by H. L. Logan
Lee opened the door to the minimart and we went back inside. “There’s a few others on our side of the town,” he continued. “Oh, the Duncans. Their property was unmanaged for a while after the husband and wife passed and their children moved out, but recently one of the daughters came back. She kind of keeps to herself though.”
“No luck?” Reynold asked, sipping a coffee.
“None,” Lee said. “Fliers?”
Reynold pushed them over the counter to us. “Hey, Chrissy.”
“Yes, sir?”
“So, Lee filled me in a bit on your situation. He said that you’re headed to California, is that right?”
“That’s right. Though I don’t really have much of a plan once I get there.”
“Any reason why you chose there?” He paused and scratched his chin. “Sorry, I don’t mean to pry, that wasn’t my intent.”
“Oh, no problem,” I said, waving my hand. “You all have been so welcoming to me, you have a right to know why I left Georgia and all.”
“Well, your business is your own, if you want to keep it. I just wanted to know if you had a specific reason why you were going to California. What your end goal was, that is.”
“I left Atlanta because of the hurricane and flooding there—I know, ironic, isn’t it? But that was more of a catalyst. I’d been thinking about leaving for a while. Or rather, I just wasn’t happy with my life there. I was working a call-center job where I was supposed to be helping people, solving problems for them, but with corporate BS, all I could do was ruin days and put people in bad moods. It was the only work I could find after school, and well, frankly, I don’t even know what I want to do with my life.”
“I see,” Reynold said. “A journey of self-discovery.”
“Nothing like a quarter life crisis,” Lee chimed in, fishing a frosted donut out from the plastic box of donuts and bagels.
Reynold nodded thoughtfully. “You’re young, so it’s a good time to be thinking about that stuff. You’ve got choices available to you, so you might as well explore them. Broaden your horizons.”
“Exactly,” I said. “That was my thought.”
“You have any family in Atlanta, if you don’t mind me asking?”
My thoughts immediately went to my parents and the hateful tirade they’d went on before excommunicating me from the family, and again I wondered if I would be as welcomed here if they knew my orientation. It made me feel terrible, thinking that, especially of people who had been nothing but the kindest to me, but the wounds my parents had given me had cut deep.
“Um,” I said, feeling slightly uncomfortable for the first time. I chewed my lip. “Not really.” It was all I could think of saying, but Reynold seemed to catch on that it wasn’t a topic I wanted to discuss.
“Well, sometimes it’s necessary for a person to venture out far from home to get to know themselves,” he said. He tapped his finger onto the stack of fliers. “Come back here and see me after you go give these out, okay?”
“Sure.”
Lee and I took the stack of fliers and went out to his car. It wasn’t raining and the shops weren’t too far up the road, but Lee suggested we drive anyway in case of a sudden downpour. I had no complaints with that, so we piled into his car and drove the short minute up to the center of the town.
Armstrong reminded me of one of those frontier towns you might see in an old western film, with the single main road lined with the general store and the saloon, and horses tied up to posts all along the way.
The drive really was only a couple of minutes, and we pulled up to the curb in front of the small pet store called “Pampered Paws”.
“I’ll go drop some fliers off at the market,” Lee said, pointing down the street. “You go ahead and take care of the pet store.”
I nodded, and went inside the shop. The woman behind the counter was probably in her mid-forties, with red hair, red lipstick and a stone washed denim jacket and jeans bedazzled with metal star sequins and tassels. She had her nose stuck in a tabloid magazine.
“Hi there,” she said, perking up. “Welcome to Pampered Paws, I’m Patty. Is there anything I can help you with?”
“Hi,” I said, surprised by her bubbliness. She made me think me of one of those overly hyper lap dogs that seemed to be vibrating from too much pent up energy. “Yes, there is something you can help me with, Patty. I’m from out of town, and yesterday my cat escaped from me.”
She threw her hand to her mouth. “Oh, no! That’s horrible, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“I’ve got these fliers here…” I pulled out the stack and showed them to her. “And I was wondering if it’d be alright to hang one in the store?”
“Of course it would be alright! I’ll put them up on the window, and have a few on the counter too. You don’t have a picture of, uh…” She skimmed over the flier for his name. “Of Henry?”
I shook my head. “I rescued him just a few days ago from a flood back home, so I never got a chance to get any photos of him.”
“Oh, poor thing, one storm to the next. Well, I’ll keep an eye out for Henry too.”
“Thanks, I really appreciate that.”
She smiled and nodded, then went to stick up one of the fliers onto the window. I went back outside, and met up with Lee who was walking down from the market. The wind started to pick up again, pushing the trees into a sway and sending leaves and other debris tumbling down the street.
“Did the lady know anything about him?” Lee asked, and I shook my head.
“No… How about at the market?”
