Izzy wasn’t known to keep secrets.  As a matter of fact, she loved being the center of attention any time she could share some juicy gossip, so it wasn’t long until most of Pittsville heard Jo’s ‘arrival’ story, and when I was older, parts of it trickled back to me as well, so I may as well include that in this journal, along with a fairly accurate account of what Izzy blabbed.

        “I suppose you’d like to know jest how Pat and I took up with each other,” Jo asked Izzy.  She had invited that witch for a ‘chit chat’ on a Thursday evening when my dad was working.  This was her first opportunity to get to know any of the neighbors, and she had seen Izzy sitting on her front steps having a smoke.  She called to Izzy and asked if she had time to come over for a drink.

          Izzy, probably thinking she had nothing better to do with her evening other than scream at her kids, sauntered over.  After pouring each of them a hefty Wild Turkey straight up, Jo began to regale her with bits and pieces of  “mah rather grand courtship:” 

           There were four criteria for receiving the envious title of “Operator of the Elevators”  at Pitts Department Store, she told Izzy.  The girl had to be pretty and shapely. she must be smart enough to memorize the merchandise located on the various floors, she had to understand the mechanics of making the elevator go ‘up’ or ‘down’, and lastly,  she had to put up with the sexual advances of Mr. Landers, the man who was in charge of hiring the girls.  “Let’s face it, Iz–between us girls, I scored a hundred percent in all four categories, if’n you get mah drift!”

          She confessed these intimate details to Izzy.  “Get this, Izzy–on the very first day after I was hired, I smiled at the assistant manager of the Ladies Fashion Salon, chattin’ him up, and in no time at all, ah was smugglin’ him into my room at the Y.W.C.A.  You probably know him–his name’s Mike and he lives down our street with his brother Joseph.  You know–that house with all the flashy flowers?  Five years later, it dawned on me that Mike was always gonna batch it.   I knew that dog wuzn’t gonna hunt when somebuddy tol’ me he said “Why should I own just one filly when I can have the whole damned stable.””

          Evidently Jo proceeded to tell her new-found friend that for the next five yeaars, she was still smuggling men in and out of her YWCA room–confirmed bachelors, and unfortunately, some married men as well; however she was beginning to realize she just might end up an ‘old maid’.  Then fate stepped in– the day my dad, Pat Tucker entered her elevator.

         She concluded her story to the gossip-monger that  he had gone to Pitts Department Store to purchase a few dresses and some underwear for me.  It just so happened that the elevator he chose was being operated by Miss Jo.  He inquired as to where he might find clothing for a child whose mother had died the previous year, and she was now in need of larger-sized clothing.

          I kind of imagine she had an epiphany, envisioning herself in a white wedding dress as gossamer as cotton candy, a ten-foot train, eight bridesmaids, a magnificent reception, and a most romantic honeymoon, (or at the very least, a meal ticket or two.)   “Izzy, I jes lowered muh eyes, batted them lashes and whispered in a sultry way, Why ah’d be evah so happy to take you personally if you’all kin wait ’til muh half-hour break.” 

          “Well, Iz, he waited and we dated for two years–and get this, I never slept with him, and he still thinks I wuz a virgin all that time.  Guess it worked, ‘cuz he finally popped the question. He knew he wuzn’t gonna get any unless we wuz married.  That ‘s when he took me to meet his worthless little brats. Now you understand, this is jest between us girls?”

          “Jeez–that’s some life you’ve led,” Izzy sighed in admiration, “and I won’t breath a word to anyone;” however as Izzy was promising Jo her cofidentiality, she was mentally ticking off just who she would spill the beans to first.

          Izzy later related to a few of her drinking buddies, “At that point, Jo knocked the ashes off her cigarette and squashed it in the ashtray with the other half dozen she’d smoked while telling me her life history, drained the rest of the Wild Turkey, and then dragged me by the arm up to their bedroom.  She pushed her clothes apart on the closet rod, and proceded to pull out what she said were her two most prized posessions:  a stupid fake jeweled tiara, and her gabardine operator’s uniform.  And then, guess what?  She looks at me with a big frown and says “Damn, I came that close to gettin’ those gold epaulets!”

          I know my dad fell in love with those enormous brown eyes with the mascaraed lashes, her perky bosom, teensy weensy feet, and that fake southern drawl.  She kept telling him, according to Izzy’s gossip, that “it’s important for me to remain a virgin until mah weddin’ day.”  Oh, brother!

          Jo fell in love with his handsome face, his fairly new car, and our little house with the paid-up mortgage.  She also fell in love with his wallet, and she feigned falling in love with Teddy and me.  Once she moved into our house, she immediately quit her operator’s position at Pitts, and became a ‘lady of leisure’.

          “I suppose you all’d like to know how your daddy and I took up with each other?” Jo asked Teddy and me one evening at the dinner table.  My dad was working late at the auto agency, and Jo was having her after-dinner cigarette and whiskey.

          We sat there, not particularly caring if she told us this story or not.  I would like to have said, “Who cares.”  However, flicking the ashes off her cigarette, and draining the last of her glass, she began:

          “Twelve years before I got here to Pittsville, I grew up in a little country section of Georgia.  Wouldn’t you know–during muh senior year of high school, the most mahvelous thing happened to me.  I was voted “Miss Georgia Peach of the Month.”  They presented me with a sparkly tiara, two tickets to our local cinema, four jars of peach jam, and a voucher for a bushel basket full of fresh peaches when pickin’ season began!  What’dya think of that?”

           “Hmmmm,” we both mumbled.

          “Now, when ah graduated, my aunt Polly– ah called her ‘aunt Polly’, but her real name was ‘Pollyanna’, invited me to come to Pittsville for a two week visit.  My auntie was real sophisticated.  She clerked in the handkerchief aisle at Pitts Department store.  Well, one day, she took me to lunch in the Tea Room at Pitts.  Oh, my, the specialty of the day was a big scoop of chicken salad, a ring of pineapple with cottage cheese and a sticky bun.  All for a dollar!  And you shoulda seen the waitresses.  All dressed in stiff gray uniforms with starched white aprons, frilly caps all bobby-pinned to the tops of their heads, and the ugliest sensible white shoes.  Mebbe I’ll take the both of you there some day.”

