“Emma’s cage won’t be adequate for long, but we have time before a larger cage is a necessity. You could look after him between writing chapters of your book.” She turned a beatific smile on Stephen.
He felt himself being dragged into her aura. Then he caught Emma staring at him.
He stopped short of agreeing to babysit the eagle 24/7 and picked up on Barbara’s remark. “Emma has a cage? Where?”
“Quite a nice one. Didn’t you see it around the corner of your porch under the trees? Seth and his buds built it for the baby skunks Emma raised.”
“I heard about those in Memphis. The tale of Emma and her baby skunks was a seven-day wonder. Her old boss Nathan is still disgruntled because she wouldn’t allow him to bring them to town for a photo shoot for one of his public-relations projects. Why can’t it be used as a flight cage?”
“It’s tall enough, but not nearly long enough. It would have to be extended twenty feet at least.”
“Isn’t there enough room to extend it?”
“Oh, there’s enough room, but somebody has to do the work. Nobody has time or money or interest.”
Stephen realized he had all three—money, time and interest. With the eagle right around the edge of the porch from where he lived, he actually could watch out for him most of the time.
What he did not have was the physical capability to build a cage. With his leg, he would be unlikely ever to climb a ladder again and could hardly drive a nail with one hand if he held on to his cane with the other.
Velma laid down heaping breakfast plates before them, then hovered, obviously waiting for an introduction.
“Velma, this is Dr. Stephen MacDonald. Stephen, this is Velma. She will remember your breakfast order and give it to you whether you order it or not, so don’t try to change it.” She turned to Velma. “He’s moving into The Hovel for six months.”
Stephen stood and shook her hand. Hers felt rough and strong, although her nails were nearly as long as the eagle’s talons and painted bright turquoise. Her smile, however, was nearly as brilliant as Barbara’s. “I will too let you change your order. Just tell me when you come in. Otherwise you’re stuck with your usual, whatever you decide that is. I’m glad you’re gonna be across the street from Emma and Seth, Doctor. Half the time Seth’s gone way into the night and out of cell-phone range. Emma needs somebody close by to get her to the hospital.”
“Not that kind of doctor, I’m afraid,” Stephen told her. “I teach history at the university.”
“I’m perfectly capable of driving myself,” Emma said with a grin. “I’m just having a baby. My OB-GYN says first babies take a long time to come.”
“Huh. I got three, Miss Emma. Didn’t none of ’em take but a little minute. Near about didn’t get to the hospital with any of ’em.” Velma turned to Stephen. “You give her your cell-phone number, and don’t go wandering off anywhere without it, you hear.”
She whirled toward the back of the café. “All right, Darrell, hold your horses. I’ve got the coffeepot in my hand.”
Turning back to their table, she said, “Nice to meet you, Stephen. Next time I might even be willing to give you an actual menu, but don’t count on it.” She wended her way through the tables and back to the counter.
“I’d never try to go on a diet with Velma around,” Barbara said.
“The way you work,” Emma said as she buttered a piece of toast, “you need the calories or you’d pass out.”
“Velma,” Barbara called, “has the mayor been in yet this morning?”
Velma nodded toward the wide front window. “That’s his truck pulling in now. He’s late.”
“Here comes the purveyor of rental cars and everything automotive in Williamston,” Barbara said.
The man who toddled in was a couple of inches shorter than Stephen and outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds. The bib overalls he wore were immaculate and looked as though they had been tailored for him, then starched and ironed. Stephen glanced at his boots. A marine in boot camp would be proud of the spit shine on the cordovan leather. He’d be willing to bet they also had been made for him.
“Mornin’, you all,” the mayor boomed from the doorway. “Velma, honey...”
“I got it, Mayor,” she said and reached a gigantic coffee mug across the counter to him.
“Mayor,” Barbara called to him. “Come meet Emma’s new tenant. This is Dr. Stephen MacDonald.”
