It came to me while the woman's deluge of words continued that I had seen and heard her at an earlier time. Looking over at me on the sidewalk, she raised her voice and said, “It's sure a good thing he had that tuna fish in a Tupperware bowl or it might of ended up scrambled all in amongst that gravel. Them Tupperware lids seal up real tight! And if it'd been in a
glass
bowl, why, can you just imagineâit could of broke and made a real hazard!”
All at once I seized the memory. She had delivered a speech at Mayfield's funeral in Januaryâthe first time that I had seen Birdie. I recalled now her story of Mayfield's anonymous monetary gift to her family and of her attempt to thank him after she had discovered him to be the source. She had introduced herself by name before she told her story, and I was on the brink of recalling it nowâI remembered that it was a somewhat peculiar name of two syllablesâwhen I heard Birdie say, “Let's go over here, Eldeen, so I can introduce you to a good friend of mine.”
Eldeen, that was the name. A woman of considerable size, as I have said, she lumbered toward me, smiling a most singular smile. In truth, she appeared to have sustained a severe wound from the expression on her wrinkled face. Something about her eyes, however, and a great deal about her speech, made me understand that the expression was intended for joy. She had short, nickel gray hair, as stiff as the bristles of a brush and somewhat ragged like the plumage of a fledgling. Her eyebrows were a thick hedge. She wore a skirt the color of pale spring grass, reaching nearly to the tops of her white socks, and a long, shapeless black tunic-style top with a large, gold heart-shaped brooch pinned askew and off center near the neck. Though it was warm for November, a dark green wool muffler was wrapped about her neck.
As I was absorbing the details of her ensemble, her words swarmed about me noisily. “â¦and
that
stuff leaked all over the place 'cause the lid didn't fit good and tight. It was so provoking! But I took it back to the store and explained the whole thing to the lady, how it made such a mess on our clean floor right before time for company to get there for supper, and she didn't say a word, just gave me my money back, which let me know I probably wasn't the first one to return one of them cheap containers. Anyway, I made up my mind then and there to splurge and spend a little extra to get Tupperware from then on and play it safe.”
She and Birdie were standing directly in front of me by now. Though I am considered a tall woman, this woman was taller yet. I took a step backward, for I felt a want of oxygen.
With hardly a pause for breath, the woman continued to speak in a copious outpouring of words. “Jewel went to a Tupperware party last month and ordered us the nicest little Jell-O mold. It's got this extra part you can clamp on top to make it taller, in case you got more folks to feed. 'Course when it's firmin' up in the icebox,
that
part's on the bottom instead of the top, but then when you take it out and get it loose and turn it upside down on your servin' plate, that little extra layer is settin' up on top so pretty and fancy. Makes it look like a little weddin' cake made out of Jell-O!”
Before Birdie could interject her speech of introduction, the woman fixed me with a penetrating look and demanded, “What
is
that stuff called, anyway?”
“I beg your pardon?” I replied.
She lifted a large forefinger and scratched vigorously above her ear. “All I can think of is
spaghetti
,” she said, “and I know that's not it!” She gave a throaty bark of laughter.
I was mystified, finding no link between her question and her treatise concerning the virtues of Tupperware.
Birdie must have been likewise stymied, for she said, “What stuff are you talking about, Eldeen, honey?”
“What
is
it called?” said Eldeen. “I get so irked when I'm thinkin' of a word and it just won't come! The word
graffiti
just popped into my head, but of course that's not it. That's them bad things that teenagers scribble real big with a can of spray paint.” She paused to cluck her tongue and shake her head. “I saw where somebody had written them filthy, dirty words all over the concrete wall behind the football field at the high school.”
Birdie smiled and patted the back of Eldeen's broad, thick-veined hand. “I'm afraid we're not following you, Eldeen.” Glancing at me, she added fondly, “A person has to get up pretty early in the morning to keep up with Eldeen.”
