Summer in Mossy Creek

by Deborah Smith

  Loretta turned off the road and drove the SUV into the meadow and right on up to the Sitting Tree. I got out of the giant vehicle and waited under the tree’s deep shade.

  “See you later, Grandmother,” Loretta said, gave me a peck on the cheek, then drove away.

  A minute later, a pretty red pickup truck pulled off the road and stopped. A tall, lanky, handsome, gray-haired man emerged and I felt a smile spread across my face. He carried a bouquet of wildflowers, as I knew he would.

  Ben climbed the hill and gave me a small wave. The gentle look on his face filled me with deep joy. He handed me the flowers. “Happy anniversary, Sweetheart.”

  “I love you, Ben Howell,” I said as his arms came around me. We held each other tightly as a gentle breeze caressed us. Then we bent and placed the flowers on Etta’s grave.

  I thought of the priceless gift I had been given, looked up at the clear evening sky and whispered softly, “Thank you, dear friend.”

  Mossy Creek Gazette

  Volume III, No. 3 * Mossy Creek, Georgia

  The lovely wedding of Millicent Hart, 80, and Tyrone Lavender, 81, was held at Magnolia Manor Nursing Home on Sunday afternoon. All the home’s residents and many Creekites attended.

  The wedding ceremony was held in the cafeteria (turned into a chapel for the occasion by Swee Purla Designs). The reception was catered by Win Allen, aka Chef Bubba Rice, who provided Millicent’s favorite dishes for a hearty buffet, including Tequila Lime Chicken, Broccoli Quiche, and Chicken and Dressing Casserole.

  The ceremony was performed by Mayor Ida instead of a minister because Millicent and Tyrone wanted their marriage recognized as official by everyone “except Social Security.”’ Mayor Ida assured them her service would be enough for propriety’s sake, but not the government’s.

  The bridesmaids included Millicent’s daughter, Maggie Hart, and Tyrone’s niece, Anna Rose Lavender. The groomsmen included Maggie’s fiancé, former Atlanta Falcon linebacker Tag Garner, and Anna Rose’s fiancé, Beau Belmondo. Both Anna Rose and Beau interrupted filming on his new action movie, Death Commando, to attend. As many of you know, Anna Rose has a small part in Beau’s film, playing “the only girlfriend who doesn’t get blown up by the bad guy.”

  Owing to our local celebrities, Police Chief Amos Royden and deputy Sandy Crane caught two photographers from The National Enquirer at the wedding. One photographer claimed he was only attempting to retrieve his wallet. The wallet was later found inside Millicent’s bouquet.

  Millicent looked lovely in a powder-blue dress with a lace collar hand-crocheted by Josie McClure. Rainey Cecil of Goldilocks’ Salon did a lovely job on Millicent’s hair. It matched the dress beautifully.

  In lieu of a honeymoon, the couple spent the next day moving Tyrone’s furniture into Millicent’s assisted-living apartment. When asked, Tyrone said that was about all he could handle at his age.

  Millicent only smiled.

  The bride’s bouquet was caught by Inez Hamilton Hilley, 79, who promptly tossed it back. No one was surprised, as Inez has always been trouble. Read on for more news about Inez.

  Chapter Five

  LUCY BELLE and INEZ

  “Hold a true friend with both your hands.”

  —Nigerian proverb

  MY NAME IS LUCY Belle Hamilton Gilreath. The Hamilton part is my middle name, not a maiden name, as at forty-five, I am a spinster by Mossy Creek standards. Seeing as how the Hamiltons are as close to aristocracy as you can get in Mossy Creek, if you have a drop of their blood in your veins, you will almost always get Hamilton as part of your name. Hamilton is kind of like the Mossy Creek equivalent of Windsor or Mountbatten. Not that I’m bragging, you understand.

  I’m one of those Mossy Creekites who intended to live by the town motto, “Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere And Don’t Want To,” but had to leave, anyway. I pursued a career in computer programming—God knows why, looking back on it—and so had to leave town to find a job, as Mossy Creek is not what you’d call a haven for high-tech activity. About the highest Mossy Creek has ever gotten, tech-wise, is the electronic milking machines at Ida Walker’s dairy farm, and bovine applications are not my specialty.

