Bubba and the Curious Cadaver

by C. L. Bevill

  “Oh Lord,” Bam Bam said, “not again.”

  * * *

  When they left the back area of the club, the first thing that Bubba noticed was that his mother, the not so sainted Miz Demetrice, was up on the stage holding one of the shiny poles. As she was not stripping or dancing to Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” he thought he might be able to make it through the day without needing intensive psychological counseling.

  His mother held a wireless microphone in one hand and was spouting a line about unity and job security to a crowd of what appeared to be mostly exotic dancers. In addition, there was Kiki, the DJ, Leslie, Precious, and several people who were clearly present for the buffet that was set up on the far side of the room. Bubba hadn’t noticed it before, which was odd considering how hungry he’d been. (Still was hungry, but the thoughts of dead bodies, spooks, and Willodean finding out exactly how he’d spent his afternoon were all twisting his innards like Chubby Checker singing his signature song.) (At least he was no longer having sympathetic pregnancy symptoms. It wasn’t that he wasn’t sympathetic, of course.)

  Miz Demetrice’s five-foot-nothing height and slim build belied the spine of pure steel that lined her back. Her hair might be white as snow and her eyes as blue as cornflowers, but she was a force to be reckoned with. She wore a flower-print dress that looked like it came from Macy’s. Her shoes matched the magenta color of the flowers on the dress, and she held a white purse with her free hand. In fact, she was using the purse to emphasize her points.

  “If you want to be part of a middle class, then unionizing your people is the best way to go,” Miz Demetrice said. “Did you know that exotic dancers have already unionized in three states? Many of you are not employees but contracted labor which does not cover even your basic needs. Many of you are parents with children, and you need your benefits just as much as the man down the street who works at the manure factory.”

  “Same thing,” cackled Granny Goodbang.

  “Here! Here!” said the woman with the strawberry-colored wig. Something about her was very familiar, but Bubba didn’t dwell on that.

  Bubba sighed. The police were going to come to Bazooka Bob’s even if no one called about the body because his mother was going to incite a riot.

  “Did you know that union facilities are a safer workplace than nonunion facilities?” Miz Demetrice demanded. “Do you get walked to your cars at night? Do they keep people from grabbing you while you’re on stage? Do you feel secure in your work environment?”

  “Union?” Bam Bam muttered. “Cain’t afford a union here. Cain’t afford to hire an extra shift. Don’t these girls know that? Don’t your mama know that, Bubba?”

  “I think it’s prolly slipped her mind,” Bubba allowed.

  “I don’t feel safe at night walking to my car at 2:30 am,” Diamond called. “I have a Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 Magnum that I keep in my purse, but who knows if I’ll have time to get it cocked before some creep kidnaps me and takes me to his basement lair! We want girl walkers!” Bubba took a moment to process that and realized that Diamond wanted people to walk girls to their cars, not walkers who were also girls. At least that’s what he thought she wanted. “Also,” Diamond added, “don’t tell my probation officer about my gun because I’m not supposed to have it.”

  “I walk them to their cars all the time,” Bam Bam protested. “And how big is your purse because dah-am, bab-bee, that be a big gun.”

  “Girl walkers!” Destiny yelled.

  “Girl walkers! Girl walkers! Girl walkers!” Chastity Angel bellowed, which was odd considering how small she was. Then Pop Tart Smith took up the call, which was followed by Gummi Worm, Cayenne Pepper, Alotta Fagina, Snuggles Palomino, and Tomi Knockers. They all started to click their stiletto heels in time on the laminate floor. Several of the customers began to chant as well to include Mayor Leroy, Jasper Dukeminer, and the man in the Panama hat.

  “I should have never bought this place,” Bam Bam lamented. “I should have bought a snow cone shop. I could have gotten one of those Airstream trailers and made it into a portable donut shop. I know a gal who can make donuts look like little artistic creations. They melt in your mouth. Wonder if it’s too late for that?”

  “Purt shore,” Bubba said, wondering if he could get his dog and go out the back before his mother noticed him.

  “There’s also a question of competence!” Miz Demetrice yelled as the “Girl Walkers!” motto faded out. “Your fellow workers in a union tend to be more competent!”

