LINKS

Moon Lake — Excerpt

Dear Reader,

This work-in-progress is a little different from my previous women's fiction novels, with more emphasis on humor (I hope!) yet keeping the romance and "heart" (I hope!)  I look forward to hearing your comments!

Deb

 Ashley 

1

"Do you want the bad news first?" Dad's attorney asked. "Or the even worse news?"

I tilted my face toward the muggy breeze coming off San Francisco Bay. A dirty, brownish rim of air clouded the tops of the Golden Gate Bridge. The balcony of Dad's condo had a two-million dollar view of sunshine, sailboats, and smog. A beautiful girl with bad habits. Dad's type.

"Decisions, decisions," I said. "Let me think." I set my tonic water down on a coaster decorated with a marijuana leaf, atop Dad's tiled patio table inlaid with a Playboy bunny logo. The table had been a gift from Hugh Hefner, back in Dad's prime as a Hollywood show-biz horn-dog. Hef had even autographed it. To Max  – Nobody does it better. Hef. On the other side of Dad's bunny table, directly in my line of sight, Dad's favorite life-sized statue sucked her fingers and thrust her stony breasts at me.

Max Vandeveer, TV star, pervert and art lover.

"Ms. Vandeveer?" the attorney said. "Ashley? Did you hear me?"

"Do you have a gas mask, a jug of disinfectant, and a sledge hammer handy?"

"Excuse me?"

"Nevermind."

"Ash likes to joke," my sister explained between sobs. Dressed in jeans and a lacy tank top, looking twenty instead of thirty-three, Tiffany huddled beside me at the table. "When we were little, a psychiatrist said that's how she copes with Dad's emotional abuse. She jokes. I cry."

I adjusted my sunglasses against the glare of the statue's concrete nipples. "Works for me." I handed Tiff another tissue to squelch her hiccupping, martini-laced sniffles. Then, to the lawyer: "You were saying?"

He stared at us. "Bad news first or --"

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking."

"I warn you. It is a shocker."

Tiff grabbed my hand and hugged it to her chest with the chittery resolve of a blonde warrior facing a bad hair day. "Ash and I can handle anything. We've survived all sorts of stuff together. Lonely boarding schools, a pack of greedy half-brothers and sisters, Dad's graspy ex-wives. We take care of each other. After all, we're twins."

He did the usual double-take. Twins? Short, dyed-blonde-actress, Tiffany. Tall, red-headed-business-writer, me. Little butt. Big butt. Sweet and sour. The Chinese take-out of sisters. I waved a hand. "Fraternal. And I'm older than Tiff. By thirty minutes. But I've had Botox, so most people can't tell."

"I see." The lawyer shuffled some papers and smiled. "Okay, twin sisters, will it be bad news first or even worse news, first?"

I leaned forward, pulled my sunglasses down my nose, and nailed him with a look that made him stop smiling and inch back from the table. Very softly, I said, "What could be worse than finding out our goddamned father died trying to have sex with a dolphin on the set of a reality TV show called Hollywood Castaways?"

Silence. No easy answer for that one, no, siree. Tiffany laid her head on one arm and wailed. I settled back in my chair, shut my eyes and listened to the boom, boom, boom of blood pounding in my ears – no, it was the sound of  imaginary footsteps coming my way. The soft, smoggy breeze floated one of my red curls across my nose, tickling. No, it was the feathery touch of the horrible thing called the truth, its breath on my face. I tucked the long curl back into the bulky braid that hung down one shoulder all the way to my waist. My hair was a mystery to people, and I liked that about it. They couldn't peg my image. Business writer in business suit, with a braid longer than an Amish sunset. Was I conservative, or wild? Dominatrix hair, Tiff called it. I could whip men with it, if I had to. Never turn your back on me and my hair.

Boom, boom, boom. Hesitation. 

Relax, I told the approaching monster. I only use my hair for the forces of good. 

"Ashley?" the lawyer inquired. "Are you having a seizure?" I said nothing, waiting. Tiffany moaned and took a huge swallow of her martini. Her hand shook inside the icy grip of my hand. Boom, boom, boom. Thud. I opened my eyes. Yep, there he was. The big, nasty, metaphorical elephant-in-the-corner had finally settled into a chair at the table with us. Dad really had drowned while trying to seduce a dolphin.

"Grim reality," I announced, "is actually quite tolerable once you get on speaking terms with it."

The lawyer frowned. "Ms. Vandeveer, I think the best thing to do is not sensationalize your father's bizarre death any more than can be helped --"

"Oh? Maybe we could refer to it as a simple case of ‘Fatal Flipper Interruptus?' Or maybe, ‘The Love That Dare Not Squeak Its Name Through a Blow Hole?'"

"Let's leave the lurid headlines to the tabloids, shall we?"

"Okay, then. Let's put a positive spin on Dad's demise. He died doing what he loved. He hadn't had a hit TV show since Sergeant Vegas, back in the eighties. Now he finally had a starring gig again, even if it was just a Survivor-style reality show for has-been actors. At least he was on top of his game, again. Acting! Yes, acting was Dad's life. He died with a purpose." Pause. "Or, at least, a porpoise."

Tiffany groaned. "The N-National Enquirer keeps calling us. They have our cell phone numbers on ‘speed dial.'"    

The lawyer gave up.  "Look, take some consolation in the fact that your father was stoned when he jumped into that lagoon. He didn't know what he was doing. And, at least, the object of his affection was a girl dolphin."

I smiled. "Thank goodness. We wouldn't want people to think our dad was into gay dolphin love." 

The lawyer slumped. Tiffany downed the rest of her martini in one gulp.

A security alarm beeped. Someone had entered Dad's condo. Thanks to the patio's open French doors, we heard multiple sets of high heels hurriedly pecking their way across the hardwood floor. "Me, first," a female voice ordered.

"No, me, you slut." Another femme fatale.

"Get out of my way, bitches." A third girly voice.

I stood. "Ah, the sweet sounds of Dad's girlfriends. I'll handle this. I've had a rabies shot."

By the time I walked inside, the Olson twins and Madonna were rummaging through a teak cabinet in the living room. Okay, they only looked like low-rent editions of the scrawny Olsens and the middle-aged Material Girl. I watched as they pawed through photo albums, CD's and DVD's, scattering the cabinet's contents like raccoons in a trash can.

"If you're the maid service, I want a refund."

They jumped. Three sets of silicone implants twirled to face me. "We're just here to find, uh, some personal stuff," one said.  "Who the hell are you?"

"She's not Maxie's type," the other chirped.

"Not unless she liposuctioned her ass," the third added, "and moved it to her tits."  

I opened the shoulder purse of my natty discount-store dress-suit, switched my prescription sunglasses for a pair of skinny tortoise-shells, and confirmed their skank-hood with closer scrutiny. "If you're looking for my dad's homemade porno collection, I imagine my half-brothers have already confiscated it. I expect it's winging its way to the Internet, even as we speak. I hope you signed a deal for residuals. Or pay-per-view."

The trio shrieked and dived into the cabinet again. Photos and computer discs pelted the hardwood floor. An old, dog-earred 8 X 10 fluttered to my feet. I looked down at it, and my heart twisted.

A pretty young redhead looked up at me, circa 1970. Monique Loring Vandeveer. A drunk driver killed her on Santa Monica Boulevard when Tiff and I were only two years old.

"It's Mother!" Tiff said, behind me. "One of her head shots! I didn't know Dad saved any!"

Neither did I. Our mother was only Dad's first wife. Out of seven. When we were growing up,  he'd referred to her as ‘my sweet little hick.' Not exactly an endearment.  

Tiff scooped up the picture, a publicity photo from our mother's brief and unsuccessful career as an aspiring actress. The harpy trio continued to toss Dad's mementoes in their frantic search for beaver shots of themselves doing him. "Damn," one said. "I could have gotten at least five thousand for my stuff, on e-Bay."

Behind me, Tiffany cried softly over our mother's picture. I had no tears left. "Time's up, girls," I announced to the visitors. "Your boss called. You're needed back at the massage parlor." 

"Screw you, bitch. We've got a key to this place."

I reached into my purse and pulled out a nifty little black device with twin prongs at the top. "And I've got a taser."

Ten seconds later, they were out the door.

I went back to the patio, where Tiff collapsed in her chair. She hugged our mother's publicity picture like a Teddy Bear. The lawyer stared as I tucked the taser into my purse. I smiled and sat down primly. "I'm a business writer. I ghosted a motivational book for the CEO of  a self-defense company. I get free tasers. It's a perk."

"Well, tasers are certainly capable of motivating people."

"Absolutely."

"Perhaps our conversation should wait a few days, until after your father's funeral. Until you've had time to . . . calm down. After all, you just heard about his, his, shall we say, unusual death, a few hours ago."    

"No, let's get this settled. Tiff and I are driving back to L.A. this afternoon, and we won't be coming back here for the funeral." I took a notepad from my briefcase, positioned it on the table, pulled out a pen, and waited. "I'm ready. Hit us with your best shot. Dad drowned trying to pork a dolphin. And?"

The lawyer exhaled slowly, then looked resigned. "Your father is bankrupt."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"If you and your sister are expecting an inheritance--" 

"Dad's second wife looted our trust fund twenty years ago. The other wives, and our half-brothers and sisters, grabbed the rest. We've been on our own since we graduated from  high school.  I own a lovely two-bedroom bungalow overlooking a taco restaurant in greater L.A., and I drive my very own ten-year-old Volvo. Do I look like I need Max Vanderveer's residuals from a bunch of cheesy TV shows?" 

"Well, but--"

"Me, neither, " Tiff chimed. "My acting career has finally taken off. I've starred in two home-cleaning-products infomercials this year, and I have a bit part as an alien in the new Farscape movie. You can't recognize me behind the tentacles, but I'm there. I intend to redeem the Vanderveer acting legend." She teared up at the challenge. 

The lawyer exhaled. "All right. You understand there's no money. That's the easiest thing I have to tell you."

The hairs on the back of my neck were now standing at permanent attention. The tonic water felt like acid in my stomach. I posed my pen over the notepad. "You can't shock us. I promise you. Just say whatever you have to say, and I'll jot down any particulars that need further discussion."

Tiff added helpfully, "My sister is an anus about details."

"Tiff," I said. "It's ‘anal.'"

"Oh. Sorry."

The lawyer leaned forward. "As you know, you're twins."

"Oh, you're good. Yes, we know that."

"Fraternal twins."

"Aw, go on. We just told you that a few minutes ago. And?"

His eyes strayed to my taser-loaded purse. He swallowed hard. "But you're not thirty-three years old. You're thirty-four."

I laid my pen down. "What kind of joke is that?"

Beside me, Tiff straightened. Her mouth popped open. She looked like a flash-frozen goldfish. "I think we know how old we are, and we're not almost thirty-five! I'm not telling any casting agents I'm almost thirty-five!"

The lawyer shook his head. "I'm sorry, but you are." He laid a manila envelope on the table. "These are your birth certificates."

"Yes, so what? I've seen our birth certificates, before."

"No, you've seen altered versions of them. These are the originals. Max went along with the cover-up. To please your mother, I guess. He had his moments of decency. Albeit brief ones."

"That's ridiculous," I said. "Trust me, Dad never erred on the side of decency and discretion. He'd have told us the truth, even if she didn't want him to. His favorite bedtime story was how he knocked her up after she auditioned to play one of his girlfriends on that soap opera he was in. Right before he got the starring role on Sergeant Vegas. They got married a few months before we were born. Dad was always so proud of himself for doing the right thing by his ‘sweet little hick from Oklahoma.'"

The lawyer pushed the envelope toward us. "I'm sorry, but you two were born before she married Max." 

"Then it's true," Tiff moaned. "I'm almost thirty-five."

I gritted my teeth. "All right, so Dad didn't ‘do the right thing' until we were old enough to gum his ankles with our baby teeth. So what?"

"Your mother's maiden name wasn't Monique Loring. It was Della Harrigan."

Della? Harrigan? Della Harrigan. Della Harrigan. The elephant lumbered to its feet and stomped around inside my brain. Della. Harrigan.

"Della Harrigan!" Tiff said. "I like it! Ash, don't you think it sounds good? Why would she give up a name like that for ‘Monique Loring?' Della Harrigan. I can picture that in the credits. Della. Della Harrigan."

