Cricket Hunters

by Jeremy Hepler

  Much of Cel’s childhood had been spent in the heart of Hunter’s Haven. She’d first kissed Parker in those woods, on Table Rock by Mesquite Creek, and she’d lost her virginity to him on a bed of leaves under a nearby gnarled elm months later. The thought brought on a swell of emotion. She bit at her lip to fight back the deluge rushing up her throat, but her eyes welled with tears anyway. What was she going to do? How was she going to fix this? They’d fought through so much. She didn’t want to give up. She didn’t want to lose him.

  She took in a deep breath, whispered a calming spell, and headed inside where she washed and dried the scrap bowl, then sat on the living room couch petting Mina while she waited for Yesenia. Mina was the oldest of Yesenia’s three cats, Yesenia’s familiar, and also the mother of Cel’s cat. Mina purred with pleasure as Cel scratched the nub where her front right leg used to be, a leg that had been tied to a string and worn around Yesenia’s neck, hidden beneath her clothes, for fifteen years now.

  When Yesenia walked into the room a few minutes later, she handed Cel a sheet of paper with writing on the front and the back. “Here you go, mija. There’s one on each side.”

  Cel glanced at the spells. One was the same blocking spell she’d already tried on Lauren, but again she kept that to herself. She flashed a grateful smile as she stood and hugged Yesenia. “Thanks, Buela. I better get going. I have to go to the store. Mila needs food, and I need laundry detergent.”

  Yesenia nodded, placed her hands behind her back, and cocked her head so Cel could kiss her cheek. “You know where I am if you need me.”

  Chapter 3 - Cel

  Cel purchased the items she needed and drove to Oak Mott Middle School. She parked her Envoy curbside across the street from the teacher’s parking lot, where she had a good view of the window looking into Parker’s room.

  The second time she’d visited him unannounced earlier in the month, she’d brought three ivies, claiming she thought he needed “something green to liven up his room.” She’d raised the blinds about two feet, placed them on the window sill, and told him he had to leave them there so they’d get plenty of sun. She’d figured the gap would provide enough space for her to see into his room at lunch time, and it had.

  She didn’t enjoy spying on him, but for her own peace of mind, she needed to see if he was lying about the nature of his lunches with Lauren. Were they really work-lunches, or were they locking the door and screwing each other’s brains out on his desk? As a faithful wife, she felt she deserved to know the truth. She’d only watched them three times so far, and each time Lauren had sat on a stool across the desk from him and done most of the talking. Parker had laughed a lot, more in those thirty-minute snippets than she’d seen him laugh in years. And sometimes Lauren had placed one hand over her mouth and the other on Parker’s wrist when she giggled, but as far as Cel could tell, that was the extent of their physical contact. Although there were a couple of times they went to the far side of the room out of view for longer than she liked.

  Shortly before the lunch bell rang, Cel fished the binoculars out from under the seat that she’d bought at Gander Mountain the day before she’d taken the ivies to the school. She aimed them at the window and focused the lenses. Today, she wanted to see if Parker would act jovial and pleasant, like nothing had happened at home this morning, or if he would act cold and upset, perhaps even give Lauren her apartment key back.

  A few minutes after the kids cleared out of Parker’s room, Lauren walked in wearing an inviting smile and carrying a sack lunch. With slumped shoulders, as if the upper part of his spine had turned to jelly, Parker rose from his seat and put his hands in his pockets. They talked only for a moment before he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and either read a text or checked the caller ID. Then he pointed at the phone, said something, and Lauren nodded and left the room, closing the door behind her.

  Parker spent the next fifteen minutes pacing around in front of his desk talking on the phone. Cel assumed he was talking either to a student’s parent, which happened frequently, or to his oldest sister Jennifer—the only other person Cel imagined he would answer a call from during school hours. Jennifer had moved back to Oak Mott to help care for their ailing mom, and she often called and asked Parker to pick up medications or groceries after work and drop them off on his way home.

