Sunshine Walkingstick Omnibus

by Celia Roman

  He twined our fingers together and tugged me closer. “That’s my girl.”

  “I ain’t no girl, Riley Treadwell, and I sure as tootin’ ain’t yourn.”

  He turned and led me through the woods, swiping tree limbs outta the way and helping me over felled logs like I was a queen or something. “You used to be. Remember?”

  “We was kids, what, about eight and eleven?”

  He grinned over his shoulder at me. “Yeah, but true love knows no bounds.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Good grief, Riley. It’s a wonder you get any women with them kinda sappy lines.”

  “Hey, it was the best summer of my life. Swimming in the lake together, making sand castles, endless sunny days.”

  That weren’t quite how I remembered it, like some Norman Rockwell moment captured forever in perfect nostalgia. No, my memories was a bit different, of my mama dropping me off at the swimming beach in the morning with a sandwich and a thing of Kool-Aid. Some days I got to eat that sandwich and some days it was stole before I could get to it. The kids wasn’t exactly nice to me. Mostly, they was just indifferent, right up ‘til that snake come after Riley and I snatched it outta the water and wrung its dang neck.

  I always had quick hands. Snakes never bothered me none, neither, but that’un scared me some good, slicing through the water right toward a boy with a ring of fire for hair what weren’t paying no never mind to where he was.

  Riley’s mama, now, she went on and on like I walked on water or something. Then on, I didn’t go hungry and I never had to sit all alone on the beach after ever body went home, waiting on Mama to remember she left me somewhere else.

  She weren’t a bad mama, just a mite forgetful.

  We swished our way through a cluster of ferns and hopped onto the road bank, Riley holding my hand the whole time. I tried tugging on it ever once in a while and he’d tighten his fingers like he didn’t mean to let go.

  Which was just silly. I was gonna need my hand back sooner or later, weren’t I?

  He finally let go after opening my car door for me. “Drive careful, Sunny.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s a coupla miles. Ain’t like I can get lost between here and there.”

  “No, but you’re liable to sneak off on me.” He leaned against the car, one arm stretched along the top, the other over the open car door, boxing me in. “Stick with me and I’ll treat you to a late lunch in town.”

  A flutter of nerves hit me, down low where I weren’t supposed to look. “Why you keep asking me out?”

  “Why do you keep turning me down?” He flicked his fingertip along the tip of my nose and eased back. “See you in a few.”

  I watched him walk away. Lordy, I knowed it was a sin to lust after a man’s rear, but he had a fine’un, he did, nice and firm and, whew. Between that and his broad back and them mile long legs, I was about ready to burst into flames by the time he made it to his work truck, and wouldn’t that’ve been a sight to see?

  We followed the pattern set with my wanderings, starting from the place where that fly fisherman reported finding a mess of dead fish. Sure enough, there they was, pooled up against the edges of the creek.

  Riley hunkered down and stared at ‘em for a long time.

  I stood beside him, studying his expression. It was kinda tight and solemn, and about as serious as I ever seen it. “What’s wrong?”

  He stood up real slow, never moving his gaze from them fish. “I was just wondering what killed those fish and what we’re gonna have to do to get it out of the water.”

  “We need to find it first, assuming it weren’t a onetime thing.” I didn’t reckon it was. It’d been a few days since Fame tested the water out near us and that sheen was still hanging around. I jerked my head toward upstream. “Get a move on, soldier boy. I ain’t got all day to lollygag like you government workers do.”

  He grinned. “God, Sunny, you’re something else. Just for that, you owe me two meals.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “You said you was treating.”

  Not that I had any intention of going with him, but still. A man asks a woman to dinner, he best be ready to pay.

  “I am. Now it’s for two meals, though. I figure I stick around you and your smart mouth long enough, we’ll be eating together for a week.”

  “Hardy har, Mr. Funny Man.”

  He threaded his fingers through mine and started out upstream, following an animal trail winding between the water on our right and the bottom edge of a hill on our left. “You could have pity on me and just agree to go out with me. Then I wouldn’t have to keep making up excuses to see you.”

