Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man: A Novel (25 page)

Jimmy Snow came home and gave me $25. Pickle and I went shopping with a copy of
Seventeen
magazine. I bought a pair of white loafers and more collars, including a fur one for winter. I hate it, but Pickle wants to wear it, and some sweaters plus two new skirts.

Pickle is sure that when it gets cold, we will be accepted at the Senior Radiator. The seniors have a special radiator they stand around at the end of the hall by the principal’s office and maybe, even though we are only sophomores, we might, if we’re real popular, be accepted at the Senior Radiator. We have to work hard at being popular and smile at everyone in school, even people we think are real spastics.

We went out with Mustard and Marion Eugene to the Hub Drive-In to see a double feature,
The Earth vs. Flying Saucers
and
Shack Out on 101
with Terry Moore and Frank Love joy. We were having a good time, until
Shack Out on 101
came on the screen. The boys were drinking beer and thought “shack-out” was so funny that they giggled and screamed every time anybody in the movie said it. Pickle made Mustard get in the back seat with Marion Eugene and I got in the front seat with her and watched the picture. It was a good movie, all about blackmail and crime.

Pickle and I have decided to write Terry Moore and tell her she has been in too many movies about crime and shoplifting. We would like for her to make a film that is funny, maybe a musical, because all these crime movies might begin to affect her personality.

I can never face anybody at school as long as I live. I have never been so humiliated in my whole life. I might as well quit and go back to work at the potato shed with the retards. My best friend is supposed to stand by me in my moment of need, but Pickle is in the other room sound asleep. This is all her stupid brother’s fault for bringing that stupid mule down to the stupid swimming pool in the first place.

Pickle and I were having a perfectly good time swimming. I was wearing my flowered two-piece suit and my rubber swim hat with the flowers that match. Then Lemuel brought that stupid mule over and said, “Come on, I’ll give you a ride on Molasses.”

I told him I was afraid to ride horses. He said not to be afraid, that he’d just lead him around the park.

My dear friend Pickle said, and I quote, “Oh, go ahead and ride him; he is as gentle as a lamb.”

I got up on that thing and it had an Indian blanket in place of a saddle. I asked Lem what I was supposed to hold onto.

He said, “Hold onto the mule.”

I said, “Won’t that hurt him?”

He said, “No, mules can’t feel a thing.”

He led me around the park, but I got scared when I remembered the story Mrs. Dot told me about some girl in Memphis who fell off a horse. It stepped on her right boob and mashed it flat. Now she is one-sided, so I told Lem to let me down.

About that time a bee stung Molasses, who they had just told me couldn’t feel a thing, and he took off, running as fast as he could go. He galloped out of the park and right straight down Highway 3. I had to hold onto his mane for dear life with one hand and onto my glasses with the other. I must have been bouncing up in the air three feet. I kept saying, “Whoa! Whoa!” but that stupid Molasses wouldn’t stop. About a half mile down the highway, I saw a convoy of jeeps filled with soldiers coming towards me. They had to pull off the side of the road to keep
from hitting me, and as I went by, they all started yelling and whistling and hitting the sides of the jeeps. Just then I realized the top to my bathing suit had fallen down and there I was naked, flopping up and down the highway. I must have ridden by 200 jeeps, but I couldn’t let go ’cause I would have killed myself. I had to choose between modesty and death, and I’ll tell you, I almost chose death. You should have heard those soldiers carrying on. You’d think they’d never seen a naked girl on a horse before. Even I’ve read
National Geographic
for heaven’s sake.

Molasses ran off the highway through three fields and all the way to Pickle’s house. When he finally did stop, it was in front of Lem and half the members of the Magnolia Springs football team. When I looked up and saw Flicka Hicks standing there, I ran in the house and hid in Pickle’s room, but she was still down at the pool waiting for me. When she did come home and I told her what happened, she said she was sure that the boys didn’t notice my top was off, they were probably looking at my flowered swim hat because it is so pretty.

