And on a morning like St. Patrick’s Day, when March is finally looking more and more like spring, I miss sitting in a doctor’s waiting room with complete strangers. Why? Strangers aren’t likely to tell thirty of my closest friends that Doc Champion’s nurse leaned over the office counter and bellowed, “Amos! Doc’s running behind. Said he doesn’t need to check you again if the cream is clearing up that nasty rash.”
One of life’s great mysteries is how gentle, reassuring Thelma Proctor—a tiny, blue-haired nurse who gives a shot like an angel, can open her mouth and belt out words like a carnival barker pitching his voice to be heard the length of the midway. Another great mystery is how she can say all those words, at what seems like the top of her lungs, and still not communicate the essential facts.
It’s not so much what she says; it’s what she leaves out. Sometimes the addition of two little words would make a world of difference.
Like poison ivy. As in—‘That nasty poison ivy rash.’
Or your leg. ‘He doesn’t need to check your leg again.’
Makes all the difference. Trust me.
When those particular words are left out of a sentence, you’d really rather be in a room filled with strangers you’ll never see again. Strangers who know their place, who know the rules and speak the language of Privacy. Strangers who pretend to read their magazines. Strangers who rarely ever snicker and who never give advice on how smart fellows could avoid poison ivy in the dead of winter. Talk about freak bad luck.
It happened this way: Sandy Crane dragged me into re-tracing a mountain trail where Rose the elephant was last seen twenty years ago. “Maybe we can get a feel for what direction she was taking,” Sandy said. “You know. Like was she was going south for the winter.”
“I don’t think elephants head for Miami Beach.”
Sandy didn’t speak to me for quite a while, after that.
On the way back to town, we stopped by Zeke Abercrombie’s place to check a report that neighborhood kids had lobbed a baseball through one of his greenhouse windows. Jotting notes for my report, I sat down on a bench in the middle of Zeke’s jungle of orchids and cacti and mysterious escaped ground covers. Seemed like a good place to pull off my boot and figure out how something hard had worked its way under my foot.
Sandy yipped. “Better not sit on that bench, Chief. That looks like poison ivy at the base. Nobody’s got the heart to tell Mr. Abercrombie his eyes are going. He thinks it’s a sprig of pepperonia.”
“Not in the middle of winter. Not poison ivy. Not even in a greenhouse.” I pulled a small plant up by the roots, and examined a leaf between my fingers. “Couldn’t be.” I tossed it away and then pulled up my pants leg to check on the boot situation. Bad luck, that. Because it was indeed poison ivy in the middle of winter in a greenhouse, and I’d just smeared it all over my leg.
“Sorry, Chief,” Sandy said when I made a doctor’s appointment. “I told you not to sit on that bench.”
Sandy’s no different from other Creekites. They love to give advice. At the drop of a hat. Your hat, their hat, anyone’s hat. Give them an excuse, and they’re happy to sort things out for you. Creekites believe you want their opinion and have merely forgotten to ask for it. God knows they’ve volunteered opinions on everything from the size of the tires on the department’s new Jeep to the lack of good quality bran in the breakfast cereals I buy.
Hey, everyone has a weakness. Superman has kryptonite; mine happens to be multi-colored cereals coated in sugar, and especially ones chock full of magically delicious marshmallows. What’s not to like? You pour. It’s sweet. You eat.
Mossy Creek doesn’t see it that way. They live to comment. It’s the comment capital of the world. Nothing is sacred when an opportunity to dispense advice presents itself. I was even given advice on how to leave town quietly after judging last year’s disasterous Miss Bigelow County contest. Not everyone understood why my vote didn’t go to one of the Mossy Creek girls. Especially since everyone in town had taken the time to give me explicit advice on the subject. I’m just glad Josie McClure has found true love and sworn off future contests. One more year of her mother’s chess-pie bribes and I’d need a cholesterol check.
And, of course, everyone is quick to point out that I really should stop arresting the mayor. Although I’m at a loss to understand why or how it’s my fault when Ida decides to break the law. I’m also at a loss to understand why I like Mossy Creek. And I do.
