Firefly Island

by Lisa Wingate

  “Mallory and her husband moved here recently,” Reverend Hay explained, motioning to Daniel and Nick, who were talking with Nester, one of the fishermen from the Waterbird. “Daniel’s working out at the West Ranch, and Mallory writes that blog that …” Birdie trotted up and spirited Reverend Hay away before he could finish the sentence.

  Mama B studied me with concern that even Coke-bottle glasses couldn’t hide.

  The middle-aged woman behind her, whom I now recognized from some of my visits to the hardware store, leaned over Mama B’s shoulder to get in on the conversation. From beneath a helmet-head of blond hair, she flicked an appraising look back and forth between Daniel and me. “Ohhhh … you’re the ones at the old ranch headquarters. Well, I thought I recognized ye-ew. You’ve been in the store quite a bit, haven’t ye-ew? I’m usually back in the office, but I do try to poke my head out once in a while. Sorry I’ve missed ye-ew.”

  “That’s all right.” Was it my imagination, or had Daniel and I suddenly become a whole lot more interesting?

  The woman reached around Mama B to shake my hand. “I’m Claire Anne Underhill, by the way.” Her fingers were loose and limp against my palm, barely going halfway in.

  Claire Anne Underhill glanced Daniel’s way again, her eyes traveling up and down, and I felt oddly defensive. What was behind that look? “Well, I’d heard that Jack West had hired himself somebody who looked a whole lot like his son, and I’ll be a June bug if that’s not the truth.” She stepped out of line to get an even better look at Daniel. “He is a dead ringer for Jack West’s son. Pitiful to have all that money and be at odds with your family, don’t you think?”

  Claire Anne’s hand traveled back to her own body, her perfectly manicured nails toying with the diamond pendant on her necklace. “I don’t know if anyone’s filled you in on the history there, but word is that Jack West financed Mason’s campaign for state senate years ago, and then Jack expected favors. When Mason wouldn’t compromise himself, Jack disowned him, and they stopped speaking. Can you imagine that? Putting your only son in such a position? It’s no wonder that wicked old man is alone.” The snarky little giggle that followed actually made me feel a little sorry for Jack. Considering that he spent a lot of money in town, and quite a bit of it went to the hardware store, she had some nerve. I drew back when she leaned toward me and added, “Of course, I guess Mason is just lucky he got away before he ended up six feet under, like the wife and the stepson.”

  A shiver ran over me, and my brain tripped and staggered, searching for a reply. How did one respond to something like that? Really, in view of my present condition, I’d been trying not to think about Jack West’s sordid past, or what might be buried somewhere on the ranch.

  “My word, Claire Anne. That ain’t appropriate.” Mama B had an air of command that didn’t invite argument. “It’s Sun-day and we’re standin’ in a church and yer mouth is floppin’ like the tail on a flea-bitten mule.”

  Claire Anne’s eyes flared, and she threaded her arms, still studying Daniel. “Well, he does look like Mason West, Mama B. I mean, not that he’s identical or any-thang, but they do favor …” The sentence drifted off, as if she were tasting the possibilities, savoring them, thinking about what she might say around town. “I hadn’t had a close look until now, but it is peculiar.”

  “Claire Anne …” Mama B’s frown was a silent warning, but it seemed to be lost on Claire Anne.

  “It’s just really so sad to have so much and be so … unhappy, that’s all.” She splayed a hand against her chest, one pink fingernail tapping the diamond lightly.

  I focused on the necklace and the matching tennis bracelet, and an idea struck me suddenly. Keren had complained a time or two that she’d tried to get the hardware store to help her with supplies for the gardening program, but she’d had no luck. “You know, you’re so right. What good is money if you can’t do some good with it? My grandmother used to say that.”

  “Truly,” Claire Anne agreed, tossing her hair, but it was glued in place.

  “Grandma Louisa never missed a chance to support the community, after she moved back home to Charleston.”

