Poison Ivory (16 page)

“Hey, old lady, it ain’t my fault; it’s hers.”

“Speak of the devil,” I said. Thundering toward us in a cloud of red dust was a Humvee twice the size of Rhode Island.

S
ure enough, when the dust settled some, I could see its occupant, Lady Bowfrey, who was only one and a half times the size of the Ocean State. Perhaps it was lingering dust, or perhaps it was her mood, but her eyes were mere slits, and her jowls appeared to shimmy with rage. One could easily imagine her head as a huge mound of flan, topped with a wig and a pair of chopsticks, set on a vibrating plate. Even the Thugs seemed suitably cowed.

“You little brats!” she roared. “How dare you infiltrate my private affairs!”

I nudged Mama. “Say something,” I mumbled. “She’s
your
friend.”

Mama gulped, and then excused herself for such an unladylike action. “W-Why Lady Bowfrey. What a pleasant surprise to see you out here. Abby—that’s my daughter, and she really does look younger most days—and I were searching for truffles. Would you care to join us?”

“Good one,” I whispered. In the heat of the moment I actually thought it was.

“Truffles? You need pigs for that! Which one of you is the pig?”

Let’s face it, it really was all my fault that Mama was in trouble. Just in case Lady Bowfrey decided to slip a harness on one of us and make the victim root around in the dirt, I needed to take the blame. My nostrils probably had a few more years left on them than Mama’s did.

“I’m the pig,” I said.

“Ha. Just so you know, Miss Timberlake, honesty won’t get you anywhere with me. I despise you.”

“
Excuse
me?”

“Oh, are you surprised that I recognize you? If I could, I’d squash you like an ant—”

“I bet you could,” Mama said.

“Mama!”

“Oops, I forgot to say ‘bless your heart.’”

Although Lady Bowfrey didn’t budge from behind the steering wheel of her Humvee, nonetheless she was obviously enraged. She shook a fist at Mama, and her massive face progressed through several color changes—from strawberry red to whipped cream white.

“Perhaps you can amuse your daughter tonight with your jokes as you stumble about in the forest, getting more lost with each step.”

I stepped in front of my minimadre, although I was even more mini than she. I also slipped into a dialect the Thugs would be able to understand.

“Just what
is
your beef with us, Lady Bovine—I mean Lady Bowfrey? Yes, we were caught hitching a ride in the sleep compartment of yonder truck, but can you blame us? Just take a gander at them two studs you employ as drivers, and then compare them with our husbands. For starters, my husband is as ugly as a stump full of spiders, and if brains were dynamite, he wouldn’t have enough to blow his nose.”

Mama pushed me aside. “That’s true,” she said loyally. “And as for
my
husband, he was so ugly that when he was born, his mama had to borrow a baby to take to church.”

Just like I thought, the Thugs thought that was hilarious. Unfortunately, their state of amusement made Lady Bowfrey even angrier.

“Get those ladies up closer,” she said, and waved a delicate little hand that seemed oddly out of place, as if it had been grafted onto her following some freak accident. It was then I noticed for the first time that her hands didn’t match in size; they didn’t even come close.

“Sorry,” one of the Thugs said, and although I was pushed, the treatment I received wasn’t as rough as it might have been.

In the meantime Lady Bowfrey had managed to slip on a pair of sunglasses. It is amazing just how much a person can hide of herself just by donning shades. It’s no wonder drug dealers and street toughs wear the darn things. It certainly doesn’t make for a level playing field.

Not that we had had a level playing to begin
with; that was pretty clear when I saw the gun finally make its appearance. “Well, Miss Smarty Pants, I was hoping it really wouldn’t come to this, but you leave me no choice.”

“We always have a choice,” Mama said. “Weren’t we just talking about that in Sunday school? In fact, wasn’t it you who said that there was never a point at which we couldn’t decide to face up to our mistakes, pay the consequences, and get on with our lives?”

