Love's Labors Tossed

by Robert Farrell Smith

  Leonard pointed at her upheld hand. “Yes?”

  “I’m for the road,” she announced. “It makes sense to have a better way in and out of town. I feel half-dressed with that crazy person running around. With a road we could better run him out of town. So like I said, I’m for the road. And so is Wad. Also, Digby will find his work conditions uncomfortable unless he sides with us. That makes three.”

  “Good to know,” Leonard thanked her. “As your independent counsel I will make it my duty to investigate all of you and your opinions.”

  “I’ve never been investigated,” I heard Janet Bickerstaff say. She then shivered as if she sort of liked the idea.

  “I could help,” Pete Kennedy said.

  “No helping,” Toby argued. “If this is going to be fair, then you gotta only use yourself on this.”

  “I promise I won’t listen to another outside influence,” Leonard vowed. “The conclusion I make will be completely untainted by anything else.”

  I couldn’t believe how quickly Leonard had come and conquered. In the space of a day, he had made himself an important part of this town. And whereas most of the folks here didn’t care for outsiders, Leonard seemed to be instantly accepted. I suppose they saw him as a kindred spirit or a philosophical equal.

  I would have gone on thinking about Leonard and his quick assimilation into Thelma’s Way but my right eye caught sight of something most unusual. A girl about my age stood still against the landscape gazing at me. I had never seen her before. In fact, I had never seen anything like her before. She was built perfectly. Her deep eyes and curly hair made my imagination wander like strong weeds through a wet garden. Briant Wilpst momentarily shuffled through my line of vision. By the time he moved out of the way, she was gone.

  “That’s weird,” I said quietly to myself.

  “I agree,” Grace said back, having been the only one to hear me and thinking that I had been talking about Leonard.

  I looked around as nonchalantly as I could, wondering where this unknown she had gone.

  “I’ll set up my headquarters at the boardinghouse,” Leonard was saying. “You’ll probably all be called upon to testify. There won’t be a single person that I won’t know intimately. If the issue goes to court, then I have a black rain poncho that will work nicely as a robe.”

  “That’s settled then,” Sister Watson clapped.

  Leonard marched off toward the boardinghouse to set up his operation. Everyone parted to let him by, treating him like something special. I wanted to have a talk with him about his position, but I was distracted by President Heck standing at my side.

  “An independent counsel here in our town,” he said proudly.

  “It’s just Leonard,” I said.

  “Judge Leonard,” President Heck corrected.

  I was just about to ask President Heck about my father when she appeared again, standing near the cemetery and watching me like a stalking spirit. I tried not to look too hard, seeing how I had Grace on my arm and didn’t think it would be that appropriate to gaze longingly at another woman. Grace followed my line of sight.

  “Who’s that?” she asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Me neither,” President Heck threw in.

  “She’s pretty,” Grace observed.

  “I hadn’t noticed,” I said, fog in my voice.

  Grace shook me out of it. I looked down at her and smiled. When I looked up, our visitor was gone.

  The meadow was getting crowded.

  17

  Expanding Girth

  I hadn’t remembered Thelma’s Way feeling so busy. When I had served my mission here, life seemed slow, and folks seemed to have nothing to do but mind their neighbors’ business. Now, however, it looked as if everyone had something they had to get done. Sister Watson was campaigning for her safety road, Paul was gathering material for his weather shelter, President Heck was building his chair path, Leo and CleeDee were keeping watch and keeping away, and Toby Carver and Frank Porter were working on genealogy together. It hadn’t started out as a team effort, but they quickly realized that their family tree had very few branches and that they were both heading up the same trunk. Roswell was painting and fixing up his wagon in preparation for selling ice cream. One of the biggest difficulties he had discovered was getting the ice cream from Virgil’s Find to Thelma’s Way before it melted. He had been trying out a number of different solutions. The one that seemed to work best so far was to have Pete pick it up for him and then run it really quickly back to Roswell’s freezer. Narlette had joined a Girl Scout troop in Virgil’s Find and was selling cookies like mad. She was getting large orders from everyone due to the fact that payment wasn’t required until the cookies came in. People were happy to sign up for something they didn’t have to shell out cash for now. When I tried to explain to Sister Washington that she would eventually have to pay for the sixty boxes of cookies that she had committed to, she called me silly and naive. Ed Washington was going to summer school part-time, and Jeff Titter had organized a Thelma’s Way softball team that practiced every day in the meadow. Sure, they didn’t have anyone to play against, but no one seemed to care. Digby was cutting hair with Wad, and Leonard was busy with his investigation/sales. He would call people into the boardinghouse, ask them if they wanted a road or weather shelter, and then flip off the lights and give them a ten-minute video presentation on selling prepaid phone cards. Teddy bought two, even though she had never actually used a phone in her life.

  The town was busy.

  It took some creative listening, but I found out that the girl I had spotted the day before was named Hope. Everyone who had met her seemed to think she was extraordinary. Sister Watson was so impressed with her that she offered her a room at her house to stay in while here.

