Annette kept a fast-paced clip as they trekked the condemned scenery. There were pointy branches, uneven trails and mischievously placed jagged rocks of varying size in the dense woodland.
“So tell me, Mr. Cauliflower. What happened after you found the asphodel in the storage room?”
“Well,” Nathaniel started to say, but in keeping up with her, he felt winded. He had not had this much exercise in a while and it showed. “Every night we would find ourselves in the same storage room waiting for the door to reappear so that we could investigate it more and, perhaps, get a spot of irrefutable evidence.”
“Did it?”
“No, it didn’t. And we often got in trouble with Thomas for staying up so late. School was about to start in a few weeks and our sleep schedules were out of whack. One night at dinner Thomas set his foot down stating that we were ‘Men, by God’ and we should stop with this ‘haunted house ridiculousness.’ Jonas insisted that the door existed and showed his father the asphodel to prove it. Thomas insisted, ‘You boys need to start focusing on other things like sports or making new friends or your upcoming schoolwork. You’re scaring Justine.’ Thomas didn’t want to hear another word about it. Back then, I considered myself a fairly well-behaved lad so I did what was expected of me. Jonas, on the other hand, turned to me. ‘Tell them, Nate!’ he ordered. ‘Tell them what we saw!’ I simply sat there eating the broccoli on my plate, biting my tongue. That’s when Jonas called me a newfound nickname ‘Broccoli.’”
Annette stopped. “Broccoli.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cauliflower. When we met, I pressured you about your name. I didn’t know.”
“Don’t worry.” But it was obvious from Annette’s concerned gaze that she did. “Honestly, Mrs. Slocum, it’s nothing. Let’s keep walking, yes?”
A hill of purple wildflowers with a steep downward slope led to a grassy field. Past that field was a small, rundown motel with an empty parking lot and an indecisive vacancy sign. Annette consulted the map and the compass and devised that the motel was, most likely, their destination.
“Oh no . . .” Annette quickened her pace. “Not Jonathan. Not my violinist! I remember visiting him after his inspiration, Mr. Cauliflower. I visited him at the river walk where he played his instrument for gathering audiences. I remember the benefit concert where he met his future wife! I remember watching him grow progressively older! He called me his muse! Don’t tell me that Jonas stole that storyline from me!”
Moments later, and with Nathaniel a bit worse for the wear as he collapsed in a lobby chair, Annette dinged the front desk’s bell. She stood at the counter nervously tapping the surface of the desk. She spied a wall calendar that read March 25th. The bell was rung again.
The manager appeared. He was in his mid-sixties. His thinning, light colored hair initially led Annette to believe he was bald. There were bags under the manager’s eyes as if he hadn’t slept in days.
“Sorry for your wait,” yawned the manager. He had a raspy voice and a smoker’s cough. “I usually work nights but today I’m working a double. Must have dozed for a spell. What can I do you for?” He was a bit stymied by Annette’s wedding dress but didn’t question it.
“We’re looking for someone who may have stayed here,” Annette told him.
“Oh?” The manager raised his eyebrows.
“It would have been a man with a violin who went by the name of Jonathan.”
Upon hearing the word ‘violin,’ the manager’s face fell. “Oh. Him. You must be Annette Redmond?”
Annette nodded.
The manager gave a deep sigh and told her, “Wait here.”
With that, Annette and Nathaniel were once again left by themselves in the lobby.
“This is the place,” Annette told Nathaniel. Outside the lobby window, Annette could detect the ruined, colored-peg gnarled timeline. “He didn’t seem upset about the sky, did he?”
“To him it’s a typical quiet day,” Nathaniel explained. “When an inspiration ends, we feel the rumbles of thunder and hear the flipping of pages. The same applies to the disarray out there. It’s for our eyes only.”
