by Lisa Wingate
“Come on, Mallory,” Chrissy beckoned, turning and walking backward. “You can get a good look at Firefly Island from downshore by the causeway.”
I hesitated, feeling a little guilty. Daniel, Nick, and I had so little time together as it was. I wanted to watch as Nick explored the new stretch of territory and tried out the fishing worms he’d been keeping in his pocket.
“Go ahead,” Daniel urged. “We’ll be here.”
Chrissy gave Tag a petulant look. “See how nice he is?”
Tag scowled, and I tried to politely pretend I didn’t notice.
“He’s such a poo,” Chrissy complained as we walked toward the island, where a manmade causeway and a private road connected Firefly to the rest of the world. Up close, the earthen-and-stone causeway was impressive.
“Wow, that thing is massive,” I commented. At some time in the past, a great deal of effort had gone into making sure the island was accessible. Now an iron fence, a locked gate, and a plethora of No Trespassing signs prevented any public entry.
“Yeah, no kidding.” Chrissy agreed. “I’d so love to see what he’s hiding out there. Floyd’s been working on the ranch forever, and he says that Jack’s second wife, the one who disappeared”—she punctuated the word with finger quotes—“along with Jack’s little stepson used to spend a lot of time on Firefly. It was, like, her favorite place on the ranch. There’s a cabin on the island, and she’d go there a few days at a time. Probably whenever she wanted to get away from Jack West, I bet. Anyhow, after she and her son vanished”—finger quotes again—“off the face of the earth, Jack put up the gate across the causeway and all the No Trespassing signs. Tag doesn’t like me to say it, but I think he hid somethin’ there—somethin’ really bad.”
A chill danced over me as we stopped walking and stood looking across a short expanse of water at the shores of Firefly Island.
Chrissy pointed. “You can see the roof of the cabin through the trees a little bit, if you look … right there, see?” She glanced over her shoulder toward the men, as if to make sure they were still nearby. “Lights move around on the island at night, too. Tag says I’m making it up, but I’m not. One night, Tag and me were out lookin’ for a lost colt in that pasture just across from your house. I was right there on the hill where the old homestead is, and I looked across toward the lake, and I saw a light moving around on the island. I don’t believe in ghosts, strictly speakin’. My mama raised me in church, but it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up like hen scruff, I’ll tell you.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up, too. I stared into the tree shadows of Firefly Island and wondered what might be concealed in the thick growth of elms and pin oaks. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. It was surreal, being here looking at that place I’d had so many strange dreams about. In the dreams, I was standing right where I was now—on the shore near the causeway.
A shiver went through me, and I almost felt as if I could see the blond woman from my dream, watching me. “We should probably go back,” I suggested, and Chrissy was already turning around, as if this place made her uncomfortable, too.
On the return trip down the shore, she filled me in on ranch history and invited us to Sunday services at the little church in Moses Lake. I’d been thinking about issues like church. One thing this upside-down life in Moses Lake had done was begin to cure me of the notion that I could get by on my own, that I didn’t need anyone’s help. I’d sent up more prayers in the last month than in the past five years combined. Even that seemed wrong—the hallmark of an overbooked, self-centered life. There had been people around me who’d needed prayer over the years. I just hadn’t thought to give them any.
Now I didn’t have much choice, other than to pray. I had control of almost nothing in my life. Prayer seemed the only option left.
Nick and McKenna were playing in the shallows with a minnow net and a bucket when we reached them. Nick’s face lit up as we came closer. “Wook!” he breathed in sheer amazement, then headed toward me. He was carrying a green bucket in a bow-legged run, the water inside rocking and sloshing.
