Strawberry Hill

by Catherine Anderson

  “Me? I’ll be your friend John?”

  Erin nodded. “If you want to be my friend, that is.”

  “I do. And whenever you want a Heath bar really, really bad, I’ll buy you one.”

  Erin held out her right hand. “It’s a deal. Let’s make it official by shaking on it.”

  Johnny looked expectantly at the truck. Now that he no longer feared incarceration, he was clearly excited about going somewhere in a police vehicle. She could still remember how excited she’d been the first time her father had taken her for a spin in his patrol car.

  “Before I take you home, Johnny, do you mind if I stop at Safeway for a couple of things?”

  He looked over his shoulder at the neighborhood market. “Why can’t you just buy ’em here?”

  “I could,” Erin confessed. “But I don’t think that store manager is very nice.”

  “Me, neither.”

  “And,” Erin added with a smile, “Safeway has a candy bar special going right now, two for a dollar.” That was a lie, but she wanted Johnny to remember that she really would give him money for candy if he was ever tempted to steal again. “I’m getting a Heath bar! What kind is your favorite?”

  “Milky Way. They don’t got any nuts.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Erin had delivered Johnny to his front door, spoken with his father to hopefully make it clear that Johnny had already been punished enough by the store manager for his mistake, and then told his mother what a wonderful, well-mannered little boy he was. Now she sat in the truck, knowing she had to drive away. That boy, dressed in little better than rags, had captured her heart, and she hated to think that his parents might spank him or yell at him or send him to bed without dinner. The poor tyke hadn’t even gotten to eat the candy bar he had swiped. He had gotten to enjoy the one she’d gotten for him, though, so that was something.

  Her cell phone notified her of a text. She figured it might be Julie, who sent her pics or jokes or updates on how her day was going. Only when she glanced down, she saw Wyatt Fitzgerald’s name instead. She couldn’t imagine why he would text her. Then she remembered the gift that Blackie had taken up to the drop box and smiled. She knew he was probably just sending her a quick thank-you, nothing more, but with Johnny and all the hardships children from poor households endured playing on her mind, she welcomed any distraction.

  She swiped the screen, went to Messages, and began to read.

  “Hi,” he wrote. “I got the package. Plan to have an early dinner at the Straw Hat. Want to join me? My treat.”

  Erin grinned. Her shift had officially ended twelve minutes before. She still needed to do her end-of-shift reports, but she could meet Wyatt for dinner and drop by the department afterward to do her paperwork and get her own car. She texted back, “I’d love to. See you in ten.”

  As Erin backed out of Johnny’s driveway and got the truck headed down the road, it suddenly hit her that she had a date. Well, maybe not a real date, but it was dinner with a really good-looking guy. She couldn’t go dressed in this stupid uniform.

  Instead of heading directly to José Hayden’s Mexican restaurant, she drove straight to the Mystic Creek Menagerie. When she burst into the Morning Grind, she shouted, “Wyatt Fitzgerald just asked me to meet him for dinner. I’ve got five minutes to get ready, tops, and I can’t go looking like this! I just can’t!”

  Julie got a horrified look on her face. “I don’t keep any clothing here, Erin! And I live clear out on Bearberry Loop!”

  Erin plopped her purse on the counter. It was a huge, metallic gold thing, and she loved it. “Please, Julie, think of something!”

  “Switch!” Julie dashed out from behind the counter, grabbed Erin’s hand, and took off for the unisex bathroom at the back of her shop. “We’ll just trade clothes! Thank God I wore something halfway sexy today.”

  The bathroom was barely big enough for one person, and as Erin gave Julie the fastest once-over in history to see what she’d be wearing to meet Wyatt, she glanced down and couldn’t drag her gaze from Julie’s shoes. They were black, strappy things with wedge heels—really high heels. “I can’t wear those.”

  “They’ll fit. We’re the same size.”

  “No, I mean—they just aren’t me.”

  Julie was already peeling off her top, a low-cut burgundy thing with cold-shoulder sleeves. She kicked off the shoes. “Thank God they aren’t you. Your style is—well, you don’t have one.”

