Summer in Mossy Creek

by Deborah Smith

  Including Mama. They fought like ducks snipping at each other’s tail feathers with dull bills. Harmless, but annoying.

  See, my mama named me “Therese” after a character in a racy romance novel. She read it on the sly when she was a teenager, after finding it in a collection of paperbacks stuffed under Granny’s bed. When Mama found out I was on the way, she told Granny she had a name ready to go. This revelation resulted in a quarrel that goes on to this day. Granny swears those romance books were never in her house and that she doesn’t read anything but women’s magazines and the weekly Sunday school lesson.

  Mama had already named my older sister, Sally, after Granny (whose full, formal name is Geraldine Sally Stroud), so she gave me my middle name, Geraldine, to appease Granny. Geraldine was my Great Granny’s name. And so it also became my redemption from an existence assuredly headed toward deprivation after being branded with Therese, a fancy name straight from books Granny calls “a hussy’s guide to life.”

  Sally was seventeen and she thought she was queen bee now that she could drive. She had a summer job working for Jayne Reynolds at The Naked Bean. She only got that job because Ingrid Beechum is my mama’s cousin on the Stroud side. Ingrid and the owner of the coffee shop are good friends now, but that didn’t happen until after they had a dirt-throwing fight right in the middle of town. You can tell Ingrid’s my relative that way.

  Anyway, my sister, Sally, complained day and night about how she couldn’t get the coffee smell out of her hair. Sally was the only person I knew who put raw eggs and mayonnaise on her head as a hair conditioner. She looked at me like I was the crazy one while she waltzed around smelling like long-lost Easter eggs.

  My sister had aspirations of becoming the wealthiest woman in Mossy Creek one day and rubbing all our noses in her money. She liked to talk big about going off and becoming famous making shampoo commercials with her long black hair. Her hair made me think of a horse’s tail. In fact, a lot about Sally made me think of a horse’s tail.

  Most of the time Sally was off somewhere with Earl Jenkins, her stupid boyfriend. At night I had to listen to her talk about what a stud he was until I fell asleep. “Earl is such a good kisser, Earl is so strong, Earl’s such a great boyfriend, Earl looks so cool on his daddy’s tractor . . .”

  It all made me want to throw up, and I said so.

  Sally said I’d understand when I was a woman.

  “If you’re a woman,” I shot back, “then I don’t have much to look forward to.”

  She whacked me with her hair brush, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t sure I’d ever understand the women in my family.

  The only adult woman in all of Mossy Creek who understood me was our mayor, Ida Walker. She must be about ten-feet-tall, and she was always dressed up pretty in things like scarves. I didn’t know anybody else in Mossy Creek who wore scarves in warm weather. She ran her own show, the scarves flying like silk flags over a fancy country where she was queen. Nobody said anything bad or embarrassing about Miss Ida, and not just because she’d go after them with her gun.

  She always patted me on the back, not my head. And she always said my name right. Not Tur-esa, not Tear-race, but Tha-reese. I never had to help her remember how to pronounce it with a “th,” like you had a lisp.

  Best of all, she often said, “Therese Taylor, you’re a bright one.”

  Last fall at the big reunion picnic I marched right up to her and asked how she ever got people to listen to her, because I needed some tips. Miss Ida said she understood how hard it can be to have big opinions in a small body. She said it would help to get taller, but mostly I’d just have to bide my time and keep my eyes open for Opportunity.

  “When Opportunity comes your way, Therese,” she explained, “you’ll be ready to jump on it and express yourself loud and clear. And then people will listen to you. Always remember: She who hesitates is last. Bide your time and keep your eyes open.”

  Okay. Since then I’d been biding and watching like a hawk. It turned out, I’d been sitting on top of Opportunity all along. I was living right in the middle of a bunch of criminals.

  My grandmother and her sisters. The Stroud women.

  ON THE EVE OF my tenth birthday, I was ready to confront them. All I had to do was get out of the house, first.

