Calamity Jayne Heads West (2 page)

The next day we blew a tire in Amarillo, lost the hubcap along I-40 somewhere near U.S. Highway 38, and at a rest area just outside Albuquerque my dad got stung by a swarm of killer bees in the men’s restroom. At that point he was ready to nuke our little farewell road trip and turn around and head right back to good ol’ Grandville. There, if you lose your hubcap within the city limits, you’ll generally find it propped against the stoplight pole at the intersection of High-ways 18 and 6, waiting for you to retrieve it.

“What do you mean you don’t know what to take?” My gammy stepped into the room and a glob of face cream dropped from her chin to the rug. “You take clothes. Makeup. Sanitary supplies.”

I made a face. Considering her box of bladder con-trol briefs presently taking up space under my bath-room sink, I didn’t exactly want to discuss toiletries.

“Clothes? What clothes exactly?” I asked, motioning at my closet. “I have khaki slacks, blue jeans, T-shirts, and no time to shop.” No money either, for that mat-ter. Even working two-plus jobs, I always seemed to be borderline broke. I often dream of the day when I won’t have to view my bank statement through slits be-tween my fingers like I do horror movies at the theater.

“What about dresses? You got any dresses in there?”

I gave my grandma a one-eyebrow-raised look. Since my gammy took up residence with me, she’s had her head stuck in my closet more often than I have. She knows exactly how many cowboy boots I own, how many of those she can wear without breaking an an-kle, becoming lame, or suffering a flare-up of her plantar fasciitis, how many pairs of religious under-pants I possess, (the
holey
ones—amen!) and how many pairs of too-tight designer jeans I’m holding on to for the day I finally lose ten pounds and am able to slide them up over my hips and zip them without snag-ging little tummy rolls with the mechanism in the pro-cess or resulting in that excess skin-spillage-over at the waistline commonly referred to as “muffin top.” As much as I adore muffins, that is not a cool look.

“Why ask me? You know my wardrobe better than I do,” I told Gram. “And, dresses?” I waved a hand in her face when she joined me at the closet and per-formed a little bow. “Uh, you do recognize your oldest granddaughter, don’t you? The girl who wore the same dress to her best friend’s rehearsal dinner she wore to her grandfather’s funeral. Who popped out of her maid of honor gown when the preacher was ask-ing the bride and bridegroom to exchange tokens of their affection. Who spends what little spare time shehas hay-baling or on the back of a horse. Besides, I don’t even know what kind of weather I’m packing for,” I added. “It’s bound to be warm in Phoenix, but seven thousand feet up in elevation, it could get nippy. Plus, there are those pleasant little monsoons to think about.”

Iowans like to think they coined the phrase, “If you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes,” but believe me, the sharp contrasts in weather you could en-counter in a two-hour drive north on Interstate 17 from the valley into the Arizona mountains could re-ally mess with your head, Fred. And your packing, too.

I also found myself uneasily thinking that weather was the least of what could jump up and bite us in our little westward-ho wedding wagon train.

“Well, you can’t come to my wedding in blue jeans or those baggy gray sweatpants you wear around the house,” Gram told me, sliding hangers across the pole in my closet with a shake of her head. “You need help, Tressa,” she finally said. “You need to go on
Oprah
and have one of them makeovers. You know. When they stick gals up there with no makeup and ratty clothes and wearing the wrong bra size, then they hand ’em over to that fine Nate What’s-his-name to work his magic.”

“Uh, newsflash here, Gram. Nate’s a home decora-tor,” I told her.

“He is?” she asked.

I nodded. “ ’Fraid so. He does bedrooms and baths, not bad hair and baggy boobs.”

She shook her head and returned to her perusal of my wardrobe.

“All I know is that by the end of the show the gals have gone from looking like bag ladies to bitchin’. And their nipples aren’t rubbin’ their waistlines any-more.” She looked down at her own bosom. “Think Icould use one of them lifts?” she asked. She started to unbutton her blouse.

