Down and Out in Bugtussle

by Stephanie McAfee

  “What’s your hurry, sunshine?” Freddie asks, still lying back with his feet crossed at the ankles.

  “My nerves are shot to holy Hades and I can’t drive that bus today without a can of medication.” She pulls a Dr Pepper out of the dispenser and holds it up for us to see. “Gotta run, peeps.” And run she does. I look at Freddie, who is humming and smiling as he piddles with his phone.

  “She drives a bus?” I ask him.

  “Obviously,” he says, without looking up.

  “Who in their right mind—”

  “Now, Ms. Jones,” Freddie says with a smile. “Surely you don’t presume the curious Ms. Dewberry to be in her right mind?”

  I freeze, thinking that anything I say can and will be used against me in a court of frenzied gossip and twisted hearsay.

  “Enjoy the show!” I say, and then get the “holy Hades” out of there before he has a chance to say anything else. In the safety of the hallway, I take a sip of my semi-cold drink and decide that even though Mr. Freddie Dublin is one of the coolest cats I’ve met in a while, I will not be entrapped by his trickery and charm. Then I think about Stacey Dewberry behind the wheel of a school bus, and that makes me laugh out loud. How in the world does she do that and sub? No wonder she drinks so much Dr Pepper.

  I spend Saturday morning helping Jalena hang rods, blinds, and curtains while discussing the pros and cons of a wall mural. After we unpack what seems like ten thousand boxes of dishes and silverware, she asks me if I could do some flamingos instead of marsh grass.

  “Not, like, real-lookin’ flamingos,” she says. “I want them to be cartoonish. Cartoonish, but not childish. Like they’re just about to say something funny and might use ugly words when they do.”

  “Got it,” I say. “I can do that.” I grab a pencil and sketch a few flamingos that could possibly be cussing or telling dirty jokes.

  “That’s perfect,” she says. “How long will it take for you to do that?”

  “Couple of hours,” I say with a shrug. “Depends on how many you want and how pink you want them to be.”

  “I think I want three,” she says. “Like two hanging out on one side of the wall and one on the other.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll make the one by itself a little bigger. Like it’s a bit closer to you.”

  “That sounds good,” she says as she walks over to the wall. “So, two here. One over there, and could you add some water and the sun in the middle? Maybe some clouds? Like the flamingos are framing a sunset. Kind of blend them into a nice scene.”

  “That’s actually a great idea,” I tell her. “I could do this today, you know.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. No time like the present. Unless, of course, you have another truckload of dishes coming in that needs to be unboxed.”

  “I think I have enough plates and glasses to do me for a day or two,” she says with a giggle. “You wanna go pick up some paint?”

  “Do I?” I say, laughing. “Do I?”

  “Do you need some kind of special paint for this?” she asks, and I assure her that I don’t. We ride to Walmart where I grab four different shades of pink craft paint along with several other colors and a can of glaze. I go find Jalena and see that she’s picked up a bag of chicken strips, some jojo potatoes, and a package of frosted sugar cookies. On the way back to the diner, we stop by my house, where I run inside and grab my paint brushes. When we get back to the diner, she fixes us drinks and we eat lunch on paper plates at the bar. After asking her one last time if she’s absolutely sure that she wants to do this and assuring her it will not hurt my feelings if she doesn’t, I start sketching on the back wall of Jalena’s diner. She stands and watches me for a few minutes, and I don’t know if she’s curious about what I’m doing or worried about me making a mess.

  “And if you hate it, it will only take a minute to cover this wall with primer and repaint it, okay?”

  “I’m not worried, Ace!” she says, but she keeps standing there. I turn around and look at her. “Okay, I’ve got to get this menu typed up, so I’ll go get started on that.” She disappears into the kitchen and returns a minute later with an old FM radio that she sets on the bar and fools with until she finds a station. Then she starts pecking away on her lavender laptop. I line up my colors, pick up my paint brushes, and get to work.

