Wishmakers (41 page)

Home, Arkansas, was a small town at the foot of the Ozark Mountains in the southwestern part of the state. It was the main supply hub for a twenty-square-mile area. Home got its unlikely name more than a hundred years ago when a travel-weary family from Ohio paused to spend the night along a clear stream. The man looked around, liked what he saw, and declared, “We're home.”

The town was little more than two rows of business buildings that lined the main street. The businesses that remained in the Ozark Mountain town were the grocery store, hardware store, barbershop, pool hall, gun shop, and two cafes, Alice's Diner and the Grizzly Tavern, where a man could get nearly anything that he wanted to drink. Most evenings, the tavern was crowded to overflowing. Nona had learned all of this when she and Maggie came to town to attend the Baptist church, a small clapboard building that sat on the edge of town. Church was the ideal place to catch up on the local gossip.

The Ozark Mountains loomed over a wild and unsettled terrain. The merchants in Home depended on hunters, fishermen, and campers for their livelihoods and the region drew them in droves. This was not only a haven for hunters, but also hippies for the last ten years. The town was usually peaceful until sunset, when the roughnecks came to town. Nona was becoming fond of the rough little town and its wooded surroundings.

She drove east along a road that snaked through a heavily wooded area. The sound of the car's tires crunching over loose stone echoed off of the looming pines that lined both sides of her route. She had traveled this road at least once a week since she and Maggie, her sister, had come to manage the camp and had never been nervous about traveling it, but now for some reason she was uneasy as she drove away from town. Was it that the bald-headed man had held onto her arm so tightly? The encounter bothered her more than she was willing to admit.

After a couple of miles, Nona became aware of a black car coming up behind her. Furtively, she glanced in her rearview mirror. In the mirror, she could see a truck behind the car. It was probably old Mr. Wilson who lived on the other side of the lake. He was almost eighty years old. Fearfully, Nona gripped the wheel. There was nothing along this lonely stretch of road until she came to the camp. She kept her eyes on the road and waited.

She would feel more comfortable when she made it to the turnoff to the camp! A little afraid but determined, Nona concentrated on her driving.

Glancing in the mirror, she was stunned to see the car pull out to pass her! Tapping on the brakes lightly to keep from spinning out of control, Nona saw that the driver was the bald-headed man who had grabbed her arm at the store. The black car passed her, and barreled on down the road. The man in the passenger seat didn't even glance at her. The car rounded a bend and was soon out of sight. For the next several miles, Nona kept expecting to see the car blocking the road, the man out, a gun in his hand.

Nona rounded an easy curve in the road and came within sight of Tall Pine Camp. She could not remember it looking so inviting. The manager's house itself wasn't much; it was the largest of the buildings but was otherwise identical to the seven other cabins set back from Tall Pine Lake. All of the cabins were roomy and painted a crisp shade of green. As she turned onto the lane leading to the cabins, Nona was proud of what she saw. With her sister Maggie's help she had cleaned the grounds around the cabins.

As she approached the three-room house she shared with her sister and Mabel Rogers, a longtime friend, her eyes roamed the campgrounds. A battered old house trailer sat near the lake. Russell Story, the old man who lived in the trailer, took care of the boats and the bait for the camp. He also cleaned, filleted, and packed the fish in ice for the camp guests. Aunt Mabel had won him over with her apple pie and in return he kept them well supplied with fresh fish.

“Oh, for crying out loud!”

Nona spat the words out as she came up the dirt road and turned her Ford into the drive in front of her cabin. For the second time in the last three days, the man who was staying in cabin number two had parked his pickup in her drive and she couldn't squeeze past it.

“Some people have a lot of nerve,” she muttered angrily. She pressed her hand down on the horn and held it there. The horn's blaring bounced off the buildings and over the lake. Nona hoped it sounded as belligerent as she felt.

“Nona! Chill out!” Maggie shouted as she came down the steps of their cabin and knocked on the window of the passenger's side.

Nona let up on the horn, leaned over the seat, and rolled down the window.

“He isn't here,” Maggie yelled over the knocks and ticks of the idling engine. “He took his dog and went off into the woods.”

“Not here?” Stress lines formed between Nona's eyes and the corners of her mouth turned down in a frown. “I'll just park behind him and see how he likes it.”

Maggie stood by the car with her hands on her bony hips. At fourteen, she was a pencil-straight girl with light brown hair who had just begun to emerge from her childish awkwardness. While she and her sister were both slim, Maggie was already taller than Nona, who was twelve years her senior. Maggie's legs seemed endless and her blue eyes looked too large for her perky, freckled face. She wore blue jeans and a faded T-shirt. Not at all shy, she had an openness that was a large part of her charm. She made a frown of her own as she watched her sister park directly behind the truck, then get out of the Ford with a mischievous grin on her face.