“No!” I shook my head and pulled her hand away. Gram had a proclivity for sleeping in the buff, so I’d already gotten enough glimpses of wrinkled, sagging flesh to almost scare me off junk food. Almost. Either way, I’d seen quite enough to render judgment in the matter.

“No, no. You don’t need a thing, Gram,” I assured her. “You’ve got a lovely figure for a woman of your . . . er, stature,” I finished. “Just lovely.”

Osteoporosis had robbed my gammy of several inches, and her brittle bones had snapped at the wrist and ankle in the past. She’d moved in with my folks several years ago after the fall, but had improved though weight training and calcium supplements. It was then she’d decided she’d done her time under the watchful eye of my mother and moved back to her home—the double-wide trailer she’d given to me. It was right around Halloween. I know. Scary.

“Besides,” I added. “Remember what you said about Helene Dixon when she had breast surgery? You said if she tried to run, she’d blacken her own eyes.”

“The ol’ fool. She oughta known better,” Gram mut-tered, rebuttoning her blouse while I took a deep breath of relief.

I continued surveying my clothing. Shorts and tank tops for the cruise were no problem. It was the wed-ding and related functions, and pool-side apparel that had me stymied.

“Maybe Taylor has something you could borrow,” Gram suggested, not for the first time. I had the unla-dylike uncouthness to snort.

“Taylor the twig?” I said. “Yeah. Right. I might be able to get one-half of one leg in a pair of her slacks—and I’d have to grease up with petroleum jelly to standa fighting chance,” I told her. “And you know our taste in clothes is worlds apart.” Sadly, as my sister and I of-ten were ourselves.

Two years younger than me, Taylor looks kind of like a younger version of Catherine Zeta Jones. On the dean’s list at the University of Iowa for two years study-ing psychology, she up and quit at the end of her sec-ond year. Now she works at my Uncle Frank’s Dairee Freeze and lives at home while she decides for sure what direction she wants to take with her life. Okay, okay. I know that sounds an awful lot like a personal history I’d be up close and personal with, but I swear to you Taylor and I are nothing alike. The gulf in our relationship is like a little chasm you might know as the Grand Canyon.

“I wish I could figger out why you and your sister don’t get along,” my gramma said with a disgusted look at me. Or maybe it was at my closet. “Why, my sis-ter was my best friend when we were girls. Still is,” she added.

This one got my attention. Growing up, my grandma and her older sister’s bickering had made for some in-teresting family reunions.

“What about the time when you were ten and Great Aunt Eunice chased you around the town square with a pair of pinking shears trying to give you a haircut?” I said. “And there was that time she said you took after her with a ball bat.” At Gram’s expression I added, “It
was
a plastic wiffleball bat like you said, right?”

“Schoolgirl high jinks,” Gram said, turning her back on my closet, apparently coming to the conclusion that my wardrobe was a lost cause. Like I hadn’t warned her.

“What about the time you got into a deviled egg fight at the church potluck?” I asked.

“More youthful shenanigans,” she said.

“It was last spring.”

“Eunice knows I’ve got her back,” Gram said. “Any time she needs me, all she has to do is pick up the phone and call. You know. Like that song says.”

“Which song?” I asked.

“That one about a bridge over water,” she said, heading toward the door and the way she’d come in.

“I thought that song was about drugs,” I said.

“Exactly.” Gram shuffled out of the room.

I shook my head.

Go west, young woman! Go west!

I wondered if I could exchange my airline ticket for a less dangerous destination. You know, like the Bermuda Triangle.

CHAPTER TWO

An hour later I’d given up on packing for the mo-ment, showered and headed to the newspaper office to finish up a few things before I left for my very first vacation in way too long. I parked my ol’ not-so-reliable Reliant in the small lot behind the office, and headed for the back door.

I generally like to conduct a quick sweep of the building upon entering—you know, like the Secret Service does when a bigwig is coming to town—unless or until I get the green flag from Smitty, the
Gazette
sports and graphics guru and all-around good guy. Stan Rodgers—publisher, editor in chief, and the big boss man—is known for his mercurial moods. Un-fairly, most of the time I’m the one who gets credit for triggering his little episodes.

