by Joan Hess
The way the car had stopped with a wheezy shudder alarmed him something fierce. And Dahlia's remarks about this being the wrong road did nothing to ease his panic. Unless they'd gone through downtown Nashville without noticing, they were on about the wrongest road in the country. Pavement had turned to gravel, and eventually petered out into rocks and dust. They hadn't seen a cow in over an hour, much less a house or another living soul.
Tears welled in Kevin's eyes, adding to his inability to trace the source of the leak and try to figure out what to do about it. Thus far, the honeymoon had been nothing but a series of disasters. The first three days they'd been obliged to stop every few miles because of recurring gastric distress Dahlia blamed on his ma's pineapple sherbert punch. Intimate marital relations had been out of the question (he'd asked the particular question, of course, but she'd locked herself in the bathroom, sobbing and flushing all night).
The fourth night they'd ended up in a motel with an hourly rate, and the undeniable presence of insect life in the sleazy room had resulted in Dahlia sitting in the middle of the bed directing him while he stalked critters with a rolled-up newspaper. That, coupled with the roar of trucks on the freeway-and the squeals and shrieks and groans and howls from the next room-had failed to kindle a romantic ambience.
Now they were lost in Tennessee, unless they were lost in Kentucky or Idaho or Florida, for that matter. It had been a good thirty minutes since Dahlia had mentioned exactly which of them had left the well-marked maps in one of the motels behind them, but he reckoned it was near time to hear about it once more. He bravely wiped his eyes and spotted a bead of oil beginning to swell. He flicked it away with his finger, plucked the wad of gum from his mouth, and stuck it on the exact spot. It wasn't how smarmy Ira Pickerel would have done the job, but Kevin figured it might hold until they found a town and a garage. And maybe a motel with clean sheets, an air conditioner that worked, and the chance for cool showers, a jug of fancy wine, a loaf of bread, and…
He wiggled out from under the car, stood up and brushed the dust off his backside, and with a manly smile, gazed across the top of the car at his little wife picknicking amongst the wildflowers. She had fallen asleep, he noted with the proprietary air of a rancher regarding his prize heifer. She was flat on her back, her legs spread apart and her skirt bunched up enough for him to catch a shadowy glimpse of that driveway to heaven. Her mouth had fallen open, and her melodious snores mingled with the twittering of birds and the lazy drone of insects on the sylvan glade beneath the tree.
He hitched up his jeans and strode toward her, lost in a vision in which he knelt beside her, woke her with a gentle yet demanding kiss, and was welcomed into her arms for the consummation of their vows (which had been consummated a lot in the past, but not since they'd become betrothed one long, cold, celibate year ago).
"My dreamer of desire," he practiced to himself, rather impressed with the alliterative ring of it. "How about we find passion in the wildflowers? Shall we give way to youthful lust and make mindless love here on the silky grass dotted with gay yellow buttercups, tiny violets, and…"
There was no mistaking the red, waxy, three-leafed stems on which his sleeping beauty slumbered. Even Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon, who had trouble remembering which end of the fork to use to scratch his head, could recognize poison ivy.
Chapter Three
I was daydreaming about the automat on 42nd Street, the last one in town-Manhattan, not Maggody-and the only place where I'd felt like a perpetual winner at the slot machines. There were no maitre d's, no waiters to introduce themselves and rattle off the specials, no haute cuisine or haute anything else. All it took was a pocketful of change to win the sort of food that sustained my soul, like macaroni and cheese, limp broccoli in watery sauce, and soggy egg salad sandwiches. Even after ten years of life in Manhattan, a little bit of Maggody had still flowed within me like a secondary infection in my bloodstream. Maybe there was no cure for it, and never would be. A chilling thought.
But the automat was what I was daydreaming about when the telephone rang, and I was doing so because I hadn't had a decent meal since I'd driven Ruby Bee and Estelle to the airport in Farberville the day before and watched them disappear into the great blue yonder, feeling as if I were a mechanic watching a heavily laden bomber head for enemy lines.
