The Potluck Club (7 page)

I looked back at the campers. It appeared to me that the great whites, as I called those monstrosities, had thinned out—probably because of the snow shower earlier in the evening.

I picked up the radio and spoke to dispatch. “Arrived at 10-20 RV Park, 10-23 till I talk to manager.”

The manager, Bob Burnett, was already striding across the gravel to my window. When I lowered it, he popped his scowling face so close to mine I could smell a whiff of beer on his breath. He’s a funny, bald bird with eyebrows that jump so high up his forehead they could be mistaken for a streak of hair. As comical as he looks, I never laugh. A snicker from me would send him on another one of his world-famous tirades about respect. I’ve heard his speech often enough in the hallways of Grace Church; I didn’t have the patience for it tonight. Oh, no doubt, Bob believes in respect, especially when it comes to him. How he feels about women is an entirely different story. However, I’ve noticed he doesn’t hesitate to send for me when he needs someone.

“Deputy Donna, it’s those kids again. They ain’t on our property but close enough to drive my customers to leave for home. There are several truckloads of them over down by the river. They got their music blaring, and worst of all, I think they’ve been trying to start a campfire.”

Not good. With the fire conditions this extreme, even a spark could kick off a forest fire. The early evening snow shower helped, but not enough to dampen this parched timber. It was too little moisture, too late in the season. The way things stood, this forest was nothing more than an inferno waiting to happen, that is, until we got a real blanket of snow. And a fire this close to town could burn it down.

Polite as always, I said, “Thanks, Bob, I’ll drive over and look into it.”

“Oh, and Donna, the next time you see Miss Evangeline at your Potluck Club meeting, give her my regards.”

I fought the impulse to roll my eyes. “Sure, Bob, I’ll tell her.”

He gave me what appeared to be a shy grin as I closed my window.
Bob must be lonelier than I thought
, I decided as I circled my Bronco around Bob’s office and store. I shuddered. What anyone could see in Evie, well, that would take some imagination.

A quarter mile on the freeway, I pulled onto a dirt road. Just a couple of hundred yards ahead, I spotted them, about a dozen teenage boys blinded by my headlights. Talk about disturbing the peace. Truck stereos blared to the same heavy metal station while a couple of boys fed a small campfire pinecones and twigs.

I parked and stepped out of my truck. “You boys know we have a fire ban here?” No sense in elaborating—everyone knew about the fire ban unless they’d just landed from Mars. The forest fire threat had the whole county on edge. Besides, I could tell these boys were locals, judging by the old beat-up pickups with Colorado tags. They certainly weren’t driving the fancy red SUVs or sports cars the tourists pick up at DIA before driving up I-70 to visit us.

The boys stared at me without answering. I’ve seen that look plenty of times; it says,
“Well, little lady, so what?”

Little lady. That’s what the fat, balding Texan tourists call me whenever I pull them over for speeding. I hate it. Maybe I’m short at five foot two; maybe I look petite even when I wear my gun. My voice doesn’t help my authority status either. I’m not as bad as the woman rookie in the movie
Police Academy
, but to these boys, I’d sound more like their irate mother than a law officer. And I know my blond hair doesn’t help, though I crop off my curls to keep it air force short. This effect makes me look like Tinker Bell, maybe, but nevertheless, it’s a major mistake to think I’m anything but tough. These boys would soon discover that.

Things could get interesting, I hoped.

I took my power stance. Hand on my holster, legs spread apart, my voice loud and commanding. “Boys, put out that fire
now
!”

A tall, lanky teen with a yellow streak dyed into his cropped hair slowly undraped himself from the hood of his truck and stood to his full six feet of height to peer down at me. The other boys did the same. Yellow Hair stepped closer.

“You think you’re going to make us?”

“That’s right, or I’m taking all of you to jail.”

The boys laughed among themselves and crossed their arms as they looked me up and down.

“And just how are you going to arrest us all?”

Keeping my hand on my holster, I stepped back, never taking my eyes off the boys. I reached under the seat of my truck and pulled out my twelve-gage shotgun.

Casually as you please, I cocked it and emphasized my words. “Oh, I won’t have to. I’ll only have to arrest those of you who are still standing.”

