She knew that Willow used to live in a brick house with a screened porch and a swing set.
She knew that Willow’s father was buying the Sleepy Time Motel.
And she knew that Willow’s mother’s name was Dorothy, but Dorothy wasn’t here. When Loretta asked where she was, Willow just shrugged.
Willow didn’t ask Loretta any questions, so Loretta volunteered stuff. That she lived in Calhoun, Tennessee, and had bunk beds that had once belonged to her cousin Audrey, who had run away to get married. That she was going to take karate lessons in the fall. That she stepped on a rusty nail when she was eight and had to get a tetanus shot.
Then she told Willow about the day she got the box of things that had belonged to her other mother.
She showed Willow all the charms on the bracelet and promised to show her the other things tomorrow.
Willow looked so sad, Loretta wondered if maybe Dorothy was dead.
“Is Dorothy dead?” she asked.
Willow shook her head.
Loretta could take a hint. She didn’t ask any more questions about Dorothy.
Aggie
“Come on, Ugly,” Aggie said. “Let’s go sit and ponder.”
She sat in Harold’s lounge chair and let Ugly curl up on the afghan in her lap. She looked out the window at the darkening sky.
“Maybe things are starting to change,” she said. “I mean, three rooms in one day!”
She looked down at Ugly. “Maybe now I can fix things up,” she said. “You know, the leaks in the roof and the clogged drains and all.”
Ugly twitched one ear and purred up at her.
“Shoot, maybe I could even put water in that ole swimming pool again,” she said. “Everyone always loved that pool. Remember, Ugly?”
Aggie closed her eyes and pictured the little swimming pool filled with sparkling blue water. Kids did cannonballs off the diving board, splashing their mothers sunning in the lounge chairs.
Thinking about the swimming pool reminded Aggie of the time the insurance man had come to the motel and made her and Harold put up that sign.
NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY
SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK
Aggie chuckled, thinking about how irritated Harold had gotten, telling that insurance man he was making a mountain out of a molehill.
Aggie’s eyes popped open. Insurance? Had she paid that insurance bill? Where was that bill, anyway? Was it in the junk drawer with the other bills?
Aggie took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh that made Ugly jump off her lap and trot over to the kitchen to eat.
Aggie slept in the lounge chair all night with the afghan pulled up to her chin. She didn’t even wake up when the sun poured in through the window the next morning. She woke up when Clyde Dover banged on her door and called her name.
Aggie jumped.
“Coming,” she answered, smoothing her hair and straightening her shirt.
When she opened the door she could hardly believe the sun was up so high and the day had begun.
“I can’t hardly believe I slept this late,” she said, opening the screen door for Mr. Dover.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, “but I thought maybe we could go over some things today.”
“Things?”
“Um, yeah, you know, make a list of things.”
Aggie cocked her head. “A list of things?”
Mr. Dover ran his hand over his buzz-cut hair. “Well, uh, yeah,” he said. “Things we need to talk about before we sign the final papers.”
Aggie stared at him. What kind of things was he talking about?
As if he’d read her mind, he said, “Um, like, things that need to be repaired and outstanding debts and all.”
“Oh.”
“And the inspector is coming this afternoon,” he said. “If that’s all right.”
Aggie felt dizzy. She clutched the doorframe.
“Are you okay?” Mr. Dover asked.
Aggie said, “Yes,” but she didn’t feel okay. Dizzy, she could handle. Lord knows she’d been dizzy before.
But all this other stuff?
Final papers?
Inspector?
That stuff was harder to handle than a little ole dizzy spell.
Mr. Dover said something else, and Aggie nodded like she’d heard him (even though she hadn’t), and then he left.
She washed her face and went outside to water her plants.
“What ya doin’?” someone called.
Aggie looked up to see Loretta, that little girl from Room 6, skipping toward her.
Aggie smiled.
She had forgotten all about skipping. How that felt, so happy and free.
When was the last time she had skipped? she wondered.
A long, long time ago, that was for sure.
“Just giving my pals some breakfast,” she said.
Loretta examined the begonias and geraniums and marigolds in the mildewed flowerpots and rusty coffee cans outside the office door.
“But not really breakfast, right?” she said.
“Sure,” Aggie said.
“Just water?”
Aggie snapped a yellow leaf off one of the begonias and tossed it into the gravel. “They hate Cheerios,” she said.
Loretta giggled. A sparkly kind of giggle that made Aggie feel better about the day.
Loretta took a crumpled piece of paper out of the pocket of her shorts and showed it to Aggie.
“We’re going to all these places,” she said.
She beamed at Aggie and flicked her dark, straight hair out of her eyes with a dramatic shake of her head.
Aggie adjusted her glasses and squinted down at the paper. “Oh, my,” she said. “That’s a lot of places.”
“I know.” Then Loretta told Aggie all about her other mother and the charm bracelet. She held her arm up so Aggie could see all the charms.
Aggie examined every little silver charm and made sure she said something nice about each one.
“Lawd, look at that itty bitty little starfish!
“Well, I’ll be darned. The Statue of Liberty! Ain’t that something!”
Someone slammed a door.
Hard.
