by Paula Boyd
“Oh, I don’t think so. You’re not going anywhere. You are not to leave the house. Do not even think of leaving the house. Leaving the house is not an option. You are to stay inside the house.”
One must be explicit when giving Lucille directives as she is taking meticulous mental notes as well as drawing loopholes in them at the same time. “Do not open the doors and do not answer the phone. Phones. Don’t make any calls from any phone. Or hand signals from the window.” I did not add this last directive facetiously. She’s done it. As more flashes of the things my mother has done—and her perfectly illogical rationalizations for doing them—flashed through my head with big red warning lights, I revised her orders. “On second thought, why don’t you just go to your room and stay there until I get back. Pull the shades, turn off the lights. Take a nap.”
Lucille took these directives fairly well, or either she wasn’t listening. Yes, my vote too. A closer look told me her face was now in thinking mode rather than teeth-gnashing mode. It was not necessarily an improvement. “The leader goes by the name of Tiger,” she volunteered, clicking her inch long nails together. “That bunch he has around him acts like he’s the Second Coming or something, swarming him like a bunch of gnats, ready to cater to his every whim, and all he does is stand there and stare.”
“Ah, the Great Horned Toad Messiah.”
Lucille scowled. “That’s not funny.”
“You know, it really kind of is, and I’d like to see it firsthand.”
“Well, you won’t be laughing when you’ve got Ol’ Bony Butt after you.”
“Surely with all the other heathens in town, I’m far enough down her ‘come to Jesus’ list to avoid too much grief.”
“I don’t know why you say ugly things like that; you most certainly did not learn blasphemy in my home.” Lucille stared at me, grinding her teeth, chewing around for the very best words. “I’ll tell you one thing, Ethel may have herself convinced that Bobcat’s got the hots for her, but I know better, carrying on like teenagers in front of the whole town. It’s just sickening, that’s what it is.”
Say what? I tossed my purse and keys back on the table. “You want to explain that? Start with Bobcat.”
Lucille propped herself against the cabinets, her fingers clickety-clacking on the counter. “He’s Tiger’s second in command and Ethel Fossy has latched on to him like a tick,” she said, her voice escalating in both volume and speed. “She seems to think he’s interested in her, but he most certainly is not… interested in her in that way. Not really. Any idiot can see what’s going on. He’s just using her and she’s acting like a fool. Why, he’s twelve years younger than she is. Just because she started dying her hair and painting herself up like a rodeo clown, which I’m just sure is mortal sin, especially at that narrow-minded church she goes to, does not change the fact that she looks old enough to be his mother. She keeps it up and I’m going to tell her that he came after me first but I had more sense than to just fall for some fool who’s only looking for a piece of tail, and why on earth he’d want that piece is just beyond me.”
Oh, there were apparently so many, many things that were beyond me, and the list grew every time my mother opened her mouth. Realizing my jaw had fallen open, I shut mine.
“And that’s another thing,” Lucille said, oblivious to the fact that I was not enjoying her senior sex story time. “That hussy hypocrite’s been talking dirty about me behind my back all this time, preaching at me, calling me names—you remember all that slut business—and now look at her. Look who’s acting dirty now! Why, I ought to give her some of her own medicine, that’s what I ought to do.”
“Alright, enough,” I said, stopping her before she worked herself—or me—into a stroke. “Let’s take this one trauma at a time.”
Lucille grabbed the dishtowel again and slapped it against the counter. “There is no trauma here, Jolene, and I have nothing further to say about that holier-than-thou lying, hypocritical, cheap, painted-face slut. She can hop into bed with every one of them for all I care, and she probably already has. Just a little bit of attention and all of a sudden she’s one of those sex groupies.”
Sex groupies? Religious fanatic Ethel Fossy, a sex groupie? Now that pushed the bounds of plausibility, even for Kickapoo. But, speaking of groupies, “What happened to Velma Brotherton? I thought she and Ethel were joined at the hip. How does she fit into this?”
