Joe Pelham sat on the bus with me, and we did homework together, but the one time he asked me out I told him, “No. And don’t ever ask again, or I won’t study with you, either.” I concentrated on my classes, earning all A’s and hoping for a scholarship to get me out of town. Maybe a college campus would widen my dating pool.
Mama wasn’t dating, either. “Oh, no,” she told her friend Sandy. “Most of the men I know are like the sludge left in the bottom of the beer fermenter, the stuff I’d feed to pigs, if I had any.”
“They’re not all that bad,” Sandy protested. She and Mama sat at our kitchen table playing poker and drinking Mama’s beer.
I’d always found it strange that Mama and Sandy were friends. Sandy wore bright lipstick and nail polish, dresses, and stockings. Mama tended toward jeans and flannel shirts, nightly applications of Pond’s Cold Cream serving as her entire beauty regimen. Sandy was married but had no children, and spent her days watching soap operas and experimenting with new hairstyles from magazines she kept fanned out on her coffee table. Mama worked and spent her spare time brewing beer and reading murder mysteries. They’d been friends for as long as I could remember.
“Name me one good one,” Mama said. “Angie, run down and bring us up two more beers, would you?”
“Sure, Mama,” I said from the living room. I didn’t put my book down and race down the steps, though. I wanted to hear who Sandy thought was worthy of Mama’s attention.
“Well, Dave, of course,” Sandy said. Dave was her husband, a skinny, quiet, glasses-wearing man who looked at Sandy just like Muttsy, our Golden Retriever, looked at Mama.
Mama politely agreed that Dave was fine.
“And Charlie. You met him at my party.”
“Charlie? Really, Charlie?”
“What’s wrong with Charlie?” Sandy asked. “He’s sweet, and he knows how to dance.”
“First of all, there’s the comb-over,” Mama said. “If you’re going bald, you’re going bald. Don’t part your side hair just above your ear and plaster it across the top of your head. Has that ever fooled anyone?”
Sandy waved her hand dismissively. “Easily fixed.”
Mama grimaced. “He wears English Leather cologne.”
I completely agreed with her on that one. Joe Pelham had come to school reeking of the stuff, and I told him he smelled like perfume mixed with outhouse. He never wore it again.
“Again, easily fixed,” Sandy said.
Mama threw in the clincher. “He’s a steady church-goer.”
Sandy gave up. Daddy had been a steady church-goer.
I headed for the small refrigerator in the basement where Mama kept her beer chilled. Grabbing two cold ones, I started back up the steps, but stopped when I heard Sandy and Mama’s hushed voices.
“No, thanks,” Mama was saying. “Muttsy keeps me warm at night and doesn’t steal the covers.”
“There’s more to a good night than staying warm,” Sandy said. “And for that you need a man, not a dog.”
Mama was quiet for a moment, and I almost took the next step. Then she said, “A Golden Retriever will never break your heart.”
While I finished high school and prepared to go off to college on an academic scholarship, Joyce dragged home loser after loser. She had recently dropped out of beauty school and started waitressing at a truck stop near the expressway. When I asked why, she said, “Have you ever been to beauty school? All females, all day long. You’ll find out, living in a girls’ dorm.” She continued to date bums, but in August she came home triumphant, a ring on her finger. Mama and I were in the kitchen, her cooking a batch of beer, me looking through the Sears catalog for a new winter coat.
Joyce waved her hand at us. “I’m engaged!”
Mama set the spoon down, carefully lining it up with the side of the stove. “Funny—I don’t remember anyone asking my permission.”
“That’s so old fashioned. Besides, you ask the father, not the mother, and he’s not here.”
I’m sure Joyce was hoping to deflect the blame to Daddy, but I also knew it wouldn’t work. “Who’s the lucky man?” I asked.
Joyce went into offensive mode, chin jutted out, eyes flashing warning signs. “Buck Bonnett.”
“A Bonnett?” Mama’s eyes bugged out. “Have you lost your mind?”
