Georgia Bottoms Read Online Free Page B

Friend of LittleMama’s, a big man, used to come to town all the time to visit a cousin. Another Rolodex card coming up blank.
    Jolly Santa Claus cheeks and a boisterous laugh.
    She was still trying to visualize the letters of his name an hour later, as she lugged the sacks from Hull’s Market through the deep-freezer porch. Whizzy the white-spotted mutt whined, swatted his tail, and twisted around to put himself as much in the way as possible. “Get out of here, Whizzy, go on! Mama, who was that man from the Baptist convention?”
    Little Mama looked up from the pan of purple hull peas she was shelling. “What man?”
    “That friend of yours, Mr. Big Shot Baptist with the big gold knuckle rings. You said never trust a Baptist that wears that much gold.”
    “Aw, you talking about old Teebo Riley,” said Little Mama.
    “Teebo! That’s it!”
    “His real name was Clarence, or Horace or something.”
    Georgia kept her voice casual. “Wasn’t he some big to-do at the Southern Baptist Convention, in Montgomery?”
    Little Mama nodded. “He’s the right-hand man of the one that runs the whole shebang.”
    “I wonder whatever happened to old Teebo,” Georgia said.
    “He’s still around, called me last year on my birthday. Least I think it was him. Might have been somebody else.” Little Mama’s memory was getting spottier, but she filled in the gaps with her imagination. She’d been working the same jigsaw puzzle for years, but if it didn’t bother her, so what?
    “You still got his phone number, Mama?”
    “I think so.”
    Within minutes Little Mama was cackling on the phone withol’ Teebo. Georgia listened for a while at the edge of the conversation, to make sure Mama got the details right. Then she poured herself a fat glass of red wine and carried it into the chill of the sunporch to celebrate.
    She looked forward to the smoothing effect of the wine. Her body felt achy and tingling, leftover trauma from the shock she had received at church—as if she’d touched a live wire, or had fainted for real. Eugene’s attempted betrayal was not only shocking, but humiliating. Georgia was not accustomed to having her private life dangled in a threatening way in front of the congregation. The first sting of rejection had been quickly replaced by a sense of resolve.
    Either party in an affair should have the right to break it off at any time, Georgia believed. That’s one reason she never married—she liked keeping her options open. People are so naturally fickle that she understood why some might want a binding legal contract to enforce a promise of the heart. But Georgia’s life, at least, was too complicated to put in writing.
    If Eugene wanted to break it off, okay—but to shout it from the pulpit for the whole town to hear? She simply couldn’t allow it. She conducted her affairs discreetly; no one had any idea what she was up to. Rarely did she have to bring the hammer down on anybody. It was nice to know she still could if she had to.
    She sipped her wine and waited. Presently up the hall came the walker with split tennis balls mounted on the front legs for traction. “All done, baby.”
    “Mama, you are a miracle worker. Remind me to buy you a mink coat for Christmas.”
    Mama snorted. “I could use one, cold as you keep it in here. Ain’t your feet freezing? My toes are like niblets of ice.”
    Little Mama never asked why her daughter might want her to make such a call. Simply did as she was told. Eugene and Brenda would never know what hit them.
    Little Mama halted her walker at the sofa.
    “Put on socks if you’re cold,” Georgia said. “Go around barefoot, no wonder.” Thumbing through the Montgomery yellow pages, she settled on “Charlie Ross Regal Moving” because she liked the cartoon of Charlie Ross wearing a jeweled crown as he rode and whipped his moving van like a bucking bronco. She appreciated a moving company with a sense of the ridiculous. She dialed the number and explained