The Barefoot Believers

by Annie Jones

  “A relative.” Billy J had told her to settle for that, then had added, “A person who knows where you was and who you was and still hadn’t come a-lookin’ for you. Why get all-fired fired up about that kind of connection anyways?”

  Usually after a bluster like that, he’d begin to cough. And cough. And say he needed to see a doctor.

  The man loved her. He needed her. He could not tolerate the idea that anything would ever interfere with that.

  So Moxie let it drop.

  Okay, she stopped asking or talking about it.

  But every now and then it caught her unawares and she had to stare. Were the woman’s eyes really that green or was that a trick of the aging ink colors? Had she really once loved Moxie as much as it looked like in the photo? Then why hadn’t the woman tried to find her?

  Moxie had certainly tried to find her birth family, but to no avail. She had so little information, after all. No paperwork from before the Weatherbys had adopted her. No memories to help guide her. Her birth father, who had died in an accident as a long-haul trucker when Moxie was three or four, had left nothing for them to go on—except this picture, which they had found in the glove compartment of his old pickup truck.

  She had often studied the background of the photo for some hint as to where it might have been taken. But it just looked like an ordinary driveway in Anytown, America.

  She could thank the old picture for one thing, though—it had inspired her to buy and restore her vintage truck. Somehow, she felt it gave her some connection to her past.

  “Here’s a full pitcher, boss.” A young waiter pressed a plastic handle into her palm, ignoring the amber liquid the hasty action sent slopping everywhere.

  Moxie shook the sweet tea from her hands and called after the kid as he retreated, “I am not the boss around here.”

  A statement that was greeted with a lot of jeers and laughter.

  “I’m not!” she insisted.

  And she wasn’t. She had no interest in running the Bait Shack Seafood Buffet, even if she had the skills to do it…blindfolded, or at least with a patch over one eye…and a wooden peg leg that made her spill as much tea when she hopped from table to table as she poured when she got there. Her skills didn’t matter. This was her father’s domain. Her father’s dream.

  Not hers.

  Not that Moxie had a dream. She looked again toward the cash register and the picture.

  “I don’t want to run this place,” she said firmly again for anyone listening to hear.

  She only worked here to help him out on days like today, when the rain brought people in like driftwood on the tide but didn’t wash them out again.

  Moxie pushed her way through the crowd, holding the pitcher of sweet tea almost above her head as she went.

  “I hate the rain. Just hate it.” Billy J met her in the middle of the main dining room, pushing along an empty high chair as he strode toward her.

  “Rain can’t be that bad, Mr. Weatherby. It sure is good for your business,” the fresh-faced father who slid his baby into the seat joked as the old man abandoned the chair and pushed on past.

  “Good for…?” A short cough cut him off. The old man’s already ruddy cheeks puffed out and grew an even deeper shade of red.

  “You’ve done it now.” Moxie tried to get to her father before he exploded. It wasn’t the customers Moxie feared for, but her father and the effects his getting all worked up would have on his precarious health.

  “You’d think that, wouldn’t you? And at first it does seem that way when so many folks stop by meaning just to dry off and grab a quick feed.” Redder and redder. His eyes became dark and beady above his ballooning cheeks. He wasn’t angry so much as on a roll—a roll that wasn’t going to stop until it had flattened somebody! Another short cough, a deep breath, then he launched in again. “Then you look around and realize folks is hunkered down and settled in for the long haul.”

  “Daddy, calm down,” she said, knowing she might as well tell it to the plastic hammerhead shark hanging just above them as to the hardheaded man in front of her.

  “The lunch crowd becomes the dinner crowd.” Cough. “The dinner crowd stays through the night, gabbing and grabbing fourth and fifth helpings of food for which they’s only paid once.” A flurry of coughs that quickly subsided.

  “Daddy, it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet, you have to expect this to happen from time to time.”

  “Look at ’em.” He scowled. He coughed into his powerful fist, then raised his head and scolded, “Look at yourselves! All of you who tell yourselves you just come in outta the rain for a bite. Only bite that gets taken on days like these, gets taken is outta…” Cough, cough. “Outta…” More coughing before he rallied and said at last in one indignant huff, “…outta my profits.”

  He paused and took a good long look around. He closed one eye and put his fist on his hip, his lip snarled up on one side like some grizzled old sea dog. “I think some of you are taking advantage of my sweet and gentle nature.”

  The room greeted him with silence. For one second.

  Two.

  Then all at once people began to whistle, to stomp their feet, to laugh, clap and cheer. Yes, the whole lot of them had seen Billy J’s rabid fit of temper for exactly what it was. The greatest performance they were likely to see this evening.

  He snorted. Held back a cough, then waved the response away with one hand, part aw-shucks humility, part dismissive bravado.

  “Why don’t you go spread some of your sunny disposition around?” Moxie pressed the pitcher into his hand, tugged free the dish towel she had been wearing as an apron and threw it over his shoulder.

  “The only sunny thing I want to spread around is the real thing. I hate the rain, I tell you.” He started to stalk off, then paused to stop and refill a few glasses at the nearest table.