Kirby Tanner marched across the parking lot toward the road.
“Oh, Kirby,” Aggie called.
Kirby glanced over his shoulder but kept on walking.
“Come meet Loretta.”
Kirby stopped.
“Come see what she’s got,” Aggie said.
Kirby turned and walked back toward them, his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his shoulders hunched up around his ears.
Loretta jiggled her hand, making the charm bracelet jingle.
“Kirby, this is Loretta,” Aggie said.
Kirby shifted from one foot to the other. Traced circles in the dirt with the toe of his sneaker. Cracked his knuckles. Smoothed his hair.
Loretta jabbered away about all the places she was going to visit in the Smoky Mountains.
And then Willow came out of her room and sat in the rocking chair.
“Willow,” Aggie called over to her.
Willow looked up. Her blond hair looked almost white in the morning sun, framing her face with a halo of curls.
“Come here.” Aggie motioned for Willow to join them.
Willow walked slowly toward them in a tiptoe kind of way, in her pink plastic sandals. Aggie felt a little stab at the sight of such a sad-looking girl.
Aggie wanted to hug her, but maybe Willow wouldn’t want to be hugged.
So instead of hugging, Aggie said, “I love those sandals.”
Willow
That afternoon, Willow sat outside Room 10, eating sliced cheese on saltine crackers and watching the man inspecting the motel. He poked at the rotting wood under the windows with a screwdriver. He scraped at the rust on the hot water tank. He examined the frayed electrical wires above the office door. And he scribbled things onto the papers on his clipboard.
Willow’s fath
er followed the inspector around like a stray dog. Pointing at things. Asking questions. Studying the clipboard.
When Willow got tired of watching them, she walked up and down the sidewalk out front, stepping carefully over the cracks. At one end of the motel, a path led around back. Willow followed it. Pricker bushes snagged her shorts and scratched her arms. As she neared the back of the motel, she thought she heard someone talking.
She stopped.
Yes, someone was talking.
Then someone laughed.
Then talking again.
She peered around the corner. Aggie stood in the middle of a dried-up, overgrown garden. A plastic milk carton with the top cut off hung from a string around her neck. When Aggie looked up, Willow ducked back around the corner of the motel.
“Is that you, Willow?” Aggie called out.
Willow stepped around the corner and waved at Aggie. A small, floppy-handed wave.
“The rabbits are getting all my pole beans,” Aggie said. She shook the milk carton. “Six,” she said. “Six measly ole beans.”
“Oh,” Willow said.
“Good thing I don’t eat much.” Aggie stooped to pull a half-eaten cantaloupe out of the yellowing vines. “Looks like them dern rabbits had dessert, too.”
Willow stepped over a twisted clump of kudzu meandering across the path. She looked around her at the dried-up tangle of a garden.
“I thought I heard someone talking back here,” she said to Aggie.
Aggie raised her eyebrows. “Back here?” She swatted at a cloud of gnats hovering in front of her face. “Naw.” She shook her head. “Ain’t nobody back here but me and Harold.”
“Harold?”
“Well, not Harold Harold,” Aggie said. “But, you know”—she pointed at the sky with a crooked finger—“Harold.”
Willow looked up at the puffy white clouds.
“Harold?” she said again.
Aggie nodded. “He keeled right over in the tomato garden.” She gestured toward a cluster of droopy tomato plants inside a square of picket fence. They spilled out of bent-up wire cages, sagging under the weight of rotting tomatoes.
Willow shivered, thinking about a dead man in there.
“I come out here to ask his opinion every now and then,” Aggie said.
“Oh.” Willow wondered if maybe Aggie was crazy. She studied the old woman’s wrinkled face, her wispy gray hair, her sparkly blue eyes. She didn’t really look like a crazy person, but still …
“Is that nosy clipboard man gone yet?” Aggie said.
Willow shook her head.
Aggie took a bean out of the milk carton and snapped it in two. She popped half in her mouth and handed the other half to Willow.
Willow had never eaten a raw bean before. It was warm and kind of fuzzy.
Aggie brushed leaves off a dirty plastic chair beside the garden and sat down with a sigh. Willow sat beside her on an overturned milk crate. She wondered if Harold had sat on that crate.
They sat like that for a while.
Not talking.
Watching the dragonflies flit around the garden.
Listening to the grasshoppers buzzing in the weeds.
And then Aggie told Willow all about Harold. How he could do magic tricks with paper cups and how he made up songs about things, like garbage and snakes and chewing gum.
She told her about the day she and Harold had opened the Sleepy Time Motel, way back when it was brand-new and a steady stream of tourists snaked up the mountain roads in the summertime.
“I still have the guest book signed by the very first folks who ever stayed here,” Aggie said. “Carl and Libby Elfers from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.”
While Aggie told Willow about how she and Harold had worked from sunup to sundown washing towels and changing lightbulbs and refilling the soda machine, her eyes twinkled and danced like she was seeing Harold right there in front of her.
But then her face drooped when she told Willow about how the interstate highway was built and the tourists zoomed up to the mountaintop without ever laying eyes on the Sleepy Time Motel.
And then things had slowed down a little.
And then things had slowed down a lot.
