Ever since Dorothy had stunned the citizens of Partonville by announcing several weeks ago that she’d sold her farm to Katie Durbin, a city slicker from Chicago—and most in Partonville knew you couldn’t trust one of them—and that Dorothy would be moving into town and into Tess Walker’s old place (also owned by the city slicker but traded in the deal with Dorothy), she and Gladys had been openly at odds. Gladys didn’t like surprises. Anyone selling Partonville land that was contingent to Hethrow and ripe for development without first consulting her would have a price to pay. It didn’t matter that a portion of the land was earmarked for a park, and it didn’t matter that Gladys was already salivating, picturing herself one day cutting the ribbon at the park’s grand opening, newscasters surrounding her. No, what mattered was that Dorothy Jean Wetstra seemed to think the only people she ever had to answer to were God and herself! It had been the same ever since high school, when people talked about “Dorothy the Dear” and “Gladys the Gladiator.” Well, now Dorothy’d see who held the cards, Gladys often thought since she’d been proclaimed mayor after her “husband the mayor” died in office, thus the “acting” part of her title. Of course, Gladys had no doubt she’d be officially elected come the next balloting period. Then folks could quit buzzing about her backdoor reign.
“As you know,” Gladys stated with authority, “this is our biggest fund-raiser of the year, and this year it looks to be bigger than ever due to the donations from the Walker estate.”
Dorothy jumped in. “And it was mighty generous of Katie Durbin to donate her aunt’s estate goods, I might add. And I’m adding the words ‘generous donation by Katie Durbin’ to the minutes,” Dorothy said with determination as she wrote in deliberate and large letters. She was rather enjoying the official recording power she suddenly wielded.
Jessica, uncomfortable around conflict, rose from her seat and said, “I believe I’m okay now to go ahead and take the minutes.”
“Never you mind, child,” Dorothy said as she waved her back down in her chair. “We’ve got everything under control. You just take advantage of having nothing to do for an hour but take care of yourself and let us oldsters pamper you.”
“Speak for yourself,” Gladys said. Even though Gladys was in her eighties, one could be sure oldster was not part of her identity! No sir, with dyed hair, an ever-present long-line girdle and too-thick makeup base to cover the age spots, Gladys worked hard at holding herself together—any way possible.
Dorothy turned a deaf ear toward Gladys and continued. “And May Belle, why don’t you get that child a couple more cookies?” Dorothy understood, from the returning tension on Jessica’s face, that she’d pushed things with Gladys as far as—perhaps further than—they should go. She concluded that Gladys had been put in her place and that it was time to halt the sparring. She looked straight at Gladys and announced that she would from here on in be taking careful notes and would do her best to not interrupt again. “Of course, this old hand can’t do near as good a job or write as poetically as that youngun’s over there,” she said, nodding and winking at Jessica, “but it’ll do as good as it can.” Gladys was so stunned at Dorothy’s obvious back-pedaling that she had to clear her throat before she could continue.
“As you also know, Dorothy is having an auction at the farm the same day as our rummage sale, so not only do we have more donations than usual, but we’ll undoubtedly have the highest attendance ever. Nellie Ruth, you’re in charge of refreshments. Have you talked to your boss to find out if Your Store is going to set up a hot dog stand for us?”
“Yes, Gladys. Yes, I have.”
“For goodness sakes, Nellie Ruth! What did Wilbur say?”
“He said Your Store would be proud and honored to be a part of the day and that he would contribute ten percent of the sales to the Social Concerns Committee!” Her voice was as enthusiastic as it was high-pitched. Everyone applauded. Everyone but Gladys.
“Ten percent? That’s the best he could do?” Gladys huffed as she threw her hands up over her head in a dramatic gesture. When she raised her arms, the fastened top button of her blue blazer sidled up over her ample bosom and stayed there. She yanked on the blazer’s hemline, pulling the jacket into its proper position, and without missing a beat said, “I imagine he’ll make quite the pretty penny.” She smoothed her hand across her ever-present bronze name tag etched in black stating, “Gladys McKern, Acting Mayor,” just to make sure it was riding proudly exactly where it belonged.
