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The Mossy Creek Gazette
215 Main Street * Mossy Creek, Georgia
From the desk of Katie Bell, Business Manager
Lady Victoria Salter Stanhope
Cornwall, England
Dear Lady Victoria,
Let me introduce myself ... I'm Katie Bell, gossip columnist for the Gazette and the unofficial town historian. That would mean that you've come to the right person for stories about the hometown of your recently discovered American ancestor! I'm happy to share what I know and to find out what I can.
Right now I can give you a few sketchy details. Your Great-Great-Great-Great Grandmother Isabella Salter began the 1859 feud between Mossy Creek and Bigelow, our neighboring town, when she ran away to England with Richard Stanhope. Apparently she jilted a Bigelow in the process.
But like any good gossip columnist, I want to check my facts before I say any more about their love affair or exactly who broke promises to whom.
I can definitely tell you that the feud isn't over. In fact, the feud is what's keeping me from getting more details right now. I need to talk to our Mayor Ida Hamilton Walker, but--as you can see from the story I've sent along--she's been busy this spring. If you knew Ida Walker, you'd know a lot about the kind of woman your ancestor probably was. And about the people in Mossy Creek today.
I look forward to sending you more news when I have it.
Your new friend and very distant relative to you on my mama's side,
Katie Bell
* * * * Ida Ida Shoots The SignI was six years old, the year was 1950, and the torch of stubborn Mossy Creek pride was about to pass to me intrue Mossy Creek style. I clutched the railing on a rickety wooden scaffold the Hamilton farmhands had hung fifty feet up the side of the whitewashed Hamilton Farm corn silo. My grandmother and namesake, Ida Hamilton, stood precariously on a level of scaffolding above me, wildly waving a small brush dipped in black paint. Big Miss Ida, as people called her, was six feet tall, thick-limbed and as strong as a mountain lumberman. Yet she wore her silver hair in a snazzy French twist and her trademark pearl necklace always showed above the collar of her practical chintz work dress. I was known as Little Miss Ida. I trembled in my overalls and Davy Crockett coonskin cap as I gazed up at Grandma's stocky legs and chintz-covered behind, directly above my head. If Grandma made one wrong move, I'd be known as Little Miss Squashed Ida.
"Pray like a saint and paint like a heathen!" Grandma sang out, slinging specks of black paint everywhere. Oily dabs speckled my upturned face. I refused to duck. I had to be brave. This had to be crazy. But in Mossy Creek, courage was a given, and crazy was a virtue. Helping Grandma re-paint the aged Mossy Creek welcome sign on the big corn silo was as solemn as a prayer in church, only without hard patent-leather shoes. The silo stood in a sanctuary framed by broad cattle pastures, high, wooded ridges, and blue-green Southern mountains. I stared up at Grandma's painting project--the tall, faded words of the town slogan.
WELCOME TO MOSSY CREEK
THE TOWN YOU CAN COUNT ON
AIN'T GOIN' NOWHERE, AND DON'T WANT TO
Those words had greeted town visitors for generations. The silo faced South Bigelow Road, the country two-lane that led the world to our mountain doorstep with the promise of great charm but also stubborn independence, metropolitan Mossy Creek. You could count on Mossy Creek to stay put, to always be the hometown you remembered, the place you would never forget and never wanted to. We might make only a pinpoint on maps of the world, but that pinpoint was a jewel. And so I, Little Miss Ida The Terrified, vowed to survive and uphold the town motto.
A gust of wind hit the scaffolding. I hung on for dear life. Mossy Creek might not be moving, but me, Grandma, and the scaffolding were headed out on a north wind. "Come on up, Little Miss Ida, the weather's fine!" Grandma bellowed, swashbuckling in her defiance of gravity, Picasso-sequel in her ability to slap abstract dabs of black house paint precisely inside the fading borders of huge words that had been stenciled on the silo's side by a Hamilton ancestor long before either Grandma or I were born.
"Do you think I'll bounce if I fall off?" I asked, eyeing a narrow wooden ladder that led from my level to hers.
"You're a Hamilton! You won't bounce, you won't bend, you won't break! Now clamber on up here. She who hesitates is last." The wind puffed Grandma's dress, and I saw straight up her flowered skirt. My grandmother, a pillar of the community, a rich woman who commanded 200 acres of prime cattle farm and owned half the countryside in and around Mossy Creek, wore lacy pink panties. I began to giggle, and the scaffold shook harder.
I pulled my coonskin cap down hard on my auburn Hamilton hair and prayed the way my mother taught me in church, where I was expected to set an example for lesser humans. Have no fear. Lead and defend. Hamiltons, like most Mossy Creekites, had a passion for honorable eccentricity and practical self-defense.
Have no fear. Lead and defend.
I climbed the ladder to Grandma's scaffold then held onto her outstretched hand like a squirrel wrapped around a telephone pole. She grinned at me. "See? It's all about shouting down the wild wind!"
