***
The next day—Sunday—did not bring a stop to the high winds. Quite the reverse. Lucretia agreed to drop Crystal off at the Jackson farm after driving Lucy home, and the trees were swaying like stalks of wheat as they approached. Chubby, with fur flying, offered up several angry barks at the sight of a new car, but turned friendly again when Crystal put down the window to say hello.
“You know,” Lucretia said, bringing the car to a halt, “I’ve lived in Monroeville all my life and never even knew this house was here.”
“I think that’s sort of the idea,” Crystal replied. “I asked my history teacher about it at school. He told me it served as a fort during the Civil War, and that its owner really wasn’t keen on ambushes.”
A snort came from the driver’s seat. “I bet. Who was the owner?”
“Andrew Jackson.”
“No way—“
“Not the Andrew Jackson. But yes, that was his name.”
“Well he did a hell of a job with the location. 2004 and you still need to drive through half a forest to get back here.” Her next question was one Crystal had already heard. “Is this Jarett Powell guy a farmer too?”
No doubt she had noticed the barn off to the left, and maybe even a few rows of wheat behind the house. Crystal replied that Jarett was indeed a farmer, but that she wasn’t expected to do any field work during his leave of absence.
“I hope not,” her mom stressed. Then, grinning: “Otherwise your new name is Apple Jack.”
“Mom.”
“Well gee whiz, Mister Powell,” she said, in her best imitation of that yellow cartoon pony’s voice, “I got the field all plowed but the orchard’s a mess and the haystacks still need pitchin’. Yee-haw!”
“She doesn’t talk like that!”
Crystal was let out of the car with a promise to call home for another ride once her duties were complete. She waved as Lucretia turned the car around, then gave Chubby a hug.
“First thing we’re gonna do is give you a bath. How does that sound, huh?”
Chubby’s happy bark sounded like this was the best idea he’d heard all day. She walked him to the side door with the wind whipping at her hair and skirt. Her key turned in the lock.
A dour atmosphere waited inside. Shadows brooded in every corner. A narrow hallway leading to the kitchen had turned gray, and the top of the staircase looked nearly pitch. After turning on a few lights, Crystal went left into the living room. Here she switched on the television, then another light in the dining room and one more in the kitchen. Yet the shadows would not be driven back so easily, and it soon became apparent that the house was too large and too old for one girl to spend a cloudy afternoon alone in. Paintings on the wall regarded her as she passed; cracks in ancient wooden doorframes seemed to twist into frowning faces.
Even Chubby felt it. His tail had gone still, his eager prance the same. Drawing a deep breath, Crystal forced herself to walk back through the living room and upstairs. Here her nerve nearly broke. One dark doorway after another gaped in the hall, while outside the wind continued howl. Crystal could not help but remember the bearded man she had seen looking down at her from the bedroom window on her first official visit to the house. Had that been nothing more than imagination? Or was he still haunting these rooms?
“Boo,” she called out, trying to make herself relax.
When no one answered, she led Chubby to the end of the hall. There was a small, cheerful little bathroom here, and after closing the door—and locking it—Crystal began to feel better. She bundled Chubby into the tub while singing a tune from one of Hannah’s CDs. Twenty minutes later the dog was shaking himself dry on the tiles, giving his mistress a decent shower in the process.
“If you weren’t such a sweet dog I’d be mad at you for that,” she told him, reaching into a cabinet for some paper towels. “No going outside until you’re completely dry, okay? House rules.”
Chubby gave a bark to show that he understood.
“Woof yourself.”
Once back in the hallway she got creeped out all over again. The urge to run downstairs, finish her chores, and get out of the house pressed on her thoughts. She went to the top of the staircase…and stopped.
A wide open door to Jarett’s bedroom was at the opposite end of the hall, giving birth to an altogether different—and formidable—urge. Crystal took a hesitant step towards it. Her fear of the environment was vague; she didn’t know how much of the supernatural she believed in, if any at all. On the other hand, her curiosity was becoming sharper by the moment. She was standing alone and unsupervised near the empty bedroom of the man she craved, the man she loved. Did it really make sense to let a few childish qualms—what Hannah sometimes called the heebie-jeebies—act as a barrier against what might be found inside?
