Talk of the Town (16 page)

“Hey, Ms. Doll, how about some coffee?” one of them called.

“Sure thing,” I said, stopping to flip the burgers on the grill and stir the hash browns. “Comin’ right up. Looks like these burgers are just about ready.”

Bob didn’t budge. He was caught up in a conversation with Harlan, who’d just come in from his rural mail route with the news that some out-of-towners were staying at Miss Lulu’s RV camp near Boggy Bend. They’d parked three brand new RVs, still with dealer tags on, in spaces 1A through 4A, plus a truck with some kind of space-aged electronic antenna on top. Miss Lulu had kept quiet about it since yesterday, which, for Miss Lulu, was a record. Normally, she shows up in town every morning like clockwork, dressed in one of her favorite muumuus without benefit of a brassiere, and Miss Lulu’s not a small woman. She’s Otis Charles’s aunt, and she could probably play football for UT right along with him. She always wears her hair braided in neat little rows with a big flower in the back. Most days, while picking up her mail at the post office, she makes the rounds of town, telling, in that big deep voice of hers, all sorts of wild stories about the folks staying in the campground, or teenagers skinny-dipping in the swimming hole at Boggy Bend Park, or the latest stray pooch to be abandoned on her porch. Whatever the subject, Miss Lulu loves to tell a tale.

When Harlan got to her house that Friday morning, he’d found Miss Lulu in a powerful fret, sitting on her front porch in asweat-drenched muumuu with her hair frizzed out six inches in all directions. She hadn’t even bothered to braid it or put in a flower. “Looked like a chain smoker on her third day cold turkey,” Harlan said as he splayed his fingers around his head, giving an impression of Miss Lulu’s hair. “She come runnin’ out and give me a big sweaty hug right there in the driveway.”

The other countertoppers winced, and Doyle Banes’s hat-rack body convulsed in a powerful shudder. He’d been caught under the mistletoe by Miss Lulu at the Daily Downtown Christmas celebration last year after she had too much eggnog, so he knew what those hugs felt like.

Harlan went on with his story. “She calls me inside, all the while lookin’ over her shoulder, and soon as she closes the door, she cracks like a rotten egg in August, spewing out words ninety-to-nothin’. She said that yesterday a lady with short white-blond hair and nice clothes showed up in a taxicab, of all things, and wanted to rent three campsites with full water and sewer hookup. Miss Lulu didn’t know what to think, so she asked about the lady’s business in Daily. Lady said she’s on vacation, and then she offered Miss Lulu a big check to keep quiet.” Harlan paused for effect, narrowing an eye and sweeping back and forth between Bob and the other fellas.

I smelled food burning again, so I started plates and took the burgers off the grill. The odor of the onions stirred an anxiousness in my stomach. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know who those folks were out at Miss Lulu’s.
First, all the hotel rooms booked up at Donetta’s, and now there’s a rush on at the RV park.
Donetta was right. Something big was in motion.

I couldn’t help tuning in as I finished the plates, and Harlan went on with his story.

“So Miss Lulu takes the money, and it ain’t until later that she realizes what a problem it’s gonna be to keep up her end of the bargain. She figures the only way she’ll be able to keep quiet is to stay out of town. Period. By the time I show up, she’s breakin’ out in a rash and she’s got a tic in her right eye. She’s worried maybe she’s rented out her campsites to bank robbers or international spies, or a gang of domestic terrorists, even.” Harlan pointed a finger and drummed it on the bar top. “So then this morning, in rolls three motor homes and a truck van with some kind of radar machine on top. There’s at least seven fellas and the spike-haired lady, and they don’t want to have nothin’ to do with nobody. They don’t buy no wood for a campfire or take a walk down to the park on Boggy Bend. After a while, they all get in the one motor home and drive out, lickety-split. Being as they’d left in such a hurry, Lulu checks around their campsites, just to make sure the electric and sewer are hooked up right. Every window shade on every motor home is closed. Tight.”

“Uulll-land-land sakes,” Doyle breathed, reaching blindly for his coffee. His fingers landed in it, then he pulled them out and wiped them on his shirt. “Won-wonder what them f-f-folks u-rrr doin’ there, ya reckon?”

“TV people,” Bob cut in. “Just mark my words. That’s people from Hollywood.” He stopped me as I stuck the tickets in the hamburger plates and started toward the cowboys. “Imagene, those folks staying at the hotel say anything about bringing in a filming crew, maybe puttin’ them up out at the RV park?”

