Rhythm and Bluegrass (13 page)

The few meals I didn’t share with Miss Martha I ate at the Dinner Bell with Jenny Lee. I suspect she was also behind the sudden miraculous revival of my debit card at Piggly Wiggly. And the fact that I could gas up my car without requiring an act of Congress. I was carving out a tentative, temporary place for myself in Mud Creek. While most of the locals remained ambivalent, if not downright unenthusiastic, toward me, the few people I had made some sort of connection with were quickly becoming the best friends I had outside of Frankfort.

Kelsey took exception to this, but she knew Jenny Lee was armed, so her objections remained on the quiet side of indignity.

After spending most of an afternoon on the phone with yet another potential sponsor, I walked into the foyer to find Miss Martha slinging papers into the enormous canvas tote bag she used as a purse. She wore her usual denim-work-shirt-and-khakis ensemble, but this shirt featured embroidered birdhouses at the shoulders.

I arched my brows, forgetting my sweatiness for a second. Did Miss Martha have a date?

“I left a tuna casserole in the oven for your dinner, honey,” she told me, slicking a layer of raisin-colored lipstick over her mouth. “I have to go to a meeting for the community food pantry. I sit on the board. Of course, Maddie Trinket is the only other person on the board, so we’re just going to sit at the Dinner Bell and natter it out over pie. It’s better than having the meeting at the pantry. Nothing quite as depressing as spending your evening in a closed-down Minit Mart.”

I chuckled. I’d only met the sensibly dressed Miss Trinket once, and it was clear she hadn’t quite made up her mind about me. Miss Martha assured me that it had far more to do with my desire to “dredge up” the town’s sinful musical past than any personal grudge. Mission minded and a self-designated old maid, Maddie would have become a nun if her parents weren’t insistent Baptists, or so Miss Martha claimed. She was firmly antiliquor, antismoking, and anti-music-that-was-anything-but-gospel-written-before-1894. And I just happened to be wearing a Lady Gaga T-shirt when I met her.

There were times when I wondered whether God used me as a sort of personal Tumblr account when he needed a laugh.

“I thought Will said that people around here won’t accept charity,” I said, dropping my bags in their usual spot by the door.

“They won’t. They’re too bullheaded, which is part of the reason I like living here.” Miss Martha sighed, dropping her lipstick into her bag. “But it’s also why we’re going to have a meeting. We have to find a way to get people to use the service. Poor Maddie is tying herself up in knots over it. We keep food for so long that it expires, but we’re afraid of not having anything on hand, just in case the odd person wanders in needing help. The thought of people in my town going hungry because they don’t want to ask for help—I just can’t stand for that, Bonnie.”

I nodded. It could be difficult to make someone accept what they actually needed. But there was no reason for people to be in need when there was help available. I thought back to something Miss Brenda had said about parties and poverty, how it’s hard to be depressed about your state in life when you were together with your friends.

“Miss Martha, I think I have an idea. Would you mind waiting for a second while I clean up for your meeting?”

12

In Which I Enjoy a Nice Plate of Mystery Meat

I never thought I would be so excited that squirrel season, dove season, and deer season were all open at the same time.

The sun set low and burnt-gold over the town square as Will and his friends put out hay bales and picnic tables to mark the dance floor. The weather was cold and crisp, with that smoky autumn scent that spoke of campfires and hay rides. Miss Earlene and her friends from the Ladies Auxiliary had taken the whole fall theme and run with it, using every available corn husk and gourd in three counties to create an autumn wonderland for our festivities.

Somehow, between my obsessive-compulsive planning skills, Miss Martha’s shameless bullying of the town council, and Maddie Trinket’s full-on desperation, we managed to put together the first-ever Mud Creek Burgoo Festival in less than two weeks. The plan was to put together an enormous burgoo from freshly caught deer and other game that I preferred not to think about. People would bring veggies to add to the pot and we would cook it while the crowd played games and danced to a very narrow selection of Maddie-approved country music. It reminded me of that children’s story,
Stone Soup
. No one family had enough to eat on their own, but when they all put their food in a pot together, there was a warm meal for everybody.

It took Maddie a while to warm up to me at that first pantry board meeting, but eventually I convinced her that people who wouldn’t accept handouts from a food bank would come to a potluck. And if we could get them to accept that, maybe she could introduce the idea that accepting help from the food bank wouldn’t be that different.

Maddie hoped to convince more people to enroll by setting up a raffle for one of Miss Martha’s quilts. On the bottom of the entry forms, there was a tiny checkbox that read “Check here if you are interested in receiving services from the food bank.” Entrants could ask for help without anyone knowing they were asking for help.

In what Miss Martha considered a downright reckless show of optimism, I contacted a college friend who worked in the branding archives at Omnifoods, a corporation that included General Grains Cereal, Happy Tummy Pasta, and Bennett Canned Fruits. The company agreed to donate a pallet of products per month as needed, using it as part of their community outreach program. We used the first delivery to put together some goodie baskets for all of the participating families.

