Jack (chapter 7)

            Tillie informs us that it will probably be best to stay with two widows named Lois and Eunice who came here when their husbands, who were best friends in the Coast Guard, died in a tragic boat accident.  They inhabit the largest and most hospitable house that does not belong to Ms. Sasha Leonard.  I’m not sure who this is, but Tillie speaks of her like she is ancient and deserves every sliver of respect she is granted by this community, that gets stranger the more I hear about it.  I admit I have never spent too much time around older people, I’m afraid of the smell.  But this community becomes more intriguing the more I hear and any reservations I had are long gone, for better or worse, probably worse.

We continue walking down the relatively narrow road.  Tillie points out a small building with peeling white paint and a barely legible sign that reads “General Store.”  Do they still have those?  She mentions that it is where we can get anything we need while we are here and that it is the one place with internet, when it decides to work. 

            “But now would not be the time for that.”  As she says this just as a loud thunder clap booms and it starts to pour.  I now understand the cliché of raining cats and dogs.  Tillie starts running, bike in tow.  Valerie squeals feebly, she is too tired from dragging so much stuff to really let her true emotions show.  Mr. Peter James takes his time, mumbling under his breath about how a little rain never hurt nobody, it is actually refreshing.  I linger somewhere in the middle of a trot and a gait (not that I know anything about horses).

            The house we run to is a beautiful white monster with black shutters and a red roof.  The wraparound porch offers comfort and rest with its seven rocking chairs.  I know I am going to like whoever lives here.  It is the kind of house that you think of when trying to envision the good side of the hated South (at least as far as I know).  Tillie leaves her bike by the porch under an overhang that must have been built especially for that purpose.  She gets to the door first.  Valerie hides a little behind Tillie and I hide behind Valerie.  We begin to create puddles on the porch.  In front of the door is a Welcome mat in the shape of a lady bug.  From the short glimpse I got around the porch it looks like there are every species of plant growing around the porch, in hanging pots and window sill flower boxes.  I can’t see a duplicate anywhere (who needs symmetry?). 

            The screen door creaks.  Two ladies crowd into the doorway.  One of them is in a pepto bismal pink shirt with a linen white skirt that barely reached her ankles.  The other wears jeans with dirt stains at the knees and a t-shirt with a cat dressed in a hat and surrounded by flowers.  They light up with the view of Tillie in their doorway.  However, when the one in pink catches a glimpse of Valerie and I standing there, her eyes roll and a frown begins to take over her face.  The one with the cat shirt doesn’t even look at her before she elbows her friend in the stomach.  The cat woman never stops smiling.  Predictably, she speaks first.

            “Tillie!  Dear.  What have you brought to us this time?”  She continues without giving Tillie a chance to answer.  “Oh my dear children you are soaked and tired obviously.  Please do come in.  I wish had had a chance to clean all this up for you but I guess this is what happens when things happen.  We’re always prepared for company in any case.”  By this time the lady in pink has disappeared into a different part of the house.

            “Oh forgive me, where are my manners?  I am Lois and the other one is Eunice.  Don’t mind her she doesn’t like her routine to get disturbed, not that it ever really does.  I’m the one who takes over during these times.”

            Valerie speaks, “Do you have visitors often?”  I can tell she is really worried about this place.  She is uncertain about staying somewhere where everyone seems overly kind and definitely different.  She begins to shake a little, fortunately it could be blamed on the wetness of her clothes which Lois notices as well.  I feel that I should be more nervous than I am, but I can’t seem to muster any such feelings.

            “We’ve had a few over the years.  But poor things ya’ll must be freezin’ soaked to the bone that way.  Let me show you to your rooms and you can shower and change.  Then we’ll look at findin’ you somethin’ to eat.”  It’s amazing to me that everyone here seems to drop the final consonant of every word they said. 

            Tillie notes, above the sound of the rain, “There’s one more comin’, I’ll wait for him while you show them to their rooms.”

            Lois yells to Eunice, “Eunice, get in here and take this fine young man to the room he’ll stay in.  Little miss, you will come upstairs with me.  We’re a little old-fashioned around here, keepin’ boys and girls separated.  You just never know and Lord knows we’re responsible for the things that happen under our roof.”  Her voice trails off as she takes up the stairs and timid Valerie follows her, glancing back at me in a way that asks me to be sure not to leave without her if something happens.  I can’t guarantee her anything at this point and try to express that on my face.

