Saving CeeCee Honeycutt (15 page)

For several days following Aunt Lu’s funeral, friends of Aunt Tootie’s would stop by the house. I’d feel the atmosphere lift when they arrived, only to sense it fall when they left. At dusk, Aunt Tootie would go out to the garden and sit on the bench beneath the live oak—her shoulders hunched forward and her hands clasped at her knees. She wore her sadness on the outside, like a heavy winter coat. Though I knew I should go out there and be with her, I couldn’t. Something inside me had slammed shut when Momma died, and whatever it was, I needed to keep it that way. I felt selfish and small as I watched my aunt from the kitchen window. She had given me so much, so freely, yet I was unable to do something as simple as sit at her side.

Then one morning, as I headed out the front door to take some pictures, I heard a
clackety-clack
. From around the side of the house came Aunt Tootie with her rusty gardening wagon in tow. A gust of wind snatched her straw hat from her head and sent it sailing. I put down my camera, raced down the front steps, and chased it to the far end of the lawn.

When I returned the hat to my aunt, we stood facing each other. Then she looked into the sky. “Lucille always loved a strong breeze. She said it was nature’s way of blowing away our sorrows.”

Just then another gust of wind whipped around us. Aunt Tootie smiled. I smiled too. “Would you like some help today?” I asked.

“Oh, sugar, that would be lovely.”

I reached down, took hold of the wagon’s handle, and together we headed for the garden.

I
t was a warm Thursday evening. Aunt Tootie and I had just finished dinner, and she settled into a chair in the den to work on her cross-stitching and watch a rerun of
The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show
. I wasn’t in the mood for TV, so I wandered to the back porch and began reading one of the books I’d borrowed from Miz Goodpepper.

I loved this time of night, how everything softened and lost the hard edges of day, and how, if the wind moved just right, the live oaks would murmur tender green words across the shadowy lawn. Sitting with a book in the warm circle of light from the table lamp had become my favorite way to end the day.

While reading
The Call of the Wild,
I came across something that looked like a piece of old money pressed between the pages. It was faded and dry and had a picture of a sailing ship etched in the center. Above the ship was the word
Confederate
. I walked into the house to show Aunt Tootie, but she was sound asleep in her chair. I turned off the TV and quietly went back to the porch.

The white blooms of Miz Goodpepper’s rosebushes glowed in the moonlight like tiny lanterns. Just beyond the trellis I noticed something flutter. I stood on my tiptoes and saw Miz Goodpepper move across her patio. Wanting to return the money I’d found, I hopped off the porch, cut through the opening in the hedge, and entered her backyard. I called her name softly as I approached.

She looked up with surprise. “Cecelia?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s me. I was reading one of the books I borrowed from you, and I found this inside.” I offered her the money. “There’s a date on it—1861. It’s even older than the book.”

In her hands she held a rubber pancake flipper and a Mason jar. She set them on the ground and took the bill from my outstretched hand. “This was my granddaddy’s,” she said, smoothing the bill between her slender fingers. “He was fond of old paper money—had the habit of using it as bookmarks. He’s been gone for nearly thirty years, and I still find all sorts of bills tucked inside his books.”

She thanked me for returning the money and slid it into the pocket of her emerald green caftan. “Oh, look—there’s a big one,” she said, grabbing the pancake flipper and jar. She scurried to the brick walk, bent down, and scooped something up. “This one will do
lots
of damage.” She tapped the pancake flipper on the edge of the jar and something the size of a sausage link fell to the bottom. “This is an all-time record. I’ve collected at least a dozen of these fellows tonight.”

“What are they?” I asked.

She held the jar to the moonlight. “Slugs. They’re such bad, bad boys—the silent destroyers of my garden. Though I must admit they’re rather pretty in a slimy, prehistoric way. After I water my gardens they come out in droves, but I’ve outsmarted them,” she said with a throaty laugh. “I come out here and scoop them up; then they go for a nice little trip.”

I’d seen a slug or two in Mrs. Odell’s tomato patch, but never had I seen anything as big as the ones Miz Goodpepper had collected. “What do you do with them?”

“Follow me,” she commanded, plunging into the shadows.

