Love's Labors Tossed

by Robert Farrell Smith

  “Father says they’re near the magazines,” Sister Knapworth shouted. She paused to listen and then said, “Are you going to be okay? All right then, we’ll talk to you later. Love from Tennessee.”

  “Love from me,” Elder Knapworth prompted her.

  “Love from Daddy,” she screamed. She then hung up and looked at Elder Knapworth.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked.

  “She just has a headache,” Sister Knapworth told him. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.” She looked at me. “I saw those announcements of yours, Trust. What a good-looking pair you two make. And that shirt,” she went on. “It takes a real man to pull that off.”

  “Thanks,” I said weakly, looking around for the announcements. “Where are they?” I asked.

  “I saw Leonard carrying them around,” Roswell said. “I think he put them away for safe keeping.”

  “That Leonard is something else,” Elder Knapworth said kindly.

  I was just about to put my own spin on Leonard when the phone rang. Not wanting to hear Sister Knapworth scream anymore, I jumped up and got it. It was for Sister Watson. I stepped outside and hollered at Tindy, who was standing halfway across the meadow. She yelled at Wad, who was further down the way, and Wad instructed Digby to run off and fetch Mavis. A few seconds later, Sister Watson came tearing across the meadow holding her wig on her head. She reached the porch, and I pointed in towards the phone.

  I had no idea who she was talking to, but it was a long conversation that made little sense on my end. When she hung up she looked more confused than usual.

  “That’s weird,” she said, as if she were acting.

  “What?” Roswell asked.

  “Well, that was a guy from the state. He didn’t believe that we were really here.”

  “What?” Roswell asked again.

  “He’s the one coming out this Saturday to evaluate our road potential,” she explained. “But he said when he went to his supervisors, they insisted that there was actually no one here.”

  “What?” Roswell still didn’t get it.

  “That was Willis from Virgil’s Find,” she lied out of frustration. “He said that the bean delivery should be here tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” Roswell said. “I’d better go clear some space.” He walked off.

  “So we’re not really here,” Sister Knapworth said to Sister Watson. “That’ll make a person feel important.”

  “Is he still coming?” I asked.

  “He seemed more certain about that than before,” Sister Watson said reflectively. “Funny.”

  I was glad she thought so.

  30

  Spammon from Heaven

  I don’t remember many of my dreams. I never have. Occasionally there will be mornings when I wake up knowing that what I dreamed the night before had been pleasant or that it had been horrible. On a good day I may even remember a two-second snippet or a certain outfit that someone was wearing, but that’s about it. As a child I was constantly being taught about all the great prophets and how they were repeatedly told things through visions and dreams. Back then I figured I simply knew it all and that there was no need for the heavens to show me more. As an adult I now knew that the real reason my memory held back was simply that I had never completely understood the short silent films in my mind. There was no way I could comprehend some epic vision that was packed with any more symbolism and depth than, say, the back of a cereal box. That’s why I was so surprised to find my mind retaining the show my subconscious had played for me Monday night.

  I had dreamed that Grace was standing by a canyon edge looking off into the distance. I wanted to run to her, but instead I picked up a phone that was placed conveniently in a tree by the canyon and called up Hope. I talked to her about myself, repeating every accomplishment I had ever achieved as a child while Grace took tiny steps closer to the edge. Just as Grace was about to step off the cliff, I hung up and then dialed my mother to see what she was doing. It was at that moment that a large boulder that looked like my old Sunbeam teacher but was actually Hope ran over to Grace and pushed her off. I didn’t even hang up. I just kept on talking to my mom as if nothing had happened.

  I woke up and lay there in the early morning dusk trying to figure out why I had been allowed to remember that particular dream. By the time the sun was up, I was wishing that God had left my head blank like he usually did. I sat up in bed and stretched. I sniffed at the air, recognizing a smell that wasn’t usually there. I stood up and sniffed around. I looked out the window and saw a small crowd of people gathered around a small purple tent in the middle of the meadow. The tent I recognized as Paul’s. He had pitched it in the meadow many times lately. His home was across the river, but the huge Girth was too hard to cross these days, so Paul would pitch his tent at night and then take it down the next morning. This morning, however, there looked to be a large circle of something surrounding his tent. Outside that ring were people standing and looking at the ground as if baffled.

