of the fat girls, the redheaded one, looked right at me and stuck out her tongue. I don't know why. I wasn't doing anything to her. Well, maybe I was staring just a little bit. I couldn't help it. I'd never seen anything like that in my whole life.
"Well, I'll be switched," Biggie said, when she could finally pry her eyes away.
"I'll bet I know who they are," Butch said. "I'll bet those are the folks from out at the Barnwell ranch. Only it's not called that anymore. Now it's called the Bar-LB. Get it? Bar-LB? Bar pounds? It's a fat farm. I think that's right clever, don't you, Biggie?"
"I guess." Biggie picked up her glass and took a quick sip of water. "Has, uh, has the place sold?"
"Biggie, you mean you didn't know?" Miss Julia shot Mrs. Muckleroy a glance. "Why, I would have personally come and told you myself if I'd had any idea."
"Well, Julia, why don't you just tell me now."
"Let me tell her." Mrs. Muckleroy looked like she'd just won the lottery. "Biggie, Rex Barnwell has moved back home!"
Biggie turned white as a sheet. Her hand shook as she reached for her water glass. "And, uh, and he's turned his daddy's ranch into a fat farm?"
"No, not him," Miss Julia said, "his wife."
"His young wife," Mrs. Muckleroy said. "I'll bet that's her sitting right over there— the pretty one, I mean."
Just then, Mr. Norman Thripp came over, bringing our food on a large tray. Miss Mattie trotted along behind him. "Norman, if you drop that, I'll kill you," she said, then turned to us. "I told him to make two trips, but no, Mr. macho man wants to take it all in one load."
Mr. Thripp set the tray down carefully on the table next to ours then started setting our food in front of us after asking who had what. When he finally had time to look around the room, he spotted the party of ten at the table by the window. He looked like he'd just peed on an electric fence. "Wha— What's, I mean, who're they?" he asked.
"Go on back to the kitchen, Norman, before they see you gaping. I'll explain later." Miss Mattie took her ticket book out of the pocket of her frilly apron and went to take their orders then came back and sat at our table.
"I'll be switched," she said. "Do you know every single one of them ordered just the garden salad? How do they expect a person to stay in business with orders like that?"
"Well, after all, they are on a diet." Biggie took a bite of her pasta. "Mattie, do you have any of that raspberry tea?"
"Sure. Anybody else?" They all said yes but me. I ordered a Big Red. Miss Mattie went to fetch the drinks.
"I know all about the place," Butch said. "I have to go out there every week and take fresh flowers for the main house."
"Tell us, Butch." Miss Julia writes for the local newspaper. "Maybe I should put something in my column."
"Well," Butch said, "first of all, the old man, Mr. Rex, is in real poor health. He hardly comes out of his room. Ya'll know, he used to be a famous race car driver— designed the Barnwell Baracuda back in the sixties. Naturally, I don't know much about race cars, but they say it was real fast."
"We know all that, Butch." Mrs. Muckleroy put down her fork and glared at him. "Tell us about the young wife. Is she a bimbo?"
"Judge for yourself," Butch said. "That's her sitting right over there— the one in the dress."
"My soul," Biggie said, "she can't be over thirty. Rex is, let me see, Rex would be sixty-six by now."
"Where have you been, Biggie?" Miss Julia said. "They're doing it all the time— old codgers marrying young women. Look at Michael Douglas; look at Warren Beatty."
"Look at Alvis Turnipseed out at Rocky Mound," Butch said. "He married a girl thirteen."
"So what about the fat farm?" Biggie asked.
Butch looked at his rhinestone watch. "Okay, but I've got to tell it fast. They turned the bunkhouse into a dormitory and added on a gym and weight room, and they built a brand-new horse barn and dog kennels. It seems that Mrs. Barnwell and Grace Higgins— that's her, that other woman over there— have some new ideas for helping teenage girls with weight problems. They call it 'Earth-Spirit Renewal,' whatever that means! They do a lot of odd things