by Joan Hess
Jim Bob was across the hall, thinking of what he could do with the money from the sale of the acreage. None of his X-rated fantasies included his wife.
Earlier, Estelle had been hunting through her supply closet in hopes of finding a product to salvage her hair, but she’d given up and gone to bed. Sleeping on bristly hair rollers was a challenge she could meet with ease, having done so for forty-odd years.
In the field beyond the Grappers’ farmhouse, the RV was dark and still. A few spotlights had been left on in strategic corners of the vast tent, but the two occupants were used to them, as well as to the cots and the persistent presence of hungry mosquitoes.
Dressed in a tired cotton robe and worn slippers, Norma Kay stood at the living room window, gazing at the top of the hill. In the back of the house, Bur was making his usual disgusting noises as he slept, but she’d long since given up hope she’d find his dead body in the morning (although she had a black dress in reserve in the coat closet). If she strained, she could hear the gentle hum of a generator behind the RV. It had been painfully tempting to rush up the hill to see Malachi, but she’d prayed for strength to wait for him to come to her. She was certain that he would.
A man of the Lord always kept his word.
3
“Guess who called this morning,” Darla Jean McIlhaney said as Heather Reilly got in on the passenger’s side of the station wagon. Both of them wore shorts and blouses that subtly complemented each other’s, having worked it out beforehand on the phone. As soon-to-be seniors, they had an obligation to the sophomores and juniors to provide leadership in such matters.
“Elvis?”
“No, seriously.”
Heather waited until they were out of the driveway, then took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her purse. “Brother Verber, because he wants you to play the Virgin Mary in the Sunday school pageant this year?”
Darla Jean did not appreciate the implication that she wasn’t qualified for the role, even though she wasn’t. “Arly Hanks called me,” she said huffily. “She was all sugary on account of wanting us to do a favor for her.”
“Us? You’d better not have—”
“I already did, so there’s no point in having a hissy fit. Besides, it might turn out to be interesting, and I don’t seem to recall you having anything better to do. Just last night you were whining about how you were ready to dye your hair green out of boredom.” She glanced at Heather, who didn’t look convinced, and continued in a brighter voice. “There’s a new girl in town named Chastity. She came with that preacher and his trucks, and she’s all upset about having to go to high school here.”
“Aren’t we all?” Heather said as she let smoke dribble out her nostrils like an Italian actress she’d seen on a late-night movie.
“Arly thought it would be nice if we went over to where this girl’s staying and introduced ourselves.”
“And get dragged off to a tent revival? I don’t think so, Darla Jean. Why don’t you drop me off at the Dairee Dee-Lishus on your way to eternal salvation? I’d just as soon go to hell with a corn dog and a cherry Coke.”
“Look, I owe Arly a favor because of her not telling my parents about certain things. If this girl is all snotty, we’ll remember how we have to go get our hair cut or something and leave. I heard my ma talking on the phone this morning about the preacher and all the celebrities that appeared on his TV show. Maybe we can meet some if we pretend to be her friend.”
“As long as you don’t invite her to hang out with us,” Heather muttered. “She probably doesn’t approve of smoking or drinking. Wait till she finds out that’s all there is to do in Maggody.” She suddenly realized whose house they were approaching and jerked the cigarette out of her mouth. “Shit!” she said, stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray and trying to fan the smoke out the window at the same time. “Why didn’t you tell me we were going to Coach Grapper’s? She’ll kick my ass off the team if she sees me with a cigarette!”
Darla Jean downshifted as the station wagon lurched up the road. “She’s over at the high school. I saw her car when I went there to talk to Miss Estes about the 4-H booth at the county fair next month. We’re gonna do something about muffins …”
Her voice faded as the tent came into view. Neither of them had seen the arrival of the caravan the day before, having been at the mall in Farberville. It might have been discussed at supper in their respective houses, but so was a lot of other crap not worth listening to.
