Monthly Archives: September 2018

LEGS

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By Sandra Sperling

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In May, Holly Freeman and her grandson, Trevor, spent much of their free time catching tadpoles in the drainage ditch by her mailbox. It helped the boy forget the tragic asphyxiation of his parents due to a faulty gas furnace, after which he’d moved in with Holly and Godfrey, his paternal grandparents, who were his only relatives in America. The reserved child took possession of his father’s former room, sleeping in a double bed heaped with brightly colored quilts to keep away the chill of Minnesota nights.

One Saturday, while Godfrey was working overtime at the car dealership, Holly was sitting on the family ATV (All-Terrain Vehicle) and collecting the mail, while Trevor scooped tadpoles into a pail. He was a well-mannered child, and she understood kids, having worked as a substitute elementary teacher for nearly twenty-five years. Now that she’d turned forty-four, however, her patience was taxed by students who were increasingly rowdy and unteachable, making her appreciate her grandson even more.

He crawled up the bank of the ditch and said, “I have about a hundred tadpoles.” He held the ice-cream pail forward for her to peek in.

“That’s enough.  Cover them and we’ll head home.”

He did so and mounted the ATV behind her, clutching the pail tightly to his chest. She drove the mile to the house and continued through the balsam, red pine and poplar forest until they reached a small pond toward the back of their forty acres.

“I wonder what kind of frogs we’ll get.” Trevor poured the tadpoles into the water, standing on the muddy bank of the pond. He looked remarkably like his mother, resembling his father only in his long-fingered hands, which he now wiped dry on his jeans. Where Holly would have chastised her son for doing that, she’d mellowed and now ignored it.

“Probably a lot of leopard and bull frogs. That’s what I found when the ditch was part of the rice paddies.”

“Why aren’t the paddies being used anymore?” he asked.

“The owners started losing money, and the government came down on them for using fertilizers and pesticides that hadn’t been tested properly, or so they claimed. Finally, the owners just got too old.”

Can we still get in there?”

“I think so. We’ll go through the ditch by the mailbox, climb up the other side, and then we’ll be standing on a dike.”

“Can we go today?”

“No, there’s too much water. Muskrats have undermined the dikes, and some have collapsed. Most of the paddies don’t have more than a few inches of water in them, but the muck will suck you down like quicksand.”

“I can’t wait. I want to see what it looks like.”

“It probably won’t be till the middle of summer.”

#              #             #

It wasn’t until late in July that Holly and Trevor were able to scramble through the ditch. Holly carried a scythe and whacked away at the eight-foot tall reeds. They came to a section of dike covered with willow saplings and turned back.  She cut through the tall grasses until they reached an area choked with cattails.  A few small sections were free of plants, where Trevor gazed at the vast sheet of shallow water.

“Wow! That looks like a lake.” He took a step forward and dropped into a muskrat tunnel, plunging all the way to his crotch.

Holly grabbed him and pulled him out, but he lost a shoe in the process.

He peered into the mucky hole. “Oh crap! I can’t even see where my shoe might be.”

“I wouldn’t put my arm in there to get it, not even if those shoes were brand new,” she said. “There might be a big snapping turtle in there. Never come here by yourself.”

“I won’t.” The look on his face was so solemn that Holly believed him. The boy gave the paddies a final inspection, then trod warily back to the area they’d climbed up the bank. He slid down ahead of her.

Holly followed, using the scythe as a walking stick.

Trevor stopped short.

A large garter snake had coiled up in front of him.

Trevor sprang back, crashing into Holly.

The snake struck at him.

It missed by mere inches.

They retreated to the top of the dike, where Holly clung to Trevor’s trembling shoulders. The snake coiled up and glared at them, then turned and slithered away at the bottom of the ditch, heading toward the river. The creature was close to five feet long, by far the largest garter snake she’d ever seen.

“Grandpa said there weren’t any venomous snakes here.”

“There aren’t. That was just a garter snake. I’ve never seen one strike at a person!”

They stood on the edge of the dike and scrutinized the ditch for snakes, then tore through it like a cougar was after them. When they related the story to Godfrey that evening, he didn’t believe them.

“Only a rattlesnake strikes like that. And garter snakes never get more than three feet long. Not up here by the border.  Come on out, Trev. I’ll catch one and show you how tame they are.”

Trevor followed, but only with great reluctance.

“Don’t be chicken. Face your fears,” Godfrey urged. “You should come too, Holly.”

She accompanied them, but only for Trevor’s sake. Luckily, they didn’t run across any snakes.

The summer was relatively dry, with few mosquitoes. They found many leopard frogs, though a few had extra legs growing from their backs. The non-functional legs didn’t seem to impair their ability to jump, but Holly didn’t want Trevor to handle them, afraid that whatever had caused their deformities might be infectious.

Godfrey worked enough overtime to buy a second ATV, which Trevor soon learned to operate. He delighted in driving on the trails that meandered through the woods, something he’d never done before.

By autumn, the boy had adjusted. He talked about his mom and dad without tears, expressing curiosity about their lives.  His Irish-born mother had no relatives living in the States, so Holly read about the Irish and passed it on to Trevor, giving him a balance in his family history, rather than just relating the stories and traditions from Godfrey’s English and Swedish ancestors and her Finnish ones.

