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

wives. Bessie was there. She’s Ralph’s sister who lives in Baton Rouge. She drove all the way from Baton Rouge to New Jerusalem just to be at our wedding. The one person who wasn’t there I thought might be there was Oscar. Ralph didn’t want him there because he said Oscar wouldn’t know what a wedding was. So Oscar stayed in Ellisville.

      I wore my new white dress with gold embroidery that Velma had bought for me at McRae’s Department Store. I had on my new white shoes and my new pillbox hat with the veil that come down over my face. My sister Earline was my maid of honor. Ralph wore his dark blue suit and his maroon tie. His daddy was his best man.

      Brother Ledbetter done the ceremony. I thought he’d never get through. That’s the way Brother Ledbetter is. He can ramble on and on. He read from the Old Testament. And then he read from the New Testament. He had a book of poems about love and marriage and he read some of them. Then he got off on divorce. He talked more about divorce than anything else. He said he didn’t want me and Ralph to ever get a divorce because gettin’ a divorce is sin. Why he wanted to hit so hard on divorce the day we was gettin’ married was beyond me. Aunt Carrie told me later he wasn’t aiming what he said at me and Ralph but was aiming at Velma. Like I told you, Velma divorced her first husband and married the husband she has now and got voted out of the New Jerusalem Baptist Church. I tell you right now: Brother Ledbetter don’t like Velma and Velma don’t like Brother Ledbetter. She says he’s full of baptized crap. She and Brother Ledbetter don’t even speak to each other. They give each other the cold shoulder treatment.

      When the wedding service was over we had some real nice refreshments. Aunt Carrie and Velma had set up a table at the back of the church and had covered it with a white linen table cloth. I could tell they’d really gone to a lot of trouble. On the table were two bowls of nuts. Them bowls had all kinds of nuts—pecans, peanuts, cashews, and almonds. There was another bowl of little round, green mints. There was a big bowl of cherry punch with a big piece of ice floating in it along with a fancy silver dipper and green paper cups for everybody to drink out of. Where that fancy silver dipper came from I’ve never found out. I keep forgettin’ to ask Velma or Aunt Carrie where they got it.

      What really stole the show was the wedding cake which was sittin’ right in the middle of the table. Velma had it baked at the Jitney Jungle Grocery in Laurel. It was covered all over with white icing and was decorated with little red rosebuds. On top in the very middle was a little toy bride and groom. The groom had on a black suit and the bride had on a red dress that matched the rosebuds on the cake. In her hand she was holding a red umbrella. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I seen that umbrella. Also on top of the cake in pink icing was writing which said, “Best Wishes to Beulah and Ralph.” It was all so nice. I wished Mama had been there to see how nice it was. But like I said, she was home pouting because she didn’t want me to marry Ralph.

      Ralph and me left the church about the middle of the day. Just before leaving I went to the lady’s room and took off my white bride’s dress and put on the pink “going away” dress Velma had bought for me. Velma helped me change into it. Everybody waved at us and told us goodbye as we drove off. For our honeymoon we drove down to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Our honeymoon lasted Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday. When we got down to the coast I seen something I’d never seen before. I’m talking about the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf of Mexico took my breath away. It was so big and so pretty and so shiny. I didn’t know there was that much water in all the world.

      Ralph and me got on the highway that runs along beside the gulf. Ralph said, “This is Highway 90. It goes all the way from the Louisiana line clean across Mississippi to the Alabama state line. When I was in the navy I was stationed for a year at Pascagoula where the shipyard is. So I know this coast pretty good.”

      After I was married to Ralph I learned all about the navy. Ralph was proud of having been in the navy. That’s where he became a cook and learned the food business.

      While we was driving toward Biloxi Ralph said, “We gotta find a motel where we can spend the night.”

      Ralph mentioning a motel made me feel funny on the inside. I’d never spent a night in a motel before. The only thing I knew about motels was Daddy saying they was whorehouses. That’s the main reason he wouldn’t let me go with Miss Hopson to Hattiesburg for the piano conference. Miss Hopson was goin’ to let all of her piano students spend the night at the Holiday Inn and go swimming in the motel pool. Daddy told me, “I’m not gonna let you spend the night in a whorehouse.”

      Me and Ralph started looking for a motel. I spotted this motel called the Broadwater Beach.

      I said, “Why don’t we try this one? The sign out front says it’s a motel.”

      Ralph said, “Okay. We’ll give it a try.”

      We pulled up in front of the Broadwater Beach Motel. Ralph said, “You stay here. I’ll go in and see if they have a room.”

      While Ralph was doin’ that I got out of the car and looked around. I couldn’t believe what I saw. The Broadwater Beach was fancier than the motels in Laurel. I mean it was a lot fancier. It had this big swimming pool with a waterfall. People in bathing suits were sitting around the pool and were soaking up the sun. Everwhere I looked was palm trees and flowers. And the motel had the greenest grass I’d ever seen. The grass was being watered by pretty, little sprinklers that stuck up out of the ground.

      Ralph come out of the motel and said, “Let’s get back in the car and keep looking.”

      Which we done.

      When we got back in the car I asked, “Didn’t they have no room?”

      He said, “Yeah, they had a room. But they wanted to charge me seventy dollars for one night. Can you believe that? Seventy dollars! I ain’t about to pay seventy dollars for a motel room. No way.”

      I thought to myself: Ralph, we’re on our honeymoon. We ain’t gonna be down here but one night. What’d be wrong spending seventy dollars for a nice motel room? But it was his money. So I kept what I was thinking to myself.

      We got back on Highway 90 and away we went. We was still goin’ toward Biloxi. A sign beside the highway read “Biloxi Straight Ahead.”

      Ralph said, “They’ve got a big airbase in Biloxi. It’s one of the biggest bases the airforce has.”

      I said, “I didn’t know that.” Ralph was tellin’ me a lot of things I didn’t know.

      The next thing I said was, “Look, Ralph, there’s a Holiday Inn. Why don’t we try it?” I kinda wanted to stay at a Holiday Inn to make up for not being able to stay at the Holiday Inn in Hattiesburg the time Miss Hopson took all her piano students to the music conference.

      Ralph said, “I’ll pull in and check out their prices.”

      So we pulled up in front of the Holiday Inn. Ralph hopped out and went inside and was back in thirty seconds.

      He said, “They’re worse than the Broadwater Beach. They want seventy-five dollars for a room. I’m not gonna let these robbers hold me up. That much money for a room ain’t nothing but highway robbery.”

      So we got back on the highway and headed again toward Biloxi. I was enjoyin’ the ride. To my right was the Gulf of Mexico. Between the highway and the gulf was a pretty sandy beach. Some couples was out there walking on the sand and holding hands.

      I said to Ralph, “I hope you and me can walk on that beach sometime this evening or night and hold hands like those folks out there are doin’.”

      He said, “We’ll do that.”

      I was glad Ralph said that. We was on our honeymoon and so far he hadn’t shown me no tenderness and honey talk. I thought that was what a honeymoon was all about. I was wanting a lot of tenderness and honey talk like he gave me the Sunday he stood beside the church piano and said all of them sweet things to me about how pretty I was.

      We hadn’t drove very far before Ralph said, “Let’s check this motel out.”

      I said, “Which one?”