Armadillos & Old Lace Read online

  “I’m sure your cat will come back,” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “This has never happened before.”

  “It may never happen again, either,” she said. “Especially if Sambo gets hold of the cat.”

  I paced up and down Marcie’s trailer as she was getting dressed, forgetting how much my cigar smoke always irritated her when she first woke up. Of course, almost everything irritated Marcie when she first woke up. She, as siblings often will, believed that it was I who was the grumpy one and that she herself had a constantly cheery, pleasant disposition. Both of us frequently confronted Tom with the well-considered opinion that he was grumpier than either of us. Tom would either laugh it off or sullenly deny it, depending on how grumpy he was feeling at the time. Whenever he laughed it off, it usually made me and Marcie pretty grumpy.

  “I mourn the fact,” I said, “that young people today don’t drink coffee and that they don’t have more compassion for cats.”

  “I mourn the fact,” said Marcie, “that I’ve got exactly one day to get this camp open and somebody’s marching up and down my trailer smoking a cigar when I’m trying to get dressed.”

  “I mourn the fact,” I said, “that more effort hasn’t been made on the part of the directors to more fully integrate me into the camp program.”

  “I mourn the fact,” said Marcie, “that you won’t get your ass out of my trailer.”

  I walked up to the lodge just as Tom was filling the hummingbird feeders. The lodge was set in an area surrounded by a white wooden fence to keep the horses out, which it rarely did. Eighty-seven trees grew inside the fence, according to Tom. One of them, very close to the lodge, was dead. That was the one the hummingbirds always established as their home base when they returned to the Hill Country from South America or wherever the hell hummingbirds come from. They arrived punctually on March 15 and stayed until about the end of August. It was a good thing they weren’t house-pests.

  More than thirty years ago, my mother had started feeding the hummingbirds, dissolving sugar in red-dyed water and hanging the glass feeders on the eaves of the porch. The job had now devolved to Tom and myself. There were more than fifty hummingbirds around now, and during happy hour things could get pretty busy. I thought of Tom as my assistant hummingbird feeder. He thought of me as his assistant hummingbird feeder. Somehow, we managed.

  Tom was hanging the last feeder on a nail and

  Ben Stroud was walking behind him trying to make up a list of things to get in town.

  “Why are you following me?” Tom said to Ben.

  Ben, aware that this was pretty much of a rhetorical question, did not give an answer. Instead, in the manner of a Talmudic scholar, he asked another question.

  “Should I get the paper for you in town?” he asked. “I’m getting the laundry and the softballs and the donuts.”

  “I could get Tom’s paper,” I said to Ben. “I’m going into Kerrville for lunch.”

  “No, I’ll get it,” said Ben. “I’ve got a whole list of shit to do.”

  Tom walked over to the redwood furniture, which was older than most of the counselors, and sat down in his favorite chair. Ben wandered over to check a thing or two on his town list.

  “Why are you following me?” Tom said to Ben.

  Tom and Ben and I sat and talked for a while, then they both had things to do. I wandered around the ranch like a stray horse for about an hour, talked to a few of the old counselors who were getting their activities set up, and ran into Marcie down at the picnic area. We’d both gotten over our little sibling snit from earlier that morning.

  “Care to join me for lunch at the Del Norte?” I asked.

  “I’ve got to stay here,” she said. “Camp’s starting tomorrow, one of the cooks hasn’t shown up yet, and Tom snapped his wig this morning when he couldn’t find a typewriter ribbon. Who are you having lunch with?”

  “The Honorable Pat Knox,” I said.

  “Pat Knox? Isn’t she the one who beat you like a drum in the election?”

  “I’m not bitter,” I said.

