16 BEN #2
“Don’t listen to these two, never had a nice word to say about nobody,” a stylish older Black man joins us.
“Uncle Tyrone! Babe, uh, remember he owns Let It Spin, not the grill,” Janie quickly says to me.
“Yes sir, I’ve heard so much about your…” What the hell is let it spin? “Store.”
The man laughs a huge guffaw at me. “Can’t bullshit a bullshittah, my boy,” he says as he shakes my hand. I smile, trying to pin his subtle accent. Jamaican, I’m guessing.
“You caught me, I keep getting the shops mixed up.”
“Records. Spin, get it? It’s a record store. Please don’t ask how it’s going!” He laughs again.
“Uncle Ty,” Janie starts, “I’ve told you before, let me look at your books. I’m helping Harper too, give me your spreadsheets and let me tinker.” She wiggles her fingers and her eyes genuinely sparkle at the idea.
“You see how she gets the crazy eyes?” He teases Janie and a flicker of something crosses over her face, but it’s gone as he keeps talking, “No, thank you, baby girl, I’ll let my store die a slow, dignified death an’ then Imma go too.”
“Oh, Tyrone, give it a rest,” Bobbie rolls her eyes at him. He makes a face at her. An actual tongue-out face like a toddler. I can’t help but laugh.
A bell chimes in the square and people start to take their places.
“Nice to meet you, Ben. Anybody good enough for our Janie’s good enough for me.” Tyrone says, grabbing the two women his age by their elbows.
“Good luck. You’re going to need it,” Bobbie says with obvious disdain before finally releasing us from her passive-aggressive vortex.
“Oh, Barbara Ann, give him a break, Janie’ll be hard enough on him.” Kim whispers as they leave.
I wince, “Well, that could have gone better.”
Janie snorts, “Not really. Tyrone loves everyone. Aunt Bobbie is the opposite. Gran was that way too. Aunt Kim was always in the middle trying to make them be nice. The town called the three of them the trifecta. They knew everything and everyone and disapproved of most of it.” she says, looking at the retreating, grumpy women with respect and a bit of awe.
I see where she gets it, then. She turns her head to glare at me, “But that’s why I put a note that said, ‘Do not try to charm her’ right next to her name in the spreadsheet. ”
“I’m sorry, darling, I saw the title said events, below that was a list of events.” She’s still glaring. “I only opened it on my phone.”
Finally she blinks. “I guess it is hard to see the bottom tabs on your phone.”
“ So bloody hard. Damned Google Sheets app is a menace,” I say, going overboard. She almost smiles.
“When do I get to meet the third member of the trifecta?” I ask gently. I know her grandmother is not well, but beyond that, I’m unsure.
“Soon. Not today, though,” Janie looks away, clearly not wanting to explain.
“Alright everyone!” A loud, deep voice screeches through the square. “So glad you could make it to our twelfth annual Juniper Falls Scarecrow Creation Contest!” I spot a large man who looks as if he thinks he’s very important.
“Let me guess, that’s the mayor?” I ask, trying to make amends.
“No. The mayor is Bear, which was,” she draws out the word.
“In the spreadsheet,” I finish for her.
“Yes,” she clenches her jaw and quickly gets me up to speed.
“That is the assistant to the mayor, a role filled by a human being because Bear the Reindeer is the mayor of our town. Yes, an actual mayor, and yes Bear is his name because he is supposedly huge but no one has actually seen him in like ten years.”
“The mayor of the town is a mystical reindeer.” I say, trying to keep a straight face.
“Look around, Benedict, are you really all that surprised?”
Before I can reply, the assistant to the mayor gestures toward us, saying something about how glad he is we could all make it. He wags his eyebrows at me and I get it. Famous person, small town. Very exciting.
“Now, remember the rules, use what you brought and when the timer sounds at thirty minutes,” he blows a bullhorn and everyone winces. “Drop everything. Good luck and, as this is our first official event, I can finally say, Happy Jolly Juniper Days!”
Everyone cheers. I clap and eye my partner, who is actually clapping. Her face is filled with dread though.
I look around, searching for the scarecrow frame. “Come now, timer’s started. I did some Googling,” I say, nodding. “But where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“The scarecrow.”
