Patty Jean 

by Leslie S. Talley

“You don’t belong here, do you? Didn’t think so. Know most ever body in these parts. Just passin’ through?” Letha asks, as she swipes the counter with a damp rag.

I turn away from the grill to see who she’s jawin’ at. Looks like a trucker. Burly enough for one, anyway. I stoop slightly to look out the window. Eighteen wheeler. The Beef People. Must really be off the beaten track. We don’t have a Winn Dixie around here.

Smiling to myself, I turn the sausage for our Number Three and, flipping the spatula over, rake the grease to the back of the griddle. Poor customers don’t stand a chance once Letha gets aholt of them. She digs out all their business before the first coffee refill. Passes it along to everyone else at the counter, too.

Bet her jaw would drop if she knew about me.

“What’ll it be?” Letha asks the trucker.

“Surprise me,” he says, as he swings a leg over the stool.  “But make it quick: I’m so hungry my backbone thinks it’s done been eat by my gizzard.”

“Do I look like a mind reader?” Letha says.

Don’t she know how to treat a trucker? And get a big tip? I’m about ready to trade this spatula in for a pad and pencil. First you tell him how tired he looks. Give him sympathy and mother him a bit, no matter how old he is and you are. Pretty soon he’s telling you how many miles he’s logged and how heavy his load is. Next thing you know you’ve got your big tip. Letha don’t know these little tricks.

“Two eggs, shipwrecked, Patty Jean!” Letha shouts. Hell, I’m right here, she don’t have to yell. The door opens again and it’s Nell Rae delivering the pies. All the regulars crane their necks to see, and there’s a lot of speculatin’ as to what kind she’s brought today. Nell Rae bakes all of our pies, and they’re different every day.

“Whatcha got, Nell Rae?” Letha asks.

“Peanut butter, sweet potato, chocolate, coconut, and fresh strawberry,” Nell says as she plunks her grocery store boxes on the counter top. Her husband used to operate the Lee Norse in the mines on the hoot owl shift until his black lung gets so bad he cain’t do nothing but hawk up gunk. Nell makes out the best she can, same’s the rest of us.

“Look good enough to eat, Nell Rae,” I holler as she goes out the door. Letha just takes Nell Rae for granted, but I know she likes to be ‘preciated same as ever body else.

“Hey, Letha, what do I have to do for more coffee? You’re treatin’ me like a red-headed step-child!” hollers Quincy, a fixture at Janie’s Cafe. There ain’t no Janie, I already done found out.

“Dadgum you, Quincy, I only got two hands. Why don’t you fetch it your own self?” Letha says.

I pick up both coffee pots and move to the end of the counter. “Leaded or unleaded?” I say.

“Well now, this purty little lady knows how to treat a man, Letha.” Quincy grins at me.

He’s right. It’s the only thing I know: waiting on ‘em hand and foot.

After refilling the stool sitters, I move out from behind the counter to refill the regulars--old coots who hang around every morning ‘cause their wives can’t stand to have them under foot. They always congregate in the corner booth just like the Amen Corner in church. If you’re a stranger, better not take their spot. They’re talking about a snub-nosed catfish one of them’s seen.

“Fifty-three inches long,” says Roscoe.

“You shit and fell back in it!” says Clyde. He darts his eyes around the room: always seems to be lookin’ for something that ain’t there. Letha thinks he’s trying to remember did he bring his old lady along and where’s she got to? But I think he’s looking for a spittoon that done disappeared about 19 and 50.

“I ain’t alyin’ to ye. Fifty-three inches long, ‘bout as big around as that there pressure cooker, and he keeps it in a ‘quarium as long as your kitchen table.” Roscoe ain’t going to be contradicted by nobody.

“Why don’t he eat the blamed thing?” asks another of the doubting Thomases.

“Can’t bring himself to do it.”

“Well, I’ll tell you a better one than that. Darryl Sheets growed him an Abraham Lincoln tomato that big,” Clyde says.

“What I’m waiting for is fer someone to grow a square tomato that just fits my sandwich,” says Roscoe.

“Say, Roscoe, I hear your granddaughter’s getting hitched,” one of the stool sitters fires over his shoulder.

“Huh! She took up with the middle Plunker boy; he can’t hold down a job, has got more notions than a cat has fleas...”

“You goin’ to the wedding?”

“Hell, no. I ain’t agoin’ to watch her drive her duck to a poor market.” Roscoe ducks his chin on his chest and takes to brooding.

In just under a month I know more about these people and their kin than they’ll ever know about me. And I’ll bet you I’ve had more happen to me in my forty-one years than the rest of ‘em added up! I could bend their ears if I took a notion to.

Working the farm, taking care of four younger kids, cooking for Daddy Bob and three hired hands--all when I wasn’t but eleven year old. I know work, all right. Working as short order cook for the breakfast and lunch shift at Janie’s--why that’s

child’s play. Shoot, I don’t have to get up till six to start the biscuits. Back on the farm I’da had the milking done, the hands fed, and be cleanin’ the dishes by six.

“Two eggs, looking at you,” Letha shouts. She don’t like me coming out from behind the counter and mixin’ with the regulars. Thinks she owns them, I reckon. I don’t blame her, mind. This here is her territory: she’s lived here all her life and will probably die here, God help her. Me, I ain’t never goin’ to stay in one place again ‘s long as I live. I want better than this for my Pearl.

