The Happy Hour Choir

by Sally Kilpatrick

  I chanced a look in the rearview mirror just in time to see Tiffany grinning from ear to ear. She held a flower arrangement with each arm and propped the third between her feet, looking like an animal sticking its head out of exotic foliage. “Please, please, please. I’ll have my burger with extra pickles.”

  Ginger’s hand flew to her mouth. Even before cancer and her first round of chemo, she’d hated pickles, refusing to put them in potato salad or chicken salad, which was fine by me. “Life’s too short for something so sour,” she would tell me.

  “Yes, Miss Momma to Be.” I shifted my voice to a whisper. “Just don’t say the p-word again.”

  Tiffany nodded, her face solemn with no smile in those huge brown eyes. She looked like little more than a child, yet she was going to be a mother. That had been me once upon a time. Only I wouldn’t have shut up. I would have shouted “Pickles! Pickles! Pickles, how I love their sour flavor and the green slime they leave behind on the bun!” It took me a long time to feel remorse for hurting Ginger’s feelings, a lot longer than it’d taken Tiffany.

  “Beulah, can you get me a plain burger?” Ginger turned to the window.

  “And—”

  “Tiffany, baby, I know you want a double burger with cheese, no lettuce, no tomato, but extra . . . you know.”

  She nodded with a grin. “And a chocolate-banana milk shake.”

  As I smiled at her, I felt love even if I couldn’t articulate it. A chocolate-banana milk shake. I was becoming such a softie. If she’d asked me, I probably would’ve had them put pickles in her milk shake, too.

  Instead I eased out of the car and walked up to the outside window to place my order. Burger Paradise might be the best restaurant in town, an institution for far longer than I had been alive, but they had their own way of doing things. Some folks went inside to eat, but I knew Ginger didn’t want to wait that long or to be seen in public while still green around the edges.

  I sneaked a glance at her and Tiffany in the car as I finished giving the waitress my order. Then I slipped her an extra twenty. “Could you kinda push this one to the top of the pile? I have a couple of ladies who need to get home.”

  The teenager tried not to grin at me, but she nodded as she slipped the extra twenty into the back pocket of her jeans. Ten minutes later I walked back to the car with a Styrofoam cup and a white grease-stained sack in hand.

  “Well, that was the fastest service I’ve ever seen here,” Ginger said as I handed her the sack and passed the cup back to Tiffany.

  “Guess it’s your lucky day.” I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Guess it is,” she mumbled to herself as she lay back in the seat and took a nap during the short ride home.

  Burger Paradise claimed they had the “Best Burgers This Side of Paradise.” Normally, I would have said they were exaggerating, but sharing burgers with Ginger and Tiffany at the little kitchen table could almost make me forget about Luke. Almost. Their burgers had never tasted as divine as they did that night because Ginger was ready to eat something other than hospital food, Tiffany thought everything tasted great, and I was happy to be sitting at the table with both ladies happy and healthy.

  “Beulah, what did you tell these folks?” Tiffany asked.

  Her burger looked to be half beef and half pickles. Ginger looked out the breakfast room window in disgust.

  “Ith tho good,” Tiffany intoned through a full mouth. If I had known $20 would have softened up the staff at Burger Paradise, we would have been eating like queens a long time ago. Of course, back then I didn’t know I stood to inherit a lot of money.

  “Greasing palms at a greasy spoon?” muttered Ginger.

  “Is there a problem with that?” I felt my own eyebrow arch. Apparently, I had learned a few things from Ginger.

  She fixed me with a stare, and her bleary eyes were angry, not like herself. “We could have waited like everyone else, you know. There might have been other people who needed their food more than we needed ours. Did you ever think of that?”

  My appetite abandoned me. “Ginger, I’m sorry. I was thinking about getting you and Tiffany home, I didn’t mean to upset you. . . .”

  But Ginger was shaking her head as though trying to get rid of mental cobwebs. Then she massaged her temples. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from.”

  Her eyes met mine again. Now they were lost, a little confused.

