Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (23 page)

She wished she could hear what he was saying, but it was enough just to see him. He was her only link to Ruth, and as long as she saw him, she knew that Ruth was still there.

This Wednesday, Mrs. Puckett, the thin little old lady in black-framed glasses, was busy as usual, moving around the store, arranging things as if life depended on everything being neat and in its place.

Idgie was sitting at the counter, looking across the street; watching.

“That Frank Bennett sure does talk a lot, doesn’t he? A real friendly fella, huh?”

Mrs. Puckett was on the first step of a ladder, arranging jars
of Stillman’s Freckle Cream, her back to Idgie. “Some might say so, I guess.”

Idgie heard a strange tone in her voice.

“What do you mean?”

“I just said, some may think so, that’s all.” She came down off the stepladder.

“Don’t you think so?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think.”

“Don’t you think he’s friendly?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t think he was friendly, did I? I guess he’s friendly enough.”

Mrs. Puckett was now poking at the boxes of Carter’s Liver Pills on the counter. Idgie got off the stool and went over to her.

“What do you mean, friendly enough? Do you know something about him? Has he ever not been friendly?”

“No, he’s always pleasant enough,” she said, arranging the boxes in a row. “It’s just that I don’t like any man that’ll beat his wife.”

Idgie’s heart went cold.

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said.”

“How do you know that?”

Mrs. Puckett was now busy restacking the tins of toothpaste. “Oh, Mr. Puckett’s had to go out there and take that poor little thing medicine—more than once, I’ll tell you. He’s blackened her eye and knocked her down the stairs, and once, he broke her arm. She teaches Sunday School and you never met a nicer person.” She moved on to torment the Sal Hepatica bottles. “That’s what liquor will do to a man, make them do crazy things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. Mr. Puckett and I are Temperance, ourselves …”

Idgie was out the door and didn’t hear the last sentence.

The barber was brushing off the back of Frank’s neck with sweet-smelling talcum powder when Idgie burst into the shop. She was in a rage. She stuck her finger in Frank’s face. “LISTEN, YOU MEALY-MOUTHED, MOLE-FACED, GLASS-EYED SON OF A BITCHING BASTARD! IF YOU EVER HIT
RUTH AGAIN, I’LL KILL YOU! YOU BASTARD! I SWEAR I’LL CUT YOUR DAMN HEART OUT! YOU HEAR ME, YOU ASSHOLE BASTARD!”

And with that, she took her arm and knocked everything off the marble counter. Dozens of bottles of shampoo, hair tonics, hair oils, shaving lotions, and powders crashed to the floor. Before they knew what had hit them, Idgie was back in her car, screeching out of town.

The barber stood there with his mouth open. It had happened so fast. He looked at Frank in the mirror and said, “That boy must be crazy.”

The minute Idgie got home to the Wagon Wheel Fishing Lodge, she told Eva what had happened, and was still in a rage, vowing that she was going back over there and get him.

Eva listened carefully. “You’re gonna go over there and get yourself killed, is what you’re gonna do. Now, you cain’t go interfering with somebody’s marriage, that’s their business. Honey, there are things between a man and a woman that you don’t go fooling with.”

Poor Idgie was in agony and asked Eva, “Why does she stay with him? What’s the matter with her?”

“That’s not any of your business. Now honey, you have to forget all about it. She is a grown woman and she is doing what she wants, as much as you don’t like to hear it. You’re still a baby, sugar, and if that man is as mean as you say, you could get yourself hurt.”

“I don’t care what you say, Eva, I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch someday, you wait and see.”

Eva poured Idgie another drink. “No you’re not. You’re not gonna kill anyone and you’re not going back over there. You promise?”

Idgie promised. Both of them knew she was lying.

Mrs. Threadgoode was especially happy today because she had fried chicken and coleslaw on a paper plate, and Evelyn was down the hall at this very minute, getting her a grape drink to go with it.

“Oh thank you, honey. You’re spoiling me, bringing me all these treats each week. I told Mrs. Otis, I said that Evelyn couldn’t be any sweeter to me if she was my own daughter … and I appreciate it so much—I never had a daughter of my own.… Does your mother-in-law enjoy good things to eat?”

Evelyn said, “No, not at all. I brought her some chicken, but she didn’t want it. She or Ed could care less about food, they just eat to keep alive. Can you imagine?”

Mrs. Threadgoode said she certainly could not imagine such a thing.

Evelyn started her off. “Now, Ruth left Whistle Stop and went off to Valdosta to get married …”

“That’s right. Oh, and it liked to have killed Idgie. She pitched such a fit.”

“I know, you told me about that. But what I want to know is, when did Ruth come back to Whistle Stop?”

Evelyn settled in her chair, ate her chicken, and listened.

“Oh yes, honey, I remember the very day that letter came. It must have been in ’twenty-eight or ’twenty-nine. Or was it ’thirty? Oh well.… I was in the kitchen with Sipsey when Momma came running back in with it in her hand. She threw open the back door and hollered for Big George, who was out in the garden with Jasper and Artis. She said, ‘George, go get Idgie right away and tell her she’s got a letter from Miss Ruth!’

“George took off running to get her. About an hour later, Idgie came into the kitchen. Momma, who was shelling peas at the time, just pointed to the letter on the table, without a word. Idgie opened it, but the funny thing was, it wasn’t a letter at all.

