Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man: A Novel (38 page)

“Ladies and gentlemen, the third runner-up in the Miss Mississippi Contest and the recipient of a one-thousand-dollar cash scholarship award plus” … drum roll … “a portrait from Robert Boutwell’s photographic studio, valued at five hundred dollars” … another drum roll … I was holding my breath, hoping to get my $1,000, when he said, “Miss Kay Bob Benson.” Applause, applause. You could have knocked me over with a toothpick. Then it dawned on me that I was going to win more money.

The audience was going crazy by this time and so was I. I couldn’t believe I was still in it. Then he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the second runner-up to Miss Mississippi and the winner of the most coveted award in the pageant, an all-expense paid scholarship to the famous Pasadena Playhouse in Hollywood, California, and” … drum roll … “a guarantee of a part in the network television show
Death Valley Days
” … drum roll … “Linda Horton” … applause … I was amazed. I thought why in the world would they send a marimba player to the Pasadena Playhouse? But I stopped thinking because I looked around and there were just two of us left on the stage, Margaret Poole and me, and she grabbed the hand I had Momma’s ring on and squeezed it so hard all I could think about was pain. The audience was getting wild.

The emcee said in a hushed voice, “The next award is that of the first runner-up and it is the most important award, second only to that of Miss Mississippi, because at any time during the coming year, if Miss Mississippi cannot fulfill her duties, the first runner-up will take over the title and reign as Queen. Ladies and gentlemen, the first runner-up and the winner of a fifteen-hundred-dollar cash award” … drum roll … “plus a brand new twenty-six-inch official Miss America television console, and a complete wardrobe from Banlon and” … drum roll … “an all-expense paid trip to New York City for a Broadway audition” … when I heard that I almost died, I was going to New York after all … “Miss Margaret Poole.” The audience went insane. They were so happy for her they stood up and yelled and cheered and started jumping up and down. And then it hit me. They weren’t screaming for Margaret Poole. They were screaming for me.

SHIT … I WAS MISS MISSISSIPPI!!

Everybody was going crazy. All of a sudden they grabbed hold of me and somebody handed me a dozen roses and threw a red cape around me, and the ex-Miss Mississippi slammed a crown on my head and pushed me out on the runway, but I just stood there stunned. I couldn’t move a step. People were screaming and they were singing “There Goes Miss Mississippi.” From backstage I heard Darcy: “Don’t just stand there, move, you asshole!”

I don’t remember much after that. I was in such a state of shock that I forgot and mashed hell out of those velvet roses. I had to stay there for about two hours while they took my picture for the paper and the television. When it was all over, this man from the Jaycees told me I had an official Miss Mississippi car waiting outside to take me back to my hotel. But I remembered to run out in the alley and there stood Mr. Smith, my cabdriver, with his hat in his hands waiting on me. He’d been there for two hours. He was as happy for me as anybody. I went back in and told those Jaycees I had come in a cab and I was going home in a cab.

I called Daddy and Jimmy Snow to tell them and they were
beside themselves. They had already heard it on the television news, where there was a picture of me and everything. The pageant has arranged to fly me home. I still can’t believe it. I am going to Atlantic City in September and be in the Miss America Contest!

I flew home today; all day yesterday was spent having my picture taken and making arrangements with the Jaycees about getting to Atlantic City in September. When we finished, a group of them took me to the airport this morning and as I walked in, I saw my cabdriver, Mr. Smith, hiding in a corner by the baggage. I went over to him and he said he was waiting for a fare, but I knew he had just come out there to see me off. He seemed embarrassed and wished me luck. I hadn’t been in the air five minutes when it dawned on me who Mr. Smith had reminded me of. That man’s name wasn’t Mr. Smith at all. He was my Granddaddy Pettibone, who everyone had thought was dead!

At first Daddy lied to me, but finally, he admitted I was right. They thought I wouldn’t remember because I hadn’t seen him for so many years. I wanted to call him right away, but Daddy said it would be much better if I never let him realize I knew who he was, he was so ashamed of himself for drinking so much and disappearing like that. That’s why he had pretended to be dead all these years. Daddy had always known where he was. Although Grandpa hated Daddy, he trusted him not to tell. He said that Grandpa used to call him about once every six months
to see how I was doing and he had all my school pictures from the time I was six. Imagine all these years he was just up the road in Tupelo.

Mr. Curl, who is the manager of the State Theater in Tupelo where the pageant took place and who knows Daddy, called to tell him what really happened the night of the pageant.

My other granddaddy, who still isn’t speaking to Daddy, is president of the stagehands’ union, and the men like him a lot When they found out Blondie Harper’s granddaughter was one of the finalists, they decided to do him a favor, so they went out and got three extra spotlights for the booth, and every time I came out onstage, they hit me with four spotlights! A reporter put in the paper that “Her smile lit up the whole audience.” No wonder! They had screwed up the mikes, glued Willima Sue’s dummy’s mouth shut and unplugged Betty Lee Hansome’s organ and everything.

The reason Kay Bob Benson hadn’t been able to hold onto her batons was because two of the stagehands had put axle grease on their hands and made it a point to go up and shake hands with her right before she did her number. And I thought they liked her!

I tell you, I can never say anything unkind about organized labor as long as I live.

