***
Agnes shivered when the wind did a turnaround. Her orange sweatshirt was warm enough in the concession stand where there was heat from the grill, but outside it wasn’t keeping her warm. However, she’d bet dollars to horse shit that she fared better than Violet right then.
Violet had to be chilly in that straight navy blue skirt and lightweight sweater. She should have turned around backward and looked in the mirror before she went out in public wearing that sweater. The fat rolls on her back looked like a couple of piglets under a navy blue blanket as she trotted back and forth to the bathroom. And she had on high-heeled shoes. She had made so many trips in those high heels that she would probably have to have her knees replaced before Christmas.
Agnes giggled at that vision. Life couldn’t be a bit better.
The flatbed trailer, all decked out in bunting, sat waiting ten feet from her. Andy stepped up to the microphone and tapped it. The buzz of the crowd dropped enough that he could introduce Clayton Mason, the campaign manager for Cadillac’s own future Representative.
Shit introducing more shit!
Both of them probably thought that the applause was for them, but folks were clapping because the festival would be over soon and everyone could pack up their wares, get the hell out of the cold wind, take their rowdy kids home, give them a bath, and put them to bed.
Clayton said a few words and then Ethan took the platform.
The clapping and whistling was louder that time. The crowd must like Ethan more than she did.
He got out two sentences before she bent down to tie her shoes and unplugged the long extension cord bringing electricity from the field house to the flatbed. They might find the problem, but just to make sure it wouldn’t work if they did, she kicked half a can of lukewarm Coke over to spill on both ends.
His mouth moved. People close to him caught a few words.
Someone yelled, “We can’t hear!”
“Who cares?” Agnes yelled back.
Andy ran over to beat on the microphone but nothing happened. He grabbed the cord and followed it, asked Agnes to move to one side, and quickly found the connection.
“Got it,” he yelled and snapped it together.
Sparks flew.
Andy threw it down and jumped backward.
Fire blazed up from the dead grass that had sprouted up in the cracks in the asphalt covering the football field parking lot.
Agnes picked up her lawn chair and moved it back five feet more so Andy and Ethan could stomp the blazes out with their pretty, shiny black shoes. When the ruckus was over, Andy went back up on the platform and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Sorry about this, folks. We’ll have to catch Ethan’s speech at the next big thing in town, which will be the Blue-Ribbon Jalapeño Society Jubilee, just a week before the big election day.”
He turned to Ethan and shrugged. “Sorry about that. Some kid must’ve run past and tripped over it and then someone else spilled soda pop on it.”
Agnes was so glad that she was looking right at Violet at the very moment it dawned on the old girl what had happened. It was the most beautiful sight in the world.
It only took ten steps—Agnes counted them—to bring Violet and all her anger to Agnes’s chair. She’d promised she wouldn’t start a fight, so she couldn’t say or do one thing until Violet made the first move.
Violet shook her fist and yelled, “You bitch! You dosed that fudge and now you’ve ruined Ethan’s night in his hometown. All because you are mad over your slutty niece? God, Agnes, I thought you had more class than that.”
The comment about Cathy brought Agnes up out of the chair. “You done made a big mistake. I won’t stand still and let you call Cathy a slut.”
Violet’s open hand made contact on Agnes’s jaw, jerking her head to one side.
Agnes came at her like a bull elephant and grabbed a handful of hair to hold her steady while she kicked her shins a dozen times.
Violet pushed Agnes and they both went down on the concrete, rolling around through the burned out place, collecting dead grass and ash on their clothing and skin. It was a blur of flying fists and red and black hair. Agnes caught one on the arm, but she landed a solid right to Violet’s good eye. One of Violet’s damned old spike heels got Agnes on the arm and the blood ran to her fingertips, but Agnes used that wicked right to bloody Violet’s nose the next chance she got.
Arms circled about her waist and more were suddenly around her legs, but she kept throwing punches, landing a couple more on Violet’s arms before they dragged her away. Even then she managed to get in one more kick.
“Turn me loose, damn it! I’m not finished. She done stepped over the line when she called my niece a slut,” Agnes yelled.
