Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

  “But Aunt Idgie never had one thing taken.” He laughed. “Of course, that may have been because of that shotgun she kept by the bed … she was as tough as pig iron, wasn’t she, Peggy?”

  Peggy called back from the kitchen, “Tougher.”

  “Of course, most of that was just an act, but she could be a hellion if she didn’t like you. She had this running feud with this old preacher at the Baptist church, where Momma taught Sunday School, and she would give him fits. He was a teetotaler, and one Sunday he preached against her friend Eva Bates, and it made her so mad she never did forgive him. Every time a stranger came to town looking to buy some whiskey, she’d take him outside the cafe and point to old Reverend Scroggins’s house and she’d say, ‘See that green house, down there? Just go over and knock on the door. That man’s got the best liquor in the state.’ She’d point out his house when some of those old boys was looking for something else, too.”

  Peggy came out of the kitchen and sat down. “Stump, don’t be telling them that.”

  He laughed. “Well, she did. Always doing something mean to that man. But, like I say, she just liked for people to think she was mean … inside, she was as soft as a marshmallow. Just like that time the preacher’s son, Bobby Lee, got arrested … she was the one he called to come get him.

  “He’d gone over to Birmingham with two or three boys and gotten himself all liquored up and was running down the halls in his underwear, throwing water balloons out of the seventh-floor window; only Bobby Lee had them filled with ink and had dropped one on some big city councilman’s wife when they were going into the hotel for some shindig.

  “It cost Aunt Idgie two hundred dollars to get him out of jail and another two hundred dollars to take Bobby’s name off the books, so he wouldn’t have a police record and his daddy wouldn’t find out … I went over there with her to get him, and coming home, she told him that if he ever let anybody know she had done it, she would shoot his you-know-whats off. She couldn’t stand anybody knowing she had done a good deed, especially for the preacher’s son.

  “All that bunch in the Dill Pickle Club were like that. They did a lot of good works that nobody knew about. But the best part of the story is that old Bobby Lee went on to become a big-time lawyer, and wound up as an attorney general for Governor Folsom.”

  His daughter, Norma, came in to get the rest of the dishes. “Daddy, tell him about Railroad Bill.”

  Linda shot her mother an exasperated look.

  Stump said, “Railroad Bill? Oh Lord, you don’t really want to hear about Bill, do you?”

  The boyfriend, who really wanted to take Linda out parking somewhere, said, “Yes sir, I’d love to hear about it.”

  Macky smiled at his wife. They had heard this story a hundred times and knew Stump loved to tell it.

  “Well, it was during the Depression and, somehow, this person called Railroad Bill would sneak on the government supply trains and throw stuff off for the colored people. Then he’d jump off before they could catch him. This went on for years, and pretty soon the colored started telling stories about him. They claimed that someone saw him turn into a fox and run twenty miles on top of a barbed-wire fence. People that did see him said he wore a long black coat, with a black stocking cap on his head. They even made up a song about him.… Sipsey said, every Sunday in church, they’d pray for Railroad Bill, to keep him safe.

  “The railroad put a huge reward up, but there wasn’t a person in Whistle Stop that would have ever turned him in, even if they had known who he was. Everybody wondered and made guesses.

  “I got in my head that Railroad Bill was Artis Peavy, our cook’s son. He was about the right size and as fast as lightning. I followed him around night and day, but I could never catch him. I must have been around nine or ten at the time, and I would have given anything to have seen him in action, so I would have known for sure.

  “Then, one morning, right around daybreak, I had to go to the toilet. I was about half asleep and when I got to the bathroom, there was Momma and Aunt Idgie in there, with the sink running. Momma looked at me, surprised, and said, ‘Wait a minute, honey,’ and closed the door.

  “I said, ‘Hurry up, Momma, I cain’t wait!’ You know how a kid’ll do. I heard them talking and pretty soon they came out, and Aunt Idgie was drying her hands and face. When I got in there, the sink was still full of coal dust. And on the floor, behind the door, was a black stocking hat.

