Memphis Read online

  Contents

  Music Muse

  1. Little Debbies & Virginia Slims

  2. Bless His Heart

  3. Goodness Gracious

  4. Heaven Help Me

  5. Oh My Stars

  6. Have Mercy

  7. Sweet Southern Mess

  8. Drama Llama

  9. Madder Than A Wet Hen

  10. Holy Guacamole

  11. I Hope She’s Ready

  12. Jesus Take The Wheel

  13. Give Me Strength

  14. Chin Up Buttercup

  15. Will Wonders Never Cease

  16. Mud and Mascara

  17. Doggonit, I Reckon I Am

  18. Damn Happy

  19. Jesus Don’t Like Ugly

  20. Ain’t Never Gonna Happen

  21. That Sounds Mighty Good To Me

  22. Shame On Me

  23. Kiss My Grits

  24. Goodbye and Good Riddance

  25. How We Roll

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Books by Kelly A Walker

  Books By Riley Walker

  First Edition, 2019

  Copyright ©2018 by Kelly A Walker

  Editor: Erica Collins, EDC Editing

  Cover Designer: Lizzie Dunlap at Pixie Covers

  Formatting: Kaila Duff at Duffette Literary Services

  ISBN: 978-0-359-49653-2

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Thank you for respecting the work of Kelly A Walker. Don’t be a jerk.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Save a horse, find a harem.

  Me: Who should I dedicate this book to?

  My Kid: Who helped you write it?

  Me: Nobody.

  My Kid: There you go.

  Kelly Clarkson - Stronger

  Shinedown - Get Up

  Imagine Dragons - Thunder

  Nelly Furtado - I’m Like A Bird

  Hootie & The Blowfish - Hold My Hand

  Blues Travelers - Hook

  Kelly Clarkson - Piece By Piece

  Lionel Richie - Say You, Say Me

  Queen - Somebody To Love

  Shinedown - State Of My Head

  Justin Timberlake - Can’t Stop The Feeling

  Marc Cohn - Walking In Memphis

  Big Head Todd & The Monsters - Boom Boom

  Outkast - Hey Ya!

  Seether - Broken

  Alanis Morissette - All I Really Want

  Matchbox Twenty - If You’re Gone

  Green Day - Wake Me Up When September Ends

  Daughtry - Feels Like Tonight

  The Cure - Friday I’m In Love

  The Wallflowers - One Headlight

  Maroon 5 - Sugar

  Barrett Baber - I’d Just Love To Lay You Down

  Pink - Try

  Train - Drops Of Jupiter

  Dixie Chicks - Landslide

  Brad Paisley - Mud On The Tires

  Five For Fighting - Superman

  Reba McEntire - I’m Gonna Take That Mountain

  Today I discovered two things about my momma. One, she didn’t name me Memphis because of her love for Elvis like I always thought. Two, momma had been keeping a secret from me for my entire twenty-four years of life.

  She knew who my father was.

  Unfortunately, momma didn't just suddenly gain a conscience and reveal this very important information. Instead of hearing it straight from her mouth, I was hearing it from her lawyer that handled her last will and testament. Make that three things I didn’t know about my momma. I had no idea she had a will, much less an attorney who took care of it for her.

  Why am I learning this vital information from an attorney I’ve never met you ask? Well, my momma, God rest her soul, loved three things in this world: me, Little Debbie snack cakes, and her Virginia Slims. Last week she ran out of her beloved Virginia Slims and decided that not only couldn’t she wait until morning to go buy more, but she had a sudden urge for a Fudge Round. The back fence of our small house in Green Bay, Wisconsin, backed up to a 24-hour convenience store. So instead of driving, she decided to go through the small opening in our back fence, and walk through the store’s back parking lot. The problem was, this particular store received its weekly merchandise shipments that same night and because the driver knew houses were behind the store and was a nice older man, he cut his lights off as not to shine them in people's homes. His niceness and my momma’s inability to pay attention to anything around her was the final straw that night. One of the eyewitnesses said she looked like an angel in her white shirt, white pants and dark hair, being shined on by the lights of the store’s massive sign when she flew into the air. The doctor at the hospital told me she died instantly, never felt anything. I hope that is true, because no matter how mad and betrayed I feel at this moment, she was still my momma. My best friend, confidant, biggest cheerleader, and until today, my only family. That last part isn’t true anymore.

  I have a father.

  I mean, I knew I had a father. If God was going to choose anyone for the next immaculate conception, it definitely wasn’t going to be her. She was a great person, but a saint like the Virgin Mary? Yeah. That would be a big fat NO.

  Bless her heart.

