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Jail Bertie and the Peanut Ladies
By Dolores J. Wilson Medallion Press, Inc.
Copyright © 2007 Dolores J. Wilson
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-933836-11-9
Chapter One
"Isn't this exciting, LoJ?" I asked my six-week-old baby girl. "You're going to be staying with your Grandma and Poppy, and I'll be right next door working at Bertie's Garage and Towing. That's Mommy's very own business. Some day I'll pass it on to your big sister, Petey and you, just like Pop passed it on to me." LoJ's only answer came in the form of a piercing screech loud enough to shatter glass.
Which, by the way, was one of the next sounds I heard. Tires squealed. Metal crunched. Glass crashed. As I swerved to the shoulder of the highway and slammed on my brakes, a large, fiberglass bumper whizzed by my windshield.
I let loose of a string of blue words and then instantly regretted them. Luckily LoJ was screaming too loudly to hear her mother's potty mouth. I closed my eyes, bowed my head, and gave thanks my baby and I had not actually been involved in the accident at the corner of Oak and Haverford.
Because of an overgrown cedar tree, which blocked the view of vehicles pulling onto Oak Street, the notorious intersection had been the site of at least one wreck a week for the past six months. I would know because I'm Bertie Byrd-Fortney, owner of the only towing company in Sweet Meadow, Georgia. My tow truck operators picked up every one of those disabled vehicles and brought them to the storage yard behind my garage, located a quarter of a mile from the intersection.
Several other vehicles had pulled off the side of the road, and people were rushing to the aid of those in the wrecked cars.
Once my heart rate slowed to the speed of a locomotive, I dug into my purse for the new cell phone my husband, Arch, had given me after the birth of our daughter. At the time I hadn't seen any reason to have one since I'd been born and raised in Sweet Meadow, and if an emergency arose, I'd just roll down my car window and yell to any passerby. Whether it was a life-threatening situation or just something they could laugh at me about for years to come or both, they would summon help.
But I digress. I flipped open the phone and called 911. LoJ continued to bellow in ear-piercing screams.
"Sweet Meadow Police Department," the operator said.
"There's an accident at Oak and Haverford."
"We've already dispatched a unit. They're on the way. The baby that's screaming in the background, is it in need of an ambulance?"
"No, just a diaper change and breakfast." I had gotten out of the car and was trying to unbuckle LoJ from her car seat. I juggled the phone between my chin and shoulder. Evidently the mouthpiece was precariously close to LoJ vocal cords.
Before I picked her up, I turned away from her to talk into the phone. "Sorry," I told the operator. "We are on our first big excursion alone. I'm taking her to my mother, who lives next door to my business, Bertie's Garage and Towing, just down the street from this accident.
"My baby girl's name is Lois Jamie, but we call her LoJ. Just the opposite of the singer's name. Our little LoJ has a good set of lungs, as you've already heard. Maybe she'll be famous someday, too."
"Ma'am," the operator interrupted me.
"Yes?"
"Is your head wound bleeding?" she asked.
"What head wound?"
"Well, the one you must have that's making you babble to an emergency operator."
"Sorry, I'm not hurt. Just a little anxious to have witnessed an accident on my first alone trip with my beautiful-"
Click. The line went dead.
"Can you hear me now?" I whispered as I closed the flap on my phone.
A police car sped toward us. Sirens blaring. Lights flashing. Deputy Carl Kelly skidded to a stop inches from the mangled mess. LoJ cried louder.
I took her out of her seat, cuddled her, and whispered hushed tones against her sweet cheek. Instantly she quieted. Her eyes fluttered. She drifted off to sleep. I pulled a light blanket around her and walked to the dozen or so people milling around the accident.
Carl had just taken his phone from his pocket and punched in numbers.
I was standing behind him. "Anything I can do to help?" I asked.
He looked over his should at me and back at his phone. "That's great service, Bertie. I was just calling you."
He handed me his cell. "Here, tell you to bring a tow truck."
Just as I put the phone to my ear, one of my drivers, Carrie Sue, answered.
"Good morning, bring the truck down to our favorite crash site. I'm here waiting on you," I told her.
"Oh, my goodness. I'll be right there." Carrie Sue gasped. Since she and my other driver, Linc were in love and constantly panting around each other, I didn't ask why she was out of breath. I really didn't want to know.
A few minutes later, my two drivers arrived on the scene. They were followed closely by Mom and Pop in their red Caddy. Mom's hair sprouted the same rollers she'd slept in since I was a child. She had on a multi-colored parrot-laden muumuu, and pink fluffy house slippers.
Pop was not so well dressed. He had on NASCAR boxers, no shirt, socks pulled to his knees, tennis shoes, and Mom's chenille purple robe only half closed.
I have an affliction where my eye twitches when I am stressed. Sometimes it's the right one. Sometimes it's the left. Today it was both. The one happy moment came when I realized LoJ had her eyes closed and didn't have to witness the two deranged people rushing toward us.