  That funny flutter started up in my innards again and my breath went all wonky. Had he really been making excuses to see me or was he pulling my leg? “Maybe I just don’t like to date.”

  “Maybe you’re just ornery. Call me crazy, but I kinda like that about you.” He stopped abruptly and sniffed the air. “You smell that?”

  I inhaled and got a big whiff of rotten eggs. Sulfur, sure as tootin’. I grimaced and put my wrist over my nose. “Where’s that coming from?”

  “Hell if I know.” He tugged my hand and pushed me behind him. “Come around to my other side. I don’t want you to accidentally slip into the water.”

  “I ain’t that clumsy,” I muttered. “Geez. You been talking to Fame?”

  “Not since I was seventeen.”

  We picked our way more careful like another twenty yards upstream and rounded a sharp bend in the creek. Soon as we did, Riley muttered a string of curses under his breath, too low for me to catch all of ‘em. Didn’t need to, though. I was kindly thinking the same thing. Up ahead, somebody’d dumped half a dozen waste barrels along the side of the creek. One had fallen over into the water and cracked, probably on one of the rocks lining the creek bed. More’n likely, it was leaking something nasty out into the water.

  Looked like we found what was killing the fish and ruining Fame’s liquor.

  Riley pointed to the steep slope on our left. “Probably dumped from up there.”

  I nodded. “Road can’t be too far from the top of that ridge. Kinda isolated, too.”

  “Bet whoever dumped it wasn’t expecting it to be found.”

  “Lots of hikers through here, mostly locals.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Those barrels haven’t been here long.”

  “We gonna try to get that’un out?”

  His hand tightened on mine, hard as stone, and he rounded on me, his hazel eyes near blazing. “Are you out of your ever loving mind, Sunny? If it’s killing the fish, it’s probably hazardous.”

  I shrugged. “I just meant, you know, we somebody, not me and you specific like.”

  He blew out a breath and shook his head. “Environmental Protection Division, maybe. I have to call it in, get somebody out here to test the water, issue an alert for the tourists.”

  I eyed the barrels. “I bet you got three yards of paperwork to fill out, too.”

  “You’re not getting out of a meal with me that easy, sweetheart. Damn it.” He swept off his cap and swiped it along his thigh. “And we were this close to a real date.”

  I let my eyes go real wide and pursed my lips, hiding a smile. “I ain’t got no intentions of breaking bread with you.”

  “By golly, if you have to sit on my lap behind my desk, you’re eating with me.”

  He said it without rancor. I knowed he was serious, though, just by the way he held my hand and looked at me with them hazel eyes of his, kinda warm and sweet.

  And lordy, I was beginning to like that look about as much as he liked my orneriness.

  We headed back to Riley’s work truck so he could call them barrels of waste in or whatever it was he done when a mess like the one we stumbled on cropped up. I waited him out a polite distance away, then hopped in his truck so he could carry me back to the IROC.

  While we was a-driving, I studied him on the sly. Here we was out on Labor Day weekend and him working. Now me,
I didn’t make much of a distinction between the days. One was as good as the next, I figured, ‘less there was church or something. Riley struck me as the five day workweek, weekends for play kinda guy, not a man what worked on a blue skied Saturday afternoon.

  “Why ain’t you out enjoying your Labor Day weekend?” I asked kindly outta the blue.

  “’Cause that’s when folks are liable to break the law.” He shifted his hands on the steering wheel and resettled into the driver’s seat. “Why are you out working?”

  “’Cause that’s when it needed doing.” I glanced out the passenger’s side window, studying the passing scenery. Summer dry woods and thick undergrowth, and fluffy clouds floating above it all. “Something’s been bothering me about this whole mess.”

  He glanced at me, one ginger eyebrow arched. “Just one something?”

  “Lots, but this’un kinda particular like. We found them barrels in the wrong waterway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I started at the creek near…” I bit my tongue. Couldn’t tell Riley where Fame got his liquor water from. Now that woulda been a mess, sure enough. “Let’s just say where you found me weren’t the first place I looked and call it even.”

