Laughter bubbled. Voices climbed the sides of buildings. Radios began to thump. “She’ll move the ’Stang,” Jo was telling Rob. “Won’t you, Norma? You’ll move it behind the antique store. That way, Amos’ll still have a space.”
Above it all, a man’s voice was chanting: Some dreams never die, some dreams never die.
The chant turned into a pulsing headache. Norma didn’t feel good. She was dripping with sweat. She hadn’t had breakfast. She really needed to talk to Justin and Annie. They would be here. Wouldn’t they?
The clock on the bank indicated it was time to head toward the small platform that was serving as a stage. She was supposed to say something before the final judging. But what?
She had no idea—but the participants would want their ribbons. So they could attach them to their cars for the rest of the day, proudly showing off their latest best of. She needed to hurry up. Everyone was telling her so now.
I’ll look for you for a hundred Julys, she heard as a microphone was thrust into her hands. She glanced to the side, looking for the Civic. But it was nowhere. Had Gary left?
A Model T sat parked in number thirteen.
Norma squinted. All that chrome in the July sunshine was blinding her. She wasn’t seeing straight. Of course that was it. Even now, logic was trying to guide her thoughts.
Some dreams never die.
The crowd was waiting for her. What did she want to say? Look over there at that Model T? What?
“Welcome,” she started. “Welcome to the—the annual…”
Some dreams never die.
Did no one else hear the chant? Was Amos showing himself to her—and no one else? Why? Because he thought she needed a push of some sort? Toward what?
She turned away from slot thirteen, and she saw him—Gary. Along the fringes of the crowd, his arms crossed casually across his chest.
“…car show,” she finished. “The show’s seeing a few changes this year. Obviously,” she said, pointing at herself. “A new emcee—and judge.”
In the back of her mind, the chant continued: Some dreams never die, not for a hundred Julys…
As she stared into the crowd, Gary began to flicker—like an image on a TV screen. Back and forth, young and old, young and old, full of all those big dreams.
“Come on, Norma,” she heard from the front row—not a shout, but another chant. From Rob this time. “Get on with it.”
And she chuckled as the thought came to her: Love was the biggest dream of all. Of course it was. Not romantic love—just—being seen by another person for what you really were. Wasn’t that what Norma had been aching for herself all those years? To be seen as Norma, not wife of, mother of, ready anytime someone needed her?
People came to the store now saying, fair. As in: So-and-so over at the hardware store said you’d give me a fair deal. Or trust: Knew I could trust you, Norma. Or smart, as in: Norma’ll know what that thing is. Guaranteed. Get her to appraise it.
They saw pieces of her: Norma. Because of her store. Because it had allowed her to be open. To share herself—her knowledge, her kindness. Her humor, once in a while.
She didn’t know Gary—but he was still flickering, just like the image of Amos on Gary’s old TV. And she thought, It’s not about me—it’s about him. It’s Gary. Amos has come to me about Gary. And if fulfillment was the ultimate dream, if it was all about being seen for who he really was, she figured the best way to get him there was by dragging him onstage.
“We’ll be starting the judging in a new way this year,” she announced. “With a song. A new friend of mine’s going to entertain us. We’re in for a treat. Gary?” She motioned toward him, asking him to the stage.
What if he didn’t come? What if he turned away, and she was left standing up there like a dope?
Slowly, Gary uncrossed his arms, started moving. Straight for her. He slid the microphone from her hand. “I have no idea what’s going on with you,” he whispered. “You can’t honestly want me to sing. There’s more rust on these pipes than the ones in my house. And I had those things replaced a good ten years ago.”
But he was smiling—at the bizarreness of it all. Or maybe at the opportunity to impress her—just like those flirty locker encounters of old. She wasn’t quite sure. One thing was certain, though: he was a good sport.
Or maybe she’d just gotten the whole thing right. Maybe it was true: maybe Amos had wanted her to do just this.
