Especially those close to home.
Especially those that come at you in the night.
Rough. Real rough. And ragged too.
I interrupted. Something I never do.
Zeb’s crumby monologue stopped mid mouth o’ Wonder Bread.
“Let’s get away then,” I said.
“Get away?” Zeb stammered, not botherin’ to do me the favor of choking on bulging bologna, now halfway hangin’ out his open liar-liar-pants-on-fire mouth.
“Yeah. You hear me. Get Away. You’re ever gritchin’ how bad things are, how much you’re proud to be sockin’ away in the Comet cleanser can in the back of your sock drawer for our happy days, come rain or come shine . . . and well, geeeez, Zeb—did we ever really have a honeymoon?”
Zebediah Branchworth wiped the back of his hand over his Hellman’s. Held my gaze. Steady-like. Like darin’ me to look another way across the Sunbeam tickin’ kitchen. But I didn’t. I peepered him right back. Even more steady-like, but soft. Didn’t wanta be arousin’ no suspicions outta that sour puss. Zeb pondered. Thunk away and awhile ‘round what was shakin’ in that shaggy noggin. Then he grinned. Big. Wide. With Wonder Bread still hangin’ outside from his inside. Musta been remembering rollickin’ rolls in our hay days. “A honeymoon? You want a honeymoon, Jenny June? Why, you got yourself a pretty baby and a good life and a happy hubby who adores you and a white picket fence with pink ramblin’—er, I mean blue morning glories, and now you wanta honeymoon?”
“Yep.”
“Shoot, Sugar—Where? You got somethin’ in mind when you go springin’ new thoughts on me from outta nowhere?”
“Niagara Falls.”
“Niagara Falls?”
“Niagara Falls.”
Zeb was quiet a minute. I knows it was a minute ‘cause I held my breath in while keepin’ my smile out. Minute hand on the Sunbeam moved a whole ticked slot. Then slowly he turned. Tryin’ on cute. “You mean like Curly, Larry and Moe’s routine? Then they murdered the guy?”
I said a mouthful of nothin’. There come moments whoever speaks first . . . loses.
Zeb was thinkin’. Kinda as if he was spewin’ on this, on that, and stirring ‘round twelve other things in a mishmash whirl of directions. Make that misdirections. Made me lean in a little closer. Listen up a little tighter. Made me think Zeb mebbe had his back up against the wall about somethin’ or other. Mebbe like caught in the out-and-out disarray of those double-crossed boys bein’ on a snit gone tirade over under-the-table nefarious profit margins that done got nipped before they had any chance of budding. Or mebbe his extra chippy was chippin’ at what he vaingloriously thunk was his fine falutin’ good graces or—well, somethin’. Sure seemed a helluva lotta brewin’ goin’ on with Zeb. He actually scratched his head. He did. I told ya. I’m a cliché spotter.
Zeb spoke first. Slow. Careful. “Well, Jenny Junebug, I ain’t none of them Stooges—”
Inside I answered where he’d never hear, Careful what you wish for, Big Boy.
“—but I can sure concur with you, it’s the right time for takin’ a coupla nights to give ourselves a good ol’ time. Get outta Dodge like they say over our TV trays. You’ve got a fine head on your sexy shoulders, my spiffy wife. Yep, Dollbaby. That’s jes’ what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna gussy up and show each other a real fancy good time. Romance flirtin’ and hand holdin’ and wine gulpin’ with a holler down to room service to boot. Whatcha all think about that now?”
I still didn’t say anything. I set down my coral polka dot mug of Maxwell House. Pushed back my chair. Walked around the speckled formica and leaned in close to Zeb. My tongue flicked his Wonder Bread. I saw a smile sandwich several motives across his easy-to-read face. So I smiled back. Real avid interested like. Explicitly. Not complicitly.
Zeb pulled me onto his lap. Told me what to pack.
I was pretty much all alone in an hour or so . . . planning on how to stay on, all alone.
I mentioned that already, right? Sorry, kinda preoccupied. Zeb’s takin’ his lengthy after-whoopee nap now and I’m real hushed up, hustlin’ around in the storage room. Gathering what I reckon my plans tell me I’ll be needing.
Packin’ a bag.
The hunting bag oughta do it.
They shoot deer hunters, don’t they?
