Dollar Daze

by Gillespie, Karin

  “There’s so many people to thank,” Mavis said in a quavering voice. “Elizabeth Hollingsworth, who helped save the Bottom Dollar Emporium from bankruptcy. My soda jerk and right-hand woman, Attalee Gaines.”

  A piercing wolf whistle came from Attalee’s table.

  “I’m also grateful to the rest of the Bottom Dollar Girls, and to all the people of Cayboo Creek who have supported the Bottom Dollar Emporium all of these years,” Mavis said. She paused for a moment, her cheeks warming at the thought of Brew calling her gorgeous. Although he wasn’t with her in body, he was definitely there in spirit.

  “And finally,” she said, the words spilling out as if they had a momentum of their own, “thanks to my new, dear friend Brewster Clark, who just makes me feel special. Thanks so much.”

  Mavis held up her award for the crowd and returned to her seat to enthusiastic applause. As soon as she reached her table, people crowded around her, offering their congratulations.

  “Make way for the press,” Birdie said, maneuvering her way through the crush of well-wishers until she reached Mavis’s side.

  “Mrs. Loomis,” Birdie said, her head bent over her reporter’s notebook, not looking at Mavis. “How do you feel at this moment?”

  “I’m surprised, of course,” Mavis began. “It’s hard to say how l feel.”

  “Elated?” Birdie offered, and then she looked up from her pad and glared at Mavis with cold blue eyes. “Or maybe you have mixed emotions,” she said in a much lower voice meant for Mavis alone. “Like shame or humiliation, seeing how you made a spectacle of yourself up there.”

  “Birdie?” Mavis glanced nervously around. No one seemed to have heard her comments. “This isn’t the time or place.”

  “Where do you see yourself in the next five years?” Birdie asked. “Not with Brewster Clark,” she continued in a ragged whisper. “I can assure you of that. He’s just being polite to you. You’re going to be a laughingstock if you keep this up.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Mavis whispered back. If anyone’s going to be a laughingstock it will be you, she wanted to retort, but she choked back the unkind words. Her old friend was clearly going off the deep end, first luring Brew to her house with phony repair jobs and now trying to shame Mavis into breaking off with her new beau.

  “Birdie, please calm down,” Mavis continued. “I shouldn’t have publicly thanked Brew. It upset you, and I apologize. I just got carried away with the moment.”

  She tried to touch her friend’s shoulder, but Birdie dodged out of reach. In the process, Mavis’s shawl slid from her shoulders to the restaurant floor. People around were starting to notice the unfolding drama.

  “I think your emotions are getting in the way of your sense of fair play,” Mavis said, leaning down to pick up her shawl.

  With an open mouth, Birdie wheeled around to face her friend. When she looked down and saw Mavis’s level-three cleavage, her eyes narrowed to slits, and she pointed her fountain pen at Mavis.

  “How dare you talk to me about fair play when you sashay around here like a Playboy bunny?” Birdie said.

  Suddenly conversation in the room ceased, and all eyes were on Birdie and Mavis.

  The next incident—which would be told and retold for weeks afterward in the diners and barber shops of Cayboo Creek—seemed to happen in slow motion. Attalee emerged from the depths of the crowd of onlookers, jostling Birdie in the process. Birdie tipped forward, losing her footing, the pen still grasped in her hand. It made an arch in the air, and like a guided missile, zeroed in on its target.

  “It reminded me of a raft springing a leak,” recalled Jerry Sweeny much later as he related the tale on his favorite stool in the Chat ‘N’ Chew.

  “It was like a fountain, just spewing water,” Jewel Turner said, the day after, to the teller while cashing a check at the credit union.

  The moment would be played over and over in Mavis’s head as she twitched and groaned under her electric blanket later that evening. With a sickening despair, she knew that no one in town would ever forget the night that Mavis Loomis sprung a leak in her Aqua Bra.

  Twenty-Six

  To you it’s a six-pack. To me it’s a support group.

  ~ Bumper sticker on Dwayne Polk’s pickup truck

  As Mary Chapin Carpenter wailed, “Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug” over Taffy’s car radio, Elizabeth was feeling a kinship with the bug.

