” The
oh, well
won.
Mary picked the onions off her hot dog, a look on her face that said for me not to notice. She took a bite and I remembered her indigestion.
As soon as Mama finished eating we were back on the road.
Stell wiped her fingers and stuffed the napkin in the trash bag. “Only three weeks till school. I can hardly wait.”
“Yuk.” I hated to think about the end of summer vacation.
“I'm excited,” Stell said, “because of the new Pledge of Allegiance.”
I had no idea what she meant.
“Congress added the words âUnder God.' ”
“Where?”
She said, in her most religious voice, “ âOne nation under God, indivisible.' It's so wonderful.”
“Hmph.” Mary crossed her arms on her chest.
I asked her, “Don't you think it's a good thing, adding God to the pledge?”
“Putting God in the pledge and on moneyâthat's like a sign in the sky saying âair.' ” Sometimes Mary surprised me, the things she thought about.
Mama raised the volume on the radio and fiddled with the dial, picking up snatches of
Young Dr. Malone
. The static was so bad she turned it off. “I've got a headache that won't let up.”
Young Dr. Malone
. The static was so bad she turned it off. “I've got a headache that won't let up.”
Stell said, “Mama, please let me drive. You can sleep for a while.”
Mama pulled off the road and walked around the car, stopping to stretch, her hands on the small of her back. She got in the passenger seat. “You get a ticket, you're grounded.”
Stell looked in the rearview mirror. I waved at her. She stuck out her tongue, then adjusted the mirror by the wing window. “All set.” She pulled onto the highway. A tractor-trailer truck came right up on our bumper, air horn blasting. Stell jumped.
“Stell!” Mama gasped. “You pulled out in front of him.”
“He's speeding.”
The truck zoomed around us and the car rocked, but Stell kept it in the road. Mama slumped against the window.
For the next hour, Mama slept and Stell drove at a steady fifty-five.We passed a group of Burma-Shave signs. I read them aloud: “Substitutes are like a girdle. They find some jobs they just can't hurdle. Burma-Shave.” I thought about Mama struggling to pull up the stiff elastic sheath, attaching her stockings to it, announcing she was nearly ready by saying, “I've got my girdle on.” I vowed I'd never wear one.
On the outskirts of Claxton, we passed farms, cotton processors, feed and grain mills. Highway 280 changed to Main Street, and Stell slowed down. Daddy said small towns were speed traps.
Davie climbed onto my lap, his body a hot water bottle.
“No.” I pushed him away.
“Doobie,” he whined, “badge.” He held out the cap from a Coke bottle.
“Quiet down back there,” Mama said.
He collapsed against me, hot and damp. I said no again, trying to whisper and be firm at the same time.
“Badge,” he shouted.
Mama swung her left arm over the seat in a slapping motion.
Stell glanced back at me. “What's going on?”
Afterward I said I'd known at that moment that it was going to happen. I said it so much I was pretty sure it was true.
A shadow loomed. There was a screeching crunch and our car spun and tilted. We slid across the seats on top of each other. The car hung on two wheels, slammed back down. Metal hit the pavement.
Davie broke the silence, crying,“Oooh-h-h-h. Oooh-h-h-h.”
“Is everybody okay?” Mama's voice shook.
“Jesus bless us,” said Mary.
Mama said, “Puddin?”
“I'm here,” Puddin said, her voice shaking. “Under Jubie.”
Davie wailed again.
“You okay, Davie-do?” I put his palm to my lips and felt wet on my face.
“No!” His hand was bleeding.
Stell opened the driver's door and stood by the car, looking dazed.
“C'mon,” Mary said. “Let's get out.”
The battered old truck that hit us was across the street, its front tires on the sidewalk.
Mama took Davie and uncurled his fist, peeling back his fingers one by one. “Oh, Davie.You've got a cut shaped like a bottle cap, isn't that funny?”
Davie hiccupped and looked at his hand.
Puddin said, “You're bleeding, Jubie.” I tasted blood where I had bitten my lip.
“Jesus H. Christ,” somebody said. A crowd had gathered. People stared, gestured, talked to each other.
“Let me see. Not too bad.” Mama pulled a Kleenex from her pocket, pressed it against my lip. Blood had splattered the front of my new T-shirt. Mama looked at the cut. “You don't need stitches, Jubie.”
I held the tissue against my lip, looking around for Mary. She was standing by the back of the car, rubbing her head. “Are you hurt, Mary?” I asked.
“No. Bumped around a bit.” She looked at the car and shook her head. “Gone take some fixing.”
I walked around the Packard. The right front fender was bashed in and the car was turned around, heading west again. A steady drip from the front grille made a puddle in the street.
Puddin said to Mama, “I bumped my head.”
Mama parted Puddin's hair to examine her scalp. “You're getting a goose egg. Everything else okay?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Stell Ann?”
“I hit my head, too.”
Mama tipped Stell's chin and looked into her eyes, “Look up. Down. Side to side. How many fingers?” Mama held up three fingers.
“Three.”
“Sit over there in the grass and be real still.”
A woman said, “Whoo-ee! Bobby Joe done it again.”
A man in a white jacket stepped out of a Rexall on the corner. “I'm a pharmacist. Be glad to help, if I can.”
Mama nodded.
He looked at Davie's hand. “I've got just the thing for that.” He went in the Rexall and returned with a bottle of Mercurochrome. When the man tried to touch him, Davie screamed, turning his face to Mama's bosom. She held his hand out to the pharmacist. When he'd finished, the man put a Band-Aid on the cut and gave Davie a cherry lollipop. “Got a candy for you being such a good boy.”
Davie sniffled and put the sucker in his mouth. Mama kissed his head.
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