Now and Again (28 page)

“What's the project this year?” asked the pastor.

“We'll know in a few hours,” said a girl who was wearing the kind of short shorts and cropped top that would have shocked the pastor only a few years before.

“That one's going to be trouble,” he whispered into his wife's ear as he tucked a raffle ticket into her pocket.

Tiffany stood on tiptoes to whisper back. “Does she remind you of anyone in particular?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact, she does.”

Tiffany drifted off to join some women she knew while the pastor lingered in the shade of the tent, watching the girls. He missed being outraged by female sexuality, but he guessed he had moved on to other, thornier, provocations, and after a few minutes, he made his way to where the mayor was holding court and passing out campaign promises even though the election was more than a year away.

“What's this?” asked Price. “No one ever runs against you!”

“There's always a first time,” said the mayor, poking his head into a nearby tent where Helen Winslow, who was dressed as a fortune-teller, was jangling her bracelets over a crystal ball. “What do you say, Helen?” he asked. “Will there be stiff competition in the mayor's race next year?”

“Not unless that young Fitch boy is thinking of running.”

“The Fitch boy!” exclaimed the mayor. “Surely you can't be serious!”

“He attracted quite a following among the younger folks with that article about government overreaching,” said Helen.

“Oh, that,” said the mayor. “I don't see how encouraging a developer to give us a badly needed office building can be described as overreaching.”

“I don't think ‘encouraging' is what he called it,” said Helen.

“‘Kickback' is a strong word,” said August Winslow, who was sitting next to his wife, drinking a lemonade. “I'll bet you could get him for slander.”

“One hand washes the other,” said the mayor. “Anyway, let's not go poking our sticks into the hornet's nest after we've sprayed it with Raid.”

“Who did you spray with Raid?” Lex Lexington slid out of the crowd and entered the backwater created by the fortune-teller's tent. “Don't tell me Martin's nephew is causing trouble again!”

“Why hello, Lex,” said Helen. “I've just been telling Buddy that young Fitch is going to make a name for himself by exposing all of Red Bud's secrets. Then he'll throw his hat in the ring and run for mayor.”

“You see all that in there?” Winslow leaned over his wife's shoulder and squinted at the glass ball.

“Of course not, darling. I made it up.”

“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” said the mayor.

“You and me both,” muttered Lexington.

“It would serve you all right,” said Helen, glancing sideways at her husband. “You of all people should know that trying to shut someone up is the surest way to prolong an argument.”

“Let's not tell these good people all our secrets,” said Winslow with a hollow laugh. “We have a reputation to uphold.” He turned to Lexington and said, “How was your vacation?”

“If you don't count the fire ants and the heat and the bad fishing and the spoiled kids and all hell breaking loose back at the office…” Lex mopped at his forehead with a limp bandana and blinked several times in succession at the pastor, who finally caught on that Lex wanted to speak privately. When the notes of the national anthem floated to them from the ball field, the mayor said, “Okay Helen, now tell us who is going to win.”

“You'll have to wait and be surprised,” said Helen. “The first Rainbow assembly of the school year is tonight. I just have time to go home and change out of this gypsy outfit. August, you're in charge of the crystal ball.”

As soon as Helen and the mayor were gone, Lex sat heavily in the chair Helen had vacated, and the pastor sat down across from Winslow, as if his fortune were being told. “What do you say, August?” he said, making a joke of it. “Tell us what the future holds.”

It was a hot day, and Lex was sweating so profusely that patches of his polo shirt had turned clinging and translucent. “Good God, man,” said Price. He was proud of his ability to stay cool in most circumstances, and although it was probably a genetic trait and not technically something he could take credit for, he couldn't help feeling slightly superior to the man who was practically melting in front of him.

“I need a little advice from you two,” said Lex. “I misplaced a confidential document at work—something given to me by a lobbying group—and while I was away, my assistant found it. So I dropped by the office to get it on my way over here, but it wasn't there. Valerie tells me that the only person who could have taken it is Maggie Rayburn.”

