There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell - v4 (23 page)

Maye shook her head.

“You should see it sometime, then,” Ruby said, taking a seat in a plaid burlap-covered rocker with maple arms that had been chewed like chum by litters upon litters of boxers dating back to the beginning of time. “Now, what’s your business with Rowena Spaulding?”

“She’s a horrible woman,” Maye declared. “Even the first time I met her, she was insulting and condescending and she made me feel so awful and for no reason. I didn’t know her, I had never met her before. It was my first bad experience in Spaulding. Do you know her?”

Ruby nodded. “I used to.”

“My husband and I just moved to Spaulding, after he got a job teaching at the university in Dean Spaulding’s department,” Maye continued. “I don’t know anyone, and it’s been hard to make friends. I know it takes time, but I tried all kinds of things. I met these witches, I stalked people, I even lied, I mean, I was really trying. I had so many friends back home, and here it’s so lonely. So I thought that if I entered the Sewer Pipe Queen Pageant, I could meet people that way, especially if I won the title. But then I found out that Rowena’s sponsoring the opera singer, my sponsor got eaten by a raccoon, and now I have no one. Everything has fallen apart, and I am so afraid that I’m going to spend the rest of my life in this town where I don’t know a single person. I just wanted a friend to go to lunch with, or someone who knew me well enough to notice I was wearing a new sweater. That’s all. That’s all I wanted.”

Ruby said nothing and just stared at Maye for a long time, her red, smeared mouth puckered tightly. “So you’re not a reporter,” she finally said. “And you don’t work at the TV station.”

“Well,” Maye replied, shaking her head, “I used to be a reporter, but I’m not anymore. I came out here to talk to you because I want to be the Sewer Pipe Queen.”

“But I could swear,” Ruby rattled, “that I’ve seen you on TV.”

Maye nodded. “I was on the news once,” she admitted. “When my sponsor was supposedly killed by a woodland creature.”

“That’s where I saw you!” the old woman declared, snapping her bony fingers. “I thought you looked familiar! You were awfully nice to the rapscallion who snacked on your neighbor. I knew that girl in high school, although she was a couple of years behind me. Pretty thing.”

“No, no, no. That was Rick Titball’s handiwork,” Maye protested. “I never said those things, well, not exactly in those terms. That whole segment was pasted together like a ransom note.”

“That one-man news team is always coming out here, trying to get me to talk to him,” Ruby continued. “Doing his own makeup, setting up the camera, yelling ‘Cut!’ to himself. I won’t have anything to do with it. I usually just send a couple of the dogs out after him. That does the trick.”

“I don’t know how he found you,” Maye replied. “You were pretty hard to track down.”

“Mmmm,” Ruby said, grinding out her cigarette before lighting a new one. “They find you. Not very often, but once in a while, some nosy body comes snooping along. I guess it’s not okay with some people to leave well enough alone. It’s none of their damn business anyway!”

“I feel badly that I am one of those nosy bodies,” Maye said. “I understand why you would be so upset, but it truly wasn’t my intention.”

“What exactly is your intention?” Ruby crackled, then burped without pause. “Why would you go through the trouble of driving all the way out here just to see an old Sewer Pipe Queen? There are plenty of them left in that shithole town, I’m sure. Why did you want to see me? Everyone else has forgotten everything about me except for Dick Titball.”

Maye laughed. “I’m entering that Sewer Pipe Queen contest and I want to win,” she explained. “That’s why I’m here. I need your help. I need a coach, a sponsor to show me how to win. When I found your file in the library, it had more newspaper clippings in it than all of the other queens put together. Photographers took pictures of you everywhere you went. Every time you did something, there was a clipping of it with a photograph of you. People were fascinated by you, they had to be, otherwise why would you be in the paper so often? All those headlines—RUBY SPICER OPENS GROCERY STORE, RUBY SPICER TO ATTEND WEEKEND PARTY, RUBY SPICER KICKS UP HER HEELS AT BARN DANCE. You really were the queen of that town. No other title holder seemed to have the effect on Spaulding that you did. You were the best. You were the Queen of Queens. They
loved
you.”

Ruby looked into Maye’s eyes for a moment, then looked away.

“Yeah? Did you see one that said RUBY SPICER VANISHES?” the old woman finally asked quietly.

Maye didn’t know what to say. It was true, the old woman was right. She didn’t see a single clipping about Ruby’s sudden disappearance or even speculation about what might have happened to her. It was as if Ruby Spicer got sucked into a black hole one day, and no one noticed or said a word about it. It was as if Spaulding just kept on going.

