Mossy Creek

by Deborah Smith, Sandra Chastain, Donna Ball, Debra Dixon, Nancy Knight, Virginia Ellis

The doctors told me I was lucky to be alive. I didn’t feel lucky. When they told me I’d never walk again, Hank blamed himself.

  My Olympic dream shriveled up and fell into a black hole. Hank’s internship at Angel Memorial slithered into the same deep abyss, though the admissions director promised he could apply later. I never blamed Hank for the accident; I should have buckled my seatbelt. I knew he would never intentionally hurt any living creature, including me. That’s why he is such a good vet. We don’t talk about it any more, but I know he still lives with his guilt.

  For the next year, he alternated weekends between working for his father, who’d had another heart attack, and riding his motorcycle to Atlanta, where I was in a spinal rehabilitation center learning to live without the use of my legs. If I hadn’t fallen in love with Hank the summer I was fourteen, I would have during that year.

  The doctors fitted me with braces that made it possible for me to stand, but I spent most of my time in a wheelchair. Two days after I was released from the spinal center, I attended Hank’s father’s funeral. I’ll never forget the pitying looks people gave Hank and me, though there was plenty of support and love in Mossy Creek, too. I just didn’t recognize it yet. Hank graduated from vet school, and we moved into the rambling Blackshear homestead beside the vet clinic. Hank intended to put his father’s house and clinic up for sale.

  “You and I never had a honeymoon,” Hank told me one day. Then he handed me two airline tickets. “We’re going to the Bahamas.”

  “You’ll have to carry me everywhere, or push me in the wheelchair.”

  “I don’t mind,” he said.

  I cried.

  We were in the Bahamas when Hank told me we were nearly broke. He didn’t have the money to pay off his student loans as well as his father’s large medical expenses. The old Blackshear Clinic showed no signs of selling. That’s when Hank confessed: He had given up hope of interning at Angel Memorial. He’d decided to take over his father’s practice in Mossy Creek. He said he did it for me, so that I could stay close to my doctors in Atlanta, and my family. And this way he’d have time to take care of me—I’d always be right next door to the clinic, at the old farmhouse.

  There was only one problem. He didn’t ask me if that’s what I wanted.

  I didn’t. I’d forever given up my dreams of the Olympics, but I’d expected New York, the theater, museums, sports. What I was getting was a husband and a new life in the very town I’d wanted to escape, a town where I believed people loved the glorious Casey Champion, not the crippled Casey Blackshear. A town whose motto seemed to predict a terrible future for me. Ain’t Going Nowhere and Don’t Want To.

  But I had trapped Hank in that future alongside me. I owed him every bit of loyalty in the world. “I think living in Mossy Creek is a fine idea,” I lied. “We’ll be happy, there.”

  Hank tries everything he can think of to get me out into the community. But other than picnics with him in the mountains and weekly dinners with my folks, the only activity I’ve done is volunteer at the children’s hour at the library. I liked telling the children stories. They soon forgot about my wheelchair. I even asked if there was an opening for an assistant librarian.

  “I’m sorry, Casey, but we don’t have the budget to hire you,” Hannah Longstreet, the head librarian, told me. I could hear the regret in her voice.

  “I completely understand,” I said cheerfully, then went home and sobbed.

  I hate feeling worthless. I can’t help out much in Hank’s practice; I’m afraid I might fall down while trying to stand with my braces and hold a cat or dog on the examining table. Other than answering the phone for the clinic when Hank’s receptionist is at lunch and sending out a few bills, I have nothing to do. In short, I’ve spent our first year in Mossy Creek being bored, depressed, and mad at the world.

  Today was one of those days. We were heading into the Fourth of July, and the weather was sticky hot. The mountains baked under a bright-blue sky. I sat in my wheelchair by the bedroom window fanning myself with a magazine. The antique clock over our fireplace started to chime. It reminded me that Hank was showering, getting ready to report to the new softball field with his friend, Buck Looney, who coaches down at Bigelow County High. Buck played four seasons of pro football for the Green Bay Packers thirty years ago, and he’s never lost the burly attitude of a gorilla in shoulder pads. He’s coaching the Mossy Creek Twelve-and-Under Softball Team as if they’re hard-boiled linebackers. Buck is big and stalwart and gruff, but he tries his best to help out with the kids’ teams in Mossy Creek. Every kid in the town is in awe of him. After the little girls’ practice session, Buck, Hank, and our police chief, Amos Royden, planned to practice with the Mossy Creek adult co-ed team. I insisted that Hank join the team.

