Mammoth Secrets (25 page)

The reporter hopped into the passenger seat of her van, not waiting for her crew, as if she couldn't get back to Springfield fast enough.

Her camera man dug into his pocket and drew out a ten dollar bill. “Hope it helps some.”

“Thanks.” She folded the bill neatly around the business cards.

He packed his gear and walked around to the driver's side door. The news van left the fairgrounds in a trail of dust. The remainder of the reporters and their crews packed up and drove away as well, but still, Lilah remained rooted to the spot.

Pastor Bill was Jake's father.

It punched. Deep.

Another deception, another lie.

Back inside, money in collection box, she rejoined her family, Nana's voice trilling her favorite hymn.

Jake stood apart, watching the crowd. The resemblance of the famed Pastor Bill was there in his shape of face, his smile. Now she saw it.

Nana's hand found its way into hers. Warm, dry, gripping strong. How could such a small woman be filled with so much strength? Lilah sang along, imagining the cabin in the song, wishing she were anywhere but here.

At last, the evening wound down as the faithful left with spirits high, offerings generously gifted, and prayers of thanksgiving lifted.

Lilah took the chance to sit heavy in the folding chair as the band wrapped up.

Deacons stood with Jake on the edge of the stage, their heads bowed, arms wrapped around each other, some with hands laid, others raised high to heaven, their murmuring voices filled the room with prayers.

She'd never seen so many people, so many hearts softened by the words and music. Like no church service she'd ever witnessed. A shiver ran up her spine. She hugged herself, hands clasped on her upper arms. Though the humid, warm tent no longer surged with people, a few lingered, not wanting their experience to end.

The baskets and bags of collected items for the affected Thayer families overflowed. Food, clothes, toys for the children, all promised for distribution after services tomorrow at the main church. They'd gathered, more than a thousand strong, under this makeshift church and prayed for the lost, the lonely, and the forsaken.

The songs that Raymond and his band played that night were handpicked by Jake, designed in a careful church service of music and light, to go along with the shared testimony of the church members. Every detail, overseen and planned, had gone off without much of a hitch. Jake—as Pastor Gibb—held quite a party. His father taught him well. So why hadn't he told anybody? What did it matter?

She turned to face where Jake delivered his message under the white hot spotlight. With heart, soul, and reverence—the depth and breadth of his belief in salvation, in renewal, revival of the spirit, of the “do-over” that their Savior allowed, encouraged, even in the wake of nature's destruction.

His sincerity spoke to the gap in her soul, where love bloomed. But he wasn't just a pastor. He was Pastor Bill's son—famed, lauded on radios across the country, the world. Heir to that ministry, a national stage, and once he decided Mammoth was too small for him? What then?

“You ready?” Jake's voice called her thoughts back to the here and now.

“Sure.” She glanced at her watch. “Wow. Almost midnight. We should put the donations in the truck. “

“In a minute.” He held a hand out, pulled her to stand. “I want to show you something.”

She followed him out into the bright, strung bulbs swaging the midway.

Folks walked about, greeting each other, some riding, others playing games, but unlike the night before, it seemed like a true reunion. Family camaraderie filtered from the Revival and spilled out into the carnival grounds. For one night, perhaps, angels and demons called a truce.

“Did you see Maya? Or Mr. Randall?” Jake asked as he led her by the hand, up the rocky hillside.

“No.” She turned to the moon swept field, the garish carnival circled by a stand of high-reaching old oaks. Leaves glinted with moonlight, rustling in the breeze, chilly on her skin. A brisk cloud dusted the earth in its passing shadow. “Lots of news cameras showed up, though.” She offered, but he ignored her bait.

“I thought they'd come. Maybe they stayed at the back.” Jake trudged around a rocky outcropping to a flat spot at the crest overlooking the fairgrounds. “Guess he figured just offering the location was enough.”

Lilah swallowed the barbs of her discovery, savoring them a moment as Jake spread out his flannel shirt on a flat rock.

Below, laughter, music, and the whoosh of the Sea Dragon ride ebbed in carnival chaos. Up on the hill's apex, overlooking all of Mammoth, the black-blotch of Thayer to the north—still without power—and Pastor Jake, setting a pallet up on the self-same spot where Wayne O'Neill once planted an unripe kiss on her, at the age of thirteen.

