This next chapter is a bit longer than the previous ones. I may need to post it in two pieces, but we will see. What to tell Molly? Where to go? How to get there? And should you pick up strays from the cemetery? Lets begin Chapter Three. ~3~ Stalled In Beaufort Falls “You are one of those persons who goes places in life.” Chinese Fortune Cookie "How can I ever get her to accept me as her Dad?” Charlie didn’t mind talking to himself. Spending eight years in the privacy of his own mind, keeping secrets that could destroy him, gave him some leniency in the sanity department. It didn’t matter that no one heard, but today, for old times sake, he had his three best friends lined up, listening. Maybe it was being back in Beaufort Falls, but he needed their approval to continue making plans. Affectionately running a finger over the deep furrows in Sheriff Nate St. Claire’s darkened face, he remembered the day he dropped this head in a bucket and ran for his life to nearby Sicily, starting his lonely escape from the clutches of the law. On the shelf next to Nate sat Nate’s lovely wife Arlene, her cheeks sunken in a way that no diet she ever tried had ever achieved, and his favorite, Homer, who looked very much like a husked English walnut now. Lifting Homer by his fuzzy white hair, he cradled the taxidermied cranium in one large hand. “Bet you never thought I could do it, old man! I found my kid, my seventeen-year-old daughter!” Homer didn’t care. He’d stopped worrying about that sort of thing the day nine years ago that Charlie’d lopped his head off. A little apart from the three heads lay Charlie’s favorite trophy; John Duke Parsons’ severed hands, still elegant in repose. He’d quickly stopped being sorry that he hadn’t recovered his archenemy’s skull. His were one set of eyes Charlie never wanted to face. Still, knowing that his hands would never again hurt anyone he loved again gave Charlie great satisfaction. Right now he didn’t have time to think about the past. He had to make a plan that would convince Molly to come with him, and he didn’t even know where that would be. Frustrated, he knocked some of the dust off the other end of the shelf and pulled a dirty map from a pile of paperback novels and cheap tabloids. “The National Enquirer, The Daily Star, and now the world!” he quipped. Actually, it wasn’t the world but it was a map of the United States and that served his purposes much better. All he lacked was money and some idea of how to proceed next. Molly was on her way to meet him and she expected answers. “I sure lucked up when I found this old trailer out in the woods.” It was a lifesaver. A week ago when he’d arrived, he’d had no idea where he would stay and his life savings, a mere three hundred dollars and pocket change, was dwindling fast. On the way into town he’d stopped to relieve himself beside the highway and the filthy pink vinyl and aluminum side of the singlewide RV could barely be seen through the thick pines. A quick jimmy of the lock and he’d been in the front door, ready to make it his new home. It looked like someone had just locked the door one morning and never returned. There were no clothes in the narrow closet, but everything else, dishes, furniture, even a few cans of soup, seemed intact. The owner had definitely been female, and loved pink. It smelled faintly familiar, but he couldn’t remember where he’d inhaled that scent. “Hey! What’re you doing in Verbena’s trailer?” Horrified at Molly’s sudden appearance, Charlie moved to sweep his whole collection of bodiless buddies into the leather bag that had been their home for the last nine years. He would never gain her trust if she met the crew. It was only by telling her that he brought news from someone far away, that he’d been able to convince her to meet him at this out-of-the-way spot. He’d spent the entire night trying to think of a cover. He was still as blank as he’d been the day before when he and she had sat talking in front of her house and Anna had pulled up and forced him to make a fast exit. “Uh, give me a second. I’m -- indisposed.” He’d heard that word in a movie once and never thought he’d ever be using it. He stowed the bag under the small, frilly, very pink, bed. Verbena? How many Verbenas could there be that came from Beaufort Falls? It wasn’t exactly a common name. Molly was inside now, surveying the décor with the look of a person who wished she had brought something clean to sit on. “Verbena Smith?” Charlie asked anxiously. Verbena should have been his fourth head, but a brief moment of weakness prevented her addition to his collection. All he needed was for her to reappear now and ruin his life for a second time. On the other hand, maybe this was karma? Her abandoned little house had certainly made his life easier. “That’s her. How do you know Verbena?” Molly stopped suddenly. She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to