“Arly said to find the RV,” Darla Jean said bravely. “I reckon that’s it behind those trucks.” Despite the urge to turn around and race down the hill, she cut off the engine. “Come on, Heather. It’s just some girl with a dorky name. She can’t make us do anything we don’t want to do.”
They climbed out of the station wagon and looked nervously at the tent looming over them. There were two trucks from the telephone company, along with one from the electric co-op and another from a wholesale grocer. No one seemed to be around, though, and the only sounds were bugs whirring in the weeds and a truck grinding its gears at the low-water bridge.
“Now what?” whispered Heather.
“I’m not exactly the Welcome Wagon lady, you know. I guess we ought to knock on the door.”
“So knock on the door.”
“I said we, Heather, as in we ought to knock on the door.”
“I never agreed to this. You’re the one that—”
The door opened and a woman came out to the top step of a concrete-block porch. She was wearing shorts and a blouse, but her hair was a pale blond cloud, all puffed out so her face was barely visible. Her figure was hard to miss, though. Although Darla Jean had never seen a Las Vegas showgirl, this was what she figured one would look like: big breasts, small waist, rounded hips, and legs so long she could kick somebody in the teeth from six feet away.
“Hi,” she said, her bright red lips curving into a smile. “Isn’t this a pretty morning! I just love waking up to the sound of birds singing. It makes me want to spread my wings and go flying into the sky. Can I do something for you girls?”
Heather was standing there like a fence post, so Darla Jean took a deep breath and sputtered out an explanation for their visit.
“You two are so sweet,” the woman said. “I’m Seraphina Hope, Chastity’s big sister. She’s been feeling a mite lonely since we got here, and I know she’ll be tickled pink that you came out just to meet her. You wait here and I’ll fetch her.”
Darla Jean and Heather were too dumbstruck to do more than stare as Seraphina went back inside. They hadn’t so much as caught their breath when a girl appeared in the doorway, her hands on her hips and her mouth twisted into a sneer that reminded Darla Jean of Miss Estes when she caught Andrea Sickle-pod cheating on the personal hygiene quiz.
“I don’t need anybody’s help,” said Chastity. “You’ve done your good deed for the day, so beat it, okay?”
Darla Jean bristled. “Okay with us. We got better things to do. Come on, Heather, let’s go see who’s hanging out at the Dairee Dee-Lishus.”
Chastity glanced over her shoulder, then stepped onto the stoop and growled, “What’s that?”
“Nothing that would interest you, I’m sure.” Darla Jean shoved Heather toward the station wagon. She had to admit the blond woman had flustered her, but she was used to dealing with slutty girls on account of having lived in Maggody for seventeen weary, dreary years.
Chastity closed the door behind her. “Maybe I’ll go have a look at it. Gawd knows there’s nothing to do around here.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Darla Jean said as she pointed ungraciously at the backseat. Once they were heading down the hill, she poked Heather. “Gimme a cigarette.”
Heather finally found her voice. “You’d better wait until we’re past Coach Grapper’s house. She liked to have throttled Traci when that story came out about the party behind Purtle’s Esso the week before the postseason tournament. All Traci ever does is ride t
he pine, anyway. It’s not like she’s ever scored a basket.”
“Who’s Coach Grapper?” asked Chastity.
Darla Jean grimaced. “Remember that witch that tried to poison Sleeping Beauty? Compared to Coach Grapper, she was a nun.”
“She’s the basketball coach,” said Heather, making a rude gesture at the farmhouse. “According to her, we’re all half-blind wimps. If we win, we should have won by more. If we lose, at the next practice we have to run a lap around the track for every point we lost by. When Hasty beat the shit out of us, I thought my legs were gonna fall off and my lungs were gonna burst.”
“Quit the team and tell the bitch to kiss your ass.” Chastity leaned forward and plucked the cigarette pack and lighter out of Heather’s open purse. “There’s no law that says you have to play basketball, is there?”
Heather giggled. “No law, but there’s a reason for being on the team. Actually, there are fourteen reasons, some better than others.”
“Yeah?” said Chastity.