“Well, now, I
do
like to get up early, that's for sure!” Eldeen said. “You can get so much more done that way.” I could easily imagine the woman opening her mouth the moment she swung her feet out of bed and never closing it until the night was far spent. “And speakin' of spray paint,” she resumed. “Libby Vanderhoff told me the funniest thing on the telephone yesterday! She had her a can of this stuff they been advertisin' in all the papers called Ex-Static that you spray on your knits and petticoats and what have you so's they won't cling. Well, she was in a hurry yesterday morning to get over to her daughter's so she could take care of her little grandbabyâthe one that was born on July the Fourth, can you beat that?âand she had gone and put on a dress that was just
bristlin'
with static. So she reached up on the shelf up above her washing machineâ“ Here Eldeen clapped her hands together and broke off to emit an enormous, resounding quack of laughter. “And lo and behold if she didn't grab a can of yellow
spray paint
by accident! She'd been aiming for months to spray-paint an old stool with that yellow paint, and there it still sat. So she yanked off the lid, not dreamin' what she was holdin' in her hand, and went to sprayin' her dress up and down, up and down, up and down. She said she
saw
it comin' out yellow, but by the time her mind had put two and two together, she had a real mess on her handsâon her dress, too!”
Birdie laughed along with Eldeen, who was now dabbing at her eyes with the tasseled end of her neck scarf. She stopped laughing suddenly and said, “But it's that stuff I was talkin' about a little while ago when I mentioned Bernie Paulson's Bible notes scatterin', don't you know,” she continued. “Them bits of colored paper that's dumped out from a window high up so's they can float around in the air during a parade.”
“Oh, you mean confetti?” Birdie asked.
“That's it! That's it!
Confetti!
Don't you just hate it when a word's settin' right there on the tip of your tongue but you just can't coax it to come on out?” She pointed to the tip of her tongue, then inhaled for another verbal marathon. She would have found a congressional filibuster mere child's play.
I was most grateful that Birdie broke in at this point. She spoke quickly as if knowing that the opportunity might not repeat itself. “Eldeen, I want you to meet Margaret Tuttle, my good friend from the grade school lunchroom where I work. Margaret, this is Eldeen Rafferty. We go to the same church, and we've been friends for over twenty years, haven't we, Eldeen?”
Eldeen threw her head back and laughed loudly. “I guess we have, Birdie! Years and years and years! But I remember clear as a picture the day you and Mickey first moved here from Tuscaloosa and me and Jewel met you at the check-out in the Woolworth store downtown and invited you to come to church with us the next day. And you
did
, too! I got such a kick out of finding out your name was Birdie 'cause I had thought to myself the minute I laid eyes on you, âWhy she's no bigger'n a little chickadee!'”
“Yes, we came to church that first Sunday and never even wanted to visit another church after that,” said Birdie.
Eldeen leaned forward and embraced Birdie, talking and laughing at the same time. “Oh, you sweet little thing! You just tickle me to death. I sure am glad the Lord Jesus led us to the same check-out line that day. I sure am!”
She released Birdie and stopped laughing abruptly. She gazed at me intently, her lips pursed as if in thought, her shaggy eyebrows partially lowered as a shade. “Margaret Tuttle, now if that's not a nice name,” she said. “I once knew a little girl named Jamesetta Tuttle, back in Arkansas. She was named after her daddy, James, and both of 'em had hair the color of black licorice. Fact is, Jamesetta wore hers in long twirly springs that kind of looked like them licorice twists. You don't have any kin in Arkansas, do you, Margaret?”
“I do not,” I replied, adding quickly, “and neither do I have time to stand here any longer. If you will instruct the driver of your car to back up, I will be able to leave.”
Casting a look behind her, Eldeen smiled happily and said, “Oh, that's my grandson Joe Leonard. He just took the test to get his driver's license this summer.
Passed
it, too. The man that gave him the test used to go to school with my daughter Jewel. Used to have a head full of red hair, but he started goin' bald before he turned thirty. Now he's just got a tuft or two.”
“Yes, well, I assume that your grandson knows how to put the car in reverse,” I said.
“Why, he sure does! He had to do that and lots of other things when he went for the test. He did his parallel parkin' perfect right off, the first try! The man that gave him the test said thatâ”
“I think Margaret does need to leave, Eldeen,” Birdie interrupted. “Could you get Joe Leonard to back up and let her out? Then you could stay and visit longer.”
