The Crossroads Cafe

  “I’ll settle for a few prayers asking God to give me a makeover. Or at least a clue about what I should do with my life.”

  She hugged me and left to call Sister Sister in Mexico.

  I set my bottle of pills out on the nightstand every day, now. Got them out, counted them, put them back.

  Every day.

  Chapter 9

  Thomas Cora And Ivy Arrive

  That fall, when Anthony delivered a check from Cathy for a quarter-million dollars, everyone in the Cove took a sharp breath and swallowed their own spit. I walked into the front yard of Delta and Pike’s big log house—a ten minute stroll along a winding drive behind the café—and found a Saturday afternoon community barbecue had turned into a gape-at-the-check party. Several dozen people—in other words, the majority of the Cove’s residents—came over to have a look. The heady scent of smoked pork mingled with the sweet September air and the fragrance of money.

  “She says it’s to cover all my shipping costs for biscuits and gravy over the months,” Delta yelled above Billy Ray Cyrus singing Achy Breaky Heart on a boom box. “And to cover your photography costs. I get half and you get half, she says. I told her I don’t need it and besides, family doesn’t take payment for sending biscuits to family. So then Cathy said, ‘Give your half to a local church, then,’ and I told her, ‘Oh, boy, after he gets this, the pastor of Crossroads Cove Methodist is going to tell the pastor at Turtleville First Baptist to kiss his ass,’ and Cathy said, ‘Just tell the pastor to pester God on my behalf. I don’t think God’s listening to me.’”

  A little out of breath from yelling, Delta took a minute to recover while I studied the hand-written check. Cathy’s signature was elegant and sprawling, but tilted precariously at odd angles. A handwriting expert might say she seemed desperate for direction.

  Don’t tell my heart, my achy breaky heart, Billy Ray sang.

  “What are you going to do with your half?” Delta yelled.

  I shook my head. Thanks to John, who managed a few good investments I’d made, and thanks to my cheap lifestyle, which was one degree short of pioneer living, I didn’t need money. I’d rejected the government’s nine-eleven compensation, donating all of my share, over a million dollars, to charities for children. I didn’t want the government’s hush money; I wanted to know what really led to that day, a futile hope. Money doesn’t buy amnesia. Cash wouldn’t make me forget the terror in Sherryl’s and Ethan’s voices the last time I talked to them. Cash doesn’t buy off guilt.

  Cathy’s trying to make up for something, I thought. Cathy, you haven’t done anything wrong. Trust me. I’m an expert on the subject of culpability.

  “You hang onto my half for now,” I told Delta. “Tell Cathy I’ll find a righteous use for the money. Sometime that might bribe God to give her a call.”

  Thomas

  A few weeks later I still hadn’t thought of a way to spend Cathy’s money. Delta regarded me as a slackard. One chilly October morning, as I slept off a hangover in my truck, she poured a stew pot full of water and ice cubes on my face. I opened my eyes, blinked away the cold water, brushed ice cubes off my beard, and gazed up into Banger’s pink nostrils. His tongue descended. He licked my nose.

  I pushed him away and sat up, holding my head. My hangover was deep, broad, and pounding. “Okay, he’s awake, we can go,” a voice said, accompanied by snickers. I squinted over the side of my truck. Delta disappeared through the café’s back door, swinging her empty pot. Six young faces peered back at me from close range. The oldest was Bubba’s teenager, Brody, fifteen. The youngest was Jeb’s baby, Laura, eight. All of Delta’s grandchildren, nieces, and nephews stood beside my truck, watching me with unsympathetic glee. “See ya,” Brody said. “We gotta catch the bus. Aunt Delta told us to make sure you woke up after she doused you.”

  I managed a thumbs up. The six of them headed for the school bus stop by the Trace, lugging back packs, cell phones, iPods and laptops. It was a Friday. Fridays were “casual electronics” day in Jefferson County schools. Or something like that. I couldn’t think. My head throbbed.

  “Bah,” Banger said, and nibbled my shirt. Pieces of my cell phone were scattered on my beard. I pushed him away again. My hand connected with cardboard. I tore Delta’s message off Banger’s collar and tried to focus. She had written only one word, in big, angry letters.

