Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

JULY 2, 1979

A gentleman of color inquired about another gentleman of color, who was sitting in the lobby, laughing.

“Is that nigger crazy, or what? What’s he laughing about? There ain’t nobody talking to him.”

The brown, pockmarked man behind the desk answered, “Oh, he don’t have to have nobody to talk to. His mind done went addlebrained a long time ago.”

“What he doin’ here?”

“Some woman brought him over two years ago.”

“Who’s springing for the bill?”

“She is.”

“Hummmmm …”

“She comes over and dresses him every morning and puts him to bed every night.”

“Some easy life.”

“I’d say.”

Artis O. Peavey, the subject of this discussion, was sitting on a red Naugahyde sofa, with a good deal of cotton stuffing escaping through the various tears and cuts it had acquired over the years. His cloudy brown eyes seemed to be fixed on the wall clock with the pink neon ring around it. The only other object on the wall was a cigarette ad showing an attractive black couple enjoying a Salem cigarette, remarking that the smoke was as cool as a mountain spring. Artis threw back his head and laughed again, revealing a perfect set of blue gums where once had flashed a number of gold teeth.

To the world, Mr. Peavey was sitting in a run-down flophouse hotel lobby, on a towel supplied by the management, since he was often known to pee through the rubber pants the woman put on him every morning. However, for Mr. Artis O. Peavey himself, it was 1936 again … and at the moment, he was walking down 8th Avenue North, dressed in a purple sharkskin suit, wearing a fifty-dollar pair of lime-green brogans, his hair freshly straightened and pomaded down like black ice. And on his arm, this Saturday night, was Miss Betty Simmons, who was, according to the social columns of the Slagtown News, the toast of Birmingham’s ebony glitter set.

They had just passed by the Masonic Hall and were, no doubt, headed on over to Ensley to the Tuxedo Junction Ballroom on the midnight streetcar, where Count Basie—or was it Cab Calloway?—would be playing.

No wonder he was laughing. And God bless God for not letting him remember the bad times, when it was no fun to be a “nigger” on a Saturday night. Those long, hard nights when he had been in Kilbey, beaten and kicked and stabbed by guards and prisoners alike, where a man had to sleep with one eye open and be ready to kill or be killed in an instant. Lately, Artis’s mind had become just like the Frolic Theater; it chose only to run light comedies and romances, starring himself and a number of brown, tan, and cinnamon-colored beauties with swishing hips and flashing eyes …

He banged on the once shiny, now dull, chrome arm of the sofa, and laughed again. The movie in his mind, this time, was starring himself when his stay in Chicago had made him an important figure for telling and retelling about the famous performers he had seen—Ethel “Momma Stringbean” Waters, the Inkspots, Lena, Louis.… He had been able to forget the insults, and the way his manhood had been cut off in the minds of the whites. But somehow, it was that very dismissal that made it go at it with a vengeance, just to prove that he as a man did exist.

Want a white woman?

I never hankered after no white woman! High yellow was as high as I cared to go.

He liked them, in fact, big and black … the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice. And more could call him Daddy than he cared to admit. He could smile and shuffle, but it never bothered him; because he had a secret …

Yes, life was sweet; women, important talk, Knights of Pythias, High Potentate, strutting rights, setting on porches rights, the finest men’s colognes, women in peach satin gowns and multijeweled dresses to the floor, brown derbies and coats with collars puffed with purple, maroon, and green fur, midnight-colored women to kiss you good night, cigars that traveled from Cuba, a gold timepiece that could be pulled out for the hour or for impressing … Shake That Thing … good times at the Black Shadow Lounge. Bleach that skin, make us a little closer skin. If you are white, all right! If you’s brown, you be around. Yellow? You’re a nice fellow. But if you black, jump back … jump back.

Now the movie flipped to the fifties. He was standing in front of the Masonic Temple Drugstore, jingling change in his pockets. The feel and sound of folding money never appealed to him; he was not cursed with a driving desire to break his back earning the green stuff. He was just as happy with a pocket full of shiny dimes and quarters, won in the elusive game, known in the back alleys as the Galloping Dots, Seven-Come-Eleven, Snake-Eyes. But more times than not, the change was a gift from some grateful partner in passion.

When he finally lost his activities at age eighty, due to the natural deterioration and the normal wear and tear, there was many a disappointed lady in Slagtown. He was that rare and precious commodity: a woman’s man.

The movie speeds up, and sights and sounds start coming faster. Three-hundred-pound women, shaking and screaming in church … and in bed … “OH JESUS, I’M COMING!” … Mr. Artis O. Peavey and a number of women exchange nuptial vows … sitting in the Agate Cafe, talking to his friend Baby Shephard … “That woman done busted my head” … “I heard tell it was the husband” … “I would have fought for you, Odetta, but when a man’s got the difference in his hand, loaded and cocked, there ain’t no use in being a fool” … “Give me a pig’s foot and a bottle of beer” … “I’ve got the world in a jug and the stopper in my hand” … “You’re not the only oyster in the stew!”…. Blue Shadows and White Gardenias … amber-colored plastic cigar-holders … Professor Fess Whatley’s Jazz Demons.… Got the miseries? Feena-Mint.… Princess Pee Wee Sam and Scram … Fairyland Park Ballroom … Hartley Toots Killed in Bus.… I married her without my consent, so to speak … “That woman domineered over me”.… Nobody knows you when you’re down and out … Watch out … Don’t be coming down here … Oh no, you gonna get them white folks all mad … all riled up.… No, no, I ain’t one of ’em, boss, they’s just troublemakers … Yes suh … “Get off that bus!”

Artis tapped his foot on the floor three times and, magically, the movie changed. He is a little boy now, and his momma is cooking in the back of the cafe … Oh, don’t get in Momma’s way, she slap you out the door … There’s Naughty Bird and Willie Boy … and sweet Jasper … Grandma Sipsey’s there, dipping her cornbread in honey … Miss Idgie and Miss Ruth … they treat you white … And Stump … and Smokey Lonesome …

Then, the old man, who had been agitated just a moment before, begins to smile and relax. He is out in the back of the cafe, helping his daddy barbecue … and he is happy … we know a secret.

His daddy gives him a barbecue and a Grapico, and he runs way back up in the woods to eat it, where it’s cool and green and the pine needles are soft …

The pockmarked man in the hotel lobby walked over and shook the smiling Artis O. Peavey, who was now quiet and still. “What’s the matter with you?”

The man jumped back. “Jesus Christ! This nigger is dead!” He turned to his friend at the counter. “Not only that, but he’s done peed all over the floor!”

… But Artis was still way up in the woods, with his barbecue.