Forever Finley

by Holly Schindler

  “Why’d you want to know about Mary?”

  “I just met someone—she mentioned a Mary—”

  “When?”

  “When I was gathering flowers.”

  “For the bouquet.”

  Mark sighed. “Are you upset?”

  “No. You’re free to help. You should help Natalie. It was nice to offer.”

  “But?”

  “You seem to jump after anything wedding-related lately.”

  “Marriage is what people do,” he justified. “Besides, what’s so horrible about wanting us to get married? I want us to be together.”

  “It’s not the same for us,” Jo insisted. “It’s not like Natalie and Damien.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because. Young people aren’t yet set in their ways. They’re malleable.”

  “Why can’t we be?”

  “What am I supposed to do, come live in your tree house?” Her tone indicated she’d meant it as a joke; she was trying to illustrate just how silly the whole thing was. But it hurt. Mark was suddenly unsure about everything. If Jo couldn’t see them together—if she couldn’t fantasize about it—what did that mean? Had her feelings not grown as deeply as his?

  “I’ll let you go,” Mark murmured into the phone.

  But it was still too hot and Mark was too upset to sleep. He sat on his porch, propped his computer on his lap. It was just as muggy out here as it was in his bedroom, but he liked to be on the porch where he could enjoy the sky. It was the best spot when Mars was opposite the sun, making it visible to the naked eye. The best spot from which to count lightning strikes in the distance. Most of all, though, Mark especially liked to be on the porch during sunrise. It always overwhelmed him with a sense of promise—every bit as intensely as a new job or a promotion or the birth of a child overwhelmed others. Jo always laughed when she watched it with him. “The eternal optimist,” she inevitably said, letting her fingers run across his shoulders.

  Maybe so. But wasn’t everyone, really? If you weren’t—even just a smidge—wouldn’t that mean there was nothing left other than jumping from the bridge that stretched across the river, the same that ran along the edge of Founders Park?

  He tried to push thoughts of Jo aside as he typed, searching eBay for worn-thin Big Smith overalls. Men’s. Small.

  Now that he thought about it, he felt more like a moon. Maybe he offered Jo no new source of light for growth. Maybe she had all she needed on her own. Maybe the truth was that he had been feeding off Jo’s light.

  He growled in frustration, his thoughts turning increasingly darker. He could have hurled his computer into the nearby river. And not just because he couldn’t find any Big Smiths.

  In response to that growl, he felt it—Jo’s soft touch against the back of his shoulders.

  He flinched in surprise and swiveled to find Jo wasn’t there at all. It was only the glancing touch of a vine.

  He tugged it away, trying to figure out where the long vine had come from. Perhaps it had been growing up the trunk of one of the sycamores that cradled his home? Just grown heavy enough to drop down from one of the branches?

  Mark’s eyes widened when he traced the vine back to the pot he’d just filled with moon seeds.

  The vine was growing so fast, he could watch it continue to climb out of the soil, over the brown ceramic edge of the pot, and trail down the staircase from his house toward the park.

  Mark jumped to his feet, his heart thundering. Without stopping to question what he was witnessing, he began to follow the vine, now growing so fast, he nearly needed to break into a jog.

  The green shoot pressed still faster, weaving between trees and avoiding bushes. Down the riverbank. Across the bridge. Toward the center of town. The vine paused for a moment in the square, then zipped straight to the Depository for the New & Used. Unbelievably, the vine began to weave itself into Jo’s long-empty trellises. Over and over, up and through the white wooden crisscrosses, like strings of yarn filling a loom. When the trellis was filled, the last of the vine arrived, tying itself into a neat little knot, and providing no clue that the vine had in fact come all the way from Mark’s tree house.

  In a giant synchronized burst, beneath nothing other than the glow of the moon, flowers bloomed. From that single vine, a myriad of varieties and a rainbow of colors exploded. Round petals, pointed petals. Tropical plants. Orchids. Wildflowers. Wild roses. So many of them popping open, they knocked aside the poster advertising Justin’s signing from the day before.

