It would have been inappropriate to laugh, but it was the first reaction that came to Kaye’s mind as she pictured a man of those advanced years trying to force himself on a woman. She wouldn’t have thought a man that old could force himself on a sandwich.
“No, I know how it sounds, but listen,” Rosemary continued. “Nine different women came forward – mothers and daughters, some of them, and said that Willie Baker had either raped or attempted to rape them, multiple times, while they were working for him at the Eyeteeth Mountain Rocking Chair Factory over the past thirty years.” Rosemary read further, whispering words to herself. “Two of them claimed that Willie had also attacked their mothers even longer ago . . . so it’s possible that this was going on for decades. How could these mothers let their daughters work for a man who had attacked them?”
“Look at this area,” said Stefan as he maneuvered the vehicle. “Jobs would be pretty scarce around here. There might not have been anywhere else to go for work. People in small, tight communities can spend a long time ignoring, and excusing, and normalizing bad behaviors.”
“Bad behavior,” scoffed Kaye. “Sounds like someone needed to castrate the old bastard.”
“Maybe his sister cast some spells to make everyone forget,” said Sally, with clear dislike.
“Oh shit shit shit,” Rosemary groaned. “I do not want to drag the show into this quagmire. Why couldn’t it have been drugs? This part of Missouri is lousy with meth manufacturing, but no, we get the rapist. I guess that Elton took over running the family rocking chair business after Willie died. Oh, here’s a picture of Willie - Jesus, look at the size of him! That might explain Elton’s bulk. Well, if any of you were wondering how a 97-year-old man managed to overpower anyone, you should see this picture. He’s big as a bear.”
“So,” surmised Greg, “Willie is arrested. The new judge thinks it’s about time somebody put the boot up this old rapist’s ass, and leaves him in jail for half a week. He dies there. Now, if I’m understanding what Cloda’s saying, she believes Elton, Willie’s grandson—”
Kaye corrected, “No, Elton is Cloda’s grandson. He would be Willie’s, um, grand-nephew, I think.”
“Okay, whatever. She believes Elton must have cast some kind of spell over the accusers to get even with them.” Greg cleared his throat. “Does anybody else think that’s an awfully good guess? I don’t think Cloda told us a third of what she actually knows.”
“That’s the impression I have too,” Drew agreed, and around the group they went, each of them agreeing that this seemed to be the situation.
Kaye agreed too, and was paying attention, but her thoughts wanted to stray back to Cloda Baker’s house, where lay a grimoire that she wanted in her own hands.
*****
Not even half an hour later they came slipping back into Slope, spraying muddy water all around. Kaye wouldn’t have thought it likely, but the town looked even worse, more pervasively depressed. It was silent and empty; of course no one would be back from the rocking chair factory yet, if the seven-to-seven schedule could be relied upon. Kaye supposed long work hours were to be expected, when one was under an evil spell.
The lone citizen in residence, Ardelia, was on her front porch, scowling at them. She might have been waiting there for hours. Now three vehicles were to be parked in front of her house and she seemed to be most perturbed.
“Looks like a parking lot,” she complained as they crossed her yard.
Quietly Judge muttered, “Maybe she’d prefer we took the wheels off and left them in the grass,” which made Kaye cover her face to keep from erupting into laughter. Stefan, who carried Vladimir’s crate for his tired young friend, gave Judge a look of exaggerated fatherly admonition which only served to make Kaye laugh harder.
“Something funny?” demanded Ardelia.
“The rain, the mud,” sighed Kaye. Under the porch, she was out of the downpour, but it hardly made any difference. The team gathered around and began the arduous process cleaning themselves up enough to enter the house. There was no point in it – the house was too small for them, they probably had things to do, and they’d just get muddy and wet again – but of course, the only bathroom was inside.
“Can’t see as I find anything funny about it. My chickies are about to drown in their coop.” With a harrumph Ardelia stomped away.
“Oh – you have chickens? Do you have any new chicks?” asked Judge, following their reluctant hostess with renewed energy. Stefan hurried behind, toting the sleeping Vladimir.
