Cannot Wait to Get to Heaven - Fannie Flagg [97]
She didn’t answer for a while, then said, “Macky, all I can say is, ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.”
“Aunt Elner, this is serious. Now listen, I didn’t tell Norma it was a real gun, I covered for you.”
“Thank you, honey,” she said.
“You’re welcome, but you need to be honest with me. I need to know where that gun came from.”
“All I can say is that it wasn’t Will’s gun.” She looked up at the ceiling. “I’m gonna have to take a broom to those corners, look at those spiderwebs.”
“So, you’re not going to tell me where it came from.”
“Honey, I would if I could.”
“All right, just tell me this then. You haven’t done anything you shouldn’t have, you haven’t shot anybody, have you?”
She laughed. “What a question. Good heavens.”
“Well, wherever it came from, it’s long gone now. I took the damn thing out and threw it in the river. You know I have never fussed at you before, but I love you too much to take a chance on you hurting yourself or somebody coming in here and finding it and shooting you with it.”
She sat there looking chagrined. “Where in the river?”
“Never you mind where, just promise me that from now on you will keep away from guns.”
“OK. I promise.”
He felt bad he had to be stern with her and walked over and kissed her. “Well, all right then, let’s just forget about it, OK?”
“OK.”
“I’ve got to go to work. I love you.”
“Love you too,” she said.
She had learned a lesson that day that very few people on earth have a chance to find out firsthand and after the fact. When you are dead, people go through all your things, so if you have anything you don’t want found, you better get rid of it before you go!
Elner hated not being able to tell Macky what he wanted to know, but she had certainly never stolen anything or killed anybody. True, she may have been guilty of hiding and withholding evidence from the police, but what the heck. Besides, some people just needed killing. She remembered when her husband, Will, had had to shoot a rabid fox. Nobody is happy about it, you hate to do it, but you have to protect your chickens, and you can say self-defense until you are blue in the face, but sometimes it just doesn’t work. She periodically asked herself if she had it to do over again, would she? The answer was always yes, so her conscience was clear. Besides, Raymond hadn’t said a word about it, so she figured she was home free on that count.
Beauty Shop
8:45 AM
After things settled down a little, Norma was able to get back to normal again, and on Wednesday morning she was back in the chair at Tot’s Tell It Like It Is beauty shop having her hair rolled up, and listening to Tot say the same old things she had been saying over and over again for the last twenty years.
“I tell you, Norma, I’m so sick of all these whiners saying how society made them into criminals. My hind foot. Being poor is no excuse to rob people. Hell, I was poor, I pulled myself up by the bootstraps; you know what I came from, Norma, just plain trash and you didn’t see me run out and rob people…and there’s no shame anymore. People will just come right out and tell how they cheat on their taxes, and are proud of it! And when they film all those people on television looting, they just smile and wave at the camera. And if they do get caught, they get a free lawyer, and hot and cold social workers telling them they are victims of society, boo-hoo, and aren’t responsible for their behavior. And don’t tell me there are no jobs out there. Anybody can work if they want to. Dwayne Junior thinks he’s too good to get a job. He sits at home on welfare and his disability, while his sister and me work our fingers to the bone. Even his sorry, no-good daddy worked. Granted, it was only between drunks, but at least he made an effort.” Tot took a drag off of her nonfiltered Pall Mall. “Poor James, as much as he aggravated me to death, I hated that he ended up like that. The last time Darlene and I heard from him he was living in some old