  I used to ask Momma twice a year who my father was, my birthday and Christmas. I figured if she was asking what I wanted on those two particular occasions, she had to answer. I gave up asking on my sixteenth birthday. “Enough is enough, Memphis,” she told me. I guessed if this woman who gave birth to me, and raised me all by herself didn’t want to tell me, there had to be a good reason. I may have given up asking her, but I never stopped thinking about him. Was he a drug dealer? Undercover FBI agent? The President of the United States? Was he Vladimir Putin? I have an active imagination. It’s probably why I studied English at college. I figured the old saying about those who can’t, teach, applied to me. Since I couldn’t make myself attempt to send out, or self publish, any of the books I’d written over the years, I’d teach others how to write. Just because I’m teaching my students to write their alphabet didn’t mean anything. I was still teaching them to write something.

  Back to my current predicament. Mr. Carr, Momma’s attorney, is handing me a letter written by her a few years ago. I clutch the letter tight to my chest and wonder how long this meeting will last before I can get home and rip it open.

  “Memphis, your mother was very specific with me. She said everything you ever needed or wanted to know about,” Mr. Carr pulls his glasses down from the top of his head to his nose so he can read His name, “Arthur Peterson, is in that letter. She wouldn’t give me specifics, but I got the feeling that she was hiding from him so please, Memphis, be careful before you decide to look him up.”

  I shake Mr. Carr’s hand and then rush home as fast as my old 1971 Volkswagen Beetle convertible will get me there. By the time I’ve made it, my nerves are shot and I feel like throwing up. Placing the envelope with my name in Momma’s chicken scratch on the worn out coffee table, I sit back and stare at it. I know as soon as I open it, my life will never be the same. Sure, I will still be quirky Memphis, the kindergarten teacher with pink hair and a nose ring, teaching in Wisconsin, but everything I know will change. I’ll know who He is. I will also know why Momma refused to utter anything to do with him out loud, and why she only felt like she could tell me in a letter she entrusted to an attorney, I knew not
hing about.

  I got up, walked up and down the hall a few times, made myself a cup of coffee, drank the coffee, ran to the bathroom to pee, then started the cycle all over again. After the third cup of coffee, my stomach started to hurt so I made a turkey sandwich and ate it standing over the sink. The entire time my eyes were laser focused on the letter. I groaned at myself. “Don’t be a chicken, Memphis. It’s a letter. Nothing more, nothing less. There is nothing in that envelope that can jump out and bite you. So it has His name in it. So what? Open it, read it, then burn that thing.” I began to laugh. I’m staring at a letter and talking to myself now. I have officially lost my mind. I take a deep breath and stomp over to the coffee table, snatching the letter up and tear into the envelope like it was a winning lottery ticket waiting to be opened. My hands begin to shake when I see her handwriting. My momma was gone and this would be the last thing I would ever receive from her. I close the letter without reading a single word and I cry.

  I cry for the mother I had lost. I cried for the loneliness I felt without her. I cried for the wedding she would never see me in, the grandkids she would never know. I cried for the girl she had broken when she continually denied her any information on a man she knew I was desperate to know about. I cried for myself. I cried for her.

  I just cried.

  After an hour I sit up, wipe my eyes and snotty nose on my sleeve, give myself a big, full body shake, and take a deep breath. Enough of this mess. There was a reason why she waited and it was time to start acting like the adult I was. I pick the letter up from the where it had landed on the couch during my crying fit, slowly unfold the pages once again, and I read.

  My dearest Memphis,

  I'm sure this letter and the information inside will come as a shock to you. Year after year you would ask about him. I couldn't bring myself to tell you the story, afraid of how you would look at me afterwards. I know you, so I'm sure all thoughts of who and what he is has crossed your mind. Let me start by putting your mind at ease. Your father is not Vladimir Putin or any crazy mob boss. He is someone important, but not in a bad way.

  I met Arthur the summer before I turned eighteen. At that time we were still living in Memphis. Your grandfather, my dad, had passed away a few months earlier and Mom and I were still trying to find our footing. My parents hadn't planned for this, no money put back for funerals, much less for Mom and I to survive after the only breadwinner in the family left us. Mom finally found a job at a dentist office answering the phone but the pay wasn't much, so that left me getting a summer job to help make ends meet. By this time, we were struggling to keep the only home I had ever known, and enough food in the house for us not to starve. I got a job at the local amusement park as a ticket taker and later at one of the concession stands. That's where I met your father.

  I had just gone on break and was leaving the stand with a giant lemonade in my hand. I guess I wasn't looking at where I was going and ran straight into him, dumping my drink all over the both of us. I was petrified, afraid that I would get fired, but he just started laughing and told me thank you. He said he was so hot walking around the park, that a cold lemonade bath was exactly what he needed. Thankfully I didn't get fired that day, and your father hung around, and very quickly became part of my daily routine.

  Some days he would pick me up and take me to work, other days he would pick me up and we would just drive for hours. He made sure that we saw each other every day, no matter if it was for a few minutes or the entire day if I wasn't working. He was always a perfect gentleman and even had your grandmother eating out of his hands. I swear that man could woo (yes, I just said woo) any female. It wasn't something he tried to do, he just had this way about him. It was no wonder I fell for him so hard and so fast. He was my sun and I bathed in his light.

