A Plan Blows up

Margaret Lowell stepped on her porch to escape the vinegar aroma of the tomatoes and cucumbers she was canning—and shrieked.  Smoke as black as death billowed from her daughter’s home. 

She flew down her front steps toward the house where her daughter Emma and four-year-old granddaughter Betsy lived. Margaret didn’t bother with the path but plowed straight through the acre of corn between the houses. A faint siren sounded near the Starlight Galleria mall two hay fields from Emma’s house. 

Sudden screams of agony echoed off the east Tennessee hills. Margaret shuddered but kept running. After what seemed an eternity, she burst out of the cornfield to Emma stumbling out of the house with Betsy. They made it to the front lawn and fell in a crying, coughing heap.

“P-pete!” Emma pointed to the house. “Pe-t-e!”

“Pete Chandler?” Margaret cried.

Margaret ran around the house looking through the smoke and hollering for her hired man. Minutes later volunteer firemen arrived and began laying hose from the county road hydrant. She grabbed the closest one and told him about Pete. The firemen sent her out of their way to join Emma and Betsy under the shade tree. 

“Sorre-e. Sorre-e, Mommy.” Betsy hiccupped and shook against her mother.

“You’re okay, honey. I shouldn’t have left you to answer the door,” Emma cooed.

“G-r-andma.” Betsy reached for Margaret. 

Margaret wiped her granddaughter’s tear with the corner of her apron. By now flames shot out the side of the house that she and her husband George gave Emma as a wedding gift when she married in 1966. But they were all okay. Emma could rebuild on land Margaret’s family had owned for generations.

“Gracious” was all she could say. Only last night she’d sat on this very lawn chair watching Betsy chase fireflies. She’d fussed about cookies she had to bake for the church luncheon and Emma griped about losing her fancy mixer in the divorce. Emma and Betsy offered to bake if Margaret would loan them her big mixer. 

“All my fault,” Emma said between coughs.

 According to Emma, she had left Betsy on a kitchen chair with a spoon and a bowl of butter and sugar ready to mix when she went to answer the doorbell. Betsy must have turned on the mixer. Next thing Emma saw through the front window was smoke, Pete tackling Betsy then boom! 

“It exploded? Pete just fixed that mix—wait, who was at the door?” Margaret asked.

“Nobody,” Emma said. “Maybe. . . Pete. Had to be. I heard footsteps around the side and went to look. As I was coming back around the porch, I looked in the front window and caught a glimpse of Pete tackling Betsy. Then. . ..”

“B-boom,” Betsy sniffled.

Margaret mustered a smile. “Betsy, you and your mama come stay with me a spell. Spite’ll be real glad.”

“Spite kitty,” Betsy mumbled.

Somebody had thrown out a calico kitten in front of Emma’s house. Cats made Emma sneeze, but Betsy kept on about that cat until Pete said he’d feed her. The kitten spit and hissed at everybody, so Margaret named him Spite. He followed Pete around like a dog.

What Emma told her mother about the fire didn’t set right. Margaret’s stomach churned from a sour kettleful of fear and anger. The sheriff arrived, talked to the Fire Chief then motioned to Margaret. She hauled herself out of the chair and traipsed through puddles made by a leaky firehose.

The sheriff said, “Uh, there’s a body inside, Mrs. Lowell.” 

Margaret closed her eyes in prayer.

After a respectful nano-second, the sheriff eyed her frizzled white hair and red-stained apron. “You know anything about it?”  

“I had no idea. I came outside for some air and saw smoke,” she babbled like a trapped suspect. “House’s always hot as a firecracker when I cook since my electric stove’s on the inside wall. Only mistake I made renovating that kitchen.”

The sheriff grunted. “Pete got kin?”

“A son, Bill, in Chicago. He’s got cancer.” 

“Know how to reach him?” The sheriff asked.

“I’ll find out.”

Margaret and the sheriff dodged hoses and puddles to Emma. He asked her, then Betsy, what happened. He made notes and said, “Uh-h, huh” a bunch of times. 

