Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 09 (4 page)

“Five more months,” she said aloud, having taken to talking to her womb on a regular basis. “I’ll tell you one thing, Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon Junior, as soon as I get wheeled out of the delivery room, I’m orderin’ a pizza. It’ll be a supreme with everything but anchovies. They give me gas.” There was no response, but the doctor had said it was too early for the baby to start kicking.

—==(O)==—

Jim Bob Buchanon was in his office at the SuperSaver, frowning at the unpaid invoices and trying to decide if he could fire a couple of the checkers and one of the girls in the deli. It wasn’t any big deal if the customers had to stand in line for a whole five or ten more minutes, he thought as he ran his fingers across his stubbly hair. It wasn’t like they could go to another supermarket up the street. During the summer and fall, they could buy fresh produce in town, but the closest place to get toilet paper and laundry detergent and Kool-Aid was fifteen miles away.

Kevin Buchanon entered the cubicle and stopped on account of Jim Bob didn’t like being interrupted when he was doing something important. When Jim Bob didn’t start snarling at him, Kevin cleared his throat and said, “I was wondering if I kin take off tomorrow afternoon.”

“Sure,” Jim Bob said in a deceptively friendly voice. “‘Course I’ll fire your ass before you’re out the door, but other than that, I don’t see any problem.” He went so far as to smile at Kevin, who was as gawky and poorly put together as a widow woman’s scarecrow. Kevin’s membership in the clan was more obvious than some, and his Adam’s apple had an unfortunate tendency to ripple so wildly it looked like it was trying to burst out of his slack mouth and go flying across the room.

“You’d fire me?” gasped Kevin, horrified. “I can’t lose my job when Dahlia and me is gonna have a baby long about December. We’re saving every penny so we kin pay the clinic and start paying on the hospital bill. Then there’s groceries and electricity and-“

“Keep your tail in the water, boy,” Jim Bob said before he was treated to the entire budget. “I haven’t fired you yet. What’s your dumbass reason for wanting the afternoon off when we’ve got a truckload of paper goods to unload?”

“I’m gonna take Dahlia to her appointment at the clinic, and then I thought I’d treat her to a picture show. She’s plum run out of sap since the doctor put her on a real strict diet. Why, just the other day at supper, she took one look at the string beans and liked to burst into tears and-“

“Spare me the details. Yeah, I suppose you can take off tomorrow afternoon, but you’ll have to work till midnight the rest of the week-and you ain’t getting any overtime. I am running a business, not a charity. Got that?”

Kevin shook his head, thought better of it and nodded, then gave up trying to figure out how to respond and hurried out of the office before Jim Bob changed his mind.

Jim Bob went back to scowling at the figures and wondering how much longer he could get by with not paying the wholesale grocer, who had sent a pissy letter that very day implying he might turn the account over to a collection agency. When the phone rang, he gazed at it uncertainly. Most of the calls these days didn’t end on a friendly note.

Finally he picked up the receiver. “Yeah?” After listening for a minute, he said, “No, I didn’t know you all were already here, Mr. Fratelleon. As soon as I can hunt down my good-for-nuthin’ assistant manager, I’ll hustle my butt right out there so we can talk about this deal you’re offering. I got to warn you, though-property values have been going up since you wrote me back whenever it was. You and me may be in for some dickering before we make a deal.”

He was grinning like a possum as he left the store. The two checkers abandoned their counters to watch him through the plate glass window, asking each other what in tarnation could have caused this minor miracle. Over by the door, Kevin leaned on the mop handle and imagined himself and Junior fishing at some secret spot on Boone Creek. He didn’t even notice when the bucket tipped over and scummy gray water spread across the linoleum.

—==(O)==—

Back at the Maggody High School gymnasium, Cory Jenks sat in the dim locker room, thinking about how twelve years ago the team had cinched the conference title and had exploded through the door like a pack of coyotes. There’d been so much hooting and towel-snapping and ass-grabbing that Coach Grapper had cussed up a storm. Later they’d rounded up their girlfriends, a dozen six-packs of beer, a couple of jars of hooch, and gone down to a clearing next to Boone Creek to build a bonfire and do some serious celebrating.

