Georgia Bottoms by Mark Childress

Author:Mark Childress [CHILDRESS, MARK]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780316121965
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2011-02-23T05:00:00+00:00

11

Riding back from the prison in the dark, she turns on the radio and listen what song’s coming on: that beat starts up, whick-it whick-it strummed on electric-guitar strings, a dirty horn section, phasey electronic mixer sound taking us straight into The Girls, only the girls ain’t backing Diana anymore, Diana done left and gone solo on their ass, left them behind in a movie-star cloud of gold dust, leaving Mary and Cindy to try and replace her with another thin trembly soprano, Jean Terrell… The song is “Nathan Jones” and maybe because Georgia is hearing it for the first time in years, through a good car stereo, it’s absolutely transcendent—the best thing the Supremes ever did. Is that possible? The Supremes got better after Diana?

You can hear The Girls trying to erase all memory of Diana, who thought she was better than the others, always parading out in front, and now! We are The Supremes! We sing as one! Equal parts! No lead!

For a moment Cindy takes the melody, for a moment Jean takes it, then they stand aside and let Mary holler it out. A rhythm shake a shake it just keep rolling down the road like a big old Greyhound bus, You never wrote me (ooh ooh) You never called! The heat of three voices fused into the sound of one abandoned woman, beaten down though she never admits it, the way she clings to the pain of his memory you just know he had to be hitting her… The sound was relentless, unstoppable, rolling down the big old highway. A handclap—or is it a whipcrack? Doin’ it without you, Diana, strutting it proudly on Better-Than-Ever Street!

Mama in the passenger seat: “What are you going on about? I don’t understand a word.”

“The Supremes,” Georgia said, “without Diana Ross.”

Bringing Mama along was the last thing Georgia wanted to do, but it was getting harder to leave her home alone now.

“Nathan Jones” put Georgia in high spirits considering they’d just come from that horrible prison where they were not even allowed to see Brother. The man at the front desk said he was in solitary, the next “visitation window” was a week from Wednesday. After successive rings of concertina wire, chain-link fence, electric-lock doors, thick greasy glass reinforced with steel mesh… coming out to the car, breathing free air, and finding “Nathan Jones” on the radio seemed like a gift from God.

Of course Georgia didn’t believe in God, but a gift like that song helped her understand why some people do.

She loved that song, and that’s why Ree had named the boy Nathan.

“I told you to keep him away from Sims Bailey,” Mama said, helpfully.

“Yes you sure did,” Georgia said. “You are so much smarter than I am. I don’t know why I never noticed it before.”

Turns out that having a couple barrels of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in proximity to some barrels of fuel oil gets you in the kind of trouble you can’t grin your way out of. As far as Georgia could tell, Brother was screwed.

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