by Chris Cooper
“Happy to help. Where’s Izzy?” he asked, walking around to the other side of the counter.
“Think she’s down for the count. Might want to go check on her after you help me,” she replied, handing change to a customer.
He grabbed a set of tongs and assembled the carryout orders. Once the line died down, he went back into the kitchen to check on Izzy. She sat on a stool at the big kitchen table, clutching a cup of tea.
“Still alive back here?” he asked.
“Mm-hmm,” Izzy mumbled without looking up from her tea.
He tried to reassure her. “I’m sure we can put everything back once the celebration’s over.”
“If it’s not the outside, they’ll find something else. There’s always something. It took the council nearly two years to approve my bees. Two years!” She clanged her teacup down on the metal table and looked up at him. “There’s not another house for nearly a mile, but still, it was a battle just to get the first damned hive. Now, everyone in the town buys honey from us, but no one ever bothered to acknowledge the hoops they made us jump through. You should have seen the backlash when I bought the bakery building. I tore out a few walls, and the town nearly had a meltdown. The building was sitting empty, and they still couldn’t stand for anyone to change it. I’m tired of fighting to be myself, kiddo. I’m getting too old for it. You know, I’ve thought of selling this place and maybe moving out west. Portland sounds pretty nice.”
So the issue wasn’t simply the outside of the building. Izzy was the nicest person he’d ever known, and he felt a flicker of anger at the thought of the unnecessary anguish placed upon her. He could see why Anna had seemed so irrationally upset.
“This place would be dull without you,” he said. “It’s still pretty dull with you in it. Clearly, they love your bakery, whether they’ll admit it or not.”
This didn’t sound like him. Blend in was usually Oliver’s motto, but the feeling he felt deep down in his belly was the same he’d felt before flipping over the clock in front of his entire office. He’d felt a twinge of it while standing in the back of the town-hall meeting. It wasn’t just anger, though. Something else was there, too, a profound sense of sadness for just how much the need for others’ approval dominated his life. Stick out. His subconscious pleaded with him. Stick out like your happiness depends on it. Flip the freakin’ clock.
“Thanks, kiddo,” Izzy said with a forced smile before returning to her tea.
Later that evening, Pan circled Nekko in the living room, yipping playfully and trying to get the fat cat to engage. Nekko stretched out on the rug and yawned, paying no attention to the mischievous corgi. She was an immovable force, a heavy boulder, until Pan started to nudge her with his cold nose. Nekko gave the pup a warning growl. He perked up his ears and backed away, not sure what to make of the strange noise coming from the orange lump on the floor. After a moment of hesitation, he decided to chance it and ran headfirst into the cat’s soft, exposed underbelly. His actions resulted in a swift thwap thwap as Nekko rolled onto her hind legs and brought her massive front paws down onto Pan’s head in quick succession. The dog yelped and ran into the other room. Fortunately, Nekko had been declawed, but the pup received the message loud and clear.
Oliver watched the action unfold from a papasan chair, where he sat with one of his aunt’s sketchpads. He’d never seen Nekko move that quickly before and was pretty sure he wouldn’t see it again without the help of Pan’s prodding. Izzy had gone to bed a while before, but Oliver couldn’t shake the stench of the day, which left him wide awake and discontented. From the sounds of it, the council had been on Izzy’s case for years and had made her life in Christchurch a constant battle. He wanted to do something to make her feel better. He felt complicit, not for something he had done but for something he hadn’t. Instead of speaking up for his aunt, he’d stood idle, leaving Izzy and Anna flapping in the breeze. He wasn’t sure what he could have said to help, but anything would have been better than nothing.
Oliver was a perpetual bystander. The same thing had happened a week before, when Jeanine needed a moment to grieve in peace and Mr. Sally scolded her for being away from the desk. It had happened in elementary school, when his classmates made fun of one of the new girls for her Coke-bottle glasses. His life was full of these moments, and he was determined not to slip back into his old habit of complacency. He sketched out an idea, a plan for something he would be able to pull off just in time for the tricentennial celebration.