Cory had been the high scorer in the game, and scored pretty damn well on an old quilt off in the bushes. He’d been a handsome kid, tall and muscular, with regular features, blond hair, clear skin with a few freckles. It was hard to recall the details, but he knew he’d made it with two of the cheerleaders and somebody’s cousin from Mississippi. It’d been the first time he’d ever screwed a girl from out of state.

He was trying to remember what she’d looked like as he went back to the office, dropped the leather thong with a whistle on his desk, and picked up his keys. Not that the girl mattered, he thought with a smile. His nearly flawless performance during the game is what had really mattered, since it had earned him a scholarship at a junior college down by the Louisiana border. After two years, he’d been picked up by a second-rate college team and been able to hang on to the scholarship until he’d eked out a degree in physical education.

It’d been rocky after that. The coaching job at a junior high had ended when he was accused of seducing a girl in his driver’s ed class, although everybody knew she was sleeping with every jock, even the sissies on the soccer team. Finding a job with that on his résumé was like trying to slam-dunk a bowling ball. After a couple of wretched years selling used cars and cemetery plots, he’d come home for his mother’s funeral and found himself begging Grapper to hire him as assistant coach.

Now it was possible Cory might find himself head coach of the Maggody Marauders, what with Amos in a body cast (on account of not noticing his grandson’s skateboard on the porch steps) and liable to retire. The other assistant coach had an edge, being Amos’s nephew, but there were ways to make sure that didn’t happen (like another skateboard). And Norma Kay kept swearing she put in a good word with her husband every chance she got. Bur was retired, but he’d reigned over the basketball program so long his opinion would matter when it came time for contracts in the spring.

Cory parked his truck in front of his house and switched off the headlights. From where he stood, he could see Norma Kay’s car in her driveway alongside Bur’s ancient truck. Light shone from behind drawn shades, but the porch lights weren’t on to welcome unexpected guests.

His social life was no more exciting than theirs, he thought as he went inside. He’d learned his lesson and steered clear of the local girls—despite their provocative looks and wiggly bottoms as they cut through the gym between classes. There were damn few single women in Maggody, except for spinsters like Edwina Spitz and withered-up widows like Bethesda Buchanon, who was rumored to fry up one of her cats when she ran low on grocery money. Arly Hanks was always crumpy when he ran into her, leaving him to wonder if she remembered his reputation in high school. He cruised the bars in Farberville every once in a while, but the college girls didn’t seem all that interested in his team’s chances for a conference title—and he wasn’t about to gabble about rock concerts or foreign films.

Instead of starting supper, he took a scrapbook off the mantel and lay down on the couch. Maggody was in the AA conference and therefore rarely warranted more than a paragraph or two in the newspaper. The year they’d won the conference was different: There’d been a long story and a photograph of Cory as he leapt into the air, the ball clutched next to his chest, his face contorted with concentration. At that moment, all he’d wanted was to make that one particular shot.

Now all he wanted was to be head coach.

—==(O)==—

It had been quite a day in Maggody, but by midnight everything had settled down. Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill had been the site of a lot of conversation about the Hope Is Here caravan, but all of it had been speculative at best, and now the pink concrete-block building was locked up tighter than bark on a tree. Ruby Bee was sound asleep out back in #1 of the Flamingo Motel, her alarm clock set to rouse her in plenty of time to get the biscuits started for breakfast. If her clock failed to go off, there were plenty of roosters to do the job.

Kevin Buchanon was snuggled in bed, snoring steadily as he dreamed of fatherhood. Dahlia tiptoed into the kitchen, peered wistfully into the refrigerator, and then found consolation of a sort in a late-night movie in which trustworthy American soldiers were bombing the wicked Japs into oblivion. Dahlia was mimicking the explosions, but real quietly so’s not to disturb Kevvie.

Over in the rectory, Brother Verber was sitting at the dinette, working on a second bottle of sacramental wine while he considered how he was going to defend his flock against this slick-talking serpent with his cottoncandy machines and promises of milk and honey.