We walked to the edge of the property, to the exact place where the murdered magnolia tree had once stood. Miz Goodpepper gathered the length of her caftan and stepped on the stump. Her lips formed a devilish smile when she shook one of the slugs onto the end of the pancake flipper. She held out the jar and said, “Will you hold this for a minute?”

I wrinkled my nose but did as she asked.

With her right hand she held the handle and with her left she pulled back the top like a slingshot and said, “Enjoy the ride.” She let go and the slug catapulted through the air and disappeared into the darkness of Miz Hobbs’s backyard.

Though I didn’t much care for the creatures, I thought it was cruel to hurl them through the air like that. Plus, it was the exact opposite of all the things Miz Goodpepper had told me when we first met, and I couldn’t stop myself from saying so. “Miz Goodpepper, you said killing anything was wrong. You said it would bring lots of bad karma. So why are you killing the slugs?”

She let out a low, haunting laugh. “Oh, I’m not killing them. I’m just sending them on a little ride. Slugs like to fly. They look forward to this—it’s their only sport.”

I stood, stupefied, and watched her catapult the slugs, one by one, over the hedge. When the jar was empty she stepped down from the stump with a satisfied smile. “Well, with any luck those slugs will eat half of that evil witch’s garden before morning.”

A squeak sounded and I turned to see Miz Hobbs push open her screen door and step out onto the back porch. She struck a match and lit a row of candles that were lined up on the railing. Miz Goodpepper motioned for me to duck, and we crouched down low and peered through an opening in the hedge. She poked my ribs with her elbow and whispered, “Look at that outfit.”

Miz Hobbs was wearing a yellow see-through robe with its hem and sleeves trimmed in white feathers. Backlit by the glow of the candles, I could see she was naked underneath, and I mean
totally
naked.

Miz Goodpepper whispered, “Isn’t she ridiculous? She looks like the centerfold in a poultry catalog.”

Just then a man’s voice boomed through the air, “You’re a wild one, Violene.”

Miz Hobbs turned around and giggled as a short, pudgy man stepped onto the porch. It wasn’t the baggy white underpants that left me wide-eyed. It was the black, Zorro-like mask. Dangling from his fingers was a brassiere. I could hardly believe my eyes when he began twirling it over his head like a lasso.

“C’mon, Violene, shake it for Big Daddy,” he whooped, spinning the bra faster and faster. “Do that little striptease again.”

“Stop that, Earl.” She giggled, reaching for the spinning brassiere, but he snatched it from her fingers and sent it hurling it into the shrubs. Miz Hobbs let out a scream. “Now, you go get that.”

“I’m gonna get
this
instead,” he said, grabbing her butt.

She slapped his hand and stepped away. That’s when I noticed her feet. They were crammed into high-heeled shoes that had feathery pom-poms on the toes.

“C’mon, honey, do that striptease again.” Earl begged, reaching out and grabbing her breasts. Miz Hobbs squealed and her high-heeled shoes clacked across the wooden floorboards as she ran to the other side of the porch.

“You’re a naughty boy, Earl,” she called from behind the porch swing. “If you don’t behave I might have to spank you.”

“Ohhhhhh, baby, you sure are frisky tonight.”

I thought Miz Goodpepper might choke when she elbowed my side and whispered, “That masked man is Earl Jenkins. He’s a policeman
and
he’s married. Just look at him. I’ve always said he was only one step above a bait-shop dealer.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but Miz Goodpepper thought it was so funny, she buried her face in her hands.

Earl began chasing Miz Hobbs around the porch. “Now, you leave me alone,” she shrieked, running down the porch steps. But her feet flew straight out in front of her, and in a flash of feathers she was airborne. She landed at the bottom of the steps with a sickening
thump
.

The man’s laughter died in the night air, and his belly jiggled like a bowl of Jell-O when he ran down the steps. “Violene? Are you all right? Awwww, shit,” he said, pulling the mask from his face and kneeling by her side. “C’mon, Violene, stop kidding around.”

Earl patted Miz Hobbs’s cheeks and called her name, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t wake her. He sputtered a few words I couldn’t quite hear, then he ran up the steps and into the house, returning a few minutes later dressed in his police uniform.

