Four
In Twin Rivers snow is a rare occurrence. However, the following Friday shortly after lunch the skies turned a dull grey and light flurries peppered down. I’d been so caught up in my own misery lately that I hadn’t heard the weather forecast. And, totally shocking, my parents hadn’t called with their usual Weather Channel update and urgings to rush to the grocery store for bread and milk.
Okay, borrowing from another nursery rhyme, my cupboards were bare. Food hadn’t been first and foremost on my mind in recent weeks. This brought back memories of the many nights, in the beginning of our relationship, when Adam would come to my house after work and we would grill steaks and corn on the cob…never mind. I hurried to Food Lion to stock the cabinet and fridge since I knew I would soon be having a visitor.
Sure enough, when I arrived back home Mallory, one of my best friends and also an employee, was sitting on my porch swing with duffel bag in hand. She has developed a habit of camping at my house during snow and ice storms. The girl is petrified of being stuck in her house alone when the power goes out, and since I have gas logs, we can stay warm even if it does. To be honest, I was thrilled to see her. At least I would have company for the weekend and wouldn’t be snowbound alone.
We were debating on whether to cook spaghetti or lasagna when my parents called and invited us to supper next door. By the time we walked the path between my house and my parent’s the light flurries had changed to big fat flakes and the snow was coming down in earnest.
We were greeted at the door by the enticing aroma of my dad’s down home Southern cuisine. He had cooked a mouth-watering chicken stew consisting of chicken, potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, one of his red hot peppers, Spicy V-Eight Juice, and enough butter to clog at least 90% of your arteries. For desert he whipped up his famous snow cream.
Mallory ate, as usual, like a small elephant. She is blessed with one of those amazing metabolisms that allow her to pig out at will and never gain one stinking ounce. Of course, it also helps that her favorite activity is bedroom related and a calorie-burning workout in itself. And trust me; she burns an outrageous amount of calories at said activity.
After a supper that had us swearing we wouldn’t eat again for three days, we moved to the living room. It was a cozy room, with afghans thrown across the backs of a floral patterned couch and chair that were beginning to show signs of wear and tear. Although if you asked my dad he would insist the furniture still had several good years of quality usage.
Dad grew up during the Great Depression and even to this day, he refuses to waste anything. Before he would take money out of his bank account, he would rather do without. Don’t even get him started on buying on credit. It has never been an option for him, and it will bring you a heated lecture on the perils of debt. He firmly believes that if you don’t have the money to buy it, you don’t have any business with it.
Cozy by the fire, I was reminded of the many autumn evenings spent sitting around a campfire and roasting marshmallows when my son was small. And what is my favorite campfire activity? You got it! Ghost stories, of course! “Do you believe in ghosts, Mallory?” The wind howled through the eaves of my parent’s old house, causing the living room lights to flicker eerily. Oh boy! What an appropriate ambiance.
“You know I do! Don’t start that shit, Eve!” We moved away from the intense heat radiating from the crackling fire. I never understood why Dad wouldn’t just spring for central heat instead of dealing with all the trouble associated with heating with wood.
I stifled a smile as we settled back against colorful throw pillows and she seemed to turn quite pale. Bless her heart. I should really be ashamed of myself for tormenting someone who fully believed that spirits hovered in the air around us.
“This house is haunted you know?” I leaned toward her, all the while studying her eyes for her reaction. As if on cue, one of Dad’s guinea hens came running around the house screeching that God-awful racket they make and the poor girl almost found herself in the attic. “My mom has frequent visitors from the other side.”
“Shut up, Eve! Now dammit! I mean it!”
“It sure is haunted,” my mother, Evelyn, agreed. The woman could hear a pin drop.
My mom is short, plump, with a head full of white hair that she has shampooed, set and sprayed, or I prefer to use the term lacquered, into submission every Friday morning.
