Pawing Through the Past (3 page)

4

“Now what?” Harry, hands on hips, sourly inspected her truck.

“Battery,”
Tucker matter-of-factly said.

Harry opened the hood, checked her cables and various wires, kept the hood open, then got back in the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. A click, click, click rewarded her efforts.

“Damn! The battery.”

“That’s what I said.”
The corgi calmly sat, gazing at the hood of the old blue truck.

The truck, parked in the alleyway behind the post office, nose to the railroad tie used as a curb bumper, presented problems. Many problems. With over two hundred thousand miles on the 1978 V-8 engine, this machine had earned its keep and now had earned its rest. Harry had investigated rebuilding the engine. She might squeeze another thirty thousand miles out of the truck with that. She’d gone through eight sets of tires, three batteries, two clutches, but only one set of brakes. The upholstery, worn full of holes, was covered by a plaid Baker horse blanket Harry had Mrs. Martin, the town seamstress, convert into a bench seat cover. The blue paint on the truck was so old that patches glowed an iridescent purple. The rubber covers on the accelerator and clutch were worn thin, too.

Mrs. Hogendobber, having changed into her gardening clothes, including a wonderful goatskin apron, walked across the alley from her backyard to the post office. Apart from singing in the choir and baking, gardening was her passion. Even now—being the end of a hot summer—her lilies, of all varieties, flourished. She misted them each morning and each evening.

“Miranda, do you have jumper cables?” Harry called to her.

“Dead again?” Miranda shook her head, commiserating. “And this such a beautiful afternoon. I bet you want to get home.”

Just then Market Shiflett stuck his head out of the back door of the store. “Harry, Pewter—half a chicken!”

“Uh-oh. I’ll pay for it, Market. I’m sorry.” Secretly, Harry laughed. The fresh chickens reposed in an old white case with shaved ice and parsley. Pewter must have hooked one when Market opened the case. She was clever and she knew Market’s ways, having spent her earlier years as his cat. “Did you see Mrs. Murphy?”

“Oh, yes.” Market nodded. “Aiding and abetting a criminal! I often wonder what your human children will turn out to be should you have them.”

“From the sound of it—chicken thieves.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pewter valiantly struggling to haul the half-chicken to the truck. Mrs. Murphy tugged on the other side of the carcass.

“Let me help.”
Tucker gleefully leapt toward them.

“No, you don’t,”
Mrs. Murphy spat, then saw Market.
“Pewter, quick, into the crepe myrtle!”

The two cats dragged the chicken under the pinkish-purple crepe myrtle.

“Here.” Harry dug into her pocket, handing Market a ten-dollar bill.

“It’s not a gold-plated chicken.” He fished in his pocket for change.

“Forget it, Market. You do plenty for me and I’m sorry Pewter behaved so badly.”

“Breathed her last?” He turned his attention to the truck.

“No, just the battery.”

“You’ve got cables, don’t you?” Miranda smiled at Market, who was getting a little thick around the middle.

“I do.”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll let you two recharge Old Paint here. I am determined to dust for Japanese beetles. And I’m enduring a grub attack, too. Maybe I should get some chickens. That would take care of that.” Then she saw the two cats crouched under the crepe myrtle, passionately guarding the plucked corpse. “Then again, I think not.”

Harry laughed. “Go on, Miranda. Market and I will fix this.”

As Miranda walked back to her lawn, Market hopped in his Subaru, next to a large new dumpster, backed out, maneuvering his car so that its nose was at a right angle to the blue truck. This saved Harry from attempting to coast backwards.

“The cables will reach.” He clipped the tiny copper jaws onto the battery nodes. “Off?”

“Yep.”

He switched on his ignition. “Just give it two minutes. Did you check for a loose connection?”

“I did.”

Market slid out from behind the wheel and came over to lean on the truck. “Harry, it’s time to bite the bullet. You’ll never get through another winter with this baby.”

“I know,” Harry mournfully agreed.

“Call Art.”

“I can’t afford a new truck.”

“Who said you had to buy a new one? Buy a used one.”

“Market, the bank won’t give me a loan on a used truck.”

“They will if it’s a recent one, like two or three years old.”