Out on Finger Lane, in the finest house in Maggody, Mrs. Jim Bob was staring at the shadows on the bedroom ceiling as she visualized how her position in the community would dwindle into nothingness if the members of the Missionary Society defected. She’d campaigned too long and hard to let that happen. Rather than count sheep, she began a mental list of Jim Bob’s latest batch of transgressions. By the time she got to fifty (tracking mud on the living room carpet), she was fast asleep.

Jim Bob was across the hall, thinking of what he could do with the money from the sale of the acreage. None of his X-rated fantasies included his wife.

Earlier, Estelle had been hunting through her supply closet in hopes of finding a product to salvage her hair, but she’d given up and gone to bed. Sleeping on bristly hair rollers was a challenge she could meet with ease, having done so for forty-odd years.

In the field beyond the Grappers’ farmhouse, the RV was dark and still. A few spotlights had been left on in strategic corners of the vast tent, but the two occupants were used to them, as well as to the cots and the persistent presence of hungry mosquitoes.

Dressed in a tired cotton robe and worn slippers, Norma Kay stood at the living room window, gazing at the top of the hill. In the back of the house, Bur was making his usual disgusting noises as he slept, but she’d long since given up hope she’d find his dead body in the morning (although she had a black dress in reserve in the coat closet). If she strained, she could hear the gentle hum of a generator behind the RV. It had been painfully tempting to rush up the hill to see Malachi, but she’d prayed for strength to wait for him to come to her. She was certain that he would.

A man of the Lord always kept his word.

“Guess who called this morning,” Darla Jean McIlhaney said as Heather Reilly got in on the passenger’s side of the station wagon. Both of them wore shorts and blouses that subtly complemented each other’s, having worked it out beforehand on the phone. As soon-to-be seniors, they had an obligation to the sophomores and juniors to provide leadership in such matters.

“Elvis?”

“No, seriously.”

Heather waited until they were out of the driveway, then took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her purse. “Brother Verber, because he wants you to play the Virgin Mary in the Sunday school pageant this year?”

Darla Jean did not appreciate the implication that she wasn’t qualified for the role, even though she wasn’t. “Arly Hanks called me,” she said huffily. “She was all sugary on account of wanting us to do a favor for her.”

“Us? You’d better not have—”

“I already did, so there’s no point in having a hissy fit. Besides, it might turn out to be interesting, and I don’t seem to recall you having anything better to do. Just last night you were whining about how you were ready to dye your hair green out of boredom.” She glanced at Heather, who didn’t look convinced, and continued in a brighter voice. “There’s a new girl in town named Chastity. She came with that preacher and his trucks, and she’s all upset about having to go to high school here.”

“Aren’t we all?” Heather said as she let smoke dribble out her nostrils like an Italian actress she’d seen on a late-night movie.

“Arly thought it would be nice if we went over to where this girl’s staying and introduced ourselves.”

“And get dragged off to a tent revival? I don’t think so, Darla Jean. Why don’t you drop me off at the Dairee Dee-Lishus on your way to eternal salvation? I’d just as soon go to hell with a corn dog and a cherry Coke.”

“Look, I owe Arly a favor because of her not telling my parents about certain things. If this girl is all snotty, we’ll remember how we have to go get our hair cut or something and leave. I heard my ma talking on the phone this morning about the preacher and all the celebrities that appeared on his TV show. Maybe we can meet some if we pretend to be her friend.”

“As long as you don’t invite her to hang out with us,” Heather muttered. “She probably doesn’t approve of smoking or drinking. Wait till she finds out that’s all there is to do in Maggody.” She suddenly realized whose house they were approaching and jerked the cigarette out of her mouth. “Shit!” she said, stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray and trying to fan the smoke out the window at the same time. “Why didn’t you tell me we were going to Coach Grapper’s? She’ll kick my ass off the team if she sees me with a cigarette!”

Darla Jean downshifted as the station wagon lurched up the road. “She’s over at the high school. I saw her car when I went there to talk to Miss Estes about the 4-H booth at the county fair next month. We’re gonna do something about muffins …”

Her voice faded as the tent came into view. Neither of them had seen the arrival of the caravan the day before, having been at the mall in Farberville. It might have been discussed at supper in their respective houses, but so was a lot of other crap not worth listening to.