Suddenly I felt as tall as the softly molded green mountains around us. I threw back my head. "I hope to shout!"
"Yaaah hooo!"
"Yaaah hooo!"
Grandma placed her small paintbrush in my hands. She gestured at the welcome slogan. "I'm afraid I'll mess it up," I admitted in a whisper.
"Bullfeathers. All it takes is a steady hand and a respect for tradition."
"Ardaleen says the saying's backward and stubborn. She says people down in Bigelow think we're all a bunch of pee-culiar small town mountain hicks." Ardaleen was my much-older sister, already sixteen and extremely annoying.
Grandmother snorted. "Your sister's struck with the prissy stick. Firstborns are always a stickler for rules. She liked her diapers too tight from day one. That's why I took a hard look at her in the crib and said, 'Nope, name the next one after me.'"
I beamed at her. "Because you knew I wouldn't be struck with the prissy stick."
"I know I can depend on you to knock sense into your sister's head if she ever sets her sights against her own hometown. And knock sense into anybody else who wants to throw out the baby with the bath water, tradition-wise." She nodded at the slogan. "You've got to keep the words up here and their meaning in your heart."
I put one paint-speckled hand over my heart. "I swear I'll knock and keep."
"Good girl. Now, paint." Grandma helped me guide the brush. Ain't Going Nowhere and Don't Want To. I put a big dab of black paint on the "I" in AIN'T. "So I will always stand out," I said.
Grandma laughed. "See? You've got the knack. You'll be the Big Miss Ida around here some day, and I'll be proud of you in Heaven."
"How will I know you're watching?"
She winked at me and pointed at her behind. "Whenever you see pink clouds in the sky, that'll be me showing off."
I laughed and suddenly understood my place in the world. I, Ida Hamilton The Knocker and Keeper, would shout down the wind, hold onto our best old ways but welcome new ones, and when in doubt look up to heaven for a glimpse of Grandma's pink drawers.
In Mossy Creek, that brand of philosophy makes perfect sense.
* * * *Fifty years passed as quickly as a dream. I woke up on a cool spring morning and lay quietly in my big bed at Hamilton Farm, gently remembering that day with Grandma at the corn silo. I was the Big Miss Ida, now. I put a Best of Fleetwood Mac CD in the sound system of my parlor office, turned up the volume on "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," drank a swig of scotch straight from the bottle, unlocked my mahogany gun cabinet, and loaded shells into my heirloom twelve-gauge shotgun with the silver-inlaid Hamilton crest.
After my parents disinherited Ardaleen for marrying a Bigelow, I inherited a lion's share of the Hamilton property and buildings, both in town and at Hamilton Farm. Ardaleen lives on a fake English estate down in Bigelow and hasn't spoken to me in twenty years. I'm the mayor, not to mention being the town's biggest property owner and landlord. And, if I do say so myself, I'm a fine-looking woman. I allow a few gray tendrils around the front of my hair now, but I consider them racing stripes.
I dressed in tailored khakis, a silk blouse and a dark blazer. I put my hair up with a tortoiseshell clip and polished my wedding ring. I've been a widow for longer than I care to remember, and though I've had my share of menfriends, I still wear my husband's etched gold wedding band. Over my parlor desk, I have a little bronze plaque he gave me: Tradition. Courage. Love. Finally, I latched a single strand of heirloom pearls around my neck. Grandma's pearls.
It was time to knock heads.
The mountains had begun greening like a dime store shillelagh. We were smack in the Ides of March. I walked down the long gravel farm road, through the woods and pastures, carrying the shotgun like a baby. Caesar will get his due, I vowed grimly.
Fifty of my fat, tan-and-white Guernsey cows followed me along a pasture fence as if I was the Pied Piper of moo-dom. Beyond the farm's big front pastures, South Bigelow Road still snaked past Hamilton Farm on its way into town, and the old corn silo still stood proudly, bearing the Mossy Creek welcome sign. A big, ugly, neon-yellow state highway truck squatted across from it, on the far side of South Bigelow.
I reached the road, and several workmen looked up from their project. When they saw the shotgun, they backed away, their eyes going wide. They reached into their yellow coveralls, pulled out cell phones, and began calling for backup. I lifted the shotgun. "Just stand back, boys. This is between me and my sister Ardaleen's son."
I looked up at the old silo. Thanks to my fresh coat of paint, its tall black words still stood out against the white sides as if stamped there by a huge hand. Ain't Going Nowhere, And Don't Want To. I nodded to that sentiment then faced the road crew's handiwork, an antiseptically modern, green-metallic sign with reflective white lettering:
Mossy Creek, Georgia The Town That IS Going Somewhere, And DOES Want To. By Order of Hamilton Bigelow, Governor of GeorgiaI blasted that sign. I shot it again, then reloaded and shot it two more times. By the time I finished, the sign leaned backwards like a drunk in a windstorm. The last blast punched a hole the size of a fist through the metal. There were only a few readable pieces of words left, to my satisfaction.