“Well, I do know that in all of my asking around about you,” she said to the town’s former favorite daughter, “some people thought you moved to a big city because you were so young and pretty that you’d have more opportunities there. Or that you met some fellow, ran off, and lived happily ever after.”

“Heh,” the old woman scoffed. “I guess it never crossed anyone’s mind that I was living twenty miles out of town off a stinking dirt road in a farmhouse that my father built. No one ever thought that. Or why it might be.”

A long moment passed before Maye was able to assemble enough courage to open her mouth and say, “And why was that?”

Ruby turned her head sharply and glared at Maye. “I don’t need to tell you anything,” she hissed as smoke billowed out of her mouth. “I don’t even know you. Who are you to ask me questions? You’re in my house! A stranger in my house, asking me questions!”

“I’m sorry,” Maye said, standing up, not willing to be threatened again with the nearest item that Ruby could get her knotted hands around. “I think I should go. Again, I’m sorry that I disturbed you.”

“I’m such a fool, such an old fool,” Ruby said, suddenly weeping into her hands. “These are only tears of gratitude—an old maid’s gratitude for the crumbs offered…. You see, no one ever called me darling before.”

Again, Maye was stumped. Maybe the old woman was senile, she thought—perhaps she was hearing voices? Being stuck out in an old farmhouse for fifty years couldn’t have provided too much stimulation for mind clarity or preserving whatever was there to begin with. Oh boy, Maye thought as she looked at the sobbing woman, not knowing what to do.

“Well,” Maye said gently, touching Ruby on the shoulder as the woman sobbed. “Despite the fact that you tried to burn my face with your flaming cigarette, I can see that you may have some inner potential for a primitive form of kindness, but I’m sorry, I didn’t call you darling. I think maybe you have misunderstood something I said?”

“Oh, goddamn it!” Ruby suddenly shouted, looking up with a somewhat disgusted dry face and throwing her hands down with a fast, hard slap on her legs, followed by a sudden, rumbling shot sounding similar to
ppppppppppppptt
that was entirely unaccounted for. “Don’tcha ever watch TV? It’s Bette Davis.
Now, Voyager
. Old crazy fat lady goes on a diet and becomes beautiful, then takes a cruise and falls in love with a doctor? Have you ever seen that one? Do you even
have
a TV?”

Maye was still trying to figure out exactly what had just happened when she became engulfed in a smell that called to mind the essence of a stagnant swamp.

“Mmm,” she said, trying to keep her mouth closed as tight as possible to avoid inhaling the foul odor. “I have a TV. Seen
Now, Voyager
, but it was years ago. I don’t remember that line.”

“How could you not remember that line?” Ruby asked, incredulous. “It’s the best line in the whole damn movie! The spinster, that was Bette Davis’s part, she was once in love when she was young, to a nice fellow, too, and just like that, it gets taken away from her. Snap! Just like that because of her evil mother. She spends the rest of her miserable life cooped up in an old house going insane and getting fat because of what she lost until her psychiatrist makes her lose the weight and puts her on a cruise where she meets the doctor. You might as well not ever have seen the movie if you don’t remember that line. I remember that line. For years, I have remembered that line.”

“I’ll make a note to keep my eye out for it,” Maye said quickly as her breath ran out.

“Agh!” Ruby screeched, waving her hand vigorously. “Puppy! Christ, that was a stinker!”

Puppy, knowing all too well that he had been falsely accused and convicted, no less in front of a stranger, lowered his graying snout, climbed off the ratty sofa, and slinked down the hall.

“I really should go,” Maye said. “I’ve taken up enough of your time. I’m sure you have a lot of…things to do. Thank you for inviting me back in. I really enjoyed meeting you.”

“Oh,” Ruby said, looking surprised. “So soon? You’re gonna go so soon? Well, all right then, I suppose. Don’tcha want help with the pageant? Did you change your mind?”

“No,” Maye said, smiling and shaking her head. “I’m going to do it. I’ll just keep looking for a sponsor if you’re not available.”

“I never said I wouldn’t do it,” the shriveled woman said. “Never said that. It’s just that—well, how ’bout I think about it? I’ll think about it. I’ll know by tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Maye agreed. “Should I call you in the afternoon?”

“No, no, no,” Ruby protested, seeming affronted. “Just come by. Around this time. That’s a good idea, I think.”

The thought of driving another forty-mile round trip to the middle of nowhere just so Ruby could refuse to help her didn’t sit very nicely with Maye, but she had already realized that you didn’t compromise with Miss Ruby Spicer. There was barely room to stand, let alone wiggle.