The manager stepped into the lobby with the shattered violin in hand. “I believe this is what you’re looking for? He was here for a few nights until the stranger in the storm came for him. Jonathan’s visitor wore a black suit and tie and a nasty disposition. Real piece of work. Handed me an envelope.” The night manager transferred the violet envelope with the number “6” written on it to Annette. “He told me not to open it or he would know. He said you’d be by in three days time asking about him,” the manager turned his eyes to the calendar then back at Annette. “And he was right.” He scooted the violin closer to her. “Whatever business you have with this guy, I wish you the best. He doesn’t seem to be the type to cross, if you know what I mean.”
“Thank you,” Annette smiled, taking the envelope and violin.
As Nathaniel stood from the chair the night manager had more to say.
“One more thing. On the night that your friend was taken into the storm . . . there was someone else in the lobby that left right after him joining them in the rain.”
“Someone else?”
“Yeah, a little guy. Sat right there,” the night manager pointed to one of the lobby chairs; specifically the chair Nathaniel had been sitting. “I didn’t get a good look at the face or any of his features. But I do remember he was wearing a black hoodie over his head. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure it was a guy. It could have been a girl – not much to go on, I know.”
“Any witnesses who may have seen him?” Annette asked.
“Me and the vacancy sign, that’s it. No security cameras either.”
“Thank you,” Annette turned to Nathaniel who blanched at this statement.
They left the motel and crossed the parking lot to the hill. Annette walked slower while attempting to open the violet envelope. “I don’t like what he said,” Annette told Nathaniel. “I don’t like it, not one iota.”
From Nathaniel’s view, there hadn’t been dandelions when they had walked down the slope but there were certainly dandelions at present.
*
It was the last week of summer for both Jonas and Nathaniel. They went to church on Wednesday nights to involve themselves in youth group activities. Jonas made acquaintances who, to Nathaniel, were unfriendly. The friends learned of Nathaniel’s nickname and referred to it without abandon. Jonas was playing with these friends while throwing a football in the church’s front lawn. Nathaniel heard them from afar with Dorian Gray in hand; its pages were open and the words exposed to the afternoon light. Nathaniel wore fitted jeans and a blue, short-sleeved buttoned shirt. His back was propped against the church’s concrete sign which had been erected near the lawn’s edge.
The football the boys were playing with was jettisoned through the air and struck Nathaniel in the face. Nathaniel recovered, retrieving his glasses that fell to the grass. He reached the football. With the glasses over his eyes, Nathaniel stared at the boys in the yard who were overly amused by the bookworm’s plight.
“Well, Broccoli?” Jonas called to him. “What are you waiting for? Throw it!”
Nathaniel frowned. Feeling a surge of rage, he tightly gripped the football with both hands and tossed it. The ball didn’t land far from him which caused the boys to convulse in laughter. Nathaniel returned to his library book. There was a crunching on the dried grass. Nathaniel peered to find Jonas with football in hand standing over him. His friends accompanied.
“You know why you couldn’t throw that football, don’t you Broccoli?” Jonas asked. “It’s because you’re always reading those stupid books. Isn’t that right boys?” To which the friends agreed nodding their heads condescendingly. “There are times I wonder what kind of step-brother you’d be without those damn books. I think that maybe, just maybe, you wouldn’t be so much of a momma’s boy! That you’d defend yourself. That you’d be a normal kid. That maybe you’d be
able to throw a football!” He grabbed Dorian Gray hoisting it above Nathaniel’s grasp.
“Give me my book, Jonas!”
“I’ll tell you what,” Jonas told him. “You can have your book as soon as I give you a free lesson on how to throw a football.” He handed the football to one of his friends and said to Nathaniel, “The key to it is that you’ve got to have a good throwing arm, like me. You take the football,” Jonas demonstrated with the book “and do as I do. Watch closely, Broccoli!” He made himself into the proper stance by slightly leaning his body with the arm positioned up over his head. He then took a step backwards and brought his arm forward sending the book through the air and onto the inaccessible roof of the church. “See?” Jonas smirked while taking the football from his friend. “That’s how you throw a football.”
