by C. L. Bevill
“Just Hornbuckle now,” she said. “Maybe you heard I parted ways with the FBI.”
“It might have come up,” Bubba allowed. He looked meaningfully at the metal detector in her hand. “You move on from the Snoddy Estate to Foggy Mountain?”
“Well, it’s been said that Old Man Hovious had a collection of silver Kennedy fifty-cent pieces. The 1964 ones that were 90% silver. Not the ’65 ones. Those were only 40%.”
Bubba wasn’t certain how to respond to that. He hadn’t seen a fifty-cent coin since one of his grannies had left him a bagful after she’d died, and at the time he’d simply gone to the bank and traded them for twenty-dollar bills. (He hadn’t known about the silver percentages, and honestly if he had known, he wasn’t sure if he would have cared.)
“You know about the Boo?” Bubba asked. Maybe the former FBI agent could bean the costumed person with her metal detector and put an end to all this nonsense.
Hornbuckle suddenly smiled hugely, and Bubba nearly stepped back in dread. It was as if a ravenous honey badger had unexpectedly grinned at him, and most folks had a pretty dang good idea not to stick around a grinning, ravenous honey badger. Even Precious whimpered and hid under the truck so that only her brown and white butt could be seen.
Hornbuckle abruptly put the metal detector on the ground and brushed off her hands on her camo cargo pants. “Oh, you got me good,” she said amicably. “I just can’t help looking for something wherever I’m at nowadays. The truth of the matter is that Marquita hired me as a consultant. There’s an FBI agent in the film, and well, I guess they want some technical pointers.” She laughed. “Although I can’t see the point since they all ran back to Hollywood.” She paused. “Except for Marquita, Risley, and Tandy North. Well, there’s a few other crew members, too. Some of the locals aren’t really scared, and Marquita hired them as crew, but I think you probably know them, right?”
“The Boo don’t scare you,” Bubba said. It wasn’t really a question. Somewhere during the time when Hornbuckle had been a staid FBI agent dressed in a neat dark suit with an immaculate manicure and a holstered weapon that could just be made out from under her jacket, she’d become a staunch, overconfident camo-wearing creature of which Bubba couldn’t fathom.
“I’ve been paid,” Hornbuckle said, “so I’m just nosing about in case I found some Civil War doohickey or maybe the odd coin. People have been living on this mountain since the 1800s.”
Bubba thought of the narrow rusted tracks inside the tunnels. “I reckon,” he said. “Nice to see you and all, but I need to run.”
“You do that,” Hornbuckle said, and Bubba didn’t care for the expression on her face. The Snoddy family had definitely threatened her with a lawsuit if she came traipsing across the property again, but this seemed like a slice of pure-D hatred or possibly heated dislike.
Bubba shook his head. It was because he was hungry, and nearly everyone in Pegram County knew there was food to be had at the caretaker’s place on the Snoddy Estate. Well, there was ice cream anyway.
Chapter 9
Bubba and the Stuff That
Makes a Good Story Even Better
Bubba had to literally drive around people setting up chairs and a bandstand to get to the place where he typically parked next to the caretaker’s house. (It hadn’t ever really been a caretaker’s house, and no one could actually recollect who’d nicknamed it that. Once it had been a stable that Bubba’s grandfather had converted into an oddball house after WWII. His grandfather had thought to make money by housing soldiers from nearby Fort Dimson, but the fort had gone by the congressional cutting wayside within a few years, and the Snoddys were left with a strange house that looked like it had been made from a Tinkertoy set. Bubba had been living in it when the woman who had murdered Bubba’s ex-fiancée tried to burn it down. It hadn’t been burned badly, but specific load-bearing walls were affected enough for the local structural inspector to declare it persona non grata or housa non grata. Now it was a trim two-story house that only superficially resembled its predecessor. It was on the small side, but Willodean and Bubba were happy with the home they’d made, and they’d even finished the nursery on the second floor.) He looked unhappily at all the nearby activity and then up at the second-floor window where Willodean was peeking out. She waved at him, and all of his angst immediately slipped away.