  The family had traveled only ten miles out of Cayboo Creek when Elizabeth’s daddy and Taffy started a squabble over which radio station to listen to. Dwayne wanted Metal Rock 107, because it interrupted songs like “Highway to Hell” with regular NASCAR updates.

  When Dwayne changed the channel during the song ‘Strong Enough to Be Your Man,’ Taffy screeched, “That was Travis Tritt, you nitwit,” and twisted the knob back to KIX Country. Currently Taffy was winning the battle of the airwaves, and was twanging along to her country songs in an off-key voice.

  Elizabeth tried to block out her family’s bickering by staring out the backseat window at the passing landscape, but the highway out of Cayboo Creek wasn’t particularly scenic. She had already counted seven businesses selling manufactured homes—all with flapping banners advertising liquidation sales—and five car lots.

  As they traveled closer to the coast, the land gradually flattened out and became more rural, but not necessarily prettier. Run-down farmhouses, bristling with lightning rods, were plunked in the middle of scrubby fields. A handmade cardboard sign advertised “Collards, sweet potatoes, and boiled peanuts, three miles ahead.” Barren trees, choked with trails of dead kudzu, stood in stark relief against the diluted gray sky.

  “It’s the Prize Pack!” screeched Taffy, her lacquered blond hair barely stirring as she bounced up and down in her seat. “We can win the entire Toby Keith CD catalog if we’re the fifth caller. Where’s the dang cell phone?”

  Dwayne unhooked his phone from his belt and handed it to his wife, but Taffy couldn’t get through to the station in time.

  “I’ll keep this phone from now on,” she snapped at Dwayne.

  “Those contests are always rigged anyway. The station manager’s daughter probably won it,” Dwayne said, changing the radio station just as Classic Rock 107 announced the beginning of their Hairball Weekend. The band Twisted Sister screamed, ‘We’re Not Going to Take It Anymore.’

  After ninety minutes on the road, Taffy and Dwayne were more listless than combative.

  “Florence, S.C.” Taffy yawned while reading a billboard. “Home of Maytag Appliances.” She emitted a loud snort and her head lolled against the window. Dwayne, his camouflage hunting hat low on his head, made a whistling sound through his nose.

  “Daddy, you awake?” Elizabeth asked with alarm.

  “I’m as alert as a pit bull guarding a ham bone,” Dwayne responded, rolling down the window and spitting. “Look ahead, it’s the first of the Sparky’s signs.”

  Taffy jolted awake. “Sparky’s? Can we stop, Dwayne?”

  “I suppose so. I wouldn’t mind picking up a gift for Ray,” he replied.

  Sparky’s was an enormous roadside store on Highway 501 just outside of Dry Branch. According to the Day-Glo orange signs that were posted every few miles, Sparky’s had it all, from live hermit crabs to fireworks to pecan logs.

  Taffy grew more excited with every passing sign.

  “Exotic seashells,” she said, reading the latest one. “Dwayne, we’re so close to Myrtle Beach. It’s a shame we can’t have a mini holiday.”

  “Don’t forget what this trip is about,” Dwayne said in a solemn voice. “Ray may be darkening death’s door, and you’re thinking about beach vacations.”

  Taffy slid down her seat and sulked for a while after her husband’s admonishment, but perked right up when she saw the next Sparky’s sign.

  �
�Saltwater taffy!” she shouted out.

  After twenty miles and several more signs, Sparky’s was finally in sight and even Elizabeth was antsy with anticipation. As soon as Dwayne parked the car, the trio tumbled out onto the blacktop pavement outside the store and headed for the entrance.

  Sparky’s was stuffed with the usual touristy junk: seashell nightlights, painted coconuts, and rock candy.

  Dwayne chuckled over a display of fossilized shark droppings. “Ray will get a big kick out of this,” he said.

  Taffy rolled her eyes and said, “You’re going to give petrified poop to a dying man?”

  “I’ll give it to him when he’s better,” Dwayne said, his black eyes flashing. “And don’t say he’s dying. You don’t know Ray. He’s strong as a bull.”

  Taffy meandered away from Dwayne to consider a display of pickled Vidalia onions and hot sauces of various strengths. Elizabeth went into the sweets department to buy a package of peanut brittle for Timothy.

