Mammoth Secrets (8 page)

“Not the first time I've faced an angry mob.”

“Angry? About what?”

“Your grandmother didn't tell you?” He arched an eyebrow and laughed.

“We don't talk much—or, didn't that translate back at the diner?”

“I made some decisions about the Revival. Voiced them at the meeting last night. Didn't go over so well with some folks.”

“Some folks. Meaning my grandmother.”

“Her. Others. But this place is desperate for change. They just don't know it, yet.”

“Like my specials?”

“Sure.” He adjusted his grip on the pole. “It's a lot like fishing, actually. Toss an idea out there for folks to circle around. Decide whether or not they're interested. Some'll bite. Others'll swim right on past, ignoring it, or come back. Strike.” He shrugged. “Or not.”

“The curse of free will?”

“Or the blessing. It depends on your point of view.” His mouth upturned a grin. “He'll get through to them.” Jake played out his line, settled his rod back, and waited. “All I've gotta do is show up.”

“You honestly believe that, don't you?”

“I believe…that river fishing's night and day to fishing off shore.” He tilted his head to where line met water. “Cast, and wait. No seaweed, no pull of the tide. Just…wait.”

“Off shore? I meant to do that, but—just never got around to it.”

“I used to go with my dad. But, his work took off—kept him busy every weekend.” He exhaled and picked up his rod, slow, keeping the line slack where it met the rippling water. “Last time, I was about twelve. I caught a barracuda trolling in a sailboat, off Malibu.”

“Lots of bones.” Lilah's thoughts drifted to the best way to serve up fresh barracuda, grilled in olive oil, salt, with chopped tomatoes, red onion, garlic. She licked her lips and grinned. “Good eating, though…”

Jake's line tugged, silencing any reply. The rod tip bowed down to the water. He gave a cautious, achingly slow spin to his reel. Within moments, the fish swallowed the bait. He gave the line a confident jerk, setting the hook. They stood, side by side, as he played out line, then drew back in with a swirl of the reel. “Good size, you think?” Grin splitting wide, he nodded to the rod's tip, practically touching the surface of the water in a tight arc.

“Maybe a one pounder.” Lilah grabbed the net and, barefoot, squished into the ankle deep water. “River trout know how to fight.”

At last, through the lens of the surface, they saw it swimming.

Lilah laughed, turned a quick I-told-you-so grin, and looped the net under the foot-long rainbow trout.

Trading pole for net, Jake scooped up the trout. It flashed in the sunlight, scales reflected a brilliant rainbow, wide gills gasping, hook looped clean through its lip. “Beautiful...” He breathed hard, smiling like a little boy.

“Good enough to keep?”

“Nah. Let's let him get bigger.” He freed the creature and set it back into the water. With a flick of fins it disappeared faster than it had arrived. “Get you next year!”

“Sign of a confident fisherman.” She returned to her pole, fingering her reel in a slow twist.

“Not confident.” He shrugged and re-baited his pole with a struggling minnow from the bucket. “Just not in that big a hurry to fill up our stringer.”

“Ah.” The smile bloomed within, though she did her best not to show it. “Sure your parish won't mind if you sit here with a fallen woman?”

“What fallen woman?” He winked. “There's no one here but us. We're friends, remember?”

“Friends.” She elbowed his ribs. “It's kind of nice. Here you know my deep, dark past and want to hang with me, anyway.”

He said nothing, but she sensed him pull back, as if a veil fell over his thoughts, a shadow cast over the perfect afternoon. Why had she opened her mouth?

“So. About that dinner?” he offered, and behind his hooded gaze, she saw something she almost missed. Hope.

“Sure, why not.”

He sat taller, but her shoulders sank with the hornet's nest of trouble she was about to cause. Nana embarrassed her at the diner, so her reply would be missing Saturday night's family meal. Relaxing to the idea, Lilah reeled in, recast. “If we're gonna have anything to eat, no more tossing back.”

They turned back to their own lines, their own thoughts, as the sunlight played on the rush of water.

 

 

 

 

11

 

The Saturday evening rush settled, Eden washed up, ready to go. “You good to close, Ray?” Eden finished applying lipstick in the small hand mirror. She pressed her lips into a full, glossy pout.

