July Frost
James William Gardner
Climax was a hot dusty place in summer. The tobacco fields seemed to exist in a perpetual brown haze born more of Heaven than of earth. Reverend Dooley said that most things were. So it was with Virginia Wray’s baby, Elizabeth. She was a gift from God, the only one that Virginia Wray had ever truly known.
Tobacco had a certain unearthly quality. Running through it was like pushing your way into a crowd. Leafy green arms reached out to touch you and slow you down. You had to step lightly lest you stumble and find yourself face down, sprawled out on the hard red earth, tripped and your chin bleeding. But when the time finally came and the wagons were loaded and Danville beckoned, the work was done and the man from R. J. Reynolds gladly bought everybody lunch. Then, like Easter morning, it started all over again.
“I do not envy others,” said Virginia Wray, standing there in the Food Lion parking lot with Joanne Butler while the boy put the groceries in back. “We have a plenty and that’s all you can ask.” But, Elizabeth Wray was older now. She was all but grown up at fourteen. “Lord Honey, you’re going to drive the men wild. Be careful. Know what you’re getting into.” Late at night she would stand in front of the mirror with just the table lamp on, necked and dance to please herself.
Down the Chatham Road were the Roops, Mister Claude Roop, his wife Wanda and their boy, Curtis. On his seventeenth birthday, Claude Roop gave his son a set of barbells so he could build himself up. Curtis Roop was planning to work the land like his father and it took strength for that. “Where in the devil is that boy when you need him?”
“He’s lifting those infernal weights you got him, I bet,” said Wanda Roop as she rinsed off tomatoes from the garden. “That boy is obsessed with his muscles. He ain’t going to fit in his Sunday suit if he keeps on.”
“Well, I’ll just have to get him a new one, I reckon.”
The Roops were church people, Independent Baptists, serious minded and strict when it came to religion. Curtis Roop had read a chapter in the Bible every night before bed since the time that he was able to read. They weren’t like Virginia Wray. She didn’t believe in nothing but herself and she was raising her only daughter the same way. “That woman is out until all hours,” Wanda Roop used to say about her only close neighbor. She often used the word “heathen” to describe Virginia Wray’s doings. “That poor little girl, she’s growing up just like her momma.”
“She’s an awful pretty little thing,” said Claude Roop. “I seen her out hanging wash the other day when I drove by wearing nothing but a bathing suit, practically necked for all the world to see.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
When school started that September, Elizabeth Wray and Curtis Roop rode the same bus. She was just starting high school. Curtis Roop was a senior. “I swear to the Lord, that girl is about the sexiest thing I believe I’ve ever seen,” He told his friend Leon Spradlin when Elizabeth Wray climbed on the bus that first morning.
“You’d best stay away from that stuff,” Leon Spradlin advised him, but Curtis Roop flexed his new muscles and Elizabeth Wray was quick to notice.
It wasn’t long before he had stopped reading his Bible at night and was sneaking out to meet her after his folks were in bed asleep. “Lord Lizzy, I just got to have you. I can’t stand it. You’re all I think about.”
“So have me,” she told him.
The October moon looked like a silver dollar that night. Afterward, they started talking about their dreams, what they wanted to do, what they could do. This went on. “Let’s just go,” she said one night.
“Go where?”
“Let’s go to Atlanta. I got an aunt there. We could stay with her.”
“I can’t just up and leave everything like that. I don’t know nothing about Atlanta. That’s three states away. What would we do? It’s crazy talk.”
“You don’t really love me.”
“Yes I do so, but you’re just a kid.”
“Is that what you think?” He felt her warm skin against his and he knew that it wasn’t so. He had never loved anything so much.
“Momma would track us down. She’d tell the police and we’d be up shit creek. I might even go to jail.”
“Atlanta ain’t like here. There’s people everywhere. No one will find us. We can take Momma’s car.”
“Lizzy, we can’t steal your mother’s car. Talk sense.”
“Well, we can take the bus. I’ve got some money saved. We can skip school and catch the Greyhound bus at noon when it comes through Chatham.”
“You’re just pussy whipped,” said Leon Spradlin. “That girl has got you all fucked up so you ain’t thinking right. I told you to watch out.”
“She’s done spoke with her aunt Charlotte down there. She says it’s okay with her if we come. She says she won’t tell a living soul.”
“You’re out of your mind, Curtis.”