Holly hid her depression over her son’s death, crying only in private to spare Trevor her pain.

Godfrey never did cry, but he bought an extra carbon monoxide detector and morbidly checked the batteries daily, which was one of his ways of coping.

Shortly after Christmas, Godfrey suffered a mild heart attack at work. He retired, citing health reasons, and drew a reasonably good pension, though his easy-going approach to life was a good part of the reason he stopped working.

Holly made up for the loss in income by tutoring students two days a week, which paid more than substitute teaching.

Finding it difficult to cope with the unending leisure and not possessing enough industriousness to pursue any hobbies, Godfrey began to get crotchety, jumping on Holly and Trevor for the least little thing.

It wasn’t long before she overheard Trevor speaking to one of his friends. “Yeah, I’d love to make a tree house this summer, but I have to see what El Bitcho says.”

She didn’t reprimand him for his comment, since her thinking was much the same.

#             #             #

It rained continually during the second spring that Trevor lived with them. There were fewer tadpoles. Also, the spring peepers were quieter, so much so that Holly worried she might be losing her hearing, as was Godfrey, who’d just turned 53.  Soon after, she read in a local paper that frogs of many types, including peepers, were dying off from a fungal infection. She worried about them becoming extinct.

Trevor, at nine and a half, had become a fan of horror and science fiction movies, often watching DVD’s with his best friend David in the basement recreation room.

Trevor said, putting an ominous tone in his voice, “Maybe for the frogs, it’s their stand.”

The very thought chilled her.

As months passed, Godfrey became increasingly disagreeable. To escape from his scowls, Holly took as much teaching and tutoring as she could get, glad that the job allowed her to be home when Trevor was there. The boy learned to complete the list of chores his grandfather gave him as soon as he got home, and then escaped to his bedroom to study and read books from the school library. Holly often joined him in the evening, bringing cups of cocoa to sip while they quietly discussed their day.

On the first day of summer, Godfrey had a second heart attack, this one more severe. He was instructed to give up his pipe, cut back on the whiskey, and get some exercise. He began by walking halfway to the mailbox with Holly and Trevor, increasing the distance until he was able to walk the entire way, bitching about life in general and ragging on Trevor in particular.

“Why do you wear those pants? They’re way too long and they drag dirt into the house.”

“I forgot to cuff them. I’ll try to remember.”

“Do so. You look like you walked off the set of The Grapes of Wrath.”

Godfrey never admitted it, but he no doubt walked with them in case he had another heart attack. What had previously been a time of closeness and conversation between Trevor and Holly had turned into a dreaded chore, but one they couldn’t quit. They never went into the drainage ditch when he was along, going there instead on a pair of used bikes while Godfrey took his afternoon nap, which generally lasted about two hours and effectively robbed him of a good night’s sleep.

In August, Trevor found three leopard frogs within minutes.  “Look, Grandma, all of them have extra legs. This one has two growing on his forehead, like antlers.”

Holly examined them, repulsed by the deformities they sported. “It’s getting so we’re finding more mutants than normal ones.”

“If they’re still out when school starts next week, I’ll bring some to school to show my teacher.”

The grass on the top of the dike began to rustle and they tore out of the ditch and stood on the road. An enormous garter snake crawled down to the bottom and hastened out of sight.

Trevor said, “Did you see how bright yellow the stripes were?”

“Yes, I did.” She fetched two containers of salt from her bike basket and handed one to him. They emptied them on the ground by the mailbox to kill the grass where the snakes lurked, able to strike at the legs of people who got too close. They didn’t mention them to Godfrey, to avoid hearing one of his lectures about snake handling.

#             #             #

During the winter, Godfrey kept up his walks, losing the pasty coloring he’d acquired after his last heart attack. Other than walking, though, he mostly sat in the living room, alternating between watching television with the volume cranked up high and staring at the gray jays in the bird feeder while he polished his collection of sabers from the Civil War era. If asked, he’d wash a load of clothes, but not fold them or put them away. He had a couple of buddies, also medical retirees, with whom he visited now and then. The men rehashed the old days, since the present was dull and his future uncertain.

Godfrey assigned Trevor extra chores, which Holly thought unfair to the boy.

“Hold back on the jobs,” she said. “He never has any time for fun.”

“It’ll make a man out of him. Show him what to expect from life.”

“His grades are down because he doesn’t have enough time to study.  And, he’ll never get a decent job unless his grades are high enough to get into college or tech.”

Godfrey didn’t reply, but he did stop piling chores onto Trevor. Unfortunately, he didn’t do them himself, so they were relegated to Holly, who was already overwhelmed. The least important tasks simply remained undone.

Out of boredom, Godfrey snagged a part-time job as a janitor working the afternoon shift at a local casino. The first day, when he was gone, Holly felt the tension drain from her. She laughed out loud for no reason whatsoever. Trevor wandered into the kitchen and they sat together, giggling until tears ran down their cheeks.

