by Webb, Peggy
Whistling for her dogs, she ran toward the lake behind her house. The wind lifted her honey-colored mane of hair and swept it back from her ears. She clamped her hands over her ears and shivered.
“Shoot. Forgot my hat.”
CHAPTER TWO
On Tuesday Maggie called Mac Jennings. It was surprisingly painless.
“I need to borrow the nursing home van tomorrow after school.”
“You must be crazy,” he told her.
“That’s what you said last spring when you jilted me.” She grinned into the telephone. After she’d gotten through hating Mac last May, she’d fallen out of love with him, and now they were just good friends.
“Well, what did you have in mind?” the suspicious director of the Deerfield Nursing Home asked.
“I’m going to take my Wednesday afternoon bingo ladies on an outing.”
“Maggie, is this for one of your causes?”
The telephone scorched her hand when Mac said “causes.” He’d hated her causes. When he’d broken their engagement he’d cited her causes as the main reason. “I just can’t cope with it anymore,
“Maggie,” he had said. “I want a wife, not a modern day Joan of Arc who stomps all over northeast Mississippi toting signs and tooting horns.” He didn’t like dogs, either. It was a good thing they’d broken up.
“Just have my bingo ladies ready to travel tomorrow at three-thirty, Mac. They’ll love it.”
“Maag-gie,” he said, a warning in his voice.
“Now, Mac,” she cajoled him, “how many years have I been coming to Deerfield on Wednesday afternoons to play bingo? Since I was twenty-five. Right, Mac? Three whole years. Now, Mac, in all that time have I ever brought any harm to those dear, sweet ladies?”
“There was the time on the Natchez Trace Parkway when that forest ranger caught you and those sweet little ladies red handed, stealing bodock apples.”
“Not stealing. Just borrowing to use for crafts.”
“On government property, Maggie.”
“Well, he let us go when I explained how those dear, sweet nursing home residents wanted to make Halloween witches with the bodock apples. He even let us keep the apples.”
Mac heaved a resigned sigh. Maggie knew she had won.
o0o
On Wednesday afternoon, she loaded thirteen lively little gray haired ladies into the Deerfield Nursing Home van and headed for Holly Springs National Forest.
Mac stood on the front lawn in the near freezing weather and practically wrung his hands as she drove off.
“Maggie, what’s this gun doing back here?” piped up Mrs. Peabody as she bounced around on the back seat.
“I’ll explain later, Mrs. Peabody. Gotta get gas.”
She took a sharp right turn off West Main Street and squealed into Tupelo Savings Station, narrowly missing a parked silver Mercedes. The license plate on the back of the luxury car read ADAM 1.
Maggie hitched up her baggy army pants, pulled her toboggan cap low over her eyes, and jumped down from the driver’s seat.
Adam Trent bailed out of his car, all spit and polish in a gray pin-striped suit. “I might have known it would be you.” He looked grim. “Do you always drive like a maniac?”
Maggie caught her breath at the sight of him. Gracious, just look at those shoulders in that perfectly tailored suit. It had to be a sin to hide a body like that under clothes.
“Are you always so serious? Loosen up, Adam, or you’ll get ulcers.” She jerked the hose from the gas pump marked Premium, Unleaded and never even noticed that she had called him Adam.
Adam leaned casually against the side of the van and watched as she filled the tank with gas. ‘Tell me... Maggie, isn’t it? ...what makes you tick?”
“A heart. Just like everybody else.” A marshmallow heart. That was what her brother called it. As a young girl she used to cry over every broken, suffering animal brought into her father’s veterinary clinic. She believed that animals should be healthy and alive, running free in the sun, flying high in the wind. It was inconceivable to her that anyone could be heartless enough to use a gun to snuff out the life of a living creature.
“Oh, come now, Maggie,” Adam chided her, relaxing against the van as if he owned it and everybody connected with it. ‘There’s more to you than meets the eye.” He raked her with a bold gaze from head to toe, taking in the lopsided knit cap, the down parka that zipped with room to spare over her slim torso, the baggy army pants that almost disguised her long, shapely legs.
