Their Wander Canyon Wish

by Allie Pleiter

  For a moment there was a terrorizing silence, and then Wyatt heard the blissful thunk of the mechanism engaging. A series of clicks and whirrs heralded the machine parts launching into motion. Then, as if the whole carousel—maybe the whole canyon—were pulling in a breath, the platform began to move. A million mechanical stutters filled the air around him, and he turned away from the central column to watch in wonder as animals slowly began to parade by. The wheeze and hum of the calliope—a sound unlike any other, in his view—rose toward the first notes of the carousel’s song.

  “It works!”

  “You fixed it,” Dad said, grabbing his shoulder. “You fixed it.”

  The slow rotation of the platform and the rise-and-fall waves of animals felt as large as the solar system. When God’s hand had set the planets in motion, it must have felt something like this.

  Wyatt gave a whoop and stepped onto the moving platform as the carousel reached its full working speed and stayed there. It stayed there! He felt like vaulting himself onto the back of the eagle, kicking his legs out in celebration. Instead, he reached out a hand to his father, pulling him onto the platform as they went around together, just standing beside the moving animals and soaking in the victory. He, no-good Wyatt Walker, had restored the Wander Carousel to working order. He found himself glad his father was here to see the moment—something that astonished him.

  Dad must have felt the same way. “I’m glad I got to see this,” he said as the carousel finished its cycle and the music died down. It was the first genuine smile his father had given him in a long time. They’d made a cranky sort of peace for the family’s sake, but right now felt like the first moment of real reconciliation.

  “Me, too,” Wyatt said, meaning it.

  “I’m proud of you, son.”

  Wyatt hadn’t realized how starved he was to hear those words until his father spoke them just now. Emotion tightened his throat and left him fumbling for a response. “Thanks,” he managed, his voice thick.

  They didn’t quite know how to handle the moment. The carousel had stopped, and the silence amplified the awkwardness.

  Dad finally stepped off the platform. “Well, I’ll leave you to whatever else needs doing. And you should get cleaned up before church starts at four.”

  He was a greasy mess at the moment. Happy, but as grimy as his worst days at the garage. “I know.”

  He waited for his dad to launch into a speech about how long it had been since he’d had both his sons in pews at Wander Community Church, but Dad just offered a goofy grin and said, “See you soon.”

  “Yeah.”

  As the big red door pulled shut behind his father, Wyatt realized he was wearing a goofy grin himself. I fixed the Wander Carousel.

  For no reason than his own enjoyment, Wyatt hit the lever to start up the mechanism again. When the music and motion began, he sat himself on the eagle for a victory lap. But he wasn’t halfway around before he yanked his phone from his back pocket and dialed up Marilyn’s number. He put the phone onto the speakerphone setting so it would catch the music. He didn’t say anything as she answered, just let the calliope announce his victory.

  “It’s working?” her voice came over the clamor. “You fixed it?”

  In the background he could hear a pair of delighted squeals that lodged in his heart. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t take this on partly to play the hero—just once—for Wander Canyon. And it meant the world to him that his father had come and offered his pride. But this joyful noise, the triumph of this moving carousel, was really about only two people. Two little people who had somehow managed to cross the moat of disregard he’d built around himself. Tomorrow he’d shout to the entire canyon that he, no-good Wyatt Walker, had fixed the carousel. Tonight, after church, the only thing he wanted was to watch Margie and Maddie go around.

  And see the joy on Marilyn’s face when they did.

  “I’ll pick you up at three thirty. And this will be waiting for you after the service.”

  Wyatt could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “I can’t wait.”

  As he pocketed the phone, still on the eagle as the carousel spun its way through the cycle, Wyatt caught sight of himself in one of the many mirrored panels that lined the ride’s center pillar.

  He looked ridiculous. A grown man grinning like an idiot atop a wildly painted eagle going up and down in mock flight. The furthest thing from the cool, collected, can’t-touch-me face he showed the world. The face of the Carousel Man flashed back at him as it traveled across the mirrors. A strange new Wyatt. The reflection of someone who’d cracked open just enough to really care.

  Was that okay? Was he looking at some matured, improved version of himself, or just the newest ploy for attention? Wyatt pointed at his reflection as it jumped from mirror to mirror, slowing down as the carousel did. “You don’t even like kids,” he said aloud to himself and the Carousel Man in the shiny gilded panels.

  He didn’t. Wyatt usually avoided children whenever possible. He was actually dreading the day Chaz and Yvonne would announce they were starting a family and he’d have to figure out how to be Uncle Wyatt. Mostly because he was so sure he’d be no better at that part of family life than he had been at being a son or a brother so far.

  He’d gotten so used to messing things up with people that he’d stopped trying to get it right. Forgotten how good it felt to get it right. And this, he’d gotten right. The stubborn old machine was running right. He and his father had found their way to putting things right between them—at least that’s how it felt. And before the sun went down today, he would lead Margie and Maddie through that door and put right that pair of pouts they’d worn when he first met them.

  That was easy. It was the other part that had him scratching his head when the music finally gave way to silence. The Marilyn part.

