The Orange Blossom Special Read Online Free Page B

Special, and Maynard and Charlie shared a fascination with it. They saved matchbooks and key ringsfrom it, and built a model of the orange, green, and gold locomotive that sat like a trophy on a special table in the living room.
    Like most American towns in the early part of the century, Gainesville was built around its courthouse and transportation hubs. The downtown was a grid of commercial and government buildings, most of them redbrick with tin roofs, and everywhere the lanky Laurel oak trees. Gainesville had long been serviced by railroads that carried away lumber and phosphate and replaced the citrus and cotton crops that still hadn’t recovered from the record-setting freezes of the 1890s. When word came that the town would be a stop along the route, the dream was that some of the rich folk traveling south would stop off and leave some of their money behind. Matthew shared that dream. When he rode the heaving work trains up and down the budding mainline, he would imagine the office buildings and hotels and banks and saloons that would inevitably grow up around the new station. He squirreled away a piece of his wages, and in 1927 he bought a little corner lot some five blocks from where the new station was to be built. Then came Black Friday and the Depression, and while work on the tracks went on, building in the rest of Gainesville, as in the rest of the country, screeched to a halt.
    But the Orange Blossom Special turned out to be its own little works project. Matthew took out a loan from one of Roosevelt’s new programs and built a liquor store on that corner lot. He called it the Rest Stop, figuring travelers stopping over would need a little something to wash away the fatigue from a twenty-hour train ride. That’s not what happened. Instead, the store became the crossroads for those working at the budding businesses that sprang up around the station.
    When Matthew died of a heart ailment at age fifty-two, he left the store to Maynard who changed the name to Landy’s Liquors. Later, when he acquired three other liquor stores in nearby towns, he gavethem his name as well. “Hell,” he said, “it’s like getting married, I might as well.”
    Crystal learned early in life about expensive jewelry. Her mother would stare tenderly at the five-carat diamond Maynard had given her and say, “Now that’s class.” About moisturizer, she cautioned, “Hands tell more than half the story.” And she was forever telling Crystal horror stories about sudden weight gain and pot-bellied “tummies.”
    Slightly overweight, with a snaggle-tooth and crooked smile, Crystal would never be the beauty her mother was; she knew that. It left a space in who she was that she filled by being the class cut-up, the one who always sassed the teacher and made people laugh with her smart mouth.
    W EDNESDAY NIGHT DINNER at the Landy’s was always fried chicken, canned green beans, and potatoes. It was Crystal’s favorite meal. The housekeeper, Ella, spooned a mound of the thick and buttery mashed potatoes onto her plate. Victoria narrowed her eyes and watched as Crystal reached for a warm Pillsbury dinner roll.
    Charlie caught the edge of his mother’s glance and tried to divert the conversation. “Auburn’s playing Alabama this weekend,” he started. Ella stood behind Victoria’s chair, waiting to serve her. “Just a ti-eensy bit please,” she said to Ella. “I’m watching my figure.” She pronounced “figure” like “vigor.” Nobody spoke. Victoria stepped into the silence and reported what the landscaper had suggested that day. “Eric says Saw Palmetto and Bear Grass over by the cabana would look lovely, because they’re—you know—indigenous, they give it a very natural look.” As she waved her hand to show where in the backyard the new plantings would go, she observed with pleasure her Strawberry Crème