Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 04 (3 page)

-- ==+== --

"But is it a sin?" Mrs. Jim Bob repeated, determined to remain on her knees but increasingly aware of the graininess of the floor. The windows of the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall were open, but the air inside was as fusty and stagnant as the contents of an old trunk.

Beside her, Brother Verber rumbled thoughtfully while he tried to decide what to say. He knew he had to say the right thing, that being defined as what she wanted to hear, but nothing in his correspondence classes from the seminary in Las Vegas had dealt with the sinfulness -- or lack thereof -- of having your house in a movie. He clasped his hands more tightly against his white-bread soft belly and rolled his eyes upward to stare at a cobweb on the ceiling. A drop of sweat formed on the tip of his nose, and hung there with the tenacity of a stalactite.

"Well?" she prompted him.

"It's a matter of conscience," he said piously. "In that you, Sister Barbara, serve as the conscience of the whole town and have never let even your pinkie stray off the path of righteousness, I think it's safe to assume that whatever you choose to do will be the Christian thing."

Mrs. Jim Bob fought back a flash of annoyance as she sat on the edge of the pew and dusted off her knees. "If I saw clearly what the proper thing was, I wouldn't have driven all the way over here to ask you, Brother Verber. I was planning to take a coffee cake to Eula, who's been so feeling poorly that she hasn't decided how to vote in the upcoming Missionary Society election. Then Ruby Bee called on me with this crazy story about a Hollywood company wanting to make a movie in town, with my house in it."

"It's troubling," Brother Verber said, aware he wasn't behaving like the spiritual dictator of his flock. He normally didn't have any problem telling folks what to do and when to do it (and usually made a practice of doing just that), but a recent episode with an inflatable doll and a sackful of dirty magazines had undermined his conviction in the sanctity of his own opinions.

Mrs. Jim Bob had lost a little faith in him, too, but he was still the shepherd and she but a humble lamb, so she figured it was only fitting that she give him a chance. "The problem is," she said through a smile so tight the corners of her mouth didn't move, not even one tiny millimeter, "that everyone knows what kinds of immoral things go on in Hollywood. Every last one of those people takes drugs, drives too fast, sops up liquor like a sponge, and commits ... well, unnatural acts during the day. What if they were to start doing that sort of thing in my newly redecorated living room? What if they were to sneak upstairs to the guest room and commence fornicating on that ruffly pink bedspread that I had dry-cleaned less than a month ago?" Brother Verber's mind strayed for a moment, but he managed to avoid any onslaught of tattletale sweat. "Right there with the sun shining through the window?"

"That is not the issue."

"No, of course it ain't." He banished the image from his mind, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, and did his best to concentrate. "What does Jim Bob say about your house being in a movie?"

"He asked how much they would pay," she said with a sniff. "I do not feel we can welcome immorality into our home for three hundred dollars, but Jim Bob seemed to feel otherwise." Her eyes narrowed as she remembered the last time she'd been obliged to confront Jim Bob with certain violations of the Ten Commandments. Some of them she'd rewritten for the occasion, but she felt her revisions were just as good, if not better, than the originals.

"Do they have any use for a religious setting?" asked Brother Verber. There was a variety of good works he could accomplish with that kind of money. Like a new television in the trailer that served as the rectory, for starters.

"I doubt it. The name of this movie is Wild Cherry Wine, and I think that says it all, don't you? I simply will not have strangers drinking alcoholic beverages in my living room." Her decision made for herself, Mrs. Jim Bob stood up, smoothed away the wrinkles in her skirt, and put on her white gloves. "I really must run by Eula's and see how she's feeling. My duty is to the members of the congregation, not to outsiders with their trashy Hollywood morals."

"Praise the Lord," Brother Verber muttered to her back as she marched toward the door. He waited until she was gone before allowing himself to ponder the wicked, lascivious ways of the outsiders, at least one of whom was bound to be a starlet with big breasts, a tiny waist, a firm derriere, wet lips, and sultry, smoldering eyes. He was so overcome by his vision that he thudded to his knees, entwined his fingers, and earnestly began to pray.

