Lila Blue (7 page)

"No, I'm okay. I just wondered
why I couldn't find it."

"Okay, sweetheart. I'll be
home around six. Call again if you need anything."

I was not okay. Honestly, I was
fine for about three minutes after I hung up, and then I was not fine. I was
restless, agitated, and annoyed. If my mother had given me a little advance
notice about sending me to this unbelievable summer camp experience, maybe I
could have gotten myself used to the idea. I could have called Lila on the
phone and asked a long list of questions before coming, such as running water?
electricity? English spoken? That way I could have been prepared.

A thorough list of questions
wouldn't have been much help though, because television was like air. Who
thinks to ask if they have air in Oregon?

Okay, I told myself. I can do this.
My mom said two weeks, so that means nine more days without TV. I'll live.

To still the silence, I went
upstairs to explore the loaded bookcases there. I chose a book from the top
shelf and took it down to the couch in front of the ocean. I was well into
The
White Dragon
when I heard Lila come in through the kitchen door, and my
panic over the lack of television had evaporated.

The next day, I packed the dragon rider
book in my backpack and went to the village with Lila. We'd walked on the beach
after breakfast in a misty rain, and before work, she took me for lunch at
Happy Hearts, a soup and salad place across from her barbershop. I had corn
chowder, which was different from any soup I’d ever eaten before, but good.
After lunch, we had time to visit some of the other Rainbow Village shops.

Everyone knew Lila, of course, and
she introduced me to the shop owners. They all welcomed me and said I could
come by to visit anytime.

It seemed to be normal to have a
shop pet, or maybe it was so wet outdoors that all the animals went wherever
their owners went. Next door to the soup place was Rainy Hardware, where a huge
red and turquoise parrot yelled, "What's up, Buster?" when we entered
the store. He squawked, "Mind your own business!" when I approached
him. He was pacing back and forth on a long gnarled driftwood branch, and his
area had signs posted everywhere saying,
Beware of Bird
, Danger, Keep
Away, Don't Trust Parrot, No Children Allowed,
and
Hide your Fingers.

I kept my hands to myself and
followed Lila to the back of the store where there was a shelf full of
television sets, all tuned to different stations with the volumes low. Across
from them were some beat up armchairs, a few occupied.

"Mark comes here when he
misses having TV," Lila said. "He likes the game shows, because he
usually gets the answers before the contestants do."

"I prefer reading," I
said, not wanting Lila to think I was like her grandson, even though I nearly
always got the answers right. Besides, no matter how desperate I was, I'd never
sit in a hardware store and watch TV. How tacky, my Grandma Betty would say.

"I prefer reading, too,"
said Lila, and she smiled at me.

"When do they come?" I
asked. "Your grandchildren."

"They spend July fourth with
their parents in Idaho, and then around mid July they all come to the beach for
a few days. The family stays at the resort down the road, and when their
parents go home, the boys stay with me for a time. The resort has a big indoor
pool, and Jamie loves the water. He's my little water bug."

"I'm a good swimmer," I
said, then blushed to catch myself bragging.

"I'm not at all surprised,
Cassandra. Your daddy loved the water."

My dad. There he was again.
"Was his last name Blue?"

"Yes," she said, and she
studied my face as if wondering how much information I wanted. "His full
name was David Alexander Blue. He always went by David, never Dave or
Davy."

We went to the two shops on the
other side of the soup place next, Kitty Lynn's Yarn Shop and The Salty Dog
Taffy Company. Kitty Lynn was a big blonde woman dressed all in pink. She was
about fifty but she sounded like a little girl. She sat behind the counter, and
beside her on a low shelf in a big straw basket was her dog Oleander. Before he
lifted his head, I thought he was a pile of messy white yarn. His eyes were
covered with long hair, and he seemed to see with his square black nose. When
Lila said hi to him, he stood up, yawned, turned around a few times, and
plopped back down in his basket.

"Please forgive his
manners," Kitty Lynn said. "His arthritis is acting up."

"At least he doesn't scream,
'Mind your own business!'" I said. They laughed.