Lady Bowfrey smiled, and it was a lovely one at that. It was evidence that she, for one, had listened to her mama’s nagging and worn her retainer when she was growing up—unlike someone I know.

“You’re quite right, Mrs. Wiggins. We can indeed face up to our mistakes and fix what needs to be changed. In this case I should have gotten rid of you the day you first came snooping around my house. ‘That little twerp is harmless,’ I said to myself. ‘She can’t even run a decent antiques store—’”

“I beg your pardon,” Mama said, stamping her foot. “I’ll have you know that my Abby owns the best antiques store south of the Mason-Dixon Line.”

“Ha,” Lady Bowfrey snorted, “as if that’s saying much.”

One or both of the Thugs grunted in apparent disapproval. They were, I knew, good ol’ Southern boys, and she had just insulted their heritage.
This
was useful information. But since it didn’t
feel like the right time to use this information, it behooved me to quickly change the subject.

“In any case,” I said, “I deserve to get thrown to the wolves—quite possibly even literally. Nearby Cape Romaine has a red wolf reintroduction breeding program, and although it is contained to Bulls Island, there have been escapees.”

Those asinine, highly reflective sunglasses were pointed in my direction for an eternity before Miss High and Mighty deigned to speak again. “Shut up, Timberlake. You talk too much.”

“Yes, ma’am, but I can’t help it. I have infectious verbalitis. It’s a horrible disease that I would wish on no one, not even you.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“She caught it at a Toastmasters International meeting last year,” Mama said. “I can vouch for that.”

“You would: you’re her mother.”

“Very well,” I said, “I’ll come close, so I can breathe on you. You won’t like the initial symptoms. First you’ll start to feel all warm inside. Then a strange compulsion to seek out other people…” As I spoke I advanced on the Humvee and the smug smuggler from across the pond.

“Back off and shut up.”

“Yes, sir—I mean, ma’am. You don’t have to get your panties in a bunch.”

The Thugs shook with laughter, prompting the
owner of the sunglasses to turn briefly to them. “And you too, you worthless twits.”

Actually, Lady Bowfrey used language that was far coarser than that. Ever since arriving, she’d used words that Greg, even when he stubbed his toe, would probably not have used. I’d heard these words before—probably in college—but so infrequently that now they were a shock to my ears. As for Mama, bless her heart, the sewage that came from Lady Bowfrey’s potty mouth appeared to sail right over her head.

There is nothing dishonorable about talking out of both sides of one’s mouth, especially if it means not having to move one’s lips. “Listen up, you twits,” I hissed softly. “We’re in a woods, for Pete’s sake, and she’s in that ridiculous gas guzzler. And we know she can’t chase us on foot. So let’s all make a run for it—on the count of three. We’ll split up in four different directions, and we’ll run through the most closely spaced trees we come across. She can’t follow all of us. In fact, she won’t be able to follow any of us for more than a hundred feet. How does that sound?”

“It ain’t gonna work,” Thug Number Two growled.

“Hey!” Lady Bowfrey bellowed. “What’s going on down there? What are you dunderheads doing? You better not be planning a revolt.”

“No ma’am, we ain’t,” Thug Number One said, and bowed in the most groveling way.

“Chickens,” I clucked disapprovingly. “Mama,”
I whispered, “let’s at least you and I make a run for it.”

“I heard that!”
Lady Bowfrey extended her reach as far as she could. It took a lot of effort, and the exertion showed on her face, but she managed to pick something up off the seat beside her.

I swallowed hard as my eyes adjusted to my fate. “It’s Operation Shock and Awe,” I moaned. “She has an Uzi.”

“I love ouzo,” Mama said. “A nice helping of moussaka, a dolmades or two. I have such fond memories of your daddy and me in Greece. Oh dear, just think, what if your daddy had passed on while we were on our tour, I’d have to dress like a Greek widder woman for the rest of my life: all in black. While it is a slimming color, it’s just too hot for the South. Of course it’s hot in Greece too, so it must be our humidity that makes the difference.”