“Yeah, but then the price will be way up. It’s damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”

Market, hearing the distress level in Harry’s voice, put his arm around her shoulder. “Chill out, honey. Art is one of our buddies. He’ll help. He makes enough money off everyone else. Go talk to the man.”

“Well . . .” Her voice weakened. “I don’t want to be disappointed.”

“There are worse disappointments than that and we’ve both had them,” Market genially encouraged her.

He was right, too. They’d both had a few hard knocks along the way—his divorce being more acrimonious than hers, but no divorce is happy. He had one beloved daughter, now in college. Poor Market had married the day he graduated from high school. His senior superlative was Friendliest and that friendliness meant his daughter was born seven months after the wedding.

“You know, time forges bonds of steel, doesn’t it?” Harry said.

“What do you mean?”

“You, me, Miranda, Herbie, the gang. We know everything about one another—almost.” She smiled.

“Yep. I can’t believe we’re having our twentieth. I’m”—he hummed a minute, a habit—“half-excited and half-apprehensive. How about you?”

“Same.”

“Well, let’s see if this baby is fired up.” He walked back and cut his motor. “Crank her up.”

Harry hopped in. The engine turned over, then rumbled. “I think I’d better let her run for a few more minutes.”

“Good idea. How are you coming along with ideas for the reunion?”

“Okay. We had our first meeting yesterday. I’ve gotten everything written out for the calendars of local newspapers for all the major towns in the state. And I’ve written up ads to run the week before the reunion—ads with photos. I’ll have to fight BoomBoom for the money. The publicity part I can do with no problem. It’s coming up with some special moniker for everyone that’s driving me crazy.”

“Speak of the devil,” he said under his breath as BoomBoom, in a new 7-series BMW—to replace one wrecked during a theft attempt—rolled down the alleyway. She pulled over. The electrical windows purred as she lowered them.

“Hi.” BoomBoom’s voice purred like her windows.

Marcy Wiggins, Chris Sharpton, and Bitsy Valenzuela said “Hi” along with her.

Harry returned the hellos of the trio, all neighbors in the Deep Valley subdivision. Bitsy had married E.R. Valenzuela, a classmate who’d worked in Silicon Valley and moved back home last year to establish a cellular phone business. Since E.R. worked all the time no one ever saw much of him, including his wife. Marcy, a somewhat withdrawn woman, had married Bill Wiggins, who’d gone to medical school in upstate New York, returning to the University of Virginia Hospital for his residency in oncology. No one saw much of Bill either, but he was conge-nial when they did.

“How’d you do?” Market asked the ladies, who all wore golf clothes.

“Not bad. We played in the Cancer Society tournament, captain’s choice, and we each won a sleeve of balls. We came in seventh out of a field of twenty teams,” BoomBoom bragged.

Chris leaned out the back window. “I’ve never played at Waynesboro Country Club. It’s fun. I don’t think I’ll ever win boxwoods from Susan, though.”

“Keep trying. Anyone roped into working on our reunion deserves boxwoods,” Harry replied. “Do you all need mail?”

“No, everyone’s husbands did their duty.”

“Except for me,” Chris laughed.

“Stay single, girl, believe me. Marriage is work,” Marcy grumbled.

“Need your mail?” Harry inquired of Chris.

“No, I’ll get it tomorrow. We’re on our way to the big sale at Fashion Square,” Chris answered. “Next time you see any of us—complete makeover.” She crinkled her freckled nose.

The ladies waved and drove off.

“Cute, that Chris.” Market winked.

“Yes. She reminds me of someone but I can’t place it.”

“Meg Ryan in a pageboy.”

“You have made a study, haven’t you?” Harry poked him.

“Hey, she’s living in one of those new houses. She isn’t going to look at a guy who owns a convenience store. I’m realistic. She’s a stockbroker. Stockbrokers don’t date grocers.”

“The right man is the right man. Doesn’t matter what he does.”

“Bull. Especially from you.”

“You trying to say I’m not romantic?”

“You’re as realistic as I am and you always were. The Minors are solid people.” He referred to Harry’s paternal ancestors. She’d kept her married name, Haristeen.

“I wish someone in our family had had a head for business. Solid is good but a little money would have been wonderful.”

