The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life (4 page)

We children didn’t understand this at the time, but ours was a poor parish; the fancy-pants new school came courtesy of tax receipts from the River Bend Nuclear Generating Station, construction on which began in the mid-1970s. There were few rich kids in West Feliciana schools. The student body was evenly divided between black and white, but the white kids—almost all middle or working class—were generally much better off than the black kids, most of whom were very poor. There wasn’t much palpable tension between the races, but there weren’t many deep cross-racial friendships, either. We went to the same school, but lived in different worlds.

The social universe of white kids was roughly divided into three cliques: preps (middle class to upper middle; drug of choice: alcohol); potheads (working class; drug of choice: marijuana); and nerds (everybody else; drugs of choice: anxiety, Dungeons & Dragons). There was overlap, of course, and a number of kids—like, well, Mike and Ruthie—who wouldn’t have identified as preps but still hung out with them. To be sure, despite the fact that some of them wore argyle socks and Izod shirts, none of the kids we all called preps would ever be mistaken by actual preppies as one of their tribe. Plenty of so-called preppy guys drove pickup trucks and listened to country music. No small number of girls in those preppy circles had bows in their big hair. “Preps” was the day’s catch-all term for socially engaged white kids who didn’t smoke dope (or at least much dope), some of whom thought of themselves as elites.

It was common in those days for teenagers to have after-school jobs, and there was no question that Ray Dreher’s kids would work to
make their spending money. Ruthie spent part of the salary she drew as a clerk at Boo Bryant’s pharmacy on Hank Williams Jr. cassettes. One year she had tickets near the front row for a Hank Jr. concert in Baton Rouge. Wound up and possibly under the influence of Tennessee’s finest sour mash, Ruthie took off her bra, whirled it around her head several times like a lasso, taunting the chortling band members, and threw it onstage. Hank put the garment on the neck of his guitar, raised hell, and tossed her a drumstick after the song.

If there wasn’t a concert or something else going on in Baton Rouge, teenagers didn’t have much to do on the weekends. In the seventies there was a local pool resort called Bikini Beach, and a burger-and-pinball place called the Redwood Inn (which boasted the first Pong game in town), but by the early 1980s, when Ruthie and I were teenagers, both places had closed. The only fast-food joint in town was the Chicken Shack (the sun-bleached yellow plastic sign out front said “Log Cabin Fried Chicken,” but nobody called it that), in a gravel lot off Highway 61 next to Choo-Choo Bennett’s Gulf station. There was no place to sit at the Chicken Shack; you’d drive up, wait for the cashier to open the mosquito screen on the right side, order a hamburger or box of fried chicken, then wait in your truck until the mosquito screen on the left side opened, and someone barked out your name. It was a great day when the Chicken Shack installed a bug zapper the size of a mop bucket from the overhang in front; it meant you had something to do while you waited for your order.

It was that kind of town.

For a couple of years Boo Bryant, the pharmacist, spun records at Catholic Hall for Catholic Youth Organization dances, which were a lot of fun, and gave awkward seventh and eighth graders, smelling of Sea Breeze, Love’s Baby Soft, and Brut by Fabergé, practice in the art of slow dancing.

With nowhere to hang out, West Feliciana teenagers took their partying to wherever they could park their pickup trucks. In Ruthie’s high
school years that place was typically the parking lot of the new Sonic Drive-In on 61 or down by the Mississippi River.

Sometimes the gang gathered down by the ferry landing where Bayou Sara empties into the Mississippi. There were rusted hulks of cranes and other abandoned heavy equipment. On other occasions teenagers drove down a gravel road that ran along the riverbank and parked in a semicircle in a clearing in the woods two miles out of town, overlooking the water. It was secluded and far from adult eyes. Unless they built a bonfire, the only lights were the moon, the stars, and the glow from the Big Cajun coal-fired power plant on the opposite bank. The river was where you went to drink, to listen to country music, and to be with your crowd.

The river wasn’t the only place to go, though. Somebody was always having a party, either at their house, their parents’ camp, or at a barn. Teenagers were often on the road to Baton Rouge to the movies, or bowling. A lot of teenage social life centered around the West Feliciana Saints, the high school football and baseball teams. If the CYO scheduled a dance for the same night as a Saints football game, a win meant the priest would let the kids dance till one in the morning, but a loss meant the music stopped at midnight.

