THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD
EVERY DAY WAS A CHALLENGE, NOT TO SUCCEED BUT TO survive. Nobody wanted me around; I smelled badly because I hadn’t taken a bath in days. I had few job skills, so no one would hire me for serious employment; people didn’t even look me in the eye when they passed me on the street. I took any odd job I could get and was glad to do whatever work was necessary to earn enough money to buy some food. Fortunately, summer evenings in North Carolina are pleasant, and sleeping outside on the ground was something people actually did for fun. For me, it was a necessity.
One day I was riding down Highway 274 on my borrowed bike, looking for any work somebody might pay me to do, when I passed S&W Woodworks, a mom-and-pop woodshop. The shop had formerly served as a fueling station back in the 1940s. It was the place everyone in the surrounding area went to buy gas for their cars or some milk and bread for dinner. The owners had bought one of the first televisions in town and set it up in the shop, so the store became a popular gathering place.
As I was about to ride past, I noticed that the garage bay door was open. In years gone by, cars entered those doors and were hoisted up on the hydraulic lift over the work bay so the mechanic could change the oil. Now it seemed that the work bay had been covered over with flooring.
I looked in and saw an old man standing at a large band saw. He was cutting dashers to be inserted in decorative butter churns he was making.
A voice inside me said, Go in and ask that old man if he has any work you can do. I had experienced that voice speaking to me several times in my life, and I had learned to recognize the importance of paying attention to it.
I turned my bike around and headed back across the sawdust-covered parking lot toward the bay door with the paint peeled off. I pulled up close, leaned the bike against the white brick building, and walked inside.
The old man must have known I was there, but he didn’t even look up from his work. He didn’t acknowledge my presence in any way.
“Sir, do you have any work I can do?” I asked tentatively.
Still without looking up, the old man said, “Ask the boss,” and nodded toward a white-haired woman in the back who was manhandling a powerful, loud, radial arm saw. When she saw me, she hit the off switch and walked over to where I was standing.
She wore a cotton dress coated in sawdust, an apron, and goggles. Her white hair had sawdust blown all through it, and her arms were covered with sawdust as well. I repeated my question, asking if she had any work I could do.
She slowly looked me up and down, and despite my ratty-looking long hair and faded tattoos, she said, “Come back this afternoon and cut our grass. He’s Russell, honey, and I’m Beatrice Costner, but I’d just as soon you call me Bea.”
“Okay! Thank you, ma’am, er, I mean, Bea. What time would you like me to be here?” She gave me a time, and I continued down the road, but not too far away.
I showed up on time and followed the old woman down to a storage shed beside her house. “The yard work is getting too much for Russell,” she said as we walked. Understandably so. I rolled the heavy Snapper riding mower down the two parallel ramps made of boards, checked the oil, and filled the gas tank. The property was large; even with the riding mower, I could tell that it would take me several hours to mow the entire yard. I got busy.
About midway through the job, I saw Bea walk out the front door of her house, carrying a Coca-Cola and a doughnut. She waved me down, and I drove the mower up the field toward her house and parked under an old apple tree so heavy with apples and the lack of pruning that it looked like an umbrella. A rusty fence ran right through the apple tree, where the tree had grown around each rusty wire over the years.
Bea handed me the Coca-Cola and doughnut over the fence, and we talked briefly. Actually, she talked, and I listened. She had much to share. And she had such a positive attitude about everything. She even complimented me about the way I was mowing the yard. I wasn’t used to such encouragement, but I appreciated her kind words.
I finished cutting the grass and did the trim work, which entailed quite a bit of effort since the Costners had a stand-alone swing, several lawn chairs, a birdbath, and nearly every piece of outdoor ceramics known to man. When I finished trimming, I put away the tools and rolled the mower backward, up the boards and into the shed, steering it by the white handlebars. I could see how this might have been a difficult chore for Russell. It wasn’t easy for me.
Once everything was put away, Bea handed me a twenty-dollar bill. My eyes opened wide. I couldn’t believe that she gave me that much money to cut her grass, especially since I had used her mower and her fuel. I could eat all week long on twenty dollars!
The old woman looked at me intently. “Can you come back next week and cut the grass again?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Absolutely!”
I cut the Costners’ grass every week for the remainder of the summer. Toward the end of August, the grass wasn’t growing as fast, and the yard work was slowing down. Thinking ahead, I worried about where I was going to work through the winter and how I was going to buy food. That week, when I mowed the Costners’ yard, Bea met me during my break, outside under the apple tree, as she had done every week. As always, she handed me a Coca-Cola and a doughnut, and I thanked her sincerely.
I expected Bea to tell me what a lovely day it was or to make other small talk, but she didn’t. Instead, she asked, “Jimmy, where do you live?”
Her question took me by surprise. Oh, no! I thought. I didn’t want to tell her that I was homeless, sleeping wherever I could find a bed or outside on the ground when I couldn’t find a friend willing to take me in. I didn’t want to let her know that the twenty dollars she paid me each week was the major portion of my income, with which I purchased necessary items from one week to another. I felt sure that if she knew I was homeless, she and Russell wouldn’t want me to come around anymore. But looking at her beautiful, beaming face and her bright, honest eyes, I knew I couldn’t lie to her. So I gave her the most general answer I could think of in the moment.
