Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 09 (21 page)

Things quieted down only when Chastity came onstage, dressed in a white gown, wings, and a halo that was definitely lopsided. “I’d like to dedicate this to my sister,” she said, “because now she’s with Jesus.” She sang a fairly acceptable rendition of “Amazing Grace,” curtsied, and fled behind the curtain. I may have had the only dry eyes in the tent, but we atheists are notoriously cynical.

Malachi let the applause die down. “I am so touched by little Chastity’s song that I feel another miracle coming on. This time Jesus tells me there’s someone out in the audience who’s enduring the agony of arthritis. Someone’s fingers are stiff and sore.” An unfamiliar woman from the front bench stood up. “I have arthritis!” she yelled, clearly proud to be the next afflicted party. Several minutes later, Thomas was dragging her limp body offstage. A burly man in tattered overalls and dark glasses was brought onstage and “healed” of his blindness as well as the brain tumor that had caused it. Malachi went into the audience and persuaded a gaunt woman in a wheelchair to stand up and take a few steps. A young woman with a baby was assured her husband would stop drinking and stay home with her. Another woman was assured her daughter would stop sleeping with every trucker she met. (Knowing the girl, I wouldn’t have put money on it.)

It was interesting—from a voyeuristic standpoint. Malachi was dynamic, his voice rising to an ecstatic frenzy, then dropping to a hoarse, theatrical whisper. His candidates had no reluctance about spilling their family secrets, although there might be regrets in the morning when reality replaced religious fervor. I had no doubt Ruby Bee was taking notes for the grapevine.

“I feel a miracle coming on!” Malachi said for the umpteenth time. “Wilma, I know you’re afraid you’re going to lose your job. Jesus knows it, too. Where are you, Wilma? Come up here with me, and we can pray together that Jesus will make sure you don’t find yourself out on the cold, hard streets, scavenging for food from garbage cans.”

An expectant buzz filled the tent as people craned their heads to locate the hapless soul, but no one stood up. As Malachi came down the steps to the aisle, he said, “You don’t have to be afraid of Jesus, Wilma. He wants me to find you and pray with you.” He pressed his fingers to his temple for a moment. “I can see you in my mind, Wilma. You’re wearing a dress, glasses, and a big ol’ hat with pretty pink and yellow flowers.”

“Here she is!” shouted a woman in the last row, waving her arms over her head as if directing an airplane to a gate. “I reckon this here’s Wilma!”

Malachi approached his next candidate, who was slumped down in her seat with her face hidden beneath the wide brim of the hat. “Wilma,” he said gently, “don’t be ashamed to let Jesus help you. When I asked all these generous, loving Christians to help Jesus, they dug in their pockets and purses and their very hearts. Now Jesus is helping us. Can you feel it?” He put his hand on her back. “Can you feel Jesus, Wilma?”

Wilma bobbled her head, which was good enough for Malachi and the audience. The music came back up, the buckets appeared, and the show went on.

At the end of three hours, Malachi had discarded his coat and his sleeves were rolled up “to work hard for Jesus.” Several people in the audience had fainted and been revived with cups of water provided by the ushers. Chastity had appeared in a pink haze to sing another hymn. Malachi had described his proposed City of Hope, with its crystal cathedral, hundred-foot-tall cross illuminated by five thousand lightbulbs, audio and video recording studios, and the vast expanse set aside for carnival rides, condos, a two-acre artificial lake designed for baptisms (as well as paddleboats), and meeting rooms that could be rented for weddings and family reunions.

None of this would be cheap, he’d warned them as ushers passed out brochures, but he’d prayed long and hard and felt sure it could happen—if the folks in the tent would help Jesus. After another round of the buckets, everyone had been blessed and promised a featured role in Malachi’s prayers. The curtain closed, the music faded, and overhead lights came back up. Ushers began to push wheelchairs toward the door, although I noticed that several occupants preferred to walk.

Mrs. Twayblade waylaid me outside the tent. “Mrs. Teasel is spending a few days at the hospital, but the doctor said she didn’t suffer any serious injuries. It wasn’t my fault that she wandered off, you know. I try as hard as I can to take care of my patients. I not only see to their health but also provide crafts projects and a variety of seasonal activities. I can’t lock the exits or chain folks to their beds. There’s a door at the end of every corridor, and—”

“I didn’t say anything was your fault,” I said as she glared at me like a protective hen, “but you’re going to have to find a way to keep Mrs. Teasel from doing this again. Lottie Estes has never driven over twenty miles per hour in her life. Truckers and tourists are another matter. We don’t want Mrs. Teasel to share the same fate as Raz Buchanon’s dog.”

