O Little Town of Maggody Read online

  “I am not overwhelmed with amazement,” Ripley said with only a faint smirk.

  “This is the second time since Matt won the award that he’s been arrested. He was scheduled for a couple of telephone interviews this morning, but I called the radio stations and made excuses. He missed two shows in Memphis last weekend, just flat out didn’t show up. Harry says he and the Hellbellies are thinking about backing out on the tour and just riding out the winter here in Nashville. This latest crap gets out, no one’s gonna risk opening for him and we might as well cancel the tour and kiss off the quarter of a million we’ve put into the album.”

  “I said right after he won the award that Lillian wouldn’t be able to control him. The annals of country music have proven that small-town rednecks are notoriously incapable of handling fame and fortune.”

  “That’s it!” Pierce said, hitting his desk with his fist so hard his secretary glanced up from her computer and inadvertently added a zero to some lucky devil’s contract. He got up and went to stand at the wide window, smiling at the mountains faintly visible through what the Nashville chamber of commerce elected to describe as haze. “The club agents, the deejays, the fans, even the Hellbellies—they all need to be reminded that despite his newly acquired reputation as a total fuck-up, Matt’s nothing but a simple country boy with treasured memories of his hometown. Tie in this Christmas thing—’tis the season, deck the halls, away in a manger. Help me here, Ripley. We need some kind of publicity about where he grew up … and we need it before the tour starts falling apart. Let the media see him surrounded by his kinfolk, decorating the Christmas tree, singing carols in the high school gym, and reminiscing about his beloved granny. Get him on the line and ask him where he grew up.”

  “I should think at the moment the poor boy’s sleeping off what must be a ferocious hangover. In interviews, he talks about Little Rock.”

  “Little Rock’s too big for a hometown. Come up with someplace quaint and honest, with hard-working folks and a café where everybody has coffee on Saturday morning.”

  “There’s something in the file … I seem to think he spent at least part of his childhood in some little cesspool in the Arkansas Ozarks. Let me check his bio.” Ripley left the room, then returned with a folder containing a few grains of truth and a lot of whimsy. “I was right, of course. On his AFM application, he says he was born in a place called Maggody. There’s a next-of-kin listed, too.”

  Pierce rubbed his hands together. “Perfect! Matt Montana’s going home for the holidays.”

  Chapter Two

  “Matt Montana was born in Maggody?” I said. This dutiful display of incredulousness in no way delayed a forkful of mashed potatoes destined for my gullet via my gaping mouth. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that.”

  “There’s a lot of stuff you ain’t heard,” Ruby Bee said from behind the bar, glaring as if I’d criticized the meat loaf or voiced doubts about the greasy perfection of the collard greens. I preferred to live another day.

  Perched on her favorite stool at the end of the bar (elbow room and proximity to the ladies room given equal consideration), Estelle rolled her eyes beneath artfully drawn eyebrows and in a smarmy voice said, “And here I thought we were blessed by the company of Miss World Almanac.”

  They weren’t blessed by much other company. The room was empty except for the three of us, two unemployed poultry processors drinking beer at a table, and an insensible truck driver in the last booth. For the first time in weeks, the jukebox was not blaring “You’re a Detour on the Highway to Heaven,” or its flip side, the less popular but loyally played “I Bit My Lip and Held My Tongue When You Walked Out the Door.” It was, therefore, the first time in weeks that I’d been able to eat without feeling as if I were being aesthetically assaulted. I’m an old rock-and-roll fan, myself—something I’d hidden well in a previous life in Manhattan. It doesn’t play all that much better in a backwater where the primary decor in a lot of living rooms is a depiction of The King on black velvet. And I don’t mean one buried in Westminster Abbey; this one’s planted by a swimming pool in Memphis.

  Estelle slid a glossy magazine down the bar in my direction. “But I got to admit it’s peculiar,” she said, twisting a red curl around her finger and nibbling on magenta lipstick. “According to this interview, he grew up in Little Rock, and there ain’t one word about Maggody. He’s not but twenty-five now, and I’d like to think I’d remember someone who went on to become as famous as Matt Montana. But Patty May Partridge out at the county old folks home said that the man who called was real insistent. She ought to know, since she was the one who had to talk to him on account of Adele having one of those days.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Ruby Bee murmured. “She back to listening to aliens on her hearing aid?”

