“What’s wrong with my choir robes?”
Dusty deduced that the burly-looking woman who shoved her way to the front of the group was Norma.
“Nothing, except when we stand together we look like a bunch of grapes grown near a nuclear reactor, that’s all. Purple and green, Norma?”
“Purple happens to be the color of royalty, Louise Mayella Buchanan Sanderson. And green stands for the color we hope to be seeing soon, once the rains come and get everything started growing again. I explained all of this during the steering committee meeting. If you had bothered to show up…”
“I had an appointment!”
“You had a tryst, and everyone in town knows it!”
Louise gasped.
The room went silent.
Dusty backed slowly away.
Then the group erupted again, in a commotion of shouted accusations and outraged recriminations. Half the women whirled with noses in the air, and the other half followed, either apologizing or getting in one last insult. The pandemonium wound its way past the pews and out the foyer door, which closed behind them all with a bang. Dusty breathed a sigh of relief and thanked a God she didn’t necessarily believe in for the silence. What a bunch of hot heads.
Helen came back a few moments later, hurrying down the aisle. “I am so sorry you had to see that. We’re not normally like that, arguing amongst ourselves. Tempers are so short these days, with everyone worrying about the drought. I do hope you’ll come to the Jubilee and see how we can really be.”
Dusty doubted she’d be anywhere near it, but she kept that to herself.
“I hope we even have the Jubilee, now. Mavis looked very upset, bless her heart.”
“She’ll get over it.”
“Mavis has never really excelled at getting over things. Once she gets…”
“Bent out of shape?”
“Yes, bent out of shape, she doesn’t get bent back in very quick. And we don’t have a lot of time. I hope Brother Mark can appease her.”
“You’ve got four churches here. Surely you can get by without her.”
Helen frowned. “I don’t know. She’s our leader. Everyone pretty much waits for Mavis to say boo before they jump. It’s just always been that way. Of course, we all know she can’t sing very well. But she thinks she can, and it’s really the only thing she has. She can’t sew, she doesn’t quilt very well. She can’t cook worth a flip, bless her heart. You should see her cornbread dressing at Thanksgiving. Has so much sage it’s green.”
Helen peered at Dusty. “I can not believe my manners. Here I am unloading our town’s secrets and I haven’t even told you my name. Helen Tanner.” She stuck a large hand out at Dusty, a hand worn soft and comfortable by time and work.
“Dusty Rhodes.”
Helen gasped again, but this time with a delighted smile on her face. “You’re the angel Luke told us about.”
“Angel?” Dusty snorted. “Whoever said I was an angel had me mixed up with someone else.”
“My son, Luke Tanner, said you had the voice of an angel.” She grinned at Dusty. “He’s one of the deputies here, and plays in the house band at Tumbleweeds.”
“Yes, we’ve met.” Dusty felt her cheeks get hot, thinking about the conversation she’d had with Helen’s son just last night.
“Are you going to stay in here and work your trap all day while I’m waitin’ out in the heat?” Dusty and Helen looked up to see a man about Helen’s age standing in the doorway, holding a worn cowboy hat, his hand on his hip.
“Oh, shut up. Like a little heat is going to kill you.”
Dusty drew back her head and stared at Helen, not believing this angry voice had come from the same sweet woman who beamed when she talked about her insane son.
Helen put her hand on Dusty’s arm and smiled at her. “It was nice to meet you. I’m glad you’re here for the Rain Fest.”
Dusty nodded, not quite sure what to say to these nutballs. “Glad to be here.”
Helen waddled down the aisle toward the man. “Did you get the tires rotated like I told you to?” she snapped.
“Did you find a way to quit nagging like I told you to?”
When the sanctuary was once again quiet, Dusty sat down on the dais and let out a breath. The town got weirder by the second. So it was no surprise when she heard the door open again and looked up to see Luke Tanner walking down the aisle.
“If you’re looking for your parents, you just missed them.”
