Runny03 - Loose Lips Page 2

  Celeste, standing now to read over Ramelle’s shoulder, chuckled. “Sorry.” She caught herself.

  “Go right ahead,” Cora said.

  Soon both Celeste and Ramelle were laughing.

  Ramelle read Popeye Huffstetler’s byline out loud: “…‘The source of disagreement, according to Vaughn Cadwalder, was over why Mrs. Chester Smith would enlist in the Army. Mrs. Paul Trumbull took offense when Mrs. Smith, her sister, declared she would enlist just to get away from her. Both ladies are free on bail posted by their respective husbands. Sheriff Harper Wheeler lectured Mr. Smith and Mr. Trumbull on controlling their wives. Mr. Smith was quoted as saying, “Not even Adolf Hitler could control Juts.” Mr. Flavius Cadwalder, owner of Cadwalder’s drugstore, has refused to press charges since both Mr. Smith and Mr. Trumbull have promised to pay in full for damages, which are estimated at three hundred and ninety-eight dollars.’” Ramelle drew in her breath. “Three hundred and ninety-eight dollars! My God, Cora, what did they do?”

  “That depends on who is telling the story.” The heavyset woman shrugged her shoulders.

  “What do you think?” Celeste asked her friend and servant of many decades as she sat back down. She was too hungry to continue reading over Ramelle’s shoulder.

  “Louise was stuck on her roof—”

  “What?” Ramelle interrupted.

  “She was cleaning out a bird’s nest from the chimney. The ladder fell and Juts came along hours later. Except she wouldn’t put the ladder up until Louise gave her that beautiful Easter hat she bought at Bear’s.”

  “You know, I always thought Julia had the makings of a great politician.” Celeste bit into a biscuit, light as a feather.

  “One says ‘apples,’ the other says ‘bananas.’” Cora poured Ramelle fresh coffee. “Some of this fuss is because Mary and Maizie are like to drive their mother wild. What little patience Louise has is—” Cora waved her hand to indicate that patience flew away.

  “It’s hard to imagine Louise as a mother,” Celeste said. “It’s even hard to imagine Louise as a wife. I keep seeing this little girl with long curls playing the piano in my parlor.” She tapped the back of the paper, which Ramelle eagerly read. “Of course, it’s hard to imagine you as a mother with a twenty-year-old daughter.”

  “Yes.” Ramelle laughed. “But mine is a grown woman in California. Juts and Louise are overgrown children right here under our noses.”

  “Well, Cora, how are the husbands going to raise three hundred and ninety-eight dollars?”

  “I haven’t asked.”

  “If I were you I wouldn’t inquire too closely.” Celeste felt the delicious bacon crunch between her teeth.

  3

  Chessy Smith ran his fingers over the deep grain of cherry wood. Walter Falkenroth was paneling his extensive library with cherry. The Clarion had to be hauling in money hand over fist, because Walter’s new house was as big as an airplane hangar. Chessy took the leftover wood home to build two nightstands for Juts. Chester Smith owned the hardware store in town. To bring in extra money he would build cabinets, chairs, and tables in a workshop at the back of the store. This way he never wasted time. If it was a slow day in the store he’d still be productive.

  Juts breezed into his workshop. Even though they would be fourteen years married in June, she always gave the twoey whistle, then knocked on the door. Partly this was out of respect but partly it was for safety’s sake. If her big, blond husband was bent over a band saw or a jigsaw she didn’t want to startle him. As it was, he was just checking the dimensions of his nightstand drawings.

  “Come on in.”

  She pushed open the door. “Honey, it’s dropped to forty-eight outside. You’d better fire up the stove.”

  “Not going to be in here long. I’ll be home in a minute.”

  She sat on a heavy oak bench. “Are you still mad at me?”

  Julia Ellen’s merciless vitality could wear down an iron man. Her flagrant disregard for propriety had made her exciting when they first met. It still made her exciting, but there were moments when Chessy would have settled for a docile wife, one not given to smashing glassware at the drugstore fountain because she was furious at her sister. They had also smashed the huge mirror behind the marble-topped counter. He and Paul would be in hock for the rest of the decade.