  As the chimes came to an end, the bathroom door opened and Hank emerged in a cloud of steam. He was already dressed in a faded teeshirt, cutoffs and his baseball cap with the bill turned backwards. His Let’s Cheer Up Casey smile was planted hopefully on his face. “Ready, Case? I told Buck we’d be at the ball field at two-thirty. I put your glove and bat in the van.”

  I stared at him. “Why?”

  “You might get the urge to play.”

  “Is that a joke?”

  “No, it’s a hope. At least, you could coach from the sidelines. Buck has no clue how to deal with little girls.”

  I shook my head. “Neither do I—not when you’re talking about coaching softball. Why would they listen to me? I can’t demonstrate much. I can’t get up and run. I’m useless.”

  “No, you’re still a world-class softball player.”

  I groaned. The world doesn’t look at me and see an Olympic contender, but Hank still does. My wheelchair and Hank know how worthless my body is. The wheelchair doesn’t talk, and Hank won’t. He doesn’t say so, but he thinks I’m a coward. He’s right. Reading stories to children at the library is one thing. Helping girls hit, run and field, is another thing all together.

  “Those girls need you,” Hank coaxed.

  “Any summer league that would give a little girls’ softball team to an ex-pro linebacker who used be nicknamed Jawbone deserves what it gets.”

  “That’s why Buck needs help.” Hank laughed. It was a good laugh. There haven’t been many of those lately. My heart still melts when I hear it, it just takes longer now.

  “You’re talking little girls who have one foot in their childhood and one foot in their teens. If Buck Looney makes the little girls cry with his harsh methods, I’d say you need a new coach.”

  “It’s too late, now,” Hank admitted. “We’re set to play Bigelow in the Fourth of July tournament and the Twelve-And-Unders are scared to death. Please, Case, I really need your help. Buck thinks that if you’ll just give them a little pep talk, Mossy Creek has a chance of winning the All-Star Tournament for the first time in years.”

  “What exactly is their record?”

  He squinted at the ceiling, thinking. “This is the ninth year they’ve held the county playoffs since you were on the team. Bigelow has won eight of them.”

  “You’ve got a softball team with a record of 1 and 8, a coach named Looney, and now you want to add an assistant coach in a wheelchair?”

  “I’m counting on the Casey magic.” He took my face between his hands. “I’m counting on the Casey who never gave up.”

  Hank always got to me. I would follow him forever, even though I’d send us both tumbling. I shook my head and tried to smile. “Okay, Blackshear. Let’s go see who I can knock down this time.”

  There are two categories of natives in Mossy Creek: the people who’ve been here all their lives and those who’ve left and come back. As one of those who left and came back, Hank appreciates progress but knows why Mossy Creek is special. He’s beginning to see what Ida Hamilton Walker and the rest of the older generation have been trying to preserve. I hate to admit it, but I’m beginning to understand, too. I feel safe, here.

  Hank was even persuaded to run
for the city council and was given the parks and recreation department as his responsibility. The job should have been easy; it would have been for anyone else–there was no recreation department. But my Hank takes his duties seriously. So do the other Mossy Creekites. As we drove to the ball fields outside town, I noticed all the Beat Bigelow signs in shop windows and on bumper stickers.

  I unfolded a copy of the weekly newspaper and saw that the Mossy Creek Gazette had gotten into the mood. Even the front page touted the Fourth Of July All-Star PlayOffs. Hank hadn’t told me that Katie Bell’s Bellringer column confided that I’d agreed to help the Twelve-And-Under girls, but Sue Ora Salter made sure I got a copy of the Gazette every week. Sue has a big heart, but she’s as big a meddler as Katie. She’s just more subtle about it.

  When we arrived at the practice field, it was painfully obvious that Buck Looney took all the hurrah as a mandate to win. Though the older girls’ softball team was a shoe-in to win the All-Star tournament, and the co-ed team, on which Hank was the pitcher, looked great, the Twelve-And-Unders were, well, they were a big question mark.

