Canine unit. That meant dogs.
The Crackers were sending dogs after my boys.
I don’t remember reaching across my kitchen counter for a knife, or yanking it out of the block, or even taking aim. But somehow, my biggest, sharpest meat cleaver launched from my hand and streaked through a narrow opening in the crowd.
Thwack. Twannnggg.
All conversation stopped. Everyone stared, open-mouthed, not at me, but at the cleaver still quivering in the wall, not two inches from Mutt’s head. It had stuck deep into the hardwood trim of the doorjamb, where the handle had nudged the rim of Mutt’s hat, setting it slightly askew. He’d gone chalk-white and gaped at me in disbelief.
“Don’t you send no dogs after my boys.” I barely recognized that low growl of a voice as mine. “Or I’ll kill you.”
It took another full moment of stunned silence before anyone moved or uttered a word.
To give Mutt credit, he was the first one to gather his wits. “Miz Brown,” he said, straightening his hat as he stepped forward, looking dazed, “do you realize you have just assaulted an officer of the law?”
“With a deadly weapon,” added Sandy , staring wide-eyed at the deeply imbedded cleaver.
“If I’d been aiming to hit you, I would’ve.”
“Mrs. Brown, you’ve lost your mind,” argued Adele Clearwater, a prune-faced old woman who’d been marching in the Social Society picket line until she joined the invasion of my house. “Sandy. Mutt. Take the woman in hand before she hurts one of us or herself.”
It was then, my dear reader, that I truly hit rock bottom. Not because I was staring life imprisonment in the face, or because my boys would probably never return alive, or because Bunkin would be left alone and unattended. No . . . I’d hit rock bottom because of the hatred festering within me. I hated these Mossy Crackers with a black, hot, unholy passion. The ugliness didn’t mar only my face, but my very soul. I felt myself losing me . . .my inner person. I was turning into a beast. And there was nothing I could do to change it.
The buzz of conversation started again when, lo and behold, Mayor Ida Hamilton Walker stepped out of the crowd and put a hand on my arm. I hadn’t even realized Mayor Ida was there, in my home. Of all the Mossy Crackers, she was the one I feared the most—maybe because she always radiated supreme authority that no one seemed anxious to challenge, other than Governor Hamilton Bigelow himself.
“Tammy Jo Bigelow Brown,” Mayor Ida said in that royal-edict tone of hers that would give even Ham pause, “if you don’t want to be carted off to jail, then you’ll do exactly as I say.”
I stood there silent as stone, my jaws locked tighter than poor Bunkin’s, who lay in his hospital bed in the other room, at the mercy of our enemies. My hatred and fear were too strong too overcome.
“You stay in this kitchen,” Ida ordered, “and you bake pecan pies.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in. When they did, I blinked. “Ma’am?”
“My granddaughter told me that Chip gave her some homemade pecan pie from his lunch, on his first day of school. I’m assuming you baked that pie.”
I hadn’t heard a word from Chip about his giving away pie. “Well, of course I baked it. But I don’t see what pie has to do with—”
“Consider this a form of community service. The search party will need something to eat when they bring your boys home. You can either bake pecan pies and brew some coffee, or I’ll have Mutt escort you right now to jail—or at least to Doctor Champion’s office to have you sedated.”
It made no sense. Nothing made much sense. I felt as if I’d fallen into some alien dimension from one of my boys’ video games. All I knew was, I needed the search party to find Chip and Toby. But I had to stand firm. “There’ll be no dogs sent to hunt for my boys.”
“No dogs. You have my word.”
I barely saw Ida’s face or any of those around me as I turned to find the ingredients for a pecan pie. I blocked out the presence of all the Mossy Crackers and concentrated fiercely on gathering everything needed for the baking process.
It wasn’t until my elbow hit into another elbow as I stood chopping pecans that I glanced up and discovered a woman working beside me. Francine Quinlin, of all people. My archrival.
“What are you doing in my kitchen?”
“Making the coffee.” She didn’t bother sparing me a glance as she measured my coffee into my coffee maker, pretty as you please.
“Who asked you to?”
