Right as rain, p.1
Right as Rain, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Praise
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Part One - 1950
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part Two - 1958
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Part Three - 1968
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Right as Rain
A CONVERSATION WITH
READING GROUP QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION -
READ ON FOR A PREVIEW OF BEV MARSHALL’S LATEST NOVEL - Hot Fudge Sundae Blues
About the Author
Also by Bev Marshall
Copyright Page
To Lisa Banko f, who believed;
Butch, my whole in one;
and Dad, who is always right as rain
In memory of my father-in-law,
Francis Chester Marshall,
who knew a lot more about cars than Mr. Larry
PRAISE FOR Right as Rain
“I marvel at the wisdom tucked away inside these pages, at the generosity and artistic grace on display here. This is a fine, fine book.”
—STEVE YARBROUGH,
author of Prisoners of War and The Oxygen Man
“A sprawling Southern epic that covers a number of years and generations and crosses racial lines.”
—New Orleans Gambit Weekly
“Bev Marshall has not so much written a novel as she has drawn back the curtain on a South-facing window, a view of Mississippi fifty years ago, of forty and thirty years ago. . . . They are not so much characters as people we have known; their stories not so much witnessed as shared. The shifting points of view—female and male, black and white—never shift away from honesty and authenticity.”
—SONNY BREWER,
author of The Poet of Tolstoy Park
“A brilliantly crafted page-turner, Right as Rain spins a cinematic tale of familial love, everlasting friendship, and secret desire that will entrench you in the lives of its characters so completely you will never want it to end.”
—SUZANNE KINGSBURY,
author of The Summer Fletcher
Greel Loved Me and The Gospel According to Gracey
“In the tradition of . . . Gone with the Wind and . . . To Kill a Mockingbird . . . Pitch-perfect.”
—Roanoke Times
“Marshall has managed the mixing of history and fiction and magic and memory. She keeps the reader glued to the pages with love, friendship and secret desires that will summon you into the lives of the characters. You don’t want the story to end!”
—Magnolia Gazette
“Catches you from the first page . . . Marshall knows how to capture the life and language of the rural South.”
—McComb Enterprise Journal
Acknowledgments
On my list of people to thank, the name of my editor, Maureen O’Neal, appears on the first line. My respect for her editing skills and knowledge is boundless. From the beginning of our relationship and continuing through publication, she has cheerfully been a source of help and inspiration that far exceeded my expectations. The professionalism and talent of the Ballantine family is truly phenomenal, and I offer my heartfelt thanks to each of them, especially Nancy Miller, Johanna Bowman, Kim Hovey, and Cindy Murray, who is possibly the smartest and sweetest publicist in the business. I dedicated this book to Lisa Bankoff, my agent and friend, who believes all things are possible and whose faith in me and this novel confirmed my suspicion that she is one of the most remarkable women I will ever know. Patrick Price and Tina Dubois are angels in disguise, and I thank them both, past and present.
Thank you to the St. Tammany Writers Group, who read the first drafts of this novel and encouraged me to write on and on and on: Andrée Cosby, Jan Chabreck, Tana Bradley, Maat Andrews, Mark Monk, Dan Butcher, Melanie Plesh, Wade Heaton, Phillip Routh, and Kate Hauck. I also appreciate the continuing support of my fellow writers: Katie Wainwright, Karen Maceira, and Tracy Amond. The early encouragement I received from Douglas Glover and Paul Cirone, who read the first manuscript of this saga, meant more to me than I can find words for.
I am grateful for the support of the independent bookstore owners and managers, who are some of the nicest and most special people in the business. I am especially thankful for Sonny Brewer at Over the Transom, whose talent and generosity are boundless and whose friendship is truly a blessing.
In the past two years I have been fortunate in meeting many talented authors (too many to name) who overwhelmed me by generously sharing their knowledge and supporting me with grace. Your friendships are a privilege I will forever cherish.
I thank Allen Orillion for sharing his knowledge as a firefighter and Corvette lover. In researching the civil rights movement, I am indebted to Townsend Davis for his splendid account of that era in his book Weary Feet, Rested Souls.
Finally, through all of the drafts, highs and lows, the support and love of my family and friends was essential. Jim Forrest, Shirley and Irvin Tate, Joey and Mandy Marshall, Zora Marshall, buddies Tana, Andrée, Jan, and my lifetime editor Emily Heckman, I love and appreciate all of you. My dad, Ernest Forrest, never runs out of stories to tell, and for that and many other reasons, I’m blessed to be his daughter. My other blessings are Angela and Chess Acosta, and I thank you both for loving me on my worst days. I am most thankful to live each day with Butch Marshall, whose love makes my life right as rain.
Prologue
1935—1940
JOHNNIE WILKS WAS LAID OUT IN HIS LIVING ROOM IN A PINE box balanced on two ladder-backed chairs. He weighed only 132 pounds, and the borrowed black suit his wife had dressed him in was tucked and folded beneath his back. The starched white shirt covered the bullet hole in his chest just fine.
