Homecoming in Mossy Creek

by Debra Dixon

  I sailed the rebar to my left as hard as I could from flat on my back, and clutched at God-knew-what to slow myself down. I don’t think I was sliding fast, but it felt like Mach 2.

  The rumbling above sounded like an avalanche. In a sense it was.

  Suddenly I felt Peggy’s hands under my shoulders. She yanked me to my feet and dragged me back and sideways as hard and fast as she could manage.

  “Run!” she shouted.

  I ran.

  It was a very small avalanche. The whole shebang stopped about four feet from the bottom of the pile. The mess it had dislodged lay strewn around the ground. The man who looked after the dump would not be happy about the mess we made. I didn’t plan to tell him about it.

  “You hurt?” Peggy hunkered over with her hands on her knees.

  I gulped air. I do not even want to consider what my blood pressure was, but my adrenaline would have powered a super-sonic transport. I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then let’s go see if you dislodged anything of value.”

  “Not likely with our luck.”

  She grabbed my arm and glared at me. “Louise, we are due!”

  We climbed across the muck very carefully. With two of us, we could move the broken concrete. The pile seemed to have subsided as much as it planned to.

  By the time we shoved fifteen or twenty pieces of block down behind us, I was ready to quit. My whole body ached, I could feel a dozen scraped places I hadn’t been aware of in the throes of my adrenaline rush, and the aftermath of fear had set in.

  “Give me a hand here,” Peggy said. She didn’t look much better than I did. Cement dust caked her face, but the runnels of sweat had cut so many paths in it she looked striped. I’m sure I did too.

  God in heaven, we were two old ladies! We were definitely bonkers to do this.

  But I shoved with her. Then we sat down on the nearest flat piece of concrete. “I quit,” I said. “The dumb box is gone forever and I, for one, am glad.”

  Peggy struggled to her feet. “One more.”

  “No! We’re going home. I’ll call Ida from the car and tell her we failed. She can shoot us if she wants to, but not before I stand under the shower for about a month.”

  Peggy turned over the piece of concrete we sat on. It slid down and barely missed my ankles.

  “Hey! Watch it.”

  She just stared down with her mouth gaping.

  “Don’t you dare have a stroke on me!” I swore.

  She pointed. “What’s that?”

  Moving our sitting block had revealed a gap. “Another damn block. See? White, dusty?”

  “Metal.” Peggy said. She reached down into the hole and brushed the cube. Underneath its dust coating it was dark gray.

  Ridiculous! We couldn’t have found it. I don’t think either of us had ever truly believed we would.

  Getting it out wasn’t easy. We had to find my rebar and pry it up before we could remove it. Eventually, it sat on the ground at our feet like a square metal toad.

  “I’m calling Amos,” I said, dialed his cell phone and listened. “Says he’s not available, whatever that means.” I left a message anyway. “Amos, we found it. We’re at the dump. Come get it.”

  “Call Ida,” Peggy said. So I did. Same thing, not available.

  “Great. We’re not supposed to call Sandy or Mutt. What about Win?” I glanced at my watch. “He’ll no doubt be in the throes of early dance disasters. Looks like Amos or Ida would be waiting, if they wanted the damned thing so bad.” I rubbed my gloved hands together and hunkered down. “It’s getting dark. I’m not staying here waiting to hear back from them. The dance starts in an hour.”

  “We have to wait,” Peggy said. “We can’t lift the thing ourselves, and Amos wants to be the one to open it. Let’s go sit in the car.”

  “I’m hungry. We missed lunch.”

  “Suck it up.” She pulled me up and I stumbled behind her to the car.

  “When Amos deigns to answer my call, he can drive on out here, tuxedo or not. I’ll be delighted to tell him what to do with that box,” I said.

  “You get very grumpy when you’re hungry.”

  “Like you don’t.” I started to climb into the car, then looked at my nice leather seats and at the state we were both in. “Wait a minute. I’ve got an old blanket the dogs use. We can cover the seats so we don’t have to fumigate them.”

