Love's Labors Tossed Read online

  Trust Williams Trilogy: Book Three: Love's Labors Tossed

  Trust and the Final Fling

  Robert Farrell Smith

  © 2000 Robert F. Smith.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Deseret Book Company ([email protected]), P.O. Box 30178, Salt Lake City Utah 84130. This work is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Church or of Deseret Book. Deseret Book is a registered trademark of Deseret Book Company.

  Deseret Book is a registered trademark of Deseret Book Company.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Smith, Robert F., 1970-

  Love’s labors tossed : Trust and the final fling / Robert Farrell Smith.

  p. cm. — (Trust Williams trilogy ; bk. 3)

  ISBN 1-57345-648-9

  1. Mormons—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3569.M537928 L6 2000

  813’.54—dc21 00-024711

  Printed in the United States of America

  10987654321 18961-6640

  It may seem repetitive, but she’s

  just that amazing.

  For Krista.

  Table of Contents

  One Heart, One Bind

  The Homely One

  Another Log on the Fire

  One Eternal Now

  A Little Black Cloud in a Dress

  A Fly in the Ointment

  Shoving a Camel Through the Eye

  This Little Piggy

  Rolling Along

  There is Beauty All Around

  Plane as Day

  Caught on an Eye

  Family Secrets

  What You See is Most Definitely, Without a Doubt, Positively, Undeniably Not What You Get

  Jerry Rigged

  Complications

  Expanding Girth

  Biting Her Tongue

  Idle Hands

  The Dead Make Lousy Chaperones

  Candy from a Babe

  The Pain of Separation

  Written by the Finger Of . . .

  Hard of Herring

  Worked into a Lather

  Trial and Error

  Definitions

  Saints

  Stamped

  Spammon from Heaven

  You Remind Me Of . . .

  Patience is a Big Stinking Pain and Anyone Who Tells You Otherwise is Simply Repeating What His Mother Drilled into Him

  Bulking Up

  A Little Bit of Hope

  Fed Up

  Tailed

  Faking It

  Sunday Sick

  Fair Warming

  Boarded Up

  Hope Flings Eternal

  ’Fessing Up

  Deceive Unto Others

  Good-Bye

  To Weather Forever

  The news thumped him like a wicker cannon ball, sending splinters of pain throughout every inch of his body. Toby quickly batted a fat cat off an overturned scrub bucket and shoved the tub behind his friend’s weak knees.

  President Heck sat.

  “Does Trust know?” he managed to say.

  “Yep,” Toby answered.

  “And?”

  “He isn’t thrilled,” Leonard said, sounding as if he was talking about some child’s reaction to a meal involving spinach. “How would you feel if your fiancée was taken?”

  “I can’t speak for Trust,” Toby said soberly. “But I know I’d feel sicker than Mavis after our squirrel day buffet. Remember how Lupert accidentally hit her in the stomach with that bat?”

  President Heck nodded.

  “I still feel bad about him doing that,” Toby said.

  “Accidents happen,” Leonard comforted.

  “We’ve got to find her,” Ricky Heck whispered. “If he has her, then she could be in real harm.”

  “Don’t worry,” Leonard said. “We’ve got the whole place searching. There’s not a single good eye looking anywhere but for her.”

  No one was comforted.

  1

  One Heart, One Bind

  Lightning tore across the sky, connecting with the treetops and setting their crowns afire. I smelled and heard the thick air wheeze as it gagged on ozone.

  This was a bad idea.

  I searched the darkness for human forms, knowing all the while that my eyes couldn’t differentiate between a sumo wrestler and a toothpick in the mucklike night before me. Light flashed and the sky boomed, sounding like an ill-tempered Father Nature barking at his children for losing the remote.

  This was the last ward campout I would ever attend.

  “Leonard!” I screamed into the wet night.

  Lightning snapped again, the sky acting like a horde of tourists with the need to photograph something. I didn’t smile.

  “Leonard!” I hollered.

  It had started out as such a nice outing. Grace and I had come up together and pitched our tents by each other. I had impressed her by cooking dinner over a small intimate gas stove, and she impressed me by flashing back a smile, the image of which still burned on the inside of my eyelids. After dinner we had watched the ward’s kids run around the Tom Cove campground while the members talked about how life would be so much more fulfilling if we still lived simply like the pioneers. Sister Barns went on and on about how she longed for a quainter life and then threw a fit when one of the young men accidentally unplugged her generator, thus causing her to have to go to the trouble of resetting the clock on the portable microwave oven she had brought up.

  Tom Cove was a campground rooted in misrepresentation. It was not a cove, and it had no real connection with anyone named Tom. Apparently an early, uneducated explorer named Harold Locks had wanted to name the place after his buddy Jacques. Well, Harold had grown up traversing rivers and hiking hills instead of studying his spelling words. Consequently he had a really difficult time spelling Jacques’s name. So he went with Tom since it was so much easier to pen. He added Cove because there was a woman across the ocean that he pined for by the name of Camille.

