Bet Your Bottom Dollar (The Bottom Dollar Series Book 1) Read online

  I shot Attalee a stern look and then turned to Birdie. “You got any idea when’s this supposed to happen, ma’am?” I asked.

  “Not a clue. In the next few months, I’d imagine,” Birdie said.

  The paper shook in Mavis’s hands and her voice sounded high-pitched, like she’d just inhaled a lungful of helium. “I only have fifteen hundred items and one checkout line,” she said. “Cayboo Creek isn’t big enough to support two dollar stores.”

  “Wait a minute, now.” I laid a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Cayboo Creek may be small, but our customers are a loyal bunch. I don’t think they’ll abandon us for this new store just because they can choose from three different kinds of dishwashing soap instead of two.”

  “That’s not so,” Mavis said. Her voice squeaked with panic. “Remember when Goody’s opened up? It ran the Vickery Family Clothiers right into the ground. And I was a party to that. Once Goody’s opened, I never again stepped foot into Vickery’s.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Yes, but that’s because Vickery’s was so stuffy.”

  When I was a little girl, I remembered Mello Vickery sticking her nose in the dressing room when I was trying on one of their overpriced party dresses. She’d said, “Don’t fidget so much, Elizabeth Polk, or you’ll get that party dress all sweaty and I’ll have to put it on the markdown table.”

  “They were even snooty about their underwear,” Attalee said with a nod. “Calling them foundations instead of bras and panties.”

  Birdie sighed. “I’m sorry to be the one to deliver this news, Mavis. But I felt you needed to know immediately so that you could develop a plan of action.”

  She peered at her watch. “I need to be scooting, gals. The elementary school is having their fall festival and I’ve got to be there to cover it. The city councilmen are taking turns in the dunking booth. Good-bye, all.”

  Birdie’s heels clicked out the door and the three of us sat slumped in our chairs, the weight of her news pinning us down.

  “‘Plan of action,’ she says,” Mavis said. “What plan of action? I’d be hard pressed to add one more register in here, much less three more. And forget about all that extra inventory; we’re bursting at the seams as it is.”

  The three of us fell into a grim silence, interrupted only by the drip from the coffee maker and hum of the oscillating fan. Mavis’s normally smooth complexion looked as rumpled as a much used bed sheet.

  “I’ve got it!” Attalee bolted from her chair. “We undercut the Super Saver Dollar Store by a nickel. Instead of being the Bottom Dollar Emporium, we change our name to the 95-Cent Emporium.”

  “Sorry, Attalee,” said Mavis. “There’s no way I can undercut the Super Saver. They got so many stores that they have tons of bargaining power with their suppliers. I’ve got enough trouble keeping most items priced at a dollar.”

  “There must be something we can do,” I said. “It isn’t right for a rich corporation to swoop into town and swallow up the business that you’ve broken your back to get.”

  Mavis cast her glance to the floor. “That’s the way it goes all over this country. Only in the Bible, it seems, is David able to beat Goliath.”

  “That sounds like a fancy excuse to give up,” I said.

  Mavis trained her tired, gray eyes on me. “I’m not giving up, Elizabeth. I’m just facing facts. A minute ago, you were talking about the loyal folks in Cayboo Creek. I suspect some of them will stick with us. ‘Specially our little group who comes in every day to shoot the breeze. But the odds and ends they purchase won’t even be able to pay the electricity bill. Truth is, most people in town will take their trade to a newer, bigger store.”

  “We’re just going to have to figure out some way to keep them here,” I said. “We have to fight this. I know how important this business is to you, Mavis.”

  Not six months ago, Mavis had bought a tidy cottage on Persimmon Road after having lived for years in a double-wide in an aging trailer court by the creek. I knew that she counted on the profits from the Bottom Dollar to make her mortgage payments.

  “To think how many years I scrimped and saved to buy this business,” Mavis said. “And now it’s going to be gone. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers.

  I jumped to my feet. “Not if I have anything to say about it,” I said. “I’m the manager here after all. I have a selfish interest in keeping this place afloat.”

