She looked in the bank’s window. The word Bank was decorously etched in lacy letters on the glass. Pappy had taped a handwritten sign that said “Pappy’s” over it, so it now read Pappy’s Bank. Cleo rolled her eyes.
I might be attempting something on my own for the very first time, but I can handle this lunatic.
She walked in the door and looked around, surprised to find it was in as bad a shape as the rest of the town. It might even be worse. Sawdust covered the floor, desks were turned over and chairs propped haphazardly against the wall. She assumed if her father were going to restore anything, it would be the financial heart of the place. Well, clearly when it came to second-guessing her father, she’d been wrong before.
“Hello?” Cleo called out to the empty space. “Pappy?”
She walked toward the back of the bank. A cavernous vault with a dial lock took up half the back wall, its heavy steel door ajar.
She thought about what an odd, formal phrase that was—“the door is ajar.” But it was one in everyone’s consciousness since the advent of the talking car. Cleo thought back to her fleet of cars—correction, her father’s fleet of cars—in Los Angeles. Would she ever get to hear the robotic voice admonishing her driver that “the door is ajar” again? She doubled her resolve to get what she wanted from Pappy.
She pulled open the door to the vault. The hinge groaned as if being exercised for the first time in a very long while. She walked into the spacious interior. It was surprisingly cool in there. That wasn’t the only surprise. There also was no money, no gold bars, and no deposit boxes inside. It was totally empty.
“You looking for me?” Pappy’s voice bounced off the steel wall of the safe.
Cleo let out a gasp—she hadn’t heard him come in. She turned and looked at him. She wanted to slap that smug smile right off his hairy face. They both knew he had the upper hand.
“I was over at the jail.”
“You’re a hardworking man,” Cleo said.
“It’s good to keep busy,” Pappy said, ushering Cleo out of the vault.
Pappy looked around the room. He grabbed an upended desk and flipped it effortlessly over onto its carved feet. Cleo thought that if she ever made it out of Fat Chance, she’d want to get her hands on some of this old carved furniture. Everything in town was in terrible condition, but her practiced eye told her that much of it could be restored to its former glory. Maybe she would become an interior decorator who specialized in ghost-town antiques.
Pappy carried two chairs over, placed one behind the desk and one in front. He dusted the guest chair off with his hat, then motioned for Cleo to take a seat. He lowered himself heavily into the chair behind the desk. She sat bolt upright and silent as Pappy took off his glasses and wiped them on his T-shirt—as if that were going to clean anything!
“I know your secret,” Cleo said, trying to regain her footing.
Pappy halted for the briefest moment while cleaning his glasses. He looked up at her. Those silver-tinged green eyes reminded her of someone. But as soon as the glasses went back on, whoever it was disappeared. She was back staring at Pappy. The banker.
“And what would that be?” Pappy asked.
“There’s no money in this bank,” Cleo said.
“That’s no secret.” Pappy let out a roar of laughter. “You think I would have left the vault open if I had any money?”
“Well, if there’s no money, why is this called a bank?” Cleo asked.
“The sign says so,” Pappy said, pointing at the window. “What can I do you for?”
“What kind of answer is that? I sometimes think you’re just making fun of us.”
“You just need to lighten up, Cleo. This isn’t Beverly Hills or New York City. What do you need?”
“I want a loan.”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“You said it yourself. I have no money.”
“How am I supposed to run a café with no credit?” Cleo asked. “All of us have debit cards, but there are no machines set up in our stores to take plastic. I know there are those little phone-things that swipe credit cards, but we have no cell phone reception, so that won’t work either. Are we supposed to barter services back and forth the whole six months we’re here?”
“I guess you’ll have to figure that out,” Pappy said. “The universe is just waiting to see what you’ll do.”
“Thank you, Yoda.” Cleo knocked over her chair and stormed to the door.
“There is one thing that might make you feel better.”
Cleo turned around to see Pappy sitting at his desk, hands folded under his chin. “What would that be?”
“They take plastic over at the Rolling Fork Ranch.”
“How do we get there? It’s four miles away!”
