Upstate Uproar (5 page)

“I need to pee,” Lucy squealed, still
imitating a kangaroo.

“No one will see you now, go for it. Trail
pee.” Vivian laughed.

Lucy reached for her pants but paused. “I
can’t do it out here.”

“Come on.” Vivian pushed her forward but
stayed close, holding onto the back of Lucy’s jacket.

“Why don’t you lead the way?” Lucy asked.

“Nope! You broke the flashlight, you go
first.”

They went along the maze for several minutes,
Vivian occasionally jumping up and yelling, trying to see lights
from the house. “Hello? Anyone? Our flashlight died! Helllooo?”

A big gust of wind rustled the stalks around
them and they both stopped.

A crunch behind her about caused Vivian’s
heart to jump out of her chest. She turned around in time to see a
dark figure rush toward her making a crazy sound.

“Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Vivian
yelled.

The figure grabbed her, pushing her into the
corn stalks. Vivian tripped and fell back, the figure falling on
top of her.

“E.T., phone home!” Wendy yelled, laughing.
“Poke her! Prod her!”

Vivian kicked and shoved Wendy off of her.
“Not funny! Not funny!”

Wendy rolled over, cracking up, holding her
stomach. “So funny!”

A flashlight flicked on and Kate appeared
from between the stalks. “Y’all are hilarious. We’ve been following
you for about five minutes. We were prepared to take pictures of
Lucy’s trail pee!”

Wendy rolled around on the ground, snorting
with laughter. “Aliens taking the energy out of your flashlight!
That was classic.”

Vivian picked straw out of her blonde curls.
“You’ll pay for that one, Wendy. Just you wait!”

Wendy rolled over and picked herself up off
the ground. “Totally worth it, I just wish I had video so I could
put it on ellentube. She’d totally run that on her show.”

Lucy spoke up. “Holy crap, I would never
forgive you if Ellen DeGeneres ran a clip of that on her talk show.
I almost wet my pants back there.” She looked around and put her
hand on her hips. “How do we get out of here?”

Kate turned around and started marching.
“Follow me! I have an excellent sense of direction. Plus, I smell
food.”

They followed Kate’s nose through the maze,
laughing about aliens and crop circles, poking and prodding the
whole way. They emerged at the edge of the field, near the
makeshift parking lot.

“Told ya I’d find the way,” Kate said as she
clicked off her flashlight. “My nose knows no bounds these
days.”

They walked up to the house where Lucy headed
in to find a bathroom. A group had gathered on the front porch, the
front porch steps and in lawn chairs. A lady was selling food off
to the side, and Kate walked straight to her.

“Hi, there! Whatcha got?”

“Corn on the cob hot off the grill, smoked
turkey legs and pogos.”

“What’s a pogo?”

The lady held up a corn dog.

“I’ll take a turkey leg, please,” Kate
said.

The woman handed her a bigger-than-her-face
shank.

Kate greedily took it and sank her teeth
in.

Lucy walked up, licking her lips. “I’ll try a
pogo-slash-corny dog. Got mustard?”

The woman reached into a vat of heat and
pulled out a foil-wrapped foot-long tube, then handed over two
mustard packets and looked at Vivian.

“Corn on the cob for me,” Vivian said.

The lady handed her a foil-wrapped, fatter,
shorter tube.

Vivian looked at Wendy as she unwrapped her
cob and took a big-ass bite. “I can’t spend that much time lost in
corn and not make it pay!”

Wendy pulled out some money and paid, then
the girls rocked on the porch while they ate. Kate was
super-impressed with her turkey leg and only pulled off a few
pieces to share.

“I’m feeding two here,” she reminded, patting
her belly. “Save the best bites for Little Plum.”

“Is it a girl?” Vivian asked. “Is that why
you call the baby ‘Little Plum’?”

Kate licked her fingers. “The baby is the
size of a plum. That’s why I call her/him that. We had the
opportunity to find out, but we want it to be a surprise.”

“It’s a girl, I just know it!” Vivian said as
she watched people wander into and out of the maze. She noticed
Brandon was sitting alone off to the side.

A middle-aged man in jeans and a green
flannel shirt walked up to them. “So did you girls enjoy our
upstate New York’s finest maize maze?”

“Our flashlight died,” Lucy said, finishing
off her pogo.

