“You seem determined. I’m sure you will.”
The biker tapped his head with his fist. “Box of rocks, man, box of rocks, but I never give up. Until then, buddy.” He hopped on his machine, turned the key, a velvet purr filling the air. Then he slowly rolled down the driveway.
Mrs. Murphy watched him recede. “Motorcycles were invented to thin out the male herd.”
Tucker laughed as they fell in with Blair.
“What were you doing out there?” Harry asked as the other women came out of the house and crowded around Blair.
“Talking about motorcycles.”
“With that certain?” Marilyn was incredulous.
“Oh, he’s not so bad. He’s searching for his girlfriend and he’s staying at the Best Western until he finds her. I might even have a beer with the guy. He’s kind of interesting.”
Both Kerry and Aysha had been informed of the search for Malibu.
Laura said, “You’re not afraid of him?”
“No. He’s harmless. Just a little loaded, that’s all.”
“Long as you’re not Malibu, maybe he is harmless.” Harry laughed.
“Can you imagine anyone named Malibu?” Aysha’s frosty tone was drenched in social superiority.
“Think my life would improve if I rechristened myself Chattanooga?” Kerry joked for the others’ benefit. She wanted to smash in Aysha’s face.
“Intercourse. Change your name to Intercourse and you’ll see some sizzle.” Harry giggled.
“Ah, yes.” Laura Freeley’s patrician voice, its perfect cadence, added weight to her every utterance. “If I recall my Pennsylvania geography, Intercourse isn’t far from Blue Ball.”
“Ladies”—Blair bowed his head—“how you talk.”
3
The John Deere dealership, a low brick building on Route 250, parked its new tractors by the roadside. These green and yellow enticements made Harry’s mouth water. Probably a thousand motorists passed the tractors each day on their way into Charlottesville. The county was filling with new people, service people who bought enormous houses squeezed on five acres—riding mowers were their speed. They probably didn’t lust after these machines sitting in a neat row. But country people, they’d drive by at dusk, stop the car, and walk around the latest equipment.
Harry’s tractor, a 1958 John Deere 420S row crop tractor, hauled a manure spreader, pulled a small bushhog, and felt like a friend. Her father had bought the tractor new and lovingly cared for it. Harry’s service manual, a big book, was filled with his notations now crowded by her own. The smaller operator’s manual, ragged and thumbed, was protected in a plastic cover.
Johnny Pop, as Doug Minor dubbed his machine, still popped and chugged. Last year Harry bought a new set of rear tires. The originals had finally succumbed. Given this proven reliability, Harry wanted another John Deere, the Rolls-Royce of tractors. Not that she planned to retire Johnny Pop, but a tractor in the seventy-five-horsepower range with a front end loader and special weights for the rear wheels could accomplish many of the larger, more difficult tasks on her farm that were beyond Johnny Pop’s modest horsepower. The base price of what she needed ran about $29,000 sans attachments. Her heart sank each time she remembered the cost, quite impossible on a postmistress’s wage.
Mrs. Murphy and Tucker waited in the cab of her truck, another item that needed replacing. The Superman blue had faded, the clutch had been repaired twice, and she’d worn through four sets of tires. However, the Ford rolled along. Most people would buy a new truck before a tractor, but Harry, being a farmer first, knew the tractor was far more important.
She strolled around the machines, not a speck of mud on them. Some had enclosed cabs with AC, which seemed sinful to her, although if you ran over a nest of digger bees, that enclosed cab would be a godsend. She liked to dream, climb up to touch the steering wheel, run her fingers along the engine block. That’s why dusk appealed to her. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t want to talk to the salesmen. She’d known them for years, and they knew she hadn’t a penny. She hated to waste their time since she wasn’t a serious customer.
She opened the door of her truck; a tiny creak followed. She leaned onto the seat but didn’t climb in right away.
“Well, kids, what do you think? Pretty fabulous?”
“They look the same as last time.” Tucker was hungry.
“Beautiful, Mom, just beautiful.” Mrs. Murphy would occasionally ride in Harry’s lap when she drove Johnny Pop. “I vote for the enclosed cab myself and you can put a woven basket with a towel in it for me. I believe in creature comforts.”
