Eyes at the Window

by Deb Donahue

  She’d seen her trespassing neighbor a couple more times, also. Neither time had he seemed to notice her, and once he had been alone, without the dog at his side. She’d half convinced herself that he must be Harlan’s hired hand, Bob Meeks, since she knew his farm bordered hers. If that were true, though, it seemed odd that he had so much free time. All the other farmers she’d seen in the area were out in the fields day and night, chugging up and down the fields on their John Deers and New Hollands and International Harvesters.

  By Saturday, she finally felt mostly settled in. The creaks and groans of the old house were barely noticeable to her now. When she snuggled into bed each night, she kept a nightlight on and felt the comfort of its glow whenever her nightmares jerked her awake. Her optimism had returned, also. She no longer felt plagued with the fear of a potential blackout in the middle of the night.

  One of the rocking chairs she’d liberated from the front room made a great spot to sit on the porch in the mornings and drink her coffee. After years of drinking double skinny extra foam vanilla lattes, she’d forgotten how good a cup of freshly perked coffee tasted. A drop of milk, a spoonful of sugar and the delicious aroma woke her up and made her ready for her day.

  Saturday morning, however, she stayed on the porch longer than usual. There was finally no pressing work to be done inside. Rufus, fully recovered, was chasing birds across the yard despite Miranda’s admonishment to leave them alone. The crisp fall air contained a hint of winter but the sunlight slanting sideways across that side of house felt warm and welcoming. Miranda was tempted to go inside and bring out the book she’d been reading, a book of poems by Eugene Field she’d found when she cleared the stairway. She deserved a day off.

  Then she remembered Patty’s invitation to attend the Fall Festival in town. She hadn’t been to Greenville all week. The telephone company had arrived on Friday to install her landline but she’d already begun to wonder if that was such a good thing. The peace and quiet had been welcome after her hectic, deadline-driven career at WKLU.

  Checking her watch, she realized the festival would begin in another hour, although Sissy had told her people usually started arriving at the park much earlier. If she was going, she should start moving. She had an overflowing laundry basket in the bedroom and Goodwill boxes still cluttered one corner in the kitchen. She could run into Riverside to take care of those chores first and then enjoy her day off at the festival without feeling guilty. She could even take Rufus with her. He would enjoy the park.

  At the back of her mind, there was another reason for her decision, although she didn’t admit it to herself. There was a good chance she might run into her mysterious hunter face to face this time. She would love to find out more about him and discover why he seemed to be spending so much time on her property.

  She thought about him again later with a smile on her face as she waited for her clothes to spin dry at the laundromat. This new move to the country seemed to have brought out the romantic in her. While she’d had boyfriends in the past, her career had always taken precedence. Even as a teenager, she’d been more likely to be out biking or running than reading romance novels or daydreaming about her knight in shining armor. And yet here she was, 25-years-old, making up fantasies about a man she saw four times from a distance.

  An hour later, as she drove into Greenville with a clean basket of laundry, she found herself scrutinizing the pedestrians on their way to the park, looking for her mysterious stranger. Main Street and the side streets were lined with cars. Someone had draped blue and white streamers up around the large shelter in the middle of the park and music from the band playing in its shade stretched out to where Miranda finally found an empty spot.

  She joined the stream of families toting picnic baskets and pushing strollers as they walked toward the sound. Two teens on skateboards were the only ones in town who didn’t seem drawn to the festival. They were taking advantage of the slow day to practice kick flips on the sidewalk in front of the gas station.

  Miranda paused at the fair entrance, scanning the crowd. Nowhere did she see the young man she’d hoped to find there. She did, however, find Patty Carmichael easily enough. Patty was manning a kissing booth near the entrance and her clear tone reached halfway up the block.

  “Oh, come on, darlin’,” Patty teased a young man about 19 who was red as a beet. “It’s for a good cause, you know. Just close your eyes and pretend I’m your old auntie, why don’t you?”