“Pete’s a hero,” the sheriff declared. “He musta seen the mixer smoking through the front window, run around to the back, pushed Betsy out of the way, and his clothes caught fire. Even I know how he kept an oil rag in his hip pocket.” 

Then he left. He didn’t say he’d look around Pete’s cabin or wonder how an overweight fifty-five-year-old man could act so quickly or ponder how an oil rag ignited Pete’s clothes like it did. 

Margaret couldn’t believe Tolliver County elected such an idiot. She had more questions. Like, why was Pete at Emma’s house when he lived and worked near Margaret? Why had her mixer exploded after Pete fixed it? Why had Emma, who owned enough brains to graduate from college, married Jason Ricketts?

Emma’s ex-husband came flying up the driveway from the road as unkempt as Margaret had ever seen him.  His crisp, blue pin-striped suit coat flapped, his black hair bobbed on both sides of his head and sweat dripped off his pale face. 

“Betsy! Baby, are you okay? Are you hurt? Oh my God!” Tears leaked from one of his eyes.

An ambulance pulled into the yard. A skinny young medic with long brown hair jumped out. 

“Daddy-daddy-daddeee.” Betsy’s little hands stretched for her father as the medic tried to check her heart. Emma rose and handed her to Jason since it would never cross his mind to bend over.

The medic put the stethoscope on Betsy’s back to listen to her lungs as Jason held her in his arms. He hugged his daughter and rocked. She buried her sooty-streaked face on his shoulder.

“What happened, Emma? How-how could you let this fire happen?” he yelled. 

Emma’s face turned red as the fire truck. She leaned over gasping. I half-rose from my chair, but the medic had already gotten her to sit. 

 “J-jason, don’t y-you have w-work,” she wheezed, “o-or a date with your side piece?”

 “You couldn’t call and tell me Betsy was ok?” Jason stormed like he hadn’t heard his bride called a whore.

Emma started to answer but coughing got the best of her. 

“Fire probably burnt the phone ‘fore the operator could put through the call.” Margaret rarely got between them, but Emma couldn’t catch her breath right then.

The medic guffawed. Jason glared pitchforks. Margaret suddenly had a charcoal taste in like she’d gotten the burnt hot dog at a cookout. Or maybe it was the nasty taste Jason always left.

“Emma needs—.” The medic pursed his lips. “Wait, I got something.”

Emma’s breathing sounded bad. Her face looked almost purple like the time she had bronchitis as a child. Her eyes rolled like she was passing out. The medic ran over with an oxygen tank and some plastic tubes, connected the tube to the tank, stuck a piece of plastic tube up each of Emma’s nostrils, and turned on the oxygen.

“I tinker a bit. Fixed this new oxygen nasal delivery system for the ambulance. Works a lot better than a mask.” He gave a sideways grin. “We don’t get a lot of county money.” 

Emma’s color began to improve, and her gasping subsided.

“Great invention,” Margaret said.

“I’m hoping to sell it to hospitals someday,” the medic said.

Margaret couldn’t think of that man’s name. He worked at his family’s fruit, vegetable, and fireworks stand all summer . . . She sighed. It wouldn’t come to her. 

Still clutching Betsy, Jason said, “Emma, the house is gone. Sell me the land so my company can expand Galleria.”

“That’s what you’re thinking about now?” Margaret snarled. “Well, she owns the house, but I own the land it sits on.”

“How well I know,” Jason snapped. He handed Betsy to Margaret. “I’ve got meeting at the bank. Sure you’re okay, Betsy? Love ya, sweetie.”

He left with a stiff-legged stride. 

“I’m taking Emma to the hospital,” the medic said. “Betsy too.”

“Nonononono!” Betsy dug her face into Margaret’ chest.

 “Look, Emma’s stable but. . .” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I gotta come back for, ah . . . well, when he . . . cools. County’s only got the one ambulance.” 

“Oh, uh, sure.”

“Hey, Miss Betsy. Let’s go for a ride,” the medic cajoled. “Your mama can come too,” 

Betsy lifted her head, intrigued. 

