by JL Bryan
“Excuse me?” Neesha asked Larry, with an arched eyebrow.
“I mean, that big red devil dick, you slut?” Larry corrected himself.
“Call her that one more time, Larry,” Seth said. “I fucking dare you.”
“Seth, relax,” Jenny whispered.
“I’m not scared to say the truth!” Larry yelled. “I read all about witchery on a website. I know how it works. Jenny Mittens is the Devil’s tramp, his concubine, his harlot—”
Seth dropped his bookbag and charged directly at Larry. Larry screeched and ran away, across the grassy lawn, towards the parking lot. He ran as fast as he could, but Seth had been a starting running back since middle school.
Seth grabbed Larry’s bony shoulders. Larry whirled around and brandished a full-sized black Bible at Seth, as if he expected Seth to shrink from it like a vampire.
“Get thee back!” Larry screamed, his voice breaking.
“Don’t hurt him, Seth!” Jenny yelled. Larry was gangly and narrow, and Seth could do real damage to him without much effort, even by accident.
Larry slapped the Bible against Seth’s face, and Seth rolled his eyes. He snatched it from Larry’s hands, and Larry shrieked. Seth returned the book to him by slamming it into Larry’s abdomen, and Larry doubled over and staggered back a few feet, clutching the Bible to his gut. He finally lost his balance and fell backward in the grass.
Seth stalked toward the flagpole, eyes blazing. The prayer circle had broken up, and now people pulled together into little defensive clumps. Seth glared among them, waiting to see if anyone would dare approach him. He flipped over the card table that Christians Act! set up every morning. An open box of Dunkin Donuts Munchkins, a stack of pamphlets, and a paper donation cup full of change all tumbled to the ground and spilled out across the grass.
“Get out of here!” Seth said. “All of you!” He ran towards the largest group of boys, who scattered, screaming. The other little clumps broke apart, and everyone ran towards the safety of the school building.
Seth stood by the overturned table, still angry and ready to fight, but there was nobody left. Jenny picked up his bookbag and brought it to him.
“That was stupid, Seth,” Jenny said. “Really sweet. Super sweet. Like, amazing. But stupid. You haven’t been dealing with this crap all your life. Now they just get angrier. Who knows what they’ll do next?”
“Whatever they do, I’ll take care of it,” Seth said. “No one treats you like that. I promised to keep you safe, remember?”
“I remember.” Jenny kissed Seth, then held him for a minute, her head against his thumping heart.
“We should report them to Principal Harris,” Seth said.
“He’ll take their side,” Jenny said. “Everybody takes Ashleigh’s side. Come on, let’s get to class.”
Friday night, Jenny rode to Vernon Hill in her dad’s Ram, sitting between her dad on the driver’s side and Seth on the passenger side. She felt very safe between the two of them, safer than she’d ever felt. These were her people, her family.
They spent more than an hour at Lowe’s, a place that her dad never left without buying more than he’d originally planned. He picked up some lumber, tarpaper and shingles for the shed extension he wanted to build. Together, they’d completed the fence between the house and the shed, and painted it with half a dozen old paints, which her dad had sealed and saved from jobs over the years. The front side of the fence was red, white and blue, while the back was orange, purple and green.
Seth bought Jenny all the plants she picked out for her front yard, now that all the junk had been moved behind the fence. She wanted azaleas, a couple of baby willow trees, and a Knock Out rosebush. After they’d carted everything out and loaded it into the back of the Ram, Seth glanced furtively back towards the store. Then he reached into his shirt and pulled out a big blue forget-me-not blossom he’d stolen from a plant inside.
“This reminded me of your eyes,” Seth said as he handed it to Jenny.
“Oh, Seth, a forget-me-not!” Jenny sniffed it and twirled it in her fingers. You know what these are? Ladies wore them to show they were thinking about their lovers.”
“Uh, yeah,” Seth said. “I totally knew that.”
Jenny rolled her eyes. She tucked the flower into her hair, then lay her hands on Seth’s face.