“Yeah, that happens sometimes. Can sure mess
you up.” He sat down next to Wendy on the porch step. “So you have
plans tonight?”

“Bed is my plan,” she said.

“My kinda plan,” he said, and he put his arm
around her.

She gently picked up his hand, lifted it over
her head and placed it on his knee. “I’m sleeping with preggo over
there, buddy. You’re outta luck.”

He laughed. “Story of my life. Where are you
staying?”

“Turlington Farms,” Vivian said.

He gave a stern look. “Really? I didn’t know
that place was still open.”

“It’s nice,” Wendy said. “Why wouldn’t it be
open?”

“You know,” he said but didn’t elaborate
since Brandon walked up.

“Hey, Gus, how are you?”

“Doing fine,” the man said, standing. “You
enjoy your trip.”

“Thanks,” they all chimed.

“You ready to head back?” Brandon asked.

Kate finished off her turkey leg and tossed
it in the trash from a distance of at least eight feet. “Our work
here is done.”

They made it back to Turlington Farms, said
their goodnights to Brandon and got ready for bed.

Vivian had to floss her teeth twice to
extract all the pesky corn kernels. She climbed into bed with Lucy,
who was already breathing rhythmically, and drifted off.

Vivian startled awake, got her bearings and
looked at the clock — 4 a.m. Covered in sweat, she threw the covers
off and flipped her pillow to the cool side. As she lay there, she
felt like someone was watching her. She didn’t want to do it, but
she couldn’t help herself and clicked on the lamp next to her.

“You’re awake, too?” Kate asked.

“Jesus, you scared me!” Vivian said, then she
looked at Lucy, who rolled over but didn’t wake up.

Kate stopped pacing and sat in the
high-backed chair next to Vivian’s side of the bed. “Sorry. I’ve
been awake for a bit. I had a weird dream.”

Vivian’s stomach clenched. Kate’s weird
dreams often involved dead people. “When you say weird, do you
mean…”

“No dead relatives visited me.”

Vivian sighed in relief. “Oh thank god, I was
worried you might have had one of ‘those’ dreams.”

“A dead stranger visited me, instead.”

Vivian stopped breathing.

“I know, I know,” Kate said. “I’m a
super-freak. But I have to say, this person was really interesting.
She wanted me to find her killer.”

“And you know this how?”

Kate took a deep breath and rubbed her baby
bump. “She let me live her death.”

V
ivian grabbed her
pillow and held it tight to her ear. Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!
Zzzzz….Zzzzz…Zzzzz…. She opened one tired eye and quickly squeezed
it shut. The faint light of morning was way too bright. Chirp!
Zzzzz.

Dammit!
She threw her pillow on the
floor and flung the comforter off, then padded to the dresser. She
yanked open a drawer, pulled out jeans and a sweater, and headed to
the bathroom.

“What the heck?” Lucy yelled to the slamming
door.

“Sorry, sorry,” Vivian said. “Stupid birds.”
After her morning routine, she followed the scent of frying sausage
to the kitchen, where she found Brandon and Tracy working on
breakfast.

“Morning,” Brandon said. “You’re up awful
early, care for some coffee?”

“No, thanks,” Vivian said. “I love the smell
but can’t drink it, even with tons of sugar and cream.”

Tracy turned from the stove, apron on and tea
kettle in hand. “How about some hot tea?”

“That sounds perfect. I’ll take it to the
back porch with me.” Vivian prepared her tea and started out of the
kitchen, then stopped. “Are the birds always this noisy in the
mornings?”

The proprietors just laughed and continued
making breakfast.

Vivian let the screen door slam shut, hoping
to scare off her arch-enemy, her foe, the fowl.
I’m going to
invest in a BB gun if this keeps up.
She sat in a rocker,
sipped and enjoyed watching the sun come up over the water until
the remnants of her hot tea were cold.

Lucy opened the screen door, closed it gently
and sat in the rocker beside her. “We’ve got to document this, it’s
epic. Vivian Taylor, up before the rest of us! I’m impressed.”

Vivian laughed. “Don’t be. I didn’t sleep
well. I had a creepy feeling I was being watched, then Kate got up
and told me about the crazy dream she had, and I was finally dozing
off when the birds started chirping and you started snoring.”

Lucy shook her finger at Vivian. “Oh no, I
don’t snore. You’re the log saw– wait, did you say Kate had a
dream? What about?”