In those days teenagers in our town didn’t really go on formal dates. Instead you’d either go out with your friends, or you’d “go with” someone—which meant you were seeing that person exclusively. If a boy and a girl liked each other, the boy would screw up the courage to ask the girl to go with him. That typically meant they would hang out with all their friends anyway, but would be off-limits to the romantic attentions of others. It was easy to tell which girls were going with which boys: if you got behind them on the highway, the girl would be riding in the front seat of his pickup as close to him as she could be without actually sitting in his lap.

Mike Leming was a year older than Ruthie and began noticing her in the hallway when she moved up to ninth grade, and therefore over
to his side of the high school building. He liked the way Ruthie carried herself. He had never seen anyone like her—tomboyish and girly at the same time. She had lots of friends and never talked about anybody, nor did people gossip about her. When kids were changing classes in the hallway and huddled to talk in groups, he was struck by how she had a way of making people comfortable by the way she talked to them.

Ruthie’s social ease was especially attractive to Mike. Though he was tall, blond, handsome, and athletic, Mike was painfully shy. He couldn’t figure out how to approach Ruthie.

One April night in 1983 Ruthie convinced Paw to let her attend a creek party. She was two weeks shy of her fifteenth birthday, and couldn’t believe he had let her go. She saw the Leming boy there, and they got to talking, and laughing with each other, and the next thing you know, he kissed her. Ruthie had a midnight curfew and made it home with only three minutes to spare. That Monday at school everyone teased her for kissing Mike Leming at the party. What was the big deal? It was just a creek party. “Mike and I are just friends!” she protested.

The next weekend the Saints baseball team played John Curtis High, a suburban New Orleans school, in a regional playoff. John Curtis was well known around the state as an athletic powerhouse. Squaring off against them was a David-and-Goliath moment for the West Feliciana country boys. Mike played right field for the Saints. Ruthie rode the fan bus to New Orleans for the game.

To everyone’s great surprise the Saints played the hell out of John Curtis, and reached the bottom of the ninth inning ahead, six to two. Victory seemed so certain the West Feliciana fans finally answered the city team’s pregame taunts by singing “When the Saints Go Marching In.” But then John Curtis rallied, coming within one run of tying the game.

Bases loaded. Two outs. The John Curtis batter had struck out every time he had come to the plate that night.

Strike one.

Strike two.

And then, on the next pitch, the batter connected. The ball struck a high, hard arc over right field, like an incoming mortar round, right through the heart of West Feliciana’s season. Mike ran for the chain-link outfield fence and started to climb, hoping to lift himself high enough to catch the ball and win the game. There was no catching this ball, glory-bound for a grand slam. Sammy Patrick, the West Feliciana pitching ace, collapsed on the mound in shock and disbelief. Mike hung on the fence for a few seconds, then let himself fall to the ground, spent and defeated.

Ruthie, like every other West Feliciana fan there that night, was shattered. She and her friends held each other, wailing and sobbing.
Our boys worked so hard all year,
she thought,
and had this game all but won!
The Saints’ gruff coach gathered his team behind the dugout, and with tears in his eyes told them how proud he was of them.

Heads bowed, the boys gathered their gear and loaded back onto the team bus. The fan bus followed close behind. The buses pulled over at a McDonald’s on the way out of town. Mike sat next to Ruthie in the booth and they ate hamburgers and fries together. This left her giddy, and almost redeemed the disastrous night.

The following weekend Mam and Paw let Ruthie have a birthday party in Paw’s old barn, just up the gravel road from their place. They promised her they wouldn’t stay back there, watching the kids, but they trusted her to make sure her friends wouldn’t drink alcohol. A big crowd turned up that night in Starhill, parking their trucks in Paw’s field, and beckoned by the sound of country music, joining the party under the tin roof. One Starhill kid turned his truck lights on and captured Ruthie and Mike making out by the fence row.

“What’s the matter with him?” Ruthie fumed. “Hasn’t he ever seen anybody kissing before?”

In the aftermath of the evening Ruthie and Mike had to pick up
several trash bags’ worth of empty beer cans and whiskey bottles. Mam and Paw were furious. Ruthie and Mike were disappointed in their friends. That’s how these parties usually went, though. That next week Ruthie turned fifteen and got her learner’s permit to drive. Paw let her take his big white Lincoln Continental, a wedding cake on whitewalls, to school.