  Old habits, Moxie thought. He could complain all he wanted but deep down, the man loved what he did. He knew everyone in town. He probably even knew the Cromwell sisters.

  “Daddy?”

  “Give me a warm afternoon and a room full of people so rarin’ to get out into the open air that they fill their plates once, good and full, but they don’t go back because they want to get fed and…”

  A young boy lifted his glass.

  Billy J refilled it with a smile and a wink then turned to face Moxie, all thunder and grump, concluding, “…and get out.”

  Moxie shook her head, laughing. “I’ll believe you when you do as I’ve suggested over and over again. Fix up the place into a nice, quiet sit-down restaurant where patrons are not so inclined to gather and linger.”

  “The days of Santa Sofia supportin’ a fancy eatin’ spot are long over.”

  “Not fancy.” She pointed toward a booth across the room stuffed with mom, dad and two teenage boys. The table was piled high with plates and every glass among them empty. “Family.”

  “Family? You mean one of them places where they tack posters and neon signs on the walls?” He gestured toward his beloved rough-hewn paneled walls covered in fishing nets and cheap, tacky souvenirs. “Fill the menu with stuff that’s more trend than taste and make the whole staff line up and sing a made-up song to customers on their birthdays over some stale brownie and topping concoction?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Can’t picture it.”

  Moxie couldn’t, either. Oh, she could conjure up the image, thanks in part to her father’s detailed description, but as for putting her father as the owner of such a place? Nope. He’d run Billy J’s pretty much as it looked today since before she was born. The Bait Shack was part of this town, just like the weary Traveler’s Wayside Chapel and the historied cottages on Dream Away Bay Court.

  That thought snapped her back to her earlier concerns. “What do you know about the Cromwell sisters?”

  “Who?” Suddenly the man who had ignored her silent direction to tend to the distant booth couldn’t make his way across the room, and away from
Moxie, fast enough.

  So she just followed him. “The ones who own the cottage on Dream Away Bay Court?”

  “Sisters?” He put his huge back to her and began pouring tea into the glasses, even the ones that clearly should have had juice in them. “I thought there was only the one lady. Single mother. Dottie? Dorie?”

  Moxie frowned. Her father never forgot names. “Dorothy.”

  “Dorothy Cromwell? Sounds right. Haven’t spoken to her since you took over handling the cottage upkeep.”

  “Ten years? You haven’t spoken to her for fifteen years?”

  “That how long it’s been? Hmm.”

  “Time flies when you’re going fishing.”

  He chuckled, looked pensive then chuckled again. “But to answer your question, no, I don’t know a thing about them sisters and ain’t particularly interested in making a study of them.”

  The front door creaked again. Moxie turned just to see where the newest customers would find to wedge themselves in. And she couldn’t help but smile. “So I guess it wouldn’t interest you at all that the Cromwell sisters just walked in the door?”

  “That’s it! I’ve reached my limit!” Billy J spun around, his huge arms spread wide. “If you ain’t paid yet, settle up now. If you ain’t ate, fill a plate and take it home with ya. This is not a drill, people. I repeat, this is not a drill.”

  “Daddy? What are you doing?”

  “I’m…I’m…I’m going fishing, sweetheart,” he said softly. Then he gave her cheek a pat and began moving through the dining room, directing people to pay up and skedaddle. “Everybody out!” Billy J called again. “I’m closing this place down!”

  Chapter Ten

  “That felt like the longest day of my life.” Jo slumped into a wooden kitchen chair with leatherette padding on the back and seat.

  Travis stacked the leftovers from their meal in the refrigerator, moving the newly stocked milk, eggs, lunch meat, fruit and vegetables around to accommodate the large white to-go box from the Bait Shack Seafood Buffet.

  Jo let out a sigh that was more like a moan, or a moan that was almost a sigh. Anyway, she made a sound that she thought summed up her weariness and frustration then went to work trying to elevate her throbbing ankle.

  Before she could maneuver her leg more than a foot off the kitchen floor, Travis had slid his hand under her knee, gently bending and raising her leg as he scooted the other chair up to provide a resting place for her foot.

  “Thanks.” She nodded.

  He nodded right back, saying nothing as he let his hand linger, lending support a moment longer than the situation really warranted.

  “I’m okay,” she said, finally able to straighten her leg, in a crooked, tense, ready-to-yank-it-out-of-harm’s-way sort of way.

  He stepped back.

  She missed the warmth of his touch immediately. So she asked a totally pointless question, hoping to keep him from making some excuse and heading out the door. “Coffee?”

  “Don’t mind if I do. I didn’t get any work done today for the chapel. I’ll be up late playing catch-up.”

  Jo should have felt bad about that but she didn’t. Whatever he had done, he had done because he wanted to. He was a grown man, after all.

  After all, before all, and all in all!

  A real live, grown-up, wonderful man, who was, at this moment, making coffee in the kitchen of the house she had heretofore only associated with childhood and childlike hopes, dreams and memories.

  There had never been a man in this kitchen that she knew of. Oh, wait, Vince Merchant.

