Distilling Lies, page 5
If I had done something unthinkable, he was too polite to mention it. “How did you know where I lived? Did I even tell you my name last night?”
There it was again. The smile that curled my toes.
“When I came back with your water, your friend, Sharla—”
“Charlene.”
“Charlene was there. We got you up, and I carried you to your mother, then to her motorcar.”
He carried me, a vomit-smelling mess. I turned my head away, hoping to hide my embarrassment. “You met Mama then. How was she?”
“Kind. Introduced herself and told me she was grateful. She looked upset, though. Fidgety. Why? Is she okay?”
“Do you remember anything else? Anything she said?”
“Nothing. Sorry. After getting you in the back seat, the three of y’all took off.”
Three people, not four. “Another woman wasn’t with us? A couple of years older than my mother?”
“No. Just you three.”
Betty. If Mama no longer trusted her, I needed to know why. I didn’t know where Betty lived, but I sure did know where she worked.
CHAPTER 8
EMMA JUNE
Roadrunner, the name Miss Helen gave her roadster, sparkled in the distance and gave me a wink.
“I need to find my mother,” I told Samuel. “She didn’t come home last night.”
I felt sure that if Mama needed comfort, she was safe in Miss Atta’s small home across town. Miss Atta, or as Daddy called her, Atta Girl, wasn’t just my boss but a family friend.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“The woman who was supposed to ride home with us from the carnival. She needs to tell me what happened between her and my mother.” I turned to go inside, then stopped. “And, well, thanks for helping me last night. Sorry if I was …” I stopped, not wanting to remind either of us of that horrid vision of myself. “I need to change clothes. See you around maybe?”
“Need some company?”
“Company?”
“A tagalong, to go with you to talk to that woman.”
I couldn’t imagine why he would want to come. Me, a bumbling fool who had disgraced myself in front of him. My eyes were still blurry from the rotgut, and the inside of my head had assembled a riotous gang of tuba players. “Oh, that’s okay. I couldn’t possibly ask you—”
“You didn’t. I offered.”
I hurried inside, changed into a simple shift dress, and added color to my lips and pale cheeks. I grabbed the object from my dresser and headed outside.
I found Samuel sitting on the front porch getting his face lathered by Choppers’s tongue.
“Pinwheel,” he said, staring at my hand and smiling.
I had a vague memory of him handing it to me at the carnival. “It’s for Miss Helen’s son.”
Cool spring day or not, my legs wobbled toward Miss Helen’s. I kept my head down and focused on lifting one foot in front of the other. Something as small as an armadillo divot could have thrown me face first.
“Scooter. Have you met him?” I asked Samuel.
“Last week. Mrs. Munson brought him into the office for … well, never mind. I’m not supposed to say.”
“It doesn’t matter. If Scooter has a finger scratch, Miss Helen rushes him to your uncle because, ‘you know, it could turn to gang-green.’”
Miss Helen charged hell with a bucket of ice to protect her family. After Scooter was born, some folks in Holly Gap, even a preacher, tried to force Miss Helen to ship Scooter off to a loony bin. “And cut off my arm?” she had told them. “I am blessed with this child and this child only. He’s mine for the duration. And if I ever hear anyone mention sending him away again, they’ll be contending with more than just being on top of my hit list.” She hadn’t stepped foot in a church since.
Choppers darted ahead, grinning through his pant.
“Doesn’t seem possible,” Samuel said. “Running that fast on three legs.”
“Yeah.” I left it at that.
“Emmy, Emmy, Emmy!” Scooter leaped off his front porch and wrapped his arms around my waist. Strong for a thirteen-year-old, and thank God, he didn’t pick me up and give me the usual bounce.
“Hey, Scoot Bucket.” When he finally released me, I held out the pinwheel with a “ta-da” and received his eye twinkle.
“A twirly bird!”
“Yes, for you.”
“Emmy is best.” He faced Samuel and stuck out his hand. “Howdy-do, Samuel.”
“Hi, Scooter. You remembered my name.”
