Stargazey Point

by Shelley Noble

  “Uh-huh,” Sarah said and went back to the porch where the summer school math tutorials were taking place.

  “Ervina remembers the carousel,” Dani said. “She telled it to us, but I didn’t know how to write all the words, so she says she’ll tell you for the movie.”

  Joe had settled Ervina in the chair, and she sat upright like an exotic, colorful bird. Or an African chieftain. The woman knew how to put on a show. But Abbie was beginning to think it wasn’t just a show. Ervina had the habit of nailing things too often to be a sham.

  “You have your questions for Ervina?”

  “Yes’m, Jerome wrote ’em for us.”

  “Okay, who’s going to film and who’s going to ask the questions?”

  “I’m gonna be the cameraman,” Joe said.

  “ ’Cause I read better,” Dani said.

  “Nuh-uh,” Joe said.

  Abbie stepped in before things spiraled out of control, though she was glad to see them arguing rather than smacking each other in the head. Progress.

  “Okay, Dani, you stand just there.” She hoisted Joe onto the chair so he could run the camera. A crowd formed behind them and no one—kids, teenagers, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, Sarah—made a sound.

  Ervina looked into the camera as if she’d done dozens of interviews.

  Joe pressed play; Dani frowned at the paper and asked, “What chore name?”

  Ervina sat even straighter. “My name is Ervina Eugenia Maxwell.”

  “Whose mama are you?”

  Ervina pursed her lips. “I had me a son. He was killed in the war, but he left me a granddaughter. Her name was Sarah. And she had a daughter and she named her Sarah. And we had Sarahs livin’ in this town ever since.”

  Behind Abbie, Sarah groaned and left the room.

  “What’chu remember ’bout that carousel?”

  “Oh, that carousel. I remember when I was a girl, the town was somethin’ in those days, filled all summer with fancy people from Charleston and Columbia and even farther away. They brought their chil’run to the beach, stayed in the hotel before it burned to the ground. They’d stay all summer, some of them. That carousel music filled the air from morning to night. There’d be dancin’ at the end of the pier, and if you sat out on the beach, you could hear a little bit of both.

  “But if the man who ran the carousel ever caught one of us trying to sneak a ride, he’d pull us off that thing and throw us out to the ground. None of us ever had no money.

  “Then Ned grew up and moved away. Never thought we’d see him again, but one day he comes drivin’ into town in a big old black Mercury. He goes up to that feller, Clayton, I think his name was, and says, ‘I want to buy your carousel.’ We’d had us a couple a bad storms and that old man sold it to Ned that very day.

  “From then on everybody could ride the carousel. Rich or poor. No matter what color. Those were good and bad days. Changing days. Then the hotel burned down, and they started buildin’ these big old hotels up the way, and those big fun parks. Stargazey just got left behind.” She chuckled. “And some of us got old. Ned got old. Now we got young Cab fixing it up again. We got a place for the children to come where it’s safe and they can learn how to go on in this life. We gonna have us a new store.”

  “Praise the Lord,” someone said.

  “Amen.”

  Ervina held up her hand, a benediction, and looked at Dani. “We take care of our own. We take care of each other. We welcome strangers.” She looked at Abbie. “If they don’t wanna build no golf course.”

  They were surrounded by laughter, which somehow made Abbie want to cry.

  “Now I got me two new children and that’s all I got to say.” Dani threw her arms around Ervina before she could get up from the chair. Joe slid off the chair and hurled himself at her.

  Abbie took over the camera. This was a scene not to be missed.

  “And we never leaving Momma Ervina,” Dani said.

  “And if uncle or the services try to take us, Jerome gonna shoot him.”

  Abbie stopped the camera.

  “Lord, child,” Ervina said, placing him on her knee where he could see her face. “Remember this. Nobody is gonna do no shootin’.”

  “Uh-huh,” Dani said. “Uncle—he shoots people.”