Now my parents are two of the most well loved people in the entire county. Everyone in our town, even the ones who aren’t any relation to us, calls my dad “Pa” and asks Mom when she is going to fix one of her mouth watering country breakfasts for them. To give you an inkling of how old fashioned my beloved parents are, Mom still refers to her underwear as step-ins, and Dad wears britches and says things like, “I reckon I better go over yunder and get me a poke to put these arsh taters in.”
“In fact, this whole area is haunted,” Mom continued. They’s a old plantation house about a mile from here with a graveyard in back where the slaves was buried. They’s been a whole lot of strange happenings back there in them woods behind the house, I can tell you. We have lived here for fifty year and I knowed this was a strange place the week me and Joseph got married and he brung me here. I just got a feeling.”
“What happened?" Mallory leaned forward, scared shitless, but eager to hear her answer.
Now you rarely catch my mom without a dip of snuff in her jaw, Tuberose, and tonight was no exception. She picked up her spit cup, an empty Maxwell House coffee can stuffed with tissues, and spit a healthy stream of tobacco juice. “Tell her what you seen, Joseph.”
Dad is 80 and no matter how much my sister and I complain or worry about his health, he continues his daily trips to the garden during the hottest months of the summer growing vegetables to sell at the local Farmer's Market. Age is slowly creeping up on him, but when we were teenagers and watched the Tarzan movies every Sunday without fail, my sister and I were convinced he was the spitting image of Johnny Weissmuller.
“You might not believe what I’m about to tell you, but it’s the God’s honest truth, Mallory.” He settled back in his recliner to get comfortable. “When I was about fifteen, a bunch of us went coon hunting right back yunder behind the house in the graveyard. It was my daddy, his two brothers, and me and my brother. I won’t never forget that night as long as I live. I was carrying a coon in a sack and walking through the woods, when we heard something running through the leaves making a terrible racket. We thought it was a coon. My daddy shined his light toward the noise. Huh! It weren’t no coon!"
“What was it?” Mallory asked totally engrossed in the story.
“Well, I’ll tell you, Mallory. It was a little black boy running as fast as his chubby little legs would carry him. He would stumble and fall, git right back up and strike out running again. He looked to be about 3 year old. It was cold that night and all he was wearing was a cloth diaper. Them dogs was getting closer to him, so he stopped at the bottom of a hickor’ nut tree and looked up, then looked back at the dogs and started up that tree.”
“He had a real hard time climbing the tree, but made it to the first set of limbs. He held on to the limb above him and stood there while them dogs was barking like crazy and trying to jump up the trunk of that tree at him. When we got to the tree we shined our flashlights up into it and just watched him for a few minutes. Didn’t none of us say a word. It was hard to believe that a small child had clomb a tree that any of us would have had a hard time climbing and was standing on a limb looking at us. But he was.”
Dad shook his head, remembering. “He was just a crying. I guess them dogs had sceared him pretty bad. My daddy finally said, “Joseph, climb up that tree and bring that youngun down.” So I handed him my flashlight and started up the tree. I watched the little boy as I was climbing the tree. He had big ole fat tears rolling down his cheeks and he was trembling. I guess from being cold and from being sceared of the dogs.”
I watched Mallory’s face, as I had heard the ending to this story hundreds of times from my grandpa.
“When I got within arms reach of him, close enough to touch him, he just disappeared right in front of my eyes. In front of all of us."
“He disappeared?” Mallory glanced sideways at me. She was painfully aware that my parents were telling the truth, since my mom held regular conversations with God, and neither of them had ever been known to tell a lie. “What did you do?"
“I reckon I broke some kind of speed record for climbing back down a tree. I was fifteen, but it sceared the daylights out of me and my brother so bad we hung on Daddy’s coattails till we got back out of them woods. To this day, I ain’t never been as sceared as I was that night! I remember walking back home with my eyes glued to the ground. None of us was going to risk looking up in them trees and seeing that little boy again. In fact, it was several year before any of us went back in them woods again, ‘special after dark.”
“And even now, do you still believe the little boy disappeared?”
“I don’t just believe it, Mallory. I know it as good as I know I’m setting here. I seen that little boy just as plain as I see you setting there now. Three grown men and two grown boys seen him. One person might can ‘magine something, but when five sets of eyes see the same thing that ain’t no ‘magination.”
