Mama Gets Hitched (7 page)

Betty Taylor was busy
at Hair Today, Dyed Tomorrow, combing out a permanent for the wife of the president of the local branch of First Florida Bank. She grinned above a head full of unnaturally dark curls as Mama and I came in, bells jangling on the beauty parlor’s door.

“Mornin’ ladies.” She punctuated her greeting with a hurricane-force blast of hair spray. Coughing, First Florida’s First Lady squeezed her eyes shut.

“I see you’re working, Betty. How ’bout I come back for our consult some other time?”

“Oh, no you don’t, Mace. I think you’d rather go to the dentist than come to my shop. Sit down over there, next to that hairdryer.” She pointed her purple comb to a far corner. “I’ve got to finish here and then I have one quick cut to do. We can talk about your hair then.”

Mama reached up on tiptoes to grab a handful of my hair. “I’m thinking something with lots of curls, Betty.”

“Ow, that hurts!”

“But it has to look nice with the girls’ bonnets.” She let go of my hair, her hand making a hat-shaped arc above my head.

Bonnets? Lord deliver me.

“Aren’t the parasols enough, Mama?”

“In for an inch, in for a mile, Mace. You can’t be half a Southern belle.”

Mama had been promoting fancy hairdos for the wedding. Of course I’d been resisting. Betty was supposed to persuade me to go along today by showing me sample styles in some kind of beauty book.

“Don’t worry, Mace,” Betty said. “I’m a professional. You’ll look gorgeous.”

I glanced at the bank president’s wife, who looked like a poodle in earrings.

Muttering darkly, I grabbed a
People
magazine and took a seat to wait. Mama bustled around the shop, straightening up and lighting her aromatherapy candles.

“Hey, y’all!” A voice came from the supply closet in the back.

“Hey, D’Vora,” Mama and I chorused.

Betty’s twenty-something beautician trainee, D’Vora had made a big boo-boo last summer involving peroxide, an overly long cell phone call, and Mama’s platinum dye job. But all Mama’s hair grew back; and she’d forgiven D’Vora for the mishap.

Now, I looked up from an article on Angelina Jolie’s brood to see D’Vora emerging from the closet, juggling several bottles of shampoo and conditioner. I wondered which ones were responsible for the smells at Hair Today: green apples, tropical fruits, and citrus, all overlaid with the ammonia-like odor of permanent solution. Add in Mama’s aromatherapy candles and the lingering cloud of hair spray, and the shop was an allergist’s nightmare.

As D’Vora began restocking shelves, I saw she was wearing her customary, jazzed-up uniform: painted-on purple pants and too-small smock, zipper revealing her cleavage. Appliquéd flowers and lilac-colored butterflies along the neckline further accentuated her chest.

Like C’ndee, D’Vora was a fan of the “If you’ve got it, flaunt it” school of fashion. They shared that, along with the fanciful use of apostrophes in their self-created first names.

“I saw y’all through the window at Gladys’ this morning,” D’Vora said to Mama, who’d stepped in to help her shelve the hair products.

“You should have joined us, honey.”

“She was running late, as usual.” Betty shot D’Vora a sharp look as she rang up the bank president’s wife.

“Sorry, Betty,” D’Vora recited by rote. “Anyways, who was that gorgeous guy at your table?”

Mama supplied the details on Anthony Ciancio as I leafed through
People
. What is it about Hollywood that makes celebrities go crazy? The star of a kids’ show arrested for porn. A pop singer out in public with no undies. A famous actor caught in a racist rant. I tuned in to the beauty shop chat again.

“I should have known that guy was related to C’ndee,” D’Vora was saying. “She’s so glamorous!”

“That’s a nice word for it,” Mama said dryly. “But I have to admit, I do like that nephew. Maybe he can be a backup beau for Mace, once she screws things up completely with Carlos.”

“Hello? I’m sitting right here!” I said from behind my
People
.

