“Cookies don’t give him the right to attack me!” Balthazar Leopold creaked.
“This dog was never going to attack you,” she replied angrily. “He just wanted the delicious snack you were taunting him with!”
Leopold shrugged a small apology, but it was nothing the crowd was ever going to see. The comments from the audience kept coming, boos kept rolling in, in conjunction with calls for harmony, peace, love, understanding, and requests for the name of a good restaurant where a vegan could get some decent protein.
“Hey!” Maye heard someone shout from the audience. “Hey! I know her! Isn’t that the raccoon lady? That’s the sympathizer of the killer raccoon that ate that lady’s face! I saw her on TV!”
“BOOO! BOOO!” the calls came before Maye could even protest or defend herself. “BOO THE RACCOON LOVER! Booo her!”
“She’s nothing less than a killer herself!” a voice rang out.
“She is a killer! She infiltrated Vegging Out and then ate a cow!” a familiar voice declared, and as Maye looked out into the audience, she saw the gray, scraggly, wispy head of Vegging Out Bob.
More than one person gasped.
“She hates bathing!” another voice added. “We tried to give her a bath, but instead she ate all of my Triscuits and then ran away! She owes me a box of Triscuits! She’s a bath hater. Bath hater!”
“She wouldn’t let us put glitter on her face, either, remember?” said someone with a small head in a bike helmet.
“Bring Little George back!” someone demanded.
“There’th nothing wrong with a couple of glatheth of wine on an empty thtomach and talking about periodth!” someone slurred loudly. “Why do you hate periodths? What did they ever do to you?”
“The Grand Duchess Anastasia went to dog school with that pimp!” someone else cried. “And the raccoon lover made fun of a pregnant dog-school dropout!”
“She’s a swinger!” another voice shrieked. “She did a striptease at a faculty party and we all saw her bra! It had a hole in it!”
Stay calm, Maye told herself as her face flushed hot. This is bad, but you’ve experienced worse. At least you’re not in middle school onstage with your robe swinging open and your bike shorts exposed. Be brave. Stand strong. Your triangle is not showing, and if it was, you have shaved. Hopefully this will end before morning or a huge white hook will come to drag you offstage any moment now.
Suddenly, a flash of bright light in the front row caught Maye’s attention, and as she shielded her eyes from the glare, she saw Miss Teeny Royalty Universe, who, although she had her Dolly Parton wig back on, was still wearing her mechanic’s jumpsuit with a terrific stain on the front of it. But next to the littlest contestant, who should she see counting one, two, three, and then screaming “Action!” to no one but himself, with his camera pointed directly at the lead story on the evening news, Maye and Mickey, but Rick Titball.
“Boo! Boo! Hiss! Boo!” the audience continued to shout.
But from the back of the boiling crowd, ripples were beginning to form. A path was being made, indistinguishable from the regular movement of a large assembly of people, but it was happening nonetheless. Slowly and patiently, it came forward as people moved aside, some people flinched, and others jumped away. It came closer, and closer, leaving tiny little holes in its wake, a little red glow in an otherwise dark shadowy sea of people. It was Rick Titball’s light that illuminated the area enough to cause Maye to see it, moving quietly and stealthily through the hordes of people, unnoticed and almost invisible.
No one would have seen it unless they were paying attention.
It was Death.
Maye gasped slightly, pulling Mickey closer to her. She had seen it before, once, at the library, when she seemed to be the only one who saw a dark, cloaked, faceless figure walking among them.
There was no indication from any of the hundreds of people in the square that anyone but Maye saw the image of the Great Taker. She stared at the faceless hood, unable to take her eyes away, unable to move them in case she needed to be prepared for something, in case she needed to be ready. If this was indeed her time, she was ready for her boat trip to the hopefully least gross circle of hell.
Another voice, craggy, raspy, shrill, and mean, roared out from the darkness, accompanied by a gnarled, wrinkly skeleton hand holding up a smoldering cigarette.
“You want something to yell about?” it demanded, cracking the night air and immediately hushing all other voices. “I’ll give you something to yell about!”