  I hurried and got dressed and then ran downstairs. The boardinghouse was empty. Everyone had gone out to look at what was going on.

  I followed my nose to the meadow and up to Paul’s tent. The ground was covered with some sort of white stuff. Paul stepped out of his tent and warned us all to stay far away.

  “What is this stuff?” Sister Watson asked.

  “I have no idea,” Paul lied.

  Toby Carver picked up a piece and stuck it in his mouth.

  “Not bad.”

  Everyone except me bent over and began tasting what was lying on the ground. Paul tasted some as well and then stood in awe. He held his hands up.

  “People,” he shouted, “do you realize what this is?”

  They had no idea.

  “It’s manna.”

  They still had no idea.

  “From heaven,” Paul elaborated. “Like in the Old Testament. This is heaven’s way of saying that God still sides with me on the weather shelter. The one with the small gold plaque that says my name.”

  Paul was acting like his old self.

  “The heavens know that this shelter will keep us safe from all that is to happen in these final days.”

  “Final days of what?” Frank Porter yelled.

  “The world.”

  “Shoot,” Toby said. “The world ain’t going anywhere. It’s too big. Not that I mind this manna, though.”

  “Look at the Girth,” Paul pleaded. “Our river is swelling so much that it no longer stays within its banks. Can’t you see that our time is running out?”

  Teddy Yetch shuffled up from her home. Her old eyes were ringed from sleep. She pulled up next to me and asked what was going on.

  “Paul’s claiming there’s manna on the ground.”

  Teddy bent down and picked up a piece. She tasted it and then stormed up to Paul. “That ain’t manna,” she chastised. “You stole my spicy snow sausage recipe.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I know my own creations,” Teddy yelped.

  Everyone began gathering up handfuls of the one thing Teddy actually made well.

  “It’s Teddy’s sausage,” Toby confirmed.

  “Would one small gold plaque really kill you guys?” Paul whined, looking hurt.

  I’m sure he would have said more, but he was interrupted by the large billows of smoke erupting from his tent. Before anyone could adequately gasp, the smoke turned to flame and completely devoured Paul’s tent, exposing a slightly charred portable grill. The fire followed a trail of lighter fluid, racing across the ground and directly underneath Pete Kennedy’s legs. Flames then snaked across the meadow as if they knew where they were going and jumped up onto the boardinghouse porch. The fire twisted itself around the rails and shoved until it was inside and lighting the place like a Christmas village. It all happened so fast that no one could react. The entire boardinghouse was on full-blown fire before we all began scrambling for water and ways to put it out. />
  I know it was selfish of me, but I just kept thinking how great it was that my goofy-looking announcements were going to be ruined.

  We were able to get a sort of water chain going, but there were just too many weak links to make it effective. Toby would hand Ed a full bucket and then Ed would toss the water onto the next person in line. Miss Flitrey got the hose on the other side of the school working, but it wasn’t long enough to reach the fire. Wanting to at least look optimistic, she stood spraying the hose in the general direction and watering the ground a good twenty feet in front of the fire. With a shortage of buckets but wanting to do their share, a few locals tried spitting.

  It was pointless. The boardinghouse was toast. We all just stood there in stunned silence. Wood sizzled and crumbled as fire purged it of its soul. I heard a mournful tisking at my side. It was Leonard. His beard was coming in, and he was wearing suspenders made out of two old cloth belts. He fit in way too well here.

  “It’s a shame,” he said.

  I nodded in agreement.

  “Roswell should have bought that insurance when I offered it,” Leonard lamented.

