Southern Gothic and Other Stories
A Collection of Short Stories by
by Edward P. Norvell
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011 by Edward P. Norvell
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Discover other titles by Edward P. Norvell at Smashwords.com
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/epnorvell
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This novel is a fiction. Any reference to historical events; real people, living or dead or to real locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
Southern Gothic
Could this be a part of him? Sadie thinks as she pulls a petal from the large peony in her hand. She watches the petal fall to the floor. Surely it must be. When the roots grow through the earth into his nose, ears, and mouth and as he becomes black and rotten and the worms spread him around, certainly little particles of his are pulled up into the plant ending up in these lovely moist petals. She picks another petal, holds it in the light and looks at the intricate webbing.
A piece of his mouth, the curl of his upper lip, tiny little parts of his eyes, grey green, even the color is so small that it is lost in the red of the flower. She pulls another blossom out of the arrangement. I wonder where this one grew from; his fingers, his hands, so big and clumsy, covered with thick black hair; or maybe his belly button or... she laughs.
A man with dark hair, ruddy cheeks and wearing a dark suit walks up behind her, holding a cigarette.
“What are you doing?” He asks, half chuckling. She turns around, looks at him then turns away.
“Nothing.”
She puts the flower back into the vase then bends over the arrangement to smell it. The muscles in Henry’s cheeks work furiously. “Come on.” He grabs her arm roughly. “Let’s go. We’re late.”
When they return from the party Henry walks into the parlor to pour a Bourbon and Sadie walks out the back door. The air is warm and humid. She smells the peonies and picks a few from the small rectangular garden by the kitchen door. She lies back in the hammock and swings. Looking at the half-moon, she begins to run the flower down the length of her body. She unsnaps her dress and reveals one of her breasts to the blueish light of the moon, then begins to circle it with the flowers until her nipples become erect. She pulls the dress up and runs the flowers down her thighs.
“What part of you is here, Walter, your hands, your lips?”
She moves her hands along her thighs, a film of sweat forms on her body. Henry opens the screen door, holding his bourbon.
“Sadie?” He eyes are slow to adjust to the dark. “Where are you?”
He hears her and sees her in the hammock.
“Sadie, what’s the matter with you?’ He pulls her dress down and picks up roughly by her shoulders and shakes her. Her hair is loose and her eyes look wild, they do not focus on Henry, but on some point beyond him.
“Come inside.” He pulls her out of the hammock roughly and leads her into the house.
He pours her a Bourbon and they talk in the parlor.
“It has been a year since Walter disappeared.” Henry said, lifting his glass. “The inquiry has finally ended. I think it is time to toast Walter.” Henry said with a wry, knowing smile.
“To Walter,” he said. “May he rest in peace.”
“To Walter,” Sadie said, lifting her glass as well.
After they finished their drinks, it is late and they decide to go to bed. Once in bed Sadie makes no sound until she hears Henry snoring then she leans over and slowly rolls the covers down. Henry is sleeping naked, he often does in the summer because of he heat; she never does.
He is so quiet, she thinks, as still as a root in the ground. The moon softens his features making them smooth and lovely. It is only when I lean closer that I can see the ugly wide pores, the grotesquely twisted hairs, and smell his body odor, mixed with the odor of tobacco. There’s the stubble on his face. He shaves twice a day, but that doesn’t keep it from growing at night. How it rips my face when he kisses me. How rough he is, how crudely he holds me, clawing at me like an animal, quitting when he’s had his way with me and falling asleep without any regard for my pleasure. I thought he would be so different from Walter, but he is no better. He may even be worse.
Henry opens his eyes. “What are you looking at?” He says.
“You.”
“Why?”
“I’m admiring you.”
He pulls the covers up.
“Go to sleep, it’s late.”
“Yes, Henry.”
How lovely he would be as a rose, she thinks, so soft and delicate. He wouldn’t have any of the roughness and crudeness. It will be a job though, roses are not easy to care for. I will have to prune him and keep the bugs off of him in the summer and pinch his blossoms off when they die. But how lovely he would look arranged in Grandmother’s crystal vase in the parlor.
Aaron
“Tell that boy to shut up!” Billy shouted.
“Aaron’s harmless, mister. Don’t let him get to you,” the bartender said, then he bent over the bar close to his customer, and whispered, “He’s not right.”
Aaron Koontz stood at the other end of the bar. In his mid-twenties, he wore a felt hat with a saw-toothed rim that stood up where the hat met his head. On the hat were buttons and pins of different sizes and colors, some were from old political campaigns, some were advertisements. He wore a long gray coat with political buttons on the lapel. His face was round with a double chin. When he spoke he stuttered, showing yellowed teeth, unnaturally large. His eyes sparkled and were deep blue. When he looked at you he seemed to look right through you like he wasn’t sure you were really there.
Two men, Ned, and Jacob, sat beside Aaron laughing and cupping their hands over their mouths and whispering behind his back so he couldn’t hear them. Aaron held a big roll of dollar bills tied with a rubber band that he waved in the air in the direction of the bar tender.
“Bartender, get these fellows a round of drinks.”
Ned and Jacob started to talk, swaying on their bar stools. Ned lightly punched Aaron on the shoulder. Aaron let out an inappropriately loud guffaw, as he sucked the air violently in and out.
“Tell that boy to shut up,” Billy, who sat at the other end of the bar, said. This time he looked at Aaron and his voice was louder and more agitated.
Ned, a tall lanky man with a stoop who looked to be in his mid-thirties, sat on one of the stools near Aaron. He got up and walked to the end of the bar. “Calm down, Billy,” Ned whispered.
