“Gibby,” he repeated. “What are you doing in my house? Why couldn’t you sleep in your house?”
“Let’s see,” Gibby appeared cogitative as she deliberated her answer. “I had some news, doofus, oh excuse, Your Honor the Supreme Doofus, that I thought you should know about. That you should know about soonest, so I waited for you. Well, first I went to the jail to see if I was going to have to bail you out. But the officer down there, you know Jake Elridge? Well, he said you weren’t in the jail, like I was expecting. I called around and found out that a certain infamous someone’s body had been taken from you-know-who’s mortuary on Monday night or Tuesday morning. They’re saying the thief peed in you-know-who’s coffeepot.”
“I did not,” he protested immediately. Then he grimaced. “I wish I’d thought of it, though.”
“Then I found out that Albie’s chief of police and Sawdust City’s chief of police had been over to Sawdust City’s City Hall with you-know-who in tow. Then they searched City Hall and supposedly searched your house. Lord, how the gossips are going. Since the police have already been here, I figured it would be safe.”
“Safe,” Pascal said dumbly.
“For me, Pascal,” she said. “Everyone knows I went with you to Shreveport to pick you-know-who up, so they’re bound to come knocking on my door to see if I’ve got him in the basement with the rat poison and the bank loot from the job over to Dallas.” Gibby smiled at him. “Just kidding about the poison.”
“You’re pretty chipper for a woman who went on a mission that was almost certainly due to fail,” Pascal said cheekily and a little bit hopefully.
“Huh. I didn’t fail.”
“From what I heard about Ophelia’s trip to Edom, she had a helluva…what did you say?”
“I…didn’t…fail.”
“You got a new, notarized power of attorney for the disposition of Bayou Billy’s cadaver?” Pascal was aghast, and he didn’t exactly know what that word meant. He stood there and forgot to breathe.
“Yes, Miss Danley was very accommodating,” Gibby said cheerfully.
“Did you promise your first born son?” he gasped out, remembering that oxygen was essential to the process of living.
“Of course I did not.”
“Then what the hell?”
“Consider it the wrath of a woman scorned,” Gibby said mysteriously. “And the fact that Ophelia Rector stopped payment on the check she wrote to Tamara Danley.”
Pascal giggled. Then he leapt joyfully onto the bed, narrowly avoiding two plates full of food. “Billy’s granddaughter took a check from Ophelia?” He laughed harder. “She would have been better off selling her soul to Satan.”
Gibby nodded concededly. “Do you still want coffee?”
Laughter dying away, Pascal looked up at Gibby thoughtfully. She looked great. All glowing with excitement and animation. Her eyes were gleaming with exhilaration. Her blonde streaked hair was delightfully mussed and she had slept away her makeup, but it didn’t really matter. At that very moment in time, Pascal knew something extremely important. And he didn’t need the wisenheimer reflection to tell him what it was.
Pascal leapt to his feet, pulled a startled Gibby into his arms and smooched her but good. He vaguely heard a muffled protest, but it ended with the wrapping of her arms around his neck to pull him closer. After a long minute, or was it an hour, knowing exactly where the smell of wildflowers and vanilla had come from, he pulled back and said with feeling, “Dear God above, I am in so much trouble.”
Gibby was bemused. “Wow, Your Honor, you can kiss very well. That thing you do with your tongue is…well, interesting.”
Pascal stared down at Gibby. He started to bend his head again but she said, “I could do this all day, Pascal, honestly I could, but I think you need to get some food in you and you should also read the paper.”
“Did I mention that I stole Billy’s body not once but twice yesterday?” Pascal whispered lustfully, gently pulling on her arms.
“Twice?” Gibby stared at Pascal. “What the hell?”
In between kisses, Pascal explained. But after a while Gibby didn’t really care. Even when they knocked the food onto the floor, neither particularly paid attention.
•
“We need to go check on Billy,” Pascal said.
“That’s about the least romantic thing I’ve ever heard,” Gibby said back. “Especially after making whoopee.”
“We need to go check on Billy, and you have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen,” Pascal amended.
“Okay, so where did you stash Billy?”
