Signs and Wonders

by Philip Gulley

  Sam squeezed her hand and whispered in her ear, “Who’s that lovely young lady?”

  “I believe it’s the 1977 Lawrence County Tenderloin Queen,” she whispered back.

  Every now and then, a picture of a tanned young man flashed up on the wall. Just often enough to make Sam appreciate what he had and might have lost.

  Two

  Spring in Harmony

  The surest harbinger of spring is the opening of the Dairy Queen. It’s the signal to bring up the porch furniture from the basement, push the snowblower back to the corner of the garage, and sharpen the blades on the lawn mower. Windows are propped open, curtains are washed, and dead flies are vacuumed from the window sills.

  The Dairy Queen used to open on Ash Wednesday, until Father McLaughlin at the Catholic church got up a petition in which Oscar and Livinia Purdy, the owners of the Dairy Queen, were cautioned to honor the Lord or else. Oscar and Livinia didn’t fight it. They stayed a little longer at the Sunny Daze Trailer Park outside Pensacola, Florida, and opened the Dairy Queen the first Monday in May instead. When people complained about the late opening, Oscar said, “Tell it to the Catholics.”

  In early May, Oscar hauls his ladder from home and changes the sign from CLOSED FOR THE SEASON to OPENING THIS MONDAY—FREE SPRINKLES ON EVERY CONE. Livinia cleans the ice-cream machines and washes the windows. Bob Miles from the Harmony Herald stops past and snaps a picture of the preparations.

  The Dairy Queen was built in 1967 on the corner of Main and Washington, where the train station stood before Oscar and Livinia bought it from the Great Northern Railway Company and hired Bud Matthews to knock it down with his bulldozer. Although it was their building to do with as they pleased, it seemed an unspeakable violation. There was talk of boycotting the Dairy Queen, and things didn’t calm down until Oscar offered free sprinkles on every cone. They’re good sprinkles—peanutty crunchies with red and blue sprinkles mixed in.

  When Bud knocked down the station they found a time capsule, welded shut, with 1857 etched on the top. Bud carried it down to the Herald building and stored it in the back corner. The plan was to save the capsule in case the president ever visited and open it then to commemorate the event. Richard Nixon’s third cousin, Lucy Milhous, lived just outside of town, which everyone hoped would lure him to town. Every December he’d send her a Christmas card, which she displayed in the front window of the Rexall. She’d invite him to the family reunion, but with a war on, he couldn’t come. He hoped she understood. Then when the war ended, he got in trouble and didn’t go out much after that.

  The years passed, and the time capsule was forgotten. Then Bob Miles came across it when he was cleaning out his office. He had been intending to clean the Herald office for a number of years, but the pressures of a weekly deadline hadn’t allowed it. So the first week of May, he wrote, There will be no edition of the Herald next week due to office renovations. He thought “office renovations” sounded better than “hauling a bunch of stuff to the town dump,” which was what he had in mind to do.

  The Herald was begun in the 1850s by Bob’s great-grandfather, the original Robert J. Miles. It was his idea to store items of historical interest in the back corner of his office in the event Harmony ever built a museum. When the trains stopped running, there was talk of turning the station into a museum, but then the Purdys knocked it down to build the Dairy Queen and that ended the discussion. Meanwhile, Bob was stuck with all that old junk cluttering up his office.

  There was a lightbulb purported to be the first lightbulb in Harmony. There was the telephone headset from when Hazel Rutledge was the telephone operator and had the switchboard in her kitchen pantry. There was a sword from the Civil War, which Bob’s grandfather had bent while prying open a can of paint. There was a brick from the Harmony Institute for Virtuous Young Ladies, which closed in 1921 due to a shortage of virtuous young ladies. On a top shelf, in a dusty wooden crate, were three bones with a note that read: Found on the Albert Deming farm on May 5, 1932. Might be cow bones, or possibly dinosaur bones.

  The time capsule was in back of the box of bones. By standing on his tiptoes, Bob could just reach it. He slid it across the shelf and lifted it down. It was thick with dust. He wiped it down with a rag and that was when he noticed the numbers 1857 etched in the top. He picked up the time capsule and shook it. There was a rattling sound. It sounded like money. Maybe there’re some old coins in there, Bob thought.

