No Laughing Matter

 We all smiled knowingly on the day when Tiny Billups vowed that he would marry Eliza Summerset. After all, we’d secretly harbored the same idea, we were all just smart enough not to say it out loud. Eliza was not only the prettiest girl in Wilson County, she was the banker’s daughter to boot. But when Tiny saw Eliza on the street he was so instantly smitten that he immediately knew there could be no other for him. He’d walked directly up to her, right there on Main Street, Tiny had, and laid it all out for her while the whole town watched; he told her his plans for the future, of his yearnings for a large family to care for through that future, and his desire that she be the one to share that future with him. 

Eliza had stood in the street that day and taken it. When Tiny was finished she laughed along with everyone else, but no one seemed to notice that she hadn’t been laughing while he was standing there before her, spilling out his heart, nor that her laugh afterwards had seemed half-hearted at best. “Eliza was out of his league,” they’d said, and “they“ weren’t altogether wrong, is what she remembered thinking at the time, yet somehow his earnestness had affected her.

Tiny Billups returned home from a tour of duty in Vietnam to nothing, and with nothing; nothing that is except 60 baked-clay acres of cotton that he‘d just floated on a 15% loan from Eliza’s daddy over at the Farmer’s Bank and Trust. Well, I say Tiny had nothing, but he had that land now and he had a plan along with it, and for a big man with the big dreams of Tiny Billups those two things were a “big-plenty” of things to have.

“They” laughed at Tiny again when he dammed Bledsoe Creek, flooding most of his newly acquired land to include the shack he was living in, leaving Tiny temporarily homeless on his flooded acreage. They laughed, but those who laughed hadn’t been there in “The Nam” with Tiny. They hadn’t seen the things Tiny had seen, nor learned the things he had learned, but they would, given time. Until they did, however, Tiny simply placed his tools and things beneath a tarp up on the ridge, set up his mosquito smudge under a hastily constructed lean-to, and settled in to spend the winter doing what Tiny loved doing the most… planning and building for tomorrow. You see, for a man like Tiny Billups tomorrow is like a square of dirt. Left alone, it will stay a square of dirt, but if loosened, fertilized, and seeded it has the potential for so much more!

By Christmas the locals who ventured out Tiny’s way saw the foundation for a home that was way too big for a single man living alone, even if that man was as large as Tiny Billups was, and more than that the house was being framed for two stories! When asked about the incredible and unnecessary size of the house being constructed, poor Tiny‘s face reddened bashfully. “The extra space is for our children, Eliza’s and mine.” He replied. “I plan on a passel of ’em.”

Back in town Eliza heard those rumors, along with tall tales that people who’d seen it said about the house. “Yes,“ they’d sip their coffee and say incredulously, “Tiny has sure enough flooded his land, but that boy is building the biggest, finest house you’ve ever seen up there on that ridge.” And then those people sipped their coffee and speculated on where Tiny could have gotten the money for such a fine house, and how one man could do all of that work all by himself?

Come Spring the banker felt the need to drive out for a check on his investment, certain from what was being whispered about town that those sixty acres would soon be his. Curiously to him (as she’d never asked to do such a thing before), Henry Summerset’s daughter asked to ride along, providing the banker with a prideful thrill that his freshman daughter at Ole Miss might be interested in learning the family business. Perhaps she would decide to follow in her Old Man’s footsteps when her schooling was done? Wouldn’t that be a wonderful development, to have her working forever right alongside him?

The house was well underway when the pair arrived, being recently roofed and sided. It was every bit as large as both Henry and Eliza Summerset had heard it was, but more than that, it was lovely. The house boasted Victorian flavored architecture that was unusual for these parts, what with it’s cedar shake siding, it’s many working windows, and it’s wide, wrap around porch all elegantly gingerbread-trimmed. The house was a marvel, being built where it was, and seemingly by this one man alone. Tiny took them on a tour, showing the curious pair where the spacious kitchen would be, hurrying them past the large master bedroom with it’s adjoining bath, and lingering with them in the upstairs nursery, allowing his dreams time to wend their ways into Eliza’s head.

Eliza stayed strangely quiet as they made their way through, but not her father. “Why, this is all extraordinary young man, but however do you plan to pay for it, what with your land being flooded? You know that I am fully aware of your financial situation. I know that you have no means with which to pay back your loans. All of this will soon belong to the bank if you don’t stop this house building nonsense, plant some cotton, and make those fields pay!”

But Tiny only smiled. “All of that is being taken care of, Mr. Summerset. I could hardly expect Eliza to want me if I had nothing to offer her, could I?”

”Ah, yes. I remember! Your boast in the street. So, you have built all of this for Eliza, have you? Do you really believe that a girl like Eliza would marry the likes of you? Allow me to answer that question for her with an unequivicable no! But I will tell you this, when the bank does take your land, as it certainly will, perhaps I will move out here myself, so that Eliza might profit from your hard work after all!” With that said, the older man turned on his heel and walked indignantly out to his car.

”Thank you for coming out, Eliza. Seeing you here has given me extra motivation to get the house completed, as if I needed any extra.”

”It’s a lovely house, Mr. Billups. Any woman would be proud to live here.”

”Thank you, but please call me Tiny.“ His face reddened as he said it. “Everyone else does.”

”No, Mr. Billups. Lying is one thing I will never do.”

Eliza was already walking away when Tiny asked if he could come to call on her when the house was finished, so he could not be certain if she’d heard him or not?

I can say with certainty, being one of them, that no one in Wilson County was laughing through that summer’s drought as their cotton withered on its stalks, but over on the ridge Tiny Billup’s rice was waving tall, lush, and lovely across his flooded sections. It seems that the red, Mississippi clay was perfect for soaking up and holding in the water that the rice grains loved, and the Southern heat and humidity were not so different from that in Southeast Asia where the seed stock had been procured, providing a perfect host for this new kind of crop.

And during that long hot summer, Banker Summerset was not laughing either. It’s hard to laugh when your bank’s soul income is being derived from the county’s laughing-stock and his hair-brained scheme.

And there was certainly no one laughing that fall when the whole county came out to witness Timothy and Eliza Billups saying their “I do’s”. And no one was laughing either when the wedding party broke up early so that the happy couple could begin work on the large family that Tiny had in mind. After all, as Tiny always said, “the future will not build itself.”

Well, I say there was no laughter, but anyone still around when that work began might have heard a few giggles, but let’s leave that part of Tiny’s story to the newlyweds.