As Bubba parked his truck, he saw two people surreptitiously leaving a Styrofoam cooler on the little porch in front. They saw him, straightened up, waved, and both hurried to a cherry red, classic MG Roadster that was half-hidden behind one of the delivery trucks. Bubba abruptly recognized them as two of the exotic dancers from Bazooka Bob’s. It took him a minute to put names to faces. One was Crystal Chandelier. The other was Chastity Angel. As Crystal drove off in the convertible, she called to him, “Just a few more pints, Bubba! Tell Wills to keep up the good fight! Lamaze! Breathe!”
Bubba touched his chest again as he watched the classic roadster narrowly avoid three workmen carrying a plywood creation the size of a refrigerator. His torso hurt from the hit he’d taken after falling into that hole, or he was having some kind of panic attack. No, he decided as the workmen dropped the plywood and jumped out of the way of the MG all the while yelling at Crystal, it’s bruised. Then the workmen stopped yelling at the two women and instead called for their cellphone numbers. The MG disappeared down the lane in a cloud of dust.
Bubba turned off his truck, let his dog out, admonished her not to eat the workmen or the Styrofoam cooler, and briefly glared in the direction of Snoddy Mansion. His mother. No two words had better incorporated the meaning of “Oh, dear Lord, what is she doing now?” His mother. That was all that needed to be said. “There’s another dead body under my house.” His mother. “Illegal gambling ring involving Cher, a Supreme Court Justice, and sixty flats of Top Ramen?” His mother. “Anything un-to-do?” Oh, definitely his mother.
Precious decided that the inside of the house was more interesting than all of the activity. She nosed the cooler and then managed to get the front door open all by herself. She vanished inside as Bubba collected the cooler. He took a quick deep breath, nudged the lid aside, and glanced into it. Six pints of Häagen-Dazs sat inside. Three were Peanut Butter Salted Fudge. Two were Pineapple Coconut. The sixth was Espresso Chocolate Cookie Crumble, which made his face wrinkle. Who comes up with these flavors?
One of the dancers had evidently decided that Willodean needed some variety.
Bubba took the cooler and its contents inside to discover that the chest freezer was packed full. In fact, the refrigerator’s freezer was also packed full of Häagen-Dazs. Under the kitchen table were three more portable coolers, and they looked to be full as well. Any more ice cream, and the caretaker’s house was going to burst at the seams.
Bubba made a trip upstairs to see the beauteous sheriff’s deputy before he had to find a place for all of the ice cream to keep it from melting. He found that Willodean had plumped up five pillows, so she could peek out the window while she reclined. Furthermore, a Basset hound had scrambled onto the bed and had parked herself along Willodean’s legs, which were covered with Smurf bottoms. (The Smurf pajama bottoms hadn’t come in maternity size, but Bubba had found an XXXL that did the trick even if they had to roll up the bottom so she wouldn’t trip on the overlong legs, and they even matched the XXXL Smurf pajama top that had Smurfette sitting under a giant mushroom.)
“You look a little worn out, darling,” Willodean said as he knelt beside the bed and properly worshiped her swelling abdomen.
“You want that cheese veggie strata or a turkey sammy?” Bubba asked.
“Oh, both,” she answered. “Maybe with ketchup?”
“The strata?”
“Both,” Willodean said again immediately.
Bubba pulled back to look his wife in the face. “You okay, sweetums?”
“There’s this ache in the bottom of my spine,” Willodean said. “Feels like I broke my coccyx. You know that bone
at the tail?”
“I might have broken mine once or twice,” Bubba allowed. There was that guy in high school who’d broken his in two places when the truck had hit a bump while escaping from the Hovious place and possible Boo-dom. He scowled. “That ain’t like early labor is it?”
“I think it’s because I’ve been sitting on it.” Willodean sighed. She waved a hand at the window indicating the outside. “Your mother really thought you wouldn’t notice all of that.”
