Evangelina Green (4 page)

"Hey slackers…get to work!”

The work gang all turned in one move and
boo’d him. Several chuckled and went back to their lunch.

"It’s chow time buddy!" Jason, the dark
eyed, muscle-bound carpenter answered him. "And we deserve it. Been
working since sunrise trying to beat this rain.”

Jason was one of his
second or third cousins, he’d lost count, but they’d grown up
together near Keaton's home in the Rocky Mountains and he was sure
glad to see he would be around.
Keaton had
an uneasy feeling the moment he’d stepped foot on the property. The
hair stood up on the back of his neck even now, feeling as if
someone—somewhere out of sight—was watching. He motioned to Jason
who looked up and instantly knew Keaton was trying to warn him.
Something was not quite right.

"Keep your eyes open.
Watch your back.”
Keaton’s eyes conveyed.
Jason nodded.

****

Lina watched the men interacting out back
from the safety of the shadows in the kitchen. They were a good
bunch of guys, except maybe that one man. He was tall and thin with
the dark hair. He was...odd. She didn’t remember seeing him around
before yesterday. He wore his hair long, parted down the middle,
almost old fashioned. He never seemed to join in the chatter or sit
with the other men. And come to think of it, she hadn’t seen him
working at all. Maybe he was waiting until the other crew finished
their tasks. Like how the plumber had to wait for the carpenter or
maybe he was the proverbial “foreman” who just told everyone else
what to do. No matter, because if he didn’t start pulling his
weight she’d have to say something. She couldn’t afford to pay
people to stand around doing nothing.

Feeling proud of herself
for knowing even that small amount of construction information she
smiled. Out the window, she watched Keaton casually sit on the
stack of lumber, looking totally at ease and totally hot!
Sigh
. She knew she
wasn’t his type, no matter what his pants had indicated. Most guys
would jump any girl if she gave the slightest hint and if she was
handy and she was both. Her low self-esteem was bubbling to the
surface and she started listing the things she wasn’t, instead of
her good points.

She was totally unaware of her beauty,
inside or out. She was tall, graceful—usually—and everyone she met
became a friend, she never “met a stranger”. Most people described
her as friendly and outgoing, and nurturing to a fault, always
taking in the unloved and always the champion of the underdog. In
her mind she was just plain and sometimes nice. So, she wasn’t the
homecoming queen, she did have Keaton's kiss to remember.

“
Oh well, pity party’s
over. Get back to the things at hand,” she muttered and jumped into
her work. She began tearing wallpaper off the opposite wall and
taking down some of the cabinet doors. It wasn't rocket science and
she knew the more labor she did herself, the less money she’d have
to shell out for the contractor and his subcontractors.

Plus she had some rad
power tools! One of the younger workers had announced the
collection she had was
knarly and
rad,
and although those descriptive words
were out of fashion, she grinned like a fool and thanked him. Seems
she was desperate enough for
any
male attention, she’d even take power-tool
admiration from a teenager.

"Sad, really.” She went back to the
wallpaper with a vengeance born of sexual frustration.

Keaton sat with the guys
for a few minutes more, before leaving them to their work. Jason
asked if he’d met the boss-lady. The other young men woo-hoo’d and
waggled their eyebrows, while elbowing each other with
“she’s hot!”
or
“she will pass you by boy once she gets a load of
me,”
or
“I’d fuck
her and her ugly sister!”
Although this
was typical work-crew banter, Keaton felt his jaw tighten and his
hands fisted.

"That’ll be enough, guys."
His deep voice, an almost inaudible whisper caught the attention of
all of them immediately. They stopped the banter, all but one smart
ass, Pete Warren, who had a reputation as a troublemaker anyway. He
just had to comment,
"I'd bet you a
hundred bucks, that if Mr. Keaton here spent the next week around
boss-lady, he’d screw her up against a tree and she wouldn’t mind.
And if he won’t try for it, by damn, I sure will!"