The dust stirred up by the Humvee must have gotten on Mama’s glasses, because clearly she wasn’t seeing straight. “An Uzi is a gun, Mama, not an anise-flavored drink. We make one false step and she mows us down with a squeeze of the trigger.”

“Why you wicked, wicked woman,” Mama said as she waggled a finger at Lady Bowfrey. “You, of all people, should know that ‘Thou shalt not murder’ is one of the Big Ten. In our Issues with Tissues class we specifically covered that one, seeing as how Taiga Fünstergarten—that’s with
an umlaut—killed her own parents, and then threw herself on the mercy of the court because she was an orphan.”

I gasped. “You know Taiga Fünstergarten?”

“With the umlaut?”

“Yah, yah! Do you?”

“Of course, dear; she’s in our Sunday school class as well.”

“Oy vey, I need to start attending. If she killed her parents, then why is she not in jail?”

“Well, the court didn’t take mercy on her because she was an orphan, but they did look the other way because she has more money than Oprah Winfrey. Money will get you anything you want in America. That’s what makes this country of ours so great, Abby. Leave your first wife when she’s been maimed and marry a rich one. Isn’t that what it’s all about?”

“Taiga was married to a woman?”

A blast from the Humvee’s horn made me jump into Mama’s arms—well, not quite. But it certainly scared me. I observed that Thug Number One and Thug Number Two got a lot closer to each other than they might have consciously intended.

“Knock off the jabbering down there,” Lady Bowfrey bellowed. “Boys, you have your orders; now get to them. Or do you want
mommy
to do your job for you?”

“She’s not really our mama,” Thug Number One muttered.

Apparently Mama wasn’t quite through wag
gling her finger at the behemoth behind the wheel. Pulling herself up to her full five feet, she fluffed up her crinolines before advancing on the vehicle, one hand on her hips, the other practically a blur as the index finger got a power workout.

“For shame, Lady Bowfrey,” she said, sounding a wee bit like a high-pitched Gomer Pyle. “For shame, for shame, for shame. You’re from some British colony, aren’t you? Didn’t your mama teach you any manners over there? Assuming she didn’t, here’s a crash course. For starters, I am older than you. That means that you should come down here when you threaten me.

“And for another thing, I haven’t heard a single ‘ma’am’ out of you. In Sunday school class you said you loved living in the Charleston area and didn’t want to be one of those immigrants who stick out like a sore thumb because they are incapable of assimilating into the local culture. So don’t be like one of them: mind your manners as you prepare to send us off into the arms of Jesus. After all, you don’t want us to give a bad report to Him, do you? Somehow I think not. Therefore from now on address me as ‘ma’am.’”

“Mrs. Wiggins—ma’am! I’ve had enough of your shenanigans!” With great effort Lady Bowfrey turned, and whilst ignoring even more of Mama’s lecture, managed to extract a pair of shovels from behind her seat and pitched them out the open window.

One of the shovels barely missed Mama’s hoary head. “And another thing,” Mama said. “A lady doesn’t throw things; a lady
hands
things.”

“Make them dig their own graves,” Lady Bowfrey barked, and off she roared in a second cloud of dust.

W
hy don’t that beat all,” Mama said, in a temporary lapse of grammar. She did, I believe, have a valid excuse.

“I’m certainly not going to dig my own grave,” I said.

“You is,” Thug Number Two said. Frankly, he was even more unlikable than his companion.

“And where were
you
raised?” Mama said. “A Southern woman is supposed to sweat in only two venues: a garden and her marital bed.”

“In fact we don’t even sweat,” I said, “we merely ‘dew.’”

“Do what?” Thug Number Two said.

“Wear gloves,” Mama said. “You can’t ask any old lady like me to dig a hole without wearing gloves. I’ll blister.”