  “Ouch. Not nice. I have a style. It’s just not one that flips your skirt.”

  “Shut up and strip!” Julie cried. “And, please, get that stupid hat off. And don’t accidentally shoot me with that horrible gun. You’re not leaving me with that self-defense arsenal, by the way. I’d have bad dreams all night with that weapon in my house.”

  “I’ll stow my arsenal in the truck. Like I’d let you touch my sidearm? You’d end up shooting yourself. As mean as you are to me, you’re the only friend I’ve got. I’d like to keep you.”

  There followed the fastest exchange of clothing imaginable, with both women asses to elbows trying to get almost naked and trade outfits. Erin stared down at the black skirt, which was a slinky knit with graceful folds and a scalloped hem that had a higher cut in the scallop over her right thigh. “It’s a Mexican place, not the Ritz!”

  “Oh, come on. It’s not fancy.” Julie stood back, which put her butt in the corner created by the vanity and the wall. “You’ll make his eyes pop out. Get the shoes on.”

  While Erin struggled with the ankle straps of the shoes, Julie threw on Erin’s uniform. When Erin glanced up, she said, “Oh, God, no. You’ll get arrested for impersonating an officer!”

  Julie’s response to that was to take the shirt back off, turn it inside out, and put it back on. “This will work. Badge hidden. Lettering almost hidden. People who can read inside out and backward may report me, but I’m not too worried about someone like that coming in before I close in fifteen minutes.”

  She jerked open a cabinet and plucked out a little zipper bag. “My shop makeup so I can freshen up during the day. Come here so I have better light.”

  Erin moved closer to the vanity and soon felt about Johnny’s age as her friend messed with her face. As Julie shadowed Erin’s eyes, she said, “You’ll have to stop by my place later to get your uniform.”

  “Tomorrow. Just bring it to the shop. I have three more sets at home.”

  “Okay. That works.” Julie grabbed a fat brush and began highlighting Erin’s cheekbones with blush. “Thank the saints that the bruises on your cheek and eye are gone. Be still. Almost there. All we need now is a touch of mascara and some lip gloss.”

  “What do I look like?” Erin tried to roll her eyes far enough sideways to see herself in the mirror. “Not too heavy. You know how I am about makeup.”

  “I know how you are about everything that’s girly, and trust me, Erin, my way’s better.”

  Erin suffered through getting mascara applied to her lashes, fearing an accidental stab of the wand would render her blind in one eye if she wiggled. “Careful.”

  “Don’t blink! You’re smearing it!”

  “It’s a little hard not to blink when you’re poking at my eyes with a black stick.”

  “Shut up,” Julie said as she uncapped a pale pink lip gloss. “I can’t hit your lips when they’re moving. I hope he likes watermelon.”

  “It’s flavored? My enchiladas will taste weird.”

  “You’re not meeting him to eat. Your aim is to turn him on.”

  “Which may be impossible. You said you didn’t think he was attracted to women.”

  Julie laughed. “Yeah, well, as you very well know, my stud finder is malfunctioning. Maybe he deep-froze me because I’m not his type, and maybe the reason he doesn’t date is—heck, I don’t know why a guy that handsome would
willingly be celibate. But go meet him, smile, don’t do the cocked-hip thing with your arms akimbo, and give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  She jerked Erin’s shoulder-length hair from its clasp and rubbed styling gel between her hands. The next thing Erin knew, Julie went after her hair as if she were trying to shake out fleas.

  “There!” she said. “Magical transformation in three minutes. You look beautiful.”

  Erin stepped close to see herself in the mirror. Her hair looked like she’d slept restlessly, had a bad case of night sweats, and had just climbed out of bed. “Julie, that’s awful.”

  “Don’t touch it! It’s perfect.”

  “But it’s messy.”

  “It’s bed hair. When a guy looks at you, it makes him think about doing things to you. Really delicious things. Trust me on this.”

  Erin sighed and turned from the mirror. “Thank you. It’s better than how I looked when I walked in.”

