The Biscuit Witch

  “I wanna see what he’s doing.”

  “You can watch from the back. Now go!”

  She hustled over the seat and into the cargo area, chortling. “He’s eating Monkey Poop off your blue jeans!”

  Slurp. He was, indeed.

  “I’m going to sit still, very still, until he finishes. He can’t reach any farther inside the car. Black bears don’t want to hurt people. He’s just hungry. When your aunt and uncle and I were growing up outside Asheville, we saw bears all the time. We’ll be fine.”

  He’d wander off. I’d clean up, dig out my cell phone even though I shouldn’t, and call for help. No one in the Cove would ever know that Tallulah MacBride was not a bonafide North Carolinian anymore, but instead, a New York City woman so damn clueless she got herself and her little girl trapped in the back of a decrepit SUV with a bear licking banana cupcake off her legs.

  “Look, Mommy, somebody’s coming,” Eve said.

  The road behind us was now full of four-footed spectators with dreadlocks. Sheep. Big sheep with long, corkscrew curls and dusky blue faces. Also, huge, shaggy black dogs. Two sturdy women were heading toward my Bronco, swooshing the air with shepherd’s crooks straight out of Little Bo Peep. Unlike Miss Peep, they wore quilted coats over baggy overalls. Rainbow-hued knit caps covered curly red hair on one, long blond braids on the other.

  Mr. Bear, still using me as a cupcake-delivery device, did not seem to care or notice.

  “Tagger, you sneaky bastard!” the brawnier of the two women bellowed. “Get your freaking head out of that freaking window!”

  “What’s a ‘freaking head,’ Mommy?”

  This was no time for a lecture on bad language. “The lady is just mad at Mr. Bear’s head,” I said. “Shhh.”

  That was no lady, that was ex-marine Alberta Spruill-Groover, who eschewed the term “lady” as a label meant to divide women into camps: Demure vs. Alberta. I would learn that later, during introductions. At the moment, I watched her smack the bear’s large black rump with her crook.

  “My Gawd,” Alberta bawled through the windows. “What’s in that goo on your knees? Bear bait? He’s never done anything this ballsy before!”

  Not only did the bear ignore her, he strained forward to lick my cupcake-coated self more efficiently. Alberta bent down further to peer at us through the back window. “Tagger’s harmless,” she said loudly. “See all those tags on his ears? He’s been caught raiding campsites so many times the forestry service quit bothering to keep records. But you should know better. Don’t feed the bears! This is not some kind of cutesy pie exhibit at Disneyland!”

  “I didn’t feed the bear. He broke in and fed himself.”

  “Why didn’t you drive off?”

  “Dead battery.”

  “Why didn’t you just sit tight and wait for somebody to come by and give you a jump start? Why’d you open a window?”

  “I didn’t,” I said through gritted teeth. “He opened it with his head.”

  “City girl, aren’t you? This is why everybody oughta carry a gun. All you have to do is wave a gun at Tagger. He hates them.”

  “I have a nine millimeter Glock 19 in my tote.” A gift from Gus. He gave Gabby one, also. There. My bonafides. Bite me, NRA spokeswoman.

  “A gun doesn’t do any damn good unless you get it out of your purse, girly.”

  Eve defended me. “Mommy wouldn’t shoot Mr. Bear! So she got out her hairbrush and smacked him on the nose!”

  Alberta stared at me. Her flat little lips formed an upside-down half-moon, the kind that precedes a snarky laugh and a full-blown eye-rolling. “You got a license to carry a lethal weapon like that?”

  Okay, okay, my humiliation is complete.

  She returned to whacking Tagger. Tagger continued to lick my legs.

  Someone knocked on the opposite window. I swiveled quickly.

  Looking at us was a lumberjack. Plaid flannel, canvas cargo pants, a fleece-lined jacket. Thick, wavy hair the rust-brown color of old copper shagged around his face. He had blue eyes under Magnum P.I.-era, Tom Selleck brows. His eyes were sad, even a little hard. Though he was bent over to look at us, he seemed very tall. He tapped a large knuckle on the window again.

  When I frowned at him, he tilted his head and studied me, frowning in return.

