Poison Ivory

by Tamar Myers

  I couldn’t tell exactly what transpired at the door, just that a few seconds after she arrived, it was opened, and then she slipped in. A faithful daughter—that is to say a good Abby—would have chased after her, maybe even called 911. I didn’t as much as call Greg.

  Instead, I saw this as the perfect opportunity for me to do what I do best: I snooped. There was chitter-chatter coming from the tent, and it occurred to me that it might be the wait staff finishing up what was left of the buffet food. I peeked in the tent, and sure enough, there was food being downed. Not only that, but the air was thick with the pheromones of good-looking young men and women in high-flirtation mode.

  Having survived that stage of life, I knew the help was temporarily oblivious to what was going on outside, so I turned my attention to the truck. It was one of those ultra long, eighteen-wheeler jobs, the kind that come within a prayer’s width of running you off the road between Charleston and Rock Hill. The back doors were closed, and besides, I would have needed a pole-vaulting pole, or a step ladder, to reach them anyway.

  Keeping the truck between me and the tent, I walked casually down the street. Now that the residents had been served their customary Wednesday breakfasts, they were off to the golf courses, tennis courts, or (I hoped) shopping. The shady streets of the Old Village—indeed of virtually all of Mount Pleasant—are generally deserted while school is in session during the winter.

  Imagine my excitement when I discovered that the windows were down on the driver’s side of the cab. If only I could hoist myself up to the running board…well, it never hurt to try, and try I did. On my first attempt I landed hard on my petite, but rapidly expanding, patootie. The second time, I managed to get the door open, but it rudely knocked me back on my aforementioned patootie (there is something to be said, however, for being bottom heavy). But as they say, the third time is indeed the charm; at last I had gained access to the high-riding command center of the eighteen-wheeler.

  Despite the fact that the cab’s exterior was shiny and white, the interior of this one smelled of old leather, cigarette smoke, sweat, and the essence of flatulence. It was exactly how I remembered Greg’s apartment smelling when we first started to date. I took a quick look around, hoping to find nothing unusual, because if I did, I wouldn’t be able to breathe. But silly me, every truck with an extended cab has a compartment behind the seats where the driver and/or his companion can sleep and/or engage in activities that might help keep them refreshed on a long haul.

  This cab was no different. There was a fiberglass wall behind the seats that contained a fiberglass door. Wait—the door wasn’t locked. And behind it was—uh—darkness. But not for long. Between the seats and the wall there was a huge mound of filthy magazines (literally and figuratively), a toolbox the size of a small coffin, and a pair of well-worn soft-sided suitcases.

  What jumped out at me was a flashlight lying on top of the toolbox. The battery case was as long as my forearm, and the reflecting head almost as large as my own noggin. It was a torch for those who took their flashlights seriously, and it was therefore something that I could respect.

  I picked it up and turned it on. Good! It was in perfect condition. I aimed its intense beam at the portal that led into the compartment behind the seats.

  “How very interesting,” I said aloud.

  “What is?” a voice said just above my ear.

  22

  Mama! You just took ten years off my life?”

  “Since I gave you life to begin with, dear, I dare say that’s my prerogative.”

  “Not according to your church. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.”

  “That’s all very nice, dear, but the Lord didn’t become a widder woman in the prime of His life and have to raise children on His own.”

  “That’s blasphemous!”

  “Oh Abby, you really need to take that adult Sunday school class. You’d learn all about situational ethics. Like, what if this was only a book, and we were just characters in it? Would it be blasphemous then?”

  “Mama, quit wasting my time! How did you get up here? What happened with Lady Behemoth—I mean, Bowfrey?”

  “Of course I climbed up here, Abby. How else do you suppose I got here? Flew? As for my friend, I’d really appreciate it if you’d stop with the fat jokes. They aren’t funny! They hurt people’s feelings.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Just don’t do it again, dear. Now about my friend—the truth is—well, she isn’t. Not anymore! I thought we knew each other so well from ‘Issues with Tissues,’ but she doesn’t recognize me from Adam. Tell me, Abby: has our culture become so multifaceted that someone like me goes totally unnoticed these days?”

