I laughed. She was such a funny little mystic, a good witch delivering the wisdom of the ages, along with boxes of orange plastic pumpkins. How do you do it? I wondered. How do you walk smiling through the day, while grief is alive, inside of you?
“What’s the matter?” Cleo asked me.
Lord, I was close to tears and couldn’t let her see it.
I blinked, fumbled for a tissue, as if I had a runny nose, and behind it, said, “So how do we get this reading?”
She told me that I could ask “the Ching,” as she called it, a specific question, although she said that really wasn’t necessary, because it would automatically either address the question that was uppermost in my mind, or it would talk to me about the question that should be uppermost in my mind! Then she demonstrated to me how I was to “throw” the three coins six times, which I did, choosing not to ask a question, just to see what it would come up with on its own. Each throw seemed to tell her something, which she transcribed into chicken scratches on the back of a Poste Haste envelope. When I had completed my six throws, I said, “So what have we got?”
“Goodness,” she responded. “What we have is six changing lines, which means that you are involved in a very volatile situation, indeed.” Upon seeing my reaction to the word volatile, Cleo hastened to say, “Well, maybe volatile is too strong a description, so let’s just say that this is a situation that’s in a very pronounced state of flux.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, laughing a little, “let’s say that”
She proceeded to refer to the book with the yellow and gray cover.
“It says that recently you had a problem which was solved, and now you feel peaceful about it.”
“Yes! The insurance!” I exclaimed.
“Okay. It says that the problem was in your public life, and was caused by sly foxes. But you had enough inner strength to combat them and to win.”
“Wow,” I said, impressed with her “reading” already.
“But here’s a warning, Jenny, against being insolent or careless. There could be a theft.”
I shrugged, since that didn’t sound too dire.
“It seems to be saying that some people around you will not be true friends, and you must get away from them.”
I didn’t have any idea what that meant, or how it related to the festival.
“Ooh,” Cleo said. “It says there is an enemy! A really wicked one, and you must shoot him down.”
Cleo looked at me and suddenly grinned like a teenager.
“Cool,” she said and laughed.
She had the most charming way, I thought, of smoothing sharp edges.
“Did any of that,” she asked, “say anything meaningful to you?”
“The first thing you read certainly did—about the peace that comes after problems have been overcome. That’s exactly how I’ve felt all week, after I first thought we wouldn’t get the insurance, and then we did.” I thought a moment. “And that bit about the foxes in public life?” I laughed. “That’s Pete and Ardyth and their group, as I live and breathe.”
“Well,” Cleo said, “that’s ail in the past, anyway, although you are probably still dealing with the consequences of it. I do think you’d be well advised—if I do say so myself—to hang on to your valuables, with that warning about theft. Sometimes the Ching is talking metaphorically, but a lot of times when it says something like ‘the nest burns up,’ it really does mean that you’d better check to see if you turned off the iron before you left the house!”
I confessed to her that I hadn’t understood a word of any of the rest of the reading, and that I couldn’t see what it could possibly have to do with the festival, which was what had been uppermost in my mind when I threw the coins.
Cleo replied, her face utterly serious once again, “I think it means that you’d better stay alert, Jenny, because there’s still …” She gave me a tentative, rather apologetic smile. “… there’s still an enemy out there which you have to, metaphorically I hope, kill.”
I felt chilled by her warning, and suddenly, also a little resentful of it.
Just what I needed, a dire warning from a gypsy!
Cleo seemed to sense my feelings, because she laughed and said, “Can ten billion Chinese be wrong?” She was amazing, the way she could absorb skepticism without getting defensive on behalf of her own beliefs. Nor was she insensitive to my feelings, which must have been plain on my face: “Hang on, though, there’s good news. My other source book—” She pulled the black one toward her. “—says this situation is upward, which is to say, away from danger. It also says that, ultimately, you’ll be tested in your capacity to pardon and forgive.”
I must have gotten a give-me-a-break look on my face, because she laughed and said then, “One more thing, Jenny. The coins you threw made a pattern that is called Deliverance, or Liberation. But in this particular reading, that pattern changes into another one called Family.”
“Family?”
She made an embarrassed face. “I don’t get it, either. Maybe it will ail seem clear to you later, when it’s all over. Look, maybe this was a bad idea. If I had thrown the I Ching for myself this morning, it probably would have told me not to offer help unless somebody specifically asks for it”
“That’s one of my life lessons, Cleo.”
She glanced at her wristwatch. “Shoot! I’ve got to get going. Hope I haven’t spoiled your day, Jenny.”
“No way. Cleo, why don’t you be a fortune-teller at our festival? I could arrange to set up a booth, and you could raise money for your favorite charity, how about it?”
“No, thanks!” She held up both hands to ward me off like an evil spell. “I think I’d better stick to predicting my own future.”
Without thinking, caught up in the fresh conviviality of the moment, I said, “What do you see for yourself?”
I could have kicked myself.
Especially when I saw her face tighten, and when she turned away as she had done before.
She murmured four words like an incantation: “Thurisa reversed, Fehu, Inguz.”
