Thoroughly 10 - What Are You Wearing to Die? (13 page)

In the new year, our recent troubles were temporarily eclipsed by a momentous event: The Georgia Taxidermist Association was fixing to hold its annual winter convention in Hopemore. It wouldn’t be until the end of February, but starting in January, the whole populace was being urged by our chamber of commerce to “Make Hopemore the Best It Can Be!”

Elementary school children contributed bulletin board art to the Bi-Lo and the library. Middle schoolers formed teams to pick up litter around town each week. Senior high service clubs came around to downtown merchants offering to wash plate-glass windows or do touch-up exterior painting in return for a donation to their latest cause. The garden club pruned and weeded public areas and planted pansies in new urns up and down Oglethorpe Street and around the courthouse square. Joe Riddley and I donated the urns; then the Garden Club bought the pansies from the superstore. The new president had the nerve to call and say, “We knew you wouldn’t mind, since we could get them a few cents cheaper per pot.”

As far as I could tell, the only people not out making Hopemore better were members of the chamber of commerce and the city council. You couldn’t really blame them. This was the first statewide convention to be held in our new community center, and our city fathers had worked hard to make that happen. First they’d had to convince taxpayers we needed a big community center more than we needed better schools or better housing for our poorer citizens. That took more than two years, and involved a lot of talking, eating, and drinking. Then they’d had to convince the state taxidermist association that Hopemore could provide the same amenities as Macon or Tifton, where they’d held conventions before. That had also involved a lot of talking, eating, and drinking. By now, the officers of the town were exhausted.

“They lied to the GTA,” I pointed out to Joe Riddley at breakfast one morning. “We aren’t anywhere in the same league as Macon or Tifton. We have one motel, two bed-and-breakfast places, and two motels up at I-20. And we only have three restaurants.”

“Four, since the Waffle House opened up.”

“Even so, with that many people looking for beds and meals, the place is going to be a madhouse. We can’t come close to accommodating a crowd.”

Joe Riddley sipped his coffee and mulled that over. “We’ll learn how the Romans felt when they got overrun by the Goths and Vandals. At least the motel is decent.”

That was one thing we had to give the city fathers credit for. The Magnolia Inn used to be charming—an old-fashioned place painted white with three stories, deep balconies with rocking chairs in front of all the rooms, and thick white columns holding up the balconies. Live oak trees shaded it, and its dining room was the best place in town for elegant dinners. However, once I-20 opened up and tourists stopped coming through Hopemore, the inn had deteriorated badly. In recent years, it had become little more than a magnet for vagrants and rats. Once the community center was in the works, however, the city powers-that-be used that as leverage to persuade a national chain to buy the motel and upgrade it. The work had been finished in November, and it sat out on the federal highway in newly refurbished splendor.

Lest you think I am telling you more about a motel than you want to know, bear in mind that it plays an important part in this story.

With the community center completed, the motel fancied up, a superstore on the outskirts of town, and a new four-lane road up to I-20—providing access to two more motels—our civic leaders were boasting that Hopemore’s tourist tide was about to turn. Their heads were so big at the moment, their necks could hardly bear the weight.

They managed to overlook all the empty stores along Oglethorpe Street, and produced blank stares when I pointed out that most of the profits from those tourist hoards were unlikely to flow into Hopemore pockets. After all, the superstore, the motel, and two of our four restaurants were not locally owned. The primary source of income for Hopemore was going to be the fee that the conference paid for using the community center, and all that money would have to go toward the center’s enormous mortgage. The rest of our income would come in the form of whatever money visitors spent on meals and tips at Myrtle’s and Casa Mas Esperanza, our Mexican restaurant. Since neither Myrtle nor Humberto Garcia was likely to raise wages for the weekend, I figured the primary benefit Hopemore would reap from the convention was that Myrtle would extend her annual five-day cruise to seven.

Have you ever wondered how much better off our society would be if decision makers were all required to take one class in basic accounting?

