Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 02 (11 page)

I had to pound on the front door for a long time before it opened to a slit and one eye peered out at me. "I thought they had bathed," hissed a disembodied voice.

"Did I imply that? Sorry, Mrs. Jim Bob, but I knew you'd want to supervise that yourself, since your standards are so much higher than mine." I gave the children a smile and patted Hammet on the head. "Okay, guys, here you are. I'll let you know the instant I find your mother. See you in a day or two, okay?"

Nobody looked real happy, but nobody bolted. They were still standing between the Grecian columns as I drove away, but the door had opened another inch or two, and I presumed Mizzoner wouldn't dare leave them on the porch for fortyeight hours. Why, that would get her kicked out of the Ladies' Missionary Society quicker than the congregation could shout "amen" at the end of one of Brother Verber's knee-busting prayers.

6

The Ommms drifted over the fence in the late-afternoon light. Kevin Buchanon, agonized by indecision (not to mention tortured by temptation), leaned against the sweet gum tree and told himself not to do it. "Don't do it," he said aloud, hoping it would help. "Kevin, you know you don't want to get your ass whipped. You know better. Don't do it."

He squinched his eyes closed real tight and tried to concentrate on a vision of his true love, with her warm, soft, monstrous-big bosoms that liked to suffocated him on more than one occasion, and her marshmallowy expanse of rippling body flesh, and her always sincere invitation for him to crawl up that heavenly path between her legs and do anything he wanted. Not to forget her kindly words of instruction and willingness to learn him all kinds of wondrous things.

It didn't help. He shinnied up the tree to the first branch, then wiggled around until he was standing up. He still couldn't see what was going on next door. Scrabbling and grunting, he climbed up several more branches, and took a minute to catch his breath before he turned around to see what he could see.

"Oh, lordy, lordy, lordy," he said in a low whoosh, as his stomach flopped over like a catfish in the bottom of a johnboat. They were naked as the day they was born, all four of them. The men were hairy and uninteresting. But the women-well, that was different, at least in Kevin Buchanon's wide, unblinking eyes. The one with a bun in the warmer was a smidgen rounder, as to be expected. The other one, that being the one with the ripe round perky bosoms, each just a handful, and that flat belly that went all the way down to that dark, fuzzy --

"Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon! You git down from there right this minute! You pa's going be home any time now, and you know what he said he'd do if he caught you up in this tree again!"

He made it to the ground with only a few scratches and a rip in the seat of his jeans. "Gee, Ma," he said, his Adam's apple rippling furiously, "I was just making sure they weren't doing nothing illegal that I ought to report to the chief."

"What's Arly got to do with you being a lowdown peeping Tom?"

"She told me to keep an eye on them. Since she doesn't have a deputy anymore, she asked me to do my civic duty and help her." He was real proud of the inspired reference to civic duty, his ma being big on patriotism and a one-time secretary of the county DAR. The rest of it had been planned over several hours of commode scrubbing. Ad-libbing was not his forte.

"Arly Hanks has a sight more sense than that, young man. I've known her since the day she was born, and I've never seen any signs she's mentally retarded. Which is more than I can say about some folks, present company included. You'd better go in the house and pray for forgiveness of both your sins: lusting at naked ladies and lying to your own mother."

"She did so, Ma. It's supposed to be a secret, though, and I'm not supposed to say nothing about it to anyone, including my own flesh and blood. I swore on the Bible and everything. She says those hippies are breaking the law, and all we need is evidence so we can lock 'em up tighter than ticks on a hound dog's tail."

"Commence your prayers," Eilene Buchanon said, unmoved by the importance of his secret assignment to rid the local environs of dastardly crime. "If you pray real hard, mebbe I won't have to tell your pa that I caught you up in the sweet gum again. His belt's hanging by the back door where it's right handy. He'll be home shortly." She went back to the kitchen to stir the corn bread batter. Kevin trailed after her, explaining her civic duty not to tell anybody, including Pa and especially Pa, about the secret assignment.

