Detour

by Lorena McCourtney

  “Yeah, well, sometimes I think he’s in better shape than he lets on. That maybe he just likes having both his girlfriend and Kathy fussing over him.”

  I wondered if Brian planned to remove the plastic bags stuck to the triceratops in the parking lot, but he still didn’t seem to notice them. We were almost back to the Porsche by then. Apparently he saw me comparing the vehicle to the economics of the dinosaur park.

  He brushed a hand across the back fender of the sleek Porsche. The car looked freshly washed and waxed, unlike the old Honda standing out in the weather. “We like it here, but I have business interests independent of the park.”

  “Business can be handled from almost anywhere these days, with computers and smart phones and all.”

  “Right. Say, maybe we can get together for dinner? I have brochures and copies of some old articles about the park that might interest you.”

  “Sounds good.”

  A light rain had started again by the time we reached the apartment door at the back of the gift shop. I figured Ivy and I would wait out in the motorhome while Brian went over to Duke’s trailer, but she pulled me inside when Brian opened the door.

  “Take a good look at Kathy,” she whispered. “Does she look familiar to you?”

  I glanced at the back of Kathy’s generously sized figure as she reached into the refrigerator to retrieve the almond milk. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

  “Because I’m sure I know her from somewhere.”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “I did, but she insists we’ve never met. That she’s never been in any of the places I mentioned. Never stayed in any RV parks.”

  “So?”

  “So, I think it’s odd, that’s all. Strange that she’s so insistent about it. She won’t even try to figure out where we may have known each other. Look at her again. You’re good at remembering people.”

  “Ivy, you’ve met all kinds of people I don’t know.” Before we were married, we both had motorhomes, but we didn’t always travel in unison. “I don’t recognize either of them, and their names don’t sound familiar to me.”

  I’m good at getting information for magazine articles, but Ivy can know more personal details after talking to someone for a few minutes than I’d know in a couple hours. People like to confide in her. Her memory about people is also very good.

  So it seems unlikely she’d be so certain she’d met Kathy Morrison before if they hadn’t actually met, and it was also odd that Kathy didn’t even want to explore where they might have known each other. I studied the woman more closely when she turned around.

  Nope, no help from me. I’d never seen her before.

  Chapter 3

  MAC

  Ivy and I walked back to the motorhome in what was now a drizzle. I toweled off from the drenching I’d taken in the park, changed from my wet shoes to rubber boots, and took BoBandy out for a walk around the puddled parking lot. He sniffed the toes of the triceratops, not intimidated by the size of the creature, but interested in visitors who had been there before him. Smell identification is a rather enviable talent, one I wouldn’t mind having. Although I wouldn’t want to stick my nose in places BoBandy does.

  Brian hadn’t seemed concerned about the plastic bags clinging to the triceratops, but they bothered me. I found a blown-down branch and managed to scrape off the bags and take them back to the trash sack in the motorhome. Brian knocked on the door a few minutes later.

  “I’m sorry, but this isn’t a good time for Duke. Kathy said you were on your way to Arizona, so if you have more questions, I’ll be glad to answer them. I brought one of our brochures.”

  The touristy brochure looked too superficial to be of much use, but I thanked him and asked, “Maybe I could talk to Duke tomorrow? I need to take photos too.”

  “I can take you back in the park so you can get them now.”

  I held an open palm out the door. Heavier drizzle. “Maybe it won’t be raining by morning. We aren’t in any big rush to get to Arizona.”

  “I see.” He sounded reluctant to leave it at that, but finally he said, “Before I forget, Kathy wanted me to tell Ivy—”

  Brian peered around me, and Ivy stepped up to the door when he mentioned her name. “She said you’d been trying to remember where you’d met before and that you mentioned Arkansas as a possibility. I reminded her about when we rented a motorhome and drove around in Arkansas for a week. She’d forgotten that, but you must have met in some RV park there. You have an impressive memory.” He nodded approvingly, as if memory was a remarkable accomplishment for someone our age, like one of the dinosaurs suddenly exhibiting mathematical skills. “Kathy was quite embarrassed that she’d forgotten.”

