A Bird on a Windowsill (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Savannah 

(23 Years Old)

Day 6,576

“Y
ou look all professional with that camera.”

I feel an elbow to my side, and I turn and look up.

It’s Eben.

“Oh, hey,” I say.

For the first time since I’ve been back here, I’m surrounded by the people of this town again. Young, old, it seems as if they’re all here—dancing, drinking, talking.

“You retire that old Polaroid?”

I laugh and glance at my camera. “No, I’ve still got it. It’s just Polaroids don’t print so well in newspapers.”

He tilts his head back and smiles. “Aah, I see.”

I watch him force his hands into his jeans pockets and rest back on his heels. He seems like his old self. He seems...happy.

“How’s the pipe holding up?”

“What?”

“The sink.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s great. Thank you again.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “It was my pleasure.”

I smile. “I didn’t know you were a plumber, too.”

“Miss Catesby, I fear you’ve been gone too long. There’s probably a lot you don’t know about me.”

His last words cross into a new light. They sound darker—almost foreboding, in a way.

“So, how was the rest of high school and the East Coast and the last...what is it...half a decade of your life?” he asks, changing the subject.

I take a second. I can’t help but notice that,
tonight
, he seems to be in a talking mood. It makes me feel a little lighter, somehow.

“It was good,” I say.

He gnaws on the inside of his cheek and nods once. “I heard you were a big shot and won some award at a paper down there recently.”

“Wow, word sure does travel fast in these parts,” I say, in my best Southern drawl.

He looks at me curiously—as if he doesn’t know what to think of my accent.

“Like tongues of fire lickin’ up straw,” he confirms.

I think he tries to say it in a Southern accent, too, but I’m pretty sure whatever accent that was, it doesn’t exist in real life.

I let go of a heartfelt laugh. It feels good to laugh with him again.

“Plus, your uncle liked to brag on you,” he adds.

My smile quickly fades. I miss Uncle Les—the times we shared and those we didn’t.

“It must be kind of hard steppin’ back into this small-town stuff, though,” he goes on, breaking me out of my thoughts.

I look at him and notice his dusty eyes first. They’re darker tonight, as they focus on something across the room.

“Mount Pleasant isn’t that much bigger,” I say.

“Ha.” He laughs. “The Walmart in Washington employs more people than live in this town.”

A laugh instantly catches in my throat.

“So, how’d you get the honor of inheriting
The Town Herald
anyway?”

I shrug. “I was the only one who knew anything about the newspaper business. I’m happy to have it.”

I see an old woman dancing with a boy. I only vaguely recognize them, but not enough to remember their names. I snap a photo. I never wrote about foreign affairs or high-profile criminal cases out east, but I did cover imports and exports and the shipping news, which is the news that won me the award. But dancing grandmas... There aren’t too many awards for dancing grandmas.

I push back my shoulders and continue to scan the faces.

The bottom line is that I have a paper to revamp and get settled before I can even contemplate going back to that world again. And who knows? Maybe there will be something here worth staying for.

I catch Eben staring across the room again, but this time, I see a girl. And something that feels an awful lot like jealousy washes over me.

“Who is she?”

His eyes dart to mine. “Who’s who?”

“The girl in the corner—the one you keep trading glances with.”

He smiles and takes a breath. “Can’t get anything past you.”

“Were you trying to? Get it past me?”

He narrows his eyes at me and only grins.

“That is,” he starts to say but then stops when he catches her eye, “Anna, my girlfriend.”

I don’t say anything for a second. I only look at the girl with the long, dark hair in the corner and then quickly refocus my attention on him.

“You have a girlfriend?”

He nods. “I do.”

My gaze falls to the floor near my shoes. I think I’m just trying to sort it out. And even when I feel his eyes on me, I still don’t look up.

“Savannah?”

“Yeah, I just...um, you never had a girlfriend.”

My stare lifts to the pretty girl in the corner of the room. She’s talking to another girl now.

“I had a couple girlfriends in college, actually.”

“Really?” My eyes go to him.

I don’t know why I never thought to think Salem Ebenezer would have a girlfriend. He’s attractive—tall, muscular, sweet. Of course he would have had a girlfriend...or two.

“So, you met her in college?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I met her here. She moved here after school.”

I suck in a quick breath, and at the same time, I stuff a pad of paper into my camera bag.

“When did you want to catch up?”

“What?” I ask.

“You said you wanted to catch up.”

“Oh, yeah.” I feel distracted, all of a sudden. “It can wait, I guess.”

“I tell you what, how about I come by the paper sometime.”

“The paper?”

“Yeah. If I see your car out front, I’ll stop by, and if you’re not too busy, we can catch up.”

He’s looking at me when he finishes. “Yeah, okay,” I mumble. “Sure.”

Suddenly, I don’t know how to feel.

“Um.” I clear my throat and busy myself by easing my camera back into its bag. “Well, I’ve got to take off.”

“Okay,” he says, nodding. “I’ll see you around then.”

I force a smile, and with that, I turn. And I leave. I leave the crowded, outdated dance hall and the pretty girl in the corner...and the boy, who once upon a time, used to be mine.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Savannah 

(23 Years Old)

Day 6,577

“Y
ou must be Weston Hartfield,” I say, as the old man with a crooked cane walks, unannounced, into my office.

I watch as he carefully falls into the blue recliner, just as if he’s done it a million times before. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he had.

“Sure as the day is long,” he says, in a soft but rough voice.

I nod. “Well, it’s nice to finally meet you. I heard you might stop by.”

“Yeah, as long as I’m kickin’, I’ll be here. Every Monday.”

