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July, 1961 – Sinful, Louisiana
The bell above the door to Sinful Photo dinged. “Welcome to Sinful Photo. Be right with you,” Marge said, continuing to focus on the display of new Kodak Starmatic cameras she’d been arranging.
“Oh look, Dorothy,” a familiar, yet grating, voice said. “It’s a little boy.”
Another familiar voice cackled.
“No, wait, it’s Marge Boudreaux,” said the first voice. “Still wearing her drab old pixie cut from the Fifties. But what would you expect from drab old Marge?”
Marge straightened up and turned toward her arch-enemy Celia and Celia’s cousin Dorothy. Celia was home on summer break from her out-of-state college and took every opportunity to stop in and needle Marge. A quick-moving burn shot up from her neck, spreading over her cheeks.
Marge ran her gaze over the matching striped shorts and crisp white blouses the two cousins wore. “Why look what crawled out of the swamp,” Marge said. “Must be feeding time. Though it looks like you just ate a couple of Doublemint Twins.”
Celia pursed her lips and patted the top of her hair, which, through the miracle of teasing and hairspray, towered about a half foot from the top of her head. Marge had tried learning the beehive from Gertie once, before quickly discovering she lacked the ability to do anything to her hair but wash it and let it dry. A girl could do that in the Fifties, when pixies were all the rage. But now it was the Sixties and girls were expected to spend an hour in front of the mirror achieving the perfect helmet head. Marge shook her head. So far, the Sixties were turning out to be a cruel decade.
Celia looked down at Marge’s hand and shook her head in mock sadness. “Still no class ring from a steady boyfriend?” As she did so, she lifted her own hand to show off her own ring.
“You’d think she could have snagged a guy at that community college she goes to,” Dorothy said. “What are you majoring in, Marge? How to be a spinster?”
Celia laughed. “Lucky for Marge she’s joining the Army. I hear some of those boys are desperate, so anything’s possible.”
It was taking all of Marge’s strength not to show it bothered her, which is exactly what they wanted. Besides, as her friend Ida Belle always said, revenge is a dish best served cold. Like at two in the morning. Pick the lock of Celia’s kitchen door, leave it open with a trail of food leading inside her house, and there’s no telling what Celia would find tangled up in her beehive when she woke up.
“I’m not in the mood,” Marge said, trying to be calm. “What do you want?”
Celia slapped an envelope of photos down on the counter. “I’m not satisfied with these prints of me and my boyfriend, Pike. They’re too dark. You can barely see me. Probably defective flash bulbs I bought from this store.”
Marge opened the envelope and examined the photos. Pike showed up, but Celia, who stood behind him, barely registered. “If you ask me, the flash bulbs were doing the world a favor.”
“The sign says, ‘Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.’ Well, I’m not satisfied. Maybe I should talk to Miss Louanne. Complain to her about the help she has around here.”
“My aunt is working in her home darkroom today and I’m just about to close up. So if you want to complain, you’ll have to do it tomorrow.”
Celia grabbed the envelope. “I’ll do that.” She signaled Dorothy to follow her out. Before opening the door, she stopped and turned back to Marge. “It’s a shame you parked your granny’s car in front of the fire hydrant. Sheriff Lee won’t like that. Especially if someone calls it in and complains.”
“I didn’t park in front of the hydrant.”
Celia snickered. “Dorothy’s brother and his tow truck come in handy sometimes.”
Marge shot out from behind the counter and raced to the window. Her Granny Boudreaux’s car was now parked on the other side of the street from where she’d parked several hours earlier. In front of a fire hydrant. Sheriff Lee stood to the side of the car, placing a ticket on the window. His horse, Barnaby, was tied to a tree behind the car.
“Did you really think we were going to let you leave for the Army without a nice send-off?”
Marge cursed and ran out of the shop, but by the time she’d arrived at the car, Sheriff Lee had ridden off. She heard the laughter from Celia and Dorothy as they walked away from the store.
This was an act of war.
* * * * *
The knife came within inches of slicing off the tip of Ida Belle’s finger.
“Harvey Chicoron!” Ida Belle screamed. The onion Ida Belle had been dicing slid off the kitchen counter and landed on the floor.
“For Pete’s sake, Ida Belle,” Gertie said, picking up the onion and giving it a rinse under the sink, “be careful with that thing. The Army won’t want you with half a finger.”
“Are you sure about this?” Ida Belle asked, knowing how Gertie tended to overexaggerate.
Gertie nodded. “I heard it from Doreen who heard it from Shelly. She said Barbara called her up and said Harvey asked her to marry him. Told Shelly it was a big secret.”
“Is she crazy? He’ll chew Barbara up and spit her out.”
Barbara was Gertie’s cousin. She was normally a smart girl, except when she was around men, particularly men who could muster up a little charm and flash around some cash.
“She’s your cousin. Why didn’t she tell you? Why’d you have to hear it from Shelly?”
“Because Barbara knew I would have gone over there and knocked some sense into her head, that’s why,” Gertie said. “She’s planning on marrying him after we leave for Fort McClellan. She knew if we were around, the three of us would kidnap her the night before the wedding and not let her marry him.”
