Sweet Creek

by Lee Lynch

  Someone had swept up the broken glass when Katie, sweaty, legs unsteady, returned. Chick was replacing the granola bars on the shelf. Everyone else was gone. She looked around for the Sony.

  “Your camera is behind the counter,” Chick told her. Chick picked up a green goddess figurine and studied it. “I’m sorry I’m not more serene. More like R.”

  Katie had been going for her Sony, but turned back, a flash of anger shooting through her. “Don’t wish that on yourself, Chick. You have a fire in you she never had.” Chick looked at her and she realized how she sounded. “I can’t believe I said that.” She shook her head. “I love R. She’s so intense.”

  But it was true. Upset as she’d gotten over Chick’s rage, Chick came by it honestly. R’s passion felt cold, drawn from some intellectual or political premise.

  “Intensity and passion don’t equal love, do they?” Chick said, watching her as if for signs that Katie finally got it, whatever it was.

  If she and R made love tonight—and that had seldom happened after the first few weeks—she would watch for real passion. But she already knew it wasn’t there. R sought an orgasm like she ate an apple; both were pleasant experiences and nourished her. Casting R back into the darkness and steadying herself against a shelving unit, she asked Chick, “What was that all about? I never heard you bitch out a living soul before.”

  Chick reached to enfold Katie in a hug. She could feel Chick trembling too. In a voice hoarse with crying Chick said, “Being nice to some people is like offering a treat to a dog. It doesn’t make them go away. It only teaches them to come back for more. Once upon a time I tolerated that man, because he was central to a group of women I dug and because he sold us drugs. My mistake. You’re smart to keep that camera between you and the world, Katie Delgado.”

  It segues me out into the world, she thought. Then she switched into automatic interview mode. “Is he an old squeeze? This isn’t the first time he’s bugged you, is it? What’s the story?”

  Chick pulled away. “On the other hand, curious Katie, because of your camera, baring my soul doesn’t feel cool. For your information, though, I’ve been a woman’s woman since day one.”

  “Truth? You’re not safe period around that guy, Chick. I’ve interviewed convicts less spooky than him.”

  “I’ve never lost it like this before. I wanted to maim that troubled man.”

  “Troubled! He’s a live bomb.” Katie shuddered, though she felt steadier now.

  “But if you tell Donny,” warned Chick, “I’ll have to break a coffeepot on you.”

  “Never! I’m not looking to expose my friends.”

  Or was she? Damn, why had she been so quick to pledge silence? She was the mirror to this little world, and Chick was reflected like everyone else. She was a mirror wherever she went. A reporter’s job was to watch and never take on what she reflected, but look how she’d reacted today. On the job she’d always arrived on scene after the violence, as part of the cleanup, to try to give a sense of, even make sense of what had happened. Today she’d seen her first real violence and she’d been catapulted back inside the fragile skin of metal that had sheltered her and her mom.

  Watching Chick defend herself against M.C., where had the objective journalist gone? She’d held the Sony, but essentially wasted the film. This really wasn’t something she could show the world, she thought with regret, except for M.C.’s mocking words. But she knew she’d play the Chick scene in her mind many times over. Had it mirrored her and her mom? No. Chick had gone on the attack, had altered Katie’s reality. It was in Katie’s memory bank differently now, right next to Mom and herself cowering.

  “Katie?” Chick asked, taking both her hands. Chick’s hands were warm, her own embarrassingly clammy. “Give me your word this will stay between us. Donny would lose it over something like this.”

  “I’d never use it,” she said, wrestling with the need to use such great footage for the story she wanted to tell.

  “Not just the film, Katie. I’m serious about not wanting Donny to know. She’s up at Dawn Farm again today working.”

  Chick sounded unsure of her. Well, du-uh, she thought. Chick had good reason. So Donny was up at Dawn Farm. Did she need to know Chick was in danger—from M.C. and from her own fury? She followed Chick to the counter. Did she need to tell Donny? No. It wasn’t her job to protect Chick, just like it hadn’t been her job to protect her mom. Why in hell had her mother wanted a seven-year-old to protect her? Hadn’t that been asking a bit much? If Chick needed someone to take care of her, she could decide that for herself.

