I was glad to be back.
I spotted the older missionary couple that was currently living in the small cabin that I had lived in while serving here. Their names were Elder and Sister Knapworth. They were from Montana and had been out on their mission a little over two months. I had met them yesterday and spent a short while talking to them. They were the first full-time missionaries to serve here since I was dragged out after my spill down the falls. Elder Knapworth was a funny, short man with thick arms and bowlegs. His teeth were small and his lips big. He had a hollow voice that seemed to travel in clips—like a poor radio transmission. The only hair he sported was a small patch on the point of his forehead. The rest of his free-spirited noggin had allowed itself to go completely naked. He smiled a lot and wore glasses that looked as if they were better suited for a woman. Sister Knapworth was a fireball. She was the kind of woman who would have made an outstanding barmaid had she been inclined to slide in that direction. She talked loudly and happily as if every word she said were an announcement of something spectacular or the punch line of a really funny joke. She had high gray hair that was laced with red strands, showing that at one time she had been a real redhead. That made her instantly fond of Grace. Of course, I think Sister Knapworth was instantly fond of everyone. She hugged and slapped and pinched people as if they were lonely balls of touch-activated dough. The two of them had only been out on their mission a short time and were definitely more in love with each other than I ever had been with any of my companions. They hugged and kissed as if their mission were to give people a chance to witness public displays of affection.
I watched Elder and Sister Knapworth hold hands and talk to Jerry Scotch about something. She laughed and Elder Knapworth kissed her. Jerry just smiled. I turned from the window when I heard a knock at my door. Roswell entered before I could even answer.
“Sleep okay?” he asked, his gray head looking particularly pale today.
“Fine,” I answered, realizing that I wasn’t even fully dressed yet. I quickly put on a shirt.
“Don’t worry ’bout me,” Roswell waved. “I’ve seen a mess load of half-dressed men in my lifetime.”
If I wasn’t worried before, I was now.
“Listen,” he went on, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. “I’m glad you’re back and all, but I’m wondering whose side you’re gonna be taking?”
“I don’t know what . . .”
“Hold on,” he said, showing me his palms. “’Fore you go sidin’ with Mavis Watson, you need to know that I can’t stand foreigners.”
“Foreigners?”
“Anyone from anywhere besides exactly where I’m from.”
“That means me,” I pointed out.
“In a broad sense, yes,” Roswell agreed, sounding as if he had wanted to use the phrase, “in a broad sense,” forever and was now thrilled that he had finally found a place to put it.
“I see,” I said.
“Listen, Trust, you’re okay. I can make exceptions. One or two strangers is fine, but people just weren’t meant to get too mixed up.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed, hoping he wouldn’t mind my doing so. He stood up, obviously having minded. He rubbed at an age spot on his right hand and then leaned up against the large bureau that was at present housing the few items of clothing I had brought with me.
“Mavis Watson thinks she knows everything,” Roswell complained. “Her ideas ain’t no more special than anyone else’s. Wearing a wig don’t make you a dignitary.”
“I don’t even know what Sister Watson wants to do,” I informed him, hoping to put this part of the conversation well behind us.
“I’ll tell you what that woman wants to do,” he frothed. “She wants to lay down a road from here to Virgil’s Find. She wants the state to build us a highway. A highway,” he hawed. “More like a low way.” Roswell smiled to himself at his brilliant and unexpected wordplay. “A low way,” he repeated. “She thinks it will make our town progressive and safer. Everyone’s been seeing goblins ever since Toby’s pig turned up missing.”
“I don’t know about goblins,” I reasoned. “But it might be kind of nice to be able to drive in and out of here.”
“It might be kind of nice,” he mocked. “It might be kind of nice to have a third arm, or tail, but you don’t see me begging God to change things.”
“A tail?” I asked, smiling.
“Not a real long one,” he said, as if that made the notion any less ludicrous.
“You know, there’s probably nothing to worry about,” I said, trying to be comforting. “I can’t imagine the state’s paying to put in a road here.”
“So we can count on you to support Paul?” Roswell brightened.
“I didn’t say that, I . . . support Paul in what?”
“His weather shelter,” Roswell said firmly. “Paul wants to build a covering over the entire meadow. It’ll keep the rain and snow out of our town twenty-four seven.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope,” Roswell beamed.
“Twenty-four seven?” I asked.
“I don’t know what that means,” he admitted. “But I heard Paul guarantee it. I for one wouldn’t mind being able to make my schedule according to my own need, instead of having to wonder, Is it gonna rain today? Is it gonna snow this week? I’d like to walk out into the meadow on January twenty-fifth shoeless and without a hat. Is that too much to ask?”
I shrugged my shoulders as I tied my own shoe.
“Paul’s got himself a good idea this time,” Roswell insisted. “It ain’t like the other times.”
“It just seems a little extreme,” I said.
“Bah,” Roswell blew.
“And crazy,” I added.
“Crazy? That’s what folks said when Noah began building that boat.”
“Ark,” I corrected.
