Aggie pushed herself up and went out to meet him.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey back at ya,” Clayton said. “You hit the jackpot today.”
He handed her a stack of envelopes.
“Uh-oh,” Aggie said. “Who did I forget to pay now?”
Clayton chuckled. “You got them boxes packed up yet?” he said.
Aggie felt a little flutter in her stomach. Not the good kind of flutter like you get on Christmas morning, but the bad kind, like you get when you think of something scary.
The flutter moved to her hands, making them tremble. Making them drop the envelopes.
Then it moved up to her face, making her chin quiver. “Um, not yet,” she said.
“You okay?” Clayton said, squinting up at her from under his camouflage hunter’s cap.
Aggie gathered the envelopes scattered in the gravel.
She nodded.
“Gimme a shout when them boxes are ready, then,” Clayton said, tipping his cap and pulling out of the parking lot.
It was nearly lunchtime, and Aggie was still sitting in the lawn chair outside her room. Ugly lay curled up in her lap.
Willow and her father had gone to the hardware store.
Loretta and her parents were off to Tuckaleechee Caverns.
Kirby had fixed up that old bicycle in the shed and gone for a ride somewhere. His mother had walked down to the convenience store to pick up a few things.
Aggie had been so lost in thought, she’d forgotten all about the stack of envelopes that Clayton had brought until she spotted them there on the rusty metal table beside her. She picked them up and leafed through them.
The telephone bill.
The water bill.
A small white envelope addressed to Kirby’s mother. Darlene Tanner.
“Well, look at this, Ugly,” Aggie said. “This is for Kirby’s mother. Maybe it’s the money she’s been waiting for. You know, to get the car fixed.”
There was a bill from the soda machine company, marked Urgent. Second Request.
On the bottom of the pile was a large manila envelope addressed to Willow.
Aggie grinned.
“This one’s for Willow,” she said to Ugly.
She clutched the envelope against her chest. “I sure hope this is from that mother of hers she’s been pining for so much, don’t you?”
Ugly twitched his ear.
Aggie studied the envelope, running her fingers lightly across the front.
Then she looked up at the sky and said, “Harold, I don’t know if you got any pull up there or not, but if you do …” She jabbed a finger at the envelope. “ … let this be from Willow’s mama.”
Aggie gathered the envelopes, nudged Ugly off her lap, and shuffled up the sidewalk to her room.
But just before going inside, she looked up at the sky again and said, “By the way, her name is Dorothy.”
Willow
Willow stared out the window of the pickup truck, thinking about what to say.
Should she say, Daddy, please let Aggie stay at the motel?
Or maybe, Aggie’s sad about leaving the motel, so I think she should stay?
How about, We should ask Aggie to stay and help us get ready for the tour group?
She looked over at her father. He hummed as he drove, his elbow propped up on the open window.
“Daddy?” she said.
No answer.
“Daddy?” she said a little louder.
Her father kept his eyes on the road and said, “Hmmm?”
“I was thinking, well, I thought … I mean, maybe …” Willow looked down at her lap, trying hard to find just the right words. “Don’t you think we oughtta ask Aggie to stay at the motel instead of going to live with her cousin in Raleigh?” Willow closed her eyes and waited.
Nothing.
She glanced at her father.
He kept his eyes on the road.
Willow could feel her heart beating. Thump. Thump. Thump.
She tried to send a mental message over to her father.
Say yes.
Say yes.
Say yes.
But when her father answered, he didn’t say yes.
He said something mean.
“Willow,” he said, “you can’t give a home to every stray dog in this world.”
Willow felt a wave of mad run through her from the tip of her pink plastic sandals to the top of her head.
“Aggie’s not a stray dog!” she hollered, making her father jump.
He pulled the truck over to the side of the road and turned to face her. His jaw twitched. His eyes narrowed.
“The motel doesn’t belong to Aggie anymore,” he said. He ran his hand over his buzz-cut hair. “The motel belongs to us.”
“But Aggie lives there,” Willow said.
“She has a new place to live now.”
“She won’t like it there.”
“You don’t know that, Willow.”
“Uh-huh.” Willow nodded. “Besides, she knows a lot about motels. And she can help us do stuff. And she—”
“Willow.” Her father set his face in that hard way that told Willow he was through talking.
Then he pulled the truck back into the road and stared ahead like Willow wasn’t even there.
As soon as they got back to the motel, Willow jumped out of the truck and ran over to the picnic table. She climbed up on it and sat down, hugging her knees. She wished she were back in Hailey. If she were back in Hailey, she would go out to the little patch of weeds that used to be the flowers that Dorothy grew. She would stay there forever and never talk to anyone except for maybe Maggie, once in a while.
Willow looked up at the sound of someone walking across the gravel parking lot.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Aggie waved an envelope.
Ugly sauntered along behind her.
“This came for you today,” Aggie said, handing the envelope to Willow.
Willow clutched the envelope with both hands. “It worked!” she said. “The cobweb worked!”