“You’re going to spoil everything me and Jacob is planning. You can listen to that fool for a few more minutes, just give me time to get my hands on his cash,” he said. “As soon as we convince him to get in the car with us we’re going to take him out in the country and roll him,” he laughed. “You just hold your horses and let me and Jacob get this show on the road.”
Billy stared at Aaron and did not reply.
Ned smiled nervously and patted his friend on the shoulder. “Okay?” then he walked to his stool and sat down.
“Aaron, tell us where does that rich uncle of yours keep all them horses,” Ned asked.
“Down at the river. In a big brick stable.” He spread his arms in a sweeping motion. His head followed the movement of one of his hands. “As big as that cemetery out there.”
“That cemetery?” Jacob said pointing out the front window.
“Yeah, as big as that cemetery.” Aaron slowly raised his eyes to the ceiling where a beer sign turned slowly overhead with the face of a woman, with long blonde hair, smiling as she held a mug of Budweiser beer.
“That’s pretty big. Must be about four or five acres. Why do you reckon he built himself a stable that big?” Ned asked. He looked at Jacob and snickered.
“I don’t know; I supposed he wanted to. He’s mighty rich. He lives in a big brick mansion on Jefferson Davis Avenue that has a swimming pool in the back yard with port holes in it, so when you walk under it you can see the people swimming.”
Ned and Jacob laughed out loud and one of them said, “Yeah he must be rich,” Ned said. “Hey Aaron, if your uncle’s so rich, why do you go around dressed in them raggedy clothes and wear them funny looking buttons.”
Aaron looked at Ned and said “Cause Momma don’t want me to wear nice clothes, says its a waste of money, clothes are, and I don’t like em anyway. So I wear my daddy’s coat and a hat I made for myself in high school.”
“Come on now Aaron, we know you never went to high school,” Jacob said.
“Did too!”
“Yeah,” Jacob said. “Probably special education classes where they teach you not to wet your pants, and by the time you graduate you’ve learned how to tie your shoes,” he laughed. Aaron looked down at the floor and let his hand, holding an empty mug of beer, drop to his side.
“Hey, Aaron how about taking us out to that horse farm of your uncles,” Ned said. “I bet he don’t even have a horse farm.”
“He does too, I’ll show you,” Aaron said, straightening up in his seat.
“Can you show it to us tonight, Aaron?” Ned winked at Jacob. “Me and Jacob, will take you in our car, how about that?”
Aaron walked across the gravel parking lot in front of the bar and started to laugh again like he did inside, with the loud sucking noise.
“You tell him to shut up or by God I’ll kill him,” Billy said, turning to Jacob. The streetlight lit Billy’s face, showing lines of premature age, and a look in his eyes that frightened his younger companions.
“Jacob keep him quiet, okay,” Ned said.
Aaron got in the back seat with Jacob and slammed the door shut. Billy drove with Ned in the front seat. Ned turned around and asked Aaron, “Now where’d you say that stable was?”
“Down Bringle Ferry road. I’ll show you.”
Soon after driving through town they were on a windy black top road that was very narrow and dark.
“How far out did you say it was?” Ned, asked Aaron. Then he started to snicker and looked around at Jacob.
“Oh its a lot further out than this. Its got to be far out from town cause it’s so big. They won’t let it be in too close,” Aaron said, “cause of the smell and the noise. My uncle’s so rich he could be governor if he wanted to. They even offered him the job once. He just put on his big white gentleman’s hat and rode off in his car. Said he didn’t have time for such trifles,” Aaron began to laugh.
Billy, reached over, grabbed Ned’s leg, and dug his fingers into his flesh, “I thought I told you to keep him quiet.”
Ned shot a look at Jacob and Jacob said, “Aaron you better keep quiet. It bothers Billy when you make noise when he’s driving. You don’t want him to get upset and drive us into a ditch now do you?”
“Oh no!” Aaron said, lowering his head, puckering his mouth, and shaking his head several times.
A little farther down the road, Ned said. “I think this is far enough.” Billy turned down a side road until he came to a wooded area with a small cemetery surrounded by a low stone wall beside the road.
“Where are we?” Aaron asked, “I didn’t tell you to stop here.” He was upset, “This ain’t where my uncle’s farm is. What are we doing here?” The three men led Aaron out of the car into the little cemetery.
Aaron broke free and started to run across the moonlit graveyard, but Ned knocked him down and pinned him to the ground. Jacob began to beat his stomach with his fists as Ned knelt on the ground holding him from behind.
“Billy, come over here and give us a hand.”
“I don’t want to have anything to do with him.”
Ned grabbed Billy’s arm and yanked it. Billy pulled it away and swung at Ned, knocking him to the ground.
”Billy, Ned, stop that, we’re out here to roll this fool, not kill each other.” Jacob yelled at his companions as he held Aaron to the ground. “You all stop fighting and help me.”
Aaron violently pitched his head back and forth, kicking and trying to free himself. He let out a piercing scream, it did not sound human, it sounded more like a trapped and frightened animal.
“Shut him up,” Billy yelled.
Before Jacob knew what was happening, Billy was on Aaron. Billy kicked the boy with his shoes then tore into his face with his fists. Jacob managed to free himself from the tumbling mass on top of him and stood up. Billy slammed the heel of his boot down on Aaron’s face while kicking his side with the other. Aaron continued to scream, and as he screamed, Billy became even fiercer in his attack.
Jacob ran to Ned, who still lay on the ground. “Ned, get up, if we don’t stop him, Billy’s going to kill that boy. Then we’ll really be in a fix.”