  “Just like it was the six o’clock news. Anyway, Patty May said the man was going to call Adele again before too long when maybe she’d be in a more responsive state. Patty May went back to the sitting room to find out what on earth he meant, but Adele kept right on clicking her dentures and peering real grimly out the window.”

  Ruby Bee snatched up the magazine before I could look at it, although I may have been more interested in my stomach than in outlunging her to get my hands on the latest issue of Country Cavalcade. “Look at this, Estelle,” she said as she jabbed at a photograph. “This is Matt when he was seven years old. Cute little fellow, with those jug ears and curly eyelashes.”

  “And we might assume,” I said idly, “that Montana is a stage name.”

  Ruby Bee blinked at me. “Like an alias?”

  “Don’t be a ninny,” Estelle said with a snort. “Lots of famous actors change their names when they go to Hollywood. Some do it because they have sissified names and others because they have peculiar foreign names with sixteen consonants and no vowels. Writers do it, too, although they’re so goofy nobody cares what they do. Matt must have changed his name, but it’s kind of hard to understand why he’d pick another state.”

  “Albert Arkansas doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue like Tennessee Ernie Ford,” countered Ruby Bee, no doubt insulted at the idea she wasn’t fully aware of the shenanigans pulled by famous movie stars and impoverished writers. She tossed aside the magazine and began to wipe the immaculate surface of the bar with a dishrag.

  Eating steadily, I used my free hand to open the magazine to the page of photographs of the singer who purportedly was Maggody’s most renowned hometown boy. “I’ll tell you who he looks like in a vague way,” I said, then paused to pursue a slippery green bean. Successfully, I might add. “He looks like Adele’s nephew or whatever he was. He came to visit for a few years. The last time I saw him was the summer after I graduated from high school. He and some nasty little savage from the trailer park were spying on us out by Boone Creek.”

  “And what were you doing out there, missy?” said Ruby Bee.

  I finished off the meat loaf and pushed my plate toward her. “Counting lightning bugs for biology class.”

  “Thought you said the summer after you graduated?”

  “Must have been a graduate project,” I said coolly. “They were snickering behind some bushes and we—”

  “We?” said Ruby Bee.

  “Yes, we chased them down to explain how polite young men should behave.”

  “How about young women? Don’t think you’re fooling me with this—”

  “You didn’t make much of a lasting impression on them,” Estelle said, rescuing us from what might have escalated into a full-fledged maternal diatribe concerning an incident of no postcoital consequence. “I read in another magazine that just last week Matt was arrested at a bar in Nashville. He got into a fight over Katie Hawk, that mysterious black-haired singer who’s supposed to be part Indian.”

  “Wonder what his wife had to say about that,” Ruby Bee said under her breath as she took my plate into the kitchen. Pots and pans clattered as she made known her disapproval of biology projects, infideli
ty, and barroom brawling, but when she rejoined us, she was back to business. In this case, business meant shaking the grapevine to find out if Matt Montana was really Adele Wockermann’s nephew or whatever and what Adele was going to do if those Nashville folks called her again. And, when she had some spare time, searching through the boxes out in the storage room for my high school yearbooks.

  I left them to their plotting and walked back to the PD to sift through flyers begging me to protect my loved ones with a wise investment in life insurance. The only loved one I had was Ruby Bee, and nothing could protect her from her sharp-eyed, sharper-tongued, meddlesome self. Picture the two of us in a boat out in the middle of a pond. A sudden breeze blows off her scarf. I get out of the boat and walk across the surface of the water to retrieve it for her. If you think she’d be impressed, think again. “What’s the matter, Miss Tippy Toes?” she’d say tartly. “Forget how to swim?”

  Hell, I’d probably apologize. A couple of years in Maggody and I’d regressed into childhood. The symptoms were hard to overlook. After a brief romantic fling with a state cop, I’d shrugged him off and subsequently dedicated my life to reading Sears catalogs and watching grainy black-and-white movies in which the heroine dies in her paramour’s arms in time for a message from Bad Bubba at the discount furniture farm. I was bored, petulant, and, somewhere not too far in the back of my mind, usually wondering what my mother would fix me for supper.

