Watermelon Days and Firefly Nights: Heartwarming Scenes from Small Town Life (21 page)

“S
ANDY
? T
HIS IS
B
ESSIE
.
How are you? Good. Good. Listen, you’ll never believe it. Baby came home. That old wives’ tale about putting butter on a cat’s paws—well, it’s true. Uh-huh. Really. It worked on Baby.”

And from the contentment that shows on her face, I’d say it worked on Bessie too.

13

A P
INCH OF
S
UGAR

“W
HEN
I
GROW UP
,
I’m going to be a missionary. I’ll go to Africa to teach the little children about Jesus,” six-year-old Tiny told her parents.

“When I grow up, I’m going to be a nurse and join the Air Force and fly on an airplane to take care of injured soldiers,” Tiny told her third-grade teacher.

“When I grow up, I’m going to be a famous singer. I’ll travel all around the world and wear shiny dresses and have my own makeup woman,” Tiny told her best friend in junior high.

“Housewife” is what grown-up Tiny Tinker prints on the “occupation” line whenever she fills out a form. Regrets? No. She and her Alfred, who is now halfway through his third two-year term as Ella Louise’s mayor, have been married for thirty-two years. All but one of those has been good.

Alfred and Tiny’s fifth year of marriage broke their hearts. Their only child, Tammy, was fifteen months old at the time. With blond curls and blue eyes, Tammy was the prettiest baby that folks had ever seen. She was what the town’s old wives called a good baby, one that smiled all the time and would sing and play in her crib for more than an hour before calling to be gotten up. Her pleasant, quiet disposition was likely what caused Tiny to lose track of her for a few minutes on a sunny summer day.

Tiny was peeling potatoes at the sink on that day, looking out the window, humming and daydreaming, as she was prone to do. Tammy played at her feet—for how long, Tiny can’t recall. After a time, Tiny realized that Tammy wasn’t with her in the kitchen anymore. So she wiped her hands on a tea towel and went looking for her crawling child. “Tammy,” she remembers calling, “Where are you?” She found Tammy in the mudroom, just off the kitchen. “What are you doing? What’s that you’ve got in your mouth? Plums? You sneaky little girl. Are they good?”

Tammy had helped herself to the contents of a half-bushel basket of ripe plums. Tiny thought she looked cute on her knees beside the basket, plum juice running down the sides of her face, her hands sticky and her little dress a mess. “You little imp! We better put you in the bath.”

That night, Tammy got sick. Her little tummy swelled up and she began to run a fever. Tiny took her to the doc
tor early the next morning, and he took one look at the
baby and told Tiny to take her to the hospital. The next day, Tammy died. It was anyone’s guess as to exactly what had happened, but Tammy’s baby doctor believed that the plums Tammy ate, specifically the seeds inside the plums, caused an obstruction in her little bowel. At the time, there was nothing that could be done.

Alfred and Tiny grieved for their little girl. Everyone told them that they needed to have another baby, but though they tried and tried, Tiny never again conceived.

Many couples that lose a child end up losing each other too.

That didn’t happen to Alfred and Tiny. If anything, their loss made them cling to each other like never before.

Many mothers who lose a child forfeit every bit of joy in their lives.

Not Tiny. While the raw place in her heart never went away, and while the sight of a newborn calf nuzzling its mother or dolls in a toy-store window sometimes made her flinch, losing Tammy somehow made her softer, more tender, more acutely aware of life’s beauty than she had been before.

Alfred and Tiny are what folks in Ella Louise call salt of the earth. Tiny is blessed with such a kind face and warm heart that no matter where she is—at a church social, a ballgame, or even on a bench at the mall—children who have never laid eyes on her before crawl up in her lap when they want to go to sleep.

Alfred has worked with the Boy Scouts for years, and he
helps out at their camp every summer. Year before last,
he arrived at camp without his blood pressure medicine, so
he called Tiny and asked her to bring it up to him. When she arrived, a group of the youngest campers was standing
nearby. Within minutes, the whole homesick, mosquito-bit
ten bunch was standing beside her. Just standing there. They were all missing their mothers, and Tiny was the next best thing.

Kids know when someone is good and kind.

Which sort of breaks your heart.

O
N THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY
of her marriage, Tiny’s best
friend, Sugar Fry, tore open the card that her sweetie had
proudly laid on her breakfast plate. Its flowery verse brought tears to her eyes—until she saw how her beloved had signed the card.

Sincerely, Millard Fry

May 13, 1959

“Millard!” She began to cry.

“What? You don’t like the card?” It had cost two dollars. How could she not like it?

Millard and Sugar’s marriage started out on the rocks. The first thing Millard did after he and his bride moved into their new house was dig up all the grass in the front yard and put in a rock garden. It took him all day. As soon as he was done with the front, he started on the back.

That made Sugar cry too.

Which puzzled Millard. After all, they didn’t own a lawnmower, and rock gardens didn’t have to be mowed. Right? Made sense to him.

