The Pecan Man (5 page)

When Halloween rolled around, I
got to sit and enjoy the Trick-or-Treaters going from house to house. Grace,
filled with self-importance and utter glee in the witch’s costume I made for her,
stood at the edge of the stoop and counted out exactly two pieces of candy for
each child. The pigtails Blanche kept in Grace’s hair prevented a good fit for
the pointed black hat I got at Woolworth’s. Each time she reached into the
plastic pumpkin that held the candy, the hat tipped forward, rolling off her
head and down the front steps. Blanche and I sat in our rockers on the porch
and laughed until our sides ached watching that child. She wouldn’t hear of
taking the hat off until I suggested she pour the candy from the pumpkin into
the hat and distribute it that way.

When the foot traffic slowed,
Blanche gathered Grace up and headed for home. Grace put up a fuss until
Blanche promised to stop at a few houses on the way so she could collect some
candy of her own. I refilled the pumpkin bucket and sat awhile longer on the
porch to wait for latecomers.

Blanche and Grace had only been
gone a few minutes when Skipper Kornegay showed up with three of his friends in
tow. They were too old for costumes, but apparently not too proud to stand in
line for candy.

“Hey, Miz Beckworth.”

“Hey, yourself.”

I wasn’t in the mood for
hypocrisy.

“Nice evening, ain’t it?”

“It was.”

He gave a nervous laugh.

“Well, uh…Trick or Treat.”

“Aren’t you a little old for Trick-or-Treating?”

“Yeah, well, you’re never too
old for candy, Miz Beckworth.”

He laughed again. I didn’t.

“I think you’re wrong there,
Skipper. Comes a time when you have to put away childish things and face life
like a man.”

His friends, to this point
standing in silence, began to laugh uneasily, too. I called them each by name.

“Donnie Allred. You old enough
to be treated like a man?”

“Yes’m, I reckon I am.”

“Then you don’t need any candy,
now do you?”

“No ma’am, I don’t reckon I
do.”

“Allen Madison. You old enough
to be treated like a man?”

“My daddy don’t think so.” He
elbowed Skipper, who was the only one of the four who no longer laughed.

“James Robert Hardy, you old
enough to be treated like a man?”

Allen answered for him.
“Jimbo’s still in diapers, Miz Beckworth. I think he should still get some
candy.”

Jimbo turned and walked away.
“Come on, y’all. Let’s get outta here.”

Skipper didn’t move, nor take
his eyes from mine. The other three boys turned and laughed their way down the
sidewalk, pushing and heckling each other, no doubt wondering what had gotten
into this crazy old lady. Skipper stayed put.

“You got something to say to
me, son?”

“I could ask the same of you.”
His voice held more contempt than fear. I stood my ground anyway.

“
Are
you asking, Mr.
Kornegay?”

Silence.

“I didn’t think so.”

Knowing what he had done to
Grace, I probably should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. Skipper was defiant,
but puzzled. It occurred to me that he had not made the connection between
Grace and me. I wanted to confront him right there. Wanted to call his daddy
and tell him to come pick up his deviant son and do something about him. But my
loyalty was to Blanche and I bit my tongue.

I stared at him for several
minutes until, finally, he fidgeted a bit and looked away. I pulled a handful
of candy from the bucket and tossed them on the ground at Skipper’s feet.

“Here’s your candy, boy.” 

I turned my back on him and
went into the house, flipping the porch light off as I did. Moments later I
heard the clatter of wrapped candy hitting the front window like hail. I don’t
know when he left or which direction he went. I went to bed and picked up the
candy the next day.

By the time we started making
preparations for Thanksgiving, Blanche’s entire family had gotten used to the
changes in our relationship. It wasn’t unusual now for Blanche’s twins, ReNetta
and Danita, to show up of an afternoon, just to do their homework on the front
porch or watch T.V., which they didn’t have at home. Patrice had made the cheerleading
squad at the high school, so she was no longer home in the afternoon to watch
them anyway.

One of the mixed blessings of
living on Main Street is having a front row seat for all of the local parades.
I never tired of seeing the homemade floats made from chicken wire stuffed with
colorful paper napkins. And, though the very thought of having a child of my
own in a beauty pageant sent me into fits of revulsion, I secretly enjoyed
waving at the little girls perched on the backs of sporty convertibles. I could
even forgive the mothers who dressed them in layers of tulle and satin, curled
their hair into tiny ringlets and plastered their sweet faces with enough
makeup for three grown women when I thought about how wonderful it must feel to
be a princess for a day.

The closest I ever came was the
day I was married. That went by so quickly that, when you factor in my nerves,
I was left with not much more than a long list of do's and don'ts and thank you
notes etched in my memory of the event.

This year's homecoming parade
was particularly exciting for the girls. Patrice would be leading the Mayville
High Cheerleading Squad. I helped take up her uniform at the beginning of the
year. The skirt was a little short, but I have to admit Patrice was striking in
it. Her long dark legs contrasted beautifully with the orange and white pleats
of the skirt and she carried her willowy body with extraordinary grace. She was
then and remains today, a simply beautiful girl.

Blanche's children had seen
many a parade from the porch of my house, but never one with their own sister
in such a prominent role. They had school banners to wave and spent hours
practicing the chants they'd watched Patrice learn at the beginning of the
season.

The parade started at 4:00 p.m.
on Homecoming Friday. The game would start at 7:00 that night, but none of us
would be going. I think Blanche always wanted to go see Patrice cheer, but I
imagine the thought of negotiating those wooden bleachers was enough to give
her pause. We were all excited for the opportunity to see her in action.