Maggie was mesmerized by him. While her hands were pumping gasoline into the tank, her mind was spiraling off on a breathless tangent. Did he have hair on that magnificent chest, hidden away behind that flawless white shirt? Did he have three mistresses tucked away in his bed to keep all his shirts so white?
He was so close she could see a small muscle twitching in the side of his square jaw. A man like him had to have a mistress or two panting in the vaults of that staid old bank of his. It wasn’t fair, not fair at all, that he should look like a Greek god and have sixteen gorgeous mistresses whom she hated, and live worlds away from her. Nobody—before, including, and after Mac—had excited her imagination the way Adam Trent did.
“What makes a woman like you go into the woods before dawn to fight for the animals?” She noticed when he spoke that even his teeth were perfect.
“What makes you stand here in thirty-degree weather and ask? Don’t you have a bank, or something, to run?” She would have to tread cautiously around him. He was, after all, the enemy. But then, why was she just itching to pull the shirt off her enemy to see if he had hair on his chest?
“I’m curious. More than curious, actually. After all, you did cheat me out of a duck supper Saturday.” When he smiled, Maggie was sure that every Christmas candle in Tupelo had dissolved right down to its wick. “What kind of woman are you? What are you hiding under all those baggy clothes?”
Maggie had a coughing fit. Good land! She was standing there wanting to undress him and he was standing there wanting to see under her clothes! And he didn’t even have the good grace to turn red in the face as he made his outrageous remark.
Thirteen noses pressed against the windows of the van, and thirteen pairs of lively eyes watched in fascination as gasoline overflowed the tank and spilled unnoticed over Maggie’s hands. Thirteen gray heads nodded approvingly as the handsome man took the overflowing hose from the beautiful woman and hung it back on the gas pump. Thirteen wrinkled faces smiled in delight as the hero took a chamois rag off the rack beside the pumps and rubbed the gasoline from the heroine’s hands. The residents of Deerfield Nursing Home loved romance.
Maggie’s marshmallow heart melted right down to her toes when Adam took her hands in his. As those fine, strong hands dabbed at the gasoline she pictured herself on a beach in Tahiti with those hands rubbing coconut oil over her bronzed body. “I can do that for myself,” she protested, but not too strongly.
His smile lit up the entire west side of Tupelo. “We can’t let anything happen to your hands, can we, now, Maggie? Then you wouldn’t be able to toot your horn.”
“I should think you’d be happy if I never played my trumpet again. All things considered.” They were now lying together on the white, hot sands, their well-oiled limbs entangled. She peered up at his face from under her wool cap. She wondered if he read minds. Lord, she hoped not!
“I should have told you Saturday. I love a good fight with a worthy adversary.”
“Even when you’re bested?”
“Even then.”
The job of cleaning her hands had become quite an undertaking. Not that Maggie was complaining. While Adam studiously concentrated on each long, tapered finger, she was blushing at what the two of them were now doing on that beach in Tahiti.
He began rubbing her gasoline-free, ice-cold hands between his. “Don’t expect to win every time, Maggie.”
“Oh, but I do.” The steamy heat rose from that fantasy beach and smote her i
n the midriff, radiating in waves throughout her body. She felt so overheated she considered shucking her coat right there in the gas station, in the middle of December. Just peeling it off and fanning herself right there in front of everybody.
“And are these the cohorts who will be helping you?” Adam’s hand waved to encompass the van full of fascinated gray haired ladies.
Maggie dragged herself off the beach, scorched and seared, and pulled her fractured mind together. Adam must not suspect the nature of this afternoon’s outing. Laughing shakily, she told him, “These are my Wednesday afternoon bingo partners from Deerfield Nursing Home.”
“You play bingo in the van?”
“Of course not. Sometimes we don’t play bingo.”
“What do you do when you don’t play bingo?”
“We go on little outings.”
“In thirty degree weather? Isn’t it a mite cold for them to be on an outing?”
“They like excitement.”
