A Day in Mossy Creek Read online

  He grinned. I looked at Hank. He looked at me and nodded. It had been a long time since anybody had seen Ed smile.

  “Amos,” Ed said, “I believe that Melvin and I have come up with a solution to our traffic and sidewalk problems.”

  “I’d be glad to hear it, Ed, but don’t you think it could be better addressed at a town council meeting?”

  “Why? We got pretty much everybody from the council right here.”

  Amos ran a hand over his hair. “The thing is, Ed—”

  “Come on, Amos,” Melvin put in. “Don’t you want to at least hear the plan?”

  “All right. I’m game. Tell me.”

  “Wasn’t really our idea,” Ed said, “it was Amelia’s.” This produced murmurs in the crowd, since Amelia was the wife of Pastor Phillips. Everyone turned to stare at her. She waved and smiled from a church booth. Ed grinned. “Smart woman, she is. She looks like my Ellie, when Ellie was young.”

  “I’m listening, Ed,” Amos reminded him.

  “Look around this square. Our founding families were pretty smart people. They made the streets extra-wide. There’s enough room to move the parking lanes out four feet or so. That will give us space to make a bicycle and scooter lane between the parking spots and the sidewalk. Think of the publicity. We even got Dwight Truman on board with the idea. He says Mossy Creek will be the only town he knows that can welcome both the handicapped and the biking clubs.”

  “We’ll put together a volunteer group to paint the new parking lines,” Melvin interjected. “It won’t cost the taxpayers anything. And think of the new business it will bring in. Buses full of retirees with their wheelchairs and scooters.”

  You didn’t have to be a psychic to see that Amos was thinking this might work. “Sounds good to me, but you’ll have to run this past the mayor. I don’t know where she is today.” Amos spotted Ingrid across the street, leaving her bakery in what appeared to be a hurry. “Ingrid,” he called. “Where’s Ida? I thought she’d be here by now.”

  “I don’t know a thing,” Ingrid said, looking guilty of something. She tucked Bob tail-first into her over-sized purse, then headed down a back alley, clearly rushing to her car. Sandy pivoted to watch Ingrid with the intensity of a curly-blonde hawk. Something was up, something involving Ingrid and Ida and who-knew-who-else.

  Amos frowned, then turned his attention back to the scooter brigade. “Without the mayor on hand—”

  “I’m right here,” Ida said.

  Well, she wasn’t right there, exactly, but she was on the screen of Bert Lymon’s laptop computer. He held it up for everyone to see. “She text-messaged me,” Bert explained. “I told her to hold her cell phone up and look into its camera. Then I put her on-line. Wireless technology is wonderful.”

  Amos frowned at Ida’s suspicious lack of bodily presence. “Mayor? Where are you? Why don’t you hop in a car and just drive on up to the square? We’ll wait.”

  “I’ve got cookies in the oven.”

  “You don’t bake.”

  “I’ve taken it up. The Food Channel seduced me.”

  “Oh?” Amos studied her shrewdly. “Do you bake outdoors, dressed in a business suit, standing beside your Corvette? Because it looks like that’s where you are.”

  “Are we here to discuss my baking habits? Or Irene’s mission?”

  “Hurry it up, Mayor, Chief,” Bert interjected. “I’m on battery power.”

  Ida smiled sweetly. “Thank you, Bert. I hereby convene this impromptu meeting of the Mossy Creek town council. I like Ed and Melvin’s suggestion about the scooter lane. I wasn’t aware of how many of our citizens owned their own scooters.”

  “Mayor, they really aren’t ours—yet,” Ed admitted. “When the manufacturers heard about what we were planning, they loaned them to us. Ain’t it wonderful? We get to keep them, too, if Mossy Creek puts in the scooter lane and we agree to be in a Medicare commercial.”

  Ida gave a thumbs-up. “Good work. Is Casey Blackshear there?”

  “Right here, Mayor,” I said.

  “What do you think of a scooter lane, Casey?”

  As the only person on a scooter who wasn’t in the protest, I said, “Let’s ask Aunt Irene.”