  Arthur was a year older than me and while I was headed back to school to finish my senior year, he was leaving for the Army. He wanted to make it work with us. He told me no matter how far away we were, I would always be his, and he mine. The night before he left, I gave him the only thing I could, the one thing I could never give another. A month later I found out I was pregnant with you.

  Your father and I wrote all the time while he was at boot camp in Texas. I didn't want to tell him about being pregnant through a letter, so I waited until he was able to come home. I knew the date, heck I had it circled about thirty times on a little calendar I had hanging in my room. The day came and I waited at the airport gate. It wasn't like it is now. Back then we could go to the gates and drop off or wait for people to get on and off the plane.

  I watched the plane land and all of the people start to walk off, but I never did see Arthur. Maybe he was in the back of the plane or was letting everyone else off? That would have been something he would do, wait until all the other passengers got off before he attempted to move. After everyone exited the plane I still sat there waiting for him. Even after the stewardess closed the door to the plane, I still sat there waiting. I knew he wasn't going to walk through that door, but I couldn't make myself get up and leave.

  I was crushed Memphis. I didn't know if something had happened to him or if he had just given up on us and couldn't bring himself to tell me to my face that we were over. It took another week before I received his letter. It would be the last thing I ever got from him. Of course, after that, I didn't want anything else from him anyway. He told me that his parents had come down a week early to do some sightseeing in Texas and they had brought Rachel Long with them. I knew immediately who she was, an ex-girlfriend of his. He told me all about her, how they had broken up before summer started because she was angry at him for wanting to join the Army. She sounded like a spoiled brat and he was happy to see her go.

  I guess he changed his mind when he saw her again. You see, your father came from a very wealthy family. They were farmers with more acres than they could probably count. Rachel came from another wealthy and influential farming family. They had grown up together and their parents always had plans to see the two of them eventually get married. I don't know what changed in the week he saw her. I always wondered if it was something she did or was it his parents. Arthur was always doing whatever he could to please them until I came along. They definitely weren't happy with me, but for some reason, he didn't care, and he refused to let me go. Until that week.

  I never did write your father back. Because of my pregnancy and school, I couldn't find another job after school started. Unfortunately, the amusement park closed for the season and my lost income hit Mom and me hard. She decided that the both of us needed a new start, so the weekend before I was supposed to start school, we packed everything that mattered to us in the back of our old Buick and started our journey. Your grandfather was a huge football fan, so Mom decided if we were doing this without him, we could at least go where we knew he would have been happy. Green Bay was the easy choice, and that's how we ended up here. The desperation of two lonely women, and the love of a game by the only man to ever truly love and care for us. It's actually funny once you think about it.

  Once we got settled into our new home, I decided not to finish school and got my GED instead. Mom got a job at another dentist office, this time as an assistant making enough money to pay for our small apartment and buy diapers, milk, and clothes for you. We didn't have much, but we were so happy Memphis. The first year of your life was one of my happiest, even though we were alone and I still missed your father desperately, we had more love and laughter than should be legal. The month after your first birthday I came home from work at the grocery store to find you in your crib we kept in the living room crying and my mom in her bed. The men in the ambulance that responded to my call said she had been gone for hours. A heart attack that took her in a matter of seconds. In less than two years I lost my dad, my lover, and my mom. I didn't think I could do it, Memphis. I didn't think I'd be strong enough to get back up and take care of us, but one look at your beautiful, innocent, blue eyes was enough to make me want to get up. You were th
e reason I had to get up every day and put one foot in front of the other.

  I never did date after Arthur. I had plenty of opportunities, but I made the decision that you were enough and I didn't need or want anyone or anything to take a second of my attention from you away. I know my aversion to men had to have an effect on you. You never have been one to let any guy into your heart and for that I am sorry.

  There are two things I need from you, Memphis, my beautiful baby girl that gave me more love than I could ever deserve. I want you to break down the walls you have built around your heart. Find love, Memphis. Find it, grab hold of it, and don't you dare let it go. Fight for it, Memphis. If anyone deserves to find their happy ending, it's you baby. Secondly, I want you to find your father. Yeah, I can't believe I'm actually saying that either, but it's important Memphis. You deserve to know him. You don't have to have a relationship with him, but you need to be the one to make that decision. Don't let my feelings or the way he ended things with me be your guide. Use your heart and all those smarts you inherited from me (stop laughing at that...) and make your own choice. Believe it or not, knowing that you made a connection with him would make me very happy. I was just too proud, too stubborn, and maybe too afraid of losing you to him, to tell you the truth all these years.

  I am so sorry, Memphis. I know you must hate me right now, but know that every choice, right or wrong I made, I did it for you. I love you with all that I am, Memphis. You were the one thing I did right. You are a beautiful woman, baby. Go live a beautiful life. I will miss you every second of every day.