Fireflies in December

by Jennifer Erin Valent

  Gemma flashed me a shocked look at Momma’s display of affection.

  I raised my eyebrows in return. I’d never seen Momma so excited over a little sewing meeting, but I realized that she’d been without friends all summer. I smiled at Momma on the way out, silently praying she wouldn’t come home disappointed.

  Thankfully Mr. Tinker’s boys had spent the day at the swimming hole and were good and worn-out, but the evening wasn’t so special as Momma had suggested. Luke was busy working on the truck with Daddy and Mr. Tinker, and the only time I saw him was when he came in to get some sweet tea. I helped him fix the drinks for the three of them, but outside of an initial “Your hair looks real nice, Jessie,” he talked about nothing but carburetors and spark plugs.

  By nine o’clock, the Tinker boys had dozed off on the couch listening to the radio, and Gemma and I were sitting on the floor with our chins on our knees, bored to tears.

  “Jessilyn,” Daddy called, “where you at?”

  “Right here,” I replied with a sigh. “Sittin’ here doin’ nothin’.”

  “Well, I got somethin’ for you. We need some of that strong tape I keep in the field shed.”

  “I’ll go get it,” I volunteered quickly. “Ain’t got nothin’ else to do.”

  “That’d be a big help. You want someone to go with you? It’s dark.”

  “It’s just out to the field shed.”

  Gemma stayed with the boys, and I grabbed a flashlight and trudged out the back door, following the path to the shed. The toads and crickets were particularly raucous, a symphony of night noises that drowned out my footsteps. There was very little moon, and it crossed my mind that even with the lanterns Daddy had lit up, those men still must have been struggling to see. The overwhelming darkness began to close in on me halfway through my journey, giving me shivers despite the warm air.

  I hated that I had to feel frightened walking on my own land, and I started to wish I’d told Daddy to send someone with me after all. I’d never felt uncomfortable on Lassiter property before, but now . . . now, life was different. In one summer, the innocence of my youth had fled away, fear creeping in to take its place.

  A soft breeze rattled the bare branches of a dying tree to my right, and I leapt to the side, the rapid beat of my heart joining in with the toads and crickets.

  I had that feeling of being watched, that feeling that any space outside my line of sight contained evil waiting for the perfect time to pounce. I had made this journey a thousand times, all times of day and night, and I’d never known fear of this sort. But fear of all sorts had become my constant companion of late, and I had not easily come to accept that fact. I fought it the whole way, determined that no one had the right to steal my peace of mind. In principle I may have been right, but in fact, I was always frightened, and those moments on the path were no different.

  To my left, a bush rustled. To my right, an owl hooted. It was as though the entirety of nature had conspired with Walt Blevins to drive me into a panic. I walked on briskly but would not allow myself to run because I felt running would be giving in to fear.

  By the time I reached the shed, I was feeling certain I was being followed, but my head kept saying I was crazy. There was no doubt that my imagination had jumped its boundaries that summer, and I told myself twenty times while I was entering the shed that I was only imagining things.

  The old wooden door creaked loud and long, and I tossed the light over the shed’s contents before entering. I did that quickly, however, figuring that there was less likelihood of someone being inside the shed than out. Once I was sure no one had taken up residence in our shed, I went in and slammed the door behind me, pushing a wooden crate against the door since it would only stay closed if locked from the outside.

  A light breeze whistled through the broken glass in one of the tiny windows, a ghostly sort of whine. The beam of the flashlight cast awkward shadows about the place, making wrenches look like knives and hubcaps like the distorted faces of Halloween masks.

  Knowing exactly where the tape was, I scurried over to get it, sticking it inside the pocket of my dress to keep one hand free to combat any attackers. But then I froze, certain now that I’d heard footsteps outside the shed. Hoping desperately that it was just Daddy or Luke come to fetch me, I called out, “Hello?”

  No answer came.

  “Anybody there?” I asked again.

  For several moments, I stood as still as I could, holding my breath and hoping to hear something positive in reply. But I heard nothing.