Trevor wiped his face with the back of his hands, looking like a young boy again. “I try to remember how nice he was before he got sick.”

Holly nodded, glad that Trevor had inherited the kindness gene from his mother.

In May of their third year together, they searched for tadpoles in the drainage ditch, as usual, but only found a few. They left them there.

“I hope some of them are immune to that fungus thing,”

Trevor said, his face filled with sadness.

“So do I,” said Holly. There were no spring peepers, and she missed them immensely, since they had always broadcast to the world, or at least to her, that it was almost summer and warm enough to begin wearing shorts.

As soon as school was out, Holly and Trevor began to walk to the mailbox again. Godfrey occasionally joined them. He was there on the day when both Holly and Trevor shrank back from a two-foot long snake that lay sunning itself on the driveway.

After catching the creature, Godfrey said, “Come and hold him, Trev. You’ll get over your fear of them.” He stepped toward his grandson, plainly determined to force the boy to handle the snake.

Trevor stood where he was. Godfrey walked toward him and taught him how to hold the snake with one hand behind its head and the other supporting its body.  Trevor took a deep breath and took it from Godfrey, held it briefly, then put it on the driveway. The creature fled into the meadow bordering the road.

“I should force you to hold one,” Godfrey said to Holly.  “The way you scream when you see one scares the crap out of me.”

“Try that, and you’ll be eating them for supper.”

Godfrey snorted but dropped the subject.

When Trevor was alone with Holly, he said, “It wasn’t that bad. Kind of like touching a shoelace. But I’ve washed my hands three times and they still smell icky, like moldy licorice.”

One morning Trevor and Holly took the ATV’s out to mail some letters one day, with Trevor well in the lead. Two huge snakes stretched across the driveway, nose to nose. Trevor swerved and missed one, but killed the other. The survivor moved away slowly enough for the boy to notice that the center back stripe was missing on the top half of its body, but present on the lower half. He found a stick and picked up the dead snake and flung it into the bushes on the side of the road.

The next day, Holly was bringing Trevor in for a dental checkup and planned to do some grocery shopping. She’d picked up her purse and keys, waiting by the door for the boy to get done in the bathroom. He came out, waving his hands in the air to finish drying them while he walked toward her.

She opened the screen door.

A huge snake lay coiled in front of the door and lunged at her. She flew backwards and bumped into Trevor, shrieking.

The snake slithered into the house, and the screen door slammed shut behind it.

Trevor jumped forward to stand beside Holly. The snake turned and struck at his knee, missing by a hair.Horrified, Holly glanced around the living room, desperate to find a weapon to kill the horrid thing.

It struck at Trevor again.

They backed up to the fireplace.

Godfrey’s collection of polished sabers caught the corner of her eye, and she snatched one that was about three feet long.  She whipped the metal scabbard off the heavy weapon and threw it on the floor, hoping to distract the snake from Trevor.

It didn’t work; the snake swiftly coiled up.

She clutched the leather grip in her right hand and the brass knuckle guard in her left. When the serpent reared up to strike, she swung the curved blade at it.

She sliced its wicked looking head off, but the heavy saber kept going until she hit the back of Godfrey’s vinyl recliner, where she buried the blade deeply in the stuffing.

The snake’s body writhed and twitched, leaking blood onto the floor. The room smelled like anise, with undertones of molding cardboard.

Holly stood on the hearth, trembling and nauseated. Trevor

stepped close to her, brushing her bare arm with his; she jumped, her flesh still creeping from the experience. She

laughed shakily, joined by her grandson.

“My legs feel like I’m gonna fall down,” he said.

“Mine too, but it’ll pass.” She handed him the hearth shovel.

Trevor hauled the snake’s head outside and flung it into the bushes bordering the yard. Then he went back inside and slid the shovel under the center of the snake, but he dropped it immediately.

“Grandma, this snake is the partner to the one I drove over yesterday.”

“How can you possibly tell?”  She finished wiping the blood from the saber with a damp rag and removed her rubber gloves.

“It’s missing the middle stripe on half of its body.” He looked distinctly worried. “I wonder if it tracked me here because I drove over its mate.”

Holly shuddered violently. “Don’t even think that.”

“I read that garter snakes have a sense of smell, so it might have tracked me here.”

“I suppose it’s possible. At least they aren’t venomous.”

He bent down to lift the snake, but again dropped the shovel and peered at the snake, examining it closely. “It has

two short legs growing from its sides just like we saw on some of the frogs.”

Holly came a bit closer and looked. “Maybe it’s caused by whatever has been deforming the frogs. Get it out of here, please. I want to mop the blood off the floor before we go.”

During that week, they researched garter snakes and learned that they were venomous, something only recently discovered. A gland producing a neurotoxin, which caused lowered blood pressure and a loss of muscle control, was located between the gums and lips and was delivered by a chewing action.

“At least we can avoid them,” Holly said. “Even if they are venomous, who in their right mind would stand around and let a snake chew on them?” She kept a watchful eye open for them, not wanting to spend much time outside, and then realized that she had spent her entire life in their territory and had come to no harm. The incident with Trevor must have been an aberration.