Feke Parsons, the man who had murdered Johnnie, stood looking into his coffin. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a thin white handkerchief stained brown from the tobacco juice that dribbled down his chin daily like a small muddy stream flowing from the corners of his mouth. Feke was thinking about Dolly, his best working mule, whom he had shot with the same rifle he had used on Johnnie. He’d have to buy another animal if he was going to finish the plowing.
At supper on the day of the “accident” Feke had looked across the oilcloth-covered table and said to his wife, “Niggers. They’re all good for nothing.”
His wife had kept her head down, her eyes on her candied yams like they were the answer to a mystery she had been trying to solve. His twenty-year-old son, James, had half believed the story Feke told the sheriff. The first part of Feke’s explanation of the death was accurate. Johnnie had sprinted up to the Parsons’ house, gasping for air, his eyes bulging out with fear. “Dolly,” he said, his voice a high screech, “Dolly done fell with the plow, look like her leg be broke.” Feke made two trips to the ditch, a ribbon of red clay dividing the green rows of pole beans and tall cornstalks. He had followed Johnnie’s half skip, half run to where the mule, braying horrid, squealing sounds, lay on her side with one hind leg crunched beneath her. On his second trip out to the field, Feke carried the rifle he had bought for thirty-five dollars in Summit, Mississippi. He shot the mule in the head between her twitching ears, watched her jerk until she lay still, and then he turned the gun on Johnnie and fired into his chest. Johnnie’s body, lifting from the ground, slammed back into the ditch and landed crosswise on top of the mule. As the scent of gunpowder and blood wafted around him, Feke stood with his gun cradled against his chest. He spit tobacco juice onto the red clay ground, shouldered his rifle, and, looking down on the two corpses, addressed them. “Dumb animals,” he said.
By the time the sheriff, Ed Duncan, and Johnnie’s forty-five-year-old wife gathered in the front yard where Johnnie lay in a deceptively peaceful repose, Feke had polished his story so that it was entirely plausible to the sheriff, who borrowed Feke’s hunting dogs every quail season. Walking away from the wailing wife on her knees beside her husband’s body, Ed leaned into Feke’s shoulder and whispered, “Johnnie was a dumb nigger. It figures he’d jump in your line of fire, cause you to have to waste a bullet.” Feke said nothing to this, but he lifted his hand to his mouth to cover his smile.
Turning away from Johnnie’s bleached pine box, Feke hurried out of the Wilks’ house. He had paid his respects and now he was eager to begin his search for another nigger and a smarter mule.
He found both at an auction some forty miles away on the Martin Place. After purchasing David Martin’s best mule, Feke hired Uncle Kurt, a strong, dark-skinned man who was unaware of the fate of his predecessor.
In the fall, six months after Johnnie had been laid to rest in the colored cemetery, Feke’s son, James, married Euylis Bearden, the daughter of Jarvis Bearden, a schoolteacher whose family had migrated to Lexie County in the mid-1800s. Euylis’ daddy loaned them five hundred dollars for a down payment on the old Reeves’ homestead, and the newlyweds settled happily into the modest white farmhouse. Their new home sat on the rise of a hill half a mile off Enterprise Road and four miles west of Zebulon. James’ deed included 185 acres, a pond, a barn, a pine grove, and two tenant houses across the field to the left of the main house.
Euylis hated to visit James’ parents. She was afraid of her father-in-law, suspecting that, if she were to open the mirrored doors of the big black wardrobe in his bedroom, she would find a white sheet and hood that was worn on nights when the moon turned bloodred. She made James promise that he would treat his Negroes better than his father. She was a Christian, she told him, and she couldn’t abide violence against her fellow man, even if he was colored. James assured her that he would be kinder than his father had been; and in return, he asked for her promise to learn to cook—but Euylis couldn’t keep her vow. Her biscuits came out of the oven black on the bottom, gooey in the middle; the crust of her fried chicken fell off before James could lift it to his mouth, and her sun tea had a bitter sharpness to it that made him snap his teeth together after each sip.
When Euylis stopped her menstrual flow for two months in a row, she learned to crochet. After she mastered the chain and purl, she bought cream-colored plastic needles and soft yellow yarn. When the baby, named Browder after Euylis’ grandfather, had mastered walking bowlegged down the wide center hall, Euylis was tying pink ribbons on her daughter, Ruthie’s, booties. Her cooking skills deteriorated even more as the demands of the children occupied her time. She would put a hen on to stew and hours later run back into the kitchen when the smell of charring bird wafted into the living room where she sat on the floor playing pat-a-cake with the children. James, who was rapidly losing weight and dreaming of chocolate pies and big thick pancakes covered in maple syrup, threw down his fork of mushy butter beans one night and said, “We’ve been here five years, and we’ve nearly got the note paid off on the place; I made good money on the cotton, the corn, and the two bulls I sold at the Summit auction. We can afford more help if we rent out one of the tenant houses. Let’s hire a first-rate cook and another hand.”