  He’d lost count of the number of dates he’d taken to this carousel, fully aware of how romantic women found it. It was a persuasion tactic, an easy penance for any of his many wrongdoings, not unlike the red cupcake tickets.

  This was different.

  Before he’d used the carousel. Tonight he’d be giving it. Not just to Margie and Maddie, but to Marilyn. And not just as the girls’ mother. He wanted to lift Marilyn onto the ostrich she liked and stand right next to her as she threw her head back and laughed. He wanted to be the one to make her smile—and not just because the girls were smiling. He knew half a dozen ways to get a woman into his arms coming down off a carousel animal, but none of those schemes seemed worthy of Marilyn Sofitel.

  A foreign thought hung in the air amid the gold glow of the carousel’s many little lights. Women amused him, fascinated him, even distracted him, but he admired Marilyn. Who she was, how hard she fought to give the girls a good life, how she dared poke her nose into his business—literally into his business. Wyatt stood in front of the ostrich and pondered the strange notion. What do I do with that? With her?

  Normally, Wyatt always knew what to do with women. It came second nature to him, and he was very good at it. Always had been. Kissing beautiful women was one of life’s great pleasures in his view. He was very good at that, too.

  Marilyn was neither his standard definition of beauty, nor his type. And while he gleefully ignored most standards of decency, he knew he would not ever kiss Marilyn in front of her girls.

  But, to his great surprise, he couldn’t say he didn’t want to. He did want to. Her? With him? Nothing made less sense in the world.

  “She’d try to fix me,” he lectured the ostrich’s glossy wooden eye. “Those kinds always do.” In fact, hadn’t she already tried?

  The trouble was, even he knew there was a difference between fix and help, and she’d genuinely tried to help him. And he needed it. He’d taken the section of the Sunday Courier with the harmful article about Landon from the table at the ranch and brought it with him to try
to read it. The trouble he’d had getting through the exasperating paragraphs seemed to shout its own conviction. When he went to that session at the church learning center, Wyatt felt certain they’d confirm what Marilyn suspected. What she was brave enough to tell him even though he’d been a total jerk in his reaction.

  He was grateful to her. He found her beautiful in ways he’d never considered before. He respected her and felt an honor in protecting her. And he was picking her up for church in a matter of hours.

  Wyatt stared at the rafters again. I could take this whole carousel apart and it wouldn’t be as complicated as what I feel about her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Marilyn kept an iron grip on each girl’s hand as they walked into the clearing behind Wander Canyon Community Church. Rows of folding chairs spread out in a peaceful semicircle around a picnic table pressed into service as an altar and pulpit. Under any other circumstances, she would find the scene pleasant. Iconic, even. At the moment, it looked more like a battlefield to her, the scene of a last stand.

  “We never had church outside in Denver,” Margie said to Wyatt as he walked beside them.

  “That’s too bad,” he answered. “I think it beats the inside kind.” She had to give Wyatt credit. He was managing to make this church appearance look perfectly ordinary even though Pauline had let it slip that this was Wyatt’s first arrival at any service since Chaz and Yvonne’s wedding. He was doing this for her, wielding his defiance on her behalf. Doing his best, even, to brashly draw attention to himself and away from her. There weren’t words for how much that meant to her today.

  They took their place beside Pauline and Hank Walker far too near the front of the chairs. “Sitting up front means they can’t crane their necks around and stare,” Wyatt had joked when she showed a wisp of apprehension. How did he do that? She didn’t have his ability to slough off what other people thought. Marilyn prayed for some semblance of focus, that she wouldn’t spend the next hour sensing people’s stares as if they burned holes in her back.

  She pulled in a deep breath and willed the warmth of the afternoon sunshine to send calm into her body. Inhale. Exhale. She made her list:

  I’m thankful Maddie and Margie haven’t really grasped what’s happened.

  I’m thankful for Pauline’s kindness.

  I’m thankful for Wyatt. That felt a bit dangerous to admit, even though it was so very true. He’d even chosen to sit on the aisle, placing himself physically between her family and anyone who might dare an unkind remark. With Pauline and Hank on her other side, she could almost convince herself she wasn’t dangling out in the open like a target for hurtful gossip.

  I need to feel like I can survive today. And the days to come.

  I need to feel Your presence, Lord.

  I need Your protection from hurtful words I can’t withstand right now.

  “I am sorry for all this,” Pauline leaned over to whisper in Marilyn’s ear, “but I won’t say I’m sorry the Good Lord found a way to drag that boy back to church. Don’t you doubt for a minute that He’s got this, got Wyatt and got you.” After a moment, she asked quietly, “Why aren’t Ed and Katie here?”

  “Gram and Gramps already went to the service inside this morning,” Maddie piped up. The girls continued to be blissfully oblivious to the tensions of the grown-ups around them.

  The look Marilyn exchanged with Pauline said it all. It was poignant, and telling, and more than a little sad that Mom and Dad made no offer to come with her and the girls to this outdoor service. In fact, Mom seemed rather put out that Marilyn would dare to show her face at all given the papers. Oh, Mom, what you know now isn’t even the half of it, Marilyn wanted to yell.