Most of the time.
Except maybe today.
Especially not today when Thelma is broadcasting my personal medical history to everyone in the waiting room and focusing every pair of eyes on me. On me and my nasty rash.
All the previous advice I’d received from well-meaning citizens paled in comparison to what was about to be unleashed on me. I’m not ashamed to say that the thought of facing a barrage of helpful suggestions for curing my rash terrified me. Believe me, after hearing Thelma’s announcement, everyone in the waiting room was poised and ready. They had scooted right to the edges of their fake-flame-stitched upholstered chairs so—just as soon as I answered—they could bounce up and begin dispensing advice.
Or, God help me . . . compare rash stories.
Silence swelled around me, becoming positively pregnant with anticipation. Even Betty Halfacre, Wanda’s sister, stopped sorting and winding the needlework threads that had absorbed her from the moment she’d planted her square solid body in the chair beside me. She wasn’t a woman who wasted time or words, although she muttered in Cherokee from time to time. Nor did she let her attention stray from the job at hand. That quality of focus was the main reason Ingrid Beechum had hired Betty. It was the reason they got on so well when most people didn’t last long working for Ingrid. But even Betty looked up to find out how the nasty rash was coming along and what my answer would be.
I had no choice. I did what any moderately intelligent law enforcement officer would do. I gritted my teeth and falsified my report.
“Yes.” I was careful to pronounce each word clearly, if not as loudly as Thelma. “The poison ivy rash is practically gone from my leg. You can cancel my appointment. I need to head back to the office anyway.”
The disappointed sigh was actually audible. The subtle undercurrent of anticipation fled the room like a frustrated leprechaun who’d been denied the promised pot of gold or an Irishman denied a pint of brew on St. Paddy’s Day. Everyone resettled in his or her chair to await the next victim.
Without so much as a blink, Betty returned her attention to sorting the tangle of color in her lap. And right on cue, the insidious pulse of itchy-awareness below my knee blossomed into an insistent tingling and then threatened to errupt into a full-blown riot of itch-mania. I gritted my teeth, nodded a curt goodbye to Thelma and got the hell out of Dodge before I gave in to the growing urge to scratch wildly at the traitorous patch of skin.
The door snapped shut behind me. I took a deep breath, refused to scratch, and decided that from now on someone else would be in charge of any law enforcement event that included poisonous vines. This wasn’t my first embarrassing brush with the laws of nature. The summer before, I’d been covered with poison ivy from my right knee to ankle, leading to my moratorium on rescue operations for kittens-trapped-under-rickety-wooden-porches. The kitten hadn’t really been trapped, but little Melanie Myerson had been terrified enough that a big fat silent tear spilled onto her cheek as she tugged me toward the empty house next to hers. She and her mom lived on the old part of Laurel Street. Some of those houses are fast earning the name ‘fixer-upper.’
I had no idea what I was getting into when she waved frantically at the jeep as I drove by on patrol, but when a little tyke like that waves you down, you hit the brakes pronto. The story and the tear spilled out before I’d even gotten the door open all the way. Two minutes later, I was belly-crawling under a porch, making come-here-kitty noises at Fluffy Anne—who was supremely unimpressed—and then inching back out with kitten in to
w. I’m pretty sure wiggling out from under the porch did the poison ivy damage when my right pant leg ripped on a nail. Just above the protection of my boot.
All three of us learned a lesson that day. Melanie learned that tears are a great motivator of men. Fluffy Anne learned that playing hard to get makes humans do stupid things. I learned I still didn’t know poison ivy from pansies. I also learned that the hero always gets the girl. Melanie plans to marry me just as soon as she’s allowed to cross the street by herself.
She’ll have to get in line. Lately I’m getting more than my fair share of charming ladies tossed in my path. What bothers me about the situation is not the ladies themselves, but that I don’t seem to have a choice in the matter. Every dinner invitation is an ambush with Cousin Eva, Sister Susan or Aunt Tess jumping out of the closet to yell, ‘Surprise! I’m your blind date!’ I’ve been so busy fending off the matchmakers, I haven’t had much time to look up the few old flames and high school heartbreakers that I ought to be looking up. Coming back to live in Mossy Creek had certainly been more than I bargained for.
