High Plains Hearts (20 page)

“I can remember this movie from when I was a kid,” Jake said. “I thought it was the scariest thing I’d ever seen.”

“Really?” she replied, her mouth full of a delightful Christmas cookie.

“I understood the moral of the story, about appreciating your life, and every time I watched it I’d vow to take more time to remember the past, heed the present, and prepare for the future.”

“Wow! That’s some heavy thinking for a child,” she said, reaching for another cookie. “I was more afraid of the spirits, but I have to be honest and tell you I didn’t get the point until I was a teenager, and by then I’d figured out the spirits weren’t ghosts as such. Guess I was a slow learner, huh?”

Jake laughed. “You sound like you were a typical teen.”

“Probably. I hope I’ve learned from the story. The only sticky part is that I hope I’m not doing my good deeds now only because I’m selfish enough to want heaven for my future—as if all my actions are an insurance policy of sorts. They’re not. I have to believe it in my heart.”

“There’s the rub,” Jake commented. “How do you know if you’re doing it right and if you’re going to heaven?”

She smiled. “Jesus tells us. A lawyer asked Him what he had to do to have eternal life. And Jesus asked him back what the Scriptures said. The lawyer said, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.’ ”

“I remember that. Jesus said that was the right answer, didn’t He?”

“Yes, He did. So maybe the answer is to do those things, and good works and good deeds will follow as naturally as night follows day.”

Jake fell silent. “I wish I had your convictions, Tess. Your faith is so solid and true. I believe—I truly do—but I don’t have it as completely as you do. I wish I did.”

Her heart opened, and the words flowed out. “Just wanting it is the first step. Let yourself be open to God, Jake. He’s there, waiting for you. He’s been there all along, in the past, in the present, and He’ll be there in the future, too. He’s never left you, and He will always be at your side. Let yourself be open to Him. Let yourself see Him.”

“If only I had proof, it’d be easier to believe.”

“Maybe. But would it be in your heart? Or would it be because you don’t see another choice?”

“Good point,” Jake said. “I don’t know what I’d do if I had real proof.”

“Actually, Jake, if you want proof, it’s there. Look in the face of a newborn baby. It’s there. Look in the face of an older person. It’s there. I can even see it in Cora’s face. God makes beautiful creations. And each one is a gift of proof.”

She touched his hand. “The proof was there in the manger, and it was there in the empty tomb. Faith is an amazing thing. It is its own proof, even as it denies proof. I can’t explain faith, but I know it is there.”

She fell silent. His eyes were focused on hers, searching and seeking for this elusive thing they called faith.

“I need it, especially as I think about the possibility of moving Panda’s,” he said, breaking the quiet at last. “Maybe it’s not the same thing, but I have an intensive need for proof. Give me charts. Give me graphs. Give me statistics.”

“Did you build Panda’s from a blueprint?” she asked.

He laughed. “Sort of. The conflict between the contractor and the architect gave it its distinctive rose brick and gray smoked-glass look, but basically, yes, we had a blueprint. Why do you ask? Is it really that bizarre looking?”

“No, no!” she demurred. “It’s just that you’ve already invested heavily in faith. When you built Panda’s, you did so on a promise—that the building would replicate what the blueprint proposed. Right?”

“Right.”

“And did it?”

“Yes.”

“But the blueprint didn’t have the personality of Panda’s. It didn’t include all the little details like the cooking, the roaster, even the personnel. Like Todd.” She couldn’t resist asking. “Todd wasn’t in the blueprints, was he?”

“No,” Jake admitted, “though he probably should have been. He knows everyone and can keep the place running like a top, unless you want the till to balance.”

“And you definitely had a role in it. Your enthusiasm and dedication to Panda’s show. My point is that these little things make the entire place come alive.”

A slow smile crossed Jake’s face. “You know what else wasn’t in the blueprints?”

She shook her head. “What?”

“Faith. A crazy angel whose halo will not stay straight. And Faith, Tess Mahoney, is making all the difference in the world. Without Faith I’d never have met you.”

She didn’t know what to say. And she didn’t have to. He said it for her.

“Faith has brought us together. And I’m hoping—no, I’m praying—that Faith will keep us together.”