“It was just a page torn out of the Bible, King James Version. Ruth 1:16–20:

“Idgie just stood there, reading that quotation over and over and then she handed it to Momma and asked her what she thought it meant.

“Momma read it, put it down on the table, and continued shelling her peas. She said, ‘Well, honey, it means just what it says. I think tomorrow you and your brothers and Big George better go over there and get that girl, don’t you? You know you’re not going to be fit to live with till you do. You know that.’

“And it was true. She wouldn’t have been.

“So the next day, they went over to Georgia and got her.

“I admired Ruth for having the courage to walk away like that. It took real courage in those days, not like today, honey. Back then, if you were married, you stayed married. But she was a lot stronger than people knew. Everybody was always treating Ruth like a china doll, but you know, she was a lot stronger than Idgie in many ways.”

“Did Ruth ever get a divorce?”

“Oh, I don’t know that. That’s something I never asked. I just figured that was Ruth’s business. I never met her husband, but they say that he was handsome, all except that glass eye. Ruth told me he had come from a nice family, but just had a mean streak where women were concerned. Said on their wedding night, he got drunk and forced her, while the whole time she was begging him to stop.”

“How awful.”

“Yes, it was. She bled for three days, and after that, she never could relax and enjoy herself. And, of course, that just made him madder. And she said he kicked her down a flight of stairs once.”

“Good Lord!”

“Then he started forcing himself on the poor colored girls he had working for him. Ruth said one little girl was only twelve years old. But by the time she found out what kind of a man he was, it was too late. Ruth’s mother was sick, and she couldn’t leave. She said that on the nights he would come home mean and drunk and force her, she’d lie there and pray to God and think about us to keep herself from going crazy.”

Evelyn said, “They say you never know a man until you live with him.”

“That’s right. Sipsey used to say, ‘You never know what kind of fish you’ve got till you pull it out of the water’—so it’s best that Stump never met his daddy. Ruth left before he was born. As a matter of fact, she didn’t even know she was pregnant at the time. She’d been over there with Idgie about two months before she noticed that her stomach was just a-pooching out. Went to the doctor and found out she was expecting. He was born over at the big house, and he was the cutest little blond baby, weighed seven pounds and had brown eyes and blond hair.

“Momma said, the first time she saw him, ‘Oh look, Idgie, he’s got your hair!’

“And he did. He was just as blond as could be. That’s when Poppa Threadgoode sat Idgie down and told her that now that she was going to be responsible for Ruth and a baby, she’d
better figure out what she wanted to do, and gave her five hundred dollars to start a business with. That’s what she bought the cafe with.”

Evelyn asked if Frank Bennett had known he had a child.

“I don’t know if he did or not.”

“He never saw her at all after she left Georgia?”

“Well, I cain’t say for a fact if he ever did or not, but one thing’s for sure, he came over to Whistle Stop at least once, and it may have been one time too may, as far as he was concerned.”

“Why do you say that?”

“ ‘Cause he was the one that was murdered.”

“Murdered!”

“Oh yes, honey. Deader than a doornail.”

When Ruth had gone home that summer to marry, Frank Bennett and her mother had been at the station to meet her. Ruth had forgotten how handsome he was and how happy it had made her mother that she had made such an important catch.

Almost immediately, the parties started, and she tried to shut out any thoughts of Whistle Stop. But sometimes, in the middle of a crowd or alone at night, she never knew when it was going to happen, Idgie would suddenly come to mind, and she would want to see her so bad that the pain of longing for her sometimes took her breath away.

Whenever it happened, she would pray to God and beg Him to take such thoughts out of her head. She knew that she must be where she should be and doing the right thing. She would get over missing Idgie. Surely, He would help her … surely, this feeling would pass in time … with His help, she would make it pass.

She had gone to her wedding bed determined to be a good, loving wife, no matter what, holding nothing back. That’s why it had been such a shock when he had taken her with so much
violence—almost as if he were punishing her. After he was finished, she lay there in her own blood and he got up and went into the other room to sleep. He never came back to her bed unless he wanted sex; and then, nine times out of ten, it had been because he was too drunk or too lazy to go into town.

Ruth couldn’t help but think that something inside of her had caused him to hate her; that somehow, no matter how hard she tried to suppress it, Frank felt the love inside she had for Idgie. It had slipped out somehow, in her voice, her touch; she didn’t know how, but she believed he must have known and that’s why he despised her. So she had lived with that guilt and taken the beatings and the insults because she thought she deserved them.

The doctor came out of her mother’s room. “Mrs. Bennett, she’s started to talk a little, you might want to go in for a while.”

Ruth went in and sat down.

Her mother, who hadn’t spoken in a week, opened her eyes and saw her daughter. She whispered, “You get away from him.… Ruth, promise me. He’s the devil. I’ve seen God, and he’s the devil. I hear things, Ruth … you get away … promise me …”

It was the first time this shy woman had ever said anything about Frank. Ruth nodded and held her hand. That afternoon, the doctor closed her mother’s eyes for good.

Ruth cried for her mother and, an hour later, went upstairs, washed her face, and addressed the envelope to Idgie.

After she sealed it, she went over to the window and looked up at the blue sky. She took a deep breath of fresh air and felt her heart rising like a kite that some child had just released to the heavens.