  It clattered to the street below.

  A light came on in Jo’s second-story loft apartment. A moment later, the door to the bookstore flew open, and Jo emerged in a light summer robe. “What in the world—? What are you—?”

  When she turned to get a glimpse of the front of the store, though, she gasped, put a hand to her mouth. And threw her arms around his neck.

  “I should have known when you called so late, it was for a reason. My sweet, sweet Amos.”

  Mark hugged her back, but only because she was no longer angry.

  She always had loved him best this way—as Amos Hargrove. Or, really, as the man who had stepped right into that century-old legend. The man who truly brought the residents their good luck. Who anonymously brought home missing dogs. Or made that extra hundred dollar bill appear, just for you, under the bottom shelf of the Cash Saver Grocery just off the highway (on the very same afternoon you got your pink slip, no less). He was the one taking care of them all. Which was why he continued to mow lawns and deliver pizzas and work five days a week in the community garden: those part-time jobs kept him in the know. It made him aware of exactly what the Miriam Holcombs of Finley needed.

  Jo had found him out last spring—the only one who ever had. Everyone else was too determined to believe in the legend of Amos Hargrove. They were too busy holding tight to their belief in Amos “magic” to see him, Mark, tugging on the strings, engineering it, making it all happen.

  Of course he was. There was no such thing as “magic.”

  No more than seeds could ever be forced to grow and bloom beneath the moon, right Mark? he asked himself, staring at the trellises—covered with so much greenery, the trellises themselves were no longer visible. The intoxicating perfume of the blooms filled the night air.

  “Come in, come in,” Jo was saying, at the same moment she began tugging him toward the door. “When did you find time to do this? I talked to you less than two hours ago!”

  Mark had no answer. For the first time, he’d seen something that had defied all logic.

  Every last bit.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The girl has to be there, Mark chanted to himself the next morning, racing down the riverbank. He had given Jo a flimsy excuse to get out of her apartment. And now, he was trying to retrace his steps, get back to the funny looking moon seed stand. She just has to be.

  The sunlight bouncing off blue glass caught his attention. There it was: the stand. There she was: blond hair, denim straps on her shoulders. “Where—” he called out.

  The girl stopped arranging her Ball jar display, raised her head to look at him. She’d been humming, he suddenly realized. Now that she’d stopped, it was eerily quiet.

  “Yes?” she finally asked.

  He’d wanted to ask her about her special seeds. But he was afraid now. He could not blurt out his question—for the first time in his life.

  “Where’d you get those overalls?” he wound up asking instead.

  “Oh.” She blushed. “I kinda stole ’em. You see, I needed something new to wear. A girl in britches. Can you imagine?” She laughed. “Just lets me move about at my work easier.”

  He didn’t know what to make of her answer—no more than he knew what to make of her seeds, the stand. Who are you? he wanted to cry out.

  “You planted the seeds!” she shouted. She put the rest of the jars down and clapped victoriously. “I can see it in your face.”

  She placed her hands on her hip
s and leaned closer to him, her wild, long blond hair falling forward. “Where’d they go? The vines and blooms?”

  “To—” He glanced toward the bridge that led to the town square.

  “Went to a woman,” the girl said, singsong—almost like she was teasing him.

  “Well—yes. I—”

  The girl cocked her head. “You already know this woman.”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s already your woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s the right one, then. The moon seeds know. Those vines start with you, then draw a line tracin’ your true love’s footsteps. Lucky you, they led you straight to her door. You can stop doubtin’ now.”

  “I didn’t doubt to begin with.”

  The girl frowned. “Must’ve, if the seeds grew for ya.”

  Mark shook his head, trying to deny it.

  “Seeds don’t grow unless there’s a—not really a problem…just somebody not seein’ something like they should.”