-- ==+== --

Dahlia O'Neil sighed as she and Kevin sipped cherry limeades in front of the Dairee Dee-Lishus.

"What's the matter?" Kevin asked, swallowing hastily so he could inquire about his beloved's obvious state of depression. Why, she'd shook her head when he'd suggested cheeseburgers and onion rings. Now all three hundred plus pounds of her quivered in distress, as if she were the goddess of a volcano about to erupt in tears. He would have dropped to his knees to entreat her to pour out her soul to him, but the parking lot was muddy and he was wearing new jeans.

"Ain't nothing the matter," Dahlia growled, her teeth clamped on the plastic straw. A gargly noise came from her cup as she sucked up the last few drops. "Nothing at all, so there ain't any point in you asking me over and over again. Take me home, Kevin."

"Home? But I thought we was going to drive out to Boone Creek and -- "

"And what?" She sounded so unfriendly that Kevin's mind went blank. This happened a lot, and according to some folks in town, it stayed that way more often than not, but this time Kevin was blinded with panic. His father had let him take the car, which he hardly ever did after Kevin had experienced a few mishaps (though no one had been killed). There was a blanket in the trunk, along with a cooler filled with soda pop and a package of vanilla sandwich cookies. He'd even brought a transistor radio so the night could be filled with music, the breeze with the heady perfume of honeysuckle, the sky with twinkly stars, and his arms with as much as he could hold of the woman he loved.

He turned on all his manly charm. "Ah, but Dahlia, my dumpling, the night is young."

"The night may be young, but your brain ain't been born yet," she said without mercy. Her cheeks bulged out, and several chins appeared as she lowered her face and glared at him like a bull getting ready to charge.

"But what did I do?" Kevin forgot about his new jeans and dropped to his knees.

She looked down at his teary eyes, trembling mouth, and undulating Adam's apple, and for a moment felt something akin to pity for him. "Nothing, Kevin."

"And we're still betrothed, even if you don't want to go out to Boone Creek to count the lightning bugs?"

The pity dried up real quick. "I told you that we're gonna behave like respectable folks now that we're betrothed. Last time you let the devil creep into your soul, it was about the worst week in my entire life, Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon. If it ever happens again, you'll find yourself on your knees asking Raz's prize sow to be your awful wedded wife."

She refused to talk to him on the drive home, and climbed out of the car without so much as a peck on the cheek. The house shook as she stomped across the porch and through the door.

"Women!" Kevin said to himself as he backed out of the driveway, flattening a dozen chrysanthemums in the process, and drove back toward town. As he went past Raz Buchanon's place, he remembered the brutality of his beloved's remark. An ice pick stabbed his heart. He decided he needed some advice from someone who understood women. That ruled out his pa, and he sure couldn't go asking his ma about counting lightning bugs by the creek, but at last he thought of someone.

-- ==+== --

"Who does she think she is?" Hal Desmond barked from behind his desk. "Get me the last contract, Carlotta. She took three points last time. Why in God's name does she think she deserves six now? What's she done -- grown another breast?"

Carlotta did not leap to her feet and dash into the front room of the office to find the contract under discussion. She was much too inured to these petty and petulant tirades, and less than impressed with them. Hal was redfaced, but what else was new? He was trembling so hard that his curly brown toupee was liable to slip off his head, but who cared? She, along with other distaff members of the production company, had seen him without the toupee or anything else, and none of them had found the result worthy of discussion.

Crossing her legs, she settled back in the chair and said, "Gwenneth's heard rumors that actors actually get paid salaries, as in scale minimum and more. I told you to keep her locked in the basement between pictures. You're the one who insisted on escorting her to the hot new places and displaying her at parties. An extra three points seems to be the price of having cleavage hanging on your arm, Hal."

