The Clay Lion (8 page)

Employees began filing out of the store in
droves, apparently unable to curtail their curiosity about what was happening
on the roof. With all of the extra people milling about, I decided that the
sooner I exited the attic, the better.  After briefly considering taking the
box of letters with me, I immediately thought better of it and instead returned
the box to its hiding space behind the rafters.  I carefully inched the
attic door open and was bombarded with the sounds of the children playing and
the adults discussing the roof.  I crept silently down the fire escape,
thankful for the distracting noises and breathed a sigh of relief as my feet
hit the ground. 

I had decided on my way down to meander over to
the action to see if any resolutions had been made regarding the state of the
roof.  As I approached the small group of hardware store employees, I
heard someone calling to one of the children from across the parking lot. 
Instinctively, I looked in the direction of the voice and was taken aback when
I saw the boy from which it came.

It was mostly true when Branson teased that I had
no interest in boys.  I really did not. 
Or had
not.
 
Until that particular moment.

With the exception of Paul McGregor, my resident
stalker, very few boys had taken any romantic interest in me over the course of
my high school career.  My visceral response to that had always been not
to take any interest in them either.  I was quite protective of my heart
for some reason and had been from the time I was able to recognize that love
was both given and received.  It was almost as if fate knew that I was
destined to have my heart broken.  So although I was not unattractive and
had quite a few friends who were boys, none of them had ever actually been
worth risking my heart to approach romantically. 

But here, across the parking lot, was someone who
made my heart involuntarily skip a beat.  For the first time in ages, I
was not thinking about Branson.  I was thinking about how in the world I
was going to meet this boy, who was now strolling toward the hardware store,
hands in his pockets, jeans low on his hips.  I was frozen solid in my
snow boots, unable to move forward.  My head knew what I needed to do was
walk over to the store employees to hear what they were planning for the
roof.  My heart, whose voice I had spent so many years ignoring, was
screaming for me to walk towards the boy.  Unable to move in either
direction, I watched as he crossed the vacant lot to where the children had
resumed their game of kickball.  He called again to a girl, Melody,
perhaps his sister.  The little girl turned, chocolate curls brushing her
shoulders, as if hearing him for the first time, and smiled an angelic
smile.  She immediately left the game and ran toward the boy who watched
her with a mixture of love and nostalgia.  He held out his hand and she
took it willingly.  They turned together and headed back toward his
waiting car.  In less than ten seconds, they were gone, headed west toward
the mountain pass.

I realized, as I watched the car disappear, that
I had been holding my breath.  I filled my lungs desperately with air and
released the tension in my shoulders.  The store employees continued to
discuss the roof, so I reasoned that I could spare a minute to approach the
remaining children in the vacant lot.  My legs found their momentum and I
moved swiftly to their playing field.

“Hey guys,” I called as casually as I could, “who
was the girl who just left?”

“Melody,” replied a little blond girl with both
front teeth missing.

I approached her.  “Was that her brother?” I
ventured.

“Yeah, Charlie,” she said.

“Oh.  Do you know their last name?” I pried,
wondering when the girl would realize she was giving out an awful lot of
information to a perfect stranger.

“Johnson,” she answered without missing a beat.

I continued my line of questioning, aware that,
in addition to appearing rather strange, I was also wasting the time that I
should have been spending learning about the roof.

“Do they live close by?”

“Yeah.
 
On Sycamore.
  But they go to Hawk’s Ridge,” she
explained, possibly anticipating where I was headed with my next question.

Hawk’s Ridge was the town’s only K-12 private
school, which would explain why I had never seen him before.  I thanked
her for the information and ran as quickly as I could over to the other side of
the lot.  As I approached the employees, Mr. Cooper recognized me
immediately and signaled for me to come over with a friendly wave of his
hat. 

“Well how are you Miss Brooke?” he asked warmly,
wrapping his arm around my shoulders.

“I’m good,” I answered. 
“Real
good.
  What’s going on?”

“Kids got a ball up on the roof here and when
Bill went up to get it, seems we got a patch of busted up shingles on the roof
gonna
need replacing before the next snow comes.  What
a blessing those kids were out here today or else I’d have never known ‘bout
that hole. 
Ain’t
no
coincidence in life
ya
know!”

“Yes sir,” I said.

“Branson showed up last week looking to work
again this season and you know I can’t turn down a hard working boy like your
brother.  Could probably use you too if you had an inclination,” he said,
eyes twinkling.

“Oh, no sir,” I replied, “I’ve got plenty of
schoolwork keeping me busy these days.  I hope you can get the roof fixed
real soon.”

“Well, yeah, I’m
gonna
get Bill and a few others on it tomorrow.  Hopefully have it torn off and
redone in a day or two.  I
gotta
run now. 
Tell your brother I’m
gonna
need him as soon as
possible with this mess and tell your momma and daddy hello.”

“I will, sir,” I said.

With that, Mr. Cooper headed inside.  I
lingered to listen to Bill and the others deciding how to go about demolishing
the broken shingles in such a way as to protect the underlayment from the
elements.  After a few minutes, I realized they did not have any
information to share that I did not already have, so I began the walk back
home.  The sun was beginning to set, and with it, the warmth of its
rays.  I untied my jacket from around my waist, shrugged it over my
shoulders, and tried not to think about Charlie Johnson as I made my way toward
home.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

Over the course of the next week, I repeatedly
failed myself, and my whole family for that matter, on every front.  While
I was supposed to be contriving elaborate schemes to keep my brother from the
hardware store attic, I caught myself continually thinking of Charlie Johnson
and his bewitching smile.  I found that I was unable to control
myself.  It took every fiber of my being to concentrate on the task at
hand.  I began hating my subconscious for its unwillingness to focus on
Branson’s plight instead of Charlie.

