The Devil Diet

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  Two Weeks Later

  Willie Mae’s King Ranch Casserole

  * * *

  Biggie and the Devil Diet

  Nancy Bell

  * * *

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS/

  St. Martin’s Minotaur

  New York

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  BIGGIE AND THE DEVIL DIET. Copyright © 2002 by Nancy Bell. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address

  St. Martin’s Press,

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  ISBN 0-312-70885-8

  www.ebookyes.com

  ALSO BY NANCY BELL

  Biggie and the Quincy Ghost

  Biggie and the Meddlesome Mailman

  Biggie and the Fricasseed Fat Man

  Biggie and the Mangled Mortician

  Biggie and the Poisoned Politician

  Prologue

  I see the Angel of Death,” Rosebud said, gesturing toward the afternoon sky with one big, black hand. “See her? Up yonder, settin’ on a cloud.” He pulled a cigar out of his pocket and slowly unwrapped it, then sniffed it, just as casual as could be, for all the world like he’d just made a comment on the weather. “Un-huh.”

  I looked at the sky, but all I could see was a pair of big thunderheads rising up like soapsuds behind the Muckleroy house.

  Willie Mae dropped a just-peeled potato into the pan in her lap. “Humph,” she said.

  “Funny, I always thought the Angel of Death would be a man.” Biggie sat in the swing next to Willie Mae, shelling peas. She nudged the porch floor with her toe to get the swing going. “Was she carrying a scythe, Rosebud?”

  Rosebud held a kitchen match to the end of his cigar and puffed hard to keep it lit. “Nuh-uh,” he said, “that there’s the Grim Reaper. The Angel of Death looks just like any other angel.”

  “I’ll bet you know a story about that, Rosebud.” I looked up at him from where I was sitting on the porch steps. Rosebud has a story for just about every occasion.

  Rosebud didn’t answer. He was blowing smoke rings and watching them disappear in the slight breeze that rustled the leaves of the big pecan tree in front of the house.

  I live with my grandmother, Biggie, in a big, white house on the corner of Elm Street and Sweet Gum Lane in Job’s Crossing, Texas. Rosebud and Willie Mae live in their own little house in Biggie’s backyard. I am thirteen and starting the eighth grade this fall. I have lived with Biggie since I was six. Before that, I lived with my parents in Dallas. My daddy owned his own business renting portable toilets to construction sites. My daddy died, and my mother, who is the nervous type, could not take care of an active child like me, so Biggie came and packed up my things and brought me here to live with her. Rosebud and Willie Mae came to us a year later. Willie Mae is a voodoo lady. Biggie is a very important person in town and is a charter member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, James Royce Wooten Chapter.

  I sat for a while listening to the “pop-pop” of peas falling into the bowl and the occasional “thunk” of a peeled potato dropping into Willie Mae’s pan.

  “Biggie,” I said, “tell about how Job’s Crossing got its name.”

  “My soul, J.R. You’ve heard that a hundred times.” She dropped a handful of pea hulls into the grocery sack at her feet.

  “I’d like to hear it again.” I know how much Biggie loves that story.

  “Well, if you insist.” She set her bowl on the swing beside her and commenced to speak. “It was back when Mr. Stephen F. Austin decided to bring a colony of settlers to Texas. My people all lived in Tennessee before that time. Your ancestor helped found the city of Knoxville. Did you know that, son?”

  I nodded.

  “Well.” Biggie sat up straight in the swing and put her hands on her knees. Her little-bitty feet hung six inches above the floor. “So, my great-great— well, I can’t remember how many ‘greats’ he was— grandfather, James Royce Wooten, set out from Tennessee to Texas to join Austin’s colony down in central Texas. He was a brave man to make that trip alone, doncha know, and many hazards awaited him along the trail, from bandits to bears to hostile Indians.”

  “Golly,” I said, thinking how the story got better every time Biggie told it.

  “We Wootens have always had grit.” Biggie reached for her glass of iced tea, which stood on the porch rail. She took a sip. “Grandpa James Royce wasn’t afraid of man nor beast— but there was one thing he couldn’t fight.”

  “What, Biggie?”

  “Disease, that’s what. A plague descended on that poor brave man so that he was unable to pursue his dream of joining Mr. Austin and his colony. But true to the Wooten character, when handed a lemon, my great-great— whatever— grandfather made lemonade.”

  “What kind of disease, Biggie?” I knew, but I also knew she wanted me to ask.

  “Boils,” Biggie said. “James Royce Wooten came down with a bad case of boils. You don’t see that much in modern times, but back in the old days it wasn’t an uncommon disease at all. Naturally, James Royce knew what to do. He doctored himself with slabs of salt bacon to draw the poison out, but, still, they bothered him quite a lot. Once one boil would heal up, two more would appear on another part of his body. Still, James Royce forged on, determined to reach the center of Texas.” She stuck her fingers down to the bottom of her now-empty tea glass and pulled out a piece of ice. She plopped it into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully before continuing. “And he would have, too, except for the fact that somewhere around Fort Smith, Arkansas, a big red boil popped up on his, um, his rear end, doncha know.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, seeing as how Grandpa James Royce was traveling on horseback and leading a supply wagon pulled by two oxen, he was becoming more than a little uncomfortable on the trail.”

