Why Beulah Shot Her Pistol Inside the Baptist Church. Clayton Sullivan

that Ralph stood up and shook hands with Daddy. He told me and Earline and Mama goodnight. “Goodnight Josephine. I wish you didn’t feel the way you do. I hope you change your mind.” He looked at me and said, “Goodnight, Beulah.” And he looked at my baby sister and said, “Goodnight, Earline.”

      Ralph walked out to his Ford pickup and drove away. Every man in Jones County who can afford one has a pickup truck. Maybe a Dodge or a Ford or a GMC. They use ’em to carry feed in and to haul dogs when they’re goin’ hunting during deer season.

      Mama and Daddy and Earline and me watched Ralph’s pickup drive away on the gravel road that runs in front of our house. We watched its red tail lights until it went out of sight around the bend that’s down the road.

      A few moments went by and nobody said nothing.

      Finally Daddy spoke. I remember to this day what he said. “Ain’t this something. Ralph Rainey has come here tonight and said to me and Mama that he wants to marry Beulah. It ain’t everyday a man like Ralph Rainey asks a woman to marry him. No sir! This don’t happen everyday. Ralph’s got property. You take his farm on the Okatoma River. I know for a fact it has five hundred acres on it. Two hundred acres are on the west side of the river, and three-hundred acres are on the east side. It’s all good river-bottom land. It’s as fertile as a cat’s ass. He bought it for a steal from Henry Lassiter’s widow. She got rid of it after Henry died so she could go live with her two boys in Birmingham. You plant corn in Okatoma River bottom land one day and the next morning you’ve got corn stalks five feet tall. Ralph’s got a real nice brick home on the place. And he has two good barns. And he’s got a goin’ meat market and barbecue cafe in Laurel. He’s bound to be makin’ money. If he wasn’t makin’ money how could he afford every year to have a new Ford pickup and a new Buick car? And besides all this, he’s a deacon at the church. Every Sunday he’s there—leading the singin’ and taking up the collection.”

      After Daddy had said all of them good things about Ralph, he looked right at me and said, “Beulah, you’re one lucky gal and I don’t mean maybe.”

      Quick as a flash, Mama said, “No she ain’t. Ralph Rainey ain’t no good. I’ve told you this but you won’t listen to me. Or hear me. The reason I know he ain’t no good is because of all the stuff Ruth Ann told me about him. Ruth Ann wasn’t tellin’ me no fib about him beating her up when he got mad. Ralph is like a dime. He’s got two sides. He’s got a good side and a bad side. I don’t want Beulah gettin’ mixed up with a guy like him. And besides, there’s too much difference between his age and Beulah’s. He’s twenty years older than her. And he’s got that nitwit son from his marriage to Ruth Ann. When Ralph brings Oscar to church all he does is sit on the front pew and pick his nose. Him pickin’ his nose makes me sick at my stomach.”

      Daddy said, “I don’t think Oscar’s a problem. He stays most of the time at the Rehabilitation School at Ellisville.”

      Mama and Daddy went around and around. Daddy was all for me marrying Ralph and Mama was dead set against it. While they was talking they didn’t say nothing to me. I’d about decided they didn’t care what I thought. Just like a farmer doesn’t care what a cow thinks when it’s being hauled to market to be butchered for meat.

      But believe it or not they finally got around to asking me how I felt.

      Daddy looked over at me and asked, “Beulah, what do you think about marrying Ralph?”