“No way,” Crystal said to herself, “not this girl.”
She went to the bedroom and snapped on the light. Blue carpet and brown paneling sprang into view. Heavy curtains hung over the window. An alarm clock ticked on the headboard of a neatly made bed.
“Let’s check out the closet,” she said to Chubby. “How’s that sound?”
The reproachful look on Chubby’s face required no further castings for his opinion.
“Oh stop it. You’ve done worse.”
She opened the door. Most of Jarett’s wardrobe, as she was already well aware, was dark. Beneath it were two pairs of boots: one black, one brown. In fact everything about the closet looked very masculine. Crystal felt her curiosity jump, and then take off at a full sprint.
She removed a black shirt from the rod, carried it to the bed.
“No telling,” she said to Chubby, unbuttoning her blouse.
After a moment’s thought, she took off her brassiere as well, so as to throw Jarett’s shirt on over a completely bare chest. The effect forced a sigh from her lips. Her nipples grew hard and sharp. She walked back to the closet, selected another shirt, and tried that on. It felt nice, but surely there were more treasures to be found in the depths of Powell’s wardrobe, provided she had the gumption to look.
Crystal’s hand closed around a pair of faded blue-jeans. She brought them down to her nose, then down lower to her chest. From here the next step didn’t take long to ascertain, and she felt no hesitation whatsoever about carrying it out. Within seconds she was sitting on the bed, removing her shoes and socks. Then came the skirt. Her panties she thought about leaving on for a moment, until another axiom of Lucretia’s materialized in the accumulating steam: If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.
Of course it is.
“Thanks, Mom,” she giggled, pulling the last of her clothing off.
That was all the further she got. Because now the most intimate, sensitive parts of her body were in contact with the counterpane—Jarett Powell’s counterpane. All at once Crystal did not want to try on the faded jeans. All at once, Crystal did not want to try on a single damned thing.
She stretched back. The mattress was soft, the blankets tempting. It would be nice to hunker down into both for a nap. But of course that was a bad idea. Unfinished chores were in wait all over the house. Her mom was expecting a call before dark.
Crystal sat up…and that was when she noticed for the first time the one bit of color in all the darkness of Jarett’s closet. It came in the form of a box on the top shelf—a shoebox, or so it appeared from this distance. A pink shoebox.
She stood. Her bare feet padded across the room. The shelf looked a little too high to reach, presenting her with a divergence. Should she be content with what she had already discovered in this room today—which was more than enough—or try to uncover just a little bit more?
Throwing Powell’s shirt back on as a kind of nightgown, she went in search of something to use as a step. His writing chair was in the room next door. Crystal lugged it through the hall, stood on it and grabbed the box. It was heavy with something that shifted from side to side as she stepped down. Crystal was pretty sure she knew what.
Once back on the bed she pulled the cover off. And there they were. Dozens—hundreds, maybe—of folded papers. Most were letters, written in Jarett’s hand, yet betwixt and between these rather lengthy missives came an occasional, yellowed newspaper clipping from another age.
She decided to browse the clippings first. The dates on them clarified their decayed appearance. The latest had come off the press in May of 1981—almost twenty-five years ago.
Jarett Powell’s 5 RBI Game Seals Win For Truckers, one headline read.
Crystal wasn’t sure what RBI meant, though she knew it was somehow related to baseball. Two other articles in the box—one from 1980 and another from ’81—were also about high school baseball. It seemed that Jarett had been quite a star in his day for the Norwalk Truckers, which was bemusing, since no author bio Crystal had ever read made even passing mention of the fact.
The other clippings did not seem related in any way, either to baseball or themselves. One from 1978 talked about a July 4th fireworks raid on West Main Street, again in Jarett’s hometown of Norwalk. Another dated 1979 looked to be a fluff piece about video game arcades. The author thought they were a great place for kids to hang out and have fun, though he barely expounded upon why. He then called for entrepreneurs to move into town and set up shop. As newspaper articles went, Crystal felt pretty sure this one had been phoned in.
