Prom Night

The sun fell in slanted beams across the wraparound porch, and Jim held court from his favorite rocker, twirling a lollipop between his fingers and occasionally popping it in his mouth. He’d been doing this since he stopped smoking, and the young’uns didn’t remember the cloud of Pall Mall that used to shroud his face as he told his tales. The kids were playing in the yard and under the porch, escaping the brutal shafts of September sun in the cool sand with stripes of light interrupted here and there where an adult’s frame blocked the sun from shining through the gaps between the slats of the porch floor. Presently, a grubby face appeared over Jim’s shoulder. The kids wanted to go down to the creek to play.

“Y’all go on, but watch out for snakes, ‘specially copperheads,” Jim’s brother-in-law called to his daughter, who was off the porch and across the yard, hollering, “Come on, y’all! Daddy said we could!” before he had the words out of his mouth good.

“Pass that jar over here, JP.” Jim extended his hand for the blackberry ‘shine his brother was famous for.

“What you ‘bout to get into, Jim?” Shirley’s ears were trained to pick up “pass that jar” from the Auburn side of the ‘Bama-Auburn game.

“Maybe I’ll tell the one about that stunt you pulled at Homecoming.” Jim took a hearty swig from the jar after wresting it from Shirley. “JP, we’re gonna need another jar.”

“No, don’t tell that one, everybody’s tired of it.” Shirley took back the jar.

“Seems like you’re the only one gets tired of the Homecoming story, Shirley.” Emmy appeared behind the screen door into tbe house’s shotgun hallway. “Reckon I would, too, if I were you.”

“Both of y’all hush. I’ll tell whatever I want. If y’all think these two caused trouble at homecoming, just wait till you hear about prom night.”

“You wouldn’t!” Shirley lifted the jar out of Jim’s reach and passed it to Emmy, who took a long, slow sip.

“Alright, Jim.” Emmy gave him a level look. “Make sure you tell it true. I’m staying for this one. Susan and Patty can shell peas by themselves. I’m staying out here to be your fact-checker. Isn’t that what they call it on Hatebook?”

The path to the creek started at the woods beside and behind the yard, and the assorted siblings and cousins ran through the sunlight into the cool shade of the thin woods, mainly river birch and elms dropping leaves on the path where they lay mottled into a collage of browns and golds. Sally led the way, her older, more timid sister trailing behind the boys with the younger cousins.

“How come Sally’s ahead of us?” JJ asked.

“Because I’m smarter and faster, and besides, I’m the one who asked Daddy if we could.” Sally’s older brothers got on her last nerve.

“Both of y’all hush,” Steve took a long stride, evening his step with Sally’s. “Don’t you get JJ all riled up down here. You know better.”

The creek came into view as suddenly as if a wizard had dropped it into the landscape in that moment. Sally was up the tree to the rope swing before anyone could call dibs, swinging out over the creek to the deep spot and dropping into the water with a substantial splash.

Back at the house, word had spread that Jim was going to tell the prom night story, and every adult in the house, plus a few from neighboring ones, had gathered on the porch, there wasn’t an empty seat anywhere, and a jar of cherry moonshine began a counterclockwise circulation in tandem with the clockwise blackberry rotation. The commotion on the porch roused a copperhead who’d been napping in the cool sand beneath it, and he slowly slithered out of his coil to see what disturbed his rest.

After everyone got settled, Jim unwrapped a fresh dum-dum, cream soda-flavored, and began his tale, “Y’all remember what a fuss the girls made about prom, picking out dresses in Seventeen magazine before they were even sophomores with a ghost of a chance of an invite from an upperclassman?”

“Like you weren’t smoothing up to every fat or ugly junior girl when you were in tenth grade!” Shirley cawed, clasping the blackberry jar in her left hand and the cherry in her right.

“Oh my God, do you remember when Jim brought Shannon Piazza home for dinner? I thought Daddy was going to lose it when she took that third helping of mashed potatoes!” Emmy cackled as she grabbed the cherry jar from Shirley.

