by Joan Hess
"Of course I am," I said, trying not to sound as irritated as I was. It's not wise to mess with Ruby Bee, who looks like a chubby grandmother with her rosy round face and improbable blond hair but has a streak of something hard to define but best to avoid. Every now and then, one of them good ol' boys drinks one pitcher of beer too many at the bar and learns the hard way. One of them limps to this day. Truth.
"Well, then, get your fanny off your chair and get down here," Ruby Bee snapped, then hung up before I could think of anything else, smart or not, to say.
I got my fanny off my chair, vowed to renew my passport, and went out of the relative sanctuary of the PD into the whitewashed August heat of Maggody. A lone pickup truck was heading south, leaving a ghostly swirl of dust in its tracks. A car was parked in front of Roy Stiver's antique store, and I supposed some naïve tourist was in there trying to pull a fast one over on potbellied, slow-talking Roy, who has more CDs in the bank than a cow patty has flies.
My efficiency apartment was above the store. I gave it a wistful look but obediently trudged along the highway to find out what species of bee was buzzing in Ruby Bee's bonnet this time. I winced as I passed the site of the new supermarket, thinking about the poor souls putting on a tar roof in the heat. The building itself was rather peculiar. Jim Bob was too cheap to tear down the old Kwik-Screw, an ordinary convenience store, so some of the facade remained-like a boil.
As I watched, several trucks rolled in loaded with refrigeration equipment and metal shelving units. A beefy man in a hard hat came out to bellow at the drivers, most of whom ignored him and ambled over to the soda machine in front of the Suds of Fun Launderette next door. I didn't blame them. One of the roofers came to the edge and let out his version of a wolf whistle, presumably intended to flatter me into scampering up the ladder for a quick romp in the tar. I'd lived on the Upper East Side in another life, and responded with a minute yet succinct gesture.
Estelle's station wagon was the only car in front of Ruby Bee's, which was odd on a searing Saturday afternoon. There was a black Cadillac parked in front of the motel unit out back, which was odd, too. No one stays at the Flamingo Motel; its sign is a perpetual V CAN Y and every year its neon flamingo looks a little more inclined to molt into oblivion. Ruby Bee lives in number one and swears she prefers the solitude. I've always thought she didn't want to change the linen or mess with registration.
The bar and grill was bright pink on the outside but dim and cool on the inside. And pretty much deserted. Estelle was sitting at the bar with a glass of sherry, listening as Ruby Bee raged and sputtered over the sink.
Estelle, the owner and operator of Estelle's Hair Fantasies, is the antithesis of Ruby Bee. She's as tall as I-five nine-but she towers over me with her six-inch fiery red beehive hairdo. As a child, I'd kept a cautious eye on it, not sure what would happen if it slipped to one side. It never had, to my disappointment. It didn't even sway when she walked.
"It's about time," Ruby Bee said by way of warm welcome. "You want iced tea or milk?"
"Neither, thank you. I'll just sit here like a little mouse until you tell me all about whatever it is that's disturbing you." I climbed onto the stool next to Estelle and propped my elbows on the bar.
"This is hardly the time for jokes," Estelle said with a snort of disapproval. "You might show some concern for your own flesh and blood, Miss High Horse."
Ruby Bee grabbed a dishrag and began to wipe the counter so hard it squeaked. "Now, Estelle, there's no point in giving Arly a lecture on manners. She lived in Noow Yark, you know, where people don't pay any mind to anyone else. They make you turn in your party manners when you drive across the Brooklyn Bridge."
"I forgot," Estelle said, slapping her forehead like a heroine in a melodrama, which wasn't too far off base. "People in Noow Yark just watch out the window when someone gets mugged, and they can't be bothered to learn their neighbors' names or have a nice conversation in the elevator about the weather."
"Hot enough for you?" I inserted quickly.
Ruby Bee shot me a beady look, then attempted to wrest the starring role away from Estelle. "So there's no reason why I should expect Arly to be concerned about me having to live out the last years of my life in the county nursing home. Isn't Adele Wockermann out there?"
