by Lisa Wingate
Next to me, Gary’s daughters tucked away their cell phones and stretched in their seats as we rolled into the sleepy little burg of Moses Lake, Texas.
It was just the way I remembered it: a convenience store selling bait and gas at either end of the strip, and in between, a row of brick and limestone buildings with high false fronts. A few new antique stores had gone in, but everything else seemed to have been frozen in time—the Variety and Dollar, the pharmacy with the soda fountain in it, the Wash Barrel Laundry, the chamber of commerce, the little rural medical clinic that was only open a few days a week, the community center, the little brown stone church with the white steeple, a squatty brick building that belonged to the Corps of Engineers.
Not much had changed. Moses Lake was still the same, right down to the little Moses Lake Hardware store at the end of the strip, near the church. Same wooden barrels out front, filled with fishing poles, shovels, and on-clearance tackle. In the summer, blown-up beach balls, air rafts, kites, giant squirt guns, and old tractor inner tubes converted for floatable fun would be stacked there, as well. Tourism in the winter was scant, of course, the place only appealing to fishermen and bird watchers hoping to catch a glimpse of the bald eagles.
Uncle Herbert’s place, Harmony Shores Funeral Home, was only a few blocks farther, just past the post office and the Ranch House Bank.
“Let me off here, okay?” I said, suddenly not ready to face my family.
Gary glanced over his shoulder. “Here? At the hardware store?”
His wife swiveled in her seat, giving me a quizzical look. “We can drive you all the way.”
“It’s all right. My uncle’s place isn’t far.” Somehow, I couldn’t imagine pulling in with Gary and family in tow. Harmony Shores was a stately old estate, a classic example of nineteenth century Greek Revival architecture, but strangers tended to find the idea of a combined residence and funeral home rather odd.
When Mom, Clay, and I had moved into the gardener’s cottage out back following my father’s death, there’d been no end to the whispers. Couple that with the dark, drab, chain-laden and somewhat vampirish style of dress I’d adopted as a protest when my father had moved us to Moses Lake, and I’d looked way too much like I might be sleeping in one of the coffins myself. Kids can be merciless, and when your mother is the reason the prodigal son left town in the first place, so can adults.
Gazing at the hardware store now, I remembered passing by on my way to the pharmacy and wishing Blaine Underhill would come out to help some customer with an inner tube or a fishing pole. In my teenage imagination, Blaine would look my way, and against all social mores and at risk to his reputation, discover his undeniable attraction to the skinny girl in the dark clothes and ridiculous goth makeup job.
It was an insane fantasy with which I both entertained and tortured myself throughout my senior year of high school. It kept me tromping back to chemistry class, day after day, and it broke my heart night after night. I wanted Blaine Underhill to love me; he didn’t even know who I was.
Such are the twisted dreams of teenage girls.
It didn’t occur to me until I was actually on the hardware store sidewalk, hugging Gary and family good-bye, that Blaine Underhill’s family might still own the hardware store. The Underhills had been in Moses Lake since long before the Corps of Engineers ousted a settlement of Mennonites from the farms in the valley, then dammed the river and created the lake.
Blaine had been a prince in this small town; his stepmother was the queen and his dad the banker. When I could get away from home long enough, I used to stand in the convenience store, catty-corner from the hardware store, peeking out the window while I pretended to peruse the magazines. I’d watch Blaine there in his football jersey, his dark brown hair curling on his suntanned neck as he sorted through the inner tubes for kids in swimsuits, or carried bags for little old ladies, or flirted with girls in bikinis. If there’d been a pin-up poster of Blaine Underhill in Teen Time magazine, I would have bought it and tacked it on my wall in some secret place.
“ . . . that okay?”
I realized that Gary was talking to me, and I hadn’t heard a thing.
“Sorry,” I answered, noticing that he’d unloaded my suitcase and laptop on the sidewalk. I whirled a hand by my ear, rolling my eyes apologetically. “Had my head in the past there for a minute. This town hasn’t changed at all.”
