Wedding Bell Blues (11 page)

Mayor Moss's barn was long past anything ever thought of as a barn. No animal would dare step a hoof on those polished hardwood floors that I'd heard had been used for dancing when Miz Moss imported a big-name band for one of her parties. Designer chandeliers hung from the rafters.

I hoped Malinda would get the first-prize trophy—not that anyone would really want the thing since it was made of recyclables, too, a tall plastic bottle of some kind with Mardi Gras beads and odd costume jewelry glued on at random, but a trophy is a trophy and from a distance and with a squint, it might look impressive. And Elvis would be impressed his mama won a fashion show, even if it was a trashion one.

Someone from the library wore a pantsuit made of pages from an old
Oxford English Dictionary
glued onto some thin fabric, then cut and sewed. The model's paper hat sported a jaunty white feather from a quill pen.

Students from Littleboro High's home economics classes wore dresses made of plastic bags or fast-food wrappers. They carried purses made from juice boxes and gum wrappers. One darling girl wore a white tutu made of industrial coffee filters. She got second prize, a smaller trophy made of bottle caps stuck to sculptured pieces of milk cartons sprayed with gold glitter.

Malinda got the grand prize and the crowd went wild, clapping and finger whistling. Malinda gave a gracious bow in her royal attire, held the trophy aloft like it was really a legitimate prize. I bet her mama would just shake her head and wonder what would happen next in Littleboro? Me, too.

As I packed up my leftovers in the kitchen, I heard two people outside the back door talking. Two of Mayor Moss's guests, I supposed, hiding out for a place to smoke.

I heard one male voice say, “There's not a soul in this dead burg with an ounce of sense enough to figure it out.”

“It” what? I wanted to ask. It? “It” could be anything.

When I opened the door to see who had been talking, there was nobody there. But they had left their cigarette butts, one of which was from a cigarillo. I knew Allison smoked cigarillos, but what I had heard was two male voices. Or I thought they were male voices.

Could one of them be Mr. Moss? I'd never met him. Miz Mayor referred to Mr. Moss often as being “away on business” and that he traveled “so much” she could never depend on him to be where she needed him.

I got paid for catering, which I had not made of expensive foodstuffs, just time-consuming, cute, fun and cheesy things. Easy peasy. Scott had played the keyboard background music, jazzy at first, then something with the right beat for the models to stomp and sashay up and down the runway. I was glad the mayor had decided to keep some things local. That was in the spirit of things, this fund-raising business, support Littleboro and all that. Mayor Moss gave us both our checks at the same time, kissed Scott on the cheek and hugged me. “Thank you. Thank you both. I couldn't have ever done this without you.”

As Scott and I walked to his truck I tried to see the figures on his check but he folded it and tucked it in his shirt pocket. Nosey me. I only wondered if he got paid more than I did.

On the way home neither of us said much. For one thing I was so tired the bottoms of my feet ached and I felt like I had bits of Brie in my hair. I knew I smelled like cheese, which is seductive only to a mouse.

Scott drove, hummed some tune I didn't recognize, then stopped in front of the Dixie Dew and parked. He got out, collected my trays from the bed of the truck, came around and opened my door, handed them to me. “Good night,” he said. “Sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs in tonight.” He laughed, leaned over for a soft, wet, sweet, swift kiss, then was gone. I just stood there, disappointed and tired. Maybe even more disappointed than tired and I was really tired.

 

Chapter Sixteen

I unpacked, washed, put back my coolers and trays in the pantry/office and made myself a sandwich of leftover pimento cheese spread. I like mine cold on either rye or dill bread. Plus I put lettuce and tomato on it. In a rare dash of bravery I'll add a slice of Vidalia onion … one slice that's big enough to cover the whole bottom layer. When I was in high school, Gaddy's Drug Store, which wasn't Gaddy's then, used to offer toasted pimento cheese. With chips and a pickle. Toasted pimento cheese is the spread that went from mill worker's lunches to get a bit of education. Warm pimento cheese as a dip is pimento cheese that's gone to cooking school under the tutelage of some fancy chef in a black, button-on-the-side, name-embroidered coat with little shoulder pockets that hold personal thermometers and tasting devices. Those kinds of chefs.