Within several days of the ball incident, work
began on the roof of the hardware store.  Before they started, I made one
last trip into the attic to see if there was any area I was overlooking for
asbestos.  So far, I had found two potential areas.  I also retrieved
the box of letters from its hiding spot.  For some reason, I could not
stand the thought of them being thrown away or destroyed.

On Friday night, Branson reported to us at dinner
that as the shingles were being removed that afternoon, a hole was found in the
plywood beneath that needed repair.  Mr. Cooper was sending a few of the
boys to clean out the attic the next morning.  Branson was assigned with
the task.  My heart sank.  I had failed. 
As
it was before, so it would be again, if the attic was indeed the culprit.
 
My mind raced furiously to think of something to say that would convince him to
avoid the attic as the demolition was being done.  But I had
nothing.  Not a single credible idea.  My attempt at saving him from
the asbestos exposure had failed.

That night in bed, I prayed for a miracle. 
Perhaps Branson would develop a bout of influenza that would keep him
housebound until after the roof was complete.  And although I hated to
wish pain upon him, I could not stop myself from considering how a broken leg
would surely keep him from working for the next several weeks.  In the end
however, I acknowledged that God’s will be done.  If my plan was not
destined to work out, then so be it.  At least that is what I told myself.

I rolled over for the hundredth time and glanced
at the clock on the nightstand.  It read 2:17 A.M.  Sleep was eluding
me and I finally decided to stop fighting.  I booted my tablet and
searched the internet for instances of asbestos exposure causing pulmonary
fibrosis.  As I began, I hoped that I would be unable to find any accounts
tying one to the other, thus effectively easing my mind.  Instead, I found
person after person citing one reason after another for their disease.  I
felt the tears coming.  Sadness and despair washed over me again.  My
body was wracked with heaving sobs. 

And then, as only the mind of a teenager would, I
was struck with an image of Charlie and myself. 
And
Branson.
 
All together.
 
Standing at my graduation.
  What a joyful
thought.  I picked my head up off my desk and logged into the Hawk’s Ridge
Academy web site.  I searched for Charlie’s face among the pages strewn
with the photos of the school’s students.  By the third click, he
appeared.  He wore his blue and tan school uniform and stood, in what I
assumed was the school’s library, with the other members of the debate
team.  He was smiling directly at the camera and therefore it seemed as
though he was looking at me.  I instinctively placed my fingers on the
screen to touch his face.  Immediately, I acknowledged the ridiculousness
of what I was doing and dropped my hands into my lap.  I spent the next thirty
minutes
crawling
the school’s website for his
image.  I found him several times – in the swim team photo, in a candid
photo with friends eating lunch in the cafeteria, and in a photo of him at a
recycling center doing volunteer work.  I decided that, although I did not
know Charlie Johnson, I liked him.  Or rather, he seemed like a person I
would like if I knew him.  Finally, exhausted, I climbed back into bed and
attempted to fall asleep.  My last conscious thoughts were of my brother
and Charlie.

In the morning, Branson was gone by the time I
dragged myself out of bed.  I had heard him quietly walking past my door
on his way out to work before the sun rose.  After my sleepless night, I
had no intention of getting dressed.  I dug through my closet for my red
robe, the robe that I practically lived in after Branson died.  It was
strange to see it still in such good condition, as the robe I left in the
future was missing buttons and falling apart at the seams.  I held it up
at arm’s length and then pressed it to my cheek.  It was like an old
friend with the power to comfort my aching heart.  I pulled my arms
through the sleeves and buttoned each of the buttons carefully.  I
admitted silently to myself that I was on a slippery slope, back to the days
when I refused to leave the house and left the world behind, but I did not
care.  I knew I had failed.  I knew the attic insulation was coming
down and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I padded down the stairs in my bare feet. 
My mother and father were seated at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and
watching the local news.  They both acknowledged my arrival with smiles
and good mornings.  My mother offered to fix my breakfast, which
surprisingly, I accepted.  Despite my depression, I was famished.  I
took it as a good sign.  I polished off three eggs, sunny side up, two
pieces of cinnamon toast, and a large glass of orange juice.  My father
responded with a comment about my having a hollow leg, a comment typically
reserved for Branson’s large appetite.

I had envisioned a day spent idly wallowing in my
own despair, but after breakfast, as I was making my way back upstairs to my
room, I was struck by a wonderful thought.  The attic of the hardware
store was being torn apart for one reason and one reason alone – a child kicked
a ball on the roof.  That was it.  That seemingly inconsequential
detail set off an entire chain of events in everyone’s lives involved at the
store.  It suddenly occurred to me that I did not have to keep Branson
from helping to fix the attic.  I had to keep the roof damage from being
discovered.  And although it was too late to change the outcome during
that trip, should the need
arise,
it could be changed
on another trip by someone else.  If the cream did not cause the disease,
and it was caused instead by the store attic, all was not lost!  If the
ball never landed on the roof, the damage would never be discovered.  And
I already knew the exact time to make sure the change could take place. 
New hope melted away the impending depression and I ran the rest of the way up
the stairs, stripping off my robe so that I could get dressed and take on the
day.