by Ronald Kelly
“But I don’t even know the old guy,” he complained. “I think I’ve only seen him once or twice in my entire life.”
His mother took a sip of her orange juice. “Oh, you’ve seen him more times than that,” she said. “I know we haven’t kept in touch with Papa as much as we should have, especially after your grandmother died, but who can these days? Especially if they have a career?”
“It’ll be weird,” continued the boy. “I won’t know anybody there. I’ll be miserable!”
“You’re being too melodramatic, Keith,” she said. “You’ll end up having a fabulous time. There are all sorts of things to do on your grandpa’s farm and you’ll have your cousin Rusty to pal around with.”
Keith had to strain his brain to even remember Rusty McLeod. All he could recall of his cousin was that he was red-headed, skinny as a beanpole, and meaner than a snake with a belly rash.
“But this place you’re sending me to,” he protested. “What’s it called?”
“Harmony,” said his father with a trace of disdain in his voice.
“Yeah, Harmony,” said Keith. “I know what that’s going to be like. Hicksville, USA, that’s what. Just a bunch of tobacco-chewing rednecks and hayseeds with double-digit IQs.”
“Well, it’s not all that bad,” said Felicia.
“Says who?” asked Robert, arching his brows over the top of his paper.
“You’re not helping matters, dear,” she said sweetly. “I’m trying to be encouraging to Keith. Sarcasm will only make him more resistant.”
“Sorry,” he replied, then turned his eyes back to the stock report. He saw that Microsoft was down a point and groaned softly.
“Really, Keith, don’t be such a whiny baby,” his mother told him. “You knew that we’ve had this trip planned since the first of the year.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know I was going to be shipped off to Mayberry R.F.D.,” grumbled Keith.
“Please, darling,” she said, iron replacing the honey in her voice. “No more complaints. Just accept the fact and learn to live with it.”
“But, Mom – !”
“You heard your mother, young man,” said his father sternly, using his intimidating lawyer voice.
Keith clammed up. He knew that he had lost whenever Robert Bishop used the term “young man” in his presence.
He frowned and sat there quietly, picking at his omelet with the tines of his fork. Harmony, he thought to himself. What did I ever do to deserve this?
After his parents had left for work, Keith left the Bishops’ townhouse condominium near Woodruff Park. It was an elegant structure of tan brick and light gray trim that had cost his mother and father a good $500,000, and that had been eight years ago. Keith figured it was probably worth twice that much now.
He locked the door behind him and started toward the Peachtree Center Mall. Keith arrived at the shopping complex a few minutes after it opened at ten. Even at that early hour, the place was crowded. Most were kids his age or older, out on summer break with nothing to do but hang around the mall. There were also a few tourists who had journeyed to Atlanta to visit Six Flags, Stone Mountain, or to see the Braves play in the stadium that coming weekend.
Keith’s first stop was the video arcade, his favorite spot in the entire mall. The place was packed with kids similar to himself, as far as adolescent fashion and attitude was concerned. Keith’s dark brown hair was styled into a spiky flattop with the sides and back of his head clipped close. He wore an oversized Atlanta Braves t-shirt, black shorts, and Air Nikes with the laces loosened and the tongue protruding. In all, he looked like any other urban kid who lived within the limits of a big city like Atlanta.
He headed straight for the Lethal Enforcer game and was glad to see that no one had hogged it before he got his chance. Keith was a great fan of police and private eye shows, and even hard-boiled detective novels, when he found one that didn’t bore him out of his skull. So this game, more than any other in the arcade, appealed to that particular interest of his.
Keith quickly changed a twenty at the counter, then ran to the game and began depositing quarters in the slot. He withdrew the blue plastic magnum revolver from its holder, then chose the bank robbery scene, his favorite. Soon, he was blasting away at ski-masked terrorists toting Uzis and thugs decked out in trench coats and sunglasses, carrying sawed-off shotguns.
He played the game for an hour before he finally grew tired of it. Besides, his right hand had begun to cramp from pulling the trigger so much. He took the escalator upstairs to the food court. He bought himself a hamburger and a chocolate milkshake, and ate it at one of the dining tables.