“Mim Sanburne’s got enough brains and money for the whole town, I guess.” He folded his arms across his chest. “This morning a lady came in as Mim was picking up a big rack of lamb, beautiful piece of meat. She’s having another one of her ‘dos.’ Anyway, these two ladies come in, tourists. They’d crawled over Monticello and Ash Lawn and they’d driven up to Orange to see Montpelier. They were on their way to Staunton to see Woodrow Wilson’s birthplace and they needed gas. Anyway, they wound up right here in the middle of Crozet. The tall one says, ‘This is kind of a dumpy town, isn’t it?’ The short one, maps under her arm, replies, ‘Yes.’ Then she looks at me and says, ‘Is there anything of interest here?’ Before I could open my mouth, Mim says, ‘Me.’ Gives them the freeze stare”—he rubbed his hands when he said that—“then opens the door, gets into her Bentley Turbo R, which these two ladies had no appreciation for, and drove off. ‘Well, who does she think she is?’ says the short one. ‘The Queen of Crozet,’ says I.” He chuckled. “Guess they complained all the way to Fisherville. By that time they were probably consulting their maps again.”

Harry laughed. “Crozet isn’t exactly picturesque, but I think the painting the kids did on the railroad underpass is pretty nice.” She leaned next to Market, shoulder to shoulder. “I guess we aren’t much to look at but the land is beautiful. That’s what counts. Buildings fall down and so do we. Can’t be but so bad.” She changed the subject abruptly, a habit of hers. “How do you get a name like Bitsy?”

“Probably the same way you get a name like Harry. You do something when you’re little and it sticks. You picked up more injured animals than anyone I know. You were and remain dappled with an interesting assortment of animal sheddings.”

“Which reminds me—give me a plastic bag so I can take that chicken home and boil it for them.”

He fetched a beige plastic bag from the store. They both approached the two cats and Tucker, squatting before them, making them crazy.

“All right, girls, hand it over.”

“Death to anyone who dares touch this chicken!”
Pewter growled.

“Don’t be melodramatic.”
The dog salivated.

Pewter lashed out, catching one of the corgi’s long ears. Tucker yelped.

“Pewter, hateful thing.” Harry knelt down. “Market, want your cat back?”

“Hell, no. She ate me out of my profit.” He knelt down beside Harry. “Pewter, you’re a bad cat.”

“Put one over on you.”

“Don’t brag, Pewter, let’s see if we can make a bargain.”
Mrs. Murphy swept her ears forward.
“Harry, if you don’t throw the chicken away, we’ll come out.”

“I’m going to cook the chicken.”

“She understood!”
Tucker was ecstatic.

The cats, equally amazed, released the chicken from their fangs and claws. Harry scooped it into the plastic bag.

“Come on.”

They slunk out from under the bush just in case Market was going to take a swat at them.

Harry put the chicken on the seat, which meant three animals gladly scrambled into the truck. “Market, ask that Chris out. She’ll say yes or she’ll say no. And you’ve heard both before.”

“I don’t know.”

“Hey, before I leave I forgot to ask you. Did you get a letter saying ‘You’ll never grow old’?”

“Yeah. In Crozet colors.”

“I checked the envelopes. Each of our classmates living here got the same envelope, but that doesn’t guarantee the same content. Thought I’d ask.”

“No name.” He stepped back from the driver’s window. “I thought it was a joke because it’s our twentieth reunion. Thirty-seven or thirty-eight, most of us, you know. I figured someone was panicking about turning forty.”

“I didn’t think of that. Susan thought it was a compliment. We look good. I guess.” Harry smiled her beguiling smile.

“I’ll take it.” Market smacked the door of the truck like a horse’s hindquarter and Harry drove off.

5

“Call to question.” BoomBoom, sitting behind a long table, raised her voice.

“What are you talking about?” Harry, failing at hiding her irritation, snapped.

“Robert’s Rules of Order. Otherwise we’ll descend into chaos.”

“BoomBoom, you’re full of shit,” Harry blurted out. “It’s just us. Susan, Market, and Dennis.”

Dennis Rablan, voted Best All-Round, volunteered to be in charge of the physical plant. That meant cleaning the gymnasium at Crozet High School, setting up the sound system for taped music, and working with the decorating committee. He’d gotten only one volunteer, Mike Zalaznik, to help him. Dennis was lazy as sin, so Mike would wind up doing most of the work.