  The boy gave her his dollar and complied, keeping this eyes open as Patty gave him a loud smack on the lips. His blush turned almost purple at the guffaws and clapping of the crowd around him.

  “Friends of the Library appreciates your contribution,” Patty said. “Come back again real soon, you hear?” Then she caught sight of Miranda and Rufus. “There she is, and who is this fine little gentleman you brought with you?” She squatted and called to the terrier, talking baby talk to him. “Who wants free kisses, hmm? Free kisses for the handsome doggie.”

  Rufus loved every second of it. He twirled in circles and yapped and then stood with his front paws on Patty’s knees so she could ruffle his ears and neck.

  “Better watch it, Patty,” one of the men standing near them said. “You might get the reputation for being a loose woman.” He and his wife laughed.

  “Oh go on, you,” Patty said, but she was clearly pleased at the joke. “I’m sure you can take over for a bit, can’t you?” she asked the man’s wife. “I want to introduce Miranda and her beau here to everyone.”

  “Everyone” seemed to include half the town. The smell and smoke of barbequing pork competed with the mingled scents of cotton candy and hot dogs from a food truck parked near the jungle gym. In a large grassy area, rides had been set up for the smaller children: toy cars circling to calliope music, a carousel covered with a red and white awning, even a small roped-off area where kids waited in line to ride one small pony who looked tired already. A farmer’s market had been laid out under a canopy where several locals sold fresh fruits and vegetables and even baked goods. It looked like Miranda has missed some sort of judging. Several of the tables had blue, red or white ribbons proudly displayed on a prize squash or pie or jar of jam.

  Patty introduced her to so many people, Miranda lost track of their names and had to label them in her mind with their occupation. The grade school teacher was blond and young and laughed at everything the football coach said, pleased by his flirtatiousness. The farmer and his wife who had apparently grown the largest pumpkin had just found out they were expecting. Patty spent at least five minutes guessing the gender of the baby, changing her mind several times. No one seemed to care that they’d already told her the sonogram showed it would be a girl.

  Finally Miranda and Patty stood in line to fill their plates with pork chops dripping with barbeque sauce, corn on the cob slathered with butter, coleslaw, and buttermilk biscuits kept warm under heat lamps.

  Patty talked the whole time. “Same thing every year. You’d think they could come up with a new menu once in a while. Still, this is some good eating.” She took an extra buttermilk biscuit. “The hubby don’t know what he’s missing. He couldn’t make it today on account of he’s working and all. On a Saturday. That man, let me tell you.

  “There’s some chairs.” Patty marched over to the first table under a stretched canvas. Several people in various stages of eating sat around it, engaged in conversation with a man in a large white hat. One of those people was Harlan Hunter. He seemed to be the one with the most to say, arms on the table as he leaned forward earnestly. Sissy, who was sitting next to him, greeted Miranda with a wide smile, then forked in another mouthful of coleslaw.

  “Mr. Mayor.” Patty greeted the white-hatted man with a nod and set her plate at the place next to him as if he had been saving it for her all this time. “Have you met Miranda yet?” she asked. “Of course you haven’t. She’s new to town. Living at the Preston place. You know it, I’m sure. Grandma Preston from Sunday School.
You remember.”

  Miranda nodded and said “Hello” as the mayor greeted her, standing awkwardly holding her plate. There was another seat available, across from Patty and right next to Harlan. But something about the way Harlan simply sat and looked at her, unsmiling, made her hesitate to take it.

  Patty had continued to introduce the others at the table until she noticed Miranda still stood. “Here, here, girl. Have a seat. The mayor don’t bite, do you, Mayor?” She laughed and thumped his arm as he smiled at her. “And you know Harlan and Sissy here, I’m sure. Scootch on over there a little, Harlan, let the girl sit down.”

  Rufus had already recognized Sissy and had started chewing on a juicy bone she’d handed down to him. His front paws were covered with sauce as he pinned it to the ground in order to gnaw the top of it. Miranda began to worry what the spicy sauce might do to his still delicate stomach, but it was too late to take it away from him now.

