Legend Of The Sparks

by Ophelia Dickerson

  “That’s why you should remarry. I don’t care how bad that girl broke your heart, no man should live alone like you do,” Mary Beth declared.

  He didn’t have the heart to tell her his heart wasn’t broken. He’d been deceived sure, but he’d figured out real fast what kind of lying, weaseling little bitch his ex had been and was in no hurry for a repeat. He’d had a couple of women walk in and out of his life since, but most of them couldn’t cook, at least like this. But a man couldn’t live alone without warming his bed sometimes. And sometimes the cooking had to take back seat to his other needs.

  “Don’t worry though. Now that you’re back home I’m sure it won’t take you long to find a good woman. As a matter of fact the phone’s been ringing off the hook this evening. Gracious, I was barely able to cook. You remember my friend Barbara? She called. Her granddaughter graduated about two years ago and has been running wild ever since. She needs a good, strong man to take her in hand and settle her down. Oh and Vikki called. You remember Phoebe? I believe she graduated with you… or was she younger? Anyway, Phoebe’s good for nothing husband ran off a couple years ago leaving her stranded with three mouths to feed. She could use a good strong man to help her out.”

  Buck tooth Phoebe? Was she being serious? The last he’d seen that girl she was skinny as a rail, freckle faced and scraggly.

  “Mom. I’m didn’t come back to get hitched right away. I need to figure out what I’m doing with my life first. I need a job.”

  “Hmmph.” She huffed. “Seems to me like you would want to find a good woman to help you get back on your feet. Someone who would encourage you and give you motivation to do better.”

  He’d tried to make the chief understand this wouldn’t work, but since he was the least likely to raise any red flags he’d been the one to get sent down here. If he could’ve only recorded this conversation and pass it to the chief, maybe he’d reconsider because something told him he’d spend more time trying to avoid matrimony than he would doing actual work.

  “Settle down Mary Beth, I’m sure Ray will remarry soon enough. Don’t push the boy. You don’t want him to end up with another broken heart do you?” Chester patted his wife’s hand and talked in a soothing voice. When had Dad become such a manipulator?

  “No, I suppose not. I just know he’d be happier if he had someone at his side.”

  Ray did a mental head slap and hoped this assignment would be short so he could get out of this God forsaken town.

  The rest of dinner smoothed out and ended well. Ray had just left his plate in the sink and walked out of the kitchen when he heard his dad’s voice.

  “Mary Beth have you talked to Becky Sue lately?” Ray slowed his steps trying to listen without being noticed. He’d wanted to ask about Becky Sue but was somewhere between being afraid she was married with five kids and having his mom match make them.

  “No, why?”

  “I need to talk to her and make sure she’s planning on planting my watermelons again this year. I’m thinking to ask her to plant a few extras.” Ray stopped just out of sight but within hearing distance.

  “Well I need to go to the post office tomorrow. I’ll stop by and talk to her.”

  Ray walked to his room musing. If he had one ally in this town it would be Becky Sue, at least if she was the same as she used to be.

  He shuffled around a little bit and walked back out to where his mom was cleaning up dinner. His dad had just flipped on the TV. “I need to run into town tomorrow and try to pick up a few things. Is there anything you need while I’m there?”

  “The only thing I was going to do was run to the post office and your dad needs to me to go talk to Becky Sue.”

  “I can do that if you’d like.”

  “That would nice.”

  He turned to leave the kitchen and glanced over at his dad. Chester looked his way and smiled. Why did he feel like he’d just walked into a trap

  Chapter 2

  There’s a legend told in the hills of the Arkansas Ozark Mountains of a peculiar people known as Sparks, or Sparkers. They hold magical powers. It’s rumored they can take on the form of an animal, a shape shifter if you will.

  Now how to identify these people is a bit of mystery. They appear normal and walk among the general population. They may even believe they are normal. Some have stronger powers than others. Some are born with the power as a recessive gene and without the proper ignition will never know they are a Sparker. (This happens only if one parent is a Spark and the other is not. In this way, the Sparker gene can pass unnoticed from generation to generation until it eventually disappears.) If both parents are Sparkers the children born will possess their powers from birth.

