Muletrain to Maggody (11 page)

Hammet slithered halfway over the seat. “Jest what is it I’m s’posed to do until these make-believe Yankees shoot me on Thursday? Whittle drumsticks?”

Ruby Bee took one hand off the steering wheel to catch his ear. “What you’re
s’posed
to do is what we tell you. I’m gonna let you have a whole motel room to yourself, with your very own television set to watch whatever you want. I’ll bring you nice, hot meals on trays. You just can’t go roaming around town or trying to hunt up Arly.”

“I ain’t sure Jim Bob will be happy to see me, neither,” Hammet said as he jerked himself free. “The peckerhead was mightily pissed last time I saw him.”

“And when was that?” asked Estelle.

Hammet realized that he might have blurted out something best left unsaid, since Ruby Bee, Estelle, and Arly had been off somewheres when he and Jim Bob came to an agreement that had left one of them so mad he was fartin’ out his ears. “Oh, awhiles back. I disremember exactly when.” He risked leaning over the seat again. “Why is it I can’t see Arly until Thursday?”

Ruby Bee waited for Estelle to come leaping to the rescue with some damnfool lie, but when that didn’t happen, said, “Because she doesn’t know you’re coming to Maggody. She’s real testy these days, and we don’t want to rile her. You’re gonna have to think of yourself as a secret agent right up until we surprise her. Estelle here is gonna entertain you for the next few days. Ain’t that right, Estelle? Didn’t you say something to me about taking Hammet for a picnic on Cotter’s Ridge?”

“First thing in the morning,” Estelle said brightly.

Brother Verber had been aching all morning, knowing that those gripped by the deadly sin of avarice were up there on Cotter’s Ridge. If any one of them was to stumble across the gold, he wouldn’t fall to his knees to give thanks to the Almighty Lord, then go forth to found a mission in Africa, or even send a pittance to the little heathens in need of shoes and eyeglasses. No, the miscreant would most likely slink away and waste the money on gambling, liquor, and pleasures of the supple flesh.

However, he’d been obliged to conduct the morning service, which had been sparsely attended. Sister Barbara had been there, as always, but she’d been scribbling in a notebook the whole time and had hardly glanced up to offer an “Amen” when he’d paused. Joyce Lambertino had brought her unmannersome children and her husband, who looked like he was close to passing out in a hymnal. Lottie, Eula, and Elsie had taken their usual seats in the third pew, but they were squirming like they’d been infested with fleas. Millicent McIlhaney had been in the fifth pew, sitting by herself and looking twitchy. Some other folks had been there, but none of them had looked like they was feeling the glory brought on by the purification of their numerous sins. It had been all he could do not to start scratching his head as he beamed down at them from the pulpit and related in great detail the story of the Good Samaritan.

Brother Verber wondered if he might ought to call an exterminator, since it wasn’t far-fetched to think Satan might have enlisted fleas or lice in his battle against righteousness. The mail-order seminary in Las Vegas had never suggested such a possibility, but Satan was wily.

The thing was, Brother Verber thought as he plopped down on the couch, the gold was likelier than not to fall into the hands of the Prince of Darkness if he didn’t take steps to rescue it and send at least some of it to the little heathens. After he’d done that, why, he just might take one of those cruises so he could see for hisself all that wickedness and lasciviousness on sultry islands where women bared their breasts and wiggled their bottoms in the moonlight.

He blotted his forehead with his handkerchief, then got up and found the bottle of sacramental wine he kept under the sink. It was gonna take a goodly dose of courage to approach Raz Buchanon and inquire discreetly about this particular cave. He’d gone into Farberville the previous afternoon and bought a few things he hoped might soothe Raz. Moonshine had its place, but a bottle of Kentucky bourbon might be welcome. He figured Raz ate nothing but squirrel and possum, so a nice selection of sausages, crackers, pickled okra, green tomato relish, and mustard might win over his petrified heart. And, of course, the fancy smoked ham.