So for pretty much the first six months of their marriage, Millard made Sugar cry. Honestly, he couldn’t help it. Raised by his daddy and an uncle—he’d had no mama—Millard didn’t have a clue how to live with a woman.

Millard nearly drove Sugar crazy with his muddy-shoed stompings through the house, his loud voice, and his constant need to be on the go. He was so energetic that in an effort to calm him down before he wore her out, Sugar began to make his morning coffee half decaf.

Which, of course, did no good.

Early on in their marriage, Millard and Sugar decided to start a family. When they were blessed with their daughter, Shonda, Millard calmed down—for a couple of days. Restless, he still needed to be busy, to be working all the time.

“Daddy go work,” was Shonda’s first sentence.

“Yes, baby. Daddy go work,” said Sugar.

It was not until Shonda grew up and gave them a darling granddaughter, Millie Tonette, that Millard began to
mellow. Maybe it was his age, or maybe it was the spell
that only a granddaughter knows how to cast. For whatever reason, every year after Millie’s birth, Millard became calmer, more tender-hearted, and more sentimental about everything.

Millard changed so much that sometimes Sugar wondered to herself,
Who is this man? What has he done with my husband?

Sugar read somewhere—might have been in
Reader’s Digest
—that there are these special hairs that grow on peoples’ brains. These hairs are what make folks care about home and family, domestic stuff. Women have really long brain hairs when they are young, which makes them want to nurture their families, to take care of their kids and their houses. Men, on the other hand, have short brain hairs, so all they want to do is stay on the run—to their jobs, to the lake, to the golf course—and be anywhere but home.

Well, according to the article, women’s brain hairs start to break off about the time when their kids are grown. That’s when they feel the need to get out of the house, explore the world, and be on the run like the men.

Which would be a good thing, except for the fact that that’s the time when men’s brain hairs finally start to grow.

That, best as Sugar could tell, was what happened to her and Millard.

By the time Millard hit fifty-five, all he wanted to do was play with the grandbaby, invite folks over for dominos, sit down and eat home-cooked meals (the kind that required Sugar to spend long hours in the kitchen), and watch
Wheel of Fortune.

But when Sugar hit fifty-five, she realized that she was sick of cooking. She hung up her apron and got herself a job. She hired someone to clean her house once a week, discovered Hamburger Helper and frozen potpies, and began researching vacation spots on the Internet.

Poor Millard didn’t know what to do. Had Sugar gone crazy or something? The woman wanted to stay gone all the time. Terribly confused, he began bringing her all kinds of gifts—flowers, an omelet pan, a bread machine, a birdbath.

One day, over lunch, Sugar shared with Tiny her and Millard’s marital shift and the compromises they were both having to make.

“Not been easy for either one of us. And all because of those brain hairs. That’s where I lay the blame. Growing. Breaking off. Long. Then short. It’s no wonder that sometimes I feel like I’m just one long split end. Kind of makes you wonder if God screwed our heads on wrong.”

Tiny giggled. “Sugar! Shush! You can’t be talking about God that way.”

“I know. I know.” She looked heavenward. “God, I’m sorry.” Then she looked back at Tiny. “You planning on eating the rest of your pie?”

It was Tiny’s second piece. “You can have it.” She slid her plate across the table. “Got any plans for Thursday?”

“No.”

“Me either. Let’s drive down to Houston. Make a day of it. Go to a couple of museums, have lunch. Maybe shop.”

“Uh-uh,” Sugar said. “I’m not going with you to any museums.”

“Come on. I promise I’ll be good. At least I’ll try.” But both of them knew it was no use. Tiny never could keep her hands to herself. When she was in a museum, she got so caught up in the interesting things that she was compelled, almost trancelike, to reach out and touch—a sculpture, a tapestry, a gilded egg.

How many museums had Tiny been kicked out of? More than a dozen. She knew from experience that some displays—there was no way to tell which ones—were equipped with silent alarms. Over and over, in response to her having handled some priceless, irreplaceable object, armed guards appeared out of nowhere to escort her out the door and into her car.

Sheesh. It wasn’t like she was going to steal anything.

T
INY AND
S
UGAR GO WAY BACK
.
They have been friends for thirty years. When they were newlyweds, the two couples were neighbors. Since both of their husbands spent long hours working, Tiny and Sugar kept each other company. On Mondays they cleaned Tiny’s house. On Wednes
days they cleaned Sugar’s. Tiny hated to iron but was a
great seamstress. Sugar liked to iron, but once got so frustrated
while trying to make a blouse that she cut the thing to
ribbons. So they decided that Tiny would do Sugar’s sewing and Sugar would do Tiny’s ironing.

Which worked out great.

In those early years, neither couple had much money. While no one went hungry, many nights dinner was beans and cornbread or a can of chicken noodle soup and American cheese on toast. One December day, Tiny’s daddy stopped by and surprised her and Alfred with a turkey.
She cooked it, they ate it, and she boiled the bones for
soup. They enjoyed the soup so much that once Tiny was done with the bones, she handed them over to Sugar so she could use them to make soup for her and Millard.