The Scent of Lilacs

by Ann H. Gabhart

  “I’ll write an editorial,” David promised. “But we don’t have much time. Not even a whole month. We should have started planning earlier.”

  “Well, I aimed to get started on it earlier, but you know how the time flies by. It feels like it ought to still be March instead of already June. Anyhow, we can’t go back and do any of that different. And we don’t have to have the fireworks. Just the singing and preaching and maybe the high school band out to play the national anthem. And Boy Scouts with flags. Girl Scouts too. Their cookie sale’s over, isn’t it? Maybe we could have a parade.”

  “Sounds good, Mayor. You checked with the council members to see what they think?”

  “Who cares what they think,” the mayor said shortly and then remembered who he was talking to. “Now, I don’t want to see that in print next week, David, but you know how a couple of them are. If I said we should put a water fountain in the Sahara Desert, they’d say nobody was ever thirsty there and even if they were they could drink sand like their daddies before them and a water fountain would be a misuse of city funds. Now, you know that’s true, David.”

  David laughed. “Well, maybe, but surely everybody will want to get on the patriotic bandwagon.”

  “They might climb aboard if they think they can push me off, but that’s the kind of thing a public servant has to deal with every day. So you’ll beat the drums a little to work up some interest? It’ll have to be in this week or next week.”

  “Sure. Sounds like a great idea. Something to draw the community together.”

  “Great. I’ll start passing the hat around the businesses on Main Street. If we get the parade idea going, that should mean some extra folks downtown shopping. A win-win situation for everybody.”

  “Are you sure it’s not an election year?”

  “If a man wants to stay mayor, every year’s election year,” Mayor Palmor said. “You just don’t have to put ads in the local paper every year.”

  “You pay for them, we’ll run them.”

  “Don’t you worry. I’ll be paying for plenty of ads next campaign, but right now you just make sure you remember who came up with the idea when you’re writing that Fourth of July piece.” The mayor laughed and hung up.

  David dropped the receiver back on the phone and looked at the stacks of papers on his desk. All to-do piles instead of done piles. And he still had to call Matt McDermott. He pushed back from his desk and stood up. That could wait. It all could wait. He needed coffee and a good dose of banter from Wes. He’d get everything done. The Lord wouldn’t throw opportunities his way and then not help him handle them.

  Wes was always a step ahead of Jocie in any conversation and ready for the sneakiest curveball, but the news about Tabitha seemed to surprise him. “Tabitha home? All the way from California?” he said. “She come in on a spaceship like me?”

  “Nope. A bus,” Jocie said.

  “All the way from California! Well, if that ain’t something.” Wes shook his head at the wonder of it. “Saturday the dog prayer. Sunday the sister prayer. You ain’t been praying anything about me, have you?” Wes looked worried.

  “Just the usual everyday stuff. ‘God bless Wes and help him keep from mashing his fingers in the press, and don’t let his spaceship come back for a few more years.’ Nothing special.”

  Wes looked at his ink-stained fingers. “You know, I haven’t got a single purple fingernail. I can’t remember that ever happening since I went to work for your dad. The dog prayer. The sister prayer. The no mashed fingers prayer. What else you been praying about?”

  Jocie shrugged. “I don’t know. That Aunt Love doesn’t burn the house down. Rain for the farmers. Lost people get saved. Sick people get well. I don’t know. Daddy says half the time we don’t expect an answer when we pray anyway. We just do these little prayer chants without thinking about what we’re asking for.”

  “Did you expect to get an answer to the sister prayer?”

  “Well, yeah, but maybe not so soon after the dog prayer. It’s like God just looked down and said, ‘Oh, there’s Jocie. What is it she’s been praying for? Oh yeah, dogs and sisters.’ And wow, here they are.”

  “And what about Tabitha? How was she? She was just a little kid like you last time I saw her.”

  “I’m not a little kid. I’m thirteen.”

  “Okay, so you’re almost grown and in another fifty years you’ll be old like me. But tell me about Tabitha. Did she grow up as pretty as I thought she would?”

