“Not what you’re used to, huh?” Will asked, hauling my stuff up to the front stoop.
“It will be an adventure,” I told him. “Like the Swiss Family Robinson . . . only instead of a tree house, I’ll be encapsulated in a little metal tube.”
He chuckled. “Are ya sure you don’t want to come out with me for that chicken-fried steak? I might even be willin’ to throw in a piece of pie.”
“I appreciate it, but I’ll have to take a rain check. Thank you for the ride, and the keys.” I tugged them from his hands.
“You’ll regret it,” he called. “Junie—the cook at the Dinner Bell—never makes the same pie of the day twice.”
“I’ll just have to learn to live with it. To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development,” I told him. When he gave me a blank look, I added, “It’s another Oscar Wilde quote. I studied him, too.”
He clutched at his considerable chest. “Smart and pretty, a double threat.”
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” I assured him. “Thank you for all of your help today.”
“Well, what sort of mayor would I be if I just left flamin’ cars on the side of the highway? You’ll check in with me if ya have any problems at the hall?”
“Definitely,” I told him. “I’ll be in touch.”
He grinned cheekily. “A guy can dream.”
“Do you always have to have the last word?” I called after him. “Is this a thing with you?”
He smiled as he backed out of the trailer door. I thought he was going to shut it behind him, when he suddenly stuck his head back through the frame and said, “No.” Then he slammed it behind him.
I hadn’t even begun to unpack when the knocks on my trailer door started. My neighbors had turned out in droves to welcome the “new girl” to the neighborhood. Lula, a sweet-faced woman with eye shadow the color of radioactive plums, presented me with a homemade chicken potpie she’d frozen for a rainy “I don’t feel like cooking” day. Another, Ina Jane, gave me a casserole that consisted of tater tots, cream of mushroom soup, and cut-up hot dogs. And the third, Rosalee, sheepishly presented me with a five-pack of Bud Light from her fridge.
“Sorry, I didn’t know you were comin’,” she said. “Ina’s just really good at throwin’ casseroles together last-minute.”
“Velveeta and ‘cream of’ soups work kitchen miracles,” Ina said with a wink.
On a better day, I would have invited them all to sit down and share my Bud Light. But I was hot and tired and still smelled like burned tires. I was not in a hostess frame of mind. After asking just a few slightly invasive questions, the ladies excused themselves from my “living room” and assured me we’d all get to know each other better when I wasn’t so “torn up.”
I would ponder exactly how insulted I should be over being called “torn up” at another time.
Sipping a beer, I checked what clothes I had left for smoke damage. Most of my wardrobe consisted of sundresses that Kelsey had forced on me or T-shirts I’d bought at thrift stores. My shoes were old rain boots or Keds. When combined with my (completely necessary and prescribed) black-rimmed glasses, Kelsey called it my “nerd goddess” look. She would know—she was their secret queen.
I used my tiny shower stall to triple-wash my hair. I set up my laptop and my mobile wireless hotspot. I unpacked my toiletries. I did everything I could to make the trailer slightly more homey than the average motel room before collapsing onto the mattress.
My last thought before drifting off to sleep was that I hadn’t eaten anything since those diner waffles early in the morning. But since I wasn’t in the mood for frozen potpie or hot-dog bake, I decided against getting up to cook something for myself in my almost-an-Easy-Bake oven. I’d had enough fires for one day.
4
In Which I Solve the Problems of the World with WD-40
I rolled out of bed and flopped face-first onto the floor.
“Ow.”
Sadly, this was a pretty normal occurrence for me the first few mornings in a new location. I never could remember how much rolling room I had from one bed to the next, so I always overestimated or forgot which side to exit on.
I lifted my face from the nubby beige carpeting and groaned. Every muscle in my body felt like an overstretched rubber band. On top of that, I hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours. My stomach was so empty it was practically rubbing against my spine.
I pushed up from the floor and stumbled into the dollhouse-size bathroom to turn on the stall shower. The previous night I’d learned a lot about this tiny island of bathing efficiency. The good news was that the lack of extensive plumbing meant the water heated up quickly. The bad news was that the water heater was so small that the hot water ran out just as quickly, which meant I couldn’t linger under the water to put off whatever I had to accomplish that day.
Despite Sadie’s assertions that the mindless masses fell under my “princess spell” almost instantly, meeting new people always made me nervous. So I tried too hard to win people over right out of the gate. I overcompensated for my nervousness by being even more upbeat and chipper, which seemed to either charm people or make them dislike me with all of their cynical might. So I dialed up the cheerfulness even more to win them over—it was a vicious cycle. So far, my integration into Mud Creek society had been colored by shock and car fires. How would it change when my old patterns started to pop up?
I talked a sunny-side-up game, but I didn’t quite walk the walk. Part of me wanted so badly to believe that people were inherently good and decent and that things would always work out for the best. But my realistic side knew it didn’t always work out that way. Even so, I’d had unrelenting optimism beaten into my central nervous system from birth. There were times when not trying to find the silver lining of a situation left me feeling nauseated and a little dizzy.
