Mum's the Word (21 page)

What had fueled such animosity? We had seemed harmonious enough friends last night, when conducting Operation Marjorie Rumpson.

Ernestine's hair stuck to her red face. She looked ready to speak volumes, but fortunately our drinks and food arrived and I was able to move smoothly into praise of the crispy golden fries, the artful way the onion and tomato slices were nestled on the hamburgers.

“Yes, but is the beef Grade A?” fretted Henderson.

Heidi shouldered off and a voice bellowed through the hubbub. “Hush up, all you big time yackers, this is Jimmy
speaking.” The ogress in satin with the rose growing out of her bosom tapped cigar ash in a glass and leaned forward, elbows on the bar. “We've had some problems raising money for repairs to the kiddy playground, but a challenge is what the Hope Church women likes best. So sit yourselves down, hold up the walls or whatever suits, and listen up while our very own Sheriff Tom Dougherty gives you the run down on our Fashion Fantasia!”

Applause.

“Shucks, folks.” The sheriff smoothed a hand over a thatch of hair which was at once grey and boyish. A hoist of the gun belt slung low on hips. Just like the movies. “Howdy do, friends, neighbours, and tourists!” His eyes picked out our table as though committing each of us to a file marked vagrants. “Don't anyone go expecting me to come off sounding like some spokesman for Dior.” A suggestion of dimples in his chubby cheeks as he smiled. “But I tell you we've got some down-home goodlooking gals for your viewing pleasure. And, remember, the voluntary contribution isn't voluntary, not unless you want to be charged with leaving the scene of a good cause.”

The jukebox began playing drifty, dreamy music. The sheriff pulled out a notebook. “A big welcome if you please for Mud Creek's favourite twins, Terese and Teresa Brinharter!”

Through the door marked Private, down the rectangle of space between the people lining the bar and the tables lining the window wall, came two young females. Hair: Swedish blonde. Tans: California's best. Their skimpy outfits could have served as wrist bands for sporty males. Their giggles floated among the outcry of admiration. “Clothes made by the gals' mother Irene, God bless her.” I vowed every scrap of clothing worn by my child would be lovingly stitched by hand.

Next a fresh-faced young woman in a barn dance outfit, a check blouse and blue skirt flounced out by a white frilled petticoat. Almost as much applause for her as the twins. Now came a sweet little girl about four. She wore pink and carried a basket of posies with all the aplomb of a grownup.

My interest didn't fade. I began to fade. So little sleep last night. The figures coming down the ramp began to blur one into another … I hoped I wouldn't slide off my chair or
worse, start talking in my sleep. I heard a click, as of a door opening, and Ben strolled nonchalantly into my mind.

“Ellie, I love you.”

“No, you don't.”

“Sweetheart, you can't believe everything you see and hear.”

He had swept me up in his arms, I was floating … in circles.
“Well, I suppose if you care enough to lie …”

I snapped awake when the music changed pace to a bump and grind. Why all the gasps from the audience? Had the Brinharter twins been called back for an encore? Even Henderson Brown was straining forward in his seat.

“Friends, darlings, country people! Lend me your ears!” The voice was spun sugar. The woman drifting down the ramp wore white silk edged with ermine, and swirled two gigantic feather fans before her. She was thirty—perhaps forty—years older than the twins, nowhere near as beautiful, but a hundred times more fascinating. Hers was a gamine face framed by bobbed silver hair. She had panda bear eyes and a vivid mouth stretched into a “gee whiz” smile.

Theola Faith.

“Theola Faith!” Ernestine clutched my arm, her expression repeated on forty some other faces. Only Henderson Brown looked aghast, as the woman in white pointed a dainty silver toe out from her skirt, arched her neck and swiveled her slender hips. “I do not come to bury my daughter under the kind of abuse she has shoveled on me. The quality of mercy is not strained, it is mightiest in the mother.” Two quick steps forward. Waggling one of the fans, Theola Faith tickled Henderson on the nose. He sneezed. Not another sound anywhere in the bar. She stood centre stage, the fans trailing to the floor. “I could have resisted the urge to return to the heartland, had not my darling daughter Mary usurped my house, my servants, and my pigeons.”

“What you want, Theola?” The sheriff tucked his notebook in his belt.

