The Yellow Rose Beauty Shop

by Carolyn Brown

  Annabel glowed. No, that was understating the look on her face. She lit up the whole damned room with her smile.

  Can I please kiss your fingernail for letting me work my fingers to the bone on little cakes for the first annual Yellow Rose Barbecue Ball? Nancy didn’t say those words, but she could hear them rattling around in her head like marbles in an empty soup can.

  She’d far rather be sitting in her daughter’s beauty shop basking in the glory of having their argument settled. But oh, no! Everett had told her that if he was going to be responsible for smoking enough brisket, turkey, chicken, and pork tenderloin to serve the whole town of Cadillac, then by damn she was going to every meeting between now and the ball.

  “I want you damn good and tired of all that shit so you won’t back out when it comes time to quit,” he had said.

  When she got home, she intended to kiss him smack on the lips for making her go. This was better than a circus.

  “Nancy, are you listening to me?” Heather asked sternly.

  “I’m so sorry. My mind drifted. Now what was it you were saying?”

  Heather did one of her dramatic inhale-deeply-and-blow-it-out-slowly rituals, but this time she added a glare in the mix. “I said that we will need equal amounts of pork loin and brisket, half as much chicken and turkey.”

  “That’s what Everett planned on,” Nancy said. “He wants to know if it’s going to be open bar or bring your own beer or bottle.”

  “This is an Angels affair,” Annabel gasped. “There will be no liquor of any kind or shape at the barbecue ball.”

  Oh, Everett is going to love that idea after cooking for days. Why couldn’t they at least have beer?

  “That’s right,” Heather said. “This is a formal affair. We will offer lemon-infused water and sweet tea and of course there will be a punch bowl on the table with all of Annabel’s gorgeous petits fours. And a smaller bowl on a little round table for those of us who are allergic to red punch and prefer the kind made with white grape juice and lemon-lime soda. I shall be in charge of the smaller one since I’m the one who can’t abide red punch.”

  Nancy made a mental note. I’ll just bring a cooler and leave it in the car. Everett has one of those fancy can covers so no one will know. I’m not asking him to help me serve all night with nothing but lemon-infused water to drink.

  “Now, on to the next item on the agenda. I’d like to get this all settled before we drive down to the barn and look it over. Ideas will just pop right out of our heads when we see the inside and figure out what we can do to make this the best affair in Cadillac. I can foresee people coming from miles away like they do for the jubilee.” Heather’s eyes actually went misty.

  “Are you plannin’ on a carnival next year?” Nancy asked.

  Annabel’s quick intake of breath said that Nancy was sure walking on thin ice. “Of course not! This will always be Cadillac’s formal affair. The jubilee is for families. The chili cook-off is to make money for the firemen’s fund and it’s also for families. But this is a holy affair.”

  “Well put, Annabel.” Heather nodded.

  A holy affair? Did that mean they would offer up a virgin on a hay bale at the end of the festivities? If that’s what Heather had in mind, she’d best start advertising for one real soon, because Nancy was pretty sure that none of the over-eighteen women in Cadillac would qualify.

  Heather held a hand up toward heaven. “This will be Cadillac’s way of telling our Lord and savior that we appreciate his answering our prayers all year. The money that we take in will go straight into the church’s brand-new marriage ministry fund. I’ve talked to Reverend Jed about it and he said that we could keep whatever money we made for future projects for my ministry.”

  “I’d like to see it used for a fund to help folks in need. Like broke people who have car trouble near Cadillac. Or young, single mothers who have trouble paying the rent,” Nancy asked.

  “I’ve decided this is going into the MM fund, which stands for marriage ministry fund if you don’t understand the world of initials,” Heather said. “Why would you want such a fund, anyway? I asked you earlier if Stella was pregnant. Has that changed?”

  Every eye in the room cut toward Nancy. “Not that I know about, but y’all remember that I asked you to pray for a husband first and then a baby. I don’t think God will get it backward. He’s pretty good at keepin’ things straight.”

