If you’re new here, you may be wondering right about now… What’s the deal with, The Cooler?
Let us catch you up to date-
We were at a Carnival in Muscle Shoals, AL. Grace had just spent an ungodly amount of money on bracelets, and the gang was about to watch a mini-boat race when MJ got a call from Hank…
When they got outside, Grace swallowed the air like she’d just popped out from under a fuzzy pink fever dream diving lesson. Beau looked at the times for the next boat race. MJ answered a text from Hank — another abandoned cooler he wanted them to check out. Grace put on her poker face. The one she could only muster once, maybe twice a year.
In the very early days, Hank may or may not have been real. But his cooler definitely was. MJ was babysitting it when Grace called on him and Beau (beet) for help running errands. One pink sofa, a burned-out clutch, and several green smoothies later, a legend was born—and I’m not just talking about Grace’s atelier. They thought they were just running errands, but they were starting something. Hank's cooler (contents always questionable) hasn't left their side... mostly.
She pointed toward the frilliest, laciest, pinkest building in three counties — a Victorian fever dream called Miss Primrose’s Palace of Pretty Things.
Her eyes lit up. Her smile widened. She sighed like home.
The Cooler
I reckon I ought to tell y’all how I got mixed up with this here, Southern Writers’ Guild business. So the stories below.Gone ahead — you’ll regret it later if’n ya don’t.
And then Hank decided he needed to address this “Cooler situation” himself. Little did Cotton know that Beau had broken the seal. And not only discovered the Cooler’s contents, but somehow had also allowed it to become confiscated by the FBI…
Will the gang be able to win it back on Poker Night?
Beau Guards the Cooler
I was perched on the porch, coaxing lazy blues out of my old guitar—notes drifting like cigarette smoke in the humid afternoon—when my phone buzzed. Hank. Three words: “Bowling alley. Now.” Then: “Got something for you.”
Hank Cotton then serenades the Cooler in Knoxville, which draws a standing ovation!
“This one’s called ‘The Cooler Still Leaks.’”
We haul that cooler state to state like some family secret, pink bow flappin’ like a Gadsden flag gone cotton-candy sweet. Grace got her foot through the floorboard, ribbon snappin’ like joy lost its damn mind, Georgia behind us, cathead biscuits still warm Somewhere between Georgia and this sticky-ass dive, that leak quit bein’ a mess on the seat and turned into somethin’ holy. Grief was wearin’ camo; now it’s sequins and a smile, Burning up the Smokies, just to see the sunrise. Me and Jean-Paul? We tight now. Thought he was just a dumb stuffed bird, one eye cracked like he’d been drinkin’. Turns out that feathered fucker knew what was really in the cooler all along. Grace gift-wrapped it pink so I wouldn’t notice the past walkin’ off. Now the ribbon’s snappin’, the road’s peelin’ away like old paint, and the fist I have left is open. Ain’t no fight. Just applause. Lord have mercy. Maybe grace don’t need a church. Maybe just a shotgun and a smoothie and enough gas to make it to the next open mic.
The Knoxville Southern Fried Poetry Slam
It started, as these glorious trainwrecks tend to, with Grace spotting the billboard just as they pulled out of the Flying J. Meat sticks and pork rinds flanked their tankards of coffee.
As it turns out though, the Cooler goes back further than all of that — it is what brings this whole crew together…
Beau had shown up with a cooler riding shotgun in his truck, duct tape sealing the lid, a hand-lettered sign he taped to the side that read “MISC. BIOMEDICAL—$40 OBO—NO QUESTIONS.” He found it near a Waffle House dumpster. He figured if nobody bought it he’d just drive it to the Ocmulgee River and let the catfish sort it out.