  But I do come back to Mossy Creek most weekends to spend time with friends and family. It helps me forget the stresses of a demanding job and city living. That is, usually. But home, no matter how humble, can come with stresses of its own. Take my grandmother, Inez Hamilton Hilley, for example. In her day, Grandma was the most formidable woman in town, with the possible exception of her cousin, old Big Ida Hamilton. Now she is tethered to an oxygen machine by a length of plastic tubing because of smoking Camels for more years than she cares to admit.

  Her limited mobility does not dim her spirit or mar her mettle. Unfortunately, though, her once boundless energy has diminished, and facing the fact that she can no longer accomplish all she sets out to do leaves her often frustrated and fractious. Even more fractious than in the old days, which was to a considerable degree.

  That in mind, I knew I was in trouble when I walked into Grandma’s house one hot Friday night after visiting the Bigelow membership warehouse on the way home to Mossy Creek for the weekend. I greeted her and my mother, who were seated at the kitchen table embroidering and watching Wheel of Fortune. The kitchen is the center of Grandma’s home and where she holds forth from her customary place at the table, her oxygen machine rattling away at her side. I put the items from Grandma’s grocery list onto the table and gave her the receipt.

  “I put the sack of birdseed on the porch,” I said. “They didn’t have the kind in the bucket this time.”

  Her eyebrows shot up like a pair of white doves flushed by a bird dog, and she stopped pawing though her purse for her wallet. “I wanted the kind in the bucket.”

  “I know you wanted the kind in the bucket,” I said patiently. “But they didn’t have any of that kind so I got you the kind in the sack.”

  “She wanted the kind in the bucket,” my mother put in for reinforcement, presenting a united front.

  I took a deep breath and tried again, enunciating my words carefully. “I realize that Grandma wanted the kind in the bucket. But, as I said, they didn’t have the kind in the bucket, and I don’t know anybody else who sells it in a bucket, so rather than come back empty-handed, I got the kind in the sack just this once.”

  “I always get the kind in the bucket,” Grandma said, staring into her purse as if to make eye contact with a creature as contrary as myself would singe her eyeballs.

  “She likes the kind in the bucket because when the bucket’s empty she can use it to take her peelings to Hank’s compost pile,” my mother allowed, not looking up from her embroidery.

  Of course I was aware of all of that. I was the one who hauled the bucket next door to my uncle’s compost pile after Grandma had deposited a week’s worth of scraps in it, after it had started getting nice and putrid. The watermelon rinds are the worst—heavy, juicy and quick to go sour on you, like my mood at present.

  I gritted my teeth. “I promise. Next time I’ll get the kind in the bucket.”

  Grandma gave me the sort of withering look she usually reserved for Bigelowans. “The kind in the bucket is the only kind to get, because—” Grandma started.

  I could feel my face glowing like neon. “Dammit! Listen here. They didn’t have any birdseed in a bucket. If they’d had birdseed in a bucket, I’d have gotten it. If I came back here without any birdseed at all, you’d be on my case telling me I should’ve gotten the kind in the sack! If you want a bucket, I’ll go to the Home Depot down in Bigelow and buy you a plastic five-gallon bucket for five dollars and you can sit in it for all I care!”

  “Don’t talk to your grandmother that way,” my mother said seriously, looking down her bifocals at me.

  Grandma smirked and slung the money she owed me across the ta
ble. “Put that gallon of milk in the ice box for me, would you?”

  I chewed my tongue. I was raised to be respectful to my elders. “Sure,” I said finally, opening the fridge. “Can I have some of this macaroni and cheese?” When angry, talk about food. It’s a Southern tradition.

  “Help yourself,” Grandma said, and picked up her embroidery hoop.

  Did I mention that Grandma loves a good fight? These days her fracases (or is it fraci? I’ll have to ask Sue Ora and Katie Bell at the Mossy Creek Gazette) are usually only verbal in nature, thank goodness. Mostly she confines herself to railing and shaking her fist at objectionable people she sees on television, such as umpires and Republicans.

  Mercifully, arguments with her family members are quickly forgotten. But in the right setting, she can still wring satisfaction out of nursing a grudge, and can still squeeze enjoyment out of fueling a feud. I guess it’s the Hamilton in her.