Death reached up its other withered and worn hand and pulled back the heavy, dark hood that had been protecting its face in darkness to reveal a small, shrunken hellcat named Ruby Spicer, now missing both eyebrows.
The crowd sucked in one giant breath, then collapsed into random rumblings and incoherent, ghostly whispers.
“Quiet!” she demanded shrilly, then lunged toward the newsman. “Shut up or I’ll burn Titball!”
“Burn him! Burn him!” someone called out. “He’s an asshole!”
“Keep your dirty handth off him!” the slurring voice returned. “He’th the man I love!”
“Shit,” Ruby said, looking around for a moment until she found and seized her prey. “Shut up or I’ll burn the Tiny Miss!”
“RUBY!” Maye called quickly. “She’s got pee all over her!”
“Echhhh,” the old woman cringed, pushing the pee girl away.
“ALL RIGHT, THEN, SHUT UP ANYWAY!” she screamed, which was a demand null and void, since a hush had smothered the crowd as soon as the mention of pee popped up.
“Do you know why that girl and her dog wanted to be the Sewer Pipe Queen?” Ruby bellowed as she pointed her cigarette at Maye and Mickey. “To make friends. All she wanted to do was to make some nice friends. Look at you! Look at all of you! Who would want to be friends with the lot of you? Screaming at a girl because her dog wanted a treat! Booing and hissing because she doesn’t like glitter! Well, it does look stupid on your face! What kind of people are you, huh? You’re the same nasty people that ran another girl out of town years ago because of what you heard rather than what you knew, aren’t you? You gotta be. You’re doing the same thing all over again with your booing and catcalls! What a sorry bunch you are. Boo! Boo at you! Hiss! Hiss at you! That’s what I think!”
Ruby stuck out her tongue and shook her head, hissing like a cat, her fingers reared like claws. Then she turned and looked up at Maye.
“Any of you would be lucky to have a friend like her!” she continued. “A friend that would keep your secrets…and catch a butt that’s about to burn a third-degree hole through your chest. That’s what I call a friend. Yes, sir, that’s a friend, all right. So you leave this girl alone. I don’t wanna hear another boo or word outta any of you about her! You oughtta be ashamed of yourselves!”
Ruby moved closer to the stage and stretched out her warped, buckled hand. Maye knelt down to reach her, and took her hand in her own.
“We’re friends,” Maye said as she nodded.
“We are friends,” the old woman said as she smiled.
Maye wrapped her hand tighter around Ruby’s.
“Isn’t that sweet?” Maye heard a calculating cackle erupt behind her. “The two biggest disgraces this town has ever seen are best friends. The stripper and the firebug. What a pretty picture! What’s the matter, Ruby? Was there a building you forgot to torch the last time you were in town?”
Maye’s first instinct was to land that punch she had so desperately felt emerge from within her, but Ruby gripped her hand tighter, keeping her where she was. She looked back at Ruby, who was holding her own steady, hawklike glare at Rowena.
“Look at her,” Ruby retorted. “Standing up there, looking down on us like she was somebody!”
Johnny Guitar, Maye recognized with a grin.
“Do you see me holed up on an old, barren farm hiding with nothing but all of my secrets?” Rowena shot back.
“Time hasn’t been a
s kind to you as you think it has,” Ruby continued. “Yes, I can see the makeup now, along the lines that weren’t there before…. There’ll be more and more, and one day your face will begin to decay and you’ll have nothing left to make a man growl.”
“Ooooo, that was good,” Maye whispered.
“First line was mine,” Ruby whispered back. “The rest is Burt Lancaster, Separate Tables, although Rowena’s days of growling men look like they’ve been over for some time now.”
“But if you wanna talk about secrets, I have a few,” Ruby said aloud. “Secrets of yours, though.” And quickly, Ruby let Maye’s hand go as hers disappeared into the robe, and when it resurfaced, it held a red bundle enclosed in plastic wrap.
Rowena just stared, not saying a word.