It wasn't until nearly dusk I remembered Robert Redford. The missing mister bunny.

I had to round up that rabbit, who surely couldn't have hopped very far. I knew though that I had to find him. I only hoped nothing happened before I did so. Somebody strange to Littleboro could see him and immediately think barbecue or hasenpfeffer. I can live with a lot of baggage but a whole knapsack of guilt is tough to tote around. Didn't want to add any more to what I already had. I
had
to find that rabbit or Verna would never forgive me.

Somehow I kept thinking Robert Redford had to be in or near Verna's house. But shortly after I finished clearing out the breakfast things, I had checked outside, around, about and underneath the Dixie Dew as well as both yards and saw no sign of him. I had ruled out inside because I couldn't figure out how he'd get himself inside. But, knowing Littleboro, some kind somebody could have found him, knew who he was and that he lived with Verna and taken him home, opened the door and let him inside. Then I got rushed for time and had to start on the doings for the mayor's shindig.

Frankly I forgot about him until almost dark. That's when it hit me. Plus a big white rabbit should be easy to see in the dwindling twilight.

I went next door to Verna's, had to part my way through towering shrubs that had grown untrimmed into scraggly trees, through backyard grass gone to seed so high it fell over, then up Verna's back steps that looked as old and rickety as the rest of her house. I walked very carefully, lest one board be so thin from rot I'd fall through and there I'd be, one leg dangling and the rest of me hanging on to whatever I could grab to keep from falling the rest of the way.

On her screened-in porch I threaded my way past boxes and newspapers piled to the ceiling, an old wringer washer, tin washtubs on legs, a clothesline still hung with dresses and nightgowns, and long-legged bloomers that had been out there so long all color had faded. They hung in a line of tan-colored depression.

In the back hall, I peeked in the kitchen, which didn't seem quite as cluttered as the rest of the house. Then I saw an open door just inside the kitchen, some steps down, and darkness. A rabbit could have stood where I'm standing, started down those steps and hopped the rest of the way into what I now guessed was an old-fashioned root cellar.

“Rabbit,” I called. “Robert Redford, honey.” Secretly, I liked the intimacy of calling Robert Redford “honey,” as though we (the movie guy, the famous one) and I actually knew each other and I could call him “honey.”

I felt for a light switch and flicked it on. It was either a forty-watt bulb or so covered with dust and grime it didn't help all that much. Calling the rabbit again, I started down the steps while a thick dark smell got stronger and stronger. A smell like the bottom of the earth.

Halfway down, I heard the root cellar door slam shut behind me. A hard, final sort of
clunk
sound.
Clunk,
like the door to a jail cell. “What?” I yelled. “Wait. I'm down here.”

Then I heard a bolt slide into place.

“Help,” I yelled, ran up to the door and began to beat on it.
Wham, wham
, wham. A hollow desperate sound. “I'm in here!” I yelled.

The door was metal and my
wham, wham, wham
s only echoed back, rocking but not loosening. Probably this metal door was the only thing in the house not headed toward rot and decay.

I banged and yelled and banged some more. Listened for footsteps of someone coming back. Nothing. Maybe whoever shut that door and locked it had known I was down here and had done it on purpose. But who? Surely it was an accident. There was no one in Verna's house but me. Maybe a breeze blew the door shut? Except a breeze wouldn't have slid that bolt into place. Not long ago I had been locked in a mausoleum on purpose, only then I had Robert Redford shut in there with me. This time I was alone.

Behind me I saw the last bit of natural light coming from the small window near the ceiling. “Hey,” I yelled. I saw feet and legs walk by very fast. “Help!” I yelled. Then I thought, Whose feet were those? Whose legs? “Hey,” I yelled again. “I'm down here.” The feet were quickly out of sight.

The window was too high for me to reach and bang on it. And too high for me to climb out.

I went all the way down to the bottom of the steps where I saw a water heater that must have been in Noah's Ark, and a furnace that took up most of the wall and looked medieval. The water heater clicked on. The furnace looked so rusty it probably had not worked in years.

