Designer Genes (15 page)

Limitless, he
supposed.

On the school
playground, kids were running and screaming under the distracted supervision of
Lilibeth Anderson. She was too intent on peering through a window at Quade
Gardiner to notice Joseph Grimes giving one of his younger sisters a mud bath.

Carter decided
not to intervene. The giggling girl was already about as dirty as she could
get.

Ahead of him,
Buffy held the front end of Mazeppa’s shopping cart as the two women dragged it
up the building’s front steps. Thick blonde hair floated around her face and,
in a demure pink sundress, she looked as pretty as an ice-cream cone on a hot
night.

She’s the
mother of my child.
The thought sent tremors through Carter. He got even
more of a
 
thrill when his daughter’s
gray eyes fixed on his face. Riding securely in a cloth baby carrier on Buffy’s
hip, she reached out toward him. He couldn’t resist striding forward to grasp
her tiny hand.

Other
latecomers rushed past, and he wondered if they were puzzled by his
unaccustomed radiance. How could he help it, in the presence of this miracle,
this discovery that he had a daughter?

“Put your
tongue back in your mouth before you trip over it,” snapped Mazeppa.

Carter blushed
to the roots of his hair. It was just his luck that the wrong person had
noticed.

Inside the
school, the scuffed hallway echoed with the creak of shopping-cart wheels as
the three of them hurried to the kindergarten room. When they entered, they
found a folding partition had been removed between two classrooms, providing an
open space.

The dimensions
might be large, but the furniture wasn’t. When Carter tried to fold himself
into the only unoccupied seat in the front semicircle, he felt like Quade
looked in another of the tot-sized chairs. His knees were inches from his chin
and his cowboy boots stuck out in front like clodhoppers.

Horace
Popsworthy, who had put on a few pounds in recent years, had stuffed himself in
so tightly that Carter expected him to go sproing! and explode from his chair
at any moment. The man’s expression of offended dignity, however, precluded any
friendly joshing.

The audience
wasn’t having a much easier time of it. Some, like the well-rounded Gigi, had
wisely remained standing.

As Billy Dell
had told them, Mimsy sat on the crafts table beside Willie, who held her
protruding abdomen as if afraid it might escape. At least there was no huffing
or groaning, the way there’d been in church that fateful day of the Jezebel
sermon.

Buffy appeared
at home in her little chair with Allie perched on the writing surface. Mazeppa
headed straight for some odd-looking fritters on a table at the rear of the
room.

Quade tapped
his gavel on his armrest. “As most of you know, a pipe burst in the auditorium
today, which is why we’re meeting in here. This points up the urgency of
raising funds by the start of the fiscal year.”

From Carter’s
right, Finella said, “We’re raking it in with our dress-sale fund-raiser. For
those of you who haven’t heard, be sure to stop by Murchison’s Garage tomorrow.
We’ll have plenty of new merchandise.”

“Thank you,”
Quade said. “I’m sure we all appreciate the effort. However, I doubt even you
hardworking ladies can raise millions of dollars before the first of July.”

“A lot of us
have tornado shelters that we don’t use much,” noted Gigi. “We could rent them
out.”

Mazeppa
groaned, a sound that bordered on a Bronx cheer.

“What about
distance learning?” said B. K. Anderson, the druggist. “Universities are
putting their courses on line. Kids love gadgets. Why not teach them that way?
We could put our money into computers instead of a school building.”

“Distance
learning for five-year-olds?” scoffed Willie. “I have one that can’t sit still
more than ten minutes in the whole day. It doesn’t compute.”

From around
the room came murmurs of agreement.

“We could take
out a mortgage on City Hall,” Horace suggested. “A fine big place like that
ought to be worth a few million.”

“To who?”
asked Billy Dell.

“Renting out
City Hall would present a jurisdictional problem,” noted Quade, one of the few
men in town who could pronounce “jurisdictional.” “School and city funds are
separate. It would be illegal to mix them.”

“Says who?”
demanded Popsworthy. “As the future mayor, I say it’s just fine. I am running
unopposed, aren’t I?” He glared at Quade.

“Even if
you’re elected, you wouldn’t have the authority to—”

“What do you
mean, if?” roared the store owner. “It’s true then? You’re planning to run
against me?”

“It never
entered my mind,” Quade said.

“It ought to,”
griped Mazeppa, and held up one of Finella’s fritters. “First thing you should
do is outlaw these here science experiments from being offered as
combustibles.”

“Comestibles,”
said Gigi.

“Well, they
aren’t edible,” the bag lady continued. “Finella, I’m a big fan of your Spring
Salad, but the good Lord did not mean for us to create mutant fritters out of
mashed potatoes and chocolate chips.”

Willie Grimes
let out a guffaw that degenerated into a gasp. “Good heavens!” she cried. “My
baby’s dropping and we haven’t even chosen a name yet!”

Along the rows
of tiny chairs, large foreheads wrinkled in concern. Carter knew people were
worried less about the imminent birth than about what name Willie might seize
upon.

“You cain’t
give birth yet!” cried Cissy Leroy. “Oh, what did I say? I mean, you...you
can’t
!”

“Watch your
mouth, Cissy, or I’ll take a cane to you,” snapped JoJo Anderson. “I mean, a
stick!”

“Stuff it, all
of you.” Relinquishing her shopping cart, Mazeppa helped Mimsy hoist Willie to
her feet. “Listen here, young lady. You name that baby whatever you wish, and
if the rest of us don’t like it, we’ll bestow a nickname on the little guy.”

“Like what?
Candy?” called some joker.

Carter
couldn’t identify the culprit. Candy Cain, indeed.

“Thank you,
Zeppa.” Willie nodded weakly.

Billy Dell
leaped to join his wife as she tottered out of the classroom. The last thing
Carter heard was Mazeppa saying, “I’ll watch your little ones tonight, so don’t
worry about them.”

After they
left, Quade rapped for order. “Let’s get back to the subject, please.”

“
You
get back to the subject,” ordered Popsworthy. “Are you running against me or
not?”

“Say yes!”
shouted George Weinbucket.

“Y’all know
something?” drawled Bobette Moriarty, who rarely drove in from her ranch but,
when she did, enjoyed stirring things up. “I’ll vote for you, Quade, if you’ll
change the name of this town. We’d have a better chance of gettin’ us some
funds if people weren’t always makin’ jokes about Nowhere Junction.”

A shocked
silence greeted this proposal. If she’d meant to put Quade on the spot, she
couldn’t have found a touchier subject.

He sidestepped
her comment neatly. “Seeing as a lot of people around here are such baseball
fans, maybe we could call ourselves Major League, Texas,” he joked.

“Major
League?” Judging by Horace’s relish, he apparently believed he was about to
squash his rival into road kill. “A little place like this? The best we could
call it would be Minor League, and who wants to say they’re from Minor League,
Texas?”

“Who-all wants
to say they’re from Nowhere Junction?” replied Bobette.

“Me, for one,”
cried Gigi.

Carter was beginning
to worry that they might be in for a free-for-all, or possibly a food fight
with Finella’s fritters as the weapon of choice, when Billy Dell popped back
into the room.

“Miz Buffy,
would you mind joining us?” he said. “Willie gets hysterical when she’s in
labor and complains that nobody understands what she’s going through. Since you
yourself recently had a baby, maybe you could reassure her.”

All eyes
riveted on the slender woman rising from her seat. “Of course.” Buffy scooped
Allie into her arms. “Carter, would you mind taking her?”

His mouth
tried to form a series of nonchalant replies but none of them took hold, so he
merely nodded. He could hear speculation ripple through the audience as he
accepted the baby and Buffy whisked out.

The meeting was
dissolving into chaos. Even Quade could read the writing, or perhaps it was the
block printing, on the wall. “We’re obviously not going to solve this problem
tonight. Please, all of you, give some thought to the future of our school.”

As everyone
rose to leave, Finella shot Carter a sympathetic smile. “Could you use a lesson
in diapering?” she asked. “Buffy may be gone for a while.”

“Yes, ma’am,”
he said in relief. “I sure could.”

*

Buffy’s feet ached by
the time she stumbled home shortly after midnight. What a proud idiot she’d
been to wear strappy sandals with stacked heels to the school board meeting.
After hours of standing around a labor and delivery room, they dug into her
skin and cramped her arches.

