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Authors: Barbara O'Connor

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Kirby's mother rang the bell on the counter again.
“Well, this is just great,” she said. “Nobody's here.”
The postcard rack squeaked as Kirby spun it around and around.
“Stop it, Kirby,” his mother hollered. “I've got a splittin' headache. My feet are killin' me. And I need a cigarette.”
She slammed her hand down on the bell again.
Three times.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
“I'm going to go look for somebody,” she said, shoving the screen door open.
Kirby strolled around the office, running his hand along the walls, shuffling through the maps on the counter, turning
the pages of the guest book. He studied the postcards in the rack by the door. Pictures of mountains. Indians. Bears. He picked one that said
Greetings from the Great Smoky Mountains
, folded it in half, and stuffed it into his pocket.
He went behind the counter and studied the calendar with the red X's through the days. He jiggled the keys hanging on cup hooks on the wall.
He peered into the room behind the curtain. It was jammed with furniture. A bed. A tattered lounge chair. Tables. Bureaus. In one corner of the room was a little kitchen. The sink was filled with dishes. The countertop was cluttered with milk cartons, paper towels, and cans of cat food. On the floor under a tiny round table was a bowl with
Kitty
on the side. Flowerpots filled with drooping, pink-flowered plants lined the windowsills.
Kirby went to the front of the office and hopped over his duffel bag. Then back again. Then over again. Then back again.
Hop.
Hop.
Hop.
Hop.
Meow.
Kirby stopped hopping.
A scruffy black cat with one eye sat outside the screen door.
Kirby pushed the door open. The cat strolled inside and rubbed against Kirby's legs, purring.
Kirby sat on his duffel bag and held his hand out. The cat sniffed it, his nose twitching and his scraggly tail swishing back and forth on the floor.
Then the cat jumped right into Kirby's lap.
“What happened to your ear, fella?” Kirby said, running his finger along the cat's torn ear. “And your eye?”
The cat rubbed his face against Kirby's shoulder and purred again.
“I bet you been in a fight,” Kirby said.
The cat blinked.
“A lot of fights,” Kirby said.
He scratched the cat's neck.
“I guess nobody likes you,” he said.
The cat looked up at Kirby and let out a tiny little
meow.
“Yeah,” Kirby said, “I know how you feel.”
“Hello?”
A voice drifted into Aggie's dream.
“Hello?”
There it was again.
Aggie opened her eyes and sat up. Her neck ached. She blinked, adjusting her eyes to the afternoon sun.
“Hello?” came the voice again. And then a woman appeared, walking from the direction of the office. A wild-haired woman in short shorts and flapping sandals.
Aggie stood up, forgetting about the bucket in her lap. It hit the concrete with a clatter and rolled, sending sponges and brushes and spray bottles scattering into the gravel parking lot.
“Is this place open?” the woman said.
Aggie straightened her glasses and smoothed her hair. “Yes, ma'am,” she said. “It is.”
“I need a room,” the woman said. Her red hair framed her face in frizzy curls. She smelled like cigarettes.
For one tiny little moment, Aggie thought about saying, “No smoking, okay?”
That's what Harold would have said.
But she didn't.
She gathered up the cleaning supplies and said, “Let's go over to the office and I'll fix you right up.”
Aggie led the way up the sidewalk to the office. She opened the screen door and jumped, startled. A young boy was sitting on a duffel bag with Ugly in his lap. He had the same red hair, the same freckled white skin as the woman.
“For cryin' out loud, Kirby!” the woman hollered. “Get outta the way.”
Ugly jumped off the boy's lap and darted around behind the counter.
“Ugly must like you,” Aggie said to the boy. “He's usually kinda shy.”
“Really?” the boy said.
Aggie nodded. “Shoot,” she said, “he didn't sit on my lap till I fed him about a hundred cans of tuna.”
Aggie turned to the woman. “I'm Agnes Duncan,” she said. “But you can call me Aggie.”
“I'm Darlene Tanner,” the woman said. “That's my son, Kirby,” she added, jerking her head toward the boy.
“Nice to meet you.” Aggie smiled at them, but they didn't smile back. The woman was rifling through her purse. The boy was glaring at the floor.
“Well, now,” Aggie said. “If you'll just sign that guest book, I'll get you the key.”
Which room should she give them? Aggie wondered. Room 7? That one was closer to the ice machine.
But did that ice machine still work? Aggie couldn't remember.
Maybe Room 1. That was the other corner room.
Yes, that was it. Room 1.
“There's free coffee in the morning,” she said. “And here's your complimentary map of the Great Smoky Mountains.”
The woman took the map. “Oh, good,” she said. “I can use this. I need to get to Smoky Mountain Boys' Academy. Near Bird's Creek off Highway 15. How far is that?”
“Bird's Creek is just a few miles up thataways.” Aggie flung her arm toward the road.
“How do you get there?” the woman asked.
Aggie looked up at the ceiling. “Hmmm,” she said. “I couldn't really tell you. I don't drive much anymore, and, well, things have changed so much around here over the years …”
Truth was, Aggie didn't drive at all anymore. She hadn't
renewed her driver's license when it had expired almost eight years ago. Harold had been so good at driving.
