Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes Page 7

  My brother was, around this time, just getting settled in Athens in his new job and first real apartment, and he decided his life just wasn’t complete without a dog. Naturally, when he heard the Halls had a litter, he concluded that was where he would go to get his new pup.

  He arrived at feeding time, so he tells the story. A raw-boned black Lab bitch, a big dog that quite possibly had German Shepherd ancestry, and eight fat tail-wagging puppies were face deep in a shallow dishpan filled with kibble. Another pup, who had apparently not heard the dinner bell, came galloping up just then and belly-flopped into the middle of the dish. The German Shepherd, startled, growled at the pup. The pup growled back. The German Shepherd backed off.

  For all of you out there who are considering bringing a new puppy to share your lives and your homes, the following advice will not fail you: do not choose the one who, at age eight weeks, is already so mean he scares his own daddy.

  For my brother, however, no other dog would do. This was one tough little guy. This was a dog with spirit. This was a man’s dog. Coal black, bigger than his brothers and sisters by half, faster than lightning and meaner than you-know-what, my brother named him, appropriately enough, Lucifer.

  I wasn’t there, but I imagine old Willard was grinning as my brother drove off with little Lucifer under his arm. On that day, it seems to me, an old score was finally settled.

  Lucifer’s adolescence proceeded predictably. Some dogs eat light bills; this dog ate lamps. He cut his teeth on automobile chassis and railroad ties; he was demolishing poodles at age six months. He was one of the few dogs not only to be kicked out of puppy kindergarten, but banned from all dog schools within a seventy five-mile radius.

  Those dog trainers are a spiteful lot, and they have an underground network you simply would not believe.

  By the time he was a year old Lucifer was approximately the size of a truck, filled with a joyful and exuberant spirit, and possessed of a stubborn streak that was unmatched anywhere in nature. What he loved, he loved intensely, and that included almost all people, flower beds, car rides, food of any description, and runs in the park. What he hated he tended to kill on sight, and the less said about that the better.

  For my brother, who was living in his first apartment with two roommates, the blessings Lucifer brought into his life were mixed, to say the least. On the one hand, there was the joy of early morning runs and being greeted in the evenings by big, wet, slobbery kisses. On the other hand, there was the fact that his roommates—not to mention his dates—were afraid to enter the apartment before being armed with a large sturdy stick. Several of them—dates and roommates—had been flattened by the exuberant puppy, and everyone who had ever visited the apartment bore at least one scar from being happily jumped upon and clawed by the canine welcoming committee.

  The end came, alas, when Lucifer jumped up for a better view of the meter reader, who had the audacity to cross his visual path without permission, and shattered the six-hundred-dollar plate glass window in my brother’s living room. It was generally agreed upon by all concerned that Lucifer would be much happier as a country dog. He went to live with my mother.

  My mother, recently widowed and in no way desirous of either the protection or the companionship Lucifer was supposed to afford her, tolerated the new addition to her homestead by setting a few simple rules: No dogs in the house. No poop on the lawn. No barking after midnight. Other than that, he was on his own. Surprisingly enough, Lucifer acceded to these minimum requirements in exchange for two squares a day and a soft rug on the porch on which to sleep. My mother and he established what might be referred to as a separate peace, while elsewhere in the neighborhood, war raged.

  Who stole the rack of ribs off the Bootheby’s grill right under Commissioner Bootheby’s nose? All anyone ever saw was a black blur. And what about the missing guinea hens over at Rock Mableton’s place? Nothing but a pile of feathers and some giant paw prints in the mud in the way of evidence. Lilly Hancock, however, caught him red-handed, tangled up in the clothesline and a brand-new J.C. Penney half slip, the remainder of her whites trampled in the mud. Lucifer just stood there, grinning at her affably, and when she came at him with a broom, he loped off, taking her half-slip with him.