I hope she is right, but I still could die of mortification. What if the Army gets my name and puts it in the paper that I was riding down the middle of Highway 3 bare-breasted? It will ruin our chances of ever being accepted at the Senior Radiator, even though Pickle is prepared to swear on the Bible it wasn’t me.

I have never been so sore in my whole life. I’ll probably never be able to sit down again, but I certainly have a lot more respect for cowboys now. All I can say is Mr. Lemuel Watkins is going to be very sorry when he wears the jockey shorts Pickle and I put poison ivy in.

Pickle got into terrible trouble for spending the night with me. Her daddy was waiting for her when she came home from school and accused her of being with a boy. The only reason I found out is when we were dressing out for gym, I saw huge red welts on her back. She said it was nothing, but I asked her sister about it and she said that her father is always beating them if he thinks they’ve been with boys. She told me one night Lem tried to kill him when he was beating up on Pickle. Lem nearly got sent to a reform school. Now they just put up with it until they can get away from him.

I wonder why Pickle never told me. I guess she is too embarrassed. My daddy may drink, but he never hits me. I was so upset over Pickle I forgot I had exposed myself until Kay Bob Benson came down the hall with three of her friends and said, “Well, here is Lady Godiva.”

I know Flicka Hicks told her. I just know it!

We won another football game and the band was OK. We did a jungle show, and we formed the African continent and played “Abadaba Honeymoon.” We formed two jungle drums and they turned out all the lights on the field while Kay Bob Benson twirled two fire batons in the air. Then we formed a hunter’s hat
and played “Searching,” made a skull and bones and played “Witch Doctor.”

During the game Nathan Willy was hurt and Amy Jo Snipes got hysterical and ran out on the field with the water boy and the coach and they had to pull her off of Nathan’s body. He only had a sprained ankle.

After the game we went to the Spinning Wheel and I got in the trunk of Patsy Ruth’s car and let my arm hang out dripping with catsup, but nobody saw it and I ruined my sweater. Nathan was walking around using Amy Jo Snipes as a crutch. She loved it. She will make the perfect wife. I think she has braces on her brains. If I have to hug those football players one more time, I will
SCREAM
. Why can’t they lose?

Velveeta found a whole bunch of empty whiskey bottles under my bed and asked me where they came from. I told her they were Daddy’s. I hope she keeps her mouth shut. I am still having a hard time sleeping. I never see Daddy anymore. Jimmy is worried about him and made him go to the doctor. Daddy is throwing up blood, but he won’t stop drinking for anything.

Pickle is driving me crazy. All she thinks about is the Senior Radiator. She is very good at math and I am failing algebra. Who cares if
x
equals
z
or whatever? It seems to me I am learning a lot of useless stuff. The only thing I like is English, but not the grammar. Pickle can even diagram a sentence. I wish they would let me take shop, but they won’t. I am taking driver’s education, but I am failing that because I had a head-on collision on the driving machine.

Pickle’s daddy went out of town for a White Citizens’ Council meeting, and Lem and she and Baby Sister and Michael and I drove their tractor to the Hub Drive-In where we saw
The Beast with a Thousand Faces
and
The Cult of the Cobra
. Nathan and Amy Jo Snipes were there. They never watch the movie.

Pickle is after me all the time to smoke Kents because the senior girls do. They taste awful. I told her smoking Kents was like smoking Tampax. She smokes every chance she gets.

The TB bus came to the school the other day. In the study hall over the loudspeaker, they announced the names of all the girls
who had to go back to have their X rays done over. Their X rays didn’t take because they were wearing rubber falsies and that great and wonderful majorette Kay Bob Benson was one of the first names called. Ha-ha.

Patsy Ruth Coggins sewed her own skirt into the sewing machine in Future Homemakers of America class. When the bell rang, she jumped up and ripped the arm right off the sewing machine. Her father has to pay for the whole machine. Tomorrow we have a lecture about small appliances and how to use them.