Adam’s deep, rich laugh filled the winter air. “Then, tell them for me that they’ve come to the right person. I don’t know anybody better able to generate excitement than you.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not sure I meant it as a compliment.” His smile raised the temperature outside the gas station at least fifteen degrees. “I hope they’re all heavily insured. Riding in boats on the Tallahatchie River can be dangerous.” With those words, he turned to go inside the station. When he had gone a few feet from her, he swiveled halfway around and spoke over his shoulder. “Maggie, try not to run over my car when you leave. I’m kind of partial to it.”
“I was considering leaving just a small dent.” She grinned impishly at him.
“That’s probably the truth.” He walked away, and there was a great big empty place where he had been standing.
Maggie shivered. Suddenly she realized how cold she was. She hopped back inside the warm van and stuck her numbed hands next to the heater.
“Who is he, Maggie?” Mrs. Peabody called from the back.
“My, my, he’s handsome,” Mrs.Vinson chimed in.
“He made this old girl swoon,” added Mrs. Clark.
“Fannie Mae, I didn’t know you had it in you,” Mrs.Vinson said to Mrs. Clark.
Mrs. Clark laughed. “Emma, just because there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean there’s no fire in the oven.”
Maggie turned to face them. ‘That, ladles, is the enemy. Adam Trent. He’s one of the hunters I’ve sworn to foil.” She paused to let the truth sink in. At last Wednesday’s bingo game she had presented her cause to the ladies of Deerfield, and they had all begged to be part of the plan. Such excitement rarely came their way.
After the chorus of Oh, my’s and Dear me’s had subsided, Maggie went on. “Today we’re going hunting.” There was a collective gasp, and then she added, “Today will go down in history as one of the most unsuccessful hunts ever attempted. I doubt that a single duck or bird or squirrel or rabbit or deer will be killed.” There were chuckles of appreciation from her co-conspirators. “What we are going to do today is stuff the application box, so that when the one-day antlerless deer season is declared and names are drawn for the limited number of permits, guess whose names will be drawn.”
“Absolutely ingenious, Maggie,” Mrs.Vinson cried.
“I haven’t had this much fun since we stole the bodock apples,” added Mrs. Clark.
Maggie sat down behind the wheel, revved the engine, and took her excited crew to the Holly Springs National Forest. She pulled up at one of the entrances to the hunting area, got fourteen hunting forms, and brought them back to the van.
“If anyone needs a pencil, just yell.”
“Maggie, what do we put on this line that asks what we’re hunting?” Mrs. Peabody asked.
“Well, I should think that any of the game animals would do.” She worked quickly, filling out her form, and then stood up in the front of the vain. “On the line that asks for number bagged, put zero. We don’t want to confuse anybody about the number of animals killed, we just want the lion’s share of permits so that as few as possible will be killed.”
After they had filled out the forms at that entrance, Maggie raced around to a second entrance and repeated the process. “Ladies, if anybody ever asks you what kind of gun you used, it’s right back there. It’s a twenty-gauge. It’s too bad all of you are such poor shots.”
The merriment in the van was running high by the time they had filled out forms at four different entrances to the hunting areas. The sun had disappeared over the edge of the forest when Maggie turned the van toward Tupelo.
“Can we do this next Wednesday?” Mrs. Clark asked.
“It’s a lot more fun than bingo,” Mrs. Peabody added.
“If I can beg or borrow the van from Mac, well do it again next Wednesday,” Maggie promised.
“You could steal the van. Temporarily, of course,” Mrs. Vinson suggested.
“Emma, I’m shocked at you,” Mrs. Clark said with a gasp.
“Well, it’s no worse than you, Fannie Mae. Fires in the oven, indeed. Why, Mr. Trent wouldn’t look once at old fossils like you and me.” Mrs.Vinson sniffed to emphasize her point.
“Who said anything about Mr. Trent?” Mrs. Clark looked smug.
“Have you been carrying on with Mr. Luther, down the hall?”
Fannie Mae Clark burst into laughter. “No. I’m just trying to get a rumor started. You know, spice things up a little.”