Scooter patted his slight belly pooch as if he’d just eaten a large portion of satisfaction. “Scooter remembers.”
An understatement. Scooter still remembered the name of a traveling salesman who’d knocked on his door the year before.
I rubbed my hand across his burr haircut, his blond bristles a tad darker than Samuel’s. “Scoot, where’s your mama?”
“Moonshine thicket.”
Samuel followed me to the cluster of post oaks that served as a canopy for Miss Helen’s still. The scent of bubbling prunes and yeast thickened the air. And the back of my throat.
“Good Lord,” Samuel said. “What a contraption.”
Whereas most folks had next-door neighbors who grew rosebushes or vegetable gardens, mine fermented mash and turned it into alcohol. Eight years of gurgles and thumps from a still that produced a ghostly steam loop between the oak branches. Prohibition was Miss Helen’s bread and butter, and she aimed to keep brewing her way to the top of the food chain with one-eighty proof.
Miss Helen sealed the cap on a Mason jar and looked up. “Ain’t she a beaut, Samuel?”
Beauty wasn’t a snake-looking tube that sat atop a barrel attached to a copper boiler pot. Beauty was Mama’s burgundy hair curling around a smile that lifted you off the ground.
I shook away my thoughts of Mama.
“Miss Helen’s been doing this since Prohibition started,” I told Samuel.
Miss Helen wiped her hands on the gaudy green and yellow apron she’d thrown over her pajamas. “Emma June?”
“Miss Helen?”
“You want something, spit it out. I’m busier than a dog in flea season.”
“I need to borrow Roadrunner. It won’t take long, I promise.”
“Where?”
“To get answers.”
“Emma June—”
“You expect me to do nothing?”
“You can barely drive, young lady. Theo’s given you what? Two lessons?”
True. After hitting our mailbox the first go-round, it took some convincing for Daddy to take me out for a second run.
Samuel stepped forward. “Mrs. Munson, I’ve been driving since I was twelve, seven years now. I’d be glad to drive Emma June.”
“I’m driving the twirly bird,” Scooter said as he ran in circles with the pinwheel held high. He came to a screeching halt and pulled out his prized pocketknife. “Now, I must plant it.”
“Nice of you to get that pinwheel for him, Emma June.” Miss Helen flicked her eyes between me and Samuel, then cracked a grin. “Don’t be long. And Samuel, I’ll tell your uncle not to wait for you. He’s inside with Leonard who’s trying to talk him into buying one of his side tables.”
Which would take a while. Leonard’s words weren’t exactly quick out of the chute, which made it easy for Miss Helen to talk over him.
“And no matter what, Emma June, you will walk Scooter to school tomorrow.” It wasn’t a question.
I told her I would, knowing I’d have to endure Miss Primrose’s eye roll. She was still upset I had passed my exit exam and graduated in December instead of May. Younger than Mama, the schoolmarm acted as though her one trip to Chicago added extra snap to her garters.
After a wave to Scooter, Samuel and I started down the drive in a motorcar that smelled of White Rose Toilet Water, Miss Helen’s wretched perfume.
Samuel looked in the back seat and whistled. “There’s enough room in here to house a family of four.”
I felt the smoothness of the seat’s brown houndstooth fabric and hoped Mama had slept on something just as soft. Surely, she missed not sleeping next to her husband in the comfort of her own bed. But knowing Miss Atta, Mama was safe and sound.
“Where can I take you?”
As much as I wanted to talk to Betty, Charlene was on the way. “Johnson’s Variety.”
He gave me a dimpled grin. “Need a tight kerchief to wrap around your skull?”
“Yeah, if it’s the kind that squeezes out answers.”
CHAPTER 9
EMMA JUNE
Like the other stores in Holly Gap, a bell announced our arrival at Johnson’s Variety. Except, at that moment, the soft ding sounded more like the gong at the start of a boxing match.
Mr. Johnson, Charlene’s father, glanced away from the customer standing at the counter. “Morning, Emma June. I’ll be right with you.”
The customer, a young man I’d never seen before, looked a bit older than Samuel. Tanned face, strong jawline. A rough kind of handsome. He gave me a quick once-over and tipped his cap.
