Thistle Down

by Irene Radford

  “What does that mean?” Thistle asked, still fingering the obnoxious lump.

  “If everyone at your table wears a coonskin cap, then the drinks are two for one. It’s a Festival tradition,” Chase said. He looked grumpy, eyes watching the crowd, shifting from group to group. “Actually, it’s a tradition whenever the owner gets bored.”

  Thistle remembered the dozens of furry blobs hanging on the wall the last time she was here, Friday night. She looked above Chase’s head. Only a few hats remained on the wall.

  “A lot of people have their own hats,” Dusty explained. “The management keeps a stock on hand for the rest of us.”

  “Put the hat on, and I’ll go get another pitcher,” Dick said, placing the hat on her head for her. He bounced away.

  “He’s in a good mood,” Thistle commented. “Did he find out anything?”

  “We just got here. Thought we’d wait for you to exchange information,” Dusty said. She held her glass in both hands, not drinking.

  Chase only sipped his own drink.

  “What’s the matter?” Thistle asked quietly.

  “Lots of things,” Chase replied.

  Both Thistle and Dusty raised their eyebrows questioningly. Interesting, Thistle noted, how they’d begun to use similar gestures and expressions after only a few days of living together. Or had the similarities happened when Thistle was Dusty’s only friend?

  “Phelma Jo’s not wearing a cap,” Chase observed.

  Both Thistle and Dusty turned to look. Sure enough, Phelma Jo and Haywood Wheatland sat at a table with the mayor and Councilman Smith. None of them participated in the community nonsense.

  Dusty frowned, then looked away hurriedly. “They must be working,” she said, as if needing to justify Haywood’s presence.

  “I’d like to hear what they’re saying,” Chase said, rising from his chair.

  “Not you.” Dusty placed a hand on his arm to keep him in place. “You represent the law, even if you are off duty. You get too close, and Phelma Jo will shut up.”

  They both looked pointedly at Thistle. She shrugged and pushed her chair back. “Gathering gossip is a Pixie duty . . . and thrill.” She bowed formally, as if she was still four inches tall and had wings. Her cap fell off. She left it where it was.

  Thistle worked her way around the room slowly, glass in hand. She nodded to people she’d seen in the parade, and the families of her new friends. Snatches of conversations reached her.

  “Wish it would rain.” “Been a long hot summer.” “Forests are set to burn at the next lightning strike.” “Who needs a new cell phone tower? It’s ugly and spoiling my view of the mountain.” “Too hot to take the kids to the carnival.” “Had to run off some teens I didn’t recognize.” “That new discount store they’re building up on the hill will kill the merchants downtown.” “They had firecrackers and matches.” “Spray painted gang logos on the produce warehouse down by the tracks.” “Damn cell phone won’t work.”

  All grumbles. No delight or excitement over the Festival. Thistle frowned. Pressure in the air made her uneasy. Trouble. She knew trouble was coming. And soon.

  A wiggle of blue on the top shelf behind the bar caught her attention. Chicory sat between two bottles on the edge of the shelf surveying the entire room. His hat sat askew and his wings sagged. He was drunk on beer fumes, and probably some honey he’d stolen from the kitchen.

  His report back to Rosie or Mabel, whoever nabbed him first, would be garbled at best.

  From the way he kept moving his head back and forth, pointedly not letting his gaze rest on Thistle, she knew he’d seen her. Just like he’d probably seen her during the parade. Either Rosie, his queen, or Mabel, his boss, had ordered him not to acknowledge Thistle now that she’d been exiled from Pixie.

  Thistle was betting those orders came from Rosie.

  “Thistle, where are you going?” Dick asked, grabbing her arm.

  “Huh?” She looked around and found herself with one foot inside and one out. A quick look at the people told her she’d passed through only half of the room. She turned to Dick and smiled. “It’s stuffy in here. I thought I’d get some air.”

  Deliberately, she stepped back inside and aimed toward the table where Phelma Jo presided. A heartbeat later, she was back with Dusty and Chase on the opposite side of the room without knowing how she got there.