“Revenge.”

“Hey, we don't want trouble.” Unidentified male voice. The clown bright smile didn't dim. “And you lot call
yourselves the Welcome Wagon! As well Jimmy remembers, she owes me for all those nights I paid the rent on this joint, sitting on the bar singing ‘Love Me or Leave Me.' Jimmy's paying up by putting her penthouse at my disposal.” A flourishing sweep of the ceiling with one of the fans punctuated this avowal. “Any of you guys got a better offer?”

A woman near our table shoved a hand over her male companion's open mouth.

“Theola,” the sheriff said, his face, under the grey thatch, as bashful as a boy's. “You won't find
Monster Mommy
on the book mobile when it comes through. Our Jane Spence, of Citizens For Decency, wrote over to the library and told them we wouldn't have it.”

“What! None of you has read the sweet things my darling Mary wrote about me?” The panda eyes grew big. The crimson smile broadened. “Don't you home-grown tomatoes keep up with what's in in sin? Or do you only believe your eyes?”

Executing a slow turn, Theola Faith brought the fans up over her eyes, slowly lowered them and purred, “Hit it, maestro, please!” The jukebox was silent, but she swayed to an inner rhythm. The silver hair curved against her cheeks; her ageless face was spread with a smile, coy as a bared ankle.

Theola Faith sang in a bouncy, music hall voice

Hard to tell the reaction to the ditty because the catcalls, and now Henderson sliding under the table, could have resulted from Theola Faith having tossed first one of her long white gloves then the other into the crowd. Oh, no! Everyone close their eyes! Holding both fans in one hand, she was unzipping the side of her white silk gown.

Thank goodness Sheriff Dougherty was present to uphold the moral code of Mud Creek. Whipping his guns from their holsters he shouted “Freeze!” Scattered cries of “Shut up, Tom!” The effect on Theola Faith was minimal. She was sliding the sleeve of her shimmering dress off her shoulder. How far she would have gone to shock the homespun citizens of Mud Creek was not destined to become a matter of public record. Debate on the issue would continue well into the next century.

The entrance door slammed inward, as if kicked by a spurred boot. A voice rang out, powerful enough to jiggle the bottles behind the bar and sway the plastic stained glass light fixture. The crowd fell back.

“Hell fire and damnation! Wicked are the ways of woman! The serpent has taken her to its bosom and the Beezlebub put his thumb upon her brow. She takes up drunkards and pleasure seekers in the house of the grape!”

The eyes of the speaker would burn holes in the carpet. His white hair flowed back from a domed forehead; he carried a black book and was dressed to match. And I recognized him. He was the fanatic who had crashed into me at the petrol station—the Reverend Enoch, Diethelogian minister. That wasn't the Bible he was carrying, it was the
Book of Salvation Through Starvation
. “Retribution shall seek out the vixen, she shall be thrust to her knees, and the sound of her wailing …”

Returning his gun to its holster, Sheriff Dougherty stood scratching his head. Jimmy lit up a cigar and Theola Faith rested a hand on her hip, the feather fans trailing alongside her still unzipped silk skirt; her smile bright as lipstick could make it.

“You talking to me, sweet darling?”

The face of vengeance darkened to hell-fire red. But the minister had taken no more than two steps forward before we had another disruption. A woman in a beige raincoat broke through the crowd by the jukebox and burst upon centre stage. Laverne of the faded auburn hair and washed-out face, wife of Enoch. The same woman … but different. She was tearing at her raincoat belt, eyes on Theola Faith, as she screamed—“Better the company of sinners, than life with you, Enoch! I won't live another day standing to heel like a
dog. I won't pretend anymore as how I don't see the looks in people's eyes when you rant at them about punishment and starvation and the glory of misery!”

Theola Faith held her silken arms out toward Laverne. The Reverend dropped to his knees, wringing his hands and thanking the Lord for bringing him to this den of iniquity where he might suffer the torment (“praise His name”) in order that the brand should be snatched from the flames.

“Where's the hope? Where's the love?” yelled his doubting wife, who now stood on the ramp with Theola Faith. “God didn't appoint you second in command! I shouldn't have left that note saying I was coming here for to get drunk.” She was unbuttoning her raincoat. “I should have written I was casting off the shackles by coming here to strip naked before the whole town.”

