"I think we're pretty much agreed on that. The question is, what do we do? Are we going to let some...entity push us around?"
"I think it's been pushing my family around for four generations. It hasn't hurt us yet." And Whiterock is home. I think I've been denying that for too long. I belong there.
He snorted. "It hasn't done you any good, either."
"How do you know?" Sally was suddenly impatient with his suspicion. "Have you seen anything that says it—whatever it is—"
"Call it Whiterock," he said, a sneer plain in his voice.
"Okay, I will. Have you seen any evidence that Whiterock means us harm?" She shook her head again, this time with emphasis. She had lost her doubts and knew, really knew, that whatever force affected them while they were in Whiterock, it meant them only good. "Think back. Last winter the town was dying. Now it's alive and vital and...and awake!"
"Because the people who live there worked hard to clean it up."
"Who fixed the elk's antlers? Patched the bandshell? Who?"
He opened his mouth, closed it again. His shrug wasn't exactly a capitulation, but it came close.
"I stayed awake a long time last night after you went to sleep. Thinking. Adding things up."
"And?"
"The antlers are real. Birds sit on them. The bandshell was patched. Maybe not well, and maybe not permanently..." She thought about how scruffy it had looked just yesterday. "It looked patched," she admitted, slowly, "but maybe that was an illusion."
"The inside was safe," Gus said slowly. "Lyle checked it before he okayed it for the kids to sit on."
Relief flooded her. He was going to be reasonable.
"Well, then..."
"I don't like being pushed around."
"Neither do I. But if we know... Gus, if we know it's affecting us, maybe it won't be able to push us around."
His frown told her he doubted that very much.
"The only way we'll ever know is to try." She leaned across the cab and kissed him, a light, fleeting kiss. "Let's go home, Gus. Maybe we can cut a deal."
* * * *
By unspoken agreement, Gus dropped Sally at her house and went to the shop to reassure Pete that all was well. They had spoken no more of the contents of Lorena's diary or of their outrageous conclusions.
Sally replaced the diary in her father's desk, tucking it into one of the pigeonholes underneath insurance papers and a copy of Pop's will. Now that she was home again and in full possession of her senses, she had to take care of all the details she'd left undone.
Or was she in full possession of her senses? How could she be, if she believed that there was even a grain of truth in her great-grandmother's diary?
The more she thought about it, the more skeptical she became. Whiterock was simply a special place. Grandmother Lorena had suffered from severe post-partum depression. Aunt Trudy had been looking for an excuse to get out of a place that held no future for her.
And Gus had experienced hallucinations caused by dehydration and heat prostration.
She went up to her room and sat at her drawing board. In a few minutes she was sketching details for the dancers in Carousel. Making yellow wet-weather gear and white coveralls attractive had been a challenge, but the salmon fishermen and cannery workers of this modern version of the musical would be a feast for the eyes in the costumes she'd designed.
When the phone rang an hour later, she was deep in details of Lycra inserts and reflective tape trim.
Almost before she'd said hello, Gus said, "Meet me at the park? I have an idea."
Sally glanced outside. Yesterday's hot weather had been banished by low, wet-looking clouds.
"This isn't my idea of picnic weather."
"We'll stop by the market and pick up groceries afterward. I want to check something. At the bandshell. Fifteen minutes?" His tone was abrupt, and she thought she heard both impatience and apprehension.
"I'll be there."
He hung up as soon as she spoke.
"Good grief. Tell a man you love him and he starts taking you for granted," she grumbled as she tidied her drawing board. Now that she was on the right track, the detail designs for the rest of the cast's clothing would go quickly. When she went back to Portland she'd be all ready to work with the costume shop.
There was a smell of rain in the air as she walked down the hill toward the park. A good soaking wouldn't hurt the gardens and lawns, but she hoped it would hold off until she and Gus were back inside. Like many who'd grown up in the desert, she found being outside in the rain unnatural. One more reason not to move to Portland permanently.
As she passed the elk, she saw that the pigeons had returned; their droppings coated its back like a ragged blanket. Poor, pathetic thing. Maybe we ought to simply take it away, since we can't seem to protect it from vandals and birds.