He could just picture himself sittin’ on Raz’s front porch, passing the bottle back and forth and eating thick slices of salami. Why, they’d be feeling downright brotherly, and before long, Brother Verber could steer the conversation into matters that might be to his advantage. His and the little heathens’, of course. The very first thing he’d do after he got off the phone with a travel agent would be to write a check to some mission or hospital in the middle of darkest Africa, where his generosity would be so deeply appreciated that tears would be streaming down the missionaries’ cheeks.

He finished off the last of the wine and got up to open another bottle. It was gonna take him some time to find the courage to approach Raz’s cabin, but as a soldier in the Lord Almighty’s army, he had no choice.

M
rs. Jim Bob was prowling the kitchen when Jim Bob came home for lunch on Monday. Prowling, but not growling, although her jaw was clamped and her forehead was rutted like a forgotten back road.

“It’s about time you got here,” she said by way of greeting.

Jim Bob stopped in the doorway and listened for the whine of incoming missiles. “It’s about noon, same as usual.”

“That is not what I meant,” she said as she went around the dinette table and into the hallway, then returned with a darker expression. “I am doing my level best to make this reenactment reflect well on our community, but I cannot be responsible when people have the audacity to change their schedules and then expect me to forget all my carefully laid plans and—my lists—my menus—my notes…” She reeled around and disappeared into the hallway, but before he could do more than blink several times, she was back, darn close to frothing. “No one else has seen fit to accept this burden, as you for one should know. Perkin’s eldest had to leave early today because of her ballet class in Farberville. Am I supposed to change sheets and put out fresh towels? How can I spend the afternoon doing housework when I need to be preparing dinner for these people? Just how am I supposed to do that, I ask you?”

“Dinner for these people?” he echoed, keeping his distance.

Mrs. Jim Bob threw herself into a chair and swept all the pieces of paper onto the floor. “I had this well under control, but now I don’t know what to do!”

“About what, exactly?”

She glared at him. “Haven’t you heard a word I just said? That woman from Charleston, her son, and his fiancée are arriving in a matter of hours. She called to say that the only decent hotel in Farberville was full because of a conference, and they had no other option but to come to Maggody. Two days early, mind you, but she didn’t mention that minor detail. Oh no, she just assumed that it wouldn’t inconvenience me the tiniest bit. I was planning to go to Farberville tomorrow to buy new linens and bath soaps. I wanted to be a gracious hostess. I was going to put potpourri in little baskets on the bedside tables so they’d know we aren’t barbarians. Who knows what they’ll think now?”

Jim Bob gave it his best shot. “It ain’t like they don’t know they’re showing up two days early, so they won’t expect much. I’ll bring home some food from the deli and we can have a right nice picnic on the patio.”

“Are you intending to vacuum the upstairs bedrooms and dust the living room, too?” she said icily. “Does the deli have potpourri?”

“I reckon not,” he acknowledged, since he had no idea what damn fool thing she was talking about. It sounded like fancy cat litter, but he wasn’t about to say so.

Mrs. Jim Bob cradled her head in her hands. “Will this son and his fiancée expect to share a bedroom? This is a God-fearing house, not some sleazy hotel that caters to sinners bent on depravity under this very roof! I called Brother Verber to ask him, but he couldn’t bother to be at the rectory in my hour of need. And you’re just standing there, squinting at the refrigerator and thinking of nothing more than last night’s pot roast and a slice of chocolate cake. I can see it written all over your face, Jim Bob. All you want to do is fill your belly and get back to your office at the SuperSaver, where you can drink whiskey and flirt with the checkout girls. Don’t think for a second that I don’t know what you do down there, except when you’re off visiting some harlot in a cheap apartment.”

Whiskey sounded real good at the moment, but he forced a sympathetic smile and said, “Don’t get so all fired up about this. Did she say why they’re coming early?”