          “Sunshine and me have been there before,” Teddy bragged.

          Hardly stopping to take a breath, Jo continued.  “My ‘ol home town, Porter, Georgia didn’t have a department store, and let me tell you, I wandered about all wide-eyed at the wondrous sights:  rack upon rack of fancy ladies clothing, an entire shoe department with displays of the latest in foot fashion, and my God—you wouldn’t believe the underwear section. Mannequins wearin’ brassieres in all sorts of colors, and panties almost too shocking to behold; sorry, Teddy if I’m embarrassing you, but it’s the damned truth!”

          “Teddy and I have been to Pitts a few times,” I stated.

          This fell on deaf ears, for she proceded to rattle on.  “There was an elevator leadin’ to the lower level where the Men’s Clothing Department was found, a mezzanine where chocolates, sodas and the Tea Room were located.  On the second floor there were all kinds of electrical appliances and kitchen gadgets. The third floor had children’s clothing, the fourth floor was loaded with furniture, and they even had a piano department.  You could buy a piano, or even just a sheet of music which a lady would play for you on one of the Baldwins.”

         ” Yeah, we’ve heard the music,” we both said in unison. 

          Lighting another cigarette, and barely hesitating, she went on with her story of how she loved the elevator operators’ stunning uniforms of soft green gabardine with brass buttons parading down the front, and red epaulets on the shoulders, with the ‘captain’ of the elevators distinguished by epaulets of gleaming gold.  “Now get this–in addition, the operators wore immaculate white gloves, and a fresh boutonniere was pinned to their lapels.  And every Monday before the store opened, they were given a manicure and a wave at no cost, plus a five percent discount on any one item purchased from the Ladies Fashion Salon–once a month.” 

          After this long-winded speech, I looked over and noticed that her cigarette had burned so close to her fingers, I was deciding if I should run and get the first-aid kit just in case, but darn it, she noticed, and stubbed it out just in time.

          “Those operators would sit inside their cages on three-legged stools just waitin’ for the passengers to file in.  When the time was right, the captain would saunter by, and if the elevator was full, she’d snap the little yellow clicker in between her fingers.  Then that there operator would close the doors, pull the lever, and announce to all her passengers as they went up, what merchandise was on each floor. ”

          Jo went on and on.  I looked over, and Teddy’s head was propped up by his fist, and his eyes were closed.  I wasn’t so lucky.

          “Those ladies had their noses up so high in the air, there was frostbite on ’em,” Jo commented.  “Why it’s a true bonus if they as much as smile or even speak to you.  I must confess, that’s part of the reason ah loved it so.  I wanted to be jes like them.  I wanted to feel like ‘somebody””!

          Jo continued in rapturous tones about the haughty elegance of those women, how she aspired to be one, and how, after her two-week visit had ended, she traveled back to her little town in Georgia just long enough to bid her parents ‘goodbye’.

         ” My mama  said, “Sugah, I wish you’d a change your mind, but if you’ve got a hankerin’ to see the world, I guess there’s no way we’re gonna stop you.  Just remember what I been preachin’ to you since you was a young’un–you got to hang on to that virginity of yours ’til your weddin’ day.  No man wants to find out on his weddin’ night that he’s latched onta sum’un else’s used goods.  I shouldn’t a told you that part, Sunshine, but it looks like Teddy’s fallen asleep.”

          “Anyways, my daddy looked heavenward and sang out “Amen”!  The very next day, I gathered up muh baby doll shoes, some pretty clothes, muh high school diploma, and the jeweled tiara; packed ’em all into a little ‘ol cardboard suitcase, walked the ten blocks to the train station and purchased a one-way ticket to Pittsville.  That’s when I took up livin’ at the YWCA.”

          My daddy loved to tell Teddy and me of his friendship with our ‘Uncle Tap’.  Theodore Alan Pitts, of the founding Pitts family was known to all as ‘Tap’, and my dad, Patrick Alvin Tucker was nicknamed ‘Pat’ — not only because it was his first name shortened, but, like uncle Tap, they were his initials.

          They had been best friends since their earliest memories when they attended grade school together.  Both were outstanding athletes and leaders among their friends.  Over the years they shared their love of sports, their homework assignments, and their girlfriends.  One, in particular, ( and my father didn’t divulge this until after our mother’s death,)  Annie Noreen Donahue, was liked by both.

          In the summertime, Tap and Pat hired themselves out for the usual summer jobs–washing cars, mowing lawns, life-guarding at Tarpin Lake. Tap could have relied on his family’s wealth to pad his wallet, but he insisted on earning his own spending money.  In my dad’s case, the meager amount he was able to acquire during the summer was meant to last him for the entire year.

          Annie’s family had known my daddy’s family all of their adult lives, for they had moved  to our street within six months of each other.  Her parents had produced five sons, and Annie was their only daughter.  She was the youngest of the brood.  Her mother had died during Annie’s birth, and consequently, by the time she was ten, Annie became the ‘mother’ to her older brothers who adored her.  When she was in high school, her brothers had married and moved away.

          Annie was known to be the area’s most responsible baby-sitter.  She never left her charges unattended, and was painstakingly patient in teaching each and every child in her care the appreciation of nature and art.  From the time she was very young, she never had any aspirations beyond being married to a good man and raising a healthy and happy family.

          In their free time, the three would ride their bicycles to the lake with Annie bringing along her sketch pad, and a picnic basket with their lunch.  While the boys tossed the football around, wrestled, or swam, she would sit on the blanket and sketch.  Annie was in love with both of them, I found out much later.  Although Annie thought she was just a ‘pal’ to the two of them, this was not so either.  I found that out later as well.

          Annie and my dad would sometimes meet up with Tap, who lived in a better section of town at Pitts Movie Theatre on Saturday afternoons.   The three would sit in the back row watching the serial westerns and cartoons, sharing one bag of popcorn, and occasionally tossing some of it at unsuspecting patrons in the dark.  One afternoon, they were caught and asked to leave until they could conduct themselves in an adult manner.  Later that same night, they sneaked back to the theater where they pasted popcorn over the entire window of the box office.  This was a story that even as adults, they would double over in laughter each time they told and retold the tale. Teddy and I heard it more than once.