Hal lit a cigarette and regained control of himself, which wasn't all that hard, since his tantrums were perfunctory. He was a producer and a director. He had an artistic temperament. He was the one who made it happen. He had a full head of expensive hair, a keen grasp of the industry, a Jaguar, a house on the beach, and a herd of lackies to jump when he snapped his fingers. Except for Carlotta, he amended with a grunt. If she weren't so damn efficient, she'd have been cinematic history a long time ago.

He blew a plume of smoke in her direction. "I took Gwenneth to Marty -- what's his last name? Anyway, I took her to Marty's to stir up some interest in the flick. I've got to go through Marty to get to the distributor, and I've got to get to the distributor if we want Prickly Passion to be shown in the passion pits of America."

"Did Gwenneth make it with Marty?"

"I don't know," he admitted. He would have run his fingers through his hair had it been possible. "I told her to, and I threw him a few stories about her undeniable prowess. Gave him the tape with the outtakes of her and Frederick when they were, shall we say, ad-libbing to excess? If she'll ad-lib like that with Marty, he'll persuade Cinerotica to pick up the film in a big way, and we might see some money for our effort."

"You're a pimp."

"Yeah." He jabbed out his cigarette and gestured at her. After a moment of thought about her schedule for the evening, she took a cassette of Prickly Passion from a shelf, loaded and activated the VCR, and went behind the desk to massage his fleshy neck. As she did so, she realized her fingers could not reach around it. A shame.

Outside, headlights streamed down the boulevard like lemmings heading for the sea.

-- ==+== --

"Why would anyone want to make a movie in Maggody?"

"I don't know," I said as I passed the box of greasy popcorn to Sergeant John Plover of the Arkansas State Police. "Why would anyone forget to clean the windshield before inviting someone to accompany him to the drive-in movie?"

"There're a lot of bugs between Maggody and here. How was I to know they were suicidal? But tell me more about this movie business, Arly."

I glanced at the totality of my social life. He was good-looking in a sneaky way, with shaggy blond hair, a crooked nose, a quirky smile, and a dimple that appeared when he was trying not to laugh. The dimple was on display at the moment. I retrieved the popcorn and said, "Some little company from California. Ruby Bee told me its name, but I didn't recognize it. It's not MGM or Disney. The cast and crew are slated to reside in the Flamingo Motel."

"That many, huh?"

I checked the screen to see if the giant carnivorous cricket had leveled Tokyo yet. "And they didn't demand cots and rollaways, so they can't be more than ten of them. I suppose they chose Arkansas because it's cheap and they can get away with nonunion labor."

"Choosing Arkansas is not inexplicable, but choosing Maggody is," Plover said amiably. It was his most irritating trait -- this good-humored, easygoing amiability of ol' Sergeant Complaisancy. It carried us along from week to week, but I was increasingly aware that I knew very little about his inner convolutions. Maybe he didn't have any. A soul of silk, perhaps.

I was about to agree with his remark when my beeper went off. "I'd better call in," I muttered. "Ruby Bee's likely to have developed a hangnail or some such tragedy. Let me know if Cricko eats anybody."

I used the pay telephone outside the concession stand, and came back to the car with a scowl. Slamming the door hard enough to cause heads to pop up in backseats all around us, I said, "There's another fire between Maggody and Hasty. Harve wants me to meet him there."

"Does this mean we'll have to miss Tanya Makes the Team? darn it, you know how much I enjoy sports stories." He was already putting the speaker on the stand and starting the engine, however, alleviating me of the necessity of making a comment about his sordid taste. After all, I was the one who savored the antics of nature's finest mutants. That in itself might have merited some introspection, but I was more concerned about the recent spate of fires.

"What do you know about firebugs?" I asked as we pulled onto the highway.

"Not much. You ought to talk to Merganser about it. He's done a couple of special courses with the FBI and knows more than anyone else at the barracks."

"He came out to investigate the last fire, but the shack was so dry that it burned to the ground before the fire department arrived. We both agreed it was arson, though. You can't blame faulty wiring when the place had no electricity."

"Maybe some derelict was holed up there and made a fire to cook," suggested Plover.