While he sat there, Keith had time to reflect on the discussion he had endured with his parents that morning. Not that it had really been much of a discussion at all. They had laid down the law to him and mapped out their plans for the remainder of his summer, seemingly with no consideration for his wants or feelings. They were like that; more concerned about themselves – their careers, their social standing, their vacations – than they were about him. He couldn’t even remember the last time his father had congratulated him on a good grade or his mother had told him that she loved him.
Not that he really needed all that emotional crap. Keith was a loner of sorts. He was fiercely independent and unaccustomed to being told what he could and couldn’t do. And that was one thing that bothered him the most about where he would be staying during his parents’ trip to Europe. They were packing him off to the boonies and he had absolutely no say in the matter. And, frankly, that pissed him off.
Well, if that’s the way they want to play hardball, then fine, he thought to himself as he finished his burger and got up, leaving his trash on the table. I’ll just be a colossal pain in the ass for Grandpa McLeod and everybody in that hick town. They won’t know what him them after I rattle their cage!
Keith walked along the rows of shops and boutiques, his anger slowly giving way to boredom, and then boredom to mischief. He spotted a Champs sporting goods store and his lips curled into a wicked grin. Through the open front, he could see the only sales person on duty waiting on a couple of customers at the counter. He ducked into the store without drawing the man’s attention and made his way down one of the back aisles.
He reached the clothing section and began to browse absently through nylon warm-up jackets and running apparel. When he was certain that no one was watching – and that there were no security cameras in the place – he took a black and red Braves cap from a rack on the wall. Keith studied it for a moment, then stuck the tag up under the crown and tugged it over his head.
Slowly, he made his way back down the aisle, toward the open corridor of the mall. He peeked around a display of golf clubs and nine irons. The cashier was waiting on another batch of customers.
Quickly, Keith walked toward the entrance way, eager to make his exit. There were no electronic theft-detection panels to walk through, like at other stores. If he could only get outside without being noticed, he would be in the clear.
Suddenly, just as he was almost out the doorway, a man’s voice called out.
“Hey!”
Keith froze in his tracks. He swallowed dryly, then slowly turned around.
Fortunately, it wasn’t the cashier who had spoken. Instead, it was a man calling to his son, wanting to show him a selection of aluminum baseball bats. The tension drained from Keith’s body and, with a sigh of relief, he left the shop. Swiftly, he dodged out of sight, heading toward the escalator and the lower level of the mall.
The stunt he had just pulled reminded him of the remark his father had made earlier that morning. Behavioral problems. Keith really couldn’t deny that he had been in more trouble than most of the kids he knew. He had been caught skipping school several times, as well as participating in other forms of mischief that would have once branded him as a juvenile delinquent. The shoplifting was another matter. He had never been caught at it and his parents had no earthly idea that he had
ever done such a thing, although Keith had gotten away with the act a couple of dozen times. Sometimes he felt a little guilty about the lifting, but, hey, a lot of kids did it these days, mostly for the thrill. Keith was just a little better and a little more prolific at it than most.
He turned the cap around on his head until the bill was pointed backwards. He smiled when he hopped off the escalator and saw a Ray-Ban sunglasses store directly across from him.
“Such a boss hat deserves some cool shades to go with it,” he said to himself. Keith carefully cased the joint and, satisfied that it was a piece of cake, entered the shop, determined to exercise his secret skill once again.
CHAPTER TWO
Jasper McLeod climbed out of his old Chevy pickup truck and shut the door. The hinges squealed like fingernails on a blackboard. The elderly man made a mental note to spray a little WD-40 on them. Of course, he had already reminded himself a hundred times before in the past two years, but had yet to remember it when he was back at his workshop.
It was late evening, nearly seven-thirty. The sky was streaked with broad splashes of purple and pink. Jasper knew the sunset wouldn’t last much longer, however. The colors were already darkening. Soon, twilight would engulf the little town of Harmony. But, more than likely, that wouldn’t do a thing for the temperature. It had been in the mid-nineties all day long and, even thought the sun had set, the air was still uncomfortably hot and muggy.
