Silver and Spice

completely that it wasn’t just Jake next to her, but Jake-who-came-back-threatening-marriage-this-time. “Do you want a snack?” she asked suddenly.

“Restless, Anne?”

“Terribly,” she lied, as she got up, ducking under the overhead berth to head to the back of the motor home. “I warned you I wasn’t a very good traveler, Jake, much less a camper. I can’t imagine where we’re going to find a place to stay in country like this tonight.”

“Fildekirky, Iowa,” Jake called back to her.

In spite of herself, she chuckled at the sound of the name, and started opening cupboards.

“If you find a doughnut back there…”

She brought him a bag of dried pineapple slices, which would be much better for him than a doughnut and would still satisfy his sweet tooth, then returned to the miniature kitchen to make herself a cup of peppermint tea. It still amazed her that she could get up anytime she liked and make a cup of peppermint tea while driving.

A moment later, she took a sip of her brew, glancing around before going back to sit by Jake. The motor home, she decided, was a symbol of the impermanence of Jake’s lifestyle. It represented the unbridgeable distance between them…but she seemed to be falling in love with the darned thing. Everything was so meticulously neat; there was a place for everything, home comforts begging to be taken advantage of.

She’d had three days to rearrange everything, of course. Her yogurt had joined his beer, fresh fruits and vegetables supplemented his canned goods, sleeping bags had been replaced by percale sheets on both the double bed and her berth. Next to his paper plates and plastic forks were china and sterling. Her wardrobe provided a contrast to his; traveling suits to his jeans, high-heeled shoes to his tennies.

She’d deliberately gone overboard, right down to the brands of toothpaste she’d chosen, in an effort to impress Jake that their values were terribly different even in the little things. Taking a minute to reapply lipstick in their tiny bathroom, Anne took in her reflection, from the high-throated blouse and modest violet skirt to the prim coil of hair at the nape of her neck. The image was honestly Anne, soft fabrics and gentle colors and classic styles. She was not flamboyant and never would be; she was not at all the kind of woman she expected Jake to end up with.

Fleetingly, her soft jade eyes met their reflection in the mirror; her expression was oddly distressed at that moment. Surprisingly, she was happy to be with Jake. She had always been all too happy to be with Jake, at least until he’d brought up the subject of marriage. She knew that yogurt versus beer wasn’t the issue; rather, the crux of the matter was their different systems of values. Her craving for roots and stability and order… Lord, you’re boring, she told the mirror wryly.

And the man hadn’t touched her since she’d agreed to the trip. His restraint was making her nervous. She’d heard what he said about proving they had something more than sex between them, but Jake’s blood had certainly never run tepid before… You’re supposed to be boring him, she reminded herself. You should be happy he’s keeping his hands to himself.

Still, though, a little kiss wouldn’t cost him much, her libido grumbled. Would you stop that? Grabbing a newspaper, she walked back to the captain’s chair next to Jake, wearing her most formal, boring smile. “I’m going to read aloud to you from the Wall Street Journal so you won’t get restless,” she announced to him cheerfully. “Do you want to hear about common stocks or blue chips first, Jake?”

His crooked grin had a little too much Chesire cat in it for Anne to feel comfortable. She decided on blue chips. Most days, they even bored her.

The dot on the map for Fildekirky was an overstatement. Anne, buried under campground directories and road maps, was by now heartily sick of cornfields. Once she’d directed Jake to the expressway exit he wanted, her nerves quieted down with an expectation that never materialized.

“This is it?” she asked him unbelievingly.

A shabby little diner sat on one corner, a gas station on another. Three pickup trucks took up the restaurant’s parking lot, such as it was. A mongrel dog wandered along the middle of the main street. Late afternoon sun was pouring down in long yellow rays on the silence.

“I had a feeling your love affair with Iowa wouldn’t last,” Jake said lazily. “Not that you can judge any state by the view from its highways. Tomorrow will be quite different, Anne, but I have a feeling the campground will surprise you. I’ve been here before.”

The campground did surprise her. There were trees.

Gingerly, Anne stepped out of the motor home as Jake sauntered into a wooden A-frame building to check in. She felt like a toddler just learning to walk as her feet touched solid ground.

The A-frame and huge maples blocked her view of the actual campground. She’d already decided the trees were imported. Across the road were another five trillion acres of farmland and nothing else. At least there was a huge green tractor to relieve the monotony, but she had no real hope for the view behind the thick row of bushes and maple trees.

She glanced toward the door of the A-frame. Jake was taking forever. Smells assaulted her nostrils, the scents of rich brown earth and green leaves, not unpleasant. Rubbing at a kink in her neck from all the traveling, she wandered around one side of the building. A cool breeze had picked up the hint of a September night; a few of the maple leaves had started to turn gold and russet. The campground owners had planted a wild profusion of marigolds and asters, their perky colors splashing over the stone walk as she meandered farther. The place wasn’t totally uncivilized…

A fat white duck suddenly waddled in her direction, squawking belligerently. Startled, Anne glanced up. Her eyes widened in surprise. A narrow creek wandered like a serpent between shaded campsites; in the middle of the creek was a strange redwood structure that looked like a miniature fort mounted on wooden stilts with a rustic ladder leading up to its entrance. The place was almost pretty; the ambience had clearly been created to provide a quiet night’s rest for a stranger…barring the ducks.

White duck had friends. All of them seemed to catch sight of her at the same time, and instantly waddled forward to welcome her. There seemed to be thousands of them… Well, four dozen, anyway. Fat ducks, skinny ones, some white and some brightly feathered, all quacking unlyrically. Laughing helplessly, Anne bent down to pet one, and found a dozen yellow beaks very gently trying to devour her hand.

“It sounds good, but don’t believe a word you hear,” Jake suggested dryly from behind her.

“They’re obviously hungry.” She blinked. The squawking cacophony reached a dangerous decibel level. “Jake, they’re terribly hungry…”

“We’re just an hour ahead of the usual camper trade. By eight o’clock, those ducks will be so full they’ll sink if they try to swim, and Rochester-the owner of the campground-will pocket mucho dinero for every wee handful of feed he sells.”

“Oh? He sells the feed?” Anne questioned absently, her hand still stroking the silky feathers of the closest duck. She glanced up a moment later to find Jake studying her with one of his half-baked grins.

“Anne, don’t you think you’d better free yourself from your admirers before they nibble your immaculate nylon stockings to shreds?”

Anne threw him a speaking glance and waded through the ruffled feathers and outraged quacks to head for the door of the A-frame office. The screen door clapped shut behind her as she entered. Inside was a dizzying array of products for sale, from milk to Penthouse magazine, from ivory chess sets to canned soup. Behind the long counter, she noticed travel guides, diapers next to spark plugs, sunglasses next to aspirin. A short, cigar-smoking man stood waiting; a plaid shirt was stretched tightly over his watermelon-sized stomach. “Well, hi, little honey.”

“Hi.” She spotted the cardboard box filled with cellophane-wrapped packages of duck feed. Fifty cents for a handful. Robbery, sheer robbery. Instinctively, Anne clutched her purse in tight fingers for a second. She never even allowed pennies to collect in the bottom of her purse; it wasn’t in her nature to let herself be taken in by the owner of a tourist trap. On the other hand, it wasn’t in her nature to let the poor ducks be victimized, either.

“One or two, ma’am?”

Her voice seemed to come from a distance as her left hand forced her right hand to release its hold on her purse. “I’ll take all of it,” she told the man grimly.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am?”

“If they eat all of what you have in that box in a day, I’ll take it all,” Anne enunciated clearly.

Jake burst out laughing when he saw her emerge from the building laden with little cellophane packages, but