Chapter Seven
“This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Izzy said, holding the piece of sketch paper in one hand and cupping her mouth with the other. Her eyes glistened with tears. “I had no idea you sketched.”
“Oh, please. I doodle a little, but I think you get the idea,” Oliver replied.
His aunt leaned against the kitchen counter, scanning the sketch and taking in all the details. “Just tell me what you’ll need to make it happen,” she said.
“Just a few evenings of your time in order to finish it by the tricentennial,” he replied. “I’ll stop by the hardware store today and scope out all of the supplies.”
Izzy placed the sketch on the table and wrapped her arms around him.
“Have I ever told you you’re my favorite grandnephew?” she asked.
“I thought I was the only one,” he replied.
“That’s beside the point. This made my day,” she added. “I’ll go see what I have in my studio. The revolution lives on!” she shouted, pumping her fist in the air and walking into the living room toward the staircase.
With the tricentennial only two days away, they had a lot of work to do and a very short amount of time in which to do it. Oliver cleared the old garage behind Izzy’s house and pulled the blue station wagon inside. A line of spray-paint cans, all of different colors, sat on the makeshift workbench, next to several rolls of painter’s tape. The next two days were a blur. After finishing their shifts at the bakery, Izzy and Oliver would return to the garage to work on the car. They carefully taped off portions of it to recreate the design from Oliver’s sketch on the metal body. Painting the car was more work than initially anticipated, but the patterns slowly came together. While they worked in the garage, Pan busied himself chasing rolling spray cans across the floor. Nekko had the run of the entire house but barely moved from the windowsill in the kitchen.
Back at the bakery, Anna started work on the tricentennial cake. The mammoth confection consisted of three massive tiers. The bottom tier was made to look like a field of colorful wildflowers, mimicking those around the edges of the town. Christchurch was spelled out in rich chocolate lettering on the second tier, and a miniature recreation of the town sat atop the third. She paid special attention to the tiny bakery on the top tier and ensured the outer walls were covered with colorful designs, as they had been before Oliver took the hose to them.
After two days of baking and two nights of working in the garage, the morning of the tricentennial had arrived. Large wicker baskets of baked goods lined the metal table in the bakery kitchen, and several racks full of breads and pastries sat in waiting. They would load the baskets into Izzy’s car, drive them to their booth in the square, then come back for more goodies as needed.
Izzy pulled the car around to the back door of the bakery and opened the trunk. “If this festival is anything like the annual festival last year, we’ll be sold out by noon,” she said.
Anna carried a basket of bread outside and stopped cold when she saw what had once been the robin-egg station wagon.
“And what is this?” she asked.
Bright swirls of color laced the sides of the car. A caricature in Izzy's likeness was prominently displayed on the hood, holding a rolling pin in the air as if daring the Elders to confront her. The Rolling Pin was spelled out in graffiti-style letters, spanning each side of the station wagon.
“If the town won’t let us have a colorful store, we’re going to have a colorful car,” Izzy sa
id. “It was Oliver’s idea.”
“I didn’t know that you were an artist too,” Anna told Oliver.
“Oh, I can draw a little, but I was mostly just the idea man,” he replied.
“Nonsense,” Izzy said. “You should have seen him paint. I think it’s the most I’ve seen him smile since he’s been here.” She jabbed Oliver in the ribs with her elbow.
He did have an undernourished artistic flair, one that wasn’t satiated by the engineering drawings he had been paid to crank out for Mr. Sally. He’d been happier in the last few days than he’d been for some time and noticed the bounce had returned to Izzy's step too. She’d come alive over the two nights in the garage, seemingly fueled by her rebellious spirit.
“And why didn’t you tell me about this beforehand?” Anna asked. “You know how long I’ve been waiting to stick it to this town? I could have helped.”
“We wanted it to be a surprise,” Oliver said.
