All Things New (Virtuous Heart)

by Donna Fletcher Crow

  “So, tell me. How’s Adonis and Little Miss Muffet?”

  Debbie avoided a direct answer. “Tomorrow’s his birthday. I’m fixing dinner. It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

  “The proverbial way to a man’s heart.” It was very nearly a sneer.

  Debbie shrugged. Her emotions were much too confused at the moment to attempt defending anything she did.

  “Well, one thing I can say for your Victorian ideas of not giving him anything more than food before they sing ‘O Promise Me’ is that at least you don’t feel like quite such a fool when you get dumped flat on your, er—back. Pardon the reference.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I just did. What else is there to say? There were no promises asked, given, or taken. But the louse could have warned me before I decided to pop in on him Saturday that I was in danger of finding another woman there with him.” Byrl drank deeply of her coffee. “There are moments when one wonders what’s the point of it all …” She shrugged and tossed her head. “So, this is one of those moments. It’ll pass and leave ye olde sadder-but-wiser me in its wake.”

  Byrl grew up spending as much time in Sunday School as Debbie had, and she could probably have quoted more Bible verses than Debbie. So she didn’t need any sermons. Not ones of words. Just actions. “You need a change of scenery.” Debbie jumped to her feet. “What’ll it be—swimming? shopping? beachcombing?”

  Byrl looked at her in surprise. “You serious? You don’t have plans?”

  Debbie shook her head. “Nothing as important as you.” She gave her cousin an impetuous hug. To her surprise it was returned.

  “Well, what I really need to do is to run up to Astoria and visit Fort Clatsop where Sacajawea spent the winter with the Lewis and Clark party.”

  “Great. Let’s go. I’ll drive so you can be free to take notes along the way.”

  It was a quick drive northward to the oldest city in the Pacific Northwest at the mouth of the Columbia River. At the reconstructed fort, the original of which the explorers completed on Christmas Eve, 1805, the cousins walked slowly around the heavy stockade walls and spent some time in the captain’s living quarters, trying to imagine what the winter must have been like for the young Indian woman living there with her infant son.

  They took a trail leading from the fort to the canoe landing on the Lewis and Clark River. “What did Sacajawea do after the expedition?” Debbie asked.

  “She went back to St. Louis with Charbon eau, her husband. I haven’t found out yet what happened to him, but she lived for a long time on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. I read that she died in 1884, but I haven’t learned yet just what she did. One disadvantage of working in a small town is the limited library resources. But I’ll dig it all out. Sacajawea is becoming a favorite of mine. I may even do a book on her later. Do you realize she was only 18 when she made the trip with Lewis and Clark?”

  Debbie looked up from the replica of the dugout canoe she was studying. “No. I didn’t know. And with a baby. He must have been an incredible inconvenience, yet she did it.” She was quiet while Byrl made a lengthy note. “Do any of your sources mention whether or not Sacajawea had any Christian training?”

  Byrl looked at her for a moment. “Good question. I would never have thought of that.” She scratched another note. “Sometimes I wonder if there’s something to this ‘Faith of Our Fathers’ thing.”

  Debbie nodded. So did she.

  Chapter 12

  The next morning Debbie was just taking a puffy white meringue crust from the oven when she heard a knock at the door.

  Greg and Melissa stood there. “We’ve decided to celebrate my birthday by going blading.”

  “Um, blading?”

  “Rollerblading. In-line skates.” Greg started to explain.

  “Yeah, sure. I know what they are. I’m a mole, but I live on this planet. I guess I hadn’t figured that would be your thing. Whatever next? skateboarding? skydiving?”

  Greg grinned and held up a hand. “Whoa. One thing at a time, please. I have to do something to prove I’m not completely over the hill at 35. But I do want to survive the day. Want to come watch me break my neck?”

  “What you mean is you want me there to fall on.” Debbie could hear her heart pounding. She hadn’t seen him since Saturday night—two and a half days. Now she knew how it must feel to go to a cocktail party when you were trying to stay on the wagon. All that distance she was trying to gain suddenly lost its attraction. “Er, I don’t have any skates—blades, that is.”

