Idgie was walking by. "Hey, Grady, why don't I send Stump over to the yard to help you boys out? Maybe he can catch him."

Grady said, "Idgie, just shut up and get me some more of these damn things," and handed his plate to her.

Ruth was behind the counter making change for Wilbur. "Really, Grady, I cain't see what harm it can be. These poor people are almost starving to death, and if it hadn't been for him throwing coal off, a lot of them would have frozen to death."

"I agree with you in a way, Ruth. Nobody cares about a few cans of beans, now and then, and a little coal. But this thing is getting out of hand. So far, between here and the state line, the company has already put on twelve new men, and I'm working a double shift at night."

Smokey Lonesome was down at the end of the counter having his coffee, and piped up, "Twelve men for one little old nigger boy? That's kinda like shooting a fly with a cannon, ain't it?"

"Don't feel bad." Idgie patted Grady on the back. "Sipsey told me the reason you boys cain't catch him is because he can turn himself into a fox or rabbit whenever he wants to. What do you think? Do you reckon that's true, Grady?"

Wilbur wanted to know how much the reward was up to.

Grady answered, "As of this morning, it was two hundred fifty dollars. Probably go up to five hundred before this thing is over."

Wilbur shook his head. "Damn, that's a lot of money.... What's he supposed to look like?"

"Well, according to our people that saw him, they say he was just a plain old nigger boy in a stocking cap."

"One smart nigger boy, I'd say," Smokey added.

"Yeah, maybe so. But I'll tell you one thing, when I do catch that black son of a bitch, he's gonna be one sorry nigger. Hell, I ain't been home to sleep in my own bed in weeks."

Wilbur said, "Well hell, Grady, from what I hear, that ain't nothing new."

Everybody laughed.

Then, when Jack Butts, who was also a member of the Dill Pickle Club, said, "Yeah, it must be pretty bad ... I hear Eva Bates's been complaining, too," the whole place exploded with laughter.

"Why, Jack, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," Charlie said. "You ought not to insult poor Eva that way."

Grady got up and looked around the room. "You know, every one of you boys in this cafe is as ignorant as hell. Just plain ignorant!"

He went to the hat rack and got his hat, and then turned around. "They ought to call this place the Ignorant Cafe. I think I'll just take my business elsewhere."

Everybody, including Grady, laughed at that one, because there wasn't anyplace else. He went out the door and headed for Birmingham.

NOVEMBER 27, 1986.

Stump Threadgoode, still a good-looking man at fifty-seven, was at his daughter Norma's house for Thanksgiving dinner. He had just finished watching the Alabama-Tennessee football game and was sitting at the table with Norma's husband, Macky, their daughter, Linda, and her skinny boyfriend with the glasses, who was studying to be a chiropractor. They were having their coffee and pecan pie.

Stump turned to the boyfriend. "I had an uncle, Cleo, that was a chiropractor. Course, he never made a dime at it ... treated everybody in town free. But that was during the Depression, and nobody had any money, anyhow.

"My momma and Aunt Idgie ran a cafe. It wasn't nothing more than a little pine-knot affair, but I'll tell you one thing: We always ate and so did everybody else who ever came around there asking for food ... and that was black and white. I never saw Aunt Idgie turn down a soul, and she was known to give a man a little drink if he needed it ...

"She kept a bottle in her apron, and Momma would say, 'Idgie, you're just encouraging people into bad habits.' But Aunt Idgie, who liked a drink herself, would say, 'Ruth, man does not live by bread alone.'

"There must have been ten or fifteen hoboes a day that showed up. But these boys weren't afraid to do a little work for their grub. Not like the ones they've got today. They'd rake the yard or sweep the sidewalk. Aunt Idgie always let them do a little something, so as not to hurt their pride. Sometimes she'd let them come sit in the back room and baby-sit with me, just so they'd think they were working. They were mostly good guys, just fellows down on their luck. Aunt Idgie's best friend was this old hobo named Smokey Lonesome. God, you could trust him with your life. Never took a thing that didn't belong to him.

"Those hoboes had an honor system. Smokey told me he heard they caught one that had stolen some silverware out of a house, and they killed him on the spot and took the silverware back to the people he had stolen it from ... back then, we didn't even have to turn a key. These new ones on the road and riding what's left of the rails are a different breed. Just bums and dope addicts that will steal you blind.

"But Aunt Idgie never had one thing taken." He laughed. "Of course, that may have been because of that shotgun she kept by the bed ... she was as tough as pig iron, wasn't she, Peggy?"

Peggy called back from the kitchen, "Tougher."

"Of course, most of that was just an act, but she could be a hellion if she didn't like you. She had this running feud with this old preacher at the Baptist church, where Momma taught Sunday School, and she would give him fits. He was a teetotaler, and one Sunday he preached against her friend Eva Bates, and it made her so mad she never did forgive him. Every time a stranger came to town looking to buy some whiskey, she'd take him outside the cafe and point to old Reverend Scroggins's house and she'd say, 'See that green house, down there? Just go over and knock on the door. That man's got the best liquor in the state.' She'd point out his house when some of those old boys was looking for something else, too."

