by Kitty Margo
I giggled nervously.” I had forgotten all about that.”
He winked and said, “I hadn’t,” before turning and marching back into the funeral home, and hopefully back into his coffin.
Chapter Nine
Maggie
I was having a cup of strong black coffee and watching a program on the cooking channel. Lord knows I had already learned more than I ever wanted to know about the various and sundry uses for smoky cumin.
Irene was having water with lemon, since I was out of decaf coffee and she refuses to touch caffeine in any form. The girl even drinks unsweetened decaffeinated iced tea and still claims to be a southern belle. She says caffeine messes with her heart. I can understand that, but still, if she didn’t drink so much unleaded stuff she might be able to keep her eyes open past 9:00 at night.
I thought she was supposed to be watching me in case I had a concussion, yet her head was bobbing up and down on the headrest like a turtle.
“Irene!” I shouted.
She sat straight up, eyes blared wide open, sniffing for smoke like the house was on fire. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to ask you something.”
She was so sleepy she could hardly hold her eyes open. “What?”
“Do you think I’m crazy?”
She just looked at me like I was crazy.
“Do you believe I saw Rusty tonight, or do you think it was my imagination?”
She hesitated too long then yawned widely. “I believe you think you saw him. So that’s all that matters.”
“Yeah, you’re right. It was probably just my imagination.” I took my coffee cup and went to the kitchen for a refill. Her glass of water was untouched. “But it was so real, Irene. Rusty sat straight up in that coffin just like he had been taking a nap and said, ‘What’s up, Maggie.’”
“What do you want me to say, Maggie? I have to admit I’m lost here.” She finally picked up her water glass and drained it, then chewed on a piece of ice, obviously stalling for time. “This is uncharted territory.”
I sat my coffee down on the end table, grabbed an afghan since the temperature in the room seemed to have dropped by several degrees, and plopped down in my chair. Just as I opened my mouth to answer her, I noticed a movement in the corner. I cross my heart and hope to die, Rusty Weston was sitting in Earl’s recliner like he owned the place.
“What’s up, Maggie,” he asked in that deep country voice of his. “I kept hearing my name and thought I would pop in and see what you girls were talking about.”
“Hey… Rusty,” I stuttered. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think I can drink liquids now, but thanks for the offer.”
“Sure. No problem.”
“You know, Maggie? I still can’t figure out why you can see me and nobody else can.” His lips turned down in a frown. “I thought surely Shelly would be able to see me, but my sweet baby girl can’t.”
“I’m… sorry to hear that, Rusty.” You would think if anybody could see him, his young adulteress could.
“We had some good times back in the day, didn’t we, Maggie?”
“Um… yes. We sure did.” Where in the hell are Ghostbusters when you need them?
“A lot of females would freak out if they saw a ghost in their living room, whereas you act like it’s an everyday occurrence.”
“I recently watched as the police dug up a headless body from my backyard.” I was going for carefree and witty, but it fell short. “It would take more than a ghost to scare me.”
“You might be right, but poor Irene is looking at you like you’ve lost your mind.”
Oh! Irene. I turned to her and, sure enough, she appeared to be a little green around the gills. ‘”It’s okay, honey. Rusty is just paying us a little visit.”
Irene pulled the afghan off the back of the couch and spread it over her, covering everything from her nose down.
Rusty laughed. “Tell Irene I said what’s up.”
“Rusty says what’s up?”
She only nodded her head in recognition.
“Have you been able to see ghosts all your life, Maggie?” Rusty was looking at me curiously, apparently confused by my ability to converse with the nonliving.
“I’m not sure.” Had I? “Rusty, do you remember the incident I had on the playground in the third grade?”
It was obvious that he didn’t. “Refresh my memory if you don’t mind.”
“I was drinking water from the fountain, waiting my turn at bat. Jimmy Blalock stepped up to bat, and you know he was known for slinging the bat after he got a hit. Well, he hit a homer and slung that wooden bat my way so hard it wrapped around my skull and broke in two. I passed out from a cracked skull and the x-ray showed that I also had a brain bleed. Mama said when they got me home from the hospital I slept off and on for a week.”
“Now I remember.” Rusty had a thoughtful expression on his face. “We thought you were a goner for sure. Our entire grade made you get well cards.”
“I still have those in a box in the attic somewhere if rats haven’t made nests with all of them. Anyway, when I woke up, I had an imaginary friend named Delilah sitting on my bed and begging me to go outside and play hopscotch with her. At least I thought she was an imaginary friend. Now, I wonder if Delilah was just dead and we didn’t know it.”
As I said this Irene picked up her phone and started rapidly punching in numbers. “Who are you calling?”
“911.” She looked at me with determination in her eyes, and the phone clutched tightly to her ear. “Maggie, you know I love you. But, honey, you are in desperate need of counseling.”
I reached over and grabbed her phone. When the 911 operator answered, I said, “Sorry, I called you by mistake.”
“No problem,” the operator responded.
Placing the phone out of Irene’s reach, I turned to face her and took her hands. “Irene, this is my life and I have to accept it.”