I squeezed her hand. "We'll do the Gregorian chant version later, okay?" I gazed  at the lawyer coolly. "All right, so she changed her name for Hollywood."

"She wasn't from Oklahoma."

"All right, so she fibbed about where she was born."

"She was from North Carolina."

"All right, so she grew up playing a banjo with her albino cousins. It happens."

"She was from a small town called Moon Lake. Up in the mountains."

"So Tiff and I are half-hillbilly. Big deal. I've always wondered why I have these urges to sleep under porches with large dogs named Beau."

"Please, be serious!"

"Excuse me, I'm a little giddy with relief. So far, nothing you've said rivals the fact that Dad tried to date a marine mammal."

The lawyer slapped the table and hunched toward us, elbows in the air. Tiff gasped. I reached for my taser. "Back off.  My sister has asthma. You're crowding her bronchial tubes."

"And you're giving me a migraine. Listen to me, you two weird sisters. Listen!" He pointed at Tiff. "Your birth name is Tammy. Your middle name is Wynette." He jabbed a finger at me. "You're Loretta. Your middle name is Lynn."

The lawyer paused for a breath. Tiffany grabbed an inhaler from the pocket of her jeans and took a long puff. I was suddenly beyond breathing. Loretta. Loretta? It was a good thing I had such a strong Ashley identity. What was that itch in my fingertips? The desire to make cornbread and pick a guitar? No, just my imagination. I was Ashley Vandeveer. Ashley, she of the Donna Karan suits via Goodwill, she who wrote solemn business books about people who spoke in success slogans, she who played golf and bridge with aging, widowed CEO's. She who slept with those safe, wise old men. And liked it.    

"All right," I said slowly. "So our mother's Della Harrigan, from Moon Lake, North Carolina, and she named us after country-western singers. The kind with big hair and sequins. Tell anybody that last part and I'll put enough voltage in you to light up Sacramento." 

Tiff got her second wind. "I'm almost thirty-five years old, and my name is Tammy Wynette Vandeveer? And Ash is Loretta Lynn Vandeveer? Oh. My. God. I can't believe it! This is unreal!"

I clucked my tongue at the lawyer, and put on a fake drawl. "See? Now, you done gone and got Tammy all fired up."

He banged the table so hard a small tile popped out of the bunny logo. "Don't you understand what I'm saying? For some reason, your mother didn't want anyone from her home town to find you. Including your real father. Your dad isn't Max Vandeveer!"

Tiffany squealed. All my skin peeled off. My exposed nerve endings waved frantically. I pictured them holding flares and small signs. Save us! Deflect the truth! It might be even worse than what you thought was true! "Max Vandeveer isn't our biological father?" I finally managed. "Why, that's just wishful thinking."  

The lawyer jerked the birth certificates from the envelope, plopped them on the table, and thumped his fingertip on the ‘Name of Father' line. I bent over it slowly, incredulous. Tiffany plastered herself to my shoulder and peered down.

"Michael," she whispered tearfully. "‘Michael Robert. Michael Robert O'Ryan. Place of residence: Moon Lake, North Carolina. '  Ash, we're not Vandeveers. We're . . . O'Ryan's!" She pondered the consequences for a long second. I watched her worriedly. Oh, no. I saw what was happening. Look up ‘Wacky Impulse' in the dictionary and you'll see a picture of my sister.

She morphed in front of my eyes. Neurons packed their bags and moved to Dixie. Synapses fired around the concepts of ‘buttered grits' and ‘NASCAR.' Her cerebral cortex busily rooted a new family tree for us, one fertilized by a heapin' helpin' of fantasy.

She threw her arms around my neck and hugged me feverishly. "Ash! Even if we are almost thirty-five, and even if we are named Tammy and Loretta, this is wonderful! We're not Vandeveers! We're not doomed to make crappy TV shows and serve jail time like our brothers and sisters and be sentenced to rehab! Producers won't be able to say, ‘She's a Vandeveer. Give her a part and she'll just blow it by sleeping with any animal on the set.' We're O'Ryan's! We're . . . Irish-American! And Southern! We're . . . we're downhome folks!"

I looked up at the lawyer numbly. "Does this Michael O'Ryan know about us?"

"No. I don't know if he's ever known about you."

"Or ever wanted to know about us."

"Max left instructions in his will to tell you your true identities. Apparently, Max didn't know anything about your real father, either, other than what your mother told him, which wasn't much. For whatever reason, she didn't want to tell Michael O'Ryan about you and your sister. Believe it or not, Max actually liked your mother and tried to honor her wishes. He told me she was young and innocent and . . . hopeful. He wanted to help her out. She must have trusted him. However naïve that was."

I grimaced. "What a great thought: Our real father was such a loser, Mother picked Max over him. Please tell me this O'Ryan's dead."

 "Sorry. He's alive and well. With a wife. And five daughters. I mean five other daughters."

"We have five baby sisters!" Tiff said, crying, laughing, and pounding my back. "We're the oldest of seven O'Ryan daughters! Ash, we have to go bond with them! And with our real father! We'll ask what happened between him and mother, and why she didn't tell him about us. And I'm sure he'll explain, and it will all be okay!"

"Tiff, please step back from the rim of Fantasy Canyon --"

"My name's not Tiffany. It's Tammy. Tammy O' Ryan. I'm  going to North Carolina. We're going. Loretta."  

Loretta.

"Call me that name one more time, and I'll get out the taser."

Tiff just laughed and hugged me again. "Loretta, I love you! Tammy and Loretta are going home to Tara!"

Oh, God.

The lawyer smiled wickedly. You doubted my bad news? he mouthed. Now, do you believe me?

Fiend. Lawyer. Well, that was redundant. 

The elephant of grim reality looked me right in the face, and chortled.

Howdy do, Loretta.  

Parker

2

The good news?  I was one day short of my fortieth birthday, so my obituary in the Moon Lake Weekly Floater would lead off this way:

Parker Dwayne McCabe, Local Hero, Dies At Only 39

The bad news? The obit would go on to say:

His burned-up remains are still being sifted from the ashes of Dewey Logan's barn.

"Dewey, give it up!" I yelled through a bullhorn stenciled on one side with MLVFD for Moon Lake Volunteer Fire Department and on the other side with MLPD, for Moon Lake Police Department. In other words, it was the only bullhorn in greater Moon Lake. And I was the only fire captain. "Climb down, Dewey. We got the ladder in place for you!"

Smoke was already seeping out the open doors of the barn's hayloft, making clouds against the starry night sky. The barn's bottom floor was a forest of flames. Thank God, in the last few years Dewey only used the old log barn for storing hay. There was no livestock to worry about -- just ol' Dewey, who was up in the hayloft with a garden hose and a lot of faith.

"Go to hell, Parker McCabe!" Dewey yelled from somewhere inside the loft. "My granddaddy built this barn, and I ain't gonna let it burn! He courted my grandma in this barn! I courted my wife in this barn! It's got sentiment!"

Beside me, Kook Phiney said drily, "I've always wondered why the Logan men are so fond of livestock."

Standing beside Kook, Pardo Cantrell looked at me grimly. Pardo was not a romantic. "If you want my opinion, Captain, we'd be doing the local gene pool a favor if we let this hee-haw love nest go up in smoke."

I shook my head. "Cover me, boys. I'm going up. Gimme the hose."

I hooked the unrolled hose from our tanker truck over one shoulder and climbed the ladder to Dewey's loft. In case it's not obvious, let me tell you: Carrying sixty feet of wide-gauge fire hose up a hundred-foot ladder while wearing one-hundred pounds of firefighting gear will make a man wish he'd volunteered to head the local crocheting club, instead.

I hoisted myself and the hose into the loft, peered through the smoke, and spotted Dewey in a far corner. If you've ever seen a big-bellied, long-snouted possum stand up on its hind feet, wearing overalls and a Kubota tractor cap, that's pretty much what Dewey looks like. Waving his garden hose, he squirted head-high rolls of hay that were smoking and about to burst into flame.

"I'll take care of your barn, Dewey!" I yelled. "But you gotta haul your ass down the ladder, right now! Deal?"

He squirted me with his garden hose. Squirted me. "Hell with you! It's my barn. I'm staying!"

I aimed my nozzle at him and put one hand on the lever. "My hose is bigger than yours, Dewey."

"I got a right to take care of my barn! The Second Amendment says so!"

"That's the amendment that gives you the right to shoot your barn, Dewey."

"Irregardless! I ain't leaving!"

"Sorry, but either you're climbing down, or I'm throwing you down." I dropped my hose and lumbered toward him, arms spread, all six-foot-three of my neon-yellow-geared firefighting authority aimed at scaring him down the ladder.

"I ain't going, I ain't going!" he bellowed, aiming his garden hose at my open visor. I was just about to duck and tackle him when a roll of hay went up in flames like a cheap Chinese bottle rocket at a July 4^th picnic.  

Dewey shrieked, dropped his garden hose, and ran for the loft door. Don't ever let anybody tell you possums aren't fast when they want to be. That night, Dewey could have out-run any tractor-trailer on the interstate. The last I saw, he was scurrying down the ladder with smoke coming off the brim of his Kubota hat.

Leaving me alone in the equivalent of Dante's Inferno, Barn Division.   

I stared at the burning hay. I had my pride as captain of the volunteer fire department, I had a job to do, and I loved old log barns the way we southerners always love old things, though, unlike Dewey and his forebears, I'd never been keen on using a hay loft as date-bait. I grabbed the fire hose, buttressed the nozzle between my right elbow and side, and  looked the burning hay in the eye.

"Fill your hand, you sonuvabitch!"

Yeah, I admit it. When I'm intense, I channel John Wayne in the gun fight from True Grit.

I twisted the nozzle lever. A monster stream of water hit the hay. Smoke boiled out. I staggered. Wrestling a fire hose at full throttle isn't a one-man job. It took all my strength to keep standing, much less standing still. I fell, I rolled, I got to my knees, I got shoved against a wall. It was like holding onto the tentacle of a giant octopus, and the octopus was trying to beat me to death.

I must have slammed into every wall beam and every floorboard in the loft. But by God, I kept the water going, and what I didn't bounce off of, I doused. I could dimly hear Kook and Pardo yelling for me to let go of the hose, and I'm pretty sure I heard Dewey yelling something about shooting me if I did.

Trust me, no one's ever seen me deliberately let go of my hose.

One minute I was staggering on the edge of the loft door, a second later I was flying back-asswards into thin air – but still clutching the hose. I had this quick vision of breaking my neck when I hit the ground – a death not by noble fire, but by sheer bad luck. Of being an embarrassment to volunteer fire captains everywhere.

That's why I had such a grip on the hose nozzle. Pride.

Whump. Not the sound of me hitting the ground, but the sound I made when the hose slung me against the barn's outer wall.  The hose had caught around the top of our ladder. I hit the wall, then fell a good ten feet.

I lay there on my back like a swatted fly. Kook and Pardo dragged me over to the tanker truck and pulled my helmet off. "You did it, Parker McCabe!" Dewey was yelling. "You put the fire out! You saved my barn!"

I managed to prop myself up on one elbow. As my head cleared, I realized Kook and Pardo were squatted beside me, patting me on the back, trying to get me to breathe. One day, when we actually had a budget, we'd invest in an oxygen tank.

The barn was still smoking, but water dripped through the loft onto the fire below, and the flames were just sizzles, now. 

Dewey's ancestral love crib was saved.

"Watch out, Captain, Dewey's headed this way," Kook warned.

"Yeah," Pardo grunted, "And he's looking at you as if you're a pretty steer."

"Parker McCabe, you're a hero!" Dewey shouted.

In between hurting all over, I managed to say to Kook and Pardo, "Whatever you do, don't let him kiss me. No telling where those lips have been."

I shut my eyes and pretended I had passed out. Thus ended my thirty-ninth year on the planet.

I thought my life couldn't get any more exciting than that.

Thank God, I was wrong. 

*

The next morning, I still hurt all over. But now I was forty years old. So it was even worse.

Mike O' Ryan poked his graying head inside the door of my store, McCabe's Outdoor World, which wasn't so much a world as a big shack that smelled like fish and sterno. The fishing-lure wind chimes rattled as Mike banged the wooden door open. Spring air, straight off Moon Lake and smelling as clean and crisp as a cut apple, poured in. Well, all right, it was already pouring in through a hole in the window screen by the cash register. Damn confident raccoons. That's what I got for feeding them leftover bait all these years. Drive-by gnawings.

