Woods lifted the Bible from the table and placed the evidence in his lap. “Come on, Ada May, it’s good for the town. We’ve never had a teenage girl on the ballot before. Bring some new life to the festival. People will respond. They’ll remember why it’s important. They’ll donate. We’ll kill two birds with one stone.”
Sometimes a seed goes into rock-hard clay in a barren desert. And sometimes it falls into manure and sunlight beside the grandness of Kentucky Lake.
Ada May had the last word. It’s not what she said, but how she said it. Ears open. Heart soft. “The committee will take your suggestion under advisement.”
Woods threw his arms around the back of my and Janie Lee’s chairs, binding us together in this scheme. He smiled because he knew that Ada May taking it under advisement was as good as Billie’s name on the ballot.
He believed we’d done something good there.
Made up for something lost.
Maybe we did.
But I hope Billie never finds out.
21
I carry myself off to bed around three thirty that night, having spent hours researching Davey’s LaserCon. His costumes are all over the home page. Basically, he’s a legend. If we’re going to win a thousand dollars, Beauty and the Beast will have to be spectacular.
I am so groggy when I get to the elementary school the next morning, I nearly walk right in front of Fifty’s mower.
When Janie Lee scoots up next to me and says, “Hey, we’re doing our after-school service project together today,” I actually groan. I catnap through school, not for the first time, and join Janie Lee in her mother’s Acura.
101 Needmore Road, home of Victor Nix, is a white farmhouse half-lost in some untended soybeans. We arrive windblown and delighted by the freedom of a country road. There’s an oak tree in the front yard that must be three hundred years old. It has the remnants of a tree house high in its branches and a dilapidated ladder that doesn’t even look safe for squirrels. She parks in its shade and I prop my sunglasses on my head.
“If I fall asleep, punch me,” I say.
And then we walk purposefully toward the door and knock. A gentleman, who must have been poised to go out as we were coming in—his trilby hat under his arm, wearing a camel-colored coat with a line of fur that’s far too heavy for September—opens the door. “Well, hello there,” he says cheerily.
“Mr. Nix?” I greet.
“I am.” He raises his neck and shoulders from their slouch, thrilled for company. “And you?”
“I am Billie McCaffrey, and this is Janie Lee Miller. We’re out doing some service projects for Community Church, and wanted to see if you needed anything done.”
“Well, I was about to run to the mill for seeds, but I guess . . .” He places his key on a hook by the door labeled Front Door. “I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything fancy to wet your whistle, but I have water from the tap.”
Sure that he will give us something to do soon, we accept water in juice glasses and the three of us sit in yellow Naugahyde chairs around a white Formica kitchen table. The clock on the wall chirps like a bird, and a cat emerges from beneath the table and lands on my lap. His tag says Otis. He’s ogling the selection of Little Debbie cakes in a bowl. Janie Lee is too. There’s a sign on the bowl that reads Take One. One is underlined.
Mr. Nix lifts a chocolate cake. Midair, he passes the cake to Janie Lee. “Did you know my nurse counts these things?”
She eats the cake, which loses me Otis as a friend.
“Mr. Nix, can you think of anything we might help you do?” Janie Lee asks, wadding the paper from the cake and placing it in her pocket.
“Maybe I should check Gloria’s list,” he says.
Mr. Nix’s late wife, Gloria, is the youngest Corn Dolly recipient to date. When she was the fresh age of twenty-three, she won the 1968 Corn Dolly. Though many have tried, no one has replicated the win. Other Corn Dolly winners are all forty and up. When paired with the fact that Mrs. Nix wasn’t even mildly attractive, or from a well-reputed family, she’s a curiosity among the aging Corn Dolly queens. (This is discussed and debated freely over coffee and cakes because Gloria Nix died and isn’t around to defend herself. She clearly went on living in the heart of Mr. Victor Nix.)
“What did you younguns say you were selling?” Mr. Nix asks, taking a Little Debbie cake from the bowl.
Thinking this man probably needs more company than service, I answer, “We weren’t selling anything, sir, but we’d love to hear more about your lovely wife.”
“God rest her,” Mr. Nix says. “She’s over in Fairfield Memorial. I need to get some flowers for her grave. Maybe I’ll go to the mill later.”
Janie Lee sags a little lower in her chair, but says, “We could help you with that.”
“Oh, that’s so nice,” Mr. Nix tells us. “I’m eighty-three. Did you know I don’t even have to have a picture on my driver’s license anymore?”
From my spot at the table, I have a full view of the front yard. There’s no vehicle parked there. No hook labeled Car Keys by the door.
“Mr. Nix, would you like us to drive you to the mill?” I suggest.
Mr. Nix pats the part in his hair, and then points a withered finger toward a large shed. “Oh, I must have plenty of seeds in the barn. But I’m not supposed to go out there with my hip.” He rubs his left hip, and then his right.
“Mr. Nix, we’ll slip out and check. Then we’ll help you do some planting for your Gloria.”
“Gloria was the most beautiful woman in Otters Holt other than our Hannah,” he tells us. And in his old voice, there’s a kernel of a much younger voice. I see a woman on tiptoe kissing a smooth-skinned man in the same trilby hat under an oak tree in the front yard.
“Key’s around here somewhere.” Mr. Nix pats his pockets.
I lift the key off an equally well-labeled hook by the door, and promise we’ll be right back with seeds. The door closes behind us. We walk slowly on the path to the shed.
“That man—” Janie Lee says.
“Is painfully wonderful,” I finish.
Key to lock, I swing the door wide on its hinges, revealing the shed. There isn’t a packet of seeds to retrieve; there are thousands and thousands. Daisies, sunflowers, marigolds. Bins of seeds. Buckets of seeds. Bunches of bulbs. This man has been going to the mill and forgetting he went to the mill for years.
“What do we do?” she asks.
I sink my arms deep in a barrel, let hundreds of prickly bits cling and fall through my fingers. What a wonder. I can’t tell whether I am insanely happy at the way he has loved this woman or insanely sad that he hasn’t been loved by this woman in so long.
“I think we ask him if we can borrow some seeds for the elementary school,” I say.
“Yes,” Janie Lee agrees.
First, we load our arms with supplies for Gloria. Flowerpots, soil, Miracle-Gro, and seeds. Inside, we pot the seeds while Mr. Nix searches for Gloria’s Corn Dolly. He’s intent on showing us, as if we’ve never seen a Corn Dolly before.