Suddenly I wondered why I should suffer alone. "Wake up, sweetheart," I whispered to my baby girl. "Grandma and Poppy are here."
It took a few minutes to convince my parents the baby and I were fine and had, in fact, not been part of the mess surrounding us. We'd already equipped Pop's Caddy with a car seat, so we transferred LoJ's tons of paraphernalia and put her safely in his car.
I watched them drive away, my heart heavy, my uterus contracting. For the first time since her birth, Lois Jamie and I were separated by more than a wall or hospital corridor. Tears streamed down my face.
"Move it or lose it." Carl encouraged me to step out of the way of my tow truck, which Linc was backing into the spot where I stood. The deputy put his arm around my shoulder. "It's okay. She's only going to your mom's. She's not eloping or anything like that. She'll be right next door anytime you feel the urge to hold her."
He was right. I was being so silly. "Thanks, Carl. I appreciate that."
"So we're good now?" He gave my arm a squeeze.
"Sure."
"Then please either help clean up this mess or get the heck out of the way."
I grabbed an industrial shop broom and began sweeping up the kitty litter Carrie Sue had spread on the anti-freeze leaking from a crumpled radiator. Just that quick I was back into the swing of things: sweeping, shoveling, and flinging car parts inside the vehicles to be hauled back to my storage yard. A smile played at the corners of my mouth. I was happy to be working.
"You're happy, aren't you, Miss Crash and Tow?"
I glanced around and found a man I'd seen around town, and I may have even hauled his vehicle a time or two, but his name escaped me.
"As a matter of fact, I am happy, but how did you know?" I shaded my eyes from the sun.
"I can hear your cash register cha-chinging all the way over here. The acid fumes of boiling radiator water on a hot engine smell like money to you, don't they?"
I would have joked back with the man, but I could tell by the dark glare in his eyes he wasn't kidding.
"Sorry, I've got to get this area cleaned up." I went back to sweeping.
"Do you get to charge more per hour if the boss is on the scene?" Sarcasm dripped from the man's voice.
"Is one of these cars yours?" I swept a small pile of dirt over his highly polished shoes.
"No." He didn't move, but I did.
I scurried directly to Carl's side. Out of the side of my mouth I whispered, "Hostile bystander at eleven o'clock." I hurried on my way to the other side of the road.
Linc had taken the first car to the yard, unloaded, and had returned to hook up the second one. After surveying the site and finding it clear of debris, I got into my car and drove to the garage.
Before I started my first day back in the office, I wanted to run to Mom's and check on LoJ. A car pulled between me and my path to the house next door. The man who had approached me a few minutes before climbed out of his car.
"Mrs. Fortney." He and his dusty shoes hurried my way.
"Yes?"
"Don't you think you should do something about the cedar tree at the corner of Oak and Haverford so people coming from the south can see to pull into oncoming traffic?"
"Sir, I don't have anything to do with trimming trees along the highway, but surely you can take that issue up with the city."
"I assume you wouldn't want to take it up with the city, because if people had a clear view, they wouldn't wreck. And that would cut into your profit. Right?"
Of all the unmitigated gall. "Are you insinuating I would do something to cause those accidents?"
"Of course not."
"Well, I would hope not," I huffed.
"What I'm saying is that you aren't doing anything to stop the accidents because they are a source of income for you."
I looked skyward. Lord, if this man has any more to say, please let his words lodge in his throat. When he didn't choke, I lashed out. "Sir, I would say that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, but unfortunately the way my life goes, I can't make that claim. But I can say none of it is true, and I don't intend to spend another minute discussing it with you. Good day."
"I think it's only fair to warn you I'm going to report your business practices to the city."
"Well, good. While you're down there, why don't you tell them to cut down the cedar tree you've so boldly pointed out is the precise reason for the wrecks?"
* * *
The next day, it came to my attention in rather an over-the-top way the city council had no intention of cutting down the tree at the corner of Oak and Haverford. Several cars of well-meaning citizens of Sweet Meadow unloaded in my parking lot and formed the neatest, perfectly-organized picket line you've ever laid eyes on. I wondered if they were a professional group of demonstrators ready at a moment's notice to march against injustice or to raise awareness for a cause.
What could they be doing right in front of my business? The signs they carried told the whole story: Bertie in cahoots with city hall. Miss Crash and Tow refuses to demand city action. Tree must go-Bertie says no.
I lifted my gaze upward. "How crazy can my life get?" I asked God, but instantly retracted the question. I didn't really want to know if things could get worse.
The ten or so picketers pacing the sidewalk were enough foolishness for one day. I couldn't believe anyone thought I would want people put in harm's way by wrecking just so I could tow them to my shop and in the end make money. But, apparently, they did. Their signs said so.
Boycott Bertie's. Take your business elsewhere.
The last two signs were extremely interesting: Burn your bras. Make love not war.
"Millie! Mavis!" I grabbed the arms of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumber.
