driving. “How can you say that, Estafay? You know I’ve been planning this for years. What you think I trained snakes for? What if we can’t afford to start my business and get you all the stuff you talking about?”
“No problem, we drop the snake cage.”
“What! It ain’t a snake cage, Estafay. It’s a gas station and exotic snake farm. How many times I gotta tell you?”
“Did the Lord tell you to open a gas station… with snakes… and serpents?”
“No, He didn’t.”
“What I thought. Don’t worry about it. We should have enough money to do both. Faith, Robert, faith.”
They rode in silence, through small towns distinguishable only by the name on a water tower.
Lake Village. Masonville. Winchester. Pickens. Dumas. Mitchellvile. Gould. Grady, the home of the infamous Cummins prison farm. Moscow. Pine Bluff, where the two-lane road finally ended and Interstate 640 began.
Arriving in Little Rock, Estafay directed Robert Earl to a three-story medical building. He waited in the car while she, wearing a blue-and-white ankle-length pinafore, walked up the steps to the entrance, holding her beloved Bible to her chest.
Yes, she definitely could use some fixin’ up, he thought when she disappeared inside. But dag gummit, why should he give up his dream? The way his luck was going when Estafay paid for all the plastic stuff she wanted, he wouldn’t have enough to buy a gallon of gas, let alone open a gas station and exotic snake farm.
The Lord didn’t tell him to open a gas station and exotic snake farm. So what? He didn’t tell him not to, either.
Shut up! he told it. He wouldn’t listen, couldn’t listen. The last time he’d listened he’d hurt someone, hurt someone real bad… He pressed his hands against his ears. Shut up! Shut up!
The voice in his head grew louder:
And throw twenty-five years of marriage away? No way, Jose!
She’ll still be my wife—through sickness and death.
Robert Earl thought hard and couldn’t recall a Tara Reid.
He remembered: she was the little white girl whose titty popped out during a photo shoot. A deformed titty, scarred and mutilated thanks to a surgeon’s scalpel.
Estafay’s operation could go wrong, just like Tara’s.
Jeepers! If that happened to Estafay… He squeezed his head harder, hoping to rid the image of Estafay and him sitting at a table in the Waffle House, his teeth slipping out and Estafay’s deformed titties popping loose…
“What’s wrong with you?” Estafay asked.
“Huh?”
Estafay got into the backseat. “What’s wrong with your head? Looks like you fighting a demon.”
“No, just a little headache.” He took a quick peek at her chest and a chill ran through his gums. “That didn’t take long.”
“The doctor said I should take a few days to think about it. It’s a medical procedure, you know, so there’s a slim possibility of complications.”
Robert Earl swallowed. “What kind of complications?”
“Pain. Infection. Scars. The operation doesn’t take with everyone. I’m sure I won’t have any problems. Unlike most people, I have faith in the Lord above.”
He wanted to tell her about Tara Reid, but didn’t have the heart. “Uh, did the doctor say how much the procedure is going to cost?”
Estafay fanned herself with the paper. “Let’s go. It’s a hundred degrees out here. Thirteen thousand dollars. It’s hot enough to bake a cake in the shade. Turn the radio on. I don’t feel up for much talking. It’s too hot.”
Robert Earl started the car and pushed the button on the radio. Paul Simon sang about fifty ways to leave your lover.
“Turn to gospel. You know I don’t listen to the devil’s music.”
He let the song play. Paul suggested make a little plan… and set yourself free. If it came down to losing his dream and helping Estafay paste on falsies, he would take Paul’s advice.
Estafay tapped him on the shoulder. “Didn’t you hear me? Turn to gospel music.”
He looked her in the face in the rearview mirror, smiled without a tooth in his mouth and said, “Yes, dear.”
Chapter 17
Lysol burning her hand, Ruth Ann scrubbed the tub. It didn’t need cleaning. She needed an activity to occupy her mind. The yellow sponge disintegrated into bits and pieces and she kept scrubbing. The bits and pieces rubbed away to nothing and she had to stop.
Ceasing activity for only a minute allowed a horrific thought to take center stage: Lester flipping his lid when Sheriff Bledsoe informed him of her affair with Eric. She sat on the commode and chewed on a thumbnail.
She bit a nice piece of skin off the tip of her thumb and spit it on the floor.
When she’d stepped inside, Lester asked, “What did Sheriff Bledsoe want?” She’d shrugged and said, “Nothing.”
She couldn’t tell him the truth; it sounded so crazy: Eric and I had an affair, I broke it off and Eric got mad and tried to frame me with Daddy’s murder by planting poison and neck bones on our back porch, and now Sheriff Bledsoe wants you and me at the station because he’s not sure we didn’t have anything to do with the poison and neck bones.
There was a knock at the door. “Ruthie, you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
She picked up a tube of Crest toothpaste and tossed it in the air… Tails, she would tell him a modified version of the truth… Heads, she wouldn’t tell him shit… The tube landed on the floor, the backside showing…
She got up and opened the door. Lester stood in the hallway, brow furrowed.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I was just cleaning the bathroom.”
“Something’s wrong, Ruthie. I can feel it. Talk to me. It’s that no-good Eric Barnes, isn’t it? He’s done something to Shirley, hasn’t he?”
Ruth Ann nodded. In a circuitous way he was right. “Yes, Lester, I guess you can say that.”
“What has he done now?”
She wondered if he could tell she was shaking like a cheap vibrator. “I’m not quite sure, honey. I better get over to Shirley’s and see if she’s all right.” She started past him and almost screamed when she felt his hand on her shoulder.
“What did you just call me?” Lester asked.
Had she called him Eric? Lord, she hoped not.
“You called me honey,” Lester said.
“I-I did? I didn’t mean to. I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately.”
Lester embraced her and kissed her nose. “Ruthie, honey, there’s no need to apologize. You don’t know how