My dad was a frustrated army lieutenant whose career had never quite reached the heights he’d expected. He had accepted any transfer that came his way, sure that the next base would be his big break, where the military would finally recognize his leadership potential and promote him all the way to his first star. I attended seven schools in twelve years. There were times when I would come home from the bus stop to find my mother in full-on packing mode, with this insistent, manic smile on her face, declaring that this was going to be the last move, this time was going to be different. Daddy would finally find people he could work with. Mama would finally find a group of officers’ wives who appreciated her. I would finally make some friends at school.
And somehow, we always ended up moving again. But if I pointed this out to Mama, groundings and the silent treatment ensued. My parents simply rolled right over any concerns or protests I had, just like they did with everyone else. No one knew better than they did. No one had your best interests at heart like they did. So going along with this volcanic flow of delusional optimism became an act of self-preservation. By the time we moved to Fort Campbell during my senior year, I didn’t make a peep. My father finally retired from the military right after I got my bachelor’s degree, and my parents settled down in Russellville, where their personalities guaranteed that they joined and left at least two churches a year.
My parents just didn’t mix well with others. They didn’t understand why the people around them didn’t appreciate their advice, their guidance, their brilliance. And they definitely didn’t understand how I could be happy in a job where there was no opportunity for advancement, not even a decent, upwardly mobile salary.
After getting my master’s degree in history and a specialty degree in folk studies from Western Kentucky University, I had bounced around different museums across the state. I’d gotten myself into a little bit of trouble by suggesting improvements to the displays and exhibits, which I could only blame on a genetic tendency to offer unsolicited advice. I aggravated the director of the Abrah
am Lincoln Birthplace Museum so much that she sent me away on the mobile exhibit for the summer, traveling from city to city with a semi truck full of second-tier Lincoln artifacts.
At the time, I preferred the mobile lifestyle. Too much time in one place made me twitchy. So I wrote a proposal and was given an annually reviewed position through the Kentucky Commission on Tourism. I’d held down the same job for three years, a personal record. And I’d made real friends, who were able to get to know the real me. After Kelsey had a long sit-down talk with me, subtitled “You Seem Like a Really Nice Girl, But If You Don’t Stop Pushing Splenda on My Coffee Breaks, I’m Going to Snap You Like a Twig,” we developed a system of signals for my various levels of annoyingness, the most severe of which was Kelsey miming snapping a twig. For the record, Kelsey was an incredibly intimidating mime.
I sighed. Picturing Kelsey in mime gear meant it was time to get some coffee in me.
I slipped into jeans and a blue Morrissey T-shirt I’d nicked from a wannabe travel writer obsessed with manga, grabbed my bags, and stepped outside . . . and suddenly remembered I didn’t have a car. I’d put off dealing with this the previous night, focusing on mundane details I could control instead of the mountain of things I couldn’t.
I plopped down on the concrete steps. I didn’t know what to do. Fred said there wasn’t a rental company in town. I didn’t know anyone in town. I didn’t want to introduce myself to my new neighbors in the park by bumming a ride.
I chewed my bottom lip, staring out at the dozen or so trailers that comprised Fernwood. It did look rather pretty, surrounded by fluttering green birch branches, with the early-morning light reflecting off the curving metal of the trailers. I was surprised at the quiet, even for seven o’clock on a Saturday in June. There were plenty of bikes and toys lying around the units, but no kids playing yet. No grown-ups getting up to drag themselves to work or on errands. Was Mud Creek the sort of place where families watched Saturday morning cartoons together over cereal? Part of me hoped so. Lucky Charms and Smurfs were tied to some of my favorite childhood memories.
I sighed again and kicked a rock with the toe of my shoe. Unreliable transportation. Disappointing housing. Backwoods traveler’s jet lag. Just a few of the many reasons I was getting a little tired of living on the move. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy seeing different parts of the state and speaking to students. Heck, contact with students was one of the best parts of my job. But I was getting to the point in my life where I wanted permanence. I wanted a home of my own, not just space carved out in a friend’s apartment. I wanted to be able to start a real relationship with someone without warning my boyfriend that he wouldn’t be seeing me very often because of my hectic schedule. I wanted to live like a grown-up.
But these things would require a promotion. At this point, I was barely making enough to fund my transient, makeshift lifestyle. I’d asked Sadie about a promotion to a full-time in-office position on a few occasions, but so far she and her boss, marketing director Ray Brackett, hadn’t been able to find the funding in our ever-shrinking state-sponsored budget . . . or maybe my work just hadn’t impressed her enough. I wasn’t sure. Sadie had Ray’s ear, so to speak. He trusted her judgment implicitly. Conversely, if she decided I was a liability, I would be ejected from the office faster than you could say, “seeking other opportunities.” If Sadie decided that I was ready for a full-time position, he would offer it. I just had to convince her that it was the right time.
I heard the crunch of tires over gravel and turned to see a battered yellow-and-Bondo-colored VW Beetle pulling through the trailer park entrance. And Joe Bob, waving vigorously from behind the wheel. He grinned madly as he pulled to a stop in front of my stoop, his eyes nearly disappearing in the deep creases in his face.
“Hey, Miss Bonnie!” he called.
