beds. She wasn't anywhere. I even looked in all the closets and up in the attic. Prissy was nowhere to be found. Finally, I went out in the yard and yelled my lungs out for her. I even checked the neighbors' yards on both sides of the street. No Prissy. Now I was getting pretty worried. Even though she was, to my way of thinking, a poor excuse for a dog, I didn't want anything bad to happen to her.
It was after eleven when I finally gave up and came back in the house. Biggie, dressed and looking much better, was talking on the telephone in the hall.
"They want us to come today? That's pretty short notice, isn't it?" She listened for a long time. "Umm… you forgot…. Is Butch going?… He is…. How about Ruby?… Oh, well, I guess. I'll meet you at the square at three then. Okay. Bye." She hung up the phone and saw me standing there for the first time. "Oh, J.R., some of us are invited out to the Barnwell ranch for tea this afternoon. I want you to go along."
"Me? Why? I don't want to go, Biggie. There's nothing but a bunch of fat girls out there. No guys or nothin'."
"J.R., I want you to go."
"No, ma'am, I'm not going. I got better things to do than tag along after you all the time." I was scared and shaking all over. I had never disobeyed Biggie before, but now was the time to take a stand. Biggie needed to realize that I was a teenager and not just a little kid anymore.
"It's important to me, J.R." There was a tremor in her voice.
I almost gave in. It wasn't going to hurt me to go with Biggie. I'd done it all my life and had some pretty interesting adventures doing it. I opened my mouth to say okay when something stopped me, something strong that seemed to be pulling me away from being a kid and into— something else. "NO!" I ran up to my room and slammed the door. I flung myself on my bed and lay there shaking all over. It seemed the walls might come tumbling down on top of me— my whole life might be breaking apart. What was wrong with Biggie? Why had she acted so funny last night? Did it have to do with all those fat girls at the tearoom? How could it? And what was wrong with me? I had never behaved like that in all my days with Biggie and Willie Mae and Rosebud— never ever wanted to.
I was still trying to figure it all out when I heard a tap on my door, then the door opened and Biggie peeked in. "May I come in?"
I was surprised. Biggie never asked that. She usually just walked right in.
I sat upon the bed and nodded. "Am I in trouble?"
"No." Biggie sat on the edge of the bed and patted my leg. "I have a story to tell you. I never thought you'd have to know, but now I guess you do."
I sat up against the headboard pushing a pillow behind my back. "Yes'm."
4
Job's Crossing was a whole different place when I was a girl than it is today." Biggie crossed her legs Indian style and sat facing me on the bed.
"How's that?"
"For one thing, there were four cafés downtown and a shoeshine parlor and a newsstand."
"No foolin'?"
"No foolin'. And every Saturday night, the stores stayed open until ten o'clock so that all the farmers could come into town to do their business."
"Way cool." If anybody had asked me, I would have said the town was quieter in the olden days, not livelier.
"Not only that, we had two picture shows on the square— two! One was old and dirty and showed mostly cowboy movies and serials, while the other, which was just a little nicer, showed the first-run movies. Every Sunday afternoon, my friends and I would wear our church dresses to the matinee."
"You dressed up to go to the movies?"
"Well, yes, but only on Sundays. That's the way everybody did things back then. And the ladies all wore hats and gloves even if they were just going to the grocery store. Everything was more formal in those days."
"That's lame."
"It's just the way things were. People set a greater store on their reputation in the community and who their family was than how kind they were or how honorable." Biggie looked out the window for a long