Gus sat on a picnic table waiting for her. When she approached him, he held up a hand.
"Wait," he said. "Don't touch me yet. I want to try something."
Sally stopped a few feet short of him. "Gus, I don't think—"
"Humor me, please?"
She nodded.
Rising, he turned to face the bandshell. "Okay, whoever...whatever you are. You've got our attention. What do you want from us?
"You need us. And I think the town needs you—whatever you are. The town. Not Sally, not me, not any single person. We want Whiterock to be our home. We'll stay long as you don't try any cute tricks—no coercion, no hallucinations, and no visions of the future. We'll be free to come and go, to travel whenever we want, but we'll always come back, as long as you don't try to keep us here."
Looking over his shoulder at Sally, he raised an eyebrow in query. She shrugged, not having anything to add to what he said—or wanting to feel like a fool talkig to empty air.
INTERVAL
Success?
Or failure?
Awareness posits danger.
Contrariwise future energy sources probable sequent of cooperation.
Decision?
Decision!
Advantage exceeds risk.
TWENTY-FOUR
As they waited for something to happen, Sally took a good look at the bandshell. It was shabby, with all the signs of long-term neglect. Yet she knew it had been in fair shape at the May Fest and looking good during the summer band concerts.
She opened her mouth to say something to Gus about getting together a work party to patch the stucco then closed it again. This was neither the time nor the place for housekeeping matters.
Later, she estimated they'd stood there for close to a half-hour. The slight wind that had stirred the cottonwood leaves gradually died and the birdsongs faded. Shadows long with the lowering sun stretched across the lawn, showing how badly it needed mowing.
"Look!" Gus's whisper pulled her out of idle introspection. "Good God, Sally. Look there!"
Sally blinked. And looked again. No lath was showing through the bandshell's intact plaster. Sparkling glass globes completed the shiny brass light fixtures at the sides of the great open stage.
"How?"
"I don't know. I'd swear..."
"It was falling apart," she whispered.
Slowly she turned, looked back toward the intersection of Main Street and Fifth Avenue. At an elk whose gleaming bronze back was clean, whose wide, spreading antlers caught and held glints of golden light.
"Gus?"
He came to her then, slipped his arm around her. At his first touch, a charge of energy swept through her but without the compulsion she'd felt before. She still wanted to tear off his clothes and have her wicked way with him, but not right this instant, and not without the leisure to enjoy each touch, each kiss, each caress.
"IT spoke to you?"
"No, but I think we've got our answer."
He looked around. So did she. Sunset was upon them, turning the light golden, painting the sky with pink and peach and apricot and orange, the clouds with lavender and blue and rich, deep pur
ple. The faded brick of the schoolhouse was a bright terracotta, Nagy's Cabins looked almost new under their fresh paint, and the spire of the Community Church appeared newly gilded. Even the grass under their feet seemed greener.
"This is how I always remember Whiterock," she whispered.
"This is how it will stay." Gus pulled her into a hug. "We'll keep it this way."
Twelve Years Later
"Evenin', Miz Loring. How's your man?"
Sally smiled at Ernie Green, looking older than time, yet still able to hobble down to his bench beside the library every day the weather allowed.
"Just fine, Mr. Green. And how are you?"
"Gettin' older," he said, as he always did, "and better every day." He dug into his pocket and pulled out four cellophane-wrapped mints. "Here you go, young'uns. Mind you don't choke."
Little Will hid his face in his mother's skirt, but Merilee, Kip and Kirstin accepted their candy with polite thanks.
"You spoil them, Ernie," Sally said, "like you've been spoiling kids since before I was born." She tucked Will's mint into her pocket. "Will you be at the concert later?"
"Wouldn't miss it for the world. I was here when they first opened the bandshell, did I ever tell you that?"
"You did, indeed."
"You go on now, and meet your man. He was lookin' for you earlier."
The walk down Main Street took longer than usual because of the crowd. Ben Kemp had recently won a Grammy, so people were coming from considerable distances to hear him perform in the opening concert of the Whiterock Music Festival. That performance would dedicate the rebuilt bandshell with its perfect acoustics. At noon, Gus had told her motels were booked solid for a radius of a hundred miles.