Mama clapped a hand over her mouth. My presence in the shop was so unnatural, I’m sure she’d forgotten I was there.

Ignoring her editorial comments on my love life, I said, “I’ll give you the fact Tony is charming …”

“And gorgeous,” D’Vora chimed in from near the shelves.

“Right,” I agreed. “But doesn’t it seem a little strange he and his aunt have those plans for a new catering business? I mean, Ronnie Hodges isn’t even in the ground yet.”

Betty was already snipping at the wet hair of her next appointment, a woman I didn’t recognize. Scissors flying, she added her two cents’ worth. “Everybody can agree it was horrible what happened to Ronnie, girls. But you have to strike while the iron is hot. That’s the business world.”

None of us had anything to add to that. The break in the conversation gave me time to think, not for the first time, that I was happy I worked mostly in the animal world.

Expertly navigating the lull, Mama steered the talk to her favorite topic, my marital prospects. “Betty, you’ve got to do something extra special with Mace’s hair for Saturday. Weddings are fertile fields for romance. Maybe Carlos will pop the question once he sees Sally and me tying the knot.”

All of a sudden, I was fed up. The dresses. The hair. Mama’s constant meddling. Not to mention the assumption that Carlos was the one dragging his feet. I slammed my
People
onto the purple chair beside me.

“Let’s put aside for the moment that seeing you get married for the FIFTH time might have just the opposite effect on Carlos, Mama. And on me. Have you given a bit of thought to the fact I might want to be certain things are right between us before I run off to the altar? I mean, I don’t want a long string of ruined marriages, like some women I could mention.”

Mama’s hand flew to her throat. She looked at me like I’d put my boot to her three-tier, buttercream-frosted wedding cake. No one else said a word. All of us knew which woman in the shop had a history of ruined marriages. I felt my face getting hot. My stomach churned around a leaden ball of biscuits and sausage gravy. Funny how you dream of saying just what you want to say, but it never feels as good as you think it will once it comes out.

The customer in Betty’s chair stepped into the strained silence and saved me. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop earlier,” she said quietly. “But I heard y’all talking about C’ndee Ciancio, and I wondered if you knew she’d been staying at Darryl’s Fish Camp, out by the lake.”

Mama and I both burst out laughing at the same time, which felt good. Almost normal.

“C’ndee? At a fish camp? That’s like hearing Madonna’s been dishing up chili dogs at the Dairy Queen,” I said.

“Well, she was. I know, because I’m renting one of the cottages out there. Just until I find something better.”

I took in her cheap tennis shoes and bad teeth, and remembered how she’d told Betty she’d take just a haircut today: No shampoo, no blow dry, and no color. She had the look of hard times, and it’d probably be a good long while before she found “something better” than that rundown cottage at the fish camp.

“C’ndee could have been out there. Stranger things have happened, Mace.” Mama’s tone to me was snippy, but she smiled encouragingly at Betty’s customer. “What’s your name, honey?”

“Luanne. The only reason I mention C’ndee is because she’s gone now, and a lot of us wondered what happened to her.” She looked around, like she expected C’ndee to be lurking in the closet, listening in. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she said, “She really did a number on Darryl Dietz, the guy who owns the camp. He’s been mean as a striped snake and drunk ever since she left.” She paused. “Well, he’s always mean. But he’s been drunker than usual.”

“So C’ndee—Jersey accent, flashy clothes, cherry red Mustang—was going out with this Darryl?” I asked.

Luanne nodded, her newly trimmed hair a pretty frame for her worn face. “Darryl walked out on his wife and everything. The same wife he’s now trying to crawl back to since C’ndee disappeared.”

D’Vora nodded. “Oh, I’ve been there, Luanne. After I found out my no-account husband was cheating, I smashed the headlights on his truck and tossed his sorry butt out of the trailer. He can beg all he wants. He ain’t coming back, and neither is that stupid Rottweiler of his. Both him and Bear are as dumb as dirt.”

