Wedding Bell Blues (2 page)

This God's eyes, whatever color they were, were rolled back in his head.

“He won't wake up.” Reba's face was wet, her nose all red and runny. She kept wiping it with the back of her hand.

“Oh Reba, honey,” I said. “Let me check.”

She moved aside and I felt for a pulse underneath his copper bracelet, which jangled a little in the silence. He even had hairy hands. On his little finger I saw Reba's diamond(?) engagement ring. He had taken it back? What a rat. I pulled it off and handed it to Reba, then felt for his pulse.

Nothing. I felt at his throat. Nothing.

“Do you know CPR?” I asked Reba. This might have seemed a stupid question, but with Reba you never knew. What she did know could sometimes surprise you. She didn't answer, but stood up and started turning in circles.

I climbed on top of God, unbuttoned his flannel plaid shirt that had a huge green stain on the front. I pushed on his chest, which was hairy as a bear. Where in the world had Reba found this guy?

I pried open God's mouth and saw he didn't believe in dentists. Brown, ragged teeth. I took a deep breath, bent down and forced myself to kiss those tobacco-colored lips that were getting whiter and whiter. His breath was awful to say the least. Sour. Garlic and whiskey and cigarettes. Oh, Lord.

Nothing.

I buttoned up his shirt. Crookedly. Two buttons were missing. I stepped back and then I hugged Reba. “I think we better call 911.”

They would get Eikenberry Funeral Home. Eikenberry, Littleboro's legendary undertaker, would love this one, I thought. I could see him, curly black mustache and all, rubbing his hands together. Business. Eikenberry's first thought, and probably his last thought before he went to sleep at night, was business. People in Littleboro said if you ran into him at some social function, he looked you up and down, like he was taking your measurements for what size coffin to order. Maybe it was just a nervous tic, but he did have the habit of moving his head up and down as he talked to you.

As I dialed 911 and gave particulars and directions, I pulled Reba around to the other side of the picnic table so her back was to God and hugged her close. Sometime this spring Reba had stopped wearing her orange-colored blanket and gotten some pullover cotton tops and cammo cargo pants with pockets. Reba loved lots of pockets. If you met her at M.&G.'s Grocery she'd have to unzip, unsnap and show you every one. And you'd have to stand there, ooh and ahh, before she'd let you go.

She smelled like some kind of aftershave. Men's cologne, something brown and spicy. No roses and lavender for Reba. But where had she spritzed herself so generously and so recently? Whose aftershave had she helped herself to? Did God wear Old Spice?

I heard the sirens in seconds, knew the blue and red lights on the MedAlert vehicle were flashing as it screamed toward the Interstate. Barring no dogs crossing Main Street, it would probably take only minutes to arrive. And fast behind that green-and-white truck would be Ossie DelGardo, chief of Littleboro police.

There was no love lost between me and Ossie DelGardo because there had never been any to begin with. I felt like he came to Littleboro, New Jersey accent and all, brought big-city crime with him and infected Littleboro with it. Not long after I moved back, there were two murders in two weeks and somehow he always acted like I had something to do with them. We weren't archenemies, just on opposite sides of everything each of us stood for.

No sooner had the MedAlert shot in, spewing gravel in all directions, and the attendants had jumped out, grabbed a stretcher and run toward the picnic table than Ossie and Bruce Bechner screeched up, spewing more gravel and flashing more lights. I shaded Reba's eyes.

Ossie and his sidekick, Bruce Bechner, sprang out and Bruce ran to the body on the table while Ossie, in white cowboy hat and shiny snakeskin boots, strode up, hands on his hips with a tight little, what looked to me like a snarl on his lips.

“You.” He pointed a finger at me sharp as his voice. “Stop making my job work.” He took off his cowboy hat and fanned himself with it. This was his new look, one he'd started wearing the same time as the boots and his engagement picture had appeared in the paper. I wondered if this was Juanita's idea and if he'd get married in cowboy hat and boots. Somehow I had trouble seeing Ossie as the good guy, the hero in the white hat.

I stepped back as he took Reba by the shoulders and gently sat her down at the picnic table. “Now, miss,” he said. “Let's see what's going on here.”

Reba leaned her head into his chest and cried while he patted her on the back. “He was a better man,” she choked out. “A better man.”

