Joan Hess - Maggody In Manhattan

As befitting his officer's commission in the Lord's army, he pounded on the door and yelled, "Open up, Raz Buchanon! Open this door or prepare to spend all eternity stoking the fires of perdition beneath the devil's own moonshine still."

The door opened to a slit. "What're ye howlin' about, preacherman?" said a surly, suspicious voice.

Brother Verber sucked in his gut and stuck out his chin. "I'm here to save your filthy, perverted, motheaten soul. You've gone many a mile down that wicked road, but it's my Christian duty to bring you back, even if it means hanging onto your trim ankle to stop you from taking that last step."

"Say what?" said Raz, puzzled. "I ain't gonna have the likes of you or any other feller hangin' on my ankle. I hear tell there's boys like that over at the truck stop in Hasty. You kin go over there and find yerself a real pretty one."

"How dare you!" Brother Verber thundered, mostly to cover his embarrassment. "The Good Lord says that's an abomination, just as wicked as fornication, drunkenness, lust-and making field whiskey! I'm here for your own good, Raz Buchanon. This is a mission of mercy, and I'd appreciate it if you'd open the door and step aside so that I can bring salvation into your home and your heart."

"Suit yourself, preacherman, but you'll have to wait until Marjorie's show is over. It's one of those damn fool soap operas, and she's stucked on it tighter 'n a seedtick on a mule's ass."

To Brother Verber's dismay, the door opened all the way and he was ushered inside, warned again to stay real quiet, and nudged across the room to be plopped on a lumpy sofa. On a recliner lay a bristly white sow with moist pink eyes and a drooly snout, and damned if she wasn't staring attentively at a television set. He was so bewildered that he mutely accepted a jar filled with a clear liquid and went so far as to automatically raise it to his lips. The first sip nearly jolted him out of his daze, but it didn't. The second sip went down more smoothly, Before too long, the jar was in need of a refill.

Brother Verber wasn't off and running down the road he'd described to Raz, but he was well on his way at a brisk clip.

I scrunched as far as I could against the window and stared down at the endless expanse of flat, gray clouds, trying to convince myself I was traveling in an airplane rather than a time machine. We were moving forward in space, not backward along a continuum that ended in an elegant apartment (fv rms, ter, all mod con, full sec). I was going to Manhattan to rescue my mother from whatever disaster she'd brought upon herself, I was not going home. I'd done that when I walked out of the courthouse and hailed a cab for the airport.

I strained to believe the lecture I was giving myself but my ex's face kept popping up and breaking my concentration. For the record, he wasn't bad-looking if you like lounge lizards only one generation removed from pastel polyester pantsuits, family outings to discount stores, and forced joviality around the gas grill in a New Jersey backyard. The facade had begun to erode early in the game (we're talking months, not years), but I'd persevered until I could dredge up the courage to confront myself with my lack of judgment, lack of perspicuity, and lack of anything remotely akin to common sense. Admitting it to Ruby Bee had been even more painful, although for once in her life, she didn't point out that she'd told me so. Estelle did it for her, and at length.

I took out my checkbook and glumly noted the damage I'd done with the airline ticket. The pathetic figure, coupled with the possibility I'd be unemployed when I returned to Maggody, distracted me but did not enhance my spirits. Nor did the three-hundred-pound salesman from Toledo, who in theory was sitting in the aisle seat but in truth had oozed over into the adjoining one, and was now frowning as he read the bottom line in my checkbook.

"You got a place to stay tonight, sweetie?" he asked wheezily. "I'd hate to see a pretty little thing like you stay in a dirty hotel with a bunch of pimps and whores. I'm staying at the Hilton, myself, and I sure could stand to squeeze you in with me."

"That's real nice of you, but I'm hoping to get my mother out on bail. Either way, I can stay in her room."

"Get your mother out on bail?"

"Murder," I said levelly. "I'm not sure if I have enough money. If she just hadn't gone hog wild and tried to blast her way through all those cops, she might have gotten off cheaply. But she's a real card, my mama, especially when she's off her medication. Say, maybe you could loan me a few hundred bucks, and come along down to the jail to meet her? Then we all could go back to your room at the Hilton and get to know each other better. Mama's scrawny, but she's feisty. You can ask anybody in town, 'cause she's taken on most of 'em and left 'em for dead by daybreak."

He grabbed the plastic card from the seat pocket and began to memorize the location of all the emergency exits. I resumed my study of the blanket of clouds, wishing I were in my bed with a more substantial blanket pulled over my head.

Kevin stared resolutely through the windshield, determined not to let his eyes drift to the rearview mirror. "Would you like to stop for something to eat, my honeybuns, or stretch your legs in a rest stop?"

"No."

It wasn't so much her terseness as her tone that caused him to clutch the steering wheel more tightly and gulp several times. He considered offering to pull over and fetch her a soda from the cooler in the trunk, then decided he'd better just keep quiet as a little ol' mouse and let her say if and when she wanted anything. His bride wasn't the shy type, even in her current condition. His job was to keep on driving northward, aimed at their goal, the spanking new roadmap folded and set on the seat where he could reach it.

They were back on pavement again, and this was good. Like a cowhand who'd had to venture into some canyons to round up strayed calves, he'd taken them off the route for a while. But now they were back on track, or at least going in the right direction.

"Lotion," Dahlia growled from the backseat.

"Yes, my precious," Kevin said, scrabbling on the seat for the pink bottle. He twisted his arm around and thrust the bottle over the back of his seat. "Calamine lotion for my beloved bride. I sure am sorry about not seeing that poison ivy around the tree. Can you ever find it in your heart to forgive me?"

"I doubt it, especially since you're pouring out the lotion on the floor of the car. It ain't the picnic basket that's covered with oozy red welts that itch worse than crabs in a fiddler's privates."

She groaned, although the noise hinted as much of simmering rage as it did of discomfort, and it occurred to Kevin that he was kinda glad she was lying in the backseat, her legs spread apart and her feet poked out the window.

He jerked his arm back, splattering the dashboard and windshield with pink spots. "I'll stop at the next store," he said as he hunkered over the steering wheel on the off chance she could reach him if she tried. "You know, this road's a lot prettier than a boring old interstate. There's some real nice flowers in the ditch, and that last house had a plastic duck and little yeller babies in a row. I wish you could have seen them, my adorable bride."

"You dumped lotion on the potato chips. You'd better be darn glad I ain't sitting up there beside you, Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon. Iff'n I was, we'd find out if you'd be any smarter with soggy pink potato chips stuffed up your nose!"

"It's gonna be just fine," he said soothingly. "This is our honeymoon, my sweetness, and we've got our whole lives in front of us. You and me, a cottage with a vegetable garden out back, maybe the pitter-patter of little feet afore too long."