  “I bet!” I said.

  “He decided to cross over into Indian Territory, which is now Oklahoma, and enter Texas by crossing the Red River.”

  “I bet he was attacked by Indians.”

  “Nope. He never saw any. But his boil was getting worse. When he came to the Red River, he found a ferryman to take him across into Texas. He camped there for the night and then set out again traveling due south. About sundown, he came to Wooten Creek— of course, it wasn’t called that then. Weary and burning with fever from the boils, he decided to make camp there for the night. That evening along about twilight, as he was resting beside his campfire looking around at the tall trees, listening to the sound of the running creek, and thinking about the nice bass he had just fried up for his supper, what should he see but a family of white-tailed deer come out of the woods to stand in the clearing not fifty feet from where he sat. The deer stared at Grandpa just as bold as you please, and Grandpa stared back. Thoughtfully, he dug his bare toe into the fine black loamy soil. It felt rich and cool against his bare skin. It reminded him of his home back in Tennessee. ‘Ample game, good soil, and a creek full of fish,’ Grandpa thought, ‘a feller could live right well in these parts.’ Then he thought about how he’d heard centra
l Texas was full of scrub oak and limestone boulders the size of a cow. He pondered how much he hated the thought of getting back on his horse what with his boil paining him so terribly.” Biggie frowned like she had the boil herself.

  “So that’s when he decided to stay here?”

  “Not quite,” Biggie said. “First, he decided to have a little swim in the creek before bedding down for the night. He swam back and forth across the creek. Once he rolled over on his back and just floated there, watching the moon up in the sky.”

  “I’ve done that before.”

  “You bet you have. Well, when Grandpa got out of the creek and was getting back into his clothes, he noticed a funny thing. His boils were all gone— vanished without even a trace of a scar! ‘It’s a miracle!’ he shouted. ‘Praise the Lord!’”

  “Was it a real miracle?”

  “You betcha. Well, right then and there, Grandpa Wooten made up his mind. He wasn’t riding another mile. He’d just homestead right here on the banks of Wooten Creek— and here he stayed. The very next day, Grandpa set about building himself a cabin in a grove of pines right near the creek. I guess you know what happened next.”

  “More people came, and pretty soon they had a town,” I said.

  “That’s about it,” Biggie said. “It took awhile, of course. In due course, Grandpa James Royce took a bride, one Eleanor Ann Muckleroy, the prettiest girl in town, which wasn’t saying much because at that time there were only three females. One was already married, and the other was sixty-seven years old. James Royce never left Kemp County again except the time he had to go down to San Jacinto and help Gen. Sam Houston beat the tar out of old Santa Ana. After Texas won its independence from Mexico, he built Eleanor Ann a fine house on the hill, where the family graveyard sits now, and they had themselves eight fine strapping boys.”

  “That’s a good story, Biggie. Makes me proud to be a Wooten.”

  “Me, too,” Biggie said, “but a person can’t rest on the laurels of those who came before him. We must all make our own mark in the world. Always remember that.”

  “Yes’m.” I hoped she wasn’t going to give me one of her lectures on the responsibilities of being a Wooten and living up to the family name.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when Biggie yawned and picked up her bowl of peas. “I’m tired,” she said. “I believe I’ll just go in and have a little nap before supper.”

  Willie Mae got up and followed Biggie into the house. “I got to get my roast in the oven.”

  “I reckon I’ll take a walk down to the feed store,” Rosebud said, pitching his cigar butt into the yard. “I heard they got in some nice chrysanthemum flats this morning, and I aim to get some before they all picked over. Miss Biggie’s got her heart set on bronze mums in that bed around her birdbath.”

  I got up from the steps and went to lie down on one of the big concrete buttresses that stand on either side of Biggie’s front steps. The cement felt nice and warm from the sun. I was about to doze off when, plop, my cat, Booger, jumped down from the porch rail and landed right on top of me. I pressed his back with my hands until he settled down on my stomach, purring like a freight train. It was almost the end of summer. School would be starting in two more weeks. I was looking forward to the eighth grade. Life was good.

  That was the last peaceful day we had that summer because the very next day an old friend of Biggie’s showed up in town, and before we knew it, we were up to our necks in affairs we never should have been involved in. I blame Biggie for that. She just doesn’t know how to keep her nose out of other folk’s business.

  1

  Our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Moody, came tapping at the back door just as Willie Mae was frying up a batch of beignets for our breakfast. If you’ve never tasted beignets, you’re in for a treat. They’re little square doughnuts covered all over in powdered sugar. When Willie Mae puts them, hot out of the frying pan, on my plate then dusts them with enough powdered sugar to make them white as snow, I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven.

  “I just got a call from Woodrow,” Mrs. Moody said, pouring herself a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove. She pulled out a chair and took a seat beside Biggie at the table. “Umm, something smells good. What is that, Willie Mae?”

  “Beignets,” Willie Mae said, not looking around.

  “Have some breakfast with us,” Biggie said. “What did Woodrow have on his mind this time?”

