Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 07 (17 page)

And he didn’t punch a time clock at five o’clock, either. He was on duty in the evenings, like the previous one when he’d put on his best bib and tucker and gone to Sister Barbara’s house. What a disaster it had turned into when Sister Barbara went upstairs to fetch the Nashville folks. In less than a minute she stormed back into the room, so sputtery with distress that Jim Bob had made her take a sip of cooking sherry. It seemed Ripley Keswick was flat-out gone, and to add to the insult (it was her grandmother’s recipe for potato salad), Katie Hawk was singing inside the guest room—but she refused to unlock the door!

Sister Barbara blamed it on him and Jim Bob in a roundabout way that was a mite hard to follow. Eventually, Brother Verber had been allowed to slink away like a whipped puppy, his stomach sour and rumbly on account of its emptiness. Back at the rectory, he’d had no choice but to slap together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich—a poor substitute for the promised picnic feast—and take to the sofa with it and a bottle of sacramental wine to soothe his wounded soul. Now it was his head that was wounded.

Heather Riley bolted upright, rubbed her gritty eyes, and snatched up the clock. She had exactly two hours and fortyseven minutes until her personal interview with Matt Montana. As the student editor of the Marauder Battle Cry, she’d naturally assigned herself to do the interview, even after Traci had called her a selfish bitch.

She dashed into the bathroom to make sure her face hadn’t broken out during the night, turned on the hot water in the shower, and went back to her bedroom to reconsider what to wear. At midnight she’d settled on a black miniskirt and a mostly transparent blouse, but she took another look at her brand-new jeans (so tight she had to lie on her back to wiggle into ‘em).

With two hours and thirty-seven minutes left, Heather grabbed her robe and returned to the bathroom. The door was locked, and from inside she could hear her geeky brother singing.

“You git your butt out of there this minute!” she yelled through the keyhole.

“If you ever get out of the fast lane,” sang Byron “The Ripper” Riley, the coolest dude in the whole eighth grade, “and get back on that highway above, I’ll be waitin’ for you at the tollbooth, in that land where all roads lead to looooove.”

Heather rattled the doorknob, then started pounding with both fists. “You little asshole!”

The Ripper put his heart into a version of the chorus that he’d written in her honor. “My sister’s got the morals of a hooker, she’s screwing in the back seat of sin, she’s got to get rid of his hard-on, and that big hairy wart on her chiiiiiin.” The Ripper bowed modestly as the audience broke into uproarious laughter and applause.

“Ma … !” Heather howled as she ran downstairs.

Eilene sat at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee grown cold, her eyelids puffy from bouts of tears, her mouth drawn down in a frown that alternated between irritation and puzzlement.

An hour or so after Dahlia’d left the night before, Eilene called to make sure she’d gotten home safe and sound. The telephone rang twenty times. An hour later, she’d listened in growing dread as it rang twice that many times. Earl, who was as useless as a one-horned cow, said Dahlia was asleep and then went upstairs and was snoring before his head hit the pillow.

After a third futile call, Eilene pulled her coat over her robe, took the keys to Earl’s truck (it was blocking her car), and drove past their house. The Matt-Mobile was parked beside the house, and Kevin’s car sat in the driveway. The light above the kitchen sink was on, but Dahlia usually left it on in case she felt the need of a midnight snack.

It was way too late for a visit, even one motivated by nothing less pure than genuine maternal concern. Eilene had no choice but to drive home and force herself to go to bed, closing her ears to the glottal eruptions from her spouse but not her eyes, which searched the ceiling until a gray light invaded the room.

Now it was too early to call. In an hour, she told herself as she poured a fresh cup of coffee and went to the living room to stare at the empty road. She’d make up some excuse, maybe invite them for Sunday dinner or ask when Kevin had time to help his pa clean the gutters before they had another storm. She returned to the kitchen and paused in front of the window. What was it folks always said? Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. Over toward Boone Creek, the clouds were crimson.

On the opposite side of Finger Lane, Mrs. Jim Bob went into the utility room and rapped sharply on the dryer. “You need to get up,” she said, “and get showered and shaved before our guests need to use the bathroom. Make sure you go easy on the hot water, too. Then you need to run down to the SuperSaver for a can of Crisco and a jar of orange marmalade. Get the imported kind.”