“I’ve had it wrapped up just the way the Captain did when it got ‘lost’ as evidence, and I found it after he died,” the old woman continued. “It mighta been my scarf, but I never had a chance to wear it before you borrowed it. And I have the A&E and Court TV channels, Rowena. I watch a lot of crime stories. A lot of them. Whaddya think some DNA testing will show on this should I hand it over to my nephew?”
“That was fifty years ago,” Rowena scoffed, not flinching. “There’s nothing left on there! You’re not as smart as you think.”
“They do DNA testing on the remains of Civil War soldiers,” Ruby scoffed. “Don’t you watch TV, you idiot? Or are you too busy writing anonymous letters to the editor?”
“Everyone knows you’re a crazy drunk,” Rowena added. “No one would believe such a preposterous allegation. I’m a pillar of the community.”
“You’re a pillar of salt,” the old woman sizzled. “It won’t be long until you’re nobody, Wendy. Unless you count the somebody that really did light those fires years ago. You’re the one who left this town in cinders and ash, not me. Not me. You lit up the sewer-pipe factory, City Hall, the movie theater, all of it. It was you. You and your jealousy.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Rowena hissed. “No one will ever believe you. I had nothing to do with any of that!”
Then, suddenly, with the agility of a geriatric cat, Rowena lunged for the scarf in Ruby’s hand, but Maye was quicker and plucked it away before Rowena’s claw could even graze it.
Maye stood up and looked Rowena right in the eyes. “Sometimes you don’t need a cookie for my dog to go for you,” she said firmly. “Sometimes all it takes is a command.”
“You didn’t win, Wendy!” Ruby called out. “You didn’t win.”
“Really, now?” Rowena countered. “Is that really what you think? Because I have the mansion. I have Minty. I have the nice clothes, and I have the fresh flowers. I have the respect of this entire town. What exactly is it that you have, Ruby? A hovel for a house and a nephew that drops off toilet paper once a week. It’s hardly a contest.”
“Ya think so, huh? Then point to a friend,” Ruby told her. “Point to one friend.”
Maye smiled and looked at Ruby, who had a smile beginning to stretch across her face.
“You did good, Girl, you did good,” Ruby said, looking at Maye. “Almost as good as the splits.”
Mickey whined slightly, backing away a few steps.
And that was all. That was all the warning they had before Ruby’s soft smile shifted into a look of surprise, and with a shot of blue flame and a blinding, brilliant flash that smelled of a fart, she was gone. Ruby Spicer, once magnificent and beautiful, was now nothing but cinders and ash herself, being carried by a soft breeze away from the crowd and hopefully toward something white and bright and forever where there would be an endless supply of free cigarettes and an open bar just waiting for her.
“Ruby!” Maye called, looking frantically at the spot where the old woman had been. “Ruby!”
The crowd was amazed, in awe, believing the disappearance to be an unannounced magic trick in Maye’s act. Some of the audience even began to clap.
“Ruby!” Maye began to cry frantically, not knowing what to do except scour the crowd for a wrinkled crone in a reaper outfit. There was none. The old woman was gone without a trace. She had vanished. Evaporated.
Then Maye heard a scream from behind her. She turned to look, hoping to see Ruby, or something that made sense, anything that could explain what had happened or where she had gone, but what she saw running toward her wasn’t the old woman at all. It was a scarecrow with a jangly staff, scrambling across the stage, then leaping off it and into the crowd like a raccoon with distemper, shrieking furiously, “FIRE! IT’S ON FIRE! IT’S ALL ON FIRE! THE STAGE IS ON FIRE!”
There was no moment of hesitation; the crowd moved like quicksilver away from the stage, and with screaming and running all around her, Maye stood up and saw the black, inky, billowing smoke begin to stack up in the sky behind the stage. There was no time to think. She picked up her dog with both arms, held him tight to her, and jumped off. As she ran, with adrenaline pumping like hospital-grade drugs through her veins at an astonishing rate, she didn’t even feel the welts and burn that her inner thighs were creating as her lycra body shaper and her nude-colored tights melted together as one control-top garment with friction, as if they were always intended to be that way.
And, with the other residents of Spaulding, including those who had booed her, she sat on the steps of City Hall across the street and watched as the town square burned to the ground before the wails of a fire engine were even audible.
