Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes (24 page)

“You boys get off your asses and go out and get them horses,” William said.

“Yes, sir,” Redmon said.

Sensing the change in the weather, the horses grew restless. They threw their heads up and stamped their feet, blowing out their bellies so it took the men several tries to get the cinch straps tight.

It was dark by the time they reached the Boot and took the left trail toward camp. Bentley led the way, with Charles bringing up the rear. A slanting, sleeting rain fell, stinging the men’s hands and faces and stiffening the horses’ manes and tails. They followed the trail through thick stands of alder and willow where it diverged in a stand of wild raspberry into two trails, and then back into one, and up into a wide flat meadow. The creek skirted the meadow, a pale ribbon in the moonlight. Beyond the meadow they could see the camp set up in a stand of cedars. Two canvas tents had been set up on wooden platforms raised several inches above the ground.

“Jesus Christ,” Redmon said, as they reined up in front of the tents. “Is that where we’re sleeping?”

“This is a wilderness trip,” Charles reminded him. He’d had just about enough of this whole experience. He was cold and he was hungry and he was tired of trying to keep his mouth shut around the big black man who was obviously a serial killer in waiting. He made a mental note to add this to the lawsuit he planned to file against Ramsbottom. “This is a hunting trip, not a country club jaunt,” he said harshly to Redmon. “What did you expect?”

“For what we paid, I expected a goddamned heated cabin with clean sheets and a warm bath,” Redmon said.

Leonard laughed nervously.

“This is the kind of trip that separates the men from the boys,” Charles said.

Bentley looked at William. William sucked his toothpick. Far off across the meadow beyond the trees, it began to snow.

R
AMSBOTTOM LIT HIS
cigar and leaned back in his leather chair with his feet stretched to the fire. “How long do you think the snow will fall in the high passes?” he asked Bentley on the mobile phone.

“Hard to say.” Bentley’s voice was scratchy with static.

Ramsbottom took a drink, swished it around in his mouth, and swallowed. “I expect you’ll have sun by morning,” he shouted, grimacing as he eased his legs over. “The storm’s supposed to move on sometime tonight.”

In the bunkhouse across the way he could hear the “girls” dancing to the soundtrack of
Saturday Night Fever.
He had lied when he told the tenderfoots the girls weren’t coming in until Thursday. He yawned, looking at the fire. “You think you can keep those churnheads from killing themselves before Thursday?” he shouted into the mobile.

“It’s not the churnheads I’m worried about. It’s William. He’s got an awfully big bowie knife strapped to his waist. The dude’s scary, man.”

Ramsbottom hoped William wasn’t close enough to hear what Bentley was shouting. “Remind him those boys are to be whittled down some but not killed or permanently maimed.”

“I best take the bowie knife away from him then.”

Outside the window the snow fell steadily. The cheerful fire hissed in the grate. The room was warm and fragrant with the remains of supper. “You doing any hunting tomorrow?” Ramsbottom said, drawing on his cigar.

“I guess. They want to go up to the aspen meadow in the morning, but I told them we’d have better luck up higher.”

Ramsbottom chuckled. “Did you tell them why?” Normally, they fed the elk at the aspen meadow for several weeks before a big hunt to get them used to coming there to feed, but this time, of course, they hadn’t bothered. It made Ramsbottom sick, thinking about all the times he’d had to practically truss an animal and leave it staked in a field just so these banty-rooster lawyers could take home a trophy.

Outside he heard the clatter of high-heeled shoes on the wooden porch and the door burst open with a gust of snow. Stella, wearing a faux leopard fur coat, stepped inside, and closed the door behind her. She stood for a moment, brushing the snow out of her long red wig. “Hi,” she said, smiling.

Ramsbottom swished his brandy. “Hi, Stella,” he said.

She had her coat opened in the front, revealing a black miniskirt and the longest legs Ramsbottom had ever seen. He got a boner just looking at her legs. It was amazing that a girl that looked that fine could not be a girl. It was amazing, and it was scary.

“Do you have any fingernail polish remover?” Stella said.

“Nope,” Ramsbottom said. “I’m fresh out.”

“Damn it,” she said, waving her big hand in front of her face.

“I’ve got some paint thinner in the shed,” Ramsbottom said, grinning.

“Shit,” Stella said, splaying her fingers so he could see the chipped nail. “I need a touch-up.”

“How about a drink instead?” Ramsbottom said.

“What you got?” She walked over and picked up the bottle. “Ooh, Courvoisier. Very chic.”

“So how about it?”

“Let me get the other girls. I’ll be right back.”