The two tried to grab Billy from behind, and tear him away from the screaming balled up mass beneath him, but they couldn’t. “Billy stop it you’re going to kill him,” they yelled.
Jacob grabbed the back of Billy’s coat and almost succeeded in pulling him off but Billy wheeled around and knocked him flat to the ground.
Soon the screaming stopped. Billy had a stone now. He held it in both hands, and knelt over Aaron, smashing the stone into his face. Each time it hit, it made a dull thud.
Ned was powerless to stop the relentless pounding of the stone. Billy remained frozen over the motionless figure, except for the pounding that he did with the timing and precision of a machine.
Car lights flashed and lingered on the road outside the cemetery. Ned and Jacob approached Billy cautiously.
”Billy, a car drove by. It went real slow, they saw our car, and they’ll probably be back. Come on, you got to stop. We got to get out of here.”
Billy stopped pounding and dropped the stone. He dropped his head, kneeling over the bloodied form. He spoke very softly, almost to himself. “They should have killed him when he was born. Shouldn’t no one live like that, breath the same air as we do. Shouldn’t no one be like that.”
He began to shake his head and Ned and Jacob put their hands under his arms and lifted him up. They walked him to the car and put him in the back seat, then they ran back to the bunched up mass on the ground in the gray coat. Jacob reached for the shoulders to pick him up and under the pale light of the moon he saw that Aaron’s face was a bloody mass of flesh.
“Oh my God!” He said. Ned ran to Jacob’s side and looked down. “God damn!” he gagged and turned around.
The two grabbed Aaron’s feet and dragged him to a nearby grave. At the head of the grave was a marker and some freshly dug earth. The two began to dig frantically in the fresh earth, spreading it over the body, then Ned grabbed Jacob’s arm and said, “We haven’t got time, let’s get some branches and leaves and cover him up.”
In a corner, of the stone enclosure was a pile of branches that had recently been cleaned out of the cemetery. They hauled enough leaves and branches to cover the body and ran to the car.
Ned jumped in the driver’s side, found the keys still in the ignition, and roared off down the dirt road to the highway. In the back seat, Billy sat holding his head in his hands, shaking back and forth, mumbling.
“They should have killed him,” he said. “They should have killed him.”
Billy Eugene Johnson and Me
Billy Eugene Johnson and me met three years ago; he was nineteen, I was twenty-six. We both worked at the Harris Quarry. There’s lots of granite quarries in Cowan County, but most of them are worked out and filled with water like the Balfour, near my place. The Harris isn’t filled up though; it’s the only one still being worked in the county. It’s a shame, because there’s plenty of good granite to be quarried in this county. They used to mine gold up at Gold Hill back a hundred years ago. They had some of the deepest mines in the country, but water got them too, too much water in Cowan County.
I remember the first time I met Billy was at the Blue Goose Bar and Lounge on Hwy 29. We were both hot after this woman named Theresa; she was as big as a barn, but we were so drunk it didn’t matter. She took us both home with her, fucked me first, then Billy. It was way the hell out in the country. When we woke up she was gone and we had no way to get home, but to walk. We were both still drunk, stopped at the Candlelight Restaurant and ate sausage biscuits and coffee before we thumbed back to our cars. Billy was out of work and there was a job opening at the quarry, so I told him to come on out. He started working the next day. His Mamma was fed up with him, wild buck that he was, so when he got the job, she kicked him out and he moved in with me.
I lived in an old wooden house with cracks in the walls and broken windowpanes I stuffed with newspapers. It wasn’t much more than a shack. I got it cheap since it was so near the Balfour Quarry.
The Balfour is filled with water that is so deep they say there’s automobiles and even a crane at the bottom of it, though you can’t see a trace of any of them. They say dead horses are down there and cows. People have died in it, diving off the cliffs, getting snagged in the debris at the bottom, or hitting rocks just below the surface. There’s probably a body or two down there that nobody’s found, someone went diving at night, got killed and no one knows about it. The quarry’s fenced off with “No Trespassing” signs posted all over, but people still go there, college kids from Wiltshire and high school kids from Granite Quarry and Faith. Me and Billy used to go swimming in the quarry, skinny dipping some of the time, and laying out in the sun on the rocks. I didn’t like to go swimming except at one place that was low enough that you could walk into the water. But Billy, he used to dive off the high rocks, some of em fifty and sixty feet, and off the crane that hung over the water even higher. It scared me just to think about it.
We went fishing together, rode motorcycles through the woods near the quarry, and went into town nights to raise hell at the Keg and the Midnight Sun. Sometimes we’d drive uptown, park my car on Main Street and watch everybody go by, just like all the other rednecks. Lots of kids come into Wiltshire from Lexington, Concord, and Kannapolis. Davidson County and Cabarrus are dry, so they come to Wiltshire to drink beer and ride up and down Main Street in their hopped up cars.
There was plenty of fights in town at the bars and Billy and me got into our share of em. I never looked for one, but sometimes you couldn’t help it. One time at the Keg, I saw a man kill another man because he thought he had been eyeing his girl. After he shot the man, he saw it wasn’t the man he thought it was at all, it was some other guy who looked like him. Another time I was at the Midnight Sun, minding my own business, wasn’t even a rough crowd, mostly college kids, when this fool came running in the bar with a butcher knife and stabbed a girl standing next to me in the breast then ran out. They caught him and took her to the hospital. Sometimes it gets rough in Wiltshire, especially on weekends when the mill boys come in from all around to spend their paychecks.
