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                                             Belle and Lena

1987

            In the white house President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski have an affair behind closed doors. Dow Jones closes above 2,000 for 1st time (2,002.25). Bryan Gumbel co-hosted his final “Today” show on NBC-TV. Secretary of State Margaret Albright announces she just discovered that her grandparents were Jewish.  In a small town in Alabama twin sisters sit on a veranda.

                Belle and Lena sat in twin green rockers on the front porch of their old Victorian house located about a block from the center of the small town they lived in. An ancient wisteria vine grew draped around the front porch rail and pulled relentlessly against it. A few out of season  fragrant purple blooms peeped from the dense green foliage and perfumed the air. Tired from picking cucumbers in the garden most of the morning and magically turning them into sweet pickles for much of the afternoon they briefly retired to the front porch for a late afternoon rest and a glass of iced tea. They loved to sit on the veranda in the early evening to watch the few cars and pedestrians that passed in front of their home.  Their neighborhood had declined and practically all of the children had long ago grown up and moved away to cities and towns far away from this small side street in Junction Center. Many of the adjacent houses were in need of paint and general upkeep. Little was done at this point to maintain the appearance of the area as nobody seemed to care very much one way or the other. The parents who so lovingly raised their children for the most part now occupied the town cemetery that was located just behind the new high school. The grave yard that had been there since the town was established was an overgrown place where the tombstones baked in the hot midday sun and wind blown buffalo grass, Queen Anne’s lace, other tall weeds and wild flowers gently caressed the knees of sun baked monuments situated above the departed former residents. It was ironic that the youngest and most vigorous of the town’s inhabitants should spend so much of their life being educated within sight of the graves of departed former town’s people. Their deceased grandparents, relatives and many old friends rested just over a dilapidated barbed wire fence that kept cows and horses from trampling the headstones and markers that defined the cemetery’s boundaries. The fence that separated the living from the dead was installed years ago so that the adjacent fields of lush peanuts and cotton didn’t overlap and impinge on the graves. There at the center of the cemetery stood a tall singular obelisk, the grave marker for a former wealthy local doctor. It towered over the graveyard and could be seen at some distance. It was a grey speckled granite edifice that marked the center point of the burial ground with the other graves circling like satellites.

                 The sisters rarely went to the cemetery to visit their relative’s graves because, as Belle was fond of saying, “Honey, we'll soon be spending all of our time there so why go now it if we don't have to!” Their final resting plot was determined many years before when their aging parents bought the white graveled plot in the south west corner of the field that was surrounded with rectangles of marble. One enormous camellia bush grew in the middle of the plot but offered scant shade to the marble headstones.  Purchased from the local United Methodist church they knew even as young girls that eventually they would spend eternity beneath the dirt and stones here in this modest grassy field.             Their parents and their younger brother Curry were all ready there eternally sleeping below the orange clay and dirt. Curry, their younger brother died while still in high school from a football injury to his right thigh bone. He suffered many months and finally died from blood poisoning after a botched surgery in a futile attempt to restore his health. The sharecroppers living down the dirt road who helped Stanford with the farm chores heard Curry’s pitiful cries in the night from all the uncontrolled pain he suffered. Finally when it was over and he had finally passed away the broken hearted parents and sisters placed him beneath a pink marble slab inscribed with his name, date of birth, death and the message that read, Curry, beloved Son of Mavis and Stanford, brother to Belle and Lena. Belle said upon each visit, “It is very unsettling to see your name inscribed on a tombstone every time you visit the cemetery; I must say! It is like an invisible metaphorical hand waiting to pull you underground! It just gives me the creeps and I do not like going there at all!” she said. Belle reminded Lena, “Speaking of metaphorical hands, remember the time all those buzzards took up to roosting in that old dead oak tree in the front yard of the house a few years ago? It was the most unsettling thing I have ever experienced, not counting seeing my name on a tomb stone. That, if you remember is the main reason we had the tree cut down, well that and the fact that it was going to eventually fall on the house!  I honestly hate those damnable harbingers of death and doom!”Lena exclaimed.

