Applewhites Coast to Coast

by Stephanie S. Tolan

  She said it to herself several times as Melody and Jake once more climbed into the Pageant Wagon for the day’s travel. E.D. had looked up Beale Street. It had bars and dark, shadowy restaurants with very private booths. What had they been doing there all that time? If E.D. was reading the signals right, Melody was actively ignoring Jake. That didn’t make sense, though. It must have been her idea to sneak off—it just must have been! So why would she be mad?

  As hard as it was not knowing what was going on, the hardest part was trying not to let it affect her. The real meaning of it is what it is, she thought, was there’s nothing I can do about it. Even so, every time she thought about Jake and Melody together, she shuddered all over. His crush on her was so obvious it was pathetic. What if when they snuck away he took the chance to act on it? What if he tried to kiss her? Shudder.

  E.D. was so preoccupied that she totally forgot to pay attention as they drove over the wide, mighty Mississippi River into Arkansas. Only the most important geographical boundary in the whole of the United States, she thought angrily when she realized it was behind them. Only the most significant river in the history of the country, and I missed it!

  After a long drive into the Ozark Mountains, over gradually steeper winding roads, with two stops along the way—one to stock up on groceries and the other to get some lunch—it was midafternoon when they reached the outskirts of Valley View.

  E.D. wasn’t sure exactly what she’d been expecting from a small town in Arkansas, but Valley View was a total surprise. The main street, called Hawthorne Way, was lined with boutiques, galleries, and cafés. Along the sidewalks there were sculptures done in a variety of materials and styles. Some were made of metal parts that looked as if they’d been pieced together from farm machinery, others were covered in broken glass mosaics, still others looked as if they’d been carved from logs or tree stumps with a chain saw. The scattering of people on the sidewalks mostly smiled at their buses and waved as they drove by. E.D. wondered whether they’d heard of the Expedition, or whether they just thought the buses fit right in. Valley View was certainly the only place on this trip so far where they did. Jeremy must have picked this place for us, she thought.

  Archie had been leading the way in the Pageant Wagon, when he suddenly put on his turn signal and pulled into a gravel driveway that wound around the side of a sprawling building set far back from the sidewalk. Just a few hundred yards farther down Hawthorne Way, the street itself dwindled into a wide meadow that ran up to a rock bluff topped by woods. The building was the last on the street. It could have been a factory once, but now it was painted in stripes and swirls of neon colors. Stained glass artwork hung in some of its windows, and a collection of sculptures flanked a massive and beautifully carved wooden sign that rose out of the grass almost as if it had grown there. And that was how they stumbled onto the Ozark Art Co-op.

  Randolph followed the Pageant Wagon into the drive and pulled to a stop behind it. Lucille, who’d been riding in Brunhilda, clapped her hands as she read the sign. “Look at that! An art co-op when our challenge is cooperation!”

  “Coincidence!” Randolph exclaimed.

  “There’s no such thing as a coincidence,” Lucille answered. “It’s a clear reminder that the Universe is on our side.”

  The building was surrounded by a raggedy lawn that made it look as if the meadow might be trying to take it over. After a moment a gigantic man with bushy blond hair and a beard, who looked like E.D.’s idea of a blacksmith, came out to greet them, followed by a huge black-and-brown dog.

  Winston, standing with his front feet on the back of the couch, saw the dog and started barking frenziedly from inside Brunhilda. “That a boy dog in there?” the man asked Archie, who had emerged from the Pageant Wagon. When Archie nodded, he laughed. “Tell him old Suzi’s a pussy cat. They’ll be fast friends in no time.”

  That turned out to be an understatement. The moment Brunhilda’s door was opened Winston bounded out, nearly tripping over his ears, and went to sniff the dog, who was easily three times as tall as he was, tail wagging furiously. “Cooperating with the locals already,” Lucille said, as Suzi licked the top of Winston’s head. From that moment on Winston was like Suzi’s shadow, following her everywhere.