“What are we doing here, Jake?”

“Sit.” He reached a hand, drew her to his side.

“What's going on?”

“I thought you and I needed a minute alone.” He dipped his gaze to hers, wrapped an arm across, warming her shoulders.

“Why?” She dared, the moonlight flashing in her eyes. “Got a deep, dark secret to share with me, Pastor Gibb?”

He opened, shut his mouth and tilted his head toward her. “What's bothering you, Lilah?”

“Lots of reporters out there tonight.” She crossed her arms tight around her chest. “I wonder why you didn't want to talk with them.”

Jake just looked away. “Just, didn't seem right. I'm not advertising anything. We didn't call the media.”

“They love a good, juicy story, hmm?” Lilah prodded, even though her guts weighed with guilt. “One was asking lots of questions. About Hot Springs Ministries. About you.”

“What is it you really want to ask me, Lilah?” His gaze questioned, stars sparkling in their inky blackness. “No time like the present. There's no one else around.”

“You're wrong about that, Jake.” She bit her lip, fighting the welling laughter. “Look around.”

He darted a glance over his shoulders. Bushes rustled. Low voices murmured, most of them in fast, hushed, worried tones.

“I wanted to give you a birthday present—it is your birthday, and Eden's. Right?”

She nodded, throat filling with that familiar guilt, and palmed a pebble. “It's not something we celebrate…so much confusion, guilt, sorrow wrapped up in it.”

He nodded, as if he understood growing up in a house with no birthday cakes or princess parties. Even with Ryan, her birthday slipped by without notice.

Jake cleared his throat and continued. “I didn't know what you want, or need, so I figured—fireworks. We could share them.”

“Ah, Jake.” She leaned her head on his shoulder, but his back remained ramrod straight.

“I was told...” He used his pastor voice, projecting so all within earshot would hear. “...this was the best spot to watch them.”

“Who told you that?” She tilted her head as he spied the huddled, whispering forms in the bushes. The first bloom of pyrotechnics exploded over the carnival below.

There was a reason that kids came up to this spot to hold hands, kiss, and play that dangerous game of chicken with bodies, hearts.

The darkness bloomed with green, blue, and bright white sparks. The air screamed with rockets, boomed with explosions of light and color, tinged with sulfur and phosphorous smoke. Shadows lengthened. Shrubs danced as a young couple did their best to pull themselves together, shushing each other with hurried whispers.

Jake scrubbed his head, realization reaching his eyes along with a flash of anger, a scattering of humor. “Your sister.”

“Well, she'd know. Spent her share of time up here. She and Marty—Luke's best friend. Back in the day, they were quite the item. She probably would have married him if he hadn't died in action...”

The words hung in the air along with a splash of light, a huge circle of exploding white, faded to quick-falling in streaks of orange embers. Trails of phosphorous smoke lingered in the humid Ozark night.

From the thin cover of bushes, Lilah heard a feminine sob.

“Should we say something to those kids?” Jake whispered. “Or just go?”

“Give them a second.” Lilah suggested, wrapping her hand around his, they leaned shoulder to shoulder.

Fireworks boomed, one after another. The show blossomed with searing whistles, and twirling rockets, the firework-induced clouds low enough to brush with their fingers.

“We all make mistakes,” Jake said, after a while. Her hand curled in his. “Maybe that's why we're here. To keep those two from making one.”

“A reason for everything, hmm?” Lilah glanced over as a girl's voice whispered, hushed and hurried in the darkness, heading the direction of the carnival.

Feet beat down the hill, followed steps behind by the lanky teenage boy she recognized as Andy Phelps. The basketball star. Responsibility bloomed, as she'd dangled that carrot for Maya, and ultimately Mr. Randall's approval to have the Revival here.

“That the last of them?” he whispered.

“One more, other side. We'll wait them out.”

