WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (25 page)

It took a few minutes to warm her up but when she was ready, she shot outta the drive way like a Hart boys tinker shop Chevy.
Dad wasn’t going to be too thrilled I bought a Jap car, but hey, we do what we gotta do.  I
left Fred and Lena charred in black smoke. This little car had a mind of her own. 
Just like me. Just like the house inside me.
 All I could do was steer and hold on. Before I knew it we were at the corner of the loop and Main Street, a mile down the road.

“Whoa there girl!” I said slamming on the brakes. “I wanna go out knowing but I’m not ready to go out 
juuuust
 yet.” I stroked the dashboard and tried to calm her. Dad said engines run better when we’re affectionate. A minute later, Lena pulls up beside me in an outrage, fuming at the bits, and foaming at the mouth. She didn’t take too kindly of me leaving her behind with a serial killer. 
HA. 
Lena’s face was apple red. She wrinkled her lips, shot me a hellfire look and gunned it. Tank’s Goodyear tires licked up road gravel and s
pewed it all over the place.  I never saw
Lena drive
in such a rage. 
I fell into a rolling, frolicking, belly hurt of laughter. The car jutted, shook and laughed with me.
At this moment, everything in the world felt right.  Tears flowed
mixed with spontaneous giggles. 
Holy Smokes. I bought a car. I bought a damn car for five hundred dollars.
 
Forty eight hours later, after one tree climb, my life took a one eighty. 
Somet
hing spectacular was happening. 
I couldn’t explain it—but I didn’t need to. All I could think of on the drive home was
faith and 500.

A day later I volunteered to go to the store for Lena.  She was out
of eggs and milk.
I was just glad to be able to get out of the house.  The clinking of keys meant I owned something.  It was all mine.  Well, almost.  I still had to pay Lena back. 
It took three door dances
this time.  Lena grew slant eyed watching me from the kitchen window and I could care one iota. 
It felt good to not care what people thought. I
t was new to me, and I hadn’t perfected the art, but I was working on it.  I mean, I was happy with a tin can car and this itself was
epic.

The little Jap vehicle spun into the grocery store parking lot
as if she owned the place, a royal crown on her rusty roof, a commanding presence.  I found a parking place near the front,
shifted her to park and killed the ignition.
I reached to grab my wallet out of my purse and everything went crazy. 
That is when I learned—
royalty doesn’t die
. It shudders side to side like an old washing machine, agitated and jerking around. I switched the ignition key on and off.
On and off.  The engine would not shut off.  Roaring and sputtering, moaning, shaking. 
A hard explosion rang out behind us in the parking lot. On instinct I dunked and covered. 
Jesus Christ! It’s a robbery.
 I waited a multitude of seconds. I glanced up from the steering wheel
only to see a few startled faces looking my way. 
Why are people looking at me?
 I was confused by the situation until it
dawned on me.  Oh. My. God. 
It was her. I remember cars from th
e tinker shop blowing backfires. 
It was like a shotgun blast. 
I
fell over laughing.  I couldn’t contain the laughter spilling out of me. 
Her tailpipe launched a round as if she was part of the wild west. “
I am shotgun Annie! Hear me roar.”
 Had this happened at any point earlier in my life, I would have been embarrassed to death. Mag would have crawled under the seat. Hell, who am I kidding? Mag wouldn’t have been caught dead in this rickety old car. I busted out laughing again and stroked the dashboard.
Gawking eyes had finally dispersed from the scene. 

“I didn’t know you had it in you Shotgun Annie.”
A namesake was born right then and there.
I thought of Flash Fannie, Brutus and Miss. My heart yearned for something
it didn’t have.  Not fully, not yet. 
Something that could only come from a simple, southern sap girl with a big heart of magic and mystery. 
Faith and 500.

In the months that followed, Annie taught me the simple satisfaction of having little, but enough. Content in my squander, it was sustainable and nourishing to the soul while gratitude flowed in me and of me for the small, broken things in me,
and of me. 
The wreckage of Annie’s dingy, dented, and highly flawed body taught me about
my own, the house inside me. 
In the process of life working its magic, mayhem, Dumas of Umbra visitations, little girl sightings and spontaneous crumb droppings, along with Annie's shotgun explosions—
I was slowly changing.
 I noticed a multitude of things I had missed all these years, small, delicate objects in nature, signs in the sky, rain, sun,
birds of the air, lilies of the field, stars of heaven. 
I feel more in tune with myself than ever before.  

A week after Annie, I found a job. Two weeks after that, I found a rent house. 
Lena Hart was astounded but still suspicious as if she expected me to crater and come back any day. 
I didn’t have the money to spend on furniture but I had a roof over my head and I didn’t have to live with my parents. Hallelujah! The first night
in my house was so gratifying.  I laid on the floor with a blanket and pillow.  The rest of the house, hollow and empty, just my closet items and a wooden hope chest, and some other personal things.  The electricity hadn’t been turned on yet, and I fought Lena tooth and nail, determined to stay in the house, regardless.  I simply had a flashlight.  I could make do.  I slept by the open window listening to the night sounds that took me back to the wondering tree.  I thought of
Bonnie McAdam’s
and what she must have felt.  It was thankfulness, I’m sure of it.  Gratitude.  I drifted off to sleep counting cricket chirps.  In my dreams, I felt the winds swirl violently through the open hollows of my own house while I dreamed of moons,
stars and crumbs falling.