Otherwise,
everything had gone splendidly, despite the agonizing screams of the mother. In
between hollering, Willie had apologized, and brightened when Buffy assured her
that movie stars screeched even louder and swore like truck drivers. How Buffy
could possibly know such a thing hadn’t occurred to her, and a white lie seemed
justified under the circumstances.

If Allie did
indeed stay in Nowhere Junction, she’d have a playmate only six months younger,
a little girl named May Zeppa Grimes.

Buffy wished
she could see Mazeppa’s face when she learned about the name Willie had chosen.
It occurred because Mimsy and Billy couldn’t stop talking about her comments at
the meeting and laughing over her disgust with Finella’s latest culinary
concoction.

All evening,
Willie had heard Mazeppa this, Mazeppa that. The name had stuck in her mind,
blotting out the Biblical succession that might otherwise have prevailed.

Speaking of
Zeppa, it was a relief to see the shopping cart stowed in the living room.
“That was nice of Carter to bring it home for her,” Buffy told her sore feet.

Her toes
curled, urging her to remove the shoes. Buffy, however, wasn’t eager to turn on
a light, and with only the faint moonglow to guide her, decided not to risk a
smashed toe.

“You can
handle it,” she told her pedal portions, and went in search of her daughter.

Her feet
winced as she left the carpeted front room for the hard wooden floor of the
hallway. Buffy peered into her own room first. The portable crib was empty.

Approaching
Carter’s room, she nearly stumbled over Rover, who formed a large shapeless
mound on the floor. His only response was a sleepy “oof.”

Carter’s door
stood open. Moonlight streaming through the window highlighted two intertwined
shapes beneath rumpled covers. Allie’s little head rested on Carter’s arm, and
his large frame curved around her protectively.

Tears pricked
Buffy’s eyes at this simple, physical demonstration of love between father and
daughter. Although she’d never experienced such a relationship, she recognized
instantly how precious it was.

Now that she’d
seen this tableau, she couldn’t take Allie away. And she refused to be parted
from her daughter. Somehow or other, Buffy had to stay in Nowhere Junction.

Through misty
eyes, she studied the man in the bed. In the warm air, he’d left his pajama top
unbuttoned so it fell open, revealing the firm contours of his chest. Someone
ought to run her hands over it, and soon.

As long as she
planned to stay, Buffy needed to find out if this fierce, tender man could
possibly love her. Because she might, just might, be falling in love with him.
And she didn’t want to go there alone.

*

By the time
Buffy awoke, Carter had gone to work and Mazeppa had returned from visiting her
namesake in the hospital. She rocked Allie in one arm and beamed like a
lighthouse while fixing toaster waffles for breakfast.

“I won’t say
May Zeppa’s cuter than this little darling, because that isn’t possible,” the
woman chortled. “There’s a special quality about her, though.”

“There sure
is,” Buffy said, although in truth she’d caught only a glimpse of a
disgruntled, red-faced newborn before she was whisked away for a checkup.

“First
goddaughter I ever had,” the older woman confided. “That makes it a doubly
blessed event.”

“Blessed all
the way around,” Buffy agreed.

They’d
scarcely finished eating when Finella arrived with a trunkful of new dresses
that the talented seamstresses had whipped up overnight. As they hung them in
front of the garage, Buffy noted with relief that Finella and Mazeppa were able
to work side by side without quarreling.

Buyers began
arriving by truck, car, horseback, foot and, in one case, tractor. Elbow-deep
in axle grease, Carter paid them scant attention. Buffy did see him glance at
his daughter’s playpen from time to time, though.

She kept busy
waiting on customers. They consulted her about colors and styles, and several
ladies special-ordered dresses. She valued the custom orders highly, since,
unlike ready-made stock, there was no danger of garments being left unsold.

In any case,
they sold everything on hand by midafternoon, netting over two hundred dollars
for Buffy’s share. Most of it was earmarked for auto repairs, but she splurged
at the grocery store on steak, baked potatoes and ice cream for Murdock’s
visit.

Her only
regret was that she’d had no time alone with Carter. She was eager to tell him
about her change of plans. She was even more eager to see his reaction.

Would he
welcome her decision to stay in town? Might he offer to help her find a job?
Above all, did he regard Buffy as merely an accidental coparent or as something
more?