Nathaniel was not amused. Wrath caused him to explode. He repeated the motions that Jonas had taught him but, instead of throwing a football, Nathaniel threw an angry fist into Jonas’ right lip. Nathaniel took off running for his life. He hid around the side of the building feeling miserable. There was nowhere for him to run or hide! He was eight! No matter where he ran, it wouldn’t change the fact that he had to live with Jonas and, more importantly, live with the consequences.
An hour later, the boys sat in the family kitchen of their house explaining to their parents why Jonas’ lip was bleeding. The boys were scolded by both Thomas and Justine and forced to shake hands. Jonas grabbed Nathaniel’s hand and gripped it hard. Nathaniel didn’t wince. He too gripped his step-brother’s hand showing Jonas that he wasn’t afraid.
The boys then parted to recover. Nathaniel found himself rushing through the forest behind their new house. There was a bustling creek and a discarded miniature paper sailboat by the water’s edge. He held the boat close to his glass-covered eyes checking to see if it was water-tight. He placed the sailboat on the water and sighed as it drifted downstream. He wished that he were small enough to sail with it.
Nathaniel’s wish was granted, though not in the approach he was expecting. A damaged encyclopedia volume with faded letters on the spine also floated downstream. He caught it and shook it dry. The leather had been ruined and the words had faded. There was no saving it from its peril. A patch of dandelions appeared. Nathaniel’s eyes then settled on a circus tent on the water’s surface. The front flap was opened.
To make matters worse, Jonas also found his own refuge from his father’s punishment: the branches of an apple tree across town. As he sat in the branches nursing his swollen lip, he heard the subtle sound of a page turning in a book. He looked down and saw a young girl reading. It reminded him of earlier that afternoon with Nathaniel and made him furious. In taking out his leftover aggression, Jonas plucked an apple from the tree. With the same arm and force in which he had chucked Dorian Gray, Jonas tossed the apple at the girl and, in-so-doing, changed Young Annette’s course forever.
*
As she and Nathaniel continued their trek to the church, Annette opened her case files to show him the violet envelopes she had previously collected. “I ran a fiber analysis on these violet envelopes. I was hoping for some kind of helpful watermark, brand or discarded DNA. I had the lab run a spectrometer on them. There were no traces as to where the envelopes had come from or to the identity of the manufacturer. No DNA either. But do you know what they did find? On the inside of the envelopes, near the seams, were handwritten words.”
She showed Nathaniel the three violet envelopes from her dry erase board. Three words stared at him from the three seams: the words “a”, “for” and “me.”
Nathaniel recognized Jonas’ handwriting. “You couldn’t have shown these words to me before?”
Annette scowled. “Coming from the muse who kept your memoir’s seventh life section secretly locked in your library book cabinet?”
“Touché.”
She asked Nathaniel to hold her case files as she opened Jonathan’s violet envelope. Annette found three other envelopes. They were marked with numbers “5” through “3.” The evidence was spoiled as she forced the envelopes apart to reveal the additional three words. She asked for the first three envelopes and flipped through the papers to arrange the words into a complete sentence. The additional words were “works” and “dishonest” and “ally.”
As she did this, Nathaniel stood like a faithful Dr. Watson to her inner Sherlock Holmes.
The papers were then stacked and utilized as a medium-sized flip-book which she showed to him. There were six words in total which read the following statement in Jonas’ hand:
A dishonest ally works for me.
“Well,” Nathaniel sighed as he looked to the dislodged countryside. “It’s like you said earlier. I don’t like it. Not one iota.”
CHAPTER 18: THE REPAIRED LIBRARY BOOK AFFAIR, RETOLD FROM ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW
Jonas’ correspondence to Annette also included four colored pegs which she held in the exposed palm of her right hand. The green peg corresponded to the life of the violinist. The purple peg definitively belonged to her former ex-husband. The cream-colored peg with pink polka-dots had, she assured, belonged to Doris the waitress. Annette surmised, and outwardly concluded, that the blue peg once housed the story of the unknown client Sarah Milbourne. What the envelopes lacked was a reason why Jonas had been stealing his victims but Nathaniel supposed that “not knowing” was part of his hazardous amusement.
