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.