“There’s something comforting about a place that doesn’t change.” Gary couldn’t have known how wrong he was about that. My sweet memories of childhood visits to Moses Lake had been permanently painted over by the blackness of that senior year in high school. I’d spent the first three months of our stay trying to punish my father for marooning us on the family farm outside town, and the other six months living in the tiny gardener’s cottage behind Uncle Herbert’s funeral home, mired in the grief and guilt that followed my father’s death.
Standing in the middle of town now, I sensed that those emotions could be as potent as ever if I let them, so I concentrated on expressing gratitude to the Good Samaritans who’d spent their anniversary saving me from disaster. “I really don’t even know how to thank you. If there’s ever anything I can do to pay you back—advice on the clinic designs, anything, really—please let me know. When I get back to Seattle, I’ll send money for the gas.”
Smiling pleasantly, Gary lifted a hand. “No money needed. It’s a blessing to be a blessing. That’s what my mother always said. Just pass it on to someone else when you get the chance. Can we pray for you before we go?”
Gary’s wife smiled expectantly, and his daughters extended their hands, ready to form a prayer circle on my behalf.
I felt the momentary culture shock of having been asked that question, of being back below the Mason-Dixon line, where such an inquiry was considered perfectly natural. Nine years in the city—and not that I hadn’t met plenty of passionate churchgoers—but I’d couldn’t recall anyone coming right out and asking me that. Typically, I didn’t run in those sorts of circles.
“Sure.” I could hardly say no after all they had done for me. Slipping in somewhat awkwardly between Gary’s daughters, I closed my eyes and bowed my head, and for some reason, thought of Trish. She was actually quite spiritual herself, in the broader sense of the word. She thought it was ridiculous when I told her that I’d grown up in church with my father and didn’t have issues with it, but I just didn’t want to go anymore. That’s like saying you believe fatty foods cause heart attacks and then eating fried chicken all day, she pointed out. I mean, if what you do and what you believe are two different things, it’s a guilt trap, right?
Trish would have loved the sight of me standing on the sidewalk, hand in hand with the dentist’s family as they prayed for my journey.
When the prayers ended, I did feel better, in a strange way—as if perhaps some special blessing had been called down and might ease my return to Moses Lake. Nearby, the white wooden steeple of Lakeshore Community Church glistened in the late-afternoon sunlight, as if in punctuation.
Gary’s wife looked up at it and said, “It’s a gorgeous day. Let’s take a drive around the lake before we head back home. We can do the anniversary dinner tomorrow night.”
Gary agreed, and even the girls looked toward the lake, placid in its deep blue winter coat.
“What a pretty little town,” Gary’s wife remarked, and I was startled by the chasm between their perspectives and mine. To me, this place would never again be beautiful.
Even so, I took a moment to describe some of the sights they might see on their drive—the cliffs above Eagle Eye bridge; the historic marker that told the legend of the Wailing Woman, whose voice could be heard moaning through the cliffs; the spire-like rock formations north of the dam, where tourists pulled off at the scenic turnout to watch bald eagles nesting. I finished by telling them about Catfish Charley’s, my great-uncle’s floating fried food Mecca, where they could eat batter-crisp fish while being watched by Charley, the hun
dred-pound primordial catfish who’d been greeting diners from his tank for as long as I could remember.
“I think they’re only open on weekends in the winter, come to think of it, but if you want some dinner before you head back, the food is good at the Waterbird, over by the dam,” I added, and then I realized that the Waterbird might not even be there anymore. It’s funny how the mind believes that the places of your childhood will always be waiting for you to come back to them. “I mean, I guess it’s still around. Anyway, the view of the lake is beautiful there, and it’s sort of a tradition—people go in and sign the back wall of the store, sometimes leave a favorite quote. The legend is that if you sign the wall of wisdom with someone, you’ll return to Moses Lake together again.”
A lump rose in my throat. My father and I had signed the wall together when I was a girl. Every time we visited after that, we went by the Waterbird to look at our handiwork, touching the quote like a talisman. When we moved to Moses Lake that final year, I’d refused to visit the wall with Dad. I’d broken the chain. . . .
