Lover's Leap

by Pamela Browning

  “Another thing,” Karl was saying. “We’ll want you to attend all county council meetings and report back to us everything that’s said about Conso. We think somebody’s doctoring the minutes of the meetings, and we can’t depend on Albie Fentress at the newspaper for the real story— he’s hand in glove with the council.”

  Albie Fentress, the editor and publisher of the Scot’s Cove Messenger, was Tate’s good friend, and he regarded Albie as a fine newspaperman. But Tate held his tongue, waiting to see what else Karl had to say.

  Karl shoved the folder to one side. “I’m sure you know that the company is pleased with your work. The PR department doesn’t function as well these days without you. The company has big things in mind for you, Tate.”

  Tate’s collar was too tight, and he resisted the urge to tug at his tie. He shifted in his chair. “Well, Karl, you’d better tell me what you’re talking about,” he said. He happened to know that Karl was a gossip who could never keep anything under his hat. This particular quality of his boss’s had often caused trouble that Tate had found himself mopping up in the past. Now, he thought, he might be able to play Karl’s shortcoming to his advantage.

  Karl leaned across the desk. “They’re talking about a vice presidency for you next year,” he whispered with a watchful eye toward the door beyond which his assistant sat. “Don’t tell a soul.”

  “A vice presidency?” Tate said. True, he had risen through the ranks quickly. But a vice presidency at his age of thirty-two, thirty-three in a few months, was almost unheard of within the company.

  “If you can handle the brewing crisis, that is, and of course, if you’re top management, you’ll have to get a haircut. That mop of yours,” Karl said with obvious distaste, “looks rebellious.”

  Tate, although outraged, forced himself to ignore the comment about his hair. “I’ve been out of touch,” he said warily and through gritted teeth. “I’m not sure what crisis you’re talking about.”

  Karl leaned close again. “When Conso came here to develop the town into a resort area with ski slopes and condominiums and housing developments, they had to fight for zoning variances from the county council, especially for the Balsam Heights mobile home development on Breadloaf. One of the conditions that the council insisted upon when they approved the variance was that the company must deed a huge chunk of land to the county and develop it as a park.”

  “I remember,” Tate said. “The park will be a perpetual wilderness area and ensure that the local people will always have access to Breadloaf Mountain.”

  “That was the plan. At the time, land values were high and the company felt that the park was feasible considering how much money they’d make selling lots in the various subdivisions. And we had to agree to it in order to get what we wanted. Now land values have tumbled so that we’re not getting as much money as we’d planned for those big homes over in Cherokee Acres. The company needs to make up the money somewhere else, and guess where?”

  “The wilderness park?” Tate said unbelievingly.

  “The park,” verified Karl. “The company’s going to renege on the deal. There’s a legal loophole, and the wilderness park acreage is going to be used to develop five hundred more mobile home sites in addition to the ones planned. It will double the size of Balsam Heights.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Tate said. “I was on the committee that convinced the county council members to give the variance based on our promise of the wilderness park. Those people trusted us.”

  Karl shrugged. “It’s all going to hit the fan shortly after you come back to work, so be prepared. You’ll have to mount a campaign to whitewash the whole ploy, make the locals think that we’re doing it to provide even more jobs, point out to the merchants how twice as many mobile homes means more people to shop here, that kind of thing. I don’t need to tell you how to go about it, man. You know what to do.”

  Tate stared at the outline of Breadloaf Mountain in the distance. The local mountaineers, who were for the most part descended from hardy Scotch-Irish stock, were fiercely independent and until a decade or so ago had managed to eke out an existence on their hardscrabble farms. Conso was changing that; now the local people were becoming a servant class for the wealthy newcomers to Scot’s Cove. Many old-time landowners couldn’t afford taxes that had tripled in the past few years, and some had been forced to sell their ancestral lands to Conso. This state of affairs was difficult for these proud people to swallow.