  There was a movement after the end of the Civil War to make the Sparkers extinct. It started after the Mayor’s wife burned down their house in a fit of sparking rage after finding him in bed with the preacher’s wife. The Mayor tried declaring a law that made it illegal for two Sparkers to marry and in an era of military rule and unrest, they couldn’t risk running the error, being imprisoned, and sometimes relocated. The war hadn’t helped the general population of Sparker’s either, running down the male population like it did. While a Sparker may possess powers to take on a form of animal, and throw fire they are not immortal.

  By the turn of the 20th century there were only a handful of known Sparkers remaining, the rest were either dead, or silent. The last, believed to be, local Sparker died December 20, 1903.

  Becky Sue closed the book without finishing the introduction and replaced it back on the shelf. She knew the book forward and back, and more besides. Nothing but tales that rivaled Sasquatch and UFO sightings filled the pages. But the tourists loved it, that’s why Uncle Melvin’s book still sat on her shelf. Tourists.

  On the next shelf were little figurines celebrating the legends of the Sparks. Animals hurtling balls of fire from their paws and feet. Some blowing fire from their mouth. Those were typically big sellers. Then there were figurines targeting the more romantically inclined. A boy and a girl came in three different classic romantic poses. In each one they were a fraction away from kissing, a blue haze representing fire encircled them, sparks flew in every direction.

  Once upon a time, for a very short time, Becky Sue had entertained the thought that she might be a long lost Sparker. She closed her eyes and for a minute and let herself feel the breathless excitement she’d felt as Ray had taken her by the hand and led her to his dad’s barn where they’d let the moonlight talk for them, whispering words of romance and sensual pleasures to come. Chills raced up her arm at his touch, despite the warm evening air. The fluttering of a hundred butterflies filled her breast and turned her stomach upside down. Waiting. Anticipating his every touch. His every breath.

  When he’d finally gathered the courage to kiss her, a heat she’d never felt since, coursed through her body and had seemed to light up the night. Then she’d smelled the smoke. Within seconds flames were spreading across the barn, licking at the walls, threatening death and disaster. They’d run from the barn like the hounds of hell were after them. They didn’t hesitate as they ran into the house to call the fire department, but in such a small rural community, the reaction time was too long and the barn had burned to the ground, exploding one of Chester’s stills in the process. She’d gone home that night wondering if their kiss had ignited the Sparker in her. The next day Ray told her his sister, Lucy, had thrown a match in through a crack to scare them.

  Becky Sue’s bubble had burst. She wasn’t a Sparker after all. It had only been a brief teenage fantasy.

  She sighed and opened her eyes. She wasn’t sure what had made her think about Ray after all these years. Maybe it was the longing for that rush again. Maybe she’d been lonely too long. If she ever found someone who made her feel the way Ray had that night, she wouldn’t let them go so easily. She’d been just a dumb teenager who knew nothing about life, but had dreamed of legends and romance. So much had changed in the last eleven yea
rs, and yet, so little.

  Her parents had divorced. Ray had moved off. She’d lost count of the number of babies born in that time frame, but the population was basically the same. The sane ones move away before the town sucked them in forever. And the economy of the little town still depended on the tourists. It always came back to the tourists.

  Thunderhead was everything you’d expect to find in the rural mountains of Arkansas. Spring through late fall tourist would flock the mountains to canoe, hike, and collect trinkets and stories to take home to family and friends. The winter months showed the true make up of the town. Most businesses closed and folks wintered at home, except for the gas station.

  There were more camp grounds surrounding the town than there were businesses inside it. Downtown consisted of an open city block that served as sort of a park complete with a couple of benches and some narrow concrete paths crisscrossing it.

  The park was surrounded with crumbling brick buildings, most of which were built back in the 1920’s. The only business not encircled in the town square was the Birdsong Motel, and even it had its back to Claire’s diner.

  Vernon’s gas station was on the corner where the highway entered, on the opposite side of the road. It was typically the hot spot, but often times the tourists would want to stretch their legs and would wonder into the neighboring shops. On the end of the block opposite Vernon was Sam’s canoe rentals, also a popular destination.

  Becky Sue’s shop was furthest from the highway, but facing it. She sold her handmade quilts, local souvenirs, and produce out of her garden, and sometimes in a good year jams and jellies she’d canned. She was also one of three business owners who carried Chester’s Thunderhead tonic, a.k.a moonshine, which was technically illegal but with the revenue it brought in, it supported nearly a quarter of the town by various means from charity to taxes.

  The other half of her building was Cindy’s homemade candles, soaps, and lotions. Cindy was a good neighbor, mostly, that is for a grandmotherly type. Cindy’s husband had passed away a year after Becky Sue had bought her shop. The woman had been lonely ever since and was constantly at Becky Sue’s door chattering away or having her try a new soap or lotion she’d made. That was after three years of trying to set Becky Sue up with any unattached male she could find that was of age.

  Thunderhead didn’t have a lot of eligible bachelor options, and Becky Sue had politely turned down invitations from all of them. At the ripe old age of 28 yrs, she was the town spinster. Most the girls her age, especially those who hadn’t moved off, were married and had three kids already, or were getting near it. It wasn’t like she was a celibate spinster though. Occasionally a rogue tourist would come to town and she’d get to practice her feminine wiles on him. But they always moved on and none of them had come close to bringing the heat that Ray had, which made her start to believe it’d been a teenage fluke of the imagination all the more.

  She sighed as she propped the door open. The air was still a little brisk, but the sun warmed her skin. Spring was about to hit in full swing. Like flowers emerging after the winter, shops were beginning to open and tourists were starting to trickle in.

  Life wasn’t bad. She was content to make her quilts and tend her garden. She had meaningful friendships and she could support herself. Becky Sue was comfortable, if not a little bored on occasion. But every once in a while she wished she was a Spark, or at least had something spark in her life. And those times usually hit around spring when everything came back to life.

  “Good morning Becky Sue,” Cindy called out as she opened her door, propping it open with a brick to let the aromatic smells of her potions and lotions into the air to call the tourists in. “Did you hear who’s back in town?” Her short grey curly hair was scattered across her head as the wind lifted it, making her look wilder than she actually was.

  “No. Let me guess, Macy?” Macy was Cindy’s granddaughter who’d graduated high school last spring only to fall in love with a passing tourist a week later. She moved out of town within two months of graduation. By Christmas she was already expecting her first baby. Becky Sue had been counting down months until Macy got thrown out in the cold and had to return home.

  “Why ever would you say a thing like that?” Maybe because Becky Sue had become a cynic. There were no happily ever afters. Those only existed in fairy tales or in legends like the book Uncle Melvin had written about the Sparkers. “No. Ray is back in town. I ran into Mary Beth at the gas station this morning and she said he came in yesterday. Alone.” Cindy gave me a side long look and winked. “Seems he’s finally moving back home.”

  “Ray is like my brother.” Her face screwed up into an are-you-crazy-look but somewhere deep inside a little voice called her a liar. He’d been her best friend growing up. They’d been almost inseparable, but sometime in their teens something had changed between them. They’d almost fallen for each other. But then there was the barn incident. Becky Sue swore she’d never let herself be disillusioned again. After that, they’d sort of drifted apart. Mary Beth, his mom, would stop in occasionally and share news of him and other gossip with her so she’d sort of kept track of him these last nine years since he left.

  “Like doesn’t mean is. You know it’s perfectly legal to marry up to your third cousin. As a matter of fact, just last month Henry and Susie married and they’re siblings by marriage.”

  “I heard about that.” Henry’s mother had passed away when he was at the tender age of eleven. Susie’s father had run off with a hippy tourist when she was nine. Henry’s father had married Susie’s mother when they were both kids were hitting their teens. Technically there was no blood relation between them but that didn’t detract from the fact it was still just a little weird.

  “Just remember you won’t stay young forever and you don’t want to die a lonely old maid.” She shook her finger at Becky Sue and her whole arm jiggled.

  Yep, that’s right. Don’t want to be a lonely old skinny maid, because obviously men make you fat. It was inevitable. She’d seen it happen to nearly every single girl that’d stayed in town and settled down. Then all you do is pop out babies and all your energy is channeled into raising them. No self care. No business. No independence. “Yes, Cindy, I know.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot. I’ll be over in a minute. I have a new soap for you to try. It’s mint and lavender. I whipped it up last night. This should make you smell good enough to attract a man.”

  Great, now she stunk too. Cindy ducked back into her shop to retrieve the magical bar of soap that would end Becky Sue’s spinster hood. Becky Sue briefly considered ducking out the back door, but she didn’t run from anything, even Cindy. Or maybe she didn’t run because she had nowhere to go and her mom still needed her here to take care of her.

  A bench sat beside the large window of Becky’s shop. She waited for Cindy there afraid if she went inside she’d never see the end of Cindy today. From her vantage point, she could see Vernon’s gas station. There were three cars in the parking lot. A woman had a dog on a leash off on the side in the grass letting it do its business. A man stood off to the side of the doorway smoking. Another man was filling up the family car with gas. On the opposite side of the block, Sam was hooking up a trailer full of canoes, readying them to take out to the tourists. Yep, Thunderhead was waking from its winter nap.

  Cindy bustled back out with a carefully wrapped soap square in her hand. “Here, smell it.” She had it practically shoved up Becky Sue’s nose before she could decline.

  “It smells beautiful. I bet it’ll turn into a bestseller.”

  “This one is for you. It’ll do wonders for your skin too. It’s one of the goat milk recipes I enhanced.”

  Becky Sue looked down at her skin. Did it need wonders done to it? Was it really that bad? Sure she was pale from being inside most the winter working on quilts for this spring, but it wouldn’t take long for her normal healthy tan to return as she returned to her garden. In fact, she was planning to start planting her peas t
his week

  “Thanks Cindy, I’ll give it a try.” Hey, it was something free she didn’t have to buy, she wouldn’t complain.

  No, Becky Sue wasn’t poor. She liked to think of herself as frugal. She worked hard and earned enough to take care of herself and help her mom a little. She’d been saving up for a vacation since she hadn’t been on one since opening her shop seven years ago. If the next two years turned out good, she should finally be able to have saved enough to take the cruise she’d been dreaming about. “I better get in here and get to work. This quilt isn’t going to stitch itself.”

  “What are you making now?”

  “A patriotic themed star quilt.”

  “Oh, that should go good. You got your grandmother’s talent that’s for sure. She was a good woman. I see a lot of her in you.”

  Becky Sue gave her a half crooked smile. “Thanks.” She darted into her shop, bar of soap in hand, and hoped Cindy would get a clue. Most days she didn’t mind her and her chatter, but some days she just liked to be left alone. Today was one of those days.

  Her mind whirled with questions concerning Ray’s reappearance as she lifted her quilt already on the hoop and began hand stitching it together. She could only assume he was divorced now. Was he living back at his parents, or was his dad still pissed about the barn? Why, of all places, did he want to come back here? There were no real jobs. Most people worked for themselves or traveled to work in bigger areas, such as Harrison which was a good forty-five minutes away.

  Becky Sue was deep in thought, fingers flying to and from the quilt leaving neat tiny stitches behind when footsteps in the doorway called her attention away.

  “Hello,” she set the quilt aside and stood to greet her customers. “How are ya’ll today?”

  The man she’d seen pumping gas was standing behind a woman roughly the same age as herself with two little dark haired girls in tow.

  “Good.” The woman eyed the quilts hanging on her homemade racks. “Are all these handmade?”