Tales of the Jazz Age (Kid Haider's Adaptation)

The Jelly Bean

Jim Powell was a true Jelly-bean through and through. I can't sugarcoat it - he was lazy as they come, just lounging around in the land of the Jelly-beans below the Mason-Dixon line.

If you dare call a guy from Memphis a Jelly-bean, you might end up in a sticky situation. But a New Orleans fella? He'll just laugh it off and ask about your love life.

Now, the Jelly-bean patch where our main man comes from is a sleepy little city in southern Georgia. It's been dozing for ages, only waking up to mumble about some old war nobody remembers.

Jim was a Jelly-bean. I say that again because it just sounds so nice - like the start of a fairy tale. It makes me imagine Jim with a round, friendly face and all kinds of plants sprouting from his hat. But in reality, Jim was tall and skinny, hunched over pool tables, and what some might call a lazy bum up North. In the South, a Jelly-bean is someone who spends their days doing nothing but lounging around.

Jim was born in a white house on a green corner. It had four weather-beaten pillars in front and a lot of lattice-work in the back, which created a nice background for a sunny lawn full of flowers. The people who originally lived in the white house owned the land next door, and the land next to that, and the land next to that. But that was so long ago that even Jim's father barely remembered it. In fact, he didn't think it was important enough to tell little Jim when he was dying from a gunshot wound he got in a fight. Jim was only five years old and scared out of his mind. After his father passed, the white house became a boarding house run by a stern lady from Macon, who Jim called Aunt Mamie and absolutely hated.

When he turned fifteen, he started high school, rocked a messy black hairdo, and had a major fear of girls. Living with four women and an old man who never stopped talking about the Powell place and flowers drove him crazy. Sometimes, people mistook him for his mom and invited him to parties, but he was too shy and preferred hanging out in Tilly's Garage, playing dice or messing around with a straw. He made some cash doing odd jobs, which made him stop going to parties. At one party, a girl spilled the beans that he was just a grocery boy, so he ditched the dance floor for dice games and wild stories about local shootings.

He turned eighteen and then joined the military during the war. He spent a year polishing brass in the Charleston Navy Yard, then switched things up by heading North to polish brass in the Brooklyn Navy Yard for another year.

After the war ended, he returned home at twenty-one. His pants were too short and too tight, his shoes were long and narrow, and his tie was a wild mix of purple and pink. His eyes were a faded blue, like old cloth left out in the sun.

One April evening, as the gray twilight settled over the cotton fields and the town, he stood leaning against a fence, whistling and staring at the moon above Jackson Street. His mind was focused on a problem that had been bothering him for a while. The Jelly-bean had been invited to a party.

Back in the day when all the boys used to dislike all the girls, Clark Darrow and Jim sat next to each other in school. But while Jim's social ambitions faded away in the greasy air of the garage, Clark went through a series of ups and downs - falling in and out of love, going to college, struggling with alcohol, giving it up, and eventually becoming one of the most popular guys in town. Despite their different paths, Clark and Jim maintained a casual but definite friendship.

One afternoon, Clark's old Ford pulled up next to Jim on the sidewalk, and out of nowhere, Clark invited him to a party at the country club. The decision to extend the invitation was just as random as Jim's decision to accept. Perhaps it was a sense of boredom or a hint of excitement that led Jim to agree. Now, as he pondered over the invitation, Jim started to hum a tune and tapped his foot on a stone block on the sidewalk, causing it to wobble up and down in rhythm.