Shifter Overdrive

by Scarlett Grove

  I pulled my cell phone from my back pocket and looked at the time. It was almost noon, so I told Daisy I had to get going. She made me promise to take a horseback riding lesson from her.

  After several moments of prodding, I acquiesced. Riding a horse was the last thing I wanted to do in this lifetime. It sounded terribly dangerous. The animal could bolt at any moment and go barreling over a fence, and I’d fall off and break my neck or at least get embarrassingly dirty. I’d seen that kind of thing in the movies and wasn’t in a big hurry to live it out. Daisy wouldn’t let me leave until I promised to take one of her lessons, so I agreed.

  I walked up to the main house past the bunkhouses and the vegetable garden. Big ripe squashes and tomatoes clung to the vines and dusty orange pumpkins squatted along dirt mounds. I could smell the fermenting scent of the compost pile as I passed. It had a surprisingly delicate sweetness.

  I wiped off my shoes on the front porch and walked inside. A woman with a scowling face and white-streaked, black hair came trudging down the stairs with a basket of laundry. She wore a long, gray housedress and brown clogs. She narrowed her eyes at me and stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

  “You must be that girl Jane in the princess room.”

  “Yes, I’m Jane Elder. You must be Penny, right?” I held out my hand to shake hers, but she didn’t respond.

  “Let’s get this clear right off the bat. I don’t do your laundry. I don’t clean your rooms. You tidy up after yourself around here. I’ve got too much work to do with Mr. Ellis and Miss Ellis, and all the borders, to be cleaning up after some spoiled city girl.”

  “Well, of course, I never expected…”

  “Good, just so we have that clear. The laundry’s in the basement.”

  “OK. Thanks.”

  She huffed at me and turned away, the bottoms of her clogs clicking on the floor. I stood in the entrance hall completely stunned. What had I done to deserve such a reaction? I’d never asked to have anyone clean up after me. I hadn’t unpacked my room yet, but that was no reason to assume I expected to be served. A sheen of frustration glossed over my eyes, and I felt a tear gather in the corner. I sucked in my breath and tried to blow it off. Daisy had warned me about Penny. She must be like that to everyone.

  I opened the big double doors that led to the library, expecting to find Morgan already sitting at the table. There was no one there. I took another deep breath as my stomach turned in knots. Where the heck was that girl? I had no idea where to find her. I decided to look the last place I had seen her, the family room.

  I marched down the hall and into the kitchen to find Patty assembling rows of sandwiches on the big, square, granite covered, kitchen island. I peered into the family room. Morgan wasn’t there.

  “Hi Patty. Have you seen Morgan?” I said, hoping she had forgotten I asked about Mrs. Ellis earlier.

  “Hi Hun, I sure haven’t. Want a sandwich?”

  It seemed she had forgotten, or at least forgiven me. Patty did look almost identical to Penny. I wondered how twins could be so different in character. At least one of them was nice.

  “Not right now. I need to find Morgan. Any idea where she might be?”

  “Let’s see. She likes to go play near the creek by the settler’s cabin. You might find her there. Here. Take some sandwiches. She’s probably getting hungry. Might help you catch the mouse, so to speak.” Patty hurriedly wrapped up two sandwiches and put them in a paper lunch bag with two small packets of chips. She grabbed some bottles of water from the fridge and thrust it all into my hands.

  “Where is this settler’s cabin?”

  Penny went to the window and pointed toward the dark-blue mountains in the distance.

  “You see the edge of the pasture all the way to the back there, where the tree line starts? There is a fence there. You go ahead and climb that fence and just beyond is a creek. There’s a little bridge between two big spruce trees. Just cross that bridge and follow the creek to your right, and you can’t miss it.”

  “OK,” I said hesitantly. I didn’t think I would find this hidden cabin, but I had to at least try. The prospect of keeping the “fantastic opportunity” in Montana hinged on me getting my student to actually talk to me.

