Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen Read online

  “I'm not mad at you, I never really was,” I said, without even rolling over to look her in the face.

  “I'm sorry Daddy got so mad at you. It's all my fault. If I wasn't such a . . . well, maybe he'll change his mind in a day or two,” Martha Ann said with a strange mix of regret and hope in her voice. “But I promise I won't go to the Dairy Queen without you. It just wouldn't be right.”

  “I hate this place, Martha Ann,” I said softly, feeling the tears welling up in my eyes again. “It's never gonna feel right, and finding the Lord in some lake hasn't changed that one little bit.”

  Maybe my exodus needed to be now, not when I'm eighteen, I thought to myself, knowing good and well Martha Ann would start crying too if she heard me talking like this. I could go to Willacoochee and find my mama's family. None of them had ever been to Ringgold, not even when Mama died. But I had gotten a card from Mama's sister on my birthday for as long as I can remember; so had Martha Ann. I could live with her. I bet she'd be happy to have me. But Martha Ann would want to come along and traveling with a child might slow me down.

  I spent the next two days holed up in my room figuring out what to do with the rest of my life, or at least the rest of the summer. I was still mad at my daddy, and I had decided that part of my plan was not talking to him. No good-night kisses, no warm morning exchanges, nope, nothing.

  On the third day, I decided I was doing a better job of punishing myself than my daddy and decided to come out of my room long enough to visit Gloria Jean. I hadn't had a chance to tell her about the baptism yet. Gloria Jean had never cared too much for Roberta Huckstep, especially after she told Ida Belle that Gloria Jean was nothing more than a modern-day Jezebel. I figured she'd enjoy hearing that precious, darling Emma Sue had had an ill-timed swim in the lake.

  Besides, Gloria Jean would agree with me that life was treating Catherine Grace Cline just plain rotten. She'd understand. She always did. She never called my dreaming foolishness, not once. She believed me when I said I was leaving town, and she always said she would help me figure out how to do it when the time came. She said she understood what it felt like to land in a place where you didn't belong. I always figured she was talking about Ring-gold and yet she had lived here since before I was born, since she married her fifth husband, Darrell Hixson. Sometimes I wondered if Daddy really knew how supportive Gloria Jean had been if he'd have let me spend so much time with her.

  Gloria Jean listened patiently to my sad story. She tried not to laugh thinking of Emma Sue's bow floating on the surface of Nottely Lake, and then she turned to me and looked me straight in the eyes. “Honey, if you want to get out of here as bad as you say you do, then you're going to need some money, a little do re me, if you know what I mean,” Gloria Jean said very matter-of-factly. “So why don't you put your energy into making some change instead of sitting around moping all summer long. Dreams don't just happen, baby, you got to go after ’em.”

  Then Gloria Jean started talking about my granddaddy's vegetables. I wasn't really sure where she was going with this, but I knew it would be someplace good. She explained that she had been over to Floyd Marshall's garden just the other day to help Ida Belle pick some corn. Even all these years after my granddaddy had passed on, Ida Belle still insisted on planting the corn and green beans for Wednesday-night suppers on the church grounds. She said it pleased the Lord that she fed His flock with vegetables grown on such blessed land.

  “Anyway, I hadn't been back there in a year or more, and I was surprised to see that the strawberry plants have taken over half the plot. I thought about picking those berries myself and making me some homemade strawberry jam, but you girls could do that. You know your mama used to make some of the best blackberry jam I've ever tasted, and I bet you two could do something just as special with those strawberries.”

  I was practically jumping off her sofa with excitement. I was going to make my dream come true and all the while working in the kitchen just like my mama used to do. Gloria Jean called it divine intervention. She said maybe my granddaddy left those strawberries there for me so I could turn them into something more valuable than I could have ever imagined. She figured I could sell the jars for a dollar a piece and that Mr. Tucker, the manager at the Dollar General Store, might even let me display them on one of his shelves, if we asked him real sweet.

  “Gloria Jean,” I said, suddenly sounding deflated. Mama died before she taught me how to do much of anything in the kitchen. “I don't know how to make jam or jelly or anything like that. I helped Ida Belle pickle some cucumbers once, but I just did what she told me to do.”