“Her name happens to be Corinne Dawk, and don’t you forget it! All she offered was some lame excuse about how she wanted to spend more time speaking to classes. Why on earth she thinks she can keep their attention for three whole days with her Civil War folderol is beyond me, but I said fine. Then I tried to call Lottie Estes at the high school to let her know, and she wasn’t there. The secretary said Lottie hadn’t even bothered to call in sick. It seems that Lottie has chosen this day for the first time in who knows how many years to simply not show up. Larry Joe’s having to take her home ec classes to the shop to make bird feeders.”

“Could be she had a heart attack and died in her bed.”

Mrs. Jim Bob stood up so abruptly that the chair toppled over. “That is the last thing I need to hear,” she said. “You get on the phone right this minute and call Arly. Tell her to go by and check on Lottie, then call me.”

“Mebbe you should be the one to handle this. After all, you’re running this dog-and-pony show, not me. I need to eat some lunch and get back to the store to work on the payroll taxes. You don’t want the IRS to start sniffing around, do you?”

“At this point, I don’t care if the IRS blows up the supermarket and everyone inside it, including you. Now you make this call while I start dusting the living room. All Perkin’s eldest does is flip a rag from the doorway. I can probably write your epitaph in the dust on the credenza.”

“We have a credenza? What the”—he caught himself—“heck is a credenza? It sounds like a bottle of cheap dago wine.”

“You’d better hope I don’t find any whiskey bottles under the sofa. What’s more, I’d better not find any frilly lace underwear in your bedroom when I empty the dresser drawers. If I do, you’ll find yourself wearing it till the cows come home to roost!”

As she snatched up a dustrag and stomped out of the kitchen, Jim Bob tried to think what all she might find in his dresser drawers. Cigars possibly, condoms probably. The pictures of Cherry Lucinda in a red teddy were stashed away in his desk at the supermarket. Realizing his wife would hear him if he tried to creep upstairs, he resigned himself to calling Arly and putting up with her smart-ass remarks. After telling her about Lottie, he could also point out that it was high time she hunted down Petrol and hauled his skinny ass back to town. Hell, Drainard wasn’t more than fifty miles away. She could go knockin’ door-to-door like a missionary until she found him, then stuff him in the trunk of her car and deliver him to the old folks’ home.

He was halfway across the kitchen when the telephone rang. He picked up the receiver and said, “Yeah?”

“Ah, Mayor Buchanon. I didn’t expect to catch you. This is Harriet Hathaway from the Stump County Historical Society. We met the other night at the town meeting.”

“You backing out of this thing?”

“Don’t be silly. I just had a call from the gentleman who volunteered to make the film. He’s decided to come a few days early, so I thought I might as well, too. This will give us the opportunity to discuss various sites and camera angles. Wendell Streek is very excited about the opportunity to explore the church cemeteries and family plots for names and dates that may prove relevant to his genealogical research. Please let Mrs. Jim Bob know we’ll be there around six o’clock—unless, of course, this might inconvenience her.” She paused, then added without enthusiasm, “We could stay at that motel, I suppose. The Flamenco, or something like that.”

“What the hell,” Jim Bob said, figuring that he was signing his own death certificate. “Y’all might as well come along. The woman from Charleston and her runts are coming today. The more the merrier, long as you don’t mind baloney sandwiches and potato salad.”

“That will be lovely. We’ll see you in a few hours, then. Please let your wife know how much I appreciate her hospitality.”

He hung up, then stared at the telephone, waiting for it to ring again in case some platoon of damn Yankees called to say they’d be camping in the backyard and would need a couple of bales of hay for their horses.

Since there’d be hell to pay for years if he didn’t tell her, he went to the doorway of the living room. Mrs. Jim Bob was on her hands and knees, wiping the baseboards with a dustrag and muttering under her breath.

“That was Miss Hathaway on the phone,” he said. “She and that man from the society will—” He stopped and scratched his head. “What happened to the curtains?”

She glared up at him. “Nothing happened to them. They were looking grimy, so I took them into Farberville to be cleaned. Since when did you start paying attention to the decor? For all you care, I could paint the ceiling black and glue moss on the walls.”

