Love's Labors Tossed Read online

  “You know, a lot’s changed since we left all those months ago,” Grace observed.

  I knew perfectly well that the change she was speaking of had to do with herself and not with Thelma’s Way.

  “They’re going to be blown away,” I smiled.

  She smiled back, picking up her bag and slinging it over her shoulder. “My father used to talk about how nothing ever changes in Thelma’s Way. He would go on and on about how nice it was that everything remained just as it was. I thought he was crazy. But now I can think of nothing nicer than walking back into exactly what I left.”

  I leaned in as if to kiss her. She had other plans, stepping off towards Thelma’s Way at a pace that made me have to jog a few steps to catch up with her.

  Before we reached the meadow we could hear that something was going on. We walked faster, our curiosity making us even more excited than we had already been. When we got to the meadow, there was a rally of sorts taking place. A big table had been set up, and Sister Watson was standing on top of it while everyone else was gathered around listening to her. She had on a big feathery cap and was waving her arms while she talked. She was so excited about whatever it was she was saying that I instantly grew concerned about her keeping her balance up on the table. We slipped up behind everyone, unnoticed and midsentence.

  “ . . . I for one am not going to just stand by and let this . . . this . . . thing terrorize us. We have got to make a decision.”

  Paul Leeper yelled out, “What about me?”

  “What about you?” she shot back.

  “If you haven’t noticed, I’m . . .” Paul looked around, realizing that his words would be better heard if he too were up on the table. “Do you mind if I step up?” he asked.

  “Suit yourself,” Sister Watson frowned.

  Paul climbed up, looking like a toddler struggling to climb into a big bed. He stood and spoke. “I know that I did this town wrong once, but I’m wanting to make up for that. That’s why my project is so important. Certainly you all want me to feel truly repentant. And a road would destroy my dream.”

  “No one wants your shelter,” Sister Watson insisted.

  “Well now, wait a minute,” Toby Carver spoke up. Then, without permission, he too climbed up onto the table and started speaking his mind. “Paul’s idea has some possibilities. I mean, it might be kind of nice to have a dry meadow year round.”

  “What are they talking about?” I whispered out the side of my mouth.

  “I have no idea,” Grace whispered back.

  “I wouldn’t mind keeping my shoes clean in winter,” Toby continued. “God put us out here to improve our state.”

  “It ain’t natural,” Teddy Yetch booed. “I think that . . .”

  “Put her on the table!” Frank Porter yelled from the side of the crowd, unable to understand her from the height at which she was speaking.

  Paul and Toby reached down from the table and hefted her up. Teddy smiled, delighted to be the center of attention.

  “I’m just saying that it ain’t right to stop the rain and snow,” she pointed out. “Besides, if we had a road, I could finally get me a car before I die.”

  Sister Watson put her arm around Teddy, creating the perfect photo op—her cause, whatever it was, finally had a face. Teddy wanted a car before she died.

  “I think we should take a vote,” Sister Watson shouted. “As long as we’re isolated we could be in danger. We must be more progressive. So, all in favor of a road, which brings safety, say aye.”

  “Aye!” the crowd hollered unanimously.

  “All opposed, say nay.”

  “Nay,” everyone yelled.

  “You can’t have both,” she fumed.

  “Hold on a minute,” Roswell shouted from the audience. He too must have felt a need to stand on the table, because he hoisted his old body up there and stood. After rubbing his knees for a few moments he said, “This town has done just fine without no road. I don’t see why we need one now. You slap down some asphalt, and we’ll get all sorts of lowlifes drifting into our blessed meadow.” Roswell paused, drew in air, and then spat forcefully over the heads of everyone there. He wiped his lips and continued. “I’ve seen some of them kids in Virgil’s Find. Colored hair, big shoes, pretty teeth. Who needs ’em. I’d hate to wake up and see some city person sitting on the banks of the Girth poking ’round for my fish.”

  “They want to pave the trail?” I asked Grace in amazement.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Can I say something?” Pete hollered out.

  Sister Watson rolled her eyes, and Pete climbed up and took a place on the extremely unstable table. Pete turned and faced the crowd.