“Maggie Rayburn!” exclaimed Winslow, his face turning purple. “Don't tell me she's at it again!” He slammed his fist on the table and stormed out of the tent into the crowd that was still streaming toward the stands, only to immediately turn back again.

“What? What?” asked Lex. “If there's something you can tell me about that woman, I'd like to know about it!”

Winslow sat back down. “This goes no further,” he hissed. “Do you understand?”

The pastor nodded coolly, but Lex looked like he was about to explode. “For Chrissakes, man. What goes no further?”

“A top-secret document went missing from my office too. Back in the winter, just before that Rayburn woman quit working up at the plant. I haven't told anyone because…well, because it wouldn't look too good for me if anyone knew. But this is just a little too much of a coincidence, don't you agree?”

There was no disagreement.

“That's not all,” said Price. He was thinking back to the day Lyle had brought Maggie to his house for counseling. “She also admitted to stealing prisoner records. At least her husband said she did. He said so right in my own living room, and she didn't deny it.”

“What if we turn her in?” said Winslow. “What if we turn the little hussy in? Lex and I will just have to take the heat and hope it doesn't get too ugly.”

“We can't do that,” said Lex. “There's too big a downside.”

The pastor's mental wheels were already turning—another trait he was proud of was the ability to see solutions while others were still poking at the problem like sad sacks with a sore tooth. “I'm wondering if there's some way we can use this to our advantage,” he said.

“To our advantage!” cried Lex. “This is a disaster. How could it possibly work to our advantage?”

“Using a person's momentum against him—or her—happens to be one of my specialties.” Price put his hand up to forestall interruptions. “Do you remember how young Fitch wanted to write an article about Maggie back when she left her job at the munitions plant and how we told old Martin to shut him down?”

“I do,” said Winslow. “No sense giving the woman a megaphone is what I said at the time.”

“Well, what if we give her one now?”

“Are you joking?” asked Lex. “That's a sure way to get me fired.”

“I don't mean we say anything about the top-secret documents. I mean we create a distraction. We tell Fitch that someone is stealing prisoner records—nobody cares much about those, do they? We say she's got the best intentions, of course—peace and justice, et cetera, et cetera—all the same reasons that caused her to leave her job in the first place. We get Fitch to ask himself questions—for instance, can do-gooders carry a thing too far or does a good outcome justify illicit means? That's exactly the kind of high-minded stuff he likes. Meanwhile, the Rayburn woman comes under scrutiny for theft—only of the prison records, mind you—which makes her think twice about making any other stolen documents public. Everyone is entertained by a local scandal, and young Fitch is happy because he has a story. All the better if the prisoner is actually innocent, frankly—then Fitch can go off on a tear about injustice and all that. There's a good chance we can even leverage this thing to get your sensitive documents back.”

The three men were silent as they contemplated the proposal. A breeze had sprung up while they were talking and the sun had slipped past the topmost branches of a stand of cottonwood trees, leaving the day ten degrees cooler than it had been. Price moved Helen's crystal ball closer to him, noting how it turned everything upside down. “You see that?” Price asked the two other men. “Crystal balls might not tell the future, but they can get you to look at things from another point of view.”

A roar erupted from the stadium, and the pastor took the opportunity to excuse himself. “If you're both in agreement, I'll get things rolling by contacting Fitch—anonymously, of course. And Lex, wipe that frown off your face and go get a plate of barbecue. You too, August. Things will work out just fine.”

The empty tents were flapping in the breeze as the pastor made his way up the path toward the bleachers, stopping first at the food court to treat himself to a lemonade. Two girls eating ice cream out of paper cups waved their spoons at him. A man bought his son a hot dog and hurried back to watch the game. A vendor refilled his ice chest with soft drinks and fitted the strap around his neck. “Who's winning?” asked Price.

“Dr Pepper,” said the vendor. “It's not even close.”

Price smiled, amused by the misunderstanding. That just goes to show, he thought, and then he let his mind drift away from lessons about human nature. The leaves on the sycamore trees were already turning. For once, no one was tugging at his sleeve asking him to slice a baby in two so they could each have half of it. One time, he had asked a divorcing couple, “Okay, folks, heads or tails?” But he had mellowed since then.

