by Robert Dalby
Just as Mr. Choppy had predicted, the Nitwitt network was up and running throughout the night, and Gaylie Girl had become Conflagration Central by virtue of her getting all the girls out of their beds at the ungodliest of hours. Not an easy feat to accomplish. From time to time, Mr. Choppy had given her updates on his cell phone as he had promised, always careful to include the status of How’s Plants? and Euterpe’s studio. There, at least, the news continued to be good. Neither had been remotely threatened at any point, and the fire had finally been contained and restricted to the north and west sides of The Square after a grueling two-hour battle.
“Please come on home now,” Gaylie Girl pleaded to Mr. Choppy over the phone as his four-fifteen report rolled around. “You need to take the advice you’ve been giving everyone else from the beginning. There’s nothing more you can do right now. You’ve done your duty as Mayor and stood on the front lines for the troops longer than most elected officials would ever think of doing. But now it’s time for you to get some rest, Hale. You’re going to need a clear head and your wits about you in the days ahead. We all will.”
He had finally conceded his exhaustion and told her he would give up his terrible vigil. “I don’t know where we go from here, though,” he concluded just before hanging up.
In truth, Gaylie Girl didn’t either. But her ordeal had been made more bearable by Petey’s appearance at her doorstep around three-fifteen in rumpled clothes, his eyes half lidded.
“I don’t care what you say, Mother, I’m coming over to be with you,” he had insisted over the phone earlier. “I haven’t been able to get back to sleep since you called the first time. If Myrtis and Euterpe are any indication out here at Evening Shadows, your Nitwitt friends are looking to you for answers every fifteen minutes, and I don’t think you should be handling that all by your lonesome. Last time I checked, you weren’t on the CNN payroll as a correspondent, and this isn’t exactly 9/11. Though it probably feels like it to most of us. Besides, I need some advice myself. I’m dreading breaking the news to Meta about the gallery when it gets to be a decent hour. She’s going to be devastated. So I’ll be over in a few.”
Sipping their coffee at Gaylie Girl’s kitchen counter some twenty-five minutes later, mother and son resumed their conversation, trying their best to make some sense of it all.
“It’s so weird, Mother,” Petey was saying, running his hand through his disheveled hair. “I’ve been down here in Second Creek off and on for only six months, and I feel the pull of the place in a way I would never have imagined. Oh sure, I know I’ve bought Pond-Raised Catfish as an investment, and running it has gotten all my executive juices flowing but good. And, yeah, Sis and I have both been set straight after having our noses in the air about Hale and anything connected with the state of Mississippi. But we finally saw the light this past summer during all your wedding hoopla, thanks to you and your Nitwitts. I give all of you full credit for shaking the snobbery out of us. You know as well as I do that the sun had always risen and set in Lake Forest and environs for me. That seems like decades ago now, though. I want to know how this little town has gotten to me so fast.”
Gaylie Girl was stirring her coffee while looking past him, and then she decided to tell him all about her Santa Fe feeling. “I was so surprised at how well your father and I treated each other when we were out there vacationing in New Mexico together. The town brought out the best in us somehow, and the same thing has happened to me and Hale here in Second Creek the second time around. I also think it’s happened to you and Meta. It’s just part of what makes this place tick.”
Petey gave an ironic little chuckle and gazed up at the ceiling. “Meta and I were just looking forward so much to opening up her gallery and then fixing the upstairs as our cozy little love nest. We were going to walk out on the balcony every morning with our mugs of steaming coffee and gaze out over The Square as it slowly came to life. That old brick and lacework building was beginning to seem like an old friend we hadn’t seen in a while, and we were determined to lift its sagging bones. It was going to symbolize our spiffy new life together.”
“I know, son, I know. But just be thankful you hadn’t moved any of your things in yet.” Gaylie Girl took a sip of her coffee while searching for something to lighten the mood and soon found it. “You were insured, of course. You won’t take the loss.”