The fireworks continued as her mind flipped from Jake's deception, to thoughts of her mother. The tragedy of their beginning wove the fabric of her life. Her mother's death was the yardstick by which every choice she'd ever made had been measured. From her first date, to Eden's prom, to canoe trips down the river with the senior class and getting caught puffing a cigarette on Emma's dock. Nana's disapproving stare and keen eyes missed nothing, promising to forgive, but never willing to forget. Especially after Ryan, and the crescendo of her lasting mistake, she knew Nana's heart, even if her grandmother never uttered the words out loud. She'd come back too late for forgiveness to matter. She stared into the dark, rustling hedgerow.

“Hey, y'all!” Lilah called out. “We suggest you get home quick! And think twice about coming up here next time, OK?”

“OK.” The feminine voice at last leaked out of the darkness from the opposite side of the hill.

A quick shuffle of feet and scrabbling of stones, the teenagers scuttled down the opposite side of the hill. In the intermittent light from the fireworks, Lilah thought she saw a familiar outline. Charla, Emma's daughter, and a shadowy boy high-tailed it ahead of her.

“That was nice of you.” Jake squeezed her hand. “Looks like your plan worked. That was the basketball kid, right?”

“And not with his sweetheart.” Lilah shrugged as bright blue sparks bloomed overhead, pungent smoke drifting. “So Andy and Charla escape the Mammoth curse.” At his non-understanding blink she added. “Seems like every kid in this town thinks they have to marry the first person they fall in love with. Look at Emma and Scott. Eden would've done it with Marty. She didn't get the chance.”

“And you.”

A swallow, she nodded. “He was so exciting for a good girl like me. Eden had the spotlight since day one. I figured I'd take the diner over after Eden started popping out kids. But Eden lost her love to the war, her light shut off awhile. Ryan buzzed through town like a man on a mission. He wanted me. Whisked me away. How could I say no? No one had ever looked at me that way, touched that place of longing in my heart. Then, everything changed.” She cleared her throat and turned to him. “Your turn.”

“Margaret. She was perfect for me. Always there, saying, doing the right thing…like I didn't have much of a choice. We just fit.” A sad smile graced his face, matching her own. “Look. Can we skip that part where we share our past regrets?”

Lilah viewed him through a curtain of her hair, tears threatening to spill “OK,” she said, at last, even though questions, accusations lay just below the surface. “For now.”

“For now.” He brought the back of her hand to his full lips, pressed a warm, lingering kiss, aching sweet, to seal the deal.

She swept her hair back to view another screaming, swirling rocket spear the heavens, all thoughts to her planned accusation on whether Jake Gibb was Jacob Gibson—Pastor Bill's son, and why he was hiding out in Mammoth, left to burn inside like a sizzling rocket fuse.

If Margaret was perfect, she was the polar opposite. This was a glimpse at what might have been, a dream, and soon she'd have to wake up.

Silence fell between them, replaced by the grand finale of the fireworks show, his fingers wrapped over hers as they leaned back in alternate light and shadow.

 

 

 

 

35

 

Jake finished reviewing his sermon notes as the parishioners filtered in from the streaming light of Sunday morning. He'd been late returning from his early run, chasing inspiration just beyond his reach, like the mist that blanketed the river. Today he'd gone farther than before, up the steep hill leading to Mammoth's cemetery, tilting headstones, flat polished markers, flags and flowers. He'd paused and watched as doves lifted from tree limb to grass and pecked at seeds on the freshly churned soil. One landed on a flat, glossy stone, etched: Dale.

The opening sounds of the day's hymn brought him back to the here and now, Raymond and his little band of worship musicians softened their Christian rock to mesh with Marilee on the organ, a compromise.

Jake peeked through the crack in the door, eyeing a full to capacity crowd. He stood in the back room and adjusted his hair, spiking and smoothing in the small, round mirror. Checked his breath. Popped a mint from the tin on the table.

He stepped from the antechamber into the sanctuary and smiled at the parishioners. These were the faces, the reason he'd been needed here. The men, dressed in all manner of clothing from suits to golf shirts, the women, garbed in everything from sundresses to slacks in the thick, humid Ozark morning.

All eyes intently focused on the podium as they promised to gather at the river, their melodious tune blended into another hymn, the same songs they'd lifted heavenward for fifty years set to a new beat.