“Ah, well, let’s go home.” She climbed into the truck, cranked the motor, and pulled onto the highway, heading west.
In fifteen minutes she was at the outskirts of Crozet. She passed the old Del Monte food packaging plant and decided to pull into the supermarket.
“I want to go home.” Tucker whined.
“If you want to eat, then I’ve got to get you food.” Harry hopped out of the car.
Tucker inquisitively looked at the cat. “Do you think she understood what I said?”
“Nah.” Mrs. Murphy shook her head. “Coincidence.”
“I bet I could jump out the window.”
“I bet I could, too, but I’m not running around this parking lot, not the way people drive.” She put her paws on the window frame and surveyed the lot. “Everyone must need dog food.”
Tucker joined her. “Mim.”
“Bet it’s her cook. That’s the farm car. Mim wouldn’t do anything as lowly as shop for her own food.”
“Probably right. Well, there’s the silver Saab, so we know Susan is here. . . .”
“Aysha’s green BMW. Oh, hey, there’s Mrs. Hogendobber’s Falcon.”
“And look who’s pulling in—Fair. Um-um.” Tucker’s eyes twinkled.
Hurrying down the aisle with a basket on her arm, Harry first bumped into Susan.
“If you’re not buying much, you could have gone to Shiflett’s Market and saved yourself the checkout line.”
“He closed early tonight. Dentist.”
“Not another root canal?” Harry counted items in Susan’s cart. “Are you having a party or something? I mean, a party without me?”
“No, nosy.” Susan pushed Harry on the shoulder. “Danny and Brookie want to have a cookout. I said I’d buy the food if they did the work.”
“Danny Tucker behind the barbecue?”
“Well, you see, he’s got this new girlfriend who wants to be a chef, so he thinks if he shows an interest in food beyond eating it, he’ll impress her. He’s talked his sister into helping him.”
“Talked or bribed?”
“Bribed.” Susan’s big smile was infectious. “He’s promised to drive her and a friend to the Virginia Horse Center over in Lexington and then he’ll look at Washington and Lee University, without Mom, of course.”
Mrs. Hogendobber careened around the aisle, her cart on two wheels. “Gangway, girls, I’ll miss choir practice.”
The two women parted as Miranda roared through tossing items into her cart with considerable skill.
“Great hand-eye,” Susan noted.
Nearly colliding with Mrs. Hogendobber, since she entered the aisle from the opposite end, was Aysha Cramer, with her mother, Ottoline. “Oh, Mrs. Hogendobber, I’m sorry.”
“Beep! Beep!” Mrs. Hogendobber expertly maneuvered around her and was off.
Ottoline, wearing an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse that revealed her creamy skin and bosoms, plucked the list out of Aysha’s cart. “If you’re going to waste time talking, I’ll work on this list.”
Aysha shrugged as her mother continued on and turned the corner. She rolled her cart over to Harry and Susan. “We know she’s not DWI.”
Mrs. Hogendobber didn’t drink.
“Choir practice,” Susan said.
“I hope I have as much energy as she does at her age,” Aysha said admiringly. “And just what is her
age?”
“Mentally or physically?” Susan rocked her cart back and forth.
“Mother says she’s got to be in her sixties, because she was in high school when mother was in eighth grade,” Aysha volunteered.
Of course, Ottoline the raving bitch never said anything nice about anyone unless it reflected upon her own perceived glory, so Aysha’s recounting was a bogus edition of Mrs. Gill’s true thoughts.
As if on cue, Ottoline sashayed down the aisle in the opposite direction from which she had left. She dumped items in the cart, nodded curtly to Harry and Susan, only to continue down the aisle, calling over her shoulder, “Aysha, I’m pressed for time.”
“Yes, Mumsy.” Then she lowered her voice. “Had a fight with the decorator today. She’s in a bad mood.”
“I thought she’d just redecorated,” Susan said.
“Two years ago. Time flies. She’s into a neutral palette this time.”
“Better than a cleft palate,” Harry joked.
“Not funny,” Aysha sniffed.
