Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes

by Cathy Holton

  Ramsbottom limped to the steps and shouted, “Goddamn it, Bentley, you’re fired!” He hurried down the steps and around the side of the house, expecting to see the ground littered with the bodies of dead or injured lawyers. He had spent weeks planning his little revenge and now Bentley was going to fuck everything up by killing them before he had had a chance to videotape them with the female impersonators.

  Ramsbottom limped around the side of the house, his legs stiff, joints wrenched in pain, and headed toward the stable just in time to see Big Mama clear the stable fence, Leonard’s head missing the top rail by maybe three inches. Charles Broadwell’s horse pulled up short and Broadwell swung around in front of him, his arms still clutching the horse’s neck. He stood there for a moment, slumped against the sweating animal in an awkward sort of embrace, and then he collapsed like he’d been hit between the eyes with the butt end of a pistol. Redmon’s horse dropped to a trot and followed Bentley and William into the corral. The horse stopped and waited patiently for Redmon to dismount, but the man refused, clenching the saddle horn and blubbering until William and Bentley came over and lifted him forcibly out of the saddle.

  IN THE END, it was the girls who managed to get the greenhorns calmed down. Charles Broadwell had walked around in a stupor for nearly an hour after the stampede incident and the fat one had sat on a stool in the stable yard and cried like a baby. After they dragged Redmon from his horse, they plopped him down on a bale of hay and he grinned and chattered like a monkey, asking for tequila and cigarettes.

  The girls went into the bunkhouse to freshen up, and came out forty minutes later in full regalia. Ramsbottom had to admit, watching them troop into the stable yard in their high heels, they did look good. Pretty as a speckled pup. Pretty as a scorpion with her tail up, and just as dangerous.

  AFTER A HOT bath and a hot meal, the tenderfoots began to look better. The fat one’s left eye was swollen to a slit and one of his hands had frozen into a clutched position, the result of having hung upside down beneath his horse on that wild ride across the field, but other than that, he looked okay. Charles Broadwell had developed a tic in the side of his face and a slight stutter, but seemed fairly normal otherwise. Redmon seemed to have aged about twenty years and one shoulder set up higher than the other one, which, for a man his age, considering what he had been through, probably wasn’t too bad. Overall, they were whittled down some, but still standing.

  After dinner they all went out on the front porch to party. The tequila had been flowing freely for two hours and the girls were still looking pretty good, especially under the dim porch lights. Redmon sat between Tawny and Morganna, who had perched precariously on the arms of his chair, and kept leaning forward to press their bosoms to his face. He looked happy as a pig in slop. His eyes rolled from side to side of his big bald head. Drool spilled down the front of his shirt.

  Cherry Blyss sat on the porch swing squeezed up beside Charles Broadwell, but it was obvious to everyone that Charles had his sights set on Stella, who was sitting on Leonard’s lap and feeding him olives by hand.

  Stella was the prettiest girl to ever sit on Leonard’s lap. He had lost the contact in his swollen eye, which made it kind of hard to see her clearly up close, but he was enthralled by the length of her legs and her voice, which had a deep, throaty quality, and the playfulness of her teasing. She flattered him every way possible, told him how smart he was, how sexy, how funny, and by the time she finished buttering him up, Leonard was feeling pretty good about himself. The demoralizing memories of the past few days were beginning to fade under Stella’s careful guidance. She’s just the kind of girl I will marry once I get rid of Lavonne, Leonard thought, happily nibbling olives from her rather large hairy fingers. Someone who appreciates the things I will give her. Someone who appreciates me for who I am.

  Charles stared at Stella like a man in a trance. She was the most desirable girl he had ever seen. But why was she flattering that fat buffoon, Zibolsky, when she could be sitting on his lap? Charles knew he was still a damn fine, good-looking man. Someone had told him once he looked a little like Robert Redford.

  Cherry Blyss was not accustomed to being ignored. She pouted and poked Charles in the ribs with a sharp finger, and when he did nothing but continue to stare at Stella, she yawned and said, “I’m bored.” She stretched her legs out in front of her but Charles didn’t look. “I think I’ll go sit with him,” she said, rising and walking over to plop herself down on Redmon’s lap.