  “Your secret’s safe with moi,” she said. “There are things I want to use on this tape or I’d give it to you to destroy.”

  Chick had taken the camera out from under the counter, but only now did she pass it over. As Katie accepted it, she knew she would keep Chick’s trust. She didn’t quite understand what had happened inside herself today, but earth-mother Chick—she wanted to call her Mama Chick—was totally central to it.

  “I want to crack open the secrets of this little town in the worst way. Scratch the women’s land story. I can do a docu-drama about the heart and soul of a small town.” She felt so alive talking about this, but switched into her Chatty Cathy newscaster voice. “Waterfall Falls, afraid of corruption by the new casino, seethes with its own self-destruction. The druggies, the retirees, the farmers and loggers and jobless mill workers, the gays, the Native Americans, the Mexicans, the welfare-to-work families, redneck hippies, professionals, tourist-gamblers. America’s melting pot is at meltdown in Waterfall Falls.”

  Chick gave her another quicker hug. “Save the world with your journalism, sweetie, but make sure you edit me out.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Burning Ambition

  The day was brimming with sunshine and the promise that seemed to inhabit Fridays. Jeep’s breath came in steady frosty puffs as she skated past the idle mill to work. She’d shoved her fiddle inside the old canvas rucksack she used to transport it, then secured it tightly to her back with bungee cords. Band rehearsal was tonight.

  “Excellent day!” she burst out as she entered the noisy classroom. The volume seemed to go up a notch every day that they got closer to the end of the school year.

  Arlene Hardy, the other teachers’ aide, came in behind her, but the teacher, Dottie Yankel, was, as usual, already there. She was applying the brakes to a little girl’s wheelchair. Jeep got busy taking off baseball caps, helping the blind boy find his coat hook, soothing one of the autistic boys. Poor little guy, he was revved up and rocking already. She wasn’t at all sure he would make it to a regular classroom.

  Her favorite pupil arrived late. Luke’s big sister led him by the hand to Arlene, then veered off to a regular classroom at top speed. On the way she cried, “This is my Auntie Marly’s magic coat!” She was holding the long, oversized multi-colored cardigan up and out on her arms as if it could give her flight.

  “Does your aunt know you have it?” Arlene called after the girl, but got no reply. Arlene muttered to Jeep, “Probably not.”

  Jeep waved to blond, round-faced Luke, and he grinned, clapping his little hands without sound to some intricate rhythm he seemed to hear ceaselessly. Sometimes she wondered if he didn’t talk because the sounds in his head were too loud.

  On her break midway through the afternoon she hung with Dottie.

  “I could never get into this part of your job. You’re always catching up on paperwork.”

  “You’ve got to clean up the poop.”

  She laughed and stretched. “This afternoon is being really intense on cleaning up messes. Hey, how come when someone messes up, you clean up? Shouldn’t you clean down, or maybe they should mess down? Anyway, I’ll bet this is the most fragrant zone in Waterfall School.”

  Dottie smiled and nodded, obviously giving her only half an ear as she worked.

  “That’s okay,” Jeep said, talking as much to herself as to Dottie. “I’m never depressed a
t work. Here I can forget I’m not on the fast track to concert violinist or even first violin in the Lucky City Symphony. Which was not exactly my life goal anyway.”

  “You’ve got time to come up with a burning ambition,” said Dottie, who wasn’t much older than Jeep, but was the most together person, next to Cat, Jeep had ever met. Well, except she was kind of a dumpling and needed to lose the Coke-bottle glasses.

  “Tell that to Mom and Dad.” She took her harmonica from her pocket and turned it in her fingers as she spoke. She loved the feel of the thing, the cool metal and the wooden holes against her thumb. “Every week I call from the pay phone at the trailer park so they know I didn’t do a bunk with some UFO cult. Does it help? No, they say I’m throwing my expensive education and scholarships out the window. My buzz cut embarrasses them. The only thing they like about this job is that I ditched the nose stud and three earrings because the kids got so bumptious with them. Worse, about once a month they ask if, you know, I’ve changed. Meaning switched to boys. No freakin’ way.”