"Parker," Mike boomed. "Birthday Boy! What you doin' in here by yourself, you ugly fire-fighting hero?"

Like most people in Mike's circle, I had lots of affectionate nicknames. "Don't bother sweet-talking me, I'm not taking the bait," I drawled, refusing to look up from my work bench. I had important chores to do before the summer fishing season brought thousands of tourists armed with rods and reels.  I was trying to type a message into the Blackberry I'd just bought as a birthday gift to myself.

Forty years old and trying to poke girly-man buttons with sore, he-man fingertips. Hell with it. I'd just carry my laptop around, instead. Hang it from a mountain climber's O-ring, on my belt, maybe.

I heard giggles. Little-girl giggles. Okay, Mike had brought the heavy artillery. I looked up. Mike grinned at me. His youngest, eight-year-old April, clung to his back like a monkey. All I could see of her was two high-top basketball shoes, two skinny arms decorated with a dozen of those colorful, plastic, save-the-something bracelets, a few puffs of shaggy brown hair, one blue eye, and half-a-grin full of braces. She peered at me around Mike's left shoulder. "Bubba Parker," she said sweetly,  There's two baby llamas out back in your bathroom. And they're eating that plant in the macramé hanger by your commode."

Mike guffawed, she giggled, and they disappeared with a door-bang that swung the fishing-lure chimes so hard they snagged one ear of the stuffed jack-a-lope on the wall. Now my jack-a-lope was wearing a wooden minnow earring to go with the Phantom of the Opera yacht cap some jokester had stuck on his antlers. If he hadn't looked gay before, he did, now. 

And there were baby llamas in the toilet.

Those are words no man wants to hear, especially on his birthday, especially his fortieth birthday, when he wants to forget his responsibilities and celebrate his hairline (still full,) his stomach (still flat, ) and his pecker (still hard.)

Maybe it was a joke. I was being lured out back for a surprise. If anybody but Mike tried to pull a prank on me, I'd, well, okay, I'm a sucker for pranks, so I'd go along. Anyhow, Mike wouldn't take no for an answer, since he was my surrogate daddy.

He and his wife, Dooly Bug, had taken me in after my family died in a tornado up at our farm up on Trick'em Mountain. I was sixteen and all alone. My mama was Dooly Bug's third cousin once removed, by marriage. In Moon Lake, that meant I was family. So after the tornado I was sort of adopted by Mike, Dooly Bug, and, as the years went by, their growing brood of chicks. Now five O'Ryan sisters called me Bubba. Which is southern for "brother."

You couldn't ask for a better family, born or made.  

I got up from the work bench, glared at the Blackberry, and headed down the store's back hall, dodging boxes of camping gear I hadn't shelved, yet. I thumped a sore fist on a rough plank wall covered in posters for chewing tobacco,  beer, deer lures, high-tech hiking shoes, and fishing gear.

Baby llamas, hell, no. I'd already done my part being a daddy to all manner of living beings. I'd raised two sons, at least a thousand milk cows, several hundred goats, stray dogs and cats too numerous to count, my sons' pet iguanas, pet turtles, pet bear cubs, pet foxes, and pet squirrels, not to mention running a sporting goods store, where I raised fishing worms, bait minnows, trout fingerlings, crickets, and burglar raccoons.

Right now, up on Trick'em, I'd let old man French Monroe talk me into planting wine grapes. So now I was playing papa to twenty-five acres of chardonnay on the hoof. Grapes, even if they don't have a heartbeat, are living things, just like the rest. And they're as needy as children. 

What I hadn't raised in the past two decades was enough hell. Yours truly, Parker McCabe, had gone from being a boring and hard-working young daddy to being a boring, forty-year-old, middle-aged man. I got married by the time I was 18, became a two-time daddy by 22, and a widower by 23. These days I was looking for racy love and a margarita, not more responsibility.

So, no, I didn't want to hear that there were baby llamas in the toilet.

I stepped out onto the raked gravel of my back parking lot and made a bee-line for the toilet door. Shut. Quiet. No llamas. Thank God. 

"HAPPY FORTIETH BIRTHDAY, PARKER!" About two-dozen people, led by Mike, leapt out from behind the big rhododendrons by the store's corner. Firecrackers popped, dogs barked, and a couple of our famous curly-earred cats jumped off the hood of my Jeep and ran for cover. Over in "downtown" Moon Lake, just a good throw east of me on the shore, Father Elvis rang the bells at the Catholic chapel, and Kook and Pardo  blew the ear-splitting horn on the tanker truck.

"Pa, happy birthday!" shouted two deep voices.

Here came my sons, Shane and Travis, grinning as the crowd parted for them. They lugged a big folding table up to me. I stared down at a six-foot long sheet cake in the shape of a lake bass. It even had a lure of colored frosting hanging from its mouth. "Polly has outdone herself," I said in awe. Polly DeWalt, our mayor and owner/chef of the Moon Lake Inn, had sent me my favorite, a giant-bass-sized helping of carrot-cake heaven with cream-cheese icing.    

I gazed at the cake with pure love. "Now this," I said, "is a fish worth catching."

Mike clapped me on the shoulder. "Polly said to tell you Happy Birthday and enjoy the cake."

 "I sure will do that."

Travis reached underneath the table, pulled out a poster he'd hidden by taping it there, and held it high. "Here's to you, Pa. From me and Shane. Pardo e-mailed it to Shane this morning, and Shane e-mailed it to me, and I got it printed in Atlanta before I drove up." My sons spread the poster between them, so everyone could see.

"Our Pa," Shane announced. "The best barn-saving volunteer fireman in the world."

Everyone applauded. Me, I just stared at my smoke-grimed face and wished I didn't have a clean smudge on one jaw where Dewey had kissed me. Pardo, who doubled as a reporter and photographer for the newspaper, had insisted on taking the picture of me, still in my gear, standing in front of Dewey's barn. It was around dawn by then, and we were all bone-tired after babysitting the barn all night.

I looked like I'd been on a three-day drunk. Rolling in a fireplace. In a giant yellow raincoat.

On a good day, it's been said I'm a handsome looker. Black-brown hair, good white teeth, enough Cherokee Indian in me to give me some cheekbones, and eyes that men call "brown," but women call "hazel."       

But this wasn't a good day.

"Right there," I said grimly, and pointed to the smudge on my face. "That's where Dewey kissed me. We're engaged."

Laughter.

Dooly Bug gave me a hug. "We're so proud of you, sweetie pie," she said. "Happy birthday." She gave me a kiss on the cheek, to void Dewey's effect.  "Polly couldn't come to the party because she's got another audition with the Food Channel. She's determined nobody'll get hurt by an exploding squash, this time."

"I'll cross my fingers for her."

"She sends her love. Says you're a good man for what you did last night." 

"Letting Dewey Logan kiss me?"

She chortled. Mike's wife was a cute little chubby brunette who raised five rambunctious daughters without ever losing her sense of humor. She could gut a fish in fifteen seconds flat and rebuild a boat motor with her eyes shut. What a woman. She and Mike ran the Moon Lake Marina and grew Christmas trees on their land next to mine, up on Trick'em.  She and Mike still held hands and kissed on the mouth, in public,  after nearly 30 years of marriage. 

 "Cut the cake, Bubba!" April said. "June, quit lookin' dopey and hand over the  knife!"

June was Mike's next-youngest, sixteen, lanky, freckled, and brown-haired, like Mike had been before he went gray. June (all the O'Ryan girls were named after months of the year,) didn't seem to hear a thing. She gazed, moon-eyed, at Shane. "Happy birthday, Bubba," she said to me in a hypnotized tone, without even blinking my way. Shane, who was busy helping Travis lock the tables' legs in place, never noticed her love-sickness.

Shane was eighteen and liked his women older, wilder, and not hampered by a daddy like Mike, who interviewed his girls' new boyfriends while cleaning his shotgun.  Plus Shane thought of the O'Ryan gals as family, even though, technically, they weren't. The three oldest daughters, Jan(uary,) July and (Nov)Ember, had changed his diapers once upon a time, so they weren't in awe of his handsome grown-up-ness. In fact, as babysitters they'd nicknamed him Squirt, for good reason, a moniker that could still put a damper on Shane's manly dignity.

Now the problem wasn't too many girls changing his diapers, it was girls all over our part of western North Carolina wanting to get in his pants, and him all too happy to accommodate them. June didn't stand a chance amongst that competition. Good. Mike was six-five and armed. I didn't want to referee a blood feud between him and my son.   

Dooly Bug elbowed June out of her Shane trance, took a tote bag of plates, napkins, and a serrated knife from her, and began slicing the bass cake. 

"Hand out pieces of the fins to everybody else," I instructed. "But that cream-cheese tail is mine."

Laughter. Shane and Travis finished adjusting the table and gave me great big  hugs. I slapped their backs hard enough to jolt some un-manly tears out of my eyeballs. I faked a glare at Travis. "You better not've ditched class to be here."

"No, I ditched a day at work, not classes. Don't worry. I keep telling you, Pa. I'm on salary. I don't have to punch a time clock. I'm the go-to guy in the hardware lab. They're already talking about offering me a job after graduation. It's a different world from Moon Lake. Relax, Pa." He smiled. He was always so patient with me, these days. I made a mental note to prove I could still wrestle him to the ground and make him eat hominy. Which is the nastiest stuff ever concocted on a southern stove.  

Truth be told, my oldest boy had outgrown me. Travis was a junior at Georgia Tech, a five-hour drive south of Moon Lake, in the big city of Atlanta. Unlike me,  he could program a Blackberry in his sleep, using half a brain cell. He was a fraternity man, already worked as an intern at a high-tech company, had a genius, Yankee girlfriend who was studying civil engineering, and drove a BMW he had bought and paid for without even needing me to co-sign the loan. 

Man, I felt proud. Okay, proud but unneeded. Proud, but . . . unneeded and backward and forty.

Shane stared at him. "Hey, Trav, how's the weather up there on your high horse?"

Travis smiled cooly. "I'm not trading insults with you on Pa's birthday. Squirt."

Mike got between them before I could. "Injun, stand over there," he ordered Shane, jerking a thumb at one end of the cake table. And to Travis, "Cowboy, stand over there. You two bucks apologize and eat some cake. Or else. It's your daddy's birthday. He's an old man now, and he can't take much fuss." 

The boys looked at me. "Sorry, Pa."

"Yeah, sorry Pa."

I managed a mean look for a few seconds. "Eat."

Shane gave his brother a smart-assed grin, Travis rolled his eyes, and so, they were on good terms, again. Shane plopped a curled-up cowboy hat on his head. June, a piece of cake forgotten in her hand, gazed at him like sugar on chocolate. "You look like Brad Pitt in that hat," she blurted.

He grinned proudly. Then, god help him, he scuffed a hand over her hair, as if she were a pet pony. "Thanks, Junebug. But Pitt's just a pretty boy. James Dean, now that's the guy to be. A real actor."

Muttering, June slunk to the back of the crowd, her ruffled hair sticking up like brown feathers on a girl turkey. April turned to Dooly Bug in alarm. "Mama. Please let me move into Ember's old room now. June's gonna have real bad PMS for the rest of the month. I can just tell."

"You'll live. Just ignore her." Dooly Bug thumped Shane on the brim of his hat. "Shane McCabe, I got a word of advice for you. Don't pat June on the head again. And don't call her ‘Junebug' anymore. Otherwise, some day we may find you floating in the lake with her fingerprints on your throat and a picture of Brad Pitt nailed to your forehead."

Shane shoveled cake into his mouth. "Huh?"

I prodded him on the shoulder. "Don't ask why. Just do what Dooly Bug says."

"I was only trying to educate the kid about James Dean."

"Let June call you Brad Pitt, and pretend you like it."

"Okay. Whatever."

I dived into a piece of cake, wishing Polly DeWalt had never put strange movie trivia into Shane's head whilst babysitting him over the years. She was the one who gave him the cowboy hat for his eighteenth birthday, and that's when she nicknamed him James Dean, too. Which, to Shane, was way better than "Squirt."

"Com'ere, James Dean," she called that day, when we were at the inn for his birthday lunch. She stood by a buffet full of casseroles. "Taste this potato soufflé and tell me if it needs more cinnamon."

"I'd be honored, Liz," he answered, having nicknamed her Elizabeth Taylor, which is a dead-on comparison in terms of Polly's personality. Put Polly in a Cleopatra outfit, and she could rule Rome.

