Double blast, p.5
Double Blast, page 5
“Any chance you’d mind me going to the little boy’s room?”
“So you can sneak out the backdoor? Yes, I mind. Keep your seat.”
My phone was a mess. There were countless missed calls from the Bellissimo, all, I felt certain, were about Fantasy. Four calls from my husband. The first three were probably about Fantasy. The fourth was probably wondering why I wasn’t answering my phone. I shot him a quick text message saying I’d been gathering wild blackberries, which was true, and otherwise busy trying to fill Daddy’s shoes, also true, and I’d call him soon. He texted back. Don’t worry about calling right away. I’m up next at the Texas Law podium. It sounds like you’re having a great Pine Apple time. I’m happy for you. I bet the girls loved picking blackberries. I bet my boy loved the fresh country air. Quickly, Davis, I need to tell you my side of the story, actually Biloxi PD’s side of the story, when you have a minute. I’m sure you’ve heard Fantasy’s side by now. Tell her to turn herself in. Call when you can. I’d missed two calls from my father before I’d blocked his phone. That struck fear in my soul. He needed to hear the goat story from me. I needed to know the goat story before I could tell it. I didn’t want Roy Howdy to hear whatever it was Daddy had to say, then blab it all over town, so I read the transcribed version of his voicemails. The first one said, Sweet Pea, we’ve had an unfortunate development. Bea overheard an amputation being discussed between a surgeon and a scheduling nurse (the pinkie toe of an elderly diabetic patient) and things have escalated to an entirely new level. Bea is convinced they were secretly discussing her and intend to amputate her leg. She’s demanding to be extricated by Navy SEALs. She’s insisting someone put her in touch with hostage negotiators at The White House. No one can calm her. If they don’t sedate her soon, I will be forced to take matters into my own hands. How? I haven’t figured it out yet. If she doesn’t calm down, it might take a baseball bat. I’m calling to see how the weed control is going. Let me know. His second message said, Sweet Pea, is there any truth to the rumor that Pine Apple’s Prodigal Daughter has returned?
It was a good thing I’d blocked his phone. Because someone had already snuck in a call to him about Florida Simmons. I opened my laptop, bypassed the block on his phone, but only long enough to shoot him a quick text. All is well, Daddy. Good luck with Bea.
I called my sister. “Are my children okay?”
“The girls are at the lunch counter watching PAW Patrol and eating chicken wings.”
“They can’t eat chicken wings, Meredith. They’ll choke on chicken bones.”
Roy Howdy piped up from the perp chair. “I wish I was choking on chicken bones.”
I didn’t say, “Me too,” because just then, my sister said, “They’re boneless.”
“Surely you’re not feeding the baby chicken wings.”
Roy Howdy said, “I wish somebody would feed me chicken wings.”
Meredith said, “Of course not.”
I asked, “Is Fantasy with you?”
“I think she’s still at Mother and Daddy’s. Mother’s flowers are gone, Davis. All her dahlias and zinnias were wiped out. And it looks like someone took a shovel to every square inch of the yard. There isn’t a blade of grass left.”
“What are dahlias and zinnias?”
“Flowers, Davis. The hundreds of bright red, yellow, orange, pink, and purple flowers in Mother’s flowerbeds are gone.”
I told Meredith we’d take care of the dahlias and zinnias before Mother returned. She said that wasn’t possible unless I had a greenhouse in my back pocket, and that certainly wasn’t the case because I no longer had back pockets. Meanwhile, Roy Howdy shuffled in his seat. Checked the clock on the wall. Checked his phone for messages. And apparently with chicken wings on his brain, checked out the liverwurst sandwiches still on my old patrol desk. I tossed him one and told Meredith to keep the children inside and I’d see her as soon as humanly possible. By then, thirty whole seconds later, the first liverwurst sandwich was gone. I reloaded Roy Howdy with an Orange Crush soda and the second liverwurst sandwich. I caught my breath for the additional thirty seconds it took for him to inhale both.