  Something strange was going on. Why couldn’t she get close to Phelma Jo?

  She had Saturday night at the restaurant. What was different tonight?

  Haywood Wheatland.

  She squinted her eyes to check his aura. All she could see was drifting beer fumes, smoke from the kitchens, and the overlapping energies of the other three people at his table. Nothing from him at all.

  Before she could voice a concern to Dusty, the entire building shook, followed by a whoosh of air and a deafening kaboom!

  Thistle swayed. The room went fuzzy.

  “Thistle, what’s wrong. Are you okay?” Dick asked anxiously.

  “Explosion at the new cell phone tower on the hill. It took out a bunch of construction equipment when it fell,” the bartender called over the unnatural hush in the bar. He waved his normal phone. “No cell signal anywhere in town. Chase, they need you down at the station. Dick, the EMTs are rolling and want you on board.”

  “Damn, that’s the second attack on the cell tower. Only half complete and vandalism has put completion behind by three months,” Chase muttered.

  “Explosion. Fire and Air. This is Faery work. Faeries making trouble,” Thistle breathed. Her vision cleared.

  “Go, Chase. Go, Dick. Thistle and I will be okay,” Dusty reassured them. “Do what you have to do. We’ll talk later.”

  As the men dashed out the door, a blue blur followed them. Chicory would get answers, even if Rosie wouldn’t part with them.

  “Did you get any sleep at all last night?” Dusty whispered to Dick as she slid into the folding chair beside him in the Council Chamber of City Hall. Thistle sat on the other side of Dick, dutifully studying a few printed paragraphs Dusty had helped her prepare.

  “A couple of hours. No serious injuries at the explosion site. Just some peripheral damage to the hearing of people in the closest houses. Mostly, we EMTs worked on the fire fighters trying to contain the flames. Some smoke inhalation and minor burns. General cell phone signals should be back up and running by now.”

  Dusty checked his skin color and the clarity of his eyes. She hadn’t heard him come in last night. But here he was, freshly showered, in a crisply pressed suit, looking bright-eyed and enthusiastic.

  “You really thrive on emergency medicine, don’t you, Dick.”

  “Yeah. I’d make a great ER doc, but I was a lousy med student. Can’t do one without the other.” Dick grinned at her.

  “So you compromise, volunteering with the fire department while raking in the bucks as a pharmaceutical rep.”

  “You got it. So why are you here? I thought you were going to send Joe,” he asked casually.

  “Joe couldn’t make it,” Dusty whispered, brandishing her own printed pages. “He . . . he sent a statement.” She held out the two closely typed pages to Dick.

  “I’ll read it for you.” He patted Dusty’s hand in reassurance.

  She relaxed, easing her hot feet out of her white flats.

  “I think Dusty needs to read it,” Thistle said under her breath. Her eyes darted about, weighing and assessing. “You already have your statement to read, Dick. And I have mine.”

  “I don’t know.” Dick looked directly at Dusty. “If you don’t want to . . .”

  “I think she has to,” Chase added, taking the seat beside Dusty. He looked pale and hollow-eyed. Obviously running on less sleep than Dick. “I’m on coffee break if anyone asks. How close to the end of the agenda are we?”

  “One more item until the one we are concerned about,” Dick replied. “Dusty doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t feel comfortable with.”<
br />
  “She represents the museum. They have an official concern with the logging off of the park. The rest of us are just private citizens,” Chase said. He carried firm authority in his voice and his posture despite his fatigue.

  Dusty flushed, breaking out in a sweat despite the fans, the cold marble walls, and the lightness of her sundress. “I . . . I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can, Dusty,” Chase insisted. “No one will judge you. They will judge the words that Joe wrote. Trust me. I’m your friend and I won’t lie to you.” He took her hand in his. “I’ll be right here. Just pretend you are reading that statement to me. Don’t look at the mayor or the Council. Just at the paper and me.”

  He sounded so calm and reassuring, Dusty forgot her fears for a moment.

  “What did Joe find out?” Thistle asked.

