Left To Write

When I was a kid, fall was my favorite season. Yep, I was one of those kids who loved school. And in my small Michigan town back then, things were simpler. We raked leaves and burned them in driveways, after we’d had our fun jumping into big, crackly, red and yellow piles. The football field was a block away and you could hear the high school band practicing when the players weren’t on the field, coaches’ whistles shrieking.

Every Friday a pep rally passed by our house, cheerleaders riding the firetruck and the band showing off its not-quite-perfect rendition of the school fight song, and even less perfect marching cadence. Homecoming was a big deal, with floats and pretty senior girls dressed in prom dresses, riding on the backs of open convertibles.

It was the time of year when Mom opened the upstairs trunk and closet to pull out the cold weather clothes, and put away the summer ones. Nothing like the first day you get to don your favorite sweatshirt after school before you run back outside to play. I think PF Flyers make you run faster when the weather is cooler and you have on your jeans and sweatshirt. Summer is the time for lounging in the muggy heat, eating watermelon and spitting out the seeds, and playing games in the porch shade. Fall is for getting out there and doing stuff.

I went through a time in my life when summer was my favorite season. I was older, and dating and other adult activities seemed better suited for wearing fewer clothes. Then I hit the period where spring was my favorite. I had become a homebody with my own home and garden. Spring was magical. Winter has never been my favorite, though I did love it when I was a kid. Snowmen, skating, sledding…it was all great. Since moving to the Pacific Northwest, winter just doesn’t offer much except a time to catch up on indoor stuff and wait out the four months of dark and drizzle.

Now, fall is my favorite again. These late summer days when you feel the change in the air, but it’s still technically summer, are the best. Even though I’m long past my school days, I always buy a new pen and notebook in the fall. And maybe a new sweatshirt. I wonder if PF Flyers would help with my arthritic hip. That’s probably asking for too much. But could we at least have a parade on Main Street every Friday afternoon?

THE HANDSOMEST BOY AT SCHOOL

In a snapshot of dappled emerald and ultra-marine blue the light fell through the fir trees on a wispy breeze of a spring afternoon. Jim’s boot smashed into the wet earth where he stepped down from the school bus in front of Golden Oaks mobile home park on Mullen. As he walked from the bus toward the trailer that he shared with his mom at the back of the forested park, he hiked up his backpack full of homework he wasn’t altogether sure he would do over the weekend.

“Wait up!” Mary Ellen Beattie called to him. He turned and gave her a quizzical look.

She scampered to join him as three other kids nearly flew, in Friday afternoon joy, off the bus and scattered like squirrels in different directions. Some headed up Mullen, a few into the slightly tired residential development across from Golden Oaks. Mary Ellen and Jim were the only kids going into the ramshackle trailer park in which twenty aluminum mobiles were scattered like lost alphabet blocks in a beautiful snag of forest at the edge of Lacey, Washington.

Mary had never spoken to Jim before even though they lived in the same park and waited for the same bus every morning under the same trees. She normally felt at ease with people but not with Jim. But today something jumped within her and she found herself calling for him to wait for her. She had always wanted to say hello but never did much more than nod to him from a safe distance at the bus stop. He was just too handsome to talk to and she was, uncharacteristically for her, too shy to find a way to say hello. Jim Bernard was simply the best-looking boy at River Ridge High School. Every girl at school thought so.

Jim, in fact, had no idea that he was even considered handsome. He never noticed when girls looked at him, which was all the time. He was afraid of the idea that any boy in school might be interested. Too dangerous. Subsequently, his self-conscious reserve was perceived as snobbishness. He had very few friends. Only grownups said he was good-looking. And always it was friends of his mother. They would comment on his jet-black hair and how they wished they had his almost alabaster complexion. His cobalt blue eyes were ringed with long dark lashes, which he cut off with his mother’s fingernail scissors in the third grade because he was tired of old ladies gushing over them. At 17, nearly six feet tall and of a naturally muscular build, his square chin finished off an oval face wherein was set a strong straight nose above a not-too-thin mouth which, when his crooked smile broke open, revealed a set of strong straight teeth.

All this natural, yet unwanted, beauty did nothing for Jim. He couldn’t care less. What he was interested in was to be left to his books and PC games and to someday becoming an archeologist, or a history professor at WSU, or a graphic designer. He hadn’t quite decided yet which profession to land on, but his favorite thing of all was a good detective story.

“Hi, my name is Mary Ellen.” She said as she caught up to Jim.

“I know,” he said. “I’ve heard kids say your name on the bus.”

“I live in the white trailer. That one with more rust than white paint, the third on the left.”

“Mobile home, Mary Ellen, not trailer. That’s what my mom insists we call ours.” He smiled, causing another jump in Mary Ellen’s stomach. “I live in the last trailer at the edge of the forest.”

He noticed Mrs. Keller sitting on her rickety porch reading The National Enquirer.

“Hello Mrs. Keller!” Jim called as they passed by.

“Good afternoon Jimmy, hi Mary Ellen!” she called back. “I just baked some chocolate chip cookies. You kids want some?”

“No thanks Mrs. Keller I don’t…”

Suddenly Mary Ellen grabbed his hand.

“Oh, come on!” She said dragging him toward the old lady’s mobile home. “A cookie ain’t gonna mess up your day.”

“I guess not,” he said, not sure he liked the way she was taking charge of the moment. But yeah, a cookie couldn’t hurt.

NICE MRS KELLER

“Here you go Jimmy. Take more than one!” Mrs. Keller said as she held the old green depression glass plate of cookies out to Jim.

Jim smiled to cover his discomfort. “Thanks, but one is all I want. I’m going to the gym later.” He hated to be called Jimmy, but Mrs. Keller was so nice that he never bothered to correct her. He had known her all his life and many times when he was little, before his father moved out and even more times after, she had been his babysitter. So, it was natural that she called him Jimmy. She had since he was a baby.

“Going to the gym? Well then, you should take three to keep your strength up. You know Mary Ellen, Jimmy and his mom have lived here longer than any other family except mine. After Mr. Keller died and Mark and I moved here in, hum… When was it? 1980 I think. Anyway, that’s how long I’ve been here.”

“Gosh Mrs. Keller…you’ve lived here since the place was new,” Mary Ellen said.

“Yes. Been here since the late 1900s. I wonder what the world will be like when you are eighty years old, like me?”

“We’ll be living on Mars, I bet,” said Mary Ellen. “It’s got to be better than Lacey.” Mary Ellen took a bite of her cookie.

Jim looked at her. “You don’t like Lacey?”

Mary Ellen winced. “Nope. I’m in exile. I hate it here. We moved to Washington last year from San Diego. I love Southern California. I miss it every day, but I’m stuck here now.”

“Darling, have you looked around? We live in one of the most beautiful spots on Earth,” said Mrs. Keller.

“If you don’t mind living in the middle of a dark rainforest,” Mary Ellen said.

Jim shot a hard look at Mary Ellen. Mrs. Keller offered him another cookie; he pushed the plate away. “If you don’t like it here, go back to California. It’s getting too crowded here as it is. I-5 is a mess and it’s getting too expensive to live in Seattle, so everyone is moving down here and driving the prices up. And why? ’Cause everyone from California is moving up here ’cause it’s too expensive down there and too damn beautiful up here. Pretty soon…. never mind!”

He turned and walked swiftly away toward the dark back of the park where the edge of the forest began.

“Oh…. What did I…? Hey Jim, come back…”

“Let him go, sweetie,” Mrs. Keller said.

“I blew it. I finally got my courage up to talk to him and I went and blew it.”

“It’ll be okay. You can apologize the next time you see him.”

“There won’t be a next time. He hates me.”

Mrs. Keller put her arm around Mary Ellen. “Come sit with me a while on the porch and tell me what you love about California, and I will tell you what I love about Washington. And we will see if there are more similarities than differences.”

Mary Ellen looked up and managed a weak smile. “Okay.”

Mrs. Keller placed the plate of cookies on the small wooden TV tray between her Adirondack rocker and the little chipped white bistro chair that Mary Ellen sank onto with a sigh.

“There is something strange about Jim,” she said. “Something, I don’t know, faraway and cool. Not cool like ‘He’s a cool guy’ but. I don’t know. Cool and ….”

“Distant, guarded, secretive, mysterious? Something like that?”

“Exactly, Mrs. Keller.”

“His parents divorced when he was just six. When that happened, I saw that sweet, loving, open-hearted little boy, who would talk to everyone, disappear.”

“Half the kids I know are from broken homes. No, there is something else going on there. I’ve been studying him since I first saw him at the bus stop on the first day of school last fall.”

“You’ve made a study of him?’

“Oh yuck! I sound like a stalker. Well, it’s just a crush, I guess. I’ll get over it. But I didn’t mean to make him hate me.” With a question mark in her eyes Mary Ellen pointed at a cookie on the plate.

“Go right ahead, eat as many as you want.”

“Comfort food.” Mary Ellen took the cookie, broke it in half and put half of it back on the plate. “But I don’t want to overdo it. Where is his father now?”

“He is a policeman here in town.”

YOUR FATHER CALLED

“Your father called,” Edie Elliot whispered. She’d dropped the Bernard after the divorce and reverted to her maiden name. “Can you believe it?” She rocked the trailer with an eruption of blistering laughter. “That son of a bitch calls you out of the blue after, what? Ten fucking years?”

“Mom! Don’t say ‘fucking’. It makes you sound….”

“Oh, honey I am cheap and rude and a mess, you know that. Why try to change what can’t be changed.”

“Because you are a better person than you think you…”

She started to pace the space between the tiny kitchen and the living room that doubled as Jim’s bedroom. “What the hell gives your dad the right to call out of nowhere and ask to talk to you?”

“Maybe he wants to finally act like a father?”

“Oh no, that would be a miracle. Or something out of a fairytale. There are no fairy godmothers or magical talking animals in the woods behind our trailer.”

“Mobile home, Mom.”

“Yeah right. There aren’t no Lord of the Ring wizards back there who will make things better. The only thing you will find in the woods is just darkness and shallow graves.”

“Mom!”

Edie stopped pacing. She looked up at her son and laughed. “I’m pretty dramatic, ain’t I?”

“A regular Meryl Streep, Mom. You always have been.”

She hugged Jim. “Go call your dad, he’s at work. I’ll go to Fred Meyer and get something from the deli for dinner. I’m too worked up to cook tonight.”

Edie Elliot was usually too worked up to cook most nights.

Jim sat down on the fold out couch and dialed the Lacey Police Department. “Detective Bernard please. His son.”

There was a click, then two, then, “Detective Bernard speaking.”

Jim said nothing, not sure what to say.

“Hello?”

Jim looked out the window into the low cool shifting light of the forest. Late afternoon light that looked like it could be either morning or afternoon but nothing in between. Maybe he should hang-up.

“Jimmy?”

“It’s Jim, not Jimmy.”

Silence.

“Hi Son.”

“Hi Dad.”

“Thanks for calling me back, Jim.”

“What do you want?”

“I’m getting married and…”

“You want me to come to your wedding? Really? I haven’t seen you since I was a baby, and you want…”

“No, not that. I know that would be awkward, uncomfortable. It’s my fiancée Tracey. She wants to meet you.”

Jim looked down at his boots. They were damp. His feet felt cold and slightly soggy through the thick leather and woolen socks.

“Jim? You there?”

“Yeah. Why does she want to meet me?”

“She thinks it would be a good idea for the three of us to meet. To maybe be, I don’t know, be friends?”

Nothing.

“I think so too. I’d like to see you, son.”

“I’ve seen you, dad. Lots of times around town. But you’ve never seen me. Twice in Olympia, once at The Procession of the Species Parade, the second time at the Farmers Market. I saw you five times at Taco Time. When I was thirteen, I walked right up to you and looked at you, face to face. It was at that food truck on Pacific Street. You were with some other cops and you said, ‘Hey kid what’s up?’ I wanted to kick you in the balls. I didn’t, I just got on my bike and rode home. I nearly hit a tree because I was crying so hard. I don’t want to cry like that again. So, the answer is no. I hope you and your fiancée have a great life. But I don’t want to be a part of it.”

Jim looked at the Android in his hand and pressed the hang-up button just as his father began to speak.

THE WOLF MOON

 Rick Braun’s voice was mellow on the far end of “The Good Life.” Jim loved jazz, all kinds of jazz and he had just twenty minutes before he finished creating his ‘Jazz Baby Jazz’ playlist on his phone. He was plugged in, and the sweet trumpet gave way in this ear pods to Braun’s high baritone just as the clouds parted above the fir trees. There it was. A red Wolf Moon just to the southeast of Mt. Rainer. The light from the red moon gave a pink tint to the volcano.

He had almost forgotten to go out on the porch and look for the moon that Mr. Smeltzer, his science teacher, had asked the class to look at for at least half an hour…to watch the slow transit of the earth’s shadow across the face of the moon.

A hand touched his shoulder, he jumped and turned to see Mary Ellen. He took the pods out of his ears.

“Geez you scared me.”

“Sorry Jim. I didn’t mean to. I was standing in the drive looking at the moon and saw you. Pretty strange, isn’t it?”

Jim looked back up at the moon, then dropped his head a bit and peaked at Mary Ellen from beneath a quizzical brow. A crooked smile followed, and she began to melt around the edges.

“Yeah,” he said. “Pretty strange.”

“I’m in Mr. Smeltzer’s science class too, so I knew you would be out here looking at it. I….” she shrugged her shoulders. “I wanted to apologize for this afternoon. My shitty California comments.”

“That’s okay, I kinda went off the deep end on you. I’m sorry too.”

He looked back up to the moon. Mary Ellen’s eyes shifted behind him. She saw his mother sitting on the foldout couch drinking wine and watching TV.

“What does Mr. Smeltzer think we are going to get out of looking at a red moon?”

“Another brick in the wall.”

“The wall?”

 “Yeah, you don’t know that old song? I grew up with it. My mom is a big Pink Floyd fan.”

“I never heard of them.”

Not my kind of music. Do you like jazz?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never paid much attention to it.”

“What do you like? I mean music?”

“I don’t know. Beyoncé, Taylor Swift.”

