Read Online Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man: A Novel by Fannie Flagg - Free Book Online

them. It was true because we saw Sheila Ray on the beach all day digging up holes and crying.
    Daddy said Sheila Ray was Al the Drummer’s fiancée. Momma doesn’t believe him. She thinks Daddy likes her. The only peace and quiet I can get is under the house.
    Sometimes Momma forgets to put that white stuff on my face, but not often.
    They are setting up the carnival across the street. I went over there and met a man named Mr. Kowboski, a Polish Gypsy. He said his wife and children are coming down in a week and I will have someone to play with. They will be Yankee children, but I am not going to let that stop me.
    I haven’t been doing much. I have been digging my tunnels under the malt shop every day. I have about sixteen tunnels dug and I’ve been going on the fishing pier. I kick the fish back in the water. People ought not to catch fish they are not going to eat.
    I go every morning and every afternoon. George Potlow, the man who runs the pier, gives me a cold drink for free.
    We don’t have Mattie Mae as a dishwasher anymore. She got into a fight with another girl over her boyfriend, Jerry, and was bitten in the face. Her head swelled up like a poisoned dog’s. Daddy and I went to Beulah Heights to see her.
    Peachy Wigham had the Elite Nightspot lit up with blue Christmas lights. She told us that she had another colored woman who didn’t have a boyfriend that would be a good dishwasher. Peachy said Mattie Mae was crazy about that Jerry and wouldn’t be any good for nothing now that he was back from Korea.
    The new dishwasher is a little old skinny woman named Velveeta Pritchard. She is the blackest woman I ever saw, so black she looks blue, which is a sign of royalty among Mississippi colored people.
    They hate albinos with a passion, which I don’t think is fair. I still am dying to see a real albino in person. I asked Velveeta if there was one living up there in Beulah Heights and she said no, there wasn’t and it was just a story someone made up. But I think she was lying. I just know there is an albino up there. I can feel it in my bones.
    Velveeta has only worked for us a little while and she hates Daddy already. Momma is crazy about Velveeta and they talk and talk all day. Momma won’t let me say “jig time” anymore. I don’t like Velveeta at all. She is a one-woman person and will take Momma’s side against anybody.
    One of Momma’s gold loop earrings got stuck in my nose and she ran in there and told her as fast as she could. She finds all Daddy’s hiding places for liquor and runs and tells Momma. She Knows she won’t get fired because Momma thinks she is wooonnnderfullll!!!!
    Hank is having a terrible problem with women. They won’t leave him alone. He’s too sweet to say no. There is this one girl who is after him all the time, Tommie Jo Harris. Her daddy owns a truck stop four miles up the road and she hangs around here day and night.
    Mrs. Dot said that her heart is just like the moon, there is always a man in it. Tommie Jo is a real wild girl and every local boy is crazy to get her to go out with them. They like her because she is so mean. She drives a convertible and goes everyplace by herself. Mrs. Dot believes everybody wants to catch her and tame her, which seems silly to me if what they like about her in the first place is that she is wild.
    The story I like about Tommie Jo is the one where she went out with this guy that thought he was a big deal with the women, a lady-killer in Mrs. Dot’s term. Well, he got her into a car and tried to sweet-talk her, not caring a thing in the world about her but just trying to win a bet he had made with the other guys that he could kiss her. And then she took her knee and pushed in the cigarette lighter and at the very moment he thought he had won the bet, she stuck the lighter on the end of his nose. She took the wind out of his sails! Now he doesn’t dare show his face too much and he sure doesn’t play with the emotions of any other young