Again, Stephen stood and shook hands, then sat down again.
“Another doctor?”
“Not that kind. I teach at the university.”
Stephen saw him eye the cane beside his seat, but he didn’t comment.
“Stephen pretty much murdered his car last night,” Barbara said.
“You want us to fix it?”
“It’s a vintage Triumph,” Stephen said. “The parts will have to come off the internet or out of some salvage yard. I have a guy in Memphis who can do it. He’s going to tow it in this afternoon and try to find everything he needs. In the meantime, I can’t keep catching rides with Emma.”
“I can’t rent you a car, but a truck—sure. Little bitty or big honkin’?”
“I’ve never owned a truck. I have no idea.”
“Well, Steve, how ’bout you come on down to the place after breakfast, and I will flat out sell you one? You can’t make do with a sports car up here.” He clapped a hand on Stephen’s shoulder and came close to knocking him out of his chair.
Steve? Nobody called him Steve, Stephen thought. Not even Nina when she was furious with him. It suddenly hit him that he had crossed the threshold into another universe. He didn’t know the language or the customs. Thank God for Barbara—and Emma, of course. Why had he put Barbara first? He’d known her less than twenty-four hours. But then maybe wallowing in blood together, or something approximating wallowing, gave them a kind of kinship he didn’t have with his daughter’s friends or even his academic friends.
“Join us, Mr. Mayor?” Emma asked.
“No, darlin’, I got to get on down to the showroom. Just came in to pick up my coffee and a couple of sweet rolls.” He turned to Stephen. “You let Emma drop you down at the showroom. I’ll rent or sell you wheels. And if I don’t, I’ll have one of my people run you back to your house.”
“Thank you.”
Sonny took the sack Velma handed him in one hand and his mug in the other, did a 360-degree wave to the patrons and staff with the sack hand, then toddled back out the door.
Interested to see what the major drove, Stephen stood, then nearly fell over again at the decibel level of the horn that blasted as the man drove out of the parking lot.
“That thing has more chrome on it than an eighteen-wheeler,” Stephen said. “And it’s nearly as big.”
“He owns the dealership,” Emma said.
“As well as the feed store, most of the rental property in Williamston and heaven knows how much more,” Barbara added. “In the country, Stephen, a man’s truck is a symbol of his place in the community.”
“Like a knight’s armor or the caparison of his warhorse?” Stephen asked.
“Pretty much. I’ve got to get back to open the clinic,” Barbara said. She reached for her check, but Stephen got there first.
“This is for the pimento cheese last night and for keeping Orville alive.”
“Orville?”
“Better than Wilbur.”
Barbara said over her shoulder, “Emma, explain to him about naming rescues, will you? Don’t do it, Stephen. If you don’t keep your distance, keep your objectivity about your rescues, it’s a disservice both to the animals and yourself. Besides, it can break your heart.”
He felt as though Barbara had taken a tiny bit of peace with her when the door shut behind her. Ridiculous. But he made a mental note to call her in the afternoon and offer to d
rive back to Williamston in whatever new vehicle he would be driving to pick up a pizza for their dinner. After all, he needed to check on Orville. Orville? When had the blasted bird become Orville? Just happened. But Orville he was, for better or worse alive or, heaven forbid, dead. So much for not naming your rescues. Please, let Orville not break his heart.
“Stephen,” Emma said and laid a hand on his sleeve. “Everybody hates advice, but I’m going to give you some anyway. Barbara is a wonderful person and a great veterinarian. She is also a one-man woman, and that man died five years ago.”
He felt as though she’d slapped him. “And that has to do with me how?”
“Come on. I saw the way you looked at her. If you’d been a puppy, you’d have rolled over to have your tummy scratched.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I was impressed at the way she handled Orville.”