“Ugh. I can’t stand her. That “You’re Gorgeous” song is real crap.

“It’s about Tom Hiddleston. You know, Loki from the Thor movies.”

“I didn’t know that, but it still sucks. Jazz doesn’t lie or act pretentious. It’s real emotion without all those pop frills and trills.”

“Hum… so where should I start? I mean, if I wanted to listen to your unpretentious jazz.”

“Okay, let me make it easy for you. Do you like Gaga?”

“Yes! She’s amazing.”

“Listen to ‘But Beautiful’ on the ‘Cheek to Cheek’ album, then listen to Billie Holiday sing it. Then maybe some Stan Getz, some Oscar Peterson and…”

Mary Ellen squinted at Jim. “Speaking of music, I was wondering, every so often about once a month late at night I can hear a weird song, like it’s coming from the woods. Have you heard it?”

Jim laughed. “For as long as I can remember! We think it comes from old man Walton’s farm on the other side of the woods. Everyone is used to it. Just ignore it.”

“it’s pretty and sad and old. I wonder…”

“Jimmy! Jimmy! What’s going on out there?” Edie yelled from inside the trailer.

“Nothing Mom! I’m just looking at the moon and talking to Mary Ellen.”

“Who?” Edie got up from the couch, came to the window and peered into the dark through a torn screen.

Jim took Mary Ellen’s hand. “Come on.” He skipped her down the stairs and ran, trailing her laughing behind him to the drive.

“Sorry, she’s too much when she’s been drinking,” Jim said. “If I introduced you, you would have been stuck talking to her til midnight. And those long talks go nowhere really slow.”

“Oh, I wanted to meet her.”

“No, you don’t. At least not this late in her chardonnay.”

“Okay, maybe in the daylight I can take a chance.”

“Yeah maybe, before noon,” Jim said. He glanced down the drive to Mullen. “Come on. I bet we can get a better look at the…”

A shatter of glass splintered the air.

“What was that?” Mary Ellen said.

Jim and Mary Ellen looked to where the sound had come from. There was no one around. They began to walk to Mullen. Just as they approached Mrs. Keller’s trailer, they heard the shouting. It was muffled and angry.

“What is going on? Should we knock on the door and see if she is okay?”

Before Jim could answer, the door to Mrs. Keller’s trailer was flung open with such force it bounced back and hit a tall thin man full in the face. Instantly he pushed it back out and bounded across the shaky porch. Mrs. Keller followed.

“Please, don’t go like this!” Mrs. Keller called after him. He stopped and turned.

“I’m warning you, Joan, you can’t get away with this. Someone is going to get hurt and I hope it’s not you.”

“I promise Sam, I’ll make it right.”

“Shit! There is no making it right. Just be careful from now on.” He turned just as she reached his side and grabbed his arm. He shook her off as he fled the porch. Mrs. Keller tottered, fell back against her Adirondack rocker and collapsed into it. It teetered for a moment then rocked back to safety with her in it.

Jim ran to the trailer. Mary followed him up the steps.

“Are you hurt?”

There were tears in her eyes and she grabbed his hand with both of hers. “Oh, Jimmy, I’m sorry. No, it’s okay, I’m alright.”

“Who was that man?” Mary Ellen asked, kneeling next to the rocker.

“Nobody…” She whispered.

Jim looked back over his shoulder just as he heard a door to one of the nearby trailers slammed.

“It was someone from around here. Who was it?”

“Nobody…. Nobody sweetheart. Here, help me up and back inside.”

They both took an arm and helped Mrs. Keller to her feet.

Mrs. Keller sank into her recliner as Mary Ellen knelt next to her. Jim walked over to the door and looked out into the night. Fog from Lake Saint Clair was creeping into the trailer park, covering the moon and making it hard to see anything.

“You kids go on, I’m fine.”

“Who was that man? It sounded like Sam Robson.”

“Never mind Jimmy.” Mrs. Keller said.

He shut the door against the night and the cold and turned to face her. “Who was it?”

The tone in his voice gave Mrs. Keller pause. When she spoke, he could tell that it was a lie couched in the truth. “Alright, It was the park manager, Sam Robson. He was upset because I forgot yet again to pay my rent.”

“Why would “someone get hurt” because the rent is late?” Mary Ellen asked.

“What?” Mrs. Keller looked confused.

“Yeah, I heard him say that too. I’ve never seen Sam upset like that.”

“Oh, you kids misunderstood. He didn’t say that. He’s just a bit of a hothead. Not to worry. Now go on home.” She got up from the recliner. “I have to do my dinner dishes before The Bachelor comes on.”

“Alright, as long as you are, okay?”

“I’m fine, honey. Now scoot.” She walked them to the door, opened it and stood aside to let them pass. Mary Ellen first, then Jim. He stopped, turned and leaned down to give Mrs. Keller a kiss on the cheek. He had never done that before. Mrs. Keller, touched by the gesture, smiled and patted him on the shoulder.

“What a fine young man you are. I wish I had a grandson like you.”

“If you need anything, call Mom and I’ll be right…”

“Thank you honey. I’m fine. Goodnight.”

“G’night.”

Mary Ellen was waiting in the drive.

“I guess it’s nothing,” she said.

“I don’t think so. Something is up.”

The fog was thick and low and not going anywhere for the next twelve hours. It made the dim lights along the drive give off a cold and eerie glow. Somewhere on the edge of the forest behind Mrs. Keller’s trailer there was a crack of wood, as if a branch was breaking from one of the fir trees. A dog barked.

“What’s that?” Mary Ellen grabbed Jim’s arm.

They both looked in the direction of the cracking sound. A beam of a flashlight danced in the fog.

Mary Ellen stepped behind Jim.

Amid a symphony of breaking twigs and undergrowth and within a swirl of fog, the light danced away.

The barking turned to a growl. Then a gunshot.

VICIOUS ANIMALS

“AW NUTS!”

A squatty round figure in a yellow jacket and oversized daffodil hunting hat broke out of the fog. There was a Pomeranian dancing wildly on a short leash attached to the figure, which carried a shotgun.

“Oh my God, Jim, he has a gun!”

“Who’s your girlfriend there, Jimmy?”

“Hi Mrs. Caleb. She’s not my girlfriend, and like I told you before, please call me Jim.”

Mary Ellen squinted at Mrs. Caleb. Upon closer inspection he really was a she. Short cropped blonde hair, dancing green eyes and a ruddy weathered face that seemed cherubic and fitted out for mirth.

The Pomeranian began alternating between snarling, barking and doing backflips.

“Pooters! Stop it! You’re scaring Jimmy’s girlfriend. And we don’t want to scare her off. She’s his very first girlfriend.”

“Mrs. Caleb, this is Mary Ellen, and she is not my girlfriend.”

“Hi.” Mary Ellen softly stepped out from behind Jim.

“Oh Mary Ellen…sure, I know you. Lives in the white trailer with all the rust on the roof. Nice to see ya, honey. How’s your parents?”

“They’re fine I guess.”

“God damn coyotes!” Mrs. Caleb exploded. “They are coming into my yard again from the forest. I know they are after Pooters when she’s out to make poo poo. So, I been hunting them. Damn near got one just now but it just too damn foggy.”

“Yeah, I was going to ask why you are shooting in the fog like that. You might kill someone.”

“Naw, not a chance. I’m a good shot,” She pushed her trifocals up from the tip of her nose to the bridge with one finger. “Never hit anything I ain’t aiming at.”

“Clarisse Caleb is that you out there?” The bass booming from two trailers down echoed through the trees.

“Yeah, Parker it’s me.”

“Shit, woman, you blasted a hole through the side of my tool shed, AGAIN!”

“Sorry Parker! I’ll pay for it… again!” she hollered into the fog.

“What’s going on out there? Who’s shooting off guns?” Another voice from the dark. People were now coming out of their homes in a low grumble of tangled concern.

Parker Jones called out. “It’s Clarisse again, Lisa.”

“Oh my God, Clarissa! Stop with the night hunting! You’re going to kill someone!”  Lisa Lasson slammed her door as punctuation.

“Damn woman, go home.” It sounded like Mr. Robson. Doors slammed and porchlights went out.

“There are vicious animals out there,” Clarissa said as she scooped Pooters up into her free arm. The shotgun teetered in the crook of her other arm. “And I ain’t gonna let them get my little Pooters.” She turned and walked off toward her trailer.

Mary Ellen turned to Jim. “Nothing like this ever happened in San Diego.”

****

From the edge of the forest, a man watched. One eye twitched and caught the movement of the two teenagers as they separated, each heading home. An hour passed; the fog thickened, warping vision even more, and folding sound in upon itself. Still, he was there, waiting and watching. The lights went out in Mrs. Keller’s windows. Still, he waited there on the edge of the forest. The only sound now was his slow measured breathing.

PLUMS IN BOOM AT CHAWTON HOUSE

A shower of pink plum blossoms lay scattered across the drive at 5713 Meridian Road Southeast. Weighed down by the fog that had been there all night, they had fallen too early from the spring trees. This murder of pink made the long drive look like the blossoms had exploded due to some shocking event in the night. At the head of the drive that stretched one fifth of a mile stood a green and white sign. “Chawton House – Private Drive.” No one in the neighborhood even once considered venturing beyond the first plum trees, or for that matter, past the sign. But if they had, they would have passed through the two rows of 25 trees set in a narrow long lawn to finally arrive at a large L-shaped Tudor house built on a circle drive set within a square piazza of concrete. At the center of this piazza was an ample round of ground wherein sat tall fir trees and native plants of the region. Bursting up wherever the ground was bare were sunny daffodils like tiny Chinese lanterns in the fog. The owners of Chawton House had planted a wall of emerald green arborvitae to block the unsightly view of the rather ordinary house next door. It was a wall against where they were in the world that allowed them to pretend to be where they dreamed of living.

There was a garage separate from the house as you approached, over which, on the second floor, was a guest house. As for the house itself, it was built in the second year of this century and housed in its north wing a large artist’s studio, which was entered through the library off of the foyer. From the back lawn of Chawton House there was a commanding view of Lake Saint Clair.

All this nouveau magnificence was built by Henry Barr for his wife Lucille, who was an anglophile with an overtly dangerous obsession for Jane Austen. That being so, the house was named by her after Miss Austen’s home in Hampshire England. The furnishings were mostly faux Regency and really had no business being in a barely twelve-year-old Tudor house.

Lucille and Henry had two children: Emma, who was away at Sara Lawrence; and a son, Elliot Thorpe Barr, who was in high school and insisted, to the horror of his mother, on being called Ted. He hated everything connected to Jane Austin.

The year before, Ted had been a student at Bales Academy for Boys in Tacoma, but hated the school. After much discussion and at his father’s insistence over his mother’s objections, he was now enrolled at River Ridge High School, a public school.

Ted rolled out of bed and walked to the window overlooking the long drive to Meridian. The house was quiet, and he might, if they were all still asleep, be able to sneak out and go for a ride along the lake. Within five minutes, he was dressed and silently down the stairs. He disarmed the alarm and as he opened the door he stopped and looked down at his feet.

“And where do you think you are going so early on a Saturday morning?”

Ted turned his bowed head to the side and peered up from under a slightly cocked eyebrow. “For a bike ride.”

Mrs. Fulton smiled at the young man. “Well, don’t make it a long one. I’m making your favorite for breakfast. Mulligan hash browns and biscuits with your mother’s cursed Cumberland sausages. “

“And three fried eggs?”

Mrs. Fulton smiled. “And three fried eggs. Be back by 7:30 and at table if you want it hot and your parents, not.”

Ted laughed; he loved how Mrs. Fulton always tried to rhyme. “You bet, my pet,” he said as he sailed out the door into the rose-blushed fog of dawn.

MR & MRS BARR AT BREAKFAST

Having served herself at the buffet table English breakfast style, Lucille Barr affectedly over-fussed in camel slacks, cream silk blouse, and light Scottish wool cardigan, walked over to the long Regency dining table and placed her plate at her usual seat, the north head of the table. She lowered herself regally into the chair and then looked down the table at her husband. He was ensconced at the south head of the table. Between them, at the 50-yard line on the west side of the table, was a place set with a freshly pressed linen napkin and glittering morning silver. This was Ted’s place at the table.

“Where on earth is Elliot?”

Henry Barr, not looking up from his iPhone said, “Mrs. Fulton said he went on a bike ride about an hour ago. Don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t like it when he goes out so early. And it’s too foggy for bicycling.”

“I wouldn’t think the fog would worry you, it’s so very English, you know.” Mr. Fulton smirked.

The door to the dining room swung open and Ted bounded in. He slowed his stride to an acceptable pace at the sight of his mother’s displeasure.

“There you are Elliot. I was just telling your father I don’t like it when run off on your adventures so early in ….”

“Lucille, leave him alone,” Henry said without looking up. “He’s a boy and he should be having adventures.”

Lucille narrowed her eyes and added another mark in her book of slights. She sighed heavily.

“Well then, Elliot, make yourself a plate…” only then did she notice what her son was holding. “What are you doing with your father’s hunting knife? You know I don’t like you playing with his weapons.”

“I’m not playing with it.” Ted looked at his father. “You left it on the workbench in the garage Dad.”

“I did?” Henry, who was an avid hunter, said absently.

“Henry really? You are becoming so forgetful lately. Elliot put the knife where it belongs in the trophy room.”

Ted nodded. “Got it, Mom!” He strode across the dining room(?) to the door that led into his father’s sanctuary from the world; it was an oak paneled, elegantly appointed room, inspired by such rooms in stately old English country houses. Lucille was particularly proud of the design, deep oxblood leather sofa with matching club chairs, two mahogany rifle cabinets with engraved gold letters, C.H. for Chawton House, set into the silver handles on the cabinet doors. In fact, C.H. was even engraved on the butts of the rifles, upon almost every weapon in the room. In the center of the room stood a mahogany desk where Mr. Barr kept a revolver said to have once belonged to Wild Bill Hickok. Ted went to the knife case opposite the desk and put the glinting, vicious-looking knife into its cozy safe home.

