by C. L. Bevill
Bubba let out a deep sigh. He wasn’t about to suggest to Sheriff John that maybe Bubba himself snookered Neal into buying that fancified equipment to make sounds in the mansion, too. Even if it was sarcastic in nature, it would be like handing his head over to the sheriff on a silver platter. And he wasn’t going to bring up Melvin Wetmore, Mark Evans, and the elusive Mary Bradley because Sheriff John would probably blow holes in those theories as well. “I guess you got it all figured out. Now what?”
“I’m waiting for some ballistics on the bullet that killed Neal. We dug it out of the Donut Shop beside Ledbetter’s Realty. We’ll need to confiscate all of the weapons in the house, Bubba, for comparison.” Sheriff John smiled widely, kind of like what Bubba imagined the grin of a great white shark would be like, right before it ate someone.
“You got a warrant?” Bubba asked nicely.
Sheriff John patted his shirt pocket. “You want to read it?”
“You know what?” Bubba was as tired as a man could be without falling on his face flat out on the floor. “I do.” And he did, much to Sheriff John’s consternation, from front to back, and in slow excruciating detail, pausing to look up every third word in the family’s oversized Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. By the time Bubba finally finished the warrant he could hear Sheriff John’s top teeth grinding away at the bottom. An hour later, Sheriff John left the mansion with every single gun in his legal possession. Miz Demetrice had been woken up, and followed Sheriff John around the house, saying, “You going to leave us without protection, Mr. Sheriff Man? This is just another example of po-lice harassment. Just wait until I talk to Lawyer Petrie. He eats people like you for breakfast, and poops ‘em out at lunch. I’m going to call every congressman from Texas about this morally deficient outrage! Did we wake up in the Soviet Union this morning? Do we live in communist China, now? This is exactly the reason that we have the Constitution of the United States of America! We have every right to bear just as damn many arms as we can buy!”
To Bubba’s amazement, Sheriff John didn’t even lose his temper once. He merely collected all of the weapons, which included some that Bubba didn’t know about, much less even knew what to call them, placed them in a box, wrote out a receipt for them, and presented the paper to Miz Demetrice.
She leaned out the kitchen door, dressed in her scarlet robe and screamed at the county car as it pulled away, “I bet you don’t do this right next to an election year!”
Bubba went to the telephone in the kitchen, and held the receiver in one hand, while he flipped through the yellow pages.
Miz Demetrice watched him with something akin to astonishment. She was so furious that she couldn’t believe that her son was so calm. She had figured that everything would be just hunky-dory once Sheriff John figured out that her son, Bubba, was just the most innocent man on the face of the planet. All they had to do was wait it out, and then, Sheriff John would say, ‘Okey-dokey, you can go on home. Sorry about all the accusations, and name-calling, and general defaming that went on. We’ll print a retraction in the paper.’
But it didn’t happen. And even worse, it didn’t look like it was going to happen. Then there was her son, looking like nothing had happened to him, and although he was as black as a coal miner, he was going down one page of the telephone book with his index finger. He made a call, poking on the numbers as if he had all the time in the world. He waited, and then asked, “I sure would like to know when the next train to Dallas is?”
Miz Demetrice’s mouth dropped open.
“It is? Well, that’s just great. Can you tell me if you have any seats on it? You do. Yes, it’s an early train, isn’t it?” Bubba tapped on the cover of the telephone book absently. “I know the weather has been a little mild here...thank you, I think I’m a nice fella, even at five in the morning. Good-bye, now.”
Bubba disconnected the line with one blackened hand. He dialed again, and listened to the phone for a long time before someone answered on the other end. “Miz Adelia? Yes, I know what time it is...a dream about what...Tom Cruise...Is that right?...No, I ain’t never dreamt about Tom Cruise...Maybe Sylvester Stallone once...but that was completely innocent...Listen, we had a fire out here...No, everyone is okay...Ma is her normal self...That’s right, as mean as hell...I’m a gonna put her on a train to Dallas this morning, and I don’t want you to come to the house for the rest of the week...I’ll give you a call...Consider it a paid vacation.” He looked up as Miz Demetrice started to say something loudly and then abruptly shut her mouth. “You just rest up for the week, and when Miz Demetrice comes back, we’ll all be ready to take her orneriness on then. Bye, Ma’am.”
