Murder in a Very Small Town Page 15

  “I’m still thinking that tonight’s fireworks are gonna try and cause the fire,” Charlie explained in a new authoritative tone.

  She nodded and returned his serious expression.

  ✳ ✳ ✳

  Charlie was napping in his cool and dark front white room. The cottage and the lake were midday calm and quiet. Wiki lowered herself slowly onto her couch and elevated her feet up on the ottoman Jame had brought in from Charlie’s room. The room was very warm. She looked at the patio door and considered opening it, but getting up was such a bother. She reached to the floor and picked up her iPad, opened it, and rested it on her pregnant tummy.

  There was nada from Sara. There were plenty of emails from Twat, but Wiki didn’t feel like wadding into all that. She was worried about Sara, but the twat had not mentioned her in days. Not sure why she had even opened the iPad, she began to close it. That is when she saw Pauline Place in the Sender list.

  One thing Pauline had never touched was a keyboard. She was an ink and stationary writer. Part of Wiki’s responsibilities when she worked for her aunt was processing the actor’s emails, which she would print, and Pauline would ink replies on. Wiki would then transcribe and send. Wiki tapped the screen and opened the message from Pauline:

  My darling Cork (I will explain your new nickname in a moment), I hope this finds you well. I miss you so very much. All is interesting here and we are being packed up for the return to the States. We fly on the tenth and I get two whole days alone with your uncle before I have to be in the studio. Please bear with me, the last time I typed I believe it was on your uncle’s old blue Smith-Corona.

  I don’t want to distress you, but when we arrived in Palma, Sara was with the police.

  Your back-up during this hiatus has been arrested and whatever was going on sent Sara into a tailspin. All she talks about is lies and you. She’s been giving testimony and seems to be enjoying it.

  Like a darling Wiki, a cork is still for years before exploding, popping, blossoming into life. And, like a cork, my amazing Wiki floats well and steady on smooth or troubled and rough waters.

  Pauline

  ✳ ✳ ✳

  There was barbecued corn and pie for dinner. Wiki had baked a banana and blueberry swirl. Deane wandered in and Wiki asked her to join them for dinner and to stay for the fireworks. Out back, Jame and Abel sat at the end of the dock watching Jame’s dad and the fireworks crew out on the float. The sun was setting and the evening was still very warm.

  Charlie grew more and more excited as the moonless sky changed to velvet black. He had explained to everyone that the fireworks were actually the start of the attack on Dent. He held an unlit sparkler and stood close beside Wiki at the town replica in the dirt—she had the box of matches. There was faint music coming from town—an acoustic song crossing the lake. Jame and Abel walked from the dock and joined Deane to watch what Charlie and Wiki were calling the Battle of Dent.

  The sky began to explode with different colors and the delayed boom following each fiery blossom. With the town budget being what it was, the display was brief and underwhelming compared to those in the city. When the sky was black again, Wiki took out a match. Charlie was waiting eagerly with his sparkler in his small grimy hand. Before Wiki struck the match, she slowly leaned forward in her chair, and the others moved closer for a better view of Dent. Wiki lit the match. The sparkler tip ignited with silver hot light that illuminated Charlie’s focused and serious face. He lowered the sparkler to the forest surrounding the lake and the town.

  The trees were ready fuel. They went up in flames quickly and the fire started to circle the town. Charlie dropped the sparkler on the opposite side of the lake and those trees began to burn fast. In under a minute, the two half circles of fire joined and the town of Dent was surrounded. The flames closed in on Main Street and the back of the shops. The match-head people grew skinny dark shadows as the flames reflected off the lake.

  A roof caught fire along Three Quarter Road. The backside of one of the Main Street shops did the same. Charlie scurried about in the dirt in response.

  The grown-up faces around Charlie were fire warmed; their expressions both muted and worried. Abel took Jame’s hand, and Deane put her arm around Wiki as she knelt closer. A second shop on Main Street ignited. Charlie plucked up the kamikaze airplane and drew it along the airstrip. It looked like it might escape until Charlie mouthed a sputtering and the aircraft fell from his fingers and crashed into the east shore flames. The fire closed in on the match-head people. Charlie raised dust as he turned away.