  “Did you brush your teeth, Therese?” Sally asked snidely as she flounced past me in the cramped little bedroom we were forced to inhabit together.

  “Yes.” I hurried to my side of the room, pulling my shirt over my head and breathing heavily in my sibling’s face.

  “You did not, you liar!” she bellowed. “I checked your toothbrush and it’s not even wet.” I ignored her. Teeth were not on my agenda, and neither was my obnoxious teenaged sister.

  “Good morning, Daddy.” I swiped a kiss on my father’s scruffy cheek as I zipped through the kitchen.

  “Therese didn’t brush her teeth yet!” Sally called down the narrow hallway of our double-wide mobile home. “She already has bad breath, even when her mouth is clean!” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re so embarrassing!”

  “Sally, if you don’t have anything better to do than check your sister’s toothbrush every morning, maybe you could help your mother out a little more around here, huh?” drawled Dad, his exasperation already evident.

  I stuck out my foul little tongue and grinned at her.

  “You’re just gross, did you know that!” she yelled. “Your teeth are all going to get cavities and fall out of your head and I won’t even act like I know who you are.”

  Big change, I thought. I watched as Daddy scrubbed his face with his hands and yawned, apparently resigned to his eldest daughter’s belligerence.

  My Daddy worked all day as a lineman for the Mossy Creek EMC Company, and when he got home, he took off his faded, blue, work clothes and headed straight to the bathroom with the weekly edition of the Mossy Creek Gazette. The only thing that might slow him down was the need for a new roll of toilet paper or when he spied a new dirt spot on the carpet. We had gotten fancy wall-to-wall carpet in our trailer the spring before. My daddy got pills for his blood pressure not long after. We had to take our shoes off before we could go inside now, even in summertime. I’d tried to tell Daddy that it doesn’t matter if you leave your shoes outside when you’ve been barefoot all day, but he was usually too busy lecturing Sally to listen.

  He was always trying to teach her about being proud of what you’ve got. He said, “Sal, you can tell a lot about a person by the way they take care of their things and appreciate the hard work it took to get them. If you don’t learn what it is to work hard for something and be thankful to the good Lord that He sees fit to provide for you, you won’t amount to nothing in this world.”

  He thought he was going to give his family something he called class. I thought he was going to give himself a heart attack by the way his face got red when he talked to Sally. My sister was a big believer in her version of the American way. If she could get rich quick from a lottery ticket at the filling station for a buck, then she saw no reason to worry about making a living some day. She was embarrassed by my dad because he didn’t work in an office and we lived in a mobile home. She wanted to be a big shot, like the folks down in Bigelow. The way I saw it, Daddy was probably wasting his time trying to explain to my sister what gives a person class. On my birthday eve, Daddy’s morning sermon to my sister and me was no exception.

  “. . . and it wouldn’t kill the two of you to have a little pride in what we have here. You could help your mother clean up the place better. She works a hard job all day. She don’t need to come in here and have to clean up after you kids, too.”

  Sally rolled her eyes and let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Daddy, I’m working a summer job, you know. Tell Therese to clean up. She’s the pig. Besides, if I came home to clean every evening like some kind of Cinderella, I�
��d practically never get to go out with Earl. Summer only lasts so long, Daddy. Don’t you remember being young? This family is so boring!”

  “Young lady!” Daddy bellowed as usual, pounding on the kitchen table so hard the portable TV jumped. On the Today show, even Katie Couric looked rattled. Sally knew just the right buttons to push to send Daddy into orbit. I left my sister, my father and Katie to the troubles of the day.

  Mama was cooking biscuits for breakfast and changing out the laundry like she did every morning. The aroma drifted through our cramped little house. But I was not really interested in food that morning. I could feel my nerves jangling, anticipating the plans I had for the day. My mouth was a direct link to my conscience and so I started to talk to my mama about anything that came to mind. I jabbered a mile a minute about what I thought I might be doing over the weekend with my cousin, Sue Ann.