Of course, there weren't all that many motels within a hundred miles of Whiterock. The influx of music fans was a boon to Bill Holmes's newly opened Badlands Dude Ranch and Juana's refurbished Nagy Tourist Cabins.
"There's Dad!" Kip dashed ahead. Kirsten followed, hard on his heels.
"They are such infants," Merilee said, from the superiority of her eleven years. "Sometimes I want to pretend I don't know them."
Biting her lip, Sally swallowed the reminder that Merilee had been brought home in disgrace for helping with the whitewashing of the elk during this year's May Fest. If she didn't turn Sally's hair gray before she was eighteen, her younger siblings would.
Gus joined her then, swinging Will onto his shoulder before taking her hand.
"The party's about to start. What kept you?"
"What do you think?" Sally raised one eyebrow in the direction of the redheaded twins, now with their noses pressed against the enticing window of the candy shop. She snagged their collars as she passed, and then released them so she could wave to Harriet Alpin, who stood in the door of the hardware store. Bless the woman, she'd argued with her grandmother and her father for two years before getting her chance to carry on the family business. Just the other day she'd told Sally that this year the store would make a profit.
"I'm so glad Evan decided to come home and reopen the furniture store."
It had been the last empty building on Main Street.
"I can't believe we've come so far in only twelve years."
"It's taken a lot of hard work," Gus said, "but I think it's been worth it."
"Some magic, too, I think."
By unspoken agreement, they had never spoken of the improbable notions they'd discussed that day they'd decided to marry. Sally knew what she believed, and was content to let Gus, with his greater skepticism, believe what he chose. As long as he did it in Whiterock.
"There was magic that summer we met, Gus."
"Love?" he suggested, slipping his arm around her waist. The children had all run ahead and were clustered around Jack and Georgina, who had acted as honorary grandparents ever since Merilee's birth.
"More than that. Do you remember the elk?"
"That poor, pathetic thing? Of course I do. What was it you called it? A hermaphroditic deer with something?"
"Hush! The kids will hear you."
"About the elk?" he prompted.
"Oh, yes. The antlers had been gone ever since I was a kid, and nobody bothered to replace them. Until that summer. Well, I never did find anyone who admitted doing it."
"I remember the day I told you about Emily." His mouth twisted in an old, but still painful memory. "There weren't any antlers."
Sally looked up at him, wonder in her eyes.
"So you remember, too. But they'd been there at the May Fest. And they were there the day we got married. When did they get fixed?"
"Why, I don't...They were..." Gus turned to look back toward the library, but of course, could only see a distant silhouette. "What difference does it make?"
"Just that it proves there was magic."
A peculiar expression spread over his face.
"Engineers don't believe in magic."
"I do. There isn't any other explanation."
He shook his head.
"Oh, yes, there is. Like I said, it was love." Ignoring the streams of people passing them on both sides, he took her into his arms.
"Perhaps," she said, just before he kissed her.
CODA
Gratification.
Progeny satisfactory, more closely bound than prior generations.
Departure unlikely.
Dependence on limited resource misguided.
As safeguard against recurrent energy shortage, expansion of sample size indicated.
Uncertainty is...uncomfortable.
END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Judith B. Glad was one of those fortunate children to be raised by someone who believed in magic. A great aunt, with whom she lived until she was almost seven, filled her imagination with stories of adventure and derring-do and magic, never letting her know which was fact and which was fiction. With a childhood like that, is it any wonder she grew up wanting to create worlds in which the good guys—male and female—always win, where right always prevails, and where love is the most important force in the universe?
Sidetracked by reality, Judith started a family, followed a couple of careers, went back to school and ended up as a botanical consultant. Eventually, the kids all left the nest and she cut back on the consulting, leaving her with time to work on creating those worlds. She and her favorite hero had a long and happy life together in Portland, Oregon, where flowers bloom every month of the year and snow usually stays on the mountains where it belongs. It's a great place to write, because the rainy season lasts for eight months—a perfect excuse to stay indoors and tell stories.
* * * *
Uncial Press brings you extraordinary fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Put a world of reading in your pocket.
www.uncialpress.com
Table of Contents
PRELUDE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
CODA
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Improbable Solution Page 24