“Hey, Joe Bob,” I said, in a softer tone, trying to keep my sleeping neighbors in mind. “How are you this morning?”
“Well, ma’am, Fred and I didn’t feel right about you bein’ left without any kind of car, so I thought I would bring this by for ya,” he said, gesturing to the Bug.
My mouth dropped open. “I can’t let you give me a car. That’s too much!”
“I’m not really givin’ ya a car, Miss Bonnie. It’s just something I put together usin’ spare parts from the scrap yard. Sort of an experiment, just to see if I could get it to run. I’m not usin’ it right now. And you need a car, so here ya go. It’s registered and insured, I promise. Fred made me. Otherwise, he woulda kept takin’ the spark plugs out when I wasn’t lookin’.”
Joe Bob’s round face held such an earnest expression, an almost childlike glee at being able to share something with me. How could I say no to that face? “Joe Bob, this is so nice of you. Really, it is.”
“Least I can do for ya when you’re gonna polish up the old McBride place. I hate that it’s all broken down. They used to make the best cheeseburgers in Mud Creek. You’d go to a concert and there’d be a line at the grill stretching all along the back wall. And it would stay that way all night. Don’t know if you could tell, lookin’ at me, but I love a good cheeseburger.” He rubbed his enormous belly and winked at me. “Don’t suppose you’re goin’ to open the grill up again, are ya?”
“No, I’m not really polishing up the building. I’m just saving some of the things inside. Posters, instruments, costumes, that sort of thing. I’ll clean them and send them to museums all around the state so they can display them.”
“Eh,” he grunted. “You can’t win ’em all. Now, are ya gonna take the car or not?”
“Only for a few days, and I’ll pay you fifty dollars a day for a rental fee.”
“Aw, no, I couldn’t take money for that, Miss Bonnie.”
“Just to cover the wear and tear on the car,” I insisted.
“Twenty-five,” he said, shaking his head.
“Thirty,” I responded, leveling him with stern eyes.
He pouted. “You’re makin’ a serious face, so I should just say yes. You win.” He reached out and shook my hand.
“Yay! I love to win.” I jumped up and down, clapping my hands. “Can I give you a lift into town?”
The FrankenBug ran surprisingly well, and Joe Bob was even chattier when he wasn’t the one driving, pointing out the grocery, the “good” gas station, and the local clinic as we bounced along the highway into town. I dropped him off at the towing station, along with my first “rental” payment. I was in a considerably better mood as I retraced my steps to the music hall.
I’d only managed to get about five miles out of the town proper when I heard a siren blaring behind me. I looked into the rearview mirror and saw a police car with lights flashing. I checked my speedometer, frowning when I saw that I was exactly two miles under the speed limit. And then I remembered that I didn’t know where the insurance and registration paperwork were located.
“Clearly, I am not meant to drive on this particular assignment,” I said with a sigh, pulling the FrankenBug over to the shoulder.
The squad car parked behind me, and a shapely blond lady stepped out. If I hadn’t noticed that she was carrying an actual firearm at her side, I would have sworn that this woman was just an extraordinarily well-dressed stripper. She had long legs and a tiny waist that somehow made even the brown polyester uniform pants look good. Her skin was peaches-and-cream and was combined with warm brown eyes and a naturally pink pout.
If not for the whole “armed officer of the law” thing, I would have hated her on behalf of less-hot women everywhere.
I rolled down my window and called out, “Ma’am, I don’t think I was speeding.”
The lady deputy chuckled, grinning widely under her mirrored aviators. “Oh, no, hon, I recognized the car. Joe Bob said he was going to lend it to you. I just wanted to say hi! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You used li
ghts and sirens just to say hi?”
“Well, in a town like this, a girl’s got to make her own fun.”
I giggled and extended my hand out the window. “Bonnie Turkle.”
She shook it with a firm, tight grip. “Sheriff Jenny Lee Felter. I hear that you’re going to be sorting through the chaos over at the music hall. I just wanted to say, I’m glad you’re here. You should find some really interesting stuff in there.”
“I hope so. I’m starting on it this morning,” I said, hoping that would be a polite hint that I would like to move along and not be seen being questioned by the sheriff on the side of the road as Mud Creek residents drove past on their way into town.
“Oh, sure, sure,” she said, slipping a business card into my hand. “Here’s my card. If you ever run into trouble out there, just give me a call. Or if you just want to go out for a beer. It can get kind of lonely around here if you haven’t known everybody in town since birth. And it would be nice to visit with someone who’s been in the outside world lately. Will says you’re good people. That’s enough for me. ”
“Remind me to thank Mayor McBride for his endorsement.”
Jenny Lee snickered, sliding her sunglasses up her nose. “Well, he doesn’t give it to everybody, just the pretty ones.”
She patted the top of the FrankenBug, which I assumed was my signal to drive away. I honked lightly as I pulled off the shoulder and onto the road.
It was nice of Will to try to lay groundwork for me with people around town, to make my transition easier. But I couldn’t help wondering what he’d been saying, and to whom he’d been saying it.
The gravel of the McBride’s parking lot crunched under my tires as I slid to a stop in front of the building.