The Book of Joby (74 page)

Laura leaned away, covering her discomfort with a smile she hoped was as perfect as his own, then turned back to look at the parade as a float advertising Taubolt’s upcoming Whale-Watching Festival passed by. Astride a huge, somewhat misshapen whale of papier-mâché, which there’d apparently been no time to paint, sat Karl Foster, the Chamber of Commerce’s president, waving at the crowd, like Captain Ahab riding Moby Dick. A banner on the whale’s side proclaimed,
TAUBOLT: PARADISE BESIDE THE SEA!

“Look.” Rose grinned. “There’s your mom and Joby.”

“Where?” Hawk said.

“Down there, across the street. See? They’re kissing.” Her eyes became as bright as her smile. “When’s he going to marry her anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Hawk sighed. “When he finally gets off his butt and asks her, we should have another parade.”

“Sometimes you sound like it’s you he’s supposed to marry,” she scoffed.

“No way.” Hawk grinned, leaning in to kiss her again. “Only one person I’ll ever want to marry.”

“I hope that’s not a proposal,” she smiled, dodging his lips to peck his cheek instead, “ ’cause you know what I’ll say.”

“Not until after college,” he sighed, shrugging away from her to watch the parade again. “I know. You must have told me about two hundred times.”

“It’s hard to know when you’re listening.” She grinned mischievously. “If we both get into Brown—”

“
When
we both get into Brown,” Hawk corrected with a smile.

“
When
we’re at Brown,” she smiled back, “we can take all our gen-ed classes together, and study together every night. It’ll be almost the same thing.”

“No it won’t,” he said, “but I can wait. Long as we’re together. That’s all I care.”

“That’s all I care too,” she said, throwing her arms around his neck, and starting to rhapsodize again about going off to college and living in the wider world at last. Hawk couldn’t suppress the silly grin that always crossed his face when she talked this way. He’d known that wider world all too well once, but never believed it could be lovable until she’d begun to show it to him through her eyes. Now, he couldn’t wait to share it with her. Solomon had told him once that a true bard was only fully forged by pleasures and pains far greater than any Hawk had yet known. Listening to Rose now, Hawk felt sure that everything Solomon had meant awaited them at college. Just one more year.

“It’s kind of strange,” she said at last, watching the ladies of Taubolt’s Historical Preservation Council pass in their old Model A Ford, decked out in antique frocks and wide, flowered hats. “Half our friends may never leave Taubolt at all. Don’t they ever wonder about what’s going on out there?” She gave him an earnest look. “I know some of it’s awful, but there must be so much worth doing!” Her expression became dreamy. “Sometimes being cooped up here feels like,” she smiled, “like sleeping through a parade.”

“You think Taubolt’s boring?” Hawk laughed. “Look at all these people! They’d have given anything for five minutes of what you took for granted growing up here!”

“I know,” Rose sighed, pulling him back into the shop entryway where they could talk more privately. “I love Taubolt with all my heart, Hawk. You know I always will. But what are we doing with everything we have here? What’s it for? Do we ever ask that? All these people seem so desperate for
what we’ve been given, but we just hide it here, where it’s nothing but a game—a game for children.”

“It’s not just
hidden
here,” Hawk murmured gravely. “It’s protected. Their world destroys what it
needs
as quickly as it destroys anything else, you know. Maybe Taubolt’s
little game
is all that’s kept what we have here alive.”

“Maybe,” Rose sighed. “But we must be keeping it alive for something more than just,” she shook her head impatiently, “just keeping it alive.” The excitement came back into her eyes. “Haven’t you wondered why Taubolt’s borders have suddenly failed after all these years? Maybe it’s time to bring what we have
out
of hiding, Hawk! You know none of this is really ours, certainly not the—” Hawk started and looked around to remind her they were not alone. “Certainly not
it,
” Rose whispered, looking chastened.

“That’s one thing I’m not looking forward to,” Hawk said, taking her hand and leading her around the building into a small patch of garden away from the noisy street with its prying eyes and ears. “What’s it going to be like,” he asked softly when they got there, “living so far away from the Cup for so long? I can’t even remember how that felt now, and I don’t think I want to.”

“We’ll handle it,” she assured him, “because we’ll have each other, Hawk, and because we know there
is
something to believe in, and that there must be some way to share it. There must be a thousand ways! All we’ll need to find is
one.
”

Agnes Hamilton took a petite sip of iced tea, set her glass on the lawn table, and heaved a long-suffering sigh. A sudden blare of discordant horns from the parade route three blocks off was followed by a muffled swell of applause and laughter. “Listen to that racket, Franny! Did we move up here just to be assaulted by a bunch of yahoos trying to wake the dead?”

Franny shook her head obediently.

“Karl wanted me to ride with him on that ludicrous whale, if you can believe it,” Agnes scoffed. “Imagine. Up on that monstrosity waving like some circus performer. I do wonder about the man sometimes.”