And then there were the letters.
At first she almost didn’t bother. There were many of them, they were lengthy (most were covered front to back in Jarett’s small, nervous handwriting), and the time was getting late. But when the addressee’s name flashed up from one of the pages—a girl by the name of Vicky—her heart sank into a pit of coals, where it began to smolder in fury. She picked up five more letters, only to find the same name on each. A random plunge to the bottom of the box brought back the name yet again. Seven letters, all addressed to the same girl. Chances were the entire box had been dedicated to her.
“Who the hell?” she hissed, as a cyclone of dry leaves rattled against the window pane.
But the letters couldn’t be new. They had to have come from the same time period as the clippings. A quick check on some of the dates written after the closings—Sincerely, Love Always, Yours Forever—confirmed this. It mellowed Crystal.
A little.
Still, she had to know who this Vicky person was. And so she started to read.
Before she finished it became necessary to get dressed and switch on some of the lights around the house. The day had run out of patience with her. And just a few minutes after full dark, Lucretia did too. It took five blows on the car horn to get Crystal to put the box back and storm outside, kicking stones.
It was no wonder the box was pink. It was dedicated to a girl. Someone near and dear to Jarett’s heart. Someone he would never forget.
Well…perhaps not that last. Perhaps, Crystal thought, slamming the car door shut opposite her mother’s curious expression, Jarett wouldn’t have a choice in the matter. If indeed he was still hanging on to some high school princess he’d once loved and lost, the time for jettisoning had arrived.
Because the new princess was here. And as Crystal had already figured out months earlier, there was only room in his world for one.
9
The trig quiz on the 17th went about as well as Crystal could have hoped. Some of the questions stymied her, but not all. After the break Mr. Emmons handed it back with a C+ written at the top of page one.
“Good enough,” she said to Lucy at lunch. “A+ for you?”
The other girl had raised her can of Diet Pepsi in mock salute. “Of course.”
“Well don’t fall off the balance beam this afternoon or I’ll feel like a freeloader.”
Before all of this, of course, were the holidays. They provided a welcome respite from the unpleasant discovery Crystal had made in Jarett’s shoebox. Her thoughts, busy with baking cookies and wrapping presents, had very little time to spend on the outside world. At just after midnight on the 22nd, Hannah knocked on her door bearing gifts. She stood in the candlelit hallway with a scarf in one hand and a pair of pink mittens in the other. Crystal was overwhelmed. Thanking her sister as best she knew how, she invited her in. They chatted on the bed for a few minutes before Crystal presented her own gift: a music box with a twirling ballerina on the inside. By this time snow was falling beyond the frosted glass of the reading nook (which now twinkled with Christmas lights), and the girls lay in bed together watching it until three in the morning, at which point Hannah at last fell asleep, freeing Crystal to sneak downstairs for a secret glass of Canei Mellow Rose.
On Christmas Eve Lucretia woke up with a cough. By the middle of January, she was in the hospital with pneumonia. It wasn’t serious, the doctors assured, but she needed to be confined until the affliction was under control. From this announcement there came a swift and awkward dilemma.
“Who’s going to stay with the two of you at home?” Lucretia asked as a nurse wheeled her to her room.
Crystal looked at Hannah, who only shrugged. Both girls were a little out of breath keeping up with the nurse’s brisk pace, but perhaps that dealt them a helping hand, for an idea sprang into Crystal’s stimulated mind that was as brilliant as it was spontaneous.
“That’s a lot to impose on a man I’ve never even met,” was Lucretia’s response after hearing the pitch.
“He won’t mind. He’s all alone in that big house.”
“And how well do you trust him? Not that the judgment of an eleven year-old girl is something to bet on.”
The nurse helped her into a bed. An IV was taped into her arm. She coughed, took in a ragged breath and let it out slow. Seeing it almost made Crystal want to quit cigarettes cold turkey.
“I trust him a lot, Mom, he’s my teacher. Look how well my writing’s improved since Halloween.”
A choked laugh came from the other side of the bed. Crystal shot Hannah a look but said nothing. She knew that for this to work any and all conflict with her sister had to be cut for at least the rest of the day.
