Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg Read Free Book Online

little babies and sing to them all nightlong, sometimes two at a time, and just pine away for one of her own.
    “Then, one afternoon in November, right around Thanksgiving—Momma said it was freezing cold outside and all the trees were bare—Sipsey was upstairs making the beds, when a friend of hers from the colored church came in the backyard, hollering up to her. Her friend was all excited and told her that there was a girl from Birmingham down at the train station that was giving away a baby. And she said to hurry up ‘cause the train was fixin’ to leave.
    “With that, Sipsey ran downstairs as fast as she could with nothing on but a thin dress and her apron. When she ran through the back door, Momma Threadgoode said she yelled at her to put her coat on, but she called back, ‘I don’ have time, Miz Threadgoode. I got to go get me that baby,’ and was gone in a flash. Momma stood on the back porch and waited, and pretty soon she saw the train pull away, and here came Sipsey, grinning from ear to ear, her legs all scratched and bleeding from running through the briars, carrying the fattest, blackest little baby boy, all wrapped up in a towel that said HOTEL DIXIE, MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE . Sipsey said that gal had been on her way back home and had told Sipsey she didn’t dare show up with a baby, ’cause her husband had been in jail for three years.
    “So we never did know the baby’s real name. Sipsey said since he came off the train, she would just call him George Pullman Peavey, after the man that invented the pullman car. But whoever his real daddy was, he must have been a big man, because George grew up to be a six-foot-four, two-hundred-fifty-pounder.
    “When he was a little boy, Poppa took him over to the store and taught him how to be a butcher. He was slaughtering hogs when he was only ten, and Sipsey was so proud of him … she couldn’t have loved him any more if he had been her very own. She used to hug him and she would say, ‘Honey, just ’cause we ain’t no kin don’ mean you don’ belong to me.’
    “And later, when Big George was on trial, she dressed up and went to that courtroom, come rain or come shine … shemust have been close to ninety years old. Course, you can never really tell how old colored people are.
    “She was always singing her gospel songs … ‘In the Baggage Car Ahead,’ and ‘I’m Going Home on the Morning Train’ … always singing about trains. The night before she died, she told George that she had a dream where she saw Jesus all dressed in white. He was the conductor of a ghost train and he was coming to get her and take her to heaven.
    “But I would venture to say she was still cooking over at the cafe well up into her eighties. That’s the reason most people came, because of her cooking. It sure wasn’t for the look of the place. When Idgie and Ruth bought it, it wasn’t nothing more but one big old room. It sat just across the street from the railroad tracks, down from the post office, where Dot Weems worked.
    “I remember the day they moved in the cafe. We were all down there helping, and Sipsey was busy sweeping the floor when she noticed that Ruth was hanging her picture of the Last Supper. Sipsey stopped sweeping and studied that picture for a while, and then she asked, ‘Miz Ruth, who’s that sitting up there at the table with Mr. Jesus?’
    “Ruth, who was trying to be sweet, said, ‘Why, Sipsey, that’s Mr. Jesus and the Brethren.’ Sipsey looked back at her and she said, ‘Oh. Uh-huh. I thought Miz Mary just had the one boy,’ and went on sweeping. We ‘bout died laughing. Sipsey knew exactly who that was in the picture. She just liked to play with people.
    “Julian and Cleo had built four wooden booths and built the room in the back, so Idgie and Ruth would have a place to live. The cafe part had walls that were knotty Georgia pine, and the floor was just plain old wood.
    “Ruth tried to fix the place up. She put a picture of a