  I looked over at old Roswell. He had his thin hands in his pockets and was staring at the aftermath as if it were a confusing piece of art that he would never understand. I noticed Paul standing right behind him. I had never seen Paul look so genuinely miserable. It had been his stunt that caused this. It would only be a matter of moments before everyone remembered that and turned to tar him.

  “I can’t believe it,” Toby whispered. “I just can’t believe it.” He felt around for his Ace bandage and then remembered that Hope was wearing it on her wrist. I suppose he thought it might bring someone some comfort in a time like this.

  “Everything was in there,” Roswell said, stunned.

  “It’ll be okay,” Teddy tried to comfort him. “You still got your wagon.”

  Roswell looked over at his almost-ready ice cream wagon. The right side of it was dark from the smoke that had filled the air.

  “But my ice cream was inside,” Roswell said angrily, as if he were talking about his children.

  Sister Watson was the first to remember that this was all Paul’s fault. She turned, locked eyes with him, and then like a brittle volcano began to harp.

  “This is all your fault.”

  “I didn’t mean . . .”

  “That boardinghouse was as important to this town as any rock or tree could ever be,” she interrupted.

  “I only . . .”

  “You had your chance to push for that shelter, and you were turned down. Why couldn’t you have left well enough at home?”

  “If you’d let me speak,” Paul said, trying to act in control.

  “She’s right, Paul,” Pete agreed.

  “She’s more than right,” Frank hollered. “She’s dead on.”

  “I think you’re all jumping to conclusions,” Paul tried.

  “I think you’re right,” Ed admitted.

  “Let’s just . . .”

  “Let’s just nothing,” Frank argued. “You burned down the place I got my first kiss in. Under the stairs, behind the boiler, next to the mops.”

  “That’s where Feeble taught me how to play harmonica,” Jeff Titter reminded us.

  “It’s where Bishop Watson proposed to me,” Sister Watson spoke. “Right after I chipped my tooth on that high stair.”

  “It was my home,” Roswell cried.

  Paul was in trouble.

  In times past whenever Paul was about to be lynched by the town, he had simply run off towards the Girth, jumped on a raft, and paddled across. This time, however, the river was just too deep and too wide. I suppose that’s why we all couldn’t believe it when he did just that. Paul pushed through Teddy Yetch, bowled over Tindy MacDermont, and ran straight for the river. There were no rafts anymore due to the fact that the river had overflowed the shores and washed all of them away. So Paul ran past the catapult and dived straight into the water.

  Toby and I gave chase, but neither one of us jumped in after him. There was no way I was going to take another ride down Hallow Falls. I had done it on my mission and had no desire to do it again. The moving water growled at us as we stood on the ground, searching for any sign of Paul.

  “Is that him?” Toby pointed across the water to what looked to be a moving branch or person on the other side and well down the way.

  “Could be.”

  “So he’s all right?”

  “If that’s him,” I answered. “I can’t tell for sure.”

  Whatever it was we saw slipped behind a rock and out of view.

  “What’ll we do?” Toby asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  It was not shaping up to be a very good day in Thelma’s Way.

  31

  You Remind Me Of . . .

  Life was so much more bearable if he could sleep through the day and then roam at night. Today, however, the smell of smoke had pulled him from slumber. He quietly worked his way towards the meadow.

  The fire was gone by the time he arrived. So was the big house that had once sat right in the middle of the field. He imagined the size of the flames that must have consumed the place. In his mind he saw the red tongues of fire licking the place down to nothing. The thought of red made the tiny gears in his large head whiz and click. He pulled out the crumpled picture and stared until it hurt.

  He worked his way back to the deep spot where he hid and tried to fall back to sleep.

  32

  Patience is a Big Stinking Pain and Anyone Who Tells You Otherwise is Simply Repeating What His Mother Drilled into Him

  Cindy was growing sick of this. There was not a single fiber in her body that could tolerate much more of what was happening.

  What was happening?

  Nothing.