“No, they said crazy.”
“Why can’t Paul just build his thing over the road?”
“Because his idea calls for exactness,” Roswell spit. “He wants his cover to run the whole length of the trail. How can he build it if the state’s smearing our ground with tar and paint?”
I simply shrugged. I finished getting my shoes on and stood up next to Roswell. He looked me up and down. He was every bit as old as I had remembered him, but he didn’t look half bad, considering that a couple years back he was thought to be dead. Actually, to the folks in Thelma’s Way he had never died, just simply been translated and lifted up to heaven on a golden chariot. Now here he stood before me, his limbs as thin as angel hair pasta and his skin as wrinkled as the brow of a simpleton at a science fair. His pitch-black pupils stared at me.
“So you’re gonna wear those pants?” he commented.
I patted him on the back and then tried to kindly push him out of my room.
Roswell halted. “All right, Trust,” he said in hushed tones. “Do you want me to be honest?”
“It depends on what you’re divulging.”
“I got a business venture on the line.”
“Really?”
“No, I ain’t selling houses.” He looked at me like I was dumb. “You remember my cousin from Virgil’s Find?”
“Sure.”
“He’s got a wagon and horse that he’s willing to sell me for cheap.” Roswell looked guilty. “All right, truth be told, I won it in a card game.”
“I thought you gave up gambling.”
“Sort of,” he hedged. “The important thing is that I’m going to use my spoils to make me a little spending money. You’re looking at Thelma’s Way’s first official ice cream man.”
“And you were against progress.”
“That’s the point,” he pointed out. “We put a road down, and there’ll be competition from Virgil’s Find.”
“Oh.”
“See my dilemma?” he asked.
I saw his problem.
“You really don’t need to worry. Probably none of this will ever come to pass,” I
said as we both started down the stairs to the first floor.
“None of what?”
“This road. Or the meadow cover thing.”
“Weather shelter.”
“Or the weather shelter,” I restated. “Building a roof over the meadow would be a costly endeavor.”
“I have no idea what that means,” Roswell said hon-estly. “But if you’re talking ’bout money, Paul’s gonna find that old Book of Mormon and sell it for funds.”
“So it’s never turned up?” I asked, having forgotten all about it.
“Never.”
“And Paul knows where it is?”
“No, but he’s got an idea.”
“He’s probably had it all along,” I thought aloud.
“The idea?”
“No, the Book of Mormon.”
“Doubt it,” Roswell snipped. “He would have turned it over to Roger when he was here if he had known.”
“Roger?”
“That’s not important,” Roswell brushed it off. “You know what’s important, Trust?” he asked as we shuffled down, his thin knees popping with each step.
“What?”
“I’m old.”
I felt it best not to say anything.
“Chances are, even if Mavis or Paul wins, I won’t never see any of this stuff before I die anyhow.”
I think he was waiting for me to say, “Sure you will,” or “Don’t say that,” but I thought since he was being honest, I should be too.
“Everyone dies,” I tried.
He just looked up at me and scrunched his old face into an even more wrinkled mug. “I guess Grace is just looking for a pretty face,” he insulted me. “You know what though?” he asked.
“What?”
“I don’t think I could settle down good and dead if I knew a road was coming in here.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I tried to comfort him.
We stepped down from the stairs and onto the main floor of the boardinghouse. Roswell shuffled away from me. I was planning on simply walking out the front door and heading over to the Heck residence to check up on Grace, but my vision was impaired by the sight of a certain someone’s backside as he leaned over the counter talking to Briant Wilpst. I just stood there, dumbfounded and listening. I felt as if I had just spotted a butterfly in a fish bowl—both things fine in their own right but entirely wrong when combined.
Leonard Vastly had found Thelma’s Way.
Leonard was leaning on the counter talking to Briant as if he were a piano salesman about to close a key deal. He wore white pants and a faded orange dress shirt. As usual, his wardrobe was too tight. He wasn’t overweight; in fact, he fit nicely into the “skinny” category. But Leonard hadn’t bought a new article of clothing for years, deciding instead to force fabric that was as old as I was to clasp and close more times than it had been intended to. He had bushy eyebrows and a long head that looked like the result of a fun house mirror. He was a completely unique individual with a completely unique way of looking at life. An added bonus to his unusual personality was the fact that he usually reeked of garlic due to the pills he took.
“You know, you could give up that cane entirely if you rubbed your ankles with a couple of magnets every evening for say, ten, fifteen minutes,” Leonard said to Briant.
“Magnets?” old Briant said with enthusiasm.
“Sure.”
Briant Wilpst looked around, his eyes stopping at the big clock hanging on the wall. He reached up, grabbed the clock, and smashed it up against the counter. Glass fell across the floor, sliding up against the far wall. Briant then sifted through the pieces and pulled out a tiny magnet.
“Like so?” he asked, showing Leonard the magnet.
“Well, for best results, I prefer something in the four-pound range.”
“Leonard,” I said in amazement.
He turned and faced me. “Trust.”
