Introduction

A heartbreaking, beautifully written debut novel from Jeffrey Dale Lofton, RED CLAY SUZIE captures life and love living on the fringes in America's Deep South.

Inspired by events in his own life, the author takes us inside the heart and mind of Philbet, a gay, physically misshapen boy struggling to find his way in a deeply conservative family and community. Fueled by tomato sandwiches and green milkshakes, and obsessed with cars, Philbet is happiest when helping Grandaddy dig potatoes from the vegetable garden that connects their houses. But Philbet's world is shattered and his resilience shaken by events that crush his innocence and fragile sense of security; expose his physical deformity skillfully hidden behind shirts Mama makes for him at home on her Singer; and convince him he is not fit to be loved by Knox, the boy he idolizes to distraction. Over time, Philbet finds refuge in unexpected places and unexpected ways leading to resolution from beyond the grave.

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Excerpt

Chapter Two

Grandaddy’s Tater Rule

Grandaddy’s vegetable garden was perfect for carving out paths and roads for my fleet of Matchbox cars. The neat rows defined by mounds of soil were long avenues that headed any place my preschool mind could conjure. Each row looked endless, its perspective making it disappear before it actually stopped against the fence that followed the back line of the property, which abutted a railroad track. My miniature green 1968 Mercury Cougar was almost identical to Beau’s real Cougar, which sat across the highway at Pick and Lolly’s filling station every day Beau worked there. I could see it from any place I stood, whether I was at Adam’s and my bedroom window, next door on Grandaddy and Jorma’s front porch, or in the garden rows.

Ours was a small, insular world, but it seemed back then to go on forever. The axis was the two side-by-side plots of land that held Grandaddy and Jorma’s house, our home, and the vegetable garden that connected them. And a twenty-five mile sunburst that radiated from that point was all I knew, all I wanted or needed. That was our universe.

The railroad cut that ran behind us to the east seemed miles deep with a treacherous path of rocky steps and complicated switchbacks hacked out of the jungley brush between the edge of our backyard and the track far below. In truth, it would take a rock tossed from our yard about three seconds to hit the track, so it wasn’t actually miles deep, but it felt that big to my four-year- old eyes. The cut was the place where outlaws traveled, walking along in the dark of midnight, avoiding the law and good folks like us who were free to come and go as we pleased during the day. We, safe in our homes, were superior to those who had the law after them and couldn’t live in real houses with actual roofs with all their things and toys around them.

The cut, a man-inflicted open wound in the red clay, separated us from colored town on the other side of the bank. From where I stood, colored town looked the same color as our side of the cut with the same patches of bare red clay on the banks, green and brown trees and bushes. But Adam said it was colored town because of who lived there. And sometimes there was a funny smell in the air. “Colored folks are burnin’ their hair again,” Adam would explain. I thought they must have an awful lot of hair because I smelled that smell a lot. But I never saw anyone on the bank on the other side, not any folks of any color. I wondered how far behind the line of trees on the top of the bank they lived, and why the kids never came out to play in the cut like we did.

Our house was sandwiched between the railroad cut and the highway—busy with cars during the day, but not much traffic at night. While the cut was our outback wilderness, our Times Square was Pick and Lolly’s filling station and grocery store. It sat across the highway and about one house-width over to the left from our place and was the social center of our small community. You had to go there for just about anything, except for barbecue. The store up past Grandaddy’s had exclusive rights to barbecue and green sherbet push-ups, but only Pick and Lolly’s had bread.

I also couldn’t understand why I never saw the colored kids at Pick and Lolly’s, but they didn’t come, not even to get candy. I know, because I looked out our door toward Pick and Lolly’s a lot. I was looking for Beau, their son who was eighteen, grown up already, and the size of two people in one—Pick and Lolly combined.