Kaye took up a spot on the end of the porch, sitting on the dubious railing and feeling rainwater soak into her jeans. She’d never be completely dry again, that was certain. She suddenly missed the infamous droughts of Oklahoma.
“Rosemary,” she said, motioning.
Looking about as tired of rain as Kaye felt, Rosemary joined her at the end of the porch. “What’s up?”
“I’m going to say something shocking.”
Nearby Drew, scraping the mud off his boots, glanced up, as did Sally and Greg. Kaye would have preferred to have this conversation without an audience, but at least Stefan was out of earshot for the moment. For some reason she wanted to say this to someone else first, maybe to see just how bad it would sound.
“Well I for one cannot wait,” Rosemary said, encouraging her to go on.
“I want Cloda’s grimoire.”
“That’s not shocking,” Drew said. “I want it too.”
“Specifically,” said Kaye, “I want one spell out of it – but I’d gladly take the whole thing. If even half her spells work even halfway, well—”
“You could just buy a spell from her,” said the helpful and yet-still-sarcastic Sally. “I’m sure she’d trade you for your leather jacket and some corn chips.”
“Yes, and I will, if that’s what it takes. But it’s just sitting up there on the top of a virtually unknown mountain in the middle of nowhere, full of God-knows-what kind of magic that could be put to some real use.”
“Should we just take it?” asked Rosemary. She spoke as if this was a reasonable solution; Rosemary was always suggesting outlandish things as if they were reasonable. “The seven of us could overpower Cloda pretty easily.”
“I was thinking we might offer to buy it from her,” said Kaye.
Sally said, “Cloda Baker doesn’t care about money.”
“In exchange for helping with her problem,” Kaye amended. She gauged the temperature of her audience; no one had outright objected yet.
“This doesn’t seem shocking,” said Rosemary. “Only if we club her over the head, and steal it, would it be shocking.”
“I feel that we should be insistent,” said Kaye. “How much longer is she going to live, anyway? And let’s be honest. She’s a fam-trad witch with no family to pass it on to – Ardelia has vehemently denied witchcraft, her grandson Elton seems to be on her shit list and is about to lose his ability to use magic, if we can believe what Cloda tells us. If there are no Wiccan great-grandchildren, the grimoire could be put to much better use in our hands.”
“Why are our hands so qualified?” asked Greg, smirking. He had to say this because Rosemary wasn’t going to, but Kaye had been expecting that point.
“Because of who we are. Seven people who understand a lot more about the supernatural than most people. We’re a committee who can make educated decisions on what to do with something that powerful. We’re an other-naturally talented A-Team.”
Drew remarked, “It’s funny that the two people I’d expect to object to this idea are Kaye, who is suggesting it, and Stefan, who isn’t here right now.”
“So you don’t object?” Kaye affirmed hopefully.
“It’s a book,” said Drew with a shrug. “It’s knowledge. It should be shared. I agree that we’re equipped. I think we should try to buy it or trade for it. If she refuses, I guess there’s nothing we can do until she dies, and then we can try to buy it from her beneficiary.”
That sounded to
Kaye like something that could take a long time and a lot of trouble.
“It might be worthless, you know,” said Greg. “Just because the old gal has had a few effective charms doesn’t mean we should get greedy about her scrapbook. Do we even know if the damn thing is usable, or sensible, or even legible?”
“Let’s table this idea for the moment,” Rosemary said – she said it because they heard footsteps approaching, probably Stefan coming back. “When we see Cloda tomorrow, I’ll just ask her what she wants for it. When you have the right currency, everything’s for sale.”
*****
The seven of them had barely fit in the front room of Ardelia’s house the night before; tonight Ardelia herself joined them for dinner, squeezed between Rosemary and Sally. She grumbled about the food throughout, but helped herself to a little of everything, including the plump end of a “Jew food” hoagie.
After dinner, which polished off the last of the picnic supplies they had packed, the Othernaturals waited for Rosemary to speak. “I guess,” she said, “that we’ll need to make a trip down the mountain to that town, Gully, for some supplies and fresh ice. And maybe we should get some rooms at a motel. I know that the allergens here are making Sally feel rotten, and we’re crowding Miss Ardelia. A couple of us should stay to watch Slope for the sake of the show, but we all don’t need to.”