As I told Gary’s family good-bye and watched them drive off, the blessing they’d pronounced over me seemed to fly away with them, rolling down the main street of Moses Lake, growing smaller, and smaller, until it drifted out of sight, and I was once again all alone, with no ID, no phone, and no money, in the last place I ever thought I’d find myself.
The man who troubles the water
might soon enough drown in it.
—Fisherman’s proverb
(via Catfish Charley, feeding lakesiders since 1946)
Chapter 4
I’d barely been in Moses Lake ten minutes, and I could already feel the place winding around me, quietly and efficiently, a spider twisting silken threads about an errant moth before it can break loose and fly away.
The bells on the hardware store door jingled, and my mind tripped over itself. “May I help ye-ew?” The question traversed the parking lot in a long, sticky-sweet Southern drawl, and for an instant, I was like an astronaut being pulled into a black hole, lost in time and space. I turned to find Blaine Underhill’s stepmother, a ghost from yesteryear, standing in the hardware store doorway, wearing a peach-colored pantsuit, her puffy hair still the same brassy shade of blond, pulled back in a pearl-toned headband. “Do you need directions to someplace, hon?”
The word hon took me by surprise. Even though some of the Moses Lake ladies had attempted to adopt me as a somewhat lost cause after my father’s death, I was never hon to Mrs. Underhill. She couldn’t quite forgive me for being the product of the unwelcome union of my father and the freewheeling out-of-towner who stole him away.
Clearly, she didn’t recognize me now. I hadn’t considered the possibility that, while the people of Moses Lake still loomed large in my mind, they might not even remember me. It was strangely pathetic to think that I’d been reacting all these years to people for whom I was just a temporary blip on the radar.
“No, I’m fine,” I answered, and then started walking, conscious of Mrs. Underhill staring after me, no doubt wondering why I was dragging luggage along the side of the highway. She was probably thinking, What an odd little thing. . . .
I headed out of town, past Lakeshore Community Church, its brown stone walls warming in the winter sunlight beneath a patina of dust and moss. The doors to the squatty low-ceilinged fellowship hall were open, a half-dozen cars parked out front. An elderly woman in a red coat was trying to wrestle a wheelchair from the trunk of her car. After glancing back and forth between her and the door a couple times, wishing someone would come out and help her before she hurt herself, I parked my suitcase near the road and jogged across the gravel parking lot. The suede boots that had set me back a week’s salary squished in a layer of creamy, limestone-colored goo as I skirted puddles left behind by a winter rain.
“Here, let me help you,” I said, and unfortunately startled her off-balance. She caught herself against the car, with a bug-eyed look. Such was usually the way with my awkward attempts at random acts of kindness. I wasn’t meant to be folksy and friendly, but I had promised Gary that I would pay it forward. If not for an act of kindness, I’d still be standing at the bus station, or worse yet, sleeping in an airport chair in Denver.
“Oh!” the woman gasped, catching her breath and squinting at me through glasses thick enough to make me wonder if she’d driven herself here. Something about her was familiar, but I couldn’t decide what. “Oh, well, all right. Aren’t you sweet?” She pulled and stretched the words, adding extra syllables on ri-ight and swe-eet. Scanning the parking lot, she tried to figure out where I’d come from.
She motioned to the sidewalk in front of the fellowship hall. “Just set it up there, hon. It’s my cousin’s. I was tryin’ to make room back here for the casseroles.”
Casseroles. Why did it not surprise me that the casserole ladies were on the move again today?
A blue piece of cardboard tangled in the spokes of the wheelchair as I pulled it out, and I rested the chair against the trunk rim for a moment, wiggling the paper loose and dropping it into the trunk. It flipped over and slid partway under a folded navy-and-gold Moses Lake High stadium blanket. I found myself cocking my head to read, from the bottom up, the bold, white letters on the royal blue sign. Precinct 4. County Commission. Underhill. Blaine. Vote for.
