Jelly Roll: A Black Neighborhood in a Southern Mill Town

11. Saphire and Wilbur Hines: Home is Like a Honky Tonk

CHAPTER 11 Saphire and Wilbur Hines Home is Like a Honky Tonk The Hines live conveniently at the end ofthe street on a large lot adjoining a shady creek lined with feathery cypress trees and a thicket of small oaks. Their large trailer house faces the creek, not the street, and has a spacious living room that opens out onto a raised wooden deck. By chance or by design, the setting is perfect for the life style of its owners, a gregarious couple who have allowed their home to become a sort of club for their friends and neighbors. As one approaches the house early on a sunny Friday afternoon, four or five cars are probably already parked in the ample yard. A few people, sitting on buckets and in lawn chairs, loiter about the cypress grove by the creek exchanging casual conversation and sipping the inevitable tall can of beer. Moving toward the deck the group is larger and the conversation louder and more animated; while, on the inside through the open screenless door, four or five are seated at the dining room table where they have started up an early two-bit game of black jack. Outside against the wall on the shadiest part of the deck Saphire herself sits, looking alternately stern and jolly as the conversations ebb and flow around her. Practically everyone has a beer can in hand which, when drained. will be pitched unceremoniously into the yard adding to the already sizeable accumulation. Periodically Saphire's father will collect the cans, crushing them with a quick stomp ofthe heel before placingthem in 88 plastic garbage bags for future sale. Saphire explains that these bags of cans are her "savings account" to be cashed in an emergency, as when beer money gets dangerously low. Saphire, a formidably large and corpulent woman, presides at these gatherings much like a Polynesian queen over her court. Although extremely overweight, she is nonetheless a strikingly handsome woman of thirty whose full features still reveal a youthful beauty. Her dark, penetrating eyes register her changing good humor. Her husband, Wilbur, five years her senior, is a strong but acquiescent consort. He is a leader and a skilled employee at the sawmill. Thin, on the quiet side, and mostly in the background, he forcefully inserts himself into the proceedings only when a visitor gets out of line or the company becomes to raucous. The Hines have five children, three young boys aged eight, nine and eleven, and two girls, thirteen and fourteen. Exuberant in theiryouthful beauty, the girls are deferred to by all and, under the watchful eyes of their parents, are frequently attended by a roving troupe of teenaged boys. Saphire was a middling child from a large Jelly Roll family. Her mother is recently deceased, but her father like her husband works at the mill and livesjust several houses away. He is close to his daughter and her family and, since his wife's death, drops by to visit regularly. He fondly recollects times past when his own home was also a gathering point. Now his daughter proudly maintains the family tradition. Saphire, pregnant with Wilbur's child, dropped out of school after the ninth grade. Her daily routine of "lazying around the house" and never straying far from home became set after that first pregnancy. By her own admission she has many anxieties about traveling, even by car to nearby EI Dorado. She has never worked, rarely traveled and seldom even crosses the street to her father's house or to visit neighbors. Wilbur does all of the grocery shopping himself; but at home, Saphire reigns supreme over her family and her court, consisting of kinsmen, friends and freeloaders, as well as many town youth who have fallen under her spell. One day is very like another. Some court regulars arrive as early as mid-morning to partake of an eye opener, the first beer of the day. Inventories are assessed and fresh provisions ordered. On a warm day the assemblage follows the sun, moving from the yard to the deck to the air-conditioned living room as the day progresses. There is usually a steady coming and going of friends and card players. After three in the afternoon when the school bus lets out their five children, youths of all ages are added to the mix, promi89 nent among whom are the girl's young...