T
ess grimaced at her reflection. She felt like a sausage, her body snugly encased in a set of thickly knit long johns, a long-sleeved turtleneck, a heavy sweat suit in a bizarre chartreuse she’d never had the nerve to wear before, heavy woolen socks, a bright green parka, her military olive snow-shoveling boots, an emerald and yellow patterned muffler, and an orange hunting hat topped with a fluorescent lime-colored pompom.

Jake’s greeting confirmed what she feared: that she looked like an inflated and somewhat eccentric elf.

“I don’t want to be cold,” she said defensively. It was difficult to be assertive about what she was wearing when underneath it she was sweating like mad.

“Honey, you’d have to be in the Arctic before you got cold in that getup.” He batted the pom-pom on her cap playfully.

“But most of First Night is outside,” she objected. “It’s freezing!”

“It’s only eleven below.” He grinned at her.

She looked one more time in the mirror. Chartreuse! What an odd color and definitely not for her. Whatever had possessed her to purchase it from the mail-order catalog? She knew the answer, though. The model had looked stunning in it, and the color hadn’t been quite so, well, so chartreuse.

“I’ll be right back,” she said and ducked upstairs to change into jeans and her new sweatshirt that had been her Christmas present to herself. Its snowy white background was crusted with pink rhinestones that spelled out the words
*flutter*flutter*flutter*
across an outline of angel wings.

“I feel ten pounds lighter,” she said as she came back downstairs. “And I probably look it, too. After a month of hanging around with you, I need all the help I can get, thanks to your insistence upon feeding me all sorts of gourmet treats.”

Cora sashayed into the room and meowed loudly.

“Speaking of gourmet treats,” Tess commented, “Cora’s girth has increased, too. She has a definite bulge now, and the old gal wiggles when she walks.”

“Both of you get lovelier every day,” he said, dropping a kiss on Tess’s head and scratching behind Cora’s furry ears. The cat lifted her gray head and drooled blissfully.

Jake watched as Cora waddled off to her spot by the heat register, apparently having had enough attention for the moment.

“That is a splendid cat,” he whispered to Tess. “Absolutely splendid.”

The First Night festivities were easily within walking distance, and they made their way quickly to the city center. In the town square a tent had been set up as a nuclear gathering spot.

Tess and Jake stopped there first. As Jake gathered the list of locations and events from the table, Tess warmed her hands by the kerosene heater that was almost unnecessary with all the people clustered in there.

“Where do you want to start?” he asked as he rejoined her.

“Ice sculptures, of course!”

Circling the frozen pond in the square was a fantasy display of statues carved of shimmering ice. They glistened in the reflected light of the street lamps like sculpted diamonds and crystals.

“The theme this year is the Winter Garden,” she commented as they strolled through the array of sparkling images. “Look! Here’s a hyacinth, I think, and over there—oh, I can’t believe the detail! It’s a prairie rose!”

Jake bent over the cards and read each one aloud. “Yup, once again they’re all done by local artists. I keep thinking that some year they’ll have to farm this out to a bigger city, but our art community sure can produce some astonishing works! Check out this one: Jack Frost as a master gardener!”

“And each one is carved from a single block of ice,” Tess marveled aloud. “With my luck I’d be right at the end, and my little hammer thing or whatever they use would slip just a teensy bit, and, blammo, my statue would be minus an arm. What steady hands they must have!”

They decided to check out the local library’s exhibit next. They climbed the stone steps with a host of other revelers.

“Sure are a lot of people out tonight,” Jake said, turning back to gaze over the square from the top step of the library. “Look at that!”

The sea of humanity was impressive.

“A lot of people are like us,” Tess said. “They don’t want to see the New Year in by getting sloshed, and yet they want to celebrate without risking getting killed by someone who’s been drinking and driving. That’s one of the things I like the most about First Night—that I don’t have to drive anywhere. It’s all set up within walking distance of the downtown parking lots for those who don’t live down here. And for the rest of us it’s great to be able to stroll on over!”

More people surged up the steps, and Tess and Jake found themselves propelled into the library.

