In the Land of Second Chances: A Novel - Softcover

Shaffner, George

 
9780345484987: In the Land of Second Chances: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0345484983 ISBN 13: 9780345484987
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

In Ebb, Nebraska, things are pretty much as they were fifty years ago–aside from that coffee shop–and that’s just the way folks like it. Plucky Wilma Porter is the proprietress of Ebb’s only Bed and Breakfast, and she knows everything there is to know in town: the mental state of Clara Tucker Booth Yune, a rich recluse who says only two words at a time; the gossip at Loretta Parson’s Bold Cut Beauty Salon; and the sad series of events that have led poor Calvin Millet to the edge of desperation. Calvin is the owner of Millet’s Department Store, a village mainstay for generations, but many fear that it–and the downtown–won’t survive his terrible run of bad luck.

Wilma prays for a miracle to save Ebb’s special way of life, but she’s surprised when it arrives in the form of a traveling salesman, if that’s what he is. Vernon L. Moore claims to peddle games of chance, but he sticks his nose in odd places and says things like, “uncertainty is the spice of life.” He is welcomed nonetheless, because he seems to have the power to change minds, save fortunes, and fix broken hearts.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

George Shaffner has worked in the computer industry for twenty years, most recently as CEO or COO of three international computer companies. He is the father of three children, who are all math refugees.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

The Sad Edge of a Slippery Slope

My name is Wilma Porter. I own the Come Again Bed and Breakfast, which is the only B & B in Ebb, Nebraska, and the only one in Rutherford B. Hayes County that is recommended by two Internet directories. I bought the place from Clement Tucker, our very own Warren Buffett, who contracted an acute case of Midlife Crisis about five years ago and decided to build himself a modern house with all the latest conveniences.

The Come Again is a single-turreted, three-story Victorian mansion that was built by Silas Tucker the Second shortly after the Civil War. There’s a single, grand oak tree in the front that antedates the house and a black asphalt driveway leading up to a formal porte-cochere and a little parking area for my guests. Last year, I had the house painted bone white except for the roof, which is black. I think the contrast is meaningful.

Clara Tucker Booth Yune, Clem Tucker’s older sister and Ebb’s most prominent recluse, occupies the entire third floor of the Come Again on a permanent basis. There are six bedrooms on the second floor. I live in the one that faces the back garden; the other five are for rent. Each bedroom has its own bathroom; the Cornhusker Suite even has a Jacuzzi. Downstairs, there’s a living room the size of a tennis court, a parlor for the TV, a den, which I keep for myself as a rule, and a giant-sized dining room that will seat sixteen. Except for my kitchen, which is commercial grade, the entire house is decorated in beautiful old antiques that Clem Tucker left behind or I bought cheap at estate auctions and refinished myself in the basement.

Like most folks who live in Ebb, I was born right here, but about an hour after I got my high school diploma I jumped on a bus to North Platte. I came back with my two daughters after the divorce fifteen years later. Both girls are grown up and gone now. One is up in Omaha and the other is over in Council Bluffs, across the river.

By most measures, Ebb is a small town. It is the county seat, but only two thousand people live inside the city limits. There’s not a lot to do here most of the time, and that’s the way we like it. If we need some excitement, we can drive up to Lincoln. For twenty years, every politician in this area has been elected on the “No Wal-Mart, no how” platform. We take a similarly dim view of fast-food franchises, slow-food franchises, convenience-store franchises, and all other franchises with big, backlit signs in primary colors. The only exception is the new Starbucks on Main Street, but Ebb is so small that we only have the one.

All the rest of the stores on Main are unique and most of them have been in operation for more than fifty years. The biggest and most famous is Millet’s, the last remaining department store in the tri-county region. Millet’s, which is pronounced like “mill-it” and not like “mill-ay,” sits right at the corner of Bean Street and Main, where it’s been ever since Joshua Millet opened it up back in 1920. It has survived the Great Depression, rural flight, three bank bankruptcies, World War II, a flood, and God knows how many droughts and tornadoes. Now it is owned and managed by Calvin Millet, June and Joshua III’s only child. Calvin is a smart, hardworking young man, and everybody in Hayes County shops at his store as if it was a patriotic duty, but we’re all afraid that Millet’s will not survive his run of terrible bad luck.