“Damn straight we would.” Ida Belle shook her head. She’d had a date with Harvey once. Well, not actually a date. She and some friends took some beer to an abandoned camp once and Harvey found out and invited himself. He had taken a liking to her, or, rather, her tight sweater. Before she knew it, he was giving her an uninvited hickey. He was lucky all she gave him was a black eye.
Harvey was a snake, which wasn’t surprising as he took after his daddy, Sonny. And Sonny Chicoron was a womanizer and a mean SOB, especially after he’d been drinking.
“What is Barbara thinking?” Ida Belle asked.
“Apparently, they had a few good dates. He can be a real charmer when he’s trying to get something he wants, you know that.” Gertie glanced over at some of the diced onions and grimaced.
“Go ahead, I know you can’t stand chopped vegetables that aren’t all cut even,” Ida Belle said.
To Gertie, an unevenly chopped vegetable was an insult to God who made vegetables so people like Gertie could show off their cooking skills. Gertie grabbed the knife and began slicing some of the biggest onion pieces in half. Before long she’d take over chopping all the vegetables, maybe even cook the entire meal Ida Belle was preparing for her father. Didn’t bother Ida Belle. In fact, sometimes she’d cut uneven vegetables when Gertie was around at dinnertime just so she’d finish up. Gertie was onto her, but didn’t seem to mind.
“He doesn’t love her,” Gertie said. “Well, correction, he loves her big boobs. Those are our Great-Grandma Claire’s boobs. I inherited my mom’s. Big enough for the pocket protector boys but not impressive enough for a guy like Harvey.” Gertie grabbed the rest of the onion and began chopping. “But I bet he also has his eye on the land that Barbara’s family has across from Loppinot Island. Part of my granddad’s old plot. Our half is next door and the Chicorons have been hounding my daddy for years to sell it to him. That’s what this is all about. He wants their land to impress his daddy. Barbara’s boobs are just the icing on the cake.”
Gertie lit the burner under the cast-iron skillet. “Barbara’s my cousin! How am I going to leave for the Army knowing she’s going to marry a Chicoron?” She dipped a spoon into the grease jar and flicked the gloppy mass into the skillet, tilting the skillet up and around to distribute the grease. “But you know how Barbara is. You can’t tell her anything when it comes to men.”
Ida Belle sighed. “I agree. We need to do something to make Barbara see what kind of man Harvey is, but let her think she came to that realization all on her own.”
Gertie turned to her, smiling. “Psychological warfare.”
Ida Belle nodded. “We need to think like Louanne Boudreaux.”
Louanne was Marge’s aunt and an avid reader of mysteries and spy novels. Over the years Miss Louanne had shared her enthusiasm for all things “covert” with Ida Belle, Gertie and Marge, teaching them a game she called “Undercover.” Sometimes they’d dress up as other people, other times they’d just hover in the background and listen in as adults spilled their secrets to one another. They’d also learned how to pass messages between them in a code they’d made up. Their parents, of course, never knew what they were learning from Miss Louanne. The three girls had thought it best not to let them know Marge’s aunt was teaching them things like how to pick a lock and how to dress like the Fuller Brush Man (a great way to gain access to Celia’s house and spread itching powder on the family sofa).
“I’ll tell you what Miss Louanne would do,” Gertie said, adding the onions to the skillet. “She’d follow Harvey around until she caught him with some other girl and then take incriminating photos of him. But we don’t have that kind of time. We’re leaving for the WACs next week.”
“Well, I do have an idea how to speed up the process, but it is kind of devious.”
Gertie stirred the onions. “Aren’t those the best kinds of ideas?”
“We need Marge in on this. Where is she, anyway? She was supposed to leave her aunt’s shop a half hour ago.” Ida Belle picked up the handset of the wall phone but was greeted with an irritating voice in the middle of a conversation.
“You should have seen her face when the Sheriff gave her a ticket.”
Damn party line, Ida Belle thought. Of all the people in Sinful, Ida Belle and her dad had to share their phone line with Celia’s family.
“Your cousin just moved it to the other side of the street?” another voice asked. Celia’s friend, Sandra.
“Get off the phone,” Ida Belle said into the handset. “This is an emergency.”
Party line rules dictated that if one party cut in and said it was an emergency, the other party had to oblige and get off the line. Of course, everyone said their calls were emergencies, so no one ever hung up unless they heard a woman giving birth in the background.
“Wait your turn,” Celia said. “My call happens to be an emergency as well. Or, should I say, it was Marge’s emergency.” Celia and Sandra cackled.
Ida Belle slammed the handset into its cradle. “Now we know what happened to Marge. Celia’s goons moved her granny’s car in front of a hydrant and it was ticketed.”
Gertie banged the wooden spoon against the skillet. “Bitch.” Her gaze moved to the window. “Here comes Marge.”
Without knocking, Marge stormed inside. Her face was red. Her eyes crazy. Marge could do crazy eyes like no one Ida Belle had ever seen.