“Yes. But you know money’s not the issue here. I know we can buy something else downtown and start all over. Seems funny to be putting it that way when we hadn’t even really begun, though. It’s just that—well, I trust this fire wasn’t any kind of omen for my third trip to the altar.”
Gaylie Girl’s maternal instincts kicked in, and she moved forward to wrap him up in her arms, letting the strength of her hug speak for her. The result was that neither of them was willing to let go for quite a while.
“Mother, I really want things to work out this time,” he said, pulling back slightly to give her an earnest smile. “I freely admit I blew it with Sharon and Marny big-time. If this doesn’t work out with Meta, I think I might be permanently headed toward ‘rich but lonely old codger’ status.”
His self-deprecation generated some much-needed laughter. “That’s not going to happen, son. Renza and I have reached an understanding as future in-laws, and we came to the conclusion that the four of us are definitely a match.”
Petey brightened further. “Yeah, Meta told me that her mother’s finally come around and has stopped reading her the riot act about all her choices in life. Yesterday evening, she said she had the best conversation she’s had with her mother in years, and that’s saying something. If you had anything at all to do with that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“Just one more thing a mother is supposed to do for her children,” Gaylie Girl added, taking a cute little bow.
But Petey did not remain upbeat for long, as a thoughtful frown crept into his face. “Who’s going to tell Sis about this? I’ll call her up later after I talk to Meta, if you want.”
Gaylie Girl was emphatic, however. “Let me do it. Your sister and I have been keeping in touch constantly about the caroling progress. Amanda just adored The Square on your visits down this summer. That’s what really won her over to Second Creek. You know how she is about architecture and historic buildings. She’ll be every bit as heartbroken as Meta will, I’m sure. But I want to be the one to handle it.”
“Speaking of the caroling, what are you going to do about it, Mother? All those choirs practicing so hard, all that elaborate planning and coordination, not to mention those church bus tours that are in the bag. And now this. Can you salvage something?”
Gaylie Girl’s sigh was clearly full of pessimism as she tied her terry-cloth robe at her waist and folded her arms. “Hale has already told me most of The Square will definitely be off-limits for a long time while the cleanup is taking place. After that, it’s up in the air as to what gets rebuilt and restored, but that kind of thing always takes money and patience. I don’t see how we can pull off Caroling in The Square with all that to contend with.”
“Hey, you thought outside the box to come up with the event in the first place. Maybe you could do it again and surprise the hell out of everybody with something brilliant,” Petey said, offering a ray of hope.
“I suppose I could try.” But her reply was as subdued as her resolve. For much like The Square, itself, she was substantially burned out.
Though they both needed to get at least a few hours of sleep before heading down to the courthouse and officially tackling the aftermath of the devastation the night before, Gaylie Girl and Mr. Choppy were unable to do much more than lie in bed and stare at the ceiling once he’d finally returned. She winced at every one of his plaintive sighs as he tossed and turned, and she was hardly more relaxed herself. But it was that conversation she’d had with Euterpe somewhere in the midst of their Nitwitt networking that kept resonating with her in particular, and she needed to bounce it off someone to clear th
e decks.
“As long as we’re both not sleeping, sweetheart,” she finally ventured, “I wanted to run something past you.”
He wrestled with his pillow for the umpteenth time and slid down to face her squarely. “If your brain is still runnin’ on like mine is, we might as well. I just can’t get the images of that fire outta my head. It felt like the end of the world to me. Or maybe some bad dream.”
Gaylie Girl inched closer as his last words spurred her on. “That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about—the dream I had tonight that started turning into a nightmare. It’s receded in my memory a bit now, but I could swear I was on the verge of having it all leaked to me somehow.”
“Havin’ what leaked to you?”
“The fire. Or more precisely, the fact that it was headed full speed for The Square.” She gave him the details of her dream just before the phone call from Garvin Braswell had awakened them both. Then she awaited his reaction.
“A strange coincidence, maybe?” he offered after a brief silence. “Who can explain dreams?”