“Good stuff.” He pounded his chest with a fist to help it all down.
“Roy Howdy.” I sat back. Crossed my arms. I tipped my head back, leading with my chin, and narrowed my eyes. To finish setting the mood. “Why did my father tell me to look for brush mowers and mulchers to clear the hill at Wright and Oak Streets? How did he not know you’d arranged for hundreds of wild goats to clear it?”
“I forgot to tell him?”
“Are you asking me or telling me, Roy Howdy?”
“Are we still talking about the goats?”
I took a deep breath and spoke slower. “Did you originally hire a landscaping company to clear the hill, then change your mind?”
“My mind.” He put a hand on his head. Probably to make sure his mind was still in there after losing his hat to a goat. “What’s the question?”
“Was it your idea to bring goats to Pine Apple?”
“No.”
“Whose idea was it?”
“I was out having lunch—” which must have reminded him of the lunch he’d just scarfed down, because he pounded his chest again “—barbeque and hot slaw and fried corn—”
I interrupted. “Whose idea was it to bring goats to Pine Apple?”
“Mine.”
“You just said it wasn’t.”
“Not at first. But then it was. Because I got some real good advice while I was having barbeque that was way cheaper and more environment friendly.”
“Someone gave you cheaper and environmentally friendly barbeque advice?”
“Someone gave me cheaper and environment friendly weed advice.”
I waited.
“—while I was having barbeque.”
“So the goats weren’t your idea.”
“Yes.”
“Yes they were or yes they weren’t?”
“Half and half.”
I was going to lose my mind. And I had a sneaking suspicion who the other half of the equation was, because there was only one place in town that served barbeque. Very bad barbeque, I might add. Scooped out of huge Costco tubs and microwaved to near death. “Were the goats Bea Crawford’s idea? Were you having Friday Barbeque at Bea’s Diner and she suggested the cheaper and more environmentally friendly goats?”
Roy Howdy was genuinely impressed. “How’d you know that?”
“Where’s the paperwork?”
“What paperwork?”
“Surely there’s a paper trail of your agreement with the goat contractor.”
He pointed at the circa 1980 Commodore 64 monstrosity covering half of my father’s desk. “Should be all up in there, Davis. I wrote it down and Bea typed it all in.”
Great. It would take an hour to turn on Daddy’s old computer. I didn’t have an hour. “Do you remember how many goats you ordered?”
He answered quickly and confidently. “Ten.”
“Do you remember the name of the company?”
“Something about goats but not exactly.”
“Not exactly what?”
“I don’t remember the exact name.”
“But you’ve spoken to them?”
He nodded. “Lots.” He pounded his chest again. “Was that Spams?”
I picked up the station phone’s cordless receiver. “What are you talking about?”
“The sandwiches. Spams?”
“Spams?” He wasn’t talking about junk mail. He was talking about gelatinous canned mystery meat. “No,” I said. “Liverwurst.”
“Oh, hell.” His head fell back. “Me and liverwurst ain’t friends.”
“Uhm.” I had nothing. “We’ll make this quick.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that was liverwurst?”
“Because I was checking on my children. How did you not know it was liverwurst when you bit into it?”
Roy Howdy pounded his chest again. “I already got the heartburn.”
I poked a big red square along the row of buttons on the station phone base, then the speaker button. I spoke over the dial tone. “What’s the number?”
Roy Howdy very hesitantly guessed. “Four?”
I leaned in. “The goat company’s phone number. If you’ve talked to them lots you should have their phone number.”
Roy Howdy held up a gotcha finger, then fumbled for his phone and began scrolling. When he found it, I dialed as he read the numbers slowly and at top volume.
A man with a testy voice answered on the first ring. “Graze Away Goat Rental, Home of Hassle-Free Brush Removal and Weed Control. This is Bobby.”
“Bobby, my name is Davis Way Cole. I’m acting chief of police in Pine Apple, Alabama.”
