The Cane Mutiny by Tamar Myers Read Free Book Online Page B

its mouth busy in the days before pacifiers.
    â€œSugar Tit,” Mama said knowingly. “What a lovely little town. I’m sure you were the most beautiful Miss Sugar Tit ever.”
    Claudette glowed. “Thank you, ma’am.”
    I peered at the former beauty queen from behind the concealing safety of my tea glass. She was a tall, natural redhead whose alabaster skinwas lightly salted with the faintest of freckles, the kind that are almost impossible not to get at this latitude. Although she’d presumably been alone when we came calling, she was decked out in a flowing hostess gown of lavender silk that had a frilly collar composed of shredded ribbons that were lime green—slime green, Buford used to call it. Her long red locks were piled high on her small round head, exposing a graceful white neck and displaying to their best advantage the most ostentatious pair of diamond chandelier earrings I’d ever seen. But perhaps her most distinguishing characteristic, despite her fiery hair, was the surgeon-enhanced bosom. The implants had been placed so far apart that they almost pointed in opposite directions.
    â€œMrs. Aikenberg,” Mama said, in a tone that was practically purring, “tell us all about yourself.”
    The former beauty queen tossed her head, rewarding us mortals with a thousand flashes of color from the diamond mines suspended from each ear. “Well, there’s not much to tell, really. My parents moved to Sugar Tit from Shelby, North Carolina, back in—”
    â€œThe short version, please,” I said.
    Mama glared at me.
    Claudette smiled. “I was raised up poor. Mamatook in other folk’s washing. She was a redhead like me. Daddy worked on a peach farm. He had one leg shorter than the other. Polio. My parents were so poor they couldn’t buy hay for a nightmare. I didn’t think I was ever going to get out of Sugar Tit, until I won the title. Never was very popular. Then this rich lawyer, Big Jim, came along—saw me win the title—and asked me to marry him that very same day. Said we were going to raise some fine-looking kids. But we never had any, see, because Big Jim was really Little Jim, and what there was of him was shooting blanks. Do you think I ought to have stayed with him, or what?”
    â€œWhat,” Mama and I said in unison.
    â€œI guess it doesn’t matter, does it? Because Big Jim’s out on his ear now. We moved down here on account of Big Jim has his practice here in Charleston. This house was his idea. It’s not my style, but all this water sure is pretty, even though two workmen drowned when they were putting up the dock. Anyway, after we’d been married ten years, Big Jim had himself an affair with his secretary. Make that three secretaries in a row—but I didn’t find out until the last one. He had it in his head that the doctors were wrong, and that he really could produce children. Well, the last secretary did get pregnant, but the baby was black, so it wasn’t his.”
    She paused to take a breath. “Don’t stop now,” Mama pleaded. “This is better than All My Children. ”
    â€œThat’s just it. I told Big Jim my life was turning into a soap opera, and that if he didn’t make peace with the fact that the Lord hadn’t seen fit to deal him a winning hand, I was going to leave him. He said he’d shape up, quit trying to spread his seed around, but of course he didn’t. So I sued for divorce, and won this house, the Jaguar, and over a million in stock. Not too bad for a skinny little gal from Sugar Tit, if you ask me.”
    â€œNot bad at all,” I said. “My husband was a lawyer, and when we divorced he got everything, including the dog.”
    Claudette fiddled with the fortune worth of diamonds that dangled from her left ear. “That might well have happened to me, but the last woman Big Jim fooled with was the wife of the senior