That shocked those boys into silence. Of course, I would never make good on that threat, not unless they came at me. But that wouldn’t happen, because they were worried now that I might be crazy, an assessment not far from the truth.

They stared. I stared right back. Suddenly, one of the boys turned and kicked dirt onto the fire. Another boy poured his bottled water on the small blaze. As it sizzled out, other boys stomped on the hot twigs, grinding them into the dirt.

Then, slowly, one by one, they spit their tobacco juice onto the ground, then climbed into their pickups and drove past me to the highway. Only Yellow Hair made eye contact as he slyly topped his head with a Rockies baseball cap, adjusting it with a one-fingered salute. He was a daring one, all right.

I sighed with relief as I walked over to investigate what was left of the campfire. I kicked a couple of blackened pinecones into the river, then walked back to my Bronco to grab my fire extinguisher. One final squirt of white foam, and the fire was officially out.

I probably should have called it in, or at least called for backup. Even a small campfire like this would make front-page news, with wildfire being such a threat. But a call to dispatch would have taken too much effort. Besides, I’d have to spend the rest of the evening writing up a report. Then the
Gold Rush News
reporter, Clay Whitefield, would call me first thing in the morning, waking me from my well-deserved rest, just to get a quote. Nope, I’d handled things just right. I don’t need anyone’s help, except maybe when it comes to cooking something for that Potluck Club. Why I go, I’ll never know.

Okay, that’s not quite true. I know exactly why I show up—with some lame dish in hand—month after month. And it’s not to say hello to Miss Evangeline Benson. That woman hates me, but I’m long past trying to win her approval. Besides, that was all resolved in sixth grade one Sunday at church.

There I was, all of twelve years old, dressed in one of the only dresses I owned, an olive drab A-line that was probably wrinkled and too short. Miss Evangeline Benson, dressed in her new orange pantsuit, walked right over to me, pinched my cheeks, and blurted, “Donna, dear. Someone needs to take you shopping. But, oh, I guess since your mom left your dad, you have to fend for yourself, poor, dear child.”

I stared at the woman, totally speechless, and stepped back into plump Vonnie Westbrook, my Sunday school teacher.

Vonnie stiffened, and one glance told me this lady was angry! Her voice shook as she spoke. “Evangeline Benson, that’s no way to speak to this fine young lady.” She’d put her arm around my shoulders and whispered in my ear. “Never mind Evangeline, dear. She’s just a bitter old maid.”

“I heard that,” Evangeline charged.

“Good.” Short Miss Vonnie never seemed taller. “Now you know how it feels when folks don’t mind their manners.”

With that, Vonnie and I stomped off together, though I somehow peeked over my shoulder to see Evangeline’s livid face.

That was probably the first time that old biddy had been told off in a very long time, and that it was Vonnie, one of her perpetual sidekicks, who did it just made it sweeter.

And Vonnie, truly a lady of grace, the very next week drove me down to a Denver Sears store and bought me a new dress for Sunday, a couple pairs of shoes, plus new tops and pants for school. She even managed to talk Dad out of two hundred bucks to perform this miracle.

“Vernon, Donna is a young lady now, and for that reason alone she needs new clothes. Now, don’t argue. I know you’re good for two hundred, and I promise to bring you the change.”

To my astonishment, Dad forked over the money without batting an eye. He said, “I appreciate the help, Vonnie. I’m not much on shopping for girls.”

Even today, I consider Vonnie Westbrook my best and possibly my only friend. She’s the reason I attend the Potluck Club. It was Vonnie who took my motherless self under wing.

I once had a mother. Deep inside my mind, I can still catch a glimpse of her swirled within watercolored fog. I wish I could remember more. Did she ever tuck me in at night? Did she ever tell me she loved me? I don’t know.

But I do remember she was a petite blond with a soft cloud of curls that framed her blue eyes. I know those eyes well because I see them every time I look into the mirror. But it’s my mom’s voice I remember best; a voice that sang sweet songs around the house, a voice that sang solos in the church choir.

I remember the time, one Sunday morning, when I was all of four years old; my father squeezed my arm, a warning to stop my wiggles as Mom sang from the pulpit of the church. That’s my last clear memory of my mom, and even now, it’s like a grand dream. Her voice rose in sweet glory while the choir director, Mr. Shelly, flapped his skinny arms as the choir’s voices rose to embrace my mother’s pure song. Suddenly, the choir director turned and stepped into the pulpit with her, completing the hymn in unbelievable harmony as the choir’s voices faded to silence. I stopped wiggling then, not because of the warning hand on my arm but because I was lost in the utter beauty of the song.

