Talladega County, Alabama
November 30, 1954
10:31 AM
BASED ON REAL EVENTS
Ann had done enough for the day, she thought. She had woken up, sat across from her husband Eugene, and her mother Margie, ate two eggs, a sausage patty and sipped a glass of orange juice. Now, they all sat at the used Formica table—a nice mint color—a find she had made at Goodwill.
She remembered spotting its mint top from the aisle of women’s dresses. And she remembered how hard it had been to find dresses big enough to fit her fat body. She had stood in the dressing room, making gross faces at her reflection, pulling one big dress over her scrunched-up face.
Oddly, it had been too big, and she knew it was designed for someone twenty years her senior. But it would have to do, she had thought. Coming out of the dressing room, she had bumped into her neighbor Peggy, a mother of two.
“Excuse me, Peggy,” she had whispered, her pale gray face flushing.
Peggy had smiled with two perfect dimples on smooth skin. “Oh! Hey, Ann! Did you find a nice new dress?” Ann had barely raised her head as Peggy held up a form-fitting blue dress, smiling wide. “I sure did!”
“That’s nice,” Ann had said, slipping away to take in the mint table. She had moved her hand across its top, noting only one blemish. She had bought the table and the too-big muumuu, thinking she would grow into it.
Finally, she thought when her husband went off to work. The table was cleared, and Ann gathered her body under a heavy quilt. And under the quilt, she listened as her mother finished cleaning the kitchen, her mother calling out, “You need to get yourself together. I can’t live here forever playin’ house. You’re a thirty-two-year-old woman for Pete’s sake! You’ve been grown and my husband is good and dead. Thank God for that…Do you hear me, Ann? You need to get up and do something. You need to give that man a baby.”
Ann heard her, even after nuzzling her nose deep into the cushion of the couch. Her mother kept on talking, banging dishes around, and Ann cried into the lumpy pillow, feeling the warmth of her tears, remembering the article she had read from Reader’s Digest on depression. ‘Electric Shocks to the Brain.’ Lithium had not worked. Maybe electricity would, and on that note of odd hope, a hope she gripped with the fist of a child, she fell into a hard sleep.
2:46 P.M
Ann awoke to what she did not know. It was one of those what the hell moments. One causing disorientation to time, place, and space; half of her brain still locked into a dream. A good dream, too. A sharp pain registered in her mind as she jerked off the couch, logging her mother’s ringing voice in her mind. Ann grabbed her left hip. It was oddly sore.
“What in the blue blazes?” her mother hollered with a shocked face.
“I’ve been hit…” Ann mumbled, pushing the fog of depression to her stomach, and the cotton of confusion began to disintegrate in her mind. She stood up to see a strange puff of smoke hovering in the room. Her mother yanked the front door open, the screen door flapping loudly behind her. Ann yelped seeing the family radio; new, busted all to heck. And then looking up to the ceiling she spotted a hole the size of a basketball in its corner.
Ann scrambled from the blankets wrapped around her feet, seeing a large black rock on the ground rolling from under the coffee table. She picked it up, but it was hot, and she dropped it with a screech, “Kids. Some kids threw a rock,” she said.
Her mother barreled back into the house, hysterical. “Don’t touch it! It could explode!”
Ann hushed her mother’s antics, and her own fears as neighbors walked right through the front door, the screen door flapping. It was Peggy and her husband, and Bob from next door.
Bob waved his hands “Okay. Everyone Okay? I saw it coming. Heard it, too.”
“I’ve been hit!” Ann whined, grabbing at her side.
“Saw what coming Margie yelled, hands on hips ready to scold whatever had come without her say-so.”
“Look like a comet to me. I saw it. Like a fireball right there in the sky,” Bob said pointing to the ceiling as if anyone looking could still see it.
“I saw it too. Looked like a bomb coming!” Peggy chimed in.
More neighbors made their way through the door talking of Russian attacks, explosions and planes crashing; Some lingered in the yard as if they were waiting on something else to happen. Ann walked to find the lawn covered in half the neighborhood—mostly ladies as most husbands were working, and they were alleying her, pointing, calling out for information.
Her face flushed red. This is what happy women looked like on Thursday afternoons, she thought. Their hair pinned, lips glossed with aprons around their waist, toddlers waddling around their feet. Ann stood in front of them looking like a mule struck dumb.
Dr. Maker, a short, fit man wearing a blue bow tie briskly made his way towards her. “Mrs. Ann. Are you okay?”
