Free Madness In Maggody by Madness in Maggody

distressing thing, Rubella Belinda Hanks. It smacks of the devil's handiwork, and I'd like to think I was misinformed."
    "It's happened before," I said as Hammet and I retraced our steps, curiosity having gotten to me.
    "What'd you hear?" Ruby Bee said.
    "I heard that you aim to sponsor a baseball team."
    "You ain't misinformed yet."
    "I also heard that you're intending to allow girls to play right next to boys, and that Arly here is the coach."
    Ruby Bee ignored my growl. "You got problems with that?"
    "Well," Mrs. Jim Bob continued, her mouth tightening until I wasn't sure how she could spit out the words, "I was afraid of that. You know as well as me that girls aren't supposed to play physical games with boys. It's dangerous for the girls, because they're so much weaker. Everybody knows girls do better at activities like sewing and making little animals out of yarn pompoms. What's worse is that seeing the girls jiggling around gives the boys ideas—wicked ideas about unnatural, sinful things. I know for a fact that Lottie Estes's younger sister 's boy, Kyle, went to a coed swimming party, and that very night his ma caught him in the bedroom"—she shot a quick look at Hammet—"doing an unnatural, sinful thing to hisself."
    I could see Hammet's mind going every which way. Before he could say anything, I said, "That is absolutely absurd."
    "It is not! You can just call up Lottie and ask her. She'll tell you how her sister liked to have cried for an hour on the telephone, and long distance, too—all the way from Enid, Oklahoma. She was sick with worry that Kyle's hands would break out in some kind of rash and everybody would know why. To this day, she frets over his report cards, wondering if his mind is quite right."
    "Absurd," I said, still keeping an eye on Hammet, who was mystified but working on it. "Queen Victoria's dead, and we are in the twentieth century, with faint hopes of seeing the twenty-first. Girls have every right to participate in sports. They are not at a major physical disadvantage unless we're talking about weight lifting or wrestling. At this age, girls are better coordinated than boys, which more than compensates for a slight edge in brute strength."
    "And nobody said one word about wrestling," Ruby Bee snapped. "I myself would be of two minds about girls rolling around on those mats with boys, especially in that skimpy underwear they wear, but there's nothing wrong with a girl throwing a baseball to a boy."
    "Or hitting a ball," Estelle added.
    "But they jiggle!" Mrs. Jim Bob said in triumph.
    Ruby Bee leaned forward, her face beginning to take on the hue of the contents of the pickled-beet vat. "Not all of them, and the ones that do, why, they jiggle at school, too. They jiggle at the hardware store and at church. They jiggle all the time."
    Estelle swept in for the kill. "And if God hadn't meant for them to jiggle, they wouldn't have anything that jiggled, would they?"
    Mrs. Jim Bob took a breath and let it out in a martyred swoosh. "I suppose there is nothing wrong with girls having a nice team of their own so they can play other girls. Softball would be better, of course." She glowered in my direction. "And I am aware that Queen Victoria is dead, Miss Chief of Police. You were attempting to make a little joke, weren't you?"
    "I was attempting to make you go away, but it didn't work. Come on, Hammet, it's high noon at the O.K. Corral."
    Her smile had such a self-righteous air about it that I felt goose bumps rising on my arms. "Let me add one other thing," she said in an appropriately smirky tone. "If you coach this sinful team of jiggling girls and lusty-eyed boys, I shall insist that Jim Bob remove you from your position. He'll have your badge and your gun before you can make one more single smart-mouthed remark."
    "You can't do that," Ruby Bee said, horrified.
    "We'll just see about that, won't we?" Mrs. Jim Bob nodded curtly at the group, then stalked across the dance floor and out the door,