Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

DECEMBER 13, 1930

Ruth and Idgie had left the cafe and gone over to the big house to see Momma Threadgoode, who was sick. Sipsey had come down to stay with the baby, as she often did. Tonight, she had brought along Artis, the eleven-year-old blue-gummed twin, so he could walk her home. He was a devil, but she couldn’t resist him.

It was eight o’clock and Artis was asleep on the bed. Sipsey was listening to the radio and eating what was left of the skillet bread and molasses.

“… And now, the makers of the new Rinso Blue, with sodium, bring you …”

Outside, there was nothing but the sound of leaves cracking as the black pickup truck with the Georgia license plate drove up to the back of the cafe with its lights off.

Two minutes later, a drunken Frank Bennett kicked the back door open and came through the kitchen into the back room. He pointed his gun at Sipsey and headed toward the crib. She got up and tried to reach the baby, but he grabbed her by the back of the dress and threw her across the room.

She jumped back up again and lunged at him. “You leave dat baby alone! Dat’s Miz Ruth’s baby!”

“Get away from me, nigger.” He slammed her with the broad side of his gun, hitting her with so much force that she was knocked cold and blood began to trickle from her ear.

Artis woke up and yelled, “Grandma!” and ran over to her while Frank Bennett picked the baby up and headed out the back door.

There was a new moon that night. Just enough light for Frank to make his way back to the truck. He opened the door and put the baby—who had not made a sound—into the front seat, and was climbing in when all of a sudden he heard a sound behind him … as if something heavy had hit a tree stump that had been covered with a quilt. The sound he had heard was that of a five-pound skillet hitting his own thick Irish hair, a fraction of a second before his skull split open. He was dead before he hit the ground, and Sipsey was headed back inside with the baby.

“Ain’t nobody gonna get dis baby, no suh, not while I’s alive.”

Frank Bennett had not figured that she would get back up off the floor. He also hadn’t figured that the skinny little black woman had been handling five-pound skillets, two at a time, since she was eleven. He had figured dead wrong.

As Sipsey passed by Artis, frozen in his tracks, he could see that she was wild-eyed. She said, “Go get Big George. I done kilt me a white man, I done kilt him daid.”

Artis slowly tiptoed over to where Frank was lying beside the truck, and as he leaned over to get a good look, he saw that glass eye shining in the moonlight.

He ran so fast over the railroad tracks he forgot to breathe and nearly passed out before he made it home. Big George was asleep, but he could see Onzell was still up, back in the kitchen.

He flew in the door, holding his side in pain and panting, “I gotta see Daddy!”

Onzell said, “You better not wake yo daddy up, boy, he’ll whup you within an inch of your life …” but Artis was already in the bedroom, shaking the big man.

“Daddy! Daddy! Get up! You’ gots to come wit me!”

Big George woke with a start. “Whut? Whut’s da matter witch you, boy?”

“I cain’t tell you. Grandma wants you over to the cafe!”

“Grandma?”

“Yes! Right now! She say ax you to come right now!”

Big George was putting on his pants. “This better not be no joke, boy, or I’ll have yo butt.”

Onzell, who had been standing in the door, listening, went over to get her sweater to go with them, but Big George said for her to stay home.

“She ain’t sick, is she?” Onzell said.

Big George said, “Naw, baby, naw, she ain’t sick. You just stay here.”

Jasper came into the living room, half asleep. “What …?”

Onzell said, “Nothin’, honey, go on back to bed … and don’t wake up Willie Boy.”

When they got away from the house, Artis said, “Daddy, Grandma done kilt a white man.”

The moon was gone behind the clouds and Big George couldn’t see his son’s face. He said, “You’re the one gonna be daid, boy, when I find out what you is up to.”

Sipsey was standing in the yard when they got there. Big George leaned down and felt Frank’s cold arm, sticking out from the sheet Sipsey had covered him with, and he stood back up and put his hands on hips. He looked back down at the body and shook his head. “Mmmm, mmmm. You done did it this time, Momma.”

But even as he was shaking his head, Big George was making a decision. There was no defense for a black who killed a white man in Alabama, so it never occurred to him to do anything but what he had to do.

He picked up Frank’s body and threw it over his shoulder and said, “Come on, boy,” and took it all the way in the back of the yard and put it in the wooden shed. He laid it down on the dirt floor, and said to Artis, “You stay here till I get back, boy, and don’t you move. I’s got to get rid of dat truck.”

About an hour later, when Idgie and Ruth got home, the baby was back in his bed and sound asleep. Idgie drove Sipsey home and told her how worried she was about Momma Threadgoode being so sick; Sipsey never told her how close they had come to losing the baby.

Artis stayed in the shed all night, nervous and excited, rocking back and forth on his haunches. Along around four o’clock, he couldn’t resist; he opened his knife and, in the pitch dark, struck the body under the sheet—once, twice, three, four times—and on and on.

About sunup, the door creaked open and Artis peed on himself. It was his daddy. He had driven the truck into the river, out by the Wagon Wheel, and had walked all the way back; about ten miles.

When Big George pulled off the sheet and said, “We got to burn his clothes,” they both stopped and stared.

The sun had just cracked through the wooden slats. Artis looked at Big George, his eyes as big as platters, with his mouth open, and said, “Daddy, dat white man don’t have no head.”

Big George shook his head again. “Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm …” His mother had chopped that man’s head off and buried it somewhere.

Stopping only long enough to take in that horrendous fact, he said, “Boy, help me wid dese clothes.”

Artis had never seen a white man naked before. He was all white and pink, just like those hogs after they’d been boiled and all their hair had come off.

Big George handed him the sheet and the bloody clothes and told him to go way out in the woods and bury them, deep, and then to go home and say nothing. To nobody. Anywhere. Ever.

While Artis was digging the hole, he couldn’t help but smile. He had a secret. A powerful secret that he would have as long as he lived. Something that would give him power when he was feeling weak. Something that only he and the devil knew. The thought of it made him smile with pleasure. He would never have to feel the anger, the hurt, the humiliation of the others, ever again. He was different. He would always be set apart. He had stabbed himself a white man …

And whenever any white folks gave him any grief, he could smile inside. I stabbed me one of you, already …

At seven-thirty, Big George had already started slaughtering the hogs and started the water boiling in the big black iron pot—a little early in the year, but not too soon.

Later that afternoon, when Grady and the two detectives from Georgia were questioning his daddy about the missing white man, Artis had nearly fainted when one of them came over and looked right in the pot. He was sure the man had seen Frank Bennett’s arm bobbing up and down among the boiling hogs. But evidently, he hadn’t, because two days later, the fat Georgia man told Big George that it was the best barbecue he had ever eaten, and asked him what his secret was.

Big George smiled and said, “Thank you, suh, I’d hafto say the secret’s in the sauce.”