  I think she likes to fuss with me most of all, which is just as well, since I am the only one who has the guts to give her back as good as she dishes out. The others—my mother, aunt, uncle and cousins—are too deferential to be much of a challenge for her. That was one reason I had been selected by the whole family to break the news that hot summer night. This was going to be a fight neither of us was going to enjoy.

  Grandma got up from her seat at the table, stretched to her full five-feet-even and waddled to the bathroom, trailing her length of plastic tubing behind her. When the door was closed firmly, my mother scrambled, sweeping her embroidery, scissors, thread and thimble into a tote bag and heading for the front door as if an air raid siren had just gone off.

  “It’s time for you to tell her.”

  “Tell me again why I have to be the one to do this?” I queried as Mama raced by me.

  Pausing at the door, she looked back and said simply, “It’ll be better coming from you. You’re not just her granddaughter. You’re her best friend.” Then she disappeared like a wraith.

  I knew Mama was right. I was the one who needed to tell Grandma that, for her own health, she had to do something that would be, for her, a fate worse than death. Her pulmonary problems had been worsening and after a few near-fainting incidents, something had to be done to ensure that she wouldn’t harm herself. It was going to be hard, but she would have to face facts.

  Grandma shuffled back from the bathroom, sat down, aimed the remote at the television and tuned in the Braves game. I took my mother’s vacated place opposite her.

  “Grandma, we’ve got to talk.”

  “Talk away.”

  “You know you’ve been getting weaker lately,” I began. “And the family, well, we think you should take things easy from now on.”

  Grandma’s thinning white hair, which normally stuck out in all directions anyway, took a sudden notion to stand on end like the comb of some strange albino rooster. She eyed me darkly.’“What is that supposed to mean?”

  I took a deep breath. There was nothing to do but plow onward. “We don’t think you should get yourself all exhausted working up an entry for the chow-chow competition at the Bigelow County Fair this fall.”

  Right about now, dear reader, I figure you were thinking that I was about to tell Grandma that she had to go into Magnolia Manor nursing home. Oh, heavens no. I wouldn’t ride up to Grandma’s house with that proposal if you gave me a Humvee and a flame-thrower to protect myself.

  “No!” Grandma slammed her fist down on the table. “This is the year. This is the year I’m going to beat Ardaleen Bigelow at her own game!”

  I sighed as Grandma began to tell me the story again.

  THE FEUD BETWEEN her and her younger cousin, Ardaleen, went back fifty years to when Grandma was president of the Bigelow County Home Demonstration Club. Ardaleen had come to Grandma’s house on the pretense of attending the club’s program on the latest canning techniques.

  The county home economist doing the teaching was just out of the University of Georgia with a degree in home economics and a lot of fresh ideas regarding the womanly arts. Ardaleen was newly married to Winston Bigelow and said she was eager to impress her wealthy new in-laws with her homemaking skills. Ardaleen always spoke as if her own clan, the equally wealthy Hamiltons of Mossy Creek, could not hold a shade to the Bigelows of Bigelow. She turned up uninvited at the club meeting, which Grandma could have overlooked, Ardaleen being blood kin and all, if it hadn’t been for the pepper pod incident.

  The season before, Grandma had received from a distant cousin in Mexico seeds from a rare breed of pepper unrivaled for the ferocity of its hotness. It could peel the pink off your esophagus like turpentine peels paint. Using these fiery little pods and her own culinary creativity, Grandma had slaved over a hot stove until she had produced the perfect chow-chow.

  Grandma distributed many jars of this stern stuff to her friends and relatives. Before long, the recipe was being hailed far and wide as the preferred invigorator of boring soups and stews, the stimulator of choice for stagnant deviled eggs, tuna casseroles and chicken salads, and the ideal complement to wieners. The formula had even beaten back stiff Bigelow competition at the county fair that year and won the blue ribbon in the aforementioned pickles and preserves category.

  It was probably the Bigelows’ loss in the competition that inspired Ardaleen to impress her fancy Bigelowan mother-in-law by executing the most vile and underhanded bit of domestic sabotage ever committed on a Creekite by a denizen of our evil sister city. While refreshments were being served in the parlor, Ardaleen sneaked into Grandma’s kitchen and stole the secret chow-chow recipe right out of the metal box Grandma kept on the pantry shelf.

