They loved me, but mostly they loved each other. They laughed and talked, often in some kind of brief shorthand that went over my head. I always felt like I intruded in their lives. I think that’s why I never married. I wanted my parents’ kind of completeness, and so far I hadn’t found a woman who offered it.
My father was a good man, but stubborn. Everything in his world was black or white. That made it simple for him.
It was never simple for me. My life evolved in shades of gray until the night ten years before the fire. The night of the 1971 Mossy Creek High School Homecoming Game. The Mossy Creek Rams were playing the Bigelow Wildcats; we always played Bigelow at Homecoming. Traditionally, the boys from Bigelow tried to capture our ram mascot. At that time, the mascot was a big wooly ram named Ulysses from a herd Pop kept. In return for the Bigelowans’ effort to kidnap Ulysses, we Creekites painted the big rock in front of their high school. It was supposed to all be in fun, but even then, it was serious business.
That was the night I became Ed Brady in my own right. It was my job to defend Ulysses. I didn’t. Let’s just say it was my first experience with a blond decoy named Buffy who was wearing Charlie cologne and a mini-skirt.
While I helped her change her tire out on North Bigelow Road and accepted her thanks in the form of a kiss hot enough to peel the paint off the fender of her blue Mustang, the boys from Bigelow stole Ulysses from his stall in the parking lot at the high school. To my credit, I tried to do the right thing, later. Didn’t matter that the world never found that out. I knew.
I couldn’t tell Pop and Mama what really happened; I’d sworn to keep it secret. Pop didn’t ask much but didn’t forgive much, either. Maybe he thought when I was ready to admit my weaknesses, I’d explain. I never did.
When I won a scholarship in track to a small college out West, I left home and didn’t look back. It took me a while to get myself together, realize I had a talent for computer programming, and get a real job. To begin with, I was happy to be a ski bum, but eventually I partnered with some fellow computer gurus and found my calling. Brady, Inc. developed computer games. Our business grew by bits and bytes. Then by leaps and bounds. I had money. I had women.
But I had no family.
Once Mama’s health started to fail, Pop stopped farming to stay close to her and protect her. At first, even her friends in Mossy Creek didn’t realize her mind was going. Pop feared she’d wander away from home and get hurt. I didn’t know just how sick she was until I came for a visit.
“Who are you?” she would ask me, wringing her hands. “What are you doing in my house?”
She still knew my father, but she’d become so anxious at the sight of anyone else that I stayed away. That was hard.
Then Mama had a stroke, and she had to go into the Mossy Creek nursing home, Magnolia Manor. I called and offered my help, but Daddy said he could handle it. I knew he couldn’t afford her care. Sending the nursing home money so that he wouldn’t know how much it cost was something I could do.
Snow Halfacre, the administrator at Magnolia Manor, had been in my class at the high school. We’d had a little romance between us in the tenth grade, and a friendship survived it all those years. She handled my secret payments to Magnolia Manor and kept me informed about Pop and Mama. When Pop had his cataracts removed, she told me the surgery helped his sight but the life just went out of him. He got himself back and forth to the nursing home to see my mother and played Santa for the town, as usual, but other than that no one could get him out of his house, much.
Then Mama died.
It was as if fate had meant for her to leave and me to go back to Mossy Creek. My partners and I had just sold our company to an international media conglomerate, leaving me a reasonably wealthy man with plenty of time and money to do whatever I wanted.
Including go home.
So I came to bury my mother and take care of my father.
“I don’t think he should be living alone, anymore,” Snow told me. “Why don’t you consider moving him to our assisted living apartments?”
“Could he bring Possum?” I asked. “Possum is living with the Blackshears at their vet clinic, for now. But I think Pop really wants him back.”
She sighed and shook her head. “No dogs.”
“No Pop, then,” I said.
So I was right back where I started. Maybe the town motto ought to be, ‘Ain’t going no where, and even if you leave, you can’t help but come back.’ I decided I’d get the farm spruced up, stick around for the reunion events in November, and—with any luck—by the first of the year, I’d get Pop settled in some apartment that allowed old hound dogs, too, and I’d move on.
