The admin hadn’t left any fresh material in my inbox. I stepped closer, flipped through the papers and interoffice envelopes to be sure. Nothing there. No new manuscripts or project summaries piled on the credenza by the door, where the interoffice mail intern had been depositing George Vida’s infamous circulation of printed manuscripts.
My hand stopped an inch above the faded envelope, just hovered there. The upper corner had been torn off at some time in the past. No return address. Dust clung along the feathered edge, so that it drew a jagged brown line against the paper peeking through from beneath. The underlying sheet was aquamarine, a vibrant color beside the haphazard brown, like water touching the shores of a lake. The juxtaposition made me stop, admire the random art of everyday life.
The envelope was crisp and grainy when I slid my fingers over it, picked it up, peeked inside at a small stack of papers, the margins slightly darkened with age. Strangely, the aquamarine sheet on top hadn’t faded. Something was written by hand there. A swirl of ink lay just beyond my thumb. It tantalized, made me stretch the envelope away from the page to see what lay beyond. In the shadowy lamplight, I couldn’t quite make it out. . . .
An odd sixth sense tightened the corridors of curiosity in my brain, brought a wariness that caused me to leave the papers inside. The postmark, what remained of it, read June 7, 1993. I pulled back, squinted at the envelope, turned it over and looked at it from all sides. The aged appearance, the dust, the sun-bleached edge—all of it was familiar.
Was this thing from George Vida’s famous slush pile? The one nobody was supposed to touch?
Outside my door, the building was silent, yet I had the eerie feeling of being watched. I set the envelope on the desk exactly where I’d found it, left the room, and walked down the hall, checking for signs of life in the other offices—a coat hanging over a chair, a fresh cup of coffee, a pair of walking flats tucked in a corner after a coworker changed into heels.
Nothing.
Who would take part of Slush Mountain and leave it in my office? Why?
A mistake? Or was someone trying to—I hated to even think it—set me up? Had I made an enemy here without even realizing it? Maybe someone who was insecure about a new addition coming onto the team? Publishing could be a cutthroat business.
Maybe someone was just goofing around. Hazing the new girl. Maybe all that talk from Roger and the intern about George Vida once firing an editor for tampering with Slush Mountain was all an elaborate joke. Something they pulled with every newbie at the pub house.
Hollis hadn’t mentioned anything about steering clear of Slush Mountain when she’d gone through my employment paperwork with me.
Then again, Hollis didn’t seem to like me very much, especially after George Vida’s observation about Clemson and North Carolina girls. Maybe she was just as serious about burying her past as I was, and dumping an antique submission on my desk was an easy way of getting rid of an inconvenient reminder of the homeplace.
Maybe this was a test . . . to see if I could be trusted? To see if I’d return the envelope to its place or look at the contents?
Not this girl. I had plenty to do without toying with a loaded weapon. Whatever this was, it belonged in the war room, and the time to take it there was now, while the office was empty. No one would be the wiser. From now on, I’d watch my back, just in case. If this was a joke, the joke would be on someone else once the package was quietly returned to its original resting place.
In under a minute, I was out the door with the forbidden fruit innocuously tucked in a folder. Rounding the corner, I came up short, spotting Roger near the coffee credenza with his morning cup of brew.
“At it early again?” He smiled, toasting me with his cup, seeming amiable enough. “You’re making the rest of us look bad, you know?”
“You’re here too.” I tried to sound casual, but I felt like I had a package bomb squeezed to my chest. I just wanted to be rid of it before it blew.
Yet in the back of my mind, there was that bit of aquamarine paper, the swirl of ink, the niggle of curiosity. . . .
“I have an author and an agent coming in for a quick, early meeting in the boardroom,” Roger offered.
Was it my imagination, or was he casting a curious eye toward the folder in my double-armed embrace? Maybe I looked guilty of something. Or maybe he knew what was inside. Maybe he’d put it on my desk.
“Well, have a good meeting, then.” I turned on my heel and headed back to my office. My trip to Slush Mountain would have to wait. No way I was going there with Roger nearby. The last thing I needed was the competition having a secret to hold over my head. I’d been there once already with Roger, and it hadn’t been pretty.
The folder seemed to grow heavier and hotter as I walked back to my office. A part of me was saying, Just tuck it in the desk drawer where no one will see it, then return it after they all leave this evening, but another part of me, the part that had led me around more than one blind corner in my life, was saying, Well, if you’re stuck with the thing for a while, why not take a peek?
That little whisper of mischief, the one my father and the men of Lane’s Hill Church of the Holy Brethren had so vehemently tried to beat out of me as a child, always brought about one of two things: incredible adventure or unmitigated disaster.
I was sliding my fingers into the folder before I rounded the corner to my office and shut the door. The latch clicked as I leaned against the painted wood, pinched the small stack of papers, tugged. The glue on the bottom flap clung for a moment, seeming determined to keep whatever secrets lay hidden inside. Or perhaps it was only testing my resolve. Just as quickly, the tension released, and the stack, perhaps fifty sheets in total, came loose in my hand, the blue piece on top. The extraction slowly revealed a pen-and-ink drawing of what looked like a leather string holding some sort of oddly shaped bead and a small, ornately carved box. A necklace, perhaps?
The pen-and-ink was nicely done. Somehow, despite the lack of color, I imagined that the circular bead would be blue.
Below the artwork words had been hand inscribed in graceful, scrolling letters that seemed fit for an ancient parchment unearthed in some long-hidden sea chest.
The words gave a title to the pages clothed by aquamarine.
The Story Keeper.
OUTSIDE, AS I LOOK DOWN the street, Uncle Butch and Mom are in a heated discussion in front of the little house she built for herself after Dad died and she sold the farmhouse to my brother and his wife.
Uncle Butch is in Mom’s face, his arms flailing, his six-foot-four-inch bulk dwarfing her five-foot frame. But she’s not backing down. My mother’s hair may be auburn, but she’s got the fire of a full-blown redhead.
Right now, she’s lifting her hands palm-up in frustration. I know what she’s saying. She has called my aunt Sandy in the Outer Banks of North Carolina repeatedly, and Aunt Sandy isn’t backing down either. She’s determined to sell her twenty acres of the farm in order to save the seaside store that has eaten up most of her cash reserves after the hurricane damage last year.
So far, Uncle Butch has threatened everything from a legal filibuster involving easements on the farmland to the equivalent of a family shunning. It won’t do any good. Aunt Sandy is the baby of the family, and only slightly over five feet tall herself, but she is a force of nature. The rebel. She won’t cave, no matter how much everyone espouses the logic of finally letting go of the beachfront retirement dream that has kept Aunt Sandy and Uncle George away from the family compound for the past eighteen years.
I haven’t ever seen her little store by the sea, even though it’s just a day’s drive away. If I did anything to encourage this post-empty-nest life my aunt and uncle have carved out for themselves, I’d never hear the end of it, especially now that they’re getting older. My mother can’t fathom why anyone would want to live more than a stone’s throw from their children and grandchildren.
But lately, I understand it. Sometimes when I’m coming home after a long third shift on the boards, I want to run away to the beach myself.
I watch the fight across the street until it finishes. Uncle Butch stalks off to his vehicle and drives away, spewing gravel and burning rubber all the way up the street, a skill he undoubtedly perfected as a high schooler with Elvis hair, cruising in his ’57 Chevy. The maneuver loses some of its effect when it’s done in an old, potbellied Suburban and you’re only going a half mile up the street.
The next thing I know, I’m laughing, and I wonder if I’ve really lost it this time. Maybe this is the final tipping off some invisible cliff.