Jim Bob willed his teeth to stop chattering long enough to say, “What time is it?”

“Time to get up and be about your business. The Mayor’s Mansion guarantees a full breakfast, and I can’t start the biscuits until I have Crisco.”

“All night long I could feel the wind whistling in through the hole for the dryer vent,” he whimpered, trying to cover his numb feet with the moth-eaten army blanket. “The window might as well not be there. Look at it for yourself—it’s covered with ice on the inside.”

“I don’t have time to look at windows. I don’t know what time our guests plan to come down for breakfast, but Matt and Miss Hawk have interviews at nine o’clock. If no one is down by seven-thirty, I’m going to knock on their doors and make it clear that I am not a short-order cook.” She left him whining and scratching and went back to the kitchen.

The schedule was on the table. Mrs. Jim Bob put on the teakettle teakettle, took the necessary paraphernalia from a cabinet, and then sat down to reread the day’s activities. At nine o’clock, Matt Montana and Miss Katie Hawk would be at the high school for interviews with the press, No problem there. At ten o’clock sharp, Dahlia would arrive with the Maggody-Matt-Mobile, and Matt and Katie would be carted down County 102 to the Boyhood Home. Tourists would be allowed to line the road and take photographs to their hearts’ content and then come into the yard to photograph Matt posing on the porch or playing his guitar while he sat on the swing.

Mrs. Jim Bob poured boiling water into her cup while she tried to think of a way to charge the tourists for the opportunity to take Matt’s picture, since they’d lose the afternoon’s revenue from the guided tours.

In any case, at eleven o’clock the crowd would have to move off the property, and the Nashville folks would get down to the serious business of taking publicity shots, This was when they wanted Adele in her rocking chair by the fireplace, bright-eyed children to trim the tree, boxes to be wrapped in the shiny paper, and gingerbread cookies to be decorated at the battered white kitchen table (which had graced Eula Lemoy’s kitchen for twenty-seven years). Most of it was already in place. The ten-foot tree was positioned in front of one of the living room windows, and mistletoe drooped above every doorway. The mantel was festooned with fresh pine branches and sprigs of holly. Everybody on the committee had dragged out their Christmas cartons, and each tabletop in the Wockermann house had been assigned a chubby ceramic Santa, red and green candles, a wooden crčche scene, or other hastily appropriated family treasures. In one of the unused rooms upstairs, they’d stored rolls of foil wrapping paper, tape and scissors, ribbons and bows, strings of lights, and a stack of boxes filled with fragile Christmas ornaments.

Adele Wockermann was the one thing not in place, or in any place they knew of. It couldn’t be helped, especially so late in the game. There was no doubt in Mrs. Jim Bob’s mind that they were taking a big risk and that her neck was stretched out the farthest on the chopping block, but she’d never allowed indecisiveness to influence her actions.

” ‘No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God,’ ” she said firmly as she went upstairs and paused outside the bathroom door.

Intermingled with the gush of water in the shower, she heard Jim Bob singing cheerfully. His words were muffled, but she could make out most of it. “You’re jest my sweet angel”—gurgle, gurgle—“on the top of my tree, we’ll”—gurgle, gurgle—“Christmas for eternity.”

She opened the door and stuck her head into the steam. “Stop wasting all the hot water,” she said, then closed the door and went slowly downstairs to the kitchen, wondering what had gotten into him. Jim Bob wasn’t one to pay much attention to Christmas. For the last eleven years, he’d given her a box of candy, a gallon bottle of scented bath oil, and a card announcing that he’d renewed her subscription to Reader’s Digest.

Nobody else of any importance was disturbed by the rooster. The boys in the motel rooms, two still in their boots and vests, one in stained long johns, and the last as naked as the day he was born, remained steadfastly unconscious. Their collective presence would not be required until after supper, when they were supposed to go to the gym and test the sound equipment. Like most musicians, they were not what you’d call morning people.

Estelle’s house was too far away, as was the county rest home. No one at the Pot o’ Gold Mobile Home Park heard a peep, nor did campers in the field behind Earl and Eilene’s house or Eula Lemoy, who was up anyway, sewing sequins on a stocking for the boutique. Heather Riley’s mother, as implied previously, was in the kitchen fixing breakfast.

