Summer in Mossy Creek

by Deborah Smith

  For Christmas that year, I bought myself an Irish whistle. I loved Celtic music and thought it would be fun to learn to play some. Besides, the Irish whistle was also within my budget, which a lot of other instruments weren’t.

  Now, if I’d been a more experienced bird owner, I might have realized that a baby parakeet who was learning to vocalize in his own selective way and an Irish whistle in the hands of a very novice player were not necessarily the best combination. But I didn’t realize, so I happily practiced each evening while Tweedle Dee perched nearby to listen.

  The first song in the instruction book was “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Since I had trouble covering the whistle’s holes to get a clear note, it tended to come out as Da-da, da-da, da-da sour note. Da-da, da-da, da-da sour note.

  Which is exactly how Tweedle Dee learned to whistle it—and what Tweedle Dee knew, he knew and there was no changing it. I progressed to other songs, and we ended up with these strange duets. He’d wait for me to hold a long note in the song I was working on, then chime in with da-da, da-da, da-da sour note.

  No one else had to listen to it, and it entertained both of us. At that point in my life, that was all that mattered.

  AS WINTER GAVE way to spring, I went back to the doctor because I hadn’t been able to shake that “not well” feeling. In fact, that feeling had been getting stronger. There was another checkup and more tests, which I didn’t expect to come out any differently than the last set. But that was before I understood that my feet were stuck to the pavement and the bus was heading my way.

  The same week the divorce was finalized, David married his greener pastures, the company I’d worked for downsized my job out of existence and I got the results of the tests.

  As I sat in my living room, with Tweedle Dee perched on my shoulder making worried little chirpy sounds when nothing he did produced a response, I thought, If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, what would I regret not having done?

  The answer was easy. I loved stories. I’d always wanted to write stories. I’d dreamed of a life beyond the nine-to-five routine, where the days would flow instead of being cut up into segments. There would be routine, sure, but not the same routine. Maybe a walk to a coffee shop, where I would sit for an hour making notes and watching the world. Then home to write for hours and hours if inspiration struck, or to read or dream if that’s what the day called for. Time for work, time for friends, time to simply be.

  I could do it. There was enough money from the sale of the house for me to live on until my retirement fund was sent to me, and since old age wasn’t something I had to save up for anymore, there was no reason for me not to use the money.

  I could do it. But not here. I’d taken the apartment because I’d needed a place to live, but I didn’t like it, had never felt comfortable in it and didn’t want to stay there. I didn’t even want to stay in the area, even though that would have been the prudent thing to do. No, I wanted a clean start for this pocket of time where I would live out a dream.

  So I had a yard sale, and what I couldn’t sell, I donated or gave away. By the time I was done and packing up my old Toyota hatchback, which was literally held together in places with duct tape, I had a box that had a set of sheets, some towels and a few plates, mugs, glasses and silverware; three boxes of books, one of the new paperbacks I hadn’t read yet, one filled with storytelling books, and the last with favorite books I wanted to revisit; a file box with all the important papers I would need; a couple of shoe boxes of my favorite CDs and cassette tapes; two suitcases stuffed with clothes and toiletries; my Irish whistle and music books . . . and Tweedle Dee.

  We trundled out of western New York on a fine spring morning and headed south to visit my friend Nadine, who had relocated to Richmond, Virginia, a few years before. It took two days to get there since I didn’t want to push my luck—or the Toyota, loaded down as it was—by trying to make the drive all in one day. But we got there and had a lovely visit. When we left several days later, Nadine’s insistence that I call her on a regular basis was the only indication that she was concerned about this road trip I was taking from life. I hadn’t wanted to spoil the visit by telling her about the bus heading my way, so I promised to call and trundled out of Richmond, heading south.

  Tweedle Dee was a terrific companion, but he was a lousy navigator, which is why we ended up in Georgia on our way to South Carolina.

