The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat

Chapter 16





Between them, Lester and Barbara Jean owned four vehicles when he died. When she learned that Odette was sick, Barbara Jean

donated Lester’s truck and his year-old car to the American Cancer Society. She thought it might buy her friend some good luck.

That left her with her Mercedes and an old Cadillac.

Lester had bought the Cadillac new in 1967, the first in a long string of Caddies he bought over the years. He babied it, keeping

it looking as if it had just rolled off the dealer’s showroom floor until the day he died. It was the only one of his cars he

never sold or gave away when newer models came out. The car hadn’t been touched since the last time Lester drove it. It just sat

in the garage taking up space and reminding Barbara Jean of the past.

One day when she arrived at the museum to work a volunteer shift in her butter-churning outfit, Barbara Jean discovered that a

sign had been posted near Benjamin Harrison’s flag. The sign asked for volunteers to contribute something to the annual Christmas

auction. She offered the Cadillac.

Judging from the shocked reaction she received when she contacted the committee putting together the auction, a mint condition

1967 Fleetwood was a little more than they had in mind. They had been expecting donations more along the lines of handcrafted

needlepoint chair cushions, beeswax candles, or gift baskets full of homemade strawberry preserves in quaintly bonneted jars. But

once they understood that Barbara Jean really intended to donate the car itself, not a ride in it or some sort of leasing

arrangement, they eagerly accepted her gift. In return, she took them up on their offer to have a room of the museum, the one with

the Indian artifacts, renamed the Lester Maxberry Exhibition Hall. They had wanted to name the room after Barbara Jean, but she

declined the honor. The Fleetwood had been Lester’s baby. And he had been the one with happy memories of it, not her.


Barbara Jean had been living at Big Earl and Miss Thelma’s house for about a month when she first saw the car. She was walking

home from her job at the salon when she saw a crowd gathered across the street outside the All-You-Can-Eat. Clarice stepped out of

the knot of people and called her name.

When she got closer, she saw that the dozen or so people in the street were clustered around the nicest Cadillac she had ever

seen. In fact, it was the only brand-new Cadillac Barbara Jean had ever seen outside of TV commercials. It was a beauty, so shiny

that it was hard to look directly at it in the afternoon sun. It was sky blue, and the brilliant gloss of the car’s paint job

reflected the clouds above so perfectly that looking down at the hood almost made you feel dizzy, as if you didn’t know which way

was up. The back end of the car was long and so sleek that it seemed likely you would cut your finger if you ran it along the

sharp fins. Occasionally one of the people circling the car in admiration would lean in to exhale on the bright finish and watch

the oval of their condensed breath appear and then evaporate.

Only one person in the crowd dared make any real physical contact with the car. That was the Cadillac’s owner, Mr. Lester

Maxberry.

Barbara Jean knew Lester, of course. He was famous. At one time or another, he had employed half of the boys in her high school in

his landscaping business. James Henry worked for him all through high school and his two years of college. James worked for Lester

so long that everyone expected him to take over the business one day. They went on expecting it until James surprised them all by

becoming a cop.

Lester sometimes came into the All-You-Can-Eat with James and sat with the young people at the window table. He was always nice,

courteous, and charming in an avuncular way. He would talk sports with the guys, or dispense advice, or compliment the girls. But

he usually didn’t stick around for long. He would say, “Let me get going, so you young people can enjoy your evening,” and then

he’d tip the fedora he always wore and leave while they objected.

Barbara Jean enjoyed Lester’s company, but she never thought of him in a romantic way, even though just about every other woman

she knew did. He had a small, compact body and a long face with droopy eyes that most of the girls thought were sexy. He also had

a slight hesitation in his stride from an injury he had received while he was in the service, but he layered it over with so much

cool and self-confidence that it seemed like a stylish accessory. Lester was light-skinned and had curly, but not kinky, hair at a

time when there weren’t many attributes considered more important than fair skin and good hair.

Lester stood at the prow of his automobile with one foot on the front bumper and his hip leaning onto the driver’s-side quarter

panel. He wore navy blue pinstriped pants, a dress shirt the same sky blue as his new car, and a black fedora with a blue feather

in its band. He must have been cold. It couldn’t have been more than forty-five degrees on that December day. But he looked

perfectly comfortable posing there, smiling and showing off his car.

When he saw Barbara Jean, Lester stood and said, “Hey, Barbie, what do you think?”

She said, “It’s slick, real slick.” She immediately regretted that answer. “Slick” sounded so stupid and childish, just the

wrong thing to say to a man like Lester Maxberry. She corrected herself. She said, “It’s a gorgeous car, truly gorgeous,” and

felt better.

“Wait till you see this. This is the best part.” He walked around to the driver’s side of the car and then leaned into the open

window. He pressed the horn, and after it sounded he turned around with a big grin on his face. The horn had been modified so that

it honked out the first three notes from the chorus of Smokey Robinson’s “Ooo Baby, Baby.” The crowd gathered around the car

went nuts, some of them singing, “Ooo, Ooo-ooo.”

Barbara Jean was squeezed off to the edges of the crowd by the boys who pushed forward to ask car questions or just to hear the

horn again, so she went into the All-You-Can-Eat to say hi to Miss Thelma. By this time on a Saturday she could usually be found

in the kitchen of the restaurant starting the baking for Sunday’s after-church rush.

