“Well?” Susan leaned forward in her seat.
“We shoot the original locations, ask the away people to duplicate their pose in a studio, and we superimpose it on the location photograph. Dennis knows how to do it. Right, Dennis?”
“Right.”
“For how much?” Harry asked.
“Seven hundred dollars.” BoomBoom smiled broadly, as though she’d scored a coup.
“Mostly that’s for gas, chemicals, paper. There’s not much in there for me,” Dennis quickly added.
“You’d better not take it out of my publicity budget,” Harry warned.
“You don’t have a publicity budget.” BoomBoom dismissed the idea.
“Oh, yes, I do. I worked it out over the weekend and I’ve made copies for everyone. If you want a bang-up reunion then you’ve got to cast wide your net.” She handed out budget copies as Mrs. Murphy walked into the room, sitting down under the blackboard. “And don’t forget, the day after Labor Day weekend I have to send a mailing with details to each class member. That’s in the budget, too.”
The school, built in 1920 out of fine red brick with a pretty white four-columned main entrance, exuded a coziness that Mrs. Murphy liked. Pewter and Tucker peeped around the doorjamb.
“Are they finished yet?” Pewter had found nothing in the hallway to entice her.
“No,” Murphy replied. The other animals came in and sat next to her, watching the humans as humans watch animals in a zoo.
“Harry, we can go over your budget later. We need to nail down this superlative idea first.” BoomBoom barely glanced at the paper. BoomBoom herself had been voted Best Looking.
“I think it’s a good idea. And I assume you will blow up the original senior superlative photograph and put it next to the new one.” Susan nodded.
“Exactly! Won’t it be wonderful?”
“Not if you’re going bald,” Market moaned.
BoomBoom pounced on him. “If you’d take the herbs I drop off for you it would help, and if that doesn’t give you results fast enough, then get those hair transplants. They really work.”
“You’d look adorable,” Dennis teased, “with those plugs in your scalp. Just like cornrows.”
“I’ll get you for that, Dennis. You know why God made hair? Because not everyone could have a perfect head.”
“Three points for Market.” Harry chalked up the air.
“Are you going to agree with my plan or not?” BoomBoom folded her hands, staring at Harry.
“Yes. There, bet that surprised you, didn’t it?”
“Kinda.” BoomBoom sighed with relief. “Dennis, when can you start?”
“The sooner the better. How about this week?”
“Fine,” everyone said in unison. They wanted to go home. The weather was good and everyone had things to do.
“Let’s go.” Pewter shook herself.
“Not yet,” Tucker sighed as BoomBoom plucked another paper off her pile.
“We still don’t have a ball chairman. So many of us live in the central Virginia area—you’d think someone would volun-teer.”
“People are overcommitted,” said Susan, a shining example.
“If I can’t buttonhole someone soon, we’ll have to do it,” BoomBoom announced.
“No, we won’t.” Harry put her foot down.
“BoomBoom plucks Mom’s last nerve. Beyond that, what is it about people sitting in a meeting? Everything takes three times as long. Big fat waste of time,” Murphy commented.
“Passing opinions is like passing gas. They can’t help it,” Pewter giggled.
“Harry, are you still our liaison person with Mrs. Hogendobber so we don’t have any conflicts with their reunion?” BoomBoom ignored Harry’s small rebellion.
“Liaison person? I see her five or six days out of the week.”
“Thought I’d ask.”
“BoomBoom, what’s your idea for the decorating committee?” Susan had visions of a bare auditorium save for the senior superlative photographs.
“Marcy Wiggins and Bitsy Valenzuela have volunteered to help us if we help organize the Cancer Ball fund-raiser in December. I think Charlie Ashcraft will head the committee.”
“You can’t be serious,” Harry blurted out. “Charlie is such a womanizer.”
“He’s all we’ve got. Plus”—BoomBoom lowered her voice conspiratorially—“he’s already putting the moves on Marcy.”
“I hope you’ve warned her.” Susan frowned.
“She’s a big girl.” BoomBoom tidied the few papers on her desk.
“Boom, he’s one of the handsomest men God ever put on earth and utterly irresponsible. His idea of going slow is to ask a woman to bed after being introduced to her instead of before. Come on.” Harry leaned forward.
“She’s married.” Market waved off the subject, feeling Marcy’s wedding ring offered protection—sort of like garlic against a vampire.
“Unhappily,” BoomBoom demurred.
Dennis finally spoke. “Remember Raylene Ramsey and Meredith McLaughlin getting into a fight over Charlie at our fifteenth reunion?”
“I thought they’d kill one another.” Market checked his watch.
“I’d rather hoped they’d kill Charlie,” Harry laughed.
“I never could see what you girls saw in him.” Dennis laughed, too.
“Don’t look at me. I think he’s an asshole.” Harry held up her hands.