“Let’s call him up,” she proposed. “I know his number.”
Lucretia’s brow wrinkled as if something awful had just been put in her mouth. “Are you out of your mind? I’m not going to call your teacher up on the phone and dump two bodacious girls into his lap for a week.”
“What’s bodacious?” Hannah wanted to know.
“It’s something like a pain in the ass.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, forget it.”
Crystal stamped her foot. “Come on, Mom!”
“I said forget it.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“I’m thinking, I’m thinking.”
Except Lucretia couldn’t think when she was sick, or so it appeared to Crystal. She closed her eyes, put her hand on her head, and snuffled through her nose for several minutes without uttering a word.
“Your grandparents live in Florida,” she pointed out with finality.
“Yeah, we know,” Crystal replied. “What, are we gonna pack for a trip?”
“Shut up.”
More minutes went by. Hannah found a chair in the corner of the room and sat down. Crystal took the edge of the bed. January, gray and brutally cold, idled outside the window. The icy sepulcher of an Ohio winter.
“I’m burning up with fever,” Lucretia went on with eyes still closed, “otherwise the ill-mannered, imposing suggestion you made a few minutes ago would never come close to entertaining my thoughts.”
“You’ll be feeling better soon,” Crystal said.
“Uh-huh. Then I can go to this Jarett Powell’s house on my knees and beg him to forgive me my trespass.”
“So I can call him?”
Lucretia thought about it for one, final moment before acquiescing to a weak nod from the pillows.
Things didn’t turn out as bad as she feared. Jarett was not only very kind and understanding over the phone (as Crystal had already known he would be) but eager to meet the mother of his student after so many weeks of delay. He arrived at the hospital within the hour carrying a bouquet of roses with a get well soon card. A blade of unexpected anxiety cut across Crystal’s heart as her mother gushed out one thank you after the next. Both the adults were single; both were about the same age. What if a terrible explosion were to occur beneath the bridge Crystal had so carefully been building over the past months? Terrible and—yes—goddamned grotesque?
She shot over to the bed, almost knocking the flowers out of Jarett’s hand. Her mom made a face and asked what the hell was going on.
“You can’t put those flowers here,” she said to Jarett, “the table’s way too small. How about by the TV?”
“Good idea.”
“No!”
The author jumped and looked back at her. “No?”
“Changed my mind,” Crystal told him. “My mom will see them by the TV.”
“That’s sort of the whole point—“
“I mean they’ll block the screen!”
“You can put them in the window, Mr. Powell,” Lucretia came out with after a second grimace towards her daughter, “and I thank you again for the thought.”
Jarett blushed. “I had pneumonia a few years ago, ma’am. It’s an uphill battle but you’ll get through.”
The two spent the next half hour getting further acquainted, but to Crystal’s great relief there didn’t seem to be any sparks. Her lessons were the hotter topic of interest. Lucretia asked a great many questions, to which Jarett provided satisfactory if not especially meticulous answers. One of those questions was in concern of payment for his services. Lucretia informed him that she would be more than happy to provide these in the form of cash on a per lesson basis.
“Perhaps we can talk about that at a later time, ma’am,” Jarett said. Then, with a glance towards Crystal: “But honestly, you daughter is pulling her own weight. She cooks and cleans for me. She looks after my dog when I’m away. Having an extra pair of hands like that is invaluable on a farm.”
“If you like her cooking,” Hannah put in from her corner chair.
“In which case you might be suicidal,” said Lucretia amidst another flurry of coughs.
Crystal raised her hand. “That’s enough, Mommy Dearest.”
Seconds later a nurse arrived and told everybody to leave. Goodbyes were exchanged. Crystal kissed her mother on the cheek and promised to return the next day. Hannah did the same.
Before they went out Lucretia had one final piece of instruction for Jarett Powell. “Don’t let the girls bully you,” she said, “don’t let them push you around. You’re the boss.”
“Of course.”
She snorted. “Yeah, this time next week you’ll be regretting that casual tone.”
***
Only there were no acts of insu