  Most of the wards in Southdale held their outdoor get-togethers up at Tom Cove. It was a nice place that Tom—I mean Jacques—could feel proud about having named after him. There were pavilions and grills and a bathroom that smelled like my grandmother’s cellar in summer. There were two horseshoe pits and a big tree house with a wooden ladder that was missing every other rung and covered with thatch like patches of breeding splinters. The Thicktwig Ward had reserved the entire area for the weekend. It was all ours, and we probably would have had a perfectly fine outing if it had not been for Leonard.

  Leonard Vastly was, at present, our ward’s activities director. He had the enthusiasm of a medicated high school mascot and the common sense equivalent to that of most legumes—the lima bean not included. How a grown man could think that a ward tire roll was a good idea was beyond me. But he had, and for some reason the entire congregation in attendance had blindly gone along with it.

  Leonard had pulled a few strings and gotten one of his brothers-in-law to deliver five giant construction tractor tires up to Tom Cove. They were huge tires. When stood up on their ends they were taller than I was by a torso or so and as wide as a small compact car. After families had eaten and all the campsites were set up, Leonard coaxed everyone into the five tires. Then with the help of his assistant activities director and two subcommittee heads, he prepared to push all five tires across what looked to be a thin, mild slope in back of the tin pavilions.

  People laughed and chatted as they climbe
d into the huge rubber rings. I even heard Sister O’Shawn comment on what a clever activity this was and how Leonard was the best activities director our ward had ever had. Brother Max Evans, our previous ward activities director, then asked if it would be possible for him to ride in a different tire than Sister O’Shawn. Despite Max’s dented pride, everyone seemed to be excited about rolling around together.

  Without really giving it the kind of thought I should have, I climbed into tire number three with Grace, the Relief Society presidency, and a solid one-fourth of the ward’s Primary children. The moment Scott Gneiting kneed me in the nose I knew that this was not going to turn out well. I started to wiggle and fuss in hopes of getting out, but Sister Barns interpreted it as my being fresh and began lecturing me.

  It was not my finest moment.

  The second the tires started to turn, everyone collectively realized what I had caught on to a mere moment ago.

  This was a completely disastrous idea.

  Leonard and his assistants pushed the big tires for a few feet as we all began to spin within. Twenty feet into it, however, the tires began to get away from their pushers. Those doing the shoving began to jog in an attempt to keep up with their responsibilities. Unfortunately, jogging just didn’t cut it.

  The tires were loose.

  Because I was spinning I couldn’t clearly see what was happening, but even above the screams of the Relief Society presidency and the Primary children, I could hear Leonard yelling.

  “Sweet mother of polished pearl!”

  The tires gained some pretty impressive speed as they bounced down what had looked to be a harmless grade. I felt someone’s foot kick my stomach as a stray elbow jabbed me in the kidney. I tried to grab for the inner edge of the tire in hopes of keeping myself from crushing Grace and some of the smaller children. It was impossible. We were out of control. The landscape flew by, spinning like a newspaper headline in an old movie. Our tire hit a tree and bounced backwards with great force.

  Everyone flew out into the air, falling to the ground like scarecrows of putty, dust bouncing up in curtains and folding over us. I would just have stayed there and complained a while, but tire number five was heading right for me. I hopped up, spotted Grace, grabbed her hand, and ran out of the way. Sister Barns wasn’t quite so lucky. Tire number five tagged her on the side, spinning her until she collapsed. Tire number one caught a bush and then twisted in place like a settling coin. When it finally stopped, everyone climbed out, stumbling about like inebriated marionettes. I watched tire number five end its journey by getting pinched in a large gully. Wedged tight, it jiggled about until it had shaken everyone up and out.

  Leonard came barreling across the meadow waving his arms and screaming louder than any of those injured. He stopped and bent over, putting his hands on his knees and struggling to catch his breath. For a moment the worst appeared to be over. Unfortunately, as our ward had a tendency of doing, we grew too complacent too quickly.

  Tire number two was still moving.

  No one panicked at first since it looked as if it would simply roll itself out, heading for an open meadow that sloped upward in the opposite direction. We all watched as it rolled up the hill. We all watched as it reached the top of the hill. We all watched as it paused and then started coming back our way.

  Everyone took off running down the narrow meadow and back towards the pavilions. Initially there was no more than a mild panic in the air. Of course that changed the moment Sister Barns pointed towards the tire and screamed.

  “The bishopric’s in that one!”

  Well, taken on an individual basis, each member of the bishopric could not be categorized as more than just “a big guy.” As a cluster, however, they deserved to be named and charted. And they were not alone in that tire.

  “Run!”

  It was every member for himself. The mild panic became a run-with-your-arms-above-your-head-and- mouth-wide-open sprint for your life. I saw Leonard step in a rabbit hole and go down. I stopped and reached to help him.