let this man know she knew about anyone around here. It was time for him to provide some answers. “I knew a woman named Verbena once. She lived in Sicily. Did she come back to Beaufort Falls?” In other words, was she coming back soon to reclaim her trailer? “No. She never came back. Who are you anyway?” Molly didn’t know why this man knew her. She liked Verbena and would never expose her friend or her pack of abandoned kids to possible danger. Verbena and the boys were very happy and very successful as the residents of the first mental health group home in the state of Alabama. The formerly frustrated, middle-aged, woman had the family she wanted now. Molly always had felt she would have been happier staying with them, but she was never given the choice. Instead, she was placed with Anna and Tessie, forty-five miles away from them. She’d seen them twice since her mother’s second funeral and she still missed them like brothers. At the very least, it would be a good idea to stick to safer subjects. Frowning, she rummaged through the stack of papers on the bed. It was time for a distraction. “Star-struck young actress gives birth to two-headed baby. Now there’s a story for you!” Idly, she continued leafing through the pages of the yellowed newspaper. “Look at this! It’s the LA Star! I’d give anything to go to Los Angeles.” The former owner of the trailer must also have had dreams of fame and fortune far away. Charlie watched his child intently. The beginning of a story began to form in his mind. She is star-struck, he realized. She’ll go with me if we go to LA. “It’s not a very big paper. I’ve already reached the classifieds.” Charlie wasn’t listening. Now that he had a destination, he was deciding what items from the little home could be pilfered to make their trip easier. So far all he’d found of value was a dusty jewelry box with a set of cheap rhinestone earrings in it. He still had to figure out a story to tell Molly. There was no way he could tell her he was her Dad. “Whoa!” Something caught Molly’s attention. “Did you know that a two-bedroom house is worth a hundred thousand dollars in Beverly Hills? A frick’n trailer is worth seventy or eighty thousand!” A trailer? A mobile home was worth seventy or eighty thousand dollars? “What kind of trailer?” It had to be one of those ritzy dressing room kinda trailers the stars used. “Just any cheap old trailer. Look at this ad. This trailer’s only got one bedroom and a bathroom and the ad is asking seventy-five thousand dollars for it. Says it’s a great ‘fixer-upper’ for a young family with land. Sh…shoot, it can’t be any bigger than this trailer.” She caught herself before actually cussing. It wasn’t a good idea to cuss around strangers, but she need not have bothered. Charlie was staring into space, positively glowing. No need to look for things of value. They were standing in the only thing of value around. “Uh, Molly. What if we took this trailer to Beverly Hills and sold it to one of those young deserving families that ad is looking for? Think we could do it?” “But this is Verbena’s trailer!” In spite of her wild reputation, Molly’d never actually stolen anything. “It doesn’t belong to us.” Suddenly, she realized that he had used the word “we,” as in him and her. “Well, it’s not like she visits it or anything. She’s probably forgotten all about it.” That was true. It was obvious that she’d never returned to take any of the pieces of her old life with her when she moved to Sicily. Still, she couldn’t go to Los Angeles with a strange man who seemed to be stalking her. It was time to find out who he was, and who had sent this mysterious message. “Who are you and why did you come to find me? What is this message you say you have for me? Why should I go anywhere with you? You have ten minutes to tell me, or I’ll call the police and have them arrest you for” … She hesitated, trying to find something strong enough to have some bite to it. “For contributing to the delinquency of a minor!” Now he had to tell her something, and fast. Hesitating, he took her hand. “Molly, I’m going to tell you something that you might find hard to believe, but you’re almost grown now and it’s time for you to hear it. J. D. Parsons was not your father.” He had her attention now. Moving away from him, she put the paper down on the bed. She said nothing, but sat motionless waiting for his next statements, certain that they would change her life forever. She’d waited for a long time to have someone else know what she had known since the angel had told her, the angel in the cave by the river. Was this man her Dad? She scanned his face, waiting to recognize something that might be like her. He looked very much like the man who had held the axe on the day that she could never forget. “Are you my Father?” she asked, the words barely more than a whisper. Charlie wanted to say yes. He wanted to tell her how much it meant to him that she was his child, but he couldn’t. He could see she was still afraid. Desperate now, he launched into a story, any story but the truth. “Uh, no, but I know your Dad.” Oh, Jesus, how do I know her Dad? Mother of God, give me words now. It’d been too long since he’d been a preacher for him to think the Divine owed him any favors. “Uh, I’m your uncle. Your Uncle Charlie.” “What? My mother had a brother? She never mentioned having a brother!” She really didn’t want to admit even to herself that she might be related to the man she remembered; the terrifying man who had killed her stepfather with one swing of his big axe. “No, your dad. I’m your dad’s brother, your real dad. Your real dad sent me to find you. He can’t come back to Beaufort Falls because he was in trouble here a few years ago. He sent me to get you and bring you to him so that he can meet you and take care of you. He doesn’t want you to be a ward of the state when you have real family alive. It’s just not right.” Molly relaxed a little. That explained why this man looked so much like the man at the cave, the man the angel had told her was her father. But what if her dad was still a monster? The whole town had been glad that he was gone. It was time to find out more. “Where is my dad?” Charlie froze. Of course that was too easy. Of course she would have more questions. “Who is my Dad?” “Your Dad is Harold Slotsky.” Charlie stopped to take a big breath. He couldn’t believe he’d pulled that name out of his hat. This reclusive director was famous for his murky background and his controversial films. No one had any idea who he had been before he made his first Hollywood flick a few years ago. His appearance was as magical as his rocketing career, shooting him straight to the top of his profession. He was also out of the country right now making a well-publicized documentary in Romania, so he was conveniently not available for comment. “He’s Harold Slotsky? No way!” In spite of herself, she was impressed. She knew she’d gotten her talent from somewhere. “Why does he want me? And why now, after all these years?” Oh shit! She was never going to believe this story “Because you’re his only kid. He had an accident a few years ago and he isn’t going to have any more children.” Molly’s bullshit detector sounded an alarm so loud she almost had to shield her ears. “If Harold Slotsky’s my dad, why are you thinking about stealing Verbena’s trailer and selling it in Hollywood? Don’t you have money? Doesn’t he take care of you? Wouldn’t he give you money to come get me? Why not just send a lawyer to pick me up, for crying out loud?” Good questions. Charlie hesitated before launching into the best instant reply he could invent. “He gave me money to get someone to come get you before he left the country, but I lost it, gambling. He’s going to be mighty pissed with me when he gets back. If I can make some of it back he’ll be okay about it. I have an awful habit.” Charlie looked down at his hands, sheepishly. She was still scowling at him suspiciously but he could tell she wanted to believe him. “Let me see your driver’s license. If you’re Charlie Slotsky, you’ll have ID.” Stay calm. Don’t panic. “But I’m not his brother, really. I’m his half-brother. We had different fathers. I’m Charlie Callahan, and I let my license expire before I came out to get you. I used to live here, with Harold. I only went out there a year ago and I never got a license for California.” He was going to lose her, he could feel it, but suddenly she relaxed. “I always knew my father would be famous.” This might be her only chance to get to LA. If there was any possibility the stranger might be telling the truth, she had to find out. If her dad had actually been the man with the axe, of course he wasn’t going to come back here. She could take care of herself. Charlie grinned in relief as she stopped giving him the third degree. “What ’cha say we take this trailer to California?” Almost giddy with relief, he was ready to have her commit. “We’d have to clean it up. I can’t live in this kind of dirt.” Molly moved to the sink to investigate the cooking utensils. Charlie felt like two tons of worry had just been lifted off his chest. Now they had a place to live while they were traveling and a guarantee of money when they reached the land of milk and honey. All he had to do was to figure out how they would tow it. J. D.’s old Cadillac was a fine vehicle, and still in peak condition, but it was never going to pull a trailer to California. Thinking of a solution, he reached into his pocket. “Hey kid!” Molly looked up from her inventory just in time to catch a set of flying car keys. “Point me toward a junkyard and you’ve got yourself a car.” It was only fitting that she should own the car of the man who’d once tried to kill her. All he