I type another sentence out on a story I’m working on—just so I don’t forget it. And then I look up.

He seems comfortable in the chair now. His cane is propped up against the blue polyester. An old seed dealer cap is resting on his knee.

“Nothin’ too much to speak of this week,” he says. “All’s pretty quiet this time of year.”

I nod and smile.

“Hey,” he says, as if he’s just thought of it, “you doin’ business with that Ebenezer boy?”

I’m a little thrown off by his question, until I notice him eyeing the lumberyard ad sitting on my desk.

“You ought to be careful with that boy.”

I examine the old man, as he stares back at me with a raised brow. What’s left of his hair is white. He’s got a beard. It’s white, too. He’d probably make a pretty good Santa Claus.

“That’s funny,” I say. “You’re actually not the first person to tell me something like that.”

“Yeah, well. That should tell you somethin’.”

He goes to resituating himself in the old chair.

“Why is that? Why is everyone warning me about him? I’ve known Salem since we were young.”

“Well, he’s changed since he was just a boy,” he says. “Well, he’s got that girlfriend. And she seems like a good girl—a little too fancy for my liking, but a good girl, I guess. But that Salem, he’s changed.”

“How so?” I try not to sound too curious.

“Well, you know, he’s been working real hard on something mysterious. And ain’t nobody knows what he’s doing.”

“Something mysterious?”

“Yeah,” he confirms with a head nod. “You know, he’s probably working for the government or something. That’s the only thing I can think of.”

He stops and shakes his head, and then he seems to get lost somewhere outside the window behind my desk for just a moment.

“He could be doing some kind of testin’ or, uh...” He pauses, as if in thought. “It could be he’s making some kind of weapon or something. You know, for the, uh...”

He looks at me, and I just stare blankly back at him.

“The, uh, you know?” he goes on.

“The government?”

“Yeah,” he says. He tugs on his beard and then points a finger at me. “Or it could just be drugs, you know. All these kids these days. They start off good kids, and then they just get caught up in the drugs, you know?”

“Drugs?” I say, trying to keep my smile to myself.

“Yeah, bad stuff.” He shakes his head. “Real bad stuff. You don’t want to get involved in those drugs.”

“Okay,” I say. “No drugs.”

He seems satisfied with that comment.

“So, where is it that he’s doing all this mysterious stuff?”

“Well, most likely it’s just one of those things,” he clarifies. “I don’t think he’d be doing all three.”

He holds his stare on me, so I nod.

“Right, just one. Testing, weapon or the drugs.”

“Right,” he repeats. “But that’s the problem. No one knows which one it is. He’s got barricades all set up at the bottom of Sheppard’s Hill.”

“Sheppard’s Hill? Outside of town?”

“Yeah,” he confirms, “that’s it. And you can’t see anything from the road. Believe me, I’ve tried. You can’t even see anything from the air. That’s what I hear, anyway. I didn’t look myself, of course. I don’t got no helicopter, and I don’t got one of those fancy computers where you can see everything from the sky.”

I nod, in thought, as the room grows quiet.

“You know, maybe he’s just building a house,” I say, after a moment of the silence.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what we thought, at first.” He puts his finger to his lips. “So, we asked him. And then he got all secretive about it. Never did get an answer out of the boy. And not too long ago, Keith Sumter saw big, unmarked flatbed trucks going up the hill.” He shakes his head and furrows his brow. “Real fishy stuff.”

“Okay,” I say. “And you said he’s acting weird.”

“Oh yeah. I know he’s an Ebenezer. I know he was raised right. Those Ebenezers are good people, you know?”

“Yes, I know,” I confirm.

“It’s just, you know, all that went on right before he went off to school... And then lately...” He stops and starts over. “He’s just around, you know? ...But he’s not around.”

He looks at me with one eye squinted shut and his head cocked to one side. I think he assumes I know what that means.

“What do you mean ‘not around’?”

“You know, not around,” he says. “These days, he’s either at the lumberyard or he’s up on Sheppard’s Hill. You don’t see him anywhere else. Just one of those two places. That’s it.”

“Testing or making a weapon...or drugs?”

He slowly nods his head. “Now, you’re gettin’ it.”

“So, what all went on before he left for school?”

His eyes quickly find mine.

“You know.” He flails his hand in the air. “When the devil got to him.”

I keep my stare in his, but I don’t say anything. I’m waiting for him to elaborate, but he never does. And after a few moments of us just staring at each other, I look down at my keyboard and then push out a long, steady breath.

“Okay, Mr. Hartfield, I’ve got a lot of work I need to finish up. I appreciate your information, but I’m sure those boys up at Casey’s are missing you by now.”

He smiles. “Yeah, I reckon you just might be right about that.”

Slowly, he starts to get up. It takes him a little while to climb out of the chair, but once he does, he balances himself with his cane and stands up tall. Then he shoves his cap back on his head.

“It’s good talkin’ to ya.”

I nod. “I’ll see you next Monday, I suppose?”

“If I’m still kickin’.” He smiles over his shoulder. “And you can call me Weston.”

I smile, too. “Okay.”

He’s almost out of my office, when he turns back around. “You know, you’re sure a hell of a lot prettier than Ol’ Les.”

I bow my head and laugh to myself.

“That’s good to know.”

He nods once and then turns and walks out the door.

When he’s gone, I sit back and let my head rest against the back of the chair while my eyes get stuck on the white ceiling above me.

I’m pretty certain everything Hartfield said today was bullshit. But even bullshit has a little truth to it. Eben’s doing something up on Sheppard’s Hill. I just wonder what it is.