Darla Jean was giggling, too. “Coach Grapper has this thing for Coach Jenks, who’s acting head coach for the boys’ team. She’s all the time gazing at him like a cross-eyed cow, practically drooling—and she’s got to be ten years older than him. It’s unbelievably nauseating. Anyway, the girls’ and boys’ teams ride on the same bus. We also stay at the same motels at tournaments.”
“Some of the tournaments last four days,” said Heather. “We have a blast. The way the coaches carry on, we might as well not have any chaperons. Last year a couple of the guys got some whiskey, and we played strip poker half the night.”
Chastity hung over the back of the seat. “Where are these tournaments?”
“Oh, all over the place,” Darla Jean said as if the Maggody Marauders had been dribbling from California to Calcutta. “You really ought to go out for the team. Coach Grapper’s a pain in the butt, but you just have to mind your mouth around her, act like you’re listening, and not snicker when she comes out of her office in a jogging suit the color of Pepto-Bismol.”
“I’m not any good at basketball. I had to play in phys ed classes and I used to shoot baskets with some dumbshit little kid at one of the foster homes, but that’s about it.”
Darla Jean glanced in the rearview mirror. “There’s not exactly a long line outside the gym every fall. If you go out, she’ll put you on the team. You may not get to play much, but you’ll still dress up and go to all the games and tournaments.”
“And the retreats,” added Heather. “There are three of those a year—one before the season starts, one about halfway through it, and one afterward. We stay in cabins at one of the state parks and supposedly set goals and strengthen team spirit. Mostly we goof off.”
Chastity sat back and thought about what she’d heard. Seraphina refused to let her drive and made sure the car keys were never lying around. Nobody who worked for Malachi would risk losing his job by helping her run away, not even Joey. When school started, she could probably sweet-talk some redneck into taking her to a bus station, but Malachi would hire a private detective like he’d done in the past. She’d be dragged home and catch holy hell for months.
But if she went out of town with the basketball team, she could get a good head start—especially if the two girls in the front seat would cover up her absence for a few days.
She was imagining herself back in Milwaukee when the station wagon splashed across the low-water bridge and Heather yelped, “Who was that?”
“Ruby Bee Hanks and Estelle Oppers,” answered Darla Jean. “Do you think they saw us smoking? My pa’ll whip me silly if he finds out.”
Heather groaned.
“Who was that?” asked Estelle.
“Darla Jean McIlhaney, Heather Reilly, and some girl in the backseat I didn’t recognize right offhand. Maybe one of them has a cousin that’s visiting.” Ruby Bee turned off the pavement and started up the hill, clinging for dear life to the steering wheel. “You’d think now that Bur’s retired, he could do something about that scraggedy yard, but Norma Kay told Lottie Estes that all he does is lie around all day in his underwear, watching television.”
“He’s an ornery little cuss. I don’t know how Norma Kay puts up with him. If you ask me, she ought to—”
“Will you look at that!” Ruby Bee said, gasping. “That tent’s bigger than the new Wal-Mart in Farberville! I swear, I can’t think when I’ve ever seen a tent so big.”
Estelle would have mentioned having seen a bigger tent if she could have. She was obliged to settle for a snort as the car came to a stop. “I ain’t sure we should be doing this,” she said. “Maybe we should wait for a few days so they can get all settled in.”
“We are merely being neighborly,” Ruby Bee said, although she wasn’t exactly leaping out of the car like the seat was on fire. “What would they think if nobody came out to welcome them?”
As they sat bickering at each other, a young man in a leather jacket and jeans came out of the tent and walked right past them without so much as a nod. Ruby Bee waited until he disappeared between the trucks, then said, “You don’t reckon that was Malachi Hope, do you?”
“You saw him on TV,” Estelle said in a snippety voice. “He didn’t look like some two-bit hoodlum, did he? I hope this doesn’t mean you’re turning into another Virella Buchanon and will commence to accusing everybody of being your evil twin sister.”