Maggie headed into the Deerfield Nursing Home parking lot and deposited her chattering crew at the door. Then she raced inside to hand the keys over to Mac.
“I see the van and my residents are still in one piece.”
“What did you expect?” Maggie grinned in spite of small chastisement. Nothing could mar her day’s success.
“I don’t know, Maggie. With you, anything is possible.”
“Cheer up, Mac. Maybe Santa Claus will stuff your stocking with a nice, boring girl.” She turned to leave and then remembered. “Oh, I’ll want the van again next Wednesday.”
“I’m not even going to ask why.”
Maggie reached over and pinched the face that held such a pain expression. “See you Wednesday.”
She stuffed her hands into her pants pockets and jogged out to her pickup truck. The cold engine caught after a couple of tries, and Maggie took the bypass home to Belden.
o0o
A stack of second grade papers greeted Maggie when she walked in the door of her cozy cottage. She tossed her coat in the general direction of the coat rack, missed, stooped over to pick it up, and caught a lingering whiff of gasoline. She stood in the middle of her kitchen floor with the faint odor of gasoline on her hands and remembered Adam. The way he laughed, the way he walked, the way he stood next to her, the way his hands felt on hers.
In slow motion, she hung the jacket up and floated toward the kitchen sink. She had to reach the soap dish. That gasoline on her hands had obviously affected her brain. She scrubbed her hands until they were bright pink and smarting. Leaning over, she sniffed them. There was not the slightest trace of gasoline. Good. That meant she had washed Adam down the sink drain.
CHAPTER THREE
Maggie led the way in her pickup truck as the Friends of the Animals descended on Boguefala Bottom. The temperature had dropped another five degrees, making the December weather unusually cold for Mississippi. To add to the discomfort, a slow, drizzling rain had started to fall.
Martha Jo Peterson, sitting beside Maggie in the truck, yawned hugely. “I’m going to be furious if I’ve gotten up at the crack of four and Adam Trent doesn’t show up.”
“Are you here to save the animals or to ogle Adam?”
Maggie would have to be tarred and feathered before she would admit that she had spent the last two days wondering whether Adam would be among the deer hunters in Boguefala Bottom for the opening day of the season. She alternated between hoping he would be there and praying he would not. F
or all she knew he could be hunting down in Clay County or over in Itawamba. The Friends had chosen Boguefala simply because in past years it had recorded more deer bagged on opening day than any other area in northeast Mississippi.
“I’m planning to do both,” Martha Jo told her. “While I’m stomping through the woods beating my pizza pan, I’m also going to be beating the bushes for Trent.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. He doesn’t like activists.”
Martha Jo laughed. “He doesn’t have to like activists. I’m not planning to marry the guy, just ogle him some and maybe pant and paw over him a little.”
“I call that consorting with the enemy.”
“Party pooper.”
Maggie parked the truck by the side of Boguefala Creek. She and Martha Jo waited inside the warm truck for the rest of the pot-and-pan brigade to arrive. When everybody had finally assembled, Maggie took her metal soup spoon and her stainless steel pot and hopped down from the truck.
“You all know what to do,” she told the crowd. “We’ll spread out and march through the woods, making as much noise as we can. By the time we’ve made our sweep, there won’t be any deer within fifteen miles of this place.” She reached into the back of her truck and pulled out a hot pink vest. “If anybody needs a vest, I have plenty in the back of my truck. I don’t want anybody getting shot.”
“How long should we stay, Maggie?” Carl Lamons asked.
“I grew up around here, and I’m sure we can cover this section of woods in less than an hour. It’s too cold to stay much longer than that anyhow.”
With a loud whooping and hollering and a frantic beating on pots and pans, the Friends entered the woods. Maggie and Martha Jo split up, with Martha Jo following a line close to the creek and Maggie plunging straight into the heart of the woods.
Birds and squirrels, startled by the clamor, took flight before the noisy brigade. As the rain drizzled down, drops of moisture clung to the tree branches and froze in a thin, glistening sheet.