  “Judge Pepperidge says until he sees the paperwork authorizing the logging, all he can do is put a forty-eighthour halt on all work, to give the city and the timber company time to come up with proof this isn’t illegal. But if anyone comes up with a contract signed by the mayor, he can’t do anything.”

  “What happens if no papers show up after forty-eight hours?” Dick asked.

  Dusty shrugged. “I don’t know. Joe is trying to get a face-to-face meeting with the judge, or the guy in the hard hat, or the lawyer who issued the work order. No one is talking to him or to each other.”

  “That we know of,” Chase mused. “Hush, we’re up next.”

  Councilman Pepperidge read the proposal to rescind contractual authority by the mayor. Dusty dismissed the legalese in the speech, too worried about her upcoming session with reading aloud her own document. She hadn’t given an oral report since fourth grade, just before her bout with cancer and subsequent homeschooling.

  She gave tours to strangers and school groups every day.

  That was material she knew inside out, upside down, and backward. She could do a tour in her sleep.

  She knew the arguments in the statement she’d helped Joe write equally as well.

  “This is preposterous!” Mayor Seth Johansen shouted. “You all gave me the power to sign work orders and contracts to end the bickering, posturing, and indecision that plagues the Council. Nothing got done before you signed off that authority, and nothing will get done if you take it away from me. Toilets will remain plugged in public buildings, parking meters won’t get fixed. Potholes won’t get filled. You didn’t want to have to work at the job you got elected to and paid for.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Mayor,” George Pepperidge interrupted the tirade. “That power was granted to you twenty-five years ago, by a different City Council, with a different agenda. And now we feel that we should have a greater say in the management of the city.” He kept his voice calm and rational.

  The mayor, however, turned beet red, breathed shallowly, and drooled a bit.

  Dick half stood, as if to rush to the mayor’s side and begin CPR.

  “This meeting is adj ourned.” The mayor pounded his gavel and pushed his chair back from the long table.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Mayor. There is an issue pertinent to the measure still on the floor.” Dick finished standing and addressed the Council as a whole.

  “No measure is still on the floor. I have adjourned the meeting.”

  “No, sir. According to the rules of order, the Council has to vote that they have finished the daily business before you can adjourn,” Dusty found herself saying. “You have to follow the rules of order.”

  “Who are you people?” the mayor asked suspiciously.

  “Benedict Carrick, sir,” Dick replied.

  “Juliet Worthington’s boy? Didn’t she marry that teacher person, never thought any good would come of that relationship.”

  “My parents are still married after thirty-two years and still happy. Sir,” he added the last a bit belatedly. “And there is the issue of who signed the work order allowing Pixel Industries, Ltd to log off The Ten Acre Wood,” Dick continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “The Ten Acre Wood is a city park, the timber is protected from cutting by city ordinance.”

  “The park is special to everyone in town, enhancing the city, granting necessary recreation, and preventing serious erosion of the fragile soil on the ridge.” Thistle jumped up and recited her own piece. Not once did she look at her paper.

  Chase nudged Dusty’s side with his elbow. “Your turn. Read the paper to me, not to the Council.”

  Gathering as much calm and dignity as she could, Dusty stood, adjusted her glasses, and began reading the words Joe had set forth for her. Her heart pounded loudly. Sweat dripped from her brow, making her glasses slide to the tip of her nose. Two minutes later, she shifted to the second page, unaware of anything she’d said.

  But she got through it. She presented all of Joe’s logical arguments in order, without failing him. “Respectfully submitted by Joseph Newberry, Curator of the Skene County Historical Museum, and staff.” She dropped back into her chair the second the last syllable left her mouth.

  Chase took her hand again and kissed the back of it. “Good job.”

  She couldn’t help smiling at him, and the warm tingles that crawled up her arm from where his lips had touched her.

  Chaos erupted around the room. All Dusty heard was, “You can’t cut down The Ten Acre Wood!” repeated again and again. The acoustics picked up the words and reverberated them around and around, again and again.

  Thistle sat and covered her ears against the noise, whimpering slightly.