  Dottie wrote and smiled, shaking her head full of drab, heavy hair as if in sympathy. When she looked up, it was with an appraising eye Jeep hadn’t seen since her interview. “Jeep, have you ever considered the field of music therapy?”

  “Me? No, I’ve always been into performing. There was a girl in the dorm who had a double major in music and psych, but I thought she was kind of, like, making up the music therapy thing.”

  “It’s pretty new as a recognized therapy, but it’s being taught at a number of schools now, including one a couple of hours north of here. It could be a good skill to have when performing is slow.”

  “But what is it? I mean music is therapy. That’s a given. But do you play? Teach? Do—what does Chick call them—hootenannies?”

  Dottie, still filling in forms, smiled at her papers. “I don’t know much about it. It’s probably all those and more. I’ve wondered if some of the less verbal pupils could learn to express themselves through instruments or by singing.”

  “You mean like Luke?”

  “Like Luke and all the little Lukes who come through these classes. You know, he’s not going to make it into kindergarten if he doesn’t start talking here. I couldn’t recommend him for that.”

  “So what then? He repeats preschool? We get him for another term? Breaks my heart.”

  Dottie put down her pen and gazed out the window. Jeep could see that a deer was helping itself to a meal of new leaves from the lower branches of a young sapling. It’s typical of life, isn’t it? The more successful we are at our jobs the sooner we lose the pupil.” She looked Jeep in the eyes for the first time. “You can’t get too attached to them, Jeep. It’ll only break your heart when they graduate or—worse—don’t make it.”

  “What happens if they don’t?”

  “It depends on the reason.” Again Dottie’s eyes strayed to the window, and Jeep smiled to see two fawns barely old enough to have lost their spots stroll up to their mother. One nuzzled her belly, the other nibbled on a bush. “Some do repeat the class. Some wait out kindergarten or find a church preschool because we don’t have funding to support a special-ed kindergarten. They start in special-ed first grade. That’s the biggest measure of our success—how many succeed. A few are institutionalized or placed in foster homes because their families either can’t or won’t care for them adequately. And then, of course, these children are at risk. Some get sick, some die.”

  “Which children?” She hadn’t thought much about her job beyond coping with each day in the classroom and finally getting some money in her wallet. Her sister Jill had mainstreamed, no problem, and she’d assumed most of these guys would eventually. But the thought that Luke—“Who could die?”

  “Yancy Dillard. Jennifer Schwane. Little Jaquelle Ruiz. Their problems are not merely developmental.”

  “Holy shit. And who might get institutionalized? Not Luke? He’s not going to die, is he?” Her hands suddenly hot, she blew on them, though this never worked to bring their temperature down.

  “I understand his home situation is not the best, Jeep. There’s a suspicion of little kids running wild and possibly having access to drugs despite the father’s very public law-and-order stance. Luke’s older siblings—he’s from a huge blended family—have been in trouble. Two were sent to live with their grandparents. They’re smart kids. The state intervened, convinced the mom to get them out. Something’s wrong there. I think the mom is an old hippie or something. Very vague, hard to get information from.”

  “But his sister’s okay.”

  “She was in here for two terms and is barely hanging on in first grade. ADD, hyperactive, and deeply marked by a childish father who seems to tease and taunt her unmercifully. Unless she’s making these stories up.”

  “Aw, Dottie, don’t tell me these things. Luke’s love on two feet.”

  “I know, I know. And when I see you interact with him, with all of them, you’re real good, Gina—Jeep, sorry. You’re Gina Pauline on the paperwork.”

  “But Dottie, that’s, like, too weird. I never thought about going into this work forever.”

  “Didn’t you tell me in your interview that you had an autistic big sister?”