  “I don’t know where I’m going to get two hundred dollars.”

  “One hundred and ninety-nine dollars,” she quickly corrected him.

  He pressed his lips together. “Right.”

  “She started it. I swear, ever since she’s turned forty she’s twitchy. That and the fact that Mary is getting carried a little fast by Extra Billy.” Julia referred to Mary’s boyfriend, a good-looking kid who believed rules were meant to be broken.

  “I’m going over to Rife Munitions to get a part-time job. Pearlie’s going too.”

  “You can’t do that!” She slammed her fist on the bench, hurting her hand. “Ouch, goddammit.”

  “We have to do it, Juts. There’s no other place we can pick up work quickly. It’s the munitions plant or the canning factory, and Rife owns both of them.”

  “Well, you could go up to Hanover and work for the Shepards. There’s always work in the shoe factory up there or on the horse farm.”

  “Can’t afford the gas.”

  “What are you talking about? We aren’t that poor.”

  He leveled his lustrous gray eyes into his wife’s gray eyes; they both had the same unusual eye color. “Don’t you read the newspapers? Julia Ellen, we’re going to war. It’s only a matter of time … and when we do, gas will be one of the first things rationed.”

  “Fiddlesticks. Isn’t that why FDR pushed through the Lend-Lease—so we wouldn’t have to go?”

  “No, that’s how he’s trying to keep England afloat.”

  “Europe can settle its own scores. We went over there once. The American people won’t stand for it again.”

  “I’m telling you—we’re going in.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Been talking.”

  “Women gossip. Men talk.” She smiled. “You are all bigger gossips than we are.”

  “Makes no matter. I’ve got to raise that two hundred dollars somewhere.”

  “One hundred and ninety-nine dollars!” she shouted.

  “That one dollar counts for a lot, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. You can’t work for a Rife. You know what they did to our family.”

  “That was a long time ago. Brutus paid for blood with his own blood. Pole and Julius are a little better than their father.” He referred to Napoleon and Julius Caesar Rife.

  She ground her teeth. “You can’t do this to me. You and Pearlie will break my mother’s heart.”

  “Already talked to your mother.”

  “Behind my back?” She hit the bench again and wished she hadn’t.

  “Since when is talking to your mother going behind your back? She understands that the money has to come from someplace.”

  “I’ll get a job. I’ll go back to work at the silk mill.”

  “They’re full up.”

  “How do you know?”

  “’Cause I went there first.”

  Outraged, Juts leapt up and kicked the bench over. She slammed the door and hurried down the street.

  Chessy sighed. She’d be sure to make life miserable for as long as it pleased her. He figured he’d better drop by Cadwalder’s for a sandwich. He wouldn’t be getting any supper tonight.

  4

  The wind picked up. Juts strode with her head down. A car horn beeped twice. She glanced up. Louise motioned to her from behind the wheel of Paul’s black Model A. She ran over and hopped in, glad to be out of the wind.

  “Where’s Pearlie?”

  “Home.”

  “Does he know you have the car? He never lets you take the car.”

  “I ran right out of the house and took it.”

  “Oh, Louise.”
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  “I’m sick of him telling me what I can do and when I can do it. I paid for this damned old rattletrap the same as he did. Maybe not in dollars and cents, but in hard work. So if I want to drive it he can sit on a tack. He’s too damned cheap to buy a new car. He says we have to run this one until it dies. Well, Sister, let’s just run it until it does.”

  That said, Wheezie pressed the accelerator, let out the clutch, and they lurched forward.

  “You two have a fight?” Julia stated the obvious.

  “Son of a bitch.” Since Louise rarely swore, the eruption must have been a real Vesuvius.

  “Us, too. Rife?”

  Louise nodded. “You and I had an argument yesterday. A few drugstore items were broken. My husband acts as though we have marched on Atlanta and burned it to the ground.” Louise sounded extremely rational, her voice oozing maturity.

  “The Clarion didn’t help.”

