“Aw. T’weren’t nothin’, ma’am,” he drawled, looking down, abashed, to scuff a shoe on the pavement. “Any ol’ knight woulda done the same.”
She leaned up to kiss him on the lips. The kiss he gave her in return was, as always, perfect. Perfect lingering length, perfect tenderness, followed by a perfect smile. Just like the kisses he had given her in high school.
Laura leaned away, covering her discomfort with a smile she hoped was as perfect as his own, then turned back to look at the parade as a float advertising Taubolt’s upcoming Whale-Watching Festival passed by. Astride a huge, somewhat misshapen whale of papier-mâché, which there’d apparently been no time to paint, sat Karl Foster, the Chamber of Commerce’s president, waving at the crowd, like Captain Ahab riding Moby Dick. A banner on the whale’s side proclaimed, TAUBOLT: PARADISE BESIDE THE SEA!
“Look.” Rose grinned. “There’s your mom and Joby.”
“Where?” Hawk said.
“Down there, across the street. See? They’re kissing.” Her eyes became as bright as her smile. “When’s he going to marry her anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Hawk sighed. “When he finally gets off his butt and asks her, we should have another parade.”
“Sometimes you sound like it’s you he’s supposed to marry,” she scoffed.
“No way.” Hawk grinned, leaning in to kiss her again. “Only one person I’ll ever want to marry.”
“I hope that’s not a proposal,” she smiled, dodging his lips to peck his cheek instead, “ ’cause you know what I’ll say.”
“Not until after college,” he sighed, shrugging away from her to watch the parade again. “I know. You must have told me about two hundred times.”
“It’s hard to know when you’re listening.” She grinned mischievously. “If we both get into Brown—”
“When we both get into Brown,” Hawk corrected with a smile.
“When we’re at Brown,” she smiled back, “we can take all our gen-ed classes together, and study together every night. It’ll be almost the same thing.”
“No it won’t,” he said, “but I can wait. Long as we’re together. That’s all I care.”
“That’s all I care too,” she said, throwing her arms around his neck, and starting to rhapsodize again about going off to college and living in the wider world at last. Hawk couldn’t suppress the silly grin that always crossed his face when she talked this way. He’d known that wider world all too well once, but never believed it could be lovable until she’d begun to show it to him through her eyes. Now, he couldn’t wait to share it with her. Solomon had told him once that a true bard was only fully forged by pleasures and pains far greater than any Hawk had yet known. Listening to Rose now, Hawk felt sure that everything Solomon had meant awaited them at college. Just one more year.
“It’s kind of strange,” she said at last, watching the ladies of Taubolt’s Historical Preservation Council pass in their old Model A Ford, decked out in antique frocks and wide, flowered hats. “Half our friends may never leave Taubolt at all. Don’t they ever wonder about what’s going on out there?” She gave him an earnest look. “I know some of it’s awful, but there must be so much worth doing!” Her expression became dreamy. “Sometimes being cooped up here feels like,” she smiled, “like sleeping through a parade.”
“You think Taubolt’s boring?” Hawk laughed. “Look at all these people! They’d have given anything for five minutes of what you took for granted growing up here!”
“I know,” Rose sighed, pulling him back into the shop entryway where they could talk more privately. “I love Taubolt with all my heart, Hawk. You know I always will. But what are we doing with everything we have here? What’s it for? Do we ever ask that? All these people seem so desperate for what we’ve been given, but we just hide it here, where it’s nothing but a game—a game for children.”
“It’s not just hidden here,” Hawk murmured gravely. “It’s protected. Their world destroys what it needs as quickly as it destroys anything else, you know. Maybe Taubolt’s little game is all that’s kept what we have here alive.”
“Maybe,” Rose sighed. “But we must be keeping it alive for something more than just,” she shook her head impatiently, “just keeping it alive.” The excitement came back into her eyes. “Haven’t you wondered why Taubolt’s borders have suddenly failed after all these years? Maybe it’s time to bring what we have out of hiding, Hawk! You know none of this is really ours, certainly not the—” Hawk started and looked around to remind her they were not alone. “Certainly not it,” Rose whispered, looking chastened.
