Kinfolk, page 17
They just stared at her.
“What?” said one kid.
“Tell your little joke again. I want to hear it.”
The boys all looked at each other. More snickers.
“Why are you so obsessed with me?” said Phillip. “You’re not my type, Herman Munster.” Then he called her a bad name.
“I’m carrying your child.”
“You’re carrying someone’s bastard,” said Phillip. “But it ain’t mine.”
Minnie did not think. She just reacted. She reached outward with both hands and pinned Phillip’s arms to his sides.
“Get off me!”
With both arms clamped to his sides, Phillip was defenseless against her. He shouted as he kicked his feet. Minnie carried him, kicking and screaming, toward the door.
“Stop!” came the voice of a teacher. It was Miss Rhonda. Miss Rhonda and Nub were running from the office. The two adults raced down the hallway.
“Put him down right now, Minnie!” said Miss Rhonda.
Minnie hesitatingly did as she was told. Phillip’s feet hit solid ground. His clothes were askew. His hair was disheveled. He shoved Minnie as hard as he could in a feeble attempt to salvage his threadbare pride.
“I can’t believe you would do such a thing, Minnie!” said Miss Rhonda. The woman’s voice was quavering with righteousness. “This is appalling. I’m shocked at you. Shocked at you all.”
The woman was yelling now.
“I can’t understand what’s gotten into all of you! And I’m especially disappointed in you, young lady. You ought to know better than this.”
Nub touched Miss Rhonda’s shoulder. “Don’t be so disappointed, sweetie. I think Minnie was just exploring her boundaries.”
* * *
Nub placed his groceries onto the IGA conveyor belt. Minnie stood beside him, silent as a stump. She hadn’t said much since the incident at school. Benny stood near the magazines, reading a Cosmopolitan, thumbing through the pages, looking at the pictures. The conveyor belt ushered Nub’s grocery items toward the register. An extremely tall man with faded hair and a gaunt frame was bagging their groceries.
“There is no way one man eats this much pork and beans,” said Miss Janet, the cashier, punching numbers on the register. “Does Emily know how poorly you’re eating?”
“Emily’s not my mother.”
The old woman looked over her wire-rimmed glasses at him. “Well, someone ought to be.”
Nub transferred the remainder of his items from the basket to the belt. There were sardines packed in ketchup sauce, two loaves of bread, four packages of Oscar Mayer bologna, a package of Limburger cheese, six cans of Vienna sausages, two cartons of Lucky Strikes, and a bag of cat food. He yanked the Cosmopolitan magazine from Benny’s hands and threw it onto the conveyor belt too.
“Happy Hanukkah,” Nub told him.
Miss Janet zeroed in on the girly magazine with serious eyes. Miss Janet was the oldest surviving member of the Primitive Baptist Church in Park. She had also been Nub’s and Benny’s fifth-grade teacher. Nub still remembered when she would grip her lectern like Billy Sunday, educating the class on the key points of predestination and everlasting hellfire. Theirs was the only class in Ash County that had altar calls.
Miss Janet read the headline aloud. “‘How to Get Him to Love You Like a Mistress’?” The old woman stared at them both without moving a facial muscle.
Nub jingled the change in his pockets.
Miss Janet slapped the magazine onto the belt. “Shameful.”
“Benny’s a growing boy,” said Nub.
Behind them was Georgianna Rodgers. Georgianna was tall, elegant, and wearing a small pillbox cap even though it was an average Saturday night and nobody had recently died. Her buggy contained enough food to compromise the integrity of the supermarket’s foundation. Her toddler granddaughter was sitting in the cart, dutifully picking her nose.
“That’s a lot of beans,” said Georgianna.
“So everyone keeps telling me,” said Nub. “I didn’t know so many people cared about my dietary fiber consumption.”
Nub watched Georgianna’s little granddaughter dig into her nasal cavity. The kid was up to her elbows. “Cute kid.”
Georgianna was old money. She was the kind of woman who did not leave the house—not even to check the mail—without wearing pearls, pumps, and a prodigious dusting of bath powder. She gave Minnie a look that was supposed to be maternal, he supposed.
