Distilling Lies, page 3
Betty waggled her hips, accentuating the big hip bow on her flapper dress. “Darlings!”
I hopped out of the motorcar. Betty grabbed my shoulders before I could climb in the back with Charlene. “Well now, don’t you look swanky?” The faint smell of gin wafted from her lips. “Those boys will see you coming a mile away.”
“Don’t encourage her, Betty,” Mama hollered. “I need to get her home in the same condition I brought her.”
She meant untainted.
Betty drifted her fingers across my cheek. “She’s a good girl, Bernice. Aren’t you, Emma June?”
Betty usually looked as if she’d walked off the cover of Vogue. Not then. She had bags beneath her eyes and a redness within them. Instead of her customary spirit of gaiety, her vim and vigor had evaporated.
“Betty, everything Jake?” I whispered.
Betty pivoted in her heeled Mary Janes and hopped in the front seat. She pulled the fancy scrolled flask from her garter, a gift she’d received from some friend with the initials I. S. engraved at the bottom. “Let’s show those carnival saps a thing or two about how to party.” She downed a healthy gulp, then ran her fingers over the flask’s surface as if attempting to etch the scrolling of vines anew.
“Wish I could have some of that,” Charlene said as I settled next to her.
Mama wagged a finger. “Not on my watch. Your mother would never—”
“I know, I know. Never let you take me anywhere ever again,” Charlene huffed.
“So, Zelda Fitzgerald,” Mama said to Betty. “Give us the skinny. How was your getaway with the ex-beau?”
Betty had recently returned from a ten-day road trip to see if anything worth keeping remained of their relationship. Although we had never met him, I pictured him looking like Rudolph Valentino.
“Oh, that. Let’s just say I got away from the getaway as fast as possible.” Betty held up a lipstick tube and turned sideways. “Blood red, anyone?” Her eyebrows moved up and down with enough pizzazz to entice a town of do-gooders to rouge their knees.
Mama shook her head and focused on driving. She had yet to take a good look at her best friend.
“I’ll take some.” I grabbed the tube.
“Not too much, doll baby,” Mama said. “Or I’ll have to hold your hand at the carnival.”
Betty shrunk in her seat. “I’d give anything to be their age again.”
I nudged Charlene, pointed to my eyes, and then to Betty.
“Hey, Betty,” Charlene said. “That bandeau you’re wearing? Is it new?”
Betty straightened and turned to Charlene. “Like it?”
“You have been crying,” Charlene blurted. “Are you unzipped things didn’t work out with your old beau?”
Subtle Charlene.
“Betty?” Mama said. “Something wrong?”
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong. I’m in a motorcar with three killjoys.” She rose from her seat and shouted, “Time to paint the town ruby red!”
But she slunk down into the seat, the corners of her mouth turning downward again.
Mama changed the subject and told us the gossip she’d heard about Sheriff Gunny Gibbons. Gunny, a funny name for a sheriff who rarely carried a weapon. Last time he toted his pistol, he was on a stakeout for the coyote preying on Mr. Peterson’s chickens.
“Gunny was mad, all right,” Mama continued. “Fired his new deputy for making the mistake of invading bingo night at the Methodist church.”
“Why would Gunny hire a deputy anyway?” Charlene said. “Everyone knows he prefers to work alone.”
“True,” Mama said. “He probably fired him for just that reason.” Mama sighed. “I feel kinda sorry for that young deputy. How was he supposed to know that gambling and bingo go hand in hand at Holly Gap Methodist?”
Betty turned sideways and stared at the passing countryside. “Lots of things we’re supposed to know but don’t.”
Charlene scooted closer. “Emma June, you still plan on seeing Wade at the carnival?” she whispered a bit too loud.
“Shush. Keep your voice down.” Meeting up with Wade was one secret I couldn’t share with Mama. Although Daddy never said he hated the Foleys, he made it clear by adamantly telling me and Mama to stay away from them.
“Well, are you?”
Charlene wouldn’t let it go. Two bad things about sitting in the back seat of the breezer were swatting bugs from your face, and having to endure Charlene’s nagging. “What if I am?”
