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Step Sisters (Hoedown Moses)
Ceren’s family moved around a lot. Her father, Coskun, was famous for taking failing businesses and making them prosper. Coskun is the one who convinced Col. Cacklebird to start selling chicken in addition to mashed potatoes and biscuits. He cemented his reputation when he recommended that the company, Sweaty Illegal Aliens, change its name to Two Men and a Donkey. The rest is franchise history. Caskun’s latest assignments was in a tourist town in the Ozarks. He was to figure out how to make the Possum Holler Jamboree into a going concern. The Possum Holler Jamboree featured live local country and bluegrass music, but so did twelve other places—each one festooned with cartoon plywood cutouts of coon dogs and moonshiners in pointy hats. There was the Hayseed Jubilee, the Ozark Nut Shed (where members of the original Foggy Mountain Dough Bros would drop in from time to time and sit in with the house band, the Liquored Up Goony Boys), the Cracker Castle, the Pork Chop Palace, the Oprey Outhouse, Hootenanny Heaven, and half a dozen others. Ceren toured her latest hometown and declared,. “This is either a bizarre nightmare or I’ve died and gone to Hell. It’s as if went to the crossroads where Huckleberry Finn meets Huckleberry Hound and sold my soul to Granny Abner, in exchange for some dulcimer lessons and a mess of turnip greens.” “Give it some time,” Coskun said, grinning reassuringly. “Maybe it’ll grow on you.” Ceren peeled her damp blouse away from her back and flapped it furiously. “It’s already growing on me,” she said. “Allah only knows what else is growing on me. There are fungi, insects, and diseases here that cannot survive anywhere else on Earth.” Ceren was born in Turkey and grew up listening to her native music. She was a gifted belly dancer. She considered belly dancing the ultimate art form. Everything else was unsophisticated, sophomoric, and simple minded. “This humidity kills my zills, makes them chug instead of ching.” Tabitha was a clog dancer, a member of the Corn Creek Cloggers. You could melt down her dancing trophies and have enough metal to string every banjo in the civilized world. She had enough blue ribbons to knit her own county fair. She considered clogging to be the ultimate expression of all things dance. Ceren and Tabitha took classes at Green Whiskey Community College. They were both cheerleaders. They were both in love with Luther “Greased Pig” Bootwater, the star running back. The two girls argued incessantly about everything, especially belly dancing and clogging. Coskun was in trouble. He’d finally met his match. Turning around the Possum Holler Jamboree was, he feared, impossible. He became irritable and one-dimensional. He started to drink heavily and hang out at the Bingo parlor. As much as Ceren hated the town and hated Tabitha, her primary concern was for her father. If only there was something she could do. When Luther won a scholarship to Northwest Gristle State University, he invited Jane “Frosty” Cupcake to go with him. That gave Ceren and Tabitha a common enemy and a misery to share. They began to speak civilly to and about each other. In their discussions, they discovered that both of their religions had main characters in common: Abraham & Moses, to name but two. One day Ceren asked Tabitha to show her some clogging steps. She had to admit, “Hey, this ain’t easy. I’m using muscles I didn’t know I had.” Tabitha laughed and pointed. “You said, ‘ain’t.’ You’re becoming a local!” With fake indignation, Ceren yelled, “I ain’t doin no such a thang!” Tabitha asked Ceren to show her some belly dancing moves. “Good Lord, girl, I’m startin to appreciate your tummy twirlin. Hell, I’m sore all over.” In a few months, with diligent practice—refocusing all that energy they formerly put into admiring Luther and despising each other—both girls got pretty good at doing their new dances. One day, Tabitha said, “Hey, I got an idea!” Ceren said, “Hay is the first stage of horse—” “No, really,” Tabitha said. “Why don’t we combine the two dances?” And they did. They called it HillBelly Dancing. They made bangles and bracelets out of pop-tops from beer cans and tiny cow bells. They refitted square dancing dresses, making them low-cut and low-riding. Instead of scarves, they used red and blue bandanas. They also had some overalls with the middle cut out, way out; those drove the guys wild. They alternated using zills and stainless steel washers on rubber bands. They worked with the fiddle player from the Possum Holler Jamboree, Griz “Old Gritty Boy” Griswald, until he learned and blended both kinds of music. Coskun hired them to perform at the Possum Holler Jamboree. The folks went nuts. The house was filled every night; they had to turn people away. If you didn’t have reservations six months in advance, you couldn’t get into the Possum Holler Jamboree. The red and blue bandanas the girls wore? They used each scarf only once. The sweaty bandanas, unlaundered, were sold at the concession stand. Coskun called them Mountain Dew Rags and they sold, as fast as they could collect them, for twenty bucks apiece. Coskun’s reputation remained untarnished. Another marketing miracle had come to pass. |