Critters of Mossy Creek

by Deborah Smith

  Ardaleen cocked her head slightly to the right, eyeing me sideways, the way a frustrated zoo chimp eyes a tourist standing within dung-slinging range. I resisted the urge to waggle an imaginary banana at her.

  She scowled at me one more time then gave her note cards another try. “. . . yet another fine project . . . with the assistance of our neighboring town—” the snark-level rose in her voice “—dear little Mossy Creek, which may be small, secluded and far less blessed than we are, here in Bigelow, but whose well-meaning citizens held nice little bake sales and car washes to raise an adorable contribution for the new humane society . . .”

  I held up a finger.

  No, not that one. My forefinger.

  One hundred thousand, I mouthed widely, making sure the cameras caught every syllable. We raised one hundred thousand dollars.

  Nikons flashed. Video cams swiveled from Ardaleen at the podium to me, standing behind her.

  I wiggled my finger, mouthed the amount again and shifted just enough to give a little sass-bop with one hip. Lessons I’d learned in two decades of public troublemaking: wear dark green suits to make my green eyes stand out for the cameras, a touch of red to match my hair and keep my skirts tight enough to talk.

  I smiled at Ardaleen and gave another little hip toss.

  Ardaleen clenched the podium with both hands. I could see her wrinkled knuckles turning red. A woman’s hands tell her age, and Ardaleen’s knuckles were a loudspeaker begging for liver spot removal. Not that her advancing age—fifteen years older than my fifty—made me gloat. I spent a lot of time looking at my own hands, these days.

  More camera flashes. I lowered my finger and smiled innocently, reassured by my still youthful and willowy knuckles. Yep, I’d make the six o’clock local news and CNN. too, again. The Atlanta media always sent crews to cover every public event featuring me and my sister, or me and my nephew, the governor, or me and the arresting officers, or all of the above.

  “. . . I’ll now introduce . . .” Ardaleen finished between clamped teeth, “my baby sister, Ida Hamilton Walker, my son’s colorful aunt and the mayor of Mossy Creek, a town that prides itself on a tradition of—”

  “Independence,” I inserted, before she could say something less flattering.

  “Rebellion.”

  “Patriotism.”

  She couldn’t top that.

  Thinking I’d won today’s round of insults, I stepped forward, smiling. But Ardaleen’s pink-lined, collagen-filled lips drew back from her blindingly whitened capped teeth in a final, victorious sneer.

  She leaned into the mic and added in the sugary, Bless her heart drawl which Southern women use to gut their enemies, “I’m so proud of my baby sister. She’s been working so hard lately to prepare for Mossy Creek’s new high school, which opens in the fall. Sixteen-hour days can really take a toll on a woman my sister’s age. But just look at her: Gorgeous.” Ardaleen smiled at me. “What is that term a younger man calls a woman your age, baby sister?”

  The crowd went on high alert. They knew what younger man she meant, but until now no one had had the bull muffins to mention him in public. I clenched my fists. Breathe. Focus. Think calm thoughts.

  I had an image to uphold for the sake of Mossy Creek. I’m a public servant. Ardaleen is not, despite her public bragging. Ardaleen has never run for any office. She sees her job as breeding Bigelow politicians, like the mother monster in the Aliens movies. I think Ham came out of her as a thirty-pound, soft-shelled egg with mouth tentacles, ready to suck the life out of the nearest campaign donor.

  Breathe. Stay calm. Down in front of us, my granddaughter, Little Ida, the third-generation namesake of the glorious Big Ida, my grandmother, gaped up at me and her great aunt Ardaleen. Her freckled hand held her phone high.

  Ten years old and trying to score a video she could upload on YouTube. What a hustler. I love her the way Grandma Ida loved me. Independent spirits stick together, irony be damned. Little Ida did what her fellow spectators did, all two hundred of them. She held her camera phone up and thumbed Record.

  “What’s the term for older women who like to have younger men at their beck and call?” Ardaleen repeated loudly, smile-grimacing at me. “Cougar?”

  Cougar. Okay, she could call me that, I didn’t care. Cougars are sleek and dangerous.

  I laughed as if this were all just some good-natured joke. “I prefer ‘Your Highness.’”

  Some in the crowd hooted and applauded. But others wisely angled their cameras closer.

  Ardaleen put her mouth nearer the mic. “Oh? Did Chief Royden call you that before or after you made out with him? Was that before or after your boyfriend caught the two of you?” She looked out at the crowd solemnly. “For those of you fine folks who haven’t heard, my sister recently cheated on her boyfriend, now her ex-boyfriend, Bigelow businessman Del Jackson, a retired army officer and a decorated hero. And the object of her unethical behavior? Her own police chief, who is much, much younger than she.”

  Camera phones clicked, regular cameras flashed, video cams whirred. Little Ida jerked her phone down and began text messaging madly, her little thumbs moving at warp speed, probably alerting her parents to drive out to Hamilton Farm, quick, and change the lock on my gun cabinet.

  And me? I just stood there, my smile frozen, speechless for once in my life. She had gotten me with a one-two punch: the Amos reference followed by the low blow about Del. I would always feel guilty for hurting him. Was merely kissing Amos “cheating” on Del? Yes, in my code of ethics, it was.

  Suddenly I felt as if I were five years old again, hitting the wall as Pokey tossed me with his curving brown horns. An eerily familiar sound filled my ears.

  Ardaleen, laughing.

  Then, and now.

  ooo

  “Nana,” Little Ida said solemnly, holding up at a sympathetic cupcake with white icing and a Chihuahua’s face outlined in orange sprinkles. Cousin Ingrid had donated dozens of “pup cakes” from her bakery in Mossy Creek. Little Ida waved the pup cake at me. “You got punked by Great Aunt Ardaleen.”

  l glared at her. We were hiding in a propane-heated corner of the reception tent outside the humane society’s kennels, where a caterer was serving the themed cupcakes along with pimento cheese sandwiches cut in poodle shapes and something called Pet Punch, which was strawberry red with dog-bone-shaped ice cubes floating in it.

  Looked like watery blood with ice turds, to me. I was in a bad mood. I wanted a stiff bourbon instead.

  “Drop the subject, hon,” I said grimly. I kept checking my watch. Five more minutes of mayoral duty then I was out of there. Our fellow citizens smiled nervously at me then sidled away

  Little Ida gnawed the cupcake. “Daddy told Mama you and Chief Royden might as well get it out in the open. He says it’d be less fuel for the fire that way. Are you planning on setting something on fire, Nana?”

  “Just your Great Aunt Ardaleen.” I hesitated. “You didn’t hear that. Don’t repeat it.”

  She grinned and made a lock-and-key gesture over her heart. “You gonna start dating Chief Royden? Like a real girlfriend and boyfriend? Can I tell my friends on Facebook?”

  “The Chief and I are still just friends. Despite what anyone says. Be quiet. Eat your cupcake.”

  “But you kissed . . .”

  “Friends kiss.”

  “Not on the lips, and not in a way that made Colonel Jackson quit dating you and go back to his wife.”

  “Ex-wife,” I corrected. I took the cupcake from her. “Too much sugar makes children talk too much. Go eat a carrot.”

  She chortled.

  Ingrid hustled up to me at that point, her graying red hair like a dusty rose and her green eyes snapping above her quilted vest with the embroidered Chihuahuas.

  Bob, her non-embroidered Chihuahua, glared at us from a tie-dyed baby sling that was belted across my cousin’s considerable boobs. “Trouble in the parking lot,” Ingrid announced. “You better intervene, Ida.”

>   “Why?” I grunted. “People want more embarrassing pictures of me?”

  “As a member of the Humane Society’s board. Come on.”

  I arched a brow. “There are ten board members. Including you. Can’t you take care of it? I’ve donated my official pound of flesh to Ardaleen’s claws and now I’m off-duty.” I looked at my watch again. “Plus I promised to get Little Ida back to Mossy Creek in time for her dad’s soccer game.”

  Ingrid smiled wickedly. She fooled people into thinking she was a kindly, middle-aged chick who ran a small bakery and pampered an incontinent dog with a penchant for mishaps, that she was just a doting godmother to Jayne Reynolds’ little boy, that she was a harmless star pitcher on the Mossy Creek 50-and-up co-ed fast-pitch softball team.

  But I knew better. She bared her teeth at me like a wily Betty Crocker plotting to open a can of whup-butt on the Pillsbury Doughboy. With my help. “So you’re just going to let Ardaleen abuse a desperate man with a sobbing little boy and a truck full of miniature livestock that needs a good home? Did I mention the little boy’s crying because he has to give up his pet rabbit?”

  Little Ida squealed, “A rabbit!” and headed for the parking lot. The child has a pony, two cats, three dogs, some kind of South American lizard, two parakeets, a family of hermit crabs and a pair of ferrets named Mickey and Minnie. She loves critters like Shriners love parades.

