“Meetcha,” Bubba said.
“Buenas noches nos dé Dios,” Alfonzo said. He tilted his head toward the lady who had entered with him. “This is my wife, Pilar.”
Pilar nodded. Bubba smiled gently at her. The woman was petite and thin, as if a strong wind would blow her away. Her clothing was comparable to her husband’s. It was well-used but clean and serviceable.
“Our children, Blanca,” Alfonzo said, nodding at the child he held, and then at the one his wife held, “and Carlotta. It’s been a long trip.” Although he had a slight accent, Bubba had an idea that Alfonzo had been raised first generation American citizen.
“We have cribs upstairs or toddler beds if you think they’d be more comfortable with those,” Miz Demetrice said.
“Las niñas need to sleep in the same room with us,” Pilar said immediately. “They’re a little upset with the trip.” Even Bubba could hear the urgency contained in her voice. He frowned as he realized that Pilar was frightened of something. He wasn’t sure of what it was. She wasn’t comfortable with him in the room or with being in a strange house or perhaps it was that she was in a huge strange house.
“I’ve got some supper ready,” Miz Adelia said eagerly. “Ya’ll can take turns with the showers and I’ll bring a tray up. A good night’s sleep will do the trick.”
“Si,” Alfonzo agreed. “I think they’re so tired they won’t wake up if we put them down. Then Pilar can shower while I eat, or would you like to eat first, mi dulce?”
“Shower,” Pilar said gratefully. “The girls can take baths in the morning, si?”
“Of course they can,” Miz Demetrice said. “Our house is your house. If you get hungry in the night, you should come down and help yourselves. Miz Adelia has left cookies in the jar and there are cold cuts in the cooler. Those little ones will probably wake up starving.”
“Ma,” Bubba said, “don’t forget about the zombies in the morning.”
Alfonzo’s face crinkled with confusion. Pilar said something in Spanish. Then Miz Demetrice said something else in Spanish. Bubba’s Spanish was very rusty. He thought he might be able to ask for a shot of tequila and possibly where the bathroom was located.
“A movie set?” Alfonzo said in English in response to what Miz Demetrice said.
Miz Adelia took down a tray and got some plates out. She made herself busy as Bubba watched the expressions on his mother’s face and on the faces of their guests.
“Wouldn’t want the kids to be scared,” Bubba explained.
“No,” Miz Demetrice said. “I’ll show you upstairs. And we’ve got a box of toys for the girls. Diapers, too. I’ll show you where the television is. I have some movies for children with dubbed Spanish. Toy Story, Wall-E, and Cinderella. We might have to keep them inside tomorrow.”
“Is that a minivan I heard?” Bubba asked Alfonzo.
Alfonzo nodded slowly.
“It sounded like it could use a little work,” Bubba said. “I’ll look it over when I’ve got a chance. Ifin you leave the keys I kin take care of it.”
“Bubba’s a very good mechanic,” Miz Demetrice said as she directed the couple with their children out into the long hallway. Alfonzo paused to toss the keys to Bubba.
“I’ll leave the keys on the kitchen table,” Bubba called. He waited until he was sure that his mother had the four people halfway up the stairs. He heard Pilar say something about the chandelier. After all, it was the size of a VW Beetle hanging in a two-story open foyer and one could hardly not notice it. Miz Adelia cleaned it once a year and everyone had to help. All the crystals on it took forever to wipe off.
“Adelia Cedarbloom,” he said softly.
Miz Adelia’s shoulders stiffened, but she didn’t turn around.
“What in tarnation is going on around here?”
* * *
Bubba found it difficult to sleep. He stayed awake thinking about Willodean Gray, his mother, Miz Adelia, and the worried expression on Pilar’s face. He wasn’t stupid and if his mother was doing something illegal with the Garcias, then she almost certainly had a good and moral reason for doing so. If Bubba could count on any one thing in life, it was that Miz Demetrice would run the road of good and moral, until she could no longer do so. His mother would have been the first fake Indian on the boat at the Boston Tea Party.
