When Venus Fell (32 page)

He turned in the darkness. “I’m looking at what you are now. And it’s true.”

He walked on, disappearing in the night.

I folded the letter and put it in my pocket.

Gib, Min, and I crowded into Gib’s jeep and went to the tiny post office in the back room of Hoss’s store in New Inverness. “Glory be,” Hoss enthused as we carried in a half-dozen large boxes filled with stamped and sealed envelopes.

“So many people to contact! I never would have thought!” Sophia sang out, reaching over the scarred wooden ledge of the office window to take each box.

“About five thousand,” Gib said. He took the last box from Min and levered it over the ledge. Hoss and Sophia stacked it atop the others.

Min looked at the head-high pile of boxes wistfully. “Simon and I never sent out big mailings like this. We kept a list of guests from the very beginning, but after the first few years we never had to solicit new business. We had to turn people away unless they booked rooms months in advance.”

I nabbed a package of peanuts from a shelf above a fat, humming, dew-speckled soft-drink cooler. “Well, with five thousand on this mailing we should at least get a one-percent return. So maybe fifty people will book rooms during the winter weekends. That’ll be a nice, modest start.”

“Except that Simon and Min used to get fifty people a day,” Gib said, scowling.

“Well, we’ll practice on our fifty during January. See whether you can master the fine art of hosting.” I grinned at him fiendishly.

He grunted. “I was the agent in charge when the king of a Scandinavian country and two of his mistresses wanted to go out of the White House and eat real American soul food in Washington after midnight. If I could get that clueless bunch through dinner at a rib shack where the locals tried to shake
down the king’s personal valet for pocket change, I believe I can make a good impression on the plain, ordinary guests we might entice back to the Hall.”

“Well, well, well, you’re getting uppity now that you’ve got a mission in life,” I joked. I wiped my hands on the legs of the baggy blue overalls Min had presented to me as a joke. “You’re a hillbilly now,” she had said wryly. But I had stitched rows of gold sequins on the shoulder straps and I wore the overalls with my Tchaikovsky Rules T-shirt underneath. I heard that after Ruth saw my customized outfit she told Isabel I looked like a circus clown. Thinking of that, I nibbled peanuts delicately, and frowned.

“You don’t know how to eat goobers,” Gib said. He dismissed my little bag of store-bought nuts with a shake of his head.

“What? I’m as southern as you are.”

“You grew up in New Orleans, city girl. It’s not the same. Come on. I’ll show you.” We walked outside. Min stayed behind with Sophia to look over cruise-ship brochures. Her expression said she was tired and impatient. Sophia was trying to coax her to come along on the Hightower Garden Club’s seven-day winter cruise in the Caribbean.

Out in the bright October sunshine, with just a hint of cool autumn in the air, I followed Gib to the jeep and got in. He drove up the state route toward Hightower, then swung off on the roadside where a ramshackle fruit stand sat under the trees. Smoke wafted from a fifty-gallon steel drum set on a makeshift grate over a wood fire. The yard was outlined with empty fruit crates, and the top of each crate was crowded with jars of fresh honey, homemade jellies, pickles, and relishes. The scent of apples and cinnamon curled deliciously from the tailgate of an old pickup truck, where mounds of fried apple pies lay cooling in a shallow cardboard box beside a bubbling pot of oil on a gas grill.

A small old man spotted Gib and came out of the fruit stand, waving like crazy. “I re-COG-no-sized you right off!”
he said. “I threw up my hand and started a-woving ’fore you set foot on the ground! Hit’s been a long spell since I seen ya out and about!”

Gib introduced me to Golwat; that was his name—first or last, I couldn’t tell. I learned later that Golwat lived in an old one-room lumberjack’s shanty high up in a hollow, and he got a pension from his years as a railroad lineman, plus what income he made at his fruit stand. He was FeeMolly’s
man friend
. Ebb and Flo’s biological father had died when they were children. Golwat had been FeeMolly’s casual paramour for years.

“I could use you if you need a little work this fall,” Gib told him. “FeeMolly needs extra hands to shuck and peel and slice. She got a late start on her canning this year. You come by the Hall anytime your arthritis isn’t acting up.”

“I sure will be there,” Golwat promised. “I got my ear full of news about the Hall already. God bless.” He pointed at me. “Ma’am, you done got The Cameron out in the ’shine. Good to see him.”