“What are you doing here?” was my reply.
“Well, it’s a long story,” he said, nodding towards Briant, indicating that it was for our ears only. I don’t know why it mattered. Briant was so busy rubbing the magnet on his elbows and ankles he didn’t even look up.
“How long of a story?” I asked.
“I guess we won’t know that until it’s over.”
Leonard motioned for me to follow him out onto the porch.
I’ve always been a glutton for punishment.
7
Shoving a Camel Through the Eye
I had no one to blame but myself. Well, maybe Grace. You see, a few months back while having Sunday dinner at my house in Southdale, Grace had mentioned to Leonard that her family owned a lot of land in Thelma’s Way and that they were the kind of people who would give anyone an acre if they really wanted it.
Well, Leonard wanted one.
After the flood in Southdale all those months ago, Leonard had bought himself a brand-new double-wide mobile home and placed it on the land where he had once had his single-wide Bio-Doom.
The neighbors complained.
They had put up with his single-wide home because they had been forced to. After all, it had been there before most of them had ever moved in. But they saw no reason, now that it was gone, why Leonard couldn’t simply build a house that fit within the covenants of the neighborhood. Leonard was livid. He couldn’t imagine ever living in something so confining as a glued-to-the-ground home. He liked the idea that if prompted by prophet or peril, he could simply hook up his house and haul it with him. He talked often about how surprised he was that the Church leaders didn’t command everyone to get mobile homes, seeing how we could all then drag them to Missouri when the time came.
Well, Leonard took his complaints about his intolerant neighbors to city hall. He spent weeks on the steps of the courthouse with a sign that read, “I have a pre-fab dream.”
Remarkably, city hall finally listened to him. In fact, the judge overseeing his case grew sympathetic until Leonard made the mistake of commenting on how lucky the judge was to be able to wear a robe to work, seeing how he, the judge, was probably a good forty pounds over-weight and the cut of the robe really did a nice job of disguising it.
If I haven’t mentioned it before, Leonard Vastly is a man of little tact.
The judge ruled Leonard’s house as being in violation of zoning and then went on and on about how according to European high school textbooks he was at his ideal weight. Leonard was ordered to move his home and build something less portable.
Well, that was months ago.
Leonard had stalled as long as he possibly could. But it had finally gotten to the point that he had to get out or get arrested. So when he heard Grace and I were coming back here, he talked one of his buddies into pulling his home across the country to Thelma’s Way, where, according to Leonard, the promise of free land beckoned like a lost love ringing the dinner bell.
“You brought your home here?” I asked in amazement.
“Yep,” Leonard answered.
“Where is it?”
“That’s the problem,” Leonard answered sadly. “I’ve got it set up on blocks at the beginning of the trail. There’s no way to get it back in here. What kind of place doesn’t have a street leading in?”
As fate would have it, Sister Watson was walking by just as Leonard asked his question.
“A believer,” she whispered, stepping up onto the porch and sticking her hand out to Leonard.
He looked at it and then told her that he had read that most germs were transmitted by people shaking hands.
I thought Sister Watson would be offended. But she simply said, “A sensible man. You’re a rarity ’round these parts.”
“He’s a rarity around any part,” I added.
“Thank you, Trust,” Leonard said, not catching the sarcasm.
“Do you mind if I sit?” Sister Watson asked, pulling up an empty porch chair.
“I’ve never known a woman to do anything other than exactly as she pleases,�
� Leonard replied.
Sister Watson blushed and tittered as if she had just been supremely complimented. I didn’t understand, or perhaps I refused to believe, what was going on right in front of me. But if I had been forced to answer honestly, I would have to say that what I saw seemed to be an enamored Sister Watson.
“I don’t believe I caught your name,” she said.
“Leonard. Leonard Vastly.”
“How regal.”
Whereas I was initially intrigued, now I was nauseous. I stood up, stepping away to leave them alone. I had to tell Grace that Leonard was in town. I went back up to my room and changed my pants—Roswell’s approval obviously meaning more to me than I cared to admit. When I got back down, Leonard and Sister Watson were gone. A mere three paces into my jaunt through the meadow, my plans were thwarted. Paul Leeper slipped up next to me, matching my stride with his slightly shorter legs.
“Have a moment?” he asked.
We stopped at the rotting pioneer wagons and leaned. If Thelma’s Way was a rose, which it wasn’t, then Paul Leeper would be the biggest and most obnoxious thorn on its stem. He was constantly causing and creating trouble for a town that had plenty of its own to begin with. He was fairly mean-spirited and as dishonest as a used-car salesman with a late mortgage payment. I know he was trying hard to rebuild his reputation, but it seemed like an impossible task. I just couldn’t see how anyone claiming to have dug out a large portion of the Grand Canyon by hand could ever be taken seriously again.
I looked into Paul’s scrunched and poorly arranged face. His thick, helmet-like hair was as dark and plastered as ever. He had an apple in his shirt pocket, causing his upper-wear to hang at an angle on him and making me feel as if we were leaning.
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