  “Don’t you try and steal my beau away from me, Sissy,” Patty said. “Rufus and me are going to crash the homecoming dance, aren’t we, you sweet little puppy?” Rufus looked up at her high-pitched words and shook his tail, then got back to work on his bone.

  “We’ll just have to share the cute little thing,” Sissy answered. Then she looked over Harlan to ask Miranda, “How have you been, dearie? I see Rufus is doing just fine. Are you settling in okay over there? It’s got to be exhausting trying to whip that place into shape. You should come visit again sometime soon. I know it must get lonely in that huge old house like that.”

  “I have been busy,” Miranda said. “But I’ve not been completely alone out there. I have Rufus, of course, and a couple of times I’ve seen a hunter in the back woods. I was thinking it might be your hired hand, Bob Meeks. Does he hunt with a German Shepherd?”

  Sissy laughed. “Why Bob wouldn’t know one end of a shotgun from the other. That’s him over yonder, see?” She pointed to a man at the next table wearing a grimy baseball cap. He didn’t look anything like the man Miranda had seen. “Bob’s as anti-gun as Harlan is. More maybe.”

  “Is that what you’re bending the mayor’s ear about today, Harlan?” Patty cut a piece of pork chop and ate it, speaking around the food. “I saw you on your soap box there. What is it this time?”

  “The usual,” Sissy answered. “Politics. Gun control again. Harlan is trying to make pacifists out of all these NRA members sitting around the table here.”

  The mayor and three of the men laughed, but one woman said “He’s right, though. Just last month a six-year-old over in Riverside accidently shot his little sister playing cowboys with a loaded revolver. His daddy had a whole room full of rifles and hand guns. What’s a man need with so many guns? Poor baby could have been killed.”

  “Now, now,” the mayor said, wiping his mouth and then laying his napkin neatly across his knee again. “Guns don’t kill people—”

  “Yes, yes,” Harlan interrupted. “We know. People kill people. But guns make it a lot easier to kill people and you can’t deny that.” He leaned forward again, jabbing his finger to make his point. “You can’t tell me there’s any good reason a man needs an assault rifle as his personal weapon, for Pete’s sake. If I had my way, all guns would be illegal, but at least—”

  The debate they’d interrupted took off again full throttle. Someone argued that any move to ban the personal acquisition of assault weapons was just the first step toward banning all weapons.

  “That tired old argument?” Harlan countered. “That’s like saying establishing a police force in town means we’re going to live in a police state. Ridiculous. Did banning public smoking lead to arresting everyone who buys cigarettes?”

  “Not yet,” someone said to a spattering of laughter.

  “You talk like guns are some kind of pathogen,” one white-haired man said. Miranda tried to remember his name. Doctor somebody. “As if getting rid of guns would eliminate violence like penicillin cures syphilis. Violence is the disease if you ask me. Until we find a cure for that, let me keep my aught-five.”

  “Statistics show the crime rates go down when households are allowed to own guns for self-protection,” someone else argued.

  “And I can show you data that the number of accidental deaths goes up in those same neighborhoods.” Harlan pointed a barbeque sauced finger around the table at his listeners. “500,000 guns are stolen each year in the U.S. Who do you think they get stolen from? Law abiding citizens too stupid to be allowed access let alone ownership of a dangerous weapon.

  “Take this little girl here.” Harlan jabbed his finger toward Miranda who flushed in anger at being called little girl. “Know what she had on her the other day? A handgun. That’s right. She came to greet Sissy and me at the door with a gun in her hand. What kind of training do you think she had, city bred girl that she is? What if she’d accidently discharged that weapon? Or mistook us for trespassers?”

  “I’ve been target practice shooting with my father since I was old enough to hold a gun,” Miranda protested, her face hot now. “I don’t go off half-cocked. If I had known you were coming—“

  “And how was I supposed to let you know, girl?” Harlan’s nose had grown redder as he argued and now the veins stood out prominently. “I tried your cell and there was no answer. You didn’t apparently bother to check cell availability or install a landline. Or call the electric company,” he added meaningfully.

