by Ben Rehder
“Are you kidding? That’s a secret,” she said, wagging her finger. “Not revealed until the announcement itself.” She leaned forward intimately and motioned for Rick to do the same. He met her halfway across the table. She whispered in his ear, “A toad named Bernie Dribbling.” Then she stood up straight and held out her hands as if to apologize. “Oh, I shouldn’t say that. Toads aren’t all that bad, really.”
“Which one is he?”
The woman raised up on her toes and scanned the crowd. Rick couldn’t help but look down and notice the fine bones in her feet and her sleek, pedicured nails painted pink as the inside of a conch shell. “He’s over there,” she said tipping the rim of her glass toward the dais. “Sixty-ish? Salt and pepper with the Chamber of Commerce cut? Suit by Sears?”
Rick saw him. An unremarkable man by appearance, though his behavior, at least as described by Clay Stubblefield, lent him an inescapable ugliness. “What’re the criteria for this award?” Rick asked.
“Truth be told, I think it just rotates among the members of the club,” she said. “Far as I can tell it’s got nothing to do with how well you run your business or how much you give back to the community. Of course conventional wisdom says that it helps not to be the subject of a grand jury investigation, even though last year’s winner was technically under indictment when he picked up his plaque.”
Rick laughed and said, “You’re kidding. Is he here?”
“No, he’s currently appealing the conviction.” She shook an ice cube into her mouth and crunched it between her teeth while looking around the room. “Where is that damn waiter?”
“Excuse me,” Rick said as he bent down to grab another record from the crate. Grover Washington? No. Hubert Laws? Nah. Ahhh, the late Herbie Mann. When he stood up he was surprised to see Clay wresting the glass from the woman’s hand. Stubblefield forced a smile and said, “I see you’ve met my wife.”
41.
In Rick’s defense, it had to be pointed out that Lori Stubblefield didn’t look anything like the photo on Clay’s desk which had been taken eight years earlier. Her Mary Tyler Moore flip was now a Parisian blunt cut and a different color to boot. And the Suzy Homemaker personality he had projected onto her photo bore no resemblance to the slinky tart in the halter top.
She was seated on the dais now, sullen and brooding without her drink, as Clay stood proudly at the podium addressing his fellow Booster Clubbers. Rick found it hard to imagine her ever being attracted to someone like Clay but then it was hard to imagine the woman in the photo turning into the one he’d just met. But regardless of what had drawn her to Clay in the first place, Rick wondered what made her stay? Financial security? The kids? Inertia?
“Before I present this award, I hope you don’t mind if I take a moment to talk about all the good work that the McRae Booster Club does in our community.” Clay proceeded to talk about the Little League team the radio station sponsored. The way he told it, Clay had paid for new uniforms out of his own pocket and the goodness of his heart and had put in thirty hours a week as a volunteer coach last year. “And enjoyed every minute of it,” he said with a slap to the podium.
Rick saw Lori Stubblefield rolling her eyes and he figured it was more likely that Clay had done an advertising trade-out with a local sporting goods store for some slightly irregular uniforms and had dropped by two practices for a total of about twenty minutes over the course of the previous season. In fact, assuming he ever received it, Rick would bet his first paycheck that the kids on the team couldn’t have picked their alleged benefactor out of a line up.
Clay’s introduction of Bernie Dribbling was nothing less than fantastic. Winner of several awards similar in nature to the one he was about to receive, Mr. Dribbling was on the board of directors of three local charities, and of course he was deeply involved in pastoral activities in his church. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Clay said. “The McRae Booster Club’s Businessman of the year. . . Bernie Dribbling!”
Bernie sat there for a moment grinning like a pickled possum. Then he lurched to the podium and accepted the plaque, slurring only a few words while thanking everyone for their votes. He tried to make a joke about how expensive some of those votes were, but he botched the punch line. Finally, after an obligatory, if synthetic, nod to God and country, Bernie pointed at Rick and said, “Now play that funky music, white boy!”
42.
