Miss Julia Hits the Road

by Ann B. Ross

  “Well, they usually have contests of some kind set up where the runs end. I know Red will have something in mind, maybe like a Burnout Pit. That’s where they rev their motors and burn the rubber off the back tires. The one who creates the most smoke is the winner, and a new tire is usually the prize. He might have a Slow-Ride Contest, too, to see who can go the slowest without falling. Maybe even a Wienie-Bite Contest, but J. D. won’t let me enter that.”

  I thought it best not to inquire about the last-named contest. If it was too much for Mr. Pickens, I didn’t want to hear about it.

  “And, Miss Julia,” she went on, “there’ll be vendors selling souvenirs, like stuffed teddy bears and bike replacement parts and so on. And bands playing, and people singing and dancing, all kinds of things for everybody to do.”

  “Since the displaced riders are all women, maybe they could help with the food,” I said, then bit my lip. “No, let’s not suggest that. Sounds too much like church. I tell you what, why don’t we get Mr. Pickens to come up with something? From what I’ve observed, he can make a woman love something she doesn’t even like.” Then I realized that that wasn’t the most tactful thing I could’ve said, but Hazel Marie didn’t take offense at hearing the truth.

  “Well,” she said, “he’s probably the best one to do it. Maybe he can put them in charge of the contests. You know, deciding the winners and handing out the awards. Oh, I know! He could have a Best-Dressed Female Biker Contest. They’d love that.” Hazel Marie’s face lit up, just like it did every time she had an idea. “I’ll call him and suggest it, but first, I’d better get something ready for the newspaper.”

  “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” I said, and took myself to the far side of the house.

  That afternoon, while I busied myself counting up the donations we were likely to get, LuAnne called me.

  Before I could thank her for her willingness to ride in the Poker Run, she took off on the latest news. “Julia, have you heard about Thurlow Jones? He’s in the hospital, sick as a dog.”

  “No!” I said, sitting up with the sudden fear that he wouldn’t be able to fulfil his promise. “What’s the matter with him?”

  “Nobody knows,” she said, her voice quavering with the excitement of her news. “But I’ve heard he’s on complete bed rest. Can you believe that?”

  “Oh, LuAnne!” I said, patting my chest. “You scared me to death. I thought he was dying, the way you sounded.”

  “Why, Julia,” she said in a sly tone, “I didn’t know you’d be so concerned. Anything you want to tell me?”

  “Not a thing. It’s just that he’s made a pledge to the Willow Lane Fund and, as long as he’s not broken his check-signing hand, I don’t care what he’s done.”

  “Well, believe me, it’s not his hand, and it’s not broken.” Then she giggled and, lowering her voice, went on. “Don’t tell anybody I told you, but what I heard is that he’s had a sudden spurt of growth in an unmentionable area of his anatomy. They sat that every doctor and nurse in the county has dropped by to see it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Use your imagination, Julia.” She smothered another bout of laughter.

  I suddenly realized what she was talking about, then wished I hadn’t. There are certain things that a decent woman simply does not nurture in her mind.

  “Is it catching?” I asked, wondering if the hospital was equipped to handle an epidemic of disabled men.

  “What?” LuAnne asked. “Oh, what he’s got? No, I heard that they think it’s some kind of allergic reaction to something he ate or drank. They’re giving him megadoses of one of those killer antibiotics.”

  “Oh, my Lord,” I gasped, as a jolt of fear shot through me. “LuAnne, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back.”

  I slammed down the phone, cutting off her questions, sprang from the chair and nearly broke my neck running down the stairs.

  “Lillian!” I called, dashing through the dining room and pushing through the kitchen door, my breath catching in my throat. “Lillian! Where is it? What’d you do with it?”

  “What?” she asked, turning from the counter to stare at me. “What you talkin’ about? What’s wrong?”

  “That jar! The one we took to Clarence Gibbs’s spring! Where is it? Oh, Lord, tell me it’s still here!” I grabbed the back of a chair with one hand, patting my chest with the other, so afraid I was trembling.

  “What got you so het up ’bout that jar? They’s nothin’ in it but some ole cloudy water.”

