Chapter Sixteen
Bubba and the Epiphany
Saturday
Bubba Snoddy was one tired, smelly, sorry-looking individual. He had a black eye that had evolved into a sickening purplish-green color and a bruised cheek that was just turning brownish-yellow-black. A knot the size of a tennis ball showed prominently on his forehead. There was a matching knot on the back of his head that made his normally well-groomed hair look like it was pushed up from having slept on it while it was wet. Both bumps made it impossible to wear his Stetson the way any God-fearing Texan was supposed to wear it. Still hacking out smoke-induced phlegm from exposure to the fire at the caretaker’s house, his voice sounded like he was a lifelong whiskey and cigar man. He smelled like he’d been the chef at an all-day barbeque and rubbed the ashes all over his body, which surely didn’t smell right to any individual with any kind of normal sense of olfactory modality. Finally, he hadn’t slept as much as a large growing boy ought to sleep and this consequently resulted in his present state of crotchetiness.
Fellow Pegramville residents might liken that to Bubba possessing the normal Snoddy genes. That would be normal for Snoddys, to be precise. Genes much like both his mother and his father possessed. These were genes for which his forebears had been well-known.
After making sure that his mother, Miz Demetrice, claiming duress the entire time, boarded the seven AM Amtrak train to Dallas, Texas, Bubba was not feeling the least bit sociable. Several people tried to say their howdies to the man at the station but were dissuaded either by the grim look on his face, the bruises on his person, or the smell of him in general. A few were firmly deterred by all of the above.
“My God,” said Bryan McGee, who was still waiting on his truck to be repaired at Bufford’s Gas and Grocery and didn’t think much of George Bufford for his extra-marital activities with Rosa Granado, even if she was a hot little tamale. Bryan was there at the Amtrak to pick up his sister-in-law, who was traveling up from Lake Charles, Louisiana and was specifically coming to pester Bryan into an early grave, while his wife, her sister, had her gallbladder removed. But now, while his sister-in-law, Henrietta, was collecting her luggage and badgering some poor bastard of a porter, Bryan was staring with startled big brown eyes at Bubba Snoddy.
Bryan had heard the stories and had even spoken to George Bufford, himself via cellular phone about his disabled Ford truck, yet sitting in Bufford’s garage, while old George was off carousing with hot Rosa in the Bahamas. All that aside, it didn’t prepare him for what Bubba looked like of late. He seemed as though he should be in a hospital, with all that battering. It looked like someone had dropped the A-bomb on that poor boy.
Meanwhile, everyone with a mouth in Pegramville was talking about Bubba and the murders of Melissa Dearman and Neal Ledbetter. Now there had been some mighty fishy goings-on over at the Snoddy Mansion. While Bryan was waiting on Henrietta to disembark from the train, Stella Lackey told him that a fire had consumed the Snoddy place right down to the foundation. Furthermore, she said that Bubba Snoddy was running around stark-naked, yelling things about the invasion of communist Cuban dissidents. Or maybe it had been communist Korean dissidents. Stella wasn’t rightly sure, because she hadn’t sleep too well since Newt Durley had knocked her telephone pole down in an abhorrent spree of reckless and dangerous drunken driving. Consequently, she hadn’t had phone service with which to call the police because the telephone company contained, in her opinion, a bunch of sorry money-grubbing, sons of bitches.
“Which has what to do with Bubba Snoddy?” Bryan asked when Stella said that.
“Nothing, but it just means I cain’t recollect everything of late. So it was either communist Cubans or communist Koreans. One or t’other,” Stella said, adjusting her false teeth in her mouth with a total lack of personable etiquette. She was getting to be in her eighties and didn’t justifiably care what most other folks thought of her behavior. The only reason she was at the Amtrak station was to pick up her son, Charles, who was coming in from New Orleans to talk her into moving into a retirement home. Stella cackled to herself at that and moved away from Bryan, who stared at the older woman as if she was becoming senile right in front of his eyes.
Bubba, on the other hand, was aware of people staring and a few trying to greet him, but he was too tired and angry to be much of a gentleman. He did, however, stop to help an older woman he didn’t know by putting her bags in the back of her minivan. The older woman, who wasn’t from Pegramville, said, “Thank you kindly, sir.” And drove away, leaving him to feel maybe a little better.
After all, would a murderer stop to help a lady with her luggage? He didn’t think so.