  “Wa-wa-whatever,” Charles said, embarrassed by his stutter. He hadn’t stuttered since kindergarten, since his mother sent him away to a school in Boca Raton that specialized in stutterers, sufferers of Tourettes syndrome, and idiot savants.

  “Hey,” he said to Stella, patting his lap with both hands. “Why don’t you c-c-come over here and sit?”

  “What’s the matter, honey?” Stella said. “Cherry Blyss not good enough for you?”

  “I’m picky,” Charles said. “I like the c-c-cream of the c-c-crop.”

  Stella couldn’t help but be flattered by this. She stroked her hair and crossed her long legs dramatically.

  Charles stood up. “C-c-come on,” he said to her. “Let’s take a walk.”

  She stood up and went down the steps with Charles, arm in arm, before Leonard could think to say anything. “Hey,” he said, lifting his frozen hand like a lobster lifts his claw. “What about me?”

  “You take Ch-Ch-Cherry Blyss,” Charles said over his shoulder.

  Rage ricocheted through Leonard like a bottle rocket. All his life he had been taking second best. All his life boys like Charles Broadwell had been taking the prize away from him. All his life he had sat back and let it happen. “No,” he shouted, standing up suddenly.

  Charles and Stella turned around in surprise. “What did you s-s-say?”

  “I said no!” Leonard bellowed, coming down the steps like a madman. He grabbed Stella’s arm with his good hand and pulled her behind him. Charles’s face twitched and spasmed, and he reached out to take Stella back, but before he could touch her, Leonard had clubbed him in the head with his lobster claw hand. Charles stood for a moment, stunned, staring into his squinty-eyed partner’s enraged face, and then he put both hands around Leonard’s throat, and they went down in a pile of swinging fists and kicking feet.

  Ramsbottom videotaped them rolling around in a big pile of steaming horse shit and pummeling each other, and then he motioned for Bentley and William to break it up. He convinced Stella to take both of them back to the ranch house for a friendly little game of strip poker, and it was after that that things got interesting and Ramsbottom managed to snap some photos and film some of his best footage. He was amazed at how long it took the lawyers to figure out that the girls weren’t girls, and he really wasn’t sure they ever did, because Leonard passed out sometime around eleven o’clock, and Redmon fell asleep soon after, facedown in a plate of chicken pie. Charles had more stamina; he lasted until nearly twelve-thirty.

  Ramsbottom waited until he had stumbled off to bed and then he downloaded the photographs and e-mailed them to Eadie. He checked the video, sealed the mini DV in a package, and then handed it to Bentley who had volunteered to drive it into Push Hard to the overnight courier office.

  CHAPTER

  * * *

  NINETEEN

  THE FLIGHT HOME to Ithaca was considerably more subdued than the flight to Push Hard had been. Charles sat by himself near the front of the plane, and Leonard and Redmon sat near the back. Redmon had his foot bandaged and stretched out in the aisle and Leonard spent a good deal of time adjusting Redmon’s blanket, propping his leg on a stack of pillows, making sure the stewardesses were prompt and attentive, and in general, trying in every way possible to assure Redmon the shooting had been accidental and very regrettable, and that he hoped their business relationship would continue as before.

  “Prop it a little higher, Sport,” Redmon said, as Leonard attempted to adjust the injured limb, “and
get me another one of those Percocets out of my pocket.”

  Charles put his head back and gazed wearily at the fog rolling past the window. He felt feverish, his stomach was still queasy, and he had not been able to keep anything down in twenty-four hours. Not since waking Friday afternoon to find Stella and the other girls gone. Not since his brawl with Ramsbottom where he demanded a partial refund for the dismal hunting trip and the man, perhaps too readily, complied, seemed even to be trying to keep himself from chuckling as he wrote out the check.

