by Joan Hess
“Would you please pay attention?” Ivy said with measured impatience, resigned to his limitations after fifteen years of marriage but not ready for sainthood just yet. “This supermarket’s going to put us out of business. No one’s going to come to the produce stand if they can get fruits and vegetables more cheaply elsewhere.”
Alex wrenched his gaze from the ladybug ad to smile at his wife, who was attractive in a comfortable way and clearly peeved at him. “But we’re organic. Our customers won’t buy anything sprayed with pesticides and herbicides.”
Ivy looked back at him, her eyes unblinking behind wire-rimmed glasses. “We have customers because we have the only source of fresh produce between here and Starley City. The majority of our customers would drink pesticides if it saved money.”
“Whatever you say.” He returned to the ladybug ad, which promised the nifty little things could rid a garden of aphids in a matter of days.
Lamont Petrel, the occupant of unit number four at the Flamingo Motel, was reading fine print on various legal documents. His thick silver hair was combed in a sweeping pompadour to draw attention away from his slightly protruding ears, and he was often mistaken for a televangelist. He had twinkly blue eyes ringed with lines, an affable voice with only a tinge of southern refinement, and a firm handshake that’d served him well in many a meeting fraught with peril. His teeth were perfect, but his smile went no deeper than his tan. His wife had told him on more than one occasion that he was a cold-blooded bastard who’d sell his grandmother’s soul for a fistful of dollars and his own for a few dollars more. Lamont found that a reasonably accurate description, although he hadn’t said so.
He’d already checked the infamous ad for typos, but it looked pretty good and he was pleased with his work. Jim Bob had yelped about the cost, to be sure, but Lamont had convinced his partner that advertising was the only way to go, and he’d finally won the argument.
As for the documents, the fine print was pretty spidery for his sixty-year-old eyes, but he’d instructed his attorneys to go whole hawg in terms of complicated language and meaningless legal jargon. By the time you stumbled into the fifth or sixth “wherein the fiduciary obligations of the party of the first part blah blah the reciprocity of obligations of the party of the second part, heretofore to be identified as the blah blah,” it made about as much sense as the federal government’s simplified tax form. Which was what Lamont wanted, because he sure as hell didn’t want to stay partners with the dumbshit mayor of Maggody.
And unless Jim Bob hired himself a bunch of eagle-eyed lawyers to plow through the partnership agreements, Lamont wasn’t going to have to put up with him much longer. This was going to be more of a “Slam-bang, thank you, ma’am” arrangement.
“This is the smartest thing I’ve ever done.” Jim Bob Buchanon chortled, studying the ad like a proud papa. “Lamont wasn’t crazy about running a full page, but I told him how we’ve got to get everybody’s attention before the grand opening in two weeks. I’ll bet you twenty bucks every single sucker in the county will come by for a look-see and free samples from the deli.”
“Gambling is a sin,” Mrs. Jim Bob said automatically.
“You know what I mean.” He leaned back and put his feet on the coffee table, cringed at his wife’s sharp intake of breath, and got them off real fast. “I get all fired up thinking about being the owner and manager of a great big supermarket. The whole county’s gonna shop at the Jim Bob’s SuperSaver Buy 4 Less. We got ourselves fifteen employees, and most of them’s at minimum wage and glad to get it. I think I’ll mosey down there and see how the roofers are doing.”
“The construction supervisor assured you this morning that everything was on schedule, and more likely to remain so without your continual interference.” Mrs. Jim Bob said all this without interest, being more concerned with her study of the Book of Corinthians II, because it was going to be discussed in her Sunday-school class and she intended to be prepared. Only three weeks ago, Lottie Estes had won a minor skirmish involving an obscure verse from the Gospel of Luke, and it had taken all this time for Mrs. Jim Bob to overcome the humiliation. It would not happen again.
Jim Bob finished his beer and did his level best to hold in a belch, which would make it all the harder to get his ass out of the living room and its suffocating piety. “Maybe you’re right,” he said magnanimously. “I guess I’ll go over to the Flamingo and visit with Lamont about the grand opening. He’s apt to be lonely sitting all alone in a shabby motel room with nothing to amuse hisself.”