  A bit of sparkling light caught Dusty’s attention. By the time her eyes focused on the blur of movement, she saw only the slender back of a man in a gold-and-tan sport coat exiting the hall behind the mayor’s dais. A bit of the shimmering haze clung to the mayor’s head.

  “Ahem,” Mayor Seth cleared his throat. The marble walls picked up the sound and sent it around the room loud enough to cut through the noise. “Such a proposal has come to my attention. The purchase price of the timber is enough to keep the free clinic open for another year and to rehire three of the five teachers we had to let go due to the current budget crisis. This is something I must consider seriously.”

  Dusty sat in stunned silence.

  “Why weren’t we told that the clinic is closing?” Dick asked. “It’s part of the community college. Nursing students get most of their clinic hours required for graduation there. All the people who have lost jobs and, therefore, their health insurance depend upon that clinic.”

  “The college provides less than half the funds required to keep the clinic open,” Mayor Seth said with a sneer. “I was told last week that the state budget can no longer fund the rest. Our area is growing. We aren’t an isolated community anymore. Other hospitals and clinics are within easy commuting distance and along mass transit lines. That is enough on the subject. This meeting is adjourned.” He pounded the gavel once more, rose slowly, took up his three-legged cane, and stumped out of the room.

  Twenty-one

  PHELMA JO NELSON READ THE NOTE that Haywood placed in her hands, not on her desk.

  “Free clinic closing January 1 or before.”

  Interesting. Haywood had been back and forth between the office and City Hall half a dozen times today. This was the first tidbit of news to intrigue her. Especially since the receptionist from the free clinic sat in front of her.

  She schooled her face to make it look like she listened intently while her mind wandered to daydreams of the look on Dusty Carrick’s face when her precious fund-raising Ball was ruined.

  “As you can see, we need donations from the entire community.” Janet Boland finally finished her shpiel.

  “Donations look good on a resume,” Haywood whispered to Phelma Jo, finally settling behind her left shoulder. “The elderly in this town represent a strong voting contingent come November,” he added so quietly Phelma Jo had to strain to hear him.

  She glanced at the note again and read the second line of handwritten text. A bigger idea pop
ped into Phelma Jo’s head.

  “You need more than just a few donations now, Ms. Boland. You need a nonprofit corporation with a continuing stream of donations.”

  “You are right, Phelma Jo,” Ms. Boland said. “The problem of seniors needing a little extra help will continue and get severe again with the first cold snap and snowstorm. But this is a new project. We only have the resources to start small and temporary. It all came about because of Mrs. Spencer’s collapse—you do remember Mrs. Spencer from fourth grade, don’t you?—and that new girl, Thistle Down. She needs a job and this is something she can do. Actually it’s something she’s good at. She saved Mrs. Spencer’s life. Her intervention might very well save several other valuable voters.” So she had heard Haywood’s comment.

  Beside her, Phelma Jo felt Haywood stiffen. Hastily, he wrote a note and passed it to her, keeping his hands below the desk level. “Remind this lady that the clinic is closing, and she’d make a better employee than Thistle.”

  Phelma Jo already had that in hand.

  “Ms. Boland, I have the staff and resources to set this up. Leave it in my hands.” Phelma Jo smiled her dismissal.

  “We need donations now, not six months from now when the paperwork for incorporation clears,” Janet insisted.

  “So you do.” Phelma Jo retrieved her personal checkbook in its oxblood leather cover from the desk drawer and scrawled numbers and a signature.

  Haywood fidgeted nervously. What was with the man today? One of the reasons she’d hired him was his calm reassurance.

  As she put the final flourish on her signature, Phelma Jo’s field of vision seemed to narrow. Darkness encroached from the sides.

  She raised her head a moment in alarm. Sparkles replaced the darkness, pretty sparkles in wonderful autumnal colors of gold and green and russet.

  “Since the clinic will be closing soon, I suggest we set this corporation up so that you will take the job of checking on the seniors, Ms. Boland. You are much more qualified than Thistle Down. Much easier to obtain a bond on your honesty and integrity. Especially since she has a criminal record under another name. Something to do with gang violence and vandalism.”