Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 07 (2 page)

Dahlia heaved all of her three hundred pounds to her feet, wiped her face, and trudged into the kitchen to make supper for Kevin. Marital bliss sure wasn’t the way they showed it on television. The honeymoon had been one disaster after another, and then they’d come back to find out that Kevin had lost his job at the supermarket and Ruby Bee couldn’t afford the salary for one barmaid, not even parttime.

Spilling a can of beans into a saucepan, she wondered if she’d done the right thing getting married in the first place. Kevvie’d talked about a cozy cottage and going to the picture show every Friday night, but he took the first job he could find—selling fancy vacuum cleaners in Farberville—and hardly ever got home before ten o’clock at night. Just what was the new Mrs. Kevin Buchanon supposed to do all day?

She popped a couple of cookies in her mouth and imagined herself on the Grand Ole Opry stage next to Matt Montana, whose photograph she kept tacked to the wall in the living room and whose face had been known to invade their double bed on those rare nights Kevin didn’t stagger through the door and fall asleep in the recliner. In her daydreams, she was always as thin as Ronna (but with Dolly’s bust), with Barbara’s exquisite seashell blue eyes, with Wynonna’s cascading blond hair, with Katie’s stark and mysterious cheekbones. She was dressed in a white sequined gown and cute little cowgirl hat, and her boots were dainty as ballet slippers.

“But I was caught in the glare of your headlights,” she recommenced to singing, this time in perfect two-part harmony with Matt, “and went joyriding just for the view.”

“Your curves made me lose my direction,” sang Brother Verber as he stood in the doorway of his trailer parked beside the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall. He dearly hoped the highway he was gazing at wasn’t the one in the song, because it wasn’t clogged with cars and trucks heading for the Pearly Gates. A cadaverous hound was asleep on the dotted yellow line, threatened only by an empty beer can rattling across the road.

The collection plate was getting lighter every week, which meant not only were the little heathen orphans in Africa missing out on the opportunity to be enlightened (as soon as he got their address), but also that he’d been obliged to quote a verse from the Good Book to that sassy young woman who’d called that very morning. ” ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear?’ ” he’d demanded of her. She’d suggested the rural electric cooperative.

Religion ain’t immune to recession, he thought bleakly as he went to the kitchenette to pour out another tumbler of wine, and then lay down on the sofa. Why, he couldn’t find the energy to change out of his pajamas and bathrobe, and it was already early afternoon. Hanging over the end of the sofa, his bare feet looked like a pair of dead fish. All in all, at the moment even he would admit he wasn’t the epitome of evangelical inspiration.

Brother Verber got up long enough to turn on his television to one of those talk shows where people seemed eager to tell the whole world about how they’d lusted after their household pets or dressed up in leather underwear and performed degrading acts on the kitchen floor, or both. Brother Verber didn’t approve of this kind of thing being shown on television, but he figured watching it fell into the realm of better preparing himself should a sinner come a-knockin’ on the rectory door.

It occurred to him that he might could charge a small fee for eternal salvation, maybe even run some kind of special at Christmastime.

“But you were just one more roadside attraction,” sang Kevin Buchanon as he walked up the sidewalk of a house in Farberville, “and it’s been ten thousand miles since I prayed.” He wore a dark suit and a tie, and despite the fact that his trouser cuffs failed to hide a good three inches of white socks, he was sure he looked like a bright young businessman. After all, his manager, Mr. Dentha, had slapped him on the back and told him that exact thing at the regular morning sales meeting at the Vacu-Pro office.

Kevin tightened his grip on the case containing the body of the vacuum cleaner and its thirty-five attachments. The proud owner of a Vacu-Pro could not only clean her carpet but also shampoo upholstery, sand wood, spray-paint walls, dust venetian blinds, strip furniture, and so many other useful things that it had taken Kevin more than a week to memorize the list. Now he could rattle ‘em off in under a minute. And who wouldn’t want the finest vacuum cleaner on the market, a contraption on the cutting edge of the technological revolution? Sure, a Vacu-Pro was expensive, but so was a jet airplane—and try to scale a fish with one of them!

His shoulders squared and his chin held so high that anyone in the neighborhood could see his throat rippling, Kevin pushed the doorbell.

