The Merchant of Menace

who subcontracted for his food?“ Jane asked.
    Shelley thought for a minute. “You’ve got a point. All right, then. We’ll do a couple presliced hams, a bunch of scalloped potatoes from a boxed mix with some decent cheese and some green and red peppers added, and we’ll tell everyone to bring either a salad or a dessert.”
    Jane sighed again. “Shelley, you’re a good woman. Now tell me what gifts to get my kids.“
    “You haven’t done your shopping yet?“ Shelley almost yelled.
    “I know. I know. You had yours finished in August.”
    Shelley didn’t deny it. “It’s too late to even count on catalogs. Sorry, Jane, but you’re on your own there. Gift certificates are nice,“ she added wryly.
    “Life was so much easier when they could be thrilled with a Big Wheel or a huge new box of crayons and half a dozen coloring books. Easier and cheaper. Mike sent me a list of computer programs and games he wanted. I went and priced them and reeled back out of the store looking like a woman who’d been hit in the head with a shovel.”
    Shelley abandoned the topic. “So what were your other complaints? Something about the neighbors?“
    “Oh, that’s right. You and Paul were out of town when they moved in.“
    “I’ve been meaning to get over there and meet them,“ Shelley said. “What’s wrong with them?“
    “Nothing, I guess, if you’d grown up in Possum Hollow and were married to your half-brother.“
    “Hicks?“
    “Oh, way beyond hickdom, Shelley. Way beyond. You should have seen the furniture going in. Stuff I’d be embarrassed to put out for the trash. A hideous rainbow plaid sofa that made my eyes water. Dining room chairs with fake gold legs and plastic covers on the seats. I hate being a snob—“
    “I can see why,“ Shelley commented, glancing at Jane’s hair.
    “But the wife wears housedresses—the kind our grandmothers wore in the Depression—and I saw her once at the grocery store with her hair in pin curls. I haven’t seen anyone do that for at least twenty years.“
    “Have you met them, or just gawked at them?“
    “We’ve met, briefly. I took a tuna casserole and a salad over to them for dinner the first night they were here. The husband—Billy Something, Jones or Johnson, I can’t remember which—wears cowboy boots, a deer-hunting hat. He made us come in the house and meet his wife.“
    “Us?“
    “Suzie Williams was with me. She brought a dessert. He very nearly drooled on her.”
    Jane and Shelley’s friend Suzie, who lived a couple houses down the block, was a big, voluptuous platinum blond. A Mae West–looking woman, but much prettier and just as vulgar.
    “Why wouldn’t he drool over Suzie? It’s a perfectly natural impulse for a man.“
    “Well, the poor wife was standing right there, for one thing.“
    “Was he nasty?“
    “No, not nasty. Just sort of showed off like a kid trying to impress a teacher he’s got a crush on. Had to tell us all about his alligator boots and how he ‘knew the of boy what raised the ‘gators hisself.’ And he wanted us to admire their pictures they were hanging. Landscapes they’d bought in a vacant gas-station parking lot. Oh, well. Maybe they’ll grow on me. It’ll be a cultural experience, at the very least.“
    “What does he do, did he say?“
    “He’s retired.”
    Shelley looked surprised. “Oh? Older people?”
    “No. He looks about forty.“
    “What’s he retired from?”
    Jane shrugged. “No idea. Making moonshine?”
    As if she’d made a cosmic announcement, her last word was followed by a trumpet blast of Biblical proportions that shook the windows.

Two

    Billy Joe Johnson ran out the front door and down the sidewalk to where his wife Tiffany was standing. Once again, she had her hair in pin curls, but with a woolen scarf on her head, peasant-style. She was wearing jeans, a lumberjack shirt, and a light jacket she was trying to keep overlapped in the front and cover her ears at the same time. She didn’t have enough hands for both.
    “Ain’t it great, Tiff?“ Billy Johnson shouted over the music. The raucous noise had resolved itself into a brass band recording of “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.”
    Tiffany cupped her ear. “What? I can’t hear you!”
    Jane and Shelley came out onto Jane’s front porch and Billy Joe waved cheerfully at them. Jane raised a limp hand in response as she and Shelley minced down the front steps to get a better look at the Johnsons’ house. It was