  The party with the girls was a blurry memory. He could remember the fistfight with Leonard over Stella, could remember snatches of the strip poker game, could remember Leonard passing out, and Redmon, could remember Stella rising to take his hand. But after that it got smeared and indistinct like images seen through a foggy window, strange figures, flickering lights, snatches of memory—or was it a dream? A dream of something . . . unpleasant. Charles shuddered and shook his head.

  He couldn’t even remember if he had slept with Stella. Often they didn’t sleep with the girls Ramsbottom provided, but sometimes they did. The point was, they had paid for the girls’ company and they had not received what they paid for—even Ramsbottom realized that or he would not have been so eager to refund their money.

  In any case, the tradition begun by his father was over; Charles had made up his mind this would be his last trip to the Ah! Wilderness Ranch. It had gone on far longer than it should have, and he was not even certain why. His trips in the future would be with his family, he decided. Maybe he would take them skiing at Christmas. Maybe he would take Nita to Europe. It had been a bad year for the firm financially, billable hours were down considerably and Leonard had managed to lose the Moretti case, which should have been a slam dunk, but Charles could come up with the money if he tried. He could take out a second mortage on the house, or hell, even sell the Duesenberg. He’d been shocked to find out how much the car was worth, and the truth of the matter was, it meant little to him outside of the obvious symbolic value it held; the fact he had defied his father in order to keep it, but really, who was around now to see his defiance? He never drove the car, he worried incessantly that someone would steal it or sue him for possession—why not sell it and be done forever with that part of his life?

  He found the idea of unloading the Duesenberg oddly comforting. He found the idea of spending more time with his family strangely compelling. The children were old enough, now, not to be annoying in public and Nita, well she was lovely and supportive in an all-American-girl-next-door kind of way. If he could get her the counseling she needed to snap out of her recent surliness, if he could medicate the children so they were quiet and focused and better able to carry on conversations in a sedate and adult manner, this family renewal policy might work. Hell, Dick Melton had put his wife and children on Ritalin and claimed it had made all the difference in family harmony.

  Charles put his head back and dozed. He awoke thirty minutes later with a start, his chest pounding and sweat breaking out on his brow and the palms of his hands. He had dreamed again that disturbing dream of long legs and garter belts and frilly underwear and hidden somewhere in that frilly feminine underwear something . . . wrong. Something that shouldn’t be there.

  No, no, it isn’t a memory, he told himself, sitting forward and wiping his mouth on his handkerchief. It’s a dream, a nightmare, something Freudian and bizarre and to be expected from a man in the grips of a fever.

  In the back of the plane Redmon’s leg rolled off the stack of pillows and landed with a loud thump on the floor of the plane. He cursed Leonard loudly and profusely and it took two stewardesses and a steward to get him calmed down.

  THE SOMBER FEELING of waking in the grips of a nightmare persisted as they landed in Atlanta and discovered there was no one there to meet them. They had driven up with Trevor earlier in the week and with him gone, Charles had had no choice but to call Nita to pick them up. He had called from the Push Hard airport and the Bozeman airport and had not been able to reach her either time, but he had left clear and concise messages when and where she was to pick them up at Hartsfield. He tried her on her cell phone thinking she might be caught in traffic, but there was no answer. Redmon had himself wheeled to the curb in a wheelchair, and without a word to either Charles or Leonard, he took a cab. They waited thirty minutes and then went to the desk to rent a car.

  They were quiet on the trip to Ithaca, Charles worrying about his wife’s erratic behavior and Leonard wondering how he was going to be able to keep his income up now that he had lost Redmon as a client.

  Traffic was light and they made good time, speeding along the expressway past scattered herds of grazing cattle, and cornfields, and soybean fields, and a barn that read See Rock City in big black letters across its roof. Darkness descended gradually, rolling in like ominous clouds of billowing smoke.

  IT WAS DARK by the time they reached Ithaca. They had decided not to stop for dinner and they were both hungry and tired and eager for a hot shower. Charles swung into the subdivision and slowed as he reached their block.

  Something was wrong. Charles knew it instantly as he pulled into their street. Both houses were dark and there was a sign in Leonard’s front yard that read Another Sale by Delores Swafford—Your Friendly Christian Real Estate Broker.