  The blond man, whose name was Joe, had actually heard of the Expedition and had even watched some of the videos online. When he found out they were supposed to be camping thirty miles away, he pointed to the meadow. “Nonsense! Just park yourselves over there, close to the driveway. We can hook you up with power and water. This town will be honored to have you here for a few days. I’ll make a couple of calls and we’ll get the whole co-op crew together here this evening to see what we can do for you. Soon as you get yourselves settled, Suzi and me’ll give you a tour of the place.” He turned, then, and pointed to a sculpture made of scraps of old farm equipment. “That’s one of mine,” he said. “They call me the blacksmith.”

  Ha! E.D. thought.

  The co-op building, Joe the Blacksmith said, used to be a manufacturing plant for car parts. In one corner, behind a partial, paint-spattered wall, there were dozens of canvases stretched on frames and rack after rack of painting supplies. Paintings at all stages of completion were scattered everywhere. Some of them, E.D. thought, were really quite pretty—mountainscapes and valleys and vases of flowers—and some of them were the kind that she never really understood, all squiggles and scratches and blotches of color. She knew they were supposed to be very sophisticated, but she secretly thought they looked like something Destiny could have made.

  In another corner was the sculpture area, which Archie exclaimed over, with wood- and stone-carving tools and some welding equipment. There was an upper level along one side, with a wall of Plexiglas windows “to keep out the dust,” as Joe the Blacksmith explained. “That’s our multimedia lab, lots of computers and musical instruments and stuff. We got a grant for all that!” Hal’s eyes nearly doubled in size as the man described it. Melody, E.D. noticed, was particularly focused on that part of the building, too.

  When Zedediah explained that the challenge for the four days in Valley View was simply to “cooperate with the locals,” Joe laughed a great big laugh that just about filled the huge space and set both Suzi and Winston barking. “We call our group a co-op, but the truth is artists aren’t always great at cooperating. Still, we’ll do what we can!”

  E.D. realized she’d left her notebook back in the bus. This cooperation project was going to need a lot of organizing, and she wanted to get started right away. She turned to go get it and almost shrieked out loud—Melody was standing right behind her, staring at her with those big dark eyes, her hair falling in her face. E.D. pressed her hand to her heart and took a deep breath. “Can I help you?” she said, trying to make her voice sound as dismissive and nasty as Melody’s usually was to her.

  “No,” said Melody thoughtfully, after a long pause. “But I think I can help you.” And without another word, she grabbed E.D.’s hand and dragged her away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Two days later, Jake was on his way from the Pageant Wagon to the multimedia lab after lunch when Suzi the dog charged past him, followed by Winston and Destiny, headed for the meadow. “I’m taking a dog break!” Destiny shouted over his shoulder as he ran.

  “Have fun!” Jake called after him as Destiny followed the dogs into the tall grass. Joe the Blacksmith had assured everyone that his dog wouldn’t go far from the building, and Winston wouldn’t go far from Suzi, so nobody worried about Destiny when he was off taking a dog break. It was a good thing, Jake thought, because he was way too busy with his project to be “the babysitter for that motormouthed kid,” as Melody had put it.

  The challenge was to cooperate with the locals, and everyone but Randolph and Sybil, who both steadfastly continued doing their projects alone, was working with one or another of the co-op artists. Archie and Zedediah had teamed up with Joe the Blacksmith, banging away throughout the day and into the nig
ht at his forge, working on a giant abstract metal sculpture. Lucille was flitting around with a photographer, composing poems to accompany the pictures he took of flowers, moss, rocks, and the like. Destiny had met an old puppeteer and built a possum puppet, then immediately they built five or six more and started writing a whole puppet show about them. “I wanna do our show for the publics,” Destiny announced at the end of the first day. “I’m gonna get Dad to let me use the Pageant Wagon and we’re gonna do our show for everybody. It’s really good and I love our puppets.” Clearly Destiny was not the kind of artist who was perpetually crippled by self-doubt.

  The idea caught on, as it turned out, and plans were quickly put in place for a public showcase of all the cooperation projects on the last night of their stay. Signs went up around town and the collaborations went into overdrive.

