Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (21 page)

“You’re not gonna see anything but his coffin, but if you want a picture of it, I guess you can. Ask Grady first, do you hear me?”

“Yes ma’am.”

He ran over to Peggy’s house to impress her with this privileged information about Mr. Pinto, who had been captured only after a long and hard gun battle at a cabin in north Alabama, where three policemen had been shot. He had been apprehended with his girl friend, billed as Hazel, the Flame-Haired Murderess with the Heart of Steel, who had personally knocked off a lawman in Baldwin County. When he got the death sentence, headlines blazed all over Alabama: “MR. PINTO TO TAKE A SEAT IN ‘BIG YELLOW MOMMA.’ ”

That was the name given to the huge iron electric chair down at Folsom Prison that had claimed hundreds of lives over the years. But this was something special.

When he got to the house, Dr. Hadley was sitting on the front glider and told Stump that Peggy was inside, helping her mother with the dishes. So he went in the backyard and waited.

When Peggy came out, Stump told her the news, and she was duly impressed, like he’d hoped she would be. Then he proceeded to give her instructions.

“In the morning, I’ll come to this tree, right here, and I’ll signal you like this …”

He then made a bobwhite bird whistle, three times.

“When you hear me, come on out, but be ready about five o’clock, because I want to be there in case the train is early.”

The next morning, Peggy was already dressed and outside
waiting for him at the tree when he got there, a fact that irritated him because he liked the idea of a bird signal. He had gotten the idea out of a book he was reading at the time,
The Talking Sparrows Murder Mystery
. Besides, he had been up all night, practicing his bobwhite whistle; that is, until Idgie told him she would kill him if he didn’t shut up.

That was the first thing that went wrong with the plan. The second was that the train was an hour late, so they had been at the railroad station for three hours now, waiting.

Stump must have loaded and unloaded his camera a hundred times, just to make sure it was in working order.

In another half hour, the big black train finally came rumbling on in and stopped. Grady and a crew of four railroad men came out of the switching house and pulled open the boxcar and lifted the large white-pine box in which the state had seen fit to ship Mr. Pinto.

The train rumbled off again, leaving the box on the loading platform, while the other men went to bring in the other train, and Grady stood guard, looking important in his khaki shirt and pants, with his leather gun-holster strapped to his side.

He saw Stump and Peggy running down the platform toward him and said, “Hi, kids!” and kicked the box. “Well, here he is, just like I told Idgie—Mr. Seymore Pinto, as big as life and as dead as they come.”

Stump asked if he could take a picture.

“Sure, go right ahead.”

Stump began taking pictures from every angle possible, while Grady reminisced about the time he had once been a guard at Kilbey Prison, in Atmore, Alabama.

Peggy, who was in charge of holding the extra rolls of film, asked him if he had ever seen any real murderers.

“Oh sure, lot’s of them. Even had a couple working for me and Gladys up at the house when we lived in Atmore.”

“You had real live murderers in your house?”

Grady looked at her, surprised. “Why sure. Why not? Some of your best people are murderers.” He pushed his hat off his forehead and said sincerely, “Yes sir. I wouldn’t give you nickel for a thief. Now, a murder is usually just a one-time thing—
mostly over some woman, not a repeat crime. But a thief is a thief until the day he dies.”

Stump was already on his second roll of film, and Grady continued talking to a fascinated Peggy. “Naw, I don’t mind murderers. Most of ’em are pretty mild-mannered, pleasant folks, as a rule.”

Stump was snapping away, and threw in a question. “Did you ever see one of them electrocuted, Grady?”

He laughed. “Only about three hundred.… Now,
that’s
a sight to see. Before they go to the Big Yellow Momma, they shave ’em as bald as a billiard, not an ounce of hair is left on their bodies, bald as the day they were born. Then they dip these sponges in cold salt water and put it under the cap. That water, there, conducts the electricity faster. Last one I saw fry, it took ’em seven tries. Everybody in Atmore was mad ’cause it interfered with the electricity in town and messed up their radio show. And then the doctor had to stick a needle in his heart to make sure that nigger was dead …”

Grady looked at his watch and said, “What the hell is taking them so long? I better go over there and see what they’re doing,” and he left them alone with the box.

Stump lost no time. “Help me pull this lid off, I want a picture of his face.”

Peggy was horrified. “You cain’t fool with that, it’s a dead body! You have to honor the dead!”

“No we don’t, he’s a criminal, so it doesn’t count. Move out of the way if you don’t want to look.”

Stump was busy opening the lid and Peggy went over and hid behind a post, saying, “You’re gonna get in trouble.” After he got the lid off, Stump just stood there, staring into the box. “Come here.”

“No, I’m scared.”

“Come here. You cain’t see nothing, it’s got a sheet over it.”

Peggy walked over and very carefully peeked in at the body that was, in fact, all covered up.

Stump, desperate for time, said, “You’ve got to help me. I want you to pull the sheet off his face so I can get a picture.”

“No, Stump, I don’t want to look at him.”

Stump did not really want to look at Mr. Pinto’s face, either, but he was determined to get a picture of him, one way or another; and so he devised a plan on the spot that would save them both from having to look.

