Grace looked up at me, her green eyes hitting my blue. “Never mind,” she waved.
Some things were best left unsaid.
14
What You See is Most Definitely, Without a Doubt, Positively, Undeniably Not What You Get
Cindy paid the taxi driver and then told him that he would never be a successful cabman, or human for that matter, with such a putrid-smelling vehicle. He sped off, leaving her alone in Virgil’s Find and standing in front of the trail that led to Thelma’s Way.
It had not been simple getting this far. Thelma’s Way, Cindy had discovered, wasn’t on any map, and most people in Tennessee had no idea it even existed. So Cindy had been forced to use her wits. Drawing upon a plot point from the book Desire’s Handmaiden, Cindy called the Knoxville mission home and pretended to be an investigator looking for directions on how to get to her Mormon friend who lived in Thelma’s Way. True, the plot to Desire’s Handmaiden really had nothing to do with her idea, but there had been a phone involved, so she went with it. The mission home gave her directions and informed her that the Church had a set of older missionaries serving there. Cindy would have thanked them, but the woman on the phone had a funny accent. Besides, the directions she gave did not exactly make Cindy happy. It had been a major upset when Cindy discovered that in order to get to Thelma’s Way she would have to hike four miles on foot. It was so much an upset that she thought about giving up her quest. But then she remembered that she had her father’s credit card and warmed up to the idea of buying some new, suitably feminine hiking clothes. So after a quick stop at a mall, she was driven by taxi to the start of her hike.
“How awful,” she complained aloud as she looked around.
Cindy was in a particularly foul mood. Although she would have adamantly denied it, her current disposition didn’t stem from her long plane ride or from the fact that she was now going to have to hike. It stemmed from the conversation that she had been forced to have with that awful bald man.
“You’re not fooling anyone,” he had said. “Your insecurity is as plain as the perfect Roman sculptured nose on your fabulous face.”
Or something to that effect.
“‘Not fooling anyone.’ Ha!” Cindy laughed. “Just because I’m honest, people get all bunched up and hurt. ‘Not fooling anyone.’”
Cindy picked up her bags and walked down the road to where a sign stood pointing the direction to Thelma’s Way. On the left of the road sat a double-wide mobile home. It was sort of angling into a ditch and hooked together rather poorly.
“Beautiful place,” she snipped.
This was not going to be easy. Maybe the man on the plane had been partly right. Maybe Cindy had been going about this all wrong. If she was going to get Trust, she needed to be something different from what she had always been. That’s how it usually worked in her books. Most of the really believable heroines acted like something they weren’t to win the man they needed. Then they simply slipped back to who they really were once Mr. Right had pledged his heart and soul to the perpetuation of their eternal happiness. Cindy knew she could be honest to a fault. And at times she even sensed that being so open about her amazing beauty was a turnoff to others. So maybe if she acted the part, she could lure Trust away long enough for him to become eternally bound to her.
Cindy giggled, although to anyone looking on, it could easily have been mistaken for an evil cackle. She picked up her bags and walked past the mobile home. Just as she cleared the kitchen window, Leo Tip stuck his head out.
“Who goes there?” he said, having taken up the responsibility of monitoring who walked in and out of his hometown.
Cindy bit her lip, stopping herself from telling him off. If this were going to work, she would need to be someone other than who she actually was.
“What’s your name?” Leo asked impatiently.
Cindy looked at him and winced, although to anyone looking on, it could easily have been mistaken for an innocent smile on a lovely girl’s face.
“Hope,” Cindy threw out pleasantly. “Hope Hayhurst.”
Let the games begin.
15
Jerry Rigged
We hiked back to Grace’s house to have a talk with President Heck about my father’s being in Thelma’s Way. He wasn’t there—President Heck, or my father, for that matter. According to Narlette, her dad was off collecting the beginnings of his shed full of cement. I thought about questioning Narlette, but I felt that it would be best to bring it up with President Heck first. So Grace and I sat on the unstable couch in the front room and waited—her on one end, me on the other. I thought we were being good.
“It’s nice to be back,” I said, trying to start some light, nonintimate conversation.
“It is,” she stopped it.
“Things seem just like before,” I began again.
“Weird, isn’t it?”
“The town?”
“No . . . well, yes,” she changed her mind. “I wanted to come back so badly, but now that I’m here, I don’t have any idea what to do.”
“We could hike into Virgil’s Find,” I suggested.
“I don’t mean this afternoon,” she laughed. “I mean this week, this month.”
“We could hike into Virgil’s Find then too.”
“I’m serious, Trust.”
“Why do you need to do anything?” I asked. “Isn’t being here enough?”
“No.”
“It used to be,” I pointed out.
“It really never was.”
“So you want to go back to Southdale?”
“Not yet.”
“Me neither.”
Grace shifted one of the books on her parents’ coffee table. Then she shifted it back. I noticed a small photo lying on the table.
“What’s that?” I asked, trying to pick it up.
“Nothing,” she said, grabbing it before I could touch it. “It’s just a really bad picture of me.”
“Is there such a thing?” I asked.
Grace crumpled it up and threw it away. “Not anymore. What were we talking about?”