Me and Billy was close friends. He was a nice looking fellow with long brown hair, he never seemed to comb, and blue eyes. He was built well, and strong as an ox when he wanted to be, working in the quarry, and getting in fights at the bars, but he was as gentle as a puppy, clumsy and daredevil, like when he dove off them rocks knowing people had been killed doing it, but he was the closest friend I had in this world. I told him things I never told anybody else, I’d do anything for that boy, just like I know he’d have done anything for me.
It wasn’t too long ago that I turned twenty-nine. I had always gone out with girls, picking em up at bars, and took more than a few home and screwed, but I hadn’t been serious about a girl, or wanted to be until I met Sharon. We met at the Midnight Sun; she worked there in the kitchen. I’d seen her before, once when the kitchen door swung open from the bar, but this time she was out at the bar bringing some guy a hamburger. She had long silky black hair and brown eyes with a look I couldn’t forget. She looked scared like she was under water and reaching for someone to save her. She had a nervous laugh that sounded like she had better do all the laughing she could while she was still able. She saw me staring at her and we started to talk. It was like she was looking hard for somebody and I was too, but I didn’t even know it until I met her. Soon we was going out almost every night.
I decided I couldn’t live in that old ramshackle house anymore, so I bought me a mobile home with an electric stove and refrigerator and a clean bathroom with chrome fixtures and a mirror that covered the wall over the sink. It was furnished in Mediterranean furniture with a leather reclining chair and an amber glass chandelier that hung from the ceiling from a chain. Me and Billy pulled it up into the back yard, plugged in the electricity, and sat it on concrete blocks. I wasn’t ashamed to bring Sharon home there. Although Billy wasn’t so careful about keeping it clean.
I started spending more time with Sharon at nights, so Billy started to go out on the town by himself. Sharon tried to set him up with some of her girlfriends, but he said he didn’t want a girlfriend. He started coming in later and later and getting real drunk. He kept his room a terrible mess and whenever he went through the living room, kitchen or bathroom, it was like a tornado hit. Sharon and I would clean up after him, but I got tired of it, and I hated for Sharon to do it.
One night Chuck Corriher and some of the guys from the quarry came banging on my door. They were all drunk as coots. They said Billy was diving off the rocks in the quarry and asked me if I didn’t want to come out and watch.
I ran out and found him standing at the top of the ledge where the crane stood. He was buck-naked and was so drunk he could hardly stand up. He stepped up on the boom of the crane and started to walk out onto it. It hung out about seventy feet above the water.
I yelled at him to come back. Some fool kids walk out to the end of the boom and jump into the water, but you have to go to the very end and jump to miss a shallow rock shelf just a few feet below the surface. By then I was running. He walked out on the beam with his arms spread out like a tightrope walker in a circus. I got to the beam and yelled at him, “Billy come down from there.” Then he slipped. The last thing I saw, he turned and looked at me with that same puppy dog innocent look he had when I first met him.
We found him in about three feet of water. He was face up with his arms out. The water over him was spring clear, he looked alive almost in the light of the moon. His face had a terrified look; his mouth was open like he was still screaming, and his eyes - I closed his eyes and picked him up in my arms, then they went open again, the moon reflected dull in them. I cried as I carried him up the metal steps out of the quarry where someone covered him up with a blanket.
Sharon walked up behind me and touched my shoulder as I stood over him.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I couldn’t answer.
Deborah’s Angel
Timothy and Freddie played around the chain link fence surrounding the overgrown yard of the old Lascaux mansion. The boys were both nine years old. All the kids in the neighborhood thought the house was haunted - they said a witch lived there.
“I dare you to call out the witch’s name,” Freddie, a freckle faced, red-haired boy said to Timothy.
“I’m scared,” Timothy said.
“Hey, Witch, here’s a present,” Freddie said, as he picked up a rock and threw it through a window on the second floor of the big two-story white frame house. The windows on the first floor were shuttered; soot stained the walls of the second story of the house showing where the worst of the fire had been.
“Get off my property or I’ll pull your finger nails out, cut your fingers off and feed them to my pet alligator,” Deborah Lascaux, a commanding woman in her sixties, called down through the broken second story window, in the scariest voice she could muster.
“I’m getting out of here,” Freddie said, running as fast he could.
Timothy ran too, but he fell and twisted his ankle. It hurt really bad and he lay there, calling out, “Freddie, wait, I hurt my ankle.”
“I’m coming to get you, you little hoodlums,” Timothy heard Mrs. Lascaux call from inside the house.
“Freddie, she’s coming to get me, help!” Timothy cried out. Freddie did not answer.
Deborah walked quickly out the back door of the house holding a broom. She opened the gate to the chain-link fence in the back yard and walked quickly to where Timothy lay in the grass.
“You’re not getting away from me this time,” Deborah said, as she grabbed the back of Timothy’s coat.
“Please don’t hurt me Mrs. Lascaux. I didn’t throw the rock, my friend did.” Timothy said, crying as he looked up at Deborah. She was an imposing woman wearing her purple cotton sweat suit with matching silk turban. Her hair was bright blonde, she wore candy red lipstick and garish make-up. She was very big and scary to Timothy, who was small for his age.
“What is your name?” Deborah asked. “You look familiar.”
“Timothy DuBois,” he said meekly. He thought that his life was about to end.
“Who are your parents?” Deborah asked, her look softening.
“Frank and Ellen DuBois,” Deborah let go of Timothy and helped him off the ground, dusting off the dirt.
“Ouch!” Timothy said, “That hurts.”
“Your father would be ashamed of you.”
“Honest, Mrs. Lascaux, I didn’t throw the rock. I would never do something like that.”
“If you are Frank DuBois’s son, I certainly hope you wouldn’t do something like that. Come inside, let me look at that ankle.” Deborah said, putting her arm around Timothy, holding him up as he hopped along beside her.