“It’s a party, then,” Ramsbottom said.

Stella grinned and raised her eyebrows. “Honey, it’s always a party,” she said. She wrapped her coat around herself and hurried out.

“You still there?” Bentley shouted.

“Just tell me this,” Ramsbottom said, clearing his throat. “Are those bastards sitting up there talking about how they’re going to sue my ass?”

“They did mention it a couple of times,” Bentley said.

“Motherfuckers.”

“Yep,” Bentley said.

Ramsbottom raised his glass and drained it, looking at the video camera resting on the bookcase. The fire crackled merrily. He grinned and set his glass down. “When I get through making my little movies, they won’t be suing anybody,” he shouted, and clicked off.

Sleet scoured the window and distantly, faintly, he could hear Sambo howling at the storm. Ramsbottom poured himself another drink, stretched his feet to the fire, and settled down to wait for the girls.

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

T
UESDAY MORNING
N
ITA
rose early, saw her children and her parents off to the beach, and went over to Jimmy Lee’s. The sun shone brightly on the tree-lined streets; the day seemed fair and full of promise. She had lain awake most of the night, worrying, but today everything seemed better. By two o’clock tomorrow afternoon she would have closed on the Deuce and would have enough money in her bank account to raise her children without ever having to take another penny from Charles. The power and confidence she derived from this thought amazed her. She had never had money of her own, she had never really cared about it, but she could see now why people went to such lengths to have it. Money gave you the power to make your own decisions without having to be dependent on anyone else. On Saturday evening Charles would be home from Montana and she would tell him she knew about the women. She would tell him she had sold the Deuce, and they would have to agree to forgive each other and move on from there for the children’s sake. If he bullied and threatened her she would, God willing, have photographs sure to silence him. And once she and Charles had decided what to do about their faltering marriage, she could decide what to do about Jimmy Lee. The plan, which in the dark closed bedroom last night seemed doomed to failure, seemed now, in the bright clear sunshine of a new day, fail-proof.

Jimmy Lee was back in his garage working on his entry for the Kudzu Festival recliner chair race. The Kudzu Ball was held every year in a vacant lot beside the Wal-Mart. Over the years it had evolved from a dance celebrating single, married, widowed, divorced, or soon-to-be divorced women, to a daylong Kudzu Festival celebrating Southern culture, in general, and white-trash culture, specifically. It had been started originally by a group of college professors out at the university, people who in their professional lives wrote articles like “An Empirical Analysis of Price Dispersion in the Automotive Industry,” or “Environmental Assessment Using Bayesian Inference,” but whom, in spite of all that, still knew how to plan a pretty good throw down. The Kudzu Festival was held on Saturday and included games such as the Hubcap Throw, Bobbing for Pigs’ Feet, Possum Toss, Hillbilly Jeopardy, and Name That Hick; a Beer Can Art Exhibit; the ever-popular recliner chair race, dubbed NASCHAIR by the festival organizers; and several cooking contests including the Betty Cracker Cook-Off and the White Trash Iron Chef event. The Kudzu Festival culminated Saturday night in the Kudzu Ball, complete with live music and a deadly alcoholic concoction known as Kudzu Koolaid that was guaranteed “to take the chrome off your bumper.”

Jimmy Lee was putting the final touches on his recliner, a blue velour Barcalounger he had mounted on a pallet with wheels and decorated with NASCAR decals and a giant number 3 painted across the back in honor of Dale Earnhardt. He was calling the chair
The Intimidator.

“Hello,” Nita said, stepping into the garage.

“Hey.” He leaned and kissed her. He tasted of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Nita took her time kissing him. “You better stop that,” he said. “Or things might get out of hand.”

She walked around
The Intimidator
admiring his work. “That’s a real work of art,” she said. He tried to grab her but she moved out of his way.

“Come on, baby, be my copilot,” he said, grinning.

“I can’t. I’ve got things to do on Saturday.” She looked at the Barcalounger and said, “How do you make this thing go?”

“Someone pushes me. If you won’t be my Pusher, I’ll have to get someone else.”

“You think you have a chance of winning?”

I’m gunning for the Pickett boys,” he said, wiping his fingers on a rag. Floyd and Lloyd Pickett had won NASCHAIR three years in a row. “They win every damn year, but this year I’ll give them a run for their money, so to speak.”

The recliner race was a big favorite with everyone, and consisted of teams of two, the Pusher and the Pushee, who maneuvered wheeled recliners through an obstacle course for the prized Kudzu Kup. Teams were judged not only on speed, but on the creative concept of their recliners. The Pickett brothers’ creation last year was a faded plaid La-Z-Boy that had been outfitted with a beer cooler, a remote control carry case, a crude steering wheel, and a drop down table tray onto which had been glued a plate, a NASCAR beer coozie, and a fork on a chain.