“The motel room to talk business … or Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill to guzzle beer?”
“I’m just trying to do the neighborly thing for Lamont. You’re all the time saying how it’s your Christian duty to visit with those who are lonely and bereft in their time of need.” He wasn’t sure this made a whole helluva lot of sense, since Lamont was probably drinking bourbon and watching a football game. Jim Bob was doing neither, because the smell of whiskey made his wife nauseous and the noise of the television disturbed her Bible study. He waited for a minute, then stood up. “I’ll be back before suppertime.”
“Dinnertime. Common folks have supper. In this house, we have dinner.”
“Right,” Jim Bob muttered on his way out the door. He’d already decided to forgo comforting Lamont in order to find out if sweet Cherri Lucinda might be in the mood for company.
I was reading a travel guide to Europe. I was dressed in my uniform and sitting behind my desk at the police department, however, in deference to my position as chief of police of Maggody, Arkansas, population 755 at last count. Nobody counted very often because there wasn’t much need. The outside world was not obsessed with an accurate head count, and the good citizens knew what every last person was doing and therefore could keep a running tally of births, deaths, and escapes.
I was in Maggody because I’d skulked home from a posh Manhattan existence to recuperate from a tasteless divorce (as opposed to an elegant one, in which both parties fall all over themselves to be fair about the property settlement and fondly kiss each other on the cheek on the courthouse steps … in Disney World). It wasn’t that I was covered with oozing sores; there were only a few scabs to be picked at on a regular basis. I figured it would be only a couple more years before I was ready for the real world, which wasn’t ringing all that much anymore.
I was the chief of police because I was the only applicant for the position who’d had any police training. I’d managed to avoid brain petrification only by spending most of my cognizant hours imagining myself elsewhere. And not with a capital E, either, since almost anyplace else was preferable to a one-street town noted for its ornery citizens, dusty weeds, boarded-up storefronts, and artful display of litter that ranged from rusted beer cans and disposable diapers to unmentionables.
At this point, I’d just left Florence, after a delightful stay at a quaint pensione that served robust breakfasts and elegant dinners at a reasonable price. Thus far, excluding airfare, I was well within my fabricated budget and I was considering a few days in Rome in a seventeenth-century villa overlooking the city. I could take a bus in every morning to sightsee, and idle away the evenings on the broad balcony, sipping wine and chatting with the resident contessa.
When the telephone rang, I marked my place (just south of Siena) and, in further deference to my position, answered it with, “Police department, Chief Ariel Hanks speaking.”
“Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill, your mother speaking,” came a most unfriendly voice. “I thought you were coming down here for supper.”
“I am, but it’s the middle of the afternoon. I still have time to check in at the Villa della Gatteschi and do the Colosseum before it gets dark.”
“Don’t give me any of that smart talk, young lady. Are you coming down here for supper or not?”
“Can I expect lasagna and osso buco?”
Her voice was so icy that my eardrum tingled. “Are you coming or not?”
“Of course I am,�
�� I said, trying not to sound as irritated as I was. It’s not wise to mess with Ruby Bee, who looks like a chubby grandmother with her rosy round face and improbable blond hair but has a streak of something hard to define but best to avoid. Every now and then, one of them good ol’ boys drinks one pitcher of beer too many at the bar and learns the hard way. One of them limps to this day. Truth.
“Well, then, get your fanny off your chair and get down here,” Ruby Bee snapped, then hung up before I could think of anything else, smart or not, to say.
I got my fanny off my chair, vowed to renew my passport, and went out of the relative sanctuary of the PD into the whitewashed August heat of Maggody. A lone pickup truck was heading south, leaving a ghostly swirl of dust in its tracks. A car was parked in front of Roy Stiver’s antique store, and I supposed some naîve tourist was in there trying to pull a fast one over on potbellied, slow-talking Roy, who has more CDs in the bank than a cow patty has flies.