Whoever it was that said, The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray, obviously had me, Pop, and Mossy Creek in mind, beginning with the sales agent at Mossy Creek Mountain Real Estate, Inc.
Farm Land, Log Homes and Mountain Retreats For Sale.
The sign outside the office said nothing about selling memories, too
* * * *
“I’m interested in farm land,” I told the good-looking brunette sitting behind a fake mahogany desk. Both she and the elegant desk looked out of place among the dried corn stalks and pumpkins decorating the fake cedar cabin interior.
She held out her hand and gave me a welcoming smile. “I’m Julie Honeycut, and I’m sure we can find what you want.”
I hated to disappoint her. “You misunderstand. I’m not buying. I’d just like to know what land is selling for up here in the north end of Bigelow County these days.”
She frowned. “Oh. Mr. Brady, I’d heard you were staying.”
“You heard the wrong gossip, then.”
Her mouth flattened, and she turned to her computer without another word. Thirty minutes later, I learned that my father’s rolling two hundred acres with its mountain views was one of the most valuable pieces of land in Mossy Creek. “You do know that the Bank of Bigelow County threatened to foreclose on his land last year,” Julia said, scowling at me as if I’d willingly let my family farm go to bankers.
My blood froze. “No, I didn’t know that.”
She smiled.
* * * *
I headed for the Mossy Creek branch of the Bank of Bigelow County, where I deposited money to pay two years’ worth of back taxes. On the way out, I was intercepted by Amos Roydon. Amos was nine years younger than me. He’d been just a lanky kid when I left town. Now he was in his mid-thirties and the police chief. He’d come back from a career as a cop down in Atlanta. He’d learned to fit in, again. I envied him.
“You planning to stick around for a while, Ed?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You know your father needs you. He’s just too stubborn to admit it.”
“He’s always been that way.”
We talked a few minutes, and I started to move on.
“I suppose you’ve heard,” Amos said. “Ham Bigelow is planning to run for President in two years.”
I stopped cold. “Bribing half the state to elect him governor wasn’t enough?”
Amos smiled and left me standing there in a state of shock.
Ham Bigelow. I had bad memories of him. And that was an understatement.
I drove down to Bigelow in a foul mood. At the County Tax office, I learned an even more surprising truth; Ham’s cousin, John Bigelow—husband of Mossy Creek Gazette publisher Sue Ora Salter Bigelow—had loaned Pop money with the farm as collateral. Although John was a lawyer, he had taken over management of the bank as a favor to Ham, who was busy governing the state. Pop had missed the last few months of payments, but John hadn’t foreclosed. I headed straight for the Bank of Bigelow County’s main office.
“Good to have you back, Eddie,” John said. “Your dad needs you.”
“Call me Ed,” I said.
“Sorry. Ed. Are you going to stay?”
“Hadn’t planned on it, but now, I don’t know. Why haven’t you foreclosed on the farm, John? Excuse me for p
utting it this way, but Bigelowans in general, and the family’s banking presidents in particular, aren’t known for being kind-hearted. Your cousin’s still running this bank behind the scenes, even though he’s governor. And there’s no love lost between him and my father. Or me.”
John looked out his office window, made a show of straightening some papers on his desk, then brushed an invisible bit of dust off a framed desk portrait of Sue Ora and their teenage son, Will. John was a prominent Bigelowan married to a prominent Creekite, with a mixed-blood son to bind them. Maybe he had a conscience. “I talked with Ham. I told him I intended to let the mortgage ride while your father took care of your mother in her final days.” John smiled without using his eyes. “Ham is happy to help out an old friend. He just hopes you’ll . . . return the favor.”
“Ham and I were never friends, and you know it. Look, I appreciate your concern for my father, and I appreciate Ham’s, well . . . I’ll call it self-serving kindness, but I’ll take care of Pop’s debts myself. Today.” I pulled out my cell phone. With one call, I’d have my bank transfer the entire amount of the loan.
