The Widows of Eden

by George Shaffner

  “Are they bearing gifts?” Calvin asked.

  Loretta shot him another naughty-boy glance. “I apologize for my husband, Vern. He can forget how much he owes you. When do your friends arrive? I assume it’s soon.”

  “They get here sometime tomorrow, but you’ll probably hear before I do.”

  “I’ll hear? Before you?”

  “They have a way of making an entrance.”

  Loretta giggled. “Well, why the heck didn’t you say so? Any woman who can make an entrance will be a fast friend of mine.”

  Chapter 4

  MR. MOORE BRINGS A DELUGE

  I GOT DOWN TO my kitchen at oh-dawn-hundred the next morning, which was day one hundred and eighteen of the drought, but Mr. Moore was already sitting at the table in his usual spot, sipping a cup of tea and reading the Lincoln newspaper. Normally, lodgers were not allowed to sit in my kitchen unaccompanied, but Mr. Moore had the run of the house. I offered him a waffle and bacon for breakfast, which he accepted, so I went about whipping the batter while we talked. Here’s a little hint: I use club soda instead of milk in the batter. It may sound odd, but the waffles come out extralight and crispy, and they’re super low in cholesterol.

  Mr. Moore put down the paper. “Last night, Loretta said that the townsfolk expect me to make it rain. Have you heard anything like that?”

  “I suppose I should have warned you myself. That’s what all those calls were about last night.”

  “Does everyone expect me to make it rain?”

  “Drought is an equal opportunity disaster, Mr. Moore. Everybody’s desperate, and some of the residents of Ebb have seen you do things that a normal person can’t do. You can’t hardly blame them for being optimistic.”

  “Optimism is good, Wilma, but within reason.”

  That may have made sense to Mr. Moore, but it confused the heck out of me. “I thought optimism was what you used when reason didn’t work,” I replied.

  The batter was whipped, so I got the bacon out of the refrigerator and put seven slices into the skillet, four for Mr. Moore and three for me. It wasn’t the healthiest item I could have put in the pan, but I have a country girl’s weakness for good, thick bacon.

  Mr. Moore inquired, “How was Clem last night?”

  “Not good, I’m afraid. The doctors cut so much skin out of his back that they had to transplant a swatch from the inside of his thigh. The leg is infected now and his temperature is running at a hundred or more most all the time. Doc Wiley says the chemotherapy is affecting his body’s ability to fight infection. It’s also causing him to feel sick to his stomach, and he has no appetite to speak of.”

  “Will he be up to seeing me this morning?”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Moore. He even offered to send John for you.” John Smith is Clem’s chauffeur plus bodyguard and my most recent son-in-law. He and my elder daughter, Mona, a divorcée herself, got hitched last spring, just five weeks before Calvin and Loretta. Luther Salevasaosamoa, the county chief of corrections, married Louise Nelson, too, but she kept her last name. All in all, it was a backwards year in Ebb from a matrimonial point of view. Women usually come here to get unhitched, not the other way round.

  I brought Mr. Moore up to date on all the latest news while we ate, starting with my eldest grandson, Matt. If it wasn’t for Mr. Moore, he would be serving life in prison and then some. As it is, he’s taking college correspondence courses in a medium security facility in Iowa and he could be paroled in only five years. Mark, his little brother, will be graduating from college around then. He’s going to be Ebb’s next tycoon.

  Mr. Moore waited until breakfast was over to bring up his widow friends. I guess running a B & B gets in your blood. Of all the questions I could have asked the man, the first words from my lips were, “Will they be staying with me?”

  “They won’t need rooms, but I’d appreciate it if they could use the parking lot.”

  “The parking lot?”

  “They travel in large RVs, recreational vehicles. They may need to hook up to your electrical power, but they usually prefer to sleep in their own beds.”

  I had had the odd RVer at the Come Again before, so I wasn’t caught completely off guard. “If that’s all they want, it’s perfectly fine with me. Will I need to feed them?”

  “Once at most, if you don’t mind. They’re a self-sufficient bunch, and they won’t want to impose. Add whatever it costs to my bill. Add the cost of the electricity, too.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. I won’t need to do that.”