“Have you seen him since that night?”
“No, I ain’t never seen him again. But several other men have been in the woods hunting at night and seen him. He’s still out there.”
“It weren’t long after you seen the little boy that we had to start fighting for bed cover, was it?” Mom laughed, spitting into her coffee can.
“Right around that time,” Dad agreed. “I woke up one night freezing to death, cause my cover was gone. I reached down to pull it back up, but soon as I did it slid back down to the foot of the bed. I thought Evelyn was hiding at the foot of the bed and playing a trick on me. So, next time I grabbed it and held it tight. I thought she sure was strong, cause it was all I could do to hold on to that cover! Then I turned loose of the cover expecting to hear her fly back against the wall and come up cussin’, but I didn't hear nothing. I got up and turned on the light and she weren’t there. I opened the bedroom door and went in the living room. She was setting by the fire. I asked her why she weren’t in bed and she said, “cause something keeps pulling the durn cover off me!”
“Has it happened since?”
“A couple times a year,” Mom answered, not seeming overly concerned with the paranormal activities in her house.
“Have you ever thought about moving to another house?” The toe of Mallory’s shoe made a steady rat a tat tat on the tile floor as she glanced nervously around the room.
“Foot naw! Ain’t nothing gonna make us leave our house. Besides, he don’t really bother us. Mostly just aggervates us and keeps us from getting a good nights sleep. You ain’t got nothing to worry about when you know God is in the house and I knowed He was in this house the day He sent me an angel!"
“God sent Mom an angel concerning my son, JoJo,” I informed Mallory, who seemed to have settled down somewhat when the discussion had switched from aggravating ghosts to heavenly beings.
“He sure did! Lord, I won’t never forget it as long as I live. It was a miracle is what it was. A miracle straight from heaven. I ain’t a gonna lie to you about it. I was having a terrible time, just terrible when JoJo had his accident. He was at work one day when a steel beam fell from above him and hit his head. He was knocked off a stepladder through the air about ten feet and landed on his back on concrete. He suffered broken bones in his back, his neck, a fractured skull, and had a brain bleed. I didn’t know whether my baby was going to make it or not. I’m here to tell you, it was touch and go there for a while and me and his mama like to worried ourselves to death. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. All I did was pray and worry about him. Yessiree, I worried about that child day in and day out.”
“She cried day in and night out,” Dad agreed.
“Finally, when I had all I could take, I fell down on my knees one night and commenced to telling the Lord how worried I was and asking Him if there was any way He could lift that burden off of me?”
“The next morning I got up and went to Food Lion to get groceries. I was about half way through the store when I bent down to get a box of grits and out of nowhere the most beautiful black lady you ever did see squatted down beside me. She was wearing a white shirt and a pair of white pants and had long black flowing hair. I smiled at her, then grabbed my box of grits and pushed my buggy to the next aisle.”
“I picked up several more things and when I reached over to get Joseph’s fiber cereal, there she was again. She didn’t have a buggy and she wasn’t picking up any groceries. She was just standing there. I just thought maybe she was a little tetched in the head or something, so we smiled at each other again and I kept on going to the next aisle. Wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I turned to go up the next aisle there she stood. She was just standing there, smiling at me. Just me. Other people were passing by her without even bothering to speak to her, which I thought sure was rude. I started to ask her why she was following me when I passed by her, but I didn't. I guess she was making me nervous, because I just kept on going.”
“When I turned the corner to go up the next aisle she was standing in the middle of the aisle again. I had to know why she kept on following me, so I pushed my buggy to the side and walked up to her and said, “It seems like everywhere I go you are always there.”
She smiled the most beautiful, peaceful and loving smile and said, “Yes, I am. Isn’t it good to know that I am always with you?”
