Mighty Old Bones (7 page)

I tried to reach Phoebe to make sure she was all right, but to no avail. Neither landline nor cell phone services worked. I took a short but very nice hot shower by candlelight, using as little of the water heater’s reserves as possible, and went to bed.

The night sounds of the forest, once unfamiliar and distracting when I first moved to the outskirts of Tullulah, had become a wonderful lullaby. As I settled into the down comfort of my bed, I realized the storm made the woods much more quiet. I sat, enjoying the rare treat of almost total silence. A paperback mystery kept me company for the next hour or so, thanks to a book light I had received as a gift. When my eyelids would stay open no longer, I drifted toward sleep, snuggling under the cover with the thought I’d soon need the housewarming gift Phoebe had given me, an electric blanket for the coming winter.

As I crossed through the in-between world, a silly dream of rocks dancing in a ring came to an abrupt end when a sound downstairs brought me fully awake. Not a loud noise. Something small and light, like a dropped coin. I stared into the darkness. Had I really heard anything or was it merely a part of the dream? I lay still and listened for some time. Whatever it was, it hadn’t roused Homer from sleep. I relaxed. The wind continued its song, wrapping around the walls and traveling on through the countless leaves of the surrounding forest.

T
HE MORNING DAWNED WITH A COOL CRISPNESS IN
the air. as I took my morning run, I watched the sun come up behind the nearer mountaintops, sparkling still with water from the storm. A thick fog shrouded the road, allowing only glimpses of empty fields and stands of trees as I passed.

Homer, who had taken to accompanying me on my run of late, stood up ahead in the road, listening, his strong black body framed in mist. It pleased me so to see him healthy. Not long before, he’d given me quite a scare. He had escaped death, but his owner and my dear friend, Cal, did not. How we both missed him. Homer looked fully mended now. Our daily run strengthened us both. Going through those terrible days, the importance of keeping myself in tiptop shape became a priority. I hoped no more confrontations of a dangerous nature would ever occur again. Yet I knew the possibility was there. I needed to stay strong for that, just in case.

We raced the last hundred yards or so to the house. As always, I finished second. We caught our breath on the patio then walked to the right boundary of the yard to a small clearing between several tall oaks. It had become a ritual to do a tai chi routine there where the ground was flat. It was a place of great serenity. The vista of rolling green mountains and morning clouds streaked with the sun’s first rays was a lovely way to start each morning. I breathed in the cool air with gratitude.

Once done, Homer and I made our way inside for our breakfast. I started a pot of coffee. Homer walked to the center of the room to inspect a bit of dirt or perhaps a bug. While the coffee brewed, I gathered eggs and cheese from the refrigerator for an omelet then walked across the kitchen floor to the pantry closet where I kept potatoes and onions, with the thought of making hash browns.

I stopped. Homer sat in the middle of the floor, his front legs stretched out as far as they would go. He was staring at me and, now that he had my attention, he gave a soft
woof,
moved his head downward, and touched his nose to the floor a few inches from a small dark object that lay there. He raised his head and gave another softer
woof.
He sat still, continuing to stare at me as if waiting for orders.

“Good boy,” I said. I stroked the wide stretch between his ears. “Now, what have we here?”

Just beyond the black ends of his claws, the small gift glinted on the kitchen floor. I picked it up. And smiled.

“How lovely. I wonder what it is.” I bounced the little blue piece of glass in my palm. It weighed hardly anything.

There was no doubt that my housemate had left it for me. I looked all around, though I didn’t actually expect to see my benefactor. “Thank you, Boo,” I said to the air. “You’re a dear.”

Boo, my resident ghost, is a shy teenage boy who died in the house many years earlier. I frequently find lightweight gifts from him here in the kitchen.

I turned the blue object this way and that in the light. It most resembled a button in the shape of a flower, only it had no holes for thread. I placed it in the center of the kitchen table where the low-hanging overhead light cast a circle around it. From there, I could frequently ponder its use and where it might have come from. I resumed my plan for hash browns and made our breakfast, much to Homer’s relief.

I used my cell phone to try Phoebe again when I thought she would be awake. Her home phone was still out as well. I called her cell number and was relieved to hear her say the storm caused no major damage there. She and Rowdy came through it unscathed.

“Are we still on for a walk later?” I said. “I’ve found another of Cal’s maps. I’d like to follow it to see what he was on about.”

