The Last Annual Slugfest (2 page)

I nodded. At first glance, stoical Mr. Bobbs seemed the antithesis of Edwina Henderson. In his tan suit, which was the color of the PG&E trucks, he rarely got up from his desk in the windowless cubicle that served as his office; he was as much a fixture there as the tan bookcase or tan chair. But his sedentary nature was not an indication of laziness. Far from it. He husbanded all his energy for his one passion: the management of the Henderson PG&E office. He was installed behind his desk before the first meter reader arrived at seven
A.M.
and still fixed in his chair when the last of us left. He could recall which meters had been tampered with in 1968 or what the read was for Fischer’s Ice Cream Shop in June 1973. And he knew the Missed Meter Count of every office in Sonoma County, and doggedly struggled to limit his own—or failing that, to shift the guilt from the overall office count to the individual readers, as he would do with me today, when I got back to the office. A clear show of devotion to the company was his acquiescence to representing it at the Slugfest. The wonderfully ludicrous prospect of Mr. Bobbs downing a spoonful of Cream of Slug Soup could never be fully explained to a stranger.

“But why does Edwina Henderson want to have the Slugfest here? Does she have a bizarre sense of humor?” her visitor asked.

“No. It’s odd. She doesn’t have any sense of humor at all. But she wrenched the Slugfest from Guerneville, where it’s always been. She has to have some reason. You can ask her when you see her, but I wouldn’t count on getting an answer. You’ll probably just have to come tonight to find out.”

I gave him directions to Steelhead Lodge, where the Fest would be—clear directions. I was getting to like this man. I wanted him to be there. He would have to wait more than three hours to sate his curiosity, but Steelhead Lodge was on my route. I had saved that read for last. I figured if anyone had an idea why the Slugfest was going to be there it would be Bert Lucci, the manager. I knew what Bert Lucci thought of Edwina Henderson. If there was scandal or subterfuge involved, Bert Lucci would be delighted to tell me.

S
TEELHEAD
L
ODGE WAS ONE
of those places realtors describe to prospects as “charming” and to each other as “dilapidated.” Named for the river trout that was the focus of most of its guests, the lodge was a big wooden rectangle with a high, pointed roof. The roof sloped down over a veranda that ran the length of the building. Had it sported comfortable rockers, screens to keep out the mosquitoes, and a view of the river, the veranda might have been appealing. But it had none of those plusses. It was bare of furniture. Once, more than twenty years ago, Steelhead Lodge had been painted green, but now most of that paint had peeled off and what remained was coated with dust from the unpaved parking area. The long-ago-shingled roof leaned heavily on rough posts, and the thick railings between those posts looked like they had supported too many beer-sodden fishermen.

This, I thought, is where the first lady of Henderson has chosen to have her Fest! Perhaps she did have a sense of humor.

I had been inside the lodge a number of times when I read this route. The lodge was notorious among meter readers, especially female meter readers, because it was one of those old buildings built before anyone conceived of women having such jobs as meter reading. The meter was in the men’s room! And in steelhead season, when every bunk in the lodge was filled with the Sonoma Fishermen’s Association, or the Modoc Fly and Tackle Club, and a goodly proportion of the club members were still suffering from the previous night’s drinking, making a dash into that bathroom when it was empty was a precision task.

Normally, at this time of year, the lodge would have been full. The same groups came year after year. The pine-paneled main room, with its sway-backed sofas, rattan tables that sagged from the weight of too many boots, and still-sticky spills on the floor, would be strewn with forgotten clothes, magazines, and aluminum cans that served as ashtrays or spittoons. The smell of stale smoke filled the room. This was not the type of place I could picture Edwina Henderson choosing for anything, even the Slugfest. I couldn’t imagine her agreeing to be inside here for two hours.

Another thing I couldn’t imagine was Bert Lucci working. But as I approached the front door, the sounds of hammering inside were clear. Mr. Bobbs might
appear
to be the antithesis of Edwina Henderson, but Bert Lucci
was.
Easygoing, he was always willing to stop, talk, and laugh. It was as if the energy for two people had been split between Edwina and Bert, and she had gotten it all. He was an averaged-sized man, bald but for a few tufts of gray hair poking out the sides. Habitually, he wore well-stained overalls and a shirt, denim or plaid, that matched the pants in accumulation of grime. He carried a hammer in his belt loop, but I had never before seen him use it.