          By the time they entered high school, they were still enjoying each other’s company.  Annie graduated, received a part-time scholarship to a near-by university where she majored in art, and later graduated with honors.  Within six months of coming back home, her father died suddenly, and her generous brothers insisted that she continue to live in her father’s small house.    Tap attemded an Ivy League school in the East, and majored in business.  My dad received a four-year scholarship to a small college in Iowa.  During his sophomore year, he met a sweet girl, fell in love with her and after a ‘whirlwind romance’, married her–my mother, Sally Tyndale.  Neither finished college and the two of them came back to Pittsville where they took up residence on the street where my dad had grown up.

          Teddy and I had been students of Annie Donahue at Pitts Grade School.  She taught there since her college graduation, although I heard that she had skipped a year of teaching, but that was before I was even born.  She was beloved by all the students; however outside the school’s premises she was unusually aloof.  In particular, to me.  This always made me feel sad, and I could never explain it away, except for the fact that although only a first grader, even ‘stick-figures’ were beyond my artistic grasp, and my paint smock always had more dribbles on it than anyone else’s.

          After mother’s murder, Annie was the first person to offer my father her condolences.  To my brother and me, she gave a hastily painted, but beautiful portrait she had painted of our mother, and much to my surprise, she embraced me with such tenderness, that I thought perhaps I had only imagined her reticence toward me. 

          As I sit here writing about my past, and trying to tie all of this together, it is significant to note how generous Annie’s gesture truly was.

       These next few pages I guess are just my imagining of what must have happened in the next few months.  I have nothing to prove this—only from knowing what Jo was like, so it’s not beyond the realm of reality that this may have occurred.   I’m going to indulge myself with a little fantasy.  After all, nobody’s going to read my printed thoughts.

       My dad, Pat Tucker, worked at Pitts Auto Agency.  By the time Miss Jo snagged him, he had become by far Pitts Auto’s best salesman, and newly promoted to manager.

       Bobby Pitts was given the store when his daddy decided to retire.  Since Bobby knew little about the auto business other than driving new cars off the lot at all hours of the night,  my dad pretty much ran the place.  He was focused, dedicated and honest.

       One late morning, shortly after Jo had become a lady of leisure, she walked the five blocks to the auto store in her strappy, toeless heels, a tight skirt, orange in color, with a snug sleeveless yellow top.  Gobs of gaudy jewelry completed her ensemble.  Waving her freshly manicured nails in the breeze to dry, wobbling along the uneven concrete sidewalk and occasionally stumbling on a crack, she was bringing our dad the lunch he’d forgotten.

       She had yet to meet Bobby, and was eager to do so, for his reputation with the women of the town had preceded him.  When she arrived, she stopped short of entering, and took a full five minutes to pat her curls, apply a smidgeon of fresh makeup, and wipe a bit of perspiration from her upper lip.  Dabbing a finger full of ‘My Sin’ behind her ears,on her wrists,and into her cleavage with one hand, she straightened the seams of her stockings with the other.

       Tapping on the door of Pat’s sparsely furnished office, she opened it, minced across the wooden floor with her heels making staccato clicks, planted herself in Pat’s lap, and kissed him seductively.  She hoped he got a good taste of her new lipstick fron the Avon Lady.

       “You sure are tempting, Jo, but who knows when the boss might drop in, so save a little of this for later, and behave yourself.”

       Reluctantly, Jo crossed the room and pouting, plunked herself into a chair.  At that moment, who should swagger in but Bobby himself.

       ” Bobby, I’d like you to meet my wife, Jo.  Jo, this is Bobby Pitts, my boss and the proud owner of this place,” Pat said.

       “Well, little lady, I’ve heard a lot about you, and I must say, Pat described you perfectly.”  With that, Bobby looked Jo up and down, hesitating slightly at her firm, perky breasts, her tiny waist, and her sexy shoes, making a mental note that Pat’s wife definitely had possibilities to be explored at a future date.

       Jo pulled a cigarette from her gold case, waggled it between her fingers, crossed her legs provocatively, and before Pat had a chance to light it, Bobby took two steps at a time to reach her first.

       “Why I do thank you, kind sir,” Jo drawled, bouncing her curls close to his face.

       In one short hour, Jo had nicknamed him ‘Bobby Bubba’ which both amused and intrigued him.  Laughing at his jokes, she told  a few suggestive ones of her own, much to Pat’s displeasure and embarrassment, but Bobby seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.

       Rearranging her skirt seductively from time to time, exposing the snaps on her garter belt, she dangled one of her petite high heels from her brightly painted toenail.

       “You’ll have to see that Pat takes you out for a ride in that new red roadster out on the lot,” Bobby chuckled.  “Better yet, Pat, if you’re too busy, I’d be happy to take Jo for a spin some day soon–if that’s alright with you, of course.”

       “Why, of course it’d be all right, Bobby Bubba–ma baby wants me to have a good time–and what better way to do it that  than to make the boss happy,” she responded innocently.

       Somewhat perplexed by this exchange, Pat answered, “Well, Bobby, I guess I could spare her for a while, but only if I’m too busy to take her for a ride myself.  ”  Looking at Bobby, he said,  “Maybe Bobby’d let me take a longer lunch hour and  you and I could take that roadster and have ourselves a picnic, Jo.”  Bobby remained silent, and Jo registered little emotion.

       Staying a while longer, she made delightful little small talk in her melodious southern drawl, which languidly wrapped its way around and into Bobby’s ears, as she lightly caressed the hair on his arm, as if to make a point of her flirtatious and trivial conversation.

       As she got up to leave, Jo gave her husband a peck on the cheek, then went to Bobby, shook his hand delicately–just long enough for the scent of her exotic perfume to linger on his skin after she was gone.  As she closed the door, a smile appeared on her cupid bow of a mouth.

       Bobby spent a good ten minutes making idle talk with Pat, sitting across from him in the old leather office chair with a couple of Popular Mechanics magazines placed strategically across his lap.  Bobby Pitts had definitely met his match.  “Strange,” he thought, “if Pat’s wife hadn’t died, I never would have had the chance to mee this juicy little tidbit.”