  The week before, he’d read in a magazine of a man who’d found a coin in his pocket change worth a thousand dollars. He crossed his office and locked the front door, then took the sword and tried to pry the capsule open. The sword snapped in half. He wrapped it in old newspapers and hid it in the bottom of the trash can.

  He carried the time capsule to his car, drove home, and set it on the workbench in his garage. The capsule was welded shut. He took his hacksaw down from its peg and began to saw, but the steel was thick and it was slow going. He thought about asking Harvey Muldock if he could borrow his cutting torch, but decided against it. Harvey would want half of whatever was in the time capsule, and Bob wasn’t of a mind to share.

  He wasn’t sure what was in there, but he hoped it was worth a lot of money. He wanted out of the newspaper business. He was tired of the grind. He wanted to shut the Herald down and do a little traveling, but first he needed money. He’d never saved any money. He’d always counted on hitting it big, maybe buying a painting at a garage sale for ten dollars and then finding out it was worth three million.

  On Saturday nights, he and Arvella watched Antiques Roadshow on television. People would drag in junk worth thousands of dollars. It was stuff Bob saw a kid—Coca-Cola signs and tables and ugly glass vases. He told Arvella, “One of these days I’m gonna clean out our attic and go on that show. I bet we got a million dollars worth of stuff up there.”

  He didn’t mention to Arvella about finding the time capsule. He’d hidden it behind the lawn mower in the corner of the garage, and after Arvella went to bed, he’d go out and work on it with his hacksaw. After three nights of sawing, the last of the metal gave way, and the lid clattered to the garage floor. Bob peered inside.

  For a good-sized box, there wasn’t much in there—an 1857 almanac and a Queen Victoria Bible, printed in 1851. It was the King James Bible with all the racy verses edited out. The Song of Solomon had been removed entirely, and David and Bathsheba had confined their affections to a brief handshake.

  At the bottom of the box was a coin. It had a shapely woman on one side and an eagle on the other. Underneath the woman was the number 1804.

  Bob read the date twice. 1804! He let out a low whistle. Nearly two hundred years old. Now that’s gotta be worth something, he thought. He put the coin in his pocket.

  There was an old newspaper in the box, the very first edition of the Herald. It didn’t look much different from the paper the week before. The weather forecast was in the top left corner: Mostly sunny, unless it rains. Seasonal temperatures expected, though variations might occur. The church news was on the third page, and the “Ten Years Ago Today” column was on the second.

  The next morning, Bob drove to the city to a coin shop near downtown, just off the Interstate. The sign was hanging loose on one bolt, and there were bars on the windows. The door was locked. Bob tapped on the glass. A man in a T-shirt peered out at Bob, then unbolted the door and let him in.

  “Whatcha want?”

  Bob showed him the coin. The man thumbed through a book, wetting his finger as he turned the pages.

  “Let’s see. That’s an 1804 silver dollar. These old silver dollars aren’t worth as much as people think. Coin market’s slow these days. I can give you eight hundred for it.”

  Eight hundred dollars! Bob tried not to appear overly excited.

  “Well, I don’t know. I was thinking it’d maybe be worth a little more than that. I was thinking it was worth at least a thousand dollars, a coin like that. Maybe I oughta take it somewhere else.”
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  “Nine hundred then, and you’re getting a real bargain there, mister.”

  Nine hundred dollars! Bob was beside himself. This was better than Antiques Roadshow.

  Bob tried to look pained. These sharpies from the city weren’t the only ones who knew how to drive a bargain. Thirty years of buying cars from Harvey Muldock had honed Bob’s skill.

  Bob reached across the counter and took the coin. “Nah, I think I’ll just hold on to it. Maybe my grandkids will want it one day.”

  He didn’t even have any grandchildren; he just said that.

  Bob put the coin in his pocket. “Thanks just the same. Sorry to take up your time.”

  He turned toward the door.

  “Okay, then. A thousand even.”

  He paid Bob with ten one-hundred-dollar bills from a safe in the back room.