"Buster," Kitty Lynn
said.

I nodded.

"Believe the signs," she
said. "That old criminal should not be allowed in public."

Next we went to The Salty Dog Taffy
Company, where of course there was a real dog, even though it was a candy shop.
You'd think people would worry about dog hair in their taffy.

Sailor, who Lila told me was a
golden retriever, wasn't technically in the store, because she stayed in the
backroom, where she had a big bed on the floor by the back door. From her bed
she could see who came in the front of the store. Lila went back to scratch the
dog's ears. "Sailor likes to keep her eye on things, don't you,
girl," she said. Sailor looked at Lila with big adoring brown eyes, but
she stopped at the threshold of the main part of the shop when Lila came back
to stand by me.

Kim and Les, two women about my
mom's age, owned The Salty Dog. When I told Lila I wanted to send a bag of taffy
to Shelly, she said Kim and Les would ship it for me.

"Come across the highway to my
place when you're done here, Cassandra," Lila said as she headed out.
"I need to give Herbert a break. Looks like a busy day at the shop."

After Lila left, Kim said, "Your
grandmother is the most amazing person. We love her. Tell me," she said.
"What do you think of our little beach town so far?"

I told her about Lila's house and
about my mom in Sacramento and about Shelly in Wisconsin. Kim was so easy to
talk to, I babbled on and on. She reminded me of my first grade teacher. She
was small, dark haired, soft spoken and very sweet. What a perfect person to
make candy!

Les, who was more my size and
coloring, was working in the taffy machine area, so she simply called out "Welcome
to The Salty Dog" and waved and smiled. She waved at the people lined up
outside the shop, too. There was an outside viewing ledge along the front by
the sidewalk, where little kids could stand up high enough to see everything
that was going on in the shop. A couple of families were watching the candy
making process from out there.

The taffy machines were straight
out of Willy Wonka. Thick ropes of pink taffy were looped around metal arms
that twisted and pulled at the candy ropes until they were the right
consistency to be mechanically snipped off onto individual waxed papers. A
machine wrapped each piece and twisted its endpapers, and the final wrapped
candies fell down a chute into a big deep tray.

While Kim was listening to my
entire life story, she'd replace the full tray with an empty one then dump the
candies from the first tray into a big white bin. Identical bins lined three
sides of the sales area, and each had its own calligraphy sign naming the
flavor of the taffy it held.

There must have been forty or fifty
different flavors, all with exotic names like Root Beer Float, Lavender Blush,
Fantasy Fudge, Miners' Mint, Ugly Undertow, Pumpkin Pie, Tickle Me Pink, Sea
Foam, Blueberry Kiss, Midnight Brandy, Captain Black, Chocolate Riptide, and Mermaid's
Tears. Just reading the names filled me up.

I twirled around wondering how in
the world I was going to choose what to send to Shelly, or even what to try for
myself. Kim was used to first timers, though, and she talked me through it.

"Most of our business is mail
order," she told me as she pointed to the three most popular sizes of
shipping boxes.

I had my backpack with all my
money, so I decided it would be fun to send Shelly and her gaggle of cousins
the biggest size. She was always buying me things, and I never knew what to get
for her. Saltwater taffy would be perfect.

"Good choice," Kim said
when I chose the largest size. She set up the box on a square shopping cart
that could be rolled around at bin level, then lined the box with a clear
plastic bag. Handing me a scoop, she said, "Here you go, Cassandra. Have
fun!"

By then, several other people had
come into the shop. They all seemed as fascinated as I was by the taffy machines
and the array of choices.

Choosing the candies was fun. At
first I scooped only three or four from each bin, being sure to include some of
every flavor, but after I'd been to every bin, the bottom of the box was barely
covered. Then I loosened up and started adding full scoops of the flavors I
thought Shelly would love best, mainly ones with chocolate or mint or berries.
Shelly practically worshipped raspberries, so I included three full scoops of
Raspberry Rapture. I topped the box off with scoops of Vanilla Bean, Brown
Sugar, Peanut Delight, Bubble Gum, Honey Bear, and Lucky Lemon, for the people
who might not be crazy about chocolate.

