Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County by Amy Hill Hearth

Author:Amy Hill Hearth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

Nineteen

As the Trailways bus rambled toward Naples, Priscilla yawned politely and stretched, taking care not to bump into the older woman sitting next to her. She reminded Priscilla a little of her grandma—tiny and hunched over, with hands swollen and disfigured from a lifetime of working in the fields.

Priscilla had been trying to read on the long bus ride from Daytona, with some success on the Sanford to Tampa stretch, but then began dozing off, tired from working late in the college laundry. One employee went home sick, so she’d been doing the job of two people but complaining was unthinkable. Working until midnight—even in a hot and humid laundry—was easy compared to what her grandma did, day after day.

The older woman suddenly elbowed her and cried out, pointing to something outside the bus window. Even wedged as they were in the far-back seat of the colored section, it was hard to miss: a brand-new, oversized billboard with lime-green lettering.

Welcome to Dreamsville! the sign hollered.

What in the world? Priscilla thought.

And then they passed another, identical to the first. This time, Priscilla got more than a glimpse. Accompanying the astonishing words was a stylized illustration of an idealized American couple. A white gal was tastefully reclined in a lounge chair with a long cigarette in one hand and a cute little mixed drink—the kind with an umbrella in it—beside her on a small table. A white fellow, presumably her husband, loomed in the foreground with an expensive-looking fishing pole in one hand and a golf club in the other, grinning so broadly it was scary. Lord, Priscilla thought, you’d think God himself had just handed him the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. Imagine going through life with that amount of self-assurance. The couple, to Priscilla’s eyes, looked vaguely Northern. For one thing, they were tan. With the exception of men who worked outdoors—a farmer with his red neck from driving a tractor, or a fisherman with deep crows’-feet wrinkles acquired from squinting at the water—local white folks protected their skin from the sun. In fact, it was said among black folks that the Caucasians of Collier County were so white that looking at them hurt your eyes. Priscilla tried not to join in when others joked like that. White folks couldn’t help being white any more than she could help the fact that she was not. Besides, she’d been treated exceptionally well by white folks. Most of them, anyway.

The other indication that the folks depicted in the sign were supposed to be Yankees was, in a word, jewelry. The gal on the lounge chair had a ring on one hand that would have made Elizabeth Taylor pass out, plus ropes of gold, pearls, and who-knows-what hanging heavily around her neck. All this, and wearing a bathing suit, too. The man, who wore a polo shirt with some kind of insignia like a family crest or college logo, sported an oversized watch on one wrist.

In sociology class, Priscilla had learned that these folks were called “the Northern Leisure Class.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.