The town Elders had enlisted an army of volunteers to assemble the festival booths. The station wagon’s wheels hummed on the uneven brick as Izzy cautiously drove past stacks of metal poles and canvas tent covers. The car garnered looks from the helpers as it passed in a rainbow blur. Izzy pulled up next to the bakery booth and ensured Oliver’s design was front and center. In a sea of red-and-white canvas stripes, the wagon was an explosion of color, impossible for the eyes to miss.
Oliver and Anna lined several card tables with baskets of baked goods, while Izzy scrawled prices on a miniature chalkboard display and recreated her likeness from the hood of the car. Both she and her chalk caricatures were beaming. As visitors started to trickle in, several stopped to take pictures with the car, picking up a cinnamon roll or donut along the way. The station wagon not only served as a defiant act of self-expression, it turned out to be a great marketing tool as well.
“Interesting paint job. A little garish, don’t you think?” Madeline strolled over to the bakery booth with a small entourage of Elder members following closely behind, like a flock of ducks forming a flying V. Oliver hadn’t noticed it from a distance at the town-hall meeting, but Madeline wore a lapel pin bearing the seal of the Elders, as did the gaggle standing behind her.
“No rules against painting your car, are there Madeline? Or are you planning to address that at the next meeting?” Izzy turned her back on the woman and pretended to rearrange the bakery baskets.
“You know, there’s a reason why we have these rules. People come to this town expecting a certain look, an historic look. They don’t come to be visually assaulted with junkyard sculptures and spray paint,” she said, eyes darting to the station wagon.
Anna also had her back turned to the group. She said nothing but accidentally took her anger out on a baguette, which she snapped in half on the edge of the table.
Oliver felt as if he were standing back in the old office, with his boss’s finger wagging in his face. He was done being wagged at. He had been wagged at his entire life. He forced a smile and locked eyes with Madeline. “So, what can I get for you today? A cookie? A piece of bread to feed your flock?” He gestured toward the other women.
Madeline’s eyes narrowed, but she struggled to find an adequate comeback. She turned without saying another word, and the group strolled away in synchronized step.
As the Elders made their way down the aisle of booths, he looked over at the basket of rolls next to him. Before he could stop himself, he picked up a roll, cocked his arm, and threw. Izzy turned just in time to see the roll leave Oliver’s hand and fly toward the group of Elders. He had aimed for the back of Madeline’s head, but his athletic track record was poor, and the roll veered to the left and grazed the shoulder of one of the other Elders. The woman swatted at her shoulder, as if to shoo a bug away, and turned around to see what had hit her. After a few confused moments, she returned to her place in the formation.
Izzy put a hand on Oliver’s shoulder. He was clenching the table, and the knuckles on both of his hands were completely white. He looked over at her, pulled from his momentary rage.
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what got into me. I shouldn’t have done that.” Embarrassment filled his cheeks with crimson. He could have caused a lot of heartache for Izzy, had the roll hit its intended target.
“Use a muffin next time. There’s less wind deflection, and they hurt a hell of a lot more,” she said, patting him on the shoulder.
The crowd grew larger throughout the morning, slowly shuffling in from the corners of the square. Oliver watched as lines of tourists followed little old ladies down the cobblestone side streets, taking in stories of the tiny village’s past. Christchurch must have been a regular stop for history buffs. Little had changed in the town square since the initial buildings went up, indoor plumbing aside. The town had also won Village of the Year awards, which the council displayed prominently in the town hall’s trophy cases.
Several thousand people descended on Christchurch for the day, which brought booming business. Izzy, Oliver, and Anna rotated between the booth and the store and were completely sold out by early afternoon, just as Izzy had predicted.
The tricentennial cake was to be unveiled at the mayor’s lunchtime address, and volunteers had cordoned off the area surrounding the founder’s statue and placed a podium at his feet. Anna had wheeled the cake over to the council booth earlier in the day, and the council members kept it hidden from view behind a red velvet curtain.
