Cannot Wait to Get to Heaven - Fannie Flagg [94]
“He’s inside,” Norma said. “I locked him in, I knew you’d want to see him the minute you got home.”
Elner walked in and Sonny was in his spot on the back of the couch. She went over and picked him up, and sat down and petted him. “Hey, Sonny, did you miss me?” But Sonny acted as though he didn’t even know she had been gone, and after allowing himself to be petted a short while, he jumped out of her lap and headed to his dish for a snack. Elner laughed. “Cats, they don’t want you to know they care a thing in the world about you, but they do.”
That first night home all the members of the Sunset Club gathered in her side yard with their chairs, and it was a particularly beautiful sunset that evening. Verbena remarked, “Elner, I think that’s the good Lord’s way of saying welcome home!” And Elner was glad to be back home again, until the next morning when she opened up her dirty-clothes basket and looked in.
“Uh-oh.” Never in a million years did she figure someone would go rooting around in there. “Now what?”
Elner walked over to Ruby’s house and knocked on the door. “Yoo hoo.”
“Come on in, Elner,” Ruby said from the kitchen. “I’m still doing my dishes.”
Elner walked back and said, “I just came over to thank you again for feeding Sonny and the birds and straightening the house and all.”
“Oh, you’re more than welcome, honey. Glad to do it.”
Elner nodded, then as casually as she could, she inquired, “You didn’t happen to find something in my dirty-clothes basket, did you?”
“Like what?” asked Ruby.
“Oh, nothing…just something.”
“No, I didn’t find anything but clothes. Why?”
“I just wondered.”
“Oh.”
“Well, OK, then.”
Ruby hated to lie, but she and Macky had made a pact. And as a registered nurse and a good neighbor, she knew it was for the best. Old people and firearms do not mix. Old Man Henderson who used to live up the street shot half his lip off fooling around with a loaded weapon.
As she walked back home, Elner was worried. If Norma had found it, she was in big trouble again.
Luther Comes Home
5:03 PM
That afternoon when Luther Griggs drove back into town after his Seattle run, he wondered if anybody had missed him at the funeral. He had felt terrible about not being able to go, but there had been nothing he could do about it. He thought about driving past Elner’s house before he went home, but changed his mind. It would be too sad not to see her out there on the front porch. He would go home, and after he had a nap and a bath, he would go over to Mrs. Warren’s house and tell them why he had not been at the service, and find out where she was buried. He knew where to get some nice flowers for her grave. He had seen a bunch of different arrangements the last time Bobbie Jo had dragged him through Tuesday Morning right next to the picture frames. He would get some as pretty as the ones he put on his own mother’s grave, nicer even, he thought. After all, she had been nicer to him than his own mother. But as he turned off the interstate and approached Elmwood Springs, he changed his mind and decided he would drive by her house. He realized that as fast as they were tearing down all the older houses in town, he better go by before it might be too late. As he came down First Avenue, he was relieved to see the house was still standing. He was thinking that he might try to buy the old house himself; he had saved some money over the past couple of years. He was thinking this when Elner Shimfissle walked out onto her porch with a watering can, and waved at him.
“Goddamn it, Luther!” yelled Merle. Luther had just run his eighteen-wheeler truck up over the curb, had almost run Merle over, and had taken out almost all of Merle’s prize hydrangea bushes. Merle ran up to the truck and banged it with his green and white plastic lawn chair, but Luther