  “Okay, are you ready to see greatness?” I ask when I finish the first flamingo. “Close your eyes and turn around.” Jalena turns around on her bar stool with her eyes shut. “Okay, look!” I say.

  “Wow!” she says when she opens her eyes. “I love it!”

  “Thanks!” I tell her. I like it, too. “So you want two more?”

  “Abso-freakin’-lootley!”

  And so we both get back to work. After I finish the other two flamingos, I get started on the sunset, which is quick and easy work, and then paint some blue-green water and a white seashore. I stand up straight, back and knees cracking, and give the mural a thorough inspection. After a few touch-ups, I sit down on the floor and lean back against the wall to rest my aching back. Then I literally watch the paint dry. When it does, I get up and start on the glaze, which makes the whole scene look soft and faded like an old postcard.

  “Voilà!” I say, and Jalena turns around on her bar stool again.

  “Double wow!” Jalena says. “I love it! Talented!” She opens her mouth to say something, then stops.

  “What?”

  She gives me a funny look.

  “What is it?” I ask. “If something is wrong, just say so and I’ll fix it. This has to be perfect, so no holding back.”

  “It’s not that.” She nods toward the wall. “I love it. It’s perfect.”

  “Well, what is it then?”

  “I don’t even want to bring it up.”

  “Bring what up?”

  “Just never mind. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t just never mind me, sister. What were you going to say?”

  “I was just wondering how you don’t miss having your own art gallery,” she blurts. “This”—she points to the wall—“is amazing. I’m sorry. I don’t want to upset you by bringing up the past. I just don’t see how you can not do this for a living.”

  “It doesn’t upset me to talk about the art gallery,” I say, trying not to think too hard about it. “It’s over. I gave it my best shot and it wasn’t for me.” I shrug.

  “You don’t miss it?”

  “Hell to the niz-oh,” I say, and that’s the honest truth. “I mean, I love to paint, but I hated being in there by myself all the time. I’m a social bird, sister, and I can’t function without my flock.”

  “Yeah, and speaking of flocks,” she says, eyeing me, “how are things going over at the schoolhouse?”

  “Oh, it’s terrible,” I say with a laugh. “Worse than I ever imagined, but it’s okay. It’s fine.” I pause. “Okay, I’m lying. It’s not fine at all. It actually sucks rotten donkey balls, but whatever. It’s a means to an end.”

  “The end of what little sanity you have left,” she says, laughing. “I don’t see how you do it. Hell, I don’t see how anybody does it.”

  “Teaching isn’t as bad as you think.” I look at her and she doesn’t look convinced. “It’s actually nice when you have your own classroom and your own desk and all of your stuff put together just like you want it. It’s really cool.” She looks skeptical. “Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not trying to convince you that subbing isn’t the absolute rock-bottom hottest freakin’ part of hell. Because it is.”

  “I just hope it’s worth it,” she says.

  “Me, too,” I tell her. “It would suck for real to go through all this crap for nothing.”

  “So you’re pretty sure you’re going to get your old job back?”

  “I don’t know,” I say with a sigh. “Honestly, it’s not looking good right now. I mean, that hussy Cameron Becker doesn’t have any idea what she’s doing, but she’s made it abundantly clear that she has no
plans to vacate my classroom and she’s even threatened to get a lawyer.”

  “Why can’t they just add some more classes and have two art teachers?”

  “They could if they had enough students to fill up the classes, but Chloe has already told me that barely enough students have registered for the class next year to justify having one art teacher on the payroll, let alone two. That’s the problem with electives. The students have to elect to enroll in your class. Chloe says she’s had to coax students into taking the entrance exam and she’s never had to do that before.”

  “See? You’re irreplaceable.”

  “Not hardly,” I say with a snort. “I take my classes on awesome field trips to the Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis.” I smile at Jalena. “Fifteen bucks each to ride a charter bus, lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe afterward, and bingo! Everyone loves your class.”

  “I’m sure there’s more to it than that.”