“Now, now.” Ossie pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped her face.

This was a side of Ossie I'd never dreamed existed, and I wanted to stage-whisper to Reba, “Don't trust him. Don't say a word. It's a trap.”

Meanwhile, the MedAlert guys and one gal had put an oxygen mask on the man who lay flat on his back on the picnic table. They whipped out all sorts of machines that made clicking and whizzing sounds. I couldn't see what they were doing except they seemed fast and efficient. Two of them held a stretcher at the ready. I saw them load the man into the truck, machines and all.

One of them had an iPad and was inputting information. Reba had snatched Ossie's handkerchief and was wailing into it, so the EMTs turned to me. They asked me for the dead man's name.

“I don't know,” I said. I could not say I heard his name was God, or that's what he went by.

“Address?”

I wasn't about to say “Heaven,” so I said, “I have no idea. You can get the information from the police later.”

They slammed shut the double doors and roared away.

Reba and Ossie sat side by side at the picnic table. I heard Reba saying God was dead and she killed him. Ossie had produced a tiny tape recorder from somewhere and was getting it all on the record, trying to get more information from her. In between her crying and snuffles I only heard bits of words here and there. “Wine” and “June bride” and “best man” and “no wedding” and it was “late, too late,” and she wanted sweet tea but he had fried chicken, KFC. None of her answers seemed to make sense but she kept insisting to Ossie she'd killed him.

Meanwhile I just stood there not knowing what to do. I started to go sit beside Reba, but I knew to Ossie that would look like I was interfering with a “trained law enforcement professional,” an expression to which I wanted to snort a big “Ha.”

Cars whizzed by on the Interstate. A few slowed, but nobody stopped. A lumber truck groaned and wheezed up the hill, loaded to the rails with tree bodies so freshly cut I smelled the dripping sap as it passed. There goes progress, I thought, or destruction, as tree body after tree body from the Uwharries, a little bitty mountain range back of Littleboro, went bleeding past. I felt like crying every time I saw a loaded log truck.

Bruce was in the patrol car talking to somebody or pulling up something on the computer from the license plate on God's big white truck. I'd seen Bruce walk around behind it. Now he shut the patrol car door, walked over and got in the truck, cranked it up, gunned the motor, then let it idle and waited. But waited for what?

“Don't,” I said when I saw Ossie help Reba up, put his arm around her and start leading her toward the patrol car. “Don't you dare.”

He stopped, and still with his arm holding Reba, stared me down. His dark little eyes told me not to come a step closer. “This is police business, I thank you, missy.”

“But she hasn't done anything. The body doesn't have a mark on it. She doesn't know what she's saying.”

“Back off,” he said and held the car door for Reba. “Go bake your muffins. Isn't that what you do, little girl?” Little girl? I wanted to slap him. The nerve, making fun of me trying to make a living making homemade pastries for my B and B guests, trying to help my friend. Oh, the nerve.

I always felt like Ossie looked down on Southerners, as though the minute we opened our mouths it sounded like we didn't have enough sense to get in out of the rain. Me in particular. At least he was being nice to Reba. For that I was grateful. If only it could continue.

Ossie escorted Reba to the backseat of the patrol car, helped her in and closed the door. The metal
click
of the door lock was a shock to my heart.

Ossie started the car and pulled away.

Reba lifted up her head long enough to wave bye to me and smile. I wanted to run after that car, beat on the door with my fists and say, “You let her out. She's innocent as a child.” Reba was like a child who just loved to ride, anywhere with anybody. For years she had hung around the Interstate and hitched rides with anybody who stopped. She had a fondness for truck drivers. It's a wonder she hadn't been killed. Maybe she'd just been lucky so far.

But where was Ossie taking her? Not to jail, surely not. If I knew Reba, she was like a captured wild bird who would beat its wings against a cage until it fell down dead.

As soon as Ossie pulled away, Bruce followed in the big white truck. That's when I saw the tall black lettering on the side.
G.O.D. GENERAL OVERNIGHT DELIVERY
.

God.

That's why Reba thought she was marrying God. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She hadn't been making all this up. God was in the big white truck.