  But I forgot all about how weird Ginger was acting because that’s when the brick crashed through the living room window.

  Chapter 17

  “What in the blue blazes?” Ginger was saying for the third time by the time I got the loaded shotgun out of the coat closet.

  I crept to the door. In my peripheral vision, I saw Tiffany help Ginger to her feet. I pulled back the curtain. Carl Davis stood on the lawn, his hair fading into the hazy gray of twilight. He staggered to one side and bent to pick up another of the bricks that circled our oak tree out front.

  “Tiffany, call the police and tell them your daddy’s throwing bricks at us.” I didn’t hear movement, and I turned to face her. She was frozen in one spot, but I couldn’t tell if it was fear or anger.

  “I told you to call the police. Now do it before he does something really stupid!” I took the shotgun and then fiddled with the dead bolt with the other hand.

  “Beulah, what are you doing?” Ginger was supporting herself by leaning on the table just outside the kitchen.

  “I’m going to try to talk some sense into Carl. If that doesn’t work maybe I can scare him off.” I opened the door a crack, and held the gun up in what I hoped was an I-mean-business pose.

  Ginger took a step toward me, but tripped a little and clutched at her chest, a spot I now recognized as more spleenward than heartward. “You couldn’t hit a bull in the ass with a bass fiddle. Hand me that shotgun.”

  “And you need to sit down,” I said calmly. “I don’t have to hit him with this bad boy; I only have to get close. Besides, he doesn’t know if I’m a good shot or not.”

  Ginger muttered something about how he could tell by the way I was holding the gun like a sissy, but she sat down in the chair closest to the kitchen. I turned to Tiffany. “When I get out on this porch, lock the door behind me.”

  Tiffany was wringing her hands again. “But—”

  “I’m not kidding. Lock the door and don’t open it until the police get here.”

  Finally, she nodded that she would.

  I opened the door with my foot and edged out on the porch with the gun up to my shoulder and my eye looking down what I hoped was the sight. “Carl, you need to go home and not come back.”

  Carl staggered right then left, but he dropped the brick and held up his hands. “Beulah, I want my girl back. You can’t keep her. You just can’t.”

  He took a step forward.

  “Stop right where you are, or I will shoot.”

  He stopped. “I’m lonely without her. I need my little Tiff-Tiff.”

  A disgustingly awful realization formed in my mind as Carl began to weep.

  “You should have thought about that before you beat her up. And if I shoot you now, I don’t think anyone’s going to have trouble thinking it’s self-defense.”

  “Aw, Beulah, don’t shoot.” He fell to his knees.

  “Daddy?”

  “Tiff-Tiff.” Carl’s face lit up. “Look at you, so pretty like your momma.”

  Tiffany took another step forward, and I could’ve strangled her for coming out on the porch. “He’s fine. Go back inside.”

  She started forward, and I had to balance the gun with one hand to hold her back with the other. “If not for you, go back in the house for the baby.”

  She took one step backward then another. The dead bolt locked behind me.

  Carl fell face forward into the lawn and beat his fists on the ground. “I need my little girl!”

  As I lowered the shotgun, he said, “You took her away from me.”

  Something b
ehind his eyes flashed from sad to mad. He grabbed a brick and leaped to his feet like a cat. “I will bash your head in if you don’t move away from that door.”

  I lifted the gun. “Carl, don’t get any closer or I will shoot.”

  He took another step, and my finger itched to squeeze the trigger, but I couldn’t make myself do it. Just as he reached the barrel of the gun, the wail of sirens drowned out the cicadas. Flashing blue lights lit up the night as a cruiser pulled up the drive.

  “Freeze!”

  To this day, I have never been so happy to see Len Rogers. I even promised myself not to sarcastically call him “One of Ellery’s Finest” anymore.

  “Carl Davis, I told you to freeze.” Len’s voice cracked.

  Carl dropped the brick. “This ain’t going to be the last of me.”

  “When I get done you’re not going to be able to come within a mile of me or Tiffany.” I shifted the shotgun back into a safer position. I really was going to have to learn to shoot one of these things.

