Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe Read online

  “Wow. Did you see it?”

  “Sure I did. It was a pair of two’s, big as life.”

  Stump was thinking it over when he spied something sticking out of the snow beside the track. He ran over and picked it up. “Look, Aunt Idgie, it’s a can of Deer Brand sauerkraut, and it hasn’t even been opened!”

  Then it hit him like a ton of bricks. He held the can up with awe and whispered, “Aunt Idgie, I’ll bet this is one of the cans that Railroad Bill threw off the train. Do you think it is?”

  Idgie examined the can. “It could be, son, it very well could be. Put it back where you found it, so the folks that are supposed to find it will.”

  Stump placed the can back down on the exact place he’d found it, like it was a sacred thing.

  “Wow.”

  His first snow and now a tin can that could have been from Railroad Bill. It was all too much.

  They continued walking, and after a few minutes Stump said, “I guess that Railroad Bill is about the bravest man that ever lived, huh, Aunt Idgie?”

  “He’s brave all right.”

  “Don’t you think he’s the bravest man we know of in our whole lives?”

  Idgie thought. “Well now, I wouldn’t say the bravest person I know. I don’t think I’d say that. One of the bravest, but not the bravest.”

  Stump was taken aback. “Who could be braver than Railroad Bill?”

  “Big George.”

  “Our Big George?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What he ever do?”

  “Well, for one thing, I wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for him.”

  “You mean, here today?”

  “No, I mean here at all. I would have been eaten up by hogs.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes sir. When I was about two or three, I guess, me and Buddy and Julian were all hanging around the hog pens, and I climbed up on the fence and fell head first right into the hog trough.”

  “You did?”

  “I did. Well, those hogs all started running over towards me—you know a hog will eat anything … they’ve been known to eat lots of babies.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. Anyhow, I jumped out of the trough and started running, but I fell down, and they almost had me before I could get out, when Big George saw me and jumped in that pen, right in the middle of those hogs, and started knocking them out of the way. Now, I’m talking about three-hundred-pound hogs. He would grab ’em and sling ’em across the pen, one by one, like they were sacks of potatoes. He was able to keep them off me long enough for Buddy to crawl under the fence and pull me out.”

  “Really!”

  “Really. Did you ever notice those scars on Big George’s arms?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s where those hogs bit him. But Big George never said a word to Poppa, because he knew Poppa would kill Buddy for bringing me down there.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “Wow.… Do you know any other brave people? What about Uncle Julian shooting that twelve-point deer last week? That took a lot of courage.”

  “Well now, there’s courage and then there’s courage,” Idgie said. “You don’t have to be too brave to shoot some poor dumb animal with a twenty-gauge shotgun.”

  “Who else do you know that’s brave besides Big George?”

  “Well, let’s see,” she said, musing. “Besides Big George, I’d have to say that your mother was one of the bravest people I know.”

  “Momma?”

  “Yes. Your momma.”

  “Oh, I don’t believe that. Why, she’s scared of everything, even a little bug. What’d she ever do?”

  “Something. She did something once.”

  “What?”

  “It doesn’t matter what. You asked me and I told you. Your mother and Big George are the two bravest people I know.”

  “Really?”

  “I promise you so.”

  Stump was amazed. “Well, I’ll be …”

  “That’s right. And there’s something else I want you always to remember. There are magnificent beings on this earth, son, that are walking around posing as humans. And I don’t ever want you to forget that. You hear me?”

  Stump looked at her sincerely and said, “No ma’am, I won’t.

  As they continued on down the tracks, a bright red cardinal swooped out of a snow-covered tree and made a Christmas flight across the white horizon.

  MARCH 9, 1986

  Before, during those long endless black nights when Evelyn had been awake sweating with fear and fighting visions of death and tubes and tumors growing, she had wanted to scream out for help while Ed slept beside her. But she had just lain there in that dark pit of her own personal hell until morning.