16
Ash and Bone
Even after most of the people had cleared the area, Maye and Mickey sat on the steps of City Hall, watching the last charred beams of the stage smolder. It was on those steps that Charlie found her, staring at the smoking, heaped mound like she was in a trance. He touched her shoulder, urged her to get up and come home, but she wouldn’t budge. Maye shook her head without looking at her husband. She was searching for Ruby, she said; she could be wearing a robe or she could be in a tracksuit, and she had to look, she had to keep looking. She had to be somewhere. She had simply vanished into thin air, and Maye needed to find her.
She tried to explain what had happened, but how can you possibly describe with any measure of rationale that a little old woman who was dressed up like death and burning people in the audience with her cigarette, POOF! suddenly disappeared before your eyes like a rabbit in a top hat, leaving only a puff of ash and bone and a lingering odor of sulfur behind? How can it possibly make sense that someone you knew disappeared as if sucked into a black hole? Who would remotely believe you unless they saw it for themselves? How do you expound that your little, wrinkled elderly friend suddenly combusted in front of hundreds of people, who applauded like she was David Blaine climbing out of a water tomb after a week? Certainly her blood-alcohol level ran an average of ninety proof and some part of her was always ablaze, making her not only a living Molotov cocktail, but the most obvious answer was also the most unbelievable.
Take Mickey home, Maye told Charlie. He’s hungry, tired. It’s been a long day.
Give him a special bone. Give him whatever he wants. He was a good boy.
Maye handed Charlie the makeshift rag leash and at the bottom of the steps saw John Smith, standing there with both hands on his hips, on duty. As Charlie climbed down, John climbed up, and they exchanged nods as they passed.
“Can you make sure she gets home okay, John?” Charlie asked.
John nodded again. He took two more steps and sat next to Maye.
“You all right?”
It took her some time to answer, and then she barely shrugged.
“People thought it was a magic trick,” she explained. “They clapped. But I am not understanding. Where is she? What could have happened to her? Please tell me she knew magic. Please tell me she’s back at the house falling asleep in her dirty slippers with a cigarette in her hand in that recliner watching Susan Hayward almost set her baby on fire.”
John paused and he took a deep breath. He didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure what hap
pened, but he had seen it while writing out parking tickets along Broadway and wasn’t able to run more than four steps before the crowd turned and surged toward him.
“I can’t explain it, Maye,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I’m as confused as you are. I only saw it from across the square, after I heard her yelling and hissing.”
“There wasn’t a trace of her left,” Maye said, feeling a tear break free and run down the side of her nose. “She didn’t make a sound. And then I—I couldn’t find her. Just some wisps of ash. She was just gone.”
“I’m sorry, Maye,” John said, patting Maye’s knee.
“I’m sorry, too, John,” she replied as she wiped her eyes, sniffled, and took a deep, deep breath. “I know she meant a lot to you.”
John nodded, his mouth pursed tightly. For a while, the two of them sat side by side on the steps, not saying anything but each understanding what the other wanted to say. They looked at the firefighters poking at the ruins, hosing down small eruptions of flame and trying to figure out what happened in the last seconds before Ruby went missing.
“They’re going to think she set this fire, too,” he finally told her. “It will be a couple of days before the investigation is fully over, but it looks like a deliberate fire, probably another lit cigarette, just like all the others. They’ll have to send evidence to the lab, but so far, it’s too much of a coincidence, Maye. The thinking will be that she comes back into Spaulding again and another town landmark goes up. Case closed.”
“If you’re sending stuff to the lab,” Maye said, pulling a bundle from her pocket, still with the evidence number marked on it, “send this, too. Ruby didn’t set this fire or any of the others. It’s the truth. I was holding her hand, her fingers were yellow, like a sinew yellow. The first knuckles on her pointer and middle fingers were like mummy yellow. I’ve seen a yellow finger like that before, the fingers of a heavy smoker, someone who’s smoked for decades. And I’ve seen it on Rowena Spaulding, who created quite a scene with Ruby before the fire spread.”
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