       It seems that the new manager of Pitts Auto Agency may have been hard working and honest, but he was also terribly naive.

       Three years after the murder, my father invited a lady to dinner. Although he knew little about cooking, and even less about fancy cooking, it was evident that this was someone he wished to impress. My brother and I had never eaten shrimp before, but dad  made a trip to the local provision company and brought home two dozen raw shrimp. He bought a six-pack of beer–more expensive than what he had ever purchased before, bread from the local bakery, and lastly, a trip to the grocery where he bought not only cheese and crackers, but enough greenery for a splendid salad, a whole chicken, baking potatoes and sauce for the shrimp.

       Serendipitously, dessert had been provided quite unexpectedly by Eddie Morrison’s wife Izzy–undoubtedly with the hope that Pat might share it with her, some night when Eddie was laboring at his night-shift job.  I was over nine now, and Teddy had become a strapping fourteen-year old. We were both pressed into service and among the three of us, we managed to complete the cooking, and cleaned up the kitchen in a fairly proper fashion.

       Inspecting his ears and neck, daddy admonished Teddy once again: “Teddy–march yourself back to the bathroom and this time, use soap and water, and if my next inspection doesn’t prove you’ve done so, I’ll come in and scrub for you! And Sunshine, for God’s sake, put on a clean dress. The one you’re wearing is spotted with everything we’re having for dinner,” he complained, while picking a piece of shrimp shell from my hair.

       After mother’s death, not too much attention had been paid to my  appearance.  My clothing consisted mainly of hand-me-downs from sympathetic neighbors, or a gift from Mike, who was now the manager of the Ladies Fashion Salon, at Pitts Department Store; however, two years ago, my father began bringing me an occasional package which contained a simple dress or two, and ordinary underwear which he himself had purchased at Pitts.

       In the afternoon, the weather turned windy and the sky was inky with dark and angry clouds. Forever after, when I saw raw shrimp in their shells of grey and black, I would be reminded of that day, and never again would I enjoy sitting on a porch of a summer evening watching heat lightning in the distance, nor hear the rumble of thunder without reliving the moment she came into our lives.

       Teddy and I peered out an upstairs’ window in time to see our dad scramble from the driver’s seat, fairly falling over his own feet to make it around to the other side of the car to help ‘Jo’ (short for Josephine, we later learned.) from the car. Just as she emerged, the rain began in earnest. Under the protection of his umbrella, she minced her way up the front porch steps in a dainty pair of black patent leather, pointy-toed shoes, with the highest heels I’d ever seen, and even then, I noticed that this lady only came to my daddy’s chin. She shrieked at each flash of lightening, covered her ears with every clap of thunder, and squealed while grabbing his arm “honey, if you don’ hustle me in, ma ’do’ is gonna be completely rooint!”

       By the time they reached the front door, we had made our way downstairs and after hasty and nervous introductions, the adults settled themselves in the living room, while Teddy and I served the shrimp and crackers, and Teddy produced two bottles of beer. It occurred to me that perhaps the lady didn’t know my daddy’s name, for it was ‘honey’ this, and ‘sweetie’ that, and it became quite clear to us that this was not going to be a once in a lifetime visit!  Jo politely asked in a long, drawly sort of way to “faaetch me a tumblah for ma beeeah, honey.”  I remembered my mother’s collection of metal tumblers delivered by the milkman, each containing eight ounces of cottage cheese, and I promptly ran to “faaetch” one. I handed her the tumbler, Teddy poured her beer, and then we sat in a corner of the room and stared in silence.

       When Jo withdrew a cigarette from a gold cigarette case, which I mistook for a lady’s compact, my father stumbled over his feet to strike a match for her.  Now when my daddy smoked, he inhaled, exhaled, and coughed.  Jo inhaled long and hard, and when she exhaled, the smoke came out of her puckered mouth and nose at the same time, terminating with a perfect little smoke ring. Teddy and I were mesmerized by this spoiled lady who called our daddy ‘honey’.

       During dinner Jo picked a crumb from her lower lip, looked toward us and drawled, “ahd be ever so pleased if you’all’d call me ‘Miss Jo’. It sounds so nice and respectable to me, don’t you’all think so?”

       Teddy pushed the chicken around his plate while I looked at my daddy, who conveniently was distracted by swatting an invisible fly. We both murmured “Yes, Miss Jo.” Jo nodded smugly and gave Pat a little nod and a wink as if to say “there, I told you so!”

       She ate with dainty little bites (morsels, as she called them,) patted her dainty little lips after each morsel with her paper napkin, and commented “this was jes the sweetest dinnah ah think ahv evah been served, but if you don’ mind, I’ll pass on the cherry pie–watchin ma figgah, ya know.”

       After dinner, we all  ‘retired’ to the living room, where  once again we were hypnotized by her pyrotechnics, and then Jo mentioned that she “was mighty supraahsed” that you han’t got rid of a passel of Sally’s thangs.” I glanced at my daddy just in time to see him put his finger to his lips to shush her.

       By the time our father returned from delivering Jo to wherever it was that she was to be delivered, we were fast asleep. The following weekend, Jo once again came to dinner, and three months later,unbeknownst to Teddy and me, they were married on a Saturday afternoon by the same minister who had buried our mother. His secretary Myrtle was the only witness.

       Returning home with Jo later that evening, our dad  announced to us, “I have great news for you both–you can now call Miss Jo, ‘mama’, or ‘ma’am’ if you prefer because we hitched the knot this afternoon, and Jo is now going to be your new mother.”  I looked at Teddy, Teddy looked at me, and later, when we were alone, we discussed the situation. “What do we do now?” I asked, “I liked it when it was just the three of us.”

       “I don’t know about you, Sunny, but if I was a little older, I’d join the army–even army rations would be better than having her around. I’ll bet she doesn’t even know how to cook–unless it’s possum!” “Well, she’ll never be ‘mama’ to me,” I said sadly.

       With that, Miss Jo moved into our lives, and into our mama’s side of the bed.