  “I suddenly figured out why I’d seen her and old Grady Kilgore, the railroad detective, always whispering. He’d been the one who was tipping her off about the train schedules … it had been my Aunt Idgie jumping them trains, all along.”

  Linda said, “Oh Granddaddy, are you sure that’s true?”

  “Of course it’s true. Your Aunt Idgie did all kinds of crazy things.” He asked Macky, “Did I ever tell you what she did that time old Wilbur and Dot Weems got married and went on their honeymoon at a big hotel in Birmingham?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Peggy said, “Stump, don’t be telling that story in front of the children.”

  “It’ll be all right, don’t worry. Well anyway, old Wilbur was a member of the Dill Pickle Club, and right after the wedding, Aunt Idgie and that bunch got in a car and drove over to Birmingham as fast as they could, and bribed the hotel clerk into letting them into the honeymoon suite, and they put all kinds of funny stuff all over the bed … God knows what all …”

  Peggy warned him, “Stump …”

  He laughed. “Hell, I don’t know what it was. Anyway, they got in the car and came back home, and when Wilbur and Dot got back, they asked Wilbur how he liked his honeymoon suite at the Redmont, only to find out that they had been at the wrong hotel, and some poor honeymoon couple had gotten the shock of their lives.”

  Peggy shook her head. “Can you imagine such a thing?”

  Norma stuck her head under the serving counter. “Daddy, tell them about the catfish you used to catch down at the Warrior River.”

  Stump’s face lit up. “Oh well. You wouldn’t believe how big those catfish were. I remember one day, it was raining and I got a bite so hard, it slid me right down the bank and I had to fight to not be pulled into the water. Lightning was striking and I was fighting for my life, but after about four hours, I pulled that grandaddy mud cat out of the water and, I tell you, he must have weighed twenty pounds or more, and he was this long …”

  Stump held out his one arm.

  The skinny would-be chiropractor sat there with a stupid look on his face, seriously trying to figure out how long the catfish was.

  Linda, exasperated, put her hand on her hip. “Oh Granddaddy.”

  Norma just cackled from the kitchen.

  SEPTEMBER 28, 1986

  Today, they were enjoying a combination of things: Cokes and Golden Flake potato chips, and for dessert—another request from Mrs. Threadgoode—Fig Newtons. She told Evelyn that Mrs. Otis had eaten three Fig Newtons a day for the past thirty years, to keep her regular. “Personally, I eat ’em just ’cause I like the taste. But I’ll tell you something that’s good. When I was at home and didn’t feel like cooking, I’d walk over to Ocie’s store and pick up a package of those little brown-and-serve rolls and pour Log Cabin Syrup on them and have that for my dinner. They don’t cost all that much. You ought to try it sometime.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s good, Mrs. Threadgoode, are those frozen honey-buns.”

  “Honey-buns?”

  “Yes. They’re like cinnamon buns. You know.”

  “Oh, I love cinnamon buns. Let’s have some sometime, want to?”

  “All right.”

  “You know, Evelyn, I’m so glad you’re not on that diet of yours anymore. That raw food will kill you. I hadn’t wanted to tell you this before, but Mrs. Adcock nearly killed herself on one of those slimming diets. She ate so much raw food that she was rushed to the hospital with severe stomach pains and they had to do exploratory surgery on her. And she said t
hat while the doctor was examining all her insides, he picked up her liver to get a close look at it, and dropped it right on the floor, and it bounced four or five times before they got it. Mrs. Adcock said that she has suffered with terrible backaches ever since, because of it.”

  “Oh Mrs. Threadgoode, you don’t believe her, do you?”

  “Well, that’s what she said at the dinner table the other night.”

  “Honey, she’s just making that up. Your liver is attached to your body.”

  “Well, maybe she got mixed up and it was a kidney or something else, but if I were you, I wouldn’t eat any more of that raw food.”

  “Well okay, Mrs. Threadgoode, if you say so.” Evelyn took a bite of her potato chip. “Mrs. Threadgoode, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Didn’t you tell me one time that some people thought Idgie had killed a man? Or did I just think you said that?”

