High Plains Hearts

by Janet Spaeth

  She touched his hand. “The proof was there in the manger, and it was there in the empty tomb. Faith is an amazing thing. It is its own proof, even as it denies proof. I can’t explain faith, but I know it is there.”

  She fell silent. His eyes were focused on hers, searching and seeking for this elusive thing they called faith.

  “I need it, especially as I think about the possibility of moving Panda’s,” he said, breaking the quiet at last. “Maybe it’s not the same thing, but I have an intensive need for proof. Give me charts. Give me graphs. Give me statistics.”

  “Did you build Panda’s from a blueprint?” she asked.

  He laughed. “Sort of. The conflict between the contractor and the architect gave it its distinctive rose brick and gray smoked-glass look, but basically, yes, we had a blueprint. Why do you ask? Is it really that bizarre looking?”

  “No, no!” she demurred. “It’s just that you’ve already invested heavily in faith. When you built Panda’s, you did so on a promise—that the building would replicate what the blueprint proposed. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “And did it?”

  “Yes.”

  “But the blueprint didn’t have the personality of Panda’s. It didn’t include all the little details like the cooking, the roaster, even the personnel. Like Todd.” She couldn’t resist asking. “Todd wasn’t in the blueprints, was he?”

  “No,” Jake admitted, “though he probably should have been. He knows everyone and can keep the place running like a top, unless you want the till to balance.”

  “And you definitely had a role in it. Your enthusiasm and dedication to Panda’s show. My point is that these little things make the entire place come alive.”

  A slow smile crossed Jake’s face. “You know what else wasn’t in the blueprints?”

  She shook her head. “What?”

  “Faith. A crazy angel whose halo will not stay straight. And Faith, Tess Mahoney, is making all the difference in the world. Without Faith I’d never have met you.”

  She didn’t know what to say. And she didn’t have to. He said it for her.

  “Faith has brought us together. And I’m hoping—no, I’m praying—that Faith will keep us together.”

  Chapter 16

  Tess grimaced at her reflection. She felt like a sausage, her body snugly encased in a set of thickly knit long johns, a long-sleeved turtleneck, a heavy sweat suit in a bizarre chartreuse she’d never had the nerve to wear before, heavy woolen socks, a bright green parka, her military olive snow-shoveling boots, an emerald and yellow patterned muffler, and an orange hunting hat topped with a fluorescent lime-colored pompom.

  Jake’s greeting confirmed what she feared: that she looked like an inflated and somewhat eccentric elf.

  “I don’t want to be cold,” she said defensively. It was difficult to be assertive about what she was wearing when underneath it she was sweating like mad.

  “Honey, you’d have to be in the Arctic before you got cold in that getup.” He batted the pom-pom on her cap playfully.

  “But most of First Night is outside,” she objected. “It’s freezing!”

  “It’s only eleven below.” He grinned at her.

  She looked one more time in the mirror. Chartreuse! What an odd color and definitely not for her. Whatever had possessed her to purchase it from the mail-order catalog? She knew the answer, though. The model had looked stunning in it, and the color hadn’t been quite so, well, so chartreuse.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said and ducked upstairs to change into jeans and her new sweatshirt that had been her Christmas present to herself. Its snowy white background was crusted with pink rhinestones that spelled out the words *flutter*flutter*flutter* across an outline of angel wings.

  “I feel ten pounds lighter,” she said as she came back downstairs. “And I probably look it, too. After a month of hanging around with you, I need all the help I can get, thanks to your insistence upon feeding me all sorts of gourmet treats.”

  Cora sashayed into the room and meowed loudly.

  “Speaking of gourmet treats,” Tess commented, “Cora’s girth has increased, too. She has a definite bulge now, and the old gal wiggles when she walks.”

  “Both of you get lovelier every day,” he said, dropping a kiss on Tess’s head and scratching behind Cora’s furry ears. The cat lifted her gray head and drooled blissfully.

  Jake watched as Cora waddled off to her spot by the heat register, apparently having had enough attention for the moment.

  “That is a splendid cat,” he whispered to Tess. “Absolutely splendid.”

  The First Night festivities were easily within walking distance, and they made their way quickly to the city center. In the town square a tent had been set up as a nuclear gathering spot.

  Tess and Jake stopped there first. As Jake gathered the list of locations and events from the table, Tess warmed her hands by the kerosene heater that was almost unnecessary with all the people clustered in there.

  “Where do you want to start?” he asked as he rejoined her.

  “Ice sculptures, of course!”

  Circling the frozen pond in the square was a fantasy display of statues carved of shimmering ice. They glistened in the reflected light of the street lamps like sculpted diamonds and crystals.

  “The theme this year is the Winter Garden,” she commented as they strolled through the array of sparkling images. “Look! Here’s a hyacinth, I think, and over there—oh, I can’t believe the detail! It’s a prairie rose!”

  Jake bent over the cards and read each one aloud. “Yup, once again they’re all done by local artists. I keep thinking that some year they’ll have to farm this out to a bigger city, but our art community sure can produce some astonishing works! Check out this one: Jack Frost as a master gardener!”