Rosemary waited for Ardelia to respond to this. Ardelia took her time and eventually came up with only, “Suit yourself.”
Rosemary set down her drink and checked her phone. “Seven o’clock. Will the workers be coming home now?”
“Yep, I reckon we’ll be seeing them soon,” said Ardelia.
“Everybody clean up your mess,” Rosemary instructed. “Miss Ardelia, do you think that Elton will be coming by tonight?”
“Elton comes of a Sunday. I need to see to my chickens,” said Ardelia as they began to collect their trash into plastic bags. She’d thanked them for nothing. She rose with a groan, her old bones cracking, and then shuffled away. After a minute they heard her go out the back door as she had the night before, into the rain to do whatever needed to be done for chickens.
“She has like a hundred chickens out in that coop,” Judge said. “I can’t believe all those dogs don’t bother them.”
“There’s a protection spell around the coop,” said Andrew. They all laughed, but he said, “I’m serious.”
Rosemary said, “All right. First let’s make sure we don’t miss the workers coming home. Then we’ll arrange for a party to go into town. Frankly I’m glad Elton’s not around - kidnapping the giant is at the bottom of my to-do list.”
“Hear, hear,” Greg agreed. “He didn’t seem like a reasonable kind of guy on a good day, never mind when he’s under a spell he screwed himself into.”
They went outside, pulling on caps and hats to shelter their heads from the rain, which came down steadily still, thunder rumbling in the hungry stomach of the sky. Rosemary’s weather app told her that the sun would set at almost 9:00 that night, but thanks to the constant storm clouds, the marking of daylight hours seemed pointless. They hadn’t seen a peek of sunshine since Sunday morning, which was . . . oh. Only yesterday.
“I feel like we’ve been in the rain for a week,” she complained.
“Good thing rain is bitchin’ atmospheric for the show,” said Andrew, doing his Greg-impression.
Greg bowed his head to Andrew. “My favorite thing about your impression of me is how stupid you make me sound.”
Andrew looked mystified. “I was trying to make you sound smarter.”
“You want to mud-wrestle, Blondie? Because I’ll mud wrestle you right here.”
There was considerable encouragement from the female crowd including catcalls and whistles too - oh, turned out, the loudest whistler was Judge, who added, “Do it! Take your shirts off! Pull his hair!”
“Shh, shh!” Rosemary squeaked at them, stifling her giggles. “Ardelia’s going to hear this and yell at us again.”
“Ardelia hasn’t seen Greg shirtless,” remarked Judge. “Give the poor girl a thrill.”
“I look just fine without a shirt,” Andrew argued. “Just because I’m not some roided up bodybuilder, you know, I’m no slouch.”
“Guys! This is serious!” said a smirking Stefan. “We’ve got a town of people to rescue - Kaye, would you mind giving them the mom-glare please?”
Kaye shook her head vehemently. “Oh no sir. I want to see the wrestling.”
Rosemary glanced around - yes, Sally was filming everything, and the boys were showing off, and why not? But she wondered for a moment what would happen if she just let it run. What would they do? The idea of watching Andy get half-naked and wrestle in the mud was both awful - he was too gorgeous to muddy up, and yet, hmmm, the idea was not without its appeal . . . but they would never go through with it. Greg didn’t mind Andrew’s impression, Andrew didn’t mind Greg’s teasing, they were just goofing off because the rain was oppressive. It was her job, now, to stop all this silliness and bring them back to the purpose of their excursion, which was to talk to the rocking chair factory workers. Then again, the workers weren’t around yet.
She asked, “Are there going to be rules, or are you two just going to grapple until somebody starts to cry?”
Snickers all around, but Judge howled laughter, and Greg and Andrew exchanged a look of astonishment. “You know,” Andrew said, “I’m thinking that maybe we should get Romy in on this too. She looks a little too clean right now.”
