Nanowrimo - 9

I find Jones out behind his house, contemplating the withered beds of his garden. In four months this plot will explode with color and life. But, you wouldn’t know that to look at it today. Dirty mounds covered with dead leaves are populated by dried, dead looking remnants of rose bushes and the scraggly husks of what used to be marigold & zinnia. Like a flannel question mark, he supports his thin frame on a cane while bending down to look over the spot where last season’s salvia lived. He hears me coming, but can’t right his back fast enough to make a proper greeting. Instead I just get a turn of the head and a “Hello, hello! Well if it isn’t the dinner-fairy!”

“Hello, Jones. Just bringing by some dinner I made for ya.”

“Yes yes I see that. That’s nice, that’s real nice there.” He makes his way back to straight again with a sigh. “ahhhh, just lookin things over here. Won’t be too much longer I’ll have my flowers back.”

“You miss them during the winter, do you?”

“Ohhhh if I could tug at the plants to make the spring come faster I would. My old bones can’t take much more of this cold. Maybe some day I’ll be one of them snow-birds and head down south for the winter!”

“With the kind of plants they have in the south? We’d never see you again! I bet you’d be off farming passion flowers in no time.”

“PASSION flowers? He heeeee, no ma’am I don’t think so. I’ll stick to these here roses.” He waives his cane briefly toward the brown stems popping out of the ground in V-shaped clusters. He does have the loveliest rose bushes. The bank of wild roses along the front of his house bloomed clear into November. “C’mon in, now. Don’t want my dinner getting cold!”

Walking into the ranch house behind Jones happens at such a delicate pace that it almost feels like a ceremonial procession. Inside he slides his bones onto a vinyl chair at the kitchen table while I take the liberty of rummaging through the cupboards to find a plate for his dinner. Difficult to find a bit of china without some chips or cracks in it, but I locate a plate with only few nicks along its edge. “It’s still hot.” I put the plate in front of him and sit down.

He looks at the plate, looks up at me politely, looks back at the plate, looks up at me with raised eyebrows, and then starts to grin.

“Shit, you need a fork!” I always forget that all people use silverware, now.

“A knife too, if you can locate a clean one.”

“Yes, yes, there’s a setting right here in the drawer.”

“Don’t bother none about wiping ‘em. If there’s dirt on them it’s all my dirt.”

I place the flatware within his reach and sit down. Like a hungry dog, he dives into the food. He doesn’t get much from his social security, just enough to keep a roof over his head, I bet. Food stamps help some. But what he buys is the cheap stuff in cans. The contents of his grocery bags tend to be the easily cooked, canned food. The heap of cans attracting flies around his garbage bin is a testimony to poor eating habits.

“You want me to take those cans outta here? They’ll be stinking in another day or so.”

“If that makes you happy miss, you may do so.” He eats with a meditative intensity. “hmmmm, good good food. Like real cookin’. Where’d a young lady like yerself learn to cook like that?” As he looks up I notice the spatters of chicken grease across his glasses.

From an 800 year old Italian monk is where I learned it. “I learned by hanging out with folks like you! That and watching Julia Child.”

“he he, Julia Child. Wife loved watching her. ‘cept some of her later shows. I think she was drunk in some of them. Heh. Sampling the cooking wine, maybe. Heh.”

“Maybe your wife cooked too well? If she’d burned dinner a few more times maybe you’d know how to eat something besides canned food!”

“She did burn dinner, that’s how I know how to open a can.”

For the span of at least five minutes we are helpless with laughter. When the last chortles have spent themselves out, he adds “well, the prettiest of roses all comes with thorns.”

“I might have to use that one of these Sundays.”

“I want royalties.”

“I’ll make sure the board comes straight to you with their editorial.”

“They at it again, huh?”

“No more than the usual. Wait until next week when I celebrate Ash Wednesday by telling everyone that they are atheists and prostitutes.”

“So it’s the Catholics been having all the fun all these years? Didn’t know that! I’d have left the Baptist church long ago had I known that.”

“Oh yeah man, and their communion wine is the real thing! Not just grape juice.”

“So maybe Julia Child just did her shows after going to church!”

“Maybe so old friend, maybe so.”

I get up to start fishing under the kitchen sink for a proper garbage bag to put the cans into. They make a terrific clatter once the bag is full. Jones doesn’t rinse the cans before tossing them aside so by the end of the task bits of noodles and drippings of slightly moldy mushroom soup cover my hands. I will never understand what some folks call food.

I head over to his kitchen sink and squirt a bright green liquid into my palm. Soap, amazing. I can’t help but play with this color for a bit before washing. Through the window before me I see the choke cherry tree, it’s limbs bare and grey except for the few bright red balls still hanging from its limbs. At first I only dimly register the raspy call of blackbirds. Then, at once, five of them appear in the yard. Large and robed entirely in black, their color commands a silent moment of awe. This darkness they wear seems tinged with thousands of midnights. Can’t help but whisper their name silently “Corax…”. All at once they take flight, their large wings casting a shadow over the garden. But one stays behind. Turning, he marches determinedly toward the house, aiming his beak up at me as I look out the window as if to make eye contact.

“Raaaaak!” It calls out. “Raaak! Raaaak!” He seems to be yelling at me, trying to say something. With a flap of wings like a flowing cape he comes to rest on the window ledge just outside. The ledge is narrow, but he manages to turn and point his beak straight towards me. Our gazes lock, he seems to regard me most intently, almost as if this creature were sent to detect…

I bang on the window, stunning the bird. He flies off, airing his complaints. “Raak raaak raaak!”

“Whatcha tryin to do there? Break my window?”