He made his way past a bank of old gasoline pumps – not digital, but the kind with revolving numbers – and crossed the crushed gravel to the weathered structure of Hill’s General Store. The old building looked the same as it had back when Jasper was a child, when the business had been owned and operated by Wilbur Hill. It was run by Wilbur’s son, Edwin, now. It had been since the late 1940’s.
The outer walls of the store were covered with bare wooden slats and rusty metal signs advertising Orange Crush and Beechnut Chewing Tobacco.
The roof was constructed of sheet tin, corroded a dark orange in places and sporting sheet tin, corroded a dark orange in places and sporting new patches of gleaming metal in others. The porch was high and the steps leading up to it were two-by-fours that had withstood the ravages of time – as well as the weight of countless customers – for nearly a century.
No, they just didn’t make places like this anymore. Everything nowadays had to be constructed of concrete, glass, and compressed particle board. This was hand-hewn lumber and hammered tin; materials of a bygone age. That’s why Jasper felt most at home there. Even more so than his own farm, or at least during the past couple of years.
Spryly, Jasper made his way up the steps to the porch. It was cluttered with bags of chicken feed and peat moss for planting begonias, empty whiskey barrels bought from the Jack Daniel’s distillery over in Lynchburg, and all manner of garden implements; hoes, rakes, and long-handled scythes for harvesting hay and alfalfa, just in case someone had the notion to go back to the ways before tractor and combine had been invented. The merchandise sat on the porch of Hill’s store from mid-March to early-October, and he never brought it in at night. Not that anyone would steal the stuff. Harmony had a few bad apples but, all in all, it was a good, Christian town with more than its fair share of honest folks. In big cities like Nashville or Chattanooga, storeowners invested in iron bars and fancy burglar alarm systems. In Harmony, people invested in the trust of neighbors who had lived there since birth. It might seem a little naïve, but there in the heart of Hawkshaw County it was pretty much the way things were.
He opened the screen door and stepped inside. Jasper’s entrance was heralded by a copper cowbell that hung above the sill of the door. It jangled loudly in his ears, causing him to nearly jump out of his skin. He had been coming in and out of that store for most of his ninety-five years, and he had never quite gotten used to the bell in all that time.
“Edwin?” he called out.
“I’m back here in the stockroom,” answered his best friend from beyond an open door at the rear of the store. “I’ll be out directly.”
“Take your time,” he replied. Jasper walked over to an ancient Coca Cola box – the kind where the bottles stood up in the bottom – and rummaged around until he found what he was looking for. He pulled out a frosty bottle of Sun Drop and shucked off the cap with the chest’s built-in opener. He held the bottle against his forehead for a second, savoring its coolness. Then he upended it and took a long swallow. The soda pops they sold in aluminum cans in those new-fangled vending machines just weren’t as cold or tasted as good as the glass-bottled drinks that Edwin Hill kept in the old-fashioned refrigerated chest.
Jasper stood there and looked around the store. Like the exterior, the interior didn’t look much different than it had since Jasper was a tadpole. Wooden shelves held canned goods, boxed cereal, and cake mixes, and stacks of chambray work shirts and denim overalls in the dry goods section. On the long counter stood gallon jars of five cent bubble gum and sticks of brown horehound candy, as well as cardboard displays of Tic Tacs and Slim Jims. Jasper breathed in deeply. The smell had never changed either. The store was still rich with the scents of chewing tobacco, cider vinegar, and peppermint. Jasper relished the aroma. He thought about the new Wal-Mart over in Manchester. You couldn’t smell a dadblamed thing in there, just purified air and that was all.
The old man ambled toward the back of the store, where an ancient potbelly stove of cast iron stood, along with a couple of high-backed chairs. Between the chairs was a flimsy TV table with a checkerboard and checkers laid out on its top. Edwin had already set up their game, which they had indulged in every Friday night for the past fifty-odd years.
Jasper took his place on the right side of the board and stacked his black checkers in a single column. He took another swallow of Sun Drop, then cracked his knuckles loudly. He was primed and ready to go.