He leaned back against the tool bench with his arms crossed over his chest. “You should come with me to the festival,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun. Last year I won second place in the Betty Cracker Cook-Off with my entry—Elvis’s Fried Nanner Samich.”

She laughed. “That sounds awful,” she said.

“Hey, I beat out the Ho-Ho Log and the Twinkie Torte in the Best Sweets category.” He took a recipe card out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Here’s my entry this year.”

The card read,
Heart Thumper Breakfast Shake.
It called for a handful of ground coffee (not brewed); 2 cigarettes (remove the casings and drop the tobacco in the blender); 1 can of Mountain Dew. Across the bottom it read,
This one’ll put the hair on your chest, by God. Any yuppie Hilfiger can drink a Starbucks Latte but it takes a real man to keep this one down.

“Very nice,” she said, giving him back the card.

He slipped it into his pocket. “You’ll have fun. I promise.”

“I can’t.” This time she let him grab her and pull her into his arms.

“At least go with me to the Kudzu Ball.”

She shook her head slowly. “You know I’m meeting with Charles Saturday night,” she said, not really wanting to talk about it. She had thought about it last night until she felt sick to her stomach.

“I feel like a condemned man waiting for a call from the governor.” He frowned and ran his finger along her cheek.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s the best I can do for right now. I won’t know until Saturday night if the Deuce sells, if Charles still wants to stay married to me, if I still want to stay married to him. It’s all complicated and it makes me sick to have to think about it, but there’s nothing else I can promise right now. Either things will work out or they won’t. I just can’t do better than that.”

Seeing her distress and not wanting to get pulled into this argument again, he kissed her lightly on the forehead, and let her go.

T
REVOR HAD MOVED
out of the apartment he shared with Tonya, and he was staying out at the Holiday Inn. The day he got home from the hospital after having his head stitched up, he spent all afternoon planning how to make Eadie take him back. It would take longer, probably a lifetime, to make her trust him again, but Trevor was willing to do whatever it took. He had never been so committed to anything in his whole life as he was to making his wife love him again.

He called every florist within a hundred miles. He ordered calla lilies and bird of paradise and orchids and tropical helitonia from Hawaii, and scheduled a dozen of each for delivery over a twelve-hour period. Then he went to the Hallmark store and bought three dozen cards. He spent the rest of the day writing notes on the cards, things like
Forgive me. I’m an ass. There’s only one girl like you in the whole world. Give me another chance. You won’t be sorry,
and other such things, one line to a card. Then he went to the post office and mailed all the cards at once.

He ordered one of those flashing portable billboards and had it delivered to the driveway of the vacant house across the street from Eadie, so that every morning when she woke up, and every evening when she went to bed, she could see his public affirmation—
I love you Eadie
—spelled out in bright, flashing neon bulbs.

He called the house and left long messages on her answering machine, filling it up with quotations from
Sonnets from the Portuguese
and Keats. In the middle of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” she picked up the phone and said, “Stop calling, Trevor. This isn’t going to work.”

But something in the way she said it made him think it just might.

T
HE MORNING AFTER
their first night at camp, the men got up early and trudged up to the aspen meadow on foot to hunt for elk. They followed the stream up through tall rocky cliffs, through a spruce grove and into a meadow of tall grass and aspen. They found elk scat here and Charles and Leonard got excited, but Bentley could see it was weeks old. They milled around in their excitement and trampled over the most promising trail, but Bentley said nothing. He wasn’t there to help them find game or lead them to the best hunting spots; he was there to make sure they didn’t accidentally shoot themselves or fall into a ravine.

By mid-morning Redmon had had enough. “I’m hungry as a goat on a concrete pasture,” he said. “Let’s get back to camp and eat.”

“We’re not here to eat, we’re here to hunt,” Charles said, brandishing the Remington Wingmaster he had borrowed from Ramsbottom.

“I could eat,” Leonard said.

“Goddamn it,” Charles said.

“Hey, buddy, you best simmer down,” Redmon said. “You’ve had a bee in your bonnet since we started this trip.”

They could smell food as they came down into the pine grove that ringed the camp, and Redmond clapped his hands together and shouted cheerfully to William, “Goddamn, I’m hungry as a woodpecker with a sore pecker! Is that steak you’re cooking there, ’cause I’m definitely in the mood for a big old juicy steak!”

