Homecoming in Mossy Creek by Debra Dixon

Author:Debra Dixon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BelleBooks, Inc.
Published: 2011-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

PART EIGHT

The Great Time Capsule Caper

Louise & Peggy, Saturday morning

“Charlie, I need your old fishing waders.”

My husband looked up from the crossword puzzle in this week’s Mossy Creek Gazette, adjusted his bifocals so that he could actually see me, and said without a hint of curiosity, “In the storage closet in the garage. You need a rod and reel, too?”

“I’ll take what I need, thank you.”

He went back to his puzzle. “Louise, what’s a seven letter word for insane? Starts with a ‘b’.”

“Bonkers,” I said and headed for the garage. I pulled two of his yellow hard hats off pegs. He uses them when he consults at construction sites. I unearthed the leather welder’s gloves he used when he took up building metal bird cages, added the waders and suspenders, a couple of respirator masks he used when he varnished his furniture, plus two pairs of the goggles he wears when he cuts wood. I’ve known Charlie long enough to realize that his lack of curiosity about my doings is a game he plays to drive me nuts. So I ignore him. I didn’t even go back to tell him goodbye.

The honey bunny Bouviers were dying to go with me and fascinated by the stuff I accumulated on the back seat of my SUV, but I hardened my heart, suckered them into the back hall and shut the door on them. The last time I let them dig, they’d unearthed a dead body. I put my small cooler of cokes and iced tea on the back seat along with a roll of plastic bags and called Peggy on my cell phone. “I’m on my way. You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

Peggy practically scuttled down her back steps and dove into the passenger seat of my car. She had on her gardening hat, gardening gloves, a heavy long-sleeved denim shirt, baggy jeans and her knee-high rubber muck boots.

“Do you have any idea how ridiculous we look?” she asked.

“We are going to dig in a garbage dump. I’m not wearing Donna Karan.”

The Bigelow county dump is far enough away from Mossy Creek that its odors don’t waft to the good folks who live here. Part of it has already been turned back into a landfill and planted with grass and wildflowers. If everyone recycled, we’d still generate a great deal of debris, but most people still don’t.

Even this far from the Atlantic, flocks of gulls aided by crows and turkey buzzards searched for edibles among the debris. God’s real cleanup crew.

When I was growing up—which was before DDT was outlawed—dozens of buzzards roosted nightly in a dead tree in my grandfather’s pasture. Then they all but disappeared. Now, they’re back on duty, cleaning up road kill, so we don’t have to. I know they look ugly on the ground, but when the day is clear, I swear they go soaring for the sheer joy of it.

We, however, are not buzzards. I find no joy in the mess we leave behind. Nor in the smell.

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