“Ooh, ooh,” said Judge, “if Rosemary and Andrew mud wrestle, does that count as a win for me?”
Sally hissed at Judge and some sharp glances darted his way. Rosemary frowned, the delightful thought of wrestling Andy briefly supplanted by a suspicion that something fishy was happening here. “What kind of a win?” she asked, peering at her friends.
“Oh come on,” Judge said, rolling his eyes. “They probably already know anyway. Drew there claims to be psychic, ya know.”
“What in the hell are you all up to?” Andrew asked.
“It’s just a joke,” said Sally. “It’s not meant seriously. You know how we all tease each other.”
“It’s a joke that is currently worth about a hundred and forty dollars to me.” Judge turned to Stefan. “Is that right, Old Man? What’s the pot?”
“I think it’s a hundred sixty, now,” said Stefan.
“Hot damn.”
“And mud wrestling would not count, just FYI,” Kaye added.
Greg, second in command, took charge and cleared his throat. “So, um, the thing is, we all are to some extent aware that you, Rosemary, and you, Andrew, are sort of cultivating a relationship of sorts, sort of, you know, some meaningful looks and hand-holding, and so on.”
“We’re taking bets on when you two finally get it on,” said Judge.
Rosemary put a hand over her mouth, felt an unusual blush rising into her cheeks. Andrew folded his arms. She couldn’t bear to meet his eyes.
Judge continued, “And I, of course, who have the utmost respect for your sex lives, think that you’ve probably already been at it for months, just keeping it discreet. My last chance is this week, the chart is all bought up from here on out by these losers,” he gestured at the team, “who think you’re still in a holding pattern right around ‘irritating banter.’”
“There’s a chart?” gasped Rosemary.
“My banter is irritating?” asked an equally shocked Andrew.
“It’s just an Excel spreadsheet,” Sally said, then her eyes widened as if she just now realized how that sounded. A sideways flare of lightning cracked across the sky with an almost pink hue to it, and Sally pointed upward in a hearty attempt to change the subject as thunder growled and shuddered in the sky. “Did you all see that? That was not how lightning is supposed to look. Did anybody else, um, see that?”
Rosemary glared at Judge specifically when she demanded, “Whose idea was this?”
Kaye stepped for
ward. “It came about kind of organically, and it really is just joking around. With money involved, yes, yes, but still perfectly friendly kidding around. We’ll stop it. Won’t we? Guys, won’t we?”
The lack of response was not encouraging. Stefan, however, who looked the most uncomfortable about it, said, “We’ve put a lot of work into this, though.”
Rosemary had only one concern. “Andy, does this bother you?”
“That my banter is considered irritating, yeah, a little bit.” Andrew shook his head. “I’d consider myself fairly well-spoken.”
“About the bets on our sex life,” Rosemary insisted.
“I’m not a bit surprised,” he admitted with considerable dignity. “It’s my fault, for dragging my heels. They all know I should have manned up a year ago and asked you out on a damn date. Does it bother you, sweetheart?”
Sally squealed softly, putting her hands over her eyes. “Omigod that is so cute.”
Rosemary rolled her eyes. “Keep the chart, keep a careful record of the money involved. Greg and Sally, get some talking-head interviews about it with the cast. We can pad out one of the shorter episodes with it. Andrew and I will decide when and if we tell you anything and we may demand a cut of the winnings so we can go get ourselves some pizza and hot dogs at the Supercenter.”
“That is a great lunch special,” said Kaye.
“Love their hot dogs,” said Rosemary. “For all any of you know, Andy might have been my secret lover since the day we met. So just keep that in mind. Now, can we please focus on the evil spell over the citizens of this town?”
Stefan seemed enormously relieved to have this conversation over. “If the workers take the same path as last night, they’ll come up between these two houses,” he said quickly. He led them to the sodden yard between the shacks. Rosemary followed behind, carefully stepping over glass liquor bottles half-buried, bald tires and pieces of plastic toys, the mud mixed with weeds squelching up her boots. At the back of the clearing there was a gap in the trees, a flooded rut in the ground serving as a path, of sorts.
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