She told him about Euterpe winning the Denver Lee McQueen sweepstakes a while back with her fevered dream about frantic dancing that came very close to what had actually taken place among the Nitwitts that particular Saturday. “Euterpe and I discussed the significance of both our dreams a couple of hours ago, and she once again expressed the notion that there is something out there in the universe always looking after us whether we acknowledge it or not.”
“I can go along with that,” Mr. Choppy answered. “My mother sure believed it, and that was the way she raised me. I have to say that my faith in somethin’ greater than myself kept me goin’ all those decades we were apart and I was still very much in love with you.”
Gaylie Girl snuggled right up against the warmth his racing blood was generating and kissed him gently on the lips. “And I was just thinking that I wasn’t much prone to probing beneath the surface of my life of luxury until we got reconnected. Euterpe says you have to be open to the universe to receive its messages when they come your way. Still, I think there are some things I’d be frightened to know about ahead of time. That sort of ignorance would surely be bliss. Euterpe seems to be able to deal with her prescience very well. I’m finding my way with mine, I suppose. If that’s what it is, I mean.” Then she pulled away slightly as her philosophical ramblings ended with an unexpected exit line. “You didn’t mention your father.”
“What about him?”
“You said you got your religious beliefs from your mother. Didn’t your father believe in anything?”
Mr. Choppy managed a surprising little chuckle. “Heh. My dad believed in sellin’ groceries and doin’ a damned good job of it at the Piggly Wiggly. And that also meant being there to hand out free food and water for Second Creekers in time of disaster. Lotsa folks thought of Hale Dunbar Senior as his own private Red Cross whenever one of our gruesome tornadoes and other violent storms practically wrecked the town. You could also say my dad was the kinda man whose deeds always spoke louder than his words. Everybody else might be gnashin’ their teeth when the weather turned against Second Creek as it so often has over the years, but he just rolled up his sleeves in workmanlike fashion and got busy helpin’ people every time out.”
“Like father, like son, Mister Mayor!”
They embraced further, wrapping their arms around each other. But they were far too tired and burdened to undertake anything more physical, sensing that tomorrow and too many days thereafter were going to take a lot out of them.
Eleven
Ashes and Switches
And so it came to pass in the dwindling days of 2002 that the sun came up on Monday morning as it always did. But the sight it greeted below in Second Creek, Mississippi, was hideous to behold. Where once had stood unique brick and lacework structures all in a row and fashioned by artisans long dead from a simpler era long past, there were only gutted, blackened ruins. Ashes covered everything from charred beams to The Square sidewalks like a fine gray snow, eerily draining much of the color from the landscape. Even buildings that had not actually burned showed evidence of water damage from the pressure hoses, and the overall effect was of a war zone reeking of acrid, lingering smoke.
For as long as it had burned and even after it had finally been doused, the fire had been the ruthless victor. But sadly, the spoils belonged only to the broken hearts of Second Creekers. It was perhaps not an understatement to say that the Spirit of Second Creek had been seriously wounded. Not fatally, of course. Nothing could take Second Creek out that easily—not with its proven resilience and fortitude. But on this cold, drab December morning, here was yet another unexpected disaster to overcome in a history replete with them.
Mr. Choppy was in the midst of scanning the two-page Second Creek Fire Department incident report that Garvin Braswell had left on his desk earlier that morning. It was just past ten o’clock, and he was still feeling the impact of too little sleep and too much stress. His Gaylie Girl Friday soon appeared in the doorway looking drained and disconsolate as well.
“Any surprises?” she said, collapsing into one of the armchairs across from him as he put down the stapled papers and sighed.
