Gourdfellas

by Maggie Bruce

  “That’s great.” Relieved that we seemed to be back on friendly footing, I mentally reviewed my conversation in the toy store while he disappeared into his stockroom. Sue had been understandably defensive, not at all happy when I brought up the note. Her mention of Anita was surprising, though. Maybe there was bad blood between them. They were about the same age, might have been classmates. Nora would know.

  “You better get on home,” Joseph Trent said as he plunked the two pill bottles on the counter and pointed to the windows at the front of the store. “I just looked outside, and right now that sky looks real threatening. See how green that air is? That means there could be a strong thunderstorm or even a tornado on the way. You need to get home before driving gets dangerous.”

  Beyond the window, scraps of paper and swirls of dust eddied and danced around the lone figure crossing the street. Her hair was blown first straight out behind her and then as the wind direction changed, whipped straight up, like a cartoon character who had stuck her finger in a live socket. Even when she tried to shake her long brown hair out of her eyes, the wind seemed intent on plastering it to her face.

  “You’re right. Thanks, Mr. Trent. I guess I won’t stop at the Agway this trip. It does look wicked out there.” I grabbed the white paper bag and headed for the front of the store. When I pulled the door open, a gust nearly grabbed the knob out of my hand. I tugged it closed and pushed against what felt like a wall of pulsing air as I walked the half block to my Subaru.

  Chapter 17

  The sky, no longer green, had turned evening dark. The wind changed direction as often as a diva changes costumes. The eight mile drive home usually took about fifteen minutes, and I crossed my mental fingers that I’d make it to my driveway before the skies opened up. The streets were deserted. Even the supermarket parking lot held fewer than a dozen cars. I thought I saw B. H. Hovanian make a dash from the diner to his office, but my hands felt glued to the steering wheel and I didn’t wave.

  As I passed the Agway, a tractor towing an empty hay wagon pulled out in front of me. I gritted my teeth and inched to the center line, but a car was coming toward me and I couldn’t pass. The tractor chugged along at ten miles an hour, and as I looked around for a side road to peel off onto, the driver’s peaked cap blew off. It sailed onto my windshield, then bounced to the road. In my rearview mirror, I watched as the wind picked it up and sent it flying again, like a skipping stone on a clear lake—except nothing outside my rolling fortress looked placid and still.

  Trees, some with new green leaves that looked tender and tentative, bent and whipped toward the ground. A willow’s branches flapped and twisted like a double jointed dancer. I pulled to the left again, crept closer to the tail of the wagon, clung to the steering wheel. Up ahead, no oncoming traffic. Good—but less than a quarter mile away, a hill rose above the fields. If I could clear the tractor and the wagon before a car came over that hill, I could be home in ten minutes. The sky was even darker, the wind more punishing as I pulled out, pressed the accelerator, and cleared the back end of the hay wagon.

  I was almost up to the front of the wagon when a pickup truck crested the hill, traveling fast and heading right for me. On my left, the shoulder of the road butted up against a wide green swath that could have been solid or swamp for all I knew. But it was my only choice. I cut the wheel, felt my left front tire hit soft dirt, pulled my foot off the gas pedal and blinked as the truck sped past me in a blur.

  Thrumming with adrenaline, my hands shaking, I pressed the brake until the car came to a stop. Was that truck silver?

  Seth Selinsky was the only person I knew who drove a silver pickup.

  Could he have been behind the wheel . . . and could he have deliberately tried to run me off the road? No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get a clear mental picture of the driver. Couldn’t have been Seth.

  Couldn’t.

  Why would someone want to run me off the road? It didn’t make sense. I tried to convince myself that I was as much a surprise to him as he’d been to me, that he hadn’t had sufficient time to react. The adrenaline coursing through my veins wouldn’t allow me to accept this rational argument. Besides, it had been a pickup truck, that much I knew for sure. Silver—maybe the color had been distorted by the strange storm light. The wind had died a little, and up ahead, the tractor and the hay wagon were pulling off onto a dirt road. Nothing coming in either direction. I felt as though I could fly home under my own power, but I took a deep breath and then exhaled. Still no traffic, so I pulled onto the road, and sped forward. One more mile to Iron Mill Road.