Upon waking up, the crumb fell into my head
like a shooting star. 
500 Dellmont Avenue.
 I lived in Pine Log all my life
and never heard of this street.  I started to shuck it off, but I knew better. 
There was something to
this crumb.  I was sure of it.  Later that day, I
paid for gas at a local store and
mentioned the address to the clerk. 
She spouted off directions and having nothing better to do, after work, Annie and I took
a road trip.  We pulled up and
wouldn’t you know it, sitting on the curb, at the address of 500 Dellmont was multiple towers
of odds and ends, broken chairs, tables and even a couch.  In front of the junk was a cardboard sign with white letters that said FREE.  I snatched the sign, threw it in the back seat and sped off to the store.  I called dad to come help me haul it to my house. 
He arrived shortly in his 80’s Ford Bronco, white and blue with silver pin stripes, Dallas Cowboy colors and appropriately named
Roger, for Roger Stauback, his all-time favorite quarterback. 
With
a hammer, nails, some glue, and a lot of pain, I had a house full of furniture.  From that point onward, I never overlooked a crumb.  When the house inside me began to close in—Annie and I would take a road trip.  Just road trippin’ rebels
cruising the highways, windows down, hot humid air, pellets of perspiration and a tragic disarray of Texas curls. 
I am happy.
 The adult wa
nt-to-die Willodean is silenced, although I feel it’s only temporary.  The
great sadness is still there, tucked inside the room
s of the Dumas of Umbra waiting on a moment of weakness.  Knowing this, I do feel stronger now, as if I’m not entirely alone on the journey anymore, help from beyond, for me, and o
f me. Moment by
crumb
 moment. That’s how I live each day. The shadows are still there, I feel their ominous prods as if they’re girding up for the final take down, to capture me, and contain me inside the awful rooms.
But I will not let them.  Not again.  I am stronger now. 

Annie, my little assault vehicle, reminds me of
the human condition, the curse, the gifts, and myself, my curses and gifts. 
Sometimes, unexpected and ou
t of nowhere, she comes unwound.  The
shell shock fury of her gun blast echoes in the air, bystanders duck
ing and running for cover.  I laugh every single time it happens.  It’s who she is.  It’s part of her makeup. 
Annie lets her voice be heard. Her royal existence demands a shotgun salute. The sounds ring out, “I’m dented and dingy with peeling paint. I smoke, I sputter, I rattle but by God, this is who I am.
Take it or leave it. 
I’m Shotgun Annie, hear me roar!”

She travels the highways of life without cares. Her rusty carri
age purrs with regal confidence.  She
strolls in paved lots and parks right next to a spit shiny, high maintenance rhinestone Cadillac with a diamond encrusted Eagle hood ornament. It screams my uppity, old money sister, Maggie Storm. Annie doesn’
t care about outside appearance, not one bit.  It’s the heart, it’s the inside where it counts.  Shine all you want, she says, but I shine too. 
Her tragedies are the roughage that reveal the diamonds through the dents, the sparkle gleaming out from rusty holes.
Annie knows who she is. 
She takes her rightful place.

I love my Shotgun Annie. 
I have never been more thankful for life. My days are filled with a lot more laughter now, than darkness. I am thankful for the little things. If this is the tradeoff for the bullets of rage and chaos I endured in a loveless marriage, I’ll take it.
I’ll take every crumb. I’ll take the quirks, the craziness, the dents, no handles, back door dances, shotgun blasts—I’ll take it all.
 At least now—
I’m not the target.

One day, God willing—Willodean Hart will take her place too and when she does, I hope it’s next to a spit shiny Cadillac. By then,
maybe
, by then, I won’t give a damn 
what people think.  I will be enough.  I AM enough. 

PTA

Upon waking, my gut burned.  A horrible dream escaped me, leaving an empty presence of fingertips on my mind as it drifted out the window, uncatchable, too heinous to remember.  On
Saturday mornings, I sleep late or watch
cartoons but I don’t want to.  My skin trickles and pops like it does when a Dresden is near, but not as intense, only as if I was dreaming it, and the aftereffects are left over. 
I hear the wall clock in the living room ticking in loud bursts of anxiety 
through my bedroom wall.  The gut burn went to
my
ears until I felt feverish. 
Something is wrong.
 I
could feel it in every ounce of my body.  I
jumped up, threw some clothes on and high tailed it to Maw Sue’s. I streaked past Lena in the kitchen who mumbled something I didn’
t have time to hear. 
I
made it to her house in under a minute, a record for me.  I
leaped on the old porch, the freezer moaned
as if it was eighty, which it may have been.  I opened the screen door, it squeaked, balked and slammed shut.  The bell clanged and rang an eerie chime of death in my ears.   

“Maw Sue?”  No answer.  I looked everywhere for her, scurrying doors open, glancing in and out. 
She wasn’t in the house, garden, or chicken coop,
and she wasn’t chant marching around her house.  Not in the
garage.
Where could she be? 

Maw Sue was the healthiest, sick person, I ever did see. She was seventy four years old and in her mind, she had every disease under the sun. Each week a mysterious illness plagued her, slowed her down, made her creak, pop, or consume a gazillion pills 
I called tic-tacs because that’s how she ate them, one after another.  In addition to tic-tac’s she enabled the help of ancient remedies of herbs and potions.  This was part of our Cupitor heritage she was passing on to me. 
She had a recipe book of recipes, strange old magic. She was either making a new concoction or walking with a gimp, coughing, wheezing or creating another newly found disease for the doctors to cure. At other times, I’d find her marching around her house, rebuking the devil like a militant soldier shouting ancient chants to rid the world of evil.