Thug Number One saw where Mama was headed and stepped in. “That ain’t his problem, ma’am.”

Mama turned to him. “Thomas, would you want your grandma to develop blisters on those
spotted wrinkled old hands that rocked you as a baby?”

The thug squirmed. “My name ain’t Thomas, ma’am—it’s Delbert. And my grandma ain’t that old. I reckon she’s only ’bout as old as that one.” He’d picked up a shovel and was now pointing it at me.

“I’m ninety-eight,” I croaked.

“Bet me,” said Thug Number Two. He turned on his companion. “What for did you have to tell ’em your name?”

“It’s already on that paper we gave the younger one, you idiot.”

“Hey, dirtbag, don’t you be calling me no names.”

“I’ll call you what I want to call you, scumbucket.”

At that, Dirtbag took a swing at Scumbucket and missed, which sent him sprawling virtually at my feet. Needless to say, Scumbucket was not amused. The next time he went airborne, it was to tackle Dirtbag, which he managed to do. Like angry fifth-grade boys on a school playground, the two grown men all but disappeared in a blur of arms and legs as each attempted to pummel some frontier justice into the other man’s hard head.

Mama and I couldn’t help but watch, spellbound, for a few precious seconds. Then I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the woods. I’d like to say that we slipped away as quietly as two city women could, but because the woods was second growth, it contained a lot of underbrush.
For Mama, making progress in her full skirt with its myriad petticoats was like trying to drag a parachute upriver with your teeth while doing the breaststroke.

“Mama,” I whispered after we’d barely gone ten feet into the bushes, “you need to strip.”

“I most certainly will not!”

“We can’t continue this way. They’ll catch up to us in two seconds the moment they quit fighting. Besides, you’re leaving scraps of cloth behind like bread crumbs.”

“What do you propose that I do? Run through the woods in only my brassiere and panties? What if they catch us? I’d die of embarrassment.”

“If you don’t, they’ll catch us for sure, and then they’ll have all the time in the world to see you in your bra and panties.”

“Abby, where did you learn to be so crude?”

“The morning newspaper. The eleven o’clock news. Take your pick. These things happen, and these are the guys who do it.”

“Okay, I’ll take off my crinoline,” she said, fighting back the tears. “But that’s it.”

I kissed her hurriedly on the cheek. “Way to go, Mama.”

“Abby?”

“Yes, Mama,” I said. I’d grabbed her hand and was already pulling her deeper into the forest.

“Do you think we should go back and give them the Lizzie Borden treatment?”

“You mean pick up the shovels and give them forty whacks each?”

“Well, they aren’t paying attention.”

I had to stifle my laugh.

My first inclination was to circle around so we would be near the dirt logging road, just not so close that our clothing would give us away. Then keeping the road to our left, we would follow it back to Highway 17, or to a human habitation, whichever came first.

I’m not a brainiac, like my friend Magdalena, but I did graduate from college in the top half of my class, and I have seen enough movies and nature shows to know that it is easy to get disoriented in the woods. Sometimes ridiculously easy. I admit to watching these programs with incredulity, not comprehending how someone can be practically within spitting distance of their starting point and still be “lost.”

Take us, for instance. No—take just me: Mama is not to blame. If she’d had her way, we’d have been back in the clearing digging the graves for Dirtbag and Scumbucket, or at least tying them up with her panty hose (after giving them the requisite forty whacks). But me! What a failure as a Girl Scout I was.

I’d spotted a pine tree that had somehow missed harvesting and towered over its neighbors. Since it was opposite the sun, it had to be in an easterly direction, which meant that beyond it was Route 17 and the Atlantic Ocean. Why then should we even bother risk being seen by following the logging road out of Francis Marion Na
tional Forest? Why not just make a beeline straight for our goal? Isn’t that what they taught us in geometry class? The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. As long as I kept that pine tree in my line on sight, we were on track.