“Thank you. It’s beautiful,” she said. And they kept looking at each other.
Her dad cleared his throat. “Y’all want to stop at the Waffle House on the way back? I’m getting kinda hungry.”
“Okay, Daddy.” Jenny forced herself to turn away from Seth.
The Vernon Hill Waffle House, like most of its species, was a low brick diner under a big yellow sign, with glass walls overlooking the interstate below. There were a few old men at the counter, a black family with little kids in one booth, a very white gang of darkly-clad teenagers in another. The book pile in front of the teenagers indicated they were into the role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade.
They took an outside booth, with a window, and a waitress appeared and laid out their napkins and silverware on their table. She was fortyish, a little plump and very sunburned, her frizzy yellow hair tied back from her face.
“Hey, honey,” she said to Jenny’s dad. “Nice to see you back. Bringing the kids this time?”
Jenny lifted an eyebrow at her dad.
“This is my daughter, Jenny,” he said. “And her boyfriend Seth.”
“Hey there, Jenny and Seth.” Her gaze lingered on Seth. “I guess some girls have all the luck.”
Jenny blushed.
“I’m June,” the waitress said, and the yellow nametag on her pin-striped shirt confirmed it.
“That’s pretty,” Jenny said. “Like June Carter.”
“That’s right! My daddy named me for her. I still listen to my Carter Family albums. You never hear them on the radio anymore.”
“Me, too,” Jenny said. “My momma left with me a bunch of their old records.”
“Didn’t have to say ‘old,’” June said, with a laugh. “All right, what y’all drinking?”
After she left, Jenny turned to her dad and whispered, “What was that? Do you have a secret Waffle House romance, Daddy?”
“Naw, she’s just waited on me a couple times, when I come to Lowe’s.”
“She remembers you, though,” Jenny said. “And she called you ‘Honey.’”
“It’s Waffle House, Jenny. They call everybody that.”
“She’s kind of hot,” Seth said. “Why don’t you ask her out?”
“That’s not a good idea. Waitresses get tired of that,” he said. The way he said “idea” rhymed with “mighty.”
“She won’t get offended,” Jenny said. “It’s kind of a compliment, if you think about it.”
“I don’t know.” He watched June lift a slice of apple pie from the display by the cash register. “Been a whole mess of years since I dated anybody, Jenny.”
“There’s only one way to change that,” Jenny pointed out.
“Maybe I’ll ask her sometime, when it ain’t so busy.”
Jenny looked around. Most of the tables were empty.
“Daddy,” she said. “Somebody told me that life goes by just like that.” Jenny snapped her fingers, though the effect through her blue wool gloves wasn’t quite what she wanted.
“Want me to hook it up, Mr. Morton?” Seth asked. “I bet I can.”
“He could, Daddy,” Jenny said. “Ladies can’t say no to Seth.” Her dad gave Jenny a sharp, questioning look, and she ducked her head and took a sudden interest in her silverware.
“I appreciate it,” he told Seth. “But I don’t think so.”
“Do you like her?” Seth asked.
“So far as I know,” he replied. “But you can’t just ask a lady on a date when she’s working.”
Seth dug around in his pocket. “Somebody give me a quarter. I’ll pretend I’m just going to the jukebox, and I’ll talk to her.”
Jenny found one and flipped it to Seth, who winked at her and got to his feet.
“I thought I said no,” her dad said, while Seth walked away. “You kids don’t listen too good.”
“Too late now,” Jenny told him. She watched Seth step slowly toward the jukebox, which was behind her dad and out of his line of sight. June passed the table to drop off their drinks, and Seth stopped her on her way back behind the counter. He lay a hand on her arm, and June immediately straightened up and smiled as any aches and pains in her body dissolved.
“What do you recommend?” Seth held up the quarter.
“54B,” June said.
“Listen…” Seth leaned in and whispered to her, and Jenny couldn’t hear him. June’s eyes widened and she looked at the back of Jenny’s dad’s head. They whispered to each other for a minute. Then June circled back behind the counter, while Seth dropped in the quarter.