  Someone like me. My how those words hurt my heart. Was my poor little mother really that aware of just how eccentric she was? Was this a “costume” she put on every morning to mourn my daddy’s passing, or perhaps to make a statement, or was she merely vying for attention? Nonetheless, I opted for the coward’s way out that day.

  “Mama, how could anyone not notice you? After all, you’re the cat’s pajamas.”

  “Really? That’s what I thought! Anyway, she told me to vamoose. To amscray, or she would sic the cops on me.”

  “How awful.” And how relieved I felt.

  “So, I trotted over here to have a good cry. And here you were. So dear, now it’s my turn to ask: what are you doing here?”

  I didn’t have time to answer Mama. I heard the voices when they seemed to be only feet from the cab. Therefore I had no choice but to do what I did: I grabbed my mother by the lapels of her shirt dress and pulled her over the armrest of the passenger seat and into the hollow that I occupied. Then while she was still too startled to react, I pushed her head first into the black hole that was the hidden compartment at the rear of the cab. I immediately dove in after her, and apparently just in time. Someone slammed the compartment door shut and the truck roared to life.

  Picture, if you will, two not-so-wily Wiggins women floundering about in a dark smelly hole. I reckoned that I felt pretty much the way poor Jonah must have felt when he was swallowed by the whale. Granted he probably had moisture issues to deal with, but at least he didn’t have Mama’s flailing limbs smacking him across the face willy-nilly.

  I pressed as flat as I could against a wall of the compartment in an effort to avoid serious injury, and that’s when I felt the switch just inside the door. I flipped it on, flooding the small space with an eerie orange light.

  “Abby!” Mama cried. “It’s only you.”

  “Shhh, Mama,” I said, mouthing my words more than speaking them, “they might still hear us over the engine.”

  Mama nodded and looked around, as did I. We were in the driver’s sleeping quarters, nothing more. No deposits of illegal ivory. Just dirty twisted sheets and a pillow so stained it looked like it had been salvaged from the harbor. The walls of the tiny metal cubical were papered with pages ripped from girlie magazines depicting air-brushed women with bosoms so large it was painful just to look at them. The floor was a single thin mattress that had been custom-made to fit such a small and oddly shaped area.

  At least I could stand erect; Mama, on the other hand, had to stoop. This fact, more than any other, seemed to get her goat.

  “Memorize the maker of this truck, Abby. I’m going to write the CEO—I’m going straight to the top. If a little old lady who has been abducted can’t stand up, then how is she supposed to fight for her life on an even footing with someone who can? It isn’t fair, I’m telling you. It’s discrimination. Heightism. And I’m not going to stand for it!”

  The truck lurched and Mama prophetically fell down. Being a Wiggins (even by marriage counts fully), Mama struggled to get back on her feet. After all, no one keeps a Wiggins down involuntarily, even another Wiggins. Anyone in doubt should ask my brother Toy, who tried in vain to drool on me when we were in elementary school but never could succeed, even though I was just half his size.

  “Y
ou’re better off staying down there, so you won’t get hurt.”

  “But Abby,” Mama objected, “this mattress is disgusting!” She clawed at a corner of it, in an attempt to flip it partway over. Who knew what lay under it, but even if it was just rusty truck parts, it had to be better than this.

  We spotted the clipboard simultaneously, but Mama reacted first. “They’re conducting political polls,” she said.

  I gave up trying to stand. The truck must have been turning a corner, because I felt like I was riding a mechanical bull, but one without stirrups. Once down, I grabbed the clipboard from Mama.

  “You don’t have to be so rude,” she said.

  “Sorry,” I said, as I fell back on the filthy bed. The rocking and swaying of the cab made any other position just too rigorous to maintain. Mama joined me.

  First I scanned the pages; then I studied the top one carefully. Slowly the columns and figures began to make sense. The more I comprehended, the faster my heart beat.