“Take a chill pill, Nona. Why are you so mad? You'd think this is the only parking place in the whole world.”

“I'm not mad…just exasperated.” She was still shaken from her encounter with the man at the store and on the road. “Our cabin is number one,” she explained impatiently. “This is our drive. He has his own drive. It's simple. Why does he insist on parking on this side of his cabin in our drive?”

“Seems like you're making a mountain out of a molehill to me,” Maggie retorted with a shrug. She gathered up one of the bags of groceries and leapt up the steps like a young colt.

Nona edged through the front door that Maggie held open, dumped her large sack on the table, and sighed. A thin woman in slacks and a sleeveless shirt stood in front of the sink peeling potatoes. She turned and smiled at the two girls, her high cheekbones rosy with rouge and a cigarette hanging from her bright red lips.

“Hi, Mabel,” Nona said.

“Is something wrong, dear?” Mabel asked with concern. “Why were you honking the horn?”

“She's having a cow, Aunt Mabel.”

When Nona and Maggie moved into an apartment after the death of their parents, Mabel Rogers, a widow, had been their neighbor. A woman who had no family of her own, she had taken the two girls to her heart. Mabel had volunteered to care for Maggie while Nona was at work, a blessing to both of the sisters. They loved her dearly. She had been “Aunt Mabel” to Maggie since she was four years old. When Nona had taken the job of managing the camp, it seemed only natural that Mabel would come with them.

“A what?” Mabel asked, wrinkling her brow.

“You know. Losing her cool.”

“I am not!” Nona caught herself before she said anything about what had happened in town and on the road to the camp. She didn't see the need to worry them unnecessarily. “There's the whole out-of-doors for him to park in, yet he insists on putting that pickup in our drive!”

“He's really very nice,” Mabel said. “Handsome, too,” she added with a wink at Maggie. Pushing a strand of henna-colored hair behind her ears, she began unloading the sacks of groceries.

“This sack is Mrs. Leasure's. I'll have Maggie take it down to her.”

Once everything had been placed on the table, Maggie wailed, “Nona! You didn't get my
Seventeen
magazine!”

“I had to choose between a magazine and Raisin Bran. The bran won. Our grocery dollars will only stretch so far, you know. When I think of how fast our money is going, I get panicky.”

“Did you call Little Rock, again?” Mabel asked.

Nona was reluctant to place a long distance call on the camp telephone. “I tried to call while I was in town, but they said he was out to lunch.”

“That's a heck of a note,” Mabel mused as she carefully folded the empty sacks.

“I think it was a lie. He just didn't want to talk to me.”

“Did you try to call the man who hired you?”

“No.”

“We've been here for four weeks and haven't heard a word from the owner of the camp.”

“I send everything we take in, plus the bills, to the accountant. Unless we get more bookings in a hurry, there'll be only the bills to send. To make matters worse, the pump on the well is acting up again. It'll cost a mint to have someone out here to fix it.”

As she took a load of groceries over to the cupboard, Nona stumbled over a big dog stretched out on the kitchen floor. The large mutt with the yellow coat looked up from where it lay, and then plopped its head back down onto the wooden floor. “Maggie! What's Sam Houston doing in here? I've told you time after time to leave him outside. He gets hair all over the place.”

“Sam Houston doesn't like the dog next door.”

“That's because he's a coward! It's time he decided if he's a dog or a pussycat,” Nona declared.

“He's no coward.”

Nona knew that Maggie regarded her complaints with the usual teenage tolerance for adults' irritations, but she couldn't help insisting on what was right. The mass of red hair curled around Nona's face and little tendrils of it clung to her cheeks and forehead. She blew the bangs away from her forehead and decided that rather than argue with Maggie, she would take Sam Houston and go outside.

“Come on, you mangy hound.”

“You're going to hurt Sam Houston's feelings, calling him that.”

“I should call him a hairy, worthless, mangy hound.”

Following Nona through the kitchen and out the back door, Sam Houston lumbered down the steps and eased himself into a cool spot of shade at the base of the porch. Nona sat down on the steps, rested her chin in her hand, and let her mind drift. She found herself back in Home, the strange man's hand on her arm. Inwardly, she shivered. Most of the men she had encountered since coming to the camp had been polite and rather bashful. This man had been different.

The loud blast from a car horn startled her, but then a secretive smile curled on her lips. The man in the next cabin was back and wanted to move his truck.
Not much fun, is it, buster
, she thought. She went back into the kitchen and peeked out the window. A tall, well-muscled man in faded jeans and an old plaid work shirt had his hand firmly on the truck's horn.

“Nona! Do something!” Maggie wailed.

“Not yet,” Nona replied with a grin. “Let him stew for a while.”

At a loud knock on the door her smile widened. She stayed in the kitchen while Maggie opened the door.