  Woodrow is Mrs. Moody’s son who lives in Wascom, over near the Louisiana line. To hear Mrs. Moody tell it, he would be president of General Motors if his wife wasn’t holding him back. She says that’s what you get when you marry beneath your station in life, a no-account wife and a house full of bucktoothed kids to support. Woodrow had to take a job delivering Rainbo bread to support his family instead of becoming a business tycoon the way he’d planned.

  “It’s Imogene, of course,” Mrs. Moody said. “It seems her mother, who lives over in Marshall, lost her job at the pants factory. She’s a widow, you know, since the old man drank himself to death.”

  “Poor thing.” Biggie wiped powdered sugar off her chin. “What’s she going to do?”

  “Oh, she got another job right away,” Mrs. Moody said. “She hired on with the gas company as a meter reader. That’s the problem.”

  “How so?” Biggie asked.

  “Well, it seems she was reading the gas meter outside the old folks home with a cigarette in her mouth. She didn’t know the meter had a leak. Well, naturally the thing blew up— knocked the whole back wall out of the home, and several of the old folks went into heart failure from the shock. They said it shook cans off the shelves down at the Piggly Wiggly five blocks away.”

  “Was she killed?” I asked.

  “Not her.” Mrs. Moody held up her plate and waited while Willie Mae slid two fresh beignets on it. “That old woman is tough as boot leather. It singed off all her hair though, and she had burns on her face and arms. Anyway, now she’s laid up in the hospital over in Marshall, and Imogene’s got to go take care of her. Woodrow asked me to come look after him and the kids while she’s away. Willie Mae, you’ve got to give me your recipe for these.” She waved a beignet in the air over her head.

  “Well, Essie, that’s too bad. Is there anything I can do to help?” Biggie asked.

  “Oh no, not a thing.” Mrs. Moody got up and poured herself a fresh cup of coffee. “I was going to ask J.R. for one teensy favor though.” She looked at me over her shoulder.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s Prissy. I can’t take her with me. Those children just run her ragged, all the time wanting to dress her up in doll clothes and push her around in that little toy stroller they’ve got. Prissy was a bundle of nerves the last time we visited them. I had to call up Doc Lasky over in Center Point to give her some pills to calm her down.”

  “Dr. Lasky’s not a vet. He’s a chiropractor— or an osteopath— something like that. Lonie Thedford said he did wonders for her last winter when she slipped and hurt her back.”

  “Oh, I know, Biggie. That man’s got magic hands; everybody says so. But those pills he gave me sure did help Prissy. She calmed down real quick and slept for a day and a half, poor thing. She was just a wreck!”

  To my way of thinking, Prissy is a nervous wreck all the time. She is a little white poodle, and all she ever does is run back and forth along her fence yapping at everybody who walks down the sidewalk. Even when she’s asleep, she twitches and barks and makes running motions with her legs. My dog, Bingo, who is a mutt but ten times smarter than Prissy, is scared of her on account of she bit him once just because he was trying to get one little taste of the bone she was gnawing.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Booger and Bingo don’t get along with her too good.” The truth is, Booger can beat her up anytime he feels like it.

  “Of course we’ll take care of her,” Biggie said. “J.R., you can keep her in that pen Rosebud built for Bingo when he was a puppy. When will you bring
her over, Essie?”

  “First thing tomorrow morning.” Mrs. Moody stood up and brushed the powdered sugar off her blouse. “And I’ll make it worth your while, J.R.”

  I remembered the last time she’d said that. I spent the whole afternoon raking up leaves in her yard, and she paid me with an old catcher’s mitt that used to belong to Woodrow. It had a hole in the pocket with the stuffing coming out. I sighed, knowing there was no sense in arguing about it. Biggie’s word is law in our house. I’d just have to find a way to keep Prissy in that pen and out of my hair most of the time. I nodded and went to the stove and held out my plate for another hot biegnet.

  After breakfast, I rode my bike down to the vacant lot on the alley behind Handy’s House of Hardware. It used to be a construction site on account of Mr. Handy was going to build a lumberyard there; but the bank wouldn’t approve his loan, so now it’s just this monster hole. Mr. Handy said us guys could build a dirt track out there as long as we didn’t get hurt. When I got there, DeWayne Boggs, Arthur Handy, and Bruce Oterwald were dragging a huge piece of plywood from the back of the hardware store.

  “Hey, J.R.,” DeWayne said, dropping his end of the plywood, “looky here what we found.”

  “Cool,” I said. “Does Mr. Handy know you’ve got that?”

  “Yep,” Arthur said.

  “He gave it to us,” Bruce put in. “See, it’s warped in the middle, and the layers are coming apart at the corners on account of it got left out in the rain last week. We’re gonna make a dirt bike ramp.”

  I pitched in and helped build the ramp. We laid it up against the side of the excavation, being careful to dig a trench and put rocks around the bottom edge so it wouldn’t slide around. After it was set in place, we spent the rest of the morning racing our bikes up to the top. It felt great flying off the top of that old plywood, and it didn’t hurt too much when we toppled down into the soft mud in the bottom of the hole. My bike and I were both pretty much of a mess when I rode into our yard around eleven.