“Yes, Edie.” He sprayed water over a tray of white ceramic dishes.

“Thought Lilah'd be back to help. Bein' Saturday night, after all.”

“No big deal.” He trayed the plates and then shoved them into the industrial washer. “I'll set this to run and be out behind you in ten minutes. Half hour, tops.”

“Thanks.” Eden tossed him the set of gold keys. “Pharmacy'll be closing soon. Nana's expecting me any minute. You know how Papaw gets if we're late.” Her gaze dimmed.

“Live by schedule...” The laughter vanished from Raymond's eyes. “Right. You get on, now.”

Eden picked up the pie box and hightailed it across the street to the drugstore. The checkers board game was folded and pieces stacked. She held the door for stodgy, old Martha Anderson, a prescription bag clutched in her hand.

“Evening, Mrs. A.”

“Oh, hey there, Eden.” Martha's doughy face folded into a smile, she pushed at gray curls that sproinged from what looked like a healthy shellacking of hair spray. “How's your Papaw?”

“Same. I'm on my way up there. I'll tell them you said hello.”

Martha's throat rattled as she cleared it, her circus tent flowered shirt rustled with the cough that followed.

The pharmacist's bald head tilted to the sound, but no one else browsed the low aisles of thinly stocked first aid kits, stomach remedies, and hair dye. Mrs. Anderson lowered her voice anyway. “You just tell them not to worry if we're not in church. I'll be visiting my sister over in Jonesboro on Sundays for a spell.”

“It's not like you and Mr. Anderson to miss a Sunday service.”

Hiking up her walking shorts, she shoved her pill bag into her satchel. “Donald was at the meeting last night. He's not convinced that new pastor's gonna serve Mammoth well. Not at all.”

“That right?”

“Ideas. Plans. Schemes. Why folks can't just let well enough alone is beyond me. It's enough that the riffraff are showing up again.” She flopped a hand toward the broad swath of grass that served as the fairgrounds. “I thought a nice, widowed pastor would be just the thing—maybe even catch the eye of one of our young, single ladies. Like yourself.”

“Hmm.” Eden cast a fleeting thought toward the strapping, tall pastor. Nice enough to look at, but not at all exciting, or adventurous.

“Anyway. Mr. A and I aren't the only ones thinking of not attending. That's all I'm sayin'. Goodnight, Eden.”

Mrs. A puttered up the hill in the fading light of day. Was it true? Were folks that fickle? They'd had a taste of getting their way ousting the previous pastor for his eccentricities, and now they were gunning for a sensitive guy who lost his wife? What would this idiotic town think of next?

Eden strolled into the store to the back wall and the squares of gold PO boxes. She keyed hers open and smiled at the airmail envelopes. The address for the foreign offices were so long, so complicated, it was no small wonder she'd gotten a base wrong here, a barracks number wrong there. Too soon for her soldiers to notice, though, of course. Didn't it take a few weeks to get mail overseas? It's why she insisted on writing letters longhand, not email, not instant messaging. There wasn't any romance in electronic communication. It was all about seeing their handwriting styles, to see what kind of men these really were. And why, out of all the men she'd sent letters to, she'd chosen these two, Eli and Anthony, to correspond with.

Eli. He was strong, confident, brazen, and brash. Tony, on the other hand, made subtle, sweet attempts at romance. So unsure, so charming. She'd been unable to choose between them, and in the end had decided not to decide. She'd continued her love letter relationship with both. Her gut speared and fell to her shoes, imagining Anthony reading her response to Eli. Her only hope was finding some way to explain before—

“Evening, Edie.” The pharmacist interrupted, his nose-perched glasses gleaming in the incandescent light

“Hey, there, Mr. Hackleberry.” She folded the unopened letters into her purse, juggled the pie box, and turned. “D'ya have anything for Papaw and Nana? I'm headed up that way.”

He turned to the alphabetized rack of plastic baggies, grabbed several from the D loop, and handed them over. “Just have your grandma drop by Monday and pay the tab.”

“Thanks.”

“Lots of mail for you, there.”

Eden laughed. “For now.”