Being trivia-handicapped, that day I made the mistake of asking, "James Dean, is that the ol' boy who sells sausage?"

To which Polly hooted and Shane got red-faced. Because James Dean is a famous  dead actor who wore  a cowboy hat in some movie with Liz Taylor set in Texas, but Jimmy Dean had a hit country song called Big Bad John, and sells sausage. Polly knew those things. I didn't.

She was a film and TV buff, maybe because her older sis, Della, died out in Hollywood thirty-something years ago. Polly has been obsessed with show business stuff ever since. She'd gotten Shane hooked, too.

"Pa, you gotta get out more," Shane huffed. "I'm gonna take you to the James Dean retrospective at the next Asheville film festival." 

"Do they ever have a John Wayne retrospective at that festival?"

"No. It's an art film festival."

"McClintock. The Quiet Man. Donovan's Reef. True Grit. Boy, those movies have everything you could want: Great fist fights, great jokes, Maureen O'Hara with her red hair and her big . . .well, I like Maureen O'Hara, let's just leave it at that . . . and the ol' Duke yellin', ‘Fill your hand, you sonuvabitch,' at the bad guys. That's not art?" 

"Not like James Dean in Giant. And Rebel Without a Cause. And East of Eden."

"Forget it, then. Go ahead and be James Dean instead of the Duke. But don't expect me to like it."

"Hey, I'm finding myself, deciding who I am, Pa. That's what you said I oughta do after highschool."

I shut up at that point. Talking sense to Shane was like wrestling with an oiled trout. 

Shane had spent this past year, post high-school, trying to "find himself" by working with me at the farm and store. I was beginning to fear  he'd never track himself down. I was even more afraid some girl would find him before he figured out where he was. 

I loved my sons, I wouldn't change even one minute of the past if it meant giving them up, but I didn't want either one of them to marry young to young wives who had so many problems they couldn't begin to fix them. I didn't want my boys to pick women who were broken from the start, and would break their hearts, too. Like their mother. And like Della Harrigan, Polly's sister. There'd been something painful between her and Mike, long before Dooly Bug came along. Nobody talked about it, not even Polly.

"Hoss, you look mighty serious over that carrot cake," Mike said gently, peering at me. He was six-five, I was six-three. He could peer down.

"Extra carrot," I said. "Needs extra serious chewing."

"I love you, Boy."

Damn. Mike had no shame. He was the kind of man who stood up in the choir of Moon Lake Methodist and sang baritone off-key with pure joy and not one shred of shyness. My daddy had been tight as a coiled snake, not mean, just pulled-in. I was headed the same way, myself, as a teenager, until Mike taught me to reach out. But I wish he wouldn't reach out in front of other people. Because then they all got in the spirit.

April: "Love you, Bubba."

Dooly Bug: "Love you, sweetie pie."

June: "Love ya, Shane . . . I mean, love ya, Bubba."

The other folks in the crowd – friends, people who owned stores over in town, farmers from the mountains around the lake, chimed in. I was awash in a lake of love.

"Love you, Pa," Travis said.

"Love ya, Pa," Shane finished.

Chew, chew, smile, squint, don't get teary.

"Speech!" Mike called, thank God. "Now that you're an elder statesman around here, say something wise, Hoss."

I squinted some more and hemmed and hawed, looking past the crowd at the slate-blue lake and the green-blue mountains as if I had to check the color of the wind for my fishing report. Moon Lake was the prettiest place on the face of the earth, a bowl of pure water held in the mountains' hands like a secret drink. Any direction you looked, there were close, blue-green mountains, covered in big hemlocks and rhododendrons and ferns that grew right down to the water's edge. Pretty lake houses and docks peeked from the woods, with more hidden around curves that took off into little coves.

There were only about 350 full-time residents in the town and surrounding mountains, but ten times that many hikers, bikers, shoppers, and fishermen, came through the neighborhood most days of the year. The town faced the lake along a shallow beach where people could swim. You could walk right out of the Moon Lake Grocery or the hardware store or the touristy boutique shops, cross a tiny street where cats and dogs could still took safe naps on the center line, set your bags on a park bench, and wade into the lake.

This was paradise. And I had the friends, and the family, to prove it.

"I appreciate all of y'all so much," I croaked. "And I'm just so glad --" I had to stop and clear the knot in my throat--"I'm just so glad there are no baby llamas in my toilet."

Everybody got real quiet. Real quiet, while they chewed their smiles. I got real quiet, too. I even put my cake down. "Am I in on this joke?"

Mike bit his lower lip, rocked on the heels of his boots, put his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and refused to look at me. April hid her face. Dooly Bug pretended to watch a hawk fly over. June stopped mumbling about Brad Pitt. Oh, yeah, there were llamas.

"Travis," I said between gritted teeth. "Shane."

 "We thought you'd like them," Travis said. "Honestly, Pa, you love baby animals. You're just like Mike. You love being a daddy. Everybody knows that."

"Yeah, Pa," Shane echoed. "And with me and Travis grown, you know, and if I decide to go off to college or something--"

"Or something?"

"College, yeah, if I go to college next fall, you'll, uh, you'll need some new kids to raise."

"No, I won't. I don't want more human kids, much less the kind that need their ears combed. This is a joke, right?"

Silence.

I spun around and headed for the toilet. I opened the door with a swoosh that set the weathered "No Fishing From This Outhouse" sign swinging.

I looked down. There, standing in mounds of hay, looking up at me with huge dark eyes, their little lips stained with philodendron leaves and jute fibers from my chewed-up macramé hanger, stood two baby llamas.

One was white with brown splotches, and one was brown with white splotches. Wearing a pink halter and a blue halter, respectively.

"The one with the pink halter's a girl," Mike said behind me, his voice strangled with laughter. "And the one with the blue is--"

"He better be a midget in disguise. With his midget wife."

Everyone crowded up beside me. "Pa, look at those sweet little faces," Travis said.

"They spit," I retorted. "Those cute little faces can spit a llama loogey ten feet, I've read."

I squatted down to look them in their big, brown eyes. They had cute, shaggy ears, curved inward like arches.. Or devil horns. Shane pounded my shoulder. "Pa, they're smart, they're funny, and you can knit with their wool. You can even teach them to pull you in a cart."

"Well, in forty years I haven't had a craving for a llama sweater or a ride in a llama buggy, but I'll let you know if I do." Mike let out a huge, dramatic sigh. "All right, this was a bad idea. I'll tell you what. I'll take ‘em off your hands. Maybe I can sell ‘em to ol' man Porchers. He'll turn them in with his beef cattle. Probably slaughter ‘em in a year or so. Llamas make good eatin', don't they?"

"I don't think you can eat llamas," I said grimly. "They look like stretched sheep.  I don't see where you could get so much as a decent llama burger out of them." 

Dooly Bug put in slyly,  "Doesn't matter. Ol' man Porchers'll eat anything."

Shane put in, "Yeah, I heard he grilled a skunk. Stink and all."

April yelped, pushed past me, knelt by the llamas, and hugged the little girl. April's save-the-world bracelets quivered. "Don't let ol' man Porchers eat them! Save the llamas, Bubba!"

I caved.

"Okay, okay, the llamas can stay."

Everyone applauded.

The theme from one of Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns played on Shane's cell phone. That whistling, gun-fighter song. Like the phone was primed for a duel. Shane popped the phone open and stuck it to his ear. "Yeah? Hey. What? Oh, man! Man! No, I hadn't heard! I'll get on-line and check it . . . oh, man. You're kidding me. Man. No. With a dolphin? Oh, man.  Bye."

He snapped the phone shut. He looked a little rattled. "That was a guy I know  over in Asheville, who helps run the film festival. He says Max Vandeveer died last night."

"Who?" I said.

"Captain Hero!"

"Who?" Mike said.

We sounded like a pair of owls.

Shane waved a hand. "Comeon, don't y'all remember Captain Hero? The super-cop with the bionic feet?"

Travis said solemnly, "I thought that was Captain Podiatrist."

"Don't make fun! Captain Hero was cool, man! He could jump out of skyscrapers from twenty stories up. He could kick holes in steel. He could walk through molten lead!"

"Bet he needed a pedicure," Travis said.

"Shut up, Travis! Show some respect."

I stood up. First I turned forty, then I got baby llamas, and now my youngest son was mumbling about some guy with weird feet. "Pipe down, both of you. Now, once and for all, Shane, who is Captain Hero and who is Max Vandeveer?"

"A TV character and the guy who played him! And before that, Max was Sergeant Vegas. ‘The coolest rookie cop on the hot Vegas strip.'"

Mike glowered. "Oh. Now we know. Some stupid actor."

"Just the slickest action hero in re-runs on Nick At Night! I gotta go tell Polly. She's a big fan of Max Vandeveer. She has scrapbooks about all his shows."

"I didn't know that," Mike said grimly. "I thought she had better sense."

"She doesn't talk about him much, except to other fans."

Mike looked darker by the second. "Hollywood junk."

I shooed Shane. "Go. See Polly. Tell her I said thanks for the carrot-cake bass."

Shane started away.

"Hey," Travis called. "How'd Captain Bigfoot die?"

"I can't talk about it in front of little girls!"

"I'm not little," June muttered.  

He hopped in my Jeep and took off.

I turned back to the llamas. Squatted down, again, and stared at them. Tried to do some kind of silent, llama-whisperer conversation. Stick with me, kids. I may not be exciting, but I'm dependable. Forty years old, and real dependable. Dammit.

Out loud, I said, "I'm gonna name the girl llama Polly, because that's who gave me the philodendron she just ate. And I'm gonna name the boy . . .  Max. Yeah. After this actor Shane's talking about, whoever he is." I peered closer into the boy llamas' eyes. "Cause you look like a bad actor, to me."

Polly the llama nuzzled me. I had a way with women. But Max curled his fuzzy llama lips back in a little llama grin.

And spit on my shirt.

I hate fortieth birthdays.

Polly

3

"And if you're not careful," I yelled across the lake, "next time it'll be your testicles I cut off!"

That threat didn't make Simon Levy, my across-the-cove neighbor of six months, too happy. Standing on his dock, he continued to hold up his big, fat ex-tomcat, Tolkien. "You spirited Tolkien away to Asheville," he yelled, "where some unsuspecting vet didn't know he wasn't your cat, and you, you mutilated him, you . . . you feminist!"

Standing on my dock, with my professionally done hair and make-up starting to wilt and my brand-new linen suit going limp at the creases,  I was in no mood for this argument. "I warned you that we have a leash law for cats in this town! I told you  we've got enough work to do keeping our native curly-ears cared for, much less lettin' new cats run wild around here! Well, it's three strikes and you're out! Mr. I'll Let My City-fied Tomcat Move To The Lake And Do As He Pleases Levy!"

"Three strikes?" Simon Levy bellowed. "This was more like a penalty on two balls!"

He set Tolkien down. Far as I could tell, the big, gray-and-white cat was none the worse for wear. All he had was a little pink scar under his tail, with a few hidden stitches in it.  Tolkien galloped inside Simon's big wood and stone cottage. "See?" I called. "He's a good pound lighter and happy as a clam." 

Simon Levy looked as if he might explode. He stomped around his cedar dock, one hand on his hips, raking the other exasperated hand through hair the brindle gray of a possum's snout. He wore clingy jogging shorts and a snug, sweaty t-shirt with a St. Andrews, Scotland golf logo on it. For a ticked-off middle-aged college professor with a neutered cat, he looked sexier than I wanted to admit. Finally he stopped stomping and shook a fist at me. "I'm not paying the vet bill!"

"Oh, yes, you are! Or I'll have the fee added to your property tax!"

"You can't charge me a neutering fee for living here!"

"Oh? I'm the mayor! Watch me!" 

"Polly DeWalt and her despotic stronghold on the lake!"

"That's Mayor DeWalt to you,  Simon Levy, you hog-headed know-nothing!"

"That's Doctor Simon Levy, to you, you small-town Martha Stewart wannabe!"

"Having a PhD in math mumbo jumbo doesn't make you a doctor."

"And having a big mouth doesn't make you a mayor."

As my ol' grandmama, Darlene Groover Harrigan – a direct descendent of the buck-wild Groover sisters who founded Moon Lake – used to say: Polly looks like a sweet little hen, but don't ruffle her feathers, Lord help.