“I thought all of them were in jail.” I closed the Sears catalog. Coat shopping could wait.
“No, they’re not all in jail,” Joyce snapped.
“Which one is this?” Mama said. “The one set fire to the police station? The one shot his cousin’s eye out shooting rats at the dump? Or wait, the one broke into the elementary school and peed on the principal’s desk and chair?”
Joyce faced her sullenly, refusing to answer.
“It’s the little pisser, isn’t it?” Mama nodded and crossed her arms over her shirt with the Western-style stitching.
“That was years and years ago. He’s changed.” Joyce’s face turned red, and her lip began to pooch out.
“Into what?” Mama turned back to stir the beer mixture, the wort, on the stove. “You going to move in with him out at that, that compound they live in? Because if you do, don’t expect me to come out there and babysit y’all’s children. I wouldn’t set foot out there. Those people ain’t right.”
The Bonnetts lived communally, with hovels, trailers, and sheds dotting any of the landscape that wasn’t covered by junk cars and other heaps of rusting metal. A tall fence made mostly of roofing tin surrounded the property, and thin, ill-tempered dogs roved in packs, threatening anyone who dared to come near.
“Wasn’t it the Bonnetts who stole the hoses off the town fire truck after the parade last year?” I asked.
“There’s no proof it was them,” Joyce snarled, vicious as the Bonnetts’ dogs. She turned back to Mama. “We’ll live in an apartment until we can get a house. We’d never live out there.”
Mama counted on her fingers. “His mother lives out there, and all his brothers and half brothers and stepbrothers and cousins. The first time Buck gets thrown in jail for being drunk in public, loses his job, and can’t make the rent, y’all’ll move into a shed in the midst of all that squalor.”
“That will never happen. Buck’s not like those others. He’s got plans. He’s going to get his GED and go to work for a friend of his.” Joyce blushed and bit her lips inward, maybe wishing she could take back that last part. She leaned against the doorframe and turned her head, as if suddenly fascinated by the corner of the kitchen.
Mama pointed the wooden spoon at Joyce and demanded, “What friend?”
Joyce shrugged. Her gaze slid past Mama to the window.
“Pumping septic tanks for Alvin Poole, that’s his big plan?” Mama asked. She shook her head and turned back to stir the wort.
I started to laugh, but Joyce smacked the back of my head.
“He’ll only do that for awhile,” she said. “Then he’ll move up in the company.”
Mama whirled around and snorted. “There’s no ‘up’ in that company. You think Alvin has a flock of managers prancing around in white shirts? It’s him, his wife on the phones, and a couple of drivers.”
“You don’t even know him, and you’re judging him.”
“Yep.”
“Mama!”
“First, he’s a Bonnett,” Mama said, counting off items on her fingers once again. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s plenty. But okay, second, he hasn’t even made it through high school, although I think he spent a fair amount of time enrolled. Third, driving a honey wagon for Alvin Poole is not going to earn enough money for a family. And right now, he doesn’t even have that job.”
Joyce turned the too-big ring around her finger and stuck her bottom lip out farther.
“Let me see that ring.
No, not on your hand. Take it off.” Mama held out her hand, and Joyce gave her the ring. Mama turned the ring so she could see the inside. “What is this?” She gave Joyce a wide-eyed look. “‘Diane, All my love, David.’ Who are Diane and David?”
Purple-faced, Joyce grabbed the ring. “Well, he isn’t made of money. He must have bought it used.”
“Bought it. Well, I guess that’s possible,” Mama said. “But I’d be careful about wearing it in public. Whoever he ‘bought’ it from might want it back.”
Joyce was stubborn, like I said, and clung to Buck Bonnett like a tick. She tried to get Mama interested in the wedding plans even though there wasn’t a set date, and she forced us to spend time with him.
