The Trouble With Apples and Trees

Fresh Water Bucket

The trouble with Fresh Water is the small minded small town folk occupying all of its 12.5 square miles. The residents are staunched traditionalists so set in their ways, they rely on the same forms of amusement every year with no variation whatsoever. New ideas are met by a wall of opposition in the form of those community pillars who refer to themselves as the descendants of the town’s founders. What none of them seem to realize is that the town had been founded back when the west was still wild and there are some traditions better left in the past. They all have a spot to whisper in the mayor’s ears, who unfortunately, is even less of a visionary than they are. So, while ideas like a music festival featuring up and coming artists from neighboring towns are shot down from the get-go, today’s highlight -- The Ms. Home Maker’s Pageant -- continues to survive every year even if the participants hardly ever change.

Lily will never understand it.

What’s surprising is that women actually volunteer to compete in such nonsense year after year. If there was a grand prize involved, it would make much more sense. Depending on the size of the pot, Lily might have considered entering back when she’d been younger. But when the top award is the honour of wearing a sash announcing the winner as the most eligible bachelorette, then you can just count her out.

To Lily, women showing off their ability to be trophy wives is a sham. It speaks little of true character. Winning the show proves nothing of a person’s readiness to take care of a home or a family.

Just look at Jesse’s sorry situation.

Whenever Lily thinks about that, she could just spit. The poor boy’s wife had won the auspicious title of Ms. Homemaker three years running before he’d asked her to marry him. See how that had turned out.

She’d have thought that the organizers would have learned a lesson after the disastrous outcome of his marriage but the show is still going strong.

And they’d dared approached her – Lily Dangleben – to extend an invitation for her to participate this year.

Maybe this will be your year,” one of them had said to her in that 'why aren’t you married as yet' tone.

After all this time, they must not know her very well. If that’s what it takes, at age forty-three, to finally get a man to put a ring on her finger, she’ll be dying a single woman. When she’d expressed that exact sentiment to Liza-Beth Anselm, the Matron of Fresh Water, Lily had been certain by the way her face had contorted that the woman would suffer a heart attack and keel over.

She only attends these town activities because her daughter makes her. It’s no secret that the mature folks of Fresh Water do not like her very much. After twenty-three years living among them, she’s not inclined to believe that they ever will.

Either way, she doesn’t care what they think. She’d survived being jilted while pregnant at age twenty. She’d raised Tullisa on her own and had done a stand-up job of it too. A few loathsome stares from people like Liza-Beth Anselm, doesn’t keep her awake at night anymore.

It’s just ridiculous what passes as entertainment in Fresh Water and that includes the Fresh Water Bucket.

It’s nothing more than wooden shack but it’s a versatile spot that serves as the only bar, one of the two coffee shops, a fast food joint and restaurant all at the same time.

A real bucket indeed. Not that she is complaining. The Fresh Water Bucket is, after all, her daily bread.

And yet, for all it's flaws, Lily still thinks that Fresh Water is a lovely place. Small town living is a far cry from life in the city she'd been accustomed to but she'd made do. The clean air and fresh water supplied by the surrounding mountains is what had sold the town on her and made packing up her bags and moving her entire life to the small town in the backside of nowhere worthwhile. Plus, other than the young hellions who fall into the occasional mischief, there’s no crime to speak of.

She still wishes that her daughter would venture out of her comfort zone a bit more to see the rest of the world, however. Regrettably, Tullisa’s umbilical cord seems to still be attached to the town and to her. As is her heart. So much so, in fact, that when the time had come after graduating high school, no amount of talking could have convinced her daughter that the more convenient thing would be moving to the city in a sort of quasi-permanent situation to continue her education. After all, she could always come home for the holidays.

Tullisa had preferred to drive back and forth between school in the city and Fresh Water to earn her certification as a Vet Tech. The day that she’d graduated was the same day that she’d returned home to accept the position working alongside Dr. Schumacher.

Then again, maybe it’s not so hard to imagine why Tullisa had chosen to stay, Lily thinks when the object of her daughter’s almost life long infatuation shuffles through the front door of The Fresh Water Bucket.

Although he doesn’t look like himself today, Jesse Caine is quite easily the best looking young man in not just the town but the entire county. He’s humble about too. A true gentleman if she’s ever seen one and it would be an honour to have him as part of her family if he could just get over his hang-ups. As he is carrying his sorrow around in his slumped shoulder, Jesse isn't ready to the type of man her daughter needs.

It’s unbelievable to her how some people can’t appreciate a good thing when they’ve got it; but she won’t think ill of the dead now.

She frowns at his countenance while he trundles across the wooden floor to take a seat at the table with his long time friend and the town’s hellraiser, Clive. She finds herself laughing quietly at the memory of some of the scrapes that one has gotten himself and Jesse into over the years.

While he annoys most folks, Clive is really a teddy bear if a teddy bear can be over 6 feet tall and all it’s stuffing honed into well defined muscles. Today, however, he looks better put together than the All-American golden boy.

