Blue Moon Bay (9 page)

As we entered the Waterbird, old men gathered in the red vinyl booths on the left wall waved and called out greetings worthy of an episode of
Cheers
. They observed that I was much more attractive than Charley's usual traveling companion, Uncle Herb. Already positioned in a seat along the wall with a cup of coffee, Uncle Herb pretended to take offense.

The Waterbird was exactly as I remembered it: the café, deli, and cash counter along the right side of the room; the booths and a pay phone on the wall at the far left; three aisles of indiscriminately mixed groceries, fishing tackle, doughnut cases, and candy in the middle. Beside me, the minnow tanks burbled in strangely close proximity to the drink machine and the freezer case. Along the far wall, a bank of tall windows afforded a view of the lake below, complete with docks, boathouses, and a waterside gas pump for boats.

As Uncle Charley ordered coffee for the two of us, I moved across the room to look at the wall of wisdom. I wondered if Gary and his family had signed it while they were in town. It wouldn't be easy to find their entry, if they had indeed made one, among the countless signatures and bits of Sharpie-pen lore that stretched from the front counter, circled the windows, and went all the way back to the bathroom. Without even intending to, I followed a rhythm of remembered steps, moving toward a place I hoped would still be there, just to the left of the windows. And then I was in front of it, reading the quote my father and I had jotted on the wall together.

You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. –Winnie the Pooh
.

We'd signed our names after the quote—Neal Hampton, Heather Hampton—and then the year. I was nine, my father still a young man. We'd read the Winnie the Pooh books together so many times we could recite them by heart. It had never occurred to me that this place, Moses Lake, was my father's Hundred Acre Wood, and he wanted me to love it as much as he did. Maybe he'd had a premonition when we wrote that quote on the wall. Even now, I knew the rest of the quote—the part we'd left out, so as to save space. Touching a hand to words, I heard my father and me reciting the last part together, giving each other a high five after adding our entry:
But the most important thing is, even if we're apart, I'll always be with you.

My father hadn't chosen our place on the wall at random. He'd picked a spot directly underneath a wooden plaque left behind by a German tinker who passed through Moses Lake back in the days when tinkers drove from town to town, sharpening knives and sheep shears, and fixing leaky kettles. The tinker's riddle had been the beginning of the wall of wisdom. Looking at it now, I remembered standing with my father as I read it.
The future is a blank page, but not a mystery.
The riddle had eluded me then. I'd complained to Dad that it didn't make any sense; I didn't see how it could be his favorite. He'd only laughed, scrubbed a big, brawny hand over my hair, and said
No sense trying to cheat a riddle. You have to figure it out for yourself, or it's no fun. Keep thinking on it. It'll be clear one of these days.

Unfortunately, the tinker's riddle was no more logical to me now than it had been then. A page is either blank, or it's not. If it is blank, the possibilities are endless, the end result a mystery.

“Better come fix this cup the way you like it, darlin',” Uncle Charley called from the coffee counter.

I turned away from the wall and crossed the room, feeling unburdened, rather than weighed down, by the memory of that day with my father. The quote we'd written seemed almost a message from him, a promise that even though I hadn't been the person I'd wanted to be during our last turbulent months together, he realized that inside the melodramatic teenager there was still the little girl who loved him in the Winnie-the-Pooh sort of way—always and no matter what. The same way he'd loved me.

One of Uncle Herbert's fishing buddies vacated a seat for me as I finished preparing my coffee and walked to the table. A round of greetings came my way, along with some comments about how I couldn't really be related to Charley and Herb, because I was too pretty. I laughed and blushed at the banter circling the table, a few anecdotes about my father livening up the mix. A warm feeling washed over me as Uncle Herb reached for my coat and threw it into an empty booth like we owned the place. I had the sense of being right at home.

Two of the men sharing space with us looked familiar, although it took a minute for my memory banks to dredge up the information. They'd aged since my time here, but I knew who they were—Nester Grimland, who'd kept the Moses Lake school busses running, and Burt Lacey, the high-school principal, apparently retired now, since he was sitting in the Waterbird midmorning on a Friday.