  The unexpected happened; water splashed Main Street and the people on it. Another spray hit the burning cottage on the opposite side of the lake. Deane turned to Wiki and saw her growing smile. Back in the very small town of Dent, more jets of water hit the shops on Main Street. She turned to Charlie kneeling close to the fire, his squirt gun in both hands, expertly aiming and firing.

  The Battle of Dent was nearly over. There were some scarred buildings and homes, but after Charlie reloaded from the bucket at his back, he let out a proud grunt and aimed.

  The town of Saint Joseph was flooded with tourists for the last holiday of summer. The shop owners were pleased to be making cash and they hurried to serve and help, smiling with the prosperity and the delight of their customers. The three blocks of cobblestones on the front street were awash with visitors enjoying the beachside enclave beside Lake Michigan. There was plenty of free parking, and the playgrounds on the beach were full. There was family laughter and hoots; people swept up in the hot sunny day and the last celebration of summer.

  Music wavered out from the back decks of the restaurants and bars. Children ran to and from the water. Dogs were barking, Frisbees were flying, and a pack of elderly women in goggles and swim caps marched happily across the sand and into the lake.

  Jame parked his truck in the lot at the end of Saint Joseph and entered the happy, boisterous crowd. He had forgotten to pack ice. Abel caught up to him, and they waded in and bought two seven-pound bags at a party store that sold more liquor than piñatas and balloons. Headed back to the truck, Abel led Jame by the hand to a kiosk on wheels and she bought them a rainbow icy to share.

  Jame put the two bags of ice in the bed of the truck and they drove north, using the back streets since the front street was closed to traffic. Abel sat close beside Jame, chewing flavored ice and navigating. Jame appreciated her help. Only three blocks away from St. Joe, he was finding the distraught vacant homes and storefronts disconcerting.

  Abel directed him onto a frontage road that paralleled the highway.

  “It’s slower going and that’s okay,” she explained, and he agreed.

  They shared the cone of sweet ice and talked little. Abel used the straw to give Jame tastes, her hand resting high up on his thigh. Jame was smiling even as abandoned and neglected homes passed along the country road.

  “Want the radio on?” he asked.

  “No, I’m good,” she replied, leaning closer and kissing the corner of Jame’s smile.

  They turned off onto a dirt road that ran straight up through the center of a wild field of yellow grasses. A mile in, Jame parked in the small dirt lot beside someone’s clean rental car and Wiki’s new and dirty green Subaru. The lot was located before a hill. A footpath wove up and over the rise of swaying grass. Abel poured ice into their food cooler while Jame released the bungee straps holding his old and sun-stained surfboard. He gathered it under his arm and followed Abel up the dirt path. She was carrying the cooler with both hands and Jame was grinning; the swaying of her rear was simply quite beautiful.

  There was no view of big blue Lake Michigan until they crested the hill. When the two of them saw the water, Abel stopped and Jame stepped around to her side.

  Charlie was on the beach, kneeling in the wet sand before a series of buildings, moats, and hand-dragged roads. He was holding his kamikaze aircraft aloft over the town, and it was circling. Ten yards away was the back of Wiki’s umbr
ella and her beach bags. Forty yards up the beach a group of teens sat in a half circle facing the lake. They were drinking and laughing and happily pushing and shoving.

  Off in the other direction there was a county-provided single restroom and outdoor shower. A couple was sitting next to the building in old canvas beach chairs. The man had a newspaper open in his lap, blocking the view of the lake. The woman beside him extended her hand between their chairs, resting it on the man’s shoulder. She was looking to the lake which offered different shades of blue the deeper it ran.

  “Hun,” Abel said and that was all.

  She started down the path through the grass, and Jame followed.

  Abel knelt down beside Wiki and watched her friend turn in the shade of the umbrella, giving her the familiar crooked smile under her dark glasses. Abel returned the smile, and they didn’t speak. Jame carried the surfboard down to the shore to Charlie, who yelped with joy.

  The boy was quick to his feet, the town of sand instantly forgotten as he reached out for the surfboard. The two of them walked side by side into the water, and Abel turned around and sat close to Wiki in the shade.

  “How’s Cry Baby?” Abel asked.