  “Well, of course, that’s what I like to think, but probably not.”

  “So what are you going to do if Ms. Becker manages to hang on to your job for another year?” Jalena asks, and I’m tempted to tell her to hold off on the hard questions because she’s killing my mood. I look at my flamingos and frown. Dammit! I was so happy two minutes ago.

  “Hey, do you like your new flamingos or what?” I ask. Jalena takes the hint and lets it go.

  “I love my new flamingos. So are you finished?”

  “I have to glaze it again,” I say. “But that won’t take too long.”

  “Okay, well, while you do that, I’m going to go print off this menu and see how it looks on paper,” she says.

  I inspect my artwork one final time, then glaze the wall from top to bottom and right to left. I walk back to Ethan Allen’s office where Jalena is sitting at the desk, examining one of her menu sheets.

  “Come check out the finished product,” I say. She follows me down the hall to the diner and then brags on the mural until I finally have to tell her to lay off. I think she might be overembellishing the compliments because she’s worried that she hurt my feelings by grilling me about what I’m going to do if Cameron Becker doesn’t give up the art class and move her sassy ass on to some other place. But the mural does look exceptional, if I do say so myself.

  “Okay, now come check out my finished product, which isn’t quite so glamorous,” she says, and I follow her back down the hallway to the office where she plops into the desk chair. “These things are ugly!” She points at the copies on the desk. “They’re too plain. I didn’t realize how dull they were until I slid ’em into the menu cover and…Look at this.” She hands me the menu. “Blah blah blah. Boring!”

  “It looks very professional,” I say.

  “Professional is boring.”

  “Maybe a little, yes.”

  “Can you put something cool on here before I have to take them to the printer? Liven ’em up for me?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I can draw a mean penis.”

  “Yeah, I hear you’ve drawn a lot of that around here,” she says with a cunning smile.

  “Ethan Allen needs to stop telling lies about my lust life. You want a penis on here or not?”

  “What’s your deal with always trying to draw a penis on something?”

  “You said to liven it up and that would surely do it,” I tell her. “I stay true to the cause of artistic integrity.” Jalena rolls her eyes and laughs. “Okay, seriously, you want an alligator on here or some little food baskets or what?”

  “I don’t care,” she says, still giggling. “You’ve been here every step of the way since the first wall went up, so I think you have a feel for this place as well as I do. Just do your thing.” She stops talking and waves a finger at me. “Not your b.s. artistic integrity thing, but your unperverted creative thing.”

  “Okay,” I say with a sigh. “Unperverted. Got it.” I smile, thinking this part of helping Jalena is so much more fun than sweeping up Sheetrock dust. “Print me off some extras for doodling purposes, please, ma’am.”

  “How many?”

  “Three or four.”

  “No problemo, mi amiga.” She starts tapping on her laptop again and the printer starts humming. I ask for a sheet of paper and a pen. “You don’t have to start right now,” she says.

  “I’m not,” I say, and then ask her a few questions about this and that on the menu because, even though she has complete faith in my ability to create something unperverted that she’ll like, I still want to make sure I have a clear idea of what she has in mind. I make a bunch of notes and then decide to surprise her with a little picture of her daddy’s marina at Frog Bayou on the back of the last page. I think she’d like that.

  “Do you want me to do it by hand or on the computer? I can do it either way.” She considers that for a minute, tapping her ink pen against her temple.

  “If it’s all the same to you, let’s skip the computer,” she says finally. “I don’t want it to look too commercial. I ain’t openin’ a Red Lobster here.” She starts laughing and so do I. “Everything I serve will be homemade, so it would be awesome if the menu had that feel to it, too.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “It’s all about that personal touch, you know? There’s a certain quality in that.”

  “I couldn’t possibly agree with you more.” I scribble a few more notes. “When do you need these by?”

  “Anytime this week,” she says, and I get up to go. “Wait a minute! I’m not letting you do this unless you let me pay you.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Why don’t you have Ethan Allen order me a bottle of that white moscato he gets for Chloe?”