“Loretta came to the store today. She had bruises on her arms.”
“What does that have to do with Wade?”
“She says he gets mean sometimes. That’s what I’m saying. Her brother’s starting to act like their vile father.”
The only bad thing about Wade was how he made me swoon. I counted down the minutes to arrival.
“Betty?” I said, ignoring Charlene. “When the Baker Hotel opens for business, let’s be their first customers.”
The upcoming Baker Hotel and all its extravagance were all she had talked about for months. But Betty said nothing, only gave an almost imperceivable nod, then took another snort from her flask.
“Which will you do first, doll baby?” Mama asked. “Swim in the mineral-water pool or get your hair done at the beauty shop?”
I didn’t answer. I was too busy wondering if Betty’s current slump was a sign that for the first time, she’d rather be anywhere than with us.
CHAPTER 4
EMMA JUNE
Traffic in Holly Gap meant having to maneuver around old Mr. Canter’s truck when he parked in the middle of the street to load his feed. Not in Mineral Wells. With a population of over six thousand, every motorcar invented seemed to be in our way. So many Model Ts backfiring, it sounded as if the Great War had resumed. Mama navigated her way through town with a constant pitch and yaw of the breezer. I thought I’d throw up.
Past the crowded train station, Mama made it to a parking area the size of our entire town. She screeched to a halt with a “thank God.”
We joined the throngs of people filing toward the entry gates. Mama, an arm looped through Betty’s, held on to her pecan pie with both hands and strutted tall and proud.
Bodies of all shapes and sizes swarmed in a hive of electrifying joy. The closer we got to the ticket booth, the louder the chatter and laughter. Carnival lights, spotlighting a rotating carousel, had turned the blackness of night into the light of day.
Mama stood in the ticket line and held up a “wait” finger.
Charlene leaned up against a post and pointed. “Look at Betty. Swaying like a clock pendulum. Miss Bernice looks none too happy.”
Charlene might have been wrong about Wade, but she was right about Mama. She threw words in Betty’s face like the day she confronted the mayor after Miss Atta had been turned away at the voting poll because her skin wasn’t the color of Gold Medal flour.
By the time we reached Mama, she was picking up shattered pieces of her pie plate.
“Oh, Mama. Your pie!”
“It was an accident, right, Bernice?” Betty said, her arms crisscrossed her chest, hands clutched to her shoulders as if expecting a blessing.
“Here, Emma June.” Mama handed me the tickets, then pointed through the entry gate. “See those flying chair swings? Meet me there in an hour for a check-in.”
“Mama, we’ll be swell. An hour is too—”
“One hour.”
Mama’s don’t-cross-my-line voice meant no room for persuasion.
Charlene tugged me away, but I turned back. While Betty waffled between scanning the crowd and staring down at her shoes, Mama chucked glass into a nearby trash can.
“Come on, Emmy, they’ll work it out. Let’s breeze and have fun.”
Right. They’d work it out. After all, Mama and Betty were best friends. And nothing was going to stop me from a romantic rendezvous with Wade.
We navigated our way through the crowd inhaling the passing scents of popcorn, cotton candy, and women’s perfume.
I turned to a man’s voice. “Pinwheels. Colorful, twirling pinwheels. Only five cents.” The straps around the vendor’s shoulders were attached to a box with holes. A pinwheel stuck out of each one. I thought about the sparkle in Scooter’s eyes and placed a nickel in the man’s dirty palm.
“For Scooter?” Charlene said.
“He’ll have something else to bury besides forks and Tinker Toys.”
“He ever dig up those marbles?”
“Nope. Still waiting for them to sprout.”
The pinwheel’s stick fit inside my purse, but its curls of blue paper twirled free, propelling me forward to my destination.
We passed the Helter Skelter slide, bumper cars, a long row of games of chance, all promises of fun. Charlene followed, unaware as to where I was heading.
A mob of people circled the wooden boxing platform, eager to see a local win five clams for beating the carnival champ. Chants of “lay him out flat!” and “get away from the ropes!” grew louder.