When I blew through the door of the Naked Bean, I realized my feet had taken me from the doctor’s office to the coffee shop. I knew why. I wanted some privacy, and there was none to be had at the police station. My small office does have a door—not that Sandy Crane seems to notice. My dispatcher-clerk has never quite grasped the idea of knock-and-wait. She guards my office like a tigress . . . except from herself.
When I hired her, with no prior experience to speak of, she was so grateful she decided I hung the moon and all but swore fealty on the spot. If I’d had a sword, I would have had to knight her. One of these days, she’ll realize I’m getting the best end of the bargain. Until then, the tiny offices we call the station, the job. . . that’s her prized territory. Including me. It never occurs to her that as much as I respect the job she does, sometimes I wish she’d do it a little less intensely.
So, I stood in the Naked Bean, feeling a lot like someone running away from home, but not quite understanding why I’d run here. To this specific and very public place.
Jayne Reynolds looked up at the sound of the tinkling bell, obviously surprised to see me in the middle of the afternoon. Probably surprised to see anyone. Coffee shops don’t do a booming business on St. Patrick’s Day. Wanna-be Irishmen aren’t looking for a cup of Joe. They’re looking to raise a pint. Or three. Michael Conners at O’Days would be doing most of the beverage service in Mossy Creek today.
The surprise at having a customer didn’t last long. Jayne just nodded toward my table and turned around to fix my order. That’s when it hit me. Like a paving brick to the back of the head.
I’d become a regular. Not only did I have a ‘usual;’ I had a table for God’s sake. The one farthest from the door, in the corner where I could lean my head against the wall and close my eyes for a moment.
But it wasn’t the comfortable corner and rich coffee that drew me to the shop today. Or even the pretty-but-pregnant widow. Somehow, without my realizing it, the Naked Bean had become a brief refuge from being the “chief.” The place wasn’t like Mama’s All You Can Eat Café with its family-style jumble of conversation and no-one-eats-alone philosophy. Jayne seemed to understand I needed a place to sit without being on display or kept company. She accepted that sometimes I liked being a customer and not one of the family.
She gave others coffee and conversation, but she just gave me coffee and that crooked, half-sad smile she had. That suited me fine. She never interrupted my thoughts to see if I wanted a refill, but the minute I needed one she seemed to materialize.
As she fussed with the tools of her trade, I decided she probably understood me because she understood a little bit about how it felt to be watched all the time. To carry a town’s expectations on your shoulders. In an odd way, her pregnancy had become town property. The town wanted her to be happy, to be over the sadness of losing her husband, to find her bearings and her life here in Mossy Creek.
Yep, Jayne and I shared a thing or two about expectations. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back. I was expected to be my father, to follow in his footsteps as Chief, to look the other way sometimes, and to settle down with a nice Mossy Creek girl. Lord knows I have no objection to finding the right woman, but the right woman always seems to be unavailable. Or my job sends her running for the hills. Can’t blame a woman for that objection. You’re never truly off-duty in a small town.
For me that’s especially true. I’m still struggling with the job on a daily basis. I probably get involved in more calls than I should. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a million times—‘Ol’ Battle Royden wouldn’t have done it that way.’ At least I don’t hear it as often as I used to. I’m proud of that change, but I’m still feeling my way. I know it, and the town knows it.
I’m not Battle—never will be—but I do finally understand that Battle had a strange sort of logic about him, about how he applied the law. Still, for someone like me, who likes life in easy-to-read shades of black and white, there are too many gray areas in a small town. I’ll never be as comfortable with those grays as Battle was. It’ll take me longer to let go of the things that get hold of me, to stop silently second-guessing my decisions.
Like whether or not I should have followed up this morning on what I thought I saw in Violet Martin’s yard when I checked her place. She was off visiting one of the grandaughters. When I heard she’d be gone, offering to keep an eye on her house seemed like a good idea. Heck, it even seemed like the sort of thing that Battle would have done.