“She doesn’t.” Lucille snorted in a highly undignified manner. “When Bony Butt started following around after these newcomers like a slobbering blind sheep, Velma high-tailed it back to California. Everybody had just figured they were like Jerry Don’s ex-wife, but now that Ethel’s run off with a man hippie, it makes you wonder. I’ve read that some people like both, they call it bisexual.” She waved her hand to dismiss the topic. “Whatever the case, she’s sure whoring it up and preaching hellfire all at the same time.”
If even a fraction of my mother’s tale could be believed, the potential that Ethel had been sucked into some weird cult was very real. “Messiahs, brainwashing and Grandma Gone Wild. Please tell me religion is not involved here.”
Lucille puffed out her chest. “Not real religion. Not like the Methodists, of course, or the Baptists for that matter, even though they’re always squabbling about who’s the best kind of Baptist or even Ethel’s Church of Christ with their weird thinking. Do you know that her very own pastor held a special prayer meeting for her, and there’s talk around town of trying to buy her an exorcism? Nobody’s sure if there’s a Christian way to do that sort of thing or if it’s just for Catholics and witches, but they’re checking into it.”
I didn’t say anything because frankly I was still processing the exorcism criteria. And then Lucille opened the refrigerator and nabbed a bottle of water, something I had never in my entire life seen her do before. She twisted off the top, took a long swig and kept talking. “I was glad for the help from the AAC people at first, thinking they were good Christians and all, but now I think it’s just some kind of cult. They’re all real secretive and peculiar acting. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out they’re all on mind control drugs. They’re a weird bunch. And that’s another thing, Ethel Fossy has to be blind as a bat and dumb as a doorknob, because if she’d been paying any attention at all she would have realized that those men darned sure brought their own women with them in that van. Girls, really, about your age, following those old men around like sheep, why I’ve never seen such a thing. I suppose they’re hopped up on drugs or maybe hypnosis. They brought in a van full of kids too, but they were just a bunch of dopers that would holler and protest about anything. I sure couldn’t make any sense out of them, but the reporters seemed real impressed so I didn’t fuss.”
Resisting all my natural urges to sigh, rub my face and bang my head against the wall, I said, “Okay, so the main players are Tiger, the leader, and Bobcat the second in command, both old hippie types, and some forty-ish women. Two women?”
Lucille nodded. “The snooty dark-haired one is Iris. Always wears black like Cat Woman and acts like she’s the Queen of Sheba. I was trying to be friendly and make conversation with her, and she just looked down her nose at me like she’d just as soon shoot me as not, and then she walked right off without saying a single word. I’ve never seen somebody so rude in all my life. Hateful hussy. She marched herself right over to Tiger and started talking about me. I know she did because I saw her lips move just a little bit, like a ventriloquist. Merline and Agnes thought she was probably just talking dirty to him or making plans for later. They think she looks like one of those dominator women who carries around handcuffs and such in her purse. I never did see her with a purse myself so I couldn’t say, but it wouldn’t surprise me any.”
You’d think at this point I’d be somewhat accustomed to this sort of thing from my mother, but I am not. The best I can do is reel my brain past the deeply disturbing conjecture and cast about in a new pond for some glimmer of a pertinent fact. “What abo
ut the other woman? Tell me about her.”
“Lily. She’s younger than stuck-up Iris, probably in her thirties, although it’s hard to tell with how she carries on. Blabbers all the time about nothing, flitting around in her long hippie skirts and sandals, playing with her braids like she’s a schoolgirl. They’re all real strange, I’ll tell you that.”
Yes, well, strange was relative. And while there may have been some bits of relevant information in Mother Dearest’s ramblings, but I did not have the wherewithal to ferret them out at the moment. I pushed away from the edge of the door and said, “Okay, here’s where we are. I’m going to the current crime scene for a first person view of the festivities, and you are going to spend your time in solitary confinement, figuring out how to get yourself out of this mess.”
“There is no mess, Jolene. I haven’t done anything wrong. And even if I have, er, had, whatever, well, you’re not in charge of me. I’m telling you, I was not involved in any of it.”