He handed her the camera, “Here, you point the camera right where his head is, and I’ll count to three. You close your eyes and I’ll count to three, pull the sheet back, you take the picture, and I’ll cover him back up and you won’t have to see him at all. Come on, please? Grady’s gonna be back in a minute …”

“No, I’m scared to.”

“Please … you’re the only person in town I told he was gonna be here.”

Peggy said reluctantly, “Well, all right, but don’t you
dare
pull that sheet back until my eyes are closed. Do you promise me, Stump Threadgoode?”

Stump gave the Boy Scout signal for Truth and Honor. “I promise. Now, hurry.”

Peggy aimed the shaking camera at the sheet-covered head.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Now, close your eyes and when I count three, you take the picture and don’t look until I tell you.”

Peggy shut her eyes and so did Stump. He carefully lifted and pulled the sheet back and said, “Okay, one, two, three,
now!
”

Peggy snapped the picture on command, as planned, and Grady came up behind them and yelled in a loud voice, “HEY! WHAT ARE YOU KIDS DOING!”

They both opened their eyes with a jolt and stared right into the face of Mr. Seymore Pinto, still warm from The Big Yellow Momma.

Peggy screamed, dropped the camera in the coffin, and ran off in one direction—and Stump squealed like a girl and ran off in the other.

Mr. Pinto just lay there, burned to a crisp, with his mouth and eyes wide open, and if he’d had any hair left, it would have been standing straight up on his head.

Later that afternoon,. Peggy was still in bed, under the covers, with Mr. Pinto’s face looming before her, and Stump sat in the back room, in the closet, wearing his Lone Ranger glow-in-the-dark belt, still shaking, knowing he would never forget that man’s face for as long as he lived.

Grady came into the cafe about six that night, and he brought Stump’s camera back.

He laughed. “You’re not gonna believe this,” and told them what had happened, “but they broke that poor dead bastard’s nose!”

Ruth was appalled. Smokey stared down in his coffee to keep from breaking up; and Idgie, who was taking a grape drink to the back door for her friend Ocie Smith, spilled it all over herself, she was laughing so hard.

When Frank Bennett was growing up, he had adored his mother, to the point that it had disgusted his father, a bull of a man who thought nothing of knocking Frank out of a chair or kicking him down the stairs. His mother had been the only softness and sweetness he had known as a child and he loved her with all of his heart.

When he came home from school early one day, with some feigned illness, and found his mother and his father’s brother on the floor in the kitchen, all that love turned to hate in the five seconds before he screamed and ran out of the room: the five seconds that would haunt him for as long as he lived.

At thirty-four, Frank Bennett was a vain man. His black shoes were always shined to a high spit polish, his hair was always brushed, his clothes were perfect, and he was one of the few men who received a manicure at the barbershop every week.

You could say he was a dandy. You could say he was handsome, in a black Irish sort of way, with that head of thick hair and the steel-blue eyes; and although one was made of glass
and the other was just as cold as shiny, it was hard to tell which was which.

But above all things, he was a man who got what he wanted, and he wanted Ruth Jamison. He’d had just about every available girl around, including, and preferring, the black girls he would take by force while his friends held them down. Once he had them, he was not one to want them again. One pale-blond woman, who lived on the outskirts of town now, had a little girl that looked like him, but after he had blackened her eyes and threatened her child, she no longer made any claims on him. It was clear he did not have much interest in used women. Particularly if he had been the one who’d used them.

But in town, he was known as a hale and hearty fellow, and he decided that he needed to have sons to carry on the Bennett name; a name that didn’t mean anything to anybody, except that he was a man who owned a lot of land south of town.

Ruth was young, pretty, certainly untouched, and needed a place for herself and her mother. What could be better? Ruth was flattered; she couldn’t help but be. Wasn’t he the most eligible man around? Hadn’t he courted her like a gentleman and charmed her mother?

Ruth had come to believe that this handsome young man loved her, and that she should and therefore did love him.

But who could have known that all the shiny shoes and flashy three-piece suits could never cover up the bitterness that had been growing in his heart all these years …

Certainly no one in town guessed; it took a complete stranger. On the night of Frank’s bachelor party, he and a group of men had stopped by a bar for a few drinks, on the way to a cabin where three whores from Atlanta had been hired for the night. An old bum, passing through, had wandered into the bar, off the street, and was watching the party of young men from across the room. Frank did what he did to all strangers: He walked over to the man, who was obviously in need of a drink, and slapped him on the back. “I’ll tell you what, old-timer, if you can tell me which one of these eyes of mine is glass, I’ll buy you a drink.”

His friends laughed because it was impossible to tell, but the old man looked at him and without a beat said, “The left.”

His friends roared, and although Frank was taken aback, he laughed it off as luck and threw a half dollar on the bar.

The bartender watched the party of men leave, and then said to the old man, “What’ll it be, mister?”

“Whiskey.”

He poured the old man his shot. A little later, the bartender said, “Hey, old friend, how were you able to tell his left eye was glass right off the bat like that?”

The old man drank his whiskey and said, “Easy. The left one was the only one with even a glimmer of human compassion in it.”

Idgie, who was now nineteen, had driven over to Valdosta almost every month for over two and a half years to watch Ruth going to and from church. She just wanted to make sure she was all right, and Ruth never knew she’d been there.