Getting permits and securing the food, tables, decorations, and advertising had been a breeze compared to the hassle of naming the darn thing. Mighty Mayor McBride heard about our plans and volunteered to round up local hunters for our meat portion . . . without actually speaking to me. All communications were routed through Miss Martha, including his request that we call the party a “roadkill cook-off”—because he thought it would draw locals on the quirk factor alone. I didn’t have time to object before both Miss Martha and Maddie smacked the back of his head. Martha wanted to call it a hootenanny. Maddie wanted to call it a “jubilee for Jesus.”

I circumvented them all by turning the ad over to Rosemarie at the
Ledger
, calling it a Burgoo Festival. I figured it was the least offensive of all the options.

Despite the roadkill connotations, Will was smart to suggest promoting the event as a party. Jeff McDermott, who owned an orchard outside of town, had pressed a huge batch of apple cider. Will, Fred, and Joe Bob had spent the better part of two days butchering the animals the hunters had brought in. What couldn’t be mixed into the stew was barbecued in massive barrel smokers, pumping a delicious barbecue aroma into the air. For the record, smoked squirrel tastes nothing like chicken.

Families showed up in droves to partake in a good old-fashioned burgoo. And there was a line fifteen people deep at the raffle booth, which I took as a hopeful sign. Will was in his element: relaxed, happy, calling out to people as he flipped meat on the smoker. Joe Bob looked like a character from a horror movie, an enormous man lumbering around in a bloodstained apron. But he was smiling, which lessened the scare factor for the kids in attendance.

The Mud Creek Trio had set up on the portable stage, playing Maddie’s approved playlist of Jesus-friendly country-and-western classics. I took a break from being Miss Martha’s general dogsbody to perch on a wooden picnic table and watch a few older couples two-step around the dance floor. A few people waved and called me by name, which warmed my heart a little. I was slowly but surely expanding my social circle beyond Jenny Lee, Miss Martha, and Miss Earlene. (I didn’t count Will as part of that circle, since he spent most of his time antagonizing me.) I wouldn’t say my neighbors were super friendly, but I was no longer getting glared at when I ate at the Dinner Bell.

I liked Mud Creek. I liked the people who lived here, their stubbornness and their spirit. I loved living with Miss Martha and hearing stories about the burlesque ladies she worked with. I liked the friendship I’d developed with Jenny Lee. Hell, there were moments when I liked Will—fleeting, few, and far-between moments.

Will McBride was a good man. He hid it under sarcasm and bluster, and occasionally being an absolute jackass, but he cared about the people around him. He worried about his neighbors and losing the way of life they’d built. He was smart, too smart to be living in a town where he couldn’t hope to have any sort of career beyond what he was doing right now. Heck, the man had saved me from dying in an overturned trailer. If I could get over his trying to torpedo my career, I might actually find him attractive.

I looked over my shoulder to where Will stood drinking beer and grilling with his buddies. He glanced at me and grinned, raising his bottle.

Who was I kidding? I was totally attracted to him. I’d wanted to see Will naked since he was Mr. Roadside Cowboy, helping me unload my burning car. I really needed to get a handle on that. Or get a handle on Will.

Brenda McBride appeared at my left, which was completely inappropriate considering the naked thoughts I was having regarding her son. She was bearing a big paper plate filled with burgoo. “Here you go, hon. Don’t think I didn’t notice you haven’t eaten.” I looked at the stew, grimacing. She rolled her eyes. “You already ate smoked squirrel; how much stranger could this be?”

“I ate smoked squirrel?” I asked her in mock horror. “When did I eat smoked squirrel?”

Burgoo had a strange gamy flavor, a sort of iron-rich brown gravy filled with carrots, onions, and bits of unidentifiable fauna. I tried not to be obvious, but I was chewing super carefully, because I kept waiting to bite into buckshot. I’d met the local dentist, Dr. Calvin, and while he was a perfectly nice man, I didn’t want to end up in his chair.

“There you go,” Brenda said, sitting next to me on my perch. “You girls did a bang-up job putting everything together.”

“Will helped,” I admitted, nodding toward the smokers.

She chuckled. “He loves cooking with fire. All men do. It’s coded into their DNA. So, when does the museum open?”

“My newly acquired sponsors come to visit in a week for a progress report,” I said. “Then after that, about another month, maybe? I should be out of here before Halloween.”

I hadn’t told her or anyone else about my meeting with the ComfyCheeks CEO, which would take place in just a few days. I didn’t like leaving town so close before the sponsors’ visit, but it was my only window to meet with Mr. Roth. I had the information packet I needed to pitch my proposal for ComfyCheeks to pay for the music hall move. Now, all I had to do was travel to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, then wow Roth enough that he would throw buckets of money at me and I could solve all of the town’s problems.

No pressure.

“Well, I know my boy has given you hell over it, but, personally, I can’t wait to see the family history up on the walls. I never could stand scrapbooking, and now it will be like a building-size scrapbook without my having to do any of the work. When it opens, I’ll be there with bells on.”

“I might have you make a little speech before we cut the ribbon, if that’s okay?”