Across the fence, the chanting stopped. Poppy lay back on the blanket and massaged her belly. "It's kicking. Does anyone want to feel it?"

"Of course we do," Rainbow said, nudging Zachery. "We all love you and we all love our baby. Isn't that right?"

Zachery obediently crawled across the blanket and put his hand next to Poppy's. "Like, wow. I feel it. Do you think it's all excited by the meditation vibes?"

Rainbow smiled as she joined him next to Poppy's supine body. "That's an intriguing thought, Zachery. I don't know why the baby wouldn't sense the cosmic harmony and want to move with it. What do you think, Nate?"

He lit a cigarette. "Probably taking a crap. Listen, I need the truck in the morning. Got to talk to a man in Farberville about some personal business. I'll drop you off at the store on my way out of town. I should be back by the middle of the afternoon."

"That's impossible," Rainbow said gently. "Poppy has an appointment with the midwife just before noon. I'm going to drive her over and wait."

"Change it. I need the truck. I'll bet you enjoy hassling me all the time, don't you? Gives you a real kick."

Rainbow's smile trembled as she struggled for sympathy, cooperation, and lovingness. "But Nate, the midwife is an old granny woman who lives in a shack on the county road. She doesn't have a telephone, so we can't call to change the appointment. But let's vote on it, shall we? That way we'll follow the communal spirit and strengthen our harmony. Who feels Poppy's need is greater than Nate's?"

Nate threw down his cigarette and stalked into the house. A few minutes later the truck's engine rumbled to life. A cloud of dust blew over the fence, eventually settling like cocoa powder on the three naked occupants of the backyard meditation garden.

"Like, wow," Zachery said, using his finger to draw a happy face on Poppy's belly. Kevin would have loved it.

I had a pleasant evening and a reasonable night's sleep, although I had to remind myself a couple of times that the Buchanon brood was in good hands. Granted they were pious, self-righteous hands, but at least not gnarled and hirsute talons. Mizzoner, the mayor's wife, had good intentions. The Buchanons were tough enough to deal with her.

The next morning I dawdled at the PD for a couple hours. I was about to get in the jeep when David Allen drove up in his four-wheel wagon. "Aren't you supposed to be counseling the youth of Maggody High?" I asked. "Don't they need scholarship applications for welding schools and the mudwrestling academy?"

"I've taken a break. Do you have time to do the same and join me for a cup of coffee?"

We went into the PD, and he looked around while I started a pot of coffee. "This isn't exactly Scotland Yard," he said, grinning at me. "You could put two of these in the auto-repair shop at the high school and still have room for a Trans Am with a bent axle."

"Did you run away from school to tell me that?"

"No, I ran away from school for two unrelated yet intensely compelling reasons. One is that a terribly sincere girl named Heather Riley has made her seventy-third appointment with me, and I felt a sudden urge to leave. She cries so much, I wear an inner tube while I listen to her. I have no idea what her problems are, either, beyond muddled references to harelips and imperiled virginity. I'm not sure if she wants to lose or acquire either or both."

I handed him a cup of coffee and sat down behind my desk. "And the second compelling reason?"

"You were right about the psychic, and I wanted to drink a toast to your keen grasp of the sociological interactions of the town." He took a sip of coffee and made a face. "At a later time and with champagne. Your waterbed or mine?"

I let it go over my head, which wasn't hard since I was sitting down and he was standing up. The Macaroni law of physics. "So the psychic is no longer upsetting the fragile psyches of the senior class?"

"Carol Alice Plummer is not going to commit suicide. She is sporting an eighteenth-of-a-carat diamond ring, and checking out bridal magazines from the school library. As far as I know, she's not even pregnant; it may be the first wedding ceremony in Maggody in which the groomsmen are not armed. Her fiancé, one Bo Swiggins, who has no neck but does have a sly sense of humor, has sworn to win the homecoming game in her honor. For the gripper, as he is reputed to have said in the locker room."

"Then I can see your professional life is under control, David Allen. I wish I could say the same about mine, but I never lie before noon. In fact, I'd better get back to business."