  “Oh no, honey, a lot of people thought she had done it. Yes indeed, ’specially when she stood trial for murder with Big George over in Georgia …”

  Evelyn was shocked. “She did?”

  “Haven’t I ever told you about that before?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Oh … Well, it was awful! I remember the very morning. I was doing my dishes, listening to The Breakfast Club, when Grady Kilgore came up to the house and got Cleo. He looked like someone had died. He said, ‘Cleo, I’d rather cut off my right arm that to do what I’m about to do, but I’ve got to go take Idgie and Big George in on charges, and I want you to go with me.’

  “You know, Idgie was one of his best friends, and it liked to of killed him to do it. He told Cleo that he would have resigned from office, but he said the thought of a stranger arresting Idgie was even worse.

  “Cleo said, ‘My God, Grady, what’s she done?’

  “Grady said that she and Big George were suspected of murdering Frank Bennett back in ‘thirty. Here, I didn’t even know he’d been dead or missing or anything.”

  Evelyn said, “What made them think that Idgie and Big George did it?”

  “Well, it seems that Idgie and Big George had threatened to kill him a couple of times, and the Georgia police had that on record, so when they found his truck, they had to bring them in …”

  “What truck?”

  “Frank Bennett’s truck. They were looking for a drowned body and found that truck in the river, not far from Eva Bates’s place, so they knew he’d been around Whistle Stop in nineteen thirty.

  “Grady was furious that some damn fool had been stupid enough to call over to Georgia and give them the tag number … Ruth had been dead about eight years, and Stump and Peggy had already married and moved over to Atlanta, so it must have been around nineteen fifty-five or ’fifty-six.

  “The next day, Grady took Idgie and Big George over to Georgia, and Sipsey went with them; nobody could talk her out of going. But Idgie wouldn’t let anybody else go with her, so we all had to stay home and wait.

  “Grady tried to keep it quiet. Nobody in town talked about it if they knew … Dot Weems knew, but she never printed anything in the paper.

  “I remember the week of the trial, Albert and I went over to Troutville to be with Onzell, who was terrified because she knew if Big George was found guilty of killing a white man, he’d wind up in the electric chair, just like Mr. Pinto.”

  Just then, Geneene, the nurse, came in and sat down to have a cigarette and relax.

  Mrs. Threadgoode said, “Oh Geneene, this is my friend Evelyn, the one I told you about who’s having such a bad menapause.”

  “How do you do.”

  “Hello.”

  Then Mrs. Threadgoode went on and on to Geneene about how pretty she thought Evelyn was and didn’t Geneene think that Evelyn should sell Mary Kay cosmetics?

  Evelyn was hoping that Geneene would leave so Mrs. Threadgoode would finish her story, but she never did. And when Ed came to get her, she was frustrated because now she would have to wait a whole week to hear how the trial came out. As she left, Evelyn said, “Don’t forget where you left off.”

  Mrs. Threadgoode looked at her blankly. “Left off? You mean about Mary Kay?”

  “No. About the trial.”

  “Oh yes. Oh, that was something, all right …”

  JULY 24, 1955

  It was just before a thunderstorm; the air in the courtroom was hot and thick.

  Idgie turned and looked around the courtroom, the sweat running down her back. Her lawyer, Ralph Root, a friend of Grady’s, loosened his tie and tried to get a breath of air.

  This was the third day of the trial and all the men who had been in the barbershop in Valdosta, the day Idgie had threatened to kill Frank Bennett, had already testified. Jake Box had just taken the stand.

  She turned around again and looked for Smokey Lonesome. Where the hell was he? Grady had sent word that she was in trouble and needed him. Something was wrong. He should have been here. She began to wonder if he was dead.

  At that moment, Jake Box pointed to Big George and said, “That’s him. That’s the one that come after Frank with the knife, and that’s the woman that was with him.”

