by C. L. Bevill
“Blew up?” an irate voice repeated. “What in tarnation blew up? What happened to the gate? What happened to the S? What happened to Bubba? BUBBA!” Miz Demetrice materialized out of the blackness and leaped upon her only child. Bubba grunted with the extra weight.
“Ma, I’m fine.”
“YOU’RE ON THE GROUND!”
“Ma, I’m fine.”
“The gate isn’t fine, how can you be fine? YOU’RE ON THE GROUND!”
“Knocked me tushy over teakettle is all,” Bubba reiterated.
“Let me look at your tushy,” Miz Demetrice demanded, “WHICH IS ON THE GROUND!”
“My teakettle is just fine, Ma,” Bubba said quietly.
“They’re in jail,” Big Joe said. “Nancy’s still in the women’s prison awaiting trial. Don’t know why they couldn’t keep her in the local jail.”
“You know the local jail ain’t set up for women and especially not long term,” Sheriff John said. “Let the state deal with her and her mouth.”
“Well, what about Lurlene, er, Donna Hyatt? Could she have a reason to off Bubba?” Willodean asked.
“The other women’s prison has her. Turns out the wardens dint want the two of them conspiring against Bubba in one prison.” Sheriff John laughed.
“And Noey Wheatfall? He was in on it, too.” Willodean was persistent.
Bubba watched out of the corner of his eye while his mother awkwardly patted his shoulder. “Are you hurt, Bubba dearest? Is that why you’re lying on the ground?”
“I don’t feel like getting up, Ma,” Bubba said. “I’m looking at the stars.”
“Is this related to the explosion during spring break?” Willodean asked.
“Naw. That was something else altogether. You know.”
“Yeah. I know. That was really weird.”
“Funny, too. Especially the forestry service guy.”
Big Joe, Sheriff John, and Willodean all laughed at the same time.
“So Noey Wheatfall’s in prison and so is Robert D-d-d-daughtry, what was his other name?” Willodean asked after she stopped laughing.
“Morgan Newbrough,” Bubba said. “Their mama changed their names.”
“I need a list of characters to keep track,” Sheriff John complained. “And yes, Newbrough’s still in the clink.”
Miz Adelia came up from behind Miz Demetrice. Her dark eyes and hair were even darker in the nighttime. “What in the name of Jehoshaphat’s jumping jelly beans is goin’ on ‘round here?”
“Explosion,” Miz Demetrice said. “Bubba is dying.”
“Not dying, Ma.”
“Bubba is mortally injured.”
“Not mortally injured. Just lying down.”
Precious whined pitifully.
Willodean leaned in between the two women. “You should get up, Bubba. You’re making your mama nervous, and we all know what happens then.”
Bubba had to agree with that, but he did it silently. As he listened to everyone talk and his mother fret, he couldn’t help but come to a conclusion. He had shaken the tree and coconuts had fallen out, right on top of him. In fact, the coconuts had blown up, and he didn’t know that coconuts could do that.
The Travellers hadn’t had time to find out his address and get here ahead of him. Well, I did stop at the Colonel’s. It was possible that they had moved that fast. But it seemed unlikely. The kid, Rory Donal, didn’t really seem to know anything, and while he might have immediately called his uncle after Bubba left, it seemed unlikely that they would have charged down to Pegram County to plant a bomb at the gate of Snoddy Estate. The bomb could have killed anyone coming or going. The first person to try to move the right side would have gone kerflooey, and it didn’t have to necessarily be Bubba.
He frowned as he lay there.
“What is it, Bubba dearest? Is there a great deal of pain? Your father was in a great deal of pain when I eviscerated him with a rusty fork. You wouldn’t believe how long that actually takes. It was agony. Sheer agony. And he wasn’t so happy, either.”
“Pa had a heart attack, Ma.”
Bubba took back the conclusion. This was an either/or situation. Either someone unrelated to the note wanted to kill a member of the Snoddy family or Miz Adelia, OR someone worried about the note wanted to kill Bubba. But if the note came from an automobile part purchased in Canton, Texas, which was approximately a hundred and twenty miles away, then how could anyone possibly have any knowledge of it in Pegram County? With the exception of the two hundred people that Ma blabbed to over the microphone, of course.