  Jake spent all his time in the computer video lab with Hal, Cordelia, and a heavily tattooed, self-identified “video geek” from the co-op, to do a video version of Cordelia’s Death of Ophelia ballet.

  But the strangest collaboration, by far, wasn’t between the Expedition team and a local. It was between E.D. and Melody.

  E.D. had been hostile toward Melody since the moment she set eyes on her—Jake guessed he could understand why. They were so different. Everything E.D. took seriously, Melody took lightly. Melody was comfortable being the center of attention—more than comfortable!—and E.D. liked to stay in the background.

  The only thing he’d ever seen them agree on was that, ever since Beale Street, they were both refusing to talk to Jake. The one time Jake’s and E.D.’s eyes had met, while they were breaking camp in Tennessee, Jake got the same little shock he used to get at the end of the summer, after the Kiss. But he’d immediately looked away. He was too afraid the intensity on her side, this time, was pure hostility. And Melody! Melody had been successfully pretending that Jake didn’t exist, even when they were in the same room together!

  But now, out of nowhere, Melody and E.D. had become a team. For days they had been almost inseparable. It started on the first morning in Valley View, when they were all walking together down Hawthorne Way, getting to know the town, and Melody had dragged E.D. into a women’s clothing shop called Style.

  That was where they found the “local” they were doing their cooperation project with. She was the owner of the shop and made most of the clothes she sold there herself. She was also a member of the co-op and called the clothes she made “wearable art.”

  Somehow, maybe by a kind of female energy he would never understand, the woman, whose name was Rainbow or Sunset or something, had gotten E.D. and Melody to cooperate with each other.

  Only it wasn’t just that. It was more than cooperation. They would go darting off together and close themselves into one of the art buses. When they were around other people—the co-op artists, people on the street, even the family, they started whispering behind their hands, casting long, appraising glances at them. Just today, they hadn’t shown up for lunch, and came strolling in after everyone else was finished. They had “grabbed lunch at a café,” E.D. explained. Whatever they were doing, they were keeping it a secret.

  Jake opened the door of the media lab. Melody, with her camera in hand, was leaning very close to Hal, whispering in his ear. Hal’s face was distinctly red, and Jake felt a twinge, seeing them together like that. Melody giggled, ruffled her hand in Hal’s hair, and swept out of the room—right past Jake—without even making eye contact with him.

  The public performance was scheduled for the evening of their last night in Valley View and everyone had scrambled to get ready. The Pageant Wagon stood in all its glory, with the stage unfolded from the side and the painted curtains glowing in the stage lights that had been mounted on telephone poles around the big yard of the Ozark Art Co-op. A fairly impressive crowd was gathered for the Academy/Co-op Showcase. Jake suspected most of the audience had come mainly for the food and drinks that were promised afterward. But maybe not. The town of Valley View, Joe assured them, had taken the Creative Academy on as their “home team” in the expedition competition. A banner had been put up across the driveway that read, GO CREATIVE ACADEMY!

  Hal’s official video would go off to Jeremy (and the rest of the world) when it was over, but there were lots of other people who had their phone cameras out. Some were gathered around the big abstract metal sculpture Archie and Zedediah had made with Joe.

  At the back of the stage a white sheet had been stretched tight so that the nature slides Lucille’s photographer had taken to go with her poetry reading could be shown, along with the videos Jake, Hal, and the co-op’s special-effects guy had made for Cordelia’s ballet. And a puppet stage made from a big cardboard box, decorated with Destiny’s colorful animals, stood in front of it.

  Destiny and the puppet maker were up first, with the puppet show the old man claimed in his introduction was entirely created by Destiny. Jake could certainly believe that. The story line involved a violently purple, very fuzzy possum, a white dog, and a caterpillar that got transformed into a butterfly while Destiny, as the possum, yelled, “Fly, fly, fly,” and the butterfly almost magically did. The audience cheered and applauded as if their football team had just made a spectacular touchdown in the last seconds of a tied game.