Huh . . . Looked like Blaine Underhill hadn’t strayed far from the hometown. “You shouldn’t be lifting this thing on your own,” I said, noticing that there was a rather large stack of Blaine Underhill signs wedged against the side of the trunk.
The woman noticed that I was staring. “That’s my grandson.” Reaching into her oversized purse, she whipped out a flyer printed on red paper. “Are you a resident of the county?” A brow lifted with a hopeful look, and I gathered that my vote was about to be solicited.
“Just visiting.” Now I knew why she looked familiar. This was the infamous Mama B. When I used to walk by the football stadium on my way home from school, she was always perched on the bleachers next to Blaine Underhill’s father, the two of them watching practice, making sure their golden boy was getting the kind of treatment he deserved. If she wasn’t telling the coaches what to do, Mama B was checking up on the teachers, shuffling through the school halls with a pug-nosed pocket pooch in her handbag, pointing out girls whose hemlines were too short and boys who had hair over their collars.
More than once, she’d cornered me and let me know that my oversized black T-shirts were “unbecoming on a young lady,” and that if I’d drop by the variety store, she’d be happy to help me look for something more appropriate. Perhaps in a nice shade of blue or mauve. She felt sure there was a cute figure underneath my misguided wardrobe, and she wondered if I’d ever thought about entering the Miss Moses Lake contest.
Thank goodness she didn’t recognize me now. I didn’t bother to introduce myself as I carried the wheelchair to the sidewalk and set it against the front of the church.
“Thank ya, sweetie.” She held out the Vote for Blaine flyer. “Here. Pass this along to someone while you’re here. Tell them Blaine Underhill’s their man. It’s about time we cleaned up that county commission.”
I felt obliged to take the pamphlet, and then I quickly backed away, folding it and stuffing it into my jacket pocket.
I could feel Mama B’s curious stare following me across the parking lot. “Where’d you say you were stayin’?” she called. A propane delivery truck passed by in a whoosh, and I pretended not to hear. Swirls of asphalt-scented air skittered across the parking lot in the truck’s wake, and I made a hasty exit, my suitcase bumping along behind me. Mama B hollered at the propane driver, informing him that the speed limit through town was thirty-five.
Dry winter grass crackled under my feet as I left the pavement and moved into the ditch alongside the rural highway, traversing the short distance to the tall limestone pillars and rusting iron gate that marked the entrance to Uncle Herbert’s driveway. The sign hanging in the shade of lo
fty magnolias still read Harmony Shores Funeral Home and Chapel, even though the place had been closed since Uncle Herbert’s health problems had forced him to shut down the business. It was a beautiful old place, if you didn’t find sleeping in the bedrooms above the funeral chapel strangely morbid. Unfortunately, I did, and the usual chill accompanied me through the gate and followed me up the long, tree-lined drive. A shudder gripped me like a fist, squeezing the air from my lungs. A voice in my head was urging, Run, just run.
Pulling in a fortifying breath, I veered off across the grass toward the memory gardens, my suitcase bumping over twigs and pecan shucks. Dampness from the soil seeped through my suede boots, making them soggy and chilly by the time I reached a stone path, where holly bushes and magnolias provided secluded alcoves in which grieving families could reflect privately.
Pausing, I gazed at the treetops and did a poor imitation of the yoga breathing I’d learned from a fitness-guru-slash-boyfriend who’d tried to convince me that meditation would help my tension problems. At the time I’d laughed flippantly and told him I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. Me, tense?
Now I wished I’d paid more attention. The muscles in my back were as twisted and knotted as a string of used rubber bands in the corner of a junk drawer. I jerked at the sound of cars coming up the drive, and a charley horse kicked up its heels near my spine.
That odd temptation to bolt for the woods stirred me again. Instead, I did the mature thing and ducked behind the holly bushes, peeking through the limbs as three cars rolled past. I recognized the one in the lead, and I knew whose little gray head that was peering over the steering wheel. Mama B. That would be the church ladies behind her. Apparently, they had arrived on another reconnaissance mission, with food in hand, of course. The fact that the casserole ladies were so interested in what was going on at Harmony Shores was not a good sign.