Folks always told Margaret that she had a deep voice, and Betsy thought it funny when her grandmother sounded like an old man. Margaret dropped her voice real low. 

“Go on, Betsy. Grandma’ll follow in her big Buick just rootin’ and tootin’.” 

Betsy giggled and went peaceably.

After they left, Margaret sat in the shade watching the firemen douse the last of the flames. She wondered what her George would do if he were still alive. 

 In all their forty-years George only made the one mistake that Margaret could recall. He gave in to Emma’s plea and sold the land wedged against the mountains, creek, and county highway so Jason could build that ugly mall. 

Margaret hauled herself out of the chair, but she lingered on the path worn between the two houses. Outlined in the dust were three sets of footprints. Emma’s sneakers and Betsy’s bare toes pointed to her house as they came to borrow her mixer then back the other way. Boot prints big enough to be Pete’s headed toward Emma’s, sometimes covering the other marks. 

That was odd, now that she thought about it. Pete wasn’t the kind to visit or do more than pass a mumbled hello. Margaret never knew him to go to Emma’s—or any place else—unless she sent him. She’d only found out about his son’s cancer because he kept taking extra jobs at the Galleria for Bill’s doctor bills. 

Thinking of Bill made Margaret face the chore of finding his number. She turned down the short lane to Pete’s.

Pete’s wood cabin seemed forlorn as she approached. Margaret felt like his uneven front porch, off kilter. The last tenant had cobbled together a workshop out back. Another wired it for electricity and telephone. Pete had done nothing but live there.

She opened the door and flicked on the lights. The gold sofa she’d given Pete was near the back and a television on a metal tray sat across from George’s old recliner. She walked to her aunt’s scarred secretary desk with its bevy of cubbies and writing top sticking out like a wooden tongue. Good place to keep important things, she decided. Sure enough, Bill’s telephone number was on a paper taped to the top. 

Habit caused Margaret to rub her hand along the side of the desk. Her aunt had always hidden hard candy in the secret drawer for Margaret. Dang thing had probably warped shut. It slid out easy as pie.  She glanced inside.

“Good Lord.”

Hundred dollar bills. More than she could count. More than Pete could earn in months. She stared at the back door as if the answer to where-did-Pete-get-this-money would walk in.

Margaret shoved the money in her apron pocket and skedaddled.

Mind awhirl, she hurried to the house to call the sheriff. The closer she got to her back yard, however, the louder a lawn mower’s roar sounded. Margaret stared. 

Pete had cut the grass from the front to the back then quit in mid-row and left the mower going. He must have seen Emma and Betsy with the mixer, knew something might happen, and dropped everything. How would he know— unless he was the one making the awful thing happen? 

The wad of money in Margaret’s apron pocket suddenly felt like a brick of trouble. When she rehearsed how to explain this to the sheriff, she realized he would think she was nuts.

Lost in thought, Margaret pushed the mower toward the deck where the lawn and garden equipment was kept. The wood lattice on one side of the new deck made it dark underneath so Margaret turned off the engine and blindly shoved the mower under. Judging by the noise, she knocked over a can or two.

Spite streaked from his hiding place.

“Guess I’ll have to feed you now, Spite.” The smokey taste in her mouth and an oily smell spurred Margaret toward the house and a shower.  

Spite waited at the kitchen door as she opened it. 

“No, Spite. Stay—.” 

Too late. The kitten dashed inside.

What a terrible day. Margaret glanced at the pickled cucumbers and canned tomatoes near the stove and wrinkled her nose. The vinegary smell lingered—and something else foul too.

“Tarnation.” She remembered the church luncheon.

The luncheon ladies counted on her. She must bake those dang cookies when she returned from the hospital. She had a hand mixer, and that’d have to do. On her way upstairs, she took a pound of butter out of the refrigerator and tossed it on the kitchen table to soften. 