  Carl’s eyes had taken on the wild expression of the night he had thrown me into the wall. He sneered. “Nothing’s going to keep me from my girl. You just wait.”

  Len cuffed Carl and read him his rights before his deputy took Carl away. He sauntered over to me, a gangly young Barney Fife without the steadying influence of Andy Griffith. “I’m going to need to ask you a few questions.”

  An hour later, we had each given Len a statement of what happened. As I studied Tiffany, I noticed she didn’t make eye contact with Len or with anyone else for that matter.

  “Young man, I told you I didn’t see a thing!” Ginger’s lip quivered a little, and the hand she held up shook.

  “Really, Len. Ginger didn’t see much of anything, and she’s had a really hard few days of it. Don’t you think that’s enough?”

  Len looked at Ginger and back at me before flipping his notepad closed. “I suppose so. I’m guessing you want a restraining order?”

  Since I’m not keen on a chain-link fence and a pit bull, yeah. “I think that’d be best, don’t you?” I crossed my arms over my chest and raised my eyebrow in my best impersonation of Ginger.

  “Yeah,” Len said. His shoulders slumped. “I heard about what happened between you and ol’ Carl earlier. You should have called the police and got one then.”

  My eyes cut to the landscape over the fireplace. “I didn’t want to drag Bill into it.”

  Len nodded. He had been known to happen over to The Fountain on occasion when he wasn’t on duty. And when it wasn’t an election year for sheriff.

  “Go on down to the courthouse tomorrow and they’ll give you all the paperwork you need to file.” Len stood and adjusted his hat with an antiquated “ma’am.”

  I showed him to the door and tried not to roll my eyes at his Old West sheriff impersonation because I had just turned over a new leaf as far as he was concerned. When I closed the door, I immediately turned to Tiffany.

  “Tiffany Davis, I think there are some things you aren’t telling us. I would love to help you, but I’m going to need to know the whole story here. Who’s the father of your baby and why is your daddy so riled up?”

  “It’s nothing, Beulah. Maybe he’s been mixing his meds with beer, pot, and who knows what.” She was wringing those hands like a regular Lady Macbeth, and she refused to meet my eyes.

  I walked over to Tiffany and took her chin in my palm so her eyes had to meet mine. “Tiffany, who is the father of your baby?”

  Tears made her brown eyes go glassy, but she made no move to tell me.

  “I think I already know,” I said.

  “Daddy.” Her voice came out in a horrible whisper, and she immediately looked at the carpet.

  Ginger gasped and clamped a hand over her mouth to hold her dentures in. “Child, why didn’t you say so?”

  Tears rolled hot and fast down Tiffany’s cheeks. “I didn’t tell anyone because it ain’t right.”

  Nothing we could say to that.

  Ginger and I looked at each other. Would the baby have two heads? Would this be another baby that didn’t make it to term due to severe in-breeding?

  “He isn’t my real daddy, you know. Momma and me showed up on his doorstep when I was three.”

  I tried to keep my expression level when I looked back at Tiffany. I tried not to let her see my immense relief that at least her baby might not be born with three heads. I thought, maybe, if I didn’t say anything at all, she would keep talking.

  “But it still ain’t right.”

  My eyes bugged out.

  I need my Tiff-Tiff.

  You’re so pretty. Like your momma.

  I wouldn’t have felt bad about shooting him.

  Dammit, was there a woman alive who hadn’t been abused at some time in some way by some man? And Tiffany had been going to make it out of Ellery and off to college, and now this? It was one thing to accidentally get pregnant—quite another to have the only father you’d ever known rape you.

  Just dammit.

  I cleared my throat because I didn’t want to ask the question I was about to ask. “Do you want to go back to him, Tiffany?”

  “No!” Her brown eyes widened with sufficient horror for me to believe her. Thank God.

  Ginger closed her eyes and nodded slowly, a touch of relief on her pale face.

  “Tiffany, do you want to tell me what happened?”

  She shook her head fiercely. “No.”

  “I think you need to call the police.”

