Damon (2 page)

“Well, I have to go back to work.”

“They don’t care,” he said, a certain wisdom sparkling in his eyes. “You spent fifteen minutes yesterday talking to your friend on the sidewalk when you went to take change to that antique store over there.”

Really
. “They would mind if I got into a car with a guy nobody knows.”

“You know me,” he said and smiled at last. He had a wonderfully bright, handsome smile. “We’re old friends.”

“Not if you put spiders on my head.” But, dammit, his smile was as charming as his eyes. “Tell ya what. I get off at four today because I’m working Saturday this week. You can come up to the house about four-thirty. But, I can’t let you go inside.”

He nodded, his smile turning even warmer. “I promise not to put insects on you this time.”

“You’d better not,” I told him and jogged across the street to the café.

I didn’t know it then, but my life began that day.

***

He was gone when I returned, and I’d bought an extra burger for him. He hadn’t shown up by the time the phone rang an hour later.

It was my mother.

I turned my back to Bella and Chester and tried to keep my voice down.

“You have to speak slower or I can’t understand you,” I said, trying to stay calm.

“There’s a burglar!” Mama hissed. “In the house!”

“A burglar?”

Bella pulled on my shoulder. “A burglar? Over at your house?”

“No, it’s Mama, ya know,” I told her, holding the receiver against my stomach. “I think she forgot her pills at lunch. She probably saw a burglar on TV.”

Bella gave my shoulder an understanding squeeze. “Go on home and check on her. It’s slow today.”

I lunged to give Bella a kiss on the cheek and she scurried away, laughing and swatting the air.

“
Magic
!” my mother screamed just as I put the phone back to my ear. I jumped near to the ceiling.

“God, Mama! Don’t yell! I’m here. I’m on my way home. It’s just the electric guy reading the meter or something. Sit tight.”

“I can see him. He’s outside now.” Her quivering voice was deep and soft and I could easily imagine her kneeling on the hardwood floor, peaking through the yellow curtains. “He’s poking the porch with a stick. Oh no, he’s coming after me, Maggie. He’s in the house!”

“No, he’s not,” I assured her with my calmest tone. “I know who it is. It’s just Kenny. I asked him to come out and see how much it would cost to get the house painted. He was supposed to come last week but he never did. Just ignore him and he’ll be gone in a few minutes.”

Her voice dropped to a low, shaky whisper. “Oh… my… god. He
saw
me. He’s gonna
kill
me. He’s been planning this for months. The devil sent him to get me!”

“I’ll be right there,” I told her and hung up.

I drove as fast as my coughing, sputtering old car would go and made it home in three minutes flat. Although it had to be Kenny, I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something actually did happen to my mother.

Briefly, I entertained the idea that it might be my new pal Damon, but I hadn’t given him my address. I’d expected him to be there when I’d returned from the café.

He was probably out driving around looking for the red house. Maybe he’d found it.

But, surely, he wouldn’t be poking the porch with a stick.

It had to be Kenny, checking to see if any of the planks needed to be replaced. Something extra to tack on to the bill.

When I pulled up at the house Kenny was backing out in his lime green truck, just as I’d suspected. “Gotta go home and do the numbers,” he called through his open window. “Call ya later.”

I waved at him, knowing it would be another week before I heard the bad news. Kenny wasn’t exactly busting his tail to make a million before retirement. He preferred to gouge people when he could and take plenty of time off for fishing in between.

Mama was curled up asleep in the corner of the living room when I got inside, completely burned-out, still clutching the curtain in one hand and the telephone in the other.

It took me a good half hour to wake her up, make her take her pills, and put her in bed.

Dr. Sanderson in Nashville had diagnosed her as a paranoid schizophrenic and kept her doped up on anti-psychotic drugs. The medication succeeded in keeping her calm and nicely glazed, but that was about it. There was no cure.

I was only glad to come home every day and find the house in one piece. Her rages were unparalleled. Which was why I kept the house furnished in garage sale whatnots.

Most everyone in town pitied me, but I didn’t bother much with self-pity anymore. I was past that stage in my life. Mama had been this way since I was born so I didn’t really expect anything different. Some people were afraid of me, because they thought I might be like her, but I hadn’t shown any signs yet. Though, I always crossed my fingers and knocked on wood whenever the possibility came to mind.