  “Put it on my bill, Wilma. They’ll be here for several days, and their drivers may need an occasional shower, too. It saves water in the RVs.”

  That was a cork-popper if I ever heard one. “Your widow friends have chauffeurs, for RVs? I’ve never heard of such a thing? May I ask why?”

  “Certainly.”

  Here’s another hint: if you request permission to ask a question, Mr. Moore will usually grant it, but then he’ll wait for you to spit out the actual question. “Why do they have chauffeurs?” I asked.

  “Because the widows don’t drive.”

  That was his entire answer. I suppose I should have expected it.

  MR. MOORE WENT for a walk after breakfast. Since the noonday temperature averaged upwards of a hundred and four during the drought, most of the downtown stores opened early so that the people with any money left could do their shopping in the morning. According to eyewitness reports I received later, Mr. Moore stopped by Millet’s Department Store, the Starbucks for a mocha, and the library. Everywhere he went, people asked him to make it rain. Oddly, there was disagreement about how he responded. Some folks thought he was amenable, others reported that he was noncommittal, and a few told me that he was downright negative.

  In the meantime, I finished up the breakfast dishes and meandered back to the den to check my e-mail. Naturally, I had to delete the spam first. Here’s a question: who in the world would be stupid enough to buy penny stocks or penile enhancement drugs from an anonymous somebody whose Internet address is jzqxkvw@goobledegook.com and the subject of their e-mail is “loquacious whitewash delirium fecal”? It beats the fecal out of me.

  Lord Almighty, there were thirty e-mails in my queue — after I was done getting rid of the spam — and every one was from a card-carrying member of the Quilting Circle. In case you haven’t already heard, the Circle was founded a generation ago by Winnie Bowe, Lulu Tiller, and yours truly. We had only two goals back then: to keep every child warm at night, and to make Ebb the nicest place on earth to live. Over the years, the idea caught on and most of the wives and divorcées in the county became members. Ebb is a woman’s town now, and we’re a force to be reckoned with. The majority of our elected officials are female and we own most of the businesses on Main Street. The Circle even holds a twenty-nine percent interest in Millet’s Department Store, thanks to Mr. Moore.

  We take particular pride in on our ability to keep the membership informed, but the deluge of e-mails that morning made me wonder if we had pushed the envelope too far, and that was before I discovered that there was more than rain on everybody’s minds. Connie Kimball, the town florist, wanted Mr. Moore to stop by and see her mother, who was eighty-six years old and failing, the poor dear. Casey Jaworski wanted Mr. Moore to attend to a well that was going dry. Dana Yelm just had to remind me about the Bowes — again. The list went on and on.

  I had no idea how to handle each and every request, so I sent the membership an e-mail saying that Mr. Moore was aware of the drought and I would be discussing their personal needs with him at my earliest opportunity. Then, because I knew I couldn’t possibly discuss each and every one of their needs with Mr. Moore, I turned on my cell phone and called Loretta. I got beeped by two incoming calls while I was leaving a message.

  I had no choice; I turned it off again. Me. For the first time in my life, I chose the laundry over the telephone.

  That’s how bad it was.

  Chapter 5

 
; THE WHIMS OF THE HOI POLLOI

  LATER THAT MORNING, Mr. Moore drove down to the River House, which is a large, ranch-style hunting lodge situated on a high bluff overlooking the Missouri River. Marie Delacroix, Clem’s full-figured chef, lived with him there, and so did a practical nurse named Pearline O’Connor, who had been imported from Kansas to care for Clem during his chemotherapy. She was an older, cone-shaped girl with a flat chest and a religious streak who never drank, swore, or wore makeup. Because of her close proximity to my Fiancé in Perpetuity, she was inducted into the Quilting Circle at an emergency session of the membership committee, meaning in advance of Dot’s usual background check. In other words, we buttered our own bread.

  Pearline led Mr. Moore back to the master suite, which was lit by a single lamp on a bedside table. Despite the dimness, you could see that Clem’s eyes were sunken and his skin was chalky and yellow-gray, like the yolk of a day-old, hard-boiled egg. He had lost weight because of the chemo, and he wore a knit cap to conceal the loss of his hair, even in bed. He said it was for warmth.