“Oh, up the road,” I replied.
Bea nodded slightly. “Well, Russell and I have been talking, and we want to know if you’d be interested in moving into our home. We have a spare bedroom you could use.”
My first thoughts were not positive. Yeah, sure, I thought. I’ll move in, and they’ll make me leave within a week or a short time after. That’s what everybody else has done.
My second thought was, Yes, but at least it’s a place to sleep tonight, and maybe they’ll let me wash my clothes and take a shower and eat.
“Okay,” I said. It was as simple as that. The transaction—the invitation and the acceptance of the invitation—that would change my life forever didn’t involve a lease, a contract, or even a handshake. It was a done deal with just Bea’s word. I was moving in with the Costners. I was sixteen; Russell was seventy-nine, and Bea was seventy-five. We had absolutely nothing in common—or so I thought.
LATER THAT EVENING, I STOOD AT THE DOOR AND RANG the doorbell to Bea and Russell’s house. Bea answered with a big smile. She opened the glass storm door and invited me inside.
Carrying a plastic bag filled with my dirty clothes, I followed her to a bedroom. The area had formerly been a two-car garage, but it had been completely renovated, converting it into a large bedroom. They had planned to use the room for Bea’s aunt, but the elderly woman had passed away before she ever really got a chance to enjoy it.
I could not believe my eyes. The room had new carpet, a brand-new bed, a new nightstand with a clock, and a piano against the wall.
“This will be your room,” Bea said.
I looked at the room and furniture in awe. There’s no way this old lady and man are going to let me stay here for long, I thought. I set my bag of clothes in the corner but didn’t unpack it. Through my experience in the foster care system, I had learned that not unpacking was a common trait among foster kids. They knew there was a high probability that they would be asked to leave, so why bother to unpack? Even many who stayed did not unpack for several months.
Four days passed, and I was still there, but I knew that any minute now, the Costners were going to tell me to leave. I just knew it. Bea was wonderful to me those first few days, but Russell barely spoke a word to me. That fourth day, Russell passed me in the hallway, put his hand on my shoulder, and stopped me.
I cringed. I wasn’t accustomed to having a man touch me. I’d been beaten and abused by Tim Allen, and I’d never known the gentle touch of a father. To me, when a man put his hand on me, that was a threat. I didn’t trust any man. What was Russell going to do?
“I need to talk to you,” Russell said.
I knew it! I thought. They’ve found out about my background. Now he’s going to tell me that I have to leave.
The same gut-wrenching feeling I had felt so many times before filled me again, leaving no room inside, not even to breathe; it felt like emotional asphyxiation.
Russell was a hard-nosed veteran of World War II. He had been wounded in battle and had earned a Purple Heart; he was about as tough and stern a man as I had ever met. The best way to describe Russell is to imagine combining Andy Griffith with Clint Eastwood’s character in the movie Gran Torino, absent the profanity.
Russell wasn’t the type to say a lot, but when he did speak, it was impossible to misunderstand him. For example, he once told me, “Jimmy, if you blow grass in my tulips again, I’m going to fire your ass.”
So when Russell said he wanted to talk with me, I knew this conversation wasn’t going to last very long.
“Sit down in that chair,” he ordered, pointing toward his recliner. I complied and sat in Russell’s chair while he sat in a chair across the room, next to the front door.
Russell held up three fingers and said to me in very a firm tone, “There’s two things you’ve got to do if you’re going to live in my house.”
I wanted to correct him and tell him that he was holding up three fingers instead of two, but something told me that this was one of those times when I needed to keep my mouth shut and listen.
“The first thing you’ve got to do is . . .” Russell paused briefly to make sure he had my attention. Believe me, he had it. “Cut off all your hair. It has to be cut just like mine.” He lowered one finger, and I quickly stole a glance at Russell’s military haircut, straight out of 1945. Oh, boy!
“Second, we want you to go to church.” Russell lowered the second finger. “And if you don’t do those two things, you’ve got to leave now,” Russell said, with great emphasis on the word now as he lowered the third finger.
“Yes, I’ll do that,” I heard myself saying out loud. What? Did I say that? Yes, I did!
I figured that Russell would let the haircut slide for a while, but Russell was a very smart man and always thinking strategically. He nodded and said, “Then get in my truck, now.”
I dutifully went out to his green Dodge farm truck, and the two of us drove to Dixie Village Shopping Center, where we walked into the barbershop—not the hair-styling salon. We went to a barbershop.
“Hello, Mr. Cole,” Russell greeted the barber.
“Hello, Mr. Costner,” the barber said. “What can I do for you?” The barber looked at Russell’s hair. He clearly did not need another wisp of hair cut off.
“This boy needs a haircut,” Russell replied, nodding in my direction. There was no debate about how I’d like my hair styled. It was definitely a one-style-fits-all sort of shop.
“Get up here, boy!” the barber said in a tone of voice that made no attempt to conceal how eager he was to plunge those clippers into my long hair.