  When Parker shoved his phone back in his pocket and exited the room a few minutes before lunch ended, Cel put away the binoculars and headed home, not happy, but content with the small victory. (“Small victories pave the road to reconnection,” was the motto of marriage counselor Dr. Les Dean’s book, The Road to Reconnection, a book both she and Parker had read after their first temporary split.) Although he hadn’t given Lauren the apartment key back, Cel was glad he’d looked downtrodden and hadn’t perked up when she’d walked into the room. She was also glad he’d sent Lauren away while he talked on the phone.

  Chapter 4 - Cel

  In the kitchen, Cel washed down a multi-vitamin and two maca pills with a swig of partridge tea, then made her way to the living room for her daily meditation. She’d been taking the pills, drinking partridge tea, meditating, and running ever since her second miscarriage two years earlier. After tests proved she had no obvious anatomical or genetic problems to blame for the first two miscarriages, and Parker’s sperm tested ready and willing, Dr. Benson had given her a suggested exercise regimen and a list of natural remedies that might help prevent future miscarriages. “A tweak here or there can sometimes make a world of difference,” he’d said.

  She dove headfirst into Dr. Benson’s suggestions not only for herself, but also for Parker. He’d always said he wanted a big family, two girls and two boys, ideally, and his family constantly badgered them about grandchildren. Even in the months right after each of the first two miscarriages, every time they talked to his mom, Beverly, she would ask when they were going to start trying again, reminding Parker that he was the only male left on their side of the family to pass on the Lundy name. Beverly would also often pat Cel’s belly and make comments like: “Those eggs won’t last forever, you know.”

  So Cel ran daily. Switched to eating only organic fruits and vegetables. Cut soda, soy, and wine out of her diet. Took multi-vitamins and herbal supplements twice a day. Performed fertility massages on her abdomen every evening. Grew partridge plants on her back porch to make the tea many Native American women used for fertility. And she continued performing the fertility rituals her abuela had given her. She lost ten pounds in the first month, and mentally and physically felt sharper, toned, ready. A viable vessel. Parker praised her efforts and seemed to love her trimmed body as well. He couldn’t keep his hands off her.

  Then came the third pregnancy, and the third miscarriage.

  Afterward, she battled through a tough depression but fell back into her fertility routine within a few months. Parker seemed discouraged but never said as much. When it came to discussing the miscarriages, he promised her it wasn’t her fault, that everything would be okay. They would try again when she was ready.

  Then came the fourth miscarriage in July, which was followed by a darker bout of depression. Dr. Benson urged Cel to go on antidepressants, but she refused. For the next six weeks, she kept the house dark, slept nearly eighteen hours a day, ate way more than she needed when awake, often cried herself into a daze with blankets pulled over her head, and couldn’t bear to be in the same room with Parker. It hurt too much to see the sadness in his eyes, to hear the pity in his voice. It was also embarrassing, shameful. She’d failed him again. She was not a mother. She killed every piece of him he gave her.

  By the time she emerged from her depression and restarted her routine, Parker had already gone back to work and met Lauren Page, halting any relationship-recovery efforts she attempted. No matter how many leading questions she asked, he never seemed interested in talking for more than a couple of minutes. No matter how flirtatious she tried to be, even if she walked around the house naked practically begg
ing him to fuck her, he never seemed interested in touching her.

  Cel finished meditating an hour before Parker usually arrived home. She ate a couple of carrots, folded and put away the clean towels, and went outside to water her plants. When she came back in, she turned on the radio and started preparing turkey tacos for dinner. She wanted to be busy when Parker walked through the door. Activity made awkward greetings easier for her. She would simply cook and follow his lead. If he wanted to talk about this morning or continue arguing, she’d oblige with honesty. If he wanted to make minimal eye contact and skirt the problem for a while, she’d play along.