As they traversed to the church, Nathaniel felt inside his pocket and ran his fingers along the edges of another envelope. He took out the blue envelope and handed it to Annette saying “For you.”
“Another envelope?” She opened the envelope and found index cards from Management’s library. Frowning, Annette said to Nathaniel “When I was a little girl, I had this mysterious friend who rescued my library books. He would sneak into my room in the middle of the night and stitch the books as if they hadn’t been damaged. I pictured him to be a confident person in my peripherals who protectively observed me. When I was a Ninth Generation muse, I even met that young boy in a root cellar and inspired him to fix my library books. He believed in himself. And I never lost faith in him. Whatever happened to that boy, Mr. Cauliflower?”
“The boy that you trusted may have believed in his talents but he never believed in himself, Mrs. Slocum. I was a purely normal boy who occasionally utilized an extraordinary talent. I was there during recess in 1989 when Jonas tossed your library book, The Hobbit, into the busy street. I watched as you dodged cars to retrieve it. It reminded me of how I felt when Jonas tossed my copy of Dorian Gray onto the roof of the church two years prior. When you disappeared downstairs for dinner that night, I ascended the trellis of climbing roses outside of your childhood window. I took the copy of The Hobbit to the root cellar and gingerly fixed it. I returned it to your pillow without you knowing it was missing. It was the same with Dracula in 1991 when you were twelve. I repaired the book right then and there under the moonlight at your bedroom’s desk.”
Nathaniel remembered having seen young Annette as she had slept in her bed that night. He recalled the exciting gush of hormones. It had been the first time that he had seen Annette in close proximity. Though Annette had been plain looking to anyone else, Nathaniel had guessed there had been more to her. Having been in her room Nathaniel had equated this moment to opening the plain front cover of one of his library books to examine the exemplary prose.
“You didn’t wake me,” Annette said to him thoughtfully. “And when I did stir you were out of the house running through the woods.”
“There was a brief second when I considered staying there, presenting you with the book and introducing myself.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“You would’ve woken to find a boy in your room. Whether I was your rescuer of the library books or not, I didn’t want to scare you.”
Nathaniel recalled having heard Annette that night. He had jumped at the rustling of her bed covers. Young Nathaniel had applied the finis
hing touches with trembling hands. He had then adjusted the book perfectly on her desk and climbed down the trellis. Annette had switched on the light and, from her window, searched the woods where he had hidden. He had looked at her from behind a maple tree thinking, if he kept running away like this, they would never be friends.
Nathaniel hadn’t been alone in the woods. As he had occupied Annette’s bedroom rescuing Dracula, and as he descended the trellis, Nathaniel’s own blood-sucking fiend, Jonas, had stalked from far afield. Though Jonas had not known what Nathaniel had been doing in her bedroom it was enough to dangerously pique his curiosity.
Nathaniel recited this to Annette adding:
“When Jonas saw you reading the repaired copy of The Hobbit, he came home furious. When our family visited the library on the weekends, I noticed that he paid more attention to the books you had borrowed and returned. He inspected The Hobbit and Dracula, trying to understand how the damaged books had been repaired so perfectly and in a short amount of time. It bothered me the way that he flipped through the books and it worried me that he might find one of my stray fingerprints which would have led him to me. The core of the issue was control. In our family, he had little control over our parents’ relationship and little control over me. He asserted authority over someone that he could control and, by that same token, gained control of an uncertain situation regarding your rescued library books.”
“Jonas never controlled me.”
“He didn’t share responsibility for you burning the copy of Les Miserables in a bucket at your driveway? You think he egged you on because he found books to be a ridiculous waste of time? No, Mrs. Slocum. Jonas wanted you to burn that book so that he might witness its reformation! To meet the person who rescued the others!” Nathaniel shook his head. There was a hint of disdain in his voice sodden with acidic jealousy. “Then . . . then you married the car salesman who introduced you to the champagne-colored VW Beetle on that rainy summer day after graduation.”
Asphodel: The Second Volume of the Muse Chronicles Page 27
