A Ghost of a Chance by Cherie Claire (book series to read .txt) 📖

I’m calling the cops. I happen to be friends with Madman Maddox.”

I didn’t mean to use my nickname for the hunk, but I don’t work well under pressure.

Unfortunately, the mayor does.

“He works for me,” she says between gritted teeth. “Don’t you even think you’re getting away with this.”

Suddenly I spot an angel lurking behind the mayor’s back, a thin PR girl holding two coffees in her hands watching this interaction with eyes as wide as saucers. God, for the life of me, why can’t I remember her name?

“Great, you’re here,” I yell to the Wallace girl. “I’m on my way out.”

The mayor turns and spots my savior and, after a moment’s pause, moves back so that I may exit the store. Just before I’m home free she whispers in my ear as I pass. “I’m watching you.”

I try desperately for a witty comeback, something that would make Clint Eastwood proud, but all I manage is, “You too!”

Skinny and I climb the stairs to Spring Street in silence, but once we turn the corner and cross over to the Basin Spring Park, she looks my way sheepishly and asks, “What the hell was that all about?”

I stop at the entrance to the park, standing beneath an arch that reads “Balm of Life” because I can see Richard, my Wisconsin buddies and the historian waiting for us ahead. “What’s your name? I’m sorry but I can’t remember.”

“Alicia.”

“And please dear God is that coffee for me?”

Alicia laughs, breaking the awful tension we carried with us from the shop. “Yes, one for you and one for Richard who’s been complaining ever since we left the Crescent Hotel.” She winces. “Oh, did I say that?”

I grab a coffee, remove the plastic cover and inhale its scent, hoping that delicious aroma will bring me back to center. “Your secret’s safe with me, Alicia, and although mine really isn’t a secret — I have no idea what that was all about, the mayor has something in her bonnet about me — but I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”

“But why does the mayor have a beef with you?”

Something to do with the ghost in my room, I want to say, but that would sound crazy.

“I don’t know. I think she has me mixed up with someone else or she thinks I’m working with her cousin, for some reason.”

And her cousin’s related to the ghost in my room.

“Her cousin?”

“The New Age-looking woman in that shop. Her name’s Cassiopeia, by the way.”

Alicia laughs, and the tension drains. “She’s Merrill Seligman. She’s pretty well known in town, a big water conservation activist. When we were planning this trip, the mayor specifically said we needed to keep you all away from both her and that discussion. One of the reasons I happened to come looking for you, by the way.”

“What discussion?”

Richard waves his hand from his seat at the base of the spring. “Are we going to do this or what?”

Alicia sighs. “A minute ago he was begging to go back to the hotel. Something about ghost tours keeping him up all night.”

We start walking toward the group and Alicia whispers, “The mayor’s fighting with a conservation group about water issues, or some development residents are upset about. But you can’t write about it!”

I send her a wink. “I’m a travel writer, always stay away from political issues. Promise.”

Alicia passes a coffee to Richard who fails to offer gratitude, mumbles something about no cream, and the historian takes that cue to start our walking tour. We’re at the center of town in a beautiful park that surrounds the Basin Spring, the site where first Dr. Alvah Jackson used the waters to heal his son of an eye ailment in 1856 and then built a business selling “Dr. Jackson’s Eye Water.” Next came Judge L.B. Saunders of nearby Berryville who brought his family to the Basin Spring to try to cure his erysipelas (I write this malady down but have no idea what it is and if I spelled it right). The judge built a small house near the spring that flowed into a natural stone basin at the time, hence its name. Mr. Historian claims the ancient Indian spring was graced with markings that vandals abused in the late 1800s.

“What’s the historian’s name?” I ask Stephanie, because I may want to quote the guy in my article.

“Harold P. Johnson,” she whispers back, and I’m so thankful for travel writers without ADHD.

Mr. Johnson explains how the judge was cured of his illness that I can’t spell and began telling everyone of the healing springs in northwest Arkansas. Soon visitors were traveling to this magical place in the Boston Mountains, which I learn is what these hills of electromagnetic energy are called. On July 4, 1879, more than four hundred people came to the spring in the hopes of renewal and it was then that the judge’s son, Burton Saunders, declared “Eureka!”