He finally dozed off about two a.m. and woke up at four. He got up, fed Precious and let her out, and dressed. After washing his face and brushing his teeth, he went out to see if he could do anything with Alfonzo’s minivan. It was a first generation Dodge Caravan with a bunch of miles on it, but it was a solid vehicle. He used a shop light to see while he cleaned the battery leads and gapped the spark plugs. He changed the oil and the oil filter. (Bubba had a collection of automobile filters he used for all kinds of friends and relatives and one was just the right size for the Caravan.) He was just finishing with the air filter when other vehicles started pulling into the area in front of the mansion.
The sun wasn’t going to come out for another hour and a half and everyone was ready to work.
Alfonzo came out with two cups of coffee and handed one to Bubba.
Bubba took it gratefully and watched the film crew get to work. They began setting up tents to one side and unloading equipment.
“Tires are getting a mite lean,” Bubba said.
“I’ll replace them as soon as I can,” Alfonzo said. “Gracias.”
“I kin get you a deal at the local tire place. I get a discount because I work for the garage.” Bubba named a price. “Ain’t sure about it but I can prolly get Virgil to give you another ten percent off. He worships the ground Ma walks on ever since she raised money for his sister’s surgery.”
“Si. I think we have enough cash for that.” Alfonzo took a drink of coffee and motioned at the film crew. “Is this place always like this?”
“Sometimes it’s much worse,” Bubba smiled around the mug he held to his face.
Both men watched the scurrying of people as they did incomprehensible acts. They heard such phrases as “follow-shot,” “pull-back,” and “vorkapich.”
“Are they speaking English?” Alfonzo asked.
“Ain’t sure,” Bubba responded. “I don’t think so.”
Precious attempted to eat one of the film crew’s legs until Bubba called for her to heel. It was a little too busy for the Basset hound on her home turf and she was unmistakably discombobulated enough to want to bite someone.
“Good looking hound,” Alfonzo said. “I’ve always liked hounds.”
Precious nosed his leg, obviously recognizing a kindred spirit. Alfonzo bent to scratch her in the correct spot behind her jowls.
Bubba wanted to say something complicated and complicated would indicate that he understood that Alfonzo and Pilar were involved in some sort of intricate fix that could only be assisted by someone such as Miz Demetrice Snoddy. He wanted to wax prolifically about how he would back his mother up, and by proxy he would have Alfonzo and Pilar’s backs, so that the couple could lose their pinched facades that plainly expected some authoritative figure to descend upon them with hobnailed boots. Oh, he wanted to, but it wasn’t the way that his speech processes worked, as evidenced by his colossal failure in speaking to Willodean Gray the day before. Instead he said, “Yep.”
And it became further clear that Alfonzo tended toward the same manly limit to human speech. Their conversation was something along the lines of:
“Nice outside.”
“Yep. Kids up?”
“Si. Woke with the birds.”
“What do you do?”
“Construction. Handy work.”
“For Ma?”
“Si.”
“Breakfast?”
“Certainly.”
“Pancakes.”
“Bueno.”
“Go on in. I’ve got to do some more stuff out here,” Bubba said. He watched Alfonzo wander in and thought that the other man was observably more relaxed. It was amazing w
hat a simple conversation could yield.
Chapter 4
Bubba and the Maladroit Movie-Makers
Saturday, March 9th
It wasn’t long before one of the film’s crew nearly attacked Bubba. She shoved herself into his face with chaotic energy and an urgency that he simply couldn’t replicate even if he’d had a thousand cups of Miz Adelia’s coffee. “You’re the guy that Risley hired!” she shrieked into Bubba’s face. “Right? Right! We need you! Now! Now! Now!”
Bubba jerked backward involuntarily and Precious growled lowly.
The film crew girl was a redhead in her twenties with a black t-shirt that proclaimed, “The Deadly Dead RISES!” The word “RISES!” was dripping with blood. She looked him over. “I knew it had to be you! Good jaw line!” she said loudly. “Nice contour on the shoulders!” She touched his collarbone. “We’ve got just the thing for you!” She tugged on his arm. “Come on! Did you go potty?”