“Hey, Missy, I ever tell you that your dad worked for me one summer milkin' cows?” Nester Grimland offered, wiping coffee off his thick gray moustache and directing a wink my way. He looked like one of those skinny cowboy statues you'd find for sale in a roadside tourist trap.

“Really?” I asked. “Dad never talked much about his dairy work.” Actually, my dad had said that growing up on a dairy made him want to get a college education.

Burt Lacey frowned sideways, squinting through glasses that had gotten thicker since his days as a principal. “What are you talking about, Nester? You never had milk cows.” I remembered them arguing just this way any number of times when I'd passed by the bus barn after school.

“I sure did,” Nester insisted, seeming offended. “Neal Hampton worked milkin' cows for me.” Adjusting his cowboy hat, he flashed a covert glance my way, a brow lifting conspiratorially. “Bet your daddy told 'ya about workin' for me, didn't he?”

I felt compelled to play along. “You know, I think he did say something about that . . . uhhh . . . once or twice.” Both of the uncs swiveled toward me, cocking their heads, confused.

“See there,” Nester held up a weathered hand, serving me up as proof. “Her daddy milked for me. Only problem was, every time a pretty girl drove by on the highway, that boy would come all unfocused. Ruined a whole batch of milk one time. He ever tell you that story?” Nester aimed a quick head-twitch at me.

“Ummm . . . yes. Yes, I think he . . . did.”

Burt Lacey rolled his eyes. “Well, let us have it, Nester. You're not gonna hush up until we've heard the whole thing. How'd the batch of milk get ruined?”

Reclining comfortably now that he had the conversational floor, Nester hooked an elbow over the back of his seat. “Well, see, it was like this. One day, that there boy was a-milkin', and he had him a good rhythm goin' along—playin' a little tune in the bucket. ‘America the Beautiful,' I think it was. Must've been close to the Fourth of July.” Pausing, he stroked his chin, pretending to think.

Burt Lacey snorted, Uncle Charley added sugar to his coffee, and Uncle Herb scratched his bald head, quiet as usual.

“Anyhoo, so there's young Neal Hampton, milkin' along, and a load of cheerleaders drives by, and he ain't payin' no attention at all to what he's doing. Right about then, a big ol' horse fly comes along and starts circling that milk cow . . . just buzzin' around and buzzin' around. Which ain't really a problem, since there's always flies in a cow barn, but that boy didn't even notice when that fly went right in that old milk cow's ear. The kid just kept watchin' them cheerleaders and milkin' along, tryin' to finish, so he could chase after them purdy girls. He didn't hear that fly buzzin' round and round inside that milk cow, looking for a way out. Didn't notice a thing. Finally, that kid was milkin' so fast it created a vacuum inside the whole cow and sucked that horsefly right out the udder. Landed smack in the milk bucket and ruined the whole batch.”

Uncle Charley groaned and pulled his hat low over his eyes, and Uncle Herb shook his head. Burt Lacey slapped the tabletop, air whistling through his teeth. “Nester, that's not one bit possible. Even she knows that.”

I shrugged and, quite wisely, kept quiet, not being an expert on milk cows.

Nester drew back against the wall. “She don't know any such thing, do ya, young lady?”

I shook my head again, and Nester took a sip of his coffee, then swilled it while all eyes remained focused on him. “Just goes to show, that boy took after the rest of the Hampton men. Why, you ask any of their wives and they'll tell you that it ain't the first time someone in that family's—” he paused for dramatic effect, the corners of his moustache twitching as he finished with—“let somethin' go in one ear and out the udder.”

A chorus of laughter followed, and from his wheelchair behind the counter, Pop Dorsey joined in. I laughed along, having the fleeting thought that it felt good to be here, just sitting and watching the world go by on a Friday morning, taking a little time for coffee and conversation. When was the last time I'd done that?

Ever?

Gazing out at the water glistening in the morning sunlight below, I had the weird thought that I might miss Moses Lake after all of this was over.