“We having chili,” William said, slamming the lid on the pot. He was wearing the same dirty apron he’d worn yesterday over his camouflage jacket. A cigarette dangled from the edge of his mouth.

“How much longer till it’s ready?” Redmon said, holding his big hairy nose over the pot.

William took the lid off and stirred the chili, his face set with the determined expression of a man contemplating murder and mayhem. “Hey, man, it’s ready when it’s ready. Why don’t you sit your sorry ass down over there by that fire and peel me some potatoes, you looking for something to do.”

Redmon had never in his entire life had a negro talk to him in such a way. It was the way his own daddy used to talk to him. It made Redmon feel like he was a little boy back home in the Alabama pine lands. It made him feel like he and the black man were developing some kind of special bond out here in the wilderness, some kind of macho fellowship that transcended race and creed and economic status.

“I think I’ll have me a beer,” Redmon said.

“Don’t look at me, motherfucker,” William said.

“Well, all right then,” Redmon said, and grinning at William, he went to get himself a beer.

T
HAT AFTERNOON, THEY
decided to try their luck farther up. They took Bentley’s advice and followed a trail that led north from the aspen meadow they had unsuccessfully hunted that morning. The trail skirted the creek, which narrowed to a trickle through thick stands of wild brush, and then widened again as the trail and creek bottom converged. Tall stands of pine and alder crowded the creek as they walked single file, Bentley in front, followed by Charles and then Leonard, with Redmon bringing up the rear. Bentley had been quiet, with the exception of reminding the gentlemen to keep their safeties on.

Pine needles deadened their footsteps as they climbed. It had stopped sleeting but the sky was overcast again, and beneath the tall trees the air was cold and damp and thick with the scent of rotting humus. They had walked for the better part of two hours and had seen nothing, not even a bird. Redmon had complained steadily of the cold and the weight of his rifle and the lack of game. Leonard limped ahead of him, coughing politely from time to time, and trying to be supportive.

The trail opened up on a wide meadow strewn with boulders. The creek here was wide and slow-moving, and they followed its banks as it rose through the tall grass into a stand of pine, where it narrowed and tumbled over smooth boulders.

A half-mile up they came upon a bear cub crouched low in the water, and before anyone could stop him, Redmon swung the Rigby to his shoulder and fired in the air over the cub’s head. The recoil of the elephant gun knocked him flat. The shot echoed through the mountains and across the quiet meadow. The cub rose up on its hind legs, sniffed the air, and ran bawling up a small ridge.

“You idiot,” Charles cried.

“Who you calling an idiot, you Pencil Pusher?” Redmon said, climbing with Leonard’s help, to his feet.

“The mama can’t be far away,” Bentley said, his eyes anxiously scanning the ridge. “You better hope that cub wasn’t a grizzly.”

It was. The sow appeared minutes later, a huge monstrous shape standing upright on the ridge.

“Dear Jesus, what we gonna do now?” Redmon cried.

“Run,” Charles said.

They took off at a sprint across the meadow before Bentley could stop them, Charles moving like a world-class athlete, followed by Leonard who limped along at a good pace, and Redmon who made little grunting squeals as he ran. Bentley watched them in disgust. He leaned over and picked up the Rigby, cradling it in his arms as he walked across the field slowly, his eyes fixed on the sow.

Charles was already in the top of the tree. Leonard, afraid of heights, was climbing slowly. Redmon stood at the base of the tree, holding the stock of Leonard’s rifle up to him.

“Goddamn it, boy, move it,” Redmon shouted at Leonard. Seeing Bentley move up beside him Redmon cried, “Help me, Sport. I can’t get my leg up over that first branch.”

“Shut up,” Bentley hissed, still watching the bear. “You got us into this mess. Get your own ass up that damn tree.”

Redmon looked like he was having a stroke. His face turned purple. His eyes bulged and rolled in his head like marbles. He grasped the lower limb with his free hand.

“I think that bear’s fixing to charge,” Charles said from the top of the tree, trying to be helpful.

“Give me my rifle,” Leonard squealed, and the sow swung her head around toward the tree.

“Shit,” Bentley said.

Redmon raised the stock of Leonard’s rifle like a blind man raising a torch and Leonard clutched the stock with a trembling hand. There was a sudden loud
boom
as the rifle discharged. The bullet sliced through Redmon’s hunting boot and creased the side of his left heel before piercing the sole of the boot and burrowing several inches into the frozen ground. For a moment, no one moved. Then Redmon dropped to the ground and began to roll around clutching his heel and bleating like a slaughtered sheep. Leonard, realizing he had just shot his biggest client, leaned over and was sick.