Blanche put on a pot roast for
supper and settled us on the porch with sweet tea, Kool-aid and popcorn. The
fall weather was perfect for a parade. I do not ever experience the
metamorphosis of summer to fall without hearing the distant sound of marching
bands and police sirens in my head.

I should have been prepared,
should have thought ahead to what might happen but, as usual, I didn't and the
day was nearly ruined before it even got off to a good start.

First in line in every hometown
parade is always the police chief, followed by squad cars of various officers
not on duty at the time.

Blanche had gone in to check
the roast. Danita and ReNetta were standing on the sidewalk, with Gracie
hopping about on the flat stoops at the base of the columns flanking the porch
steps. She might not have even looked up if Ralph Kornegay hadn't chosen the
moment he passed our house to flip on his blaring siren. Gracie squealed and
covered her ears, then craned her neck to see the source of the commotion.
There, waving from the front seat of his father's squad car, sat Skipper
Kornegay, his white hair gleaming in the low pitch of the afternoon sun.

Gracie flattened herself
against the porch column, hands reaching behind to grip its wide round girth,
her face a mask of terror and her feet back pedaling as if she could push the
column out of the way with her body.

I don't remember a time when I
moved so swiftly. I was out of my chair within seconds, my glass of tea cast
aside without thought. I reached Gracie just as the scream penetrated her
paralyzed vocal chords and joined the sound of the wailing siren. Scooping her
up under one arm, I flung open the screen door and entered the living room,
kicking the heavy wooden door shut with one foot. Both doors slammed at once.

Blanche met me at the hallway
and took Grace from me without a word. I don't remember if I ever even told her
what happened. I think she just knew from the sound of the scream that it was
another nightmare come back to haunt her little girl.

Blanche took Grace into the
guest room and worked to quiet her down. A wave of nausea hit me with the force
of a hurricane and I stumbled to the downstairs bathroom, my fingers shaking
too violently to manage the light switch. I don't know how long I vomited or
how many times, but by the time I felt able to walk again, Blanche's crooning
had worked its magic and Grace was asleep under the chenille bedspread, bathed
in that now familiar pink glow.

Six

We missed seeing Patrice's squad pass by the house and her
disappointment was

obvious when she popped in to eat dinner before the game.

"Mama!" Patrice
complained. "Where were you?"

As Blanche struggled to respond,
the twins mercifully provided a plausible, if not completely accurate, reason
for our absence.

"Aw, that ol' sireen
scared Gracie half to death," Danita put in first.

"Yeah, you shoulda seen
it," ReNetta said, rolling her eyes. "Miz Ora had to carry her
inside, hollerin' like a little baby."

Patrice's annoyance quickly
turned to concern.

"Is she okay?" she
asked Blanche.

"She fine," Blanche
answered. "She been sleepin' ever since."

"I'm worried about her,
Mama," Patrice said. "She hasn't been herself lately."

"Don't you worry
none." Blanche tried to reassure her. "She go'n be all right. She
jus' tired, that's all."

"She's been tired a
lot," Patrice persisted.

"You best stop your fussin'
and eat up now. Game starts in half an hour."

The rest of our meal passed in
silence and Grace did not wake until Blanche put her into the taxi to go home.

 It was a while before I got
used to the constant commotion in the house each day after school, but I took
to taking a nap after lunch, so I’d at least be rested up for the afternoon
onslaught of laughing and squabbling. The twins often asked me for help with
their homework. They seemed to be in awe of the fact that I had been to
college. They were puzzled, however, as to why I had never actually taught
school, as I had intended to do with my degree in Home Economics.

Up until that point, I had
never questioned it myself. Sometimes it seemed like I was listening to the
story of my own life and not telling it when I explained to the girls how
different it was for women “way back then”. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had a nice
life and Walter was good to me for all practical purposes. It’s just that their
questions made me wonder how my life might have been different if I’d lived it
for myself and not for the man I married.

I remember one of those
conversations vividly. It had been decided that Blanche’s entire family
including Marcus, who would be home on leave from the Army, would have dinner
at my house for Thanksgiving. It was the first year we would do such a thing.
Every year before, I had given Blanche a turkey and a ham, an extra twenty-five
dollars in her paycheck and four days off for the holiday. By the standards of
the day that was rather generous for hired help and it made me feel good,
benevolent soul that I was.

Walter and I always ate dinner
out after serving at the Episcopal Church’s benefit meal. Walter, an insurance
agent and local philanthropist, used every opportunity he could to make
contacts in the community. Charitable events were his thing and my job was to
help coordinate the details and then show up in a nice dress. I was never a
great beauty, but I cleaned up well.

The twins helped me polish the
silver for Thanksgiving dinner. They wanted to know all about the silver and
why we were spending so much time polishing it for use at only one meal.
ReNetta was the more inquisitive of the two, although in all other ways the two
were identical and I had yet to find a way to tell them apart.

“These sure are some pretty
forks, Miz Beckworth.”

“They belonged to my mother,” I
said. “She gave them to me when I married Mr. Beckworth in 1931.”

“Dang! That’s a long time ago.”

“Mmm…thirty-five years,” I
agreed.

“How many times you reckon you
used ‘em since then?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Not so many
times lately, but fairly often when I was younger and Mr. Beckworth was trying
to make a name for himself in Mayville.”

“What’s silverware got to do
with that?” ReNetta asked.

“What, indeed!” I thought, but
then I snorted a little and replied genially, “Back then, it was important to
be a good hostess. Wives played a big role in their husbands’ success in the
business world.”