For one, Jesse enters the bar sporting a pair of dark sunglasses which he almost never wears. It’s as if his subconscious drives him to devastate the young women of this town with those luminous turquoise colored eyes of his on a daily basis. On the rare occasion that he does cover them up with shades, he would normally slide them off his face as soon as he enters a building because he’d been raised that way.

The second thing she notes is that the fluffy chestnut curls that he usually keeps tamed are all over the place. He also eases himself gingerly down into his seat. Though it could be the heat, his skin is all flushed and sweaty and he looks like he could blow at any moment. Lily knows well what his ailment is. She can spot the symptoms of a hangover from a mile away.

“Can you make sure the eggs aren’t runny this time?” a customer at the counter asks.

Lily has to pull her attention away from the pair sitting at their usual spot in the back. Even if she wants to remind Melba that scrambled eggs isn’t on the lunch menu, she punches in the order anyway because she’s just itching to know what’s up with Jesse.

“I’m not the cook, Melba,” Lily reminds her. “But I’ll be sure to pass on the message,” she assures the woman. Not like the complaint will make any difference.

Such is the mundane fashion of working at The Bucket. She’s not ungrateful for having the job. This is one of the reasons that she likes Cyrus, the owner. Young as he had been at the time, he’d taken one look at her with her protruding belly twenty-three years ago and had known that she’d needed help. She’ll forever be thankful to that man for his assistance over the years.

With her bit of reminiscing, a mist of tears moisten Lily’s eyes. To take her mind off her past, she brews a fresh pot of coffee and while it percolates, glances at Jesse over her shoulder. In the recent past, it hadn't been unusual seeing him so unkempt but he’d seemed to be getting himself back together lately

Now, she frowns at him in concern while trying to wonder what had undone all the progress he’s made.

“Watch the counter,” Lily instructs the other young woman manning the bar before stepping around to the main floor with her pot of coffee and a mug in tow.

“Rough night?” she asks Jesse as she sets the mug in front of him and begins to fill it with the strong, dark roast. “Shouldn’t you boys be helping with the preparations for the show later on?”

"I didn't know you were a fan, Ms. Lily," Clive answers while Jesse supplies her with a grunt.

He rests his head down on the printed plastic covering the table and slides the cup away with his finger.

“You don’t need to drink it,” she tells him. “The aroma should mask every other smell in here for a little while. Then she turns her attention to Clive to ask, “Did you have anything to with this?”

He raises his hands in that defensive but not entirely innocent sort of way that he does when he knows that he is guilty of something.

“He was only supposed to have a couple of drinks to loosen him up, is all, Ms. Lily,” he tells her. “And things got out of hand.”

Raising her eyebrow in question, Lily asks, “loosen him up for what?”

“Don’t worry, he struck out,” Clive mutters.

“You i***t,” she snaps and strikes him at the back of the head with her opened palm. “Why do you insist on dragging Jesse into your shenanigans. They never end well for him.”

“Don’t I know it,” Clive mumbles while rubbing the sensitive spot on his cranium. “It didn't work so well for me either. I had to drive his sorry ass home and I just know that either one or both of those twins at Fox’s Hole would have given it to me this time,” he adds and gives Lily one of his winks that she knows sends the young women in a fit.

“Fox’s!” Lily hisses in dismay. “You drove all the way to Fox’s? Only one kind of woman visits that hole.”

“That was the point,” he responds thoughtlessly but shifts out of range just in time to avoid her hand connecting with his skull again. “You have to admit, Ms. Lily, it’s long past time.”

Lily could concede that but she’ll never say it out loud. It would simply tear Tullisa apart to see Jesse on the arm of another woman. But if he has to move on with someone else, he deserves better than the doves who frequent that place.

“I’m right here, you know,” Jesse says to both of them as he raises his hand off the table.

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” Lily tells him. “I’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

With that, she gives him a gentle touch on his shoulder that he groans in reaction to. Before she leaves them, she shoots Clive a dirty look then walks back to the counter.

For years, Cyrus has been warning her against using company phone for personal business and threatening to fire her for it for just as long, but she grabs the receiver anyway and dials her daughter's number.

Tullisa picks up on the first ring.

“Oh good, you’re free,” Lily assumes.

“Actually, I’m not,” Tullisa tells her. “I’m working.”

“It’s Jesse,” Lily informs her daughter knowing that the mention of this one name will garner Tullisa’s full attention.

A long silent pause ensues before she hears the sound of Tullisa clearing her throat.

“What about him?” she asks in a soft voice.

“Don’t worry, hon, it’s nothing a little TLC and my little mixture won’t fix. He has a hangover,” Lily informs her.

“Well, I’m busy,” Tullisa snaps in reply. “I can’t drop everything because Jesse went and drank himself stupid. That was his choice. I have to go.”

After another pause, she adds, “just make sure that he doesn’t die and don’t forget that we’re going the show later.”

Lily stares at the phone in shock when the call ends.

“What the hell just happened?” she says to herself.

When Cyrus walks out of his back office with annoyance painted on his face, she gives him her most innocent smile and places the receiver back in it's cradle.