Ham to Go.
I turned my attention to the blue March sky. A wisp of pink morning clouds showed over the mountains. Grandma's panties.
She was watching, and she was proud. "I hope to shout," I yelled.
And Ham's road crew ran.
* * * *Police officer Mutt Bottoms shuffled his feet and bit his lip as if he wished he could drop into a long, dark hole and forget he had a duty to perform. Behind him, in the yard of my big Victorian farmhouse, a Mossy Creek municipal patrol car waited. Mutt was young and he was dedicated, but he looked as if he feared I'd grab him on one ear, the way I had when he was ten years old and I caught him in town hiding stink bombs under the breakfast porch of the Hamilton House Inn. Mutt had already sent five of the inn's guests inside complaining about dead skunks.
All these years later, he put a hand over one ear. "Miss Ida, I feel like you got me again."
"It's all right, Officer Bottoms. I'm not upset."
He cleared his throat so hard his Adam's apple bobbed like a fishing cork. "Okay. Then, uh, Mayor, you're under arrest for shooting the new welcome sign." He sagged a little. "Amos said I had to come get you. It wasn't my idea."
"It's all right." I smiled. Mossy Creek Chief of Police Amos Royden did not disappoint me. Amos played fair and square, and mayor or not, I was going to jail. Perfect. I picked up the paisley overnight bag I'd packed with a little make-up, a mirror, my laptop computer, and a press release I'd already written. "See you later, June," I called to my curly-haired Scottish housekeeper.
"Be good, Madam Ida," she chimed back and stepped out into the hall from the kitchen, waving. June McEvers grinned like a large, blonde, Scottish Shirley Temple. "Or at least look good."
I nodded and smiled as I faced poor Mutt, who gulped. "Aren't you going to handcuff me?" I asked.
He backed down my veranda steps as if I'd grown extra heads. "I'd rather be skinned alive."
I sighed. "Let's save your hide, then." I walked past him down the steps, through the front garden, to the patrol car.
He loped to the vehicle and held the door for me, like a chauffeur.
* * * *The news of my assault on Governor Ham Bigelow's sign began to spread. Phones rang in the outlying mountain communities of Bailey Mill, Chinaberry, Look Over, and Yonder. Tongues wagged happily all over Greater Mossy Creek. In Hamilton's Department Store--the grand old three-story stone building that dominated Mossy Creek's town square--my stoic, decent, kind but entirely too serious son, 32-year-old Robert Walker, the store president, received the news in person from his wife, Teresa.
"Chief Royden just arrested your mother for shooting the new welcome sign," Teresa said calmly. "I'm going over to the jail and try to spring her, if she'll let me. You know your mother is always trying to make me feel tougher than I am, and I've been reading up on criminal statutes." She paused, frowning but loyal. Teresa was a tax attorney, not exactly a criminal defense shark. "Maybe I could argue temporary insanity brought on by the start of tax season."
Robert, who had solemnly ordained himself a man at twelve years old when his father died, sat back in the chair of the antique desk where several generations of Hamiltons had commanded a world of clothing, knickknacks, home accessories, and all-purpose practical needs for comfortable living. He didn't even look surprised. "I used to think," he said, "that Mother would run away with the circus someday. Then I realized that the circus wants to run away with Mother."
True to Hamilton heritage, Robert was a creature of tradition--but not, like his late father and me--a natural-born troublemaker. After graduating from the University of Georgia with a business degree, he'd bought the aging small town department store from me with a token down payment he'd saved working part-time as a stockbroker, of all things. I'd never imagined a tall, strong, good-looking son of mine wanting to manage our failing old dinosaur of a department store, staffed by ten longtime employees so slow they chewed cuds. But Robert worked a miracle. He renovated and re-energized the building, he upgraded the merchandise, and he soon had the staff chanting Smile and Sell at staff meetings. Recently, he'd put a handsome new sign above the awnings of the main doors.
Hamilton's Because quality and good service still matter.There may be cheap, sloppy competition everywhere else on the planet, but in Mossy Creek a smiling clerk at Hamilton's shoe department will still measure a shopper's foot with a metal shoe ruler then bring a choice of potential shoes while the person sits in a comfortable chair, waiting like royalty. At Hamilton's, a little old lady with a measuring tape pinned to her sweater will still help customers shop for a dress. At Hamilton's, an old, freckled doorman will carry a woman's purchases to her car. At Hamilton's, people matter.
Suffice to say, everyone in Mossy Creek adores my son, and so do I.
I just wish he wouldn't expect me to behave.
"Go see if Mother will agree to bail," he told Teresa. "Or bake her a cake with a file in it."