Dennis had learned to ignore the whisperings behind his back about how he had squandered away the large nest egg his father had left him. He owned a photography studio in downtown Crozet. Weddings, anniversaries, high-school graduation, red-haired Dennis was always on hand toting two or three cameras. He was the one classmate who saw the other local classmates during the turning points of their lives.

The small group sat in a history classroom at Crozet High, the windows wide open to catch the cool breeze since that wondrous Canadian high still hung around.

“Harry, don’t lose your temper,” Susan admonished her best friend. “BoomBoom”—she turned to the chair sitting opposite them—“you don’t need to be so formal about this meeting. I don’t like it any more than Harry does. Let’s discuss ideas without the hoopla.”

“What do you think, Dennis?” BoomBoom smiled at Dennis, her big eyes imploring him.

“Well, I never learned Robert’s Rules of Order, I doubt I could contribute much, but then I might not be able to contribute much anyway.” He brushed a bright forelock back.

“Aren’t you going to ask me?” Market folded his arms across his chest.

“You’ll vote with Harry. You always do.”

“Because she has good sense.” Market laughed. “Look, you want to reshoot our senior superlative pictures and have them blown up life-size to place around the auditorium. I’m not opposed to the idea but how are you going to get the superlatives from out of town to duplicate the photograph?”

“Easy.” BoomBoom loved showing up Harry, although she told all who would listen that she bore Harry no ill will. After all, she had cavorted with Harry’s husband after they separated but were not yet divorced, so, morally Harry was in the right. BoomBoom thought that by recognizing this she’d be absolved of her misdeeds. But small-town memories were long.

“Well?” Susan leaned forward in her seat.

“We shoot the original locations, ask the away people to duplicate their pose in a studio, and we superimpose it on the location photograph. Dennis knows how to do it. Right, Dennis?”

“Right.”

“For how much?” Harry asked.

“Seven hundred dollars.” BoomBoom smiled broadly, as though she’d scored a coup.

“Mostly that’s for gas, chemicals, paper. There’s not much in there for me,” Dennis quickly added.

“You’d better not take it out of my publicity budget,” Harry warned.

“You don’t have a publicity budget.” BoomBoom dismissed the idea.

“Oh,
yes,
I do. I worked it out over the weekend and I’ve made copies for everyone. If you want a bang-up reunion then you’ve got to cast wide your net.” She handed out budget copies as Mrs. Murphy walked into the room, sitting down under the blackboard. “And don’t forget, the day after Labor Day weekend I have to send a mailing with details to each class member. That’s in the budget, too.”

The school, built in 1920 out of fine red brick with a pretty white four-columned main entrance, exuded a coziness that Mrs. Murphy liked. Pewter and Tucker peeped around the doorjamb.

“Are they finished yet?”
Pewter had found nothing in the hallway to entice her.

“No,”
Murphy replied. The other animals came in and sat next to her, watching the humans as humans watch animals in a zoo.

“Harry, we can go over your budget later. We need to nail down this superlative idea first.” BoomBoom barely glanced at the paper. BoomBoom herself had been voted Best Looking.

“I think it’s a good idea. And I assume you will blow up the original senior superlative photograph and put it next to the new one.” Susan nodded.

“Exactly! Won’t it be wonderful?”

“Not if you’re going bald,” Market moaned.

BoomBoom pounced on him. “If you’d take the herbs I drop off for you it would help, and if that doesn’t give you results fast enough, then get those hair transplants. They really work.”

“You’d look adorable,” Dennis teased, “with those plugs in your scalp. Just like cornrows.”

“I’ll get you for that, Dennis. You know why God made hair? Because not everyone could have a perfect head.”

“Three points for Market.” Harry chalked up the air.

“Are you going to agree with my plan or not?” BoomBoom folded her hands, staring at Harry.

“Yes. There, bet that surprised you, didn’t it?”

“Kinda.” BoomBoom sighed with relief. “Dennis, when can you start?”

“The sooner the better. How about this week?”

“Fine,” everyone said in unison. They wanted to go home. The weather was good and everyone had things to do.

“Let’s go.”
Pewter shook herself.

“Not yet,”
Tucker sighed as BoomBoom plucked another paper off her pile.

“We still don’t have a ball chairman. So many of us live in the central Virginia area—you’d think someone would volun-teer.”