  By the time I reached my left turn, my pulse was almost normal, but the sky definitely was not. Darker still, and with a metallic cast that made me think of weathered bronze, it seemed to be pressing down on the trees and flattening them. Up ahead, a bright flash of lightning blazed along the horizon, illuminating the small stone church at the top of the rise, making it look like a Gothic painting. Fat drops of rain hit the windshield. By the time I reached over to turn my wipers on, the rain was so heavy I couldn’t see the edge of the road.

  I’ll never know whether I heard a warning sound first or simply had the good sense to edge the car to the side of the road, but as I pressed the brake and came to a full stop, another flash of lightning lit up the sky and a huge tree crashed across the road right where I would have been if I hadn’t pulled over.

  Something fell across the top of my car. Instinctively, I ducked. When I peered at the windshield I could barely make out a heavy branch laden with green leaves. The rain continued to pound at every surface, bouncing up in huge fat splashes.

  It was one thing to be inside my house when a snow-storm brought down power lines, or to enjoy the adventure of scooping snow to melt for drinking water after a blizzard. This was entirely different. It wasn’t a hurricane and so the fury wouldn’t last for days. Probably not even hours.

  I was still unnerved.

  Think, I commanded, but my brain had not yet recovered enough to engage in any rational activity. A black snakelike figure whipped across the road, and a shower of sparks and crackles snapped around me. The downed power line hit a puddle and sizzled, then was carried by a gust up and onto the grass. What was I supposed to do? Getting out of the car seemed wrong, dangerous. Staying in the car felt nearly as vulnerable.

  The rain, which had been so heavy I’d been unable to see just a few minutes earlier, was now only a steady downpour. In my rearview mirror, I saw what appeared to be two headlights, neither coming forward nor receding. Another car, stopped dead in the road. It was probably two hundred feet away.

  With the tree blocking the road in front of me, my only option was to turn around and find another route to the other end of Iron Mill Road. I backed up, hoping that my car would slip out from under the branch, half expecting another tree to come crashing down and pin me to the spot forever. I kept looking back to the power line, which continued to sizzle and flail like an agitated sea monster spitting fire. If I could complete the U-turn without being electrocuted, I’d be happy. Amazed, but very happy indeed.

  As I pulled forward, I gave a final glance to the black, undulating wire, watched in horror as it landed on the roof of the little shed beside the church. I hoped everything was too wet for a fire to start. Brilliant white sparks crackled for ten seconds and then the wire blew off the roof again. I started down the road with my heart pounding and my mouth dry.

  The windshield wipers pushed the rain away fast enough for me to make out the vehicle whose headlights I’d seen, still facing me. If someone was hurt or needed help, what would I do? I was terrified—the thought of stepping out of the safety of the carapace of my car made my palms sweat.

  But as I approached, I realized that I was about to pull up alongside a silver pickup truck.

  New fears sprang to life like mushrooms after a rain.

  What was going on? First a silver pickup truck nearly ran me off the road, and now here was another one. Or the same one, mayb
e. Had he reversed course to follow me? It was tempting to floor it and leave a spray of water as the only reminder that I’d been there, but I had to know who was in that vehicle. I pulled up alongside the truck. My windows and his were fogged, making it impossible to see anything more than a shape. I was about to drive away, when the truck’s horn blasted and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  The window rolled down and Seth’s face appeared, his expression hard to read under the brim of his blue baseball cap. He motioned for me to roll down my window.

  I sat frozen, not sure what to do. This was Seth, for Pete’s sake. Even through the curtain of rain that separated us, his face seemed wreathed in concern.

  “Lili!” he shouted. “Are you okay?”

  Reluctantly, I rolled my window partway down. “Fine. That tree missed me. Just. I have to get home and see how Neil is.”

