Madness In Maggody

2

"Then the high-school band plays, right?" Lamont asked, a small notebook in one hand and a much-gnawed pencil in the other.

Jim Bob poured himself another four fingers of bourbon and sat down on the edge of the lumpy bed while he tried to remember exactly what the band director had said. "The band's going to gather behind the store at one-thirty, get theirselves lined up however they do it, and then come marching around to the front at exactly two o'clock."

"In full uniform?"

"Yeah, full uniform. White bucks, brass buttons, feathers on their heads, all that shit. But some kids are away for the summer, so there'll be holes. Both tubas are gone, along with all but one of the drums and a goodly number of the clarinets. There wasn't any way Wiley could make them come back for the grand opening."

"I suppose not," Lamont muttered, "but if we're down to a fat flutist and a pimply trombone player, I'm not sure it's worth it. We don't want to look foolish in front of the media. The ribbon cutting's at two-fifteen, and then we'll try to keep the camera crew and reporters around as long as we can with free food. I'll have a bottle of booze in the office."

Jim Bob bunched the pillows against the headboard and settled back on the bed, taking a wicked pleasure in putting his dusty shoes on the motel-room bedspread. "Hey, Lamont, I had a helluva an idea over the weekend. You're going to love it."

"Yeah, go ahead," Lamont said, making a note to check that the store uniforms were starched before they were distributed to the employees. Who were the dumbest people he'd ever met. Three-quarters of them were named Buchanon, and all of those blessed with simian foreheads and nasty little yellowish eyes. And therefore resembling, in varying degrees, Jim Bob Buchanon and his tight-assed wife, who'd been introduced as Barbara Anne Buchanon Buchanon. Lamont had been appalled, but not surprised.

Jim Bob looked as smug as a retriever with a splattered duck in its mouth. "I got this letter from the Starley City folks saying Maggody could enter a team in some damn fool baseball tournament. I started thinking about it, and I finally called over there and got some information."

"We're opening a supermarket, not a baseball season. Now I want to meet with the entire staff first thing tomorrow to review the stock procedures. Tell them to be in front-"

"Hold it, Lamont," Jim Bob said, his feelings hurt just a smidgen. "I know we're opening a supermarket, but there's a way we can get a whole lot of publicity and community goodwill without it costing us a plug nickel. I realize you own three supermarkets and know a damn sight more about it than I do, but I'm a businessman, too, and I can appreciate the value of gettin' something for nothing."

Lamont accepted the distasteful fact he was going to have to hear Jim Bob out before they could get back to business. He flipped a hand in the general direction of the bed, made himself a stiff drink, and lit a cigarette, all the while admiring the overall composition of his demeanor in the mirror. Jim Bob's brown hair was showing a trace of gray, but it lacked the impact of sterling silver.

"This baseball team has to be sponsored by a local business or civic organization, see? The boys wear uniforms saying who's sponsoring them so everybody knows. Then they go play ball in front of a whole bleacher of parents, who tell each other how nice it is of the Lions Club or the beer distributor or whoever the hell it is to encourage these little boys to play baseball."

"So?" Lamont said real quietly.

"So we round up ten or twelve boys, dress them up in uniforms that say Jim Bob's SuperSaver Buy 4 Less, and send them out to do some free advertising for us." Jim Bob rubbed his palms together and gave his partner a sly grin. "Pretty damn smart, huh?"

Lamont found a certain joy in preparing to prick the prick's balloon. "Yeah, pretty damn smart, Jim Bob. But aren't you forgetting something?"

Jim Bob conscientiously searched his mind, because according to Mrs. Jim Bob, he was all the time forgetting something, even though she was usually referring to hoity-toity table manners or saying amen in church. "Are you worried about finding enough boys? I already asked around and I can get at least ten, most of them pick of the litter. Maybe we'll get some walk-ons once we start practicing."

"Good, Jim Bob, good. I was thinking about something else. As you explained so well a minute ago, we sponsor the team, which means we provide the equipment, the uniforms, and the registration fees. My store in Farberville sponsored a team one year, and it wasn't cheap."