  Claire Anne’s eyes brightened, and she regarded me with a new level of interest, her thickly coated lashes fanning against pale peach eye shadow. “Oh, I do love Charleston. So beautiful. So historic. So … cultured. And the churches …” Giving the aging fellowship hall of Lakeshore Community a down-the-nose look, she cupped a hand aside her mouth. “Nothing like that here.” Her pursed lips added, Well, you understand, of course.

  “Grandma Louisa loved her old home, just off Broad,” I commented. “She loved everything about it. It always bothered her, the dichotomy between wealth and poverty in the city, though.”

  “Well, of course, it would.” I could feel Claire Anne stepping blindly into my trap. The reverend was headed our way again, which would make it that much more effective. One thing I’d learned from my father—there’s no better donor than one who’s trying to impress someone else. Occasionally, being a lobbyist’s daughter did pay off. I’d watched my dad work his deal-making noose countless times.

  “Of course, that’s true in so many places.”

  “Yes, yes, it is. People must do what they can, mustn’t they? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone with Jack West’s means would contribute to solving the social problems around here? We have such an issue with the riffraff up in Chinquapin Peaks.” Her lips snapped closed as Reverend Hay slipped into line with us again.

  I pictured the faces of the kids in the gardening program. The riffraff. “I’ve heard.” Claire Anne gave me a hush up look, her gaze darting toward the pastor. I pretended not to catch her drift. “And I was so glad to know that the hardware store planned to play a big part in the supper garden program, donating supplies and whatnot. That’s just awesome. There’s something so empowering about equipping people with the tools to meet their own needs.”

  Claire Anne’s face blanched, and her mouth dropped open, then snapped shut, then opened again. Her blue eyes swam in a sea of white. I’d rendered her temporarily speechless. The victory was … rather sweet.

  “I’m sorry … did I get that wrong? Maybe Keren said it was Walmart that was donating the supplies. We’ve had so much going on since we got here, it’s all sort of a blur.” While I had her on the mat, I figured I might as well go in for the full nelson. “I’ve been raising donations for the program through my blog, The Frontier Woman, and through some other contacts in DC. I was just thinking that, as money comes in, maybe the hardware store could let Keren buy supplies at cost. That would make the money go so much further.”

  Reverend Hay glanced down at me, the hint of a smile tugging his thin cheeks, an eyebrow curving upward as in, The new girl knows a few things. “What a fine idea,” he interjected. “The better the families in Chinquapin Peaks do, the better the community does as a whole. Kids can’t learn when they come to school hungry.”

  Claire Anne strafed me with an ocular machine gun, tipping her chin up. “Well, of course they can’t. I think the gardening program is a lovely idea. Truly. But I do hope that, while you’re bringing it to the world’s attention online, you’ll give equal time to the many fine amenities of Moses Lake. We wouldn’t want the masses to see this as … well … a disadvantaged area, for instance.” Another glance flicked toward Reverend Hay. “Not that I’m against helping the disadvantaged, of course. I just question whether those families can be counted on to follow through. Honestly, when you can’t even wash your child’s hair or make certain they aren’t bringing lice to school … I don’t mean to sound cynical, of course.”

  “If we never take a chance on people, we’ll never know.” Reverend Hay smiled pleasantly at Claire Anne. “Of course, you understand that, or the hardware store wouldn’t be helping the program. Widows and orphans. There are plenty of those in Chinquapin Peaks, just like in the Bible.”

  “Of course.” Claire Anne had the look of a woman biting her tongue an
d tasting blood. Clearly, I’d just been crossed off her friend list, Charleston connection or not.

  “I’ll be sure to mention it on The Frontier Woman, too—the sponsorships from Underhill Hardware, Walmart, and other places,” I finished, doing the thing my father always did just after snapping the trapdoor shut—drop a little treat into the cage, so your prisoner doesn’t turn violent.

  “How lovely.” An eyetooth flashed, and Claire Anne’s nose crinkled as she looked around the room. “Oh, there are those sweet sisters from the Binding Through Books club. I hear they’re going to be in the pages of Woman’s Day magazine. Excuse me a little moment. I must find out what month, so I can order copies. It’s not every day that Moses Lake makes the national news.” Ducking out of line, she threaded her way through the tables and chairs, exiting the playing field, thoroughly beaten.