  I went around, opened the tailgate and pulled out the tattered old blanket.

  “Not too clean,” Peggy sniffed.

  “As compared to what?”

  “What’s that?” she pointed.

  “My two-wheeler. I’ve given up toting fifty pound bags of dog food in my arms.”

  “Bring it.”

  “What? Where?”

  “We’re going to load that box onto your two-wheeler and take it to the police station,” she said.

  “Who’s this we?”

  “Come on, Louise. We can do it. It’s not that heavy.”

  “Then what do we do with it?”

  “We are going to dump it right in the middle of Amos’s desk,” she said with satisfaction. “Then we are going to forget it ever existed.”

  WMOS Radio

  “The Voice of the Creek”

  Are y’all Creekites ready for more football?

  We’ve had 7 great games so far this season, but the one tomorrow night is special—and y’all know why! If you don’t, then you’re either dead or from out of town. Because as every good Creekite knows...THIS IS HOMECOMING!

  Kick-off is at 7 p.m. at the —pffft bleeeccchhh—Bigelow High School Stadium. But we can’t help it so be that as that may, we’re gonna win and we’re gonna win BIG!

  The Harrington Eagles are 3 and 5, and we’re 6 and 1. That’s right! Only ONE in the loss column. How about that for a first season?

  Before that, though, everyone’s gonna meet at the site of our future stadium for a GI-NORMOUS pep rally.

  This is gonna be the first Homecoming pep rally for a Mossy Creek Football Team in 20 years. Mossy Creek fans are gonna spur our Rams to victory, helped along by the Rams cheerleaders, Rammy the Ram mascot, the team’s coaches and the Mossy Creek High School band.

  The pep rally runs from 4:30-6 p.m. at the newly cleared Stadium Field. They’ll have games, giveaways and activities for all ages. It’s free so y’all come on out and bring the whole family!

  After the pep rally, we’ll convoy down to Bigelow for the game. Won’t that be a sight? Trucks, cars, SUVs and probably an RV or two tagging along behind the team bus.

  We’re singing the fight song the whole way, so don’t forget to roll down those windows and let the world—but especially Bigelowans—hear your melodious voices!

  Queen for a Day

  Homecoming means more than kings and queens.

  —Author Unknown

  Christie Ridgeway, Friday

  Leaning back against the grill of Mom’s ’67 Mustang and extending my arms, I felt a lot like the girl in the movie, Titanic, running away from a past I didn’t want and a future already laid out for me.

  “Christie,” my father had been saying for as long as I could remember. “It’s four years at the University of Georgia for you, followed by two years at Harvard Law School. Won’t that be great?”

  Great? Ha.

  Those were his plans for me. My choice involved four years at home attending North Georgia State with a major in journalism. I had less than a big-fat-zero desire to study law. All I wanted was to stay in Mossy Creek and write for the Gazette.

  I wasn’t one of the many kids at school whose main ambition was to leave Mossy Creek for Atlanta or other places so different and so far away from this small town buried in the North Georgia moun
tains.

  I have never felt buried here. I felt nourished. I felt kinship with the people here. I felt a deep sense of home.

  With a heavy sigh, my gaze fell across the tract of land that had been almost cleared in anticipation of tomorrow morning’s groundbreaking. It was the site of the much-anticipated, much-discussed new football stadium for Mossy Creek High School. The first football field in over twenty years.

  I’d parked close by what would one day be an end zone, trying to find a peaceful spot away from the hubbub of Homecoming festivities. The field was a flat expanse of red Georgia clay, mostly cleared by bulldozers in the past couple of weeks of the overgrowth that had strangled it for years.

  This field would once again reclaim its destiny, but it just reminded me of another direction in which I was being pushed, rather than a direction of my own choice. Another destiny thrust upon me by my over-ambitious parents.

  They had their heart set on me being the first Mossy Creek Homecoming Queen in twenty years. Mama had been the Homecoming Queen the year before the school burned down. She’d been claiming for twenty years that she was the last crowned queen of Mossy Creek, and technically, that was true.