She jerked her hands out of mine to massage her temples. “Maggie Moore, I don’t for one minute believe that Rusty Weston, the recently deceased Rusty Weston, is sitting in Earl’s recliner carrying on a normal conversation with you. I’m sorry. I just don’t think the dead can come back once they are gone.”
Poor thing. I could tell she was on the verge of a major meltdown with all this talk of the supernatural. I looked to our friendly neighborhood ghost for assistance. “Rusty, do something to make Irene believe you are really here.”
“Such as?” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Remember I’m new to this, Maggie?”
“I don’t know. Make something move. Walk through her and let her see how cold you are. Anything, just prove to her that you are really a ghost.”
Rusty walked over and stood in front of Irene. We both felt the frigid draft and it prompted her to snuggle deeper under her blanket. Suddenly the water in her glass started to freeze. Within seconds it was solid ice and condensation was making a thick film on the outside of the glass. As we watched the shape of a heart appeared in the fog. Then the initials R.W. and I.S. were written inside the heart. Rusty Weston and Irene Spenser?
“Rusty?” Irene whispered. “Is that really you?”
He looked at me and nodded his head toward Irene. “Tell her yes, and it’s good to see her.”
Now that Irene had been convinced, he sat back down in the recliner, focusing his attention on me again. “Maggie, do you remember that pink 59 Rambler with the wood panels on the side that you drove all through high school.”
“I sure do. People might have laughed, but it got me from point A to B.”
“Oh, I’m not throwing off on it,” he was quick to assure me. “How many times did we go to the drive in?”
“Too many times to count.”
“You and Prudence would sit in the front and pay for two, while the rest of us would put the seats back and lie down and hide. I can’t believe we never got caught.”
“
And every single time Prudence sat in the front squealing, ‘It’s a sin to steal money. Each and every one of you hiding back there is going to hell.’”
Rusty nodded his head toward Irene. “The night we went to watch Night of the Living Dead, Irene and I were squeezed together pretty tight back there. Ask her if she remembers that night.”
“Irene, Rusty says to ask you if you remember the night we all piled into the Rambler and went to the drive in to watch Night of the Living Dead?”
She didn’t answer but, I kid you not, I have never seen that girl blush so profusely.
Irene grinned. “Tell Rusty I said to kiss my ass.”
I just sat there with my jaw on my chin when Rusty winked at Irene and said, without cracking a grin, “I did.”
Chapter Ten
Irene
The bus was slam packed by the time we made it to Walmart to meet up with the tour at 6:00am on Friday morning, and Maggie had bitched every second of the way. “You know I won’t ever step foot in Walmart again!”
“Yes, mama.” Trip looked at me in the rear view mirror and winked. “Something about the pork they sell, isn’t it?”
“I’ll say it’s something!” She crossed her arms under her heaving bosom, obviously greatly perturbed, and sighed heavily. “The poor sows never even get to see their babies before they are taken away from them. Do you realize how sad that is?”
“Let me get this straight.” I just had to say it, because sometimes the things that come out of her mouth leave me positively flabbergasted. “You refuse to shop at Walmart because their pork comes from sows that didn’t get to see their offspring?’”
“Absolutely!” She pursed her lips and quirked an arched brow at me. “Isn’t that more than enough reason to boycott them?”
“Yet, you have no qualms with eating either the mother or the baby pig after they are separated?”
Oh, her cheeks were flushed with color. I had hit a nerve. “I did give up bacon for lent, remember?”
“Oh, yes. I do remember your sacrifice,” I said, to pacify her and hoping to change the subject. “We’re here.”
Trip was dropping us off, since we both refused to leave our cars unattended in the parking lot. Why, it was questionable if our vehicles would even have a rim on them when we returned after leaving them in this neck of the woods for ten days.
As I was getting my suitcase out of the truck, I glanced into the windows of the bus and saw nothing but wall to wall people. Glory be! They were packed tighter than sardines in a tin can. Evidently Maggie was thinking the same thing, because she mumbled, “What if there are no seats left?”
I pointed to the tour director who was busily checking off names on a clipboard. “She wouldn’t oversell the bus. You know the women in this town would cut up worse than a flat tire if they paid for a tour and there wasn’t a seat left for one of them to sit in.”
“True.” She nodded her head agreeably. “I bet we won’t get to sit together though.”
“Probably not,” I had to agree after another quick peek at the crowded bus. “You watch me have to sit beside some old sour puss who burps and farts the whole way.”
“Could he or she be any worse than Miss Nellie?” Maggie giggled.
“You have a good point,” I had to admit.
She grinned. “Maybe we can talk someone into switching seats if we need to.”
We had been told that it was customary for everybody on the bus to bring a bag of snacks to pass around such as M & M’s, pretzels, homemade goodies, Skittles, etc. I had picked up two large bags of Reese’s Pieces at Food Lion and dumped them into a large Ziploc bag. Do you think Maggie had even considered doing anything so sensible? Hell, no! I could just see her marching up to the front of the bus and harassing the crowd. “Every one of you should be ashamed for buying Hershey products.”
According to Maggie, there is a lawsuit claiming the Hershey Company uses cocoa suppliers that employ child labor in West Africa, so, naturally, she has boycotted them.