“If I could have everyone’s attention,” the mayor said, tapping on the microphone.
The chatter died down to a low hum.
“First of all, I would like to welcome you to Christchurch and thank all of you for coming. And a very special thanks to the volunteers who made this festival possible!” The crowd cheered. “I’d also like to thank the town council and our dedicated group of Elders.” The mayor paused for additional applause.
After the long list of thank-yous, he pulled back the velvet curtain and unveiled the cake to a wide range of “oohs” and “ahhhs.” Izzy, Oliver, and Anna stood next to him, and Anna was beaming from the crowd’s response. The mayor walked down the line, shaking Izzy’s hand, shaking Oliver’s hand, then embracing Anna in a warm hug.
“Nicely done, sweetie,” he said.
Oliver hadn’t been impressed by the town Elders, but the mayor had an aura of compassion and authenticity about him. Although he was an enforcer of the town rules, Oliver had a feeling the man didn’t necessarily agree with all the Elders’ actions.
After the unveiling, Oliver and Izzy returned to the bakery, which had become a place of respite for the festival volunteers and weary travelers. Izzy whipped up a few fresh batches of baked goods, while Oliver kept the coffee brewing and flowing into the cups of the town patrons.
“More coffee?” he asked a man sitting in one of the booths and reading a newspaper.
“Sure! You’re Oliver, right? Don’t believe we’ve met yet. My name’s Martin.” The man was short in stature and wore a light-brown suit and maroon sweater. His head was absent of any hair and looked as if it had been shined by an industrial floor buffer.
“That’s right. Nice to meet you. What do you do around here?”
“I run the antique shop on the other side of the square. You may have met my wife, Madeline,” he replied.
Oliver struggled to maintain his smile and cheery demeanor.
“I’ve had the pleasure,” he said.
Martin seemed to pick up on Oliver’s underlying emotions and chuckled. “She takes her role pretty seriously. I know she gives your aunt a hard time, but she’s got good intentions. You know, you should come by the pub after cleanup. We usually meet there for a few pints before calling it a night. Might be a good opportunity to meet some of the townsfolk in a more casual setting,” he said, giving Oliver a wink.
A wave from a booth at the other side of the room caught Oliver’s attention.
“I’ll be there,” he said. “I’ve gotta run, but it was nice to meet y
ou. I’ll have to stop by the shop one day.”
“Please do. It was great to meet you too,” Martin said, returning to his paper.
Oliver made another round with the coffee pot before returning to the kitchen to rest for a bit. The kitchen looked as if a flour bomb had gone off inside, and the veritable war zone was filled with dirty pans and splatters of dough. His cup of coffee had gotten cold, but he took a swig anyway, hoping the caffeine would provide the boost of energy needed to power through the rest of the day.
“Just met Madeline’s husband,” he said.
Izzy stuck her head out from behind a bakery rack.
“Like oil and vinegar those two, don’t you think?” she asked.
“He was so friendly. I just don’t get how someone like that could be married to her.”
“To each their own, I guess,” she said, lifting a tray of baked goods from the rack and emptying it into a basket.
“He mentioned a meet up at the pub after festival cleanup. Are you going?”
“Oh, I never go to those things. Not my crowd, really,” Izzy replied.
“And what is your crowd, exactly?” he asked.
“I’ll let you know if I ever figure that out.”
Chapter Eight
The Horseman sat in the corner of the square, diagonal from the bakery and across the dirt road from the market. The building had been constructed in the late seventeen hundreds, according to the plaque next to the entrance, and had scars from the Revolutionary War, including a cannonball wedged in one of its walls. The white wooden shingles appeared to have just received a fresh coat of paint, and the picket fence cordoned off a carefully manicured courtyard patio and garden.
At first, Izzy refused to cross the square to the tavern and only relented after Anna committed to going as well.
“It’s crazy how quickly the town cleared out,” Oliver said. The bakery cleanup had taken several hours, but he was still surprised the square had been cleared in such a short amount of time.