Euylis nodded, but her hands trembled with joy as she swallowed a hard ball of dough. She was hungry, too. “I heard Uncle Kurt’s daughter, Tee Wee, is an excellent cook. She lives in Magnolia I think.”
At twenty-three Tee Wee was six feet tall, big-boned, and roundstomached. From her birth, weighing twelve pounds, eleven ounces, she had outstripped all eight of her siblings in both weight and height. Tee Wee’s great-grandmother, a slave named Sadie by her owners but called Yulanda in her native land, was said to have been a tall, regal woman with large strong hands that could crush corncobs into dust. She lived on Windsor Plantation near Port Gibson, and it was fitting that the largest antebellum mansion ever built in Mississippi was her home. Sadie was renowned for her culinary surprises, like the sweet potato pie with cinnamon that she served to the guests at the long mahogany table in the Windsor dining room, and the recipes for the pie and many other delicacies were her legacy to her great-granddaughter, Tee Wee.
When James Parsons knocked on the screen door of her ramshackle two-room house, Tee Wee answered the door with a scowl on her face. Her husband, Curtis, had lost his job at the Thompson Dairy, her four children were fighting over the last piece of corn bread, and earlier that day her employer, Ida Quinn, had falsely accused her of stealing a set of embroidered pillowcases from her linen closet. James, intimidated by her girth and countenance, backed perilously close to the edge of the sagging porch and stammered out his offer. Work for both her and Curtis, a tenant house, land for planting their own crops. Tee Wee listened to his words with an immobile face, and then suddenly her set mouth spread into a wide and scary jack-o’-lantern grin. “When you want us?”
After James left, Tee Wee turned to her husband and burst out laughing. “Praise the Lord,” she said. “He done sent us a savior.” Then, grabbing the upper arms of her children, she lifted each of them from the floor and pushed them toward the back room. “Get packed,” she told them. “We movin to the Parsons Place.”
Part One
1950
Chapter 1
TEE WEE STOOD ON HER FRONT PORCH, ARMS FOLDED OVER her huge breasts, black, bare feet wide apart. She weighed more than two hundred pounds, and in her Sunday navy blue dress with red stripes, over which she wore a small white apron, she resembled a large mailbox. On her head she wore a straw boater with black streamers. As she reached to straighten the hat, adjusting the streamers so that they curled around her neck, she thought how unfair it was that the Parsons had chosen Luther to be the one to go get this Summit woman who called herself Icey. And on a Sunday, too! Tee Wee’s day had begun at five when she had stumbled to the kitchen to make pies for dinner at Mount Zion. Then at meeting four sinners had been called to Jesus, which meant an extra hour of testifying and singing, and when she had finally gotten home after three o’clock, she barely had time to make her famous chicken pie and put her Sunday clothes back on before Luther was due back.
When Tee Wee saw an orange ball of dust swirling up the hill, she crossed her arms and took a deep breath. Now she could see the black car slowly moving toward her. The 1940 Ford was ten years old and didn’t run half the time, but its chrome bumpers were still shiny, and it was the only car owned by a colored on Enterprise Road.
Now another woman was sitting in the passenger’s seat of that Ford. “Here she comes,” Tee Wee said. “Here comes misery up my drive.” Last week Mrs. Parsons had broken the news that Tee Wee’s daughter Ernestine wasn’t going to get the housekeeping job after that no-good Pansy had quit. No, she was giving the job, the tenant house next door, and half of Tee Wee’s vegetable garden to this Icey. And all because Icey’s man had run off and she was kin to Idella, who cleaned up the white Methodist church. “So she got young’ns to feed. We all got them,” she mumbled to herself. And the worst insult of all was Luther having to drive up to Summit to fetch her and her children. Didn’t the woman have no friends to help her? Like as not, she thought. Woman can’t hold her man can’t hold no friends.
Luther pulled into the small circle of shade offered by the only oak in their yard. Tee Wee began counting heads in the car. Luther’s. Hers. Three young’ns. Tee Wee smiled. Four of her six were in the house behind her. The back doors of the car opened and the passengers began falling out of the Ford. None of them had on shoes. She kept smiling. Then she saw a pair of black patent leather pumps dangling from beneath the door of the passenger’s side. Her smile vanished. She wished she hadn’t taken off her shoes, but they were two sizes too small, and her feet had been killing her after wearing them to meeting this morning. When Icey finally got out of the Ford, Tee Wee saw that she was nearly as large as herself and also in her early thirties. The woman’s skin was walnut-colored, and she was wearing a white lace dress with a blue aster blossom stuck in one of the holes over her left breast. Her head was, Tee Wee saw with relief, hatless. Luther, who normally limped from an injury caused by a mule falling on his left leg, swung around the car like he’d never seen a jackass, much less had one fall on him.
Tee Wee didn’t move. Let them come up to her. “Bout time. Supper’s on and gettin scorched.”
Luther laughed like she’d said something funny. “This here’s our new neighbor, Tee. Name of Icey.”
