The Yellow Light

“Maudie, what can I do about mosquitoes?” Mama asked Granny Hickman.

It was a Saturday afternoon during the summer after I had turned 10. We were all out on the front porch of the house where Mama and I were living on Flat Fork in Caudill County. My mother and grandmother were seated in rocking chairs, shoes kicked off. Mama was drinking a Tupperware tumbler of iced tea and Granny was puffing on a hand rolled Price Albert cigarette. I was sitting on the porch swing, reading the latest issue of Baseball Digest.

“Got a skeeter problem, Tessa?” Granny asked my mother.

Mama took a sip of tea and nodded.

“We’d like to sit out here in the evening, but mosquitoes eat us up!”

“I always heard if you was burnin’ a yeller light bulb on your porch that it would run’em off. Never tried it, but that’s what I hear.” Granny flicked some ashes from the cigarette into the palm of her left hand. I marvelled that the heat from the ashes didn’t seem to bother her, but it was easy to see the callouses on her hands from a lifetime of hard work. Granny used her cigarette to point at the light fixture from the front door.

“That right there would probably be the ideal spot,” she commented.

Mama nodded.

“We’ll try that.”

Before we tried that, there was another hour or so of conversation between the two ladies. It was mostly criticism of JR. JR was my father and Granny, who was my paternal grandmother, had taken Mama’s side against her own son when they split up a year earlier. The divorce happened because JR had been having a relationship with a 19 year old cashier in the grocery store he managed up in Toledo. In Granny’s eyes, that was inexcusable. She offered Mama and me the house on Flat Fork, her family’s home place, rent free. We had moved to Kentucky and Mama had got a job as a nurse in a local clinic. Things had worked out alright for us.

After Granny had gone home, Mama drove into town to Farmer’s Pantry Grocery Store. She came home with the yellow light bulb and a frozen pizza for dinner that evening.

“It was the strangest thing, son,” she told me,”Old Man Donner, who owns the store, got a big grin on his face and winked at me when I asked if he had a yellow light bulb. Kept saying ’I’d never thought you’d be into that kind of thing!’ It was sort of odd!”

I put the bulb in the fixture. Not much happened after that. I watched the Red beat the Cubs on TV and finished a Hardy Boys book that I’d been reading. Mom caught up on housework. We had the pizza for dinner.

We had settled in for the evening when we go the first knock at the door. We were both barefoot, wearing our pajamas, and watching BJ and the Bear on TV. There was a rap on the front door.

“It’s awful late, Denny,” Mama said, “Wonder who it could be?”

Mama went to the front door and opened it. The man standing there was fat, bald, and hadn’t shaved for a few days. The bib overalls he was wearing looked like they hadn’t veer been in a washing machine. He looked mama up and down. My mother is a very pretty woman. She was tall, slender, with long, flowing dark brown hair. This guy probably didn’t see many ladies like Mama.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting such a purdy woman,” he said. His words were slurred. He had been drinking.

Mama did a mocking curtsy.

“Thanks for the nice words. Now, what are you doing on my front porch?”

The first sentence had been sweet, almost sexy. The second was spoken in a harsh tone.

“What else would I be here for, sweet thang?” he asked. “What you got for sale tonight?”

“Why don’t you git?” Mama did her best attempt at an Appalachian accent, clenching her fists and stomping her little, bare foot.

“Ain’t you never heard that you catch more flies with honey that vinegar, sugar?” he slurred. He seemed quite shocked at Mama’s behavior.

Mama pointed a finger in his face.

“If you don’t get off my front porch and go home, I’m calling the Sherrif and you can explain it to him!”

With that, Mama slammed the door in the man’s face. A few seconds later, we heard a car speeding down the road.

Mama walked over to the couch and slumped onto the cushions.

“Lord, Denny, he smelled like that Seagram’s distillery we pass when we drive back to Ohio.”

I walked over to the couch and put my arm around her. She was trembling.

“That scared you, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, there are so many weirdos out there. You just never know.”

We were about to go to bed when the next knock came. This time, it was a woman, tall and skinny, with weather beaten skin and a sunk in face because she either didn’t have teeth or hadn’t put them in. Her hair was greasy and in a ponytail. You see a lot of women like that down there. It’s a look of someone who dropped out of school early, married young to a drunk or a drug addict, and lived hard. She was quite a contrast to my mother’s casual elegance. The visitor was waving a twenty dollar bill.

“I ain’t real choosy,” she said. “Just gimme whatever this will buy!”

Mama shook her head.

“Look, lady, I don’t know what you want, but I ain’t selling it! Understand?”

The woman shoved the money back into the pocket of her jeans and glared at Mama.

“They ain’t no need to be so snooty!”

“It’s 11 o’clock and you’re on my front porch! I’ll be whatever I want to be!”

Mama’s fists were clinched and her face was stern. It was the face I saw when I left my bike out in the driveway or made a bad grade at school.

“I’ll whup yore city girl ass!” the woman said. Now, her fists were clinched, too.

The idea of my mother fighting this woman excited me and horrified me at the same time. I walked over and put my hand on Mama’s shoulder. That seemed to calm her.

“Look, lady, my son is here. I don’t know if you have kids, but if you do, you must understand why I can’t let any of this happen.”

The other woman’s face softened a bit and she held up a hand.

“I do have young’uns. I ain’t backin’ down from you, but I do understand what you mean. I’ll leave you alone.” With that, she turned and left.

Mama began sobbing and I put my arms around her and tried to be some comfort to her.

“What in the world, son?” she cried. ”JR told me things could get wild down here in Kentucky, but this is ridiculous!”