“Is it botherin’ you?” Bubba asked sincerely. “I’ll make ‘em disappear ifin I have to chase them down the road to do it. That dawg won’t hunt.”
“It’s just for tomorrow,” Willodean said. “Say, what did you do this morning? Did you find something to get your mind off me and the baby?”
“You’ll never be off my mind,” Bubba declared dramatically.
Willodean smiled brilliantly and Bubba immediately forgot his first name.
“Lunch,” he said eventually and got to it, but first he took three loads of ice cream to the Snoddy Mansion to put in the freezer there, which was considerably larger than theirs. Also, he gave out pints to the workmen who stopped to eat it. However, Bubba had to find silverware for them and then he had to find napkins. Then he became aware that he was starving and expected Willodean and Precious might be a mite peckish, too.
* * *
Once Bubba had finished eating turkey sandwiches and portions of cheese veggie strata (which was just like a cheese veggie casserole) with his beloved wife, he snoozed for about fifteen minutes next to her on the bed. Precious had gotten a section of unsalted turkey for her treat, and she snored gustily on the foot of the bed.
It was nearly the hottest part of the day when Bubba woke up, and Willodean was watching another episode of Stranger Things. “This is strange,” she chortled. “I hope they don’t kill off Barb.”
Bubba watched for a few minutes trying to figure out which character was Barb. Then, someone started calling his name from outside.
Willodean parted the curtain, and looking out and said, “Miz Adelia.”
Bubba bussed his wife on her lovely cheek and said his hound’s name sharply. Precious woke up with a loud snort and then tooted wholeheartedly as she scrambled to get to her feet and off the bed.
“Back for dinner,” he told Willodean, taking the tray with the remnants of their lunch with him. “Think about what you want. Chinese, barbeque, and there’s a new place just off the freeway that serves burgers. All kinds of burgers. Burger burgers, turkey burgers, buffalo burgers, and I think they even had emu burgers.”
Willodean wrinkled her delicate nose. “I’ll call you.”
“I’ll be up on Foggy Mountain in case someone comes in and wonders,” Bubba said as if he went to haunted film locales every day of the week.
She rubbed her belly and eyed him carefully. “Should I be worried?”
“Of course not,” Bubba said. “Just folks doin’ stupid things is all. Just a normal day for Pegram County. Should I tell those people out there to keep it down?”
“Not sleepy,” Willodean said. “Give me another kiss.”
Of course Bubba couldn’t say no to Willodean.
* * *
“Hey Bubba,” Miz Adelia said. “Did you know about them big tractor trailers goin’ to the back of the property?”
Bubba glanced at the men setting up for a party and then back at the housekeeper. She caught him with her frank brown gaze.
“Ain’t nothin’ to do with all of this?” Bubba asked.
“Them drivers said they had Bubba Nathanial Snoddy’s permission to set up on the rear ten acres of the Snoddy Estate.” Adelia grinned wryly. “They even had a map with the back track denoted on it. Looked to be somethin’ someone did with a satellite or such. Not that I would know that. My niece showed me this program on the computer that allows you to see satellite views and it looked like that. It had everything marked off.”
Bubba bit his lower lip. He thought of former FBI agent Hornbuckle, whose first name was eluding him for the moment. Had she figured out that she could outmaneuver the Snoddys by claiming permission that— wait. “The rear ten acres?” he repeated.
Miz Adelia nodded. “That was between a delivery from the UPS man who had a crate of Häagen-Dazs and when the catering crew set up the chocolate fountain station in the large living room. Did you know that they’ll send ice cream through the mail? Because I did not know that.”
There was that phrase that went off in Bubba’s head. His mother. That was it in a nutshell. His mother felt like having a big party. She’d been somewhat held back in that she’d promised Bubba that she’d keep out of illegalities for the time being. (The general agreement was she could go back to it when the baby was in college, but in her head, she’d likely transmogrified that into something like when the baby was crawling or possibly the next week, whichever came first.)