  I decided I had two choices. I could either sit in the shed until one of the men noticed I was missing and came looking for me, or I could brave the trip back. The former seemed appealing to me, except for the sheer humiliation of being found cowering in the shed, maybe even by Luke. I couldn’t have that. I was being irrational, anyway, I decided. And the sooner I started back, the quicker I could be curled up on the cool wooden floor of the den being bored with Gemma.

  With renewed determination, I stepped forward and grabbed a hammer for a weapon just in case, then walked to the door. My yank on the handle was met with stubbornness, and with a long sigh of irritation at myself, I remembered I had yet to remove the crate from in front of it.

  I slid the crate loudly across the gritty dirt floor, but the door did not drift open as I expected it to. Grasping the worn handle, I pulled, but the door didn’t budge.

  “C’mon,” I muttered. “Open up!”

  But the door was locked in place, only moving enough to rattle on its hinges. The level of my panic reached new heights as I realized I had been followed. Someone had come behind me and slipped that hook into place. I had no idea as to why anyone would want me locked in there, but it didn’t matter much to me what the reason was. I only wanted to be back in my house, out of the stifling darkness, with the security of my daddy’s voice drifting in through the front windows.

  Fearing that the same person who had locked the door would return and try to get inside to me, I pushed the crate against the door again and stacked another on top of it for insurance. Then I crossed to the back of the shed and crawled beneath the worktable to sit in the dirt, the flashlight pointed directly at the door, the hammer in my hand poised for action.

  Surely one of the men would notice I’d not come back, and then they’d come looking for me. They would get im patient waiting for the tape and wonder. Or maybe Gemma would ask after me, realizing I’d been gone longer than necessary. Whatever the reason for searching, I sat there and hoped they would do it. Through the involuntary shakes in my hands and the tears of fright I couldn’t blink away from my eyes, I hoped and prayed.

  “Sweet Jesus,” I whispered like I’d heard Momma do time and again when worried about something. “Sweet Jesus, help me. Help me, Jesus.”

  I murmured that over and over again without thinking. Those were the only words that would come to my head, so I just kept saying them like they were magic words. I’d never paid too much attention in church. My Bible was as dusty as boxes in the attic. But I’d been raised by my momma, and my momma knew what it was to be on personal terms with God.

  Daddy knew the Lord, but he had a quiet way of worship, and he asked me only once in a while if I remembered how important it was to know the Lord. But Momma, she was different. Faith came easily to her most of the time, and she’d talk to God at the drop of a hat, out loud, no matter who was around or what we were doing.

  Once, when times were particularly thin, we had been buying flour and sugar from the grocery, and Dale Watts said, “Mrs. Lassiter, you’re two dimes short.”

  I was so embarrassed when my momma put her hand on my head and said, “Dear Jesus, I need two dimes to feed my baby girl. Help me get them dimes.” It was bad enough that I’d been called “baby girl” in public even though I was ten, but it was even worse that my momma had invoked a miracle right in the middle of the produce.

  Momma got those dimes, though, when Bart Tatum placed them in Dale’s hand and s
aid, “Faith like that should be rewarded.”

  Momma thanked him a million times and with a “Thank You, Jesus” picked up our bag and walked me from the store.

  As we walked to the truck, I told Momma that it was no miracle we’d gotten those dimes. “Mr. Tatum felt sorry for us, was all.”

  “Miss Jessilyn,” she told me, “with the stubborn way human hearts can be, it’s a miracle when we give kindnesses away with no benefit to ourselves. Yes ma’am. That Mr. Tatum would give of himself is miracle enough for me.”

  From anyone else, I would have thought that prayer a smart way of using guilt to get someone to pay a bill, but that wasn’t my momma. She never connived at anything. She simply believed in a God of miracles, even if I couldn’t understand any of it.

  Watching Momma was good enough to teach me that there was a God and a Savior. It was just that I’d never seen much need for a Savior over the past thirteen years, and despite Momma asking me every Sunday if I’d reconsidered, I’d yet to do anything about asking Jesus to save me.

