For Joyce Read online

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  By J T Pearson

  copyright 2013 Joseph Pearson

  A humming bird kept her company, dropping and lifting, darting from side to side, moving from plant to plant, as if for her entertainment only. Then it seemed to get bored with her as everyone in her small town seemed to and it floated away. She turned and watched it fly before stopping and hovering near the weathervane fastened on the corner of the fence that ran the perimeter of her house. It floated down and settled on a post to watch her for a change. A storm had threatened to approach earlier, recklessly hurling lightning bolts in the distance, but it had apparently wandered another direction leaving her to her chores. The crickets out in the field just past the dirt road that ran in front of her father’s property seemed like they were getting louder and louder. She had never heard the crickets so loud and then suddenly there was a voice behind her.

  “So, do you actually have green thumbs too?”

  She spun around back toward the road, startled and a little breathless.

  “I didn’t see you walk up,” she said after looking at the road and seeing no car, but then she would’ve heard a car drive up.

  “No, you didn’t. You were preoccupied with your garden.”

  He looked extremely fit, prominent veins coiling his bulging forearms that were revealed because the long sleeves of his dress shirt had been folded up neatly several times. His clothes were stylish but unusual, the cut of his pants different than she’d seen, his cobalt shirt had a slight sheen to it and the material that it was made of looked unfamiliar. Even his brown shoes that shined like polished mahogany were of a style that she hadn’t ever encountered, not even in her mother’s fashion magazines that she snuck peeks at whenever she wasn’t home, like today. By the look of his attire she imagined that this man had seen a lot of the world, his dress influenced by many cities, countries, cultures. He certainly didn’t seem like the men around her small town, the type of men to toil in the elements, hard labor, an outdoor job in the fields or on a farm, or like one of the men that she’d met that worked with the trains, so his deep tan suggested that he had the leisure time to maintain it, vacations basking in the sun, a privileged life most likely. His eyes were very dark, so dark she couldn’t make out the separation of the pupil and the rest of the eye, deep black pools. His hair was well cropped and dark like his eyes, a hair style that suggested an important station in life, perhaps a doctor or a politician. Her theories continued to play leapfrog as she did her best to unravel the mystery before her. Although she was still young she was extremely observant and excellent at recounting details, a lover of stories, of good books. She generally figured out the end of a good mystery novel before even reaching the middle of the book. She was precocious, starved for more of the world, eager to try new things, to meet new people, impatient and hungry to find her place in society, insatiable for knowledge and experience, already restless at the age of fourteen, even though she thought she could’ve passed for much older, as tall and slender as she was.

  She was nearly certain that she had just glanced over her shoulder at an empty horizon seconds before the man was standing there but she must’ve been mistaken. The heat must’ve taken its toll after tending to her mother’s garden all afternoon, ridding it of weeds and making sure to water it well, as she’d been instructed. The man stood casually with his hands in his pockets and a slight smile, more like he was admiring her than just studying a stranger. This man, although youthful looking, had to be over thirty. What on earth could he possibly see in me, she thought to herself. His eyes so brazenly on her body made her blush but she didn’t want him to see it or to stop so she turned her face down to the garden momentarily and cleaned her hands off on her mother’s apron that she had donned to protect her dress. When she turned her eyes up at him he was still looking at her with an almost hungry look but she wasn’t afraid, just a little excited, enjoying the attention from a member of the opposite sex, even if he was old enough to be her father. There was no ring on his finger she had noticed when she stole a quick glance at his hand. She was a good read of character. This man was obviously very nice, very respectable, and very good looking, strange that he wasn’t married at his age. She wanted to ask him what he did for a living but she didn’t want to be too forward. He was probably a friend of her father’s or someone associated with the company that he worked for designing tools. She’d make sure to be friendly, to make a good impression for her father, she told herself, but hormones had just started to have a stronger say than better judgment in her life and she could smell him from where she stood, his natural musk combined with a delightful cologne that wasn’t too sweet or flowery. Her friend Joan from school had shown her how boys liked girls to smile and the expressions that they liked. It involved narrowing the eyes and batting the lashes once in a while. Sometimes pursing the lips while you were listening to them. She thought that her friend had looked ridiculous when she taught her how to do it but Joan must’ve been right. Lots of the boys around town liked her.

  “It’s green thumb, not green thumbs,” she said, flirting a little. She smiled but chickened out when she was about to narrow her eyes at him. He certainly was handsome.

  “I beg your pardon?” he asked, moving a little closer.

  Her heart raced a bit before settling down. It reminded her of the feeling that she got in her stomach when her father intentionally sped up on the dipping hills out near her cousins house, the way her stomach filled with butterflies at the bottom of each hill just as the car started going up again. She always held her tummy and giggled when he did that. She almost reached for her stomach out of habit.

  “You say that someone has a green thumb if they are good with plants. You don’t say that they have green thumbs.” She was very good with expressions. She was very good with all aspects of language.