They packed suitcases and hid them down by the Banister River Bridge. Then on Tuesday, they caught the southbound bus for Atlanta with three-hundred dollars between them. “Well, it’s perfectly clear to me,” said Sheriff Wilbur Bates two days later. “Those two youngins have run off together. Lord knows where.”
“My son is a good boy,” said Wanda Roop tearfully. “That darn little jezebel has done corrupted his mind. I blame the mother. She’s the one. Just look at the example she’s set, out all night, running around, probably sleeping with God knows who all.”
“Well, we’ll get the state police on it. We’ll find them.”
Atlanta Georgia stood against the horizon like the city of Oz. It stretched on and on and on, people and cars and buildings everywhere you looked, people from everywhere, talking all kinds of languages. It wasn’t old like Climax or Chatham. That was the past. This was the future. It was a place where no one knew you and no one cared to know. There didn’t seem to be any place for God, no reason or need for Him at all.
Charlotte Tinsley’s apartment was on the ninth floor. Curtis Roop had never been so high. “Well, I’ll say one thing for him Honey, he’s mighty good looking. Y’all can have the back bedroom. After you get cleaned up and rested we’ll go get something good to eat and figure out what we need to do next.”
Roswell was a happy seeming place. Everybody hurried by smiling. Elizabeth Wray wore one of her Aunt’s dresses, a short black dress that showed off her legs and made her look twenty. “Lord Lizzy, you’re incredible,” said Curtis Roop, amazed at the transformation. Looking at her made everything seem possible. They ate shrimp outside along the sidewalk and there was music in the air. He noticed other men looking at her and it made him proud.
The dream lasted about a week. Then, on a rainy Saturday morning there was a knock at the door. It was the cops, two men in suits and they took them back home to Climax in a police van. No one said anything much on the drive back. It felt like being pushed into a hole. Elizabeth Wray held her lover’s hand and watched the lights go by. Had it all been a dream?
Nobody pressed any charges. Curtis Roop and Elizabeth Wray returned to school and it was all kept quiet. But, to them, things were never like they were before. Claude Roop put a new lock on the back door and after awhile it came time for the tobacco seedlings to be stuck in the ground again. Curtis Roop went to sleep in the same little bed, in the same little room and waited in vain for the memory to go away, but he didn’t bother reading his Bible anymore. He would just close his eyes until he floated off like leaves on the Banister River to somewhere else, somewhere far away.
James William Gardner
Climax was a hot dusty place in summer. The tobacco fields seemed to exist in a perpetual brown haze born more of Heaven than of earth. Reverend Dooley said that most things were. So it was with Virginia Wray’s baby, Elizabeth. She was a gift from God, the only one that Virginia Wray had ever truly known.
Tobacco had a certain unearthly quality. Running through it was like pushing your way into a crowd. Leafy green arms reached out to touch you and slow you down. You had to step lightly lest you stumble and find yourself face down, sprawled out on the hard red earth, tripped and your chin bleeding. But when the time finally came and the wagons were loaded and Danville beckoned, the work was done and the man from R. J. Reynolds gladly bought everybody lunch. Then, like Easter morning, it started all over again.
“I do not envy others,” said Virginia Wray, standing there in the Food Lion parking lot with Joanne Butler while the boy put the groceries in back. “We have a plenty and that’s all you can ask.” But, Elizabeth Wray was older now. She was all but grown up at fourteen. “Lord Honey, you’re going to drive the men wild. Be careful. Know what you’re getting into.” Late at night she would stand in front of the mirror with just the table lamp on, necked and dance to please herself.
Down the Chatham Road were the Roops, Mister Claude Roop, his wife Wanda and their boy, Curtis. On his seventeenth birthday, Claude Roop gave his son a set of barbells so he could build himself up. Curtis Roop was planning to work the land like his father and it took strength for that. “Where in the devil is that boy when you need him?”
“He’s lifting those infernal weights you got him, I bet,” said Wanda Roop as she rinsed off tomatoes from the garden. “That boy is obsessed with his muscles. He ain’t going to fit in his Sunday suit if he keeps on.”
“Well, I’ll just have to get him a new one, I reckon.”
The Roops were church people, Independent Baptists, serious minded and strict when it came to religion. Curtis Roop had read a chapter in the Bible every night before bed since the time that he was able to read. They weren’t like Virginia Wray. She didn’t believe in nothing but herself and she was raising her only daughter the same way. “That woman is out until all hours,” Wanda Roop used to say about her only close neighbor. She often used the word “heathen” to describe Virginia Wray’s doings. “That poor little girl, she’s growing up just like her momma.”