“I’ll let Kate tell you. It was pretty
creepy.”

Lucy bobbed her tea bag in the hot water.
“Nothing’s going to happen on this trip. No murders, stalkers,
abductions,
nada.
We don’t need Kate to have any dead
relative dreams.”

Kate’s height came from her American father,
but her superstitions were from her Taiwanese mother. Kate’s dreams
often starred deceased relatives from both sides of her family
tree, and they often brought cryptic messages.

Wendy poked her head outside. “Morning, early
birds, y’all hungry? I couldn’t get Kate past the table. She’s in
there chowing down on bacon and sausage. I may need to encourage
her to eat some fruit.”

Vivian waved her off. “That’s what prenatal
vitamins are for.”

Lucy laughed and got up. “If it involves
bacon, I’m in. Besides, I’ve gotta hear about this dream.”

“Kate had a dream?” Wendy asked, trailing
behind Vivian.

“I did and it was awful,” Kate said and
washed down a mouthful of something with milk. “I woke up clawing
at the air and gasping for breath. My legs still hurt from the
cramps.”

Lucy set a plate of bacon in front of Kate.
“What relative visited you?”

Kate swallowed a big bite of wheat toast
slathered in two kinds of jam. “It wasn’t that kind of dream, it
was worse.” She reached for a piece of bacon, so Wendy took the
bowl of freshly cut fruit off the sideboard and set it on the table
with an “uhn uhhh.”

Vivian took the bowl and scooped some
pineapple onto her plate. “She’s got jelly, she’s fine.”

“It was a warm summer day, perfect for a
swim, then all of a sudden, my left leg started cramping,” Kate
began as Tracy walked into the dining room with a fresh plate of
pancakes. “I reached down to massage it while I treaded water, but
then my right leg started cramping, too, and it became impossible
to swim. I tried and tried, but my legs wouldn’t work.”

Though Kate had told Vivian about the dream
earlier in the morning, she still cringed inside.

“What’d you do?” Lucy asked. “Did the cramps
wear off? Were you able to make it to shore?”

“No,” Kate said. “But I tried really hard
because of the baby. The really scary thing was in the dream, when
I rubbed my belly, it was flat. I wasn’t pregnant. Freaked me
out.”

Wendy reached for Kate’s belly. “Gosh, is
Little Plum okay this morning?”

Kate rubbed her belly and smiled.
“Everything’s fine. I felt her move shortly after the dream. I
think she woke up when I did.”

“I must have been completely zonked because I
didn’t hear a peep.”

“In my dream, my whole body started cramping.
It started in my legs and worked its way up. It was awful wanting
so desperately to survive and trying so hard to swim but have my
body fail. The last thing I remember was the sun shining through
the water as I sank.”

Crash!

Tracy dropped the empty porcelain platter
she’d been holding. “Goodness, excuse me,” she said and bent to
pick up the mess. Her cheeks were flushed as she stacked the bigger
pieces, and though her hands looked steady, she had a hard time
scooping the shards.

Brandon rushed in. “It’s not a party until
something gets broken,” he said, then looked to see what had
happened. “Darn, hon, that was a wedding gift from Grandma
Turlington. What’d you go and drop that for?”

Tracy looked at him, her eyes sharper than
the remaining bits of Mikasa on the floor. “It was an accident.
I’ve got butter on my fingers and the platter slipped.”

Brandon bristled but held his tongue. He
followed Tracy out of the room and returned moments later with a
handheld vacuum. “Sorry for the noise. Enjoy the rest of your
breakfast.”

The girls did enjoy it, although bickering
could be overheard from the kitchen and the Finchers, who arrived
just after the platter faux pas, made goo-goo eyes at each other
and spoke in baby talk.

I guess they got lost and found again last
night
, Vivian thought.
I can’t take much more of
this
.

Wendy took a bite of strawberry and a last
sip of coffee, then glanced at Mitzie and Wendell before saying to
the girls, “Y’all ready to go on our hike?”

“You’re going on a hike?” Mitzie said. Her
hairdo was reminiscent of a Shih-Tzu this morning, pink bow and
all. “You should get a dog for the day to take with you.”

Though Mitzie was annoying, Vivian was
intrigued. “What’s that?”

Mitzie explained that the local shelter would
allow volunteers to take dogs out for exercise during the day.
“They really want you to fall in love and adopt, but they’ll take
any help they can get.”