“First of all, don’t pretend you belong anywhere near my team,” he shot back, edging close enough to tower over me. “You don’t know what it was like, growin’ up here. I know you’re supposed to remember your childhood in a hazy, golden sort of glow, but mine was special. Mud Creek was just awesome. All of the empty buildings?” He gestured toward the front window, toward the abandoned highway. “Main Street was filled with thrivin’ businesses. Hank’s Barber Shop, Reilly’s Pharmacy, the Dinner Bell. The houses were newer. People actually seemed to care about the town. And then the dog food plant closed. My mom said, ‘Don’t worry, we still have the mill.’ And when the mill closed, we still thought we were okay, because by then the GPS plant was up and runnin’. But you know how that turned out. People started gettin’ nervous, leavin’ town and movin’ to bigger cities or wherever they could find work that wasn’t being yanked out from under them every few years.
“I’m pissed it turned out this way because a handful of people who never set foot within city limits made decisions that hurt all of us. I’m pissed because this used to be a pretty great place to live and through no fault of our own, it’s not that way anymore. I’m pissed because I’m not sure I know how to fix it, or if it can be fixed. But I’m damn sure not goin’ to let somethin’ like sentiment get in the way. I’ve got to make it better for the people who are still here because they either can’t or won’t leave. Mostly can’t.”
My stomach sank. This wasn’t just a case of stubbornness or hurt feelings. Will was scared, and that was my fault. “I’m not trying to mess that up for you. Really, I’m not. I’m just saying that you need to diversify a little. When an entire town invests its existence in a single employer, that ride is going to come to an end. You’re only setting yourself up for this same cycle in another twenty or thirty years, if you’re lucky.”
He scoffed. “So you’re sayin’ we should reject the offer from ComfyCheeks?”
“No, I’m saying you shouldn’t put all of your eggs in one basket. Have you considered that the museum will bring jobs to the community? Between the renovations to the music hall and the increased tourism—”
“You’re talkin’ about a handful of jobs. I need hundreds. And pinnin’ all of our hopes on tourism is a
brilliant
strategy. That’s never gone wrong before,” he retorted. “All it would take is one bad season and we’d be right back where we started. We’ve never had tourist traffic in Mud Creek. Hell, since the interstate opened, we barely get any traffic at all. Trust me, no one is gonna drive all this way to go to some museum.”
“Because you’ve never had tourist attractions here before,” I insisted. “People came here from states away for the music hall. You don’t know that they wouldn’t do it again to see the museum.”
“History doesn’t put bread on the table, honey. Jobs do. Now, I’d love to sit around and talk about how awesome my family’s place was, back before it stopped makin’ money, like everything else in this town, but I’ve got other fish to fry.”
“Do you really want to spend the rest of your life making underwear?”
“It’s a good, honest job. And how would you like it if some perky little outsider came barreling in without an invitation and told you she was going to do you this huge favor that you don’t want, then tells you that you’re basically a terrible person for not wanting it?”
“I never said that!” I exclaimed.
“The ‘you’re a terrible person’ was silent.”
I reached behind the bar and pulled out a copy of the list of sponsors I’d contacted so far. “Look, I have a plan in place. This is a list of sponsors. I’ve asked half of them for help starting up the museum and the others for contributions to put toward renovations and moving costs. All I have to do is get enough contributions from these sponsors to move the building to another lot.”
“Which you don’t own,” he snorted, sticking the list in his pocket.
“Well, no, I haven’t found one yet. But again, if I could get enough sponsors—”
“So we’re supposed to just hope that you can get this all worked out in just a few months?”
“I can do this, Will,” I swore. “I know I can do this if you’ll just trust me.”
“Trust you?” he exclaimed. “You’ve pretty much guaranteed that will never happen again. I’ve spent too much time trusting crazy dreamers and their half-baked plans. I don’t need promises. I need real solutions. I’ve got real problems. And you just became one of them.”
With that, he stomped out of the music hall and brought his truck roaring to life. I winced as gravel spun out from under his tires and peppered the front window.