  “Lord child, I know you don't know how and that's why I'm going to show you. Who do you think taught your mama? That's right,” she said, acknowledging my surprise. “But you need to pick those strawberries first and there are hundreds of ’em. You know how to do that, don't you?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

  “All righty then, you start picking, and in a couple of days, I'll take you to town to buy the jars and pectin and sugar and everything else you're going to need to go into business. I'll even loan you some money, as a good-faith gesture, and you can pay me back when you sell all your jam.”

  I ran home and grabbed my blue jeans and old sneakers, explaining the whole plan to Martha Ann as I changed my clothes. I told her I'd give her fifteen cents from every jar I sold if she'd help me pick the strawberries.

  Martha Ann didn't like to get dirt on her hands any more than she liked water in her nose. She always put up a fuss when it was her turn to water the tomatoes because Daddy also made her pull any weeds that had popped up around the vines. But the idea of making money was too tempting even for Martha Ann, so she agreed to help as long as she got to wear Mama's old gardening gloves that Daddy kept in the garage hanging next to the watering can.

  We ran the whole way to the church, carrying baskets in both hands and kicking up the dirt behind us. As I put one foot in front of the other, I kept thinking that maybe, finally, the Lord was listening to me.

  When I got to the garden's edge, something inside told me to stop. Something said I was about to step on holy ground and I ought to say a little prayer or something respectful before taking my next step.

  I knew my granddaddy was watching over me. And I suspected he had left me this garden as a present that had taken me some time to appreciate, kind of like the porcelain dish Gloria Jean had given me for my tenth birthday. It had a picture of a little fairy painted on it, and she said the fairy's sweet smile reminded her of me. When I opened the box and she saw my disappointment that it wasn't that pink leather wallet I'd been admiring in the window at Mrs. Huckstep's gift shop, she promised me that someday, when I was a little older, I was going to love that dish more than any old worn-out wallet. It was a keepsake, she said, and you grow to love them more as each year passes.

  I knelt down on my knees and squished my fingers in the warm, dark brown dirt as if to introduce myself to the same piece of earth my granddaddy had tended so lovingly for so many years. I reached for a red, plump berry, and as I pulled it off the runner, I said a few words of thanksgiving. Then I dropped it into my basket. Every strawberry I picked that day felt like another little keepsake he'd left behind for me to find. Martha Ann and I picked strawberries until the sun started to fall behind the roof of the church, casting a shadow over our heads. Our baskets were overflowing and the tips of our fingers ached, but neither one of us wanted to stop.

  We sat by the garden before heading home and sucked on the berries we'd picked but couldn't fit into our baskets. We looked at each other and started to laugh. Our lips had turned as red as Gloria Jean's favorite shade of Revlon lipstick. We blew each other kisses like we were famous movie stars stopping to greet our fans.

  We walked home that night without saying a word. My body was tired but peaceful. I wasn't mad at my daddy anymore. I wasn't mad at anybody anymore.

  For the next two days, Martha Ann and I worked on our knees, picking and eating doze
ns of strawberries. We brought peanut butter sandwiches with us and cut up some berries and placed them between the two slices of bread. When we got tired, we would sit on the grass by the garden and eat our peanut butter and strawberry sandwiches and drink a cold bottle of Coca-Cola we had carried from home in a small plastic cooler. When we had finally filled all the baskets, Gloria Jean said we had what we needed to start making jam.

  The next morning, I was standing on Gloria Jean's front porch a few minutes before seven. “Lord, child, I haven't had my coffee or even begun to put on my face. Come on in and you can eat some breakfast with me.”

  Gloria Jean couldn't have moved any slower that morning if she had tried, and it took almost as much energy to hide my frustration as it had to pick all those strawberries. Couldn't she just once in her life throw on some clothes like Martha Ann and me and forget about putting colors on her face? I wanted to be at the Dollar General Store the very minute Mr. Tucker unlocked the doors. I even cleaned the breakfast dishes, hoping to hurry things along.

