Another Short Story

Her three best friends decided it'd be better to sit a ways back from the dance floor so that she wouldn't see their poorly-hidden discontentment. It was a monumental tragedy, their marriage of a mere 2 hours. Not a soul in either party condoned it and not a peep in either party was heard in objection. Everyone politely kept their mouths closed for the record-breaking 3 week courtship.

On one hand, it was a beautiful wedding. That hand is the shallow, materialistic hand. On the other hand, she had to ask the best man what her new father-in-law's name was at the reception. So while the cake, with its 5 lavishly iced tiers, was a perfect shade of ivory, it couldn't outshine the uneasiness that crippled the Civic Center as George and Marla first stepped in as husband and wife, smiling with every tooth displayed. As the evening progressed, still, no one quite knew what to do with themselves. Some sat firmly in their seats, enjoying the lamb that was purchased with a drop in the barrel of her daddy's oil fortune.

George was an alcoholic, but no one at the wedding knew that. Their disapproval was over the 3 week engagement.

The day before he met Marla, George told his cell mates he'd see them later and put up bail for himself at the Rusk County Jail. To celebrate the cessation of his unplanned 3-day sabbatical from spirits, he drove back home to Overton where he promptly downed a 5th of whiskey and passed out in the bed of his truck. That's when Marla found him.

She'd been working nights at the Piggly Wiggly behind her parents' back. The thought of their daughter lifting a finger for money--much less the wages of a grocer--was shameful. Her family fit the old money, mineral rights, Henderson-bred description to a T. Nothing about Marla's dress, demeanor, or diction seemed common, yet her blood, that was too rich to act like it, always seemed contradictorily suitable for a lower class.

At 17, with a fluency in French, Spanish, Latin, and a bit of Greek, her hired tutor deemed her eligible for a high school diploma and helped her fill out an application to SMU, her parents' alma mater and thus, the school she would attend. Although an easily attainable full-ride academic scholarship would negate the need for money to buy her way in, her parents weren't about to let her take a handout from anyone but them. All four years of tuition, room and board were paid in full as well as multi-million dollar donations to the Athletic, English, and Music departments before she set foot on campus. She would, without argument, attend Southern Methodist University. Period.

Marla, had she been given the option of choosing her own path, would have fancied a life of car theft or dog fighting. But, never one to talk back, she kept her feelings on the institutionalization of collegiate education to herself, gritted her teeth, and packed 18 of her finest hats, 4 trunks of clothes, 3 trunks of shoes, and a conspicuously hand-carried leather bound copy of King James' Bible. While strategically executed tears flowed down her face, she looked out the window as they drove away from the familiarity of oil derricks and pine trees. Her mind knotted violently with the excited hope that she'd never go back.

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As her parents' now empty car drove away from her dormitory, Marla stood waving on the lawn until they faded out of sight. She spent the next three days claiming Mono, dropping classes, selling her clothes to the girls in the dorm who could afford her inflation, and hitching rides to the bus station with 1 bag and wads of cash hidden in every pocket and nook she could find. Her reimbursed tuition was returned to the hands of all the university's communicative powers in a plea for them to keep silent regarding her departure. They eagerly obliged and thanked her again for her parents' generous donations.

Smart enough to know how to run away but still too well-bred to walk anywhere, it only took her 18 hours to hitch to the bus station. The freedom smelled like cocaine. It was an initial rush that felt undoubtedly worth every chance she'd be caught or end up dead. But the after taste sliding down the back of her nervously swallowing throat burned, igniting fear and the encroaching sense of regret. Before she had a chance to make friends with the conservative opposition in her head, she walked onto the first train that stopped in front of her.

Two hours later she was in Overton. A mere 20 minute drive from her home town of Henderson, she first flinched at the thought of stepping off the train and accidentally seeing her parents. But she exhaled, remembering that they never had been, nor would they ever have reason to be in Overton. The only time she remembered actually leaving Henderson, aside from the day they took her to SMU, was when she and her mother would go shopping for the day in Dallas. Her only grandfather died in Alabama when she was 5. An only child of older parents who were only children themselves, she didn't grow up around grandparents, she grew up around their money. For the first time in her life, the lack of proximal relatives she could potentially run into was a relief instead of a longing.

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Marla had mentally engaged in one crush growing up--Lon Dryer. He was 22 years her senior and was known by all in Henderson as the screw up son of Loretta and Bart Dryer, owners of Dryer Drug and Sundry. Lon felt accomplished for having moved out of his parents' house at 30, but their financial support of his "independent" life still gave him the reputation of a tethered, apron string-clinging screw up. Marla liked screw ups.