  That slow smile lifted his mouth and went right to his eyes. “Fair enough.”

  “That weren’t nowhere near where we found that junk. The places I looked before you found me was upstream, more’n one. How’d that waste stuff get into them other creeks if the barrels was dumped in a creek what don’t even meet ‘em ‘til downstream?”

  He tapped a thumb against the steering wheel and scowled at the road ahead of us. “I’m more worried about why anybody would dump toxic waste into the waterways in the first place. This area depends on tourism.”

  “Hang the tourists, Riley. Lots of folk still eat the dadgum fish.” I orta knowed. I was one of ‘em. “You gonna let ever body know?”

  “Soon as I can. We’ll alert the radio stations and the Tribune, pin notices on the information boards around the wilderness areas.”

  “All right, then.” I crossed my arms over my bitty breasts and tried on accommodating for size. He’d helped me out, after all. I reckoned that deserved a reciprocating hand. “You want, I can get the word out.”

  “You might want to warn Fame, at least, maybe tell him to spread the word.”

  “I can do that.”

  The IROC appeared ahead. Riley slowed the truck and flipped on the turn signal. “Now that you’ve figured out Fame’s problem, you think you might have time to work on Belinda’s?”

  All the warmth drained outta my day. I tightened my arms around my chest and hunched my shoulders. “I ain’t decided.”

  “I know you were up there, Sunny.”

  “Is that so?” I shook my head. “I was just seeing what was what.”

  “Huh.”

  “Something’s wrecking the docks and such out there.”

  “Yeah.”

  The placid tone riled me something good. “You know what it is, why don’t you fix it?”

  “I don’t know what it is. Nobody does.” He pulled in behind the IROC and parked, then flipped the ignition switch off. “Thing is, you’ve got a reputation for tracking weird stuff down, have ever since…”

  A lump rose in my throat, big as a stump and twice as stubborn. I swallowed it down and nodded. “You can say his name, Riley.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he murmured. “You’ve been through enough.”

  “I’d say we’re about even there.”

  “Not even close.” He cleared his throat and that thumb went to tapping again. “Most of the folks with houses on Greenwood Cove will be at Rhapsody. We could go together. It’d give you a chance to talk to everybody, maybe help you make up your mind.”

  I dropped my hands into my lap and gawked at him. “You want to take me to Rhapsody?”

  “Why not? I’ve already got the tickets.”

  “But you want to go with me.” Something kinda sick and twisted lodged itself in my gut. Me, backwoods Sunshine Walkingstick, at a society charity function amongst all them fancy folk? I opened the passenger’s side door and slid outta the truck, planting both feet on terra firma, right where they belonged. “I don’t know what you’re playing at Riley, but it ain’t funny. I don’t appreciate it neither. You go find another woman to make a fool of.”

  His handsome mug twisted into a scowl. “You know what, Sunny? Sometimes I wonder why I even bother trying with you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Figure it out.” He twisted this way and that in the seat as he dug his wallet out, then pulled out a business card and handed it to me. “You change your mind, give me a holler. I’m going anyway. Promised Mama I would.”

  And Riley Treadwell hadn’t never let his mama down, not once. I stuck his card in my pocket. “Tell your mama I said hello.”

  “Come to Rhapsody and tell her yourself.”

  “I’ll think on it.” I jabbed my thumb over my shoulder. “Better run tell Fame what’s up.”

  “I’ll let you know if we figure out what’s going on. Tell him he might want to stay away from the local water until we do.”

  I nodded and turned, and got about two paces away from him.

  “Sunny?”

  I half-turned toward him. “Yeah?”

  “You still owe me those meals.”

  I pivoted toward the IROC, hiding the slow grin spreading across my face. “Keep on dreamin’, Riley.”

  He laughed and raised his voice. “Sometimes that’s all a man’s got, sweetheart.”