"No problem there. The letter said we should enter our local championship team, so I figure the town ought to foot the bill. All I have to do is call a town-council meeting and run it through before anyone can blink an eye. After all," Jim Bob said, puffing up just a bit, "I am the mayor of Maggody."

"I'm keenly aware of it," Lamont said in all sincerity. No one else could have rezoned the land adjoining the Kwik-Screw with a mere flick of a pencil.

"I was thinking we could have the Jim Bob's SuperSavers at the grand opening, too. All shiny-faced and dressed in clean uniforms, ready to play good ol' American baseball."

"Sounds great, Jim Bob. One other minor…very, very minor thing. Who's going to coach the SuperSavers-you?"

Jim Bob choked on a mouthful of bourbon, spewing amber droplets all over himself and the bedspread. Even though he was coughing, he stuck out his glass. Lamont silently refilled it and returned to the chair, where he picked up his notebook and scribbled a memo to buy a whole damn case of bourbon next time he went home.

Jim Bob downed half the whiskey, wiped his eyes with the corner of the pillowcase, and said, "Why, one of the boys' daddies. You know I'm as busy as a stallion in a field of fillies. As much as I'd dearly like to, I don't see how I could make any time to coach the boys." He wiped his eyes again, pretending to be misty about not getting to coach the boys but actually thinking what sweet Cherri Lucinda would say if he started showing up less often at her door. She had the longest dadburned fingernails in the state and wasn't averse to making a point with them if she was in one of those moods.

Lamont, who knew all about Cherri Lucinda, among other interesting tidbits, had no problem reading Jim Bob's mind, which was pretty much printed in crayon. "See if you can talk someone into being the coach. It's not a bad idea, and we might be able to get some free publicity. The media's real fond of little boys with toothless grins. Shall we get back to the grand opening?"

Dahlia O'Neill snuggled up to her honey-bunny and said, "Kevin, my honey-bunny, would you be so kind as to read me again that part about employee break time?" She was perfectly capable of reading it herself, but she had a bottle of root beer in one hand and a tantalizingly soft cream-filled sponge cake in the other, and she knew in her heart of hearts that Jim Bob and that other fellow'd be sore if her employee manual was sticky.

"Oh, yes," Kevin cooed, seizing the opportunity to burrow into her pillowy, billowy (but not willowy) softness until he could swear it was her breast against his elbow. It wasn't that she was a prude, he thought as he opened the manual. It was downright amazing the things she'd taught him when they first started keeping company. Things that brought tears to his eyes just remembering. Things that caused him to gulp several times before he could trust his voice. But now that they was officially engaged, Dahlia had insisted they stop doing all those amazing things. Which Kevin didn't rightly follow but went along with his apple dumpling, anyways.

"It says we get fifteen minutes at the end of two hours, twenty minutes for lunch, and one other fifteen-minute break, depending on how busy the store is," he said after some studying. "Doesn't say anything about calls of nature."

"Well, of course not, Kevin Buchanon! They don't talk about that kinda thing in books. It's not nice to write about potties and a person's private business. I don't even want to think about someone who'd write that kinda thing in a book!"

Kevin waited until she'd popped the last of the little cake into her mouth and methodically licked her fingers, then half-closed his eyes and, in his sexiest voice, said, "Do you recall that night we spent in Robin Buchanon's outhouse, and how the moon shone through the knotholes and you were so scared you thought you was going to get sick? Then you realized I was going to protect you no matter what, and we got to kissing and-"

Dahlia's eyes bulged like charred cherries embedded in a piecrust. "I told you not to talk like that anymore. I am the head cook in the deli and you're the assistant night manager. We are engaged to be married and we have to behave like respectable folks. Furthermore, I seem to recall you was the one moaning about throwing up and making me squish against the wall so's you could bend over the hole."

"You held my face amongst your soft breasts and-"

"You stop right this instant!"