Lon was her only personified crush growing up, but she had quite the mental love affair with establishments suited for those of a different tax bracket. She was fascinated by bars, strip joints, back alleys, and the run down block of houses off the highway. In particular, she was always allured by the Piggly Wiggly. It was no surprise that after her escape from SMU, that was the first place she went.

For the first three nights after the train pulled into Overton Station, Marla would stay in a tiny hotel downtown under the pseudonym "Janet Kingsley." She had no personal reason for picking that name. She just felt it suited her nicely and complimented her short, tight, curly brown hair and thick rimmed glasses with grace. She left for college as a blond with the eyesight of an arctic fighter pilot.

Those first three days in Overton were spent lollygagging up and down the aisles of the Piggly Wiggly. She studied how the shelves were stocked. She memorized the order, shelf level, and inventory of canned soup flavors. She found herself jealous of the types of people that came in to shop there. They were so normal. They obviously cooked for themselves because she saw them buy meat--the women knew how much chicken to buy. They would tell the man at the counter how many pounds of chicken they wanted to buy and Marla was overcome with jealousy.

On the fourth day of her new life in Overton, she realized for the first time in her entire life that hotel rooms and food and hair dye cost money, and that when you spend money, it goes away and then it's not stuffed in a sock anymore--it's stuffed in the sock of the cashier, and that if she were going to pull off this new life as Janet Kingsley, she'd need to find a way to support herself.

Quickly ruling out prostitution, though, she pondered, it would validate the gritty life she longed for, she set her job search efforts toward the Piggly Wiggly. She bought their finest tube of red lipstick and their smoothest pair of nude stockings, asked for an application, and headed to her hotel room. The store manager agreed to interview her the next morning.

As she curved the ends of her gel-soaked hair around the middle of the velvet roller, turning it upwards until she pinned it tightly to her hea, she interviewed herself in the mirror. She asked every question she could think of that would necessitate a fabricated answer. She had a new hometown, a new family, new siblings and a new identity. Everything about her was new and she loved herself this way.

That night, she didn't even pull back the covers. She sat in the wooden armed chair by the window for 2 hours and stared at the tops of oil derricks in the distance, wondering if her parents were wondering about her. They had no reason not to think she was in school, but still, she wondered if Janet Kingsley seemed familiar to anyone with a big mouth that she may have passed on the street. She decided she would call them the next evening and spent at least 4 hours constructing possible answers for the questions they would inevitably ask. Eight hours were spent restlessly interviewing herself in every foreseeable circumstance. She got an A on her first English Literature essay. Her father was in the army and she was raised all over--she and her 5 sisters and 2 brothers. Her father? He was a retired mechanic. Every life story she sewed together that night was new and she liked her life that way.

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"Please, have a seat, Miss Kingsley," Mr. Canthrop said, motioning towards the stiff leather chair that faced his desk.

"Now, let's get to it. No need to fiddle faddle, now is there? You want a job, isn't that right, Miss Kingsley?"

"Yes sir. In fact, I'd say I NEED a job, more than I'd LIKE to have one, sir. My mother's fallen quite ill. The doctor talks about an iron lung and it's become a burden to my father--he served in the first world war, you know. He's missing an eye and hasn't worked in years. So, yes, oh most certainly, sir, I need a job. And I'm skilled! I have skills! I can type! Well I know that wouldn't be applicable here but I'm a whiz at dictations if you ever need me to do them. I also memorized your inventory of canned soups. I just love canned soup."

"Well, aren't you zealous," he said in a tone that was half shock, half condescending. "I'll tell you what, I need one person to do two jobs around here. Do you think a pretty young girl like yourself could handle two jobs?"

"Oh yes sir. I would be the best you've seen at both jobs--I won't let you down, sir!"

"Would you like to know what they are before you make such bold claims, Miss Kingsley?"

"I know I would impress you, sir...but what are they, exactly?"

"Well, I need a stock b-- person, and I need someone to do a little job we like to call 'meat trashing.' Meat trashing is when you bag up all the old rotten meat that gets thrown into the pile on the floor at the back of the deli counter and then put that bag inside another bag and then bag it again and then tie it up real tight and walk it over to the dumpster in the corner of our lot. There's usually about 10 or 20 bags worth of meat. It smells obscene. This has to happen every Tuesday night. Then you'll put cinder blocks on top of the dumpster lid to keep the coons out."

Marla was in a state of pure elation at the thought of bagging old rotten meat. Truth be told, she'd never even seen raw meat. She saw meat that was cooked and garnished and sitting on her mother's china. And to think that when she wasn't bagging old meat, she could arrange soup cans and silently mingle among the lower to middle class...she was heel tappingly excited.

"I would be honored, sir."

Mr. Canthrop cleared his throat and tried not to smile. "Alright then, you can start tomorrow."

