by Debra Dixon
“North,” the older girl said. They all stared at me as if I was some creature the likes of which they’d never seen before. “My daddy said I might get to go to school this fall.”
“Don’t you go to school every year?” The girl was a little taller than me. I knew she had to be at least a third grader.
“Nah.” She shrugged. “There’s too much work to do. In the fall we pick apples. We’re usually way up north by then.”
I felt a little sick, thinking about my teachers and friends at Mossy Creek Elementary and all the fun we had. “I hope you get to go to school. You’d like it.”
“I can already read some,” she said. “My mom taught me. The other day I read the story about Rapunzel. Do you know it?”
I nodded and watched her pile some boxes higher in a heap. She climbed up on the pile and put an old work shirt on her head so the long sleeves looked like pigtails hanging down. “I like to pretend I’m in the tower waiting for my handsome prince to climb my hair and save me.”
“I like to act out stories, too,” I said. “Have you ever read Heidi?”
“Yeah, that’s a good one. I liked how Heidi and her grandfather got to eat all the cheese they wanted because they had all those goats. I wish I had a goat.”
Her littlest brother started to scramble up the stack of boxes, grabbed one sleeve of the shirt she held on top of her head, and caused her to fall off the pile. She brought him the rest of the way down with her in a heap. The other two children piled on, and the four of them broke into giggles.
By that time, their daddy had returned from the convenience store carrying a brown bag. His sad look turned into a smile as he heard his kids laughing. I stepped back so he could lower the rusty tailgate of the truck, where he carefully spread out the flattened paper sack and started making sandwiches with a loaf of white bread. He spread thick gobs of peanut butter onto the bread with his pocket knife. I secretly hoped he hadn’t recently gutted a buzzard or anything like that with the knife, but it looked pretty clean to me.
He gave a sandwich to his wife and each of his kids. Then he made one more, for himself, I figured, but when he got through, he handed it out to me. I took it and thanked him. I asked him,’“What are you going to do now, mister?”
He looked up toward the church steeple. “We’ll sit here a while, I reckon, and see what happens. The Lord will provide. He always does.” With that, he fastened the tailgate and went to the cab of the truck to sit with his wife.
The kids were quiet as they ate their sandwiches. I couldn’t help but wonder where their next meal was going to come from. Where the oldest girl’s next book was going to come from. I thought and thought as I chewed my sandwich. When I was done I brushed the crumbs off my hands and dug the money out of my pocket.
It was the most money I had ever had in my life and it had taken all summer to earn. I looked up and saw that the littlest girl had finished her sandwich and grinned at me over the top of the tailgate. With her red braids, she looked like the drawing of Pippi Longstocking in one of the story books I’d read to the kids at the library.
I felt real sorry that these kids didn’t have a home town. I probably knew all the other kids in Mossy Creek and even the names of most of their dogs and cats. Nobody was a stranger to me except people passing through. These kids would always be strangers. They’d never have a place to belong, never get a chance to put down roots like Miss Bingham’s tomato plants. Instead, they’d be like dandelions, blowing in the wind and scattering who knew where. I felt guilty for ever wishing that I didn’t live in Mossy Creek.
I went around to the driver’s side of the cab where the man was finishing his sandwich. “I have some money, mister,” I said, holding out the roll of bills. “I was going to buy my mama a present, but I want you to have it.”
The man broke out into a wide grin, making him look younger than he had before. “Thank you, son. You’re an angel of the Lord. I knew that God would provide.” He shook my hand and his wife thanked me, too.
As he headed his truck toward the tanks at the convenience store, I waved goodbye to the kids and they waved back at me. I sat on the curb and rested my elbows on my knees, my chin in my hands. Now my mom wouldn’t get the beautiful ruby necklace. So many times I had pictured her smiling face as she opened my present. Now that vision was gone.
“Was that wad of cash the money you worked so hard for this summer?” somebody said. I looked around. Miss Maggie Hart stood on the sidewalk behind me. She was carrying a big, two-level silver tray full of teeny tiny little glasses. She was in charge of washing the communion glasses, the ones they put the grape juice in.