“I heard it on the party line,” Ida Belle said. “A ticket?”
“That’s gonna cost me nine dollars!” Marge screamed. “Nine dollars! I even went to the station and begged Sheriff Lee to let it go and he wouldn’t.”
Gertie ran some water over her hands and wiped them on a towel. “We can break into Celia’s bedroom before she goes to bed. I have enough itching powder left over for her pillow.”
Marge pointed to Gertie. “That’s a good one.”
Ida Belle held up her hand. “Itching powder is temporary. I have an idea that might have some staying power. In fact, I think we could make trouble for two Sinful evils in one swoop.”
Gertie filled Marge in on the Barbara situation.
“Harvey Chicoron?” Marge said. “Even our moms eventually stopped trying to marry us off to Harvey Chicoron.” She glanced at Ida Belle. “I meant... you know. Gertie’s mom and my mom.” Marge looked down at the ground.
“It’s okay.” Ida Belle’s mother had died just after she started first grade. From that day forward Ida Belle had become THAT girl. The girl with no mother. And she always had to soothe someone when they thought they’d said something that was insensitive. “Don’t worry about it.”
“So what’s your idea?” Gertie asked.
“Okay, we want to break up Harvey and Barbara and also get back at Celia.”
Gertie and Marge nodded.
“The only thing that would make Barbara rethink marrying Harvey would be if she caught him cheating on her, right? I say we get a photo of Harvey necking with Celia and tack it up all over town. That way Barbara breaks up with Harvey, and Celia’s boyfriend Pike breaks up with Celia. Two birds killed with one stone.”
She was met with two blank stares.
Gertie shook her head. “Those two will never get together. Their families are sworn enemies.”
“They don’t have to. All we need is a Celia stand-in,” Ida Belle said. “I could look like Celia from the back if I tease my hair just right. If Marge photographs us just showing the back of my head, no one could even tell it was me in the photo. Trust me, I’ve seen Harvey plastered. Slap some lipstick and a push-up bra on a gator and he’d be feeling it up.”
Marge smiled. “It might work. As long as I’m not the one making out with Harvey, I’m in.”
Ida Belle pulled her gaze to Gertie. “Now all we need is someone to get Harvey drunk.”
Gertie winced. “Me? How am I supposed to do that?”
“You said yourself the Chicorons have always wanted the Hebert land across from Loppinot Island. Tell him your family wants to sell. Invite him to a picnic on your land. It’s isolated out there. That way you can get him drunk and we can set up the photo shoot without anyone watching.”
Gertie waved her hand across her chest. “You’re forgetting Harvey’s obsession with breasts. Do you know how much toilet paper I’d have to stuff in my bra to get Harvey to even listen to my invite?”
Ida Belle smiled. “I thought of that. Lucky for you the General Store is having a two-for-one sale.”
The kitchen door opened. The three stiffened as a black cloud known as Ida Belle’s father shuffled into the room, his clothes dirty after a four-day shift on the oil rig. He stood six foot-two and everything about him looked mean. Mean, unruly hair the color of caramel, piercing eyes that could tear a hole through you, and a mean jaw that never allowed a smile to form on his face. Ida Belle’s mother, by contrast, had been a beautiful woman, always with a gleam in her eye and a smile on her face. Ida Belle kept a photo album upstairs with pictures of her mother so she’d never forget what she looked like. The photo album was going with her to the Army.
“We were just leaving,” Marge said to him.
He didn’t acknowledge Ida Belle’s friends. Never did. He grunted. Sounded like, “When’s dinner?”
“Be ready in a couple of hours,” Ida Belle answered, not looking up at him. The three were scheduled to leave for Fort McClellan, Alabama in a week. Ida Belle wished it could be tomorrow.
“Call me when it’s ready,” he said, brushing past her.
Ida Belle pursed her lips and watched as he walked into the living room. “Harvey is nothing but a bully.” She turned to Marge and Gertie. “Nobody should end up with a bully.”
Gertie added some salt and pepper to the onions. “Okay, I’ll do it. But I want Harvey more than snookered. I want him totally pliable. We’re going to need some strong hooch.”
Marge’s face lit up. “I heard my Aunt Louanne’s moonshine will put a man in a stupor with only a couple of two-finger pours.”
“Think she’ll help us?” Gertie asked. “You know how funny she is about her moonshine operation. She still thinks we don’t know about it.”
“To bring down a Chicoron,” Marge said. “She’ll help.”
“We can take my dad’s boat to her place,” said Ida Belle. “It’s quicker than driving. He usually just sits and watches TV after dinner, anyway. He won’t need it.”
Gertie gave the onions a quick stir and glanced up at Ida Belle. “You’re the slowest cook on Earth. You’d better let me finish up.” She opened the refrigerator and started pulling out carrots, potatoes and a container of boar meat from her dad’s last foray into the woods. Luckily it was all defrosted. “I can make a pretty good boar stew in my sleep.”
Ida Belle folded her arms and cast a glance back in the living room. “Don’t make it taste too good.” Yep, she couldn’t leave for Fort McClellan fast enough.