So I may have been in a snit as I slammed the door on my way out of the bar and grill. As I stalked up the highway toward the PD, I may have been thinking of a whole lot more devastatingly clever things I should have said, and that may have been why Jim Bob had to bellow like a bullfrog to get my attention.
I shaded my eyes and looked across the highway. "What do you want?"
"The inspectors from the health department are here and they want to talk to you," he yelled. "Have you gone blind and deaf, Chief Hanks…or just plain stupid?"
"It's the heat. If I had a decent air conditioner in the PD, I wouldn't be reduced to a mindless mass of indeterminate gray matter," I yelled back, not in the mood for Hizzoner's particular brand of humorless humor any more than I was in the mood for a certain state trooper's "Don't worry your little head about it" attitude. I hate that.
"The inspectors have to talk to you, and they want to do it sometime before the sun sets in Hawaii. If you can't cross the street by yourself, I'll come hold your damn fool hand."
I waited until a truck rattled by, then took my own sweet time going across the road and the parking lot. Two men were waiting with Jim Bob under what shade there was beside the door of the SuperSaver. Despite the fact that one was tall and the other short, one rosy and the other anemic, one with a nice smile and the other with stained, crooked teeth, they had a certain sameness that bureaucracy demands and therefore begets. Neither looked especially impressed with me, but frankly, my dear, I didn't give a rat's ass.
"This is Chief Hanks," Jim Bob muttered. "She has to hear how you inspected the store and didn't find dead mice in the vents or bug spray in the icebox."
Tweedledee bobbled his head and assured me everything satisfied current state regulations. Tweedledum bobbled his head and rumbled an agreement.
"Then we're not to worry about the twenty-three people who had to be taken away by ambulance?" I asked blandly. "It was just…one of those pesky little things that can happen to any of us?"
This time Tweedledum bobbled his head and reassured me all the facilities looked shipshape to him. Tweedledee bobbled his head and rumbled an agreement.
"Good grief," I said to Jim Bob, "where'd you buy these two? Do they work part-time as dashboard figurines? You know, with one of those wiggly plastic hula girls between them and a pair of foam dice dangling from the rearview mirror, you could have yourself a real nice-"
"Thanks, boys," Jim Bob cut in heartily. He slapped them on their backs and told them how very deeply he appreciated them having to come all the way out to Maggody to satisfy some meddlesome cop who had nothing better to do than stand around in the hot sun and make smart-alecky remarks.
He kept it up until they drove away, then looked at me with one of his smirkier smirks. "I do believe you've been informed that once the state health inspectors have been here, I can reopen the store?"
"But not the deli until we hear from the lab."
"Fuck the deli. Just get all that tape out of here and go find something useful to do for a change. You're running behind on speeding tickets this month, and I'd be real sorry if the town council had to unplug that air conditioner of yours in order to cut down on expenses. Then you'd really have something to bitch about, wouldn't you?"
With a parting smirk, Hizzoner went into the store. Apparently, he'd been confident of a favorable report from the health department, because several high-school boys drove up and headed for the front door. I decided the orange tape gave the place a festive air, and went back across the road. This time, no one offered to hold my hand, but I did it just the same.
At five o'clock Monday afternoon, roughly fifty hours after twenty-three people had been removed from the premises in ambulances, Jim Bob's SuperSaver Buy 4 Less reopened for business, although without a marching band, dignitaries, careening cheerleaders, or any fanfare at all.
At 5:10, the first customer of the day, Raz Buchanon, bought a tin of chawin' tobacco, a tabloid that claimed Elvis was not only alive but had endured a series of sex-change operations to protect his anonymity, and two gourmet frozen dinners (breast of chicken à l'orange with vegetable-rice medley). If you don't understand why he bought two, don't worry about it. If you do, try not to dwell on it too much.
At six o'clock, the small patch of gravel in front of the Satterings' produce stand was as vacant as a dead man's eyes. Ivy figured she knew why, but she told Alex to wait there on the off chance there'd be a customer. She went into the house and combed her hair, then drove into town to compare tomato and snap-bean prices at the SuperSaver.
At 6:15, Geraldo Mandozes banged down the counter window of the Dairee Dee-Lishus, banged into position the CLOSED sign, banged his car door shut, and drove over to the SuperSaver to see whether the shits were selling tamales that tasted as if they were made of dog meat and catsup.
At 6:20, Eula Lemoy told Millicent McIlhaney that Lamont Petrel had tried to poison every last soul in town and was now hiding out in a brothel in Little Rock or maybe Pine Bluff.
At 6:30, Barbie Buteo told her husband, R.T., that some fellow in Maggody had raped half a dozen high-school girls. This is hardly vital to the plot, but let it be noted that R.T. spent a goodly portion of the ensuing evening (and of his paycheck) at the Dew Drop Inn on the south side of Emmet, which isn't too far from Maggody.
At 6:45, Ruby Bee and Estelle got so tired of standing on tippytoes in front of the kitchen-sink window, trying to see who all was going in and out of the SuperSaver, that Ruby Bee taped up the CLOSED sign on the door of the Bar & Grill and the two went over to identify the traitors by name, rank, and serial number, if nothing else.
At 7:13, Hammet Buchanon hit a baseball for the first time in his life. It rolled between Martin Milvin's feet, bounced over a clump of Johnsongrass, flattened a honeybee on a black-eyed Susan, and came to a stop not too far in front of Georgie McMay. After a moment of thought, Georgie hurled it as hard as he could at Earl Boy Nookim's head, but it soared over him and hit Ray Mandozes in the back. The subsequent exchange of expletives, some in Spanish and some in English, evolved into an epic brawl.
At 8:55, Dahlia sauntered real casual like past the end of the last aisle and ducked into the employee break room because she wanted to have a few words with Kevin before he started work. He came in shortly afterward and they commenced a conversation interspersed with jabbing fingers and more than a snivelly tear or two.
At nine o'clock, Buzz Milvin discovered the two in the break room and told Dahlia to run along home and Kevin to get to work and do something about the smell lingering in the general area of the picnic pavilion. When Kevin looked blank, Buzz told him where to find a bucket and mop, then went to the third aisle for a jumbo bottle of Lysol. He assumed Dahlia left through the back door.
At some moment during the next hour, Hammet Buchanon stopped complaining about what a dopey, cross-eyed calf Saralee Chewink was and fell asleep in front of the television. Saralee herself went to sleep on a roll-away cot in the Lambertinos' family room, thinking about what a mysterious fellow Hammet was. What she really meant was enigmatic, but that was a word decidedly outside the limited scope of her fourth-grade vocabulary. Also safe in bed for the night, Jackie Sattering told his pa how he'd caught a monarch butterfly in right field. Alex shared his excitement. In the tiny bedroom of a rusty mobile home at the back of the Pot O' Gold, Ray Mandozes was awake in the top bunk, imagining himself a courageous toreador and Georgie McMay a trembling, drooling, bowlegged toro. Olay, as they say in Maggody.
At ten o'clock, Enoch McMay was conversing in his dreams with Gilligan and the Skipper. Georgie McMay picked at a scab on his lower lip. Earl Boy Nookim caught a lightning bug and squished it in his fist, and only went inside the mobile home not too far from the Mandozeses' when his ma threatened to whup him if'n he didn't.