  But of all the neighbors with whom Lucifer had, shall we say, managed to put something less than his best paw forward, his relationship with Aunt Millie was the most strained. It was, in fact, more aptly described as a love-hate relationship: he loved her and everything associated with her to distraction; she hated him with an almost homicidal mania. Let’s skip over Lucifer’s early attempts to endear himself to the heart of my aunt: the gopher guts he vomited on her new silk pumps, the UPS package he found on her doorstep and thoughtfully opened for her—scattering bladder-control pads all over the front yard—the annoying yard cat he quickly disposed of out of the goodness of his heart. The real line in the sand was drawn, so to speak, over the peony bushes.

  Since returning to the home place and deciding that, as soon as Grandpa changed his will, she would be able to make a very nice life for herself here, Aunt Millie had done her best to become an influential member of the community. She joined the Garden Club, the Eastern Star, and the First Baptist Church. She had made a point to endear herself to all the most important people in the community, and when she learned that one of our cousins—a very distant cousin several times removed—was actually running for the Georgia House of Representatives, she worked vigorously on his campaign simply for the hope of one day being able to toss in a casual conversational reference to “Cousin Lloyd, down at the State Capitol.”

  As it happened, her efforts were rewarded, and Cousin Lloyd actually won a seat. Aunt Millie was beside herself with joy. We were Uptown now. We were Somebody. We were going to give a party and let the whole county know we had friends in high places.

  The gathering, a combination family reunion and old fashioned “dinner on the grounds” that Southerners so adore, was planned for the Saturday afternoon before the spring Revival meeting began at the First Baptist. The preacher and the visiting evangelist would be guests of honor, as would the illustrious Cousin Lloyd. Long tables with checkered tablecloths would be set up under the oak trees, Cousin Elmo’s boy Dan would play guitar music in the background, and Grandma Josie’s peonies would be in full bloom, providing the perfect backdrop for the family photographs Aunt Millie was paying a professional from Atlanta seventy five dollars an hour to take.

  Peonies are a big, showy bush flower that seem to be made for the Southern garden. Grandma Josie didn’t have much time for a flower garden—she was a farmer’s wife, after all—but she did grow the most spectacular peony bushes in the county. After her death, Grandpa had pretty much let them go to ruin, but to her credit, Aunt Millie had brought them back. A dozen of them lined the curve of the driveway as it circled in front of the house, scarlet and pink and ruffled white. They were, in fact, quite spectacular– until Lucifer, three days before the party, chased a squirrel across the yard, around the drive, and up the oak tree.

  He didn’t just dive into the flowers. He plowed through them like a Mack truck, once, twice, three times. It was so much fun that when the squirrel was out of reach, Lucifer came back and used his powerful digging talents to scatter the remnants of crushed blossoms and broken stalks across the yard. When Aunt Millie came out of the house to see what the racket was about, she found Lucifer, decorated with scarlet petals and torn leaves, lying in the middle of a crushed bush, panting from his exertions and grinning happily.

  Now it should be said that my mother and Aunt Millie were never destined to be the best of friends. Mother had been heard to mutter words like “uppity” and “gold digger” to Aunt Millie’s retreating back, and my aunt often sniffed the word “in-law” when she thought my mother couldn’t hear. Since Lucifer had taken up residence in the community, matters between them had only deteriorated. The peonies were the last straw.

  Words were exchanged which do not bear repea
ting. Threats were made. Doors were slammed. It ended with my mother declaring that it would take an act of God before she ever set foot in Aunt Millie’s house again, and Aunt Millie declaring that if either Mother or that misbegotten son of Satan she called a dog ever crossed the street toward her house again, she would get out the shotgun. Aunt Millie stalked off with a broken peony stalk bobbing angrily in her hand, and Mother threw a German chocolate cake after her.

  The day of the party dawned bright and clear. Red-checked tables set with vases of cut roses and wild flowers were arranged underneath the oak trees. Grandpa, who had been wrestled into a white shirt and Sunday britches but drew the line at wearing his dentures, was also arranged underneath the oak tree where he complained loudly and to anyone who would listen about how much this dad-blamed tom-foolery was costing him. One by one the cars came up the drive, proceeded past the ruined peonies, and stopped at the front door, disgorging ladies in flowered silks bearing covered dishes, and gentlemen who hitched up their trousers and cast an uneasy glance around to try to catch the tone of the shindig before calling out a hail and hearty greeting to my grandfather.