Freddie watched from behind a bush a few yards away. The witch had Timothy, he thought, she is probably going to boil him in a pot of hot water and cook him up for supper. He ran home to tell his parents.
“Your father is my friend. Did you know that?” Deborah said as she led Timothy up four steps to the back porch.
“He told me he knows you.”
Frank DuBois, Timothy’s father, worked for the county administrative office and was the volunteer president of the Alta Vista Historical Society. He had anonymously loaned money to the Society, which in turn loaned the money to Deborah Lascaux so that she replace the roof of her house after the fire. The building inspectors were anxious to condemn the house and it would have been torn down if the roof was not replaced and certain repairs not made. The money from the Society let her replace the roof and complete the necessary repairs. There was still much work to be done, however.
Deborah led Timothy through a long blackened hallway, the place smelled like charcoal and smoke. Pieces of broken furniture lay about. A once grand circular stairway, now charred and blackened, led to nowhere after it left the second floor. The plywood of the new roof could be seen from the first floor through the stair well. She led him up a back stairway into a small apartment over the garage, which hadn’t burned. It was jammed full of paper, furniture, clothes, and memorabilia.
“Do you want something to eat?” she asked, offering him a plate of cookies.
“No, Mam,” Timothy said, the cookies looked stale.
She told him to sit down and took his ankle in her hands, rolled down his socks and looked at it. It had a big bruise on it.
“I remember when my sons were your age.”
“How old are they now?” Timothy asked.
“They have grown up and moved away. I don’t see them very often, one lives in Italy and one lives in California.” She then rustled through some papers until she found a box that she opened. I have something I want to show you. It was my sons’ favorite Christmas tree ornament.” She pulled a beautiful angel out of the box and held it up to the sunlight coming in from a window. The head and hands of the angel were made of hand-painted porcelain; the angel wore a lace dress and had wings of polished brass.
“It’s very beautiful, I see why your sons liked it.”
“It was supposed to have belonged to Sarah Bernhardt, the famous French actress. My husband bought it for me in New York.”
“Deborah,” they both heard a man’s voice call from outside. “Deborah, it’s me, Frank, have you seen my son, Timothy?”
Deborah opened the window and called down to him. “He’s up here with me, Frank.”
“I’ll be right up.”
Frank bounded up the steps to the apartment.
“He hurt his ankle,” Deborah said.
“Freddie’s parents told me that you all were throwing rocks at Mrs. Lascaux’s house.” Frank said glaring at Timothy. Frank was of medium build, with short dark hair and glasses; he was a young-looking forty.
“His friend threw the rock, not Timothy.” Deborah said. “Timothy is a nice boy. I can tell that by his eyes. He’s like his father.” She said smiling at Frank.
“I’m sorry, Deborah.” I’ll send someone to fix that window. “How are you doing?”
“I’m just fine.”
“You know it is supposed to get very cold this Christmas. I’m worried about your pipes and your heat.”
“I’m fine, thank you Frank.”
Frank took Timothy to their home a few blocks away. When they got home Frank’s wife, Ellen, looked at Timothy’s ankle.
“Looks like you need to stay off of it for a while and rest,” his mother said. She was tall and slim with wavy dark brown hair and deep blue eyes. “What were you doing at Deborah Lascaux’s house anyway?”
“Freddie said he wanted to see the witch.”
“She is not a witch.” Frank said. “She may be a little eccentric, but she is no witch.”
“A little eccentric! That woman has managed to alienate the entire town and is a certified kook. She is more than a little eccentric I’d say,” Ellen said.
“She has had a hard time, with the fire and all, and doesn’t have many friends left. She is very proud and won’t let anyone help her.”
“It’s not that people haven’t tried to help her, she turns on them when they try to be nice. Everyone, that is, but you. I’m sure she’ll turn on you in time.”
“That house has a lot of history and many memories for me. It is the only house left in the block that I grew up in that hasn’t been torn down for commercial development.”
“I know, I‘ve heard the story a thousand times, about how your parents moved to the Country Club, sold your old family home and let it be torn down. About how your great- great-grandfather lived in the Lascaux mansion when he first moved to Alta Vista in the 1840s while he was building your old house, and the Lascaux house is the only old house left connected to your family.” She said then she turned to Timothy. “Timothy your father is very sentimental.” She turned back to look at her husband. “To a fault sometimes.”
“I’m worried about Deborah. The weather reports say it is supposed to stay in the teens for several days over Christmas week and get down below zero at night. Her pipes aren’t wrapped; she barely has any heat - just a couple space heaters. Her pipes could freeze and she could be without water or heat.”
“All I can say is that it is Christmas and you need to take care of your own family before you take care of some crazy widow who doesn’t want any help anyway.”
A few days later Timothy went back to see Deborah. She saw him standing outside the gate and invited him up. He followed her up the narrow stairs to her garage apartment.
“Won’t you have some tea?” she asked, as she poured a hot cup of tea into a cracked porcelain cup.
“Yes,” he said. It was cold outside; an arctic mass had swept down into North Carolina and was supposed to stay for more than a week. Pipes were freezing all over town, there were many house fires as families tried to keep warm with kerosene space heaters and open fires in fireplaces.
“Mrs. Lascaux are you ever going to fix up your house?” Timothy asked.
“Oh yes, I am going to fix it up and make a museum to my late husband, Francois Lascaux.. Surely you have heard of him, Timothy. He was one of the greatest actors in the world,“ she said.
“No, I haven’t heard of him, is he on TV?”
