Free Southern Fried by Cathy Pickens Page B

holiday feast—burned the bottoms on the brown-and-serve rolls. Fortunately, Aunt Hattie had also made biscuits.
    The first lull in the noise came when we bowed our heads for the blessing. Then the only sounds came from the television in the den and mouselike crunching sounds from my niece, Emma. Hermother—my sister—and I caught each other sneaking one-eyed glances in Emma’s direction. I grinned. My sister glared. Everybody else waited for Emma to bless the food, while Emma tried to swallow the pecan she’d snuck off the top of the sweet potato casserole.
    As usual, the food tasted like home and the conversation was stereophonically loud and familially funny.
    “What time’s the bowl game?” Emma asked. At seven, she’d suddenly become a big football fan. I suspected my dad had worked on her secretly; he’d spent years as the family’s only true believer.
    “Who’s playing?” Vinnia asked. She probably didn’t know a football had a point on both ends.
    “Clemson, Vinnia.” Hattie nodded sagely. Probably mentally planning on being on her way home by kickoff time.
    The conversation ebbed and flowed; sometimes two conversations overrunning each other. I sat back and listened. Was this what it felt like to awaken from a coma? The food was better, the kids’ knock-knock jokes were funnier, the parade floats more elaborate, my family more special to me than ever before. Everything had an intensity I couldn’t describe, as if I’d been banished somewhere far away and had come home when I never thought I’d see it again.
    I bent over another mouthful of dressing and blinked back a tear that stung my eye. Silly, but it felt good to be back here. I’d never missed a Thanksgiving at home, at this same table, with thesame menu and these same people. Well, except for the two exchange students and the drug addict.
    But it felt like the first time in very long memory: the first time I hadn’t had the pressures and vagaries of school or a law practice; didn’t have Winn Davis, my former managing partner, leaving sexually explicit voice-mail messages; didn’t have the pressure of maintaining impossible levels of billable hours.
    Of course, considering the number of billable hours I’d worked this week, I should’ve returned Jake Baker’s call offering me a job in Charleston. But rather than rehearse “Welcome to Wal-Mart” or contemplate working with the state’s most audacious ambulance chaser, I sat back and counted my blessings.
    The mention of Melvin Bertram’s name roused me from my maudlin reverie.
    “You don’t say,” Hattie said. “Didn’t know he was back. For good?”
    “Or bad,” Aletha countered.
    We’d collectively begun cleaning and stacking plates and moving serving dishes from the dining room table to the kitchen counters. Mom had shooed the teenagers and little kids out of the kitchen toward the television or other diversions. My dad disappeared out the back door. On any other day, he would clear the kitchen by himself, but he doesn’t dare interfere with the great-aunts.
    “I heard at the beauty parlor yesterday something that, if I’d known it, I’d forgotten it,” Vinnia said.
    “As if that made sense.” Letha vigorously shook crumbs from the place mats into the sink.
    Vinnia paid no heed. “I heard that Melvin Bertram’s wife—do you remember her? Lea Hopkins, she was. She and Sylvie Garnet’s son had been keeping time together, at one time. And now, here little Harry is, running for governor.”
    “He’s what?” Aletha demanded.
    “Running for governor. That’s what Sylvie announced at the Ladies Auxiliary Wednesday morning. Of course, this is very preliminary. But Sylvie said the party higher-ups had sought him out.”
    “Seems awfully young to be a governor.”
    “Not really. He’s forty-something. He’ll always look young, until he just suddenly runs to pot. He’s that type.”
    Perennially youthful, but doomed. Good description of Harry.
    “The shocking