The conversation turned to spinner baits and fat bass, and Burt Lacey went to the coffee counter and commandeered the pot to refresh everyone's coffee. As he was returning the pot to its resting spot, a little dark-haired girl wandered from behind the deli counter and walked down the center aisle between loaves of bread, bags of charcoal, and a smattering of plumbing supplies. Studying the shelves, she picked up imaginary items and put them in a miniature shopping basket. The attention of every “grandpa” in the room quickly gravitated to her.

“Hey, Birdie, you gonna come serve us up some tea?” Uncle Charley motioned her over.

The little girl smiled shyly, her wide blue eyes twinkling.

Uncle Charley leaned back in his chair. “I'm tellin' ya, I'm just about dry as a baked horned toad on a six-lane stretch of blacktop. Sure could use me some tea.”

Her smile widened, and she skipped on over to us, standing on her toes, so that she could look into his cup. Her lips twisted to one side, and she braced a hand on her hip. “It ain't empty.”

I had the fleeting thought that it was a shame Uncle Charley and his wife hadn't been able to have kids. He'd been one of my favorite Moses Lake attractions when I was little. Every kid in town loved him. “Aw, that's just that old black coffee,” he complained, giving the cup a disdainful look. “I need me some of that good ol' magic tea. You got any of that in yer basket?”

As Birdie fished around in her basket of random toys and produced a little plastic teapot, I felt a twinge of remorse at the thought of the kids I didn't have never meeting the great-uncle I wouldn't see again after this weekend.

Watching Birdie serve pretend tea, I wished life were different than it was.

The banter started again after Birdie had filled all the cups and then scampered off. A buzzer above the back door interrupted the conversation, and Uncle Charley stood up, peeking out the back window. “Looks like you need to turn on the gas pump down there, Pop. Put it on the Underhill's bill. I'll tell you what, that's a nice fishin' rig Blaine's got. He could win some votes with that thing, sure enough.”

Before I'd even given it any thought, I was excusing myself, slipping from my seat, and grabbing my coat. I headed out the back door to discern— from the source—what business was going on between my brother and the local banker.

A brisk February wind whipped over the water and raced up the hill. Swinging the coat over my shoulders, I stuck my arms in the sleeves and quickly realized that I'd grabbed someone else's outerwear from the pile on the empty booth. This one was large enough for me and my two best friends, and it was a camo color with roadstripe-orange western detailing. I pulled it on anyway, the bottom falling halfway to my knees, surrounding me like a puffy tent as I strode down the rock steps toward the lakeshore and the dock, where Blaine Underhill was nonchalantly gassing up his boat, one foot braced on the dock railing, the collar of a khaki-colored barn jacket turned upright against his neck, hiding his face. There was no sign of my brother or the red kayak. Apparently this morning's fishing trip was over.

A strange tangle of past and present swirled in my thoughts, a fruitless attempt to mesh the memory of the boy from high school with the banker of today, my brother's new best friend. If Blaine Underhill was the moneyman behind Clay's plans, did he have any idea what a mistake he was making? Did he know that, sooner or later, their plan would result in disaster for the uncs and leave Clay responsible for not only financial obligations, but most likely the reality of once again going from hero to zero in the eyes of the family? With Clay's history of chaotic life shifts, there was no telling where things might lead. Clay might join some mission trip to Bora-Bora and never come back. In the meantime, the property that had belonged to Uncle Herbert, Uncle Charley, and my family for generations would end up in foreclosure, in the hands of . . . the bank?

Potential motivations began taking shape in my mind, even though I didn't want to entertain them. Would Blaine Underhill finance my brother's flight of fancy, knowing that Clay would fail and the bank would end up with the property and whatever down payment my mother was putting into this unholy partnership? I tried to imagine the object of my chemistry-class crush, now playing the part of the heartless, shifty-eyed banker—the sort with the handlebar moustache and the evil laugh. The kind who would toss widows, orphans, and helpless old men out in the snow. Could he have changed so much from the prankster who had the ability to answer teachers' questions but typically chose to go for a laugh instead?

Of course he could have changed. Haven't you?
After sixteen years, who could say what kind of person Blaine Underhill was? In truth, the Blaine I remembered was a schoolgirl fantasy. Even back then, I had no idea who he really was behind the high-school mask.