The main topic of conversation in town was not the convention but two new elevators the motel had installed. Except for the one Hubert had added to Pooh’s house, those were the first elevators Hopemore had ever had—or needed. They had been built into new towers at each end of the front balconies, and a hexagonal cupola decorated each tower. From the way people carried on about those elevators, you could have deduced they were the eighth wonder of the world.

“No more lugging bags up two flights of stairs,” Hubert boasted, making me wonder when and why he had ever stayed there to suffer that experience.

As far as I was concerned, the best thing about the upcoming convention was that it had persuaded Myrtle to replace her floor. In fact, perhaps envisioning the world beating a path to her door, she had elected to spruce up her whole establishment. She closed down in January and covered her plate-glass windows with brown paper so nobody could peek. She reopened two weeks later with black vinyl booths, red Formica tabletops, a black-and-white-checked vinyl floor, and red-checked curtains at the windows. When she handed me one of her new red-bound menus, I saw that the price of everything, especially chocolate pie, had gone up. One thing that wasn’t going to be in the red around the place was Myrtle’s bank account.

Everybody else fixed up a bit, too—even us, although I doubted that many taxidermists were going to stop by Yarbrough’s to buy seeds or fertilizer. Still, we were selling a lot of plants and potted flowers to decorate the center during the event, so washing our windows and setting up pretty displays seemed the least we could do.

I noticed Evelyn humming while she worked one afternoon. “You still seeing Hubert?” I teased.

She turned as red as the poinsettia she was putting in our half-price sale. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

“You don’t need my permission, honey. I was his neighbor, not his mother.”

She huffed. “Not about seeing him. It’s—well, he wants to go down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and wants me to go with him. Could I have time off? I’ve always wanted to see it.”

I couldn’t say a word to save my soul. The notion of two people as straitlaced as Evelyn and Hubert partying their way through a New Orleans Mardi Gras plumb cooked my bacon.

She misunderstood my silence. “I know I already used last year’s vacation, and we aren’t far enough along yet in this year for me to have accrued much—”

“It’s not the time off, hon. You deserve it. You haven’t had a real vacation in all the years you’ve worked for us. Just a night or two at a bed-and-breakfast somewhere and the rest of the time catching up at home.”

“I love bed-and-breakfast places, but I’d love to go to Mardi Gras, too.”

Mardi Gras with Hubert wasn’t the way I’d choose to spend my vacation, but I told her, “If it tickles your gizzard, go right ahead. Take all the time you want. How long were you all planning on being gone?”

“A week, from Thursday until Wednesday.” She was blushing so bright I could have turned off the lights. “The problem is, that’s the same weekend the taxidermists are coming.”

“We’ll survive without you. You take all the time your heart desires. Just don’t let Hubert break it.”

“He won’t. If I’ve learned anything in the years since I’ve been alone, it’s how to take care of myself.”

Still, the woman skipped as she headed to the phone. Then she turned her back and lowered her voice while she talked, so I didn’t hear a word she said.

Next thing we knew she was waving airplane tickets around, boasting about the great bargains she’d gotten on clothes, and reading travel books from the library over her lunch hour. You’d have thought she was heading to China.

Of course, I was so green with envy that somebody could have stuck me in a pot and sold me. I’d been trying to get Joe Riddley to take me somewhere exciting for years, and the idea that stick-in-the-mud Hubert was going instead galled me no end.

They left on an incredible Thursday. The landscape was a symphony of gold, brown, and green. The sky was clear and blue. Daffodils were up and fattening for blossom. Hellebores were creating a show of cream and mauve bells. The breeze held only a slight reminder of winter. Robins were thick on the ground.

Evelyn looked downright pretty in a new tailored green suit. Phyllis had persuaded her to get a short haircut that tamed her unruly locks and flattered her face, and had used a color on it that brought out the tawny color of her eyes. If I hadn’t known better, the way she was glowing, I’d have thought the woman was going on her honeymoon.

With its usual winter capriciousness, the temperature plunged overnight from the midseventies to forty. A drizzle descended. My breath rose like smoke, and a damp chill assaulted my face when I stepped out Friday morning to get the paper. I paused to take a deep breath of the daphnes I’d planted by the walk, for the clusters of tiny pink trumpets were sending out an odor so sweet it was cloying. I wished I could dilute it and spread it all over town. Birds called back and forth, gossiping about the rain and the temperature, while moisture fell from the trees in a constant
drip, drip, drip.

