“No, Mayor,” said Windell the next morning, “not a kid’s playground slide. I’m talking about one of those big yellow slides—high as a four-story building—where customers climb up, sit down on a tow sack, and slide down fast as greased pigs.”
“Like at the fair?”
“That’s right.” Windell was so excited that he sat on the edge of his seat, rapping his diamond pinkie ring on the mayor’s desk as he spoke. “My cousin Eddie put one in down in Houston. Folks pay two dollars apiece for the chance to slide. It doesn’t take ’em more’n about thirty seconds, tops. You do the math. This thing is going to be a money magnet. I realize that two dollars may sound steep, but I aim to offer group rates. Senior citizen discounts too.”
Wonderful, thought the mayor. Ella Louise’s elderly are going to be lining up in droves to climb four flights of stairs so as to hurl their arthritic bodies to the ground. He struggled not to chuckle at the thought of the Senior Citizen Care Van making a stop at Windell’s slide.
“So. Do I need a permit?” asked Windell.
“Yes. For something like that you do. Where exactly are you planning on putting this slide thing?” He coughed. “Windell—you’re not planning on building it yourself, are you?” He was thinking of how Windell’s do-it-himself carport had turned out.
“No. Course not. I’ve got an outfit from Oklahoma coming. Man says that they’ll haul it in pieces on three big trucks. Take a week to ten days to assemble the thing. As for where I’m putting it, well, get this.” Windell stood for effect. “The town of Ella Louise can look for Windell’s Super Slide to go in right next to Lindell’s Clean-It-Quick Car Wash.” He sat back down. “Way he and I figure it, folks these days are busy, always looking to kill two birds with one stone. This way, they can have some fun at my place, then go right next door to my brother’s and take care of cleaning their car. Lindell’s all excited about it. He’s planning on getting some new sprayers for two of his bays, and’s even talking about putting a cappuccino machine in for folks who have to wait.”
“That’s quite a plan.”
“We’re real excited about it, Mayor, but I haven’t told you the best part.”
“No?”
“Our sister, Daphne, is moving back to Ella Louise so as to help us out at both places.”
“Daphne? Is she, I mean, how is she . . . ?”
Windell stopped tapping his ring. He ran his fingers over his almost-bald head, then folded them in his lap and leaned back in his chair. “Mayor, Daphne’s made it sixty-six days without a drink. The doc at the place where me and Lindell put her this time says that she’s done real good. Soon as she’s got a job lined up—that’s one of the requirements, that they have a set job before they get out—me and Lindell can bring her back home.”
“Bless her heart. She going to stay by herself or with you and Lindell?”
“With us. Less temptation. We’re gonna sell her place over in Pearly.”
“Windell, sounds like you’ve got a good plan, but I’m wondering, do you think it’s safe for Daphne to . . . ?”
“Don’t worry, Mayor. We’re gonna keep a good eye on her. Me and Lindell’ll have her making change, refilling the soap dispensers in the restrooms, handing out two-for-one coupons. Stuff like that.”
“I see,” said the mayor. “I certainly wish her the best. You know, Daphne went to school with my baby brother. She was a cute little kid. It’s been hard to see the turn she’s taken. You and Lindell have been real good to her.”
“Family’s family, and she’s the only sister we’ve got,” Windell said as he shrugged.
“Is she going to church?”
“No. She won’t set foot in the door.”
“Too bad. It’d help if she would.”
“I know it. But ever time I try to talk to her about it, she says she’s not interested. Claims there’s too many hypocrites in churches.”
Mayor Tinker laughed. “She’s got that right. Ever church I know of is full of sinners. Too bad she doesn’t understand that’s the whole point. I’ll be praying for her.”
“Appreciate it. Daphne is a good person. At least she never took drugs. We’re thankful for that. Maybe this time around she’ll give it a go.” Windell stood. “So—you think I’ll have any trouble getting that permit?”
“No. None at all. I’ll call down to City Hall and let them know to expect you.”