Lina gasped when she heard
that last bit. They were taking bets on her and who would
fuck
her first? And
Keaton was right there with them! She came to the sad conclusion
she always did...men were only after one thing. She had thought
Keaton might be one of the good guys. Well this just confirmed what
she’d been told. All men were dogs! No, that’s insulting to the
dogs. "Men are...they’re all just...MEN!” She spit out through
clenched teeth. That being the best she could come up with, she
pivoted on her toes and left the kitchen stirring up a little dust
cloud in her wake. She was shaking with anger and now wished
she
could
growl!

****

Keaton’s eyes started to glow and if Jason
hadn’t been there to calm him, he might have beaten Pete to a
bloody pulp. Jason had a questioning look in his eye.

"What’s the deal K? You feeling
alright?"

"Not sure...I'm not sure what that was
about...‘cept you don’t talk about a lady like that.” He had
calmed, but his hard voice with its quiet undertones brooked no
questions.

"Pete, you ever go talkin’ like that about
Ms. Maddox again, you’ll answer to me! Do you understand?"

Pete looked like he would argue, but wisely
he nodded and silently stood up from his lunch, and walked away. He
tossed his trash into the burn barrel as he walked past,
muttering.

"If you wasn’t around, I’d have her any way
I wanted and I know fer a fact, she’d like it.”

"What was that, Pete?"

He stopped dead in his tracks. Keaton had
heard him from that distance?

"Nuthin.” He stomped off
to his truck for his
soda
. They all knew it was probably
vodka or gin, but he was dependable and a good worker so folks who
hired him for odd jobs looked the other way and just let him
be.

Keaton asked Jason to keep an eye on him.
Jason nodded, knowing he would have done it without the request. He
liked Lina and had never trusted Pete more than spitting distance.
He sure never turned his back on him.

****

The kitchen forgotten for
now, Lina concentrated on the front of the house. The farther away
from the men the better she felt. Sweeping eons of dust off
shelving, carrying truckloads of damaged lumber, wallboard, brick,
and other trash out to the dumpster was tiring but rewarding. After
three hours of such labor, the front rooms actually looked
like
rooms
rather
than dumping grounds.

Finally, after she had spent some of her
frustration and anger on her work, she took time to have a lunch of
creamy tomato soup, and thick slices of bread, fresh from her
soon-to-be-replaced oven, thank God! It was almost an antique, but
wasn’t in good enough shape to sell. It was just a piece of junk.
After a huge tumbler of iced sweet tea she was refreshed and ready
to get back at it. Amazing what you can do, when it has to be done,
and you are the only one there to do it. The cabinets in the
kitchen came down with no trouble. She broke them down into smaller
pieces of lumber so they’d be easier to burn later.

Lina knew she’d overdone it when her lower
back complained and her hands were covered in scratches and
bruises, although she’d worn gloves for most of the teardown. There
were a couple of deep cuts she would have to bandage, and then and
only then, she could get some sleep!

Later, as Lina climbed the curved staircase
to the second floor for at least the millionth time, she finally
let her tiredness take control. She wasn’t walking, so much as
shuffling, to the small bathroom down the hall from her room. She
showered with her clothes on. They were filthy and by morning
they’d be dry enough to wear again need be. She wasn’t crazy enough
to dirty up all her clothes. She didn’t have that many anyway.

“
Never was much for
clothes other than that they be functional and
comfortable
,” she mumbled to herself. That
little inner voice inside whispered,
you
could dress like a girl once in a while
.
But she was convinced she didn’t have to wear silk and lace to be a
woman.

She ended up with sweats and baggy t-shirts
most of the year. But that was when she lived in Colorado, which
seemed like years ago, but in reality had only been three months.
The heat and humidity here necessitated a wardrobe change. She now
wore shorts and tanks, or long, loose, flowing, shapeless sun
dresses. And in the middle of a demo what was she supposed to wear,
a ball gown? She was practical and too much of a tomboy.