“I don’t know why, but I reached out my hand to touch her and when I did it was like electricity shot down my arm and through my whole body, and a peaceful feeling come over me like I ain’t never felt before or since. I think I must have blacked out for a minute or two, because when I come to I left my grocery cart setting in the middle of Food Lion and walked all over that store and out into the parking lot looking for her. But she was gone. I got in the car and come home and fell to my knees beside my bed and prayed. I prayed until I heard just as clear as you hear me speaking now, “Do not fear, Evelyn. He will recover.”
“That was all I needed to hear. I stopped worrying about JoJo after that, cause I knowed the good Lord would keep His word and make him well again. And he did.”
“Do you really think it was God?”
“Ain’t a doubt in my mind, Mallory.”
At 9:00 on the dot Dad grabbed the remote and switched on the TV to boxing. There wouldn’t be any more stories from him tonight. The man was addicted to the sport.
“We need to get going.” I grinned at Mallory and pointed to Dad as he punched the air each time one of the boxers made a jab at his opponent. “Thanks for supper and the snow cream.” I hugged both of my parents and my mom hugged Mallory.
“Come back to see us anytime, Mallory,” Dad said, his eyes never once wavering from the television screen.
We arrived home just in time to see Anderson Cooper, on AC360. I watched for a while, until I heard Mallory snoring. Then I covered her with a blanket and went to bed.
The next morning when I reluctantly crawled out of bed it was still snowing. After a breakfast of French toast, scrambled eggs and bacon, Mallory stacked the dishes in the dishwasher, while I sliced and diced potatoes, onions, carrots and garlic and added them to a pot roast in the crock-pot to slow cook until supper. I love the smell of pot roast simmering, especially on a cold, snowy day.
We stretched out in recliners close to the fireplace as the driving wind sent the snow splattering against the windowpanes. Mallory isn’t the news junkie that I am, so I channel surfed until I found an interesting Lifetime Movie. It was about the ghost of a young woman, who was killed by her husband’s jealous brother, and has come back to haunt the residents of an old Mississippi plantation, my kind of movie.
I watched snowdrifts piling up on the window ledge, and icicles forming on the eaves of the front porch and on my wind chimes as they did a troubled little line dance in the wind. Maybe I should bring them in, but I was too comfortable to move. Snow, the delicious aroma of pot roast, and the warmth of a fireplace are a drowsy combination.
The light from the fireplace was doing a jig on the ceiling when I heard Mallory’s decidedly unladylike snores. I should get off my rear end and throw a load of clothes in the dryer, and I really wanted to see how the movie ended, but I could hardly hold my eyes open. I programmed the DVR to record the movie, pulled the afghan from the back of the recliner, relocated thoughts of Adam to the darkest recesses of my mind, and slept like I hadn’t had a wink of sleep in forty-eight hours.
Mallory woke me a couple hours later, “Look! It's still snowing! Let’s make hot chocolate with marshmallows like we did last year when it snowed.”
“You mean hot chocolate with marshmallows like Adam made us from his secret family recipe last year when it snowed?” She had successfully shot my pleasant snow day all to hell.
“Oh yeah, scratch that idea.”
“I have an even better idea. Let’s sit by the fire and tell ghost stories. Or would you rather go next door and let my parents reminisce again?”
“Now Eve, dammit don’t start that shit again! Boy, are you ever vindictive,” she pouted. “I didn’t even mean to bring Adam up!”
Toward evening, I dug through my son’s closet and found thick insulated hunting suits for us. We simply had to look ridiculous in our camouflaged fat suits. Although, Mallory looked quite cute in the garment both of us could have easily fit in. Adding boots, toboggans, and gloves to our attire we headed outside to take pictures in the snow. I love to photograph trees, fences and old buildings when they are heavy with snow and dripping with icicles. We were surrounded by a winter wonderland when we finally followed the trail back home.
Shedding our wet clothes, we fell down in front of the fireplace in thick terry cloth robes and began a heated game of Scrabble. As usual, Mallory lucked up and had the letters to spell FART, which sent her into convulsions of hilarity. Honestly, it takes so little to amuse the girl.