“Thanks, Mayor.” Windell had his hand on the door. “I almost forgot. Lindell and I are planning a big ribbon-cutting and grand opening. I’d be honored if you’d be the one to come down and do the cutting. I’ll even see to it that you get to take the first trip down my slide—at no cost, of course.”
Mayor Tinker hated heights. Moving past the third step of a ladder made his feet hurt so bad that Faye Beth had to be the one to change the lightbulbs in the Chamber of Commerce restrooms. “Thank you, Windell. Kind of you to ask. I’ll take a look at my book. Faye Beth keeps me pretty busy, but I’ll do my best to be there. Have a good day, now.”
WHEN PASTOR JOSEPH TEDFORD of Chosen Vessel (Ella Louise’s only nondenominational church) heard of Daphne Minter’s impending arrival in town, when he learned of her problem—as it was delicately referred to at the monthly meeting of the Ministerial Alliance—he felt a stirring in his heart. When he heard of her reported disinterest in church attendance, he felt not discouraged but challenged. And a little bit afraid.
So he began to pray.
Which was a good thing.
Daphne Minter (who, after a fifth divorce, decided to keep her maiden name to save herself a lot of future trouble), was released from the rehab hospital on her thirty-sixth birthday, one week before Halloween, which just happened to be her very favorite holiday.
To celebrate their sister’s homecoming as well as her birthday, Lindell baked Daphne a coconut cake and Windell brought home some flowers—pink carnations with baby’s breath in a clear bud vase tied up with a variegated ribbon. They also went in together and got her some stationery and a bottle of cucumber-scented hand lotion, a fragrance choice that Windell questioned until the salesgirl told him that cucumber was among their most popular scents. “That and watermelon,” she said.
Daphne liked her gifts. Despite the weirdness of the first night in her brothers’ house, and despite dealing with them watching her every move, enduring their unspoken desires, guarded expectations, and prayers that this time, please, she would be okay, her first night went well.
Until the subject of Halloween came up.
“What do you mean, you don’t celebrate Halloween?” Daphne asked. “No candy? No parties? You don’t even dress up?”
No. They didn’t. But there was a nice community-wide Harvest Festival at their church. Food, fun, and fellowship. Wouldn’t she like to go?
Would there be costumes?
Uh, no.
Scary decorations?
No again.
Pumpkins?
Why, yes! Always.
Carved?
Uh, sorry. No.
She thought she would pass.
Of course, just because her brothers held to crazy notions about Halloween being something bad didn’t mean that she had to go along. Hadn’t they said that this was her house too? That she was to make herself at home? Then she would. She’d be a witch, would carve a pumpkin, and would hand out candy. Lots of candy.
So there.
WINDELL AND LINDELL WERE MINDFUL of their sister’s precarious state. They’d been warned by her doctor that the upcoming holidays would be when she would most likely slip. Stress, they were told. Expectations. Memories of times past. And while Windell and Lindell had already thought ahead to how they would help Daphne make it through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, they had never considered that Halloween would be a problem.
They agreed it was best not to get Daphne stirred up.
“What’s it going to hurt?” said Windell to Lindell after Daphne had gone up to bed.
“I agree,” said Lindell
. “It’s not worth the risk. Let her have her way this year. Next year, we can take a stronger stand.”
AS HALLOWEEN APPROACHED, Daphne got as excited as a kid about her costume, the treats she would hand out, and how she planned to decorate the porch and the yard.
All well and good, up to a point. Windell and Lindell, despite their agreement to look the other way for the sake of their sister’s sobriety, felt forced to put their feet down when Daphne proposed putting in a fake cemetery, complete with cardboard coffins, next to the fall garden.
“Okay,” Daphne threw up her hands. “No cemetery. How about some artificial cobwebs hanging from the trees?”
Windell and Lindell both sighed.
On Halloween night, after Lindell and Windell left to go to the church festival, Daphne put on her costume. She’d worked on it for the past two days and thought it looked pretty good. She had a long black dress—made from Lindell’s old college graduation gown—a black pointed hat, black stockings and shoes, and even fake black teeth. Only her face didn’t look the part. Not scary enough, thought Daphne. What to do?
