“Because,” he said, “I have felt once or twice that we’ve had some sort of chemistry.”
“You’re the doctor,” Dymphna said feebly.
“Of natural science. Not chemistry. Would you agree?”
“I don’t know,” Dymphna said, confused. “I mean, it’s your degree.”
“Not my degree,” he said, his cheeks turning a little pink. “About our chemistry.”
“Oh.” Should I lie? she thought. No. If the professor is willing to go out on a limb, I’ll meet him halfway. “I think . . . there have been moments, yes,” she finally said.
That’s just about as halfway as you can get!
“Good to know we are in agreement,” Professor Johnson said.
“So, I guess it’s off to bed, then? I mean, separately! Separate beds! You don’t even have to go to bed. But I am going. To bed.”
She started to push herself off the counter but, with a glass in one hand, found herself stuck.
“Let me help you.”
He put his hands on her waist, but instead of lifting her, he froze. He had positioned himself so he stood between her legs.
Dymphna held the glass aloft in one hand. Well, this is awkward.
The professor raised his eyes to her. He cradled the back of her neck and bent her almost into the sink, and kissed her. She closed her eyes but peeked to make sure her glass was upright. This was a weird moment, but she didn’t want to ruin it by spilling her drink.
The professor released her. “Thud!” he called into the living room. “Let’s go to bed, boy.”
The dog, groggy with sleep, struggled to his feet and followed the professor obediently. Neither the dog nor the man looked back. Dymphna finished her tea, put her glass down, and got herself off the counter.
The walls in the house were paper thin. Getting ready for bed in the bathroom while a man who just kissed you was sleeping in the next room was irritating. She didn’t want to pee or brush her teeth. She had changed into sweatpants and a baggy T-shirt. Wearing bikini panties and a sleeveless T-shirt to bed wouldn’t be respectable with a man—especially a man with whom you’ve just agreed you had chemistry—in the house.
Old Bertha is going to have a field day when she gets wind of this cohabitation business!
Dymphna’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail, with a cloth headband over her ears, a prelude to her nightly regime of washing her face. As she scrubbed her forehead, she thought back to the kiss. It was awkward and unplanned, but there was no denying it was a great kiss! Maybe there was more to Professor Johnson than met the eye. She patted her face dry. Normally she slept with her hair in a tight braid or ponytail, but tonight she shook her hair loose. She stuck with the sweatpants, though.
With the moon obscured by clouds, her room was dark as coal. She snuggled under the blankets, sure she would be awake all night. But the stillness of the farm settled over her and she felt herself relaxing into sleep.
The weight of his body in bed beside her woke her. Her eyes flew open. She was facing the wall but didn’t want to change position and signal she was awake. Her whole body tensed while she waited.
Waited for what?
He was breathing softly, clearly asleep.
How long has he been here?
The mattress was old and the springs were shot. His heavier weight made the bed sag and Dymphna had to grab the edge of the mattress to keep from sliding toward him. Minutes passed, but he stayed on his side, not moving. How long had she been asleep? It wasn’t morning—the room was still dark. The moon must still be in shadow.
Now she was wide awake and annoyed. Who did he think he was, sneaking into her bed in the middle of the night—chemistry be damned! She flipped over and was met by yet another kiss. This one wet and warm and all over her face.
“Thud!” Dymphna said, tossing out the words she’d expected to say to Professor Johnson. “Go back to your room!”
The dog gave her another slobbery kiss. Dymphna listened to the night. No alarm sounded from the barn, so she knew her animals were safe. She curled around Thud’s large, wrinkled frame and went back to sleep.
She must have been sleeping deeply, because she bolted upright in confusion. Sounds seemed to be coming from everywhere. Thud was standing in the middle of the bed, barking. Drool flew everywhere. Dymphna tried to avoid the spittle and lunged out of bed. There seemed to be a lot of yelling coming from town. Professor Johnson appeared in the doorway. He was wearing striped pajamas and frantically trying to get his glasses to stay on his face.
“Thud,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Let’s go. Dymphna, you stay here.”