I wished Will hadn’t touched a nerve. I wished that his theories on my do-gooderism didn’t hurt my feelings. I wished I was as optimistic as I pretended to be.
10
In Which My Butt Catches the Bull by the Horns
Miss Martha was an attentive, if inconsistent, hostess. While she lived simply and didn’t seem to care much for the antiques in her home, her family had clearly had money at some point. My guest room was an opulent oriental-themed dream room circa 1956. The walls were papered in elaborate cherry blossom designs. My dressing table had a huge round stylized mirror with classic scrollwork, not to mention the sculpture of a young Japanese woman reclining on a bench. I slept in a dark maple four-poster with a shockingly small mattress. Between the size and the fact that the mattress sank down into the frame as I slept, I felt like I was sleeping in a dresser drawer. Clearly, beds were sized differently in the “old days.”
Miss Martha had small hips and shoulders that were slightly stooped, from a lifetime of bending over a sewing machine, I imagined. A pair of heavy black glasses hung from a beaded chain around her neck. The only makeup she wore was a raisin-colored lipstick, and that was only on special occasions. She believed in big Southern-standard meals: chicken-fried steak, tuna noodle casseroles, and smothered pork chops, served with vegetables that had lost their nutritional content long before they reached the table. And all meals were immediately followed by unfiltered cigarettes on the back porch. She was pretty nice about my not joining her in smoking.
Miss Martha was always sewing some project, usually something small she could keep in her lap while we talked. It was always something different; blue satin one day, black velveteen the next. And there seemed to be a lot of plastic boning involved. I never saw the completed projects, but I figured if she wanted to share them with me, she would. And I think she appreciated the fact that I didn’t pry.
I mostly kept to my room when I was home, so my time with Miss Martha was usually limited to mealtimes and late evenings after I got back from the music hall. I was working like a dog at McBride’s. I cleaned. I scrapped debris after I determined it had no historical value. I smuggled two student volunteers from a local community college history class and had them scrubbing the hamburger counter for extra credit, until the stainless steel was so clean we could have used it for food service again. I contacted Sadie’s approved fabricators to discuss designs for the displays. I placed orders for the TV screens and digital displays I would need. I hired a contractor to rewire the building to allow for the increased electrical use without an actual fire. I carefully removed posters from the walls and arranged for them to be shipped to my framers, along with whatever photos I could salvage. Featured photos and documents would go under specially lit Plexiglas cases. I catalogued artifacts as I found them and sketched out where they would be placed in the displays. I cleaned everything meticulously. I took note of every initial and heart I found carved in the paneling and made plans to frame and highlight them. “HH ♥ GS” and “LG loves EM.” And in the back of my head, I tried to shape these plans so I could pick them up and move them to another location.
I didn’t see Will for the better part of a week. But word of my “meddling” seemed to have spread throughout town. My debit card was declined at the Piggly Wiggly. The gas pumps magically stopped working when I tried to fill up at the Gas’n’Go. My application for a post office box was rejected. I didn’t know it was possible for that to happen unless you were suspected of smuggling drugs into the country. Apparently Norma, the postmaster, thought I looked shifty because I dared to fill out the application on a Saturday.
I was fortunate that Miss Martha, quote, “didn’t give a damn what everybody else thought” as long as I didn’t mess with the thermostat. But it still stung when I walked into the Dinner Bell and was met with total silence. You know that paranoid feeling you get when you walk into a room and a conversation suddenly stops? So much worse when multiplied by an entire room of people who develop a sudden, keen interest in their blue plate specials.
My stomach growled at the scent of frying bacon and hot bread wafting out of the cloudy glass front door. I claimed an empty booth, placed my order with an indifferent waitress named Chrissy, and sipped the strong black coffee . . . which I promptly spit back into my cup when I saw the front page of the
Mud Creek Ledger
at another table.
It was my face, bug-eyed and faintly swollen, as if I’d been crying. And there seemed to be smoke rolling behind me in the background. I bolted up from the table, digging through my pockets as I ran to the front of the diner, where a battered red metal box sold copies of the
Ledger.