  “What about a receipt?” Bob said.

  “Well, sure, I mean if you want to pay taxes on that money, that’s okay by me.”

  “Well, maybe I don’t need a receipt after all. Why bother the government with all that paperwork.”

  Bob didn’t see any need to tell Arvella what he’d done. She’d been after him for a new refrigerator, but he didn’t see the point of it. The old one was running fine.

  “A little paint and it’ll look like new,” he’d told her. “Those old Kelvinators are good for thirty or forty years anyway.”

  No, there was no reason to tell her.

  He was feeling prosperous. He stopped at the Dairy Queen, bought an ice-cream cone with sprinkles, gave Livinia a dollar, and told her to keep the change.

  He hid the money in his garage, in the grass catcher of his lawn mower. Arvella would never find it there. He lay awake that night thinking of closing down the Herald and maybe going into the coin business. A man with his bargaining skills could do well for himself. The next week he drove to the bank in Cartersburg and bought a certificate of deposit at 4.25 percent interest. He told them to send the paperwork to his office, not his house.

  He wasn’t sure what to do with the Queen Victoria Bible. He wanted to show it to someone, but didn’t for fear they’d ask him where he got it. He put it at the bottom of a box of paperback mysteries he dropped off at the library for the annual book sale while Miss Rudy, the librarian, was gone to lunch. He didn’t need her asking a bunch of questions. As old as she was, she was probably there when they put the Bible in the time capsule.

  He stopped past the Coffee Cup for a bite to eat. Heather Darnell was waiting tables. Heather had sort of graduated from high school the year before and had already been fired from a number of jobs. Ned Kivett had hired her as a checkout girl, but had to let her go when she kept giving back too much change. Then she worked at the nursing home, but got to watching the soap operas and forgot to clean people. When the place got to smelling, they had to let her go.

  Vinny and Penny Toricelli had hired her as a favor to her parents. It was working out well, so long as the diners weren’t picky about getting what they’d ordered. Although Heather wasn’t big on details, she was very pretty and the old men at the Coffee Cup were reluctant to complain.

  Heather Darnell in her waitress uniform is a walking testimony to the beauty of God’s creation. She touches their arms while they order and after she’s done that, they don’t seem to mind that she brought lima beans instead of corn or filled their tea glass with diet soda.

  “Oh, no, this is fine. I like a diet drink every now and then. I’ve been meaning to lose a few pounds anyway.”

  Heather laughs and tells them they don’t need to lose weight, that they look pretty good to her. They suck in their bellies and sit up a little straighter.

  Heather hands them a menu, which they pretend to read while she touches their arm. They take their time, like they’ve never seen that menu, even though Vinny hasn’t changed it in twenty years. Then, because she’ll get the order wrong anyway, they tell her to bring whatever looks good.

  She brought Bob meat loaf. While he was eating, the siren down at the fire station sounded the noon whistle. Vinny flipped on the TV behind the counter to watch the news from the city. They gave the weather and told who won the ball game, then reported on a burglary and a police chase. That made everyone feel good. It delights them to hear of troubles in other places, as if it confirms their wisdom for living where they do.

  “Geez, would you look at that,” Vinny said. “It’s nuts up there. Who’d want to live there? Not me, that’s for sure.”

  There was a commercial break, and then the news came back on.

  “There’s good news for one man in our city today,” the TV announcer said. “Yesterday, Herbert Green, the owner of a local coin shop, sold a rare 1804 draped-bust American silver dollar at Sotheby’s Auction in New York City for four million dollars! Mr. Green is closing his coin shop and planning on doing some traveling.”

  Vinny let out a low whistle. “Geeminey Christmas, would you look at that. That guy’s set for life. Four million bucks for a silver dollar. Man, oh man. Wouldn’t you like to have that kind of luck?”

  Bob stood up from the booth, went to the cash register, and paid his bill. He didn’t leave a tip. He wasn’t feeling all that prosperous anymore. He walked to the Herald office and sat at his desk, thinking. There’s a lesson in here somewhere, he told himself. I’m not sure what it is, but if I think long enough, I suspect it’ll come to me.