The mercury continued to plummet. By noon, the thermometer outside our window read thirty-three. “You reckon the roads will ice?” I asked Joe Riddley as we prepared to go home for our midday dinner.

“This is as cold as it’s supposed to get.” He shrugged into a parka, wrapped a scarf around his neck, and pulled gloves from his pocket. His joints stiffened if he didn’t bundle up.

“We won’t do any business this afternoon,” I predicted.

When we came back from dinner, we saw a swarm of taxidermists buzzing around the community center, but sure enough, our store was as dull as an abandoned hive. Around three, I looked up and grumbled, “Anybody with a lick of sense is holed up by the fire with a good book.”

Joe Riddley put down his catalog. “You wanna mosey down and look at the convention exhibits?”

“Are we allowed?”

“Trevor said the exhibits are open to the public. He offered to show us around.”

“He decided to go after all?”

“I understand that both he and Robin have entered pieces in competition.”

I reached for my pocketbook. “So why are we hanging around here?”

“Thank you very much,” Bo squawked from the curtain rod.

“Not you, buddy.” Joe Riddley stroked the scarlet breast with one forefinger. “I’d be afraid somebody might decide to stuff and mount you.” He lifted the macaw and set him on his desk, then littered the surface with nuts and seeds from a tin in his bottom drawer.

I couldn’t help remembering what Evelyn had said about how Trevor looked at her dogs. “Not you, either,” I told Lulu, who was already at the door. “Stay.”

She gave a yip of disappointment, but returned to her pillow.

It seemed odd to see folks wandering around the exhibit hall in coats, but one thing the architect hadn’t put into the center was a coatroom, since we so seldom wear coats. Some folks carried them over their arms, while others—like me—wore them and sweltered. I saw several women in fur and fake fur. I hoped they wouldn’t get confused with the exhibits.

Having seen Trevor’s shop, I thought I was prepared for a taxidermy convention, but I had no idea of the incredible things people could do to bring dead animals to life. At first I was put off by all that killing, but one earnest woman assured me, “A large percentage of the animals were killed for meat, and most of the others were struck down by disease or automobiles.” I chose to believe her.

The largest space at the community center—the big room we used for things like the Golf Club dance—was filled with entries in various categories of competition: birds, fish, game heads, and complete animals in habitat tableaux. We saw a wolf that looked so real I expected him to leap at me any minute, and a hawk that surely would swoop after a rabbit when the sun went down. Heads of elk, deer, longhorn sheep, and even one African gazelle stared down from the walls. The most amazing exhibit to me was a mother bear with her cub. I heard that both had been found dead in the woods. They would spend the next several decades behind a silk bush, poking around a plastic log after artificial bugs.

Trevor seemed to know everybody there. He was constantly having to stop and greet somebody, answer a question about the conference schedule, or assure them that he’d be repeating his workshop the next morning. Only people who knew him well would know he was subdued.

During one of those conversations, Joe Riddley and I spoke to Selena and Maynard, who were also browsing the exhibits. “Heard from your daddy?” I asked.

Maynard grinned. “Nope, and don’t expect to. That old dog!”

We ran into Gusta, too, with Otis at her elbow. When she stepped aside to examine a scene depicting two ducks, I asked him privately, “Any idea yet what you all are going to do?”

“I’m waiting on the Lord, Judge. All I can do is wait on the Lord.”

I reminded the Lord that Otis didn’t have many earthly years left to wait.

Trevor took his time in leading us around to Robin’s fox with the rabbit, and the fawn he’d mounted for Starr, in its glass case. Both sported first-place ribbons. When I commented on that, he jerked his head toward the fish display across the exhibit hall. “Didn’t do so well with Farrell’s bass, though. I entered the dang thing to get him off my back, but it only took a third. I was a bit off my stride when I painted it.”

“You were preoccupied that day with showing me around.”