Southern Hospitality
Chapter one
June Gloom
It was a swelteringly hot summer day when her life ended, when her father had ruined her life and now she was stuck in the very last place she wanted to be. She was in a car, on a beautiful day going to somewhere else, leaving her friends behind forever on a beautiful day. One of those days meant for staying outdoors by the water but as far as one sixteen year-old life couldn't be worse. Moving across the world to a foreign country in the hottest season of the year and now she had sunburn marring her ecru complexion with redness and puffery. It itched terribly and she had to fight the urge tear at her skin and make it hurt even worse than it already did. She sighed and shifted restlessly in her seat and moaned softly.
Christine Daaè felt miserable as she stared out the window of her father's car. The American sky was bluer than any stone and the grass as golden as though it were spun by fairies everything was silent save for the rumble of the new Mercedes as is swept ghost–like and graceful across the grain. In other scenario this may have been just the typical family on an outing in the country but for a sixteen-year girl it was a living nightmare. She was hot and sticky and out of soda her bookmark fallen out of her book a while ago so she did not even bother trying to find her place.
She was tired of reading anyway, had finished her book hours ago and was feeling too hot and lazy to get another one from her bag had begun to reread it. Her sister's head flopped on her shoulder and she snored loudly. Christine smirked softly, at her twin who always prided herself on being a tomboy and even slept like one. Christine sighed, not that she minded her sister needing a nap on this ride but she was just too hot and sticky to tolerate the light pressure on her shoulder and she nudged her off.
Her only form of entertainment now was to stare out the window at the plains and the songs had so famed it for. Outside the town of Zazzuh Alabama whizzed past them and a 'Welcome to…' sign blurred through her vision. It sported a corny yellow sun that was all grins and joy. It made Christine want to throw up she hated fluffy nonsense and thought the whole sign to be a serious overstatement. From the smiley sun to the perfect green tree under a cloudless sky…Welcome indeed. This place looked like the sort of humdrum enclave she'd seen on little house on the prairie or worse like the eerie kind of place where crop circles sprout. She half-expected aliens to sprout out of the ground and swallow them whole like in bad Sci-Fi flicks or something like that.
She watched the sky, so blue and shiny and couldn't help but feel a loss of the things she had left back in her beloved France when her father in one of his mid-life crisis moods had decided to pack up and move it across the world. To make matters worse he had been singing High School Musical for the last two hours at the top of his voice. This was the one musical she couldn't stand Christine did not understand the fascination with it; she preferred the darker and the tragic stories like the Phantom of the Opera and Sweeney Todd. Not that fluffy stuff about the same old story with the handsome boy meeting the girl and living happy ever after.
Amidst the sounds of snores and the chatter in the car the sound of a teen heartthrob singing came muffled from the iPod on the seat between them dangling from white earbuds. Her sister Hannah had been listening to Justin Bieber repeat the word baby 547 times, (yes she counted that's how bored she was), mom was reading from the new testament preaching like some sister of the faith (Christine had often said she'd been happier as a nun) and to make it even better her iPod had died and now she was feeling carsick from claustrophobia …
Thunk!
The car jerked forward and Hannah bolted awake muttering some incoherent gibberish and the car made a horrible hissing sound. Hannah mumbled something like 'daddy' and Gustave turned to them with worried eyes and reached back to give them a reassuring one-armed hug as he turned the ignition off. Hannah's cocoa eyes were wide with fear but Christine's were slits of annoyance. This meant an even longer stay in the middle of bum-frick nowhere. Her father swung himself out of the car quickly and yanked open their doors quickly, checking them for injuries.
"You two okay?" he asked.
"Yes daddy." Hannah replied.
"What was that?" Christine asked.
"Looks like a flat…" her father said.
"Great!" Christine snapped, "We're stuck in the middle of nowhere no not nowhere hell-where with a flat tire…my iPods dead and my clothes are all sticky and gross."
Her father shook his head, "well we made it half-way to our address at least."
"Half-way," Christine echoed with sarcastic joy, "Whoopdy-stinkin'-doo."
"Aww Chrissie," her sister chimed in, "buck up where's your sense of adventure?"
Christine took off her sandal and threw it at Hannah's head, clocking her spot-on. Her twin glowered at her and threw it back. Her father laughed," All right you two, settle down. Hannah-banana would you help daddy with this?"
"Sure thing Pops!"
