As God Is My Witness, I’ll Never Be Hungry Again
Alice grew up in a house that looks like Tara from the movie Gone With the Wind. Same boxy shape and two story pillars out front. Same white paint and symmetry. Same Spanish moss dripping from the surrounding trees that weep down the bluff to the black water of the Edisto River. Walking in the woods around the house, one can almost hear General Sherman’s men, whispering in the sizzling afternoon breeze. He crossed the river there, one stop on his rampage of burning The South to submission during the Civil War.
When Alice first took me to Denmark, South Carolina to visit her childhood Tara, I felt like I had been invited into the Holy of Holies. Along with Cayleigh, we spent the afternoon picking speckled camellias from the towering bushes surrounding the house and walking the property with Alice’s dad to survey the dilapidated deer stands. Her father set fire to one of his outbuildings and watched the rest of us scramble to extinguish it, an aw-shucks smile on his face. Afterward, he came inside and made us fire-in-the-gullet cocktails, and we decamped to the screened porch that runs the length of the back of the house. Sipping. Rocking. Chattering. And grinning.
The shadows of early evening stretched long across the grass, bringing David, a family friend, rolling up the circling dirt driveway in a haze of dust. Alice’s father puttered off to church to print something on the computer, leaving the rest of us to enjoy another round of cocktails with David. On the surface, he was an average Southern man: white hair, impeccable manners, clothing that encased him in cool even when it was boiling.
But.
He had a way of coaxing things out of a person, of divining what was special in others. One could spend an hour talking with him and feel like life-long friends, realizing much later that he revealed nothing about himself.
I was privy to that talent more than most, because I ended up locked in the bathroom with him.
While we sat on the back porch sipping our second drinks, the sky turned a pulsing shade of green. A howling wind thundered from the heavens, and bullets of ice bounced around the yard.
“This looks like tornado weather.” Alice’s mom studied the boisterousness behind the scant shield of the front door. “Let’s get in the bathroom.”She picked up Cayleigh and started toward that wing of the house before pausing. “Oh, and don’t forget your drinks.”
The five of us – Alice, her mom, Cayleigh, David and me – all cowered in a bathroom the size of a large closet, protection that would’ve been worthless had the tornado knifed through the sky in a direct hit. David told jokes while it crashed all around us, while we listened to its discordant notes, while we sipped our gin and tonics and waited for the sky to either open up and swallow us or turn a peaceful shade of blue.
Tara.
It has a mythic ability to conjure tight bonds, to swirl with genteel Southern men, to endure blasts from the pits of hell, and to always know the importance of a stiff drink at the proper time.
Some things never happen at the proper time. David died last week. He’s swirling up there somewhere, watching over all of us, a cold drink in his hand.
This post is part of a series that celebrates my friendship with Alice Guess as she moves to Baton Rouge, LA. If this is your first visit, please click here and read forward. Thank you for reading and sharing your stories here.
When I was a teen the images of Tara and Gone with the Wind just made me swoon. I couldn’t get enough. Years and years later when we visited Atlanta I gobbled up every possible trinket I could find. So I felt prepared to soak up the culture along with reading this wonderfully rich post.
Drinking cocktails in the bathroom hoping to avoid a tornado is quite a story, and an intriguing memory. Memories are kind of colliding for you right now, with Alice moving and now hearing that someone you knew and enjoyed has passed. I’m so glad you’re sharing these memories with us, Andra. They are touching and quite lovely. Debra
This has always been one of my favorite memories of spending time with Alice. Bizarre, I suppose, but certainly memorable.
Lovely, lovely, lovely! Swirls up a few memories in me. Of knowing folks like David, of cowering in a basement from a tornado, and of course, rocking on the porch with a cold drink. Of these things, I’ve done more of the last with more than a few of the former.
I don’t know why I don’t give up and write Southern gothic. I have a lifetime’s worth of scenes and stories……
Maybe because you’d rather write about something other than everyday (real) life?
Never go hungry with a good bathroom drink.
A good drink does contain essential nutrients, Lou, though I barely know these days.
Your so mean! Gonna make your friend Alice cry. But, in true Southern style, “don’t forget your drinks…”
This one is a laugh-cry moment, Carnell. It has to be.
I should like to be remembered like that. Drink in hand, charming folks in a bathroom.
It was a surreal set of minutes, Cameron. That’s for sure.
I would think that you’d be lifelong friends with all those in the close knit quarters…or lifelong enemies – glad you are the former and not the latter. Let your line shine. *flutter, flutter, flutter” go the moths wings against the windowpane, searching, searching for the Moon which is the moth’s sunshine.
What’s funny is, at the time, I don’t think any of us realized how endangered we were. We came out of there to downed trees. Alice’s dad had to tackle an obstacle course to get from church to the house.
Rather like the night (1968) that I sat through the edge of a hurricane — three adults and seven sleeping babies in a single-wide mobile home. I don’t remember if/what we may have been drinking (but I remember the male neighbor in the group had a predilection for his daily vodka). At one point during the night we adults took turns holding the front door shut; yet, I don’t remember being very frightened, just thankful that my two boys and I had neighbors willing to share their space with us while the wind roared.
Life is so full of twists, turns, disappointments and losses, but we adjust and we go on. This was beautifully told, Andra. Hugs.
What a striking memory, Karen. Holding the door of the trailer shut while the hurricane raged outside. It isn’t as frightening to be with others in those situations.
The death of a good friend is so heartbreaking, and the memories that such a loss evokes are often so vivid and stark. I’d guess that you will flash to images of him sitting in the bathroom with you for a long time to come now.
I hadn’t thought about that scene in several years. Alice and I went to lunch on Friday, and she told me about his passing. I’m sorry he didn’t see another 4th, because it is quite something around those parts.
Love the scant shield of the screen door – a nice turn of phrase. Great imagery. Maybe you SHOULD write Southern gothic??
My current book is set in The South, though it isn’t my intention for it to be Gothic.
Wow, I did not expect that ending. You made me cry. David sounds like such a character!
It is a true gift when Life blesses us with characters.
You had me right there on Tara, Andra. Who has not coveted that place dominated by an indomitable spirit, and the pine forests that surround it? A haunting and evocative piece of writing today…
I am spending the holiday there tomorrow. Tonight, I am staying in another Southern Gothic Fantasyland close by.
So sorry to hear that David has died, but I”m happy that he swirls somewhere, “drink in hand.” Lovely line. What a beautiful tribute to your friendship with both David and Alice. And congrats to Alice on the new job!
Hugs,
Kathy
She’s really excited about the job. Knowing how long she’s wanted to do something like this, I’m tickled for her. Sad for me, but it will all work out in the end for everyone. I’m positive.
I hope you and Miranda are having a nice visit.
I only had to do it a few times, but there’s a weird intimacy about taking shelter during a tornado. It seems very removed from the rest of the world.
David sounds like the kind of guy you’ll always remember.
This is the only time I’ve had to do it, Annabelle, but I can understand the isolated sense of things.