Excerpt from A Southern Belle
Chapter 5
Clarise saw Bobby Boyette loitering outside Ray’s Barber Shop, apparently waiting for someone to come by so he could waste some of his or her valuable time with his pointless ramblings.
He wore tattered overalls similar to little Riley’s, only about a hundred sizes larger. The worn denim stretching over the boulder bulge of his belly looked as if it were going to give up the battle and burst wide open at any moment. He wore a nightshirt beneath the overalls that might have been white a long time ago, but was now gray with accumulated filth.
Bobby’s tangled gray-shot blonde hair and week’s growth of beard were as soiled as his shirt, and his battered and run over work boots were only recognizable as shoes because they were on his feet.
As Clarise neared, he spat a massive brown glob of chewing tobacco onto the sidewalk, and then gave her an equally brown smile.
“Morning, Clairbelle,” he beamed. His gray eyes twinkled mischievously behind the smudged lenses of his bent wire-frames, reminding her for a moment of the boy who used to pull her pigtails back in grade school. He used to call her ‘Clairbelle’ back then, combining her first and middle names into one word because he knew that she hated it.
“Good morning, Bobby.” Clarise suppressed the automatic urge to ask him how he was doing because that would lead to a thirty-minute conversation about nothing in particular and things she certainly didn’t give a hoot about.
She was almost past him and beginning to believe she was safe when he said, “When’s old George comin’ home?”
Resigned to her fate, she slowed and turned around. It wouldn’t be polite to talk to Bobby with her back turned.
“Tuesday, I expect,” she answered. She tried to inject a note of finality in her words in the hope that Bobby would let her go about her business.
“Well, tell him I got a couple of real nice rockers I’ll let him have for a good price.”
In spite of his many detriments, Bobby Boyette was an excellent woodcraftsman. He’d created some of the finest furniture anyone in these parts had ever seen, and entirely by hand to boot. He could have done well for himself if he weren’t so darned shiftless. But Bobby would rather sell a rocking chair to George for whiskey money than go into business for himself. Of course, George made a killing selling Bobby’s work in the store.
“Richard’s in the store if you need to sell them right away,” she said, trying to be helpful.
The mirth faded from Bobby’s eyes. He spat on the sidewalk again and wiped a string of brown drool from his scraggly chin with the back of his hand. “I ain’t dealing with him. I’ll do my business with George, if it’s all the same to you.”
Clarise thought she caught a trace of disapproval toward her in Bobby’s tone. Well, he had his nerve, acting like he was too high and mighty to trade with a colored man when everybody, including Bobby’s wife, knew that he had four bastard half-breed children by Lula Vaughn over in Como. And Lula was as black as Army shoe polish.
“Suit yourself,” she said, making sure that she matched Bobby’s negative tone. She spun on her heels and continued up the street.
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Britt’s Esso Station sat at the far western edge of Murfreesboro, strategically located to catch cars traveling in and out of town via State Route 258. Onson’s little clapboard house sat about fifty yards behind the station, right at the edge of the woods and hidden from view from the main road and the gas station by the rows of rusty, junked cars Charlie Britt used for parts in his service garage. Clarise knew where Onson lived because she walked everywhere and knew where just about everybody lived.
Charlie was sitting out in front of his station with Buddy Frazier, probably trading lies about how badly last night’s squall had wreaked havoc on their properties. Clarise gave the men a neighborly wave as she cut around the back of the building. They waved back, and she pretended that she didn’t notice that both men had stopped talking and were watching her intently as she went by.
She added just a little more wiggle to her stride, then touched her hair and looked away so the men couldn’t see the smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She had no more interest in Charlie or Buddy than a hog had in a dictionary, but it still made her feel good to know that she could draw their attention. And wouldn’t Nancy Britt and Eloise Frazier be mad enough to spit if they knew their men were giving her the eye? Now, that thought really made her smile.
She weaved her way through the maze of dead automobiles in back of the station, and then stepped carefully through a minefield of loose boards, broken beer and soda bottles and rusted tin cans on the other side of the cars. This must be a hangout spot for the kids, or maybe for Charlie and his drinking buddies, she figured.
Beyond the carpet of litter the ground sloped down toward the woods, and she nearly fell when the leather bottoms of her loafers slid on the still wet grass.
Wouldn’t that just make me a sight, she thought, walking through town in a wet dress covered with grass stains. Pearl and the girls would have enough gossip to last them till Christmas.
Next to Onson’s little clapboard house at the edge of the forest was a ramshackle storage shed where he kept his tools, and just enough distance away to miss most of the odor, his outhouse.
Clarise thanked her fortunate stars that as the mistress of one of the wealthiest families in Murfreesboro, she lived in one of the few homes that had both indoor plumbing and electricity. Many households in the area still used kerosene lamps for light, heated with wood, and used that little building in the back of their homes (or a chamber pot at night) to answer nature’s call. If George was good for nothing else, he’d at least made sure that she had all the reasonable comforts money could buy.
Still some twenty yards away from the shack, Clarise spotted Onson’s mule hitched to a rickety-looking wooden cart. The cart was loaded with a rusty old push mower and an assortment of picks, hoes, rakes and spades. He must be getting ready to go out and see what money he could make fixing up folk’s yards after the tempest. She’d caught him just in time. He could get rid of that darned tree at her place first.
She stepped carefully down the slope through the rain-soaked grass, frowning as the cool moisture seeped through her shoes and soaked her cotton socks.
Oh, this is just dandy. I’ll probably get blisters and pneumonia walking home in wet socks and shoes.
She thought she’d be better off just going barefoot. But her walking down Main Street like a field hand would be one more thing for Pearl to whisper about…
Something cried out, a faint but distinctive sound in the still morning.
The noise came from the direction of Onson’s shack. At first she thought it was just a cat mewling, or perhaps a crow squawking in the dark woods just beyond the dwelling. She continued on.
Then the cry came again, and Clarise froze in her tracks. The sound had come from inside the house. And this time she recognized it as a human voice.
It sounded like a woman.