Godfrey began to work every day for five hours, so she and Trevor rode the ATV’s nearly every day. Once in a while they searched in the drainage ditch for frogs, though not often, since it was usually occupied by snakes. The few leopard frogs they did find were piteous, with legs growing from their thighs, lips and even their eyelids.

The majority of the snakes they saw were around six feet long, with brilliant yellow stripes, and had become disconcertingly aggressive. Of the dead ones they found on the highway, eight out of ten had legs growing about two-thirds of the way down their bodies. The legs were a bit over half the length of the tails, looking repulsively like the legs of a Barbie doll wearing striped leggings. They saw one snake slithering across the road with its legs wrapped around its back toward the tail, the spare parts apparently causing no problems with locomotion.

At the beginning of August, Godfrey walked out with them, puffing a little from the unaccustomed exertion. He spied one of the snakes in the bottom of the drainage ditch.

“Well, I never! That snake looks like it has legs.” He jumped into the ditch, catching the six-foot long snake by stepping on its tail and then attempting to grab it behind the head.

The snake struck at Godfrey’s hand, clamping its mouth on his thumb.

Godfrey bellowed in rage and pain and attempted to whip the snake away from him, but it wouldn’t let loose, viciously gnawing away on his thumb. He fell to his knees.

Trevor grabbed a piece of slate piled up to steady the mailbox post and smashed it onto the creature, severing it, but the front half of the snake was still attached to Godfrey’s thumb.

Godfrey no longer cared, having lost consciousness. Holly leaped into the ditch. Her husband still had a pulse but looked dreadfully gray. She called 911.

He was still alive when the ambulance arrived, but died en route to the hospital. There wasn’t an autopsy; his death was ruled as a coronary caused by stress.

Trevor and Holly knew better.

After the funeral, they spent the rest of August gloomily getting rid of Godfrey’s possessions, throwing some, selling some, and giving the rest to charity. Holly kept his collection of sabers to pass on to Trevor when he got a bit older.

Since his grandfather’s death, Trevor showed no interest in seeing his friends, watching television or riding the ATV. In fact, neither of them wanted to spend any time outside. Holly hired a neighbor to mow the lawn, and did only a minimum of outdoor work herself. The weekend before school was scheduled to start, she felt irritable from having been trapped inside for so long.  She glanced at the sole pack of cigarettes she’d bought after Godfrey died, but passed on smoking one.

“Trevor, let’s take the ATV’s out for the mail. We can drive in the center of the driveway.”

Trevor perked up a bit and said, “Yes. But let’s tie sabers onto the racks.”

So, they left, not seeing a single snake all the way down.  After picking up the mail they drove, quite illegally, on the side road for a mile each way, breathing in the delicious scent of late summer grass and leaves.

They stopped at the very end of the drive and turned off their machines. Holly leaned back, enjoying the sun. A spooky sounding, high-pitched whistle emanated from the moist, grassy meadow on their right. From the far side of the field the whistle was answered by an equally chilling whistle.

“Must be some migrating birds,” Holly said, shivering.  “I’ve never heard that song before.”

A dry scratchy sound spread through the meadow. Abruptly, the entire field came alive with snakes, hundreds upon hundreds of them, all standing up. In the mowed grass of the verge stood more snakes.

The creatures stood erect by spreading their Barbie-doll legs and then coiling the tops of their bodies. They then sprang upwards, as if striking at the moon, using their tails to form the third leg of the ghastly tripod. They swayed with a sinuous motion, bending and waving both hideously and grace-fully. The largest stood over six feet tall, with the majority standing about four feet high.

Holly and Trevor gaped, unable to tear their eyes from the repugnant yet somehow elegant sight.

Trevor sneezed.

As one, the snakes whipped toward him, pivoting on their legs, undulating continuously. Dozens took awkward, mincing steps toward them. Hundreds of tongues darted out. The air was saturated with the scent of molding anise.

Harsh goose bumps covered Holly; she ached with revulsion.

“On the count of three, start your machine,” she murmured.

At the sound of the motors, most of the snakes dropped to their bellies. The tall meadow grass thrashed violently from their movement.

“Now hammer it! Don’t look back!”

They raced home, parked by the steps and sped into the house, slamming the door and locking it.

“What are we gonna do?” Trevor asked, his voice trembling.

Holly sat down at the table and lit a cigarette, her first in four days. “It’s supposed to get cold tonight; the snakes can’t move much then. We could dump about ten gallons of fuel oil into the field and set it on fire.”

“But it might not kill all of them. And what if they track us down for killing their mates?”

“Oh, crud, I didn’t think of that!” She took a second drag from the cigarette and smashed it out. “I’ll sell the house in November when the snakes are hibernating, and we’ll move to New Mexico. There aren’t any garter snakes there.”

“What if other snakes grow legs too? I don’t want a ten-foot rattlesnake looking down on me.”

She shivered. “Well, there aren’t any snakes in Ireland. How about getting to know some of your relatives there?”

He nodded his head vigorously. “I wish we could leave now.”  He plucked the book of matches that were tucked into the cellophane of her cigarette pack. “Do you have good fire insurance?”

