Yuri regarded the bear that was tearing the brook trout apart. “Maybe iz better that ve meet you back at cabin. Bears do not like to share food and if you come closer . . .”
“We’ll see you there,” I said. Taking Josie’s arm, I turned her back toward the cabin.
We’d just finished putting up the supplies we’d brought when I spied the pair walking back.
Josie and I met them on the porch.
“Iz vonderful here.” Yuri waved his arms around the clearing. “Vhy you not live on mountain?”
“I work in downtown Mossy Creek,” Josie explained. “While I do love this place, hiking up and down every day would get old.”
A shadow passed over Yuri’s face at the same time that he threw me a crooked smile. “Ah, the tings ve do for our vemen.”
Since I could tell Josie was dying to pet the bear, I took her hand and we descended the steps.
The bear sniffed the hand I extended briefly, then snuffled as he sniffed hers.
Josie pulled a large milk bone from her pocket and offered it to the bear. He was not shy about taking it.
“Where did you get that?” I asked.
“While you were on the phone, I went to check on Mama and Daddy. I raided their dog treats.”
“Iz circus bus leaving today?” Yuri asked.
I nodded. “Got the call just before we left the house. They’re leaving around five o’clock.”
“Ah.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go with them?” Josie asked.
“If okay to stay here until I find another circus that vill take bear . . .”
“You don’t need to do that,” I said, then explained about the California sanctuary. When I mentioned how delighted the director was to add Yuri to his staff, the shadows from Yuri’s face cleared.
His relief was so irrepressible, he began to dance around the clearing with joyful laughter.
The bear immediately roared and reared, joining the dance.
Josie clapped her hands.
Seeing Josie’s delight, Yuri sang the Russian folk song and gave the bear more dancing cues. Josie watched for a minute, then joined them, laughing and dancing and singing words she didn’t understand.
Their happiness was so palpable, I couldn’t budge.
When the song ended and the bear dropped to all fours, Josie gave it a hug and another milk bone. “What’s his name?”
Yuri shrugged. “I do not know bear’s name.”
“He has to have a name! You can’t just call him Bear.”
“My beautiful friend, you give bear name.”
Josie’s eyes widened in excitement. “Me? Okay.” She thought a minute, then shook her head. “I need time to think about this. I’ll let you know in a day or two.”
“Yah. Iz good.”
“If you want to say goodbyes to your circus friends, we need to head on down the mountain,” I said.
Yuri scratched his head. “I tink maybe if I leave, bear follow.”
“As much as this fellow seems to love you,” Josie said, “I think you can pretty much count on that.”
Yuri obviously had no pressing desire to see his friends before they left. Tatiana’s hold had gone deep, her desertion ripping part of Yuri away.
“I think it’s a pretty good idea for you to stay here until we can arrange transport to California. Josie and I can say your goodbyes.”
“I tank you both,” Yuri said. “So very kind to me.”
“Do we need to pick up anything for you?” Josie asked. “Did you leave anything on the bus or in one of the trucks that you might want?”
Yuri shook his head. “Foot jugglers have not much equipment but muscles. I bring bag vith me to your house. I can tink of nothing to bring away vith you.”
Josie and I hiked back down the mountain, then drove into town. We met the troupe gathering around their repaired bus.
Hannah
AFTER SPENDING MY Saturday night avoiding David Brodie—refusing his calls and closeting myself in my bedroom with the claim that I had gotten indigestion from his stupid kippers—I awoke on Valentine’s Day to a pounding headache.
That wasn’t surprising, since I’d spent half the night on Google. Google was no stranger to Dave Brodie. The man darned near owned the search engine. Typing in “Dave Brodie” and “photographer” on my laptop got me 52,081 hits, everything from galleries to newspaper bios to his photo essay in Vanity Fair. The man was amazing, darn him.
I hated him for that. So much talent, so many photos. Not the photos he’d taken in Mossy Creek—I still couldn’t bring myself to look at those. They sat on my dresser exactly where I’d left them when I’d arrived home last night from the park.
But the other ones? Let’s just say that the man knew how to capture a subject. And looking at the eloquent images tore my heart in two. Because for whatever reason, he’d decided that my town, the town that I loved, wasn’t worthy of the care he seemed to show his other subjects.
“You’re not going to church with me and the Blackshears?” Rachel asked plaintively from the doorway of my bedroom.
“Sorry, sweetie. My headache is really bad.” That was the God’s honest truth, although it was only part of it. I wasn’t going anywhere until I figured out what to do about Dave’s pictures. I was liable to erupt into tears if I ran into anybody he’d featured so cruelly.
“Monique’s not going, either,” Rachel grumbled. “She says she’s an atheist.”
“Does she?” I murmured absently, then started as her words registered. “Since when did you learn to speak French?”
Rachel dropped her gaze to the carpet. “Um . . . well . . . she’s leaving today, so I wanted to talk to her before she left so . . . well . . . I called and asked Mr. Crogan if he’d come over and translate. H-He’s downstairs.”
I gaped at my daughter. “You asked him here without my permission?”