Gary glanced out at the crowd and cleared his throat. As his eyes settled on the red, white, and blue streamers, he launched into a patriotic tune, one sung at every ballpark and every July fireworks display: “God Bless America.” A simple tune. Words ingrained. No verses to forget. His baritone poured out like aged whiskey. But the words followed a slightly different rhythm than the one belonging to the seventh-inning standard. It followed, to a great extent, the rhythm of the chant still floating in Norma’s mind: some dreams never die, some dreams never die…
Did he hear it, too? Had it invaded his head? Was Amos speaking to him? Did he know he was keeping the same time as Amos’s words?
The puttering grew closer. As Gary sang, Norma shaded her eyes with her hand and saw him—the same man who had been on the TV screen. He stuck his hand through the window of his Model T and waved at her. He puttered right past Gary’s Civic, parked in slot thirteen.
“Some dreams never die!” he shouted, this time in a way that sounded like approval, like a job well done. There was purpose to it all—bringing her here, to Finley. Letting her meet Gary.
Norma waved back proudly, as Gary’s voice continued to fill the air.
As the Model T rounded the far side of the square, though, a new feeling found her. One of near-panic, of needing to catch up to his car before it puttered away. She left the stage behind, and began pushing her way through the crowd, trying to get to him. It couldn’t all be about her—and Gary—two people that Amos didn’t know. What about Finley? If Amos would only stop driving so fast, if he’d let her catch up, she would help him find her. They all would—everyone in town. Thoughtlessly, she called his name once: “Amos!”
At the edge of the crowd, she found no sight of him. But she was certain he would be back. Meandering through the square in search of his Finley. And she would be ready for him. It would be different when he returned.
She knew what she had seen on Gary’s old TV and on the square just a moment ago. Amos was real—and no amount of logic would ever talk her out of that belief. Not now…and not for another hundred Julys.
Under the August Moon
It has been said that seeds of love planted beneath an August moon will bind two meant to be together—forever.
Two couples—one just beginning a relationship, the other a legendary pair wandering Finley in a relentless attempt to reunite—find their paths have suddenly intertwined like wild Midwestern vines under the red August Heart Moon. Will that moon allow Mark and Jo find common ground in the midst of their late-in-life romance? And how will the fabled Finley’s search for her beloved Amos be impacted by the planting of enchanted moon seeds?
The most amazing story of Mark’s life started with nothing more than a beat-up pair of overalls. Well—the roots of the story had been planted long before Mark’s time: another era, another century. But as far as Mark was concerned, it started with the overalls. Because that was when his eyes finally began to open. When he finally started to consider that the mystery of Amos Hargrove was something other than a wives’ tale, a superstition, a four leaf clover.
They disappeared straight off a clothesline, the overalls. A man’s bibbed pair. Small ones. With a motor oil stain on the left leg and a splotch of red paint on one of the back pockets, left over from the time Miriam Holcomb helped paint a wooden shed for her second husband’s sister. That was how Miriam described them, anyway, at the Corner Diner, while she and Mark sat side-by-side at the counter, each of them enjoying the Monday breakfast special. Blueberry pancakes, with blueberries provided
by Miriam herself. A bumper crop this year, that was how she phrased it. Which was why she’d been in the overalls to begin with, here in mid-August, when it was so hot, it seemed like even the Missouri air was sweating. Humid. A wet heat. Which was terrible, just terrible. Only, Miriam’s overalls had been worn as thin as seersucker, which made them the perfect thing to wear in her blueberry patch. Along with her wide brimmed straw hat and a long-sleeved cotton shirt, those overalls kept the mosquitoes and the chiggers and the no-see-ums away, kept her skin shaded from the blistering sun.
“Skin gets thinner with age, you know,” Miriam told Mark, just before blowing her cup to cool her black coffee. “I’ve been worn thin myself.” She chuckled. “More important now to protect myself from the rays.” Even though Mark knew Miriam was herself only sixty-one—why, he’d been at her sixtieth birthday party, a wild shindig with two kegs and a band and a bonfire. Guests had filled her acres until he’d scratched his head, remarking to one of the attendees that the gathering seemed like a regular Woodstock, minus the mud. Mark had left the party at two in the morning—and had been booed by Miriam for leaving so early.