  Sure, something had burned, and someone had maybe drowned, and blah, blah, blah. It all had so painfully little to do with her. She couldn’t take being Hope much longer. It was torture not being able simply to wring Trust by the neck until he pledged his perfect love for her. This waiting and playing coy was for the stupid birds. And Grace! Come on, how was it that the man of her dreams could even be interested in her?

  Cindy was sick. She tugged on the Ace bandage that what’s-his-name had wrapped on her wrist. It was dirty and smelled of sweat. She unwrapped it and tossed it in a heap on the floor.

  “This place is a sloppy hole of dysfunction.”

  Cindy cracked her knuckles and bit her lip. It was time to step things up a notch. She was not content to wait around any longer. Trust would be hers by next week, or he would be no one’s.

  Cindy picked up her book, Passion’s Pupil, and read the last two paragraphs:

  Grade school teacher Marguerite Bookworth smelled the scent of her man, Michael, as he walked past her in the hallway of their apartment building. His hair seemed to cry out to her, “Touch me.” His ringless finger reminded her of his two former wives who had both died tragic deaths exactly six months apart—both deaths involving small appliance fires. True love had truly eluded him until now. But times were changing, for she was the pill that would make him whole, the drug that would taint his blood with the taste of Marguerite. But first she would need to cleanse his palate of Mandy, the beautiful artist in apartment 2-B who was currently after him.

  Marguerite’s plan was simple. She would enlist the help of the building’s slow-witted superintendent to coax Michael down to her empty school at night. There, Marguerite would be waiting. When Michael arrived, she would cling to him until the superintendent got Mandy to come by and catch them together. Mandy would never trust Michael again, and with Mandy out of the picture, Michael would be all hers.

  Cindy sighed and held the page to her chest. Then she smiled a wicked smile. She dog-eared the corner for later use.

  33

  Bulking Up

  I suppose you could say that Thelma’s Way was experiencing technical difficulties of the worst kind. We had
lost our center, and everyone was in a funk. The destruction of the boardinghouse had been a real blow, and with Paul gone, nobody had anyone to take it out on. Most people felt confident, however, that they would eventually get a chance to yell at him. No one believed for a second that Paul was dead. They all felt within their vengeful hearts that he would be back.

  With no boardinghouse, Roswell was forced to move in with Toby, and I somehow ended up in the large tree house that Slippy Rockwell had built. Slippy was a hermit who had passed away a few years back. He had been a big man best known for his ability to whistle through his ears—unfortunately, I had not had the good fortune of hearing him do so for myself. Before Slippy died he had built a huge and elaborate tree house in a couple of the trees back behind Lush Point. He had grown paranoid in his old age and wished to construct an abode that bears and ne’er-do-wells couldn’t easily bother. The tree house had remained mostly empty since his death. Sybil Porter had tried to live there, but she kept getting motion sickness whenever the wind swayed the trees. Sister Lando had tried to turn the tree house into an herb store, but she quickly found that her older clientele didn’t really enjoy scaling the twenty-foot ladder to procure herbs for their arthritis and other ailments. Sister Heck had tried to run a sewing store there, but again, those interested just weren’t interested enough to climb for it.

  It wasn’t a bad place to live. I wished it came with running water and other facilities, but I had learned to live without those when I had first arrived here—I could adjust again. Despite my new home, I did miss the boardinghouse. The meadow looked so bare without it. The burnt ruins were as painful to look at as anything I had ever seen in my life. Wad had given Digby a leave of absence from his hair education to let him help Ed and Pete clear the ashes and remains away. They, along with a number of other folks, had kept at it the last couple of days with great fervor. It wouldn’t be long before all that was left of the town’s soul was an empty spot of nothing.

  To make things worse, the Girth continued to swell. It had grown so big that it was now seeping under the Knapworths’ far wall. It had also saturated the lower part of the cemetery enough to cause a number of caskets to pop up and float off downstream, including Feeble’s full one and Roswell’s empty one. I thought that everyone would have been sick about this, but the general reaction was simply: Why worry, since those affected are dead and all.