  Mama B turned her attention to me and smiled. “You got a little cowgirl in you.” She shook a finger. “Not too many people can rope Claire Anne in. You go by the bank and talk to my grandson, Blaine, about a donation. You tell him Mama B said so. He just got elected to the county commission. He’s been workin’ to get some attention for the roads up in Chinquapin Peaks, so bad weather don’t keep the kids out of school. You can put that on your Frontier Woman—I been readin’ that, by the way. I think folks’d be interested in what a hard time Blaine’s havin’ getting any money spent up in Chink.”

  “Welcome to Moses Lake,” Reverend Hay added, and nudged me. “And you thought politics was just a big-city thing, I bet.”

  We moved along in the potluck line before I could answer.

  Daniel and I ended up at a table with Stan, my favorite feedstore guy. He introduced us to the local game warden, Mart McClendon, and his wife, Andrea, who it turned out were the parents of Dustin, my teenage friend from the hardware store. Andrea was a social services counselor and spent a lot of time working with families up in Chinquapin Peaks. We talked about the lives of the kids and how remote the place was.

  “It’s worse with the bridge out of commission on County Road 47,” Andrea pointed out. “Access is so much more restricted. Some of my clients are on school buses for almost two hours in the mornings and two hours in the afternoons. Little kids. Kindergarteners.” She tapped the tabletop with a fingertip. “Fifty thousand dollars—that’s what the county commission won’t come up with. The federal government already committed the rest, because it was flood damage. That bridge directly affects several hundred families. I wonder if those stuffed shirts on the county commission even think about how difficult an extra thirty minutes or hour commute is for workers who make ten dollars an hour processing chickens at the Proxica plant in Gnadenfeld, or how an extra hour a day on the bus limits a kid who’s already academically—”

  “Did I hear someone taking my name in vain?” cut in a voice, and a young couple joined us at our table.

  “Not you, Blaine,” Andrea clarified. “The rest of those idiots on county commission. We like you.”

  The man—dark-haired, nice looking, thirty-something—laughed. “You must be talking about your pet project again.”

  “Yes. My bridge.”

  “You just need to tell them that my wife is going to haunt them until they rebuild that bridge,” the game warden, Andrea’s husband, joked. He laid a hand over hers, like he was trying to keep her from winding up. Daniel gave me a what-in-the-world-have-we-walked-into look.

  “I got a bridge!” Nick piped up. “In my sandbox!”

  All of us looked at him and laughed, and the tension broke. We talked about the food and about the expansion to the church fellowship hall, which Blaine’s wife, Heather, was designing. She was also doing the architectural renderings of an addition to the Moses Lake School, which brought up the subject of education again, which led to another discussion of the bridge. By the time Nick started getting restless in his booster chair, Daniel was ready to escape the onslaught of small-town issues, of which he’d been blissfully unaware while spending his time closeted with Jack.

  “Guess there is no utopia, no matter how far off the beaten path you go,” he remarked as we drove home, Nick drifting to sleep in the backseat.

  “Just kind of a microcosm of the usual issues,” I agreed. “But you know, what’s different here is how cheap some of the solutions are. Ten thousand dollars for a greenhouse for Keren’s gardening program. Less than a hundred dollars to help a family get a few backyard chickens and a coop so they can raise their own eggs year-round. Fifty dollars for gardening equipment and seeds. It’s just not that much money.”

  “No, it’s really not.” Daniel glanced over at me, his lips curving into a wry twist. “I heard you rope in the hardware store lady, by the way. Nicely done. But are you sure you want to get wrapped up in all this?”

  Gazing out the window, I took in Chinquapin Peaks, so beautiful at a distance, such a puzzle of stark contrasts up close. “I don’t see how I can ignore it. These are the kids Nick will go to school with. It’s going to affect him, whether we want it to or not. He’ll be sitting in class with the kids who didn’t get enough to eat that morning, or the ones who are growing up with parents who don’t care, or the ones who have been yanked back and forth between foster care programs. We’re involved, whether we want to be or not.”