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “I was going to buy my mama a necklace for her birthday, but those folks needed it more than I do. I guess now I’ll have to make a necklace out of macaroni and glitter like the ones I helped the little kids with during vacation bible school.” I laughed a little.
“After I return this communion set I have to attend a meeting of the Mossy Creek City Council,” Miss Hart said. “I want you to meet me at my shop at eleven. I’ve got a proposition for you.”
I said okay, and she went in the church. I looked back down the sidewalk and saw some other church ladies heading my way. Snow Halfacre, who runs the nursing home, said, “What’s wrong, young man? You look like you just lost your last friend.”
That’s pretty much how I felt too. I only shrugged.
“You know, the residents at the home miss you a lot. I’ve even heard they have a petition drive going to have you reinstated as a volunteer. I think we could manage that.”
“Really?” I asked. It made me feel good to know my friends at the nursing home had stuck up for me.
Mrs. Beechum was right behind the nursing home lady. “John Wesley, Bob hasn’t bitten anybody since you taught him a lesson by biting him. Maybe you’d better come on back to the shop and take up your sweeping and dog walking again.”
Sue Ora Salter Bigelow came up beside Mrs. Beechum and said, “Ingrid, do you mean to tell me that you had a boy-bites-dog story and you didn’t even tell Katie Bell so she could write it up for the Gazette?” She shook her head and laughed.
That’s when Miss Jayne came along, carrying her laptop computer. “Emma and my customers miss you, John Wesley. I’m going to call your mother and ask her permission for you to come back to work at my shop, too.”
I thanked Miss Jayne, and she bent down and spoke close to my ear. “We all — your mom and dad included — understand that you haven’t been quite yourself this summer. Sometimes when you suffer a loss like you did this spring when your grandpa died, it takes a while to get your head back on straight. I know all about that.” She smiled sadly into the distance, and I knew she was remembering her husband who passed away before their baby was born.
As Miss Jayne, Miss Ingrid, and Miss Sue Ora made their way into the church, I ran around back to the cemetery and plopped down in the cool grass at Grandma and Grandpa’s feet. “Those ladies made me feel so good I almost forgot about giving away the money,” I told them. “I reckon it’s not too bad living in a place like Mossy Creek after all.”
I thought about the poor kids in the truck as I watched an ant drop the seed it was carrying and another ant come up to help him carry it. “I guess having your neighbors knowing all about my business isn’t the worst thing in the world, Grandpa. They’re only trying to make sure I grow up straight, like Miss Bingham’s tomatoes.”
A little later that morning, I waited for Miss Maggie on the bench outside Moonheart’s Natural Living, her herb shop. In a few minutes she came outside. Her hippie skirt twirled around her legs in lots of pretty colors. “That was a really nice thing you did for that family in the truck.”
“You didn’t tell her I gave them all my money, did you?” I asked. She shook her head. I sighed. “Now I don’t know what I’m going to get my mom for her birthday next week.”
“I do,” Miss Maggie said. I followed her inside her shop.
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Miss Maggie’s shop smells the best of any shop in town, even better than Mrs. Beechum’s bakery when Bob is under control. She sells lots of natural things, like special soaps, bath oils, and incense. Most of the stuff she sells is kind of girly, but I like to look at the rocks and crystals. Sometimes she lets me help her unpack boxes and pop the bubbles in the bubble wrap.
“I have a brand new line of jewelry, and I think that one item in particular would be a perfect gift for your mother.” Miss Maggie opened a box she’d taken from under the counter and held up the most beautiful necklace I had ever seen. It had pink stones with silver beads here and there. At the center was a rosy pink heart.
“This stone is rose quartz. It’s one of the stones of the heart chakra. It’s all about understanding and love — the perfect gem for a mother.”
I took the necklace and held it up to the light from a window. The stones caught the sun. I didn’t know what a chock-ra was, but I knew it was the most wonderful necklace I’d ever seen. “It’s great,” I said. “But I don’t have any money left. I can’t afford it.”