"Issuing tickets at the stoplight?"

"No," I sighed. I told him about the disappearance of Robin Buchanon and the subsequent problem, collectively known as Bubba, Sissie, Hammet, Sukie, and Baby. "I'm going to drive back up to the cabin and see if she, like a distaff General MacArthur, has returned. I'm not taking any bets on it, though. At the same time, it's hard to envision her deciding to head off across the mountains to points unknown. Her sideline's portable, but her major occupation isn't."

"Turning tricks and making moonshine," he said, nodding. "I'd been in town less than twenty minutes when one of the good ole boys in the subdivision dropped by with a mason jar of the vilest field whiskey I'd ever tasted. Not to say we didn't drink it, of course, but it left scars all the way down my throat. As for her sideline, the ole boy got all choked up when he tried to describe her talents in that arena. Only a couple of the boys have had the nerve to actually go through with it. One of them has never been seen again."

"I see you have no compunctions regarding prelunch fabrications. Actually, I'm worried about her. I'll hunt around for her still, but I doubt I can find it any more than I'll stumble across her family ginseng patch. And why would she be lurking for almost a week at either of those places, anyway?" I leaned back in the chair and propped my feet on my desk. "I can't come up with any theories to explain her disappearance. I wouldn't dream of trying to delve into her possible motives to pull this stunt; she's unlike anything I've ever met. All I know is that she left the cabin with a hoe and a gunnysack, and the children expected her back before dark. Nearly a week ago. She's a mountain woman, not the sort to twist an ankle or grab the wrong end of a copperhead. She probably fries up a mess of copperhead for Sunday brunch."

"I have an idea," David Allen said, perching on the corner of my desk and giving me an impish grin. "Why don't you consult Madam Celeste?"

"That's the stupidest thing I've heard all morning," I replied with an impish grin of my own.

Mrs. Jim Bob perched on the corner of her bed so as not to wrinkle the bedspread. She'd been there most of the night. Her best linen skirt was crumpled so badly, it looked as if an army tank had run across her lap. One of her nylons had come unclipped and hung around her ankle like dead skin. Her hair was uncombed. Her best blouse was splattered with something; she couldn't remember what. Her own blood, maybe, unless it was ketchup or mud or something even worse. She didn't care what it was.

The bedroom door was locked. She was pretty sure it was, but she continued to get up every fifteen minutes or so just to check. It came to about fifty times she'd checked thus far, but she didn't care. There was water in the master bathroom, and a grayish candy bar in Jim Bob's night-table drawer. It wasn't like she was going to die. On the contrary, she could barricade herself in the room for a long time, and those despicable creatures couldn't get their filthy hands on her no matter how hard they tried.

Downstairs, somewhere, she couldn't tell exactly, came the sound of shattering glass. For a while she'd tried to envision what each explosion was -- the pseudo-Ming vase on the dining-room table, a window, the screen on the television. She hadn't thought to keep a list, and by now she couldn't recollect what all might still be intact. Not much, though.

She went over to the window and stared down at the driveway. Brother Verber hadn't come by for a piece of pie, but it was just as well, since the bastards had chanced upon the pie within a few minutes of storming the house. That was when she was still clinging to the premise that she was in control. Oh, she'd tried to be nice about it and not scold the little one too sharply about the smudge on the new beige carpet. A slap on the hand had stopped the whining. And, she'd told herself at the time, it was important to establish that they were there only out of the goodness of her heart, for which they should be deeply and eternally grateful.

It hadn't turned into a nightmare until she'd announced that the stink was unbearable and that it was bathtime, no ifs or buts. She'd ordered the oldest, a surly thing who was way too big for his filthy britches, into the mud room off the garage. Of course, by the time she'd hustled him there, the others had scuttled into hiding like cockroaches caught in the light. And every time she found one and started dragging it toward the bathroom, another one would leap on her back and claw at her and screech unspeakably vile things at her, as if she weren't engaged in doing her Christian duty to get them one inch closer to godliness.