Nub introduced them. Georgianna gave a plastic smile. “Oh, I already know this young woman, Nub. Her mama used to work for us, a long time ago. And I think it’s very Christian what you’re trying to do here, opening your home to this child.”
“That’s because you ain’t seen my home,” said Nub.
“We can all imagine it,” said Miss Janet.
Georgianna placed a jar of mayonnaise on the belt. Miracle Whip. You had to worry about a person who used Miracle Whip.
“How is Emily’s fever?” Georgianna said.
The words hit him out of left field. He knew nothing of a fever. He only knew about the fever he himself had faked earlier that week.
“Emily’s fever, or mine?” he said.
“Mary Finlay told me Emily had a fever. She said Emily wasn’t at school today. Said her fever was pretty bad.”
“Oh, that fever. She’s doing much better,” said Nub. “I’ll tell her you asked about her.”
Georgianna looked back at Minnie and changed the subject.
“And how are you settling in, darling?”
“Very well, ma’am,” said Minnie. “Thank you.”
“That’s good, dear.” Georgianna batted her eyes and scanned Minnie’s outfit. “You know, your mother used to bring you to work when she’d clean our house a long time ago. You’re probably too young to remember that, but I loved your mother. Your mother was always such a nice girl. She had such a wonderful air about her.”
Nub noticed how strategically Georgianna avoided using Minnie’s mother’s name. “What was her mother’s name?”
Georgianna looked at him. “I’m sorry?”
“You just said you were friends. You knew her. Tell us her name.”
Georgianna gave a laugh. “What on earth do you mean? Of course I knew her name.”
“Great. Let’s hear it.”
The air became awkward and heavy. Minnie looked like she wanted to shrink into a ladybug and fly away.
“What on earth has gotten into you, Jeremiah?” said Miss Janet. “She was just making conversation and being polite.”
“Tell me what her mother’s name was.”
Benny touched Nub’s elbow and tried to get him to calm down. Nub yanked his arm away. His blood was hot enough to boil cabbage. Minnie had pulled her jacket over her face.
Georgianna put her hand to her chest. Aghast. But she uttered no names. “You astound me. You know that?”
“Jeremiah Taylor,” said Miss Janet. “What are you trying to prove? Why’re you always stirring up trouble? Can’t you just be agreeable for once in your wretched life?”
Georgianna lifted her granddaughter from the cart. “Maybe I should just leave. I’ll come back and buy groceries some other time.”
“Maybe you should,” said Nub.
“You need to calm down, Jeremiah,” said Miss Janet. “You’re making a mountain out of absolutely nothing. So what if she can’t remember the woman’s name? That’s not a crime.”
The man bagging the groceries spoke. His voice was a rich baritone.
“Celia,” the man said.
Everyone fell silent.
The tall man went back to bagging groceries.
“Thank you,” Georgianna said. “There. You see, Nub? Celia, that was it. I grieved for that woman when she died. I love all people, rich or poor. I’m not going to stand here and be ridiculed by the town drunk.”
“Nub ain’t the town drunk,” Benny said. “Plenty of drunks worse than him.”
“Thank you, Benny,” said Nub.
With that, Georgianna left the store.
Miss Janet was shaking her head at Nub. “You were out of line. You shouldn’t go around acting like a blamed fool all the time.”
“A fool?” said Nub. “‘The fool doth think he is wise,’ Miss Janet. ‘But the wise man knows himself to be a fool.’”
Miss Janet punched open the cash drawer. “Heavens. A literary reference, from Jeremiah Taylor, in my presence? As I live and breathe. I wonder if you remember who said that.”
“ʼCourse I do,” said Nub. “You did. All throughout fifth grade.”
* * *
After they dropped Benny off at his house, Nub and Minnie drove toward the Kmart in Ambassador. Wyatt rode curled up on the dashboard. The truck loped across the long fields and cattle pasture. The night was obsidian. The moon was nearly full. Minnie sat beside him, staring out the passenger side, watching a big world whip by her window. And Nub was trying to coax his blood pressure down yet again. The people in this town were enough to drive a man to drink.