Calvin was a homely baby, bald and sort of wedge-headed, but he grew up to be tall and handsome in a gangly, fair-haired sort of way, kind of like Gary Cooper. He was too skinny to play high school football, a form of religion in these parts, but he studied hard and got good grades even though he worked in his father’s store. After graduation, he went up to Lincoln and got himself a four-year degree in accounting, and then he joined the Air Force to see the world. They sent him to Bossier City, Louisiana.

Calvin had hardly been gone for any time at all when his parents were killed in a train accident. I could tell at the funeral that he had already started to lose his hearing. He’s fine now; he wears tiny little hearing aids in both ears, but the Air Force had to give him a medical discharge so he came back home to run the family store. A year or so later, he married Mary Beth Tucker, Clem’s only child and a bit of an airhead, but a real beauty and the catch of the county from a financial point of view. Six months after that, Lucy was born. I know what you’re thinking, but the human gestation period in rural America is only six months for the first baby. After that, it’s nine months.

When Lucy Millet was eight years old, she contracted some sort of neurological disorder. I hear it’s similar to Lou Gehrig’s disease, but more aggressive and unnaturally painful. Anyway, a real sick daughter was more than her momma could handle, so she pulled up and left for L.A. Just disappeared in the middle of the night. Took the Jeep and the dog and the George Foreman cooker and left Calvin a note saying she was real sorry.

Mary Beth’s departure caused quite a buzz at the Quilting Circle. Most of us are divorcées ourselves, so we aren’t inclined to be critical of any woman who leaves a man. In fact, we have a support system in place so that a woman can do it right: counselors, lawyers, day care, even police protection. But Mary Beth didn’t use the system, and her husband and sick daughter suffered for it. She hasn’t been welcome in these parts since.

Apparently, being a waitress to the stars was not keeping her in the manner to which she was accustomed, so Mary Beth came home anyway but just long enough to sue Calvin for divorce. Since she had only abandoned her husband and sick child in the dead of night, and taken the dog and the Jeep to boot, the court was sympathetic to her predicament. Calvin now pays her alimony. In case you were wondering, the judge is married to a Tucker, once removed.

Little Lucy Millet is the sweetest little blonde-haired girl you have ever seen and she is smart as a whip, but she isn’t getting any better. For the last three years, Calvin has flown her all over the country looking for a doctor who can cure her, but all they’ve done is slow the disease down and, according to rumor, empty the Millet bank account. Calvin has health insurance through the farmer’s co-op, just like everybody else in these parts, but most of Lucy’s treatments have been experimental, and that means that the HMO won’t pay for them. Unless somebody gets those insurance companies under control, I figure that two aspirin and a glass of water will count as a medical experiment before I’m dead.

The tornado hit last month while Calvin and Lucy were away at the Mayo Clinic. That was too early for tornadoes as a rule, but the weather has been unseasonably warm all year. Luckily, it was a tiny thing as twisters go. It missed the town and everything else in Rutherford B. Hayes County except for Rufus Bowe’s grain silo and Calvin Millet’s place. Actually, it tore the roof off of Rufus’s silo and dropped it on Calvin’s house—dead center. I drove out to see what happened with my best friend, Loretta Parsons, who is Ebb’s sole resident black person and the owner of the Bold Cut Beauty Salon. Calvin’s home was a sight to see. It looked like a pile of rubble with a great big aluminum teacup sitting in the middle of it. You wouldn’t think that anybody’s aim could be that good, not even...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2006
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345484983
ISBN 13 
9780345484987
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
336
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

Lengericher Landstr. 19
Osnabrück
49078
Deutschland

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