In fact, that moment is probably the last memory most people have of my mother and the choir director. Instead of going home after the service, they’d hopped into Mr. Shelly’s car and headed for the interstate to start a brand-new life together, a life that didn’t include me or my dad.

But what I still want to know is—why? Was it me? Was I just too wiggly for Mom to manage? Or was it because she and Mr. Shelly thought their college-trained talents were wasted on the people of Summit View and Grace Church?

No one really knows, but it was rumored they had headed for Nashville in hopes of becoming big recording stars. Maybe she meant to call; maybe an eighteen-wheeler hit her before she reached her destination. All I know is she left me with a brokenhearted father who, if you ask me, still grieves for her, though he never shows it anymore. But the worst part of it all is the rejection. To be rejected by your own mother, wow, that hurts today as much as it did twenty-eight years ago.

But dear, sweet Vonnie didn’t abandon me. She and her husband, Fred, have been like family. I was the child they’d wished for but never had. It’s their friendship, especially Vonnie’s, that’s kept me from giving in to the demons that continue to haunt me today. In fact, they’ve haunted me ever since the night that . . . Well, it would take too much energy to explain that right now.

Even so, Vonnie doesn’t know the thing that happened to change me so much. She doesn’t know why I resigned from the Boulder County Sheriff’s Department and came back to Summit View. She’ll never know if I can help it. I couldn’t stand to be abandoned by her as well. Now my pain is bearable. It hurts, but I’m tough. Though there’s no point in asking God for help. He’s allowed my mother to leave me, and he’s never once been there when I needed him. Oh, I’ll go to church and pretend we’re on speaking terms. But we’re not, and we never were. The way I see it, who needs a God who fails?

People like Evangeline Benson serve a God like that.

Evangeline Benson, the old flirt, always saying things like, “Oh, Vernon, you look so powerful in your uniform!” Once, after dinner, Dad asked me what I thought of Evangeline. As the chief cook and dishwasher, I’d been busy scraping cold spaghetti off the bottom of one of my best cooking pots. Even though I was only nine, Dad talked to me like I was a grown-up. There he sat, with his gun tucked safely on top of the refrigerator, reading the paper and sipping the remainder of his iced tea. He looked up. “Donna, do you know Miss Evangeline, that woman from church?”

I’d been surprised when he’d mentioned the church. He hadn’t darkened the church door since Mom and Mr. Shelly had publicly humiliated him with their great escape. If it hadn’t been for Vonnie picking me up every Sunday, I probably wouldn’t have gone back to church either.

When I didn’t answer immediately, he’d asked, “Do you know the woman I’m talking about?”

Did I ever. Miss Evangeline had always made me feel lower than a squashed bug.

“Yes,” I’d finally answered, “I know who she is.”

“She invited us over for pie tonight. But I told her I’d check with you. What do you think?”

“I wouldn’t eat her pie if she paid me a million dollars.”

Dad looked over his paper with an arched brow. “Wouldn’t you, now?” He chuckled. “Fine, then. I’ll tell her we have other plans.” That was the day I thwarted Evangeline’s intentions to marry my dad. And that was the day the real war between us began. Apparently, Miss Evangeline, being fairly sharp, had traced the rejection back to me. I could tell the very next Sunday.

“Donna, dear, don’t you like pie?”

“No ma’am. Not your kind.”

To think, after all these years, I’m a member of Evangeline’s own Potluck Club.

Okay, I take back what I said earlier. There are actually two reasons I take part in this silly gathering. The first reason has already been stated: I love Vonnie. The second reason is I love to rub Evangeline’s failure into her face. And that’s just what I represent to her. I’m the family she couldn’t have.

Her pointed looks no longer bother me, because I’ve learned the real secret to life. True power comes from dispassionate hate. Such an emotion has the power to keep the whole world at bay.

I flipped on my radio. “Dispatch, 10-8. All clear.”

Now to the real problem at hand. How about a store-bought crust filled with a can of cherries?