Christine rolled her eyes, "What are you four?" Hannah stuck her tongue out.
"Chrissie, stop heckling your sister, the lord won't approve." Her mother said.
Christine groaned, "I swear I'm going to have 'the lord won't approve' put on your damn gravestone."
Her mother cast her eyes down, "I will pray for you child."
He took out his toolbox and searched through it for the right wrench and then merrily tooted the tune 'Whistle while you Work.' Christine cursed her father's optimism as he ratcheted the tire off all the way and wiped the smears of auto grease on his spotless handkerchief. Hannah laughed and climbed into help her dad like the monkey she was while whistling 'Mary had a little Lamb.' Her father always loved when things went wrong; felt it added a sense of adventure to his life. It was something Hannah loved and Christine hated she was all for dreaming and whatnot in fact she had been called absent minded by almost everyone she knew and was fine with the label but her father was a loon sometimes. A real loon!
"I'll just go over to this house and see if anyone has a spare. You know southern hospitality."
Christine groaned her father had been going on and on about so-called Southern Hospitality for weeks now and it was getting really annoying. She looked around at the area and felt her stomach heaving with the sheer boredom of it, the place looked like some kind of thing out of an old thirties movie. It gave Christine the creeps and the far off run down building marked Squelch's auto repair didn't put her mind at ease in the slightest. She heard Hannah pointing it out to her father and then her father walked toward the shop and Christine reached forward to grab his hand. He looked at it and beamed down at the teen kissing her knuckles. He nodded and released her hand assuming she wanted a hug and so he squeezed her so hard the joints in her back popped.
She winced and he let out a deep throaty and somehow musical laugh as he released her. His younger daughter couldn't help the smile that tugged at the edges of her mouth. Her father set her gently down on her feet and walked toward the Mom and Pop store in front of them with his boyish, slack-off gate. Her father always walked slowly, laziness to his posture that her mother found positively endearing and dad prided himself on.
He walked up the path whistling, 'Oh what a beautiful morning!' as he went causing Christine to roll her eyes. He banged on the door and a voice grunted in response and came to the door. The sight of the man made her blanch; he was huge and hunch-backed with a round bald head the size of a bowling ball. His steps were heavy, hulking and echoing amidst the silence as he dragged a dead-weight leg behind him like it weighed a ton. It made a type of scratching sound as it drug along the dirt. Her father seemed happy to see some prompt service.
"Hello." Her father said.
"Name's Squelch," He said, in a gravelly voice that reminded Christine of a villain in the Godfather, "J. Fabious Squelch."
Her father smiled politely, "Gustave." He said and shook the man's massive hand.
"What seems to be the trouble?"
"Oh we seem to have a flat."
"Oh no problem that happens all the time here, "he said, "It's the heat blows 'em right up, "he turned to the two girls, "Why don't you go inside and the Mrs. will freshen you three up while I get ta work."
They nodded and thanked the man going inside where a midget stood on a stool, beaming at them as she hopped off and ran to them. She shook her little head at their disheveled appearance, calling them 'poor darling's' before pulling them all into the flat above her shop. It was much lived in and small in the corner was a bassinet with a little baby in it as bulky as his father. The midget lifted him and kissed his massive bald head before placing him back in his crib after feeding him with a bottle. She pushed them gently one by one into the bathroom to shower and change their clothes. She fed them ham hocks and cornbread and strong lemonade too cool off.
It seemed hours before her father came back with Mr. Squelch and by then Christine had fallen asleep in a huge armchair that dwarfed her. Her head only reached the middle of the chair back and her legs were flung over the arm of the chair. She was snoring softly; barely audible as she drifted in that blackout state of sleep that some would call dead. Her mother was sitting on the edge of the chair petting her head and humming with a little smile on her face. Hannah was snoring too into one of the sofa cushions, a living-room blanket over her loosely.
Gustave kissed both their heads and Squelch smiled crookedly turning to her mother, "I'm sorry ma'am but your engine's blown you'll have to stay here tonight."
"Oh no, we couldn't." her father said.
"Sure ya can yer kids are already sleeping just lay down with them we'll fix it in the morning."
Gustave meant to protest but a yawn nearly tore him in two and he simply laid down with his wife on the floor when Mr. Squelch pushed him gently and then covered them up. No one knew anything else that night except that when the morning came they were in for many adventures yet to come…
For Hannah