Chapter 10: Fish Fry on Bolton Street

I didn't tell my aunt.

My aunt found out anyway, because Tammy's mother goes to her church.

Saturday morning she called me at six-thirty.

"You're coming to Bolton Street tonight," she said. "Six o'clock. Bring the husband."

"What's at six o'clock?"

"Fish."

She hung up.

Bolton Street is two blocks of little wood houses on the east side, most of them older than anybody living in them.

Half of them still had blue tarps on from last October. My aunt's had two.

When we turned the corner, the whole street was blocked off with sawhorses.

Folding tables ran down the middle of the road. Somebody had strung light bulbs between the porches.

Three big fryers were going in a driveway. The smell of hot oil and cornmeal hit us half a block away.

There had to be a hundred people.

"Neely," Thatcher said slowly. "Is this for us?"

"I don't know."

My aunt came down her porch steps in her church dress and an apron. She's five feet tall and she has never once asked permission.

She went straight past me to Thatcher.

She looked him up and down.

"You're the clerk," she said.

"Yes, ma'am."

"You married my niece on a Tuesday with a ring out of a dish."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Hm." She looked at his hands. "You can fry fish?"

"My father taught me."

"Then get over there. That deacon is burning the whiting."

Thatcher went.

My aunt hooked her arm through mine.

"He'll do," she said.

"You barely talked to him."

"I watched him on that video your cousin sent me. He kept his hand on your back the whole time those people were screaming. That was plenty."

Tammy found me by the coleslaw an hour later.

"Your husband," she said, "has been frying for an hour and he hasn't burned a single piece."

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