If true, this is a horrible, horrible practice and they should be stopped from abusing innocent children immediately. But in all honesty, it won’t stop me from picking up a bag of Hershey’s kisses to keep by my bedside in case my sugar drops during the night, or I just need a pick me up. Chocolate makes me feel better. If that makes me a terrible person, so be it.
So, I kept my mouth shut and watched in amazement as Maggie lifted a huge white box of at least fifty cupcakes off the seat. And they were not your run of the mill cupcakes either.
I would never tell her this but, if you ask me, Maggie tends to go a bit overboard with the whole Red Hat Society thing, because naturally that was the theme she had chosen for her tiny works of art. Personally, I would not be caught dead wearing a purple dress, let alone those long gloves up to the armpits that some of them wear. And you certainly will not catch me sashaying around town, or anywhere else, wearing a red hat with fake flowers hot glued to it and perched on top of my head. I cringe just thinking about it.
Anyway, back to the cupcakes, they had purple icing with a little red hats sitting on top, and what resembled a red feather boa dripping down the side of each one. Heaven help me. She had probably worked on that nonsense for the better part of an entire day.
While Maggie hugged Trip and gave him his final orders about inspecting her house daily, watering her flowers and animals, getting her mail out of the mailbox, and checking her property for any new seedlings that might germinate during her absence, we headed toward the bus with Trip carrying Maggie’s suitcase so she could protect her miniature masterpieces.
After climbing a flight of stairs to get on the bus, I can honestly say that I have never seen so many folks squeezed into the same cracker box in all my born days. Spotting two seats all the way at the back of the bus, I had started to scoot down the aisle and grab them, when I glanced back and saw Maggie struggling to get between the seats. “Turn the box sideways,” I urged. But even sideways that box was not going down the aisle comfortably, or uncomfortably.
I could just feel blood rushing up to color my neck and cheeks. How embarrassing. She should have known the box was half the width of the bus and wouldn’t fit down the aisle. “Better still, you hold the box and let me pass them out and Trip can take the box back with him,” I pleaded. “How does that sound?”
“Sounds good to me.” Maggie handed the box to me, and I was tempted to rest the heavy cardboard container on the heads of two women across the aisle from each other, but from the looks of them they were not exactly the agreeable sorts so I nixed that idea in the bud.
Maggie finally retrieved a pack of napkins from her bag and we proceeded to dole out the cupcakes. Evidently it would have been too much of an insult to her high baking standards to bring just a regular old batch of sugar cookies.
Everybody eagerly took one, except one elderly lady at the back of the bus. Looking at the cupcake like it was a snake about to strike, she sniffed and said, “I don’t eat just anybody’s cooking.”
Of course Maggie took offense and gave her one of her classic go to hell looks that would have put anybody else in their place. “I will have you know that I washed my hands thoroughly before making these cupcakes and you may certainly rest assured that anything I bake is made from the highest quality ingredients available.”
“They better be,” the woman practically snarled, just before shoving half the cupcake into her mouth.
Ignoring the rude comment, and satisfied that her donation to the group had been well received, Maggie handed the gigantic box off to her son. The tour director and bus driver breathed audible and heartfelt sighs of relief, and we finally took our seats. Luckily I got the window seat.
“That was fun!” Maggie gushed, glowing as folks went on and on about how delicious her tasty treats were and how talented she was at decorating with fondant. Within minutes she was passing out index cards with the recipe on it that she just happened to have stashed in her huge purse, and glowing with
pride.
That is until the elderly lady across from her who didn’t eat just anyone’s cooking commenced to choking and turning several shades of blue.
“Water!” the lady screeched, when she was able to gasp a breath and squeak out a word.
Her eyes were threatening to bulge out of their sockets by the time I grabbed a bottle of water from my bag and handed it to Maggie. I had already drank half the contents, but under the circumstances I didn’t think the choking woman would mind sharing a few germs with me.
Maggie tried to get her to take a sip, but it was painfully obvious that nothing could get either in or out of her clogged windpipe.
So Maggie, being the nurse that she is, swung into action. Before you could say God bless a billy goat, she had jerked the older woman to her feet, spun her around so her back was to Maggie’s front, and began doing the abdominal thrusts of the Heimlich Maneuver.
We all held our collective breaths as the first two thrusts did nothing. Then the thought hit me, hey, this is serious. This woman could really die. But, finally, on the third thrust, a hunk of crumbled cake went sailing through the air and scattered over the heads of the people in the five or six rows in front of us.
“Ewww,” several Miss Prisses up front were heard to mumble and brush the powder off their skin like it was anthrax instead of cake flour.
The elderly lady drew in several heaving breaths as her body went limp for a few seconds. Then she got her second wind and her color slowly returned. Maggie smiled and patted her tenderly on the shoulder, obviously proud of herself for having saved the little old lady’s life.
Little old lady my dimpled ass! After a few minutes, when the feisty little sprite had her bearings back, her body went rigid and her cloudy blue eyes sparkled with fire as she turned on Maggie and screeched to the top of her lungs, “You will rue the day you tried to kill me!”