  Last year Mavis had named me manager and Attalee assistant manager of the Bottom Dollar Emporium. There wasn’t anybody below us to manage, seeing as how we were the only employees, but we appreciated the gesture. Our pictures had appeared in the “Up and Coming” section of the Cayboo Creek Crier and Mavis had presented us with new name tags.

  “That’s sweet, darling,” Mavis said, trying to conjure up a smile on her pallid face. “But I don’t know what you can possibly do.”

  Two

  If Love were Oil, I’d be a Quart Low

  ~ Selection B-7 on the jukebox at the Tuff Luck Tavern

  The news about the Super Saver Dollar Store spread, and as the day wore on, the Bottom Dollar Emporium got as busy as a Lotto vendor on the night before a Powerball drawing. People came by to gossip, to declare their loyalty, or even to drop by food. Hank Bryson from the hardware store (who I know is sweet on Mavis, though she pooh-poohs it) brought by a pot of his special medicinal chili, so-called because he pours two cans of Budweiser in the mix. My meemaw stormed in, her gray hair crackling in the dry air.

  “I’ll be darned, Mavis,” she said, plunking down a chess pie. “If that upstart store thinks they can strut into town without facing a tussle, they’ve got another think coming.”

  Mavis shook her head sadly. “I keep hoping it’s all a bad dream.”

  Meemaw patted Mavis’s arm. “Don’t fret, Mavis. There’s bound to be an answer to this.”

  Her shiny, dark eyes trained on me like a crow to a silver piece. “Elizabeth! What do you have to say for yourself? You’re the manager. Shouldn’t you be throwing yourself in front of a bulldozer or something? What are you going to do to stop this foolishness?”

  I kissed her wrinkled cheek and took in her clinging scent of BenGay and Pall Mall unfiltered. “Hey, Meemaw. Nice to see you, too.” When I touched her wrist, her pulse jumped beneath her skin. “Did you take your blood-pressure pill today?”

  Meemaw pushed her dark eyeglasses up on her nose and addressed Mavis. “That’s the trouble with granddaughters. They turn saucy on you.” She harrumphed. “As if a grown woman has to be hounded to take a silly little pill.”

  Her deflection made me strongly suspect she’d neglected her medication. Meemaw was leery of most doctors, except for her podiatrist. She’d limp into Dr. Bales’s office at the first sign of a corn.

  “I don’t mean to lecture—” I said.

  “Then don’t,” Meemaw snapped. “I’m too worked up about this new dollar store to worry about pharmaceutical fiddle-faddle. What am I going to do without the Bottom Dollar Emporium?”

  Mavis sat in the corner grimly shredding a tissue. “What does this town need with a creaky-floored hole-in-the-wall when they can have four checkout lanes, piped-in Muzak, and three thousand items to choose from?”

  “I need you, Mavis,” Meemaw insisted. “Who special orders canning supplies for me every summer? Do you think a big corporate dollar store will care whether or not I have enough jars for my watermelon-rind relish?”

  Mavis smiled weakly. “I truly appreciate your support, Glenda. Everybody’s been so wonderful.”

  Attalee came in from the storeroom toting a shipment of decorative birdhouses. When she saw Meemaw, she clenched her jaw and said, “Glenda,” and then made her way to the front of the store.

  “Attalee,” Meemaw said with a curt nod of her head. Meemaw and Attalee were fierce bingo rivals. T
hey played every Wednesday night at the Senior Center.

  “Do you know she’s taken to bringing an air horn to bingo games every week?” Meemaw said in a low voice. “After she hollers out ‘Bingo,’ she gives out three blasts on the air horn. She’s deliberately trying to ruin my concentration.”

  “I heard that!” Attalee said. She stomped over to where Meemaw was standing. “What about you? Humming ‘Luck Be a Lady Tonight,’ loud enough for the whole table to hear. Off key, I might add.”

  “The soft humming of a show tune is nothing compared to the racket of that horn,” Meemaw said, her face turning red. “I missed a diagonal bingo last week because of that contraption.”

  “You know that Dixon is deaf as a post,” Attalee retorted. “Twice he didn’t hear me call out over the sound of the bingo blower. And don’t blame your missteps on me, Glenda. Face it. You just can’t handle so many cards anymore.”