Peggy came out of the kitchen and sat down. "Stump, don't be telling them that."

He laughed. "Well, she did. Always doing something mean to that man. But, like I say, she just liked for people to think she was mean ... inside, she was as soft as a marshmallow. Just like that time the preacher's son, Bobby Lee, got arrested ... she was the one he called to come get him.

"He'd gone over to Birmingham with two or three boys and gotten himself all liquored up and was running down the halls in his underwear, throwing water balloons out of the seventh-floor window; only Bobby Lee had them filled with ink and had dropped one on some big city councilman's wife when they were going into the hotel for some shindig.

"It cost Aunt Idgie two hundred dollars to get him out of jail and another two hundred dollars to take Bobby's name off the books, so he wouldn't have a police record and his daddy wouldn't find out ... I went over there with her to get him, and coming home, she told him that if he ever let anybody know she had done it, she would shoot his you-know-whats off. She couldn't stand anybody knowing she had done a good deed, especially for the preacher's son.

"All that bunch in the Dill Pickle Club were like that. They did a lot of good works that nobody knew about. But the best part of the story is that old Bobby Lee went on to become a big-time lawyer, and wound up as an attorney general for Governor Folsom."

His daughter, Norma, came in to get the rest of the dishes. "Daddy, tell him about Railroad Bill."

Linda shot her mother an exasperated look.

Stump said, "Railroad Bill? Oh Lord, you don't really want to hear about Bill, do you?"

The boyfriend, who really wanted to take Linda out parking somewhere, said, "Yes sir, I'd love to hear about it."

Macky smiled at his wife. They had heard this story a hundred times and knew Stump loved to tell it.

"Well, it was during the Depression and, somehow, this person called Railroad Bill would sneak on the government supply trains and throw stuff off for the colored people. Then he'd jump off before they could catch him. This went on for years, and pretty soon the colored started telling stories about him. They claimed that someone saw him turn into a fox and run twenty miles on top of a barbed-wire fence. People that did see him said he wore a long black coat, with a black stocking cap on his head. They even made up a song about him.... Sipsey said, every Sunday in church, they'd pray for Railroad Bill, to keep him safe.

"The railroad put a huge reward up, but there wasn't a person in Whistle Stop that would have ever turned him in, even if they had known who he was. Everybody wondered and made guesses.

"I got in my head that Railroad Bill was Artis Peavy, our cook's son. He was about the right size and as fast as lightning. I followed him around night and day, but I could never catch him. I must have been around nine or ten at the time, and I would have given anything to have seen him in action, so I would have known for sure.

"Then, one morning, right around daybreak, I had to go to the toilet. I was about half asleep and when I got to the bathroom, there was Momma and Aunt Idgie in there, with the sink running. Momma looked at me, surprised, and said, 'Wait a minute, honey,' and closed the door.

"I said, 'Hurry up, Momma, I cain't wait!' You know how a kid'll do. I heard them talking and pretty soon they came out, and Aunt Idgie was drying her hands and face. When I got in there, the sink was still full of coal dust. And on the floor, behind the door, was a black stocking hat.

"I suddenly figured out why I'd seen her and old Grady Kilgore, the railroad detective, always whispering. He'd been the one who was tipping her off about the train schedules ... it had been my Aunt Idgie jumping them trains, all along."

Linda said, "Oh Granddaddy, are you sure that's true?"

"Of course it's true. Your Aunt Idgie did all kinds of crazy things." He asked Macky, "Did I ever tell you what she did that time old Wilbur and Dot Weems got married and went on their honeymoon at a big hotel in Birmingham?"

"No, I don't think so."

Peggy said, "Stump, don't be telling that story in front of the children."

"It'll be all right, don't worry. Well anyway, old Wilbur was a member of the Dill Pickle Club, and right after the wedding, Aunt Idgie and that bunch got in a car and drove over to Birmingham as fast as they could, and bribed the hotel clerk into letting them into the honeymoon suite, and they put all kinds of funny stuff all over the bed ... God knows what all ..."

Peggy warned him, "Stump ..."

He laughed. "Hell, I don't know what it was. Anyway, they got in the car and came back home, and when Wilbur and Dot got back, they asked Wilbur how he liked his honeymoon suite at the Redmont, only to find out that they had been at the wrong hotel, and some poor honeymoon couple had gotten the shock of their lives."

Peggy shook her head. "Can you imagine such a thing?"

Norma stuck her head under the serving counter. "Daddy, tell them about the catfish you used to catch down at the Warrior River."

Stump's face lit up. "Oh well. You wouldn't believe how big those catfish were. I remember one day, it was raining and I got a bite so hard, it slid me right down the bank and I had to fight to not be pulled into the water. Lightning was striking and I was fighting for my life, but after about four hours, I pulled that grandaddy mud cat out of the water and, I tell you, he must have weighed twenty pounds or more, and he was this long ..."

Stump held out his one arm.

The skinny would-be chiropractor sat there with a stupid look on his face, seriously trying to figure out how long the catfish was.

Linda, exasperated, put her hand on her hip. "Oh Granddaddy."

Norma just cackled from the kitchen.

SEPTEMBER 28, 1986.