I go back to my griddle and break open two eggs, one-handed. I don’t use no metal ring to make them perfectly round, neither. Too artificial. A good cook can keep eggs from running all over the grill; I’m a pro. One thing I’ve learned: people are peculiar about their eggs. Especially men. Daddy Bob, now, wanted his’n scrambled, then he’d break up his biscuits into little bitty pieces, and drown the whole mess in gravy.

I tune back in to the talk around me. Roscoe and Quincy are ragging Letha ‘bout the piddlin’ little dab of grits she’s done dished up. Then they get to talkin’ about a widder man from Columbia that took up with a woman when his wife was adyin’ and married her a month to the day after his first wife was buried.

“Didn’t let his first one’s tracks hardly get cold,” says Roscoe, shaking his head.

Daddy Bob hadn’t let much grass grow under his feet, neither. Had them young ‘uns a stepma afore the cat could lick her ear.

Quincy winks at me. “And Patty Jean here didn’t even get her bid in.”

I smile sweetly and don’t say nothin’. Quincy’s all the time trying to find out my business. Drives these people crazy not to know every blamed thing about you. When Chester Purvis died, they all went to the courthouse to read his will. That’s a fact. Some things should be between you and your own self.

“Did Calanthey ever come back to her old man?” Quincy asks. He gives up on getting a rise outta me.

Roscoe rouses himself. “Yeah, two days after he sells his crop she’s back jest a cryin’ and slingin’ snot!” They both shake their heads over the abomination of women. I could say a few things about men.

Like Okey, now, just coming in the door. He goes home from work, showers, changes clothes, eats the supper his wife has fixed, then goes out and spends the night with his girl friend. Comes home of a mornin’, showers, changes clothes, eats the breakfast his wife has fixed, and goes to work! I don’t take their shit no more, I can tell you! And I’m gonna see to it my Pearl don’t, neither. Gonna raise her different.

“Did you hear what that crazy Homer Scanlon’s done went and did?” Okey asks the room at large. He likes to be the center of attention. Likes to be first with the news, too. Wonder if he knows how much he gets talked about. Probably. Probably likes it.

All the regulars and old coots lean forward, anxious to hear a good one.

“He’s done built hisself a jail in his basement! When he wants to go on a bender he locks hisself in, gives his wife the key, and drinks himself shit-faced!”

“Homer’s had a mess of DUI’s,” says Roscoe, pulling a long face. “If’’n it keeps him outta trouble....”

If I was Homer’s wife I’d lock him in, go upstairs and pack my bags, call a cab, climb in, and say to the driver, “Louisville airport.”

Right about then the door opens and Pearl comes in. She comes in every mornin’ about this time. What with school bein’ out and all, I let her sleep in, come over when she takes a notion. Letha says I oughter put her to work, but she’s only thirteen. I don’t want her turned into no workhorse; she’s going to have a better life than her ma.

She has that pale blond hair, the same color mine used to be when I was that age. She’s gonna be tall; wants to be a model. I buy her Seventeen every month, and, of an evening, we do each other’s hair and make-up. Just like a slumber party, I reckon: I ain’t never been to one myself.

I take a break from behind the grill and pull up a chair beside Pearl. She takes the chalkboard down, erases breakfast, and starts writing the lunch specials. I roll silverware and she quizzes me on my homework. Soon’s I get my GED, we’re outta here.

“Don’t know why you keep putting the Sportsman’s Breakfast on here. Ain’t nobody in these parts going to pay $4.95 for quail and eggs. Ain’t nobody ever ordered it.” She pouts her lower lip. Pearl’s fed up with this place, too, and ready to move on. She’s been restless lately, and I’m worrying the sap’s started to flow. If’’n I can keep her from givin’ in to her nature, like her ma....

One thing, I’m not going to do her the way my ma did me. Sold me down the river, you’d better believe.

“Your little girl shore looks like you, Patty Jean!” Quincy says, grinning.

I look up from the silverware and toss my bomb at them. “Pearl ain’t my daughter: she’s my grandbaby.” Letha, her mouth’s at half cock and Roscoe lets that rolled cigarette, that always looks attached to his lower lip, fall to the tabletop.

See, Daddy Bob come courtin’ my mama, but she weren’t interested. She was plumb wore out by then. But, said,”You c’n have my oldest girl there: Patty Jean.” I didn’t have no say in it. So there I was, eleven year old, stepma to four young ‘uns not much younger’n me. Had three more of my own, too. Two boys and a girl. My girl, Pearl’s mama--well, I hoped for better things for her. Not runnin’ off to Atlanta with some trucker, like she done. Done disappeared when Pearl was five.  I got a call from HRS askin’ did I want Pearl. ‘Course I said yes.

Stayed with Daddy Bob till I turned forty-one this year--same age he was when he married me. With the rest of the kids growed and gone, all that old goat wanted to do was ride me night and day. I was sick of that. Besides, I didn’t like the way he looked at Pearl; she sure looks like her granny at that age.

Anyway, Pearl and I lit out.

I look around Janie’s Cafe; everybody’s froze, just like the end of Dallas. Then all of them commence talkin’ agin at the same time.

“Ain’t she the girl that’s done tooken up with...” Quincy says.

“Shesh, Quincy. Just shut your mouth,” Letha says.

Yessiree, I got big plans for Pearl. She’s gonna be Miss America one day, or at least Miss Kentucky. I’m pinnin’ all my hopes on Pearl: she ain’t gonna turn out like her ma and grandma.

She’s going to be better.