  “Umm . . . well, thank you,” Ivy said.

  “Is it okay if we park somewhere around here for the night?” I asked.

  “There aren’t any hookups for the motorhome.”

  “We can get along without them.”

  Brian looked as if he were trying to think of more reasons we shouldn’t stay, but he finally turned to leave without suggesting any particular spot where we should park.

  “We usually look for a local church wherever we happen to be on Sunday,” Ivy added. “Perhaps you know one close by that we might visit tomorrow morning?”

  “I’ve never noticed any.”

  “We’ll see what we can find, then,” she said, and Brian just kept walking.

  I closed the motorhome door, and we both watched Brian stride across the parking lot without looking back.

  “He doesn’t want us hanging around,” Ivy said. “He’d rather we’d just pick up and leave right now.”

  I agreed with Ivy’s assessment. Brian certainly wasn’t as friendly and sociable as he’d been when we went through the park. No mention of our getting together for dinner now. “I wonder why the sudden change.”

  “He talked to Kathy.”

  “What difference would that make? You have a knock-down, drag-out battle or something with her?”

  Ivy wrinkled her nose at my facetious question. Ivy is not a knock-down, drag-out sort of person, though she’s a lot tougher than she looks. There’s steel and rawhide and a bit of fire under that sweet exterior.

  “Kathy and I got along fine until I persisted in asking about our having met somewhere before. Now she ‘remembers’ our probably meeting at some RV park in Arkansas. Except there’s a problem with that.”

  “You stayed with your niece in Arkansas. You didn’t even have a motorhome yet.”

  “Right. If Kathy and I have met before, and I think we have, it wasn’t at any RV park in Arkansas.”

  “So why are they saying you did?”

  “Because, for some reason, they don’t want me to remember where I really know her from.”

  I might scoff at that as too much of a cloak-and-dagger explanation, but Ivy doesn’t invent such situations. Although she does seem to attract them.

  “What about Brian?” I asked. “Does he look familiar too?”

  “No, but if he didn’t have the beard and mustache . . .” Ivy tilted her head and squinted as if trying to bring up a hologram of a clean-shaven Brian. “Men have this do-it-yourself system of disguise. Grow a beard, and any man can look totally different. Especially if he colors it.”

  Dye your beard? I’d be as likely to paint my toenails as color my beard. But I suppose some people don’t like the gray-beard look. Fortunately, Ivy isn’t one of them. But maybe Brian and Kathy are. Brian’s beard does look a little too black-bearish to be natural.

  “Does their changed attitude make you want to pick up and leave?” I asked.

  Ivy crossed her arms in a stubborn way that said Brian would have to hitch up a dinosaur and drag her off before she was going anywhere. “No way. It just makes me wonder why.”

  Exactly how I felt. I also felt we might just hunker down and stay for a week. Or a month. That’s what happens when you arouse the c
uriosity—and stubbornness—of the MacPhersons.

  IVY

  Mac didn’t move the motorhome for the night. We stayed right there in the middle of the parking lot, sharing space under the lone parking lot light with the gloomy triceratops. While I fixed chiliburgers for dinner, Mac unhooked the old Toyota pickup we pulled behind the motorhome so we could look for a church in the morning. We’d left my car in a shed back at his son’s place in Montana.

  After dinner we tried to access the internet with the laptop, but Brian’s Wi-Fi connection was apparently password protected, as most systems are these days, and we couldn’t tap into it. Mac worked for a while on his magazine article about the park, and then we finished the evening with our usual Scripture study. We were in the book of Ruth now. I’ve always loved Ruth, but it’s all new to Mac, who is a fairly new Christian. A CUC—Christian Under Construction—as he refers to himself. Biblical Ruth had known some upheaval and moving around in her life, as both Mac and I have. Unfortunately for Ruth, she lacked the comforts of a motorhome that we enjoy. Although she did have good-guy Boaz waiting at the end of her journey, and with him she even wound up in the genealogy of Jesus. God’s mysterious plans at work.