"Four times in the last month? You'd think he'd learn something about campfire safety along the way." I stuffed my mouth with popcorn and thoughtfully chomped my way through it. "These fires are being set deliberately. Our nut case, as Harve so politely calls him, could be a derelict. He could also be a kid or a drunk from the pool hall or a real, live psycho. What frightens me is that he seems to be heating up rapidly. Eventually someone's going to get hurt, or the fire's going to spread and do serious damage."

All Plover could do was repeat his suggestion to talk to Merganser. We turned on the county road that led to Hasty, and had no difficulty finding the scene, in that roiling smoke deposited ashes on the windshield long before we caught sight of an orange glow above the treetops. Sheriff's department vehicles blocked the road, thwarting the growing line of trucks and cars filled with spectators.

We parked and joined the parade of pedestrians, some of whom had the foresight to bring coolers and folding aluminum chairs.

"What's burning?" Plover asked me.

"A barn," I said, trying to picture something I'd driven past a million times. "There used to be a house, but it was torn down years ago. The roof of the barn collapsed and it wasn't much more than a pile of gray lumber and a home for mice and snakes."

"Evenin,' Arly," said a voice from behind us.

I looked back at one of the Maggody magpies. "Hi, Eula. What are you doing out here?"

"Lottie called me when she heard about the fire, and I thought I'd come take a look at it. Oh, there's Elsie and her daughter walking with Larry Joe and Joyce. I don't think it's good for Joyce to be exposed to smoke when she's" -- Eula noticed Plover and lowered her voice -- "in a family way."

"Don't worry about him," I said. "He's my gynecologist. You wouldn't believe some of the things he's seen. Tell her about the contortionist who -- "

Eula fled. We wound through the crowd, went past the police line, and found Harve glumly watching the volunteer firemen hosing the fire, which by now consisted only of isolated sputters of flames. "Any evidence?" I asked.

Harve plucked a cigar butt from his shirt pocket. Once he'd gotten it going, he said, "Not a darn thing. Some kid spotted the fire about an hour ago, but it took him another ten minutes to find a telephone. By the time the boys got here, all they could do was contain the darn thing."

Wade Elkins, the fire chief, joined us. His face was streaked with soot and his curly dark hair dotted with ashes, but he was still attractive, and he moved quickly for someone who'd roused his troops, driven ten miles, and battled the fire for most of an hour. "How many more bonfires are y'all planning to have this month, Arly? I'd like to see the end of a baseball game just once."

"Sorry, Wade," I said, not sure why I was apologizing. "I know you and the guys are getting tired of our fires. Maybe we can arrange for the arsonist to set a few over in Emmet so you won't have to drive so, far."

"But then I wouldn't get to be your hero of the hour." He winked at me. "I'm beginning to look forward to our little romantic, firelit trysts. Just you and me and -- oh, yeah -- everybody this side of the Missouri line."

Harrumphing under his breath, Plover tapped Harve on the shoulder. "Where's the kid who reported the fire?"

"You think he might have seen something?" I said.

Harve shrugged. "Said he didn't, but you're welcome to ask him again. He's the one in the plaid shirt."

I recognized Billy Dick MacNamara in the huddle of high school boys and pointed him out to Plover. "He's a Maggody boy, lives with his mother out past the high school. I questioned him once about some tools missing from the shop room, but it turned out he wasn't involved."

"He was kinda stuttery when he called," Wade said. "Took me a while to figure out what he was talking about and where the fire was. There wasn't anything left when we got here, so it didn't make a rat's ass of difference."

I called to Billy Dick, who came over with a leery expression on his plump, round face. He was a bleachy kid, with hair so light it was invisible, and eyes that were pale to the point of being almost colorless. He moved clumsily, as though the ground were covered with a sheen of ice. "This is Sergeant Plover," I said to him. "He's assisting the sheriff and me."

Billy Dick blinked at us, one at a time. In a high, uncertain voice he said, "It's s-scary, ain't it? My ma's all worried that someone'll b-burn our house down while we're sleeping." Every now and then he tangled with an initial consonant, but he was not difficult to understand.