* * * *That evening--just in time for the six o'clock news--I stood outside the Mossy Creek jail on Main Street. From the Hamilton House Inn to O'Day's Pub and all the way up to Mama's All You Can Eat Café, citizens, reporters and camera trucks vied for space. The Mossy Creek town square is normally the most peaceful place this side of a Norman Rockwell painting, but on that spring night it became a hotbed of protest. People waved placards out the upstairs windows of the shops, dangled little bean-bag effigies of my nephew from the limbs of the square's towering beech trees among signs that read HAM STRUNG, and had even wrapped the square's looming sculpture of General Augustas Brimberry Hamilton of Jefferson's Third Confederate Division in the official town flag. The flag bore our town seal, a medallion of creek and mountains circled by those glorious words, Ain't Going Nowhere, And Don't Want To.
"No New Sign! No New Sign!" the crowd chanted.
Camera lights flooded the whole scene. The entire town council stood behind me, forming a seven-person wall of sorrowful faces and ruffled feathers. I tried very hard to look noble and martyred, as if I hadn't just spent a grueling six hours in a jail cell with window curtains. "Governor Bigelow is ashamed of his mother's hometown," I said into the microphones of all the major Atlanta radio and television stations, which only sent crews to the wilds of north Georgia when winter snowstorms threatened tourists or Hamiltons threatened Bigelows. "He has asked us repeatedly to change our welcome motto to something he considers politically correct. After I told him in no uncertain terms we would never surrender our heritage, he forced a new sign on us."
"Do you want people to think that Mossy Creekers are against progress?" a reporter asked.
"Creekites," I corrected. "Mossy Creekites."
"Uh, sorry, Mossy Creekites."
"We're peculiar, you see. We don't want to be like every other town in the world. We hear the word 'progress' and see bulldozers tearing down the mountains. We hear the word 'growth' and see old farms being turned into subdivisions that all look alike." I paused for effect. "We hear the name 'Bigelow' and see our silver-spoon neighbors in the south end of this county plotting to get rid of us. This is not about us resisting positive new ideas and new people. This is about Ham Bigelow wanting to erase his mother's odd little hometown, so we won't embarrass him politically." I leaned forward. "Because this is about Ham Bigelow planning to run for President of the United States a few years from now."
Reporters gasped and scribbled feverishly in their notebooks while spewing questions at me. Will the governor confirm that? Has he said that to you personally? When will he make an announcement?
"You'll have to ask him when he pulls his head out of the sand."
Albert "Egg" Egbert, a retired Georgia Tech physics professor, second cousin of mine, old and jowly and hangdog, stepped forward with perfect timing, just as I had coached him to do. Professor Egg looked more like a ruined old homesteader than a man who could still dazzle everyone with an explanation of Einstein's theories. He faked a cornpone accent and drawled, "Oh, Cousin Ham, how could you be so durned sneaky? We've been ambushed! No, even worse!" He paused dramatically. "We've been Ham-bushed!"
I just stood there, gazing straight into the cameras, smiling like the cat that ate the ham sandwich. "Ham-bushed," I repeated.
The crowd roared.
* * * *Three hours' drive south of Mossy Creek, Governor Ham Bigelow cursed a blue streak and morosely sank back in his executive chair beneath the gilded dome of the state capitol. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with shrewd eyes but considerable charm--the perfect, deadly mix of Hamilton charisma and Bigelow slyness. He only fumbled when confronted by the Mossy Creek magic for absolutely twisting his custom-made boxer shorts into a wad. Now he put a hand over his face and groaned. He could see Ted Koppel turning to the camera on Nightline. "Primary voters want to know," Ted would intone. "Is Georgia Governor Hamilton Bigelow a candidate driven by consummate greed and ambition? They remember his own aunt telling the world some years ago that he planned to stake a claim on the White House. So voters want to know--as his own relatives are fond of saying--is Governor Bigelow merely trying to Ham-bush this presidential election?"
Ham lowered his hand. "Mother, what am I gonna do?"
Sitting beside him in a Queen Anne armchair she'd brought up from her million-dollar second home on St. Simon's Island so that she would have her own special throne in her son's gubernatorial office, Ardaleen Hamilton Bigelow glowered at her younger sister on the TV screen. Her green Hamilton eyes narrowed like the gaze of a silver-haired vulture. "I'll teach Ida a lesson," she hissed. She picked up a phone. "I'm calling Judge Blakely."
Ham stared at her. "Mother, you're one mean old lady," he said affectionately.
Ardaleen smiled.
* * * *Two weeks after I shot Ham Bigelow's new Mossy Creek welcome sign, I stood beside my nervous daughter-in-law, Teresa, in the packed courtroom of glowering Judge Blakely at the Bigelow County Courthouse. Judge Doom, we called him up in Mossy Creek. He thought civilization in Bigelow County began and ended inside the city of Bigelow. After all, Bigelow was the county seat. Bigelow had a country club and a golf course. Bigelow had a French café and a sushi restaurant. Bigelow had a junior college, and strip shopping centers, and a new ten-screen movie theater with stadium seating and chili nachos. Bigelow had a Super Wal-Mart. What Bigelow did not have was pretty, unspoiled Mossy Creek--population 1,700, all nose-thumbing anti-Bigelow rebels. Though our town anchored the county's northern end less than a twenty-minute drive from Bigelow, to Judge Blakely, Mossy Creek was no better than a mud-hut village filled with sign-shooting cannibals.
