Bluegrass Courtship. Allie Pleiter

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СКАЧАТЬ the preschool was a muddy mess since the storm. The portion of the church that had housed the school had been a patchwork of make-do and as-we-get-the-funds repairs for weeks, leaving the church looking wounded and bandaged in a collection of tarps.

      Janet looked up as she crossed the church lawn to see that the preschool wing of the church was now completely gone. Simply cut right off the end, like a corner off a sheet cake. That side of the building stood neatly swathed in blue plastic tarps nailed down to the remaining walls with strips of lumber so that the unpredictable winds of a Kentucky autumn couldn’t snatch them away. People clad in white hard hats swarmed over the site and clustered around members of the design team.

      “Hey, look out there!” Janet’s astonished reverie was broken by a crew member’s hand grabbing her elbow just before she would have tripped over a wiggling black cable. It was then that she noticed the cameras. There must have been six of them, shouldered by a camera crew that poked in and out of the clustered workers. Three of them, naturally, were trained on Drew Downing. One cameraman was trying, as gracefully as possible, to get Howard Epson to move so he could shoot the rest of the community’s participation.

      And participate they had. As she began to recognize face after face out of the green-shirted crowd, nearly everyone Janet knew in Middleburg was either helping on the site or watching from the sidewalks. The girls Downing had commissioned to recruit the high school had evidently been quite successful—Janet guessed she was looking at the entire senior class. High school seniors up at seven in the morning on a Saturday? Maybe Downing did have the power of the Almighty working on his behalf.

      Or, more likely, the glare of the television lights.

      As if he’d heard her thoughts, Drew Downing began walking in her direction. With two cameras in tow. I knew it’d get like this.

      “Did you ever think you’d see a hardware spectacle?” Drew asked, pulling a measuring tape off his tool belt and depositing it on a table beside him with an unceremonious thunk. “I love demolition day. It’s more fun than anyone should be allowed to have on television.”

      And that, Janet thought, is just the point. Demolition was serious, even dangerous business. She hoped Missionnovation took safety as seriously as entertainment.

      “You’ve come just in time—this ought to be fabulous. Ever pull a wall down before?”

      “Yes,” Janet said without any hint of excitement.

      Drew pointed at her. “With your bare hands?” He thrust his hands into a large box to his left and pulled out a white hard hat with the green Missionnovation logo. He held it out to Janet.

      “C’mon, lend a hand,” Downing said, offering the hat with a gigawatt smile. “You might have a bit of fun if you’re not careful. But don’t worry, we’re careful, too.” He motioned toward the line of people gathering across from a trio of ropes that were tied to the church’s remaining West wall.

      “We’ve decided to replace the church’s entire roof for you, too,” he said as they began walking. “Kevin’s got an idea to create a garden outside the school windows. It’ll even have a miniature cistern to retain rainwater. You know, teach the kids about ecology and water preservation.”

      Okay, perhaps it was a little impressive. The church had been in dire need of structural improvements even back when she was involved, and based on her mom’s conversation not much had changed in the years she’d stayed away. “Have you looked into a full system that feeds off all the roof gutters? If you’re going to replace the whole roof anyway, why not alter it into a rainwater retrieval system for the entire church?”

      He stopped for a moment, taken aback by her suggestion. “We might take a serious look at that. How many other ideas do you have lurking in the back of that head of yours?”

      Janet decided not to suppress the smile that crept across her face. “Probably more than you want to hear.”

      He grinned as he settled a hard hat down onto his own head. “Let’s test that theory. After we yank this baby down, that is.”

      Howard was getting in the way of things, determined to be at the head of the line until Drew handed Howard his megaphone and insisted that only the Mayor could give the command to pull. Now, one should always think twice before handing Howard Epson a megaphone, but he kept his speech down to an endurable thirty seconds before yelling, “One, two, three, pull!”

      And, just like Jericho, the wall came a-tumblin’ down in what, Janet had to admit, was an enthusiastic but highly controlled manner.

      A second team immediately slid a temporary wall into place that would protect the existing rooms while the framework for the new school wing was constructed. Kevin and Mike walked through the cheering crowd with a collection of bright green crowbars, showing volunteers how to dismantle the fallen lumber and remove the nails. Like happy ants in green T-shirts, volunteers began crawling over the wall, breaking it up and carrying it away. Janet permitted herself a smidge of admiration. They were doing it right.

      Until someone started singing. The crowd joined in, and when she caught sight of her mother conducting half the women’s guild with a crowbar, Janet walked off, depositing her hard hat on a table with an annoyed grumble.

      Vern met her at the door of the hardware store. She took the day’s mail from him and pointed back in the direction of the church. “They’re singing. It’s like a scene from The Sound of Music over there—people in matching outfits chirping away.”

      “I can hear ’em,” Vern said. He scratched his chin and narrowed his eyes. “What you got against happy people all of a sudden? Maybe it ain’t Sound of Music. Maybe it’s Snow White and I’m a’starin’ right at Grumpy.”

      “I am not grumpy.”

      Vern leaned against the door and adjusted his cap. “You’ve been a whole truckload of grumpy since those television folks came into town. I know I had my doubts when they got here, but they seem like good folk to me. I watched them set up yesterday. Good work. Maybe we should give them a little more credit for what they’re tryin’ to do. Ain’t no harm if they have a little fun in the process.”

      Janet’s jaw dropped. That was the closest thing to a lecture Vern had given her in ages. He’d eyed her, drug his feet at some of the things she’d asked him to do, muttered under his breath now and then, but never out-and-out told her off like he just did. Given his first suspicions, this sudden outburst baffled her, and she stared at him.

      The old man walked toward her. “Yeah, I was worried at first, too. And I know they’re a bit much to take. You’re sure we could be blinded by shiny lights and free T-shirts. That we’ll all be so busy looking at the cameras we won’t see them pulling a fast one on us. And I love you for caring so much about this town. But it seems to me that we ought to remember that Drew ain’t Tony. And Middleburg has good folk watching over her. So don’t go putting it on your shoulders.” He reached out and touched her cheek, his lined face folding into a lopsided old grin. “You don’t have to hold up the world, Jannybean. Just Bishop Hardware. And even that you could put down for a time or two if you wanted.”

      Janet swallowed, caught off-guard by Vern’s gesture. “I’m not that grumpy, am I?”

      He winked, crinkling up his face even more. “You ain’t a potful of glee.”

      Potful of glee? Where’d Vern come up with that crazy image? Dinah? “Vern, I have never been a ‘potful of glee’, and I’m pretty sure СКАЧАТЬ