  Sue Ann had to play with me on the weekends when Mama kept her while her own mother worked. I say if somebody is a playmate by obligation, there just isn’t much point. I tried to be Christian to my cousin because of Mama, but mostly I stuck to myself. Everybody in Mossy Creek thought that made me peculiar, but kids my age just had no appreciation for ambition. I didn’t have time to waste on piddly, girlie nonsense when I had to be thinking how I was going to put myself on the map. One day, Mossy Creek would be knocking down my door to socialize. Until then, I’d consider Sue Ann babysitting practice.

  After about five minutes of my chatter, Mama said she was too busy to listen to me. “Therese, you are the mouth of the South! Get out of here before you give me another one of my headaches with all your jabber!” Mama brushed past me to put away the Crisco. I knew to get out of her way quick if she started to notice me enough to talk to me. Usually, if Mama got a good look at me, she had a fit about the way I was always wearing my favorite pair of cut-off overalls or told me to wet my hair down real good so I didn’t look like a scarecrow.

  Mama was pretty. She tried real hard to keep her hair all combed down and shiny; it was wild and curly and dark auburn. Not at all like my straw-colored thicket. Mama was always wearing some kind of beauty cream when she got ready for bed. She liked to stay polished and pressed, even if her clothes didn’t come from the department stores.

  She was like my Granny that way, but you’d better not say it to her. My mama and my granny don’t like anybody saying they had the first thing in common. If they admitted they were so much alike, they might not have any good reasons to hate each other. I didn’t think I was like either one of them.

  Suddenly, she took a long look at me. Uh oh.

  “Therese, you’re going to have birds nesting in your hair! If you don’t start taking care of it, I’m going to take you into town to see Willy at the barber shop. He’ll give you a buzz cut like he gave your cousin Tommy last summer. Then you’ll wish you’d brushed that stuff.”

  Wilburn Hankins was a legend in Mossy Creek. From what I could tell, he was about one-hundred-and-fifty-years-old and blinder than the moles our cat turned up in Mama’s flower beds. If there was a threat that could inspire me to spend time yanking knots out of my hair, it was a trip to see Willy and his enthusiastic shears. Everybody in Mossy Creek remembered my cousin Tommy’s summer haircut. His head looked like an eraser on the end of a pencil that had been chewed up.

  So I tolerated the short haircut Mama had Miss Rainey give me at Goldilocks. Rainey said I looked like some ice skater who was real famous about a hundred years ago, I guess. Lucky me. That was about all Mama could do to pretty up my fuzzy head, or the rest of me. I wished she’d eventually give up and figure out I’d never be beautiful like Sally.

  “I’ll brush,” I promised Mama.

  “Good. Now go on outside and play. Enjoy the summer.”

  “Okay! I’m going to Granny’s.”

  “Then go.”

  Perfect. I’d made it past the periodontal police, the minister of work ethics and the hair inspector. I’d hung around long enough to keep suspicion at bay, so I waltzed out the front door. There was only one problem. Mama followed. As I hopped on my bike, she called, “You better brush that hair before your Granny sees you! I don’t want to hear from her after she sees you wearing a rat’s nest!”

  “I’ll brush! I promise!”

  “I just bet! Come back here and let me put some mousse on that hair!”

  I pretended I didn’t hear. It was a good thing I was already on the road, seated on my bike and peddling like mad. My mama had long arms that could catch me with a fly swat at a thousand feet, if she wanted to.

  She was a tough Stroud woman, for sure.

  THE SUMMER AIR was sticky and thick with humidity. I could feel a trickle of sweat rolling down the middle of my back as I peddled all the way into town. I had to save my family’s reputation.

  I’d single-handedly bring my family to redemption. I’d start a new breed of Strouds and Taylors that the citizens of Mossy Creek would all want to have over for dinner with the real cloth napkins.

  I zoomed down North Bigelow Road, crossed the creek at the North Bigelow bridge, and was in downtown Mossy Creek at eight o’clock a.m. My ride into town had made me thirsty and my mouth was dry from more than anxiety. I felt nauseous with excitement. I thought maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to leave without breakfast, after all.

