The light was just right. The wind
had died down as Sam Jones positioned his feet on the railing.
Darla Collins, his date, relaxed on
her iron patio chair, pink drink in hand, listening to the band. The Willows, a
harbor side restaurant, though pricey, was a common dinner place for the
couple. Sam, president of his family operation, a chain of Jones Hardware Stores,
could afford the occasional nice night out.
Her eyes drifted from table to table
as she analyzed the clothes and affect of fellow diners. She turned her head to
the right to watch the sea birds flying overhead when she saw him.
Her rapid intake of breath caused
her to aspirate her juice-laced rum. The coughing explosion she couldn’t
prevent hindered her from calling out to him. Sam, overweight at 31, was
walking the railing 150 feet above the jagged granite boulders on the beach
below.
Darla’s frantic pointing to the
spectacle alerted patrons and staff. Sam walked oblivious to the crowd with his
face turned outward to the water. He reached the end of the rail and turned to
the patio. The crowd gasped as he bent forward, certain he was falling. Sam’s
hands grasped the railing on either side of his feet. He rolled forward. When
his feet were above the pavement he let go, landed, and walked back to his
table.
Later, at home Darla held a pillow
to her chest as she related the scene to her fourth friend on the phone.
“No, he acted as if nothing had
happened. I got us out of there as soon as I could and tried to get him to
explain it to me. He still insists he wasn’t up there. He’s over 230; he can’t
climb like that!”
When her anxiety was spent Darla
went to bed for sleep filled with nightmares.
At work on Monday Darla got a grip
and faced her twenty-seven fourth graders. She didn’t have a moment to think.
She brought her class to the auditorium at 1:30 for a short presentation about
the perils of smoking. The entire school was in attendance.
At 1:47 Darla rose from her chair at
the end of the aisle. She strode purposefully to the stage and joined the
presenters who were in the middle of a skit about fending off peer pressure and
cigarettes. She took a microphone from a stand.
“When you’re a Jet you’re a Jet all
the way from your first cigarette to your last dying day! When you’re a…” sang
Darla with decent singing voice and a good command of tune.
“…You’re never alone, you’re never
disconnected…You’re…”
The audience sat in stunned silence
as Darla belted out the song. The faces of her fourth grade were radiant in
their mouth-gaping, open-eyed surprise. Miss Collins sure could sing!
Darla concluded and even got some
ragged applause. She replaced the mike and returned to her seat. The players on
stage regrouped and finished their performance. When the students were settled
at their desks, the Assistant Principle beckoned to Darla to join her outside
of the classroom.
Mrs. Jenny Carthwaite seemed shaken
as she proceeded to question Darla about the incident.
“What were you thinking?” she asked
nervously, barely able to look Darla in the eye. “What possessed you to sing in
the middle of a school assembly, and especially that song; it promotes smoking
cigarettes!”
“Jenny, are you sure you’ve got the
right person? I sat and watched the presentation just like everybody else. I…”
Darla looked at pictures of herself
on stage on Jenny’s phone.
“The principal is gonna want an
explanation. Better think of something,” whispered Jenny hoarsely.
That evening, Jenny wrote in her
journal with a mug of chamomile tea. Outside the window her half-tilled garden
bed waited for her to resume planting. She stared into space, ruminating about
the odd event in school but also about a conversation with her brother, Sam
Jones, the prior day at a coffee shop. He insisted that she had done something
that she had no memory of. He said she had gone to one of the family hardware
stores and bought six cans of spray paint. When the manager closed the store,
he discovered a mural freshly painted on the wall on the side of the building.
It was a painting of a magnificent snarling black panther balancing on the limb
of a tree.
Her denials were countered with her
signature to the side of the art work. They examined her car and found the six
empty spray cans in the trunk.
The evening grew darker. Jenny,
Darla, and Sam, each in their respective homes, brooded over inexplicable
actions they were told they had taken. What they did not recall were the random
thoughts in their minds the moment before acting, thoughts of a ‘what if’
nature.
In Jenny’s garden where she had been turning
over the earth in a flower bed before going to the hardware store, a pale glow
was visible. Mingled with the pungent scent of soil was the effluence from an
organism, disturbed. Jenny was the first host.
(857 words)
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