  The entire Loundes County Courthouse murmured with uneasiness over a black man threatening a white man. Grady Kilgore shifted in his seat. Sipsey, the only other black in the room, was up in the balcony, moaning and praying for her baby boy, even though he was almost sixty at the time.

  Not even bothering to question Big George, the prosecuting attorney moved right on along to Idgie, who took the stand.

  “Did you know Frank Bennett?”

  “No sir.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You mean to sit here and tell me you never met the man whose wife, Ruth Bennett, was your business partner for eighteen years?”

  “That’s right.”

  He twirled around, with his thumbs in his vest, to face the jury. “You mean to say you never came into the Valdosta barbershop in August of nineteen twenty-eight and had a heated conversation in which you threatened to kill Frank Bennett, a man you did not know?”

  “That was me, all right. I thought you wanted to know if we had ever met, and the answer is no. I threatened to kill him, but we were never, what you might say, properly introduced.”

  Some of the men in the room, who hated the pompous lawyer, laughed. “So, in other words, you admit that you threatened Frank Bennett’s life.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Is it not true that you also came to Georgia with your colored man in September of nineteen twenty-eight and left, taking Frank Bennett’s wife and child with you?”

  “Just his wife, the child came later.”

  “How much later?”

  “The usual time; nine months.”

  The courtroom broke out in laughter again. Frank’s brother, Gerald, glared at her from the front row.

  “Is it true that you spoke against Frank Bennett’s character to his wife and made her believe that he was not of good moral fiber? Did you convince her that he was not fit as a husband?”

  “No sir, she already knew that for a fact.”

  More laughter.

  The lawyer was getting heated. “Did you or did you not force her to go to Alabama with you at knifepoint?”

  “Didn’t have to. She was already packed and ready when we got there.”

  He ignored this last statement. “Is it not true that Frank Bennett came over to Whistle Stop, Alabama, trying to retrieve what was rightly his—his wife and his tiny baby son—and that you and your colored man killed him to prevent her from returning to her happy home and giving the child back to its father?”

  “No sir.”

  The large, pigeon-breasted man was picking up steam. “Are you aware that you broke up the most sacred thing on this earth—a Christian home with a loving father and mother and child? That you defiled the sacred and holy marriage between a man and a woman, a marriage sanctioned by God in the Morning Dove Baptist Church
, right here in Valdosta, on November first, nineteen twenty-four? That you have caused a good Christian woman to break God’s laws and her marriage vows?!”

  “No sir.”

  “I suggest that you bribed this poor weak woman with promises of money and liquor, and that she lost control of her senses, momentarily, and when her husband came back to get her and take her home, didn’t you and your colored man murder him in cold blood to prevent her from returning?”

  He then turned on her and screamed, “WHERE WERE YOU ON THE NIGHT OF DECEMBER THIRTEENTH, NINETEEN THIRTY?”

  Idgie really began to sweat. “Well, sir, I was over at my mother’s house, in Whistle Stop.”

  “Who was with you?”

  “Ruth Jamison and Big George. He went over there with us that night.”

  “Can Ruth Jamison testify to that?”

  “No sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “She died eight years ago.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “She’s dead, too.”

  He was coming down the mountain now, and stood up on his tiptoes for a second and then twirled toward the jury again. “So, Miss Threadgoode, you expect twelve intelligent men to believe that, although two witnesses are dead and the other is a colored man who works for you and was with you the day you abducted Ruth Bennett from her happy home, and is known to be a worthless, no-good lying nigger, you are asking these men to take your word for it, just because you say so?” Although she was nervous, the lawyer should not have called Big George those names.

  “That’s right, you gump-faced, blowed-up, baboon-assed bastard.”

  The room exploded as the judge banged his gavel in vain.

  This time, Big George moaned. He had begged her not to stand trial, but she was determined to give him an alibi for that night. She knew she was his only chance. The odds of a white woman’s getting off were much higher than his; especially if his alibi depended on the words of another Negro. She was not going to let Big George go to jail if her life depended on it; and it very well might.