  “Such gratitude overwhelms me.” Julie opened the door. “Now, get your beautiful self and that horrible gun out of here. I’ve still got to determine how to button a shirt when it’s inside out.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Slade sat on a fallen log near the creek, a spot that had become his favorite quiet place many seasons ago. He loved the smells here and always thought about the little net bags his mother had once made to put in all the dresser drawers and closets. Sachets, she’d called them, to make their clothes smell nice, floral scents for her and Slade’s sister, woodland smells for him and his dad. Of a morning, he’d liked to press a clean T-shirt to his nose and savor the perfume of pine, cedar, sage, manzanita, and traces of mint. It had filled his mind with images of places just like this, where the massive trunk of a dead ponderosa provided him with a seat while other elements of the forest tantalized his senses. Mother Nature had created a collage of beautiful things to commemorate both new growth and decay, with every stage of life represented in between. The tree upon which he sat was rotting—disintegrating little by little—but its contribution to existence hadn’t ended. Worms and insects had burrowed deep into its pulp, turning what had once been wood into dust that fell to the ground and nourished tiny saplings, sprigs of fern, the roots of grass and flowers, wild strawberries, and moss, to name only a few. The mature sheltered the young. The dying leaned against the strong to stay standing as long as possible. Slade was, for this moment, melding physically with a cycle that never ended, and he was as much a part of the process as the moldy carpet of the forest floor.

  Huge ponderosa pines stood like sentinels along both banks. A small waterfall, created by a deposit of rocks that had shifted into a bottleneck during high water, sent up a melodious babble that was never the same from one moment to the next. Listening to it soothed and helped center him. He could drink in the beauty of nature or he could close his eyes and just breathe for a few stolen minutes.

  He came here when he was troubled. He’d learned over time that if he stayed long enough, he would become aware, heartbeat by heartbeat, of how great and magnificent Creation was and how insignificant he actually was. It followed that his troubles and worries were also insignificant. These majestic old-growth trees would still be standing a century from now, long after he was dead and buried. Life would go on. The earth would keep turning. The sun would continue to go down at night and come up in the morning. When a man considered just how temporary his own existence was and how unnecessary his presence was, he came to understand that he wasn’t even one of the cogs that kept the wheel turning. Once he internalized that, he also came to realize that the little frustrations of his daily life weren’t all that important to anyone but him.

  Normally Slade’s worries at base camp were about his guests. When they began coming in, he often had at least two people who took an instant dislike to each other. It became Slade’s job to think of creative ways to keep them separated. But it wasn’t always easy to manipulate two hardheaded adults, especially not when they sought each other out for another round of bristling and posturing. Other times he’d get a Rambo—some damned fool who’d gone through survival training, pumped his muscles up with steroids and weight lifting, paid a fortune for some mean-looking tattoos, and suddenly believed, beyond any shadow of doubt, that he was the roughest, toughest wilderness guru that had ever walked. The Rambo guys didn’t bother Slade that much, unless they tried to guide, advise, or correct the behavior of other guests. If that happened, he had to intervene, and he’d been known to boot an offender out of camp if it became necessary.

  But this evening his worry was about Vickie. She was proving to be the best chef and camp jack he’d ever had in his employ, skilled at her job, willing to work the equivalent of three split shifts, never shying away from heavy loads, eager to please palates, and ever cheerful and friendly. Well, mostly cheerful and friendly. When she saw him, her smile vanished and her lips puckered like the top of a drawstring pouch. Sometimes they had a civil exchange, but more often she responded to his questions with monosyllabic answers and he grunted. He wasn’t sure why he grunted, only that it seemed safer than talking. Around Vickie, he seemed to have a talent for saying the wrong thing. Grunts were left open to interpretation by the giver and the receiver. Slade could be thinking eff you when he grunted and the person he grunted at might think he was saying fantastic. That worked.