  Ervina hugged them both close. “Lucky for people he cain’t hit a barn. You got no cause to worry, now you go on and help Miss Abbie with her board thing.”

  The crowd dispersed, and conversation broke out where it had left off. Abbie seemed to be the only one disconcerted by the talk of shooting.

  “Down here it’s not always easy to be a pacifist,” Sarah said. “I’m going back to the kitchen to get these ladies to start making some lunch.”

  Ervina scooted the twins away and waited for everyone else to leave before she stood.

  “Thank you so much for coming in to do that,” Abbie said. “It means a lot to the twins.”

  “I have somethin’ to say to you.”

  “Okay,” Abbie said, taken aback.

  “I came here and talked nonsense. Now you gonna do something for me.”

  Abbie smiled inwardly. Like great-grandmother like great-granddaughter. Sarah and Ervina didn’t mind a spot of tit for tat.

  “You came here lookin’ for somethin’.”

  “I came here on vacation.”

  “Uh-huh. You came here lookin’ for somethin’ and you found it. You got these children trustin’ you. You got a responsibility now.”

  Abbie shook her head. “I’m sorry?”

  “You can’t take those children out of Egypt and leave ’em alone in the desert.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t be dense. You know what I’m sayin’.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then I’m gonna tell you.” She moved in close, drawing Abbie toward her. “It’s too late to help those dead babies where you were before. It’s time to start helpin’ the ones who can still be helped.”

  She walked slowly toward the door, stopped when she reached it. “And don’t you worry none about Miss Millie. She’ll come around.”

  “And you can bet the ranch on that,” Sarah said under her breath.

  Ervina shook her finger at her great-grandaughter, and then in typical Ervina fashion, she was gone.

  Her words, however, lingered all the way into the afternoon when they were distracted by the sound of a big truck, stopping out front. Everyone rushed to the window.

  The back tailgate was open, and several men were unloading huge wooden crates. Everyone converged on the porch, and it took Abbie and Sarah both to keep them from running to get a closer look.

  “Someone go get the camera,” Abbie said, grabbing Pauli as he tried to sneak down the steps. “I bet if we all stay right here and out of the way, we’ll get a peek at what’s inside once they’ve finished unloading.”

  They watched and filmed for the next hour. Then as the truck drove away, Cab came to the door of the carousel and yelled, “Who wants to see what just came?”

  There was no holding them back now. They broke for the carousel, and Abbie, camera in hand, and Sarah ran behind them.

  Rows of wooden crates stood end to end in the octagonal room. Several men stood ready with crowbars to open the nearest one. Otis and Jerome and two other men were standing by a ladder and a cherry picker.

  “Now listen up,” Cab said. “You have to stay behind this line.” He made an imaginary line with his foot. “I don’t want anybody getting hurt. Got it?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “I mean it, because this lady could squash you like a bug.”

  The children took an extra step back.

  “Good. Okay, gentlemen, man your crowbars.”

  Abbie readied Joe and the camera, hiding her smile. The first time s
he’d met Cab, she thought he was a charming huckster. Now she knew he was. And a great showman. He’d missed his calling as the ringmaster of a circus, or some other fanciful profession.

  The men leaned over the box with their crowbars. Nails screeched as they were pulled through wood, then the men lifted the top and laid it aside, revealing foam packing material, which they carefully removed.

  Beneath it lay a mermaid with pale yellow hair that billowed about her face. Her tail was a vibrant green with gold leaf accents. Her body curved gracefully in an elongated ess.

  The men lifted her out of the crate, and everyone gasped in delight. Abbie caught Cab’s eye across the heads of the children. He smiled, she smiled, and everything else blurred for just a second.

  Then Cab turned away and directed the men as they lifted the mermaid to her slot on the wall. Everyone cheered as she slid perfectly into the cradle that had been prepared for her. Then they just looked in awe at the beautiful creature who smiled down at them.