The woman said a cuss word and Aggie thought “My, my” to herself but didn't say it out loud.
She looked over at the boy and wondered if he had heard the cuss word. He was still glaring at the floor like he could burn a hole right through the linoleum with his eyes. Through the linoleum and clear on down into the red clay earth beneath.
“I hope Kirby won't mind sleeping on a cot,” Aggie said. “It's a little lumpy, but it's right big. It's in the closet, okay?”
The woman didn't answer. She told the boy to get his bag and come on.
Aggie was surprised how easily such a scrawny kid picked up that heavy-looking bag.
“Y'all got a car?” Aggie said, glancing around the parking lot as she led them up the walk to Room 1.
“A big piece of junk on the side of the road,” the woman said.
“Oh, well,” Aggie said. “You've come to the right place if you got car trouble 'cause Harold …”
Aggie clutched her heart. How long was it going to take for her to realize that Harold was gone?
Forever?
Probably.
Probably forever.
“Um, never mind,” she said, unlocking the door to the room. “How long are y'all planning on staying?”
“Not long,” the woman said. “Just till I can get that wreck of a car fixed so I can get Kirby on up to that school.”
Then the woman and her son went inside Room 1 and closed the door without so much as a thank you.
Aggie went back to the office and looked at the guest book.
Darlene and Kirby Tanner; Fountain Inn, South Carolina.
Wasn't it nice to see new names there on the line below the Perrys from Ocala, Florida?
Maybe things were going to pick up after all, she thought. Maybe Darlene and Kirby would stay for a while and then she could pay the phone bill and the electric bill. Maybe she should tell that man Clyde Dover the Sleepy Time Motel wasn't for sale, after all.
Willow's father stopped the truck.
“There it is,” he said.
“That?”
Willow stared out the window at the motel. It looked deserted, like no one had been there in a long time. The sign out front was faded and peeling. Wildflowers grew in the gravel parking lot. The swimming pool was empty, weeds poking out of the cracked concrete.
Willow's father pulled the truck into the parking lot. The tires made a crunching noise on the gravel that seemed to echo clear across the mountain. When he turned the engine off, silence fell over them, thick and heavy.
Willow counted the rooms of the motel. Ten. Only ten
rooms in the whole motel. Five on one side. Five on the other side.
Right in the middle was a screen door with a crooked, handwritten sign.
OFFICE.
In the window next to the door was another sign.
YES, WE'RE OPEN.
Rickety-looking lawn chairs sat outside the door of each room. A black cat was curled up in one of them.
“Wait here,” Willow's father said, heading for the office.
“Hello?” her father called through the screen door.
Silence.
“Hello?” he called again.
Silence.
He opened the door and disappeared inside. A few minutes later, he came back out.
“It looks like no one's here,” he said.
Good,
Willow thought.
“Mr. Dover?” someone called from the door.
A tiny old woman in bedroom slippers shuffled toward them. Her faded brown sweater hung clear down to her knees.
“Are you Mr. Dover?” she said.
Before Willow's father could answer, the old woman said, “I'm Agnes Duncan. But you can call me Aggie.”
She tucked a wisp of thin gray hair behind her ear. “I've got your room ready.” She nodded toward the far corner of the motel. Her face was lined and leathery, but her eyes were clear and sparkly. She kept pushing the stretched sleeves of her sweater up over her bony elbows.
Willow watched from the front seat of the truck as her father glanced around the weed-filled parking lot. Squinted out at the cracked, empty swimming pool. Frowned over at the faded, peeling sign.
“I know it ain't much to look at now,” Aggie said. “But you shoulda seen it in its heyday.” She gestured with her skinny arm, making the sweater flop down over her hand. “This whole parking lot was filled to overflowing. Cars and kids and all. Guests in every room every night. Well, almost every night … at least in the summer … And—”
“Mrs. Duncan, I—”
“Aggie,” she said. “Please. Call me Aggie.”
She squinted over at the pickup truck where Willow sat.
Willow slumped down in the seat.
“Is that your girl?” Aggie said.
“Yes,” her father said. “That's Willow.”
“Willow!” Aggie grinned. “Well, what a fine name!” She waved toward the truck. “Hello, Willow,” she called.
Willow waved back.
A tiny little wave.
“There haven't been kids around here for the longest time,” Aggie said. “I just love kids,” she added.
Willow slumped down a littler farther and pretended like she didn't see her father motioning for her to get out of the truck.
She didn't want to get out of the truck.
She wanted to go home.
Back to the little brick house with the screened porch.
Her father motioned again and said, “Please come here, Willow,” in that voice Willow hated.
So Willow got out of the truck and stood beside her father, looking down at her pink plastic sandals.
“I figured we should make arrangements for the inspection,” Willow's father said to Aggie. “And get the rest of the paperwork done and all.”
Aggie's hand fluttered up to her glasses, smoothed her hair, pushed at the sleeve of her sweater. “Um, well, okay.” The corners of her mouth twitched. “But there's no hurry, right? I mean, you wanna be sure and all, and I …”
Willow studied Aggie's face. She couldn't put a name to what she saw there, but she knew that Aggie didn't want to sell this motel.
She looked around her at the ramshackle place and wondered why.
Why would anyone want to keep an awful old place like this?

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