  Ed took Aunt Irene’s hand. “You tell them, Rene.”

  “You know,” Irene said, “Everybody always says that Mossy Creek is ‘the town that ain’t goin’ nowhere and don’t want to.’ That’s the town motto, even. I think what that means is that you all welcome the world to Mossy Creek, in person and in spirit. Including the ones of us who can’t walk anymore.”

  A number of people began wiping their eyes and sniffling. She had them crying.

  Ida winced. “Okay. That’s enough of a discussion for me. Have we got a majority of the town council on hand?”

  “Yes, Mayor,” Hank answered.

  “Then let’s vote.”

  Hank said loudly, “I move to approve the new scooter lane.”

  “I second that,” said councilman Egg Egbert, Ida’s second cousin, from about tenth back in the line of scooters.

  “All those in favor, say, ‘Aye.’”

  Other council members chimed in, and a resounding “Aye,” rang out.

  Cheers and applause filled the air.

  Ida smiled. “Glad that’s settled,” she said, way too cheerfully. “Bye, now. I have to go check my cookies.”

  “Ida. Mayor,” Amos said grimly. “I want to talk to you—”

  “Catch you later, Chief.”

  The screen went dark.

  So did Amos’s expression.

  I had watched that little exchange with great interest. Li wiggled in my lap. “Beep, beep, beep,” she said, as if warning everybody we were backing up.

  I had a feeling Ida was going to need a warning beeper, too. Catch you later, Chief? Not if he caught her first.

  “Three cheers for Irene,” Ed called.

  The cheers went up.

  Irene smiled.

  To think it all came about because Melvin took her to Wal-Mart.

  Mossy Creek Gazette

  Volume IV, No. 1 • Mossy Creek, Georgia

  The Bell Ringer

  Come Early,

  Ready To Rumble

  Biggest Estate Sale Of The New Year

  This Saturday

  by Katie Bell

  Ready, set, shop! You all know how I feel about yard sales. I love yard sales the way a quarterback loves football! Ah, the smell of the turf as I race across a lawn to catch a velveteen painting of a fruit bowl! The roar of the crowd as I knock down three teenagers and an old man on my way to score a vintage Barbie missing only half of her hair!

  Well, folks, put on your helmets and grab your shoulder pads, because Russell King is hosting not just an ordinary old yard sale, but an estate sale of his late Uncle Ernest’s treasures. As we all know, an estate sale is the same as a yard sale, only with fabulous antique junk.

  I’ll be there with my game-face on and my reporting instincts turned to “High gossip.” Because you know what turns a good yard sale into a great yard sale, right?

  The post-game fights.

  Chapter 3

  Christmas comes only once a year, unless you leave your decorations up.

  Blinded by the Lights

  I LIKE FEW THINGS better than a leisurely Saturday morning with the great expanse of the weekend stretching before me, especially when there were bargains to be found on the cold but sunny horizon. I was happy. Never let it be said that yours truly, Patty Campbell, can be bested at a bargain table.

  Old Mr. Ernest King’s nephew and heir, Russell, had decided to conduct an estate sale today, which was unusual for this time of year, but I’m not one to quibble when there are “visionary pieces” to be found. That
’s what my husband Mac and his best friend, Amos Royden, call my flea-market and garage-sale finds. Once I’ve sanded, painted, and sanded some more, these finds transform into treasures. I’ve even sold a few to Mossy Creek’s own interior designer and my good friend, Josie Rutherford.

  But the notice Russell put in the Mossy Creek Gazette brought me more joy than my visionary pieces. The ad said, Bargains galore. Everything Must Go. I knew “everything” included Mr. King’s Christmas light display that had seemed to grow in abundance every year, as if it were a living thing. It wasn’t so much his love of the holiday season that had bothered some Creekites, including me, it was his habit of never taking those lights down. I relished the thought of driving along West Mossy Creek Road without having to view the icicle lights dangling from his gutters, twelve months out of the year, tacky as white shoes after Labor Day.

  Forgetting for a moment that my coffee was missing a necessary ingredient for full enjoyment, I sipped my cup-o-joe without sugar, one of my New Year’s resolutions, and tried not to wince as I waited for the aftertaste to hit me. Splenda wasn’t bad; I would survive.

