Perspective: New York City journalist. Setting, early 1980s Savannah, Georgia -- my hometown! If you can believe it, this is non-fiction -- sort of a colorful ethnography anchored around a murder trial (think Truman Capote's In Cold Blood -- probably worth consdering too). These characters are as accurate as can be! Granted, they are celebrated for their eccentricity, not their representativeness, but I think they will help us approach the material from a less sterile angle. -- Meg
"My casual surveillance of the house paid off one day at noontime. A car drew up to the curb and screeched to a jolting stop. At the wheel was a neatly dressed elderly lady with white hair as neat as pie crust. She had made no attempt to parallel park but had instead pulled into the space front end first as if tethering a horse to a hitching post. She got out and marched to the front door, took a ball-peen hammer out of her purse and methodically smashed all the little panes of glass around the door. The she put the hammer back in her purse and walked back to the car. The incident did not seem to make any difference to the people in the house. The piano went right on playing, and the voices kept on laughing. The panes of glass were replaced, but not until several days later." (Page 43)
"'It's a long drive from Waycross to Savannah, isn't it?' I asked.
'About an hour and a half,' she said, 'each way.'
'Doesn't that get a little boring, day after day?'
'Not really. It gives me a chance to do my nails.'
'Your nails?'
'Of course,' she giggled. 'Why not?'
'I don't know. It just sounds a little complicated,' I said. 'Doing your nails and driving at the same time.'
'It's real easy once you get the hang of it,' she said. 'I drive with my knees.'
'Your knees!'
'Uh-huh. Actually, I save my nails for last. I do my makeup first and then my hair.'
I looked at the brilliant palette of colors on Mandy's smiling face. This was no simple application of lipstick and mascara. It was a complex composition that involved the blending of many hues and tints. There were pinks and blues and umber, topped by the platinum-blond nimbus of her hair.
'I back-comb my hair,' she said.
'You must attract a lot of attention on the road,' I said, 'doing all that.'
'Yeah, sometimes,' she said. 'Yesterday, I pulled into a gas station, and this truck driver followed right behind me and pulled up alongside. He said, "Ma'am, I have been driving behind you for the last forty-five minutes, and I've been watching. First you did your makeup. Then you did your hair. Then you did your nails. I just wanted to get up close and see what you looked like." He gave me a big wink and told me I was right pretty. But then he said, "Let me ask you something. I noticed every couple of minutes you've been reaching over and foolin' with something on the seat next to you. Whatcha got over there?" "That's my TV," I told him. "I can't miss my soaps!"'" (Page 45)
"Joe nodded toward a young man asleep on a couch in the living room. 'That's Clint. If you ever need a ride to Atlanta, Clint will be happy to take you. He drives trailer trucks back and forth, and he likes to have company in the cab. I should warn you, thought, he makes the trip in just under three hours. Nobody who's ever been on one of those wild rides has ever gone back for a second one.'" (Page 47)
"For the past forty years, Emma Kelly had spent the better part of her waking hours driving across the landscape of south Georgia to play piano wherever she was needed. She played at graduations, weddings, reunions, and church socials. All anyone had to do was ask, and she would be there -- in Waynesboro, Swainsboro, Ellabell, Hazlehurst, Newington, Jesup, and Jimps. She had played at senior proms for every high school within a hundred miles of Savannah. On a given day, she might drive to Metter to play for a ladies' fashion show, then on to Sylvania for a retired teachers' convention, and then to Wrens for a birthday party. Toward evening she would usually drive to Savannah to play piano at one of several nightspots. But no matter where her engagements took her, she would always be back home in Statesboro -- an hour west of Savannah -- to play at the Rotary Club lunch on Monday, the Lions on Tuesday, the Kiwanis on Thursday, and the First Baptist Church on Sunday. Emma played old standards and show tunes, blues and waltzes. She was a familiar sight with her flowing caftans and happy coats and that towering turban of black hair held in place by two lacquered chopsticks .... Being a devout Baptist, Emma never drank. But once, after playing at the Fort Stewart officers' club, she was stopped on suspicion of drunk driving. The M.P. who shined his light through the window told her she had been weaving all over the road for the last three miles. That was true, but the fact of the matter was that Emma had been trying to undo her corset and slip out of it at the time. She squinted into the glare of the flashlight, clutching her unfastened clothes about her and wondering how on earth she was going to step out of the car in this condition and convince the young man she was sober. It was Emma's good fortune that she had played piano at the M.P.'s senior prom years before. He recognized her and knew she never touched a drop, and in a moment she was on her way.
In fact, most of the highway patrolmen knew Emma's car, and when it zoomed past them late at night doing eighty or ninety, they generally let it go. Emma had the greatest compassion for the occasional rookie cop who would unknowingly pull her over, siren blaring, blue lights flashing. She would roll down the window and say softly, 'You must be new.' She'd be thinking ahead to the browbeating the young man was about to receive from a groggy sheriff. It would go something along the lines of: 'What in blazes you think you doin', boy, draggin' Emma Kelly off the road! Tell you what you gone do now! You gone escort this fine lady all the way to Statesboro! See she gets home safe! A million pardons, Miss Emma. It won't happen again.'