"Well, Ida, the law finally caught you red-handed," Judge Blakely brayed as he banged his gavel to start court.
"I object," Teresa said.
"This isn't the IRS office, little lady, so unless you got a problem with my tax return, you're overruled."
Teresa blushed. I chewed my tongue and gave Judge Blakely a murderous look. "Don't take your gleeful bad mood out on my daughter-in-law--or anyone else."
"You watch yourself, Ida Hamilton Walker. I'll hold you in contempt. More'n I already do. Women like you have a responsibility to be ladies and role models. You let society down."
"I think I've lived up to my gender-based public responsibility to society more than you have. In the past two weeks, you've handed out hard sentences to every Mossy Creekite who's come to trial here. From what I've heard, those people were all innocent. You're punishing the whole town."
Judge Blakely reared back as if about to explode. Teresa yipped softly. "My client isn't accusing you of abusing your power, Your Honor. She's just upset about some of the new government rulings on tax deductions, and she's taking it out on you--"
Judge Blakely slammed his gavel down, and Teresa jumped. He jabbed a finger at me. "Ida Hamilton Walker, are you questioning my honor?"
"Your honor, Your Honor?"
"You being smart-alecky?"
"About your honor, Your Honor?"
The courtroom erupted in giggles. Judge Blakely rapped his gavel and glowered. Half the courtroom seats were filled by grinning reporters and the other half by dour aides of Ham's, pretending to be ordinary citizens.
Sue Ora Salter, the publisher of the Mossy Creek Gazette, chortled from her front-row seat. She was married to a Bigelow husband but hadn't lived with him for years. She knew what was what when it came to co-existing with Bigelowans, as we called them. My son Robert sat near her on the front bench, handsome and formal in a dark gray suit, but frowning at the judge with a jaw-punching threat that made me proud. Robert might one day actually forget himself and act reckless. Sitting beside him, grinning at me and waving when I turned around to look, was Little Ida, my brilliant, eight-year-old, auburn-haired namesake. She was taking notes for her website.
Judge Blakely yelled at me. "You makin' fun of me?"
"No, I'm letting you do it yourself."
"Now I'm gonna really hold you in contempt, you uppity--"
"Mayor Ida Hamilton Walker pleads guilty to all charges," Teresa interjected quickly.
The judge froze. He eyed me warily, squinting at me, studying me as if I might be hiding a switchblade or another Your Honor quip inside my sleek blue dress-suit. "Well, well. You gonna holler uncle this quick, Mayor?"
"I've already made my point. I've said what I needed to say. If it will stop you from punishing my townspeople, I'll admit my guilt and take the consequences."
"Well, well." Judge Blakely shuffled some papers. "Mayor Hamilton, you destroyed state property. Therefore, you'll pay for a new sign to replace the one you shot. Plus, I'm giving you six months' jail time--set aside on probation, as long as you behave." He paused, then smiled fiendishly. "But you'll have to complete six weeks of anger management classes at the Bigelow Counseling Center."
Anger management class was the equivalent of being sent to stand in the corner. I wasn't being taken seriously--the whole town of Mossy Creek wasn't being taken seriously. I wanted dramatic punishment--the kind television cameras could film. "I'd rather serve time in the county jail. I will happily wash county police cars or unload garbage at the dump with the rest of the unfairly convicted Mossy Creek citizens singled out in your reign of terror."
"Sssh," Teresa begged. "Your Honor, could I approach the bench and discuss alternative sentencing for my--"
"Nope." He slapped his gavel down. "We'll just see who's funny, now."
To add insult to injury, Judge Blakely ordered the state roads commissioner to put up an identical new welcome sign within a day after my prissy, patronizing sentence hit the news.
I had won the battle but lost the war.
* * * *On a rainy Thursday night when the spring winds carried the first full songs of the frogs, I parked my 1958 silver-gray Corvette outside one of the antiseptically modern, white-brick buildings of a Bigelow office park. I stared balefully at the glow of light coming from the glass doors of the Bigelow Counseling Center. Flinging a soft black cashmere scarf around my black sweater and slacks, I strode inside.
Room 7A was my destination, according to my court-provided instruction sheet. When I rounded a hallway corner, I nearly collided with over six feet of lean, muscular, male body. The owner of that body moved a plastic coffee mug out of the way without spilling a drop. I looked up into a rugged face, deep blue eyes, and short, sandy gray hair.
"Excuse me," I said. "You shouldn't just lurk around corners holding dangerous coffee cups."
He smiled, and I caught my breath.
There are a limited number of hunky men over the age of fifty, and this one could have been a leader in that elite group. I'm never helpless or coy around attractive males, but I gave him and his handsome packaging--loafers, khakis, a sweater and a brown bomber jacket--an unfettered once over, while my right hand rose to my chest and preened at my scarf.