Betty pointed her scissors at us: “Can’t trust a cheater.”

“Amen to that,” Mama said. “Or a liar.”

Our spat was forgotten now, in the face of this fresh gossip.

“Cheating with C’ndee wasn’t the worst of it with Darryl,” Luanne whispered. “He’s beat on his wife more times than I can count.”

I didn’t know Darryl, but I could picture him, having visited more than my share of fish camps in my rowdier days. I thought about his wronged wife, and for some reason Alice Hodges’ face popped into my head. But, try as I might, I couldn’t conjure up an image of C’ndee running around with a guy with cheap beer on his breath and fish-gut stains on his shirt.

“What happened?” I asked Luanne. “Why’d C’ndee break it off?”

“We all heard she took up with somebody new. She left Darryl for another guy. He lives up here, in Himmarshee.”

Somebody at Darryl’s Fish
camp was a fan of classic rock. Guns N’ Roses blasted loud enough to spook the cormorants off their perches on the boat docks. Maidencane grass vibrated on the canal banks. Cypress branches trembled, even though there was barely a breath of wind. “Welcome to the Jungle,” indeed.

Luanne hadn’t known who C’ndee took up with after she dumped Darryl. And, of course, that’s what all of us wanted to know. A little voice niggled at my brain, telling me that information might be important.

I left Hair Today, Dyed Tomorrow, and decided to poke around at the camp to see what I could learn. Between that or looking at hair in a picture book, it was no contest. Anyway, I’d pretty much given in to Mama’s will on the wedding. I’d likely regret that when I saw what hairstyle she’d chosen from that book.

My Jeep bounced over a rutted driveway into an open yard circled by a dozen or so ramshackle cabins. A rusted-out muscle car sat up on concrete blocks, hood popped. The stadium-volume rock came from a boom box on a lawn chair next to the car. A big guy in jean overalls and no shirt held a wrench and bobbed his head to the beat. By the looks of the ancient car and the size of him, he might have more luck just adding some tires and pushing the old heap wherever he wanted to go.

I gave a short toot on my horn, just in case there were dogs. Of course they might be deaf, considering the Guns N’ Roses. Sure enough, a coonhound rose from one of the crooked wooden porches and loped, barking, toward the Jeep. Mr. Overalls lifted his head from the engine block and whistled to call the dog. I was surprised he was so young, mid-twenties maybe. Vintage hard rock must be enjoying a renaissance. Mercifully, he hit the volume button on the boom box just as Axl Rose entered full scream.

I drove up to the decrepit car and spoke from my window. “Camaro, huh? What year?”

He ran a hand over the fender, which seemed to be more grey body filler than actual metal. “Sixty-nine,” he said. “Found her in a sugarcane field over near Clewiston.”

I took another look at the car and resisted the urge to ask him if he was crazy. “Well, good luck.” I said instead. “Is the dog okay with me getting out?”

“Sure,” he said. “Slash only goes after what I tell him to.”

That was reassuring, I supposed. Climbing slowly from the Jeep, I offered a closed fist to the hound so he could sniff at me. I guarantee I smelled better than the dog did. I scratched a little behind his ears, until he seemed satisfied I wasn’t there to do harm to Overalls. As if I could. The guy had at least a hundred pounds and six or seven inches on me. Losing interest, the dog walked back through the dirt yard to Cabin No. 7. He settled himself in the shade next to the door, and went back to sleep.

“Nothin’ a coon dog loves more than a front porch.” I leaned against the Jeep’s fender, and smiled at Overalls. He didn’t smile back.

“What can I do for you?”

Right to the point. I followed his lead.

“Have you seen Darryl, the guy who owns this place?”

He jerked his head toward the docks. “There’s a fish-cleaning table back yonder, under them cypress trees. That’s probably where he’s at.”

I thanked him.

“Enjoy,” he said, cranking up the music again.