  “She’s pretty. Like I remember Mama. Of course, Tabitha didn’t have on any makeup like Mama always wore. Not even lipstick. Nothing except this rose painted on her cheek. But she’d been on a bus for days before she hitched a ride out to our house with a potato chip truck driver. I thought Dad would go bananas over that, but he stayed pretty calm. Then she camped out on the porch till we got home.”

  “Why didn’t she go on in the house?”

  “Said she wasn’t sure we still lived there. As if Dad would have moved without letting her know. Of course, he hadn’t written her for a while, since we didn’t have their latest address. Anyway, she’d had to rough it across country. Said she slept in the bus stations whenever she had a layover.”

  “She came all that way by herself?” Wes shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it. “The Tabby I remember was a timid little thing, scared of her shadow. Bus stations have more than their share of shadows.”

  “I don’t know, but she got here. I guess she might have looked a little nervous last night, but of course, everything was pretty crazy with Zeb barking and Aunt Love quoting Scripture and Dad just staring at her as if he couldn’t believe his eyes and not saying anything.”

  “Your dad speechless? I should’ve been there to see that.”

  “Yeah, I know. Anyway, Tabitha doesn’t look much like I remember. Her hair is long and straight, almost down to her waist. And she had on a funky loose top and bright green pants and sandals. And then that rose painted on her cheek. I think it’s just painted on. I’ve never seen a girl with a real tattoo.”

  “I thought about getting a tattoo once,” Wes said. “But I couldn’t remember what the Jupiterian spaceship laws said about foreign ink coming back into the home planet zone. I didn’t want to have to slice off a piece of my skin before I could go home.”

  “You’re a nut,” Jocie said with a grin and then looked over her shoulder as if she expected Zella or her father to be sneaking up on them. No one was in the pressroom but Wes and her, but still she kept her voice low as she asked Wes, “Do you think she’s a hippie?”

  “Could be. Coming from California and all. Why don’t you ask her?”

  “I might. Later, after she gets rested up. I might ask her lots of things,” Jocie said, thinking about her mother again.

  Nobody liked talking about her mother. Aunt Love said she had never said more than “How do you do?” to her a few times, and you didn’t get to know much about a person that way. Wes said pretty much the same thing, that he didn’t know enough about her to tell Jocie, and her father looked like she was poking him with needles every time she said anything about her mother. Most people in Hollyhill acted as if Jocie had never even had a mother. But Tabitha shouldn’t mind talking about her. And she’d know things no one in Hollyhill could know.

  The door opened, and her father came in the pressroom. “Any coffee left out here?” he asked.

  “You bet, boss. Strong and so thick we can use it for ink if we run low,” Wes said.

  Jocie grabbed a cup off the shelf over the coffeepot and poured her dad a cup. She waved the coffee under her nose before she handed it to her father. “Whew. Maybe this was what Zella had for breakfast instead of prunes.”

  “Nah. This is too much coffee for a mere woman like Zella. It takes a man to swallow something this vile,” Wes said as he finished off what was left in his cup and held it out to Jocie for more.

  “It might be time to clean the pot,” David said as he looked at the black l
iquid in his cup.

  “I’ve heard that takes the taste away,” Wes said.

  “One could only hope.” David took a swig and swallowed with a grimace. “But it does have a way of popping the eyes open.”

  “Wide open,” Wes said. “Which is what a newspaperman wants. Jo was just telling me that Tabby showed up on your doorstep last night. She okay?”

  “Tired. Half sick from the trip, but okay.” David sipped the brew in his cup.

  “She tell you why she’s here?” Wes asked.

  “Not yet,” David said.

  Jocie jumped in. “What do you mean why she’s here? Maybe she just wanted to come. Maybe she wanted to see Dad.”

  “She say she’s just visiting?” Wes asked.

  “I think she’s planning to stay awhile,” David said.

  “Hollyhill’s going to be a change for her. Jo here says she looks like a real California girl.”