Ruthie and Mike were crazy about each other, but couldn’t quite move to the scoot-across-the-truck-seat phase of a West Feliciana teenage courtship. Were they just friends, or weren’t they? Mike adored Ruthie, but couldn’t believe a girl like her wanted to be with a guy like him. His self-doubt and natural timidity caused him to hang back. Ruthie took this for disinterest. They were at an unhappy stalemate.

One July day Mike was riding a lawn mower, cutting grass outside the Bank of St. Francisville. He saw Ruthie drive by four or five times with Mam in the car, and wondered what she was up to.

“Ruthie,” said Mam, “if you don’t pull over and ask that boy, I’m going to do it for you.”

Ruthie stopped the car, got out, and walked over to Mike. He powered down the mower.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“You know that Junior Babe Ruth championship tournament they’re having this month at the baseball park?”

“Yeah, I’m playing in it.”

“I know. I’m going to be on the court. Some kind of queen thing. The girls on the court have to have one of the baseball players escort them. I was kind of wondering if, um, you would escort me. You think you might be able to do that?”

Mike only managed to say, “Yeah, I reckon I could.” Ruthie thanked him, got back into the car with Mam, and drove away. Mike started the mower again, and glided across the Bermuda grass. And that was all it took. Ruthie Dreher took her place on the tournament
court, on the arm of Mike Leming. They were never again apart. Years later, in fact, they would both say it was hard to remember a time when they hadn’t been together. Ruthie and Mike just knew this was how it was supposed to be for them—a conclusion all their friends quickly drew.

With Ruthie at his side, and not a paper’s width between them, Mike would drive them to Baton Rouge on dates. They would go to the movies, and then to eat at Wendy’s, Ruthie’s favorite. When the Greater Baton Rouge State Fair was on in the fall, they would drive into the city to the far end of Airline Highway, and step out into the colored lights of the midway, with all its funnel-caked, cotton-candied, Tilt-a-Whirled glory. Ruthie was the fearless one. She would ride every ride. It didn’t matter. She just wanted to do it. Not Mike. She’d ride them, and he’d wait for her, tickled and proud that she was his girl.

Most weekend nights, though, they would ride in Mike’s truck into town to see what their friends were up to. Creek parties, barn dances, and in the fall, football on Friday night. There wasn’t much going on in St. Francisville, but for Ruthie and Mike, it was enough. The main event was each other—it didn’t matter where they were or what they were doing, as long as they were together.

“I don’t care about my friends,” Ruthie told him. “I just always want to be with you. You’re not only my boyfriend, but you’re my best friend. I can tell you anything and you understand me.”

Their devotion deepened throughout the fall of Mike’s senior year. One night they went to a party on the sand dunes at Thompson Creek. Late into the evening they lay with each other under the stars, in each other’s arms, staring at the full moon.

“I love you, you know,” Ruthie said.

“I love you, too.”

And that’s when they knew this was for keeps. A year later Ruthie wrote Mike a letter in which she called that moment “the best night of my life.”

“I’ve been happier than I’ve ever been,” she wrote, “and it’s all because of you. I’ll love you forever and a day.”

Ruthie began wearing Mike’s blue football and baseball letterman jacket. When his senior class ring came in, Mike never put it on his finger; he gave it straight to Ruthie. Because Mike’s family lived a long drive away, at the northern end of the parish, Mam and Paw invited him to sleep on the couch on weekend nights. That worked to Paw’s benefit too. On Saturday mornings Paw put Mike to work cleaning fence rows, cutting trees, removing brush, chopping firewood, and doing other chores.

At first Mike was intimidated by his girlfriend’s father, but the intimidation eventually gave way to respect and affection for Paw. Because Mike didn’t have a lot of spending money, Paw bought him several steel traps, and taught him how to snare raccoons by placing the traps underwater in the creek. Mike set a trapline in the hollows behind Paw’s place, and caught two or three coons each night. Ruthie sometimes helped him run his traplines. Paw taught him how to skin the coon to keep the hide intact. Every couple of weeks the buyer came through and paid Mike fifteen dollars per hide—enough to buy gas for his truck and burgers and Cokes for him and his girl. Paw called him “Trapper.”