  “Are you saying that my mind is failing?” Meemaw demanded shrilly.

  “If the orthopedic shoe fits,” Attalee said with a smirk.

  “Meemaw. Attalee. Enough!” I said, stepping in between the two women. I glanced over at Mavis, who was staring blankly into space. “Now’s not the time.”

  Meemaw hitched her pocketbook up to her shoulder. “I need to get going anyway. Mavis, don’t fret so. We’ll figure something out. You’ll see.”

  She left the store under Attalee’s frigid gaze. I continued my work of shelving canned goods. Just as I got a good rhythm going, my best friend, Chiffon, came in with a jar of scuppernong jam and a dozen biscuits wrapped in a dishtowel. While she poured herself a cup of coffee in the break area, her two kids weaved in and out of the aisles, wielding plastic squirt guns. They nearly toppled a rack of plus-size housedresses.

  Chiffon, who had ten years on me, had won first runner-up in the Miss South Carolina pageant several years back. She used to be the most beautiful girl in Aiken County, but fifteen years and two little ones had puffed her up some, a condition Chiffon lamented as she studied her reflection in the teaspoon she’d used to stir sugar into her coffee.

  “My face looks like a Moon Pie,” she groaned. “I can’t even find my cheekbones anymore.”

  “You’re gorgeous,” I said. And it was true. Chiffon may have gotten fuzzier around the edges, but she still had eyes the color of sparkling pool water and long, blond hair that licked her shoulder blades.

  “You always say the right thing,” Chiffon said.

  “This is no time to be worrying about your weight,” I said. Last week Chiffon had told me she thought she might be pregnant. “You should see the infant socks we got in last week. They’re no bigger than your thumb and trimmed in lace and ribbons.”

  Chiffon patted my knee. “You’re the one who needs to be having a baby. You’re crazy about kids.”

  I let out a snort. “I best find me a husband first.”

  “I’m telling you. Lonnie works with some single fellows at the NutraSweet plant. Nice boys with steady incomes. We could set you up just fine.”

  I shook my head. “It’s only been two months since Clip and I busted up. I’m just not ready yet.”

  Not ready. Not ready. The words pulsed in my ears as I pushed open the door to go home. The day, though dying, still dazzled. Sunlight clung to the front window of the store like honey in a jar and the air was sharp with the smell of burning leaves.

  I strolled down Main Street, passing by Darling Do’s, the new beauty parlor. I waved to Boomer of Boomer’s Butcher Shop, who was just locking up.

  “If you talk to your meemaw, tell her I’ve got some goat in for her,” Boomer said.

  Boomer was my grandmother’s on-again, off-again beau.

  “Are you and Meemaw fussing again?” I said.

  Boomer nodded. “I sent her a dozen carnations and they all came back to me with their heads cut off.’’

  “Ouch,” I winced. “I’ll tell her what you said. There’s nothing like some goat to get back in Meemaw’s good graces.”

  Meemaw was a fool for goat meat. She made kid goat stew, leg of goat, and even a dish called Hawaiian goat mini-kabobs. The thought of all that goat made my stomach grumble as I passed the Chat ‘N’ Chew and waved at Jewel Turner, the owner, through the window.

  Across from the Chat ‘N’ Chew was the Rock of Ages Baptist Church. Reverend Hozey had lettered his church-front sign, “Where do you want to spend eternity? In smoking or nonsmoking?”

  I traveled a block west from Main Street onto my street, Scuffle Road, which was lined with one-story mill houses, one room wide, with asphalt roofs and rusty tin awnings shading the porches. The shadow of the old Braun Brothers mill, shuttered since 1987, swallowed all the houses surrounding it.

  I picked my way to my front door through a fleet of rusting Piggy Wiggly shopping carts. My next-door neighbor Burris had swiped them from the parking lot before the Pig went belly-up.

  Just as I was about to turn the key, a truck drove by and I heard a snatch of the song “She Thinks My Tractor Is Sexy” by Kenny Chesney. Clip darkened my mind like an eclipse, blocking out everything, including the fall-cured breeze and the weakening sun. Right away, I was plopped back into a booth at the Tuff Luck Tavern, the “tractor” song playing on the jukebox. I could almost feel Clip’s blue-jeaned thigh pressed up against my own and his warm breath stirring the downy hairs of my cheek. Spangles of light from the mirrored disco ball floated by like silver moons while Clip’s low rumbling voice sang along in my ear.