  “That’s right!” Granny Goodbang interjected. “Ain’t nothing that pisses me off more than when a newbie don’t know how to use a pole. Remember that one who slipped and threw herself ten feet. She would have broken her neck ifin Mayor John Leroy Jr. hadn’t blocked her fall. I’ve never seen a man so happy that he’d gotten hit with 110 pounds of girl.”

  “Wasn’t Melvin Wetmore there, too?” asked Alotta. “He’s that mechanic over to Bufford’s Gas and Grocery. Used to work with Bubba there.”

  And that was the point where it all went south. Bubba considered. No, that wasn’t true. It had gone south from the moment he’d stopped to help Cayenne Pepper with her car, which was a car that didn’t need help. For all he knew, Bam Bam had been hiding behind the cows waiting for Bubba to take Cayenne down the road and had driven the AMC Gremlin back himself. He didn’t strike Bubba as the sort of man who would leave his favorite purple car sitting out on a country road all by its lonesome.

  However, at that particular moment, Miz Demetrice had opened her mouth and was obviously about to further endorse the case of unions’ helpfulness to the wondrous world of exotic dancing when it unmistakably dawned upon her exactly what Alotta had said. Her cornflower blue eyes scanned her audience and came to rest upon Tomi Knockers petting Precious under her jowls. Then her eyes became like laser-guided mother-of-all-bombs seeking their ultimate target to not only blow them up, but to decimate every last bit of them into microscopic pieces that would take an MIT microscope to locate.

  Bubba restrained an urge to duck under the nearest round table, but that would make him look like he was guilty of something, and he was not guilty of anything at all.

  Miz Demetrice looked upon her only child, and the room instantly silenced. It didn’t take ninja brain scientist surgeons to figure out that something was amiss. In fact, Bubba prayed that ninja brain scientists would rapidly appear and make things somewhat less awkward.

  “Well now,” Bam Bam announced suddenly, and everyone jumped, “looks like the buffet is ready to go, and Leslie done tole me he’s got ten, yes, ten, different flavors of wings and deep-fried okra, too. And them garlic encrusted corn on the cobs will make you cry for your mama.” He paused and thought about what he’d just said. Then he added, “Except mebe you, Bubba.”

  Chapter 8

  Bubba and Niggling Details

  and the Buffet and His Mama

  Tuesday, August 22nd

  “She was broke down on the side of the road and needed to get to work, Ma,” Bubba said slowly and patiently so as to not allow any type of miscommunication. “I was taught to he’p a soul out when I kin. It’s the Christian thing to do.” The unspoken message in the last sentence was “Ma, see how good I can be, see that I wasn’t really doing anything wrong, see, see, see?”

  But instead of seeing, Miz Demetrice adjusted her dress because, and Bubba was guessing here, she couldn’t think of anything besides hitting her only child upside the head with her clutch purse, and needed to keep her hands occupied.

  Bubba knew that he should probably just shut his mouth and suffer the wrath of the damned. He didn’t need to justify himself to anyone except possibly God and then Willodean, and not necessarily in that order. His mother ought to have an inkling that her son was not that kind of person. Certainly, Miz Demetrice had justifiable cause to be suspicious of men. Her late husband, Elgin Snoddy, Bubba’s father, had been a womanizing boozehound of the highest order. If there had been an
award for such behavior, Elgin would have come in as a strong contender for taking top honors.

  Bubba often thought that the reason that his mother frequently verbally changed the method of Elgin’s death was a way of slapping him from outside the grave. She might say that she killed Elgin by using a Kenworth T800 mixer truck to pour cement over him while he was staked to the ground and then sat in an Adirondack chair on the slab while sipping a gin and tonic. (Twice on Tuesdays for some reason.) Sometimes the gin and tonic would have a sprig of mint; sometimes it would have a maraschino cherry because it was nice to change things up on occasion.

  Bubba shook his head to get his mind to go back to the right place. In any case, Elgin had had a heart attack and that was what it said on the death certificate. Miz Demetrice was still angry that her philandering drunkard of a husband, who had a loose fist at times, had died before she could set his bed on fire one late inebriated night of her choosing. Elgin’s not-so-sterling example was why she was glaring at Bubba as though he’d broken nine of the Ten Commandments, written more Commandments, and then he’d broken them, as well.