“Well . . .”
“I know, I know,” Cleo said. “I’ll have to figure that out.”
She opened the door. She knew it was childish, but she couldn’t resist. “Screw the universe,” she called back into the bank.
She could hear Pappy’s booming laugh as she stormed back toward the café. She practically ran into Powderkeg on the boardwalk.
“Hey, slow down there,” Powderkeg said. “You sure seem steamed up about something.”
“Pappy is a crazy person,” she said.
“I know. He’s awesome.”
Cleo turned on her heels and stalked away.
“Where is he?” Powderkeg called after her. “I need to talk to him.”
“He’s over at the bank,” Cleo said without turning around.
“Damn. I need to wait until he goes into the sheriff’s office. I have a plan about those outlaws!”
This time, Cleo didn’t answer him.
One lunatic a day is enough.
Titan was just leaving the café as she arrived.
“You have a wonderful day, Ms. Cleo,” he said.
“I’ll do my best,” she said as she watched his broad back heading away. The buzzard waddled out to meet him and the two of them went into the forge like two old friends.
Cleo was pretty sure she wasn’t going to make any friends here, even after providing them all with good food. As she entered, she saw Elwood through the archway that connected the saloon to the café. He’d washed all the glassware and was putting them up, very carefully, on the shelves behind the bar.
She sat on a lopsided stool. “Elwood, give me a martini, no sal—”
“I don’t know how to make—”
“Oh, never mind.” She jumped down from her stool and headed behind the bar. “Move over.”
CHAPTER 22
After breakfast, before Dymphna went back to the farm, Pappy asked how the animals were doing. Dymphna confessed she was fairly certain she could manage the goats, but she wasn’t entirely sure what she should be doing about the chickens. Pappy said she could always call on him for advice, but also gave her a few issues of a magazine called Backyard Brood. The magazines were ancient, but Dymphna was grateful for them.
How much could chicken advice change in ten or twenty years?
She checked in with the hens as soon as she got back to the farm. All seemed to be well in the henhouse. She’d counted eleven hens, so Dymphna was confident she could supply Cleo with the requested eggs.
“Out of the way, Wobble!” Dymphna said, passing by the rooster, who stood oscillating aggressively in her path.
The rooster stared at her, cocking his head from side to side.
“Yep!” Dymphna said, laughing. “Wobble. That’s your new name. Get used to it.”
Dymphna was surprised at herself. She had never spoken to any creature in such an authoritative voice before. She’d only been in Texas a day and was already seeing a change in herself. She wondered if her rabbits would recognize her when she got home.
She chuckled when she saw the goats waiting at the pen for her, each little head poking through the slats of the fence. Instinct took over. She let them out of their yard. The goats l
eapt into the air and pranced their way over to the pond. Dymphna sat on a large rock at the edge of Loudmouth Lake and watched her goats. She remembered a report she’d written in the third grade about what collections of animals were called. Her group of goats were a tribe. She thought back to elementary school, wondering how many animal groups she could still name. Some of the more memorable ones were: a company of baboons, a glint of goldfish. While a group of kittens were a litter, cats traveled in a clowder. She loved that an animal as commonplace as the cat had such an imaginative designation. There was also a cloud of bats, a bellowing of bullfinches and a band of gorillas.
A band of gorillas. A band of outlaws.
A chill went down her spine as she thought about the two men racing through her property the previous night. Pappy said they were harmless, but did he really know? She tried to put them out of her mind. She watched a flock of ducks overhead and continued to test her memory.
Ducks in flight are called a flock, but they’re called something else when they are in the water. Mob? Gang? Murder?
Dymphna shook her head. Why was she coming up with these terrifying names? True, they did belong to the animal kingdom—a mob of emus, a gang of elk, a murder of crows—but there was no need to freak herself out!
The smallest goat seemed to sense Dymphna’s dark mood, because she came over and settled in Dymphna’s lap. Dymphna focused on her tribe, deciding she could distract herself by naming them.
“I’ll start with you,” Dymphna said to the diminutive goat, her mood lifting immediately.