“Oh, come on, Aysha.” Harry couldn’t stand it when Aysha or anyone behaved like a humorless Puritan.
Apart from the occasional lapse into correctness, Harry thought Aysha had turned out okay except for her unfortunate belief that she was an aristocrat. It was a piteous illusion, since the Gills had migrated to Albemarle County immediately following World War I. To make matters worse, they had migrated from Connecticut. Despite her Yankee roots, Aysha flounced around like a Southern belle. Her new husband, not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree when it came to women, bought it. He called her “lovegirl.” God only knows what she called him. Newlyweds were pretty disgusting no matter who they were.
Susan asked, “Aysha, you’ve heard about this Threadneedle virus. Tomorrow’s the big day. You worried?”
“Oh, heavens no.” She laughed, her voice lilting upward before she lowered it. “But my Norman, he’s been to meetings about it. The bank is really taking this seriously.”
“No kidding.” Harry grabbed a few more cans of dog food.
“You can imagine if accounts were mixed up, although Norman says he believes the real target is Federated Investments in Richmond and this whole thing is a cover to get everyone in an uproar while they, or whoever, strikes FI.”
“Why FI?” Susan asked the logical question.
“They’ve been having such hard times. New chairman, shakeups, and hundreds of people have been let go. Who better but an FI employee to devise a scheme with computers as the weapon? Norman says that by August 2 FI will be in a bigger tangle than a fishing line.”
“Ladies!” Fair, framed by a sale sign for charcoal briquets, waved from the end of the aisle.
Aysha smiled at Fair, then looked at Harry to pick up telltale signs of emotion. Harry smiled, too, and waved back. She liked her ex.
“Well, I’d better push on, forgive the pun.” Susan headed out. “Danny will be the youngest coronary victim in Crozet if I don’t get back with this food.”
“Me too.”
“Harry, are you cooking?” Aysha couldn’t believe it.
Harry pointed to her cart. “Tucker and Mrs. Murphy.”
“Give them my best.” Aysha moved in the other direction, her laughter tinkling as she went.
Ottoline, hands on hips, appeared at aisle’s end. “Will you hurry up?”
Harry reached the end of the aisle, where Fair waited for her. He was pretending to buy charcoal at a discount.
“How you doin’?”
“Fine, what about you?”
“Seeing more shin splints than I can count. Too many trainers are overworking their young horses on this hard ground.” Shin splints, or bucked shins, are a common problem among young racehorses.
Harry owned three horses, one of which, still a bit new to her, had been given to her by Fair and Mim. Lately, Mim had warmed to Harry. In fact, the haughty Mrs. Sanburne seemed to have softened considerably over the past couple of years.
“We’re doing pretty good at home. Come on by and let’s ride up Yellow Mountain.”
“Okay.” Fair eagerly accepted. “Tomorrow’s a mess, but the day after? I’ll swing by at six. Ought to have cooled off a little by then.”
“Great. Who do you want to take out?”
“Gin Fizz.”
“Okay.” She started off knowing that the cat and dog would be crabby from waiting so long.
“Uh, heard you and Blair Bainbridge were up at Ash Lawn yesterday. I thought he was out of town.” Fair prayed he would be going out of town again soon—like tomorrow.
“He finished up that shoot and instead of stopping by to see his folks, he came directly home. He’s pretty tired, I think.”
“How can you get tired wearing clothes and twirling in front of the camera?”
Harry refused to be drawn into this. “Damned if I know, Fair, no one’s ever asked me to model.” She wheeled away. “See you day after tomorrow.”
4
“Get out the shovels,” Harry called to Mrs. Hogendobber as she trooped through the back door just as Rob Collier, the mail delivery man, was leaving by the front door.
He ducked his head back in. “Morning, Mrs. H.”
“Morning back at you, Rob.” She beheld the mammoth bags of mail on the floor. “What in the world?”
“Heck of a way to start August.”
As the big mail truck backed out of the driveway, the two women, transfixed by the amount of mail, just stared.
“Oh, hell, I’ll get the mail cart and start on bag one.”