“There is not an unattached—or in some cases attached—male in the county or beyond who has not tried to court Barbara since John died. She ignores them. She works too hard, and when she relaxes, it’s with friends like Seth and me. She’s never moved on from John and has never shown the slightest interest in doing it. She says she’s comfortable with the life she has and hasn’t room for any complications.”
“Fine. We should do well together, then. She has her John. I have my Nina. Never the twain shall meet. Shall we go? I need wheels. Then I need to go check on Orville.”
As he climbed into Emma’s SUV, he admitted that he didn’t want to lose touch with Barbara even if Orville died. She didn’t want to move on from her John, just as he wouldn’t ever move on from Nina. Nothing wrong with a friendship.
Maybe offering to build an extension to Emma’s cage, making it suitable for Orville’s flight training, might lift his credit with Barbara a hair.
Two hours later, he drove out of the mayor’s automobile dealership in a bright red crew cab pickup with every bell and whistle the mayor could cram into it. Remembering their discussion about status and trucks at breakfast, he figured this particular truck would qualify as “honkin’” and give him the status of a knight in the good-ol’-boy hierarchy.
He was used to sitting in the confined quarters of his Triumph, freezing in the winter and roasting in the summer. This particular truck could no doubt reverse that—it was capable of freezing him in the summer and roasting him in the winter. For the first time since his accident, however, he could actually stretch out his bum leg and not have to stop every twenty miles or so to rub the pain out of it.
Silly to pay so much attention to a truck, but he felt as though he’d stepped through a portal into a weird new era in his life. How Nina would have laughed! She’d have presented him with a straw farmer’s hat and a pair of mirrored sunglasses.
God, how he missed her! All those years she had kept him on an even keel whenever he was exasperated about his students’ lack of interest or annoyed at the frequent idiocy of his colleagues. His former dean had once warned him that the smaller the academic fiefdom, the harder the faculty fought for control of it.
Until Nina had died he’d been right up there on the front lines, battling as hard as his colleagues for the optimum teaching schedule, the best teaching assistants, the most lucrative contracts for writing textbooks. Even the closest parking space to his office.
Since she’d died, none of it meant anything. He understood for the first time what it meant to want to swap places to save a loved one. He’d always thought Sydney Carton in Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities was an idiot to go to the guillotine to save someone else. To save Nina, however, he’d have chased that tumbrel down the Champs-Élysées and jumped on board.
Rather than drive straight back home, he decided to wander along the back roads. He and Nina used to enjoy driving out and getting hopelessly lost on Sunday afternoons. Not so easy to do in the familiar environs around his house in Memphis. Here, however, every road was new to him. And beautiful. In southern fall, the trees were finally changing colors. He drove past his new house without turning into the driveway and on down past Barbara’s clinic. He hadn’t seen it in daylight and had not expected to see the parking lot filled with trucks and vans.
The mayor’s advice had been right on. The Triumph would have stood out like a Roman chariot. He wanted to turn in and told himself it was to check on Orville, but Barbara would be working, possibly saving some other animal’s life. Without Emma’s holding down the phones, he had no idea how Barbara coped. From the number of vehicles in the lot he could see her need for an additional vet.
He would certainly need a break from his writing. Maybe he could offer to walk down—emphasis on the walk part—to add his volunteer efforts to Emma’s.
Down the road a bit farther he caught the sparkle of water off to his left. Seth had said there was a good-sized lake over there that emptied into the Tennessee River. Maybe he should see if he could rent a canoe.
He drove for over an hour without crossing the same path twice. For him driving was a method of getting from one place to another, but in this behemoth he was actually having a pleasant time.
He stopped at the convenience store that he’d been headed to last evening and discovered it also served takeout. Not what he was used to in the drive-throughs in town, but fried chicken, barbecue, fried catfish and steamed vegetables. Heavy on the fried, but it all looked delicious. He left with enough supplies to provide lunch, dinner and tomorrow morning’s breakfast. Dinner for Barbara as well, if she’d agree to join him. It would be better than pizza. If Emma was correct, Barbara probably would not agree to have dinner with him unless he could convince her that he wasn’t intruding on her solitary lifestyle. Both of them had to eat. Why not together?