“No. Put up all the fliers though, on the bulletin board and right up at the checkout. If someone has seen Henry, they’ll know he’s missing for sure.” He looked up at the sky. “Seems like we’re gonna get another bout of it soon. Let’s head back to the station.”
As we drove down the road, a sudden flash of hard rain hit, and pounded down for a minute before letting up to a light sprinkle. Again, I could only think of Henry somewhere out there. I hoped that maybe he hadn’t gone too far, and had just found shelter and was hiding out from the storm. Maybe he would just stroll back in once the rain was gone.
Reynold was tidying up the shelves when we came inside. “How’d it go?” he asked.
“Put out the fliers,” Lee said. “Nobody’s spotted Henry, but I’m sure if somebody’s seen him, they’ll call about it.”
“Well,” Reynold said, finishing up with the shelves. “Chrissy, if you feel like you need to keep moving on with your journey, I’d be more than happy to keep you updated, and take care of Henry when he comes back. But, um, if you feel like you don’t want to move on just yet, I understand that too.”
“I don’t feel right about moving on at least until the storm is completely gone and I know that Henry isn’t just hiding out somewhere,” I said. “But I don’t want to burden you and your wife, Lee.”
Lee shook his head and held up his hand in a gesture that said, “no trouble at all.” Reynold slung his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that,” Reynold said. “This old market has an upper attic, which actually used to be a living area back in my father’s time. It’s just a small space—you could call it a studio—but if you want you can stay there for as long as you feel a need to be in Armstrong. All I ask is that you help out around the gas station.”
His offer completely overwhelmed me. “Wow, sir, I mean, Reynold. That’s incredibly generous of you. Yes, I think I’d like that. Truth is, I do like Armstrong, and I think that maybe there’s a reason I ended up here. Hopefully it wasn’t just to lose my cat.”
“You’ll get him back,” Lee said confidently, patting my shoulder. “I feel that.”
Reynold smiled. “You’ll need to clean up the place. It hasn’t been used for anything except storage in decades. I’ll bring in a cot from my house for your bed. If you can handle all that, the place is yours.”
“You sure you’re not just
getting Chrissy to do your tidying up for you, Reynold?” Lee laughed.
“I’m more than happy to do it,” I said, brushing a lock of my bangs behind my ear, and then tying the rest into a ponytail. Such a strange mixture of emotions rushed through me. I was excited to stay, but still broken up about Henry’s disappearance. He’ll be back, I thought hopefully. It was all I could really do—be positive. So many bad things had happened recently, but finally some good was coming my way, and I just had to believe that this was only the beginning of it.
Reynold took me to the back of the shop where, behind palettes of beer and energy drinks, a narrow set of stairs rose up to a pull-down attic door. He undid a metal latch on it and swung the door open, and then continued up inside. After fumbling around in the dark for a moment, he switched on a single lightbulb that hung from the ceiling. The place was definitely not much to look at—it was dust and cobweb ridden and packed with stacks of old storage boxes, but it was at least dry.
Reynold went over and pulled back the curtains on the room’s single window, a small rectangle that sat on the far wall opposite the entrance door. Cloudy sunlight streamed in, slanting through the sparkles of dust dancing in the air. Lee, who followed up behind us, let out a monster sneeze.
“You can just move all the boxes into one of the corners,” said Reynold. “The old bed used to be over there.” He pointed to a side wall, and I could see that the wood floor had a slightly different color where the bed was.
“Well, I’d better get to work,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. “If I want a place to sleep by tonight.”
Reynold laughed. “I’ll get you a broom and a vacuum.”
4
Lucy
I stepped outside from the sunroom to get some fresh air and enjoy the sunshine that was finally starting to peek through the clouds. I’d meant to go to the pet store the day before to buy some supplies for my furry guest, but I’d ended up getting caught by a rare burst of inspiration and spent the day churning out bowl after bowl. The cat didn’t seem to mind—he was using his newspaper cat box and was perfectly happy with being fed scraps of chicken, and spent the whole time lounging around nearby. The little guy was really growing on me, and he’d given me inspiration to work on something again, even if they were just simple bowls.
Plus, it was just nice to have some company.
When I’d found him, I’d had no intention of keeping him. After all, I was only here to try and get my mojo back, not to actually become a crazy cat lady. Now, I was starting to wonder how I could not keep him. I’d held off on naming him—I’d only get attached if I gave him a name—but I didn’t know what options there were for my little guest. I could keep him, or bring him in for someone else to adopt him.
I went back into the sunroom, and the cat bounded up to me, nuzzling his face up against my leg. I crouched down and stroked his head, scratching behind his ears and at his whiskers. He mrred and pushed against my hand, and I smiled. I couldn’t just get rid of you.