  When Cab turned back to the group, his face was luminous. His eyes sparkled as if his dream had just come true. Abbie thought that it had.

  “Madame Mermaid has been restored to her place of honor,” he said, grinning at his visitors. “Now out you go.” He flourished a hand toward the double doors and winked at Abbie.

  “Aw, Mr. Cab. We want to see the others.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just one?”

  “The rest is a secret.” Cab ushered them out the door and locked it behind them. It stayed locked for the next ten days.

  Chapter 28

  Abbie didn’t see Millie the next morning, and she wondered if Beau had been too optimistic about her coming around. But there were other things to be optimistic about.

  The carousel and the new co-op were nearly finished. The sound of hammering and sawing rang in the air. There seemed to be an army of men on ladders, women sweeping, garbage bags piled on the sidewalk, waiting to be hauled over to the Dumpster that had appeared overnight.

  Wanda’s huge person was perched precariously on a stepladder, scrubbing the dirt-caked windows of the new co-op. And in the center of the tarmac, framed by a semicircle of men with paint cans, stood Ivy and Hadley nose to nose. Though Hadley had to stand on his toes to hold his own.

  “I ain’t gonna paint,” Hadley told her.

  “You are too, you old hunk a junk. You are not going to bring this end of town down after all the hard work everybody’s put into it. If you ain’t gonna help, then move yo’ sorry backside outta the way, ’cause one way or the other, we’re gonna paint.”

  “Oh, Ivy, leave the man alone,” said one of the men.

  Ivy fisted her hands on her hips. “Albertus Brown. You better not let your wife hear you; you know she’s been workin’ herself half to death gettin’ her afghans finished for the grand opening of the co-op.”

  Albertus sighed and slumped, but then he gave in. “Come on, men, let’s get it over with. Sorry, Hadley.”

  The men trudged past him while Hadley and Ivy glared at each other. Abbie passed by without slowing down.

  The kitchen was already crowded with the publicity committee, mostly older women and a few teenagers, who were tri-folding announcements of the carousel opening to be mailed to nearby towns.

  The editing of the documentary was mostly done, so Abbie organized the kids into cleaning squads. She kept busy but was randomly hit with pangs of anxiety.

  What if the video was a flop? What if the kids were disappointed? What if Millie stayed angry? Then she’d remember what Beau said about what-ifs and tried to live in the moment.

  But as the day wore on, Abbie’s anxiety increased. She hadn’t seen Millie since Sunday afternoon and Beau since Sunday night. She’d hardly talked to Marnie. She felt like an interloper, and it was driving her crazy. It would be better just to find out what was going on.

  While the mothers served lunch, Abbie went to the carousel—and found it padlocked, as if Cab and Beau had left for the day. She listened for sounds coming from inside but heard nothing.

  A hell of a time to take off, she thought, and a hundred possibilities crowded her mind. Something had broken and they’d gone for a new part. There was trouble with a zoning issue. Millie had suffered a heart attack.

  Each possibility grew worse, and she considered going to Flora’s to see if they had gone there for lunch, but a crash from the media room blew that idea out of her mind. She rushed back to the center and down the hall, wondering if they’d just lost an important piece of equipment, and praying it wasn’t her laptop with Final Cut Pro installed on it.

  She reached the door to the media room just in time to see Pauli and Kyle crawling out from under the folding table they used for drawing.

  “The legs collapsed,” Pauli said.

  “ ’Cause you didn’t listen.”

  “ ’Cause they ain’t no good.”

  “As long as you weren’t hurt,” Abbie said, stepping between them. “Now help me put the table back.”

  When she left the center that night, she heard men working at the carousel. That must mean that whatever happened must have been dealt with. She didn’t stop. Even though she wished Beau would go with her, she knew he had more important things to do. And since it was Marnie’s night out, that left Abbie to face Millie on her own.

  As she reached Crispin House, the front door swung open. Millie came out and blocked the door. Abbie’s stomach went south.

  She climbed the steps ready to face the music.