“No, he died several years ago, but his spirit lives on here with me,” she said, looking out the window to the front yard where a rusted black Lincoln Continental sat on blocks.
Deborah showed Timothy playbills from the 1920s and 30s from plays her husband had acted in New York. When he was doing well he made good money, which allowed him to buy the ante-bellum mansion in his hometown of Alta Vista, North Carolina. But by the time he died, he had many memories but little money. People in Alta Vista liked Francois, he was friendly, charming, outgoing, a gentleman, and but importantly, his family was from Alta Vista. They never accepted his wife. She was from New York - she wasn’t one of them. At one time she had been very glamorous and they thought she was arrogant and snobbish. They were a little jealous of her as she traveled across the country and abroad with her famous husband. After he died, she lived in her rent -controlled apartment in New York most of the time, but occasionally came to check on the house in Alta Vista. It was on one of those occasions that she was in Alta Vista that a fire started in a defective oil heater. It was a devastating fire, gutting the roof and most of the interior, the repairs made were just enough to secure it, and keep the building inspectors away. It still needed thousands of dollars of work, she had little money, and the house was not insured when it burned.
“Do you really have a pet alligator?” Timothy asked.
“No, my dear,” Deborah said with a laugh. “But I’m going to get one if those boys don’t’ stop throwing rocks at my house.”
“Can I see the angel again,” Timothy asked.
“Yes,” Deborah said.
She found the box that held the angel and held it up once again to the light from the window. The doll’s face had the sweetest smile and her delicate lace body and brass wings gleamed in the sunlight.
“Isn’t it beautiful,” she said.
“Yes,” Timothy said, taking it and holding it up in the sunlight.
Frank and Ellen DuBois were getting dressed for a Christmas party when the phone rang.
“Frank, this is Betty Livengood. I want to tell you that I am canceling my membership to the historical society. I think it is a disgrace that you all gave that woman money to fix up her house. It is an eyesore and should be torn down. She doesn’t deserve any help from this community. She turned her nose up at us for all those years and now she expects us to pick up her tab. I can think of a lot of things that money could be spent on other than the Lascaux house. Take my house for instance, my house is old and it needs to be painted.”
“Mrs. Livengood, the Society did not spend that money on the house, an anonymous donor lent the money to the Society which in turn lent it to Mrs. Lascaux so that she could put a roof on her house and board it up so that it could be restored in the future.”
“I can’t imagine who that crazy anonymous donor could be. Do they know Deborah Lascaux?” Frank was silent. “Tell me seriously, do think she is ever going to restore that house? Where is she going to get the money?”
“I don’t know. But I do know that if it is torn down it will never be restored. At least this way, maybe some day it can be.”
“There is nothing left to save.”
“The engineers tell us the house is structurally sound and can be restored.”
“You are just throwing money down a rat hole.”
“Well I’m sorry that is the way you feel Mrs. Livengood.”
“I don’t like it and I talk to a lot of people. This is going to hurt the Historic Society you can be assured of that.”
“Mrs. Livengood I am getting ready for a party, and have to go.”
“Good-bye, Mr. DuBois, this is not the last you have heard from Betty Livengood.“
“Whew!” Frank said, as he hung up.
“Who was that?” Ellen asked.
“Betty Livengood - I think she had been drinking. She was giving me hell for helping Deborah Lascaux.”
“Well Deborah Lascaux is not the most popular person in town. Do you remember the time those guys volunteered to clean up the mess in her house after the fire and they found a trinket in the debris and she threatened to beat them to a bloody pulp with their shovels unless they stopped shoveling. That didn’t exactly win her brownie points in the community. And the time she walked into church in the middle of the sermon dressed in her sweat suit and turban and sat down on the front row. Remember when she made little figures from chicken bones and invited people into her house to see the figures do the trot.”
“I don’t remember Jesus conditioning his love on how popular a person was in his community.”
“Yes, but Jesus didn’t know Deborah Lascaux.”
Christmas came on Wednesday that year and Saturday afternoon Deborah called Frank. The temperature had remained in the teens all day and was going to be below zero that night.
“Frank, darling. I hate to call you, but I didn’t know who else to call. I haven’t been able to get water all day. I think my pipes are frozen. I kept the space heaters going full blast all day, and it does no good.” Deborah never asked for help. When it was offered, it was usually rejected. Frank knew it must be serious. Frank wondered about her sons, whether they had tried to contact her or offered to help her financially. He knew her relationship with them was stormy and wondered if they had offered to help and she refused. All he knew was that they were not there when she struggled to save the house and now that she had no heat or water.
“I’ll call a plumber.” Frank offered.
“I can’t afford to pay a plumber. What am I to do?”
“Don’t worry, I will think of something.” He knew that if he offered to pay the plumber she wouldn’t let him.
Frank called his minister and told him about the situation.
“I’m sorry Frank, but I don’t have any money left in my discretionary fund to help. This has been a hard winter for a lot of people.”
Frank thought for a minute then said. “I will give you the money. But I don’t want her to know. I want her pipes unfrozen, wrapped, and I want some decent heaters put in there. Can you do that for me?”
“I’m very busy, if you could make the calls I will put the money in my discretionary fund and pay the bills.”
“Okay, thank you.”
Frank made the calls, and told the plumbing and heating company to bill the church. He didn’t tell his wife that he was paying for it.
It got colder and colder, water pipes began to freeze below the ground in some places. It was the coldest winter Frank could remember. Deborah’s pipes were fixed and extra heaters were put in. Frank called Deborah the next day.
“Are you okay? I called our minister and told him about your situation and he said he would take care of it.”