  But it was Tate’s job to soothe the locals and help them to accept the inevitable.

  “Yes,” Tate said heavily. “I know what to do.”

  A sudden thought struck him. He said, “What if I don’t want to?” His eyes swung back to Karl, who looked unbelieving at first and then flushed with anger.

  “What do you mean?” Karl said in a dangerously level tone.

  “What if I refuse to whitewash the company? Scuttling the wilderness park is a rotten thing to do to these goodhearted people, Karl. The county council never planned on one thousand mobile home sites with their corresponding one thousand septic tanks on Breadloaf Mountain. Even five hundred was pushing it.” He stared at Karl, but the older man refused to look away.

  “It’s your job to do and say exactly what the Consolidated Development Corporation tells you. That’s what a public relations flack does.” Karl’s voice was cold, and his eyes had turned to agate.

  “I don’t consider myself a flack,” Tate said forcefully. “I’m a public relations professional.”

  “Then be professional. You’re no babe in the woods, Tate. You know the score. I don’t need to tell you that there will be no vice presidency if you foul this up.”

  “Of course,” Tate said, keeping his voice as neutral as possible.

  Karl skewered him with a look of pure vitriol, and Tate thought with sudden and unnerving insight, It’s not just the fact that I’ve objected to the company line. Something else is bugging Karl.

  Tate cast around for some explanation of Karl’s animosity and came up with Don Chalmers. Karl had always felt threatened by Don, since both of them had risen through the marketing department and had carried on a personal feud for years. If Don was to become the next vice president, he could eventually jockey himself into position to get rid of Karl, and since Karl was known to have many enemies within the company, he was always watching his flanks. On the other hand, if Tate was promoted to the next vice presidency, Karl probably thought he wouldn’t have to worry. In the past, Tate had always aligned himself solidly and unquestioningly behind his boss.

  Karl thinks his survival at Conso is riding on my success, Tate thought. But can I continue to support Karl if I disagree with what he and the company are asking of me?

  Karl relaxed slightly and adopted a cordial tone of voice. “Enough about all that. It’ll be good to have you back, Tate. How about lunch today? I’ll be free—oh, in half an hour or so.”

  So Karl was going to act as if nothing were going on. At one time, Tate would have followed his lead, but not any more.

  “Sorry,” Tate said, getting to his feet. “I’ve got an appointment.”

  “Too bad,” Karl said. “We’ll have to make it when you come back to work.”

  “Right,” Tate said. “When I come back.”

  He stopped briefly to collect his mail and threw most of it into the circular file. Then he hurried through the hallways at breakneck speed and burst out into the cool, sweetsmelling air. He inhaled a long, deep breath in hopes of clearing the stuffiness of Conso from his head.

  As he wheeled out of the parking lot on his bike, Tate knew what he had to do. He had to go see Charlie Bearkiller and get his head straight. As a first step in that direction, he ripped off his tie and let it fly away into the dusty weeds on the side of the road.

  Chapter Five

  After Tate left Karl Shaeffer’s office at Conso, he rode to his apartment in town, ditched the suit for shorts and a shirt, and locked the place up again before going to
see Charlie Bearkiller.

  Tate parked his motorcycle behind Charlie’s scarred red pickup truck outside the neat frame house where his mentor lived and rang the doorbell. As Tate expected, his friend appeared at the screen door and ushered him into the amiable clutter of the living room. Tate took in the television set blaring in the corner, the potato chips in the dish by the recliner, and the marmalade tomcat named Oscar reclining on the couch

  “A’siyu,” said Charlie, his face all smiles. “Welcome.”

  “Wadan, thank you,” Tate replied automatically. Even though he was new to Cherokee ways, certain things, such as the Cherokee language greeting and response, came easily to him now.

  “I knew you’d come today,” Charlie said gleefully as Tate settled on the couch beside the cat. “I knew it.” Smallboned and wiry, Charlie looked like the personification of one of the fabled Little People, one who perhaps had been created to star in Disney’s Snow White cartoon feature.