  Daniel nodded. “I just meant that you’re getting a lot of irons in the fire, with the house problems, Nick, and The Frontier Woman. And now gardens, bridges, kids in Chinquapin Peaks, and … the baby news.”

  The last words, the baby news, pressed me back against the seat. Somewhere along the way today, that had slipped from my mind in favor of everyone else’s issues. I’d given up hoping for holy lightning to strike, and instead distracted myself with other things. “Irons in the fire,” I deflected. “You’re starting to sound like Jack.”

  “Well, you don’t have to insult me …” He smirked, those beautiful eyes catching the light, glowing bright, like emeralds.

  If there was such a thing as holy lightning, it struck me then, but not in the way I’d expected. I thought of the question Keren had asked as we sat watching the children play during my first visit to the summer class. Do you ever just have the feeling that God’s using you right where you are?

  Looking at my hands in my lap, contemplating the idea, I considered the possible uses for those hands. “Sometimes I feel like I’m here for a reason—here in Moses Lake, I mean.” A blush stole into my cheeks, and I glanced at Daniel, gauging his reaction. “I mean, I don’t mean to sound like I’ve gone all prophetic and profound or anything, but sometimes, I think I’m here because of those kids. With the contacts I have—with the contacts we have—maybe we can make a difference.”

  Daniel’s hand slid over mine. “You’re the most amazing person I know, Mal. If you’ve got a feeling about it, then you need to go for it.”

  “What if I said I feel like … kind of like … it’s something I’m meant to do?” It seemed weird to say it out loud, sort of presumptuous even, but I was feeling something, and it was something bigger than me, larger than my own concerns.

  Daniel didn’t answer at first.

  He probably thought I’d gone round the bend. I probably had. I could always claim hormones …

  “Then that’s probably what it is.”

  A lump of emotion rose in my throat. No one had ever believed in me like Daniel did. All my life, people had been babying me, protecting me, cautioning me to keep my plans small, to stay on the safe side, to work within the box, to stay in my own neighborhood. “Will you be okay with it if I talk to Jack about the supper garden program … whenever there’s a good opportunity, I mean? And maybe about the bridge in Chinquapin Peaks? Jack must be the biggest landowner in the area. He could put pressure on the county commission. For heaven’s sake, he could pay for that bridge without even batting an eye.” My heart sped up just at the thought of talking to Jack. He had at least four different personalities, ranging from vaguely aloof to paranoid and hostile. Even so, I fe
lt strangely empowered, unexplainably larger than myself.

  Daniel’s fingers toyed with mine. “Can I stop you from talking to Jack?” He followed the question with a wry look.

  “Probably not.”

  “Then I guess it’s okay.”

  When we got back to the house, we took Nick to the lakeshore for the afternoon. We built a small fire, cooked hot dogs, chased lightning bugs, and created a lantern jar. I thought again of how perfect things would be if every day could be like this one. If there were no Jack West to worry about.

  After Nick and Daniel were asleep, I awoke consumed with the need to put the day into words—to write and write and write. I wrote about the potluck at church, the strange collection of townsfolk we’d met, and the kids in Chinquapin Peaks. I wrote about the people who wanted solutions for them and those who saw them only as a problem, an inconvenience. I wrote about Reverend Hay’s observation that if we never give people a chance, we never know what they’re capable of. I wrote about the seeds we plant, and how we can never be sure which will grow and which will lie fallow, but seeds in the hand have no chance to grow at all. The only way to guarantee a harvest is to take a risk.

  Long after the moon rose and drifted out of sight above the window, I was writing and scheduling pieces for The Frontier Woman. In the dark of midnight, by the light of a single lamp, I wrote about the baby, about the fact that what I really wanted, what every mother wants, was a better world for my child, for this son or this daughter—this little piece of my heart who would grow within my body and tear from my body and travel into the world, with all its hills and valleys, with all its blind corners and unexpected precipices.

  When I finished writing, I pulled my legs into the chair and sat reading what I’d created. I deemed it ridiculously emotional and sentimental, but I saved it anyway, tucked it in a small corner of my hard drive, where I might pull it up one day and show it to my son or daughter, and say, See, I had hopes for you before you were ever born.