I smiled diplomatically but noticed Gib’s frown at the title Golwat gave him. “We need some boiled pinders and whatever else the lady wants,” Gib said.

Golwat hustled to the steaming steel drum and lifted a ladle made from a large clean coffee can wired to the end of a broom handle. Rich brown liquid drained from holes in the can’s bottom. He dumped boiled peanuts into a double paper sack.

I gathered several hot fried apple pies on a paper plate then turned around with money in my hand, only to find Gib paying the elderly man already. As we drove away I said, “Deduct that from my salary.”

“You said you didn’t want a salary.”

“Maybe I should change my mind so I’ll have a salary to deduct your gifts from.”

“Consider boiled peanuts and apple pies a perk of your grand title as musical director. Here. Eat the peanuts this
way.” He pressed the tip of a steaming brown peanut shell to his lips. Then he sucked for a second. “Get the juice first,” he explained. Next he parted the soggy shell with his tongue and sucked the peanuts out. Then he neatly spit the empty shell out his open window. “Biodegradable litter,” he said.

Watching him work a peanut with his lips and tongue had pretty much put me in an altered state of mind. Peanuts, boiled or otherwise, were the last thing I could think about. “Demonstrate your technique again,” I said.

He did. Slowly. I’m sure he knew peanuts had ceased to be the motivation for either of us.

Min ran into the kitchen at dawn two days later. Gib, Isabel, Flo, and I were groggily testing the first experimental cups of coffee from a ten-gallon commercial percolator Flo had unpacked from a storage room. FeeMolly had ordered bags of a new gourmet bean she’d seen on a cable cooking show. “I don’t like this blend,” Isabel announced.

“Too tangy,” Gib said.

I coughed. “I think the spice scent singed the hair in my nose.”

“Dear God,” Min moaned. We all turned quickly. Gib grabbed her arm. She was as white as a sheet. “Dear God,” she repeated. “There are one hundred and twenty-two messages on the answering machine in Simon’s office. I counted them. The letter’s only been out for two days
and there are one hundred and twenty-two messages
.”

We hurried en masse to the old kitchen building and gathered around the desk. The red signal light on the answering machine was flashing so fast it almost flickered. Gib pushed the playback button. Isabel grabbed a notepad. “I’ll make a list.”

We listened in silent amazement as one excited caller after another requested a room. A terrifying number asked specifically for the opening weekend. When the last message
ended Min studied Isabel’s notes. “Oh, my Lord. All of these people want to book the first weekend in January? Gib, this isn’t a
slow
seasonal start.
This is a full house!
And these are professionals!”

Gib frowned. “What do you mean?”

She pointed. “He owns a travel agency. She’s with the state tourism commission. He’s a reviewer for
Tennessee Travels
magazine. She’s a travel agent. All of these people are
experts
.” She sat down weakly. “We’re going to be
reviewed
.”

Gib bent over her and rubbed her limp hands. “I promise you we’ll make Simon proud,” he said.

But when he met my eyes he was worried.

Ella and I were suddenly caught up in daily meetings conducted by Min, who lectured on everything from proper check-in procedures to which bed linens to use in the guest rooms—soft brushed-flannel sheets and pillowcases in the winter, she said. Gib, Carter, and Jasper worked constantly outdoors, pressure-washing the Hall’s stone walls, painting the wooden fences along the front pastures, mulching, raking, mowing, pruning.

Like everyone else on the place, I helped with any chore that needed doing. I cleaned guest rooms, washed windows, set out the winter cabbage plants in the garden and the autumn seedlings for the flower beds. I shooed raccoons from the garbage, chased a possum from the dogs’ dishes, and captured the litter of half-grown kittens who regularly darted around the halls.

“Those weeds are my lavender plants,” Min said very gently one day. “They’ll come back in the spring if you don’t pull them up.” I was in the herb garden out back, vigorously plucking withered plants from the ground.

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.” I began frantically shoving lavender roots back into the loamy soil. Min knelt down and helped me.

“They’ll be fine,” she soothed. “They’re pretty tough. Slow down. There. That’s it. Baby them a little.” She looked at me curiously. “You and Gib have been like whirlwinds around here. Did y’all make a pact to outwork each other?”

“I can’t speak for him, but I’m just a naturally obsessive person.”

“I used to be. Believe it or not, I was a dynamo. Simon and I were up at dawn each day, always talking, planning, working.”