  “I’ll follow.” He rolled up his window and pulled forward enough to turn around.

  Not exactly what I had in mind. I wanted to recover from this experience without having to confront whether or not the man I was dating had tried to run me off the road. I tried to call Neil on the cell phone, but all I got was one of those annoying beeps-on-caffeine that meant that the circuits were busy. The rain was no more than a shower now, and I turned onto one of the roads that I knew would eventually lead me back home.

  Nowhere else were power lines or trees down. In no other spot was the debris from the wicked storm strewn across the road and the fields like a child’s toy chest upended by a giant throwing a tantrum.

  How had I gotten so lucky? But I wasn’t the only one almost to be picked up by what must have been a small tornado. If Dorothy had Toto for company, then I had Seth shadowing me. Maybe a little too close for comfort. By the time I pulled into my driveway, all I cared about was making sure my brother was safe. Then I’d concentrate on getting dry and warm. I wanted to sit still for at least an hour without worrying whether I’d be electrocuted, drowned, crushed by a tree, or accordion-pleated by a truck.

  Seth was right behind me. I didn’t wait for him as I dodged the raindrops and ran up the back stairs and into the kitchen. Neil stood at the stove pressing buttons and looking totally frustrated.

  “You need to be a genius to reset these clocks,” he grumbled. But he turned and held out his arms and hugged me to him, holding me tight until I pulled away gently. “I was so worried about you. So was—”

  Seth shut the door behind him and shook his head like a shaggy sheepdog that had just retrieved a stick from a pond. “Lili! I was so worried. Neil said you’d gone into town and you didn’t answer your cell phone and then the radio said there’d been reports of a tornado headed our way and—”

  “I’m fine. I’m a little shaken up and I feel like I only have seven lives left, but I’m fine.” Now that I was in the warm house, my soaked shirt and my hair made me cold to the core. If I didn’t do something, the shivering shakes would take over. “I’m going to take a hot shower and then put on some dry clothes.”

  Neither of them said anything. I stripped off my wet clothes in the bathroom and stood under the stream of hot water long enough for my tense muscles to relax just a little. I rubbed my pink skin with a towel until not a drop of moisture remained, pulled on my terrycloth robe, and let the hair dryer blow warm air on my neck, my face, and eventually my hair.

  By the time I’d pulled on blue sweatpants, white cotton turtleneck, and my white socks and sneakers, I felt like a different person. One who wanted to find out about the incident on Route 9.

  Neil was in the living room, flipping through a magazine. He waved as I padded into the kitchen, where Seth was hovering over a saucepan, putting the finishing touches on a tray that had already been supplied with bowls, spoons, and napkins. The aroma of hot chicken soup, which had been in the back of the refrigerator for a couple of days, was so welcoming I almost melted on the spot. Instead, I turned to Seth and said, “Where were you going in such a hurry on Route Nine?”

  He looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. “When?”

  Hovanian had advised me to say only what was necessary and sufficient to answer the question, but he’d said nothing about how to respond when someone answered a question with another question. At least this was an easy one.

  “About fifteen minutes before the tornado tossed that tree in front of my car.” The only way I could do this was to make him maintain eye contact with me, and I watched those long lashes blink a couple of times as though he was trying to calculate a particularly difficult chemistry equation.

  “Before that tornado hit the hill I was here, asking Neil if he was sure you’d taken your cell phone with you because you weren’t answering. What’s this about, Lili? You look . . . I don’t know, angry.”

  Seth Selinsky hadn’t seen me angry yet, but he was about to.

  “You might be angry with the person who tried to run you off the road, don’t you think?” I said it softly, through clenched teeth. When I glanced over at Neil, he was looking down at his cast, as though it was the most interesting thing in the room.

  This wasn’t fair, not to Neil and maybe not to Seth, although at the moment that concerned me a whole lot less than finding out the truth. That truck . . . Had it been nothing more than coincidence?