  “When I get my hands on Popeye Huffstetler his eyes will pop. Besides which he can’t write.”

  “He does all the ground work for St. Rose’s so everyone will back him up. People believe what they read.” Julia referred to St. Rose of Lima’s Catholic Church, where Louise was a devout member and Popeye performed sexton duties. Julia was a staunch Lutheran, partly out of faith and partly to drive her older sister crackers.

  Louise took a corner on two wheels. “‘Wrecked’ havoc, he said—we ‘wrecked’ havoc at Cadwalder’s. And old Flavius Cadwalder is charging us retail for the damages. The least he could do would be to charge us wholesale, after all the business we’ve given him. Besides, it’s wreaked, not wrecked. I told you he couldn’t write.”

  “Everyone gives him business. He’s got a monopoly.” She sucked in her breath. “Louise, slow down.”

  “Scaredy-cat.”

  “I might go to heaven or hell, but will I go home?”

  “Clever.” Louise grimaced but she did slow down.

  “Sisters and brothers fight. I don’t see why everyone picks on us. We always make up.”

  “Righto.” Louise had recently heard this on her favorite radio show, which glorified brave Britain. “Yes, we did, but that nauseous—”

  Juts interrupted. “Noxious.”

  “You know what I mean, don’t correct me, that fat Harper Wheeler made sure his picture was in the paper between the two of us. The only reason he gets reelected is that no one else wants the job. He’s up again next year.”

  “We could run for sheriff.”

  That idea flickered, then died. “We’d have to pick up drunks and they’d puke in the backseat of the car.”

  Julia ditched her own idea. “What about a flower shop?”

  “The Biancas have that sewed up. Runnymede is too small for two flower shops.”

  Juts flopped back in her seat as Louise again let the clutch out unevenly. “Bet it’s going to freeze again tonight. I’m cold,” Juts complained.

  “Put the blanket around your legs.” Louise patted the plaid blanket neatly folded on the seat between them but her steering wobbled.

  Juts grabbed the wheel, which made Louise yank it harder in the other direction. “Watch where you’re going.”

  “Keep your hands to yourself!” Louise corrected the big swerve. However, she scared an oncoming driver half to death.

  “Frances Finster looked peaked.” Julia commented on the driver’s appearance.

  They drove in silence along the bumpy country roads west of town. Louise swung back east as the long red rays of the setting sun lent a melancholy tincture to the rolling hills of Maryland.

  Julia piped up. “We’ve got to do something, Louise. Otherwise our husbands will go to work for Rife Munitions.”

  “I told Pearlie I’d leave him if he did that.”

  Julia whistled. “Even I didn’t get that radical.”

  “March 17, 1917, doesn’t seem that far away. Memory’s like that.” Before she realized it Louise had driven to Dead Man’s Curve, a nasty twist of road, bloodred now in the sunset. She stopped the Ford. Both sisters got out and peered over the steep incline where their mother’s lover, Aimes Rankin, had been killed, his head bashed in and his body tossed over the curve those many years ago. No one believed it was a motorcycle accident. Aimes had tried to found a union in the Rife Munitions factory, which was doing a booming business thanks to the Great War. It had originally come into prominence during the War Between the States, when the original founder, Cassius Rife, safely on the north side of the Mason-Dixon line, secured huge contracts from Washington. He was accused of shipping arms into the South. Since nothing could be proved against him no charges were ever brought. He wasn’t the only war profiteer engorged on the dead of that hideous conflict, but he was the one everyone believed had worked both sides of the fence.

  Julia swayed over the drop, cold air stinging her face. “I miss Aimes.”

  “He was more of a father to us than our own father.”

  “Think we’ll ever see our father again?” Julia wistfully asked.

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” Louise answered. She was old enough to remember her mother’s grief when Hansford John Hunsenmeir walked out on them.

  “Momma says Cassius killed her father up here, too, for asking Congress to investigate Rife’s business dealings. Must have been his favorite place. PopPop couldn’t stand Cassius’s double-dealing—” Julia paused a moment. “Sometimes I think hate is like a ball. It can’t roll if everyone doesn’t give it a push.”