Miz Demetrice stared at her only son with what he termed the glare of doom. It was a look perfected over years of sheer biliousness, practiced on hapless shop keeper, card cheaters, and mayors who didn’t toady to the Snoddy matriarch as the rightful ruler of her own universe. She had used it on her son on the odd occasion, when it was warranted, until her son had figured out that it was only a look, and nothing that could hurt him personally. Unless one counted the grudge Miz Demetrice could hold for months, and in some cases, years.
Bubba gave her back a look, measure for measure. “You’re going. If I have to carry you, kicking and screaming.”
“You don’t think I’ll kick and scream?” she asked slowly, dangerously.
“I don’t care if you tell people I beat you with a big stick, you’re going. So you might as well get dressed and pack your clothes. I’ll call Aunt Caressa.” Bubba would have smiled at the expression of utter disbelief on his mother’s face, but he knew that if he did, he would suffer for the remainder of his natural life, if he even had one, after that.
In the end, Bubba escorted Miz Demetrice to the Amtrak station, with minimal fuss. He smelled like smoke, dressed in jeans rescued from his blackened bedroom, and Precious wanted to fight over the passenger’s seat. But he passed his mother onto the train conductor like he was presenting the Queen of England to the President of the United States of America.
Miz Demetrice took turns scowling at her son and the train conductor, who was clearly flustered.
At the train station there was at least ten families seeing someone else off on the 7 AM train to Dallas. Half of them couldn’t wait to call someone about Bubba’s mother escaping his clutches to run off to Dallas. By the time, the news got back to Mary Lou Treadwell, operator of the emergency line, the story was that Bubba himself had hijacked the 7 AM train with an Uzi submachine gun, and taken one hundred screaming hostages.
It was all the same to Bubba. He had gotten rid of Miz Demetrice. The angels very nearly wept.
Chapter Sixteen - Bubba and the Epiphany –
Saturday
Bubba Snoddy was one tired, smelly, sorry-looking individual. He had a black eye that had evolved into a sickening purplish-green color, and a bruised cheek that was just turning brownish-yellow-black. A knot the size of a tennis ball showed prominently on his forehead. There was a matching knot on the back of his head that made his normally well-groomed hair look like it was pushed up from having slept on it while it was wet. Both bumps made it impossible to wear his Stetson the way any God-fearing Texan was supposed to wear it. Still hacking out smoke-induced phlegm from exposure to the fire at the caretaker’s house, his voice sounded like he was a life-long whiskey and cigar man. He smelled like he’d been the chef at an all-day barbeque, and rubbed the ashes all over his body, which surely didn’t smell right to any individual with any kind of normal sense of olfactory modality. Finally, he hadn’t slept as much as a large, growing boy ought to sleep, and this consequently resulted in his present state of crotchetiness.
Fellow Pegramville residents might liken that to Bubba possessing the normal Snoddy genes. That would be normal for Snoddys, to be precise. Genes much like both his mother and his father possessed. These were genes for which his forebears had been well-known.
After making sure that his mother, Miz Demetrice, claiming duress
the entire time, boarded the 7 AM Amtrak train to Dallas, Texas, Bubba was not feeling the least bit sociable. Several people tried to say their howdies to the man at the station, but were dissuaded either by the grim look on his face, the bruises on his person, or the smell of him in general. A few were firmly deterred by all of the above.
“My God,” said Bryan McGee, who was still waiting on his truck to be repaired at Bufford’s Gas and Grocery, and didn’t think much of George Bufford for his extra-marital activities with Rosa Granado, even if she was a hot little tamale. Bryan was there at the Amtrak to pick up his sister-in-law, who was traveling up from Lake Charles, Louisiana, and was specifically coming to pester Bryan into an early grave, while his wife, her sister, had her gall-bladder removed. But now, while his sister-in-law, Henrietta, was collecting her luggage, and badgering some poor bastard of a porter, Bryan was staring with startled big brown eyes at Bubba Snoddy.
