Mammoth Secrets

by Ashley Elizabeth Ludwig

  Somehow, she got through the song. She finished her chores as the West Plains station went to commercial. Restaurant dark and locked, she set towards home beneath the stars. In the distance, a storm cloud lit with electricity. Eden hummed as she made the trek uphill, from one amber streetlight to the next, singing near-forgotten words. How many nights had she and Marty trained their eyes up to those constellations, drawn the pictures and picked their stars that they could each see—drawing comfort in knowing that the same stars shone on them both.

  But now she was alone.

  17

  With the house scented with flavors of butter, baking, and warm fruit, Lilah plunged her hands into soapy water. She was still scrubbing when the door slammed. One thump, two, her twin sister shucked shoes and padded down the hall toward the bathroom. Water pipes rattled.

  “Must’ve been a long day.” Lilah hefted cobbler to counter, steam rising. Maybe she should take it over to the church now, a pick-me-up for the volunteers transporting supplies to the Revival tents. The volunteers were her friends now. She should let the cobbler cool, along with whatever intentions she wasn’t admitting. “Did you see any cars over at the church?”

  “No.” Water splashed. “Go look yourself, if you’re so curious.”

  Darting a look through the front window showed no action, but the handful of envelopes peeking out of Eden’s purse caught her attention. Still sealed. Usually those letters came and Edie would rip into them, devour each word, and then reread the good parts aloud, following Lilah around with them until she wanted to scream. What was with Edie’s sudden emotional jag? There was only one thing possible. Yet Eden hadn’t spoken of it in ages. Marty. Heart jogging, she knew Eden needed cobbler and company more than Jake did.

  “You gonna be in there long?” Lilah rapped a knuckle to the door.

  “Go away.”

  “It’s a one bathroom house, Eden.” She leaned on the wood door. “You can’t stay in there forever.”

  “Try me.”

  “I’ve got fresh triple berry cobbler, cold milk, and a shoulder.” Lilah pressed her forehead on the wood frame. “Come out when you’re ready.”

  Thirty minutes later, Lilah flipped magazine pages in her usual place on the couch.

  Eden wandered in, plate of cobbler in hand, white terry cloth robe wrapped around her body, hair in a towel-turban. Washed clean of makeup, she mirrored Lilah’s skin tone, shape of face, and blonde lashes.

  “You want to talk about it?” Lilah asked.

  “Nope.” Eden swallowed, speared another bite. “I thought this was for the church?”

  “There’s another in the oven.” Lilah dragged her plate from the trunk-turned coffee table. “Don’t think they’ll notice.”

  “Pastor Jake won’t, so long as you’re the one who brings it.” Eden gave her spoon a thoughtful lick. “He’s getting sweet on you.”

  “Aw, come on.” Lilah’s cheeks heated. “Don’t care what the movies say. Not every guy-girl friendship has to be that way.”

  “You’re gonna sit there and tell me there’s nothing going on between you and the divorced preacher?” Eden arched a perfectly-plucked eyebrow. “Really?”

  Lilah replayed their moments together. The way he’d helped her back onto the path. The broad surface of his hands, the line of his jaw when he laughed, his eagerness despite the folks of this town endlessly set in their ways.

  “You got it bad, girl.” Eden spoke through her mouthful. “So bad, and you don’t even realize it. All over your face.”

  Lilah turned her glance to the window, the sentinel house on the hill. Nana’s kitchen light was on, that ruby glass shaded lamp guiding weary feet through darkness for a glass of water or a midnight snack, the same as when they were children. “Nana disapproves.”

  “What else is new?”

  Lilah couldn’t have agreed more, but changed the subject. “What do you suppose life was like for them? Before—before Mama...”

  “Before she ran away?” Eden settled her empty plate on top of Lilah’s and curled her bare feet underneath. “Or before she was born?”

  “Either.”

  “I like to think she was happy. But I don’t think Nana ever gave happiness the time of day. Too busy worrying about where she was going, about what comes next, to think about where she was.”

  “Now, with Papaw...” Lilah blew a sigh.

  “Yeah.”