  It was late in the afternoon when, shaky and finally admitting that we were very, very lost, I passed a white silo with the words “Ain’t goin’ nowhere and don’t want to” painted on it. It made me smile and gave my heart a little lift. I was still smiling when I drove into Mossy Creek and found a place to park near Mama’s All You Can Eat Café.

  I got out of the car, not sure if my leg muscles were going to stretch all the way after driving for so long, and looked around. The town square was an enticing bit of green, and I spotted a bench. Now if Mama’s provided takeout, I’d be all set. I’d been living on takeout since we’d left Nadine’s simply because it was a whole lot warmer down South at that time of year than it was in western New York, and I couldn’t leave Tweedle Dee locked in the car while I went inside someplace to eat. I had these horrible visions of coming out after an hour and finding baked budgie. But I really needed to eat, so I went inside, hoping I could get something to go.

  I could, and did, along with a large Coke for me, a small cup of water for Tweedle and a copy of the Mossy Creek Gazette.

  As I stared at the passenger door while Tweedle Dee made his cht cht cht scoldy noise because I was doing nothing when I obviously should have been doing something, I realized I had a slight problem.

  “Need a hand?” a male voice asked.

  That was exactly what I needed, but there I was, feeling limp and looking wilted, and there he was, wearing that nice uniform with a badge pinned on it.

  “Umm . . .”

  “The square’s a nice place to have a bite to eat.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I muttered.

  Cht cht cht!

  “Doesn’t sound like he wants to be left behind.” There was laughter in that voice.

  I sighed quietly, handed over the food and the Gazette, got Tweedle Dee out of the car and followed the officer to the bench in the square, with Tweedle chirping at the top of his little lungs to let the whole town know he had arrived.

  I put Tweedle’s cage on the bench, took my lunch and paper from the nice officer, and set that on the bench, too.

  Feeling awkward, I smiled at the man who was still watching me. “Thanks for your help, officer.”

  “Chief, actually,” he said. “I’m Amos Royden, Chief of Police here in Mossy Creek.” He looked at me expectantly.

  “I’m Laurie Grey.”

  Cht cht cht!

  “And that’s Tweedle Dee.”

  I thought I detected a twinkle in Chief Royden’s eyes as he said, “Hey, Tweedle Dee.”

  Tweedle hopped from perch to bars, studied the man who was studying him, and said, “Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dee is me.” Then the scolding started in earnest.

  “Hush!” I said sternly. “You’ll get your French fry.”

  Yep, there was a definite twinkle in those eyes. The man probably thought I was a lunatic. Or, at the very least, eccentric. Couldn’t blame him. Right about then, I was wondering about me, too.

  “Welcome to Mossy Creek, Ms. Grey,” Chief Royden said. “Hope you enjoy your visit.”

  “I’m sure I will,” I replied, trying a smile I hoped made me look like a normal person.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when he went away, then settled down to my meal. Before Tweedle could start up again and possibly get us arrested for disturbing the peace, I broke open a French fry, blew on it to cool it off so he wouldn’t burn his tongue and slipped it into the treat dish.

  As
we ate, I looked around—and felt the tightly coiled tension inside me ease.

  Have you ever gone to a place you’d never been before and recognized, on some level, that you’d come home? As I looked around, that’s what occurred to me. I’d come home.

  I opened the Gazette and began scanning the pages for an ad for a bed and breakfast or an inn or someplace I could stay that wouldn’t object to my having a fluffy blue roommate.

  Sometimes Fate just takes you by the hand. I did find an ad for the Hamilton Inn, but I also found a small notice about a cottage for rent, fully furnished. The notice said to call Mac Campbell and gave a phone number. I flipped back to the front page to check the paper’s date. Today. Maybe . . .

  I stuffed the debris from our meal into a nearby trash receptacle, grabbed the paper and Tweedle Dee, stuffed him back in the car, then went into the café to use the pay phone. Yes, the cottage was still available, and Mac Campbell would meet me in an hour to take me over and show me the place.