  LuLynn Lipscomb—now McClure—had been announced as the queen the year after Mama won, but before LuLynn could walk from her place in the Homecoming Court to the dais set up at one end of the football field, the Mossy Creek Ram had run across the field with its tail on fire and all heck had broken loose. People had scattered in all directions, so not only had LuLynn not been crowned that night, the crown itself had somehow been lost or stolen in the hullabaloo. So she’d never been crowned Queen.

  I wasn’t there, of course, but I’d heard the story many times from my parents and others in the community. I loved that story. It’s part of what made Mossy Creek unique.

  Mama liked the story, too, because it gave her bragging rights as the last crowned Homecoming Queen. Now she wanted even more bragging rights for me to be the first crowned Queen after her.

  The trouble was, I had a shot at it.

  If it sounded as if I wasn’t exactly excited about it, you’re right. For two reasons.

  First of all, the Homecoming King and Queen crowned tonight would be presented on the Bigelow Football Field. Because the Mossy Creek Stadium wasn’t ready, our home games were being played at the stadium in Bigelow. Both schools’ schedules had been arranged to allow that. And in my opinion, there was something wrong about the Mossy Creek Homecoming King and Queen being crowned in Bigelow, Mossy Creek’s arch rival.

  But the biggest reason I wasn’t excited about the possibility of being Homecoming Queen is that my best friend, Monica Mitchell, is also a candidate for Queen. I want her to be Queen. She needs it more than I do, for two reasons.

  Monica’s aunt is LuLynn McClure, the uncrowned Queen from twenty years ago. LuLynn and Monica are very close because LuLynn took Monica in while her mother did a stint in the army. Now, LuLynn is not one to suffer silently, so both Monica and LuLynn’s own daughter, Josie, helped LuLynn through her years of...well, let’s just say she went through a period of nipping into the cooking sherry because of it. After that, LuLynn entered both girls in every beauty pageant in four counties. Josie hated every one of them, but Monica loved them. She’d even won a few—Miss Perky Pigtails in Cherokee County when she was seven and Miss Amicalola Falls just two years ago.

  Even so, Monica remembers very well her aunt’s depression over never being crowned. When it was announced that she was in the running for Homecoming Queen this year, along with me and Nancy Bainbridge, she became determined to win for her Aunt LuLynn.

  According to Mom and my Great-Aunt Adele Clearwater, Monica was my most serious competition.

  Aunt Adele was just as determined as Mom that I was going to win. She made that clear when she bought my dress back in September. A horrible lime green thing with puffed sleeves. I secretly returned the dress in October and bought one that a girl in...oh, my century might wear.

  Being introduced as a candidate for Homecoming Queen didn’t mean nearly as much to me as it did my parents. But it was tradition, and Mossy Creek lived on tradition. And I loved Mossy Creek. That was the only reason I had any interest in it at all. And though it seemed strange that the Mossy Creek Homecoming Queen would be crowned at the Bigelow stadium, until the Mossy Creek stadium was complete, there wasn’t any choice.

  So that ambivalence and reluctance to break my mother’s heart were the only reasons I hadn’t withdrawn so Monica could win for sure.

  It being the first Homecoming game in twenty years, everyone was excited. Emotions were running high. This would be the last season they’d play a game on the Bigelow field, except in competition.

  The Mossy Creek First Annual Homecoming Bake Sale had been held yesterday on Town Square. The festival started after school with the ladies of the town setting up booths selling various yummy concoctions. There’d been artists of all sorts with booths, too, selling everything from colorful quilts to sock monkeys to striking paintings and crafts of every description.

  The football game was tonight, with the crowning of the Homecoming King and Queen. Tomorrow morning there would be a parade and the Homecoming Dance was scheduled for tomorrow night.

  As if he was trumpeting his own approval, the man running the motor grader on the field below gave the clutch and gas a boost, and the machine made a lunge as he threw up his hand and waved at me. I recognized Wolfman Washington and waved back.