Some people were mean enough to tell me that Mama’s condition was hereditary and could strike at any time.

I believed them every time they said it.

Mama continued to mumble, “He’s in the house. I can see him,” even after she’d fallen asleep.

I walked over to the window and looked out, just to be safe. My stomach clenched and my heart did a whirl when I saw a man walking around the back yard.

It was Damon Jennings, ignoring my insistence that he wait until I got off work.

Well, I was annoyed. Between him and Kenny, they had almost scared my mother to death. Not to mention the fact that he was trespassing. I didn’t like his audacity. I didn’t like being left out of the adventure.

Not wasting a second, I marched out the back door and strode across my plush, freshly mown lawn - calling out to him when I saw that he was working on destroying the little rock pond I was building.

“Hey!” I yelled, hurrying to a jog when he flung my carefully placed rocks through the air. “What are you doing?”

He stood up, dusting his hand on his jeans. He actually smiled and held up a hand in greeting!

“That’s my rock pond!” I yelled, although he stood right in front of me and could hear me clearly.

He looked down and winced, then looked at me apologetically. “It is? Sorry.”

“
Sorry
? I told you to meet me at four-thirty.”

He nodded and glanced around for the large, flat rocks he’d thrown. “Well,” he said, “you were busy, so I didn’t want to bother you.”

I watched him while he gathered the rocks and began tossing them haphazardly around the border. I would have to start over from scratch.

“Why are you destroying my property?”

“Didn’t this used to be a birdbath?” he asked.

“I don’t know, maybe. Why?”

“I buried something here. A little dump truck.”

“And so you were just gonna tear up my rock pond and dig up my yard?”

“I thought this was the rubble.”

Ah, what an asinine excuse! I looked down at my rock pond and tried to imagine how he saw birdbath rubble, with the rocks stacked nicely around the perimeter, and a plastic-lined hole in the middle.

He just hadn’t cared what he destroyed.

Giving him an annoyed glance I knelt down and tried to restore my artistic creation. “Why did you bury a dump truck?”

He watched me work and shrugged. “I was a kid. It was a toy. I thought it would jar my memory if I found it.”

I wasn’t feeling very sympathetic. “Well, you’ll just have to leave it if it’s under here. I’m almost done with this and I’ve been working on it for a full week.”

He turned and slowly walked away, looking slightly distressed as he gazed at every detail of my back yard. “Maybe it was here,” he said. Then he gave my meticulously pampered lawn a severe kick with his heel. Dirt and grass flew.

“Stop it!” I yelled, jogging toward him, still clutching two rocks. “What’s wrong with you? This is my
lawn
.”

He stared at me blankly then looked down at the horrid gouge in my beautiful Kentucky Blue grass. When he looked up, I could tell he didn’t know why I was upset.

“Take a look around, man,” I said. “What do you see?”

He did, and then nodded at the gray showing through the white paint on the siding of my house. “Your house needs painting.”

“I know that,” I said with all the patience I could muster. “Forget about that, I’m having it painted next week. See how I have everything set up just right? My garden over there, my pond here, my gazebo there, and the flagstone walkway I laid myself. You wouldn’t believe how much time I spend to keep my grass looking like this. I crawl around on my hands and knees plucking blades from the old grass. Get it? I’m going for a look here, ya know? And you’re messing it all up.”

He nodded, lips pursed, and looked as if he understood. “I can see that,” he said.

“Good. So don’t mess it up. This is my place, my own special place. The inside of my house looks like a thrift shop but I want this out here to be nice. My front yard is off limits, too. When people drive by I want them to think everything is happy and under control here. I live in a small town and people talk. I’m trying to improve my image.”

He nodded, continuing to stare at the house. “Yeah sure, I can relate,” he said.

“Well… good.” I let out a long, cleansing breath. “Sorry I came unglued.”

He turned and pointed to Corky’s saltbox beyond the property line. “Who lives there now?”

“Nobody. Corky died and his kids haven’t done anything with it yet. I think they’re rich and just don’t care. His son pays me to go in once a month to dust and vacuum, and I mow the yard while I’m doing mine. I don’t think it’s for sale.”