She studied the serious little face in front of her. The doe’s eyes were peeking out from a mop of shaggy hair. They were a startling blue, like a Siamese cat’s.
“I’m going to call you Catterlee,” Dymphna said. “Do you like that?”
She felt a little guilty giving the goat such a pretty name after christening the rooster Wobble. But this petite beauty deserved a sweet name. The other goats seemed to realize something important was happening, because the three of them presented themselves. Dymphna never realized goats had such solemn expressions! In turn, she named the other two does Udderlee and Sarilee. The buck butted her, looking for attention.
Dymphna studied the buck, which was the largest of the tribe. He was so white, he reminded her of goose down. She knew what she was going to call this guy.
“OK.” She patted the buck. “I’m going to call you Down Diego.”
The ducks skidded into the water. Ducks in the water were called a team!
A bowling team.
Dymphna returned the goats to the barnyard, hurriedly gathered eggs in a basket for Cleo, and then headed down the hill to town. She wasn’t sure how she was going to ask Professor Johnson if Thud could spend nights with her, but she hoped she would think of something. She stopped and picked some strawberries, hoping the offering might sweeten the deal. She felt safer as each footstep brought her closer to Fat Chance. As she passed by the inn, she saw Powderkeg lying on the roof, reaching over the eaves, trying to grab hold of the sign that said Creekside Inn.
Dymphna looked up at him and smiled. “There must be an easier way to get that sign down.”
“There is,” Powderkeg said. “It’s called a ladder. But there doesn’t seem to be one in Fat Chance.”
“You can make one, can’t you?”
“Yeah, but I’m hoping the professor gets the Covered Volkswagen running so we can go into Spoonerville and just buy one.”
Dymphna was sure she’d heard him wrong. “Professor Johnson is working on the VW? Our Professor Johnson?”
The Creekside Inn sign dropped into the dust a few feet from Dymphna.
Powderkeg lowered himself from the roof, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Yeah,” he said, picking up the sign. “Pappy said that the thing is always overheating. Professor Johnson has a plan to keep the engine cool.”
“How’s he going to do that?”
“Do I look like Professor Johnson? You’ll have to ask him.”
I’ll add it to the list of things I need to ask him.
She was going to have to climb the trail to where the Covered Volkswagen hunkered if she wanted to speak with the professor. She dropped off the berries at the saloon and took the eggs to Cleo’s Café. The café was spotless, but also empty. Dymphna wondered if Cleo was back at the inn, but she wandered into the kitchen, just in case. Cleo was sobbing, sitting at a counter with her head in her folded arms. The index finger of her right hand was held aloft.
She must have cut herself!
Dymphna rushed to her, putting down the eggs and turning on the cold water spigot.
Cleo sat up and wiped her eyes. “Oh,” she said, suddenly composed but still holding her finger in the air. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Dymphna grabbed Cleo’s hand and thrust it under the water. She steeled herself to watch the sink fill with pink swirls of blood-tinged water, but the water ran clear. She lifted her confused eyes to Cleo’s, which were red-rimmed.
“What are you doing?” Cleo asked as she extracted her hand, keeping the finger bent.
“I saw you crying and I thought you cut yourself.”
Cleo’s face crumpled. “I broke a nail,” she wailed. “I did everything in my power to prepare for this trip to hell, and it made no difference.”
Dymphna patted Cleo’s back. “Go ahead and cry. This is just transference. It’s not about your fingernail. You’re out here in the middle of nowhere, where everything is foreign. You’re scared. It’s completely understandable.”
“Thank you.” Cleo tried to stop crying, but it was no use. The tears poured down her cheeks. “I went to my manicurist and said ‘give me a sport-length manicure, no acrylic’ and still . . . and still!”
She shook the offending index finger in Dymphna’s face.
My God! It is about her nail.
Dymphna noticed that Cleo’s hand was free of the oddly placed ring. Big changes all around.
They were both happy to change the subject. Dymphna gave Cleo the eggs she’d brought.
“These will do,” Cleo said. “Thank you.”