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After she was hired, Marla packed her tiny suitcase and left the hotel for a small, 1 bedroom apartment about half a mile from her new office. The walk to and from work invigorated her and made her feel alive. Not surprisingly, she'd been chauffeured around for most of her childhood. The blisters on her feet felt magnificent.

On her 18th day of working for the Overton Piggly Wiggly, at 11:30 pm, Marla began throwing scraps of rancid steak into garbage bags and picking up tiny chicken bones like they were as clean as fallen pencils. Humming to herself as she squatted in the shadows and culled through pig intestines, the rest of the employees began locking doors and turning off lights. She had about 3 more hours of bagging ahead of her and her heart was as calm as the river Nile.

The darkness of night or of her new life in general didn't scare her, it befriended her--it knew her and complimented her and reassured her that it would always be there to give her deeper breaths and fuller dreams. The drunks would wander on and off the lot as she'd carry bag after bagged bag of meat to the dumpster. Sometimes they'd pass out, mid-whistle, and collapse to the ground out of the corner of her eye. She didn't walk with a flirtatious bounce but she didn't ignore them either. She treated them as if they were an elderly man asking for directions. She felt like they were extended family members...but still family in some sense. She had a strange respect for them and would have sat down to talk if she hadn't had a job to do. Well, it was a mixture of respect and tremendous amounts subconscious desires to nurture. She didn't want to necessarily fix the old drunks, she just wanted to take care of them. Old drunks always love sweet girls who'll take care of them.

That night, that 18th night, after she took the last bag of sloshy, maggot attracting meat to the dumpster, she sat down next to a blue truck parked in the last space of the farthest corner of the lot. She picked at the hem on the bottom of her dress as her mind flipped pages before the first paragraph on the left page was even finished. She was electric in that way that only happens when you're IN love or doing something THAT you love and she had no idea what time it was. She planned to go home, take a bath, stay up the rest of the night reading a novel. She wasn't scheduled to work the next day so she could read novels all day and set a new permanent in her hair. And call her mother.

That night was the happiest she'd ever been in her entire life but the fix was waning. It wasn't enough thrill. She stood up from the curb, dusted off her hands on her dress, and checked her hair in the side mirror of the blue truck.

"Hello there, pretty lady. What's your name?" He mustered as he sat up and flopped against the side of the truck bed.

Only mildly startled, Marla responded instinctively as if it were normal for people to sleep in truck beds in parking lots. " My name is M--," she quickly turned the "M" sound into a laugh that pursed her lips and furiously tried to think of what to do next so that it didn't sound like she faked a name after making an "M" sound.

"Mmm," she laughed, "Wouldn't you like to know?!," she accidentally flirted. Her lower lip instinctively tucked for two reasons: she was panicking for inadvertently being cutesy with this stranger and 2. George was handsome. Much more handsome than Lon. Her crush on George happened in a matter of seconds and was reciprocated by George in equal time.

"I want to buy you pancakes in a couple hours," he said out of drunken hunger and lack of filter.

"I...have a boyfriend and I don't think he'd be too happy if I went and ate with another man," she said cautiously.

"What's his name?"

She paused, "Ronald Satchett"

"No it ain't."

"It most certainly is!"

"I saw that pretty blue eye of yours look across the street when you was trying to figure out what name to say. You said Satchett because you saw Satchett Hardware across the street. And I know the Satchett's don't got a son so there ain't no way you is goin' with one."

She paused and thought about how much she wanted to eat breakfast across from this terribly handsome drunk man.

"You never told me your name," she said.

"George Thurmon."

"No kidding?! Like Thurmon Bank of Henderson? Wait--that's you? You're Mr. and Mrs. Thurmon's son? George Thurmon III?! That's YOU?" She pulled her strained neck back upright and dropped her eyebrows, worried that her open recognition might jeopardaize her anonimity if he asked too many questions about how she recognized him. His drunken state reassured her that he probably wouldn't.

Growing up, Marla knew the Thurmons as a family that everyone in town loved but no one in town really knew. She heard what a delightful woman Mrs. Thurmon was--always friendly and gracious but never open to lengthy conversation. She was always on her way to some place. Mr. Thurmon was as honest a banker as you could find. Everyone in town put their money in his hands and he proved to be a man of integrity.

The Thurmons never had dinner parties, never attended the football games--in fact, she wasn't even quite sure where in Henderson they lived. But her mother considered Mrs. Thurmon a friend nonetheless. All she knew about them was that they had a son with special needs who died when she was 4 or 5 and that their other son, George, was this "brilliant" "handsome" boy that no one ever really saw. Her friends would say they saw him at such and such place and claim that his eyes were darker than coffee or that his arms were stronger than steel. One of Marla's friends swore on a stack of magazines that she saw him lift a car once. The less people saw him out in real life, the more lavish the stories of his appearance and ability. He was kind of an enigma.