A moment later, Edwin Hill emerged from the stockroom. He was a short, chubby man who wore black horn-rimmed glasses. Physically, Jasper McLeod was the complete opposite of his friend; tall and gangly, with a thick shock of silvery hair. The two had been best friends for most of their lives; Edwin was ninety-seven years old, while Jasper was ninety-five.
“You ready to get your skinny butt whupped again?” asked Edwin, taking the chair opposite Jasper.
“That ain’t likely to happen tonight,” said Jasper with a grin. “To tell the truth, I’m feeling right lucky.”
Edwin eyed his friend curiously. “Now, I ain’t seen you smile like that since before Gladys died. You haven’t been nipping at the bottle, have you?”
Jasper laughed. “No, that ain’t it. I reckon I’m just looking forward to having my grandson stay with me for a while.”
The storekeeper nodded. “That’s right. You’re picking him up at the airport this weekend.”
“Saturday noon,” replied the elderly farmer.
“What’s his name again?”
“Keith.”
“Yeah, right.” Edwin nodded as he moved one of his checkers forward. “Can’t say that I’d know the young’un if he came up and looked me square in the face, though.”
“Actually, I feel about the same way, I haven’t seen him in so long,” admitted Jasper. “Been pert near two years now, the way I figure it.”
“A shame how Felicia’s treated you since she went off to Atlanta and married that big-shot lawyer. Just up and forgot about you and Gladys, and snubbed the folks of Harmony to boot. Why, she hardly said two words to me when they were down for her mama’s funeral. Then, as soon as the casket was lowered, they were in that fancy Mercedes of theirs, squealing tires and heading back for home.”
“Aw, they weren’t that bad,” said Jasper, sliding one of his black checkers toward the center of the board.
“Well, just about.” Edwin worked a chaw of Redman in the pouch of one cheek, then spat a stream of tobacco juice into an empty Maxwell House can that sat next to the stove. Years of misplaced shots had left a gummy puddle of dark br
own spittle around the base of the coffee can, permanently affixing the makeshift cuspidor to the floorboards.
“They’ve got their reasons, I reckon,” said Jasper, although his voice held a trace of doubtfulness. “They live way off in Georgia and Felicia and her husband both have careers that keep them busy. I don’t expect them to run up here on a whim and visit me every month or two.”
“Every year or two is more like it,” said Edwin. “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Jasper, but your daughter’s turned her back on you. She’s gotten caught up in all the glitz and glamour and high society, and forgotten her roots. She thinks she’s too damned sophisticated to associate with the folks she grew up with. Why, I remember when she weren’t nothing but a skinny tomboy of a girl roaming around Harmony in her bare feet and her hair up in pigtails.”
Jasper smiled fondly. “Yeah, but that was a long time ago.”
“Not all that long,” protested Edwin. “Fact of the matter is, she just don’t have no cause to treat you the way she does. She’s more concerned about her life in Atlanta than she is about her own family.”
“Aw, quit your fussing,” said Jasper.
Edwin shrugged. “It just gripes the hell outta me to see you treated that way. Frank sure wouldn’t turn his back on you like that.”
Jasper knew Edwin was right. His only son, Frank, was a cross-country trucker and he didn’t get to see him as much as he would have liked, but they still had a firm and close relationship. Felicia was another story and it was her indifferent behavior that irked Edwin the most. Felicia had swept her family and her hometown beneath the rug, and there was no denying it.
That was what made it particularly painful to swallow; the fact that every word of what Edwin said was true. Felicia had once been a happy and affectionate girl who enjoyed climbing trees, swimming in creeks, and roaming the Tennessee backwoods. Then she had grown up and gone off to college on a scholarship. After that, she had opened her psychiatry practice in downtown Atlanta and met Robert Bishop. In a span of only a few years, Felicia had changed. The further she climbed the ladder of success, the more alienated she became toward those who had raised her, as well as the town that had nurtured her since birth. Jasper like to think that the old Felicia was still there, hidden somewhere beneath the surface. But, if the last few visits were an indication, he was afraid that she was gone for good. It seemed as if her rare visits to Harmony were purely out of daughterly duty and nothing more.