I suppose I should tell you that my employment at the
Gazette
has been a little like my gramma’s choles-terol numbers: up and down, up and down. I’ve actu-ally been fired by Stan twice. But both times were so not my fault. You tell me: Is it my fault the boss’s wife’sdear Aunt Deanie’s obit pic looked more like a Mr. Stubby Burkholder? And that typo in the Quik Lube ad with the picture of the local mechanics, arms crossed and grinning, that read:
We’re here to service you
instead of
serve you
? Like that wouldn’t have gotten past you, too.

Thankfully, Stan is first and foremost a man of busi-ness. When I came to him with my dead-shyster-in-the-trunk story last year, he was eager to give me a second—uh, third—chance. Okay, so I sort of black-mailed him into taking me back. Still, it worked out for everyone in the long run. As it happens, I have a certain nose for news that comes in handy when you’re a reporter type. And Stan just wants to sell newspapers. It’s win-win.

I’m also learning to exploit Stan’s little idiosyn-crasies to my advantage. This knowledge recently nabbed me some tuition assistance, a raise in salary, and office equipment that didn’t qualify for
The An-tiques
Roadshow
. After I’d successfully completed two college journalism courses, Stan the man made good on his promise to replace a bow-legged card table he’d had the chutzpah to call my desk, a chair that could serve double duty as an interrogation tool at Guan-tanamo, and a computer that froze up so often it should be sitting alongside the ice cream cakes at Un-cle Frank’s.

I crept in the back door of the newspaper office, si-lencing with one hand the stupid little bell Stan had stuck on it last week to alert him of comings and goings. I spotted Smitty bent over ad copy in the layout room.

“Red, green, or amber?” I whispered.

“Amber,” he replied. “Proceed with caution.”

“Roger that,” I told him with a crisp salute, then scur-ried over to my little corner near the back. I ran a hand across the top of my “new” desk—in reality, a cast-offfrom one of the local schools—and sank into my brand-new, black leather, ergonomically approved desk chair. And dropped so fast I almost smacked my chin.

“What the heck—?” I focused on my computer mon-itor, but had to lift my chin so high to see it that the back of my head touched my shoulder blades and my wrists bent at unnatural angles to access the keyboard. Hello, carpal tunnel!

“Who’s been sitting in my chair?” I roared, feeling like a character from “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” but looking like one of the seven dwarves. “Okay, who’s the smartass with too much time on their hands?”

A shadow fell over the top of me. Searing hot breath warmed the part in my hair.

“You rang?”

I found my new chair suddenly twirled merry-go-round style, stopping just this side of Vomitville so I could confront the culprit. I gulped when I discovered Goldilocks in this vignette stood over six feet tall, had flaming red hair and hands the size of Papa Bear’s paws.

“Oh. Hey, Shelby Lynn.” She was the high school homecoming queen I’d teamed up with last fall to get the goods on a reclusive best-selling author. And I’d just solved the
who’s been sitting in my chair
whodunit in record time. How do I do it?

“Long time, no see,” I said.

“You were at my graduation party two weeks ago,” Shelby Lynn reminded me.

I nodded. “Which reminds me, I never got a thank you for my gift,” I told her.

Shelby Lynn frowned. “You didn’t give me a gift,” she said. “Oh, wait. That’s right. I remember now. The Dairee Freeze ‘Buy One Slurpee, Get One Free’ coupons that expire at the end of June. Gee. Thanks. You shouldn’t have.”

I winced. Between the local cops threatening to write an inspection order for my Plymouth unless I re-placed two tires they claimed were bald as my boss’s shiny head (okay, so I’m paraphrasing) and an unex-pected veterinary bill for one of my pooches, May had been a lean month.

“Still, I suppose I do owe you for recommending me to Stan as your replacement,” Shelby Lynn went on.

I blinked. Whoa, Nellie. Replacement? What re-placement?

“Come again?” I managed.

“You did recommend I fill in for you, didn’t you?” Shelby Lynn said, a glint in her eye that wasn’t there before. “Knowing how much it would mean to me to have this kind of job experience to put on a résumé, and knowing how much I would give for such an op-portunity, and how badly I want to be published some-day. Considering I gave you a hell of a story last fall, I just know you thought of me as soon as you found out you’d be on vacation for two weeks. Right, Turner?”