  I took the bag of food and the bottles of water and ran upstairs to get my backpack. I put everything inside, went back downstairs, and set out toward the pasture. The quickest way to get there was around the barns. As I passed the corral, Daisy waved at me as she pulled her blue roan gelding into the barn.

  “Back for the lesson?” she yelled over the distance.

  “I’m going to find Morgan at the settler’s cabin. That’s the way right?” I said pointing.

  “That’s it. Don’t forget your promise.”

  “I won’t.”

  I continued past the corrals, climbed an ancient, splintering wooden fence, and dropped down into the pasture. The vegetation looked as if it had been recently mowed. Yellow stalks were chopped off near the base, and green growth peeked up underneath.

  In the distance, I saw a herd of black and red cattle. What were they? Angus? I had no idea really, but the TV commercials always boasted “real Angus beef.” I heard them mooing over the sound of the wind that picked up and blew my hair around my face. I turned around and looked back at the house looming above on a hill over the lake. I shivered, feeling like someone was watching me. I rubbed my arms over my sweater, glad I’d dressed warmly.

  I continued through the field, narrowly avoiding cow pies on more than one occasion. When I got to the far end of the pasture, I climbed over another ancient, splintery fence. A gray splinter jabbed into my palm, and I had to pull it out with my fingernails. I little droplet of blood pooled where the splinter had been.

  On the other side of the fence, I looked for the bridge that was supposed to be between two spruce trees. What was a spruce tree, and what did it look like? I sighed, and walked to the right. Maybe if I found the cabin, I could backtrack to the bridge.

  I followed the stream, enjoying the sound of it burbling along in my direction. I assumed this creek originated in the mountains and fed the lake in front of the house.

  Soon I came to two tall blue-green evergreens standing on either side of a pitiful little bridge that looked like it might collapse at any moment. It was nothing more than a few boards wedged into the rock and clay on either side of the creek.

  I frowned and placed my foot on the board, slowly increasing my weight until I was sure the thing wouldn’t collapse into the water. I gingerly put my arms out to the sides to give myself extra balance as I hurried to the other side. I let out the big breath I’d sucked up in my lungs and ran my backpack straps through my fingers.

  I could see a structure in the distance, tucked away behind the black-and-white trunks of aspen trees. The grove was losing its foliage and orange and yellow, tear-shaped leaves fell all around.

  “Morgan?” I called. I didn’t want to surprise her by showing up unannounced. “Patty sent me with some sandwiches.”

  The girl’s black head poked out from the rustic doorway. Her dark eyes seemed hidden in shadow. She came the rest of the way out of the door and walked toward me wearing a pair of denim jeans with faded knees and a red flannel shirt. Even with the country girl attire, she still looked like a ghost.

  “Come,” she said taking my wrist in her hand. She led me into the cabin, which had newish shingles with a light coat of moss. The plaster between the logs was full, clean, and white. Mr. Ellis must have kept it well maintained.

  Inside, I was surprised to find a tidy one-room house. There was a fire place, a wood cooking stove, a bed with linens, and a table with chairs. It was clean and almost livable. The girl had managed to build a fire in the fire place. A bouquet of black-eyed Susans and goldenrod sat in a vase on the table.

  Morgan closed the door and pulled my backpack off my back. She carefully laid the backpack on the table and removed the lunch bag. She placed a sandwich, chips, and water in front o
f both chairs, sat down and began to eat. I quickly sat down with her and opened the plastic baggy to remove my sandwich.

  She was being hospitable to me. I didn’t want to blow it. I bit into the sandwich and the flavor of smoked turkey and gourmet mustard sweetened my tongue. They sure fed these hunters well. I chewed and watched the girl slowly eat her meal. She picked at a chip and looked up at me.

  “Sorry about last night,” she said under her breath. “When daddy told me I would have a teacher. I thought he meant it would be Mommy.”

  “I see,” I said. I didn’t want to push her to communicate.

  “Mommy isn’t dead. They all say she’s dead, but she’s not.”

  “Oh,” I said, taking another bite of sandwich. My education hadn’t prepared me for this. This kid needed a therapist. I decided to play along. The worst thing I could do would be to alarm her. She needed to at least talk to someone. “When is she coming back?”

  She looked up at me as if someone finally spoke her language, and she took a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t know. I keep waiting. She tells me she’s not gone when she whispers to me, but then she doesn’t come back.”

  “She whispers to you?”

  “She whispers to me all the time. That’s how I know she isn’t dead.”

  We were treading on some seriously dangerous waters. On one hand, the idea of a dead person whispering was considered mentally ill in most quarters. To me, it wasn’t. I was torn on how to address it. I gulped and took a long swig of water before I spoke again.

  “Sometimes people whisper when they aren’t there. People who aren’t here whisper to me too.”

  “Really,” she looked up at me with her dark, haunted eyes.

  “Mostly at night,” I said, feeling like a fraud. If my graduate professors heard me talking like this, they would take back my degree. I’d gone this far; I figured I’d just run with it. “When does your mommy whisper to you?”

  “At night and in the forest. That’s why I come here. She tells me she loves me. I can’t always see her. But I know she’s here.”

  “Oh,” I said smiling. At least we were bonding. That would take us far when we needed to study math.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow move over Morgan’s shoulder. Then it came into focus. The figure looked exactly like the boy from my dream the night before. My body reacted to the memory as the dream flooded my mind. I had been so in love with him, instantly. The physical chemistry was amazing. I looked right at the shadow, and it disappeared.

  I shook my head, getting the image out of my mind. I was hallucinating. Jet lag or something. Could you get jet lag from a four hour flight to Montana? I blew a puff of breath up into my hair sending locks around my face. This was all strange and new. The kid was spooking me.

  “What do you talk to your mommy about?” I asked.

  “She’s worried about Daddy. I thought you were going to be her, but you weren’t, so now I don’t know how to help him.”

  “Help him?”

  “Something is going to hurt my daddy,” she said with a whimper. A tear fell from her eye. I stood to put my arms around her shoulders. She let me hug her, and she rested her face on my arm.

  “Everything is going to be alright. Your mommy sent me to take care of everything. We are going to have loads of fun and learn lots of things together, OK?”

  “OK,” she said, still a little teary. I stood and patted her head. When I looked up, I faced the fire place. On the stone mantle, sat a framed sepia-toned photograph. The man in the picture looked too familiar. I gasped and walked to the fireplace, grabbing the picture.

  It was a staged, old-fashioned portrait of the boy from my dream. He sat stiffly in his chair, wearing a pinstripe suit, holding onto the lapels. I nearly dropped it from the fright running up my arms.

  I turned to Morgan. “Who is this?” I almost screamed. Her eyes got big, and then she frowned at me.

  “It’s my great, great, great, great, great, a lot of greats Uncle Owen. It’s a copy. Don’t worry about it getting ruined.”

  “Owen,” I said, putting the picture back on the mantel with trembling fingers.

  “Does Owen talk to you?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” I said, leaning against the fireplace for support. I was in danger of collapsing over my weak knees.

  “What does he say?”

  The memory of my dream flashed through my mind, and I blushed. I turned to her, smiling.

  “Nice things. Only nice things. I think he is glad I’m here.”

  I didn’t want to talk about ghosts or the dead anymore. I wanted to run back to St. Louis, listen to blues bands, eat BBQ ribs, and get tipsy on wine spritzers. Nice normal things.

  “I think it’s time to go. Let’s put out this fire.”

  I poked the flaming logs with a wrought-iron poker and poured water from my bottle over the embers. It sputtered out and smoked rose from the dying ashes. I coughed and fanned my hand in front of my face to disperse the smoke.

