“‘Moses,’ she says, ‘that child is going to grow up an old maid if you’re not careful. She’s never going to leave home.’
“‘That’s exactly what I’m planning on,’ says Moses. ‘You think I’m ever going to let those horny hounds coming sniffing around my sweetheart, you got another think coming.’
“Well, of course, Uncle Moses couldn’t watch B.J. 24 hours a day, what with he had his mayoring and his feed and seed store to look after, so Aunt May Lou let her start stepping out when Uncle Moses wasn’t around.
“I guess all the yearning in B.J. had built up too long, because right after Christmas she turned up pregnant. Aunt May Lou could have shipped her off to relatives to have the baby, which is what most nice folks did in this kind of situation, but not without telling Uncle Moses. He would no more have let his baby girl out of his sight for the five or six months it would have taken than he would have shot himself in the foot.
“So Aunt May Lou got him drunk one night and told him the bad news. He
stayed
drunk for three or four days. Then when he finally sobered up, he loaded his shotgun, bound and determined to shoot the son-of-a-bitch who had ruined his darling sweetheart. The problem was, he didn’t know who to shoot, because Bobbie June wasn’t telling. No matter how he bribed her, how he begged her, she wouldn’t say squat.
“Aunt May Lou went right ahead with plans for the wedding. Holding her head just as high as she always had in her position as Miz Mayor of Towunda, she ordered off to the Saks Fifth Avenue for BJ.’s wedding dress—and for the dresses of the twelve bridesmaids, all in descending shades of pink. She said that no matter what, this was going to be one wedding that Towunda wouldn’t forget.”
“She was sure right about that,” Chester added.
Eugene scowled, waited a minute to see if Chester was through interrupting, then went on.
“Well, the day approached for the wedding, B.J. getting bigger all the time because thirteen custom-order dresses from Saks Fifth Avenue took a while, but Aunt May Lou said it didn’t make no never mind, because everybody in town knew what was going on; it was how
pretty
the wedding was that mattered at this point.
“As the day got closer, Uncle Moses came unglued. He started posting himself out at the city limits sign, out by the truck stop, and when the brown UPS truck hove into sight, Uncle Moses would pull out into the highway with his honorary sireen blasting and take possession of it.”
“You mean he took the driver’s money?” asked Sam incredulously.
“Hell, no. It was the packages he was after. He figured if the dresses never came, then there wouldn’t
be
any wedding.”
“He’d rather B.J. was an unwed mother?”
“He didn’t care about that. He’d raise the baby, no problem, just as long as B.J. stayed home.”
“And all this time B.J. hadn’t named the father?”
“Nope. You’d have thought that girl’s mouth was stuck with Crazy Glue,” Eugene said with satisfaction.
“Did the father of the baby know that he was getting married?”
“Well, I’m getting to that part. See, after a while, even though Uncle Moses was the mayor of Towunda, the sheriff had to take matters into his own hands and lock Uncle Moses up every day from noon to one so the UPS man could get through.”
“Wasn’t the sheriff afraid of Uncle Moses?”
“Well, he sure as hell wasn’t comfortable about the whole thing, but a little town like Towunda, people sort of depend on their deliveries. I mean, it ain’t just stuff from fancy Saks Fifth Avenue that was coming on that truck. There was Sears and Penney’s and Monkey Ward. People were starting to get mean about not getting their washing machines parts, their new microwave ovens, and their tennis shoes. So they took up a petition about Moses, much as they liked him, and there wasn’t much else the sheriff could do. Besides which, the UPS was getting hot under the collar, and they said if the sheriff didn’t do something about Uncle Moses, they was going to cut Towunda off the route permanently.
“So it got to be a routine. Sheriff Bailey would come over to the feed and seed store every day, shake Uncle Moses’ hand, and then lock him up. Had lunch already ordered for him, one day from the Hardee’s, the next from the McDonald’s. But mostly he ordered from the Pig ’n Whistle, Uncle Moses’ favorite blue-plate special barbecue.”