Back in the dining room, Ted descended upon the buffet table and began piling onto a plate a heaping serving of Mulligan hash, sausages and three fried eggs. “Mrs. Fulton makes the best breakfasts. Don’t ya think so, Dad? But why do we have to have it in the dining room? What is the breakfast nook for anyway? I’m sick of living in Downton Abbey.”

Henry laughed.

“Honestly, Elliot, having manners and knowing proper etiquette don’t have to go out the window just because we live in the country rather than the city. Just because people around here are swathed in flannel and dungarees doesn’t mean we have to….”

“Country! City? I know when you say it that way you think we are in Cornwall or something. You are living in a dreamworld, Mom. This is Lacey, Washington, not Bath, England in 1806.” Ted laughed and the twinkle in his eye disarmed Lucille. It always did.

“Yes well, hum.”

Mrs. Fulton came in from the kitchen with a pot of coffee. “More coffee Mr. Barr? Mrs. Barr?”

“I’ll have some, Mrs. Fulton!” Ted held up his empty imitation Wedgwood cup.

“You’re too young for ….”

“It’s fine Mrs. Fulton, give Ted a cup.”

“Thanks, Dad”

By this point Lucille Barr had lost her appetite, as she usually did at breakfast every morning. She folded her napkin and nodded to Mrs. Fulton to refill her cup.

“So, Elliot have you got a date for that dance at your school tonight?” she asked brightly.

“Nope.”

“Are you going?”

“Maybe.”

Mr. Barr stood up and dropped his napkin on his plate. “Want to barrow the car for the dance?”

“Thanks, Dad,” Ted said, scraping up the last bit of food off his plate. He shoved it in his mouth and grinned at his mother. She blanched and looked away.

“Oh Elliot!”

“You going to play golf at Indian Summer, Dad?”

“You wouldn’t want to tag along, would you? I could use a caddy.”

“Caddy? No way. I’m going to play, and I’m going to win this time.”

Father and son bounded to the door and as they passed through as they always did every Saturday morning, they looked over their shoulders at Lucille Barr and tossed her a jaunty wave.

Mrs. Barr sighed, then sipped from her imitation Wedgwood china cup and thought of England.

FIRST SIGHT

Jim caught the eye of the driver as the forest green 1991 jaguar XJ convertible shot past where he and Mary Ellen stood under the Bus 67 sign in front of Golden Oaks. The face was familiar, it was that new boy at school. Even though the Jag was speeding, Jim saw that he was wearing a hot pink Ralph Lauren polo shirt.

“It’s weird here,” Mary Ellen said.

“What do you mean?”

“That fancy sports car that just went by. I mean, we live in this run-down trailer park and there is a so-so middle-class neighborhood across the street, but sprinkled around the lakes and in the woods, there are lots of rich people. McMansions behind high fences and iron gates.”

“Not so odd. The lakefront property is premium. So, it is what it is.”

Mary Ellen looked east down to the intersection of Mullen and Meridian. The sun low in the west made the tops of the fir trees along eastern Mullen a golden green. 

“The bus will be here in about 20 minutes,” Jim said.

Mary Ellen looked up at Jim. “Thank you again for saying yes.”

“Sure. I didn’t have anything planned anyway.”

 “Do you like dances?”

“No, not much.”

She smiled. Jim laughed.

“I guess I just thought it would be nice to get out. You know, after all that weirdness last night.

A red Ford pickup truck pulled up to the end of the driveway and stopped. Jim recognized the driver. It was Mrs. Keller’s son, Mark, in the cab. Jim nodded.

“Who is that?”

“Mark Keller, Mrs. Keller’s son. I wonder what he wants. He hardly ever comes to visit his mom.”

The truck tuned and rumbled past them toward town.

“That truck was here last night. I remember it because of the crumpled bumper.”

“Yeah… but he wasn’t in her trailer, was he?’ Jim said.

The Ford pickup picked up speed and as it crested the rise heading west, the green Jaguar XJ reappeared, coming back along Mullen.

“There, see!” Mary Ellen said. “Another Jag. The woods are crawling with them.”

“It’s the same one that just passed us,” Jim said.

The Jaguar slowed down to turn into the driveway of Golden Oaks, again Jim caught the eye of the driver as he executed a three-point turn and then pulled up and stopped in front of them at the bus stop.

The driver dazzled them both with a perfect smile. “Are you guys going to the dance at River Ridge?”

Mary Ellen smiled at the boy. “Yes. We are.”

“Hop in, I’m going to the dance too.”

Jim didn’t acknowledge the boy. “That’s okay, we’re taking the bus.”

The boy didn’t seem to hear Jim even though he was looking right at him. In fact, he hadn’t even looked but once at Mary Ellen.

“My name is Ted Barr. I just started this semester at River Ridge. I don’t know a soul at that school.” He leaned over and opened the car door. “Get in.”

“There isn’t enough room for three.”

“Sure there is, Jim, you can sit on my lap.” Mary Ellen scooted past him and landed in the passenger seat. She held out her hand to Ted to shake. “Hi! I’m Mary Ellen.”

“Hi Mary Ellen.” Ted laughed. She looked up at Jim and Ted’s eye took the same trajectory.

“Okay.” Jim said reluctantly as he caught the edge of a crooked smile from Ted.

Barely seated awkwardly on Mary Ellen’s lap, the Jag jerked off in a squeal of rubber.

Ted turned the volume nob up on the cd player.

Jim smiled in surprise. “Stella By Starlight.”

“You know it?” Ted yelled over the roar of the engine and the cry of Charlie Parker’s sax.

“Yeah. You into jazz?”

“Who isn’t?”

“Everyone at River Ridge. I’m trying to educate Mary Ellen about jazz. She’s obsessed with Taylor Swift.”

“I didn’t say that!” Mary Ellen protested as Ted made the tight turn onto Marvin Road.

She looked from Jim to Ted and raised an inquisitive brow. “What are the odds that the two of you would be jazz freaks?” She pursed her lips and squinted.

Ahead of them the lights at the railroad crossing began to flash. Ted floored it and the Jag roared.

“What are you doing?” Jim yelled. Mary Ellen laughed. The crossing barriers began to lower as the train whistle blasted its approach warning. Jim closed his eyes just as the car swerved into the oncoming lane, around the yellow divider, skidded and swerved again back into the right lane, and crossed the railroad tracks just as the barriers dropped into place behind them.

Jim was livid. “What the hell?”

“What’s the matter Jim, don’t you like a little danger?”

“No, I would rather live to see 18, thanks.”

“I loved it!” Mary Ellen shouted as Ted slowed the car to enter the traffic circle by the Oak Preserve at Ovation. Exiting the circle, he kept the speedometer at 25. “Why are you going so slow?”

Ted looked over to Jim and winked. “Because Jim doesn’t like to go fast. And whatever Jim likes goes tonight. Sorry about the railroad crossing Jim. It won’t happen again.”

Jim took a deep breath and unclenched his fists. The thing that really scared him was that he did like it. He liked it a lot.

PRETTY IN PINK

“Oh my God, Janice look!” Ruby Rodriquez, swathed in pink tulle and a matching bustier, poked her friend in the ribs. Janice McAvoy, also head-to-toe Pepto Bismol pink, turned and her jaw dropped.

“Oh my God!” Janice managed to whisper above the pounding beat of “Addicted to Love.” “It’s that new guy and he’s with Jim Bernard and Mary Ellen Beattie. The two hottest boys in school and with that banana slug!

“She’s not wearing pink!” Ruby sneered. “It’s called “It’s the 80s!” dance. Goddamn it!” Mary Ellen felt all the eyes of all the girls all in pink looking her up and down. The vibe was tribal, and she defiantly was not part of that tribe.

“I forgot I was supposed to wear pink,” she said in mock horror.

“Did you really?” Ted wondered out loud. “I bet you didn’t forget for a moment, Mary Ellen.”

She smiled. “You got that right, Ted.”

“I like you Mary Ellen, you got spunk.”

Mary Ellen looked at Ted and, in that moment, decided he was cool even if he was a rich kid.

“None of the other boys are wearing pink,” Jim shouted over the music.

“I know, but I am, cause I’m pretty in pink.”

In that moment Jim decided he really liked Ted.

“Let’s get this party started!” Ted shouted and took both their hands and pulled them laughing into the whirling lights of the center of the gym.

That night a new tribe was born.

***

Ted drove them home after the dance. He stopped the car in front of Mary Ellen’s trailer.

“This the one?”

“Yes, it looks more glamorous at night. The twinkle lights on the porch posts are the secret to that.”

“I’ll take twinkle lights any day over no imagination. You should see where I live. It’s like some phony movie set. This is real, Mary Ellen.”

She laughed. “You gotta be kidding.”

“Where do you live Ted?” Jim asked.

“Chawton House. You know it?”

“Sure, everyone around here knows that place. I figured with this car and …”

Sputtering raindrops splattered about them and drew their attention to the fact that the top was down and, in a few moments, they would be soaked. Ted quickly got out of the car.

“Help me with this will you, Jim.” Together the two boys unhooked the cover over the retracted roof.

“There, okay.” Ted said. “Get back in the car.”

“There’s no room for us with the top up.” Jim said. “I’ll just walk the rest of the way.

“Yeah, I better go in too,” Mary Ellen said as she got out of the front seat. “Thank you, Ted.”

“You’re welcome, Mary Ellen. Jim, get in, I’ll drive you the rest of the way.”

“No, it’s okay really.”

Mary Ellen turned to say goodnight to Jim. She caught a glint of red light slice the air in the middle distance between her trailer and Mrs. Keller’s. It was light reflecting off the beads of water on the side of Mrs. Keller’s son’s red pickup. It was parked at an odd angle and not quite in front of her porch.

“He’s back.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Keller’s son. I wonder what’s going on. You said he never comes around and this is twice in one day.”

Jim looked.

“All the lights are out in her place.”

“Who is Mrs. Keller?” Ted said just as the rain broke into a downpour.

Mary Ellen shouted. “Oh lord! I’m going in. Goodnight!”

“Come on, Jim, get in. You’re getting wet.”

Jim gave in and hopped into the Jaguar.

“Now, where do you live?”

“The last trailer at the back of the park.”

Ted started the engine and very slowly put it into gear. The car crept almost by inches toward the back of the trailer park.

“Do you really want to go home, or would you like to come over to my house for a late-night snack? Hot chocolate and some of Mrs. Fulton’s scones.”

“Scones?”

“Yeah, we can raid the pantry. I’m almost positive she has fresh ones for tomorrow morning.”

“I don’t know.”

“You can call your mom and tell her where you are. I’ll have you home in forty-five minutes.”

“Yeah but,”

They were at Jim’s trailer. Ted smiled and pulled a quick U-turn and stopped the car.

“Yeah, but what? Come on Jim, you know you want to.”

Jim looked at Ted. “I do but…”

Ted shifted into drive and headed the car for Mullen Road. As they sailed past Mrs. Keller’s trailer Jim noticed that the red pickup truck was gone. In the last second as they passed, he could just make out Mrs. Keller sitting on the porch in the dark, her rocker turned toward the forest. It was raining hard.

SCONES AT MIDNIGHT

Jim sat across from Ted in the breakfast nook. Hard rain hit the window. The echoed sound made Jim sharply aware that they were the only two people in the house.

“We never eat in here. And oddly enough, it is my favorite room.” Ted walked out of the pantry holding a plate of perfect scones.

“Where are your parents?” Jim asked as Ted placed the plate in front of him.

“Coffee or milk?” Ted asked.

“Coffee please.” Ted smiled and turned to pop a pod into the Nespresso machine.

“They’re at the symphony in Tacoma. And there’s a dinner after. We are not alone though; Mrs. Fulton is asleep in her room on the other side of the kitchen.”

“Mrs. Fulton?”

“She’s our housekeeper and cook.”

Ted put a cup in place just in time to catch the French roast coffee as it steamed out of the spigot.

“How rich are you?” Jim blushed. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

“Not rich really. We are, as my dad says, doing okay.”

Jim looked around. “No, Ted, you are not ‘doing okay’; you are rich.”

 “Don’t hold it against me. We can still be friends. You can buy me lunch when we go to the movies.” He placed the hot coffee between them. Jim followed with his eyes as the steam twined its way up from the cup and slowly evaporated just below Ted’s chin.

“Are we going to the movies?” He looked up at Teds smiling hazel eyes. “You and me, and um…Mary Ellen?”

Ted bit into his scone. “She can come along, if you want her to.”

Jim shot his glance away from Ted and directed his attention to the rain streaking down the windowpanes like desperate tears.

“Sure…” He managed to get the word out not knowing what else to say.

“I’ve been watching you since I came to River Ridge. You are not one for hanging with a crew. You stay off on your own. Why is that?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m shy.”

“No that’s not it. It’s not shyness. People like you but you don’t like many people. You’re just different. A loner. Or maybe just lonely. Am I right?”

“I like to be alone.”

“What are you hiding?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m hiding something. I’m a teenager with a secret.”

“You could say that about any teenager.”

Ted smiled. “Maybe someday I’ll tell you what it is, and you can….”

“We better go. It’s really getting late.”

“You haven’t touched your coffee or tasted one of Mrs. Fulton’s scones. She will be very hurt when I tell her that my new best friend didn’t even try one.”

“Can I take it with me?”

“You bet. Come on, Cinderfella, let’s get you back to your enchanted forest before the spell is broken.”

RED RAIN

The tires of the Jaguar hit a pothole as Ted turned into the drive at Golden Oaks, sending up a spray of muddy water as the car jerked with a hard thud.

“Ouch, I will have to pay attention to that next time I come by.”

“Sorry about that. I should have warned… Ted! Stop the car!”

Ted hit the brakes and looked out of the passenger side to see what had caught Jim’s attention.

“What is it?” He turned off the engine.

The rain had stopped, and the fast-moving clouds were beginning to break up. A shaft of moonlight swept over the hood of the Jaguar and moved swiftly over the ground, up to Mrs. Keller’s porch. There in the heavenly spotlight sat Mrs. Keller exactly where she was an hour ago with a shawl over her head. She was soaking wet. The clouds closed and it was dark.

“Something is wrong.” Jim said as he opened the car door.

“Who is that?” Ted said when got out of the jag.