  Her parents’ assumptions and expectations had been one of the things that made coming home so hard. Mom had considered Landon such a catch. She was endlessly proud of Marilyn’s big house and fancy life in Denver. If Marilyn were honest, it sometimes bothered her how Mom spoke of Landon as if landing him was her daughter’s greatest accomplishment. It chipped away at her sense of self, made it easier to swallow Landon’s attitude of her worth coming solely through him. The pressure made it almost impossible to admit things hadn’t come close to how they looked from the outside. As if she couldn’t possibly reveal how far the truth had fallen from what everyone had thought.

  A truth it felt like the whole world just discovered.

  The tremble started back up her spine. I’m not who I was.

  No. Wait. That’s not true. A little shock of surprise went through her, halting the trembling. I’m who I have always been. Your child, Lord. You haven’t moved, You haven’t changed. It’s Landon who fell away, who became someone different. Or, if what Wyatt said was true, had never been at all.

  Oh, Father, forgive me. No wonder my faith has felt so shaky—I’ve been drawing my identity from all the wrong places.

  It struck Marilyn at that moment that worship was exactly where she needed to be. And who would have guessed that Wyatt would have been the one to make it happen?

  Despite Pauline’s comforting words and even Wyatt’s defiant position at the end of the aisle, Marilyn still felt like a feather, fragile and shaky. “Are we really going to the carousel after this?” Margie asked Wyatt for the tenth time. “You really got it to work?”

  Wyatt somehow managed to give them a smile that was wide and welcome. As if nothing in the world had gone amiss this morning. “I did. And no one else gets to ride it before you and Maddie.” It was nothing short of a wonder that he had, in fact, gotten the carousel working as he promised. Then again, the look he gave her before he left was absolute determination. That finicky piece of machinery had no choice but to bend to Wyatt’s will today. He had somehow known it was the perfect gesture, the perfect prize at the end of what she could only hope to be a difficult hour enduring stares and whispers.

  After a bit more chatter with the girls, Wyatt caught Marilyn’s gaze above the girls’ heads as the service was just about to start. “Okay so far?”

  Even though she felt nowhere near okay, she forced a smile and said, “Okay.”

  He settled into the chair as if he’d been there for years. “Steady on.” For a moment she had all but forgotten that his presence here was nearly as scandalous as she imagined hers to be.

  “Hey there,” Tessa’s voice came from the pew behind her. “I got your back. Literally. We all do.”

  And there it was, God sending a friend to say just the words she needed to hear. She turned to see Tessa and three other moms from the Solos Bible study planted in the chairs just behind her. She really was surrounded by friends who would stand between her and wagging tongues.

  Tessa put a warm hand on her shoulder. “I’m glad you showed up.”

  She managed a wisp of a smile. “Not as glad as I am that you showed up.”

  “Mr. Wyatt fixed the carousel,” Margie said, her excitement making her whisper far too loud.

  “Did he, now?” Tessa said. “That’s some good news.”

  “You should put it in the paper,” Maddie suggested, with no idea of the weight of such a remark given this morning’s events.

  “Good news is always worth printing, I’d say.” Tessa gave Marilyn a wink. “We always need more good news.”

  “Welcome one and all,” Pastor Newton announced as he called the congregation to the start of the service. “What a privilege it is to worship amid God’s glory on such a beautiful day.”

  It was a beautiful day. She’d managed to miss that in all her strife and worry. You still have beautiful days ahead waiting for me, Lord. Help me to remember that.

  Marilyn would have liked to say she paid close attention to the service, that she worshipped and sang with the focus it deserved, but that would have been a lie. She mostly survived the time. Each minute she didn’t curl up into a ball felt like a tiny victory. No groundswell of community scorn sw
allowed her up. At Wyatt’s suggestion, she kept her eyes front, not turning to look at the congregation behind her and give any chance for judgmental eyes to cast their shadows. Marilyn drew strength from Wyatt’s presence on the other side of the girls. She allowed herself to feel the warmth of Pauline and Hank beside her, and from Tessa, Greg and the Solos sitting behind her.

  As the final hymn was sung, Marilyn actually felt stronger. Less as if she’d blow away in the slightest wind. As He always had, God had met the three needs she’d asked of Him—well, two of them, anyway. She still couldn’t guarantee that they’d make it out of the service and through the lemonade on the lawn afterward without hearing some barb.

  In fact, that first barb arrived only minutes after the final note of the closing hymn. Norma Binton, a pinch-faced woman Marilyn vaguely remembered from the local drugstore counter, started walking toward her. Even Mom had little patience for Norma, and that was saying something.

  “You ought to—”

  Wyatt abruptly stepped between them. “—turn right back around and go somewhere else,” he finished in a tone that made his intention crystal clear.

  * * *

  Wyatt would could have guessed the first shot across the bow would come from Norma Binton. “Old Biddy Binton” they’d called her even back then, and the years hadn’t mellowed her one bit.

  “I’m not talking to you,” she declared, craning her neck up and peering at him through her ever-present half-moon reading glasses that hung from a beaded chain around her neck. He was inappropriately glad for every inch of the full foot he had over the tiny woman. Her hair was pulled into a bun so tight they used to joke it cut off the circulation to her brain.