  Greg produced a pair from behind his back. “Surprise.”

  She pulled back. If they were Gayle’s, she didn’t want to have anything to do with trying to fill her shoes—or rollerblades.

  “We rented them when we got ours,” Greg said.

  Debbie eyed the size 7 stamped on the heel. “How did you know my size?”

  “You left a pair of slippers in the spa room. We took them with us.”

  “I found them.” Melissa looked terribly proud of herself as she held out the missing slippers.

  Debbie laughed. “So that’s where those went to. I’d wondered. OK, give me a minute.” She ducked into her room and slipped a high-necked, dusty blue sweater on over her light blue jeans and tied her hair back with a blue and white scarf.

  She sat on the front steps to lace up her skates while Greg, holding tight to Melissa, instructed her on handling the wheels under her feet. Debbie couldn’t help noticing how, even on an overcast morning, Greg managed to look as if the sun were shining on him. “Show-off,” she said, noting the way he was dressed.

  “What do you mean?” he offered his hand to help her stand up.

  “Roller-skating in shorts is like doing crossword puzzles in ink.”

  He shook his head. “Your mistake. I figured my knees could grow new skin easier than my jeans could grow patches.”

  Debbie had roller-skated and ice-skated as a child, so she adapted quickly to the rollerblading sensation. As soon as she caught her balance she enjoyed the greater freedom of having the wheels in a line rather than in a rectangle under her feet. For a while they bladed with Melissa between them, but soon she caught the sense of it and struck out on her own. The wheels on the rough cement tickled the bottoms of Debbie’s feet, making her giggle. “I haven’t done anything like this since I was in junior high. It’s great!”

  Children zoomed by them on bicycles and skateboards, elderly couples strolled along hand-in-hand, young parents pushed babies in strollers or carried them in backpacks, and every third person they met had a dog on a leash. Debbie waved an arm at it all. “What would Seaside be without the Prom?”

  “It’s practically a symbol of the city,” Greg agreed. “I read in The Signal last week that the city fathers are considering some repairs to it. The most minor repairs will cost several times the $150,000 the whole thing cost in 1923.”

  “I wish I could have seen it then.” Debbie gave him a mischievous grin. “Tell me what it was like. You must remember it.”

  “Now you’ve gone too far. I beat students for less that that.” He reached for her.

  She pushed just beyond his grasp, her wheels clacking over each seam in the cement. “You’ll have to catch me first,” she called over her shoulder.

  She managed to keep ahead of him for a while, weaving skillfully around strollers who smiled at her. But she couldn’t keep up the effort for long. Finally she surrendered, clinging to the balustrade, laughing and gasping for breath. “I give up.” She held up her hand in defense. “Please don’t beat me, kind sir.”

  He twirled an imaginary mustache and raised his eyebrows. “And what makes you think I’m kind?”

  “I was trying to appeal to your better nature—it must be in there somewhere. But as a last resort I can scream a lot.”

  He threw up his hands. “Now that appeals to my better nature. Can you imagine the item in The Signal? ‘Dr. Gregory Masefield of Pacific Evangelical Seminary w
as arrested today for accosting a beautiful young woman on the Promenade. “I couldn’t help myself,” Masefield said in defense. When the judge saw the woman, Miss Deborah Ann Jensen of Boise, Idaho, he declared himself in sympathy with Masefield and released him to the custody of Miss Jensen.’”

  “You are a nut.” Debbie giggled. “What do I want with custody of you?”

  “That’s what I keep wondering.” The teasing was gone from Greg’s blue eyes. “But you’re going to have to decide, you know.”