  “No worries, girls,” he said in a deep Scottish brogue. He pivoted to look at Eve in the cargo bay. He touched a fingertip to the reflection of her wonder-filled eyes, and he smiled when she smiled back. It was like a sip of Scotch whiskey with a cinnamon bun for dessert. He lit up the car, the mountains, the universe.

  He returned to frowning at me and tapped the window again, then pointed to his right ear. “Can you hear me?” he said loudly. “Do you have a wee bit of an ear problem?”

  I pressed the window control. As it rolled down, the wind brought his scent to me. Flannel and wool and all man. “No, I have a wee bit of a bear problem.”

  “That’s an interestin’ way you have of dealin’ with it.”

  “Food is a universal language. This bear and I are communicating though cupcakes. Is it safe to take my daughter out of the car?”

  “Probably, but if you’ll scrape some of that frosting back into its dish, I’ll lure Tagger away with it first.”

  “It’s called Monkey Poop,” Eve told him, her voice low and distracted. She clasped the back seat and leaned over it, studying him fervently. I wondered what was churning in her five-year-old brain.

  “Is it, sweetheart? The two of you are no’ so good as bear bait, though you do smell like the sweetest bakery ever.”

  I felt heat rising in my face. I have freckles. They would now merge into a reddish pattern, and I’d resemble a half-ripe strawberry. I turned to the humiliating business of scraping banana cupcake goo off my jeans. Tagger never stopped licking me. To hell with it. I shoved his toothy snout aside and scooped the debris of six cupcakes into the plastic container.

  “Good girl,” the Scotsman said, having no apparent concern that “girl” is not the politically correct term for a twenty-nine-year-old bakery chef, mother, and human strawberry.

  I handed him the container. “My name is Tal MacBride. And this is my daughter, Eve.”

  His mouth quirked. “The name’s Doug Firth. A pleasure to meet you.”

  “We’re lost,” Eve put in. “And homeless.”

  “No, no,” I corrected too quickly. “Lost, yes. Homeless, no.”

  “But Mommy, you said we can’t go back home . . .”

  “Could you tell me if the Crossroads Café is far from here, Mr. Firth?”

  He was studying us intently, those thick, young Selleck brows knitted together. Time for a mommy-daughter talk about not repeating things Mommy says.

  His brows lifted. Good. Maybe he wouldn’t pry. “Just down the mountain.” He pointed ahead. “Keep going, and you can’t miss it. The scent of biscuits will draw you right to the front door.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Doc!” Alberta Spruill-Groover hollered from behind us somewhere. “Bunny’s gone belly up! Macy’s going to drive the tractor the rest of the way.”

  “Can Bunny hop?” he called back.

  “Nope. She’s not good for even a single hippity.”

  He bent to me again. “One of our friends isn’t feeling well. Could you give her a lift to yon café? It’s just down the mountain a wee mile or two.”

  “We can do that. Okay. But first, can you give me a jump start?” That didn’t come out right. I knew it, and so did he.

  “My pleasure,” he said. He put just enough English on our Cue Ball of Innuendo. It curved in a slow, sensuous arc and dropped deep into my corner pocket. I arched a warning brow. At the same time, my strawberry turned ripe for the picking.

  “Doc? Can the H
airbrush Commando take Bunny in her Bearmobile?”

  He sighed, straightened, and called back, “Aye, I’ve already asked her. Just let me jump her off, first.”

  Alberta’s raucous hoots hit me like verbal paint balls. “We’ll help Bunny wobble up there as soon as Tagger scrams.”

  “Give me five minutes, and Tagger will be on his way.” Doc Firth stepped back, ducked his head at me, and smiled. “Thank you, girls . . . ladies . . . Tal and Eve.”

  Eve called out, “Mr. Bear won’t eat you, will he?”

  “No, sweetie, he’s a gentleman. Give a little, get a little. Share the sweetness. The fellowship of food is not for us two-legged beasties alone.” He walked around the front of the SUV, holding out the container of smushed cupcakes. Moving slowly and carefully, he leaned over the hood and waggled it. Tagger looked at him through my windshield, sniffed, then withdrew his head from my ruined window. He headed toward Doug.

  “Watch out, Doc,” Alberta warned. “Whatever that shit is, he seems to love it. He might lunge at you.”