“The one place no one would ever think to look for him, a safe place from unwanted body-nappers, and a locale where only the cleverest of clever could have deduced.”
•
“Pascal,” Gibby said solemnly. “I think maybe someone looked for him here.”
“Did you know that nine out ten crashing pilot’s last words are, ‘Oh, shit,’?” Pascal asked dumbly.
“Really? I didn’t know that,” Gibby answered. “I would have thought it would have been a prayer or saying they loved their kids or their dog or something.”
“I feel like a pilot about to crash very forcibly into something very hard at a very high rate of speed,” Pascal commented.
“Oh, shit,” Gibby said.
“Exactly,” Pascal agreed.
Chapter Twenty-One
Excerpt from I Married Bayou Billy!, written by Glenda Welsh McCall, published by Lonesome Dog Press: Houston, Texas, 1968, page 53:
…Called me, ‘The devil’s whore!’ at the top of his lungs as he chased me down the farm road dressed only in his skivvies and a pair of worn cowboy boots. Understandably, Bill was upset with my interference in his so-called ‘business affairs,’ but as I was the only well-read and devout woman in his life, who had ever been in his life, it was my Christian duty to see that Bill traveled the straight and narrow path to salvation, whether he agreed with it or not. It was the demon liquor riling the man up. Our great government made a grievous error in repealing the 18th Amendment and falling under the influence of drunken politicians and greedy businessmen who would desecrate the meaning behind that inspired persuasion of the Temperance Movement. However, Bill was artfully clever when it came to getting what he wanted and had alcohol had been still prohibited, as it is in many counties and cities even to this day, he would have still managed to beg, buy, or steal some with which to drink to excess.
It is my belief that Bill would have beat me into a bloody pile of pulp had he caught me that day on the old farm. However, as he was nearly senseless with the intoxicating poison coursing through his blood, he tripped and cut a two inch gash just above his right eyebrow. Apparently, the pain caused an abrupt melancholy to beleaguer him, and he beseeched me to take him to the county doctor, who would stitch him without reporting his presence to the local authorities. Later, I was accused of harboring a convicted felon, but I wasn’t aware of his criminal status until well after we were married. By that time, I had made my vows, and I obeyed them staunchly. Except, of course, when Bill was truly drunk and prone to kick me in the abdomen as he was to belch out the lyrics to ‘I’ll never smile again.’ Then I was apt to flee for my sorry life. At least until he sobered up, which sometimes wasn’t for days and on one occasion wasn’t for three weeks.
Oh, there were reasons for his vileness. Bill would sometimes take off for parts unknown to flee the unreasonable requests of his greedy brothers and sisters. In those days, the men folk who hadn’t gone to war were smart to work in the factories and the mills, but none of Bill’s kinfolk were known for their intelligence. Bill was said to have had money stashed away from his days as a bank robber and a riverboat thief, and they pestered him endlessly for cash. I believe that drove him to the evil infernal liquor that he so craved. Truly, Bill even had grown children who wanted a piece of his every dollar. Once the man vanished for six months and I was sorely taken aback when once again he appeared on my
doorstep.
It wasn’t long after Bill split open his forehead that he started spending more time Pegramville way and the rumors began to trickle back about that shameless hussy, Rosa Zamarrippa. I’ll wager she didn’t get a dime more than what it cost him to lay between her legs. Even then, I know that Bill’s worthless relatives didn’t even get a copper penny from him, much less the pounds of gold that he allegedly stole over the years.
Fools, every single last one of them. And oh, good Lord above, the peabrains who married into the McCall family were even worse. Of course, that doesn’t include me.
The Present
Wednesday, July 19th
Sawdust City, Texas
“Damned idiots,” Lucy Rickard Jones said vehemently. “Wanting me to take care of his tab. Let him take care of his own goddamn bill.” She giggled suddenly. “Except he’s dead and he can’t pay zilch. Not that that stopped him while he was alive and kicking everyone’s butts that he could reach with his measly, oversized, smelly man feet. Did I tell you that once he tried to shoot me with a nail gun?”
