At Home in Mossy Creek Read online

  “Missing?” Katie’s reporter instincts sprang into action. “What’s that name again?”

  “His name is Nikoli. He doesn’t speak much English. In fact he doesn’t even belong with this troop. Seems he was with a family of animal trainers who are being returned to Russia. The boy decided he didn’t want to go back home to the youth facility he was being sent to. His relatives left him with a friend in the Cirque d’Europa troop in the hope the Russian authorities would forget about him.”

  Katie was nothing if not a defender of the lost and wounded. She folded her arms across her chest as if she were daring Amos to argue. “Youth facility?”

  Amos nodded. “Nikoli has other talents, including picking pockets and petty theft. The owner of the animals was tired of the trouble Nikoli caused after his mother died. Arrangements were being made by immigration on this side and the Russian counterpart on the other. He’s too old to go to a children’s center so it’s a military training facility for him.”

  “And ‘military facility’ in Russia means becoming a soldier,” I said. “I’ve heard about those facilities. Can’t our government do something to help him?”

  “Problem is, he’s helping himself. Last week he stole a bird from a pet shop in Atlanta. He also took a box of Valentine candy and the heart-shaped necklace the shop’s owner had hidden in the candy for his wife. The parrot’s on the endangered species list. And Nikoli seems bound and determined to add himself to that list.”

  Katie scribbled madly. “Poor kid. How did they know that Nikoli was the thief?”

  “He left a trail of candy wrappers and bird seed to the Cirque d’Europa bus.”

  “Why don’t you just forget about it?” I asked. “Once their bus is repaired, he can go with this group and Russia will have one less youth to corrupt.”

  “Breaking the law is breaking the law,” Amos said. “Besides, what I would or wouldn’t do doesn’t matter. I don’t think Dwight Truman will ignore the fact we have a thief running amuck in Mossy Creek.” Dwight was the local Chamber president. Not a relaxed guy. The chief eyed Katie for a moment. “Word is bound to get out. I’m not going to find him without some help.”

  “You’re darned right.” Katie gave me a conspiratorial look and slapped her note pad shut. “I’ll pass the word,” she said and started toward the newspaper office. She stopped and turned back to make one last comment to Amos and me. “Don’t forget, we expect both of you at tomorrow night’s Sweethearts’ Dance. Bring Emily, Sagan. Amos, bring . . . uh, well, uh . . . whoever you can think of. “As Amos’s expression went grim she clamped her mouth shut and hurried away. Amos nodded curtly to me and drove off.

  Sweetheart’s Dance? Bring Emily? That was one of the things I was struggling with. I’d spent the last month on sweat-lodge vision quests and wilderness medication searching for answers. I liked Emily and we’d become sort of a couple. But did I want to spend the rest of my life with her?

  In a city, we’d simply move in together and see where it went. Here, everyone would start planning our wedding. The good-natured pressure would mount until Emily and I gave up and set a date. Mossy Creek already had one notorious pair of live-in’s in the Salter clan, Sue Ora Salter Bigelow and her husband, John Bigelow, who were officially separated but continued to see each other frequently. Creekites accepted their situation.

  Maybe it was because of their son, Willie, who seemed content with the part-time arrangement which allowed John’s car to remain parked at Sue Ora’s house overnight about once or twice a month. Maybe being married made their avant garde relationship okay, but I doubted Creekites would let me and Emily off the matrimonial hook.

  I cranked my Harley, replaced my helmet and headed for Colchik Mountain where my little house clung to a ridge. If anyone has asked, I would have denied the warm feeling that came over me when I saw my cabin. But an unmistakable sense of peace settled inside me. I was home.

  Louise

  I DO, THEREFORE I am. I realize that’s not precisely what Descartes said, but he was a man. He could sit around all day thinking, because Mrs. Descartes was going to the market for his food and fixing it, cleaning up after him, washing and ironing his lace ruffs, and bearing his children. I could go on, but you get the idea.

  If there were any little Descartes, Mme. Descartes was also running around after them telling them not to make noise because Daddy was thinking. How nice for him.

  While I’m misquoting, here’s another. Some are born to nurture, some become nurturers, and some have nurturing thrust upon them. I don’t know whether I’m misquoting Benjamin Franklin or Stevie Wonder, actually. I just know I belong in the third category. I definitely had nurturing thrust upon me.

  I am good at it. I’ve been married for nearly forty years, and the other day after Charlie came in from a wintry golf game down in Bigelow that ended in an ice-cold downpour, he asked me how to turn on the washing machine, so he could toss his filthy golf socks in. A whole load for one pair of socks. I ask you.

  Charlie is a graduate engineer. He can create production lines where none were before, but he didn’t know how to turn on the washing machine?

  Whose fault is that? Mine, of course. He still sets his dirty dishes on top of the dishwasher instead of inside, and when he reaches for a clean shirt in his closet, he expects one to jump into his hand.

  He does put his dirty clothes in the hamper. I picked them up off the floor for six months after we were married, then one day I decided to leave them where they were until he ran out.

  When he reached for that clean shirt and found nothing but empty hangers, he had a fit. I told him I’d done the laundry already. I showed him the empty laundry hamper, smiled sweetly, and went to lunch at Hamilton Inn with Eleanor. She and Zeke have been married for years. She’s full of good advice on husbands.

  When I came home, his dirty clothes were in the hamper. Not washed, of course, but picked up. I should have continued with the lesson, except that he would have washed my coral pink linen shirt in with his shorts and been furious when he had to wear peach undershorts. So I took the line of least resistance and did the wash myself.

  Men have figured out through the millennia that if your mate asks you to do something you don’t want to do, screw it up. She’ll never ask you again.

  Maybe things have changed. My daughter’s big ol’ husband can do the laundry, even run the vacuum cleaner. But only after she asks him. My generation, however, the peri-Betty Friedan group—wants to be equal, but feels guilty about it.

  Because who would want us around if we didn’t do? And keep doing?

  I worked as a secretary, complete with coffee-making and toting duties, until our daughter was born, but Charlie reminds me from time to time I’ve never had a real job since. I suppose he means I haven’t been paid to run General Motors.

  During those years, however, I have been president of the Altar Guild and the Women of the Church at least a dozen times, been room mother at my daughter’s school for ten of her twelve grades, run the PTA and the garden club, baked enough oatmeal cookies and chocolate chip cupcakes and coconut sheet cakes to give the entire state of Georgia a sugar high. That’s just for starters.

  I’ve also been the perfect corporate wife for Charlie.

  The second year we were married I also took over our finances. Charlie would leave the mail unopened on the end of the piano. In my family we do not open mail addressed to other people—not even spouses or children.

  Because I was home all day, I was the one who had to field the irate calls from the utility company and the telephone company and the car company because the payments were overdue. I considered letting the phone and the utilities get cut off and Charlie’s car get repossessed, but I lost my nerve.

  So for nearly forty years I have paid the bills, kept the checkbook, and desperately tried to keep track of Charlie’s expenses.
He never writes check stubs. He says we’ll have copies of the checks at the end of the month. He can keep track of millions of dollars of other people’s money, of course. He’s only cavalier with ours.

  To his credit, he never questions what I spend. He isn’t a lazy slob, either. He builds beautiful wood cabinets, mows the yard, changes light bulbs. You know, guy things. Now that he’s retired, however, he mostly plays golf.

  I know this has been a long preamble. I promise there’s a kicker.

  I recently had my yearly mammogram, always a fun event.

  And on Friday morning, the Friday of Valentine’s Day weekend, I got a call. Something didn’t look quite right. Could I come back for another mammogram and an ultra-sound? Possibly a needle biopsy? First thing Monday morning?

  Probably nothing, but . . .

  I don’t think I actually choked until I hung up the phone, then I sat down on the floor and shook. My adrenaline was pumping so hard I’m surprised I didn’t have a stroke right there. My skin felt dry and clammy at the same time, and every nerve jangled. I never knew what that meant before. Now I do. The electrical current was like being hit with a Taser.

  When you hear “probably nothing,” you think “undoubtedly something,” don’t you? Of course you do. Me, too.

  I know we all have to die. We all want to die with a minimum of fuss and pain and with mind and body intact at say—a hundred and ten. I’ve nursed the dying. Dying is nasty, brutish, ugly, undignified, and smells bad. Those who are in the throes of chemo or radiation throw up, use bedpans which have to emptied, mess up sheets that have to be changed, and frequently get crazier than Cooter Brown from the drugs.

  Oh, if I were dying Charlie would talk a good game, and he’d try desperately to be nice to me, at least in the beginning. Pretty quickly, however, he’d toss my ugly butt into a hospice and visit me regularly once a week while he surfed the net for twenty-year-old mail-order Russian brides to take my place. It’s not that he doesn’t love me. He loves the me I am now. If I became another me, I think he’d be horrified.

  I’m being flippant because I’m scared. The reality is that Charlie could never handle looking after me, psychologically. A couple of years ago the wife of one of his golfing buddies had a radical mastectomy. Charlie said the guy sat in the clubhouse and sobbed because every time he looked at his wife’s wounds and scars he ran to the bathroom to throw up. He couldn’t bear to touch her, even to comfort her. And she knew.

  She’s doing fine now, but I think all that guilt is why he died of a massive heart attack a year afterwards. I don’t want that to happen to Charlie. He would try to look after me, try to keep me from seeing how appalling he found cleaning up vomit or worse, changing dressings, even helping me to the bathroom.

  My daughter? She already has her hands full with her big husband and those two wild boys.

  My friends? They have their own families. We can’t afford nurses.

  If I can’t do, then what good am I? Who do I become if I have to be done for?

  While I sat on the floor shaking with my hand still on the phone, the darned thing rang. I snatched it to my ear. Please, Lord, let it be the clinic calling back to say they made a mistake in the X-rays!

  “Louise, honey, Ida is bringing over your houseguest as we speak.”

  “House guest?” Oh, Lord, I had forgotten. That weird bunch of circus types who were stranded in Mossy Creek for the weekend. Had I actually agreed to house one of them for two days? These two days?

  I wanted to say, “No, I can’t do that, I’m probably dying.” Then, I figured having someone under foot that I actually had to look after might keep me from thinking too much about Monday. “When?”

  “I’m guessing she’s pulling up in front of the house now. Look out your front window.”

  I hung up the phone and went to greet my guest.

  Peggy

  I HAVE BEEN celibate since my husband died several years ago. I never expect a man to make love to me again. I don’t miss the sex per se. After all, there are perfectly good alternatives. Sex isn’t all there is about making love, however. I miss the touch of his hand, his scent, that wonderful feeling of closeness afterwards when I snuggled against his shoulder, and he held me. I think those tender moments are the only time men really let down their guards.

  One of my male friends says all men really want is to roll over and go to sleep. I never felt that.

  Since he died, I’ve missed the casual touch of his hand on my hair as he passed behind my chair, the comfortable kisses in the morning and evening, knowing that I could reach out at night and touch his sleeping body. Fireworks are delightful, but fleeting. The constant awareness of another human being to whom you matter, and who matters to you, is not.

  I miss the shared memories most of all.

  I’ve decided this is a normal stage of my life. I am over sixty, after all. How much over is none of your business. Men my age are bedding twenty-five year olds. I am a grandmother, an incompetent but enthusiastic gardener, a voracious reader, and I have a wonderful circle of friends, mostly widows or what used to be called spinsters. Nasty word.

  At my age in most societies I would either be considered fodder for the wolves and leopards or a wise woman imparting arcane knowledge to my tribe.