Barbara Jean walked through the dining room and headed down the hallway that led to the storeroom and the rear of the kitchen

where the baking table and ovens were. Before she got to the kitchen, the door to the storeroom opened and Chick Carlson stepped

out. She acknowledged him with a nod and kept walking. But when she came closer to him, she saw that he had a cut on his forehead.

She knew that she shouldn’t ask. She knew that it was none of her business. But she asked anyway.

She pointed to the cut just below his hairline. “What happened?”

He said, “My brother, he gets mad and …” He stopped himself and looked embarrassed, as if he hadn’t intended to say what he

had said. He bit his lip and stood there turning redder and redder.

She didn’t recognize it at the time, but something started between them at that moment, an irresistible need to say and do things

before common sense could intervene and hold them back. That need would stretch out over far too many years. And she would live to

regret it.

Barbara Jean slipped off her jacket and rolled up the sleeve of her blouse. She pointed to three small scars on her arm and said,

“My mother hit me with a belt buckle.”

He said, “I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, she did. She used to hit me a lot when she was drunk. But you’re half right; she didn’t mean to give me the scars. She

was just so drunk that time that she didn’t realize she’d grabbed the wrong end of the belt when she swung it.”

He came closer to her then and reached out and touched her scars with the tip of his finger. “It looks like a face. See?” He ran

his finger over the longer arc-shaped scar on the bottom, “That line looks like a mouth and these two smaller ones up here are

like eyes.”

With that slight touch, suddenly they couldn’t stop talking. Words that they had kept bottled up while they stared at each other

across the dining room of the All-You-Can-Eat came rushing forward. They didn’t flirt or tease each other with coy chitchat the

way other teenagers might have done in the same situation. The things they told each other were the things that only they could

share.

She said, “My mother drank herself to death.”

He said, “My father died in jail. When I was a kid they told me it was a heart attack, but I found out later he got knifed in a

fight. My mother ran off about the same time. I barely remember her.”

“I never met my father, but there are two guys who think I’m their daughter.”

“You can’t see it because of my hair, but I’ve got a five-inch scar on top of my head from getting stitches after my brother

hit me with a brick for taking food from his refrigerator.”

“When I was fourteen, my mother twisted my arm until she dislocated it because I left the house with no makeup on.”

Chick said, “Big Earl lets me stay in the storeroom here because he found out I was living in the shed at my brother’s place and

sharing it with the chickens.”

She held up her hand and said, “Okay, you win.” Then they both started laughing.

That was when she did it. She took a step toward him and kissed him on his mouth. She leaned into him until he fell back against

the wall. Then she kept pressing against him, wanting to be as close to him as she could be.

She didn’t know why she was kissing him, she just knew that she had to, the same way she had to tell him things she hadn’t yet

told Odette or Clarice, stuff about her mother and her various fathers. With him, those truths just came tumbling out.

When she started to think about the foolishness of what she was doing and began to pull away, he wrapped his arm around her waist

and squeezed her even tighter to him. They stood there in the back hallway of the All-You-Can-Eat kissing each other until they

were both dizzy from not breathing. They only stopped when they heard someone calling Barbara Jean’s name.

Chick released her waist and Barbara Jean stepped away from him until her back met the opposite wall. They were there, grinning at

each other across the hallway, when Clarice ran in and shouted, “Barbara Jean, come on! Lester wants to take us for a ride in his

new car. He asked especially about you.”

She said, “Hi, Chick,” and then pulled Barbara Jean down the hallway, stopping only long enough to give Barbara Jean a chance to

pick up the coat she had cast off in order to show her scars. As she grabbed her coat, Barbara Jean glanced back for one more look

at Chick’s beautiful, smiling face. Then she was off to take her first ride in Lester’s blue Fleetwood.


The chairman of the museum’s Christmas auction committee was Phyllis Feeney. She was a nervous, pear-shaped woman who used her

hands so much when she talked that she looked as if she were speaking sign language. When Phyllis came to get the Cadillac, she

brought along her husband, Andy, who was stocky and jumpy like her. Phyllis was even more animated than usual that day, fidgeting

and playing with her hair. She relaxed quite a bit when the title to the car was handed over and she was assured that Barbara Jean

wasn’t going to back out of the deal at the last second.

Barbara Jean escorted them to the garage, where Phyllis handed the keys to Lester’s blue Cadillac over to her husband. Then

Phyllis climbed back into the Ford they had arrived in and drove off. Andy slid behind the wheel of the Fleetwood and brought the

giant engine to life. He rolled down the window and said, “She purrs like a kitten.”

He put the car in reverse and drove out of the garage. Just as he got to the end of the driveway, Barbara Jean called out, “Andy,

hit the horn!”

“What?” he asked.

“Hit the horn. It’s the best part.”

He did it, and when he heard the three notes of the horn rise and fall he said, “Oh man, I love this car. I’m gonna have to bid

on it myself.” He waved at Barbara Jean and turned down Plainview Avenue.

For a good five minutes after he was out of sight, Barbara Jean could still hear Lester’s car off in the distance singing, “Ooo,

Ooo-ooo.”