  But Gloria Jean never threw on anything, especially her makeup. And finally, at about a quarter to nine, she walked out of her bedroom, wearing high heels and a linen dress, looking more like she was headed to a party than to town to run some errands.

  “Now, honey, I am ready to go,” Gloria Jean announced, pointing to her pocketbook sitting on the table by the door. I grabbed her purse, ran ahead of her, and jumped into the front seat of her silver Buick LeSabre. By the time she got behind the wheel and started the engine, Martha Ann was running across the yard waving at us to wait for her. She climbed into the backseat with her flip-flops still in her hand.

  Gloria Jean wanted to stop at the Shop Rite first to pick up the sugar, a bottle of lemon juice, and some boxes of fruit pectin. I had no idea what we were going to do with the pectin, but Gloria Jean said we needed it. She said everything else, including the mason jars, we could get at the Dollar General Store and that we should be giving Mr. Tucker as much business as possible since we were going to be negotiating a partnership with him shortly.

  We put our groceries in the backseat of the LeSabre and walked across the parking lot to the Dollar General Store. Gloria Jean smiled when she saw Mr. Tucker and struck a pose kind of like the one in the photograph sitting on her television set.

  “Llewellyn, dear, would you be so kind as to show us girls where the canning jars are? We are going to make us some strawberry jam this afternoon,” said Gloria Jean, calling Mr. Tucker by his first name. Martha Ann and I tried not to laugh. We never thought of Mr. Tucker having a first name, let alone one like Llewellyn.

  “Sure thing, Miss Gloria Jean, right over here,” he said with an air of excitement, as if she'd agreed to go to a movie with him, not just walk to the other end of the store.

  Mr. Tucker was a small man with no distinguishing features other than his thick, white hair that he cut real short like a soldier in the army. He got married for the first time last year, but Gloria Jean said he did that only because he was afraid of dying alone.

  No man in his right mind, she said, would marry Blanche Baggett. She doesn't wear makeup, not even lipstick, and she weighs about three times as much as Mr. Tucker. Gloria Jean said it had been a miracle that she hadn't rolled over on him and smothered him to death. “Just a matter of time, girls, just a matter of time.”

  Mr. Tucker led us to the boxes of mason jars and Gloria Jean told him that we would need four dozen to start. “You know the preacher's daughters are looking to make a little money this summer,” she said, continuing to explain the entire plan without pausing for him to interrupt. “I told them that I was certain you wouldn't mind them selling their jam here in the store.”

  “Uh, well, you know, Miss Gloria Jean, I'm not sure that the company will allow me . . . I mean, you know I would . . .”

  Ignoring Mr. Tucker's hesitation, Gloria Jean proceeded, “I told them that you of all people would understand two enterprising girls wanting to make some money of their own. You being so kind and understanding and such a successful businessman and all.”

  Mr. Tucker stood there, shifting his weight back and forth from one foot to the other, staring at the floor. “Well, I'm sure I could make an exception for you, I mean for Reverend Cline's daughters, seeing how he's the preacher,” Mr. Tucker finally confessed, looking up at Gloria Jean.

  “You sweet thing,” she said, winking at us so Mr. Tucker couldn't see. “Girls, didn't I tell you Mr. Tucker is about the sweetest man in town? It's just a shame Blanche got him to walk down that aisle before I did.” Mr. Tucker blushed, now turning about as bright a shade of red as, well, one of my strawberries. “In fact, I bet he'd carry these dirty, old boxes out to the car for us. You know I just painted my nails and I sure would hate to chip them on one of these boxes.”

  Gloria Jean pulled a ten-dollar bill from her wallet and paid for the mason jars. She walked alongside Mr. Tucker, even resting her hand on his forearm as she led him to the LeSabre, ignoring me and Martha Ann altogether. He loaded the boxes just as she had asked, and I had a feeling I had already learned an awful lot about doing business that day.

