5. Mattie
Mattie
Mattie was dreaming she was dancing, being held in a pair of warm arms as they rocked back and forth to beautiful music, when a spotlight suddenly shone right in her face.
When Mattie opened her eyes, she was greeted by early morning sunshine streaming through the windshield.
But that wasn’t the only thing she saw. All thoughts of going back to sleep fled.
“Dave! Dave, look!” Water drops shone on the water, refracting light into tiny rainbows on the dashboard.
But she pointed past them to the leafy tree branch as thick as her wrist that lay in front of the van.
Mattie scrambled over Dave, who had fallen asleep beside her on her bench bed.
She’d woken in the middle of the night to find herself sprawled across Dave’s chest. He hadn’t seemed to have minded; he had his arm around her, holding her in place.
She’d been comfortable, and the van was too small for her to sleep anyplace else, so she’d closed her eyes again.
Now, she accidentally stepped on his feet as she fumbled with the door handle.
She had to see how much damage the storm had wreaked on her Christmas village pieces.
It was blindingly bright outside. Their neighbours were already packing and cleaning up after the storm.
Apparently, she and Dave had both slept in, despite the storm having kept them awake so late into the night.
She heaved a sigh of relief to find the trailer still firmly attached to the back of the van.
After she cleared several branches that had fallen among the pieces, a quick count revealed that everything was still aboard.
The crystal arbour at the front had been blown thirty degrees sideways and had pushed all the nearby decorations accordingly.
One of the lampposts was missing its lantern top, but she found it under the trailer.
“I think the rest is okay. Do you see any damage?”
Dave didn’t answer her. He was on the other side of the van, talking to the twins’ father. Rather than interrupt him, Mattie climbed onto the trailer and tried to haul the massive arch back into position. She’d barely budged it when Dave grabbed the other side. “Thanks.”
“This was no ordinary storm,” he said.
“Yeah, it was super windy.”
“No, I mean, the radio reports say that we were on the edge of a tornado,” he specified. “It touched down between Moose Jaw and Regina.”
She grabbed a lamppost for support. “What? Was anybody hurt?”
“Nobody’s being reported dead, but there are a lot of injuries. It sounds like there was a ton of property damage too.”
“That’s horrible.”
Dave offered his hand to help her off the trailer.
It took both of them fifteen minutes to put the trailer and all the decorations to rights.
They spent another fifteen piling all the branches from their site with the debris from the campsite next door so both vehicles had a clear path.
When Mattie returned from changing and freshening up, she found Dave shaking hands with the father next door. He returned to her grinning.
“Dave the Magnificent has another gig at the end of the month. Curtis asked if I’ll be in the Calgary area at the beginning of September. I told him I would be, so I booked a show for the boys’ birthday party.”
“Congratulations!”
“Thanks.” His grin faded. “I’ve been listening to the radio.
The TransCanada east of here is a real mess until the far side of Regina.
It’s going to be a slog to get through, and the secondary roads aren’t in any better shape.
I think we’d better start now. With any luck, we’ll make it to Hopewell by suppertime, even if it’s only a four-hour drive by the map. ”
They pulled out of the campground ten minutes later, joining the slow snake of vehicles trying to merge into the highway traffic.
Drivers were considerate of each other, knowing the reason behind the delays.
Their own schedules were secondary when emergency vehicles were passing them with lights flashing.
While they waited at a dead traffic light for a Mountie to wave them through the intersection, Mattie asked, “What kind of shows are you doing in Hopewell?”
“I have two magic shows on the Family Stage of the Diamond Willow Festival. One on Saturday morning, the other Sunday at noon.”
“How did you land something that big without a bunch of reviews? Not that your act isn’t great,” she added in a rush.
“I worked with a guy from Bonnyville whose cousin is on the committee that books the acts. He recommended me.”
“It must have been a fabulous recommendation for them to blind hire you for two shows. I’ll be in the audience leading your cheer team.”
“Maybe afterwards, you’ll let me take you out for a supper date as a thank-you.”
They’d been sharing meals for the last two days, but that was out of necessity, not by choice.
A date with Dave was something entirely different, something she wanted to try.
They’d already discovered several things they had in common, like a love of podcasts and road trips.
She was sure they’d find a bunch more. “I’d like that a lot. ”
Dave inched closer to the intersection. “It’s a date then.”
It took them almost till noon to navigate the highway to the east side of Regina.
They were more than ready to pull over and enjoy a stretch and a real meal instead of the granola bars that had sustained them all morning.
While Dave concentrated on finding a place long enough to accommodate the van and the trailer, Mattie’s attention was drawn to the gaggle of people standing in the corner of the restaurant’s parking lot. “What are they looking at?”
“We can check when we head in for lunch.”
It was nothing either of them wanted to see. Thick, black clouds were gathering on the southern edge of the horizon. A small whirlwind of paper scraps formed by one of the gas pumps and moved across the pavement toward the highway. “Oh, no, not again,” Mattie whispered.