I pushed open the door and spotted Bert Lucci perched halfway up a ladder fixing the paneling along the back wall. Beneath him, the once beer-stained, ash-scuffed floor glistened. And standing at the foot of the ladder, clipboard in one hand, cigarette in the other, was Edwina Henderson!

“Every panel on that side wall is loose,” she said. “You’ll have to see to that, Bert. Move the sofas back against the walls. The picnic tables can go by the door. Set up the folding chairs, and the stage, of course. And then there’s my podium. Move, man. We don’t have time to stand and gawk.”

“What about paint?” Bert asked. “You want the place painted in the next two hours?” He glanced back at Edwina and, seeing me, shook his head.

Edwina ignored his comment. “The kitchen, Bert. Is that ready?”

“I had Helping Hands in here for three days scrubbing it out. It should be clean enough even for you.”

Ignoring his sarcasm, Edwina nodded vigorously. Her short, serviceably cut brown hair quivered from the aftershock. She was a little, dark woman, with pale eyes that bulged as if to spot the offending speck of dirt more quickly. Her nose was narrow and hooked. The observation that in profile she resembled a steelhead trout had not originated with me. “And the folding chairs, Bert, you do have those, don’t you?”

“You had them delivered yourself. Mine weren’t good enough for you, remember?” he said. “Look, don’t you have something to do at the store? Aren’t you afraid Hooper’s smoking a peace pipe in the back and your customers are spitting on the sidewalk?”

His mention of the store reminded me of Edwina’s guest. “Edwina,” I said, coming up to the pair, “there is a man waiting for you at the store.”

She spun toward me. “A man? Who haven’t I seen?” she asked herself, as if to short-cut waiting for my reply.

“He’s not local. Drives a blue Volvo.”

“Maybe he’s Chinese, Edwina, or an Apache,” Bert said. “You better get down there.”

Cutting him off before he could deliver a deeper dig at Edwina’s well-known, unquestioning support for Indians and Asians, I said, “He’s about six feet tall, and has curly brown hair and a beard.” I was hoping Edwina would mention who he was, but my description didn’t seem to enlighten her.

Still, she thrust her clipboard under her arm and said, “I’d best get down there. Can you manage now, Bert? I could have Curr drop Hooper off to help you.”

“I’ve managed this lodge for thirty years. I think I’ll make it through another three hours.”

“Call me if anything isn’t right.” She was halfway to the door. “I can get back here.” And then she was gone.

“Goddamned woman,” he muttered as the front door banged. “Does she think nothing moves without the snap of her tongue? First she’s got to have the lodge. Gives me three months’ notice. I’ve got parties booked in here years ahead. Does that impress her? No, it doesn’t.” Still on the ladder, he leaned his arm on a rung. “ ‘Let them stay in a motel,’ she says. ‘They’ll be in no condition to care where they sleep,’ she says. What she doesn’t say is ‘Let me give you what they would have paid you, Bert.’ No ma’am, I don’t hear those words from her. You know her?” he demanded, looking directly at me for the first time.

“Not well.”

“Save yourself the pleasure. Particularly if you’re thinking of some kind of business arrangement. Once that woman’s got a dime, it never leaves her hands.”

“Why did you let her have the lodge?”

But Bert Lucci was too well launched in his monologue to be deflected. “So, once I agreed, then all of a sudden, it’s not good enough. Now I ask you, is she planning to have the Queen of England here? Is she thinking of bringing her good family china and putting on a formal dinner? No. This is the
Slugfest
my lodge isn’t good enough for. I had a janitorial service out here for three days. And you know who had to pay for that. They spent an entire day on the bathroom alone.”

I pressed my lips together to forestall a laugh. I knew what shape the bathroom had been in. “She went to a lot of trouble to bring the Slugfest here,” I said, trying to steer Bert Lucci back to my interest.

“Spent too much time in that cigar store. Last thing that woman needs is nicotine to speed her up. What she needs is a harness to keep her out of the way of normal people.”

I laughed. “I heard you rather liked Edwina when you two were younger,” I said.

“Like! A day with that woman is what convinced me to live here in the woods.”

“If she’s such a plague to you, why did you let her come here with the Slugfest?”

Bert Lucci stepped down from the ladder. “Curry Cunningham got me a group of logging crews from up north just for Saturday night. That’ll make up some of the fees. But I’ll tell you, if you know Edwina, you know Her Highness is not a woman you tell no.”