"Yes, but last I heard, she was visiting with aliens through her hearing aid," Estelle said, giving me her version of the Beady Look. It's not as effective, since one of hers wanders. "It's a crying shame, Ruby Bee, you not being able to enjoy yourself in your golden years. No grandbabies, no daughter who worries about you, no little cottage with a nice flower garden. A crying shame."
"A crying shame," Ruby Bee echoed. She wiped her eyes with the dishrag, then bravely straightened her shoulders and prepared to crumble into dust in a rocking chair next to Adele.
"A crying shame," I said to complete the symmetry. I had no idea what was up, but I had no doubts I would find out in the next thirty seconds.
It took sixty because we lapsed into a temporary standoff. Ruby Bee and Estelle exchanged looks and waited for me to demand to know the cause of this bleak vision. I contemplated the gold flecks in the mirror and waited for them to spit it out.
"Don't you want to hear about it?" Estelle finally said, pissed because she'd caved in and knew I knew it.
"Sure," I said. "Can I have that iced tea?"
"It's that monstrosity Jim Bob's putting in across the street," Ruby Bee said. "It's going to put plenty of folks out of business, and you got to do something about it."
Realizing I wasn't going to see iced tea anytime soon, I leaned over the bar and got myself a glass of water. "It's ugly, it's been tying up traffic for six months, and it's likely to be staffed by Buchanons from under half the rocks in Stump County. Who's it going to put out of business?"
"Your mother," Estelle said. "The ad says it has this big deli section with tables and plastic silverware so you can eat right there in the store."
"The picnic pavilion," Ruby Bee added in a dull voice.
I shook my head. "It may hurt business for a few days, but it's not going to win anyone's heart for long. That kind of food's never good, and you're the best cook in the county."
Ruby Bee pointed a shaky finger at the empty room. "Just take a look for yourself Nobody's here."
I tried to figure out how to tiptoe around this one, but nothing all that clever came to mind. "I've heard lately that you've been…confrontational with your regular customers," I said carefully. "You've been getting hot under the collar, demanding loyalty oaths and, in general, running everybody off." Valuing my life, I did not add that the hottest topic at the pool hall was whether or not she was too old for PMS (she was).
"I never!" Estelle gasped.
Ruby Bee once again began to wipe the counter, but without her earlier energy. "Maybe I have. I'll be the first to admit I'm not pleased with this pavilion directly across the street. I'm too old to learn how to make croissant sandwiches and mousse. All I know how to make is regular food like meat loaf and scalloped potatoes.
"And all your customers will try the new place and then come right back here like they always did," I said soothingly.
"What about the Satterings?" Estelle demanded. "You think Ivy and Alex can count on folks' loyalty when their produce costs more?"
"I don't know what to tell you. What about you, Ruby Bee? You buy from them because the stand's convenient. Are you going to buy produce at the supermarket because it's cheaper?"
"Of course not," Ruby Bee said, although not with enough conviction to fool a toddler.
Estelle was still into the voice of doom. "And that Mexican fellow that bought the Dairee Dee-Lishus is right upset, I heard. Dahlia said Kevin said he liked to throw a pot of boiling chili at him. The Mexican at Kevin, not the other way around."
"There's not anything any of us can do about it," I said. "Believe it or not, not even Maggody can withstand a spurt of progress every now and then. We used to gripe about the lack of
merchandise and the exorbitant prices at the Kwik-Screw. Now we're going to have to face a larger selection and reasonable prices. I'm afraid we're stuck with it, ladies."
"Unless this picnic pavilion at Jim Bob's SuperSaver Buy 4 Less goes belly-up the first day it opens," Estelle said in a casual voice.
"Why would it?" I said in an uncasual voice.
"You just never know."
"That's right," Ruby Bee said, gazing over my head. "You just never know."
*****
The last bit of reading matter of any significance had not yet been read. It was a letter addressed to the Maggody town council, and it lay in a well-polished silver tray in the foyer of Jim Bob's house. He had ignored it on his way out the door, and Mrs. Jim Bob, who opened whatever mail caught her eye, was much too worried about the upcoming Corinthians II face-off in Sunday school to bother with local affairs.
Jim Bob would read it over coffee the next morning, and it would take him all day to figure out how best to use it to his own advantage, which was pretty much how he approached everything.