  That bit of treachery was not discovered right away, however. Having heard that the rare peppers were the secret ingredient, Ardaleen also pocketed a handful of pods drying on the window sill, the ones containing all the seeds Grandma was planning to use for next year’s crop. Then Ardaleen made the mistake of rubbing an itch beneath one demurely mascaraed eye.

  Upon making a return visit to the kitchen to fetch a quart of pineapple juice concentrate to replenish the punchbowl, Grandma spied Ardaleen splashing cold water onto her face at the sink. The sill above the sink was as empty of pepper pods as it could be.

  “What’s wrong with your eyes?” Grandma demanded.

  “Oh, I’m just so touched to be back with my kin again,” Ardaleen squeaked. “I’m all choked up.”

  If Ardaleen thought her eyes were bugging out after she’d touched a pepper-stained finger to them, I expect they were prominent indeed after Grandma seized her by the throat. “I’ll choke you up. Where are my pepper pods, you stringy-haired, flat-chested hussy? What did you do with them?”

  It took the home economist and two neighbor ladies to pry Grandma off Ardaleen, who made a swift getaway before anybody got a chance to shake her down for the pods. It wasn’t what you’d call a clean getaway, though, as her baby sister, our future mayor, Ida Hamilton (known as “Little Ida” back then), managed to dump the pineapple concentrate on Ardaleen’s head as she was beating it down the back steps. Afterward, Little Ida tried to comfort Grandma the best she could. “Maybe she drew some yellow jackets on the way home,” she suggested hopefully.

  After that, the hated Bigelows of Bigelow claimed Grandma’s recipe and her rare peppers, and she’d been stewing about it ever since. Especially when she found out that Ardaleen had tried to plant the pepper seeds herself the next spring but had let them all die. “Why didn’t you just get some more peppers from that Mexico cousin?” people asked Grandma.

  “He died at a chili cook-off,” she explained mournfully. “Sweated himself to death, they say.”

  FIFTY YEARS HAD passed, but Grandma had never forgotten or forgiven the pepper and chow-chow-recipe betrayal. I steepled my hands beneath my chin and sighed. “Grandma, why do you believe you’re finally going to beat Ardaleen at
her own game this year? After all, neither you nor Ardaleen ever found that variety of hot pepper again.”

  Grandma pounded the table.

  “I’ve got a spy in Ardaleen’s household. It’s her maid, Ruthie. Ruthie told me that Ardaleen has found those very peppers. She used Ham’s international connections with the Mexican government to track down some seeds.”

  I did a double take. Our governor, Ardaleen’s pompous son, Hamilton Bigelow, had established diplomatic relations between the state of Georgia and the nation of Mexico? “Those Bigelows will do anything to get hot peppers for chow-chow,” I deadpanned.

  “This is serious. Ardaleen hired a horticulture expert to grow her a few plants and now they’re putting out peppers like nobody’s business. They’re hidden in Ardaleen’s fancy garden!”

  “But surely Ruthie wouldn’t risk her job to steal peppers for you if there’s only a couple of plants’ worth. It would be too obvious. Too risky.”

  “No, she wouldn’t risk it. But we would.” Grandma gave me her best make-it-so look, the kind that always caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up.

  Sometimes Grandma could make me feel like a failure, whether it was for being an old maid, or for not having children, or for being a worthless bearer of bucketless birdseed. But more often than not, she bragged on me for my accomplishments and made me feel good about myself. (Incidentally, I think this alternation between praise and scorn is a form of mental torture banned by the Geneva Convention.) So because of this, and because I adored her, I had been looking for her approval from the time I was knee-high.

  The surest way to get Grandma’s approval was to help her execute one of her outlandish schemes—to take one of her harebrained ideas, set it up, flesh it out, breathe life into it and make it happen. So far none of the stunts had landed me in jail, in the hospital, or in the loony bin, but that had mostly been dumb luck. Especially the fourth-of-July fireworks incident in retaliation for Lamar Bigelow’s son beating up Grandma’s mailbox with a baseball bat. It was a good thing I had escaped unseen. The Bigelow clan were so mad you’d have thought I’d damaged the last Mercedes convertible north of the Atlanta city limits. I’ll spare you the details.