  “But she’s the one,” Mark blurted. There—he was at least back to blurting again. And it was true: Jo was the one not seeing straight. Not seeing the possibility of what they could be. Dragging her feet about marriage just because it had not been perfect last time. Or because they were older. What did age matter? Were they supposed to settle now? Go after a muted kind of happiness? Just because they’d both been around long enough to have established some routines?

  The girl ignored him. She sighed, glancing out across the tops of trees. “I’m trying to find my love.”

  “Did you plant the seeds?”

  “Well, of course! I’ve been away for a quite a while. But I came back just in the nick of time, it seems. Since the Heart Moon’s shining. This is when it’s more likely than ever to happen. When the moon seeds would be able to lead me straight to him. Under the Heart Moon.”

  “Him—who?” Mark was shaking. He had a feeling he already knew what she was about to say.

  “But a woman needn’t be selfish,” she went on. “Have to stop to help other people along the way. Whole world is like that. An old Indian taught me that. Plant takes the sun. Plant takes the rain. Plant gives air. Gives back, too, see? It all comes ’round. Right?”

  “I—I’m not following.”

  She sighed, exasperated. “I know who my love is. Same as you. I just can’t find him.”

  “You know who your love is, but you don’t you know where he lives?”

  “Not anymore. It’s different now. At this stage.”

  Something about that tickled the back of Mark’s neck. At this stage? She sounded a little like Jo, actually.

  “But you’re so young,” Mark insisted. “How could you be at any stage but the beginning? It’s easy now. You’re—malleable,” he managed, offering Jo’s word.

  “The town’s so different,” she said, ignoring him. “I mean, when I was here before, there wasn’t even a town. Just fields growing wild as love. I used to write to him about ’em—the fields here. To make him feel like he was home.”

  “He—who?”

  “My love! My sweetheart! Gone to war, a brave foot soldier. I knew he would come back. While he was gone, that medicine man taught me so much—about putting your heart and soul into something. And about seeds, too, growing things out of nothin’ more than just the feeling inside you. And now, if I plant these medicine man’s special moon seeds, just like you did—here, under the Heart Moon, my vines should follow my true love’s footsteps. Straight to his door, just as yours did, right?”

  “Okay.”

  “But his footsteps—they’re everywhere. Nothin’ he hasn’t touched around here. Don’t you see? He’s—he’s not really just mine anymore. He belongs to everyone. Every single person in this town.”

  “Amos?” Mark whispered.

  “So hard to find,” the woman said, shaking her head. Her words continued to flow as if they, too, had been locked up in some sort of container—like those Ball jars—far too long. “Place looks so different. It was just us when we met. Now there’s so much else—a whole town of people. How do I get to him now, in the midst of all this?”

  She sighed. “The worst part is, the vines all disappear come morning. It’s almost like the seeds are sayin’ it’s not quite right yet. I haven’t put enough good out into the world for somethin’ good to finally happen to me. But I haven’t had a chance…”

  Mark had no idea what to say. This was all so illogical. There was no predictability to any of it. Which meant that anything could happen now.

  “Maybe if I planted all these seeds,” she said, unscrewing a lid and looking inside the jar.

  Mark had to find out. He had to get a final answer. She had already given it to him, he knew that. He could read between the lines. But he was a scientist, and if he was going to actually believe this at all, he had to have it, the definitive answer, the black letters on the white paper.

  “When you wrote to him, your love, how did you sign your letters?”

  The girl frowned at him. “Forever Finley, of course.” She waved and darted off into the overgrown greenery, carrying away an armload of jars.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Mark burst into the Depository for the New & Used breathless, frenzied. Usually, Jo would only just be turning her “Come In! We’re Open!” sign to face the street. But judging by the crowd clustered around the front of the store (and the small group of shoppers stepping onto the sidewalk, all toting large plastic bags of books), Jo had opened early.

  Mark hugged his blue Ball jar to his chest. One of the few the woman had left behind. Yes, even now, it was still hard to use her name, even to himself—nearly impossible to think of her as Finley. Still, he clutched the jar. And he wove impatiently through the shoppers inside, anxious to get close enough to talk to Jo.

