“Maybe if we focus on the pansies, that tourist board will forget about our stop sign,” Mrs. Hargrove said. “After all, the sign is all rusted out. It would make a terrible picture. It’s a wonder the thing hasn’t fallen down by now.”
Charley nodded. “It would be a blessing if it did. I think it would fall down if folks stopped piling rocks around the bottom of it.”
Neither one of them said much more. Mrs. Hargrove offered Charley some oatmeal-raisin cookies to go with his coffee and he only ate two, explaining his appetite just wasn’t with him. Mrs. Hargrove said she understood.
The information for the guidebook wasn’t due until June, so Mrs. Hargrove and Charley decided to let the matter rest for a while.
Over the next couple of months, Mrs. Hargrove’s mind kept going back to the fateful day when the Nelsons and the Hargroves had forbade their children to marry.
Mrs. Hargrove knew she and her late husband had had good intentions just like the Nelsons had. Mrs. Hargrove had thought she was doing the best thing by sending Doris June off to Anchorage to live with her aunt and refusing to give Curt the address when he asked for it.
Mrs. Hargrove had no idea Doris June would never marry and that Curt would get so angry at his folks for interfering that he’d sign up with the army just to leave home and later make a disaster of the one marriage he entered into.
As the winter wore on, Mrs. Hargrove and Charley felt so miserable about the mess they’d made of things all those years ago that they could barely face each other. Mrs. Hargrove lost her appetite and stopped cooking for herself. Every once in a while, she would open a can of soup without even checking the label, but that seemed to be all she could do. Charley missed the cookies Mrs. Hargrove used to make for him. Finally, they both knew something had to be done to set things right again before they wasted away.
“If we could unmatch them back then, we should be able to match them up again now,” Charley finally said one morning after church. He and Mrs. Hargrove were putting the hymnals back in place, so they were the only ones left in the main part of the church.
“It won’t be that easy.” Mrs. Hargrove didn’t need to ask who Charley was talking about and she felt relieved that he had finally suggested they do something. She’d been praying about the situation, but she hadn’t gotten any ideas about anything solid that she could do.
“It might be easier than we think to get them together. It’s not like either one of them is seeing someone else,” Charley said. “And they’re not shy.”
Mrs. Hargrove stopped moving hymnals and thought a minute. “It’s not a matter of shyness. We’d have to get them in the same place at the same time. That’d be the challenge. I’ve never seen two people more determined to avoid each other. Doris June won’t even visit me unless it’s the middle of summer or harvest season when she knows Curt is too busy to come into town.”
“I don’t think they’ve even talked to each other in all these years,” Charley said.
“Well, certainly not while Curt was married to that woman. Doris June was furious.”
“Did she say that?”
“She didn’t have to. I know my daughter.”
“Well, she doesn’t need to worry about the woman Curt married. She ran off with some man the day after she put Ben in kindergarten. The only time Curt heard from her after that was when he got the divorce papers. You’d think she’d at least contact her own son over the years, but she hasn’t and here Ben just turned fifteen last month. A boy like that needs a mother.”
Mrs. Hargrove bent to straighten another hymnal. She wouldn’t say it, but she knew Ben needed a grandmother, too. “He’s a good boy. I’m sure Doris June would like to get to know him better. I don’t know what would make her agree to be in the same room with Curt, though.”
Charley thought a minute. “One of us could pretend we were dying. They’d both come to see us then.”
Mrs. Hargrove stood still and thought a moment. She almost wished she could do it, but she knew better. “Nothing good ever comes of telling a lie.”
“Well, maybe we don’t need to be dying,” Charley conceded as he rubbed his chin in thought. “But we could still need some help—after all, we’re both in our seventies. That should be reason enough to give us some help if we needed it.”
Mrs. Hargrove started going down another row of pews. “I’ll not be asking Doris June for money. She already tries to give me more than she should.”
“No, money won’t work. Besides, it’s too easy to write a check. She wouldn’t even need to come home to do that.”
Mrs. Hargrove picked a hymnal up off a pew. “But what else do we need help with except money?”
Charley thought a moment. “Lifting. What we need to do is find something that needs lifting.”
“Doris June will just tell me to save the lifting until she comes in the fall.”
“Well, maybe it’s something that needs to be lifted before fall gets here.”
“The pansies,” Mrs. Hargrove said with a smile. “If I get some seeds in the ground soon, we’d have them by May.”
“A pansy’s not very heavy,” Charley said skeptically.
“They will be if we do pansy baskets this year,” Mrs. Hargrove said. Her eyes started to shine with excitement. “I saw some gardening show on television a few months ago and it showed these big beautiful pansy baskets. I thought at the time how impressed everyone would be if we could hand out baskets like that for Mother’s Day. And it’s not just the baskets. If we grow the pansies from seed there will be lots of heavy work. There’ll be bending and lifting—and digging. Besides, the pansies could be a tourist attraction, too.”
“Maybe so. That hillside used to be something to see when you grew the pansies in the past,” Charley said. “My wife used to call it a carpet of lavender. Pure poetry it was.”
“There’s nothing like the color of a pansy,” Mrs. Hargrove agreed. She was pleased Charley had noticed her flowers. Not all men did. “To fill up those big baskets, I’ll need to plant even more pansies than I used to plant. And the week before Mother’s Day, we’ll need to dig up hundreds of pansies and put them into baskets. Lots of dirt and shoveling. And me with my arthritis. How can Doris June not come?”
“And Curt would never let you do that kind of work, regardless of whether or not Doris June comes,” Charley agreed with a slow smile. “Of course, if she does come, they’ll have to see each other. A person can’t dig in a flower bed next to someone and not say hello. You know, this just might work—if Doris June comes.”
Mrs. Hargrove grinned. “Oh, she’ll come.”
“Won’t Doris ask why Curt doesn’t just do all the baskets for you? She knows he’s back on the farm.”
Mrs. Hargrove shook her head. “Oh, no, she’d have to mention his name to ask and she never does that—not even if I mention it first.”
Charley frowned. “You mean she’s never asked about him?”
Mrs. Hargrove shook her head. “Not even before he got married.”
Charley looked even more troubled. “Maybe that means she’s not interested in him. It was a long time ago.”
Mrs. Hargrove was silent for a minute. “Well, we don’t know if Curt is still interested, either.”
“He might not admit it, but he’s interested,” Charley said. “Ever since he moved to the farm three years ago, I’ve noticed that the month of June is torn right off the kitchen calendar every year—before the month even starts it’s gone.”
“Curt was the only one who used to call Doris June just