“It’s Mrs. Keller. She is ….” Jim started toward the porch with Ted right behind him. It was quiet. All the trailers were dark except Mary Ellen’s, where a cold blue flicker from the television in her living room danced on the thin drapes. Large drops of water slipped in from the branches of the fir trees. When they hit the wet earth, the sound seemed deafening, like tiny wet bombs. The earth sucked at the bottom of Jim’s shoes, and everything seemed to slow down as if Jim were dreaming.

He stepped up onto the porch and noticed that the porchlight was broken. Glass lay splattered across the porch, leading like breadcrumbs to where Mrs. Keller sat, waiting.

Jim touched her left shoulder. “Mrs. Keller are you okay?”

Her body slumped to the side of the chair and the shawl slipped off. It wasn’t Mrs. Keller. It was her son, Mark. Someone screamed and Jim jumped back. Ted’s chest stopped what would have been a fall from the porch. Mark Keller’s sightless eyes were wide. Too wide for life. His head slowly rolled back to reveal a hideous scarlet smile that was his slit throat. A grinning gash from ear to ear that was so viciously deep as to have nearly decapitated him.

“Jesus Christ!”

“You are not going to tell me that’s Mrs. Keller?” Ted said dully.

“It’s her son.”

“Why does he have a shawl on?” Ted whispered.

“I don’t know. Where is Mrs. Keller?” Jim looked at the broken porch light and walked to the front door. It was locked. “Is she in there?” Jim knocked hard on the door. No one turned on a light, no one answered.

“Look Jim. A rifle. He had a rifle.” It lay a few feet to the left of Mark’s body. Ted moved toward it and stretched out his arm toward it.

“Don’t touch anything!”

“What’s going on, Jim?”

They both turned to see Mary Ellen standing at the end of the porch.

“I heard you scream.” She said.

“I didn’t scream.” Jim squeaked.

“I think it was me.” Ted said. “I’ve never seen a dead man before.”

Mary Ellen moved toward them. “A dead man?” The clouds shifted and opened. Mary Ellen saw the body. “Holy shit. Who is that? Where is Mrs. Keller? Is she okay?”

“It’s her son. Mrs. Keller isn’t answering the door.”

The three friends stood looking at each other, rooted in shock to the spot. Then just beyond the edge of the forest, something moved and there was a crack of breaking branches.

“What is that?” Mary Ellen yelled.

Pooters, Clarisse Caleb’s dog began barking wildly and the lights came on in her trailer. In an instant she flung open her bedroom window which faced Mrs. Keller’s porch. A high-powered flashlight hit the three kids in the face.

“Jean Keller! What the hell is going on over there?”

“I better call my dad,” Jim said, fishing out his cell from his jeans pocket.

“Your Dad?” Ted whispered. “Why don’t you call the police.”

“He is the police.”

QUESTIONS

Near dawn Jim, Mary Ellen and Ted were placed in the back of a police car to be driven to the Lacey Police Department. They had each been interviewed briefly and separately by Jim’s father at the scene and now were being taken in for a formal statement.

“Why do we have to go downtown?” Mary Ellen asked. “Does your dad think we did it?”

“It’s procedure,” one of the officers said, before Jim could answer, as he slid behind the wheel of the car. “And no talking, you three.”

Jim raised his brows and shrugged. Mary Ellen scowled and settled back into the seat.

“But my parents…” Ted began. “They were at a show in Tacoma. They should be home by now.”

“We couldn’t get ahold of your parents; your housekeeper is meeting us at the station. She will take you home.” The other cop said as he got into the car.

The lights set up around Mrs. Keller’s trailer were blindingly bright. Jim could just make out beyond the yellow crime scene tape to the other side of the porch. It was swarming with cops conducting the preliminary investigation. Beyond them Jim could see his father. He was talking to Jim’s mother and Mr. and Mrs. Beattie, Mary Ellen’s parents. Mrs. Beattie was crying. His mother put her arm around Mrs. Beattie’s shoulder to comfort her.

The squad car jerked forward out of a mud rut to then creep forward toward Mullen Road.

***

“I never wanted to move up here, Bob.” Mrs. Beattie sobbed softly. “Now look at what has happened. Our little girl … his head was nearly cut off!”

“I know, Margaret, I know.” Look, detective, are we almost done? My wife is…”

“She ain’t the only one upset!” Edie popped like a cork.

“Calm down, Edie. The kids are fine. Or they will be.”

“I’m taking Margaret back to my trail…mobile home for a bottle of comfort.”

“I don’t drink, Edie.” Mrs. Beattie whimpered.

“Oh, that’s right you don’t. Well, now is a good time to start. What with a lunatic running around Lacey chopping up jerks like Mark Keller?” She looked back at the body of Keller on the porch. “I knew him when he wasn’t a jerk.” She snorted awkwardly that ran close to a stifled a sob. “There is a madman loose! We all need a drink!”

“Shut up Edie.” Jake Bernard said with soft authority. Edie went dumb and slightly numb. She knew what that tone used to lead up to.

Jake looked at Mrs. Beattie. “You were asleep when you heard the scream?”

“I was just drifting off. I ignored it. I thought it was the television in the living room. Mary Ellen was watching “Stranger Things.” There is a lot of screaming on that show.

“And you Mr. Beattie? Where were you?”

“I was in the shower. I didn’t hear a thing. Only Mary Ellen heard it.”

“Over the screams on the television?”

“I guess.” Mr. Beattie said.

Detective Bernard jotted a few notes as he spoke. “Did either of you know Mark Keller?”

“No.” Mrs. Beattie said flatly. “We didn’t even really know Mrs. Keller. Mary Ellen was just making friends with her.”

“We’ve only lived here since last summer.” Mr. Beattie said. “I work two jobs and my wife, well, she doesn’t mix with many people.”

“Why is that Mrs. Beattie?”

Before she could answer, the lights in the trailer park shuddered, then went out. Only the police lights remained on in the crime scene, lighting up the edge of the forest at odd angles. All talking stopped as the police officers’ attention, along with that of Edie, the Beatties, and Detective Bernard, were directed toward the dark forest. A recording played loudly from far beyond the lights. Deep in the dark…

      “You’ll never know just how much I miss you
            You’ll never know just how much I care
            And if I tried, I still couldn’t hide my love for you
            You ought to know for haven’t I told you so
            A million or more times

You went away and my heart went with you
I speak your name in my every prayer
If there is some other way to prove that I love you
I swear I don’t know how
You’ll never know if you don’t know now…”

No one moved in the shock of the other-worldly aspect of music blasting out of the woods. It was a recording from the 1940’s and only one person in Golden Oaks could tell them who it was who was singing. But he was in a squad car heading to the police station with his friends.

The music cut off mid-song. A coyote howled in the distance. The lights sputtered back on.

“Don’t stand there like a bunch of goons,” Detective Bernard shouted. “Get in there. Find him!”

The policemen sprang to life and fanned out disappearing beyond the light.

Margaret Beattie began to cry again.

Edie put her arm around her. “Come on honey let’s get you that drink.”

GOING HOME

The Barrs’ housekeeper, Mrs. Fulton, was waiting in the lobby of the police station when Jim, Ted and Mary Ellen were released from questioning. She looked tired and rumpled where she stood in her raincoat, floppy rainhat and muddy galoshes.

“You kids must be exhausted. Are you okay, Ted?”

“I’m alright. Where are Mom and Dad?”

“There was a wreck on I-5 tonight, a Cheese Factory truck overturned and caught fire. The southbound lanes are a parking lot. So, they had to backtrack and decided to spend the night at a motel in Tacoma. “Look kids,” she said, turning to Jim and Mary Ellen. “You can’t go back home. The cops have the place pretty much locked down. So, Jim, your dad said to bring you and…” She looked to the new face in the group.

“Mary Ellen,” Jim said.

“Hello Sweetheart,” Mrs. Fulton said to Mary Ellen. “Your dad thought it would be easier for you to get some sleep away from where.” Her eyes narrowed, and nose wrinkled slightly as if she smelled something rotten. “That man was killed The gist of it is that you are all coming back to Chawton House. A bit of a slumber party you might say. Hot chocolate, cookies, whatever you want.”

“I don’t think I’ll be doing much slumbering,” said Mary Ellen flatly. “Maybe I should go home.”

“No, your mother agreed to what Detective Bernard ordered. Now come along, kids. Let’s go home.”

As she turned to lead them out to the parking lot, Mrs. Fulton slipped lightly on the slick muddy floor. Ted grabbed her to stop her from falling.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” she said in a soft, maternal breath that only he could hear.

Ted looked down at the smeared floor. Then his eyes moved to the back of Mrs. Fulton’s galoshes. There was a great deal of thick mud and matted leaves caked on the heels.

After a huge English country breakfast the next morning, the call came that it was okay for Jim and Mary Ellen to return home. Mrs. Fulton offered to drive them home.

“it’s okay, Mrs. Fulton, it’s not far. We can walk,” said Mary Ellen.

“I’m going with you.” Ted said.

“Good,” said Jim. Mary Ellen put her arm around Ted’s waist after he shut the front door behind him.

The rain from the night before had stopped with the sunrise. A bright spring morning greeted the three friends as they walked down the drive to Meridian Road in a gentle fall of pink plum blossoms. Each footstep crushed the blossoms on the drive into blood-like smears.

“My mom’s gonna want to move after this.” Ted said. She hates it here. A murder in the neighborhood is the perfect reason for her to make her case for an escape from Lacey. One way or another, she’s going to get her way. She always does.”

A CONFESSION

Mary Ellen was the first to notice that the main entrance was blocked off by police tape. They had to go further west on Mullen to the secondary entrance to Golden Oaks. They walked as far as the back of Mary Ellen’s trailer before they looked across the park to Mrs. Keller’s trailer. Two detectives were standing on the porch. They turned to look at the three friends.

“I should go in,” Mary Ellen said, looking at her home with an edge of dread.

“Not yet,” Jim said. “Come over to my place and the three of us can hang out on the front porch.”

“No, I better not.” She gave Ted a hug and then one to Jim. “I’ll come over later.”

Mary Ellen’s mother and father came out of the trailer. Mary Ellen moved slowly in their direction. Just as she reached them, she fell into their open arms. Mr. Beattie covered her head with his large hands and pulled her to his chest. Mary Ellen was crying softly.

“She’s not as tough as she wants us to think she is,” Ted said.

“I don’t think any of us are as tough as we think we are,” Jim whispered.

When they reached Jim’s trailer, there was the sound of the TV blasting. The front door was open with only the screen door as a barrier against the world.

“She’s been drinking,” Jim said. “Maybe you better not stay.”

“Yeah, maybe I should just go home to the battling Barrs. I’ll come over tomorrow if that’s okay.”

“Sure,” Jim said.

“And maybe on Monday I’ll give you and Mary Ellen a ride to school.”

“Okay.”

“Jimmy is that you?

“Yeah, Mom.”

The screen door flew open.

“See ya later,” Jim said.

“S’later.” Ted smiled and turned to leave. The dappled sunlight fell through the fir trees, caught the ends of his hair, then glanced off his sturdy left shoulder. Beyond that shoulder was Mrs. Keller’s trailer dark under the shade of the forest.

“Honey, I’m so sorry you couldn’t come home last night.” Jim turned to look at his mother. “I was worried sick about you.” She stumbled toward him and threw her arms awkwardly about his neck. She smelled of something stronger than wine.

“Come in…come in baby. I gotta talk to you about last night. “

Jim followed her into the dark trailer. It was overheated and heavy with the stink of marijuana and bourbon.

“Sit down, baby,” she said, as she crumpled like a bag of laundry into her easy chair.

“Are you smoking dope, Mom?”

“Just today honey. Parker Jones gave me some to calm my nerves.” She looked blurrily in his general direction.

“Just for today….”

“And you switched from wine to …?”

“Bourbon. Lisa Lasson, you know from the other side of the park… she came over and left the bottle.”

“Okay,” Jim sighed. “What did you want to tell me.”

“Oh, honey just that I am so sorry you had to see…” She choked. “See….”

“Mark Keller’s murdered body.”

“Yes! Mark….” She wailed and covered her face ending the sound when she stuffed her fist into her mouth.

Jim knit his brows. He had seen her drunk and messy before, but this was somehow different.

“Did they find Mrs. Keller yet?” He asked.

“Mark was …. Huh?” she blubbered.

“I said, did they find her?

“Who?” She wiped her blurry eyes and tried to focus.

“Mrs. Keller, Mom! She was missing last night.”

“Oh…no honey they haven’t found her. Not yet, your father says….” She looked hard at Jim.

“You look so much like him, you know…your father.”

“I don’t think so. I look more like you. What you used to look like.” He flustered into frustration. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I know that honey. I know I am a fucking mess. I’ve messed it all up. Your dad and me and well, your father….”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“I didn’t see him… did he look peaceful?”

“Who?”

She took the bottle beside her and spilled some of it into a dirty glass.

“Mark! Did he look peaceful.?”

“No, he looked, dead,” Jim said flatly.

Now the tears stopped. She looked wretched and on the edge of madness.

“I have to tell you something. Something no one knows. except for Jim.”

“What?” Jim said annoyed at her state of drunkenness.

She covered her mouth as if to stop a scream. She began to hiccup sob and the tears followed anew.

This was nothing like Jim had ever seen before and his annoyance shifted at once to concern.

He slid from the sofa and crawled the short distance between them across the tattered carpet. He put his arm around her. His touch released in her a low mournful moan. It was a frightening sound.

“Mother, what’s wrong?”

Her eyes were shut tight. She turned and wrestled free of him so he could not see her face.

“Mark Keller was your father. Your real father.”

A MUDDY MESS

Mrs. Fulton was busy cleaning up after breakfast when Ted returned.

“Ted I’ve got my hands full, and I just remembered that I didn’t put the car in the garage when we got home last night.” Since his parents were stuck in Tacoma it did not seem to matter that the mud splattered heap was in plain view in front of Lucille Barr’s perfect home. 

“I’ll put it away. I know how mom is about leaving cars in the drive.”

Mrs. Fulton tossed her keys to him. “Oh my Lord I forgot about the muddy mess. Be careful there’s a lot of muck in the garage.