He came for supper, and since he was of legal drinking age, Joyce offered him a beer. I caught the irritated look Mama gave her—Mama didn’t like to share her home brew with anyone she considered unworthy. “Let them drink Dixie Beer,” she’d say.
“Mama brews her own,” Joyce said. “Come down and see. There’s some down there now, fermenting.”
They traipsed down the steps.
I called, “Watch out for the second step from the bottom. It’s loose.” Mama had tried to fix the step, but it was still wobbly. We’d gotten used to just stepping over it.
They were down there for a while as Mama and I finished making supper. She went to the stairs and said, “Supper. And be careful of that step.”
They came up, Joyce all flush-faced and Buck with a full beer, which I figured meant he’d finished one already, and I’d have to go fetch the empty to wash it out.
Mama interrogated Buck about his plans. No, he wasn’t working right now. He was planning to get his equivalency degree. Yes, he had a firm offer from Alvin Poole. One of the drivers was retiring in a few months, and Alvin was going to take Buck on. No, they hadn’t set a date for the wedding yet.
“Where did you buy the ring?” I asked, aiming for an innocent tone.
Joyce’s glare could have cut through the stone in her ring, if it was even real.
“Bought it from a friend,” he said. He turned to Mama. “This is really good beer. Mind if I have another?” He was already on his feet and heading for the steps.
“Go ahead,” Mama answered, darting a glare of her own at Joyce. “Be careful of that step,” she reminded him.
We finished eating while he was downstairs, and Joyce got up to go after him. She met him on the stairs. “What happened to you?” she asked.
“Nothing. Just looking at the brewing equipment. Never seen anything like it before.” He returned to the table, a full beer in his hand. Two empties in the basement, I figured.
Once they left on their date, I went downstairs to fetch the bottles. Sure enough, two. As I grabbed them I noticed something odd. The heavy old safe, which came up above my knees, sat just beyond Mama’s brewing gear. The safe’s dial, set to seventy for as long as I could remember, was now set on zero.
I came back up, careful of the loose step, and set the bottles on the fake butcher-block counter with the two Buck had finished in our presence. “Mama, have you opened the safe lately?”
“Not in a couple of years.” Her hands became still in the dishwater. “Why?”
“It’s been set on seventy,” I said. “Now it’s on zero.”
“Are you sure it was set on seventy?”
“I’m sure.”
Handing me the last pan to dry, Mama wiped her hands on her jeans. “I knew that boy was all foam.” She headed down the stairs.
Later she came into the living room where I sat with a library copy of War and Peace, my chosen summer reading. I’d renewed it once but was going to have to return it in defeat.
“Is your sister still out?” Mama asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay. Buck will wait until he knows we’re all going to be away from the house, and then he’s going to come back here and steal that safe.” She laughed. “Like we’ve got a million bucks in it instead of insurance policies and birth certificates.”
“You really think he’ll risk it?” I asked. “He’s got to know we’d suspect him first.”
“This is the boy who peed all over the principal’s desk and bragged about it to half the school,” she reminded me. “He’s an idiot.”
“Okay, what’s the plan?”
She plopped down on the couch, her arms draped across the variegated orange and brown afghan. “We’ll let him know we’re all going to be away on Saturday. I’ll set my trap, and we’ll come back and catch him.”
“What trap?”
“Just wait,” she said, an evil glint in her eye. “And stay out of the basement.”
The next evening when Buck came by to pick up Joyce, Mama and I were on the front porch. Not trusting us alone with Buck for even a minute, Joyce had forgone her usual last-minute primping to sit on the porch with us. The porch ceiling fan was trying its best to fight the heavy August heat, but I had been thinking about standing in the open door of the fridge awhile, or painting myself with ice cream. Now that Buck was here, I was thinking only that Mama had some devious plan to expose him. Even though I knew he was no good, and I wanted to get rid of him as bad as Mama did, I felt an urge to throw myself at his feet and confess. Instead I put my hand over my mouth.
Buck got out of the car and came up the steps. Mama still didn’t allow Joyce to run out to meet him in the driveway.