Cleo took the eggs and put them in the refrigerator. She kept her back to Dymphna, who realized she’d been dismissed. She was relieved to see Cleo had returned to her ice queen persona. Cleo Johnson-Primb acting like a human being, even an insane human being, was unnerving.
As Dymphna left the café and made her way toward the trail that led up the hill out of Fat Chance, she glanced at the forge. Titan, shirtless and with sweat pouring down his washboard stomach, was pounding away on the anvil. She stuck her head in the doorway. The heat made her head swirl. Titan spotted her and stopped working. He wiped his entire head down with a shirt and came out.
“It is hot in there,” Titan said. “But I think I’m getting the hang of it. I helped Pappy make a new shoe for Jerry Lee. Now I’m making a bird stand for Fancy. I’m pounding out the iron and welding the pieces together.”
“That sounds pretty advanced,” Dymphna said.
“It will probably look terrible, but she won’t care. I just want to get her off the ground so she’ll be safe.”
Titan went back to work as Dymphna started the steep ascent to the top of the trail. The trail turned sharply and she stopped to catch her breath. As her breathing returned to normal, she thought she heard the unmistakable shaking of a rattlesnake’s tail. She tried not to panic. As a veteran of the hiking trails in Southern California, she had run into a rattlesnake or two in her time. Hikers were taught that if you left a snake alone, the snake would most likely return the favor.
She stood motionless, but the rattling continued. The dead grass along the edge of the trail disguised the snake’s brown skin and the rattle seemed to be coming from everywhere. She snapped to attention as she heard a hissing sound. A few inches from her right foot was the snake. She could see straight into the pink mouth, the fangs glinting in the sun. Her heart started pounding. She knew a rattler could strike about two-thirds o
f its length and she was definitely in the danger zone! She sucked in some air and backed away as slowly and soundlessly as possible. After what seemed like an eternity, the snake slithered away from the path. Dymphna was happy to see it go. She knew her goats were too big to tempt this snake, but she’d seen several wild rabbits on her land—and what about her chickens? Of all the new neighbors, she did not want to get used to this one.
She gave the snake plenty of time to move before she continued. She was already accustomed to hopscotching across the worst of the ruts, and navigated the climb quickly. When she crested the top of the trail, she couldn’t believe her eyes. There stood the Covered Volkswagen with the rear hood open, exposing the engine. Professor Johnson appeared to have attached a wooden platform over the bumper and was attempting to attach the base of a rusted old fan, pointing inward toward the engine, to the platform with a screwdriver. Thud snapped at flies.
And I thought running into a snake was interesting.
Just like the rattler, Professor Johnson seemed to sense Dymphna’s presence. Looking up from his handiwork, he seemed nothing like his serious, buttoned-up self. Grease smeared his cheeks, his glasses perched at an odd angle on his nose, and perspiration had made his carefully combed hair into a mass of ringlets. He looked damn cute.
“I know this appears cumbersome,” Professor Johnson said, indicating his creation. “But in theory, it should work.”
“Um,” Dymphna said, studying the homemade shelf sitting on the bumper, and the fan. “How?”
“The reason the engine overheats is that it’s air cooled. And the air here is hot. Of course, the bus is a wreck and that doesn’t help matters, but I think if I could find a way to cool the engine, it should at least get us to Spoonerville and back. It’s unrealistic to suppose Jerry Lee can carry enough supplies for all of us for six months.”
He took off his glasses and held them up to the sunlight. As he lifted up his shirttail to wipe them off, Dymphna glimpsed a remarkably taut abdomen. She looked quickly away and saw Pappy headed in their direction, leading Jerry Lee along the side of the road on which they’d seen the RV and the town car disappear. It seemed a lifetime ago. Dymphna remembered that Jerry Lee was wearing a new shoe and was happy to see the mule walking easily in the gravel. She gasped as the mule got closer—smoke was billowing from both saddlebags. She ran to Pappy, waving her arms. The sudden activity roused Thud, who started barking, but, with one look at Jerry Lee, stayed where he was.
Welcome to Fat Chance, Texas Page 13