  But even as I sat in that dimly lit shed, I wasn’t asking for salvation of my soul. I was asking for salvation of my body. I didn’t want anyone hurting me, and I figured if my momma loved Jesus so much, maybe He’d have pity on me and save me for her sake, even if I was a wretch like the church song said.

  It seemed like an eternity of waiting there, but it was actually only about ten minutes before I heard footsteps, and this time I was sure that was what I was hearing. But they did nothing to ease my fears because I couldn’t figure any reason why Daddy or anyone good coming to find me would walk so quiet and slow. I gripped the hammer so tightly, I nearly stopped the blood from flowing to my fingers. I flipped the flashlight off, assuming I’d be better off if any intruder had a hard time finding me in the dark.

  My teeth began to chatter when I heard the latch being lifted from the metal loop on the outside of the shed. I watched as best I could as the door creaked open slightly before smacking against the crates. Someone spoke softly, and the door started slamming back and forth against the doorframe and then against the crates, over and over again.

  I shut my eyes against the terrifying noise and continued praying for a miracle through lips that moved without sound. Finally the crates slid far enough to allow a man to enter, and footsteps slowly scuffed across the floor.

  Making my way farther toward the corner of the shed, I curled up into a ball so small, I was half my usual size. The intruder was breathing heavily from the strain of breaking past the crates, and he was muttering every time he ran into another object that was cloaked in darkness.

  I could tell by the clanking of tools that he was feeling along the wall where hooks and nails harbored wrenches, hammers, and saws. Then the noise stopped, and I heard a rattling sound, like something being shaken. I knew that sound.

  I froze when I remembered the flashlight Daddy kept on the shelf near the tools, the stubborn one that only worked now and again. Whoever it was that had locked me in was trying to get that light to work, and if he succeeded, I was doomed. My eyes having adjusted to the darkness, I could see the outline of the door, and I decided that my only recourse was to make a run for it, hopefully catching the man off guard, so he would be unable to stop me.

  A couple more smacks on the flashlight sounded before I got up the nerve. At the count of three, I bolted for the door, smacking my foot on something metal on the way. Pain shot through my foot, but I didn’t hesitate. I had just reached the doorway when a hand gripped my wrist, jerking me to a stop.

  My screams pierced the air over and over again. I was hysterical, shrieking in short, loud gasps, flailing against the grasp of my captor.

  That was when the flashlight decided to click on, but I had my eyes clamped shut, and it wasn’t until I heard my name that I paused to identify the voice that said it.

  “Miss Jessilyn,” he was saying, “what’s wrong with you?”

  It was Jeb, and his presence there with me in the dark did nothing to relieve my fears. But I knew that my screams would have alerted half the county by then, and in sheer weariness, I collapsed to the ground in a heap.

  “Heaven’s sake,” he said, stooping down in front of me. “You’re in a state!”

  By the time he got me back outside, Daddy and Luke were flying up the path in horror. “Jessilyn! Jessilyn, you hurt?” Daddy demanded. “What happened?”

  “Don’t rightly know what happened,” Jeb said. “I found the shed locked and barred by somethin’, and then she tried to run out past me, so I grabbed her arm and she just went off like a banshee.”

  I stayed on the ground to get my composure, and Daddy and Luke both bent down in front of me.

  Mr. Tinker came running up last. “What in tarnation is goin’ on here?”

  “Someone locked me in,” I said breathlessly. “I couldn’t get out.”

  “What do you mean someone locked you in?” Daddy asked.

  “I mean just that. I went to get out of the door, and I couldn’t get it open.”

  “Maybe it was just stuck,” Mr. Tinker said. “You know the humidity does that to the doors.”

  I shook my head. “No, sir! That door was locked. It wiggled but it wouldn’t open.”

  Daddy sat back on his heels and tipped his hat off his head, thinking.

  “It was locked when I got to it, Harley,” Jeb said. “She’s right about that. And there were some crates in front of the door on the inside. I had a heck of a time gettin’ in.”

  “Crates in front of the door?” Luke asked.

  “I did that to keep anyone out,” I said. “Someone locked me in, and there was no telling if they’d come back for me.”