  After she made her purchase she wandered around the store, looking over the bins filled with sand dollars, conch shells, and shark’s teeth, until Taffy grabbed her elbow and said, “Come help me tear your daddy away from the firecrackers.”

  She followed Taffy to a large room spilling over with fireworks packaged in bright, cheery colors usually reserved for children’s toys.

  “This is creepy,” Elizabeth remarked. “You could blow up half of South Carolina with this stuff.”

  “I think that’s what your daddy intends,” Taffy said. “Or, at the very least, a sectional sofa.”

  Dwayne liked his explosives. As a gimmick, he blew up various pieces of furniture on his television commercials to advertise his rent-to-own business. When they reached him, Dwayne was talking to a short man with a droopy gray mustache.

  “How much is this one?” Dwayne asked, pointing his thumb in the direction of a large, round package the size of a bicycle tire.

  Taffy read the label. “Dwayne, what on God’s green earth would you do with sixteen thousand cherry bombs? Haven’t you blown up enough things?”

  “I’m getting it for the boy,” he said. “Lanier gets bored sitting around the house all day with that ankle bracelet.”

  “Then he shouldn’t steal people’s cars,” Taffy said. “He’s spoiled rotten through and through.”

  Dwayne ignored her and addressed the salesman. “Cherry bombs are kind of limiting. How much for that Genghis Khan variety pack?”

  “Only $299,” said the salesman. “But you also get the mushroom-cloud assortment free with purchase.”

  Taffy seized her husband’s arm and yanked him out of the room.

  “What the—” Dwayne snarled.

  “The last thing your son needs is explosives,” Taffy said. “If you have to get him something, buy him some champagne poppers or a box of sparklers.”

  “Those are wuss fireworks,” Dwayne grumbled, but he allowed her to lead him out of the store.

  The trio got back in the car and proceeded down the highway to Dry Branch, which was only ten miles away.

  “What’s the name of that hotel we’re staying at?” Taffy asked.

  “The Presidential,” Dwayne said.

  “Sounds fancy.” Taffy put on a pair of pink-tinted sunglasses. “You think they might have some cute antique shops in Dry Branch?”

  “This isn’t a shopping spree, Taff,” Dwayne said with a grunt.

  “Geeze Louise, I’m just asking.” Taffy pulled down the mirror on the visor and reapplied a coat of bright red lipstick.

  “We’re here.” Elizabeth pointed to a sign and read it aloud: “Dry Branch is a great place to live.”

  “Let’s hope so, for Ray’s sake,” Taffy said, teasing her bangs with a comb.

  “Can I borrow your cell phone?” Elizabeth asked. “I want to tell Timothy we arrived safely.”

  Taffy handed her the phone and Elizabeth dialed the number, feeling a pang of concern when it rang seven times without anyone picking up.

  Finally, on the eighth ring, Timothy answered.

  “What are you doing? I was beginning to think you were out,” Elizabeth said.

  “No, we’re right here,” Timothy said. “Having a blast.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Bonding. Daddy-and-daughter time. It’s great.”

  “Good for you. I just wanted to let you know we’re now entering Dry Branch.” She shifted the phone to her other ear. “Everything’s going okay then?”

  “Hon. You’ve only been gone... what? Four hours? Of course everything’s okay.” He paused. “When are you coming back?”

  “Late tomorrow. We’ll probably spend the whole day at the hospital. Kiss Glenda for me, and I’ll talk to you soon. Love ya.”

  “Love ya, too,” Timothy said.

  Elizabeth glanced out the window, looking for familiar landmarks. She’d been to Dry Branch several times as a child to visit her uncle and she used to explore the town with her cousin Dorrie, who was the same age as Elizabeth. Dorrie was something of an anomaly in the Polk family. Instead of getting married and having a couple of babies after high school, she’d studied law and was now a practicing attorney in Atlanta.

  “Don’t know why she went traipsing off to school for seven years when she could have had a perfectly decent job in Dry Branch,” Uncle Ray had said after she left. He owned Co-Zee Heating and Air Company and had hoped Dorrie would be his secretary.