Of course, he answered himself.
In his head, Bubba went over the conversation with Rory Donal again. The kid had said, “Little po-dunk towns.” He’d said, “Even little dirt pits in the armpit of hell.” Bubba had not told Rory where he was from, so those statements intimated that Rory knew that the parts came from a small town. Furthermore, Bubba believed that one could liken the town of Pegramville to a dirt pit in the armpit of hell. But only sometimes.
Is it possible? Bubba thought it might very well be possible. But first he had to figure out how to find the elusive Paddy Sheedy.
“Oh Bubba, why does this keep happening to you?” his mother wailed.
Bubba sighed. “I reckon God’s got a refined sense of humor that us mortals cain’t understand.”
“Shouldn’t talk about God that way,” Miz Adelia chastised. “He might take offense.”
“Too late.”
Bubba sat up and then he leaned to one side and threw up all of the Colonel’s nicely prepared meal.
•
Doc Goodjoint had Bubba spend the night in the hospital. He had x-rays done and advised Bubba that a concussion was likely. The doctor took an insane pleasure in having the nurses wake Bubba up once an hour, whether Bubba liked it or not. They also smiled evilly when they took blood from him and asked for a urine sample. One suggested a rectal thermometer be used when he refused to have his temperature taken by the oral method. Bubba didn’t feel like fighting the good fight, so he acquiesced quickly.
Mostly, Bubba discovered if he lay quietly on his back and didn’t move around, then he felt almost normal.
Miz Demetrice and Willodean left after midnight, taking Miz Adelia and Precious with them. Bubba got in some rest, but Nurse Dee Dee Lacour, Doc’s main nurse and cranky pants extraordinaire, was happy to give him a poke at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m., and again at 5 a.m. Then it was another nurse who Bubba did not know who poked him at 6 am and 7 am. Breakfast was runny eggs, soggy toast, and prepackaged green Jell-O. He stared at it as if the various foodstuffs might come alive and attack him.
Diabolic David the Dreadlightful came swashbuckling into the room. His saber was out, and his beaded goatee was swinging in the fullness of the fluorescent light of the room. Fake black dreads clanking with beads twirled out from under the red bandanna. It turned out that he was wearing knee-high boots and breeches to complete his ultimate buccaneer ensemble. “Shiver me timbers!” he bellowed. “Hospital food be for landlubbers. Only children eat cackle fruit and doughboys!” He shoved a sack onto Bubba’s tray, and Bubba ducked as the saber came around the other way, nearly decapitating the light behind him.
Bubba started to say something about not waving his sword around when he realized that the paper sack was from Jack in the Box. His mouth watered, and he nearly drooled down the side of his chin. “Real food. Thanks, David.”
David put his saber into his scabbard. “Me pleasure. Me has spent a time or two in a hospital. The food stinks.”
“Sir,” a nurse protested, “no yelling in the hospital. No waving weapons around. In fact, how did you get that weapon in here?”
David gave the nurse a long look. She was in her thirties and nicely curved. “Ahoy, ye buxom beauty,” he said smoothly. “Want to see why me Roger’s so jolly?”
The nurse’s mouth gaped. Bubba tucked into the food. An Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich spilled into his hands. It was followed swiftly by hash brow
n sticks. The world was momentarily sane again.
The nurse said a nasty word and exited the room.
“She likes me,” David asserted.
“She’s probably going for security,” Bubba said around a mouthful of Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich. His mother would have hit him in the back of his head if she had seen him, but he was hungry, and it had been a loooonnnngggg night. A man could use an Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich. A man needed an Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich. In fact, a man could smear the Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich all over his body. “This is pure cholesterol going into my veins.”
“Damnation seize my soul, if I give you quarter or take any from you!” David yelled at the opening. He kicked the door and watched it shut with an expression of satisfaction on his scurvy face.
“That’s a pretty good quote,” Bubba said around another mouthful of Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich. It had been, after all, a lengthy night, and he had lost his dinner the evening before. The words actually came out as “Thassa pruht goo quo.”
