by Joan Hess
“Does the Farberville Morning News count?”
“If it leads to a mention in Sports Illustrated or Golf Digest, it counts.”
• • •
I counted to ten, took a deep breath, and walked across the scuffed dance floor to the bar. Estelle was perched on her customary stool at the end nearest the ladies’ room, a glass of sherry within reach. She nodded warily at me. Ruby Bee bustled up and said, “About time you showed your face, missy. Barbecued brisket or chicken-fried steak with cream gravy?”
“A cheeseburger and fries,” I said.
“That ain’t healthy.”
“But a chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, fried okra, and buttered rolls are? Don’t bother answering. I’ll have a Caesar salad with grilled shrimp, low-fat dressing on the side, and a cup of herbal tea.”
“Then you better skedaddle back to Manhattan and hook up with that slimy ex-husband of yours,” said Ruby Bee. “He can take you out to supper at those places that serve you two spears of asparagus and a peppercorn for fifty dollars.”
Estelle shook her finger at me. “Ruby Bee and I were there, if you recall. I was madder’n a wet hen when I had to pay more than fifteen dollars for a bagel and coffee. Imagine calling that breakfast! It’s no wonder those people on the sidewalk look like zombies heading back to their cemeteries.”
“A cheeseburger and fries,” I repeated.
Ruby Bee rolled her eyes, then went into the kitchen. To my relief, Roy Stiver, my landlord, who graciously allows me to live in a seedy efficiency apartment above his antique shop, sat down next to me. He’s one of the few literates in town, as well as large enough to block Estelle’s stare. “What do you think about this golf tournament?” he asked me.
“I’m doing my best not to think about it. From what I heard last week, there won’t be any problem with traffic or crowd control. If a handful of fools want to smack balls around Raz’s pasture, they’re welcome to have at it.”
“Curious that Raz agreed to it. He’s a cantankerous old fart.”
“Our illustrious mayor sent me to persuade him. The deal was that I’d overlook the still I found in a clearing not too far from Robin Buchanon’s old shack if Raz agreed to this so-called golf course on his property. I was as pissed off about it as he was, but I wasn’t in the mood to get fired.”
“I suppose not,” Roy said, shaking his head. “Now Jim Bob’s in a particularly foul mood on account of the hole-in-one prize. Larry Joe’s niece swore Jim Bob tried to run her down out past the old New Age hardware store. When he had a flat at the foot of his driveway, he cussed so loudly I could hear him from my porch. He damn near bit Idalupino’s head off the other day because she was chewing gum at the checkout. All the employees are skirting around him like field mice.”
“Because of a recycled trophy from a bowling tournament?”
“No, that’s for the winner.” He went on to describe the boat in quite a bit more detail than I thought was necessary. “Jim Bob’s got a scheme, naturally. Don’t go telling anybody, but he’s been scrounging around flea markets and pawn shops, buying secondhand golf clubs. We’re supposed to meet up at my place later to night to watch videos about how to play. I used to play a little bit, so I’m the coach. Every afternoon until the tournament, we’re gonna haul ass to a driving range in Starley City and practice until dark. Jim Bob says the putting and all that doesn’t matter, as long as ever’body can whack the ball a goodly distance. Seems goofy to me, but you never know. One of ’em might get lucky.”
“Or one of ’em might get struck by lightning,” I said.
“The odds are about equal,” Roy acknowledged with a grin.
Normally, Maggody is a hotbed of activity only from sunrise to sunset. Most of the residents eat supper at six o’clock, then settle in to watch television until they fall asleep on their sofas or in bulky faux leather recliners. Some stay awake long enough to watch the local news and get the weather forecast for the following day; others succumb to snoring during their favorite shows. The teenagers make furtive phone calls to each other or venture onto Internet chat rooms until someone yells at them to turn off the damn fool music and go to bed. Dogs howl. Raccoons root through garbage cans. Pink-eyed opossums waddle out of their burrows in search of a tasty meal of roadkill, often chancing upon the remains of their dearly beloveds.
