Blackwork (2 page)

Meanwhile, she would continue brewing beer. For one thing, it was organic. And it was old, old, old. The earliest example of writing, a clay cuneiform tablet, proved to be a Sumerian inventory of warehoused beer. The ancient Egyptians, on break from building pyramids, drank beer.

Beer and wine were safer than untreated water, knowledge people treasured down the centuries.

Benjamin Franklin said that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Leona had done a counted cross-stitch of that motto and hung it up at The Barleywine, even though she didn’t believe in the God old Ben was talking about.

One good thing about having a partner in business was that Leona occasionally had time to indulge another one of her passions: needlework. She directed a mental blessing at Betsy Devonshire and her shop, Crewel World. Nice to have it local, well run, and well stocked with lots of counted cross-stitch patterns.

Too bad poor Betsy thought she had to spend Sunday morning in church, praying that her shop continued to do well. All owners of small businesses—Leona included—often walked in unsafe proximity to bankruptcy.

But Leona liked Wicca because it wasn’t a petitionary religion. The Christians and Jews were encouraged to ask their God for favors. In Leona’s mind, this put them in the position of children—and Leona had resented being treated like a child even when she was one. Wicca maintained that people had power within themselves; they just had to learn how to plug into it. It had taken years, and there had been and still were failures. But when it worked, it was like riding Pegasus, soaring upward on the wings of that power. A few falls had taught Leona to go carefully, wisely, and to build shields against the unexpected.

She was amazed by atheists, even more so than by Christians. Didn’t they see how
alive
the world was? How full of invisible influences? She checked her watch, rose and went into the house, and came back with two big bags of ice cubes. She sliced the bags open with a pocket knife and poured the ice into her biggest cauldron.

After giving the boiling cauldron a final stir, Leona unhooked it from the tripod and set it with a loud hiss into the icy cauldron, stirring and stirring to make sure it cooled quickly and evenly. She dipped into it with a quart-size glass pitcher and set that aside on a flat rock.

Then she cleared her mind of residual angry or resentful thoughts about Billie Leslie, her perforce partner. And while she was at it, her anger at Ryan McMurphy, who while sober was a fine, upstanding citizen but while drunk, a disgusting and angry bigot. It could spoil the brew to make it while unhappy; and to allow angry or unhappy thoughts to take up residence could lead to thoughts of hexes and curses. That way madness lay.

When her mind was sweet and calm, she recited a brief charm to bless the living yeast and added it to the pitcher, stirred thoroughly, then added it to the cooled cauldron, stirring and stirring. The yeast would eat the sugar released by boiling the grain, turning it into alcohol. She had put in just enough hops to give it the familiar bitterness of beer—American beers, in her opinion, were generally overhopped—and now added a little anise for exotic flavor.

She siphoned the wort—there were about three gallons—into a big glass jug and put an airlock on it that would allow gasses to escape while preventing outside air from slipping in to contaminate the brew.

If she liked the dark ale that resulted, she would make a full-size batch in her microbrewery at The Barleywine. She turned the yard light off and just stood awhile, looking up at the dark sky. Ancient peoples had been afraid of the dark; modern peoples drove it away with streetlights and lamps. But Leona had never been afraid of the dark. In her mind’s eye she could see the big glass jug sitting on the earth, the earth turning toward the darkness as the yeast began its stealthy work.

She would call it Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark Ale.

I
T was a dark, blustery afternoon.

In October an occasional raw day was expected, sometimes even welcome after a hot, dry summer. But it had been a cool summer, and now it was a dark, wet, cold autumn. Godwin had turned on every light in the shop to keep the depressing outdoors at bay, but it pressed against the big front window, dimming the bright colors of the knitting yarns on display. A different kind of rainy autumn—with rackety thunderstorms that left the air sharp and clean and shiny—wouldn’t have been so miserable. But since mid-September, the days had grown short and gloomy, with chilly rain dripping from clouds that rarely parted to let the sun shine in.