He turned off the main road by a sign that read Marina, found the lake and ate lunch at a picnic bench in the trees.
How many meals had he eaten alone since Nina’s death? How much of it had been tasteless hospital food, eaten while staring at blank walls in rehab?
Here he didn’t feel alone. A cheeky crow landed two feet from him and, after alerting every creature in the vicinity that there was a human being around, stalked back and forth demanding that Stephen share.
He did.
He was preparing to toss his last morsel of biscuit to the raven when he heard a voice behind him.
“Better watch it. He’ll mug you for that biscuit.”
“He’s getting up his nerve to attack,” Stephen said as he turned. “Well, Seth Logan. Won’t you join me? I have an extra ham-and-cheese sandwich, some potato chips and a couple of sodas.”
“Already had lunch, thanks,” Seth said as he took the seat along the other side of the picnic table. “I’ll take one of those sodas, however. Diet, if you have one.”
“Yep, diet, and no longer terribly cold. My fancy new truck has a built-in cooler, but I have no idea how it works. I may actually have to read the manual—something I avoid doing if possible.”
“There speaks a college professor,” Seth said as he popped the top on his soda. He took a long swig. “So, this is your replacement for the Triumph? Rented or bought? And before you tell me, remember I know our esteemed mayor.”
“If you guessed bought, you’d be correct. Isn’t it outrageous? I do not have an ‘ooga’ horn like the mayor’s, although he lobbied long and hard to add one. My next stop is the local boot shop. These very expensive trainers don’t seem appropriate.”
“You can’t do all that walking you’re supposed to do in cowboy boots, my friend. You’ll be back in rehab in a week.”
“Ah, but there is method in my madness. The boots will live in the truck for when I want to show off the new good-ol’-boy Stephen. Or, according to the mayor, ‘Steve.’ I will break them in slowly.”
“Don’t use neat’s-foot compound, use the oil.”
“Amazingly enough, I know that. My youngest daughter, Anne, is a horse trainer. I have scrubbe
d my share of tack.
“Anne reminds me of Barbara. She has the same sort of connection with animals. They are more important to her than people. She can get annoyed when anyone interferes in her relationship with them. I suspect that’s why there are no current men in her life. Not that I am aware of, at any rate.”
“Speaking of relationships, how’s your eagle?”
“Alive. In a permanent state of fury at his confinement. Last night when I saw him, he had already perfected the guilt-inducing glare. I never considered that human doctors have one set of anatomy to learn, while Barbara treats everything from a bald eagle to somebody’s pet Gila monster with dermatitis.”
Seth laughed. “Somebody around here owns a Gila monster?”
“I have no idea. The example is sound, however. She seems to have constructed a way of life that only works if nothing except an animal emergency interferes and throws off her schedule.”
“Nothing?” Seth asked. “Or no one?” Seth tossed his empty drink can at an open trash container some distance away. The can landed precisely in the center without touching the sides. “Three points,” he said and stood. “Back to work.”
“What are you doing out here anyway?”
“Never-ending checking. Sam, who runs this marina, keeps an eye out for suspicious characters. Couple of the big marinas down on Kentucky Lake have had some break-ins lately. I need to see if he’s had any trouble or noticed anything suspicious.” He picked up his clipboard. “Thanks for the soda. Emma says you’re coming for dinner this evening, correct?”
He’d completely forgotten. So much for asking Barbara to join him for dinner. He considered asking Seth whether Emma had invited Barbara, but he didn’t want to show untoward interest in someone else’s guest list.
“Barbara’s supposed to show up if she gets finished at the clinic and doesn’t get called out on an emergency. She doesn’t often go out except to our house,” Seth said. “She’s usually worn out at the end of the day.”
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