“What’ve you got?” My heart filled with Nick’s smile, with the look of sheer adoration he gave me as he lugged the bucket. In the space of an instant, I felt it again—the crumbling of an old part of me, the growth of something new. The changing of my heart into a mother’s heart. It happened at the strangest times, in the most unexpected ways. Nick looked at me, and the love I felt for him was almost painful in its intensity. I’d never known I had it in me, the capacity to love this way. I adored my nieces, of course. I always had. But when Nick looked at me, my mind tumbled through nights and mornings, seasons and years in the future. I saw birthday parties and first days of school and first girlfriends, Christmas mornings filled with surprises, Easter egg hunts, bedtime stories to read, bad dreams to kiss away, goals to nurture, hurts to soothe, joys to cheer, and nights side-by-side trying to figure out algebra homework …
I saw a future like none I’d ever imagined. I wanted it, every minute of it. Even whatever time we would spend here in Moses Lake.
Leaning over as Nick drew close with the bucket, I felt the soft, golden glow of the moment. I made a promise to myself and God. I won’t wish away another minute. Not a single one. I will build a life here, in this …
Nick stumbled over a rock, the bucket sloshed sideways, and a wave of water headed my way. The moment drifted by in slow motion—the water catching the sunlight, tiny, silver fish glittering as they sailed through the air, the bucket tumbling end over end, Nick’s hands splaying out, and then …
The wave hit. I tasted dirt and algae. Something wet, scaly, and squiggly slid down my shirt. I stumbled backward, sputtering, spitting, and squealing.
Nick screamed, “Don’t squish the fishie, Tante M!”
Chrissy grabbed the front of my shirt and tried to shake the fish loose. McKenna scrambled to shore and started rescuing the stranded captives, and near the pickup, Tag slapped his leg and laughed. My husband, my soul mate, the gypsy-king love of my life who had, just over a month ago, sworn to honor, cherish, and protect me … the man I’d just promised God I would appreciate every moment of my life from here on out … doubled over and laughed right along with him.
Some prayers are tested before you even get them out of your fishy-tasting mouth. Either that, or God was telling me to lighten up on the philosophical rhetoric and just enjoy this singular, unexpected instant in my perfectly imperfect life.
The tiny fish fell into my hand, and I tossed him into the bucket, then Nick and I dashed to the shore to add water, laughing as we ran.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
—Maya Angelou
(Left by Sierra McVeigh, who’ll be a famous writer one day)
Chapter 12
The morning after our swim near Firefly Island, I woke with the dreadful realization of what I’d done.
I, Mallory Hale Everson, had broken my own sacred oath.
I had joined the social media revolution.
In my rush of ridiculous Zen and overwhelming personal epiphany after the evening by the lakeshore, I had come home and looked up the password for the blog Kaylyn and Josh had created for me. When I opened it, there were the photos of the ranch around the edges, and up top, the picture of me with my cartoon Annie Oakley cowgirl body had been replaced with a photo of me standing near the old homestead where I centered my mouse-release program. The image was lopsided and snapped from a funky angle, so that I looked like the Jolly Green Giant of mouse control. Nick had taken it.
In the quiet of midnight, with Daniel and Nick sound asleep, I’d started writing about the cataclysmic shift of the soul I had experienced along the shores of Moses Lake. I wrote about the sound of water stroking earth, the rustle of the evening breeze, the slow darkening of the day, the kids laughing, the unexpected splash from the bucket, the scramble to rescue dispossessed fish, including the one in my shirt. I wrote abo
ut the first stars twinkling to life above Chinquapin peaks, a fingernail moon rising, a gentle breeze breathing perfection into the air, the sky, and the night.
In those moments, I’d known that something new was being formed in me, too, created so gently that I hadn’t even realized it until that evening by the shore. I was becoming Nick’s mom in every possible way.
I wrote about the rush of love, the changing of a woman into a mother—a process that happened without conscious thought, as if the heart knew what the mind and body took time to learn. Love is the one thing that matters. That makes everything else matter. That makes everything worthwhile.
When I closed the laptop and trundled off to bed at two in the morning, I was filled with catharsis, heady with it, even. I felt as if I had created something beautiful, experienced a breakthrough, shared myself in a completely new way.
In the cold light of morning, I wanted to shoot myself in the head. I had become one of those people—the sort who poured their lives onto an electronic page for the entire world to see.