~ Chapter 3 ~
SKYLARK
Momma and Pops were hunky dory happy to have baby Betty for a big all-to-themselves weekend. Zebediah was mighty hunky dory happy at the wheel of his dented red Ford pickup, window rolled all the way down to speed the breeze, thinkin’ ‘bout what he’d be goin’ after to make his weekend more pleasurable. I leaned in, turned the radio knob up higher when “Skylark” came on. Zeb’s hand wrangled over the seat back, reached in under how my loose curls were doing a cascade jumble. He let his fingers play around. Kept tuggin’ on my tangles. But gentle like. We crooned along, just about in tune, old fave song that it was for me and my fella. Inside though, I was hearing the lyrics all amplified and magnified, why even clarified. Found myself wondering back to Johnny Mercer, Was Skylark having somethin’ to say to Me?
You know how that happens? How you think on somethin’ so hard when you’re trying to figure the way outta the maze you’re in and not sure of the ways and the means, nor the twists and the turns ahead of you, but only that you should begin? Well, somehow that’s when something goin’ on in the outside world just slip slides itself right on in. I think you gotta be real open and real pure in your intentions an all, but I was. I simply just strongly wanted to extricate myself from a nasty unfair scrape.
‘Bout then it hit me. Wham. Bam. And all that sweet Shazaam. Just like Mr smooth Mercer was croonin’ it, I was attuning it. It came to me in a song, I guess you could say. The plan o’ my day. All because over and over I heard Johnny’s thought patterns play. Like he was asking me directions, same kind he musta asked himself once upon his own romantic foibles— “Is there a meadow in the mist?” And listening real intently on, I got it. I got my clue. Where? “Where someone’s waiting to be kissed” was coming along loud and clear.
Felt like you get to feelin’ in the Bugs Bunny cartoons when the lightbulb up and flicks its sparks over Bugs or Daffy’s noggin, and you just know somethin’ smart and outta the blue is gonna happen. Something to make a right better thing come true.
I turned my head Zeb’s way. Nuzzled my avid interest face more explicitly into the way his arm stretched out over the seat back. Slow-licked his wrist. He liked that. Zeb always was one for likin’ the slippery and the slick.
“You know,” I started in, as he kept his singin’ part up solo, “Johnny Mercer had a heap o’ trouble comin’ up with his end o’ these lyrics.”
“When, Jenny Junebug? Huh? Whatcha talkin’ about?”
“Well, when Hoagy Carmichael layed the tracks on him. I heard tell it took him most of a year—all to express the mess he felt muddled inside from his love affair with Judy Garland.”
“Johnny and Dorothy from Kansas? Now that’s following more ‘n a brick road.”
“No, no jestin’, Zeb. He was a man really intent on how he loved. All his yearnin’ is there—right there. That there is what he put into this here fine specimen of songwritin’. Lissen.”
And so, we listened. Oddly, I still can conjure back, rememberin’ those particular moments. The low mumble of the Ford motor. The accompanied hum rumblin’ up Zeb’s throat. It was truly one of our more peaceful drives up a country backroad to a desired destination. Ironic that is, “how a heart can go a journeying.” But ours did. Past pain and the refrain about the rain and the shadows. A lot of what I think darkened our way to lettin’ us see clear to what Us coulda, woulda, shoulda been more about.
That’s hindsight, not hogwash. And hindsight generally knows its stuff. I don’t go arguing with sensibilities like hindsight. I mean—it has to come from somewhere you’ve been and then let in. Doesn’t it? Don’t even get me started on any purty blossoms covering up an
y crooked lanes. We were in a new lane. Considering the available timing, a fast lane. One that needed an off-exit. Skylark that, oh fickle fingered fate. The second wife not being brought up to speed about the existing first wife? Shucks, that was a secret revealed a little too late.
“Well, Miss Smarty-pants, everyone that doesn’t lollygag over stacks of movie magazines knows the best thing about Skylark is how they run as Buicks.”
He guffawed. Pulled again on my hair, proud of a lousy pun. This time it hurt.
So’d a lotta stuff hurt. But I was workin’ on that. Gettin’ outta hurt.
So, I didn’t skip a beat. Mustered up my answer to meet his retortin’. Head on.
Collision course . . . gaining traction.
“Well, Mr. Thinks He’s punny, they can rrrev up and they can rrrumble their fancy chassis, oh husband o’ mine, but sure they can’t hide none. Kinda like Johnny and Judy. Someone’s gotta know somethin’ somewhere. Ya think? People talk.”