“Why would you want to do something like that?”

“Just go on back to the SuperSaver. I’ll call Arly, and then Miss Hathaway, who probably wants to tell me she’ll be bringing a dozen more members of the society with her, all of them with allergies to dust, dairy products, tomatoes, eggs, and gluten. I don’t have time to watch you stand there and gape like Kevin Buchanon swallowing a lemon drop. I’ll call you later with a shopping list.”

Jim Bob shrugged and went back into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich and return to the SuperSaver. The official Skirmish at Cotter’s Ridge wasn’t supposed to take place until Saturday morning, but he figured there’d be a few opening rounds exchanged before too long.

“Okay, Harve,” I said, wishing I hadn’t called him on an empty stomach, “I’ll go out to Hazzard and write up the burglary, but you have to help me out this weekend. Do you realize how pissed everyone’s going to be when we block the road for half the day? You need to post a deputy at County 102 to divert the tourists on their way to Branson, and another one outside of Starley City to do the same for traffic headed for Farberville. There were no pickups, station wagons, or chicken trucks during the Civil War. Trust me on this.”

“I ain’t arguing,” the illustrious sheriff of Stump County drawled. A match scritched as he lit up a cheap cigar. Smoking may have been outlawed in every municipal and state building in Arkansas, but Harve Dorfer remained as serenely oblivious as a portly Buddha in a rock garden. “How many folks you got coming to this little battle of yours?”

“I won’t know about the reenactors until they show up, but perhaps no more than three dozen. There’s been no publicity, much to Hizzoner’s disgust, so I doubt we’ll have much in the way of a square dance at the high school on Saturday night. You and Mrs. Dorfer are more than welcome to attend.”

Harve chuckled. “I reckon we got other plans. So if I give you two deputies on Saturday morning, you’ll go over to Hazzard today and listen to them moan about their illicitly appropriated begonias?”

“Begonias?”

“Out on the front porch in glazed ceramic pots. A real fine display, or so they claim. They had a yard sale over the weekend, so don’t bother with tire prints. What time do you need Les and Willard on Saturday, and how heavily armed do they need to be? Should they be packing muskets?”

“When someone like Navidaddy Buchanon rumbles up in his truck on the way to Starley City to buy layer grit at the co-op like he’s done every Saturday morning for thirty years—well, it’s hard to say. You have any cannons in the back room?”

“I’ll get LaBelle to take a look. Let me warn you about something, Arly. When she heard about this, she figured she could show up and be an extra. She’s taken to wearing her hair just like that madam in
Gone With the Wind.
”

I gulped. “LaBelle heard about this?”

Harve was obviously enjoying himself. “She said she heard about it from her brother-in-law, who hangs out at the Dewdrop Inn. The good ol’ boys are a mite riled about Yankees showing up again after all these years. Seems the sentiment on their bumpers is ‘Fergit, Hell!’ It also seems to be the only thing anyone’s talking about at the bowling alley, the body shops, and the tattoo parlors. You want to reconsider how many deputies you’ll need?”

I was about to suggest a cavalry unit when the door opened and in marched an emaciated Confederate soldier in a threadbare, filthy uniform. His greasy hair dangled to his shoulders, and the ends of his mustache hung well below his unshaven chin. Although he was far from puffy, his pallor resembled that of the floaters in the reservoir. “I’ll call you back, Harve,” I said, then hung up and gave my visitor a wary look. “Can I help you?”

“Private Jeb Stewart,” he said with a crisp salute.

“I’m not General Grant.”

He saluted again. “I can see that, ma’am.”

“At ease, Private Stewart,” I said, hoping neither of us was in the midst of a psychotic episode. “Why don’t you sit down over there?”

“I’ll stand, if you don’t mind.”

“Well, I do mind, so sit down. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

He pulled off a bulging haversack and dropped it on the floor. His only weapon that I could see was a battered musket that appeared to be of authentic origin (and therefore perhaps not in working order). “I could use coffee. I’ve been driving since three o’clock this morning.”