“Not that I know of, Bob.” I wasn’t about to tell him Donetta had the rest of the rooms rented to Amanda-Lee for the weekend.

That’d send Bob into such a spin we’d never get through the lunch crowd.

Bob gave me a back-handed wave, since I didn’t have any interesting stories about TV folks taking over Daily. I took the plates out to the cowboys and stopped to take an order at the next table, keeping one ear tuned toward the countertop conversation.

“So then, Miss Lulu notices that a window on one of the trailers is cracked open just a little bit, and the miniblind is broke. Being as the weather forecast was for twenty percent chance of rain, that worries her some, and she goes to the window to investigate. When she peeks through, there’s computer equipment, TV screens, big wads of cable layin’ everywhere, and a machine that looks like the heart monitor at the emergency clinic. There’s a fella standing near the machine. He must’ve heard Miss Lulu, because right then he turns toward the window. She ducks off and runs for the golf cart and hurries back home, quick as she can. By the time I showed up, she had it in her mind they were terrorists for sure and she was about to be one of those people who disappear in broad daylight and never get seen again.” Chuckling under his breath, Harlan took a sip of his root beer. “I explained to her about Amber’s TV show and told her not to worry, and she got so relieved I was afraid she was gonna hug me again, so I got myself on outta there.”

Bob scratched his chin, watching a fly crawl across the ceiling. “Can’t understand why they’d be out there dealing with Miss Lulu when they didn’t even come by the Daily Chamber of Commerce yet. Don’t make sense.” He frowned deeper, until he’d moved into a full-blown pout. “Don’t make any sense at all. . . .”

“Well, you know, Miss Lulu’s is only about three miles down the county road from the Anderson place,” Harlan pointed out. “Less than two miles through the field, if you go as the crow flies.” Being the postman, Harlan knows his geography. “It’d make sense—them wanting to be out by the Anderson place, I mean.”

“P-p-p-probably doin’ re-recon work. An-an advance t-t-team, advance team,” Doyle chimed in.

“What in the world would they be looking for out at the Anderson place?” I asked. “Stray cats and coyotes?”

All three of them turned to me like I had corn growing out my ears.

“If they’re gonna do Amber’s hometown show, they gotta set up interviews, find good background scenery, get the scoop,” Bob said slowly, like he was talking to the class dunce. Holding up his fingers, he made a little box and looked through it, pretending to be a movie man on the job.

“At the Anderson place?” I couldn’t help coughing out loud. “Any of you seen that place lately? Four acres of bare dirt, blackberries growin’ up in the fence, and animals loose all over the porch. With Amber gone and just Verl and the boys there, it’s worse than ever. Who in the world would put something like that on TV?”

About that time, Brother Erve walked in, dressed in his threepiece suit, which usually meant he was headed out to preach a wedding or a funeral. “Just saw a nice-lookin’ motor home out on Caney Creek Road. They were pulled up in the parking lot at Harve’s Chapel, talking to O.C., and they kept pointing back toward the Anderson place.”

“Guess that proves my point,” Bob said triumphantly.

“Guess so” was all I could think of to say. All of a sudden, I had a sense of our quiet life being upended like a bucket under an unruly milk cow.

When the lunch rush was over and I’d helped Estacio and Maria get the dishes to the kitchen, I headed through the wall to see if Donetta was back from the old folks’ home.

“We got time to sneak in a class,” she said when I came in. “We’ll wait while you get changed. We’ll have to cut it short a bit. Got Betty Prine coming in for a cut and color in thirty minutes, and you know she’ll get on her high horse if I’m not ready when she waltzes through the door. Had two other call-ins, too, so that makes a full schedule the rest of the day. All of a sudden, everybody’s in a rush to get their hair done before the weekend. Getting ready for Reunion Days, I guess.”

I sank down in one of the dryer chairs by the café wall. It occurred to me that Betty Prine probably wanted to make sure she had all her gray hairs covered just in case Hollywood really did come to town. I didn’t bring it up to Donetta. That’d only get her started on a tirade about that snooty bunch in the Daily Literary Society. I didn’t have the energy for that conversation today. “Let’s skip exercise and just have coffee.”

Donetta pulled up her pink leg warmers. Standing there in her leotard and tights, she looked like a cocktail olive on two fluffy pink skewers. “We can’t skip exercise. Besides, we’re all dressed, right, Lucy?”

Lucy was already headed toward the coffee pot. She stopped midway, waiting to see how the discussion would play out.