  It wasn’t that Bubba was in an exotic dance club; it was that Bubba was newly married with a heavily pregnant wife and he was in an exotic dance club.

  “Then that gal left her purse in my truck, and I had to give it back,” Bubba finished, trying to sound confidently innocent.

  Miz Demetrice eyed him like he was the most evil perpetrator who perped a trator in Perptratorsville in the United States of Perpetratoria.

  “Ask them,” Bubba said, indicating the crowd of women watching the scene like they were watching a train about to plunge off a 1000-foot-tall cliff. To be perfectly specific, the conductor had just dramatically increased the steam pressure, and he was jumping for it while leaving a concrete block on the gas pedal. (Did trains have gas pedals? Probably not, but since it was Bubba’s metaphor, he could have a gas pedal on a train.)

  “Does Willodean know?” Miz Demetrice asked deliberately.

  “Of course she knows,” Bubba said. “I done called her to let her know I was running late. That fella in the kitchen is making her a to-go box with wings in it and also armadillo eggs. Willodean is goin’ to be glad I stopped here, for purely innocent reasons mind you, because the food is dang good. You should try some.”

  Miz Demetrice glanced around her.

  Granny Goodbang said, “Oh yes, Leslie’s food is fabulous. I think I’ve gained a pound in the last month, since he started working here. I feel so fat.”

  “Oh, no one would ever notice that,” Diamond told her. “I hope I look as good as you when I’m your age.”

  “I’m only thirty-three,” Granny protested.

  “It says thirty-five on your driver’s license,” Alotta told her, “and don’t look at me like that, I saw it when they carded you at Bufford’s Gas and Grocery for that beer we bought, which has a lot more calories than Leslie’s wings, by the way. Empty calories, too.”

  “Yeah, well we all could lose a pound or two,” Granny muttered.

  Bubba looked down. He didn’t need to lose any weight. He’d lost weight since the wedding. Willodean did not cook, and they had odd hours, plus they were trying to get the baby’s room ready to go. Miz Adelia would send food over periodically. Plus, he couldn’t decide on a name for the baby. He couldn’t even narrow it down to ten names. They had decided not to find out the sex of the baby, and both of them were supposed to be choosing names so they could see if they had some common ground. He was supposed to be making a baby crib at the moment. Willodean was supposed to be sitting at a desk in the Pegram County Sheriff’s Department with her feet on a padded pouf that Bubba had bought for that specific purpose. Also, no one else was supposed to have died.

  All of these things were happening or not happening, and yes, Bubba was supposed to figure out the best way of being a daddy and not being the kind of daddy he’d had. So he was worried. Sure people had said to him that things would turn out just fine, but things weren’t turning out fine.

  In fact, there was another danged dead body, and Bam Bam Jones had dragged Bubba into the matter kicking and screaming. He needed a shot of Pepto-Bismol, of which he suspected was in Bam Bam’s office.

  Taking a deep calming breath, Bubba tried to center himself. First things first. Put off his mother. Then, get Bam Bam to call the police. Finally, explain to Willodean that all was not the way that Miz Demetrice was going to put it.

  “He did pick Cayenne up on the side of the road,” Destiny said to Miz Demetrice. “She said Bam Bam’s car broke down but then Bam Bam drove it back about ten minutes after Bubba showed up with Cayenne. What’s up with that?”

  “Sounds suspicious,” Diamond said. “But Bubba has been a perfect gentleman. As a matter of fact, I haven’t caught him looking at my breasts even once.”

  “And he’s got a dog,” Tomi Knockers said. “99% of the people who come to Bazooka Bob’s don’t bring their dogs.”

  Miz Demetrice didn’t look away from her son.

  Bubba began to sweat. It was like he was sinking in a dismal morass of endless muck from which he would never be able to extricate himself. “Mebe ya’ll should talk about unionization again.”

  “NO!” Bam Bam cried. “Look at that. That was Laz Berryhill and Roy Chance who just snuck out of here. You’re scaring off all the regulars!” His voice lowered and he added, “And that guy over there, the one who looks like a mafia underlord in a pinstripe suit. He looks uncomfortable.”

