by Molly Harper
“Ack!” she shouted, throwing her hands over her face.
“Yipe!” I cried, clutching at the elderly woman’s arms so I wouldn’t knock her over completely. She glared up at me as I righted us and steadied her on her feet. “I’m so sorry!”
“Oh, that was a fright.” The lady clutched at her purple paisley blouse as if she could will her heart to slow down. “I think that should count as my cardio for the day. I don’t care what the doctor has to say about it.”
“I’m so sorry. You move really quietly!” I exclaimed, taking my hands from her arms only when I was sure she would stay upright.
“Years of practice.” She sniffed, straightening her church clothes. “Now, how can I help you?”
Miss Earlene McGlory, sister to the recently indisposed Mayor Tommy McGlory, had worked at the library for almost fifty years and was the first black woman to serve as Mud Creek’s head librarian. Her grasp of my job as a multimedia historian was impressive. I usually spent the first few hours at any location explaining what I did, because most people thought I just made the title up. But Miss Earlene, an avid devourer of library-science and historical journals, was eager to see all of my tricks and tools. I outlined my purpose in Mud Creek and what I might need from the library in terms of historical materials, promising her a tour of the building as soon as I felt it was safe. At the mention of McBride’s, her expression turned soft and a little misty for a moment, but she snapped out of it quickly, striding behind the circulation desk to tap away at the ancient computer.
“So you’re the one that has young McBride all stirred up, huh?” She chuckled, raising a pair of bifocals over the enormous black-rimmed glasses she was already wearing to peer down at the black-and-green computer screen.
“I wouldn’t say ‘stirred up,’” I objected.
“It’s a small town, honey. Word gets around quickly when our Will gets his head turned by a new girl. Especially when he’s wound up enough to talk to his mama about her. The town grapevine gets a-jangling.”
“His mama?”
She ignored my distressed squeak. “I can’t say anyone deserves it any more than him. Oh, that boy used to give me fits, hiding in the stacks with his little girlfriends for ‘study dates’ and doing who knows what.”
I frowned. “Of course he did.”
She snorted delicately. “Well, he grew up nice. You have to give him that.”
“I don’t have to give him anything,” I said, a bit more tartly.
“Good for you, honey,” she said, grinning at me and patting my hand. I had absolutely no clue what was so funny about my statement.
Miss Earlene had a wealth of news clippings for me to look over. And she saved me the awkwardness of having to go to the Mud Creek Ledger’s office to ask for access to their archives. A pipe had burst in the newspaper’s press room in 1984, prompting the publisher to move the archives to the library basement. The only things I couldn’t find were photos from the performances of the crowd. The newspaper generally used head shots provided by publicity offices when reporting on events at the music hall.
I showed Miss Earlene how my portable scanner worked, storing hi-res images on my computer and making PDF copies of all relevant newspaper clippings. I intentionally didn’t correct for any yellowing or damage, to preserve their authentic “vintage” appearance. Besides the fact that Miss Earlene wouldn’t have let me take the items from the library, I could not and would not damage original documents by mounting them.
While I worked, Miss Earlene pried the boards loose from the special collections room with an upper-body fortitude you wouldn’t expect of a woman approaching seventy. She flipped on the light inside what looked like a perfectly neat, functional special collections room. My jaw dropped as I stammered, “What— Why?”
“Had a couple of genealogy nuts come through town a few years back and try to clean me out. They thought I wouldn’t put up a fuss when they tried to just waltz out with the only copies of the high school’s yearbooks and property surveys from the year the county was founded. They had the gall to tell me that because the library was so old and the county was so broke, those ‘precious documents’ would be better off in the discerning hands of the descendants of the ‘founding fathers.’” She gave a gentle harrumph and took off her glasses to give them a thorough polishing. “Never mind that those so-called founding fathers only moved to town in the 1880s and then jumped ship at the first sign of drought a few years later.”
“And I take it that you brought their waltz to an abrupt end?”
“I may or may not have convinced them that their ancestors left town under suspicion of ‘livestock worrying,’” she said, throwing the boards aside as I burst out laughing. “After that, I put boards up on the room and only take them down for special cases.”
“Miss Earlene, I think you and I are going to be very good friends,” I called after her as she began searching the shelves.
Her shrunken little form came toddling back to the circulation desk, carrying a pile of books that reached her chin. She plopped them in a perfect stack beside my laptop. “Right back at you, girlie.”
6
In Which I Tangle with Marsupials, Both Living and Dead
No good day ever started with staring down a dead possum.
Thanks to some helpful utility workers, I got the electricity temporarily turned on at the music hall, making my job there much easier. I spent the first few days sifting through mountains of dust and debris. I kept little things, like buttons and guitar picks I found on the floor. Larger items were sealed in Tupperware until I could handle them properly.
I tried to develop a schedule. I worked in the music hall in the mornings, when the building was coolest. In the afternoons, I visited Miss Earlene at the library, looked through historical materials, and helped her organize some of the chaos—at least the shelves she couldn’t reach.