needed was a half-decent old heap of a truck and he’d have it running and them out of Beaufort Falls by daylight. It was really going to happen. By the look on Molly’s face, he was halfway to being a good parent already. Molly’s doubts disappeared when she stepped outside and recognized her dead stepfather’s Caddie. Wouldn’t he turn over in his grave if he could see me now, she gloated as she slid behind the wheel of her former enemy’s precious car. Charlie was just glad to see her ready to go as he slid in beside her on the passenger side. “Damn it!” Why was it never easy? When they’d first crept into Freddie’s Salvage Yard it looked like he had it made. He’d immediately found his dream truck, looming very white in the darkness. A three-quarter-ton, 1973 Chevy pickup truck with a Royal work-bed and a tow-bar attached had practically screamed to be recycled. After wrenching its hood open, he’d realized someone had ditched it after rebuilding the engine and transmission. At least it had been newly rebuilt ten or so years ago, as the rust on the chassis seemed to indicate. The tires were, of course, flat and rotten, and he had nothing but an old jack pulled out of one of the unlocked compartments to heft its considerable bulk high enough to change them. Scrounging around, he’d found a set of serviceable truck tires on a newly wrecked vehicle and was ready to make the switch. If this worked, he still had to siphon gas from somewhere until they could make it far enough away to buy gas without being caught. He knew that the gas tank would have to be drained of what was now essentially turpentine before he had a prayer of getting it running. It wouldn’t even need to be hot-wired. The ignition was already connected to a button under the dash. “Is this going to take long?” Molly was restless. She’d already had seen all she wanted to see of the junkyard and it gave her the creeps. Anna was probably reading the letter she’d left right now. She wondered if she might have made a mistake. “Take a walk. Get some air.” Charlie didn’t need the distraction of an antsy teen-ager right now, especially one who might be having second thoughts about the long trip. “See ya.” An hour later, she sat by the little tombstones lined up next to each other above her only real family left on earth other than her sister Tessie. The gaunt trees, draped in fragile Spanish moss, swayed gently in the soft Alabama evening breeze. The huge, full moon illuminated the rows of small white markers, some almost lost amidst the mass of early spring flowers. A hedge of primrose and honeysuckle surrounded the thirty or so family plots. Stepping carefully to avoid walking on a long-gone ancestor, Molly stopped in front of three simple graves, each smaller than the other but positioned together. This was not the first time Molly had visited this cemetery late at night. Tears flowed down her pale cheeks as she realized it might be her last time. Peeling off her jacket, she wiped each headstone clean, reading the words inscribed; words also etched on her heart in memory of the three beings who had been her closest kin. The first read Eliza Duparte Parsons, Born 10-31-1954. Died 10-31-1975. May God have mercy on her soul. It was the oldest of the three, although all three graves had been dug on the same day. The second one, a tiny little area, read Mickey Parsons. Child of God. The simple word, Ghost, marked the third. Trying to choke back tears, Molly said her good-byes. “Mother, I’ll make you proud of me. I know I have talent. I’m going away, but I’ll never forget you, any of you. I’ll come back and visit you again when I’m somebody; someone everyone in this stupid town will be proud to know. Tessie’ll bring you flowers on your next birthday. They’d never missed a year. Every year since her death, the two girls had visited the graves carrying a birthday bouquet for their real mother, and Molly couldn’t bear to think that it might not happen next Halloween. Of course Tessie would remember. She’d send her a reminder. “I love you. I love you all.” Sobbing now, she curled her legs under her and reached to hug each tombstone. The old family cemetery was the only part of her heritage that she could be certain was real. Most of her memories of her mom were hazy, but she would never forget the large white dog that protected her, or the little boy, her twin Mickey, who was her only friend when she had been discarded and was totally alone. Suddenly, she heard a sound behind her. She rose and turned quickly, half hoping for a visit from one of her beloved departed. Instead, she could barely make out a naked man, crouched behind a marker. “Who are you?” She probably ought to run, but her life had been becoming odder and odder lately, and the man didn’t seem dangerous. Small and thin, he shivered in the mild night air, warmed only by his bushy gray beard and the long