  Jo glanced toward the front room where Kate had sacked out on the couch already. Poor Vince. They had barely gotten back from the buffet, after a side trip to the grocery, and eaten their considerably cooled-off meal when Kate couldn’t endure it any longer. She’d had to have one of her pills.

  Kate had fought off the pain as long as she could, but with her tummy full for the first time today, the doctor in her had taken over and she’d taken her meds. And conked out within a half hour. Not that she’d made a lot of sense during the last fifteen minutes of that half hour. So that had given her less than fifteen minutes to talk to Vince after more than fifteen years apart.

  Kate was going to kick herself in the morning.

  A fate that Jo determined would not befall her. Travis was here. They were alone at last. She was going to make the most of it. By pumping him for information, of course.

  She put one elbow on the table and watched Travis move about the kitchen gathering the goods he had just helped stash away. Filter, coffee, creamer, cups. His fingers barely fit into the drawer handles as he went looking for a spoon. When he found one, the size of his hand dwarfed the slender silver utensil.

  Jo could have watched him all day. Um, night, she corrected, looking out at the crescent moon framed in the tiny cottage window. The day that had seemed almost endless was winding down.

  She rested her chin in her hand, with her cool fingertips along her cheek. “Is every day this long down here?”

  “Same as everywhere else. Twenty-four hours.” He raised his head, not quite looking over his shoulder, then switched on the coffeemaker as he said, “Though Santa Sofia does move at a slower pace, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Slower pace.” Jo mulled the notion over. “Guess that’s why tourists and snowbirds have sought it out for so many years.”

  “Actually, I think that’s probably why in recent years tourists especially have begun to avoid it.”

  “Avoid it?” Jo sat up. That news did not bode well for what she hoped to do here.

  The coffeemaker gurgled and the dark, rich-smelling liquid began to drip, drip, drip into the carafe.

  Despite her conviction that bathrooms and kitchens sold houses, she knew that locations set market values. They determined how much people would pay, brand spanking newly renovated kitchens and baths notwithstanding. A town fallen from favor with tourists meant a town with a depressed market.

  Drip.

  A depressed market meant desperate sellers.

  Drip.

  Desperate sellers meant…

  Drip.

  Desperate and depressed Realtors.

  Jo thought of all the things she had seen over the years. Prices reduced below real value. Unrealistic demands from buyers. Gimmicks. Giveaways. Kissing her potential windfall goodbye.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  “But the snowbirds, they still come back to Santa Sofia, don’t they?” That was the real market, she told herself.

  Travis gripped the handle of the carafe for a moment and paused to make sure the process had finished up before he yanked it free and began pouring. “Every winter there are fewer and fewer of them.”

  One lone last drop fell from the filter bin. It hissed on the hot plate, followed by the odor of burned coffee.

  “The bulk of them used to descend on the town right around Thanksgiving. Blue-haired ladies and baggy-pants men in big old cars loaded down with trunks and suitcases with just enough room to see out the back window, if a yappy little dog hadn’t taken up residence there.”

  He held up the creamer to offer Jo some in her cup.

  She shook her head.

  He sloshed a slug of it into his own cup, not bothering to measure it out, and began to stir as he went on. “They flocked to the beach, swarmed the farmers’ market and relied on locals to shepherd them around. It wouldn’t be uncommon for great gaggles of them to cross paths all over town.”

  “You sound as if you’re describing an actual migration of wild creatures instead of the yearly convergence of mostly elderly folks fleeing the cold climates of the Northern states.”

  “You ever seen these wild snowbirds?” he asked, waggling his dark eyebrows at her as he set a cup before her with a clunk.

  “No,” she confessed.

  “Then stick around a while, why don’t you? It’s more fun than watching Animal Planet.”

  Stick around? Not in her plans. J
o gazed down into the coffee cup to keep from letting her expression give away too much as she asked, “But you said there still are people who have winter homes here, right?”

  “Sure. Some pass properties down through families, well, like your family obviously has.”

  She took a sip. It was hot but that was easier to deal with that than the intensity of Travis’s curious gaze when she failed to affirm his statement.

  “And some come back year after year because they have made friends here. They don’t see any reason to try to find a new place somewhere else.”

  “Doesn’t anybody ever see a reason to find a new place here in Santa Sofia?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  That got her to look up.

  “We’ve seen quite a few people come back because they remember how it was here when they were kids. Again like—”

  “Like me and Kate,” she supplied the rest. Only she hadn’t come back here to recapture a happier time. And almost told him so.

  “That’s a funny thing about this town, people can’t get it out of their heads. They have some good times here and they want to come back. They spend enough time here and they never want to leave.”

  She pressed her lips together.

  The room went quiet.

  The quiet grew around them.

  Then it seemed to press down on them, making them each squirm a little.

  Say something, Jo’s mind screamed. But she didn’t dare. The only things she could think to say were too personal. Is that what happened to you? You came here and you never wanted to leave? Or are you talking about what you hope will happen with me? Do you really want me to stick around? What would you think of me if you knew I have no intention of doing that—and why I can’t?

  Jo shifted in her chair.

  The floorboards squeaked.