He tilted his head, arched sandy gray brows, and gave me the same head-to-toe scrutiny. "Nice accessories," he said in a deep voice with a crisp Midwestern accent. "I apologize."
My face burned. The rest of me experienced a rebellious jolt of pleasure. I wanted to retort, You, sir, are no gentleman, as if I were some middle-aged Scarlett O'Hara, not quite upset but not quite happy, either. "I don't know you, do I?"
"Not yet."
"Are you here for anger management or for a class on picking up women?"
He grinned. "Interested?"
"Do I look interested?"
"Your lips say No, but your smile says Yes."
I clamped my rebellious lips together and sashayed past him into our small, starkly lit classroom. What was the world coming to when a mayor could get hit on by a middle-aged Rhett Butler while attending court-ordered counseling?
Maybe this punishment wouldn't be so bad, after all.
* * * *My fellow Mossy Creekites and I-all victims of Judge Blakely's vendetta--sat in hard plastic chairs behind two cold metal tables in a little classroom where the wall posters offered feel-good slogans and finger-wagging lessons. Think, don't fight. Smile, don't yell.
Kiss My Behind, I wrote on a notepad.
I nicknamed our group the Mossy Creek Five. I knew two of them--bulldozer operator Wolfman Washington and young Geena Quill, who was the daughter of a friend of mine--but the other two--my rugged Rhett Butler, and a rough-looking young man with kind eyes--were newcomers who must live in the outlying communities of Mossy Creek. I sighed. Look Over, Yonder, Bailey Mill and Chinaberry were just crossroads with country stores to anchor them, but there had been a time when I could name every soul who lived there. I started to introduce myself to Rhett and Rough, as I named them, but the counselor suddenly entered the room.
He was a short, thin, tight-mouthed man who wore a bright yellow badge pinned to his sweater vest. Oscar Seymore, Happy Therapist, it said beneath a smiley face. I distrusted him instantly. Oscar frowned at our little group as he handed out packets of reading material. "I expect y'all to read these papers for class discussion next week," he commanded in a reedy, annoying voice.
Barney Fife, I wrote on my notepad.
Rhett leaned over, boldly invaded my personal space, and read my words. "I'm telling Teacher," he whispered drolly. A mischievous smile lifted one corner of his mouth.
I answered through gritted teeth, "Back off. I'm barely managing my anger."
"My job," Oscar began, "is to provoke this group and make each of you think about appropriate ways to respond to unpleasant circumstances." He stood before us, rapping the palm of one hand with a cigar-sized metal device. "First off, I want you to share your personal background and tell everyone exactly why you were placed in this class."
"Brainwashing 101 was already full," Rough suggested in a carpet-slicing New York accent. Rough was in his early twenties, with dark hair and sharp, amused eyes. He lounged in his desk-chair with dusty, laced-up work boots crossed at the ankles. His shirt was clean but old, and his hands were covered in nicks and calluses. He narrowed his eyes and smiled, but his exhausted posture and the gaunt circles beneath those eyes told me this kid worked hard at some dirty job.
Next to him, Geena fidgeted with the buttons of her demure brown suit and eyed him with shy fascination. She was trying very hard not to cry, and he was trying very hard to look mean. I felt a pang of sympathy for them both.
Oscar's cheeks colored. "Let's get something straight, young man. I put remarks such as yours in my files for Judge Blakely to read. If you don't want to repeat this class--or serve jail time--you'll straighten up. And that includes sitting up straight, too."
Silence. Humiliation crawled through the room. Rough, the poor young guy, looked as if his skin were being sliced off bit by bit. Beside me, Rhett straightened and said quietly, "You must be talking to me, Oscar."
Wolfman, behind us, drawled firmly, "No, must be talkin' to me."
I squared my shoulders. "Oh, no. Oscar means me."
Rough's mouth quirked in a smile. "Nah, it's just me." He sat up taller, defiant. Geena darted nervous looks at him and the rest of us. Then she slowly pressed her spine into a proud line and lifted her chin, quivering with brave camaraderie. "No, me," she peeped.
Oscar craned his head and gave us all a look like a worried gopher. "I'll make a note of this sarcasm in the group dynamic." He turned his back, clicked the cigar-shaped device, and pointed it at a poster pad on an easel. A red laser dot speared the first name he'd scrawled on the pad. "Mr. Washington. Stand up and own your shame."
Wolfman, a burly, thirty-something black man with a thick beard, rose from the table like a calm mountain. His beard and mustache were neatly trimmed, and he wore a white shirt and a tie with brown corduroy trousers. The tie had Mickey Mouse on it. His hands were large and hard-worked, his face, friendly. "My name's Wolfman Washington. I been in the earth movin' business since I was old enough for my daddy to set me in the cab of a bulldozer. Got me two big dozers and two bobcats, a backhoe, and a twenty-ton dump truck. Me and my wife got us a nice little farm over in Yonder."