Janie picks up a long, thin piece of wood. “Um, here? We have to make it.”
“What?” I start to sweat a bit, oddly nervous. “Fine, and we? Where’s the rest of our team?”
“You know, you need to actually read the documents people send you!” She’s back to whisper-yelling. It’s less hot without the leaning and cleavage like that night in Vegas. Still stirs something in me, though. She motions between us. “This is it! You and me! It’s a couple’s contest!”
“Oh hell,” I say, my face falling.
“It’s fine,” she rubs her forehead, “We don’t have to win or anything. It’s just for photos, right?”
“Right,” I say but I don’t think she thinks it’s fine. I think she’s more competitive than she lets on. She picks up another skinny pole thing. I ask, a bit scared, “How do we make that stick into a scarecrow?”
“According to YouTube, we make a t-shape?” She holds her arms straight out. “So arms out, we put pants on the bottom. Boom. Scarecrow.”
“Pants?” I ask, looking down.
She sighs, “Calm down, I brought some of my brother’s old clothes. We’re not going to use your thousand dollar jeans, Boss.”
“Ben.”
She ignores me and holds up the two poles to make a T, and asks, “Do you know how to use a nail gun?”
“How hard can it be?” I ask, grabbing the gun she nodded at on the ground. I shoot a nail into the grass then immediately jump and drop the thing. “What! Why is this so powerful!”
Her hold on the poles relaxes as she looks up at the sky and exhales, “Tell me we are not going to end up in the ER tonight.”
“No, because we’re not touching that thing.
It’s like they’ve handed each couple an assault rifle!
Let’s hire it out!” I say, still a bit shocked.
I’ve been skeet shooting many times. Quail hunting too.
Not my favorite activity but a requirement of my upbringing.
That power tool could be used for either.
“Well, Mr. Money Bags, did you bring your fancy interior decorator with you?” I sigh. “How about a glue gun?” She presses and I exhale through my nose. “Uh huh. So you hold the sticks, I’ll shoot it in place.” She moves to pick up the nail gun.
“The hell you will!” I stop her. “Step back, woman! Put those things on the ground in a T-shape and I’ll shoot it in the grass. Don’t touch that thing. This is barbaric.”
I look up to make sure she’s doing what I asked and she…
She’s smiling.
Wide and free.
Wow.
“What?” She says, the smile fading.
“Nothing, just, uh, looked like maybe you were laughing at me.”
“Oh, I was absolutely laughing at you, Bossman.”
I try to shake off whatever just happened to the rhythm of my heartbeat just then, “Let’s just get this sorted, eh?”
And we do, for the most part. Janie brought a T-shirt, cargo pants, a plaid jacket and even gloves.
She stuffed the body with hay from a nearby bale.
I’m fairly certain we weren’t authorized to take the hay bale from the surrounding decorative displays but Janie said we absolutely could not just leave the fabric hanging empty.
But now there’s only a few minutes left and, as if we both weren’t on edge enough with the town watching, the paps circling and time running out, the Mayor, I mean Assistant Mayor Gary Chappel is piping a tick-tock sound into the overhead speakers.
“I forgot about the head, what do we do for a head?” Janie asks.
“You’re asking me?”
“Well, would you like to contribute anything to this project, sweetheart?” She sneers, smiling because she knows the cameras are snapping away. Though I’m not sure this is the look she wants to give them.
“Uh, uh, here!” I grab the first circular thing I see.
“A dirty paper plate?!”
“We can draw a face on it.”
She holds it up, “Yeah, sure, we’ll just make the giant nasty chili stai n his nose.”
“Right, not a good look, okay.” I say, scanning for something, anything. “Fine, this!” I take a few steps over to the pumpkin at the edge of our corner of the square. It’s the same as the decorative hay bales, probably not allowed but, desperate times and all.
“Hm, okay,” she says. But then I try to pick it up.
“Kill me now, it weighs a hundred stone.”
“A hundred what? We have like a minute left!” She wails.
“Heavy! It’s too bloody heavy!” I wail right back.