“Boy, I wouldn’t want to be you right now, lady.”
“Bobby, I wouldn’t want to be you.”
I went left, he went right. I lobbed, he volleyed. I pinged, he ponged. When I grew weary of his refusal to accept responsibility for the goat invasion, I threw a few litigious and negative Yelp review threats his way until he finally admitted the fault was Graze Away’s. Bobby blamed his sorry dispatcher, who’d stayed up all night “honky tonking,” for mistakenly sending the truck headed to Mobile to clear off two thousand acres for a “stripper mall” to us, and mistakenly sending the ten goats we’d ordered for our one-acre hill to them. According to Bobby, Mobile had it worse than we did because it was too late for them to cancel their scheduled excavators. Which he called scheduled escalators. Graze Away caught the mistake when the job site in Mobile called to ask when the rest of the goats would arrive, which was when the sorry dispatcher found the semi-truck full of famished goats who were supposed to be in Mobile on State Route 10 instead. Headed west instead of south, and at the time, less than two miles from Pine Apple. He told the driver to turn around and take the goats to Mobile. The driver tried to turn around on the two-lane road with nothing but front yards and fields on either side and ended up busting an axle after jackknifing at the Welcome to Pine Apple sign. Which upset the goats. Who the driver said rammed the gate until they were free. Which was when Bobby fired the sorry dispatcher. He finished with, “I should’ve waited to fire him till this mess was cleaned up, because I need my goats back.”
“Please,” I said, “come get them.”
“Can’t hardly, because the road into your town is blocked.”
“By your truck, Bobby.”
“I’m working on that.”
“Working on it how?”
“I sent a wrecker for the busted rig. Once it’s cleared, I’ll send another truck.”
“Send the other truck now.”
“How am I supposed to send a truck if the road’s blocked?”
“We’re talking about twenty miles of a two-lane road, Bobby. It’s okay if two trucks are on it. By the time the second truck gets here, the wrecker you say is on the way will have cleared the road.”
“That’s three trucks, lady, when you add on the wrecker.”
“I can count,” I said. “And stop calling me lady.”
“Well, listen up, not-a-lady. I work the goats. Not the trucks.”
He took a deep breath, either to explain goats, trucks, or ladies to me, or ask me to explain goats, trucks, and ladies to him, but I beat him to the punch. “What are we looking at?”
“Come again?”
“How long before you can pick up your goats?”
“I’d say by sunup tomorrow morning.”
“Where do your trucks come from?” I asked. “Minnesota?”
“I don’t know where trucks come from, lady. Like I said, I work with goats. Not trucks. I don’t know where to find trucks.”
“Stop calling me lady, and I don’t care if you stand in the street and flag a truck down, Bobby. Have one here by sundown today,” I said, “and it needs to be full.”
“Lady, there ain’t no way you could need or want more goats.”
“I need and want turf grass, and lots of it. I need and want soil, mulch, shrubbery, and flowers in full bloom. Fill up the truck you send with grass, shrubs, and all manner of flowers. Send plenty of dahlias and zinnias,” I said, “in very bright colors.”
“Where am I supposed to find all that?”
“A landscaping company, Bobby. Home Depot. Lowe’s. You can dig up every yard in your subdivision for all I care.”
“I live in a trailer park.”
“I don’t care.”
The line went silent for ten seconds, then he asked, “Who’s supposed to pay for all that?”
“Did you not just admit that the fault was yours? You’re paying for it, Bobby.”
“Lady, do you think you’re talking to the Wells Fargo? We don’t have that kind of money. We got goats. Not money. And I got a boss who’s hell on wheels. She won’t go for it.”
“You caused this problem, Bobby. You need to fix it. And don’t call me lady one more time. My name is Davis.”
“A lady named David? That’s a new one.”
“My name is not David. It’s Davis.”