“Everyone says you’ve been a lot perkier in the past few weeks. You’re doing great.”

“Look at this.” She held out a lean, pale forearm and pushed up the sleeve of her sweater. “Dry skin. That’s not the least bit ‘perky.’ ”

“Use some of that honey-and-wildflower lotion Isabel makes. She taught Ella how to mix it up and Ella gave me a bottleful, and it’s great. Of course we all attract bees now, but—”

“I’m drying up.” Her expression all at once serious to the point of despair, she clutched her hands on the knees of her denim skirt. “I’m forty-six years old and I’m so lonely for my husband in bed,
and I am drying up.”

I didn’t think of her as a mother figure, I thought of her as an older sister, and that was very appealing to me. “You’re not old,” I advised calmly. “And you need to let yourself think about, well, Min, about
dating.”

She bowed her head. “I’ve never said this to anyone but you. There are times when … all I can think about is Simon. But there are times when I am so desperate—in bed by myself at night—that I think any old handsome stranger could walk into the room and I’d jump on him.”

“That’s healthy. You should want to make love. It’s not healthy to do without.” I bent my head close to Min’s. “Bo Burton,” I whispered slyly.

“Ack!” She got up, her face turning bright pink. “Oh, he’s a big, sweet, silly dog! I was friends with his wife!
Good
friends. And Bo was good friends with Simon! Why! Oh, you! Vee!” She hurried back into the house, obviously flustered beyond coherence.

Bo Burton. He was the one for Min. Any man who could fluster a woman that way had the inside track on her desires. Yes. The Camerons had meddled in my life, so I would meddle in theirs.

On one of the rare mornings when no major chores or meetings were planned, I walked out on the cottage porch and halted, stunned. The forest’s tentative autumn colors had fully bloomed, overnight, into brilliant reds and golds. A late frost had turned autumn spiderwebs into silver lace hanging among the tree limbs. I went out in the yard, tilted my head back, and turned in a circle, slowly.

I ran for my keyboard, set it up on the porch, and worked all morning on my music. I wanted to write songs to those mountains, to celebrate them, to find where they were inside me and turn the emotion into sound.

And then I put on new hiking shoes I’d bought in a shop in Hightower. I took the peeled-birch hiking stick Jasper had made for me, and I walked blindly into the forest. I wanted more inspiration.

Gib tracked me to a high mountain bald late that afternoon. I was relieved to see him and upset at the predicament. I’d been enchanted by the mountains. Gib tried to look nonchalant despite the fact that on his back he was packing a first-aid kit, water, food, thermal blankets, a portable ham radio, a rifle, and his machete. “I was just wandering through the neighborhood,” he said.

“Carrying gear for an expedition?”

“You know the Boy Scout motto.”

“Always be gentlemanly and pretend the chick’s not lost?”

“Something like that. When we couldn’t find you I was afraid you’d been carried off or eaten.”

“All right, I admit it. I got carried
away
.”

He radioed to the Hall, where Ella insisted on speaking to me in tearful disbelief. “I wasn’t lost,” I lied. “I was exploring.”

Gib and I walked back down the mountain into a deeply sided lane that wandered through the low coves and hollows. “I was just following this old trail,” I explained. “I thought it must come out on a public road somewhere.” Gesturing toward the steep sides, I added, “Someone must have bulldozed this trail years ago. I mean, it’s cut so deep in places.”

“This trail was here a
thousand
years ago,” Gib said quietly. “And probably for thousands before that. It wasn’t cut by machines. It was worn into the earth by buffalo herds and war parties and traders between the southern tribes and the northern ones. If you knew where to look for what’s left of it, you could follow this trail all the way to Canada.”

I halted. The ground felt rich beneath my feet. “I read somewhere, there’s a theory, that prehistoric Asian tribes came over the Bering Strait and settled in the Americas, and that the Native Americans are their descendants.”

He nodded. “So you’re feeling a little déjà vu? Reclaiming the old prehistoric stomping grounds?” But his teasing was gentle.

“Did you know Elvis might have been a Turk?”

“What?”

“His ancestors came from a part of the mountains where there were descendants of Turks and Moors and Portuguese and all sorts of Mediterranean people who had been brought to the New World by Spain in the fifteen hundreds. These beautiful black-haired people and their languages. Elvis is a town in Portugal. It’s not spelled the same as our Elvis, but still—”