She looks across the square, then back to me. “Find a sharpie. I’ll be back.” I nod and watch her run away. Her long puffer jacket covers her glorious ass. Pity. She disappears from view and I shake myself back to the present. Right. Sharpie. I go on a quick hunt.
A moment later she’s back, “Did you find one?”
“Yes, but I think that man might faint,” I say, waving at the couple beside us.
“Steven? Oh yes, you probably made his year. Less about you, more about this scarecrow!” She grabs the sharpie, draws a smiley and then hands me a very small, white-ish round pumpkin, now with a face on it.
“Okay, what’m I to do with this?”
“Shove it on there,” she says, as if it’s the most obvious thing she’s ever said.
“Shove it on? On the top?”
“Yeah, stab it.”
I look from her expectant face, so bloody competitive, then the little gourd, then the top of our scarecrow’s body. It’s a small wooden pole but it’s not pointed at the end.
“Love, I’m no carpenter, but I don’t think I can just impale this thing on a blunt end.”
“You can, you have those big muscles under that fancy coat, just force it, really hard.” She’s nodding and waiting and I’m short-circuiting.
Because I never would have guessed she noticed anything about my body. Big muscles, eh? Big muscles good, big muscles bad? Too big? Not big enough? Samantha said Theo was jacked, I—
“Thirty seconds!” the assistant mayor calls on the megaphone.
“Come on! Do it, Benedict, quick!
“Darling, big as my muscles may be,” she rolls her eyes, “this is not going to—”
“Just force it!”
“Alright!” I grab a step stool to get atop the ugly creation and with the timer counting down, I look at Janie one more time to be sure. She widens her eyes an alarming amount. I grit my teeth, raise the thing and pound it down on the blunt shaft as hard as I can.
“TIME!” The mayor calls.
Janie releases a terrified shriek.
I almost fall off the step stool.
Steven, I think, gasps beside us.
And he’s not the only one.
Because the pumpkin exploded.
In my hands, across my shirt under my open coat, down our scarecrow, and, I realize, across Janie’s face.
“Shit!” I say, climbing down to her. “Guess I overdid it.”
“You think? I mean I know I said force it but—” She frowns up at me, angry and so damn beautiful.
Without thinking I step down, grab her head, and use my thumbs to wipe the gourd’s guts off of her face.
She stops talking mid-sentence. I can hear the flurry of people and the snap of camera lenses around us but it’s all… muted.
She’s just staring at me, gray eyes wide and searching. Her full, pink lips are parted. Her cheeks are flushed from the chill in the air or the rush of the contest.
“You are so gorgeous.” I say quietly. She blinks a couple times, slowly, like she’s caught in a spell of sorts. Just like me. The photographers are calling out, trying to get a shot. “Can I kiss you now?” I whisper.
“What?!”
Spell broken.
She yanks out of my grasp and furrows her brow even more than before our little moment.
“No, no, I’m, I’m so gross. Ew. And,” she’s stammering, wiping her face. “Look at your shirt, ugh. Look at our scarecrow! Man, what a mess.”
“Sorry, I really am,” I say, hating how disappointed she sounds.
She exhales. “It’s okay, it’s not like we could really compete anyway.
Look at that thing.” She points to the couple beside us, both men beaming from ear to ear as they accept their award.
Their scarecrow looks like something from storybooks, with overalls, a straw hat, posed arms and, what, a wood carved face? They had time to whittle over there?
“Damn.” I say. I watch the couple accept their award. “Wait, that one only got third place?” I ask in shock.
“I tried to warn you, boss. This town is. Completely. Insane.”
“Completely,” I mutter as she throws down a rag she’d picked up to wipe her face with. With a defeated wave at the third placers, she starts to walk away.
I follow, equally defeated.
The twitchy feeling is back too. Why? What’s happening to me? Honestly, so what if we almost kissed? It was just for the paps and she was right, there would have been some pumpkin goo involved.
Who cares? Not me. I just wanted to have fun anyway, right?
We didn’t kiss. Fine.
We didn’t win. Fine.
I’m not bothered.
We did what we set out to do. End of.
First town appearance is in the books.
Now I bet she’ll shoo me away back to the city. Where I will read every single syllable of the spreadsheet she sent. Whenever the next activity comes, I’ll be ready.