Like today. Thin streamers of water dribbled down the big front window of Crewel World like the tears of a child whose dog has died.

Godwin sat down at the big library table, on a chair that faced the well-lit back, away from the tears. He picked up a piece of cross-stitch he’d been working on, a Mike Vickery chart of three brilliant Amazon macaws sitting in tropical foliage. He was stitching it on fourteen-count linen in the brightest colors DMC offered. Betsy wasn’t there, so he’d put a Jimmy Buffet album in the CD player—Betsy allowed only soft jazz or classical when she was in the shop—and was nodding in agreement while Jimmy sang about winding up in some tropical bay and wailed, “You need a holllllllliday!”

The door made its two-note announcement that someone was coming in. Godwin put down his stitching and hopped up to greet her—the shop sold needlework and needlework supplies, so naturally most of its customers were women.

Only this time it wasn’t. A slim young man stood just inside the door shaking water off his stylish gray fedora. He was dark, a little over Godwin’s height—Godwin was five seven—an extraordinarily handsome Spaniard, with thick black hair and bright brown eyes. Even his smile was handsome.

“Rafael!” exclaimed Godwin. “What brings you out in this weather? Not that I’m not happy to see you!” He reached to take the man’s hand but was drawn instead into an embrace.

“
¡Mi amigo!
” said Rafael with a chuckle.

“Oh, hey, you’re all wet!” protested Godwin, anxious about his brown and green alpaca sweater.

“So I have been told on occasion,” said Rafael in the slightly formal tone that came so naturally to him. He released Godwin and stepped back.

Godwin looked up to see if his friend was really hurt, and saw a warm smile. He continued looking, now to admire Rafael’s clothing.

His gray wool overcoat with the tie belt was a perfect match in color for the fedora. Around his neck he wore a gold-colored, loosely knit scarf so enormous it was practically a shawl. With all this, plus his narrow trousers and thin black shoes, he looked like an illustration in an upscale magazine article entitled, “What the Fashionable Man Is Wearing.”

“Are you not glad to see me?” he asked, the smile starting to fade.

Godwin’s heart turned over. “Oh, Rafael,” he sighed, and turned away so the man would not glimpse the hope shining in his eyes. Godwin had been disappointed a few times this past summer, and by incipient partners far less worthy than this one.

When he got his emotions under control, he turned back. “What brings you to the shop?”

“My condo was feeling too small, so I decided to be brave about the weather. And anyway, I wanted to see you in your own setting.” He looked around, nodding in approval.

Godwin had mentioned he would like Rafael to come to Crewel World to see him “in his natural setting,” but also to have Betsy meet him.

Not that Godwin needed Betsy’s approval of Rafael, of course. But Godwin’s susceptible heart had led him into some situations he quickly regretted, and he felt he needed a backup opinion on this new interest.

“I want also to meet the woman who is your boss,” said Rafael, and at this seeming reading of his mind, Godwin’s eyebrows lifted in surprise..

Rafael had a beautiful laugh, deep and rich and whole-hearted. “You want me to meet her, too!” he said, pleased to have guessed. Godwin laughed with him. No one who laughed like that could be a bad person. He was sure Betsy would agree.

Godwin had thought of introducing some of his friends to Rafael and later seeking their opinion. He had decided not to, sure that if they met Rafael, they’d either bad-mouth him or try to woo him away.

So now here was Rafael, ready to be anatomized. Godwin, a lover of language, had come across the word
anatomized
in an old book, and had looked it up and discovered that it meant to analyze in great detail. But what if Betsy didn’t approve? Worse, what if she perceived something awful about him?

Well, what if she did? Was her opinion likely to be good in the first place? After all, Betsy had her own unhappy history with men.

