When Miss Edna heard that Grandmother Tillman’s whole family came every week for Sunday dinner, she insisted on making the meal. Sunday morning, she started preparing fried chicken, mashed potatoes with the skins, and chicken gravy. Of course, biscuits too. In fact, she was in the kitchen rolling out the biscuits, when Hattie and Henry showed up.
“You’re never going to guess what happened,” Hattie said as she burst through the front door. “You know that waitress from Cole’s, that Edna McElroy woman?”
Grandmother Tillman swept into the living room. “I certainly do.” She grabbed her daughter by the arm and started ushering her toward the kitchen. “And how are you today,” she asked Henry so as to keep Hattie from saying more.
Henry was surprised by her solicitous comment and thought for a moment before answering with a weak “okay” to the empty swinging door. Grandmother Tillman had already gotten Hattie into the kitchen.
“Let me introduce you to my house guest,” Grandmother Tillman said graciously. “Edna, this is my daughter, Hattie Givens. Hattie, this is Miss Edna McElroy. She’s staying with me for a few days.”
Miss Edna was covered in flour from the biscuits, but her color seemed robust compared to the ashen pallor that had suddenly come over Hattie.
“I must look a sight,” Miss Edna said, “But I sure am pleased to meet you.”
Hattie’s eyes were as big as the pie plates Miss Edna had set out for dessert. She stared silently at Miss Edna.
“Edna says she’s pleased to meet you, dear,” Grandmother Tillman said coachingly. “The heat tends to slow Hattie down,” she said in a low voice to Miss Edna.
“Yes,” Hattie said haltingly, “I’m pleased as well.”
Out in the dining room, Henry asked Nate, “What was that all about? What’s going on in the kitchen?”
“Miss Edna, I suppose.”
“Oh yes, Hattie’s got an earful about her.”
“No,” Nate said, “I think Grandmother is introducing Miss Edna to Aunt Hattie.”
“How do you mean?”
“As in ‘Edna, this is my daughter. Hattie, this is my good friend Edna.’”
At that moment, Hattie walked out from the kitchen still white-faced and pie-eyed.
“Surely you don’t mean...”
Just then the kitchen door swung open and Miss Edna walked out, calling back to Grandmother Tillman, “Don’t bother, I know where they are.”
She started pulling plates out of the dining room hutch when she recognized Henry.
“Henry, is this your wife I just met?”
Henry’s mouth was as open as Hattie’s eyes were wide. Hattie came over and stood possessively next to her husband. Jim Frank’s statue, with its comic expression, had nothing on these two as they stood there with their eyes bulging and their mouths silently agape.
Grandmother Tillman came out of the kitchen and grabbed some of the dishes that Miss Edna was pulling from the hutch.
“Say yes,” she prompted Henry, and then went back into the kitchen.
Miss Edna looked with consternation at Hattie and Henry. “You should have your aunt and uncle sit in the living room, where it’s cool,” she said.
Nate led the two of them to the big couch in the living room.
Gabriel and his wife, Mary, drove up at the same time Seth did, and they unleashed their kids all at once. This provided enough activity for Nate to avoid getting cornered by his Aunt Hattie to explain what was going on. Meanwhile, each couple repeated much the same scenario that Hattie and Henry had gone through. Within a few minutes, the situation had stabilized to where all Nate’s cousins were outside playing and all his aunts and uncles were in the living room, staring at each other. Everyone was waiting for Nate’s mother to arrive.
They all heard Nate’s parents drive up and Nate went out to greet them. His mother asked if he’d been taking good care of his grandmother, and he assured her he had. His father gripped his upper arm and said that farm life was making Nate stronger. The three of them were growing closer again.
They went inside and Nate’s mother could tell right away that something was different. She stuck her head into the living room and peeked around before saying hello to everyone. She and her husband were usually the last to arrive and she was used to walking into the middle of one of Henry’s raucous stories and finding Hattie and Mary in the kitchen with Grandmother Tillman. This time, everyone was in the living room and everything was as quiet as a wake.
“Where’s mother?” she said with an edge of concern in her voice.
Everyone stared silently toward the kitchen.
“I’ll see if she needs any help,” she said haltingly.
Everyone watched as she went through the swinging door into the kitchen and watched as she walked back out two minutes later with that same zombie stare as her predecessors. She sat down on one of the extra, straight-backed chairs Grandmother Tillman put into the living room on Sundays. She tried to talk a couple of times. She would look toward the kitchen and then upstairs. She had grasped the situation more than the others: Miss Edna wasn’t just here, she was living here.
“Uncle Gabriel’s room,” Nate said.
She nodded in appreciation.
Mary glared at her husband, Gabriel, as if his sharing a bed with Miss Edna was in no way diminished by the decades between his getting out of it and her crawling into it.
At that point, Grandmother Tillman walked into the living room. She had everyone’s attention.