“You know better than to put Will near a mic.” Brenda snorted. “Smart girl. You know, the only C he made at school was in public speaking. He told one of his classmates to ‘eff off’ during a debate on farming subsidies.”

“In the teacher’s defense, you don’t usually hear the f-bomb in a high school debate.”

“He was twenty. He knew better,” she told me.

“He was still in high school when he was twenty?”

“No!” She snickered. “He was a sophomore at University of Kentucky.”

“I didn’t realize Will had graduated from college.”

“He didn’t,” she said, frowning a bit. “When he finally managed to transfer from the community college, it turned out the school absolutely refused to take magic beans as tuition payments.”

“Damned unreasonable of them,” I told her, squeezing her arm.

“Will’s dad had died earlier that year. There was no money. None. Hell, there were two mortgages on the house and another on the hall. Jim had tried some last-ditch attempt to renovate the hall and turn it into some karaoke joint. But that failed too, and keeping the music hall open just wasn’t an option anymore. I know Will doesn’t like it when I say this, but I think Jim just died of a broken heart. It killed him to let that place go. Everything got harder after that. I didn’t want Will to come home, but there was just no money for school. He got a job at the dog food plant and took over his uncle’s business as a side job. We still barely made ends meet. We couldn’t sell the music hall. Nobody in town wanted it. But in the choice between paying the house note and paying the hall loan, we let the hall go into foreclosure.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t blame Will for how he feels about the music hall,” Brenda said. “I just hoped that after all these years he would see the good in the place, too. Maybe you’ll help him with that.” She smiled, slipping her arm around me. “You know, you’re the only girl he’s met in the last ten years who hasn’t just fallen all over herself to impress him. It’s good for his ego.”

“I try.”

“Hey, Ma!” We turned to see Will jogging toward us. “Miss Maddie needs you. Something about emergency copies in the shop office. She says her booth ran out of raffle slips.”

Brenda winked at me and kissed Will’s cheek. “I should get to Maddie before she has a meltdown.”

I smirked at Will, who was swiping his mom’s lipstick off his cheek. “Mr. Mayor.”

“Fancy Pants,” he said, his tone almost civil.

An awkward silence hung between the two of us. After all, the last conversation we’d had involved me telling him to go to hell and his writing a nasty letter about me to the local press. It wasn’t conducive to casual chitchat.

There were things I wanted to say to Will. I was sorry I’d gone behind his back to reach my goals. I was sorry I’d made him think that a building was more important to me than the well-being of his friends and neighbors. I was sorry I’d passed out in his bed with a head injury. But I kept my mouth shut, because if I said one of those things, I would say them all and then some. And there was no better way to ruin my already tenuous hold on dignity than sad-girl, nonintoxicated word vomit.

“This turned out pretty nicely,” Will said, nodding toward the general splendor. “I know I haven’t really thanked you for anything you’ve done since you showed up, which is not an accident. But I really appreciate the work you put into this.”

“But just this?” I clarified.

“Well, it shows that you really care about the people here, not just getting your way,” he said carefully. “And I can see the good in that.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, staying silent, which seemed to make Will nervous. He asked, “What?”

“Just waiting for the other shoe to drop. You’re going to follow up with some sort of insult the moment I relax, I just know it.”

He sighed, rolling his eyes. “You wound me.”

“Not yet.”

The trio played the opening strains of “I Will Always Love You,” the good old-fashioned Dolly Parton version, made even more twangy by school superintendent Jack Smallman’s flinty tenor.

“Come on,” Will sighed, stretching his hand toward mine. “Let’s cut a rug. To make up for those dropped shoes.”

Before I could say no, he took my hand in his and led me to the blacktop dance floor. His fingers were warm and solid around mine. There was an awkward moment when I wasn’t sure where to put my hands. I hadn’t slow danced with anyone since high school. I just didn’t go to the sort of places that involved standing in one place and swaying. Will had no such problems, confidently pulling me into his arms and holding my right hand at the proper eye level.

He smelled so good, which was sort of weird when you consider how he’d spent the last few days. His red-plaid shirt was washed to softness against my palm. I wanted to lay my head there, to rub the fabric against my cheek. I could feel his breath feathering over my forehead and the warm assurance of his hand against the small of my back. My nipples tingled as he pressed me to his chest.

That was new.

“This is a good song,” I said absently, to take my mind off the whole nipple thing.

“I’ve never cared much for it,” he said.

I snickered. “You prefer the
Bodyguard
version?”

“No, it’s a song about leaving somebody. It’s a song about heartbreak for no good reason. It’s about pointless pain.”

The hurt and weight in his voice had my throat tightening up. Will knew a lot more about pain than I had given him credit for. Losing time with his dad, losing his chance to go to college. No wonder he seemed so bitter about the music hall. You didn’t just get over stuff like that. And here I was, dredging up all of those feelings every time I talked to him. I sucked as a human being.

So, of course, I had to crack a joke before I actually passed out as a result of emotional awkwardness. “Well, that’s way more philosophical than I usually get about songs I remember fondly from middle school dances.”

“Clearly you’ve never sat on the front porch with your buddies analyzing country songs over beers.”