A tomboy even as a young girl, she thought
maybe she should have been born a boy. Her mom had taken her to the
old mining towns in the mountains west of Denver. These were their
only affordable vacations, as they never had any extra money. They
could, however, afford to visit the ghost towns being just a short
drive from home. The quaint little villages that had developed
around some of the old mines were kinda touristy, but Lina loved
the clean air, wide-open spaces, and the ghosts. Yeah, she saw
ghosts.

Ghosts were her friends.
Sometimes it was just a sense of them nearby, but she was seldom
really alone. She was never afraid though, even as a child. She
remembered all their names fondly, as most of them were
nice ghosts,
and only
wanted their living kin-folk to know they were happy. Some wanted
their left behind spouses to continue on, to not mourn them and to
be happy. Some had minor property arguments to settle between
themselves, over gold mine claims or who owned what piece of land.
That seemed odd to her, since they
were
ghosts. Could they own land?
Possibly their heirs would?

Anyway, she did her best
to keep the peace, pass along messages and help the
left-behinds
find wills,
important papers, and in one case a large amount of money. When the
recipients were accepting of her gift, it made them happy to find
closure or peace, and it made her feel good too. When the family
wasn’t open to her gift, things could get unfriendly, to say the
least.

Ye, she continued to help when she could.
Kids at school had called her a freak, a witch, cursed by the devil
and those were the polite names. She didn't need human friends
anyway. She had her friends, the ghosts, at her home in Denver. She
helped her friends in the ghost towns and old mines. They’d been
left behind after death, for whatever reason and since she could
communicate with them, she felt she had to help. There were times
it became a bit dicey, but her friends didn’t have corporeal
bodies, so they couldn’t really hurt anyone. Right?

As she grew up, she saw them less and less
as she developed real friendships and stopped visiting the mining
towns. Regular life, work, bills, and just stuff got in the way of
traveling. Her mother, Susan, had always been a strong woman even
after recently breaking a hip, but lately she’d been showing signs
of memory loss and depression. Lina didn’t want to leave her alone
for long, so she gave up most of her travel and worked at home,
transcribing medical notes, and selling a few things for friends on
eBay.

She tended bar at a small pub nearby, but
only after 9 p.m. when Susan was drugged, asleep safe in bed. The
owner of the pub was an old family friend and didn’t mind that Lina
was barely twenty years old. Lina thought the bar owner had a crush
on Susan, but she kept quiet to keep her job and because she and
her mom were private individuals.

Then one day Mom was just gone. Physically
she remained, but she’d left everyone else behind, including Lina,
for a world of her own making. She talked to someone not there.
Telling him how she loved him and wished he hadn’t left her so
alone. She spoke of how she understood his leaving them but missed
him so badly at times, unsure she could go on without him.

Lina patiently got her Mom to talk about
him, and after a few months, she figured out the “he” was her dad.
She also gathered that once Susan was pregnant, he had left them
totally alone. He deserted them! Mom defended him, saying he
couldn’t stay, that he’d had very important things to do but Lina
didn’t buy it. They’d been deserted and no matter how important
“things” were, your family should be number one. Lina didn’t know
if she was hurt, angry, or both.

She couldn’t do anything
about either, since she still didn’t know his name, his age, or
what he might have done for a living. It was as if he didn’t exist
except in her mother’s memories. She didn’t know how to trace
a
ghost
. She made
herself laugh at that one, since she kinda
could
trace them. But...would she?
Should she?

After another month or two of prompting her
mom to talk, Lina discovered he’d been from Morris, just one town
east of Cypress Woods. She found out he might have been related to
one of the owners of the mansion and he had dark hair. Not much to
go on but it was better than nothing. For weeks she was like that,
in and out of her mind on trips to relive the past with him,
shutting out everything and everyone. One day, she scared the shit
out of Lina when Susan bolted upright from her recliner and
said: