“Ohh,” she muttered to herself as she lifted the phone back to her ear, “I’m gonna kill him.”
“Kill who?” Maggie said. “What did I miss? Tell me everything — and don’t leave out a single word.”
Four
Half an hour later Candy was out in the rickety old barn, cursing loudly as she struggled with a four-by-eight sheet of plywood, when she heard a truck in the driveway.
“Dad, you’re back!” she blurted as she poked her head out the barn door.
But it wasn’t her father.
“Oh, Ray, it’s you,” she said as the local handyman climbed out of his tan Toyota pickup, which was nearly as old and beat up as her father’s Ford.
“Howdy, Miss Candy.” Ray Hutchins greeted her with a tip of his well-worn Red Sox baseball cap, revealing a mop of uncombed dark hair that was starting to go gray. “Doc said I should stop by to help you out.” He pronounced it
Trying hard to hide her disappointment, Candy waved him into the barn. “It’s a new booth for the festival tomorrow. Might as well come on in, long as you’re here.”
Ray’s head bobbed happily. “Sure, Miss Candy, be glad to,” and he grabbed his toolbox from the back of the truck and ambled over to the barn with that odd gait of his. It was as if the bones in his shoulders and legs had been fitted together all wrong, making his body seem disjointed. The way he walked reminded Candy of a marionette.
Ray was about ten years older than she was, tall and lean, with an innocent smile and droopy eyes that seemed ready to slide off the sides of his face. Thirty years ago he would have been called something cruel and unfortunate, but these days when folks around town talked about Ray, they often referred to him as being “special” or “mentally challenged.” Even that was hardly accurate, though. Ray would never be considered an intellectual giant, true, but he’d finished high school, and he had more common sense and life knowledge than many gave him credit for. More important, he was a gentle, kind soul who made his living with his hands as a talented carpenter, capable plumber and electrician, and overall handyman.
Doc had him out to Blueberry Acres every few weeks or so, fixing one thing or another — building shelves in the den or putting in a few extra electrical outlets in the basement or repairing some of the outbuildings. Ray didn’t seem to have a problem doing any of those things when he was working for Doc. But when he got around Candy, all his carefully honed skills seemed to leach right out of him, and he often was reduced to the level of a shy, awkward schoolboy.
Which was one problem Candy didn’t need today.
“Have you heard about Jock?” Ray asked as he followed her into the barn.
Perhaps a bit too distractedly, she said, “I’ve heard. It’s a terrible tragedy, really.”
“Sure is. Terrible, terrible.” Ray pronounced it
He shook his head sadly. “Jock and me was related, you know.”
Candy stopped and looked at him curiously. “No, I didn’t know that. Were you two cousins?”
Ray blinked shyly and his face reddened just a bit. “Sort of. His mama’s husband was my mama’s second cousin.”
“Oh. I see.” Candy had to think about that a moment. “So he was, what, your second or third cousin-in- law?”
“Um, yeah, I guess.”
“So did you and Jock see each other much? You guys talk a lot?”
“Oh no. He was a real busy person, you know. Real famous. We didn’t get together much. But when we was younger we used to hang out sometimes at the diner. He tried to fix me up with a girl once.”
“I bet you’re going to miss him.”
“Yup. Yup I am. He was a real good man.”
“He sure was.” Candy fought an urge to glance at her watch. “So, you ready to get started?”
“Yup, sure am.”
Candy clapped her hands together. “Okay, here’s what we’ve got,” she said as she walked farther into the barn, pointing to a pile of wood near the back. “It’s a simple project — a three-sided booth with a wide counter in the front for displaying items for sale. I thought I’d hinge the sides so I can fold them in and load the whole thing into Doc’s truck.” She picked up the brass hinges that sat on a swaybacked bench along the back wall, then indicated a pile of raw wood nearby.
“Doc’s already got all the wood we need. There are extra two-by-fours to use as crossbeams across the top of the booth to stabilize it. And I’m working on the banner I’ll hang across the front.”
She pointed to the five-foot-long swath of canvas nearby, with the words HOLLIDAY’S BLUEBERRY ACRES, CAPE WILLINGTON, MAINE sketched out in pencil along its length.
“I’d also like to build some shelves into the back side of the front display section,” Candy continued, “and maybe we can put some hooks in the crossbeams so I can hang up a few of the gift baskets for show.”
Ray listened to her carefully, surveyed the materials and what she’d done so far, and set to work without a word. Doc had already cut some of the two-by-fours and marked the quarter-inch sheets of plywood for cutting. Ray walked back to his truck to get a cordless circular saw, and for the next half hour or so the summer air was filled with the smells of sawdust and the shriek of metal teeth cutting into raw wood, mixing in with the buzzing of honeybees, the chirps and trills of sparrows and terns, and the earthy smells coming off the blueberry barrens and surrounding woods.
For the most part Ray worked silently, his mouth drawn into a tight thoughtful line, his hands fumbling about a bit more than usual. Candy regularly caught him glancing her way. She was used to glances like that. She knew that, at thirty-six, she still looked pretty good in a pair of jeans — not because she exercised a lot (which she hated to do) but because she did lots of farmwork. (“Who needs a gym,” Doc often said, “when you’ve got a blueberry farm?”) The sun had added some color to her high, full cheekbones this summer and a touch of rosemary honey to the tips of her hair. It contrasted nicely with her eyes, which were a light shade of blue but bright — “the color of forget-me-nots in the spring,” her mother used to tell her. And that morning she’d slipped on a faded red T-shirt, which clung to her a little more than she would have liked on this hot, humid July afternoon.
Thank God she’d remembered to wear a bra.
After awhile Ray settled down to business, his eyes focused on the work in front of him more than on Candy’s figure, and the booth began to take shape.
At around three thirty they took a break. Candy invited Ray into the kitchen for some fresh-baked blueberry pie. Ray’s nervousness made him fidgety and restless. In a moment of carelessness he knocked his water glass to the floor, shattering it, and tipped over a chair when he turned around too fast. Sweat began to break out on his forehead. He mumbled a lot, shifted his eyes this way and that, and even had to ask directions to the bathroom.
“Ray, you’ve been here plenty of times before. You know where it’s at,” Candy said, a note of frustration creeping into her voice. Struggling to hold back a sigh, she pointed him to the proper door. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings but she had too much to do today, and didn’t have time to deal with these kinds of delays.
Chastised, Ray dropped his head as he walked down the hall and closed the bathroom door behind him.
Once they were back outside, Candy decided Ray needed a few minutes alone to settle down, so she left him in the barn while she went out back to check on her chickens.
Ray had helped her build the chicken coop last fall, right after she purchased the “girls,” as she called them. She’d opted for bantam hens — mostly because she had been so taken with the small, squat black and white birds as she walked past them in the poultry shed at the Common Ground Country Fair up in Unity. She’d bought six hens on impulse that very day. Doc had grumbled a bit as he loaded the cage into the back of the truck, but he soon warmed to the idea.
Back home, Candy had been surprised to find that in short order she developed a strange affection for her little flock. She discovered that each hen had a distinctive personality and a little routine, and they seemed to listen