  I shook my head and got in the IROC. Sure as tootin’, if I stayed a minute longer, he’d talk me into something. My heart’d always been a mite too soft where Riley was concerned. It didn’t need me helping it along, nor him neither.

  Chapter Five

  Soon as I got home, I hightailed it up the trail to Fame’s. His car was gone and so was the boys’. I knocked on the door anyhow. Might be one of ‘em was still there, and Fame needed to know about the water now, not whenever I could catch him.

  Sure enough, the doorknob jiggled and the door opened wide. Missy’s voluptuous frame filled the entryway. “Sunny Walkingstick, what are you doing knocking?”

  “Didn’t know if anybody was home.” I sidled in behind her and shut the door tight. “Got news on the water, if Fame’s around.”

  Missy sank into a chair at the kitchen table and tucked her bare feet into the rungs. “He ran into town for me. Should be back soon, if you want to wait.”

  I slumped into a chair next to her. “Naw. Just let him know to stay away from the water for a while. We found some nasty junk in a couple of the nearby creeks. Don’t know if the same stuff is around here, but he don’t need to take a chance ‘til we can get it cleaned up.”

  “By we you mean…?”

  I scowled and glanced away from the curiosity decorating her pretty face. “I run into Riley Treadwell this morning.”

  “I see.”

  “You don’t got to act so knowing and all.” I rolled my shoulders and slid lower in the chair. “Geez, Missy. It ain’t like we’re dating or nothing.”

  Heat flared along my cheekbones, burning me sure as fire. Me and my fool mouth. What’d possessed me to mention dating and Riley in the same sentence, and in front of Missy, no less?

  She leaned forward and caught my gaze. “He asked you out.”

  “Tried to finagle me into eating with him today.” I blew out a breath. Well, dang. Now I was gonna have to spill the whole thing, else she’d spend the rest of the day nagging me about it. Like I had time for that. “Said he’s got an extra ticket if I wanna go to Rhapsody with him.”

  Missy blinked twice, shading her violet eyes. “I hope you said yes.”

  I squirmed on the chair. “Thing is, I kind of accused him of trying to make me into a fool.”

  “Sunshine Walkingstick,” she snapped.

  I sat up straight real quick l
ike. “Now, Missy—”

  “Don’t you now, Missy me, young lady.” She sucked in a breath and speared me with her you’re in big trouble now stare. “Riley Treadwell is a decent young man. Don’t think I didn’t check, because I did, and all I heard were good things.”

  “I never said he weren’t—”

  “I’m not finished.”

  I hunched my shoulders around my ears. “Yes’m.”

  She nodded once, sharp and fierce, and her wild sable curls bounced around her head. “A decent young man asked you out and you treated him as if he were trying to pull one over on you. What were you thinking?” She held up a finger. “No, don’t answer that. I know what you were thinking and I can honestly say this is the first time I’ve ever been ashamed to call you mine.”

  The breath whooshed right outta my lungs, leaving my innards hollow and sick. “Missy…”

  “You’re going out with him.”

  “But I—”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what you’re going to do. You’re going to call him and accept his invitation.” A smile started up in her eyes and some of the heat drained outta her voice. “We’ll go shopping on Tuesday, as soon as the Labor Day traffic eases up.”

  I recoiled away from her. “What on Earth do I wanna go shopping for?”

  “For a dress, a nice one, and some shoes, too. I’ve got some money set aside for it. Heaven knows, I’ve waited long enough to use it.” She leaned forward and patted my arm, and a pleased smile bloomed across her face. “This is just what I needed, too. Since my ring went missing, I haven’t had a single easy moment. A trip to the mall will be just the thing to take my mind off of it for a while.”

  I closed my mouth around the uneasiness sinking through me. I hadn’t forgot about her ring, not one bit, and I sure didn’t have it in me to disappoint her any more. “I’ll call him tonight, when he’s had a chance to cool off some.”

  She beamed at me, like I just handed her the winning lottery ticket. “Oh, you’ll have so much fun, Sunny. I haven’t been to a dance in ages. Maybe I’ll get Fame to take me.”