This one has a shocker at the very end that I didn't see coming 'til I wrote it. There will be another relatively tiny chapter in its wake shortly. Sometimes the characters just know what needs to happen, don't they?

24.

I heard Mike yell, “You’re goin’ down, James!”

So I leaned to look across the WalMart checkout counters where me, the girls, Joie and her girls and three of the pastors were lined up and went, “Yeah, that’s what you say!”

And right beside me, Rev. Stanton looks up and goes, “Y’all just hush! I’m finna show you how we do!”

She’s a big babe, Vivi Stanton—Vivian Stanton, full name. And she can out preach all of the men. When she gets going she looks like Tina Turner throwing a Holy Ghost party up there in that pulpit, wig hat and all. Let me get into that wig business right quick—her whole wardrobe, in fact.

You see, normally, she walks into church in one of those bright colored suits with the matching crown, shoes and purse—if you know any serious church going sistahs, you know what I’m talking about. I don’t care how big they are, they’ve got those perfect suits—there’s even a site called churchsuitsforyou.com to make sure you can find them.

But what amazes me most is how they come tipping in in the highest heels they can stand. I was once told that there are actually rules about those shoes in some church circles—not that they shouldn’t be worn but that they have to be.

The source of that information is kind of suspect, though, as you’ll see. It was this teacher whose husband was a pastor. She came to school in a pencil skirt, high necked, long sleeved button down blouse, pearls and “fetish” heels every single day, no matter how hot it got.

I’m serious. She wore those extreme heels you usually only see on foot fetish sites. They’re not even meant to walk on, those shoes—if you’ve seen them, you know what I mean.

And when one of us kids asked her why she dressed like that every day, she gave us this speech about high heels as part of a sort of “man pleasing” thing a woman should do. The whole speech sort of creeped me out, because she seemed to believe she needed to be perfect for her man and that the world had gone to hell because women no longer knew their “place.”

So when we went to the library one time, I showed some kids the same shoes our teacher had worn in class one time on a site for foot fanciers to prove that I knew what they were really for.

And I was really sorry when she caught us at it, because she had a little breakdown right there in front of us. They had to come take her to the nurse’s office, in fact. I think maybe her husband had told her all that bushwa, you know? And seeing her shoes on those freaky looking women on that Web site was too much for her to take.

I can guarantee you Rev. Stanton had tougher skin than that. And she also knew when to wear what. For the WalMart event, she had on this snazzy sweat suit with Nikes and everything. And she’d tied back her wig and put a headband on, too, to keep it in place. She was one dedicated wig wearin’ sistah, Rev. Stanton. Had a wig to match every one of her Sunday suits. Some Beyoncé long, others kind of prim and proper.

But that night at the WalMart, she was out to beat all of us, so she dressed for a different kind of success.

And I figured she’d probably beat me for sure, since I had the babies in the shopping cart for the race. Let me explain what was going on, so we can get on with it.

See, we have this supermarket sweep thing we do every night of the carnival at a different WalMart each time. Three families get the little shopping cart stamp during each meal, sort of the same way we do the Disneyland thing on those cards.

If you get a shopping cart, it means you’re eligible to have a church van take you to one of the WalMarts with a grocery section, where your whole family gets ten minutes to throw as much stuff into their grocery carts as they can grab.

Before the families go, me and some of the other folks who put on the carnival get to go, just as a demonstration run, so people can see how it works. But also, all the stuff we grab gets distributed to a food bank and each family gets an equal share, in cash, of the total amount we rang up in the demo run. They can buy more food or other things on the other side of the store if they like. Or they can just keep it, but I’ve never seen anyone actually do that.

Anyway, each of us had a cart and Bonnie and Wyatt had volunteered to join me by taking their own carts to add to mine, so that I could tend to the babies but still rack up a good total.

You couldn’t even tell Wyatt had just stared down the barrel of Friendly’s gun, by the way. The only thing she’d talked about on the way over was how stressed out he was, not what he’d done to prove it. She was also worried that he might go over and mess with Maddie again, later—we’d tried to get her to consider a hotel room for at least a little while.

But I think she was determined to show me she could handle her own business—Wyatt, especially, she wanted to impress. She was new and didn’t know her the way we did. And I think that motivated her to try a little harder, maybe thinking they could be friends or something.

I knew for sure that our just being there had made her very happy. I could feel it when she hugged me goodbye. And how she smiled and waggled fingers at Wyatt when she looked back with a worried look on her face.

I was trying not to worry about her as Rev. Givens hopped up on the Customer Service counter with the mic they usually only use to call to staff members or announce some kind of special sale.

He said, “Y’all ready?!”

And the families, carnival staff and spectators behind the barricades all yelled, “YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

So he gave the rules as quickly as he could, counted down from four and when he hit the air horn at “ONE,” all the runners took off toward the meat section as always. But most of them ran for the turkeys first, so I had Wyatt scoop up a bunch of steaks and rib roasts and even shrimp and other expensive things while I fought for a couple of turkeys to plunk down by the babies’ feet.  