“That’s one thing I’m not looking forward to,” Hawk said, taking her hand and leading her around the building into a small patch of garden away from the noisy street with its prying eyes and ears. “What’s it going to be like,” he asked softly when they got there, “living so far away from the Cup for so long? I can’t even remember how that felt now, and I don’t think I want to.”
“We’ll handle it,” she assured him, “because we’ll have each other, Hawk, and because we know there is something to believe in, and that there must be some way to share it. There must be a thousand ways! All we’ll need to find is one.”
Agnes Hamilton took a petite sip of iced tea, set her glass on the lawn table, and heaved a long-suffering sigh. A sudden blare of discordant horns from the parade route three blocks off was followed by a muffled swell of applause and laughter. “Listen to that racket, Franny! Did we move up here just to be assaulted by a bunch of yahoos trying to wake the dead?”
Franny shook her head obediently.
“Karl wanted me to ride with him on that ludicrous whale, if you can believe it,” Agnes scoffed. “Imagine. Up on that monstrosity waving like some circus performer. I do wonder about the man sometimes.”
“He’s very proud of the new Chamber,” Franny said with apologetic deference. “You did encourage him to form it.”
“I encouraged him to organize this town’s unruly flood of merchants into some more manageable body, not to make a spectacle of himself—or me! Parades! What next? A kissing booth?”
“Oh, I’m sure he would never ask you to do that,” Franny gasped.
Agnes gave her a sidelong glance, wondering, not for the first time, whether Franny’s dim front were just disguised recalcitrance. “If he had to raise such a din,” she growled, “he might at least have kept rabble like that Greensong woman out of it. It’s disgraceful to legitimize such a harridan by letting her march down Main Street.”
“What could he do?” Franny asked timidly. “It’s against the law to stop her.”
“Oh!” Agnes exclaimed sarcastically. “And laws are so important here, aren’t they?” She was suddenly wracked with something close to despair at the overwhelming obstacles she faced. “No one seems to understand the price I’ve paid to help protect this town,” she moaned. “The historical society was a useless gossip refinery before I took it under wing. Preservation hadn’t even occurred to them! Can you imagine? Now we’ve got the teeth to keep people from painting their houses any old color they want, or plastering Main Street with neon signs, or . . . who knows; growing cactus in their yards! Just look at this influx of people, Franny! Taubolt’s character would have been swept away completely by now if not for me. Just tell me I’m wrong.”
Franny looked a bit unsure about whether to obey. “I know how hard you work, Agnes. So does Karl. . . . A lot of people do.”
“Well, they don’t work very hard to show it,” Agnes pressed, speaking not so much to Franny anymore, as to some larger internal audience. “The school board still refuses to close that high school campus at lunchtime,” she huffed. “You’d think they might remember who got them going in the first place. I mean, really, Franny! The school board, the Chamber of Commerce, the Botanical Council, even the committee to explore incorporation. None of these had even crossed this town’s backward minds before I came.” She exhaled as if some large animal had stepped on her
chest. “Who knew it would be so much work to manage a little dolls’ house like Taubolt?”
“It’s a very nice little dolls’ house though,” Franny reassured her.
“Yes,” Agnes conceded wearily, “but between the yahoos moving up here, and the native simpletons, one of me may not be enough to save the place.” Somewhere down the street, a string of firecrackers exploded in rapid staccato. “Ugh!” Agnes exclaimed, sloshing her drink onto her blouse in alarm. “Oh! Those hoodlums!” she complained, brushing ineffectually at the wet spots on her breast. “If we had a standing police force here, these lawless children might develop some respect for the rights of decent citizens!”
Franny nodded solemnly, getting up to offer Agnes her napkin.
“It’s disgraceful that we’re reduced to importing officers all the way from Heeberville for events like this circus of Karl’s! God knows what bedlam might erupt amidst such a mob!” Her tirade was cut short as a low-flying helicopter thundered over her rooftop and across her yard on its way toward the parade route.