Mr. Johnson turned back to him. “Head down to Dixie’s Drugstore. Block down on your right. They carry aspirin.”
Aspirin. Judging from the stranger’s cocksure appearance, his headache didn’t reach my level of bad. He strutted out, the bell chiming his exit.
“Well, Emma June,” Mr. Johnson said, “God created another beautiful day, now, didn’t He?”
Not really. “Yes, sir. I need to speak with Charlene. This is my … this is Samuel.”
“She’s in the storage room. Go on back.” Mr. Johnson gave Samuel the stink eye. “Son, you best stay here and let them gals do their gossipin’.”
I found Charlene leaning over a small crate unloading small green and blue boxes of Star Harps, toy ducks printed on each one. I cleared my throat and got her attention.
“Geez Louise, Emma June. You look terrible.”
“Yeah. I feel like I’m on a hill trying to balance my butt on a log.”
“Told you he was no good. You never listen. Was it worth the bags under your eyes?”
Compared to Charlene with her narrow waist, full hips and breasts, her flawless milk-white skin, I looked like the grim reaper.
“What happened with Mama and Betty last night? Why didn’t Betty drive home with us?”
“That’s all you care about? What should have been a fun night ended up being a flop. And we had to leave before the evening even got started.”
“Because I got ossified,” I said, acknowledging my stupidity.
“Probably,” she muttered. “After I shrugged Louis’s cooties off my arm, I went looking for you and saw Bernice and Betty’s war squabble. God, how people stared. Anyway, I found you sitting on the dirt. Then, after you were carried … After I got you back to your mother, Betty was gone.”
“What were they yelling about? What did they say?”
“Why don’t you ask your mother? She tells you everything,” she spat. Charlene had always resented my relationship with Mama. While my mother listened and gave me honest advice, Mrs. Johnson nagged and judged everything Charlene said or did.
If I told her the truth, that Mama didn’t come home, the whole town would know within fifteen minutes. “Mama didn’t say anything about last night.”
Charlene shrugged. “They stopped talking when I walked up. But right before, I heard Miss Bernice yelling something like, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ When it was just the two of us in the car, and I don’t count you because you were out cold, she wouldn’t answer my questions. Just asked how you got to be so drunk. Most the way home, she stayed quiet.”
“So what happened to Betty?”
“I asked if Betty met someone. She said, ‘Oh, she did, all right. She’s finding her own way home.’”
“I gotta go.” I turned my back to Charlene and stopped. “Hey, you want to meet the boy who carried me to the car last night?”
“What? How—”
“Long story.”
Charlene peered through the supply room door and gasped. “He’s talking to my father. He better not say anything about Betty being with us last night.”
I thought about Samuel’s doctor oath, about him not revealing why Scooter had gone to the doctor. “He won’t talk. Come say hello.”
Charlene flicked dust off her work apron and tugged down one side of her bangs. “What? You carrying a torch for him now?”
“Are you coming or not?”
Charlene backed away. “No. Not with Daddy around.”
“Suit yourself. And Charlene? About last night. I didn’t mean … well, you were right. Wade is a creep.”
“Yeah? And that boy out there? He might be one, too.”
I left her alone with her crates and jealousy. Charlene and I had been friends for fourteen years. Hundreds of happy times spent together. Yet too many days had been ruined by her pettiness.
After passing through the aisles of sewing supplies, dishrags, cleaning supplies, and toy trinkets, I made it to the front where Samuel and Mr. Johnson stood chuckling.
“That beauty shop’s called the Chicken Coop,” Mr. Johnson said. “Can you imagine driving all the way to Mineral Wells just to get your hair dyed orange?”
“Well,” Samuel said, “if I had that new roadster, I’d drive it to get my hair dyed green.”
I cleared my throat. “Interrupting something?”
“Emma June?” Mr. Johnson said. “This young fella was just telling me how Helen Munson let him use her motorcar. Now, if that don’t beat all.”
“Beats all,” I muttered and turned to Samuel. “Ready?”