  “What kind of good is that going to do? It’s my word against his. Besides, you didn’t press charges against him.”

  “That was different. I was trying to protect Bill.”

  She stared through me stubbornly. It was a case of her word against his. At this point, he’d even squeaked past statutory.

  “Okay,” I said with a sigh of defeat. “I think I speak for Ginger, too, when I say you are welcome to stay here as long as you want to. Anytime you want to talk, you know where to find me.”

  And we have more in common than you think.

  Tiffany raced up the stairs with the same speed she’d once used to steal bases. I stood and walked to the kitchen. I needed a drink. I looked forlornly through each cabinet before I remembered that Ginger was a teetotaller. When I’d told her about my new job at The Fountain, she’d made sure I knew she wasn’t happy about it but that she didn’t feel like she could make decisions for me. She mainly told me I wasn’t bringing any of that mess into her house.

  I heard Tiffany tromping around upstairs. Down the hall and into the nursery she went, no doubt to cry.

  “Beulah.” Ginger’s voice was so low I almost didn’t hear it.

  “Ma’am?”

  “There’s a bottle of Jack in the laundry room on the top shelf underneath the old dishpan. I’ll take mine with that Dr Pepper you bought, thank you.”

  Ginger had been hiding booze from me all of these years? I didn’t know if I could handle any more secrets.

  I looked at Ginger, and her beady eyes met mine. “Before you came along, I was lonely. I used to take a few too many nips. I decided I was going to have to quit that behavior if I was going to help you turn out all right.”

  She shifted in her seat. “I put Gentleman Jack underneath that old pan and didn’t touch him again, but I think whiskey ages just fine. I think we could both use one about now.”

  I nodded and went out to the laundry room, a place Ginger knew I hated to linger. Sure enough, Jack was hiding underneath the pan on the top shelf.

  I took out the bottle and went about the business of fixing our drinks, putting a little Dr Pepper in the Jack. It felt weird making a drink for Ginger, especially now knowing she had stopped touching the stuff for me. Sure enough, as I thought about it, I had assumed she was a teetotaller; she had simply said she didn’t want me to bring any alcohol into her house. Red-hot shame burned my cheeks. She had been protecting herself more than me back then, and I had never once seen her
do that, so I assumed—

  “Beulah, what are you doing in there? Grinding and fermenting the corn yourself?”

  “I’m coming, Ginger, but this doesn’t feel right.” I handed her one drink.

  “Can you put the footrest up on the recliner?”

  I bent to comply, holding my own drink steady in the other hand, but I stumbled on my first step to the couch.

  “You okay? I thought the doctor said to avoid alcohol.” Ginger was already reaching for my drink.

  “Not so fast,” I said. “He was referring to the first twenty-four hours, and he hadn’t just found out a friend of his had been raped and impregnated by her stepfather. Nor had he discovered that his straightlaced piano teacher had a love affair with Tennessee whiskey.” I tossed back half my drink before she could take it away.

  Ginger was still studying her glass, her eyes glazed over as though Jack himself were enchanting her.

  Whiskey burned down my throat. “Maybe you’re the one who shouldn’t be drinking.”

  Her eyes snapped up and narrowed. “Beulah Lou, I only have a few more months. I might as well go out in style, especially since there’s no fear of my becoming a hopeless alcoholic. I simply don’t have the time.” And with that prim declaration, she took a dainty sip of her Jack.

  She licked her lips and cocked her head to one side, then she tossed hers back and drank half of it. “Yep. Still good.”

  I could almost see her relax in the first throes of intoxication. “Gentleman Jack was my one friend and constant companion before you came to live with me.”

  I tried to picture the piano teacher going home and fixing herself a drink, but I couldn’t. “Aren’t we all full of secrets this evening,” I murmured.

  Ginger jerked her head ever so slightly toward the stairs. “And who knows what else there is to come?”

  Chapter 18

  The more I thought about it, the madder I got.

  “Luke, I know it’s not Wednesday, but I need to talk to you.” I barged into his office without knocking, and he took off his reading glasses as he looked up at me.