"And your nipples was like rosebuds, and I-"

"I'm warning you, Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon-you stop this filthy talk right now or I'm gonna climb out of this porch swing and march right into the living room to tell your ma what all you're saying to me. She'll tan your hide till you can't sit down at the supper table for a month of Sundays."

Kevin wanted to stop. He didn't want to distress his goddess of love, nor did he want to even think what his ma would do. But he couldn't. He was possessed by the devil. And all of a sudden, he realized the devil was putting pictures in his head and licking on his loins with a fiery serpent's tongue.

Kevin fought as long as he could, but, with a yowl not unlike that of an alley cat, he succumbed to Satan. He clambered onto Dahlia's broad, cushiony thighs and put his mouth right on her best blue blouse and tried to gnaw through it like he was a gopher burrowing for grubs. Dahlia grabbed his shoulders to push him back, but the devil was bracing him from behind. "Kevin! Stop that! You're ruining my best blue blouse! What do you think-stop it, I said! Stop it now! Kevin!"

He could smell the tang of bleach from her brassiere and feel the roughness of lace against his lips and he could almost taste her damp, salty flesh and he knew-

"Stop it…!" Dahlia wailed, thinking of her best blue blouse.

"I cain't…!" Kevin wailed, although for an altogether different reason.

"Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon," said a new voice, a voice cold enough to make his forehead seize up like it did when he ate ice cream too fast. "You stop this very minute."

"Yes, Ma," Kevin said, having been flung into reality hard enough to make his adenoids tingle. The devil departed with a chuckle and an uncomfortably wet goodbye kiss.

"I can't imagine what's gotten into you," Eilene continued in the same voice. She waited until he flopped back onto the respectable side of the porch swing. "I do believe I'm going to have to have a word with your pa. Dahlia, honey, are you all right?"

"This is my best blue blouse," she sniveled. "Look where Kevin tore it with his teeth. I can't even sew it back because of where the rip is and everything."

She and Eilene stared at the perpetrator, who had managed to cover an awkward problem by crossing his legs and folding his hands in his lap like he did at church. He couldn't think of a single thing to say, which was probably just as well.

And now, sated with wine and moonlit nights at the Colosseum, it was time for me to say "Arrivederci, Roma" and take a train to Venice. The weather had been glorious thus far, but I was hoping there might be a gray drizzle when I arrived in Venice. It seemed more appropriate for the darkly romantic decadence of the neglected palazzi, the narrow canals, the Bridge of Sighs, the haunting lament of a gondolier guiding his craft in a-

The telephone rang. "Police department," I said in my darkly romantic, decadent voice as the gondolier gazed up at me with a sad, knowing smile.

"You coming down with a summer cold?" Ruby Bee demanded.

With a sad, knowing smile, I put the travel book aside and propped my feet on my desk. "I'm thinking about it."

"Sometimes I just don't know what gets into you. I really don't. If you're so all-fired bored, why don't you go have your hair fancied up or buy yourself some decent clothes. No man's gonna look twice at a girl who wears her hair in a bun like a schoolteacher and walks around in baggy pants and a faded shirt.

"It's official police camouflage," I said, "designed to allow me to blend into a baggy, faded town where nothing happens. Well, that's not true. Raz Buchanon came by to lodge another complaint against Perkins, who's been slandering Raz's prize sow, Marjorie, by casting aspersions on her purported pedigree. Raz says he has the papers to prove-"

"You need to come down here. There's something important I need to talk to you about, and Joyce can't wait around all afternoon while you make smart-alecky remarks."

"I didn't start this," I pointed out in an admirably reasonable voice. "I was exchanging looks with a swarthy gondolier named Riccardo. I was thinking of meeting him at a tiny outdoor café for a glass of chianti. You called me, Ruby Bee."

"Because you need to come down here. I already told you that Joyce can't wait all afternoon. She needs to strip the kitchen floor on account of company coming this weekend."

I admitted defeat, promised Riccardo I'd be back, and went down the highway to Ruby Bee's to find out what was important enough to make Joyce Lambertino delay stripping the kitchen floor.