A block down, we entered through another door where the entry bells were a soft reminder of comfort and kindness.
Adelaide Jackson, conveniently nicknamed Miss Atta for those who could never remember or pronounce her name, stood leaning over her least favorite wooden booth, the one by the window. Although Miss Atta never said so, I believed the booth’s peeling seat was due to our heavy-weight mayor’s overuse.
The loose skin on her arms swayed as she swept away crumbs while humming Bessie Smith’s “Easy Come, Easy Go Blues.” In a way, she looked like Bessie Smith. Big brown eyes and a smile you could crawl inside of to brighten your spirits. But unlike the singer’s smooth skin, Miss Atta’s face was lined with crevices made from suffering rains. Not only had her husband died early on, her only son, Toby, had been lynched seven years before just because of his skin color.
According to Mama, the whole town loved Toby. Everything he did, he did with kindness and a sense of humor, earning him the nickname “Brown Sugar.” When news spread of his death, townsfolk sniffled and spoke in soft, somber tones. The louder voices grew a hunger to find the murderer and make him pay. But they never found him. Whoever it was deserved to burn in hell.
After the atrocity, Daddy and Gunny had pulled Miss Atta up for enough air to help her move forward. And she did. Ever since, Gunny by her side, both carrying a secret rapport for one another.
Miss Atta looked up and gave me a broad, white smile. “Why, Emma June. It’s your day off. What are you doing here?”
The same newcomer I had seen at Johnson’s Variety sat at the counter drinking coffee. I walked past him and into the comfort of Miss Atta’s eyes. “Mama?”
Her face revealed no hint of concern, no sign that she knew anything about Mama’s whereabouts. That’s when the fear busted in.
“What’s wrong? She doing all right?”
“I don’t know, Miss Atta. I mean …”
She handed me a handkerchief and wrapped her arms around me. “Shortcake, don’t carry your burdens alone. True friends hold you with both hands. And mine are right here.”
I told her the little I knew.
CHAPTER 10
EMMA JUNE
Samuel stayed quiet on the short drive to The Diner, giving me time to collect my wits.
Mama and I had never been to Betty’s place. She’d told us it was nearby but too small for entertaining properly. I kept thinking that Mama had found out where she lived, went there to seek an apology, and ended up staying due to the late hour. As Charlene said, they were best friends, and best friends worked things out.
Samuel parked in front of The Diner and stared ahead. Almost every window was cracked, all so filthy you couldn’t see inside. He ran around to my side of the motorcar and opened the passenger door. “Doesn’t look like a very nice place to work.”
An understatement. But it was the first job available when Betty moved here. “Wait till you see the inside.”
We entered through The Diner’s torn screen door. No jingling bells. No smiling face to greet us.
Crumbs and grease stains dotted the floor. Wooden tables, strewn haphazardly around the room, were carved up by bored customers hankering to practice their knife skills. Nothing like Rosie’s clean and welcoming interior.
“I wouldn’t eat a peanut from here,” Samuel whispered.
And for good reason. The food tasted like the inside of a fertilizer bag. Mama and I only came when we wanted to visit Betty.
Bald and missing a front tooth, Betty’s boss, Percy Yates, sat in a corner, his chair leaning on two legs against the wall. “If yer eatin’ here, take a seat,” he said, ogling me. He wiped his hands on a brown-stained apron and headed back to the kitchen.
“Betty working today?” I called after him. No response.
“Emma June? That you?” Miss Mabel’s head appeared over the counter, the rest of her struggled to stand. She placed the remnants of broken glass in a trash bin and turned to me.
Slump-shouldered, Miss Mabel wore the same dingy pink dress and matching waitress cap she’d worn since the place opened twenty years before. Cloudy-eyed and sagged with age, her wrinkled lips only uttered unkind words to hostile customers.
“Good morning, Miss Mabel. This is my friend Samuel. I wanted to introduce him to Betty. Is she here?”
“Packed up and high-tailed it early this mornin’. Didn’t say where. Maybe back to the big city. She talked about them skyscrapers almost as much as she talked about you and Miss Bernice. Surprised she didn’t tell you.”