She took the matches from him, looked slowly around the room and smiled. “Yes.”

She tucked the matches into her shirt pocket.

Sample chapters 1 & 2 – Spouse Removal

Free download in printable form, or can be downloaded and emailed to your Kindle App – Download

CHAPTER 1

I consider myself to be a fairly decent person with relatively high values, but I want my husband to die.  I haven’t actually tried to murder him; I’ve only created situations where the odds of his early demise are a bit higher.  Now that I’ve said it, you’ve likely decided that I’m a ruthless, cold-blooded person and no doubt think badly of me.  But, it’s only fair that you know the entire story before passing judgment.

#   #   #

Father deserted Mama when I was six years old and my brother, Robert, was nine.  He left money for two months’ rent, which is all we ever got from him, and was rumored to live in Alaska, a place he’d long talked about, although to my way of thinking, not any improvement over northern Minnesota.  We moved from our village to Birch Lakes, a small city where Mama got a job at a garment factory, slaving long hours for low wages, while Robert and I went to school and kept the apartment tidy.

Both of us were expected to clean.  Robert prepared simple meals until, at the age of twelve, my enterprising, housework-hating brother obtained a series of jobs, from walking dogs to washing cars, determinedly saving his money for college.  Thus, at nine, my salad days a fading memory, I was solely responsible for cleaning our home and cooking the meals.  I strongly resented Robert for dumping it all on me.

By the time I’d turned twelve, I’d learned to bake pies, sew curtains from old ones bought from rummage sales, and had developed a flair for housekeeping—all on limited funds.  I still disliked it but did the chores with grim determination, even proficiently.  Mama did appreciate it.

Gaynelle Webb, my best friend, had a similar life, with babysitting for her half-brother tacked onto the onerous list of tasks that she was allotted by her also-divorced mother.  We became firm friends, escaping to a marvelous grassy park when-ever we had a free hour.  The fact that we both despised our names drew us even closer.

On a hot July afternoon, at the age of thirteen, I left our clean but shabby garage apartment and carefully locked the door before I walked across the dismal yard.  The soil produced only a few bunches of yellowish weeds.  The landlord had two old cars parked there.  One of the junkers had no wheels and was blocked up on railroad ties; the other had two rims and two flat tires.  Its front end was smashed in, the windshield broken into a maze of tiny cracks.  The vehicle was unlocked, but I never entered it after spotting the sinister, brownish-red stains that coated the front seat and the brandy bottle that lay on the floor.  I did, nonetheless, spend countless hours speculating about the gruesome accident, which caused such frightening dreams that I sometimes was tempted to flee to Mama’s bed.  Only the thought of her dangerous mattress, with its unpredictably stabbing springs, kept me in my own bed.  I often wished the cars would be towed away to give us a little more yard space, but they never were.

I skipped to Gaynelle’s.  She saw me coming and plunked her three-year-old brother into a rusty old wagon, along with a ragged blanket and a ketchup bottle filled with drinking water. She grabbed the wagon handle, and we walked side by side on the cracked and heaving sidewalk of our neighborhood, speeding through the sunny parts and creeping along where the shade from the maple trees blocked us from the broiling-hot sun.

“Merry Kessler, you lied to me!” she said, her mouth turned down and her eyes dull with misery.

“I did not!  What about?”

“I’ll never get used to wearing this miserable thing!” she said, thrusting her hand into her blouse to adjust the straps of her first bra.  “I feel it binding me every time I take a breath.  I’d like to rip it off and throw it into a tree.”

Speaking as a veteran bra-wearer of two months, I said, “Leave it on when you go to bed for a couple of nights; you’ll feel naked without it after that.”

“Are you nuts?  I’d have nightmares about being kidnapped and duct-taped to a chair.  No thanks.”

I giggled and kicked a dead branch into the street, my cheap rubber flip-flop flying alongside the branch.  After dashing onto the gritty pavement to retrieve it, I slipped it back onto my dusty foot.  “I wish my shoes still fit.  I’m gonna be stuck wearing these ugly things until fall.  I hate being poor!”

“Me too.  We’ll never have clothes to attract boys who have money, so if we get married, it’ll be to some poor guy.”  Gaynelle’s honey-blonde bangs fell over her eyes, and she brushed then aside angrily.

“I know.”

“It’s like there’s no escape from it.  We have to do so much work at home that there’s never enough time to study, so we won’t be able to get a scholarship, and that means college is out.”  She walked along looking dejected, then shrugged the mood off with a smile.  “I’ll just have to find a prince.  One who’s rich and covered with jewels.”

“The only man we’ve seen wearing jewels is that old fart who comes around selling renter’s insurance.  And all he ever wears are those agate rings and that bola tie with the agate shaped like Minnesota.  Some prince.”

“You have to have faith.  I’ll find him, just you wait.”

I kept silent, letting her keep her dreams, but I had no expectations of either finding a prince or of any miracles coming along for me.  I took my turn at pulling the wobbly, squeaking wagon, my hand becoming brown from the powdered rust that flaked from the handle.

