Wedding Bell Blues

by Ruth Moose

  The last float was done in black and pink. Black crepe paper with big pink satin bows. I mean big! At least three feet wide. On the float sat a shiny black beauty shop chair and on each side, in black smocks with pink slacks and pink bows in their hair, stood Juanita from Kurl Up and Dye and her assistant, Tina Marie. Their hair matched their pink slacks. They waved and smacked the world’s biggest pair of scissors open and closed like a huge menacing bird, which didn’t make me want to avail myself of their services.

  Then with the last clop, clop of hooves and few plops of horse patties, the parade was over. “No Lesley Lynn,” I said. “What’s the world coming to? Did she die and nobody told me?”

  Malinda didn’t answer. As a pharmacist she’d know about prescriptions going to somebody by the bucketful, but by professional oath and just plain good sense and integrity she didn’t answer. I’d read nothing about Lesley Lynn in The Mess since I came back to Littleboro. She must have moved, left for a life of her own if her father had died. Nothing to hold her here.

  About that time Malinda’s mother pulled up to the curb in a red Toyota Prius and Malinda buckled Elvis, kicking and screaming, into his car seat. “Bye.” She blew him a kiss. He snuffled and blew one back.

  “Nap time,” she said as we walked toward the fairgrounds. “He gets cranky and we sure don’t want to be chasing and losing him at whatever is going on.” “Losing” reminded me Robert Redford was still out there somewhere, probably hungry and thirsty.

  “No one has called about the Robert Redford posters,” I said.

  Malinda sighed. “Rabbits eat clover. I bet he’s not starving.”

  We walked on, not talking, not looking forward to what we were going to see at the fairgrounds.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Turned out there wasn’t much. Well, this was the first year of the Green Bean Festival and Mayor Moss was fairly new in town. When I asked how in the world she ever got elected, Scott said, “She’s the only one who ran. It was unanimous.”

  The question was why anyone would want the job. The answer had to be that Mayor Moss was maybe an ingénue, a fresh-from-somewhere sophisticate who wanted to play politics. I didn’t think she was one of those “let’s dive in and raise the burg into the twenty-first century” types. And she wasn’t an Ossie DelGardo, who acted like he thought anybody with a Southern accent was a yokel too dumb to walk and chew gum at the same time.

  At the fairgrounds entrance was a ten-foot-tall sculpture of a giant green bean wearing a top hat and holding a cane. He was outlined with blinking green fairy lights. Mr. Bean, I supposed. Should we stop and salute him like he was some sort of dignitary? Malinda and I let out a huge laugh at the same time. “And who says green beans aren’t sexy?” I asked. “That’s about as phallic as you can get.”

  Then I turned around to see if Mayor Moss or any of the committee happened to be within hearing distance. No one was close, but as sure as I’d said what I was thinking, which was, Whose god-awful idea was this? than the originator or the sculptor would be right behind me and I’d be left with egg on my face. Or in this case green bean mush.

  Actually, there was almost nobody around.

  Clyde Edgemont had a display of used cars and there was a vintage Carolina-blue Thunderbird among them. Could it be Lesley Lynn’s? Nobody was around to ask, so we walked on.

  We passed by a couple empty booths, old and weathered but shored up with some new lumber, which told me Scott had been there with hammer and nails and hope.

  One booth advertised Green Bean Burgers and I thought, “Why not?” If kale was the current green rage, then green beans might be next. Some men in green aprons and chef’s hats flipped burgers. Across the top of the booth was a sign: HOPE ETERNAL COMMUNITY CHURCH and the letters WWJE.

  “WWJE?” Malinda stopped to read them.

  I grabbed her arm and pulled her along. “What Would Jesus Eat?”

  “Of course.” Malinda clapped her hands together. “Of course.”

  Down the almost bare midway I saw a booth swathed in green lights, making it glow a green bright enough to make you shade your eyes. GET YOUR GREEN IN the sign, decorated with a string of little lights in the shape of green beans, read. Wow. I had seen strings of lights in the shape of red chili peppers, but itty-bitty green beans was a new one.