"Get to the point," Oscar snapped.
"Well, yessir. Heavy equipment sure isn't the point." He cleared his throat and launched into a poem. Wolfman was the poet laureate of Greater Mossy Creek, including Yonder and the other outlying communities. "Wife and kids, I'll take no bids, Wouldn't trade 'em, For all the world's riches, I'm just happy, Digging ditches."
"Very nice," I said.
Oscar glared at me, then at Wolfman. "Tell us your crime, Mr. Washington."
"I was doing some work for a developer over in East Bigelow Estates--digging a swimming pool for his backyard--and whilst I was working he set this crew of men to building a gazebo, and one of those men was a Mexican feller, a real hard worker, he has a family, he's a good soul, and, well, I found out that developer wouldn't pay the Mexican as much as the rest of the crew. See, he knew the Mexican wasn't here legal. So he knew the Mexican couldn't do nothing about being cheated out of pay." Wolfman paused. His chin came up. "I can't watch a person be cheated out of his duly earned money. I can't go home to my boys and tell 'em we live in that kind of country. So I ... I lost my temper, and I, uh, got in my bulldozer, and I pushed the developer's golf cart into the swimming pool hole." He sighed but kept his chin up. "I did the crime, I'll serve my time, Just don't want the world, To turn on a rich man's dime."
A bad poet, I thought, but a noble crusader.
Oscar snorted. "You, next," he said loudly, and pinpointed my name on the pad. I stood, gave my particulars in a firm, loud voice, then started to sit down. "Not so fast," Oscar said. "I believe all of us are familiar with your crime, via television and the newspapers. I'd like some comment from your classmates."
I nodded, and calmly studied the group. Wolfman nodded politely back, Rough shrugged, Geena blushed, but Rhett Butler raised a hand. "What gauge was your shotgun?"
"Twelve," I said.
"Wouldn't a deer rifle have done more damage?"
My heart warmed. "Yes, but the shotgun was a family heirloom. A sentimental choice."
"Next time, try to stand no more than twenty feet from the sign--"
"Enough!" Oscar stepped in front of me. He could have killed Rhett Butler with one waspish look. "You think the mayor's violence and vandalism are a joke?"
"No, I think she betrayed her official oath, and she ought to resign from office. But I was talking technique, not morality--"
"Betrayed my oath?" I echoed. "I'll tell you what would have been a betrayal of my oath: Letting the citizens of my town be trampled by the Bigelow political machine. Letting the governor's arrogance overrule more than one hundred years of devotion to an old-fashioned welcome sign that means something to the people of Mossy Creek. Turning a blind eye when individuals corrupt the system for their own gain."
"You corrupted the system when you did an end run around the law," Rhett countered smoothly. "That makes you no better than your enemies." He paused. "But you're a helluva admirable fighter, I have to tell you."
"Keep your fake compliments."
"Temper, temper."
"This is good," Oscar said, studying my face. "We've hit a nerve. Would you like to describe how you're feeling?"
"Not in language you want to hear," I said flatly and sat down.
Oscar pointed at Rhett. "You." My blue-eyed nemesis stood with a sigh, and began to speak. He had a name as sturdy as his red-blooded attitudes. Delaware Jackson. Newly retired Lieutenant Colonel Delaware Jackson, U.S. Army, to be precise. A civil engineer. Combat veteran of Vietnam and the Gulf War. Fifty-five years old, divorced for more than twenty years from the mother of his son, Campbell, and grandfather of two. He had just bought the old Bransen farm outside Bailey Mill. For now, he was helping out his son, who owned a gym and martial arts studio in Bigelow.
"Mister Jackson," Oscar bawled, emphasizing Del Jackson's lowly new status as a mere citizen. "You conveniently forgot to explain anything about your crime."
"There's a six-year-old boy involved. He's in foster care, and I have to testify on his behalf in a court hearing. I don't think I should discuss the details."
Oscar pawed through a sheaf of notes. "Well, I don't care what you think. You tossed the boy's father in a garbage container. You gave him a broken nose and a concussion. Why?"
Del Jackson eyed Oscar as if he were a termite in a woodpile. "My son and I saw the man whipping his little boy in the parking lot after a karate class." He paused. "I decided to teach the man how to manage his anger. He needed a hard lesson."
Oscar looked unnerved by Del's valiant story and the group's aura of respect. "You," he ordered, and pointed to Geena. "You're next."
Trembling, she stood and began to talk. Until recently she had worked as a secretary for Swee Purla of Purla Interiors. Swee, Bigelow's answer to Martha Stewart, was a cold-blooded tyrant. I had been to one or two elaborate parties at her rambling country cottage, and I'd seen her reduce servants to tears.
"My whole dream in life is to be an interior designer," Geena said in a small voice. "I've worked for Mrs. Purla a whole year and never asked for anything but a chance to prove myself. Besides being her secretary, I've walked her dachshunds, done her Christmas shopping, even polished her shoes. She barely noticed I was alive, but ... but that was all right. I just wanted a chance." She stopped, her throat working, her eyes wet.