I left my question danglin’. Kept attuned to his vibes stumblin’.
Picked up the trail of Johnny’s jaunty telling tune. Wondered just a jiff, if I was “crazy as a loon”. Thunk it over. Nope. My jury inside my head and my heart and my hurt through all my downward bruises was sadder than even any melancholy “gypsy serenading the moon.” My verdict was gaveled. My plan was full speed ahead.
Zeb moved his hand back to ten and two on the wheel, kinda hasty like. From what I could side glance, the big, lying lug was doin’ a little song and dance step around in his mighty messy mind. I’d say kinda like wonderin’ if the jig was up, but remember, I’m all about avoidin’ clichés. He kept mum some more on his silent thinking. Afore he thought his thinkin’ out loud.
“Folks figger what folks figger, Hon.” He paused, caught his thought. Never let it scamper. Musta thought he was gainin’ traction on a good rollout. Revved his rhythm, “Some should mind their own figgerins though. Now that’s what I think. Not too wise to let the world know all your comins and goings on.”
I kept to quiet. Sometimes whoever speaks first, remember? Loses.
I did wonder on though, in seconds passin’ to mebbe minutes. What it felt like. Y’know—being free, like a skylark bird. Havin’ your heart kinda higher than what you were flutterin’ around in. All o’ that heavy stuff, gettin’ lighter by the minute, “riding on your wings”.
“Good thing you don’t have none of that figgerin’ to go figgerin’ on about, Junie Bug.” He moved his hand up my thigh. Pressed down. Hard. Rubbed his configgerin’ point on in. “You jes gotta love your big lug.” He laughed. “Hey, how ‘bout that woman? I just made me a rhyme. Mebbe I should write lyrics in my spare time.”
Aha. An opening always presents itself to the careful planners. Makes itself plainly known to those following what survival skills tell ‘em when they sit back with avid interest and lissen on in. Explicitly.
Jes like that free flyin’ skylark of a bird with more than a bird brain was feathering in to “lead me there”.
“Spare time? THAT’S what you call it these days, Zebediah?”
They say, whomsoever “they” are, that there’s no such thing as a coincidence. The situations which present themselves as unexpected coincidences are more precisely evidence unseen—like when reservations in certain hotels and long-distance radio call-in requests are strategically made ahead of time.
Before I tell ya about the hotel with the swingin’ sign sayin’ THE SKYLARK, I should mention some more about Johnny and Judy. That music man was no hack when he let his words pour out songs that stick to the heart like scrambled eggs to the bottom of a cast iron fryin’ pan that didn’t see enough butter glide in. Ol’ Johnny was a ripe thirty to ingénue Judy’s eighteen pretty years. He slung words her way like other fellers brung red, red roses to the front porch door. In “That Old Black Magic,” he wrote about “the lover I have waited for”. He even expressed in his way that fate created his mate. Oh yeah. They became lovers. It jolted up his already darn clever wordworkings. He hailed her as he held her, for making his dreams come true in “I Remember You”.
But Hollywood didn’t want their new young Dorothy of Oz yellow brick roading with a married man of a different profession than what the movie mags wanted to trot out for sensations that made folks smile back at the kitchen table. Powers that be pushed and shoved and openly ended what the lovers kept together secretly for years and years, and good ol’ Johnny satisfied folks with one o’ his best. He wrote the lyrics that poured out with “Set ‘em up Joe”. He went mean drunk, dark side drunk, monster a’raging drunk over the next batch of years, and all the public really recalled, was a man in a bar, “One for My Baby and One More for the Road”, warblin’ on ‘bout “the end of a brief episode”. But the wife, Ginger, his wife, not the lover Judy, took the hits. Literally. There’s somethin’ ‘bout fellers being able to think they had the ables on their side to push around their broads when they had some unsatisfied goin’ on in their own lifeways that . . . well, you know . . . just ain’t right.
The SkyLark Hotel was on the Canadian side, just above Horseshoe Falls. Just near enough to Brides Veil Falls for me to make some girly schmaltzy talk sound meaningful over mushy as we drove on by and I asked Zeb to slow down a little, take in the view. Zeb did. Then he turned past the iconic Flower Clock and headed the dented red Ford up ‘round the long circular drive. Put his pickup in park. Decided at that point with how the nature of our drive up north had changed the atmosphere between us, to see if he should mebbe put his “on guard” in park too. Slowly he turned. I held my silence, my position, and what felt like a bit or a hunk of power I was gaining on. Zeb gave me a lingering once-over. Like he was taking his measure to see that things were just things between us, nothin’ extra hangin’ in anybody’s stinky air.