  “I just want to say, Has anyone seen my good knife?” he asked. “I seem to have misplaced it.”

  “This is not the place or time for that,” Sister Watson scolded.

  “Wait a second,” Ed Washington said. He climbed up onto the table and fished through his pockets. “This it?” he asked, handing Pete a knife.

  “Thanks, Ed.” Pete slapped Ed on the back, and the entire table swayed.

  “We’ve strayed from the subject,” Sister Watson complained. “We have got a criminal running around our town. A road would give us a chance to chase him out. So, do we make a nice pretty road into our town, or do we remain unsafe? Not to mention stagnant and moldy?”

  I saw Wad sniff himself as if she had been talking about him personally.

  “A road into here would change everything,” Grace whispered.

  “And what’s this about a criminal?”

  Lupert Carver heard us whispering and turned around. He smiled and then pushed through the crowd and up to the table. He tugged on his father Toby’s pant leg. Toby leaned over, and Lupert whispered something into his left ear. Toby then stood and put his hand above his eyes, scanning the crowd. He spotted Grace and me. The exact moment our eyes met, the table gave out, dropping everyone on it straight to the ground. None of them fell over. The table legs had just folded up underneath and lowered them quickly down. They were now standing level with everyone else. The crowd all stared at them, wondering if that was supposed to have happened. As soon as Toby got his bearings, he pointed through the crowd to Grace and me.

  To enhance the mood, the misty sky sucked itself in as if tightening its corset. Not to imply that anything as windy and vast as the sky need always be equated to the female gender. I could just as easily have said that the sky sucked itself in as if it were a construction worker’s gut in the presence of a beautiful passerby. But honestly, although nothing wonderful, the first comparison was more fitting.

  Toby couldn’t believe we were back. He kept turning around and then quickly turning back. Each time he looked more surprised than the last.

  “It’s you!”

  “What are you two doing here?”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  The crowd quickly encircled Grace and me, everyone commenting about how much we had been missed. The attention was good for me, but it was great for Grace. She had left Thelma’s Way a different person. Now here she was standing before the people that she had grown up with and looking like something wonderful the heavens had held back until this very moment. Digby Heck spotted his sister and ran to fetch the folks. Pete Kennedy pulled the guns from his hip and shot off at least fifteen rounds into the nongendered air. The bell had been sounded. In moments the entire meadow was completely filled with the faces I had longed to see just moments ago. As people patted me on the back and commented on how fancy my Target-bought clothes looked, I spotted Patty Heck at the tree line with Narlette by the hand.

  The emotion was so great that the clouds began to drip. As a single body we all pushed into the boardinghouse and out of the wet. The boardinghouse was still the biggest and most fitting center of town. It had belonged to Roswell and Feeble, the Ford twins, but Feeble had passed away a few years back, so now old Roswell was the only one at the helm. It was a two-story building
with a pitched roof and a sagging rock chimney. The bottom floor was used as a community center and store. There was also a large first-floor bedroom that Roswell lived in. The top had a couple of junk-filled rooms that were cleaned out every so often to house whomever might be in need of a lumpy bed and a leaky roof.

  Sister Watson jumped up on top of the store counter and whistled. Her wig shifted as she acknowledged the crowd with a nod. It was obvious that since we had left Sister Watson had grown accustomed to talking while on top of tables and counters.

  “Who here knew that Grace and Trust would be back?” she asked, wanting to get a feel for how deep the surprise was.

  Narlette raised her hand but was ignored.

  “Well,” she went on, “it looks like we were caught completely off guard.”

  Everyone blinked and nodded in agreement, totally comfortable with the off-guard position.

  “I’m glad I’m wearing clean underwear,” Frank Porter whispered to Paul Leeper, happy that he hadn’t been caught at this impromptu reunion with dirty shorts. His comment caught a few listening ears and painted a couple of faces with worry, as if they themselves weren’t as well prepared as Frank.

  Sister Watson held up her hands to calm the slightly restless crowd. I could see that she had written herself a reminder on her left palm. From where I stood it looked as if it said, “tape Dateline.” The crowd silenced as she continued to pat the air in front of her.