Trixie had her arms wrapped firmly around Agnes’s waist and held on for dear life. Cathy hugged her from behind, pinning both of those wicked fists to her side. Marty was flat on the ground with both her arms around Agnes’s legs. Darla Jean was in front of her, keeping Violet at arm’s distance.
Ethan, Clayton, and Andy finally corralled Violet. They carried her kicking and screaming toward the flatbed with Ethan and Andy holding her back and Clayton scowling as usual.
She got one hand free and rocked Andy’s jaw, got a foot free, and was on her way back to Agnes when Andy slapped cuffs on her wrists.
“You need my extra set?” Andy yelled at Trixie.
“I think we got her,” she hollered back.
Violet yelled above both of them. “You take these things off me right now. It’s her fault and I’m pressing charges. Andy, take her to jail.”
Ethan handed her his sweaty handkerchief to hold against her bloody nose. “Mother, settle down!”
Agnes finally relaxed, stopped trying to get free, and yelled across the distance. “She hit me first, Andy. I was minding my own business and she went crazy. I should’ve got the first hit in since it’s my boyfriend she’s sleeping with. I told her she’d better leave him alone or I’d black that other eye. Take her to jail. Or turn me loose and you can take her to the damn morgue.”
“She’s got a boyfriend?” Trixie gasped.
“Hell no! She’s just pestering Violet,” Marty said breathlessly.
“Do you?” Trixie looked Agnes in the eye.
Agnes winked.
“Okay, okay! Jack!” Andy motioned to his off-duty deputy to help him.
“Yes, sir?” Jack took a step forward from behind Agnes’s corner.
“You stay here to supervise everyone getting their stuff out of the parking lot. I’m taking this whole bunch down to the station to cool off. Y’all can ride with me.” He pointed at Violet’s crew.
He turned to his ex-wife and raised an eyebrow. “Trixie, can I trust you to get her down there?”
“Oh, we’ll be there, all right! I’m filing assault charges against her. Look at my arm and this is my best shirt. She’s going to pay for it, too,” Agnes said.
***
Agnes went from raging to giggling to laughing like a hyena on the way to the station. Her mind had finally snapped and Marty would put her in a nursing home. There wouldn’t be a thing she could do about it because not even Darla Jean could live with a raging lunatic.
“When did you get a boyfriend?” Darla Jean finally asked.
“Hell, I ain’t got a boyfriend and there ain’t a man alive that’d take on Violet. Not after she bitched Ethan’s poor old daddy into the grave. I always felt sorry for him,” Agnes said.
“Then why did you rant about Violet sleeping with your boyfriend?” Trixie asked.
Agnes sat between Marty and Darla Jean in the backseat. Cathy drove and Trixie rode shotgun. She leaned forward, propped her arms on the back of the front seat, and said, “You gave me the idea when you said that about Anna Ruth and Ethan. I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks of me, but she’s always had to be perfect.”
“You may have just ruined Ethan’s election,” Cathy said.
“No, he’ll do that on h
is own. I just had a bang-up good time. Paybacks ain’t bitches; they’re wonderful.”
The Cadillac jail, like the restrooms at the football field, had been built fifty years before, but unlike the restrooms, the only use it got was an occasional Saturday night drunk. It had two cell blocks separated by bars, each with a long bench on one side and a stainless steel commode in the corner.
Violet was sitting on a bench in one cell, but the door was open when Andy ushered Agnes into the other cell.
“You all can wait outside,” he told Trixie.
“Not me. Agnes sits in the can; I sit with her,” Trixie said.
“But you don’t even like her,” Andy said.
“You really think those bars will keep her from snatching Violet bald-headed?” she whispered. “Remember the shotgun?”
“Me too.” Darla Jean went inside with Agnes and sat down stoically on the bench.
Andy shook his head. “Only one person. You can’t both stay.”
“She is my spiritual adviser,” Agnes said. “And I want my nieces too. They’re my bodyguards. That woman is crazy. She’ll eat her way through those bars and kill me.”
The other three women filed into the cell and sat down beside her.