If possible, I felt my body sink even lower into the chair. The truth was, I hadn’t even stopped to consider that they’d need someone to cover for me. It wasn’t as if Grandville was a journalistic utopia, a hub of nev-erending news. Last June’s hometown murder mystery had been an exception. At this point in the year—too early for state fair features and too late for school news—Stan generally relied on people to either kick the bucket or pop out a kid, the baseball and softball teams to at least be competitive, and an occasional weather event—either flood or drought; Stan wasn’t picky—in order to fill his pages.

“About that recommendation—” Shelby Lynn loo-med over me.

“Happy to do it!” I said, jumping up and motioning toward the chair with a flourish. “My pleasure! You justhave a seat there and make yourself right at home on my new ergonomically designed chair with easy-lift feature. Go ahead!” I shoved the girl referred to as Sasquatch by people far braver than me into my chair. “Be my guest! Try out my customized computer, nineteen-inch flat panel monitor and executive key-board pad!”

Shelby turned a wary eye on me, a puzzled look on her freckly face. I get that look a lot.

“Oh, and don’t be afraid to put your feet up on the tiny little footstool I handpicked and keep under the desk there,” I continued. “Enjoy. Enjoy my hard-earned perks while I just touch base with our boss for a second.” I stopped, took a step back and cocked my head to one side, surveying Shelby’s length in my chair. “Bless your heart. Don’t you just look all . . . all Monica Lewinsky there.”

“Huh?” Shelby Lynn said.

“Oh, you know what I mean, Little Miss Intern. Be right back,” I said, and reached out and pinched one of Shelby Lynn’s cheeks. “Oooh. Just look at that face,” I said, and moved off before my own face cracked from the brittle smile I’d plastered on it.

I found Stan in the break room, his back to me, sticking coins in the pop machine, about to make his selection.

“You wouldn’t be thinking about getting ready to push a button for ‘the real thing,’ now would you, Stan?” I asked, propping a shoulder against the door-jamb. “I could swear you promised your loving wife you’d switch to diet soda after your recent physical,” I said, raising an eyebrow in challenge. “And what’s that in your hand—a candy bar?” I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth a couple times. “Stan, Stan. What would the little woman say?”

The
Gazette
publisher’s neck turned dark red, so itwas a safe bet his face was the same brilliant color. Stan turned, spotted me in the doorway, and frowned as he doubled his fist and smacked the diet cola button with the side of his hand. The soda dropped with the same velocity as would the good stuff that’s not so good for you. With a snarl, Stan retrieved it.

“For your information, I actually like the diet pop better,” he said, popping the top and taking a long swig. Unfortunately, he couldn’t quite hide the gag re-flex that followed. He made the face I imagined I made whenever I bit into a piece of gristle. Or my gammy’s soy meatloaf.

“Such obvious enjoyment is truly a sight to behold,” I said. “And now I know just what to give you for your birthday this year. So, do you prefer can or bottle?”

“What the hell do you want, Turner? To heckle me about my diet?”

Diet? What diet? I shook my head.

“I only heckle on Tuesdays. And every other Thurs-day on karaoke night at the East End Lounge,” I as-sured him. “No, this is Wednesday, and Wednesdays are Twenty Questions days.”

Stan blinked. I noticed he hadn’t taken a second drink of his cola.

“Twenty questions? What do you mean?”

“Wow. You catch on quick.”

“I do?” he asked.

“You’re a natural, Stan,” I exclaimed.

“I am?”

“You’ve played this before, haven’t you?” I asked, narrowing my eyes and giving him a closer look.

“Played what?”

“Now, stop that! It’s my turn,” I said. “Okay. Ready? One, why did I almost slice my chin open on the edge of my desk just now? Two, why did you tell Shelby Lynn I recommended she fill in for me? And three—why didn’t I know about this arrangement before now? Okay, now it’s your turn. Answer.”