            The sharecroppers that lived two hundred yards down the dirt road farmed several acres rented on shares from Stanford and his wife. They were black, very poor and struggled to make a living. His name was Luthor and his wife was Vie. They had two children, one boy Costanel who was sixteen and a daughter Janie who was twelve. Costanel helped his father on the farm and had finally gotten large and strong enough to be very helpful with the farm chores.  He sometimes drove the tractor with his father following behind planting the seeds and sowing fertilizer. They attended a Baptist Church further down the road where the Sunday school rooms doubled as an elementary school during the week.  On Saturdays Vie and Janie could be seen in the small yard with a blazing fire beneath a huge black cast iron pot filled with boiling water and dirty clothes. The weekly wash took the better part of the day and the clean clothes hung in the yard for most of the afternoon and sometimes would still be there on Sunday morning.

           

                The sleepy town square was just a half mile away. It was surrounded with ancient live oak trees that offered shade in the sweltering months of summer in the small township and provided a gathering place for the citizens and country farmers who brought produce and small animals to town for sale, show and barter. The town hall along with numerous assorted mercantile stores as well as a restaurant called Dan’s Down Town Diner circled the small green space that was the epicenter of the diminutive town. Once a bustling site for Saturday morning gatherings the square now serves as a place for pigeons and squirrels to reside and carry on their incarcerated lives within the surrounded confines of the square. Most of the now deserted storefronts have rusted tin and plywood nailed to what once was windows and doors providing entrance to the treasures within the stores. Hand painted “keep out!” signs offer warnings that trespassers would be prosecuted should they transgress. In the small town there were precious few people to trespass anymore anyway, so no one understood the purpose of all those signs! Belle rose from her rocker and shuffled towards the kitchen to replenish the amber colored liquid in her ice filled glass. “You getting another drink?” called Lena as she pushed her foot against the floor propelling her chair backwards and forwards creating a minuscule breeze that motivated her artificially colored red, beauty parlor curled hair. Inez at the beauty parlor had assured her that she was still young enough to wear that particular color even though Belle thought it looked absurd. Out in the street she noticed two black children on ragged out bicycles being chased by a black and white dog racing down the street shrieking to each other in fear of the pursuing canine. Lena heard one of the children scream, “It’s a Dalmatian dog and he’ll bite the shit out of you!” The children and the dog disappeared into the distance, still screaming and pedaling frantically with the dog following in hot pursuit.

Lena

The Day at the Train

                                                                                                                                                                         October 1943

The Second World War had been in progress since 1939 with 100 million people from 30 different countries involved before it ended in 1945. Holocaust; Dr.Joseph Mengele begins his service as a medical officer in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Anne Frank’s diary will not be published for four years.  

                Lena and Belle at seventeen had recently finished high school. Wearing a new flowered dress with her hair only just fixed Lena felt very beautiful and didn't want to walk in the heat and dust the mile and a half to town just to see a passing freight train. Lena was a beautiful girl and she knew it. Her face was slightly more symmetrical than her twin sister’s and therein lay the difference. Not by any means was Belle unattractive because she certainly was not. In fact many people thought she was the prettier one. Their father had taken the wagon pulled by two enormous mules into town earlier in the day and had not returned so walking was the only option. After learning the train was packed with young men, soldiers headed off for war in foreign countries she agreed to go with Belle who was determined to go no matter what. The walk to town was very hot even during the fall of the year like this particular sweltering dry day in October. After reaching town they stood with sweat beads on their foreheads near the railroad tracks and watched impatiently for the train to round the distant curve. It came into sight spewing black smoke from the smokestack and slowing somewhat. Ear piercing whistles emanated from the train as it approached the main intersection where Lena and Belle were standing.