Just when he was thinking that fall was as good as spring for the way it made a man feel, Maggie Rayburn burst into view, running along the sidewalk with a paper grocery sack clutched in her arms and her hair falling from its clips. Their eyes locked for an instant, and the pastor zigged backward as though some high-voltage connection had been made and quickly severed. He stumbled on the edge of the pavement and almost fell before zagging forward again. Hells bells, he thought. She'll think I've been drinking something stronger than lemonade! In order to cover his awkwardness, he called out, “Happy Glory Dayz,” but he said it too late, for Maggie was already scurrying toward the bleachers like a frightened rabbit.

She was definitely guilty. Chickens had a way of coming home to roost even if they needed a little encouragement now and then. “Encouragement.” That was the word the mayor had used when he meant “graft.” Tiffany would be wondering where he was, but the strange force of the encounter with Maggie had knocked him off course, and now, instead of following the stragglers into the stadium, he let his altered momentum carry him down a steeply cut embankment to the creek.

He'd swum in a creek just like this one as a boy. He and his friends had caught tadpoles and put them in jars so they could watch them turn into frogs if they didn't die first from lack of oxygen. But now a slick of green slime covered the rocks, making the going treacherous. He thought how, if the theory of evolution was true, man's ancestors must have crawled out of the slime and up the banks, their gills turning instantly into lungs. Of course, there were mutations not only of physical features, but also of outlook and character. How else had people emerged from the Dark Ages, and how else had tyrants given way to more enlightened rulers? But, like anything else, enlightenment could go too far. It was a strange world, and he didn't pretend to understand it. Strange and wonderful, he told himself, shaking his head over an image of the cute little Rainbow Girls and only belatedly adding a thought about the glory of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen! He sat on a fallen log and peered into the water, but it was sluggish and opaque, and if there were frogs or tadpoles hiding there, the pastor didn't see them.

T
he team was behind by two runs, but things were finally clicking for Will. His arm was smoking. His legs were on fire.

By the time he thought to glance up at the stands, it was the fifth inning. His parents were sitting on a high tier behind third base. Tula had another engagement, so she wasn't at the game, but they had plans to meet up after. He wished he had a car. If he had a car of his own, he could take her out when the game was over. But he didn't, which meant he'd have to go home with his parents, and if he couldn't persuade them to let him have the truck for the evening, he'd have to ride the bicycle or walk the two and a half miles to Ash Creek Circle on foot.

Don't let the future interfere with the present, his coach was always saying, so Will forgot about Tula and the truck. He excised the present from everything that had come before it and everything that would come after. He was coming from and going nowhere. He said his cue word, which worked to center him. “Spider-Man,” he said. He immediately felt a contraction of his body mass, as if his mind and body were undergoing a kind of cold fusion before releasing a blast of focused heat. As he approached the plate, the coach called out, “Okay, killer. Knock it out of the park.”

Will let the bat slide through his hands and settle into place before he tightened his grip around it, stepped up to the plate, and pounded the bat against it. Then he sized up the pitcher, who was pivoting to hold Stucky Place on second. Stucky gave a nonchalant shrug and spat in the dirt. When the pitcher turned back around, he squinted into Will's eyes and Will squinted back, both eyes together and then each eye on its own. He refocused on Stucky. Then he let Stucky go and narrowed the universe until it contained only Will and the pitcher and then only the ball and the bat. He ran his left hand and then his right hand between his ear and his cap, as if to push a lock of hair out of his eyes. He swung the bat loosely in a figure eight before locking his wrists again, this time for real. Now when he said his cue word, the power surged from his hands up through his elbows and shoulders and down through his core, where it connected with a countering surge that started at the ground and ran up through his legs and groin. The forces met in a tightening of his abdominal muscles and culminated in what the coach called the resonating moment—a snapshot of approaching time showing only the smack of the bat and the sweet spot of the ball. When the pitcher wound up and released, Will's muscles took over, transferring the blast of pure thermonuclear energy into the ball, converting the vision into reality, and sending the baseball out of the park.