“Shoot. I was hoping to catch Mom before she left.” He glanced at his watch and frowned. “Choir practice let out early.”
“Yeah, there was a cat fight.”
“Oh no. What was it this time?”
“Let’s see. It started with Mavis and her high screechy voice, which was my fault. And the last I heard was something about choir robes, nuclear reactors, and trysts. Oh, and your parents didn’t seem to be too thrilled with each other, either.”
Luke tossed that aside. “They’re always arguing. It’s the rest of the town that usually gets along okay.
“Hmmm.” Dusty stood and began arranging microphones. “You probably know more about this than I do. What do you think of this setup? Do you know… why are you looking like that?”
Luke rested his hand over his heart. “I’m just dealing with the shock of you saying I know more about this than you do.”
“I meant you know more about how the choir is going to be arranged. About everything else…”
“Gotcha.” He came up on stage and stood beside her. Very close beside her, she noticed, crowding her. She moved back. He moved with her.
She gave an impatient sigh. “Look, quit trying to cop a feel. First, we’re in church, and second, I already said I’d sleep with you.”
“You’re right. Completely inappropriate of me. I have no idea how the choir is going to be arranged, so I can’t help you with that. But I can tell you that the street carnival is almost set up, so we’d better get going.”
“Get going where?”
“To the carnival. You know, cotton candy and guys in stilts and dart games. Today is kind of a dress rehearsal for all the volunteers and their families. Toby’s calling it the ‘sneak peek’. Pretty corny, huh?” He reached for her hand. “Come on, let’s go before it gets too hot. I’ll win you a teddy bear.”
The church was only two blocks from Main Street, and Luke held her hand during their short walk over. Dusty slipped her hand out and put it on top, just so he wouldn’t think he was calling all the shots, but really she kind of liked how cozy and familiar it felt, walking hand in hand with a good-looking deputy among the booths and milling carnival workers. They dodged vendors setting up booths and games as they moved slowly down the street, Luke looking everything over with a critical eye. Over the loudspeakers, static blared and then squawked, then the Everly Brothers came on with “Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Rain.”
Luke pointed toward the far end of the row. “Would you look at that?”
A giant rainbow made from chicken wire and colored paper stuffed into the holes towered above the booths. As they got closer, they saw a rusty iron pot at one foot of it. Bowls of cotton billowed out.
“Charles, I want to know where you got all this cotton at this time of year,” Luke asked with a grin, shaking the middle-aged man’s hand. “Do you have a trick you could let everyone else in on?”
Charles laughed and scratched his forehead, causing his cap to ride up so that Dusty saw the line of white skin where his farmer’s tan stopped. “Well, I’ll tell you. Some of it came after sweeping out the trailer. And some of it was piled up in the corner of the barn. And some of it…” He pushed back the cotton so that they could see blue plastic underneath. “Most of it is wadded up plastic bags from Walmart. I knew those dadgummed things were going to come in handy some day.”
They walked back down the row and Luke bought both of them an ear of corn dripping with butter. They sat on a bench and ate while the watched the grow
ing crowd. Most of the booths weren’t officially open yet, and many weren’t going to be until the next day, but something this exciting drew a good-sized crowd who just wanted to watch.
Dusty pointed to a couple of teenage girls in dark gray costumes that looked like paper mache boulders. “What in the world are they supposed to be?”
Luke drew back his head. “They’re rain clouds. Don’t they look like rain clouds?”
“Oh sure. Of course. At first I thought they were big rocks, but now that I look a little closer…”
“If they were big rocks they would have some hard edges to them.” He motioned the girls over and made them twirl around. “See how rounded and billowy they are? Like rain clouds.”
Dusty looked at the sincere expression on his face and couldn’t help but smile. “This was your idea, wasn’t it?”
He started to shrug, but one of the girls nodded. “He was all excited about it.”
“Actually, the whole Rain Fest was my idea.”