After the dance, Rick couldn’t stop singing the chorus to Boogie Oogie Oogie. He wanted to stop, he just couldn’t. He wondered if that phenomenon had been studied, if there was a name for when you can’t get a song out of your head? And why was it always goofy stuff? The theme to a sitcom or Boogie Oogie Oogie?
Rick needed some head Drano to purge the Taste of Honey from his mind. So he turned on Uncle Victor’s Wax Museum for his drive home. The first thing he heard was the Yardbirds followed by Badfinger, Meatloaf, Grand Funk, and the New York Dolls. Rick was searching for the wild card because he knew Uncle Victor wasn’t just randomly playing these songs; that wasn’t how the Wax Museum worked. Next came a George Harrison tune followed by Patti Smith’s Dancing Barefoot and Rick finally saw the light. The answer was the Runt.
In 1967 Todd Rundgren formed a band he called Nazz from the Yardbird song Nazz Are Blue. Todd also recorded a version of the Yardbird’s hit, Happenings Ten Years Time Ago on his Faithful album. George Harrison’s connection was that he’d been the first producer on the Badfinger album Straight Up but left the project before completion. Todd stepped in to produce the record and had the hit Baby Blue, which is the song Uncle Victor had played. Todd had also produced the Meatloaf, New York Dolls, and Patti Smith albums.
When We Gotta Get You A Woman came on, Rick smiled and started thinking about Traci’s comment that she would just ‘deal with it’ if she got to his place and found him in bed. He entertained a fantasy wherein he was tucked warmly in the sack when she arrived. The door would be unlocked and she’d come inside to find a path to his bedroom lighted by candles. In the background, the erotic strains of Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On would set the mood. Traci wouldn’t say a word as she undressed and slipped under the covers and started to move to the slow, relentless rhythms of the music.
It was a nice fantasy but Rick couldn’t help but project ahead to the days at work that might follow. He’d be maintaining a professional demeanor and she’d take it as a slight. She’d retaliate with stares and silence until she couldn’t stand it anymore and she’d finally storm into the production room and give it to him with both barrels. Rick took a moment to examine why, in this projected future, he assumed Traci would be the cause of the problem. He wondered if he should seek counseling to deal with his unswerving pessimism about relationships, even the ones he didn’t actually have.
The Todd Rundgren ended as Rick pulled onto the dirt driveway leading to his trailer. Uncle Victor did a backsell before going into a spot set which, at this time of night, consisted solely of the Universal Financial Services commercial. “Are you behind on your bills?”
To his surprise, Traci was already there when he arrived, forcing Rick to re-choreograph his fantasy. She was sitting on the steps to the trailer wearing sweat pants and a T-shirt. As he approached from the carport, she stood and scratched at her armpit and spoke in her best white trash accent. “Hey, Billy Rae,” she said. “D’jew ‘member tuh get that carton of Salem liiights I sent you for? These kids’re drivin’ me crazy ‘round here and if I don’t get me a smoke soon, I tell you what, I’monna cut yer water off and take yer meter out!”
Rick gave her a sideways glance. “That seems to come pretty natural for you,” he said.
Traci aimed a finger at him. “You better hush or I won’t share.” She held up a paper sack with a bottle inside.
“Eww, malt liquor or Night Train?” Rick keyed the door and they went inside.
“You don’t hush your mouth you’re gonna find yourself in a tight fight with a short stick,” Traci said as she pulled the bottle fr
om the bag. “I’ll have you know this is a rugged little Australian shiraz blend with an exceptionally long finish and notes of raspberry jam.” She looked at the label. “Or at least that’s what they said down at the Pick ‘n’ Pack. Supposed to go good with potted meat.”
“Allow me.” Rick popped the cork and pulled a couple of tumblers from the drain rack by the sink. “How was baby sitting?” He filled the glasses and handed one to Traci.
“It was fun. My niece is four and just adores me, so what’s not to like?” She held her glass out. “Cheers,” she said, moving toward the sofa where she sat down cross-legged. “So how was the Boosterville dance?”