  Jo smiled at him underneath her pepper gray bangs, gesturing toward a customer. “We were just talking about the trellises. All those varieties of flowers. Amos was at work all night long—” She said his name like an inside joke.

  But this was nothing to joke about.

  Mark tugged her away from the customer, who was too busy staring through the plate glass window, marveling at the assortment of flowers, to care.

  “I insist you come over,” he whispered. “Tonight. The tree house.”

  She frowned, confused. A little worried, too, it appeared. He was serious. He was all worked up. About what? her eyes seemed to be asking.

  But she would come. He could read that in her expression, too. He left before she had a chance to ask him anything.

  That night, Jo arrived with the sunset. “I tried to close early,” she apologized as she climbed the elaborate spiral staircase toward Mark’s porch. “But everyone had to see the flowers for themselves. And then they had to come in and say something. And then, when they were done talking to me, they clustered together and just kept on talking. I never thought I’d get them all out…”

  She sat beside him on the porch, her eyes wide as she waited for an explanation.

  Mark only stared down at the dirt-filled flowerpot in his lap.

  “What’s happened?” she finally asked.

  “I’m not Amos,” he said.

  “You’re not—?”

  “I didn’t plant those flowers last night.”

  She frowned. “Then who—”

  He held up the jar. “Moon seeds.”

  Jo laughed. “There’s nothing in there. And weren’t you the one who said—”

  “Wait until the sun sets.”

  She did; they sat silently, first through the initial pale yellow streaks across the sky, then through the deepening horizon-line reds.

  Once the dark had settled, the seeds inside Mark’s Ball jar began to glow. Mark held the jar up, pointing the seeds out to Jo. Then he unscrewed the metal lid, planting several seeds into the same pot that had brought forth the trellis flowers the night before.

  A woman’s voice began to filter in from the distance.

&n
bsp; “Who is that—?” Jo asked. “Is she saying—?”

  “Amos!” the woman shouted in that musical sounding voice of hers. “Amos! Where are you, my love?”

  Under the bright glow of the red Heart Moon, she stepped into view. Her feet splashed along the fringes of the river.

  “Are those Miriam’s overalls?” Jo whispered.

  And still, the woman continued to cry out, her voice growing increasingly desperate. “Amos! Amos!”

  “Look,” Mark whispered, as tiny green sprouts began to shoot out from the soil in his flowerpot. As he and Jo stared, those shoots grew longer, thicker. They spilled out of the flower pot, circled Mark’s right leg, then stretched toward Jo.

  She gasped, and Mark took her hand to comfort her.

  The vine then began to wrap around her wrist—and Mark’s. At the same time. Binding them together.

  “What’s happening?” she whispered.

  “The moon seeds grow vines that lead you straight to the one who’s meant for you.”

  “This doesn’t sound like you. You said the moon had nothing to do with—”

  “That was before I met Finley,” he whispered back.

  “Is this a joke?”

  But before Mark could answer, a strange crackling filled the air.

  “Who’s coming?” Jo gasped.

  “Watch,” Mark insisted. Vines pushed their way through—they slipped through tree limbs, they crawled along the grass, they followed the edge of the park. They intertwined along the bridge. They crisscrossed over the river, zigzagging back and forth from bank to bank. In less time than it took for Mark or Jo to draw a deep breath, the entire area seemed covered by moving vines. Each one of them tracing Amos’s many footsteps. Trying to show her the way, poor lost Finley.

  Meanwhile, the vines from Mark’s pot were continuing to circle himself and Jo—to tie them together. Just as quickly as the vines grew, they began to bloom. This time, two flowers alternated back and forth: jonquils and dandelions.

  He grinned. Just like him and Jo. He’d given her jonquils last spring, when he was trying to get her attention. They were both symbols of spring, of the beginning. Yes, here they were, still at the very beginning of it all. So much time left for the two of them. But there was something else—there were long, wide spaces between each flower. Long spaces, long spaces…he repeated in his mind. That meant something, too. He was sure of it.