  “And each one is carved from a single block of ice,” Tess marveled aloud. “With my luck I’d be right at the end, and my little hammer thing or whatever they use would slip just a teensy bit, and, blammo, my statue would be minus an arm. What steady hands they must have!”

  They decided to check out the local library’s exhibit next. They climbed the stone steps with a host of other revelers.

  “Sure are a lot of people out tonight,” Jake said, turning back to gaze over the square from the top step of the library. “Look at that!”

  The sea of humanity was impressive.

  “A lot of people are like us,” Tess said. “They don’t want to see the New Year in by getting sloshed, and yet they want to celebrate without risking getting killed by someone who’s been drinking and driving. That’s one of the things I like the most about First Night—that I don’t have to drive anywhere. It’s all set up within walking distance of the downtown parking lots for those who don’t live down here. And for the rest of us it’s great to be able to stroll on over!”

  More people surged up the steps, and Tess and Jake found themselves propelled into the library.

  For the next half hour they were entertained by a team of storytellers from the town, including the children’s librarian, a man who wrote poetry, and the mayor herself, who waved at them. The room was filled to capacity, and the temperature soared.

  Tess wiped a band of sweat from her brow. It was a good thing she’d changed out of her earlier outfit; she would have been roasting in all those layers. Jake nudged her and indicated the door. They stole out together and stood at the top of the stairs, letting the cold air wash over their heated faces.

  “That feels tremendous,” he said. “Whew, it was hot in there!”

  “Why isn’t the sweat freezing on my forehead?” Tess asked. “Scientifically it should, right?”

  He shook his head. “Beats me. It must have sizzled off when we came outside. It was blazing in that room with all those people crunched together like that.”

  He consulted the schedule. “Hey, if we hustle over to the police station, we might catch a ride on a horse-drawn wagon. Does that interes
t you?”

  “Sounds like fun!”

  The line at the police station extended the length of the block and wrapped around the corner. “There’ll be a thirty-minute wait,” the woman overseeing the rides told them.

  “Want to wait?” Jake asked Tess.

  “Sure. Look—a guy is selling hot apple cider and doughnuts!” She pointed to a man behind a red-and-gold painted pushcart, which was mostly hidden by the people hunkered around his source of heat—an open fire in an old oilcan.

  Jake grinned at her. “Are you always hungry?”

  She tried not to be embarrassed. “Well, it’s been awhile since dinner, and doesn’t that sound good—hot apple cider and fresh doughnuts?”

  Jake admitted it did, and they agreed she would hold their place in line while he bought them some food from the vendor.

  “There’s something special about food served in open air like this,” she murmured, gratefully biting into the doughnut. “It seems to taste a whole lot better than it does inside.”

  “Remind me to transfer all the tables out of Panda’s then. At the very least, it’ll keep them moving. No one will want to sit very long when it’s fifteen below.”

  The line moved quickly, and they were soon climbing into the wagon. Jake made room for her on the straw bundle closest to the horse and created a circle of warmth around her with his arm. She leaned against him, enjoying the heat his body generated, but mostly reveling in being close to him.

  First Night had never been so much fun.

  It was only a tickle at first, then a little more, and it quickly mushroomed into a full-fledged itch. She tried to ignore it, but she eventually had to scratch her leg. And then her hip. And her leg again.

  “Problem?” Jake asked her, his mouth tilted with amusement.

  “I seem to be allergic to hay,” she answered, trying gracefully to reach her hip again. “Or something. Whatever it is, I think this will be my last trip.”

  The ride seemed to take an eternity. Around the town square the wagon went, up the hill to the high school, around the water treatment plant, alongside the river, over the little footbridge, and back down past the post office to stop again in front of the police station.

  She couldn’t hop off quickly enough. She scratched and clawed, uncomfortably aware that Jake was finding her actions amusing.

  “Do you need to go back home and maybe shower?” he suggested.

  Tess pulled herself up to her full height and tried to regain her decorum. “No, I’m quite”—scratch, scratch—“fine. I can do that”—scrape, claw—“later. Right now let’s just enjoy the”—scratch—“evening.”

  They went to an exhibit at the police station about drugs and how to recognize them, examined a display of historic photographs at City Hall, and stopped at the school to listen to the junior-senior choir sing hits from the major musicals.

  By the end her itching had fairly well abated.

  “I love downtown,” she mused aloud, giving her hip one final scratch. “For one thing it’s a comfortable place to be—well, except for when we have to sit on straw.”

  “It’s nice, but I still don’t know my way around here very well, so I can’t feel totally at ease yet.” He pulled out the schedule again and squinted at a street sign. “Is this Fifth? Or Fourth?”

  “It’s Perth, and you need glasses,” she teased. “You probably feel the same way here that I do when I have to go to the End. I don’t know the names of the streets or even what businesses are where. Like the Animal Kingdom. That place is heaven on earth for cats, but I’ve never been there since it’s in the End. And this town isn’t all that big. We probably use it as an excuse.”

  She couldn’t believe that she, Tess Mahoney, was saying that. She was an ardent supporter of downtown growth and an adamant opponent of anything having to do with the End. How had she mellowed so quickly? Had she lost her edge? Or maybe her mind?

