Kindle Edition
Amazon
www.lonasmith.com
Category:
Literary Fiction
Publisher: Uppity Woman Press
ISBN-10: 1547124229
Type: Fiction
Pages: 306
Copyright: Dec. 14, 2017
ISBN-13: 9781547124220
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
In her morning walks, Jessica Parker discovers a past she does not expect, and a future she dares not dream of.
Jessica Parker was raised by her mother and never knew her father. When her marriage to Malcolm starts to crumble she began taking morning walks to escape his critism. Little did she know that her fascination with a dilapidated house in an overgrown orange grove and Jack, the bitter old man who lived there would give her life purpose. Under the cloak of dawn she encounters Ben Rodrigues, an Hispanic preacher, who is an ex-felon. She learns through his unshakable beliefs and his untiring compassion for those around him, the beauty of God's grace.
When an accident almost costsJessica her life, Ben is the one who guides her through her darkest valley as she accepts the secrets of her childhood. But it is Ben's love that shows her who she is.
Excerpt
Eight
The sun was higher when I walked out from under the shroud of the live oaks onto the street Monday morning. Tomorrow would be April 1. Malcolm was in Beijing. He’d called twice and I’d had one e-mail from him. He expected to be there for several months and wanted to know when I thought I would go back to New York. “Isn’t it getting hot there?” he asked.
I’d said no to both questions. I didn’t know when I’d be going north, and no, it wasn’t too hot. I’d also said no to three or four jobs I’d been offered. Sooner or later the offers would stop coming. Is that what I wanted? I didn’t know.
As I neared the Cypress House I saw the gray-and-white cat sitting on the back step looking up at the closed door. I heard its insistent meow from the street. The cat was usually not outside when I first went by. The morning paper was still in the driveway, but it often was. Mr. Webster did not seem to be an early riser. I noticed that the light over the side door was on.
I walked up the drive toward the house. “Is something wrong, kitty?” I asked. He looked at me and meowed, but didn’t move away from the door. I tried the screen. It was unlatched, so I walked on to the enclosed porch. The cat darted in front of me. When I tried the door it wouldn’t open.
“Something’s wrong,” I muttered.
Through the dingy pane I saw the same cluttered counter, the red Formica-topped table with its chrome legs. There were two matching chairs with stuffing spilling out of ripped seats. The table was covered with everything the counter
63
wouldn’t hold. Piles of yellowing newspapers were stacked around the room.
Cupping my hands against my eyes, I peered further into the room. Two doors led from the kitchen, one to the right, probably to a dining room. The one across from me opened into a hall.
Across the hall there was a third door, and through that door, I saw a man’s legs stretched across the floor.
“Mr. Webster,” I yelled, pounding on the doorframe. “Mr. Webster, its Jessica.” The cat stood on its hind legs and stretched its forepaws up the side of the door. I screamed his name again then ran around to the front of the house and tried that door. It wouldn’t budge. At the back of the house I found the door that Mr. Webster had come out when I was picking up litter. No luck there either. The cat trotted after me, crying plaintively. I reached down and patted its head. “I know,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I sprinted back down the road to Huntington House, grabbed the kitchen phone, and punched in 911. Yes, Malcolm, I can dial 911 if I have to. Convincing the emergency crew to come was more difficult.
“No,” I fairly shouted into the phone, “I told you, I am not a relative. I’m a neighbor. I can’t get into the house. And, no, I don’t know if he’s alive.” When I was sure they knew where to come I hung up the phone and then called the nearest police station. If I couldn’t break down the door, surely they could.
I stopped long enough to splash cold water on my face. I grabbed my wallet and car keys and was standing in Mr. Webster’s driveway, the cat beside me, when the emergency vehicle and the police cruiser arrived at the same time. They wheeled into the driveway from opposite directions, their lights flashing. As the First Responders pulled their equipment from the van I led the policemen to the door and
64
stood back while the officers mounted the steps. One man was older, probably in his fifties, and beefy. The other was young and pale with sandy hair and brows. He seemed unsure of himself. After peering through the door, knocking and shouting as I’d done, they broke the lock.
