Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes Read online

  We were all silent, watching Cathy’s reaction as her husband held the two bloodied birds before her. Little Earl hesitated, and started to put the birds away.

  Cathy said, “I put my fingerprint on the mantle today.”

  She smiled at her husband, and took the dead birds from him, and slipped her arm through his.

  Arm in arm, man and wife, we all walked back to the house.

  A LITTLE SQUIRRELLY

  By Nancy Knight

  You enter into a certain amount of madness when you marry a person with pets.

  —Nora Ephron

  Children love animals and would keep a menagerie of pets if they could. Mama would never let us have pets, except for Mr. Thomas, an old tom cat that took up at our house during the summer after I turned three. He always stayed outside. Mr. Thomas was a great hunter, always bringing little snakes, moles, and mice up to the house and placing them on the front porch for us to see. Mama couldn’t stand even the idea of a critter in the house, no matter how well groomed and trained it was—and no matter how good a hunter.

  When I was in the first grade, we moved to Cleveland Park, giving Mr. Thomas a huge hunting ground to prowl. My sister and I were old enough by then to discover plenty of critters in need of a home, and we always brought them home. Like the duckling we found one time at Cleveland Park Lake. Or the chicken we found pecking beneath a large oak in the picnic area. There was always an assortment of baby birds, bird eggs, frogs, and bugs—none of which were to Mama’s liking. She sent each and every one of them back into the wild from which they came, despite our tears, pouts and protests.

  Looking back, I suspect that the duckling’s own mama was searching for him. And the chicken probably belonged some neighbors on the street behind ours. But at the time, of course, Mama’s logic meant nothing to us.

  Daddy, on the other hand, was always on our side when it came to house pets. He loved animals—all of them. He, too, would have liked a houseful of pets if he could have sweet-talked Mama into it.

  He got his chance when the city cut down the beautiful old oak trees beside the service station he owned and a family of squirrels got displaced. He couldn’t do much for the mother squirrel, but she could fend for herself. It was the three helpless babies that bothered him.

  Daddy decided he would just have to serve as Mama to those babies. He and the men who worked for him built a huge cage of chicken wire, replete with a human’s approximation of a squirrel nest, an enclosed area for privacy, and lots of sunny places with tree limbs where they could play. They even made one of those running wheels so the squirrels could get some exercise. They set the cage up in front of the service station, close to the place their tree had once been.

  The babies were too young to eat solid food at first, so Daddy went down to Kress’s Five and Dime and bought a few doll bottles to feed them. The local veterinarian said it was probably a hopeless cause, but Daddy refused to give up. At first he fed them Carnation Evaporated Milk. It wasn’t long before he was feeding them chopped pecans or acorns when he could find them.

  That squirrel cage became somewhat of a tourist attraction in the neighborhood. People would stop in, just to see how the babies were doing. The squirrels, accustomed by now to humans, would chatter excitedly when anybody stood by their cage. Somehow, they knew they were the neighborhood celebrities.

  Dr. Smith’s pediatrics practice, which was located next to Daddy’s service station, lured in plenty of kids to see the squirrels. Pretty soon, mothers were bribing children with a visit to see the baby squirrels if they behaved properly at the doctor’s office. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but there were always lots of children peering into the cage.

  Everybody seemed concerned with the welfare of those baby squirrels except Mama. When we’d go to see Daddy at work, she never ventured near their cage. She always said they looked like rats with fuzzy tails to her. Maybe they did, but my sister Joyce and I didn’t care. We loved to play with them. We may have been mistaken, but I swear those babies’ big black eyes would light up when we approached.

  All of the babies adored Daddy, but the runt of the litter was his favorite. Peanut was a smart little fur-ball. Daddy carried him in his coat pocket most of the time. He even taught him a few tricks. After a while, Daddy could place a pecan on the office counter and say, “Peanut, ole buddy, you want a pecan?”