Beau, so tall and big that it was a wonder he could come up behind me so quietly that I didn’t know he was there, pick me up just by wrapping his hands around my middle and sling me up and over his head. Then he’d settle me onto the seat of his shoulders, only his ears or the underside of his chin or the curls of his hair for me to hold and keep myself up on my surprise perch.

How could a person so giant in my eyes raise a leg so big as his and touch his foot down again to the ground without me hearing? He must have cast magic dust in front of him that rendered him silent and invisible before each step as he sneaked up. Surely it was sold off a shelf so high in Pick and Lolly’s that it would be years before I was tall enough to see it there, Beau’s Invisible Powder, and know to ask for it by name. When I looked for Beau, I looked for the Cougar. I didn’t need X-ray vision into Pick and Lolly’s to see if Beau was there. The Cougar was my sign. If the Cougar was there, Beau was there.

The Cougar was a machine from another world, with taillight bulbs that blinked each in turn, starting at the edge of the tag and blink, blink, blink, out toward the back fender to signal which way the car wanted to turn. It had headlights that lived under pop-up doors that only opened at night and when it rained. Beau sometimes took a break from the station and wiped a paste on the hood and trunk lid, and then rubbed it off, leaving it the exact color of the inside of a ripe kiwi and with a light metallic glitter that exactly matched the glint of the wet fruit. I knew about kiwis because my cousins Meg and Suzie brought them from Florida every summer when they came to stay at Grandaddy and Jorma’s. They were older than Adam and me because Uncle Rudy was older than Daddy. Daddy’s brother had kids before Daddy because he was older. Adam, when he grows up, will get married before me because he’s older. And then he’ll have kids before me too. That’s the way it works. That’s what Jorma said anyway.

Even now, years later, I can see Beau’s green Cougar every time I see a kiwi, even an unpeeled one, because I know what’s inside. And that childhood toy rushes back to me with a soft punch to the heart along with all the joy it brought me rolling it around the edges of the garden. When I think of it, I want to turn. I want to see Beau sneak up behind me and lift me over his head and settle me on his shoulders.

Adam had a whole set of Matchbox cars, too, because when I got one—begging every time we went to the store—he got one too. But he never played with them. I coveted Adam’s because his were showroom-immaculate and not scratched up and loved up like mine. But he was four years older than me. I guess he had outgrown them by the time Santa Claus gave us our first ones in our stockings. I loved mine, the Cougar, from the first. I don’t remember anything else I got that Christmas.

I didn’t want to trade my Cougar for his, but I did like playing with his. It felt special. The differences in them fascinated me, mine with dings; his, perfect. It made me think of the difference between the Grandaddy I saw every day and the Grandaddy in pictures. I liked the Grandaddy I had now, the one with almost no hair on his head and eyeglasses of gold wire, but sometimes I wished I could have opened a door and found the younger Grandaddy, the one who lived before I knew him. The scratch-free Grandaddy.

On rainy days when we couldn’t go outside and play, I sometimes sneaked Adam’s Matchbox case out of our room; it was a little blue suitcase with a yellow panel right on the top, with a big racing car emblazoned across the side. My own cases were worn, dog-edged. I could see the panels between the plastic covering were just ordinary cardboard. Somehow seeing that surprised me again and again. Cardboard didn’t feel special enough, but even that thought didn’t dampen the allure of these cars. I did have some ideas on how Matchbox could improve their product line, though. I had no problems with the cars, but the cases...why not design them to look like miniature parking garages, with cars neatly lined up as soldiers in formation?

While I’d take my Matchbox Cougar to the dirt at Grandaddy’s garden’s edge, I’d never intentionally take it beyond to the red clay. If red clay touched it, the stain remained, marked forever. If you dug down too far in the garden, you hit it—red clay. Grandaddy said he spent years hauling in regular brown soil from outside the county, and he scattered white pellets from a bucket all over the place—regular fertilizer—and added cow poop and catfish heads to the base of plants—natural fertilizer.