  Doug Firth backed away slowly, calling softly in his brogue, “Come along, beastie, come along.” The giant bear lumbered after him like a big dog. I held my breath.

  “I want to take Tagger home with us,” Eve said. She looked at me sadly. “Where is our home? Is it really gone?”

  “Our home is right here.” I liked New York, but my roots were in these mountains. I touched a finger to her chest then to mine. She had been born inside me. She knew the sound of my heart. “Heart to heart.”

  “Look!” She pointed to the floor board. I retrieved an intact Monkey Poop cupcake. It was completely unharmed. Not a dent in the icing, not a single, slurpy slime-trail from Tagger’s tongue, nothing. Eve sighed. “It’s magic.”

  I watched Doug Firth stop at the edge of the woods. He held out my plastic container to Tagger. The bear took it in his jaws with gentle manners. His sizable teeth came close to Firth’s hand, but Firth never flinched.

  “Oh my,” Eve whispered, as he slowly stroked the bear’s wide forehead. Tagger lumbered away at a placid pace, carrying his prize. Doc Firth and he had an understanding. Share the sweetness.

  A sweet-talking man. So irresistible that even wild bears were charmed, and strawberries ripened on his tongue.

  Doctor to the lost and found

  ALBERTA AND MACY hand out “life mottos” on little business cards. I have a few stuck to the sun visor of my truck. I didn’t put them there. Alberta and Macy did. With superglue.

  Don’t follow the path. Blaze a trail.

  Live to be of value.

  And my favorite:

  Whatever you are, be a good one.

  They called themselves “light workers” and “energy channels,” which always makes me think of moths and light bulbs. I like all their talk of vortexes and spirits and dimensions because it makes everything seem so fixable and airy, but truth be told, my favorite cable show is Mythbusters, and I start every morning reading the Snopes website on my iPad to see what new gidgety blap has been revealed as a lie, a half-truth, or at least an unprovable notion.

  But when I saw Tallulah Bankhead MacBride protecting her little girl at the risk of losing a kneecap or two, I decided Alberta and Macy were right about these ancient Appalachian Mountains. They block out the rest of the world and focus our attention right in front of us. Don’t step off that ledge. Watch out for that snake. Be careful in those river rapids.

  Don’t take your eyes off the majesty of God’s blue-green magic.

  The steepest mountain sides are stuffed with thick evergreens and rise so high that sunlight barely reaches the forest floor and then, only at mid-day. If you want to blaze any trails, you better watch out for the noonday shadows.

  The sunshine came down in a wide, soft beam on me and Tal as she introduced herself and Eve. She glowed. She took my breath away.

  And though I tried to make a joke of it, I felt the heat.

  I’m no’ the pick of the litter, so they say. Lanky and bony and too fond of a dash of bitters in my beer, I am. What made a woman as fine as her give me an up-and-down that burned my skin?

  Must’ve been the maternal urge. Saving her wee one from the cupcake-eatin’ bear, I was.

  Do you notice my Scots brogue gets stronger when I’m attracted to a special woman?

  There hasn’t been a special woman in my life for four years now. My wife divorced me during “the proceedings,” as we called them down in Florida, and for a time, I thought I’d failed as a man. No matter the selfish reason she walked out, unhappy that I’d thrown away my future among the high society of the horse-racing world, nor the praise I got for blowing the whistle on a company that had imported me from Scotland to keep its race horses “healthy,” if by that you mean “making money.” I had loved and lost the American woman to whom I’d pledged Forever. I was raised Presbyterian by Grandmama back in Glasgow, and we Scots Presbyterians take failure as a sign of personal weakness. I sank into drink and drugs for a mite after the divorce, the court battles, and the fight to keep my license. If not for Delta Whittlespoon and her biscuits, I might be buried inside a bottle now.

  When she wrote to me, I thought, What a strange woman! Naturally, being a fey Scotsman, given to impulses, and hypnotized by the biscuits she sent me, I arrived in the Cove a week later.

  My only regret? I didn’t move here sooner.

  Now, about Tal MacBride. A woman alone with a little girl, speaking with a hint of a local drawl but driving with New York State license plates. Heading for the Cove, she said, but she didn’t share much else.