“Now Bubba,” Miz Adelia said soothingly, “it don’t mean nothin’ and all. Your mama just wants y’all to be happy. This is the last hoorah for some time. It’s right special that she wants to greet the impendin’ appearance of her first grandbaby, you know. And don’t y’all have someplace to be, you know, like a particular misty crag or such?”
Bubba took a deep breath. Maybe he was going to have to talk to McGeorge about those affirmations and anger management classes. Possibly the woman had a few pertinent tips about it.
First, Bubba had to figure out exactly what David Beathard was doing in the back pasture.
* * *
“Wowza,” Bubba said because nothing else quite fit the moment.
It looked like David was building a rocketship. It wasn’t a large rocketship but it was a rocketship.
Furthermore, the rocketship had been constructed on a launching platform that had magically been built without Bubba’s knowledge. Bubba was going to have to talk to David the astronut, and also his mother, about that later.
What? How? When? Bubba asked himself. Had it not been just that very morning that David had asked him about the back acreage which hadn’t been used since 1964? Yes, it had only been that morning.
The concrete was one thing. It was a large patch about 500 square feet in the middle of what had once been a cotton field. Whiskey tango foxtrot are we goin’ to do wit’ that? It certainly wasn’t the future location of another house and it was possible that the field could be used for growing something once again. Regardless, the pines and hardwoods had taken root, and someone had bushhogged those before setting up the area for a pad.
The tower that was being built was another. Bubba wasn’t a rocket scientist, and he knew he wasn’t a rocket scientist, but that looked like something someone from NASA might construct, or someone who was hardcore into reenacting the first forays into space.
What was really was cracking Bubba’s noodle was that it had been accomplished so quickly. David had been busier than a one-armed pickpocket at a kangaroo convention.
And do I need to say something about money? Bubba asked himself. We’re making payments on hospitalization for a baby what ain’t bin born yet, and David is making a rocketship a half mile away from the swamp. Ain’t none of that looks cheap. It’s not like the sides of the rocket are made from cheap sheets of aluminum that might be nailed to the side of a trailer home.
Bubba turned his head and saw two full-sized eighteen-wheelers complete with trailers and men unloading more supplies while other men and, oh look, it’s David and the loonies plus Daniel Lewis Gollihugh, watched. It might as well have been a circus.
As the case might have been, Bubba could have stood there watching the event unfold for the remainder of the afternoon if another man hadn’t tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m looking for David Beathard,” the man said when Bubba turned his head.
“In the blue flight suit,” Bubba said and pointed at David.
The man looked over at David and then glanced at Bubba. “You in this affair?”
“I own the property,” Bu
bba said. It was half true. His mother had put his name on the deeds when he’d turned eighteen, so he wouldn’t be taxed unduly if something happened to her.
“It looks good,” the man said looking at the budding construction.
Bubba examined the man. He was about five foot ten inches tall and balding with a handlebar mustache. He wore a button-down shirt that was too thick for the 100-degree-plus weather and Levi’s with hiking boots that would keep the ticks and other bloodsucking insects at bay. “You should spray on some Off!,” he suggested. “The Deep Woods kind. Also, use sunblock.”
“I have a hat,” the man said. “This isn’t my first rocket rodeo.” He took a folded hat out of a back pocket and unfolded it before plunking it on his head. It even had the neck flap so that one’s tender skin wouldn’t fry like an egg on Arizona asphalt.
“I’m Bubba Snoddy,” Bubba said.
“Professor Augustus Blenkinsopp,” the man said and held out a pasty hand.
Bubba shook it warily. “And you’re a professor of what?”
“Aeronautical engineering, although I have Ph.D.’s in mechanical engineering and astrobiology. I also have one in medieval English, but that was one of those periods where I was looking to expand myself.”
“And you’re here to help David out with his…project,” Bubba said.
The professor clapped his hands together. “Absolutely! What a wondrous project. We have a tremendous budget and the space to expand if we want to, so we have a fighting chance. Those rotten people at NASA don’t want the private sector to play in their sandbox, but we’ll show them!”
