Jars

Jim sat in his favorite rocker, beams of late afternoon sun draped over his lap instead of stabbing him in the eyes like on Billy’s side of the porch. He twirled a lollipop between his fingers, occasionally popping it in his mouth. He’d been doing this since he stopped smoking. 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, out of the September heat in the cool sand, sun shining between the shadows of the slats. 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 reached 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 the one about that snake took you to Homecoming.” Jim took a swig from the jar, wrestling 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 spoke from the screen door into the 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 Shirley 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 out here to be your fact-checker. Isn’t that what they call it on Hatebook?”

Sally’s brothers followed her across the yard into the cool shade of the thin woods, mainly dogwood, birch, and elm, 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 rolled her eyes, though nobody could see.

“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 conjured it out of thin air. 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, the rope snaking back to the tree when she let go.

Word spread around the house and yard that Jim was going to tell the prom night story, and every adult in the house, plus a few from neighboring ones, 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 jar. The commotion on the porch roused a copperhead who’d been drowsing in the cool sand beneath it, and he slithered out of his coil to see what all the fuss was.

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? They were prom-crazy before they had 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 he brought Harelip Heather home for dinner? I thought Daddy was going to lose it!” The cherry jar, fresh from the freezer, had begun sweating and nearly slipped from Em’s fingers as she grabbed it from Shirley.

“Cleft-palate,” Shirley corrected.

“Y’all hush up!” Jim gave everyone a minute to finish laughing at him while he took a sip out of turn from Emmy. “Yeah, well, Billy dared me to, and there may have been a tax involved.”

“Go on, Jim. Don’t tell tales out of school on one of your tangents. And you were fined, not taxed.” Billy strode across the porch. “Wasn’t that the night before Emmy and Shirley went to the mall to try on every prom dress in Macy’s?”

“If memory serves, that was indeed the night before Shirley and Em’s fateful trip to the mall.”

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

The creek frolicked with splashing and laughter. Sally and the boys took turns on the rope swing while Carrie taught Billy and Ginny how to skip stones.

Sally snapped a twig off of an elm branch, sat down on the biggest shoal 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 hadn’t been asked 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 as the grown folks on the porch gathered around Jim, the children pulled up a piece of shale to listen to Sally weave a tale.

“How come they bought dresses for a prom they weren’t goin’ to?” Billy scowled at Sally. “That don’t sound like Daddy Jim.”

“Uncle Billy says he took ‘em to the prom, so how come you’re saying they didn’t go?” JJ challenged.

“I didn’t say they didn’t go. I said nobody asked them. Something happened at the mall, so just hush up and let me tell it.”

“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 Billy tried to do a back flip off the diving board and whacked his head?”

“I mean anytime any of ‘em says hold my beer.” Sally continued, “Y’all aren’t old enough to remember Aunt Em and Aunt Shirley 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 and snakes away from his girls.” Sally paused and skipped a stone from the pile next to her. “It was the night after Uncle Jim brought home that ugly girl. Emmy and Shirley weren’t the only ones hankerin’ to go to the prom.”

“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,” Sally nodded slightly toward him and 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, didn’t understand yet about parents being embarrassing.

“Daddy Jim hated the mall. Don’t you remember Mama Gail saying the only thing he liked about the mall was Orange Julius?”

“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, nobody watching them. What do y’all reckon they did first?”

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

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

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

“You weren’t there! How do you know?” The color crept up 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!”

Jim surveyed his kinfolk and neighbors, pointing to everyone with a late “Roll Tide!” and said, “Drink.”

“So, after Em and Shirley spackle on enough makeup to pave a road, they sashay on over to the Juniors department to the prom dresses. Y’all, we’re talking late 80s’ prom dresses, and they were something else. Em, how many dresses did you pile on your arm to take into the dressing room?”

“Seven. That’s the limit, so Shirley had seven, too.”

“And both of y’all went in one of those tiny cubicles together with fourteen frilly prom dresses?” Jim paused for effect.

On the shoals in the creek, Sally flicked a flat stone that skipped down the creek without sinking until she lost sight of it.

“So Aunt Em and Aunt Shirley are at the mall all by themselves, and instead of doing something fun, like going to the arcade, they go to Macy’s and put a whole bunch of makeup all over their faces, gobs of bright green and purple eyeshadow, blue eyeliner, every kind and color makeup there is. Daddy says they looked like clowns when they got home.”

“Who wants to go to Macy’s if they’re at the mall by themselves?” JJ squinted in the harsh sunlight.

“Teenage girls, that’s who. They’re crazy about clothes, shoes, makeup, and boys, and Daddy and Uncle Jim say Aunt Shirley was the most boy crazy girl they ever saw. Said they were embarrassed to bring friends home ‘cause she’d be making eyes at them, trying to get ‘em to take her to the mall when they just wanted to play Nintendo.”

“My daddy says they were all clamberin’ to come home with him to try to make out with his sisters.” Ginny piped up again. “What’s ‘make out’?”

“Long, smoochy kisses like in the movies,” Sally answered.

“That’s only first base,” Steve said with a sly smile.

“You hush up, Steve, or I’m gonna tell Billy about—“

“Billy don’t need to know nothing about that, Sally. You watch your mouth.”