  “Do you think Dorrie will be here?” Elizabeth said. She hoped to see her, even though she knew she’d feel something of a failure around her ambitious cousin.

  “Why wouldn’t she?” Dwayne said. “She’s lived here for going on two or three years now.”

  “What? I thought she lived in Buckhead.” Elizabeth poked her head between Taffy and her daddy’s seat. Buckhead was a moneyed area of Atlanta.

  “She did, but then she married a local boy, and they set up housekeeping in Dry Branch,” said Dwayne. “Seems to me Ray said she’s got a young ‘un now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  During Elizabeth’s rare visits, Dorrie had always insisted that as soon she graduated high school she was going to wipe the red clay of Dry Branch off her Keds and never come back.

  “Sure as spitting,” Dwayne said, easing on the brakes as they passed a thirty-five-mile speed limit sign.

  The interior of the car alternately darkened and lightened as the sun slipped through the pine trees. Elizabeth was trying to imagine her tomboy cousin with a child. Dorrie had never cared for dolls and once when she got a Barbie for Christmas, she gave the fashion doll a buzz cut, dressed her in trousers, and stuck her behind the wheel of a Tonka truck.

  “This town is a pit,” Taffy frowned as she stared out the window.

  They passed a rusting trailer where a speckled hound howled in the dirt yard. Old hulks of cars slumbered underneath an oak tree, and sunlight bounced off a row of bullet-shaped propane tanks. Dwayne had to swerve to avoid an old sofa that was turned on its side and spilling its innards of springs and foam onto the road.

  “We’re getting into the commercial section now.” Dwayne flipped down his visor to shade his eyes from the midday sun.

  They passed E-Z Tax service, a Super 10 store, and a unisex salon. A dingy, windowless building advertised itself as Sister Soul Food Diner.

  “They serve some darn good country-fried steak as I recall,” Dwayne said.

  Taffy lowered her sunglasses and peered at the small restaurant. “You eat there. I’m not getting citronella poisoning.”

  “Salmonella,” he corrected. “And that place is so clean you could eat off the floor.”

  “I only eat in chain restaurants; you know that, Dwayne,” Taffy said. “But I bet there isn’t an Olive Garden within miles of this country-bumpkin town.”

  “Sandpit R
oad,” Dwayne said, noting a street sign in front of a rusting tin water tower. “That’s where me and Ray had that run-in with a wild boar.”

  Elizabeth’s daddy sat up straight in his seat, looking about with interest. When he’d struck it rich with his rent-to-own business several years back, he bought a patio home in a fashionable gated community in Augusta. But Elizabeth knew Dwayne was still a small-town Southern boy to his marrow, feeling most at home in tiny hamlets with dirt roads, smoky roadhouses, and family-owned meat-and-three cafes, the “three” standing for the slow-cooked vegetables that always accompanied the entree on the plate.

  Taffy yawned. “I hope the Presidential has an in-room Jacuzzi. I want to soak some of this road dust off of me.”

  “It’s supposed to be on the main thoroughfare,” Dwayne said. “Must be a brand-new motel, because it wasn’t here three years ago when I visited Ray.”

  They passed a Hardee’s, a barbecue place called the Big Pig, and a Bumper-to-Bumper auto parts. Beyond the cluster of businesses was a light-studded arrow with the word “motel” on it. The arrow pointed to a row of dilapidated mint-green cinder-block units with an empty, cracked kidney-shaped pool set in concrete out front. Faded letters painted on the building identified the place as the “Heart of Dry Branch Motor Inn.”

  “Heck, if we’re in the heart of Dry Branch, I hate to see its nether parts,” Taffy said with a grimace. “I wonder who’d stay in such a dumpy—”

  “Here it is, the Presidential.” Dwayne swung the car into the lot of the motor court. He tugged on his chin. “Funny. This place don’t look brand new.” Then he pointed to a portable curbside sign with letters that spelled out, “Presidential Inn. Under new management.”

  “Oh, new management,” Dwayne said, reading the sign. “And they changed the name.”

  “Dwayne, I wouldn’t let my roaches stay here,” Taffy said, glaring at the building with narrowed eyes. “Although I’m sure they’d find plenty of their friends around.”