The letter was from the Starley City Youth Center and was thick with dates, guidelines, rules, regulations, methods of compliance, and boring stuff like that. The gist of it, however, was that Maggody was invited to enter its local championship baseball team in the Starley City Labor Day Weekend Invitational Intermediate League Baseball Tournament (in subsequent paragraphs referred to as the SCLDWIILBT, but don't try to sound it out, 'cause you can't without coming off like you're drunker'n Cooter Brown).
Maggody didn't have a local championship baseball team, but not because there wasn't a competitive spirit. It had a good high-school football team, and a darn tough basketball team. The local 4-H'ers always picked up their fair share of blue and red ribbons at the county fair. The Future Homemakers of America thrived under the enthusiastic guidance of Miss Lottie Estes, and the club's secretary secretary-treasurer had won third place in the state bake-off with her Lemon-Lime Surprise Dinner Rolls.
Maggody didn't have a soccer team, though, because it was a sissy foreign game where you wear shorts and don't get dirty. It didn't have a chess team or an IQ Bowl team, for obvious reasons. And because nobody'd ever given it any thought, it didn't have a championship baseball team. Not yet, anyway.
2
"Then the high-school band plays, right?" Lamont asked, a small notebook in one hand and a much-gnawed pencil in the other.
Jim Bob poured himself another four fingers of bourbon and sat down on the edge of the lumpy bed while he tried to remember exactly what the band director had said. "The band's going to gather behind the store at one-thirty, get theirselves lined up however they do it, and then come marching around to the front at exactly two o'clock."
"In full uniform?"
"Yeah, full uniform. White bucks, brass buttons, feathers on their heads, all that shit. But some kids are away for the summer, so there'll be holes. Both tubas are gone, along with all but one of the drums and a goodly number of the clarinets. There wasn't any way Wiley could make them come back for the grand opening."
"I suppose not," Lamont muttered, "but if we're down to a fat flutist and a pimply trombone player, I'm not sure it's worth it. We don't want to look foolish in front of the media. The ribbon cutting's at two-fifteen, and then we'll try to keep the camera crew and reporters around as long as we can with free food. I'll have a bottle of booze in the office."
Jim Bob bunched the pillows against the headboard and settled back on the bed, taking a wicked pleasure in putting his dusty shoes on the motel-room bedspread. "Hey, Lamont, I had a helluva an idea over the weekend. You're going to love it."
"Yeah, go ahead," Lamont said, making a note to check that the store uniforms were starched before they were distributed to the employees. Who were the dumbest people he'd ever met. Three-quarters of them were named Buchanon, and all of those blessed with simian foreheads and nasty little yellowish eyes. And therefore resembling, in varying degrees, Jim Bob Buchanon and his tight-assed wife, who'd been introduced as Barbara Anne Buchanon Buchanon. Lamont had been appalled, but not surprised.
Jim Bob looked as smug as a retriever with a splattered duck in its mouth. "I got this letter from the Starley City folks saying Maggody could enter a team in some damn fool baseball tournament. I started thinking about it, and I finally called over there and got some information."
"We're opening a supermarket, not a baseball season. Now I want to meet with the entire staff first thing tomorrow to review the stock procedures. Tell them to be in front-"
"Hold it, Lamont," Jim Bob said, his feelings hurt just a smidgen. "I know we're opening a supermarket, but there's a way we can get a whole lot of publicity and community goodwill without it costing us a plug nickel. I realize you own three supermarkets and know a damn sight more about it than I do, but I'm a businessman, too, and I can appreciate the value of gettin' something for nothing."
Lamont accepted the distasteful fact he was going to have to hear Jim Bob out before they could get back to business. He flipped a hand in the general direction of the bed, made himself a stiff drink, and lit a cigarette, all the while admiring the overall composition of his demeanor in the mirror. Jim Bob's brown hair was showing a trace of gray, but it lacked the impact of sterling silver.
"This baseball team has to be sponsored by a local business or civic organization, see? The boys wear uniforms saying who's sponsoring them so everybody knows. Then they go play ball in front of a whole bleacher of parents, who tell each other how nice it is of the Lions Club or the beer distributor or whoever the hell it is to encourage these little boys to play baseball."