  “I’m not uncomfortable,” the man said with a heavy Latin accent. He smiled brightly, revealing one gold incisor. “Best entertainment I’ve had for weeks.”

  Bubba decided that he was going to get some of the buffet. If he was going to be forced to wear a scarlet letter A, then he might as well have a full stomach. While he ate he was going to think about who could have killed the man in the bathroom instead of why he might have been murdered. That latter questioning was only going in circles. Bubba needed to think about the whole thing in a different way.

  “Bubba?” Miz Demetrice asked as he headed toward the line of food under glass.

  “Ma?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting a plate,” Bubba said. “You want one?”

  “Is it really that good?”

  “Yes, Ma, it is.”

  “Well, okay then.”

  * * *

  As Bubba methodically chewed the wings (Bourbon honey madness and Caribbean jerk surprise-flavored) he thought about who was a suspect. If the club was empty, or mostly empty, and locked as Bam Bam said, then Bam Bam was the only suspect. Unless Bam Bam had a split personality that he didn’t know about (the only multi-personalities that Bubba knew were some of the folks from the Dogley Institute for Mental Well-Being, and they didn’t make a habit of coming to gentlemen’s clubs), then it was likely that Bam Bam hadn’t been alone. After all, John J. Johnson had made it inside. Bam Bam had said that he hadn’t let him in. He’d just appeared. So John had broken in somehow or possibly someone else had let him in.

  Bubba sat at a table eating his illicit bounty. (He was well aware that he hadn’t paid for entering the club nor had he paid for the buffet, and he thought he wouldn’t because wasn’t it supposed to be a “free” buffet on Tuesdays, and wasn’t this Tuesday? Why, yessirindeedee, it was a Tuesday.) His mother sat next to him eating her illicit bounty while Precious sat at their feet and made irritated growly noises because she wasn’t getting any more illicit bounty. Bam Bam stood on the other side of the large room, visibly trying to figure out which of the exotic dancers was in charge of unionization while Kiki sat at a nearby table jotting notes down for whatever paper it was that she was going to write for her college class.

  Mostly all of the regular clientele had fled upon Miz Demetrice taking the stage. (Who wouldn’t have? Bubba thought before mentally clouting himself in the noggin.) More of them had fled when Bubba had come out to confront his mother. (They were just lucky that
his mother didn’t have her entourage from the Pegramville Women’s Club with her. When she did things like inciting unionization at various businesses, which was much more common with Miz Demetrice than one might have thought, she would set some of her people up with cameras to make certain they were taking pictures of everyone fleeing the scene. She said it was merely to cover her bases, but Bubba thought she was in collusion with the local media. However, one of the local media, Roy Chance, co-owner of The Pegram Herald, had fled in terror, not minutes before. Oh, the whole thing just made Bubba’s noodle hurt.)

  Miz Demetrice burped delicately and commented, “Those were indeed delicious.”

  Bubba didn’t care to comment, but Precious whined hopefully.

  “I could understand why you came to Bazooka Bob’s,” Miz Demetrice said carefully, “but I’m not sure why you stayed.”

  “Bam Bam needs some he’p with something important.”

  His mother digested that tidbit of information with something akin to a cup of disbelief with a spoonful of are-you-stupid and a hearty dollop of if-you’re-not-stupid-then-what’s-wrong-with-you? “What he’p does that young man require exactly?”

  “He’p,” Bubba answered unhelpfully, hoping against hope that his mother would get the message that this wasn’t something that she should mess with.

  Miz Demetrice eyed her son with something a veteran would have called a thousand-yard stare. Bubba had also heard Brownie call it the death-glare-of-doomity-doom-oh-we-should-just-run-now. Instead, Bubba ate another wing. The Caribbean jerk surprise-flavored ones were really tasty. He hoped that Leslie put some of those in Willodean’s to-go box.

  Bam Bam sidled up to the pair and looked them both over with his own death-glare, although his really didn’t compare to Miz Demetrice’s. “I beginning to think I might have made a mistake,” he said.