An “Ooooh!” rose from the mob.

Laverne flung the raincoat toward the bar. Neat catch by the sheriff. Having shifted the neckline of her own dress back into place and zipped up her side, Theola Faith studied the competition. Everyone else seemed in shock. Certainly no one at my table moved a muscle.

“I haven't a daughter to write a bestseller about how often I change my underwear”—Laverne had half the buttons of her blouse undone—“but seems to me if I do a real good job of letting it all hang out, I could make one of the smut sheets. Who knows—even the one for people with perspiring minds!” The blouse went sailing into the crowd. The Reverend Enoch's rantings reached a crescendo. Theola Faith seemed to be trying to shield Laverne with a fan. Jealousy? Finally Sheriff Dougherty took action.

He strode over to Laverne as she got busy with her slip, and clapped a hand on her shoulder. “Why not sit awhile, Mrs. Gibbons. Take things easy. Mebbe go upstairs with Jimmy and talk things out.”

The crowd went wild. Theola Faith and the unhappy Laverne disappeared from view.

I stared down at the table, amazed to discover I had finished my hamburger, all the fries, and half a pickle.

“So big a tragedy!” Solange said.

Ernestine shuddered. “That horrible man!”

“He's affiliated with the Diethelogians,” I contributed. “A group which is opposed to eating.”

Henderson gripped the arms of his chair.

“Wrong, Ellie!” Ernestine responded smugly. “They are not opposed to eating
per se
. Bingo wrote an article, “The Danger of Dietheology,” for the magazine
Dining Out at Home
. What they oppose is eating for pleasure. You may eat as much as you like of anything you dislike.”

“Same old basic diet,” I said.

“My Lois should never have gotten involved!”

“Monsieur Brown, you are a royal pain in the donkey! You are as bad as that man, seeing the evil everywhere!” Solange gathered up her bags. “
Paradonez moi
! I wish to visit the
toilette
.”

Ernestine and I immediately jumped up to join her.

“Women!” Henderson curled his lip. “If a man says he's going to the gentlemen's room, his companions don't leap to their feet with ‘I'll come too!' ”

Did the poor man suspect us of holding a private party in the ladies room? There wasn't the time, Solange reminded me, when Ernestine vanished into the one stall. We were due to meet Pepys at the dock in ten minutes. In a whisper, she said, jerking a thumb towards Ernestine's feet, “I saw her.”

“Saw her what?” I mouthed back.

“Coming out of your room thees morning when you was at breakfast.”

No time for more. Ernestine came out tugging at her skirt, her froggy beads askew. How could I suspect this woman of being up to tricks? The rivalry which had sprung up between her and Solange had twisted the Frenchwoman's thinking. Besides, who was I to criticize anyone for snooping, especially after my encounter with the medicine chest? We found Henderson waiting as though we women were children who had defied parental curfew. Jimmy, back behind the bar, fed us a fly catcher smile and we walked out the door … bang into Mary Faith. Her complexion matched her prison grey dress and her Richard III bob didn't go with the wing-tipped glasses.

“Hello, dear ones!” Her enthusiasm was touching. She held onto my hand as though it were a prized toy and whispered “I pulled myself together and decided a public
figure must stay public. I had Pepys bring me over; he was coming for you anyway. Usually I don't go to Jimmy's. Too many people. I prefer the Mexican place a few doors down—Martin's Mexican Café. Marvelous food. So hot, you'd think your mouth's on fire. But they close between lunch and dinner. And all I want is a Coke.”

How to stop her from going in there? The other three stood like statues. “I'm so pleased to see you!” I gabbled. “Nosy of me, but I didn't get to ask you earlier if you took Jim Grogg and Divonne off the island this morning. No one else seems to know when or how they left.”

“A mystery! How intriguing!” She still held my hand, but her smile included the others. “No, I was not their pilot, although I am quite a whizz with boats! Mustn't put Pepys' nose out of joint! Now you don't all have to rush off, do you? I so much hope we can all be dearest friends. Yes, that sort of thing takes time, but you'll come back into Jimmy's with me. We'll sit down and all pour out our hearts.”