  Unable to meet his gaze, Debbie pushed ahead to catch up with Melissa. At the kiosk they bought caramel corn and saltwater taffy and sat on a brick bench overlooking the beach as they munched. Across the broad expanse of beach, holidayers engaged in various activities. Several groups of children dug in the sand, one near them laughing as they buried the largest boy up to his neck. Early sun-worshipers, still clad in sweatshirts, staked out their territory in anticipation of sunnier times. Kite fliers awaited the breeze that would clear the sky for the sun, one with a giant dragon kite spread out on the sand like a fallen rainbow. Farther out, on the damp, surf-washed beach, groups of sand cycle riders sped up and down, looking like a horde of sand crabs, and on the dunes off to their left someone flew a gasoline powered plane. Debbie shivered. “I’ll always hate those things.”

  “I understand your feelings. But try not to let it bother you. Freak accidents happen.”

  “I know. But that’s what worries me …”

  “What?”

  She spoke quietly. She didn’t want Melissa to overhear. “The thing is, I’m not absolutely convinced it was an accident.”

  Greg frowned. “What else could it have been?”

  “Well, remember those guys arguing at Indian Beach about how one of them overrode the commands of the pilot with another set of controls?” Greg nodded. Debbie took another deep breath. “Well the next morning I was walking on the beach and found a radio control. I assumed it was the one Larsen was using, except for one funny thing. It was on the other side of the dune from where he was.”

  “Maybe a kid carried if off.”

  “Exactly what I thought. But I don’t know—he was such an important man—the kind that could be a target for something, I suppose.”

  “What did you do with the control?”

  “I met Ryland Carlsburg a little later and showed it to him. He offered to get it back to Larsen’s family.”

  “Well, there you are then. If there was anything wrong, the family would have noticed and told the police.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so …”

  “Daddy, I’m thirsty.” Melissa threw her caramel corn bag in the litter barrel.

  Their sweet snack had left them all thirsty, so they lined up at the drinking fountain before blading on. Soon past the motels on the south end of the Prom, Debbie admired the flower-bordered lawns facing the ocean. The cool, moist climate produced such intense color in the flowers that a small bed or single pot could light up a whole yard. Debbie called Greg’s attention to a luminous hedge of red geraniums four feet high. Then she paused before a display of fluorescent-colored tuberous begonias, some of the blooms as big as paper plates. “I can’t believe that.” She shook her head. “My whole plants don’t get as big as one of those blossoms. It’s a good thing my mother told me to expect life to be unfair—it prepares one for such disappointments.”

  “You really have a green thumb, don’t you?”

  “Well, it’s more a green heart. Green thumb implies success. I just have good intentions. I always dreamed of doing a really old-fashioned garden with hollyhocks and daisies and morning glories. I suppose in my apartment I’ll have to be content with misting a fern and growing a pot of chives in the kitchen.” She was quiet for a moment. “But I do love growing things.”

  The further they left the town behind them on their two mile course, the heavier the wild vegetation grew on the beach side as well. Hillocks of rolling sand dunes were covered with thick beach grass, scrubby gnarled bushes, and tall, slim-stemmed dandelions that nodded in the breeze like daisies.

  The wind everyone waited for appeared on cue to sweep the clouds from the sky. Now a warm sun shone on the skaters. Much too warm. Debbie regretted her heavy sweater as sticky prickles irritated her neck and arms. No matter how stoically she tried to ignore it, the discomfort increased. She looked with envy at Greg and Melissa whose recently shed windbreakers were tied loosely over their cotton shirts. She longed for a breath of cool breeze to find its way inside her wool sweater. It became an endurance test, and she was losing.

  Debbie argued with herself for a block further, then gave up. “Greg, I feel so stupid, but this sweater is killing me. Could I, er, could I borrow your windbreaker?” The beach bracken now provided solid cover, and little trails led off through the brush, beckoning her to a private dressing room.

  Greg sketched a bow. “My jacket would be honored.”

  The rollerblades necessitated making her way carefully on the tiny, sandy trail, but it wasn’t many steps until she could sink behind a screening hedge. The relief as she wriggled out of the sticky sweater was almost equal to the temptation to sit there half dressed in the fresh air. Only the fear of someone coming along the path made her hurry. Then she froze. Someone was coming.