On this particular night, however, a goodly number of the husbands and bachelors of Maggody were squeezed into the backroom of Roy Stiver’s antiques shop. They were staring intently as a middle-aged man on a television screen stressed the importance of keeping one’s head down and focusing on the follow-through.
Unbeknownst to them (not that any of them would have been interested), a goodly number of the Maggody women were involved in a complex network of telephone calls. Messages were relayed according to the unspoken pecking order. Determination was expressed, doubts suppressed, details debated. Age, arthritis, and allergies were analyzed. Like a spider’s web, each strand secured another. Long before the polecats could catch the scent, the web enveloped the town in a gossamer plot.
Two
Bony watched the waitress’s ample butt as she stalked away from the table. “There’s just something about big, bold women. I’d sure like to see her wearing nothing but two fried eggs and a slice of ham.”
“As you told her so elegantly,” said Frederick Cartier. He took a sip of tepid coffee. “It’s an Oedipus complex, obviously. You had an unhealthy attraction to your mother. Your futile lust is an act of defiance aimed at your father because he had conjugal dominance.”
“He was a mechanic, fercrissake.”
“Let’s return to the topic of this golf tournament in Maggody. What else did you learn?” He leaned forward, his expression intent.
His silver hair and sharp nose gave him the look of a merciless judge preparing to sentence a felon to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Bony was intimidated by the piercing scrutiny. Trying not to slither under the table, he said, “They’ve got about fifty entries as of yesterday. The course is a bad joke. I ruined a good pair of shoes when I stepped in a meadow muffin. Besides poison ivy in the rough, there’s some fine-looking marijuana. I’m going to take a plastic bag with me next time I’m out there.”
“That would not be wise,” Frederick said, hoping no one in the adjoining booths was listening. “Did you go into any of the local mercantiles?”
Bony’s brow wrinkled. He still wasn’t used to Frederick’s fancy words, even though they’d spent seventeen hours together driving from Las Vegas. And he sure as hell didn’t have any idea why Frederick was so damn determined to go to Maggody.
It hadn’t changed since Bony was forced to spend his summers there. It had never been a quaint little town with ivy-coated cottages.
The locals weren’t charmingly eccentric; they were surly, ornery, and opinionated. Godliness was a lot more important than cleanliness, if you took in the tobacco stains on the barbershop floor, the litter along the roads, the misspelled graffiti spray-painted on abandoned storefronts, and the acrid stench of fertilizer. He shuddered as he remembered the endless hours of Brother Verber’s sermons on eternal damnation. As far as he’d been concerned, the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall was a sight worse than Satan’s fiery furnace.
But Frederick somehow knew about the upcoming golf tournament, and he had a car and a wallet filled with platinum credit cards. Bony, broke as usual, needed to get out of Vegas before certain people caught up with him. They’d left the casino through a ser vice door and were in New Mexico before the sun rose, and in Farberville late that night. A couple of days to case the situation, and here they were, eating grits in a grimy café, with Li’l Abner in one booth and the Dukes of Hazzard in another.
“No, but I heard something funny while I was having supper at my kinfolks’ place,” Bony said. “Uncle Earl was carrying on about how no outsider was going to walk away with the bass boat. At first I thou
ght he was talking about a load of buckshot, but we went out on the porch to drink beer and he told me the men in Maggody are secretly trying to learn how to play golf. Not one of them knows a bogie from a booger.”
“Good for Uncle Earl,” Frederick said.
“That’s not the half of it. When I went in the kitchen to thank Aunt Eileen for the meal, she told me that the wives are secretly planning to learn, too. She asked me if I’d give them lessons on the sly. I hemmed and hawed until she told me they’d pay me by the hour. What the hell, I thought. It won’t be as though any of them will ever be able to hit the backside of a barn, much less a decent drive.”
“Which ladies?”
“I didn’t ask.” Bony wadded up his paper napkin and tossed it on the table. “I’m supposed to buy used clubs and meet up with them behind a church in Bugscuffle.”
“And your means of transportation?”
“I was kinda hoping I could use your car. I’ll be back before noon.”
“Oh, I think not,” Frederick said, “but rather than disappoint the ladies, I’ll take you there and watch from a discreet distance. Perhaps I’ll pick up some pointers.”
