Free The School of Beauty and Charm by Melanie Sumner Page B

disappearing figure of his wife and then issued a curt command to us through the open window. “If either one of you so much as lifts a finger, I will skin you alive,” he said.
    Two minutes later, an egg truck rattled by. It passed Henry in a cloud of dust but stopped for Florida. Henry picked up his pace, walking in quick, measured strides with a hard frown on his face, but by the time he reached the truck, Florida had already negotiated a gallon of gasoline with the driver. She waved gaily to Henry and signaled to the rest of the family with a sweep of her arm. We were saved.
    O NE MILE FROM the Deleuth farm, Florida leaned across me to apply her lipstick in the rearview mirror. Then shelooked around the car to see if anyone’s hair needed combing. She told Roderick to tuck his shirt in. She opened her hand, palm up, to me, and said, “Spit out that gum.”
    We passed cow after cow after cow, chewing cud behind an endless string of barbed wire. The houses were ugly: tight little brick boxes set on empty lawns. Most of the trees had been cleared, and the few that were allowed to remain had been chopped off to the size of large shrubs and painted white. Florida explained that some people thought stubby white trees were pretty.
    â€œWhy?” I asked.
    â€œBecause it’s not natural,” she said. “When you live in the country, you get sick of nature.”
    All around the small brick houses were vast fields. The tobacco plants, already taller than Daddy-Go, bloomed a defiant green. There were fields of hay, and Martian-green corn, and more stolid, staring cows. Occasionally a horse lifted its head, then flicked its tail and galloped away from the fence, but not fast, and not far. Grandmother and Daddy-Go had never gone further than the county fair in Louisville. When we showed them pictures of the ocean, they were unimpressed.
    Henry eased the Galaxie 500 around the last curve. The tires crunched along the rutted gravel lane, and suddenly we were all waving to Grandmother and Daddy-Go, who had been waiting in the yard for an hour, watching the road.
    As the engine died, Daddy-Go raised himself from the swing with his cane and hobbled forward; Grandmother beat him by five yards. She wore what she always wore: a homemade double-knit polyester dress covered with a cotton apron trimmed in rick-rack, coffee-colored nylon knee-highs, and thepair of Adidas running shoes we had given her last Christmas to cure her corns. Her thin gray hair was wound up in a bun. A pair of silver, cat-eyed glasses, studded with rhinestones, hung from a chain around her neck, and tears ran down the soft, wrinkled map of her face. Her first name was Cornelia, but Henry addressed her as Mrs. Deleuth, in the voice TV anchormen used when they said Mr. President.
    â€œWe thought something had happened to y’all,” Grandmother said, holding out her arms as she sobbed and tried to smile. “Reckoned y’all weren’t coming a-tall.”
    â€œHush, Mother” said Florida, embracing her as she watched Daddy-Go slowly make his way across the lawn. “We’re here. Look at your grandchildren. They came all this way to see you.”
    Brack, or Daddy-Go, as Roderick and I called him, was a big tall man in overalls and unlaced brogans. His Stetson was half his age and matched the burnt leather of his skin. White stubble roughened his cheeks; tobacco stained the creased corners of his mouth. Several years ago, his brown eyes had disappeared behind the silver clouds of cataracts, and this is how I knew him: a slow man bent under the weight of himself, moving at the imperceptible speed of the earth, and seeing everything with sightless, silver eyes. He was crying, too. They always cried when we came.
    â€œHush that crying, Daddy,” said Florida when he grasped her arm with his free hand. “What are you sad about?”
    â€œChou chou,” he said. That was his pet name for Florida.