BoomBoom, having seduced Charlie in their youth, or vice versa, kept silent on this.
Susan jumped in. “I don’t mind that he had sex with both of them at our fifteenth. I do mind, however, that he saw fit to do it in the pool at the Holiday Inn. Just because it was three in the morning didn’t mean we weren’t awake.” Susan shook her head in disgust.
“Back to the subject. Charlie as head of decorating?” BoomBoom tapped the desk with her pencil. “And Marcy Wiggins and Bitsy Valenzuela,” she added.
“But they didn’t go to high school with us,” Market protested.
“Who cares, Market? We need workers. Chris was a big help at our meeting at my house.” Harry punched him lightly. “Anyway, they married into our class. That counts for something.”
“Chris says maybe she’ll meet some men. It’s hard for new people to fit in. We were born here. We never think about breaking into a new place,” BoomBoom replied.
“Did she really say she wanted to meet men?” Market whispered.
“Yes,” Harry whispered back.
“She’s not half bad,” Dennis whispered as he overheard them. This earned him a stern glare from Market.
“Are we okay on Charlie then?” BoomBoom pressed on.
The others looked at one another, then reluctantly raised their hands in agreement since no one could think of a substitute.
“One last item of business before we adjourn.” BoomBoom couldn’t help but notice how fidgety her classmates had become. “I received a bordered letter, run off at Kinko’s or KopyKat, I think. Anyway, it said, ‘You’ll never get old.’ Harry, did you send that out?”
“Why me?” Harry was surprised.
“You’re the postmistress. I thought you might be playing a practical joke on us.”
“No. It wasn’t me.”
BoomBoom looked from one to the other as each one shook his or her head. “Well, I think it’s in bad taste.”
“Boom, what are you talking about?” Susan asked.
“Yeah,” Market and Dennis said.
“‘You’ll never get old.’ I should think it would be obvious. We’ll never get old if we’re dead. Here I am trying to create the best reunion ever and someone is sending out a sick joke.”
“I didn’t take it that way.” Susan frowned since she didn’t like BoomBoom’s interpretation.
On that note the meeting broke up.
“It is odd,” Mrs. Murphy mused to no one in particular.
* * *
6
“Are you really going to buy a truck?”
Fair Haristeen asked his ex-wife as he picked up his mail the next morning.
“Gonna try.”
“She’s taking a two-hour lunch to visit Art Bushey.” Miranda helpfully supplied him with information.
“Serious.” He rubbed his chin.
“She cruises the lot at night, looking at trucks, but this is the first time she’s going over in the day,” Mrs. Murphy told Fair, who pulled a metal foil wrapper out of his pocket and gave it to her.
“Here, Houdini, open this.” His deep voice rumbled.
Mrs. Murphy surreptitiously looked around. Pewter, asleep in the mail cart, remained unaware of the gift which Murphy inspected and then tore open. The aroma of moist fish tidbits caused one chartreuse eye to open down in the mail cart.
“Don’t you have anything for me?” Tucker implored.
Fair reached into his other pocket, bringing forth a foil packet with a plum-colored edging marked Mouth-Watering Dog Divine Treats. He pulled open the pouch, spilling the contents on the floor.
“Thank you!” Tucker gobbled up the round meat treats.
Pewter, on her back, rolled over. She crawled out of the cart to join Mrs. Murphy, who wasn’t wildly happy about it but she wasn’t selfish either.
“Are you going to add a small-animal practice to your equine practice?” Mrs. Hogendobber laughed.
“No. I get freebies from feed companies. Which reminds me, I’ve got a bag of rich alfalfa cubes. I’m wondering if you’d help me, Harry? If I give you a feed schedule, three cubes per day along with your standard timothy, will you keep weight charts for me?”
“Sure,” Harry happily agreed.
“You don’t put your horses on a scale, do you?” Mrs. Hogendobber, not a horse person, inquired. “That would be awfully difficult, wouldn’t it?”
“Miranda, the easiest way to keep track of gain is a tape mea-sure. Just the kind you’d buy from the five-and-dime.”
“Except there are no more five-and-dimes.” Miranda wrinkled her forehead. “When I think of the times I ran into Woolworth’s with a quarter as a child and thought I was rich . . .”
“You were.” Fair smiled, which only made him more handsome. He strongly resembled the young Gary Cooper.
At six feet four inches, with blond hair, a strong jaw, kind eyes, and broad shoulders, Fair was a man women noticed. And they usually smiled when they noticed.
“Those were the days.” The older woman rolled up the blue nylon belts used to hold large quantities of mail. “Do you know, Fair Haristeen, that this year is my fiftieth high-school reunion. I have to pinch myself to realize it.”
“You don’t look a day over thirty-nine and no one in Crozet can hold a candle to your gardening powers.”
She smiled broadly. “Better not say that in front of Mim.”
