Charlaine Harris - Midnight Crossroad

My thanks to Dr. Karen Ross, Dr. Ed Uthman, the Reverend Gary Nowlin, Ellen Dugan (witch and writer), and Mike Meyers, the owner of Purple Heart Pawn. All of you helped me in the writing of this book. If I have made mistakes, they are mine alone. And, as always, thanks to Dana Cameron and Toni L. P. Kelner (aka Leigh Perry), for aid and support above and beyond the call of friendship. Paula, I really appreciate your reading the hate mail so I don’t have to wade through it. Joshua, I couldn’t have a better agent. You and the staff of JABberwocky are my agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Hal, thanks for staying calm.

You might pass through the town of Midnight without noticing it, if there weren’t a stoplight at the intersection of Witch Light Road and the Davy highway. Most of the town residents are very proud of the stoplight, because they know that without it the town would dry up and blow away. Because there’s that pause, that moment to scan the storefronts, maybe three cars a day do stop. And those people, more enterprising or curious (or lower on gas) than most, might eat at the Home Cookin Restaurant, or get their nails done at the Antique Gallery and Nail Salon, or fill up their tanks and buy a soda at Gas N Go.

The really inquisitive ones always go to Midnight Pawn.

It’s an old building, the oldest building in town. In fact, it was there before the town grew up around it, before there were two roads to intersect. The pawnshop, situated at the northeast corner of the intersection, is stone, like most buildings in Midnight. Rock is easier to come by than timber in West Texas. The colors—beige, brown, copper, tan, cream—lend a certain charm to any house, no matter how small or ill-proportioned. Fiji (“Feegee”) Cavanaugh’s cottage, on the south side of Witch Light Road, is a prime example. It was built in the nineteen thirties; Fiji (“I’m named for the country; my mom and dad liked to travel”) doesn’t know the exact year. Her great-aunt, Mildred Loeffler, left it to Fiji. It has a stone-flagged front porch big enough for two large urns full of flowers and a little bench. There’s a low wall all around it, and rock columns hold up the porch roof. The large living room, across the whole front of the building, has a fireplace on the right side, which Fiji uses in the winter. The living room is now a shop/meeting place where Fiji holds her classes. Fiji is an avid gardener, like her great-aunt before her. Even at the beginning of fall—which is only a date on the calendar in Texas; it’s still hot as hell—the small front yard is overflowing with flowers, in large tubs and in the ground. The effect is charming, especially when her marmalade cat, Mr. Snuggly, sits like a furry statue amongst the roses, the ice plants, and the petunias. People stop and look, and read the prim, small sign that says THE INQUIRING MIND on the top line, followed by CLASSES FOR THE CURIOUS, EVERY THURSDAY EVENING AT 7:00.

The Inquiring Mind, most commonly known as Fiji’s house, is on the east side of the Wedding Chapel and Pet Cemetery, run by the Reverend Emilio Sheehan. The Wedding Chapel is open (that is, unlocked) twenty-four/seven, but the sign at the gate of the fenced cemetery behind the chapel informs mourning pet owners that funerals are by appointment. Though his business is to the east of the Davy highway, the Rev’s home lies to the west, to the right of the Home Cookin Restaurant, which is past the closed hotel and the closed hardware store. The Rev’s house is similar to Fiji’s, but it’s older, smaller, and has only sparse grass in the little front yard. It is also in no way welcoming or charming, and he has no cat.

But back to Midnight Pawn, the largest occupied building in Midnight. The pawnshop has a basement, sort of, which is unusual in Texas. Digging through the rock is a job for the stout of heart, and the original owner of the pawnshop was a formidable individual. That basement is only partly under the ground level; the windows of the two apartments peek out above the hard-baked dirt like suspicious prairie dogs. Most of the time, the prairie dogs’ eyes are shut, since the windows are heavily curtained. The main floor, up a set of six steps at the entrance, is the pawnshop proper, where Bobo Winthrop reigns by day. He has an apartment above the shop, a big one, taking up the whole floor. There are only light curtains over the windows in his personal space. Who is there to look in? There’s nothing else that tall for miles. Bobo bought the house next door in a parcel with the pawnshop. It’s intended for the owner to live in, but at the time he bought the place, Bobo thought he would be just as happy over the shop. He planned to rent the house for extra income. He did some necessary repairs and advertised for years. But no one wanted to rent the house until now.

Today, the house has a brand-new tenant. Everyone in Midnight (except the Reverend Sheehan; who knows what he thinks?) is excited because the new resident is moving in.

Fiji Cavanaugh peeks out from behind her lace curtains from time to time and then commands herself to go back to work behind the glass shop counter, which is filled with New Age–type merchandise: glass unicorns, fairy bookmarks, dolphins galore on every conceivable item. On the lower workspace built in behind the high counter, Fiji is mixing an herbal compound that should confound her enemies . . . if she had any. She is fighting the impulse to dig into the Hershey’s Kisses she keeps in a bowl on the counter for her customers. (Her customers just happen to like Fiji’s favorite candy.)

Across Witch Light Road, at Midnight Pawn, Bobo walks down the enclosed staircase from his apartment. At the pawnshop level, he has choices. There’s a door to his left leading out to the driveway. There’s a short open stairway down to the tenants’ floor. And there’s an inner door to the pawnshop on his right. Bobo should unlock it and enter, since the pawnshop has been closed since Lemuel went to bed a whole two hours before, but Bobo ignores it. He chooses the outer door, relocks it when he’s outside, walks across the graveled driveway leading to the rear of the pawnshop, then over a little strip of downtrodden grass, then across the rutted driveway of the house next door, to offer help to the newcomer, a short, slim man who’s unloading boxes from a U-Haul truck and sweating profusely.

“Need a hand?” Bobo asks.

The new tenant says, “Sure, some help would be great. I had no idea how I was going to get the couch out. You can take the time from the store?”

Bobo laughs. He’s a big golden guy in his thirties, and his laugh is big and golden, too, despite the lines in his face and the expression of his mouth and eyes, which is mostly sad. “I can see if a car pulls in and walk back into the shop in less than thirty seconds,” he says. In no time he’s lifting boxes and putting them where the labels say they should go. Most of the boxes have “Living Room” scribbled on them, and they’re heavy. The bedroom boxes are not so numerous, nor the kitchen boxes. There’s furniture to move, really old furniture that wasn’t that nice to begin with.

“Yeah,” Bobo says, surveying the interior of the U-Haul. “You would have been up the creek without another pair of hands.”

Joe Strong, with his little Peke on a leash, strolls over from the Antique Gallery and Nail Salon. He, too, offers assistance. Joe looks like his name. He’s muscular in the extreme, and tan, though thinning brown hair and the lines around his eyes hint that Joe is older than his body suggests. Since Joe’s obviously a great box lifter, the new tenant accepts his help, too, and the job goes faster and faster. The Peke, Rasta, is tethered by his rhinestone leash to the front post of the porch, and the new tenant unearths a bowl from a “Kitchen” box and fills it full of water for the dog.