by Sharon Short
Todd Raptor. Right off, my face went hot and red, because a slow grin was curling up his mouth as he appraised me in that frank, sexual way some men just can’t resist whenever they see a woman—even a woman with short blond fuzz for hair, no makeup, baggy eyes, wearing an old tank top and shorts and sneakers, and bearing a ferret in a birdcage.
“I’m Josie Toadfern,” I said. “I’m a—well, I guess you could say—a friend of Trudy Breitenstrater’s and I, well, I wanted to return her ferret.” I knelt, picked up the birdcage, and pointed to the still-snoozing Slinky.
“Ahh,” Todd said. “The infamous Slinky. Well, you’ll certainly make Trudy happy—although Alan won’t be thrilled.”
I sighed. Was there no way to make all the Breitenstraters happy at once?
Todd shook his head. “I’m sorry. You probably didn’t need to hear that. I’m Todd Raptor.” He stuck out his hand. We shook hands. His grip was nice and warm and firm. “No one is home except me—they’re all off at church.” I myself normally go to the Methodist church Sundays—the one day a week I close the laundromat—but I wasn’t about to leave Slinky’s side until she was firmly back under Trudy’s care. “Do you want me to take”—he gestured at the birdcage as if it contained a snake instead of Slinky—”that thing for you?”
Suddenly, I felt protective of Slinky, and put off by Todd’s attitude. “I’d feel better handing Slinky over to Trudy directly.” His eyebrows went up at that. “It’d just—give me a chance to make up with Trudy. When will the family be back from church?”
“In about an hour. But Trudy won’t be with them. She took off this morning before everyone woke up—her usual style. Look, why don’t you and your little friend come in? You look like you could use a cup of coffee.”
Now, normally, I wouldn’t go into a big house alone with a man I didn’t know. But I was curious—maybe I could learn something about the Breitenstrater family from Todd that would help me get back on their good side. Plus, I could also thrust Slinky at him if he got too fresh. What was it Sally had said last night about ferret pee? Probably the threat of that would make him keep his distance. And, I admit, coffee—even served by Todd Raptor—sounded good.
And five minutes later, as I took my first sip of the coffee, it tasted good, too. Todd and I sat on opposite sides of a long, mahogany table in a wooden-floored dining room that was bigger than the whole of my apartment, that shone with lemony-scented furniture polish, and that looked like a picture of perfection straight out of a home-and-garden magazine. The walls were painted burgundy, and a crystal chandelier hung over the table, silver candelabras were centered on a white lace table runner. It wasn’t the kind of dining room I’d feel comfy serving up, say, salmon patties and cheesy-grits-casserole on my hand-me-down Fiestaware from Aunt Clara.
But when Todd had asked if I’d rather be in that room or the living room, I chose the dining room. For one thing, the living room had white carpeting and furniture upholstered in pale peach. Ferret pee and coffee do not clean well from these things. Plus, the mantle over the stone fireplace was filled with all kinds of photos—of Jason, or of the family with Jason. Nothing recent, showing Trudy growing into young womanhood. Not even a photo of Geri and Alan’s wedding. Just all Jason. It was too sad.
So we sat on opposite sides of the dining table for eight, sipping coffee. And I have to admit, it felt luxurious to sit in a room like that, sipping hazelnut-flavored coffee from an unchipped china cup with a matching saucer.
“So,” I said to Todd. “You’re Dinky’s friend from his college days.”
Todd nodded. “I guess word’s gotten around town.”
“It’s a small town. Not much reason to come here unless you’re from here or spending the day antique shopping. People talk when new faces show up.”
He grinned at me. “So you’ve heard the one about how I’m really here having an affair with Geri?”
The question was meant to embarrass me. I countered by taking the question at face value. “Are you having an affair with Geri?”
“No. Geri has eyes only for Alan.” He sounded a little aggravated. I wondered if he’d made a pass and Geri had put him off. Geri had been a cheerleader back in high school—a very quiet one, who hadn’t seemed comfortable with being in the spotlight. I’d been on the bowling and volleyball teams and worked on the school newspaper, so I had run with a different crowd. Now I thought maybe Geri, who’d seemed like something of a pushover back then, had gotten tougher. Maybe all those rumors about her being a gold digger weren’t fair. Go, Geri, go.