In Savannah, Emma's fans followed her from nightspot to nightspot like a cheerful caravan -- from Whispers to the Pink House to the Fountain to the Live Oak Bowling Alley to the Quality Inn out by the airport. She was good buisness. Bar receipts always picked up sharply for the duration of her stay and fell off when it was over. For years, Emma's children had pleaded with her to open her own piano bar and cut down on the driving. After she killed her ninth deer on the highway, they stopped pleading and just plain insisted. 'It breaks my heart,' said Emma, 'because I love animals so much, not to mention the damage it's done to the car.' About opening a piano bar, she promised she would think it over." (Pages 81-82)
"An unnatural calm descended over Jones Street after Joe Odom's move to Oglethorpe Avenue. No longer could Joe's sweet serenade be heard floating over the garden walls. In the stillness, it occurred to me that it was time to buy a car. I wanted to see more of the environs of Savannah, but I proceeded carefully in the matter of wheels
Savannahians drove fast. They also liked to carry their cocktails with them when they drove. According to the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, more than 8 percent of Savannah's adults were 'known alcoholics,' which may have accounted for the disturbing tendency of motorists to run up over the curb and collide with trees. The trunks of all but one of the twenty-seven oaks that lined the edge of Forsyth Park on Whitaker Street, for instance, had deep scars at fender level. One tree had been hit so many times it had a sizable hollow scooped out of its trunk. The hollow was filled with pea-size crystals of windshield glass that glittered like a bowl of diamonds. The palm trees in the center of Victory Drive had the same sort of scars, and so did the oaks on Abercorn.
I had never owned a car. Living in New York I hadn't needed one, but the idea appealed to me now. If I was going to drive a car in this environment, though, it would have to be a very big and heavy one. It would probably have fins.
'I'm in the market for an old car,' I said to Joe. 'Something big and roomy. Nothing fancy.'
An hour later we stood looking at a 1973 Pontiac Grand Prix. Its metallic-gold body was dented and flecked with rust. The windshield was cracked, the vinyl roof was peeling, the hubcaps were missing, and the engine was well into its second hundred thousand miles. But it ran well enough and it was big. It did not have fins, but its hood was so long it looked like the foredeck of an ocean liner. The man was asking $800.
'It's perfect,' I said. 'I'll take it.'
Now I was completely mobile. I drove south of Gaston Street (breaking Joe's second rule). I took excursions into South Carolina. I sailed past the trees with the scars on them and shared the road with drivers who sipped from traveler cups and lurched from lane to lane. I felt perfectly safe in my rolling metal fortress, rusted and dented as it was. Nothing and no one could get to me, and nothing and no one did -- with one very notable exception. Her name was Chablis .... She began moving slowly toward me with an undulating walk. She trailed an index finger sensuously along the fender, feeling the hollow of each and every dent. 'Y-e-e-e-s, child! Yayyiss ... yayyiss ... yayyiss!' She walked on past me and continued all the way around the car, inspecting its condition and laughing. When she got back around to me, she leaned in the window. 'Tell me somethin', honey,' she said. 'How come a white boy like you is drivin' a old, broken-down, jiveass bruthuh's heap like this? If you don't mind me asking?'
'It's my first car,' I said.
'Oh! I hope I didn't hurt your feelings. If I did, I'm sorry. I truly am. I did not mean to do that. I just call it out, baby. Whatever way I see it, I just call it out.'
'No, that's okay, ' I said. 'I'm just practicing my driving skills before I go out and buy a Rolls Royce.'
'Aw right, honey, I can dig it! You are traveling in disguise, baby, you are incognito. Yes, I can dig that, child. I surely can. And you know, honey, when you drive a car like this, you don't get nobody fuckin' with it. Ain't no stereo for nobody to rip off. Ain't no fine paint job for nobody to scratch up with no key, honey.'" (Pages 95-97)
"Well into her nineties, Big Emma could still be seen driving aorund Savannah at the wheel of her Mercedes limousine with her German shepherd sitting next to her on the front seat and an ancient black chauffeur, dressed in full livery, sitting in back. The chauffeur, who had worked for Mrs. Morel for more than thirty years (and for her mother before that), was permitted to driver her smaller car but not the Mercedes limousine. No one but Big Emma was permitted to drive that one; it was her exclusive domain. One recent noontime, she drove downtown to the headquarters of the Savannah Bank on Johnson Square to sign some papers. Before setting out, she had called ahead and told the bank's trust officer to meet her with the papers by the curb in front of the bank. She was in a hurry, she said, and did not want to be kept waiting. Twenty minutes later, Big Emma turned the corner onto Johnson Square, the massive German shepherd sitting at her side and the old uniformed chauffeur cowering in back. She drew up to the trust officer, but never quite came to a complete stop. The trust officer trotted alongside the limousine, handing papers through the window, pleading, 'For heaven's sake, Emma, stop the car!' Big Emma glided along at eight or ten miles an hour, scribbling on papers and handing them back, one by one. They were halfway around Johnson Square when she handed the last document back to the trust officer, rolled up the window, and sped off." (Page 157)