“Sure,” Phoebe said. “I’ll bring an apple danish ring. I baked four yesterday. Actually, I baked quite a bit of other stuff to take around this morning, too. I’ll make my rounds and then come over. So don’t fix anything much to eat, okay?”

We agreed on a time and I hung up without telling her not to bother with the pastry. I couldn’t. She takes such pleasure in her baking and in giving her creations to everyone. I hadn’t the heart to tell her I rarely eat sweets. I only indulged when she brought me something on such an occasion as this. It would hurt her feelings so, if I refused on any grounds.

She doesn’t particularly care for nature. I sense that she only tolerates my ramblings about this or that historical connection on my land. I’m afraid she doesn’t share my enthusiasm for the unique plants and other natural wonders of the woods. She walks with me out of friendship, accompanying me in the forest when I ask, though she much prefers being in town.

If she had not wanted to come with me, I would have understood. I thought she might be helpful, however, in assisting me with photographs. I have to admit, as much as I love exploring on my own with only Homer, I also enjoyed sharing the little discoveries on my property with Phoebe, even if she was less enthusiastic than myself. This she also understood and tolerated. I’m so lucky to have such a friend.

T
he morning after the storm, after I talked to Jane on the phone, I pulled the food I made from the refrigerator and wrapped it all up to take around to the workers. I always do that when the power goes out. Even a few hours without electricity makes me appreciate it more. What I do is, I bake up something that carries well, and then I go down to the police station and the electric department to pass out goodies. Sometimes, I stop on the road and hand things out to the ones on duty. Those poor guys and gals work hard in awful conditions, all through the night sometimes, to get things back to normal.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I think I’m Florence Nightingale or Mother Teresa. All I want is for folks to know I appreciate their work. Plus, it would not do to let Rita Underwood and Gladys Orr and several others of the better cooks in Tullulah show me up. We have what you might call a friendly competition.

Like for instance, what a coincidence that Jody Wilkes suddenly decided to join Grace Baptist, right when they announced they were putting together a cookbook so they could buy choir robes. Especially when everybody knows Jody is a hardcore Methodist from way back. And then there’s Shelby Ferguson, who moved here from Meridian, Mississippi, where Joe Ferguson found her after his first wife died. Shelby was used to winning cooking contests before she got to Tullulah, and honey, let me tell you, the Gillispie women, seven of the South’s finest cooks, didn’t like it a bit when Shelby swooped in and stole first place in a pie-baking contest.

Several instances such as that have made some friendly rivalries among the ladies. That’s why none of us pass up an opportunity to try a new recipe on somebody, preferably several somebodys who can talk amongst themselves about which dish they liked the best. So that next morning, when the power came back on, I jumped into cooking mode to add to what I’d already fixed the day before. What I do is I make up two recipes, one with some kind of meat, and one dessert, and I do several batches of each.

While they were in the oven, I went out in the yard. The mutt came with me. He didn’t try to run away at all, but stayed fairly close while I picked up sticks. He explored, sniffed all over the yard, and every now and then would look at me to make sure I was still there.

I made a little pile of branches at the far corner of the yard by the curb. Muttface inspected everything I set down there. I looked over at him one time and he was headed for a flowerbed I’d cleaned out, which was now a big bed of mud.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said. “I am not having you track mud in the house.” He stopped, gave it a look, and trotted back over to me. “Good. That’s good.” I hated to admit he was smart, but if he could understand what I said and then would do it, he was better than most of those kids I wrangled with at the library.

That’s what I did before I retired. I got married when I was a junior in high school, and then as soon as I graduated, I started working part-time at the library and never quit.

That was another place I went that morning. Having a storm didn’t necessarily put my friends at the library out, but I don’t need very much of an excuse to take them some goodies and catch up on the latest gossip. That’s why I always save them for last when I’m out and about.

I like to take my time when I visit with Grace. Grace Taylor is just like me except she’s younger than I am by a good fifteen years. I’m guessing there, because she never would tell me the exact year she was born. But other than that, we’re just alike. Except her hair is black with just a sprinkle of gray, where mine is red with a lot of gray sprinkles. Well, if you want to get technical, her skin is black and mine’s not. But otherwise, we are just alike. We wear the same size clothes, and though we don’t do it as often as when I still worked, we get together for lunch and a clothes swap every now and then. We have the best time. That girl knows how to have fun.

