Eat, Drink, and Be From Mississippi

by Nanci Kincaid

Genres: Family Life; Marriage & Divorce; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

With several acclaimed novels under her belt, Nanci Kincaid is praised for her raw, edgy Southern tales. Leaving their sleepy Mississippi home behind, brother and sister Truely and Courtney Noonan head west. There they drift apart, only to reunite, as they lay down new roots in Southern California.

Release date: January 6, 2009

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 400

Sample

One

HINDS COUNTY NEEDED RAIN. Heat rose to nearly a hundred degrees most afternoons. Already two boys had gone down, fallen to their knees, threatening to collapse of heat stroke. They’d been sent to sit under a sprawling shade tree with cups of ice chips to chew on. One spilled the ice on his head and rubbed it over his parched skull.

Truely had long ago sweat through his pads and jersey, adding a couple of pounds to his misery. It occurred to him that wearing a helmet in this kind of heat could cause your brain to fry. Still, drill after drill, he went at it full speed. Nobody on the field worked harder or complained less. According to his coach there was a certain genius to that. Truely liked pushing himself. He liked knowing that no matter how tough it got out there, he didn’t quit. Nobody could make him.

Between series he glimpsed his daddy, Truely Sr., standing there, watching. He was easy to spot among the fathers huddled on the sideline en route home from work, mopping their brows with soiled handkerchiefs, squinting into the glare of the afternoon sun, spitting plugs of chewing tobacco to the ground, their trucks parked helter-skelter in the dry grass. On any given day there might be as many as twenty men gathered to watch their sons suffer through Hinds County football practice. A few suit wearers had abandoned their jackets midday and now loosened or lost their knotted neckties. The rest wore overalls or jeans — or like Truely’s own daddy, a uniform of some kind. Some men were gray or losing their wispy hair altogether. A couple of older guys were of the flattops forever persuasion. One old man, a local recovering hippie, a veteran, had a stringy ponytail left over from his post-Vietnam rebellion. The men wore ball caps and bifocals and had biscuit bellies overlapping their sagging belts. To a man, all of them had dark underarm circles on their cotton shirts.

Truely Sr. was middle-aged like the others but he was thin and remained fit. He stood with his feet apart, arms folded across his chest, watching tirelessly as young Truely went at it play after play. Truely played corner. His job was to keep Mose Jones, the team’s promising receiver, from catching the ball and waltzing it into the end zone. He succeeded in stopping him maybe forty percent of the time, which was nowhere near good enough.

Truely Sr. nodded when he caught his son’s eye after he’d batted down a spiraling missile meant for Mose. It was a wordless conversation between them. Encouragement unspoken. Truely’s daddy was tanned dark from working long hours in his garden or tinkering with his truck under the glaring sun. Once, when Truely was a young boy, a kid at school had asked him, “Is your old man I-talian or something?”

Truely had not liked the question. “No,” he’d insisted. “Why?”

His daddy’s hair was thick and brown, compliments of an unsubstantiated Indian ancestor he liked to claim. Truely had been told his daddy was a handsome man. That’s what some people said — like his mother for example. Mostly her. His daddy wore his green JACKSON APPLIANCE coveralls with his name on the pocket and his leather work boots. The only things that betrayed his age were the deep lines carved into his square face and, if you knew him, his taste in nearly everything.

At one point that afternoon Truely saw his daddy speak to one of his teachers who had wandered out to the football practice field carrying a Coca-Cola in her hand. Another time he saw him share a word with one of the other fathers, a subsidized soybean farmer whose son, Lamont, a fat boy, played offensive line. Lamont made up in size whatever he lacked in talent. People in Hinds County respected that.

After practice, spent and sore, Truely showered with the others, threw on his jeans and wrinkled shirt, gathered his outdated, tattered books, and climbed into the sweltering cab of his daddy’s truck. The sun was beginning to set, turning the sky the color of a bruise. Truely and his daddy rode the half-dozen or so miles home in relative silence as was their habit. At one point his daddy broke the spell and said, “I talked to your history teacher.”

“Mrs. Seacrest?”

“She says you’re doing good in her class. She says you understand the power of the past and that’s unusual at your age.”