My efficiency apartment was above the store. I gave it a wistful look but obediently trudged along the highway to find out what species of bee was buzzing in Ruby Bee’s bonnet this time. I winced as I passed the site of the new supermarket, thinking about the poor souls putting on a tar roof in the heat. The building itself was rather peculiar. Jim Bob was too cheap to tear down the old Kwik-Screw, an ordinary convenience store, so some of the facade remained—like a boil.
As I watched, several trucks rolled in loaded with refrigeration equipment and metal shelving units. A beefy man in a hard hat came out to bellow at the drivers, most of whom ignored him and ambled over to the soda machine in front of the Suds of Fun Launderette next door. I didn’t blame them. One of the roofers came to the edge and let out his version of a wolf whistle, presumably intended to flatter me into scampering up the ladder for a quick romp in the tar. I’d lived on the Upper East Side in another life, and responded with a minute yet succinct gesture.
Estelle’s station wagon was the only car in front of Ruby Bee’s, which was odd on a searing Saturday afternoon. There was a black Cadillac parked in front of the motel unit out back, which was odd, too. No one stays at the Flamingo Motel; its sign is a perpetual V CAN Y and every year its neon flamingo looks a little more inclined to molt into oblivion. Ruby Bee lives in number one and swears she prefers the solitude. I’ve always thought she didn’t want to change the linen or mess with registration.
The bar and grill was bright pink on the outside but dim and cool on the inside. And pretty much deserted. Estelle was sitting at the bar with a glass of sherry, listening as Ruby Bee raged and sputtered over the sink.
Estelle, the owner and operator of Estelle’s Hair Fantasies, is the antithesis of Ruby Bee. She’s as tall as I—five nine—but she towers over me with her six-inch fiery red beehive hairdo. As a child, I’d kept a cautious eye on it, not sure what would happen if it slipped to one side. It never had, to my disappointment. It didn’t even sway when she walked.
“It’s about time,” Ruby Bee said by way of warm welcome. “You want iced tea or milk?”
“Neither, thank you. I’ll just sit here like a little mouse until you tell me all about whatever it is that’s disturbing you.” I climbed onto the stool next to Estelle and propped my elbows on the bar.
“This is hardly the time for jokes,” Estelle said with a snort of disapproval. “You might show some concern for your own flesh and blood, Miss High Horse.”
Ruby Bee grabbed a dishrag and began to wipe the counter so hard it squeaked. “Now, Estelle, there’s no point in giving Arly a lecture on manners. She lived in Noow Yark, you know, where people don’t pay any mind to anyone else. They make you turn in your party manners when you drive across the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“I forgot,” Estelle said, slapping her forehead like a heroine in a melodrama, which wasn’t too far off base. “People in Noow Yark just watch out the window when someone gets mugged, and they can’t be bothered to learn their neighbors’ names or have a nice conversation in the elevator about the weather.”
“Hot enough for you?” I inserted quickly.
Ruby Bee shot me a beady look, then attempted to wrest the starring role away from Estelle. “So there’s no reason why I should expect Arly to be concerned about me having to live out the last years of my life in the county nursing home. Isn’t Adele Wockermann out there?”
“Yes, but last I heard, she was visiting with aliens through her hearing aid,” Estelle said, giving me her version of the Beady Look. It’s not as effective, since one of hers wanders. “It’s a crying shame, Ruby Bee, you not being able to enjoy yourself in your golden years. No grandbabies, no daughter who worries about you, no little cottage with a nice flower garden. A crying shame.”
“A crying shame,” Ruby Bee echoed. She wiped her eyes with the dishrag, then bravely straightened her shoulders and prepared to crumble into dust in a rocking chair next to Adele.
“A crying shame,” I said to complete the symmetry. I had no idea what was up, but I had no doubts I would find out in the next thirty seconds.
It took sixty because we lapsed into a temporary standoff. Ruby Bee and Estelle exchanged looks and waited for me to demand to know the cause of this bleak vision. I contemplated the gold flecks in the mirror and waited for them to spit it out.