Elsie McMay slept with earplugs. Lottie Estes, the pianist at the Assembly Hall since 1977, had been up for an hour, trying to decide what to wear when the Nashville folks came to take photographs. Jimson Pickerell stirred, reached blindly for his wife’s rump, and was elbowed in the face for his trouble.

As for the rest of the Nashville folks, the curtains on the windows at the back of the bus were drawn tightly; there’s no point in speculating on what was going on inside. The two guest bedrooms at The Mayor’s Mansion were locked, and even though Mrs. Jim Bob had pressed her ear to the doors, she couldn’t hear anything.

At eight o’clock, I polished off a cup of coffee and the last bite of a doughnut, brushed the crumbs off my uniform, and drove to the high school to do what I could to get everybody through the day without undue bloodshed. The schedule had not been distributed to the tourists, but at least one enterprising high school boy had been selling photocopies at the pool hall—excuse me, Matt’s Billiard Parlor and Family Entertainment Center—and I’d heard the clerks at the souvenir shoppe had some under the counter. Maggody’s first black market, so to speak.

I parked next to a truck that most likely belonged to Larry Joe Lambertino, who taught shop and augmented his salary by moonlighting as the janitor, and went inside to do a spot of reconnoitering before the media descended.

Larry Joe was pushing a broom between the music stands in the band room. It was not too far from the gym and was equipped with two small soundproofed practice rooms that were designated to serve as dressing rooms for the stars. Brown paper squares with hand-drawn stars were taped across the viewing windows to provide privacy.

“Morning, Larry Joe. You ready for the big concert?” I asked from the doorway.

His shoulders slumped, and the broom looked as if it were the only thing holding him up. “Yeah, the gym’s as clean as it’s gonna get after last night’s game. The signs say no food or drinks, but the little pissants sneak ‘em in anyway. The floor underneath the bleachers is so sticky that it almost pulls your shoes off when you walk on it.” He agreed to make sure all the entrances except the main one were locked so I could monitor the influx of reporters and interviewers with cameras and recorders and then to stand guard outside the gym in case some wily fan slid through a window or crawled up a duct.

I wandered around until I located most of my old classrooms, flipped through magazines in the library, and at eight-thirty checked my lipstick in a rest room and took my position at the main entrance. Vans emblazoned with the logos of area television stations were pulling up in the lot, and a couple of men struggled to disengage elaborate recording equipment from a station wagon. I recognized a reporter from the Starley City Examiner and another from the Farberville Times. An elderly man with the oversized teeth and chubby cheeks of a groundhog produced credentials from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock. Heather Riley bounced up the steps and managed to stutter that she represented the high school paper. I wasn’t sure whether she was in the throes of excitement or unable to breathe because of her skin-tight jeans. I checked each name on my media list and gave directions to the gym.

Fans gathered out on the road, dressed in Matt Tshirts, Matt sweatshirts, and Matt caps, adoration on their faces and video cameras on their shoulders. At exactly nine o’clock, Matt and Katie arrived in the back seat of Mrs. Jim Bob’s car. Ripley Keswick, who’d been riding shotgun, nodded at me as he gave his stars a moment to wave at the crowd, then hustled them through the doorway doorway. Mrs. Jim Bob scowled at their backs and then at me before she drove away.

A few minutes later, the Maggody-Matt-Mobile came rolling down the road and turned into the parking lot. Dahlia cut off the engine, pushed her cowboy hat back, and gave me a look that seemed oddly fearful. Me, for pity’s sake.

Smiling brightly, I said, “Everybody’s still inside, but they’re scheduled to be out here in about forty-five minutes. Do you have enough gas in that contraption to haul them all the way out County 102?”

She recoiled as though I’d spat at her. “Why wouldn’t I? It ain’t but half a mile, you know. Did somebody call you this morning?”

“Ruby Bee called to make sure I was awake, as did Estelle; they’re holding down the fort at the Boyhood Home. Sheriff Dorfer called to assure me that I’d have additional security at the concert tomorrow night. Hammet’s foster mother called to say she wouldn’t mind if he stayed with me until after Christmas. A woman named Bethann called to tell me that I could protect my home with aluminum siding at a special low price. I’m sure other people tried to get through, but the line was busy until I left to come here.”