On the porch, Jim continued, “So Emmy and Shirley are in that teeny-tiny dressing room together, and they both try on these slinky mermaid dresses first, and Shirley went to open the door so they could parade around the store in them, but she couldn’t hardly walk in that slinky dress and keeled right over into Em, and both of ‘em went down like hookers in a truck stop, smearing that war paint all over the dresses. Only ones they didn’t ruin were the ones they had on.”

“Daddy had to buy all the dresses so we wouldn’t get banned!” Emmy exclaimed.

Shirley rose from the glider and crossed the porch to sit on the steps. “Remember how mad he was?”

“Yeah,” JP said, “he told me that if y’all sewed ‘em all together, you’d almost have something he’d let you out of the house in.”

“Remember the look on Mama’s face when they came in with all those dresses! She like to had a fit!”

Sally picked the story back up from in the creek beside her rock. “Anyway, Aunt Shirley and Aunt Em went in this itty-bitty dressing room with as many dresses as they’d let ‘em, and they wiggled themselves into these ooh-la-la dresses that they couldn’t even walk in, and they got all tangled up and fell down in the dressing room, smearing that makeup on all the dresses ‘cept the ones they were wearing. Daddy Jim had to buy all the dresses they ruined so they wouldn’t get banned from the store!”

“Sally, I’m getting cold,” Ginny said. “Can we go back to the house?”

“Aw, Ginny, let Sally finish the story!” Billy skipped another stone, three skips.

“I’m cold, too,” Carrie said, standing up from her rock.

Steve looked at Ginny shivering and stood. “Alright, let’s go. Roll Tide!”

“Roll Tide!” echoed as the kids all scrambled out of the creek, and Steve carried Ginny piggyback all the way to the porch. Carrie had barely spoken the whole time they’d been gone to the creek, but as they approached the porch full of adults, she said, “Y’all mind your manners. They’re passing around jars, and you know how they get.”

The grown-ups were laughing so hard that some of them had tears on their faces.

“What’s so funny?” Sally asked.

“Your Uncle Jim just told that story about Shirley and Emmy and those prom dresses,” Uncle Billy said.

“Uh-uh! I just told that story down at the creek! No way me and Uncle Jim were tellin’ it at the same time!”

The copperhead slid across the sand under the porch, toward the voices.

Uncle Jim scooped Sally onto his lap. “I bet you told it even better than I did.” He ruffled her hair.

“I did, Uncle Jim, I told it real good, but I didn’t get to finish ‘cause Ginny got cold and we had to come back.”

“Why don’t you finish it now? I only told up to the part where they came home with all of them dresses and Mama like to had a cow.”

“You tell it, Uncle Jim. I like listening to it your way.”

“So prom night’s coming up. Sally and Em are some kind of mad about not going, threw such a fit that Mama told Billy he had to take ‘em to give her some peace, and for what Daddy spent on those dresses, he could have bought a new truck, so Billy had to take them.”

“No good deed goes unpunished!” Billy called from across the porch.

“That’s enough, y’all. Let’s go inside and put on some music.”

Sally started giggling. “Aunt Em, let Uncle Jim finish!

"While Em was taking her shower first--"

"For the first time ever! I shoulda known she was up to something!"

"--Shirley snuck out the back door down to the creek and dug up a jar of Granddaddy Jim's special 'shine to take to the prom. I understand that she put that jar of shine in her drawers, counting on the crinolines under her dress to hide it."

The porch broke out in raucous, contagious laughter. The youngest children had no idea why they were laughing or what was funny, but they knew something was and cracked up in genuine belly laughs with the adults.

The copperhead left a serpentine pattern in the sand as he approached the steps.

Emmy was fit to be tied about going to prom in the Dodge instead of a fancy limousine like Katie Wimmer, and she made Shirley sit in the middle over the gear shift, and . . . Billy, why don't you take it from here?'

Billy rose from a distant rocker and ambled over to the populated side of the porch, shaking his head and laughing. "When Shirley was scooching across from the driver's seat, Emmy wouldn't budge to let her in the passenger side, went to put her legs on the other side of the gear shift, that jar of 'shine fell out on the floorboard, and I taxed her."

Sally leaned over to her younger cousins and said, "That's what we do in this family. We don't tattle, we tax. That means Shirley had to give Billy and Emmy some of that 'shine she stole from the super-secret stash."

“My daddy says we don’t cotton to taxes,” Billy refuted.

“This is different from taxes the revenuers take. Grownups in our family pay taxes with ‘shine, not on it.”

"Shirley had it bad for Sam Fisher, and as soon as we walked in the door, her eyes panned the room for him. She was like a bird dog, went on point to the punch bowl, and zeroed in on her prey."

"Alright Billy, enough about Sam, unless you want an in-depth discussion about Heather when we wrap this up."

"But after having to give up half of your shine already, you wasted most of what you had left on that snake."

Shirley was blushing as bad as Em. "I didn't know he couldn't hold his liquor."

Sally squirmed for a minute, then sprang to her feet and jumped in before she could stop herself, "That no-good tomcat Sam puked all of Granddaddy Jim's moonshine up on Shirley's dress and Emmy's dress, 'cause Emmy was right there getting some punch to mix with her share!"

The snake was by Shirley’s foot when she saw those black, glittering eyes staring out of that auburn head at her, and she brought the jar of moonshine down on his head before she screamed and jumped back onto the porch.

Billy pulled his knife off his belt and cut the snake's head off in one clean swipe, kicking it into the grass by the steps, looked over his shoulder at his family, and said, "Ain't the first time Shirley wasted good 'shine on a snake."