“About enjoying being here,” I said, thinking that I needed to remember to dig that picture out of the trash later. “This is probably the last time in our lives when we’ll have nothing to do. After the wedding, it’s back to Southdale for school.”
“I know,” Grace said. “So where should we live when school’s over?”
“In a golden castle in a magical land.”
“Trust.”
“In a crummy apartment near a bus stop so that I can easily commute to my slightly-better-than-minimum-wage job.”
“That’ll be great,” Grace joked.
“Yeah,” I answered honestly, thinking only about the fact that Grace would be my wife.
Grace changed the subject. “So do you think there really is some stranger hiding in the woods up here?”
“Besides Pete and Ed?”
Grace smiled.
“I don’t think so,” I answered.
“Sister Watson swears she saw him.”
“Sister Watson sees a lot of things others don’t.”
“I suppose so.”
There was a moment of silence.
“So, do you want to hike into Virgil’s Find?” I asked again.
We cut through the woods and connected with the path near its center. Once in Virgil’s Find, we saw a movie and ate at a restaurant that charged seven dollars for a hamburger. After that we went to the mall and visited Jerry Scotch at the Corndog Tent. He was very happy to have visitors.
Jerry was one of the few residents of Thelma’s Way with outside employment. He had worked at the Corndog Tent for as long as I had known him. He was still just a regular employee, but he hadn’t stopped dreaming of becoming an assistant manager someday. He was happy to report to us that the sportswear manager at Sears had recently told him that if he ever got tired of selling corn dogs there was a place for him folding sweaters or straightening hangers
at Sears.
“I got options,” Jerry bragged.
Jerry was in his forties and by far the most average-looking person I had ever seen. Whenever people met him they always felt that they had known him before. He constantly wore his corn dog outfit. In fact, he had sort of become the law in Thelma’s Way, seeing how he was the only person with any sort of uniform. I had seen him settle many disputes by the authority of his outfit alone.
“Met my uncle yet?” Jerry asked us while staring at Grace.
“Winton?” I recalled.
“Yeah,” Jerry said, as if he were recalling a pleasant memory.
“Not yet.”
“You sure got pretty.” Jerry blushed at Grace.
“Thanks, Jerry,” she smiled.
“I asked out a woman from the Gadget Shack yesterday.” Jerry was letting us know that he had options of a different sort.
“That’s great,” I congratulated him.
“Not really,” he said sadly. “She was busy for a really long time. And after that she said she might get married.”
“At least you asked,” I said supportively.
“I suppose.”
Jerry was constantly seeking female companionship. I would say it was because he enjoyed the company of the opposite sex, but truth be known, I don’t know that he had ever really been alone with someone of the female persuasion long enough to find out for sure. But he tried hard and had an amazing collection of rejection stories. One of my personal favorites was the time he knew he was in love with a girl named Jenny who worked two shops down from him at Happy Feet: dress shoes for men. Well, Jerry was a man. So, for two solid weeks he spent every lunch break buying a new pair of dress shoes from her. She would help him find his size and fit him personally. By the end of two weeks, Jerry knew it had to be her or no one else. Doped up on love, he was moved to buy her something to express his feelings. Unfortunately, the twenty pairs of shoes he had invested in had put a real dent in his spending power. So using information that only he as a mall employee was privy to and figuring that Jenny, like most human beings, liked to eat, he hid out behind the Rotisserie Chicken’s dumpster late one night and waited for them to pitch the birds they had not sold that day. Jerry picked the best castaway, washed it off, and then wrapped it in one of the outdated Corndog Tent aprons.
Well, nothing says loving like a day-old chicken wrapped in a faded apron.
Jenny was not impressed. In fact, she was repulsed to the point of calling mall security. As they dragged Jerry away, he begged her to reconsider. She then pointed out that she was happily married, had three kids, and was expecting her fourth sometime in the coming month. And as if that were not barrier enough, she had vowed early in life never to get involved with a grown man who doesn’t wear socks.
Jenny quit her job a couple of days later, and Jerry never saw her again. One nice thing had come out of the relationship, however, and that was that Jerry had a pretty good supply of gifts to give people for the next little while. I had actually been there when he gave Sister Watson a nice pair of men’s dress shoes for her last birthday.
Jerry currently had his eye on one of the mall security women who had dragged him away all those months ago.
“Hope it works out,” I said.
“Love’s tricky,” he admitted. “I been up at nights just thinking about it.”
Grace looked at her watch and reminded me that Sister Watson would soon be disclosing one of the town’s problems. We said good-bye to Jerry and then headed back to Thelma’s Way. I was only slightly curious about what Sister Watson was going to say. I figured it had something to do with the road that she wanted. If I had known who awaited me in Thelma’s Way, however, I might have picked out a nice spot in Virgil’s Find and sat it out.
16
Complications
As we passed Leonard’s displaced mobile home, Leo stuck his head out and demanded that we stand and be noticed. Since we were already standing, the procedure didn’t take long. CleeDee hollered out a hello through the window.
“She’d show her face,” Leo explained, “but this warm weather’s chapped things up something awful.”