I hurried to the computer to erase the whole thing, but in my state of euphoria the night before, I’d sent out email invitations to my sisters, who were on the east coast and by this time already active on their computers. Kaylyn and Josh had been automatically notified of the activity on the blog site, and last night via iPhone, they’d shared the news with the Gymies, one of whom had worked on The Hill with me. She’d shared the link around various Congressional offices. Word was spreading like wildfire.
A strange thing happened over the next few days as I contemplated tossing myself off the cliffs and into the lake. People actually liked what I wrote. They sent notes and left comments on the blog, and when they did, the feeling of connection was heady and satisfying. Like an addict looking for a fix, I found myself checking the page several times a day. In the comments, I learned things I’d never known about old friends and former coworkers. Many had experienced similar life epiphanies in situations alike and different from my own.
I was not alone in the human condition.
And then, on the third day in the dark of midnight, I did it again.
I blogged about taking Nick to help little McKenna and her dad bottle-feed an orphaned foal they were keeping in their backyard. I wrote about the interdependence we all share, how none of us are meant to go along the path alone. I wrote about the vulnerability of the little spindle-legged colt, about how he’d been found standing in a ranch pasture alongside his dead mother. A middle-aged couple from Dallas, city folk on their way to a bed-and-breakfast down in the Hill Country, had seen him. They’d taken the time to turn around and make sure everything was all right. They’d saved his life with a short detour and less than an hour of their time. How often, I wondered at the end of the story, do we pass by a need, a life that could be changed with the smallest bit of effort? And it’s not that we don’t care but that we’re driving so fast, all we see are the fence posts flashing by on the side of the highway?
Maybe the first step in changing the world is in slowing down and looking through the fences.
People liked the story of the orphaned foal. I’d added photos, and people loved those. Nick, McKenna, and Mugsy the foal were cute together, the giant milk bottle extended between them. Oddly enough, I had some talent for photography. I loved working with the lighting and the angles. I had started carrying the camera everywhere I went, looking for shots.
Later that week, when Jack West reappeared at the ranch and life turned upside-down again, photography and the blog became my lifeline. Kaylyn and Josh added new photos to the background and beefed up The Frontier Woman headline with fancy scrolling that looked like something from the Old West. More followers signed on. Former coworkers who were still slogging away in dank, cave-like basement offices enjoyed reading about the wild life. Suddenly the world that had been small and isolated was large again, filled with people who wondered about what might happen when a former apartment-dwelling city girl was dropped in the middle of ten thousand acres without a superhighway or a Starbucks in sight.
Even the Binding Through Books ladies found me, while thumbing through Moses Lake Google searches. Cindy, Paula, and Alice were back in Moses Lake for their annual sisters’ vacation. They were scheduled for a photo shoot with a photographer from Woman’s Day magazine, doing a story about their Binding Through Books club. Since I hadn’t been able to persuade my own sisters to do a long-distance book club with me, they offered to let me come watch the photo shoot. I took them up on it, because I thought it would be a great story. It wasn’t every day a major magazine sent someone to Moses Lake.
I stayed up all night reading the Binding Through Books sisters’ latest book selection, then I went to Alice’s well-weathered cottage on the other side of the lake. Somehow, I ended up making it into a few of the photographer’s shots, and two days later, I was on the magazine’s Web site, along with a little blurb about my blog and how I’d come to be The Frontier Woman.
The blog had several hundred new followers almost instantly. Josh and Kaylyn were amazed.
“The Frontier Woman’s got a ton of hits for a site that’s only been active a few weeks. I’m not surprised, though. It’s like you’re writing about a whole different world,” Kaylyn told me on the phone as she and Josh lingered over lunch in their office, reading about my photo shoot with the Binding Through Books sisters and yesterday’s cattle roundup at the main ranch headquarters.