  Morgan waited for me outside holding my backpack in one hand and her bouquet in the other. I came out and shut the front door, hearing the wrought-iron latch click into place. We turned toward the stream when a loud pop rang out across the valley. My neck plunged into my shoulders, reflexively. Morgan gasped.

  “They just killed a bear,” she said, grasping my hand.

  Chapter 5

  I slung my backpack over my shoulder, and we walked back through the pasture and up to the front porch of the house. I stopped to brush off my shoes, but Morgan ran right inside, tracking muddy gunk all over the clean, polished floors. Penny would not be happy with that. I sighed and followed Morgan into the library. She sat with her elbows resting on the table with her face in her hands.

  I sat down, took a deep breath, and smiled at the little girl.

  “What were you studying with your previous tutor?”

  “Letters and numbers.”

  “You are seven years old, correct?”

  “Seven and a half.”

  “You should be in second grade, right?”

  “I don’t know?”

  “OK. Why don’t you show me what you know."

  She produced an alphabet book from the stacks directly behind the table and plopped it down in front of me. She proceeded to recite letters and sounds while flipping the pages of the big picture-book. I was silent. The child should be reading sentences by now. Letter recognition and sound indication were kindergarten level at best. She finished the book and closed the back cover, looking at me for approval.

  “Very good,” I said.

  “That’s just what my tutor wanted me to learn. I can read too,” the child said. “Mommy reads to me, and I can repeat what she says. Want to see?”

  “Sure.”

  She took out a thick old tome and began to recite the words written within.

  “Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind. It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own. It begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of experience, and the truth and sufficiency of which are, at the same time, insured by experience. With these principles it rises, in obedience to the laws of its own nature, to ever higher and more remote conditions. But it quickly discovers that, in this way, its labours must remain ever incomplete, because new questions never cease to present themselves; and thus it finds itself compelled to have recourse to principles which transcend the region of experience, while they are regarded by common sense without distrust. It thus falls into confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures the presence of latent errors, which, however, it is unable to discover, because the principles it employs, transcending the limits of experience, cannot be tested by that criterion. The arena of these endless contests is called Metaphysic.”

  “You are a fan of Immanu
el Kant?” I said, checking the book cover.

  “Mommy picked it.”

  “I see. You read quite well. Quite well indeed. Beyond your grade level. From what I see, you aren’t behind at all.”

  “Mommy read it. No one knows but you.”

  “Oh. In that case, we will continue your education while incorporating your mommy’s help. Does that sound good?”

  “Yes!”

  “How is your mommy with math?”

  We worked for the rest of the afternoon. It turned out that Mommy was much better at math than I was and embarrassed me with her calculus skills. After we’d messed around with advanced mathematics, I threw the scratch paper away, in case anyone might see it, and went back to basic addition and subtraction. I asked Morgan to let her mommy take a break while we worked alone. After she dismissed whatever part of her mind represented “Mommy,” the girl struggled with the most basic mathematical concepts. She could barely add two and two.

  Either the child was being helped by the spirit of her dead mother, or she was a genius with a highly fragmented mind. Considering my own experience contrasted deeply with my academic predisposition toward rationality, I couldn’t say for certain which it was.

  Outside the library, I heard Penny gasp at the mud stains on the floor. The doors to the library flung open and Penny stood in the doorway, her face red and scowling.

  “Who did this?” she shouted at Morgan.

  “I did it, Penny. I’m so sorry. I’m so used to walking around on pavement; I just forgot to wipe my feet. I’ll clean it myself.”

  “You’re right you will. Cleaning supplies are in the kitchen. Better hurry it up too because the hunting party will be back any minute, and we have more important things to worry about than your muddy shoes.”

  She turned on her heel and walked away. Morgan looked at me, her dark eyes blinking. She placed her hand on my arm and smiled.

  “Thanks. Penny’s mean. She’s always yelling at me.”

  “Doesn’t your daddy stop her?”

  “Daddy is always busy.”