by Ron Goulart
“Of course.”
“Then how are you going to explain me to your aunt?”
I glimpsed a predator’s teeth when he smiled. “We have a charity program at work, helping needy handicapped individuals rehabilitate themselves through clean air and sunshine. She’s looking forward to your visit. And, of course, to the $25 per diem my company is paying for your room and board.”
“You’re too generous,” I said sarcastically. “But I suppose anything more than that would have aroused her suspicions.”
“Precisely. If she thought I sent you merely to give her some extra money, she never would have agreed.”
Our car took the King of Prussia exit. I leaned forward, eying the landmarks. Lots of new buildings had appeared since the last time I had been here, some ten years before, back when I was a healthy college student.
Smith said, “You haven’t asked what the job pays.”
“It pays something?” Money had been the last thing on my mind.
“A hundred dollars a day, plus reimbursement for any expenses. That’s yours just for showing up and keeping my aunt company for a week or two, no matter what happens.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“But you’ll take it.”
“Do I have a choice?”
He smiled thinly and did not reply.
A few minutes later, we took an exit ramp, then turned into a gas station. Leaning forward slightly, I studied the limo’s dashboard. The gas gauge showed nearly full. We weren’t here to fuel up.
“This is my stop.” Smith swung open his door. “I have businesses to run. And you have another two-and-a-half hours’ drive ahead. Enjoy Hellersville…or, as my brothers and I used to call it, Hell!”
He slid out, and without preamble my chauffeur pulled into traffic and accelerated again. When I glanced over my shoulder, Smith raised two fingers to his forehead in salute. Then a new Burger King hid him from view.
* * * *
Ten minutes later, we were on the Pennsylvania Turnpike heading west, surrounded by pleasantly monotonous trees and the occasional sprawling farm, complete with picture-perfect horses and cows. Traffic remained light. Little here could stimulate my over-active mind; I found it soothing.
With nothing better to do, I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. Flannel shirts…blue jeans…fresh air and sunshine…Hell indeed for a city boy like me.
What had I gotten myself into?
* * * *
When the rhythm of the car abruptly changed, I jolted awake. We had taken an exit ramp.
According to the clock in the dashboard up front, almost three hours had passed since we left King of Prussia. The afternoon sunlight seemed too crisp, the rumble of wheels on pavement too sharp. My stomach growled faintly. Rubbing crusty-feeling eyes, I longed for a stiff drink. I had to press my hands against my thighs to keep them from shaking uncontrollably. God, I wanted to go home.
At the toll booth, the driver paid cash. Then we sped down a rural highway. Two turns later, we were on a narrow country road. Fields to either side had just been harvested, leaving a rough stubble of cut-down cornstalks. A pair of huge red harvesting machines sat idle.
As we drove, farm complexes broke the fields every half mile or so: old houses, ancient barns, silos, sheds, dogs and horses and the occasional cow or sheep. At least they had garbage pickup; at the end of each driveway sat identical green plastic bins stenciled “Waste Management.” A few driveways had bonus items out: a threadbare sectional sofa, a rusted old bicycle, piles of broken-down cardboard boxes neatly tied into bundles.
Then we turned onto a gravel driveway. In crooked letters, the battered metal mailbox said PECK – 2040.
We had arrived. I sat up straighter, studying a large old barn with peeling red paint, three ancient silver silos, and a sprawling Victorian-style farmhouse that had seen better days. A clothesline running between ancient oaks held faded yellow sheets. To the left of the house, in a chicken-wired pen, fifteen chickens scratched and strutted.
My chauffeur pulled up beside a pink Cadillac twenty years out of style, honked twice, then cut the engine. Immediately a plump, cheery-faced woman in a red-and-white checked dress burst from the house. She wore her gray hair up in a tight bun, and a smudge of white—flour?—dotted the tip of her nose. She had that pleasant, beaming expression I had always associated with grandmothers, and half against my will I found myself smiling back.
The chauffeur opened the door for me. I fumbled with my walking stick for a moment, then climbed out awkwardly.