  “Oh, I hope! I hope it’s still full. Where is it, Lillian? I’ve got to see for myself.”

  “It right there in the pantry on the top shelf, waitin’ for you to get it tested or whatever you gonna do with it.”

  I ran to the pantry, jerked open the door, and saw the jar. Relief flooded through me. I got it down and examined it closely, holding it up to the light to determine if the water level was the same as it had been.

  “Little Lloyd hasn’t been into this, has he?”

  Lillian frowned at me. “What he wanta be doin’ that for?”

  “I don’t know, Lillian,” I said, collapsing into a chair. “It’s just that little boys are likely to have a scientific turn of mind, and I was afraid he’d try testing this himself.” I held the jar up for her to look at it. “There’s not any of the water missing, is there?”

  “You think he drink that stuff!” Lillian said, staring at me as if I’d lost my mind. “He got more sense than that.”

  “I had to be sure. Lillian, I hate to admit this, but it looks like Clarence Gibbs is right. This water is potent beyond belief.” And I went on to tell her of the horrific growth potential lurking in the water of the spring, resulting in Thurlow Jones being the subject of widespread medical curiosity.

  “Law!” she said, her eyes big enough to pop out of her head. “He musta drunk a bait of that stuff. All I ever heard was it took just a little sip to young a ole man up.” She stood looking off for a minute as she studied the matter. Then she started laughing. “That Mr. Jones, he sho’ got more’n he bargained for this time. I mean, he mighta wanted to jack things up a little, but how he think he gonna manage if he got to have a wagon to carry it around in?”

  “Well, I expect he’s learned his lesson,” I said, still feeling weak from the fright I’d had. “Now, Lillian, we have to get rid of this. I’m not going to have it in the house a minute longer.”

  “Th’ow it out in the yard,” she said, “an’ put the jar in the garbage. I don’t even want it in the dishwasher.”

  “I agree, and I’ll do it right now.”

  I went out into the backyard, holding the jar as far from myself as I could. We now knew the water’s baleful effect on the masculine half of the race, but who knew what it’d do to the other half?

  I gingerly unscrewed the top and, walking over behind the garage to get as far from the house as possible, slung the water out around one of Lillian’s transplanted bushes. Let it do some good somewhere, I thought, and disposed of the jar in the trash container. Then I went back inside and thoroughly scrubbed my hands. No use taking chances.

  I stopped and turned to Lillian, my hands still dripping. “I just thought of something. Thurlow not only drank from that spring, he fell in it. What if it works from outside in, instead of from inside out? Oh, my goodness,” I moaned, as I leaned against the sink. “What if Little Lloyd got some of it on him? I couldn’t stand it, Lillian, if something happened to that child.”

  “Don’t you worry ’bout him,” she told me. “He stay in the shower more’n half a hour that night, an’ come out all shriveled up.”

  “Good!”

  Still recovering from my fright, I pulled myself up the stairs to call LuAnne back. I needed to soothe her hurt feelings after I’d hung up on her.

  “LuAnne,” I said, sinking into my easy bedroom chair, “I apologize for being so abrupt, but there was a crisis in the kitchen and I had to see about it.”

  “Oh, th
at’s okay,” she said, though she sounded a bit miffed about it. “Well, now that I’ve got you, let me tell you about the home tour. We’ve decided on a Christmas vacation theme. Each house on the tour will be designated a Christmas vacation spot, and yours is going to be Christmas at the Beach. Don’t you just love it?”

  Well, no, I didn’t. I let the silence drag out as I fumed at the idea of bringing in sand and driftwood arrangements to go on my mahogany tables.

  “Now, I know,” LuAnne said, trying to forestall my objections, “that a beach theme doesn’t sound like much, so I thought we’d change it to Christmas at Palm Beach. That’d be so much more elegant.”

  “Maybe it would, LuAnne,” I said. “But I don’t know a soul who’s ever been to Palm Beach, much less at Christmas. So nobody’s going to know the difference between Palm Beach and Myrtle Beach.”