  I was very bothered by her. I had no reason to think about anyone besides Grace, but this Hope seemed to have a passkey to my mind. So it was with the intention of telling her to stay out of my head that I watched her walk over to the Girth River and decided to follow. Grace was in Virgil’s Find helping her mother, and I felt that I should say a few words to this girl in an effort to confirm how much less she was than Grace.

  I approached slowly, watching her throw rocks into the water. The great Girth pushed across the ground, sounding like a mushy train and keeping my presence a secret. I stepped closer to her.

  “Pretty,” I commented about the river.

  “Breathtaking,” she said with feeling.

  “I’m Trust.”

  “Hi, Trust.”

  She walked a little farther down the banks. Amazingly, I followed.

  “So why are you in Thelma’s Way?” I asked.

  “I’m doing some painting.”

  Awkward silence.

  “So you paint?” I tried, desperately wanting this visitor to feel welcome.

  “I do.”

  “That’s neat.” I was so smooth.

  Hope turned to look closely at me. Her dark eyes were like portholes of poetic possibility.

  “Do you paint?” she asked.

  “Me?” I acted surprised. “No. I’ve never been any good at that sort of thing.”

  “Have you tried?”

  “Oh, I’ve tried.”

  “Well, maybe you’ve just had the wrong teacher.”

  “That’s possible,” I agreed. “My art teacher in high school didn’t like me because I sat on one of her finches that she let fly around in class. How was I to know that it had perched itself on my seat?”

  Hope just smiled.

  “So how long do you think you’ll stay here?” I asked.

  “As long as it takes,” she smiled.

  “Are you painting something in particular?”

  “Let’s just say I’m working on a certain project,” she replied.

  “That’s great.”

  “I’m glad you think so, Trust.”

  I felt so completely guilty over how much I enjoyed hearing her say my name tha
t I almost ran to the meadow to find President Heck and confess.

  “My middle name’s Andrew,” I offered lamely.

  “Trust Andrew,” she said.

  I felt awful. I needed to tell her where I stood and how happy I was to be engaged to Grace. But, “If you ever need any help with anything, let me know” was what came out.

  “You’re all right, Trust,” she smiled. She then walked off down the shore like a fading dream.

  I stood there for a few minutes, wondering if it was possible to measure how amazingly pathetic I was. I would have been content to keep doing that for a while, but Toby Carver approached me and said, “Incredible, isn’t she?”

  I looked around nervously. “Sure, I guess.”

  “Worries me a little,” he admitted. “How about you?”

  “I have nothing to worry about,” I said defensively.

  “You’re not nervous?”

  “About Hope?” I asked in confusion.

  “What about hope?” Toby stared.

  “What were you talking about?”

  “I was talking about the Girth River.”

  “What about it?” I said, looking at it.

  “It’s growing.”

  I had been so concerned about valiantly telling Hope where I stood that I had not even noticed that the Girth was almost twice its size. I was standing up on the meadow and the edge of the river was running right by me. When I had last been in Thelma’s Way, the river was down below the meadow and outlined by sand and limestone-covered banks. There were no banks to be seen. Even in heavy summer runoff I had never seen it like this.

  “Why is it growing?”

  “Don’t know,” Toby answered. “More water, I guess. It’s been rising for a while. It’s almost impossible to paddle across anymore. I haven’t been to the other side since Roger’s accident.”

  “Roger Williams?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Toby said with excitement. “Do you know him?”

  “I think so,” I said with confusion. “Why was he here? And what accident?”

  “He worked for a paper or something,” Toby tried to remember. “He came out here to write a book.”

  “He did?”

  “I was going to be on the front cover,” Toby bragged.

  “You were?”

  “Well, if I found the Book of Mormon. He really wanted us to find it so he could write about it.”

  “Really?” I said, beginning to get a glimpse of my father’s real motive.

  “He made us all kinds of deals,” Toby went on. “He wanted that book. I guess it was real important to his research.”

  I was sick. I felt like I had just had my stomach removed, stomped on, and shoddily put back. My dad didn’t come here to see where I had served. He came to make a buck. I couldn’t believe it. He had tricked the people I loved into searching for it. I should have known. He hadn’t changed. He had simply been trying to cover his tracks.

  “He was a great guy,” Toby added. “How do you know him?”

  “I don’t,” I said sadly. “I thought he was someone else.”

  “Happens to me all the time.”

  I walked over to the boardinghouse and tried to call home. No one answered. My smooth life was beginning to ripple.

  18

  Biting Her Tongue

  Cindy could get the hang of this. She was blown away at how much power her good looks and pretend smiles could achieve. Fake could move mountains. People were much easier to manipulate when she acted as if she were a kind and caring human being. Yes, Operation Trust was running smoothly. Sure, he had not shown signs of great intelligence yet, but Cindy felt that in time he would be a worthy devotee and eternal companion.

  Despite her successes, however, Cindy was suffering. Living with Sister Watson was as great a trial as any person had ever been faced with. The woman was a fossil, a busybody, and a moral vigilante all rolled into one. She was the kind of person that Cindy would gladly take apart if given the chance. But Cindy couldn’t—not now. She had a role to play and a woman to ruin.

  Grace.