  I saddled up Dusty, my mother’s old wood-paneled Chrysler convertible, waved at my cousin Bucky, who was rounding up horses on the East Flat, and headed into Kerrville. I was thinking I could use a little liquor drink to cut the phlegm. I was also thinking how being here at camp would, of necessity, cut into my cocktail hour. My normal habits and lifestyle in New York were not especially healthy for green plants or children. Not that I was a role model particularly. I just felt that if kids were going to screw up their lives, they ought to figure out how to do it themselves.

  Dusty was a talking car. My mother had always said it was a good car for lonely people. I hadn’t been back long enough to know whether or not I was lonely yet, but I was interested in hearing what Dusty had to say. As I drove down the gravel county road to the highway, Dusty demonstrated just how perceptive she was.

  “Your washer fluid is low,” she said.

  CHAPTER 7

  “I want to talk to you,” said Pat Knox in deeply conspiratorial tones, “about four little old ladies.” We were sitting at a corner table in the Del Norte Restaurant, a place I’d often referred to as the best restaurant in the world. At least it was the best restaurant in Kerrville.

  “Four little old ladies?” I said. “Do they want me to join a quilting bee?”

  “No,” said the little judge. “They’re dead.”

  “Eighty-six that quilting bee.”

  “If you’re just gonna make fun of me, I might as well be talking to the sheriff. That’s what she did, too.”

  Not for the first time did I think what a strange town was Kerrville, Texas. For decades it had enjoyed a redneck macho milieu, overpopulated with pickup trucks sporting loaded gun racks in their rear windows. Now, suddenly, Kerrville had a lady sheriff and a lady justice of the peace. What was the world coming to?

  The judge summoned up all the dignity and controlled anger within her four foot eleven and one-half inch frame, which was fairly considerable when she stared at you across the table. I sipped my coffee and hoped the waitress would bring me my chicken fried steak before Pat Knox reached into her leather briefcase and pulled out a pearl-handled Beretta.

  “When I first met you during the campaign,” she said, “I didn’t like you.”

  “Quite understandable,” I said. “I have a certain superficial charm that holds up for about three minutes when I meet people. After that, it’s usually downhill.”

  “I must’ve stayed around for five minutes,” she said, as she reached into her leather briefcase. I readied myself.

  As fate would have it, she only extracted a sheaf of papers, but in her eyes I could still see the Beretta.

  “It was later in the campaign, Richard,” she said, using my Christian name, “that I met you one day in the bank, and thought I saw that you were really a gendeman.”

  “We all make mistakes,” I said.

  “I don’t think I made one,” she said.

  I had become so accustomed to dealing with NYPD types that I almost didn’t realize that this little woman was complimenting me and asking for my help. I didn’t really see how I could help and I wasn’t even sure what the problem was, but I felt a little ashamed about being a smart-ass. Maybe all law enforcement people brought it out in me.

  The waitress came with our orders just as Pat was showing me a map of the Texas Hill Country with four little X’s scattered around a fairly wide area.

  “Each X indicates an isolated location in which one of these old ladies—all of them were widows— lived. And died.”

  I studied the map politely as I cut into my chicken fried steak.

  “The sheriff has listed the deaths as accidental, natural, or suicide. She feels that four deaths in five months does not establish any kind of pattern and I can’t say I really disagree with her about that. Anyway, I don’t have the power to call for a formal investigation.”

  I took a bite of chicke
n fried steak. It’s an overordered dish in Texas and most of the time it’s nothing you’d want to write home about even if you had a home. I was wondering what Pat was getting at. Did she want me to share her work load? That would’ve taken a lot of nerve after vanquishing me in the election.

  “The first lady drowned in the bathtub near Bandera—”

  “Household accident number 437,” I said.

  “The second burned to death in her home near Pipe Creek.”

  “Did she run back in trying to fetch her pipe?” Pat Knox looked at me with disappointment in her eyes. The look quickly changed to a flat, hard, tail-gunner’s expression.

  “The third death occurred near Mountain Home. The victim was shot with a gun. The weapon was found near the body.”

  “That was the suicide?”

  “You New Yorkers sure don’t miss a beat.”