But it truly was funny the way you phrased certain things in your head, Mark considered, as one of Miriam’s fresh blueberries exploded in his mouth. Now, here, at this point in his life, sixty-one was an “only.” And the “only” he found himself sticking in front of Miriam’s age wasn’t just because she was the sort to still host keggers. Why, he’d be there himself in a little over five years. He had so much left that he wanted to do. Surely sixty-one was an “only.”
“I knew, once I got rid of those pests of mine, that I’d have a lot of blueberries. I just never knew I’d have this many,” Miriam went on, dragging a bite of her short stack through her syrup. “What I ought to do is make you pay the daily wage for a second picker.”
She winked at Mark. She was kidding him. But it was Jo, seated at Mark’s right, who let out a short cackle of laughter. Because Jo knew Mark had told Miriam about the flour.
“Just sprinkle the berries with it,” he’d promised as he’d stood outside her front door, pushing a small paper sack into her hands. He’d heard of her dilemma—everyone in Finley had heard it, it seemed, as much as Miriam had been repeating it. Her neighbor’s grandchildren—and their friends—had taken to eating her sweet, fat blueberries faster than she could harvest them. The story got more sinister with the telling. At least, Miriam had been working hard to make it so, furrowing her brow and trying on a various assortment of sad-puppy eyes and adding increasingly darker adjectives. Repeating it at the diner and Finley’s coffee shop and even to Justin O’Dell, reporter at The Finley Times, hoping he might cover the theft. When no photojournalist had come knocking on her door, Miriam’s only remaining hope were the parents. Or so she’d told Mark. “I sell the blueberries, you know,” she’d begun to repeat, all woebegone. “That’s my Christmas money,” she’d added, hoping to shame those thieving children’s parents. Because the parents, in turn, would punish the kids. That had been her theory. Only, it hadn’t worked out that way. The story—and her delivery—had seemed cartoonish; it just made the parents laugh. And that had encouraged the kids to return to Miriam’s fields. They were being cute; they were making adults laugh; that was a good thing.
By the time Mark had appeared on her doorstep, flour in hand, Miriam had been less than hopeful. “They’ll never fall for it. Kids’re smarter than that now,” she’d warned him.
Mark had shrugged. “In my experience, not so much.” Because as a botanist-slash-field researcher-slash-online lecturer with the University of Missouri, he interacted regularly with early twenty-somethings, and at this point in his life, twenty was not just an “only.” It was a creature yet to lose the last vestiges of baby fat. Plump and expecting to be soothed by an adult hand when attacked by any bump in the road. Those creatures on his computer screen hadn’t changed. Even now, decades after he’d become a PhD and had started teaching, twenty was twenty. A person went through all the same phases of growth—just like any plant. How they all developed followed a rather predictable pattern.
But predictable was not necessarily boring—was it? It could be comforting, too. It could even help out in times of disaster. Like with Miriam.
Miriam had sighed, rolled her eyes, and tried Mark’s flour suggestion anyway—what did she have to lose?
And the kids—unbelievably, Miriam had called Mark a few days later to describe the way she’d marveled at the scene from her living room window—they’d taken one look at the strange white substance, clumped with dew and humidity and sticking tightly to the skin of the berries, and fled. Why, those blueberries had all developed some kind of fungus, the kids said. Or mold. They’d get sick if they ate them. They were lucky they hadn’t already gotten sick. They’d find some other way to make adults giggle.
Mark had laughed, too. Laughed when Miriam had broken the news to him. “It’s such a silly old trick!” she’d shouted over his from-the-gut cackles. It was just the kind of thing that had been printed in The Farmer’s Almanac three generations ago. Before online everything and connectivity. And still, they were falling for it.
Kids were kids, Mark had insisted when he’d finally caught his breath. People were people. Each generation following the same path as the one before.
Now, though, Miriam was drowning in blueberries. And her overalls were gone.