There it was again. The smile that curled my toes.
“When I came back with your water, your friend, Sharla—”
“Charlene.”
“Charlene was there. We got you up, and I carried you to your mother, then to her motorcar.”
He carried me, a vomit-smelling mess. I turned my head away, hoping to hide my embarrassment. “You met Mama then. How was she?”
“Kind. Introduced herself and told me she was grateful. She looked upset, though. Fidgety. Why? Is she okay?”
“Do you remember anything else? Anything she said?”
“Nothing. Sorry. After getting you in the back seat, the three of y’all took off.”
Three people, not four. “Another woman wasn’t with us? A couple of years older than my mother?”
“No. Just you three.”
Betty. If Mama no longer trusted her, I needed to know why. I didn’t know where Betty lived, but I sure did know where she worked.
CHAPTER 8
EMMA JUNE
Roadrunner, the name Miss Helen gave her roadster, sparkled in the distance and gave me a wink.
“I need to find my mother,” I told Samuel. “She didn’t come home last night.”
I felt sure that if Mama needed comfort, she was safe in Miss Atta’s small home across town. Miss Atta, or as Daddy called her, Atta Girl, wasn’t just my boss but a family friend.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“The woman who was supposed to ride home with us from the carnival. She needs to tell me what happened between her and my mother.” I turned to go inside, then stopped. “And, well, thanks for helping me last night. Sorry if I was …” I stopped, not wanting to remind either of us of that horrid vision of myself. “I need to change clothes. See you around maybe?”
“Need some company?”
“Company?”
“A tagalong, to go with you to talk to that woman.”
I couldn’t imagine why he would want to come. Me, a bumbling fool who had disgraced myself in front of him. My eyes were still blurry from the rotgut, and the inside of my head had assembled a riotous gang of tuba players. “Oh, that’s okay. I couldn’t possibly ask you—”
“You didn’t. I offered.”
I hurried inside, changed into a simple shift dress, and added color to my lips and pale cheeks. I grabbed the object from my dresser and headed outside.
I found Samuel sitting on the front porch getting his face lathered by Choppers’s tongue.
“Pinwheel,” he said, staring at my hand and smiling.
I had a vague memory of him handing it to me at the carnival. “It’s for Miss Helen’s son.”
Cool spring day or not, my legs wobbled toward Miss Helen’s. I kept my head down and focused on lifting one foot in front of the other. Something as small as an armadillo divot could have thrown me face first.
“Scooter. Have you met him?” I asked Samuel.
“Last week. Mrs. Munson brought him into the office for … well, never mind. I’m not supposed to say.”
“It doesn’t matter. If Scooter has a finger scratch, Miss Helen rushes him to your uncle because, ‘you know, it could turn to gang-green.’”
Miss Helen charged hell with a bucket of ice to protect her family. After Scooter was born, some folks in Holly Gap, even a preacher, tried to force Miss Helen to ship Scooter off to a loony bin. “And cut off my arm?” she had told them. “I am blessed with this child and this child only. He’s mine for the duration. And if I ever hear anyone mention sending him away again, they’ll be contending with more than just being on top of my hit list.” She hadn’t stepped foot in a church since.
Choppers darted ahead, grinning through his pant.
“Doesn’t seem possible,” Samuel said. “Running that fast on three legs.”
“Yeah.” I left it at that.
“Emmy, Emmy, Emmy!” Scooter leaped off his front porch and wrapped his arms around my waist. Strong for a thirteen-year-old, and thank God, he didn’t pick me up and give me the usual bounce.
“Hey, Scoot Bucket.” When he finally released me, I held out the pinwheel with a “ta-da” and received his eye twinkle.
“A twirly bird!”
“Yes, for you.”
“Emmy is best.” He faced Samuel and stuck out his hand. “Howdy-do, Samuel.”
“Hi, Scooter. You remembered my name.”
Scooter patted his slight belly pooch as if he’d just eaten a large portion of satisfaction. “Scooter remembers.”