            Tillie has already left to go wait on the porch for Peter.  I’m left in the foyer by myself waiting for the grim Eunice to decide to be hospitable.  I take the time to look at some of the knick knacks and pictures decorating the area.  There are a few ceramic cats scattered about.  There are a lot of pictures and replicas of lighthouses.  One of them has a verse on it about letting your light shine before men.  There is the necessary wooden cross of anyone who has a faith in the Christian God.  I bend over to look at a worn black and white picture on the second shelf of a bookcase, there are two beautiful women standing next to what would definitely have been handsome young men in uniform.  I assume it is of these ladies and their husbands.  The ladies truly were gorgeous in a way that I cannot describe because it wouldn’t serve a purpose.  I hear a throat clear behind me.  I jerk up and then to try and cover my surprise turn around coolly and slowly.  I’m met with the glare that women perfect in their lifetimes, the one that can make a guy do anything she wants just to get her to stop.

            She turns and heads down a hallway; I take that as my signal to follow.  Looking at the woman in front of me I have a hard time believing that such a beautiful woman could turn into something large, angry and calloused.  She needs a hug, but it was not going to come from me, just the thought of it makes me laugh slightly.  The throat clears again letting me know the laugh was not just in my head.  A voice follows the grunt and it sounds like Ella Fitzgerald, strong, heavy and still mesmerizingly pretty.  “I bet you’re wondering what happened to make that girl turn into this woman you see before you.  Well, life happened.  And this is what I ended up with.  I’m not angry, not sad, just sort of resigned.”  I see her eyes now and they look heavy, strong and still pretty just like her voice. 

            “I’m Jack.”     

“Well, Jack.  The next door down is the bathroom.  The towels are easy to find.  Here’s your room.  If you need anything ask Lois.  She’s much better at this than I am.”

“Doubtful,” I mumble surprising myself.  She smiles, almost.  The tension lightens a touch.  I will definitely like this house. 

The room in which I’m staying is covered in doilies and roses—not forgetting the mandatory cross hanging right over the head board.  The window is propped open with what looks like a broken broom handle.  I open my wet suitcase and am able to find a pair of dry boxers and some semi dry jeans.  This will do.  All I really want to do is lay down on the bed of printed roses, but I’m still wet and I feel that would be rather rude. 

I find my way to the bathroom.  The bathroom lacks the roses and doilies but carries over the lighthouses and boats—and the cross.  The towels are neatly rolled on a shelf above the toilet.  The rain, lightning and thunder continue outside.  I hope that the power will hold out long enough for me to take a shower.  The whole house rattles every time the thunder booms, but it is obvious that this house had been through many thunderstorms and will still see many more.

The shower is hot and refreshing.  It gives me time to think again.  So much has happened in the last few hours.  I have no idea whether we will leave tomorrow or the next day.  I still don’t even know if I will end up being killed in my sleep by the people in this…village?  I don’t even know what to call this.  There aren’t very many people here.  At least we haven’t seen very many.  I don’t know how many more houses are hidden in these woods and what kinds of people would be here.  I do feel a little bit of responsibility for Valerie although.  The look in her eyes as she went upstairs was genuine and dependent.  Man, I spent my whole life trying to avoid having people depend on me.  I just want to worry about me. 

A sharp crack and bang shakes the whole house and the lights flicker snapping me out of my thoughts. 

I get out of the shower, slip into the mostly dry clothes and wander back to the room.  Through the rain and thunder the roses look most inviting and before I know it they have become my comfort and distraction from any fear and timidity.

Jack (chapter 6)

            This chapter begins the adventure mentioned in the forty-first hour of the previous chapter, so I’ll back up to the fortieth hour and fifty-eighth minute to give the context leading up to it.

The trees begin to run together as we search the lonesome back highways for a way out of this humidity stricken countryside.  Valerie continues to ramble about how her hair will never recover and that she should just chop it all off but that would be an utter tragedy because everyone thinks that her hair is so beautiful.  Mr. Peter James grumbles something and it shuts her up, at least for a few minutes. 

            Then it happens: the rattle and clunk.  Putter, putter, putter.  Nothing.  The van has stopped.  Just stopped.  Mr. Peter James tries to crank it a few times and no sound even attempts to escape. 

            “You have got to be kidding me; there is no way that we are stuck on the corner of farmland and nowhere.  I don’t remember seeing anything that even resembled a hotel anywhere near here and I refuse to sleep in the van, again.”