"So?" Lamont said real quietly.
"So we round up ten or twelve boys, dress them up in uniforms that say Jim Bob's SuperSaver Buy 4 Less, and send them out to do some free advertising for us." Jim Bob rubbed his palms together and gave his partner a sly grin. "Pretty damn smart, huh?"
Lamont found a certain joy in preparing to prick the prick's balloon. "Yeah, pretty damn smart, Jim Bob. But aren't you forgetting something?"
Jim Bob conscientiously searched his mind, because according to Mrs. Jim Bob, he was all the time forgetting something, even though she was usually referring to hoity-toity table manners or saying amen in church. "Are you worried about finding enough boys? I already asked around and I can get at least ten, most of them pick of the litter. Maybe we'll get some walk-ons once we start practicing."
"Good, Jim Bob, good. I was thinking about something else. As you explained so well a minute ago, we sponsor the team, which means we provide the equipment, the uniforms, and the registration fees. My store in Farberville sponsored a team one year, and it wasn't cheap."
"No problem there. The letter said we should enter our local championship team, so I figure the town ought to foot the bill. All I have to do is call a town-council meeting and run it through before anyone can blink an eye. After all," Jim Bob said, puffing up just a bit, "I am the mayor of Maggody."
"I'm keenly aware of it," Lamont said in all sincerity. No one else could have rezoned the land adjoining the Kwik-Screw with a mere flick of a pencil.
"I was thinking we could have the Jim Bob's SuperSavers at the grand opening, too. All shiny-faced and dressed in clean uniforms, ready to play good ol' American baseball."
"Sounds great, Jim Bob. One other minor…very, very minor thing. Who's going to coach the SuperSavers-you?"
Jim Bob choked on a mouthful of bourbon, spewing amber droplets all over himself and the bedspread. Even though he was coughing, he stuck out his glass. Lamont silently refilled it and returned to the chair, where he picked up his notebook and scribbled a memo to buy a whole damn case of bourbon next time he went home.
Jim Bob downed half the whiskey, wiped his eyes with the corner of the pillowcase, and said, "Why, one of the boys' daddies. You know I'm as busy as a stallion in a field of fillies. As much as I'd dearly like to, I don't see how I could make any time to coach the boys." He wiped his eyes again
, pretending to be misty about not getting to coach the boys but actually thinking what sweet Cherri Lucinda would say if he started showing up less often at her door. She had the longest dadburned fingernails in the state and wasn't averse to making a point with them if she was in one of those moods.
Lamont, who knew all about Cherri Lucinda, among other interesting tidbits, had no problem reading Jim Bob's mind, which was pretty much printed in crayon. "See if you can talk someone into being the coach. It's not a bad idea, and we might be able to get some free publicity. The media's real fond of little boys with toothless grins. Shall we get back to the grand opening?"
*****
Dahlia O'Neill snuggled up to her honey-bunny and said, "Kevin, my honey-bunny, would you be so kind as to read me again that part about employee break time?" She was perfectly capable of reading it herself, but she had a bottle of root beer in one hand and a tantalizingly soft cream-filled sponge cake in the other, and she knew in her heart of hearts that Jim Bob and that other fellow'd be sore if her employee manual was sticky.
"Oh, yes," Kevin cooed, seizing the opportunity to burrow into her pillowy, billowy (but not willowy) softness until he could swear it was her breast against his elbow. It wasn't that she was a prude, he thought as he opened the manual. It was downright amazing the things she'd taught him when they first started keeping company. Things that brought tears to his eyes just remembering. Things that caused him to gulp several times before he could trust his voice. But now that they was officially engaged, Dahlia had insisted they stop doing all those amazing things. Which Kevin didn't rightly follow but went along with his apple dumpling, anyways.
"It says we get fifteen minutes at the end of two hours, twenty minutes for lunch, and one other fifteen-minute break, depending on how busy the store is," he said after some studying. "Doesn't say anything about calls of nature."
"Well, of course not, Kevin Buchanon! They don't talk about that kinda thing in books. It's not nice to write about potties and a person's private business. I don't even want to think about someone who'd write that kinda thing in a book!"