  “Ardaleen wants the kid’s rabbit,” Ingrid added darkly.

  Oh, hell. Did I mention that Ardaleen’s favorite roasted meat, other than human hearts, is rabbit?

  I squared my shoulders. “Lead the way.”

  A rusty old pick-up truck, its bed outfitted with tall wooden sides and a high gate to hold animals inside, sat at the edge of the Humane Society’s parking lot, beneath a massive oak just beginning to dapple the concrete with the shadows of its spring leaves.

  A small, frowning crowd of Humane Society officials stood around the truck’s open driver’s door, with Ardaleen at their center, shaking a finger and talking in a low voice to the truck’s owner. He was a grim, skinny, rough-skinned young man with his NASCAR cap in his hands. Inside the truck, his little boy clutched a mound of white fur and cried, burying his face in the neck of a lop-eared rabbit. The rabbit peered out at us with deadly pink eyes. Who could blame him? Little Ida hung on the open window of the passenger door, looking in sadly at the boy and his rabbit. She put a hand on the rabbit’s droopy ears. Mr. Bunny’s nose twitched in warning. My throat clenched.

  But the toxic-eyed bunny sniffed her, decided she was a friend and gently nibbled her fingers.

  “Wampa likes you,” the boy said brokenly. “He don’t like very many folks. Can’t you give him a home?”

  “You bet,” my granddaughter told the crying boy, her voice breaking too. “My Nana won’t let anybody hurt Wampa.”

  Wampa? Wampa? I searched the pop culture lobe of my brain. When you’ve got a thirty-year-old son and daughter-in-law and an eight-year-old granddaughter, and you grew up on Star Wars movies yourself, you know these things.

  Wampa. The rabbit was named after the murderous, white-furred, Yeti-like creature that tried to turn Luke Skywalker into a piñata. I watched our version of a Wampa swivel evil pink eyes toward Ardaleen. Apparently his personality matched the name perfectly.

  “Mr. Boggs, we told you to go elsewhere with your farm animals,” an official said.

  “The sign says this is the humane society,” Boggs replied. “I want to talk to somebody humane.” He jerked his head toward the menagerie in the back of his truck. There was misery in his eyes. “These here are my son’s pets. I’ve lost my job; had to give up our home. We’re moving in with my brother south of Atlanta for a while. No room for critters. I work construction. Got to report to a new boss on Monday. I got no choice.” His voice broke as his son’s sobs filled in the silence. “I got to find a home for my boy’s critters today.”

  “I said I’ll take the rabbit,” Ardaleen said. She stepped forward, stony-faced. “Be grateful for small favors. I can place the rabbit in a good home.”

  In the meat section at Bigelow Gourmet Foods, I thought.

  “Grilled, with a side of brussel sprouts and a glass of wine,” Ingrid whispered to me. Bob ducked down inside his sling and growled.

  “Miz Bigelow, I sure appreciate that, but what about my boy’s other pets?”

  In the bed of the truck, staring at me through the slats, were a pair of goats, a miniature pig and a spindly brown burro. The goats made unhappy chuckling sounds, the pig grunted anxiously and the burro let out a high-pitched bray that sounded like a four-footed cry for help.

  Ardaleen didn’t even blink. “This is not a facility for livestock.”

  “They ain’t livestock, they’re his friends. Since his mother died, they mean the world to him. He talks to them. I swear, sometimes I think they talk back.”

  “Nonsense. They’re animals. Farm animals. This is a facility for household pets. I’m sorry. Leave the rabbit.”

  “Wampa,” the little boy moaned, hugging the white rabbit harder. Little Ida mewled.

  Ardaleen remained stony. “You should have planned your finances better. This society is run by the taxpayers. We can’t be bailing out everyone who makes a poor choice.”

  “Sir, I’ll adopt your pets,” I announced loudly. “All of them. Especially the rabbit. I love rabbits.” A lie, but for a good cause.

  “Yay, Nana!” Little Ida yelled. To the boy she said, “See I told you. We’ll take all your critters to Nana’s farm. And after you move to some place where they can live, too, you can have your critters back.”

  The boy smiled at her through his tears.

  “Is that true, ma’am?” the man said, looking at me urgently.

  I nodded. “Absolutely. They’ll be safe and well-cared-for at my farm.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. God bless you.”