That night, as she looked in George's eyes, only memories of what was said about his family resurfaced, but there were no actual memories of his family themselves. It was strange because she'd grown up "knowing him" as a son of these fine pillars of the community but had never actually seen him in person until now.

"That's me. Thaaaat's my name it is. Torge Germun. ha! You surprised to see me here drunk and sleepin' in my truck?"

"Precisely..."

"My parents know I ain't made much of myself but they ain't told a soul and me neither. They always mind they business. Keep it short."

"But--I heard you went off to Yale or some Yankee school like that?"

"Well, course when the time come for me to go off to school they told as many people as they could that I "had applied" or "might be going" to all kinds of fancy schools. But I'm here. I ain't gone nowhere but here to Overton. Nobody knows me in Overton. They would know my name if I told em--but I ain't told it to anybody but you. To everybody else I'm just a bum. Sometimes I call myself Charro because I like charro beans. But you're pretty, you get to know my name. Now tell me yours."

He slid back down into the bed of the truck and laid down flat with his hands behind his head and sighed as if he'd crawled into a feather bed.

"Janet Kingsley."

"Janet Kingsley. Hhhhhhhiiii love you Janet Kingsley," he mumbled, nearly falling asleep.

Marla didn't walk home after he fell asleep. She stood there and wondered why she was still standing there for a few minutes until she crawled into the cab of the truck and fell asleep on the seat. A few hours later, she woke up to George looking at her through the driver's side window.

"Wake up, Ruth."

"Ruth?"

"Ain't you read the Bible? Ruth crashed near Bozo one night when she barely knew him because she secretly loved him...or somethin' like that. You secretly love me, don't you, Ruth?"

George wasn't drunk anymore and Marla realized the disparity between his drunk personality and his sober personality was slim. That realization was what made her admit to being hungry.
That realization made her all the more attracted.

"Were you teasing about pancakes, George Thurmon?"

"You steer and I'll push the peddles. Let's go."

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3 days after George and Marla ate pancakes together, he took her to Longview to buy a ring. They were in love. Really, sleep deprivingly, in love. They talked more honestly with each other than most married couples ever do. They'd fought 16 times in 3 days over tangible things that actually mattered. And they'd made up 18 times. The two extra makeups were simply because they couldn't keep their lips off each other. He drank himself into a slight coma on day 4 of their love affair, which caused fight number 17, but when he woke up, he apologized and Marla forgave him. She really did love him.

They had not a clue what day it was, what time it was, or what the future could or even should even hold. They fixed each other so well that to try and dwell on anything but themselves made the problems worse. He may have still been a drunk with Marla, but at least now he was able to sleep inside. And at least now Marla could be Marla. She told him her name, her last name, her family's names. He knew where she came from and he knew why she'd run away and he knew that, for now, he was thrilling enough to keep her still for a while.

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On day 7, Marla recieved a phone call from her mother while George was at the store buying cigarettes, milk, and moonshine. He bought the moonshine from a bum in the parking lot, naturally.

"Marla, I know you dropped out of school, I know where you are, and I know what you're doing," she exploded as Marla picked up the receiver.

"I'm apalled. Absolutely apalled. Such a disgrace. You have embarassed your father and me and I am terribly...." Her rant went on for 12 minutes.

Marla was numb to the berating. She'd heard nothing but "don't" and "should" her entire life. She only wondered what her mother actually did and did not know about her current life.

"And what do you think about my choices, mother?" She said with her newfound sense of bold sarcasm.

"If you were so DETERMINED to work in retail, we could have found you a job at a nice clothing boutique closer to campus. You didn't have to go and throw away your education. You know, Mrs. Delaney said she saw you wearing an apron outside of the (she whispered) Piggly Wiggly in OVER-ton. I called the manager to see if this was true and he said to call you. It took me 20 minutes to get your telephone number from him. Where are you even living? A brothel?!"

Marla wondered if he delved at all into her exact job description.

"I don't like school," she said bluntly.

"Well--"

Marla could hear her mother's arms fly into the air.

"There's plenty of girls your age who don't go to school. I mean, for goodnness sakes, Marla, you don't have to work at a grocery store to avoid college--You could get married and raise a family."

Marla froze. Getting married was exactly what she was about to do. The qualities of her relationship were different than she knew her mother would endorse, but the premise of her story would sell, nonetheless.

All in one breath she blurted, "Mother, I've met someone. I'm in love and we're getting married. I...think you'll like him."

Marla smiled devilishly and realized that her mother really WOULD like him. George was the cream of the pure-bred crop in everyone else's eyes. She wouldn't even have to try to make him sound like not a drunk. His reputation was golden--ambiguous, but golden.

Then, Marla spoke the words she knew any mother would love to hear.

"In fact," she said, "you're friends with his mother!"