       After we buried my mother, my brother and I were attended to by the neighbors while our dad was at work.  The couple next door was especially kind to us.  She was barren, and over the years, I suspect we had become her surrogate children.  They were regarded as the older folks of the neighborhood.  Mrs. Webster, Ida, who was sixty, spent most of her days quilting, knitting, working on her needlepoint, cooking for the relatives of the recently departed, and “doing God’s work”‘.  She evoked images of Mrs. Santa Claus, with her silver hair, immaculately done up in a bun, and her plump figure modestly covered with an abundance of long, full material gathered at the waist, with only the toes of her shoes peeking out the bottom.  Depending on the day, she smelled of rose, lavender or apple pie.

       Mr. Webster, Web, was sixty-five, and not all that well-liked.  He had been a railroad worker, and many years previously the switch on a railroad car had accidentally been thrown into reverse while he was standing on the tracks.  It resulted in the loss of his right big toe and part of the adjoining one.  After a few complications and set-backs, it was determined that he should be discharged with a reasonable pension, rather than creating a new position for him.

       His clothes closet sported an entire rack of nothing but long-sleeved, flannel shirts, in seven different shades of plaid, which he tucked into his well-worn overalls.  Lined up on the floor underneath the flannel shirts were many pairs of identical slippers, each in varying degrees of disrepair.  Ida saw to it that every Christmas he received a new pair of leather slippers.  He immediately cut a hole in the right slipper where his big toe would have gone–if he’d had one–“to give my  ‘toe-less’ foot  breathing room;” but also, I suspect to elicit sympathy from anyone who hadn’t heard his tale of toe woe.

       He wandered about the neighborhood, often showing up on a doorstop to pass the time of day with the women, who had already heard his stories again and again.  He loved to listen to, and spread gossip whenever it was convenient. If the women would see him coming, they’d get on their phone and pass the word that ‘Slipper-y Web’ was making his way down the street.  His gait was uneven because of his injury, but each day, he’d walk haltingly to the local grocery for Ida, clutching her daily grocery list, and hoping he’d run into a sympathetic ear.

       I had been cautioned more than once not to go into their house if  Mrs. Webster wasn’t there, but I didn’t need any encouragement from my folks after the time he curled his finger in my direction and motioned for me to come over, patting the bench where he was sitting. He smiled with the sun glinting little shards of brightness off his gold front tooth as he called: “Sunny, if you’ll leave that barking dog of yours at home, you can come over and  I’ll show you where my big toe used to be!”

       That pretty much tells it as far as the Websters are concerned, except that Ida pinned all the laundry on her clothesline every day but Sunday, promptly at nine o’clock in the morning.  Web tended to his vegetable garden and spent a good deal of time beneath the shade of their thriving green apple tree, sittin’ and whittlin’ in his slatted, paint-peeled wooden chair, watchin’ the world go by.  Which meant singularly–the neighborhood!

            *     *     *

       The day after my mother’s murder, when the police knocked on the Webster’s door,  no one answered.  Ida was in the basement running her noisy wringer washer, humming a tune, oblivious to any sound, and Web was at the grocery.  The policemen never bothered to return–after all, as they said to each other, “The Websters are above reproach.”

       I remember a special time when my mother was alive.  It was my fifth birthday, and my daddy bought me a bicycle.  It was the most wondrous gift I’d ever received.  Bright blue with silver streaks on the fenders, and squirrel tails on the handlebars.  I watched in wonder and horror as my mama and daddy skinned those squirrels in scalding hot water after their hunting trips.  The tails were a bonus, however and the envy of my playmates, whose dads and mamas weren’t into the shotgun experience.

       I was a quick learner, and I took to that bike like a turkey on a Thanksgiving table.  By the end of the first week, I could fly like the wind, and tasted my first bite of newly-found freedom, rejoicing when looking over my shoulder, that if I spied that Rag Man–I could out-pedal him forever more.

       The day after my birthday, my daddy managed to parlay two weeks of mowing a neighbor’s lawn in exchange for a dilapidated larger bike which he gave to my mama.  She was thrilled, and that summer, we began taking short, then longer rides together.  We would assemble tiny cucumber sandwiches, pack them in our baskets, and meander along the back roads.  Stopping near a wooded area, we’d lay down an old blanket over the softest patches of pine needles, and downy moss and eat our sandwiches.

       Occasionally, we’d tramp thru the nearby woods, and Johnny jump-ups, violets, woodsy sorrel, tiny fern fronds and poke, just peeping from the soil would be pulled from the damp earth.  Their slender stems would be wrapped in dampened newspaper and carefully brought back home, where together we’d arrange miniature bouquets in old perfume bottles and empty pill containers.

       Sometimes, we’d search out a blackberry patch and set about picking just enough berries to surprise my dad with a warm cobbler, swimming in cold cream that had crystalized atop the milk bottles in the old ice box.   Returning to the house, my mama would exclaim:  “Sonny, pull out that ‘ol cast-iron skillet.  I’m about to give you a cookin’ lesson.”  Then together, we’d chop up some fat bacon, fry it in the skillet, throw in the poke leaves, sprinkle in a bit of vinegar, a tad of salt and pepper and last of all, some bits of stale bread.  When my daddy arrived home, the first thing he’d say was “My nose tells me my girls have fixed my favorite meal, and I just bet we’re going to have blackberry cobbler for dessert!  “Teddy, get your feet off that rung.”  I’m not sure which tickled me more–his delight at my fixin’s, or his growling at Teddy.

                          *     *     *

       Often, while on our bicycles, we’d stop by a house down the street from us where two brothers lived.  They seemed to enjoy my mother’s visits a great deal, and she would carry on long and interesting conversations with them to their delight.  I always resented these intrusions, and I’d show how annoyed I was by dragging my toes impatiently in their graveled driveway until the white powder covered my sandals.  Whining, I’d plead “Mama, come on.  You promised–puh-leeze.”

       Neither brother had married.  Joseph, the older one liked to garden, and while our yard was a hither and thither frenzy of common flowers and weeds, theirs was an awesome and imaginative array of neat and orderly plants of every variety.  The yard was a labyrinth of bushes with wild blooms, vines in a rainbow of colors,  flower patches everywhere, and  a small vegetable garden  with the tops of the onions, carrots, radishes and such, marching in straight and even rows, saluting the sky.

