A woman's bad boy marriage can lead to bad men
"Honey, you need to drop those berries on top of the cakes before you flip them rather than stir them in the mix. It will make for a better plate when those ornery customers bite into them plus they cook better that way."
If anybody knew what she was talking about in this little diner it was Carole, an always smiling 250 lb. dark skinned woman from south Alabama. Now where she learned about blueberry pancakes I have no idea but regardless she was an expert not only with the pancakes but everything else she touched with a spoon and a ladle.
"Don't you worry any, honey, all this will grow on you before you know it. Besides if I didn't have you in here with your fancy looks and all, half these roughnecks would park their butts someplace else."
When she smiled the whole room lit up and her laughter would spread through the place like a sweet melody. I thought back to when I first met her but the order up bell brought me back to the reality of the noon crowd rush.
"Jesus, girl, How'd a damn beautiful piece like you end up on this dusty old patch of woods?" He was just playing when he said it but I could hear the lust in the undertones.
"Tooth fairy released me here after I knocked out my husband's front choppers."
I dropped a plate of pancakes and sausages in front of him and he smiled up at me. Of course his eyes traveled to the two open buttons on my uniform and the hint of cleavage they revealed. Gunny Beauregard eyed all the women at Rose's diner looking for the thrill of a glimpse of flesh.
He was a retired Marine and had played in a hundred ports of call and like a hundred others this was just another ring of the bell.
Carole had another two orders up when I got back to the counter and the rush continued until near 1PM when most of the crowd was required to be back on the plant site. My shift was over at 4PM and for the rest of the afternoon I would do clean up and help Carole prep for the dinner customers later that evening.
After signing out I walked the short distance to the little trailer encamped down next to the river pausing just long enough to listen to the mockingbirds pull together a new number just for my benefit. The trailer had air conditioning and was big enough for what I needed and with a small garden patch behind it I had carved out an existence that was reasonably comfortable for the circumstances I lived with.
After showering and pouring a glass of wine I took my usual seat by the river to watch the waters flow by and listen to the sounds of the birds overhead. An occasional whistle blast from the plant down river would burst into their harmony but the singing pairs of birds would easily pick right up from where they left off. I must have drifted off to a light sleep because I never heard her walking up from behind to take a seat next to me.
When the heavy lids rose up from my eyes I saw her sitting there and thought I must have been still asleep and dreaming, just for an instant. Then that moment of clarity that sweeps the cobwebs from every dusty corner of consciousness fired each fiber of nervous awareness bringing me to my feet.
I stood looking at her with tears in both our eyes.
"Momma, what are you doing here?? "
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Daddy sang bass,
Mama sang tenor.
Me and little brother would join right in there.
Cause singing seems to help a troubled soul.
One of these days and it won't be long,
I'll rejoin them in a song.
I'm gonna join the family circle at the Throne.
Oh, no the circle won't be broken.
By and by, Lord, by and by.
It was really a two part harmony because my brother and I couldn't hold a note to a crow's squawk but when we were young Daddy and Momma were our Johnny and June and there were many evenings with the two of them strumming out a rhythm with Daddy on an old Gibson B-25 and Momma feather strumming a Sears & Roebucks autoharp he bought her when they were young, before kids.
My brother Donnie came before me and when I graced the household they named me after my Grannie Macy and I took my rightful place, off to the side, in the back or on the couch if we had company. It's the travails of being the younger; you learn how to wait on your elders, in this case a brother two years older than me.
It all turned out OK in the end. We were a functional family in a dysfunctional universe scratching out a reasonable living among analogous folks in divergent circumstances. In other words, we were all just normal people; at least as normal as folks get in the reaches of Baton Rouge, more properly Port Allen.
Donnie ran off and joined the Army right out of high school and six months later Daddy died of lung cancer. Momma always said it was for the best rather than having him linger and choke to death. Maybe so but I never got over it. I was his baby. In his passing, Momma was well taken care of with the house paid off and Daddy's life insurance plus she worked as a nurse at Our Lady of the Lake hospital across the river.
With Donny run off to be a man and Daddy gone I lost a sense of protection I had been nurtured with most of my life. When I started growing into a woman I had two menfolk in the family to look after me and make sure I didn't stray into the wolf's lair. With both of them now gone or not at home I had to make do with my own wits and to be honest I was poorly matched but just didn't realize it.
Momma did her best to keep me on an even keel through the rest of my high school years but she had blessed me with her good looks and feminine charms. I had her ash blond hair and brown eyes along with her full bosom and fair skin. Without Daddy to guide me with his judgement I took a few paths I'm not so proud of today.
Looking back on it I guess it wasn't terrible but I was fortunate I didn't get knocked up before I was eighteen. It might have been worse for the men if my Momma had found out. She would have gotten the law after them for statutory rape if not chased out of town with buckshot. It seems funny at times now as well as careless and just plain stupid. I lost my virginity to a refinery worker while hanging out at the old church ruins down River Road and smoking pot.
That went on for a while with a lot of promiscuity and then it was as if somebody up above dumped a bucket of smarts in my head. I lost interest in the running around and wanted to go college. LSU wouldn't accept me because of the grades but Louisiana Tech let me come in on a conditional admission and after four years I came back to town with a fresh minted degree in how to waste four years studying to be absolutely nothing; in other words a B.A. in Liberal Studies. I could do math really good and I knew the classic sciences and could even speak French but I didn't have the specific career training I really needed; so much for that bucket of smarts.
Regardless, Daddy must have been watching over me because I ended up getting a job with a big law firm in downtown Baton Rouge. I wasn't going to get rich but it was going to be OK too. There were a good number of girls in like circumstances; single, reasonably well educated and enjoying whatever was thrown their way so I fit in well.
The partners and the lawyers were almost exclusively male. When I joined the firm as a document writer and editor there were two female lawyers. Every male attorney had at least one female assistant. I wasn't assigned to any one attorney but I worked most often with two of them; Bill Comer and Travis Delacroix. Both were hotshot corporate lawyers with clients up and down the river.
Thursday evenings became almost a required let down the hair event for most of the people in the firm, especially the lawyers and admins. I tagged along with a couple of the girls I worked with and we would burn the candle and somehow pour ourselves into work the next day. Most of the guys were married as were most of the admins but that didn't stop the shenanigans. I think it was pretty common knowledge that just about every lawyer in the firm was fucking either their admin or somebody else's wife. I know Dan and Travis both hit up on me pretty hard but I kept them at a bit of a distance without completely shutting them down.
For my play time, I ventured to the south side of the city and hung out at some of the places just outside the LSU north gate. It was at Chimes on the corner of Highland that I met Jimmy Letourneau. He had a shock of curly jet black hair and stood a cool six feet wearing a pair of Tony Lama's and a black leather vest over a white silk tee shirt along with a pair of black leather jeans he had to have been poured into.
Whether it was fate or ruin I don't know but our eyes met and the glory of the heavens opened up, at least for me. Throwing caution to the wind I ended up in his restored 1972 Triumph TR-6 speeding down I-10 for New Orleans. We cruised the Quarter ending up at his place in the Garden District and I then discovered what it was like to not just be fucked but made love to throughout the night.
Jimmy cooked breakfast for me and brought it to me in bed with flutes of champagne and when we were done he opened my kitty and feasted on strawberries and whipped cream before fucking me to a shattering orgasm that had to have aroused the entire surrounding neighborhood.
"Jesus, chéri, how is it you not married with some man by now? You too damn beautiful to be messin' with a man like me." His big white grin was contagious.