Truely nodded absentmindedly. He was wishing he could put the radio on.

“What you guess she means by that?” his daddy asked.

Truely shrugged his shoulders, more bored than bewildered.

“Is she talking about the War Between the States or something?”

“Don’t know.”

His daddy drove as slow as Christmas. Truely doubted his daddy had any idea how fast his truck might actually go, since it would never occur to him to exceed the speed limit. He had never been a man in a hurry. “Guess that’s just teacher talk,” his daddy said.

“I guess.” Truely hung his head out the window, letting the hot air slap his face.

They pulled off the highway and drove the gravel road out to the house. Truely saw his mother standing outside in the yard, wiping her hands on her apron. “There’s Mama,” he said.

His daddy glanced in her direction. “She don’t look too happy, does she?”

They parked the truck in a sandy spot next to the carport and got out, slamming their doors in unison. It was obvious his mother had been crying. Her face was flushed and her eyes were swollen. Her once dark red hair was mostly gray now. It was damp around her neck, jutting out everywhere in little wet points. She walked toward them. “Courtney’s home,” she announced. “Her roommate drove her.”

“Anything wrong?” his daddy asked.

“This.” His mother reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a folded page from a magazine and handed it to his daddy.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Read it,” she said.

“Let me get in the house where the light’s better.” He took the paper and walked toward the front door.

“She says she’s quitting school and moving,” his mother blurted.

“Moving where?” Truely asked.

“California.”

“California?” Truely almost laughed. “No way.”

“That’s what she says,” his mother insisted.

“We’ll see about that, won’t we?” His daddy slapped the paper across his leg.

“Don’t get anything started, Truely John.” His mother reached for his daddy’s arm. “Not now. Let me get supper on the table first.”

TRUELY’S SISTER, Courtney, first believed that if she could just graduate from high school and get away to college then her life would finally begin. She could live on her own, think uncensored thoughts, meet new people from distant hard-to-pronounce places, mingle with the other she had craved all her life and at last transform herself more nearly into who she was really supposed to be. But it hadn’t happened that way. Now here she was, about to abandon her scholarship to Millsaps — something a lot of people would kill for — to do what, hitchhike across the country?

What was it about red-haired people? They were different from normal people. Truely believed that. “With two redheaded women in this house, me and you, we don’t stand a chance.” His daddy had said this when Truely was a boy and the two of them got run out of the house by the sheer womanness that overtook the place. They’d retreated outside to eat a sack of boiled peanuts or drop their cane poles into the small catfish pond. “If a redheaded girl ever gets after you, son — you run, you hear?” his daddy had teased. The pure absurdity of such a notion had made young Truely laugh. It was his plan at the time to run from all girls — red-haired or otherwise. He was glad to be a brown-skinned, brown-haired boy — like his daddy.

AS SOON AS they all sat down to supper Courtney kicked Truely under the table and raised her eyebrows as a signal for help.

What? he mouthed silently.

She was wearing a Mississippi State T-shirt and a pair of cutoff jeans. She’d clipped her hair up off her neck with a plastic barrette. It was a mess of part-curl, part-frizz framing her pale, fine-featured face, pink with heat. She swiped at a trickle of sweat with her paper napkin. As always Courtney wore lots of black mascara so her eyes would show up — that’s what she said — and some shiny stuff, Vaseline maybe, on her lips. She folded her legs under her Indian-style in her chair — something his mother didn’t like — then rethought it and put her feet on the floor and sat up straight.

As soon as the blessing was asked, before the first bite of food was passed or eaten, Courtney said, “Daddy, you know I’m over eighteen now. I’m legal. I’ve made up my mind to go out to California and you and Mama can’t stop me.”

“Damn, Court.” Truely hated it when his sister disrespected his parents.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But it’s the truth.”

“Start over,” Truely told her.

“Just because you’ve never heard of it doesn’t mean it isn’t a good school, Truely,” she announced defensively. “Look.” She handed him the folded ad from the back of a fashion magazine. “It says they’ll help you find a job in your field while you work toward your degree. See? Read the fine print.” Truely looked at the ad. It included a small picture of happy students, all of whom looked — by Mississippi standards — foreign.