When she faced me again, there was a coldness in her eyes. “The runes say that my past was … suffering at the gate of heaven. My present is … ambition satisfied. And for my immediate future … I must be prepared. I must be calm. I must complete a task and make that my first priority out of all others.”
I nearly said something to her then. Came close to grabbing one of her hands and confiding the tragic information I that had—without intending to—learned about her. But she was in a hurry to leave. And two volunteers walked into the room. The phone rang.
The chance dissolved.
I still didn’t have a fairy godmother costume. If it had actually ever existed, it had burned up in the Dime Store fire.
“Just as well, 1 guess,” was my conclusion, voiced to Geof and David that night at supper. The kid nad heated frozen pizza for all of us, and it tasted awful, but who was complaining? Not Geof, who appeared intensely satisfied with freezerburned cheese; not David, who looked proud of himself, and not I, who had never actually wanted to experience Canadian bacon, pepperoni, hamburger, and Italian sausage all at the same time.
“Why?” Geof asked me.
“’d look ridiculous.”
“You’d look adorable.”
I blew him a kiss, but David gave him a look. “She’d look ridiculous.” To me, he said, “Uncool.”
“Yeah. Darn. And here I wanted to go flitting around, cooing like Glenda the Good Witch, and flicking my wand at people and making ail of their dreams come true.”
Geof laughed.
David rolled his eyes. The kid had rarely complained all week of his aches and pains—in fact, he’d been something of an inspiration to me, so that I complained less about my aches and pains. Geof and I winced every time David did, even if he didn’t say anything about it. What he did complain about, though, was how nobody had been called to account for his injuries.
That evening, I ta
lked out loud about the little jobs I still had left to do before tomorrow, and Geof told us about their continuing investigations on many fronts. The fundamentalist Halloween protestors were now demonstrating in front of the jail, he said, where Meryl Tyler was being held. Although he had allegedly killed their “brother,” they seemed inclined to think of that as a death in the line of duty, Geof said. Where they might have considered Tyler the devil incarnate, they seemed instead to believe that Meryl had actually been trying to burn the minion of evil—the Dime Store and the witch—and so they didn’t seem to have their hearts behind their pickets this time.
“I can see where they’d feel ambivalent,” I said, a shade bitterly.
David said, “You’ve got the guy who burned Jenny, Jenny’s got her fucking festival, but what are any of you people doing about catching the jerk-offs who tried to kill me? Isn’t anybody thinking about me?”
When he wasn’t looking, Geof and I smiled across the table at each other. It was almost reassuring to know that although David might be stoic about pain and although he might cook a pizza once in a while, he hadn’t by any means turned into a saint.
Geof and I took a late-night drive in Port Frederick to wander hand in hand around the ghostly structures on the common. The town was already crowded—the motels were showing “No Vacancy,” and there were more cars on the streets than Pd ever seen before. Tomorrow, the cash registers in Port Frederick would be jingling. Once we’d nicknamed ourselves “Poor Fred,” part in ironic truth, part in affection. That hadn’t accurately described my hometown for several years, but this weekend—and, I hoped, all of the annual ones to follow—would help to bury that pitiful title forever.
A crew had rebuilt the speaker’s platform where the witch had burned. The singed grass didn’t show up in the dark under our feet, but we could feel the hard crunch of it, and a smoky smell still lingered around the spot.
“Tomorrow.” I leaned against my husband, who put his arms around me and pressed the side of his face against my hair. “I can almost believe it’s going to happen.”
He kissed the top of my head.
We just stood there awhile, with me reminiscing about putting it all together, and he just listening and keeping me warm.
When we drove home, I felt rested, and I knew I’d sleep well …
… until five o’clock the next morning, when I woke up a minute before the alarm blasted. Quickly, I shut it down, dressed in my festival T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, gathered everything I would need for the day, and—heart pounding with anticipation and happy nervousness—slipped out of the house, leaving the two men still sleeping.
24
I WAS THE FIRST HUMAN TO PARK AT THE COMMON THAT SATURDAY, SO naturally I got the best parking spot. Out on the grounds, the autumn colors of the trees were dimmed at this early hour, but they’d soon be aflame—God’s arson, not Meryl’s. They would cast a leafy glow onto the ground, where thousands of visitors would be shuffling along from booth to booth.
The gates were to open at ten A.M.
My mind filled with imaginary sounds and colors—and cash for good causes—as a second car pulled in to park, and then a third, fourth, and fifth. My board members were here for our picnic breakfast in the leaves, just as we’d promised one another we would do, months earlier.
Mayor Mary Eberhardt and I stood together, off to the side of the speaker’s platform, where, in about fifteen minutes, she would officially open the festival and welcome all comers.
“But why would Peter Falwell risk so much in order to sabotage this festival?” Mary had been antsy, so to speak, all through our board picnic, giving me urgent looks, until finally I let her pull me off for this private confab. “Haven’t you thought about that, Jenny? It’s all I can think about. Why did he want the nature trail so much to begin with, why has he thrown his clout and money behind a female candidate, why is it Ardyth? Why is he so opposed to making any changes to the trail? Why would he risk his reputation in this town in order to secretly block the insurance, and thereby ruin this festival that everybody else wants?”