Well, the Lord wasn't around to help me with my temper at that particular moment, so I grabbed a half-ripe Better Boy tomato from the basket I'd just picked in my greenhouse.  I drew back an arm and launched that softball-sized tomato across the lake water that separated Simon Levy's dock from mine. He had just enough time to yell and duck, but I'd accounted for evasive actions, so the tomato caught him square in the St. Andrew's logo. Splock. That was the sound it made. Red pulp flew everywhere.

Not bad for a fifty-year-old woman with a touch of arthritis in her softball arm. 

"There you go, hot head!" I called, whooping. "Now you got a side of tomato puree for all that crow you're gonna eat!"

He slapped tomato off his chest and shook his fist at me, again. "If your cousin wasn't the police chief, I'd file charges."

"Go ahead. He's arrested me before. I cook for him when I'm in jail."

"This isn't over."

"It was over before it started, you long-nosed, weasel-faced troublemaker."

"Is that an anti-Semitic slur?"

Everybody thinks Southerners are backward and bigots. Makes me madder n' dog piss on a rose bush to have some remark twisted by some ignorant outsider. I grabbed another tomato. "No, it was a slur against weasels, you okra-earred knuckleskull!"

I drew back my arm again. He whipped around, jerked his jogging shorts down, and bared his butt at me. "See if you can hit something you obviously haven't seen in a long time – a man's naked ass!"

It was a nice butt, lean and not flabby. With tan lines that said Speedo, not swim trunks. I was caught off guard, and hesitated.

"Polly Harrigan DeWalt, have you lost your mind?" a female voice yelped from behind me.

I whipped around. There, above me, on the back veranda of the Moon Lake Inn, stood my disgusted business partner, BeBe Monroe, and next to her stood a gape-jawed man clutching a soft-sided briefcase with a Food Channel logo. He grabbed a cell phone from a man-purse on his belt, clamped it to his ear, then disappeared inside the inn at a trot.

"Eat dirt and shit bricks," I moaned. I could see his report now. While Polly DeWalt's flair as a cook and hostess remains of great interest to our producers, her personality continues to make her a high-risk investment. In other words, I still wasn't safe for public consumption.

There went another Food Channel audition, down the drain.

And it was all Simon Levy's fault.

He knew it, too. He laughed so hard he barely got his shorts up before he sauntered inside his house. He flicked a sliding glass door shut behind him.

Eat dirt and shit bricks.

Eat dirt and shit bricks.

Next time, it's your balls, Simon Levy, not the cat's.

I grabbed my tomato basket, tried to arrange a pleasant, non-scary expression on my face, and headed for the stone path up to the inn. Maybe I could convince the Food Channel scout that my neighbor and me were just acting out a little play for him. Just a joke. Us Appalachian mountain folk are quaint that way.

Eat dirt and shit bricks.

"Polly!"

Shane McCabe came trotting down the hill, dodging azaleas that had just finished blooming, sidestepping rows of hydrangeas filling with buds, skirting Adirondack chairs gleaming with their new spring coat of white paint, leaping over sleepy flower beds poking green shoots up from the spring compost, and ducking beneath bird feeders dotted with yellow and purple finches still brownish from the winter molt. I had no kids of my own, but I had helped raise most of the kids in Moon Lake, with Shane and his brother, Travis, near the head of the list. Shane was a dose of spring tonic, a big, lanky puppy – cute as could be, but all gallop and no stop.

He slid to a halt in front of me, snatched his cowboy hat off, and looked at me with big, sorrowful blue eyes.  "Have you heard about Max Vandeveer?"

My knees went a little weak. "No. What?"

"He's dead!"

I sat my tomato basket on the dock's wicker patio table. Then I casually leaned on the table and crossed one leg over the other. If Shane had looked down, he'd have seen the legs of my designer pants quivering. Shane grabbed me by one elbow. "Hey, you don't look so good. Wanta sit?"

"No, I'm fine." What a lie.

"I know you're a big fan of his, but gosh, Polly, I didn't know the news'd upset you like this!"

A big fan of Max Vandeveer's? Lord, no. But I'd spent over thirty years trying to find out all I could about him, worrying about his many marriages after Della died, wondering what kind of man he was. I knew the tabloids hinted he was some kind of playboy. But I told myself Della had loved him and believed in him and he was rich and famous and glamorous and everything Della had wanted.  

And I told myself I'd made a promise to Della.

And I told myself. And I told myself.

"Polly?" Shane was bending over me, looking a little scared. I didn't realize it, but I'd sat down in a wicker chair. Sort of flopped. Knocked over the tomato basket.

"I'm fine." A southern woman's answer to any drama. All show and bullshit. A tactic we use to stall people while we get our knees back.

The Yankees are coming.

I'm fine. I'll just hide the silverware and the pigs.

Your mother-in-law just found a cooked mouse inside your Thanksgiving turkey.

I'm fine. I'll tell everybody I got the idea from Julia Child.   

Your husband ran away with a hairlipped stripper from Chattanooga.

I'm fine. I'll cancel his credit cards and slap his mama.

Yes, I was fine. I had just collapsed for a minute, feeling the grip of more than thirty years' misery, indecision, and guilt clamp around me like a coffin. Della's coffin.

"I'm gonna run up and get you some iced tea," Shane said. "And don't even ask me how Max Vandeveer died. I don't think you can take the details right now."

Oh, lord. "Hon, screw the iced tea. Get me a triple Jack Daniels. No, wait. Bring the whole bottle."

"You got it!"

Looking even more worried, he headed up the path at a run.

I pivoted in the chair, took a deep breath, and looked out over the lake to calm myself. I didn't want to bust out crying and have people get all worried and start asking questions I didn't want to answer. Lord knows, if I told everyone the truth, my whole dock would fill up with shocked, weak-kneed people, gasping for air, telling each other they were just fine, but cussing me.

Mike O'Ryan would be first among them. 

Ash and Tiff
Homecoming

5

"This is a reconnaissance mission," I reminded Tiff. "We'll just slip into Moon Lake quietly,  survey the situation, identify the targets, and get out. That's all we're doing."

Tiff rolled her eyes at me over a handful of tourist brochures, as I drove. "I wish you hadn't ghosted that book for the retired general. Sometimes you sound like a PR girl for Rambo."

"Don't go soft on me now, soldier. We agreed, Tiff. No confessions. We're not giving our real names, we're not telling these people anything about us, we're not asking them for anything. We're just going in as observers. For all we know, our genetic donor wants nothing to do with us. Let's not give him a chance to prove it."

"Ash, please. Please don't call him that. He's our father."

I snorted, concentrating on the newest tight curve of a rollercoaster road that followed the side of a mountain like a hose wrapped around a rock. To my right: mountain. To my left: air. "Genetic donor," I muttered.

We'd flown into Atlanta that morning. Five hours later, here we were in a rented car on a backroads two-lane somewhere in the wilderness of western North Carolina. At any moment I expected to be eaten by bears or kidnapped by men wearing overalls with no shirts. We passed another hand-lettered sign that said, Boiled P-nuts, Apple Jelly, Quilts Ahead. It was at least the tenth road-side stand we'd seen since crossing the line from Georgia. "Look, it's a franchise," I insisted. "McRedneck."

Tiff ignored that. She was still fixated on fatherhood. "Mike O'Ryan's not just our ‘father.' Not around here. And he's not Dad, or Pop, or Pappy, or ‘The Old Man.' He's our ‘daddy.' Big Daddy. Like Burl Ives in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof."

"Burl Ives played a manipulative old bastard in that movie."

"He was just fervent about protecting his family name."

"Well, we're in luck. Mike O'Ryan won't have to do a damned thing to defend our family name, because it's already in the gutter."

"Our real name's not in the gutter. O'Ryan."

"Look, Tammy Wynette, my name is Ashley Vandeveer, and that's what it will continue to be."

"'Cause you're so proud of being known as Max Vandeveer's child. Right."

"Because it's who I am. I learned to deal with it a long time ago. I'm not interested in adjusting to a new identity – especially one that is probably even less appealing than the old one."

"Loretta."

"Don't start."

"Loretta Lynn." Tiff began singing. "I'm prooooud to be a coooooal miner's daughter--"

"I'm getting out my taser."

She chortled and went back to studying the tourist brochures and print-outs from her Internet research. "Moon Lake," she recited, "is just over three hundred acres in size and has approximately ten miles of pristine shoreline, including many intimate coves, creek inlets, and small, wooded islands suitable for camping. It is considered one of the purest, most beautiful, man-made lakes in the Appalachian mountains. It was created in 1932. It is located in the heart of Groover Gorge, and is fed by numerous watersheds from the surrounding mountains, including the Little Trick'em,  a whitewater creek spilling exuberantly from headwaters on Trick'em Mountain. In a 1998 article, National Geographic called  Moon Lake, ‘a diamond hidden in the palm of a mountain god.'"

I grunted. "Hyperbole, thy name is National Geographic."

"No, really. Moon Lake is spectacular. Look at these." She waved a brochure of cinematic, lake-and-mountain pictures.

"Digitally enhanced."

"The forest goes right down to the lake's edge."

"These people never heard of lawns."

"Those gorgeous mountain scenes in Last of the Mohicans were filmed not far from here. Yum. Daniel Day Lewis in buckskins."

"And today, his toothless descendents sell boiled peanuts to tourists."

"Oh, my God!"

Her shriek nearly sent us into a ditch. Rounding another tight curve, I maneuvered quickly to avoid a granite outcropping. "Don't yell like that. What's wrong?"

Tiff looked up excitedly from her brochure. "Groover Gorge. It's named after relatives of ours!"

"The Gorge family, I assume."

"Ash, be serious." She read, "The town of Moon Lake was established in the gorge in 1867 by three colorful sisters: Iva, Bertrine, and Elda Groover. Their attempt at creating their own private kingdom was foiled when the state governor sent troops to break up the sisters' personal militia."

"If only they'd had tasers."

"‘Today, Polly Harrigan DeWalt, a direct descendent of the Groover's, rules the town benignly as both its mayor and owner of the famed Moon Lake Inn, where her mountain cuisine has made the tiny village on the lake a favorite destination for visitors from all over the region, the country, and the world.'"

"If you can't rule with your own militia, do it with your gravy."

"Ash." Tiff's voice cracked with emotion. "Polly DeWalt is Mother's baby sister.  Polly DeWalt is our aunt. It's as if . . . as if part of Mother is still alive, and now we can talk to her."

I couldn't think of a smart-ass comment for that. All jokes aside, I was a nervous wreck. I dreaded every mile that brought us closer to the place where a stranger named Mike O' Ryan had introduced his sperm to a pair of eggs owned by our mother. Yeah, and this Polly, this aunt, what was her excuse? Her own sister didn't confide in her? She didn't know she had two nieces in California? She knew but didn't care?

Stick it up your gorge, Polly DeWalt. I haven't even met you yet, and I'm already disgusted with you. 

"Look!" Tiff yelled. "Stop!"

"Dammit!" I swung the car across the on-coming lane and slid to a halt on a narrow pull-off rimmed with a knee-high stone wall. That measly wall was the only thing  between us and blue sky. A metal DOT sign said, WELCOME -- SCENIC VIEWING AREA. It should have said, PLUNGE TO YOUR DEATH RIGHT HERE.

"Tiff, if you screech at me one more time--"

She was already out of the car, a look of awe on her face, her shoulder-length blonde hair practically electrified with the wind of our heritage. I trudged after her to the wall.

And looked out over paradise.

Okay, I admit it. My heart skipped a beat, my breath caught. My stomach got a funny little knot in it. Tears roamed around behind my eyes.

"I hate this place already," I said in a small voice.

Beside me, Tiff went into full-fledged sob mode. In between loud, racking, boo-hoo's, she pointed to a silver-gray lake at the base of huge, forested mountains. The intricate shape of the lake, with all its coves and inlets, was a Rorschach test. Pretty, abstract snowflake? Or thoughtless splatter of sperm? Soft cloud shadows shifted over the scene, and sunlight glistened off the water. Diamond? Or glorified drain hole? If I squinted I could just make out a tiny town on one of the coves, with snippets of little roads and a few rooftops scattered among the forest. Lovable Mayberry? Or cold-blooded dungeon of hypocrisy?

Tiff put one hand to her heart. The other remained in satellite-tracking position, her fake, French-tipped nails trained on Moon Lake. "H-home," she sobbed. "H-home."