Ah, yes, the overalls. Stealing some old lady’s stained, worn overalls. That was strange, she insisted. Even Mark couldn’t have predicted that. Who wanted somebody’s used-up stuff?
Mark was sure it wasn’t strange at all. There was a logical explanation for everything. They just couldn’t see it yet. He was a man of science. Logic was woven into every last fiber of the fabric of life, of that he was certain.
“Who steals used overalls?” Miriam asked again, her voice loud enough now to carry from the counter all the way to the back booth of the diner. She shook her head in a way that sent her humidity-limp waves rippling across her head like a breeze through a cornfield. “I keep having this nightmare about some escaped convict getting hold of them. Changing out of his striped prisoner’s garb and racing off to steal somebody’s truck in my Big Smiths.”
Mark figured the solution was far simpler, gentler. As small as the overalls were, one of those kids in her field had probably stolen them off her line. But he wasn’t going to spoil the fun of imagining all the possibilities, especially when Jo chimed in from Mark’s side, “Now, there’s a novel in the making. We’d be sure to carry that one in the store.”
Mark felt his heart thumping slightly harder at the sound of her voice. Ah, Jo. The one part of his life that had eschewed logic. That she, owner of Jo March Books: Depository for the New & Used, womanly and polished like a smooth river stone, would be here with him. Mark Quigley. A part-time Finley jack-of-all-trades, and a man who lectured via Skype at his kitchen table in his jogging shorts. Who did not have a single pair of mated socks in his drawer at home. He and Jo were every bit as mismatched. Mark, with mud from the community garden still under his nails and two days’ worth of stubble on the curve of his chin. And Jo, with her tasteful makeup and her sleek pepper gray bob, looking fresh in a pair of straw colored linen slacks.
“Probably show up on the news,” added Ruthie, the waitress, as she popped up in time to pour more decaf into Miriam’s cup. “Might charge you as an accomplice.” She winked in Mark’s direction to show she was playing.
Miriam stuck her tongue out. You could get by with things like that at sixty-one, Mark had started to notice. No one seemed to get offended.
Or—no—maybe it was that you felt you could do things like that at sixty-one. What thirty-five-year-old went around sticking their tongue out? Had Miriam? Mark thought not. Life was far soberer in the lower decades. At sixty-one, a person had a little rust around the edges. They had screwed up along the way, and they recognized their own shortcomings. If they were not perfect, why not have a little fu
n with the time left? Which made people a lot like denim overalls, he supposed. Softer with wear.
The bell on the diner door jingled. Jo waved over her shoulder, at a young woman in a tailored soft yellow dress with a field daisy corsage on her left shoulder. Mark noticed the corsage immediately. Why wouldn’t he? Flowers were part of his trade. When she grew close enough to lean against the counter, though, he realized that the flower in the center was an ordinary garden variety dandelion. The old nag of every home owner’s front yard.
“Justin’s already at your store,” Natalie told Jo. She leaned forward to add, quietly, “He’s so nervous. I’m not sure why. This isn’t his first signing. It’s also not a brand-new release. It’s the paperback edition of his first book.”
“The daisy is a composite flower,” Mark blurted, still fixated on her corsage.
All around him, people flinched, jumped. Even Miriam tossed him one of her furrowed brows. But that was just Mark’s way. He had a tendency to talk too loudly, to interrupt the natural flow of a conversation.
“What looks like one flower is actually two different types of dozens of flowers,” he went on. “Petals are ray flowers, you see, and the center is made up of disc flowers—”
Jo smiled in understanding. “They are pretty, aren’t they?” She had been subject to these tiny outbursts since she and Mark had become a couple last March—since she had shown up at the door of his tree house to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him. To announce she saw him finally as leading-man material. A hero. That night last spring, with Jo’s lips on his, he’d heard the word “magic” ring in his head without any trace of sarcasm. It had been magical to hold her. In the months since, all he’d done was question it. He felt more connections to that dandelion in the center of Natalie’s corsage than he did to the Mr. Darcys or the Heathcliffs or the Rochesters in Jo’s favorite books.
Forever Finley Page 18