“Well, I’m glad to hear all is well with Geri and Alan,” I said. Although, given the photos in the living room, I wondered. “The Breitenstraters have suffered enough.”
”You mean Jason’s death.”
Well, duh, I thought. But I just smiled. “I’m sure you know more details than most of us about how hard it was for everyone—being Dinky’s college friend.”
“You sound as though you don’t believe I’m really his friend.”
Dinky had been out of college ten years by then. Todd was claiming to be his best friend from that time—but that was the first time Todd had ever been seen in Paradise. He hadn’t been at Jason’s funeral. Yeah, I found Todd’s story hard to believe—and so did everyone else, which was why the rumor about his affair with Geri started.
I shrugged. “I guess I find it hard to believe that Dinky has any friends that close.”
Todd laughed. “I take it you don’t like the Breitenstraters?”
“I don’t know them that well—except maybe Trudy. I did go to high school with Dinky and Jason and Geri.”
“So you knew them then?”
“I didn’t hang out with them, but it was-is-a small school, so, yeah, everyone knew everyone. They were older than me, too, which made a difference. They were seniors when I was a freshman.”
“And what did you think of the perfect, revered Jason?”
The question surprised me in its hostility. Maybe Todd really was friends with Dinky and had heard about how Dinky had been made to suffer all this time with guilt—not that he didn’t deserve it—and was taking up Dinky’s side.
“Jason was the kind of kid who was good at everything. He was smart, good-looking, a top-notch athlete. And he was kind to everyone.” I didn’t say it, but Dinky was the opposite, yet always trying to keep up with his cousin, and in the process, always goofing up and annoying everyone. And Jason’s death, apparently, hadn’t freed him from trying to live up to Jason’s standards. If anything, it had made him try harder—and fail worse. Sort of like his father Cletus’s attempts to break away from Alan’s shadow—and never really succeeding.
“So you think Jason deserves his saint status.”
“No. But he was the kind of kid that everyone admired. Almost—like he was an untouchable.”
“Until he died in the car wreck at the hands of Dinky.”
I frowned. Why, I thought, did Todd want to pick my brain on this? “Look, I really want to get Slinky back to Trudy. You said she took off this morning.”
“Her taking off was upsetting, especially with all the tension around the pie-eating contest and the announcements Cletus and Alan want to make.” Todd looked amused, as if Cletus and Alan’s conflict was simply entertaining, not worrisome at all. “The last thing Alan wanted was to worry about Trudy.”
”Well, maybe I can talk her into coming back for the afternoon, if you’ll tell me where she is. Getting Slinky back would surely put her in a good mood—”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You don’t know where she is?”
“I didn’t say that. I said I couldn’t tell you—and I can’t, because I told Alan I didn’t know.” Todd grinned at me and took another sip of his coffee.
“But you do.”
“Mmm hmm.”
“You know,” I said, “I could tell Alan that you do know but you’re refusing to tell.”
Todd laughed. “Like Alan is going to li
sten to Josie Toad-fern? Ever since that meeting Saturday before last, he’s been furious at you for, as he puts it, egging Cletus on.”
“I have done nothing of the sort!”
Todd shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. When Alan Breitenstrater gets an idea in his head, he doesn’t let it go easily. And as far as he’s concerned, you’re helping Cletus muck up his plans.”
“What plans would those be?”
Todd smiled. “Come to the pie-eating contest this afternoon and find out along with everyone else. Trust me, it’ll be a shocker—something the whole town will be talking about for some time to come.”