It was likely to be Mrs. Jim Bob making sure I'd bought proper Christian cookies, I decided as I went to the back room to get my radar gun. It was still ringing when I returned, armed to the teeth with said weapon and a magazine. I chewed on my lip, which tasted no better than the canned soup I'd been subsisting on for more than twenty-four hours. It could be the Stump County Sheriff, good ol' Harve Dorfer, wanting me to do something I'd probably prefer not to do, such as untangle bloodied drunks from a wrecked car or help scoop a bloated body out of the lake south of town. Or it could be the man of my dreams. Him, or the Pope; the odds were about equal.
I picked up the receiver. "Yes?"
"Oh, Arly, thank the Lord I got hold of you! The awfullest thing has happened, and I don't know what to do! I keep rubbing my face and trying to tell myself it's all nothing but a nasty nightmare and there ain't no cause to go bellowing like an orphaned calf in a blizzard, but-"
"Estelle?" I said sharply. The background cacophony nearly drowned her out, and I caught myself wondering if she was calling from the concrete island in the middle of Times Square.
"Well, it ain't the mayor of Noow Yark City! Didn't you hear a word of what I just-"
"Calm down. I heard very little of what you just said, mostly because you weren't making any sense." I sat down behind the desk and took a breath, hoping she was doing the same. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong, if you don't count your own mother being locked up in jail for murder."
After a pause fraught with frowns and grimaces, I said, "I suppose I do count that, Estelle. Could you please explain what you said in a little more detail? Who, and what, and when, and where, not to mention the ever-popular why?"
"It happened last night, and if you ask me, it was her own darn fault for firing the gun at the police when they broke down the hotel room door. After that, they weren't in the mood to listen to her explain why a bucknaked man was bleeding like a stuck pig right there in her bed. She kept tryin' to talk to them in a right nice fashion, but you'd have thought she was visiting some country where they ride around on camels. I've never seen a bunch of grown men get themselves so riled up over one itsy-bitsy bullet that didn't even hit any of 'em."
Don't think for an instant that I was taking notes or formulating questions designed to elicit further information. I wasn't so much as blinking, and I wouldn't have flinched if I'd been stung by a hornet, or a whole swarm of them.
"Would you repeat that?" I managed to say.
"I said the bullet didn't hit any of 'em, but all the same they put handcuffs on Ruby Bee and took her away, just like she had been holding up a liquor store or a bank. She wasn't nearly as mad as I would have been, although I must say she was acting downright crumpy about the whole thing."
"Why on earth…?" I began, but words abandoned me and I shrugged as if Estelle were across the desk from me.
"You would be too, if a smart-mouthed cop tackled you and nearly made you hit your head on the dresser. They wouldn't even let me talk to her, much less go along to find out where they were taking her. Instead, they made all of us wait downstairs most of the night, then questioned us one at a time in that snooty manager's office. I don't want to say anything unkind about those policemen, but there wasn't a one of them much brighter than Kevin on one of his better days. The one I talked to had a face uglier than a mud fence stuck with tadpoles and an accent I couldn't hardly understand. He hadn't ever heard of Arkansas, if you can believe that!"
"Estelle," I said, getting a little crumpy myself, "you still haven't told me what happened to Ruby Bee. Is she all right?"
"How would I know, Miss Hard of Hearing? I already told you how the poli
ce dragged her away in handcuffs and couldn't be bothered to tell me where they were taking her." She gasped. "Oh, dear, there's that crazy whiskery man who's been following me since we got here. I got to go, Arly. He's licking his lips something fierce, and I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have a knife in his pocket or an axe down his britches. Talk to you later."
"Wait!" I screeched. "Don't you dare hang up!"
She hung up.