“Not you, Tammy Jo. You wouldn’t ask for water if you were dying in the desert. You’re that proud.” Her cutting tone made it clear she didn’t mean this as a compliment.
“You must be enjoying all this,” I hissed, whacking those pecans in half with my knife. Amazingly, Mutt had allowed me to pick up another.
With a muffled curse, Francine slammed down the coffeepot and turned to face me. I pretended not to notice and kept chopping my pecans with a vengeance. “You haven’t had a civil word for anybody since you moved to this town. Not even a simple ‘hey.’ And then you go and order that fence, just to stir up trouble.”
I set my knife down and pivoted to glare at her. “I need that fence to protect my family. If it’d been up, my boys would still be here.”
“They’d have climbed over it . . . and probably broken their necks doing it, too.”
I couldn’t help an outraged gasp. “How dare you insinuate that my boys left on their own. Someone stole into this house and took them.”
She rolled her eyes in the most insulting manner. “Do you really think you can keep them locked up forever? It’s bad enough you’re putting up the fence, but to take Chip out of school, too . . .well . . . ” She shook her head. “It’s not fair to them. You ought not do it.”
I wanted to snatch her by the hair of her head and throw her down onto my linoleum. Fortunately, I refrained . . . but just barely. I’d forgotten this about Francine—how she was always handing out advice, like those times when she and I were left backstage alone during our childhood pageants, or waiting outside for our mothers to pick us up from rehearsals, chatting about this or that.
You ought not go to Hollywood when you grow up, Tammy Jo. My mama says Hollywood is wicked. Or, You shouldn’t marry a movie star. I heard on Oprah that they get divorced too much.
Oh, but her plans were always beyond reproach, or so it seemed—to marry a handsome prince and have lots of children. Daughters, she wanted. We’d both wanted daughters, mostly because we didn’t care much for boys at the time, being as young as we were. Why, we’d been so young, we hadn’t figured out yet what it meant to be rivals for life’s tiara . . . or to be Bigelowan vs. Mossy Cracker . . .
“There’s nothing wrong with home-schooling, Francine.”
“Maybe not for some people, but your boys need other children.”
“I plan to sign ‘em up for baseball,” I lied.
“After-school activities are not the same as having to work with other kids every day and face the pressures we all had to face—like giving a report in front of the class, or ignoring hurtful taunts, or taking a test while the kid next to you is trying to copy off your paper. How are they gonna learn to cope, Tammy Jo? What happens when they grow up and have a boss who isn’t fair, if they’ve never had an ornery teacher like old Miz Henry?”
Miz Henry. The meanest, orneriest, most unfair teacher at Bigelow High. At least, while we went there, Francine and I. “I’d never wish Miz Henry on my boys.”
“My daughter had a meaner teacher than her, and I’m glad. How else will she learn to deal with exasperating people? It’s the struggles and humiliations and yes, friendships, whether you approve of them or not, that make children grow strong.”
“There’s violence in the schools today.” She couldn’t deny that one.
“There’s violence in the streets, too. You want to make your boys afraid to step out of their house?”
“That’s your way of looking at things, not mine.” And becau
se I couldn’t stand to let her walk away unruffled, I just had to finish in my most scathing voice, “Miss Know-It-All-Fancy-Francie.”
She gasped, then pressed closer to me in a non-verbal threat. “Miss Nose-in-the-Air-Hammy-Tammy.”
The linoleum floor was just a’waiting for me to knock her flat, I swear.
“I better start smelling pecan pie soon, ladies,” came Ida’s stern voice from somewhere behind us. I was mad enough to ignore her.
“How dare you call me ‘hammy,’ when you’re the one prancing around town in short-shorts, wiggling your behind, showing off your perfect self.” I couldn’t help emphasizing that word. She was just about perfect, and she knew it. A little older, maybe, but just as pretty as she’d always been. The bitch.
Surprisingly, a flash of hurt flickered across her face, and she fell quiet for a minute. In a greatly subdued tone, she finally said, “I hope you don’t mean that sarcastically.”
I had no idea what she meant, or why she’d gone so still.