  “A flower child for sure,” David said. “But still my daughter.”

  “A father should take care of his daughter.” Wes stared down at his coffee.

  “As best a father can. No father can keep every bad thing from happening,” David said softly.

  “Well, we ain’t gonna get no paper out standing around yammering all day,” Wes said. “Let’s get started on those Bible school ads. Come one, come all. We’ll teach you how to spell Jesus in macaroni on a plate.”

  “Oh, Wes,” Jocie said. “Bible school is fun. You get to eat cookies till you’re sick and sing and play tag. I never met a kid who didn’t like Bible school.”

  “Homemade cookies?” Wes said.

  “Sure. Sometimes even cupcakes.”

  “Am I too old to give it a try?” Wes asked, his smile back in place.

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the preacher,” Jocie said.

  Wes peered over at David. “Do we have one in the room? Am I looking at Mt. Pleasant’s newest and finest? The Right Reverend Brooke?”

  “Brother David will do,” David said.

  “So you got the vote,” Wes said.

  “Actually, one vote short of what I asked for, but one vote didn’t seem to be enough reason to turn them down. It’ll be just a few months till they find somebody full-time. Of course, I haven’t talked to Matt McDermott yet this morning. He doesn’t know Tabitha’s home.”

  “What difference could that make? Give you sermon fodder. The prodigal daughter comes home.” Wes put his hand on Jocie’s shoulder. “And the faithful other daughter is as happy as you are. She’s ready for the feast. You’re going to invite me too, aren’t you?”

  Jocie giggled. She thought of Tabitha waking up in her room, maybe pulling the box of her old stuff out of the closet. Some of the stuff would make her laugh. Some would make her cry. And then she’d go downstairs, where Aunt Love would greet her with some Scripture. Maybe something like “Good sleep is a gift of God.” Jocie wasn’t sure that was in the Bible, but it might be. Maybe with somebody else in the house to pile Scripture on, Aunt Love would let up a little on her.

  Jocie mashed her mouth together to keep from giggling again. Her father and Wes would think she’d been drinking giggle juice. She thought of Zeb digging a hole in the dirt under the porch to stay cool till she got home. She thought of the stars through the window the night before. She remembered that “If you’re happy and you know it” Bible school song. She wanted to clap her hands and stomp her feet and shout amen all at the same time.

  “I’ll plan the feast right after I figure out what we’re going to run on the front page this week,” her father was saying.

  “You got the picture of the twin calves,” Wes said. “And it’s Bible school season in our little holy Hollyhill. You could let Jo here write up something about the wonders of Bible school. She seems to be a fan. We’re sure to have some pictures of kids running wild around a churchyard in the files somewhere.”

  “You could write about Tabitha coming home,” Jocie suggested.

  “I don’t think so,” David said. “Tabitha might not like seeing her name in the paper the week she comes back. Of course, the mayor wants the town to start planning a big Fourth of July bash. I told him I’d do an editorial, but we might just spread it on the front. Make people notice.”

  “How about the new preacher at Mt. Pleasant? New preachers are always newsworthy,” Wes said. “I could come out to the house and take a picture of you and Tabby and Jo and Love like you’d just moved in. Get the whole family. That way everybody would get a look at Tabby and wouldn’t have to come up with excuses to drop by your house to see her with their own eyes.”

  “You may be on to something there,” David said. “Folks are going to be curious for sure.”

  “Well, see. We’ve got the front page more than full already, and we’ve got Little League games and a bumper crop of wedding announcements,” Wes said. “Who says exciting stuff doesn’t happen in Hollyhill?”

  “You, I think,” Jocie said.

  “None of that back talk.” Wes gave her a little shove toward the composing table where the Bible school ads were waiting. “You ain’t got time. The presses have to start rolling tomorrow afternoon, and if I ain’t missing my guess, you haven’t got the first word of that Bible school piece written. Not to mention the ads set up.”

  “And maybe I could interview the mayor and some others about the Fourth,” Jocie said. “We studied about it in school, but that was just history book stuff.”