I ate most of my meals at the famed local diner. The Dinner Bell crowd was definitely blue-collar—work shirts, battered jeans, and baseball caps seemed to be the local uniform. This was a small-town diner, with classic car posters and sports schedules for the local high school teams on the walls. The owners also seemed to own a small fortune in antique soda signage. The brightly colored pressed tin advertisements they were using as decorations would fetch up to two hundred dollars each at an antique shop. Then again, if I mentioned it to the owners, they might think I was after something. It was better not to mention it. But it was nice to know that other people in Mud Creek valued older Americana. Maybe I could find a few kindred souls.
There were no garden omelets or turkey bacon available at the Dinner Bell. Everything on the breakfast menu involved sausage gravy. But the chicken-fried steak was just as delicious as Will had promised. We’d even enjoyed one together a time or two.
In fact, I was supposed to be joining him for lunch that very afternoon. But at the moment, I was staring in horror at a furry gray shape curled in the corner behind the music hall’s hamburger counter. I slipped on rubber gloves and was debating my disposal plan when I heard a shrill “Yoohoo!” from the glass-block entrance.
A petite, vaguely familiar-looking woman with light caramel-colored hair, wide blue eyes, and a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her pert nose stuck her head into the doorway. “Are you open to visitors—” Brows puckered, she came toward me. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, it’s just a dead possum. I don’t know how he found his way into the building. But I guess it’s better that I found him sooner than later.” I scooped it up, prepared to drop the carcass into an industrial trash bag for proper burial.
The woman arched an eyebrow as I lifted the stiff little body by the tail. “Honey, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I would just leave it and hope it skedaddles away on its own.”
“Why?” I said, lifting the animal until it was level with my head.
And for some reason, I couldn’t seem to drop the little demon. I just held on, staring in horror as it snapped, sharp white fangs bared.
“Why are you still holding on to it?” the woman demanded.
“I don’t know!”
I dropped the squirming, spitting mass to the floor as gently as I could, and my visitor shooed it out with a broom. I ran to the sink to scrub my hands clean, even though I’d been wearing gloves. I didn’t want to catch some weird possum-related illness. Was there such a thing as possum pox? As our chattering guest departed, the woman slammed the door behind it, hopefully barring further invasions from pissed-off marsupials.
“Thank you,” I told her. “From now on, I will assume that any random animals I find in here are, in fact, living.”
“Probably a good idea,” she agreed. “Mean little things, possums, but not bad roasted with potatoes.”
I did my best not to make an “ew” face. I knew that many of the people I’d met in my travels were enthusiastic game eaters. They ate everything from deer chili to beer-basted wild boar. Sometimes it was out of necessity, because they couldn’t afford to buy meat from the grocery, and sometimes it was because they just enjoyed the challenge of eating what they caught. Either way, I didn’t appreciate it when people fed me something and then cackled “I bet you can’t tell that’s not beef!”
“I’ve heard it’s kind of greasy. And gamy,” I said, in what I hoped was a nonjudgmental tone.
“It is a little bit better in burgoo,” she said. “The other flavors mask the taste.”
“The stew stuff? I thought that was just for the Kentucky Derby.”
“Not really. Burgoo has always been more of a potluck party thing. When people didn’t have enough to feed their families—or when they were just plain bored—they got together and threw whatever they had in the pot—venison, chicken, raccoon, vegetables—and they made a stew out of it. There’s no official recipe. Corn, lima beans, carrots, onions, and whatever meat you can get together. Back when Will was a little boy, we used to do it as a sort of community feed for people who couldn’t afford to feed their families—that way, we didn’t put them on the spot. It’s harder to be depressed about poverty when you’re throwing a party.”
“So why did you stop throwing the parties?”
She shrugged. “My mother-in-law was the one who organized them. After she died, we seemed to fall out of the habit. I thought about starting it up again but then Jim took over the music hall and my hands were too full.”
Suddenly, I realized where I knew this woman from. And I felt like the dumbest person alive. She had Will’s eyes. Or rather, Will had her eyes. This sweet-faced woman in the peach-plaid shorts was Will’s mother, she of the delicious pecan pie.
And it seemed that she was here to power-hug me. “Well, now that the excitement is over, honey, I am so glad to meet you!” she cried, throwing her arms around me so hard that my neck cracked. “I’m Brenda, Will’s mama.”
“Um, thank you for the pie,” I said.
“Oh, it was the least I could do. You’re just adorable up close, aren’t you, sweetie? No wonder my Will’s been in such a dither.”
“I try,” I told her, turning toward the door as I heard yet another familiar voice yell, “Hello? Ma?”
It was Will. And he seemed to be carrying more possums.
There were two taxidermically preserved bodies in the cardboard box Will was toting. Their eyes were open and fixed, pale yellow glass. And their bodies were frozen in playful poses, as if they were dancing. Brenda grimaced. “I thought you could use them for your displays . . . The possum thing is just a coincidence, I promise.”