Rainey materialized beside me—Rainey, the big-haired, redheaded hairdresser who used to be friendly enough to me in high school, though I’d kept my distance, her being a lowly Mossy Cracker and all. “I’m sure Tammy Jo doesn’t know about . . . well. . . you know,” she said to Francine, looking uncomfortable.
To me, she whispered, “Francine’s had a mastectomy.”
A mastectomy. That meant . . . cancer.
I can’t describe the feeling that realization gave me. It was like I’d been running along a grassy field, then looked down to find myself about to step off a steep cliff. Cancer. Francine. My breath hitched. My throat constricted. “Is it . . . is it . . . ?”
“The surgeon said he got it all,” Rainey confided, “but we don’t talk about it much.”
For no good reason, a fist closed around my voice box. “I . . . I didn’t know, Francine. I—”
“Oh, shut up, Tammy Jo.” She managed a faint smirk. “I might prance around town in short-shorts, but you’re no innocent yourself, tending your garden in those tight jeans, drawing all the men’s eyes with your perky little butt.”
“Perky little butt!” Nothing could have astounded me more. “Me?” I glanced back at my butt as if I hadn’t realized it was still attached. It’d been a good fifteen years since any man but Bunkin had noticed my butt. Hadn’t it?
“As if you weren’t perfectly aware of all the attention you’ve been drawing from the male shoppers on the square, or the workmen delivering your tacky fence—”
“I’m not smelling that pie yet,” Ida cut in, “or that coffee.”
Responding to the reprimand, we turned back to our chores. I put the pie together in silence, distracted by my own whirling thoughts and perplexing emotions. The trauma of the day had clearly addled my brain. Why should I give a damn what ailed Francine, or any Mossy Cracker? And why should I be pleased that she thought my butt was perky and little? What mattered were my boys. I spent the next stretch of silence spooning the filling into the pie shell and praying they’d be found unharmed.
I’d barely finished sliding the pie into the oven when Mutt came walking into the house with a boy beneath each arm. One was Chip, all muddied and sunburned, a fishing pole in his hand and a sheepish look in his eyes. The other was not Toby, as I had hoped, but the tall, broad, freckle-faced bully who’d fought with Chip in school. He was just as muddy, sunburned and sheepish looking.
“Dr. Blackshear found these two down by the creek,” Mutt said. “Fishing.”
“Fishing?” I approached my son in stark disbelief. He’d crept out of our home, against my wishes, to go fishing. With his worst enemy!
Before I could fully digest those incredible facts, though, I had a more pressing issue to address. “Where’s Toby?”
“I don’t know, Mama. Dr. Blackshear and Officer Bottoms asked the same thing, but Toby should be here, with you. I left him at home, I swear.”
“Did he know you were going out?”
“I tried not to wake him, but my fishing pole was in his closet. I told him to go back to sleep, and that he couldn’t come along. I thought he listened to me.”
The relief I’d felt at seeing Chip now gave way to renewed fear. What red-blooded four-year-old boy who loves fishing as much as Toby does would stay behind while his brother went off to the creek? If Chip had disregarded my rules with such ease, why should Toby hesitate to tag along? ‘Course, he couldn’t possibly have kept up with the older boys, especially if they’d left before him.
Fear pounded through my veins, my head, my heart. Ignoring the people crowding around me, I hurried to Toby’s bedroom, flung open his closet door and looked for his miniature fishing pole. It was, of course, gone.
My baby was alone somewhere on some mountain, in the woods . . . or in the rain-swollen summer creek.
Racing through the living room, I ordered Chip to go sit with his father until I came back. I then grabbed my car keys from the hook near the door and headed outside for the old Camaro I’d bought from my mother. If the men hadn’t found Toby in the woods, then he’d probably made it all the way to the graveled side road that overlooked the creek. He and I had walked that way a number of times, just to look out over the water. But, God help him, the incline from that road was way too steep for anyone to climb down it.
If he’d tried and fallen . . .
Panic blurred my vision and made my hand shake as I attempted to unlock the driver door of my car.