“I don’t know,” Truely said. “You sure about this?” It was a stupid question.

“You’re not going anywhere, anytime soon,” his daddy said flatly. “You’re not ready.”

“It’s just that girls — you know, well-brought-up girls,” his mother interrupted, clearing her throat, trying to keep the discussion on a civil keel, “can’t just take off on their own. People get the wrong idea. They take advantage of young women out in the world. You’ve never been west of the Mississippi. It’s different out there.”

“I’m not joining the circus, Mama,” Courtney insisted. “I’m going to school.” She gripped her fork like it was a pitchfork, the way a child does.

“Not in California you’re not,” his daddy repeated. “That’s final.”

“I am going,” Courtney said resolutely.

“Hell if you are.” His daddy piled pinto beans on his plate as he spoke.

“They accepted me, Daddy. I’ve sent my deposit.”

“You’ll do as I tell you to do, young lady.”

“No, Daddy. Not this time.”

His daddy set the bowl of beans down on the table, the serving spoon clanking against it. “Don’t back-talk me.”

“I leave two weeks from Sunday,” she said.

If looks could kill, Courtney was in the line of fire. “So you’re planning to defy your mother and me. Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’ve already got my bus ticket.”

His daddy slapped his napkin down on the table and stood up abruptly, scraping his chair across the floor. His fork fell to the floor and bounced across the room. Truely saw his daddy’s jaw flex and the anger flash across his face. He walked out the back door, letting the screen door slam behind him. It echoed like a gunshot.

“Can’t you be happy for me, Daddy?” Courtney called out. “Just once?”

Minutes later his mother got up silently. She poured a cup of coffee, put a slice of pound cake on a saucer and took it outside to his daddy. Truely imagined his daddy standing outside by the pond, slinging rocks into the black water — his mother approaching him cautiously, bearing gifts.

“Man.” Truely shook his head. “You’re something, Court. You know that?”

“I’m trying to be an adult here, True,” Courtney said. “Adults make decisions about how to live their lives. They don’t just follow the path of least resistance.”

“You have to blindside them with this kind of news?”

“There is never any good way to tell them the truth, True. They always hate the truth. You know that.”

“Give me a break.” He rolled his eyes.

“You think I like disappointing Mother and Daddy all the time, True?” Her voice quivered. “Well, believe me, I don’t.”

THAT NIGHT when Truely was trying to drift off to sleep in his hot bed, his body aching, his muscles cramped and sore, he remembered a conversation he had had with his sister the last time she was home. She was talking about California even then, calling it the most promising part of the promised land, a place generously littered with dreams and dreamers. She’d told Truely she imagined California as one huge lost and found where if you looked hard enough you could probably find whatever you needed.

He wasn’t sure about that, but he was sure about this. Whatever he needed he expected to find right here in Hinds County, Mississippi.

HIS PARENTS spiraled into despair wondering where they’d gone wrong. It became their primary pastime — lamenting. His mother especially spent hours searching out the misstep that had brought them to this dark passage. Okay, so maybe Courtney would never marry a nice local boy and become a devout preacher’s wife — the fondest dream of Mississippi parents — but did she need to move out to California, where there were no rules at all, no guarantee of good manners or good sense, where that free love movement got started and all those homosexuals were out of hiding, even marching in the streets unashamed, and drugs and gangs were taking over everything? Did Courtney think they were born yesterday? Did she think just because they lived in rural Mississippi they didn’t know what was going on in the world? They watched the six o’clock news same as everybody else.

“Remember that freaky Charles Manson, who roamed California as evil as Satan himself? Remember how he talked all those creepy girls into performing obscene criminal acts?” His mother was washing dishes at the kitchen sink, directing her remarks to his daddy, who did not respond. He sat in his usual chair with the newspaper in his hand, trying to focus on the day’s baseball scores. Truely thought he looked like a man who’d had a hard day on the job — and now had come home to an even harder night.

“Those wicked people are still locked up in some California prison to this day,” his mother said. “Thank God for that.” Truely’s mother usually concluded her comments with a favorite rhetorical question. “I read where half the people out in California can’t even speak English anyway, so even if you were screaming for help, who would come?”