She pulled the two stuffed animals out of the box and put them on a nearby table. “This is Flotsam and Jetsam. George won them in a poker game a year or so after he opened the club and trained them to dance outside the door. People used to stop by just to see them hop around. And then, of course, they’d hear the music and they’d have to come in.”
“I had no idea you could train possums,” I said, thinking of the furious specimen we’d just evicted.
“Anything to bring people through the door,” Will muttered in unison with his mother, though her tone was more reminiscent and cheerful.
Brenda ignored her son’s grumpiness and laced her arm through mine, leading me around the room so she could see my progress in cleaning. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that someone is going to organize all this stuff and share it with people. I’ve been begging Will for years to come over and at least clean the place out. But he said it wasn’t our building anymore, so we should just leave it.” Will shifted from foot to foot, suddenly fascinated with the sunglasses hanging from his pocket. “I’m so happy it won’t be left to the bulldozer.”
“Happy to help.”
“Now, I have something for you, out in the car,” she said, looking to Will. “Hon, would you mind getting the plastic storage bin in my backseat?”
He frowned. “Why didn’t you just bring it in with you?”
“Are you going to argue with your mama or are you going to comply with my very simple request?” she asked, her voice going steely.
Will’s mouth popped open as if he was going to make some sort of remark, but with an increased measure of “mother’s stare” from Brenda, he clamped his lips shut and slapped his hat on his head.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a sigh, skulking out the door.
Brenda gave my cheek another gentle pinch.
“Mrs. McBride, I think you have the wrong idea about your son and me. We’re just friends.” I pulled at the collar of my T-shirt, which seemed to be sticking to my neck. Seriously, how long could it take Will to get a stupid box out of the car?
Brenda leveled her gaze at me and told me, “My son is a very sweet, very complicated, sometimes extremely stupid man. He’s a lot like his father.”
I worked to hold in my snicker. I really did.
“I loved my husband,” she said. “Thought the absolute world of him. But he was not a businessman. Will took on a lot of guilt, feeling like Jim was working hard to preserve a legacy for him. The two of them never did see eye to eye on this place, which is why it’s so difficult for Will to appreciate it, I think. Will was here with his daddy, trying to box things up, when Jim had his heart attack. Jim had been downright depressed about his decision to close and Will wanted Jim to snap out of it, move on, start looking for a real job, grow the hell up. Jim was about to argue right back, but the next thing Will knew, Jim was on his knees, clutching his chest.”
“Mr. McBride died here?” I whispered. No wonder Will was so reluctant to come into the building. He’d watched his father die here. A shard of guilt pricked at the edge of my conscience. I was surprised he had been willing to take me as far as the parking lot.
“Doesn’t it bother you to be here?” I asked her quietly.
“Oh, honey, not a bit. I mean, Jim lived on a steady diet of cheeseburgers and stress. And it only made sense that he passed on here. He lived his whole life here.”
“That is a very balanced and yet somehow unnerving way of looking at it,” I told her.
She shrugged. “I’ve gained perspective over the years.”
Just then, Will came struggling through the door with a large plastic storage bin. He scowled, dropping his burden at our feet, and backed toward the hamburger counter to inspect the polish I’d given the chrome. Brenda opened the lid to reveal carefully stacked film reels and sleeves of negatives and dozens of small framed photos. “My
mother-in-law was a bit of a camera nut. She started right after George got home from the war. She only had one picture of him when he went away, and something about not being able to see his face every day for years on end . . . well, she wanted to make sure that if anything ever happened, she would have plenty of pictures of George. She took a few snapshots just about every day. I have enough slide carousels to start my own tiny amusement park. And when he opened the music hall, she took to recording almost every act that crossed the stage. She changed camera models as the technology got better. She even bought a Super 8 and took some movies. It’s all right here. And I’m going to give it to you.”
I wiped the historian drool from my chin. “W-why would you do that?”
“Because I think you would make the best use of them. And I like the idea of our family’s work being shared with the world.”
I could hear Will groan quietly behind us. Brenda rolled her eyes.
“So is she the one who took the photo of Louis Gray on the wall?” I asked.
“That was one of her best,” she said, smiling fondly. “He played here a few times before he hit it big. I have a copy hanging in my living room. The negative is in there somewhere. Feel free to use it.”
I threw my arms around her, squealing a little, which I would be embarrassed about at a later date. “This is exactly what I needed, Miss Brenda! Thank you so much.”
Brenda wiped at the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes as she released me. “Well, I’m going to go have a look around. Maybe try to find my initials. Jim carved ours around here somewhere.”
She wandered off, gently pushing chairs aside and inspecting the walls for the right carving. I noticed Will shifting from foot to foot, intentionally looking at the floor rather than searching the building for memories like his mother. I glanced down at the box and saw a maroon leather photo album. I bent to pick it up.