Free Southern Fried by Cathy Pickens Page A

exercised over generations of biology students. Or pupils, as she referred to them. Disparagingly, I’d always thought.
    Grandmotherly-looking Vinnia, shorter by close to a foot and softer and rounder, nestled back in thepassenger seat. “To church. The Sunshine Girls are going to the community Thanksgiving service out at South End Baptist. Hattie, you remembered the keys to the church bus?”
    “Of course.” Hattie, used to bossing high-schoolers around, tolerated Vinnia’s remindings. Vinnia had mothered five children and couldn’t get out of the habit.
    “Church bus?”
    Vinnia nodded. “The Sunshine Girls—of course, we just call them that, but we’d take any men who lived long enough to qualify—”
    Hattie snorted at that. “—and could keep up with us.”
    A frightening prospect for some man of certain years to find himself mixed up with a bunch that included my great-aunts.
    “Anyway, we’re all going together. Hattie and I take the bus around to pick up the girls who can’t drive after dark.”
    “You drive the church bus, Aunt Hattie?” I was picturing the repainted Blue Bird school bus that usually sat parked behind the church.
    “Certainly.” She leaned over enough so she could get a clear view of me. “Have for years.”
    I hesitated, about to tread on dangerous territory. “Aunt Hattie, do you have a commercial driver’s license?” Hattie had retired from teaching five years ago—and that had been more than a decade after most of her contemporaries had retired.
    “Whatever for?”
    “Well, it’s required now. To operate a commercialvehicle. It’s like the old chauffeur’s license.” Only the requirements are much more stringent.
    Hattie propped her left arm on the steering wheel so she could lean farther across the front seat. I knew, in a momentary flash, what it must have been like to accidentally knick an earthworm’s intestine in her biology class.
    “I’ve been driving that bus to pick up those girls since before I taught you to rollerskate, Avery.” She didn’t have to say anything else.
    Vinnia scrunched back against her seat so I could have the full force and effect of her older sister. But Vinnia, too, fixed me with her soft blue eyes. In a pitying tone, she said, “Avery, honey, sometimes you know just enough to spoil everyone else’s fun. It’s not a becoming trait, sweetie.”
    I tapped the car door lightly, surrendering gracefully. “You all have fun.”
    I hoped my smile smoothed things over. What cop in his right mind would stop the Sunshine Girls? All the cops had probably had Aunt Hattie’s biology class. They likely wouldn’t go out of their way to encounter that stern stare again.
    I waved as Aunt Hattie bumped the Buick’s back tire over the curb.
    The sun had dropped below the trees. Suddenly, the drive up the mountain to the lake cabin seemed a cold, lonely trek.
    Something about this time of day, hanging between daylight and dark, always distresses me. I try to stay busy until good dark. Somehow, then it’s okay. But the death throes of daylight and the loneness of an empty house and the inevitability of the evening news and a microwave dinner were things I wanted to avoid. Or to share with someone.
    I turned toward my parents’ house.

Five
    T he chaos at my parents’ house built to a crescendo I on Thanksgiving morning. Aunts Letha, Hattie, and Vinnia joined my parents, my sister Lydia and her husband, my niece and nephew, two Japanese exchange students from the college, and some drug rehab kid my mother had taken in. I hoped the newcomers were all sufficiently rehabbed and ready to deal with my family in full force and volume.
    The aunts had henpecked each other and the dinner to pieces before the time came to set it on the table. During the morning, I’d snatched glimpses of the Thanksgiving Day parades on TV, roughhoused with my niece and nephew (until our mothers yelled at us to knock it off), and—as my contribution to the traditional