  “I did—” Miranda started angrily, but was interrupted by Patty.

  “Now, now, everyone. This here’s a festival, remember? Means we’re supposed to be festive, okay, not talking politics and bickering like little boys in the play yard. How about we change the subject? Sissy, did you enter your blueberry preserves in the competition again this year?”

  Her diversion worked and the next few minutes were spent talking about the prizes that had been won or lost that morning and then moved on to discussion of a new gas station that was supposed to be built in town.

  “What we want with two stations is more than I can figure out,” Patty argued. “We don’t have enough cars in town to need that much gasoline. It’s not like any major road goes through town. It’s just us folks who live here that’ll use it.”

  “It’s called a convenience store, Patty,” the mayor said. “You can buy lots of things besides gas, including hot pizza. Something like that could sure be used around here since Duke’s Diner shut town three years ago.”

  Miranda listened to it all politely, even as the argument which had been about gun control now turned to how badly the new convenience store might hurt sales figures for existing businesses. But at the back of her mind she was still fuming about Harlan’s attack on her. At least she felt like she’d been attacked—accused of being silly and foolish. What made it even worse is that she secretly felt there might be some truth to that.

  As soon as she could, she made her excuses, telling everyone how nice it had been to meet them and thanking Patty for inviting her.

  “Oh, shoot, honey,” Patty said. “You don’t need any invite. You’re one of us now, aren’t you? You be sure and stop by and see me next time you drive through town. Gets lonely sometimes in that hot box of a post office. And remember, you’ve got an open invite to supper. Wait, even better. Sunday lunch tomorrow. Now don’t talk to me about all that work you got to do. It’s the Lord’s day. If God can rest, so can you.”

  Miranda finally got away after agreeing to meet Patty and her husband at one the next day. Throwing her paper plate and cup in a nearby trash can, she called Rufus over to her and headed across the park, a little relieved. Her relief was premature, however. Just as she reached her car, she heard Harlan calling her name.

  “Wait up there, Miranda.” He stopped in front of her, puffing a bit from his hurry to reach her. Once he caught his breath, he said, “I wanted to talk to you about what we were discussing the other day.”

  “Discussing?”

  “Selling the farm, of course. Now that you’ve had time to t
hink it over, I’m sure you must see what a reasonable suggestion it is. It was obvious from the way you greeted us that the place has you on edge. I completely understand that, mind you, given the history of the place. Most young people wouldn’t even want to spend one night under that roof. No one would blame you for getting it off your hands.”

  “What history? What are you talking about?”

  “They’re just rumors, I assure you, folk tales. Kids have been telling ghost stories about that place since before I was born. I thought you knew, but I guess you haven’t been there since you were little and they would have kept it from you then. It’s all nonsense, of course, at least nothing’s ever been proved. But ever since your Grandmother passed the same way—”

  “The same way?”

  “Unexpected. Perfectly healthy one day supposedly and then found dead from quote unquote natural causes. Every generation since that house was built, someone dies peacefully in their sleep. Your granny just happened to be the only person who’s lived there recently.”

  “Are you trying to say the place is cursed? Or haunted? That’s ridiculous.” But at the back of her mind flitted the memory of her dream and how it had seemed to linger even after she’d wakened.

  “Of course it’s ridiculous. It only started, I’m sure, because of its connection to the Underground Railroad. During the Civil War, you know. Rumors began after the raid in 1827 when all those runaway slaves were killed. Still, these things tend to make a person uneasy, of course, and when you add in how isolated and lonely the place is, and how much work—”

  “I’m not afraid of work,” Miranda broke in, feeling flustered. “Or ghosts. The farm, Mr. Hunter, is not for sale. And I don’t like being pressured like this.”

  A shadow passed over Harlan’s face and he narrowed his eyes. For a moment, Miranda thought he was going to snap at her.