“Yes, God bless you Frank. I am warm and I have water. Thank you so much. Tell him that I will pay him back as soon as I get my January check.”
“I’ll tell him. Merry Christmas, Deborah.”
“Merry Christmas, Frank.”
Frank bought Deborah a big fruit basket for Christmas. He was worried that she didn’t have enough to eat. She had been eating at the soup kitchen at the Presbyterian Church. He took Timothy with him to deliver the fruit basket.
“Frank, darling, I see you brought your little boy with you. I am so glad because I have something for him.”
“Deborah, he doesn’t need anything, he’s got so many toys we don’t have room for them all as it is.”
“This is something special between Timothy and I.” She pulled out a box, wrapped in some old red paper and gold ribbon. “Don’t open it until Christmas Day. Will you promise me that?”
“Yes, Mam,” Timothy said.
On Christmas day after opening all of his Santa Claus presents and presents from his friends Timothy opened Deborah’s present.
“I hope it’s not chicken bones,” Ellen said.
“Now Ellen,” Frank said.
Timothy opened the box and found the antique Christmas angel wrapped in white tissue paper inside, with a note.
“To my dear little friend, Timothy, I give you my guardian angel to cherish always. Love, Deborah Lascaux.” Timothy smiled as he held the angel in the light streaming through the lace curtains of the front window. Frank smiled as he watched his son’s face light up with wonder.
First Date
Michael borrowed his mother’s car for the occasion. Susan and Bill carried the beer and champagne in the back seat. Terri sat in the front seat with Michael. Michael loved it when he had someone who had never been to the river before, like Patti and Susan. He turned off the main road onto an old logging road. He knew it well - it was on these roads that he had learned to drive before he got his license. When the road disappeared into a field of wheat, Michael continued to drive undaunted. Susan screamed.
“Where are you taking us,” she asked.
“To my parents river house, just like we told you. It’s really back in the sticks.”
The big gray Cadillac lurched through a field of wheat the height of the car, showering the windshield with fresh kernels. From the field they went into a deeply rutted road in the woods, the road led to another overgrown field. Susan was not too bright and Michael enjoyed teasing her. Patti suspected the field route was not the only way to his parent’s lake house. But apparently Susan did.
Michael, was sixteen and had just gotten his drivers license. Bill could drive, and so could Patti, but Susan still didn’t have her license. She asked Michael if she could drive. They were on back roads, so Michael let her. After she drove a bit, Bill, who sat in the back seat, opened his door, let out a loud adolescent scream, and pulled the door shut, hiding on the floor behind the front seat.
“Bill jumped out,” Michael said. “Stop the car Susan!”
“Bill!” Susan screamed, slamming on the breaks and looking in the back seat for him, almost taking the car into a ditch in the process. Luckily, Patti caught the wheel and steered it back onto the road. Patti was not amused at the fun Bill and Michael were having with Susan.
“Hey, how about cutting it out, and let’s get on to the Lake,” she said.
It had all been arranged. Bill and Michael were to lose their virginity. Bill asked Susan and she asked Patti to go along for Michael.
At the lake house, after they drank several beers and a bottle of champagne, Susan got up on the counter, which separated the kitchen area, from the living room in the A-Frame contemporary house. She said she wanted to do a striptease, and began to dance in a sexy manner to a slow beach music tune on the radio. When Bill turned up the radio, she began to take her clothes off piece by piece. She was very drunk. Susan had large breasts, a pretty face, innocent looking brown eyes, and long dark hair that swayed back and forth provocatively. She was a sexy sixteen year old. When she got to her panties, Bill walked to the bar, picked her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom.
Patti and Michael stayed in the living room kissing on the sofa for a while longer. Patti had broad shoulders, broad hips, and a thick waist. She looked hard and mannish while Susan had a sweet, fresh, devilish look.
“Where’s the bedroom?” Patti asked, standing and taking Michael’s hand. She was very matter of fact, and spoke in a monotone.
In the bedroom she took off her clothes and lay down on the bed. Michael was slower to take his clothes off. He did not have an erection. He got erections all the time, in school, riding down the road in his car, at the swimming pool, water skiing, whenever he didn’t need or want one. But now, the first time he was with a naked woman who was ready to make love to him, and he couldn’t get it up.
“I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” he said.
“Okay,” she pulled the covers up and lit a cigarette, propping a pillow behind her.
In the bathroom he worked hard to get it up, but it wouldn’t respond, the best it would do was become semi-erect. He walked back into the bedroom and slipped on a condom. Light from a street light streamed through the window blinds, casting a slatted shadow that fell across Patti’s face. She looked at him with a cigarette hanging out of a corner of her mouth. “Well, are you ready?” she said looking down at his half limp penis.
He climbed into bed with her and they tried to make love, but his penis never got hard enough. They heard Susan call out Bill’s name.
“Don’t let him fuck her, she’s a virgin. Tell him if he wants to fuck somebody to fuck me,” Patti said to Michael, worried about Susan. Bill and Susan then walked into the bedroom and jumped in bed with Michael and Patti giggling. They all rolled around on each other feeling each other’s nakedness, and laughing like teenagers.