“Yes, mama,” Danalyn Jones said obediently. Danalyn was Lucy’s oldest daughter and at the advanced age of twenty, she was wishing that she had left to join the Navy like she had originally planned. However, her mother had insisted that she needed her ‘baby’ at home and not in some faraway place on a faraway ship doing who knew what to faraway foreigners in faraway conflicts brought on by faraway politicians. God, she prayed silently. Please let something interesting and good happen to me today, something that will change my despondent life.
Lucy, on the other hand, was Ruby Atwater Rickard McCall’s daughter, and at the advanced age of forty, was teetering on the verge of full-blown alcoholism. It would require an appalling shove for Pascal Waterford to advance exponentially to the point where Lucy tottered. Lucy was also William Douglas McCall’s step-daughter, which was a fact that she would have cheerfully and drunkenly liked to forget. As a matter of fact, she would have paid a professional hypnotist money to make her forget it, but cash was a commodity sadly lacking in the Jones house.
As a matter of fact, the latest request for monies in the way of Billy’s postmortem debts was causing Lucy to drink twice as much as she normally consumed. Furthermore, she was drinking first thing in the morning, pausing for a midmorning martini made of beer and a pickled onion, indulging in a liquid diet of Mountain Dew and gin for lunch, breaking for mid-afternoon wine coolers, and just plain old getting snookered in the evening on the cheapest alcohol she could buy in bulk from the Sam’s Club in Tyler.
“Mama,” Danalyn said hesitantly, her hands wrapped tightly around a large mug of coffee. “Should you be drinking quite so early?”
“No, dammit, I should not,” Lucy said. “But a man from Dallas, Texas called not an hour ago, at the crack of nine am, and informed me that it was my moral obligation to pay off his bills. Hah! I bet you don’t know what I told that jack-assed, good-for-nothing, slimeball creditor.”
“I heard you screaming on the phone,” Danalyn said with a sigh. “The whole trailer park heard you. And I’m pretty sure what you told the guy isn’t physically possible. I can’t even picture that in my head.” She wondered if the recruiting office was open yet. Please God, let it be open so I can go sign up right now.
“Last night I got three calls from three different companies wanting to be paid for his credit card debt. He had at least ten credit cards and they were all maxxed out. I do not understand why any company would have given him another credit when they got a gander at his age. It wasn’t like he was forty-five with a steady income. And yesterday, two bankers. Double mortgages on both of his fucking houses. How did they get my number? I mean, did I post it on the internet that I was distantly related to him by marriage? No, I did not.”
Danalyn looked at her mother. Once Lucy had been quite beautiful. Her eldest daughter was certain that she could be again, if she would climb up on the wagon from whence she had fallen so many times. But now her hair was a scraggly, gray-streaked mess, her eyes were bloodshot and the skin underneath was swollen, and she smelled like she might have slept in some of her own vomit. And the overwhelming capsule of bitterness combined with despair was haunting the entire trailer home like a ghost from a ‘B’ movie.
I’m going to hide the booze again, Danalyn decided. No, strike that. I’m going pour it all down the drains. I’m going to alert all the neighbors. I’m going to go personally to every store that sells liquor and beer and wine in the town and show them a photograph of my mother and put her off limits on purchasing any booze. Furthermore, I’m never having another drink in my life. Screw alcoholism. Please, God, don’t ever let me become an alcoholic. Thank you.
“The day before that, it was three other people about a home equity loan, a personal loan, and, get this, a ATV that cost $10,000. A flipping, farping, funking ATV, for the love of St. Aloysius’s patched underwear. All from his excessive spending, that miserable sack of armadillo poo. What does a thousand year old man do with a bleeping ATV?”
“Why don’t you just call him by his name?” Danalyn asked politely.