  Their thoughts circled around the image of their grandfather when they were kids. Whittling carved bears or fish they’d play with for hours. Telling stories of his ranch horse, Broomtail, how they herded up lost cows and chased off rustlers from the Taylor range.

  Stories of when Nana was but a girl of nineteen, when their entire future was before them. She, the lady’s maid, and he, a cowboy. In a time when the country was a dustbowl, they’d found love and risked everything to marry.

  The next winter, when the house burned to the ground along with every precious belonging, the ranch folk and neighbors gifted them a friendship quilt made from gunnysacks and bits of bright colored, worn dresses. Each square signed with embroidered hands of those doing their Christian duty, wrapped them in subtle kindness. The same quilt Nana used to wrap them in during the storms, back before her heart had hardened to stone, before she’d wrapped the quilt in paper—the offering of comfort and caring, now hidden in the back of her closet. Along with that quilt, she’d hidden away a part of herself, her dreams, and secreted away a portion of her soul, never to be discussed again.

  Lilah’s eyes went damp at the thought of Nana as she’d been when they were little, when knees were scraped and bruised from tumbling down a hill. The Nana who dried her tears as she watched Eden and Papaw meander down the hill on a clandestine fishing trip, thinking Lilah wouldn’t know or notice. The Nana who’d taught her how to cook, how to sew, how to turn nothing into something, and knew her, inside and out. The Nana who’d look her in the eye.

  Eden squeezed her hand, drawing her back into the here and now. “Your timer’s buzzing.”

  Lilah blinked. The air hung with scents of baking fruit and crust. “Cobbler’s ready.” She pushed up off the sofa as Eden gathered scraped-clean plates.

  “Remember when Papaw dragged us out of the blackberry patch? I never knew two girls who were more stuck!” Eden jumped up to follow her into the kitchen.

  “We ruined our new shirts.” Lilah lowered the plates in the sink with a clatter. “Then Nana made me wear mine anyway, with that big ’ole purple stain.”

  “No. She didn’t make you do that.” Eden furrowed her forehead. “Remember?”

  She’d ruined hers by slinging ripe, dripping blackberries across the front. She’d sobbed while Nana tried to lift out the stain, but declared the garment destroyed. Lilah wore it anyway, in spite of Nana’s best efforts to sneak it into the ragbag.

  What other memories from her childhood were skewed like that?

  Up on the hill, the ruby glow from the kitchen blazed.

  18

  Cherokee Spring fairgrounds bloomed with the red and yellow striped tents. Clouds on the horizon sparked with lightning.

  Guthrie checked a rope on his own structure, then stepped over the counter that would be his home for the next few weeks. The Glass Shack sat just east of the ring toss and south of the Tower of Strength. He unpacked his equipment—the mask, the long clear glass cylinders—and unrolled his pliers and tongs from the green felt bag. One tool slot remained empty. He checked his blowtorch. Tanks full. Guthrie had inherited the booth, and the knowledge of his craft when he was a young man, the day his mentor was caught with one ace too many in a card game with the carnival master.

  “Cheat at life, face your death.” Randall had spat the eulogy as Guthrie had shoveled a final pile of dirt on the unmarked grave in the Ozark backwoods.

  They’d given him the Glass Shack as consolation, near thirty years ago, since no questions were asked. From that day on, Guthrie knew he had to give up the sauce, at
least on driving days. He couldn’t make figurines if his hands shook, or spin molten glass while doused in an alcoholic haze. This was the only place left to call home. He was out of options. This was his purgatory. He barely remembered what came before, as if it were some dream from which he’d never roused.

  “You all right there, Guthrie?” Maya Randall, the carnival master’s daughter, walked over. She was sixteen with curves where she used to be stick straight. “Just making sure everything made it safe.”

  He averted his attention. “Yes’m.” He twisted to glance at the exhibit pieces, flicked the spark to his blowtorch, adjusted the narrow blue flame, and lowered his visor. “I’m all unpacked.”

  Across the field, near the forest’s edge, other tents popped up their tops. White canvas ghosts, they floated under the moonlight, near the skeleton of the old schoolhouse. “Look at them, up there.”