ON THE DAY of Courtney’s departure all the family got up and went to church together as though it were any ordinary Sunday. When they got home from church they sat down to Sunday dinner. His mother asked the blessing, embellished appropriately for the occasion at hand. Then they ate quietly, avoiding one another’s gaze.

Afterward, while his mother cleared the dishes from the table, Courtney went to her room and dragged out her battered suitcase. The wear and tear had come from some previous, faceless owner. Days earlier his mother had made an impulse purchase at a garage sale over in Jackson. A good-bye gift of sorts. It passed as a peace offering.

Truely’s daddy stood silently with his hands in his pockets, watching Courtney struggle with her heavy suitcase. He resisted the temptation to step in and carry it for her — so Truely did it. “What you got in here anyway?” he asked. “Rocks?”

“I love you, Daddy.” Courtney kissed him. Truely’s daddy stood fixed in the doorway. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, but said nothing. Truely’s mother cried and slipped his sister five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills. At the time it was the most cash money Truely had ever seen.

He was the one who drove his sister to the bus station. He’d had his learner’s permit less than a month, although he had been driving the country roads since he was fourteen. His parents had agreed that he, rather than they, should deliver his sister to the bus station in order to avoid any family drama, which would likely become the fodder of gossip. Nobody wanted the harsh local spotlight shining on Courtney as she boarded the Greyhound bus destined to set her on the path to ruin.

He made a dumb remark like, “This ought to give people around here something to talk about for a while.” Which was true. All through school Courtney had had a knack for getting herself talked about — something Truely personally had never aspired to.

Truely didn’t tell his sister he’d never admired anybody more. He wasn’t even sure he’d told her he loved her. Surely she must know that, right? Until that moment in time he had never realized it was possible to leave the place you were born and move someplace far away and unfamiliar — just because you wanted to. Nobody had bothered to tell him that where you lived your life could be a choice you made yourself. Who knew the accident of birth had an expiration date?

Two

TRUELY LISTENED to his sister fall in love with Hastings long distance over the telephone. She called home nearly every week and before long was describing at great length the many quirks and wonders of this guy, Hastings Cabot Littleton.

Courtney had been in California less than a year when she met Hastings at a Grateful Dead concert at Berkeley. Some friends from art school had offered her an extra ticket when somebody backed out at the last minute. She took the bus out to the stadium when she got off work, with plans to meet up with the others, but there was mass confusion and she couldn’t find them. She confessed later to Truely that she had been maybe slightly out of her element. The last concert she’d gone to was Charley Pride over in Jackson at the Civic Center. She’d gone with Truely and their daddy that time. When Charley crooned “Missin’ Mississippi” he had the whole audience choked up with geographically inspired emotion — including the three of them. But this was totally different.

Out of all the guys in the throbbing concert mob she had chosen to ask him — Hastings — directions to the gate where she was supposed to meet her friends. Hastings didn’t stand out really, she would insist later. He was a tallish, sort of handsome guy, with longish hair, a stubble of beard, wire-rimmed glasses, brown eyes and a quick but cautious smile. She told Truely that he had looked a little older and calmer than the others in the crowd. Maybe that was why. She explained to him — Hastings — that her ticket was confusing and it seemed that everywhere she went the gates were chained closed anyway. “I can’t figure this out,” she had said. “What’s going on here?”

He claimed he had been so startled by the rawness of her accent that he couldn’t understand a word she was saying. After he asked her to repeat the question three times — What? What did you say? One more time?—she became exasperated and walked away, calling him rude. Now, that might not have been such a big insult out in California — Truely wasn’t sure at the time — but it was the ultimate insult that could be hurled your way on Mississippi soil. Hastings must have sensed that. He spent the rest of the night trying to talk to her, explain himself, apologize again, provide detailed directions pretty much anywhere else she might ever need to go. She avoided and ignored him — forcing him, naturally, to try harder. Avoiding him was pure instinct on her part. It was pure genius too. She would learn much later that Hastings was not a man used to being dismissed and ignored.