  How her man could be interested in such a person Cindy just couldn’t comprehend. But then again, all good stories needed some bland tart that the man could eventually lose interest in without anyone’s caring or mourning her loss. Cindy would make this entire dumb town not only forget, but also run out, Grace. She was in the way, simple as that.

  Cindy pulled out her sleeveless dress and perfect sandals. Tomorrow she would turn up the heat. After all, even she had her limits. It’s not like she could wait around forever in this sour pit of society. She needed to get Trust, get out, and then parade him in front of everyone who had ever done her wrong.

  It was going to be one long parade.

  19

  Idle Hands

  I don’t know what it was. Hope came to town, and suddenly Grace had reason to be busy and away from me, leaving me with idle hands and a one-track mind. Thursday, Grace went with her mother to Collin’s Blight for an overnight craft show that Patty Heck was participating in. I asked to go, but Grace insisted that I stay here and enjoy myself.

  She could be so cruel.

  I walked up to the Heck home and tried to have a conversation with President Heck concerning my father, but he was so preoccupied with his chair path that he couldn’t seem to focus on anything else.

  “Do you remember Roger Williams?”

  “Trust, will you hand me that board?”

  “I was just wondering if you could tell me a few things about him,” I said, handing him his wood.

  “I didn’t realize how quickly this stuff sets up.” He ignored me. “I had to chisel out the dog’s tail after he let it lay too long.”

  Realizing this wasn’t the best time to be asking him questions, I went to the boardinghouse and tried to keep myself busy. While I was hanging out on the porch with Roswell, Hope walked up and kindly offered to teach me how to paint. I declined, lying about having promised Ed Washington to help him out with something.

  “With what?” Hope smiled.

  As if fate wasn’t messing with me enough already, Ed passed by at that exact moment. Poor Ed couldn’t even look at Hope without hyperventilating.

  “Hello, Ed,” she cooed. “Are you going to take Trust from me?”

  That really threw him for a loop. Hope tried to explain.

  “Trust said he was going to help you out today.”

  “Remember how I said that?” I begged.

  “Not really,” Ed shrugged. “But I have been wanting to get to work on my idea.”

  “Yes,” I exclaimed. “That’s what you said. You needed help with your idea.”

  “What idea is that, Ed?” Hope asked, brushing his arm with her finger.

  It took Ed a couple of minutes to catch his breath.

  “I wanted to build a catapult so that we can fling things to the other side of the Girth. The river’s getting too wide to cross.”

  Hope smiled. “Sounds important.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed, wishing I wasn’t so valiant.

  As soon as she was gone, Ed took a couple of deep breaths and then promised to meet me near the Girth in thirty minutes. We worked late into the afternoon building a catapult. The idea was ridiculous, and I kept trying to explain to Ed how you could fling certain things across the river but you could never, ever, fling people. Every time I tried to drive this point home, he looked disappointed and crushed.

  Despite its impracticality, it was actually kind of nice to have something constructive to work on. We fastened a long telephone pole that Ed had found in Virgil’s Find to some wheels and a wood base with a catch and hook to pull the beam down. The catapult would have been worthless if it had not been for the gigantic spring that Roswell had won in a bet. It had come from some huge piece of equipment somewhere. It was powerful, and when that pole was cranked down and set into place, the tension was so great I was certain that Ed’s catapult could fling anything anywhere. It was early evening be
fore we were done.

  “Let’s test it,” Ed said happily.

  “All right, but not with a person.”

  Once again Ed seemed bummed. People began to gather, offering suggestions of what should be our guinea pig—guinea pig being an actual suggestion from Lupert. Bags of trash and porch chairs were considered, but we went with an old plastic ice chest of Roswell’s that he was planning to take to the dump soon anyway. Pete thought we should load the ice chest with something that would explode, but we passed on that. We put the empty ice chest on the pole’s mitt and Ed took hold of the release rope. We had a good-sized audience, so I called on Digby Heck to give us a drum roll.

  He did.

  Let me just say that we had dramatically underestimated the spring. Ed pulled the rope and the giant pole flipped forward so fast that it pulled up the entire base and flung itself into the ground, smashing the ice chest into a million bits with a noise not unlike that of a planet giving birth. Dust exploded everywhere as the ground wobbled like a disturbed water bed. Pieces of rubber shrapnel from the cooler flew through the air, stinging and wounding almost everyone in attendance, and dirt rained down and covered us all. Luckily, there were no serious injuries, but Roswell sure threw a fit over the destroyed ice chest that he was going to take to the dump anyway.

  “I’m glad no one was standing in front of it,” Ed said in awe.

  “It’s got a few kinks.” I tried to brush myself off.

  “It’s got potential,” Leonard Vastly said. I hadn’t noticed that he had been there or that he was standing right behind me. I would have jumped, but I was so used to Leonard’s popping up in my life that it hardly fazed me anymore.

  We worked long into the night fixing our creation. Pete and Leonard stayed around to help, and Frank Porter lent us a hand until he got a really bad splinter and went home. Pete and I tightened down the spring adjuster and took out some screws that were keeping the give of the spring too loose.

  “Save these,” I said to Pete, while lying on the ground and unscrewing them. “We might need to put them back later.”