  Vickie would tell him that his guttural utterances were a coward’s way out, but after nearly a week of tiptoeing around that woman, he would only agree with an emphatic hell, yes. She was as mercurial as the red shit inside a thermometer. He could make the most unobjectionable observation ever—like the night he’d told her she wasn’t too old to get a pup—and in a twinkling, he was a no-good, rotten, heartless son of a bitch. He’d go before a jury of his peers to plead his case on that one, and he had every confidence that he’d get a unanimous vote of not guilty.

  So, he grunted. When she said good morning, he grunted. When she asked how his meal was, he grunted. He grunted so much, in fact, that he wouldn’t be surprised to find himself eating bananas and grazing his knuckles over the ground when he walked. He formed words only when she asked direct questions, and he kept his answers brief and to the point. The last thing he needed or wanted was to cross horns constantly with a woman half his size. She didn’t fight fair.

  And that was why he was out here, sitting on a grubworm nest. He had to talk to Vickie about the practical jokes, and grunting his way through that conversation wasn’t going to cut it. First off, he had no proof that Vickie was the culprit, so he’d be broaching the subject with his hat in his hand and an apology on his lips for suspecting her. Secondly, the pranks had been harmless and funny. Scary, glowing eyes out in the woods. That trick was almost as old as the ponderosas that loomed over him and as common in a camp as gnats in the pancake syrup. In the old days, glow sticks hadn’t yet existed, so people had stuffed a slender flashlight into a paper towel roll. Same effect, same result: spooked campers.

  The spider drawn on the toilet paper had been hilarious, too. For most people, it would have been a harmless instant of startled fright. Only, Slade wasn’t most people. He had a bad case of arachnophobia, and only Vickie had known that—until he’d hopped out of the shitter with his pants down around his ankles, screaming like a girl. Vickie had deliberately targeted him. Others used his makeshift toilet on occasion, but ninety percent of the time, Slade was the occupant. He had what he called a “rodeo knee.” He’d busted up his kneecap years before, and the joint could no longer handle being bent into a full squat with his weight adding pressure. He could hunker by a fire with his rump resting on one boot heel for hours—a position often called a “cowboy rocking chair”—but squatting in the woods brought tears to his eyes. Thus, his regular use of the shitter he constructed every year.

  No doubt about it, Vickie had set him up to make a fool of himself. Slade cringed every time he considered what a picture he must have made. As he’d
pulled on the tail of tissue, which hung from the branch of a limb he’d poked in the dirt, the squares had unfurled, making the drawn-on spider appear to be moving toward him. He’d gotten only a glimpse before the arachnid flashed out of sight, and he’d been sure the damned thing had dropped off into his pants. My bad, he thought. Vickie couldn’t be held to blame for his irrational panic. The prank hadn’t been intended to do any harm. But, despite that, Slade felt that he’d been victimized and injured, even if the blow had been dealt only to his pride.

  He knew she probably hadn’t considered any of the far-reaching results of making a laughingstock out of him. It had been only a joke, something everyone got a kick out of. In a camp, jocularity every once in a while kept the tensions down and embellished the whole experience of roughing it with unforgettable memories that brought a smile to the lips. He got that. Hell, he’d even played a few camp pranks himself, always just for fun and never with malicious intent. But he had to make Vickie understand that he couldn’t allow his authority as the outfitter and boss to be compromised. And, hello, if a Rambo dude showed up tomorrow, he’d lose all respect for an outfitter who screamed and ran from spiders. That spelled trouble. Slade couldn’t allow some overblown weight lifter to constantly contradict him, disregard camp rules, or usurp his authority in any other way.

  Only how could he explain all that to Vickie? He guessed he could come right out with it. Don’t embarrass me like that again and make me look like an idiot. But that pretty much placed the blame entirely on Vickie, and the truth was, it had been Slade’s reaction to a harmless trick that had actually caused the problem.

  He went back to staring at the trees, and after about twenty minutes, he finally found that peaceful place within himself where the little frustrations of daily life weren’t all that important. His wisest course of action, he decided, would be to leave it alone. Chances were good that Vickie would target someone else with her next prank. And even if he took the brunt again, he needed to remember it was all in good fun. In camps, it was almost a rite of passage for people to learn how to be a good sport when the joke was on them.