We weaved between the masses until we found space to breathe. “Butt me, will you, Charlene?”
She pulled a Marlboro from her pack and handed it to me.
I lit up and blew the smoke upward toward the sign. Get Your Healing Water Here. “Wade is here somewhere.”
“Are you off your trolley?” she said, grabbing my arm. “After what I told you, you still want to meet up with him? You’ve never even had a real conversation with him.”
“So? That’s what tonight is for.”
Over the years, I had kept Wade in my peripheral vision. His sister, Loretta, shy and thinner than a lamppost, was the same age as Charlene and me. Wade was a year older. When I still attended school, I’d see him stop by the schoolyard to give Loretta messages from home.
Sometimes, I spotted him at the river skimming rocks with his pals and, more recently, the Friday before at Rosie’s. After I had taken his order, he asked if I wanted to meet him at the carnival. “Why not?” I told him, yearning to sweep a stray strand of his red hair away from his eyes.
“Coming or not?” I said to Charlene, not really caring one way or the other. I edged closer to the sign.
MADAM ZOLA’S EXPERT FORTUNE TELLER PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE CRYSTAL BALL GAZING, PALM READING TAROT CARDS
“Hey, sexy Sheba.”
I turned toward the deep voice and kept myself from squealing.
“I’m telling you,” Charlene whispered, “even if he wasn’t a mesquite chopper’s son, he’s still a wrong number.”
“I’m dialing anyway.” I stepped closer. “Hi, Wade.”
“Time for some hooch. Found a spot behind that voodoo trap,” he said, referring to the fortune teller’s tent.
I pulled Charlene along before she refused and followed Wade and Louis, his beanpole best friend, past the line of hand-twisting people waiting to hear about their future. We crept through a narrow path until we entered a small area littered with boxes, barrels, and discarded wood scraps. The next tent over, a man screamed, “Knock down the milk bottles for a mere dime.” Games of chance and grifters everywhere.
I felt overdressed. Wade wore a faded blue collared shirt. His trousers had oil stains that dotted down to his scuffed work boots.
Wade pulled down a box crate from its stack and took a seat, then patted the small space next to him. My heart clenched tighter than Charlene’s fist. I’d never been so close to him.
Louis copied Wade and grabbed another empty crate. “I’ll have my own, thank you very much,” Charlene said, turning up her button nose.
Wade reached behind an empty pickle barrel and produced a brown hooch jug. “Just where I left it.” He smoothed back his hair, revealing the small scar over his right eyebrow, then lifted the jug to his lips. His Adam’s apple bobbed through each swallow. After wiping his mouth with a sleeve, he thrust the jug on my lap.
The booze burned down my throat and roiled in my stomach. Possum piss. Nothing like Miss Helen’s five-star moonshine. I tried not to grimace and passed it to Charlene.
“Gals, y’all seen the fat lady tent yet?” Wade laughed. “Wish her rolls’a dough was real cash. Right, Louis?”
“Reckon,” he mumbled, scraping the heel of his boot back and forth in the dirt.
“Good Lord,” Charlene said. “This shit is terrible.”
Wade belted out another laugh. “Only the first few sips. Then you don’t notice and don’t care.”
The jug passed around again. Charlene refused.
Louis took a small sip and squeezed his eyes shut. “Thought yer daddy’s new guy could get better.”
“Shut up, Louis,” Wade said, eyeing his surroundings.
I steeled myself and gulped more.
Louis spat off to the side, then turned back. “Flea circus. Them fleas can pull a tiny carousel two thousand times their weight,” he said, in what was probably the longest and smartest sentence he’d ever strung together.
Charlene scratched one arm, then the other.
Wade slapped a thigh and chuckled. “Shoulda seen them Rock of Ages bims in the walzin’ tent. No husband to dance with so they had to hoof it together.”
As far as I was concerned, dancing didn’t have an age limit. Betty told me dancing took away your worries. “Pivot your knees, Emma June,” her ruby-red lips had smacked out between cigarette puffs. “And for Pete’s sake, move your arms and kick your legs higher!”