“No, I don’t want to buy it,” he said. “I need to go inside.”

I had a key to the house but wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to take him inside. “Why?”

“I think I spent some time over there.”

I had almost forgotten that he had actually been here years ago, with me. He’d put a spider on my face. Not surprising. “How long did you stay here?”

“Don’t know. It seemed like a year or two, but it might have been months, or weeks.”

“You lived with your grandfather?”

He nodded vaguely. “Sometimes.”

“He’s dead now?”

“Yeah, last year. Heart attack all of a sudden. One minute he was standing there talking and the next he was on the floor. He died before the ambulance could get out.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. So why are you coming back here now?” What’s the big deal about this boring little town, I wondered.

“I need to know something,” was all he would say.

I could see from his faraway gaze that he was searching for answers to questions that truly haunted him. I couldn’t begin to imagine, but I could understand.

“Do you promise not to touch anything?” I asked. “That house doesn’t belong to me.”

He looked at me hopefully and stuffed his hands into his front pockets. “How’s this?”

He was teasing, I could tell, but I had to get serious, so he would understand. “I’ll go get the key.
Stay here
.”

I jogged, fearful that he might try to follow me. Only three people had been in my house in the past year: the sheriff, James Eddie, and two EMTs, when Mama cut herself up with a fork.

More than enough visitors for me.

For a sheriff, James Eddie had a big mouth, and so did the EMTs. People had stared at me for two weeks after the incident. And worse, some people had wanted to hear the details.

Kids already called Mama a witch, so I didn’t like to fuel the flames. Every time there was a new incident, they called me a witch, too.

I couldn’t have been gone but thirty seconds, yet when I returned Damon was already over at Corky’s, walking slowly around the back of the house, touching things.

Running, I beat him to the back door, before he tried to jimmy the lock with a pocketknife or something. I couldn’t have guessed what he might do next. He obviously didn’t hear much of what I said.

Entering the house, he stepped on my heels and mumbled, “Sorry,” before squeezing past me to lead the way.

I followed him around the house, taking the opportunity to do some dusting, since he was so slow. He had to stop and look at everything. Yet nothing in particular. And he would often stop and slowly sweep his gaze through the air. He was trying to dredge up memories from so long ago.

Memories from my own childhood were gone. I’d tried to put some images together over the years, just like Damon was doing now, but I’d done such a good job blocking them out that they were buried under concrete. As far as I knew, I had simply appeared on this planet at about age eight. I had fairly clear memories from second grade on, but before that… nothing. Dr. Sanderson told me that it was common for children to block out traumatic events, and my childhood had been one long traumatic event with Mama’s crazy episodes.

“Remember anything yet?” I asked.

He’d been behaving so well, and not harming anything, that I had let him go upstairs alone, and now he was returning, stopping to look out the front window. He must have been giving himself a headache the way he was frowning.

“I stayed here sometimes. With an old man.” He glanced at me. “This Corky, or whoever. He made me stay in the living room and wouldn’t let me go outside or play, or anything. I just had to sit there,” he stared furiously at the worn old blue and white sofa, “on that couch.”

“He was kinda… gruff,” I said. And he had been. Everybody had called Corky ‘that mean ol’ bastard.’ “People said he couldn’t be killed. His son is just nearly as mean. He pays me on time, though, so I don’t care.”

I hated it when I caught myself gossiping. I tried hard not to do it, but everybody else did it, and it was hard to resist sometimes.

“I wonder why he left me here,” Damon said.

“Maybe when your granddad and my grammy went out?”

It still gave me shivers to think about it, but I was learning to deal with the idea. My sweet grammy had had a boyfriend.

“What about your mother?” he asked. “She was there, wasn’t she? Why didn’t I stay with her?”

“Well, my mother has medical problems. They wouldn’t have left you with her.” Not even if they were desperate. “Gram didn’t even leave me with Mama until I was thirteen. And then I was in charge. It’s weird they would leave you with Corky, though. Gram always left me with Aunt Cynthia. She used to live with us. Or Mrs. Jarvis next door. Maybe they were both gone that day.”