“Because he doesn’t deserve it, even if he is dead,” Lucy snapped. “The nerve of these people. Why don’t they call his freaking children? Because they all had the foresight to die before that old piece of crap did. I’m not his closest kin. One of his seven million grandchildren are, or one of his twenty trillion great-grandchildren. Dammit, I don’t know. But it ain’t me. Mama died well before he did and she left everything to him. I had to go pry Granny Atwater’s china service out of his little greedy paws. It wasn’t like he was going to use it. Oh, God, no. He didn’t even want it until he knew I wanted it. I had to steal it from him. One day while he was doing his kidney dialysis, I went into his house with the key Mama gave me and I got every piece back, including three broken plates, that nasty son of a scumbag. Also got some linen that Great-Granny Nola made. And a patchwork quilt that Granny Sheridan made from all her children’s’ school clothes. Why should he have that stuff? It didn’t mean anything to him. He wasn’t going to use it. I’m just surprised he didn’t think to auction it off on eBay. Guess he didn’t know about that.” Lucy looked blearily at Danalyn. “Did I tell you he once tried to shoot me with a nail gun?”
“Yes, Mama,” Danalyn answered obediently.
Lucy tapped the newspaper that Danalyn heartily wished she had left out on the stoop that morning. The local news was reporting the theft of Bayou Billy’s corpse as well as the growing rivalry between Sawdust City and Albie to claim the body for their own. Because Danalyn’s eyes had been on the bottom half of the paper, concerning the weather being riled up in the Gulf of Mexico, she hadn’t looked at the headline when she had carried it in. However, she wished she had so the paper could have gone directly into the trash barrel and her mother would have been none the wiser.
“They’re fighting over his remains,” Lucy said. “As if he were someone who was worth fighting over. All because he robbed a fucking riverboat in the thirties and copped a feel on the captain’s wife’s goodies.” She made a gagging noise and her hand went for her morning orange juice and cream sherry. Taking a long drink, she was silent for a time.
Please God, let her be struck dumb for a time, Danalyn thought fervently.
Lucy set the glass down and studied the headline for a long moment. Then she shifted in her chair and tilted her head curiously to the side. Her mouth began to twitch and after a great length of time, her tongue ponderously exited to moisten her lips.
Uh-oh, Danalyn thought. That’s trouble. When she shuts up like that, it’s trouble. Big trouble. The kind of trouble that’s going to get me into trouble. Dear God Above, I didn’t really mean for her to be struck dumb. Please forgive me for thinking in a nasty way about my mother. Also, God, can you help just a little about keeping her out of trouble. Maybe give her a sudden allergy to all things alcohol. God, I don’t think that’s much to ask and I would really owe you. Also, God
, I’d like to make it my next birthday without getting maimed, killed, or tossed into jail because of what Mama’s thinking right now. Thank you. Amen. She looked around for her purse and her car keys and couldn’t immediately find them, much to her consternation. A moment later she dragged the set of keys out of her jeans pocket and Lucy turned toward the noise.
“Just what I was thinking, Danalyn, m’girl,” Lucy said triumphantly. “We need your little Ford Ranger.”
“It’s twenty years old, Mama,” Danalyn said warningly. “I’ve got just about gas to get to work and back for the next three days. The clutch is smoking when you get it into third gear so you have to skip that one. Um, I spilled maple syrup on the seat?”
Lucy eyed her daughter suspiciously. “Do you want your old mother to take a shotgun and put it in her mouth and pull the trigger?”
“You pawned the shotgun years ago, Mama,” Danalyn mentioned helpfully.
“Beside the point,” Lucy snapped. “Get your purse. Call your brother. We need a strong back.”
“Am I going to go to jail for whatever you’re planning, Mama?” Danalyn asked pitifully. If the recruiting office in town is still closed I’ll drive to the one in Tyler, and if I run out of gas, I’ll hitchhike.
Lucy made a pooh-pooh noise. “Jail? Hah. The cops are too busy looking for his body. They ain’t going to give a lickedity split what we’re up to.” She got up from the small card table that served as their kitchen table and began to earnestly rummage in a kitchen drawer. “Let’s see. Pens we’ve swiped from Denney’s and IHOP’s. A box of upholstery tacks. What the heck did we use those for? Three broken Swiss Army knives. Is that a mouse turd? I’ve got to clean this drawer out. Hey, look, that recipe for those biscuits we like so much from Red Lobster. I’ve been looking for that everywhere. Is that a diaphragm?” She raised disbelieving eyes to her daughter. “Something you want to tell me, Danalyn?”
Life and Death of Bayou Billy Page 27