“I believe this is where we started this conversation. And yes, you were, I just don’t know the details yet.”
Lucille snorted and lifted her chin. “Fine then, you just run along and see what dirt you can dig up on me. There isn’t any, of course, but you go on and have a good time trying. I have plenty of things to do right here.”
Oh, I just bet she did. Red flags and blue flashing lights accompanied the warning bells in my head this time, forcing me to face a reality I really wanted to ignore. I couldn’t leave her alone. Regardless of what orders I gave, she still had unfettered access to a phone, a Buick and a 9mm handgun. There were no good outcomes from that scenario. None. “Change of plans. Get in the car.”
“What! All this fuss about locking me away in my own house and now you just up and order me to get in the car? Why, I don’t even know if I want to go now,” she said, reaching for her purse on the table. “That little rental car of yours is awfully small.”
“Hold on there. You can take the purse, but the gun stays here.”
Lucille made a good effort at registering shock and outrage, but she moved on to snarling rather quickly. “I can take my gun anywhere I want. I have a permit.”
“I don’t care.”
She glared for a few seconds, weighing her options. Finally, she flung open the black bag, fumbled around inside, pulled out the gun case and set it on the table. “This really hurts me, Jolene.”
“We’re taking the Buick. Get in the car.”
Chapter
Four
I chose the paved road to Bowman City, and fourteen minutes after we’d passed the Kickapoo city limit sign we were there. To her credit, Lucille had kept her mouth shut most of the way, a whoop escaping only at the crest of a really big hill. And not from fear either. She was having a ball. My mother’s idea of fun has apparently changed significantly in the last few years. Months, even.
As I’d expected, the road into the crime scene was blocked. Also as expected, I knew the deputy directing traffic. I pulled up and rolled down my window. “Hey, Leroy, getting things finished up here?”
“Hey, Jolene, Miz Jackson,” Leroy said, bobbing his head at us and snickering. “I’m a packin’. That’s something.”
Huh? I looked at Leroy and then at my mother, who was not so surreptitiously shaking her head at Leroy.
“Best license plate in the county, maybe even the state,” he said. “I kick myself every day for not thinking about it first.”
Lucille waved a dismissive hand at me. “It’s just one of those ‘Keep Texas Wild’ license plates with a horny toad on it,” she said. “That’s all. I support protecting the horny toads, you know.”
“Yes, I know.” After a few seconds, I finally caught up with what they were talking about. “You have a vanity plate that says what?”
“I-M-A-P-A-K-N,” Leroy chortled. “I’m a packin’.”
“If you paid any attention at all you’d have already noticed it,” Lucille snapped. “Now stop all this nonsense and get down to business.”
Leroy took the hint. “Things are just getting started, Jolene,” he said, dropping back into his serious voice. “HazMat’s inside and the bomb dogs are on the way. This is a serious situation we’ve got here. Don’t know what all we’re dealing with.”
We’re not dealing with your first string criminals, that’s for sure. Then again, past experience told me they hadn’t sent the first string HazMat team either. I couldn’t bring myself to ask about the gung-ho guy who’d shown up at Mother’s house a few months back with unfettered enthusiasm, an instruction booklet, lit cigarette, gasoline and Tyvek suit. He’d managed not to blow himself up that day, but he was clearly in line for a Darwin Award at some point. “Think there’s another bomb?”
His eyes kind of popped open a little wider, signaling me that he hadn’t exactly thought of that possibility. “Can’t say about any of that, Jolene. Everything’s still under investigation. Can’t say a word to anybody about anything. We’re securing the area now. May even have to shut the whole town down. This is serious.”
“Yes, very serious, I got that part. Where’s Jerry?”
“He’s busy. You can’t be bothering him right now. He wouldn’t talk to you anyway. He’s the one that put out the gag order. We can’t say nothing to nobody. Even you.”
One would think that sort of specific directive would not be necessary, but one would be wrong. The don’t-tell-Jolene-anything order kind of hurt my feelings. “Okay then, where’s the press hanging out?”