  That little squirrel would poke his head out of Daddy’s pocket, run up his arm and around his shoulders, dash down the other arm, and grab that nut. He’d tuck it away in Daddy’s jacket pocket for a rainy day. He never seemed to figure out that it was always the same nut.

  One night, Daddy forgot that Peanut was in his pocket when he came home. He hung his jacket on one of the dining room chairs as he always did. Peanut was content to sleep in Daddy’s pocket, but some time during the night he got a little hungry and started munching on that pecan.

  The crunch of breaking pecan shells woke Mama up. She grabbed a broom out of the broom closet and began to hunt down the “rat” which had somehow gotten into our house. Imagine her surprise when she tracked the sounds to Daddy’s coat pocket. She was just about to swat the coat with the broom when Daddy stopped her. Needless to say, she was very unhappy about the squirrel in the house—especially one that made sounds like a rat.

  Daddy promised never to forget and leave a squirrel in his pocket again, and, the excitement over, we all went back to bed. Well, that was a pie crust promise: easily made and easily broken.

  Several weeks later, Daddy forgot to put Peanut in his cage again a day or so before Thanksgiving. He came in, took off his jacket, and hung it on the dining room chair as usual. We had supper and then went off to complete our homework. Daddy sat down to watch the news in front of our new Admiral television set. It was our second one—ever so much better than the tiny picture tube of our first.

  After a while, we joined Daddy in the living room to watch television. We curled up next to him on the couch, nestled into his arms, and settled in for one of our favorite programs. We never missed Our Miss Brooks if we could help it. And it was a show we liked to watch together.

  All the while Peanut snoozed quietly in Daddy’s pocket.

  Mama was in the kitchen making a pecan pie to take to Granny’s for Thanksgiving while we watched television. The rooms were arranged in a manner that allowed her to listen to the television, but not see it. Occasionally, she would pop in to see what that silly Walter Denton (played by a young Richard Crenna) was up to. All in all, it was one of those comfortable evenings when we were all together.

  After a while, Peanut must have smelled the pecans Mama was shelling—his favorite treat—and began to search for a snack. Or he may have been attracted by the voices, since he was accustomed to being around people. But, for whatever reason, he was no longer satisfied to sleep in his most loved place. He climbed out of Daddy’s pocket and scurried into the kitchen. Mama, suspecting nothing out of the ordinary, continued to shell pecans and talk back and forth with us about the show and the upcoming holiday.

  The baby squirrel might have been confused at first. He probably saw the counter and wondered how he could get way up there for his nut. He finally figured out a way to reach the counter top, looking for that pecan Daddy always teased him with, and began his ascent. Unfortunately, the route he took was straight up Mama’s leg.

  Her scream jolted us into action. With Daddy leading the way, my sister and I dashed into the kitchen. Mama stood cowering in the narrow slot between the refrigerator and the kitchen table. Peanut crouched, shivering with fear, between the cabinets, with no place to hide.

  Daddy, after insuring that Mama hadn’t injured herself, reached down and picked Peanut up. He tried his best to comfort the frightened squirrel, but it continued to quiver with fear. Nothing seemed to help, not Daddy’s calming voice, not the hands of two little girls trying to pet him and cuddle him. Eventually, Mama couldn’t stand to see the little critter so scared, so she edged over t
o the bowl of pecans and nudged it toward Daddy. He kind of grinned that sheepish grin of his and offered one of the shelled pecans to Peanut. “Peanut, ole buddy, you want a pecan?”

  That did the trick. Peanut took the pecan and nibbled on it until the shaking stopped. Daddy put him down on the counter, and he ate another piece of pecan with Mama watching warily from her vantage point beside the Frigidaire.

  Mama breathlessly told us how she’d been standing there, working away. A couple of times she heard a scratching sound, but dismissed the noises as coming from the television set. And then, “That creature jumped onto my leg, caught hold of my stockings, climbed to my knee, up my skirt, and leapt to the counter.”

  Joyce and I shrieked with laughter at the idea of cute little Peanut climbing Mama’s leg. Her shredded stockings weren’t funny though. Daddy had to promise to buy her another pair.