I stepped aside as the paramedics, a stout Caucasian woman and a slender black man, rushed past the officers.
I waited just inside the kitchen. Four people blocked my view, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what they found anyway.
“He’s breathing,” I heard someone say. “He’s unconscious,” another voice added. “Looks like he banged his head on the lavatory here.”
“Hello, sir? Hello, can you hear me?” I recognized the voice of the female responder. “We’ve got to get him in a better position. Uh-oh, wait a minute. Stop! Looks like his leg is broken.”
The policemen backed out of the way as the young paramedic ran out the door, returning momentarily with a leg board. I could see a mask on Mr. Webster’s face and watched his breathing as the attendant monitored his vital signs. With awesome efficiency his broken leg was secured to the rigid support and, with the help of the policemen he was lifted on to a gurney in the hall. An intravenous was started, and I saw Mr. Webster’s eyes flutter.
“His name is John Arnold Webster,” I said to the senior officer who questioned me, pen and pad in hand. “He lives here alone, and as far as I know he hasn’t any family.” The cat rubbed against my legs, alternately purring and meowing. I found a bag of dry cat food and poured some in his dish.
“Mr. Webster, it’s Jessica,” I said as his gurney was wheeled past me. His defiant eyes fixed on mine. “You’re going to be all right. I’ll come with you to the hospital.”
“Why?”
65
I wish I knew, I thought. I didn’t answer him.
As the female medic climbed in the back of the van with the patient, the young man turned to me. “You’ll be there to take care of the paperwork?” he asked.
“What paperwork?”
“Insurance, admission papers—that kind of thing. Someone needs to fill that out if he can’t.”
“Look,” I said exasperated, “I hardly know the man. I’ll ask the officers to stay with me while I see if I can find that information in the house.”
In the front of the house there were identical-sized rooms on either side of the central front door. The one on the left was a parlor, its furniture covered in a knobby brown plaid fabric of the sixties.
A teakwood and brass coffee table sat on matted gold shag carpet. It had that “retro” look that was becoming popular. Shades and heavy drapes covered the windows and defied entry of any sunlight. The room smelled moldy and surfaces were layered with dust.
Across the hall in a room that seemed to serve as Mr. Webster’s living and sleeping area, we found his wallet containing a Medicare card and an expired driver’s license. An unmade bed sat in one corner. It was anybody’s guess how long it had been since the bedding had seen a washing machine. There was a dresser, the surface of which was filled with empty Jim Beam whiskey bottles.
In an opposite corner was an antique roll-top desk. Every one of its many cubbyholes was jammed full of scraps of paper. The drawers were so full they wouldn’t close. Crumpled clothes were thrown over the backs of chairs and piled in smelly heaps on the floor.
Near the front window, looking out onto the street, sat a recliner covered with nubby olive green fabric. Here was where Old Man Webster watched the world—and me—pass
66
by. The only thing of a recent date was a color television, which sat on a wobbly table. The remote control rested on the arm of the chair.
A hall led from the front entry to a set of stairs rising to the second floor, then continued on to the back of the house. We passed the bathroom where Mr. Webster had been found. I noticed that a towel rack was pulled loose from the wall. The basin of the washbowl, the toilet, and the ancient tub all bore stains of permanent rust and pits from endless dripping faucets.
“I’ll see that the door is repaired,” I told the officers. I put a bowl of food out for the cat who now watched apprehensively from underneath the steps. “You’ll be okay,” I said as I patted its matted fur.
How did I get into this? I wondered as I drove down Palm Beach Boulevard toward Lee County Memorial Hospital. I could imagine Malcolm’s reaction and blessed the fact that he wasn’t here. No doubt he would have offered monetary assistance and insisted that I distance myself of the affair.
How could anybody live like that? I thought as I mentally reviewed the disgustingly unsanitary rooms.
After I parked the car I went in search of the patient. He was still in the emergency room having his leg set and cast.
I was told he had lain there for several hours, but except for a mild concussion, the broken leg, and a few bruises, he was all right.
I gave the girl at the admitting desk his Medicare card. “We’ll keep him here for a few days,” she said, “but you know he won’t be able to be by himself, and he will need therapy.”