I made the offer before I knew I’d be landing on the horns of a dilemma worthy of a ten-point buck.
This morning I checked her windows. I jiggled her doors. I gave the grounds a once-over. But I didn’t actually stare through the glass door of her sunroom to determine if what looked like scruffy tomato plants in big clay pots were actually weeds. Weed, to be precise. Marijauna. Acapulco Gold. Truth be told, I’m not sure I want to know. The woman has glaucoma, and judging from the cornucopia of medications on her kitchen window shelf, she probably suffers more than her fair share of nausea.
A year ago, without question, I would have stared long and hard to be certain. Today, I’m having a hard time getting all worked up over the thought of 704-year-old Violet Martin quietly breaking the law by baking Mary Jane brownies to settle her stomach. Today, the line between right and wrong has grown a little fuzzy, and it’s not likely to get any clearer.
I’d give anything for this job to magically transform into something nice and tidy and simple. But it won’t. Today, I finally realized the quiet burdens of choice that Battle chose to carry around with him every day.
My father embraced what I’m only beginning to understand. Knowing the people you protect guarantees hard choices. You see them every day. You know their hearts, their secrets, their troubles. When you know all of that, everything changes. The black-and-white world begins to fade to gray. Empathy pushes you in new directions. When I first became a cop in Atlanta, Battle gave me some advice. I dismissed it as self-important mumbo-jumbo, verbal slight-of-hand, which conveniently justified his habit of looking the other way all too often.
“Find the balance, boy. Don’t be looking so hard for the letter of the law that you miss the right thing.” After a year in Mossy Creek, I’ve decided that maybe his advice wasn’t mumbo-jumbo, but I haven’t yet had the guts to adopt it as a philosophy, either.
To cloud matters further, my empathy kicked in with a vengence this morning. Given a choice, I’ll take a groin pull over a bout with nausea any day. Which means I understand Violet’s need to quell queasiness. There were no beer guzzling competitions in my college days. No legendary frat parties in which I drank everyone under the table. Truth is . . . I can’t hold my liquor. I guess I should actually say, I can’t hold on to my liquor.
Some people have glass jaws. I have something of a glass stomach. That’s one of the secrets Mossy Creekites haven’t ferreted out yet
. God help me when they do. They won’t be content just to know this embarrassing tidbit. They’ll want to know exactly which drink is one too many for my stomach. Two beers? Three? A couple of scotches? They’ll marvel and puzzle over why a big strapping man like me can’t toss back his fair share of home-brewed. One or two of the older folks will lament the sad loss of mountain-stock sturdiness in the younger generation.
But that wouldn’t be the worst of it.
Oh, no. Sandy would run the betting pool just as efficiently as she ran everything else. Holiday parties would be a misery as people watched to see how much and what the chief drank. Until someone won the pool, I’d have every hostess in Mossy Creek offering me a beer—several beers—before dinner, during dinner and after dinner. I’d run out of polite excuses for refusing unless I admitted I tended to toss my cookies after two stiff drinks or three beers.
The temperance ladies would pounce on this as proof that the chief frowned on spirits, which I don’t—taken in moderation. And the softball team would split their uniforms laughing. An epitaph suggested itself—Amos Royden . . . damned good catcher but hurls his liquor like a girl.
A clunk on the Naked Bean’s café table forced my eyes open. Jayne slid a gigantic bowl-sized cup toward me and tucked a chunk of ponytail-escaping, brown hair back behind her ear. My surprise at the size of the cup must have showed in my eyes.
She laughed. “My treat. I made it a double today.”
“Nice call. What are you? Pyschic?”
Some of the tiredness that seemed to haunt her eyes disappeared for a moment. “No. Just my keen powers of observation.”
“That obvious, huh?”
“One look at your bad mood and Bob would have emptied his nervous little chihuhua bladder. Twice.” She whispered as if Ingrid Beechum’s incontinent dog might appear outside her door at any moment.
I felt the corner of my mouth quirk in a smile as she left me alone. Without ever asking me why I’d been frowning.
Reunion at Mossy Creek Page 6