|
Tom swerved his old truck around a bend in Cane River and saw a dreadful sight. Smoke was billowing out the eaves on one the side of Clementine’s cabin.
It looked like a tornado in reverse. An impatient tornado. Tom didn’t slow down, just kept driving around another bend in the river straight to the Melrose Plantation Store.
Skidding to a stop, he jumped out, raised and waved his arms to the heavens and shouted again and again: “Clementine’s house is on fire!”
Right soon the folks from the store descended on the burning house to put out the fire. A tractor pulled up with a pecan-spraying tank trailing behind; a pickup carried young and old in its bed, all eager for the
excitement.
Clementine calmly came out the front door, her curly black wig slightly askew, a clean but faded apron tied around her petite waist, a lace-trimmed slip hanging a full two inches below her print dress. With a
cup of coffee in her hand, she sauntered across the road to her daughter’s house and sat her skinny body down in the porch swing. Arthritic fingers clutched her cracked cup; matchstick legs covered by men’s
socks up to her knees escaped into feet tucked into frayed felt slippers that barely touched the porch planks.
Her cloudy eyes never left the motley group of firefighters darting back and forth in utter confusion.
No sooner had she gotten all settled, she heard her phone ring. She put her cup down and walked back across the road, a bit more briskly this time. As she started up the steps to the porch, Tom yelled at her.
“Clementine, stop! You can’t go in that burnin’ house!”
She continued up the worn steps, one step at the time. More shouts were aimed in her direction as the thin spray of water weakly arced toward the flaming roof.
“I have to answer! It’s my ring,” Clementine said with her chin tilted up, proud that she had recently acquired a partyline telephone. Not everyone had a phone. Especially not the colored folks.
When she reached the rickety screen door, she grabbed the “make-do” door pull, a white #6 spool for thread, now black from use. Into the house she went and answered her ring. It was Mrs. Jack Fullilove from
Shreveport. She wanted to know whether Clementine had any paintings because she had friends visiting from Corpus Christi who wanted to buy some and she planned to drive down that afternoon.
Clementine replied, “Yes ma’am, I got plenty paintin’s this morning, but I can’t tell for sho’about this afternoon ’cause the house is on fire. But I tell you what you do, Mrs. Fullilove. You call back this afternoon
and if the house don’t burn up, I’ll be here an’ answer. But if you don’t get no answer, you knows the house done burned up and ain’t no need fo’ yo to come. But right now you got to ’scuse me cause I got to get on
back in the yard to see them firefighters don’t mess up my car none.”
Clementine, at that time, was in a somewhat affluent state: she was getting $15 for each one of her paintings. She had gotten herself not only a telephone but also a used Oldsmobile, which she called “my Rocky
Eighty-Eight.” No matter that she did not drive; she wanted it because “it looks good settin’ under the pecan tree.”
The situation all came to a happy ending. The house was saved. Mrs. Jack Fullilove and guests drove down from Shreveport and bought five paintings. Clementine bought some Muscatel wine and a bottle of snuff, knowing
she had enough paints for her next batch of “paintin’s.”
Old Rocky Eighty-Eight, unharmed, continued to “look good settin’ under the pecan tree.”
(Source: Francois Mignon’s letter to James Register, February, 1964; Cammie G. Henry Research Center, Watson Memorial Library, NSU of Louisiana)
|