  “Oh, Julia,” LuAnne said, exasperation clear in her voice. “Don’t you read Town and Country? Palm Beach means polo and international society. Tiffany’s and pearls and jewelry of all kinds, charity balls and lots of wealth. Why, I bet the arrangements in that category will be everybody’s favorites.”

  “Good. Then you won’t have any trouble assigning it to somebody else’s house.”

  “Now, don’t be that way,” she pleaded. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll enter that category myself, and decorate a tree with all kinds of jewelry. You know, pins and necklaces with colored stones and strings of pearls and gold bracelets and little twinkling lights. Oh, I can picture it now. It’ll be gorgeous, Julia, I promise you that.”

  “Well,” I said, with a martyr’s sigh, giving in for Lillian’s sake and feeling a tiny bit better for it. “But I’ll tell you this, LuAnne: those arrangers better not come tracking sand in my house and ruining my Orientals.”

  Keeping Lillian in mind with an effort of will after we hung up, I talked myself into being resigned to the beach theme, Palm or otherwise. I wouldn’t have minded so much if I’d thought the tour would bring in any appreciable amount, but I knew it wouldn’t. Still, I’d agreed to it, and I would endure it with my usual composure. But I didn’t have to be happy about it, and I wasn’t.

  When I went downstairs, Lillian announced that she had to run to the grocery store. “I used ever’ bit of sugar in the house when I went on my cake- and pie-cookin’ spree.”

  “Let me go instead,” I said. “I need to get out a little, anyway. After talking with LuAnne, I need some fresh air to cool me off.”

  When I returned from the store, lugging several bags of groceries, which always happens when you go for one item, Lillian said, “Some man come see you while you gone.”

  “What’d he want?”

  “He don’t say. I tell him you gone to the grocery store, an’ he say he come in an’ wait for you.”

  “Well, my word, Lillian, I hope you didn’t let him.”

  “No’m, I say you likely be gone till suppertime, an’ he oughta call ’fore he come back.”

  “Good.”

  “Yessum, he real pleasant, say he like our house.”

  “Typical salesman,” I said. “Trying to flatter so you’ll be in a good mood for whatever he’s selling. I’m going upstairs, Lillian, and work on the fund-raising books.”

  As I turned to leave, she said, “I notice he have on one of them raincoats like yo’ pastor have. You know, with that plaid linin’ on the inside, an’ he have on a fancy hat with a little feather on it. Don’t nobody ’round here wear a hat like that. Baseball cap’s the best they do.”

  That stopped me on a dime. Little Lloyd had seen a man in a Burberry raincoat and hat with Clarence Gibbs. I would’ve bet money—although that was not a custom of mine—that Gibbs had sent somebody to check out the property he already considered as good as his own. An appraiser, maybe, or some kind of inspector, either of which raised my blood pressure considerably above the normal.

  “Lillian,” I said, irate now at the nerve of that arrogant and overconfident weasel, “if that man comes back, you send him packing. I don’t want him putting one foot inside this house.”

  “Yessum, I will. But what if you home, an’ he asts to see you?”

  “Then I’ll do it myself. Believe me, he is up to no good, and we don’t want him anywhere around here.”

  I went upstairs, still fuming, and thinking of calling Clarence Gibbs and blessing him out for overstepping himself. Then I thought better of it.

  Better to let him assume that I didn’t have a chance of redeeming my house and buying Willow Lane. I smiled to myself as I estimated the donations and sponsorships that were bound to come rolling in. He just didn’t know who he was tangling with.

  It was a settled fact that I wasn’t one to count her chickens before they hatched, but if Thurlow Jones’s condition didn’t completely maim him, we had a good chance to meet Clarence Gibbs’s price, as well as his deadline.

  So, in a fit of compassion undergirded by my own ulterior motives, I called The Watering Can and ordered a plant garden to be sent to Thurlow’s hospital room.

  Chapter 26

  With the house tour and flower show fairly well under way, I was free to turn my mind to other aspects of our fundraising efforts. Number one on my list was bringing in the pledges and seeing where we stood on our journey toward our goal of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

  When I went down to breakfast Saturday morning, I found Hazel Marie still in her robe, drinking coffee at the table and looking through the morning paper.