As was my habit, I had checked my messages the minute I walked through the door. And as expected my employees had called one by one to inform me that they would miss work the following day due to snow covered roads. That’s why I drive a Jeep Cherokee. Showing up for work isn’t an option for me. I have to be there even when no one else can make it in. It’s one of the pitfalls of being self-employed. Well, that and taxes.
As a rule, half of the plant, the men with four-wheel drive trucks, normally shows up for work on snow days. This left me to clean up after roughly 150 people. I have the janitorial contract at a large tire manufacturing company and the plant operates seven days a week, rain or shine. Not something I looked forward to. Thank God for Mallory. 25 toilets, 6 urinals, 12 sinks, 2 canteens, a patio, 3 smoking booths, 12 water fountains, and 99 trash cans to empty are a bit much for one person, don't you think? Again, thank God for Mallory!
At 6:00 Sunday evening, the plant was spotless and we were both near the brink of exhaustion, and the thought of standing over a hot stove wasn’t one I actually even considered. So I pulled into the parking lot behind Alfredo's, an Italian restaurant in town. Mallory put in a request for spaghetti, and I ordered my usual boneless inferno hot wings, along with a large basket of buffalo chips. Most of my life is spent on a starvation diet, but I deserved each and every one of those greasy, salty chips today.
Slumped in the booth, I was almost too tired to hold my head up and had to be a most pathetic sight. The only time I really did physical labor anymore was on snow days or when one of my employees took a vacation, which wasn’t often. In this economy, most of them chose to take their vacation in the form of a weeks pay.
I pushed further back in my seat and closed my eyes to rest for the few minutes it would take our salads to arrive. Deebo, the extremely handsome and totally adorable owner of the restaurant, evidently took pity on me and began massaging my shoulders.
“Heavenly,” I mumbled unwilling to open my eyes as the tension slowly oozed from my tired body. I was about to drift off in the middle of the restaurant, when I felt the toe of a shoe almost splinter my shinbone. “Ouch!” I screeched in throbbing pain, bending down to massage the offended area. “What did you do that for, Mallory?” Yet the second I opened my eyes, the answer was before them. Adam, along with the chosen one, stood looking rather tense and agitated a few feet away.
Oh my God! How was it possible for one man to look so good? And why was he looking at me as if I had committed a sin comparable to one of his? His eyes were shooting daggers aimed directly at me. Why? Oh! Because Deebo had his hands on me? That had to be why! He was jealous! Imagine that! Evidently, it caused some small fraction of pain when the shoe was on the other foot. I opened my mouth to speak-- well, actually, breathe his name-- but before I could he placed his arm possessively around Chia's tiny waist, gave me a go to hell look, and left.
I collapsed in my seat, realizing that I had been holding my breath for a couple of minutes. Adam looked so scrumptious that my bones turned to mush and I could have easily dissolved into a puddle of goo as I watched him storm out. If the love of his life hadn’t been with him, I’m not sure what would have happened.
Would I have raced across the floor and fallen breathlessly into Adam’s outstretched arms? Well, he would have had to remove his arm from its death grip on Chia’s waist or I would have fallen breathlessly to the floor. And wouldn’t that have been the absolute pits if I had ran up to him and he had patently ignored me, with a knowing smirk? The horror! Watching him walk out of the restaurant with his arm around Chia left a twisting, gnawing ache deep inside me.
Being perfectly honest, if I had been him, I would have scurried out the door as well. We both knew they weren’t about to enjoy a cozy little meal. Not with me there. And Adam wouldn’t have dared anyway. He was acquainted with my emotions well enough to know that if he had even considered snuggling with Chia, in one of the dimly lit back booths, I would have found immense pleasure in ripping out every last silky shiny black strand of hair from her gorgeous head.
I glanced at Mallory and her eyes were bulging as big as one of her Melmac saucers and she couldn’t be still. I mouthed, “sshhh” to her, praying that she could keep quiet for a few more seconds - oftentimes a chore for her- at least until Deebo decided to cease with his marvelous ministrations.
“Gotta get back to work. Here comes your salads,” he said in that sexy Italian voice and moseyed back to the kitchen.