“You said you didn’t play golf.”
“I’ve played a few rounds over the years, but I’m not in your league. I take an interest in the sport. As I told you in Vegas, I recognized your name when I found out that you were doing commentary during the televised tournament. I felt quite honored to meet you in person. It was unfortunate that you imbibed to excess and attempted to engage in a sexual liaison between the rows of slot machines. How could you possibly have known that the young lady was the casino owner’s special friend?”
“Or that she could scream so loud the sprinklers came on,” Bony said, smirking as he recalled what he could of the ensuing chaos. “I gotta make a few calls to track down some golf clubs for the ladies. I’ll meet you at the car in half an hour.” He ogled the waitress as he sauntered out of the café. Her gesture did not imply he would be welcome in the future.
Frederick ordered another cup of coffee, then flipped through the local newspaper, although his thoughts wandered along a path that took him well into the past. The age when he’d only just begun to cross that bridge over troubled water. Maybe that’s what he’d find in Maggody.
Bony was already in the car when Frederick went outside. They drove to several pawn shops, where satisfactory prices were agreed upon for mismatched sets of rusty irons and bent drivers. They arrived at the church in Bugscuffle in due course. Cars were parked in the rutted lot, including a garish pink Cadillac, a station wagon, and a boxy little car with a license plate that had expired a decade earlier.
More than a dozen ladies were standing near a corner of the building. While Bony hauled golf clubs out of the trunk, Frederick scanned their faces. None of them was remotely familiar. He exhaled as he joined them. “I’m Frederick Cartier,” he said with a slight bow, “and you must be the contingent from Maggody. What an attractive group, if I may be so bold as to remark. Each and every one of you, in your own special way.”
The only one who failed to simper was a thin-lipped woman in a prim white blouse and a navy skirt. Her hair looked as though it could withstand shrapnel. “Let’s get the show on the road,” she said. “I’m meeting my decorator this afternoon, and I don’t have time to shilly-shally. Bonaparte, did you think to buy golf balls?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bony said. “They’re scruffy because they were fished out of the water at the Farberville Country Club, but they’ll suit us just fine. Let’s go around back and get started.”
As they trooped along, the rest of the ladies introduced themselves to Frederick. He made a point of noting their names, a talent he had perfected over the years. Their spokeswoman was Mrs. Jim Bob, the mayor’s wife, he was told in a reverent whisper.
They were an unremarkable mixture of old, young, married, widowed, and spinsters. Only a few of them were remotely attractive: Joyce Lambertino, who had a slim figure and a bouncy ponytail; perky Crystal Whitby, who kept peeking at him in an unsettling way; and Bopeep Buchanon, who’d clearly lost her sheep by the time she was fourteen.
The older women sat down at a picnic table and took out various knitting and needlework projects. Under Bony’s supervision, the rest chose woods and fiddled with their grips, adjusted their stances, and began to topple balls off spindly tees. Those who made contact, anyway. An occasional misfire ricocheted off the church wall, eliciting squeals from the sewing circle. Cora Cranshaw’s backswing knocked Audley Riley’s straw hat off. Eileen Buchanon managed to hit herself in the back of the head. As the hour progressed, Bony looked more and more harried.
Frederick sat on another weathered picnic table and watched, debating which ones might be inclined to offer him coffee, cookies, and, most importantly, gossip. He did not flinch when an errant drive shattered a church window.
• • •
Phil Proodle threw down the red cape. “Cut! Somebody go fetch that goddamn bull so we can finish shooting before my pants split.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his neck, mindful of his makeup and the black wig combed into a pompadour. The glue that held on the sideburns was itchy. It wasn’t all that hot, but after spending two hours in the parking lot, he was sweatier than a preacher in a whore house. This was the sixth time the bull had ignored the matador’s provocative cape and headed for the rows of party barges. The fence would contain him, but then everybody had to twiddle their thumbs until he was coaxed into camera range. So he could do it again.
“Doesn’t one of the steak houses have a plastic bull out in front?” asked a salesman, who’d given up hope that Proodle would be gored.