“No. Business as usual. It was first called in at 2:14. Police car patrolling The Square caught the first glimpse. Braswell’s company was the first to arrive three minutes later. It took an hour and fifty-one minutes to get it under control. Too soon to determine area of origin or heat source or any of the rest a’ that. There’s gonna be plenty a’ damage with at least a dozen buildings affected—in the millions, I’m afraid. Only upside is no injuries or fatalities, which is to be expected considerin’ the hour. Thank God it didn’t happen in the middle of the day with The Square up and runnin’ full blast. And then Garvin’s note he’s clipped on here says it’ll take a coupla days to do a complete investigation into the cause. Can’t imagine it would be arson, but stranger things’ve happened.”
Gaylie Girl caught his gaze intently. He knew exactly what she was going to say, and it made him squirm in his seat for an instant or two. “Give me a bottom line here, Hale. Is Caroling in The Square officially kaput?”
“Sweetheart, we just can’t have people wanderin’ around out there anywhere near that mess, I can tell you that right now. I’m just as sorry as I can be to have to say it, but The Square isn’t gonna belong to the public for a while now. We’ll need a staging area for the demolition crews, so this’ll hurt the businesses that weren’t even damaged. No, I think you’d better make some other arrangements for those choirs now that this has happened. Oh, and break it to Lady Roth gently that we’re not gonna have her up on top of the courthouse roof now. We gotta check out every structure around The Square anyway. That’ll be just as good an excuse as any to use.”
Gaylie Girl was touching her eyelids with the tips of her fingers and shaking her head slowly. “You’re right to remind me about her. She’s just as likely as not to insist on appearing as the Star of Bethlehem anyway. Knowing her, she’ll view the fire as a plot to throw a wrench in her illustrious career. We’ll be making her give up the role of a lifetime.”
“Yeah, she probably won’t go quietly, but if she gives you too much trouble, you just tell her to come to me,” Mr. Choppy added, allowing himself a brief smirk. Then he leaned in and assumed a more stoic attitude. “You’re just gonna have to postpone that ‘Santa Fe’ feelin’ for a while longer. I don’t know why either of us thought Second Creek would change its spots when we got into office. Just when you think you’ve got this town tamed and purrin’, it likes to bare its claws, doesn’t it?” He made a sudden sour face. “Hey, what am I sayin’ here? Second Creek’s no alley cat. I’ve got no business puttin’ that kinda face on this gentle place I love so much. It’s just that it’s smudged with all that soot today.”
But Gaylie Girl chose not to answer. Instead, she seemed to be adding things up in her head with a restless fervor, cutting her eyes this way and that as she mov
ed her index finger back and forth in midair. At some point, the hint of a smile crept into the corners of her mouth.
“I’m doing a diagram of The Square in my head,” she finally explained. “All of the choirs chose the north and west balconies for their caroling, and those are now mostly gone. Couldn’t we try to move everything to the south and east sides? I know there aren’t nearly as many balconies along those blocks, and there’s some cleanup over there, too. So it would all be more difficult logistically. We’d have to okay it with those merchants here at the last minute and get all the choirs on board, but maybe you’d let the Nitwitts give it the old college try?”
Mr. Choppy conjured up a polite smile, but his tone was unyielding. In that respect, he was granting his wife no special quarter. “It’s my responsibility to make judgment calls for the safety and well-bein’ of all Second Creekers as well as the tourists that come here, Gaylie Girl. I just can’t in good conscience let people mill around out there as if it was our everyday, charmin’ little Square with souvenirs aplenty available. And I hate to say it, but human nature bein’ what it is and all, I betcha you’d have more people showin’ up to gawk at all the damage than there’d be payin’ attention to any carols within a five-mile radius.”
“Oh, I know you’re probably right,” Gaylie Girl said, sounding completely resigned. “I was just hoping against hope for a reprieve of some kind.”
“My daddy once told me that you can always find more people wantin’ to look at car wrecks out on the highway than at new cars in the showroom. I’ve gotta err here on the side a’ prudence. If anything happened to anybody as a result of my decidin’ to let this go on, I couldn’t live with myself. Not to mention that the city would probably be liable. I don’t have to tell you that folks run to trial lawyers these days when somebody sneezes on ’em and they come down with a cold.”