After one play session outside, the Matchbox wheels no longer rolled, grit caught up in the wheel wells. The garden soil always dried out and could be shaken loose. But I had to be careful, especially after a tater digging, because that red clay was only a few inches below the rich brown soil. When I got the red clay up in the wheel wells, well that was just about death for a Matchbox.

That was the alchemy of red clay, I realized thinking back. When moist, it had the texture of silken butter about thirty minutes out of the refrigerator. When the beating Georgia sun leached it of moisture, it was either hard as a rock or powdery, slippery even in the heat of day, feeling almost liquid against skin. Stand barefoot in the clay with your eyes closed, and you’d have no idea if it’s dry dust or hot-mudded after a sudden downpour that came and went so fast it had no time to cool the surfaces it wet. When overloaded with water, the clay was a chunky, creamy soup, getting everywhere, gumming up everything. It reminded me of teeth stuck in an over-heaped spoonful of peanut butter.

Grandaddy didn’t want to hear anything bad about the clay. It was there when he came into the world and would be there when they lowered him into it. He had sort of a reverence for it, though he claimed we’d have starved without the rich, fragrant soil he’d hauled and hoed into the garden’s earth. The garden used to be twice as big, but Grandaddy and Jorma gave up half the land—and half the vegetables—to Mama and Daddy when they got married.

“What did Grandaddy used to plant that he dut’n now?” Adam asked Daddy.

“He plants the same stuff, just half as much.”

That didn’t seem to square with Adam’s new math. “Two times more people and half as many vegetables.” He didn’t quite shake his head, but I could tell he wanted to.

“Grandaddy and Jorma figured we needed some land to grow on,” said Daddy.

Our house was a white cinder block two-bedroom that Mama and Daddy found in a catalog. They just pointed to it in the wish book, and after a $600 down payment and a $3,000 loan, Homeblock South came out and in seven days, it was there. Mama said it was The Parisienne, and she chose it over The Greenbrier, even though The Parisienne was one hundred square feet smaller, because she always wanted to go to Paris. The Parisienne had the back door on the side of the house instead of on the back. Mama said she liked it that way. Still, Daddy called it a back door, and Mama went along with him. But Homeblock forgot to put the kitchen cabinets in, and there wasn’t even a septic tank. I didn’t know what a septic tank was, but Adam said you had to have one if you wanted to go to the bathroom. Adam knew about the septic tank because he was there—kind of. Daddy dug the hole in the ground after he got home from work at night while Mama, with Adam in her tummy, held the flashlight. And the dark green carpet that was in every room except the bathroom and the kitchen wasn’t there at first either. For Christmas, Grandaddy and Jorma gave Mama and Daddy door frames, doors, and carpet. MawMaw gave Mama and Daddy kitchen cabinets. When I first heard that, I remember thinking Mama and Daddy must have been really good all year long to get such a lot of presents, though they wouldn’t have been on my Christmas list. And I would have told Homeblock South to put all that in when they built the house in the first place.

The path from The Parisienne to Jorma and Grandaddy’s house—an old gabled clapboard with what Grandaddy called gingerbread trim, which confused me to no end—ran smack down the middle of Grandaddy’s garden. The lush, over-my-four-year-old-head plants were jungle- green and full of string beans, butter beans, lady peas, black-eyed peas, carrots, banana peppers, turnips, cornstalks, and my favorite, “ourish” potatoes.

They required digging in the ground, and you never knew if you were going to find a small, pebble-like failure that never took off or a big honking potato so large that all six of us could eat it as a whole meal if we ever ran out of food. And there were the ones that were so misshapen, so long and skinny, that they looked like one of Grandaddy’s cigars after Jorma twisted it all up to spite Grandaddy when she was upset with him. Or they were amorphous blobs growing in on themselves, looking like miniature infants set out to scrounge on the ground, catching the dirt in their little fists, only letting go when brought in to the kitchen sink and sliced open, revealing the little pockets of once dry but now muddy abscesses. Grandaddy liked these misfits best of all— respected them even.