“Hello!” I said through clenched teeth. I tried for a happy note, but it came out as a desperate croak. I had been sitting in one position too long; fierce stabbing pains shot the length of my legs.
“Hello yourself!” she replied. I tried not to wince; she spoke at full volume. “Call me Aunt Peck—everyone does. You must be Mr. Geller? Pete? Petey?”
“My friends call me Pit, Aunt Peck.” Not that I had any left, but Pit was several steps better than Petey.
“Lord above, what an interesting name! You must have quite a story to tell about it!”
“Not really—” I began.
She swept past me, all but bouncing with energy and enthusiasm. The chauffeur had opened the trunk. Without hesitation, Aunt Peck seized a blue leather suitcase and a matching garment bag, then started for the house.
“Come on, Pit!” she called over her shoulder. “I’ve got pies in the oven! Can’t let ’em burn!”
I looked at the chauffeur. “I suppose it’s too late to back out?”
“Sorry, pal,” he said. “Orders.”
I nodded. You didn’t contradict a man like Mr. Smith. Leaning heavily on my walking stick, I limped after Aunt Peck.
* * * *
She was a talker—I’ll say that much for her. As I sat at the kitchen table and worked on a slab of hot-from-the-oven apple pie topped with freshly whipped cream, she kept up a nonstop monologue about everything under the sun except angelic visitors—the farm, her late husband Joshua, the city kids who had just moved in next door.
“City kids?” I prompted. New neighbors explained all the cardboard boxes out for trash pickup.
“Nick and Debby,” she said. “You’ll meet them tomorrow. I always invite neighbors over for Saturday dinner. It makes things a little less lonely. Of course, now that you’re here.…”
I nodded encouragingly. “Have they been here long—Nick and Debby?”
“Oh, a bit over a month, I guess. Maybe two.”
“Ah.” I ate my last bite of pie. My hands kept shaking, but Aunt Peck either didn’t notice or marked it down to my accident.
How closely did the new neighbors’ arrival coincide with the disturbances? Could they be trying to scare her off her land? Pennsylvania had its share of natural resources…what could make her land valuable enough to steal? Oil, perhaps?
“I was wondering,” I said, wiping my mouth carefully on a napkin, “if you have well water?”
“Of course. Why?”
“In the late 1800s, my many-times great-grandfather had a farm in Pennsylvania. He gave up on it and moved to Ohio because every time he tried to dig a well, it filled up with black oily stuff.”
She laughed; everyone who heard it always did. According to family legend, it had really happened. And Marilyn Monroe used to baby-sit my father and uncle, too, before she got famous.
Aunt Peck said, “I bet your family has been kicking themselves ever since automobiles came along!”
“Yes.” I shook my head ruefully. “I guess you don’t have that problem here, though.”
“Oil companies poked around in ’75 or ’76, doing all sorts of surveys, but apparently there’s nothing under Hellersville but water.”
Strike one theory.
“Surely the town has something going for it…,” I said. “Mines? Silver? Gold?”
“Well…there used to be a quarry. They made gravel, I think—but then it filled with water. It’s been a lake
for nearly fifty years now. All Hellersville produces is produce.” She gave a wink. “But wait till you taste my tomatoes—they’re as big as softballs and sweet as anything! And my watermelons!” She laughed heartily.
Strike a second theory. If the land had no intrinsic value, why would anyone want to scare her off her farm?
After I finished my pie, Aunt Peck offered to show me my room. She retrieved my bags from the hallway, where she had left them while we checked her pies, then skirted the narrow stairs (which I had been dreading) and headed down a wide hallway. The floorboards creaked loudly as we walked: no one would be able to sneak up on us during the night.
We reached a cluttered family room. The sofa, wingbacked chairs, and ottoman all had plastic over the upholstery. Books, curios, and photos crammed the built-in shelves and the standalone bookcases. A small TV sat next to the fireplace.
We passed through into another small hallway, then came to a small bedroom at the back of the house. It had one window, which looked out across fields stubbled from recently harvested corn. To the left, I saw the edge of her garden—tomato and pepper plants.