Wade put a hand on my knee. “And damn if we didn’t see that monkey pee on the organ grinder.”
Charlene rolled her eyes. “Emma June, let’s go ride the Tilt-a-Whirl.”
Already lightheaded, the thought of twirling made me nauseous.
“You go with her, Louis,” Wade said. “I’ll watch over this bear cat next to me.”
Louis hoisted himself off the crate with the speed of a sloth. Charlene rose from her wooden throne and gave me a “you’re gonna pay for this” look.
Just the two of us, alone in probably the least romantic place on earth, Wade draped his arm around my shoulder. It felt awkward, stiff, almost creepy. Not at all what I thought his first touch would feel like.
He held the jug to my lips and poured. Then, in one quick movement, his hand plunged down my dress. He clamped down on my breast as if squeezing the bulb of a motorcar horn, then, before I could knock the smugness off his face, he leaned in.
CHAPTER 5
EMMA JUNE
I leaned away from the grimy feel of his hands. “I need food. I’m going for popcorn.”
Wade shrugged. “Suit yourself, Emma Jane.”
Emma Jane. He didn’t even know my name. Didn’t offer to escort me. He merely threw me a mischievous grin and said, “Just come back so we can finish what we started.”
Finish what we started? Starting meant honeyed words followed by sweet nothings whispered in my ear. Clearly, I was not in a romantic picture show. Instead of a rendezvous with Rudy Valentino, I got the Laurel and Hardy combo.
I had always prided myself on judging character. Whether a person showed more kindness than rudeness, more honesty than deception. How had I missed the mark so completely?
Before Mama met Daddy, she told me she dated a boy who seemed nice at first. But after a month, he showed his true character. He embarrassed her in front of a group of friends by saying she couldn’t tell a fry pan from a piss pot. Mama told me, “If that ever happens to you, Emma June, fluff your hair, buff your nails, and sashay far in the other direction.”
Although difficult to fluff a bob, I got the meaning. I pushed my way through the crowd of boxing spectators and ended up near a baritone voice yelling, “Snake oil, the cure-all! Only fifty cents a bottle!”
Rotgut snaked back up my throat. I would have given up a whole dollar if the slimy oil cured nausea. Two if it cured stupidity.
I stumbled past the vendors pleading for customers. Past the caged gorilla whose eyes seemed to beg me to free him. A juggler pedaled a one-wheeled bike, weaving between children screaming with excitement. Music blared from every direction. People melded into each other in a fuzzy swirl of motion. Through the untrusting blur in my eyes, a woman who looked like Betty ran through the crowd. I focused ahead, trying to find a quiet hole to bury myself in. Anywhere away from the masses and blaring lights.
My face hit the ground with a thump. My right palm stung through a layer of wet grime.
“Are you okay?” A male voice.
My nose at ground level, all I saw were the two-toned oxfords.
“Can I help you up?”
“What? I …”
“I saw you take a tumble. Easy to do with so many people milling around.”
Strong hands guided me to my feet.
He was older than me. Maybe a tad older than Wade. Even in my drunken haze, I could make out his strong jawline, blue eyes, and what looked to be light brown hair beneath his tweed Ivy cap.
“I must look …” In complete shambles. Not him, though. He was a real knee-buckler. His unbuttoned blue-gray suit jacket revealed a pressed white shirt tucked into tan trousers.
“Oh, and I found this.” He reached in his back pocket and pulled out my pinwheel. “I believe you dropped it.”
I nodded, praying the violent movement wouldn’t make me vomit.
“You look a bit … My uncle’s here somewhere. He’s a doctor. I can find him for you and—”
“No. No. Thanks. I’m … swell.” I heard the slur in my words.
“Let me find you some water. Wait here.”
As if I had a choice.
Oxford Two-Tone didn’t live in Holly Gap. If he had, I never would have mooned over the likes of Wade Foley.
Legs of rubber, my head a constant spin, I tried to hold it back but couldn’t. The contents of my stomach unloaded. No more fragrant scents of popcorn and candy. Only horse manure and my own vomit.