  Whose fault? I’d blamed it on my ex-husband for a while, righteously telling myself I was so scarred from his betrayal that I was incapable of anything more complex than a do-nothing job in a town where there was nothing to do. I was merely being realistic about my temporary emotional debilities. When the time was right, when I was no longer a bruised orchid but something more like an invincible kudzu vine, that’s when I’d venture out into the real world. Bear in mind, when all you do all day is mark the minutes until your next meal, you can come up with some impressively eloquent metaphors for sloth.

  Berating myself had become so boring that I dozed off. When the dispatcher from the sheriff’s office called to invite me to a “real humdinger” of a truck wreck near Emmet, I heard myself come too damn close to bubbling over with gratitude. I hung the CLOSED sign on the door of the PD and left to go scrape bodies off the pavement. With any luck, I’d be busy trying to match arms and legs until suppertime.

  Mrs. Jim Bob parked in front of the county old folks home. As the mayor’s wife, it was only proper that she be the one who determined what all this call from Nashville was about, and why in heaven’s name some man had insisted on talking about Matt Montana to doddery old Adele Wockermann.

  The gloomy foyer smelled of a disinfectant pungent enough to make her eyes water. Pinching her lips, she listened to the faint squawk of a television set behind one of the closed doors and voices that drifted down the passageway beyond an uninhabited desk. She hadn’t been in the building since Cousin Vinnie Buchanon had been placed there temporarily while his daughter dealt with his mailorder bride from the Philippines. He’d been in the wing to her left. The ladies resided in the one to her right. The common rooms were clumped in the middle, and somewhere there was a nursing ward. The memory of it made her uneasy. Good Christians knew it was their duty to visit the sick and dying, but she figured that Brother Verber’s seminary training had better prepared him to offer a dose of bedside solace.

  After a terse mental lecture about the gravity of her visit, she went by the desk and tracked down the voices to a pair of aides in a staff lounge. Both wore drab green smocks and white stockings. One of them, a chubby young woman with tortoiseshell glasses and a ponytail, had taken off her shoe to massage her foot. The other, made up like a tart, was filing her nails and nattering.

  “Is one of you Patty May?” asked Mrs. Jim Bob.

  “Oops, a room buzzer,” said the tart. She didn’t exactly run out of the room, but she didn’t dawdle either.

  The remaining one squinted nervously from behind thick lenses. “I’m Patty May,” she admitted.

  Mrs. Jim Bob decided there wasn’t any reason to beat around the bush, especially when it looked like it was missing a few leaves. “I’m going to visit with Adele Wockermann, but first I’d like to hear exactly what that Nashville man said.”

  “Are you a relative?”

  “I am the wife of the mayor of Maggody. I suggest you stop asking questions and worry about answering them.”

  “I got to fix the medicine cups. Maybe you ought to talk to Miz Twayblade. She’s the day supervisor, and—”

  “I don’t believe I’ve seen you around town,” Mrs. Jim Bob said, “and I’m sure I’ve never once seen you attending services at the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall. You are a good Christian, aren’t you?”

  Patty May gaped as she tried to figure out if she’d just been accused of being a heathen. She decided she had and, in a huffy voice, said, “Of course I am, ma’am. I’ve been a member of the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Hasty since the day I was born. I’m in the choir and—”

  “Very commendable, I’m sure. Now stop flapping your lips like you’re eating soup and tell me about this telephone call from Nashville, Tennessee.”

  Patty May obliged.

  Once she was armed with the scanty details, Mrs. Jim Bob sent the girl about her business and went down the hall. She was beginning to wonder if she was supposed to go out the door marked EMERGENCY EXIT and look for some sort of annex when she saw her quarry’s name on a handprinted card. She opened the door of the room that Adele Wockermann seemingly shared with a hairless cocoon under a thin gray blanket. “Afternoon, Adele. How are you today?”