I nodded approvingly at the single bed with a white quilt and two fluffy pillows. It looked a lot like my bed back in Philadelphia. A threadbare oval rug, made of tiny triangles of randomly chosen fabric set in a spiral pattern, covered much of the floor. An oak dresser and a battered old armoire completed the furnishings.
As she set the bags on the bed, I straightened the pictures on the walls: three faded black-and-white photographs showing children standing in army-like formations before this same farmhouse. Smiling girls wore knee-length dresses with bows in their hair; boys wore short pants and shirts with buttons, their hair buzzed so close they almost looked bald. The men behind them all wore white shirts with dark ties, and the women wore plain dresses. Dates written in the lower corners said July 13, 1961, July 8, 1962, and July 14, 1963. They had to commemorate the family gatherings Mr. Smith had disliked so much.
That would make Smith one of the boys. I studied their faces, but couldn’t pick him out—nearly identical clothes, haircuts, and suntans made him blend in among the others. Smith’s father, though, stood out among the men—shorter and darker than the others, leaner, with a somewhat sinister look in his eyes: a younger, rougher version of Mr. Smith.
“You used to have a lot of guests,” I said to Aunt Peck. “Where did you put them all?”
“Oh, we put the boys in the barn—plenty of room in the hayloft—and the girls slept in the family room. We had six bedrooms upstairs for the adults.”
“I was an only child. It must have been great to have so many family members together.”
“Oh, it was wonderful.” She sighed, eyes distant. “Those were the days.” Then she brightened. “Do you want me to unpack your things?”
“No, thank you. I can manage. I try to be self-reliant.”
“My Joshua was the same way, God rest his soul.” She started back for the kitchen. “I’ll start supper. Give a holler if you need anything.”
“Thanks.”
* * * *
I spent the next half hour unpacking. Everything Mr. Smith had purchased looked like it would fit me. With careful precision, I opened packages of socks and then refolded the contents, placing each garment neatly and precisely in the dresser drawers. Next I meticulously removed all the tags from my new shirts and hung them in the armoire. Jeans didn’t need hangers, so I stacked them in the bottom.
Mindless activities let my racing mind slow down. For a few minutes, I could forget Aunt Peck’s problems and concentrate solely on the here and now.
The last things in the suitcase turned out to be a tiny cell phone and a small but powerful flashlight, batteries already installed. I turned on the phone and checked the list of numbers. Speed-dial had been preprogrammed with several numbers:
Smith 001
Fast help 002
Smith really had thought of everything. I switched it off and put both phone and flashlight in the front of my sock drawer.
Next I opened the garment bag. My new suit turned out to be a Joseph Abboud original, gray with pinstripes, 100% wool: practical and conservative enough not to stand out in a rural farming community. Mr. Smith had good taste, if nothing else. I hung it up, then put my bags on top of the armoire. I made one last pass over the room, straightening the dresser slightly, lowering the shade so it covered the window latch, and picking a few bits of lint from the bed’s white quilt.
Lastly, I opened the window and peered out. Now I could see the whole of Aunt Peck’s garden, and I had to admit it was impressive: a rectangle perhaps thirty feet long and sixty wide, enclosed with chicken wire and planted with peppers, tomatoes, pumpkins, and quite a few other vegetables I couldn’t identify at this distance. Other than the garden and a couple of shade trees, the land around the farmhouse had been cleared for more than two hundred yards in every direction. Nobody could sneak up on the house—or, having gotten here, escape unseen the way the last prowler had.
I made my way back toward the kitchen, straightening pictures along the way, examining rooms with greater attention. The books in the family room seemed to be a mix of espionage novels and religious nonfiction. Family photos showed Aunt Peck and a man I took to be Joshua with five children and in a variety of settings, from Disneyworld to Hershey Park. I committed the position of every item in every room to memory. If these alleged angels moved or made off with anything, I would notice.
The plastic covers on the sofa and chairs had tiny pinprick indentations—probably cat claws, since cat hair in several different colors speckled the throw pillows.
Then, as I made my way toward the kitchen, I heard voices. Visitors? I strained to hear, but couldn’t make out the words.
