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The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 by Willina Lane Productions, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Hardback ISBN 9780593133842

Ebook ISBN 9780593133859

randomhousebooks.com

Book design by Victoria Wong, adapted for ebook

Cover illustration: Ben Perini

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Sheriff Grady Kilgore

Dot Weems

Idgie Threadgoode

Buddy Jr.

Twenty-Five Years Later

Welcome to the World

U.S. Army Base

Dot Weems

The Visit

Ruthie and Brooks

Dot Weems

Different Backgrounds

At Caldwell Circle

Dot Weems

Silver Spring, Maryland

Callaway Resort and Gardens

Bud in a Nutshell

The Bee Charmer

Atlanta, Georgia

Losing Ninny

An Unexpected Turn of Events

Atlanta, Georgia

Daddy’s Girl

The Elephant in the Room

What Now?

The Weems Weekly

Briarwood Manor

Losing Daddy

Nervous in the Service

Why Isn’t He Calling?

The Escapee

Time on My Hands

Briarwood Manor

The Mix-up

Amtrak

Whistle Stop, Alabama

Aboard the Amtrak

Whistle Stop, Alabama

The Weems Weekly

Amtrak Train

A Christmas Tradition

A Year Later

Whistle Stop, Alabama

The Weems Weekly

Whistle Stop, Alabama

Amtrak Train

Going Home

All Over the News

Get Me to Birmingham

Bud in Birmingham

A Kindred Spirit

The Connection

More Than Meets the Eye

The Wonder Boy

A New Friend

The Weems Weekly

Whistle Stop, Alabama

Surprise Visitors

Going Back to Briarwood

Jessie Ray Scroggins

Safe at the Plate

Evelyn and Ruthie

Fairhope, Alabama

Opal Butts

The Birthday Wish

Dot Weems

The Proposal

A Close Call

“Who Would Believe Such Pleasure…from a Wee Ball of Fur”

The Eviction Notice

Ruthie Gets a Call

The Insurrection

The Will

Evelyn’s Call

Time Ran Out

The New Proposition

Only in America

Telling Daddy

Let the Project Begin!

23 and Who?

The Surprise

Very Bad News

Dot Weems

Dot Weems

Breaking a Heart

Back Where She Started

The End of an Era

The Dead Body

Good News

An Old Acquaintance

Ready to Begin Again

The Chicks Return

Look What the Cat Dragged In

The Grand Opening

Epilogue

Dedication

Acknowledgments

By Fannie Flagg

About the Author

L & N TERMINAL TRAIN STATION

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA

November 29, 1938, 8:10 A.M.

IT WAS A cool November morning. Inside the large train station, shards of clear bright sunlight shot down through the glass ceiling as arriving and departing passengers and porters with carts piled high with luggage hurried back and forth across the white marble floor in a beehive of activity. Sounds of happy chatter and trains pulling in and out of the station echoed throughout the entire building.

Over on platform 7, the Crescent, the long silver train from New Orleans, was now ready to receive its Birmingham passengers, and Mr. and Mrs. Arthur J. Hornbeck quickly climbed aboard, headed to New York City for their annual Christmas shopping trip.

Mrs. Hornbeck, carrying six large round hatboxes, three in each hand, happily banged down the aisle, hitting several sleeping passengers in the head as she passed by. Mr. Hornbeck, with his newspaper tucked under his arm, followed five steps behind.

Some twelve and half minutes later, after all the hatboxes had been stacked and her fur coat carefully hung up in the compartment closet, Mrs. Hornbeck was finally ready to settle down, relax, and enjoy the ride. She looked out the window just as they were approaching the Whistle Stop, Alabama, railroad crossing. As they got closer, she suddenly noticed a little blond boy in faded overalls standing by the tracks, smiling and waving at the train as it went by. Mrs. Hornbeck had a little boy at home about his age, so as they rode past him, she smiled and waved. When the little boy saw her, he began running under her window, waving back at her, as hard and for as long as he could. She watched him until he and the little dog running along beside him became smaller and smaller, until they were both completely out of sight.

After a long moment, Mrs. Hornbeck turned to her husband with a concerned look on her face and said, “Arthur, I think that little boy back there had an arm missing.”

Never looking up from his paper, he replied, “Well, I’ll be.”

Mrs. Hornbeck sighed, sat back in her seat, and began fingering her triple strand of pearls, then said, “Oh, what a shame. He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight at the most, and he was the cutest little thing. You should have seen him. So happy, smiling away….Well, bless his precious little heart. My cousin Charles had a little finger missing, but an entire arm? I wonder what in the world could have happened to him.”

Her husband glanced over at her. “What did you say?”

“I said, I wonder how that poor little boy lost his arm. What could have happened?”

Mr. Hornbeck, a master at stating the obvious, replied, “Well…something must have.”

—

SHE HAD SEEN the little boy for only a few seconds at the most. But every year after that, as their train passed through the Whistle Stop crossing, Mrs. Hornbeck always leaned forward in her seat and looked out, hoping to see him again. And every year when he was not there, she would always turn and ask her husband, “Arthur, I wonder whatever became of that cute little blond boy with the one arm.”

“Beats me,” he always said.

WHISTLE STOP, ALABAMA

January 24, 1991

GRADY KILGORE, A big barrel-chested bear of a man in his seventies, had been the sheriff of Whistle Stop, Alabama, until 1958, when he and his wife, Gladys, had moved to Tennessee. Today, Grady had driven down to Whistle Stop from Nashville with his grandson and was standing on the railroad tracks, looking across the street to where the old Whistle Stop Cafe used to be. Kudzu vines had grown all over the buildings and had covered most of the block. It was hard for his grandson to tell what was underneath.

Grady pointed over to one of the buildings. “That’s the old post office that Dot Weems ran, and right there’s the cafe, next to Opal Butts’s beauty shop, where your grandma got her hair done up every Saturday morning.” Grady stood there looking around and was sad to see how much the place had changed since the last time he’d stopped by.

By now, the old two-lane highway from Birmingham to Whistle Stop had been bypassed by a new six-lane interstate, and most of the area was now just a dumping ground. Old rusty cars and trucks had been abandoned by the tracks, left to slowly fall apart. Empty beer cans and whiskey bottles were everywhere. And as a sad sign of the times, Grady noticed there was a lot of drug paraphernalia scattered around that hadn’t been there before.