  BACKSLIDER

  I crawled out of the truck. The frost was on the pumpkins and the hardwood forests of Ten Sisters had turned into an impressionist’s landscape of red and gold. My outdoor bedroom required an extra blanket over the sleeping bag. And now, apparently, an umbrella. I staggered to the Privy, washed up, then made my way back to the truck. I slumped in the front seat, pulled the visor down, and touched the pictures of Ethan and Sherryl.

  Today was Ethan’s birthday.

  He would have been eight years old.

  For his birthday I’d plant another row of grapes in my ‘Tree of Life’ vineyard. I drove up the Trace halfway to Turtleville then turned left on a winding side road called Fox Run Lane. A big green sign welcomed me to Kaye’s Heirloom Plant Nursery. Dolores and the Judge lived in a handsome little Victorian overlooking the grounds. They’d converted a small barn into a shop and offices. Thanks to the Internet, UPS, and the post office, Dolores did a brisk business shipping roses all over the country. Her rose beds covered the nursery’s terraced hillsides, rimmed in hogwire fence to keep out rose-loving deer. In summertime the roses exploded in a cacophony of colors so beautiful it lured drive-by rose gawkers from all over western North Carolina.

  Inside the shop Dolores stocked bonsai and orchids, but also sold upscale gardening knickknacks and handcrafted items made by some of our locals. Her shop was a favorite of the Asheville ladies-who-lunch. It wasn’t uncommon for sleek sedans or SUV’s full of salon-tanned women to head straight from the café to the nursery. Women don’t like to admit it, but they prefer to shop in packs, like wolves. I waited until a carload of lunch ladies left before I walked in. My public persona tended to make strangers sidle one hand into their purses for the pepper spray.

  “You look awful,” Dolores said helpfully.

  I leaned on the counter by her cash register, inhaling rose potpourri that soothed my stomach. “I love it when you flatter me.”

  “Your vidal blancs came in, but I’m still waiting for the baco noirs you ordered. I hope you’re not intending to be ‘all vine and no vinting.’”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “It would be a shame if you just plant these wonderful hybrids for fun and don’t make wine from the grapes. Baco noir makes a luscious red. The plants do well at these elevations. You could start your own small winery, Thomas. There are little boutique wineries all over these mountains, now.”

  My Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired vineyard was more about creating order in my personal universe than creating a good glass of wine. A way to distract myself during my waking hours. Maybe Ethan could see it from Heaven.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I lied.

  “Backslider.” She looked at me sternly.

  “Ah hah. Word gets around.”

  “I know it’s your son’s birthday today. Delta told me. You think your son would want to see you like this? You think you’re the only person in the world who ever suffered a tragedy in their lives?” Dolores jerked her head toward several lovingly framed pictures of her and the Judge’s grown daughter. She’d died in a car accident on a Florida highway along with her husband and their new baby. Dolores and the Judge had been devastated. They moved to the Crossroads to escape the memories.

  “Believe it or not,” I said quietly, “I’m fully aware that the world is full of grief and suffering. I’ve never claimed to be special, and I don’t ask anyone to feel sorry for me.”

  “Thomas, of course you have the right to mourn, sure, but you have to keep moving, keep reaching out. I understand what you’re going through. When Benton and I first came here we wanted to sit down and die. We didn
’t know what to expect from the lily-white mountain culture up here. Maybe we only moved here to confirm that the world was a mean, cold place full of people who didn’t want us around and didn’t care about our loss. But guess what? Here came Delta Whittlespoon. She showed up on our doorstep the day we moved in. Saying in the way only Delta can put it, ‘Hello, Black People! Have a biscuit!’ Or words to that effect. She and Pike and their family welcomed us and made sure everyone else did, too. Delta dragged us out of our despair day by day. We’ll never forget that, and we’ll never stop trying to pay her back by paying her forward, if you know what I mean. We aren’t going to let you just sit down and give up.”

  “I appreciate your concern but—”

  “I don’t want to speak in religious slogans, like Cleo at the café, but I believe God puts us here for a reason. There are people who need you, people whose lives would be terrible without you. But you have to make an effort to find those people and to recognize them when they find you.”

  “I wish I believed that.”

  “You do, deep in your heart,” she said flatly. “Or you’d have killed yourself by now.”