“I’m pooped.” I let my head fall back and closed my eyes. It seemed like a million years since I’d dreamed of Jack downstairs making the coffee that morning. I’d been on the run all day, and now that things had settled down, I was bushed. “Busy lunch shift at the café. Lots of out-of-towners. Bob’s sure they’re all from Hollywood.”

“More traffic up and down the highway than normal, too. Wonder if there’s something goin’ on down in Austin this weekend,” Donetta said as she watched a pretty silver sports car roll through town.

“Don’t know,” I said. “You read those newspapers I brought from Wal-Mart?”

“I did.” Donetta’s lips pursed into a disgusted frown. “The things they’ll say! I can’t feature any of that’d be true. Amber and Buddy Ray been sweet on each other since the tenth grade. I always thought they’d get married, but it’s hard to say, I guess. There’s been many a young girl get her head turned by that Justin Shay. Movie star, got money, smooth talker, and he ain’t hard to look at, that’s for sure. Little country girl like Amber might find herself caught up by someone like that.”

“Lands, I hope not.” I pictured Amber, with her sweet blue eyes and that smattering of freckles over her nose, falling into the trap of a fast-living dandy who’d been through at least a dozen Hollywood women already. Even I knew that Justin Shay had exwives and kids all over the place.

“His one wife try suicide with pill and drink,” Lucy interjected with a note of concern.

Donetta took in a breath. “You don’t think Amber would get took into that kind of mess? Drinkin’ does run in her family. You know Amber’s daddy was drunk the day he ran the car off Cowhouse Creek Bridge and killed her mama? There wasn’t a skid mark on the road. He probably just passed out at the wheel, ran off the bridge, and poor Tara Lynn got pinned under the water. She wasn’t even hurt much—she just drowned. If Patrick hadn’t been so drunk, he mighta saved her.”

“Hard to say.” Years ago, I’d heard about the car crash that killed Amber’s mama. Jack being with the volunteer fire department, he was there on the scene. He said there were beer cans everywhere and at least two empty bottles of whiskey. He figured both of Amber’s parents had been on a drinking spree that night. He didn’t want me to say anything, because word getting around wouldn’t do those kids any good. “Hard to say about Amber, too. Those tabloid papers make things up. I doubt if that woman in China who birthed the baby sumo wrestler is really eighty-two.”

“The picture’s convincin’, though,” Donetta pointed out. “The baby’s got her eyes.”

“They make it on computer,” Lucy chimed in. “I see on
Sic-ty Minute
one time.”

“Let’s hope,” I agreed. Maybe those pictures were all made up on computers and Amber didn’t even know Justin Shay.

Donetta clapped her hands together. “Well, time for exercise class. We still got twenty-one minutes.”

“Not today.” Every once in a while I had to stand my ground with Donetta.

“Come on, upsy-daisy.”

“I’m too tired.”

“Imagene . . .”

I pulled the dryer hood over my head. “I can’t hear you.”

Donetta leaned over and knocked on the dryer. “A little exercise will perk you right up.”

I shook my head. “Sometimes I don’t want to be perky, DeDe.

Sometimes I just want to be me.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” I heard Donetta’s footsteps cross the room. “There’s not enough time now, anyway. We might as well just change back into our clothes and have coffee. I sure don’t want to be in this getup when them high school boys come over.”

I got a little tickled, thinking about the high school kids showing up while Donetta was in her yoga suit. “Them boys might think you look pretty good in your exercise outfit, Netta.”

Donetta spat a puff of air as I pushed the dryer hood up. “Doubt that. I walked by the mirror a while ago and plumb scared myself. Looked like I’d swallowed a melon. Anymore, it seems like the less I wear, the worse I look.” Snorting at the mirror, she headed off to the storeroom to change back into her pants and smock.

Lucy watched her go, frowning.

“I didn’t mean to get her all upset about the exercise,” I said, walking over to the coffee area. “It’s all right if we skip a day once in a while, that’s all.”

Shrugging, Lucy picked up the coffee pot and started pouring. I always liked to watch Lucy pour coffee. She had a certain way of doing it that made me think of that old Marlon Brando movie
Sayonara
. Whenever I thought of
Sayonara,
my mind always went back to sitting in the Paramount Theatre in Abilene, Texas, with Jack. He was just out of the navy, and we’d driven over there for an interview with Farmer’s Insurance Company. He didn’t take the job, but we stayed long enough to go to the picture show. On the way home, he told me all about Japan and the South Pacific, and it was just like I’d been there myself. When darkness settled in, we put down the top on his old Chevy ragtop and smelled the sagebrush and looked at the stars. It’s funny, the little moments you remember from a lifetime.