“A little more intellectual than I’m used to,” Rick said. “I never know what to say when someone asks, ‘How ‘bout them Panthers?’ But I’ll give ‘em this. They were serving some fine roast beef.” He went on summarize the evening’s events, from his introduction to the McRae Police Department to meeting Clay’s wife and seeing Bernie Dribbling.
Halfway through his narration, Traci refilled their glasses. When he got to the part about having to play Boogie Oogie Oogie, she interrupted him to say, “Okay, enough about that. What about Donna Moore? What did she have to say for herself? And tell it fast,” Traci said. “‘Cause I wanna hear that tape you used to lure me over here.”
“Well, first of all, she didn’t burn her place down,” Rick said. “I’m pretty sure that was somebody else, maybe even the fabled Dixie Mafia.”
“For real?” Traci seemed genuinely surprised by this.
“So it seems. I don’t think there’s any connection between the fire and Captain Jack’s disappearance. But Captain Jack did blackmail her. Got a little of her money and broke up her marriage too, before he disappeared.”
“So she has a motive to be involved in that?”
Rick shook his head. “No, sounded like her marriage was already on the rocks. She wasn’t nearly as upset about that as she was about losing her business. And setting aside for a moment whatever character flaw is revealed in her choice of paramour, and the cheating itself, she struck me as more-or-less honest.” He walked over to the record collection and pulled the box for Chicago IV. “But here’s where the plot thickens,” he said as he took the reel from the box. “Donna had a friend named Holly Creel.”
“Yeah, I remember you asking me about her.”
Rick threaded the tape onto the reel-to-reel, then turned to look at Traci. “Well, she’s missing, too.” He turned on the amp and switched it to auxillary. “And the circumstances are at least suspicious.”
“Suspicious how?”
Rick just grinned and said, “You ready?”
43.
When Clay said, “And you know that bitch wanted me to come back to her motel room and piss on her?” a spray of wine shot out of Traci’s nose. She couldn’t help it. Her reflex was too strong. She sputtered and coughed and waved her hands and said, “Whoa! Play that again!”
Rick stopped the tape then went to the kitchen and tossed her a towel. “You might not want to have any beverages in your mouth as we go forward,” he said.
“Thanks for the warning.” She wiped her face then gestured for him to start the tape over. So he did. Traci listened with dismal amusment as Clay bragged about his sexcapades. Traci wasn’t surprised to hear him say any of it. They were exactly the kinds of things she suspected Clay of saying all the time to his good-old-boy friends. And she found that actually hearing him say the words was engrossing, in a loathsome sort of way.
They eventually reached the point where Clay said,“Yeah, so she had this friend name of Holly Creel who needed some money, right? So there’s this old guy I know name Bernie Dribbling at Universal Financial Service. D’jew ever know him?”
The banker on the other end of line giggled a bit and said, “Un uh,” indicating ‘no.’
“Oh, weird old sumbitch,” Clay said. “About fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty years old, just talked about pussy all the time, you know. Ol’ Bernie lives up in Jackson but comes down here and spends like three days each week running this business. He stays in the Knight’s Inn, over there, the Budget Six motel, something like that. And the clerks would give him a room next to couples checked in who were crackin’, you know, ‘cause he told ‘em what he want. And he’d get in there at night and fix him a drink, lean up against the wall, listen to ‘em crack, and beat his meat, you know.”
This caused the banker to let go with a big laugh, but not enough to stop Clay from talking. “Sumbitch invited me over there for a drink one night, wanted me to lie on the floor, you know, and stick my ear up to the wall and hear them people gettin’ it next door.”
“Are you kiddin’ me?” The banker giggled a bit more.
“Hell no, I ain’t kiddin’,” Clay said. “So anyway, this Holly Creel needed some money, right? And so I told Donna, I said, ‘Look, I might know somebody’ll make a loan to your friend but she’s gonna have to come across for him any way he wants to. And she said ‘No sweat.’ Tch. So I went to Bernie and told him, you know, about this deal. And she wanted ten thousand dolla’s now. This ain’t like a damn hunn-ed dollar, ninety-day note, you know.”