I felt my chest tighten, my breathing get shallow and fast. Panic. I must not panic, I told myself. There had to be a way to get up to that window.

If there was a ladder here, I could climb to the window, break it with something and climb out. No ladder I could see. If I could find even some rickety old table, I'd chance a climb on it. A table of any sort I could stand on. No table.

But there was something: the whole wall at the end of the root cellar was floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with jars of canned vegetables and fruits. At least I wouldn't starve. But how old were those canned goods? I bet Verna hadn't had a garden or gone to a Farmers' Market for fresh vegetables in a lot of long summers. I'd be taking my life in my hands to touch anything from any of those jars even if I could get them open, which I doubted.

So here I was locked in a dim, earthy-smelling root cellar that had one very secure metal door out and a teeny tiny way-up-high square of a window. I could yell my head off and nobody would hear. And nobody would have a reason in this world to come check anything in this cellar. If it was winter somebody might be scheduled to deliver coal for the old furnace. But there would be big doors that opened out so coal could be unloaded in. I looked. No chute, no big doors, so the furnace must not be coal. Or wood. Or the first gas one ever made. This one was a monster of a furnace and I didn't dare try to break loose some pipe to hammer at the window even if I could get high enough to do so. Didn't think that was the route to try.

I told myself I would not start to cry like a six-year-old. Big girls don't cry. They pull up their jeans and take on the task at hand.

I was locked in the last place anybody would come to look. I should have left Ida Plum a note. I should have packed my cell phone somewhere on my body. I remembered some commercial for something that ended with the line “Don't leave home without it.” Maybe that should apply to cell phones, but I was only going next door! Who would think to take their cell phone if they were only going next door?

I mentally kicked myself for ever, ever coming down those stairs in the first place. Dumb move. If I ever got out of here, Ida Plum would scold and scold. But now, just thinking about her voice, her scoldings made me tear up. Wimp, I told myself. I'd take the scoldings if I could just get out of here. “Lord,” I said to the ceiling, “if you get me out of here, I promise—” What? Anything. Everything. Whatever.

I looked around again. Water heater, furnace, wall of canned food.

Floor-to-ceiling jars of green beans, of course. This was Littleboro. Corn, tomatoes, okra, lima beans and a mixture of all four called vegetable soup, which my grandmother made at the end of the canning season. Soup mix. Fat lot of good all this was going to do me now. Then I touched one of the shelves. Metal, like the door, and probably the newer of anything in the house.

A metal shelf would hold me. No rot. But this was a set of shelves and I could not make a ladder of them. Even if I emptied them and propped them against the wall under the window, I couldn't climb them. They'd be flat against the wall. If I leaned them against the wall to try to make them into a sort of makeshift stairs, I'd fall through.

I felt under the closest shelf. A plastic clip held it in place. I could take out all the clips, then I'd have individual shelves. And boards, not shelves, but boards to make stairs. Boards are what you build stairs with.

Row by row I unloaded the shelves. I stacked a platform of jars wide and long, laid a few shelves across it. I'd made myself a base to make a set of stairs. Stacked more jars on top of that, then another shelf, until I had stairs. Steps up. Up, up and out that window, I said to myself. I stood back and looked at my creation, my inspiration, my salvation. I could climb to the top, break the window and crawl out.

Slowly, slowly, the jars rocking a bit under me, I took one stair step up, then another, higher, higher.

Now I held my breath, reached out and touched the window. I felt a latch. I wouldn't have to break the glass. The latch was rusted as heck, but I pushed and pushed on it until I felt it give. The window opened. I breathed good, clean air and smelled sweet, green, growing grass. I gave myself a mighty hoist, pulled myself up and through, crawled out that little window that was just wide enough. I belly flopped onto God's dear earth, stood and brushed myself off.

“Rabbit,” I said, “wherever the hell you are, you are not worth it.”

It was now almost pitch-dark and I was exhausted. I limped across the backyard and through the wall of overgrown hedges to the Dixie Dew, a bath to get off the grime and mold, years of accumulated dirt. All I wanted was my soft, clean bed and a good night's sleep. Maybe whoever at the trashion show had called this a “dead burg” inhabited by dumbheads had a point. Root cellars be damned.