“Wilbur wanted us to know,” Nellie Ruth said rather pointedly, “that he will absorb the costs for hauling all his equipment out to the farm, including tables and condiments—which he’s donating—and hot trays, as well as pay extra staff out of his own pocket so we can save committee members to work the actual sale. He also wanted us, especially you, Gladys, to know that he’d be glad to give a full accounting of his books at the close of the day, if you requested one.”
“Humph” was all Gladys said in response. Dorothy opened her mouth to say how lovely and fair and accountable she thought Wilbur’s offer was, but her conscience was pricked when she recalled that she had, within the last few moments, volunteered to keep her mouth shut.
“Dorothy,” Gladys said, “you volunteered to be in charge of parking. What do you have to report to us about that?”
“Nothing.” As soon as the word was out of her mouth, she wrote on her minute-taking paper, “N-O-T-H-I-N-G.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“When do you think you might have something?” Gladys spat.
“By the next meeting. I have a couple ideas up my sleeve, including talking to the Boy Scouts. I thought it might be they could all earn some kind of badge working on an all-day project like that.”
“And it might be,” Gladys responded, “that we could all earn our own badges of courage trying to untangle ourselves from the nightmare of having allowed a wild pack of boys to direct us as to where and how to park!”
“Why, Gladys McKern!” Dorothy nearly shouted. “Isn’t your very own grandson a Scout? Isn’t your very own brother the pack leader? I imagine he’ll know whether the boys can handle it or not. And like I said, I’ll have a report at the next meeting. The Scouts are just one of the options I’m exploring.”
“I move we move on to the next order of business,” Nellie Ruth said, hoping to halt the once again escalating duo.
“And what would you suggest that be?” asked Gladys, turning her sour tone of voice toward Nellie Ruth.
“Pricing. Let’s hear from May Belle about pricing and the bake sale.”
Before being acknowledged by the chair—a rule suddenly no one was abiding by—May Belle announced that plans for the bake sale were under way and that as the date grew nearer, sign-up sheets would go out in the narthex. She said she thought that if they put them out too soon, nobody would remember they had signed up. The committee quite agreed. She also shared that she’d like to plan a trip to Hethrow to check out price tags at the new discount office supply store someone had told her about. Although in previous years they’d used rolls of masking tape and just ripped off pieces, writing prices on them with marking pens, she thought this year that would be too time-consuming, what with all the extra goods. Gladys, in an unusual but genuine gesture, gave verbal applause to May Belle’s “forward and progressive thinking.”
Although there was a bit of discussion about new business, all agreed that the old business was going to fill their time for the next several months. At precisely 8:10 P.M., the meeting was adjourned.
Gladys hustled out of the building without so much as a good-bye to anyone. Nellie Ruth went into the sanctuary to check communion setup for Sunday. Dorothy and May Belle cleared the debris and began to rinse out the coffeepot, taking their time so Jessica could relax a bit longer. Jessica sat at the table, pounding down the remaining cookies May Belle had stacked in front of her, then she swigged the last few dribbles of coffee in her ample mug, which displayed a l
ine drawing of the church with the words “United Methodist Church celebrates 100 years” right above it. At 8:25 P.M., she sighed so loudly it caused Dorothy and May Belle to wink at each other; she’d eaten an even one dozen cookies.
At last, four of the five Social Concerns Committee members shared a good laugh and a group hug in the parking lot before bidding one another a good night.
Dorothy waited until she saw that the ladies were all safely on their way home before firing up her rusty-and-white, battle-scarred 1976 Lincoln Continental, known and referred to by everyone in Partonville as The Tank. Although she had to crank it over twice and gun it a good one before it actually kept running—something she’d have to see Arthur Landers about before long—Dorothy was convinced The Tank was as evergreen as she was, even though they were both taking a little longer to start these days and they each had their peculiarities. She rolled down all the windows and revved her up, delighting in the sound of power. She was sure they just didn’t make V-8s like the one in The Tank anymore. Most in Partonville would agree that they sadly didn’t make them like Dorothy anymore either.