  “I’m not talking about hate,” Louise said. “I’m talking about honor. Our husbands can’t work for a Rife, no matter which Rife it is. They’re Brutus’s sons and they’re Cassius’s grandsons and they’ve killed our people two generations running.”

  “I know.” Julia’s voice weakened. “But where are we going to get all that money?”

  Louise shivered. “Let’s get back in the car.”

  They clambered in and pulled the plaid blanket over their legs. Louise hugged herself to keep warm.

  “I’ve been coming up with all the ideas,” Julia said. “It’s about time you had one.”

  “Dress shop.”

  “That’s pretty good. We’ve got wonderful taste.”

  Louise again defected. “’Cept we don’t have any money for clothes to start up.”

  “There is that.” A screech owl startled Julia. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They motored around in the gathering black velvet of night.

  “I think better on a full stomach,” Julia grumbled.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Dolley Madison’s is too far away.” Juts loved the little restaurant set over a creek on the Pennsylvania side. “Blue Hen is good but kind of pricey.”

  “Let’s go to Cadwalder’s.”

  “Umm, we’d better wait awhile before going back in there.”

  “I’m driving by.” Louise, determined, rambled down the Emmitsburg pike, which fed into Runnymede Square. Once in the square she zoomed around the north side just for effect, then jolted to a stop in front of the drugstore.

  “Chessy.” Julia noticed her husband’s car parked out front.

  “And I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts he’s got Paul with him.”

  “Damn. I’m really hungry but I don’t feel like seeing them.”

  Louise pulled out in case Pearlie looked outside the big window. She drove over to the bakery. “Doughnuts are better than nothing.”

  “Yeah,” Julia agreed.

  Millard Yost’s face fell when the Hunsenmeir sisters pushed through the door. “Hi, girls,” he managed to say.

  “Hi, Millard,” they replied.

  “Sure hope you two are getting along today.” He nervously laughed as his fingers drummed on the expensive glass display cases.

  “We’re thick as thieves.” Louise laughed.

  “And hungry. How about one dozen glazed doughnuts, six cake doughnuts, and six chocolate-covered doughnuts.”

  “All right.”
He immediately began filling the order.

  “And two coffees.”

  “Sweetie—” he called.

  His wife, Lillian, entered from the rear. The Yosts lived behind the store. “What?”

  “Could you get the girls two coffees while I do this?”

  “Hey, Millard, are you trying to get rid of us?” Julia joked.

  “No, no,” he lied.

  “Really, what happened at Cadwalder’s was, uh …”—Juts glanced at Louise and decided not to get into it—“unfortunate.”

  “There you go.” He handed over the doughnuts in a bright white paper bag as Lillian gave them coffee in heavy mugs.

  “We can’t take your mugs.”

  “No, no, you all just keep them.” Millard made change.

  “Can’t we eat here?” Louise inquired.

  Lillian pointed at the clock. “Closing time.”

  “Now, you girls just go on and keep those mugs.” Millard ushered them out the front door, locking it the minute Julia’s back foot hit the pavement.

  They climbed back into the car. “Jeez, Sis, think everyone’s going to be like this?”

  Louise grabbed a chocolate doughnut. “They’ll forget.”

  “Maybe we’d better not go into shops together.”

  “I still don’t think it was that bad. If it weren’t for that horrible Popeye Huffstetler.”

  “Well, even if he hadn’t put the picture in the paper I guess it would have gotten round.” Juts sighed.

  “The Trumpet only carried a small column on it. We’ll shop in Pennsylvania.”

  “They don’t like to admit that the Clarion got the scoop.” The glazed doughnut seemed to melt on her tongue. “You know, Wheezer, we can’t keep these mugs.”

  Louise studied the hefty white mugs with a thin dark green line painted around the top.

  “Is your doughnut spoiled?” She knew Juts felt bad.

  “No. Best doughnuts in Maryland. It’s just, I wish Chessy wasn’t working so hard and now he’s going to work nights too. Just because—you know.”