“One, you’re a klutz. Two, Shelby Lynn assumed, so I gave you the credit. And, three, I’m the boss. That’s why. I like this game,” Stan said.

I moved out of the doorway and over to him. “I didn’t know you planned to replace me,” I said, feel-ing a lump in my throat that hadn’t been there earlier.

“Shelby Lynn isn’t a replacement, Turner. She’s a substitute. You know, like one of those office temps they tout on the radio all the time,” Stan explained.

Yeah. Right. And on the radio commercials, those temps always did a way better job than the person they were temping for. I felt so much better.

“But why Shelby Lynn?” I asked, recalling her fierce drive to nail down the scoop on acclaimed author Eliz-abeth Courtney Howard last fall. And at over six feet tall and built like a brick crap house, she’d be a hard reporter to say
no comment
to. I swallowed another esophageal lump.

“I thought she was your friend,” Stan said.

“She was. She
is,”
I assured my boss. “That’s why I’m a little concerned that, uh, with my recent impressive string of journalistic successes, she might find my shoes a little big to fill.”

Stan frowned at me. “Are you kidding? Have you seen the size of her clodhoppers?” he asked.

“Shelby Lynn so badly wants to be a writer someday,” I reminded Stan, the funny, funny man, “I’d hate for her to have a painful experience so young. It could scar her for life if she wasn’t up to the task.”

“Up to the task? She’s a foot and a half taller than me!”

“Just know that if that young girl’s spirit is dimin-ished by disappointment, her hopes for the future dashed by defeat because she couldn’t live up to theimpossibly high standards of excellence set by her pre-decessor, then it will be on your head,” I told Stan, thinking I sounded pretty damned . . . what’s the word? Altruistic. In a self-serving kind of way.

Stan laughed. “Impossibly high standards? Have you seen the length of those arms?”

I crossed my own arms and stared at him. Neither one of us blinked.

“I think we both know what’s going on here, Turner,” Stan finally said. “And the question you have to ask yourself is, can you handle a little competition?”

I thought about it for a second, deciding the ques-tion my employer had to ask himself was whether he could handle the fallout if a certain disgruntled, un-predictable employee returned to find Shelby Lynn’s butt cheeks stuck for good to her brand-new er-gonomically designed desk chair.

How about it? Do you feel lucky, Stan?

I took time to readjust my chair to within human range, typed up some general instructions for Shelby Lynn, and grabbed my backpack that served as purse, organizer, and makeup kit, then headed out the front door and down the street to Hazel’s Hometown Café in search of a hot cup of coffee and one of Hazel’s fa-mous plate-sized cinnamon rolls.

Hazel’s is legendary for the quality, quantity, and value of its home-cooked meals. Served in a circa 1950s décor that’s a cross between June Cleaver’s kitchen and Sam Drucker’s General Store in
Green
Acres
(minus the occasional visits from Arnold the pig—although the Todd Twins did let loose a good half-dozen Easter chicks there last April), Hazel’s is also known as the place to go if you’re lookin’ for the latest dish on your neighbor. (Well, so I’ve heard. What? Me? Nah. I go strictly for the vittles. Any gossip is a cherry on top.)

I raised a hand in greeting to Reverend Browning of the Open Bible Church as I entered the café and tried to avoid prolonged eye contact. Things have been a little awkward between us since Kari’s wedding cere-mony. Plus, I wasn’t in the mood for his “We haven’t seen you at services lately, Tressa.” Head down, I aimed straight for the counter.

I always sit at the counter. As a child, I got in trouble regularly for spinning around ’til I got dizzy and fell off the stool. Then, I’d climb back up and do it again. Yep. I was the kind of kid you see at your favorite eat-ing establishment who causes you to shake your head and mutter, “If that was my kid, I’d . . .” and fill in the blank with something like, “blister her hind end,” “yank her butt off that stool,” “take her home and make her eat gruel”—what is gruel, by the way?—or the ever-popular, “If that was my kid, I’d blow my brains out.” It wasn’t that I was a bad seed or anything. I simply had boundless energy and, even at an early age, going out to eat made me giddy.