I smelled dead fish and cigarette smoke before I spotted Darryl. He stood at a high wooden table, which was washed by a faucet. As he cleaned his catch, he tossed heads and innards into the dark water of the lake-access canal below. He was bent over the task, but I could see the strong line of his jaw, and a thick head of tar-black hair. As he worked his knife, sinewy muscle stood out across his arms and broad shoulders. I got a pretty good look at his build, because he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Just filthy jean cut-offs and bare feet covered in the mucky sediment that plagues the natural sand bottom of Lake Okeechobee.

Darryl looked like a creature right out of the swamp.

I thought I’d been pretty quiet coming up. But his head lifted for just a moment, like an animal getting a scent in the wild. He didn’t turn around, and the knife never stopped, but he knew I was there.

“Yew lookin’ for me?” His voice was pure Florida redneck.

“Depends,” I said. “Are you Darryl?”

He nodded, still cutting. The sun reflected off the silver blade of his long knife.
Slice. Glint. Slice. Glint. Slice. Glint.
I waited, expecting he’d turn around to talk to me, but he didn’t. So I walked a little closer and situated myself alongside the fish table. When he tossed a handful of gills and guts from a black crappie right next to my boots, I spoke up.

“I wondered if I could ask you a few questions.”

He shrugged.
Slice. Glint.

“I’m a friend of C’ndee Ciancio’s.”

The knife paused for just an instant. He quickly recovered his rhythm.

“I know you two were going around together.”

“So? What’s it to yew?”
Slice. Glint.

He had me there. I wasn’t sure why I was so interested in C’ndee’s love life. I just knew I was. I’d learned in the last year or so to pay close attention to things that don’t seem to add up.

“Her friends have been kind of worried about her behavior.” I prayed the Lord wouldn’t strike me down for lying, though I couldn’t imagine He took much interest in a low-down snake like Darryl Dietz. “We’re trying to find out who she’s seeing,” I continued, “because we want to make sure she hasn’t hooked up with somebody dangerous.”

The knife went still. For the first time, he raised his face to me. I had to admit he was handsome, in the same way you can admire the beauty of a rattlesnake while still knowing its bite can kill you.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about C’ndee if I was yew. That’s one girl who can take care of herself. I’d worry about the poor guy she took up with instead.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

The smile he gave me was as cold as the ice in the chest full of fish at his feet. As I waited for him to answer, an osprey’s plaintive
scree
sounded from a tall pine. The breeze sighed a bit, rustling a Confederate flag on a pole. Axl Rose crooned “Out Ta Get Me.”

“Well?” I prodded.

He picked up the burning cigarette that had been balanced on the table’s edge. With a hand covered in fish blood, he drew it to his mouth and took a drag nearly to the filter. Then, he flicked the butt into the dark water and silently bent his head again over his mess of fish.

Slice. Glint. Slice. Glint.

I started to rephrase my question. I managed, “Who …”

“You’re a nosy bitch, yew know that?” His hiss was low and menacing, like a rattler before it strikes. “We got ways out here to deal with people who don’t know their place. Now, I’m gonna ask yew nice to take all your questions and shove ’em. And then get the hell off of my land.”

Slice. Glint.

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I think what convinced me was that final, violent jerk of the knife, all the way from tail fin to head. I hurried to my Jeep and lit out of there, but the rutted driveway would let me go only so fast.

In the rearview mirror, I noticed Overalls fooling with a boat in a slip near the fish-cleaning table. How long had he been there? Then, I saw Darryl step from the dock into the yard to watch me go. His black eyes were hypnotic, holding my gaze without a blink. Heart pounding, I had to wait for traffic to pass before I could pull out onto the paved road. Behind me, Darryl propped a foot up on a tree stump. His eyes moved to the knife in his hand, and so did mine.

My last image of the camp was Darryl testing the sharpness of that silver blade by shaving a hair off his bare leg.