Bubba returned to his truck and his faithful dog, Precious. Precious sat in the passenger seat as far as she could get away from her master. He hadn’t been very nice to her. Not only that but he smelled very interesting and he wasn’t inclined to let her stick her wet nose anywhere she pleased which that put her out tremendously. Then there was that one human’s presence in her seat. The one called ‘Miz Adelia’ was often directed by the one called ‘Mama’ to give Precious baths, which she didn’t like, and sprayed perfume on her, which was even worse than baths. The worst insult of all was that that human talked to her as if she were merely a dog. Things like, ‘Oo-ums-good-puppy-wuppy-uppy.’ It was time to show her master the extent of her disdain. As soon as he wasn’t looking she fully intended to pee on something that belonged to him.
Unfortunately, Bubba did not notice her dogly disdain. He wanted a strong cup of coffee, some decent breakfast to stop the empty ache in his stomach, and the sight of a beautiful woman to make it all go away. Since he couldn’t feast his eyes on Deputy Willodean Gray, he would feast his eyes on the next best thing, Lurlene Grady. He stopped by her apartment, and one of her neighbors told him that she was filling in down at the café for someone who had called in sick. Thus, he went by the Pegram Café and discovered it was chock full of more gawking, gaping, nosy people.
Bubba entered the small café, and the room instantly silenced. He looked around, keeping a blank look on his face as if he didn’t notice everyone suddenly being quiet. He recognized several people there. Noey Wheatfall was looking through the kitchen window at Bubba, a dark lock of hair hanging in disarray over one eye with an expression of interested curiosity on his face. Lloyd Goshorn and Foot Johnson were sitting together at a table with full plates of food before them. Both had paused mid-bite to look at the spectacle of Bubba Snoddy entering a public place. Foot had his mouth wide open, showing the large bite of scrambled eggs covered with ketchup therein. Mayor John Leroy, Jr. sat at a booth with Judge Stenson Posey, and both were goggling at Bubba like two small children. Bryan McGee seemed to have transcended the laws of physics by beating him here from the train station, to include dumping his sister-in-law at his house on the way. Even librarian Nadine Clack sat at the counter with a cup of tea in her hands, and her head arched around to look at what everyone else was looking at.
It was almost impossible but Bubba managed not to bark, “Just what in the hell do you people think you’re looking at?” He settled on the certified Snoddy glare, making sure that no one in sight was spared and threaded his way through the tables to the counter. There were two empty stools on the end. He selected the one on the farthest side away from the next person in order to put off conversation from eager beavers.
After he sat down, Lurlene hurried in with a stack full of plates running down the length of both of her arms. She was rushed, a little sweaty, and appeared to be working hard this morning serving the breakfast crowd. Even the too-tired Bubba noticed that the waitress looked to be plumb worn out, as if she been out a little too late the night before. She hesitated when she saw Bubba but smiled at him. It was, perhaps, the first smile he’d seen out of a person this day, and like the woman he’d helped at the Amtrak station, it made him feel a little less like a monster ambling around the town, grunting menacingly, and looking to eat the next hapless human be
ing who stumbled in front of him.
General conversation resumed behind him, and Bubba didn’t look around to see what, or who, they were talking about. He really didn’t need to know because he already knew. He could feel eyes burning holes in his back. A whole lot of holes in his back. And it didn’t help that Noey was periodically looking through the kitchen window every so often as if Bubba were going to lose his mind in Noey’s very café, which would be followed up with a mass murder on the spot.
Bubba knew what it was. One murder might be justified. After all, the woman had cheated on him in their very own bed. What kind of Texan would stand for that? It might have been a fit of rage, wrong all the same, but comprehendible. But the other murder, although to a disliked individual such as Neal Ledbetter, was a murder spree, and here was the prime suspect in their midst. Wanting to eat with them, wanting to act normally, and wanting to be treated normally. Well, that was stretching what was commonly and socially acceptable. One didn’t associate with persons such as that.
Bubba had just become persona non Pegramville-grata.
Lurlene stopped in front of Bubba with a coffee pot in her hand and a cup in the other. “Here you go darlin’,” she said, pouring coffee in the cup and sliding it in front of him. “You shore look like you need this. I heard about the fire. But I didn’t want to get all in the way of the firemen. They did say that no one was hurt so I wasn’t too worried about you. My Lord, I was up half the night when I heard.”
Bubba drank in the coffee and also in the appearance of Lurlene. Her blonde hair curled nicely around her head. She had pinned it up at the base of her head, but ringlets had escaped and draped themselves around her neck. Her face was flushed as if she had been running, but she looked as attractive as ever in the tight, little uniform that all the Pegram Café waitresses wore, showing off all the right curves in the good spots. And here, she was concerned about his welfare, unlike the rest of the town.