  Lately, to get her mind off that cold gun and pulling the trigger, she would close her eyes and force herself to hear Mrs. Threadgoode’s voice and if she breathed deep and concentrated she would soon see herself in Whistle Stop. She would walk down the street and go in Opal’s beauty shop and could actually feel her hair being washed with warm water, then cool, then cooler. After a comb-out she would stop by to visit with Dot Weems at the post office and then on to the cafe where she could see everyone so clearly, Stump and Ruth and Idgie. She would order lunch and Wilbur Weems and Grady Kilgore would wave to her. Sipsey and Onzell would smile at her and she could hear the radio from the kitchen. Everyone would ask her how she was and the sun was always shining and there would always be a tomorrow … Lately she slept more and more and thought of the gun less and less …

  When she woke this morning, Evelyn realized that she was actually looking forward to going to the nursing home. Sitting there all these weeks listening to stories about the cafe and Whistle Stop had become more of a reality than her own life with Ed in Birmingham.

  When she arrived, her friend was in a good mood, as usual, and was happy to get the Hershey bar without almonds, a special request.

  Halfway through it, Mrs. Threadgoode was busy wondering about a hobo she had known years ago.

  “Lord, I wonder whatever happened to Smokey Lonesome. It’s no telling where he is now, probably dead somewhere, I guess.

  “I remember the first time he ever came in the cafe. I was having a plate of fried green tomatoes, and he knocked on the back door, looking for food. Idgie went in the kitchen and pretty soon she came back in with this poor fella that was filthy dirty from riding the rails, and told him to go into the bathroom and wash up and she’d give him a bite to eat. Idgie went to fix him a plate and said that was the lonesomest-looking character she’d ever seen. He said his name was Smokey Phillips, but Idgie named him Smokey Lonesome, and after that, every time she’d see him coming in off the road, she’d say, ‘Here comes ol’ Smokey Lonesome.’

  “Poor ol’ thing, I don’t think he had a family, and Ruth and Idgie felt sorry for him ’cause he was ’bout half dead, and let him stay in that old shed they had out in back of the cafe. Oh, he’d get the wanderlust every once in a while and take off two or three times a year, but sooner or later he’d show back up, usually drunk and run-down, and, he’d go out back in his shed and stay awhile. He never owned a thing in his life. All he had was a knife and a fork and a spoon that he carried inside his coat pocket, and this can opener that he kept in his hatband. Said he didn’t want to be burdened down. I think that shed out back was the only place he ever had to call home, and if it hadn’t been for Ruth and Idgie, he might have starved to death.

  “But I think the real reason he kept coming back was because he was in love with Ruth. He never said so, but you could tell by the way he looked at her.

  “You know, I’m thankful that my Cleo passed on first. It seems like a man cain’t live without a woman. That’s why most of them die right after their wives do. They just get lost. It’s pitiful … you take Old Man Dunaway who’s out here. His wife hasn’t even been dead over a month yet, and he’s already started g
oosing all the women … that’s why the’re giving him those tranquilizers, to calm him down. Thinks he’s a Romeo, can you imagine? And you should see what he looks like, just like an old turkey buzzard, with big floppy ears and all. But who am I to say? No matter what you look like, there’s somebody who’s gonna think you’re the handsomest man in the world. Well, maybe he’ll catch one of these old women yet …”

  DECEMBER 3, 1938

  West Madison Street, Chicago, was no different from Pratt Street in Baltimore, South Main Street in Los Angeles, or Third Street in San Francisco; a street of gospel missions, cheap rooming houses, and hotels, secondhand clothes stores, greasy-spoon soup lines, pawn shops, liquor stores, and whorehouses, teeming with what were kindly referred to as “disappointed men.”

  The only thing that made that year in Chicago different from any other was that Smokey Lonesome, who usually traveled alone, had picked up a friend. Just a kid, really, but he was company. They’d met over a month ago, in Michigan.

  He was a good-looking, fresh-faced kid, wearing a thin blue-gray slipover sweater over a brown frayed shirt and ragged brown pants, with skin like a baby’s ass. Still wet behind the ears, he’d had a lot of trouble over in Detroit with guys trying to bugger him, and he’d asked Smokey if he could travel with him for a while.