As we walked, the sidewalks gradually improved, and the houses became larger and well-maintained.  Most had flowers planted in small beds, along with patchy yards that were both green and mowed.  After several more blocks, we arrived in an area of large and luxurious homes, their huge lawns upholstered with lush green grass.  The shiny cars parked in their driveways had tread-covered tires mounted on all the wheels.  The very air smelled sweetly fragrant from the abundance of flowers in bloom. A couple emerged from an enormous brick house and strolled  to their car.  The lady wore a spotless white dress and sandals, her hair bouncing while she walked.  Her toenails were painted deep rose to match her fingernails.  The man was freshly barbered and wore a pale-yellow shirt tucked into tan pants. I glanced down at my grubby feet and rumpled, faded clothing and felt ashamed because I was poor.

“There has to be some way out of poverty.  We just have to figure it out.”  I handed the wagon handle back to Gaynelle and wiped my sweaty hands on the back of my shorts to get rid of the rust.  We plodded toward the park, the wagon wheels screeching in protest, it seemed, against the unfairness of life.

#   #   #

At fifteen, I considered myself to be an adult, which, in the varied arts of housekeeping, I certainly was.  But, I was woefully inadequate in the social graces so easily mastered by the lucky girls whose mothers didn’t have to work.  My tender teen psyche suffered agonies of embarrassment at the many blunders I made while in the company of kids my own age.  Sometimes I wished I were like those cool kids, but more of my time was spent longing to be like Mrs. Brick, the name I’d given to the lady whose house I so often passed.  She always wore subdued colors, and her hair was cut in a pageboy style that fell perfectly in place.  If she happened to be outdoors when I walked by, she always waved and smiled at me with friendly self-assurance.

One day when I went past her home, her tiny white poodle ran from the porch and darted into the street.  I snatched up the beautifully scented dog and carried him to Mrs. Brick, who scurried toward me, her tiny feet shod in heeled sandals that tapped on the inlaid-brick walk.

“Oh, thank you!” she said, her perfect teeth displayed in a big smile when she took her dog.

“He smells really good.”

Mrs. Brick chuckled.  “I spray him with a little of my perfume every morning.”  She scratched his head, and his gold name-tag became visible.  Phydeaux.

“What’s the perfume called?” I asked, surprised at my boldness.  “It’s the nicest I’ve ever smelled.”

“Why, thank you.  Charlie always buys it for me.  It’s called Must DE Cartier.”

I left, aware for the first time that wealthy people even smelled better than poor ones, and I was determined to buy some Must De Cartier myself.

Gaynell and I first searched for it at K-Mart, then went to two drugstores, still not finding it.

“I’m tired of walking in all this heat,” Nell said.  “Why don’t you just buy some musk?”

“When you smell it, you’ll know.  Besides, we only have five more blocks before we get to Hershback’s.”  It was the finest store in town, and in the cosmetics department, behind the counter, we found the perfume.

With my entire fortune of twenty-seven wrinkled dollars in my pocket, I asked the clerk the price.

When she told me my mouth fell open to my boobs.

She said kindly, “Well, honey, it’s made by Cartier.”  She placed a sample bottle on the counter, inviting us to try it.

We left the store, sniffing our wrists until we became euphoric from the heady scent.  I felt filthy rich and smelled every bit as good as Mrs. Brick’s poodle, though not nearly as well groomed.

#   #   #

The summer we turned sixteen, I asked Nell to cut my tobacco-brown hair in a style to match Mrs. Brick’s.  Nell readily agreed.  While she hacked and sawed with the dull

sewing shears, I felt envious of how tall and willowy she’d grown, wishing I could add a spurt of growth to my short, sturdy frame.  I soon grew tired of sitting, but the long job turned out rather well.  And, as long as I kept my head tilted to the left, the difference in length wasn’t really noticeable.

Mom did notice.  “You can’t walk tipped over like that till it grows out.  The edge looks like a ragged, old paint-brush. I can’t fix it, so you’ll have to go to a beauty shop.”

I reluctantly parted with some of my wrinkled hoard on my first-ever haircut by a professional, and the difference was truly remarkable.  It curled under and bounced—just like Mrs. Brick’s.

The vivacious young operator clearly enjoyed her job and gave me many tips on hair care and styling, even telling me about her schooling.  I found it fascinating, something I’d like to do.

But outside of robbing a string of convenience stores, I could see no way to earn enough for tuition.

 

CHAPTER 2

By sucking up to a pimply boy who was interested in my body, I got a job in his father’s bakery, working in the back, where I washed dishes and mopped.  Over time I was given more responsibilities.  I learned to operate the bread slicer and was promoted to running the monstrous bread mixer.  After working for four hours, my feet throbbed from standing on the tile-covered cement floor.  The constant smell of baking, the equatorial heat and batting off the continual advances of the horny boy all nauseated me.  I was sorely tempted to quit, but I needed the money to go to beauty college, so I gritted it out.

Nell worked as a bagger in a grocery store, working weekends and after school most nights.  Her mother remarried and quit her job, since her third husband, besides providing an adequate income, brought along three small daughters, somehow packing them into the small house.  During the school year the only chance Nell and I got to talk was during lunch hour, when we discussed our lives and our plans.

