Jodi Thomas: Twisted Creek

I rolled the handle of the paddle across my lap and wondered if I’d imagined the intruder under the bed because making up even a monster is better than having no dreams. Lately I’d caught myself forgetting to hope, much less dream. I was twenty-six, too young to give up. I should be partying, running around with friends, running up my credit cards.

But I knew of no parties. I had no friends to run around with. No credit cards to abuse.

This was it, I thought. I’d finally drifted down until I could go no lower. At least when we were traveling I had hopes the next place would be better, brighter. But now I was tied to this ugly lake. Anchored. I felt like I’d accidentally stepped through a time door and gone from being young to old age without ever living. The starting point and the finish line were in the same place for me.

Nana would tell me to make the best of it. Or, she’d raise that gray eyebrow and tell me I was swimming in thoughts so deep I’d get a cramp and drown.

“Nana.” I jumped up, letting the paddle tumble to the floor. I’d left Nana in the van.

Running down the stairs and out the front door, I was halfway across the dirt to the Dodge when it dawned on me I’d forgotten to put my shoes back on. Stickers were everywhere, attaching themselves to my feet with painful little stings.

I danced, picking at them as I continued toward the van. Most of the stickers were out by the time I reached the passenger door, but Nana had disappeared.

I hopped my way back to the porch, pulling out stickers with each step. From the top of the porch, I shielded my eyes and tried to see my grandmother.

No sign of her, but a man passing by in a motorboat waved.

I waved back.

He slowed. “You Allie?” he yelled when he was almost to the dock.

I nodded.

He bobbed his head and revved the little outboard engine. “I’ll tell Mrs. Deals you’re here,” he called and motored on down the lake as a tiny wave rippled from his boat and flapped against the shore.

“You do that,” I mumbled wondering who Mrs. Deals was and how this old-man-in-the-lake knew my name.

Of course, I decided, Uncle Jefferson must have talked about me. The uncle I didn’t have had told his friends I didn’t know that I was coming.

I limped back into the store and followed the sound of Nana’s voice. I should have guessed she’d head straight to the kitchen, her favorite room in every house.

When I opened the swinging door, she was standing in a neat little kitchen with a MoonPie in each hand. The under-the-bed monster sat less than two feet from her, reaching his big, dirty hand for one of the pies.

The noise I made sounded more like the squeak of an untied balloon than a scream, but it was enough to make the intruder twist around to face me.

The bluest eyes in Texas stared at me. For a moment, all I saw was their color. They were the twilight sky during a storm. Dark, rich, and sparked with lightning.

“There’s Allie,” Nana said as she handed him the MoonPie. “I told you she was around. She’s an artist, you know. Does strange things now and then, like tells me to lock the door against spiders, but I love her anyway.”

My grandmother had been introducing me like that for as long as I could remember. Telling everyone I was talented, but strange. To my knowledge no teacher from the first grade through college had ever agreed with her, about the talent, anyway. I might love art and try from time to time to paint or draw, but I seemed to be missing one small necessity: skill. I seemed destined to only show at refrigerator-sized galleries.

My grandmother continued, “Luke, I’d like you to meet Allie Daniels.”

Grateful the dirty man with the bluest eyes didn’t offer his hand, I stared at him for a moment before he turned back to Nana. He could have been anywhere from thirty to forty. His face was too square to be handsome; his dark brown hair needed cutting. His body rounded in the chair as if he tried to take up less space than his big frame required. I thought of asking him why he’d been under the bed but I wasn’t sure I was ready for the answer.

“Luke was just telling me he lives next door.” Nana pointed toward the wooded area. “He says he can help out around the place if we need anything done.”

“We don’t need help.” More honestly, I couldn’t afford to pay anyone. I didn’t realize my words might seem unkind until they’d already exited my mouth.

The big man stood to go. His clothes hung around him. He was more tall than thick.

“I’ll be going then,” he said without looking at me as he slipped out the open back door and vanished.

“We don’t need help, Nana,” I repeated.

She nodded, understanding more what I hadn’t said than what I had. Without a word, she began cleaning the kitchen. The counters were worn, the sink had a chip the size of a quarter out of one side, the refrigerator light blinked on and off while the door was open, but other than that, the place looked better than most where we’d cooked. There was no food, but all the pots, pans, and knives seemed to be there along with a working double oven.

By late afternoon, we had both the kitchen and the two rooms upstairs at least livable. I tossed out all of Uncle Jefferson’s medicine bottles along with the fishing magazines. Guessing from the full bottles, it looked like he quit taking his pills about six months ago. My detective brain cells reasoned that a man not taking his medicine wouldn’t drive into town to pick up new prescriptions, so someone must have been bringing them to him. Someone who didn’t bother to make sure he took them.

Another fact nagged at the back of my mind while I worked. Why would a man who’d stopped taking medicine leave the bottles around?

Nana’s take on Uncle Jefferson was slightly different. She noticed that it appeared he didn’t leave a clean stitch of clothing. According to her, he hung on to life until everything was dirty, then he kicked the bucket rather than do laundry.

I suggested maybe Blue-Eyed Luke stole the clean clothes, but after a quick inventory we discovered my uncle Jefferson was a small man. His clothes would almost fit me so he couldn’t have stood over five-feet-five and, judging from the piles of dirty things, he owned no underwear or socks.

Once we found an old ringer-washer in a shed out back, Nana wanted to wash his clothes, but I convinced her to burn most of them. The fabric was too worn to even make good rags. I saved back the few flannel shirts in good condition for myself and dropped the rest out the window. We carried them down to a campfire pit close to the water and poured enough gasoline over the pile to get a good fire going.

An hour before sunset, Nana went to the kitchen to fix our supper. She’d had me move the two old wingback chairs down from the apartment. We shoved them into what must have been built as a breakfast nook in the kitchen. She added a table big enough for two and a little black-and-white TV. Then she pulled out her sewing basket that she hadn’t unpacked from the van for two moves and placed it in front of one of the chairs as a stool.

I hadn’t liked the idea, but once she’d spread a cloth over the table the little space seemed to welcome us, a private little parlor in the corner of the kitchen.

Climbing the stairs, I wished we had enough furniture to make the apartment above as livable. My grandmother might not ever be able to change her environment, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t rearrange it. I hoped the outbuildings we hadn’t gotten to yet contained furniture, otherwise we’d use boxes for nightstands by the beds.

“Allie,” she called up from the kitchen. “You want catfish for supper?”

“Sure,” I answered, thinking she was kidding.