"No crying!" Oscar ordered. "Crying is a denial of guilt, and denial leads to uncontrolled anger, and I demand that you control yourself!"
We all glared at him.
Geena wiped her eyes and took a quick breath. "Finally, a nice lady over in Bigelow Estates asked Mrs. Purla if I could help with her lake cabin renovation. We'd become friends on an earlier job, and I'd suggested some colors, so"--she straightened her shoulders--"so Mrs. Purla said yes. I got to work as a designer!" Her face brightened. "I did the whole cabin, and it was wonderful. Mrs. Purla let me enter my designs in the state decorators' association competition." Her face tightened. "I waited for weeks to hear about my entry, and one day I came into the office, and I heard Mrs. Purla telling a client that the cabin design had won first place!" She paused, knotting her hands in front of her. "I'd won first place! But then I heard. I heard..." she groaned. "Mrs. Purla took all the credit! 'Oh, I felt very inspired when I created the look for that cabin,' she said. Well, I just went crazy for a second. After all I'd been through. I ... picked up a faux Grecian vase off our display counter, and it felt so ... so well-balanced, I threw it at Mrs. Purla. I didn't mean to hit her, but I did! Right in the back of the head. She collapsed. I was terrified. I'd only stunned her, but she said I'd meant to kill her. I didn't! I only wanted the credit that was rightfully mine."
Geena broke down, sobbing. Rhett, Wolfman, and I got to our feet. Rough rose and leapt ahead of us. "Hey, take it easy," he counseled her gruffly. "You didn't even break any skin. Where I grew up, we got nuns who fight dirtier than that."
"Stop validating her impulses!" Oscar demanded. "She's got to deal with her remorse. Self awareness requires discipline and stamina."
Rough pivoted toward him menacingly. "You just like to make chicks cry."
"Watch what you say! I'm taking notes!"
"Go ahead. My name's Nail Delgado," he said in his Brooklyn brogue. "I just moved to Chinaberry last month. Got a trailer on some property my ma left me. Cutie Upton--she was from around here. I got a job at the candle factory. I don't know what it's like to live in the country--hey, I don't know cows from cannoli, see? So my neighbor's cow gets out of the pasture and comes over, and stands in my driveway and has its kid--its calf, whatever--has its baby right there by my truck. So I go out and say, Nice, cow, no hurry, and the baby's just getting dried out, looking for lunch, but the owner comes over, and he's a cranky dude, and he starts waving an electric cow prod like he's gonna zap momma and her little beefcake. And I say, Cut 'em some slack. They've had a long day. So he mouths back at me that they're just dumb animals, and I say they're on my land and it's a cow sanctuary, I just decided. You poke 'em with that zapper and I'll stick it ... well, anyway. He got mad at that, and I wrestled him for the cow prod, and when I got it I gave him an electric jab in the rump roast."
So he's Cutie Upton's son, I thought in sad amazement. Cutie had had a hard life and disappeared as a teenager. I looked at her stalwart boy with admiration and then realized everyone else was equally touched by his heroic, breathless, bovine tale. Even Geena stopped crying and studied Nail as if he were a tender cut of steak.
But Oscar's lip curled. "You think cows deserve more respect than a fellow human being?"
"The cows couldn't fight back. They didn't have an electric people prod."
Oscar snorted. "Give everyone your name, Mister Nail. Your real name."
"Francis Upton Delgado."
"Francis Upton. Not so tough-sounding now, are you, Francis Upton?"
"I dunno. Why don't you use my initials, instead?" He paused perfectly. "Just F.U."
I bit my tongue. Glancing at Del Jackson, I caught the twitch of a smile on his lips. The obscene double entendre turned Oscar livid. "You're out of here, jerk! You're out of this class!" He leaned toward Nail, spitting as he shouted. "I'm reporting you to Judge Blakely. How does time in the county jail sound? Better than anger management class once a week? You've got your wish, then."
"Don't you dare," I said evenly.
"Listen to the mayor," Del told Oscar. "She's speaking for all of us."
We all drew closer together, all five of us, bonding in Mossy Creekite defiance. "You'll have to send this whole class to jail," I said.
Geena whispered, "Does F.U. mean what I think it means?"
I lied quickly. "It means Forget-about-it, You!" I looked at Del Jackson for support.
He arched an eyebrow. "Yes, it's a Yankee insult."
Wolfman, struggling not to laugh, added, "I think Yankees say it like 'Foo.' As in Foo You."
Geena took a deep breath. "Foo!" she said to Oscar. "Just Foo!"
Nail, speechless through all of this, began to smile. "Hey, if my homies say it, it's true. Foo You."
Oscar looked at us with the white-rimmed eyes of a small, frustrated lap dog, but the slightest twitch began under his beady left eye. He was defeated. Five Mossy Creekites had just declared All For One and One For Y'all.
We were The Foo Club.