Like hell!
Professor Johnson and Thud took off as Dymphna jumped out of bed. Tucking her sweatpants into her boots as quickly as possible, she grabbed her cell phone–flashlight and followed the professor and Thud onto the porch. Two men flashed past and Thud raced after them, growling and barking. The animals in the barn raised their voices as well. The farm was a cacophony but the whooping sounds were still coming up the hill. The clouds parted and the moonlight revealed Pappy and Powderkeg giving chase and shrieking.
Dymphna thought back to Powderkeg saying he needed to talk to Pappy about something important. Was this Powderkeg’s great idea?
Powderkeg shot by them just as the clouds overtook the moon again. Dymphna grabbed Professor Johnson’s arm as they listened to yelling, howling, and growling.
“Get this dog off me,” came a voice in the dark.
Pappy wheezed up to the porch. “I’m deputizing you and your dog.”
“We’re pacifists,” Professor Johnson said.
The moon continued to play peekaboo with the clouds. One minute Dymphna could see Powderkeg holding on to a slender man in the middle of the creek while Thud held on to the man’s pant leg. The next minute they were in darkness again.
“Where’s your buddy?” Powderkeg asked.
“Somebody call off this dog,” the man said, in what sounded to Dymphna like a very youthful voice.
“Thud!” Professor Johnson sounded stern. “Come here, boy!”
Thud let go of the man’s trouser leg and trotted over to Professor Johnson. The dog panted exuberantly.
“Ain’t in a bloodhound’s nature to be a pacifist,” Pappy said.
“Dude, you made me drop my phone in the creek,” the man said to Powderkeg, who loomed over him.
The clouds parted once again and Dymphna could see Cleo, Polly, Old Bertha, Wally, and Titan making their way up the hill together. Wally was still wearing jeans and a sweater, but the others had clearly been woken from sleep. Sweatpants seemed to be the nightwear of choice with Titan and Polly; Cleo was wearing leggings and an oversized T-shirt and Old Bertha was wearing a lumpy bathrobe and curlers.
People still wear curlers?
As if reading Dymphna’s mind, Old Bertha started yanking out the rollers and stuffing them in her pockets.
“Dude, you scared the tar outta us,” said the young man. “What was with all that noise?”
“I figured you’d gotten a little used to Pappy’s routine,” Powderkeg said.
“Did you catch the other one?” Titan asked.
“No,” Pappy said. “But we’ll make this one talk.”
“No, you won’t,” the young man said to Pappy. “I’m not afraid of you.”
He seemed to lose a little bravado when Powderkeg’s grip tightened around his arm. He looked away from Powderkeg’s icy glare but did a double take and quieted down when he saw Titan’s massive biceps gleaming in the moonlight.
“Man, can I get my cell phone out of the water?”
Pappy reached into the creek and grabbed the phone from where it was wedged between two rocks, creating a miniature waterfall. Pappy shook it and water vibrated off of it like a dog just out of a lake. Cleo reached for the phone, but Polly cast a practiced eye at it as it exchanged hands.
“Wow,” said Polly, “that phone is toast.”
“What difference d
oes that make?” Pappy asked. “Can’t use them up here anyway.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Cleo said.
“What are you talking about, Cleo?” Pappy said.
Even by moonlight you could tell Cleo was smirking.
“You look like the Cheshire cat,” Powderkeg said.
“Only slimmer, I hope,” Cleo said.
“Goes without saying,” Powderkeg said.
“I know what’s going on around here,” Cleo said as she looked at the young man. “I would have filled everybody in in the morning, but it looks as if my ex-husband decided to take matters into his own hands.”
“Well,” Titan said to Cleo, “spill!”
“I need to take this man into custody,” Pappy said.
“Oh, not again with the sheriff business,” Professor Johnson said. “Can’t we sort this out here and now?”
“Nope,” Pappy said. “This man is a fugitive.”
“No, he isn’t,” Professor Johnson said.
“At the very least he’s a trespasser,” Old Bertha said.