  The roar of the motor grader almost covered up the ringing on my cell phone. I’d been ignoring it for over an hour. The phone at home was probably ringing off the wall since my friends couldn’t get me on my cell. The team’s last minute football practice would soon be over.

  Knowing I might as well get caught up with the messages, I flipped the phone on.

  It rang immediately, a merry rendition of “Here Comes Santa Claus.” I didn’t have to look at the caller ID to know Monica was calling.

  “Where are you, Chris?” she demanded. “I thought you were going to give me a ride home, but I don’t see your car.”

  “I’m over by the new stadium.” I turned back toward the Mustang. “Where are you? I can—”

  Suddenly, Monica appeared on the path up to the school. We flipped our phones off simultaneously.

  “It’s about time I found you,” she said, then scrunched up her nose. “What are you doing here? It’s so...dirty.”

  I looked back over the field and smiled. This was home. This was Mossy Creek. So many of my friends didn’t understand why I didn’t want to leave, not even for college. Including Monica.

  “I’m just...thinking.”

  “You’ve been doing a lot of that lately. What about? College, again? Today of all days? Geez, you were accepted by six schools and you still can’t decide where to go.”

  “That’s right. It’s a big decision.”

  “Why not go where your dad wants you to go? Most of your friends will be in Athens.”

  I shook my head vehemently. “I’m thinking about studying journalism online. Then I won’t have to go anywhere.”

  “I just don’t understand why you don’t want to get out of this place.” But she said it without rancor. We’d had this discussion before, many times. “I’d go in a heartbeat.”

  “I know...” I started to explain, then I let my voice trail off.

  “I know,” Monica said with a stony look. “You don’t want to leave Willie.”

  There it was, the second reason I wanted Monica to be Homecoming Queen. If she won that, maybe she’d be okay with my having Will as a boyfriend. We’d both been in love with him since we all attended Bigelow Junior High, but for some reason, he liked me instead of her.

  Since that wasn’t the reason I didn’t want to leave Mossy Creek, Monica’s comment made me want to scream. How cou
ld my best friend not understand? But she didn’t, no matter how much I tried to explain. Maybe it was easier for her to believe that. Whatever the reason, I picked another topic to release my ire. “How many times does he have to tell you that he prefers to be called ‘Will?’”

  “Hey, y’all!”

  As if he’d heard us talking about him, John Bigelow Jr.—Will—appeared on the path to school. “Will! What are you doing here?”

  “After practice, I thought I’d wander down and see if they’ve made any progress. Then I saw your car.” His eyes traveled past us, over the future gridiron. “Do you realize that I will have finished high school without ever playing on Mossy Creek Field?” He stared across the expanse of red dirt, then seeming to dismiss his reverie, he glanced back at us. “Hey, shouldn’t y’all be primping for Homecoming court?”

  “Shouldn’t you?” I returned with a bit more bite than I’d intended.

  “I’ll be wearing my football uniform.”

  “Which will be dirty and smelly by halftime,” I said. “And we’ll be in formals.”

  “Yep.” His grin was unapologetic.

  “We were discussing college.” Monica changed the subject smoothly. “What about you, Willie? Have you decided where you’re going for your next college weekend?”

  “My parents are taking me down to the Citadel the first weekend after football season,” he said, ignoring Monica’s use of the boyhood name he was trying to shed. He was pragmatic about it, I knew. The whole town still called him Willie. Probably would for years to come.

  Monica nodded. “That’s cool. You’re a Bigelow, and a smart one.”

  “What would you rather do?” I asked quietly, hearing the underlying tightness in his voice. He sounded like me.

  Will kicked at a clod of red dirt and looked off down the field. “I’ll probably do what Dad wants me to. How about you, Monica? You never talk about your future.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Can’t afford college.” Monica slung her backpack over her shoulder and grimaced. “Maybe I’ll hock my crown, if I win. That might buy a couple of pairs of jeans and some shoes. Not too many college classes, though.”