The door opened slowly, and all of a sudden he was gulping and fighting for air as he found himself staring at a woman wearing a scarlet nightie, lace panties that hung on her shapely hips, and not another stitch. He jerked his eyes up to her face, which was wearing a bewitching grin amidst a cloud of crimpy blond hair that looked soft as cotton candy.

“Well, hello,” she purred, her tongue curling along her scarlet lips. “I’ve been waiting all day to have my carpet shampooed. Nobody told me they were sending a handsome young man to do … it. I’ve been told there are all sorts of interesting things to do with the attachments. You did bring your attachments, didn’t you, honey?”

Kevin knew he was supposed to launch into the joys of owning a Vacu-Pro, but not a single word made it out of his mouth. All he could do was gurgle as she took his arm and pulled him into the house.

“So he did it again,” muttered Pierce Keswick as he grimaced at his younger brother. They shared a family resemblance strong enough to give Pierce ulcers. Ripley had the same hawkish nose and washed-out blue eyes, and the same sharp chin, but his hair hung to his collar in an untidy mess that’ begged for a comb (or, in Pierce’s opinion, a weed whacker). Pierce wore silk; Ripley preferred corduroy and one hundred percent cotton. They rarely—just short of never—communicated outside of the office, which suited both of them just fine.

“I am not overwhelmed with amazement,” Ripley said with only a faint smirk.

“This is the second time since Matt won the award that he’s been arrested. He was scheduled for a couple of telephone interviews this morning, but I called the radio stations and made excuses. He missed two shows in Memphis last weekend, just flat out didn’t show up. Harry says he and the Hellbellies are thinking about backing out on the tour and just riding out the winter here in Nashville. This latest crap gets out, no one’s gonna risk opening for him and we might as well cancel the tour and kiss off the quarter of a million we’ve put into the album.”

“I said right after he won the award that Lillian wouldn’t be able to control him. The annals of country music have proven that small-town rednecks are notoriously incapable of handling fame and fortune.”

“That’s it!” Pierce said, hitting his desk with his fist so hard his secretary glanced up from her computer and inadvertently added a zero to some lucky devil’s contract. He got up and went to stand at the wide window, smiling at the mountains faintly visible through what the Nashville chamber of commerce elected to describe as haze. “The club agents, the deejays, the fans, even the Hellbellies—they all need to be reminded that despite his newly acquired reputation reputation as a total fuck-up, Matt’s nothing but a simple country boy with treasured memories of his hometown. Tie in this Christmas thing—‘tis the season, deck the halls, away in a manger. Help me here, Ripley. We need some kind of publicity about where he grew up … and we need it before the tour starts falling apart. Let the media see him surrounded by his kinfolk, decorating the Christmas tree, singing carols in the high school gym, and reminiscing about his beloved granny. Get him on the line and ask him where he grew up.”

“I should think at the moment the poor boy’s sleeping off what must be a ferocious hangover. In interviews, he talks about Little Rock.”

“Little Rock’s too big for a hometown. Come up with someplace quaint and honest, with hard-working folks and a café where everybody has coffee on Saturday morning.”

“There’s something in the file … I seem to think he spent at least part of his childhood in some little cesspool in the Arkansas Ozarks. Let me check his bio.” Ripley left the room, then returned with a folder containing a few grains of truth and a lot of whimsy. “I was right, of course. On his AFM application, he says he was born in a place called Maggody. There’s a next-of-kin listed, too.”

Pierce rubbed his hands together. “Perfect! Matt Montana’s going home for the holidays.”

“Matt Montana was born in Maggody?” I said. This dutiful display of incredulousness in no way delayed a forkful of mashed potatoes destined for my gullet via my gaping mouth. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that.”

“There’s a lot of stuff you ain’t heard,” Ruby Bee said from behind the bar, glaring as if I’d criticized the meat loaf or voiced doubts about the greasy perfection of the collard greens. I preferred to live another day.

Perched on her favorite stool at the end of the bar (elbow room and proximity to the ladies room given equal consideration), Estelle rolled her eyes beneath artfully drawn eyebrows and in a smarmy voice said, “And here I thought we were blessed by the company of Miss World Almanac.”