  Meanwhile, he had a paper to get out. He opened his desk, pulled out the picture of Oscar Purdy standing on his ladder changing the Dairy Queen sign, pasted it on the first page, and wrote underneath it: Oscar and Livinia Purdy ready themselves for another year of ice cream! As always, there will be free sprinkles on every cone!

  He tried hard not to think how many ice-cream cones he could have bought with four million dollars.

  People feel kind of sorry for Bob Miles. It’s not easy being a journalist in a town where nothing happens. In the spring, the only things to write about are the opening of the Dairy Queen and the annual library book sale, which Miss Rudy holds the tail end of May.

  The Harmony Public Library was built in 1903 with a grant from Andrew Carnegie. Up until then, the library had occupied the parlor of Ora Crandell, who was also the town’s first librarian by virtue of owning more books than anyone else in town. When Ora Crandell died in 1902, she left the town her books, which are now displayed in the Ora Crandell Memorial Bookcase in the ladies’ rest room. When they added indoor plumbing in 1913, the bookcase was too heavy to move, so they built the rest room around it.

  Before her death, Ora Crandell had applied for a Carnegie grant, which was approved, and a new library was erected in 1903 east of the town square. Shortly after that, as rumor has it, Miss Rudy was employed as the librarian.

  The Harmony Public Library, ostensibly a democratic organization, more closely resembles a South American dictatorship. The first week a book is overdue, Miss Rudy calls your home. The second week, she prints your name in the library column of the Harmony Herald. The third week, she sends Bernie, the policeman, to your house. If those measures fail, she places a lien on your home. There is no due process, no appeal to a higher court. There is no voting Miss Rudy out of office. She has the only key to the library. She keeps it on a chain around her neck, and no one’s ever had the courage to retrieve it.

  So it was that the meeting of the Library Board to plot the overthrow of Miss Rudy was held in secret in the basement of Owen Stout’s home. The whole board was there, all three members, huddled around the laundry table, conspiring.

  Lorraine Belcher suggested poisoning the postage stamps Miss Rudy kept in the top drawer of her desk. “We could maybe put a few drops of arsenic on the back of the stamps. The good thing about arsenic is that it kills a person real slow. They’ll never be able to link it to us.”

  “My Lord, we don’t want to hurt her,” Judy Iverson said. “Why don’t we just tell her it’s time she retired and offer to name a room after her?”

  “Won’
t work,” said Owen Stout. “We tried that fifteen years ago. She barricaded herself in the library for three days. Wouldn’t come out and wouldn’t let anyone in. We had to shut off the water to get her out.”

  “We have to do something,” Lorraine said. “We’re the laughingstock of the library district. We don’t have computers. We only made thirty-two dollars at our last book sale. And with people grouching about taxes, we need someone who can raise money. Someone younger, who isn’t so bossy.”

  “We’re gonna have to let her go, that’s all there is to it,” Owen said. “We need a volunteer. Who wants to tell her she’s fired?”

  “Why don’t you tell her?” Lorraine asked. “You’re the president of the board.”

  “Ordinarily, I would, but since I’m her lawyer it’d probably be a conflict of interest. She might want to hire me to sue the board for age discrimination. Why don’t you tell her, Judy?”

  “I don’t think so. I have two children to think of. It’s the quiet types that go crazy. I can’t risk it.”

  “Well, I’m not gonna tell her. I had to tell her fifteen years ago,” Lorraine said. “It’s someone else’s turn.”

  Owen sat at the laundry table, quiet and pensive, lawyer-like. “I’ve been thinking for some time it’s time we brought a new member onto the board. What we need is a real leader. Someone who isn’t afraid to take the bull by the horns. Someone with a real vision for what needs to happen.”

  “Someone we could talk into firing Miss Rudy,” Lorraine added.

  Owen Stout nodded. “Exactly.”

  “How about Sam Gardner?” Judy Iverson suggested. “Miss Rudy might be reluctant to harm a member of the clergy.”

  “Now there’s a thought,” Owen said.

  “I make a motion to nominate Sam Gardner to the Library Board,” Lorraine said.

  “I’ll second that motion,” Judy said.