Parker and Ash

6

It was the first Saturday in May. In Moon Lake, that always meant one thing: The Curly Earred Cat Festival. My favorite shindig of the year.

Ask most men if they like kitty cats, and most men will lie. Or, at best, they'll say, ‘Yeah, but I was a dog man 'til I met my wife and her Persians.' Like they converted just to keep from having a mixed marriage. Me, though, I admitted it right up front: Parker McCabe is a cat lover.  

"Parker, see if you can calm that little brownish tabby down," Polly said to me. "He's a tough one. No one's going to adopt him if he looks that wild." 

"I got bad news for you. The little booger is that wild." I squatted by a cage under a table at the Della Harrigan Memorial Humane Society tent. We were surrounded by cages of yowling cats, but this little feller was the worst.

Polly and I had run the society for years, pretty much single-handedly trapping wild Curly Ears and their kittens, hauling them to the local vet for shots and the ol' private-parts snip-a-roo, taming them, then putting them up for adoption. Curly Ears were considered exotic, meaning they were in demand by people who wanted even their pets to be collectibles, so we didn't have much trouble finding homes for most of them. But we were always left with the hardcore cases nobody wanted. That's why we started The Curly Earred Cat Festival. To match "special" cats with "special" owners.

In other words, to pawn the Furry Unwanted off on the Hairless Unsuspecting.

"Hey, little pal," I said to the brown tabby. He backed into a corner and hissed at me. He wasn't even a year old but he already had fight notches in both curly ears and a  bald spot from a fight wound over one eye. I spoke gently to him. "Let me give you some advice, son. Look friendly, twitch your whiskers, and somebody nice'll take you home. That's always worked for me." I put a fingertip against the cage. He lunged and took a big swipe. I drew back a bloody stump. At least, that's how the scratch felt. 

"Polly," I said over one shoulder, "Get the tranquilizer drops. It's time to spike the Friskies."

She ignored me. She was busy filling out paperwork for a couple of men – that is, a male couple wearing matching, pumpkin-orange golf caps – who were adopting a three-legged, one-eyed calico. Polly was good at convincing people to take the outcasts of the Curly Ear world. "The orange spots on this sweet little cat match your caps," she told the guys. "She's meant for you boys."

They nodded fervently. "She's utterly adorable," one said, hugging the purring cat to his chest.

"We'll name her Madonna," the other said. "Because she's so unaware of her handicaps."

They wandered off happily, and Polly began hawking the next messed-up cat to the people in line.

Sucking my bloody fingertip, I stood and looked around. 

There must have been five-thousand visitors in town that day. We had Curly Earred Cat Festival banners everywhere, arts-and-craft tents lined the street in front of downtown, bluegrass music was fiddling and twanging to a fair-thee-well, courtesy of Cat Scratch Hopkins and his Cat Scratch Boys at the gazebo by the lake, and wonderful smells rose from the concession stands.

There's nothing better than an outdoor-grilled festival burger followed by an outdoor-grilled gyro, an outdoor hotdog, an outdoor funnel cake with powdered sugar topping, and, if anybody should ever take the challenge, an outdoor-grilled glass of water. You can eat anything grilled, outside in mountain air, with the aroma of woodsmoke as a dressing, and it's heaven.  It was a perfect day.    

Shane came loping through the crowd. Travis was back at school. Shane was up to good-natured nothing, as usual. Unless you consider pretending to be Alfred Hitchcock a hobby. "No, no, Polly, don't look at the camera," he ordered, a little digital video cam welded to one eyeball. "Look normal."

"I haven't been normal for years," she shot back. Usually she was happy to be one of Shane's subjects – he'd helped her practice for her Food Channel auditions, and filmed the piece that got the Food Channel scouts out to see her in person – but she was in a mood right now. She'd been touchy for the past three days, ever since hearing about that actor. Max What's-His-Name. Or, as Travis had taken to calling him, just to yank Shane's chain: Flipper's Love Puppet.

"Go film somebody else," she ordered Shane. "Before I sic one of these unhappy cats on you."

"Awright, awright, I get the message." He wandered back through the crowd, chatting with people, especially cute girls and their mamas, charming the sunshine out of the sky, as usual. Shane filmed people all the time, and made movies starring his pals and girlfriends – not dirty movies, thank God, just bad ones – and he entered his short masterpieces in film festivals, where they got about as much attention as warts on a frog. 

I waved at Mike, Dooly Bug, April, and June, and they waved back. They staffed the barbecue tent for Moon Lake Methodist. The older O'Ryan daughters –Jan, Ember, and July -- refused to come to the festival, anymore. They already owned their share of nutty, wild, or parts-challenged Curly Ears.

"Good morning, Cat Man!" Mike called, waving a spatula at me. Dooly Bug grinned at me as she doled out pork sandwiches. She and Mike were just naturally happy people. Little April looked content enough in her What Would Jesus Barbecue? apron, but June was misery with eyeballs. She watched Shane even while scooping hot Brunswick Stew into plastic bowls.

The girl was so lovesick she'd risk stew blisters.

I sighed and turned back toward Polly. "Tell you what, I'll take little brown ‘Catzilla' up to my farm for the summer. Introduce him to the llamas. They'll spit on him, and he'll come back here in the fall with a new appreciation for . . . "

My voice trailed off. Polly hadn't heard a word I'd said. She was peering intently into the crowd. She shoved her Della Harrigan Memorial Humane Society baseball cap back on her hair, which was turning a lighter shade of red every year. I'd had a crush on Polly as a kid, and sometimes, when her hair caught the sun like a copper wire, I still got a little of the feeling. It was a warm, friendly thing, now. My red-head fixation. Her and Maureen O' Hara and every red-headed Irish girl in Riverdance and . . .you get the drift.

She pulled her sunglasses off and jabbed them in the breast pocket of her denim shirt, knocking her, ‘Hi, I'm Mayor Polly DeWalt, Ask Me About Della's Curly Earred Cats' badge off center.  She frowned, squinted, and peered some more. If lasers had green eyes, they'd look like Polly.

Either she thought she'd spotted an old friend, or she was seeing ghosts. I followed her line of sight. A redhead looked back at me.

What a redhead. Hair down to there. Hair everywhere. Her hair was held back by some kind of black comb. But still, big, fluffy waves of it spilled over her shoulders and down her breasts and down her back and everywhere. She was a long-haired mermaid with legs. Long legs. Not skinny legs, but I've never been taken by skinny legs, anyway.

The redhead was a stand-out in black. Black jeans, black sweater, black sunglasses, black leather purse, black boots. Either she was in mourning or she learned her style at the Johnny Cash School of Fashion. The only things not black were her red lips, her perfect, untanned skin, and that pile of coppery hair that hung to her thighs.

The queen of redheads.

My heart.  Be still. The redhead of my dreams.

A bronzed blonde stood beside her, all in delicate blue. Blue jeans, blue tank top, blue sunglasses. Together they looked like a bruise. I should have recognized the warning.   

"That somebody you know?" I asked Polly.

"I don't know. I don't know. I don't . . . maybe I'm losing my mind. I don't know. Here they come. Who are they? Look at them. They look so . . .  familiar."

"You come from a family of redheads. You see a redhead, you naturally want to start a club."

"Sssh."

I shut up, trying to look casual beside Polly, while my heart pounded a good ol' boy rap song. Baby got red hair, baby got back, baby got a rack.

The redhead and the blonde looked from Polly to the Humane Society banner and back again. Red took a tight grip on Blondie's right elbow. Red looked stiff with determination, like she was about to walk on hot coals.  Blondie looked as if she might melt from the heat.

Suddenly Blondie smiled and lunged forward. "Hello, there!"

"Hello," Polly said.

Red frowned. Blondie had escaped from her elbow hold.

Blondie put both hands to her heart and gazed from the cages full of cats to Polly, back and forth. "Hello!"

"Hello," Polly repeated. She seemed wired, an invisible cord going from her to the strangers. "Do I know you?"

"Oh!" Blondie gaped at her. "Oh!"

Red swept in like a special ops commando. She snagged a new leash-hold on Blondie's elbow, and gave her a nudge. "Cats. We want to know about your cats. I assume these cats are . . . mutants?"

Polly blinked as if trying to wake up. "They're . . . special. They need . . . special love. I . . . have a little male cat here, who needs someone very, very special. He's such a sad case we may have to give up on him and put him to sleep."

"Oh, no, no!" the blonde said. Red scowled harder, like she could smell a scam a mile away. Smart girl. Truth was, we hadn't ever put a cat to sleep. Polly was shameless when it came to pricking people's consciences. She did or said whatever it took to find good homes for the cats.

"Tell me about Della Harrigan and her Memorial Humane Society," Blondie said. Her lower lip quivered. Put "Memorial" in a name, and you get sentimental questions. But not shaky lips, usually.  

"Della was my sister," Polly said slowly. She kept staring from the blonde to the redhead. "She loved cats. And every Curly Ear in this town loved her back."

Blondie put a hand to her trembling mouth. "Then these cats are descendents of cats she loved?"

"That's right," Polly said. "When you adopt one of these cats, Della knows. I'm convinced she watches over them."

"Oh!" Blondie swiped a finger under her sunglasses. Now she was openly crying. A stranger was crying over Della's cats.

Red gave Blondie's arm a jerk. "My . . . friend . . . is a cat lover," Red said tightly. "Cat stories always make her teary. So. Tell me. Mayor. You and your sister must have been close?" Red's lip didn't quiver. It was a full, dark-red lower lip, like she'd been chewing it all morning until it was almost raw, but it was rock hard. You could use that lip as a barricade at the Daytona 500. A man's front bumper would just leave scuff marks on that lip.

I was fixated on her lips. Yeah.  

"Very close," Polly said. She leaned forward, studying the pair fervently, trying to see past their sunglasses. "Where are you girls from?"

Blondie looked at Red, as if the answer needed a discussion. Red didn't hesitate.  "Minnesota."

"Butte, Minnesota," Blondie chimed, nodding at Polly. "And let me tell you --"

Red winced. "That's enough --"

"It's so pretty there," Blondie went on. "We have the Rocky Mountains, and lots of nice Lutherans, and cowboys, and cheese – or maybe it's Wisconsin that has cheese--"

"They get the picture," Red growled.

I was determined to stake a claim on this conversation. Seemed like a good opening. "I've done some fly fishing near Butte," I said, smiling at Red. "Montana, that is. I didn't know there was a Butte in Minnesota." I also hadn't heard that the Rocky Mountains had picked up and moved east, either. But I was being polite.

Red turned her death-ray sunglasses toward me. Two pink dots colored her cheeks.  "It's near Lake Minnetonka."

"I've fished for pike at Lake Minnetonka. But I didn't know there was a town named Butte close by."

God, I was just trying to talk her. I was so dense. The pink dots on her cheeks turned into red warning flares. She leaned toward me, pulled her sunglasses down just long enough to knock me over with her green eyes, and said softly, "Why don't you go fishing right now?"   

I just stared at her. Just staring like an idiot. Lost in those eyes.

She kept looking at me, too. Like I was an idiot. "Tell me," she said slowly, "Did they not teach you any social skills, at the institution?"

Cold. That was cold. All right, so she wasn't from around here, she had one of those somewhere-else accents, so she didn't understand that when your average good ol' boy meets an incredible looking woman, he switches to stealth tactics. When you're suffering an attack of shyness combined with a major hard-on, your talking mechanism operates on a need-to-know basis.

I scraped my pride up off the ground. "Sorry, I guess you get this kind of dumb-founded attention a lot. I was hypnotized by your hair." She turned redder. I'd flattered her and used a couple of big words. She hadn't expected that. My demonstration of extra syllables seemed to leave her speechless. I lobbed a manly put-down her way. "I sure didn't mean to complicate your image of me as a backwoods idjit." 

She shoved her glasses up. "Oh, you didn't."

"Parker, quit joking around!" Polly scolded. She reached over the table and grabbed Blondie's tear-stained hand. "Comeon, hon, squat down and have a look at this brown tabby. He's very open-hearted and sensitive. You're a perfect match for him."

"Oh, I'm sure!"

Red tried to keep a hold onto her elbow, but Blondie hunkered down and began cooing to Catzilla. Polly squatted on the other side of the table, looking at Blondie and Catzilla through the cage.

Catzilla didn't know which way to hiss first.