I hadn’t seen her since we drove down to Birmingham together when her sister was sick. One of my sisters lives down there, too, so I visited her while Grace was at the hospital. Of course we went shopping. You can’t go to Birmingham without a stroll through Brookwood Mall. We had us a big time. If we stopped at the wine store on the way home for pantry stock, it wasn’t anybody’s business.

The Tullulah library is fairly good-sized. We may not have a lot in Tullulah, but what we’ve got is done right. We missed out on the Carnegie buildings, back in the 1920s. I reckon we were too far away from the big cities. That kind of ticked off Lorna Todd, whose daddy owned the timber company and had scads of money. In those days, Lorna liked to think of herself as both the tops in high society and also the intellectual leader of Tullulah, if you can imagine either thing around here.

She went to one of those ritzy colleges up north, some woman’s name, not Agnes Scott but something like that, and up there, she got the wild idea that she was a queen. All she needed was some royal subjects. That’s where Tullulah came in. She’d sworn she’d never come back, but I reckon there weren’t any towns up north that would let her tell them what to do, so she came home. This is just what I’ve heard. That was way before my time, of course.

Anyway, Lorna went around starting clubs. Guess who was always the president? She started a local history club, a gardening club, a wildlife club, a charity club that raised money for various causes, and a literary club. Notice I didn’t mention a Bible club. She knew that would be a lost cause. She knew any six-year-old in the county could quote more scripture and out-preach her heathen self any day of the week.

She called her literary club a salon. This wasn’t like the other clubs because it was by invitation only. She held it at her house, and then when her parents died, she decided to make their house—which was and is Tullulah’s closest thing to a mansion—a museum, library, and local civic center. She had nice glass cases made for doodads passed down through her family. It grew as she added local historical finds. Then people started donating things, including personal libraries. So we don’t have one of those ugly government buildings for our library. Ours is classy. It has what they call grandeur. I never tire of walking in and taking a deep breath. The marble entrance, the sweeping staircase, all the wood polish, and the smell of old books are things I miss being around every day.

But now, I was telling you about Grace. That morning, when I walked in, Grace saw me coming and her whole face lit up in a big smile. “You took your sweet time, Chi Chi,” she said. “What happened? Did that new lineman from Memphis take one bite of cupcake and propose?”

I gave her the eye. “Hush your mouth. That boy ain’t never getting near my cupcake.”

She threw her head back and laughed and then slapped my arm. “Give me that basket,” she said. She took it and the cake carrier from me and led the way back to the break room.

Our voices echoed off the walls when we walked by the checkout desk, past the computer room and the microfilm room, and on into what had once been the kitchen of the old house. The back windows and old crown molding were the only things left of the original. Everything else shone like a New York kitchen, all metal and nice counters big enough for several cooks to work. The library rents it out for things like political to-dos and even wedding receptions.

“So,” I said while Grace took the green plastic wrap off a tray of chicken fingers, “how long was the power out at your place?”

“Only four hours,” she said. “Took two trees down in our backyard.”

“No damage to your house though, I hope.”

“No, just a big mess in the yard and the driveway. One tree missed Al’s car by about three inches.” She went over to a phone on the counter, one of those office kinds with lots of buttons. She pushed one of them and when she spoke, her voice went all over the building. “Attention, everyone. One of our favorite patrons has brought us some fine-looking snacks. Come on back to the break room and help yourself.”

It wasn’t a minute before three library workers and one customer had already fixed themselves a plate. They all said, “Hey, Phoebe” except for a young boy I didn’t know. He smiled and nodded hello. He said he was Brian and was twenty-five years old but he sure didn’t look it. I would have guessed sixteen. “Now who is your mama?” I asked him.

“Darlene Miller.”

“Oh, goodness. Are you her youngest boy? I’ll say, you sure have changed since I’ve seen you. How is Darlene? I saw her about two weeks ago as they were wheeling her out of the hospital.”

“She’s better. Cranky, but able to get around some. My sister took care of her a while until I was able to move back.”

“How nice that you’d move in to help out.” His hair flopped down in his eyes as he shrugged.

“I was able to get a temporary job here until I have to go back to school next spring, so it’s no trouble. I would have done that anyway.”

“What, are you on one of the work release programs?” Everybody laughed. Which is so rude. I have no idea why people do that all the time and then don’t explain themselves like I’ve said something stupid when I have made perfect sense.

“Something like that,” he said.