He frowned for a second then the light bulb came on and he nodded. “Oh, yeah, I guess you could do that, say you’re with the press and all. They’re over at the Dairy Queen, just outside the roadblock. You really ought to put on your press badge though.”
You betcha.
The Bowman City DQ was packed. Clusters of locals outnumbered the reporter types by about twenty to one. There was one local news van with a live feed setup waiting for something interesting to happen, but the crew did not appear to be on pins and needles. In fact, if the wristwatch checking was any indication, they were ready to move on to a livelier locale. There is only so much of an adrenaline rush to be had from flying livestock pellets, although I couldn’t help but wonder how this would play out in CNN’s “situation room.”
These days, this sort of thing could be twisted up with all kinds of supposition and conjecture, and within seconds an entire segment of the US population would be on pins and needles. “Breaking News! A feed store in north central Texas has exploded. Response teams have been called and the area is being evacuated. We do not yet know the motive for the bombing or if there are other bombs in the area. There has been no official link to Muslim Terrorists at this time. The national threat level has not been changed. Repeat, the threat level remains at yellow. If a terror threat is determined, we will be the first to let you know. To repeat, the feed store bombing has not been linked to any known terrorist cells. We have a live feed now from local channel—”
“Jolene!” Lucille whacked me on the arm. “What are you daydreaming about?”
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. “Just grateful that the place isn’t crawling with reporters.”
“Well, I’m not. I need to talk to a decent writer who will say what needs said about this park business and give it the attention it deserves.”
Yes, I got the implication and it wasn’t going to get me to write a story for her. I pulled the Buick into the DQ lot and stared a little more. Now that I was in the midst of it all, I couldn’t exactly remember why it was imperative for me to rush right over. And how much trouble was there anyway? It didn’t look all that intense to me. Aside from the nosy gossip types, most of the crowd looked bored.
“There’s Tiger,” Lucille whispered, facing me and cocking her head toward the windshield obviously and repeatedly. “Bobcat’s next to him. That’s Lily on the left, twittering around, and Iris is behind them all, slunk over to the side like black alley cat. And I suppose you can see for yourself whe
re Bony Butt is.”
I really couldn’t. What I saw were two old hippie-looking guys, each near sixty, with gray ponytails and goatees. Lily’s long reddish-blonde hair was woven into two neat braids that hung over her shoulders. She wore what used to be called a peasant blouse with a broomstick skirt and earthy sandals. Iris, however, was not exactly as I’d expected from Mother’s description, although I couldn’t really define what that might have been. She did look to be in her forties and she most assuredly had black hair—short and spiky like Halle Berry in that James Bond movie. She was tall, maybe five-foot-eight, thin and gorgeous, with light blue eyes that seemed to cut through the crowd even from here. She did not look brainwashed or on drugs. She wore a black tee-shirt with jeans, looking more commando than Cat Woman. Mother had gotten one thing right though, she did not look the least bit friendly.
A sharp jab in the side from my mother’s elbow broke my stare.
“There she is. That’s Bony Butt, if you can believe it.”
I followed Lucille’s head bobbing and finger pointing until I finally caught a glimpse of Ethel, standing just behind Bobcat. Her formerly gray hair was indeed dyed a color suspiciously close to Frivolous Fawn, not that I would say so aloud, that being one of Mother’s most recent choices. The compact helmet hairdo was a little more relaxed than I remembered, and it did look like she was wearing jeans and some kind of tailored jacket. I was kind of impressed. Ethel had taken herself from the 1950s to maybe the mid-eighties, and it was a definite improvement.
The Great Horned Toad Messiah, on the other hand, was an old hippie. Tiger stood ramrod straight, arms crossed, eyes closed. A standing meditation maybe? His sidekick Bobcat held a similar pose—sans the serenity part. Of course, it would be darned hard for anyone to be Zen if you had Bony Butt buzzing you like a wasp.
“Look over there,” Lucille said, craning her neck this way and that. “That’s Gilbert Moore. The one I was telling you about that was out behind the house when the pole truck was there.”