Фэнни Флэгг - The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop

When Ruthie opened the closet to help him get dressed for the trip home, she was appalled.

“Oh, Daddy. Don’t tell me you wore this old worn-out jacket in public. You told me you got rid of it.”

“I did? I don’t remember.”

“And look at your good pants. They have grass stains all over them. Oh well, there’s nothing to be done now.”

After Bud was checked out of the hospital, Terry wheeled him downstairs and waited while Evelyn brought the car around to the front door. When she pulled up, Terry helped get Bud get into the car and said, “You take care of yourself, or I’ll have to come over to Atlanta and give you what-for, you hear?”

“Okay, I’ll try,” said Bud. “And you tell that husband of yours to watch out, or I might come over here and steal you.”

After Bud was in the car and the door was shut, Ruthie said, “Terry, thanks so much for taking such good care of him. You’ve just been an angel.”

“Well…he’s easy to take care of. He’s a real sweetheart.”

—

LATER, AS EVELYN stood in the airport watching Ruthie and Bud’s plane take off, she realized she was going to miss them. She had known them for only a few days, but it had been so nice to finally meet someone who had also known Ninny.

—

WHEN RUTHIE AND Bud landed back in Atlanta and were waiting for her car at the parking lot, Ruthie turned to Bud. “Daddy, are you sure you won’t come home with me? You know you don’t have to go back to Briarwood if you don’t want to.”

Bud shook his head “No, no, honey. Your mother-in-law would be upset if I left. And besides, I’m used to the place now. I’ll just go back and take my medicine. I guess I will have to apologize to Merris, though.”

“If you’re planning to stay, it might be a good idea.”

When they drove up to Briarwood Manor, Mr. Merris was waiting in the front entrance with a flower in his lapel and a pained smile plastered on his face.

“Well, here is our wandering boy. Welcome back, Mr. Threadgoode.”

“Thank you. Yes…listen, I’m sorry about the little mishap. I sort of—”

Thankfully at that moment, Bud’s friend Hattie came down the hall toward them and called out, “Hey, Mr. Threadgoode, I hear you took a trip on a train, and I want to hear all about it. Come on with me, your room is all ready for you.”

Ruthie waited outside in the car until she knew everything was all right. It must have been, because Bud turned around and gave her a little wave, and he was smiling.

After she had dropped her father off, Ruthie drove across town to her house. When she arrived at the big iron gate, she punched in the code and drove into the Circle. She had left home with only a purse, but had returned with a suitcase that Evelyn Couch had lent her, filled with Mary Kay products and some new clothes she’d bought in Birmingham.

She was headed into her house when, across the way, Martha Lee opened her front door, looked at her, then went back in and shut the door.

As soon as Ruthie walked inside, her phone was ringing.

“I see you are finally home,” said Martha Lee.

“Yes, I am. I stayed a little longer than I’d planned.”

“And your father? Is he back as well?”

“Yes, I just dropped him off.”

“I hope you are aware that his behavior was quite an embarrassment, not only to me, but to the Manor.”

Ruthie closed her eyes and silently sighed. “Yes. I’m sure it must have been. Daddy said to apologize to you, and tell you that it won’t happen again.”

“I hope not. Also, were you aware that when you ran out like that, without a word to me or the staff, that you left your stove on? If Ramón had not gone in to check on things, you could have burned down the entire Circle.”

“No, I wasn’t aware. I’m sorry.”

After Ruthie hung up, she said to herself, “Welcome home, Ruthie.” Before she could get upstairs, the phone rang again.

“Listen, you’d better call Carolyn right away and tell her you’re home. She’s been extremely upset over her grandfather’s behavior.”

“Yes, I will do that, thank you.”

Ruthie would call, but not right away. She knew she would get another lecture. Carolyn and Martha Lee were always on the same page.

1978

JESSIE RAY SCROGGINS was one of the many kids in Whistle Stop that Idgie would pile into a car and take to the picture show every Saturday. He was a handful, always getting into trouble, fighting in the back seat, throwing popcorn at people in the theater, but Idgie liked him.

Being a preacher’s son was never easy, particularly in a small town. And doubly hard, if you were a son of Reverend Robert A. Scroggins, minister at the Whistle Stop Baptist Church, where a sign on the young adults Bible study blackboard read: WE DON’T DRINK, SMOKE, OR DANCE, OR DATE THOSE WHO DO.

—

JESSIE RAY HAD come out of the womb wriggling like a worm, and he never stopped wriggling. He seemed to have been given a double dose of energy. The minute he could stand up, he didn’t walk, he ran. From the time he was five, the first thing his poor mother had to do every morning was open the door and let him run out in the yard, or else he would have broken everything she had. His older brother, Bobby Scroggins, had gotten into trouble a few times for drinking too much, but Bobby had gone on to become a successful lawyer. Jessie Ray was a different story.

Jessie Ray had been given his first drink when he was ten by a friend of Idgie’s named Smokey Lonesome who used to hang out at the cafe. And he’d liked it right away. Not the taste, but the way it had made him feel. And the more he drank the better he felt. By the time he was eighteen, he had wrecked three cars and been in jail in Birmingham five times.

Each time, he had called Idgie and she’d driven over and bailed him out. She was the only person in Whistle Stop he could call who wouldn’t tell his daddy.

Jessie Ray had gone into the army, and his daddy had hoped it would make a man out of him. However, when he came home from Korea, after having seen so many of his army buddies get killed, he seemed to be worse. As hard as he tried, he could not stop drinking. He knew he was letting his parents, his wife, his friends, and everybody else down, but there was a part of him that didn’t want to live.

He had given up on himself as a hopeless case, and then one night in a drunken stupor he called Idgie down in Florida and talked to her for almost two hours, telling her how he was going to kill himself. All he remembered of the conversation was the last thing she’d said: “Jessie Ray, you get your sorry-ass self down here right now!”

His father had tried everything. Maybe, just maybe, Idgie could do something with him. Nobody else could. The following day, his daddy drove Jessie down to Florida, let him out of the car, and drove off. The next thing Jessie knew he was sitting in an AA meeting, with Idgie on one side of him and her brother Julian on the other.

It took a while. He had a few setbacks. But slowly he began to understand himself a little better. For as long as he could remember, he had always felt uncomfortable in his own skin. The only relief he could find was in the bottle. He figured out later that this must be why they called it “spirits.” After about six months, when he was sober, healthy, and tan from picking oranges, Idgie sent him back home to his wife and kids, pretty much a changed man.

Jessie found out that being sober was wonderful, but it could also be painful at times, especially when he had to have the big LIFE SUCKS tattoo removed from his chest. It had hurt like hell, but nothing like having to face the fact that his daddy had died before he’d gotten a chance to tell him how sorry he was for all the hurt he’d caused. A few years later, hoping to do some good in what life he had left, he became a minister and took over his father’s church in Birmingham. Although his daddy had been hard-shell Baptist, Jessie leaned more toward a nondenominational point of view.