  ***

  I woke up early, before Mac and Koop, but not before BoBandy, who wiggled and danced with eagerness to go outside. This day was a different world than yesterday’s gloomy rain. The coast temperature was chilly enough to warrant a jacket, but early-morning sunlight slanted through the tall trees from a blue sky overhead. The fall air held a crisp scent of fresh-washed evergreens and unseen ocean.

  I let BoBandy take his time leading me around the parking lot and gift shop. No sign of Kathy or Brian this morning, but I jumped when a voice called from the direction of the travel trailer back in the trees.

  “Over here,” the voice called again, and I spotted him. An elderly man sitting in a spot of sunshine in a . . . chair tree? Tree chair?

  Because that’s what it was. A tree with narrow branches trained to grow in the shape of a chair, then turning into leafy shade overhead. A striped pillow softened the branches under the skinny old guy sitting there. He had a white beard and mad-scientist hair, but his smile looked almost boyishly friendly. He had a cat in his lap and a walker stood beside him.

  “Hi,” I called as I walked down the overgrown driveway toward him. “You must be Duke Lancaster.”

  “That I am, young lady.”

  Usually I feel an urge to kick shins at “young lady” nonsense, but Duke said it with such gallantry that I accepted the term without grumbling.

  “I’m Ivy Mal— Ivy MacPherson,” I corrected. Sometimes I still stumble over the change from Malone to MacPherson. “My husband is here to write an article about the dinosaur park for a travel magazine. We were hoping to talk to you.”

  “Brian mentioned that yesterday, but I was kind of under the weather. Got a bum knee.” He patted his left knee, then smiled and whacked the other knee as if it annoyed him. “Actually, got two of ’em. Sorry I couldn’t talk to you yesterday. But Sheila brought me some pills, so I’m not hurting now.”

  I hadn’t realized it until now, but a suspicion that Brian had made up some excuse so we couldn’t talk to Duke had simmered in my subconscious. Apparently, a mistaken simmer, because Duke was now saying he really hadn’t been up to talking to visitors. The black-and-white cat in his lap stood up, spotted BoBandy, and hissed.

  “Now, Scarlett, don’t you go throwing a hissy fit,” Duke admonished with a soothing swipe of hand along the cat’s arched back.

  BoBandy backed away, but his tail wagged. He and Koop get along fine and often curl up together. Scarlett didn’t suddenly become friendly, but she didn’t repeat the hiss. She turned her back on BoBandy with royal disdain and curled up in Duke’s lap again.

  “Scarlett seems an unusual name for a black-and-white cat,” I said.

  “I didn’t name her for her color. It’s for her feisty attitude, like that woman in Gone with the Wind. Scarlett, with two t’s.”

  “You read a lot?”

  “Oh yeah. What else is there for an old guy with bad knees to do? This thing”—he held up a cell phone I hadn’t noticed—“is pickier about when it works than Scarlett is about where she sleeps. Right now I might as well be trying to make a call with a toadstool.”

  “Cell phones can be like that.”

  “I like reading that Grisham guy’s books. Lee Child too, and that Rowling woman and those Mitford books. Not so fond of that weird stuff Stephen King puts out. Maybe I ought to get a computer. Brian’s always on his. There are all kinds of games you can play on them.”

  “Is Duke a real name or a nickname?”

  “It’s real, all right. My mother had some fancy ideas. I had a brother named Prince and a sister named Duchess. Both gone now, sad to say.”

  Which made me think of the sister I’d lost, niece DeeAnn’s mother, and my beloved husband Harley too. And the son who had been gone longer than either of them, without ever a chance to say goodbye. But it was always a comfort to know I’d see them again someday beyond this life. I jumped to another subject. “Tell me about that chair you’re sitting on.”

  “Kind of neat, isn’t it?” He patted the branch trained to become an arm for the chair. “I’ve been working on it for, oh, twelve to fourteen years now.”

  When Mac and I finally settle down somewhere, maybe I’ll try training tree branches into a chair too. A double chair, of course, so we could sit together. Although, given the unpredictable effect of my thumb on plants, I might wind up with a springboard into space instead of a chair.