I sat down in the large barber’s chair facing an enormous mirror, and the barber wrapped a cape around my neck.
“How’s business, Mr. Costner?” he asked.
“Fine, sir,” said Russell.
The next sound I heard was the buzzing of clippers zipping around my head. Long hair piled up on the floor all around that chair; undoubtedly, it was more hair than Mr. Cole had cut the entire week. Within twenty seconds I was nearly bald. I looked in the same mirror, where my image had been a few seconds earlier, and I now saw some kid with a military haircut. My head without hair resembled a cheap baby doll. I looked like Mr. Peanut.
Russell paid the barber five dollars and thanked Mr. Cole for his fine work. As we walked outside, I headed toward the farm truck, but Russell veered to the right.
“Where ya going?” Russell asked in his usual drill sergeant tone. I stopped short, and Russell nodded toward a department store. “We’re going in here to get some school clothes,” he said.
At the front of the truck, I turned around and followed Russell into the store.
“Pick out some pants,” Russell said.
I stood motionless for several moments. “I don’t know how. I’ve never done this before,” I replied.
“What size do you wear?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. I wasn’t joking. In sixteen years of life I had never shopped for new clothes. I simply wore whatever I had or whatever somebody gave to me. I didn’t even know where to start.
Russell asked the clerk, a young woman, to assist me in finding the right size school clothes, and she was kind and patient, almost stylish in her selections for me. Russell paid for the clothes, and we headed home with my new look.
One day I called my former guidance counselor, Cindy Ballard. I hadn’t seen her or talked with her in months, not since Mama had kicked me out. I excitedly told her, “Ms. Ballard, I have good news. I have a new place to live.”
She had good news for me as well. “Jimmy, you passed your summer courses and got good scores on your tests. We need to get you back in school.”
I enrolled as a sophomore in Bessemer City High School on the first day of the new school year. From the day I set foot in Bea and Russell’s home, I never missed another day of school. I even went to school on Senior Skip Day.
ON SEPTEMBER 21, 1989, HURRICANE HUGO HIT THE EAST Coast, making landfall at Charleston, South Carolina, with sustained winds of more than 135 miles per hour. The gigantic storm moved north at nearly 30 miles per hour, creating havoc all the way up through Charlotte and into West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Damages were estimated at seven billion dollars! The category 4 hurricane roared directly over Bea and Russell’s house. We all gathered in the basement for hours, waiting and praying for the hurricane to pass. Thank God for this couple, I kept thinking. Just a few weeks ago, I was living outside.
That next Sunday I didn’t need Russell to encourage me to go to church. Church attendance was a regular thing for the Costners. Bea was a musician; she played piano for services at Regan Mill Baptist Church, even though she and Russell had literally built the church on Holland Memorial Church Road. But she felt needed at Regan Mill, so that’s where we attended.
WITHIN TWO MONTHS OF MY MOVING IN WITH THE Costners, Russell was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Neither he nor Bea seemed shaken by the news. They had absolute faith that the moment Russell took his last breath here on earth, he would be with Jesus in heaven, so there was no weepy sentimentality surrounding his illness. He was a soldier awaiting his next assignment.
Even on good days, Russell never said much to me; he’d just stare at me. Sometimes he stared at me so much that it made me nervous. What was he looking at? What did he expect to see? What was he searching for? His eyes seared into me and pierced me right to the heart. I could feel him scanning every centimeter of my soul.
He wasn’t trying to intimidate me. I think he was staring at me because he wanted to be absolutely sure that Bea was going to be okay after he was gone.
One time Russell stared at me so long, I sketched a picture of him. When I showed it to him several hours later, he asked if he could take it to church. I said, “Sure, I drew it for you. You can do whatever you want with it.” Russell showed that drawing to all his friends and bragged on me in front of them. That was the first time in my life that a man acted as though he was proud of me.
I was accustomed to men who were abusive, so my guard was up constantly. Combine that fear with the arrogance and insecurities of a normal teenager, and it makes for a volatile mix. Russell probably sensed that about me at first and wasn’t about to let some punk street kid get by with anything in his home.
Although I was only sixteen, I had lived a lot of life in those years. I wasn’t about to let another man put me in my place, so there was bound to be some tension. That drawing changed everything between Russell and me. I didn’t know how to respond to his praise other than try to make him proud of me again. Unfortunately, I didn’t have many more opportunities.
THE CANCER SPREAD QUICKLY, GOBBLING UP THE LAST healthy cells in Russell’s body. His health declined rapidly, and on November 6, 1989, Russell Costner, the strong American soldier and an even stronger soldier in the army of the Lord, was promoted to glory.
I like to imagine that when Russell met Jesus, He said, “Russell, there are two things you’ve got to do if you’re going to stay here in my home. First, you’ve got to go to church. The second thing is, you’ve got to grow your hair out long, just like Mine.”
Bea was sad but not inconsolable. She knew Russell was ready to go, and she knew she would see him again. She missed him terribly, but she understood that she still had some work to do. I didn’t know it at the time, but part of her remaining work involved me.