            The train rolled past in a whirling cyclone of dust and debris. From the dry red clay beside the track the air turned orange as the wind from the passing train cars stirred the dry powder into the air whipping it skyward. Many fresh faced young men in khaki uniforms hung out of the windows of the train waving, whistling and shouting enthusiastically at the two beautiful young girls when the rush of wind blew their dresses up above their knees and whipped their flaxen hair about in all directions. Families and groups of other people standing beside the tracks clapped their hands and cheered the soldiers as they blew quickly into and out of the small town on the chugging train. Through this cloud of detritus the train passed rapidly. As the final car passed Lena saw a man standing on the rear platform outside the back of the caboose. His left hand was grasping the pole that supported the roof over the platform on which he stood. A dark suit covered his tall frame and there was sadness about him that she could see from the distance where she stood beside the track. His black brooding eyes were set on some distant point beyond where the tracks came together and met in the distance. He was the most beautiful man Lena had ever seen with broad shoulders and hair as black as coal. He stood still except for the movement caused by the gentle sway of the speeding train. His eyes remained fixed on the distant horizon. Lena felt her heart come unfixed from its usual place in her chest and fall noiselessly into the stones and dirt between her feet. The image of this stranger was burned into her mind like a tattoo. Besieged by this handsome outsider she turned to her sister and said, “That’s the man I am going to marry!” The train rumbled off into the distance gathering speed as it passed away into the countryside, growing smaller as it moved further away down the tracks. Lena could not avert her eyes from the diminishing train, longing for one more glimpse of the stranger. Tears filled her eyes and silently ran down her cheeks.

                The mile and a half walk back home out the dusty dirt road seemed like a hundred miles. As Lena walked toward home she began to think and imagine exactly how she could meet the handsome sad man she had seen at the rear of the train. Maybe one day he would show up on the door steps of her home selling Singer Sewing Machines. When she opened the screen door and looked into his eyes she again felt her heart shift in her chest and thought she might faint as a great heat wave encompassed her. She felt that looking into his eyes was like staring up in to the night sky filled with stars. Perhaps she might accidentally pass him on the street and fortuitously brush his shoulder. He would stop and say, “Oh, pardon me miss. I did not mean to bump you.”  Lena would blush but still gaze into his dark brown eyes and knowing that she was all ready besotted with his charm would gently touch his arm and say, “Oh, it was nothing at all, sir. Don’t even mention it.” Thinking about these scenarios she felt faint but continued walking towards home next to Belle who by this time was sweating profusely. Their bulldog puppy Tige saw them approaching and raced across the dusty field to meet them leaping and cavorting in the rows of peanuts as they crossed the field approaching their house.

                Father mentioned the passing train that night at the dinner table and what he heard while in town earlier in the day. “Sad, sad how terribly sad it was, “he stated. Lena asked, “What was so sad? Belle and I were there watching the train pass and saw nothing sad, “she said. Their father continued, “There was a young man on the train from over near Mobile; a young Methodist minister carrying his deceased wife back to north Alabama for burial at her ancestral home. She died in child birth and her coffin was in the baggage car.” Lena’s mouth dropped open and she let out an audible gasp. Belle looked at her and said, “That was the man you saw on the back of the train and said you were going to marry him! It had to be!”Again Lena blushed.

Night at the carnival

November 1944

Russian troops land on Kertsj peninsula, FDR, Churchill & Chiang Kai-shek meet to discuss ways to defeat Japan, FDR, Churchill & Stalin meet at Tehran to map out strategy,  Chic Bear Sid Luckman passes for 7 touchdowns vs NY Giants (56-7), Jewish ghetto of Riga Latvia is destroyed.

