Doing It at the Dixie Dew by Ruth Moose

too long thinking I owned the rights to the condition.
    Scott and I worked with the steamer until after midnight. There were six layers of wallpaper that ranged from bamboo to roses, the bamboo being the oldest and hardest to remove. “Remind me never to plant any of this stuff,” Scott said. “I’ve seen enough to last a lifetime.”
    â€œThink how the kudzu would give it a run for the space,” I said. “You know the old story about if you plant kudzu in the rear of your yard it will beat you back to the house.”
    Scott laughed as he left.
    A few minutes later I let Sherman in the front door. I started to lock the door when I saw a huge van careen around the corner and down the street. A do-it-yourself rental type of moving van, going much too fast, and where on earth did moving vans go at this time of night? I watched as it passed and gunned down the street. I thought the determined driver looked a little like Father Roderick’s housekeeper.
    But what was Father Roderick’s housekeeper doing driving a moving van? Ida Plum had said she’d been someone he took in and gave a job to. She probably didn’t own more than the clothes on her back. Odd. But I could have sworn that was his housekeeper driving hell-bent for somewhere behind the wheel of that truck. It was her or someone who looked enough like her to be her twin sister. Two of those women in this world would be tough to take, I thought, and I didn’t know why I thought that. Just a feeling. I really didn’t know why the woman bothered me. But something about her bothered me a lot.

Chapter Ten
    I hated lawyers’ offices, even Ethan Drummond’s old wood-paneled, pine-smelling, green rubber-tiled reception room. It looked like it had the first day he’d opened the practice with a green plastic sofa, two boxy brown plastic chairs, plastic plants and magazines no one but a lawyer would read, except a three-year-old issue of Country Music, which Scott started thumbing through.
    The door to the inner office was closed, but behind its milky pebbled-glass pane I saw shadows, heard voices. Heyman bellowed something about this “Hicksville of a town” and “chicken shed police department.” Scott lifted one eyebrow, grinned at me. “What are we doing here?”
    Someone peered from the hall into the reception room, then eased himself into a chair closest to the door. Mr. Mumble Mumble Polyester, I remembered, Miss Lavinia’s cousin. He perched on the edge of the chair as if he wanted a head start should an occasion call for him to jump and run. He acknowledged me and Scott with a quick bob of his head, looked behind him as though someone might be following, then waited, holding his tan pancake of a hat over one knee of those god-awful green plaid polyester pants.
    I listened as Ethan Drummond’s easy tones seemed to calm Kingswood Heyman down. Ethan was used to charming juries, judges, the city council, hostile witnesses, church elders … anybody who sat before him. He and his wife, Miss Grace, had been friends with Mama Alice for as long as I could remember. They’d treated me like a daughter, always remembered my birthdays, Christmases … every occasion. They thought me and Ethan Clay, their son, would marry. We would go up to the university together after high school. He’d finish law school, pass the bar, we’d get married, come back to Littleboro to live, and Clay would take over his father’s practice. But it hadn’t worked that way. Clay had gone to England on a Rhodes Scholarship and when he came back, he’d settled in New York. Verna Crowell told Mama Alice once that Miss Grace said, “That boy’s up there just making pots and pots of money and it scares his daddy to death. He thinks you can’t make all that much money unless you’re doing something dishonest. He thinks Clay won’t come back to Littleboro even for our