  “Leave me,” he commanded. “Save yourself!”

  I have always been a fairly obedient person.

  Grace and I would have left him for dead if the tire hadn’t flown past us about four feet to the left.

  Leonard stood up. “Whew, that was close,” he said, as if all danger were done with. I guess he didn’t realize that there were still women and children out in front of the now-flying tire.

  The screams of the participants inside the tire grew even louder than the screams of those in its path. I saw the big tire bounce and watched as someone’s leg from inside flew out and whacked Brother McLaughlin’s large head as the tire tore past him. Scott McLaughlin went down like a fleshy folding chair, impeding those who were running directly behind him. Clyde Knuckles couldn’t stop in time. He tripped over the McLaughlin mound and sailed through the air, eventually using Sister O’Shawn as his personal runway on which to land.

  Brother Victor, the ward employment specialist, was in front of the speeding tire now. He looked back as he ran, sweat pouring from his tiny forehead and making him look plastic and even less lifelike than usual. He was never going to make it. Moments before the tire smeared him, he fell to the ground and curled up into a tiny ball. The tire hit him and jumped up into the air, soaring through one of the tin pavilions and taking out two of the wooden support beams. Pinched, the pavilion toppled over, squealing like a stuck pig as it fell to the ground.

  Tire number two had come to a stop.

  Everyone just stood there speechless. There was some coughing and weeping, but no understandable words were being uttered. Fair skinned, and fairly skinned, Bishop Leen crawled out from the downed tire. With his palms and knees against the ground, he tried to catch his breath.

  “He doesn’t look happy,” Grace whispered.

  “I can’t imagine why,” I whispered back.

  Bishop Leen got to his feet and scanned the crowd, looking for Leonard. He finally spotted him ducked down behind the nursery-aged children, pretending to tie his Velcro-fastened shoes.

  “Brother Vastly!”

  It’s important to realize that Leonard Vastly had not always been a Saint. He had been a petty thief early in his life, joining the Church after he mistakenly stole someone’s scripture tote from an unlocked car. After his initial disappointment, he read the scriptures, gained a testimony, and got baptized. So I suppose it was an old reflex of his to jump up and bolt when the bishop started to yell at him. I had never seen a middle-aged man run so fast.

  “Leonard!” the bishop called again, hoping to stop him.

  It was no use. He was out of there.

  The ward turned their attention to the wounded at hand. We helped pick up one another and clean any scrapes or wounds the tire travel had caused. Bishop Leen pulled me aside just as we got everything and everyone back in the right places.

  “Trust, I’ve been in the lawn business for a long while,” he informed me.

  I didn’t know how I was supposed to respond, so I patted him on the back and congratulated him for a job well done. He stared at me and continued talking.

  “I mention it because I’m rarely wrong when it comes to predicting rain.”

  I looked up at the clear sky, wondering why he was bringing all this up.

  “It’s going to rain,” he clarified.

  I pointed up. “But it’s . . .”

  “Going to rain,” he insisted. “Listen, I was all right with Leonard being stuck out in the woods when it’s dry, but I can’t leave him out there alone while it’s raining.”

  “I’ll let your wife know where you’ve gone,” I offered.

  “Actually, I should probably stay here since I’m the bishop.”

  “How about Brother Johnson?” I asked, referring to his first counselor.

  “He needs to look after the young men.”

  “Brother Tugg.”

  “He’s keeping an eye on the outhouses. I’m sure you remember what happened
on the ward outing five years ago.”

  “The Sister Hood incident?” I asked.

  Bishop Leen somberly nodded.

  “So you want me to go find Leonard?”

  “I figured since you’re his home teacher, it would be appropriate. Besides, you would just be hanging around here making eyes at Grace.”

  He made it sound so cheap.

  I left Bishop Leen, made a couple more eyes at Grace, threw in a longer than usual kiss, and then set off in the direction Leonard had fled. After I’d been walking for about ten minutes, clouds rolled in and it began to rain. Fifteen minutes later the sky grew completely dark. Ten minutes after that I began hollering Leonard’s name in hopes of his hearing me.

  “Leonard!”

  Five minutes later I figured it was time to head back, with or without him. In another two minutes I realized I was lost. And a mere thirty seconds ago, lightning had struck the ground directly in front of me. I jumped back from the trail and rolled under a huge pine tree. Once again the sky screeched. Rain dumped as if the heavens were clearing their pipes. I scrambled back under the tree and up against the side of the hill looking for shelter. I pulled myself along the side of the mountain, feeling for someplace to plant myself. In the dark I felt something sticking out from the side of the hill. Whatever it was wiggled as I touched it. Lightning struck again, giving definition to what were two feet sticking out of a good-sized animal hole. Thanks to the fact that no other person in the Thicktwig Ward would be caught dead wearing camouflage dress socks, it was easy to identify the ankles and feet of Leonard Vastly. His toes were pointed downward as if he had been crawling on his stomach up into the hole.