“Sorry, that bird was just, I don’t know, getting too close. Ravens are kinda weird. Like they’re too smart in their heads to still be stuck in bird bodies.”

“Well they used to be revered as gods.”

“Or seen as the souls of those unhappily deceased.”

“I like my version better!”

I try to hide it, but the raven’s visit has put a distinct uneasiness in my stomach. As I leave the house, clinking bag of cans in tow, I inspect the skies. The uneasiness grows into a distinct apprehension over the next few hours. Fear. I haven’t felt fear in a great while, and this overtakes me utterly. At home I rummage through my desk, I try writing, I try cleaning, all in attempts to stuff this strangely ominous sense of doom.

As night creeps in the faces start to haunt me. An English gentleman, a waif, a Jacobin, a reformer, a ship hand, a pioneer bent on killing a village of natives, a soldier delirious from battle and wandering far from the field, they start slowly, like a haunted parade. Yet soon they rush in, old faces, young faces, all surprised and angry and pleading with their eyes to be spared. I can’t shut my eyes and make the visions stop. The Canadian, the hippie, the Italian who liked to steal old ladies’ purses (so that’s what pizza tastes like?), the hitchhiker, the burglar, the business man from New York who thought he was going to get a neat little liaison, the law student, that big, dumb lawyer, the ski racer, the lot of them assail me with their faces.

“That is why!!” I shout into the air. “That is why I stopped! That is why I want to be the one to die now!!”

“I am weary of your baleful whingeing and self-deprivation.” Is all I hear back from the darkness. And so, all goes silent.

The phone rings. It echoes foreboding through the house. I reach for the receiver feeling it burn in my hand.

“Reverend Eleanor” says a panicked voice from inside the line. “You have to come quick, it’s Jones.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Missy! Your chaplain!” The upset voice sounds hurt.

“Calm down Missy, tell me what has happened.”

“We don’t know! We don’t know but it looks awful and he’s dead! Something killed him! There’s demons in his house I tell you! You got to come over and cast out the witches and demons! It’s terrible! I tell you you got to get over here!

I can’t slap her through the phone. Maybe by the next century they’ll do something to perfect that. “Missy!! Get a hold of yourself! You’re talking nonsense! Now what do you see?”

“It’s terrible! It’s pure evil!” And thenceforth she is merely incoherent and tearful. Shit.

“ok! Ok! I’m coming right over. I’m coming to Jones house? Is that it?”

“yes! Yes! Come quick!”

“ok, I’m on my way. Try to stay calm and stay with other people. Don’t let anyone wander off on their own. Do you understand?”

“y-yes.”

“Good, I’m on my way.”

Where my advice comes from I’m not even sure. But, I have a feeling from the sound of her voice that I know what I’ll find. Dammit! Why Jones? He was such a sweet man!

I can see my destination from a good mile off. It’s a bright square of police lights and emergency floods like a postage stamp on the black night. As I arrive the people who have gathered rush toward me. I try to calm them down and find the police.

“Good evening officer. I’m Reverend Eleanor Durat from the Unitarian church in Farmersville. I got a call to come over here.”

“You know Mr. Jones?”

“Yes, I visited him weekly. I brought him food and we’d sit and talk.”

“When’s the last time you were over here?”

“Just this afternoon. I brought him a chicken dinner and removed the pile of cans he had in his kitchen.”

“you notice anything funny about the place while you were here Reverend?”

“Nothing funny just…” the officer leans in as if I might be withholding some valuable detail. “Only a murder of ravens gathering in the back yard. We don’t usually see those around here.”

“hm!” He seems awfully disappointed with my contribution.

“May I see him?”

“What?”

“May I see Jones? Some people here have called and asked me to cast out demons.” I hold up a Bible and a bottle of water for him to see. No one needs to know that it’s just evian.

“you say you were here just this afternoon?” He holds his face in the same pinched, pug like expression he looks at the bottle and looks at me.

“Yes, not even eight hours ago.”

“Well, come take a look” he raises the police tape blocking entry. “Just keep in mind that this is a murder scene. Do not touch anything. I’m going to have to ask you to put these booties on your shoes so no evidence gets destroyed.”

The scene inside the house is ghastly. Tables are upturned, furniture is ripped and upended, curtains are stripped from their rods as if clawed off by giant hands. I can only gasp and look around in surprise. “It didn’t look like this!” I keep repeating this as I pass shelves whose books have been thrown to the ground, a busted TV, and holes punched into the walls.

“This way.” The cop steers me toward the bedroom. Amidst the fluttering bits of cotton batting and springs a torn open mattress belches into the room, lies old Jones. Naked, spread eagled on the floor his chest has been carved open and he holds his heart in his own left hand. Entrails spill out of the body cavity. He has been castrated and I don’t want to know where that part went. His bones are broken.

My eyes slam shut from shock. The scene is just so, it’s so OLD. I haven’t seen a man die with his body beaten and drawn in such a manner in almost 200 years. Who would even think to do such a thing? But as I contemplate this, my spine goes cold. I open my eyes and survey the scene again. Something is exactly wrong.

“There’s no blood.”

“What?” One of the officers turns to look at me.

“There should be blood. There is no blood.”

Those who have been dusting and photographing at a distance to avoid coming too near now draw in. “Holy shit, she’s right.”

I step over the debris to come near, standing next to my old friend’s body. I bend down and gently take his head between my palms. Looking up briefly at the officers for acknowledgement I slowly turn his head to face the other direction. On his neck appear two neat little poke marks, just a thumb’s length apart. I hear the room reacting. But with my ears that hear no human sound comes another voice.

“Hello – MUMMY!!”