  With his ball cap pulled firmly down over his head and his stopwatch in hand, Buck had all the players lined up behind first base. They looked as nervous as paratroopers ready to make their first jump. Hank parked the van, came around to my side and opened the door. I heard Buck bellow, “We may not have much experience, girls, but we sure are fast. So we’re gonna run Bigelow into the ground. Kill ‘em. Stomp ‘em. I’m going to clock your speed. Are you ready?”

  The girls simply looked at him.

  “Trust me,” he barked. “We’ll make those Bigelow sissies throw the ball around, and when the dust settles, we’ll win. Little Ida, you’re first. I want you to hotfoot it to second base, as hard as you can. Go!”

  Ida Walker, the granddaughter of Mayor Ida Hamilton Walker, took off toward second, running as hard as her spindly legs could carry her. She was ferocious, but only eight-years-old.

  “Go to third!” Buck yelled, swinging his arm in a furious circle. “Faster!”

  Little Ida glanced back, lips narrowed in determination. “Yes sir!” That’s when she caught her right foot behind the base bag and tumbled into left field.

  “Oh, for…” Buck let out a sigh and started toward her. “You’re not hurt, Little Ida. Get up.”

  Ida lay there for a minute, then sat up. One knee had turned into a raw scrape. Her lips went from firm resolve to impending tremble. Buck came to a stop beside her and frowned. “Be tough, Little Ida, like your grandma. Ball players have to suck it up!”

  I didn’t have to be told that Little Ida had been compared to her tough grandmother all her life. She burst into tears. I glared at Buck. The idiot. Buck Looney might know how to coach burly, knot-headed teenage boys for our county high school, but it was obvious he had no clue how to deal with little girls.

  “Hank, get me to the field!” I said, disconnecting my seatbelt.

  “You sure?” Hank asked slyly. “What do you plan to do?”

  What did I plan to do? Hell, I…I didn’t know what I could do. “Gimmie my bat and my wheelchair, and I’ll show you!” I’d figure it out when I got out there.

  I refused to acknowledge Hank’s broad I told you so grin as he helped me into my chair and rolled me down the path to the field. “You aren’t going to hurt Buck, are you? We need him on the co-ed team.”

  “Possibly, but first I’m going to restore Little Ida’s confidence. Push me out there.” I pointed at the third base dugout, where Little Ida sat hugging her wounded knee. Hank parked me beside her.

  “Hi, Little Ida, I’m Casey. That was a real Michael Jordan move you made! Where’d you learn how to do that?”

  The child stopped her sniffing and looked at me with eyes as big as robin eggs. “Michael Jordan? You mean Bugs’ friend?”

  “Bugs? Eh?”

  “The commercial with Bugs Bunny,” Hank whispered. He straightened and grinned at Buck. “Hey, Coach. Casey decided you were right. These ladies can use a woman’s touch.”

  “We need more than that,” Buck grumbled. “Need a stack of hankies for everybody to boo-hoo into every time I look at ‘em wrong.”

  By this time, Little Ida was standing wide-eyed beside my chair, skinned knee forgotten. “Are you going to be our coach?”

  “Of course not, silly,” one of the other ballplayers said. The team gathered around my chair. “She can’t walk.”

  “You don’t need to walk to play great sports. You have to use your brain.” I nodded somberly to Little Ida. “Michael Jordan uses his brain. And he’d be impressed with the way you run bases.”

  “Little Ida’s no Michael Jordan,” another girl said. “The only reason she’s even on the team is because her grandmother is the mayor and her daddy’s the president of Hamilton’s Department Store. They’re donating the uniforms. She’s too little.”

  I saw pain watering Little Ida’s eyes again. She blinked to remain stoic, but I could see disaster in the making. Nothing ruins a team as quickly as hurt feelings between the players. And Buck was making no move to nip it in the bud. I took Little Ida’s hand. “>From now on, no one makes mean comments about any other player. That’s my rule. Okay? Now, does this team have a name?”

  Little Ida sighed. “No, ma’am. We’re just the Mossy Creek Twelve-And-Unders.”

  “Well, if we’re going to use our brains, the first thing we have to do is think up a name. A name for the team—and good names for each other, too. We’ll only worry about player names, for now.”

