of her life, but she also had Miss Sister Mattie May Billings there to run the part she rented out to long-term roomers. Everybody knew that and most people also knew that her share of the boarding house once known as River Queen Inn, which her grandfatherhad built on Buckshaw Mill Road back during the days of William McKinley and which was being managed for her and Miss Cute by Brother Buford Larkin, came to more than enough for her to live well on, even without the old homeplace.
People used to forget about all of that when they got started on Creola Calloway, or so it seemed to me. But even so, what all the botheration always came down to was not whether she could or would earn and pay her own way as expected or would even let somebody else look out for her. No matter what folks said, everybody knew better than that. The problem was that people felt let down because she didn’t do enough with herself and the extra special God-given blessing she was born with.
Not that anybody ever really expected to reap any personal profit in dollars and cents from her success. All most expected was that she would come back through town every now and then. It was not that folks had put their hopes on her coming back and changing anything around town. Others were expected to do that. All they wanted her to do was go out and become Gasoline Point’s contribution to the world of show business.
Such was people’s downright exasperation once they finally came to realize that they might as well give up so far as she and all of that were concerned, that the very way they called her name (behind her back to be sure) sounded as if they had already decided what to put on her headstone: C REOLA C ALLOWAY —S HE COULD HAVE BEEN FAMOUS .
And yet nobody ever really hated or even disliked her. How could you not like somebody who was just as friendly as she was good-looking? She was not a nice girl because nice girls didn’t ever go into the low-down joints and honky-tonks she spent so much of her time in. Still, she was such a nice person.
Yet even so, by the time I was old enough for Mama to start worrying and warning me about fooling around and getting myself all tangled up with no good full-grown women out for nothing buta good time day in and day out, it was as if Creola Calloway had become the very incarnation of all the low-down enticements that had always led so many promising schoolboys so completely astray.
That was why Little Buddy Marshall turned out to be the one who finally got to do what I too had hoped to grow up to do, if only one time, one day. When he came back from one of his L & N hobo trips and asked me if I had made any move on her yet and I told him what Mama and some others, especially Miss Minnie Ridley Stovall had been preaching for my benefit, he said, Man she may be getting on up there with a few wrinkles after all these goddamn years of fast living and all that, but man I don’t care what anybody say I got to see if I can get me some of that old pretty-ass stuff.
He said, Man, I been wanting me some of old Creola ever since I found out what this goddamn thing was made for. Man, remember what we used to say when she used to say what she used to say. Man couldn’t nobody else in Gasoline Point, Mobile County, Alabama, say hello sweetheart to a little mannish boy like she could, and I ain’t just talking about the sound of her voice. I’m talking about couldn’t nobody make it sound that good because couldn’t nobody else look at you with a smile like that.
I said, Oh man. I said, You know it too. Remembering also that she was the only grown woman you didn’t have to call Miss and say ma’am to. You said Creola because that is what everybody else always said and also because it was what she herself said when she wanted you to do something for her. That was when she always used to say: Hello, sweetheart. Come here sporty. Listen darling, would you like to do Creola a great big favor and run up to
People used to forget about all of that when they got started on Creola Calloway, or so it seemed to me. But even so, what all the botheration always came down to was not whether she could or would earn and pay her own way as expected or would even let somebody else look out for her. No matter what folks said, everybody knew better than that. The problem was that people felt let down because she didn’t do enough with herself and the extra special God-given blessing she was born with.
Not that anybody ever really expected to reap any personal profit in dollars and cents from her success. All most expected was that she would come back through town every now and then. It was not that folks had put their hopes on her coming back and changing anything around town. Others were expected to do that. All they wanted her to do was go out and become Gasoline Point’s contribution to the world of show business.
Such was people’s downright exasperation once they finally came to realize that they might as well give up so far as she and all of that were concerned, that the very way they called her name (behind her back to be sure) sounded as if they had already decided what to put on her headstone: C REOLA C ALLOWAY —S HE COULD HAVE BEEN FAMOUS .
And yet nobody ever really hated or even disliked her. How could you not like somebody who was just as friendly as she was good-looking? She was not a nice girl because nice girls didn’t ever go into the low-down joints and honky-tonks she spent so much of her time in. Still, she was such a nice person.
Yet even so, by the time I was old enough for Mama to start worrying and warning me about fooling around and getting myself all tangled up with no good full-grown women out for nothing buta good time day in and day out, it was as if Creola Calloway had become the very incarnation of all the low-down enticements that had always led so many promising schoolboys so completely astray.
That was why Little Buddy Marshall turned out to be the one who finally got to do what I too had hoped to grow up to do, if only one time, one day. When he came back from one of his L & N hobo trips and asked me if I had made any move on her yet and I told him what Mama and some others, especially Miss Minnie Ridley Stovall had been preaching for my benefit, he said, Man she may be getting on up there with a few wrinkles after all these goddamn years of fast living and all that, but man I don’t care what anybody say I got to see if I can get me some of that old pretty-ass stuff.
He said, Man, I been wanting me some of old Creola ever since I found out what this goddamn thing was made for. Man, remember what we used to say when she used to say what she used to say. Man couldn’t nobody else in Gasoline Point, Mobile County, Alabama, say hello sweetheart to a little mannish boy like she could, and I ain’t just talking about the sound of her voice. I’m talking about couldn’t nobody make it sound that good because couldn’t nobody else look at you with a smile like that.
I said, Oh man. I said, You know it too. Remembering also that she was the only grown woman you didn’t have to call Miss and say ma’am to. You said Creola because that is what everybody else always said and also because it was what she herself said when she wanted you to do something for her. That was when she always used to say: Hello, sweetheart. Come here sporty. Listen darling, would you like to do Creola a great big favor and run up to
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