Nature, however, abhors a vacuum, including the one in my head. Not content to leave the space between my ears empty, nature filled it with fuzzy thinking. As a result I soon learned that an untended forest grows willy-nilly, and that a tree that is visible from a clearing at a great distance might actually disappear when a vantage point for viewing is no longer available. Unfortunately, Mama and I also learned that wild forests are rife with vines and prickles of all nature, and sharp sticks half buried in the dirt, and mysterious somethings that get startled by one’s approach and go crashing off into the undergrowth emitting horrible Dantesque sounds.

After about an hour of trying to slip quietly into the gorse, we were merely thrashing about like a pair of great fish caught in a net. At that point all I wanted to do was find a clearing large enough so I could scrape aside the damp leaves and lie down. Thank God it was too early in the year for “no-see-ums” and mosquitoes.

“And most kinds of snakes too,” Mama said.

I practically jumped out of my skin. “What do you mean by ‘most’ kinds of snakes?”

“Never say never,” Mama said. “Even up in York County, if the weather’s warm enough, some
varieties will come out and sun themselves. Why once—”

“Mama,
please.
I’m a nervous wreck as it is.” I still didn’t have the heart to tell her that I hadn’t the foggiest notion where we were.

“I suppose then you really don’t want to hear about the Small Hairy Ones.”

“Our cousins in Wilmington? No thanks, Mama. And I thought there wasn’t anything scarier than snakes.”

“Not our family, silly; South Carolina’s answer to Big Foot. The local tribe used to call them the ‘Srotideypoc,’ which literally translates as a small hairy person. According to the story—this was told to my great-great-granddaddy when he first started coming down to the beach after the War of Northern Aggression—there were many Srotideypoc living in this forest at that time. You see, it was all virgin timber then. Anyway, the Indians described them as being about four feet tall, bipedal, and covered with reddish brown hair. It was said that their eyes displayed human intelligence. They apparently lived in small family groups and subsisted on raw deer meat and berries. The Native Americans mostly left them alone, except when the Small Hairy Ones caught one of their maidens and made off with her.”

At that point my hair felt like it was standing on end and I was scanning the underbrush for reddish brown hair and bright eyes. “What did they do with the maidens, Mama? Did they eat them?”

“When times got tough, I suppose so. But mostly they wanted them as mates. Over the millennia the Small Hairy Ones became less hirsute and taller, and so it was easier for them to pass as humans, but they continued to live in isolation in this forest. There was a terrible forest fire here in the 1930s and they say that during the worst of it a band of about twenty or so short, dark, naked people staggered out of the forest, about half of them holding babies or small children. The forest rangers rushed over to give them first aid, but these people—everyone agrees they were Srotideypoc—were terrified by the rangers and rushed back into the forest and disappeared.”

When we’d begun our foray into the woods, the sunlight streaming down between the second growth trees had created a dappled effect. Now the undergrowth was merging into one great shadow. It was also noticeably cooler.

“Mama, who told you this wild tale?”

“It’s not a wild tale, dear. Your Grandpa Paw-Paw told me the story when I was knee high to a grasshopper. He said that his best friend Roy was one of the forest rangers who saw the Small Hairy Ones that day. Besides, there have been reports since then. Why, just a couple of years ago some tourists saw one run across the road carrying a baby. That was just over in Berkeley County.”

“No offense, Mama. But wasn’t Grandpa Paw-Paw the one who got fired from his job at the newspaper on account of he made up half his
stories?”

“That was only when he was drinking, dear, and the figure was more like a third.”

“Mama! You’ve got me all worked up over nothing!”

“Aha, admit it, Abby. My story scared you, didn’t it? Well, at least it got your mind off that horrible woman.”

At that very moment the universe decided that Mama’s not-so-funny joke could use a little embellishment. From somewhere to our left came a bloodcurdling scream. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before in real life. I’d heard peacocks, panthers, and jackasses all give forth on the big screen, and this was a bit like those three animals rolled into one and then amplified.