“Something’s going on here, but I’ll be danged if I understand it!”

Mom cried in my arms for a few mor minutes. Then she pulled away.

“I’m gonna go have a cup of coffee and wash my face, okay?” she said.

I nodded and she padded out of the living room.

A few minutes later, there was another knock at the door.

I took a deep breath and trudged over to the door. When I opened it, I saw two skinny men, no shirts or shoes, hanging on each other so they wouldn’t fall down. They were both very obviously drunk. They were almost identical except for the guy on the left looked about 25 years older. I guessed that they were father and son.

“Listen here, boy,” the father said, “why don’t you git yore daddy so a man can do some business? My boy and me is runnin’ dry!”

“MY dad ain’t here and, even if he was, he ain’t a plumber and couldn’t help you with your problem!”

The son seemed to think I hold told the funniest joke ever. He laughed so hard that he almost fell down and almost bringing his father down in the process!

“Daddy, he thinks we need a plumber!” the son yelled in that nasally tone that men around here tend to have.

“Boy, that ain’t the kind of runnin’ dry we’re a talkin’ about!”

He had to double his efforts to keep his son upright and that seemed to wear him out. The whisky that I could smell on both of them probably didn’t help their situation.

“Look, it’s none of my business, but I think you two should go and sober up,” I was trying to sound a lot older and wiser than I actually was.

“He’s purdy smart for such a young pup, ain’t he?” the father asked.

The other one nodded.

“You have a good evenin’ now, you hear,” the older man said.

He tipped an imaginary hat and then, he and his son staggered of the porch and made their way to a rusty old truck that was parked by the side of the road. The vehicle was running and I was glad to see that somebody else was in the driver’s seat.

“Son, you shouldn’t have answered that door!”

I turned to see Mama, coffee cup in hand, glaring at me.

“Didn’t want you going through any more crap tonight,” I said with a shrug.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I already almost got my tail kicked!”

“Aww, Mama you would have taken her apart.”

Mama grinned.

“Do you think that I could take her? Seriously now?”

She was giggling now. She sat on the couch and put her coffee on and end table.

“I think that I’ll watch what’s left of the news and then, we’d better turn in. We have church tomorrow, you know.”

I sat down beside her and we watched the news. The weatherman was finishing up when we heard another knock at the door. Mama’s face fell.

“Hey, it’s me, Marshall Watts!” a voice hollered.

Marshall Watts was the pastor at Flat Fork Baptist Church where we attended. He and Mama had also gone out to dinner a few times. I didn’t like most preachers. They seemed to always be frowning and acted like their sewage didn’t stink. Marshall was an good guy. If my mother wanted to date somebody other than my father, I’m glad it was him.

I was relieved, but Mama seemed horrified. She ran a hand through her hair.

“ I look a mess!” she said.

“You are the prettiest woman in the county!” I retorted. I was teasing, but it was true.

“I’m not even wearing shoes!” she said.

“He’s lived in Kentucky his entire life! He’s seen toes before!”

I got up and answered the door. There stood Pastor Marshall Watts. He was tall and slender, with curly brown hair and a handlebar moustache. He was wearing a faded pair of bib overalls instead of the suit and tie that I was accustomed to seeing him in.

“Hey, can you do me a favor?” Marshall asked. He pointed to the fixture where the yellow light bulb was burning. “Can you shut that off for me, Denny?”

I did as he asked and he unscrewed the bulb and walked into the house. Mom had gotten up from the couch and was waiting beside me. He smiled at her and she smiled back. He waved the yellow light bulb at her like an elderly school teacher would wag a finger at a misbehaving student.

“I’m guessing that you two have had some unwanted company!” he said.

Mama sighed.

“We certainly have!”

“This here light bulb is the culprit. Didn’t anybody tell you two that a yellow light bulb is how a bootlegger in a dry county advertises that he’s open for business?”

“Noooo,” Mama sounded almost like a little girl who had just been scolded by a parent. “My mom in law said that yellow light bulbs would get rid of mosquitoes!”

Marshall grinned. I could tell that he was trying to laugh.

“I guess a church lady like Maudie Hickman wouldn’t know about it. I think she got saved when she was still a baby. It’s like I said in my sermon last Sunday, every saint has a past and every sinner had a future. There was a time when I’d stop at any house with a yellow light!”

Mama shook her head.

“They were looking for something to drink?”

“That’s about the size of it, Tessa.”

“Well, would you like a cold Pepsi and some no bake cookies? I might as well give somebody something to drink!”

So, we went to the kitchen and for the first of many times, we had a late night snack together. We laughed and talked until Marshall pointed out that he’d need some sleep if he intended to preach tomorrow morning. He and Mama walked to the front door arm in arm and, before he left, the man, who I now call “Pop”, leaned down and kissed Mama on the forehead.

As I heard his truck start up and pull out of our driveway, I started toward my bedroom. I looked over my shoulder at Mama. She was leaning against the door with a flushed, but smiling face.

I picked up the light bulb from the coffee table where Marshall had placed it and said, “I think I’ll keep this as a souvenir.”

Mama giggled.

“You do that, son.”

“And, Mama?”

“Yeah?”

“You like that preacher more than you’ve been letting on, don’t you?”

“Young man, you don’t need to worry about that!” She tried to sound stern, but there was still a trace of laughter in her voice. Then, she corrected herself.

“Son, after some of the things that you’ve seen happen over the last few years, it’s important that you have at least one honest parent. So, yeah, I do like him an awful lot. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, that’s okay with me. Love you, Mama”

And it’s still okay with me. And I still love both of them.