  As she reached the top, Millie motioned to her with both hands. “There you are. I’ve been waiting.”

  “Not to worry, I’ll pack now and be out in half an hour.”

  Millie gasped in an intake of air. “Leaving? What are you talking about? You’ll do no such thing. We have too much to do for you to go gallivantin’ about.”

  “What?”

  Marnie stepped into the light and made a face over Millie’s shoulder.

  “Well, come on in,” Millie said and took Abbie by the arm. “Time’s a-wastin’.”

  Abbie only had time enough to glance at Marnie as she was propelled forward.

  Marnie cast her eyes toward heaven and followed them across the foyer to the parlor.

  Millie stopped at an escritoire covered with catalogs and paper of various sizes. “I know it’s going to be a public day, but we need to send formal invitations to certain members of the community. I’m leaning toward the oyster shell myself. Marnie likes the blue. What is your opinion?”

  “Uh, oyster?”

  Millie shot a triumphant look at her sister. “Now I need to order the tablecloths tonight from the Party Rental place. Plastic, I’m afraid, but it can’t be helped. Beau is insisting on having barbecue out on the lawn. And you know what barbecue does to linen.

  “But the poor soul misses Silas’s barbecue so much, I relented, but I told him in no uncertain terms that I would not have barbecue in my ballroom. I’ll have Penny Farlowe do canapés for the ballroom.”

  “Very wise,” Abbie said and cast another look toward Marnie, who was hovering at a safe distance in the archway and hiding what Abbie hoped was a grin beneath her hand.

  Ballroom. Public day. Had Cab actually asked her to host the viewing? And she’d agreed?

  “We’ll put chairs and the projector at one end and still have enough room for people to socialize. Once your little movie is over, I’ll get Otis and Jerome to remove the chairs to give us more room. Not everybody wants to sit elbow to elbow at picnic tables.”

  Abbie didn’t know what to say. Except that she must be dreaming. So she just nodded in agreement. Marnie snorted from the doorway. Millie didn’t seem to notice. Two days ago she had stood in the driveway demanding that Abbie leave. Now she was consulting her about tablecloths?

  “I’m not su
re I understand.”

  “Didn’t Cabot tell you? Well, isn’t that just like a man. He and Beau dropped by for lunch this afternoon. And he was telling me how you’re cleaning up the community center to show your film.

  “I told him not to be ridiculous. After all the work you’ve put in with those kids and the carousel, everybody would want to come and there just isn’t any room down there.”

  Abbie nodded, though she bet Millie had never even been in the community center.

  “I told him just to plan to have the festivities at Crispin House. Our family has always supported the endeavors of the community. This is no exception. Now, I’d better telephone to Myrtle Beach and order those tablecloths. I think a dozen of the large rectangular ones should suffice. You had better make a list of equipment and things you’ll need and let Otis know so he can pick everything up.”

  She took her catalog and tottered into the hallway where the telephone sat in an alcove behind the staircase.

  Marnie stepped aside and watched her go. “Damn, that was a sight.”

  “I’m having a little trouble processing all this. What are you doing here?”

  “Hell, I called in sick tonight just to see your face when you encountered the new and improved Millie.”

  “Want to fill me in?”

  “Sure, but come on back to the kitchen. I think we both need a glass of something stronger than sherry.”

  It was a sight to behold,” Marnie said, over a double scotch. Abbie was sipping a white wine spritzer. She wanted to be on her toes in case the wind shifted.

  Marnie burst out laughing. “A public day. I swear we’ve never had a public day in our lives. I think she must have gotten it out of an old movie.”

  “I can’t believe it. She acts like nothing ever happened.”

  “To her, nothing did. Thanks to Beau’s painting and the buyer from Charleston.”

  “She accepted the money?”

  “Never saw a genteel lady move so fast. Did he tell you he got paid a bundle?”

  “He said it was enough to pay the taxes and give some to Millie for pin money.”