  Smokey had told him the same thing that an old guy once said: “Go home now, kid, while you can. Get away from this life, ’cause once you piss out of a boxcar, you’re hooked.”

  But it didn’t do any good, just like it hadn’t done any good with him, so Smokey decided to let him tag along.

  He was a funny kid. He had about pulled his own britches off, digging so hard for a dime. He wanted to see Sally Rand do her fan dance to “White Birds in the Moonlight,” as it said on the poster. He never did find a dime, but the woman in the glass ticket booth felt so sorry for him that she let him in free.

  Smokey had hustled up a quarter while he was waiting for him to come out of the show, and thought they’d go get them a ten-cent steak over at the Tile Grill. They had not had anything to eat that day except for a can of Vienna sausages and some stale crackers. He was smoking a Lucky Strike that he had found mashed in a cigarette package someone had thrown away when the kid came bursting out of the theater, flying high.

  “Oh Smokey, you should have seen her! She’s the most beautiful and delicate thing I’ve ever seen. She was like an angel, a real live angel come down from heaven.”

  All through dinner he couldn’t stop talking about her.

  After they had their steaks, they were thirty cents short of a hotel room, so they headed on over to Grant’s Park, where they hoped to grab a sleep in one of the shacks, made out of tar paper and cardboard and a few scraps of lumber, that you could sometimes find if you were lucky; and they were lucky that night.

  Before they went to sleep, the kid said, as he had every night, “Tell me about where all you’ve been and what all you’ve done, Smokey.”

  “I told you that once.”

  “I know, but tell me again.”

  Smokey told him about the time he’d been in Baltimore and had a job at the White Tower hamburger place, and how it had been so shiny and clean you could eat right off the black and white tiles on the floor; and about the time he had been a coal miner, outside of Pittsburgh.

  “You know, a lot of these fellows will eat a rat, but as for me, I couldn’t do it. I’ve seen ’em save too many lives. Saved mine, once. Rats are the first ones to smell gas in a mine …

  “One time, me and this old boy was deep down in this mine, picking away, when all of a sudden here comes two hundred rats running past us, going more than sixty miles an hour. I didn’t know what to think, and this old colored boy throws his pick down and shouts, ‘Run!’

  “I did, and it saved my life. If I see one, to this day, I just let him go on about his rat business. Yes sir, they’re tops in my book.”

  The kid, who was almost asleep, mumbled, “What’s the worst job you ever had, Smokey?”

  “Worst job? Well, let’s see … I’ve done a lot of things a decent man wouldn’t do, but I guess the worst was back in ’twenty-eight, when I took that job in the turpentine mill, down at Vinegar Bend, Alabama. I hadn’t had nothing to eat but pork and beans in two months, and I was so busted that a nickel looked as big as a pancake, or I’d of never took the job. The only white people they could get to work down there were the Cajuns, and they called them turpentine niggers. That job would kill a white man; I only lasted five days and was sick as a dog for three weeks from the smell; it gets in your hair, your skin … I had to burn my clothes …”

  Suddenly, Smokey stopped talking and sat up. The minute he heard the sound of men running and shouting, he knew it was the Legion. In the past couple of months, the American Legion had been raiding the hobo camps, knocking down everything in their path, determined to clean up the riffraff that had descended on their city.

  Smokey shouted to the kid, “Let’s go! Let’s get out of here!”

  And they started running, just like the hundred and twenty-two other residents of that particular Hooverville that night. All you could hear was the sound of men crashing through the woods and the sound of the tar-paper shacks being ripped apart and struck down with crowbars and iron pipes.

  Smokey ran to the left, and as soon as he hit thick underbrush, he lay down, because he knew, with his weak lungs, he could never outrun them. He went flat to the ground and stayed there until it was over. The kid could run and he’d catch up with him somewhere down the line.

  Later, he went back over to the camp to see if there was anything left standing. What had once been a little town of shacks was now just loose piles of tar paper, cardboard, and wood, scattered and smashed flatter than pancakes. He turned and was leaving when he heard a voice.

  “Smokey?”

  The kid was lying about twenty feet from where their shack had been. Surprised, Smokey went over to him. “What happened?”