“Y’all hush up!” Jim gave everyone a minute to finish laughing at him. “Yeah, that was a mistake I regretted. What a head case!”

“Go on, Jim. Don’t let Emmy sidetrack you with Shitty Shanny. Wasn’t that the night before Enmy and Shirley went to the mall to try on everything Gunne Sax, ZumZum, and Jessica McClintock made?”

“If memory serves, that was indeed the night before Shirley and Em’s fateful non-shopping excursion at the mall.”

“Nobody needs to hear this part, Jim, just skip on over it,” Shirley slurred.

Down at the creek, Sally and the others were taking turns on the rope swing, skipping stones, laughing, splashing, being kids.

Sally snapped a twig off of an elm branch, sat down on the biggest of the shoals in the creek, and said, “Alright, y’all I’m going to tell you about the time Aunt Shirley and Aunt Em went prom dress shopping, even though they weren’t going to the prom.”

“Look at Sally! She’s Uncle Jim!” The younger cousins splashed and scrambled over to the shoals, and so did the older kids. Like Jim, Sally could flat tell a story, so just like the grown folks on the porch gathered around Jim, the children pulled up a piece of shale to listen to Sally weave a tale.

“It was the night after Uncle Jim brought that crazy girl who almost ate the house home for dinner. Emmy and Shirley weren’t the only ones hankerin’ to go to the prom.”

“What’s a prom, Sally?” Little Ginny piped up.

“A prom is a magical night for teenagers when they dress up and pretend they’re fancy grown ups.”

“That sounds stupid!” Billy slung a stone down creek, but it was a clunker.

“It is, but it’s not half as dumb as some of the stuff grown ups do when they pretend they’re still teenagers.”

“You mean like when Big Bill tried to do a back flip off the diving board and whacked his head on the board?”

“I mean anytime any of ‘em says hold my beer.” Sally continued, “Now y’all aren’t old enough to remember what Aunt Em and Aunt Shirley looked like before they let themselves go, but they were both real pretty in high school. Daddy Jim says he had to sit on the porch with his shotgun every weekend night to keep them no-good, prowlin’ tomcats away from his girls.”

“Aunt Shirley’s still pretty!” JJ was Shirley’s favorite nephew, and she was his favorite aunt. She didn’t talk different to kids than adults.

“Yes, JJ, Aunt Shirley is still pretty,” Sally twirled her twig between her fingers. “Daddy Jim took them to the mall after school and dropped them off.”

“How come Daddy Jim didn’t go in the mall with them?” Ginny was only five, so she didn’t understand about parents being embarrassing yet.

“Daddy Jim hated the mall. Don’t you remember Mama Gail saying the only place in it he could ever tolerate was the Orange Julius in the food court, but that’s not important.”

“Surely you don’t think I’m skipping this, Shirley?” Jim popped the candy ball off the lollipop stick with his teeth. In the distance, a pair of hawks wheeled over the creek, riding the thermals.

“Y’all remember how much Daddy hated the mall,” Jim began again.

“We had to get him an Orange Julius for taking us every time we went!” Shirley jumped in.

“That was so Mama would think he stayed there with y’all instead of ducking over to AJ’s Hideaway for a beer,” Jim continued. “So, Shirley and Em had the whole mall to themselves without any grown ups watching them. What do y’all reckon they did first?”

JP nearly fell off the porch laughing. “I’d forgotten about this part!”

“Oh, is this the one where they paint themselves up like two dollar hookers?!” Sheila from across the street took the cherry ‘shine and let her giggles dissolve into it.

“That’s right, they went straight to the Macy’s makeup counter and proceeded to paint themselves up like Picasso’s canvases. I mean, you should have seen that day glow eye shadow all over their faces.”

“You weren’t there! How do you know?” The color was rising in Em’s face.

“Daddy told me about it over a beer one day when we were watching ‘Bama kick LSU’s ass.”

“Roll tide!”

“Roll tide!”

“Roll tide!”

“Roll tide”

“Roll tide!”

Jim surveyed his kinfolk and neighbors, pointing to the ones who were late with their “Roll tide!” and said, “Drink.”