We also found out when the judges went in the manager’s office to pretend to vote, the owner of the theater had gone in and told them if they didn’t let me win, the audience was going
to rip his theater apart, and it would be the last year they could hold the pageant there. Mrs. McClay got in a huff and said she didn’t care if they ripped his theater apart. The Miss Mississippi title was not going to white trash whose daddy ran a bar as long as she was in charge, and I would be Miss Mississippi over her dead body. Then Madame Albergotti said, “I don’t see how we could possibly give the title to a girl who screamed
FUCK
into the microphone.” Mrs. McClay got mad and told her to shut up, Margaret Poole had not screamed
FUCK
in the microphone. The mike had been broken. It just sounded like she had said it, that’s all. Mrs. McClay yelled it was her pageant and if they dared give me the title, they would have to kill her first.

She must have scared them, because she was winning her point. Just then Darcy went around to the side of the theater and delivered the judges a note:

They say Mrs. McClay screamed and hollered it was a lie and she was being sabotaged. But the other judges said their reputations were on the line. They all had good names in the community to protect and couldn’t afford to take a chance on it being true. Mrs. Buchanan was the only one who held out for Margaret Poole. When they finally had to go back out to the judges’ box, they left Mrs. McClay on the couch prostrate with grief and a cold rag on her head. The last thing she did was to raise up and say to Mrs. Buchanan, “Don’t let them do this to me, Peggy.” Then she fell back in a dead faint.

So that’s what the big fight had been about. The judges were so upset they got everything screwed up. Linda Horton, the marimba player, wasn’t even supposed to be in the top five finalists, much less go to the Pasadena Playhouse and be on
Death
Valley Days
. Anyway, Mrs. McClay quit the Miss Mississippi pageant forever, saying she was betrayed by a nest of adders and she wouldn’t go to Atlantic City with that piece of white trash, meaning me, for anything. I feel kind of sorry for her. I didn’t win fair and square, but Jimmy Snow said for me to forget it, that I owed it to myself to just get the hell out of Mississippi.

Here I thought I didn’t have any family, but all these people were out there pulling for me. I have so many people to thank I just have to make good.

Since I’ve been back I’ve been interviewed on the television station where I got fired, and received letters and telegrams from people all over the state. The governor sent me a letter of congratulations and a couple of senators wrote. I’ve heard from everyone, including the International Order of Rainbow Girls, who sent me a telegram saying how proud they were that one of their girls was Miss Mississippi. I guess they forgot I had been thrown out. I wrote and thanked them for their good wishes, anyway. Pickle and Mustard wrote. She has another baby. I even heard from Billy Bundy who’s in some prison in Tennessee.

But the letter I got today means more to me than any of them. It said:

I go to Atlantic City in fifteen days!

Jimmy Snow has renamed his plane
The Miss Mississippi
and is going to dust crops all next week in my honor. Daddy painted a big sign over the door of the bar that says, “Official Headquarters of Miss Mississippi.” Mrs. McClay would die if she could see that. The other day I went down to Gamble’s Department Store and had my official “Miss Mississippi” portrait made. They wanted to photograph me in my white evening gown, but Mr. Cecil said I should wear something other than a white gown because that’s what all the other girls would do. So I had my picture taken in a brown suede jacket. You know Mr. Cecil. He is going with me to Atlantic City and all the Cecilettes are coming on the same train. We should have a ball. You’d be surprised how people treat me now. I was even invited to the Hattiesburg Country Club on the twenty-sixth for a dinner in my honor by the Junior League. I am going to take Daddy and Jimmy Snow. I have to go downtown with Mr. Cecil tomorrow and help him pick out his Atlantic City wardrobe. I swear you’d think that he was the one who was Miss Mississippi.

The hospital called Thursday. Jimmy Snow died at 5:47 that morning of a broken neck. His plane crashed in Madison County on Wednesday. Daddy and I went down to get him and bring
him home. We buried him this afternoon. Nobody was at the funeral except for Mr. Cecil and a few men from the bar who had come to be pallbearers. Daddy has taken it pretty hard. When they put Jimmy in the ground, he stood there and cried like a baby. Jimmy was the best friend he ever had. I think he was the best friend I ever had, too. I don’t know what it’s going to be like without him. I thought he would always be around. It was sad he had no family at his funeral. I asked Daddy why he thought Jimmy had never married and had children. He looked at me real strange and said, “You’re the only person he ever really loved. Didn’t you know that?”

No, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that at all.

I’m all packed. I leave for Atlantic City in the morning. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, or if I will ever come back, but I do know I owe a lot of people a lot of things and I promise I won’t come back until I’m somebody.

And I won’t.

Q:
Was there a particular person or event that inspired you to write
Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man
? Is any of it based on your experiences as a girl growing up in the South?

FF:
Several things inspired me to write this book. While attending my first writer’s conference, I heard the great Ray Bradbury speak about all the books from his childhood that had inspired him to become a writer. Each and every book he mentioned were either adventure books or coming-of-age books about little boys, all written by men. As I sat there and thought about what I had read as a child, I realized there were very few books about little girls compared to so many books about little boys, it didn’t seem fair. Then it suddenly struck me that maybe
I
should try and write a book about a little girl! At the same conference we were told to write what you know and so yes, the book is indeed based on my experiences growing up in the South.

Q:
How did you prepare yourself to get into the mind-set of a very young child? What challenges did you face making Daisy’s voice age throughout the novel?

FF:
I had to go back in my mind and remember what it was like being a child and observing life without having the real story. I was very careful not to let the grown-up writing the story slip in and know or say things that Daisy would have no knowledge of. I was also writing the story on two levels. I
was writing the story about what was really happening in the adult world and also writing what Daisy Fay thought was happening, which was not always the same thing.