Today, they were enjoying a combination of things: Cokes and Golden Flake potato chips, and for dessert-another request from Mrs. Threadgoode-Fig Newtons. She told Evelyn that Mrs. Otis had eaten three Fig Newtons a day for the past thirty years, to keep her regular. "Personally, I eat 'em just 'cause I like the taste. But I'll tell you something that's good. When I was at home and didn't feel like cooking, I'd walk over to Ocie's store and pick up a package of those little brown-and-serve rolls and pour Log Cabin Syrup on them and have that for my dinner. They don't cost all that much. You ought to try it sometime."

"I'll tell you what's good, Mrs. Threadgoode, are those frozen honey-buns."

"Honey-buns?"

"Yes. They're like cinnamon buns. You know."

"Oh, I love cinnamon buns. Let's have some sometime, want to?"

"All right."

"You know, Evelyn, I'm so glad you're not on that diet of yours anymore. That raw food will kill you. I hadn't wanted to tell you this before, but Mrs. Adcock nearly killed herself on one of those slimming diets. She ate so much raw food that she was rushed to the hospital with severe stomach pains and they had to do exploratory surgery on her. And she said that while the doctor was examining all her insides, he picked up her liver to get a close look at it, and dropped it right on the floor, and it bounced four or five times before they got it. Mrs. Adcock said that she has suffered with terrible backaches ever since, because of it."

"Oh Mrs. Threadgoode, you don't believe her, do you?"

"Well, that's what she said at the dinner table the other night."

"Honey, she's just making that up. Your liver is attached to your body."

"Well, maybe she got mixed up and it was a kidney or something else, but if I were you, I wouldn't eat any more of that raw food."

"Well okay, Mrs. Threadgoode, if you say so." Evelyn took a bite of her potato chip. "Mrs. Threadgoode, there's something I've been meaning to ask you. Didn't you tell me one time that some people thought Idgie had killed a man? Or did I just think you said that?"

"Oh no, honey, a lot of people thought she had done it. Yes indeed, 'specially when she stood trial for murder with Big George over in Georgia ..."

Evelyn was shocked. "She did?"

"Haven't I ever told you about that before?"

"No. Never."

"Oh ... Well, it was awful! I remember the very morning. I was doing my dishes, listening to The Breakfast Club, when Grady Kilgore came up to the house and got Cleo. He looked like someone had died. He said, 'Cleo, I'd rather cut off my right arm that to do what I'm about to do, but I've got to go take Idgie and Big George in on charges, and I want you to go with me.'

"You know, Idgie was one of his best friends, and it liked to of killed him to do it. He told Cleo that he would have resigned from office, but he said the thought of a stranger arresting Idgie was even worse.

"Cleo said, 'My God, Grady, what's she done?'

"Grady said that she and Big George were suspected of murdering Frank Bennett back in 'thirty. Here, I didn't even know he'd been dead or missing or anything."

Evelyn said, "What made them think that Idgie and Big George did it?"

"Well, it seems that Idgie and Big George had threatened to kill him a couple of times, and the Georgia police had that on record, so when they found his truck, they had to bring them in ..."

"What truck?"

"Frank Bennett's truck. They were looking for a drowned body and found that truck in the river, not far from Eva Bates's place, so they knew he'd been around Whistle Stop in nineteen thirty.

"Grady was furious that some damn fool had been stupid enough to call over to Georgia and give them the tag number ... Ruth had been dead about eight years, and Stump and Peggy had already married and moved over to Atlanta, so it must have been around nineteen fifty-five or 'fifty-six.

"The next day, Grady took Idgie and Big George over to Georgia, and Sipsey went with them; nobody could talk her out of going. But Idgie wouldn't let anybody else go with her, so we all had to stay home and wait.

"Grady tried to keep it quiet. Nobody in town talked about it if they knew ... Dot Weems knew, but she never printed anything in the paper.

"I remember the week of the trial, Albert and I went over to Troutville to be with Onzell, who was terrified because she knew if Big George was found guilty of killing a white man, he'd wind up in the electric chair, just like Mr. Pinto."

Just then, Geneene, the nurse, came in and sat down to have a cigarette and relax.

Mrs. Threadgoode said, "Oh Geneene, this is my friend Evelyn, the one I told you about who's having such a bad menapause."

"How do you do."

"Hello."

Then Mrs. Threadgoode went on and on to Geneene about how pretty she thought Evelyn was and didn't Geneene think that Evelyn should sell Mary Kay cosmetics?

Evelyn was hoping that Geneene would leave so Mrs. Threadgoode would finish her story, but she never did. And when Ed came to get her, she was frustrated because now she would have to wait a whole week to hear how the trial came out. As she left, Evelyn said, "Don't forget where you left off."

Mrs. Threadgoode looked at her blankly. "Left off? You mean about Mary Kay?"

"No. About the trial."

"Oh yes. Oh, that was something, all right ..."

JULY 24, 1955.

It was just before a thunderstorm; the air in the courtroom was hot and thick.

Idgie turned and looked around the courtroom, the sweat running down her back. Her lawyer, Ralph Root, a friend of Grady's, loosened his tie and tried to get a breath of air.