I put a quarter in the slot, but like most things in this town, the machine was out of order, and it dropped open before I could complete my payment. I frowned down at the front page headline:
STATE TOURISM OFFICIAL DERAILS PLAN TO SAVE TOWN
. Somehow, Will must have snapped a photo during my roadside breakdown, because there I was above the fold, pale and stricken in blurry dot-matrix print.
Well, that explained why everybody had stopped talking when I walked into the diner. Clearly these people were
Ledger
subscribers. I wanted to cover my face with the newspaper, run to the car, and hide. And then cry. With ice cream.
And I almost did exactly that. I’d turned my feet toward my borrowed bug and was searching my pockets for the keys when I saw Will’s truck rumble down the street and circle into the Dinner Bell parking lot. I froze. If I left now, he would see me running, and he would know that he’d gotten to me. I couldn’t have that.
I tucked the paper under my arm, ignoring the stares of the other patrons as I scurried back to my table. My pancakes were waiting for me. I made a sort of meditation exercise out of buttering them and running rivers of syrup over the fluffy golden layers before I could face the newspaper story.
I took a bite, and then a deep breath, and skimmed the first paragraph.
Plans to build a factory that would provide more than three hundred jobs to the town’s underemployed citizens have been put on hold indefinitely as city officials deal with Kentucky Commission on Tourism historian Bonnie Turkle, who has appropriated the property as a historic landmark
.
And that was the nicest thing the reporter had to say about me. There were subtle digs at the uselessness of my project. How it would be very comforting to know that the town’s musical heritage was being preserved when its citizens had to move out of town to find employment elsewhere. How it would have been nice for the citizens to get some input in how said musical heritage would be treated. (Okay, they may have had a point there.) And there were several comments from random citizens doubting whether an “outsider” would be able to do McBride’s justice. The article stated that I was unavailable for comment. I didn’t recall getting any phone calls the night before.
Whoever R. M. Fitzpatrick was, we were going to have some words. And a lot of them were going to have four letters. Okay, I would have Kelsey write some down for me. She was way better at that sort of thing. Did he let Will dictate his story to him word for word? What happened to a free, unbiased press?
The story included a
“see also Letters to the Editor”
reference leading me to the editorial page. Will had written an open letter to each and every one of the sponsors on the list he’d taken during our argument, detailing why the town had no need for a music museum, the long and varied list of other uses the citizens had for the property, and the “underhanded, deceptive practices” I’d used to swipe the music hall property out from under him. The letter closed with,
“The people of Mud Creek don’t need Ms. Turkle’s meddling condescension. She believes she is trying to preserve some sort of mystical historical mecca, but in her ill-informed, addlepated liberal stubbornness, she is singlehandedly destroying an entire town.”
The editor’s note stated that the letter had been sent to each of the sponsors’ corporate offices, but that at the time of publication, Mayor McBride had not received any responses. I wanted to curl up in the booth and die. Or possibly tunnel my way out under the table. All of the people in this room had most likely read the article, and it was even more likely that they felt the same way Will did.
This is what happened when I messed around with the forces of karma.
“Don’t take the newspaper story too personal,” Jenny Lee told me, appearing at the end of my table. “When I was runnin’ for office, Rosemarie had the nerve to bring up my ‘inappropriate interactions with fellow students’ under the bleachers when we were all in high school. She’s a grudge holder, which is a shame when it’s combined with a long memory and overactive typing fingers.”
“Rosemarie?” I asked, tipping my head to the side.
“‘R. M. Fitzpatrick,’” she said, slinging her hip into the seat opposite me while making air quote fingers. “The reporter Will got to write the newspaper article about ya. Awful picture, by the way.”
Oh, so “he” was a “she.” And she was sort of mean. I felt a low-burning flash of irritation with Will for having done exactly what I suspected him of doing. It really sucked to have my expectations fulfilled. “Why would she do that for Will?”
Jenny Lee waved to an older waitress with a thin frame and fantastic black cat’s-eye glasses. The henna-haired waitress, whose name was Florence, poured Jenny Lee a cup of decaf and gave me a warm smile. “Honey, you may not hear this from a lot of people, but I’m glad you’re saving the old place. I had my first date at McBride’s. Jimmy Yancey. Boy had hands like an octopus. Just when I thought I’d blocked one, there was another on my rear.”
