Jodi
FREE WILL
I cain’t near stand it when I hear people talking ’bout how home-canned food ain’t safe to eat ’cause it carries bacteria.
“It just ain’t true,” I told Buddy.
We was sitting outside on one of them early spring days, all breeze and warm air and bare feet. We was surrounded by the freshest, greenest asparagus you ever seen. I just heard some cranky old woman saying to another that she wouldn’t never eat somethin’ canned that wasn’t from the grocery store. I had to bite my lip near in two to keep from saying, Oh yeah, my food that came off the vine two days ago is so damn dangerous. You go on and get to eating that mess that’s been sitting on the grocery shelf for five years.
Buddy nodded and looked at me over the Psychology Today he was reading. That big, burly, dirty-nailed cowboy is always studying up on something or another. “You know what else ain’t true?” Buddy said.
“Free will.”
The earth damn near shifted as my grandma banged on the roof a’ that coffin to come smack some sense into his head. “So, what you’re saying,” I said, “is that the whole God, free will, we-make-our-own-choices-and-decisions thing is totally made up.”
“I ain’t saying it,” he said. “This article’s saying it. Them researchers, they say we ain’t got any control.” He threw the magazine onto the hunter green card table that’s got all our scales and cash register and mess. It landed with a big ole smack. “Our neurons do all sorts a’ random stuff, we do what they say, and then we think we made the choice.”
I rolled my eyes and said, “You get me all involved in your church and get me dern near believin’ again and then you go and say something like that?” I was acting iller than a whole nest a’ hornets, but, oh my Lord, I cain’t tell you how relieved I got to feeling. What if I weren’t in control a’ my drinkin’? What if I didn’t have no choice but to give you up? What if it were just my brain the whole time doing its own thing and then actin’ like it were me that made it up my own self?
But I weren’t saying nothing of the sort to Buddy. That farmer’s market, it was buzzing like an oven timer. “So what if all these people cain’t decide for themself whether to buy some of my jam? What the hell we doing here?”
Buddy patted my knee, and, I ain’t lying, it gave me the shivers like that warm air’d turned snowy. Buddy, I knew he found me right amusing. I’ll admit it: I tried entertainin’ him just to see him grinning like a dad whose Boy Scout won the pinewood derby.
“So, look,” he said, like I ain’t said nothing, “speaking of free will, I hear you’ve got a choice to make.”
“The cookbook,” he said, counting out five dollars change.
I winked at the man he handed it to. “I’m telling you, you toss that kohlrabi in a little olive oil and bake it in the oven and it will change your life.”
That Khaki, she knew how to get right what she wanted, that was for damn sure. Buddy turned his attention back to me and said, “I’m sorry, I mean, I know being from around here, people like me and you, we get these kinds of opportunities all the time. But I’m not sure I’d let this one slide by.”
“Ha ha,” I said. “I know people like me don’t get these kinds of opportunities. But it’s real scary, you know?”
Buddy shook his head. “The dark is scary. Bugs is scary. Drunk mommas and daddies wasting away and ex-boyfriends trying to kill you is scary.” He piled five turnips into a green paper basket and said, “Writing a cookbook ain’t scary, darlin’.”
I know he called everyone darlin’. But, oh my Lord, it was like my name getting called at the church raffle. My cheeks was getting right red, so I fanned myself and said, “Sure is hot out here today.”
“If you want to be cool, be a writer.” Buddy winked at me and turned and got to talking about sprayin’ with a regular, who was smelling a bunch of dill. “Graham, he’d never let his kids play around in a field all full a’ chemicals. So you don’t never have to worry about that with us.”
Outta the corner of my eye, I saw a little boy, ’round Alex’s age, lookin’ on a big old pile of Coke crates. I knew that Alex would be crawling up them things faster than you could whistle Dixie, so, without even looking around for a momma, I started running right at him. Sure enough, he got up that first crate, and the second one he was holdin’ got to falling right as I grabbed him. He laughed, not knowing that he was damn near to being a bloodstain on the concrete. His momma, she came running up in her long dress and three-inch wedges. Who wears that to the farmer’s market I ain’t sure, but them Raleigh women came to get vegetables looking like they were ready for a night on the town. Not like in Kinston where everybody wore their sneakers and looked like they had some dang sense.
“Oh my gosh, Jack!” That momma was ’bout as blond as Marlene. She got to running best she could in them shoes. I put Jack back on the ground, and his momma said, all them bracelets she were wearing tinkling, “Thank you so much. I turned my back for one second.”
“Oh, it ain’t no big deal,” I said. “I’ve gotta lot of nieces and nephews, so I’m always looking out for kids.”
It were damn near like an ingrown toenail calling you my niece. It took my breath away hard. You weren’t gonna be calling me “momma” in a few months. I wanted to cry, but, instead, I got right mad.
“You’re gonna be a really great momma one day,” Buddy said when I got back to the table.
I looked at him like I’d sooner sell my organs on the black market.
“What?” He was looking all confused.
“I ain’t never gonna have any more youngens,” I said firmly.
“Why the hell not?”
That was the stupidest damn thing he’d ever asked me. “It wouldn’t be fair to Carolina.”
Buddy shook his head and turned to ring up a customer. “Have you tried any of Jodi’s famous jam?” Buddy asked a woman so thin it were real clear she ain’t never had sugar.
Just like I was thinking, she shook her head and said, “I don’t eat jam.”
Buddy weren’t the kind to give up easy. “What about sauerkraut? It’s the best in North Carolina, and there’s one jar left that’s got your name on it.”
She got all excited and her tennis dress was just a-quivering. “I love sauerkraut! I’ll take it.”
Didn’t nobody at this market ever ask how much nothing cost. I smiled at her, said, “Thank you,” and she shocked the livin’ daylights out of me by saying, “I’ve heard from my friends that you are an amazing canner.”
I shifted my eyes from her pretty face, all shiny and groomed, and said, “I don’t know there’s much to be good at or not.” My accent was getting more backwoods and country talking to her with her city, fancy Southern.
“Oh, yes there is,” she said, her ponytail just a-bobbin’. I couldn’t figure she knew much ’bout nothing besides getting her nails done. “My friends and I are starting to grow our own gardens, and some things are so plentiful that we don’t know what to do with it all. Do you think you could come by sometime and give us some advice?” She got all nervous. “I mean, um, we’d pay you of course,” she stuttered.
I was more flattered than a girl on a tenth date with a confirmed bachelor. “Well, actually, if you check back with me, I’m gonna have a cookbook coming out real soon that’s got all my best secrets in it.”
Buddy was shellin’ some peanuts for a little girl with a big bow in her hair, but our eyes met all the same. Later, he said, “For someone who was so unsure about changing her life, that sentence sure did slide right out.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t have no choice. My neurons made me do it.”