They weren’t blessed by much other company. The room was empty except for the three of us, two unemployed poultry processors drinking beer at a table, and an insensible truck driver in the last booth. For the first time in weeks, the jukebox was not blaring “You’re a Detour on the Highway to Heaven,” or its flip side, the less popular but loyally played “I Bit My Lip and Held My Tongue When You Walked Out the Door.” It was, therefore, the first time in weeks that I’d been able to eat without feeling as if I were being aesthetically assaulted. I’m an old rock-and-roll fan, myself— something I’d hidden well in a previous life in Manhattan. It doesn’t play all that much better in a backwater where the primary decor in a lot of living rooms is a depiction of The King on black velvet. And I don’t mean one buried in Westminster Abbey; this one’s planted by a swimming pool in Memphis.

Estelle slid a glossy magazine down the bar in my direction. “But I got to admit it’s peculiar,” she said, twisting a red curl around her finger and nibbling on magenta lipstick. “According to this interview, he grew up in Little Rock, and there ain’t one word about Maggody. He’s not but twenty-five now, and I’d like to think I’d remember someone who went on to become as famous as Matt Montana. But Patty May Partridge out at the county old folks home said that the man who called was real insistent. She ought to know, since she was the one who had to talk to him on account of Adele having one of those days.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ruby Bee murmured. “She back to listening to aliens on her hearing aid?”

“Just like it was the six o’clock news. Anyway, Patty May said the man was going to call Adele again before too long when maybe she’d be in a more responsive state. Patty May went back to the sitting room to find out what on earth he meant, but Adele kept right on clicking her dentures and peering real grimly out the window.”

Ruby Bee snatched up the magazine before I could look at it, although I may have been more interested in my stomach than in outlunging her to get my hands on the latest issue of Country Cavalcade Cavalcade. “Look at this, Estelle,” she said as she jabbed at a photograph. “This is Matt when he was seven years old. Cute little fellow, with those jug ears and curly eyelashes.”

“And we might assume,” I said idly, “that Montana is a stage name.”

Ruby Bee blinked at me. “Like an alias?”

“Don’t be a ninny,” Estelle said with a snort. “Lots of famous actors change their names when they go to Hollywood. Some do it because they have sissified names and others because they have peculiar foreign names with sixteen consonants and no vowels. Writers do it, too, although they’re so goofy nobody cares what they do. Matt must have changed his name, but it’s kind of hard to understand why he’d pick another state.”

“Albert Arkansas doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue like Tennessee Ernie Ford,” countered Ruby Bee, no doubt insulted at the idea she wasn’t fully aware of the shenanigans pulled by famous movie stars and impoverished writers. She tossed aside the magazine and began to wipe the immaculate surface of the bar with a dishrag.

Eating steadily, I used my free hand to open the magazine to the page of photographs of the singer who purportedly was Maggody’s most renowned hometown boy. “I’ll tell you who he looks like in a vague way,” I said, then paused to pursue a slippery green bean. Successfully, I might add. “He looks like Adele’s nephew or whatever he was. He came to visit for a few years. The last time I saw him was the summer after I graduated from high school. He and some nasty little savage from the trailer park were spying on us out by Boone Creek.”

“And what were you doing out there, missy?” said Ruby Bee.

I finished off the meat loaf and pushed my plate toward her. “Counting lightning bugs for biology class.”

“Thought you said the summer after you graduated?”

“Must have been a graduate project,” I said coolly. “They were snickering behind some bushes and we—”

“We?” said Ruby Bee.

“Yes, we chased them down to explain how polite young men should behave.”

“How about young women? Don’t think you’re fooling me with this—”

“You didn’t make much of a lasting impression on them,” Estelle said, rescuing us from what might have escalated into a full-fledged maternal diatribe concerning an incident of no postcoital consequence. “I read in another magazine that just last week Matt was arrested at a bar in Nashville. He got into a fight over Katie Hawk, that mysterious black-haired singer who’s supposed to be part Indian.”

“Wonder what his wife had to say about that,” Ruby Bee said under her breath as she took my plate into the kitchen. Pots and pans clattered as she made known her disapproval of biology projects, infidelity, and barroom brawling, but when she rejoined us, she was back to business. In this case, business meant shaking the grapevine to find out if Matt Montana was really Adele Wockermann’s Wockermann’s nephew or whatever and what Adele was going to do if those Nashville folks called her again. And, when she had some spare time, searching through the boxes out in the storage room for my high school yearbooks.