She reminded Aggie about how Dorothy believed that if you walked into a cobweb, you’d get a letter from someone you loved. Then she told Aggie about the cobweb in the garden.
“Well, I’ll be …” Aggie said.
Willow opened the envelope and peered inside. More envelopes. She dumped them out onto the picnic table. Along with the envelopes was a scrap of paper torn from a spiral notebook.
Dear Willow,
These letters came for you. I hope you are doing good and that you like that motel. I am fine. It has been hot here. Maggie says hi.
Love,
Grannie Dover
Willow picked up one of the envelopes. There on the front was her mother’s loopy handwriting, just like on the calendar.
Willow’s stomach fluttered with excitement. “It’s from Dorothy!” she said, clasping the envelope against her heart.
Aggie grinned. Then she looked up at the sky and said, “Thank you, Harold.”
Willow read every letter twice.
Each one started the same way:
Dear Willow,
I miss you so much …
Each one ended the same way:
I love you very much.
Mama
Willow folded the letters carefully and tucked them back inside the big envelope. Then she ran across the parking lot to where Aggie sat outside the office.
She told Aggie everything that Dorothy had written in the letters.
How she was down in Savannah with her sister Sarah, in a house next to a church where Sarah’s husband was the preacher.
How she was working in a doctor’s office, answering the phone.
How she missed Willow more than anything and thought about her every day.
Aggie put her hand on Willow’s knee. “Ain’t that nice?” she said, giving Willow a little pat.
Willow nodded. “And pretty soon, I can go and visit her in Savannah,�
� she said.
When Loretta and Kirby came back, Willow showed them the envelope full of letters. She told them all about Dorothy and the house with the preacher and the job at the doctor’s office. She even read them one of the letters.
Loretta ran to get her AAA book that had a map of Georgia so they could look for Savannah. Willow circled it with a blue marker. Loretta let her tear out the page and keep it.
Kirby didn’t say much, but he let Willow try some of his yo-yo tricks.
Around the Corner.
Dizzy Baby.
They looked for Loretta’s pin for a while, Loretta leading them all around the motel, Kirby trailing behind, jumping over stuff, touching everything.
Then they went out to the swimming pool and sat in a circle around the drain and said stuff to each other in pig Latin.
Loretta even sang a pig Latin song.
Ow-ray, ow-ray, ow-ray our-yay oat-bay …
When Ugly appeared at the edge of the pool and peered down at them with his one eye, Willow tried to coax him to join them, patting the cement beside her and calling, “Here, kitty, kitty.” But Ugly just blinked.
Then Aggie appeared, calling down to them, “How’s the water?”
They all laughed.
“Come on in,” Loretta called.
“Yeah, come on in,” Willow called.
“Lawd, I might not ever get up out of there if I came down them steps,” Aggie said.
“We’ll teach you pig Latin,” Loretta said. “Ome-cay own-day ere-hay.”
So Aggie joined them down there by the drain. She sat on the crumbling cement with her scrawny legs stretched out in front of her and Ugly in her lap.
They stayed there till it was almost dark, singing pig Latin songs and doing yo-yo tricks, while lightning bugs flickered all around them.
Loretta
Loretta pinned the sheriff’s badge on her T-shirt and headed outside to show her rubies to somebody. That ruby mine over in Cherokee had been her very favorite place in the Smoky Mountains. She had liked it even better than Dollywood.
Aggie was sitting out by the office. Loretta ran over and showed her the tiny rubies in a plastic sandwich bag.
“And guess what else,” Loretta said.
“What?”
“I saw a charm just like this one in a souvenir shop there.” Loretta held her arm up and pointed to the little bear charm.
“Well, I’ll be …” Aggie said.
“That means maybe my other mother was right there in that very same shop.” Loretta wiggled her arm, making the bracelet jingle. “Maybe she went to the ruby mine.”
“Maybe,” Aggie said.
Just then Kirby came out of Room 1. He walked across the parking lot toward the swimming pool, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans.
“Come see what I got,” Loretta called to him.
He shook his head and kept walking.
“I got real rubies,” Loretta called.
Kirby kept walking. When he got to the pool, he jumped down the steps and ran into the deep end, disappearing from view.
“Now, what do you suppose is the matter with him?” Aggie said.
“Let’s go see.” Loretta ran out to the pool and peered over the edge.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
Kirby was sitting down by the drain. He made squiggly lines on the dirty cement with a stick. “Virgil sent the money to get the car fixed,” he said.
“That’s good,” Loretta said.
“I suppose.”
“So now y’all can go on up to that school,” Loretta said.
“Whatever.” Kirby snapped the stick in half and tossed the pieces up by the diving board.
When Aggie joined Loretta at the edge of the pool, Loretta told her about Virgil and the money. “So now they can get their car fixed and Kirby can go on up to that school,” she said.
“Oh,” Aggie said.
Loretta pulled the sandwich bag out of her pocket. “These are real rubies.” She waved the bag at Kirby. “You want one?”