Bryan had heard the stories, and had even spoken to George Bufford, himself via cellular phone, about his disabled Ford truck, yet sitting in Bufford’s garage, while old George was off carousing with hot Rosa in the Bahamas. All that aside, it didn’t prepare him for what Bubba looked like of late. He seemed as though he should be in a hospital, with all that battering. It looked like someone had dropped the A-bomb on that poor boy.
Meanwhile, everyone with a mouth in Pegramville was talking about Bubba, and the murders of Melissa Dearman and Neal Ledbetter. Now there had been some mighty fishy goings-on over at the Snoddy Mansion. While Bryan was waiting on Henrietta to disembark from the train, Stella Lackey told him that a fire had consumed the Snoddy place right down to the foundation. Furthermore, she said that Bubba Snoddy was running around stark-naked, yelling things about the invasion of communist Cuban dissidents. Or maybe it had been communist Korean dissidents. Stella wasn’t rightly sure, because she hadn’t sleep too well since Newt Durley had knocked her telephone pole down in an abhorrent spree of reckless and dangerous drunken driving. Consequently, she hadn’t had phone service with which to call the police because the telephone company contained, in her opinion, a bunch of sorry, money-grubbing, sons of bitches.
“Which has what to do with Bubba Snoddy?” Bryan asked when Stella said that.
“Nothing, but it just means I cain’t recollect everything of late. So it was either communist Cubans or communist Koreans. One or t’other,” Stella said, adjusting her false teeth in her mouth, with a total lack of personable etiquette. She was getting to be in her eighties and didn’t justifiably care what most other folks thought of her behavior. The only reason she was at the Amtrak station was to pick up her son, Charles, who was coming in from New Orleans to talk her into moving into a retirement home. Stella cackled to herself at that, and moved away from Bryan, who stared at the older woman as if she was becoming senile right in front of his eyes.
Bubba, on the other hand, was aware of people staring, and a few trying to greet him, but he was too tired and angry to be much of a gentleman. He did, however, stop to help an older woman he didn’t know, by putting her bags in the back of her minivan. The older woman, who wasn’t from Pegramville, said, “Thank you kindly, sir.” And drove away, leaving him to feel maybe a little better.
After all, would a murderer stop to help a lady with her luggage? He didn’t think so.
Bubba returned to his truck and his faithful dog, Precious. Precious sat in the passenger seat, as far as she could get away from her master. He hadn’t been very nice to her. Not only that but he smelled very interesting, and he wasn’t inclined to let her stick her wet nose anywhere she pleased, and that put her out tremendously. Then there was that one human’s presence in her seat. The one called, ‘Miz Adelia,’ was often directed by the one called ‘Mama’ to give Precious baths, which she didn’t like, and sprayed perfume on her, which was even worse than baths. The worst insult of all was that that human talked to her as if she were merely a dog. Things like, ‘Oo-ums-good-puppy-wuppy-uppy.’ It was time to show her master the extent of her disdain. As soon as he wasn’t looking she fully intended to pee on something that belonged to him.
Unfortunately, Bubba did not notice her dogly disdain. He wanted a strong cup of coffee, some decent breakfast to stop the empty ache in his stomach, and the sight of a beautiful woman to make it all go away. Since he couldn’t feast his eyes on Deputy Willodean Gray, he would feast his eyes on the next best thing, Lurlene Grady. He stopped by her apartment, and one of her neighbors told him that she was filling in down at the café for someone who had called in sick. Thus, he went by the Pegram Café and discovered it was chock full of more gawking, gaping, nosy people.
Bubba entered the small café, and the room instantly silenced. He looked around, keeping a blank look on his face, as if he didn’t notice everyone suddenly being quiet. He recognized several people there. Noey Wheatfall was looking through the kitchen window at Bubba, a dark lock of hair hanging in disarray over one eye; an expression of interested curiosity was on his face. Lloyd Goshorn and Foot Johnson were sitting together at a table with full plates of food before them. Both had paused mid-bite to look at the spectacle of Bubba Snoddy entering a public place. Foot had his mouth wide open, showing the large bite of scrambled eggs covered with ketchup therein. Mayor John Leroy, Jr. sat at a booth with Judge Stenson Posey, and both were goggling at Bubba like two small children. Bryan McGee seemed to have transcended the laws of physics by beating him here from the train station, to include dumping his sister-in-law at his house on the way. Even librarian Nadine Clack sat at the counter with a cup of tea in her hands, and her head arched around to look at what everyone else was looking at.