  Aunt Millie made exaggerated fusses and wide protestations of “Oh, you shouldn’t have!” and “It’s too much, really!” over every dish that was uncovered and set proudly on an already overburdened table—despite the fact that she had been counting for weeks on each and every dish to feed her hungry horde of guests. Platters of fried chicken and country ham. Cold sliced pork roast, mounds of coleslaw, feathery yeast rolls and big shiny rounds of cornbread. Cut glass relish dishes were filled to overflowing with bright cucumber pickles and spicy chow-chow. Jello molds shimmered with their burden of suspended fruit and wept green and red puddles in the heat. Casserole after casserole was squeezed onto the table–sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, squash casserole, company potato casserole, corn casserole, chicken and dressing casserole. Pitchers of sweet tea and lemonade punctuated every table. Three churns of ice cream were going on the back porch, hand-cranked by those unfortunate young cousins who weren’t smart enough to get out of the way when Aunt Millie was looking for volunteers. An entire table bearing nothing but cakes and pies was set up inside.

  The guests of honor, as was only proper, were among the last to arrive. First came the preacher and his wife, bearing the visiting evangelist and the preacher’s wife’s Sunday Ambrosia in the back seat of their silver El Dorado. Barely had Aunt Millie managed to gush a protest over how the preacher’s wife shouldn’t have brought anything and smile a flustered greeting to the evangelist in the back seat when the Cadillac bearing Cousin Lloyd, his wife, and his eighty-six-year-old mother pulled up behind the El Dorado. Aunt Millie was torn. Could she rush off to greet her celebrity guest while leaving the evangelist behind? What disastrous timing. Why hadn’t she planned the arrival of the cars better?

  And while Aunt Millie stood there, agonizing, someone whose timing was always impeccable took the decision out of her hands.

  The look on Aunt Millie’s face as she turned to see Lucifer, tail high and grinning widely, round the drive and lope toward the picnic tables should be forever frozen in time. John the Revealer might have had much the same look on his face as he witnessed the arrival of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

  Amid much shrieking and drawing back of silk skirts from muddy paws, Lucifer made his boisterous way through the crowd and toward the smell of food. Aunt Millie, who knew a genuine disaster when she saw one, screamed, “Lucifer!” at the top of her lungs.

  Delighted to have been called by the one woman whose attention he sought more than any other’s in the world, Lucifer altered his course ninety degrees and made a bee-line toward Aunt Millie. Cousin Lloyd was bending down to take from his mother’s hands her prize-winning chess pie as she got out of the car when Lucifer burst between them. The pie went flying. So did the elderly woman, right back into the front seat of the Caddy, flat on her back with her skirt up over her head. Cousin Lloyd lurched backwards, slipped on the pie, and landed on his sit-upon in the dirt.

  The visiting evangelist was coming out of the back seat with the Sunday Ambrosia in his hands, grinning a broad evangelical grin that indicated he had yet to become aware of the chaos that was taking place outside the car, when Lucifer, distracted by his second most favorite thing in the world—an open car door—made a detour. He jumped in the back seat and landed with both front paws flat in the middle of the Sunday Ambrosia, turned and slapped the evangelist in the face with his tail, then heard Aunt Millie screaming his name again and leapt out of the car, upsetting the rest of the ambrosia in the evangelist’s lap.

  He paused only to scoop up a bite or two of chess pie from the ground next to the dazed-looking State Representative, then obeyed Aunt Millie’s call—with two paws on her shoulders and a big wet kiss across her Revlon-rouged face. She screamed.

  Grandpa cackled with laughter and waved his cane in the air. The young boys abandoned their ice cream churns and came to cheer Lucifer on. Some enterprising young matron tried to shoo Lucifer away with an embroidered napkin, which he gleefully snatched from her hand and shook until it was dead.

  Second Cousin Sue Ella came out of the house just then, screeched when she saw the huge black dog mauling the napkin, and ran back into the house, slamming the screen door behind her. Lucifer took this as an invitation to join the fun inside, and bounded up the steps and through the screen door, never once noticing that the door was closed. Pies and cakes flew as he skidded onto the table. Aunt Millie covered her face with her hands and wailed as Lucifer bounded back out the door again, his muzzle white with cream pie filling.