An understatement. Scooter still remembered the name of a traveling salesman who’d knocked on his door the year before.
I rubbed my hand across his burr haircut, his blond bristles a tad darker than Samuel’s. “Scoot, where’s your mama?”
“Moonshine thicket.”
Samuel followed me to the cluster of post oaks that served as a canopy for Miss Helen’s still. The scent of bubbling prunes and yeast thickened the air. And the back of my throat.
“Good Lord,” Samuel said. “What a contraption.”
Whereas most folks had next-door neighbors who grew rosebushes or vegetable gardens, mine fermented mash and turned it into alcohol. Eight years of gurgles and thumps from a still that produced a ghostly steam loop between the oak branches. Prohibition was Miss Helen’s bread and butter, and she aimed to keep brewing her way to the top of the food chain with one-eighty proof.
Miss Helen sealed the cap on a Mason jar and looked up. “Ain’t she a beaut, Samuel?”
Beauty wasn’t a snake-looking tube that sat atop a barrel attached to a copper boiler pot. Beauty was Mama’s burgundy hair curling around a smile that lifted you off the ground.
I shook away my thoughts of Mama.
“Miss Helen’s been doing this since Prohibition started,” I told Samuel.
Miss Helen wiped her hands on the gaudy green and yellow apron she’d thrown over her pajamas. “Emma June?”
“Miss Helen?”
“You want something, spit it out. I’m busier than a dog in flea season.”
“I need to borrow Roadrunner. It won’t take long, I promise.”
“Where?”
“To get answers.”
“Emma June—”
“You expect me to do nothing?”
“You can barely drive, young lady. Theo’s given you what? Two lessons?”
True. After hitting our mailbox the first go-round, it took some convincing for Daddy to take me out for a second run.
Samuel stepped forward. “Mrs. Munson, I’ve been driving since I was twelve, seven years now. I’d be glad to drive Emma June.”
“I’m driving the twirly bird,” Scooter said as he ran in circles with the pinwheel held high. He came to a screeching halt and pulled out his prized pocketknife. “Now, I must plant it.”
“Nice of you to get that pinwheel for him, Emma June.” Miss Helen flicked her eyes between me and Samuel, then cracked a grin. “Don’t be long. And Samuel, I’ll tell your uncle not to wait for you. He’s inside with Leonard who’s trying to talk him into buying one of his side tables.”
Which would take a while. Leonard’s words weren’t exactly quick out of the chute, which made it easy for Miss Helen to talk over him.
“And no matter what, Emma June, you will walk Scooter to school tomorrow.” It wasn’t a question.
I told her I would, knowing I’d have to endure Miss Primrose’s eye roll. She was still upset I had passed my exit exam and graduated in December instead of May. Younger than Mama, the schoolmarm acted as though her one trip to Chicago added extra snap to her garters.
After a wave to Scooter, Samuel and I started down the drive in a motorcar that smelled of White Rose Toilet Water, Miss Helen’s wretched perfume.
Samuel looked in the back seat and whistled. “There’s enough room in here to house a family of four.”
I felt the smoothness of the seat’s brown houndstooth fabric and hoped Mama had slept on something just as soft. Surely, she missed not sleeping next to her husband in the comfort of her own bed. But knowing Miss Atta, Mama was safe and sound.
“Where can I take you?”
As much as I wanted to talk to Betty, Charlene was on the way. “Johnson’s Variety.”
He gave me a dimpled grin. “Need a tight kerchief to wrap around your skull?”
“Yeah, if it’s the kind that squeezes out answers.”
CHAPTER 9
EMMA JUNE
Like the other stores in Holly Gap, a bell announced our arrival at Johnson’s Variety. Except, at that moment, the soft ding sounded more like the gong at the start of a boxing match.
Mr. Johnson, Charlene’s father, glanced away from the customer standing at the counter. “Morning, Emma June. I’ll be right with you.”
The customer, a young man I’d never seen before, looked a bit older than Samuel. Tanned face, strong jawline. A rough kind of handsome. He gave me a quick once-over and tipped his cap.