As quietly as I could, I crept up the hallway and peeked around the corner. Aunt Peck had her back to me as she stirred something on the stove—soup or stew, from the smell. An old man in coveralls sat at the kitchen table nursing a mug of coffee. He looked at least seventy, maybe older: thinning white hair, weather-beaten skin, rough calloused hands.
“—ought to be ripped out and replaced,” he was saying. “Wouldn’t take more’n a day or two, and you wouldn’t have to worry about the termite damage. Can’t have you fallin’ through the floor.”
“I don’t have the money right now,” said Aunt Peck. “It will have to wait.”
As his fingers curled tightly around his white coffee mug, I noticed that the little finger and ring finger of his right hand were both missing their last joints.
“Wouldn’t cost more’n a couple hundred for lumber, Bessie. A wise investment, if you ask me. Happy to throw in the labor for free, just to keep you safe.”
“Maybe next year.”
“Suit yourself. But the damage ain’t goin’ to go away.”
“I know, Joe.” She sighed. “But my heart just isn’t into keeping things up anymore. Joshua used to handle all that.”
Joe frowned. “You do what you can, Bessie. You do what you can.”
He drained his mug and shoved back his chair. “I better get goin’. My boy and I can fix the barn tomorrow afternoon. Just needs a few new shingles, and I have plenty at home.”
“Thanks, Joe.”
Then, to my shock, she gave him a kiss—not a casual peck, but a downright passionate smooch—and he returned it heartily, along with a squeeze that made her squeal. Clearly the old folks had some friskiness left inside.
Joe left through the side door, which led into the yard facing the barn. After it slammed shut, I counted to ten, then limped into the kitchen.
“I heard voices,” I said. Through the door’s window, I watched Joe climb into a battered blue Ford truck and slowly drive away.
“Joe Carver stopped by.” Aunt Peck nodded as she stirred her pot. “He’s worked on the farm since the day we moved in here. The hardest thing I ever had to do was let him go when Joshua passed. He and his boy still do all the little jobs I can’t handle.”<
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“Ah,” I said. I picked up both coffee mugs and carried them carefully to the sink. Aunt Peck hadn’t stirred hers well enough; a thick white residue of sugar remained on the bottom when I poured out the dregs. “Does he live around here, too?”
“He has a little house in Hellersville. His wife kept it cute as a button till she got sick last spring. This was the first year they didn’t plant new flowers.” She shook her head. “Poor dear. She passed just after Joshua.”
Two old friends who had lost their spouses. No wonder they felt drawn to each other.
* * * *
At dinner, my hands shook so badly I could barely eat. I spilled all the water from my glass twice, soaking myself and the table. I apologized profusely as I wiped at everything with my napkin.
“Land sakes, it’s just water, Pit!” said Aunt Peck with a laugh. She fetched a towel from the kitchen and mopped up. “After five babies and Joshua’s passing, a little spilled water isn’t going to bother me!”
“You’re very kind,” I said miserably. Stop shaking, stop shaking! I pressed both hands together in my lap, but it didn’t help. My body wouldn’t cooperate. What I needed was a drink. Did Joshua keep a supply of booze in the house? Probably not; he had been a minister, after all.
Aunt Peck returned to her seat and began to eat her stew again—a thick one full of beef, carrots, and potatoes, just the way I liked it.
“You must be wondering what happened to me,” I said as I struggled with my fork. With effort, I managed to spear a carrot and get it into my mouth without impaling myself.
“Do you feel like talking about it…?”
“I don’t mind.” I half shrugged and put my fork down. Eating wasn’t worth the effort tonight. “I used to work on Wall Street. I got a plum job right out of college, but I had a nervous breakdown from working twenty-hour days seven days a week. After six months of treatment, when I finally began to pull myself together again, a taxi ran a red light and hit me. I spent an hour pinned under its front wheels, and I almost lost my legs. I spent another six months in rehab…and I just haven’t been the same since.”
“I’m so sorry, Pit.” She touched my hand gently. “I’ll pray for you.”