  That was Mama’s up close and personal introduction to Peanut and I don’t think she was too happy about it.

  From then on, she always asked Daddy where the squirrels were. I think she and Peanut finally reached a truce. On the rare occasions when he’d come home with Daddy, she’d always find a few nuts to put in the pocket for our “guest” to nibble on during the night. She didn’t want to take a chance on him venturing out to find food and climbing her leg again.

  Back at the service station, folks just loved to watch Peanut do his trick. Every day somebody would stop by and ask Daddy to do it. He’d grin and say, “Peanut, ole buddy, you want a pecan?” Sure enough, Peanut would poke his head out of the pocket and scurry out to get his pecan.

  Remember, I told you that Peanut was a smart little fur-ball? Well, one day Daddy was pulling his favorite trick and Peanut, just as always, raced around Daddy’s shoulders to get his pecan. But this time, instead of putting it in Daddy’s pocket, he dashed out the front door and buried it in the pansy garden that bordered the office.

  Eventually, Daddy began to leave the cage open so the babies, who were now grown, could begin to see what a squirrel’s world was really like. One by one, they ventured out to see the world at the corner of St. John Street and Oakland Avenue there in Spartanburg. They’d prowl about, but always come back to the cage.

  Gradually they left to have families of their own. But for more than a year, three baby squirrels were the most popular attraction in the area—except to Mama.

  And, I suspect that, to this day, every time she makes a pecan pie, she glances over her shoulder just to make sure Peanut isn’t there behind her, planning to use her nylon clad legs like a tree trunk.

  UP JUMPS THE DEVIL

  By Donna Ball

  I’m a lean dog, a keen dog, a wild dog, and lone.

  —Irene Rutherford McLeod

  In 1782 my ancestors came down out of the hills of North Carolina and shrewdly negotiated the Indians out of some fifteen hundred acres of prime North Georgia farm land. A generation later, my great-great-great-great-grandfather took a fancy to the daughter of a Cherokee chief and sought her father’s permission to marry. The price of the chief’s blessing: two thousand acres of prime North Georgia farm land. Since red clay acreage back in those days was one thing that even my folks—for whom the phrase dirt poor was invented—had no trouble acquiring in abundance, the dowry was easily paid with a few hundred acres left over.

  There are, in fact, two things that all native Georgians worth their peanuts have in common, if you look deeply enough into the weeds that obscure the family tree: the once-upon-a-time ownership of great sprawling expanses of land, and a Cherokee princess ancestor. My illustrious forebear may well have gotten more than he bargained for in this particular deal, however: twelve children, a mission school, and a Cherokee princess who turned out to be a boot-wearing, whip-wielding tyrant who patrolled the school grounds with a shotgun under one arm, the whip in the other, and a Bowie knife tucked into the cuff of her boot—thereby eliminating some of the discipline problems that plague the public school system today.

  Eventually there came, of course, the Trail of Tears, and another great land deal—although most Cherokee would not describe it in precisely that way. It worked out pretty well for my great-great, however, as he was able to recoup most of what the family had lost in the Great Dowry Exchange—and promptly deeded it over to his wife, who was, of course, Cherokee and unable to own property. Gone again.

  And so it continued over the next several generations, for if there was one thing my family was better at than acquiring land, it was losing it in bad deals. A thousand acres won in a poker game. Six hundred lost to cotton speculation and boll weevils. Eight hundred gained in a wily railroad deal, twelve hundred lost when the deal fell through. By the turn of the century my family had paid for the original two thousand acres a dozen times, and had only managed to hold on to five hundred.

  During the Depression my great-grandfather deeded one hundred twenty acres to his son-in-law Early Hall, only to shoot that same Mr. Hall in the back two years later when he found him in flagrante delicto with a woman not his wife. It was a mortal wound, but justice being what it was in those days—my great-gramps was a pillar of the community and all the Halls had to back them up was a bunch of hillbilly white trash living in mill shacks on the edge of the woods– he never even went to trial. Times were hard enough, most folks figured, without a body having to worry about who was doing what with whose wife, and besides, who was going to take care of the poor widow now if her daddy went to jail?