Mr. Johnson turned back to him. “Head down to Dixie’s Drugstore. Block down on your right. They carry aspirin.”
Aspirin. Judging from the stranger’s cocksure appearance, his headache didn’t reach my level of bad. He strutted out, the bell chiming his exit.
“Well, Emma June,” Mr. Johnson said, “God created another beautiful day, now, didn’t He?”
Not really. “Yes, sir. I need to speak with Charlene. This is my … this is Samuel.”
“She’s in the storage room. Go on back.” Mr. Johnson gave Samuel the stink eye. “Son, you best stay here and let them gals do their gossipin’.”
I found Charlene leaning over a small crate unloading small green and blue boxes of Star Harps, toy ducks printed on each one. I cleared my throat and got her attention.
“Geez Louise, Emma June. You look terrible.”
“Yeah. I feel like I’m on a hill trying to balance my butt on a log.”
“Told you he was no good. You never listen. Was it worth the bags under your eyes?”
Compared to Charlene with her narrow waist, full hips and breasts, her flawless milk-white skin, I looked like the grim reaper.
“What happened with Mama and Betty last night? Why didn’t Betty drive home with us?”
“That’s all you care about? What should have been a fun night ended up being a flop. And we had to leave before the evening even got started.”
“Because I got ossified,” I said, acknowledging my stupidity.
“Probably,” she muttered. “After I shrugged Louis’s cooties off my arm, I went looking for you and saw Bernice and Betty’s war squabble. God, how people stared. Anyway, I found you sitting on the dirt. Then, after you were carried … After I got you back to your mother, Betty was gone.”
“What were they yelling about? What did they say?”
“Why don’t you ask your mother? She tells you everything,” she spat. Charlene had always resented my relationship with Mama. While my mother listened and gave me honest advice, Mrs. Johnson nagged and judged everything Charlene said or did.
If I told her the truth, that Mama didn’t come home, the whole town would know within fifteen minutes. “Mama didn’t say anything about last night.”
Charlene shrugged. “They stopped talking when I walked up. But right before, I heard Miss Bernice yelling something like, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ When it was just the two of us in the car, and I don’t count you because you were out cold, she wouldn’t answer my questions. Just asked how you got to be so drunk. Most the way home, she stayed quiet.”
“So what happened to Betty?”
“I asked if Betty met someone. She said, ‘Oh, she did, all right. She’s finding her own way home.’”
“I gotta go.” I turned my back to Charlene and stopped. “Hey, you want to meet the boy who carried me to the car last night?”
“What? How—”
“Long story.”
Charlene peered through the supply room door and gasped. “He’s talking to my father. He better not say anything about Betty being with us last night.”
I thought about Samuel’s doctor oath, about him not revealing why Scooter had gone to the doctor. “He won’t talk. Come say hello.”
Charlene flicked dust off her work apron and tugged down one side of her bangs. “What? You carrying a torch for him now?”
“Are you coming or not?”
Charlene backed away. “No. Not with Daddy around.”
“Suit yourself. And Charlene? About last night. I didn’t mean … well, you were right. Wade is a creep.”
“Yeah? And that boy out there? He might be one, too.”
I left her alone with her crates and jealousy. Charlene and I had been friends for fourteen years. Hundreds of happy times spent together. Yet too many days had been ruined by her pettiness.
After passing through the aisles of sewing supplies, dishrags, cleaning supplies, and toy trinkets, I made it to the front where Samuel and Mr. Johnson stood chuckling.
“That beauty shop’s called the Chicken Coop,” Mr. Johnson said. “Can you imagine driving all the way to Mineral Wells just to get your hair dyed orange?”
“Well,” Samuel said, “if I had that new roadster, I’d drive it to get my hair dyed green.”
I cleared my throat. “Interrupting something?”
“Emma June?” Mr. Johnson said. “This young fella was just telling me how Helen Munson let him use her motorcar. Now, if that don’t beat all.”
“Beats all,” I muttered and turned to Samuel. “Ready?”
A block down, we entered through another door where the entry bells were a soft reminder of comfort and kindness.