"What time did you see the fire?" Plover asked.

"I -- uh, I left my house at nine, so it was probably ten minutes after that. I drove real fast to the nearest house to report the fire."

Wade nodded. "I got the call at nine-twenty. Took us half an hour to organize and get here."

"This is a pretty lonely road," I said, "and it was late. Think, Billy Dick: Did you pass any cars when you drove out this way?"

"I wasn't paying much attention. I've been keeping company with a girl what lives in Hasty. I was thinking about her all the time I was driving -- right up until I noticed the fire, anyway."

Plover's dimple appeared as he said, "Nine-thirty's late for a date, isn't it?"

Billy Dick scuffled his foot in the dirt. "Her p-parents had to go into Farberville on account of her great-aunt taking a fall in the bathtub. She was afraid to stay home alone."

"Oh," Plover said knowingly.

I ignored this display of macho bonding. "Try to remember if you saw any cars going in either direction, Billy Dick. Were you momentarily blinded by headlights?"

He closed his eyes and sucked noisily on his lower lip until his chin glistened in the last of the firelight. I was about to repeat my question when he said, "Yeah, twice. Just past the low-water bridge there was a p-pickup coming toward me. I didn't see what color it was or anything. And right before I spotted the fire, there was a taillight going over the top of a hill. The other one must have been broke."

"Well, then," Harve said, working the cigar butt from one corner of his mouth to the other in record-breaking time, presuming there was a record. "We got a truck that was headed for Maggody and a taillight headed for Hasty. It ain't much, but at least it's something."

Plover shook his head. "Unless the perp set the fire so that it would take a while to blaze up, and was back home watching the baseball game by nine o'clock. Or unless he was parked off the road and watched Billy Dick here drive by, then sedately went on his way."

"Dammit, Plover," Harve said without anger, "it's my party and we're going to play by my theories, mostly, cause that's all we've got. Arly, see what you can turn up about a truck coming your way. I'll put one of my boys on the Hasty end. A vehicle with a broken taillight might not be too hard to find."

I nodded. "And I'll cruise the road tomorrow and look for a place where the perp could have pulled off far enough not to be seen."

Wade yelled a few orders to his men, then grinned at me. "Maybe you ought to take me up on that offer to open a branch in Maggody. I'd be real pleased to stay at your place with you until we catch this guy. On your couch ... or elsewhere."

"So kind of you," I said, taking a wicked pleasure in Plover's faint snort. "If a fireman can't heat up the situation, who can?"

On that incredibly witty note, we disbanded.

Chapter 3

8 EXT. WOODED PATH -- NIGHT -- MED. SHOT

Loretta is sitting on a log. Cooter paces in front of her, Ins face tight with anger and his hands curled into fists.

COOTER

So you and that white trash went for a walk the other night, did you?

LORETTA

(miserably)

Yes, Sir, but that's all we did.

CAMERA MOVES behind Cooter as he steps in front of Loretta.

COOTER

So you're still a sweet little virgin, huh? Never seen one of these before, huh? Wouldn't know what to do with it, huh?

LORETTA

(brokenly)

Yes, sir -- I mean, no, Sir. Billy Joe and I didn't ... He wanted to, but I told him I had to wait until I was married.

COOTER

I'll find out if you're lying when the time comes. If you are, I'll find ways to make you miserable for the rest of your life. (beat) How old are you?

LORETTA

Fifteen, Sir. My birthday's coming up real fast.

COOTER

I don't care about any fool birthday. Fifteen's old enough to be learned a few things. I aim to start the lesson right now.

LORETTA

Yes, Sir. My pa said I had to do whatever you told me to.

9 CLOSE SHOT-BILLY JOE

Billy Joe is hiding behind some trees, his expression tormented.

10 RETURN TO SCENE

Loretta and Cooter should be able to AD-LIB through this. CAMERA MOVES between them.

Note: See script of Prickly Passion, scenes 1, 6, 11, 17, 29.

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