  By that time the crowd was getting mean. Someone found a broom. Someone else a two-by-four. Grandpa was laughing so hard tears ran down his weathered cheeks, and loudly declaring this the best damn party he’d been to since VE-Day. A great many of the guests joined him in loud, screeching, doubled-over shouts of laughter, but those who weren’t laughing were chasing Lucifer. After once or twice around the picnic tables, Lucifer apparently decided that the fun had gone out of this adventure. The last anyone saw of him he was bounding over the peony bushes, a Tupperware bowl of Chinese chicken salad clutched in his jaws.

  Lucifer did not come home that day, or that night, or the next day. Unkind speculations were made about the chicken salad, and Mother, though she had never shown much in the way of affection for the big brute before, was visibly worried. My brother came home from Athens to comb the woods for his errant friend, but to no avail. Lucifer was gone.

  It was a grim group that filled the family pew on Sunday night to open the Revival meeting. Aunt Millie, pale and stiff and fortified, it was rumored, by something a little stronger than sweet tea, sat on the aisle and stared straight ahead without blinking during the entire two and three-quarter hour service. Grandpa snored beside her, interrupting his somnolence now and then to chortle out loud. Mother, on the opposite aisle, sniffed delicately into a handkerchief, although if asked to testify none of us could honestly declare whether it was tears or giggles that she was hiding. On the front row State Representative Lloyd Calhoun, sporting the latest fashion in neck braces, loudly Amened every mention the evangelist made of the consequences awaiting the followers of the devil.

  The evangelist preached fire and brimstone with a particular vengeance, said those in attendance, with eyes that blazed and fists that thumped and a memory, perhaps, of Sunday Ambrosia all over his new dress pants. Sinners trembled, and even the righteous sank low in their pews. The power of the Lord was so great upon that place, praise Jesus, that midway through the sermon a great clap of thunder blew out the lights, and the heavens opened to pour down torrents of rain.

  After twenty minutes or so without air-conditioning the sanctuary became too stuffy for even the righteous to bear, and a thoughtful deacon opened up the outer doors to admit the cooling breeze and the smell of cleansing rain. The choir took its place as the invitational began. Filled with the Spirit, the evangelis
t tore off his tie, rolled up his sleeves, stretched out his arms, and sweated and wept openly as he begged the unrepentant to come to Jesus before it was too late.

  The choir had reached the third verse of “Just As I Am” and no one had moved. Tensions were running high. Mother shot dark looks at Aunt Millie, and Aunt Millie remained stoic. Grandpa snored. The evangelist left the pulpit and stood before the altar, arms outstretched, face turned heavenward as he prayed, beseeched, entreated an Almighty God to strike repentance into the black souls of the sinners cowering in their pews.

  And then something happened. Murmurs of astonishment and whispers of awe undulated from back to front through the audience. Heads turned, necks craned, gasps were subdued. And who should come strolling up the aisle, wet to the skin and seeking absolution—or perhaps seeking nothing more than shelter from the rain—but Lucifer himself. Head high, tail wagging, he walked straight into the evangelist’s open arms—thus giving that man of God the singular distinction of having saved the soul of the devil him self.

  Oh, and Aunt Millie? She did, in fact, get what she wanted. Joe Bob Ramey, the family lawyer, said that Grandpa made his will that very Monday after the party, and it was his opinion that the old man was persuaded to do so out of nothing more than pure appreciation for the show his daughter had put on with that dog. Nine months and six days later, Aunt Millie was the proud owner of two hundred acres of prime North Georgia real estate, which she promptly put on the market at five thousand dollars an acre.

  The first offer she got was for a mere seventy five acres, from a developer who was known for his upscale golf and tennis communities. Exercising the shrewd negotiating skills for which my family is renowned, Aunt Millie offered him his pick of the acreage—at six thousand an acre. Hardly daring to believe his luck, the developer took her up on it, cut a check, and lost no time in registering the deed to his new property—which consisted of every bit of road frontage my aunt possessed.