  “As a lot of you know, I didn’t really care for Trust here when he first came around all those years ago. He had that sort of look.”

  Sister Watson pulled a face that I prayed I had never actually had.

  “The kinda look that a lot of young cocky boys get.”

  “Like Philip?” Toby questioned, pointing at eighteen-year-old Philip Green.

  Despite the extra finger he had, Philip was looking incredibly self-assured.

  “Exactly,” Sister Watson said, jabbing the air. “Minus the overbite.”

  I was going to respond to that, but someone came crashing across the porch and into the boardinghouse. He pushed through the crowd and up to us.

  President Heck was by far my favorite person in this hidden valley, if not in the world. He was the most run-amuck, discombobulated, mentally askew individual I had ever had the pleasure of knowing. He was brilliant and childlike all in one sentence. He could enlighten and confuse simultaneously. He saw nothing wrong with the world aside from his own spiritual deficiency.

  His hair had given up all hope of holding onto anything darker than dapple gray. In fact, there were spots where white strands were letting their presence be known. He had put on a couple of pounds since I had last seen him, and those pounds were resting upon the few he had put on a little earlier than that. He was closing in on fifty but wore the smile of a kid who had just won a six-foot stuffed animal at the state fair.

  “Elder Williams.” He hugged me, still not able to forget what I once was.

  He then looked around as if searching for his daughter. If it had not been for Grace’s red hair, I don’t think he would even have recognized her as she stood there holding my hand.

  “Grace?” he asked in amazement.

  “Dad,” she smiled.

  “Well, I’ll be a corn-fed pig.”

  It wasn’t Hallmark, but it was touching.

  Ricky Heck looked around at everyone, wondering if they too had noticed the difference in his daughter.

  “Toby, you seen her?” he asked in awe.

  “She looks right pretty, President,” Toby answered, as if Grace weren’t directly in front of both of them.

  Ricky Heck smiled. If the buttons on the front of his shirt hadn’t popped off weeks ago from his new weight, they surely would have shot across the room at that moment.

  Let me just make it perfectly clear. Grace was always the most beautiful girl my eyes had ever rested upon. Her red hair, pink lips, and green eyes were like mesmerizing ornaments on a perfectly shaped tree. I think, however, that until I had taken her away from Thelma’s Way, I was the only one who really understood this. In Southdale, she had come around, realizing for herself what a remarkable person she was—her confidence had changed her countenance. You would have had to be a blind man with no sense of wonder not to recognize the differences.

  Leo Tip, who was rumored to have liked Grace at one point in the past, looked down at his pregnant wife, CleeDee, and then back at Grace. He looked at CleeDee again.

  “What?” CleeDee asked impatiently.

  “Nothing,” Leo sighed.

  CleeDee caught on and dragged her man out of the boardinghouse to tell him a few things she felt he needed to know right then.

  Sister Watson called for a cheer to celebrate our arrival, but no one could agree on which cheer to do. So we all just hollered into the air, happy to be back together. And for the second time in a couple of days I realized that I couldn’t be happier. It seemed as if my entire life had been building simply to usher in this moment. I couldn’t foresee a single black cloud on the horizon.

  5

  A Little Black Cloud in a Dress

  Cindy was upset. The e-mail she had just received from Aunt Cravitz indicated that this Trust fellow was getting along better with this Grace person than had once been the case. It said that Grace had really turned out to be a lovely girl and that Cindy shouldn’t get her hopes up because the two of them were planning to marry in August. Aunt Cravitz then electronically lectured her niece about opening mail when it arrived, telling her that five months ago Trust and Grace might have been unsteady enough to topple. Now, however, it was too late.

  Cindy pulled Trust’s picture out of the book she was reading. She had been using it as her bookmark and felt that it greatly enhanced her reading time.

  “Grace,” she sneered. “I suppose people in Tennessee have a hard time finding clever names to name their children.”

  Cindy put the picture back in her book and set them both down. She looked in the mirror. Her head was covered with thick spongy rods and coated with perm solution. She imagined how vixenlike she would look once it was done. She held up the shirt she had just bought at the outlet store in Bourbonville. It was exactly like the one the heroine on the cover of her book was wearing. She puckered up for the mirror. Some perm solution dripped down her forehead, and she pushed it back up above her hair-line.