            It was a bright November morning when Belle woke up and looked across the room expecting to see Lena asleep in her bed. She was not there. From down in the kitchen the smell of bacon drifted up into the bedroom and its tantalizing aroma lured Belle from the warm comfort of her bed. She walked down the wooden steps holding on to the banister rail. The textured wooden steps pressed up into her bare feet. There in the kitchen her parents were sitting across the table from Lena. Belle heard her father say, “You are not going to Mobile by yourself and that’s all there is to it!” Belle realized that she had entered midpoint in a conversation that had been going on for weeks in their family. Lena was determined to go to Mobile for a job interview that she had heard about from a cousin who lived in the coastal city. The teaching job was in a small school on the outskirts of Mobile in the country side.  Belle knew that Lena had little interest in teaching and did not like the Mobile area. She thought it was too hot in Junction City and the idea of going even further south to live in hotter temperatures was not appealing at all. Belle knew that Lena had ulterior motives for her move to Mobile. Lena looked at Belle for some support but Belle did not meet her glance. “Dad” Lena said, “Belle and I could take the train to Mobile and then get someone to transport us to the school for the interview. I am not going to sit around Junction City and waste my life waiting for something to happen!” “Belle, if I decide to let her go would you be willing to go with her to Mobile for the interview?” her father asked.” “Maybe,” Belle replied, looking at Lena with a sly grin.

            From the front yard the machine gun barking of Tige filled the air with urgent yapping. Stanford rose from his chair and ambled across the breakfast room floor to look out the front door. “Good Lord! What in the heck is all that about?” Stanford exclaimed. The girls jumped up from their chairs and moved toward the windows. Passing in front of the house on the sandy dirt road was a large truck filled with men dressed in clown outfits. Multicolored streamers flowed behind the vehicle and drug through the orange dirt on the road. Attached to the sides of the truck on the fenders were large festive signs that stated, “The Carnival is here! Come tonight and get half price admission!”A loud man shouted,”See the two headed dog, the snake woman and the crocodile man, alive and in person!” He shouted, “Come see the man eat a live chicken, the bearded lady and the one thousand pound man. See the sultana ladies from the harem of the sheik of Arabia!” A young boy perched on the rear of the truck banged an oversized drum in the dust from the road as the truck moved slowly down the road. One of the several blond women was dressed in purple transparent gauzy wrappings and as she leaned from the truck she exposed a surprising amount of cleavage from her sequined halter top. Stanford said, “Get back in the house girls! It’s nothing but a bunch of trash blowing down the road!” Everyone knew that carnival folk were just a bunch of riff raff and were always up to no good. “They are nothing but thieves and criminals!” Stanford said, “That’s all they are”. Little more was said about the passing ménage. Belle looked intensely at Lena and gave her a furtive wink. After breakfast the two girls helped with the dishes and then went out onto the front porch and sat on the swing. Belle began, “I am going to that carnival tonight. Do you want to go with me?” Lena replied, “You are not going anywhere. You'll get your throat cut at that horrible place!” “We’ll see!” Belle muttered. Over the distant horizon a dark thunderhead rolled into view. “Looks like we might get a little rain,” Belle muttered.

            That night after much politicking from Belle she and Lena fabricated a story convincing their parents that they needed go to a neighbor’s house half way into town. They left at dusk and walked the winding road toward the small town. Finding the carnival was no problem as there was only one place where things like carnivals and fairs had enough room to set up and operate. Approaching the entrance to the carnival they walked through an unexpected milky mist that had appeared at a depression in the ground like a gauze curtain draped across the landscape near the entrance to the carnival. They paid a small fee for the both of them to enter the grounds and moved into the midway where many of the town’s people were all ready there walking around looking. Barkers’ called to the passerby’s trying to lure them into the tents set up for housing the attractions. Men shouted, “Only costs a nickel. Come on in!” The girls paid the admission fee to see the one thousand pound man and passed into a brightly lit tent where a huge man lay reclined on a dilapidated mattress. He was immense. There seemed to be no end to him. His mass covered the mattress and spilled over of the edge onto the floor. Only a thin white covering wrapped his midsection. Overwhelming fleshy tissue seemed to encompass the entire room. Eating what appeared to be a chicken dinner there was a greasy glistening sheen circling the man’s mouth and clinging to his hands and fingers. He looked at the girls and winked. They left and went to the next tent.