It was almost impossible but Bubba managed not to bark, “Just what in the hell do you people think you’re looking at?” He settled on the certified Snoddy glare, making sure that no one in sight was spared, and threaded his way through the tables to the counter. There were two empty stools on the end. He selected the one on the farthest side away from the next person, in order to put off conversation from eager beavers.
After he sat down, Lurlene hurried in with a stack full of plates running down the length of both of her arms. She was rushed, a little sweaty, and appeared to be working hard this morning serving the breakfast crowd. Even the too-tired Bubba noticed that the waitress looked to be plumb worn out, as if she been out a little too late the night before. She hesitated when she saw Bubba, but smiled at him. It was, perhaps, the first smile he’d seen out of a person this day, and like the woman he’d helped at the Amtrak station, it made him feel a little less like a monster ambling around the town, grunting menacingly, and looking to eat the next hapless, human being who stumbled in front of him.
General conversation resumed behind him, and Bubba didn’t look around to see what, or who, they were talking about. He really didn’t need to know because he already knew. He could feel eyes burning holes in his back. A whole lot of holes in his back. And it didn’t help that Noey was periodically looking through the kitchen window every so often as if Bubba were going to lose his mind in Noey’s very café, which would be followed up with a mass murder on the spot.
Bubba knew what it was. One murder might be justified. After all, the woman had cheated on him, in their very own bed. What kind of Texan would stand for that? It might have been a fit of rage, wrong all the same, but comprehendible. But the other murder, although to a disliked individual such as Neal Ledbetter, was a murder spree, and here was the prime suspect in their midst. Wanting to eat with them, wanting to act normally, and wanting to be treated normally. Well, that was stretching what was commonly and socially acceptable. One didn’t associate with persons such as that.
Bubba had just become persona non Pegramville grata.
Lurlene stopped in front of Bubba with a coffee pot in her hand and a cup in the other. “Here you go darlin’,” she said, pouring coffee in the cup and sliding it in front of him. “You shore look like you need this. I heard about the fire. But I didn’t want to get all in the
way of the firemen. They did say that no one was hurt, so I wasn’t too worried about you. My lord, I was up half the night when I heard.”
Bubba drank in the coffee, and also in the appearance of Lurlene. Her blonde hair curled nicely around her head. She had pinned it up at the base of her head, but ringlets had escaped and draped themselves around her neck. Her face was flushed, as if she had been running, but she looked as attractive as ever in the tight, little uniform that all the Pegram Café waitresses wore, showing off all the right curves in the good spots. And here, she was, concerned about his welfare, unlike the rest of the town.
She said something while he was lost in his thoughts, then she repeated, “You want something to eat?”
“The special’s okay,” he answered. Maybe it was the way she was looking at him, but he suddenly noticed that Lurlene looked oddly familiar. She looked like someone he’d seen recently. She looked like a picture he had been looking at in the not-too-recent past. Her doe’s eyes scrutinized him in a manner that said she was real interested in him at the moment. Not in the way a gal looks at a man she’s been dating, but in a way that he couldn’t quite get. If he had to put a word to mouth, he would have said, ‘That would be a predatory look, I reckon.’
“Eggs scrambled?”
“Yeah.” No romancing or wry repartee this morning, because not one single fancy word came to Bubba’s thoughts. It was like having a big, black hole on the top of his head. There was that odd deja vu and his extreme tiredness holding him back.
Lurlene hesitated again, and then smiled at him, showing her white teeth. “We should get together, tonight,” she whispered. “Just you and me, big boy, hmm?” She hurried off before he could say anything.
Bubba’s eyes were as big as saucers. He nodded slowly. Up and down. Up and down. He knew exactly what she was talking about, and even though he was as tired as a man can get without falling flat on his face, there was a little surge of energy. There ya go. Someone does care about me. And I might even get lucky. Except a sudden mental image of Lurlene appeared in his mind. Lurlene and Willodean and a whole mess of chocolate Jell-O pudding. Their hair was blowing in an imaginary wind. Lurlene took a moment to look back at Bubba, and in that moment, she looked exactly like a playboy model poising for a photographer. She looked just like…