  “That’d be the Revival folk setting up.” He swallowed a shard. “Wrong side of the highway.”

  “You ever been to one?” Maya leaned her elbows to the edge, the fire red of her hair dangled across one shoulder.

  “Not for quite some time.” The blue flame whooshed, heat and light. He tightened until it almost burned invisible. “Pastor’s getting ready to save some souls.”

  “Pa’ll snag a few down here, too, I reckon.” She tilted a wicked grin as she reviewed the figures in the haphazard display, a mini carnival in its own right. She pointed to the clown. “You gonna finally give that to me this year?”

  Guthrie shook his head. “Nope.”

  Her lips pressed into a full pout. An idea brightened those agate-colored eyes. She reminded him of a tiger, ready to pounce as she leaned halfway over the counter. “Make me something?”

  “Already started.” He dragged the amber stick of glass over, warmed it, set his hands in motion. Guthrie made the same form that he made for her time and again, bunching the tiger’s shoulders, jaws open, tail swirled around its lithe body. He used the fine tongs to twist the cooling glass just so.

  Maya scrunched her lips. “Why do you always make me tigers?”

  “It’s what your eyes tell me.” Satisfied, he set about cooling the figure, using a heavy cloth to draw the heat out.

  The girl in the alley had eyes that showed him something altogether different. His mind replayed the scene he’d witnessed a few days ago, and he started his next project for the menagerie. The heron. The trout. With competent, quick fingers, the animals took shape from tubes of glass.

  Lips pursed in an O of surprise, Maya ignored the tiger and watched him work. Childlike, she clapped.

  The sloshing bottle pressed in his breast pocket as the glass sparked under his hands. He cleared his throat as he wove in bright blue for the bird’s wing. A slight line of yellow melted under the blaze of his torch. He tweaked it with the finest pliers, forming its beak, the crest at its head.

  “I want that one.” Maya blinked brandy-colored eyes.

  “Always want what you can’t have, don’t you?” Guthrie gave a swift shake of his head. “You take care of the tiger now, Maya.” He cooled the heron, quick-like to keep it from breaking, and secreted it away between heavy cloths.

  “I never will get how you do that.” She frowned, turning the cat over.

  “Tried to show you once, remember?” He smiled, teeth hidden behind his lips. “You didn’t give it a chance.”

  “Patience isn’t my strong suit.” She flipped her ponytail, a laugh on her lips. “I ended up with a blob.”

  “Paperweight,” he corrected. “Everything deserves a chance—even if it needs to be re-melted. Formed into something new.”

  “If you say so. I call it trash.” She set off toward her pa’s trailer without so much as a glance back.

  Looking back up the hill, Guthrie’s heart throbbed. The last of the Revival tents bloomed out. Someone sang, a guitar hummed through loudspeakers. A voice lilted, laughed.

  Inside, curtains drawn, lights burning, Maya’s father—Carnival Master Randall—plotted and planned the next moves for his carnival of fools.

  19

  Lilah scrawled an unrecognizable signature on the electronic form while the delivery driver muscled out a large paper supply box, topped with the slim envelope that would decide where she went from here.

  At the box truck’s departure, Emma and two of her besties giggled and compared him to the actor from that latest dystopian movie. “He could save my life, any day.” Emma fanned herself.

  The Thursday lunchtime crowd fell to a hush.

  Eden paused, pad in hand, her pencil poised mid-order. Her eyebrows jogged, but she didn’t budge.

  Lilah took the thick packet to the back room and sat at the little desk. The letter opener ripped with a zip. Inside, the hand-scrawled note from the attorney in Los Angeles had her blinking. She read it again, just to make sure that she got it right, and glanced up as her sister centered herself at the dining room window.

  “Order up!” Eden called. She spun a receipt on the wheel, and then hurried through the tables with water pitcher, refilling glasses with a sploosh. Wasn’t she even curious?

  Lilah smiled as she read the note a third time. The attorneys had reviewed her requests, made the changes. The final comment made her snort a laugh.

  “What? What does it say?” Raymond stood, though a pained look in his face begged her to share all.