  Heather ignored her and shuffled a few more papers. “We will have music playing and the dance will go on from six to eight. I would like to be able to hire a harp and have a piano brought in, but it’s not possible this first year. So we have a sound system and CDs, but there will be none of that twangy country music. We’ll have true waltz instrumentals. That way there won’t be any of that sinful rubbing-all-over-each-other type of dancing.”

  “Are you kidding me? Not a single one of the men in Cadillac will stay past the first dance,” Nancy said bluntly.

  “Yes, they will, because the ladies will love it,” Heather protested.

  “Have you got rocks for brains, woman?” Nancy asked.

  She’d promised Everett she’d go to the damned old meetings. She had not promised to be good and not speak her mind.

  “You are being contentious, Nancy Baxter, and you know what the Bible says about that. We are going to dance the waltz like civilized people, so get used to it.”

  Before Nancy could answer that snide remark, Annabel raised her hand like a little first-grade girl in pigtails. “Miz Heather, I had a vision of all the single women being sent to the buyers’ balcony on one side and the single men to the other balcony. When you call out their names, then the guy . . . I mean, the gent . . . crosses the whole barn and offers his hand to the lady at the bottom step of her side.”

  “That’s lovely.” Heather clapped her hands. “I’ll write that down and we’ll do it just like that. I knew you’d have some wonderful notions. Now shall we go to the barn and see what else we can come up with? Annabel, I’m just sure you’ll picture all kinds of scenarios. I’m eager to know how you think we should arrange the tables. Would you be in charge of that the day we set them up?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am. I’d be honored to take care of that. Would you like me to rent the tablecloths as well?” Annabel asked.

  Heather left her throne behind the desk and looped her arm in Annabel’s. “That would be lovely. Dinner will be served at eight, then, and the couples will be announced right before that. They will have their first dance together and then sit together for their dinner and then dance some more. Oh, I could just swoon thinking about it. Just keep the receipts for the tablecloths, honey, and the ball fund will reimburse you for your expenses.”

  “And the meat that Everett is cooking?” Nancy asked.

  Heather threw a drop-dead-and-fall-in-fresh-cow-poop look over her shoulder. “I thought that was your donation. It is tax deductible since it’s for the church. But if you are too poor to buy it, then by all means keep the receipts.”

  “Thank you. I will bring them to you the day we buy the meat. The Fannin sisters and I will be donating the potato salad, the baked beans, and the coleslaw. You might want to ask someone else to volunteer for the condiments,” Nancy said.

  A rooster crowed and Agnes fetched her phone from the bibbed pocket of her hospital gown. “Got to take this one, Stella,” she said.

  She listened for so long that Stella was sure she’d forgotten to hang up when the call ended. But finally she hit a button and shoved it back into her pocket.

  The rehab room was nicer than the hospital room that Agnes had been in for less than a week. And over there hanging on the front of the closet door were her brand-new fancy overalls. The sunlight filtering in through the miniblinds caught the stones and flashed spots of color on the walls.

  “They’re downright beautiful, ain’t they? Alma Grace brought them yest
erday and said that they was supposed to help me get well. I done took them to the therapy session so Violet could see them. I’m going to remake my will and be buried in either them or the dress that Carlene is making for me to wear to the ball. I hope to hell Violet and Heather wear something that requires a corset and a girdle and they’re miserable all night,” Agnes said when she tucked the phone back into her pocket.

  “I bet Carlene could sell those things faster than hotcakes if she’d put some in her store window.” Stella smiled.

  “Oh, no! Them is one of a kind. Me and Rosalee has got the only ones and we ain’t sharing,” Agnes told her. “Now listen to me. That was Nancy on the telephone. You already know about the dress rule. There will be no liquor of any kind, not even beer. We will be drinking lemon-infused water, whatever to hell that is, sweet tea, and of course there will be a punch bowl on the table with Annabel’s petits fours. I hope she makes chocolate ones because I intend to eat about twenty.”

  “I’ll pale in comparison to a redhead who’ll be wearing an overall formal with that much bling.”