Ruby Bee thought of a lot of comebacks, some of them real jewels, but she decided to be magnanimous this one time. “Well, are we gonna sit here till the cows come home or are we gonna be neighborly?”
She picked up the offering, got out of the car, and waited until she heard Estelle coming before she approached the door. Breathing a tad unevenly, she opened the screen and knocked just like visiting televangelists was something she did every day.
“Maybe nobody’s home,” murmured Estelle.
“Maybe you got a yellow stripe down your spine,” Ruby Bee said as she raised her knuckles to knock more sharply. She snatched ’em back real fast as the door opened and she found herself staring at a man wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. She looked back at Estelle, whose eyes were popped out like a stomped-on toad frog’s.
“Yes?” he said nicely, if a shade impatiently.
Ruby Bee turned around and took a deep breath. Despite her stupefaction (and his wet hair), she recognized him. “Mr. Hope, I’m Ruby Bee Hanks and this is Estelle Oppers. We just wanted to drop by and say welcome to Maggody.” When he didn’t say anything, she thrust forward the foil-covered dish. “We brought you a little something for your supper. It’s a green bean casserole. Estelle said I should have made a pie, but I always think it’s nice to have something solid and filling after a long trip.”
“Thank you,” Malachi Hope said as he took the dish from her hand and stepped back. “As you might have guessed, I was in the shower when you arrived. It was very kind of you ladies to come all the way out here, and I hope I’ll see you at the first night of the revival. God bless you.”
The door closed, leaving Ruby Bee and Estelle standing on the little stoop like a set of andirons. After a minute of stunned silence, Estelle took Ruby Bee’s arm and pulled her toward the car, saying, “See? I told you he wouldn’t want to be disturbed on his first official day in town. He must be awful busy getting ready for the revival, and the last thing he wants is to—”
“Let’s have a peek,” Ruby Bee said as she veered toward the tent opening.
“That’s trespassing,” Estelle said, trying to sound virtuous but following right on Ruby Bee’s heels just the same.
The tent didn’t seem so big on the inside because there were navy blue curtains blocking off the back part. There was still plenty of room for benches and chairs, though, although they were going to be unsteady until the grass was trampled flat. In front of the curtains were a metal scaffold holding up a stage and more scaffolds on either end that weren’t doing anything at the moment.
“Look
at those,” whispered Estelle, pointing at enormous black amplifiers with enough wires to run electricity to every house in Maggody. “Whatever happened to a choir all dressed in black robes?”
“Same thing that happened to horse-drawn buggies and milkmen.”
The young man in the leather jacket came out onto the stage, a screwdriver in one hand and slinky black cables in the other. “Help you?”
“No, thank you,” Ruby Bee said, speaking politely even though she could see the tattoo on his hand plain as day. “We were just leaving.”
She stepped on Estelle’s foot in her haste to live up to her words, and pretty soon they were in the car, going down the hill.
I was a bit proud of myself as I drove by the Dairee Dee-Lishus and spotted Darla Jean, Heather, and Chastity standing at the window. They weren’t chattering like starlings, but they appeared reasonably amiable. Some of the other kids were perched on a nearby picnic table, so it seemed likely Chastity would do okay on the first day of school. If Hope Is Here was still here, of course. I’d spent half the night unsuccessfully trying to imagine a thousand-acre Christian amusement park in this particularly desolate corner of the Ozarks. Then again, I don’t think anyone ever dreamed that Branson could become one of the hottest tourist attractions in the entire country. The last time I’d been duped into going, traffic had been creeping along at a snail’s pace and the preponderance of polyester had given me a rash that lingered for a week.
And there’d been Heritage U.S.A., too. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker had raked in millions of dollars before the roof caved in—and the cell door slammed on one of them. If Malachi Hope was of the same species as other well-known evangelical predators, I was in for some deep shit. Religion seems to bring out the worst in mob mentality.
For lack of anything better to do, I decided to drive into Farberville and see what I could find at the library about Malachi Hope. After that, I’d drop by the state police barracks to inquire about outstanding warrants and requests for his extradition.