  “Hold the weddin’,” I said. “I come from Texas.”

  “You could’ve fooled me.”

  “And it’s no disgrace to come from Texas,” I said. “It’s just a disgrace to have to come back here.” Her Honor laughed briefly. I assured her I was kidding. She continued reading her book of the dead and I continued eating my chicken fried steak which I hoped was dead.

  “The fourth death occurred just outside of town on the road to Ingram. The woman required an oxygen supply and apparently the botde had come disconnected. That’s it.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Now three of the deaths didn’t even occur in this county, so they’re not really my jurisdiction—”

  “Or mine.”

  “That’s correct. But I’ve talked to other J.P.’s, to members of the families. I’ve conducted my own private investigation—I always do. Crime scenes, blood splatters, photos. I’ve kept records on all of this.”

  I was only half listening now. I was thinking how a handful of deaths of elderly people wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans in crazy old New York. It wouldn’t even make good table conversation. I wondered again why the judge had called me. Did she want to show me how hard the job was and how overworked she was? Was she trying to rub it in that I’d lost the election?

  “Okay, Pat, so what’s all this mean? Put it on a bumper sticker for me.”

  “I know they were murdered.”

  Great, I thought. The whole thing is coming down like some gothic novel. Pat Knox is Joan of Arc. Pat Knox is Cassandra warning the warriors of Troy. Pat Knox is Martha Mitchell reporting that Secret Service agents had kidnapped her and shot her in the butt with a hypodermic needle. Who listens to these people? No one. Not until a little B&E job at Watergate brings down a presidency. Not until the Trojan Horse is taken into the gates of the city. Not until we all can hear the voices that once were only in Joan’s head.

  “I believe you,” I said.

  The judge sighed deeply. “But there’s more,” she said. “When I was a child I witnessed sexual molestation occurring for a period of several years within the family next door. I’m almost psychic about any aura of sexual violence in the air.”

  I sipped my coffee and waited.

  “I know this sounds crazy,” she said. “But I also believe they were raped.”

  “Pat,” I said, “the sheriff is very well liked around here and by all accounts very efficient. In fact, as you know, she just solved a triple murder case recently. Maybe she is investigating and just chooses not to tell you.” I could understand why the sheriff might not take the judge to her bosom, so to speak.

  “I hope to hell you’re right,” she said, “ ’cause I’m damn near worried sick about this.”

  “Remember what Mark Twain said: ‘I’ve had many troubles in my life, but most of them never happened.’ ”

  The judge did not look convinced. She picked up her briefcase and stood up, indicating that our little luncheon was over.

  “Tell that to Nigger Jim,” she said.

  CHAPTER 8

  The following night, ten little girls stood outside the green trailer in the moonlight. It was pushing Cinderella time. They were all in their pajamas and many of them had brought cameras. They were hoping to get a picture of Dilly. He was there, too. Dilly was my pet armadillo.

  There are those who say armadillos do not make good animal companions, but they have obviously never known the joys of tickling one behind its ears or hearing it knocking on their trailer door in the early hours of the morning for a midnight snack of milk, bacon grease, and cat food. There was a note of sadness in my heart as I brought the cat food out to Dilly amidst the throng of giggling, awestruck members of the Bluebonnets. I had a lot of cat food, I reflected, for a man without a cat.

  The Bluebonnets and Dilly, however, were oblivious to my own personal sorrows. Dilly was enjoying himself immensely, and quite frequently, rising to the occasion on his two hind claws. Whenever this happened, the flash of paparazzi cameras fairly lasered the darkness of the surrounding cedar trees.

  There was something rather poignant, almost spiritual, about the little scene. For armadillos, as practically every Texan knows, are the very shyest of creatures, who, ironically, have been fated to coinhabit a state populated with the very loudest, brashest of human beings. Nevertheless, they’ve been here since the time of the dinosaurs, and they’re not about to let a silly race of people 86 them out this late in the game.