CleeDee Tip had the most sensitive face of any person I knew. A gentle breeze could suck every bit of moisture from her mug. She was pale, with dirty brown hair and a clean, tight smile. She had married Leo in the Atlanta Temple a year after he was baptized. She was protective and overly jealous about her man. In her eyes it didn’t seem possible that any woman could go through life without falling for Leo. Leo, after all, was quite the catch. Not only was he handsome in a gangly, backwoods kind of way, but he also received monthly royalties from an invention his grandfather had patented years ago. Thanks to those checks, Leo and CleeDee were quite possibly the most financially secure couple in all of Thelma’s Way.
“So, how’s this working out?” I asked Leo, referring to living in Leonard’s house.
“There are drawbacks,” he admitted. “For one, this home ain’t hooked up to any electricity or water. But shucks, them things seem mighty trivial when I look at the fancy gas stove and gigantic tub we have.”
“Of course neither of those things actually work,” I pointed out.
“We weren’t sent to this life to be comfortable,” an eavesdropping CleeDee screamed out.
If anybody knew about that, it was CleeDee. Not only did she have the skin thing going on, but she was also six months pregnant and living in a nonfunctioning mobile home.
Grace and I left the Tips to themselves and hurried down the trail and into Thelma’s Way. We made it to the meadow right on time. Sister Watson and Leonard were draping yarn along the ground to section off an area where whatever was going to be talked about might be talked about with plenty of space. I watched a few people pat Leonard on the back and act as if he belonged here. I was amazed at how quickly he had worked his way into my turf.
I had heard rumors that Pete Kennedy had taken up the trombone. Those rumors were rock-solid truth. Pete was on the edge of the crowd puffing and playing, making this get-together feel more important than it would have without him. Teddy Yetch and Sister Watson had selfishly talked him into learning. They had hoped to get him interested in something besides guns—it had always made the entire town nervous to have Pete spontaneously shooting off. Well, their plan was marginally successful. The only hitch was that now, whenever Pete perfectly executed a song, he would fire off a couple of rounds into the air. Of course, hearing him now slaughter “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” I couldn’t imagine him ever making it flawlessly through a single piece.
I saw President Heck talking to Sister Lando. His arms were covered with cement up to his elbows. It was obvious that he had torn himself away from his path-building to be here. Sister Watson clapped and then stood patiently waiting. Realizing that no one was going to settle down, she walked over to Pete and whispered in his ear. He set down his trombone, pulled a gun from one of his holsters, and fired up. Only a few people seemed to notice. He shrugged and went back to playing his trombone. Sister Watson was extremely put out. This was her event, and folks weren’t even paying attention. Roswell, showing uncommon sensitivity towards Sister Watson and wanting to help, whistled loudly. The whistle gathered little attention, but the act of whistling caused him to have a coughing spasm.
It was the perfect attention grabber.
After a few minutes of awful hacking, Toby walked up to Roswell and patted him on the back. It was a nice display of Toby’s medical expertise. Amazingly, it seemed to help. Roswell stopped and wiped his thin lips on the end of his untucked shirt.
“Thank you, Roswell,” Sister Watson said gratefully, as she stood in the middle of the yarn ring. “We’re gathered here because we’ve got a problem.”
Everyone nodded and agreed.
“I know that some of you think that Paul’s weather shelter is not a bad idea, even though it’s for vanity purposes that he seeks to build it. And I know that a lot of you more sensible people want a r
oad that will offer us growth and security in this insecure time. Well, even a pony with mange would know that we couldn’t have both. So, with Paul’s consent, I’ve hired an independent counsel to investigate and decide what’s best.”
This seemed to please most everyone.
“Let me introduce to you Brother Leonard Vastly. He hails from out west, and according to him, he has vast experience in a number of things.”
Leonard stepped into the ring and took a bow. “Thank you,” he said. “I want you all to know that I desire nothing but justice. If it be the security of a road you seek, you shall have a road. If it be shelter, then by goodness you shall have it. My goal is your good.”
There was some spotty, halfhearted clapping.
“I’d like to open up the ring for questions,” Leonard announced, as if presenting us with some fabulous privilege.
Frank Porter raised his hand. Leonard scanned the crowd for a while, pretending that he had more than one hand to choose from.
“You in the plaid shirt and overalls,” Leonard finally nodded towards Frank.
Seven men all began speaking at once, thinking he had been addressing them.
“With the single eyebrow,” Leonard clarified.
That eliminated two.
“And a pen behind your ear.”
Frank had the floor. “So what side are you on?” he asked Leonard. “You want a road or a covering?”
“Originally I was for the road,” Leonard admitted. “But in talking to Paul, I now see some real potential in this weather shelter.”
Miss Flitrey raised her hand. Technically she wasn’t a Miss anymore, seeing how she had wed Wad a while back. It had been a long time, however, since anyone had actually referred to Wad as anything other than just Wad—so long, in fact, that he couldn’t remember his last name. He had a feeling it was something like Stevenson, but he just couldn’t be sure. So Miss Flitrey kept her own name and title. She still taught school, and he still cut hair. But now at the end of the day, the two met at the far end of the meadow, held hands, and would not separate until morning or meals.
Love's Labors Tossed Page 7