As Ted came around to the driver’s side of the car, he noticed that the mud was thickly coated more so on that side than on the passenger side of the car. He got in and turned on the ignition, pressed the garage door opener on the windshield visor.

The wide door to the three-car garage slowly rose to reveal a shocking sight. The back door of the garage was hanging from only the top hinge, splintered wood gaping like torn flesh barely held it in place. The door had been blown open by a substantial mud slide from the hill behind the garage that had been recently cleared of trees for the new formal terraced garden his mother had decided to put in. Half of the garage was awash in muck.

“Mrs. Fulton!” He called out as he ran through the door leading from the garage into the kitchen.

“It happened last night just before I got the call to come pick you up.”

“Mom is going to have a fit.”

“And your dad won’t be too happy either. It was a mess getting in the car last night and I thought for a moment that it was too stuck in the mud to move. I was lucky I finally got it out to come get you.”

“I should clean it up, at least what I can before they see it.”

“Good idea. Better jump to it. Who knows, they could be home at any moment.”

Mrs. Fulton looked past Ted and her expression shifted so suddenly that it caused Ted to turn to see what the matter was.

Jim was standing in the doorway from the garage. He looked shockingly pale, his eyes were swollen and red.

“The garage door was open… There is a lot of mud out there. I um….” He stifled a wracking sob. “Can I stay here for a while?”

****

” Jake, I think Jim has run away,” Edie cried into her cell phone.

“What do you mean run away?” Jake, half asleep, managed to mumble. He looked at the alarm clock next to his bed. It read 3:28 A.M.

“He ran out of here yesterday morning. He won’t answer his cell and …. oh, Jake he’s out there and that killer is too.”

Jake sat up and reached for the lamp next to his bed, nearly knocking it over. He steadied it and switched it on.

“Why did he leave?”

There was no answer, only Edie’s ragged breathing on the line.

“Edie, why did he leave?”

“I told him.”

Jake did not have to ask what it was she told him. “Shit. Why did you do that?”

“I didn’t mean too… I was freaked out about Mark. I … he was so angry and stormed out. He didn’t give me a chance to explain.”

“You were drunk.”

“I guess so. I was upset and had a few…”

“Shit, Edie. Shit!”

“Don’t yell at me now. We gotta find him. We both need to talk to him. To explain.”

Jake took a deep breath and held back the years of anger and resentment. Jim was not his son and that wasn’t the kid’s fault. His real father had been no father at all, and neither was he. Maybe it was time to make something right out of all the wrongs. “I’ll find him Edie. I have a pretty good idea where he is. I’ll explain it to him.”

“Call me as soon as you find him.”

“Get some sleep,” Jake said and ended the call. He swung his legs over the side of the bed to get up, but he didn’t move from the bed. He sat there looking at the dresser where only one photograph in a cheap silver frame sat. He stared at it for a long time, absentmindedly humming a tune. The humming slowly changed into a soft whisper of a song.

      “You’ll never know how much I love you.
            You’ll never know how much I care….”

He stopped. “Jesus! Will I ever get that song out of my head?”

TWELVE HOURS EARLIER

“What time is it?”

“Four A.M.”

“Park behind that clump of trees on the other side of the bridge.”

Mrs. Keller lay bound and gagged in the back seat of the Mercedes as it careened along the high gravel road in the first rises of the Olympic mountains. She moaned a low, guttural, unintelligible plea. Her cheeks were wet from tears.

“Shut up!” the woman snapped over her shoulder. She turned to the driver. “Can’t you make her stop?”

“It’ll be over soon,” said the man behind the wheel.

The Mercedes made its way across the 375-foot-high span of the High Steel Bridge and rolled on the darkness of the hidden space behind the trees. Once parked and the headlights killed, the driver got out of the car and opened the door to the back seat. He untied Mrs. Keller’s legs and pulled her rather gently across the seat and helped her to her feet.

Her eyes wide with terror, she looked first at the man and then to the woman, as they half dragged her back along the road and out onto the bridge.

“Mrs. Keller, do you know about this bridge, the High Steel Bridge it’s called. It was built almost a hundred years ago.”

Mrs. Keller stumbled, and the woman jerked her up from her side violently.

“…Careful dear. As I was saying, it was built as a train trestle for the old logging trains and then in the 60s, it was converted for logging trucks. It is quite a sight, a high sight above the gorge, if it weren’t so remote it might be a tourist attraction. As you can see…one side here has a tall rail and an elevated sidewalk safe for anyone to walk across.” The woman jerked the arm she held hard to the right. “But over here, there is no pedestrian rail…only this low guardrail for cars. Kind of frightening, isn’t it?”

The man and the woman led Mrs. Keller to the very edge of the bridge side right up to the low rail. They stood in the center of the bridge above the Skokomish River, hidden in mist and darkness far below them. The roar seamed distant and as cloaked to the ear as the sight of it was to the eye.

“As I said, this spectacular bridge draws many visitors. It also has tragically drawn many suicides.”

Mrs. Keller’s eyes widened as she sucked in a sharp muffled breath.

“My sister was one of those … suicides, Mrs. Keller.” The man spoke sharply.

“And she was my sister-in-law Mrs. Keller,” the woman said in a soothing whisper, inching closer to the precipice. “And that young girl who jumped to her death 16 years ago was the mother of a newborn boy, the baby we raised as our own son, our precious boy Elliot, Ted as she called him.” Lucille Barr hissed between clenched teeth.

“My sister killed herself here from this very spot because of your son, Mrs. Keller. Your son, who we executed tonight.”

Mrs. Keller was screaming into her gag and shaking her head violently. She tried with all her waning strength to pull away from her captors. Away from the edge of the bridge.

“Even though he abused her, raped her, she loved your asshole of a son, and when she told him she was pregnant he abandoned her the next day. She never saw him again. So why did we wait all those years to execute him. We simply had to wait for the right time. We are very patient and methodical when it comes to Justice.

Mrs. Keller was sobbing and sagged to her knees between Lucille and Henry Barr. Slowly, they pulled her to her feet as Henry spoke softly into her ear.

You’re his mother, you gave birth to the monster who destroyed our family, we wanted you to see him die, to know why he had to pay for my sister Rosalind’s death, for not being a man and taking responsibility for his rape of my sister. Yes, Mrs. Keller, your son raped my sister; he murdered her as surely as if he had pushed her off this bridge.” Lucille released Mrs. Keller’s arm as Henry took the woman by her frail shoulders. Lucille handed him the hunting knife she had given him as an anniversary gift. The handle was engraved with C.H., Chawton House.

“Goodbye, Mrs. Keller.” With one sudden slash he drew the knife across her throat.

There was only the distant sound of the rushing river below until very faintly there came a dull thud. Then an echo as the death of Mrs. Keller reverberated into the dark corners of the forest.

Henry crumbled to his knees, almost lost his balance and came within inches of going over the side of the bridge. He covered his mouth with his hand that fisted into a gag as he shoved it into his mouth, but it did nothing to stifle his anguished howl.

Lucille knelt behind him, put her arms around him.

“It’s over Henry. The sun will be up soon. We must drive to Tacoma and check out of the motel. Let’s go home.”

He looked up from the bottom of the gorge and into his wife’s face, tears streaming in the predawn glow. “I thought if we killed them it would stop. It’s not over, it will never be over.”

She helped him up. They walked back to the car.

“Call Mrs. Fulton and Ted at home. Set the alibi.”

“There are no bars. We’re too deep in the forest to make a connection.”

“Henry!” Lucille snapped. “Just keep trying until you get through.”

“What about the I-5 story?”

“No one will check because no one can connect us to what happened tonight. Get in the car!”

Lucille drove the two hours to Tacoma. They changed clothes and checked out of the motel. On the way home they threw their clothes from the murder in a dumpster behind a 7-11 near a homeless camp.

Just before they arrived home, Henry finally spoke. It was flat and cold. “I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything.”

Lucille had not heard him. She was locked in her own memory. She looked at her husband. “Henry, did you throw the hunting knife over the side of the bridge?”

IN A SAFE PLACE

“There’s a cop car coming up the drive,” Ted said as he let the curtain drop at the upstairs window of the guest room.

“I bet it’s my dad…my stepdad,” said Jim with not a hint of concern.

“You knew someone would come looking for you,” Mrs. Fulton said from the side of the bed where she was putting clean sheets on the bed.

“Yeah, I suppose so. But I don’t want to go home. Do you think your parents will let me stay?”

“I don’t know,” Ted said.

He and Jim looked at Mrs. Fulton. “Well, if it were up to me, you would be here for as long as you like. Let’s see what your stepfather says and when Mr. and Mrs. Barr get home, well, we’ll see. Take it one step at a time, I always say.”

Ted opened the front door to let Jim’s dad in.

“He’s in the living room, Detective Bernard,” Ted said before Jake Bernard had the chance to ask where Jim was.

Ted led the way. He stopped at the entrance to the elegantly appointed room and stood leaning against the door jamb.

Jim was sitting on an ottoman at the foot of a club chair. He felt safe somehow there next to the French doors that led out to the terrace overlooking Lake Saint Clair. If he had to run, he had a clear path to the lake.

“I’m not going back there, Dad…” He stumbled over the words. “I don’t know what to call you.”

“Why not stick with Dad for now.”

Jim just looked at him straight on. His jaw tightened. “Why didn’t anyone tell me the truth? Is that why mom’s a drunk? Because of Mark Keller? Because of me?”

“No, it’s not because of you. She loves you more than you realize. She drinks because she’s an alcoholic and it runs in her family. There’s more to it of course. It’s complicated. That’s why I left. I didn’t want to leave you, but I had no choice. You weren’t mine and well….”

“You had a choice.” Jim looked down at his hands where they gripped his knees.

“I made the wrong choice. And not just one wrong choice.”

“Do you know who killed him? My father?”

“No, son. We are just beginning the investigation.”

“I hope whoever did it gets away with it.” Jim hissed through his clenched jaw. “I’m glad he’s dead. I won’t have to deal with him or ….” He broke off. “What about Mrs. Keller, my grandmother…?”

“We’re searching for her as well. We’ll find her. We have a lot of questions.”

“So do I.” Jim smiled crookedly. “She’s the only good thing about this whole…” Jim bit his lip to stop the threat of tears that stung at the edges of his eyelids.

“Look, son,”

“I’m not your son.”

“Look, Jim, you don’t have to go back to your mom’s today. You can come home with me. Edie agrees with me that you should for a while. Stay with me where you are safe.”

“It’s safe here, I want to stay here. Ted wants me to and Mrs. Fulton thinks that Mr. and Mrs. Barr will let me.”

Jake sat silent, thinking the proposition over.

“I’ll talk to Mr. and Mrs. Barr.”

“My parents aren’t home. They stayed the night in Tacoma because of the wreck on I-5 last night.”

“Do you think, Ted, they would mind if I waited here to talk to them?”

****

Henry Barr was too nervous to drive home. It was Lucille who turned the wheel of the Mercedes off Meridian and onto the drive. The tires of the car kicked up bruised pink petals until the brakes locked, bringing the car to a skidding halt under the plum tree canopy.

Henry…. There’s a police car in front of the house.”

FOLLOW MY LEAD

“Why are they here?” Henry said, beginning to panic.

“Just follow my lead, Henry, and we will be fine. Ted and Mrs. Fulton can back up our story.”

“Lucille, you have never called him Ted before.”

“I know. But things are different now.” She stepped on the gas and slowly the car moved toward Chawton House.

****

“Elliot, my baby, are you alright?” Lucille cried as she entered the living room, arms wide to embrace the boy. Henry was on her heels and the three met in the center of the room for a tight embrace.

Lucille took Ted’s face in her hands. “I’m so sorry you had to see that, that horrible murder. We should have been here.”

“I’m okay mom. Mrs. Fulton took care of us.”

“Are you sure?” Henry said, just as he and Lucille looked to where Jim and Detective Bernard were standing.

“I’m Henry Barr and this is my wife, Lucille.” Henry spoke weakly and moved across to shake hands with Jake Bernard.

“Your boy is fine, Mr. Barr.” Jake said. “Detective Bernard, Lacey Police department, and this is my step-son, Jim.”

Lucille smiled. “We know your son.”

“Step-son.” Jim said. “My father…”

“Mom, Dad,” Ted interrupted. “Can Jim stay with us for a while?”

“Stay with us? Lucille frowned. Why? You have a home with your mother at Golden Oaks. Why do you want to stay here?” Her words were rushed.

“It’s well, it’s a mess,” Jim said.

“Why don’t we all sit down, and I will explain.” Jake said.

****

“That man who was, was murdered last night is your father?” Lucille rasped. She looked at her husband for a desperate moment. His face was drawn but unreadable.

“I just can’t stay with my mom right now, she’s drunk and she’s a liar. I don’t want to be with him either.” He pointed to Jake.

“Just for a few days Mom. Just until things calm down. Please?”

Lucille looked at Ted and for the first time saw how much he and Jim looked alike. It was like looking into the face of Mark Keller. Her stomach tightened.

“No, no, it’s not possible.” she said softly.

Finally, Henry spoke in a strong clear voice. “Of course, you can stay.”

“Henry? We need to talk about this in private,” Lucille mumbled.

“Look, it’s not a bad plan. We can keep an eye on both the boys. Nothing bad can happen if we have them both here, safe with us. We can do this Lucille. Just follow my lead.

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC

The song crept into her dream. Mary Ellen turned in the twisted sheets of her bed and murmured the disjointed words of the lyrics that floated into her room from the dark forest beyond Golden Oaks.

“Never know, never know,” she whispered. The dream jumped to awake. She sat up completely, eyes wide. It wasn’t in the dream! She could still hear it faintly from the woods. She looked at the alarm clock next to her bed. 1:30 am.

      You went away and my heart went with you.
            I speak your name in my every prayer.
            If there is some other way to prove that I love, you.
            I swear I don’t know how.
            You’ll never know if you don’t know now…”

The song stopped.

“Oh my god.” She blurted and recalled that her parents said there was singing in the woods after the police had taken her and the boys to the police station. The police had searched the woods until well after dawn but had found no one. The woods were empty all the way from Golden Oaks to Meridian Road.

The song had sounded tinny and there was an orchestra behind the woman’s voice.