  In one of the occupied booths, demonstrating some sort of juicer machine big as a steam cleaner, stood someone who looked like Mrs. Butch Rigsbee. That woman sure moved in fast and moved around a lot. First serving luncheon at Mayor Moss’s and now here slinging smoothies. She wore a green tank top that displayed her deltoids and biceps with tattoos of vines and snakes. You couldn’t hear her spiel above the roar of the machine juicing and crunching. I saw a basket full of jars of canned green beans, another basket of some bananas, pears, cherries and avocados and decided there was nothing that could make a green bean smoothie delicious.

  I knew I sure didn’t want to taste anything this woman would whip up. She had threatened me on the phone and intentionally dropped a hot corn stick in Debbie Booth’s lap at the mayor’s luncheon. I didn’t feel safe around her, not one bit. I grabbed Malinda’s arm to try to hurry her away from the menace.

  Malinda didn’t budge.

  “Come on,” I said, my voice a little sharp. I pulled at her.

  Mrs. Rigsbee’s helper, in a green smock with a cap made of green felt leaves, leaned out from the booth. She was pressing upon passersby, which in this case was only me and Malinda, small white cups of a sample smoothie. “It’s our pear, peanut butter and green bean flavor,” she said.

  I waved her hand away, but Malinda took one. “Peanut butter? Gotta be good.” And before I could say “don’t” she had downed the stuff.

  “Not bad,” she said. “But not so good either.” She tossed her cup into the trash and shook her head. “I think I can live the rest of my life perfectly happy without ever tasting another. You put it up to your lips and down it goes. No stopping it. Like a green oyster.” She shuddered and wiped her hand across her mouth.

  I steered Malinda toward the Agriculture Building.

  The Agriculture Building smelled the way I remembered: aged dust and fresh sawdust. The spaces where 4-H and Home Extension people used to put up educational displays and instructional booths were mostly bare. Toward the back we saw Miss Isabella leaning over a row of brightly lit food items. She had a clipboard, wore an apron and a hairnet, and waved a tasting fork. Someone followed her and it wasn’t Debbie Booth, but Miles Fortune in the most elegant suit I’d ever seen on a man. It shouted custom-made, perfectly tailored, and he wore a green-and-white-checked shirt with a tie that changed colors. He reached over to check the label on something that looked like pond scum, all green and frothy piled in a dish. “Blended Italian Garden Salad,” he said when he saw me. “I’m not touching it.”

  “Green beans are the main ingredient,” Miss Isabella said. “Herbs and garlic. Not bad. It’s an interesting idea.”

  The woman must have a stomach of iron, I thought. Wonder how many food competitions she had judged all these years? And lived!

  “These brownies I can go for,” Miles said. He broke one in half and handed pieces to me and Malinda.

  “We’re not doing desserts yet,” Miss Isabella snapped. She looked as if she’d like to take her trusty clipboard and wham the three of us on the head. But she didn’t. She focused back on the array of dishes in front of her to be judged.

  I wondered when and where and how Miles Fortune got pulled in to being a judge. I thought he had people to see about something or an airport run to Raleigh. He must have read my mind because he turned to me and whispered, “On hold.”

  “So who hornswoggled you into risking your taste buds in this crazy business?” I asked, but he had stuck a tasting fork into something that looked like an ordinary green bean casserole for any ordinary Thanksgiving table. He didn’t answer, just shook his head.

  “And where’s our cute little Debbie Booth?”
I asked.

  “She started out fine,” Miss Isabella said. “We finished the appetizers and soups, then she started feeling woozy, sick to her stomach. She just had to taste that god-awful-looking and smelling smoothie sample … so devoted to her profession. I didn’t go near that booth, but bless her soul, that girl is something else when it comes to food tasting.” Miss Isabella sighed. “Somebody took her back to your place.”

  “The Dixie Dew?” I asked. My next thought was, Oh no, not again. Shades of Miss Lavinia. It could never happen again. Fate would not deal two deaths to my budding business venture. No way. Then I calmed down. Maybe Debbie had a slight stomach bug, nothing to panic over. Food judging had to be risky business. I wouldn’t want to do it, not in a million years and not if they paid me, as bad as I could use the money. It would be money or my life on the tasting fork.

  Malinda and Miles had moved down to more entrées, more casseroles, cheesy-looking noodle things, then I saw cakes and what was left of the brownies.

  “A flourless chocolate cake,” Malinda said, eating a piece out of her hand. “But made with green beans.”