Our imperturbable mayor was perturbed.
“Mary, if you’ve been obsessed with those questions,” I said to her, “have you thought of any answers?”
“Maybe.” She pointed to a spot just behind the permanent, reconstructed historical buildings. “You know what runs right behind there, Jenny?”
“The trail?”
“That’s right.” This was not news; the trail ran unobtrusively through most of the heart of Port Frederick, everybody knew that, but nobody thought about it very much. I certainly . didn’t. But Mary said, insistently, “I’ve been trying to see any connection between this festival and God’s Highway, and that’s the only one I can find. Proximity.”
“So?”
“So, Jenny, when does Peter Falwell ever do anything that does not in some way benefit himself and line his pockets?”
I shook my head. “Don’t know of any time that hasn’t been true. What are you getting at, Mary, that there’s something in the trail for him?”
“It would be characteristic of the man,” she pointed out.
“Yes, but—”
“I know. A decade has passed since the trail opened. But what if whatever it is that Pete wants to do requires an exceptionally strong political base in town? What if, in order to do it—whatever it is—Pete thinks he needs his thumb on the mayor and the majority of the town council? What if the time has to be just right?”
“God, Mary, it’s a long time to wait!”
“How long did he wait and plot to steal Cain Clams from your family, girl?”
“Okay. But if you’re right, Mary, what the hell does he want?”
“I don’t know.” She seemed, for her, frazzled, worried, a mayoral dog with a community bone. “But I have to go be mayor now, and give my speech, and smile big. You think about it, Jenny, and think about it hard, because the election is very much upon us, and Pete could have untold tricks up his sleeve, couldn’t he?”
Damn, I thought. He could, indeed.
While Mary mayored, I ambled among the populace, whose (mostly) smiling faces were turned up toward her. Port Frederick was proud of themselves for having a black mayor, and a woman, at that. It pleased the citizens to see her carry off this ceremonial duty with her customary grace and dignity, and to know she made them look good to all the tourists on this day. But then, when didn’t Mary look good? Maybe she slept gracelessly.
“Bitch.”
It was a growled whisper, near me. I whirled in the direction of the voice, in time to see the hateful expression on Meryl Tyler’s face before he pulled a silver Halloween mask down over his eyes, and disappeared into the crowd. He hadn’t meant Mary; he’d been staring straight at me. I went searching—on the run—for the head of festival security, who happened to be my husband.
“Why couldn’t you hold him just two more days!” I said. “And if you can’t do that, can’t he be prohibited from being here, considering what he did?”
“He has been warned off, Jenny.” Geof took hold of my right arm and tugged me to where David Mayer stood watching kids try to climb a Jacob’s ladder. “But that can’t stop him from slipping in, not with a crowd this size for him to hide in. You say he’s wearing a silver half-mask?”
“Yeah, but who isn’t!” I protested bitterly. “We’re selling the damned things, and there’s no telling how many hundreds of people are already wearing them. Why couldn’t he stay in jail, just for one measly weekend!”
“Because we don’t have the evidence to hold him on the arson homicide, and unfortunately, Tyler didn’t hire a lousy lawyer. A good one showed up this morning and sprang him.”
“What’s happening?” David asked, when we reached him.
“You want a job?” Geof asked him. “You’ll even get paid.”
“Maybe. What?”
“Be Jenny’s bodyguard—”
“Geof!” I exclaimed.
“—for the rest of the day and tomorrow, too, if we need you. I’ll pay you the same as the extra security personnel are getting.”
But David objected. “How am I supposed to guard her body when my own body is still screwed up?” He pointed toward his broken collarbone; and, indeed, he was still noticeably holding that side of his body, and his head, quite carefully.
“If you can hold yourself upright on a motorcycle,” Geof said, “you can carry a walkie-talkie, right?”
“I guess so, but what if somebody jumps her bones, and I have to jump their bones?”
“You’re not to do anything,” Geof said in his lieutenant voice. “That’s why I want you for this job, so you can’t harm anybody by mistake. If anybody misbehaves, you get hold of me, immediately. I’ll do what needs doing.” He looked at me. “And your job is to scream and run.”
“I can do that,” I assured him, and smiled a little.
He leveled his lieutenant’s stare back at the kid again. I actually thought this was quite a good idea, which might also give David a sense of involvement with the day, so he wouldn’t just stand around all the time looking bored and superior—or, worse, depressed at the sight of so many ailAmerican families coming together for the kind of day he’d probably never known with his own parents. The kid looked at me, doubtfully, as if the prospect of my company for so long didn’t appeal to him. But then, he allowed us to see a small grin.
“Yeah,” he said, “okay, but you’ll have to pay me, to spend a whole day with her.”
Geof looked to me for my approval, which I gave with a nod.
To David, he said, “You’ll have to watch her. She’s slippery.”
“What am I watching for?”
“Go,” I commanded him, “get your walkie-talkie with Geof, then come back here, and I’ll tell you.”
My bodyguard and I strolled over to where the openinghours crowd was dispersing from around the speaker’s platform. Mary came down the steps and grinned at us.