  “How’d you know I was coming?”

  Charlie tapped his head. “I get messages,” he said. “Like you do.”

  Tate was stunned. “How did you know?” he said.

  “I recognized the gift in you from the first time I met you,” Charlie said. “Some of our people have always had it.”

  “I wasn’t aware of it until—well, until recently,” Tate said, not wanting to bring Maggie into this conversation if it wasn’t necessary.

  “Didn’t I tell you that your new way of life would open new windows and let fresh air into the old, stale places?”

  “Sure. You never mentioned how I’m supposed to deal with it, though, and I don’t only mean reading other peoples’ minds. For instance, right now I’m having a hard time reconciling the Cherokee belief that the land, the air, the trees, the water should belong to all of us.”

  “Humph.” Charlie slid him a sly look out of the corners of his eyes. “That’s certainly not what Conso thinks, is it?”

  “I worry about that, Charlie. I see everything in a new way now that I’m living more simply. I find that different things are important to me.” He helped himself to the potato chips.

  “Like what?” Charlie leaned forward in the recliner, all ears.

  “I want peace in my heart. I’m still searching for a sense of who I am and where I’m going, but I know now that I want to be comfortable with who I am and what I do.”

  Charlie waited, but Tate said no more.

  “Well?” Charlie said. “That’s not all, is it, Tate?”

  Tate flushed. “I should have known that you’d realize I’m holding out on you. Yes, Charlie, there’s one more thing. I’ve met someone.” Oscar the cat stood up, circled around, and curled up with his chin on Tate’s knee.

  Charlie cackled. “I knew it. You’ve got the look.”

  “The look of what?” This unsettled Tate; he didn’t like to think that his demeanor or appearance would give a clue to what was going on in the most private sections of his heart.

  “The look of a man who wants,” Charlie said.

  Tate cleared his throat. “It’s not only sex,” he said earnestly. “There’s certainly more to my relationship with Maggie than that.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt that. You’re one of those deep ones, Tate, You don’t love easily, but when you do, look out.”

  “I never said anything about love. And my interest in Maggie did happen easily, which makes me wonder what it’s all about.” Tate related how he had dreamed of a woman, then recognized Maggie as that woman as she was swept past him at Lover’s Leap. He told how he had jumped into her canoe, and Charlie regarded him soberly, remaining quiet for so long that Tate grew impatient.

  Finally Charlie spoke. “Maggie needs to know why you feel as you do for the relationship between you to develop to its greatest potential,” he said. He looked Tate full in the face, his expression keen. “Can you talk to her?”

  Tate shifted his position so that Oscar reproached him through narrowed eyes. He scratched the cat’s ear in apology. “Talk to Maggie about my life?” He didn’t like the idea much. He had learned never to get involved, never to get too close, and never, never to trust anyone, man or woman, with his innermost thoughts. Opening up to his friends was new to him; it hadn’t come easily, even with Charlie.

  Charlie’s voice was gentle. “You must tell Maggie about your past. It is the only way you can make her part of your future.”

  “I can’t imagine that she’d want to listen to my version of a hard-luck story.” Oscar was purring now in the rhythm that Cherokee children would say sounded like counting; in the Cherokee language, purring sounded as if the cat were saying “sixteen four, sixteen four.”

  After a moment’s quiet, during which Tate wasn’t sure if the older man was communing with his own spirit or something outside of himself, Charlie said, “Maggie needs you. She doesn’t know how desperately she needs you yet, and neither do you. And soon you will find an opportunity to talk to her in a natural way, and it will make a big difference.”

  “Maggie seems pretty self-sufficient.”

  “You can’t always trust appearances, Tate.”

  “Don’t you think I know that after working for Conso?” Tate said.

  “I think you know more than you think you know.”

  “Now that,” Tate said, “is what is known as a cryptic comment.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m best at,” Charlie said with a grin.