  Ardaleen turned toward me, her lips twitching with anger. “I. Will. Take. The. Rabbit,” she repeated, biting off every word. She was determined to spite me. “I’ve already claimed the rabbit. I’ll. Give. Him. A. Good. Home. Discussion. Closed.”

  Before I could lob a verbal grenade at her, the boy climbed out of the truck and ran to Ardaleen, Wampa jiggling unhappily in his arms. “Lady, I have to find out if Wampa likes you.”

  Ruh roh.

  Wampa looked huge, fluffy and pissed off.

  Ardaleen held up her be-ringed hands. “I don’t want to pet him. I’m sure we’ll get along merrily.”

  “Just let him sniff you, ma’am! I can tell right away how he feels about you.”

  He thrust Wampa at her.

  Wampa took a big sniff of Ardaleen Essence and wisely identified her as one of Satan’s hungry handmaidens. His pink eyes turned red. His powerful hind feet dug into the front of the boy’s camo t-shirt.

  Wampa launched himself at my sister, his mouth open and teeth bared. It was surreal. He straight-out flew. If you’ve ever seen the bunny attack in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, well, that’s what it looked like.

  Ardaleen screamed and lunged backward. Wampa hit her between the boobs and she sprawled on the hard black asphalt with the rabbit on top of her. His jaws snapped shut on her defending hand. A pinprick of blood sprouted on her little finger.

  Ardaleen bellowed, “He bit me! Kill the little bastard!”

  Wampa shot away at a fast hippety-hop. Little Ida and Little Boggs chased him across the parking lot. My heart clenched when Little Ida scooped the homicidal bunny into her arms, but Wampa huddled harmlessly inside her hug, glaring back at Ardaleen, his bunny mouth making chew-motions as if he were determined to spit out the taste of her.

  Little Ida looked at me worriedly. “Can I still have him?”

  I nodded and gave her a thumbs-up.

  I suddenly loved Wampa.

  Ardaleen’s minions surrounded her, bowing and scraping, clamping tissues to her tiny wound, helping her sit up. Our eyes met. Hers, a livid, defeated green
. Mine, a glowing victorious green, I’m sure.

  “I want that rabbit put to sleep,” she yelled. “He’s a menace.”

  I looked down at her without a shred of sympathy. The old Pokey memory welled up inside me, fresh and raw but finally in its rightful place. That chicken, as they say, had come home to roost. And he’d taken a big dump on Ardaleen.

  I pivoted toward Jess Crane, husband of Mossy Creek’s Police Officer Sandy Bottoms Crane and a part-time reporter for the Mossy Creek Gazette. Nowadays he also carried a video cam in hopes of scoring a piece for Mossy Creek’s local access cable TV show, or maybe a YouTube hit. “You got all this on tape?” I asked Jess. “Including the part where she yelled ‘Kill the little bastard?’”

  He grinned widely as he kept aiming the video cam at Ardaleen. “Oh, yeah.”

  I looked down at my sister, again. The shock in her eyes made me happy.

  “The rabbit goes home with me,” I said. “Discussion closed.”

  Her lips flattened, her face reddened even more and she began ordering her much-abused staff to get her car and call her doctor.

  I’d won. Jess was still filming.

  Beside me, Ingrid started laughing so hard that Bob jiggled in his sling. “Can rabbits spread rabies?” she asked between guffaws.

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “Every boy should have two things:

  a dog, and a mother willing to let him have one.”

  —Anonymous

  Amos and the Soccer Mom

  The station clock’s hands landed on 11:38 a.m. by the time I’d sorted out the paperwork we needed for the annual state audit of the police department. My officer-cum-manager Sandy Bottoms Crane would have done it, but Mossy Creek’s next mother-to-be looked a little green in the gills and I thought she needed rest and a weekend to herself. Jess, her husband, had taken me aside to let me know she was feeling really queasy these last few days. I could work with queasy, but I was terrified of what would happen when the nesting hormones kicked in.

  The boys and I were in for some rough times ahead. Best case scenario was a little wall paint. Worst case scenario was a whole new filing system and God help any of us if we screwed it up. I didn’t want to give Sandy any ideas about improving the office while she was feeling the effects of having a baby-on-board, so I’d volunteered to sort out paperwork this Saturday morning. Next week some official bean counter would arrive and make sure our ticket books, fine receipts and deposits all matched. They’d look at our files and certifications. They’d make absolutely sure we conducted ourselves, in our tiny little town, with impeccable professionalism, and then declare us good-to-go for another year.