  “We’re headed for Georgia,” I said. We were already about twenty minutes into our trip.

  “Isn’t that terrible what the Russians did? And right during the Olympics too.”

  “Not that Georgia, our Georgia. Mama, why aren’t you taking me seriously?”

  “I knew what you meant, dear, but of course I can’t take you seriously because you’re the one who told me that Lady Bowfrey holds these teas every Wednesday morning. And even though I don’t live in Mount Pleasant, I don’t think I’ll ever forgive her for not inviting me to one. As if she’s the cat’s pajamas. Ha! Why I’ll have you know she wore the same outfit to church two Sundays running, and it wasn’t even summer, but high season. And those chopsticks she wears in her hair! Give me a break, Abby, that look is so retrohemian. That is a word, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps it is now. Mama, this paper is a manifest of the ivory shipment that arrived in the Port of Charleston on Tuesday, and was delivered via this truck to Lady Bowfrey’s residence—where we were, right up until a few minutes ago—on Tuesday evening. Also on Tuesday evening a crew—presumably arriving via separate transport—set up the humongous tent and cooked the breakfast buffet.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “This is a record of arrival and departure times. Our next stop is the Port of Savannah, by the way.”

  “You mean after this stop?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The truck just stopped.”

  “Stoplights don’t count,” I said, slightly irritated.

  “Yes, but even if your guess is right, Abby, why would she have two trucks in motion all the time? Why not just one?”

  “Maybe it’s a bit like a shell game. Who knows? Maybe the other truck is loaded with the ivory this time. Maybe this one is empty.”

  “Yes, but what’s with the neighborhood breakfast in the first place? Why have the ivory brought into a peaceful upscale neighborhood to begin with? Isn’t that risky?”

  “Au contraire, ma mère. What better place to have a warehouse full of contraband than right there, in an historic village? That despicable woman has bought her place in the neighborhood with weekly portions of eggs Benedict and Virginia smoked ham.”

  “She’s too d-despicable to be Episcopal,” Mama said, sounding for all the world like Sylvester the cat. “So Abby, what do we do now?”

  “We think.”

  “Think? You tried that before, and just look at the mess you dragged me into!”

  “Mama, I didn’t drag you into my mess; you jumped into it willingly, like a frog into a lily pond.”

  “That’s been drained,” Mama said. “Abby, I have a bridge game tonight, so I’m getting my hair blued at two. Did you hear that, dear? I just made a rhyme. Anyway, if I’m as much as ten minutes late—”

  “Mama! This is no time to worry about your bluing. We need to think about getting out of this truck undetected and to a phone. Maybe we can trick them—”

  “Silly Abby, tricks are for kids.”

  A second later the door to our hideaway was rudely flung open. One has a right to apprehend interlopers lollygagging about on your bed, but shouldn’t one do it with a modicum of manners?

  “Do you mind knocking first?” I said.

  “Whoa! The little lady’s a spitfire; I like that.” The rude man was probably in his early twenties; quite handsome, with lots of sandy-brown hair and green eyes, and good dental hygiene. I think a lot can be said about a man by the way he cares for his teeth.

  “Which little lady?” another man, who I couldn’t see, asked. “All I see is two old bags.”

  “Why I never!” Mama said.

  “Yeah, I bet you didn’t.”

  The two men laughed uproariously at the coarse joke. So much for my good teeth theory. I tried pushing the door shut with my shoulder, preferring self-imprisonment for the meanwhile over whatever freedom these two goons had to offer.

  “Oh no you don’t, grandma.”

  A pair of callused hands grabbed me under the armpits and I popped right out of the sleeping compartment like a queen olive from a tall narrow jar. Again, Mama was right on my heels. Simultaneously we were plopped on the ground some distance from the truck, on a sandy patch beneath a scrubby oak.

  Much to my amazement, we were no longer even in the city. My how time flies when you’re shut up in someone’s smelly sleeping hole. My guess was that we were in the Francis Marion National Forest. I decided I had nothing to lose by asking for confirmation.