“Do y’all want to go with us to the state fair on Saturday?” Mama asked.
Joyce snorted. “The fair? It’s a hundred degrees out there. Besides, I have to work.”
“That’s too bad. You always used to enjoy the fair,” Mama said. “We’ll be gone most of the day. I want to see the quilts and shows and everything.”
Pulling my hand away from my mouth, I lied, “I want to see all the exotic chickens.” I’d seen them a dozen times and could live without seeing or smelling them ever again.
“Have fun,” Joyce said. “Y’all’ll sweat to death.”
Buck just stared at Mama, looking as close to brainless as possible without actual drool. She stared back.
The trap was set.
On Saturday morning, Mama and I dressed in what we’d wear if we were truly going to the fair—me in cut-off jeans and a tie-dyed top, her in another Western shirt and ten-year-old Capri pants. I felt like a criminal as we headed out in the old Pontiac. Mama just hummed. About a half-mile down the road we pulled into a dirt driveway that led to an abandoned farmhouse. Mama parked out behind the barn, and just as I reached for the door, it flew open.
“Aaaahhh!” I yelled.
“Shhhh!” Mama and Sandy shushed me, and Sandy pulled me out of the car.
“Hush, girl,” she said. “Want to scare the Bonnett boy off before we catch him in the act?”
I turned to Mama. “You told her the plan, but you didn’t trust me?”
“Honey girl, you walked around looking guilty just knowing that I had a plan. If I’d actually told you, you’d have gone to Buck and confessed.”
I could feel my face turning red. I’d probably cross myself like a Catholic when I did it, too.
Mama gestured us into a small huddle out behind the gray barn. “Okay, here’s the plan. I tied invisible threads to bottles of beer on the bookshelves behind the safe and glued the threads to the bottom of the safe. As soon as he picks it up, the beers fall off the shelves and break around him. And he’s busted.”
A beer trap. Perfect.
We walked on the edge of the road, poised to run and hide in the trees along the road if we heard a car coming. When we got near our house, we hid in the garden amid the browning corn stalks.
We didn’t have to wait long.
A strange pickup pulled into the driveway, and Buck went to the door. The other two men, prob
ably Bonnett brothers or cousins, waited in the truck.
When knocking didn’t rouse anyone, Buck waved for them to follow him around the back of the house. They pulled the truck around to the back door. We had left the heavy door open with just the unlocked screen between Buck Bonnett and his goal.
“Muttsy’s in there,” I whispered.
“Muttsy loves everyone,” Mama said. “If Buck didn’t already know we had a safe, Muttsy would probably lead him straight to it.”
Sandy, dressed in all black like we were on a midnight stake-out, asked, “When do we go in?”
Mama said, “In a minute. I want them to have plenty of time.”
We waited, fighting off gnats, and then headed for the back of the house. Quietly, we went in through the screen door and stopped when Mama held up her arm like a cop. She put her finger to her lips, and we all stared at the open basement doorway, listening.
“Grab that side,” Buck ordered. “This thing weighs a ton.”
“What’s with all this beer? What are they, alkies or something?” a strange voice asked.
“We should take the beer,” said another.
“Let’s us get the safe first,” Buck said. “Then we can celebrate with a beer or two. Or twenty.”
They all laughed.
“Oh, y’all’ll have a beer or two—or twenty,” Sandy whispered.
“Shh!” Mama waved a hand at her.
Buck said, “On three. One, two, three.”
Crashing, cussing, even a few explosions. We ran downstairs, guiding Sandy past the loose step.
The three men were soaked, foam licking their pointy boots.
“Well, well, well.” Mama surveyed the three with her arms crossed over her chest. “All foam, like I said.”
Buck went to jail, and Joyce gave up on him. She and Mama drove me to campus and helped me make my bed and unpack. When they were leaving, Joyce said, “It’s a new start for both of us.”
“Really? Are you going back to beauty school?”
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