Rafael had walked away to look around the shop while Godwin was turning these things over in his mind. They’d rearranged the shop recently, and now the shallow front section, marked off by the antique, white-painted counter, was devoted entirely to knitting yarns, needles, patterns, and supplies. Counted cross-stitch patterns, fabrics, floss, and other materials took up the biggest area in the center; and needlepoint canvases, wools, needles, and other supplies were stored in the back, behind a half wall of box shelves. The walls in the central area were covered with framed models of cross-stitch patterns. Some were small and beautiful; some were large, complex, and beautiful; some were amusing or clever. There were alphabet samplers, witches and jack-o’-lanterns, animals, seascapes, flags and eagles, teapots, English cottages, comic Santas, farmyards, elaborately gowned women, to name just a few. Most were done in counted cross-stitch, but some showcased other kinds of needlework, such as bargello, candlewick, or Hardanger. Rafael walked around, as absorbed as if he were in a museum.

Godwin let him wander. At last Rafael returned to say, “And this,
this
, is your ‘fun little hobby’?” He flung a hand up and outward. “How dare you speak of it so slightingly! Many of these things are very beautiful, and doubtless they are very difficult to execute! No wonder your heart is so blithe, when you work among such beautiful things all day long! Your boss must be an amazing woman, so—so charming, so artistic, and then to turn so
feminine
an occupation into a
business
! I want to meet her! Where is she?”

“She’s at a meeting. The whole city of Excelsior is going to hold a big Halloween celebration in a few weeks, with a parade and everything, and she’s on the planning committee for the parade.”

“Oh, yes, you told me of that event. And she is helping with it? She is a woman of many talents, I see.”

“Oh, yes, more than you know—more than
I
know, probably. I worry about her sometimes. I mean, she’s already got the hassle of this shop plus she owns the building—or will in about four hundred more mortgage payments—so why she takes on more grief is a puzzle to me.”

“You think planning a parade in a small town is a big grief?”

Godwin smiled sourly. “You have no idea.”

 

 

 

 

T
HE main problem was that the organizing committee for the fall festival was too big. Not many hands making light work, but too many chefs spoiling the broth. Fourteen chefs to be exact, almost every one of them insisting his or her opinion be heard.

Billie Leslie had never organized anything bigger than a church picnic, but she had a solid, authoritarian manner that made people frequently turn to her for guidance. On the other hand, she was slow to cut off discussions, even when things were getting bogged down in talk.

Decisions had taken too long from the start. What kind of autumn festival was it going to be? A Halloween celebration? A mini-Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade? How about the ultimate in nonoffensive, politically correct events, a celebration of the pretty-colored leaves?

The “pretty-colored leaves” supporters were quickly defeated, but it wasn’t until after the third planning meeting that the leader of the Thanksgiving contingent discovered she had to go to Pennsylvania for a son’s sudden marriage, which gave the Halloween contingent their chance to rally and win.

The meeting to decide the specifics of the Halloween festival was particularly rancorous. Some wanted a parade. Others wanted the sidewalks lined with booths. Some wanted games and dancing on the common by the lake. Someone suggested a huge cookout, others felt families would enjoy individual post-summer picnics, and still others wanted hot dog stands, that fellow who sold pork chops on a stick, and the woman who made fabulous fruit smoothies. Everyone had an opinion and was willing to share it, at length, with the committee. And what was to happen if it rained—or snowed? Snow was not unknown in autumn in Excelsior. Normally there were at least flurries by Halloween. Billie’s solution was to set up subcommittees to work problems out. Eventually, there were eleven subcommittees, some with as few as one member.

At a meeting that ran two hours past its scheduled end, there was a compromise of sorts. They’d have it all: pork chops, a picnic, a pickup tag football game, and booths on the common; three—three!—costume contests (children from infants to age six, children from seven to fourteen, and adults), booths on the sidewalks, two bands,
and
a parade. Someone suggested a torchlight parade, pointing out that since the floats and costumes were to be done by amateurs, dim lighting could only help. At least ten people insisted on making a statement of agreement to that last suggestion.