A hand reached out and took the keys away from me. “Let’s take my truck. It’s four-wheel-drive.” Mayor Ida stalked away with my keys, and I had no choice but to follow. As I slid into the passenger seat of her Land Rover, someone else crowded in next to me, holding a stack of towels, a length of rope and a first-aid kit in her lap. Francine.
I told Ida where I suspected Toby might be, and she set out for that lonely stretch of back road. She also talked into her cell phone, telling Mutt where we were headed. We didn’t say much. I kept a careful look-out along the way, combing the woods with my eyes as we passed by . . . praying, praying. . . squeezing the hand that was holding mine . . .
My breath stalled in my throat as we approached the narrow, curvy section of road that overlooked the rushing creek below.
We turned a sharp bend, and Francine exclaimed, “Oh, me!”
My stomach lurched. There was Toby, trudging along the outer curve of that narrow road, just steps away from the steep decline, still wearing his teddy-bear pajamas, holding his little fishing rod over one shoulder, his sneakers untied, his shoe laces dragging. . .
And that huge German Shepherd named Killer just a step behind him.
Panic slapped me hard at the sight of that dog so close to my boy. My world went hot and cold and still. But before terror could rush to my head and wash away all good sense, I realized Killer wasn’t tracking him like some bloodthirsty predator, as I’d first thought. He was keeping even pace, wedging himself between Toby and the drop-off, nudging up against him now and then . . . forcing him back from the danger zone. And when Toby heard our car approach and turned to look, Killer grabbed hold of those teddy-bear pajamas—a big mouthful of cotton britches—and tugged him back off the road.
I’ll never forget the sight, as long as I live, that dog holding my boy in the slim safety zone between the dangerous roadway and the deadly drop-off.
I’m not sure when I started crying, but as we climbed out of the car, I noticed Francine blinking back tears of her own.
Talk about an alien dimension from some video game. That ride back to my house couldn’t have been any stranger. There I was, with my boy on my lap, a Mossy Cracker on either side, and a big ol’ panting beast of a dog breathing down my neck from the back seat. The strangeness didn’t end with that ride. When we reached my house where the passle of intruders awaited us, a mighty cheer went up all around. We were hugged and kissed and fussed over, and someone set me down with a blessedly hot cup of coffee and a warm piece of pecan pie. Francine gave
a lively account of how we found Toby, and everyone talked at once.
By the time I’d finished my pie, Rainey had asked if I still sang and invited me to stand up with her band, the Screaming Meemies, at O’Day’s Pub some Friday night.
Her mention of the pub brought up the annual All-County Mossy Creek Labor Day Dart Competition, and Mutt suggested I throw for the Mossy Creek team. That suggestion started a debate on whether they could claim me for their side.
“She might’ve been born a Bigelow, but she’s living in our town now,” my next-door neighbor Professor Egbert said.
“And her husband is kin to Miss Winnie,” Sandy Crane added.
“And her mama is second cousin to Ellie Brady’s niece by marriage,” put in Adele Clearwater, surprising me with this bit of information I’d forgotten—or purposely blocked out, seeing as how it had always linked me to the lowly Mossy Crackers.
They continued rationalizing my switch to their side, and I couldn’t help but gaze around in wonder. This was my house, with neighbors gathered, chatting and laughing and sipping coffee. These were my sons, throwing a football around the front yard with other kids, and that big killer dog scampering between them. That was my husband, his hospital bed now parked in the living room and surrounded by men who were watching the baseball game on television and asking Bunkin which team he was pulling for. He answered by means of his finger movement: one crook for the Braves, two for those suck-egg Yankees. At least, this was the choice posed by our neighbors.
In the midst of all this light-hearted commotion, I stood up, strode to my kitchen telephone and called Bigelow Security Systems. “I’ve decided I don’t want the fence,” I told the clerk who answered. “Cancel the installation.”
My Bigelow cousin, who owned the company, promptly got on the phone and informed me it was too late to cancel the order. “We delivered it, Tammy Jo. You own that fence now, whether you have it put up or not.”
If that isn’t just like an ornery, low-down Bigelowan!
Reunion at Mossy Creek Page 19