The key was still in the alarm panel. She turned it to the “Off” position, shoved the bar on the door. Freezing night air rushed into the hospital as Ida stepped out, hugging her body against the cold, yet welcoming it at the same time. She looked up at the night sky, at the brilliant moon above the hospital roof spilling its pearlescent light on the frozen lawns stretching into the darkness.
By the time the nurses found her, Ida had given herself to the cold night. She’d wanted to join her mother, wanted to shine under the stars. It took a long time to nurse her back to health. After that, her bedroom door stayed locked at night.
Lester Simmons moves the arm and drops the car’s hood back into place with a loud bang. He climbs in the driver’s side and starts the engine—as expected, it starts first time. Not the choked sputtering sound it had made before, but a steady rumble. He turns the key, silencing the engine of the old Ford Granada. He wipes his oily hands on a rag, stuffs the rag into his pocket, and walks through the garage into the house.
Ceeli is out in her backyard, hanging laundry. She turns around, startled by his sudden appearance at the back door; he’s watching her in her faded housedress, the afternoon sun adding a shine to her dark-brown skin. “Jesus, Lester! You nearly gave me a heart attack!” she cries, smiling all the same.
“I fixed the problem,” he says. Lester is in his early sixties, with bushy gray hair on either side of his pale-white, bald, domed head. But he’s not old—he has long, gangly arms, the tops heavy with muscle. His body is lean. To look at him, it’s not hard to imagine Lester has naturally inherent strength. He is the sort of man who can turn a wrench on a bolt no other man can budge, but when he walks, he lumbers at his own pace, as if he hasn’t yet learned how to use his gigantic feet.
“Oh good. I did worry about it,” Ceeli says. “Now, how much do I owe you?”
He shakes his head. “No charge.”
“Come on, Lester. Let me give you something.”
“Honeftly,” he says, grinning. His cleft lip lifts to show the gum above his top front teeth. When his mouth is closed, the deformity isn’t as noticeable. But smiling, or laughing, Lester assumes a freakish appearance.
He has never said an S his entire life.
Ceeli moves close, her hand on his crotch. “Honey, you sure I can’t do nothin’ for you?”
Lester’s eyes stop on her full lips before he looks away. “Not today. Wanna get on my way. Pretty tired.”
Dejected, Ceeli removes her hand and goes to the fridge. She removes a six-pack and hands it to him. “At least let me give you these. Mack won’t notice. Probably think he drank ’em already.”
Lester bows his head in thanks.
Brightening a little, Ceeli smiles at him. “You know, you’re a good man, Lester. What would I do without you around?”
He smiles gruesomely. “Well, I better get goin’.”
“Sure, honey.” Ceeli walks him to the door. At the last moment, she blocks the way out, gets in close to him, her rank breath washing over him as she whispers in his ear. “You come by soon, you hear? I’ll call you when Mack’s away next.”
“Okay.”
She grabs his crotch again, this time giving his fruits a firm squeeze. “And keep that big ole tire iron handy.” With that she pecks him on the cheek and opens the door.
Lester goes to his truck, a late-eighties model with scuffed gray paint, starts the engine, and looks back at the house. Ceeli waves. “Thanks again!” she shouts across the street.
Lester waves back and peels away from the curb. He heads for home—the house on the outskirts east of Hope’s Peak where he has lived his entire life. At an intersection, he stops and waits for the light to change. A bus goes past, deposits several passengers at the stop to his left. An old lady, two young schoolboys, a mother with a baby carriage, and a black girl.
The girl is late teens at least, early twenties at the most, hair braided back in pigtails. Tall, slender, good-looking. Lester feels that all-too-familiar stirring within him. The same tingle you get along your forearms at the sound of a familiar song.
I told you about that girl lester that little bitch is like all them blacks not one of ’em don’t deserve what they got comin’ . . .
The light changes. The girl walks to the left, out of sight. Lester should turn right and head for home, but he turns left and follows her along the street.
She walks in a daydream, doesn’t notice him. The street leads to a road that cuts through the fields, crops on either side. A big red barn on a hill to the right. Lester drops his speed, takes his time. There are no other cars on the road, not in front or behind. He follows her as she walks on her own for a solid twenty minutes before arriving at the gate of a farm. The bus doesn’t come out here. Lester speeds up, and she half turns to watch him pass as she opens the gate and continues on toward a big farmhouse at the end of a lane. Lester looks in his rearview mirror at the farm falling away behind him, the girl.
There it is: the same tightening in the chest he gets each time. Something has stirred, touched him in a way Ceeli only wishes she could when her husband, Mack, is working. It’s lust, it’s the warm, fuzzy glow of attraction all swirled together, like the red-and-white stripes in a lollipop.
Them feelin’s you got they ain’t real they that ole black magic workin’ on ya turnin’ your head from what you been taught from how you been raised . . .
Lester finds a place to turn around, the car tires kicking up dust and dirt as he backs up on the grass. He heads back toward the farm and slows to a stop outside it, looking at the house, the chickens milling about the front. Then he gets into gear and speeds off, eager to get home now, feeling newly invigorated.
The way he always does when he falls in love at first sight.
The supplejack vine grows at the edge of an abandoned property a few miles down the road, where the woods start. Lester collects whole lengths of it, snapping them off and holding them in a bunch. He picks them for girth, for uniformity.
Back home, he sits in his shed carefully interlacing the vines, tugging at them to make them hold together, but not so tight that they might snap as they dry. He does so around a broken cookie jar his mama used to keep—it gives the perfect circumference to create a crown.
Decades before, he spent hours weaving such a crown for Ruby Lane. He didn’t know what she would think of it, or if she’d understand the hobby of a lonely boy with time on his hands. She put it on and Lester told her how pretty she looked as she circled in front of him, looking every bit the princess he thought her to be . . .
A crow caws outside.
Sweat drips from Lester’s nose and hits the vine. He holds it up. The crown is perfect. It might be the best he’s done yet. He pictures Ida’s mother standing before him once more, the crown on her head; then he pictures it on the new girl. Lester smiles at the thought of how beautiful she will look when the crown—his work—sits atop her head.
Harper pats her pocket for the key to the filing cabinet. She has already stowed the files back in there, then double-checked that it was locked.