  Sandy Crane’s pickup truck was already parked out front of the police station. I felt a rush at the prospect of setting my plans into action. I parked my rusty purple bike and scampered up the building’s creekstone steps.

  Sandy stood at the front counter, stirring her coffee and eyeing a box of pastries from Cousin Ingrid’s shop. Sandy always showed up first at the office. I didn’t want to risk running into Chief Royden or anyone else. For one thing, I had a crush on the chief, like most females in Mossy Creek.

  Sandy grinned at me. “Hey there, sweetie. What you doing out so early? You got a cat up a tree or something?” Sandy leaned over the counter to look down at me.

  “No, ma’am. It’s bigger than a cat.”

  “What is it then?”

  “This is about my granny and my great aunts.”

  Sandy came around the counter to me. Her expression changed to a more serious one. She sat us down in a couple of chairs. “Are they all fighting again? Is it over your Great Uncle Hogue? Is he okay?”

  “Nobody’s hurt, Miss Sandy. I’m here because I need to report a crime. Well, actually it’s a crime that hasn’t happened yet. But I want to report it to you later today, after it happens. That’s why I came here this morning. I need your help to set up a bust.”

  Her eyebrows furrowed. “Now, Teresa, are you sure about this, honey? What exactly are you talking about? What do you mean a bust? Have you been watching your daddy’s detective shows on TV again?”

  I had, but she was missing the point.

  “No, ma’am,” I lied. “What I’m talking about is a real crime. My granny and my great aunts are about to break the law. Today. At the old Baptist cemetery outside town.”

  “Do tell!”

  I spoke in hushed tones. “Miss Sandy, I’m a law-abiding person. I believe in being good. And even if it means turning in my own kin, I want to make people think well of the Strouds and the Taylors from now on. I ain’t got no choice but to hand over my granny if I ever want to be able to live with myself. I’ve heard my mama say granny ought to be locked up, so I think she approves.”

  I finished dramatically, covering my face with my hands like I had seen a distraught actress do on Law and Order the week before. It had worked for her. They had started working on her case really fast. I peeked through my fingers to see if Sandy was won over.

  She looked skeptical. “I believe I’ll need more details,” she said in a solemn tone.

  I sighed. “They’re good women, really. They’re just Strouds, is all. Everybody knows t
hat makes them crazy. But I’m part Taylor. I’m not crazy. And I want to be a good citizen of Mossy Creek. Maybe someday I’ll even be respectable enough to get a job as your assistant, Officer Crane.”

  Sandy sat up tall in her chair, apparently moved by my performance, and took me by the hands. “Sweetie, you be brave and go on and tell Miss Sandy exactly what has you so worried about your granny and her sisters. I’m listening.”

  The magic words! She was listening! I beamed and let it fly.

  “They’re grave robbers!”

  Miss Sandy bit her lower lip. “Grave robbers?”

  “I’ve never seen them, but I’ve heard my mama talk about how they go down to that old cemetery south of town where the Baptist church used to be, and they say they’re going to clean it up, but they never clean up! They steal the flowers right off the graves. My mama says they’ve been doing it as long as she can remember. They bring ’em home and plant ’em right in their own yards, as proud as you please. She says they don’t ever bring her anything, though. Before she married my daddy she used to go with them, but one day she got in a fight with my granny and her aunts and after that Granny and her aunts never took her with them again! But they’re taking me today! For the first time! I’ll see it all, and I’ll bring them right straight to you!”

  Miss Sandy sat back, staring at me. I guess it took her a minute to process all the critical information. I figured she was trying to decide how to charge them in her report. Finally she got herself together. “Miss Taylor,” she addressed me formally, “You sure are a good citizen, and I’ll tell the chief all about this as soon as he gets in this morning. Probably after he has his coffee and doughnuts. Don’t worry. We’ll be sure to look into this.”