Foot on the accelerator, Sheba’s head sticking out the driver’s-side back window, Dorothy zipped The Tank across the blacktop parking lot, turned onto Main Street to head for the farm, then suddenly turned onto Vine Street, deciding to cruise by Tess Walker’s old place, soon to be her new home. Slowly, almost as if she were sneaking up on her own emotions, she pulled up in front of the little frame house.
She turned off the headlights and let The Tank idle as she stared, trying to imagine what it might be like to park right here for the night rather than making that delicious, calming drive through the country and up the lane to the farm. She wondered what it would be like to have that streetlight, which she’d never noticed before, outside her front window rather than nothing but the awesome, dark night of twinkling sky. She pondered what type of sounds this house might make when the wind blew, compared with those familiar creaks and groans, hums and whistles, of the home in which she’d been born, and where she’d lived her entire life.
“Lord,” Dorothy said aloud, “I know You’re with me no matter where I go, whether it’s to the familiar or the new…I know it. Just help me remember what I know. Amen.” With that, she turned on her headlights, gunned the engine a time or two and sped off into the night, into the country, into her own uncertainty. Nearly instantly she remembered that God had once given her an unmistakable peace about this decision, and she claimed it—whether she felt it right now or not.
“Now, that was fast!” she said to the heavens. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
As she turned off the hard road near the WELCOME TO PARTONVILLE sign and onto the gravel road that would lead to her lane, at the top of her lungs she loudly finished singing the last chorus of “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” Sheba howled once, sending up her own doggy praise.
2
Dorothy prowled through her refrigerator, trying to decide what to heat up for lunch. It was a warm and sunny Thursday afternoon, and she was thankful to feel rested and ready for action after last night’s testy meeting. On the spur of the moment, she phoned to invite May Belle and Earl over for lunch, announcing that it was “Smorgasbord Time!” May Belle understood this meant Dorothy had lots of leftovers in her refrigerator to clear out before they turned bad.
May Belle readily accepted the offer and packed up a goodie bag of her homemade sweets for Dorothy. Earl, May Belle and Homer’s only child, was nearly beside himself with enthusiasm when his mother told him Dorothy would soon be there to pick them up. Although Earl was challenged by mental slowness, most folks around Partonville had always loved and accepted him just the way he was, and that was that.
May Belle never had found it necessary to learn how to drive, what with Homer’s steady and capable ability to do so, and the fact that they lived in town right off the square. When Homer died, it just didn’t seem like the time to start. Although Dorothy’s lead-footed driving behind the wheel of The Tank often admittedly made the slow-moving May Belle a bit nervous, she would never let her nerves keep her from accepting the opportunity to spend time with her best friend. On their drive out to the farm, they rehashed the meeting, talking a mile a minute. They both hoped Jessica had gotten some sleep and hadn’t suffered a stomachache from all the cookies. They giggled, wondering if it was even possible for her sugared mother’s milk to make that precious baby sweeter than she already was.
Sheba stood on the back seat, head sticking out the window, tongue flapping in the breeze. Earl sat silently next to her, hanging on to the bill of his baseball cap with both hands just to keep the wild winds from scalping it off his head. He’d never forgotten that on one of their rides out to the farm, Dorothy had had to back The Tank down the road and he’d had to jump out and race toward the field to retrieve his cap, luckily stomping on it just before it rolled into the muddy ditch. Sometimes he even held on to the bill of his cap with both hands when the windows were rolled up, just in case.
While Dorothy finished off the last of the desserts, she and May Belle got to talking about the sale, deciding to work off some of their calories by doing a little preliminary work out in the barn. Besides, it was a perfect day to open up the big barn doors and Dorothy’s favorite little back-wall door to take advantage of the cross breeze that would set their sails for work and allow the sun to shine in on the otherwise dimly lit space. Dorothy, now physically a little too weak to manage those massive, heavy sliding doors, knew Earl’s brute strength—just like his dad’s—could handle them with ease, and nothing made Earl happier than being around his Dearest Dorothy and being helpful.