            A sign announced “See the two headed dog, right this way!”  Belle and Lena paid their nickel and walked through the curtained door. The large room contained hundreds of formaldehyde filled bottles on wooden shelves. Many of them had fetuses with huge blue veined heads, snakes and worms that had been removed from the digestive tracts of children, a human heart, a child’s hand and many other things that made the girls blush and turn their heads away. In one corner of the shelf was a large fluid filled bottle with a small dog that looked as though he had two heads coming from a thick neck. One bottle contained a uterus and partially birthed immature baby. The girls were repulsed and left the tent after just a minute. They pushed their way through a yielding canvas curtain that opened into a tented room where many men sat in chairs smoking cigarettes staring intently at a raised stage where a ferociously blond, completely naked woman lay repeatedly thrusting her pink private parts into the open air. It was the woman in the purple gauze wrapping with the immense cleavage that passed in the truck earlier that morning. Belle and Lena retreated from a side door into the cool humid night air. A large bald man with a chewed up cigar and a stubbly beard just outside the tent said, “Hey! No women allowed in there!”

             They walked into the little crowd fearful someone from the town had seen them pass out of the tent where the blond woman was performing her show. Further down the midway they ran into two boys they had known at school. The four of them began walking together and talking about their plans now that they had finished school. Lena said, “I am moving to Mobile, Alabama and find the man of my dreams!” Belle commented, “Yeah and I am flying to the moon!” The boys both laughed. Belle and Lena left the boys and started for the front gate of the carnival and the trip back home. They were very quiet and the weather was worsening by the minute. Lightning flashed across the night sky and large drops of rain started to fall. Thunder rumbled across the distant fields and the trees beside the road began to quake and whip around in a synchronized dance with the wind. The girls knew they were going to get wet. The mist that shrouded the fair entrance had now expanded and encompassed the country side like an opaque curtain making it difficult to navigate their way back home.  Another flash of lightning briefly lit up the night sky and Belle saw a dark shadowy figure following at a short distance in the heavy fog behind them. She grabbed Lena's arm and pulled her closer.

.....to be continued……maybe?

Explanations

                Lena was the name of my Mother’s aunt who lived across the street from us when I was a small boy living in Midland City, she loved to grow flowers

The character of Lena is my mother’s sister

Belle was the name of the character of the prostitute in “Gone with the Wind”

The character Belle is another of my Aunts, fictionalized

Junction Center is a combination of Midland City and Headland, Alabama

The dark stranger on the train is my Uncle

Mavis was the name of the mother of a friend

Stanford is the name of a former neighbor

My father sold Singer sewing machines when he lived in Kentucky, was young and first married  

Curry was my mother’s youngest brother who died in high school from a leg injury

Tige was my grandfather’s bull dog

Inez was a beautician who did my mother’s hair for more years that any of us could remember

                “Dalmatian dog” is what the black children in our Jonesboro neighborhood called Jesse and Checkers (my Dalmatians) when I walked them around the block.

When I was a small child I went to the movie in down town Dothan alone late one afternoon and walked home afterwards. It was almost dark as I passed down the sidewalk leaving town and saw a trailer that had written on its sides, “See the fattest man in the world, only a quarter!” Having a quarter left over from the movie I paid the money and walked in. The window you looked through to see the immense man was too high for me to see over into where he was laying. Being so short I  jumped briefly up and caught a glimpse into the space where he reclined. In that tenth of a second my eyes saw over into the man’s little room and I saw him.  Although it was for less than a second it burned into my mind like a brand and after all this time I have almost perfect recall as to what I saw.

 In Dothan Alabama we had many fairs and carnivals come through town especially during the Peanut Festival. The sordid attractions I saw there, including the formaldehyde filled jars, the naked blond woman and the two headed dog are reflected in the “Night at the Carnival” section.