“I was trying to let you know he was here, but you had your eyes closed,” Mallory grumbled as soon as Deebo and the waitress were out of hearing range.
“Tell me every detail from the minute he walked in.” I waited breathlessly as she took the time to pour Thousand Island dressing over her salad. I know the girl was famished, so was I, but let’s try to get our priorities in order here. “Don’t leave anything out! Start at the beginning.”
She finally took a deep breath and began her oratory. “I saw them when they came in. He stopped to talk to some people at the door,” she whispered conspiratorially. “The minute he walked in he saw you. He got this weird look on his face. I don’t know, like mad or confused. But then Adam always looks confused. Anyway, he stood frozen in his spot for a few seconds. Then he walked in and just stood there waiting for you to open your freaking eyes! And by the way, you looked quite content with Deebo’s hands all over you.”
“Don’t you dare change the subject! What was the precious one doing?”
She took a huge bite of salad and chewed it longer than the average cow chews its cud. Then without apparent haste, or concern that I was on the verge of choking her, she took a big swig of iced tea to wash it down. “Oh, she was just trailing along behind him like some simpleton. She had to know he was staring you down. I personally would have been thumping Adam’s head and telling him to get a grip if I was her.” She took another large bite of salad, miraculously found room in her mouth to stuff a cracker and, spitting crumbs, continued. “Especially when the two of you were just gazing at each other like there was no one else in the restaurant. I have to admit, for a few minutes there I was terrified that you were going to do something stupid, like run into Adam’s outstretched arms.”
Mallory always did have a flair for the dramatic. And what outstretched arms? It would have been on if he had so much as stretched out his pinkie. “The thought crossed my mind.”
“I know it did. I could tell from the look of complete adulation on your face.” She breathed an irritated sigh. “Now this will bring all of those unnecessary feelings for Adam rushing back.”
When had they left?
Mallory felt no love loss for Adam, whatsoever. Her boyfriend, at the time, had been the one who had introduced Adam and me on a blind date. So I guess she felt somewhat responsible for the ensuing chaos. Hers had been the shoulder that I had sobbed quarts of nasal secretions on for the last three years. She knew every pain and heartache that he had ever caused me and obviously wasn’t anxious to witness a repeat performance.
“Why did he have to show up here anyway?”
“Well, in the booming metropolis of Twin Rivers, we have Alfredo’s and Bojangles. It wouldn’t take a nuclear physicist to answer that question.” However, my mind had already traveled through time and space to the apartment Chia had recently moved in to. I was imagining, in vivid detail, what they were doing and in which room they were doing it. I knew Chia was drop dead gorgeous, but ever the glutton for punishment I needed to hear Mallory’s assessment of her. “What did you think of her?”
“You were right. She’s… pretty.” Then, of a sudden, she seemed extremely interested in the inner workings of a saltshaker.
“Pretty!” The word came out a little harsher than I had intended, but I was so not feeling like being patronized tonight. “The girl transcends pretty, Mallory, and you damn well know it!”
“Okay, so she is a freaking knock out! Nonetheless you can tell by the way she just stood there, with her man fixated on another woman, that her pretty little head didn’t come equipped with a brain. How did Adam get her anyway?”
Mallory seemed truly perplexed by Adam’s ability to have a woman of such stunning beauty enamored with him. Exactly what did that say about me?
“Who knows?” I was unable to hide my smile. But he won’t have her long. In a rush Lady Wonder's words filled my head, “He will feel exactly what you are feeling now. Only worse.”
I sat staring at the door hoping against any last remaining vestiges of hope that Adam would drop Chia off at home to make egg rolls and rush back with a sincere declaration of his undying love for me dripping from his lips. I slid my untouched salad toward Mallory and she smiled her thanks before digging in.
Refusing to allow my mind to wander and conjure up a clear image of what the lovebirds were up to in her cozy little apartment, I forced myself to eat a couple of tasteless hot wings. Then I drove home as a familiar, weary depression settled over me.