  Mac, who’s a lawyer specializing in family law, set down the newspaper and eyed me as if he were a wealthy Bigelowan instead of a Creekite, wanting to change his will to spite his relatives. “What’s got you in such a good mood?”

  “I plan to spend part of the morning trolling for visionary pieces at Mr. King’s estate sale.”

  “Maybe your resolution should have been to give up searching for visionary pieces rather than to give up sugar,” Mac said with a twinkle in his deep blue eyes.

  I couldn’t help but smile at his teasing. But removing sugar from my diet was my resolution, and I was sticking to it. The closer I approached forty, the more weight I seemed to gain over the holidays. Being a tiny woman, I can’t hide those extra lumps and bumps that every buttery-sweet cookie packs on my behind. So in a moment of either supreme brilliance or utter stupidity, I gave up refined sugar until I could zip up my favorite pair of jeans without lying on the bed.

  You may wonder what prompted my decision. It was quite simple, really. I saw my hind end when I exited the shower on New Year’s Eve and thought I saw my mother in the mirror. So . . . no pancakes with sorghum syrup on Saturday mornings, no sugar in my coffee, no honey ham, no chocolate. You get the picture.

  I called out to my son, Clay, “Honey, we’re going to leave in about fifteen minutes. Get your shoes laced, your jacket zipped, and I’d better see gloves on your hands and a hat on your precious head.”

  “Aw, Mom, do I have to? The sun’s shining.”

  “Mom” is a simple word, but I don’t ever take it for granted. I blinked away the tears that filled my eyes at the way he’d said “Mom” in that whiny, I’m-irritated-but-I-love-you tone. And at the way he’d knit into the family. It was like he’d always been ours. God had truly blessed us when he made the way smooth for Mac and me to adopt Clay. “It’s cold, honey. You need to keep the top of your head and your ears covered.”

  He groaned as if we’d been having this argument for years. I nearly teared up again.

  Mac rolled his eyes that way men do when they think mothers are being overprotective. Or maybe it was Katie Bell’s Bell Ringer column in the paper. He had it folded over so he could read it. Oh, Mac pretended he never read Katie’s column because he didn’t like gossip, but he read it from opening gambit to the byline at the end.

  Recently, Katie had outdone herself. She’d come up with the brilliant if devious idea of recording all the resolutions spouted at the Hamilton Inn during the New Year’s Eve party. Shortly after publishing the town’s resolutions for one and all to see, she started outing people when their resolutions failed. I had to give her kudos for cleverness. The last time she’d done a piece like this was when she sent out that survey asking Creekites for their deepest, darkest memories to share leading up to the Mossy Creek Reunion.

  More than a few townspeople are unhappy about having their lack of fortitude commented upon in print. Take Eula Mae Whit, for example. Filled with the New Year spirit, she proclaimed to one and all that she planned to stop dipping her favorite peach snuff. Katie caught her with a pinch between her cheek and gum and a plastic spit cup in her apron pocket last Sunday.

  Katie recently enlisted an assistant—Sandy. And Sandy’s so annoyed about Creekites failing in their resolutions only two weeks into the new year, she’s begun to drive everyone crazy making sure they don’t fail.

  “So what sort of visionary pieces are you looking for today?” Mac asked, as I brought my mug of coffee over to the sink to dump.

  “I never know until I see one. Then the ideas come to me.”

  He nodded. “Sort of like a sculptor finding the form in the marble.”

  “Exactly. I knew I married you for some reason. You understand me.”

  “More than you suspect. For example, I understand that looking for visionary pieces makes you happy, but I also know, even if you won’t admit it, you’re in a good mood because you’ll never again have to see Ernest King’s icicle lights hanging off his roof in the middle of July.”

  A twinge of guilt pricked my good mood. I was glad one of the town’s eyesores would be gone, not that Ernest himself was gone. “Is it petty of me?”