John nodded. “Good. I hoped you’d be back for homecoming, and I planned to talk to you about your father’s options. I would have called you, but I knew your father would reject anyone’s help. Even yours.”
I thanked him, paid off the loan, then headed back up to Mossy Creek with more questions than I started with. I didn’t know John well, but I knew Ham.
And Ham was running scared.
Governor Ham Bigelow and I were about the same age. Mid-forties. Thirty years ago he’d been a senior at Bigelow High when I was a junior at Mossy Creek. My own carelessness had involved me in a dark event that year at homecoming, and I’d lived with a guilty conscience ever since. I doubted Ham felt any guilt for his part—he wasn’t exactly a model of ethics—but he certainly didn’t want anyone to know the truth, either. So Governor Ham Bigelow had made certain the Bank of Bigelow County ignored my dad’s missed loan payments. Ham owed me. He was trying to keep me quiet.
“Do you know you forgot to pay last year’s taxes?” I asked Pop.
“Taxes? Got no children in school and don’t farm anymore. The government’ll have to give me a discount before I’m gonna pay taxes.” He paused. “Besides, I was takin’ care of your mama. That’s more important than taxes.”
“If you don’t pay the taxes, the government can take the farm.”
“Take my farm?” He snorted. “Bradys have been on this land since 1850, and I’ll be damned if the government will tell us to leave before we’re ready.” He stared at me. “’Course, if there ain’t no heir willing to stay on here after I’m gone, I guess Ham Bigelow and his kind will get the land, anyhow.” He continued to look straight at me for one of the few times since I’d been home. Then he shook his head and went to feed Possum, as if he’d answered his own question.
I followed him through the house. “Pop, I don’t know a thing about farming.”
“Pop? Sounds like breakfast cereal.”
He was right. I had a hard time being comfortable with what I called him, even in my thoughts. Away from home, he’d been Father. As a boy in the south, he was Daddy. Never Dad. Addressing him as Pop was too casual, and the look he gave me said plain enough that he wasn’t pleased. Maybe Ed fit better.
“All right, Ed,” I deadpanned.
He snorted, again.
Later, I watched as he sat on the back porch in his old rocking chair and looked off across the pasture behind the barn. Suddenly, I realized how hunched and thin he looked, his big body curved like an old bow. A stubble of white beard emphasized his sunken cheeks. I reached out to touch his shoulder, then stopped myself. Together, we looked at the Brady view of the world.
With the mountains behind, most of our land spread out to the southwest of the house toward Bigelow. To the north, there was a wedge of cedar trees and a wire fence heavy with trumpet vines between our property and Ida Hamilton Walker’s well-kept dairy pastures. The famous silo of Hamilton Farm peeked over our trees.
Our house was a typical seventy-five-year-old frame house with a tin roof and fading white paint. Across the front was a porch made of aging tongue-and-groove flooring. Nobody ever came in the front door, so it didn’t matter that they could have fallen through a rotten spot here and there. Visitors drove up the lane that circled around behind the house. They knocked on the back porch door and entered through the kitchen. The original long, open porch had been shortened by half when Pop added indoor plumbing and built a bathroom. But Pop, true to his traditions, hadn’t closed the well at the other end of the porch, near the kitchen. The galvanized bucket and tin dipper still hung on a hook on the post beside it. I could drink sweet, ice-cold Creekite water from the same well as my grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great grandparents.
My great-great-grandfather had built the house on a slight rise. “So he could hide up in the trees,” my mother had liked to tell me. What she called our “grand driveway” snaked through maples and oaks to South Bigelow Road. As a boy, when the leaves fell in the fall I’d climb onto the roof outside my window then down a hundred-year-old oak tree with limbs that made it easy for me to escape into the night.
Now I debated sitting on the roof, but decided I was a grown man and couldn’t. I went inside and cooked Pop some dinner.