“People are overcommitted,” said Susan, a shining example.

“If I can’t buttonhole someone soon, we’ll have to do it,” BoomBoom announced.

“No, we won’t.” Harry put her foot down.

“BoomBoom plucks Mom’s last nerve. Beyond that, what is it about people sitting in a meeting? Everything takes three times as long. Big fat waste of time,”
Murphy commented.

“Passing opinions is like passing gas. They can’t help it,”
Pewter giggled.

“Harry, are you still our liaison person with Mrs. Hogendobber so we don’t have any conflicts with their reunion?” BoomBoom ignored Harry’s small rebellion.

“Liaison person? I see her five or six days out of the week.”

“Thought I’d ask.”

“BoomBoom, what’s your idea for the decorating committee?” Susan had visions of a bare auditorium save for the senior superlative photographs.

“Marcy Wiggins and Bitsy Valenzuela have volunteered to help us if we help organize the Cancer Ball fund-raiser in December. I think Charlie Ashcraft will head the committee.”

“You can’t be serious,” Harry blurted out. “Charlie is such a womanizer.”

“He’s all we’ve got. Plus”—BoomBoom lowered her voice conspiratorially—“he’s already putting the moves on Marcy.”

“I hope you’ve warned her.” Susan frowned.

“She’s a big girl.” BoomBoom tidied the few papers on her desk.

“Boom, he’s one of the handsomest men God ever put on earth and utterly irresponsible. His idea of going slow is to ask a woman to bed after being introduced to her instead of before. Come on.” Harry leaned forward.

“She’s married.” Market waved off the subject, feeling Marcy’s wedding ring offered protection—sort of like garlic against a vampire.

“Unhappily,” BoomBoom demurred.

Dennis finally spoke. “Remember Raylene Ramsey and Meredith McLaughlin getting into a fight over Charlie at our fifteenth reunion?”

“I thought they’d kill one another.” Market checked his watch.

“I’d rather hoped they’d kill Charlie,” Harry laughed.

“I never could see what you girls saw in him.” Dennis laughed, too.

“Don’t look at me. I think he’s an asshole.” Harry held up her hands.

BoomBoom, having seduced Charlie in their youth, or vice versa, kept silent on this.

Susan jumped in. “I don’t mind that he had sex with both of them at our fifteenth. I do mind, however, that he saw fit to do it in the pool at the Holiday Inn. Just because it was three in the morning didn’t mean we weren’t awake.” Susan shook her head in disgust.

“Back to the subject. Charlie as head of decorating?” BoomBoom tapped the desk with her pencil. “And Marcy Wiggins and Bitsy Valenzuela,” she added.

“But they didn’t go to high school with us,” Market protested.

“Who cares, Market? We need workers. Chris was a big help at our meeting at my house.” Harry punched him lightly. “Anyway, they married into our class. That counts for something.”

“Chris says maybe she’ll meet some men. It’s hard for new people to fit in. We were born here. We never think about breaking into a new place,” BoomBoom replied.

“Did she really say she wanted to meet men?” Market whispered.

“Yes,” Harry whispered back.

“She’s not half bad,” Dennis whispered as he overheard them. This earned him a stern glare from Market.

“Are we okay on Charlie then?” BoomBoom pressed on.

The others looked at one another, then reluctantly raised their hands in agreement since no one could think of a substitute.

“One last item of business before we adjourn.” BoomBoom couldn’t help but notice how fidgety her classmates had become. “I received a bordered letter, run off at Kinko’s or KopyKat, I think. Anyway, it said, ‘You’ll never get old.’ Harry, did you send that out?”

“Why me?” Harry was surprised.

“You’re the postmistress. I thought you might be playing a practical joke on us.”

“No. It wasn’t me.”

BoomBoom looked from one to the other as each one shook his or her head. “Well, I think it’s in bad taste.”

“Boom, what are you talking about?” Susan asked.

“Yeah,” Market and Dennis said.

“‘You’ll never get old.’ I should think it would be obvious. We’ll never get old if we’re dead. Here I am trying to create the best reunion ever and someone is sending out a sick joke.”

“I didn’t take it that way.” Susan frowned since she didn’t like BoomBoom’s interpretation.

On that note the meeting broke up.

“It is odd,”
Mrs. Murphy mused to no one in particular.