After opening things up and taking a few minutes simply to enjoy the day, the ladies engaged in a bit of finger-pointing discussion about how to proceed. When Katie Durbin and her fifteen-year-old son, Josh, had begun clearing out Tess’s house six weeks ago, they’d delivered so many loads of things to the barn that Dorothy had told them to just pile them any old way. They had needed to spend their limited time in town dealing with the funeral and chipping away at the overwhelming cleaning project before heading back to Chicago to return Josh to school. It was discovered, upon Tess’s death, that every room in her home, aside from the pristine kitchen, was stacked high with clothing, newspapers and just about everything else anyone could think of. She’d been a recluse for many of her last years, and this was the first anyone had learned of the magnitude of the disheveled state of her home…her life.
Yes, piles in the barn had been fine for then, but now, now they had to begin to initiate a plan of order for the big event before things got too out of control in the barn, causing them all quadruple work.
With Earl’s capable help, May Belle and Dorothy began by moving Tess Walker’s things around a bit, trying to arrange a better floor plan to allow for more white-elephant donations that townsfolk would be dropping off in the coming months, and to make room for the auction items Dorothy would be clearing out of her home. Finally, a plan was put in order and the task begun.
As the ladies peeked and prodded, slid and arranged, Sheba ran from one box to the next, trying to stick her nose in them, hoping to find something to nibble. Dorothy had already lamented to May Belle over lunch that only about one-twentieth, if that much, of her lifelong possessions would fit in her new dwelling place. “I have to figure out how to turn a mountain of mayhem into a molehill of order,” she’d said. “Now, that’s gonna take not only some doing, but some ruthless decision making as well—not to mention a miracle!”
For the first time that day, a shadow of grief flickered across Dorothy’s face. Even though she knew she’d made the right decision, the task before her felt heavy. She knew sorting through a lifetime of accumulation would be an emotional ride, each item sparking its own memory. Some of the process would undoubtedly be gut-wrenching, especially when she came to the boxes containing her only daughter’s memorabilia from school days, college, career and marriage. Caroline Ann had los
t her husband in an accident before losing her own battle with breast cancer at age thirty-nine. Dorothy blinked a few times, willing herself to keep her mind on the task at hand. One step at a time, Lord. Don’t let me get ahead of myself, she silently prayed.
“Goodness me!” May Belle exclaimed as she held up a dented metal bedpan stuffed with plastic poinsettias. She was blowing at the dust on the now more brown than red plastic flowers. “Where in the world do you think Tess put this for a Christmas decoration?” Many in Partonville wondered what Tess Walker had done with her life, but especially they sadly wondered why they hadn’t gotten more involved with it. “Or do you suppose she just one day stuffed the flowers in here to store them? You know how we do when we’re in a hurry.”
“I wish I knew,” Dorothy said thoughtfully, bent over a box, rifling through its contents. “I surely wish I knew.” When she straightened herself, a chest pain accompanied by a slight rush of light-headedness caused her to stumble back a couple of steps for balance. She willed herself not to draw her hands to her chest and cause any undue concern.
“Dorothy! Are you all right, dear?” May Belle dropped the bedpan to the floor and moved toward her friend. Earl, who’d begun unstacking and rearranging a couple of bales of hay—for no reason other than he liked doing so—immediately moved to Dorothy’s side at the sound of his mother’s alarm. He braced Dorothy in his strong arms, eyes filled with fear that anything would happen to his Dearest Dorothy.
“Earl, help Dorothy over to that hay bale so she can sit for a spell,” his mother said, pointing to the bale he’d just unknowingly, but perhaps divinely, positioned to within a couple of feet of where Dorothy would suddenly need to sit down. Earl did as he was told, gingerly bracing his arm around Dorothy’s back. Dorothy protested she was just fine and that they didn’t need to be making such a fuss over her, but neither of them listened. After Earl got her seated, he began to pace back and forth in front of her, wringing his hands, staring at her. Sheba jumped right up in Dorothy’s lap and began licking her face.
Dearest Dorothy, Slow Down, You're Wearing Us Out! Page 2