  I had an hour to kill, so I retrieved Tweedle Dee, tossed the paper in the car and the two of us took a stroll. So what if people noticed that I was walking down Main Street carrying a budgie in a cage? I’d just be that eccentric Yankee.

  Well, people did notice—hard not to with Tweedle happily chirping at the whole world. I just hadn’t been in town long enough to realize that little stroll had pretty much assured my welcome in the Mossy Creek community.

  I met Mac Campbell, saw the cottage . . . and before the sun had gone down, I had signed a lease, had a set of keys, directions to the Piggly Wiggly (which, Mac explained with admirable self-control when I stared at him, was the grocery store) and a promise that he’d call first thing Monday morning to arrange to have the phone turned on.

  So I unpacked the Toyota—and almost heard the poor car groan with relief—made up the bed so that I could fall into it as soon as I needed to, left a protesting Tweedle Dee in the living room, and trundled off to the Piggly Wiggly to get enough of the basics and frozen dinners to last me at least through the weekend.

  I stayed vertical long enough to put the groceries away, make sure Tweedle had food and water, pull the most recent Sharyn McCrumb paperback out of the to-be-read box, and crawled into bed. I didn’t manage to finish reading the back cover copy before I was sound asleep.

  Over the weekend, Tweedle and I got acquainted with our new home. One room had a desk, two small bookcases and a phone jack—just about everything a wanna-be writer needed. I also went over to Hamilton’s Department Store. When I trundled back to the cottage, my groaning Toyota held a small microwave, a CD/cassette/radio boom box, a touch-tone phone and a laptop computer and printer.

  As soon as the phone was turned on the following week, I called Nadine to give her my new address and phone number.

  “You’re where?” Nadine said.

  “Mossy Creek. In Georgia.”

  “Why are you in Georgia?”

  “I was going to South Carolina, remember?”

  “I remember. Where is Mossy Creek?”

  “In Georgia,” I repeated patiently.

  “Where in Georgia?”

  Long pause.

  “Sorry,” Nadine said. “Forgot who I was talking to. I’ll look it up on a map. Tell me about the cottage and the town.”

  So I did. I told her about the little screened porch off the kitchen and the flower beds I could play in. I told her about the bookstore and the library, the potpourri and candle shop, the beauty salon, the coffee shop next door to a bakery and the bookstore.

  “Sounds like you’ll have everything you need,” Nadine said, laughing. “And it sounds like you can’t get too lost.”

  “Most of it’s on Main Street.”

  “Uh huh.”

  I couldn’t really take offense at this lack of optimism about my getting from one place to another. Before moving to Richmond, Nadine had lived in the same house for several years—and I got lost every single time I went to visit her. Come to think of it, that’s probably the real reason she’d insisted that I keep in touch. She’d probably worried that I’d start out for South Carolina and end up in South Dakota.

  The conversation ended with my getting her email address and promising to send her mine as soon as I got one.

  All in all, it was a good beginning.

  THE FOLLOWING Monday, I began my new routine as writer wanna-be. After spending a little time over breakfast and writing an email to Nadine, I put a notebook and a couple of pens in my World Wildlife totebag and walked up to Main Street and the Naked Bean. I chatted a bit with Jayne Austin Reynolds, the owner, while she made my coffee and put shortbread cookies on a plate. Then I settled down at one of the little tables, opened my notebook and got to work.

  I wanted to tell a story about romance and magic. I wanted a tall, handsome, dangerous hero. I wanted a powerful heroine who, in spite of herself, would swoon for the hero. Now, all I needed was a story to go with the things I wanted to put in it. I spent a happy hour making notes and getting nowhere. Then I went home for Irish whistle practice because Tweedle tended to get cranky if we didn’t have whistle time together. During the afternoon, I did practical, mundane things, made more story notes, had dinner, then spent a leisurely evening reading and practicing the stories I had learned. That was my routine for the first week, with added stops at the bakery or bookstore on my way home from the Naked Bean.