  “So where’s the green beans?”

  “Who cares?” said Miles Fortune cutting himself a slice.

  I figured if you can put kale in everything you cook and bake, zucchini in bread and cakes, then green beans can go in, too. Just puree the hell out of them and mix well. They don’t actually have much taste in themselves and nobody would know. Chocolate can cover up anything, maybe even poison.

  Our Miz Mayor came rushing up to be the third judge. Somewhere, somehow, in mere minutes she had ditched the parade people, zippered herself into another darker shade of green linen sheath dress. Maybe she’d changed in the back of her car or the nearest “convenience facility.” She clamped on a huge matching green hat as Miss Isabella handed her a clipboard, apron, tasting fork and bottle of water.

  “Stand back,” Miss Isabella told Malinda and me, then pointed Miles and Ms. Moss to the first dishes on the table. “Start right there,” Miss Isabella said, “we’re behind.”

  I loved how she ordered the mayor around and how Miz Mayor scooted to the end of the row in her kitten heels, sawdust billowing little tan dust clouds after her. Malinda held a napkin tightly to her mouth.

  Had the smoothie gotten to her already?

  “I need a convenience facility, a comfort station,” she said with half a laugh. “In a hurry.” She looked a bit green around the gills, as Mama Alice would say.

  I looked around for Porta-Potties and didn’t see anything that looked like one. Probably the mayor had banned plastic ones from the festival. Back in my childhood the Littleboro fairgrounds had wooden “johnny houses” out behind the animal barns. Surely those had been replaced years ago. I had no fond memories of having to “go” in one of those dark, smelly, spiderwebby wooden booths. Mama Alice would always say, “Why in the world didn’t you go before we left the house?” And I’d protest, “I did, I did.”

  Now I saw a small, tall johnny house gleaming with unpainted fresh lumber. One of Scott’s recent projects for the festival?

  A sign beside it read, MODEL ORGANIC SOLAR CONVENIENCE FACILITY—USES NO WATER, NO ELECTRICITY. On the roof bubbled a solar tube. “Look.” I took Malinda’s hand and pulled her toward the door that actually had a half-moon shape cut in it, plus a couple of stars. I laughed and lifted up the wooden bar that held the door shut. This “model” didn’t have a doorknob, and inside you pulled the door shut with a long string of leather with a knot tied in the end. I guess you held it to hold the door closed. What a showcase of simplicity.

  Malinda bent over the hole carved into the sleekly finished pine board. “Close the door,” she said.

  I pulled in a length of leather string and held it while her smoothie rushed upward and out and down the hole. Then I handed her some sheets from the roll of tissue on a loop of string tied to a nail on the wall. Simplify, simplify must have been the order for whoever built this. And built it well, with the freshly cut pine boards notched together in golden smoothness.

  I love fresh lumber. This little johnny even smelled like cut pine. I ran my hand over the wall. Nice, beautiful wood. Was this the way of the future? Used no water, no electricity. Little carbon footprints all the way around.

  After Malinda “tossed her smoothie,” she wiped her mouth, said “yug” a couple of times and that she felt better but thought we ought to head home.

  I took her arm and we walked slowly, slowly toward the Dixie Dew. I thought to anyone looking who didn’t know us, we must have looked like two little old ladies out for a stroll, old friends who had known each other all their lives and were now depending on each other for balance and staying upright, keeping each other safe and alive. And that’s what we really were. Well, alive at least. Safe, I didn’t feel so good about.

  Behind us at the fairgrounds the judges were still judging and heaven knows what else was going on. What green bean rumpus was afoot?

  As we headed toward the Dixie Dew I wondered if Debbie Booth was alive and well or at least on her way toward getting up from her sickbed and back to judging. If she had her green on and was jumping with it. Please God, let her be okay. Please, please, please.

  And thank you, Jesus, that Malinda’s malady was only temporary. So far.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Sherman sat on the Dixie Dew porch washing a paw. When I went in the front door he followed me up the stairs to the room where I hoped Debbie Booth was recovering from her “stomach bug.”

  I tapped lightly on her door, called, “Debbie, Debbie Booth.”

  No answer. My heart was choking me it was so huge in my throat. I called louder. Knocked again. Harder.