The Waffle House was filled with “Black Velvet.” Seth wore a cocky smile as he sat down.
“I think she’s interested,” Seth said. “She said as long as you don’t drink. She’s had enough drinkers.”
“Never touch it.” Her dad smiled at Jenny.
June seemed extra friendly when she brought their food. She managed to ask Jenny’s dad three times if he wanted anything else.
When she eventually dropped the check by the table, Seth flipped it over and tapped it. On the back of the yellow paper, she’d signed her name in big cursive letters. There was also a smiley face. And a phone number.
“I should have bet somebody money on this,” Seth said.
“What did you say to her?” Jenny’s dad asked.
“I told her you raised your daughter by yourself,” Seth said. “Instant melt. You should use that one.”
“It’s kinda personal,” her dad said.
“It’s kinda going to get you laid,” Seth told him.
“Seth!” Jenny clapped her hands over her face, wishing she could turn invisible. That, at least, would be a useful power.
But her dad was looking over at June, who pumped vanilla flavoring into a glass of Coke. She saw him looking and gave a sly little smile.
“Sunday is Valentine’s Day,” Seth said. He slid the ticket closer to Jenny’s dad. “And she doesn’t have anybody. I’m just saying.”
“Maybe I should go and pay,” her dad said.
“Maybe you should,” Jenny agreed.
They spent Saturday straightening up the front yard. Seth and Jenny raked pine straw from the woods, while her dad chopped down the high weeds and grass with a push mower. They used the straw to turn the bare, oil-stained patches of yard into little islands. They planted an azalea in each island, the rose bush by the front steps, the willows further out from the house.
Later, when her dad was ready for his first date in more than twenty years, Jenny cut some flowers from her new rosebush so he could give them to June. Jenny and Seth stood in the driveway and waved as he drove away in the freshly-washed truck. He would be taking his new lady friend to The Catfish House in Apple Creek. If she wanted to come back with him, he had coffee and a little chocolate cake waiting.
“They grow up so fast,” Jenny said, and Seth laughed. “And what are you and me doing for Valentine’s?” she asked.
“You said you were cooking for me.”
“Did I say a thing like that?” Jenny teased. “Okay. But we have to go by Piggly Wiggly. And you have to give me money. And wait in the car while I shop.”
When they eventually reached Seth’s house, she banned him from the kitchen while she cooked. He filled the first story of the house with Patsy Cline, which made her smile as she worked for the next two hours.
She brought him supper in the dining room: shrimp and grits, cornbread that was a little on the sweet side like Jenny liked (and her father hated, preferring his cornbread as rough and dry as Brillo pads), green beans she’d flavored with pieces of bacon and crushed red pepper, and a simple fruit salad with melons, cherries and coconut to sweeten up the Valentine’s meal.
Seth had set her place at the table with a vase of assorted roses, a box of Godiva chocolates, and an envelope printed with red and pink hearts. Jenny’s own heart fluttered at the sight of all this. It was really her first Valentine’s Day, she thought.
As they ate, they tried to guess how her dad’s date was going. Jenny made sure he had Seth’s phone number and told him that if he didn’t call, she would take it as a good sign.
For dessert, they had strawberries dipped in a chocolate sauce Jenny had purchased at the store, but allowed Seth to believe she had made from scratch.
She gave Seth his present, which had been first manufactured as a brown wool hunting jacket sometime in the 1960s. She’d sewn some new black material at the collar, pockets and wrists, and remade all the buttons with vintage bottlecaps and old coins she’d picked from a box at the Five and Dime.
He paraded around in front of her, striking poses, flipping up the collar. “Nobody has a coat like this!”
“You like it?”
“Love it, Jenny.” He kissed her, then put the envelope in her hands. “Now you go.”
Jenny carefully peeled the envelope open without ripping any part of it. The card had a picture of two baby lambs nuzzling together. The inside read I WOOLY WOOLY WUV EWE! When she opened the card, a folded slice of blue-tinged paper tumbled out and landed on the table.
“What is that?” Jenny asked.