Toward the end of the night, the story went, Hastings was slightly crazed by the lost girl searching in vain for a familiar face. He didn’t even know her name — this eccentric redhead, hot tempered, high strung and Mississippi exotic. When he finally heard her laugh it was all over. That’s the way he would tell the story later. “That laugh. My God. I knew I was a goner.” Somehow he managed to convince Courtney to leave the Grateful Dead and go have a late supper with him, which he still claimed to be his crowning achievement in the art of persuasion, a talent at which he considered himself — and in the future years would in fact prove himself — to always have excelled. “I know a place you’ll like,” he’d told her. “The people speak your language there — or close to it.”

Courtney said she only agreed for two reasons: one, she never did find her friends and consequently had no ride home and not enough bus fare, and two, inhaling all the secondhand marijuana smoke was wearing down her defenses, besides making her ravenously hungry. It was really the thought of a cheeseburger, she said, that was irresistible.

At the time she was going to art school nights and had a part-time job at an art gallery downtown on Geary Street. She took the bus into the city four days a week and one day out of every weekend. Her boss liked her and paid her well enough, even helped her sell three modestly notable pieces of her own work, but still her money was always running low and she struggled to keep herself afloat. So she was not too proud to let an apologetic man express his regrets by buying her dinner.

They drove to Fat Daddy’s, a hole-in-the-wall all-night diner in Oakland that Hastings knew about. It played nonstop blues on scratched 45 records on a temperamental old jukebox. It was in what Hastings called an iffy neighborhood, but it specialized in Southern food and that was the lure. They were the only white people in the restaurant, a commonplace occurrence back in Mississippi, and Courtney’s comfort zone for sure. She guessed, according to Hastings’ definition of iffy, that she must hail from an extremely iffy homeland. The sights, sounds and smells at Fat Daddy’s helped put her at ease, which was good, since she was uncharacteristically nervous. She ordered a cheeseburger with Vidalia onions, watermelon rind pickles and a side of greens with pepper sauce. Hastings ordered the same, hold the onions.

While they waited for their food he said, “Anybody ever tell you your freckles are great?”

“Everybody,” she said. “Of course, most people are lying.”

“I’m not,” he said.

“Back home people are all about tans, you know? Freckles are not the thing down there.”

“I think they’re spectacular.”

“That’s a good start then.” She smiled. “So, what else do you like about me? I mean, so far? Let’s make a list, okay? How about my eyes? Do you love the way they sparkle and dance with light? Do you see your very soul when you look into the depths of my eyes?”

He laughed. “Do I detect a tinge of sarcasm here?”

“When I’m nervous I can get a little sarcastic I guess.” She was sipping sweet tea through a paper straw.

“Good. I like that,” he said. “So does that happen a lot with you? Men gazing into those liquid pools of yours in search of their souls?”

“Pretty much always,” she said. “Are you surprised?”

“Ask me later,” he said, “after we see if my soul makes an appearance.”

“Fair enough.” She leaned toward him. “Are you going to eat that slice of white bread?”

“Help yourself.” He passed her the red plastic bread basket.

“People in California don’t eat much white bread, do they? That’s what my roommate says. It’s not healthy, right? But in Mississippi we love it. Sunbeam is our favorite. Sometimes we fry it in a skillet with lots of butter and mayonnaise. That’s how Elvis liked his white bread.”

He watched her spread butter on her bread, fold it in half, and eat it daintily.

“Down in Mississippi we’re actually quite famous for our bad habits. Maybe you’ve heard?”

He nodded almost absentmindedly, staring at her so intently that she was slightly uneasy. “You’re staring,” she said.

“Sorry.” He smiled.

“Don’t stare.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“It’s rude.”

“Of course. Rude. Twice in one night. Damn,” he teased.

“So let’s try this again,” she said. “We’re aiming for a little pleasant conversation here. Help me out, okay?” She smiled her hundred-watt smile. “I take it you’re a Grateful Dead fan?”

“You could say so, I guess. I mean, I haven’t sold everything I own to follow them around the country in a stolen van or anything.”

“But maybe you wish you could?”

“Never,” he said. “You know how you hear people say, Oh, music is my life. I’m ready to die for the band or the art — or whatever. Well, I like music, but it’s not my life. What about you?”

“I mostly listen to country music.” She mimicked playing a fiddle for emphasis. “You know, I like a lot of different things, but when I’m alone in a car I nearly always go straight to the country music station.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I always wondered who was out there listening to that stuff.”