“It’s a recording.” Mary Ellen picked up her phone and texted Jim.

“Meet me at the corner of Meridian and Mullen in the morning. I heard the song in the woods. Text me when you are leaving Chawton House.”

******

Having searched through the woods late the next morning, Jim, Ted and Mary Ellen stood perplexed in the center of the forest.

“It was a recording, I’m sure of it.” Mary Ellen said.

“Are you sure you weren’t just dreaming?”

“No, my dad heard it too, and Mrs. Caleb said Pooters heard it and woke her up.”

“I believe you, Mary Ellen, but we haven’t found anything. We turned over every log, looked in every stump. There is nothing here but tall trees.” Ted said.

“But it has to be here.” She threw her arms wide open.

“If it played two nights in a row, the night of the murder and last night it’s probably going to play tonight. It was a message to someone. It has to be. The killer used it to throw off the cops. It’s got to be on a timer of some sort. We should come back tonight and listen for it.” Ted’s realization sparked excitement within him.

“I don’t know.” Mary Ellen looked around the forest. Dark, even on a clear day, it was spooky enough. “We should let the police handle it. My dad called this morning and they said they would check it out.”

“Maybe they’ve already been back this morning before us.” Jim kicked the soggy earth then squinted quizzically at Ted then Mary Ellen. “But I don’t know, let’s see if it plays again tonight. We can meet here at midnight, do a stakeout.”

Ted laughed. “Teenaged detectives! I’m in!”

“Mary Ellen? Are you game?” Jim smiled a winning smile.

“Well, if you guys are. I think I can do it too.”

****

“What time is it?” Jim whispered.

“1:29” Jim said softly.

“I’m so bored,” Mary Ellen said. “And cold and scared. What if the killer comes back to, I don’t know, turn off the recording. They always return to the scene of the crime.”

“Only in books and TV,” Jim whispered.

“Then why are you whispering?” Ted whispered.

Mary Ellen giggled. “Because he is as scared as I am. Aren’t you scared, Ted?”

“No, I’m fine…”

A loud click cut him off, followed by music. The song began to play, it sounded like the three of them were in the center of the music.

“There it is!” Mary Ellen croaked.

Three flashlights clicked on, and their beams danced erratically around the forest bouncing off trunks and branches of the surrounding fir trees.

“We are right on top of it!” Jim said, turning his flashlight on the other two. “I don’t see anything.”

“It’s going to end in a second. We have to find it!” Mary Ellen shouted above the din.

“Wait a minute,” Ted said calmly.

Slowly he turned his flashlight, and the three friends’ eyes followed the beam as it climbed slowly, searchingly up the trunk of the large tree to their right. High above, hanging from the first strong branch was a large metal box.

“What the hell?” Jim said, just as the timer clicked and the song went dead.

“The cops never bothered to look up.” Ted laughed just under his breath.

“Look at the rope holding it up,” Mary Ellen pointed. “Where is it going?”

They trained their flashlights on the thick rope and pushed the beams along to follow it north toward Meridian Road. It crossed the tops of branches from tree to tree. Jim jumped up.
“You stay here Mary Ellen, come on Ted.”

“No way am I staying here alone! I’m going with you.”

They followed the rope through the ferns across the forest floor until they came to the road. There the rope stopped in in the last tree, wrapped and tied off on a low branch just above their heads.

“Give me a boost Jim.”

Both Jim and Mary Ellen assisted him up to where he could reach the branch.

“The knot’s too wet and tight.”

“Here, use my knife.” Jim handed up his blade.

Ted sawed at the rope until it abruptly snapped sending its frayed end flying back over the connecting trees into the dark. Almost at once there was the sound of the box hitting the forest floor.

When they reached the box, they found it intact. On one side was a metal screen where the sound from within was released. There was a hook on the top like an old lunch box closure. Jim snapped it open to find an old cassette tape recorder attached to a battery pack and a timer. He popped the recorder open and took out the cassette. On the side was written.

“Her favorite song.”

“Who is ‘Her’?” Mary Ellen whispered.

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

“Do you think we should tell your stepdad?” Mary Ellen looked at Jim.

“We should, but I don’t want to.”

“Why not?” Ted looked up from the cassette marked ‘Her Favorite Song’.”

Jim took the cassette from Ted and put it back into the player in the metal box. “Because I want to solve this and hand it to him all wrapped up like a birthday present. I’ve been thinking about it and now that the truth is out about my parents, my real parents, he’s the only one who has reached out to me in a good way. My mom is a mess, almost as bad as Mark. Jake Bernard’s not my father and we have a rough past, but now he seems like he wants to be. Look, I don’t care who killed my real father, I only want to find Mrs. Keller and bring her home safe. We can do this. But for now, we should hide the box and figure out what to do next.”

“Maybe we should follow Mark’s trail. It seems the only route that might get us an answer,” said Mary Ellen.

“She’s right, Jim. We should interview his, his what? Buddies, his girlfriend,” said Ted.

“Ewww! I can’t imagine anyone being that creep’s girlfriend,” said Mary Ellen.

****

Mark Keller’s home was on the north side of I-5 on Drahm Rd North East, where it turns sharply to the west and becomes 15^th Avenue. There, on the curve, is a collection of ramshackle, rusted trailers in front of a crumbling, small cottage with a moss rotted roof.

“This is worse than Golden Oaks,” Mary Ellen whispered as the three friends walked down the muddy drive past junked cars and empty crushed beer cans. Ripped tarps hung from the low branches of fir trees hiding more refuse just beyond them.

“Mark had real style, that’s evident,” said Ted somberly.

“He was a complete fuckup and a true asshole.” A woman’s voice came from behind one of the tarps. She stepped out from behind an olive-green tarp “Didn’t you see the no trespassing sign by the road?”

“Ah, no we didn’t,” said Jim.

“There’s so much to see, I think we missed it,” said Ted, flashing her his most disarming smile.

“Yeah right,” said the woman. She was in her mid to late 50s, short as she was wide with a face that was once considered handsome. “What do you kids want? Drugs? Beer? Well, you came to the wrong place. Mark is dead.”

“We want to find out why he is dead, who killed him and where my, my grandmother is,” said Jim.

The woman’s eyes narrowed, and she dropped her head just slightly to look at Jim. She gave a little nod. “You’re Jim then?”

“Jim Bernard, yes.”

The woman smiled wryly. “Not anymore, Jim Keller is your real name.” She walked over to him, looked up at him and then put out her hand. “I’m your aunt, Mabel Keller.”

MABEL

Jim cocked his head to one side and studied Mabel. “My aunt…”

“It’s a mess of a story kid.” Mabel’s eyes narrowed onto Ted. “Do I know you?”

“Nope, but then I have a face that everyone knows. My name is Ted and this is Mary Ellen.”

Mabel nodded as Mary Ellen smiled weakly. “Hello.”

So, what is this, some kind of teenage detective game, The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew team up or something?”

“Who?” Mary Ellen asked.

“Never mind, children. Look Jim, you should know the truth, all of it. Your dad was a shit and a lousy drug dealer.”

“I know he was a bastard, but I want to know why my grandmother has disappeared. She isn’t a shit or a drug dealer. She’s a nice old lady who looks after everyone in Golden Oaks.”

“Hey Mabel! Dinner’s ready! Get those punks out-a here!” A scruffy, bearded, inked-up man appeared from the kitchen door of the house.

She waved him off, then turned with a scowl that barely hid a regretful twist of a smile.

“Is that another Keller?” Jim asked.

 “Naw, he just, shall we say, bunks here. It’s better than a soggy tent along I-5. Let’s walk to your car. This ain’t a place for you kids to be hanging around. In fact, I don’t want to see you here again.”

She took Jim’s left hand and as they moved toward the road, she squeezed it.” What I’m going to tell you I wish I didn’t have to. Your grandmother was not so sweet. When she was young, when Mark was a baby, she and your grandfather ran drugs up from Mexico. With the money they made, they expanded and started a pot plantation In the Lost Coast area in Humboldt County. With that business and the Mexican connection, it became dangerous and deadly. That’s how your grandfather died. In a raid on the plantation just south of Ferndale. The feds shot him. Your grandmother and Mark, who was 15 at the time, escaped into the forest and with what little money they managed to grab as they ran. It got them as far as Lacey, the Golden Oaks. When the money ran out, Mark began to make connections with the help of your granny, and he began his own dealing business. It turned to hard drugs real quick and finally he set up a meth lab up past Shelton in the Olympic Forest a mile past the High Steel Bridge. He was using your granny to distribute the meth to your part of town from her trailer. He had drops all over the county. The money he made from Golden Oaks he gave to your granny. A good son, right?”

“I don’t believe it,” Jim sputtered, pulling his hand away from Mabel. “If she had been selling meth, we would have noticed the traffic coming and going.”

“She didn’t sell it. Mark would bring it to her and then at night there would be a signal from the forest, and she would take it to the shed behind her trailer and put it in a small old Flintstones lunch pail nailed to the back of the shed. The street dealer would take it and leave the money in the lunch pail. Your granny would sit on the porch with a shotgun on her lap and watch to make sure the dealer left the money. It was a crazy stupid way to do business, but Mark was a crazy stupid man. Now that he’s dead the couple who work the lab up in the mountains took over. I never wanted any part of it. “

“A Flintstones lunch pail?” Ted asked.

“It was Mark’s when he was a kid.”

“Then he was killed over a drug deal gone wrong,” said Mary Ellen.

“That’s my guess. And it ain’t so much a guess. Mark had lots of enemies from here to Tijuana.

“What was the signal from the forest?” Jim asked in a raw rasp.

“Your granny’s favorite song. ‘You’ll Never Know.”

HIGH STEEL BRIDGE

Jim slammed the door of his mother’s car and grabbed the wheel, then froze in place.

Mary Ellen scooted into the passenger seat and rolled up the window. “The sun is almost down and it’s getting chilly. It feels more like a soggy November, not May.”

Ted leaned forward from the back seat placing his handsome head between Mary Ellen and Jim. “You’re right, Mary Ellen, November is the wettest month of the year.”

Jim spoke as if to himself, soft and distant, his thoughts moving away in a northwesterly direction. “I wish it was November, and all of the filth in the forest was washed away.”

Mary Ellen and Ted looked at him with the same quizzical look.

“That’s it. We have to go to the High Steel Bridge.”

“Why?” Mary Ellen questioned.

“Mabel said we shouldn’t hang around here, but why did she say that? She’s now running the meth lab up there. I got a hunch that somehow, some way, someone up there knows something that may lead us to Mrs. Keller; to my grandmother.”

Ted snapped his fingers. “Maybe they are hiding her at the lab to protect her from the killer?”

“Exactly!” Jim punched the starter button, and the engine turned over with a warm purr.

“Let’s go!” Mary Ellen shouted.

Ted let out a yelp. “Floor it, Jim!”

*  *  *

As they rolled up to the turn in the road, the entrance to the bridge came into view, illuminated by the full moon between the towering fir trees. Jim slowed the car to a crawl. Ahead on the bridge were two Mason County Sheriff SUVs, a Shelton firetruck and an ambulance. The headlights of the vehicles lit the scene on the bridge. One of the sheriff’s deputies saw the approaching car and walked toward it, meeting it at the lip of the bridge. He signaled them to turn around and go back the way they came.

Jim stopped the car instead of turning back and rolled down the window. The deputy frowned and walked the short distance to the side of the car. Jim could see his own reflection in the mirrored sunglasses the deputy wore. “You kids are in for a disappointment if you are looking for drugs. We just shut down the lab. So, count yourselves lucky and turn around before I decide to search your car.”

“We aren’t looking for drugs, sir. We are looking for my grandmother. She disappeared and we got a lead that…”

“Your grandmother you say?” The deputy looked back over his shoulder to the congregation of vehicles on the bridge.

From around the side closest to the high side of the bridge, a third sheriff’s SUV inched past the firetruck, cleared it, then moved quickly off the bridge and, kicking up dust and a small hail of gravel, sped past, narrowly missing the deputy talking to Jim.

Mary Ellen, Ted and Jim simultaneously caught a fleeting flash of two people, a man and a woman in the back seat of the SUV.

The deputy made a fist over his mouth and pinched his lips between his thumb and forefinger. He dropped his hand from his mouth, then removed his dark glasses and looked back towards the bridge.

Jim followed his glance just in time to see the fire rescue team pulling something in a long basket up over the side of the bridge, wavering flashlights danced over something covered in an olive-green blanket.

“Son,” the cop looked back to Jim, his face soft his voice even softer. “What is your grandmother’s name?”

THE VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE

“Keller, her name is Keller.”

The officer squinted his eyes, pressed his lips hard together and deliberately and gently touched Jim on his shoulder. “Joan Keller?”

“Yes, how did you…?”

Jim shot a glance over to where the body wrapped in the olive-green blanket was being put into the back of the ambulance. “What happened?” he whispered.

“We were in the process of a bust on a meth lab. We were sneaking up from the river to the back of the cabin. We saw her body caught in the branches of a maple. She must have fallen from the bridge.”

“Fallen?” Jim asked.

“Oh Jim.” Mary Ellen said softly.

Jim’s voice came hard and cold. “She didn’t fall.”

The officer cocked his head to one side.” “What makes you say that.” Just then another officer ran up behind Ted and Mary Ellen with an evidence bag in his left hand. “We found the knife that the killer used to slit her throat.”

“Jesus Rick! Not with these kids here! Get that out of here!”

Just as the offending officer turned on the ball of his boot, Ted saw the handle of the knife. It was a British hunting knife just like the one his mother gave to his father last Christmas. Rhinoceros horn handle with a gold cap at the top. There, etched in the gold, were the initials C.H. No one noticed Ted’s soft sharp intake of breath. It was drowned out by Jim’s shout.

“No!” the cry carried down over the bridge and echoed back hollow and broken.

HOMECOMING

The deafening silence after the chaos at the bridge filled the car on the hour-drive back to Lacey. Not until the car merged from 101 to I-5 did anyone speak.

“Jim? Jimmy?” Mary Ellen said softly.

Jim laughed. “Jimmy? No one calls me that Mary Ellen.” He slammed his fist on the steering wheel. The car lurched like a wounded animal to the left, almost bringing them into the side of a passing 18-wheeler just as they were entering the flow of I-5.