  We unpacked the jars and the groceries when we got back to Gloria Jean's house, and Martha Ann and I washed all the berries on one side of the sink while Gloria Jean washed the mason jars on the other. Using the back of a fork, my little sister and I crushed the berries against the side of the mixing bowl and then poured them into a big black kettle waiting for us on the stove. I added the pectin and Martha Ann added the lemon juice. Gloria Jean explained that the pectin and the juice would preserve the taste and color of the jam.

  Then Gloria Jean turned on the gas under the black pot and told me and Martha Ann to stand back as she put a lit match to the burner. Martha Ann wouldn't take her eyes off the pot, waiting for the strawberry mixture to boil. Gloria Jean warned her that a watched pot of any kind never boils, but Martha Ann didn't dare blink. After it had bubbled and steamed for a minute or two, Gloria Jean added the sugar. Then we had to wait for it to boil again, but this time Gloria Jean kept scraping this pretty pink foam off the top. Martha Ann said it looked like pink clouds.

  We had to wait even longer for our strawberries to cool down so that we could pour them into the mason jars. Gloria Jean fixed us grilled cheese sandwiches. She said eating would make the time pass more quickly, but even a warm grilled cheese sandwich couldn't take my mind off that pot. Finally, Gloria Jean handed us both a ladle and said we could start filling the jars as long as we were careful to leave a good quarter inch of space at the top of each one. I did most of the pouring, though, and then Martha Ann came behind me putting a metal lid on top of each jar. Then we went back and topped each one with a screw band that held the lid securely in place.

  Gloria Jean said we did a real good job, but we weren't done yet. Then she put as many jars as she could at one time on a metal rack she had placed inside a large, stainless-steel pot. She filled the pot with water, making certain that the water covered all of the jars. Even when the water started boiling, Gloria Jean kept checking to make sure the jars were always covered with at least two inches of water. She said this was the most important step because we were killing all the germs that might otherwise make our customers sick. And that, she said, would not be good for business.

  After about half an hour or so, we took the jars out of the water to cool once and for all. And there, sitting on the counter, was our first batch of jam. Gloria Jean said we were turning out to be real entrepreneurs just like our great-granddaddy, William Floyd, except that what we were doing was legal in all fifty states.

  She pulled some paper out of a drawer and handed it to us. “These here are labels that you girls can decorate and then glue to the jars, right here, you see,” she said, pointing to a smooth, rectangular space on each jar. “You're going to need to come up with a name for your jam.”

  Martha Ann and I looked at each other. We'd been so busy picking berries that we never gave a minute's thought to
a name for our jam.

  “Well, start coloring those labels, something will come to you.”

  We sat at Gloria Jean's kitchen table for an hour or more decorating labels and gluing them onto the jars. And she was right, the name just came to me. I called it Preacher's Strawberry Jam, in honor of our grandfather. I looked at Martha Ann, holding a jar of jam in my hands, and said, “You know, getting grounded may have been the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “Honey, the Lord works in mysterious ways,” added Gloria Jean with a smile on her face as she stood at the kitchen sink washing the big, black kettle.

  By the end of the week, Mr. Tucker had sold every jar of jam we had given him, and he was asking for more. So Martha Ann and I happily spent the next month picking berries and making jam, and I think even Daddy realized that his punishment had turned into a lucrative opportunity. Ida Belle ordered a dozen jars to serve at church suppers. Lankford Bostleman said his aunt was wanting some for friends over in LaFayette. Even Mrs. Roberta Huckstep was seen picking up a jar or two. We had made almost two hundred jars when all was said and done. But our business came to an abrupt end one morning when I woke up with bright red blotches all over my body. I started screaming, thinking for sure I had scarlet fever. I had no idea what scarlet fever looked like, but since I was red, I figured I had to have it.

  Daddy heard me crying and came rushing into my room. He took one look at me and picked me up in his arms and carried me out to the car. He sped into town, almost driving poor Brother Fulmer off the road. He thought I had scarlet fever, too, I knew he did.

  But Doctor Brother Bowden took one look at me and started laughing. He said he and his wife had been enjoying my strawberry jam on their biscuits every morning, and he had a feeling that I had been eating my fair share of berries this summer. “I imagine quality control is an important part of the job,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. Kind of.”