A timer dinged. I went over to the kiln, opened it, and pulled out the first bowl I’d made, which was now cool and ready for a glaze. I opened the cabinet with my custom glazes and chose something simple. I wanted to give it an overall dark stain, but with shimmers of opalescent green that would peek out around the interior of the bowl, exactly how my guest’s green eyes contrasted with his dark fur.
He nuzzled up against my leg again and let out a long meow. “What’s the matter, guy?” I said. He looked up at me and meowed again. “Shit,” I said, looking at my watch. It was already getting to be the late afternoon, and he was probably hungry.
I got up, went to the kitchen, and pulled open the fridge.
Double shit. I was out of the leftover chicken.
The fridge was pretty much void of anything else desirable to be eaten by cat or human. I turned around and saw that he’d followed me. “Good thing you’re here,” I said, “otherwise we might’ve both starved to death.” It was a good sign, actually—it’d been a long while since I’d gotten so absorbed in working that I forgot to eat.
“Keys, keys,” I muttered, searching around the house for my car keys until I found them in a random spot in the living room, and then repeated the routine with my wallet.
“Don’t burn the house down,” I said to the cat, who stared at me as I walked out the door, his tail swishing curiously.
I drove down the street until I reached the corner with the gas station and saw Reynold, the old-timer who’d operated the place ever since I could remember, standing out front cleaning debris from the driveway and the sidewalk. He looked up, saw me, and waved. I waved back. A girl, maybe in her early or mid-twenties, came out from the gas station with a push broom and started to help Reynold clean. Reynold didn’t have a kid, so she must’ve been someone from town. It wasn’t usual to see another younger person around Armstrong, so I found myself staring with a little more interest than I normally would’ve. Not to mention, it’d been a while since I’d seen such a pretty face.
No, stop it. I looked away and quickly took the turn, driving off up the street towards the grocery market.
I hated when girls made me feel that way. I felt guilty about it, and I didn’t want to believe that I could feel that way about another woman… but it happened so often.
Still, the thought of that girl at the gas station trailed in my mind, like an image burned into my retinas from staring at a light for too long. She was tall, with dirty blonde hair that hung in a long ponytail and bangs that swept her face. She’d had on a green, military style jacket over a v-neck shirt and ripped jeans that hugged long legs. She was very slim and fit. Younger girls were able to burn the weight so easily. 22 was when I started to hit the gym hard, because I found that the repetition and the mental discipline required was quite similar to the skills I used to create my pottery. These days, at 34, it was becoming an uphill battle to keep the weight off. I knew I was in pretty damn good shape, but it was hard not to feel flabby constantly, especially because I hadn’t been in a gym in ages.
There was something else about her that stuck in my head. I’d only seen her for a second and from a distance, but there was something about the look she carried on her face… She was pretty, but that wasn’t the only thing. I couldn’t put my finger on it. It wasn’t so much the expression, as something that lingered behind it. Maybe it reminded me of myself. I wasn’t sure. I’d only seen her for a moment, after all.
I wandered around the market in a bit of a daze, not really thinking about anything in particular, but still had that girl’s image bouncing around in my head. I forced myself to divert my thoughts to my new furry friend, and the bowls that I was making. The first—the one that I would glaze the moment I got home—I’d made to use as a food bowl, but it was probably too large for that purpose. I’d made four others, all of varying sizes. One was probably a more fitting size, and the three others were just sort of random and likely would end up in the trash can later.
It’d been so long since I’d produced work that I wasn’t immediately smashing into a lump.
I picked out a whole chicken that was on sale and put it in my basket, along with some fresh vegetables. The meat was pretty expensive, but the vegetables were cheap and much better than anything I could’ve gotten in a store back in New York. It was one of the perks of living out here—we did have access to some great produce.
Who was she?
I put my groceries on conveyor belt and stared off into space as the elderly checkout lady scanned the items.
“Sixty-nine,” the woman said, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“Uh, sorry?” I asked, smiling apologetically.
“Twenty-two sixty-nine. Your total.”
“Oh, right.”
I paused and frowned, reading the text. And that’s when I saw it.
“Um,” I said, pointing. “I think… you overcharged me for the chicken. It said it was on sale for $3 a pound.”
She straightened her glasses an
d double-checked a little binder of coupons she had next to the register. “Oh, you’re so right. I’m sorry.”
I smiled, paid the new price, and then bagged the groceries myself. It was quite warm out, so I put the bag in my trunk and drove the short distance down to the pet store. I’d just be in and out to grab some kitty litter and pet food.
“Hi there, welcome to Pampered Paws, I’m Patty. Anything I can help you with?”
The woman behind the register smiled a dazzling smile that was outlined with bright red lipstick that seemed to be twenty years out of style, and the loudest outfit I’d ever seen. “I’d like to buy some kitty litter and cat food,” I told her.