Now, I felt my curiosity rise big time, but I wasn’t going to let Todd see that. Instead, I grinned right back at him. “Okay,” I said. “That sounds like a good idea.” No need to let him know I had to be there anyway to take care of the tablecloths after the pie-eating contest. I hadn’t lost my Breitenstrater laundry contract—yet. “Of course, I’ll have to bring Slinky with me, which probably won’t make Alan very happy, especially if Slinky gets out and mucks up Alan’s speechmaking like she did last week, and then maybe those big plans will get put off—”
Todd suddenly looked angry and something else, too. Scared. “Nothing can get in the way of his announcement!” Todd said. “All right—I’ll tell you where Trudy is. But I can’t tell you how I know and when you see her, you tell her Cletus told you.”
“But—”
“I’ll work it out with Cletus,” Todd said, suddenly all business. “She and her buddies have a spot where they hang out in Licking Creek State Park,” he said. “It’s in a remote section. You’ll have to go to the primitive camping area, then hike about a mile in on one of the marked trails. Then you’ll have to go off trail exactly north. Do you have a compass?”
“Yes, but—” I was about to protest that hiking off trail on state lands was against the law.
“After you’ve gone a quarter mile, you’ll see some white strips of cloth tied to branches. Follow those. You’ll find Trudy.”
I stared at him for a long moment. “You expect me,” I said, “to go hiking off trail for miles in a state park while toting a ferret in a birdcage—just based on your word?”
He grinned. “Wear good hiking shoes. And plenty of bug spray.”
7
I took the advice. I went back home, changed into jeans, a T-shirt, thick socks, and hiking shoes. I’d be hot, but locals know Licking Creek State Park for its most prodigious plants: poison oak. Poison ivy. And poison sumac. And as I’d learned on a Ranger Girl campout when I was a kid, I’m highly allergic to all three. Spending the summer covered in chamomile lotion was not my idea of fun.
But I’d ignored the bug spray advice because (a) I was out of bug spray and (b) I didn’t want to go shopping with Slinky in tow and (c) the sooner I returned Slinky to Trudy, the happier I’d be.
So now, I was swatting my face and neck—both already slick with sweat—with one hand, and holding Slinky aloft in the birdcage with the other, because where I was hiking was not a cleared path, and the grass and shrubs would flick into Slinky’s cage if I held her low.
Hope you appreciate this, ferret, I thought. I was panting, looking around for the next white marker. My arm was aching so that it felt like it was about to break off.
In the state parks around the populated areas of the state—which is just about anywhere along the major highways that connect up Columbus in the center, Cleveland in the northeast, Toledo in the northwest, and Cincinnati in the southwest—you can hear traffic from some nearby state route.
Not so where I was hiking. I was, after all, in a state park in south central Ohio, which, along with southeast Ohio, is the least populated part of the state. Which meant I was really alone in miles and miles and miles of forest. Which—with the dense growths of oak and maple and birch—was beautiful. And also hot and sweaty and just a little intimidating. I hadn’t stuck to Ranger Girls long enough to learn which berries I could eat and which I couldn’t, so I didn’t relish the thought of being lost in the forest with Slinky and my poison-vines allergy.
I fished a bandanna out of my pocket, wiped the sweat from the back of my neck and my eyes and peered around. Ah . . . there was the next white cloth marker. Thank God.
I trudged on, holding Slinky aloft in her birdcage as if she were some strange lantern guiding my way. And maybe she thought she was. She was standing up, alert, staring straight ahead, as if fascinated by her journey.
Three white markers and at least a dozen bug bites later, I came to a stream, along the bank of which were six tents. No one was around. A spot had been cleared for a fire ring. I went over to it. Rocks surrounded the ring and a water pail stood nearby. A recent fire had been put out, the embers carefully raked over. Trudy and her buddies were following proper fire-building techniques—but in an area that was not authorized for fire-building. They could get in big, big trouble for that.
I heard a rustling sound, looked up, and saw Chucky—Charlemagne—emerge from one of the tents. He grinned at me. “Hi, Ms. Toadfern. Welcome to New Paradise!”
I opened my mouth—not sure what I was going to say—when Trudy popped out of the same tent—buttoning up her blouse.
She glared at me, then looked embarrassed, then glanced at Charlemagne, and finally saw Slinky aloft in her birdcage.