Adelaide Jackson, conveniently nicknamed Miss Atta for those who could never remember or pronounce her name, stood leaning over her least favorite wooden booth, the one by the window. Although Miss Atta never said so, I believed the booth’s peeling seat was due to our heavy-weight mayor’s overuse.
The loose skin on her arms swayed as she swept away crumbs while humming Bessie Smith’s “Easy Come, Easy Go Blues.” In a way, she looked like Bessie Smith. Big brown eyes and a smile you could crawl inside of to brighten your spirits. But unlike the singer’s smooth skin, Miss Atta’s face was lined with crevices made from suffering rains. Not only had her husband died early on, her only son, Toby, had been lynched seven years before just because of his skin color.
According to Mama, the whole town loved Toby. Everything he did, he did with kindness and a sense of humor, earning him the nickname “Brown Sugar.” When news spread of his death, townsfolk sniffled and spoke in soft, somber tones. The louder voices grew a hunger to find the murderer and make him pay. But they never found him. Whoever it was deserved to burn in hell.
After the atrocity, Daddy and Gunny had pulled Miss Atta up for enough air to help her move forward. And she did. Ever since, Gunny by her side, both carrying a secret rapport for one another.
Miss Atta looked up and gave me a broad, white smile. “Why, Emma June. It’s your day off. What are you doing here?”
The same newcomer I had seen at Johnson’s Variety sat at the counter drinking coffee. I walked past him and into the comfort of Miss Atta’s eyes. “Mama?”
Her face revealed no hint of concern, no sign that she knew anything about Mama’s whereabouts. That’s when the fear busted in.
“What’s wrong? She doing all right?”
“I don’t know, Miss Atta. I mean …”
She handed me a handkerchief and wrapped her arms around me. “Shortcake, don’t carry your burdens alone. True friends hold you with both hands. And mine are right here.”
I told her the little I knew.
CHAPTER 10
EMMA JUNE
Samuel stayed quiet on the short drive to The Diner, giving me time to collect my wits.
Mama and I had never been to Betty’s place. She’d told us it was nearby but too small for entertaining properly. I kept thinking that Mama had found out where she lived, went there to seek an apology, and ended up staying due to the late hour. As Charlene said, they were best friends, and best friends worked things out.
Samuel parked in front of The Diner and stared ahead. Almost every window was cracked, all so filthy you couldn’t see inside. He ran around to my side of the motorcar and opened the passenger door. “Doesn’t look like a very nice place to work.”
An understatement. But it was the first job available when Betty moved here. “Wait till you see the inside.”
We entered through The Diner’s torn screen door. No jingling bells. No smiling face to greet us.
Crumbs and grease stains dotted the floor. Wooden tables, strewn haphazardly around the room, were carved up by bored customers hankering to practice their knife skills. Nothing like Rosie’s clean and welcoming interior.
“I wouldn’t eat a peanut from here,” Samuel whispered.
And for good reason. The food tasted like the inside of a fertilizer bag. Mama and I only came when we wanted to visit Betty.
Bald and missing a front tooth, Betty’s boss, Percy Yates, sat in a corner, his chair leaning on two legs against the wall. “If yer eatin’ here, take a seat,” he said, ogling me. He wiped his hands on a brown-stained apron and headed back to the kitchen.
“Betty working today?” I called after him. No response.
“Emma June? That you?” Miss Mabel’s head appeared over the counter, the rest of her struggled to stand. She placed the remnants of broken glass in a trash bin and turned to me.
Slump-shouldered, Miss Mabel wore the same dingy pink dress and matching waitress cap she’d worn since the place opened twenty years before. Cloudy-eyed and sagged with age, her wrinkled lips only uttered unkind words to hostile customers.
“Good morning, Miss Mabel. This is my friend Samuel. I wanted to introduce him to Betty. Is she here?”
“Packed up and high-tailed it early this mornin’. Didn’t say where. Maybe back to the big city. She talked about them skyscrapers almost as much as she talked about you and Miss Bernice. Surprised she didn’t tell you.”