Mary Ellen gasped and as Jim righted the car into its lane, Ted seemed to snap out of his dead thoughtless shock. “Jim, you can’t come back to my house. Drop me off and you just go home to your mother.”

Mary Ellen looked at Ted. “He can’t go back there!”

“Yes, I can.” Jim said flatly. “I need to be alone. Besides, it’s late enough that Mom will probably be passed out.”

Mary Ellen reached up from the back seat and touched Jim’s shoulder. He shuddered and jerked away.

Mary Ellen said nothing more and settled back into her seat. She quickly wiped a tear away as it slid down her cheek, but not before Jim caught the reflection of the action in the rearview mirror.

The thick silence filled the car and enveloped them in its stifling embrace until the tires of Jim’s car wheeled into the drive of Chawton House, kicking up chards of desiccated plum blossoms. Above the drive, the bruised purple leaves of the trees arched over the passing car like the arms of a great dark spider, pulling them toward the darkened facade of Chawton House.

“I’ll call you later tomorrow, Ted,” Jim said.

“Don’t bother, I probably won’t be home,” he said flatly, as he left the car slamming the door behind him.

“Fine, Ted, that’s just fine!” Jim yelled at the retreating figure as Ted disappeared into the yawning dark hollow of the entrance to the house.

Mary Ellen said nothing. Then she took a sharp, deep breath, realizing she had been holding it in since they had turned onto the driveway.

Jim threw the car into reverse and wheeled it back and around the fountain until it was facing Meridian at the end of the drive. He slammed it into drive. The gravel spit up and shot out, hitting the stone of the fountain as Jim’s foot slammed into the peddle, driving the car away from the house.

Halfway down Meridian, Mary Ellen said, “Something isn’t right.”

“Shut up,” Jim said.

“You didn’t see what I saw back there on the bridge.”

“The knife?” Jim slowed down to turn onto Mullen and then into Golden Oaks. He pulled up in front of Mary Ellen’s mobile home. “I saw it. Then I saw the way Ted…” He went silent and looked over to Mrs. Keller’s abandoned trailer. “You are right Mary Ellen, something is off, something… I don’t know. I need to…”

“You need something to eat. Come inside and I’ll fix us some sandwiches.”

“Okay,” he turned off the motor. “I’m sorry I told you to shut up. I’m sorry I made you cry.”

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

The grandfather clock in the entry hall of Chawton House chimed the time in slow, measured, Westminster tones. Midnight. The hall was dark, with the only illuminations coming from the half-open door to his father’s trophy room. Ted stood still, looking at the light, as the chimes washed over him like the song of a long-forgotten fragmented dream. He looked to the right at the dark stairs, then back to the light. That light from the room he knew he never wanted to enter again, that light that if he dared look into would change his life forever. That room, that light that would in fact shatter his world if he moved toward it.

“Is that you, son?” Henry Barr’s voice came from within the light. Ted said nothing. “Son?”

“Yes Father, I’m just locking up,” he lied. The front door was still ajar behind him just as he’d left it upon entering. He didn’t move. “Where’s Mom?” Ted asked as he stepped toward the trophy room.

“She’s in bed, probably reading Jane Austen.” Henry laughed to himself as Ted pushed open the door into the light. His father was seated on one of the ox blood club chairs, cleaning his Weatherby Mark Vrifle.

 “Planning to kill someone, Dad?”

Henry shot Ted a dead look. “Hunting season is October.” He held his son’s eyes a beat before he smiled weakly. “I’m just getting things ready.”

Ted turned and took a slow walk around the room. His eyes fell from one glass encased weapon to the next as he moved toward the knife cabinet.

“You’re awfully late getting in, Ted. Your mother is rather upset with you.”

“I certainly am young man.” His mother’s voice came from the doorway just as Ted’s eyes fell upon the empty spot in the knife cabinet. The place where he knew he would not see the hunting knife the policeman had shown him, Mary Ellen and Jim on the High Steel Bridge. He turned to his mother.

*****

“That hunting knife!” Jim said dropping his half eaten peanut butter and pickle sandwich. “Did you get a good look at it?”

“Yes. It was very fancy,” Mary Ellen said.

“Yes, too fancy. It had initials carved into the butt of the handle. C.H.” Jim stood up. “Come on! Get your coat.”

“Where are we going?” She moved swiftly toward her coat.

“Chawton House!”

****

Ted walked to the knife cabinet and opened it.

Lucille Barr shot a look to Henry. He had gone white, eyes widening as he watched Ted.

“Ted,” Lucille said softly. “It’s very late, you have school tomorrow. I must insist you go to bed. We will discuss your being out past your…”

“Elliot, you always call me Elliot, Mother. Why are you calling me Ted now? Where does that name come from?”

“You thought it up when you were little and….”

Henry squirmed. The rifle slid from his lap to the floor.

“It’s that boy you are hanging out with,” Lucille hissed. “That Jim, he’s filled your mind with dirty gossip and lies!”

“It’s true!” Ted shouted. “It’s all true. We figured out, why Mark Keller was murdered. And today they found Mrs. Keller’s body at the bottom of the gorge at High Steel Bridge with her throat slit and tossed off like garbage. They found the knife too!” He wheeled around to face his father. “A knife engraved with C.H. Your knife, Dad!”

“Teddy, you’re wrong.” Henry sobbed. “It’s not true, son.”

“It’s that boy’s fault, Henry, that dirty trailer trash shit from Golden Oaks.” Lucille ran to Henry.

“That boy is my best friend. He hasn’t put all the puzzle together yet. And neither have I, but I’m not sure, I think this has something to do with me. I keep asking myself why, why would you kill them and all I can think of is…me. Am I right?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” scoffed Lucille. “We had nothing to do with any…”

“He raped your aunt Rosalind, 17 years ago.”

“Shut up Henry!”

“He should know, Lucille. If you don’t tell him the truth now, I will.”

Ted’s eyes darted from Henry to Lucille. “17 years ago…”

“She named you Ted,”

“Why would she name…”

“She’s your real mother.”

“It’s not true Elliot! It’s not true. Your father is sick…”

Looking past Ted, Lucille narrowed her eyes to a hard, hate-filled laser that froze Ted to the core. He turned to see Jim in the doorway, Mary Ellen just behind him. Jim’s mouth hung open in shock. Eyes glittering on the verge of tears.

“Killer! You soul-killing son of a bitch!” Lucille screamed, as she lunged to the mahogany desk and fumbled for the revolver in the side drawer. Ted saw the gun come up and level at the doorway where Jim stood frozen and crying. Lucille was howling. Henry, in a helpless paralytic panic shouted, “No, Lucille!”

Ted stepped between his mother and Jim. As the bullet entered Ted’s heart, tearing it apart, Mary Ellen pulled Jim to the floor. In Ted’s last moment of consciousness, he saw Lucille put the revolver into her mouth and pull the trigger.

Jim crawled to his brother’s side and turned him over to look into his open dead eyes. His tears fell onto Teds lips and ran down his cheeks. Somewhere far away he could hear Mary Ellen and Henry crying.

“Ted,” he said, “Ted you can’t go. You can’t go. Please don’t leave me alone.”

Mary Ellen was at his side hugging his shoulder. “I’m here, Jim.”

Jim looked at her, with a cold lost look. He stood up and walked over to the desk, past a shell-shocked Henry. Looked down at what remained of Lucille Barr. He pulled his phone from his pocket and punched in a number.

The voice on the other side. “Detective Bernard speaking.”

“Hello, Dad? There’s been a murder.”

My day had started off quite well. I had slept well, I woke up in time to get an early enough start to my day, and was up/showered/dressed and out the door by 8:00 AM. I wanted to go to Walmart for groceries and a few other items, and I always try to go fairly early because it’s easier to get a parking space not too far away from the store entrance and also close to a shopping cart return which is somewhat important to me. You see, when I walk my lower back hurts so I try to use the shopping cart to lean on to relieve the back pain. Anyway, I found an ideal parking spot and there was an empty cart in the cart return so I could walk comfortably with the cart into the store.

I found all the items on my list (plus a few not on my list), enjoyed a surprise visit with my neighbor Pete who was also shopping in the store, and only had one person ahead of me when I entered the checkout line. The checker was pleasant and I was on my way fairly quickly.

When I left Walmart, I had one other very brief errand to do before heading home. I had some mail that I wanted to get to the post office so I headed to the Olympia post office. (Side note: In my experience, the Lacey PO seems to have nice employees but they don’t really seem to know what they’re doing, so I take all my outgoing mail to the Olympia post office where I know it will be handled properly and sent on its way in a timely manner.)

With both tasks completed, I headed on home. I exited I-5 at the Martin Way exit, turned right onto Carpenter Road, then I turned left onto Mullen Road at the roundabout, and drove down Mullen towards home. Everything was going quite well. Traffic was moderate and I had hit mostly green lights instead of red all day. At this point I am driving behind a fairly large truck – the kind that is shaped like the U-Haul trucks I often see, and he was driving the speed limit so not slowing down any traffic. Anyway, we’re cruising along Mullen when suddenly there is a very loud crunching sound and the top of the truck is scraped totally off the truck body. The truck roof in its entirety is lying in the middle of the road slightly in front of the train trestle.

Now what do I do?? Should I stop and try to help? I certainly can’t help move the roof off the road. I watched the now roofless truck in front of me as it pulled ahead past the trestle, got off to the side of the road, and then stopped. The driver sat in the truck for a couple of minutes – whether he was just gathering his thoughts together or making a phone call for help I don’t know. Anyway, after a minute or two, he got out of the truck. He appeared to be in his thirties and was walking toward the roof resting in the middle of the road. By that time I had noted a couple of other drivers exiting their vehicles and I saw one of them heading towards the truck driver and talking to him calmly. I decided to let them work out whatever came next.

I figured I should continue on my way home with the groceries still in the trunk. I surveyed the scene carefully and realized that the roof was squarely in the middle of the road with room on each side for cars to pass cautiously. The roof seemed intact – by that I mean it seemed to be pretty much in one piece. There were no shards of metal or any other material scattered across the pavement. I drove very cautiously by the scene as did the driver coming in the opposite direction. After that, I don’t know what happened. I just knew I wouldn’t want to be that young truck driver talking to whoever was in charge at the trucking company!

And that was my first and last shocking experience of the day!!

Teenage males – not always the best ideas come from the mind of a teenage male.

 Jack and Fuzzy were best friends. They’d been best friends ever since they were little. Jack was the adventurous one – always thinking up crazy things to do. Fuzzy was the more cautious one.

“This is a great day to have a race,” said Jack. “The skies are clear, there’s almost no wind, and it’s not a real busy day.”

“I’m not so sure about this, Jack. I’ve never done any racing,” said Jack’s friend, Fuzzy. Well, Fuzzy was his nickname. His real name was Bartholomew but he didn’t like that name and no one except his mother ever called him that.

“That’s okay,” replied Jack. “There was a first time for me too. But once I did it, I just thought it was so much fun that I wanted to see if practicing each day could make me even faster.”

Fuzzy replied, “But there are no designated lanes like they have a real sports event. This is just outside in nature and the land isn’t exactly level; we could lose our footing or things could get in our way.”

“But that’s the part that makes it exciting,” answered Jack. ”You have to reach the other side. See that tree with the deflated balloon caught up high in its branches? We’ll start here and end up at that tree. If something is in the way, just figure it out – even if you have to dart to one side a little bit. It’ll be fun, and it’s a challenge for me to see if I can run fast enough to beat everyone.”

“But is it safe? I mean, isn’t it a bit scary too?” asked Fuzzy.

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Jack. “It’s just fun for me to see how fast I can get all the way from here to that tree over there. I bet I’m faster than you!”

“Well, give me a minute to think about the best way to beat you at this little race,” answered Fuzzy.

There weren’t lanes delineating the exact route you had to take to reach the tree. According to Jack, they would each start at the point they were standing now and then run to the tree. It didn’t sound so hard.

“Ok,” said Fuzzy. “You go first.”

“OK!” answered Jack.

Jack hesitated a moment, looked around, and then ran as fast as he could from his starting place to the tree. He was pretty fast. “Ok, now it’s your turn!” he called back.

So Fuzzy crouched down a bit, looked around quickly, and then raced to the tree. “I made it!” said Fuzzy as he panted a bit. “When you’re running, that tree seems farther away than it looked from where we started.”

“Yeah,” answered Jack. “It always does. But isn’t it fun to race?”

“And then we just run back to the starting point again?”

“Yep, we run back to where we started.”

Fuzzy and Jack both ran back to their starting place. There weren’t any obstacles the first time they ran to the tree, but it was getting busier now and more obstacles were appearing.

“Ready to go?” asked Jack.

“What?! There’s a whole string of big, noisy vehicles coming now! It doesn’t seem safe to run across now!” said Fuzzy anxiously.

“That’s the challenging part,” replied Jack. “The first time across the road was easy because no cars came. Now that the traffic has increased, it’s more challenging to weave and dart and make our way across the road. Come on, it’ll be fun!”

But Fuzzy was a bit reluctant. “I’m too young to die,” said Fuzzy. “Racing is exciting but I don’t think I want to play this game anymore.”

“Oh, get a little excitement in your life,” answered Jack. Then Jack took off across the road, darting and weaving, and made it across. Then he returned to where Fuzzy was waiting.

Jack looked at Fuzzy a moment and then he said, “OK, that’s enough for today. But I plan to come back again tomorrow and practice running some more.”

“Not me! I think I’ll just have a life a little less exciting than yours, but we’ll always be friends, right?” asked Fuzzy.

“Definitely!” replied Jack.

THE END

It’s hard to open any news source anymore without some article or pronouncement about the utility or dangers of artificial intelligence.

Just this morning I read two articles that passed on some fascinating information about AI.  One article explained how AI had just verified a proof that had earned a Ukrainian mathematician a Fields medal, one of the most prestigious prizes in math.  AI verified a proof of a higher-dimensional “sphere-packing” problem, which asks how many spheres you can cram into spaces of eight and 24 dimensions.   