She said something while he was lost in his thoughts, then she repeated, “You want something to eat?”
“The special’s okay,” he answered. Maybe it was the way she was looking at him, but he suddenly noticed that Lurlene looked oddly familiar. She looked like someone he’d seen recently. She looked like a picture he had been looking at in the not-too-recent past. Her doe eyes scrutinized him in a manner that said she was real interested in him at the moment. Not in the way a gal looks at a man she’s been dating but in a way that he couldn’t quite get. If he had to put a word to mouth, he would have said, “That would be a predatory look, I reckon.”
“Eggs scrambled?”
“Yeah.” No romancing or wry repartee this morning because not one single fancy word came to Bubba’s thoughts. It was like having a big black hole on the top of his head. There was that odd deja vu and his extreme tiredness holding him back.
Lurlene hesitated again and then smiled at him, showing her white teeth. “We should get together tonight,” she whispered. “Just you and me, big boy, hmm?” She hurried off before he could say anything.
Bubba’s eyes were as big as saucers. He nodded slowly. Up and down. Up and down. He knew exactly what she was talking about, and even though he was as tired as a man can get without falling flat on his face, there was a little surge of energy. There ya go. Someone does care about me. And I might even get lucky. Except a sudden mental image of Lurlene appeared in his mind. Lurlene and Willodean and a whole mess of chocolate Jell-O pudding. Their hair was blowing in an imaginary wind. Lurlene took a moment to look back at Bubba, and in that moment, she looked exactly like a playboy model poising for a photographer. She looked just like…
He was dimly aware that conversation had halted again when Lurlene had swung by to pour the coffee, take his order, and proposition him. Bubba settled his face into a neutral expression and glanced over his shoulder. Everyone in the café, bar none, was gazing at Bubba with the oddest expressions on their faces. It was as if they didn’t know exactly what to make of him. He could have been a Martian who had wandered into the Pegram Café to ask directions to Venus, and his flying saucer was parked outside with a dog sticking her head out the window.
Bubba turned back to his coffee and tried to think. He was all out of plans. He was all out of suspects. Even his own mother, for whom he would still take the blame, hadn’t killed his ex-fiancée and the pesky real estate agent. Or, he reconsidered, she hadn’t killed Melissa, he was sure of that. Neal Ledbetter was still up for grabs. He frowned to himself. Of course, Miz Demetrice hadn’t murdered Neal either. He knew that.
So he was back to the eternal question or actually two eternal questions. Who had killed Melissa? Who had shot Neal in the middle of his forehead? Neal most of all, didn’t make much sense. He was just that, a nettlesome real estate agent. He had tried to bribe Judge Posey once. He had tried to get Mayor Leroy to influence the city council about re-zoning several pieces of land around Pegramville, a dim-witted scheme that had failed miserably. He had invited himself into the mansion until Miz Demetrice pulled out her Browning shotgun. He had planted that equipment in the house with the express purpose of scaring the Snoddys off. All of which showed what a foolish man Neal had been. Since he had been a fool, he thought that other people were just as foolish. Only he would have pranced around a mansion in a sheet, moaning and howling. Only he would have placed wailing, groaning speakers that could easily be traced back to him.
Therefore, if Neal had been such a great big fool as all that, didn’t it stand to reason that his accomplice finally figured out that his foolishness was a huge liability in the plan? So Neal was guaranteed the status of worm food by the nature of his own feebleminded actions. Or perhaps, that there had been a second plan after all, not to split the booty three ways but only two. And if that was the case then it was likely that another body would turn up soon, because someone probably wouldn’t want to share the loot.
Bubba finished his coffee and didn’t even notice that Lurlene filled it up again. His eyes were staring off into the distance as if lost in another world. It wasn’t until she served him a platter with eggs, bacon, sausages, and hash browns heaped on it, that he abruptly came back to the present. And it wasn’t until he reached for the Tabasco sauce that he saw something that he had missed before, because he was simply so fatigued, because it was taking every single bit of energy that he had to simply sit there at the counter and eat.
There was a coat rack almost in front of him, behind the counter, where the employees put their coats and purses. He stared at a garment hanging on it for the longest time. It hung from one arm of the rack in his direct line of sight. He knew what it was. He recognized it for what it represented, and the puzzle fit itself together. But his mind was so exhausted, he wasn’t sure if he weren’t imagining things after all. Every bit of it made sense, a sick kind of twisted sense, but sense all the same.
“Hey,” Bubba said, having an epiphany.
Then some other damn thing happened.
~ ~ ~