  Pearline took up her position at the nurse’s station in the hallway, just out of Clem’s sight but within easy earshot. Mr. Moore sat down on a cane-backed chair next to the bed.

  Clem pulled himself up to a sitting position, then hacked and cleared his throat. “Thanks for coming,” he half-gargled. “Wilma was all aflutter when she told me the news last night.”

  “It’s good to see you again. How are you feeling?”

  “Like I was spun around on a top, run over by a bulldozer, and drowned in a tub of warm spit. I have some free advice for you, Vernon: don’t get cancer. The disease is immune to money. If you don’t catch it in time, a mountain of rubies won’t do you a bit of good.”

  “So I’ve been told. What’s the prognosis?”

  “Medically speaking, I’m in deep shit.” Clem coughed again, then resumed, “The skin cancer is gone, but it spread to other parts of my body before the doctors caught it. Next Saturday morning they’re going to remove an unspecified percentage of my pancreas, lymph nodes in various and sundry locations around my body, and my prostate if they don’t like what they see in there. Then they’re going to clean up the infection in my leg and fill in all the holes with silly putty. If I survive, my oncologist says I have a twenty-five percent chance of seeing my sixtieth birthday, the bastard.”

  “I’m very sorry, Clem. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Pardon me for bypassing all the touchy-feely bullshit, but there damn well is. Folks in Ebb are convinced that you can heal the sick. I may be in need of your services.”

  “Come on. You don’t really believe that.”

  “Not exactly, but neither do the townsfolk. They believe you’re one for two: that you lost my granddaughter but revived the mother of your child — twice by some accounts — and they have eyewitnesses. You may recall that one of them is extremely close to me.”

  “But …”

  “No buts, Vernon. You double my chances of survival, even if I discount you to one in three because I’m not your long-lost flame. I’d like to hire you to cure my cancer, and I’m willing to make it worth your while. Name your price.”

  Pearline O’Connor nearly peed in her pants when Clem offered what he did. I doubt that Mr. Moore had a similar urge, but water was a factor in his answer. “I took a walk around town this morning,” he said. “Everyone I met wanted me to pray for rain.”

  “I’m aware of the goddamned drought, but I have a more pressing need. If you turn me down, I could be pushing up daisies within the week. I’m not ready to be ground into bone meal just yet, thank you very much. I have more to do.”

  “You do? Like what?”

  “Have you ever faced death, Vernon? I don’t mean a nickel-and-dime scare like a near-miss traffic accident; I mean nose-to-nose with the Grim Reaper himself.”

  “Yes. Once.”

  “Did it alter your way of thinkin’?”

  “In a hundred different ways, but you’re the one facing death today, not me. I take it that the perspective has changed you, too.”

  “You’re damn right it has. From the day I took control of the National Bank of the Plains to the day I went on chemo, I never had a goddamned minute to myself. I want to get well, and then I want my old life back.”

  “You sound as if you’re surprised, Clem. Did you expect that chairing a major bank would be a walk in the park?”

  “Hell no, of course not.”

  “Then why did you do it?”

  “You need to ask? Because it was my job; that’s why.”

  “Your job?”

  “I thought you knew me, Vernon. I’m a Tucker. Like my father and his father, and his father before him, I dedicated my life to the Tucker Trust. Not only that, I beat the crap out of all of them. I was the best damned custodian in family history, but now I’m ready to cash in.”

  “Are you sure? You’ve never been a man of leisure. What will you do with all the extra time?”

  “Well, I’d like to put a few more heads on the dining-hall wall, that’s for sure, and I’d like to get my golf handicap back down to single digits. I want to return to Europe, too, and spend more time with Wilma. I might even write my memoirs; I haven’t decided yet. All I can say for certain is that I need more time.”

  “But you could’ve done all that years ago. Why didn’t you?”

  “Are you having trouble with your hearing today, Vernon? I’m the seventh Tucker in a direct line stretching back to 1815 and the fifth to control the Tucker Trust. It was my destiny. I fulfilled my goddamned destiny.”