  “Look, maybe I was hallucinating. Or maybe it wasn’t you. But I saw a silver pickup truck barreling down the road toward me without even slowing down. I know I wasn’t fantasizing when that truck didn’t even stop to see what happened after I skidded into the weeds at the edge of the road.”

  Can you ever put the toothpaste back in the tube?

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. I sank back against the counter, afraid to look up and see the expressions on Seth’s and Neil’s faces.

  “Are you okay, Lili? It wasn’t me. Maybe the driver was too shaken himself. I don’t know what happened, but I was here with Neil.”

  When I did look up, I saw worry brimming in Seth’s dark eyes. He took a step toward me, then shook his head and made no further move in my direction, as though he knew I’d have to be the one to decide how close we might get.

  “I don’t know,” I said in a barely audible voice. “I thought I was handling everything—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a witch.”

  Seth came around the counter and put his hands on my shoulders, pressing on my tight muscles with his fingers. “Too much stress, that’s all. You’ve got a million little knots here and here and here.”

  With each word and each bit of pressure, he touched a sore spot and massaged it until it loosened a little. My eyes fell shut, and I felt myself go limp under his touch. When he got to a spot on the side of my neck, he hit the jackpot—a tiny burst of pain was followed by a sense of release so complete that I almost cried. I don’t know how long I stood there, feeling the warmth of his hands as he massaged every little packet of steel and turned it into silk again. His warm breath on my neck stirred a memory of nicer times, and I must have sighed.

  “That’s good, Lili. Listen, why don’t you go lie down now? See if you can nap. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Seth came around in front of me, kissed my eyes, and then let himself out the back door.

  I waved to Neil as I headed to my bedroom. The bed was soft and welcoming, and I was asleep before I could wonder how Seth had found me.

  Chapter 18

  The sun blazed in the sky, cutting a swath of light across my eyes that made me wince even before I opened them. I glanced at the clock. Seven thirty.

  Seven thirty? Either I’d just been transported to the Arctic Circle or I’d slept around the clock, nothing I’d ever done before. My mouth felt dry, but otherwise every part of me felt better than I had in weeks, relaxed, rested, and definitely energized. I recognized this—this was my normal, something that had been missing for too long.

  Neil was already showered, dressed, and making breakfast. Smatterings of small talk and some decent scrambled eggs filled half an hour, fueling me with eno
ugh energy to look forward to finishing up the dreaded co-payment and deductible sections of the health benefits booklet I had to turn in by Monday.

  “Gotta get to work.” I danced over to my brother and planted a kiss on his forehead. “Beard’s looking great. You trim it?”

  Grinning, he said, “You didn’t even notice. Melissa trimmed it two days ago. She stopped by to see if you wanted to go to the movies and we got to talking and she found your scissors in the bathroom, and voila! A new me. She’s got a great touch.”

  “Oh ho. I’d say TMI, but I really want to hear more.” Could an older sister ever have too much information about what was going on between her baby brother and a good friend? “Whenever you want to talk, of course.”

  “Nothing to tell.” He grinned. “At least not yet. Anyway, here’s Trisha.”

  I peered out the window and saw Trisha Stern marching toward the front of the house, her equipment bag slung over her shoulder and her smile as radiant as the bright sunshine.

  “Give me a few minutes with her, okay?” I was ready to take on anything today, even a woman who had practically said she’d go to any extreme to protect the sanctity of her land. Of course, it wasn’t the only avenue that might lead us to the person who had killed Marjorie. There were other persons of interest, as Dad used to say. I just didn’t know who they all were yet.

  Neil pushed himself to a standing position and hobbled to the hall on his crutches. “Sounds like my old Lili. Glad to have you back. I’ll be in the bathroom, pretending to be engaged in morning ablutions. You’re not going to find out anything terrible from Trisha, you know, but give it a try so that you can let it go.”

  He disappeared as Trisha’s light, rapid knock filled the air. When I opened the door, she breezed in, all smiles and good energy. She greeted me cheerily and declined my offer of coffee as she set her bag near the straight back chair where Neil sat for most of their sessions.