  Next the special-effects guy, stationed at a computer to operate the technical side, put up a slide introducing “An Excerpt from Cordelia Applewhite’s Ballet, The Death of Ophelia.” Cordelia’s discordant music blared from the speakers, and she danced onto the stage for a few moments before the lights on her faded and the video picked up. It looked like Cordelia had danced straight up onto the screen! The projected image continued to dance, and then gradually the special effects Jake and Hal had created started to take over. First Cordelia’s dancing figure burst into flames, then it became a Cordelia-shaped flock of birds, and on and on through another dozen weird and interesting variations. When it was over, once again, the audience went wild. Cordelia took a bow and then motioned for Jake and Hal (who looked like he wanted to turn into a flock of birds and fly away himself) to stand up from the audience. After that, Lucille, accompanied by a local fiddler, read two poems in front of a series of nature slides, also to roaring applause.

  Next up, Jake knew, were Melody and E.D. But he still had no idea what they were planning to do.

  The lights went dark and a video came on, with the words The Art of Style stretching across the sheet in bright red. Music started playing, the word BEFORE scrolled across the projection, and a picture swung up onto the screen showing E.D., her hair pulled to the back of her neck with a rubber band, wearing a bulky, raggedy sweatshirt, worn blue jeans, and her usual clunky-looking hiking sneakers, climbing down from Brunhilda, carrying a clipboard, with a pencil shoved behind her ear. Then up swept a picture of Melody, her dark hair swinging loose, coming out the front door and down the porch steps back at Wit’s End in her big white linen shirt over a turquoise halter top and short shorts. As usual she looked effortlessly glamorous. Her face and eyes were made up and on her feet were flip-flops. Who made this video intro? Jake wondered, before realizing that this must be what Melody and Hal had been talking about in the video room. He fought down a twinge of envy that Melody had asked Hal for help while she was still ignoring Jake.

  Then the word AFTER scrolled across, the lights went down, and the music changed to something poppy with a heavy beat. Soon folks were bobbing their heads in time with it. Lights snapped up on the stage and Melody Aiko Bernstein, strutting like a runway model, burst out into the light. She carried a clipboard and there was a pencil behind her ear.

  Jake stared for a moment and then gave a whoop of delight. Melody’s hair was caught back just like E.D.’s had been in the photo, a rubber band holding it in a loose bun. She was wearing a big, baggy sweatshirt and a pair of Cordelia’s jeans, which covered her snugly all the way to the ankle, where they disappeared into a pair of high-topped hiking boots. She took the pencil out from behind her ear
and began tapping it on her clipboard in time to the music, swaying her hips as she walked. Whistles broke out from the crowd, and she wagged the pencil at them, as if she was scolding, but she had a devilish look on her face. She was dressed in E.D.’s usual way, but somehow an outfit that made E.D. vanish into the scenery made Melody look like a star.

  Melody got to the corner of the other side of the stage and stopped for a moment, looking out across the audience, then put the pencil back behind her ear and flung the clipboard saucily into the audience, where one of the young co-op painters caught it and clutched it to his chest. Then she turned and pointed dramatically toward the other side of the stage. The music changed to something with an even heavier beat.

  It took Jake a few seconds to realize that the glamorous, red-lipped, heavily eyelinered young woman who strode out into the light and across the stage was E.D.

  Something had been done to her hair, though he couldn’t tell just what. It hung loose, almost to her shoulders, and seemed to bend just a little, around her face. She was wearing loose black pants that seemed to flow as she moved, and a brightly colored snug silk tank top that made her skin glow and her neck look long and elegant. As she crossed the stage in time with the music, her feet, in what could have been red ballet slippers, peeked out from beneath the pants as she went. A lone whistle sounded from behind him, and Jake felt pretty sure it was the first one that had ever, ever been directed at E.D.

  Afterward, when performers and audience were mingling, Melody was overflowing with pride about their presentation. Jake couldn’t tell for sure how E.D. felt about it. She sat by herself in the corner of the co-op’s lounge while people with plates of food and glasses of wine swirled around her. She kept pushing her hair back, and once or twice he saw her start to rub her face before remembering she had makeup on. She was smiling, and accepted the compliments people offered, but she seemed uneasy.