Fool's Puzzle by Earlene Fowler (reading eggs books .TXT) 📕

jerked my thumb at the professor, who, with an ecstatic expression and outstretched arms, imitated condor flight. A couple of bemused-looking elderly ladies at a front table leaned back slightly in their chairs as he swooped in their direction. “Believe me, Elvia, he’ll never notice.”

On the passenger side of Marla’s blue Volkswagen van, in front of an extra-wide visor mirror, my cousin Rita practiced her smoky-eyed, pouty look. In the back seat, eyes closed, Eric bobbed his head to the Walkman sprouting from his ears.

“Where have you been?” I propped my elbows on the window ledge. “It’s an open question,” I added in a loud voice. Without opening his eyes, Eric threw me a two-finger kiss.

“Around,” Rita said. She poked at her shoulder-length Dolly Parton hair with a bright pink fingernail.

Superficially, our looks affirm our familial connection, though I’m still not convinced of the Southern dictum declaring fifth cousins, or whatever we are, family. At slightly over five feet tall with curly, reddish-blond hair and hazel eyes, we sound the same on paper, the difference being I use one can of hairspray a year where she is personally responsible for at least a half-mile hole of ruined ozone layer.

“Garnet’s going nuts,” I said. “Would you give her a call so she’ll quit bugging Dove who will then quit bugging me?”

“She’s just here to deliver a message from Mama,” she said. “And I know what it is. Come home now.” She pumped a tube of mascara, and flashing the whites of her eyes, applied what had to be a fifth coat. “Thanks, but I’ll pass. I’m through with the South. I’m a Westerner now.”

“Well, do whatever you want. Just be careful.”

“I intend to.” She smiled chimpanzee-wide, and rubbed at a spot of pink lipstick on her teeth.

“Be careful?” I asked hopefully.

She laughed and snapped the visor up. “Right. Loosen up, Benni. You sound like my mother.”

“Your way of loosening up is a bit risky for me,” I said. The psychic mileage between age twenty-one and thirty-four beat the distance to Mars.

“You two done squabbling?” Marla said from the driver’s seat. “Some people have work to get done.”

“Lock the studio doors behind you,” I called after them. “And get those quilts hung.” Eric’s head bobbed up and down, though I suspected it had nothing to do with my request.

By the time I walked back downstairs, Professor Murphy had finished his flight and was signing books.

“And what is your name, young lady?” He poised a chubby hand over the flyleaf of my copy.

“Dove Ramsey,” I said. Now she wouldn’t even be able to recycle it. Garnet owed me; it probably would have been her next birthday present.

“Lovely bird, the dove.” He signed his name with a flourish. “Not a condor, but a lovely bird, nonetheless.”

I spent the next hour upstairs in the bookstore attempting some half-hearted Christmas shopping. I chose a book on championship poker strategy for Dove, to make up for the condor book. The updated Veterinary Handbook for Cattlemen took care of Daddy. But before making a bigger dent in my list, I became engrossed in an oral-history book chronicling the lives of Midwestern farm women during the Dust Bowl years of the 1930’s. Edith Bennett was saying how hard her husband took it seeing the farm blow away, how he took his pain out gettin‘ mad with her and how a woman always seems more able to rise above it, take more hurting and keep on going. Then she gave her recipe for Mock Apple Pie made with soda crackers. As I was mentally rolling out the crust along with her, the store’s lights blinked twice and the round schoolhouse clock in the children’s department chimed ten o’clock.

At the front of the store Elvia helped with the last-minute rush of customers. When I caught her eye, she raised her eyebrows in question.

“When you have time, put these on my account,” I said over the crowd. I shoved the books across the counter to her.

“Thanks for coming, gringa,” she said. “Even if you embarrassed all my senior citizens with your obscene questions.”

“Just trying to add a little excitement to the dry tomes of avian academia.”

She rolled her eyes and turned back to the cash register.

I hurried toward my truck, pulling up the collar of my jacket against the cold mist swirling around me. Annoyed at myself for not thinking to give the extra keys to Marla that morning, I tried not to think about the warm bed waiting for me at home.

The truck tires hissed over wet, luminous streets as I drove the two miles to the museum. Just before I turned into the parking lot, Marla’s van sped past me. Rita was driving. Alone. I honked once and waved. She either didn’t see me or ignored me. She must be going out to get food, I thought.

I’d discovered since working at the co-op that most craftspeople, once they finally started, didn’t like to take the time to stop for meals, so munched along as they worked. Marla was no exception. I mentally congratulated Marla for putting Rita to some use.

Parking lot gravel popped and cracked like rice cereal under my Reeboks as I walked toward the museum. The front door yawned at me.

“Well, that’s just great,” I said out loud. So much for security. Pulling the door closed behind me and locking it, I walked past the still-unfinished quilt exhibit, across the patio and into the main studio, my feelings cascading from anger to frustration to resignation because there was nothing you could do to force people into being anything but what they are.

The area around the potter’s wheel informed me Marla was still working. A pot posed half-formed on the wheel; clay, water, rags, two cans of Diet Coke and an empty bag of corn chips decorated a worktable nearby. Somewhere a radio played low—Johnny Cash was falling into a ring of fire. I hugged my jacket closer and envied him.

“Marla?” I called out. “Eric?” My voice