We had another football game. The band did a salute to Stephen Foster and played “Beautiful Dreamer” and we formed a bed. Then we played “My Old Kentucky Home” while the majorettes slowly pranced like horses. We finished up with “I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair.” We formed a comb. Miss Philpot is running out of ideas if you ask me. We won the game again and Pickle is still pushing for Senior Radiator.

We can’t wait until next week because Madame Ramona is coming to town. Listen to this ad:

Last night Pickle and I had to ride back from the football game in Robertsdale with Mustard and Marion Eugene. We have to be nice to them so we can have dates with seniors for the Homecoming Dance. Marion Eugene about drowns himself in Old Spice and all he wants to do is kiss-kiss-kiss. It wouldn’t be so bad if he kept his mouth shut.

We won the game. I hugged Vernon Mooseburger because he hadn’t played at all and smelled nice. Marion Eugene got mad. Amy Jo Snipes is mad as hell because when Nathan made a touchdown, she got all excited and jumped up and down and cracked her tooth on his gold football she wore on a chain around her neck. It was just a hairline crack, not chipped like mine, so I don’t know what she was carrying on about.

Today after school Patsy Ruth Coggins, Amy Jo Snipes, and Pickle and I went out to see Madame Ramona at the filling station. All of Amy Jo Snipes’s questions were about Nathan. She wanted to find out if he truly loved her. I wanted to know if I was going to be famous and rich, and how long it would take, and when Pickle and I are gonna get to New York City or Hollywood.

Pickle went in first and was in there a long time. When she came out, she was all smiles. Madame Ramona had told her she was going to win a prize, and Pickle was sure it was going to be the Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow pin. I didn’t want to disappoint her, but the bread she made was the worst in the class, even worse than mine. At least mine rose up a little. Then Amy Jo Snipes went in and came back in a fit. Madame Ramona told her her sister, who is a member of Curtis Honeywell’s all-girl army, was going to get married before she did. Patsy Ruth Coggins chickened out altogether because she said it was against the rules of the Rainbow Girls to believe in anything but God.

So I went next. Madame Ramona was in a dark curtained room in back of the filling station. A little dirty girl was on the floor playing with paper dolls. Madame Ramona claims she isn’t an Indian or a Gypsy, but she is something foreign. She had on lots of greasy makeup, tons of bracelets, and was smoking Chesterfields. I had to sit down at this old card table with pictures of dogs on it and shuffle some cards. I was so scared I forgot my questions for a minute. When I remembered to ask her if I was going to be rich and famous, all of a sudden she stopped playing with those old cards and said, “Did you just receive an inheritance?”

I said no, I was not from a rich family. She might have me mixed up with Patsy Ruth Coggins, whose daddy owns the Chevrolet dealership, but is a Rainbow Girl and isn’t going to come in.

She said, “You got an inheritance from somebody.”

I said, “No, ma’am, I didn’t.”

She said, “Yes, you did.”

I said, “No, I don’t think I did.”

She said, “It is shiny.”

I thought and thought, but I couldn’t think of anything. I told her the only thing I ever got was a sweetheart pillow from Jessie LeGore and a ring that belonged to my mother. She jumped at me and said, “That’s it! Your mother wants you to wear that ring so she can help you.” My heart stopped.

“Your mother wants you to stop grieving over her and let her go. She is fine and she wants you to be happy. She is worried because you aren’t sleeping and you need your sleep.”

I said, “Really?”

“Yes, that will be five dollars.”

I gave it to her. I was sweating. How did that woman know about me not sleeping and that ring? I didn’t tell anybody anything. When I got home, I put Momma’s ring on and I’m never going to take it off. And I threw out what was left of my Jack Daniel’s whiskey.

Here’s the latest news. We got dates to the Homecoming Dance with Mustard and Marion Eugene. Amy Jo Snipes is going to make Nathan marry her during the Christmas vacation, and we all have to be in her wedding. Pickle is going to be the photographer for the school annual, and she signed me up to be on the staff. We all have to do our science projects so we can enter them in the county fair. Pickle is heartbroken because Judy
Ashwinder won the Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow Award pin. Now she is sure she is going to win a prize for her science project.