“The last couple of days have been very educational for me,” she said quietly. “Miss McElroy’s a guest of mine, a welcome guest, I might add. I’ll remind each and every one of you that his house was always open to your friends and guests, and I always treated them well, regardless of some interesting first impressions.”
She was quiet for a moment. Everyone shifted a little nervously, remembering some of their own strays they had brought home over the years.
“I’ll expect the same from you today.” Grandmother Tillman’s tone suddenly brightened. “Well, Edna’s made a marvelous Sunday dinner for us, and if someone could call in the children and some strong men could help carry plates and food into the dining room, we could get around to enjoying it.”
She smiled and shooed everyone into action. For a moment she had sounded a little like Miss Edna, in the flattering way she had called the men strong in order to get them to help.
Dinner conversation was polite at first, and then downright relaxed. Miss Edna asked Hattie about the broach she was wearing, and Hattie went on and on about the estate sale where she bought it.
“Hattie’ll buy anything someone puts out in their yard on a Saturday,” Henry said. “She tried to buy Mabel Adams’ lawn furniture once while Bud and Mabel were sitting in it having a picnic.”
Hattie elbowed him in the ribs.
“Seriously, she’s got an eye for antiques and can find them in the least expected places,” Henry said, with obvious pride.
“I found you, didn’t I?”
Everyone laughed and Hattie looked over at Miss Edna and winked.
Miss Edna chatted with Seth’s daughter, Katherine, about what she liked to study in school. She complimented Seth on raising such a delightful daughter, without a mother around, and Katherine blushed at the indirect compliment. Clayton made some wisecrack, and Miss Edna gently chided him for making fun of his sister, while adding that she had never had an older brother to look after her and how lucky Katherine must be. Clayton straightened his posture and said that although he liked to tease her, nobody else had better pick on his kid sister. Katherine looked at him with astonishment, she had never heard this protective tone before.
By the time pie was served, Miss Edna had worked her magic on everyone. She found ways to make each one feel special, and in doing so, made everyone else remember how special that person was.
After dinner, the men went into the living room, and Henry wound out a story as usual. The women went into the kitchen to wash dishes and to run over the weekly gossip. A certain event involving vandalism at the trailer court never came up.
As everyone was piling into their cars at the end of the evening, Henry lingered back on the porch with Nate for a moment. He jerked his head toward the inside of the house, where Miss Edna was wrapping up things in the kitchen.
“So, how is it with Miss Edna around all the time?”
Nate could tell he had been entrusted with living a rare experience for his uncle.
“It’s a dream come true.”
Henry smiled and looked relieved. He punched Nate on the arm and left without another word.
Later that evening, Miss Edna came up to Nate’s room. He was lying on his bed, on his stomach, reading about Winston Churchill. Miss Edna sat on the floor so that their heads were at the same level.
“Your family’s real nice.”
“Trust me, they were on their best behavior because of you.”
Nate closed the book.
“You know the story you told me about how you tricked Grub Hanley and got back at him for being mean to you?” Miss Edna had a far-off look.
“Like I could forget.”
“That was real smart, how you thought of all that and made it happen,” Miss Edna said.
“Yeah, and it turned out so well, what with me getting shot at and shipped out here and all.”
“He missed, and this isn’t all that bad, now is it?”
Nate smiled. It felt good to remember that night and to have someone think of him as a hero again. And she was right, living on his grandmother’s farm with Miss Edna wasn’t all that bad. He climbed off the bed and sat on the floor in front of Miss Edna.
“This is going somewhere, isn’t it?” he said.
“I want to get back at Buddy Cole. I know it’s wicked of me, but I do.” Miss Edna was whispering now. “You figured out how to get back at Grub Hanley, I bet you could figure out a way for me to get even with Buddy.”
Nate felt intoxicated. Life on the farm had gotten pretty quiet and, well, dull, Nate admitted to himself. Here was a challenge and a diversion being handed to him. More than that, here was Miss Edna asking him, a thirteen year old kid, for his expertise. He had only done anything like this once before, the incident at Founder’s Hill, and he had botched that one, really. Botched or not, it gave him experience, something others lacked. Such is the way that reputations and resumes are built.
“Tell me everything about the diner, everything about Buddy’s routine. Don’t think about it, just start talking and tell me everything that comes to your head.”
The next three hours were heaven for Nate. He sat and listened to Miss Edna talk about people she knew, things she did, and all the goings on around Buddy’s truck stop.
“Can you help me?” Miss Edna said when she couldn’t think of anything more to tell him.
“You gave me a lot to think about. I think the slot machine is where he’s the most vulnerable. I need to figure out a way to use that against him.”
Nate knew the real value in an adventure was the story it provided afterward. A story about a slot machine named Captain Jack was too good to pass up.
“I knew I could count on you.”
Miss Edna leaned over and kissed Nate on the cheek, then quickly jumped up and left. Nate sat on the floor for another hour, touching his cheek and making a plan.
Chapter 20
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
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