  Normally Cindy would have let the notion of Trust go, giving it no more thought than a nonfiction book—perfectly content to simply bad-mouth him until she had forgotten every intriguing thing his picture did to her. But there was something about his face and his build that made her want to fight. Something inside her told her that it was Trust or eternal misery. Something inside of her told her that this was her one shot at fulfilling romance and that she shouldn’t give up. If she had learned anything from her books, it was the importance of fighting for your man. Certainly Grace’s hold on Trust would be nothing once he got a look at her. Cindy was no stranger to mirrors. She knew perfectly well that she was the most fetching woman Trust would ever set eyes on.

  “It’s been a while since I visited Aunt Cravitz,” Cindy rumbled, pulling open the drawer beneath her bed and extracting a huge pile of cash. “I could catch a plane out this afternoon.”

  She counted the money carefully, very familiar with every bill there. It was, after all, her nest egg, set aside for a rainy day.

  A storm was brewing.

  6

  A Fly in the Ointment

  It took me no time to feel right at home in Thelma’s Way. Tuesday morning when I woke up and looked out the window it was as if I had never left. From the top floor of the boardinghouse I could see kids playing on the rotted pioneer wagons in the meadow—collecting splinters and exhausting themselves so that, come evening, their folks could count on their dropping off sometime before the sun did. I watched Wad supervise Digby Heck as he nervously cut Miss Flitrey’s hair. Up until a couple of weeks ago, Digby had been unsure of just what he wanted
to do with his life. He had prayed and prayed that the heavens might reveal just how he should go about making a living. He began looking for a sign, a marker pointing the way to his would-be livelihood. He thought that Toby’s dog unexpectedly giving birth in the boardinghouse pantry might be a sign for him to go into commerce, but then he remembered that he wasn’t good with money. He still wasn’t sure just how four quarters made a dollar.

  “They turn into paper?” he would ask in confusion.

  When Jeff Titter got wedged in a small passage down in Martin’s Cavern while exploring, Digby was momentarily swept up in the romantic idea of becoming an explorer. But then he remembered that unknown things made him uneasy.

  Digby was in a laborer’s funk. Luckily, Tindy MacDermont caught a nasty cold from one of the Porter boys. Digby was in the meadow thinking and thinking about what he should do when Tindy came walking by. She didn’t talk, but her achoos spoke louder than words. To Digby it sounded like heaven whispering over and over again, “Hair school. Hair school. Hair school.”

  Could it be any clearer? The heavens wanted Digby to cut hair.

  Well, Thelma’s Way had no hair school, but it had Wad, and Wad was willing to take on an apprentice. So for the last little while, Digby had been honing his hair skills under the wrinkled tutelage of Wad. Reports were that Digby was actually quite good at it. The only problem he had with it was that he was supposed to wear an apron—Digby felt they looked silly. So once again, he found a new purpose for Saran Wrap. He would roll plastic wrap around his torso and over his shoulder. It worked rather well. Sure, the first day he had put it on a little too tight, binding his lungs and causing him to pass out halfway through Sister Bickerstaff’s tint job. But after Wad unwrapped him and then shook him for a while, Digby came back breathing strong.

  I watched Digby nick Miss Flitrey’s neck. She yelled at Wad, and Wad tried to yell at Digby, but due to Wad’s lack of assertiveness, I’m not sure that Digby got the point. I saw Pete Kennedy taking potshots at a line of rusted soup cans he had propped atop a charred rail on the burnt and unusable Girth Bridge. He hit four in a row, and then, spotting a bird flying directly over the meadow, he pointed his gun and pulled the trigger. With the kind of precision he demonstrated in no other aspect of his life, he hit the bird. It bucked in the air and then fell like a rock, straight down. It hit an unsuspecting Toby Carver on the head and bounced onto the pile of old shirts he was carrying. I watched Toby look at the bird and then at the sky. He smiled and walked off, happy about the blessing that had just magically dropped into his lap.