  “Would it be okay if I go get my husband so he can talk to you about information for his article?”

  “I’d rather talk to a pretty young lady like you, but sure, you go get him. I’ll go inside and fix coffee.”

  I went to the motorhome, and Mac accompanied me back to the trailer. We left BoBandy in the motorhome. I noticed, when we reached the trailer, that it had a ramp rather than steps, easier for Duke to navigate with his walker. Inside, the trailer was a bit cramped but warm and cozy, not immaculate but bachelor-level clean. A window looked out on the gravel road going toward the coast. Kathy had mentioned liking to look for shells and rocks, so there must be a nice beach out there. Shelves overflowed with books, and a bear-shaped honey container stood on the kitchen counter. Duke took three steaming cups out of a microwave and added instant coffee granules.

  “Cream’s in the fridge.” Inside the trailer, Duke seemed fairly self-sufficient without the walker, but he motioned to the small refrigerator rather than going to it.

  I opened the refrigerator and reached for the quart of half-and-half. I stopped with my hand on the container. Duke noticed my surprise.

  “That’s my Celebration Champagne,” he said.

  “You have a celebration coming up?” Mac asked.

  “No, but if one comes, I figure on being ready,” Duke said cheerfully. He added a dribble of honey to his coffee.

  Mac and I exchanged smiles. When we were Duke’s age—which, to be honest, wasn’t all that far off—I hoped I could still expect an event worthy of a champagne celebration to be coming soon.

  Although the next thing I noticed when we settled on the sofa with our coffee was the handgun casually hanging in a leather holster on a hook by the door. Duke saw me looking at it.

  “Never know what kind of varmints might come sneakin’ around.” He smiled. “I figure on being ready for them too.”

  Another hook beside the holster held an oversized key ring with an unlikely number of keys for one older person in a small trailer.

  A surprising man, Duke Lancaster. He made me think of that man in the TV ads, the one they call “the most interesting man in the world.”

  The first thing Mac asked Duke was about the unusual name of the park, Ghost Goat Dinosaur Park.

  “It comes from the name of the mountain—well, it’s really just a big hill,
isn’t it? But there was an old hermit with a bunch of goats lived here back in the 1930s.When he died, the goats went to living wild. Eventually they died out too, except over the years someone claims to see one or two of them now and then. Or maybe their ghosts.” He went on to tell us how he’d once tried to build another dinosaur to add to the “herd.”

  “I thought it couldn’t be all that complicated. After all, Uncle Hiram built them alone. But that one I tried to build just collapsed. Looked like an oversized turkey after a collision with an eighteen-wheeler.” He scowled as if the memory still irked him. “Sometimes I wonder if the old coot maybe did find some old dinosaur eggs and hatch ’em.”

  “How many dinosaurs are there in the park?” I asked.

  “Nineteen. The place would probably be closed by now if it weren’t for Brian and Kathy. I don’t know what I’d do without them. Brian built the ramp for my trailer, and Kathy is always sending over goodies from her kitchen and fussing about what I eat. They take care of everything about running the park and gift shop.”

  “You don’t get out in the dinosaur area much now?” Mac asked. He’d mentioned earlier how run-down and overgrown it was out there, and he’d wondered if Duke knew Brian wasn’t the greatest caretaker.

  “Nah. These old knees, they’re about done for. Though sometimes I manage to get over to say hello to ol’ Tricky.”

  “Tricky?” Mac repeated.

  “Tricky the Triceratops. There’s Tex the Rex too. And Danny the Dimetrodon.”

  “Benny the Brontosaurus?” Mac asked.

  Duke looked surprised. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  Mac smiled. “You know the old saying, ‘great minds think alike.’”

  “You probably didn’t see Sammy the Saber-Toothed Tiger. I don’t know why Uncle Hiram built him, because saber-toothed tigers aren’t from the dinosaur era. I diverted the trail away from him, but I used to climb over the fence and visit him once in a while. He’s not in good shape. One of his saber-teeth actually fell out. Sheila helped me glue it back in.”