  Wiki’s smiles grew, but she didn’t answer. The infant was asleep in her arms. She continued to watch the guys in the lake. Jame was a few strides behind Charlie on the surfboard as the boy paddled out into the fresh water.

  Abel shifted one of Wiki’s larger beach bags from beside her to her feet. The teens down the beach called encouragement across the shore and water to Charlie. A cool breeze crossed the beach, stirred the hanging folds of the umbrella, and eased the heat from their skin. Abel leaned forward and opened the beach bag between her feet. Inside were orderly packed baby clothes and zip locked bags holding four half bottles.

  Jame swam over behind Charlie. They were talking loudly to one another, but their words did not carry to the shore, only the happy sounds. A flock of seagulls passed, flying south to north, low over the lake. Keeping her sunglasses aimed at Jame and Charlie, Wiki opened the ice chest.

  “Thank you,” she said to Abel, taking out a water bottle. She twisted the cap off, took a sip, pulled another bottle from the ice and handed it to Abel.

  Jame took three aggressive steps, gave a large push, and Charlie and his board skimmed across the water. The boy stood to his feet, yelling, “Oh yeah! Oh yeah!” as he surfed.

  The bathhouse door creaked closed behind Abel, and she turned to look. A woman was crossing the sand slowly with her head down. Abel turned to Wiki, eyes happy, studying Cry Baby’s small face. Wiki leaned back and rested her chin on her pale raised hand, her dark glasses aimed at the lake.

  Abel turned to the soft pad of feet in the sand. The woman was approaching them. She wore a black dress instead of a bathing suit. The woman knelt in the dry sand at Wiki’s feet. She leaned into the shade and gazed at the baby in Wiki arms. The woman raised her shades. The baby cried out, and the woman leaned and hesitantly kissed Wiki’s knee.

  “Cry Baby is hungry,” she said to Wiki.

  Wiki gently eased the towel back from under the infant’s chin. She placed her lips on the baby’s forehead. She kissed and let her lips linger, tasting and breathing in.

  The woman kept her lips on Wiki’s knee. Her eyes were steady on the baby. She was offering a wistful smile.

  All three women heard the pad of Charlie’s bare feet approaching, but none of them looked up. Charlie slid into the sand on his knees.

  “Hey, Cry Baby!” Charlie yelped, and the infant stirred and cried out. Charlie laughed and turned his grin around to Jame, who was walking from the water with the surfboard.

  “It’s awake!” he called to Jame.

  “It’s not an it,” Abel corrected, kindly.

  “Right,” Charlie agreed and yelled over his shoulder, “Cry Baby’s awake!”

  The infant cried out again, and Wiki began to rock and coo.

  Charlie looked to the woman before Wiki.

  “Who are you?’ he asked.

  The woman did not answer, but reached inside the beach bag at Abel’s feet and shook an infant bottle and offered it to Wiki.

  “Everyone, this is Sara,” Wiki told her new friends, her new family.

  Hello’s were exchanged along with a few quizzed expressions.

  While Wiki fed Cry Baby from the bottle, the others set out lunch. Charlie handed out bottles of water and Abel and Jame took out the pie and a knife. Plates of pie and forks were handed out. Sara, at Wiki’s knee, declined and so did Wiki, who was watching the baby suck with a hearty appetite. Charlie sat back on his rear, his lips covered with banana cream as he chewed and grinned. Abel had her plate in her lap, holding Jame’s hand.

  In the shade of the umbrella, Wiki removed her black sunglasses and set them aside.

  Sara took Wiki’s offered hand in her own. She breathed over Wiki’s knee to the joyful bundle in the colorful beach towel.

  “My only loves.” Wiki spoke to the view. “Near and far.”

  The End

  THANK YOU

  Rhiannon Hart, you were invaluable

  Russell H. Greenan

  The Howell Opera House

  Charles Addams

  Pacific Bell

  P.D. Eastman

  The Town of Hamburg, Michigan

  The art and spirit of Michael Grab

  Greg Jolley earned a Master of Arts in Writing from the University of San Francisco. He is the author of fourteen novels and a collection of short stories about the fictional Danser family. He lives in the very small town of Whitmore Lake, Michigan.