  How could he have sung to me so tenderly one week and then kicked me to the curb the next? Ever since we’d broken up, my mind worked overtime on that question. But I still hadn’t come up with a decent solution. A half a dozen or more times I’d thought about calling him, but luckily my finger froze up before I punched in the last number.

  I reasoned that if Clip was willing to throw me away like I was an empty bag of chips, I didn’t have any business calling him. Let him come to me, knee-walking, with flowers, chocolate candies, and a tortured expression.

  And when he did come to his senses, as I felt sure he would, I’d make him sweat it out for a while. Then, and only then, would I decide if he was worthy enough to come back into my life.

  I savored the image of Clip holding a huge bouquet of sweetheart roses, calling out my name from parched lips. The picture made me smile for the first time that day.

  Three

  Don’t give up; Moses was once a basket case

  ~ Notice in the Methodist Church Bulletin

  The mood the next morning at the Bottom Dollar Emporium was about as festive as an autopsy. Mavis ignored her mug of coffee as well as the pecan Danish I’d picked up from the Chat ‘N’ Chew. She stared straight ahead at the dust motes swirling around the plastic funeral flowers at the front of the store.

  “Last night I called my sister up in Onida, South Dakota,’ Mavis said quietly. “Her husband passed on last year and she says I’m welcome to her spare bedroom, should it come to that.”

  “South Dakota?” Attalee said, biting into her second Danish of the morning. The news about the Super Saver hadn’t affected her appetite one whit. “Why would you move all the way up there?”

  “It may be my only choice if I have to sell the house,” Mavis said. “I’m not going back to the trailer court and I’m too old to get me another job. Madge has a little hobby shop up there called the Craft Coop. She said she’d take me on as a clerk.”

  I had the ledger spread out on my lap and was squinting at the figures written in Mavis’s precise handwriting.

  “Goodness, Mavis, I don’t want to hear any talk about you leaving Cayboo Creek. We’ll think up a way out of this,” I said, hoping my voice held the right amount of conviction. According to the ledger figures, Mavis would be in a world of trouble if business dropped off more than a li
ttle.

  “What do folks do in a godforsaken place like South Dakota?” Attalee asked.

  “Madge loves it up there,” Mavis said. “She darts around in her very own snowmobile. And she’s chairperson for Onida’s Annual Lutefisk Feed.”

  “Lutefisk?” Attalee said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Lutefisk is dried cod treated with lye,” Mavis said glumly. “Madge says it’s very tasty.”

  “Enough!” I slammed the ledger shut. “The only fish you’ll be eating, Mavis, is fried catfish right here in Cayboo Creek. We’re going to fight this thing and we’re going to win.”

  “Well, I know I can’t afford to lose me this job,” Attalee said, giving her curls a shake. “I just started making payments on my satellite dish. I pick up three HBOs and seven Showtimes and I ain’t willing to give ‘em up.”

  “You won’t have to, Attalee,” I said. “I’ve talked with some of the other business owners in town and they’re upset about this too. I’m going to organize a meeting to see if we can’t figure something out.”

  Attalee was no longer listening. Something outside had caught her attention. “Jonelle Jasper and her little girl Kimbro are crossing the street and coming this way,” she announced. “Empty-handed,” she added with a sniff. Attalee had been enjoying all the bounty that had come our way since we’d heard about the Super Saver.

  “We ain’t going to have us a catfight are we, Elizabeth?” Attalee teased.

  “‘Course not,” I said, defensively. The rumor around town was that my ex-fiancé Clip had been stepping out with Jonelle the past couple of weeks. Chiffon, who waitresses at the Wagon Wheel, saw Clip feeding Jonelle a T-bone steak.

  That burned me up, because whenever we went to the Wagon Wheel he’d always steered me in the direction of the chopped steak special. A few other folks had seen Jonelle in the cab of Clip’s brand-new pickup truck.