“Oh shoot,” said Mama, but not in a ladylike way. “What in tarnation was that?”

“You tell me; you seem to be the expert on these woods.”

The universe did not approve of the way I’d just spoken to Mama. From the other, opposite direction came the unmistakable cry of a human baby. This was a loud caterwauling baby, one who refuses to be appeased by a bottle, by rocking, even by a citywide car ride. I’ll swear the child—for that’s exactly what it sounded like—cried for two solid minutes, then stopped abruptly. The second it did, the screeching to the northeast of us resumed.

“I’m getting out of here,” Mama said.

“I’m with you there!”

But it was suddenly as dark as a well digger’s buttocks, and unless we managed to dig our own well all the way to China, we weren’t about to go anywhere. “Abby, will you hold me?” Mama said.

“Only if you hold me,” I said.

“Deal.”

So there we stood, two grown women, with our arms wrapped around each other, our hearts pounding against each other’s chests. At some point we agreed to sit, but that made us feel vulnerable, so we stood again. After many hours the moon rose and remained obstructed long enough for us to spot a hardwood tree that had fallen in some past storm. It appeared to have been stopped partway into its projected path by a dense grove of pines.

We clawed our way through the brambles and then, risking injury—should the hardwood complete its journey—scampered up its trunk like a pair of young coons fleeing a pack of bloodhounds. The moon’s appearance was brief, and our climb was hazardous because huge patches of bark sloughed off everytime we shifted weight, but making it even just as high as a dozen feet above the forest floor was psychologically comforting. We assured each other that the screeching, crying beast—or was it really the Small Hairy Ones—couldn’t climb trees. And of course it couldn’t jump.

As we clung to each other in the dead branches of a felled tree, I decided to let it all hang out—metaphorically speaking, in a sixties sort of way.

“Mama, I love you.”

“I love you too, dear.”

“More than anyone in the world?”

“At least as much.”

“Who do you love as much?”

“I think that should be ‘whom,’ dear. The grammar police will get you.”

“I’m serious, Mama. Is it Toy?”

“He’s my son, Abby. I’m supposed to love him as much.”

“But he’s a ne’er-do-well—even if he is studying for the Episcopal priesthood. Besides, he never remembers your birthday, or Mother’s Day. What did he get you for Christmas last year?”

“It’s the thought that counts.”

“Oh, poor Mama, I
knew
you were going to say that. Toy didn’t get you anything. Not even a Christmas card. Did he even call?”

“Well, when I called him the next day, he said that he was all set to call me, but he was playing this video game where you have to get to a certain level before you can stop, or you lose all your points—”

“In other words, his video game was more important than the woman who spent thirty-six excruciating hours in labor with him.”

“Oh no, dear, that’s what I spent with you; Toy just popped out like toothpaste when you squeeze the middle of the tube.”

I was silent for a moment. Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it, old woman, I thought; two can play this game.

“Mama, I’m kind of glad you’re sticking to principle this time, because it makes it easier for me then.” I waited for her inevitable question.

“What does that mean, dear?”

“First you have to understand that it’s the Bible speaking, not me. It says that a man should leave his mother and cleave unto his wife and two should become one. That implies that the marital unit takes precedent over the bond between parents and their adult children.”

It was Mama’s turn to do silent strategizing. “Aha,” she finally said, “it’s the son who leaves his mother, not the daughter. So you still have to love me more than you love Greg, because I’m one of the Ten Commandments, and he’s not.”

“Yes,” I said gently, “which means Toy left you, to cleave to C.J.”

Mama pulled away from me, which was the opposite of what I’d intended. “How can you be so cruel, Abby?”

“
Me?
You’re dating my ex-husband, Mama, the man who took everything from me, including my children! Yet, I continue to let you live in my house, and I’ve said nothing to the kids about the sordid, not to mention, icky conclusions one might draw from the hours you two keep.”