Slowly, I turned back toward him. I smiled. Sweet. Soft. Avid-interest like. Pretty damn explicitly expressing a certain mood he liked.
And he liked that. Oh yeah, he liked that.
We parked the truck. Checked in. Fooled around. Decided on an early dinner in a nice little Italian place right nearby. Red-and-white-checkered tablecloths. Straw-bottomed Chianti bottles with the drippy candles coming out the tops. Cliché time it was, eating spaghetti and meatballs all sprinkled with parmesan cheese too. Zabaglitelle for dessert. Meal my man wanted. Meal he enjoyed. Meal where more than swirled spaghetti on a table spoon was dished out. My man talked, bragged actually, about what else in his life was making him a bigger man. I listened. Real avid-like.
After a robust cup o’ joe for me and a decaf for Zeb, we decided to take a stroll along the dangling edge of Niagara Falls. I murmured something about seeing more rainbows when the mist caught the end of the day’s sunlight just right. Said it was quite a sight at this site. Said how Dorothy’s over-the-rainbows glissandos were actually scientific facts and not prissy nonsense to oooh and ahhh over. Zeb took up his pontificating then about the merits of scientific facts. Put his arm around my waist. Did his squeezin’ where he wanted to do his squeezin’. Like I said, it hurt. That’s how he always started and built ‘til it hurt past how I thought it would hurt.
Like the “Skylark” song goes, there was a meadow in the mist.
Like the Stooges jostled, slowly again I turned.
And beneath that mist? Well, unsure footing stepped out.
Like a new version of how the ol’ comeback line goes—
“What happened in Canada stays in Canada.”
Zeb did.
I run the operation now. Not with power of attorney but more with the forward throttling of blackmail turbulence. You see, how it happened next was what was bragged about over that red-checkered tablecloth. We emptied two full straw-covered bottles of that house brand Chianti, spun spaghetti to beat the band in the corner, cliché-like on our forks in our tablespoons. Zeb pumped up brawny. Big-man style. The better to impress his little woman. Leaked that he maintained a likable leadership role in some lucrative “business interest
s”.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You?”
“Me what?”
“Likable?”
“Hah! That’s a good one Jenny June.”
“No, I mean it. About the other.”
“The other?”
“They lucrative, these success drives from this likable leadership?”
“Damn straight, Junie Bug, damn straight.”
“How so?”
“Aw c’mon Sugar Pie. Ain’t no man worth his salt nor parmesan cheese sprinklins that’s gonna lean over a red-checkered table cloth and spill more than Chianti on his trade secrets.”
“Secrets? Ya got yourself some secrets there, Zebediah?” Well do tell.
His big hand paused his small glass halfway up the well-traveled route to his pie hole. Yep, we’d already ordered our Italian treat dessert. Zabaglitelle was on its way. He said he couldn’t wait to dig in. But he was waitin’ now. He musta figgered he’d let rip a seam where the latest mews was comin’ from. You know, beginnin’ to let one of the cats outta his bag o’ tricks.
So he backtracked.
Put down his fake crystal.
Pulled out his fake charm.
Pushed back his real wooden cane back chair. Extended his long arm.
“Care to dance, Baby?”
Band in the corner had just started up. Eddie and the Playmakers. They were letting loose with some Rat Pack. Heavy American crowd comin’ in among those red-checkered tablecloths. Frank and Dean, heavy on the croon:
“Luck be a lady tonight . . .”
Luck happened along like luck against all odds is sometimes prone to do when you think you’ve blown on all the dice and the world’s been doin’ you dirty, like it’s goin’ ‘round twice. But ya see, what Zeb did then was ‘fess up. He ‘fessed up what he’d been hangin’ over “those rambunctious boys’ heads” all this time. Zeb did a lot o’ ‘fessin’ up when he came to gettin’ to the edge of his existence.
Me and all that avid interest? Big pay-off. Explicitly. I was a smart cookie, I told you I was. And I never really crumbled. I could assess better ‘n most folks could cliché.
Betrayed: Powerful Stories of Kick-Ass Crime Survivors Page 22