“I wish you’d had some idea how to keep these things from getting so hot,” the other rain cloud said. She palmed the edge of her costume and shifted it up and down, as if the small movement would generate a breeze. “I’m sweating so hard, when I take this thing off they’re gonna smell me clear to Abilene.”
“He wanted us to carry little buckets of water and sprinkle people with them, but we decided we couldn’t waste the water.” The girl giggled and pointed. “Look at Andy.”
A skinny boy about their age approached. He wore a black spandex suit with a glittering silver lightening bolt painted from his shoulder to his toe. He stopped in the street, beamed at them, and stuck his scrawny chest out in a superhero pose, which caused the girls to giggle harder.
“All right, we have rain clouds, we have lightening. Pretty soon we’re going to have big crowds of people. Y’all get out there, be good hosts, and make some rain.” Luke shooed them back down the street.
Wynonna Judd came over the P.A. system singing “Rockin’ With The Rhythm Of the Rain,” and Dusty studied Luke as he scanned the crowd. When he turned to her, wiped butter from her lower lip and then kissed her, she let him. Not that she was averse to kissing him; she was just usually the one who decided when and where any contact was exchanged.
A little voice niggled in the back of her mind that she was relaxing some of her rules with Luke Tanner, and that was probably not a good thing. But his mood was infectious, and she decided she didn’t have to remain on her guard every second. She had laid the ground rules with him last night, and she was sure he had no doubt which one of them had the upper hand. So she could let him lead her around like a sixteen-year-old with his steady, if that was what floated his boat. It didn’t mean anything if she didn’t let it.
He tossed both their corncobs in a trashcan and they set off again down the street. “I see a lot of familiar faces, so I think these are all volunteers. But let’s check the front gate to see if we’ve sold any tickets yet, just in case.”
“What’s the town going to do with the money raised?”
“Half of it’s going into an emergency fund for people in the county. Anyone who lives here can apply for a small grant, like if they electricity’s about to be cut off, or there’s an unexpected doctor bill, stuff like that. Nothing big, but hopefully there will be enough to see anybody through a rough spot. And the other half is going toward next year’s Rain Fest. We’re going to keep it going, even after the drought is over, and it’ll get bigger and better every year.” He looked down at her, then started. “Not that there’s any way we can top this year’s musical guest.”
“Don’t worry, I wasn’t offended.”
He cocked his head. “Really? You usually are. Offended by what I say, I mean.”
She tucked her hand tighter in his. “That’s true. You have a way of getting on my nerves.”
“And yet now you’re smiling at me like you’re charmed by me. This must mean you’re starting to like me.”
“It could. It could also mean that this heat is getting to me. If I were you, I wouldn’t push my luck.”
They met Corinne and Toby near the front gate, and Luke and Toby discussed crowd control and early ticket sales for the game and food vendors. Whatever they’d expected for the sneak peek, they both seemed pleased with the way things were going.
Dusty tried to think of some small talk to make with Corinne while they waited, but Corinne had all she could handle with trying to keep up with her son. He tried to launch himself at Dusty again, but she turned and pretended not to notice.
An older woman and a man about Luke’s age came through the gate. The man was busy looking at the booths, but the woman saw their little group and moved toward them. “Wayne, look. It’s Toby and Luke and Corinne.”
Wayne’s eyes grew wide when he saw them standing there. He looked from the badge on Luke’s chest to the star on Toby’s, then his eyes narrowed and his lip curled up in a half smile.
“Wayne Schotts! I haven’t seen you since high school graduation.” Toby shook his hand.
“I can’t ever get him to come home long enough to see anyone. He’s so busy up in Seattle with his computer company, he only gets to come in once a year if I’m lucky.” Mrs. Schotts took a deep breath and smiled up at her son. “That’s why I was so thrilled when he showed up this morning, out of the blue.”
“Seattle, huh? Luke just arrested a guy from Seattle the other day. Not one of your cohorts, is it?” Toby laughed.