I sat for a very long while, staring at the telephone and trying to pluck tidbits of factual information out of the bizarre conversation. A naked man bleeding in Ruby Bee's bed. When the police broke down the door, she'd fired a gun at them. Humorless chaps that they were, they'd tackled her to the floor, handcuffed her, and taken her away to be booked for murder. As of the moment, she'd not returned. Estelle had been questioned. She was now being knifed/hacked by a wet-lipped man who'd been following her since their arrival.
"And that's all we know," I said just to hear my voice and reassure myself I hadn't been beamed aboard any hovering alien spacecraft. The PD looked the same-dusty, hot, seedy if not squalid, in need of a sweeping that wasn't on my agenda any time soon. Outside, pickup trucks grumbled down the highway, along with an occasional car filled with tourists searching for bucolic quaintness and finding a lot of tacky poverty. Car doors slammed as folks came and went at the supermarket across the road. Neighborly greetings were exchanged. A child wailed, a dog barked.
The telephone rang, and this time I did not dally. I lunged for the receiver, slapped it against my ear, and said, "Estelle?"
"Hardly. This is Mrs. Jim Bob, Arly. We'll need seating for six tonight, and I seemed to recall there are only two or three chairs. You need to arrange to borrow some from the Sunday school room at the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall and set them-"
"You got it," I said and hung up. That was a link with reality, I told myself. Ruby Bee might be jailed for murder nearly two thousand miles away, but it was business as usual in Maggody. When the telephone once again rang, I was a little more cautious. "Arly Hanks here," I said.
"This is Eilene Buchanon, Arly. I'm worried sick about Kevin and Dahlia. They were supposed to call last night, but they didn't, and we haven't heard a peep from them for three days now. I was wondering if you could…"
Definitely business as usual. "Could what, Eilene?" I prompted her. "Get in my car and go find them? I thought I heard somebody say they were on their way to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. In that they have several days' head start-and are likely to have taken enough wrong turns to be in Mexico by now, I doubt I'll have much luck."
"I know," she said limply. "I'm just so worried about them. I was deadset against this idiotic idea of theirs, but Earl just laughed and said they should take their best shot at finding it." She began to snivel, and her voice grew hoarse. "They were raised right here in Maggody, where everybody knows everybody. It don't exactly teach you to watch out for people who might be dangerous or want to hit you over the head and steal your car…or worse. Why, they might be-"
"Tell you what," I interrupted, "I'll call the state police and ask them to check with their counterparts along Kevin and Dahlia's proposed route. They were heading east, right?" I diligently recorded their itinerary and wasted a few more breaths assuring her I'd do something about the missing couple. I then replaced the receiver and sank back in my chair, seeking comfort from its familiar familiar contours and tendency to squeak when I shifted.
Ruby Bee had mentioned the name of the hotel in which the silly contest was to be held. I had not written it down, nor had I paid particular attention to the name of the marketing firm that was conducting the contest. I worked on the latter for a while, but all I could come up with was a vague notion that it involved physical violence. My dim memory of the hotel's name stirred a Dickensian ember. Not Twist, not Copperfield, not Scrooge or Cratchit, and at least on my part, not any Great Expectations.
I was not in the mood for literary trivia, but I kept at it until I hit upon Pickwick, gnawed on my fingernails, and shortly before they began to bleed about the cuticles, arrived at Chadwick. I called information and was told by a male of Eastern European origin that the number was not working. I told him it damn well was, and we debated this until he got bored and disconnected me.
I could, of course, call all the precincts in Manhattan. If by sheer serendipity, I found the right one, I could then attempt to track down someone with information about the status of my mother's…arrest for murder.
Or I could cut the crap and do what I would have to do eventually, which was hunt up the directory and start calling those few airlines that flew out of Farberville and ultimately landed in one of the vast, flat wastelands surrounding the island of Manhattan.
*****
Marvin Madison Evinrood Calhoun, known to his intimate acquaintances (and also to the East St. Louis police and the officers in the juvenile detention center) as Marvelous Marvin, Captain Marvel, but usually just plain Marvel, grinned broadly at the elderly woman behind the counter. "I thank you kindly for the donation to such a worthy cause, ma'am. If you don't mind, I believe I'll help myself to a carton of milk and a box of cookies on my way out the door."