       Joseph knew all the botanical names for his rare and exotic flowers and he loved to impress my mother.  “This one is a Zanthis Teropodus (or something like that, but it sounded like an old dinosaur to me.)   “This here is an Elopidea Maryandi.”  My mother would gasp “Oh, my!”

       I’d love to have mustered up the smarty-pantsness to say to him “Boy, oh boy, you should see my mother throw her coffee grounds on our flowers–that’s about all she knows about gardening.”  This might have gotten me out of there fast, but for sure, I’d be sent to bed without any supper.

       Slight in stature, Joseph wore gold, wire-rimmed glasses, was interested in books, and had a job at the Pittsville Public Library.  He looked creepy in an over-sized tweed jacket with patches on the elbows.  He wore that jacket in all weather, hot or cold.  It was later I discovered that underneath the jacket, he’d occasionally smuggle a book or two from the library shelves.  He had acquired quite an extensive library of his own.

       Mike, the younger brother was the complete opposite.  He was my mother’s age, good looking, with a sun-tanned complexion and perfect white teeth.  He dressed well, and his muscles bulged beneath his suits.  He wore a different flashy tie every day which was always knotted perfectly, and his hair was slicked back, looking all wet and shiny.  Employed at Pitts Department Store, he held the position of “Assistant Manager of the Ladies Fashion Salon”, and traveled to Chicago and New York on occasion.  “One of these days, I’m gonna bring you some perfume from New York.”  My mother would gasp “Oh, my!”

       My daddy looked down on these two, but in particular, Mike.  More than once I heard him complain to my mother “I don’t like the way he swaggers, smokes with that damned cigarette hanging off those lips, and flexes his muscles when you’re around.  I can just hear the neighbors talking about your visits to those two.  You’re going to get a reputation–and I don’t want Sunny around them either!”

       This just seemed to kindle mama’s free spirit that much more, and she’d pull out a cigarette, tap it on the table and give my dad “the look”.  After a few seconds of seeing her eyelids all scrunched up and staring straight ahead without blinking, he’d slink out of the room.

       One balmy afternoon the phone rang and it was Joseph.  “You’ve got to come down here quickly!  That rare plant I told you about?  Well, it just got it’s first bloom–ever, and I want you to see it.”  My mama said to him “You called at just the right time.  Sunny and I were about to take a bike ride.”  And to me, she cautioned:  “Sunshine , we’re going over to Joseph’s to see his rare flower.  You are NOT to touch it–DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”  I looked down at my Mary Jane’s, knowing that in a few moments they were going to be splattered in chalky white dust.

       We were led into Joseph’s Immaculate Gardenia of Eden.  Pouting because I didn’t want to be there, and angry at my mother’s warning that I wasn’t old enough to appreciate the flower’s arrival, I knelt down to smell it, reached out–and accidentally broke the stem in two!

       The air was filled with shock and silence.  I looked up to see the glare of three adult faces staring back at me in disappointment.  Utterly ashamed and saddened, I looked into the palm of my hand at this newly born baby flower dying by the second, and blinking my eyes, a lone tear ran down my cheek and watered it one last time.

                                   *    *     *

       The next year, at my mother’s funeral, Joseph offered to give a reading.  My father reluctantly agreed, and when Joseph opened his book, there was the flower I had broken off–dried and crinkly; it’s color gone forever.

       I overheard my father tell one of the mourners:  “Mike isn’t here–he’s in New York ‘fooling around’ with the buyer of the new line Pitts is hoping to introduce.  Then his eyebrows got a crooked look and his eyeballs rolled around aside his head.

       Later, the policemen told my dad that when they went to question the two brothers, Joseph explained to them that he had been watering his precious flowers that morning, and hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary.

       A most peculiar family lived directly across the street from us.  Their house was three-storied, with a little separate bungalow of two small rooms in the back of their lot.  They had seven children, which was unique for the times.  The mother wore dentures that not only clicked when she talked, but shifted back and forth as well, as though they were platens of corn cob typing aimlessly away.

       She was often in a state of disarray with her hosiery rolled down around purple, swollen ankles, a filthy housedress covered by a food-slopped apron, and her long, unkempt dirty hair spilling over both.  Her shoulders were massive, her forearms muscular, and her fingers resembled fat little sausages.  Izzy was the neighborhood troublemaker and was known to be dangerously mean to those who crossed her.

       Her husband, Eddie Morrison, was fairly good looking with a receding shock of wispy blonde hair.  He had a strong and hard body thanks to his job as a laborer at Rubber Molds Consolidated, where he hoisted tires onto wooden pallets after they were cured and taken off the molds.  He was considered a failure by Izzy, who ruled their family, and she took great pleasure in letting him know what a failure he was.  He often looked at my mother with a wistful glance.

       I sometimes pondered just how they acquired all those children, but I was too young at the time to comprehend that two of them resembled the Neanderthal tattooed bartender down at Tim’s, or that the youngest daughter of darker pigmentation might have been sired by the Rag Man himself.

       Izzy had never taken to the domestic scene, and consequently most of their kids bordered on delinquency:  shoplifting, smoking, filching money from the rusted Maxwell House can; but Billy, their sixteen year old, earned his spending money as the paper boy on our block.  Now, I had never heard of ‘hormones’, but Billy was inquisitive.  One day, he waylaid me and said “I’ll give you a nickel to pull down your under drawers.”  I shook my head “no”.  He countered:  “Okay then, a nickel and two pennies.”  I turned my back to him and began to run away, but then he called after me “How about a WHOLE DIME?”  Well, I whipped my cotton undies down so fast, even he was startled!  And let me tell you–penny candy never tasted so sweet as the dime’s worth I purchased later that day at Biddle’s Drugstore down the road a piece.

       The grandfather, Izzy’s father, was known to all the kids in the neighborhood as ‘Gran’daddy Edwards’.  A widower, he lived behind them in that scary old two-room bungalow.  The first time I saw him, I asked him how old he was.  He grinned at me and said,  “Why, honey, I’m one hundred and ten.”  He had moved into the bungalow after his wife had gone straight upstairs to be with the Lord.  He was missing more than a few teeth, his fingernails were stained a darkened yellow and curved over the ends of his fingers, his baggy trousers were held up by suspenders that had long since lost their elasticity, and he had a foul smell reminiscent of undergarments soiled by dried urine.  My parents had always cautioned me “Sunny, you must always be respectful of older folks.”  Because of my parent’s admonishment, I had stood quiet and still more than once while being subjected to his undulating embraces when no one else was around.