  “What the hell?” Leonard said, as they drove slowly past his house and pulled into Charles’s driveway. Leonard didn’t even wait for the car to stop before he opened the door, rolled out, and limped at a fast clip across the lawn toward his front door.

  Charles stood in his driveway feeling like he was caught in some bizarre parallel universe; this looked like his house, but it was not his house, something was wrong, something was terribly wrong. Nita’s car was not in the garage. Where was his wife? Where were his children? He wondered suddenly if there had been some kind of an emergency and he picked up his cell phone to call his mother before remembering that she was in the Bahamas with Myra Redmon.

  Leonard stood at his front door trying unsuccessfully to open it with his key. He gave up finally and went around to the garage but that door wouldn’t open either, nor would the French doors in the back. He peered through the glass but the house was dark and seemed suddenly cavernous. He called Lavonne on her cell phone. She picked up after the third ring.

  “I can’t get in the house,” Leonard shouted. “There’s something wrong with my key.”

  “Meet me at the Pink House Restaurant at eight. Bring Charles,” she said.

  “I think we’ve been robbed!” he screamed into the phone, but she had already hung up. He tried to call her again but the line went instantly to voice mail.

  CHARLES OPENED THE kitchen door and stepped inside, noting that his footsteps sounded odd, that they had a strange ringing quality in the darkened house. He switched on the light. Everything was as it should be. Dishes gleamed in the glass cabinets, the appliances sparkled, the floor shone. But there was an oppressive quality to the stillness of the house, a lingering sense that something was wrong. Behind him he could hear Leonard stumbling through the garage.

  Leonard stepped into the house and said, “Oh my God, I’ve been robbed.” He was out of breath and his face was the color of bone. “Lavonne says I’m to meet her at the Pink House Restaurant and bring you. I need to call the police.”

  For some reason he didn’t yet understand, Charles said, “No, wait.” They went through the house, room after room, and everything was as it should be, neat and orderly. But coming back into the kitchen, he saw a note lying on the breakfast bar addressed to him. It was in Nita’s handwriting. The children are with my parents at the beach. Meet me at the Pink House Restaurant at 8:00. Bring Leonard.

  “What does this mean?” Leonard shouted, looking wildly at his partner. “What the hell does this all mean?”

  Standing in the kitchen door, Charles suddenly realized what it meant.

  He ran through the back door and the screened porch, and down the deck step
s with Leonard limping behind him like an old stiff-legged dog. “I can’t get into my house,” Leonard kept shouting. “What in the hell’s going on?”

  Leonard followed him through the yard to the back gate, down a garden path to a small garage at the rear of the property. His knee ached with each step and his lungs felt like he had swallowed a dagger that pierced and sliced his chest with every breath. He stumbled into the garage just as Charles flipped on the light.

  Charles stood there looking at the empty garage. There was a sound in his head like angry bees. Cobwebs hung in the corners of the room like tattered lace. Looking at them, Charles felt suddenly bereft, lonely.

  “What does this mean?” Leonard cried, overwhelmed by the panic in his own voice and the thought that everything he had ever worked for, everything he had ever hoped for was on the verge of ruin and collapse. He had survived four days in the wilderness with a morose partner, an ungrateful client, a grizzly bear, a bad-tempered felon, and a wild Sioux Indian only to return and find that the real danger to his health and sanity lay here in the civilized world he called home.

  Charles’s face had hardened. He looked like a man on the edge of something dangerous and unpredictable. His eyes glittered. His arms hung down from his shoulders like sledgehammers.

  “I can’t get into my house.” Leonard’s swollen eye throbbed and pierced his skull like a hot poker. “I can’t get into my house and my wife wants you and me to meet her at eight o’clock at the Pink House Restaurant. Tell me what’s happening here, buddy. Tell me what I’m supposed to do.” His teeth chattered. His heart pounded his chest wall like a battering ram. “Tell me I’m having a nightmare and all I have to do is wake up and everything will be back the way it was.”