“Why didn’t Uncle Moses try to hide?” Sam asked. She was on her third Coca-Cola by now and felt like soon her teeth were going to float, but she couldn’t leave the bar—especially now that Eugene seemed to be closing in on the good part.
“He did hide out a couple of times, but it didn’t do no good. See, everybody knew where he was headed, and all they had to do was wait for him out by the city limits sign.
“Bunch of folks did that very thing one day when he gave Bailey the slip, and it was embarrassing for Moses to have an audience when Bailey put him in the sheriff’s car, even if he did sit up front and turn on the blue light himself, and even if they did yell encouragements to him, like ‘Go on ahead, Moses.’
“So anyway, the great day came when the dresses got through, though by that time B.J. had grown so big they had to let out all the seams in hers and then sew in some stretchy lace around the middle.
“Course, nobody told Uncle Moses the dresses had come. Aunt May Lou had made an arrangement with Sheriff Bailey, who just kept on locking Uncle Moses
up for lunch till it was Saturday and they could hold the wedding. So Moses is sitting in his cell, chewing on a pork rib like any other day, when all of a sudden the bells of the First Baptist Church, which is right across the street from the jail, cut loose. And two minutes later you can hear old Miz Pringle pumping away at ‘Here Comes the Bride’ on the organ at an extra-fast tempo, like she needed to hurry up and get home and check on something she’d left in the oven.
“Uncle Moses gets all bug-eyed as he figures it out, ’cause he may be stubborn, which is where B.J. got hers from, but he ain’t stupid. And just like Superman—I mean, they have never figured out yet exactly how he got out of that cell, and Sheriff Bailey is too embarrassed to this day to talk about it—but Moses busted out. Just tore loose.
“He ran down them front steps, across the street, up the steps of the church, and he almost made it in, too, but Preacher Barlow saw him coming from up at the pulpit and yelled right out in the middle of the ceremony, ‘Boys, lock them doors!’ And the deacons standing in the back, who were well trained, did what they were told to.”
“So
who
was she marrying?” Sam asked, squirming with impatience and because she had to go to the bathroom.
“Well, that’s the thing. Nobody knew. She wouldn’t tell
anybody,
not even Aunt May Lou. So what May Lou had done was she ordered, on pain of death and tar-and-feathering, for every single male in town who was between the ages of fourteen and fifty-four to be there and be square and look presentable. It was sort of like a sweepstakes—nobody knew who was going to win.”
“Or lose,” said Sam.
“Well, no, I don’t think any of them thought of it that way. I mean, it had gotten to be such an exciting thing, you know, that you’d just be proud to be pointed out as the daddy. And marrying B.J. would have been a treat. I mean, she
was
a beauty. She kinda reminded you of pink spun-sugar candy at the country fair. You know, the kind that was so soft and sweet that you just never could get enough in your mouth at once.
“So anyway, every man that was eligible and some that wasn’t was sitting up there combed and curried within an inch of their lives, hoping against hope, even if they’d never said more than howdy-do to B.J., that they’d be the one.”
Eugene paused for a second as the bartender set down another round.
“You have to understand,” he continued after a long pull on his beer, “that Towunda is about as big as this room, and there’s not too much excitement there in the day to day, or even in the year to year.”
“Or millennium to millennium,” Chester threw in fast.
“So there they all are. B. J.’s down at the front now, having walked down the aisle behind all those graduated pink bridesmaids on the arm of Aunt May Lou, who was in deep rose and looking just as pleased as punch that she’d pulled this thing off. And the preacher had inserted this extra little line into the ceremony, something like, ‘Would the bride please take the hand of her intended,’ at which B.J. was going to reach out into the congregation and grab ahold of the lucky man.
“Everybody’s just sitting there on pins and needles, and just as the preacher says it and B.J. takes a long, slow look around the church,
kerwham!
There was this crash that sounded like kingdom come.
“Uncle Moses had gone and gotten in his brand-new Cadillac El Dorado and driven it around and around the square, building up momentum, and at that moment he steered it right through the First Baptist’s front doors. He jumps out of the car waving his shotgun and yelling, ‘Show me the son-of-a-bitch!’ and B.J. screams, ‘Oh, my God!’ and stares down at the floor under all that white lace, because her water had broke. She went into labor right then and there, but they did manage to get her home before she was delivered of an eight-and-a-half-pound premature baby boy.”