  “Now, honey, I just can’t believe anyone locked you in,” Daddy murmured unconvincingly. “Most likely that lock fell into place when you shut the door, is all. Stranger things have happened.”

  His denial of the reality of my experience angered me, but I held my tongue, realizing that he didn’t know how fully I’d been threatened of late. Luke looked suspiciously at Jeb and came over to help me up. I gratefully let him, but even the touch of Luke’s rough hands couldn’t ease my spirits.

  I saw Mr. Tinker exchange a meaningful glance with my daddy, but they didn’t voice their worries in front of me. I thought it was pretty stupid for them to think they shouldn’t talk about it in front of me. After all, I knew better than anyone how much trouble I was in. But I just kept silent knowing that saying such things to my daddy would have been the stupidest thing of all.

  As we walked back to the house, Daddy offered all sorts of different ways that the door could have locked by itself. “Could’ve been the breeze. Or the force of the door closin’. Did you slam it, Jessie? That’s probably all it was. Or maybe it really was swollen stuck. You know how old that shed is. Maybe the hinges are rustin’.”

  It was unlike Daddy to come up with so many guesses. He liked facts, not speculation, and I saw his eagerness to make excuses as evidence that he was worried but didn’t want to let on that he was.

  Jeb walked as far as the house with us, and then he tipped his hat in our direction. “Sorry you got so scared, Miss Jessie. S’pose I’ll say good night now.”

  Luke stared at Jeb, his head cocked to one side. “Now, how is it you’re on this property this time of night?”

  “I was stayin’ in the lean-to, since I had extra work to be done this evenin’.”

  Luke looked at my daddy for confirmation of Jeb’s story.

  “You know I let him stay there on late days, Luke. There ain’t nothin’ wrong with Jeb.” Daddy said those words very determinedly, as though he were vowing Jeb’s innocence in his simple words. I couldn’t be as sure as he was, though. The way I saw it, Daddy didn’t know all there was to know about Jeb Carter. “Thanks for helpin’ my girl, Jeb,” Daddy said. “We’ll be seein’ you tomorrow.”

  I watched Jeb walk off, my mind full of suspicions. The lean-to was attached to the very shed where I’d been st
uck, and there wasn’t a single soul who had been better able to lock me in than Jeb had been.

  While Mr. Tinker went back to fixing the truck, Daddy and Luke got me settled inside the house with Gemma, who we found in front of one of the windows, her face pressed closely to the glass. “Land’s sake!” she shouted when we came in, sounding like her momma. “I was nearly faintin’ in here wonderin’ what happened! What was all the screamin’ about? Jessilyn, you okay?”

  “I’m okay, Gemma. Just got scared, is all.”

  “Scared by what? You see a snake or somethin’?”

  I glared at her. “I ain’t afraid of no snakes!”

  “Well then, what?”

  “She’ll explain it to you in a minute, Gemma,” Daddy said. “Let’s get her settled down first.”

  Gemma obeyed and went to get me some cold water. She came back with a glass mostly full of ice with a little water in it. “Cold helps you calm down,” she told me. “Crunch some ice.”

  I did as she said, and loath to be the center of attention again as I had been so often that summer, I told Daddy they should get back to fixing the truck. “Ain’t no reason to hang around starin’ at me,” I said, pulling the tape from my pocket and handing it to him. “Gemma’s with me.”

  “Truck can wait. But Otis wants to borrow my good saw, and I’d better get it for him before he goes. He was searchin’ for it in the barn when you started screamin’, and he more’n likely forgot all about it himself. You sure you’ll be okay, Jessilyn?” Daddy asked, clearly concerned.

  “Yes’r. I’m fine.”

  “Maybe I should stay with her,” Luke said. “If I’m in here, then you can finish up on the truck. You boys could do it without my help.”

  “You’ll just be outside,” I said, trying not to be too convincing. “But if you want to, Luke . . .”

  Gemma put a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing at me, but I figured if I was going to have such a trying night, I may as well get something out of it.

  “Fine idea,” Daddy said. “That would ease my mind a bit if you stayed inside, Luke.”