Millie Keats is a member of one of Sweet Meadow's founding families. Mavis Fortney is Arch's aunt by marriage. A forty-seven-year marriage which I managed to destroy in a short two weeks. My penitence for that deed is to be in charge of keeping the two octogenarians out of trouble. That's a full-time job.
I dragged them clear of the other marchers.
"What is wrong with you two? Don't you realize these people are wrong? You know me; I would do anything to make that corner safer for everyone." I raised my voice and directed my comments to the crowd. "You know I have no control of things like that. I tow you in when it happens, but I've never wanted, wished, or caused a wreck in my entire life."
They were a fickle group. Suddenly, they turned on their leader, the man who had accosted me the day before.
"She's right," someone said and tossed his sign on the ground.
"Yeah," another person chimed in. "Let's go to the Chow Pal Diner and have coffee." Several people handed their signs to the man who started the ordeal and piled back into their cars and disappeared as quickly as they'd arrived.
"Mavis, go on home and take that old placard with you," I told her.
Millie pressed against my body and lifted her face to me. "Who are you calling an 'old placard'?"
"Please go home, Millie." I rubbed my forehead. "You're giving me a headache."
She and Mavis got into the car. Before they drove away, I motioned for Mavis to roll down her window. "Have you gotten your driver's license yet?"
"No, but I'm working on it." She laid on the horn. It blared for a good ten seconds.
"See." Millie leaned over in the seat so I could hear her. "She's mastered Horn 101. Tomorrow we're going to work on passing on a two-lane road."
I should have tackled them and taken their keys away, but right now I had bigger fish to fry. The rabble-rouser who'd started all this collected signs and put them in the back of his car.
"What did you hope to accomplish with that? You look like you have all your marbles, so what is the deal?"
He barely glanced my way, just continued with what he was doing. "I talked to city hall yesterday, and they say they can't cut down that tree because technically it isn't theirs to cut down. It seems it was planted on that empty corner many years ago by a lady named Tiny Byrd. Any relation?"
"Well, yes, that's my father's mother."
"Right. She planted it there in memory of her husband, your grandfather. She requested it never be cut down. So the city won't cut it down."
Grandpa Byrd died when I was very small. I'd never heard anything about that tree. It was all too bizarre.
"Who are you?" I asked the man.
"Tuten. Timothy Tuten." He stared at me like I should recognize the name, but I didn't. My brother Bobby used to be friends with a boy whose last name was Tuten, but they'd moved away when I was in elementary school. I couldn't recall what his first name was, but I knew it wasn't Timothy. And besides, that young Tuten had ears and a nose that could rival Dumbo in both cases.
Whoever this guy was, his ears and nose were very well proportioned to the rest of him. It was his ego that was too big for its britches.
"Why are you singling me out? You look far too intelligent to really believe a tree being planted many years ago was done just so it could grow up and block the view of drivers. And that my grandmother did it so I could profit from others' misfortune. Why am I the target of your hostility?"
His stern look softened, but quickly turned hard again. "All I can tell you is that I moved here two years ago, and at least once a week I'm held up at that corner because of an accident. It's my understanding that to this point no one's been killed, but it's just a matter of time. What's wrong with solving the problem before a tragedy happens?
"Something has to be done. The city has washed their hands of the situation. The property is tied up in some kind of probate battle. They've hired someone to keep the lot mowed, but he's been given orders not to touch the tree because it belongs to the Byrd family. And that brings me back to you."
He got in his car. "Do something about it before someone gets killed," he shouted and drove away.
Suddenly I was responsible for the well being of every person who drove past the corner of Oak and Haverford. Their lives were in my hands.
I called city hall and talked to Cy Linder, head of the city council. He said the same thing Mr. Tuten had said. It was on private property and the city law said they couldn't touch trees with a certain trunk diameter.
"Surely you have a law that overrides it when it poses a danger to people."
"I think they always meant to have one, but just never got around to it."
"Okay, Cy, what do you suggest I do?"
"Cut down the tree."
"You want me to get rid of it when no one else in town will touch it because of legalities?"
"I can't think of a more likely candidate to handle it than you." He whispered as if talking to someone near him. "I got to run, Bertie. Sorry I couldn't be more help, but you'll figure it out. I have faith in you."
* * *
I was in the middle of telling Arch about my day when Mavis and Millie arrived. They'd been out practicing driving and thought they'd visit for a few minutes. If I happened to have dessert and coffee, all the better.
Over a store-bought bag of cookies, I explained the problem with the tree.
"If it's your family tree, cut it down. Problem solved," Mavis said with a mouthful of cookies.
"There seems to be a little more to it. The tree is a certain dimension, and it's illegal to cut it down."
"Don't let anyone see you cut it down." You can always count on Millie to go against the law.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Jail Bertie and the Peanut Ladies by Dolores J. Wilson Copyright © 2007 by Dolores J. Wilson. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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