Joan Hess - Mischief In Maggody

Rainbow's motherly smile was being sorely tested, as was her temper, which she prided herself on never losing. "This is not the jungle of Vietnam, Nate, nor are we in the middle of a triathlon. I'll mind the register and bring the books home to work on tonight; I truly don't mind staying up late to get them finished. Poppy's going home in the truck. I have no intentions of making you angry, and you can run your errands later."

"The co-op closes later. If I don't get over there before they close, we won't have any layer grit tomorrow. I told some old coot we'd have it tomorrow morning."

There was not much communal harmony in the office as Zachery pushed aside the curtain. "Customer," he said, scratching his armpit as he tried to assess the situation through eyes befogged by a joint of exceptionally good pot. "Wants to know the price on six yards of velour."

"I'll see to it," Poppy said. She went around Zachery, trying not to look too relieved at escaping the tension-laden room. Or to throw up.

Rainbow loved both men equally, because equality was the basis of their relationship, but at times she had to admit to a teensy amount of favoritism. Zachery was mild and dopey in a sweet way, with his wispy beard, ponytail, and soft brown eyes that never seemed to focus on much of anything. His face was lined with wrinkles, and his nose was perhaps on the large side, but he never complained.

Nate had the tendency to get too intense, as if he were still in the jungle with a machete between his teeth and they were the invisible enemy. She occasionally thought, although she'd never say a word, that he didn't seem to be meditating quite as seriously as the rest of them. More than once she'd had to remind him of his mantra, or gently admonish him to seek his psychic center. Zachery just needed a pat on the head or a kind word, and he'd offer to hang the moon for her. And he never forgot his mantra. But they and Poppy were her family. Therefore, she loved them all. Once she'd rather sternly reminded herself of that, she turned on her best smile and gave Nate a kiss on his dear, pock-marked cheek. "There, everything is in proper alignment, and we can all share the energy."

"Yeah," Nate said.

Hammet had even more fun with the radio in the jeep, which sparked and spat and produced earshattering static when he turned it up as far as it would go. I kept my attention on the ghastly road, and my hands in a death grip on the steering wheel as we bounced up what was surely a creek bed pretending to be a road.

"Holy shit," Hammet muttered as a dispatcher somewhere sent a police car somewhere else. "Real folks is a-talkin' on this box."

"All courtesy of Mr. Marconi," I replied, trying to hold up the map to see how much farther we had to go. The ridge was crisscrossed by hairline roads, but most of them were abandoned logging trails that had disappeared a decade ago. I was pretty sure we were headed in the right direction; Hammet hadn't been any help because he'd never driven home.

"Yeah," he said. He flopped back against the seat. "You sure we're goin' right? I ain't seen this afore now."

"According to the map, we're going toward your house. As for the accuracy of the map and my interpretation, I don't know. We may end up on County 103, having wasted about six hours in the process."

"So you ain't so all-fired smart, huh?"

I gave him a very quick glance, but it was long enough to see his lower lip stuck out past the tip of his nose. "No," I murmured, "I'm not so all-fired smart. What's bugging you?"

"Macaroni, if you gotta know. Course you gotta know everything, don'tcha? Goddamn cops."

"Marconi was an Italian physicist who invented radios," I said without taking my eyes off the road. "He won a Nobel Prize about seventy years ago."

"So he's dead, huh? Big fucking deal. Ain't nobody what cares about some stupid old Eye-talian who's deader than a pump-handle."

"Well, the radio is a useful invention. It lets me stay in touch with the dispatcher when I'm out of pocket."

"Ain't nobody calling you on the radio."

"But they could, if there were an emergency," I pointed out mildly. "Before Marconi invented the radio, messages had to be mailed or sent on a telegraph wire."

"How'd he know how to make up this radio iffen there weren't no radios around he could copy off of?"

I did my best to explain the concept of inventions. Hammet didn't buy any of it, but it got us most of the way to the cabin. As I parked in front of the ramshackle dwelling, I thought I might miss his company-in an extremely obscure way. I gave him a smile and a pat on the shoulder, then got out of the jeep. As I started across the weedy yard, two children who came straight out of the Hammet mold appeared at the door. Both were larger, but they had the same tangled black hair, piercing yellowish eyes, and protruding brows.

"Hi, there," I said, stopping at a safe distance. "I've brought Hammet back from town. Is your mother here?"

Hammet tugged on my sleeve. "That be Bubba and Sissie," he whispered. "Sukie's likely to be hiding inside. She's right shy of strangers."

The boy, thirteen or fourteen and leaner than a fence post, stared at me for a long while, then said, "Why do you be a-wantin' to know?"

Hammet edged forward, but he clung to my sleeve. "She be the cop down in Maggody, Bubba, but she ain't all bad. She got me some vittles, and says she'll get y'all vittles, too, iffen we go to town with her."

"I ain't goin' to town."

"Me neither," Sissie said, sticking out her chin. "Besides, Her'd whup the tar outta us iffen we wasn't here when she come back."

"Iffen you starve dead, Her won't find anybody left to whup," Hammet said, expressing my sentiment with succinctness.

Bubba declined to debate the point. "I ain't goin' nowhere. Ain't none of us goin' nowhere with no goddamn motherfuckin' police lady. Hammet, you get your ass in the house iffen you don't want me to stomp it right now."

"You're forgetting who stomped ass last time," Hammet replied smugly.

The two were exchanging alarmingly militant looks when another child came to the doorway, a finger in her mouth. "Baby's a-cryin' again," she lisped through the unappetizing finger.

"Git inside," Bubba snapped.

I realized that we needed a social worker, a referee, or perhaps a few National Guardsmen with great big guns. I would have settled for Mrs. Jim Bob with a Bible. One lone (expletives deleted) chief of police was going to have a potentially volatile situation on her hands, as we say in official jargon, if she tried to force any of the Buchanon offspring into leaving. I considered a plea for reason. I considered a passionate appeal to whatever intelligence Bubba possessed. Once I recovered from that momentary flight of fancy, I went back to the jeep and sat down on the fender.

"There's a lot of food in town," I said.

"Yeah," Hammet said, nodding. "Cheeseburgers and sweet milk and corn chips. All you wants, and you don't have to give 'em money or root through no garbage cans." He shot me a quick look. "You don't hafta take a bath, neither."

"I'm awful hungry," Sukie said through her finger.

Sissie looked up at Bubba. "Baby's doin' poorly. Iffen he dies, Mama'll be madder than a brooder hen tryin' to hatch a rock. And I'm awful hungry, too."

"But we cain't just go off with some cop lady."

Sensing Bubba's indecision, I moved in for the kill. "How about apple pie, kids? Does everybody like apple pie with ice cream? Soda pop? Okra and collard greens oozing in pot likker? Pork chops with red-eye gravy? Mashed potatoes? Soft white bread? I know just where we can get plates piled high with all that-and no baths." Okay, I lied.

Pretty soon we were all in the jeep, bouncing back down the mountainside. Sukie was squashed next to Hammet in the front seat, listening blankly as he explained how Mr. Macaroni invented the radio before anyone else even owned a radio, which was a goddamn noble thing for Mr. Macaroni to have done in the first place.