The shower cleared her head, and she came downstairs knowing exactly what to tell the sheriff.  She had one foot on the last step and another in the hallway when she heard paper rattling, a chair scrape the floor.  In a panic, she fumbled in the front door umbrella stand and her hand tightened around George’s sturdy walking stick. Thus armed, she tiptoed to the kitchen. 

“Oh, tarnation! Scat, Spite! Scat!”

The kitten had jumped from the chair onto the kitchen table and helped himself to the butter. Spite regarded her fury with disinterest. 

“I’m gonna let you get away with it this one sad day,” she told the kitten. 

Spite looked funny. He had more black splotches than Nature gave him. Before the butter thief knew it, she took a quick sniff. Oil or gasoline. Whatever it was, Spite couldn’t stay in the house. She lured him outside with more butter.

A powerful stench of gas and oil followed her into the house. Even with all the equipment under the deck, she’d never noticed anything like it. She got a flashlight and went down the back stairs to see what spilled.

“Good Lord!”

At a point above her head the deck stopped, and the kitchen flooring began. A row of red gasoline cans lined the ground and wall under it. A dozen of them. Instead of rubber spouts, wicks of rags in the cans wove in and out of the wood lattice to the floor of the kitchen. She bet those cans were full and the wicks soaked in gas.

“Lord, have mercy!” She used her big mixer on the counter where the deck met the kitchen flooring. An explosion of sparks and flames from her mixer would have ignited the gas for sure.

“E-eow!” Spite exclaimed as he scampered after Margaret into the yard. 

For a moment she stood panting and trembling. She couldn’t go inside the house to call the sheriff and risk a spark blowing everything away. She would use Pete’s phone. 

Pete didn’t rig that mixer to kill her for meanness, of that, she was positive. He did it for someone. That would explain the money. 

She called the sheriff—who told her to stay put— then leaned back in George’s recliner. With a chuckle she realized she still clutched his walking stick. 

The peace of the farm settled Margaret some. In the livestock pond beyond the cornfield, frogs croaked. Outside the cabin, she heard crickets, whippoorwills, and somebody rummaging in Pete’s workroom.

She dropped the recliner leg and it fell with a mechanic noise loud as a car crash. She stood and listened. 

The back doorknob turned slowly, and her heart seized. She gripped the walking stick like a weapon. Thank you, Jesus, the door was locked.

“Hel-lo! Hell-o?”

Jason! Margaret dropped her voice deep and hollered, “Damnit!”

“Who’s here?” Jason called.

Margaret moaned in her low voice.

“Chris?” Jason rattled the knob. 

Chris. Chris Mathews. Now she remembered the medic’s name. He tinkered. He worked with gunpowder at the fireworks stand. He would know how to make a mixer explode. Margaret’s legs propelled her toward the front door. She had to get out.

She rushed out into Chris’s arms. His eyes grew wide in shock, and his grip tightened around her.

“A-a rat!” She cried.

He looked toward the cabin.

“I went in to get Bill’s phone number and—a rat!” Chris’s hold loosened. She shrugged free and maneuvered behind him like a scared mouse.

“Where?” 

“Under the sofa.” She pointed.

Chris put one foot on the porch. Margaret reared back and walloped him across the back of one knee with the walking stick. He dropped with a screech. Then she whacked his head. Something crunched and Chris howled. 

Margaret sprinted through the corn in the direction of a siren. 

++

Didn’t take long for the sheriff to round up Chris, but the deputies chased Jason through the hayfields to the mall parking lot. Then the story came out.

Jason hatched a plan to kill Margaret so Emma would inherit the acres he needed for his mall. He figured he could wheedle them out of Emma. 

He needed help pulling it off—Jason always did make things complicated. He knew the mowers and gasoline were kept near her kitchen under the deck but igniting them poised a problem. He paid Pete to rig the gasoline cans. 

They decided to trigger an explosion to look like an accident but didn’t know how. As it happened, Jason was in the bank when Chris came in for a business loan. The three conspirators met at Pete’s to plot and decided to rig the mixer. 

On her way to the hospital, Margaret decided to explain it to Emma distinctly.

“Honey, Jason’s big plan blew up.”