My eyebrows shot up. “I’m sorry.”
Florence smirked. “Don’t be. I married him.”
I stared up at her, unsure how to respond to that. She winked at me. “Well, I’m glad you’re here to save it, honey. Even if it does destroy the town’s chances of bouncing back.” She smiled blithely and drifted away from us, leaving me to drop my head to the table.
“I have a feeling I’m going to be getting a lot more of that sort of response,” I muttered into the Formica. She tapped a finger on my head, forcing me to look up at her.
“There you are. As I was sayin’, part of Rosemarie’s long memory includes holding on to hopeless crushes she had in high school,” she said as Will casually strolled into the diner, waving at his many admirers.
“And Will knew that,” I grunted, ripping open a cup of creamer, which splashed all over the table. I sighed, wiping up the spill with a few napkins. I tried again, only to lose my grip on the tiny plastic cup and send it flying across the table. Jenny Lee caught it with deft fingers, one corner of her lush mouth lifting.
“Taking out your frustrations on innocent nondairy products?” she asked.
“It’s better than taking it out on bystanders.” I glared up at the errant mayor as he sidled up to the counter and chatted casually with Fred, as if he weren’t late for an appointment with me, as if he couldn’t see me sitting here waiting for him.
“I don’t think so,” Jenny Lee said placidly, stirring sugar into her cup. “When I’m having a bad day, I just take the cruiser to the exit ramp, fire up the laser gun, and issue a few tickets to out-of-towners.”
“That seems . . . wrong.”
She shrugged. “Eh, new cruiser has to be paid for somehow. Besides, if they weren’t speeding, I wouldn’t have anything to ticket them for.”
“Moral relativism is a slippery slope, Sheriff,” I said drily as I stared holes into Will’s back.
Jenny Lee chuckled, glancing over her shoulder toward the counter. “Well, why don’t you go over there and drag Will’s butt to this table? I think you’ve taken out the best part of your anger on the creamer.”
“It’s cute that you think that,” I told her. Over the top edge of the paper, I watched Will wander through the diner glad-handing and being all “hail fellow well met.” He shook every hand, slapped every back, and had something clever to say to each and every diner. I couldn’t help but notice that like most of the female patrons, my waitress, Chrissy, became a lot less indifferent at the sight of the mayor. She straightened her maroon Dinner Bell T-shirt and fluffed her hair in anticipation of her turn.
I rolled my eyes. I’d been wrong before when I’d dubbed him the Roadside Cowboy and thought him a rare breed. I’d definitely met his type before, time and time again while bouncing around the state—cocky, self-assured, and absolute hell to deal with. How did they always end up elected to public office?
I grumbled into my pancakes, lamenting the inherent flaws in the democratic system and its tendency to attract douche bags, which prevented me from hearing Will’s work boots clomping across the tile floor.
“Hey, you saw the newspaper,” he said, as if he were discussing some front-page puff piece and
not
the possible implosion of my project and career.
“You are such an . . . A-hole,” I bit out as harshly as I could manage.
Jenny Lee eyed Will as she pushed up from her seat, carefully negotiating her gun belt around the edge of the table. “Don’t screw this up.”
“Nice hatchet job in the paper,” I hissed.
He tucked his sunglasses into the pocket of his blue flannel shirt. I really didn’t want to notice that the color made his eyes look like forget-me-nots. “I don’t write for the paper. Except for the letter to the editor, of course. I don’t control the press.”
“No, but you took a very nice photo,” I shot back, jabbing my finger at the offending snapshot. “When did you even have time to take that without my noticing?”
“I thought it captured your best side.”
“So, in good faith, I tell you that I’m trying to find sponsors to help move the building to another location and you take that as an opportunity to write to those sponsors and prevent me from possibly getting any help from them? Are you at all familiar with the expression ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face’?”
“Well, I figured rather than waitin’ for you to
maybe
find a solution that would help us out of this situation that
you
created, I would just get rid of the situation altogether. At this point, I would think it would be easier to walk away, before ya get started.”