  She heard voices approaching from the beach side. Should she scramble into the jacket or stay still and not attract any attention? The voices stopped a few feet from her just beyond the bushes. Hushed, intense tones made her hold her breath.

  “A whole percent apiece? For each of the six—er, five of us?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Just for the promise not to push for a public vote?”

  “That’s right. Just sign the thing in the routine course of business.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  “Fine. Just don’t take too long.”

  Footsteps muffled by the sand faded away. Debbie scrambled into her newly acquired attire. The cool, slick feel of the white nylon windbreaker restored her comfort and her energy, and she felt only minimally foolish when she emerged in the jacket that hung halfway to her knees.

  “Cute.” Greg held out his hand to help her back onto the Prom. “Let that be a lesson to you. Always dress in layers at the beach.”

  Somehow the clownish outfit produced a playful mood. Debbie laughed and raced off toward the end of the Prom. She loved the sense of freedom as she pushed hard for several strides, then coasted—sometimes crouching like a skier, sometimes with her arms out as if flying. This was great. A wonderful sense of freedom engulfed her.

  She really was free. She had finished her obligations at home. Free. She had made her peace with Shawn. Free. There was nothing holding her back. But … Nothing. Nothing do you hear? She was free.

  On the way back home they detoured down a side street marked Lewis and Clark Way to visit the salt cairn where, Greg explained to Melissa after refreshing his memory by reading the markers, three men from the exploration party had worked for two months during the winter of 1806, keeping the fires burning constantly in order to boil 1,400 gallons of seawater to make salt for the journey.

  “Why did they need salt?” Melissa asked.

  “To cure their meat,” Debbie answered. “They didn’t have freezers or canning then.”

  Melissa regarded her with a frown. “Was the meat sick?”

  Debbie bit her lip to keep from laughing at the child’s question. “No, but the people would have been if they hadn’t fixed their meat with salt to keep it from spoiling.”

  “Then why did you say …”

  Greg came to Debbie’s rescue. “Come over here, Punkin. You can see better on this side.”

  They bladed around the black wrought iron fence and gazed through the rails at the oblong stone oven supporting five big black “kittles” of water. Debbie shook her head. “What a lot of work. Just to produce four bushels of salt.”

  “The saltmakers were really the first white residents of Se
aside.” Then Greg turned to Melissa. “A little Clatsop Indian girl named Jenny Michael helped the people find the right place to rebuild this display because her father told her how he remembered seeing the white men working here.”

  But Melissa’s attention span for historical detail was expended, so they skated homeward, moving more slowly and with more frequent rest stops than on the outward trip. They finally rolled in, pulling Melissa between them. “If you’ll take a nap now, honey, maybe your daddy will let you come over for another cooking lesson when you get up.” Debbie gave her young accomplice a surreptitious wink, then handed her rollerblades back to Greg.

  “OK. Then daddy can come get me. I’m taking him to Norma’s for his birthday dinner.” Melissa replied right on cue. That went even better than they had rehearsed it.

  Greg held out his hand to Melissa, suppressing a yawn. “Mmm, all this exercise and fresh air was supposed to stimulate my brain for a round of writing. But somehow the idea of a nap is almost overwhelming.”

  “Why not, Gramps? Seniors always nap in the afternoon, don’t they?” Debbie spun away, giggling.

  “I’ll see to it that you regret that. Just wait till I get my cane.” He brandished an imaginary weapon as he led the weary Melissa away.

  Debbie sank down on the sofa, her feet straight out in front of her. She didn’t feel as if she were flying now. Why couldn’t she hold onto that sense of freedom?

  There was no telling how long she might have sat there had the phone not rung. All the way to the kitchen Debbie found herself trying to move by pushing and gliding as if still on wheels. But when the brief conversation was over, her sensation was not one of skating or of flying, but of sinking. The minute she recognized the voice of Rachael, manager of Rainbow Land in Boise, she had a premonition. “I’m terribly sorry, Debbie. I know how much you were counting on this job. And you’d have been perfect for it. But Micron isn’t transferring Rita’s husband after all. So we won’t have a job opening.”