The woman shook her head, too terrified to speak, much less object. Later that morning, when she tried to describe the robber to the sheriff, she would estimate his height at well over six feet, although he was shy of that by four inches, his weight at two hundred pounds, although he was closer to one-forty, and his skin to be blacker than coal tar, although it was several shades lighter. Her estimate of his age as fifteen or sixteen would be more accurate, however, as would be her description of an ugly pink scar that ran across his cheek and disappeared into a dimple.
She would also attempt to characterize his antiquated snub-nosed revolver as a cannon and would burst into tears when she described how he'd almost-but not quite-sexually assaulted her in her living room at the back of the store, adding that the only reason he hadn't was that her lard-butted husband had been sitting back there watching a game show on the television set.
She would then admit she hadn't rushed to the door to try to get the license plate of his getaway car, mostly because she'd gone straight to the living room to berate her husband for failing to prevent the maniac from making her hand over every last dollar from the cash register and leering at her while doing it.
The local police officer would pass along the description to the Illinois State Police barracks, where it would be noted with a sign and added to the growing list of Marvel escapades. It was clear he was heading east, stealing vehicles now and then, holding up stores and gas stations, flashing a weapon but always speaking courteously.
The sergeant would be pleased when Marvel crossed into the adjoining state. It wasn't wise to soil your own nest too long; at some point, the shit would drop on someone below, who might get pissed.
*****
Brother Verber stood outside the gate, mopping his forehead and gazing unhappily at the hodgepodge of tin, plywood, rotten boards, and mismatched sheets of siding that comprised Raz Buchanon's shack. The roof over the porch tilted dangerously, and the boards of the porch itself were pocketed with rot. The only indication the shack was not some relic from bygone centuries was the spidery television antenna on the roof.
He shifted the handkerchief to his other hand and worked on his neck for a while. It was his Christian duty to march through the weedy yard, cross the porch, pound on the door, and confront Raz Buchanon with the bald-faced, no-gettin'-around-it truth that moonshining was a sin that led straight to eternal damnation. He knew it was his Christian duty because Sister Barbara (aka Mrs. Jim Bob) had told him so, and she'd done so for more than an hour, stressing the necessity of confrontation with this underling of Satan who was decimating the moral fiber of Maggody.
He'd have preferred to put off this particular battle with the devil for a day or two, giving himself time to study up on the extent of the wickedness and arm himself with Bible verses and plati
tudes. When he'd suggested as much, and also mentioned a baseball game on television that very afternoon, Sister Barbara had lit up like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. He'd revised his schedule real quick.
There was no denyin' she was the beacon of the church, the leading ewe of the flock, and a fine figure of a woman to boot, Brother Verber thought mistily as he hesitated on the far side of the gate. Whenever she came to him for counseling, she dressed modestly, to be sure, but he was keenly aware that she was no scrawny bag of bones. No sirree, she had a righteous bosom, a fetchingly slim waist, and a well-rounded derriere above shapely calves and trim ankles. He hated fat ankles as much, if not more, than he hated Satan hisself.
It occurred to Brother Verber that he might be harboring something akin to lust, and he firmly told himself that genuine admiration for the Good Lord's handiwork was above reproach. He closed his eyes to offer a prayer of thanksgiving for the miracles of creation, but moments later found himself wondering what the handiwork might look like in a bathing suit or a silky nightgown. Or nothing at all. "Onward, Christian soldier," he said aloud and, commencing to hum the tune, stuffed his handkerchief in his pocket and pushed open the gate. His Bible clutched in his hand, he wound through the weeds, ordered himself not to speculate on whether the porch boards would hold him, and went right up to the door.
As befitting his officer's commission in the Lord's army, he pounded on the door and yelled, "Open up, Raz Buchanon! Open this door or prepare to spend all eternity stoking the fires of perdition beneath the devil's own moonshine still."