She didn’t wear makeup. There was none in the house. Maybe some flour from the kitchen would give her the pale glow she was looking for. She tried patting some on, but within minutes, it had all worn off. Shoe polish maybe? All she found on the shelf was a color called “Burnished Brown.”
Maybe not.
When Daphne stepped outside to check on her pumpkins, the flickering green-white glow of late-season fireflies flitting just above the grass caught her eyes. That was just the color she wanted for her face. What would happen if a person rubbed firefly juice on something? Would it glow? Made sense that it would. And wouldn’t it look cool!
Daphne hunted in the kitchen cabinet above the sink until she found an empty mayonnaise jar. That would work.
Chasing fireflies made Daphne sweat. She’d aimed for ten, but gave up, out of breath, when she had six. Fireflies were harder to catch than one might think. The little critters were only visible when lit, and they flew up, down, and from side to side quickly, making no sound.
Once back inside the house, Daphne held the jar up and studied the bugs. This was the hard part. They looked awfully pretty, their little lights flickering off and on. Seemed kind of sad. Maybe she should forget about this, take them outside, and let them go. There was time to run down to the drugstore for makeup. But no, she thought, a bug is a bug. No difference between a firefly and a housefly.
Where did her brothers keep the flyswatter, anyway?
WHEN THE FIRST TRICK-OR-TREATERS CAME to the Minter door, they were greeted by a very scary, glowing, if somewhat streaky, Witch Daphne.
“Wow! How did you get your face to look like that?” asked a costumed beggar.
“Is that makeup?” asked another.
“What makes it light up?”
“Ha, ha, ha! I’ll never tell!” cackled Daphne. The effect was even better than she’d hoped for. She plucked bags of treats from a smoking black caldron she had rigged with dry ice. “What do you say?”
“Trick or treat!” they chorused.
“What else?”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Be careful. Don’t knock over my pumpkins.”
ACROSS TOWN AT THE HARVEST FESTIVAL, Joseph Tedford’s son won a chocolate pecan layer cake at the cakewalk. “Say ‘thank you,’ Isaac,” Joseph prompted. Isaac complied even though, because he was allergic to chocolate, he wouldn’t be able to eat a bite.
“Mr. Minter,” Joseph said (for the life of him, he never could remember which brother was which). “Good to see you. How’s your sister doing? She here tonight?”
“Fine,” answered Lindell once he’d restarted the tape that set the cake-craving walkers in motion. “She’s doing fine so far. Thank you for asking. I wish I could say that she was here, but she stayed home to do Halloween.”
“That’s too bad. I was hoping to meet her. I’d like to come and visit, invite her to my church—that is, if you don’t mind,” Joseph said. Then he added quickly, “She’s not already a church member, is she?” (Stealing a member from another church in town was greatly frowned upon by members of the Ministerial Alliance. It had even been discussed at last month’s meeting. “Gentlemen,” Brother Fred from First Baptist had exhorted, “there are enough sinning sheep in this town to go around. No need in any of us carrying off members of each other’s flocks.”)
“No, Daphne’s not been a churchgoer since we were kids. You feel free to come on over anytime—but be warned. Talk about church sometimes gets my sister riled up. And when Daphne gets riled up, she isn’t always nice!”
On the way home, sleepy son in tow, Joseph thought of taking the chocolate cake to Daphne. Why not? It was a perfect excuse. Everyone likes cake, even folks who think that they don’t like church. He’d give it to her, invite her to services, and be on his way. Perfect.
WITHIN AN HOUR of smearing the remains of the dead fireflies’ bottoms on her face, Daphne Minter was in a mess. She had not known that this would happen. Her whole face was swollen, and even though she’d scrubbed and scrubbed to get the dried goo off, her skin burned like fire. Too miserable to hand out candy, she lay down on the couch with a wet cloth over her eyes.
She’d only just hit the cushions when someone rang the doorbell. She ignored it, but they rang again and again. She’d turned off the porch light. Couldn’t they take a hint? She groaned as she dragged herself up from the couch.