Miz Goodpepper pushed aside a branch of the hedge so she could see more clearly. “Earl’s such an ignorant whore-hound,” she murmured. “I wonder how he’s going to get himself out of
this
.”

“Violene?” he said, leaning down beside her lifeless body, “Aww, man, you’re bleeding—you’ve gone and busted your head open. I called an ambulance, but dammit, don’t you tell anybody we were together tonight. I’m gonna say I found you like this. Okay? Violene—can you hear me?”

A siren screamed in the distance. It grew louder and louder, and a minute later two policemen rushed into Miz Hobbs’s backyard. “What happened?” one of them asked.

Earl gave an innocent shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t have any idea. I was just doing my nightly rounds as usual, checking on the neighborhood. I was heading back to my car when I glanced over the hedge and saw her lying here. Looks like she might have tripped and taken a bad fall down those steps. I tried to wake her up, but she’s out cold.”

Miz Goodpepper pulled a rosebud from the bush, held it to her nose, and smiled like Mona Lisa.

One of the policemen turned on his flashlight, bent down, and took a closer look at Miz Hobbs. “Yeah, her head’s cracked open, she’s bleeding pretty good. But what the hell was going on here? She’s almost naked. What was she doing out here wearing
that
getup? Will you look at all those feathers. She looks like a half-plucked chicken.” He moved the beam down to her feet and stopped. “Well, Jesus jumpin’ Christ. Look right there—
there’s
your perpetrator. That’s a smashed slug on the bottom of her shoe.”

Miz Goodpepper and I exchanged a wide-eyed sideways glance.

“A slug?” the other officer said. “Are you sure?”

“Hell, yeah, I’m sure. Look for yourself.”

Earl piped in, “Will ya look at the size of that thing. Slugs are slippery little shits. She must have stepped on it and had her feet go clean out from under her.”

All the policemen knelt to have a closer look at the squashed slug. “Eww, that was a juicy one,” one of them said.

Earl wiped his hand across his face. “Yeah, yeah, I bet that’s exactly what happened.”

Miz Goodpepper’s eyes gleamed triumphantly. Unable to contain her laughter, she let out a snort. Quickly she slapped her hand over her mouth.

One of the policemen stood up. “Did you hear that?”

“What? I didn’t hear anything,” Earl said.

The policeman began to scan the backyard with the beam of his flashlight. He moved slowly across the patio and around the swimming pool. Miz Goodpepper leaned back and held her breath. I did too. I was terrified when he moved closer and stopped. The beam from his flashlight skipped across the top of the hedge, stopping directly over my head.

“Good God,” the other policeman called out. “There’s a whole mess of slugs over here on the patio. Look at ’em all. There’s no crime here—just a bunch of garden slugs.”

The flashlight’s beam nearly blinded me when the policeman turned and headed back toward the house. Miz Goodpepper leaned forward and watched him move away, the whole time plucking petals from the rose in her hand and dropping them onto the ground. When the policeman reached the porch, I covered my face with my hands and breathed a sigh of relief into my sweaty palms.

A siren sounded, and a moment later whirling red lights ignited the leaves on the trees with an eerie, shimmering fire. Two men carrying a stretcher came around the side of the house. Within minutes Miz Hobbs had been lifted onto the stretcher, covered with a sheet, and loaded into the back of an ambulance. Miz Goodpepper and I didn’t utter a word until all the policemen left and the night fell quiet.

I retrieved the pancake flipper from the grass, stood, and handed it to Miz Goodpepper. “Is she dead?” I whispered.

She pushed herself up from the ground, dropped the pancake flipper inside the jar with a plunk, and looked into the sky. A strange blue tint of moonlight washed over her face, and she stood for a long moment, smiling at nothing. “No. It would take a lot more than a slug to kill
that
woman.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the scene of the crime. “When Miz Hobbs slipped on the slug and hit her head, was that kinda like the black boomerang of karma you talked about?”

Miz Goodpepper clutched the empty jar to her chest and slowly turned toward me. “You are a very smart child.”

I
t’s true what they say about people being drawn back to the scene of a crime. I woke early the next morning with thoughts of Miz Hobbs bumping around in my head. I pushed back the covers, threw on some clothes, and crept down the stairs.