  “Destiny is a myth,” Mr. Moore asserted, almost coldly. “It doesn’t exist.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You were deluding yourself if you believed you were fulfilling some kind of destiny. There’s no such thing.”

  Clem cleared his throat. “I don’t normally like to think of myself as delusional, Vernon.”

  “Perhaps, but destiny makes no sense. It would rob us of two of our greatest gifts: uncertainty and free will. A benevolent God would never take either away from us.”

  “Whoa there, cowpoke. Did you just say ‘God’? What the hell has He ever done for anybody?”

  “How about the creation of heaven and Earth? On the surface, that would seem to be a fairly significant gesture.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that. I’ll even give you Jesus, but what’s He done in the last two thousand years? He never did a thing for me, that’s for sure.”

  “So you believe that God abandoned us. Is that what you think?”

  “You’re damned right I do. I’ve been making my way around this planet for nearly sixty years, and I’ve never seen even a shred of evidence to the contrary.”

  “Then I’m confused. If God deserted us, who determined your destiny? Who turned the dials; who twisted the knobs; who kept you from straying off the chosen path?”

  When my fiancé failed to respond, Mr. Moore carried on. “You’re stuck, Clem. You believe that God has ignored us for two millennia, but you also believe in destiny. That’s a clear contradiction, which is rarely a sign of a healthy belief system.”

  My fiancé laughed, which caused him to cough again. “You can’t be serious. All I remember from Bible school is one contradiction after another. We can argue about it all goddamned morning if you want, or we can discuss my offer. Are you interested or not?”

  After a pause, Mr. Moore said, “I am, but I’m still stuck at contradiction. If God is gone, then how can you believe that I might be able to save your life?”

  “Are you kidding? Have you ever met Lulu Tiller? That woman can talk to the animals; I’ve seen her do it. Mark Breck, Wilma’s grandson, can multiply two four-digit numbers in his head, just like that. And then there’s you, of course, and that’s just the local talent. Go anywhere else and you’ll find people who can pick up a musical instrument for the first time and play it like a virtuoso, people who can read minds, people who can talk to
the dead, and people who can heal the sick by the laying on of hands. The list is endless, but the common denominator isn’t God; it’s people. Tell me if I’m wrong, but you’re a person, you’re right here in my bedroom, and you’re widely reputed to provide the exact service I need. Why in the world would I pray to a runaway God when I can pay you?”

  Mr. Moore mulled over Clem’s tirade, then he replied, “Fair enough. In light of your condition, I’m willing to make a counterproposal.”

  “A counterproposal? Now we’re making progress. Let’s hear it.”

  “If you and I can agree on price, I’ll ask for your life instead of rain. How’s that?”

  “You said my life or rain. Why not both?”

  “That’s my business. Do you want the deal or not?”

  The room was quiet for a while, then my fiancé said, “Do you have a price in mind?”

  “No. I need to do a little research first.”

  “Research? What the hell for? Are you writing a term paper? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly up to my chinny-chin-chin in spare time.”

  “You’re right. I’ll have a price for you in the morning. How’s that?”

  “It’s a deal. I’ll see you tomorrow at the same time.” As Mr. Moore stood to leave, Clem added, “I’d invite you to stay for lunch, but I can’t seem to hold anything down anymore. If you can squeeze in an early word, I’d give an arm and a leg if I could keep some of Marie’s scrambled eggs in my stomach long enough to actually digest them.”

  “An arm and a leg? For scrambled eggs?”

  “Don’t get any bright ideas, Vernon. I expect a fair price from you.”

  “And you shall get one,” Mr. Moore replied. “See you tomorrow.”

  IN CASE YOU HAVE never met any, the rich are not like you and me. The rest of us keep telephones close by because we want to hear from our friends and family, but rich folks have a different point of view. To them, telephones are for calling others; not vice versa. That’s why Clem quit carrying a mobile phone when he became chairman of the National Bank of the Plains, and why he wouldn’t allow a telephone in his bedroom either. He claimed that they made him a slave to the whims of the hoi polloi, whoever they are.