“They were in the middle of a public street,” Professor Johnson said. “That’s not trespassing, no matter who you are.”
“Loitering?” Titan offered.
“I’m taking him into custody; I don’t care what the charges are or what anyone says,” Pappy said. “Powderkeg, bring him on down.”
“Doesn’t anybody want to know why these guys are coming into town?” Cleo asked, sounding disappointed.
“We’ll sort it out at his trial in the morning,” Pappy said.
Dymphna gasped. “His trial?”
“There isn’t going to be a trial,” Professor Johnson said.
“That’s what you think,” Pappy said.
A new sound was added to the raised voices as Wobble the rooster announced morning had broken. Dawn had snuck up on the group. Thud started barking again as another slender young man, who looked remarkably like the one in Powderkeg’s custody, came splashing across the creek.
Twins?
“Hey,” he said to the astounded group. “Me and my brother stick together. If he’s going to go to jail, so am I.”
“Nobody’s going to jail!” Professor Johnson said.
“Oh, come on,” Pappy said. “I’ve never had anybody in my jail before.”
“No,” Professor Johnson said. “And that’s final.”
“Oh, all right,” Pappy said. “Let’s all go down to breakfast then. My feet are getting cold.”
“I’m up for breakfast,” the young man in Powderkeg’s grip said. “What are we eating?”
Powderkeg kept his grip on the man’s arm.
“Dude,” the young man said, “I give you my word, we’re not going anywhere.”
“Do you know how long it’s been since we’ve had breakfast?” said his twin.
Pappy and Powderkeg must have exchanged some sort of macho secret signal, because Powderkeg let go of the man’s bicep. It appeared the captives were going to be true to their word. Neither young man was going to bolt with an offer of breakfast on the table.
“So what are we having?” repeated Powderkeg’s captive.
“Whatever Cleo is serving,” Powderkeg replied.
CHAPTER 27
“A cell phone tower?” Polly asked when Cleo announced her dis-Acovery in the woods.
“Yes,” Cleo said, putting another basket of muffins on the table. “When those towers were first being built all over California, I complained so much about how ugly they were. So Daddy hired a designer to figure out a way to hide them just to shut me up. As soon as I saw the tree in the woods, I knew that Rodney and Rock must be coming into town to get a signal for their phones.”
Introductions had been made on the way down the hill. Rodney and Rock were identical twins with fierce dark eyes and glossy black hair. Rock wore three silver hoop earrings in graduated sizes in his left ear, and one silver stud in the right. He was the sneering, tough one whom Powderkeg had caught. Rodney was his soft-spoken, younger-by-twenty-minutes brother.
They corroborated that they used to work at the Rolling Fork Ranch and were superstars of its bowling team. They broke away and were hoping to move to a bigger city where their talents as bowlers would be recognized and appreciated. In the meantime, they were scraping by—camping in the woods, pilfering gas from the Rolling Fork, and living on their wits and berries.
“Why sneak into town at night?” Powderkeg asked.
Rock sneered. “Why don’t you ask Miss Know-Everything?”
“Here’s my guess,” Cleo said, sitting down across from the trespassers–loiterers–former bowling teammates. “You somehow found out about cell phone reception in town and pinpointed the only place the signal was strong enough to do you any good: the middle of the street.”
“Pretty good,” Rodney said, but shut up as soon as Rock glared at him.
“What else?” Rock asked sullenly.
“Obviously, you didn’t want to be seen, so you came at night. But Pappy said you only come to town when the moon is bright,” Cleo said. “What I couldn’t figure out is that since phones have lit screens, why you needed illumination.”
“What did you come up with?” Old Bertha bristled, annoyed that Cleo seemed to be hogging the spotlight.
Cleo pulled the phone from her apron pocket. She held it out for everyone to see, as proud as a kindergartener at show-and-tell. “My guess is this wasn’t your phone’s first time in the creek. Here’s my theory: Your phone got wet before and the backlight stopped working. But you still had reception, and everything else in the phone still worked. So you needed light. You couldn’t risk coming into town during the day—Pappy and that rifle were too unpredictable. So you came at night when the moon was full.”