Kirby shook his head, making his red hair flop back and forth.
Loretta watched him, sitting there so still and quiet at the bottom of the pool. She tried to think of something to say that would make him bounce on the diving board or race around the drain or hop up the steps.
But she couldn’t.
“I’m gonna show these rubies to Willow,” she said, and ran off toward the office.
Willow was coming out of Room 8, carrying a bucket of cleaning supplies.
“Hey,” Loretta called, skipping over to her.
“Hey.” Willow put the bucket down and pushed her hair out of her face.
“Whatcha doin’?” Loretta said.
“Cleaning.”
“Look at my rubies.” Loretta showed Willow the plastic sandwich bag with the tiny rubies in the bottom.
“Those are nice,” Willow said.
“My other mother was there at that very same ruby mine,” Loretta said.
“Really?”
“Well, maybe.” Loretta folded the plastic bag and tucked it back into her pocket. “You want to play flashlight tag tonight? We can ask Kirby, too.”
Willow shook her head. “I have to help Daddy,” she said. “A tour group is coming this weekend, and there’s a lot of stuff to do.”
Willow picked up the bucket and disappeared into Room 7.
That night Loretta sat with her parents and Aggie out by the pool. Every now and then, a car went by, sending a beam of headlights across the front of the motel. Moths fluttered around the new sign glowing in the darkness.
MOUNTAINVIEW INN.
Under that, VACANCY flashed in bright red.
On and off.
On and off.
They all looked up at the sound of someone walking across the parking lot. Clyde Dover joined them, dropping into a lawn chair with a big, heavy sigh.
“When does that tour group get here?” Aggie said.
He let out another sigh. “They’re not coming,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I called that travel agent over in Asheville and told him to forget it. There’s no way I can have this place ready in time.”
Loretta jumped up out of her chair. “We can help,” she said.
Mr. Dover chuckled and shook his head. “It would take a miracle to get this place in shape in time,” he said. “There’s carpets to clean and—”
“I can do that,” Loretta’s mother said.
“—showers to fix,” Mr. Dover went on.
“Shoot, Clyde,” Loretta’s father said, “I am a plumber, you know.”
Mr. Dover ran his hand over his head and sighed. “There’s curtains to be hung and—”
“I can do that,” Aggie piped in.
“There’s all them weeds in the parking lot that’s gotta be pulled up—”
“I can do that,” a voice called out of the darkness. Kirby appeared in the glow of the sign, flinging his yo-yo down with a whir and catching it with a slap.
Behind him, Willow walked in her tiptoe way, in her pink plastic sandals, and sat on the steps of the pool.
Before long, everybody was naming all the stuff they could do to help, and Clyde Dover was starting to perk up a bit.
They could start bright and early in the morning.
Loretta’s father would pick up the carpet shampooer.
Aggie would look for her sewing kit and hem those curtains.
Loretta and Willow would wash all the lawn chairs.
Loretta’s mother would call and make sure the soda machine got filled.
They would paint the doors and fix the broken windows and change the lightbulbs.
They talked late into the night, making lists of chores and who would do them, while Loretta danced around the flagpole, shining her flashlight up into the sky.
Kirby
Dear Burla,
Loretta gave me a real ruby.
Virgil sent the money to f
ix the car, so I guess I will be at that school soon.
How is Barney? Tell him I said woof woof.
Your friend,
Kirby
Kirby folded the letter and sealed it inside the envelope. Then he flopped back on the bed and stared up at the water-stained ceiling. A fly buzzed around the lightbulb up there.
His mother was humming in the bathroom. He could hear the pssssst of her hairspray. Could smell the sticky sweetness of it.
“So you be ready in case I call, okay?” she said, padding out of the bathroom in her bare feet.
She slapped his leg. “I’m talking to you,” she said.
“I hear you.” Kirby kept his eyes on the ceiling.
“Then answer me.” His mother sat on the bed and put her sandals on. “If the car’s ready, we’re outta here,” she said.
“Whatever.” Kirby kept his eyes on that buzzing fly.
“I’ll call up yonder to that school before we leave,” his mother said.
“Whatever.”
He closed his eyes and stayed real still until his mother left the room, slamming the door behind her. Then he jumped off the bed and peered through the slats of the window blinds. He watched his mother march across the parking lot and disappear up the road.
When he went outside, the sun was just peeking over the top of the mountains. The air was cool and damp. He could hear the eighteen-wheelers roaring up the interstate on the other side of the ridge behind the motel.
“Good morning, son,” Clyde Dover called from the office door. “You still up for doing that weeding?” he said.
“Yessir.”
So Mr. Dover showed Kirby where the rusty old wheelbarrow was and gave him a hoe with a broken handle, and Kirby set to work.
He chopped at the hard red dirt. He pulled weeds and tossed them into the wheelbarrow.
Chop.
Pull.
Toss.
All morning long.
And the whole time, that poodle dog pin burned, burned, burned in his pocket.
Greetings from Nowhere Page 9