“But why did she insist on having the Slugfest here to begin with?”

Bert Lucci’s face softened. He eased the hammer back through the loop in his pants. “Don’t make sense, I’ll grant you that. Told her that myself, when I could get a word in between her orders. But you know she doesn’t bother to explain herself.” With a sigh, he said, “I can’t stop and gab now. I’ve still got enough work for six days left. And if everything’s not just right, you can bet I’ll hear about it. Her Highness wants it up to snuff when the television cameras get here.”

“Television?” The Slugfest was a local event, more in the line of a church supper than a newsmaker. It hardly merited network coverage.

“So she says. She had me install two-twenty wiring for them. They’d better show. And it’s already after five o’clock; I’ve got to get hammering.”

After five! I raced for the men’s room, pushing open the door without even a knock. It was empty, and spotless. It looked like it had been renovated rather than merely cleaned. I noted the read, and then ran for my truck.

When I got back to the PG&E office Mr. Bobbs would be waiting. It was just a question of what he would be more perturbed by—my late return and the Missed Meter, or his impending duty as a judge of the Slugfest.

M
R.
B
OBBS WAS NOT
seated in his cubicle waiting for me. He was out in the middle of the office, pacing. With his light brown hair and pale horn-rimmed glasses, his tan suit and shoes, he resembled a cloud of dust blowing toward me. Pointedly, he looked at his watch.

“I know it’s after five-thirty,” I said. “A number of roads were out. There are three new mud slides, not to mention the ones left from last year.”

Before, he had looked distressed; now his eyes narrowed in suspicion. But I knew he was not worrying about the hazardous roads having endangered me; he was afraid of a Missed Meter.

I put the route book on the table before me. “There are no Changes,” I said. “Changes” were notations we made when a meter had been removed or tampered with and required a repairman or an inspector. “But I do have an M-Five.”

His pale eyes narrowed further. I was amazed he could still see. “Bad road?” he demanded. “Tell me about it.”

He meant “justify it.” “There was a mud slide across Kiev Road.”

“Your truck has four-wheel drive.”

“A tank couldn’t get through that.”

“Did you try?”

“If I had tried, the truck would still be there.”

He eyed my boots for evidence of mud. With a quick shake of the head, he said, “Clean. Didn’t you attempt to circumvent the obstacle on foot?”

“Mr. Bobbs, Kiev Road is on the hillside. If I’d tried to walk around that mud, I’d have slid all the way down into the river. And,” I added, knowing his weak spot, “I would have lost my route book.”

He winced. I had lost a route book to an angry German shepherd three months ago. He’d been going for my leg when I proffered the book. Snapping his jaws around the tasty leather cover, he shook it till every page sailed out, half onto the muddy rain-covered hillside and the rest into the river. I’d spent days on the phone to the main office in San Francisco copying over all five hundred names, addresses, meter numbers, and reads. And while I had done that, my routes had gone unread. Late routes go on the office report—Mr. Bobb’s report—as do unjustified Missed Meters. If I failed to read a meter because of a locked gate, or something blocking it, or because it was so obscurely placed that I just couldn’t find it, then the miss went on my Missed Meter Count. It was my responsibility to contact the customer and deal with the problem. I was allowed only four and a half misses per thousand. But if I failed to record a meter because of an acceptable reason, like a bad road, then I was in the clear; it was the office’s count it was noted on. And since the little offices in the rugged areas always had more Missed Meters than the city offices, where there were no felled redwoods blocking the roads or bulls huffing at outlying gates, Mr. Bobbs was always in the position of justifying his count. He fought us on every M-5. Presenting him with a Missed Meter was like telling Edwina Henderson to put up No Smoking signs.

He glared down at the offending route book. “We’ll hold that read out.” He looked back at his watch. “Too late to contact Public Works today. First thing Monday. And you can drive by to see if that slide has shifted.”

I was tempted to argue that my route for Monday was nowhere near Kiev Road, that I didn’t have time to hassle Public Works about a slide I knew they wouldn’t clear for months, and that Mr. Bobbs didn’t need to hold this read out to badger me with next week (other offices didn’t do that). But it was nearly six o’clock, and on Friday night, the night of the Slugfest, I had other things to do. “Perhaps,” I said, “your sacrifice tonight will make up for this month’s Misses.”