  “Yes,” Mac teased. “I still don’t understand why it bothered you and Josie so much, anyway. And don’t launch into an explanation of Feng Shui. It makes about as much sense to me as ‘shabby chick.’”

  I let that one pass. ‘Shabby chick’ was what Mac called my shabby chic slipcover-loving, go-ahead-and-put-your-feet-up-on-the-coffee-table decorating style.

  “And where does playing Beatles music on the bagpipe fit in with making sense?” I asked and was rewarded with a slow, Scotsman’s grin.

  I’D MADE SHORT work of dropping Clay off at the house of his best friend, John Wesley McCready. The boys were pretty much inseparable these days, a bond formed because they’d both lost someone they loved. I hoped they’d stay friends like Mac and Amos had. Having a friend over a lifetime was a precious gift.

  When I arrived at the estate sale, I wasn’t surprised to see Orville Gene Simple there in his ever-present John Deere cap and his favorite overalls. He liked a good bargain, too. Orville was definitely a visionary challenge if I ever saw one. He was a good man, a fair farmer, but he had no sense of fashion, nor did he understand curb appeal. When I drove past his place this morning, I purposely looked away from the hubcap-lined driveway and the commode he uses for a lawn chair. Sue Ora had tried unsuccessfully to convince him to get rid of the toilet, but Orville was a man who’d lived by himself too long.

  I headed toward the icicle lights piled up on a card table about twenty feet from me. I was going to make certain they didn’t fall into the wrong hands. But then I saw a jumble of linens and quilts thrown on a blue plastic tarp. I passed the icicle lights, my eye on the corner of a wedding ring quilt at the bottom of the pile. Katie Bell was making a beeline for the linens and my quilt. But I beat her to it, short legs and all. She snorted at me like a frustrated football tackle. “I’ll out-run you on the next play,” she warned.

  As I examined the fine stitching on the old quilt, so heavy I knew it had real cotton batting, I heard Orville tell Russell that he wanted all of the icicle lights. I tossed the quilt over my shoulder, determined to double Orville’s offer, when I saw a vintage 1940s chenille bedspread under some worn flannel sheets. I had to have it for the guest room.

  “Deal!” I heard Mr. King’s nephew say, and I turned back toward the card table with the icicle lights, my heart pounding like I was in Argie’s aerobics class.

  “You got the fasteners to go with ‘em?” Orville asked.

  “No, sir,” Russell said. “But you’re welcome to climb up and get them off the gutters yourself.”

  No way was I going to allow Orville
to bring those icicle lights home. He’d probably hang them over his commode. “Hey!” I shouted, then waved and smiled.

  Orville looked over at me and frowned. “Morning, Mrs. Campbell.”

  “I was wondering if you would do me a favor?”

  “Depends on what the favor is.”

  “How about selling me those icicle lights?” I didn’t bat my eyelashes, but I thought about it.

  “Nope.”

  “Come on, Orville. Clay’s always wanted some, and I waited too long to pick any up during the after-Christmas sales. All the stores are out.” I gave him my tried-and-true, sad-puppy-dog eyes, the expression I learned from Butler, our black lab.

  Orville narrowed his gaze and sized me up, which didn’t take long. “Drive Clay by the house, then.”

  “I’ll double what you paid,” I offered.

  “No, thank you.” He glanced at the gutters, then checked his wristwatch. “I don’t have time to climb up and get them fasteners. I gotta go down to Bigelow and spend the whole afternoon loading some lumber I bought. So I’ll just go by Derbert Koomer’s after I leave here, and buy some new ones.”

  Besides being stubborn, Orville was odd. Most people would have taken the money I offered, and if they didn’t, they would just wait until the next fall, during the after-Thanksgiving Day sales, to buy Christmas light fasteners. Thanksgiving was ten months away. Why would he need the fasteners now?

  About an hour later, as I was driving home, pleased as could be with the old pie safe, two quilts, and chenille bedspread I’d bought for me, and the stack of Beatles albums I’d bought for Mac, I found out why Orville needed the Christmas light fasteners right away. I made the mistake of slowing down as I approached the Simple farm. It’s like a wreck on the interstate, you can’t stop yourself from taking a peek.