“Sorry, Cleo,” Wally said. “That’s a pretty lame theory.”
“Yeah,” Rodney said, helping himself to pancakes. “Except she’s right.”
Rock snickered. “Except for the creek part.”
“Ewww,” Polly said. “TMI!”
“She’s right?” Powderkeg asked. “Wow, Cleo! How did you figure that out?”
“Let’s just say I’ve been there. Of course, all I had to do was go see the geniuses who fix phones. I was absolutely frantic when I didn’t have my phone . . . so I thought . . . what would I do?”
Thud put his head in Professor Johnson’s lap. Rock, glancing quickly at his torn pant leg, stared at the dog nervously. “Don’t let the health department catch that dog in here,” he said.
“The health department? In Fat Chance?” Professor Johnson asked. “We make our own rules here.” He made a big show of feeding scraps from the table to the dog, proving how lawless he’d become.
The townspeople all turned to stare at him. Had that outlandish statement with its tinge of humor and bravado just come from Professor Johnson? Pappy seemed particularly impressed.
Cleo exchanged a look with Powderkeg. When Professor Johnson was a little boy and Powderkeg was still her husband, the couple sometimes discussed how humorless he was. They had tried everything to help the solitary little boy make friends, but he was always a stern adult in a child’s body. If people had told Cleo that it would take a compulsory extended stay in a ghost town in the middle of Texas to get her nephew to loosen up, she would not have believed them. Of course, if they had told her anything about Fat Chance, Texas, she would not have believed them.
Powderkeg seemed to be thinking the same thing. He caught Cleo’s eye and winked at her. Up until recently they hadn’t seen one another in years, but here they were, sharing a private moment in a room full of people, just like they used to do. Cleo shook off the nostalgia and returned her focus to the group.
“I don’t really care how or why you came to town,” Polly said to Rock. “The important thing is there’s cell phone reception, right?”
“Yeah,” Rock said, turning his attention to Polly. “But only in the middle of the street. It’s super awkward, but it’s
there.”
“I don’t understand,” Dymphna said. “How could you not know about this, Pappy?”
“I bought a cell phone a couple years ago but it didn’t work here.” Pappy shrugged. “I completely forgot about it.”
“So, Rodney and Rock could get reception, but you couldn’t? That might just mean your carrier doesn’t get reception,” Wally said, then turned a threatening face to the bowlers. “Or you guys might just be lying.”
“Maybe we are lying,” Rock snapped. “We don’t owe you anything.”
“You owe this lady for breakfast,” Pappy said, jerking his thumb toward Cleo.
Titan absently took his phone out of his pocket and stared at it. As if a great idea was passed from one brain to another, the entire group raced into the street. Fancy was waiting on the edge of the boardwalk for Titan, but when she saw the stampede of people, she waddled back to the forge, casting hostile glances at the townsfolk. Everyone stood in the middle of the street while Titan powered up his phone.
He walked the length of the street, holding the phone up to the sky and then down at the ground, like a metal detector.
“What are you doing?” Dymphna asked.
“Trying to find service.”
Wally and Rock appeared to be in a contest to see who could win “most disgruntled” by Titan’s lack of techno-savvy.
“Sir,” Rodney said to Titan. “Just look at the left-hand corner. If you have some bars, it means you have service. If it says ‘no service,’ then you’re out of luck.”
Old Bertha snorted. “Even I knew that.”
Titan frowned, first at the phone, then at the group. “No service.”
Polly let out a whimper while Wally looked smug.
“What are you looking so happy about?” Rock said, almost nose to nose with Wally. “That doesn’t prove anything.”
“Calm down, everybody,” Powderkeg said. “OK, Titan, who is your carrier?”
“I don’t know,” Titan said. “I didn’t have a phone, so Maurice gave me one. I’ve been keeping it charged for the flashlight.”
“The flashlight!” Dymphna called out, waving her phone in the air. “I keep mine charged for the same reason!”
Welcome to Fat Chance, Texas Page 16