  Classic rock songs played as the smell of seasoned meat saturated the kitchen. Four-thirty came and went without Parker arriving. Cel left the meat on the warm burner, made a salad with fresh tomatoes from her garden and a fresh pitcher of tea. Thirty minutes passed. Parker had only stayed later than five o’clock a handful of times, all of which were this school year. With Lauren. Cel waited another thirty minutes before texting him.

  Are you coming home? I cooked tacos.

  Twenty minutes later, she put the meat and salad in the fridge and called Parker. The phone rang six times and went to voicemail. She didn’t bother leaving a message because he never checked his voicemail. She typed a second text, asking if he was at the school with Lauren, but thought better of it and sent a text to her friend Natalie instead.

  Do you have time to chat?

  Natalie was Cel’s best friend, one of the few people she was honest with about Parker. They had all three been friends since their Gateway Elementary School days. Natalie texted back immediately saying she had two more houses to show this evening and would call afterward. Cel sent back a smiley face emoji and patiently waited.

  When Parker still hadn’t come home or texted by seven, Cel headed to his mom’s house. If he didn’t want to come home, fine, but she deserved to know where he’d gone and who he was with. Sometimes he could be such an asshole.

  Best case scenario: he’d gone to his mom’s house after work. He frequently went there and vented to his oldest sister Jennifer after he and Cel fought.

  Worst case scenario, one Cel didn’t want to fully consider until faced with the reality of it: he was somewhere secret with Lauren.

  She slowed to a stop on Union Street and parked angled where she had a direct line of sight at the Lundy house on Evergreen. It was the third house on the right, the one rimmed with rose bushes. The blinds in the front windows of the two-story brick home were open. Jennifer’s Audi sat in the circular driveway behind Beverly’s Durango, but Parker’s Camry wasn’t there.

  Cel exhaled a loud breath. Where was he? She briefly considered knocking on the front door and asking Jennifer if she’d heard from Parker, but the idea left her as quick as it had come. She knew better than to go inside the Lundy house and ask if they’d heard from Parker. His mom Beverly and favorite sister Jennifer would freak out. Parker was the baby of the family, the happy accident, more than ten years younger than both of his sisters, and although he’d turned thirty-one in May, they still treated him with kid gloves. If they hadn’t heard from Parker, they would unleash a barrage of questions on Cel and insist they all go search for him. She couldn’t handle hours of Jennifer’s and Beverly’s underhanded judgement and criticism right now.

  Cel pulled away from the curb and headed for the Grandview Apartments, Lauren’s home, just in case. She’d followed Lauren to the complex a few weeks earlier, after her suspicions had gotten the better of her and she wanted to know where Miss Mentee lived. She went the long way, passing Oak Mott Middle School in hopes of finding Parker diligently working alone in his room, maybe grading papers, avoiding a fight at home, but he wasn’t there. The lot was empty, the school abandoned for the evening.

  Half of the sun had slipped below the horizon, coloring the sky dark orange, by the time she reached Grandview Apartments. She looped through the circular complex twice, searching for Parker’s Camry, to make sure he hadn’t sneakily parked on the opposite side of complex from Lauren’s apartment. He’d been sneaky a lot since meeting her. His Camry was nowhere in the complex, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t parked a block away and walked to Lauren’s. Lauren’s yellow rag top Jeep was in its designated spot, so Cel parked in an empty slot facing Lauren’s one-bedroom apartment—building 14, apartment 212, upstairs on the right.

  Cel watched the sliding glass doors on Lauren’s balcony for a few minutes before Lauren appeared. The blinds were pulled back, the living room well-lit. She watched Lauren move from the kitchen to the living room a couple of times before sitting down on the couch with a bowl of food and turning on the TV. Satisfied Parker was not in the apartment, Cel left the complex just as the building’s security lights popped on.