  Tate moved the cat aside and stood up. “I’d better get going. I’ve made up my mind to buy a canoe today. Thanks, Charlie. You always manage to make me feel as if I’m on the right track.”

  “That’s because you usually are,” Charlie said. He walked Tate outside, one hand on his shoulder.

  Tate had already swung onto his bike when Charlie said, “One more thing. You aren’t going back to your job after your leave of absence.”

  Tate stared for a moment, and then he broke into laughter. “Well, Grandfather,” he said, using the word as a term of respect for one’s elders in the tribe. “I don’t think I have much choice.”

  Charlie was still standing in the driveway as Tate kickstarted the motorcycle, and Tate waved as he drove away. He hoped that Charlie was right about his not going back to Conso; the whole idea of it left a bad taste in his mouth. But if he didn’t go back, how was he going to support himself? Did Charlie know that, too?

  He chalked Charlie’s prediction up to another cryptic comment and wished for a moment that he could read the old fellow’s mind as well as he could read Maggie’s.

  “KEEP YOUR BABY!” exclaimed Bronwyn at the top of her lungs.

  Maggie cringed. “Must you inform everyone in the offices of MMB&O of my decision? Couldn’t you let me do that in my own way?”

  “I didn’t think that you’d decide to keep it, that’s all.”

  “I want to. I love this baby already, Bronwyn. I can’t explain it. I know the baby is still a tiny embryo, a mere dot of protoplasm, but to me it’s real and wonderful and all I can think about right now. I couldn’t possibly give up my child.” She knew she wasn’t explaining this well, but then Bronwyn wasn’t receiving it well, either.

  “Your apartment in Atlanta only has one bedroom, not to mention that your neighbors will complain if the baby cries in the middle of the night. You know how those people bang on the wall with their fists when you play music too loudly.”

  “I’ll move,” said Maggie. “The place is too small anyway. The landlord won’t let me have a pet.”

  “You never wanted a pet,” said Bronwyn. “You’ve always said they were too much trouble.”

  “The baby will need a pet. A nice little dog, maybe. A Yorkie. A cockapoo. A cat.”

  “You don’t even like cats.”

  “It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for my child,” Maggie said, hoping that she sounded noble, but Bronwyn guffawed.

  “I have never known anyone less altruistic in my life,” Bronwyn said. “What’s come over you? Aw
ful Predicaments don’t normally affect one’s sanity.”

  “I’m going to change, Bronwyn. This baby is the most important thing in the world to me. It’s going to make a difference in my whole life-style.” How could she tell Bronwyn that she had come to picture herself as a benevolent mother surrounded by animals and children? She would speak to them in gentle tones like Marmee in Little Women, and she would wear smocks and sensible shoes. A halo would also be a nice touch.

  “Why don’t we talk about this when you come back to the office after your vacation? We’ll take a long lunch hour, treat ourselves to a feast at the Ritz.”

  Maggie drew a deep breath. “I’m thinking I might take a leave of absence from MMB&O,” she said.

  “Leave of absence?” Bronwyn said. “No one at MMB&O takes leaves of absence!”

  “Well, what if someone wanted to? In order to get her life together?”

  “Are we talking about a paid leave of absence?”

  “I hope so,” Maggie said blithely, but she was worried. Bronwyn wasn’t exactly lapping up this idea.

  “Would you go for an unpaid leave?”

  Maggie calculated rapidly in her head. She had a small inheritance from her mother, but not much in the way of savings. She would have doctor bills, things to buy for the baby and miscellaneous expenses that she hadn’t even begun to anticipate.

  “I think it would have to be a paid leave,” she said not so blithely.

  “You’re asking a lot, Maggie.” This delivered in a doubtful voice.

  “Will you see if it flies with our superiors?”

  A long silence, and then Bronwyn said carefully, “How long would this leave need to be?”

  “Oh, I was thinking of six months.”