Before she sealed the box, Kim put
in several copies of a glossy Salty Dog flyer that listed all the flavor names.
I could imagine Shelly checking off each one to make sure I had sent her a complete
assortment.

After I filled out the address
label and paid for everything, Kim gave me a small white sack and said,
"Take some Maple Syrup ones to Lila and Captain Black for Herbert, and
whatever you want for yourself. On the house."

I thanked her, filled up the little
bag, including a few of each kind that caught my attention while I was filling
Shelly's box, and said goodbye. As I was going out the door, Les called to me
from the back of the work area, "Come work for us. Long hours, low pay,
and all the taffy you can eat." She grinned and waved goodbye.

One hour in town and I already had
a job offer. Wow.

Attached to the wall outside the
front door of Lila Blue's Family Barbershop was an old-fashioned revolving red,
white, and blue glass barber pole. It was shiny clean and welcoming.

When I walked inside the shop, the
first things I noticed were the two giant barber chairs. They were dark green
leather and had polished silver bases and foot pedals to raise and lower the
seats. They each faced big oval mirrors mounted on the wall. Below the mirrors
were sturdy worktables with drawers to hold implements and hooks to hang
electric clippers and hair dryers. In between those two worktables was a
wall-mounted sink with its own reclining shampoo chair.

The floor was like a checkerboard
set on the diagonal made of large black and white tiles. Everything was
sparkling clean and well lit. The shop smelled like spicy wood. It was a warm
relaxed place, and I'm sure it was a haven on stormy days.

Across from the haircut area was
the waiting area, equipped with four comfortable chairs, each with its own
small side table. A round kid-sized table with two chairs sat in the corner by
the shop's front windows. The kids' table had comic books and picture books and
a tub of Lincoln Logs for building cabins. In a big basket in the corner behind
the table were stuffed animals and hand puppets.

Two little boys were playing on the
floor with puppets, making the puppets snarl and bite each other. They had nice
fresh haircuts, and every once in a while they'd glance over at the man and
woman in the barber chairs, their parents, I guess.

The man in Lila's chair had his
eyes closed and seemed to be falling asleep. Lila worked on him silently, a
satisfied smile on her face. She looked relaxed and confident. I wondered if
I'd ever have a job I enjoyed that much.

The other barber, Herbert, was
trimming the mother's bangs, and she was telling him about how difficult it was
to adjust to the boys being out of school. He concentrated on making sure each
hair was perfect, and it was clear he didn't care about a word she was saying.

Lila had smiled and greeted me by
name when I came in, and the other adults in the room all smiled my way, too. I
felt like a celebrity. Maybe it was normal small town behavior. I was used to
being mostly invisible. At home you kind of knew everyone in your building and
in your regular shops, but here it seemed that everyone belonged to one
another.

I sat in the waiting chair closest
to the front door and got out my book so I could observe everything without
being too obviously curious. Not that anyone would have minded. A barbershop is
a public place after all, even if it belongs to your grandma.

After checking out the details of
the shop and the people, I opened my book and drifted into a world of flying
dragons. Soon I was pulled back to the barbershop world by the commotion of the
mom paying for the haircuts and the dad wrestling the puppets away from the
boys so they could all leave.

The family left, and Lila called me
over to meet Herbert. I said hi and he said hi, but he didn't look me in the
eyes. He was the shyest grownup person I'd ever seen. His gaze slid away from
my face until he was looking at the floor, but it wasn't content to stay there.
Instead his eyes jumped back to my hair, and then they'd slide down and then
back to my hair. I could feel his fingers itching to grab some scissors or
electric clippers and tackle my orange lion's mane.

Herbert was so easy to read, it was
funny. No wonder he was so shy. He had no guile, no protection from the world.
What a strange person! Like a hermit crab without a shell.

He turned away from me and busied
himself cleaning his workstation and sweeping the floor around both the cutting
chairs. When all was tidy, he disappeared into another room at the back of the
shop.