“Slinky!” she cried and ran toward us.
New Paradise was, Charlemagne and Trudy explained to me, a Utopian experiment that they and their friends—also misfits, they said, and the same kids that had come to the meeting at the theatre—were trying. It was Trudy’s idea. She’d grown up listening to her Uncle Cletus talk about Utopias and his research into them and fascination with them, and she decided it was time to create one herself with her friends. She stroked Slinky, who was curled up in her lap and clearly happy to see her.
It seemed fairly harmless—and understandable. Trudy surely hadn’t had an easy time of it. And lately, neither had Charlemagne, given all the taunting he’d gotten at home and school and from his coaches for one simple mistake in one baseball game that was far too important to everyone—including the former Chucky.
I didn’t know the stories of the other kids, but I reckoned they also had tales of feeling misunderstood. So they all came out here whenever they could—Charlemagne and Trudy told me—to talk about life and love and the meaning of it all and how they sure weren’t going to make the same stupid mistakes their dorky parents had.
As I listened to them talk, so incredibly enthusiastic and young and sincere, I couldn’t bring myself to tell them that of course they’d make the same stupid mistakes their dorky parents had, of course they’d goof up and fail. The whole idea that goofing up is avoidable—that perfection can be attained anywhere on earth—was why Utopian communities had never thrived—although a few had flourished for an impressive time. But always, the human need to satisfy self, the need to grow and explore away from the little group, would take over eventually. As it should.
And in the process of fulfilling those needs, people always make mistakes. Always have. Always will.
But if all they were really doing—as they said—was talking and sharing ideas and wearing black (to symbolize unity) and—as I reckoned from Trudy emerging from the same tent as Charlemagne, doing some making out (I hoped it wasn’t going farther than that. Had anyone talked to Trudy about birth control? I wondered), then where was the harm?
On the other hand, they probably weren’t telling me all they were doing or into. At the very least, they were trespassing and fire-building on state property. And I didn’t want to think about the penalties that both the county sheriff and Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources might bring down on my head for not ratting on them.
On the other hand, these two were talking with me and trusting me—something they didn’t feel about any other adults in their lives—and I didn’t want to betray that. I was caught in the middle, knowing the legal, right thing to do, and wondering what the mo
ral, right thing to do would be.
I would have to talk to Cletus Breitenstrater at the pie-eating contest, since he’d put these ideas in Trudy’s head, and since he apparently knew about where Trudy was going, based on what Todd had said. And Todd knew, too. Why?
“Josie, how did you find us here?” Trudy asked.
Todd, of course, had told me. But something else told me that Trudy wouldn’t like that answer. Cletus apparently knew what Trudy was up to, based on what Todd had said, so I ventured a white lie.
“Cletus told me,” I said. “When I went to return Slinky to you at the house. He—he said he was worried about you and wanted to make sure you came to the pie-eating contest, that it was really important to your father that you’re there.”
For a long moment, Trudy stared at me, trying to decide whether or not to believe me. Finally, she shrugged. “I’ll be there.” She scratched Slinky between the ears. “Odd, though. I thought Uncle Cletus was going to church with Dad, Dinky, and Geri.”
“Must have changed his mind,” I said. “Listen, I returned Slinky to you.”
“I said thank you.” Trudy sounded defensive.
“I know. But I need a favor from you. Is there any way that you can keep Cletus from announcing the basis for his new play at the pie-eating contest today?”
Trudy laughed. “You know he’s going to go ahead with it sometime. What’s the point?”
“Well, I know your dad wants to make some big announcement, too. Maybe if he can make it without your Uncle Cletus stealing his thunder, your dad will be in a better mood. And then I can convince your dad to go ahead with the fireworks, even if Cletus does his play, and convince Cletus to supply the fireworks, even if he has to postpone his own announcement.
“Maybe I can convince him that saving the new play as a surprise would be good publicity. Or something. I think it can work. I had a lot of time to think about this last night—while I stayed up watching Slinky.” Okay—that was a stretch beyond a white lie, but if the guilt factor worked, fine.