hair which wrapped around him, covering him instead of clothes. “Are you real?” She asked. It was not a strange question. She’d met spirits in this cemetery before. “Am I real?” He echoed her question as if he might not know. Molly reached out to touch him. “You’re not a ghost.” “What is a ghost?” he asked. “A ghost is someone who is dead but doesn’t want to leave this world. They stay close to where they are buried hoping to see someone they knew when they still were alive so that they can remember what it was like. People who are dead are buried in places like this so that they can have a place to belong even though they are dead.” “Does everyone have a place to be when they are dead?” For some reason this subject seemed to interest the shivering nudist. Molly felt like she ought to find him some clothes, but so long as he stayed covered up with all his hair, she didn’t mind talking. He seemed warmer when he talked. “Well, some people get cremated. They get burned up and put in an urn. Either people keep them with them or they take the ashes that are left and scatter them on the ground or in the ocean somewhere.” She realized that the little man’s eyes had an eerie, deep look about them, dark brown, almost black, and as deep as the vast expanse of space. They were unsettling. Suddenly, they changed shade and now were a dark navy blue. He didn’t seen to mind that she stared at him. Maybe it was time to get him clothed. She’d known enough of the mentally unbalanced at the West Alabama Regional State Hospital while she had been held as an inmate there not to be afraid of the merely strange, and to her this little man seemed to fit in that category. She also decided it was better to be proactive and get garments on him, rather than ask him questions he might not be able to answer about what had happened to his former apparel. She couldn’t leave him alone and naked in the graveyard. “Do you live somewhere near here?” she asked, taking care to remain casual. “No,” he replied, sadly. “Put this on and follow me.” She handed him her dirty jacket and then helped him put it on after he attempted to put his leg through an armhole. With a last look behind her, she bid goodbye to the dead and acquired custody of the newly alive. After all, she’d found him in her family graveyard so he must belong to her somehow. All she needed now was to figure out how to explain him to Charlie. “What’s your name?” Hopefully, he would remember what he was called. “Name?” he repeated. “Oh, shit. What if I just call you Al?” “Al. Me, Al.” He seemed to like it and continued to chant the words as he followed her back to Freddie’s junkyard, his hair blowing behind him. Molly didn’t look back. Turned out she didn’t need to do much explaining. Charlie had the old truck running when she returned, and the three of them hopped onto the large bench seat. It choked, sputtered, and belched horrible fumes out of its tailpipe as they coasted back to the little pink trailer. “It’ll run better tomorrow.” In fact, Charlie didn’t even seem to notice Al’s nudity until they actually reached their new home. “You’ll have to wear more clothes if you travel with us,” he explained, as Molly handed Al a pair of her old jeans and a t-shirt. “And cut your hair. You look really weird.” “He will.” Molly answered for him. Al was moving around the trailer holding the flashlight Molly had given him, picking up first one thing, then another.He seemed to be a fast learner. He’d managed to put the pants and shirt on correctly after only a couple of minutes of examining the garments. “Stop that!” Al lingered dangerously close to Charlie’s secret stash under the bed, and the big man moved quickly to intervene. “Take this blanket and get some sleep. We’ll have an early start tomorrow, as soon as I figure out how to hook this trailer to the truck. Molly, you do have a driver’s license, don’t you?” “Yes, sir.” Every kid at Beaufort Falls High suffered through the high school’s driver’s education course and came out of it with a shiny new Alabama driver’s license by their sixteenth birthday. “Okay, gimme that flashlight. Time to get some sleep.” Molly immediately claimed the bed, and Al was already passed out in the corner, so Charlie settled in on the little living room loveseat, his feet dangling over one side. He’d slept in worse places. Soon, his snoring drowned out the music of the low-country river-frogs, harrumphing in the distance. Tomorrow was going to be a big day. copyright 2013 And now the little group is together, and tomorrow the journey will begin. A teen wanting to know her roots, a head lopping, cross-dressing serial killer wanting redemption and a strange non-human semi-god, wanting to be the creation instead of The Creator will go to Hollywood. (And save the world!)
Posted on: Wed, 25 Sep 2013 06:35:52 +0000
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