“Which was?”

“Roadkill,” I said glumly, then watched her scuttle away to gather up her gray-haired chicks and hustle them into a large van. I started once again toward my car at the bottom of the hill, but before I could make my escape, Ruby Bee appeared on one side of me and Estelle on the other.

“I told you to come by the barroom,” Ruby Bee said, “and I left half a dozen messages on that answering machine of yours. It seems to me with two murders in the last twenty-four hours, with Lottie running over that old lady, and who knows what else going on in Maggody, you might be more concerned with doing your job than gallivanting all over the place.”

Estelle poked my arm. “Your mother and I sacrificed half the day trying to assist you, and then you don’t have the common courtesy to—”

I held up my hands. “I can assure you that I have not been neglecting my duty. What’s got the two of you stirred up like hornets?”

“Estelle learned something important,” Ruby Bee said with a sniff. “Because of its nature, I didn’t want to say anything about it on the answering machine. You never lock the door at the PD, so anyone could waltz right in and listen to your messages.”

“And what a thrill that would be,” I said. “It’s late and I had all of two hours of sleep last night. Tell me whatever it is that’s so important and let me go home.”

Estelle looked at Ruby Bee. “Maybe we should put it off until Arly here has a good night’s sleep. We don’t have any call to burden her when she’s tired.”

“Just tell me,” I said. Ruby Bee opened her mouth, but Estelle leapt in first. “I happened to be at Cory Jenks’s house earlier today. I wanted to ask him something, but before I could get out more than a word or two, Chastity came out of the bedroom—practically buck naked. I knew right away that they’d been fornicating, and in the middle of the afternoon, too.”

This stopped me cold. “Chastity and Cory Jenks?” I said.

“He was embarrassed, but she was as proud as a homecoming queen in a taffeta dress. Watching her tonight on the stage, all simpery and innocent—it was enough to gag a goat!”

“I’ll say it was,” Ruby Bee added.

That pretty much summed it up for me, too.

—==(O)==—

Mrs. Twayblade sat at the table in the foyer, where she could monitor all four corridors and thus prevent any attempts at licentious activity. It was outrageous how some of her charges behaved when they got the chance; Petrol Buchanon in particular imagined himself to be quite the satyr, despite the fact he was hairless, toothless, and witless.

With a pinched frown, she looked down at the medication schedule to make sure everybody had received whatever he or she was supposed to take at bedtime. The new aide was grossly incompetent, always fussing with her hair in the lounge instead of following orders, but it was nigh onto impossible to find reliable girls willing to work for minimum wage.

The new aide’s writing was so cramped and smudged that Mrs. Twayblade had to take the clipboard into the office, where the light was better. It seemed no one was being taught penmanship these days, much less meticulous attention to detail. Or spelling, unless some higher authority had decreed that nite and capsool were now acceptable.

They were not, in Mrs. Twayblade’s opinion.

She returned to the table and sat down, planning to read a journal geared toward nursing-home management. Something was not right, however, and she could find no distraction in an article discussing ways to integrate the four food groups into each meal in exciting and innovative ways.

Armed with a small flashlight, she prowled down the corridors, occasionally shining the light into rooms to assure herself that the residents were peaceful. The snores and gurgles were as pleasing to her as a pastoral, yet she remained uneasy as she sat back down.

It had to do with this latest evening at the revival, she decided as the recipe for sweet potato puff pancakes blurred before her eyes. Mr. Buckhorn had been taken onstage to be cured of his rheumatism, but he’d griped afterward about how much his knees still ached that there had been an attempt to shove him out a window in the van. Mrs. Teasel’s roommate had not been given a chance to be cured of her gallbladder infection, nor had Petrol …

Mrs. Twayblade put her hand to her mouth to muffle a gasp. After she had supervised the loading of the van, she’d counted heads as best she could in the dark. She’d asked very clearly if everyone was there and been assured they were. The subsequent altercation altercation had given her a dreadful headache; back at the county home, she’d ordered the new aide to help everyone out of the van, then gone into her office for a well-deserved swallow of the brandy she kept hidden for such moments.