  I couldn’t talk about this subject anymore. I stepped back from the counter. “Now about those baco noirs—”

  “Sssh.” She spotted something out the window beside the cash register. “One of my girls is here. She hand stitches those fabulous silk throw pillows over there on the wicker chair. I provide the material, she does the rest. The women who just left? They bought ten pillows at thirty dollars each. This girl’s one of the most creative fabric artists I’ve ever seen.”

  Dolores called all her craftspeople her ‘girls and boys.’ She needed to mother people. Or in my case, to club them with tough love. From my angle I couldn’t see anything out her window except the front grill of an aging blue sedan with a primer-colored hood. “I’ll be out back, loading some mulch in my truck.”

  Dolores clucked disapproval at the person I couldn’t see. “She’s stoned, again, I bet. I should tell Benton. But I don’t know what would be worse, leaving her in charge of those little girls or leaving them without even an aunt to raise them.”

  I wasn’t interested in gossip—or being sucked into any discussion that involved children. I started toward the back, pulling on a pair of work gloves I kept in my pocket. “I’ll be outside,” I repeated.

  “The girl’s name is Laney Cranshaw. She only moved here a few weeks ago. From way over in Raleigh, I think. Her sister’s dead, she’s raising her two nieces, and she hasn’t got, to put it politely, a vessel to urinate in or a window to throw said urine out of.”

  I tugged the last finger of my gloves into place. “I’ll be out—”

  “She and the little girls are living in a tent in the state park. It’s only a matter of time before the park rangers make them leave. I’ve tried to talk to her about it—this community is willing to help her—but she’s got a chip on her shoulder a mile wide. I suspect she’s afraid to have anyone in authority look too closely at her background. Or at her drugs.”

  “Here’s some advice for you. You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped.”

  “People always want to be helped,” she shot back. “They just don’t always want to admit it.”

  We heard footsteps on the shop’s small wooden porch. “Sic ’em, Dr. Phil,” I said drily, and walked out the reconstituted barn’s back door.

  I was shoveling mulch into the truck’s bed a few minutes later, when small, quick footsteps crunched to a halt on the gravel walkway behind me.

  “Hagrid!” a small voice trilled in a heavy mountain drawl. “You went on a diet!”

  I turned slowly and looked down. The most wonderful little face looked up at me. Dark eyes flashed beneath long, glossy black hair. She clutched her hands over the heart of a faded Powerpuff Girls t-shirt. A tiny yellow butterfly fluttered around her pink sandals and little-girl baggy jeans.

  The butterfly was charmed.

  So, against my will, was I.

  “Hagrid?” I said gently, not wanting to scare her—though she hardly looked nervous, gazing up at me in Harry Potter-inspired wonder. “I’m afraid I’m not Hagrid. I’m his . . . skinny cousin. Herman.”

  “Herman! Have you seen my owl? I sent her off with a note for my teacher. I can’t come to school tomorrow because Ivy and me have to help Aunt Laney move our tent to a new campground. I’m in the first grade.”

  I put a hand over my brow and scanned the sky. “I haven’t seen any owls lately, but I’ll keep an eye out. What’s her name?”

  “Mrs. Jones.”

  “That’s an interesting name for an owl.”

  Peels of little-girl giggles rose in the air. “Mrs. Jones is my teacher. My owl is named Arianna.”

  “Oh. That’s a great name for—”

  Princess Arianna. Cathy’s first starring role, when she was only nineteen, had been in a whimsical sword-and-dragon film titled Princess Arianna. The film had been a surprise hit, and she’d made two sequels, Princess Arianna and the Dragon, then Princess Arianna and the Wizard, which were also box office successes. The trio of films had become perennial favorites for children and also for the Spock-ears crowd at fantasy and science-fiction conventions. Cathy had been, hands down, the most ethereally va-voomish princess ever to grace a sword-and-sorcery potboiler.

  Not that I was all that familiar with Cathy’s films. Chick flicks, mostly, and the Princess Arianna shtick was cheesier than old brie. Delta, however, owned all of Cathy’s films on tape and DVD. She popped one into a TV in the café’s quilting room every Saturday night. I couldn’t help but watch as I wandered through on the way to poker.