For the next half hour they were entertained by a team of storytellers from the town, including the children’s librarian, a man who wrote poetry, and the mayor herself, who waved at them. The room was filled to capacity, and the temperature soared.

Tess wiped a band of sweat from her brow. It was a good thing she’d changed out of her earlier outfit; she would have been roasting in all those layers. Jake nudged her and indicated the door. They stole out together and stood at the top of the stairs, letting the cold air wash over their heated faces.

“That feels tremendous,” he said. “Whew, it was hot in there!”

“Why isn’t the sweat freezing on my forehead?” Tess asked. “Scientifically it should, right?”

He shook his head. “Beats me. It must have sizzled off when we came outside. It was blazing in that room with all those people crunched together like that.”

He consulted the schedule. “Hey, if we hustle over to the police station, we might catch a ride on a horse-drawn wagon. Does that interest you?”

“Sounds like fun!”

The line at the police station extended the length of the block and wrapped around the corner. “There’ll be a thirty-minute wait,” the woman overseeing the rides told them.

“Want to wait?” Jake asked Tess.

“Sure. Look—a guy is selling hot apple cider and doughnuts!” She pointed to a man behind a red-and-gold painted pushcart, which was mostly hidden by the people hunkered around his source of heat—an open fire in an old oilcan.

Jake grinned at her. “Are you always hungry?”

She tried not to be embarrassed. “Well, it’s been awhile since dinner, and doesn’t that sound good—hot apple cider and fresh doughnuts?”

Jake admitted it did, and they agreed she would hold their place in line while he bought them some food from the vendor.

“There’s something special about food served in open air like this,” she murmured, gratefully biting into the doughnut. “It seems to taste a whole lot better than it does inside.”

“Remind me to transfer all the tables out of Panda’s then. At the very least, it’ll keep them moving. No one will want to sit very long when it’s fifteen below.”

The line moved quickly, and they were soon climbing into the wagon. Jake made room for her on the straw bundle closest to the horse and created a circle of warmth around her with his arm. She leaned against him, enjoying the heat his body generated, but mostly reveling in being close to him.

First Night had never been so much fun.

It was only a tickle at first, then a little more, and it quickly mushroomed into a full-fledged itch. She tried to ignore it, but she eventually had to scratch her leg. And then her hip. And her leg again.

“Problem?” Jake asked her, his mouth tilted with amusement.

“I seem to be allergic to hay,” she answered, trying gracefully to reach her hip again. “Or something. Whatever it is, I think this will be my last trip.”

The ride seemed to take an eternity. Around the town square the wagon went, up the hill to the high school, around the water treatment plant, alongside the river, over the little footbridge, and back down past the post office to stop again in front of the police station.

She couldn’t hop off quickly enough. She scratched and clawed, uncomfortably aware that Jake was finding her actions amusing.

“Do you need to go back home and maybe shower?” he suggested.

Tess pulled herself up to her full height and tried to regain her decorum. “No, I’m quite”—
scratch, scratch
—“fine. I can do that”—
scrape, claw
—“later. Right now let’s just enjoy the”—
scratch
—“evening.”

They went to an exhibit at the police station about drugs and how to recognize them, examined a display of historic photographs at City Hall, and stopped at the school to listen to the junior-senior choir sing hits from the major musicals.

By the end her itching had fairly well abated.

“I love downtown,” she mused aloud, giving her hip one final scratch. “For one thing it’s a comfortable place to be—well, except for when we have to sit on straw.”

“It’s nice, but I still don’t know my way around here very well, so I can’t feel totally at ease yet.” He pulled out the schedule again and squinted at a street sign. “Is this Fifth? Or Fourth?”

“It’s Perth, and you need glasses,” she teased. “You probably feel the same way here that I do when I have to go to the End. I don’t know the names of the streets or even what businesses are where. Like the Animal Kingdom. That place is heaven on earth for cats, but I’ve never been there since it’s in the End. And this town isn’t all that big. We probably use it as an excuse.”

She couldn’t believe that she, Tess Mahoney, was saying that. She was an ardent supporter of downtown growth and an adamant opponent of anything having to do with the End. How had she mellowed so quickly? Had she lost her edge? Or maybe her mind?