  This time I heard a little moan.

  “Are you all right?” Oh, thank God she was alive.

  A muffled reply. Oh, she was alive.

  “May I come in?”

  “Wmumffered.”

  I didn’t know if that was a no or yes or help or yes you can come in. I tried the knob. Locked. All I knew was that she was alive!

  I heard the bed creak and footsteps padding across the floor, then Debbie opened the door a crack and stuck her curly head out and said, “I’m okay. Just had the throw ups and sit downs.” She still looked cute, but not her usual perky self. She was pale and wan.

  “Oh, dear,” I said. “Anything I can do?”

  “I’m feeling better. Really. Just weak as water.” She gave a thin little half smile.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Would you like me to bring you up a cup of tea? Some toast?”

  “Later, later,” she said. “I’m going back to bed.” And she shut the door.

  I was relieved down to my little toe. Shades of Miss Lavinia Lovingood were not being repeated. She was alive! Whew. I wiped sweat beads from my forehead and went downstairs to bed.

  That night every time I closed my eyes I saw white rabbits jumping over a fence, looking back at me with fear in their eyes. Hundreds of rabbits, all leaping, looking back. Some of them wore masks that looked like the photo of Butch Rigsbee only with long flopping ears. Where was the man? If he was dead, his ghost was trying to tell me that. It said nothing while bigger-than-life white rabbits hopped away with blue backpacks on their backs.

  I’d heard Miles Fortune and Miss Isabella come in, though they did so very quietly, politely. Then I heard the clink of spoons against china cups as one or both of them must have made a cup of tea or cocoa. I left the dining-room kettle always plugged in and a basket of teas and cocoa beside it on the sideboard for guests to help themselves. I thought if Scott or Malinda had been around we would have shared a nice touch of sherry, a glass of blackberry wine or a good-night toddy with rum and cream. I didn’t need any tonight. Things were quiet, if still mysterious. For example, where was the person for whom Miles Fortune was reserving my extra bedroom? He was paying for a room nobody was using. But most of all, where the hell was that damn rabbit?

  I must have
hit the pillow hard, eyes already closed and the rest of me close behind. Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits all night long.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I woke with a start, damp with sweat. The clock read six a.m. I pulled myself up, feeling creaky as a hundred-year-old. I pulled on yesterday’s jeans and a clean T-shirt and in breakneck speed went to the kitchen. I brewed coffee, telling myself, “Think, think, think. If you were a rabbit where would you be?”

  Where there’s food, of course. If Robert Redford was like Sherman, he thought food first thing in the morning until last thing at night. Food, food, food. Pellets. Rabbit chow. Robert Redford couldn’t live on fresh clover forever. He’d come home!

  Of course. But I had looked under every leaf and limb and shrub in Verna’s yard. I’d looked under her house, in her house as much as I could, and there was not a trace of Robert Redford. But if he came home, or had come home, he wouldn’t be able to get in. He couldn’t open the front door, and though there were steps to the back porch, I couldn’t see him hopping up them to push in the screen door.

  Finding Robert Redford was not the most important of my worries, but a nagging one that kept my mind off being paranoid about Mrs. Butch Truck Driver Rigsbee and her threats on my life. I still felt safe in Littleboro most of the time. I had family (Ida Plum was close as family) and Scott and Malinda. And if Littleboro was the kind of place Reba could sleep outdoors and wander the streets any hour of the day or night she took a notion, then I could shake off my concerns for my own safety.

  Reba! If Reba was in and out of Verna’s house, she might let Robert Redford in, but I couldn’t quite see Reba under a roof, any roof, for very long, even if she did have cake to eat and a plush antique canopy bed to sleep in.

  I left a note for Ida Plum to put the coffee cake in the oven and pour the juice, put out the fresh fruit, that I was going “rabbit hunting.” I’d set the table the night before. I didn’t have to tell Ida Plum what to do, but I felt better leaving the note, acting as if I were in charge of things. Going into Verna’s could be dangerous. Stuff was piled so high there was only a narrow path through rooms and there was always a chance something could topple and avalanche, bury me under six feet of collected crap. This way, at least if I didn’t come back in a reasonable amount of time, Ida Plum would know where to look and order some steam shovels, bulldozers and bucket trucks to dig and claw their way in to find my body.