  “Where is everybody?” I asked. I’d expected Lillian to be making a big breakfast for Little Lloyd, as she usually did when he didn’t have school.

  “Lillian and Little Lloyd decided to walk over to Willow Lane,” Hazel Marie said as she smoothed out the paper.

  “My word, it must be two miles over there.”

  “Well, I think they both just wanted to get out. Lillian said something about visiting with one of her neighbors who’s staying with a family near Willow Lane.”

  I made toast and poured coffee and, offering more to Hazel Marie, sat at the table with her.

  “Oh, look,” Hazel Marie said as she turned a page of the newspaper. “Look at this. They’ve got our ad in here. A whole half page.”

  I looked over her shoulder and read with increasing agitation the huge, attention-grabbing ad:

  POKER RUN!!

  Sponsored by the Abbot County H.O.G.s Chapter

  and

  Red Ryder’s Stop, Shop & Eat

  to benefit the Willow Lane Residents

  ALL BIKERS WELCOME

  Then, right below that in smaller letters, but not that much smaller, was a list of names of the leaders of local society—that’s what it said, “leaders of local society,” of all things. And heading the list was my name, as clear as you please. And beside my name were the words Sponsored by Thurlow Jones, Sam Murdoch, J. D. Pickens, Deputy Coleman Bates, Sheriff Earl Frady, and Lieutenant Wayne Peavey.

  I found it hard to get my breath. “Hazel Marie! My name wasn’t supposed to be in there! Who’s responsible for this?”

  “Well, I put it in, Miss Julia,” Hazel Marie said. “You asked me to, remember? I didn’t know I was supposed to leave your name out.”

  I put my hand to my forehead and moaned. “But what about all those sponsors? Thurlow Jones’s name beside mine is bad enough, but the rest of them? That’s false advertising, Hazel Marie.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said, beginning to smile at my distress. “They’ve all donated at least a thousand dollars in your name, and some of them even more. I’ll tell you, the money is rolling in for you. Although Emma Sue Ledbetter would be a close second if you hadn’t gotten Mr. Jones as a sponsor.”

  Leaning over to read the ad more closely, I said, “Well, at least you didn’t put the amounts that the sponsors have given. I’d never live it down if this town saw how much Thurlow Jones gave. They’d be speculating on what else he was buying.”

  “Oh, you worry too much about wh
at people say,” she said with an airy wave of her hand, as if she had not been the major topic of whispered conversation for years. “Now, listen, there’re five or six more women who’ve volunteered to ride since I sent this to the paper. A couple of doctors’ wives, a lawyer’s daughter, the Lutheran minister’s wife, and a judge’s wife. And they’ve all got sponsors. This thing is really rolling, Miss Julia.”

  “How old are they?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “They’re mostly in their thirties and forties, I would imagine. Why?”

  “Oh, no reason,” I said. “I’d just prefer not to be the only elderly woman to make a fool of herself.” Then, turning to the phone, I said, “I better call Sam.”

  “He’s not home. I talked to J. D. before you came down, and he’s going with Sam to have the sidecar put on. Then they’re going to ride for a while to see how the bike handles. And I think J. D. wants Sam to get in a little more practice before the big run.”

  “From what I’ve seen, he needs it,” I said. “When did you talk to Mr. Pickens? I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

  She ducked her head and said, “Well, I called him. Just to tell him the ad would be in the paper. He might’ve missed it, you know.”

  “If he had, somebody would’ve told him. This is going to be the talk of the town, if it’s not already.”

  “Oh, look, Miss Julia,” Hazel Marie said, holding the newspaper up. “They’ve got a separate article about the Poker Run in here. Red Ryder’s quoted, and so is Sam. Oh, my goodness, they’ve even interviewed Emma Sue. Listen to this: ‘I go wherever the Lord tells me to go, whether I like it or not. And since he wants me on the back of a motorcycle, that’s where I intend to be.’ ” Hazel Marie stopped and pondered Emma Sue’s words, then, looking up at me, she went on. “Do you think the Lord really told her to ride?”