“Premature,” Sam said, laughing, “because she still wasn’t married.”
“That’s right.” Eugene grinned. “And she still ain’t, till this very day.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Would I tease about a thing like that? She said, ‘Hell, I got this far. Now I already
am
an unwed mother. Guess it don’t make no difference now, so forget the whole thing.’ Named the boy Moses Junior, and stayed home just like her daddy wanted in the first place.
“Course, she slips around from time to time, but she’s careful about taking care of business, now that she’s grown up, so there’ve been no more little Moses Juniors to worry about. Her daddy gave her a red El Dorado of her very own for graduation when she went back that next fall and finished school. And she and May Lou go off shopping to New York whenever the spirit moves them. Bring the things right home with
them. Don’t have to wait for the UPS. They all live right there in Towunda together, just as happy as if they had good sense.”
“I don’t believe it,” Sam said. She stood up and headed toward the ladies’ room, then stopped and turned. “Eugene, who was the father of that child?”
Eugene slapped Chester on the back, and they both laughed.
“That’s the best part,” Eugene said. “See, I got B.J. drunk one night a couple of years later and asked her the same thing, and she said, ‘You know, Gene, Daddy came busting through that door just in the nick of time. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do. When Mama let me start going out, I was like a pig in shit. Didn’t spend one ounce of discretion. I had myself a quandary there, pointing out who the father was, ’cause I didn’t have a clue.’”
“You’re lying, Eugene,” Sam accused, hands on her hips. “You’ve made this whole thing up.”
“Well, honey,” Eugene answered, chuckling, “them’s the chances you take when you drink Co’-Colas in bars with strangers. Ain’t it, Chester? I guess the answer to that’s for me to know”—he winked at her—“and you to find out.”
Twelve
Well, just like old B.J., you don’t have a clue either, do you, Sam said to herself as she pulled out of Manuel’s parking lot. You’ve spent the whole morning talking to a crazy man who’s threatening to kill Forrest Ridley because he can’t even remember Ridley is already dead, drinking Coca-Colas, and listening to shaggy dog stories. You’re no closer to whoever murdered Forrest Ridley,
if
anyone murdered Forrest Ridley, than you ever were. Maybe you ought to get on the horn and call Hoke and turn yourself in.
“Save me from myself, Hoke,” she said aloud. “Send me to cover a garbage strike. I’m an investigative incompetent.”
She would no more do that than she’d admit that there was nothing to her corrupt sheriff story—which she might never know, if she didn’t hurry up and get around to it.
Sam stopped at the intersection of Virginia and Highland. This was the most walkable shopping
neighborhood in a town addicted to automobiles and malls, a cluster of clever restaurants and antique/scented soap/record shops. But she’d overshot her destination. She turned the car around, pulled into a parking spot, and reached for the street map that every native carried, except those who liked driving in circles.
Atlanta, Sam thought, had to be one of the most confusing cities on earth. Streets changed names at will; there were fourteen variants on Peachtree, from Avenue to Valley, not to mention the fabled Peachtree Street, the main artery which in its travels north and south crossed Piedmont Avenue three times, which ought to be an impossibility. There were no grids, no straight lines, neither rhyme nor reason to the patterning. One simply memorized pathways through the city and, at all times, carried that map.
Sam pulled her map out of the glove compartment. Damn! she thought. Virginia Circle didn’t come through. She traced the path she needed to take with her finger. Back to Virginia, then a right turn, next a left, and another quick left, and there the street was.
Virginia-Highland was a close-in neighborhood of 1920s bungalows. Allowed to grow seedy, the area had started to rejuvenate in the late seventies. Armed with bright paints and imagination, new young homeowners began to refurbish the broad-hipped, comfortable old houses and fill their yards and driveways with baby carriages and BMWs. Less than three miles from the center of the city, the area was a nice walk across Piedmont Park from the Ansley Park neighborhood.