  “You would know. I’m certainly not going to question you.”

  She wasn’t sure what he meant by that.

  “Are you looking for my father? Because he’s still at work.”

  “Frederick stays pretty busy, doesn’t he?”

  “So you’re a friend of my father’s. You know him.”

  “Not really. I know of him.”

  He continued to look at her with his smile that wasn’t quite a smile and she found herself revisiting the talks that her mother had had with her sometimes after dinner about being careful with strangers, especially men, and especially men that walked up from the road, the ones that seemed to be traveling.

  “Are you from around here? Or are you just passing through? I mean to say that I don’t think that I’ve seen you around here. Are you from over in Parksley?”

  There was a long pause before he answered her.

  “The rabbit’s hole. That’s where I came from.” A bigger smile, a million dollar smile revealing perfectly straight white teeth.

  Now she was wondering whether he was some type of entertainer. That would make sense. An actor or a musician. He was probably traveling through Millersport and got lost, took a wrong turn, probably just needed directions. And he had just quoted Alice in Wonderland, only the greatest book ever written by her estimation. He couldn’t be all bad.

  “Do you like Alice in Wonderland? I just love Alice in Wonderland. It’s probably my favorite book in the world and that’s saying a lot because I love books and I’ve read lots of them.”

  “I know you do, Joyce.”

  “Hey, how do you know my name? Nobody actually calls me Joyce except for my teacher when we’re at school. When I see her at church she calls me Joy like everybody else-oh, and our priest, Father O’Bryan, he calls me Joyce to, I guess.”

  “They call you Joy. That makes sense. It’s all the little things that people never know that are so interesting.”

 
She was starting to feel uncomfortable with the strange manner in which the man behaved, his strange answers, and the fact that he still hadn’t stated his business.

  “I don’t mean to be rude but I should probably get back to this garden. My mother won’t be too happy with me if she comes back and finds that it’s still filled with weeds.”

  “She’s not going to care about the garden, Joyce. Do you know what I’d like to do?” He smiled and waited for her to answer.

  “Mister, I’m sorry but I really don’t-“

  “Be polite, Joyce, and ask me what I’d like to do.”

  She was nervous now. Something seemed to be wrong with this man. She was starting to think that he wasn’t the type of man that she had imagined him to be when he first smiled at her.

  “What would you like to do?” she asked, her voice losing the woman’s tone that she had put on, becoming higher, less certain, a little girl again, her mother’s little girl. She suddenly wished that she had gone shopping with her mother along with Fred and Lynn when she had been asked.

  “I want to go inside your house and see the typewriter that Blanche gave you. Is it in your bedroom? What do you think, Joyce? Should we go inside?” He took a couple steps toward her. His smile was gone.

  “I can’t. My mother’s not home.”

  “We don’t need your mother.” He closed the gap between them slowly, cautiously, the way a cat moves toward a mouse just before it pounces so that it doesn’t scare it off. Now he was right next to her. He reached out and cupped her elbow, pulling her close, and then fondling it softly. His hands were powerful like her father’s but the skin was soft instead of callused. His nails were trimmed and manicured more neatly than most of the women Joy knew. “You like older men, don’t you, Joyce? I know that about you.” He was breathing heavier and she could feel it in her hair and down her neck.

  She looked around to see if there was anyone in sight but there was no one. It was if they were suddenly the only two people on the earth and as if they were caught between the milliseconds of time, frozen together in a cage that defied natural law. She considered running for a moment but that might just make him angry and she was sure by the look of him that he’d catch her.

  “How did you know that my grandmother gave me a typewriter? Does my grandmother know you?” Joy asked desperately, struggling not to cry.

  “No.” He put his hand around the back of her head and pulled it close, putting his mouth on top of her, kissing her crown gently, his breath warm on her scalp, his scent now making her stomach hurt.

  Her heart sank further and she started to tremble. She looked down at the garden.

  “Where are you from, mister?” she asked, her little girl voice now quiet and cracking, nearly unable to get the question out.

  He moved his head back and forth, snaking his face into her hair, before she felt his breath on her cheek. His teeth lightly caressed the top of her ear and it sent a shiver down her spine.

  “I’m a traveler, Joyce. A traveler that came a long way just for you, to pay homage, to unite our souls, to be with you forever.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because when there was no one else, when I was all alone there was always you. I knew that you were talking to me between the pages, from inside your stories.”

  “I don’t understand,” she sobbed.

  “You don’t need to.” He kissed the side of her neck.

  She turned back toward her house, wishing she was safe inside it without any memory of this man that had suddenly appeared behind her, and she noticed that the humming bird was still watching her from the fence, a helpless witness, like a captive to a nightmare, unable to move.

  “But where did you come from?” she asked between sobs one last time. She needed to know. Even though she knew that his answer would make no difference. Nothing was going to save her from what was about to happen. Tears were streaming down her face.

  “Out there,” he said, casually waving his arm across the horizon. “There are many of us, Joyce, just as you imagined.”