“It’s your present,” Seth said. “Open it.”
Jenny eyed him while she unfolded the sheet. It had a thick blue border veined with white, and a golden seal with a palmetto tree in the upper left corner. The page’s header read:
State of South Carolina
Certificate of Title
Of A Vehicle
The paper identified Jenny Morton of Fallen Oak, SC as the legal owner of a 1975 Lincoln Continental.
“Seth? What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Seth said. “I just went by Merle Sanderson’s house and paid him for the car, so you could keep it.”
“You’re kidding.”
“He really didn’t charge that much. He said he couldn’t decide between giving a Morton discount and charging a Barrett premium.”
Jenny laughed. Then she held the page and stared at it for a while. It was really her car now. She and her dad wouldn’t have to share the truck. She could go where she wanted, whenever she wanted, without asking anybody. She felt her eyes sting.
“Seth, this is amazing.” She sat in his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. “God, I’m actually crying. You bastard. That was way better than my coat.”
“Nah,” Seth said. “I didn’t make the car or anything.”
She kissed him. She brushed his lower lip with her finger. “I want one more thing. Can you guess?”
“I think I can.” Seth smiled.
“I want to see the third floor. The haunted part.”
“That wasn’t my guess,” he said.
“Come on, Seth. What’s up there?”
“Just my great-grandfather’s room.” His smile shrunk away. “They had to move all of it from the second floor, because of the all the racket his ghost made after he died.”
“Shut up,” Jenny said.
“That’s what my uncle told me,” Seth said. “He never visits. He says he still has nightmares about this house.”
“Seth, that’s not cool,” Jenny said. “I have to sleep here.”
“Yeah, so do I,” Seth said. “Which is why I stay away from great-grandpa’s stuff. They say he’s territorial about it.”
“Come on,” Jenny said. “You haven’t ever seen a ghost. Have you?”
“No.”
“I knew it.”
“I’ve heard his footsteps up there. And his adding machine clacking.”
“When?”
“When I was a kid,” Seth said.
“That could have been anything.” Jenny stood up and held out her hand.
“Take me.”
Seth stood up, but he looked reluctant. They had to go to his father’s office to find the third-floor keys, which were buried in the back of a file cabinet drawer.
They followed the curving front stairs to the second floor. Seth unlocked a tall door by the head of the stairs.
“Are you sure?” he asked her.
“Stop being dramatic,” Jenny said.
The door opened onto a steep, very dusty staircase. Seth flicked on the single electric bulb hanging from a string.
“Ladies first,” Seth said.
“Still not funny,” Jenny told him.
“Scared?”
Jenny scowled at him. She elbowed him aside and started up the stairs, sneezing as the dust puffed up under her tennis shoes.
The steps widened and grew less steep, and began to curve along the wall. Jenny realized it had once been part of one continuous staircase spiraling from the first floor up to the huge windows and skylights of the third floor, all of which were now filled in or boarded up. It must have been a breathtaking entrance hall in its time.
The stairway flattened into a balcony that curved around to the third-floor gallery. Looking over the balustrade would once have given a sweeping view of the entrance hall below. Now the big, empty space in the center was sealed with unpainted boards. Layers of spiderwebs filled the rafters, hiding the ceiling.
“Why did y’all cut it off like this?” Jenny asked.
“My grandfather did it,” Seth whispered. “He was scared of his father’s ghost. He moved my great-grandfather’s room and personal things up here. Then he had workers demolish all the staircases to the third floor and seal them off. He left this part as the only way up. Then he moved his own bedroom down to the first floor, to get away. The last years of his life, he lived in an old servant cottage out back to escape the main house.”
“That’s crazy,” Jenny said.
“He wasn’t crazy.” Seth said it quickly, automatically. Then he added, “I mean, not if it’s haunted.”
“And what if it isn’t?” Jenny worked her way down the hall, which was cluttered with old furniture, stacks of framed daguerreotypes, glass cases with their contents hidden by thick dust. Dust and cobwebs covered everything. The dry floorboards creaked under her feet.