“God almighty!” she exclaimed, sucking breath like a landed fish. “Ferristaff! A man with his money has no excuse for such manners!”
“The earth is our mother!” Greensong shouted into the video camera trained on her cadre of protesters as they marched under signs and banners decrying Ferristaff’s local logging operations. “They’re calling Taubolt paradise! Would men rape their mother in paradise? We want Ferristaff out of here NOW, with all his macho men stinking of money and steel!”
“News crews in Taubolt,” Franklin muttered, overlooking the angry spectacle from up on the Crow’s Nest Bar and Grill’s sundeck with Gladys Lindsay and the Connollys. “That I should have lived to see it.”
“And policemen,” Gladys lamented, gazing down at the two bored-looking officers escorting Greensong’s company down the street.
“Came up here for a public interest story,” Tom sighed. “Looks like they got it.”
“Trouble in paradise,” Gladys said grimly. “Far more titillating than the quaint parade they expected, I’m sure. She does put on quite a show. Look at her scream.”
“Seems to me she might hate men a little more’n she loves trees,” Franklin grunted. “Feelin’s mutual from what I’ve heard. Not sure I like seein’ so many of our kids out there beside her either. Couple of ’em came into the store last week to get stuff for those banners. Said she told ’em the planet’s proper human population was zero.”
“She opposes Ferristaff.” Clara shrugged. “Of course the children back her. They’re angry about what he’s doing to our forests too. Aren’t we all?”
“Not like that,” Franklin said. “That anger’s got nothin’ to do with justice.”
“For what it’s worth, Rose agrees with you,” Clara conceded.
“Smart girl, your Rose,” said Franklin. He looked up and down the parade route with distaste. “Awful lotta bad seed gettin’ spilled in our yard these days. Turns my stomach to watch ’em fight over Taubolt like we’d never even been here.”
“There’s a television executive from Los Angeles staying at my inn this weekend,” Gladys said. “Some friend of Ferristaff’s apparently. He tells me they’re preparing to film a one-hour special here.” She shook her head sadly. “I still can’t understand how all this happened so quickly—or at all!”
“Ain’t natural. I’ll tell you that,” Franklin grumbled. “Jake can say what he likes. This ain’t just an overcrowded world stumblin’ up against us. There’s gotta be somethin’ behind an invasion like this. Wish I knew what it was, much less how to stop it.”
“Well, between the way Hamilton’s buying up this town, and Ferristaff the woods,” Tom said, “I don’t know how much there’ll be to save soon. I hate to say it, but maybe we should be looking for someplace else to go.”
“Things here that’re awful hard to move,” Franklin said without looking away from the parade. “You know that well as I do, Tom.”
“Yes, I do,” Tom sighed. “But we may have to find some way to move even those, Franklin. Ferristaff’s already started looking north.”
“He won’t find it,” Franklin said. “Never get in on the ground, and we both know what he’ll see from the air.”
“Men like him destroy things they can’t see all the time,” Tom pressed.
“He tries,” Franklin said quietly, “I’ll do things to him personally that’ll make any plans Ms. Greensong’s got seem lovesick.”
A rhythmic thrumming in the distance made them all look up, along with everyone on the street below, as a helicopter appeared above the roofs at Main Street’s far end, and turned in their direction.
“Speakin’ of the devil,” Franklin spat.
“There you go, Mr. Benzick,” Ferristaff said, banking the copter to give his passenger a better view of Main Street. “Not exactly the Macy’s parade.”
“If it were, I wouldn’t be here.” Benzick smiled. “Wish we had cameras down there. This is exactly the kind of stuff we’re going to want for the special.”