  Adele was seated on the edge of her bed, dressed in a thin cotton robe and shapeless slippers. She was deflated with age, her fingers swollen as they plucked at a snarly mess of yarn, her back bent, her skin as translucent as tissue paper. It was a shock to Mrs. Jim Bob, who could remember when Adele had been tall and strong, her head so high she always looked down her nose at you, often brusque, never one to hunt for a tactful word or spare a smile.

  Adele shot her a spiteful look. “I’m fine and dandy, excepting that Miz Twayblade went and canceled the finals of the volleyball tournament.” Cackling, she pointed at her roommate. “Iva and me were the favorites for the gold medal.”

  “Have you been taking your medication, Adele?” Mrs. Jim Bob retorted, unamused.

  “I hide them horse pills under my pillow, and then slip ’em to Iva. The last thing I need in my dying days is a roommate who blathers like a goat. Got no time for visitors who do the same. State your business, Barbara Ann Buchanon Buchanon, and then be on your way.”

  At least she was lucid, Mrs. Jim Bob thought as she twisted her gloves. The only chair in the room was piled high with soiled towels; she wasn’t about to touch them, much less move them. Iva most likely wouldn’t have minded if she sat on the bed—or even on her head—but it didn’t seem polite. She stayed where she was. “I happened to hear that a man from Nashville called to speak to you yesterday, but you—”

  “Never been there. Mr. Wockermann and I went on the train to New Orleans for our honeymoon. I didn’t know what to make of all those dark-skinned faces and wild music and dancing in the streets. Still don’t, come to think of it.”

  “Matt Montana is the name of a person, a real popular country music singer. Just last month he won a prize for writing the best original song of the year. Why would this man from Nashville say he was born here and you’d know about it?”

  “The man from Nashville was born here? Seems to me he’d be the man from Maggody.” Adele put aside the yarn and lifted her hand to the hearing aid in her left ear. “It’s time for you to go, Barbara Ann Buchanon Buchanon. There’s trouble brewing in places you’ll never see, and I aim to tune in for the latest bulletin.”

  Mrs. Jim Bob sprang forward and caught Adele’s wrist. Abject supplication wasn’t among her most predominant talents, but she did her best. “Please give me one more minute,
Adele. One more teeny, tiny minute. Maggody’s in a bad way. If this Matt Montana fellow is a hometown boy, he can save us.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “That’s his professional name. You would have known him as Matt something else or maybe Matthew. Could he have been one of Mr. Wockermann’s kinfolk?”

  Adele stopped struggling and gave Mrs. Jim Bob a sly smile. “If I was to recall, what’s in it for me?”

  “What do you want?”

  Adele wanted a number of things. Telling herself this was no time to worry about what Adele planned to do with swim fins and an electric can opener, Mrs. Jim Bob dutifully made a list, tucked it in her purse, and promised to return the next morning, Adele having made it clear she was tuning out until she had her spoils.

  Patty May hovered on the porch, swinging her arms to keep herself warm. “Did she tell you anything?” she demanded eagerly. “I’d about die if it turns out Matt Montana’s Miz Wockermann’s kin.”

  “No, but I’ll be by in the morning to see if she’s remembered anything. Listen real carefully, Patty May. If that Nashville man calls again, I want you to give him my name and my telephone number. Tell him I’m acting as Adele’s agent in all matters concerning Matt Montana. Furthermore, I don’t want Adele disturbed by anyone else—especially Ruby Bee Hanks and Estelle Oppers. They’re nothing but a pair of magpies who’ll yammer away until they exhaust the dear old thing.” She thought for a minute, then waggled her finger at the aide. “This needs to be our secret. If you do what I say, I’ll make sure you’ll be the very first person in all of Maggody to meet Matt Montana and get his autograph. Can I count on you?”

  Patty May nodded, but after Mrs. Jim Bob was gone, she went to find Tansy to see what she thought.

  Lillian Figg paused in the doorway of the bedroom, debating the merits of adopting a celibate life-style. She was a solid woman, broad-shouldered, taller than most of the men with whom she did business, and able to both shout them down and drink them under the table when negotiations demanded it. Her income as an agent and manager depended on her image, and at forty-two, it was taking more and more time each morning to fine-tune it. She did so religiously and effectively.