Then I dusted the plastic frogs going ribbet ribbet every time I walked by.
I dusted the pictures of Jesus and footprints in the sand.
I dusted a bowl of bread glazed stiff for decoration and a shotgun sitting up behind the door.
I walked around the recliner and the radio playing radio preachers and gospel tapes.
So Ruby stood at the stove and I asked: “Grandma, where’d you get these flowers?”
My grandma said: “Oh Larry sent ’em to me. He sent me some to give to Mae too but I liked her flowers better so I just kept them both.”
She was always doing stuff like this.
A STORY ABOUT RUBY TAKING STUFF
One day we went over to Aunt Shirley’s and Shirley had just put this new mirror on the wall. Grandma said it was pretty. Ruby walked over and took it off the wall because she wanted it for herself.
Shirley said: “Ruby, you can’t take that with you. That’s mine.”
Ruby said: “Oh but you have so much stuff.” Then she put it under her arm and we left. Aunt Shirley just stood there.
I looked at Ruby now and I saw all of the things she knew. She knew how to do all kinds of things no one else knew how to do.
She knew how to render lard and make soap.
She knew how to make biscuits from scratch and slaughter a hawg if she had to. And she knew how to do things that are all forgotten now — things that people from Ohio buy because it says homemade on the tag. I looked at the quilt she was working on. The quilt wasn’t a fucking symbol of anything. It was something she made to keep her children warm. Remember that. Fuck symbols.
Then she said: “Okay, I think it’s ready.”
…We all sat down and started eating the chicken and gravy and I did it like this. I took a giant spoon and started scooping out all kinds of gravy all over my plate and plopped out a spoonful of mashed potatoes. Then I grabbed myself a chicken leg and got to it. I sat and first started eating all the gravy with a spoon. Then I looked out across the table, and there were cucumbers in vinegar, and homemade biscuits, mayonnaise salad, green beans, pickles, fried chicken, chocolate cake, angel food cake, chicken, brown beans, peas in butter, chicken, more biscuits, and gravy, gravy, gravy. Then Grandma started telling us about how my father was born on the kitchen table and how the doctor was drunk.
Ruby told us about how the doctor was really a dentist but would deliver babies. She told us how she gave birth to him on the kitchen table. After he was born he was so pretty and shining and new. She just held him in her arms — the prettiest baby you’ve ever saw, the prettiest baby she had. He was so pretty that the doctor offered to give her twenty dollars for him or trade him for another baby he had out in his truck. But she didn’t trade him. She just held him close to her heart and listened to him whimper. We listened to the story and ate our chicken and gravy. Then I skimmed the bowl and got out a couple of more bites and it was all gone.
So after dinner was over I watched Grandma gather up all the dishes and put them in the sink.
Then Grandma said: “Well, Todd, you sure didn’t eat much. You’re just a skinny thing — look sickly.”
But I didn’t say anything about Todd not being my name. She wouldn’t listen anyway because she was on to something else now.
I started washing the dishes and then she started going on about how I didn’t need to throw away the styrofoam plates because she could use them again.
I said: “Well you can’t wash styrofoam plates and use them again. It’s not healthy. You can’t get them clean.”
But Ruby just told me to wash them and said: “Well that’s all right. That’s the reason I got something.”
After dinner I took a nap and I dreamed a dream about the future and in this future I was dreaming a dream about the past. But in my dreams I’m always back at Ruby’s house, and back at Ruby’s table. It’s always Sunday again and we’re all just sitting around the table like we always did. Nathan’s on one side and I’m on the other and my grandma’s on the left. And just like always she’s fixed chicken and gravy and we’re all so hungry and passing the plates — the biscuits, the mayonnaise salad, the cucumbers in vinegar, and I think to myself, even now, that this will be what the final moments of oxygen escaping from my brain will be like. It’ll be like a Sunday so long ago with all of the dead stuffing themselves full of food cooked with lard, and gravy that will once again clog their arteries and kill their hearts. It will be the feast of death and it will taste so delicious.
Then I dreamed that she was gone and yet, even now there’s still something about me that believes I can bring her back from the dead. There’s something in me that wants them to rise from the grave and go back there. There’s something about me that wishes I could see them again.
But wait! There’s still something that makes sense.
There’s still the recipe for chicken and gravy. There may still be something of Ruby inside of it. So here’s the recipe…
Ingredients
1 (3 pound) frying chicken, cut up
2 cups of buttermilk
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
1 teaspoon of onion powder
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
Vegetable oil for deep frying
Butter
Flour
Directions
Wash chicken and pat dry. In a large bowl, stir together buttermilk, garlic powder, onion powder, flour and butter. Place chicken in buttermilk mixture and refrigerate.
In a large cast iron frying pan, heat oil to 325 degrees F. Drain chicken in a colander to remove excess buttermilk. Place flour and butter in a large paper bag. Add chicken. Close top and gently shake bag to coat chicken with batter mix. Remove chicken and fry, turning pieces over after 3 minutes. Continue to fry, turning until brown on all sides.
And if you’re reading this — you can go into your kitchen and try making it right now. And even if you don’t know how to cook, wherever you are, and far away into the future, maybe you can make this chicken and gravy and we can bring these zombies back to life again.
YOU CAN’T PUT YOUR ARMS AROUND A RECIPE
I had to take Nathan to the bathroom. It had already been a horrible day. That morning on the way over to the doctor’s office my grandma kept going on about Nathan grabbing the steering wheel and killing us all. I had just got my license and Nathan was sitting in the passenger seat. Ruby was full of anxiety in the back and then she said it again, “Now, Nathan, don’t you grab the steering wheel and wreck and make us crash over the mountain and kill us all.” Nathan just shook his head like Fuck. Do you seriously think I’m going to grab the wheel and wreck us? Do you really think that?
Then he circled his finger around and around his head and told her she was crazy.
I said, “He’s not psychotic, Grandma. He just needs a wheelchair.”
Then we had to wait a couple of hours before the foot doctor could cut Grandma’s toenails. Now here we were eating at Captain D’s and Nathan had this look on his face. That look meant one thing: He had to go to the bathroom. He had to go to the bathroom BAD.
So I got up from the booth and took hold of his wheelchair when Ruby stopped us. She reached into her giant purse and pulled out his pee bottle inside a plastic bag. Then she handed it to me. I just laughed and said: “Well, Grandma, you don’t have to show off the pee bottle to everyone.” Nathan just waved his finger and stomped his foot which meant: I don’t even need the pee bottle. I need to go the other thing.