by Kathy Waller

For Thanksgiving Week, I’m sharing a story made from things I’m thankful for: a hometown the size of a broom closet; long, hot summers that started on  June 1 and stretched clear to Labor Day; a visiting teenager who spent every spare minute reading Gone With the Wind; bobby socks and garter belts and petticoats; an ornery Presbyterian great-aunt and her ornery Baptist mare; front porches where quiet kids learned a lot; Army surplus bunk beds; a grandfather who said stop signs cause wrecks. I don’t know whether he believed it, but he said it. 

Flannery O’Connor said, “Anyone who survives a southern childhood has enough material to last a lifetime.” 

I survived. So do the memories. 

(“Stop Signs” won first place for short story in the 2000 North Texas Professional Writers Association Contest. It isn’t a murder mystery, but only because one of the characters restrains herself.)

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Stop Signs, Part I

My grandfather thinks stop signs cause wrecks. That’s what he told Mama when they put up stop signs at Farm Road 20. If you go on across, you’ll be okay, but if you stop, you won’t be able to build up enough speed, and a car will come along and hit you for sure.

Mama didn’t argue. She says when she married into the Coburn family, she learned to pick her battles. The rest of the time, she’s just polite.

Nobody was just being polite that day on Aunt Eula’s front porch. Dr. Larrimore was there, and they were talking about the new phone system we’re getting. We’ve always just turned the crank and told Ernest who we want to talk to, but now we’ll have to dial a number. Dr. Larrimore said it’ll never work—people will get the O and the zero mixed up. They also agreed that man will never go to the moon because it isn’t in the Bible. Mama said the new phone system isn’t in the Bible either. I don’t know whether to be more concerned about getting the O and the zero mixed up or about having a doctor who gets them confused.

I know Aunt Eula wasn’t just being polite because she doesn’t bother with that kind of thing. She is Daddy’s oldest aunt, and, like Grandaddy, is tall and straight and white-haired. Unlike Granddaddy, she is proud and haughty. She belongs to both the Daughters of the Republic of Texas and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She likes the United Daughters best. Mama says that’s because she’s an unreconstructed rebel.

Aunt Eula has a beautiful sorrel mare named Lady, who is my Mr. Boots’ mother. She bought her when the San Marcos Baptist Academy sold off its stables. I used to ride her before Mr. Boots was saddle broke. Mostly I chased her around the pasture trying to catch her. Once when I finally got hold of her and got the bit in her mouth and led her into the yard to saddle her, she sidled up to a big pecan tree and walked round and round it, while I followed, trying to get the saddle across. She’s never tried to unseat me, probably because by the time we get started, she’s worn out.

Daddy says Lady’s uncooperative because those Baptist Academy kids didn’t know how to ride and let her build up some bad habits. Mama says it’s because she belongs to Aunt Eula, and animals always resemble their owners. I say it’s because she’s a Baptist set down here in a nest of Presbyterians, and she’s testing the doctrine of Free Will against that of Predestination.

My cousin Ruth must be a Baptist, too, because she’s been using her Free Will ever since she arrived last month to spend the summer.

Ruth is thirteen, two years older than I am, and she used to be my dearest friend in the whole world. I could hardly wait till she got here. I had the summer all planned out. I would ride Mr. Boots and she would ride Lady, when she could catch her, and we would explore all the places over on York Creek that Mama won’t let me go to by myself. We’d share a bedroom and talk all night just like sisters.

But when we picked Ruth up at the train in San Marcos, I hardly recognized her. She was wearing a dress with about five petticoats, and high heels, and nylon hose. She was carrying a copy of Gone With the Wind.

We got into the back seat of the car. I held her book while she spent about five minutes arranging her petticoats.

“Do you like this book?” I said. “I read it last spring.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I’m surprised Aunt Virginia let you. It was written for adults.”

“I guess you haven’t heard,” I said. “I’m advanced. I’m a third of the way through the high school reading list.”

She smiled. “You’ll probably want to read this one again when you’re older. I imagine you missed a lot.”

I let that pass and tried again. “Why aren’t you wearing loafers and bobby sox?”

She said, “They’re not appropriate for the train.”

I said, “Why?” and she said, “They just aren’t,” and I said, “Who told you that?” and she said, “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

“You told me wearing a garter belt was like sitting on rubber bands.”

“I’ve grown up a lot since I said that.” Then she crossed her legs at the ankle and folded her hands over her white straw clutch purse, and by the time we got to Martindale, I was nauseated, and it wasn’t motion sickness that was causing it.

At home, Daddy carried Ruth’s suitcases into my room, and Ruth said she would sleep on the top bunk.

“That’s where I’m going to sleep,” I said.

Ruth knows better than to boss me outright—I got that settled when I was five—so she tried bribery instead.

“Look, if you let me sleep on the top, you can lie on the bottom and kick me while I’m sleeping.”

“It’s tempting,” I said, “but my legs aren’t that long. It looks like yours are, though. Exactly how tall are you now?”

She smiled. “Mother says I’m going to be statuesque.” And then Princess Grace floated out to see if Mama needed help in the kitchen.

The next day, I was up at six o’clock as usual, ready to saddle Mr. Boots, but Ruth didn’t drag out of bed until nine. Then, instead of saddling up and heading to York Creek, she insisted on walking downtown to say hello to all of my relatives. When she saw Aunt Eula and Aunt Babs sitting on the front porch, nothing would do but we must stop and visit. The first thing out of her mouth, Ruth asked Aunt Babs to teach her to crochet. Aunt Babs lit up like a chandelier and ran inside to get a hook and some yarn so they could start right away.

While she was gone, Ruth told Aunt Eula that she was reading Gone With the Wind and asked about the United Daughters. That got Aunt Eula started. Before they were finished, she and Ruth had rebuilt Tara on the banks of the San Marcos River and were ready to move in. Aunt Eula told Ruth the next time she came, she could look at Great-great-grandpa’s Civil War sword and medals. When we finally left, I heard Aunt Eula tell Aunt Babs that Virginia’s niece was turning into a lovely young lady even if she wasn’t a Coburn.

Ruth spent all the next day chain stitching with her nose in a book. That night, she kept the light on a half-hour past my bedtime. I finally leaned over the side of the top bunk and asked her, very politely, to turn out the light.

“I can’t,” she said. “I’m putting my hair in pin curls.”

“Anybody who spends that much time on a ducktail must have a bird brain,” I said, and she took one of her statuesque legs and kicked the underside of my mattress, and I yelled, and Mama came and moved Ruth into the front bedroom, where she had her own double bed and a good breeze and our grandmother’s piano, and she played her transistor radio all night long.

And that wasn’t all she did up there at night. I know because one night when I thought she might be asleep, I tiptoed in to turn off the radio—I’d had about as much “Purple People Eater” as anyone should have to endure—and Ruth was sitting on the side of the bed in the dark, talking to Junie Franklin through the window screen. He was sitting out in the yard on Uncle Robert’s Palomino. I was shocked. If Mama knew what was going on, she would be very disappointed.

TO BE CONTINUED

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More about the man who said stop signs cause wrecks at “Dad” on the blog Whiskertips.