  “That’s a beautiful name for an owl,” I finished gruffly. “I bet you’ve seen all the Princess Arianna movies.”

  “Oh, yes! I love Princess Arianna! We used to have the tapes, but one of Aunt Laney’s boyfriends busted ’em.”

  All my fatherly feelings coalesced in a single clump of protectiveness. “I know a place where you can watch Princess Arianna’s movies on Saturday nights. For free.”

  “Where?”

  “Let’s go inside and talk to Dolores about it. She’ll tell your aunt—”

  “Hey! Leave her alone!”

  A righteous, pre-teen dynamo bounded out the back door and ran down the path. My first impression focused on fuzzy, red-brown hair around blue eyes in a round-cheeked, light-brown face, with freckles. She planted herself between us and the smaller girl then stared up at me with obvious fear but also stony determination. “What do you want, mister?”

  The little one peered around her and smiled at me. “Ivy, his name’s not Mister, it’s Herman! He’s Hagrid’s cousin. It’s okay.”

  “I told you not to talk to strangers.”

  “But he’s not a stranger! He’s Hagrid’s—”

  “He’s not Hagrid’s cousin. He’s not from a fairytale. He’s hairy and he’s a stranger.”

  “Ivy, don’t be so mean!” The smaller girl squirmed forward. “I’m Corazon. My daddy was Mexican. My name means heart, in Spanish. You can call me Cora.” She tugged on her sister’s hand. “And this is Iverem, but you can call her Ivy. Her daddy was an African-American. She’s twelve. I’m seven.”

  “Stay away from us,” Ivy warned me between gritted teeth. “I know where to kick men so it hurts. Come on, Cora.” She began tugging her sister up the gravel path. “I told you not to talk to strangers.”

  “But he’s not—”

  “Iverem is a Nigerian name, I believe,” I said. Ivy halted and turned, staring at me, her eyes wide. Cora gaped at us both. “I once worked with an architect from Nigeria,” I went on. “She was a good friend of mine. A very smart and strong person. When she married, she and her husband gave their children Nigerian names. I helped them do the research. Iverem. Doesn’t that mean ‘blessings?’”

  From the look on Ivy’s face I scored major points, but then her eyes flattened and she retreated. “Bullshit artist,” she hiss
ed, and led Cora back inside. Cora disappeared while looking back at me and waving.

  I sat down on the truck’s tailgate. My hands shook, and not just from the hangover. Epiphanies can be delicate, painful, and needle-fine. Dolores was right. People always want help, they just won’t admit it. Especially when they’re young and suspect the world is full of monsters. The tougher ones are defensive, and the gentler ones build fairytales around themselves.

  On Ethan’s birthday, here, suddenly, was a gift I could give him. The hope of a happier life. Not his, or mine, but theirs. Two small strangers named Cora and Ivy. Feeling illuminated, as if light glimmered briefly through the pores of my skin, I glanced at one of the shop’s back windows. Dolores stood there, watching me.

  Pay it forward, she mouthed.

  At that moment, I thought of the perfect way.

  Chapter 10

  Cathy The Darkening Ruby

  First, Thomas named a cow after me. Then he turned me into a landlord.

  Dear Cathy, thanks to the money you sent, you’re now the proud owner of a ‘tenant house,’ he wrote. Around here, that’s what people call a rental property. Yours is a small cottage on Fox Run Road. You’re renting it to Laney Cranshaw and her nieces for one dollar a month, with all utilities covered by you, the landlord. You also furnished it, including a TV, a DVD player, and an entire collection of your Princess Arianna movies and the Harry Potter films. Before this, the Cranshaw trio lived in a tent at the Turtleville camp ground. They’re broke.

  Living in a tent. I re-read that line several times from the comfort of my bed with silk pillows. Living in a tent, with winter approaching.

  Delta told Laney you bought the property as an investment and don’t care about making anything other than a token rent payment from tenants, that you just want someone to maintain the cottage. Laney doesn’t have any clue I set this up. Delta’s acting as the liaison because Laney is suspicious of ‘do-gooders’ in general but Delta convinced her you’re on the level. As Delta put it to her, ‘Why would a movie star with millions of bucks in the bank need to charge anybody rent?’