Mary-Martha “Mary” Pickens lived in a little house off the four-lane on one of the smallest, yet highest yielding pecan orchards in all of Julep. She attributed her success in farming to the love and care she gave to her trees. “Nobody loves their trees like me. That’s why they got such big nuts.” Mary even had a name for each tree on her property and every morning after her black coffee and Pall Mall cigarette she would visit each one and encourage their growth and production. “Squeeze out some big ones for me boys, I know you can do it.”
After Mary’s morning walks of encouragement she would often stop and sit by a little puddle that would randomly form in her backyard. The area was known for natural springs and this must have been one of those. “Some days it’s there and some days it ain’t...and I really do miss it when it ain’t”. She decided to contain the wild spring and set to work sinking cinder blocks and bricks as deep as she could around the mud perimeter of the puddle. Sure enough, after time she had herself a proper little pond where she could smoke cigarettes all hours of the day and contemplate the next fall’s pecan harvest.
Mary started to invite her friends over to relax by the pond but they never stayed that long. Partly because all Mary wanted to talk about was pecans but partly because of a strange smell that would waft in and out of her property. “That’s the smell of them trees making them sweet nuts.” Mary actually assumed it was the occasional drift of stench from the pulp mills down south but did everything she could to work her trees into conversation. When the winds in Julep were strong enough pulp mill air would float over the piedmont and inundate the city. But Mary didn’t know for sure. She had smoked so many cigarettes she had no sense of smell whatsoever.
Since nobody wanted to sit with Mary she looked into securing a more captive audience. “Ima get me some of them big Japan goldfish.” She ordered three giant Koi from a magazine and dumped them in the pond. “Larry, Curly, and Ralph.” She fell immediately in love with these magnificent creatures. They filled a void somewhere in between pecan trees and humans that she had been searching for her entire life. “They don’t talk back like the trees, but they still move around a bit like people do so you know they’re alive...it’s a cake and eat it too situation for me.”
In three days Larry, Curly, and Ralph were dead. Mary was not the emotional type. She figured the fish just weren’t meant to live in the south. “They ain’t from around here.” She decided to get some locals instead and bought three live catfish and threw them in the pond. “Larry II, Curly II, and Frank.” They weren’t as pretty as the Koi but she loved them all the same. The next morning Larry II and Curly II were dead as could be and poor Frank was quickly on his way.
Not knowing what to do with a sick catfish she panicked, picked up Frank, threw him in her bathtub, and turned on the water...but nothing came out. She tried her kitchen sink. Still nothing. Frank was on death's door. His whiskers lay limp. Mary didn’t know what else to do and threw him in the toilet and called the vet. “Vet says he can’t do nothing for a catfish in a commode.”
As Frank started to make is departure from this world Mary called a plumber to come and fix her pipes. “Catfish or not I can’t let one of the Lord’s creatures die in a commode.” Come to find out that pond in Mary’s backyard wasn’t a pond at all. 30 years of washing pecan shells down the drain and destroyed her septic system. “I thought they was paper shells on my nuts.”
Luckily, Frank made a full recovery and spends his summers in a new pond Mary was able to finagle the insurance company into covering. Mary even gets visitors that stay for more than ten minutes at a time. “Everything will be fine as long as I don’t put no pecans down the drain again...funny thing is I give my trees the same amount of love...but my nuts sure ain’t as big as they used to be.”