  “Whatcha mean?” the dissenter challenged.

  “Well, you know. The players on television always give each other nicknames. If we want to be tough, let’s think like them. Now, I’m Casey. My name is really Cassandra. But I’m named after a very famous ball player who once struck out. He was known as Mighty Casey of Mudville.” They nodded. They’d heard the poem in school. “My daddy told me not to worry whenever I struck out. I might have missed that time, he said, but with a nickname like Casey I’d be famous one day.”

  “That’s true,” Hank added. “And she was. Before she got hurt, she was being scouted for the Olympics. Her accident changed that dream, but she’s still Casey. She still knows how to play softball.”

  Little Ida smiled and ignored my wheelchair completely. “So what’s my nickname going to be?”

  “Hmmm, I can’t say yet. Why don’t we practice our running for the coach, and we’ll think about it.” I looked at the rest of the girls. “Coach Looney doesn’t expect you all to be a fast rabbit like Little Ida. He’s just trying to help you find a way to confuse the other team into making mistakes. The Bigelow team doesn’t expect Mossy Creek girls to run well and they’ll get so shook up at our gooney bird speed they’ll miss their throws, and we’ll get on base.”

  “Huh,” Buck grunted. “All right, whatever. I guess I don’t need the stopwatch. Let’s just start over and see what we can do.”

  The girls obediently lined up again at first. I started to wheel myself off the field when Buck put his hand on my chair. “Why don’t you stay out here, so you can get a good close-up look at the girls? That way you can help us come up with their nicknames.”

  Two hours later, Buck and I knew we had four real runners, four tippy-toes runners, and four who would always be just slightly faster than turtles. “I thought this was the All-Star team,” I whispered to Hank.

  “Sorry, babe, we only had four teams, and some of the best girls weren’t eligible for the playoffs.”

  “Why not?”

  “We got a lot of girls from Look Over, Yonder, Bailey Mill and Chinaberry. They don’t live inside the city limits of Mossy Creek, so the league doesn’t consider them eligible to play. All the girls on the Mossy Creek All-Star Team have to live inside Mossy Creek. Just like the Bigelow All-Star team lives inside Bigelow’s city limits.”

  “But Bigelow’s huge compared to us. There are 10,000 people in Bigelow. That’s not fair.”

>   “I know. But the Bigelowans control the league’s board of directors. Buck says they pushed through the rule change a few years ago.” He sighed. “We broke that rule just by signing the county girls up for regular season play. We did it, anyway. But our team will be disqualified from the playoffs if we include any girls outside Mossy Creek.”

  I growled under my breath. It had been a long time since I’d played summer sports, but nothing had changed. Everyone seemed to forget that the playing ought to be fun. Maybe it had been once, but the adults found out that losing wasn’t fun. So they began to make rules to keep everything equal. Or in the case of Bigelow, to ensure that Bigelow always won.

  “Okay, ladies,” Buck called as the sweaty little girls downed water from a cooler. “Practice again tomorrow at 3:30. Okay?”

  “Is Casey coming?” a chorus of small voices asked.

  Hank looked at me. Buck looked at me.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Hank has appointments. I might not—”

  “I’ll come and get you,” Buck said quickly.

  I glanced at the parking lot, where the only other vehicle was Buck’s red pick-up truck. “The last time I rode in the back of a pick-up truck was the Miss Bigelow County Parade.”

  “I’ll leave my truck with Hank, and we’ll drive your van.”

  Before I could shake my head, Little Ida put her hand on my arm. “Please?”

  I looked at her, then at the rest of the girls, and made a decision I never thought I’d make. “I’ll come, Buck. And don’t worry, I can drive myself.”

  “Are you sure, Case?” Hank asked as we drove home. “I know I pushed you into helping Buck, but if it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll understand. I just thought it would give you something fun to do.”

  Not that I could teach them anything, but that it would give me something to do. That hurt, even though I knew he didn’t mean it that way. I didn’t try to explain. Today, I just didn’t want to go there. I remembered Little Ida’s hopeful eyes. “Of course, I’m uncomfortable. But they’re uncomfortable too. I’ll help them get ready, but I’m not going on the field on game day. Coaching from a wheelchair while a stand full of people watches me is not my idea of fun.”