Encounter
Rick and I were sitting on the old pine rail in the attic of the Victorian house that I had recently restored. It was my annual Christmas party. There must have been over a hundred people at the party; most were home for the holidays. Many of my old friends now lived away, and for them this was an opportunity to get together. People were all over the house, the front porch, and the back yard. The music was loud downstairs where couples danced in the den. The beer and liquor flowed freely and there was plenty to eat. Usually there were people in the third floor attic space; it was neat with interesting alcoves and window seats, and the walls and ceiling were covered with a rich heart pine paneling. The third floor wasn’t tied into the central heating system so I installed a wood stove, which connected to a chimney with a stovepipe and thimble, which is how it was heated originally. I suspect a servant lived in the attic when the house was first built; it was so well made, not like an attic built for storage. A few people gathered upstairs to talk and drink, but left soon after Rick and I walked up. Both of us had drunk a lot that night. Rick was studying for his master’s degree in business at Duke. I enjoyed Rick’s company, Rick was a couple of years older than me and very intelligent; we rarely saw each other except at gatherings like this. After talking for a while, Rick turned to me and said.
“Damn, Tom, I love the hell out of you. I can’t tell you how much these parties mean to me and everybody else. I couldn’t stand to come home if it weren’t for your parties.”
“Thanks,” I said, touched by Rick’s sincerity. Rick was not much of a talker, but when he spoke, he spoke with intensity. Then he put his hand on my thigh.
“I don’t know quite how to say this, but I’ve always been attracted to you,” Rick said staring at me very intensely.
“Yeah, Rick,” I laughed, “I like you too.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Rick said, holding his hand on my leg and looking into my eyes.
I laughed nervously and stood up. “Listen Rick, I’ve got to go downstairs and check on the food, and ice. I’m the host, you know.”
Rick grabbed my hand as I stood to leave, as if to say, don’t go. I left quickly, pushing through the crowd of friends in the second floor hall and downstairs; everybody wanted to talk so it was slow going. I checked the kitchen and made sure my guests were comfortable and there was plenty of ice and everyone knew where the drinks were, then I went into the den, where the music played and a large group of people were dancing. I saw Doris Deal sitting on the sofa.
“Do you want to dance,” I asked Doris.
“Sure.” I knew Doris didn’t have a date that night. Doris and I had flirted off and on for some time. Doris had a reputation for good sex, and not caring too much about who she did it with. I kissed her while we danced and she rubbed her thigh against my crotch. We sat down on the sofa and began to kiss. I felt her large breasts under her dress. I did not care who saw us, nor did she.
“Want to come to my room?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said, smiling. I had heard Doris loved wild sex, though I never did more than kiss her at parties.
Her reputation was well deserved. She got on top right away and rode me like a horse. My brass bed banged loudly against the wall, indenting the wallboard as I later discovered. She responded very well. She was a little rough and wild for my taste, but I let myself go with her and really enjoyed it.
When we finished, I walked from my room into the crowded hall outside. People stared, giggled, and pointed. My hair was mussed up and shirttail was out. She didn’t look much better, with smeared lipstick, shirt hanging out and hair that needed to be combed. I looked around for Rick. Maybe he had seen us or heard us. I hoped so.
Flaying
After taking off his clothes and throwing them on a boulder, Hank jumped naked into the crystalline water pooled at the bottom of the cascade. His testicles drew up into his body when they touched the icy cold water. The pool below the falls was deep and rocky, but it was as clear as tap water. He turned and looked at the jagged rock with deep crevasses, shelves, and boulders strewn on the sandy bottom. The water from the falls curled white and furious into the icy calm of the basin below. Trout suspended in the water hid in the shadowy corners of the rock. The fish turned and stared, coolly surveying Hank’s awkward nakedness. His feet hit the bottom of the pool and he sprang up like a dart through the water. Breaking the surface, he shook the water from his hair as he gasped for air.
“Damn, that water’s cold,” he said drawing out the damn as if it had at least three syllables.
“My dick shriveled to a nub and my balls sucked up in my body,” he said. The water was cold, but refreshing. Hank didn’t want to get out, so he went back under. Looking underwater, he watched his companions, Jerry and Todd jump in - their pale white bodies surrounded by a coverlet of bubbles as they descended into the water. Their hair rose straight up - eyes and mouth glazed silver by the air. Their shriveled genitals couldn’t be seen behind the air bubbles that filled their pubic hair.
They all rose to the surface at the same time.
“Damn, that water’s cold!” Jerry said.
“Yeah, I see what you mean about your balls. I think mine are plum up around my ears,” Todd laughed.
After the three stayed in the icy water as long as they could stand it, they climbed out onto the steep rocks surrounding the falls to put their clothes on. They had been drinking beer and fishing all day and wanted to go swimming before they went back to camp. It was early May and trout fishing season had started only a few weeks before in the North Carolina mountains.
Todd fried a freshly caught trout in a black iron skillet over the fire as three baked potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil cooked in the hot coals. They started to drink Pabst Blue Ribbon in cans as soon as they returned to camp from their swim. They had been drinking non-stop for the last three days. They started drinking in the morning when they got up, then drank all day and night until they passed out. After they ate the fish Jerry pulled out a bottle of bourbon and started to drink it straight from the bottle.
Jerry was a deer hunter and started to tell the others some hunting tales.
“One time we shot this young buck and cut his dick off and put it between two pieces of bread and gave it to Dave Trexler to eat. He bit into it and started to chew on it before he realized what he was eating. He spit it out and spat and spat over and over, saying ‘you sons of bitches. I’ll get you for this,’ and that night after we went to sleep, that son of a bitch put shaving cream all in my sleeping bag. He got me back, but I think he would have liked that dick sandwich if it hadn’t been so rare.” Jerry laughed out loud, his buckteeth shone in the light of the campfire.
“I want to have a little fun tonight,” Jerry said.
“Like what?” Todd said, “Eat rare dick meat?” he laughed.
“No, you son of a bitch. You know that good-looking blonde we saw today in Edgemont with that college boy. I’ve been thinking about her and I think she needs to get to know a real man,” Jerry said.