  “Bullshit! Don’t you try to weasel out of going. I need my bodyguards,” Agnes said.

  “But Cathy, Trixie, and Marty will be there,” Stella said. “And you’ll be in a wheelchair, Agnes, and that’s only if you are lucky and get out of rehab.”

  “I’m going if I have to go in a damn hospital bed. You should see what Carlene is doing with my ball gown. I’ve had some curtains up in a trunk that I took down out of my kitchen about twenty years ago. Yellow sunflowers on a green background. Carlene is using the material for the bottom of my new formal,” Agnes said.

  Stella laughed out loud. “That should bring down the house. You reckon the newspaper and television station will interview you and take pictures?”

  “Hell, yeah, they will, if I have to pay them to do it.”

  “Okay, then, I promise I’ll go shopping and buy a dress. What do I need to do to take care of things from my end?” Stella asked.

  “I’ll do most of it with my telephone, but there’s a couple of things I’ll need help with. Nancy needs to make a trip out to old man Hinton’s. That’s all you need to tell her,” Agnes said.

  “To buy moonshine?” Stella asked.

  “How’d you know about that?”

  “If you grew up in Cadillac, you knew about old man Hinton. You leave a twenty-dollar bill on the stump out near his smokehouse. There’s a thumbtack in the stump and an hour later you go back and there’s two jars of ’shine sittin’ there in place of the money,” Stella said.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. You ever drink any of it?”

  Stella shivered at the memory. “One time. But Mr. Hinton has gone out to El Paso to live with his son. He is ninety now, you know. They moved him out there last week, Agnes.”

  “Well, shit!”

  “Hey, hey.” Piper poked her head in the door. “Did Stella upset you about something?”

  “Hell, no! Old man Hinton did. I need moonshine.”

  Piper pulled up a chair beside Agnes’s hospital bed. “You can’t have moonshine in here. You might have a reaction to whatever medication they’re giving you if you mix it with liquor.”

  “It ain’t for me.” Agnes’s eyes settled on Piper and she nodded. “Liquor? Yep, that’s it. Your job is to go to a liquor store and buy whatever looks and smells like moonshine. Whiskey won’t do. It’ll make the punch taste funny.”

  “Agnes Flynn!” Stella gasped.

  “It’s just for the little punch bowl. The big one is going to have red punch in it. Nancy already told me so. But there’s going to be a little one on a second table for folks like Heather. She tells people that she’s allergic to the pineapple juice that goes into red punch. The smaller punch bowl will have something made out of white grape juice, so whiskey would sure show up in it.”

  “Vodka,” Piper said.

  “That’ll work,” Agnes said. “Just don’t let nobody see you gettin’ it or it might set off an alarm. She has to drink it for my plan to work.”

  “And what is this plan?” Stella asked.

  “To make this the only Yellow Rose Barbecue Redneck Ball in Cadillac. The jubilee and the chili cook-off are enough. And I sure don’t want it to have the name of your beauty shop,” Agnes answered.

  Stella was just glad that it wasn’t her job to buy liquor. It wouldn’t bode well for the preacher’s wife to be seen in the liquor store and someone would be bound to see her even if she tried to buy it in Sherman or Denison. Then when she and Jed announced that they’d been married more than two months, someone would remember that she’d bought liquor after they were married. Gossips were very good at remembering dates and times!

  Agnes pointed at her. “Your job is to get one of them flash-point-drive things that you put into a computer and get someone to fill it plumb up with country music. I want that kind that you can do the hoochy-cooch to. Ain’t no way we’re goin’ to be bored to death with a bunch of waltzes from the Civil War days.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Stella said.

  “And Charlotte’s job?” Piper asked.

  “You tell her to come see me tomorrow. We’ve got some discussin’ to do. Now I’ll be goin’ to my therapy here in about five minutes, so y’all best scoot on out of here.”

  “Does Violet go to the same therapy?” Piper asked.

  “Hell, yeah, she does.” Agnes grinned. “But she’s a big baby. I hope she whines around until she loses every bit of her clout in Cadillac.”