  Chapter 5 - Parker

  Parker cancelled his afternoon tutorials and left the school right after the final bell rang. He didn’t want to stay and talk to Lauren. He didn’t want to lie and tell her everything was fine, to hide the fact that Cel had confronted him about their relationship, but he didn’t want to tell her the truth either. He didn’t want to talk at all. He wanted a break. A quiet break. Some time alone before heading home and facing Cel again. He took FM 24 around the southern edge of Oak Mott, and about a quarter of a mile outside of town turned onto an overgrown dirt road that penetrated the southern reaches of Hunter’s Haven. Shrouded by tree shade, he drove at a snail’s pace with the windows down for a while, inhaling the scent of mud and creek and weed pollen, before stopping in the center of the road and killing the engine.

  Although he hadn’t been out to Hunter’s Haven since the school year started, since he’d met Lauren, he’d used the old road, the only one that lead into the woods, as an escape route for years. And based on the constant fresh supply of cigarette butts along the side of the road, many people in Oak Mott did. Most came to hide a vice like drinking or smoking from their spouse or parents, or to rendezvous with a secret lover, or talk to God, or contemplate divorce or suicide, but he came to simply be alone. Escape. Decompress. With a population hovering around fifteen thousand, Oak Mott wasn’t a tiny town, but it was small enough that hideaways were few and far between.

  Parker unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt, rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, then opened his briefcase and pulled out a worn paperback copy of Jack Ketchum’s Red. He’d had his nose shoved in books since his sister Jennifer had taught him to read when he was five years old, making him read aloud from her Sweet Valley High collection every night before bed. Back then, Jennifer was an overweight loner with a horrible case of pubescent acne. Books were her best friends, her magic portal, her escape from the comments and ridicule her cruel peers often bombarded her with. And although Parker hadn’t had the same social problems in school, he’d followed in her footsteps when it came to reading, especially as an adult. To him, reading was therapy. When he read, he didn’t fret or worry, overthink or rethink, assume or regret. When he opened a book, all of his daily problems vanished for a while. He relaxed. He healed. He forgot himself. Over the years he’d spent hundreds of hours reading out here under the canopy of Hunter’s Haven, jumping from world to world, journeying with friends and fighting foes. He muted his cell phone, opened the book, and began reading.

  For the next hour he didn’t look up. He didn’t think about Lauren finding his room empty and his door locked after school. He didn’t think about how to greet Cel when he arrived home. Or if he’d even go home for that matter. He didn’t worry about the parents who would be pissed that he’d canceled after school tutorials at the last minute. He pored over the words, through the sentences. He followed Avery Ludlow on his quest for justice after three heartless teens had shot his best friend, his dog, Red, for no reason other than malice. Parker had read the book three or four times, but Ketchum was one of his favorite wordsmiths, a master at pulling him in, and each time felt like the first.

  He was twenty pages away from Avery’s revenge when the roar of an engine pulled
him out of the story. He closed the book and watched through the rearview mirror as a gray F-150 came into view. The truck slowed to a stop about fifty yards behind his Camry, and after a brief pause, made a three-point turn and drove off.

  Parker smiled to himself. Looks like I stole someone else’s idea, he thought.

  He continued reading for twenty more minutes, finishing Red and starting the other short novella in the book, The Passenger, before checking his phone. It was almost five-thirty. Cel and Lauren had both texted, both asking where he was. As he set the phone on top of his briefcase in the passenger’s seat, movement in the trees to his left caught his attention. He looked that way and saw a girl with thick brunette hair standing beside an elm tree thirty yards away. She wore a light-colored summer dress and had her hand on the tree trunk as though holding it upright. She had pale skin, slender legs, and was staring at him.

  Parker watched her for a moment as an impossible possibility moved slowly through his mind, like a sodden leaf finally too heavy to float on a lake’s surface sinking to the bottom. When the thought settled, his pulse quickened. It couldn’t be her.

  He opened the door and stepped out of the car to take a better look. The dancing shadows, overgrown shrubbery, and untrimmed trees made it hard to see well, but the girl’s long brunette hair was parted down the center just like Abby’s. And the style of the dress looked similar to the last one he’d seen her in. He felt like he’d stepped into the past, into a dream. It couldn’t be her.