Phil’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Ain’t you ever heard of authenticity, boy? If Phil Proodle says he’s gonna grab the bull by the horns and lower prices, then that’s what he’s gonna do. And now you’re saying I should grab a plastic bull by the horns? Do you think I want to be the laughingstock of the county? We ain’t selling canoes here. Come to think of it, you ain’t selling much of anything, are you? Maybe you ought to be washing dishes at that steak house.”
The salesman scuttled away. Phil was leery of sitting down, since he was stuffed into a rented costume that was squeezing his internal organs like a sausage casing. He went into the office to suck in the cool air.
“I got a phone message for you, Phil,” his secretary said. “I wrote it down, but it doesn’t make any sense.”
He snatched the note off her desk and went to get a soda in the break room. As he read the message, he almost tripped over a rack of brochures. Despite his secretary’s primitive handwriting, he was able to determine that a certain customer was out of prison and wanted a certain boat back. There was no mention of the missed payments that had allowed Phil to repossess it as soon as the drug-dealing creep had been sent south to enjoy free room and board, courtesy of the Department of Corrections. The charge had been aggravated assault, the prison sentence a double-digit number of months. But how long ago had it been? Could there have been a parole or early release?
Phil berated himself for having been bullied into loaning the boat to that damn fool golf tournament. If he’d only been able to stop and think, he would have been able to negotiate a cheaper boat. Hell, he was a master salesman who could sell bikinis to Eskimos and sleeping bags to Bantus. But the woman who’d assailed him was a fearsome wind devil that’d swept away his plaintive protests like scraps of paper along a highway. She’d jabbed him with her finger until he was backed into a corner, literally.
He’d had to explain the bruises to his wife, who was still suspicious.
At that moment, the boat was in Maggody, displayed in a supermarket parking lot. Having been assured that he could fetch it the day after the tournament, he’d conceded that the publicity was worth it. A lot of the losers might come sniffing around for a deal. But the publicity was not worth a dislocated jaw and broken kneecaps. And that was just for starters.
One of the guys from the
ad agency came inside to tell Phil that the bull had been coerced into position and they were ready to try again. Phil followed him to the parking lot and growled at the bull, which gazed back without interest.
The shoot continued.
• • •
“You gonna be full up out back?” asked Estelle as she squirted ketchup on a grilled cheese sandwich.
Ruby Bee nodded. “It didn’t look good until the boat got everybody fired up. I must have had twenty or thirty calls in the last week. I wondered if I should keep a unit open for Arnold Palmer, but he seems to be skipping this tournament. I’ve got two women in number three, next to my double unit, a boy and his mother in number four—”
“Which one’s the golfer?”
“I didn’t ask. In number five, there’ll be some man who sounded drunk when he called. A married couple in six, two men from Hot Springs in seven, and a couple from Tulsa in eight. Bony Buchanon’s staying with Earl and Eileen. Mrs. Jim Bob has a house guest, but I didn’t hear who it was. Did Joyce tell you anything when she was having her hair trimmed?”
“Just that her third cousin over in Jeeber is gettin’ a divorce. She got caught canoodling with her husband’s nephew. He ain’t but fifteen.”
“Lord amercy, what’s wrong with young people these days?”
Instead of demanding the lurid details, Ruby Bee went into the kitchen to peel potatoes.
Estelle was feeling miffed when footsteps thudded across the dance floor behind her. She knew from the way the glasses behind the bar clinked that it was Dahlia, all three-hundred-plus pounds of her. Dahlia was usually as placid as a dairy cow, but when she was riled, she was more dangerous than a herd of buffalos.
The stool squealed as she sat down. “Estelle, I got to ask you something,” she began wheezily, “and I got to be quick on account of the younguns. Eileen’s minding ’em, but she sez there’s another meeting at Mrs. Jim Bob’s house in half an hour. You know how snippety Mrs. Jim Bob can be if everybody don’t jump when she snaps her fingers. Last week I was at the supermarket, and she had the nerve to tell me Kevvie Junior and Rosemarie should be spanked on account of them beating on each other with celery. If she so much as lays a finger on—”