“She’s an awful pretty little thing,” said Claude Roop. “I seen her out hanging wash the other day when I drove by wearing nothing but a bathing suit, practically necked for all the world to see.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
When school started that September, Elizabeth Wray and Curtis Roop rode the same bus. She was just starting high school. Curtis Roop was a senior. “I swear to the Lord, that girl is about the sexiest thing I believe I’ve ever seen,” He told his friend Leon Spradlin when Elizabeth Wray climbed on the bus that first morning.
“You’d best stay away from that stuff,” Leon Spradlin advised him, but Curtis Roop flexed his new muscles and Elizabeth Wray was quick to notice.
It wasn’t long before he had stopped reading his Bible at night and was sneaking out to meet her after his folks were in bed asleep. “Lord Lizzy, I just got to have you. I can’t stand it. You’re all I think about.”
“So have me,” she told him.
The October moon looked like a silver dollar that night. Afterward, they started talking about their dreams, what they wanted to do, what they could do. This went on. “Let’s just go,” she said one night.
“Go where?”
“Let’s go to Atlanta. I got an aunt there. We could stay with her.”
“I can’t just up and leave everything like that. I don’t know nothing about Atlanta. That’s three states away. What would we do? It’s crazy talk.”
“You don’t really love me.”
“Yes I do so, but you’re just a kid.”
“Is that what you think?” He felt her warm skin against his and he knew that it wasn’t so. He had never loved anything so much.
“Momma would track us down. She’d tell the police and we’d be up shit creek. I might even go to jail.”
“Atlanta ain’t like here. There’s people everywhere. No one will find us. We can take Momma’s car.”
“Lizzy, we can’t steal your mother’s car. Talk sense.”
“Well, we can take the bus. I’ve got some money saved. We can skip school and catch the Greyhound bus at noon when it comes through Chatham.”
“You’re just pussy whipped,” said Leon Spradlin. “That girl has got you all fucked up so you ain’t thinking right. I told you to watch out.”
“She’s done spoke with her aunt Charlotte down there. She says it’s okay with her if we come. She says she won’t tell a living soul.”
“You’re out of your mind, Curtis.”
They packed suitcases and hid them down by the Banister River Bridge. Then on Tuesday, they caught the southbound bus for Atlanta with three-hundred dollars between them. “Well, it’s perfectly clear to me,” said Sheriff Wilbur Bates two days later. “Those two youngins have run off together. Lord knows where.”
“My son is a good boy,” said Wanda Roop tearfully. “That darn little jezebel has done corrupted his mind. I blame the mother. She’s the one. Just look at the example she’s set, out all night, running around, probably sleeping with God knows who all.”
“Well, we’ll get the state police on it. We’ll find them.”
Atlanta Georgia stood against the horizon like the city of Oz. It stretched on and on and on, people and cars and buildings everywhere you looked, people from everywhere, talking all kinds of languages. It wasn’t old like Climax or Chatham. That was the past. This was the future. It was a place where no one knew you and no one cared to know. There didn’t seem to be any place for God, no reason or need for Him at all.
Charlotte Tinsley’s apartment was on the ninth floor. Curtis Roop had never been so high. “Well, I’ll say one thing for him Honey, he’s mighty good looking. Y’all can have the back bedroom. After you get cleaned up and rested we’ll go get something good to eat and figure out what we need to do next.”
Roswell was a happy seeming place. Everybody hurried by smiling. Elizabeth Wray wore one of her Aunt’s dresses, a short black dress that showed off her legs and made her look twenty. “Lord Lizzy, you’re incredible,” said Curtis Roop, amazed at the transformation. Looking at her made everything seem possible. They ate shrimp outside along the sidewalk and there was music in the air. He noticed other men looking at her and it made him proud.
The dream lasted about a week. Then, on a rainy Saturday morning there was a knock at the door. It was the cops, two men in suits and they took them back home to Climax in a police van. No one said anything much on the drive back. It felt like being pushed into a hole. Elizabeth Wray held her lover’s hand and watched the lights go by. Had it all been a dream?
Nobody pressed any charges. Curtis Roop and Elizabeth Wray returned to school and it was all kept quiet. But, to them, things were never like they were before. Claude Roop put a new lock on the back door and after awhile it came time for the tobacco seedlings to be stuck in the ground again. Curtis Roop went to sleep in the same little bed, in the same little room and waited in vain for the memory to go away, but he didn’t bother reading his Bible anymore. He would just close his eyes until he floated off like leaves on the Banister River to somewhere else, somewhere far away.
