The Mutual Admiration Society(23)
Along with all the other putridness Gert Klement does to Birdie and me, she put a real crimp in our cemetery visits after she paid to get a gigantic picture window put in above her kitchen sink. So now, whenever she’s doing the dishes or cooking or baking or pondering evil plans, she can keep tabs on Birdie and me better than she ever has. And believe me, nothing, and I mean not . . . one . . . thing on God’s green earth, even pagan babies, fills the black heart of that old biddy with as much joy as catching the Finley sisters in the act.
Birdie looks up at me, cocks her head, and asks, “What very important caper do we gotta pull off first, Tessie?”
This is not the time or place for this kind of sentimental sloppiness, but I can’t help myself. She is just so darn cute that I give her an Eskimo kiss before I narrow my eyes at the house next door and tell her, “We gotta sneak past the old fart first.”
7
LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS
After sitting Birdie down on our back porch steps and giving her strict instructions to stay put until she hears my coast-is-clear signal, I got busy doing reconnaissance from behind a tree in front of Gert Klement’s house.
I’m peeking around the trunk to make sure that everybody who is out and about on the block is so busy paying attention to something else that they won’t notice me and report back to Gert that they saw me on the morning in question. So far . . . so good. A group of around twenty kids are playing a rough game of Red Rover in the middle of Keefe Ave. Looking like death warmed over, Mrs. Stewart is barely pushing her tenth colicky baby in a ratty-looking carriage on the opposite end of the block. And four houses down, Louise’s opponent in the Pagan Baby Society election is working up a storm.
I’ve heard our mother refer to Mrs. Nancy Tate as “a lame duck,” but in my opinion, instead of wasting energy calling the gal she’s running against names—I’m rubber, you’re glue and all that—Louise should get busy doing exactly what Mrs. Tate’s been doing. And I don’t mean she should dance half-naked for traveling vacuum cleaner salesman Horace Mertz while listening to “Rockin’ Robin” when the mood comes over her. What our mother should be doing is some advertising if she doesn’t want her clamdiggers beat off her two weeks from now.
The reason I know how important getting the word out is in the scheme of things is because every other Saturday afternoon this summer, besides teaching me a lot about the Braves baseball team—boy, that Eddie Mathews is really something and so is Hammerin’ Hank Aaron—the owner of Skank’s Funeral Home has “undertaken” the job (Joke!) of teaching me free of charge about embalming fluid, how to apply makeup to a corpse for the most lifelike appearance, high-quality casket linings versus tacky ones, and most importantly, how to run a successful business. “There are only so many dead bodies to go around, and more parlors are popping up every day,” Mr. Art Skank told me when he was putting the finishing touches on Mr. Otto Cooper, who died of old age week before last. “It’s crucial to draw attention to your business, so besides my usual advertisement in the Yellow Pages, I recently purchased a billboard.” He dabbed a little more pink lipstick on Mr. Cooper’s lips. “Have you seen it, Tessie?”
I had seen the WORKS OF ART sign on top of the abandoned Goodyear tire store on North Ave. I thought that was a really good slogan, but in my opinion, Mr. Skank should’ve stopped while he was ahead. He shouldn’t have put the sign on top of that particular store, and he should also not have included a picture of himself standing next to a casket in a Leonardo da Vinci costume. Firstly, you croak, you’re never gonna make somebody believe it’s a good year. Second off, from hanging around so many dead people, hate to say it, but they have kinda rubbed off on the short-necked, unusually hairy-armed, and generally not-very-good-looking-in-the-first-place mortician.
But, in answer to his question, of course, I did what any good friend would do. I fudged a little and told him, “I did see your billboard, sir, and it’s . . . it’s a huge masterpiece!” That seemed to make him happy, because he perfectly rouged Mr. Otto Cooper’s cheeks. (Mr. Skank was doing a little showing off, ya know? The way people do to make the compliment you just gave ’em seem true.)
If The Mutual Admiration Society ever needs to get more detecting customers, but not blackmail customers, we have plenty of those because there is never any shortage of people doing bad things around here, I’ll BE PREPARED to do some advertising. We’ll need a snappy slogan, like the ones Mr. Art Skank and his sister, pom-pom-shaking Mrs. Nancy Tate, came up with. He must’ve lectured her about the importance of “getting the word out,” too, because from behind this tree in Gert’s front yard, I’m watching our mother’s opponent in the Pagan Baby election pound another sign into her lawn and she’s really putting her back into it.
TWO-FOUR-SIX-EIGHT!
SCORE A TREASURER THAT’S REALLY GREAT!
CAST YOUR VOTE FOR NANCY TATE!
After I take one more good look up and down the block and I’m positive that the kids playing in the street are too wrapped up in sending “Timmy” over, Mrs. Stewart is sticking a bottle into the ratty carriage, and Mrs. Tate is busy with another one of her u-rah-rah signs, I stick my two pointer fingers in my mouth and whistle wooo ooo whoot, which is the signal to let Birdie know that it’s time for her to jump off our back porch steps and run like crazy to the bushes in front of the cemetery fence and wait for me in the usual place.