Eldeen shook her head briskly. “No, no, no! I'm leavin' myself! I told Joe Leonard we'd just stop by for a minute to see if you could useânow, looka there, I almost forgot. It's back there in the front seat of the car. Here, let's go get it.” She included me in her beseeching gesture. “Come on, Margaret, you come see, too.”
It was a frozen turkey, double-bagged in brown Thrifty-Mart sacks. As Eldeen told it (I will condense her verbose explanation), her son-in-law had brought home a turkey for Thanksgiving the day before, on Monday, having received it from a patron of his place of employment, which, in a coincidental development, turned out to be the Derby Public Library, the parking lot of which I probably would have been entering at that very moment had I not been delayed in Birdie's driveway.
On that same day, Monday, Eldeen's daughter had also arrived home with a turkey after stopping by the grocery store, which was to be my next item of business this afternoon if I ever managed to get past the blockade. To cap off the story, Eldeen reported with great geyserlike eruptions of wonder that she herself had been the awestruck recipient of a telephone call today, Tuesday, a few minutes past noon informing her that her name had been drawn at Thrifty-Mart as the winner of none other than a twelve-pound turkey.
“Three turkeys in two days!” Eldeen cried. “Can you feature that? Seems like the Lord just opened up the gates of heaven on us, doesn't it?” Though perhaps the thought of three turkeys tumbling out of the rich blue of the November sky could have been amusing at another time, I did not join in the laughter. “Now, we'd already made up our minds to use one turkey and save the other one for Christmas,” she said, “but when I got this call today, I just threw up my hands and said, âAll right, Lord, who do you want me to give this feller to?' And quick as a twinkle, I thought of you, Birdie. The Lord just seemed to say to me”âshe pitched her voice even lowerâ“âDrive on out to Birdie's house, Eldeen. Go on, drive on out there to Filbert.'” This brought to my mind the lines from the poem by James Weldon Johnson that read: “And the Lord said, âGo down, Death, go down to Sister Caroline's house in Yamacraw, Georgia.'”
This, then, is how it was that I became the possessor of a free twelve-pound turkey two days before Thanksgiving. Birdie told Eldeen that Mickey had already brought a turkey home and put it in the freezer two weeks ago, and then the Lackeys, their “neighbors through the woods,” had invited them a few days later to be their guests for Thanksgiving dinner.
“So we've got a turkey saved up for Christmas, too,” said Birdie gently. “And our freezer is so cramped we wouldn't have room for another one.”
For the briefest of moments both women had stared at each other in confusion, their kindly urges sadly thwarted, before Eldeen raised her finger, pointed it directly at me, and stated, “Then it must be
you
, Margaret Tuttle! You must be the one the Lord had in mind for me to give it to. No sir, no sir, don't you go arguin' about it. I found out a long, long time ago that God doesn't get things mixed up, and when he tells you to do somethin', he
means
it, and there's not a bit of use tryin' to talk your way out of it.” She opened the car door and said, “Here, Joe Leonard, shove it over here. Old Mister Tom Turkey's goin' home with this pretty lady!”
When I turned onto Highway 11 ten minutes later, the turkey beside me on the front seat of my car, I heard Eldeen's last words fired upon me as from a blunderbuss at close range. “You're the one! You're the one God's got his eye on! I knew he wanted me to come out here to Birdie's!” A great restlessness overtook my spirit, for I felt that by some divine trick I had been present against my will at a time appointed.
And I saw Birdie's imploring eyes as she lifted the bag from Eldeen's car. “Margaret,” she said, walking with me to my car, “it's nice of you to take this. It means a lot to Eldeen, bless her heart.” Setting the bag in my car, she smiled at me. “And I sure didn't mean to pry earlier,” she said. “I hope you'll forgive me, honey.”
I thought it most ironic, given my recent interest in the poem by Archibald Rutledge and Birdie's remarks concerning certain characteristics of the wildflower, that Thomas arrived home that very afternoon, Tuesday, with a book newly purchased from a music store in Greenville. He had negotiated a contract with three hotels in Greenville to service their vacuum cleaners and periodically drove over in his pickup truck for this purpose. I was in the kitchen chopping a green pepper on a small cutting board when he came home. The book, which he proudly displayed to me, was a large hard-cover volume, quite thick, that bore the presumptuous title
The Three Hundred Favorite Songs of America
.