“I’m sorry about losing my cool before,” he finally said. “I never should’ve put you through that. It wasn’t very nice of me.”
She shrugged. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I’m not setting a very good example for you. Don’t people like that woman make you mad?”
She shrugged. “Not really. Just how some people is.”
He looked at her. There was more beneath her words than even he understood. He knew what it felt like to be blackballed. He knew what it felt like to be the butt of every joke. He knew what it felt like to survive suicide. But this child had it worse than he ever did.
“I’m sorry for what you’re going through, Minnie.”
Shrug.
When they reached the intersection of County Route 19 and I-65, a series of misfiring sounds came from the truck. He shifted gears to see if that helped. It didn’t. The truck sputtered melodramatically. Then the wheel went slack. The needles on the dashboard flicked left in unison. The Ford veered to the ditch.
The truck was dead. Long live the truck.
They sat in the stillness among the miles of table-flat range lining both sides of the highway, far from home. The sound of crickets filled the night.
“What just happened?” said Minnie, petting the cat.
He turned to look at her. “What happened is we’re gonna get plenty of exercise for the evening.”
Minnie kept stroking Wyatt.
They raided their grocery bags and got ready to dine on the tailgate of the deceased F-100 while they watched the stars play above them. Angus in the nearby meadow lingered near the fence, watching them curiously. The truck battery still worked. So did the radio. So Nub treated her to WSM 650 AM, Nashville. Jim Reeves was singing “Is It Really Over?” like only Gentleman Jim could. Wyatt ate cat food straight from Minnie’s hand while Nub prepared a pork-and-bean sandwich. He opened the can of beans with his P-38 can opener, which had a permanent home on his key chain ever since Pearl Harbor. He scooped beans onto the white bread, doused the bread in Heinz and Tabasco, and clapped the two sandwich halves together. He handed the soupy mess to Minnie.
“What’s this?” she said, wrinkling her face.
“Food.” He winked.
She took the sandwich cautiously. Wyatt sniffed it.
“It’s called a Po’ Nub sandwich. It will bless your heart. Try to keep an open mind.”
“A Po what?”
“My own creation. Go on, eat. It’s getting cold. Get away from that food, Wyatt.”
The young woman looked at the concoction. She turned it in her hands. Beans spilled from the slices of bread, all over her thighs. She hesitantly took a bite. In a few moments, she began fanning her mouth.
“It’s hot. My mouth is burning.”
“Tabasco sauce. Key ingredient.”
“Why you make it so hot?”
“Ain’t my recipe.”
Over the next few bites, the sandwich seemed to grow on her. She finished her first Po’ Nub sandwich and ate a second and a third. Then a fourth. He was thrilled.
History’s first Po’ Nub sandwich happened when Emily was six years old. He had been babysitting her on a rare weekend that Loretta had deemed him fit for fatherhood. Emily fixed her father a sandwich in his kitchen using the only ingredients he had available in the fridge. Emily had been so adamant that her daddy eat her homemade sandwich in front of her. She called it a Po’ Nub. It became a thing between them.
“Miss Georgianna called you a drunk,” said Minnie.
He touched a fresh cigarette to the end of his dying one and puffed it to life. “Yeah, well, Georgianna’s a serial monogamist, so there.”
Minnie said nothing.
“And to be fair, Georgianna’s right about me. I am a drunk. But I’m working on that.”
She took a bite of her sandwich. “You mean you ain’t going to drink no more?”
“I mean I’m taking it one day at a time.”
“But if you don’t drink no more, then how come you got beer in your refrigerator?”
“Hard to say goodbye.”
“And you got a lot of whiskey under your kitchen sink too.”
“What are you, the Southern Baptist Convention?”
Minnie fixed herself another sandwich, pouring the cold beans onto slices of bread, adding the condiments, then smooshing it all together. She had the recipe down pat. Wyatt played on her lap, rolling around like he was having blissful convulsions.