Joyce was sitting at the bar, dressed as usual in worn jeans and a high-school sweatshirt that had seen the tenth reunion but might not make it to the twentieth. Her face had acquired a few more lines and her ponytail quite a few more gray hairs. She gave me a wan smile as I perched on the stool next to her.

"Sorry I got Ruby Bee all stirred up," she said in a low voice.

"Don't worry about it, Joyce. Last season, they named three hurricanes after her. What's the problem?"

A tropical storm slammed out of the kitchen, banged a glass of iced tea in front of Joyce, and turned inland on yours truly. "Did Joyce tell you about this outrageous business?" I shook my head, Joyce opened her mouth, and Ruby Bee continued. "It seems that Mayor Jim Bob Buchanon, in a fit of civic pride, has decided Maggody is going to enter a baseball team in a tournament in Starley City. What's more, in this same civic fit, he and the town council voted to pay for the team's uniforms and equipment out of the budget. Now isn't that the most generous thing you ever heard?"

"It's not the most outrageous thing I ever heard," I said cautiously.

"Oh, no?" Ruby Bee rolled her eyes around for a minute, no doubt wondering how she could have produced such an obviously dimwitted offspring. "Would you like to hear about these uniforms the town's buying? I'm just a simple widow woman, and I haven't ever been to college or lived in Noow Yark, but I assumed when Joyce started telling me this that the uniforms would have the town's name across the back. But I'm just a simple widow woman, so there isn't any way I should be smart enough to know what to put on the uniforms."

I looked at Joyce. "The simple widow woman's incoherent. What do the uniforms have across the back?"

"Jim Bob's SuperSaver Buy 4 Less, with the address underneath. The only thing missing is a coupon to cut out at the end of the tournament. Larry Joe's going to coach the team. He brought home the uniforms yesterday and told me about the tournament and all." Joyce caught the end of her ponytail and began to twist it around her finger. I asked Larry Joe if my little niece Saralee could play on the team. She's visiting this summer while her parents get divorced, and she loves all kinds of sports. I said it might help take her mind off things and he said it was okay with him. Then last night he talked to Jim Bob about it and Jim Bob said absolutely not because she was a girl-but she could be a cheerleader. Saralee is not the cheerleader type, Arly. She's been in two wrasslin' matches in Sunday school already, and half the time I can't find her at suppertime because she's climbing trees or fishing in Boone Creek."

"That's outrageous," Ruby Bee cut in. "Even you got to agree it's outrageous."

"It's certainly not fair," I said, "but I don't know what we can do about it."

The door opened behind us, allowing in a flash of sunlight. Estelle marched across the room, a piece of paper in her hand and an excited look on her face. "I got it!" she crowed. "I told you I could get it, and now I got it!"

"Lemme see," Ruby Bee said. She took the paper from Estelle and moved into the muted blue light beneath the neon Pabst sign.

"What it is?" I asked Estelle.

Estelle waited for a minute to savor the triumph. "You know how Perkins's eldest cleans every other day for Mrs. Jim Bob? She used to clean every day when Jim Bob's illegitimate children was there, but now that they've been packed off to some special school, Perkins's eldest comes every other day."

"Fascinating," I said.

"Well, this very morning Mrs. Jim Bob went to Farberville to look at some fabric samples, so Perkins's eldest slipped into Jim Bob's little office off the sun porch and found the letter about the baseball tournament."

I managed not to flinch. "At your request, of course."

"Goodness gracious, Arly, you don't think Perkins's eldest would snoop through Jim Bob's office on her own, do you? Not all the burners on her stove get real hot."

"It's just what we thought!" Ruby Bee said before I felt obliged to mention conspiracy, theft, theft by receiving, and so on. "It says we're supposed to enter our local championship team. It doesn't say anywhere that Jim Bob can just put his supermarket's name on the uniforms and send the team out to advertise for him."

"We don't have a local championship team," Joyce contributed.

"Because we can't have a play-off," Ruby Bee said, giving Estelle a sly look. "If there was another team in Maggody, the two teams could have a play-off like they do in the television leagues. Then we'd know which team was champion of Maggody."