  “Getting our town leaders to tell a kid what Independence Day means to them. That might work. And I could hunt up some kids to see what they think Independence Day is. Great idea, Jocie,” her father said.

  “I could start with you,” Jocie said.

  “I better save my thunder for my editorial. I have to fill up that page too.”

  “Well, then how about you, Wes? Just for practice. What’s the Fourth mean to you?”

  “Up on Jupiter, we don’t have Independence Day, but . . .”

  “Come on, Wes. You know I can’t write about Jupiter for this,” Jocie interrupted him. “It has to be all American pie. Stuff like that.”

  “Okay, no Jupiter history today. You might have liked the story, but oh well. If it’s Earth stuff you want, it’s Earth stuff you’ll get.” Wes looked at the press behind him as if words might be forming on the iron pieces. “Fireworks. Hot dogs. Ripe, juicy watermelons. Naps.”

  Jocie had grabbed a pencil to take notes. She looked up. “Naps?”

  “Yeah, while the politicians tell you how great they are. You’ll have to get toothpicks to prop open your eyes when you talk to the mayor,” Wes said.

  “I’ll tell him he has to limit it to five things, no more than two words each.”

  “He couldn’t even tell you his name without using more words than that,” Wes said. He raised his voice a couple of octaves. “Mayor Raymond Palmor, that’s me. But people just call me Buzz in the best little town in America. Because I made it that way. Single-handedly. Don’t forget that when you vote next year. Keep the Buzz going in Hollyhill.”

  “Don’t let him hear that one,” David said as he turned to go back to his office. “He’d want us to change the name of the Banner to the Buzz Banner.”

  Jocie settled down to work on the ads, but while she was cutting and cropping and fitting in the words, she kept thinking about the other stories she was supposed to write. The Bible school piece would be easy. She had lots of experience with Bible school. The summer she was eight, the perfect Bible school age, she’d gone to ten different Bible schools. By the time summer was over, she could have taught the Bible lessons blindfolded, and she had a whole shelf full of egg carton caterpillars, pencil holders made from soup cans, macaroni-encrusted plates, and coasters with her picture stuck in the bottom.

  Her Mama Mae had made a fuss over each of them as if they were works of art. When Mama Mae had died the following fall, Jocie had slipped one of the coasters into the coffin when nobody was looking. She could still remember
how stiff and wrong her grandmother’s arm had felt when she’d touched it. She’d had nightmares about it for months after that, but she’d never been sorry she’d put the coaster picture in the coffin. She didn’t want her grandmother to forget what she looked like before she saw her again in heaven.

  They ran the papers Tuesday afternoon. Even Zella got her hands black assembling the pages fresh off the press for dis- tribution, but she was an old pro at it, folding papers long before David or Wes had even thought about working in a newspaper office. On Tuesdays she always wore a navy skirt and white button-up blouse that somehow stayed white. She never scratched her nose or rubbed her eyes until the last paper was folded, while the rest of them generally ended a folding session spotted like Dalmatian pups.

  For David it was always the best moment of the work week when he took the first paper off the pile and sat down and unfolded it as if he were on his front porch settling in to catch up on the town’s news. As he looked over this week’s front page, he nodded his approval.

  Jocie blew out a long breath and smiled. Her piece on Bible schools was on the bottom of the front page. The picture of the twin calves had made the top fold of the paper. Twin calves happened only once in a blue moon, and although everybody in the county had probably heard about the calves by now, David was banking on them wanting to see a picture for proof.

  They hadn’t been able to find a kids-in-the-churchyard picture, so Wes had designed a VBS logo that David figured some of the churches would cut out to use in their Sunday bulletins. Wes had worked in a Bible, a smiling kid’s face, and a cross. David pulled the paper up for a closer look at the top of the S. “Wes, tell me I don’t see snake eyes on that S.”

  “Snakes are biblical. One old serpent had a right important part at the beginning, I’m told,” Wes said.

  “Snake? Where’s a snake?” Jocie said as she grabbed a paper off the pile.