  “Jill. But shouldn’t that make me want to run in the other direction?”

  Dottie peered at her. “Did you love your sister?”

  Jeep nodded. She tried not to think about Jill and, after all these years, pretty much succeeded. “Then I hope you’ll give the field serious thought. A talented adult can save a life. If not Luke’s, then someone else’s. I have no idea what the job prospects are for music therapists, but if I had the funding I’d get one in here without hesitation.”

  “I don’t know.” Jeep’s mind was in overdrive. Rug rats? More student loans? Years of heartbreaks? Jill had been heartache enough for a lifetime. “How about you?” she asked, more to distract herself than to challenge Dottie. “Have you ever thought of making a radical change? Like getting a buzz cut?” She ran her fingers though her own hair. Did the woman know she was queer as a Susan B. Anthony dollar?

  “Um-hum.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  Dottie looked out at the kids, rubbing her chin with a pen. “I’m not brave enough.”

  “That’s honest.”

  “I’m supporting my mother and my little brother. He’s graduating with honors from Greenhill Community College this weekend. Can’t afford to lose this job over a haircut.” Dottie looked back down to her paperwork and sighed aloud, as if she could hear Jeep thinking that Dottie was scared of a lot more than a haircut. “Do you have your fiddle today? The kids might like to hear you play.”

  “I could get into that, no problemo!”

  “I know. It’s what makes you a kid magnet. Go get ‘em, Pied Piper.”

  The children watched as she plucked the strings to tune up. She started with a simple bluegrass piece, roaming the classroom. “Go Sara!” she encouraged as the little girl danced in her wheelchair.

  Another child sang nonsense words. Grinning, Luke beat the table in perfect syncopation. A kid magnet. I like that, Jeep thought, and then felt a pang so sharp she stopped, swallowed, and took a few deep breaths, before she could put bow to string again. She missed the kids, the three sibs who had come after her and Jill. Her parents had never trusted her with them and had let her stay alone in the room she had shared with Jill while the little ones slept in the other upstairs bedroom together.

  She shook her head slightly to bring her eyes back into focus and wondered how Luke would accompany something more complex. She switched to a lively Vivaldi concerto. Luke’s mouth became an “o” of astonishment. He watched her every move. The other children grew restless, but Luke lifted his arms and mimicked her, obviously mesmerized. He kept time with both feet. His smile returned, beatific. Jeep got totally choked up, watching Luke’s transformation. She was going to miss him all summer, but Dottie had recommended that he come back for a second year since he
’d started in January rather than last September. Luke’s reprieve.

  For the rest of the afternoon Luke held an invisible violin under his chin, playing it with an orange crayon. Jeep was all quivery, like when she fell in love hard.

  After school she asked Cat, “What do you think it means?” She tossed her board into the bed of Cat’s pickup.

  “The kid’s a child prodigy? He’s a cute little dude.” Cat twisted to back out of her parking space. “Want to eat at the A&W?”

  “Okay, but I mean it was kind of like a throw-away-your-crutches experience, Cat.”

  Cat backed out of her parking space in the school lot and gave her a warning look.

  “What?” Jeep asked, although the look felt protective.

  “Maybe all the stimulation he gets at home is from church and the TV, and here you come playing church music he doesn’t have to sit still for.”

  The burger place was down the street. It always came as a shock to her that this A&W still had carhop service. She leaned over Cat to the teenaged girl in a brown and orange uniform. “Stacy” was stenciled on her pocket. “Can I get a double Velveeta burger and a float with coffee ice cream?”

  “You sure can,” Stacy answered.

  She felt like an old letch, but the girl was cheerleader-pretty, with an adventurous look about her.

  The promising smell of burgers grilling and potatoes frying had them both superhungry. Cat was halfway through her first Coney Dog when Jeep brought the subject up again. “Music is awesome, Cat. You know what I’m saying. Listening to it, playing it, feeling the vibrations through my fingers. Until today, though, I never really thought about using its super powers. Healing powers. Luke might never talk, but music does.”