David’s eyebrow arched piratically. “Edward Teach. He was otherwise known as Blackbeard.” He grinned, and his gold teeth glinted in the fluorescent lights. Fluorescent lights were very good for glinting gold teeth. He pulled up a metal chair and sat in it backwards. He put the saber on the bed next to Bubba and extracted a dagger from his belt, with which he proceeded to clean his fingernails.
Bubba noticed the finger claw was missing. “Where’s your claw thingy?” he asked around food. Normally he wouldn’t be so rude, but he was really, really, really hungry.
“Sheriff John said it was a deadly weapon and confiscated it.” David shrugged in a buccaneerish manner. Then he stated, “Someone be trying to kill you, matey.”
“Really?” Bubba tried to make the word dry, but that was difficult to do when one’s mouth was full.
“Oh yes. Bombs usually are an indication of deathly intent.” David scratched at the hair underneath the red bandanna. He flung a fake dreadlock over his shoulder. “Although I’ve never been blown up before. Last week someone threw grits at me head. That was nearly deadly in case you’ve never eaten the grits at the institute.”
“Oh, give it some time. If you continue to hang out with the Snoddys, you’ll probably be dodging grenades soon,” Bubba counseled.
David looked encouraged for a moment but then turned serious, or as serious as a man dressed up like Captain Jack Sparrow can be. “What about this here mystery, me hearty?”
“I went to Canton to track down the person who sold me the part,” Bubba said. He swallowed the last bit of sandwich and considered licking the wrappings. “He weren’t about. But I left a message.”
“Think ye they be responsible for the deadliness?”
“Think I a lot,” Bubba said. “But I cain’t see how they found out where I lived, hightailed it down here, scouted out a place for the bomb, planted it, all before I got here, even if I did stop for dinner.”
David stroked his beaded beardlets. “Think ye someone else be trying to kill you, or it be an attempt on your mother?”
“I’m certain there are people out there who would gleefully blow up Ma,” Bubba admitted. He could get three hash brown sticks in his mouth at the same time. He would have giggled if his mouth wasn’t stuffed. Furthermore, there were only five hash brown sticks in the package. Life was unfair. “Did you bring coffee?” he asked hopefully.
“Me couldn’t carry the sword and coffee too,” David said woefully.
“It’s okay,” Bubba said and inhaled the last two hash brown sticks. “God invented Jack in the Box. I’m perty sure.”
“The timing is off,” David said. He stroked his wispy mustache. “Why try and kill your mother now? What did she do to tick someone off?”
“That would be a difficult list to make,” Bubba said with a sigh. His stomach wasn’t full, but it wasn’t abysmally empty either. Having food inside him actually made him feel mildly improved. His ears had finally stopped ringing, and the back of his head wasn’t thumping in time with his heartbeats. “She said something about the note I found, right in front of a big crowd. On the microphone. Half the town and half the state of Texas heard it. All them people working at the festival heard it. Prolly most of ‘em don’t know what it means.”
“Or they think it’s part of the festival mystique,” David suggested.
“But mebe one of ‘em don’t think that. Mebe they know exactly who wrote the note. Mebe they want to stop me before I figure it out.”
“Thar be dragons about, matey,” David said sincerely. “Murderous dragons. Also wenches with bad breath. I’m not really trying to compare them to dragons, but it seems inevitable.”
Bubba burped and excused himself. “What are the odds? Really, I mean, what are the odds?”
“Ye purchased the part in Canton, then brought it here where it sat, and then ye opened it to see the note, a note that says someone is going to get murdered, ye mother blabs it over the microphone to a crowd of, what, hundreds?”
Bubba nodded.
“Then someone in the audience realizes they didn’t cover up their crime all the way,” David went on. “There was a mysterious note leftover from their victim. So they have to kill the person who’s digging into the background of the note.”
Bubba nodded again. He decided he was still hungry and started to lick the cheese from the inside of the wrapper.
“That’s not just a longshot, that’s preposterous,” David concluded. He waved his dagger in the air to emphasize the point.