“That would be fine,” she agreed.

“Good,” Ruby replied victoriously. “Right around this time would be good.”

“Sure,” Maye complied as she headed out the door toward her car. “I’ll see you then.”

“Wow,” Charlie said that night at dinner, his face consumed by astonishment. “I can’t believe you met her. The Old Sewer Pipe Queen herself. I’m a little worried that you went out there alone, though—I don’t know how I feel about that, it makes me a bit uneasy. Next time you go, make sure you take my cell phone. And bring some hobbits with you, too.”

“Well, you’ll have to help me travel to the Shire and trap a couple, because I’m going back to Ruby’s tomorrow,” Maye said.

“That’s fast. Are you starting your…training?” he asked with a smirk, scooping a second helping of mashed potatoes onto his plate.

“Nope,” she replied. “She hasn’t taken me on yet. Said she needed to think it over and she’d know by tomorrow. That’s why I have to go out there again.”

“You can’t just call her?” Charlie said, a little annoyed. “Why do you have to go all the way out to the woods to find out if she’ll say yes?”

“It’s Ruby, and it’s a whole different world out there,” Maye tried to explain. She almost added that if you pushed Ruby a fraction of an inch the wrong way, you’d wind up needing a skin graft somewhere on your body, but decided against it. “She’s been out there by herself for a long time. I think it’s been quite a while since that old woman has had any kind of human interaction aside from that jackass Rick Titball knocking on her door. She’s even sort of—feral. It’s like she’s a one-person tribe who’s been living deep in the forest for years and years without seeing anyone else, just her and her pack of dogs.”

“So what you’re telling me is that you’re trying to get the Blair Witch to be your coach in a beauty pageant,” Charlie commented.

“Not exactly the Blair Witch,” Maye said, sort of laughing. She took a sip of wine. “More like a hybrid of Ruth Gordon and Witchiepoo from
H.R. Pufnstuf
.”

“Great,” he jeered. “If you vanish in those woods and all they find of you is some videotape and a couple of teeth, I’m making them into earrings and giving them to my next wife.”

“Listen,” she said. “If there’s even a drop of that Ruby Spicer charm buried deep in the layers of crust that she’s now become, I’m never going to find that anywhere else. She had something about her the other queens simply couldn’t touch, not even Cynthia. She’s the Obi-Wan Kenobi of Sewer Pipe Queens, I’m telling you. She has the power. I know it’s in her somewhere—a quality like that just doesn’t vanish, even if
she
did. I need her as my coach, because whatever it is that Ruby Spicer has, Rowena Spaulding certainly doesn’t.”

“Rowena Spaulding has pickle juice in her veins,” Charlie agreed. “She’s nothing but brine and vinegar and a tiny raisin heart. Dean Spaulding is such a nice, gregarious man. I can’t figure that pairing out for the life of me. He must see something in her we can’t.”

“Or maybe he can’t see what we do,” Maye suggested. “All I know is that I want to beat her for the title. I have to win this thing. I’d rather have liposuction in a dirty basement than see Rowena Spaulding win the right to gloat over me for the rest of my life.”

“Well,” Charlie said as he stood up and started to clear the dishes. “I guess tomorrow you’ll find out if you have a sponsor. Save these dinner rolls, Maye; bread crumbs are cheaper than GPS and far less trouble than Frodo and friends.”

The next afternoon as she was driving toward Ruby’s shack, Maye found the woods far less foreboding than she had the day before. Maybe there was more sunlight illuminating the badly worn road, or perhaps the morning rain had freshened the woods up a bit, making them look more green than dark, but when she finally got to Ruby’s house, even that didn’t seem nearly as ruinous as it initially had. On a fresh approach, it might have only needed a coat of paint and the minor talents of a handyman. And a gardener. And maybe a roofer. Still, it was clearly not what the home of a celebrated town queen should have been.

Maye knocked on the boxer head and stood there for quite some time without hearing any signs of life inside. She knocked again, this time much louder, concerned that she didn’t even hear the herd of dogs stirring. Cupping her hands around her eyes, she peered into the window next to the front door and saw two black-bottomed slippers hanging off the edge of a recliner, attached to two skinny, wrinkly legs poking out of a ragged old blue robe. Boxers lay scattered around her feet, encircling her as each breath rumbled in and out of her tar-filled lungs like a train chugging through the mountains. Maye knocked as hard as she could on the dog’s head and finally heard some shuffling from behind the door. After a couple of agitated grunts, a raspy voice shouted, “Whaddya want?”