“What’s this?” he asked, staring at one of Mama’s old blue willow plates filled with something besides pork chops, turnip greens, and cornbread.
“Pasta covered with cheese and sun-dried tomato sauce.” One of my ex-girlfriends had been a chef. She’d taught me to cook. There was a lot Pop didn’t know about his middle-aged son.
“Humph! What’s wrong with plain old macaroni and cheese?”
“That’s what this is,” I assured him. “Just with fancy ketchup on it.”
He sat down and ate a few bites, looked impressed, refused to say so, and refused a second helping. The next night I served him some fish and chips from Fish Stix, a take-out place down in Bigelow. “Not near as good as fried trout caught from Mossy Creek,” he said, while cleaning his plate.
“Sorry to see you could barely stomach the food, Ed,” I said.
* * * *
“Pop, there’s something I’ve been wondering about. You used to watch all the University of Georgia football games on TV. Never missed one. When your TV died you could have afforded a new one. Why not get a TV? Don’t you like sports anymore?”
Pop stared at me over the breakfast table. “I still got my radio. Don’t have to see it to listen.”
“Tell you what, I’ll buy you one of those big-screen televisions, so we can watch the Bulldogs and the Yellow Jackets in style.”
“My antenna got blown down two or three years ago.”
“I’ll pay to have you hooked up to Bigelow Cable.”
“I appreciate the offer, son, but I don’t want you to spend all your money on me. I can get along without a TV, just like I have been.”
“Don’t worry, Pop, I can afford it. Another thing—you know I’m driving a rental car. I’d like to get your truck fixed and turn the rental car back in.”
He looked surprised. “You want to drive my old ugly truck?”
“Sure.”
“Suit yourself. Craziness.” And he shuffled off into his bedroom and shut the door.
“This is war, Ed,” I said under my breath.
The next day I ordered cable, bought the big screen TV, and arranged for it to be delivered, then drove Pop over to the Blackshear Veterinary Clinic. It was a rare fall morning, warm with a crisp taste to the air. I felt curiously content, and that surprised me.
Hank Blackshear had made a lot of improvements to the place since the years when his father was the town vet. The house sparkled with fresh white paint. Ramps connected the office and the clinic so Casey could roll her wheelchair everywhere.
I parked at the side of the clinic, cut the truck’s engine, and opened the door slowly
. A frantic barking came from the office. Casey opened the office door, and Possom nearly fell all over himself in his frantic rush to get to Pop. The old hound jumped into the truck and climbed onto Pop’s lap, slobbering all over Pop’s face.
“Fool dog!” Pop snapped. “Sit down here like you got good sense.”
But Possum was having no part of any sense that didn’t allow him to show his joy in being reunited with his owner.
Casey rolled herself outside. “Hello, Mr. Brady. And you must be Eddie,” she said in a voice that sounded like sunshine. Strange. She was in her early twenties, too young to have known me at all when I lived in Mossy Creek. I felt old, suddenly.
“Ed,” I corrected and gently shook her hand.
“I kept telling Possum that Mr. Brady would be back for him, but he was beginning to doubt me.”
“Thank you for looking after Pop and for taking care of Possum.”
“That’s what we do in Mossy Creek—look after each other, whether we want to be looked after or not. Would you like to come in for coffee? Hank’s performing a minor surgery on Zeke Abercrombie’s cat right now. I’m manning the office.”
“Pop and I have a date with the Georgia-Georgia Tech football game on television this afternoon. Dad’s a dyed-in-the-wood Georgia fan. Me? Well, I’m a Tech man.”
Casey smiled. “Are you going to stick around Mossy Creek for a while?”
“Looks like it. At least for now.”
“Good.” She waved to Pop, reached up one hand, and Possum clambered to the truck’s open door and licked her fingers. “Mr. Brady, I’ve never seen a happier dog. And you’re looking pretty happy yourself.”
Reunion at Mossy Creek Page 32