The first lesson I remember word-for-word, not even knowing it was a lesson, was in his garden.

“Hey, Philbet, whatcha got there?” Grandaddy asked. His smooth head eclipsed the sun and shaded me.

“I got six carrots and five potatoes.” “You got five taters already?” “Yessir.”?“Philbet, that’s real good.”

“But this one ain’t any good,” I said.?“What’s wrong with it?”?“It’s all ugly, all pinched up, and has rough spots on it.”?“No, that’s a good one. That’s a fine tater,” Grandaddy assured me.?“It’s ugly.”?“No, it’s a good one.”?“It looks rotted.”?“That’s the best of the bunch.” His knobbly finger entered my field of vision. “See, this is prob’ly where a bug got after it, but that little tater said, ‘You ain’t gonna get me, bug. I’m stronger than you.’”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And see, that tater had to work harder than that big pretty one right there just to survive. And that means it’s got more flavor inside and more vitamins, too, I ’spect.”

“Why, Grandaddy?”

“’Cause it sucked up more minerals from the ground around it. It had to, just to fight off that bug and survive. That tater dut’n care that it’s not as big and pretty as those other ones.”

“I’ll look for more ugly ones,” I replied, grinning. Only later in life would I understand what he really meant, a wave of devotion and grief overtaking me.

“That’s fine. I know you will,” he said. “You’re about the best tater digger I’ve ever met, and I’ve known a lot of ’em.”

I liked helping Grandaddy. Before he moved on, he bent over and stroked the back of my head, pressing my hair down. I was suddenly aware of how much heat it had soaked up from the sun.

“Hey, let me see that carrot you got there.”?“Which one?” I asked.?He pointed to the one I had set aside from the others. I handed it to him.?“Philbet, see, you can apply the tater rule to carrots too. See, this little carrot was growin’ down into the ground, and it come up on a rock.”?“How you know?”?“On account of how it’s shaped. Had to be a rock we missed and left in the row. Couldn’t’ve been a root. And that carrot turned and growed sideways to get ’round that rock. But it kept on and dit’n let that rock stop it.”

“What about peaches?”

“Yeah, if a peach has a spot on it looks like you doodled on it with a brown Crayon, that’s where a worm tried to get in.”

Now in on the rules of the game, I continued: “And that peach said, ‘You’re not gettin’ in me and ruinin’ me, worm.’”

“That’s right, boy.”?“And that works for all plants...tomatoes too?”?“Yep, it works for any living thing. People too,” Grandaddy said.?“And dogs too?” I asked. “Is that why oI’ Luke has only one back leg, but he can still walk?”?“Um, yeah, I guess. I guess it is.”?Excited because I understood, I added, “He told that car that it wad’n gonna stop him?” “You got it, boy.” Then he swung wide his arms, and I went in for a hug.

Maybe there was something in the dirt that caused my problem. Maybe. The vegetables and me. Butter beans would produce pods with an under-formed bean next to a hefty, hearty one, as if two twins grew next to each other and one took the nutrients for both of them. String beans produced large, gorgeous husks that hung so straight from the vine, they looked like green crystals on a candelabra, so perfect that a picker had to stop and admire the sheer health and heartiness of it. But some of them were nothing but pith on the inside, dry as a pixie straw. That was the way of string beans.

Grandaddy gently, in his tender way, taught me the rule of potatoes and carrots and even ol’ Luke almost fifteen years ago. It’s the first of his many lessons I remember, loving guidance to last a lifetime, to help me make it on my own. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. What is more concerning to Philbet—his same-sex attractions or his skeletal deformity? Which one most shapes his character, stokes his fears?

2. Which character plays the most pivotal role in helping Philbet find his way? His grandaddy? His best friend James? His neighbor Beau?

3. Do Philbet and Knox have a future together?

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