  Wise I am not. And the last time I checked, north Georgia was fresh out of leopards and wolves, thank God. So I have taught myself contentment.

  Or so I thought.

  Why Carlyle Payton couldn’t leave me happily doddering toward my grave, I don’t know. He is, after all, a good ten years younger than I am. An old friend, a colleague I knew casually when I was still teaching at the University of Tennessee. He is a world-renowned botanist. We met again over the Bigelow County garden club contest, in which my poison garden beat out Ardaleen Hamilton Bigelow’s illicit opium poppies and won the contest for Mossy Creek.

  When Carlyle called me a couple of months later and took me to dinner, I figured he was being kind to a lonely old lady. We had a great time, and have continued to enjoy dinners, movies and plays at the university. We have become real friends. I thought that was enough.

  Not that I feel old. Inside, I suspect we never age past sixteen. If I look younger than my age, it’s not by forty years, so I don’t fit into those twenty-somethings men are after.

  The age difference isn’t actually that important. The gulf between thirteen and twenty is as wide as the Grand Canyon. Between forty-five and sixty-five—once we are all adults—the gulf is more like a tiny creek that can be stepped over.

  I am not concerned with the morality, either. We are both consenting adults. My issue is esthetics. I have a friend who spends two weeks each year in a nudist club. She is my age and probably wears a size twenty-two. The other nudists are equally ordinary. She says it doesn’t matter because the naked human body is a beautiful thing.

  Not necessarily. Frankly, the mind boggles. I probably look pretty good for my age, but I do not look twenty. My belly is not flat, my boobs are not perky, and I have enough cellulite to stuff a mattress—well, at least a sofa cushion.

  I am amazed when women on television and in the movies strip and jump on men they met twenty minutes earlier. They are absolutely certain the guys will be receptive. Granted, the women are generally young and beautiful, but even at twenty I would never have had the nerve.

  Now, frankly, the thought of revealing my naked body to a man, any man, goes way beyond boggling my mind.

  Not that Carlyle’s a great beauty, either. He’s a couple of inches shorter than I am, and although he’s not what I would call fat, he’s burly. Good word.

  He wears an aging tweed jacket and rotates a couple of silk Repp ties that have been cleaned so many times the stripes are downright pastel. He doesn’t trim his gray beard often enough, and what hair that remains on his head is tonsured like a
monk’s.

  But men never seem to be concerned about their looks. Someone, I think it was Noel Coward, said, with regard to sex, that things should have been organized better. I have never understood voyeurs. I’ve seen my share of porn—it was all the rage on the campus for a while. I think watching other people have sex is hysterically funny. Like viewing copulating frogs.

  Unfortunately, the last time we had dinner, I was stunned to discover that my friend and colleague had undergone a sea change in some mysterious way. When he took my hand, and stared too long into my eyes, I found that my juices still flowed, my heart was capable of speeding up on its own, my throat could still tighten, my skin could still heat up, and I could indeed want him to touch more than my hand.

  I bolted like the lily-livered coward I am.

  He, however, was amused and delighted by my response. And wise enough to let me go. For the moment.

  I agreed to see him on Valentine’s Day. He planned to fix me dinner at his apartment. We all know what that means.

  What was I thinking when I agreed? Victoria’s Secret can only do so much. It was Friday. Valentine’s was Sunday. Could I lose twenty pounds and have my thighs liposuctioned in two days?

  To top it off, I had to spend the weekend hosting a young man from the stranded circus. He did something that entailed soaring around on ropes. When Ida called to solicit my guest room she said he performed aerial ballet. It’s not trapeze. The fact that a young man should be billeted on me, a single woman, showed that our mayor and everyone else in Mossy Creek thought of me as sexually safe.

  No doubt he would, too.

  Eula Mae

  The old gas stove heated the kitchen to a comfortable eighty-five degrees, and I sat snugly against it in my favorite chair, silver mixing bowl between my knees, my great granddaughter Estelle looking intently into the bowl.