I tried to hand the necklace back to her, but Miss Maggie put her hand up gently and pushed it back toward me. “I have an idea. Down at the theater, the Mossy Creek players are going to put on a production of The Sound Of Music, and Anna Rose Lavender says we need an assistant to help my friend Tag Garner build and paint the sets. You can start now and continue to work after school until the sets are finished. I’ll advance you the necklace as payment for your work. Do you think you’re the man for the job?”
“Am I ever!” I said.
* * * *
I had no idea that the job at the theater would be so much fun. Miss Lavender, the director, and Mr. Garner taught me lots about carpentry and painting. When you think about it, what I was doing was a lot like what I do anyway for fun — creating make-believe places where I can pretend to be my favorite characters from books.
Miss Anna Rose even let me play one of the Von Trapp kids, and it was lots of fun. I’d never played pretend with grownups and costumes and all. I thought my friends would tease me for wearing make-up, but they didn’t. In fact, Little Ida said she thought I was cute.
My mom loved the necklace. She says it is the most fabulously gorgeous necklace she has ever seen and she wears it all the time. Well, a lot of the time, anyway.
So I have to say that I had a pretty good summer. I learned how important roots are for plants and people. And I learned that Mossy Creek is the best place to plant them. I also learned that God works in mysterious ways, especially here in Mossy Creek.
I was pretty blue when I thought I’d lost my chance to give my mom a nice present that she would really like. But just like the man said, “The Lord will provide.” The man called me his angel from the Lord, and I reckon Miss Maggie was mine. In Mossy Creek, we take turns.
The Mossy Creek Gazette
215 Main Street • Mossy Creek, Georgia
From the Desk of Katie Bell, Business Manager
Lady Victoria Salter Stanhope
The Cliffs, Seaward Road
St. Ives, Cornwall TR37PJ
United Kingdom
Dear Vick:
I debated not running John Wesley’s story because it was so personal. I always ask permission from the parents in a case like this. His mom read the story and cried, then told me she’d be proud to see it in the newspaper. So I ran it last week, and the response was tremendous. That family John Wesley helped? Mayor Walker and Chief Royden assigned Sandy to track them down. She found them at a campground outside Charleston, South Carolina. Hope Bailey Stanton and her husband-to-be, Marle Settles, offered the husband and wife jobs and a home at the Sweet Hope Apple Orchards at Bailey Mill. At last report the family is happily ensconced in a cabin and the kids are in school at Mossy Creek Elementary. I love happy endings! So I’m in a good mood and now I’m off to interview Michael Conners about his secrets, er, I mean his, uhmmm, blessings.
Katie
Chapter 4
In Mossy Creek, you learn right away that disputes are solved in two ways: the world’s way and the Creekite way.
Home Is Where The Sword Is
Chapter 4
All right, Katie. You want me to be honest with you for your Blessings column? Here goes.
The first time I saw a naked woman — I was all of six years old at the time — I thought I’d discovered one of the seven wonders of the world. Talk about blessings.
The woman, whose name I probably never knew, was in an old, folded-many-times Playboy centerfold Jerry McMillan and I had literally stumbled across in the basement of an abandoned tenement being renovated in our south Chicago neighborhood. I recall the cool, stuffy smell of moldering brick and the distant neighborhood sounds beyond the dusty windows — not to mention my thundering heart — as I stood mesmerized.
Looking at her made me sweat.
The years between then and now have blurred the specifics, but I remember thinking her smooth bare skin reminded me somehow of the angels in the stained glass windows of St. James church, or the statues overlooking the flock. An angel who’d flown out of her robes. A heavenly vision with red hair.
Even at the tender age of six, being a good Irish Catholic boy, I recognized a blasphemous thought when I had one. But knowing I’d probably end up in Hell’s basement — dragged kicking and fighting from my red-haired angel straight to the fire — couldn’t make me look away. And, although gawking at a naked woman hadn’t been my first ever transgression, now I see how it set my feet on the wayward path.