“Yep,” Bubba said because he didn’t know how else to answer that. His mother had taught him that bathroom humor was never de rigueur. His grandmother had taught him what the meaning of de rigueur was. Bubba was almost never de rigueur but it had never bothered him. It wasn’t bothering him now.
“Good, because you’ll be sitting in a chair for three hours!” the redhead said. “THREE HOURS!”
Bubba called to Precious, “Heel, girl.”
Precious trotted behind them as they threaded through the tents.
They eventually ended up in a tent that had chairs in front of tables covered with bottles, jars, brushes, picks, and things Bubba didn’t even want to try to identify. One chair already had a young man in it with a purple-haired man lurking over him, saying, “—white base with a green tint. One missing eyeball. Black hole it. I mean so black that Stephen Hawking would go, ‘Whoa.’”
The redhead left as Bubba was directed to the chair next to the young man with the impending black holedityness. The purple-haired man turned to him, looking him up and down in a way that made Bubba feel like a cut of beef. “Jesus, they grow them big out here.” He turned to one side and yelled, “Simone! Get your cute little butt over here. He needs the full facial implement. You know, shotgun in the face. Let’s make the NRA have second thoughts!” He adjusted the black scarf around his neck and threw the thin ends over his shoulder.
Precious ducked under Bubba’s chair. Presumably she thought it was safe there.
The purple-haired man caught sight of Precious. “Oh, my God, a zombie dog. And even better, a zombie Basset hound. How adorable. Kristoph will die. Will she sit still for makeup?”
“If food is involved,” Bubba said, thinking it was a joke.
“I must have my special case!” the purple-haired man bellowed in Bubba’s ear. “The very special case! I must work!”
Another girl with long blonde hair started on Bubba who he assumed was Simone. She had him change into a ragged set of jeans and a plain but shredded t-shirt. When he returned to the chair, she positioned his head with her two tiny hands and said, “Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Don’t move or breathe. If you have to move or breathe, raise your hand. You’re Zombie #14/Farmboy. If you hear someone yelling for Zombie#14/Farmboy then that is you. You will answer to the name of Zombie #14/Farmboy. You will have dreams tonight of being Zombie #14/Farmboy. You get a line tomorrow when you do your scenes then, so be happy.”
“How kin I get a line tomorrow ifin I’m a zombie?” Bubba couldn’t help but asking. “I always thought that zombies ain’t the chatty type. Right?”
The blonde girl, who Bubba still assumed was Simone, rolled her eyes. Bubba thought it might hurt. “We’re not shooting in sequence, duh. Must be a local.” She tilted her head at Snoddy Mansion and said, “You probably live in the big antebellum dump with your sister. And a pig named McGoo.”
“My mother,” Bubba said, “and a Basset hound named Precious. “Ain’t no need to be rude.”
Simone’s eyes widened. “I was joking. Really, you live here?”
“In the other house,” Bubba said. “It just got rebuilt from when a murderer tried to burn it down.”
Simone sighed. “I’m just not going to ask. Okay, don’t move. Don’t breathe. Did you go pee already?”
Bubba had to move and breathe to answer, so he said, “I did.”
Simone rubbed her hands together. “Let’s make magic,” she said energetically.
* * *
It turned out that the movie making business, especially the zombie movie making business, was more complicated than Bubba could have imagined. Just in the little section he sat in was a squadron of people doing makeup. Simone informed him that this was logical since it was a makeup heavy movie. There were full facial jobs and full body jobs that took up to eight hours to apply. Only some of the actors had a little amount done, like the leads in the movie. They got to be a little dirty but still extraordinarily beautiful.
“Tandy North,” Simone said, “is the lead actress.” Using sure and coordinated movements, Simone smoothed over some kind of glue on the lower part of Bubba’s face. He wasn’t sure if he could move or breathe voluntarily anymore, even if he had wanted to. “She’s a classic beauty. She really doesn’t need makeup but if you don’t have a base on, the camera reflects the skin. It looks like she’s a shiny pink ball if she doesn’t have something on. Did you see her in Bubble People? It was an amazing film. I loved the wardrobe.”
It also turned out that Simone loved to talk to people who couldn’t talk back. It was like listening to a perky blonde radio with a permanent ongoing talk show.