Dave clapped his hands loudly, then said in his attention-commanding Dave the Magnificent voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, I think we should move into the building now. We can keep an eye on the storm from safely inside.”
About half the crowd listened to him, including Mattie, who walked a little faster to ensure they got one of the tables by the windows so she could see the trailer.
Two overworked waitresses did their best to take orders from the crowded tables, but the patrons quickly grew restless between the delays in receiving their menus and the stress of waiting for the storm to arrive.
The clouds were moving fast, bringing wind and rain with them. The sky darkened so quickly that the automatic floodlights outside came on, fooled into thinking the unnatural darkness was night. Mattie’s mouth dried out as she watched the storm draw closer.
“Mattie!”
Dave’s tone told her it wasn’t the first time he’d called her name. “Sorry. What?”
“I want to try out my new trick on you.” He pulled a deck of cards from a pocket in his cargo shorts. He shuffled them on the table, then let them fall in a cascade from one hand to the other. He fanned them out in front of her. “These are ordinary playing cards. Pick one.”
Mattie heard a tiny gasp behind her. Dave’s gaze flickered over her head but quickly returned to her face. “Okay, Dave the Magnificent.” She slid a card from the deck and held it so anybody over her shoulder could see the ace of hearts. “I’ve picked it.”
“Memorize it.”
She squeezed her eyes together. “Got it.”
“Now put it back in the deck.”
Mattie slid the card back into the fan at a different spot.
Dave’s hands danced over the cards as he flicked and shuffled and cut the deck. “Lacka Toot Pate Halitosis!” He tapped the top card and flipped it over. “Is that your card?”
Mattie didn’t have to fake her astonishment. “It is! How did you do that?”
“Magic.”
“Not funny.”
“It’s a little funny,” Dave teased, looking over her shoulder again. This time, a little giggle in her ear answered him. “If your grown-ups say it’s alright, you can pick the next card.”
A moment later, Mattie squished herself into the corner as a little girl reached over the booth and took a card from Dave’s outstretched hands.
“Rooty Tooty Stinky Booty!” The girl gasped as Dave turned over the queen of clubs.
Dinah, the girl, and her parents Angie and Tim, applauded politely and told Dave they had been in Regina for their tweenaged son’s baseball tournament the night before.
Now they were on their way home. Like a lot of the others in the restaurant, they had pulled over when they saw the gathering storm.
Dave pulled quarters from the ears and noses of members of the 13U baseball team heading back to Estevan.
Then he gifted a rose he pulled out of thin air to a young woman in a wheelchair who was travelling to a medical appointment with her parents.
Dave’s running patter kept the patrons’ attention on him instead of on the dark skies outside and overwhelmed waitresses inside.
Suddenly, a broad beam of sunshine lit the edge of the lot where the Magnificent van was parked. The sun had punched through the clouds, which were dissipating without having released a drop of rain. A collective sigh of relief went up as the daylight spread and blue skies returned.
Mattie squinted at the trailer. The wind had buffeted it hard, and it looked like one of the lampposts was tilted. Then, beyond that, she spotted something else. “Oh, no!” When the waitress set her plate in front of her, Mattie scooted past her with an apologetic “I’ll be right back.”
A tall, white-haired man with skinny arms was rocking one of the lampposts on the edge of the trailer.
The plastic wrap that had protected the post for the last thousand kilometres waved like a banner, smacking the guy in the face.
While it was thoughtful that he was trying to prevent the decoration from falling off the trailer, Mattie was horrified at the possibility that it could fall over and crush him. “Stop! Hey, mister, stop!”
He looked up in surprise, like he didn’t expect her to see him. “It’s okay,” Mattie continued. “My friend and I will move it. Thanks for trying to get it back in place, but these suckers weigh a ton. I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” she called as she approached.
The man jumped back, hands out in front of him. Then he ran to a light blue mini truck that had been parked one space over, jumped in, and raced out of the parking lot. Mattie turned her head to avoid the dust and gravel that the spinning tires spat in her face.
She felt a warm hand on her back. “What was that?” Dave asked.
“Somebody noticed that one of my lampposts was sliding off the trailer. He was trying to push it back on all by himself. When I told him to stop, he ran away.”
“That’s weird.”
Mattie walked to the lamppost in question.
It overhung the trailer bed by a few inches.
She looked at the flapping plastic wrap.
The only reason it hadn’t blown away was because one end was caught under the base.
She squished it into a ball. “We can rewrap it after lunch. You need to get back to your fans and make some business cards appear in people’s pockets. ”
Dave took her hand and gave it a supportive squeeze. “Let’s get washed up and have those BLTs. My fans were also asking about your trailer, wondering if it was some kind of Christmas float. They wanted to know if there was a parade they were missing.”
She laughed, squeezing his hand in return. “They’re about four months early for the Christmas parade. I’m just glad they didn’t recognize it from Virginia’s podcast.”