She thrust out her lower lip. “He’s my friend, too, you know. And you were supposed to have a date with him until you got sick last night and made me call Mrs. Sikes and give him a message not to come.”
“Darn it, Rachel, how do you know I didn’t have a perfectly good reason for not wanting to see him? How do you know I hadn’t found out he was a murderer or a thief or—” A famous photographer who wants to make fools of us all.
“Mr. Crogan? Puh-lease.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s, like, the nicest man I ever met. And you didn’t say he did anything wrong—you just said to tell him you were sick.” A canny look crossed her face. “Are you saying you weren’t sick? That you made me lie to him and Mrs. Sikes?”
Busted. And by my daughter, no less. She got smarter by the minute, the little imp. And that, along with the discovery that she actually had good hand-eye coordination, was disconcerting. Everything was disconcerting these days.
Sharp objects again.
I sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You want me to tell him to go away?”
“Yes.” As her face fell, I said, “No.” The truth was, I’d have to deal with him sooner or later. And it wasn’t fair to use Rachel as a go-between, even if she was eleven-going-on-twenty. “Tell him I’ll be down in a minute.”
“He . . . um . . . asked me if you’d looked at the pictures yet. I didn’t know what he meant, so I didn’t know what to tell him.”
I sucked in a breath. “Tell him . . . I’m looking at them now.” And just so she’d know I wasn’t lying, I got up and grabbed his package, then carried it to the bed.
Time to rip off the bandage. Find out just how bad it was. Then at least I could make an informed decision. And if the photos riled me up, that was all the better—it would make it easy for me to kick his famous behind out of my house.
As soon as Rachel lef
t, I took out the contact sheets. The initial ones I’d seen were on top, and I looked at them again to help me brace myself for the new ones. I still hated them, but now I could see the artistry behind them. That almost made it worse, because it was the artistry that shaped the vision.
Of Mossy Creek as some sort of broken-down hell full of pathetic people.
Blinking back tears, I pulled out the rest of the sheets. The first half of the initial sheet looked like more of the same. And then . . .
The vision changed. There was no other way to describe it.
I knew it the minute I saw the shot of Jayne Reynolds making a latte at The Naked Bean. The camera had caught her in the midst of a smile at a customer. The soft and subtly shadowed lighting gave it a feel of homey comfort, while the focus still crisply captured the modern espresso machine in the background.
My breath catching, I looked at the next and the next and the next. The Sitting Tree awash with morning light—you could practically hear the holy hush of the clearing. How many Creekite romances had begun under that tree including, it was rumored, our mayor’s and police chief’s, years ago? And here was Marle and Hope Settles kissing, with the covered bridge of Bailey Branch glistening behind them on a wintry afternoon. It went on and on until I came to a set of photos that caught me up short.
“Hannah?” said a tentative female voice from the doorway.
I looked up to see Monique watching me with concern. Only then did I realize that tears were streaming down my cheeks. “Yes?”
She glanced down at the pictures, and her face cleared. Coming over to the bed, she took the contact sheet from me, her gaze fixing immediately on the set of photos I’d just been looking at. I’d forgotten about the afternoon Dave had taken them.
A week ago, I’d hurried out of the library to run an errand, only to be met by a sudden downpour. Pausing to wait under the overhang, I’d glanced over to see Dave standing in the parking lot to the left of the entrance with a tarp half-slung over his camera, his sweater plastered to his skin and his hair lying in ruins about his face. I’d smiled and waved, and he’d just kept his eye to the camera, snapping pictures madly as rain beat down on his back.
Monique laid the sheet in front of me. “L’amour,” she said, tapping her finger on one particular photo.
More tears escaped. I might not speak French, but I sure as heck knew what that meant.
I stared at the picture she’d indicated. In most of the others I was backlit by the fluorescent lights of the library so you could see only a silhouette. But in this photo, I’d turned my head toward the window, and Dave had caught me half in shadow, half in light, on the cusp of a smile, looking as alluring and mysterious as any Parisian model.
L’amour.
“Excuse me,” came a familiar male voice from the doorway, “but I thought you might need a translator.”
I lifted my gaze to find Dave wearing blue jeans and a Yankees t-shirt, his hands shoved into his pockets and his chin thrust out as if he braced himself for a final judgment. Mine.
Monique smiled, said something in French, then eased herself from the room. But I could only stare at him, completely at a loss for words. Finally I said, “I have to take Monique to the bus. But afterwards, you and I will talk, all right?”
He nodded.
Eula Mae
A BUNCH OF THE circus people and a mess of Creekites are lolling in the yard at WMOS radio station and they don’t look happy to be outdoors in the cold weather. But it’s Valentine’s Day and that’s always in February, so it ain’t my fault. I’m having a good time with my guests. We have to take them to the bus in a few minutes.
Mayor Ida walks up and she gives me a big hug and that always sets me in a good mood. Since I’m already in a good mood, I feel like a firecracker. “I hear there’s going to be a wedding and then you’re going to be in the circus?” she says.
“That’s exactly right.”
The mayor’s granddaughter, Little Ida, gives me a hug and kisses my forehead. “You’re my idol, Miz Whit,” she says. This little girl is a politician like her grandma. She’s going to be president of the big ol’ U S of A one day. I wonder if I can cast my vote for her now?