“Oh, you’ll have no shortage of quaint spectacle.” Ferristaff grinned. “Not if the Chamber of Commerce has anything to say about it. Anyway, I heard something about a news crew up here today doing some kind of PR section for a Bay Area station. You’ll probably be able to grab some of their footage.” He searched the parade route. “There’s the cameraman, in fact, ogling the latest little thorn in my side.” He nudged the copter forward a few blocks until they were hovering right over Greensong’s little band. “Hello, darlin’!” Ferristaff drawled under his breath as everyone below stared up at them. Green-song shook her fist at him, shouting in obvious rage. One more thing to like about helicopter travel, he realized; couldn’t hear a damn thing from outside the cockpit. “We’ve probably ruffled enough feathers here.” He grinned. “What next?”
“Well, I’d love a better look at the coastline,” Benzick said. “North this time?”
“No problem.” Ferristaff banked to head back across town.
“I appreciate your taking time to show me around like this,” said Benzick.
“My pleasure,” Ferristaff replied. “Shadwell and I go way back. If you all do this TV special, I hope he’ll get up here himself, and visit me. You tell him I said so.”
“I will.” The young man smiled. “The show’s already been green-lighted actually. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, Mr. Ferristaff, but this little town has become quite the hot ticket. You’d think it was Disneyland and Yellowstone rolled into one, the way people are panicking to vacation here now.” He fell silent, gazing down at flocks of seabirds wheeling about the surf-washed cliffs, amber fields of grass, and wooded knolls farther inland. In diplomatic deference to his host, he said nothing about the wide, muddy tracts of clear-cut scarring numerous slopes east and south of town. “It is beautiful,” he mused. “I still can’t imagine how all this went undiscovered for so long.”
“Well, that might have something to do with Taubolt’s stiff-necked natives,” Ferristaff said dryly. “You say ‘growth’ to them, they think tomatoes and summer squash. Hell, this place has more potential per square acre than Laguna Beach. Every last one of them could be rich for life by now if they had the tiniest bit of business sense. But I’ll tell you, Mr. Benzick, these are the sorriest tribe of backward yokels you will ever meet.” He grinned humorlessly. “Though I can see that might be a source of some delight to your program director.”
“Why antagonize her like that?” Laura asked in disbelief as Ferristaff’s craft veered from its brief pause up the street and headed away from town. “Isn’t she causing him enough trouble without him poking at the wasps’ nest?”
“You’d think,” Joby said, as the distant ruckus subsided, and the parade began to move again. “Though she pokes plenty too. Can’t expect the logging crowd to hug her for it.” It seemed to Joby that there was altogether too much poking going on in Taubolt these days. Even the tourists had changed. Gone were the
bemused, accidental visitors that had once wandered so cheerfully in and out of Taubolt’s shops and restaurants. Now, the guests at Gladys’s inn spent half their time complaining. Stressed and disgruntled couples in bright plastic sun hats and plaid Bermuda shorts moaned about the places they had come from, or irritably listed the ways that Taubolt wasn’t living up to whatever they’d been told by magazines or travel agents, while their tetchy children cried or argued in the background. It all left Joby feeling not just glum, but vaguely anxious.
By any rational assessment, Joby’s life here had gotten better with each passing year. He had a solid position now in the most idyllic place he could imagine. He was blessed with scores of remarkable friends, and, most wonderfully of all, he had Laura back; a gift he’d never hoped for in the dark years since he’d lost her. And yet, despite all this, there was still some small, hard, fearful knot at the center of him that Taubolt had never managed to reach; some elusive artifact of his unpleasant past. Unable to expunge it, he’d just done his best to ignore it altogether, but it seemed unwilling to ignore him.
To Joby’s carefully concealed dismay, that dark lump had settled very quickly between himself and Laura. A creature filled with light and beauty, she gave him fistfuls of the treasure she contained whenever they were together. But each time he reached inside himself to reciprocate, he found that mute, intractable core of empty darkness where the laughter and delight he longed to give her in return should have been. The closer she came, the more frightened he felt that she would see what sat there inside him, and recoil. For more than a year now, he’d done all he could to keep her near, fearful of losing her again, but unable to let her in. Struggling all the while to find some way past the turmoil that stood between himself and all he most wanted, he feared Laura would not let him hide from her much longer.
The Book of Joby Page 47