“Are your parents going to add on to the house soon?” I asked, speaking quietly so the other kids at our table wouldn’t hear.

Nell dug a piece of squashed chocolate cake from her lunch bag and picked frosting from the clinging plastic wrap.  It smelled delicious, but I put on weight too easily to beg even a small bite.  “Probably not till I move out,” she said.  “And it’s so noisy with all those little kids that I have a hard time studying.”

“I have trouble getting time for it.  The apartment is clean on the surface, and supper’s ready, but that’s all I can manage. I’m still getting B’s and C’s, though.”

“Me too.  Can’t you get Robert to do anything?”

“Him?” I rolled my eyes back in exasperation.  “He does his laundry and he studies.  At least he doesn’t bitch about my cooking.”  I wrapped my apple core in a napkin and dropped it into my lunch sack.  “Which beauty shop are you visiting this weekend?”

“The one by the east-end bowling alley.  They have three operators.”  She tugged her chin-length hair.  “We’re gonna have to quit spying on them pretty soon.  I don’t have much hair left to cut.”

I grinned, then said, “So have it dyed black.”

She gave me a dirty look.  “I wonder if it’s such a good plan—our going to beauty school.  I’ve missed every foot-ball game this year, and I’ve turned down a half-dozen dates because I had to work.”

“You can date all you want, once we get our shop running.  Otherwise, you’ll end up marrying some dead-end guy who’ll leave you after you have two kids.  Then what?”

Nell looked miserable.  “It’s just that for the first time I have money to buy lots of cute clothes.  Saving it for beauty college—I don’t know.  What if we aren’t accepted there?  I’ll have wasted all my time for nothing.”

“Do you want a life like your mother’s?”

She thought for about ten seconds.  “No.”

A pair of senior boys sat at our table, and I raised my eyebrows at Nell, guessing from their nervous eagerness that they were about to ask us out.  And, they did.

We double-dated, going to an action-adventure movie.  To top off the evening, they took us parking.  The young men,

reeking of their fathers’ aftershaves, were filled with hopeful expectation while they plied us with cans of warmish beer on the romantic, moonlit road of the landfill.  They plainly hoped to get lucky, but I easily resisted, as did Nell.  We had bigger plans.

#   #   #

After graduating, I worked full time at the bakery for two months, and then quit, taking the month of August off.  For the first week, I slept thirteen and fourteen hours a night, nearly hibernating to recuperate from the unremitting labor I’d done since I was six.

Robert had moved out by this time, finding a job in Duluth in the electronics field.  He came home every three or four weeks, the look of cautious tenseness gone from him, to be replaced by confidence, which made him look handsome and mature.  He tried to give Mama money, but she refused, so he bought a new mattress to replace the bear trap on which she slept.  She accepted that with unadulterated delight.

I gave the apartment a thorough cleaning and painted all the dingy walls in various shades of pale blue and green, which were Mama’s favorite colors.

“It looks really good,” she said.  Her forehead wrinkled with worry, and she added, “But, I wish you’d have saved it for yourself.  You never know what you might need in the Cities.”

I worried about that too, but I was not to be outdone by Robert. “I have enough for what I need and emergencies.”  I forced myself to smile, because despite her protests, Mama walked around the apartment admiring the fresh-looking rooms with a pleased look on her face.

#   #   #

I searched second-hand stores and rummage sales for household goods for the tiny apartment that Nell and I had rented in Minneapolis, reasonably close to the beauty college.  Since she had spent a good deal of her income on clothes, Nell was still working, adamant about contributing equally to our expenses.

The day finally came when we loaded our possessions into a truck owned by Nell’s uncle, who was driving us to the Twin Cities.  The only cars we could afford to buy were similar to the junks parked in my yard, so we decided to wait, although wheels were greatly desired.  Mama looked at me with tears in her eyes but made no fuss when we hugged.  She looked tired and old, and felt as unsubstantial as a cotton sheet worn thin. I hated leaving her all alone in that apartment.  My anticipation was dampened by worry about her, and I vowed to help her as soon as I began to earn money.

#   #   #

“It’s as hot here now as July is up north,” Nell said, standing in front of the fan we had propped in the only window of our tiny apartment.  Actually, there was a second window, but it was located in the long, skinny closet that ran the full width of our paper-bag brown, single-room home.

I wiped the sweat from my face with a paper towel and wrenched open the warped cupboard door to cram a few more dishes into it, then gave up, too hot to continue.

Sirens wailed as emergency vehicles raced through the street below, alarming me.

Nell peered out the window.  “Two ambulances, a squad car and a fire truck.  I hope they don’t go by when we’re trying to sleep.”

Angry shouts between a man and a woman on the floor above us ended with ominous-sounding thuds.

Chewing her nails, Nell turned to me.

Trepidation filled me.  The desire to flee back home to the familiar safety of life in Birch Lakes was overwhelming.

Nell looked as frightened as I felt.

I said, “Let’s get out of here.  There must be an air-conditioned store somewhere close.  We need milk.”

