“Every Sunday the five of them went to Maury’s Home Cookin’. It was buffet style, and though none of them could eat enough to make it a bargain at one sitting, their ‘knitting’ bags were loaded with enough plastic bags and containers to ensure they’d get several meals out of their single visit. They chose Sunday because it was so busy with the after-church crowd that no waiter, waitress, or manager could pay attention to a group of larcenous seniors who made a suspicious number of trips to the food bar.
Beatrice suspected they weren’t really getting away with anything, that Maury’s son, who’d been running the buffet for more than a decade, was not the tightfisted old curmudgeon his father had been. At forty-four, Maury Jr. had three divorces and a few other mishaps behind him. Instead of making him hardhearted, they’d made him indifferent. Better the food should go to old ladies than to the trash. At least that’s what Beatrice figured he thought.
They were a mostly quiet group until the first round of salad and yeast rolls had been consumed, so Beatrice wasn’t sure what surprised her more when Wylene spoke: what she said or that she said it.
‘I don’t believe in fortune tellers,’ Wylene said, her eyes on the cucumber eluding her fork. ‘Does anyone remember that carnival we went to when we were fifteen? Well, you were sixteen, Beatrice.’
‘I was the only one with a driver’s license,’ Beatrice said.
‘I remember that you stripped the gears on my daddy’s truck,’ Linette said. ‘He knew one of his kids had taken it out, and since no one would confess, we all got a whipping.’
‘Nobody told me I’d be driving a stick on the column.’ Beatrice took the defensive tone out of her voice when she turned to Wylene and said, ‘I never knew you went inside the fortune teller’s tent. How did I miss that?’
‘You were on that dinky ferris wheel for the dozenth time.’
‘I was making out with Junior Hayward behind the cotton candy stand.’ Bobbi’s tone was wistful.
‘What did the fortune teller predict?’ Linette asked, clearly in no mood for Bobbi’s romantic reminiscing.
‘She said I would have three babies and die young.’
‘Ha!’ Luann barked. ‘You passed both opportunities long ago.’
‘You did once have three kittens,’ Bobbi mused.
‘And it’s possible you died and you’re a zombie,’ Linette said.
‘Has she been a zombie for several decades?’ Luann asked.
‘I don’t believe in zombies,’ Wylene said.”
I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.
I would sooo read this.
Ha, thank you. It would probably be fun to write, too.