Bubba had to agree. “So it probably doesn’t have anything to do with the note,” he said as he got a little melted cheese off the wrapper.
“Or ye’ve hit the murderous lottery,” David chortled. “Ye seem to be attracting all of the killers of late.”
Bubba examined the Jack in the Box wrapper. There was definitely nothing left that was edible. He was sure the actual wrapper was not something he should eat. He was going to have to eat the hospital breakfast. It looked forlorn and inedible on the tray next to the bed.
“Hmph,” said a voice from the door, which had opened without either of them noticing.
The sun came out and illuminated the room. Bubba brightened.
Willodean stood at the door with a plastic container in her hands. She was in her uniform, and her green eyes sparkled. She was cuter than a speckled pup. Bubba would have melted into warm goo if she had smiled at him, but she wasn’t smiling. “He’s right, you know,” she said.
“Who? David?”
“Yes, David. You are attracting killers lately.” Willodean sauntered into the room, and both Bubba and David were transfixed. Bubba abruptly realized that David was staring at Willodean’s butt as she came around the opposite side of the bed. He reached out with a long arm and slapped David in the side of the head. His bandanna and fake dreadlocks nearly came off.
“Stop looking at that.”
“Sorry,” David mumbled. “I couldn’t help it. She looks like Penelope Cruz.”
Willodean reached Bubba’s side, and she put the plastic container on the side of the bed. “I thought you’d be hungry,” she said.
“Oh yes. David brought something from Jack in the Box, but I’m a big boy. I’m so hungry I could et a cow and a half, a horse and a half, and a chocolate mule with a peppermint tail.” Bubba didn’t reach for Willodean’s hand, although he wanted to do so. There was an expression on her lovely face that warned him the action would not be welcome. She was mad. Her petite form radiated with anger. She was madder than a centipede standing barefoot on a hot rock.
What’d I do?
David swiftly adjusted his bandanna and fake dreadlocks. Beads jingled. He put his dagger back into its sheath and snatched up his sword and stuck it through his belt. “Mayhaps me should return to the business of pirating, by the foul bowels of Davy Jones.” He slithered out the door without a backward look.
“How’s that pirate thing working out for him?”
“Not sure,” B
ubba said carefully. How bad could it be? He was already in a hospital bed. He reached for the plastic container, and Willodean simply watched him.
“I cooked for you,” she said. Bubba popped the lid and then understood that she was admitting to something. It took his befuddled brain a moment to understand.
“You cooked for me?” he asked. He felt like he was moving as fast as peanut butter in January. Willodean didn’t normally cook anything. She grilled occasionally, but her steaks usually turned out in a Cajun fashion; finely blackened. Bubba had gotten to like the flavor. “You baked something?”
“Your mama said you liked cake,” she admitted.
I do like cake. Bubba wrapped his big hands around the container, and one thumb pushed the lid up. It looked like cake. Furthermore, it looked like red velvet cake. The cake was the color of blood. The icing seemed to be cream cheese. There were three layers with icing in between each. “I love cake,” he said. “I cain’t believe you cooked for me.”
Her green eyes went a little misty. “I guess a fella needs a little encouragement.”
Bubba toyed with the top of the plastic container. Willodean had gone home after midnight. Then she was here at half past eight in the morning. Somewhere between those times she had dug up a recipe for a somewhat complicated cake, gotten the ingredients from somewhere else (on a Sunday night, there wasn’t much open except Bufford’s Gas and Grocery, and he knew the selection there was limited), and she had spent a couple of hours baking a cake for him. She didn’t look like it, but her sleep had been minimal.
“Did you sleep?” Bubba said.
Willodean didn’t say anything.
“You should go and grab some shuteye,” he said gently. “I’m okay. Ain’t nothing to worry about.”
Her face twisted. “Nothing to worry about? It seems like every time you turn around, someone is trying to do something bad to you or blow you up or shoot at you or…what have I left out? Oh, never mind, I can’t remember everything. How can I not worry about that?”
Bubba grasped one of her flailing hands. He rubbed the fine bones of her wrist with his thumb. “I’ll wear a Kevlar vest.”
“That’s not funny.”