  “Done,” she says. “Lifetime supply.”

  “Yeah, you better check with him first on that,” I tell her.

  “Nah,” she says. “All I have to do is say the magic word.”

  “Please?”

  “No. Shrimp-n-grits.”

  “Magic words, then,” I say, teasing.

  “It’s hyphenated where I come from.” She stands up to give me a big hug. I think about how great it is that I had something to do with two good-hearted folks like Jalena and Ethan Allen finding each other, even if I was just as surprised as the next guy when the sparks started to fly. Maybe their happiness shouldn’t be so depressing to me after all. It’s a success story that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, so maybe I’ll start patting myself on the back instead. I need to have some reason to pat myself on the back. Might as well be that. That and those bomb-ass flamingos I just put up on that wall.

  When I step outside, the cool wind catches me off guard and I wish I’d brought a jacket. I crank up my car and turn the heat on full blast.

  Out on the highway, I get trapped behind a left-lane cruiser who just can’t seem to make it past an old grandpa-looking car in the right lane. I stay in the left lane because, after all, it is the one designated for passing. I can see that the person driving the car in front of me is a woman who is fooling with her cell phone, and I hope for her sake that she’s looking at a damned directional device or else I’m going to get pissed. More pissed than I already am, that is, after driving fifty-five miles per hour for three miles on a highway where the speed limit is sixty-five.

  Unable to stand it another minute, I start flashing my headlights, pointing to the right lane, and yelling, “Get over, asshole! Move it!” I don’t know if she sees me acting a fool or if maybe she drops her beloved phone on the floor and goes crazy, but she runs her tiny little car off the road and into the median strip. I hit my brakes and so does the grandpa-car in the right lane. When I pass him, I see that the driver really is a little old grandpa guy. I pass him and the idiot lady whose car still has two wheels in the grass, and then I get back in the right lane, where people with good sense like to drive.

  I glance in the rearview mirror and see that the left-lane cruiser has whipped her tin-can car back onto the road. She’s coming up fast. In the left lane, of course. Grandpa is quite a piece behind
us now, and I’m relieved that he’s far removed from the commotion that I know is about to begin. When the idiot lady gets up beside me, she slows down and rides there for a minute. I try not to look over, but I can’t help myself. I turn my head and see her over there, waving her arms and screaming. She’s pointing with her right hand and still has her cell phone in her left, so I can only assume she’s driving with her knees. I shake my head and sigh, wishing I was the kind of girl who could leave an idiot to her idiotic ways, but I’ve tried that and it’s just not my style. I look back at her and smile.

  “Pull over!” I yell while I honk my horn and wave my middle finger in the air. “Pull that dumbass-looking car over and let’s do this!” I stop flipping her off and start pointing to the upcoming exit. “Right up here!” I wonder why I’m yelling, because I know she can’t hear me. Oh wait, perhaps it’s because I’m in the midst of the worst road-rage episode I’ve had in several months. “Pull over!” I yell again. Even though she can’t hear me, I’m confident she’s getting the message.

  Apparently, she doesn’t want to pull over and discuss this face-to-face because, even though I’m driving seventy-five miles per hour, she speeds away like a hybrid bat out of foreign-car hell. Yet thirty seconds ago, she was driving fifty-five. I check the rearview and see Grandpa puttering along miles behind. I feel sorry for him and his entire generation because they have to share the road with people like that dipshit, who’s up there in the median strip again and people like me who want to beat the shit out of people like her. It’s a truly unfortunate situation for the more-mature drivers on the road. I turn on my signal and exit off the highway. Jeez Lou-eeze, I’m so mad I could bend an iron skillet. And I feel so stupid for letting myself get so mad. Like Gramma Jones always used to say, “Never argue with an idiot.”

  14

  By the time I get home, it’s pouring down rain. I run inside the house where I find Buster Loo nestled into my fuzzy blanket on the couch.