  “Yeah, so what?” said Thug Number Two. He had gray eyes and a salt and pepper goatee. He also had a tattoo of Barbara Bush on the back of his bald head. the mother goddess was inscribed in a ribbon beneath the portrait.

  “We were only curious,” I said. “I’d never seen an eighteen-wheeler up close. I’m sorry if I offended you.”

  “I’m sorry too,” Mama said. “I tried to raise her better. But kids these days—go figure.”

  The thugs must have thought Mama was a stand-up comedienne; they roared with laughter. “Right, like you two old ladies is mother and daughter? Tell us another,” Thug Number Two said.

  “Well,” Mama said, “there was the time Abby asked me to help her write her own thank-you notes. Can you imagine that? What would Emily Post have had to say about that? Oh, how I miss Emily Post. These modern-day columnists can’t hold a feather duster to her. But speaking of Emily, I think she would have a lot to say about you.”

  “Me?” Thug Number One said. “I ain’t the one who called you an old bag.”

  “Nevertheless,” Mama told him, “you could use a little work. Abby,” she said, “don’t you think this man could be a model?”

  I cocked my head this way and that, taking my sweet time to answer. “Yes—if he stood straight, put on a decent wardrobe, and turned away from a life of crime. There isn’t much call for modeling orange jumpsuits, is there, Mama?”

  “Mama?” Thug Number Two said. “What’s with that again?”

  “She really is my mama,” I said. “I’m wearing stage makeup. See?” I licked a finger and rubbed vigorously at the fake wrinkles at the corner of my right eye.

  “Why, slap me up the side of the head and call me whopper-jawed!” Thug Number One said. “So what are you, actresses of some kind?”

  “You might say that,” Mama said.

  “We’re scouts for a game show,” I said (unfortunately, I have the ability to lie quickly on my feet).

  “It’s called ‘Singing for Your Sandlapper Sweetheart,’” Mama said.

  “Huh?” Thug Number Two grunted. “What the heck is a sandlapper?”

  “It’s a South Carolinian,” I said.

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “Never mind. My mama was just funning with you anyway. The game show is called ‘Bobbing for Bimbos.’ You take a bunch of hoochie-mamas in bikinis, put them in a tank of saltwater, and then a couple of guys have to go in there blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs and choose the one with the biggest
—well, you know what I mean. You want to audition?”

  “Heck yeah!”

  “Me too!” Thug Number One was equally as enthusiastic.

  “Great. I’m going to need your names, addresses, and phone numbers. You got anything to write on?”

  “Yeah, here.” Thug Number Two took a greasy receipt out of his back pants pocket and commenced writing.

  Meanwhile I scanned our surroundings. We were in a clearing off of a logging trail deep within the Francis Marion National Forest. The “forest” is named after the Revolutionary War hero (also known as the Swamp Fox), and covers over a quarter of a million acres. It is comprised of second growth pine forest, oaks, gum trees, magnolias, bay trees, swamps, hiking trails, and three small towns connected by a couple of sparsely traveled highways.

  The wildlife is varied but includes poisonous snakes, wild boars, bobcats, coyotes, and quite possibly black bears. Plus, I’ve even heard rumors of a remnant panther population. None of the aforementioned critters were on my “must see” list, especially if I were to encounter them at night, while Mama and I were making our great escape. But again I was jumping the gun, à la Magdalena Yoder; we weren’t officially anyone’s captives. So far there wasn’t a gun to be seen.

  “It is turning out to be a beautiful day,” I finally said. “Although frankly, I’m rather hungry. When do we start the picnic?”

  The Thugs had a good laugh. “Here’s our names and addresses,” Thug Number One said, handing me the slip.

  “But now that we’re done with that,” Thug Number Two said, “we gotta tell ya ta shut up.”

  “How rude!” Mama said.

  “Hey, old lady, it ain’t my fault; it’s hers.”

  “Speak of the devil,” I said. Thundering toward us in a cloud of red dust was a Humvee twice the size of Rhode Island.