“The expression means ‘I have found it,’” Johnson explains. “And it’s been the name of the town ever since.”

“I’d say ‘Eureka!’ if I could find some cream,” Richard mutters and we all ignore him.

Streets were soon planned and Eureka Springs grew as more people arrived. By the end of 1879 lots were established and wooden homes quickly built. Dozens of other springs were discovered, but the town grew up around Basin Spring and a few nearby, which Mr. Johnson promises to show us.

“By 1880 we had three thousand residents,” Johnson said. “By 1882, five thousand. Within a few more years there would be a rail line here and Eureka Springs one of the largest cities in Arkansas.”

I look around the “Indian Healing Spring” that’s now harnessed from the mountainside into a manmade basin and fountain, surrounded by a cast iron fence. There’s a monument to World War I soldiers standing guard in the park’s center, plus numerous benches where tourists rest, including one created from a massive sycamore tree that once graced the springs. One of the benches has carved in its side, “Play it again, Sam,” and I’m about to ask Mr. Johnson what that means when I look up and see the group heading up Spring Street.

I run to catch up and hear him mentioning the Osage Indians, a tribe who lived in the area and labeled this slice of heaven the land of blue skies and laughing waters. A place of miracles. Where are these native people now?

“By the early twentieth century, there were numerous claims of people being healed here,” Johnson continues as we pass the stone walls of the Basin Park Hotel and tourists watch us from their breakfast on the second-floor balcony. Johnson pulls a paper out of his pocket and reads, “In 1926 a Dr. M.H. Owen wrote, ‘I firmly believe that nature, God, has given these springs to heal nearly every disease known to man, and these springs are yet in their infancy as far as their reputation and value are concerned.’”

In my state of fatigue and recovery from being yelled at, I’m not in the best frame of mind. Part of me thinks stealing Native American miracle springs is not something to be proud of, while the other wonders if these waters will heal my broken heart.

“How do people use these springs today?” I ask.

Johnson is now walking backwards up Spring Street as he leads us on. “Unfortunately, the springs have become polluted over the years. The city’s growth took its toll on them. But there’s been work to bring them back and one of them, which we will go to, is clear enough to drink.”

This news strikes me to the core, as if I learned that Santa doesn’t exist. So now people come to Eureka Springs for what, to walk around these gorgeous springs, then go shopping, have a beer? A malaise, my constant companion these past three years, settles in my heart, this time a reminder that priorities have shifted in this country, focused on acquiring things made in China instead of what’s best for the earth and our souls. Or maybe it’s me, a broken woman who has lost a daughter and everything she owns to a monster storm some are chalking up to global warming, a threat that no one seems to be taking seriously. I can’t comprehend the machinations of the world anymore.

Johnson takes us past the post office built in 1918, then to Sweet Spring, a gorgeous park built alongside the waters that’s emerging from inside a small hollow. As we descend the steps to the water’s edge, the air turns remarkably cooler.

“Sweet spring was named for its pleasant, sweet taste,” Johnson explains.

“Which we can’t enjoy anymore,” Richard inserts.

Joe waits patiently for us to return so he can shoot the springs without interruption or people. Stephanie moves out of the way and takes in the lovely gardens surrounding the park, flowers beginning their early spring buds.

“Shame about the springs not being accessible,” she says. “I sure could use some help with my arthritis.”

I look back at the corner bluff, flowers cascading down toward the spring that still bubbles forth no matter what people have done to its environment; nature continues. Bees and butterflies flit from flower to flower and while we wait for Joe, I pause on a bench that reads, “Our Past is Your Present, Eureka Springs Preservation Society.”

“That’s an understatement,” I say to no one, thinking of the passed people who appear to be hounding me these days. Still, I get it. Even now, sitting here listening to the buzzing of bees and the trickling of water, the tension drifts away and peace prevails. There’s an aura of healing that remains despite progress, and we spot many people standing by the springs, breathing in its beauty and energy.

Johnson points out historic buildings, such as the circa-1901 Palace Hotel and Bath House across the street, as well as where hotels and spas used to be. We move up Spring Street and pause at three cottages established within the mountainside next to