The banker didn’t say anything, he just kept giggling in an encouraging way.
“Tch. And Bernie worked the damn loan out for her. For a piece of ass, or it was a series of pieces of ass,” Clay explained. “She was going to take care of him for a while and do all sorts of strange things for him, you know, all kinda weird shit.”
“Uh huh.” Please, just tell me some more, he seemed to be saying.
“So anyway I lined that up for him and he made that damn loan to her,” Clay said. “Tch. And I saw him two or three days later, he was comin’ to get it, you know, an’ he says, uh, ‘I got something,’ he says, ‘You don’t think she’ll mind if I wear this, do ya?’ And that sumbitch had him a strap-on penis extension.”
The banker belly laughed at this and said, “No kiddin’!”
“Uh big ol’ monster-looking motherfucker you wear like a damn garter around you or somethin’.”
“Oh, I ain’t believin’ this.”
“And he said, ‘You think she’ll mind if I wear this thing?’ And I said, ‘Shiddif I know, man. Go get it tiger.’” Here, Clay giggled a bit himself before saying,“But I bet you Universal Financial Services has either written that loan off or still got it on the books.”
“You reckon?”
“‘Cause I know damn well that bitch couldn’t pay that.”
“He ain’t with ‘em anymore?”
“Hell, he’s president of the company or somethin’.”
“Is he?”
“He’s one of the high moguls. Him and the may– him and Buddy Alford are partners in it.”
The banker made a noise that sounded approximately like,“Izzaahryyye?” which Traci’s trained Southern ear knew meant, ‘Is that right?’
“You know Buddy Alford the ag commissioner?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, well, Alford and Dribbling and Dicky Crumly in Laurel, who’s in the real estate business, shit, I think Wally Thigpen, three or four of ‘em formed this. Started in Jackson, then in Hartsboro and McRae, now they’ve opened up in of Biloxi.”
“Dang,” the banker said. He paused here, presumably waiting for more gossip. When none was forthcoming, he said, “Well, uh. . .”
“I tell you what,” Clay said. “Lemme run by tomorrow and pick up that damn thing, you still out at the branch?”
“Yeah, it’s out at the branch.”
“You, is that where you’re at?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I’ll run by and talk to you and we’ll see about that girl.”
The banker gave a quick laugh. “All right!”
“Okay.”
“See ya later.”
“Later.”
“Bye.” Click.
Rick stopped the tape and looked at Traci. “Whaddya think?”
“Wow.” Traci
finished her glass of wine, then she said, “Talk about your predatory lending practices.” She looked over at the tape machine as if it had told her a crazy story. “It’s hard to know where to start,” she said. “I mean, you’re definitely gonna have to play it again so we can dissect it better but, for starters, what was that part about when you’re dealing with your money you’re dealing with your morals? What in the world was that supposed to mean?”
“That’s one of my favorite parts.” Rick gave Traci his interpretation, then looked at her to see if that cleared it up.
Traci studied it for a moment. “No, I don’t see how that helps any.”
“No, not really,” Rick agreed. He pushed the button to rewind the tape.
Traci took the wine and refilled both their glasses. Then she stood and walked over to the Barcalounger and plopped down in it. “I’m ready when you are,” she said.
Rick pulled a foot stool over to the tape deck and perched on it so he could stop and start the deck when they wanted to scrutinize a particular part of the conversation.
Finally they got to where Clay said, “And the clerks would give him a room next to couples checked in who were crackin’, you know, ‘cause he told ‘em what he want.”
“Whoa!” Traci raised her hand as if to testify. “Stop it right there!” Incredulous, she said, “He told ‘em what he want? How do you ask for that? Ewww!” She gave an exaggerated shiver. “Makes me want to shower.” She waved at the deck and said, “But keep going.”
Rick started the tape again and, as it played, he watched Traci’s reaction. Her expressions went from disgust to dismay but never to surprise. He figured she’d spent her whole life around good old boys like this. Rick could see the gears spinning in her head. She had the look of someone eager to embark on an adventure. When it was over, he rewound the tape.