Ann looked down to her doctor standing at the bottom of her steps, holding his leather bag.
“I saw the commotion,” he went on.
“I’ve been hit,” she muttered again.
“Let’s get you in the house and get a look at you. Mrs. Margie tend to the spectators,” he said, a clear disdain in his voice for the rubberneckers.
***
Laid out on her marital bed, one she rarely slept in, the doctor examined her injury, a pineapple shaped contusion. “That will leave a nasty bruise.”
Ann nodded.
“But we’ll need to get you to the hospital for a more thorough examination.”
Margie busted into the room, “Doc. Kelly Horton is here with Channel 3!” And behind Margie, Kelly, a man resembling a tall plastic doll, pushed his way in the room with a cameraman behind him. “Mrs. Hodges—”
“With all due respect—”
“Dr. Maker this is of the public interest. Mrs. Ann, we need to get information about everything you have experienced,” Kelly insisted.
Dr. Maker yanked the covers back over Ann. “There is Mr. Kelly Horton, a thing called respect. Basic respect. Now please leave the room until my patient has had time to process what has occurred.”
Kelly looked at his watch. “We’ll wait in the family room.”
“You’ll wait outside,” Dr. Maker said, about to blow the lid completely off his usually stoic exterior.
“What hit me? It was just a rock wasn’t it? Why all this fuss over a rock?”
Dr. Maker went to answer when another knock came at the door. It was the police chief.
Ann sat up in the bed. “I have to try and make myself presentable.”
Dr. Maker fused his lips into a line. “You take your time. I will hold the circus back.”
***
Ann sat on the same sofa it all happened on. The same one she has spent most of her life on, the dent of her body evident in the cushions. The police chief, W.D. Ashcraft, sat opposite of her with a young navy officer, whose muscles popped through his clean-cut uniform. Ann was holding the 8-pound rock now, rubbing her fingers over its smooth black surface.
A local geologist had just given it a look over saying that it was an asteroid. An asteroid before it landed, and now a meteorite. Told her that the chances of being hit by one and surviving would be the same as being struck by lightning six times and standing. He had held it with pure awe, as if his whole life had prepped him for the moment.
“An asteroid?” Ann had muttered twice, realizing she was the owner of something valuable; that she was special. “Like from heaven?”
“From the heavens,” he had responded. He now stood outside with the news crew, camera bulbs flashing in his face, telling the same story.
“Mrs. Hodges, are you listening? Chief Ashcraft asked, leaning towards her, and she could hear the leather in his boots stretch. “We need the rock, ma’am. It has to be examined.”
“But God done sent it to me.”
“She’ll get it back once y’all give it a good look at, right?” Ashcraft asked the navy man.
“Yes, sir.”
Ann reluctantly handed the young man the rock. He saluted her with a tip of his hat, and hustled from the house as if a fire had just lit under his breeches.
***
December 1st, 1954
Julius Kempis McKinney loaded up his wagon with firewood. It was a damn cold year and he figured he would go broke trying to keep his house warm. His pet rooster, Willie, sat beside him wearing a sweater his wife had knitted just for him. Julius lapped the mule with a strap to get her going. “Take us home, Brownie,” he practically whistled, and she trotted down the road.
About a half a mile up the road, and Brownie stopped, tilting her head to the ground. A light strap to the back and she still refused to go. Willie sat up giving out an alarm. Julius laughed but had been around animals long enough to know they were trustworthy. Something was in the road worth looking at, so he hopped off the seat to see a hefty black rock right in the middle of the road. He picked it up, sniffed it, then tossed it off the lane, as if by habit with a ‘hmmph.’
Right after tossing it, he felt like a fool. “Why’d you go and do that for? That was a pretty rock.”
Cold and tired, he hopped back in the wagon without searching for it.
***
On the porch right after supper, Julius sat with his wife Ruby. Their kids had run off somewhere with the barn animals. And Willie had set off to roost with the hens. Julius sipped some tea. And he could hear his wife taking big gulps herself. The mug he held the tea in was warm, feeling good on his cold, arthritic hands.
“Ya’ reckon we go on and get a good fire going in the front room.”
“I got the beds all pulled out in the front room already,” Ruby said.
That was her way. She was always two-steps ahead. He sipped again.
“You hear about what happened in white folk town?”
Julius snickered. “I don’t carry on about white folk business’ cuz’ it ain’t worth a nickel of my time.”
“Some meteorite hit some great big ole’ woman up there in Talladega. Knocked her plum off her couch where she was sleeping. I saw it all over the Wilkin’s TV.”