“No one is going to hurt you in my jail,” Andy growled.
“I know it because I have my spiritual adviser and my bodyguards. Violet can have four if she can roust up that many friends. I don’t imagine she can, and Lord only knows her spiritual adviser is Lucifer and he’s got his hands full making deals with politicians right now.”
Violet jumped up and was out the door before Andy could get to it, but he did manage to slam the door to Agnes’s cell.
“I want my lawyer and my son and I want Agnes Flynn locked up a whole year for assault.”
Agnes stood up. Cathy and Marty got between her and Violet, who had both hands stuck through the bars trying to reach Agnes. Trixie grabbed one of Agnes’s hands and Darla Jean got the other one.
“Sweet Jesus, but you are strong,” Darla Jean said.
“Jesus ain’t got a damn thing to do with it. You two leave me alone. I’m not getting that close to her. She might give me rabies. She might already have given them to me when she tried to cut my arm off,” Agnes said.
“You are going to jail,” Violet said.
“You hit me first so I was just defending myself.”
“You put stuff in my fudge!”
Andy ushered her back to her cell and quickly slammed the door.
“Aunt Agnes, you said you didn’t poison her!” Cathy exclaimed.
“I didn’t!”
Violet started a high-pitched moan like she was dying for sure. “You poisoned me? What did you use? Now I’ll never live to see Ethan in office.”
Agnes shook a finger at her. “Stop your caterwauling. I didn’t poison you. I just used five bars of Ex-Lax in a pan of fudge. And I mixed Miralax with the milk so I wouldn’t have to put in that pinch of salt. It was guaranteed to start working in one hour or less. Didn’t miss it by much, did it? If you die tomorrow morning, we can bury you in a shoebox, Violet Prescott, because you won’t be full of shit no more.”
Violet snarled and growled. “You are a mean, jealous witch.”
“That’d be the pot calling the kettle black. Ain’t it nice that they’ve got a potty in your cell, though? You sure you want your son in there with you?” Agnes asked.
Andy opened the door and Ethan preceded him into the hallway in front of the jail cells. “Mother?”
“You can’t come in here. It’s too horrible. What if the press saw you sitting in a jail cell? It would ruin our chances at election.”
“I didn’t come to sit with you. We’ve paid the city fine for aggravated assault and we are taking you home,” he said.
“Well, shit!” Agnes whispered. “I really wanted to see if she’d use that pot.”
“Aunt Agnes!” Cathy and Marty chimed in together.
“Just get me away from that woman,” Violet said.
“Don’t you dare go home and sleep with my dear Herman,” Agnes yelled.
“Go to hell!” Violet screamed back.
“Nope! I keep tellin’ you that I ain’t spendin’ eternity with you.”
The door slammed and Agnes cackled. “We showed her, didn’t we? Bet she thinks twice before she calls Cathy a slut again.”
Marty bristled. “She did what?”
“I took care of it real good so don’t get your dander up. That felt so good that I wish I’d done it fifty years ago.”
It was thirty minutes before Andy came back. “Okay, Violet is at home now so I’ll let you go. Fifty-dollar fine for public disturbance, Agnes.”
“Pay him, Marty.”
“Why me?” she argued.
“Because I took up for your sister and kept you from a murder charge. You’d have killed her for calling Cathy a slut,” Agnes said.
Chapter 13
Agnes appeared the next morning with gauze wrapped around her arm from wrist to elbow and carrying it in a sling that smelled like mothballs. A bit of overkill for a scratch, but Trixie wasn’t saying a word.
Cathy hugged her gently. “Oh, Aunt Agnes, does it hurt?”
“Violet probably had rabies up under her fingernails. You reckon I need to take those horrible shots in my belly?” Agnes was able to use the arm very well to dip sausage gravy over the tops of two big buttermilk biscuits.
Cathy giggled. “We’re never going to live this down.”
Agnes’s sparkling eyes and tight little smile told Trixie that they’d not seen the end of the fifty-year-old cat fight.