Bonnie headed for the baby aisle by instinct—I was glad, because I hadn’t actually thought about that. They’re always asking for diapers at all the shelters and such. Baby stuff gets expensive as hell. She scooped up everything she knew they might have trouble buying.

Our own little ones squealed when I set the three turkeys I was able to fight my way to down in the cart. They were too young to know they were big dead birds with their heads cut off, of course.

After that, we just went up and down the aisles as fast as we could, but I’d instructed Wyatt to grab things that didn’t need to be kept in the fridge—things that lived forever, like powdered milk and canned goods. Toiletries, too, I went after, for the homeless ones. They always need that.

So I was trying to think of things they’d need but also about the total, because we wanted it to be really high. And when Rev. Givens started the “ten second” countdown with the whole crowd yelling along with him, I was pleased with our haul.

Wyatt stared at the total the whole time the clerk was ringing it up. She had taken the whole thing very seriously, that woman. And when the clerk said, “Seven seventy-four!” ($774) she threw both arms up and bounced around like she’d just won a boxing match.

It wasn’t even close to some of the others, but it was the combined total that mattered. Came to about $5000, which meant that each family would get over $500 to spend on the other side of the store—the highest prize we’d ever had.

So there was literally a lot of dancing in the aisles even before the families got to do their own grocery runs. But the demo runners went into the little McDonalds up front to celebrate and eat free Mickey D’s together.

Aisha came right over and sat down next to Wyatt in the booth.

“Girl, you one o’ the gang fo’ sho’ now,” she told her.

“She’s got game, that’s for sure,” Bonnie said. “I’m just sorry she had to get mixed up in all the drama today.”

“Well, you know Lil Daddy don’t feel right if he ain’t in the middle o’ somethin’,” Aisha said. “He gets worried when there’s nothin’ to worry about.”

I laughed and scooped up a spoon full of yogurt for each of my kids. Yogurt from the shelves, not the McDonald’s kind. That stuff is packed with sugar.

And Wyatt said, “They’re so good with all this. Are they just used to a lot of stimulation?”

“Given what they went through the day they were born you’d have to go some to upset these guys,” I told her.

“Her, too,” Aisha said. I knew she’d heard the story. And did not approve.

So I said, “Go on. Lemme have it.”

And she shrugged and said, “It ain’t none o’ my business.”

“But?”

“She don’t need that crazy man botherin’ her. She got one crazy man botherin’ ‘er already.”

“You callin’ me crazy now?”

“I shouldn’t be talkin’ to you at all! You had to give ‘im that watch?”

Cat and Mike came over and wriggled their way into the booth with us. Mike had an ice cream cone which she inevitably went down on like it was Cat’s cat. An act which drew a bit of a crowd as usual, too.

So I tapped her on the wrist and said, “Dude…”

But of course, she just worked that tongue even more “realistically” than ever.

“Why do I even bother?” I asked.

“I’m doing you—watch,” Mike said, flitting the tip of that tongue in a somewhat familiar rhythm and pattern.

But before Aisha could finish the thought behind, “That ain’t how he—“I said, “TMI, okay? Jeez…”

Wyatt wasn’t bothered by that, either, though. They were pretty much cracking her up. And then Joie came strutting over and said, “You should work that into the show, girl. There’s not a limp dick in the house right now.”

I covered my face with both hands and the babies laughed. So I peek a booed with them a few times, to keep them laughing and the others from making any more obscene remarks.

It didn’t work. Mike gave the mound of ice cream she’d worked almost down into the cone one more sexy lick, winked at all the gawking guys and said, ”Merry Christmas to all…”

And we all laughed, of course.

But then Aisha gave me an interesting little look and said, “While we talkin’ about Christmas presents, I need to replace that watch.”

And the way she sort of glanced over at the others told me they were up to something besides replacing the watch.

“We can’t,” I said. “She’s still gotta find out about her house’n’ all that.”

“She don’t need no house,” Aisha said. “She got one.”

Wyatt said, “Oh, sweetheart…” like she was moved and grateful but also not sure how to explain her feelings about it. I’m not sure she knew what her feelings were. We have a tendency to think that offers like that are normal, you know? We’ve got it to give, you need what we have to give…easy peasy.

But a person with a strong sense of pride is going to have all kinds of thoughts. I mean, she was probably trying to think of some way to handle it herself, the way Maddie had. We were fun and all, but…I could feel her starting to get uneasy with us. Me, in particular. It was too much too soon—it was finally dawning on her, I think.

So I took hold of her hand and said, “We’re just saying there’s no hurry, okay? I mean, I’m sure it’s—“

My Batphone rang and we all sort of startled. And I frowned, because almost everyone who’d use it was with me in that booth.

And then I got scared thinking that something might have happened to the one person who wasn’t there--Big Man.

So I went for it right quick, and at first, I didn’t recognize the number. So I didn’t answer like I usually do. I said, “This is Colt. What’s up?”

And Friendly said, “Oh. Wow. Listen, uh…Well, first off, I didn’t have nothin’ to do with this, okay? I swear on my mother’s grave—I come back to give ‘er some o’ the money left over’n’, well…”

And after he hemmed and hawed around a little more, he hit me with the news.

Maddie was dead.