“Yeah, let’s, before that couple decides to shoot it out and the bullet travels through our ceiling,” Nell said, gazing nervously upward.

There was a breeze outside, but the baked-in heat of the sidewalks negated any good it gave.  We walked for several blocks before spying a small grocery store.  We spent half an hour selecting four grocery items, allowing the cool air to revive us.

School started three days later. Going to beauty college

was as different from high school as Mrs. Brick’s house was from our apartment, but within a couple of weeks we’d worked out a routine of studying, shopping and chores.  We found time to visit art galleries and museums.  Also, we attended concerts and poetry readings in an effort to become polished enough to run the high-end beauty salon we planned to have.

When we finally began to work on actual hair, we dis-covered that Nell had a knack for giving permanents, while I shone at cutting.  And, I had more of a head for business than she did, which was no surprise.  We were equally good at esthiology, and our complexions glowed from proper skin care.  I despised working on nails, and Nell thought them merely useful to bite on during moments of stress, but we drove our-selves through that compulsory class, deciding to hire a manicurist when we had a shop of our own.

#   #   #

We rode the bus home for Christmas.  For gifts, I cut and styled my brother’s hair and gave Mama a permanent and a facial.

After tweezing her brows and convincing her to wear a little blush every day, she easily looked as if she’d dropped ten years.  Leaving, I was flooded with homesickness, and I positively ached to finish college so I could start earning money and move back.

#   #   #

After completing the course, Nell and I proudly framed our accreditation certificates.  We were placed by the college at a huge beauty salon in the Cities, living poor and saving money for our business.  The summer was sultry, and we came home too exhausted for much of a social life.

One evening, a year after we’d moved in, we sat at the table eating generic tuna sandwiches and drinking iced tea.

Spread out on the table before us was our budget.

I said, “It looks like we have to live like this for ten more months before we’ll have enough.”

It had rained earlier in the day, raising the humidity in the ugly brown room to a greenhouse level.  Dishes piled in the sink gave off the nauseating smell of cheap food.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand it that long,” Nell said, pouring us more tea.  “This neighborhood is so bad that we’re lucky we haven’t been robbed or worse. I’m tempted to move to a nicer section, even if we’ll be stuck in the Cities for longer. It’s always hot, and we’re too tired to have any fun.”

I forced myself to finish my sandwich, even though the heat had destroyed my appetite.  “If there wasn’t so much crime everywhere here, I’d agree with you.”

Nell said, “What about moving back north now?  We could

work at some shop up there.  Rent would be cheaper, so it wouldn’t take as long to save.”  She drank the rest of her tea, wiping up the ring of condensation from the table with her forearm.

“That’s true, but damn it, I want to start work up there as a class act—not struggle up to it.  I don’t want to be the poor girl who clawed her way up; I want to make an impression right off the bat.”

 “So do I, but I hate living here.  And I suppose I’m a baby, but I miss seeing my mother.”

“I miss mine too, but it’s only ten more months.”

Surely, we’d be able to tough it out for that long.

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Snowmelt–Sample

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Chapter 1

Annette Bergquist fSnowmeltought tears, as she said, “She was my best friend. I’d have given my life to save hers.” She stepped out of the truck, her eyes irresistibly drawn to the turbulent Selden River and the bridge across it. She carried her possessions in an oversized canvas tote slung high on her shoulder and thanked the driver, her mother’s cousin, for the ride to Selden from the bus depot.

“I hope you can make peace with her,” Ingrid said, her clear, northern Minnesota dialect as crisp as fresh celery.

“So do I.” Ann smiled at the woman, masking the trepidation that gnawed away inside her. She shut the truck door and watched the vehicle drive away, barely able to stifle the urge to run after it, to escape.

Instead, she strode to the edge of the deck on the wooden bridge and stared at the roiling river.  Swollen from the spring snowmelt, it was ready to spill over its banks onto the low fields surrounding it. A flash of vertigo rushed over her, and she grabbed the rough, weathered railing, clutching it until the dizziness passed. Still grasping it, she leaned forward for a better view. The railing and balusters lurched toward the water, and Ann leaped backward, horrified at how close she’d come to tumbling into the icy water.

She tore her eyes from the churning water, squared her shoulders, and snugged the hood of her parka against the chilly breeze.

Composing herself, she turned and tramped up the long driveway that led to the home of Gina Thorbert, her childhood friend. In spite of all that had happened, she didn’t hate her. Instead she loathed herself for being such of a sucker, for again opening herself to more potential pain. Her emotions were in as much turmoil as the river.

Was she compelled to see her again because they’d become blood sisters in that silly rite in second grade? Ann didn’t think so, but nonetheless, the pull to return here had been irresistible.

Mostly though, she ached to come to terms with the past because it blocked her ability to give Kent more than the cautious love of which she was capable at present.

She was determined to find out the truth about Shelly, the girl who’d moved to the neighborhood when Ann was ten, and whose wicked actions had severed the friendship between her and Gina. Even after all these years, it was difficult to believe that Shelly had been capable of such evil; it was even more difficult to believe that Gina had willingly gone along with her to the point where they’d nearly destroyed Ann’s life.

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