“He’s very proud of the new Chamber,” Franny said with apologetic deference. “You did encourage him to form it.”

“I encouraged him to organize this town’s unruly flood of merchants into some more
manageable
body, not to make a
spectacle
of himself—or me! Parades! What next?
A kissing booth?
”

“Oh, I’m sure he would never ask you to do
that,
” Franny gasped.

Agnes gave her a sidelong glance, wondering, not for the first time, whether Franny’s dim front were just disguised recalcitrance. “If he had to raise such a din,” she growled, “he might at least have kept rabble like that
Greensong
woman out of it. It’s disgraceful to legitimize such a harridan by letting her march down Main Street.”

“What could he do?” Franny asked timidly. “It’s against the law to stop her.”

“Oh!” Agnes exclaimed sarcastically. “And
laws
are so important here, aren’t they?” She was suddenly wracked with something close to despair at the overwhelming obstacles she faced. “No one seems to understand the price I’ve paid to help protect this town,” she moaned. “The historical society was a useless gossip refinery before I took it under wing.
Preservation
hadn’t even occurred to them! Can you imagine? Now we’ve got the teeth to keep people from painting their houses any old color they want, or plastering Main Street with neon signs, or . . . who knows; growing cactus in their yards! Just look at this influx of people, Franny! Taubolt’s character would have been swept away completely by now if not for me. Just tell me I’m wrong.”

Franny looked a bit unsure about whether to obey. “
I
know how hard you work, Agnes. So does Karl. . . . A lot of people do.”

“Well, they don’t work very hard to show it,” Agnes pressed, speaking not so much to Franny anymore, as to some larger internal audience. “The school board still refuses to close that high school campus at lunchtime,” she huffed. “You’d think they might remember who got them going in the first place. I mean, really, Franny! The school board, the Chamber of Commerce, the Botanical Council, even the committee to explore incorporation.
None
of these had even crossed this town’s backward minds before I came.” She exhaled as if some large animal had stepped on her chest. “Who knew it would be so much work to manage a little dolls’ house like Taubolt?”

“It’s a very nice little dolls’ house though,” Franny reassured her.

“Yes,” Agnes conceded wearily, “but between the yahoos moving up here, and the native simpletons, one of me may not be enough to save the place.” Somewhere down the street, a string of firecrackers exploded in rapid staccato. “Ugh!” Agnes exclaimed, sloshing her drink onto her blouse in alarm. “Oh! Those hoodlums!” she complained, brushing ineffectually at the wet spots on her breast. “If we had a standing police force here, these lawless children might develop some respect for the rights of decent citizens!”

Franny nodded solemnly, getting up to offer Agnes her napkin.

“It’s disgraceful that we’re reduced to importing officers all the way from Heeberville for events like this circus of Karl’s! God knows what bedlam might erupt amidst such a mob!” Her tirade was cut short as a low-flying helicopter thundered over her rooftop and across her yard on its way toward the parade route.

“God almighty!”
she exclaimed, sucking breath like a landed fish. “Ferristaff! A man with his money has no excuse for such manners!”

“The earth is our mother!”
Greensong shouted into the video camera trained on her cadre of protesters as they marched under signs and banners decrying Ferristaff’s local logging operations.
“They’re calling Taubolt paradise! Would men rape their mother in paradise? We want Ferristaff out of here NOW, with all his macho men stinking of money and steel!”

“News crews in Taubolt,” Franklin muttered, overlooking the angry spectacle from up on the Crow’s Nest Bar and Grill’s sundeck with Gladys Lindsay and the Connollys. “That I should have lived to see it.”

“And policemen,” Gladys lamented, gazing down at the two bored-looking officers escorting Greensong’s company down the street.

“Came up here for a public interest story,” Tom sighed. “Looks like they got it.”

“Trouble in paradise,”
Gladys said grimly. “Far more titillating than the quaint parade they expected, I’m sure. She does put on quite a show. Look at her scream.”

“Seems to me she might hate men a little more’n she loves trees,” Franklin grunted. “Feelin’s mutual from what I’ve heard. Not sure I like seein’ so many of our kids out there beside her either. Couple of ’em came into the store last week to get stuff for those banners. Said she told ’em the planet’s proper human population was zero.”

“She opposes Ferristaff.” Clara shrugged. “Of course the children back her. They’re angry about what he’s doing to our forests too. Aren’t we all?”

“Not like that,” Franklin said. “That anger’s got nothin’ to do with justice.”

“For what it’s worth, Rose agrees with you,” Clara conceded.

“Smart girl, your Rose,” said Franklin. He looked up and down the parade route with distaste. “Awful lotta bad seed gettin’ spilled in our yard these days. Turns my stomach to watch ’em fight over Taubolt like we’d never even been here.”