“I know,” I replied. What am I supposed to do about it? I thought.
The housekeeper was just leaving when I got home at two o’clock. There was food in the refrigerator she told me in her
67
accented English. Louisa was in her fifties and had worked for the Huntington family soon after she arrived in the states from her native country of Honduras, almost thirty years ago. She was now a grandmother several times over. Her husband, Carlos, a gardener and landscaper, took care of the grounds. She was a squat, sturdy figure who quietly went about her duties, smiling her crinkly smile that all but hid her eyes behinds folds of flesh and answering simply, “Si, Señora,” when addressed. She listened attentively with a look of warm compassion on her face as I explained the morning’s events.
After a quick lunch and a refreshing shower, I fell asleep on a lounge chair in the shade of the cabana beside the pool. However, when Pastor Ben arrived home at six o’clock that evening, I was waiting in his driveway. He looked tired as he climbed out of his truck, but broke into his uneven smile when he saw me.
“This isn’t fair,” I said as I approached him. “You’ve been working hard all day, and I’m sure you’re looking forward to the refuge of your home and not one more problem.”
“Don’t apologize,” he told me.
I suspect he thought I was there to cry on his shoulder about another marital crisis in the life of a middle-aged woman. He looked surprised when I told him about Mr. Webster.
“Why don’t I get cleaned up and we’ll go see our crotchety old friend.” He reached down and scratched Ginger, who waited patiently for his attention.
“I’ve got another idea. While you shower I’ll go to the supermarket deli and get something for us to eat. You’re probably starved.” When he hesitated, I continued, “I’ll bet the next thing you were going to do after you cleaned up was to have supper, right?”
“Yeah,” he grinned, “right.” 68
By the time I returned with roasted chicken, cold potato salad, and baked beans, two places were set on a cloth- covered table in his tiny kitchen. Tall refreshing-looking glasses of iced tea from his eternal iced tea “well” sat at either place.
He’d put on clean Levi’s and a blue denim shirt. His long black hair, loose and damp, hung down to his shoulders. “You look like a rock star,” I said.
He mimicked a typical disjointed stance as though he was playing an electric guitar. We both laughed but the image of another guitar player with dark hair flashed through my mind.
When we sat down at the table, he reached for my hand. “Let’s pray for Mr. Webster,” he said as he folded my hand in his. I felt raised calluses across his palm. His quiet voice filled the room, not as though he was talking to someone far away, but to a friend about another friend. I didn’t feel uncomfortable, but strange, as though I’d been pulled on to another plane with him.
While we ate I completed the details of that morning’s events.
“He can’t go back to that house,” I exclaimed. “That place is—is sickening,” I said finally, not being able to come up with a more appropriate word.
“We can take my car,” I offered as we headed out of the house.
“Let’s take my truck,” he said. He eyed the red Mercedes pulled to the side of the drive. “I wouldn’t be comfortable in a car like that unless I’d stolen it, and since I don’t do that anymore, let’s go in the truck.”
We were directed to the second floor, Room 204B, where a nurse, who looked to be a veteran, was seated at the nurse’s station.
“Family?” she inquired. “Friends,” we replied.
69
“Well, that’s a relief,” she snorted. “That’s one mean old man in there. I didn’t think he’d have any friends.”
We entered the room and pulled aside the curtain that partitioned off his bed. “Mr. Webster, I see they’ve got you all fixed up,” Ben said. For a moment he didn’t respond but finally he turned toward us and looked at us with bleary eyes. They indeed did have him fixed up. He was bathed and shaven, although not too neatly. No doubt the orderly assigned to the job had his work cut out for him. He wore a greenish-colored hospital gown with little blue flowers on it. His right leg was elevated and a bluish toe protruded from a cast.
He gave muttered responses to the questions we asked. Yes, he knew what happened. No, he wasn’t in pain, and yes, he’d been told he couldn’t go home until he could take care of himself. A look of sadness came over his face when he nodded the answer to that question.
The only real response came when I said, “I’ll take care of your cat.”
His eyes softened, and I think he mumbled the words “thank you.” It was enough.
|
