CHAPTER V: GETTING TO KNOW YOU - EARLENE

CHAPTER FIVE

GETTING TO KNOW YOU…EARLENE

EARLENE…

EARLENE MARIE…

EARLENE MARIE WILKES McLEMORE

A simple beginning. VERY simple.

Raised in a hardscrabble area of rural Mississippi just outside Natchez, Earlene's family had never had much to say the least. The seventh of eleven children, Earlene had helped out in the family farm (which was perhaps an overstatement) and went to school and church and everywhere else...in hand-me-downs. 

On those occasions when she was able to go into ‘the city’ as she called it, she was always almost overwhelmed by the large homes, the clothes worn by the kids she saw, the cars on the streets…and inside Earlene there was no doubt she CRAVED all that and more for herself. A vain hope it would have seemed to anyone who knew her…and probably did even to her were the truth to be told. But she dreamed. Big dreams...even if they seemed far beyond what someone like her ought to expect or even hope for.

Fortunately, Earlene was a really good student, and ambitious and because of that was able to land a place in the high school in Natchez, instead of the dreary and always underfunded country school nearer her home.

Earlene’s family didn’t have any money to give her for books and supplies, so she went scouting for a job and found one in the local variety store right near the school. 

One day, during her senior year in high school and also during a particularly violent thunderstorm, a young man came in…after losing his umbrella to a particularly nasty wind gust, and Earlene waited on him.

He was, to her mind, dashing and debonair…and JUST the kind of young man she knew in her heart she deserved. Fortunately, he was almost immediately a bit taken with her as well...and for weeks he would periodically find an excuse to visit the variety store. Earlene would of course always find an excuse to wait on him...even occasionally practically trampling one of the other salesgirls to do so.

Eventually, graduation loomed and Earlene feared that she would soon find herself without a job...AND, without any way to continue to see this young man...Clement McLemore. 

But as luck would have it, the store owner offered her a job through the summer and she eagerly accepted it. Even better, the job offer came with a raise sufficient to allow her to move from the family farm to the 'big city' and into a modest but comfortable room in a boarding house right near the store. 

Earlene was in 'hog heaven' as they say down on the farm. Permanently ensconced in her 'new life' as far as she was concerned...she kept on 'seeing' Clement and the relationship deepened. By the end of the summer and quite out of the blue, Clement proposed.

Clement was the answer to Earlene’s every prayer for as long as she could remember. He was handsome, and came from a family of ‘means’ and if it had come down to a choice, there is no question that Earlene would have chosen the 'means' over the looks.

Fortunately, in Clement, she didn’t have to. He was quite the 'catch' even in the looks department. 

The truth is, Earlene would have married the devil himself to escape the life she had been raised in. 

Course, and maybe needless to say, Clement's parents were somewhat less than thrilled at the choice of a mate by their 'lil precious', but he was adamant and they eventually gave  in (although his mama gave it her best shot almost right up to the wedding itself.)

It was a Christmas wedding, in Natchez, during Clement's freshman year at Ole Miss...and after a very brief honeymoon at a lovely old resort in Pascagoula, the couple returned to campus and began their new life together.

After four years spent majoring in finance, Clement graduated with honors and the couple returned to Natchez where he entered his fathers stockbrokerage and investment firm. In time and with his parents help, Clement and Earlene moved into a lovely and rather large old antebellum mansion. 

'Quaht thah step-up, mah deah,' Earlene silently mused to herself the day they moved in. 'OH MAH yes,' and she took to this new 'upgrade' in her life as if it was owed to her somehow...
&...
she NEVER looked back.

To this day, none of her family has ever seen where Earlene lives. They've never even been invited to. Truth be, she hasn't seen any of them for years...and further truth be told, she doesn't care to. 

From the time she left to go to school in Natchez, no one she knew in 'the city' ever saw her family home. Nor did they ever really know where she had come from. She kept all that strictly to herself, out of embarassment. This was her life now, she reasoned, and all that she had known before was in the past...and she intended to keep it that way.

Even Clement has never met his in-laws either. They weren't even invited to the wedding.

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Michael Beauregard McLemore was born about ten years into Clement and Earlene's marriage and after that she couldn't have any more children. Needless to say, he was spoiled to a fare-thee-well. 

'Mikey' to LiliBeth, 'Michael dearest' to his mama, and 'Beau' to his daddy, yes. He was indeed spoiled rotten...and yet in spite of that he seemed to emerge relatively unscathed by his mama's dotage. Or so it seemed...but things aren't always what they seem, now are they.

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            CONTINUE TO CHAPTER VI