“Excuse me,” said Joseph when Daphne finally cracked the door open. “Daphne Minter?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Pastor Joseph. From Chosen Vessel Church. Little white building on Magnolia Street?”
“What do you want?”
“I brought you a cake. My son won it at the cakewalk but he can’t eat it, and I thought you might like it.”
“A cake?” She’d had no dinner. “Just a minute. Let me turn on the light.”
“Long as I’m here, I’d also like to invite you to . . . oh my goodness! What’s wrong with your face?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” Daphne looked down and tried to shield her eyes with her hand.
“Do you need some help? Should I go get one of your brothers?”
No, she did not want her brothers. She didn’t want the religious tract that Joseph tried to hand her, either. And she especially didn’t want Joseph’s special invitation to attend his church. As for the cake? It looked good. She would take the cake. “Good-bye.” Daphne closed the door on Joseph’s face.
WHEN DR. SARAH STRICKLAND PRESCRIBED soothing salve and prescription pain pills for Daphne Minter, she thought she was doing the right thing. “You mean you actually crushed fireflies and rubbed them on your face? Whatever for?”
“To look scary. For Halloween. I was a witch.”
“Did it work?” asked Dr. Strickland.
“It did. My face glowed like a firefly. But only for a little while. Then it wore off.”
In all her years of practice, Sarah had not seen anything quite like the awful blisters on Daphne’s face. She was obviously in terrible pain.
“Take one every six hours. I want to see you back in my office three days from now.”
The pain pills helped, but they weren’t quite strong enough. Daphne hurt something awful. Neither Lindell nor Windell was keeping count of the pills, so she was able to swallow two at a time, and every four hours instead of six. Unfortunately, this made the pills run out too fast, and she was forced to drive Lindell’s mustard-colored El Camino to the next town in order to purchase a bottle of wine. She needed something to tide her over until she could get more pills from Dr. Strickland. She only bought one bottle of wine, and it was only to ease the pain, not much different from an aspirin, she told herself. Everything would be okay once Dr. Strickland gave her a refill.
Except she didn’t.
“Looking good,” said Dr. Strickland. “I don’t believe you’ll have any scarring, which surprises m
e. You’re healing quite nicely. More pills? No. I don’t think so. You can take some Tylenol if you feel like you need it, but I don’t think you will.”
Daphne drove directly from Dr. Strickland’s office to the closest across-the-county-line liquor store and stocked up.
WINDELL AND LINDELL were beside themselves when they got home and found out what she’d done. Not even dry a week. Should they take her back to the hospital? Try to reason with her?
So numb with disappointment were the brothers that they pretty much gave up. At least their sister was staying with them for now. She wouldn’t end up on the street. If they couldn’t keep her dry, at least they could keep her safe.
When word of Daphne’s backslide got around town, she was put on the prayer list of every Ella Louise congregation. No one was terribly shocked, though. It was God the poor thing needed. Power from above. No way was she going to lick this thing until she saw her need of him.
One by one, all the ministers in town came to talk to Daphne about her soul. Brother Fred came by. She told him where he could go. Pastor Graves stopped in. She suggested that he put his Bible in a very dark place.
When Joseph Tedford came, he brought cake.
Which Daphne ate. Twice a week.
“Daphne,” Joseph said at the end of each visit, “God loves you. This Sunday, why don’t you come pay a visit to his house?”
“Uh-uh. Reverend Joe, that’s not gonna happen,” she said, wiping crumbs from her chin. “Not this week or the next. You’re just wasting your time.”
“No, I’m not,” he answered each time. “God doesn’t give up, and neither will I.”
On a Tuesday morning, after three months of his discouraging biweekly visits to Daphne, Joseph was sitting in his office at the back of the church (not studying his Bible as was later reported in the paper, but working a crossword puzzle, if the truth be known) when he heard an awful crash. It shook the roof and walls. An earthquake? Never happened before in Ella Louise. A bomb then! Joseph jumped from his chair, unsure whether to run out of the building or to take cover inside.
Watermelon Days and Firefly Nights: Heartwarming Scenes from Small Town Life Page 3