But she hadn’t heard Petrol’s voice as they had come into the foyer, and he was by far the loudest of her charges. His choice of words was often enough to merit a scolding or a withholding of dessert.

She hurried down the hall, counting doors under her breath, and went into the pertinent room. In one bed, Mr. Linum snored like an outboard motor. In the other bed, the blankets were bunched enough to allow a casual observer to see a human form, but the mound on the pillow was a bathrobe.

“I am going to throttle that aide,” Mrs. Twayblade said, but softly, so as not to disturb Mr. Linum. The only time he wasn’t a pain in the ass was when he was asleep. The last thing she needed was to deal with his puerile complaints.

—==(O)==—

Eula Lemoy sat on her sofa and stared at her ankle, which was propped on a stack of pillows. The skin seemed unnaturally white, almost opaque, and her whole leg felt like it had been squeezed into a support stocking. Jesus most likely wouldn’t mind if she finished what pills she had left, but she wasn’t sure. There wasn’t any way she could sneak into the bathroom and take one, on account of Jesus always knows what you’re doing. Brother Verber was real fond of that theme and only last month had delivered a stirring sermon sermon about folks that thought they could keep their perversities a secret. He’d practically begged the sinners in the congregation to come to him and confess all the sordid details—because they couldn’t fool Jesus. Brother Verber had made Jesus sound like J. Edgar Hoover.

Eula was afraid to risk doing something that might get her labeled as an atheist, so she took the pillows into her bedroom and arranged them so she could keep her leg elevated while she tried to sleep.

—==(O)==—

Guilt had sent Lottie Estes into her kitchen to bake cookies, even though it was nearly midnight. She didn’t know how she was going to get them to the hospital in Farberville, since she wasn’t supposed to drive without her glasses. She wouldn’t drive if she had them, either, because that would tell folks that her faith was flawed so badly that Jesus hadn’t cured her astigmatism.

She opened her file box and hunted for her sister’s recipe for lemon snaps. She found it but then realized there was no way she could decipher her sister’s spindly handwriting. Having taught home economics all these years, Lottie knew what could happen if you used a tablespoon when a teaspoon was called for or put in a third of a cup of something when you needed a fourth of a cup.

She put the card back into the box. Hadn’t she made enough sugar cookies in her lifetime to pave the road all the way to the Missouri line? She set out the canisters of flour and sugar, took eggs and butter from the refrigerator, and preset the oven. Only when she opened the cabinet to get out the bottle of vanilla extract did she hesitate. There was a whole line of little brown bottles of extract, all with small print on the labels.

She opened the first and took a whiff of almonds. It was going to be a long night, she thought as she reached for the next bottle.

—==(O)==—

“Doncha want to come to bed?” Kevin said, watching Dahlia from the doorway to the bedroom.

“Later.” She belched delicately and put another cookie into her mouth. “I’m watching this movie about this rancher’s daughter and an outlaw. You kin watch it with me if you want.”

“I got to be at work at five. Jim Bob wants the floors waxed, so I got to start early so they’ll be dry when the store opens. They always look real pretty afore folks track mud on ‘em.”

“That’s nice,” Dahlia said as she chewed thoughtfully and tried to decide if the rancher’s daughter was falling in love with the outlaw. It looked like it, but movies could fool you sometimes.

Kevin held in a groan as her hand slid into the box and emerged with another cookie. “Honey bunch, doncha think you should stay on your diet until the doctor at the clinic does a test and makes sure you’re cured? I ain’t saying you’re not, mind you, but it can’t hurt to make sure.”

“Are you sayin’ Jesus needs a second opinion? If that don’t smack of blasphemy, I don’t know what does,” she said, albeit distractedly on account of the rancher’s daughter riding out by her lonesome to save a heifer in a blizzard. Dahlia could tell from the way the horse was floundering in the snowdrifts that the rancher’s daughter was in for a hard night.

—==(O)==—

I turned off the overhead light, thus granting kitchen and bathroom privileges to the cockroaches with which I cohabited, and crawled into bed with the thick folder of letters that Norma Kay had written to Malachi over the last decade. I doubted they could compete with the lurid potboilers I’d read on the beach; Norma Kay had not been a member of the jet set or waged any battles for control of an international diamond cartel.