Red seemed to be having the same dilemma. Her mouth open in dismay, she looked at Blondie, then she looked at Polly. They were already deep in chitchat over Catzilla's hard life and good prospects. Desperate for somebody to skewer, Red turned and looked at me. "We don't need a cat." 

I crossed my arms over my chest. No mercy. "Everybody needs a cat."

"Who are you, the local cat pimp?"

I'd been called a lot of things, but never a cat pimp, before. "Yeah, you bet," I drawled. "Around here, I'm known as Cat Daddy. At night I put on a fur hat and drive around in my pimped-out cat-illac." 

"You've lived here all your life?"

"Yeah."

"Are you a Harrigan?"

"Nope."

"A Groover, perhaps?"

"Nope. Name's Parker McCabe. Nice to meet you. And your name is?"

"Are you related to the mayor and her sister in any way, shape, or form?"

"Nope."

"Then please mind your own business."

She turned her back and glared down at Polly and Blondie. I pulled the icicle out of my chest.

"You girls live together?" Polly asked Blondie. "You said you're ‘friends?' Not family, I mean."

"I wouldn't say we're ‘friends,'" Blondie said darkly. "Not unless we can agree on getting this cat."

Red ignored her. "Tell me more about your sister," Red said to Polly. "Has she been . . . gone . . . a long time?"

"Did Della have any children?" Blondie chirped. "Sons? Daughters? Daughters, I bet. Did she have any daughters? I bet she had two daughters."

Polly gaped at her. "What's your name? Who are you?"

Red bent down quickly and hooked a hand under Blondie's arm. "Let's go grab a possum burger or something, while we debate getting a kitty. We need to discuss our  agenda. Our agenda, remember? All right? All right?"

"No, I'm bonding with the mayor and one of Della Harrigan's curly eared cats, and I'm not going anywhere."

"Oh, yes, you are."

"Oh, no, I'm not. I'm going to give this sweet little tabby a hug." She popped open the cage door.

"Uh--" I  began.

"No!" Polly yelled.

Catzilla launched himself like a furry cannon ball. Boom. He zoomed out of the cage, through the crowd, and up a hill toward a back street lined with small houses, big fenced yards, and trouble.

"I'll catch him!" Blondie yelled, and took off. She was smaller and faster than Red, not to mention having less dignity. Red headed after her with long strides, muttering some words that singed the hairs I'd recently noticed growing inside my forty-year-old ears.

Polly leapt up and looked at me wildly. "We can't let those girls get away! Head them off! I've got to find out more about them!"

I put a thumb and forefinger to my lips, and whistled. On the fringe of the crowd, Shane lowered his camera and craned his head. He knew my whistle. In the open spaces of the mountains, you teach your kids to obey like sheepdogs.  

"Runaway cat," I called, pointing up the hill. "Headed for Ol' Man Porcher and his dachshunds! Little blonde trying to save the cat! Save the cat! Save the blonde! Sic 'em!"

Shane slung his camera strap over one shoulder and raced up the hill at a dead run. Ol' Man Porcher – cattle rancher, griller of any critter on four feet, the biggest carnivore in Moon Lake – ran the dog division of the humane society. Every spring he came down from the mountains like Moses suffering a visit to the pharoah.  Picture Moses with killer dachshunds. He brought his dachshund pack with him while he set up the dog-adoption booth, and he put them in the fenced back yard of his son's house. He hated cats. He hated people, too, but he just hadn't found a way to sic his dachshunds on them and not get caught. Yet.

So now Porcher's dachshunds lurked in his son's yard, ready to do a weiner-dog beat-down on any cat that hopped the chain link. If Catzilla got into that yard we'd have an even harder time getting him adopted, because most people don't want a cat with no head.

I did a running-back maneuver around the end of the table and went after Red.

I might not be able to out-talk her, but I could out-run her.

*

Tiff and I had been in Moon Lake a total of thirty minutes, but my game plan was already screwed. Now I was trying to run up a steep hill full of giant rhododendrons, wearing high-heeled black boots. Me, not the shrubs.

There was one bright spot: When I caught my sister, I'd have the satisfaction of gleefully skinning her alive. She'd make a lovely leather coat.

"Kitty!" Tiff called. "Come back, kitty!" She was about twenty feet ahead of me, and the cat was another twenty feet ahead of her. He was fast, for a little bastard. He headed straight for a shady backyard surrounded by a six-foot chain-link fence. In one leap he was at the top of the fence. With another leap he was in the yard.

Instantly, the Dachshunds of Doom appeared. They boiled out of a porch door, about a dozen of them, yapping and growling and heading straight for the kitty. He leapt for the nearest safety feature, which happened to be a spindly nandina shrub, only about four feet tall. Clinging to the frail, topmost branches, he swayed just above the vicious maws of, well, yes, a murderous pack of dachshunds.

"Kitty!" Tiff screamed. She grabbed the top of the fence. She was going over.

No, she was being tackled.

The guy came out of nowhere. He was just a flash of tawny hair, straw cowboy hat, tight t-shirt and tight jeans. Oh, and a flying video camera. He caught Tiff in a bear hug and they went down together in a cluster-hump of legs, arms, and shock.

All I knew was that some redneck had jumped my sister. Reacting with the primal instincts of a trained business writer, I snatched the taser from my purse, yelled, "Get away from her, you son of a bitch!" and put 10,000 volts of justice into his blue-jeaned ass.

I'll say this much for the decision: It saved the kitty. As a doggie attraction, a treed cat is no match for a twitching, groaning human. The dachshunds came over to  have a look at my victim. The kitty escaped over the fence.

Tiff scrambled to her knees beside the Human Lightbulb. She looked down at him in horror. His eyes were slits of discomfort, his face was a scrunched mask of pain. Tiff cried a little, then glared up at me. "You just tasered James Dean!"

"Oh, please."

"Ash, how are we ever going to make friends here if you taser people?"

"We're not here to make friends. He attacked you."

James Dean -- whoever he was -- managed to open his eyes. He gazed up at Tiff, took a deep breath, began to focus his baby blues, and even raised his head to look at her closer. "I was just . . . saving you . . . from the . . . dachshunds," he drawled. "I couldn't let . . . bad-ass dachshunds . . . hurt . . . an angel." He let his head sink back onto the ground. Exhausted by macho martyrdom.

Tiff cupped his face in her hands. "Rest easy, noble knight." Then, to me: "Ash! I'll stay here with him. You save the kitty!"

I shoved my taser back into my purse. Everything was going to hell, so I might as well continue my jog up a mountainside. I trotted across the front yard of the Dachshund House of Horrors and spotted the brown tabby slinking up a scenic pathway toward what appeared to be a rustic, aging, sagging, but perfectly walkable foot bridge over a thirty-foot-deep creek gully full of sharp boulders. The fact that some wit had hung a DANGER, DO NOT CROSS sign on the foot bridge struck me as amusing. I wasn't about to let the forces of logical observation and clear common sense ruin my perfectly screwed-up day. 

"You and me, buddy," I muttered to the cat, as I climbed the path. "Right here. Right now. You're going down." 

As it turned out, we both were.

*

Red hung onto my wrist like Jane clinging to Tarzan's vine. Strong girl. Tough girl. She looked up at me without blinking. Those green eyes wouldn't show fear even when she was hanging from the broken boards of a busted, hundred-year-old foot bridge. I had to like her, despite myself. Now if I could just get her to trust me before her, me, and Catzilla ended up in the miniature gorge of Little Trick'em Creek. Catzilla yowled again as he clung to her hair. Man, that long hair wasn't just beautiful, it was useful.

"You're gonna have to let go with your other hand, Red," I said as gently as I could, considering she was pulling my right arm out of its socket. The only thing giving us a little help and some spare time was the weight she managed to balance on her right foot, which she'd wedged in the crook of the bridge's collapsed rail. "Let go of the board and grab my left hand. I need to pull with both hands to get you out of here."

"It's no use. Save yourself. Save the cat. This is how I've always wanted to die. With my high-heeled boots on."  

"Nobody's dying today, Red. Not if you're willing to trust me."

"Then I'm doomed."

Behind me, hands latched onto my ankles. "I got you, Hoss." Mike's voice. "Hold onto your girlfriend, there. I'm gonna tie a pair of boat lines to your ankles, then me and Shane and some other boys will pull the both of you back to safe ground." 

"Pa, I'm here to help, don't worry," Shane called. He sounded a little shook up. When I'd run past him I hadn't taken time to ask why he was laying on the ground twitching, with his head in Blondie's lap and Ol' Man Porchers' dachshunds licking their chops at him like they smelled microwaved hamburger.

"Ash," Blondie called. I could hear her crying. "Ash! Hang on! I know you can do it!" I heard her say as an aside, probably to Shane, "She can bench press two-hundred pounds at the gym. And one time, she broke a man's arm in kick-boxing class."

"Holy crap," Shane said. "I'm lucky she only tasered me."

I looked down at Red. "You tasered my son?"

"Your son? Go ahead. Let go of me. I wouldn't blame you."

"Nah. I figure you owe me, now. Have to pull you up just to torment you."  I stretched my left hand closer to her death-grip on the board. "Comeon, Red. You gotta take a chance on me."

Breathing hard, she shifted her eyes to my open hand. It was a big, strong, he-man hand. I was proud of it. Women looked at my big hands and feet and figured I was packing some sizable man-meat. I'm proud to say, they were right. Red inhaled, hard. "I just want to tell you, in case we don't make it out of this alive, that--" her eyes came back to mine, and I swear to God, they had a sheen of tears in them—"there is no Butte, Minnesota."

"I forgive you, Red."

She grabbed my left hand.

"Pull!" I yelled to Mike.

Mike, Shane, and about a dozen other able-bodied men tugged us out of danger. As soon as Red and I could sit up and let go of one another, I arched a dusty brow and gave her a what-for look. "No Butte, Minnesota. Well, damn."

She stared at me, trying to figure out whether I was friend or foe, and then a miracle happened. She laughed. Friend. Well, it was more of a sarcastic chuckle than a laugh, but I caught a glimpse of her teeth, so I think she came this close to smiling and enjoying my company. I got up, dusted myself off, held down a dirty hand to her, and waited. Like a challenge.

She made a wicked little chuckling sound again, like she hated herself for liking me. Then she took my hand and let me help her up. Blondie ran over and threw both arms around her. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, except for this growth on my shoulder."   

Catzilla had climbed up on her shoulder, tangled in her hair. Trapped like a fish in a net, but purring. Purring, by God. That's what you call post traumatic stress syndrome, in cats. 

"He knows we're his family!" Blondie said. "Mother's watching over him, and over us, and she told him --"

"Sssh." Red hissed.

"Oh. Sorry. Yes. Sssh. Yes."

Red looked at the crowd. At least a hundred townsfolk and a few curious festival goers looked back at her and Blondie. Red nodded to them. "You've proved the old saying: It takes a village to raise a village idiot . . . out of a creek gorge. I apologize for being that idiot."

 People nodded and smiled. In our neck of the woods, we appreciate a good confession spiced up with embarrassment. I was proud of Red. But I noticed Mike wasn't one of the smilers. Something about Red and Blondie made him keep tilting his head and studying them, and frowning.

Polly, who had stood at the edge of the crowd all that time, beside Dooly Bug, April and June, stepped forward. She gazed at Red and Blondie as if they had come to town to haunt her. Her green eyes, on their green eyes, I suddenly noticed. And Red's red hair, like Polly's.  What was going on, here? She looked at Red. "I heard your . . . your friend . . . say your name. Your name. Your name is Ash? Is that for Ashley?"

Red stiffened. Beside her, Blondie dissolved in new tears. Red took her by one arm and tried to tug her. "Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. It's been nice--"

"Is your name Ashley?" Polly repeated, her voice breaking.

Red's shoulders slumped. She didn't seem to be able to force the words out of her mouth. But Blondie had it covered. "Yes! Yes, she's Ashley. And I'm Tiffany. Have you ever heard those names before, Polly?"

Polly put a hand to her throat. "Yes, I have."

Red – Ashley – cocked her head and eyed Polly with a bitter little smile. "Then we can assume you've also heard of Loretta and Tammy?"