“Sweet Nothin’s” was playing in the café when the chimes on the doorbell let everyone in the kitchen know the first customer of the day had arrived. Trixie went through the swinging doors backward, tying her apron. She stopped so fast that she almost pitched forward when she came face to face with cameras and a microphone pushed into her face.
“Miss Andrews?” The lady with the microphone took a step closer and a cameraman started filming.
“No, I’m Trixie. Which Miss Andrews do you want?”
The camera clicked off.
“Clawdy, of course,” the woman said.
“There is no Clawdy. The café is named for Claudia Andrews, but she passed on a while back. Would you like to speak to Cathy or Marty Andrews—they are her daughters?” Trixie asked.
“Either one will do fine,” the woman said.
“Hey, Cathy, you better take this one,” Trixie yelled toward the kitchen.
Cathy was stunned to see a cameraman with Sherman’s television station logo on the side. “What is this all about?”
The little red light flashed on the camera.
Agnes pushed her way in front of the cameras. “You want to know about the fracas at the football field last night, you ask me, not her. That was all my doings and she had no part in it.”
“We are here to ask you how you feel about this zoning business. We all love this cute little café in this area and would hate to see you have to sell out. Will you think about relocating to a bigger place, like Sherman or Denison, if your zoning laws are changed?”
“That was resolved at the last Council meeting,” Cathy said.
“It’s been reopened for review. The company that was looking at the house across the street decided to buy property in Sherman. And we have it from a good source that the Cadillac City Council is once again trying to decide if they’re going to rule that your house isn’t zoned for a business.”
“We thought it was taken care of. We’d have to discuss our options before we could make a statement. I’m in business with two partners,” Cathy said.
“This is all Violet Prescott’s doing,” Agnes said.
“Ethan Prescott’s mother?” The lady reporter gave the cameraman a sign to keep the cameras rolling.
“That’s right. It’s a long story, but she attacked me at the fireworks show last night. See?” Agnes held up the
arm. “I might have to take rabies shots.”
“She bit you?”
“Who knows what she did, but just to be on the safe side, I’m on my way to the doctor’s office to see if a human bite can cause rabies.” Agnes limped out of the camera’s view into the kitchen.
“Well, Miss Andrews, thank you. We are doing a piece on the economy and how rezoning portions of our small towns might bring more business into them. Would you sign a release form giving us permission to air this?” the lady asked.
“Yes, ma’am, I will. Anything to help the small businesses,” Cathy said.
Damn that Violet Prescott. She should have left well enough alone. Now they’d have to watch Agnes like a hawk. Violet had no idea what kind of shit storm she’d just kicked up.
***
It was not what Darla Jean expected when Agnes opened the door and motioned her inside her home. It did not smell like mothballs but like bacon and biscuits. It didn’t have doilies and knickknacks everywhere, but was nicely decorated in earth tones.
“What the hell do you want?” Agnes asked.
“I’m your spiritual adviser and I’m advising you to ride down to Blue Ridge with me today,” Darla Jean said.
“Why would I do a fool thing like that?”
Darla Jean gave her a brief account of Lindsey, but she didn’t tell her that Cathy had called after the camera crew had left. The café was suddenly swamped with customers who seldom ever went out to lunch. And none of the three could watch Agnes so they’d enlisted Darla Jean’s help in keeping her out of meanness.
“Well, why didn’t you say so? Does this Lindsey and your sister know you are a hooker?” Agnes asked.
“I’m a preacher in the Christian Nondenominational Church and I’d just as soon not broadcast my past,” Darla Jean told her.
“Yes, but you used to be a hooker.”
“And you were pretty ornery yourself last night. I understand that you and Violet are sleeping with the same man. He must have a lot of stamina for an eighty-year-old man.”
Agnes laughed. “Okay, I’ll go with you. Cathy sent you to keep me out of trouble, didn’t she?”
Darla Jean smiled. “A spiritual adviser is bound by the same laws as a lawyer and his or her client. I’m sworn to secrecy, and if I answer that question, then God might not even let me dust off the clouds in heaven.”
The Blue-Ribbon Jalapeño Society Jubilee Page 17