  As she turned to say something else to Jake, she realized the little lines had reappeared around his eyes and mouth, the road map of tension.

  Stupid, stupid! she berated herself. He was finally relaxing, and you’ve tightened him right back up.

  She sent a prayer upward, so immediate that its words weren’t formed, its ideas weren’t clear to her, but its focus was true. Jake. He needed the freedom to come to his decision as she had needed the freedom to give away her precious Bible.

  And with the prayer she felt her own self lightening, and she realized she had given herself freedom, too—the freedom to move away from the old patterns of thinking, the old ways of seeing, and into the new.

  So new that she wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

  An idea roared into her mind with the strength of a tidal wave.

  “Come on,” she said, tugging on his coat sleeve.

  “What? There’s nothing down that street,” he responded, consulting the now-bedraggled flyer he’d picked up in the tent.

  “Maybe there is. Come on,” she urged.

  “What? What is it?”

  She stopped and crossed her arms over her chest. “You are so stubborn sometimes, Jake Cameron.”

  “What do you mean?” He frowned at her.

  “Always wanting to know it all, not trusting that the future might hold something you don’t know about and yet you might want or need.”

  He sighed. “Tess, it’s just a street.”

  “No, it’s not ‘just a street,’ Jake. Have faith. Trust me. Walk down this street with me.”

  He shrugged. “Okay, but—”

  She laid a mittened hand over his mouth. “Sssh. Faith. Trust.”

  They walked down the darkened street in silence.

  Suddenly Tess stopped and pointed. “There. What do you think?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of that.” She waved her hand toward a windowless hulk of a building that was shadowed beyond the streetlight’s reach.

  “What is it?” He peered at it.

  Tess took his hand. “Come on. Take a look.”

  She pulled him up the unshoveled walk to the front door. “It’s locked, of course, but I think this is it. Check out the back.”

  “This is what?”

  She headed around the corner and threw the word back at him. “Panda’s.”

  He hadn’t followed her yet, and she had to wait for him to catch up with her. “Panda’s? What? I haven’t decided to move Panda’s down here, and when I do—if I do—I will choose the location according to demographics, tax base, traffic patterns—those sorts of things.”

  “You want a good reason? Look at this back door,” she said, flinging her arm toward the rear of the building.

  A large wooden and metal door, nearly half the size of the building itself, opened onto an area cleared of trees and bushes.

  “Under all this snow,” Tess said, stamping on the ground to make her point, “is a large concrete slab. Imagine tables and chairs back here and deep green umbrellas. Flowers, maybe geraniums—yes, red geraniums—in terra-cotta pots scattered around. A white wrought-iron fence surrounding the patio. And it all overlooks the river.”

  She couldn’t keep the enthusiasm from bubbling up in her voice. She knew she was in severe danger of overstating it and driving him away, but she was caught up in the wonder of her idea, and, as she looked at him, she realized he was, too.

  He walked evenly around the building, as if pacing off the square footage, while Tess trailed hopefully behind, trying to step in the prints his feet made in the still-drifted snow.

  She could see it—she could actually see it. If only he could, too!

  “I’d have to take a look at the inside, of course,” he said at last, stopping so suddenly that Tess, her head tucked down as she tried to match her footprints to his, crashed right into his back. “And check the city code. This might not be zoned for a coffeehouse. What did this used to be—do you know?”

  “It’s been called the River Exchange for a long time. It was originally used as a
place where the barges and merchant shipping vessels could unload and take on new cargo.”

  He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “How long has it been empty?”

  “Quite awhile,” she admitted. “I couldn’t tell you the exact date—this was just a spur-of-the-moment inspiration. I hadn’t planned on bringing you here—I hadn’t even thought about this building as a possible location until God put it in my mind.”

  “God put it in your mind?” His voice brimmed with disbelief.

  “He did.”

  For a moment he looked at her, not saying anything. Then he asked, “Why? Why would He do a thing like that? Don’t you think He has other priorities, like war and famine and crime? Do you really think He’s worried about whether a little coffeehouse like Panda’s moves downtown?”

  It was a common question, and she had heard the meat of it before. But this time it hurt, coming from him.

  The answer came forth with a surprising ease. “God cares about you. You are not at war. You are not starving. You are not in the clutches of crime. Yes, for people who are at war, are starving, or are victims of crime, those are His priorities. And I don’t pretend to know why God does everything He does. He doesn’t answer to me. I answer to Him.”

  “But why are you saying He gave you the idea and led you down this street? Give yourself some credit here, Tess. It was probably in the back of your mind, and you weren’t even aware you were thinking about it. Your subconscious solved it.”

  “God did it,” she insisted. “Because God answers prayer.”

  He smiled. “Sure. I admit that. But who on earth was praying about this?”

  “I was.”

  His eyes held hers. “You prayed for this? You want me downtown enough that you prayed to God to find me a place for Panda’s?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. That’s not what I prayed for.” She tried to look away, but his gaze was arresting.

  “Then what did you pray for?”

  “Prayer is private communication,” she hedged.

  He stared hard at her for a moment, then looked away, but not before she saw the expression on his face. It was part annoyance, part anger, and part disappointment.