I kept that centerfold tucked under my mattress for two years. When my mother found it and showed it to my old man, the hell part caught up with my backside. My mum sent me straight to confession after my dad gave me a belting that made it doubly hard to kneel and face Father Harrigan through the grate. The punishment fit the crime, I suppose, since they were trying to save my immortal soul, but it also must’ve permanently set a pattern in my mind. Naked redheads — bad.
I’ve been drawn to red haired women ever since.
Therein lies the problem. Mossy Creek, my adopted hometown, is sadly lacking in Irish redheads. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine place with many fine folks. There are also some feisty, good-looking, unattached women — from the Mayor, Ida Walker, who is a borderline redhead with auburn hair — to Regina-Regina, the best waitress any pub owner could hope to find. Not to mention Jane Reynolds at The Naked Bean down the street and newcomer Jasmine Beleau, who fits nicely into the blasphemous angel category. Blessing or curse, I escaped a bullet on that one though. If Ms. Beleau’s hair had had even a whiff of red in it, I’d be a dead man.
So what’s a connoisseur of fine, red-haired Irish girls caught in a desert of blondes and brunettes to do? Why, venture out onto the Internet, of course. And that’s what I did this past spring. Charming strangers don’t worry me a bit although my sainted mother often warned me that the harvest of my sins would catch up to me. This particular harvest was named Michelle DeSalvo.
Michelle DeSalvo? Yes, I know what you’re thinkin’— nothing that sounded redheaded and Irish in that name. But she hailed from Chicago and actually knew where my brother had his restaurant on the eastside. After seeing her photograph and talking to her on the phone, I didn’t even care that she might not be a real redhead. Plenty of time to discover that later. We set up a visit. I had two weeks to get ready.
First, I had to spruce up my place so it looked more like a home than an unfinished This Old House project. It was hard enough to explain to a city girl why I lived a hundred miles north of Atlanta in the Georgia mountains. And, to convince her that I didn’t even own an ax. The blinkin’ chamber of commerce couldn’t have done a better job of selling Mossy Creek than this lonely Irishman. I did prevaricate a bit about how quaint and comfortable an old historical home could be. At least half a home. But the jury was still out on that one.
A few years ago, I bought old Mrs. Chesterfield’s place at 224 Pin
e, barely a block from my pub, O’Day’s, on the square. It seemed like a no-brainer. Annie Chesterfield’s husband had passed away two years before, and she’d decided to leave the big old house where she’d spent her married life and move into an assisted-living apartment at Magnolia Manor, the local retirement home. After we signed the papers, she asked for a month or so to ‘get rid of a few things’ and to move. Giving her time seemed to be the least I could do since the selling price had been reasonable. So, I’d had the workmen who remodeled O’Day’s frame in a loft apartment over the bar so I’d have a place to sleep until Mrs. Chesterfield cleared out.
A year went by.
Finally, on the anniversary of getting a deed in my name but no house, I paid Mrs. Chesterfield a visit. I was prepared to do whatever it took to help her finish moving. Finish being the operative word here. Pacing up the walk I noticed how much she’d let the yard go. Easy enough to fix — I could hire a neighborhood kid to help get the grass and flower beds in shape. The front steps were a little wobbly but again, fixable. Annie Chesterfield greeted me graciously at the solid oak door, then invited me inside the house I’d made mortgage payments on for a year. That’s when I knew I was in trouble. The large rooms looked exactly the same as when I’d last seen them a year before. Every stick of furniture remained in place, every knickknack and curio retained its original dust. There were no suitcases or boxes in sight. For all I knew Mrs. Chesterfield could’ve been wearing the same flowered house dress.
And, I could be caught in one of those Star Trek time warps.
It shook me, I have to say. You know the antiquated tale about how crazy people think everyone around them is crazy and that they are perfectly sane? I took this as a reality check. Was it me? Or this nice lady, who was insisting on making me a cup of Oolong tea she’d purchased at The Naked Bean?