       Although the entire neighborhood might be thought of as ‘needy’, some were more needing than others, and because of my daddy’s steady employment at Pitts’ Auto Agency, mama took it upon herself to befriend those less fortunate.  “Mildred, I know how little time you have what with that new baby and all, so here’s a pie–your favorite–cherry.”  “Glen, when that wife of yours comes home from the hospital. you just cheer her up with this.”  “Izzy–here’s a warm cherry pie I baked for you and your family.”  Izzy, more often than not, fed the pie to her dogs.

       After my mama’s funeral, most of the neighbors dropped by to offer their condolences.  Eddie Morrison came with his children and Gran’daddy Edwards.  Eddie shook my father’s hand and told him “Now, if there’s anything I can do for you, all you have to do is holler.”  The children reluctantly filed by with a “sorry”, a “too bad”,  a mumble, and in Billy’s case, he put his arm around my shoulder and slipped a dime in my pocket.  Gran’daddy Edwards, who lusted over not only my mama’s pies, but her as well, gave me a quick hug and a sly wink.

       Izzy stayed home–she was busy baking my father a cherry pie–cherries she probably stole from my mama’s own cherry tree.

                             *     *     *

       The next two years became a blur–neither significantly good or bad, but just as the years became a blur, so the memory of my mother began to fade, and eventually, I had to study a photograph to remember her pretty face.

The small funeral procession wound its way through the back streets of our little town. Unfortunately, Tim‘s Tavern was between our house and the cemetery, and as we approached, my daddy pulled in, put on the brakes, hopped out and proceeded to enter for a “shot and a beer” while the hearse and eight cars came to a screeching halt.

Later that morning, we sadly watched as our mother’s coffin was lowered into the ground.  I heard the minister chanting something about “ashes to ashes and dust to dust,” and I elbowed Teddy a good one. “Whaddya want, twerp?” he growled.

“Why’s he talkin’ about our daddy’s cigarette ashes and mama’s dust cloth,?” I asked in my softest voice.   He glowered me back with a look so evil it crossed my mind that perhaps the wrong family member was being put in the ground. Well, white collar or no, it seemed to me that minister could’a showed a little more respect for our mama.

“Now I hope you three won’t be strangers to our little church,” he said to my dad, after the flowers had been thrown on top of the box and the dirt shoveled in. “Stop off at the rectory and pick up a packet of envelopes from my secretary.” He was well aware that my parents were not regular church-goers, and even less loyal contributors to the church coffers that afforded him the luxury of skimming some change now and then to purchase a trinket or two for the aforementioned Myrtle.

When my mother and daddy had a little bit left over from payday, they liked to spend an occasional Saturday night at Tim’s for some drinking and dancing. The evening of the interment , he pronounced: “Sunny and Teddy, I’m going out for a while with some friends to remember your mother.”

Although my heart was broken and confused, my father left us to join a few older relatives and folks for a night of alcoholic bereavement, and I was left to contend with my brother who spat out: “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll pipe down and read one of your comic books. I’ll be in my room and don’t bother me or I’ll murder you before you know what Spider Man is going to do next.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice, because he often carried out his threats, like the time he took the scissors to my Raggedy Ann and then snickered “Isn’t that why she’s called ‘Raggedy’Ann?” During the night, I awoke to hear my dad stumble around the kitchen, drag out the big red chair, throw himself into it, and bawl his eyes out.

***

Our neighborhood was quite diverse: There were Italians, Irish, Poles, Chinese (who owned the laundry and had as many as a dozen relatives scurrying about on their softly-padded slippers, scrubbing grimy collars, hand-ironing men’s shirts, and all the while keeping rhythm at their scrub-boards with their high-pitched clickety-clack chatter, not unlike the tracks their forefathers had laid for us eighty years before.) There were Christians, Jews, red necks, young married folk just getting started, and many families like our own with two or three children, lower to middle class, just trying to make ends meet; however, there was one denominator that each of our houses had in common: you never knew what went on behind the closed curtains.

After my mother’s murder, the police made a few visits, fewer inquiries, and showed little interest in pursuing any leads. There were only three in our local police department at that time.  Mike Bullard, who legitimately came by the nickname ‘Bully’, was burly, rude and loudmouthed; but his grandfather, uncle, father and brother had at one time been on the force, so he was automatically destined to persue the law.  “So you say you didn’t hear anything? So you say you didn’t see anything? Well, I guess that must mean that you’re either deef or blind as a bat, huh?”

The newest kid to join the force was Tommy O’Riley, who was quite polite, but not too swift behind the ears. “Excuse me ma’am, I hate to bother you, and I can see you’re busy, so if this isn’t a good time, why don’t I just come back later.”

And then there was Sammy Quintano, whose only expertise was extracting information by way of pressure on the local business people. “Howdy there—if you know anything about that murder, I’d be obliged for information, and in return, you can count on me the next time you need any sort of protection.” He spent many an afternoon with a lonely housewife.

These three asked a few curt questions of the neighbors, who seemed to have convenient alibis, and a couple of weeks later, it was Sam who concluded before the chief that “we’ve talked it over and are pretty damned certain this was committed by a passerby. We doubt it would do any good to continue the investigation, as our funds, limited as they are, would be better spent elsewhere.” (“Toward our raises” was left unsaid, but certainly implied.) Within days, the crime went from front page news, to the second page, then lower case on the back page amidst the advertisements, and finally dropped off like a fish at the end of a pole—too small to be kept.

Now the nights were cool enough for blankets, the days began with the need for sweaters, and after a few weeks of household security, once again the doors were left unlocked, and we thought nothing of it.

       In my neighborhood, the doors and windows were never locked, and in the warmth of summer, each was flung open at all hours like a gaping maw, gasping for one last long pull of cool air. I still believed in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the assumption that humans would always ’be’.   After all, weren’t they called human beings?

