“Yes, I hear you,” steering the car back onto the road.
Estafay coughed and said, “If the Lord tells me to get rhinoplasty, liposuction, mammaplasty and… and whatever else, you should have the sense to be quiet and thankful.”
“Yes, Estafay. Hey, wait a minute! How much is all this stuff gonna cost?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Where’s the money coming from?”
Estafay sighed. “What did I just tell you? You haven’t heard a word I said. Faith, Robert Earl Harris. The money your father left you will pay for everything.”
“The money hasn’t come yet and we don’t know when it will.”
“It’ll be coming real soon.”
“How do you know?”
“Don’t start again! I just spelled it out for you. Have some faith for once in your life. The Lord will provide, just put your faith in Him.”
They rode a few miles in silence, then Robert Earl said, “Estafay, aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Your teeth? Don’t worry, we should have enough to get you a brand-new set.”
“No. My dream. Robert Earl’s gas station and exotic snake farm. Remember?”
“I pray one day you’ll drop such foolishness.”
He turned and stared at her. “How can you say that?” A car horn blew and he returned his attention to driving. “How can you say that, Estafay? You know I’ve been planning this for years. What you think I trained snakes for? What if we can’t afford to start my business and get you all the stuff you talking about?”
“No problem, we drop the snake cage.”
“What! It ain’t a snake cage, Estafay. It’s a gas station and exotic snake farm. How many times I gotta tell you?”
“Did the Lord tell you to open a gas station… with snakes… and serpents?”
“No, He didn’t.”
“What I thought. Don’t worry about it. We should have enough money to do both. Faith, Robert, faith.”
They rode in silence, through small towns distinguishable only by the name on a water tower.
Lake Village. Masonville. Winchester. Pickens. Dumas. Mitchellvile. Gould. Grady, the home of the infamous Cummins prison farm. Moscow. Pine Bluff, where the two-lane road finally ended and Interstate 640 began.
Arriving in Little Rock, Estafay directed Robert Earl to a three-story medical building. He waited in the car while she, wearing a blue-and-white ankle-length pinafore, walked up the steps to the entrance, holding her beloved Bible to her chest.
Yes, she definitely could use some fixin’ up, he thought when she disappeared inside. But dag gummit, why should he give up his dream? The way his luck was going when Estafay paid for all the plastic stuff she wanted, he wouldn’t have enough to buy a gallon of gas, let alone open a gas station and exotic snake farm.
The Lord didn’t tell him to open a gas station and exotic snake farm. So what? He didn’t tell him not to, either.
“Leave her!” whispered a voice. The demon, rearing its ugly head again, tempting him to do something evil.
Shut up! he told it. He wouldn’t listen, couldn’t listen. The last time he’d listened he’d hurt someone, hurt someone real bad… He pressed his hands against his ears. Shut up! Shut up!
The voice in his head grew louder: “Leave her, Robert Earl.”
And throw twenty-five years of marriage away? No way, Jose!
“What if the operation goes badly?”
She’ll still be my wife—through sickness and death.
“Tara Reid.”
Robert Earl thought hard and couldn’t recall a Tara Reid.
“Tara Reid!”
He remembered: she was the little white girl whose titty popped out during a photo shoot. A deformed titty, scarred and mutilated thanks to a surgeon’s scalpel.
Estafay’s operation could go wrong, just like Tara’s.
Jeepers! If that happened to Estafay… He squeezed his head harder, hoping to rid the image of Estafay and him sitting at a table in the Waffle House, his teeth slipping out and Estafay’s deformed titties popping loose… Lord in heaven!
“What’s wrong with you?” Estafay asked.
“Huh?”
Estafay got into the backseat. “What’s wrong with your head? Looks like you fighting a demon.”
“No, just a little headache.” He took a quick peek at her chest and a chill ran through his gums. “That didn’t take long.”
“The doctor said I should take a few days to think about it. It’s a medical procedure, you know, so there’s a slim possibility of complications.”
Robert Earl swallowed. “What kind of complications?”
“Pain. Infection. Scars. The operation doesn’t take with everyone. I’m sure I won’t have any problems. Unlike most people, I have faith in the Lord above.”
He wanted to tell her about Tara Reid, but didn’t have the heart. “Uh, did the doctor say how much the procedure is going to cost?”
Estafay fanned herself with the paper. “Let’s go. It’s a hundred degrees out here. Thirteen thousand dollars. It’s hot enough to bake a cake in the shade. Turn the radio on. I don’t feel up for much talking. It’s too hot.”
Robert Earl started the car and pushed the button on the radio. Paul Simon sang about fifty ways to leave your lover.
“Turn to gospel. You know I don’t listen to the devil’s music.”
He let the song play. Paul suggested make a little plan… and set yourself free. If it came down to losing his dream and helping Estafay paste on falsies, he would take Paul’s advice.
Estafay tapped him on the shoulder. “Didn’t you hear me? Turn to gospel music.”
He looked her in the face in the rearview mirror, smiled without a tooth in his mouth and said, “Yes, dear.”
Chapter 17
Lysol burning her hand, Ruth Ann scrubbed the tub. It didn’t need cleaning. She needed an activity to occupy her mind. The yellow sponge disintegrated into bits and pieces and she kept scrubbing. The bits and pieces rubbed away to nothing and she had to stop.
Ceasing activity for only a minute allowed a horrific thought to take center stage: Lester flipping his lid when Sheriff Bledsoe informed him of her affair with Eric. She sat on the commode and chewed on a thumbnail.
Would Lester kill me?
She bit a nice piece of skin off the tip of her thumb and spit it on the floor. Yes, he just might.
When she’d stepped inside, Lester asked, “What did Sheriff Bledsoe want?” She’d shrugged and said, “Nothing.”
She couldn’t tell him the truth; it sounded so crazy: Eric and I had an affair, I broke it off and Eric got mad and tried to frame me with Daddy’s murder by planting poison and neck bones on our back porch, and now Sheriff Bledsoe wants you and me at the station because he’s not sure we didn’t have anything to do with the poison and neck bones.
There was a knock at the door. “Ruthie, you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
Tell him?
She picked up a tube of Crest toothpaste and tossed it in the air… Tails, she would tell him a modified version of the truth… Heads, she wouldn’t tell him shit… The tube landed on the floor, the backside showing… Shit!
She got up and opened the door. Lester stood in the hallway, brow furrowed.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I was just cleaning the bathroom.” Uh-uh! He would have to hear it from someone else, and still she would deny it.
“Something’s wrong, Ruthie. I can feel it. Talk to me. It’s that no-good Eric Barnes, isn’t it? He’s done something to Shirley, hasn’t he?”