“What time was that?”
“Bout’ noon today.”
“Just like a white woman be laid up when hogs need tendin’.”
“Big shiny rock hit her. Says it came from outer space. She all over the T.V. Says she gonna get rich off it. She already famous.”
“Shiny, black rock? Soft to the touch?”
“That’s how they described it. Yep.”
Julius hopped up, slamming the mug down on the porch railing. He remembered Willie sounding the alarm. Remembered Brownie stopping right in the middle of the road for no good reason—except a black, shiny rock. Soft to the touch.
“Woman help me get the kids. I need help gettin’ Brownie back on the wagon. Need Willie up from roost.”
“What you talkin’ about?”
“Just listen to me, now. I got to get somethin’ done.”
***
Julius felt his heart pacing the mule’s hooves clump, clump, clump against the gravel terrain. A fancy flashlight rested in his lap; A gift from his brother who had made big money in Memphis, TN. Willie sat beside him, eyes half-opened. Julius wanted to kick himself for not picking up the rock when he saw it, when Brownie spotted it, when Willie told him it was something.
He was betting a 50/50 chance of finding it, and if he did not, he figured he would kick himself for real. When he got to the spot where he remembered seeing it, he stopped the wagon, hopped off, and with the fancy flashlight turned on, he sifted through the grass. There it was. The light gleamed off it like a sunset over water; he yanked it up, as if time were not on his side, as if his luck, so far, were a glitch. He situated the rock in the wagon under a quilt he had brought along. Hopping in the wagon, he patted Willie on the head, and whistled back home.
***
The postman, Rick, was about the only government employee Julius liked and felt like trusting. He was a tall white man, who did not act like white meant something more than color on the skin. J
Julius handed him the rock and after a long look over, Rick handed it back to him. “That there is the same meteorite Ann Hodges got hit with,” Rick said.
Julius pointed to the sky, “Must’ve’ tore apart when it was comin’ down somehow or another.”
“You need a lawyer.”
“Don’t trust no lawyers.”
“Julius you gonna need a lawyer. I know one I can send ya’ to. That their rock isn’t just a rock. To be frank, it’s money. You gonna need someone to negotiate some sort of sell.”
Julius eyed Rick hard, looking for a sign of deception but there was not a flicker of it. The man was honest.
“Alright. Who dis’ lawyer?”
A Few Weeks Later:
Ann heard the phone ring, and because of her migraine, the sound was so loud, a blow horn couldn’t compare. She sluggishly rolled from her marital bed, hearing her mom talking into the phone. She already knew it was the landlord Birdie, again, fussing and yelling over the meteorite. If evil had a name, Ann thought, it was Birdie. Ann heard her mother slam the phone back into the receiver.
“Has that lame-brain husband you got not called her yet?” Margie screamed, and Ann felt the nerves in her temple throb.
“He has Mama. She ain’t budging. Says the rock is hers. Says this is her property and so the rock is hers. Says we gotta fix the roof, too.”
Margie slapped the mint tabletop from Goodwill. “So, this table hers too since it sittin’ in her house. Everything touch the floor of this pig pen hers?”
“Eugene gettin’ a lawyer, Mama. Please.”
“Well, you need to be gettin’ something. God himself trying to wake you up, and you still laid up like a wet rag!” Margie screamed going out the back door.
Ann sat down at the mint-colored table with a heavy sigh. Her hip still hurt but the throbbing in her head dulled it. She pulled the rock to her chest, felt its weight against her bosom. She had been carrying it like this since the Navy man brought it back. God did bring it to her, and it would change her life—for the better, she thought. She caught sight of LIFE magazine, her face on the cover. And it felt surreal staring at herself in a magazine everyone looked at, one she bought at the check-out line every week from the grocery. She opened it up, seeing her own words in black and white.
‘I’m a survivor.’
A Week Later:
Ann laid on the couch. At first, she had been too afraid to sleep there but with the roof fixed, it seemed safe. Seemed like the wet patch of tar on the roof was enough to stop whatever was wanting to come her way. She turned into the cushions, to nuzzle into the daydreams that sustained her. Oh! They were elaborate, down to the boots the men who courted her wore, to the trim on her stockings, stockings rolled down slim legs—like Betty’s legs. She could even picture the crown molding on her big house.
The rock was layered under panties and socks in her bedroom dresser. It was her rock, fair and square. Eugene had paid off the landlady earlier that day, had the roof fixed and now there was nothing to do but wait on a buyer. And she figured buyers would come like the cameramen had come, like the neighbors had come.