  Another of Delta’s stray puppies, I’m bettin’. Like me.

  I’m good at taking care of stray pups.

  The yarn fairy of Rainbow Goddess Farm

  “LUCY,” she introduced weakly, as she collapsed into the Bronco’s passenger seat. “Lucy Parmenter.”

  “Tal and Eve,” I replied. “MacBride.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she groaned, then craned her head out of the ruined window and threw up.

  Lucy Parmenter was delicate, blond, and damaged. I immediately liked her, worried about her, and wondered what terrible thing had turned her into a recluse who hyperventilated whenever she left Alberta and Macy’s refuge, Rainbow Goddess Farm.

  I would learn later that her background was different from the other women who came there for help. She hadn’t been beaten and stalked by a boyfriend or husband; she had been brutally raped, beaten and robbed by two meth addicts who worked as maintenance men at her apartment complex. Her injuries were severe; she’d spent a month recovering at a hospital in her eastern Carolina hometown of Charlotte, where she’d taught art at a private school. Her late father had been a prominent Methodist minister. She had been sheltered, idealistic, and kind. The men who attacked her said they thought she “wanted it.” Why? Because she’d taken time to talk to them as they made their regular rounds. She’d tried to counsel them. She’d brought them homemade soup on cold days and iced tea in the summer. She had extended the ministering welcome of food and faith, and, in return, they’d nearly killed her.

  She was twenty-four when the attack took place. Now she was twenty-six. She sat among the dull pebbles of broken glass scattered around the Bronco’s passenger seat as if she barely felt their rough texture through the strange outfit she wore: a heavy outdoor coat, a baggy denim jumper that went to her ankles, and sweat pants. Around her neck was the most beautiful wool scarf I’d ever seen. Silky, intricately woven in soft shades of gold and blue.

  She downed a pill from the pocket of her heavy coat, pushing aside the gorgeous scarf to reach it. I drove slowly along the winding road that descended into the Cove, trying to give her time to recover from what she called “one of my tizzies.” Also, I wanted information.

  “Are you really a bunny?” Eve asked
her from the back seat.

  Lucy managed a frail laugh. “No, that’s just my nickname. Everybody who lives where I live has a nickname. It’s sort of a . . . club.”

  The nicknames were code to help hide the farm’s guests from their stalkers. Macy was their licensed therapist. Alberta had been a paramedic in the marines. She was a skilled farmer, sustainable living guru, Jill of all trades, and devoted wife/husband to Macy, her partner of many years. Eventually, I would understand that Alberta was all about defending her weaker sisters—and brothers.

  Lucy told us more.

  The residents at Rainbow Goddess stayed there for little, if any, cost. They worked at the farm for their board. The main crop was berries of various kinds, but they also milked cows and goats, tended fields of corn, cabbage and other vegetables, and shared academic skills in small classes.

  “We sell jams, jellies, cheese, butter, milk soap, and fiber.” Lucy pointed to her scarf. She spoke in a soft, sophisticated southern accent, the kind I remembered being called “flatlander,” by Asheville people. “I’m the resident spinner and knitter. Doctor Firth trades us a large share of the fleece at each shearing in return for us taking care of his sheep.”

  Doc Firth. A veterinarian.

  “How long have you lived at the farm?”

  “Two years.” She hesitated, then . . . “Most of the women stay a few months. But I’ve become . . . somewhat permanent.” A wistful tone of defeat seeped from those words.

  Eve reached between our seats. In her small hand was the only surviving cupcake. “My mommy’s the best baker ever! She sells cupcakes to movie stars and rich people in New York. Her cupcakes are magic! Would you like a Monkey Poop?”

  Lucy brushed a wisp of blond hair from her eyes and studied the bright yellow icing, sniffing the air delicately. “That smells incredible!”

  “Banana,” I explained. “Give it a try. I’m pretty certain Tagger didn’t drool on it.”

  Lucy took the proffered goodie in hands that looked chapped and callused. There was a gracefulness about her that made me cringe inside. How could anyone hurt her? “Oh, my,” she said softly, raising the cupcake to her nose, inhaling. “I’ll just take a nibble and give the rest back to you . . . .”