“And Alex Luis, well he’s just a six foot edible morsel that begs to be covered up with chocolate,” Simone continued. “Sex on two legs. He’s got the creamiest skin. It seems like a shame to cover it up. And nice, too. I think he might be gay, although he does have a girlfriend. She’s his cover. Too bad for me, but too lucky for some boy.”
Bubba wanted to fill in the pauses with “Uh-huh”s and “Um-huh”s but his jaw had been glued in place. Simone placed a glop of bloody plastic over part of his mouth and jaw and surveyed it critically.
“Of course, you’re not bad, with that whole redneck, county boy, farminess going on.” Simone patted his hand. “A girl could be happy for a few days out here in the sticks. But how do you not have a Starbucks around here?”
Bubba didn’t know. He’d never been to a Starbucks. At least, he hadn’t been that he could recall.
“You’ve met the director, right? Kristoph is so wonderful and cool, too. He doesn’t hit on all the girls, either. He loves his wife. They’ve been married for three years. That’s practically their diamond anniversary in Hollywood time.” Simone smoothed something wet over Bubba’s brow. “And Risley is pretty neat, too. You know he was irritable last week and suddenly he got all loosy-goosy. We think he got laid, but we all don’t know with whom. There’s a bet whether he’s AC or DC or AC/DC, but no one’s got an inside tract. Did you know the producer is Kristoph’s wife, Marquita? She’s not really Spanish but she took a stage name. I mean I like Simone but my last name is Sheats. Do you know how many jokes I hear about that?”
Bubba could imagine. He’d heard a few jokes about both Bubba and Snoddy. How much money am I making for this? Is this really worth it?
“Schuler is our head makeup artist,” she said, moving the gossip train to a new stop. “He’s the one with purple hair doing the work on the dog. He loves to wear a scarf, so we call him Scarfie, but not when he’s listening. I didn’t know we were going to have a zombie dog.”
After a while he tuned Simone completely out. Then he was turned so she could work on another side of him and he could watch as Schuler plied Precious with bits of bacon. Bubba was still sitting in the chair with Simone fluttering over him when Schuler led Precious away. Lights came on in the form of portable flood lamps and someone yelled, “Action!”
“That’s Risley shooting your dog,” Simone said and Bubba jerked. Abruptly he realized Simone meant
that they were filming Precious. Good luck with that. She might et the camera.
Risley must have gotten what he wanted because Precious came back with Schuler ten minutes later. Schuler carefully removed the blood and brains from the canine even while he fed her a bite of bacon. (This was a purple-haired man who had owned dogs before and probably still did.) Precious knew a good thing when she had it because she didn’t even struggle. The bacon might get away.
The last thing that Simone did was to carefully put some contact lens in Bubba’s eyes. She followed up with some eye drops. “You’re a kickass Z,” she pronounced staring at his features with critical regard. “I would totally squeal if I saw you in a graveyard.”
I had a girl in a graveyard yesterday and she dint squeal. She was supposed to squeal but then the zombies showed up. I hate zombies. I really do.
When Bubba was finally completed, he was led away by the first redhead. She spoke rapidly to him. “You’re a zombie. That’s your motivation. You like brains, brains, and more brains. Anything that’s not brains is poo-poo. Basically you’re wandering through some woods looking for brains. You can do that, right? Those clothes look good on you. This is exactly what modern day zombies wear while chasing down brains.”
Bubba would have glanced down at his shredded t-shirt and ragged jeans but he couldn’t really reposition his head, in addition to not being able to move or breathe. It seemed pointless to protest.
He glanced over to the side of the circus and saw Alfonzo observing the hullaballoo with Miz Demetrice also looking. Each of them held a child and all four were avidly watching the action. Bubba didn’t know what the toddlers got out of it. Maybe all the bright lights were exciting.
Bubba saw his mother watching him. He had a feeling that she didn’t actually recognize him. After about thirty seconds Miz Demetrice blinked and her mouth opened in seeming amazement. He was too far away to hear the words, but he could read her lips as she said, “That cain’t be Bubba.”
Bubba and the Zigzaggery Zombies Page 4