  “Eden?”

  “What?” Eden appeared as if she’d been hiding behind the wall.

  “As my attorney, can you make sure it’s OK to sign?” Lilah pushed the papers at her sister, who quite stoically perched reading glasses on her nose, and quick scanned the wheretofores and hereafters.

  “For real?” Raymond paused mid-apron tying. “You mean she actually helped you?”

  “She did one better than that.” Lilah jogged Eden’s elbow. “Looks like I can keep my car after all.”

  “And your name. He doesn’t get to ride your coattails any longer.” Eden raised her chin, handed over a pen with a ceremonial flourish. “Sign away, Miss Dale.”

  Lilah scrawled where Eden pointed, at each sticker-marked sign arrow. Finished, copies made, and final documents secured in a return envelope, she wrapped her sister in a firm squeeze. “Well done, sister.” She hoofed it to the door before her lungs exploded. She needed air. Fast. Stepping into the warmth of late afternoon, Lilah upturned her face to the sun.

  The truth of it spun out faster than line on a hooked trout. Eden had helped. She’d forced that Los Angeles attorney into reworking most of the figures at his law firm of That’s Mine, This is Yours. Even though throwing in the towel would have been easier, this was the best thing by a long shot.

  She’d fallen for a pocket full of lies and received a sack full of trouble while he’d profited from her and reaped all the rewards. Now, her sister, chock full of surprises, had freed her. And Ryan? He’d be footing the legal bill for both sides. Even Eden would get a tiny commission.

  And this is the price of freedom?

  No contest in the state of California. Everything was a fifty-fifty split, whether dollars, debt, or despair, and Eden made sure the man who’d kicked her to the curb would hurt where it counted and not take any more than his legal due.

  Why did it simultaneously feel wrong and right to celebrate this ending? She floated across the street to the corner market and buzzed through, choosing fresh meat, ripe produce, and a few fixings for dessert. On her way out, she slipped inside the pharmacy, said her how d’ya dos, and checked for any new prescriptions.

  “Your Nana just came by about an hour ago.” The pharmacist grinned over the glass partition. “Saw that truck stop at your place. Drop off anything important?”

  “Yep.” Lilah forced her shoulders back. “My papers are final. That, and a carton full of paper towels. Can’t decide which is more important today.”

  “Both clean up quite a mess, I reckon.”

  Lilah paused, heart light as she browsed bright tubes of li
pstick. “More true than you know.” She claimed the lipstick shade she’d shied from since moving back, and purchased it along with a pack of chewing gum and tin of mints. Money wouldn’t be so tight now, and neither would her determination to stay away from the handsome pastor across the street.

  ~*~

  Jake paused by the mailbox at the edge of her driveway. He scanned her carport and her dusty red convertible, tires low from disuse. He gave the back of his neck a thoughtful-looking rub.

  Lilah walked up the road, hefting up her groceries. She smiled in anticipation of his question. Why did she have a car in the driveway if she never took it anywhere? She’d never registered it in the state of Arkansas, as if doing so would admit failure: that she was staying once and for all. Just another hillbilly failure—Ryan Simpson’s favorite accusation.

  Jake’s finger traced a dust track across the hood.

  “Hey,” she called. “You made a clean spot.”

  “Funny.” He stepped to her side with hands out. “Looks as if it hasn’t moved in an age.”

  “Hasn’t.” She shrugged. Even if she could keep it, the sporty ragtop fit in Arkansas about as well as…well, about as well as she did. She pushed the thought aside. “After all, I can walk everywhere I need to go. I promised I wouldn’t move it until I was free. How about we take it for a spin?”

  “It’s done, then? Your divorce?”

  She nodded. “Signed today.”

  He met her gaze, eyes hooded simultaneously with a pastor’s concern and a man’s unveiled interest. “Want to put the top down?” Jake shot her a wicked-looking grin. “Drive it out to the carnival?”

  “Like a date?”

  He plucked the bag from her, his intentions to carry them inside obvious. “Sure.”

  They walked inside.

  “Aren’t you worried about someone seeing you there?”