  “Heather is going to be just as bad,” Stella said.

  “I can handle that girl with one hand tied behind my back and I’m about to prove it. Y’all know that she ain’t from Tulsa like she says. She’s from a little bitty place that ain’t got five hundred people about fifty miles west of there. Town called Ripley. She went to college in Tulsa and wants everyone to think she’s big city.”

  “Well, how about that?” Stella smiled.

  Agnes pointed at the door. “They’ll be comin’ to take me to the therapy room any minute now, so it’s really time to go, girls. Y’all come back anytime. And tell Charlotte I want to see her tomorrow.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Piper said.

  Charlotte had a cancellation late in the day so she reached the rehab center by five thirty. Stella and Piper each had a job to throw wrenches into the barbecue ball. With Heather tipsy and country instead of classical music playing, there didn’t seem to be much else that was needed. But if Agnes summoned her, by golly, there was no way she wasn’t putting in an appearance.

  “I brought you a chocolate cupcake from that fancy shop down the street,” she said as she entered the room.

  “Thank God! Bring it over here and I’ll eat it while you call in a large pizza. They brought liver and onions for supper. I like onions but I hate liver. We’ll share us a pizza and visit a spell,” Agnes said.

  “Only if the nurse says it’s all right,” Charlotte said.

  Agnes pushed her call button and a lady poked her head inside the door. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “I want pizza. Y’all got a problem with my friend going to get it for me?”

  “No, honey. You can eat whatever you want, and between you and me, I wouldn’t have eaten that supper they brought in here, either,” the duty nurse said.

  “Thank you.” Agnes peeled the paper from the cupcake and talked between bites. “I bet Violet ain’t got a cupcake. If I had the energy, I’d get in my wheelchair and go past her room with chocolate on my mouth.”

  “Agnes Flynn! Breaking a hip hasn’t slowed you down a bit.”

  “Hell, no, it didn’t slow me down. It just gave me more time to plot and plan for the barbecue ball. You know we ain’t got but two weeks to get it all planned out and ready to go.”

  A smile turned up the corners of Charlotte’s mouth. “You are incorrigible,
woman. What kind of pizza do you want?” Charlotte dug her phone from her purse and flipped through the contact list to find the number for the pizza place.

  “Supreme with extra bell peppers,” Agnes said. “And a side order of jalapeños. They won’t be as hot as what Cathy grows, but they’ll do. And I want the biggest sweet tea they sell. The tea they got in here ain’t got a bit of sugar in it. And yes, I’m incorrigible. If I hadn’t been, Violet would have destroyed Cadillac years ago with all that bullshit she puts out.”

  Charlotte ordered the pizza and then sat down in an easy chair beside the bed. “Stella tells me she has a job and Piper has already bought the vodka.”

  “I guess you heard that Heather is planning on each feller coming down the stairs from the buyers’ balcony on one side and crossin’ the barn to take his lady’s hand in his. Then he’ll lead her out to the dance floor and wait until all the names are called out before the first dance commences?”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “Your job is to convince her to let you do the name callin’. I don’t give a shit if you have to knock her out and drag her back behind the barn. But I want you to call out the married and engaged people first and then go on to the single folks.”

  “Why?” Charlotte asked.

  “Stella is going to goad her into eating her chicken some way or she’s by damn going to dye her hair black. I swear it on my mama’s Holy Bible. If she can’t get Heather to eat chicken, then she don’t deserve that mop of red hair.”

  “What if Heather hates chicken as bad as red punch?” Charlotte asked.

  “I already know that’s her favorite kind of barbecue and I’ve already had a talk with Cathy, who will be delivering a dozen peppers to Stella the day before the ball. Her chicken is going to be extrahot, so that will send Heather straight for the punch bowl once she samples it. Since she’s got holy blood flowin’ in her veins, I reckon she ain’t never had much to drink. It shouldn’t take much liquor to make her dizzy, and by that time she’s going to be real worried about the money.”