       The only fear in my young life was that of the Rag Man. On an irregular basis, a dappled-gray horse pulling a large cart, clomped down my narrow street, and sitting atop an enormous pile of rags and old clothes was an aged black man with wild and wiry hair crying out “Rags–Rags–Rags for Sale.”  In order to keep me from straying far from my home, I was threatened repeatedly by my parents: “The Rag Man Will Get You If You Don’t Watch Out!”

       And so it was on a hot and sticky late July morning, that I trudged down the steep steps from my bedroom, dressed in pink plisse pajamas, blond ringlets all askew, rubbing the overnight sleep from the corners of my eyes, and dragging an old woolen blanket with its wide stripes of red, green and yellow. A large stain from a vomited glass of purple grape juice acknowledged a faded bull’s eye in the very center of the blanket. Although it had been cleaned many times, the process was without success and thus, the blotch had become a part of my short, almost seven-year old history.

       I could hear my mother humming even before I reached the  large but spare kitchen with the patched linoleum floor, and the big old gas stove.  In the corner by the back door was the painted wooden table with four mismatched chairs:  Mine, daintier than the rest, my brother’s missing a bottom rung which my dad had sawed off much earlier in a rant to keep his feet on the floor, and my mother’s–tall and narrow with a flowery ruffled pillow on the seat. My daddy’s was the largest of all and had been painted many times over–most  recently In bright red lacquer.

       The old, burled Philco radio was playing “Pennies From Heaven” and mother was bending over the gas oven to light it with a safety match, humming to the tune. She was a very pretty woman with short, black curly hair–the product of perms and dyes, and she was quite trim. Today she was dressed in pants which was unusual for women, but she had always been, as they say, “ahead of her time”. She smoked, enjoyed her afternoon cocktails, had a wicked sense of humor, and was a bit of a flirt.

       “Good morning, Sunny,” she whispered, as she hugged me and kissed the top of my head. “Today’s the day, isn’t it?” I responded by squeezing her around the waist. I breathed in mama’s scent–tobacco and Sen-Sen, and as usual, the combination of the two comforted my heart. “I could smell the cherries all the way upstairs,” I whispered.

       Mama had wrapped a a brightly patterned scarf around her head to prevent any wayward hairs from falling into her baking. The scarf, a Five and Dime purchase sometime back, could be found covering her head when cooking, around her waist when dressing up or dangling from her pocketbook when shopping. It was vibrantly colorful and she knew it was an attention grabber.

       “I’ve been up ever since your daddy left for work. First the picking, then the cleaning, and I just finished the dreadful pitting, and you know how much I hate that part!  Thank goodness I hadn’t used up all our sugar ration for the month.”

       “I would’a helped you pit,” I said disappointedly. This was to be a very special pie–my daddy’s birthday pie. He always requested a sour cherry pie, the cherries ripe and pendulous from our very own tree, rather than a birthday cake.

        I knew mother and daddy were happy with each other because they whispered together, hugged a lot, and at night, even though I wasn’t allowed to jump on the mattress in my bedroom, thru the thin walls, I could hear them jumping on their mattress. Their low sighs of ‘oh, oh, oh’ kept a rhythmic cadence to the twanging of the bedsprings. That was fine with me–I had always been told that as a child, I didn’t have the privileges of an adult, so I looked forward to jumping on my mattress when I grew older.

        Last week, mother gave me an empty coffee can and a broken spoon and I padded out to the garden, scooped dirt into the can, ran water into it from the garden hose, and mixed it into a slurry. After dumping it out, I fashioned an ashtray, let it bake in the hot sun and painted it. The sections in my Prang paint box were lacking of most colors, but there was still plenty of black, which was a manly color.  I smiled as I imagined his surprise, and the ashtray piled high with his stubbed-out Lucky Strikes.

       Today, mother would help me wrap it with left-over tissue, and hopefully some ribbon from her sacred, brightly decorated ribbon box, which she kept on the very top shelf of her closet, pushed way to the back and underneath a hat box–out of the reach of tiny exploring hands. It contained a wondrous rainbow of assorted, wound up and reverently placed strings and ribbons from past holiday gifts, gently pressed with a slightly cool iron to rid them from the worst of wrinkles.

       The Philco playing, my mother humming, the astringent odor filling the air from the cherries not yet sugared, and my brother Teddy away at summer camp for another week, which meant a short reprieve from his badgering: could life be more delicious?

       “Is it okay if I go outside for a while?”

       “Sure thing, Sunny. Just remember, we have some wrapping to do.”

       With an emphatic “yes ma’am,” I dragged my blanket out the back door, down the porch steps, and bare-footed my way into the yard where the early morning sun and tiny droplets of dew reflected on the uneven border of flowers like so many sparkly diamonds. With wonder, my eyes took in a smattering of rag-tag hollyhocks, scattered four-o’clock with their black seeds just begging to be gathered, and a few pitiful pansies which had sprung up uninvited from the previous year.

       A favorite pastime my mama and I shared was the private time when we would spread my scruffy blanket over the still moist grass and lying on our backs, would regale each other with make-believe stories about the cloud formations. After a while, the wool would become damp and smell just a little like the wet coat of my Irish setter ‘Girl’, after a summer shower. She had disappeared quite mysteriously a few weeks back while expecting her “who’s the daddy” puppies, as my papa would say.

       I lay there staring at the sun, counted slowly to fifteen–squeezed shut my eyes, and the image of the sun burned itself into the back of my head. The radio interrupted Glen Miller with the latest news of the war, the cupboard doors in the kitchen were opening and closing, and the fragrant aroma from the pie now in the oven, began to tickle my nostrils.

       Suddenly, I became aware of a commotion from inside the house and the Philco began blaring. The brightness of the sun still danced behind my tightly shut eyes, but on that day, I stopped believing in Santa Claus and discovered that human beings did indeed stop ‘being’; and in the next year of school, when I began spelling larger words, wasn’t it  curious that “smother” was “mother” with an “s”.

       ***                                                                   ***                                                                   ***

       Seventeen years later, the old Philco sits in my kitchen–its innards long since regurgitated into a trash bin; but now, the hollow of it is the keeper of secrets: the scarf, wound so tightly around my mother’s nose and throat, some letters found hidden in the ribbon box, and a bit of evidence I’ve recently uncovered that might shed light on her murder, still unsolved after all these years.