Lucy Watts, the oldest employee at the library, was the only one who didn’t laugh. But then, that’s not her thing. I don’t think she can hear anymore, either. She was old when I started working and that was over forty years ago. She refuses to retire. She usually sits in the back and toddles around doing who knows what. The only time she ventures out onto the library floor is to shelve books. She can do that fine since she can use the cart as a walker. Taking corners is a little tricky because she wears those slick soled Mary Jane slippers all the time. That makes it hard to get any traction and sometimes they fly out to the side. But she hangs on to that little cart for dear life and does fine.

Jim English pecked me on the cheek as he left with his plate. “I’ve got some paperwork I’ve got to finish by noon, so I’ve got to run. Thanks, Phoebe.”

I love Jim. He hired on not long before I retired and was always doing such nice things for all of us. He came over and put in a new bathroom sink for me to save me money. Stuff like that.

As he went out the door, I overheard the library’s only customer talking to Grace. He wasn’t bad looking for an old guy. Grace saw me looking and got that twinkle in her eyes that I knew meant one thing. Trouble. She was putting her hand on his arm and steering him toward me.

“I don’t believe you two have met,” she said. Her lips turned up at the corners and her dimples crinkled which was yet another sign she was up to no good. “This is Mr. Jay Gould. He’s working on a little research. For the production company doing the movie in town.”

I shook his hand as Grace introduced me. While he was complimenting my cooking, Grace took a step back and mouthed, “He’s single,” real big from behind his shoulder.

It took massive willpower to hold my tongue. I really wanted to stick it out at her but I knew Grace would do something to make me laugh. I had to admit, he wasn’t bad. Seemed nice. White hair, no bald spots, and a white beard that he kept very neat. He had pretty blue eyes that are normally not what I like. If I was looking for a man, that is. He had a trim figure but not bony. He had a little bit of a funny accent. That was to be expected of a Hollywood movie person, I suppose.

“Where are you from?” I asked him.

“Originally from Peoria. Lived in California until my wife died four years ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “So, all the way from Indiana and California, huh?”

“Actually, Peoria is in Illinois.”

“Silly me. Of course it is.” I smiled and giggled, you know, to show him how good and silly I am. Strike one, Yankee boy. Not that I was counting. He did have a very nice smile. “So your company is thinking of filming in Tullulah?”

He looked away. “Thinking about it, yes.”

“If you do, Grace and I would make good extras.”

He laughed and promised to call us if they needed anyone. And then he just looked at me. He sure wasn’t much for conversation.

“Well,” I said, “I’ve got several more stops to make, so I better get going. Nice to meet you, Mr. Gould. Grace, would you come walk with me to the door, please, ma’am?”

Mr. Gould waved and turned back to the table for another oatmeal cookie. Grace and I didn’t say a word until we got outside the library with the front doors closed behind us. Then we both busted out laughing. I grabbed Grace’s elbow and walked her to the side where nobody could see us from inside.

“What are you, nuts? The last thing on earth I need is an old man for a boyfriend.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Feeb, he is three years younger than you.”

“No, he’s not. He’s older. A lot. And how would you know his age anyway?”

“Looked on his driver’s license, of course.”

“What, are you a pickpocket now? There’s no reason he would have showed it to you.”

“He didn’t know that. I told him I had to see it to let him use the microfilm. How else am I going to screen men for you?”

I shook my head. “Lord help my time, what am I going to do with you? Now quit that. I’m happy by myself. I don’t want some fancy husband, wandering around my house, wanting me to cook something.”

“Oh, yes, you do,” Grace said. “I don’t know who you think you’re talking to. Like I just walked up out of the blue. I know you better than that, Chi Chi.”

“Whatever. I’ll see you when I fit your costume. How about Friday night?” We were already getting ready for Halloween.

She said that would be fine. She’d stop by on her way home from work. Grace is a doll. She does her best for me. It’s slim pickings in my age group, I realize that, so I had to cut her some slack for trying. But I’d still get her back.

Before I went home, I stopped at the drugstore again. I thought I might pick up some food for Rowdy, rather than go to the Pig. I wasn’t ready to go back in there yet, after the trauma.

You wouldn’t believe all the stuff for dogs on the shelves in that drugstore. I picked up a can of dog food and slapped it down again when I saw the price sticker. What was in there, Russian caviar? They had to be kidding. I saw Betty coming toward me.