As I started toward Lady Bug, I saw something flat in the gravel under the picnic table. Reba's cell phone. I must have dropped it after I dialed 911. Beside it lay a key. I picked both up. The key was an old-fashioned metal room key stamped “Motel 3.” How long had it been here? Where had it come from? One of Reba's pockets?

Ossie was long gone. The MedAlert team, too. The back of God's big white truck wasn't even in sight anymore. All that was left was me, the cell phone and that key.

I got in my car and headed up the road. In my rearview mirror I saw the empty roadside pull-over, a bare picnic table, the woods behind it and an emptiness. Even the air seemed still, like none of this had really happened.

I pressed hard on the gas pedal and roared up the road like the Devil himself was on my tail. If God was dead, then that must have left the Devil in charge.

 

Chapter Two

Of course I drove straight to Motel 3 and put that key in the door of one of the finished rooms. If there was any way I could get Reba out of this mess, maybe I'd find something here. Door number 1. It was like I could hear some offstage announcer saying, “If you choose door number one, there could be a new car or a trip to Cancun or ten thousand dollars. Or death. Which will it be?”

What I saw were two queen-sized beds—one slightly rumpled (Reba's site of sin?), the other pristine under a fluffy-looking white coverlet with blue stitching. It offered the remains of what looked like last night's supper.

I picked up a half-finished bottle of champagne. Dom Pérignon. God had good taste. Somehow I couldn't see Reba buying it, though she had always said grape juice was her “medicine” and drank Welch's straight from the bottle, not even chilled. Two champagne glasses stood on the bedside table along with an open bottle of Scotch and a half-finished bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken on the bed.

I looked in some of the cardboard tubs of sides. A couple of potato wedges, half a serving of coleslaw, one lonely ear of corn on the cob, some garlic bread and half a Tupperware bowl of green beans. Since when did KFC put carryout in Tupperware? KFC and champagne? Only Reba.

I put lids on the takeout, which stirred up a roach underneath the garlic bread. He twitched his antennae as if to say, I got first dibs here. Go get your own. I left him to it. One of the least lovable of God's creatures.

I opened the closet door to see a white suit, some sort of western-type jacket with silver beading, sequins and fringe like a rock star or an Elvis impersonator might wear. On the closet floor, looking back at me, was a large pair of spectator shoes in blue and white. I picked one up. Size twelve.

On the closet rod hung Reba's wedding dress, the one we'd put together at The Calico Cottage. Somewhere in a piled-up storage room, Birdie Snowden, who had owned and run The Calico Cottage as long as I could remember, had unrolled a bolt of Chantilly lace so old it had yellowed on the edges. But when she held it up, Reba had clapped her hands and said, “June Bride, June Bride,” then stood still while Miss Birdie draped it over her. “I'm a June bride,” Reba said with a beatific smile. I'd always wondered what a beatific smile was and now I saw it. For a moment, Reba glowed. She looked serene and even a bit lovely.

“I'll fold it in half, cut and bind a hole big enough to go over her head,” Miss Birdie said, “then seam up the sides, let it fall to her ankles, hem it and presto, change-o, Reba, you got a wedding dress.”

Reba turned around, stood on tiptoes, twirled, let us see the back. It was like helping a child play dress up.

When we laughed, she laughed. It was all such fun. We weren't laughing
at
Reba, but
with
her. This crazy, silly business of weddings, which made me tear up and remember I'd never had one. Mama Alice would have loved to see me in her back garden, under the rose trellis in my mother's wedding dress and veil, serving her super-duper wedding cake that all her friends would ooh and ah over. But it never happened. Mama Alice probably planned my wedding a dozen times in her head, made up the reception menu, dreamed of the wedding cake she'd make. She never said a word, never made me feel guilty I didn't go that route.

When Ida Plum heard about all the wedding dress preparations the rest of us were doing, she donated a long white satin slip from her underwear drawer and it fit Reba like it had been waiting for her. Hmm, I thought, when was the last occasion Ida Plum had to wear a long slip under a formal dress? Did she have more of a social life than she wanted me to know? Ida Plum also bought some netting and made a veil and twined plastic ivy around the top. “We can weave in some fresh white roses on the big day,” Ida Plum said, then out the side of her mouth, “if such a day ever comes to pass.”