“Not trouble on the front lines, I hope.” He shot a worried look. She'd heard the stories time and again of his trips overseas, his time in Vietnam, again in the first Gulf war.

“No.” She sniffed a smile. “More on a personal level. See you tomorrow?”

“I'll be there.” Mr. Hackleberry ran a hand over fringe of white hair. “I figure our new pastor needs all the support he can get.”

She headed out for a swift walk home. Her thoughts sifted back towards the two soldiers who'd been romancing her from Afghanistan.

Each one touched places in her heart that hadn't been awakened in years. What a mess she'd made. Too selfish to let go of either, even though her soul sparked with guilt. Now, with the great letter swap, she had a tiger by the tail. She was pushing thirty, unmarried, and likely to remain that way as she'd just spoiled the best chance at love she would get. Eden walked to the carport and blew at her bangs. She unearthed Anthony's letter. She couldn't open it. Not yet.

She opened Eli's envelope instead. His coarse script looked hurried, just a few lines, and most of it crass innuendo. What had she seen in him? Was it the fact he bragged about his future as a lawyer? He wanted her to meet him in Branson this Memorial Day weekend while he was on leave. Right. In a huff, she crumpled Eli's letter.

She flipped to the next thin envelope and sighed.

Anthony's opening read like a poem, to his delicate Ozark rosebud.

Who writes like that anymore? She read on, absorbing every word as if it were living water. Then, on the next line, his fine, block letter spelled out her doom.

“Of all the...” She wanted to laugh, cry, scream, and kick something. Instead, she sank to the large stone that edged the garden and read his careful script again.

Anthony was coming out to spend her birthday with her, over Memorial Day weekend. He'd be arriving in Mammoth the weekend of the Reunion Carnival. And the Revival. If she'd have him, that is. He'd booked a room for himself at the Mammoth Inn on Route 67, the easier to visit her. No mention of wanting to do anything more than ride a Ferris wheel by her side, maybe hear her shriek in joy on a roller coaster.

“Eden!” Nana's voice ricocheted from the porch.

“Coming, Nana.” She waved. “Just gonna change first! Got a pie for you.”

Nana slammed the screened-in porch door.

So far, the only one who knew about her little fiasco was Lilah. Maybe it would stay that way. Maybe she'd just hide in the closet where she waited out tornadoes.

The sun arced closer to the rocky hills, backlit the canopy of new green leaves. Soon, it'd be summer, the Memorial Day weekend, and that meant—oh, she didn't even want to think about what that would mean. This year's Reunion was coming in with a hand-basket of trouble, and she was the one hauling the handle.

 

 

 

 

 

12

 

Lilah chopped red onions in Eden's tiny kitchen until her eyes streamed with tears. The well-used plastic cylinder sat in the sink, full of water, ice, floating lemons, and cleaned trout fillets from her fishing expedition with Jake. She sealed in the smile. No matter what Nana said or thought, Jake was intent on becoming her friend.

“What're you so happy about?” Eden's voice preceded the back door close.

“Who said I am?”

Eden set the pie box on the counter. “Hmm.” she shrugged her purse onto the stool, and sat. “You fish the river out?”

“Yeah.” Lilah smiled at the tub of white fillets chilling at her elbow. “Papaw's spot still works.”

“'Course it does.” Eden twirled a pen with manicured fingers. “Nothing changes here. Or have you forgotten?”

“Some things change.” The smile wove its way to her lips. Whether Jake's concern was with her soul in the hereafter or her life in the present, Lilah didn't really care. For some reason, Jake wanted to spend time with her, and that was worth everything when the rest of her world was falling apart.

“What?” Eden studied her like a butterfly on a pin. “Something you're not telling me. Isn't there?”

Lilah flipped the focus back to her twin. “Did you ever think, the older we get, the less alike we seem?”

That brought a blast of laughter. “Don't change the subject. What're you hiding?”

“Nothing.” Lilah slid the knife into a stream of faucet water, rinsed, dried, and returned it to the knife block. “I'm an open book, remember?”

Eden's crunched eyebrows showed she wasn't convinced. “When're you taking that up?”

“I'm not.”

“It's Saturday.”

“Yeah, and I said I'm not.”

“Did you tell Nana?”

Lilah gave a quick shake of the head.