The stage was set, but one of the players didn't have a copy of the script. On the other hand, she had a long history of being manipulated by her mother, and she was beginning to catch the drift of the production. "You thinking of sponsoring a team?" I asked.

"What a novel idea," Ruby Bee said, getting slyer by the second. "And that way, Joyce's little niece Saralee could have an equal opportunity to play instead of being made to be a cheerleader. This letter says the players have to be entering fifth or sixth grade this fall. It doesn't say one word about boys; it says players."

"Saralee's going into fifth," Joyce said.

"Hizzoner's not going to like this," I said, shaking my head.

Ruby Bee slapped down the letter so she could get both fists on her hips. "And that's going to keep me awake nights? How about you, Estelle-is that going to keep you awake nights? Joyce, you think you'll lose sleep if Jim Bob Buchanon gets his comeuppance once and for all?"

I climbed off the stool. "All I said was that he wasn't going to like it. I have no objection whatsoever to any scheme that ruffles his tail feathers, ladies. In fact, I'll make myself a tissue-paper pom-pom and sit in the first row of the bleachers. I've got a date now, so I'm going to run along and let you all work on the list of all the things you'll have to do. Ciao!"

I almost made it to the door.

"Just hold your horses, Miss Social Gadabout," Ruby Bee barked. "You come right back here and explain about this list. I'm sponsoring a baseball team, not going into Starley City to shop.

I held my horses, but also my ground. "Okay, for starters, you need a minimum of nine players, and you've got one. You need uniforms, balls, bats, gloves, bases, a league rule book, a field for practice, and a couple of coaches."

Joyce Lambertino slid off the bar stool, mumbled something about the waxy buildup on her kitchen floor, and escaped past me with the look of a homeowner on Elm Street who's just heard about the newest neighbor. Ruby Bee and Estelle stared at me, and I stared right back at them as Joyce's station-wagon door slammed shut and the engine growled to life. We continued to stare as tires ground across the gravel parking lot. We stared some more as tires met hot pavement and squealed away.

"No," I said flatly.

"I am your own flesh and blood," Ruby Bee began, but that's all I heard, because I was out of there and fully intending to stay out of there until the Maggody World Series was decided.

Ivy watched Alex as he took the empty crates from the trunk of the car. At times, he was more trying than their son, she thought with a grimace. Send him to the co-op in town for gunnysacks and fertilizer, wait the best part of the afternoon, and watch him return with crates and a stupid grin. He'd probably gotten lost.

His overalls needed patching, his bootlaces needed tying, his hair and beard needed trimming, and she was fairly sure his eyeglasses needed cleaning, because they always did. It was a miracle he didn't walk into a wall more often.

However, when he offered the crates, she wordlessly took them from him and set them down on one of the big plywood tabletops.

"I saw a scissor-tailed flycatcher on the utility wire," he said.

"Through those smudgy glasses? Give them to me so I can wipe them on my shirttail."

"I could see the distinctive silhouette, Ivy. It's the first one I've seen all summer. It was down by the low-water bridge."

"Good, Alex." She plucked his glasses off his nose and began to clean them, not bothering to point out that the bridge was not between their farm and the co-op. "At the rate business is going these days, we may have to fry it for supper. I don't know what's going to happen when that fancy supermarket opens." She stopped as a dusty white Chevy parked in the nearby shade. "Ruby Bee, how are you today? I put aside some particularly fine tomatoes for you. I was going to call you later so you could come by and get 'em."

"I appreciate it, Ivy," Ruby Bee said, more interested in a list she was glancing at. "Isn't Jackie going into the sixth grade this year?"

"He sure is," Alex said. "Hard to believe, isn't it?"

Ruby Bee went between the tables, nodding appreciatively at the piles of vegetables, and cornered Ivy in front of a stack of shallow wooden crates. "There's something I want to discuss with you," she began.