  “I know you told me not to ever untie my shoes, but they was tight. I tripped.”

  “You hurt?”

  “I think I’m killed.”

  Smokey squatted beside him and saw that the right side of his head had been beaten in. The kid looked up at him.

  “You know, Smokey … I thought tramping would be fun … but it ain’t …”

  Then he closed his eyes and died.

  The next day, Smokey got a couple of guys he knew and they buried him out in the tramps’ graveyard they had outside of Chicago, and Elmo Williams read a selection he found on this page of the little red Salvation Army songbook he always carried with him.

  Rejoice for a comrade deceased,

  Our loss is his infinite gain,

  A soul out of prison released,

  And free from its bodily chain.

  They never did know his name, so they just put up a wooden marker, made out of a crate. It said, THE KID.

  When the other men left, Smokey stayed behind for a minute to say goodbye.

  “Well, pal,” he said, “at least you got to see Sally Rand. That was something …”

  Then he turned around and headed for the yard to hop a train south, to Alabama. He wanted to get out of Chicago; the wind that whipped around the buildings was so cold that it sometimes brought a tear to a man’s eye.

  DECEMBER 8, 1938

  Beware of Blasting Caps

  Tell your kids not to play out by the railroad yards where they are dynamiting. My other half tells me that when he was on his run to Nashville a few days ago, he heard tell of a fellow who bit down on a blasting cap by mistake and blew his lips off.

  Opal says that there was such a rush in the shop the other day, with everyone getting ready for the Eastern Star Banquet, that a blue woman’s coat was taken by mistake. So if you have it, bring it back.

  A hayride was sponsored by the Baptist church and Peggy Hadley was left in the parking lot by mistake, but caught up with the gang later on.

  Idgie an
d Ruth made a group of our kids happy last Saturday by taking them over to Avondale Park to pay a visit to Miss Fancy, the famous elephant who is so popular with young and old alike. Everyone had their picture made with Miss Fancy, and can have them as soon as they come back from the drugstore, Thursday.

  Dr. Cleo Threadgoode returned home last Friday night from a visit to the Mayo Clinic, where he had taken little Albert for some tests. We are sorry he did not come home with good news for Ninny. We can only hope the doctors are wrong. Cleo will be back in his office on Monday.

  … Dot Weems …

  MARCH 15, 1986

  Today they were busy eating Cracker Jack and talking. Or at least Mrs. Threadgoode was.

  “You know, I was sure hoping I would be home by Easter, but it doesn’t look like I’m gonna make it. Mrs. Otis is still having a hard time, but she did sign up for this arts and crafts class they have out here. Your mother-in-law joined up, too. Geneene said that Easter, they were going to hide Easter eggs and invite some schoolchildren to come out and look for them. That should be fun …

  “I’ve always loved Easter, from the time I was a little girl. Loved everything that went with it. Back when we were kids, every Saturday night before Easter, we would all be out in the kitchen dyeing eggs. But Momma Threadgoode was always in charge of dyeing the golden Easter egg.

  “Easter morning, we’d all have on new outfits and brand new Buster Brown shoes from Poppa’s store. After church, Momma and Poppa would put us on the trolley car and we’d take a ride to Birmingham and back, while they hid about two hundred Easter egg& all over the backvard. There was all kinds of prizes—but the grand prize was for the one who found the golden egg.

  “I was thirteen the year I found the golden egg. We’d been running around the yard for two whole hours, and not one person had found the golden egg. I was standing in the middle of the backyard, resting a minute, when I happened to glance over and saw something shiny under the seesaw. And sure enough, there it was, the golden egg, hidden in the grass, just sitting there waiting for me. Essie Rue was mad as a wet hen. She had wanted to find it, herself, that year, ’cause the grand prize was this big lemon-colored see-through china Easter egg, with the most delicate sparkle dust sprinkled on it. And if you looked inside the egg, you could see a miniature scene of a tiny little family: a mother, a father, and two little girls and a dog, standing in front of a house that looked just like ours. I could look inside that egg for hours.… I wonder whatever happened to that egg. I think it got sold in the porch sale we had during World War One.