I looked up to see Roy Howdy’s face had gone from its usual blotchy red to pasty yellow. With a tinge of green. I pointed to the door. He ran. I didn’t know where Roy Howdy was going, probably to the creepy funeral home he lived in, but I gave him plenty of time to get there before I ended the call with Bobby from Graze Away and stepped out of the police station for air, momentarily forgetting it wasn’t pleasant air. It was my first panoramic view of the wreckage left in the wake of the goat storm. Pine Apple was ravaged. And it was heartbreaking.
My head snapped right when I heard a vehicle approaching from the west. It was a chicken wing truck. A bright yellow Ford E350. It had a gable roof. As it slowly circled Town Square, I could see one side of the truck had shutters over the closed serving window and the other side had a white picket fence painted under the wing menu. Bright red bouncing letters above the menu proclaimed the truck to be the House of Wings. The driver and his female passenger were mouths agape, heads on swivels, taking in the mayhem. Everyone on the cleanup crew stopped what they were doing to stare. The truck stared back, slowing at the post office. The driver put the truck in reverse, made a delicate three-point turn, then went back the way he’d come.
FIVE
That night it rained. A heavy soaking rain that lasted all night.
I didn’t notice the sky above me turning dark just before sunset because I was halfway up a tree watching the border collies from Camden shoo the goats into a livestock trailer backed up to the high school gymnasium doors. I’d leased the truck from an owner-operator named Gator Macon who lived in Evergreen, thirty miles south, transferring the two thousand dollars he charged from my own savings account. Money I fully intended to recoup from Graze Away Goat Rental. Who’d stopped taking my calls.
I didn’t notice the low gray cloud cover behind me as I dropped from the tree when the last goat boarded, and I didn’t hear the thunder from inside the echo chamber of the annihilated high school gymnasium we immediately set about cleaning, because the unwieldy retractable bleachers the goats had stomped to near death were louder. It was only when someone opened the double doors at the other end of the gym to let the offensive goat air out and heavy winds whipped through that I realized a summer storm was on top of us. The first gust almost ripped the janitorial mop I was wielding out of my hands. But it didn’t actually start raining until two hours later. Just after my sister called to say my children were fed, bathed, ready for bed, and she was exhausted. (Everyone in Pine Apple was exhausted.) She said she’d called her daughter, my teenage niece, Riley, who was away at cheer camp, and told her to hitchhike home to help with her cousins. (She didn’t mean that.) She said she was on her way to my parents’ house with Bex, Quinn, and the baby, and if I didn’t show up soon, she’d leave them there alone. (She wouldn’t do that.) Which was just after Penny Ballard, who lived on Dogwood Lane, called to say it was a boy. And he was so cute, she said, they just might keep him. Which was just after Fantasy called to tell me she’d found Whiskey asleep in a garden tub.
“Asleep? In a tub? Are you sure he didn’t drown?”
“There wasn’t water in the tub, Davis. I put a pillow under his head, threw a blanket on him, and left him there. In the dry garden tub.”
I’d been so busy, I’d almost forgotten about Whiskey.
I’d almost forgotten about Fantasy.
Standing in the middle of the gymnasium wrestling an industrial mop with my almost-red hair propelling around my head keeping time with the wind, it all came slamming back: the casino shooting of a high schooler, my fugitive friend who’d fired the shot, and her hostage. Whiskey. They’d been out of sight for the better part of three hours, and thus out of mind.
Earlier, just after the House of Wings food truck dropped out of Pine Apple’s chicken wing cookoff, I wove through cleanup efforts and made my way to my parents’ house after Fantasy called to say she needed help. I found her trying to talk Whiskey off the roof. Of the house. Where he’d been for more than an hour. Now, how he got up there, I didn’t know. He saw me, scrambled up another foot until his back was against the chimney, then recognition set in.
“I am acquainted with your persona,” he said.
“Hello, Whiskey.” I spoke calmly, lest he make a sudden move and tumble down. I had enough going on without Whiskey falling off the roof. “What happened?” I asked. “How’d you get up there? Why are you up there?”