“Don’t you want to hear about it?” Estelle finally said, pissed because she’d caved in and knew I knew it.
“Sure,” I said. “Can I have that iced tea?”
“It’s that monstrosity Jim Bob’s putting in across the street,” Ruby Bee said. “It’s going to put plenty of folks out of business, and you got to do something about it.”
Realizing I wasn’t going to see iced tea anytime soon, I leaned over the bar and got myself a glass of water. “It’s ugly, it’s been tying up traffic for six months, and it’s likely to be staffed by Buchanons from under half the rocks in Stump County. Who’s it going to put out of business?”
“Your mother,” Estelle said. “The ad says it has this big deli section with tables and plastic silverware so you can eat right there in the store.”
“The picnic pavilion,” Ruby Bee added in a dull voice.
I shook my head. “It may hurt business for a few days, but it’s not going to win anyone’s heart for long. That kind of food’s never good, and you’re the best cook in the county.”
Ruby Bee pointed a shaky finger at the empty room. “Just take a look for yourself. Nobody’s here.”
I tried to figure out how to tiptoe around this one, but nothing all that clever came to mind. “I’ve heard lately that you’ve been … confrontational with your regular customers,” I said carefully. “You’ve been getting hot under the collar, demanding loyalty oaths and, in general, running everybody off.” Valuing my life, I did not add that the hottest topic at the pool hall was whether or not she was too old for PMS (she was).
“I never!” Estelle gasped.
Ruby Bee once again began to wipe the counter, but without her earlier energy. “Maybe I have. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not pleased with this pavilion directly across the street. I’m too old to learn how to make croissant sandwiches and mousse. All I know how to make is regular food like meat loaf and scalloped potatoes.”
“And all your customers will try the new place and then come right back here like they always did,” I said soothingly.
“What about the Satterings?” Estelle demanded. “You think Ivy and Alex can count on folks’ loyalty when their produce costs more?”
“I don’t know what to tell you. What about you, Ruby Bee? You buy from them because the stand’s convenient. Are you going to buy produce at the supermarket because it’s cheaper?”
“Of course not,” Ruby Bee said, although not with enough conviction to fool a toddler.
Estelle was still into the voice of doom. “And that Mexican fellow that bought the Dairee Dee-Lishus is right upset, I heard. Dahlia said Kevin said he liked to throw a pot of boiling chili at him. The Mexican at Kevin, not the oth
er way around.”
“There’s not anything any of us can do about it,” I said. “Believe it or not, not even Maggody can withstand a spurt of progress every now and then. We used to gripe about the lack of merchandise and the exorbitant prices at the Kwik-Screw. Now we’re going to have to face a larger selection and reasonable prices. I’m afraid we’re stuck with it, ladies.”
“Unless this picnic pavilion at Jim Bob’s SuperSaver Buy 4 Less goes belly-up the first day it opens,” Estelle said in a casual voice.
“Why would it?” I said in an uncasual voice.
“You just never know.”
“That’s right,” Ruby Bee said, gazing over my head. “You just never know.”
The last bit of reading matter of any significance had not yet been read. It was a letter addressed to the Maggody town council, and it lay in a well-polished silver tray in the foyer of Jim Bob’s house. He had ignored it on his way out the door, and Mrs. Jim Bob, who opened whatever mail caught her eye, was much too worried about the upcoming Corinthians II face-off in Sunday school to bother with local affairs.
Jim Bob would read it over coffee the next morning, and it would take him all day to figure out how best to use it to his own advantage, which was pretty much how he approached everything.
The letter was from the Starley City Youth Center and was thick with dates, guidelines, rules, regulations, methods of compliance, and boring stuff like that. The gist of it, however, was that Maggody was invited to enter its local championship baseball team in the Starley City Labor Day Weekend Invitational Intermediate League Baseball Tournament (in subsequent paragraphs referred to as the SCLDWIILBT, but don’t try to sound it out, ’cause you can’t without coming off like you’re drunker’n Cooter Brown).