“And then, well, things just kind of got away from us,” Aggie said.
And now Harold was gone.
And then Aggie stopped talking.
Willow looked down at Aggie’s canvas sneakers. They were wet and muddy. One of them had a frayed hole in the side and Aggie’s little toe poked out.
Willow reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out a tiny china horse. The trotting white one that her friend Maggie had given her for her birthday last year. She held it out toward Aggie in the palm of her hand.
“If you keep this for a while, it will bring you good luck,” she said.
Aggie took the little horse and examined it. Then she put it in the plastic milk carton on top of the beans.
“Thank you,” she said.
She put her wrinkled, brown-spotted hand on Willow’s knee.
“Wanna help me finish watering the begonias?” she said.
Willow nodded. “Okay.”
As they made their way along the overgrown path out of the garden, Willow decided that maybe Aggie wasn’t crazy, after all.
Kirby
Kirby sat beside the swimming pool and opened the shoe-box from Burla. Tucked inside was a lumpy foil package. Kirby pulled back the foil. Cookies. The kind with a dab of strawberry jam in the scooped-out middle. Thumbprint cookies, Burla called them.
Under the foil package were three sheets of paper, three envelopes, and three stamps.
A ballpoint pen from Southside Baptist Church.
Some bubble gum.
A purple yo-yo.
And a picture of Burla’s dog, Barney, sitting on Burla’s quilt-covered couch with his tongue hanging out and a doggy grin on his face. He looked a lot younger than he was now.
His face wasn’t gray.
His eyes weren’t cloudy.
His teeth weren’t yellow.
Kirby felt a pang in his heart for Barney.
Kirby took a cookie out of the foil package and licked the strawberry jam out of the middle. Then he put his thumb in the scooped-out part. The part where Burla’s thumb had been.
He took the folded postcard out of his pocket. Greetings from the Great Smoky Mountains. He tossed it into the box with the other things. Then he walked around the edge of the pool, thinking about what a mess he was in.
Kicked out of school for no good reason.
Hollered at all the time by his hateful old stepfather, Virgil.
Treated like dirt by his very own father.
The only time his mother paid any attention to him at all was when he got in trouble. Most times it was Ace this and Ace that.
Ace, his perfect brother.
Kirby had figured out a long time ago that the only thing he could do better than Ace was get in trouble.
So that’s what he did.
Now he was being hauled off to some awful school where they made you do chores and push-ups and say yes, sir and no, sir.
The crunch of tires on gravel interrupted Kirby’s thoughts. That red pickup truck. Mr. Dover jumped out, whistling. He waved at Kirby, then helped Aggie down from the other side of the truck. The two of them disappeared inside the office.
Kirby took a piece of paper and the pen out of the box and sat on the concrete steps of the swimming pool to write.
Dear Burla,
How are you? I am fine.
He chewed on the end of the pen and looked up at the sky. Then in front of the word fine, he squeezed in the word NOT.
I am NOT fine.
Then he made a list of all the reasons he was not fine. Number one was that bad-boy school waiting for him up the winding mountain road. Number seven was being stuck in this falling-apart motel. And in between was his mama acting so mean and their broken-down car and a girl named Willow with stupid plastic sandal
s and another girl named Loretta who talked all the time and jingled a bracelet every minute of the day. And a skinny old woman named Aggie. (But then he scratched out the word old because Burla was old, too, so maybe she wouldn’t like it if he said that.)
Then he wrote two things that were fine: a cat named Ugly who liked him a lot and the thumbprint cookies.
The screen door of the office banged and Kirby looked up. Aggie sat in the lawn chair out front. Willow came out and sat beside her. Kirby looked down real quick, thinking that any minute Aggie was going to call to him. Wave her bony old hand and motion for him to come over there. Make him talk to her and Willow.
But she didn’t.
Kirby looked over at them again. Aggie sat all hunched over and droopy-looking. Willow looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap. She crossed her ankles and swung her legs. Back and forth. Back and forth.
Tires on gravel again. The white van with Murphy’s Heating and Plumbing on the side. That girl Loretta and her parents. All of them smiling and waving and acting like the Sleepy Time Motel was Disney World or something.
Loretta jumped out and ran over to him.
“Guess where we’ve been,” she said.
Kirby shrugged.
“Dollywood!” Loretta practically hollered.
Kirby said, “So?” but Loretta must have thought he said, “Tell me all about it,” because she went on and on about all the stuff at Dollywood.
“It’s over in Pigeon Forge,” she said. “There’s all these rides there. One’s called the Thunderhead and it’s really scary. And the Dizzy Disk made us kinda sick. And I went on the Shooting Star all by myself.” She sat on the steps beside Kirby. “And I tried on one of Dolly Parton’s very own wigs,” she said. “From her Chasing Rainbows museum that has all her outfits and things.”
“How come?” Kirby asked.
“How come what?”
“How come you tried on her wigs?”
Loretta’s eyebrows squeezed together. “’Cause,” she said real drawn out and whiny-like. “I mean, Dolly Parton?”
Loretta jingled her charm bracelet. “And guess what else?” she said.
Greetings from Nowhere Page 5