      Daddy’s question didn’t catch me empty-handed. That’s all I’d thought about since Ralph stood beside the church piano and asked me to marry him. Should I or should I not? I didn’t care one way or the other about his farm and barbecue cafe. They didn’t mean twaddle to me. What bothered me the most about Ralph was his buck teeth which made him look like a horse. Them buck teeth I didn’t like. And I didn’t like what Mama had said about him whippin’ Ruth Ann. But a whipping is a whipping. My daddy didn’t have no guilt or brakes about givin’ me a whippin’ from time to time. When I did something he really didn’t like he’d take his belt off and go to it on my rear end. He’d say time and again, “The Bible says spare the rod and spoil the child.” Where it says that I don’t know. But Daddy says it’s in there somewhere. Which is worser? A whipping by Daddy or a whipping by Ralph? You tell me. Maybe Ralph wouldn’t never give me a whippin’ like he gave Ruth Ann. Maybe he’d changed. Maybe he’d treat me nicer. He was sweet as honey in what he said to me after I’d played “Sweet Hour of Prayer” on the church piano. He’d said, “I think you’re the prettiest girl in New Jerusalem. The fact is, I think you’re the prettiest girl I ever seen.” Them’s the sweetest words anybody had ever spoke to me. And getting married to Ralph would mean I’d no longer have to live with Mama and Daddy. That I liked. I liked it because Mama and Daddy was always sayin’ to me things like, “Beulah, clean off the table and take the dishes to the kitchen.” They’d say this to me after we’d eaten supper. Or they’d say, “Beulah, go get a broom and sweep off the front porch. It’s got leaves on it.” They treated me like I was their maid or slave. But the thing I didn’t like the most was the way Mama and Daddy held the reins so tight on me. They did this because they was Baptists and didn’t want me to sin. Daddy went out of his way to make sure I didn’t sin none. That’s why he wouldn’t let me have no dates. Charles Stogner once asked me for a date to go to the skating rink at Laurel. Daddy wouldn’t let me have a date with Charles because the skating rink has a jukebox and Daddy said where you have a jukebox you have dancing and dancing is a sin. Or you take the way he acted the time Miss Hopson, my piano teacher, wanted to take all of her piano students to a music conference at the university down in Hatttiesburg. The piano conference was gonna begin at nine o’clock in the morning and go all day long and into the night. At night they was gonna have a piano concert by a real famous piano player who was coming down to Hattiesburg all the way from Chicago. Miss Hopson wanted all of her piano students to go to the conference and she wanted all of us to have fun. So she come up with a big idea. We’d go to the conference and attend the piano concert. Then we’d all spend the night at the Holiday Inn and eat pancakes the next morning at the International House of Pancakes on Hardy Street right across from the university. When she told me about it I got so excited I didn’t know what to do. I went home and told Mama and Daddy what Miss Hopson was planning. She was gonna pay for everything herself. Miss Hopson don’t really have to work. She has lots of money. Everybody says her father made a ton of money in the lumber business and left her more money than she’ll ever be able to spend. She teaches piano lessons because she loves the piano. The moment I told Daddy what Miss Hopson’s plans were my daddy said I couldn’t go. I asked him why I couldn’t go. He said a motel ain’t nothing but a whorehouse. Why Daddy thought that I don’t know because as far as I know he ain’t never spent a night in a motel. But I’ve heard him call a lot of places whorehouses. He says a drive-in theater is a teenage whorehouse. The back seat of a car is a whorehouse. I begged him to let me go but he wouldn’t budge. He wouldn’t budge an inch. The next week when I went up to Laurel for my piano lesson I told Miss Hopson what my daddy had said about not lettin’ me go. She said, “Your daddy is being unreasonable. I’ll call him right now and get him to change his mind.” I told her Daddy’s extension number at the Masonite plant. She called him right then and there. I couldn’t hear what Daddy said but I could hear what Miss Hopson said. She said, “Hello, Mr. Buchanan, this is Patty Hopson, your daughter’s piano teacher. How are you today?” Miss Hopson was being real nice asking Daddy how he was. Daddy must have said he was okay because Miss Hopson said, “That’s fine. I’m glad to hear that.” Then she went on to say, “Mr. Buchanan, I’m calling you about the music conference they’re going to have down in Hattiesburg in a few days. I’ve looked over the program and I can tell it’s going to be high quality all the way through. I particularly want Beulah to go so she can hear the piano concert that’ll be at night. They’re bringing down a Chicago pianist and he’ll be accompanied by the University of Southern Mississippi Symphony. Beulah tells me she has never heard a symphony orchestra before. I thought I’d let my students have a little fun by spending the night at the Holiday Inn. And then they can have a pancake breakfast the next morning. I’m picking up the tab for all this myself and I surely do want Beulah to go. She’ll be exposed to a lot she hasn’t