Geraldo Mandozes sat at a small table in the storeroom of the Dairee Dee-Lishus, the bills fanned out in front of him like a deck of cards. Why was business so bad? He ran his fingers through his disheveled hair as he muttered a few choice Spanish curses. The goddamn deli wasn't even open yet, and already he was feeling a squeeze. He was having to throw away more tamales than he sold.

"Yoo-hoo," called a voice from out front. "Mr. Mandozes? Are you home?" He abandoned the bills and went out to the counter window. "Yes, I am Mandozes. You want to order?"

Estelle hastily looked up at the painted menu above his head. "Why, yes, I believe I'll have a cherry limeade. It's so hot today that my brain is bubbling like a pot of stew."

"You don't want any tamales or some cheeseburgers?"

"In this heat?" Estelle chuckled merrily, then rewarded the foreigner with a right nice smile while he fixed the cherry limeade and put it down on the counter. "Thank you, Mr. Mandozes. I'm sure this will hit the spot. I dropped by earlier, but you were closed up tighter'n a tick."

"I needed supplies, and the wholesaler will no longer deliver such small and insignificant orders."

"Well, imagine that. There's a little something I wanted to ask you, if you don't mind." She hurried on in case he did. "I seem to recall you've got a little boy of about ten or eleven."

"Raimundo is ten," Geraldo said suspiciously. He lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke through the screened window. "Has he done a wrong thing?"

"Heavens, no." Estelle took a big slurp of the cherry limeade while she tried to decide how best to continue.

Buzz Milvin popped the top of the beer and grinned at the noise. Weren't nothing finer than to come home to a cool living room, a cold beer, and some peace and quiet, 'cause God knows the factory got louder every day. With the mother-in-law and the kids out back fixing supper, all he had to listen to was the rumble of the window unit. Of course, later he'd have to listen to Lillith bitching at him about smoking too much (he wasn't) and the kids whining about stuff they needed (they didn't), but for the moment he figured he was in heaven, or a damn close fack similar.

The doorbell rang. Buzz put down his beer, climbed out of the recliner, and tried to arrange a neighborly smile as he opened the door.

"Howdy, Buzz," Ruby Bee chirped, the list still in her hand. "Mind if I stop by for a minute?"

"Not at all," Buzz lied. He gestured for her to come in, then sat down on the edge of the sofa. "How're you doing, Ruby Bee? I guess I haven't been over to the bar since Lillith came to live with us a few weeks back."

"And how is that working out?" Ruby Bee inquired politely.

"It's great, just great. Ever since Annie died, it's been real hard to hold down a job and take care of the kids. Now I don't have to fix breakfast, find their homework papers, and make sure they get out to the bus stop on time every morning. Lillith's a real orderly sort."

Ruby Bee tilted her head and put her finger on her cheek. "Now let me think…isn't Martin going on twelve and Lissie just about eleven? One going into sixth, the other fifth?"

"Martin had a birthday last week. He's twelve, and yeah, Lissie's almost eleven. You got a real fine memory, Ruby Bee."

"Thank you kindly, Buzz. I ran into Lissie's teacher at a church potluck awhile ago, and she mentioned being concerned about Lissie. I hope she's doing better these days?"

He gave her a wry grin. "She was out in left field there for a few months, trying to take Annie's place and do all of the kitchen and laundry chores. I was so lost and confused that it took me some time to see what was going on. I think having her grandma living here has helped a lot."

"Left field?" Ruby Bee said brightly. "Funny you should mention that, because there's something I want to talk to you about." She settled into the cushion, giving herself plenty of time to consider her next move. After all, there was a possibility of two recruits and a coach.

Estelle made a check next to the Mexican boy's name, polished off the cherry limeade, and drove over to the Pot O' Gold mobile-home park. She rattled across the cattle guard under the arch, wound through the metal boxes, and parked in a scanty patch of shade under a sickly elm.

Ten minutes later, there was a check next to Earl Boy Nookim's name and she was on her way to Elsie McMay's, where she could expect a glass of iced tea, a homemade cookie, two more players of the grandchild persuasion, and a nice chat in front of the fan.