  The next week, things started to change, but I didn’t recognize the moment when it happened.

  I was in the Naked Bean, on my second cup of coffee, busily scribbling notes for my fantasy romance, when a woman and two children came in. The boy started making a commotion, waving his arms around and telling his sister something about being “this big.”

  I glanced up, saw the distracted look on Jayne’s and the mother’s faces and said to the boy, “I knew of a frog once that tried to puff himself up to be ‘this big.’ It didn’t turn out well for him.”

  “Yeah?” the boy challenged.

  So I launched into the Aesop’s Fable about the frog who tried to prove to other frogs that he could puff himself up as big as a cow and puffed himself up so much he blew up.

  The girl made a face and said, “Ewwww.”

  The boy wanted to know how far the frog’s guts splattered.

  “Far,” I said solemnly. “Really, really far.”

  He grinned at me.

  The mother, having concluded her transaction with Jayne, gathered up her children and left.

  Jayne placed a fresh cup of coffee on the table. “You didn’t mention you were a storyteller as well as a story writer.”

  “Oh, I’m—” Something inside me stifled the denial, something that asked, If not now, when? “—pretty much a beginner.”

  “You did real well.”

  I felt a warm little glow and left the shop without a suspicion in the world.

  Shows you how much I knew.

  Over the next few days, when a customer came into the Naked Bean while I was there, Jayne would call out,

  “Laurie, we were just talking about such-and-such. Do you know a story about that?” A lot of times I did, since I’d learned a goodly number of short folk tales and fables. So I would tell the story and go back to my struggle to do something with my hero and heroine.

  Then, one morning, Jayne said, “I was thinking it might be fun to have a little story program here one evening. Just a few stories, some coffee and treats. Something like that.”

  “That does sound like fun,” I said enthusiastically.

  “How’s Thursday evening?”

  “Sounds good. Who’s telling stories?”

  “You are.” Jayne went back to her counter.

  I bolted from my chair and followed her. “But . . . But I’ve never actually told to an audience before.”
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  “Won’t be an audience. Just a few people I’ll mention it to when they come into the shop. You can just tell the stories you’ve already told.”

  “But I’ve already told them.”

  “Only one or two people have heard each one. So the other stories will be new. Besides, it would be a little something extra for the shop.”

  That clinched it. I hadn’t known her long, but I thought of Jayne as a friend, and I could do this to help a friend.

  I trotted home to email a couple of people from the storytelling group I belonged to, asking for tips on telling to an audience—which it wouldn’t be, since, as Jayne had pointed out, the news about the storytelling program would be spread by word of mouth.

  Jayne hadn’t mentioned that all it took was telling the right person or two for the whole town to know about it.

  So Thursday evening arrived. So did the audience. My nerves bounced on the ceiling as the place began to fill with people. There was Maggie Hart and her mother, Millicent, as well as Maggie’s friend, Tag Garner. There was Hank and Casey Blackshear. There was Sandy Crane and her husband Jess, who had come in his capacity as a reporter for the Mossy Creek Gazette. There was Pearl Quinlan, who owned the bookstore, and Ingrid Beechum, who had provided some of the treats for the evening. Even Ida Hamilton Walker, the mayor, showed up. So did Amos Royden, Chief of Police. There were more people there, way too many people there, but I didn’t know them. I wasn’t sure which was worse—making a debut in front of strangers, or telling stories to the people I knew.

  The one thing I was sure of is I would have run out the door and kept going if I could have gotten through the crowd. Which is probably why Jayne had put the “stage” area as far from the door as possible.

  So I told my stories. And I survived telling my stories. And people made a point of telling me they’d enjoyed the stories—including Chief Royden, who also inquired after Tweedle Dee. I even survived people saying they were looking forward to coming back next Thursday.

  “Next Thursday?” I whispered frantically to Jayne.