“If I had three gardeners I’d be on the garden tour, too.” He tossed catalogues in the garbage can. “You do it by yourself.”
“Thank you.” She was mightily pleased.
“Almost lunch hour.” Harry flicked two letters into Susan Tucker’s mailbox.
Fair glanced at the clock. “Want me to go with you to Art’s?”
“Why, you think I can’t make a deal?”
“No. I think you’ll cry if you part with that heap out back.”
“I will not.” Color came to her cheeks.
“Okay.” He winked at Miranda when Harry couldn’t see him, walked to the door, then turned. “I’ll drop the alfalfa cubes off tonight.”
“I don’t know if I want to talk to you. I can’t believe you think I’d cry over a truck.”
“Uh-huh.” He pushed open the door and walked into the breezy air. It felt more like late September than the tail end of August.
“He gets my goat,” Harry mumbled as she rolled up lingerie catalogues and slid them in Little Mim’s mailbox. “Why does she get all these underwear wishing books?”
“Because she’s wishing,” Miranda answered.
Little Mim, divorced a few years back, was lonesome, lonesome and carrying a torch for Harry’s neighbor, Blair Bainbridge.
“Oh.” Harry blinked. She never thought of stuff like that.
“It’s noon. Are you going to the Ford dealer, or not?”
“I’m going. I said I was going. I know none of you think I can count beans, much less make a deal.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Harry, calm yourself. I think you have a good head for figures. I admire your frugality. After all, I’m still driving my husband’s Falcon and how many years has my poor George been called to heaven? Really now, I’m on your side.”
Harry regretted her crabby moment. “I know you are, Miranda. I don’t know what made me cross.”
“Your ex.”
She shrugged. “I think I can do better without the three musketeers. Mind letting them work through lunch hour?”
“Take me?” Tucker wagged her nonexistent tail.
“I’m staying right here.” Pewter put one paw on the collapsed foil packet.
“I’ll stay, too. Good luck, Mom.”
Twenty minutes later Harry rolled down Pantops Mountain, for she’d driven down on I-64, turning left on Route 250 at the Shadwell exit. The Ford dealership, spanking blue and white, covered the north side of the road just before the river. In the old days there had been a covered bridge over the Rivanna River, called Free Bridge, since there was no toll to use it. A big storm would find horse and buggies lined up in the bridge waiting for the worst to blow over. Today such chance encounters and sensible acceptance of Nature’s agenda had been pushed aside. People thought they could drive through anything. The covered bridge gave way to a two-lane buttressed bridge, which in turn gave way to a four-lane soulless piece of engineering. People zoomed across the river with never a thought for stopping and looking down or having a juicy chat with a friend while the thunder boomed overhead.
Harry pulled in front of the plate-glass windows at the older part of the Ford building.
Art Bushey walked out to see her. “Hi, beautiful. Did I ever tell you, I have a thing for postmistresses. I like that word ‘mistress.’ Just gives me chills.”
“Pervert.” Harry punched him, then hugged him.
“Knew you were coming. Half of Crozet called me, including your ex-husband. Still loves you, Harry. But hey, men fall all over you.”
“You are so full of it.”
“Love hearing it, though, don’t you? You’re a good-looking woman. I want good-looking women driving Ford trucks.” He ducked his head into the 1978 truck to look at the speedometer. “How many times has this thing turned over?”
“Over two hundred thousand.”
“We build ’em good, don’t we?” He patted the nose of the blue truck. “Come on, let me show you what I’ve got, and Harry, don’t panic about the money just yet. Let me show you what’s here. You drive them. I’ll work something out. I want your money, now, don’t misunderstand me. I love money. But Busheys, Minors, and Hepworths”—he mentioned her mother’s maiden name—“go back a long way. I remember when your father bought this truck.”
“I do, too. His first new truck. You still had your mustache.” Harry recalled the flush on her father’s lean face when he told his wife and daughter he’d bought a brand-new truck.
“Come on.” He opened the door to a red half-ton 4 x 4. “Thinking about growing my mustache back.”
“I guess you were expecting me—got the plates on and everything.” She smiled. “About the mustache: do it. Makes you look dangerous.”
Art liked that. “They’re all ready for you and I’ve got two used ones for you to look at as well.”
She hopped in the cab, turned the motor over as he clicked on his seat belt in the passenger seat.
“Now this truck is maxed out. AC over here, tape deck and CD, speakers everywhere, captain’s chairs—nice on the back—plush interior, which your cats will enjoy. Cats are fussy.”
&n
bsp; “Yeah, I’d hate to disappoint them.” Harry hit the accelerator, they backed out, and in a minute they were heading toward Keswick. “Jeez, this thing drives like a car.”
They roared down the road and as she touched the brakes, the machine glided to a smooth stop.
Pawing Through the Past Page 4