“I’ll be right back.” Mrs. Hogendobber hurried out the door and returned in less than five minutes, enough time for Harry to upend the big canvas bag and enough time for Mrs. Murphy to crash full force into the pile, sending letters and magazines scattering. Then she rolled over and bit some envelopes while scratching others.
“Death to the bills!” the cat hollered. She spread all four paws on the slippery pile, looked to the right, then to the left, before springing forward with a mighty leap, sending mail squirting out from under her.
“Get a grip, Murph.” Harry had to laugh at the tiger’s merry show.
“Here’s what I think of the power company.” She seized a bill between her teeth and crunched hard. “Take that. And this is for every lawyer in Crozet.” She pulled her right paw over a windowpane bill, leaving five parallel gashes.
Tucker joined the fun, but not being as agile as Mrs. Murphy, she could only run through the mail and shout, “Look at me!”
“All right, you two. This is the only post office in America where people get mail with teeth marks on it. Now, enough is enough.”
Mrs. Hogendobber opened the back door just as Pewter was entering through the animal door. “Hey, hey, wait a minute.”
Mrs. Murphy sat down in the mail debris and laughed as her fat friend swung toward her. Mrs. Hogendobber laughed too.
“Very funny.” Pewter, incensed, wriggled out.
“Everyone’s loony tunes this morning.” Harry bent over to tidy the mess but thought the cat had the right idea. “What is that incredible smell?”
“Cinnamon buns. We need sustenance. Now, I was going to wait and bring these over for our break, but Harry, we’ll be working through that.” She checked the big old railroad clock on the wall. “And Mim will be here in an hour.”
“Mim will have to come back.” Harry threw letters in the mail cart and wheeled it to the back side of the mailboxes. “Unless you’ve got some scoop, turn on the radio.” Harry winked as she snatched a hot cinnamon bun and started the sorting.
“I’m not listening to country and western this morning.”
“And I don’t want to be spiritually uplifted, Miranda.”
“Don’t fuss.” Mrs. Hogendobber clicked on the dial.
The announcer bleated the news. “—an eight-million-dollar loss for this quarter, the worst in FI’s sixty-nine-year history. One thousand five hundred employees, twenty-five percent of th
e famed company’s work force, have been let go—”
“Damn.” Harry shot a postcard into Market Shiflett’s box.
“I imagine those people being handed their pink slips are saying worse than that.”
The news continued after a commercial break for the new Dodge Ram. The deep voice intoned, “Threadneedle, the feared computer virus, was already striking early this morning. Leggett’s department store has reported some small problems, as has Albemarle Savings and Loan. The full extent of the scramble won’t be known until the business day gets under way. But the early birds are reporting light trouble.”
“You know, if some computer genius out there really wanted to perform a service for America, he or she would destroy the IRS.”
“We are overtaxed, Harry, but you’re becoming an anarchist.” Miranda wiped a bit of vanilla icing that dripped off her lips, hot coral today to match her square hot coral earrings. Mrs. H. believed in dressing for success, fifties style.
“Ten percent across the board if you make over one hundred thousand and five percent if you make under. Anyone making less than twenty-five thousand a year shouldn’t have to pay tax. If we can’t run the country on that, then maybe we’d better restructure the country—like FI, we’re becoming a dinosaur. . . . Too big to survive. We trip over our own big feet.”
Mrs. Hogendobber flipped up another bag. “I don’t know—but I do agree we’re making a mess of things. Now, what’s she doing here?” She saw Kerry McCray coming through the door.
“Hope you don’t need your mail,” Mrs. Hogendobber called out.
“I tore it up anyway.” Mrs. Murphy licked her lips.
“Did you really?” Pewter was impressed.
“Sure, look at this.” Mrs. Murphy pushed over an envelope bearing neat fang marks on the upper and lower corners.
“Bet it’s a federal offense,” the gray cat sagely noted.
“Hope so,” Mrs. Murphy saucily replied.
“I’m not here for the mail,” Kerry said. “Just wanted to tell you that the Light Opera series at Ash Lawn is doing Don Giovanni on Saturday and really, you’ve got to come. The lead has such a clear voice. I don’t know music like you do, Mrs. Hogendobber, but he is good.”
Pay Dirt Page 3