            “Then don’t sleep.”  Mr. Peter James mumbles under his breath again.  The weariness in his eyes makes him look ten years older than when we started.  He worries about his family and cares nothing about the hair and sleeping habits of a spoiled sorority girl.  Much like the van, I don’t attempt any sound.

            The sun is intense.  The only other time I had experienced sun like this was the time I went to Hawaii with my family for one of my sister’s graduation presents.  But then it was offset by the breeze from the ocean and a quick dip into the salty water.  The only movement of air near me now is my own breath.  I have been outside of the van for only five minutes and I can already feel the burn on my skin.  Sweat beads begin to form on my head.  As much as Valerie annoys me I know that there was no way we are going to be able to sleep out in heat like this.  We are stuck on a two-lane road which had just crossed one other road about 1 mile before, but I had seen nothing that even resembled habitation, for humans anyway.  For the first time I begin to worry, although I would not let it show.  Instead, I’ll think about other things; I’m not certain what these other things will be but something will come.  Maybe I’ll start with counting the pine needles at my feet.

            Valerie and Mr. Peter James sit in the van with the doors open and try to stay hydrated without drinking all of the water we had left.  Valerie has abandoned her complaints about the lack of cell phone service, the humidity and hopelessness of the situation for now which are the reasons I abandoned the van for the grass on the edge of the road.

The three of us remain in silence, for the second time on this trip.  If anyone has an idea for getting out of this mess, they realize it isn’t worth the effort to just have it shot down.  By about one there is a vision from around the corner of the street we had crossed earlier.  I stand up to see if I’m experiencing my first mirage and look into the van to see if there is any reaction from the van’s occupants.  They have fallen asleep temporarily ignoring our current debacle.  So it looks like I am the one who gets to either have my dreams of help dashed by reality or encounter whatever strange person I will meet in this fruitful yet desolate land. 

            She is on a bicycle singing to herself when she reaches the van.  I think she is real, I’m almost certain, almost.  Her hair is glittering in the sunshine, her smile genuine and her legs defined (probably from the bicycle).  “Hey!”  She grins, fully realizing that we haven’t just decided to stop on the side of the road for our health or leisure.  I step towards her trying not to wake the others, but the sound of her voice rouses Valerie.  I suppose it’s the threat of another woman’s voice.  Thankfully she is too skeptical or hot exit the van; maybe there is some reprieve in this heat and humidity. 

            I manage a half smirk and a weak sweat-soaked wave.  Her grin broadens as she dismounts her bike.

            “You must have broken down within the last 4 hours.  Lucky for you it was on a Thursday.  Do you know what’s wrong with ‘er?”

            I shake my head, wondering how in the world this could be lucky.  “I know we were low on gas.”

            “So it does speak.”  The grin remains.  “Well, I have good news and bad news.  The good news is that you are within about 2 miles of humanity.  Bad news is that we’re pretty much out of gas for the time being, apparently there’s a shortage because of some problem with airplanes.  You actually probably know much more about that than I do.”

            Mr. Peter James’ low steady voice comes from the van, “So what does that mean?”  Straight to the point, like usual.

            “It means a couple of things.  You aren’t gettin’ gas any time soon, at least not enough to get you anywhere significant.  It also means that no one is gonna waste their gas to come and get ya.  So we’re gonna hafta walk a little bit.”

            “You have got to be kidding me.”  Valerie, of course.  “There is no way I’m going to walk in this heat.  I will certainly pass out and who will help me carry my stuff?  There must be someone who can help and come to get us.”

            The grin of the strange girl doesn’t waver.  “It’s definitely up to you.  This is a farmin’ town though and we need the gas to harvest, no one is goin’ to waste it on drivin’ when walkin’ will suffice.  But if you wanna come with me, you better come on.”

            The question in my head must read on my face, because she continues, “It’s summertime and we get a thunderstorm every afternoon ‘bout three.  That gives us a little less than 2 hours to get there.  So I’m gonna be on my way, with or without ya.  Up to you.”

            I have already grabbed my bag.  I know she isn’t lying about the thunderstorm because you can already see the clouds forming in the distance and they look somewhat dark and menacing.  I can count the number of thunderstorms I have seen in Portland on less than two full hands, this girl looks like she knows what she is talking about and her smile makes me trust her, which is weird because I usually distrust chronic smilers. 