Frankly, being math challenged, I had no idea there was a “sphere packing” issue that needed to be resolved mathematically, by a fellow human being or by a digital computer program. When my kid was playing soccer, and it was time to load soccer balls in the car, one just crammed as many balls as humanly possible into a mesh bag, declared victory, and headed to the soccer field. Also, all those billiard balls always seemed to fit perfectly in the little triangle provided to rack them up. No math involved; no problem.

Then, there was another article that did not bode well for AI. Basically, AI programs engage in “deep learning”—that is they are programed to teach themselves by reading everything that is published on a particular subject. I.e. they read more than a human can and, hence, supposedly, are smarter. 

The problem is; however, it seems that popular AI chatbots often fail to recognize false health claims when they’re delivered in confident, medical-sounding language, thus leading to dubious advice that could be dangerous to the general public.

For example, and I’m not making this up, recommending that people insert garlic cloves into their butts for immune support.

Now, it’s really not hard to figure that one out. Presumably the chatbot (or chatbutt, as the case may be) was reading all the medical myths, metaphors and moral judgments coming out of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Department of Health and Human services.  That’s the Trump Cabinet position and it’s leader which is responsible for public health, and overseeing agencies like the CDC, FDA, and NIH, with a focus on addressing chronic disease and improving public health. In that context sticking garlic cloves up your rear end makes perfect sense, as that is the appropriate place for all of RFK’s medical advice.

Still. And while I’m no math whiz, I can see the benefits these AI programs.  At least when I’m sticking garlic cloves where the sun don’t shine, I can consult the sphere packing AI program to determine how many garlics I can get up there.

Suddenly I feel old. Oh, I understood full well that I was aging; it just hadn’t sunk in fully that I am OLD. Until now. I accepted aging pretty well as the decades clicked by. There were the young years when you look forward to getting older. Becoming a teenager. Hitting 18, then 21. All thoughts and plans dealt with the future and goals and dreams and fun.

Thirty was a problem for some—“Don’t trust anyone over 30!” But my 30s were the wild years I never had as a young single. At 34, my husband and I agreed to part and I lived out fantasies I never knew I had. It was exciting and crazy and downright stupid at times. When I turned 40, I was at one of the lowest points in my life, and that decade I would gladly have done without, except that’s when I probably learned the most about myself and the world.

At 50 I settled into my own little house, adopted a greyhound, put in a hot tub, turned crabgrass into an English garden, and gave up on men. It was heaven. Funny how when you give up on a dream and let it float away, that dream walks through your front door. Or garage/kitchen door, which was the door Handyman Jack came to install. And then he became my true love.

Since the settled 50s, I’ve had the pleasure of the company of four wonderful dogs, a very good man, cherished friends and wonderful workmates. The 60s were mostly satisfying on all fronts. My sights were still focused on the future. Retirement, moving to Lacey, community involvement. All good stuff.

Challenges began to creep in by my 70^th birthday. We’d survived the worst of covid by then, but political chaos and world problems preyed on the minds and hearts of anyone who has sense and empathy. Then body parts start to wear out and there are trips to doctors, dentists, estate lawyers. I sometimes wonder how life might be now if I’d stayed married and had the kids we chose not to have. Does a family give a person more reason to make the most of their later years? I’ll never know. I have what I have, it is what it is.

I’m reading a book about making healthy changes and the first thing they want the reader to do is to get clear on their life purpose, at the age they are now. Well, fuck. I’ve been trying to do that for a long time. “You can come back to this part later,” the book says. I guess they know for some of us, that task may take a while. Right now, I’d say my purpose is to outlive my pets and be well long enough to move to Panorama where there’s a plan for aging out to the next world.

The main reason I’m feeling old, though, is that people are dying left and right. In my case, literally. I’ve lost a neighbor on each side of me in the past couple years. Celebrities and idols from my youth die each week and it still shocks me. Yes, I know we’re old. But it still shocks me. The worst is all the friends and loved ones who have passed. Of the trio of best buds from college, I am the only one still standing. One was lost to cancer, the other to covid. They both lived healthier and saner lives than I did, but died before me. My ex-husband died last month. Old lovers are buried. A quarter of my graduating class is gone, as well as good friends from more recent years. Death sucks.

My grandmother Maude used to say, “All my friends are dying, and I don’t feel so good.” Then she’d laugh, and we would know we could laugh, too. But sometimes I thought I saw the pain in her eyes. Now that I am old, I understand that pain. When she came to live with my family, she was in her 60s and newly divorced from an abusive man. If a book asked her what her purpose was, I believe she might say to save my sister and me from the family turmoil that was happening then. And she achieved that purpose, while managing to always have a good time. She laughed loud, but quietly held things together, and has been a guiding light all my life.

So now I ask her, “How do I get through this phase?” I think she would tell me to look for the good things in life, be kind to others, and do what brings you joy. She’d tell me to laugh. Then she’d pour herself a beer, slap a deck of cards on the table, and motion for whoever was there to sit down and deal.   

Disconnected from the incessant, vitriol-filled mutterings by news agencies, social media outlets, and outraged individuals, a neighbor waived to me as I passed by her on the way to the Villages. Without a thought or effort, I waived back.

As I drove to Safeway to pick up a few items, I noticed other cars stopping alongside me at a red light. We waited for the light to turn green and we proceeded to our destinations unaffected by each other. After I arrived, a car paused to let me cross the thoroughfare safely to the entrance of the store. Once inside, a clerk greeted me with a smile and asked if I needed help finding something. I thanked him for asking and went about my shopping.

On the way home, I stopped into the post office to send a package out. Inside, there was a short line of people waiting to be served. Behind the counter were three workers fulfilling the needs of the customers in front of them. Like the others before me, I left once my request had been completed. Politics, war, religion never intruded into our business.

I passed restaurants, gas stations, banks, office buildings, and an array of retail shops. I knew people were inside each of those doing their jobs and providing services to other people. Regardless of having brown skin, being Muslim, far right/left or whatever the adjective-du-jour is attempting to separate us, personal/business transactions occur around the world, daily, peacefully.

So despite all the noise created by politicians, social media influencers, YouTubers, radio talk shows, podcasts, comedians, shock-jocks, the multitude of self-proclaimed experts/prophets, and even some clergy, much of our society still functions as we expect it to. I know there are more good people in the world than “bad.” The fact we haven’t devolved into utter chaos proves this. There are some who would see the world burn so a new one can rise. That’s the thinking of a child. The world is far too complex. And, the blue marble we all live on is too small for such nonsense. Besides, it will still be here long after we’re gone. Here’s a fun fact, there are no human habitable planets within our reach, distance or lifetime (good luck with Mars, Elon).

Though it seems impossible sometimes, we must continue to focus on the things we can control and allow the ones we can’t to pass by like clouds in the sky. I rest easy knowing the sun will rise again tomorrow.

Recently I had my medical and dental checkups – not usually something to write home about – but this is how it all started.  At my  dental checkup – mostly a regular cleaning appointment – both the dentist and the hygienist were pleased with how everything looked.  My hygienist even commented that she was pleasantly surprised and pleased to note that at my age I still had all my own teeth.  I’ve never thought about it before, and no one has ever mentioned it to me before, but I felt good about the appointment when I left.

Then a few days later I went to my Medicare medical wellness checkup, and the doctor asked me a number of questions.  Among those questions were: 

• Do you live on your own?  Yes.
• Do you dress yourself and get yourself ready for the day? Yes.
• Do you cook your own meals?  Yes.
• Do you eat protein, vegetables and fruit?  Yes.
• Do you do your own shopping? Yes.

And a few other questions along those lines to determine my level of independence.  There were also questions relating to my mental and emotional stability but I won’t go into those.

So, after those two appointments, I was feeling pretty full of myself – after all, I had all my own teeth!   And I was living independently and managing all these living skills on my own!  So after the medical appointment, I drove home and fixed myself some lunch, still feeling pretty good about living on my own.  As I sat at my kitchen island eating my lunch, I glanced over at the three lists I had there on the counter.  I must admit the irony of the three lists made me laugh.  At the top of the first list was the name Luke with 3 items listed under his name, one was titled Greg with one item on that list, and the third list was under the name Richard (several items were on that list).  Who are these 3 men in my life you ask??  Well, I’m in a sharing mood so let me explain.

Luke is my 16-year-old grandson who lives nearby.  He is tall and very technology oriented.  Luke willingly does the “tall” jobs for me – putting an item up on a high shelf, changing the light bulb that burned out in my master bathroom without having to use a stool to reach it – things like that.  And with his technology skills, he figures out what I perceive as glitches with my computer, but which in all honesty my former IT department at the City of Issaquah and I lovingly called PICNIC (Problem In Chair Not In Computer).

Greg is a family friend who has his own painting business and occasionally does other odd jobs.  Greg painted my house last summer and was helping me with a project in my yard this summer.

Richard is my handyman who is a licensed electrician and does all kinds of handyman jobs.  He measured, ordered and installed new cabinets in my laundry room, hung my new wind spinner on my patio, unclogged the kitchen sink so my dishwasher doesn’t spill water all over my counter when it’s running, installed my Ring camera at the back of my house so whoever continues to steal potted plants along the alley will be on camera, and one or two other minor tasks.  Also on Richard’s list was the new electrical outlet which he offered to install on my back patio area.  

So those three lists comprised my lesson in humility. These are the three men in my life who help me so I can “live on my own.”  Let’s face it: very few of us live entirely independently.  We all need help from time to time with one thing or another.  Sometimes the help is just called Google,  but in my case it’s usually called either Luke, Greg, or Richard.  So I give lots of Kudos and a whole bunch of credit to Luke, Greg and Richard for being the three men in my life helping me to “live on my own!”

OH THE GAMES THOSE COWS COULD PLAY!!

When I first moved here, my grandson, Luke, was 8 years old.  Each Wednesday night he would stay overnight at my house and then I would drive him to school Thursday morning.  Both of his parents work, so during the summer months, I would have him a couple of days each week and we would spend the whole day together.  When he was younger, the family noticed that he would focus on one particular thing and be totally unaware of anything else around him.  His mother had also mentioned to me that he didn’t seem to have much imagination, so I began thinking of fun ways that might expand his awareness and help spur his imagination.

Whatever we were doing or wherever we were going, we often drove by the cow farm on Marvin Road.  Partly in an effort to get him to look and notice what was around him and to make him think a little bit, I started pointing out the cows in the field near the road.  Then I noted how some were grouped together and others stood farther apart.   Soon I was making up stories about what they were doing or suggesting games they might be playing.  Luke really got interested in watching the cows each time we passed by and he really got into our story-telling too.  We had the most fun thinking of the games that the cows might be playing based on the formations they made while standing in the field.  If we saw a cow somewhat hidden behind a tree trunk, we thought they might be playing Hide & Seek.  If they were generally lined up one behind another,  we figured perhaps they were playing Follow the Leader.  If one cow bumped into another cow, we thought they might be playing Tag.

One day as we drove by, Luke noticed that the cows were arranged in three small groups.  There were three cows in each group.  In the center of the three groups stood one lone cow.  Luke looked at that and said, “Look, Grandma, the cows are playing Trivia and the middle cow is the Gina cow asking all the questions!”  I had to laugh at that and told him I thought he might be right and that they probably were playing Trivia.

Later when he was a little older, we drove past the cow farm and I noticed that the cows were lined up in two parallel rows.  The same number of cows were in each row.  I said, “Look, Luke, the cows are getting ready to line dance.”  He seemed a bit skeptical and said, “Oh, Grandma, cows can’t line dance.”  I said, “They could put their right hoof in and their right hoof out, their right hoof in and shake it all about!”  He answered, “That’s the hokey pokey!”  I replied, “Yes, but if they can do the hokey pokey, they can line dance!”  He thought a moment and then said, “I guess you’ve got me there.”  

Once the farmer sold the first group of cows, the second group didn’t seem to be nearly as playful.  But for a couple of years, we enjoyed the antics of the first group of cows on a very regular basis.

OK, kids, gather around me – it’s time for the talk.  Most of our lives, we can rest quietly and not too much is asked of us.  Sometimes we get pulled on, and we get walked on, and we get stuffed into things.  Sometimes it even gets a bit smelly.  But overall our lives are not too difficult.  However, these humans have one habit which is quite perplexing.

It all began many years ago or so I’ve heard.  Anyway, the fat guy in the red suit dropped some gold coins down the chimney of a poor man’s house to help his three daughters.  It so happened the poor man had hung some laundry by the fire to dry.  The coins dropped into the socks of the three daughters and that’s how it all began.  When they told their friends and neighbors, everyone began hanging stockings by the fireplace in hopes that the jolly man in the red suit would leave something in their stockings too.  

I’m telling you all this so you understand when it happens to you.  This coming of age/growing up/growing bigger thing is a little difficult sometimes but you are big enough now and you might be chosen as a sock to hang by the fireplace.  It hurts a little when they first grab you and hang you on that hook, but if they leave you alone after that, it’s okay.  You feel a bit longer than usual but that’s not too bad.

Later, on Christmas Eve, the fat guy in the red suit comes after dark, after everyone is in bed and asleep.  He comes quietly and stuff things into you – that’s when you really feel stretched beyond your limits.  You hang there all night long with small oranges, little toys, pencils and small paper tablets,  some useful items like nail clippers or toothbrushes or anything that’s small enough to fit into you.  And that’s the hard part – you just hang there not able to move.  And it is definitely not comfortable.  But don’t worry – the kids in the family will relieve you as soon as they wake up.  They’ll be all excited, and their shrill young voices may possibly bother you a little bit, but they’ll relieve you of all that stuff packed inside you and then you will feel much better.  

You look a bit concerned, a bit frightened.  Don’t worry.  It’ll  all be okay.  This only happens one night each year.  It seems odd, I know.  But it’s just something we have to put up with so that the rest of the time we can be totally relaxed, lying side by side in someone’s dresser drawer.  When that night is over, you can come back right here where we live all the time and we can talk about it again if you want.  I promise you that you’ll be okay.  And the rest of us will be here waiting for your return.  We’ll all be together again for a whole year.  Remember, I love you.  And if you get chosen this year, it just means you’re growing up and we will be back together again very soon. 

Any questions, kids?