“My mama drank too much,” she said.
He nodded. “Yeah, well, try not to blame her.” He looked off at the cows who were looking back at him. “You and I have more in common than you think we do.”
She did not respond so he just kept looking at the cows. Their big bovine eyes had always seemed so intelligent to him.
“My daddy shot himself.”
Minnie was silent.
He nodded. “I was eleven. I found him in the closet. I’ve never seen that much blood.”
“You found him?”
Nub was numb. “I didn’t know it was him because his face, it was . . . gone.”
Minnie was quiet for a long time. The sounds of the night swelled around them. Finally, she said, “When someone shoots themself, they kill a lot more than just them.”
Truer words were never spoken.
Chapter 25
They walked the moonlit dirt roads toward Kmart, which was the closest landmark. Home was fourteen miles away; Kmart was only eight. Their feet made scuffling sounds on the dust and gravel. Minnie wore her school backpack and held Wyatt in her arms. Nub carried two sacks of groceries and suffered from a bout of emphysema that nearly killed him. After only ten minutes of walking, he was winded and he could see spots in his vision.
“Should we take a break, Mr. Nub?” she said. “You look pretty pale.”
“I’m pale because you walk so dang fast.”
“I do?”
“Yes, you do. Hell. We didn’t walk this fast in the navy.”
He dug a carton from his shirt pocket, wedged a smoke between his lips. “I have to sit down and breathe. Give me a moment.”
He staggered to a cattle fence and sat on a nearby stump. He removed his seed cap and used a sleeve to mop the perspiration from his forehead. Minnie pressed her nose into Wyatt’s fur and hummed softly in the cat’s face. She paused her singing and looked at Nub.
“Do I look like Herman Munster?”
“Who’s that?”
“Never mind.” She went back to petting Wyatt.
“Well, I never heard of him, but old Herman must be a strikingly attractive young woman.”
He could almost hear her eyes roll.
“Sing something for me,” he said.
“Sing?”
“Don’t give me that. All you ever do is sing. Give a dying man his last wish before he joins the heavenly majority.”
She looked at the ground. “You ain’t want to hear me, Mr. Nub.”
“You’re stalling.”
So Minnie Bass closed her eyes and sang a song that seemed to originate deep within her breast. A song that laced the night with such immense sorrow, such deep-seated pain, that Nub’s own earthly troubles paled in comparison to what this child was feeling. It was more than music. It was more than a song. It was a sacred melody of the heart. A human being spends most of his or her life hiding behind things, hiding behind their own words, pretending to feel ways they don’t really feel, trying to convince themselves that everything is okay. But if you want to know what’s truly on someone’s mind, what’s eating them inside, you pay attention to what they sing about. The truth always comes out in music.
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,
Nobody knows but Jesus,
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,
Glory hallelujah.
Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down,
Oh yes, Lord.
Sometimes I’m almost to the ground,
Oh yes, Lord.
When she finished singing, he gazed at her through glassy eyes. He could not form words. Not at first. It took him a few moments to find them. Her song had penetrated a part of his spirit he’d forgotten was there. He lost fifty years and became a little boy. He was a child who had stumbled into the closet to find his father, lying crumpled on the floor, in a puddle of red. His father’s face missing. And the rifle’s trigger guard stuck to his big toe. That’s who Nub Taylor was tonight. A child. And in fact, that was all he’d ever been.
The insects of the night were chirping. And Nub was crying.
“You’re probably the best singer I’ve ever heard,” he said.
“No.”
He wiped his face. “I mean it. Your voice is incredible.”
She shook her head. Her face wore the blush of youthful embarrassment. “I ain’t nothing.”
Nub approached her. He touched her chin and stared up into her dark eyes.
“Don’t you ever say that again, sweetie,” he said.
* * *
When they arrived at the Kmart, Nub had blisters on his heels. His knee was complaining. His lower back had seized. And his heart felt like it was going to rupture. But other than that, he was okay. Minnie, on the other hand, was pregnant and carrying an obese cat, but hardly winded at all.