            Peter is right behind me and Valerie pouts, whines, and remains in the van.  When we have walked a little ways down the road, she finally realizes we aren’t going back for her and she manages to catch up to the rest of us dragging a few of her bags behind her with a bunch of grunts and groans.

            Tillie, as she introduced herself, walks her bike alongside us and gives us the general idea of where we had ended up.  We were stuck somewhere between Alabama, Florida and Georgia and at least 50 miles from a city of any substantial size.  The place where she lives is called Hebron, based on the biblical city.  It used to be a fully-functional plantation which has now formed into a kind of community that isn’t quite large enough to be called a town.  Apparently the family who began the plantation was Christian and found this word whose meaning is community.  I wonder if the slaves found it to be so peaceful a place as the name makes it sound.  It’s the first time I have heard someone mention the Bible in a long time.  The only other times I’ve really heard it come up were when another Dan Brown book would come out or some fanatic decided to protest something completely ridiculous.  So pretty much I always correlated the Bible with the ridiculous.  Admittedly, I have never read it to know for certain what it is about. 

            We wander down the paved road no more than a hundred feet before we veer to the left.  There is a dirt road hidden by tree branches.  If you didn’t know that it was there, you would never be able to find it.  There is a busted wooden gate resting on the side of this dirt road that has vines growing over it.  Again, you would miss it if you weren’t walking.  It is actually quite beautiful in its state of disrepair.  Tillie talks most of the way giving us little pointers about the land and what to avoid.  The main points I take away are that I should just run away from snakes and try not to touch any plants, got it.  She mentions that there are about a dozen people that live in the various buildings on the land and that we would probably, eventually meet all of them. 

“There are a couple people that you should probably not start conversations with, however.  Not to scare you, they just much prefer to keep to themselves and find conversations of most sorts an imposition.  They’ll be pretty obvious however.  Most everyone else will start a conversation with you before you’re even in earshot.  Everyone is really friendly.”

“No one will mind us staying here?”  Mr. Peter James asks.

“Of course not.  What’s strange is that we typically have somewhere near twenty people come stay with us every year.  I don’t know what it is about this part of the country but for some reason cars just break down here or people get very lost.”  She stops talking and thinks for a moment, then continues apologetically, “Wow.  I just realized how scary that could sound to you.  I swear it’s not like some weird booby trap that we set up to lure people in just so we can kill them.  It sounds like a bad horror movie.  Please trust me that it’s not that way.”

I know that these words don’t ease Valerie’s fears in the least.  In all honesty, however, Mr. Peter James looked calmer now since we hit this road than I have seen him this whole trip.  If I didn’t trust Tillie, which I do instinctively, I trust Mr. Peter James from experience.  Something about this dirt road and the swaying trees make it seem as though we really will be ok, as long as we are here.  We come to a small bridge crossing a small river.  Over the bridge is an old wooden sign which reads “Hebron.”  It looks as old and worn as the gate at the beginning of the road and I am surprised it is still hanging by both nails.  The bridge is barely wide enough for a small car to fit across and I wonder if they actually own any vehicles.  Then I begin to wonder if they are some sort of southern Amish community.  But that couldn’t be possible, Tillie is wearing a pair of khaki shorts and a flowered top.  I have the feeling that I am going to learn a lot from this place, although I’m not sure what at this point.  Maybe I’ll learn to fish or braid vines, that could be less than useful, right?

“Eek!”  Do I even need to tell you that it’s Valerie?  “There was a snake.  Did you see it?  It slithered around the edge of the bridge.  It was black and icky.”  By now she has dropped her bags and grabbed my arm, like I’m really going to do anything about it.  I admit I don’t like snakes and as long as they stay away from me I will stay away from them.  I like to think of it as a mutual respect.

Tillie followes the snake around the corner to make sure it has gone.  “It was just a little garden snake.  No big deal.  We really do need to be on our way though.  That cloud is coming up a little bit faster than I thought it would.”

I notice the ripples on top of the water aren’t caused by the current but by the wind and it’s quickly picking up.  Tillie even grabs one of Valerie’s bags and throws it over the handlebars of her bike.  Taking her lead, I grab one too and use the opportunity to rid my arm of Valerie.  I don’t know how long she would have remained there otherwise. We continue down the dirt road into the unknown Tillie leading the way with Mr. Peter James at her side and Valerie and I followed, side by side.  I continue to try and get either in front of or behind her but she won’t let me.  So I finally conclude that she would remain next to me, most likely the entire time we were here. Ugh.