  For those who are not intimately familiar with the armadillo, it is a small, armored creature about the size of. . . well, a cat. Its shell, as John D. MacDonald once observed, is often made into baskets and sold by the roadside. MacDonald also expressed a wish that somewhere in the universe there existed a planet inhabited by sentient armadillos who carved out humans and sold them as baskets by the roadside.

  “Can armadillos hurt you?” asked Marisa.

  “No,” I said. “Only people can.”

  “Is Dilly going to have a baby?” asked Michelle.

  “No, Dilly is a boy. And armadillos never have just one baby; they always have a litter of four. And the four are always either all boys or all girls.” I was quite an armadillologist.

  “Can we pat Dilly?” asked Alene.

  “Of course,” I said. “But do it gently or you’ll scare him. Armadillos almost never get this close to people. Dilly is a very special armadillo.”

  The girls crowded around Dilly and he seemed to luxuriate in all the attention. Some of them stroked his armored shell. Some tickled him behind the ears. He even posed for pictures with the girls like a little primeval spirit come to save the world from itself. For some only slightly sick reason, I thought of Christ in the manger.

  “Of course,” I said, “armadillos have been known to carry leprosy.”

  The two counselors stiffened and recoiled a bit, but the Bluebonnets remained in their attentive circle around Dilly.

  “What’s leprosy?” asked Jessica.

  “Disease where your nose falls off,” I said.

  The girls stopped petting Dilly and looked at me with that serious, half-believing expression children sometimes acquire when they suspect the adult they’re listening to may be insane. I shrugged.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “They don’t pass it along to people. Only to other armadillos. Besides, Dilly’s already been up to the infirmary and the nurse gave him a health check.”

  As if to demonstrate his general fitness, Dilly jumped about two feet in the air, then bolted inside the trailer with about six little girls almost literally on his tail. Like a young rhinoceros, he slammed into everything in sight, knocking over the forlorn bowls of cat food and water, my guitar, and a small lamp. At incredible land speeds he scooted across the floor, back and forth, with the screaming Bluebonnets alternately running after him and then away from him. Eventually, he bolted out the door and into the night, and I began attempting to shoehorn personnel out of the trailer and back to their bunk.

  “What’s this?” asked Briana, holding up a piece of paper.

  I glanced at the page. It was a sketch of Kerr, Ban
dera, and several neighboring counties. Four black X’s appeared at various loci on the paper.

  “Where’d you get this, Bri?”

  “I found it on the floor,” she said.

  I looked at the page again. This time, with the little girls standing around me under the moonlight, an almost palpable evil seemed to emanate from it.

  “Is it a treasure map?” Bri shouted.

  “No,” I said. “It’s Dilly’s health chart.”

  At roughly 2:09 in the morning, in the middle of a rather gnarly nightmare about little girls transforming instantaneously into little old ladies, I woke up suddenly to hear a thump on the nonfunctioning air conditioner outside my window. Moments later, the cat jumped through the open window and, either deliberately or accidentally, landed on my testicles.

  CHAPTER 9

  I woke up the next morning to the ringing of the old bell by the office and the sounds of radio station ECHO echoing off the hills. The disc jockey, Alex Hoffman, sometimes referred to as Phallax Hoseman, ran the station out of the media room. His first selection, unfortunately, was “The Purple People Eater.” ECHO was staffed and run by the ranchers, but it still reflected Phallax’s rather eclectic influence, ranging from “Wipe-Out” to early Bob Dylan, to “Happy Birthday from the Army,” to “Schwinn 24” by a little-known Texas group called “King Arthur and the Carrots.” ECHO, at Hoseman’s behest, also played Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle” at least two hundred times a day.

  The cat was sleeping beside me on the bed and, except for a rather irritated look in her eye, showed no signs of joining me to face the day. It was quite evident, however, from the way she was twitching her left ear, that she did not like the song “Purple People Eater.”