“Well, it was probably me. My mother and daddy too. My brother — his name is Truely — he thinks he’s black, so he mostly listens to R&B, blues, Motown — you know.”

“Country music, huh? That’s what you like?”

“That’s right. Why? Do I lose points for that?”

“I’d say you leave me no choice but to deduct a couple of points.”

She laughed and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “I’d say we might need to broaden your horizons a little, mister.”

“I like the sound of that,” he said.

“You’re flirting.”

“I am,” he agreed.

“Well, on behalf of country music just let me say this. It is some of the finest organic art produced in this country.”

“Organic?”

“Untaught. You know, spontaneous, spirit-inspired, naturally evolving.”

“And that makes it good? That it springs from musical ignorance?”

“I can see you don’t have proper respect for ignorance. Ignorance inspires great courage and free thinking — if you must know. The purest form of artistic expression is born of what you are calling ignorance. You can educate yourself right out of having even an ounce of artistic creativity left. I’ve seen that happen.”

“So you’re in favor of ignorance and against education?”

“No.” She smiled. “I’m in favor of both.”

A fat man carried two plates heaped with food and more or less slung them down on the table in front of them. “Hot,” he said. “Ya’ll need anything else?”

“More sweet tea?” Courtney rattled her empty glass.

The man nodded and walked away.

“Looks good,” she said. “I love a good hamburger.”

Hastings began to laugh.

“What?” she said. “What’s so funny?”

“I like you.”

“Already? Just wait until you get to know me.” She picked up her cheeseburger with both hands. “You’ll be out of your mind.”

“I believe you,” he said.

Courtney bit into her cheeseburger with what she later described to Truely as a swooning gesture, eyes closed. It was a messy venture too, onions and pickles sliding, sauce dripping. “You’re doing it again,” she told him.

“Staring?” He laughed. “Sorry.”

She returned the unwieldy cheeseburger to her plate and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “So let’s talk about you, okay? Tell me something interesting.”

So far Hastings had not touched his food. “How interesting exactly?”

“Not earthshaking. Just, you know, reasonably interesting.”

“Well, I don’t know how interesting you’ll find this, but I own a business. I’m one of those geeky guys who actually like to get up and go to work every day. I might be a little overeducated by your standards, but I’m hoping you can overlook that.”

“What kind of business?”

“I buy failing properties, reinvent them and sell them. Sort of like real estate rehabilitation. Littleton Properties. It’s my baby, you could say.”

“You’re Littleton Properties?”

“I am.”

“I’ve seen some of your signs down on Geary Street where I work. That’s you? Aren’t you a little young — you know, to be Littleton Properties?”

“Not really.”

“How old are you exactly? By the way, it is not rude to ask a perfect stranger how old he is when he has lured you off the beaten path like this.”

“Perfect? I guess we’re off to a good start here.”

“Just answer the question, please.”

“I’m old enough to know better,” he said. “Turned thirty in January. How about you?”

“Nowhere near old enough to know better. I’m twenty.”

“Twenty? My God. You’re a baby. You look older.”

“I’m an old soul — if that counts.”

“Wise beyond your years?”

“Definitely.”

“Me too,” he said.

WHILE THEY ATE, with Smokey Robinson and Muddy Waters crooning in the background, Courtney learned some things about Hastings Littleton. He was originally from Connecticut — a man she might have fondly referred to as a Yankee back in Mississippi — but he had come west to college and claimed the West Coast had won him over entirely.

He was an only child born to older parents. His dad had died of a heart attack when Hastings was twenty-four. His mother had been diagnosed with dementia shortly afterward and had died two years ago from an overdose of medication. Hastings never knew whether she ingested a lethal dosage to stave off the inevitable or whether in a state of confusion she continued to retake her medicines because she was unable to remember having already done so. She’d lost her short-term memory almost entirely — remembered her father but not her husband, her childhood but not her child. It was heartbreaking the way Hastings explained it. “She wasn’t the sort of woman who would want to live wearing a diaper, not knowing who she was or where she was,” he said. “Sometimes death is merciful.”

“That’s sad,” Courtney sa