“Seattle’s not exactly like Aloma, Toby, where everybody knows everybody else’s business.” Wayne kept smiling, in that lip-curled way. “I’m not at all surprised to see you two still hanging around here.”
“Probably always will be,” Luke said.
“And you’re the sheriff now, Toby? Took after your dad?”
“Yes, and Luke’s one of my deputies.”
Wayne gave them both another amused look. “Well that’s great. That really is great.”
“Listen, maybe while you’re in town we can –“
“We’ll catch you later,” Wayne said, steering his mother away.
She threw him a confused look and turned to say a quick, “good to see you,” over her shoulder as her son led her down the street.
Toby and Luke looked at each other. “What was that all about?”
“He always was kind of a snob.”
Corinne held onto Cade’s hand and let him turn her in circles. “He was probably thinking about all the times you two tortured him, and feeling smug because he’s gone so far with his career.”
“I never tortured him,” Luke said. “Toby’s the one who hid his algebra book.”
“You can hardly call that torture. Besides, he was such a brain he didn’t need the book, and you’re the one who locked him out the dressing room in nothing but his jock strap.”
“That was an accident. I did not know he was behind that door. And I did apologize later.”
“Much later, after you picked yourself off the ground from laughing and told the whole school about it.”
“Everyone had already seen it anyway. And besides, it was funny.” His gaze followed Wayne through the crowd. “Do you really think he’s still mad?”
“From the way he was looking down his nose at you two, I think you can count on him still being mad,” Corinne said.
“Oh well,” Toby said as he swung Cade up onto his shoulder. “He may be some hotshot computer guy now, but he doesn’t have the prettiest wife in town.”
“Come on, Dusty. I’m going to win you a teddy bear at the dart game,” Luke said as he took her hand again.
He chewed his lip as they walked, she noticed, and constantly scanned the crowd. He paid for his darts, and stood holding them for a second until his gaze found Wayne Schotts and his mother once again.
Dusty paid for her own darts and promptly popped two balloons out of three. Luke was too preoccupied to notice, and threw all three of his darts wide of his mark.
“
Something bothering you?” Dusty asked, since it was obvious there was.
Luke shrugged and bought three more darts. “I was just feeling guilty about Wayne and the jock strap thing.”
“Was it really an accident?”
“Oh yeah, definitely. I think we were freshmen, maybe sophomores. Toby and Colt and I were horsing around and generally acting like idiots like we always did, and we came through the door to the locker room. I think Wayne was walking through on his way to the shower or something, I don’t know. Anyway, somebody bumped him into us and he got pushed into the open doorway. I was on the other side and didn’t see him, and slammed it shut. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except the girls’ soccer team was practicing right outside that door, so….” He shot off a dart and missed.
“It doesn’t sound like you have anything to feel guilty about.”
“I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen, at the time. I was fifteen. But I don’t know… if he’s still holding a grudge after all this time…” He threw his two remaining darts, and one of them almost hit, but didn’t.
Dusty held up three fingers and received three more darts. Luke was too busy scowling back at Wayne, so he didn’t notice when all three hit. He turned back and shook his head. “We were pretty obnoxious back then. We thought we ran that school. Now looking back…” He shook his head again and shrugged. “It makes me wonder what life was really like for Wayne. I’m betting he doesn’t look back on those days with fondness.”
“Did you go out of your way to bully him?”
“Not exactly. I didn’t go out of my way to be nice to him, either.”
“Sounds like water under the bridge to me.” Dusty pointed to a royal blue teddy bear with yellow sunglasses. The attendant took it down and handed it to her, and Dusty handed it to Luke.
“What is this?” he asked.
“I won you a bear playing darts.”
They walked on toward the end of the row, slowly, and Luke said, “Okay, so I was an obnoxious jerk in high school. What about you? You definitely don’t strike me as the prom queen type, but I’ll bet you were popular.”
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