"Yes. Yes, I have."  Polly swayed. Mike and Dooly Bug stepped up on either side of her and took her by the elbows. Mike frowned at the girls, bewildered. Pretty much the attitude of the moment for everyone on the scene. We didn't know what the hell Polly and these newcomers were talking about. "Look, little ladies," Mike said firmly, "I don't know what this is about, but if you've got some complaint with Polly or anybody else in this town, let's hear it. You've caused enough trouble, already."

Polly whipped toward him. "Stop. Stop. You don't know what you're saying."

"Cookie, I know you take being mayor seriously, and you extend hospitality to every soul who crosses the city limits. But you don't have to be nice to this pair of strange characters. They set a cat free, upset the festival, climbed out on a bridge any fool could see was condemned, and nearly got Parker hurt. And that one—" he pointed at Red—"jabbed Shane with a taser. In my book, you don't owe them the time of day, much less any hospitality. They're not friends. They're not neighbors. They're not kin."   

"Please, Mike, would you just shut up!"

"Hey," I put in, holding up a warning hand to Mike. "No need to get in a foul mood. No harm was done."

"Yeah," Shane added, angling in front of Blondie. "Yeah."

Mike glared at us. "You two got a problem with me?"

I clapped him on the shoulder.  "No, but just back off, okay? Calm down."

Dooly Bug elbowed him. He frowned at Red and Blondie. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, little ladies. I gotta remember: You're not from around here. You just don't know any better." 

I grimaced. Mike didn't know when to shut up.

Red's icy little smile got icier. "We just don't know any better?"

Blondie looked at Mike with a kind of wounded wonder on her face. "Sir, is your name . . . could it be . . . just taking a wild guess here . . . is it . . . Mike? Mike O'Ryan?"

He looked at her as if she was a spy with the IRS. "Pardon me, but how'd you know that?"

She sobbed. Red grabbed her by the shoulders and gave Mike a weird look of her own. Angry and sad  at the same time. "Well, now our visit is complete. We've been lectured and insulted and insincerely apologized to. We can go, now." 

Polly groaned. I looked from Red to Mike, who was completely flummoxed. Like the rest of us. "Have I done you and your friend some wrong I'm  not aware of?" Mike asked Red. "You want something from me?"

"Let's just say you've . . . met my expectations." She shook  Tiffany gently. "Come on, my fellow ‘little lady,' let's take our hairball--" she gestured toward  Catzilla on her shoulder —"and get the hell out of here."

Tiffany moaned. "He thinks we're troublemakers and bad-mannered. He thinks we're strange.  We are strange, but I hoped, I thought, I wished--"

"Sssh. Come on." 

"You can't go!" Polly cried. She ran to them, grabbed each by a hand, and looked at them tearfully. "You came here for a reason. You belong here. You know you do."

"Not in this lifetime," Ash answered.

"I know who you are! And you know who I am!"

"Yes, well, you knew who we were when we born, too, but you didn't care, did you? Tiff, let's go. I mean it. Time to regroup."

Red tried to lead Blondie down the hill. Blondie dug her heels in. I shifted from one foot to the other, debating what my next move in this little drama should be. I knew this much: if Red left, I'd follow her and persuade her to at least tell me how to get in touch with her. For Polly's sake. And, okay, for mine.

Polly swung toward Mike. "You can't let them go!"

"Polly, what is wrong with you?"

She held out her hands to him. I'd never seen Polly so upset. Five second later, I understood why. "They're Della's daughters!" she yelled at Mike. "And yours!"

Polly and Della
1970

7

"Della, you're gonna get in so much trouble!"

"Sssh. Polly, godssake, you little worry wart, open the window and let me in."

I was fifteen, pudgy, and loud-mouthed. Della, my idol, was eighteen, skinny, beautiful, and a whisperer. I eased our bedroom window up and she crawled inside, her long, red hair gleaming in the moon light. She had to hike up her flowered mini-dress, and she whacked the heel of one platform shoe on the window sill.

"You're gonna wake up Mama and Daddy!" 

"No, Sis, you're going to wake them up. Sssh."  She kissed me on the forehead then tiptoed past me toward our cute pink bathroom. A private bathroom just for two daughters to share -- our family was rich by Moon Lake standards, and that frilly private toilet showed it.

I tiptoed after my sister in the darkness, a tubby wraith in a Brady Bunch nightshirt with a head full of metal. Every night, in a hopeless effort to control a pile of red curls, I pulled my hair up in a top knot, then rolled the ends on big curlers made from tomato-juice cans. 

I clanked my way into the dark bathroom. Della sat on the commode with her dress tucked between her thighs. She kicked off her platforms, shucked her pantyhose and her panties, and tossed them in the sink.

"Quick," she whispered. "Run some hot water over those."

"But if you're having your period, you should use cold water to get out the--" 

"Hot water. Now."

I turned the pink ceramic faucet. As steam rose, I sniffed and grimaced as a vapor of strange scents hit my nose. "I smell . . . liquor. And . . . bait? Did you and Mike O'Ryan go fishing?"

Della made a sound between a rueful chuckle and a groan. She grabbed my hand. "Sit. I'm going to tell you a secret."

I plopped down, cross-legged, on the cool tile floor at her feet. "Tell."

"The usual promise."

I crossed my heart, kissed the pad of my thumb, then gave her a thumbs-up. Della performed the gesture in return. We'd created this top-secret routine as kids. Growing up in a small mountain town without many playmates, sisters will invent more rituals than a room full of Masons.

Della hunched over and whispered, "Mike and I had sex tonight."

"You didn't!"

"We did. In the camper of his daddy's pick-up truck. On sleeping bags. And we got a little drunk, too. And I smoked some marijuana. Mike wouldn't, but I did."

I gave a small, squeaking wail and crunched my fists to my mouth. "Mama will kill you!"

"I'm eighteen years old. I'm an adult."

"When Mama finds out, you're gonna be a dead adult."

"No, I'm going out to California and be an actress."

Della was show-biz gorgeous, yes, and she could sing nicely, and she was graceful. She played piano, guitar, a little violin, and clarinet. She'd sung solo in our high school choir and won big roles in every play and musical the school put on, including her tour de force as a senior, a red-headed Guinevere with a southern-fried English accent, in Camelot. She was even going to study drama at the university that fall. But this was the first she'd ever said about going to Hollywood. I gaped at her. "You had sex with Mike O'Ryan so you could be an actress? Huh?"

"I had sex with Mike because I'm an adult and I want to experience adult passions. For my art. This was a rite of passage, tonight. Now I know my own . . . my own power. So I'm taking all the money out of my savings account, and I'm going to California. And I'm going to be an actress."

"But . . . you had sex with Mike O'Ryan. Doesn't that mean you love him?"

"No. He's a sweet guy. But he's not even interested in going to college, much less California. He's happy to stay here and fish and fix boat motors and help his ol' daddy run their marina. Besides, he's a sure bet to be drafted, any day now."

"But he loves you! He's loved you since eighth grade! You went to the senior prom with him twice! When he was a senior, and then last spring when you were a senior. The prom! Twice! Doesn't that mean anything?"

"Look, Cookie (my nickname was based on both my favorite food and my favorite hobby) I know you're a romantic, but try to understand. I never told Mike I loved him. I can't help it if he loves me. He only loves me because I'm beautiful. That's not true love." 

I gasped. Not because of her practical ideas, but because I had ears like a well-fed bat, and I'd heard the creak of our bedroom door. When it creaked again, Della heard it, too. She straightened on the commode. I snatched her panties and panty hose from the sink and fast-balled them into our pink wicker hamper.

Mama's bare feet padded our way. She had a long, lanky walk, like a mountain lion. I loved her dearly, and I was her favorite, but I knew to get out of the way when she was in a mood to pounce. I looked around the bathroom. No way out. 

"Don't bother turning on the light," she said. She halted in the doorway, lean and mean, her voice one of those cultured southern accents from the cities, smooth as a filet knife. Her cigarette smoke twirled in the moon light. It was a warm night in early fall; she and Daddy slept naked; that night she wore only a thin robe. I could see the outlines of her nipples. Her hair, a flat, short poof of brunette layers, gave her the look of a wicked pixie. One of Daddy's aunts, a hardcore Baptist, said Mama had led Daddy astray from the Word. But I suspected they had strayed together.

"Let me guess," Mama said, staring down at Della through smoke and moonshine. "You went all the way with Mike."

Despite being in a compromised power position --  sitting on the commode, pantyless – Della looked up at Mama coolly. "Yes, I did. I'm a woman, now."

"A woman, hmmm?" Mama took a long drag on her cigarette. Then she squatted on her heels and looked Della eye-to-eye. Even in the dark, it sent prickles up my spine.  "If you mess around like a goddamned fool," Mama said quietly, "and let Mike O'Ryan -- or any other boy -- get you pregnant before you finish college, I'll haul you to a doctor in Asheville who'll gut you like a fish. He'll cut out your baby, he'll cut out your uterus, and by God, I'll tell him to take your ovaries along with it. You'll dry up like an old crone before you turn thirty. If you're determined to throw your life away, I'll make sure the job gets done right." 

Silence. The elegant brutality of the threat withered even Della's confidence. I shivered so hard my tomato-can curlers rattled. Mama rose, flicked her cigarette into the sink, turned and walked out without another word.

Della and I sat there in silence for a good five minutes after we heard the bedroom door shut behind her.

"I'm going to California," Della finally repeated, though her voice shook.

I nodded. "You better."

*

To understand Mama, who wasn't from the wilderness, you had to understand Daddy, who was. And to understand Daddy you had to understand the mountains. The Appalachians of western North Carolina are blue-green kingdoms both fearful and awesome. Old and wild and covered in deep forest, they are so ancient that in places their exposed skulls jut out in great, rock balds like the pates of elders. Nobody, not even scientists, can say why these aged mountains have shrugged off patches of their own skin. But those balds are the most beautiful, ungodly places in the world. Ledges and cliffs sprout from them, and only hardy souls climb up to those perches to commune with hawks and eagles.

The view from the highest bald on our highest local mountain, Trick'em, looks down directly on Moon Lake. When I was little, and Grandma Darlene was still alive, she liked to take me there. "This is where we come from," she'd say, planting her laced walking shoes apart on a cliff that would have scared the pee out of any woman not of pioneer stock. "The Groover sisters came up here after they lost everything but each other in the Great War, (that would be the Civil War, naturally) and swore to God they'd never be put under any man's dominion, again. And they looked down on the little lake far below, in the cup of these mountains, and they knew this piece of heaven was safe from God's wrath and man's foolishness, and they called it their own."

She told me that story a thousand times. A thousand times she paused, took a deep breath, and finished,  "The mountains make the laws up here. They only tolerate folks that's smart enough and strong enough to make a life and a living here. The rest can all go to hell. Fine by me." 

Then we'd sit down on the cliff and eat egg salad sandwiches and drink iced tea from a thermos, and she'd tell me lurid local history and ghost stories. Stories about murderous feuds and man-eating wolves, lovesick women who threw themselves in Moon Lake and drowned, about coffins floating up from submerged cemeteries after bad rains, and about children who fell through thin ice during the coldest winters, never to be seen again until their bones washed ashore.

The usual sweet stories a grandmother tells a little girl. Thankfully, I was mostly entertained and not permanently traumatized.

The one story she didn't tell was how she and my grandpa made the Harrigan fortune. I heard that one from cousins, who whispered it at family reunions.

Bootleg liquor. During Prohibition. Grandpa made the whiskey; then Daddy and Grandma packed it in cases and drove it in hollowed-out Fords to Asheville. The revenuers didn't suspect a little boy driving his sweet little mama to the big city. Once or twice, when the agents caught wise and tried to stop him, Daddy outran them. Daddy was so proud. When he grew up and bought his first Corvette he put an old snapshot of himself in the glove compartment: Him in the bootlegging Ford, his elbow draped out a window, a grin and a smoke in his mouth.

He was eight years old. 

*

Our big money was in the bank by 1940, the year Grandpa and Grandma Harrigan went more-or-less legit. They built a five-room stone-and-wood hotel below their big house, in a grove of huge hemlocks beside the lake, and opened it to the well-heeled former customers of their whiskey trade. Mostly politicians.

They packed Daddy off to college to scrub his rough edges.  It worked, but  education gave him big ideas and new bad habits, making him the sophisticate of Moon Lake. Mama, an Asheville socialite from a clan of alcoholics and other lunatics, was a lot like him. They met at college. Della was born only five months after their marriage, though nobody mentioned that in polite conversation.

When Daddy inherited th