Book 4, Chapter ?

As you probably know by now, I cannot figure out how to write a book in order. So, I am not sure what chapter this is in Book 4, but I’m pretty sure it’s an early chapter. I will warn you, if you have not read The Devil Don’t Knock, then this is your spoiler alert!

I hope you enjoy the sneak peek into what’s going on in my brain.

Book 4, Chapter ? – rough draft

Sitting cross-legged in the center of her new office space, Jennifer Martin reveled in the joy of putting the final touches on her open house invitation. It had been six long months and then some more, through the cold and damp of a Bedford winter that she had worked with architects, engineers, and framers; roofers, bricklayers, and electricians. And with her certificate of occupancy finally in her possession, she sat in the middle of an unfurnished home of her dreams, built on the ashes of her parents’ burned home.

Friends and distant relatives wondered about the overreaching emotional impact of staying on the same property where her parents had been murdered. But she had never considered anything else. The fire marshal pronounced nothing but the foundation and chimney worth saving on the classic Tudor home. Jennifer was okay with that. With a bulldozer, an insurance check, and her dogged determination, she drove every subcontractor in the county crazy in order to be finished by Memorial Day weekend. And she’d succeeded, two weeks ahead of time. The schedule called for the furniture to be delivered and set up that afternoon. There was not much left to do except plan the celebration.

She’d lined up the Chris Gales Band out of Memphis to come and play on the back patio. She could imagine the bluesy stylings and electric funk of the guitar riffs she’d heard performed the year prior at Memphis in May echoing off her dad’s catfish pond in the backyard – her backyard. Some Clapton, some Skynard, some Prince. She was ready for some loud and triumphant music to mark the end of the bad memories and the beginning of good ones.

The intermingled scents of new wall-to-wall carpeting and fresh paint were the perfect elixir. Better than the smell of any new car, she took in volumes of air, breathing in the aroma of the new house and exhaling her troubles away. Her laptop nestled in her crisscrossed lap, Jennifer stretched out her arms, lay backward on the pristine white carpet, looked up at the ceiling and smiled. For the first time in a long time, it felt as if things were finally going to be okay.

There is something about summer in the south that lends to a feeling of well-being. Whether it is the sounds of music escaping the rolled-down windows of pickup trucks ambling down the backroads, the vistas of tanned teenagers in bikini tops and cutoff jeans as they make their way to the reservoir, or the smell of freshly tilled red clay being prepared to receive cotton seeds, something about summer gives solace to the battered soul. Maybe it was the activities that were reserved for the long, hot days when there was nothing more to do than kill time, when living forever seemed not out of the question, that made the heart glad and the pulse quicken.

This summer Jennifer’s memories of riding her bike down long and meandering stretches of Manahatchie Highway were palpable. When life was normal and she was younger, she would ride. It was just a three-speed, but it was royal blue with a metallic flake. It was so much better than her bike before that one. It was new – not handed down – and it was hers. She’d ride it to the country store that was back toward town. She’d buy a Dr Pepper and a Pay Day candy bar with the change from her dad’s pants pocket at the end of the workday, and she’d leave the bike on the sidewalk out front and wander down to the creek behind. Routinely barefooted, Jennifer would cool herself in the stream, hopscotching along moss-covered rocks that protruded from the chattering water. When the sunlight began to fade and the lights in the parking lot of the market began to warm and hum, she’d head back to her folks, resigned that another fleeting day of summer had slipped away, but knowing that the next day held more of the same.

Somehow that puerile consciousness had slipped away from her, and Jennifer ached for its return. Sliding her laptop to the floor and shutting the lid, she stood up from her daydreaming and checked the time. Her phone said it was still a half hour before the delivery company had promised her furniture. She wondered if that old bike were still on the property.

Slipping her feet into her bejeweled flip flops that she kept stored at the front door, she headed for her father’s workshop. Once a principal, then retired to work as a shade-tree mechanic, R.B. Martin had a legacy of keeping anything he thought might be of use. No matter that he would never need it. Someone else could possibly use a multitude of cast off clothes, appliances, car parts, boat motors, and furniture that he kept stored in his workshop in the event that he heard of a call for help. Jennifer hoped he’d kept the bike. She corrected her thinking. She knew he’d kept the bike for some time. Whether her father had given to someone else who’d needed it while she was away was the real question needing an answer.

Jennifer wandered through the gardens that were her next item for restoration and found herself where her dad had worked the last few years of his life. She opened the pedestrian door to the two-car detached garage at the back of her property and waited for her eyes to adjust to the light. The shop was piled high with things she couldn’t name or begin to know what they were used for. Woodworking equipment, fly fishing gear, and shelves of different automotive parts were the things she did know. And there was furniture. She recognized that. An end-table from thirty years ago, a lamp that Jennifer wondered had ever been fashionable, and a stack of bins of quilts that her grandmother had made, just in case somebody needed one – all these things had been pushed to the far corner, so that one car might still fit in the two-car bay.

Jennifer’s mother’s deep freezer kicked on and caused Jennifer to jump. She remembered the summer nights when she and her mom and stumbled through the dark to get the produce put up after spending the daylight hours shucking and shelling, washing and blanching and carefully measuring up peas and corn into freezer cartons from Sears. The freezer was empty now. Maybe next summer she would fill it.

And finally, there in the corner, she spotted it: her blue beauty. The handle bars were rusted, and the seat held a heavy coating of dust, but it looked fine otherwise. Jennifer wrestled her way past an old kitchen table and managed to extract the bicycle from its corner, only to discover two flat tires. Her shoulders drooped in resignation. To ride might have been nice today – to kill time as if time were expendable. She looked up when she heard the air brakes of a large delivery truck as it rolled to a stop in her front yard. Her furniture had arrived. Behind that Davis Sanford’s baby blue Nissan truck pulled up. She was glad for the company.