  And that, plus or minus a few dozen acres here and there, was how the situation stood as we entered the last half of the twentieth century: the original two thousand acres parceled up to small farms all around, each one representing a misdeed, a sentimental moment, or a lapse in judgement, with my family’s three hundred or so acres sitting smack dab in the middle. My grandfather, then eighty-three years old and failing, had a cynical and ultimately pragmatic view of the burdens of land ownership. Upon their marriages he had offered each of his four children a chance to buy fifty acres of their heritage; what was left over, he swore, he was going to let the government have when he died. The dad-blamed land had caused enough trouble over the years in his estimation and he would be glad to get shed of it.

  His impression that the government confiscated all property that was left intestate was of course mistaken—they only took most of it—but we were assured one grand squabble over the remains when my grandfather was gone. Of the four children, only three survived. Two, my father and his older brother, had taken the practical route of buying out their own inheritances. My uncle had sold his fifty acres to the first Baptist Church and moved to California; there was now a brand-new Fellowship Hall where the watermelon patch used to be, and plans were well underway for a Youth Ministries baseball field on the bottom land. My father built himself a nice ranch house opposite the old home place and raised a family, where he lived until his death.

  There remained only my Aunt Millie, who had nothing to show for herself in the way of an inheritance and who, as she approached, then passed, middle age, found that fact increasingly nettlesome. If Grandpa died without a will, the remaining two hundred acres would be divided three ways after taxes and probate fees, leaving the boys with a total of one hundred and five acres each and Aunt Millie with only fifty five. This was, as any reasonable person could see, monumentally unfair.

  In 1983 Aunt Millie, who had spent the past thirty years living the high life in Atlanta and doing her best to put her humble beginnings on a North Georgia dirt farm behind her, was stricken by nostalgia—and possibly by an acute awareness of the soaring resale values of north Georgia real estate—and moved back home to nurse her ailing father through what he insisted would be his last year on earth. Of course, Grandpa had been insisting he was living his last year on earth for the past eight years, but this did not discourage Aunt Millie. By day she dedicated herself to making Grandpa’s last days the most comfortable of his life, borrowing against Grandpa’s life insurance to replace the one hundred and fi
fty year old plaster walls with laminate paneling and installed vinyl siding over the wormy chestnut exterior . By night, she pursued a determined re-education program for Grandpa on the value of leaving a written will—a will that, preferably, named only one heir: his beloved only daughter.

  It was around the same time that Aunt Millie moved home that another notable event occurred in the community: the birth of a litter of half German-Shepherd/ half Lab puppies to Willard Hall—a descendant of the very same Hall who Great-Grandpa hadn’t simply killed, but to whom he had referred for the rest of his life as “that low down thieving s.o.b. that stole my land and ruint my daughter.” (Great-Aunt Iris, it should be said, bore her ruination well. She went on to marry a doctor in Macon, bear him six children, and die at the age of eighty-two a wealthy and contented widow who, to all appearances, never once looked back upon her tragic past).

  By this time both the relationship and the feud had been mostly forgotten, although members of my family still referred to the Halls as “shiftless” and the Halls, more likely than not, would spit great brown streams of tobacco juice on the ground whenever a male member of my family passed. They were still living on the land Great-Gramps had deeded out in 1933, having parceled it up to accommodate single-wides and leans-tos for whichever members of their family needed a place to light.

  What used to be lush green meadowland was now criss-crossed with bulldozed dirt driveways and chicken-scratched yards, clotheslines sagging with dingy laundry and bare-chested children standing around with their fingers in their noses. Whenever you drove up one of those dirt tracks, a big dog would chase your car—a different dog every time—and then stand splayed-legged and wild-eyed, barking a bark that rattled the car windows until you blew your horn loud enough to make someone come out of the house, haul the dog off, and tie him up.