She closed her eyes, dreaming of her own home—in a new town—where she could start over. Only this time, the dreams seemed closer to reality than ever before. A real hope danced in her chest. A light airy feeling settled in her throat. And she pretended to be at a dinner party, telling guests how it had all happened; how her luck had all changed, even whispering the words into the cushions, ‘God sent it to me. Bumped me right off the couch telling me to get up!’
She fell asleep talking into those stained cushions.
***
Julius walked out of the lawyers into a cool December afternoon. The wind blew the feather in his hat. It was a feather from his last pet chicken, Charlie. A fine feather, a fall maple red. His shoes shuffled in a tap as he hustled to the wagon with a smirk on his pretty black face. Hopping in the wagon, he looked at Ruby. Her thick cheeks rounded up into a smile as he handed her the check. Ten-Thousand dollars from the sale of the shiny black rock. Soft to the touch.
“Mrs. Ruby, you best start looking for you and your family a new homestead. I’ll look for us a car. Put Brownie here in retirement to greener pastures,” Julius said as he tugged for Brownie to go.
Ruby held the check up to a cold gray sky. “I declare God is good!”
“Put that there in your pocketbook before it blow right out ya’ hand and our good fortune wit’ it.”
Ruby listened, putting it in her billfold. But kept checking every few minutes to make sure it remained.
Two Weeks Later:
Ann sat at the kitchen table, smoking one cigarette after another. Eugene sat beside her sipping a beer. Her mother served dinner, practically throwing the plates on the table at them.
“You heard some nigger in nigger town done got himself a big ole’ check and here we sittin’ stupid. Done bought himself a house and car. Hell, you drive by and even his chicken coop bigger than this pig pen we in.”
“Mama, all we have to do is wait on an offer,” Ann said, but she didn’t believe it anymore. One offer had already come, and they rejected it thinking more would come. That was a week ago and now not a peep.
“Ain’t no offer coming. Nigger man had the same rock. You think they won’t two of em’?”
“Margie,” Eugene sneered. “Stop using that word in this house and lot of museums are fighting over this rock”
“Then why ain’t the phone ringin’ then?” Margie asked, sitting down hard, and slamming her fork into a cut of cornbread.
They continued to eat in a rage, one spoken with the hard clanking of silverware on plates, and deep-belly sighs. And then mid-way through the meal, Ann stood up, feeling her chest heavy, feeling as if life itself were suffocating her. She slapped a napkin over the plate and walked away from the table. She sat on her marital bed, hearing it creak under her body. She put her small head in her small hands and wept quietly, drawing the tears from a well dug too deep.
Several Months Later:
Ann sat on the porch, swinging her feet back and forth from the porch swing until the bottoms of her feet were black with dirt. Her mother roamed the house in her usual restless energy. Ann knew it wouldn’t be long before her mom would be after her to do something, so she rocked herself off the swing. She needed to do something. Walking in the house, her big toe hit the rock. She looked down to curse it. After all, she felt it had cursed her. She kicked it from holding the screen door ajar, watched it slide across the wood floor, scratching it. The screen door slammed.
Her mom yelled from the kitchen. “Ann, you get that garden weeded?”
“Doing it now,” Ann muttered as her mom walked into the front room.
Margie immediately picked the rock up, sitting it back to hold the screen door open. “We need to air this pig pen out. Leave it here!”
Ann sluggishly pulled shoes on her feet. “Alright, Mama.”
“You ain’t been out in that garden a minute yet, have you?”
“Going now, Mama.”
Ann walked outside, still hearing her mother bitch a blue streak. She stomped her feet heavy into the dry ground.
***
Julius sat on the front porch with his wife Ruby sipping cool tea with ice. He could hear his wife taking big gulps and the ice move around in their tall glasses. A good rain had come and went, and a faint rainbow cast color over an enormous chicken coop. A wood plaque hung above the door, reading: “Willie’s Coop.”
“Crops sure coming in good dis’ year?”
“Reckon the Lord blessin’ us,” Ruby said, and Julius knew she had said it with a big smile, even without looking. He had been with her that long; Knew every crease of her voice.
“Hmmmph,” he said, watching Willie waddle up a ramp built just for him. Julius opened his hands as Willie flew up to sit in his lap. He looked down into the creature’s beady yellow eyes.
“You and those chickens,” Ruby said with a light-hearted chuckle.
“They real smart. Real smart,” he said, smiling.