An amazing thing had happened to me in my first weeks of blogging. Because I was writing about adventures, I started not only to seek them out, but to see them all around me. In seeing the adventure of this place, I’d begun to truly live my life, rather than hiding from it and complaining about it. “The cattle roundup was really western, like in-the-movies western,” I told Kaylyn. “And, hey, did you see the pictures of the wild turkey nest outside the back gate? Nick and I found it on our walk down to the creek a couple days ago. She has eggs now. I asked our neighbor, Al Beckenbauer, and she said gestation on a wild turkey egg is about a month. Nick and I started a calendar, so we could mark off the days.” Among other things, I’d finally made that call to Cowgirl Al and admitted that my mouse and vermin eradication program was not working. I needed help. We’d purchased supplies at the hardware store and started working on the closets.
“I saw the picture of the nest,” Kaylyn answered. “That’s so awesome. Josh says to tell you he ordered a turkey sandwich in your honor today.”
I heard Josh in the background adding, “Subway Fresh Fit, baby. Tell her I’m eating healthy so I can get on a horse and round up some doggies whenever I get a chance to come down there.”
“I heard him,” I told Kaylyn. “Tell him he’s welcome anytime. Now that Al’s helping me fix the closets, houseguests might not wake up to the Wild Kingdom. Al says the only thing to do is line the closets with paneling, then caulk everything and paint it all to seal out the smell. And seal around the doors, windows, and plumbing really well. We redid Nick’s closet and the hall closet last week. This week, the master. I passed the information on to Alice, for her lake house, and now I’m the book sisters’ hero. They found a scorpion in the bathtub right before the photographer came.”
“I sense another how-to story coming on,” Kaylyn laughed. “You’re, like, the home handywoman anymore. Nice job on the tile around the bathroom sink, by the way.”
“Can you come do my bathroom?” Josh chimed in, and all of a sudden he was louder. Kaylyn had put me on speaker. “Hey, look, the cattle roundup has sixty-nine comments already. The turkey might lose the top spot. And there’s nineteen new followers. Who are these people?”
I’d wondered that, too. Who were all these people, and why were they so interested in life here? “Al showed me how to do the tile. She says as long as I don’t—and I quote—‘Point that dadgum camera at her and try to put her on the blog,’ she’ll help me. I’m telling you, that woman knows how to do everything.” I’d become enamored with Al Beckenbau
er, in a strange sort of way. She was amazingly competent, and for whatever reason, she’d decided to take me under her wing. It was hard to say why, because we were as different as night and day. I like to talk; Al preferred to work in silence. My refrigerator was filled with prepackaged convenience foods; Al churned her own butter and grew her own pesticide-free vegetables. I knew nothing about animals; Al surrounded herself with them. In addition to a half-dozen mismatched dogs and countless cats, she had a pet pig and miniature horse that, as far as I could gather, wandered in and out of her house, pretty much at will.
“So, did I tell you we’re making goat’s milk soap in the next few days?” I asked. “I might even learn to milk a goat.”
“Uh-oh,” Kaylyn quipped. “I feel a future YouTube sensation coming on.”
“Jerry Springer moment. Goats unplugged,” Josh added.
The three of us laughed together, and I felt strangely euphoric, my emotions taking an upsweep, like a roller-coaster car whipping over a hill and around a curve. I couldn’t stop laughing.
“It wasn’t that funny,” Josh observed.
“I n-n-n-know,” I giggled out. “Stuff just—” giggle-giggle-snort “—hits me … some … some … sometimes … lately. I’m s-s-s-sorry.”
I was still trying to catch my breath as we signed off. Even with my newfound interest in being The Frontier Woman, I wondered if I really was a basket case. Maybe I was becoming like one of those miners who’d stayed too long in a shack in the gold fields, all alone. For the most part, now that Jack had returned and once again clamped his iron fist over the ranch, my days were just Nick and me. Daniel was tied up with Jack and still trying to establish what his job was here. So far, they’d spent time doing everything from driving to San Antonio to look at farm equipment, to picking peaches from a ragged tree near a tumbledown homestead. Jack wanted the peaches to become peach pie. Right now a whole bucketful of them was slowly going bad in my refrigerator.