I nod to Mayor Ida. “Is the preacher here?”
“Yes, Miz Eula Mae, but I don’t know if the ceremony will be legally binding. Roxie and Cowboy aren’t U.S. citizens.”
“I see where that might cause a problem. However, we made exceptions before, so I figure there’s a law somewhere they can get married under. We’ll figure it out. There’s Cowboy. I hope he ain’t still crying.”
Mayor Ida raises a brow but she don’t ask any questions.
All the rest of the circus performers are buzzin’ around like flies. They seem to all know about the rift between Cowboy and Roxie. Did our ruse work? Has she been lured back? We wait and wait, then we spot her, long off in the field behind the radio station, where wisteria blooms in April but there’s just empty vines in February, taking her time as all women should, finally calm.
Cowboy goes to meet her and for the first time since I arrive, everyone is quiet. This is a big deal for Mossy Creekites. We have big hearts and we use them liberally, although it don’t mean we won’t talk about you later.
Mr. Wiley comes by my side and two chairs are brought over so we can rest our old bones. We sit together and talk about what kind of future we can have. I’m a hundred and one, he’s seventy-eight, and we’re realistic.
Getting married and blending houses isn’t a good idea. The move might just kill one or both of us. But we will stay engaged and be sweethearts forever.
Suddenly Cowboy falls to one knee before Roxie and then she lets out a whoop and does some back flips before ending up in his arms.
The preacher steps forward and within minutes Cowboy and Roxie are declared man and wife.
The circus people and Creekites cheer them on. Then the circus folk come for me.
I hear Estelle hollerin’, but I tell her I’m fine.
They form a human swing and I sit on the arms of some of the men who have linked their hands together. Ever so gently I am rocked. I’m thrilled because another of my wishes has come true. I am in the circus.
I think about that fine lady, Oprah, and I just betcha I got her beat again, ’cause I’m pretty sure she ain’t never rocked on a human swing.
This is a dandy day to be alive.
Chapter 7
Sunday Afternoon
The Circus Moves On
Sandy
AS SUNDAY AFTERNOON rolled around, Mutt got word to me that the bus had been repaired. Our circus guests were to meet back in the parking lot at Mount Gilead Methodist. So I drove the feuding foreigners back to the bus where the other circus folk were gathering from all the places where they’d been farmed out the last couple of nights. Sergei and Mariska sat in stony silence the whole way.
I parked and helped them get their things together. Sergei announced, “Come, Mariska, ve must practice,” and headed back to the target board. Standing beside it was a small, husky man smoking a long cigar. Sergei laid his knife case on the grass and opened it. Meanwhile, a petite Asian lady handed Mariska what looked like a telegram. She read it quickly as Sergei selected a knife for each hand.
“I still am not standink in front of target,” Mariska declared. This pronouncement unleashed a torrent of guttural statements from her cigar-chomping coach, who evidently spoke enough English to understand that Mariska, the throw-ee, still balked. You didn’t have to understand the language he was speaking in order to hear the threat in his voice. Sergei held out his hands to her.
“Mariska, you heard heem. He will fire us both if you do not work with me.”
“Nyet,” Mariska stated firmly. “I steel do not trust you.”
Sergei flipped several knives in the air and
caught them by their blades. He held them out to a startled Mariska by their handles. “Then you throw knives at me.” Sergei stepped in front of the bus and stretched out his arms. “Because if I have lost your trust, I have lost your love, so you might as well pierce me in my broken heart.” He looked imploringly at Mariska, and then gave me quick, sidelong glance and a barely perceptible wink.
Well, now, this was a fine howdy do. When I suggested he prove his love with actions, I was more in mind of him taking out the garbage. But I had to admit that offering to make like a pin cushion for your lady love is a tad more dramatic. For my part, I thought about the heirloom quilt incident with Miss Addie Lou and Miss Inez, back in January, and wondered why all my conflict resolutions had to do with knife play.
The coach muttered something out of the edge of his mouth. “What’d he say?” I asked Sergei.
Despite the chilly air, a bead of sweat had popped out on Sergei’s forehead. “He said that somebody needs to start throwing knives at somebody or he vill be throwing dem at both of us.”
Mariska suddenly burst into tears. “Here is real reason I refuse to stand in front of knives. I am going to be aerialist again.” She thrust the telegram into Sergei’s hand.
Sergei read the telegram while the coach peeked over his arm and read along. “You were goink to leef me all along,” Sergei said. “How long have you been planning this escape?”
“Since you keesed LuLu-san!” Tears ran down Mariska’s alabaster cheeks.
“LuLu-san keeses everyone. Even me,” said the coach. He took the telegram from Sergei’s hand. “I know this troupe. They have opening for business manager, Sergei. I would hate to lose you, but it would be good position for man of your skeels.”
Sergei looked interested. “What happened to business manager they had?”
“He ran away to dental school,” said the coach.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “He ran away from the circus to join dental school?”
The coach shrugged. “It happens.”
“So, Sergei, what are these skills that qualify you for the business manager job?”
At Home in Mossy Creek Page 20
